The Dark at the End

by F. Paul Wilson

  He hurled it at the stranger -

  Who turned and batted it away with his pistol. But he cut his hand in the process. He switched the Glock to his left hand and sucked on the side of his index finger as he approached Georges. His expression was furious . . . and frightening.

  "Why'd you kill her? No reason on Earth to do that. She's just a teenager trying to get her kid back. "

  Georges jutted his chin toward the garage across the street. "She killed Gilda. "

  The man glanced over his shoulder, then back to Georges. "Yeah, well, you guys stole her baby. " He looked at his wounded finger. "You trying to give me tetanus? Cause that was a piss-poor toss. "

  Georges spat at him. "May you die in agony. "

  The man waved his pistol at Georges's legs. "Doesn't look like you'll be picking up your boss tonight. "

  Georges felt as if he'd been slapped. How could he know that? It could only mean he wasn't here by accident. Who was he?

  "No worry," the man said. "I'll sub for you. What airline?"

  "Fuck you. "

  He looked at his finger. "Well, whatta ya know?" He thrust it toward Georges. "All better. "

  It was true - the cut had already stopped bleeding.

  "Just like your master. We're old buddies. So tell me: What airline?"

  "Fuck your mother!"

  The man looked at the sky, then back to Georges.

  "I haven't got time for this. "

  He pointed the Glock at Georges's chest.

  "No!"

  SATURDAY Chapter 9

  Jack double-tapped Georges's heart and put one through his forehead for insurance.

  Then he heard his phone ringing back in the car. He holstered the Glock and went to retrieve it. The same number as before. He thumbed SEND.

  "Weezy?"

  "I've been calling Dawn but she doesn't answer. "

  Jack glanced back toward the Volvo. "Yeah . . . well. . . "

  "What? What, Jack?"

  He was on a cell, the signal going who knew where.

  "Remember that movie with Bruce Willis?"

  "Die Hard? Listen, Jack, I don't want to play movie trivia. Dawn - "

  "Remember what Haley Joel Osment's character could see?"

  "Ohmigod! You mean - ?"

  "I'm seeing three . . . and a really ugly baby. "

  "Dawn? Is she - oh, God, no!"

  "Pull it together, okay? I - we need you to stay together. We've got big trouble. What street are you on?"

  "Ju-just off twenty-seven. "

  "Any landmarky place nearby?"

  "I can see a farmer's market across the street but it's closed. "

  "I think I saw the place on the way in. Forget the car and get over there and wait. I'll pick you up ASAP. "

  He cut the call before she could say anything else and looked around. Had to get these bodies out of sight. He wasn't worried about anyone hearing the shots in this wind and weather. What few people were within earshot were inside.

  He emptied Georges's pockets and found nothing but a cell phone and the Volvo keys. He grabbed him by the wrists and dragged him around to the far side of the car where he loaded him into the passenger seat. Heavy son of a bitch. Then he moved to the rear compartment to deal with Dawn.

  Poor kid. If she'd just done what he'd told her she'd still be alive. He tried to imagine what had happened since he'd left. She'd been with Weezy, and Weezy had walked down to the car . . . and then what?

  He leaned in and went to grab her shoulders to pull her farther into the car when the baby's deafening screech stopped him. He looked at the child - the Marty Allen hair and the scrunched-in features gave him a troll-doll look without any of the cuteness. Fury lit his beady little black eyes and Jack thought he was angry for taking his mother from him.

  "Don't worry, little guy. I'm not gonna - "

  But then he saw the red smears on his face.

  As he watched, the kid dipped his fingers into the blood welled in Dawn's shoulder wound and then stuck them in his mouth, sucking greedily.

  SATURDAY Chapter 10

  They had a litany going . . .

  "We can't just leave her there," Weezy said for what seemed like the thousandth time.

  And each time Jack gave the same reply: "We don't have a choice. "

  They stood inside the door to the O'Donnell house, looking out on Dawn's Volvo, collecting snow as it sat in the yard.

  After Weezy's call from the garage, Jack had moved Dawn and Georges into the O'Donnell garage, where they joined Gilda on the floor. He'd arranged them along its west wall, Dawn supine, covered by a sheet from the house, the other two facedown. Then he'd eased the Crown Vic in beside them - a tight fit even if the garage had been empty - and closed the damaged doors. Their hinges had been loosened and twisted a bit, and the latch was broken, but he'd managed to jury-rig them so they stayed closed.

  Then he'd taken the Volvo and its little passenger into Amagansett to pick up Weezy. Snow had begun to accumulate on the asphalt, but the Volvo handled nicely.

  He'd tensed himself during the ride, waiting for one of those screeches, but it never came. A glance in the rearview mirror showed the kid asleep. Good thing, too. He'd pitched a fit when Jack had taken his mother away, screeching like the proverbial banshee. Jack hadn't known whether it was maternal attachment or removal of his snack. He'd been chowing down on Dawn's blood with lip-smacking gusto. Jack had wiped the blood off the dashboard before heading for Weezy, and now realized he should have cleaned up the baby's face as well. But he'd had more important things on his mind.

