SUNDAY
1
Assembling the Tesla gizmo turned out to be a much more complicated chore than Jack had anticipated, especially the dome. It was close to two A.M. when they finished.
The beds had been pushed aside and now a five-foot oil derrick topped with a giant, warty mushroom cap stood in the middle of the floor.
One weird-looking contraption, Jack thought.
Something about it gave him the willies.
Nothing terribly strange about the eight-legged base. A bitch to assemble with all those crisscrossing struts, but it functioned as nothing more than a supporting framework. The dome was a whole other story. Curved sheets of shiny copper studded with dozens of smaller copper globes, larger toward the perimeter, and getting progressively smaller as they neared the center.
Jack could almost go along with Zaleski about its having been inspired by alien technology. He'd never seen anything like it.
"This looks a lot like the Wardenclyffe tower," Zaleski said in an awed tone.
"Tesla never finished the tower," Kenway said.
"So we've been told," Zaleski replied. "But I've seen renderings of how it was supposed to look, and this is it."
"Swell," Jack said. "But what's it supposed to do? Broadcast energy? Blow up Siberian woods? What?"
"I doubt we'll know that until it's finished," Canfield said.
Kenway tapped one of the gizmo's legs with his booted toe. "What do you mean? It is finished."
"Not according to this." Canfield held up one of the lids and pointed to the diagram of the dome. "See here? There's supposed to be some sort of light bulb or something in the top center of the dome. Has anybody come across anything like that tonight?"
Jack shook his head, and saw Zaleski and Kenway doing the same.
"Kee-rist!" Zaleski said. "Isn't that fucking typical? Just like the model kits I used to get when I was a kid—always a piece missing."
"You sure that's a bulb?" Kenway said, taking the lid from Canfield. He pulled out a pair of reading glasses and studied the diagram more closely. "Looks more like some sort of crystal to me."
"Lemme see that," Zaleski said. He peered closely, tilting the lid back and forth. "For once I agree with you, Miles. Look at the facets there. That's definitely some sort of crystal. Big one, I'd guess."
"Anyone seen a large crystal anywhere?" Canfield said, lifting and shaking the spread on the nearest bed.
"I have," Jack said, wondering at the surges of excitement suddenly pulsing through him as he remembered a basement…and an old desk…and on it, three large, oblong, amber quartz crystals…
"Where?" Kenway said.
"Out on Long Island…in a little town called Monroe."
2
Jack checked out the moonless sky as he followed Ken way's pickup truck north along Glen Cove Road. Dawn was still hours away and they were all headed for Monroe.
But what a job to get to this point.
First the debate on whether or not to send someone out to fetch a crystal and bring it back. Eventually it was decided that that would take too long, so they all agreed to haul the mini Tesla tower out to Monroe. Canfield, still convinced that the crates had come from Melanie, said that seemed fitting.
But how to get it there?
Canfield reluctantly volunteered the back of his specially outfitted van—reluctantly because he didn't see any need for Kenway and Zaleski to come; he and Jack could handle everything just fine.
But no way were Kenway and Zaleski going along with that.
So they separated the dome from the tower and loaded both sections into the back of the van.
But that wasn't the end of it. Zaleski didn't want to ride in Kenway's truck, Kenway didn't want to ride in Zaleski's car. Neither wanted to ride in Canfield's van, and Jack had had enough of them all for one night.
Finally they got underway—a four-car caravan with Canfield in the lead, chugging through the wee hours of Sunday morning. At least they had the road pretty much to themselves.
Jack felt a raw uneasiness wriggling through his gut, a vague awareness that he was riding toward big trouble. But he couldn't turn back now. He sensed that the end game was at hand, and wanted this crazy weird gig over and done with—tonight.
He'd tried to call Lew out in Shoreham to tell him where they were going and ask him if he wanted to meet them in Monroe. But all he'd reached was the Ehler answering machine. He'd tried Lew's hotel room again, but still no answer.
So where was Lew? Not with Olive, Jack hoped.
3
The first thing Jack noticed about Melanie's family home was that the lights were on. The second was Lew's Lexus by the garage—he spotted that when Canfield's headlights raked the front yard as he turned his van into the driveway.
As Zaleski and Kenway pulled into the curb, Jack drove past the house and parked at the corner of the property, near where he'd spotted the black sedan pulling away after his first visit to the house. He got out and looked around, zipping his warm-up top against the chill. No other cars on the street besides the ones he'd come with.
Satisfied they hadn't been followed, he walked over Zaleski and Kenway who were watching Canfield lower himself and his wheelchair to the ground on the special elevator platform built into his van.
"Wait here," Jack told them. "I think Lew's in the house. Let me check first."
He stepped up to the front door and found it unlocked. He pushed it open and entered the living room.
"Lew?" he called.
No answer. He started forward, but a sound—an odd, rasping clink—stopped him. He paused, listening, and heard it again. And again. Slow and rhythmic…coming from below…
Jack slipped through the dining room and kitchen and stopped at the head of the cellar steps. The lights were on below, and no doubt about it—the clinking was coming from down there. Along with another sound.
Sobbing.
Just to be on the safe side, Jack pulled the Semmerling as he crept down the stairs. He pocketed it when he saw Lew Ehler kneeling on the basement floor. Lew's back was to Jack, he clutched a heavy pickax, and was chipping away at the concrete around the embedded rope ladder.
He jumped when Jack touched his shoulder.
"Wha—?" he cried, looking up at Jack with a tear-streaked face.
"Hey, Lew," Jack said softly. "What's up?"
"It's Melanie," he sobbed. "She's down there! I know she's down there and I can't reach her!"
"Easy, guy," Jack said, hooking a hand under Lew's arm and helping him to his feet. "Come on. Get a grip, okay. You're not going to find her that way."
He felt the scars on his chest begin to itch again. What was it with this cellar?
Lew let the pickax fall into the shallow depression he'd chipped in the concrete. As Jack bent to retrieve it, he noticed again the scorch marks around the ladder…eight of them…
And eight legs on the Tesla contraption.
Suddenly excited, he guided Lew to the chair by the desk—and yes, the big amber crystals were still there, all three of them—then ran upstairs to find the others.
Outside in the front yard, it took Jack's eyes a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. He saw that Canfield's van had been backed onto the lawn. Canfield was watching Kenway and Zaleski as they offloaded the mini tower from the rear.
"Where we going to set this up?" Zaleski said.
"I think I know just the place. Come inside and see if you agree."
They left the tower in the van and headed for the house. The three of them lifted Canfield and his wheelchair up the front steps and inside.
"Boy, does this bring back memories," he said as he rolled through the living room. "Where to?"
"The basement," Jack said.
"There's nothing down there."
Canfield's voice didn't ring quite true. Did he know more about this than he was letting on?
"You're sure of that?" Jack said.
