His world.
And he is nearly there. He feels the final strands of the metamorphosis drawing tight around and through him. And when it is done, he will rise to the surface and allow Glaeken to gaze on the new Rasalom, to shrink in awe and fear from his magnificence before the life is slowly crushed from his body.
Soon now.
Very soon.
END PLAY
Manhattan
“Where can they be?”
Carol knew she was being a pest, that no one in the room—neither Sylvia, nor Jeffy, nor Ba, nor Nick, not even Glaeken himself—could answer the question she’d repeated at least two dozen times in the past hour, but she couldn’t help herself.
“I know I’m not supposed to be afraid, I know that’s what Rasalom wants, but I can’t help it. I’m scared to death something’s happened to Bill. And Jack.”
“That’s not fear,” Glaeken said. “That’s concern. There’s an enormous difference. The fear that Rasalom thrives on is the dread, the panic, the terror, the fear for one’s self that paralyzes you, makes you hate and distrust everyone around you, that forces you either to lash out at whoever is within reach or to crawl into a hole and huddle alone and miserable in the dark. The fear that cuts you off from hope and from each other, that’s what he savors. This isn’t fear you’re feeling, Carol. It’s anxiety, and it springs from love.”
Carol nodded. That was all fine and good …
“But where are they?”
“They’re gone,” Nick said.
Carol’s stomach plummeted as she turned toward him. Glaeken, too, was staring at him.
Nick hadn’t answered her all the other times she’d asked the same question. Why now?
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“They’re gone,” he repeated, his voice quavering. “They’re not out there. Father Bill and the other one—they’ve disappeared.”
Carol watched in horror as a tear slid down Nick’s cheek. She turned to Glaeken.
“What does he mean?”
“He’s wrong,” Glaeken said, but his eyes did not hold the conviction of his words. “He has to be.”
“But he sees things we don’t. And he hasn’t been wrong yet. Oh, God!”
She began to sob. She couldn’t help it. Lying in Bill’s arms last night had been the first time since Jim’s death that she had felt like a complete, fully functioning human being. She couldn’t bear to lose him now.
Or was this part of a plan?
She swallowed her sobs and wiped away her tears.
“Is this another of Rasalom’s games? Feed us a little hope, let us taste a little happiness, make us ache for a future and then crush us by snatching it all away?”
Glaeken nodded. “That is certainly his style.”
“No!” she screamed.
The outburst shocked her. She never raised her voice. Never felt it necessary. But this had leapt from her—and it seemed right. It capsulized the anger she felt. She glanced over to where Jeffy sat reading a picture book with Sylvia. Sylvia was looking at her with a curious expression, but the boy wasn’t paying attention. Carol turned back to Glaeken.
“No,” she said again, in a lower voice. “He’s not getting anything from me. I won’t be afraid, I won’t lose hope, I won’t give up.”
She went to the huge curved sofa, picked up a magazine, and sat down to read it. But she couldn’t see the trembling page through her freshly welling tears.
The Horror Channel
“Got to be those things in the backseat,” Jack said in a hushed voice.
Bill said nothing. He held his breath and leaned away from the passenger-side window as countless tentacles brushed across its surface.
Hurry up!
A giant, tentacled slug blocked their way on Broadway as it squeezed into 47th Street. He mentally urged it to keep moving and get out of their way.
“This happened to me once before,” Jack went on. “With the rakoshi. As long as I was wearing one of the necklaces, they couldn’t see me. One or both of those things Haskins gave us was made from the necklaces. This has got to be the same kind of effect. I mean, look at that slug. It’s ignoring us like we don’t even exist.”
The whole trip had been like a dream, an interminable nightmare. The horrors from the holes had taken over—completely. Their movements had lost the frantic urgency of all past nights. Now they were more deliberate, no longer an invading army, but more like an occupying force.
Bill and Jack had traveled in from the Island through swarms of bugs and crawlers large and small—but they had traveled unnoticed. An occasional horror would flutter against one of the windows or crash into a door or a fender, but each was accidental contact. Still, their progress had been slow through the dark dreamscape, and when they arrived at the Midtown Tunnel, they’d found it impassable—choked with countless giant millipede-like creatures. They’d finally found their way across the miraculously intact Brooklyn Bridge and had been making good time heading uptown on Broadway. The wide avenue had run downtown in the days when it had been a thoroughfare for cars instead of crawlers, but no one seemed to be writing tickets tonight.
Bill watched Jack. “You wanted to keep on going west, didn’t you.”
Jack glanced at him, then looked away. “Say what?”
“When we hit Manhattan and it was clear we weren’t going to be attacked, you wanted to cut straight across and into Jersey. Am I right?”
“Crossed my mind.”
“You could have dumped me, reached the people you care about, and used these things to protect them. Why didn’t you?”
He shrugged. “Not the right thing to do. And Gia would have sent me back anyway.” He grinned. “A colossal waste of gas.”
Bill thought he finally understood why Glaeken placed such stock in this violent, enigmatic man.
