The Dark at the End rj-15

by F. Paul Wilson

  Thompson grinned. “Well, maybe for appetizers.”

  The elevator stopped at the top floor and he let Thompson lead the way across the foyer.

  “Hey, everybody,” he said as he opened the door to the loft. “It’s party ti-”

  He stopped dead one step inside the threshold. Ernst was expecting that but purposely ran into him from behind, pushing him farther into the room.

  “Oh, shit!” Thompson cried. “Oh, fuck!”

  Ernst put on a suitably shocked expression and pushed past him. Perhaps only partially put on. It always surprised him how much blood the human body contained. And when it ran out through multiple large exit wounds, it formed pools of remarkable size. These three pools had merged into a crimson lake. Clotting had begun.

  Thompson seemed mesmerized by the blood, but he tore his gaze away and focused on the empty chair.

  “He’s gone!”

  “Yes, I can see that,” Ernst said.

  “But how? Szeto and I taped him into that chair ourselves. No way he could have gotten out.”

  Ernst stepped around the pool of blood and inspected the chair.

  “Tape? What tape? There is no tape here.”

  “There’s gotta be!” Thompson’s eyes looked ready to pop from his head. “What the fuck’s going on?”

  “Szeto once told me he thought he was a ninja.”

  “A ninja? Naw, he was just some American guy, but this-this is like supernatural!” He looked around. “We better get out of here.”

  “I think that is wise.”

  “What about the bodies?”

  This encounter had served its purpose. The Order would want answers. Ernst would say he arrived and found them all dead. Thompson would back that up. But Ernst would wonder aloud about Thompson… the last to see the three men alive… or had they been alive when he’d left? He claimed to have taped the stranger into the chair, but no tape was evident when Ernst arrived… could he be working with the stranger?

  The Order would find no evidence of that, but the questions would focus attention on Thompson while Ernst searched for clues to the One’s whereabouts.

  Even better, the One might contact him. Since he could no longer go to Szeto for “minor logistical support,” as he’d called it, would he turn again to Ernst Drexler? Ernst hoped so.

  If that happened, and if Ernst regained the One’s trust and favor, the deal with Jack would be null and void.

  19

  A sharp intake of breath hissed between Gia’s teeth as she parted the hair on the right side of Jack’s head.

  “Oh, Jack, your scalp’s all bruised.”

  He knew. He’d felt the squishy blood under the skin there earlier. Not the first time he’d been knocked cold, but the first time in years. Doc Hargus had called it a hematoma back then-not subdural, subcutaneous.

  He pressed his fingers against the area now. Odd… no squish. The last one had lasted a week.

  And his headache. Last time he’d been knocked out his head had pounded for days.

  More proof that he was being changed in preparation for Glaeken’s impending demise.

  She dabbed at the area with a cold, wet washcloth.

  “You’ve got a little dried blood here from these little tiny scratches.”

  Which were probably bigger an hour ago.

  “Oh, and look. Here’s a teeny piece of glass.”

  “I can shower all that away.”

  “No, let me help.”

  Normally this kind of attention would make him claustrophobic. If she were a nurse in an ER, he’d be pushing her away. But injuries, even minor ones, brought out Gia’s nurturing side. With every passing year Vicky needed less and less nurturing, so she had a lot stored up.

  Gia never made him claustrophobic. The closer the better.

  “Two injuries in two days,” she said as she picked at the glass. “I hope you’re not going to be making a habit of this.”

  He smiled at her. “If tonight ends like last night…”

  “Don’t count on that. You’ve got me worried now. I mean, you seem to be getting hurt lately. First your arm and now this. You never used to get hurt. Are they connected?”

  “In a way.”

  “What way?”

  “Long story. All part of a bigger problem. But this particular part of the problem has been solved.”

  She stopped dabbing at his scalp. “Solved… do I want to know the details?”

  “Probably not.”