They carried Canfield and his chair down the stairs. Lew leaped to his feet when he saw them, his expression shocked.
"What's going on?" he said.
"I'll explain in a minute, Lew," Jack told him.
He led the others over to the spot where Lew had been working with the pickax.
"What the fuck?" Zaleski said, squatting and tugging on the rope ladder where it disappeared into the cement.
Kenway stood next to him, hands on hips. "Most unusual."
"But that's only part of it," Jack said. He touched a number of the scorches with the toe of his sneaker. "Check this out. Eight marks in a rough circle. Can anybody think of anything we've seen recently with an eight-legged, roughly circular base?"
Canfield cried, "I knew it was from Melanie!"
"Melanie?" Lew said, pushing his way into the ring. "What's from Melanie?"
"Explain it to him," Jack told Canfield, "while we get the gizmo."
He led Zaleski and Ken way back to the van. Zaleski carried the dome on his own, while Jack and Kenway shared the larger, heavier, ungainly load of the derrick-like base.
Lew grabbed hold of the base as they eased it down the basement steps.
"Can it be true?" he said to Jack. He had hope in his eyes, and his face wore the closest thing to a smile Jack had seen for days. Obviously Canfield had given Lew his own slant on the origin of the crates. "Is this really from Melanie?"
"I'm going to have to reserve judgment on that, Lew."
Zaleski leaned the dome against the couch, then he helped Jack and Kenway guide the tower base toward the chipped concrete and set it down over the end of the ladder. A few minor adjustments in positioning and…
"I'll be damned," Kenway said. "You were right."
The feet of the tower's eight vertical supports fit perfectly over the eight scorch marks.
"Yeah," Jack said, feeling a growing uneasiness. "But I'm not sure I'm all that glad."
"Why not?" Canfield said. He cradled the big amber crystals in his blanketed lap.
"Well, for one thing, it's kind of obvious that another contraption just like this one was positioned here before. Where is it now? The question wouldn't bother me except for the fact that all we have left of the first are these marks that have been burned into the concrete."
"No scorch marks on the ceiling, though," Canfield said. "Nor on the furniture."
Good point, Jack thought. It made him feel a little better, but not a whole hell of a lot.
Zaleski stepped over to the couch and hefted an edge of the dome. "Let's get this sucker attached and see what happens."
Jack removed his warm-up jacket and dropped it onto the couch. He gripped the other side of the dome; together they raised it and set it on the base. A few minutes of tightening nuts and bolts, and the mini Tesla tower was reassembled. Light from the naked incandescents overhead gleamed off the dome's rows of copper globes.
"And now for the final piece," Canfield said, holding up one of the crystals.
"You really think that's all it'll take?" Jack said.
Canfield looked at him. "You have doubts?"
Jack pointed to the tower. "Where do we plug it in?"
"Tesla theorized that energy could be gathered free from the atmosphere," Kenway said. "That was why he was such a threat to the One-Worlders."
"Fine," Jack said, shrugging. "But a crystal? It seems so…so New Agey. It's just a pretty rock."
"Not just any rock," Canfield said, twisting the crystal back and forth to catch the light. "It's quartz—which has piezoelectric properties. You've heard of crystal radios, I assume?"
"Sure."
"And how many rocks do you know that can rotate the plane of polarized light? Trust me, a crystal is a lot more than 'just a pretty rock.'"
"Enough bullshitting," Zaleski said, grabbing the crystal from Canfield's hand. "Let's do it."
Standing on tiptoe, he inserted the crystal into the top center of the dome.
"Perfect fit," he said, then stepped back.
Jack did him one better. He retreated all the way to the steps. He didn't trust this thing. All he knew about this Nikola Tesla guy was what he'd been told, and one of the stories involved destroying half a million acres of forest on the far side of the North Pole.
Come to think of it, the stairs weren't nearly as far away as he would have liked. Albany might not even be far enough. But he stayed where he was and watched.
Nothing happened.
That didn't seem to faze the others. They kept waiting patiently in a rough semicircle.
Jack backed up a little more and seated himself on one of the steps.
How long do we wait before we call this a bust? he wondered.
Then he sensed a change in the cellar. He wasn't sure what was happening, but he could feel the hairs rising along his bare arms. Not from fear or alarm, but from the charge that seemed to fill the air. A little like what he'd felt in the hotel, but stronger, more concentrated.
Jack wasn't the only one to notice. He saw Ken way rubbing his arms, tugging at his shirt collar.
"Do you feel it?" Canfield said, grinning.
The lights flickered.
Lew looked around. "Did anyone just see…?"
The others nodded silently.
Then all four sixty-watt bulbs in the ceiling dimmed to about thirty—and stayed dimmed. As they lost power, the crystal atop the dome began to pulse with a faint amber light.
The air became more highly charged, and then the mini tower began to hum, low at first, but steadily rising in pitch. Jack saw the semicircle widen as all but Kenway eased back.
Where's that thing getting its power? he wondered, tensing on the steps. He didn't like this one bit.
The crystal pulsed more brightly, strobing distorted shadows against the walls; the hum rose further in pitch as the pulses cycled faster and faster, finally merging into a steady glow.
And then the tower began to rise off the floor.
"Holy shit!" Zaleski said. "This is too fucking much!"
Kenway looked grim, Lew looked puzzled, and Canfield…Canfield looked absolutely rapt.
It continued to rise—one inch…two…six…a foot…
Jack sat frozen, bloodless. This was no trick. No invisible wires on that thing. He'd set it up himself. The tower was really and truly floating in the air.
"Didn't I tell you, soldier boy?" Zaleski said, clapping Kenway on the shoulder. "Alien technology! This is how they make their saucers go!"
Kenway said nothing, but his quick glance at Zaleski was pure malice.
Jack fought the urge to pack it in and head for his car. The crawling sensation in his gut was more intense than ever, telling him he wasn't needed here, and didn't even belong here.
This isn't what you were hired for. Get out while you can.
The tower rose until the blazing crystal set in its dome was poised between two rafters. And then it simply hung there.
Jack felt a cool breeze against this back. Had somebody opened a door upstairs? He was about to get up to go look when Canfield's shout stopped him.
"Look!" he cried. He was pointing at the floor.
"Good Lord!" Kenway said, finally retreating a step.
A hole was opening. The concrete wasn't melting or crumbling, it was simply fading away. But no dirt was visible beneath, just…hole. And the wider it got, the stronger the breeze against Jack's back, rushing toward the opening.
"Good God!" Lew said. "What is it?"
"What's it look like?" Zaleski said without looking up. "A pizza? It's a fucking hole."
A hole…
Jack gripped the edges of the step that supported him. His dreams the past two nights had been nightmares about a hole…one that looked like it wanted to gobble up the world.
"Hey, guys," he said, "I think we should call this off."
"Relax, Jack," Kenway said. "You won't fall in from there."
Idiot, Jack thought. "What if it keeps enlarging?"