The slug’s back end finally cleared enough pavement to allow Jack to scoot around behind it and they were moving again. Another fifteen minutes of picking their way around abandoned cars and the larger crawlers and they arrived at Glaeken’s building.
Bill unlocked his door and reached for the handle as Jack drove up on the sidewalk.
“Better not get out empty-handed,” Jack said. “You might not make it to the door.”
Good thought. Bill grabbed the boxier of the two blanket-wrapped objects and hopped out. Julio was at the lobby door, holding it open.
“Where you guys been?” he said as Bill rushed through. “We been worried sick ’bout you.”
Bill patted him on the shoulder as he passed.
“Elevator still working?”
“Slow as shit, but it gets there.”
Bill hopped in and waited for Jack only because it would have been a slap in the face to leave him behind. The need to be with Carol was a desperate, gnawing urgency. He wanted to see her, hold her, let her know he was all right. She had to be sick with worry by now.
Jack hit a button short of the top.
“Got to make a stop.”
Bill knew it wasn’t for the bathroom.
“Hope they’re okay.”
“Yeah.” His voice was tight. “So do I.”
Jack got out and seconds later Bill reached the top floor alone. He fairly ran for Glaeken’s apartment, and there she was, the wonder and joy and relief in her eyes so real, and just for him. She sobbed when he wrapped his free arm around her. He wanted to carry her back to the bedroom right now but knew that would have to wait.
“Nick said you were dead!”
Bill straightened and looked at her. “He did? Dead?”
“Well, not dead. But he said you were gone—not there anymore.”
“Why would he—?”
And then Bill thought he understood. Just as he and Jack had been invisible to the bugs on their trip home, so they must have been invisible to Nick as well.
He realized that he and Carol were the center of attention—Sylvia, Jeffy, Ba, Glaeken—everyone b
ut Nick was staring at them. He released Carol and showed his blanket-wrapped bundle to Glaeken.
“We got it. Those smallfolk you mentioned were there. They took the necklaces and scraps and gave us this and another package in return.”
“Where’s the other?”
“Jack has it. He’s making a call. He’ll be here in a minute.”
Glaeken pointed to the bundle, then the coffee table.
“Unwrap it and place it there, if you will.”
Bill searched through the many folds until his hand came in contact with cold metal. He wriggled it free and held it up.
Bill’s gasp was echoed by the others in the room.
“A cross!” Carol said in hushed tones.
Yes. A cross, identical to the ones that studded the walls of the keep back in Romania. But the colors surprised him most. He’d expected something made of iron, a dull flat gray similar to the necklaces they had delivered to Haskins this morning. Not this. Not an upright of solid gold and a crosspiece of shining silver, reflecting the dancing light of the flames in the fireplace.
Bill tore his eyes away from its gleaming surface and looked at Glaeken.
“Is this it? A cross?”
Glaeken had stepped back, placing a section of the sofa between Bill and himself. He shook his head.
“Not a cross. But it is the source, the reason the cross is such an important symbol throughout the world. In truth it is merely the hilt of a sword.”
Bill ran his fingers over its surface and felt something like a tingle.
“But what happened to the iron from the necklaces?”
“You’re touching it,” Glaeken said. “The smallfolk have a way with metals.”
“I guess they do.”
Glaeken looked around. “What’s taking Jack so long?”
The Bunker
Nightmare.
The only word for it.
Vicky crouched in the center of the floor, fingers jammed into her ears, shoulders quaking as she sobbed in terror. Abe knelt next to her, reloading his shotgun while Gia rotated in a slow circle. Sweat soaked her hair, dripped down her face, drenched the long-sleeve T-shirt she wore. Her insides quaked, her fingers twitched, and her palms felt sweaty against the stock as she waited for the next burrower to show its snout.
The strategy, if it could be called that, was Abe’s: One of them would shoot until only one round—the one in the chamber—remained; then the other would take over while the first reloaded.
The burrowers hadn’t waited long after dark before resuming their incessant grinding. Gia had expected one to pop through the existing hole, but it remained empty. Maybe the burrower that had made it backed up and died after Abe had shot it, blocking the passage. She could only guess, and feel relieved.
But that didn’t last. Others must have been close to breaking through before they’d quit with the coming of the light, because it didn’t take long before new holes began opening in the walls and horrid snouts pushing into the bunker.
Abe took the lead, pumping two shots each into the first two, then three into the third. Each time, they writhed and retreated, leaving their holes empty. But more were on the way. Gia couldn’t hear them through her ear protectors, but she knew they were coming.
Abe had insisted on wearing the protectors, saying they’d be virtually deaf after a few shots if they didn’t. And they might need their hearing.
He tapped her calf and pointed to her right. Gia looked and saw the concrete begin to flake and bulge. She swallowed her fear and hurried over. She reached the spot just in time to see the snout break through. Again, a close look at the concentric rows of black grinding teeth ringing the snout, but this time she got a look inside the round, gnashing mouth and saw more rings of teeth, diamond clear like chew wasps’, angled inward for tearing.
Fighting her rising gorge she jammed the muzzle in among those teeth, took a breath, and pulled the trigger—once, twice. The creature twisted, shuddered, then withdrew.
