Nightworld

  “Come, Nick,” Father Ryan was saying, trying to turn the man back toward the kitchen. “You’re making a scene.”

  “Let him stay a moment,” Veilleur said, stepping closer to Nick. Jeffy trailed along, clutching his leg. “This is your friend? The one who went into the hole yesterday?”

  The priest nodded sadly. “What’s left of him.”

  Into the hole? Alan had heard the news reports about yesterday’s tragic expedition. A physicist and a geologist had been lowered into the depths, and the geologist had died in transit. Here was the survivor. What had happened to him down there?

  “I’ve seen this before,” Veilleur said to the priest. “On occasion, in the old days, one of the rare persons who survived a trek into a chaos hole returned sensitized.” He turned to the man called Nick. “Tell me, my friend, do you know where Rasalom is?”

  Nick stepped over to the picture window and pointed to the park. Alan had wanted to take a look through that window to see the hole from above but it had seemed like such a hassle to wheel his chair around all the furniture.

  “He’s down there,” Nick said. “Way down there. I saw him. He opened his heart to me. I … I…” His mouth worked but he seemed incapable of describing what he had seen.

  “Why?” Veilleur said. “Why is he down there?”

  “He’s changing.”

  For the first time, Mr. Veilleur appeared disturbed, and something deep inside Alan quailed at the thought of that man being afraid.

  “He’s started his change already?”

  “Yes!” Nick’s eyes were wilder than ever. “And when it’s complete, he’s going to come for you!”

  “I know,” Veilleur said in a low voice. “I know.”

  The light suddenly died in Nick’s eyes. His gaze drifted and his shoulders slumped.

  Father Ryan gripped his shoulder. “Nick? Nick?”

  But Nick didn’t answer.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Alan said.

  He hadn’t practiced medicine in over a year but he could almost hear the associations clicking into place. The man had lapsed into an almost catatonic state. Alan wondered if his behavior had anything to do with the cranial deformities he’d noticed. But that was unlikely. And they certainly wouldn’t have sent a schizophrenic down into that hole.

  “He’s been like this since yesterday—since he came up from below.”

  “Has he been examined by a doctor?”

  The priest nodded. “Scads of them. They’re not sure what to do for him.”

  “Why isn’t he in a hospital? He should be closely monitored until they work out an appropriate course of therapy.”

  Father Ryan looked at him a moment and Alan was jolted by the depth of the pain in his eyes. Then the priest looked away.

  “Sorry, Doctor Bulmer, but it’s … it’s been my experience that modern medicine isn’t equipped to deal with Nick’s sort of problem.”

  He took Nick’s arm and the younger man docilely followed him into the kitchen, leaving Alan to wonder what sort of hell that priest had been through.

  “Well,” Mr. Veilleur said, facing Sylvia and Alan. Jeffy still hung on his leg. “I’m expecting one more person any minute now; then our company will be complete.” He pried the boy loose from his leg. “There now, Jeffy. Be a good boy and sit with your mother.”

  Reluctantly, Jeffy complied, seating himself next to Sylvia, but barely glancing at her. His eyes remained fixed on Veilleur.

  “I’m glad you decided to come,” Glaeken told Sylvia.

  “You didn’t leave us much choice,” she said. “Not after what happened last night.” She frowned. “Strange … you show up at our house Thursday, I kick you out, and on Friday all hell breaks loose.”

  “No connection, I assure you, Mrs. Nash. I’m not responsible for the hole or for the chew wasps and belly flies.”

  “So you say. But the area around your apartment building this morning looks like a slaughterhouse. And out on Long Island, way out in Nassau County, in the village of Monroe, the same little monstrosities that did all the damage around here swarmed in and attacked one house. Ours. Why is that, Mr. Veilleur?”

  “Call me Glaeken,” the old man said. “And I believe you know the answer to your own question.”

  Alan caught the slightest tremor along Sylvia’s lips; he noticed her eyes were suddenly moist. He ached for her. What she must be feeling to let even this much through. In all the years he’d known her, Sylvia had never once let her feelings show in public. Around the house she’d let her hair down with the best of them, but in public she was pretty much like Ba.

