Nightworld ac-6

by F. Paul Wilson

  Nightworld

  ( Adversary Cycle - 6 )

  F. Paul Wilson

  Scanned by Mysterytrain.

  Proofed by Highroller.

  to Forrest J Ackerman

  whose Famous Monsters of Filmland exposed a fascinated twelve year old to a gallery of monstrous creatures, demonstrated their wonders while allowing him to laugh at them, and set him on the road toward creating his own monsters as an adult.

  Thanks, Forry. This one's for you.

  Part I

  DAY

  Rasalom went to the mountain.

  He is calling himself Rasalom these days because it seems he has always called himself Rasalom. It is not his birth name, the one his mother bestowed on him. He discarded that one back in the First Age when it was customary to keep one's True Name a secret. But he has used Rasalom so long it almost seems like his True Name.

  From here atop Minya Konka, through a break in the clouds, much of what is now called China spreads out four and a half miles below him in the darkness. His birthplace is not far from here. It is bitterly cold on the mountaintop. Gale-force winds shriek and howl angrily as they swirl the frozen air about his naked body. Rasalom scarcely notices. The power within protects him, the ever-growing power, fed incessantly by the delicious woes of the world below.

  The horizon brightens. Dawn does not break at this altitude—it shatters. Rasalom stares at the glint of brightness sliding into view and focuses the power he has been storing since his most recent rebirth. Millennia of frustration fall away as he begins the process to which he has devoted the ages of his existence. No gestures, no incantations, just the power, vomiting out of him, spreading out and up and around, seeping into the planet's crust, billowing into its atmosphere, saturating its locus in the universe.

  Soon all of this shall be his. There is no opposition, no power on earth that can stop him.

  He drops to his knees, not in prayer but in relief, elation.

  At last, after so many ages, it has begun.

  Dawn will never be the same.

  WEDNESDAY

  1 • NICHOLAS QUINN, PhD.

  Manhattan

  On May 17, the sun was late.

  Nick Quinn heard the first vague rumors of a delayed sunrise while filling his coffee mug from the urn in the lounge of Columbia University's physics department, but didn't pay them much mind. A screwed-up calculation, a missed observation, a malfunctioning clock. Human error. Had to be. Old Sol never missed appointments. It simply didn't happen.

  But the rumor continued to echo through the halls all morning, with no offsetting rumor of explanation. So at lunch break, when Nick had settled his usual roast beef on rye and large cola on his tray in the faculty cafeteria, the first thing he did was hunt up Harvey Sapir from astrophysics.

  Nick looked for the hair. Harv's hair was always perfect. It flowed back seamlessly from his forehead in a salt-and-pepper wave, so full and thick it looked like a toupee. But it wasn't. Close up, if you looked carefully, you could catch a glimpse of pink scalp through the mane. A running joke around the physics department was guesstimating how much time and spray Harv invested in his hair each morning.

  Nick spotted him at a corner table with Cynthia Hayes. She was from astrophysics too.

  Harv's hair was a mess.

  Nick found that unsettling.

  "Mind if I join you?" Nick said, hovering over the seat next to Cynthia.

  The two of them were in deep conversation. Both glanced up and nodded absently, then immediately put their heads back together. Beneath his uncombed hair, Harv's face was haggard. He looked all of his forty-five years and then some. Cynthia, too, looked somewhat disheveled. She was closer to Nick's age—mid-thirties—with short, chestnut hair and glorious skin. Nick liked her. A lot. She was the main reason he'd put aside his coke-bottle lenses and got fitted for contacts. Years ago. Still hadn't found the nerve to ask her out yet. With his pocked skin and weird-shaped head, Nick felt like a warty frog who had no chance ever of changing into a prince, yet still he pined for this princess.

  "What's all this I hear about the sun being late?" he said after swallowing the first bite of his sandwich. "How'd a story like that get started?"

  They both glanced at him again, then Cynthia leaned back and rubbed her eyes.

  "Because it's true," Harv said.

