F. Paul Wilson - Nightworld

Jack dropped to his knees and inched forward. The bugs remained oblivious to him. He stretched out on the bare floor and craned his neck around the edge of the entry way to bring the rest of the room into view.

More bugs. So tightly packed he could barely see through the thick of them. Then a gust of wind sluiced through the windows, undulating the hovering mass enough for Jack to catch a look at the center of the great room.

It was the sculpture, Moki's final work. The only object in the room on which the bugs had not perched. Its long, arching wooden spokes were bare for their entire length, from where they seemed to spring from the walls to their common center, the jagged, unwieldy aggregate of black and red lava fragments. The bugs hovered about it, every one of them faced toward its center like rapt churchgoers in silent benediction.

And the lava center…it pulsed with an unholy yellow light, slowly, as if in time with the beat of a massive, hidden heart.

A single glimpse and then Jack's view was obscured again. But that glimpse had been enough to break him out in a sweat and send him sliding back along the floor. Something about that sculpture, the way it glowed, the reverence of the bugs, the entire scene disturbed Jack on a level too deep to comprehend or understand. Something within him, not from his personal experience, but some sort of racial memory, a warning carved on his hindbrain or encoded in his genes, flooded him with circulating fear, leaving him unable to react in any way but flight.

And when he was far enough down the hall, he rose to his feet and ran out of the house to where Ba waited in the Isuzu.

"Drive, Ba!"

The Oriental pointed to the Jeep they'd driven from Kahului.

"Shouldn't we—?"

"Forget it. Let's get out of here! Now!"

Jack sat and shivered as Ba drove downhill through the downpour. He resented the fear crawling under his skin. He prided himself on his ability to govern his fear, channel it, use it. Now it was nearly out of control. He closed his eyes to the night, ignored the thump of fish bouncing off the hood and roof, took deep breaths, willing himself to be calm. By the time Ba had swerved through most of the downhill switchbacks, he was in control again. But his fingers still trembled on their own in the adrenalin aftermath.

The fear was slowly replaced by disappointment, and perhaps some depression. He'd failed. Kolabati had lied to him. Should he have expected any less? Me, of all people. He'd spent most of his life lying. He mentally kicked himself for believing she'd changed. But she'd been so convincing.

That's what you get for playing by the rules.

Maybe he and Ba simply should have tied up Moki and taken his necklace, then ripped Kolabati's from her throat and left her back there to die of old age in a few hours. Not that it hadn't occurred to him, yet everything within him balked at the plan. But maybe this hadn't been the time for ethical niceties. Too much at stake here.

Was there any use at all in going back to New York? Glaeken had sent him for two necklaces. He was returning with only one.

He set his jaw. Glaeken would have to find a way to make do with one necklace. He'd given it his best shot and had come up short.

He just hoped it wasn't too short.

When Ba hit the pavement above 377, he picked up speed. The wheels skidded on dead fish and clumps of wet seaweed.

"Easy, Ba," Jack said. "If we crack up, we may never get back to the plane, and then this whole trip will be for nothing. If it's not already."

"I must get back to the Missus. Quickly. She needs me."

Jack studied his grim, intent features in the dashboard glow. Ba was scared too. But not of bugs. Ba was scared for his adopted family. Why? Why now? What was happening back there?

WEDNESDAY

WNEW-FM

FREDDY: It's a minute after midnight. A little over nine hours till dawn.

JO: Yeah, you're almost halfway home. Hang in there.

MONROE, LONG ISLAND

Alan felt like a vampire.

Why not? He was living like one. Up all night, sleeping when he could during the day. Reminded him of his days as an intern. Many a time he'd gone thirty-six hours straight without a wink. But he was older now, and the stress of the nights—the insane paradiddles on the storm shutters, the incessant gnawing at the outer walls—carried over into the dwindling daytime, keeping his naps fitful and restless.

He was exhausted, plain and simple. But he couldn't let Sylvia know. She was a wreck as it was. The only time she got any rest herself was when she could curl up in the basement with Jeffy and Mess and Phemus, secure in the knowledge that Alan was patrolling the upper reaches of Toad Hall.

Alan was just finishing one of those patrols now, wheeling through the first-floor halls, checking the candles, replacing the ones that were guttering into glowing puddles. The power had failed around midday. He'd thought it might be just a local failure but the radio said LILCO was off line for good. Another time it might have been romantic. Knowing what was outside, straining to get in, made it anything but.

So now with the midnight rounds completed and fresh candles flickering in every room, Alan settled himself down in the TV room and turned on the radio. Strange how a little adversity could change your habits. A week ago he wouldn't have thought twice about leaving the radio on while he'd made his rounds. Now, with the power out and batteries suddenly scarce, he didn't leave it on a moment longer than necessary.

Jo and Freddie were still hanging in there, God bless 'em. Their voices were ragged, sometimes they were completely incoherent, and they were broadcasting in shifts with power that at times seemed like it was generated by a collection of frantic, wheel-spinning gerbils, but they weren't giving in to the fear. Neither was a fair share of their remaining listeners.

And neither was Alan.

Only problem was they didn't play doo-wop. They played so-called "classic rock." As far as Alan was concerned, the real classic stuff had been sung on street corners, with popping fingers and the bass voice as rhythm section, and close, soaring three- and four-part harmonies telling the story. That was where it all began. There'd been some great stuff done in the sixties, and even in the seventies, but the heart of it all, the classic end of the music, had begun in fifty-five and tapered down into sixty-four when the Brits had begun reinterpreting the classic formulae.

"Eight Miles High" came on. Alan could live with that. The Bryds knew their harmony. He was losing himself in McGuinn's Coltranesque solos when he heard an unfamiliar sound from the front hall. He turned off the radio.

Splintering wood.

He pulled the tooth-studded billy from the pouch behind his back rest, laid it in his lap, and wheeled his chair toward the front of the house. As soon as he entered the foyer he saw the problem. After nights of constant effort, the chew wasps finally had managed to rip off the metal weather strip from the bottom of the front door and were now busily at work gnawing rat holes at the floor line. Sharp-toothed lower jaws were visible in two spots, sawing relentlessly at the wood, gouging off pieces, building piles of splinters.

This wasn't good. In half an hour or less they'd have a couple of holes big enough to wriggle through. And then Toad Hall would be full of chew wasps—and spearheads, too, no doubt.

All looking for Jeffy. But to get to Jeffy they'd have to go through Sylvia. The very thought of it sickened him.

But to get to Sylvia they've got to get by me.

Alan looked around for some sort of back-up defense, something to shore up the weak point along the bottom edge of the door. He spotted the heavy brass etagere to the right of the door.