  “Why would anyone want to hurt him?” she said in a small voice.

  Alan noted how she avoided saying Jeffy’s name.

  The man who wanted to be called Glaeken smiled sadly and ruffled the boy’s hair.

  “He’s not the target. It’s what resides within him.”

  Sylvia leaned back and closed her eyes. Her voice was a whisper. “The Dat-tay-vao.”

  Alan sagged with relief in his chair. Finally, after all these months, she’d admitted it. Now maybe they could get on with the problem of dealing with it.

  “Yes,” Glaeken said. “There’s an instinctive enmity between the things from the hole and something like the Dat-tay-vao. That’s why I’d like you to move into this building with me.”

  Sylvia looked at him as if he’d just propositioned her. Before she could answer, the doorbell rang.

  “Will you get that, Bill?” Glaeken called toward the kitchen. “I believe it’s Mr. and Mrs. Treece.”

  Father Ryan came out of the kitchen and headed for the door, tossing Glaeken a baffled look along the way.

  An older woman entered, a slender, attractive ash blonde who had an immediate, bright smile for Father Ryan. The woman and the priest seemed to know each other. Alan sensed that they might be more than simply friends.

  The priest asked her something but she shook her head. He introduced her around as Carol Treece, then she seated herself on the other section of the angled sofa. The priest stood behind her, but kept an eye on the entrance to the kitchen.

  “I was hoping your husband would come,” Glaeken said.

  Carol looked flustered as she shook her head. “He was delayed on business … in Denver.”

  “Too bad,” Glaeken said. “Well, at least everyone else is here. But before you can fully grasp why you are here, I must give you some background. It’s a long story. Eons long. It begins—”

  Suddenly there came screaming outside the window. Glaeken turned and Alan looked with the rest of them.

  A woman floated there—portly, middle-aged, dressed in a white blouse and a polyester pantsuit—rising through the air a dozen feet beyond the glass, twisting, turning, kicking, writhing, futilely reaching for something, anything that would halt her helpless ascent. Her face was a study in panic. Her terrified screams penetrated the double-paned windows.

  We’re twelve stories up! Alan thought, as everyone but he, Ba, and Nick ran to the windows.

  As quickly as she had appeared, she was gone, rising above the glass and tumbling out of sight like a lost balloon.

  Sylvia’s face was white, her lips tight; Mrs. Treece’s hands were pressed over her mouth. The one named Jack turned to Glaeken with an uncertain smile.

  “It’s a gag, right?”

  The old man shook his head. “I’m afraid not. That woman is a victim of another kind of hole that will begin appearing at random intervals and locations—a gravity hole.”

  “Can’t we do anything for her?” the priest said.

  “No. She’s beyond our reach. Perhaps a helicopter…” He sighed. “But please, all of you, sit down and let me finish. Perhaps it’s a good thing this happened now. It’s no accident that it occurred outside my windows. But even so, what I’m about to tell you will strain your credulity. I had little hope of any of you believing me before now. However, the events of the past two days—the bottomless hole in Central Pa
rk, the depredations of the first wave of night creatures, this unfortunate woman outside—I hope they have put you all in a more receptive frame of mind. It is important that you believe me, because our survival, the survival of most of the human race, will depend on the course of action we take from this day forward. And for you to act intelligently and get the job done, you must know what you are up against.”

  Alan glanced around the room. At the rear, Ba was listening intently, but the man named Jack looked like he’d heard all this before. Nearby on his right, Sylvia wore her this-had-better-be-good expression. Father Ryan hovered behind the sofa with a faraway look in his eyes; Alan got the impression that he too had already heard what Glaeken had to say. On the far side of the sofa, Carol’s expression mirrored the priest’s.