  Nick stopped in mid bite and stared at them, looking for a smile, a twist of the lips, a hint of the put-on.

  Nothing. Cynthia's expression was as deadpan as Harv's.

  "Bullshit," Nick said.

  Instantly he regretted it. He never used profanity in front of a woman, even though many of them had no reservations about swearing like sailors in front of him.

  "Sunrise was scheduled at five-twenty-one this morning, Nick," Cynthia said. "It rose at five-twenty-six. Five minutes and eight-point-two-two seconds late this morning."

  Her husky voice never failed to give him a warm feeling.

  Except today. Her words chilled him. She was saying the unthinkable.

  "Come on, guys", he said, forcing a laugh. "We set our clocks by the sun, not vice versa. If the clock says the sun is late, then the clock needs to be reset."

  "Atomic clocks, Nick?"

  "Oh."

  That was different. Atomic clocks worked on nuclear decay. They were accurate to a millionth of a second. If they said the sun was late…

  "Could be some sort of mechanical failure," Nick said hopefully.

  Harv shook his head. "Greenwich reported a late rise too. Five minutes and a fraction late. They called us. I was here at four-thirty a.m., waiting. As Cynthia told you, sunrise was late here by exactly the same interval."

  Nick felt a worm of uneasiness begin to work its way up his spine.

  "Greenwich too? What about the West Coast?"

  "Palo Alto got the same figure," Cynthia said.

  "But do you know what you're saying?" Nick said. "Do you know what this means?"

  "Of course I know what it means!" Harv said with ill-concealed annoyance. "This is my field, you know. It means the earth either temporarily slowed its rate of spin during the night or it tilted back on its axis."

  "But either would mean cataclysm! Why, the effect on tides alone would be—"

  "But it didn't slow. Not the slightest variation in axial rotation or axial tilt. Believe me, I've checked. The days are supposed to be getting progressively longer until the equinox in June, but today got shorter—or at least it started out that way."

  "Then the clocks are wrong!"

  "Atomic clocks? All of them? All experiencing precisely the same level of change in nuclear decay at the same time? I doubt it. No, Nick. The sun rose late this morning."

  Nick's field was lasers and particle physics. He was used to uncertainties at the sub-atomic level—Heisenberg had seen to that. But on the celestial plane, things were supposed to go like…clockwork.

  "This is all impossible!"

  Harv's expression was desolate. And Cynthia's was frightened.

  "I know," Harv said in a low voice. "Don't I know."

  And then Nick remembered a conversation he'd had with a certain Jesuit a couple of months ago.

  It will begin in the heavens…

  Father Bill Ryan had returned to the city after five years of hiding in the South, and was still laying low. Only a handful of people knew he was back. After all, he was still wanted by the police.

  Poor Father Bill. The years of seclusion had not been kind to him. He looked so much older, and he acted strange. Simultaneously jumpy, irritable, frightened, and angry. And he talked of strange things. No specifics, just cryptic warnings of some sort of approaching Armageddon. But with the Russians acting semi-civilized and the cold war over, that hadn't m
ade much sense.

  One thing Father Bill had been fairly positive about was where it all would start.

  It will begin in the heavens.

  He'd told Nick to keep his ears open and to let him know if he heard of anything strange happening in the skies, no matter how insignificant.

  Well, something more than strange had happened. Something far from insignificant. Something impossible.

  It will begin in the heavens.

  The unease in Nick's spine stopped crawling and sprinted up to the back of his neck, spreading across his shoulders. He excused himself from the table and headed for the pay phone in the hallway.

  2 • Father William Ryan, S.J.

  "Ask him about tonight," Glaeken said, close by Father Bill's side. "Do they think the sun will set ahead of schedule tonight?"

  Bill turned back to the phone and repeated the question. Nick's reply was agitated. Bill detected a tremor weaving through the younger man's voice.

  "I don't know, and I'm sure Harv and Cynthia don't know, either. This is terra incognita, Bill. Nothing like this has ever happened before. All bets are off."