I did it! I got one!
But she couldn’t celebrate. Another was breaking through a dozen feet to her right. She ran over and blasted that one twice.
As she looked around for the next invader, she saw a light on the shortwave radio flashing red. An incoming signal. That could only be Jack calling. As she debated answering she felt something tickle the back of her neck. She rubbed it and looked at her hand: fine white powder mixed with sweat.
Cement!
She looked up in time to see a burrower break through the ceiling directly above her. They were coming from all directions!
She screamed and lifted the shotgun. As she rammed the muzzle into the snout she thought of Jack’s call. No way they could answer. She prayed he was calling with good news, to say he’d been successful. But if so, she saw no sign of a letup here.
Whatever he was involved in had to work, and work soon.
Very soon.
Or she and Vicky and Abe were goners.
Manhattan
Jack finally stepped into the room carrying the longer package. Something in his face …
Bill gripped his arm. “Everything okay?”
He shook his head. “No … don’t know. Couldn’t get an answer. Let’s get this done.” He hefted his burden. “What’s in here?”
“The rest of the instrument,” Glaeken said. “Be careful. It will be sharp.”
Another intake of breath across the room as the layers of blanket fell away to reveal a gleaming length of carved steel.
“The blade,” Jack breathed.
The muscles in his forearm rippled as he held it by the butt spike and raised it in the air, turning it back and forth, letting the light leap and run across the runes carved along its length.
The blade … magnificent. The sight of it warmed one part of Bill and chilled another. Something alien and unsettling about those runes. He slipped his arm around Carol and held her closer.
Bill still held the hilt in his free hand. He’d noticed a deep slot in the center of its upper surface—a perfect receptacle for the blade’s butt spike.
“Should we put them together?” he asked Glaeken.
The old man shook his head. “No. Not yet. Please place the hilt on the table.”
As Bill complied, Jack lowered the blade.
“This too?”
“Drive its point into the floor, if you will.”
Jack shot him a questioning look, then shrugged. He upended the blade, grabbed the butt spike with both hands, then drove it through the carpet and deep into the hardwood floor beneath. It quivered and swayed a moment, then stood straight and still.
Glaeken turned to Sylvia. His eyes opaque, his expression grave.
“Mrs. Nash … it is time.”
Sylvia stared at the gold-and-silver cross gleaming on the table not five feet away and felt all her strength desert her in a rush.
Everything was happening—changing—too quickly. She’d gone to bed last night thinking she’d been freed of the burden of deciding. Jack had only one necklace and it wasn’t enough. The instrument could not be reassembled, Jeffy would not be called on to give up the Dat-tay-vao. She had been frightened, terrified of the near future, and ashamed at the relief she had felt at being spared the burden of risking her son’s mind.
This morning she’d awakened to find everything changed. Glaeken had both necklaces and the original plan was back in motion.
Sylvia had been preparing herself for this moment all day but still wasn’t close to ready. How could she ever be ready for this?
She sensed Ba looming behind her and didn’t have to look to know that whatever she decided he would be with her 100 percent. But the rest of them … she glanced around the room. Carol, Bill, Jack, Glaeken—all their eyes intent upon her.
How could they ask her to do this? She’d already lost Alan. How could they ask her to risk Jeffy?
But they could. And they were. And considering all that was at stake, how could they not ask?
&nbs
p; Jeffy too seemed to notice their stares. He drew his gaze from the hilt—he’d been fixated on it since Bill had unwrapped it—and turned to Sylvia.
“Why are they all looking at us, Mom?”
Sylvia tried to speak but no sound came. She cleared her throat and tried again.
“They want you to do something, Jeffy.”
He looked around at the expectant faces. “What?”
“They want you to—” She looked up at Glaeken. “What does he have to do?”
“Just touch it,” Glaeken said. “That is all it will take.”
“They want you to touch that cross. It will—”
“Oh, sure!”
Jeffy pulled away from her, eager to get his hands on the shiny object. Sylvia hauled him back.
“Wait, honey. You should know … it might hurt you.”
“It didn’t hurt that man,” he said, pointing to Bill.
“True. But it will be different for you. The cross will take something from you, and after you lose that something you … you might not be the same.”
He gave her a puzzled look.
“You may be like you were before, in the time you can’t remember.” How to explain autism to a nine-year-old? “You didn’t speak then; you barely knew your name. I … don’t want you to be like that again.”
His smile was bright, almost blinding. “Don’t worry, Mommy. I’ll be okay.”
Sylvia wished she could share even a fraction of his confidence, but she had a dreadful feeling about this. Yet if she held him back, didn’t let him near the hilt, then what had Alan died for? He’d gone to his death protecting Jeffy and her. How could she hold Jeffy back now and condemn him—condemn everyone—to a short life and a brutal death in a world of eternal darkness?
Yet the risk was Jeffy losing the light of intelligence in those eyes and living on as an autistic child.
Certain darkness without, a chance of darkness within.
What do I do?
She forced her hands to release him. She spoke before she had a chance to change her mind.