  Then Glaeken began to speak. He told of two warring forces existing beyond the veil of human reality—ageless, deathless, implacable, nebulous, huge beyond comprehension. One inimical to humanity, feeding on fear and depravity; the other an ally—not a friend, not a protector or guardian, an ally simply by circumstance, simply because it opposed the other force. He told of the endless war between these two forces, raging across the galaxies, across the dimensions, across all time itself; of the human named Rasalom who in ancient times aligned himself with the malign force, and of another man, equally ancient, who’d had thrust upon him the burden of bearing the standard of the opposing force. And now the ages-long battle was coming to a close with only one army on the field. The outcome depended on this small group of people collected in this room. Unless they acted to muster an opposing force, all was lost.

  Emotionally, Alan believed Glaeken—deep within he felt the truth of what he was saying. Perhaps that too was the result of his entanglement with the Dat-tay-vao.

  But intellectually he rebelled.

  This was it? Humanity depended on this group gathered here?

  He hoped the old man was crazy. Because if not, they were all doomed.

  “Why are we so important to these … forces?” he blurted.

  Glaeken shrugged. “It’s almost impossible to divine the motives of such entities, but long experience has led me to conclude that we have not the slightest strategic value to either side. We are fought over because we exist. We are a piece on their game board. To win the game, you must have the most pieces—perhaps all the pieces.”

  “Then why—?”

  “I think we are needed by the side that’s come to be known as the Otherness. It is inimical to everything that gives our lives meaning, that makes life worth living. It thrives on what’s worst in us, feeds on the misery and pain we cause each other. Perhaps it gathers strength from our negative emotions. Or maybe we’re only a potential snack. Whatever, it is here to feed.”

  “And this other power,” Sylvia said, leaning forward. “It wants to protect us?”

  “Not us, as humans, per se. The Ally power cares not a whit for our welfare. It laid claim to us in prehistory and simply wants to keep us in its collection. Or did. The Otherness needs us, and so is a little more aggressive.”

  “Where was this Ally last night?” Alan said.

  Glaeken looked away. “Gone.”

  “Dead?”

  “No. Just … gone. Turned its attention elsewhere. Back in 1941 it thought it had won the little skirmish and pulled back.”

  “That’s it?” Alan said. “This Ally or whatever battles for eons, thinks it’s won, then goes ‘elsewhere’? Didn’t it want to hang around and show off the prize, or maybe just gloat a little?”

  Glaeken fixed him with his blue eyes and Alan felt the power behind them.

  “Tell me, Doctor: In chess, do you really want the other player’s pieces for their intrinsic value? Do you have any plans for those pieces? After you’ve taken an opponent’s knight in a match, do you give it another thought?”

  The room was dead quiet for a long, breathless moment.

  Glaeken glanced at Mrs. Treece. “You may wonder why Carol is here. In ancient times a man named Rasalom sided with the Otherness and became its agent. In so doing he became something more than human. Eventually, in the fifteenth century, he was imprisoned in Eastern Europe. He should have remained so forever, but the German Army inadvertently released him in 1941. Before he could escape, however, he was destroyed. Or at least appeared to have been destroyed.”

  Alan wondered at Carol’s stricken expression, how she wouldn’t look at anyone, as if she feared what Glaeken was about to say next.

  “Through luck and unique circumstances, Rasalom was able to incorporate himself into the unborn body of an embryo who would grow to be James Stevens. But Rasalom was powerless within Jim Stevens. He could only watch the world pass by from within Jim’s body … until Jim married Carol and they conceived a child.”

  Dear God, Alan thought.

  He noticed Sylvia stiffen, saw her suppress a gasp.

  Poor Carol.

  Glaeken pushed on. “He moved into that child—became that child. For decades after his rebirth he lay low while his new body matured, soaking up power from the world around him, from the wars and genocide in Southeast Asia, from the slaughters in Africa and the endless hatred and bloodshed in the Middle East, and from the countless spites, acrimonies, antipathies, rancors, and casual brutalities of everyday life as well. He has been preparing to make his move, setting the stage by deceiving the Ally into believing our world is dead. A few months ago he discovered he was unopposed here and succeeded in extinguishing the beacon that proclaimed our sentience to the multiverse. Since only sentient worlds have value in the game, the Ally has turned away from us and shifted what little of its attention it focused on us to other realities. Rasalom’s first overt move was delaying the sunrise on Wednesday morning. He has been steadily escalating since then.”