  "Okay, Nick. Thanks for calling. Keep me posted, will you? Let me know about sunset."

  "That's it?" Nick said. "Keep you posted? What's this all about? How did you know something was going to happen? What's it all mean?"

  Bill sensed the fear, the uncharacteristic uncertainty in Nick, and wished he could say something to comfort him. But Bill had nothing comforting to say.

  "You 'll know as soon as I know. I promise you. Get back to me here tonight. I'll be waiting for you. Goodbye."

  Bill hung up and turned to Glaeken, but the old man was over by the picture window, staring down at the Park. He did that a lot. Glaeken looked eighty-something, maybe ninety, slightly stooped, with white hair and deeply wrinkled skin; but he was a big man, and his frame blocked a good portion of the window. Bill had been living here in Glaeken's apartment for the past couple of months, helping him with his ailing wife, driving him around town while he did his "research," but mostly waiting.

  The apartment was huge, occupying the entire top floor of the building, and filled with strange curios and even stranger paintings. The wall to Bill's left was mirrored and he started at the stranger facing him in the glass, then realized he was looking at himself. He'd shaved his beard and cut his hair and he missed his ponytail. He still wasn't used to seeing himself with bare cheeks. He wasn't used to looking so old. The gray hair had been there for years, but the beard had hidden all the lines on his face. He looked all of his fifty years.

  Bill moved up to the window and stood beside Glaeken.

  The wait, apparently, was over. He was glad for that. But an icy tendril of dread slithered through his gut as he realized he had traded one uncertainty for another. The apprehension of wondering when it would start had been replaced now by a greater worry of what was starting.

  "You didn't seem too surprised," Bill said.

  "I sensed the difference this morning. Your friend confirmed it. The Change has begun its march."

  "You wouldn't know it from the looks of things down there."

  Across the street and a dozen stories below, Central Park was a palette of greens in the light of the high spring sun as the various species of trees sprouted this year's crop of leaves.

  "No," Glaeken said. "And you won't for a while. But now we must lower our watch. The next manifestation will occur in the earth."

  "Like what?"

  "I don't know. But if he follows his pattern, that is where he'll make his next move. And when he has reached his full powers—"

  "You mean he hasn't!"

  "There is a process he must go through before his power is complete. Plus, there's a purpose to playing with the length of our days. It's all part of his method."

  "Not at full power," Bill said softly, his mind balking. "My God, if you're right about that, and he's able to alter the time the sun rises when he's not up to speed, what'll he be able to do when he is?"

  Glaeken turned and pinned Bill with his deep blue gaze.

  "Anything he wants. Anything."

  "Nick says it's impossible for the sun to rise late," Bill said, grasping at straws. "It breaks too many physical laws."

  "We'll have to learn to forget about physical laws—or any laws, for that matter. The 'laws' we have created to explain our existence and make sense of the universe around us are about to be repealed. Physics, chemistry, gravity, time itself will be reduced to futile, meaningless formulae. The first laws were broken at sunrise. Many more will follow until they all lie scattered about in ruins. As of this morning, we begin a trek toward a world and a time of no law."

  An old woman's voice quavered from the master bedroom.

  "Glen? Glen, where are you?"

  "Coming, Magda," Glaeken said. He gripped Bill's upper arm and lowered his voice. "I don't think we can stop him, but there may be a chance to impede him."

  Bill urged his spirits to respond, to lift, to cast off the pall of gloom that enveloped him. But his mood remained black.

  "How? How can we hope to stand against a power that can alter the path of the sun?"

  "We can't," the old man said sternly. "Not with that attitude. And that's just the way he wants us to react—with despair and hopelessness. 'He's too powerful. Why even try to resist?'"

  "Good question," Bill said.

  "No." Glaeken tightened his grip painfully on Bill's arm. "Bad question. That way, he's already won, without a fight. He may win. In fact, I'm pretty sure we haven't got a chance. But I've fought him too long to sit around and simply wait for the end. I thought I could. I wanted to sit this out, sit everything out. That was why I took the name Veilleur. For once I'd be involved in nothing; I'd simply sit back and watch. And I have watched. And all the while I've waited for someone to come along with the power to stand in Rasalom's way. But no one's appeared. And now I find I can't sit by and let everything fall into his lap. I want that bastard to have to work for it. If he wants this world, he's going to have to earn it!"

