Nightworld

  “I believe I’ll change and go down there for a closer look.”

  “No need to rush. The hole isn’t going anywhere. And it’s only the first.”

  “You mean there’s going to be more?”

  “Many. All over the world. But Rasalom has honored me by opening the first outside my front door.”

  “I’ll see if I can hook up with Nick down there and find out what he knows.”

  “Just be sure to be back before dark.”

  Bill smiled. “Okay, Dad.”

  “I’m quite serious.”

  His smile faded. “Yeah. I guess you are. Okay. Back before dark.”

  Glaeken watched Bill hurry to his room. He was fond of the man. He couldn’t ask for a better houseguest. Always willing to help around the apartment or with Magda when the nurse wasn’t around.

  As if sensing her name within his thoughts, Magda called from the bedroom.

  “Hello? Is anybody there? Have I been left alone to die?”

  “Coming, dear.”

  He took one final look at the hole, then headed down the hall.

  He found Magda sitting up in her bed. She’d been losing weight and her eyes were starting to retreat into her skull. Her face was as lined as his, her hair as white. But her brown eyes were bright with anger.

  “Who are you?” she said, switching to her native Hungarian tongue.

  “I’m your husband, Magda.”

  “No, you’re not!” She spat the words. “I wouldn’t marry such an old man like you! Why, you’re old enough to be my father! Where’s Glenn?”

  “Right here. I’m Glenn.”

  “No! Glenn’s young and strong with red hair!”

  He took her hands in his. “Magda, it’s me. Glenn.”

  Terror flashed across her face, then her features softened. She smiled.

  “Oh, yes. Glenn. How could I have forgotten? Where have you been?”

  “Right in the next room.”

  Her expression hardened as her eyes narrowed.

  “No you weren’t! You’ve been out seeing other women! Don’t deny it! You’re out with that nurse! Don’t think I don’t know what the two of you are up to when you think I’m asleep!”

  Glaeken held her hands and let her ramble on. He wanted to cry. After two years he’d have thought he could have adapted to anything, but he couldn’t get used to Magda’s dementia. None of her ravings were true, yet Magda fully believed the delusions floating through the expanding vacuum of her mind, truly meant the hurtful things she said as she spoke them. They never failed to cut him deeply.

  Oh, Magda, my Magda, where have you gone?

  Glaeken closed his eyes and recalled her as she had been when they’d met in 1941. Her soft, even features, her fresh pale skin, glossy chestnut hair, and wide dark eyes filled with love, tenderness, and intelligence. It was the love, tenderness, and intelligence he mourned for most now. Even after her physical beauty had faded, his love for her had not. For she had remained Magda the poet, Magda the singer, Magda the mandolin player, Magda the scholar who so loved art and music and literature. Her compendium of Romanian Gypsy music, Songs of the Rom, was still in print, still gracing the shelves of finer bookstores.

  Three years ago she started to slip away, infiltrated and irreversibly replaced by this mad, incoherent stranger. Her mental status deteriorated first, but soon she became physically enfeebled as well. She could not get out of bed by herself now. That made caring for her easier in a way because she could no longer wander at night. In the early stages of her decline Glaeken had found her searching the street below, calling for their pet cat, dead since 1962. After that he’d had to deadbolt the apartment door and remove the knobs from the stove to prevent her from cooking “dinner” at two in the morning.

  The old, buried Magda occasionally flickered back to life. She couldn’t remember what she had for breakfast—or if she’d even had breakfast—yet now and then she’d recall an incident in their life together from thirty or forty years ago as if it were yesterday. But instead of buoying Glaeken, the brief lapses in her dementia only deepened his despair.

  It wasn’t fair.

  Glaeken had known and loved so many women through the ages, yet each relationship had ended in bitterness. Each love had, in her own way, ended up hating him as she grew old while he stayed young. Finally he had found Magda, the one woman in his seemingly endless life that he’d be allowed to grow old with. And they’d had a glorious life, a love that could not be tainted even by the pain of these past few years.

