Conspiracies

  "The gateway will be closing soon. I have some things I must do before it does, and then I'll join you."

  Jack didn't believe it for a minute, but Lew seemed to be swallowing the whole package.

  "Sure, Mel," he said, nodding as he started toward the steps. "I'll wait for you outside. For a minute there ... "

  "I would never hurt you, Lewis. Surely you know that."

  "I do, Mel," he said. "I know you wouldn't." He hurried up the steps.

  Canfield rolled over to the stairway and peered up, then wheeled around to face Melanie.

  "Why did you tell him that?" he said in a low voice.

  "Because I don't want him hurt," she said.

  "How can he not be?" Canfield was twisted half around. Clinking noises rose from the pouch behind his seat back as he fumbled inside it.

  "I mean physically. He was good to me, Frayne. He treated me like a human being instead of a freak. I owe him for that."

  Jack felt like he was eavesdropping on a private conversation.

  "Should I be hearing this?" he said. "Because frankly, I don't care to."

  He glanced at the Tesla device and was sure its dome was starting to glow. He wanted out of here. The growing heat was only part of it; the whole scene was starting to annoy him. Especially Melanie and her hybrid buddy Canfield—something going on between those two, something that made him queasy.

  Melanie turned to him and smiled ... not a smile to be particularly trusted. "Everything will be made clear in a minute or two."

  "Jack," Canfield said, still over by the steps, still rattling around in his chair's rear pouch, "could you help me with this a minute?"

  The Tesla device's dome was glowing a dull cherry red now. Jack was glad to get away from the heat.

  Jack came around behind the wheelchair. He noticed a length of sturdy chain running out the rear pouch, around the support column, and back into the pouch.

  "Right here," Canfield said, indicating the pouch. "It's stuck. Could you just yank that the rest of the way out?"

  Jack reached in next to Canfield's hand, grabbed a fistful of links—

  —and felt something cold and metallic snap around his wrist just before Canfield dove out of the wheelchair and slithered—slithered—away across the floor.

  "What the—?"

  Jack yanked his hand out of the pouch and stared at the chrome handcuff around his right wrist. The second cuff was closed through the links of the chain looped around the support column.

  Sudden panic at being trapped rippled through his veins, just as revulsion rippled through his gut at the sight of Canfield's boneless legs jutting from his pant cuffs; they seemed more like tentacles than real legs.

  "Good job, Frayne," Melanie said as Canfield squatted beside her like a dog. Jack almost expected her to pat Canfield's head. Instead she turned toward Jack. She was positively beaming now. "It would have been so much easier if you'd chosen to climb down the hole."

  Jack ignored her and calmed himself. He wasn't Houdini, but he could get out of this. Lots of options ...

  He tugged on the chain. The links were made of eighth-inch steel, and welded closed. He wrapped his hands around the column and tugged—not even a hint of give.

  "Don't waste your time," Melanie said. "That column is a cement-filled steel pipe, set into the cement floor and bolted to a six-inch beam above. It's there to stay."

  She was right. The column wasn't going anywhere. What about the cuffs, then? Top-grade Hiatts—a heavy-duty hinge model. If he had his pick set, he could have them open in thirty seconds. But the set was back in his hotel room.

  Okay—he'd have to shoot himself free.

  As he reached for the Semmerling he remembered it was in his jacket ... out of reach on the couch across the room.

  Jack's mouth went dry. He felt the entire weight of the house pressing down on him.

  Trapped. He looked at them.

  Canfield's eyes shifted away. "Sorry, Jack," he said. "It's not personal. Actually I kind of like you. But Melanie's calling the shots here."

  "Is that so?" said a voice from the top of the stairs. "Since when?"

  Jack recognized the voice, but it was Canfield who announced him. "That sounds like Professor Roma! Professor, I've been trying to reach you all day!"

  Melanie, however, was suddenly agitated. "He's not Professor Roma." Her voice dropped to an almost reverential tone. "He's The One!"

  Canfield sucked in a breath. "The One? He's The One?"