"I gotta feeling this ain't the first time this hole has opened," Zaleski said. "And the house is still here, ain't it?"
Jack watched with mounting alarm as the hole kept expanding, widening until the concrete entrapping the rope ladder disappeared, leaving it hanging free over the rim and dangling into the opening.
And then it stopped enlarging.
Jack sagged with relief.
"I think that's it," Zaleski said.
Kenway leaned his body forward but kept his feet where they were. "How deep, I wonder?"
Zaleski inched forward, shuffling his feet nearer and nearer to the edge. "Only one way to find out."
He stopped with his toes perhaps half a foot from the rim, then craned his neck to peer over the edge.
"I see some light way down there and—holy shit!" He jumped back from the edge.
"What?" Lew said. "What's wrong?"
"Look!" Canfield said, pointing to the ladder.
The ropes were moving, vibrating as they stretched over the rim.
"Something's coming," Zaleski said. "Climbing the ladder."
I hope he means someone, Jack thought, backing up another tread on the steps.
He sensed something ugly, something sinister slipping from that hole and coiling through the cellar. He held his breath as the gyrations of the ropes grew more pronounced, and then a single black talon rose above floor level and hooked onto the concrete…followed by a head…a dark-haired human head…with a woman's face…
"Melanie!" Lew cried and rushed forward.
He grabbed her arms and lifted her from the opening. Then he wrapped her in a bear hug that left her shoes a good foot off the floor.
"Oh, Mel, Mel!" he sobbed. "I've been so worried. Thank God, you're back! Thank God!"
Jack couldn't see Melanie's face, but her arms didn't seem to be returning Lew's hug with anywhere near his fervor. Especially the left arm…
This was the first time Jack had seen Melanie's deformed forearm, and it wasn't what he'd expected. It seemed a little thinner than the right as it tapered down to the wrist; beyond that it stayed rounded instead of flattening into a palm. Lew had told him that all the fingernails had fused, leaving her with one large thick nail. But Jack hadn't pictured this big, sharp, black claw.
She'd supposedly kept it bandaged in public, and now Jack could see why. It was wicked looking.
"Lewis, please," Melanie said in a strained voice. "You're crushing me."
He released her. "Sorry," he said, wiping his eyes. "It's just that I've missed you so."
"You two can snuggle later," Zaleski said. He indicated the hole and the still floating tower. "What is all this, Melanie? And where the hell have you been?"
"Home," she whispered. A strange fevered glow lit in her eyes as she said the word.
Jack eased down the steps for a closer look. Finally he was getting to see the notorious Melanie Ehler in the flesh. She seemed far more intense than her photographs had indicated. Her hair was darker, her black eyebrows thicker, and her thin lips were split into the rapturous grin of a zealot who'd just heard the voice of God.
"Not here," Kenway said. He pointed to the hole. "What's down there?"
"Home," she repeated, then turned to Frayne. "It worked. I've found the way to the Otherness. We can go home now."
Canfield clasped his hands together and looked as if he was going to puddle up along with Lew.
"Mel," Lew said, pointing to her arm. "What happened to your nail?"
"It changed," she said, raising her black talon to eye level. "As soon as I got there it changed shape and color…to the way it's supposed to look."
She looked around and Jack felt something like an electric shock as her gaze locked on him.
"And you must be Repairman Jack," she said.
Jack stepped off the steps onto the floor. "Just Jack'll do."
He glanced at the others, but the "Repairman" remark didn't seem to have registered. They were all still fixated on that hole. Good.
"Thank you so much," she said, stepping forward and extending her hand. "I knew you were the right man for the job."
Jack was about to protest that he'd done very little when Melanie's touch stopped him. Her hand was cold.
"Come on, Melanie," Zaleski said. "Enough with this 'home' shit. What's going on?"
She stepped back to where she could face everyone. "I've found a gateway to the Otherness," she said.
Kenway snorted. "The what?"
"It would take too long to explain fully," she said, "and I've neither the time nor the inclination. Suffice it to say that the single solution to all the mysteries that have plagued you, the answer you've spent so many years searching for, lies on the far side of that opening."
Jack had heard all this from Roma and Canfield. Hadn't believed a word of it before, but now…
He hooked his arm around the support column at the foot of the stairs and looked around. He still sensed something nasty in the air. Was he the only one?
"Is this that 'Grand Unification' thing you've been talking us to death about?" Zaleski said.
"Yes, Jim," she said with a small, tolerant smile. "It's all there. The secrets behind your UFOs and Majestic-12."
"Yeah, right."
She turned to Kenway. "And for you, Miles…the identity—and the real agenda—of the power behind the New World Order conspiracy."
"I sincerely doubt that," he said huffily.
She looked around. "If only Olive were here."
"She's been missing for days, Mel," Lew said.
Jack watched her closely. She seemed genuinely puzzled and disappointed." Didn't she know?
"That's too bad," she said. "The truth behind her cherished Book of Revelations is on the other side as well."
"All down there?" Zaleski said.
"'Down' isn't quite right. 'Over' there would be more accurate."
"But how?" Lew said. His face had a hurt look. "And why?"
"How?" she said. "I learned from talking to some old timers out in Shoreham, people who had relatives who'd worked in the Tesla lab, that before he sold his property and dismantled his tower, Tesla had buried mysterious steel canisters here and there around his property, and even beyond it."
"After the Tunguska explosion!" Zaleski said. "Must have scared him shitless."
Jack had already heard enough about Nikola Tesla and Tunguska to last a lifetime, but he couldn't bring himself to leave just yet…not with that tower floating in the air and the hole yawning in the floor. He remembered the holes in his recent nightmares, and wanted to see this one closed before he headed home.
Melanie said, "I don't know if Tesla caused the Tunguska explosion, and I don't really care. But I can tell you this: Nikola Tesla was not the type of man to be frightened by a mere explosion, no matter how powerful. I've suspected all along that something else was at the root of his breakdown. And now I know."
"This…Otherness?" Kenway said.
Melanie nodded. "Yes. During the year I spent searching for those canisters, I found three. One of them confirmed my suspicions. I gave the others to Ron Clayton and—"
"Clayton?" Jack said. That name rang a bell. "You knew Ronald Clayton?"
Melanie shrugged. "We shared an interest in Tesla. Ron was more interested in his electronics theories."
"I'll bet he was," Jack said, remembering the transmitter he'd seen on a hilltop upstate. Apparently the creep hadn't been the great innovator he'd wanted everybody to believe.
"Whether Tesla's tower was able to broadcast energy is irrelevant," Melanie said. "What I do know, or rather what I have proven"—she gestured toward the hole—"is that it can open a gateway to the Otherness. And I think that's what unhinged Tesla. He made contact, saw what was on the other side, and immediately slammed the door."
"It's that bad?" Lew said.