  She sighed. “Okay. No details. But just tell me: Is the person responsible for these injuries in a position to cause more injuries?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Good. That’s enough.” She slipped her arms around his shoulders and hugged. “I worry about you, you know.”

  “I know.”

  Her attitude had switched a hundred and eighty degrees from last night. The arm wound had seemed old then, well on its way to healing. But this one was fresh. And he could feel her trembling inside.

  Still holding him, she said, “Don’t you feel it’s all unraveling?”

  “‘All’?”

  “The world.”

  “What makes you think it was ever truly raveled?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, unfortunately I do.”

  Was she sensing Rasalom’s ascent? Ever since her coma she seemed sensitized to the Conflict. She’d seen what she interpreted as a landscape of the future while she was out, and it had ended in impenetrable darkness this coming spring.

  And spring was only weeks away.

  Her hug tightened. “I’m worried.”

  “I know.”

  “Not for myself, so much. I’m worried for you. But most of all I’m worried for Vicky. There’s so much I want for her. I want her to fall in love, I want her to have a chance at motherhood, I want her to…”

  “Live long and prosper?”

  She laughed softly. “Exactly, Mister Spock. Actually, that’s the least of what I want for her. I want everything for her, or at least a chance at it.”

  “I’ll do my damnedest to see that she gets that chance.”

  No more needed to be said.

  FRIDAY

  1

  Dawn was going crazy with boredom.

  Mind numbing. The only way to describe it. She didn’t know how long she could keep up the surveillance on Dr. Heinze before totally losing it and committing mass murder.

  She’d been up since before sunrise, arriving at the doctor’s house and watching it until he’d left. She’d followed him to the hospital where she assumed he made morning rounds. She didn’t know because she’d stayed outside in the visitor lot with a view of his Lexus in the doctors’ lot.

  After an hour and a half or so in the hospital, he’d returned to his car and she’d followed him to the McCready Foundation offices.

  Was all this worth it? She had to wonder if this would ever pay off, if she’d ever see her baby. She could be wasting her time on a total wild-goose Wait. A silver Lexus pulled out of the parking garage, and Dr. Heinze was behind the wheel. Leaving early today. Maybe things were slow at the office. Maybe he had a golf game-no, wait… too cold for golf.

  She followed him toward the east side. When he got in line for the Midtown Tunnel, she wanted to scream. She was so not in the mood for the LIE and another trip to Forest Hills. But she hung in, following him through the tunnel and onto the Long Island Expressway. But instead of turning off onto Woodhaven Boulevard like he had yesterday, he kept heading east.

  And farther east.

  Soon they were out of Queens and into Nassau County. And still he kept speeding east.

  Dawn followed. This was something different. This could prove to be nothing, or might be the break she’d been waiting for.

  2

  “Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Jack said with all the gosharooty enthusiasm he could muster as he, Weezy, and the Lady cruised south on Route 206. “Let’s sing ‘Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer’!”
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  He’d awakened early feeling pretty decent, considering what he’d gone through the night before. Maybe too decent. His bruises were already fading.

  He’d tried to fall back to sleep but began imagining what he would have gone through if Drexler hadn’t gotten cold feet about the Change. The possibilities had made sleep impossible.

  Later he’d rented a Jeep Cherokee for the Jersey trip and now had the wheel. Not the cushiest ride, but this one had a high suspension that would come in handy once they hit the Pine Barrens.

  He thought about their destination, the pyramid. He still couldn’t imagine how that fifteen-foot construct of standing triangles with open spaces between them-he remembered Eddie describing it as half a dozen Godzilla pizza slices standing on end-could hide anyone from anything. But real life had been leaving his imagination in the dust lately, so why not?

  “‘Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer’!” Weezy said with equal faux glee from the passenger seat. “My favorite! You take the first ten verses by yourself, and then the Lady and I will sing harmony on the rest.”

  “I do not sing,” the Lady said from behind him.

  Jack wasn’t sure why, but he was glad for that.

  “Neither does Weezy,” he said.

  Weezy looked offended. “You don’t know that.”