  Jack turned and stared up the steps to where Roma stood in the doorway, his monkey perched on his shoulder as usual.

  "The One what?" Jack said.

  "The One who will soon be lord and master of this world," Melanie said.

  "Oh, brother," Jack muttered.

  Roma said, "You have not answered my question, Melanie."

  "This man is wanted on the other side, sir," Melanie said. "Some entities there feel they have a score to settle with him."

  Jack didn't like the sound of that at all.

  "Do they?" Roma sounded like a chef who's just been told that some of the customers think he 'should add more chocolate to his mousse.'

  "Yes, they—"

  Her reply was cut off by terrified shouts, then gunfire—half a dozen pistol shots—echoing up from the hole. Above it, the dome of the mini-tower was beginning to smoke.

  "What's happening?" Jack said.

  Roma said, "I imagine James and Miles have found the answers they've been seeking ... and they don't like them."

  More shots. Jack noticed the rope ladder begin to vibrate. The shouts turned to agonized screams ... and then the ladder was still.

  Above the opening the Tesla device's legs and struts were beginning to glow. Jack could feel the growing heat.

  "They've also learned the painful truth," Melanie said, staring at the opening, "that the Otherness has no use for ordinary humans." She turned back to Jack. "Except for you."

  Jack yanked futilely on his chains, diluting his fear with anger. "Why, damn it! I never even heard of this Otherness crap until last week!"

  "Yes," said Roma—or The One. "Why?"

  "The Otherness creatures—they were known as rakoshi, rakshashi, and various other names. They were children of the Otherness, and events were manipulated to have them brought here, to New York, to have them at your side for the Time of Change, but this man killed them. Certain entities in the Otherness went to great lengths to create those creatures, and now they want him brought across so they can do to him what he did to their creations."

  "Why was I told none of this?" Roma bellowed, obviously angry now.

  Melanie took a step forward but was careful to stay beyond Jack's reach. She bent and looked up the stairs.

  "I cannot say, sir. One such as myself cannot contact The One. But I told Frayne and he was supposed to—"

  "I couldn't find you!" Canfield blurted. "I searched all day and—"

  "Never mind," Roma sighed.

  Melanie said, "You see, sir, though I am part Otherness, it is only a small part. Not enough to be welcomed as a lost member of the family. I have to buy my way in. And Repairman Jack is my ticket."

  "You mean our ticket," Canfield said.

  "Yes." She turned and smiled down at him. "Ours."

  "Have done with it then," Roma said—he sounded impatient. "I am going outside to wait."

  "Yes, sir," Melanie said, all but kowtowing. "Thank you for your patience."

  Jack glanced up at the now empty doorway, then back to Melanie.

  "Your ticket?" he said, holding up the cuffs and chain. "I don't think your ticket is going anywhere."

  "Don't worry. The Otherness will take care of that. All I had to do was get you this far. You see, while I was on the other side I learned my own painful truth—that I could not stay in the Otherness unless I earned my place there. So I contacted Lewis and told him to hire you. But I didn't tell him why. The plan was to draw you in through the assembly of the Tesla device, t
o lure you here to help reopen the gateway to the Otherness. In a way, you helped build your own gallows."

  Jack ground his teeth in frustration. So goddamn stupid! How had he let himself get hooked and reeled in like this?

  Melanie's smile broadened. "You might even say, Repairman Jack, that you are the victim of ... a conspiracy."

  Jack tugged again at the chain as she and Canfield grinned at each other.

  "Why kill Olive then?" he said.

  Their smiles vanished.

  "She's dead?" Canfield said. "How do you know?"

  "Don't give me that," Jack said. "You had a couple of your men in black mutilate her back in the hotel, then make her body disappear."

  Melanie shook her head as Canfield stared up at her. She looked worried. "I don't know anything about men in black. Whoever they were, I doubt they were from the Otherness. But then, there's so much I don't know. What did—?"

  She cut off as the Tesla device began to vibrate. The whole thing was aglow and beginning to drift back toward the floor.