"Not for me," she said. "And not for Frayne. But for the rest of you…" She slowly shook her head.
"Hey!" Zaleski said. "How bad can it be?"
"It is the truth…and the truth at times can be unbearable."
Somewhere in the back of Jack's head another Jack shouted, You can't handle the truth!
Zaleski stepped to the rim of the hole and peered over the edge. "And you were down there how long?"
"What day is it?" Melanie said.
Jack glanced at his watch. "Just about four A.M. Sunday morning."
"You've been gone almost a week, Mel!" Lew cried.
She shrugged. "Time is different there. It seemed like barely two days."
"Well, if you can fucking handle it," Zaleski said, "so can I." He turned to Kenway. "Whatta y'say, Miles? Want to get up close and personal with Melanie's Grand Unification Theory?"
"I don't know," Kenway said slowly. He sidled to the edge and looked down. "Awfully dark down there."
"You can see some light way down. Besides, you're carrying aren't you?"
Kenway stared at him.
Zaleski snorted a laugh. "Look who I'm asking! Does the Pope wear a cross? Come on, Miles. You're armed and dangerous. Don't be a pussy."
Kenway glared at him, then hitched up his belt. He pointed to the rope ladder. "After you."
Zaleski gave Kenway a thumbs up, then squatted next to the ladder. He grabbed the two ropes, swung his leg over, then started down.
"Is this such a good idea?" Jack said.
"It's a great idea, Jack. You're coming right? Maybe you'll find those missing hours."
"You can have them," Jack said. "Kind of late for spelunking. My job's done here. I think maybe I'll be heading home."
"No!" Melanie said quickly. "I mean, not just yet. I need to talk to you first."
"All right," Zaleski said. "Suit yourself. Here goes nothing."
He started down and disappeared below floor level.
After a few seconds, his voice echoed up from below. "Come on, Miles, you chickenshit bastard. Let's go."
Kenway pulled his .45 automatic from under his sweater, flicked off the safety, then put it away again. He sighed, looked around, and—with much less enthusiasm than Zaleski—started down.
Jack stepped to the edge of the hole and watched the bristling hair atop Kenway's head recede into the depths. Damn, that looked deep.
Lew came up beside him. "I'll be. There is some light down there."
"Way down," Jack said, spotting the faint flickers.
"Are you sure you don't want to go too?" Melanie said, looking at Jack. She sounded almost…hopeful.
Jack wondered about that. A moment ago when he'd said he was leaving, she wanted him to stay. Now she seemed to be encouraging him to leave by another route.
"I'm very sure," Jack said. "In fact, I don't think I've ever been so sure of anything in my life. But you said you wanted to talk to me."
Lew jumped in before Melanie could answer. "Before we go any further, I need an answer to something. When I asked you if it was so bad down there, you said, 'Not for me and Frayne.' What did you mean by that?"
Melanie sighed and looked away. Jack saw a touch of sadness and regret in her eyes.
"Lewis…when I called it 'home,' I wasn't exaggerating. When that gateway opened, and I entered the Otherness, that's exactly what it felt like—coming home. For the first time in my life I felt like I belonged. And Frayne will feel it too."
"But I won't?" Lew said, his voice full of hurt.
Zaleski's voice echoed up from the hole then.
"Hey! Something weird down here…like everything's floating."
Melanie went to the edge and called down. "That means you're almost there. Gravity reverses at the transition point. You'll have to climb up the rest of the way."
She waited, and a few seconds later Zaleski's voice came back, tinged with wonder and excitement, teetering on the verge of hysterical laughter.
"Fucking-ay, you're right! This is the weirdest shit I've ever seen!"
"Never mind them," Lew said. "What about me? Why won't I feel like I belong there?"
Melanie turned back to her husband. She spoke matter-of-factly, as if explaining the obvious to a child. "Because you'd be an outsider there, Lewis. You have no Otherness in you."
"Sure I do," he said, pointing to his leg. "I'm not normal. I'm different too. Not as different as you, maybe, but—"
"Different inside" she said. "Frayne and I are different right down to our genes. You're completely human, Lewis. We're not. We're hybrids."
Lew looked stunned. His jaw worked a few times before he could speak. "Hybrids?"
"Yes, Lewis. Hybrids." She walked over to Canfield's wheelchair and rested her claw on his shoulder. "Neither of us really belongs here."
Jack noticed how Lew's eyes locked on the spot where his wife was touching Canfield. His heart went out to the guy, but he couldn't help him. Lew was pushing for answers and Melanie was giving them to him.
She could take it a little easier on him, though.
"How?" he said. "When?"
"Late in the winter of 1968, right here in Monroe, the Otherness spawned something in this plane. Frayne and I were just tiny, newly formed masses of cells within our mothers at the time. We were vulnerable to the influence of the Otherness then—our DNA was altered forever as it made its beachhead."
"What beachhead?" Jack said.
Obviously she was referring to the "burst of Otherness" Canfield had mentioned. But what exactly were they talking about?
"It was not something anyone would take notice of. But the fate of this plane was sealed in that instant." Her eyes fairly glowed as she spoke. "A child was conceived. A special child—The One. He is grown now, and soon he will make his presence known."
"Sounds like Olive's Antichrist," Jack said.
Melanie smirked. "Compared to The One, Olive's Antichrist would be a fitting playmate for your children. When he comes into his own, everything will change.
The very laws of physics and nature as you know them will be transformed. And after the cataclysm…Otherness will reign."
Ooookay, Jack thought. Time to go.
"Sounds like fun," he said, turning toward the couch to retrieve his jacket. "But I've got to get moving."
"No, please," she said, moving away from Canfield and gripping his arm—Jack was relieved she used her hand instead of her claw. "Not yet. I must speak to you."
"Hey, that thing's getting hot," Lew said, holding up his palm to the Tesla device but not touching it.
Jack could feel the heat faintly from where he was standing.
"Lewis," Melanie said, "I wish to speak to his man alone."
"Alone?" Lew said. "Why alone? What have you got to say to Jack that I can't hear?"
"I'll tell you about it later, Lewis. Wait for me outside, in the car."
He stared at her. "You've changed, Mel."
"Yes…I have. I finally know who I am, and I've learned why I'm the way I am. And I'm proud of it. Please, Lewis. Wait for me in the car. I'll be up in a few minutes and we'll go home together."
His eyes widened. "Really? We're going home?" He glanced at the hole. "But I thought…"
"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, to 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 hole.
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.
He was reaching for Canfield's tool kit again when he heard the whine of the air around the door atop the steps change in pitch. He felt the wind grow against his back again. He looked up and saw the door slowly moving back. Fingers appeared, curled around the edge, white-knuckled with the strain of fighting the gale. Finally with a violent lurch the door swung all the way back on its hinges and a tall, ungainly figure appeared in the opening.
"Lew!" Jack shouted. "Jeez, am I glad to see you!"