  “You used to howl in the shower when you were staying with me.”

  “I didn’t howl.”

  “Caterwaul, then. Whatever it was, you can’t call it singing. And ‘Hungry Like the Wolf,’ of all things. What happened to Bauhaus?”

  She reddened. “I had a closet crush on Simon le Bon.”

  Jack checked his phone. No missed calls.

  “You keep doing that,” Weezy said.

  “I’m waiting to hear back from a couple, three charter boats I contacted.”

  Earlier he’d made a few calls to fishing boats in the Coney Island area. No one had answered, so he’d left messages about chartering the boat for a day trip.

  Weezy nodded. “Oh, right. Disposing of the katana. No responses?”

  “March isn’t exactly charter fishing season. Gotta be colder than hell out there.”

  “Obviously you left your number. We’ll be back by early afternoon.”

  Back from Johnson… he hadn’t been back to Johnson since his father’s funeral, and that had been-what?-a year and a half or so ago. Dad and Mom were buried side by side.

  Weezy turned in her seat. “I’ve got something serious to discuss.”

  Jack said, “Uh-oh.”

  “It’s about Eddie. He wants to join the fight.”

  “Against what?”

  She shrugged. “The Order, the Otherness, whatever we’re fighting.”

  “Since when does he know about any of that?”

  “Since yesterday when I spent half the day educating him.”

  “And he’s convinced?”

  She nodded. “Pretty much. It’s a lot to swallow, but the Compendium is an excellent persuader.”

  Jack hesitated. He didn’t want to offend her. “Don’t take this wrong, but… what’s he bringing to the table?”

  “A new way of looking at things, maybe?”

  “Good enough.” He couldn’t see a downside. He turned to the Lady. “Any objection?”

  She shook her head. “Not at all.”

  Jack had to smile. “To tell the truth, I can’t wait to see his face when we seat him at a table with Mrs. Clevenger.”

  Weezy laughed. “That makes two of us.”

  They passed through Tabernacle and now farms lined the highway.

  “Nothing changes much around here,” Weezy said. “I haven’t been back in forever and it’s like I never left.”

  “Big change up ahead,” Jack said.

  “What?”

  “You remember the blinker at 206 and Quakerton Road?”

  “Of course. Johnson didn’t rate a full stoplight.”

  “It does now.”

  And it was red when they reached it. As they waited to hang a left, Weezy pointed out the window.

  “Look. The Krauszer’s is still here, and Burdett’s is now an Exxon.”

  “Well, it is the twenty-first century.”

  Joe Burdett had kept up his Esso sign for decades after the company changed its name. What had once been Sumter’s used-car lot was now a discount furniture store.

  Quakerton Road split the north and south halves of Johnson and sported a couple of new stores. USED, where Jack had worked as a kid, was a mom-and-pop drugstore now. Mr. Rosen, his old boss, had died back in the 1990s. The bridge over Quaker Lake was wider but otherwise Old Town looked pretty much the same as it had when they were kids. The two-story stucco box of the Lodge remained unchanged.

  “There’s your old place,” he said, swinging by the rickety Victorian house where the Lady had lived as Mrs. Clevenger during their childhoods.

  “It needs painting,” she said.

  Weezy stared at it as they passed. “We all thought you were a witch.”

  “By most standards, I was.”

  “Wonder who lives there now.”

  “The Meads,” the Lady said. “Tom and Alice, and their daughters Selena and Emily.”

  “Can you tell where anybody is at any given time?” Jack said. “I mean, do you keep track of all of us?”

  She shook her head. “The noosphere is a unified consciousness. No identities there. However, when I am near enough to individuals here, I know identities. After all, they help keep me here.”

  Jack noticed with a start that the lightning tree was still standing-how had it lasted so long?-and then they entered the Pine Barrens, the million-plus acres of mostly uninhabited woodland sitting in the belly of New Jersey. Jack steered onto one of the firebreak trails that crisscrossed the area. He experienced the same creepy sensation he’d get when riding his bike into the trees as a kid. The forty-foot scrub pines got thicker and thicker, their crooked, scraggly branches leaning over the path as they crowded its edges. He remembered imagining them shuffling off the path ahead of him and then moving back in to close it off behind.