  Something in Glaeken's words, his manner, his flashing eyes gave Bill heart

  "I'm all for that, but can we do enough to let him know he's even been in a fight?"

  "Oh, yes. I'll see to it."

  Magda's voice intruded again, trailing in from the bedroom.

  "Doesn't anybody hear me? Isn't anybody there? Have I been left here alone to die?"

  "I'd better go to her," Glaeken said.

  "Can I help?"

  "Thanks, no. She just needs a little reassurance. But I'd appreciate it if you could be around tonight while I go out. I've got a little errand I must run."

  "If you need anything, I can—"

  "No. This is someone I must meet alone."

  Bill waited for Glaeken to elaborate, but no explanation was offered. He'd learned over the past couple of months that the old man played everything close to the vest, yielding only the minimal amount of necessary information, keeping the rest to himself.

  "Okay. I think I'll stop in on Carol, then. To tell her it's started."

  "Good. Do that. And keep emphasizing to her that none of what has happened or is about to happen is her fault."

  "Will do." Bill started to turn away, then stopped. "Can we really give Rasalom a fight?"

  "If I can gather together the proper elements, we may have ourselves a weapon."

  "Really?" Bill was almost afraid to yield to the hope growing within him. "When do we start this gathering?"

  "Tomorrow. Will you drive me out to Long Island? And would you wear your cassock?"

  What a strange request. Why did Glaeken want him to look like a priest?

  "I don't have one anymore. I…I don't believe in any of that anymore."

  "I know. But I must be at my most persuasive. And the presence of a Jesuit at my side might lend some weight to my arguments. We'll fit you for a new cassock."

  Bill shrugged. "Anything for the cause. Where on Long Island?
"

  "The north shore."

  A familiar pang stirred within Bill.

  "I grew up in that area."

  "Yes. In the Village of Monroe."

  "How did you know?"

  Glaeken shrugged. "That's where we're going."

  "Monroe? My home town? Why?"

  "Part of the weapon is there."

  Bill was baffled. In Monroe?

  "It's just a little harbor town. What kind of weapon can you hope to find out there?"

  Glaeken turned and walked down the hall to attend to his wife. He cast the reply over his shoulder. "A small boy."

  Over in the West Seventies, Bill knocked on an eighth-floor apartment door. A slender woman with ash blond hair, fine features and a pert, upturned nose opened it and stared at him. Carol. Her face was tight, her eyes haunted, her usual high coloring blanched.

  "It's begun, hasn't it?" she said.

  The afternoon sun filled the room behind her with golden light, giving her an almost ethereal quality. The sight of her disturbed once again the old feelings he tried to keep tucked away.

  Bill stepped across the threshold and closed the door behind him.

  "How did you know?"

  "I heard about the late sunrise on the radio." Tears filled her eyes as her lips began to tremble. "I knew right away it was Jimmy's doing."

  Bill reached out and folded her in an embrace. She was trembling as she leaned against him. Her arms locked around his back and she clung to him like a tree in a flood. Bill closed his eyes and let the good feelings wash through him. Good feelings were so hard to come by these days.

  He'd been moving through a fog of black depression for the last couple of months, ever since the deadly events in February in North Carolina. Three times since 1968 his world had been all but torn apart. First there'd been the violent death of his old friend and Carol's first husband, Jim Stevens, followed by the bizarre murders in the Hanley mansion and Carol's flight to parts unknown; he'd recovered from that. Then five years ago there'd been his parents' deaths in the fire, Danny Gordon's mutilation and all the horrors that followed, capped by his own flight and years of hiding; he'd almost recovered from that when he'd had to face Renny Augustino's brutal murder, Lisl's suicide, and the exhumation of Danny Gordon's living corpse.