"Jack?" Lew said as he clumped down the steps, clinging to the banister and the wall to brace himself against the wind at his back. "What's—?"
He stopped and gaped at the partially denuded cellar, then lurched down to the floor.
"Where's Melanie?"
"She left. Look, Lew—"
"Left?" he said, his face screwing up as he stared at the hole. "You mean she went back…back down there?"
"Yeah. Look, just get me my jacket over there and I'll explain the whole thing."
"But she said she'd meet me out in the car!" Lew cried, his voice rising. He stepped toward the hole. "We were going home together."
"She must've changed her mind," Jack said quickly. If he could just get his hands on that jacket, get hold of the Semmerling in its pocket…"Lew, my jacket—see it over there?"
But Lew didn't look at Jack…he started moving away…never taking his eyes off that damn hole.
"I've got to go find her!"
Jack grabbed his arm. "No, Lew! You can't go there! You'll be killed!"
The movement allowed the wheelchair to slip free of his foot. Jack had to choose between Lew and the wheelchair. He chose Lew. The chair rolled away and tumbled into the hole.
But Lew barely noticed, and he sure as hell wasn't listening. He violently wrenched his arm from Jack's grasp and lurched out of reach.
"I've got to be with her!"
"All right!" Jack shouted. "Be with her. But give me my damn jacket first so I can get out of here!"
Jack might as well have been talking to a mannequin. He kept shouting Lew's name but Lew gave no sign that he heard.
Lew slipped and almost lost his balance in the gale that was tearing at his clothes. To avoid being swept into the opening, he crouched and kept hold of the rope ladder as he crabbed along the floor. When he reached the rim, he snaked his good foot over the edge, snagged the dangling end of the ladder as it danced in the wind, and started down.
Not until his head had descended to floor level did he look at Jack.
"I haven't got a second to lose," he shouted. "I need her, Jack."
"Aw, Lew," Jack said, sensing it was hopeless to ask but giving it a shot anyway. "Just get me my jacket first? Please?"
"I've got to find her and bring her back while the gateway's still open. After that I'll help get you free."
"It's not going to close, Lew! It's—"
Before Jack could tell him he was wasting his time and most likely his life, Lew was gone.
Frustration screamed in Jack's brain, almost as loudly as the wind. He was out of options…the draw was stronger, and the gateway ever larger—only three rope-ladder treads between Jack and the rim.
The white box of the dryer began a shuddering slide toward the hole. Its electric cord snagged its progress for a heartbeat, then pulled free from the outlet. It wriggled halfway there before its leveling feet hung up on a crack in the floor; it toppled forward and shimmied the rest of the way to the hole on its face, then went down.
Jack wondered if it would clock Lew along the way. He almost wished it would…the jerk.
Like a Romeo eager to join its Juliet, the washing machine struggled toward the hole, but its connections to the water pipes held it back.
But nothing was holding back the hole. Its far edge had undermined the sister column to Jack's, leaving it dangling from the house's main beam, its lower end wavering over infinity.
Then one of the overhead bulbs shattered, the pieces darting into the hole like glass buckshot.
Jack found it increasingly difficult to hold his position against the gale blasting down the staircase and into the maw. He put the column between the hole and himself, and braced his back against it—safe for now, but when the edge of the hole reached the base of his column…
He squinted at the couch. It was tucked in a corner with no window, so it had remained unaffected by the draw from the hole. If only he had a stick, a metal rod, anything, he might have a chance to reach his jacket. He wished he'd thought to grab that piece of door molding as it flew down the steps a few minutes ago.
And then, to his horror, he saw the couch move.
Only an inch or two, but that was enough to jostle his jacket, and now one of its sleeves was fluttering in the wind that swirled around it.
"No!" Jack shouted as the lighter side of the jacket flipped over and tugged toward the floor, dragging the heavier, gun-laden pocket after it.
God, he had to get to it. This was his last hope. He dropped to his knees, pulling the loop of chain down to floor level after him.
Another bulb shattered as the jacket hit the floor and began to slip toward the hole. Jack dropped flat, his cheek on the concrete, and stretched his free hand toward it, feeling the edges of the steel cuff dig into the skin of his trapped wrist as he strained every joint and ligament to the max and beyond.
"Damn it to hell!" he gritted as he realized his fingertips would fall at least a foot and a half short. "Not enough!"
Frantic now as he saw the jacket begin to tumble toward the hole, Jack flipped his body around and stretched his legs to the limit—just in time to trap one of the sleeves under the toe of his right sneaker.
"Made it!"
But he began to think he'd spoken too soon as he tried to drag the jacket toward him. With more surface area to work on, the wind was tugging the sleeve from under his sneaker. Jack rolled onto his belly and jammed his other toe onto the sleeve. He trapped a tiny fold of the fabric between them and bent his knees to draw it to his hand.
"Gotcha!" he said as his fingers closed around the fabric, and it sounded like a sob.
The last two bulbs blew, plunging the cellar into darkness as a sudden blaze of pain shot through the small of his back. He hadn't even been aware that the couch was moving until it had slammed into him, and now it was jammed against his spine, crowding him toward the opening that was closer than ever.
The jacket tore from his grasp and flew toward the hole.
Jack cried out and made a desperate blind lunge for it. Searing pain from the torn skin on his left wrist against the cuff registered only vaguely as he caught hold of the zipper. The rest of the jacket went over the edge, pulling and twisting in his grasp like a hooked fish, but Jack held on, even as he found himself sliding toward the hungry maw.
His head and right shoulder slipped over the rim. Pink-orange light flashed impossibly far below. And nearer, he saw a figure clinging desperately to the whipping end of the ladder, looking as if he was trying to climb back up.
Lew…
The couch against Jack's back lifted then and rolled over, knocking the wind out him as its full weight slammed onto his body. It slid forward and slipped over the edge, an armrest banging against the side of his head as it tumbled past.
Jack's vision blurred as he fought to breath. He saw the couch go into a spin as it fell, narrowly missing Lew, who seemed to be making progress up the ladder.
Couldn't worry about Lew now.
Jack wrestled the jacket out of the pit and clamped the sleeve between his teeth. He grabbed hold of the first tread on the rope ladder and fought the hurricane-force wind back to the column.
Gasping, dizzy, nauseated, he wrapped himself around the column and fumbled the Semmerling out of the pocket. The tiny pistol felt wonderful in his palm. Now he had a chance—he just hoped it would work. He'd wished for fully jacketed rounds on Friday night, but after emptying the pistol, he'd reloaded with the same frangible hollowpoints. Once again he could have used solid rounds. He promised himself that if he got out of this he would always load the Semmerling with at least one 230-grain hardball.
The steadily brightening flashes from deep within the hole were the only illumination as Jack pulled the chain tight with his knees and held his cuffed hand on the far side of the column; the links slipped in the blood seeping from his wrist. He reached around with his left and pressed the Semmerling's muzzle against the link between the cuffs. The pistol kicked and the cuff bucked as he fired, but the report was barely audible in the howling gale.