  From the back of the room, Jack said, “What he’s telling you is that in the old days we had some heavy backup, but now we’re on our own. This is the Little Big Horn and we’re not the Indians.”

  Glaeken’s lips twisted. “You could put it that way. But we might have a chance of calling in reinforcements, so to speak.”

  “The necklaces,” Jack said.

  Necklaces? Alan thought. What necklaces?

  Glaeken nodded. “The necklaces, plus the right smithies, and…” He gestured toward Jeffy. “This little boy.”

  “Would you mind being just a little more specific?” Sylvia said. She was speaking through her teeth. “Just what the hell are you talking about?”

  Alan’s sentiments exactly.

  Glaeken seemed unfazed by Sylvia’s outburst. He smiled her way.

  “To put it in a nutshell, Mrs. Nash: We need to let the Ally know that this is not a dead world and that the battle here is not over; that we are still sentient, and that the Adversary is still active and about to take complete control of this sphere. We need to send the Ally a signal.”

  “And just how do we do that?” Sylvia said.

  “We need to reconstruct an ancient artifact.”

  “A weapon?”

  “In a way, but what I’m talking about is as much a weapon as an antenna, a focal point.”

  “Where is it?” Alan asked.

  “It was deactivated more than a half century ago when it supposedly destroyed Rasalom in a Romanian mountain pass outside a place called the keep.”

  Alan’s mind continued to rebel against Glaeken’s words, more intensely now than ever, but his heart, his emotions insisted that he believe.

  “All right. Suppose we accept all this at face value.” That earned him a sharp look from Sylvia. “How do we go about reactivating the focus deactivated in Romania?”

  “We don’t,” Glaeken said. “All the essences that made it a focus were drained off by the act of destroying Rasalom—or what appeared to be Rasalom’s destruction. The remnant of that instrument was reduced to dust when Rasalom started on the path toward rebirth.”

  “If it’s gone and we can’t get it back,” Alan said, “why are w
e talking about it?”

  “Because there were two. The other was stolen in ancient times and dismantled—melted down into other things.”

  “Oh, jeez,” Jack said. “The necklaces.”

  Glaeken smiled. “Correct.”

  “What are you two talking about?” Sylvia said. Alan sensed her anger edging closer to the surface.

  “The other instrument—the other focus—was stolen and melted down. The melting process dislodged a powerful elemental force within the focus, releasing it to wander free. But a residue of that force remained in the molten metal. The metal was fashioned into a pair of necklaces which have been used for ages by the high priests and priestesses of an ancient cult to keep them well and to prolong their lives.”

  “And the elemental force?” Sylvia said, leaning forward, her face pale, her expression tight, tense.

  The answer flashed into Alan’s mind. He suspected Sylvia had guessed it as well.

  “It wandered the globe for ages,” Glaeken said. “It’s been called many things in its time, but eventually it became known as the Dat-tay-vao.”

  Alan thought he heard a faint groan escape Sylvia as she closed her eyes and slipped an arm around Jeffy.

  Just then a voice broke through from somewhere in the apartment.

  “Glenn? Glenn!” It rose in pitch, edging toward panic. “Glenn, I’m all alone in here! Where are you?”

  As Glaeken glanced toward the rear rooms, Alan saw genuine concern and dismay mix in his eyes. This was the first time he had shown a hint of uncertainty. He took a hesitant step in the direction of the cries.

  “Let me go,” Father Ryan said, moving from his spot behind the sofa. “She knows me by now. Maybe I can reassure her.”

  “Thank you, Bill.” Glaeken turned back to his audience. “My wife is ill.”

  “Anything I can do?” Alan said.

  “I’m afraid not, Doctor Bulmer, but I thank you for offering.” Alan saw no hope in the man’s eyes as he spoke. “She has Alzheimer’s disease.”

  Alan could only say, “I’m sorry.”