  "We don't have much time!" Melanie cried. "Quick! Into the gateway!"

  Canfield hesitated, frowning as he stared at the yawning pit. "I don't know ... "

  "Trust me, Frayne," she said, beckoning to him with her talon. "You'll see—as soon as you step into the Otherness, all will be made clear. You'll know. You'll understand all its plans. You'll be part of it. You'll feel ... " Her eyes fairly glowed as she looked down into the gateway. " ... wonderful!

  "But will ... will I be welcome?"

  Melanie was already lowering her legs into the opening. "Yes;" She glanced at Jack. "As long as we have him."

  "But we don't have him."

  "The Otherness will handle it. And trust me, you don't want to be on this side when it does." Her voice echoed up as she descended below floor level. "Hurry!"

  Even as low as Canfield was, slithering on his boneless legs, he had to duck to make it under the descending base of the Tesla device. He wrapped his legs around the rope ladder and slipped over the edge. Before he disappeared, he looked Jack's way.

  "See you on the Other side," he said, and was gone.

  The device came to rest as Canfield disappeared, the feet of its glowing legs scorching the concrete where they touched down. Almost immediately the legs and struts began to bend like Twizzlers, sinking under the weight of the dome. Slowly they collapsed into the hole. The glowing dome caught on the rim for a few seconds, then it buckled, folded, and disappeared.

  Saved! Jack thought."

  Almost weak with relief, he slumped against the column. Melanie and Canfield had gone to their new home without an admission ticket. He smiled. He hoped they got a nice warm welcome. Without the Tesla thing to keep it open, the hole would close just as before, leaving the rope ladder embedded in the concrete just as before.

  Now to get out of the damn cuff ...

  4

  "You see, Mauricio? All your fretting was for nothing. The gateway is open, just as planned. My time has come."

  "Admit it, though," Mauricio said from his shoulder as they crossed the yard. "Even you must have had moments of uncertainty."

  True enough, he thought. But he would never admit it.

  "When I learned from the Ehler woman what she had found in one of the buried Tesla caches, I suspected that my time was near. When I saw the plans and read Tesla's notes, I knew."

  But the plans had been incomplete. The device they depicted could open the gateway for but a few minutes. Melanie had gone through to the other side to have a completed device sent back from the Otherness, one that would open a permanent gateway.

  What matter if forces within the Otherness had directed the device to the stranger instead of him? The first gateway was open ... more would follow, opening spontaneously around the globe. Now that the process had begun, nothing could stop it. The Otherness would seep through, engulfing this world, reshaping it in its own image.

  And I will be the instrument of that process.

  "Still," Mauricio said, "I would have thought that when your time was truly here, you would need no devices. The gates would open on their own."

  He had always thought the same, but the device had presented an opportunity he could not ignore. After all the years, all the ages he had waited, he had grown weary of biding his time until all the signs were right, until something simply happened on its own. He had seen the discovery of the plans as a sign in itself, a chance to make it happen, and so he'd leapt for it.

  "And there is still the matter of The Lady."

  "Forget her! You can await your destiny, Mauricio, or you can go to meet it."

  "At least now I know why I could not kill the stranger," Mauricio said. "I didn't know what stopped me or why. It might even have been the Enemy. Now I know. The Otherness wants the stranger for itself." He bared his sharp teeth. "Better for him if I had succeeded."

  They paused by the big oak and faced the house. To his right he saw the Ehler woman's husband sitting in his car, waiting in the darkness for his wife. How pathetic.

  You will be reunited with her soon, he thought, but not in any way you can imagine.

  He returned his attention to the house. His vibrating nerves sang with joyous anticipation. At last, after all this time, at this moment, in this place, in the little town of his reconception, his time had come.

  After all I have been through, after all the battles I have fought, the pain and punishment I have suffered, I deserve this world. It was promised to me, I have earned it, and now, finally, it will be mine.