  Dumb question, but he asked Weezy anyway: “You remember the route?”

  “I think so.”

  He hadn’t expected that. “ Think so?”

  She smiled. “Just kidding. I remember it exactly.” She tapped her forehead. “The map’s right here.”

  He followed her directions on which way to turn as the firebreak trails forked left and right. The NO FISHING / NO HUNTING / NO TRAPPING / NO TRESPASSING signs posted along the way confirmed that they were on land owned by “Old Man Foster,” known to them now as Glaeken. But that was about all he knew for sure. He was thoroughly lost by the time she told him to stop.

  He scanned the surrounding trees, which looked pretty much like all the myriad others they’d passed.

  “You sure this is the place?”

  “You remember it as burned out. That was decades ago.”

  The Lady had already stepped out of the car and was starting into the trees. Jack and Weezy hurried after her.

  “You know where you’re going?” Weezy said.

  “Of course.”

  Yeah, well, of course.

  Somewhere in all the revived undergrowth-winter bare now-lay the remnants of a burial mound he and Weezy had explored as kids. What they’d found had set a whole deadly chain of events in motion. Sometimes secrets were better left secret.

  The Lady, wearing only a housedress, forged ahead, moving easily through the brush, with nothing snagging her clothing that wasn’t clothing. Clouds had moved in and the temperature had dropped, but as usual she didn’t appear to notice.

  Then they broke into the pyramid’s clearing and Jack had to stop and take it in, just as he had the first time he’d seen it at age fourteen.

  Six huge, elongated triangular megaliths stood in a circle, their bases buried in the sandy soil with their pointed ends jutting skyward and leaning toward each other.

  Godzi
lla pizza slices…

  One had broken off halfway up, but the points of the other five met at the pyramid’s apex, fifteen feet above the ground.

  The Lady’s new home.

  3

  Dawn checked her gas gauge. Getting low. She’d never guessed she’d be driving all the way out to Long Island’s South Fork. But no way she could stop. She’d lose Dr. Heinze and never find him again.

  If she’d had unlimited funds she could have bugged his car-was “bugged” the right word?-with some sort of transmitter that would have allowed her to follow him on a GPS map.

  She wondered if he was at all concerned about being followed. He didn’t seem to be. No big deal on the LIE, but here on the narrower, slower Montauk Highway, he might notice the same Volvo behind him mile after mile. So she kept a car or two between them.

  She followed him through all the Hamptons-West-, South-, Bridge-, and East-and Amagansett as well. She was wondering if he was going all the way to Montauk Point when his left blinker started flashing and he turned off at someplace called Nuckateague. She started to follow him into the hairpin turn but stopped herself. No. Too, too obvious. She had to be totally careful now because hers was the only other car in sight.

  It killed her to keep driving but she did. But only for an eighth of a mile or so, then she made a U-turn and raced back. Her heart thumped out a dance beat. She’d never heard of Nuckateague and had no idea how big it was. Couldn’t be too big because the South Fork was so narrow out here, but Dr. Heinze could be checking on a summer place he owned and have his car garaged before Dawn caught up to him. Then what?

  She turned off at the Nuckateague sign and raced up a narrow blacktop called Nuckateague Drive. She slowed as she came to a street that ran off to the left-Bayberry Drive. Nothing moving there. She pushed on and stopped when her street ended at a T intersection with Dune Drive. She looked right and left-again nothing moving in either direction. She tossed a mental coin and turned right.

  Her tension increased as she ran the length of the waterfront homes with no sign of a silver Lexus. She reached the east end of the road and raced back to the intersection. Only a few houses on the west end of Dune Drive, one of them dominating the waterfront with its own lagoon cut in from the bay. The houses she’d seen so far were just that-houses. This was totally a mansion.