Jack tugged on the cuff—no give. The damn stupid soft hollowpoint slug hadn't broken the link.
Stay calm, he told himself. You've still got three rounds left.
But not much floor to go before the Jack's column went the way of its sister, taking Jack with it.
The sound of shattering glass from above and behind him—instinctively Jack leaned away from the stairs as a glittering cloud of jagged fragments whizzed by, spinning through the air like transparent shuriken.
There go the kitchen windows.
He fired again, hoping he was hitting the same spot—the recoil on the Semmerling was such that he couldn't be sure. Still the cuff held. He fired the last two rounds one right after the other, praying he'd feel the cuff fall away. But the chain remained wrapped around the column.
Panicky now, Jack pocketed the gun and tugged on the chain with everything he had—and shouted with relief when he felt the cuffs part. As the chain clinked to the floor, he struggled to his feet.
Free!
Movement at the rim of the hole caught his eye. A hand, its skin glistening redly, clawed over the edge, clinging to the rope ladder. Seconds later, a bloody head struggled into view.
"Lew!" Jack shouted.
In the flickering light, it looked as if the skin had been stripped away from Lew's face, leaving the bloodied muscles exposed. Jack could see his mouth working but couldn't hear a word.
And then the upstairs door slammed again, even more explosively than before. But this time it shattered and tore off its hinges, sending jagged wooden spears hurtling down the steps.
Jack ducked to the side, but the missiles caught Lew full in the face. One instant he was there, the next he was gone.
And now the edge of the hole was nibbling at the foot of the column.
Jack swung his body onto the steps and started up. Standing was out of the question, so he crawled, squinting into the gale as he pulled himself upward one tread at a time.
He heard a faint clatter from somewhere above. He ducked and pressed himself against the wall to—his right as a barrage of cups, bowls, and dinner plates hurtled down from the kitchen cabinets. A few of them pelted his head and shoulders on their way by.
If only Zaleski were here, he thought insanely. Real flying saucers.
As he resumed his climb, he prayed that Melanie's folks hadn't been into collecting carving knives.
As if on cue, another clatter from above and then the household flatware—spoons, forks and knives, even the drawer itself—were flying toward him. He ducked again and cursed as the sharper utensils tore his shirt and cut his skin.
And then the whole staircase moved under Jack.
He glanced back and saw the column hanging free over the hole, wagging back and forth. The staircase was attached to its base, and the entire unit was being ripped from the wall.
With the stairs jerking and twisting under him like a rodeo bronco, Jack redoubled his efforts to reach the kitchen, clawing his way to the top. He'd just snaked his right hand around the foot of the jamb when the staircase tore free of the wall and tumbled away, leaving Jack hanging from the doorway.
A quick glance back showed the stairs and the column whirling into the hungry vortex. He heard a loud crack as the house's center beam began to sag.
The whole place was coming down.
He had a few minutes, tops.
Through desperation-fueled kicking and scrabbling against the wall, Jack managed to force his head and chest up onto the kitchen floor, now beginning to tilt toward him as the center beam sagged further. He'd just raised a knee over the edge when he saw a dark square sliding along the kitchen counter. It hit the floor with a weighty bang and began tumbling end over directly toward him. It was almost upon him before he recognized it as a microwave oven.
Jack lunged to the side, squeezing himself against the jamb, but the oven caught his knee and knocked him off the threshold. He fell back and was left literally twisting in the wind as he clung to the jamb with one hand.
Sobbing with the effort, doing his best to ignore the agony in his knee, Jack struggled again to lever himself up to the ever-more-tilted kitchen floor. This time he got both knees up on the threshold—those regular workouts were paying a dividend—just as the refrigerator started sliding toward him.
Not again!
An inarticulate cry burst from him as he half lunged, half rolled to the side.
The refrigerator brushed against his back and it slammed into the doorway, blocking it.
Missed me, you bastard!
Wind shrieked around the fridge's edges but no way was it getting through.
Jack lay on the floor, gasping. No gale to fight…how wonderful.
Then he felt the floor jolt under him.
Oh, Christ! The increased negative pressure in the basement was putting more stress on the already weakened support beam. The whole place was going to implode.
He struggled to his feet and hobbled to the back door. He turned the knob and pulled but it wouldn't budge. How could it? He'd relocked the deadbolt when he left the other day.
"Jerk!" he shouted.
He turned away and limped hurriedly through the sagging house. At least the lights were still on so he didn't have to stumble around in the dark. The open front door was in sight when a booming crack beneath his feet shook the house—the center beam had finally surrendered.
The lights went out and the living room floor dropped three feet as Jack leaped for the swinging front door. He caught the inner and outer knobs and hung there as the carpet was ripped free. It swirled and shredded through the sudden hole in the floor, to be swallowed by the insatiable maw in the cellar.
The outer walls began to crack and lean inward. Jack felt the door hinges start to give way. He kicked off the wall, swung himself toward the doorway, and leaped through the opening onto the front steps. Without a pause, without a look back, he hopped off the steps and tumbled onto the grass.
6
"Is that—?" Mauricio said as a figure leaped from the shuddering house and crumbled onto the lawn.
The One stared through the dimness. "Yes, I am afraid it is."
"Who is this man?"
The One nodded. A very good question. Last year this stranger apparently had wiped out the rakoshi singlehandedly, and now he somehow had escaped the cellar and the gateway.
"Whatever his name," the One said, "he is a nuisance and a menace."
"I've had enough of this. If the Otherness can't finish him, I will."
Movement caught The One's eye as Mauricio crouched to leap from his shoulder. He raised a hand to prevent that.
"Wait. Someone else is here."
"The Twins!" Mauricio hissed. "They could ruin everything!"
"No. It is too late—even for them."
"It's not too late. The hole is not large enough yet. They might be able to shut it down. And you—you haven't assumed your final form yet. Until you do, they can still destroy you. And I can't protect you against their strength. Hide!"
He watched the Twins scan the yard, saw them fix on the stranger and start toward him.
This should be interesting…
7
Still puffing, Jack slumped on the dew-damp grass. The night air was cool against his face, Canfield's van was a shadow to his right. Starlight faintly outlined the sagging roof of the house, while pink-orange flashes strobed through the imploding windows.
He closed his eyes and rubbed his knee. Had to get away from here. Soon as he caught his breath…
A thunderous boom shook the ground and jerked him forward.
The house—its walls were folding in, the roof buckling in the middle. As Jack watched, the entire structure fell apart and tumbled into its foundation. The pieces—lumber, bricks, siding, wallboard, furniture—whirlpooled down into the Otherness hole, feeding it, expanding it, until nothing, not even the foundation footings, remained.