  Maybe it was for the best. Magda would spend her final days immune to the horror stalking the world. Her body was as vulnerable as everybody else’s, but her mind was impregnable to reality.

  He glanced over and saw that she’d fallen asleep again. This was her pattern—a reversal of day and night. Catnaps throughout the day, awake most of the night. Even with the hired nurse and Bill to help, Glaeken existed in a state of constant exhaustion. His heart went out to all the unfortunate spouses of Alzheimer’s patients throughout the world who did not have his financial resources. Unless they had a large family of willing helpers, their lives were an endless nightmare.

  Nightmare … soon everyone across the globe would know what it was like to live a nightmare.

  Gently he laid Magda’s head back down on the pillow and tucked the covers in around her. He would not allow a deterioration of her brain to lessen his commitment to her. If their conditions were reversed, she’d be at his side whenever he needed her. He was sure of it. And he would do no less.

  All morning he had debated whether or not to warn the media about the hole. Finally, he’d decided against it. He didn’t want to attract attention to himself. Besides, they’d write him off as just another doom-monger. The end result would be the same: They’d have to learn the hard way.

  CNBC

  —on the commodities exchanges, due to uncertainties about the upcoming growing season, prices are up sharply, especially October beans and orange juice futures, in brisk trading around the globe …

  Nick felt someone tugging at his arm. Reluctantly, he turned away from the hole to face one of the park cops.

  “You Doctor Quinn?” the guy said, shouting over the rattle and roar of the generators.

  “Yeah. What’s up?”

  “Got a priest back in the crowd says you asked him here to say some prayers.”

  “Priest?” Nick said, baffled. “I didn’t ask for any—” And then he knew. He almost laughed in the cop’s face. “Oh, yeah. I’ve been waiting for him. Can you bring him over?”

  The cop turned and waved to someone along the barricade. Nick saw a lone figure in black break from the crowd and approach at a quick walk.

  He shook Father Bill’s hand when he arrived. He’d seen the priest a couple of times since his return from North Carolina but still couldn’t get used to how he’d aged during his years in hiding. Before he disappeared, Nick had got to the point where he’d been calling the priest simply “Bill,” but since his return he’d fallen back into the practice of prefixing the name with “Father.” He pointed to the cassock and Roman collar.

  “I thought you weren’t going to wear that anymore.”

  “So did I. But I’ve decided the uniform has its uses. Especially when you want special treatment in a crowd.”

  “So what are you doing here?”

  Father Bill smiled. “I came to perform the exorcism. To close this thing up.”

  “Very funny.”

  The smile faded. “Seriously, Nick. I would like to get a close-up look at the hole.”

  “Sure. But stay on the platform. The dirt tends to crumble at the edges.”

  Nick felt the excitement build all over again as he led Father Bill to the edge of the wooden platform. He still couldn’t get over it. Something like this—a mysterious two-hundred-foot-wide hole appearing here, practically in his backyard. It was wonderful.

  They stopped at the railing and looked down. He heard Father B
ill catch his breath.

  “Incredible, isn’t it?” Nick said. “I can’t believe my luck. And that’s all it is. Luck. If I’d been out getting coffee when the boys from geology called this morning, someone else might have picked up the phone and he’d be calling the shots here now instead of me. Being in the right place at the right time. That’s all it takes.”

  But Father Bill said nothing. He seemed to be mesmerized by the hole.

  Nick knew what the priest was feeling. He’d looked down into that opening a good hundred times since he’d arrived and still couldn’t shake how unnatural it seemed.

  The walls did it. Too sheer. They didn’t look fallen away—more like scooped away. He could see the layers of earth and schist stacked like the cut edge of a trifle. When he’d first looked down he’d expected to see a sort of inverted cone with a rubble-filled bottom. But he couldn’t see the bottom. The hole was much deeper than he’d imagined. Half a mile down, he guessed. Maybe deeper. Straight down into darkness. Maybe when the sun got higher they’d be able to see more, but right now it was night down there.