  5

  As Jack searched around for a way to open the cuff, he felt the breeze pick up against his back ... and continue to increase in force until it wasn't a breeze any more. This was a wind now.

  And that hole wasn't any smaller.

  Tiny spiders of apprehension ran up and down his spine. He tried to lose them by telling himself that at least the opening wasn't growing. But what was with this wind? Was the gateway going to try to suck him into the Otherness like some giant vacuum cleaner?

  Just then Canfield's wheelchair began to roll toward the hole.

  As Jack grabbed for it and stopped it with his free hand, he realized, Yeah, that might be just what the Otherness intended.

  But no worry. He was attached to a damn near indestructible steel column. He wasn't going anywhere.

  So why didn't he feel safe?

  Truly, the only place he'd feel safe was out of here and racing for Manhattan. But first he had to get free of these cuffs. Jack gazed longingly at his jacket on the couch against the rear wall ... but no chance. He'd have to be Plastic Man to reach it.

  With the steadily rising wind chugging down the stairs, he looked around for another way.

  Canfield's wheelchair ...

  He reached into its rear pouch and found the tool kit. He fumbled it open and searched through the tools. He snatched up the biggest screwdriver and a couple of slim paneling nails, then tossed the kit back into the pouch.

  The wooden desk chair began to slide toward the hole. It toppled into the opening and caught on the edges. It hung there, its wood creaking and cracking, then its back snapped and the pieces tumbled out of sight.

  Jack stared at the hole. Had it grown in size, or did it just seem that way? He watched the rope ladder twisting and gyrating in the downdraft. He didn't remember that wooden tread sitting on the edge before ... hadn't it been further back?

  Alarmed, he clamped the nails between his lips and jammed the screwdriver through one of the chain links. He twisted the link, using both hands and putting all his weight and strength behind it. He pushed till he thought he might pop a vein in his head, but the weld held fast.

  He heard a scraping sound and looked up. The desk was sliding toward the hole. It stopped after moving a foot or so, but the tools and the two remaining crystals atop it kept rolling. The crystals hit the floor and shattered. The amber shards slid and tumbled across the concrete with the tools and disappeared into the ho
le.

  And still the wind increased ... a full-fledged gale now, blasting down those steps. The wheelchair kept wanting to roll away but Jack had the front of his sneaker hooked through the spokes of one of the wheels.

  He shoved the screwdriver into his jeans pocket and began trying to pick the lock with one of the nails. He didn't know if it was possible. Hiatts made serious cuffs. Even if he'd had his pick set, the gale buffeting his arms and body would have made the job a tough go. But with a lousy nail ...

  He looked up to see plastic containers of liquid detergent topple off the shelf above the washer and dryer and slide into the hole.

  Jack jumped and dropped the paneling nail as the door at the top of the steps slammed explosively. A piece of molding flew down the steps and wind screamed around the edges of the door.

  Jack felt like screaming too as the air pressure plummeted, driving spikes of pain through his eardrums. He lost the other nails as he shouted and worked his jaw to relieve the pressure. Nothing was working. Just when he thought his ears were going to burst, the high, pint-sized cellar windows shattered, hurling bright daggers through the air and into the sucking maw in the floor.

  Jack realized he'd be stew meat now if one of those windows had been behind him. But at least the air howling through the small openings relieved the negative pressure and the pain in his ears.

  The card table and folding chairs fell away from the wall and slid into the hole. Now the desk was moving again, and this time it didn't stop. It skated across the concrete, straight for the hole, and over the edge. But it didn't go down. It hung up in the opening, canted at an angle with the lip of its top caught on the rim.

  "Bit off more that you can chew?" Jack said. Maybe there was some hope yet.

  The sucking air shrieked around the desk, bucking it back and forth until the top groaned and popped loose. It angled up and snapped in half with a bang as it and the rest of the desk tumbled from view.

  And oh Christ, the hole was definitely bigger now. The more it swallowed, the bigger it seemed to grow. The tread that had been on the edge was out of sight now. Only four more treads remained between Jack and the sucking maw.