And the hungry rim expanded farther, flashing its weird-colored light against the trees and vehicles in the yard, still coming for him.
"Aw, cut me a break!" Jack muttered as he fought to his feet.
What was it going to do—chase him all the way back to the city? And then he realized with a shock that was exactly what it was going to do. Just like in his dream—a giant hole swallowing everything in its path.
He turned and started a quick hobble toward his car. He had to get to Gia and Vicky, warn Abe, head for the hills—
But as he neared the big oak he spotted a black sedan parked at the curb…and two dark figures in suits and hats approaching him. Jack didn't have to see their faces to know who they were.
And here he was, unarmed and in no shape to deal with them.
He broke into his best approximation of a run.
They caught him easily—strong, long-fingered hands gripped each of his upper arms and fairly lifted him off the ground. Jack writhed and twisted but couldn't pull free; he lashed out with his feet, aiming for knees and groins, but he couldn't find the leverage he needed to do any damage—at least not to this pair. He remembered how he'd broken one's finger the other night without fazing him.
They wheeled around and began dragging him back across the lawn toward the flashing pit where the house had been.
Panic spiked through him. He tried to dig his feet in, but his sneakers slipped on the wet grass, barely slowing the two golems who held him. He was utterly helpless.
"Wait!" he shouted. He had no hope that talk would help, but he was desperate enough to try anything. "Let's think about this!"
"It wants you," said Number One on his left.
"No! That's not true! I'm just icing on the cake!"
"You are the only way to close the gateway," said Number Two.
"You want to close it? I thought you were working for them! Hey, look, we're on the same side!"
They didn't seem to care.
Ahead, the growing hole had undermined the lawn. Jack saw Lew's Lexus tilt sideways and do a slow slide into the pit. The backyard swing set followed close behind.
With Jack fighting them every inch of the way, and cursing himself for using all four rounds in the Semmerling, they dragged him ever closer to the edge.
"This thing isn't here for me!" Jack shouted. "It's for Roma—the guy they call The One."
That got them. They glanced at each other and slowed their march.
The entire front yard was sloping toward the pit now, and out of the corner of his eye Jack saw Frayne's van begin to slide their way.
"The One?" said Number One. "He is here?"
"He was a moment ago."
The van was closer now, picking up speed. Gathering his strength, Jack threw all his weight to the right in a desperate lunge, veering the three of them into the van's path. It caught Number Two behind the knees, knocking him down. He released his hold on Jack as his right arm caught on the bumper and he was dragged away.
Jack turned and immediately began pounding on Number One with his free hand, punching at his face, chopping at his neck and shoulder. He might as well have been beating him with a Nerf bat for all the notice he took. He was far more interested in his buddy who was riding the fast track to the Otherness.
Number Two struggled futilely to free his trapped arm as the sliding van pulled him along. He reached out for help.
As Number One dragged Jack toward his partner, Jack searched his pockets for the Semmerling. It wouldn't fire but maybe he could use it as a club. His fingers found Canfield's screwdriver instead.
Yes!
He yanked it out, hauled back, and rammed the shaft into the side of Number One's neck with everything he had. It didn't go in easily, like stabbing into a hunk of pure gristle, but he left three quarters of the shaft buried in the tough flesh.
That got some attention. Number One's knees wobbled and he staggered a step, relaxing his grip enough to allow Jack to tear free. He gave Jack a quick expressionless look as dark fluid flowed from the wound, but made no attempt to remove the screwdriver. He straightened and continued toward his buddy.
Jack backed away, watching in disbelief. The guy shouldn't even be standing, yet there he was, grabbing Number Two's hand as the van began tipping over the edge. Number One gave a hard, two-handed pull, and Jack heard the trapped one's arm give a sickening crack as it came free of the bumper.
But a louder, deeper crunch beneath and behind him seized Jack's attention. He looked around and saw the giant oak leaning his way, tipping toward him like a falling skyscraper. He dove to his right and rolled out of its path as the ground caved in beneath him. The trunk barely missed him as it fell. With a deafening crash that bounced Jack off the ground, it landed across the hole, straddling it like a bridge.
When Jack regained his feet, the van was gone, as were his two nemeses.
8
The One watched the hole in rapt fascination, only vaguely barely aware of the struggle between the stranger and the Twins. This was it. The first of many. This gateway would spawn others, hundreds of them around the globe, all portals for the Otherness, allowing it to flow into this plane, change it, claim it. He would have preferred this first one to have opened in the heart of Manhattan, but this was close enough.
He stepped back with Mauricio when the big oak started to go, and laughed when he saw the Twins tumble over the edge.
Gone! The last vestige of the opposition had been eliminated from this plane! Now nothing stood in his way.
But a howl of dismay from Mauricio meant he thought otherwise.
"Noooo!"
"What is wrong?"
Mauricio leaped from his shoulder and scampered toward the gateway crying, "They mustn't! They mustn't!"
9
Jack crept toward the edge of the hole. He was almost sure the two guys in black were gone but almost wasn't good enough. He had to be positive. Bracing himself against the downdraft, he peeked again into the swirling, flashing depths.
Gone.
No—movement along the near wall, just below him…
There they hung, clinging to the oak's ropy roots. Or rather, one of them was. Number One—with the screwdriver still jutting from his neck—had a one-handed grip on a thick root while his other hand clutched Number Two's, whose right arm hung uselessly at his side. Number One had lost his glasses in the fall. He stared up at Jack with large black expressionless eyes.
"Gotcha," Jack said.
With only one good arm, Number Two was helpless; and Number One couldn't climb back up without letting go of his buddy. Strangely, he seemed to have no intention of doing that.
Jack sensed a deep loyalty there, all the more striking for its almost casual nature. Despite all that had happened, Jack responded to that.
Time was running out. With the rim of the hole still expanding, the tree and all its roots would be hopping on the Otherness Express in a minute or so. Every cell in his body was urging him to get the hell out of here, but he needed answers, damn it.
"I'll make you a deal," Jack shouted over the roar. "We call a truce, and you tell me who sent you and why you've been following me. That happens, I'll pull you up and—"
A screech startled him as Roma's monkey leaped onto the tree-trunk and began jumping about.
And then it shouted at him—in English.
"Save them! Don't let them fall!"
Stunned, Jack stared at the monkey, then glanced over his shoulder. Roma stood back on the sidewalk, watching.
"Quickly!" the monkey screeched as it danced back and forth on the straddling trunk. "Help them up! Don't let the Twins fall! The gateway isn't big enough yet! They'll ruin everything!"
Jack glanced at it—yeah, right—then peered back into the hole.
"Damn you!" said another voice, lower and coarser.
Jack looked up in time to see Roma's organ grinder monkey swell into the red-eyed dog-monkey that had attacked him in the basement.
"Holy—"
He rolled away as the thing hurled itself at him with a bellowing roar.