  Nick had visited the Grand Canyon last summer and still remembered the vertigo he’d experienced standing at the edge of the lookout for the first time. The giddy, vertical descent of these walls gave him a similar sensation. But he’d been able to see a ribbon of water at the base of the Grand Canyon. Here, with the gentle downdraft flowing around him, he could see only blackness.

  The downdraft had bothered him at first. Where could it be going? Then he realized that the air was probably sinking into the cavity at the edges, and then reversing and flowing out straight up through the center. Like the bubbles in a glass of Guinness. That had to be the explanation. It couldn’t all be flowing continually downward. It had no place to go.

  He straightened and turned to the priest.

  “Well? What do you think of our little sand pit?”

  The priest tore his gaze away and looked at him. He looked frightened.

  “How’d it get here, Nick?”

  “Don’t know. That’s for the geology boys to figure out. But already people are making comparisons to those crop circles in England. The tabloids will have a field day. I think The Light has got its whole staff here already.”

  “Any idea how deep it is?”

  “We don’t know yet. Geology rigged up a sonic range-finder first thing this morning and pointed it at the bottom, but couldn’t get a reading.”

  “No bottom?” The priest’s voice suddenly sounded a little dry.

  Nick laughed. “Of course there’s a bottom. It’s just that echoes from the side walls were interfering with the readings. Geology was stumped, so they called physics—moi. We could wait till the sun hits zenith and do a sight measurement, but why wait? We’ve got a new laser that’ll bounce a beam off the bottom and give us a distance reading accurate to within a centimeter.”

  Father Bill was staring into the hole again as he spoke.

  “I have it on good authority that it’s bottomless.”

  “Well, it is deep, but not that deep. Guarantee it.” And then a thought struck him. “This authority wouldn’t be the same one that told you about something happening ‘in the heavens’ now, would it?”

  As Father Bill nodded, Nick felt a cold weight settle between his shoulder blades. He gestured toward the hole.

  “Come on, now. Bottomless? You can’t really believe that.”

  “I never believed the sun would be rising progressively later each day in mid spring either. Did you?”

  “No, but…”

  Bottomless? No way. Patently impossible.

  Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned and found one of the grad students.

  “We’re ready to shoot.”

  “Great.” He turned to Father Bill. “The laser’s set. Wait here. In a few minutes we’ll have a reading from the bottom—wherever it is.”

  Bill watched a moment as Nick hurried away toward some odd-looking contraption suspended on a boom over the hole. He was proud of him. He’d come a long way from the bratty little nine-year-old orphan he’d played chess with back in his early days at St. Francis Home for Boys. He was mature and self-assured—at least in the field of physics. He wondered how he was faring socially. Bill knew Nick was more than a little self-conscious about his appearance—the misshapen skull from when he was abused as an infant, the old acne scars. But worse-looking men had found the girl of their dreams and lived happily ever after. He hoped that would happen for Nick soon.

  He turned back to the hole and stared into its black depths.

  What was that Nietzsche quote? If thou gaze into the abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.

  That was how he now felt—as if he were gazing inward at his own reclusive darkness. The abyss expanded before him, beckoning. What mysteries, what horrors were sequestered in those misty, chaotic depths? For an instant he was gripped by a mad impulse to step off the edge and let himself fall. If it was truly bottomless as Glaeken had said, he would keep falling. And falling. Imagine the vistas, the wonders he’d see. What would he find? Himself? An endless voyage of self-discovery. How wonderful. How could anyone resist? How on Earth could anyone with an iota of character refuse? How—?

  “Better be careful, Father.”

  The voice jolted him out of the reverie. To his horror he found himself sitting astride the platform railing, readying to swing his other leg over. The depths loomed below. With a convulsive lunge, he hurled himself back onto the platform and squatted there panting, sweating, and shaking. He looked up and saw one of the city workers standing nearby, looking down at him.