But it wasn't after him. It crouched in the spot Jack had vacated and leaned over the edge of the hole, reaching for the men in black.
"Hang on," it shouted. "I'll pull you up."
Jack peeked over the edge and saw that the monster had grabbed the upper end of the root and was hauling it up.
He watched Number One stare up at the creature a moment, then look down at Number Two. Number Two shook his head. Number One looked back up, this time at Jack, as if trying to speak to him with his eyes. He shook his head.
Then let go of the root.
"Jeez!" Jack said as the two of them plummeted into the depths.
The creature let out a howl—Jack couldn't tell if it was rage or frustration or both, but it was loud—then leaped back onto the fallen trunk.
Together they watched the maelstrom catch the pair and spin them downward until they vanished.
Now what? He thought, gazing into the swirling, flashing abyss.
Suddenly he sensed a change in the gateway. The flashing stopped as a bright speck of fire appeared in its suddenly darkened depths. The spot grew and swelled, rushing upward.
Jack knew—just knew he shouldn't be here. The dog-monkey was still raging and howling as Jack turned and ran as fast as his injured knee would let him. He was maybe a dozen feet away when a blast hurled him face-first to the ground. He rolled over and saw a column of fiery white light shoot into the sky, engulfing the tree trunk and the monkey thing. He watched it rip the flesh from the creature, then vaporize its bones along with the center of the trunk. The light shot toward the stars, poised for a heartbeat, then faded.
And now…silence. Real silence. The sucking downdraft had stopped, and the flashes along with it.
Jack staggered once more to the rim…just a cavity in the earth now, maybe fifteen feet deep. An excavation for a foundation…with the charred ends of a fallen oak on either side. The men in black, the dog-monkey thing—all gone. Only one loose end remained…
Roma.
He looked toward the sidewalk, but Roma was gone.
Jack made a quick turn but he was nowhere to be seen. Where the—?
Sirens began to wail in the distance. House lights were on up and down the street and people were beginning to wander out into their yards to find out what all the ruckus was about. He limped to his car—time to get out of here.
Jack kept his headlights off as he eased away.
10
Off to his left, the night sky began to pale as Jack drove toward the expressway. As much as he ached to floor the gas pedal, he kept to the limit. Last thing he needed now was to run across a cop and be stopped for speeding.
He had the windows closed and the heater cranked to maximum, not so much against the cold outside as the marrow-deep chill within as Frayne Canfield's words—he'd spoken them only hours ago, but it seemed like eons—pursued him down Glen Cove Road.
You are involved. . . more deeply than you can possibly imagine. . . .
No…he wanted no involvement with anything even remotely like what he'd just encountered. But the worst of it was he still wasn't sure just what he'd encountered. His life already was complicated enough. He didn't need to be involved as some sort of pawn in a cosmic conflict.
Cosmic conflict…jeez. Got to stop talking like that.
Already the events of the last hour were beginning to take on an unreal feel. Maybe none of it had really happened. Maybe he'd been drugged or something…
And maybe I shouldn't try to kid myself.
It had happened. Something was going on, something big …an eternal war behind the scenery.
Suddenly dizzy and a little sick, Jack stopped the car and got out to gasp some cool fresh air. He looked around at the trees, the towns flanking the highway, the fading stars…and shivered.
Scenery? Was that all that this was? Nothing more than scenery?
He couldn't live like that. It made his day-to-day life so…insignificant. He had to believe that what he did mattered, at least to him. Otherwise…why bother?
Jack shook his head. He'd hired on to this gig to answer one simple question: Where's Melanie Ehler? He'd answered that one, but now he was carrying around dozens more. With no way to answer even one of them.
All right—what did he know for sure?
He forced a smile. Okay, first off, he was still owed the second half of his fee for finding Melanie Ehler, and he knew for damn sure he wasn't ever going to collect it.
And betting on Roma's murderous monkey monster being dead seemed a sure thing.
Beyond those two, though, everything else was pretty much up for grabs.
He could assume that Zaleski and Kenway and Lew were dead on the far side of that hole, but did "dead" mean the same thing over there?
Melanie and Canfield were in that same Other place as well—but without their "ticket." Jack hoped they were slow roasting over what passed for a fire in the Otherness.
And what about Olive? What had happened to her corpse? Sent into the Otherness too? Or would it turn up in some alley next week?
Those two black-eyed goons…Jack had assumed they were working for the Otherness, and that they'd killed and mutilated Olive. But now he wasn't so sure. At the end they seemed to be working against the Otherness.
Does that mean they were on my side?
But they'd wanted to chuck him into the hole—came damn close to succeeding. Hadn't seemed to care one way or the other about him, they simply wanted to close the gateway, by any means necessary. They thought he would do it, so he'd immediately become expendable.
With allies like that, who needed enemies?
But as it worked out—they'd closed the gateway. When they hit bottom or reached the Otherness or wherever they ended up, they caused some sort of titanic explosion, a blast of light that must have been visible for miles.
Visible for miles…like the Tunguska explosion Kenway and Zaleski talked about tonight. Hadn't Kenway said one theory held that it was caused by an antimatter meteor striking the earth?
Maybe that was what those two guys had been—antimatter meteors of a sort, striking the Otherness's matter. Or more likely, matter meteors striking the Otherness's antimatter. Because the Otherness seemed anti-everything.
And finally, what about Sal Roma—"The One," as Melanie had called him? Had he been for real—some sort of ageless Otherness superhybrid born in Monroe and waiting to take over? And where was he now? Had he been so closely linked to the monkey thing that when it went up in smoke, so did he?
Jack doubted that. Some primitive part of him sensed The One still out there, prowling around, looking for a new way to create a world-changing cataclysm that would usher in the age of Otherness.
And he knew beyond all reason and all doubt that someday they would meet again.
But even more disturbing was the final look Number One had given him before he'd let go of that root. Jack kept seeing those black eyes, so cold and expressionless, and yet…a nebulous feeling that some sort of torch was being passed.
Not to me, thank you.
But like it or not, want it or not, had he come too close and seen too much, and because of that been drafted into some sort of shadow army?
The idea gave him the cold shakes.
He started as he sensed something dark moving above, blotting out the stars. He ducked into a crouch and looked up.
Nothing…an empty sky.
He straightened and slid back into the car. No, he couldn't live like this. Had to shake it off. He'd be a paranoid basket case if he didn't.
He'd handle it…give him a few days and he'd be back to normal. He'd go on living his life as before, taking on fix-it jobs, kibitzing with Abe, hanging at Julio's, playing with Vicky, loving Gia. Not your normal everyday life, but one firmly grounded in reality—the only reality he knew or wanted to know. He'd put the episode in Monroe behind him and never look back. This page was turned, this chapter closed.
But as he shifted into gear and drove on, Canfield's words seemed to whisper through the heater vents.
You are involved…more deeply than you can possibly imagine…