  “You okay, Father?”

  “I will be in a minute.”

  “Hey, I din’t mean t’scare ya, but I mean we built that railing as sturdy as we could, but it ain’t gonna hold a guy your size, know what I mean?”

  Bill nodded as he rose shakily to his feet.

  “I realize that. Thanks for the warning.” Thanks more than you know.

  The workman waved and ambled off, leaving Bill alone on the platform. He pulled himself together and moved away from the edge.

  What had happened a moment ago? What had he been doing sitting on that railing? Had he actually been readying to jump? What could he have been thinking?

  Or had he been thinking at all? More like reacting—but to what? To the abyss?

  He shuddered. Maybe coming down here hadn’t been such a good idea. He’d now seen the hole up close. He could watch further developments from Glaeken’s window or on the tube. He looked around for Nick and saw him walking his way, his expression troubled.

  “What’s wrong, Nick?”

  “‘Technical difficulties,’ as they say on TV. We’ll have it straightened out in a few minutes.”

  Bill watched Nick’s face closely. His upper lip was beaded with perspiration.

  “You didn’t get the reading you expected, did you.”

  “We didn’t get any reading. A glitch in the receiver, that’s all.”

  Bill allowed himself a quick shot of relief. He wanted very much for Nick to find the bottom of that hole. He wanted Glaeken to be wrong, just once. Not out of animosity or envy, but because Glaeken had been right about everything so far, and everything he was predicting was bad. Bill felt he’d be able to rest a little better at night if just once Glaeken was proven wrong.

  And then a thought struck him like an icy wind, carrying off any sense of relief.

  “Wait a minute, Nick. You said you didn’t receive any signal. Isn’t that what would happen if the hole was bottomless?”

  “It’s not bottomless, Fa—”

  “Isn’t that what would happen?”

  “Well … yes. But that’s not the only reason. There are scores of reasons why we wouldn’t get a signal back.”

  “But one of them is that the beam didn’t find anything to bounce off, and so therefore it never came back. Am I right?”

  Nick sighed. “Technically, yes, but…” Sudden
ly he sounded tired. “But the hole’s not bottomless. It can’t be. Nothing’s bottomless.”

  One of the grad students rushed up to Nick with a green-striped printout. Bill could tell from Nick’s expression that he didn’t like what he saw there. He handed the slip back to the student.

  “Do it again. And do it right.”

  “But we are,” the student said, looking offended. “Everything checks out a hundred percent. The beam and the receiver are working perfectly.”

  Nick tapped the printout. “Obviously not.”

  “Maybe something down there’s absorbing the beam.”

  “Absorbing the beam,” Nick said slowly. He seemed to like the idea. “Let’s look into that.” He turned to Bill. “I’m going to be tied up for a while, Father, but hang around. We’ll crack this yet.” He winked and walked away.

  At midafternoon Bill headed back to the apartment to grab a bite and make a pit stop before Nick started his descent.

  He had to hand it to Nick—he was as inventive as he was stubborn. Wouldn’t admit defeat. When he’d learned of a working diving bell on display down at South Street Seaport, he made a few calls and arranged to rent it. His plan was to get in that thing and ride it as far into the hole as the cable would allow, then take another laser reading from down there. Bill wanted to be back in time to see him off.

  He had to fight through the crowd on Central Park West. The area around the lower end of the park had become an impromptu street festival. Well, why not? The sun was out and the area was jammed with curious people. Anyone with anything to sell, from hot dogs to shish kebab, from balloons to knock-off Rolexes was there. The air was redolent of an array of ethnic foods wide enough to shame the UN cafeteria. He spotted someone hawking “I saw the Central Park Hole” T-shirts, still wet from the silk screener.

  In the apartment he found Glaeken, as expected, at the picture window.

  “What have they decided down there?” the old man said without turning.

  “They’ve decided that due to various technical glitches they can’t figure out how deep it is at this time.”