  Like how to salvage this clusterfuck.

  He'd found a snow-dappled Weezy rubbing her hands and stamping her feet in front of the empty produce stand.

  "Sorry to take so long," he said, turning up the heat as she got in. "Cleanup took longer than I expected. "

  Shivering, she slid into the passenger seat and held her hands over the dashboard vents.

  "'S-s-s'all right. "

  She glanced at the baby in the backseat and grimaced.

  "Was I right?" he said.

  "Not so bad. "

  She had to be kidding. Then again, this baby belonged to Dawn, her surrogate daughter, and so maybe Weezy was seeing the child with different eyes.

  She looked at him again. "Does he really have. . . ?"

  "Tentacles? I didn't check. "

  Time had been tight and he was in no great hurry to find out. Plenty of time for an anatomy check later.

  She gave him a quick rundown of seeing the tow truck flashers and running out to stop it.

  "How did anyone find it?"

  "The guy at the garage told me it was reported to the police and the police called them to pick up an abandoned vehicle. That's all he knows. "

  Jack shook his head. "Murphy's law rules the goddamn universe. "

  "The multiverse," Weezy said.

  Unasked questions about Dawn layered the air within the car. Finally Weezy took a deep breath and looked at Jack.

  "Dawn . . . she's really. . . ?"

  He nodded.

  Her features twisted as tears began to roll down her cheeks. "How?"

  Jack described the scene as he'd found it, then, "The best I can come up with is somehow she got hold of the baby, Gilda came after her with a knife, wounded her, but Dawn fought back and killed Gilda. Then Georges killed Dawn. "

  Weezy buried her face in her hands. "Oh, God. It's all my fault!"

  He sighed. "Somehow I knew you'd say that. "

  "Well, it is. I never should have left her. "

  "You saw the flashers. I'd have hauled ass down there too. "

  "But if I'd stayed - "

  "This never would have happened? Okay, probably not. But just because you could have stopped her if you were there doesn't make you responsible for her bad decisions. And she made a whole series of them, one right after another:
leaving the house, going to the mansion, entering the mansion, taking the baby. At any point along the way she could have made the opposite choice, but she didn't. "

  She raised her head and looked at him. "That's awfully cold. "

  Yeah, it was, wasn't it. But anger was leaving him feeling pretty damn cold at the moment.

  "Sorry, but that's the way I see it. "

  "She was a young mother, her baby had been taken from her, she wasn't thinking. "

  "Exactly. This wasn't all about her. There's a bigger picture. We explained that. But in the end none of that mattered to her. Dawn-Dawn-Dawn - that was it. "

  Weezy was staring at him with a worried expression. "What's happening to you?"

  "What's happening to me? How about what's happening to us - as in the whole world? How about she's blown this primo chance - a near-perfect setup - to stop this guy. "

  "How can you say it's blown?"

  "Well, Georges isn't going to be waiting at JFK to pick him up tonight. And neither Georges nor Gilda will be answering the phone - death tends to create something of an impediment to that. He's no idiot. When Georges doesn't show and he can't contact either of them, don't you think he'll suspect that maybe, just maybe something's amiss? And when he does, he'll head elsewhere. Maybe turn around and catch the next flight to Timbuktu or anywhere far from here. We're losing our last chance to stop the Change. And when the Change happens, how many deaths will be laid on Dawn's doorstep?"

  "There'll be other chances. "

  "Not like this one. "

  She gestured toward the backseat. "We have him. "

  "Yeah, there's that - assuming the kid is crucial to his plans. If not . . . then, as Abe would say, we've got bupkes. "

  She reached out and patted his arm. "You can salvage this. "

  "Oh, really?"

  "Yes, really. I have faith in you. "

  "Swell. "

  He didn't tell her that he hadn't a clue as to how to accomplish that.

  He'd turned into Nuckateague and sensed Weezy pulling into herself as they neared the house. Dune Drive was quiet as, well, a tomb - and would be sort of functioning as one for a while. As he approached the mansion and the O'Donnell house he couldn't find a clue that all hell had broken loose here less than an hour ago.

  She'd insisted on seeing Dawn's body. He'd warned her it was bloody and she'd suffered an ugly death, but she'd insisted. And when he'd pulled the sheet down, she lost it.

  She'd recovered somewhat now, but was keeping up the how-can-we-leave-her-there-like-that? litany. The most rational woman he'd ever known had surrendered all her critical faculties.

  "You're not thinking, Weez. Where can you take her?"

  "I don't know, but we can't just - "

  He raised his hands. "Please. Stop. You're talking about driving around with a dead body in your car. Not just dead - murdered. So you can't take her to a funeral home or even an ER without winding up being asked a lot of questions you do not want to answer. "

  "But - "

  "Think of it as cold storage. "

  "But rats . . . mice. . . "

  He realized he had to give her something.

  "Okay, here's what I can do: Before I clear out, I'm going to wipe this place down - everything we might have touched. After I'm gone I'll call the East Hampton police and report bodies in the O'Donnell garage on Dune Drive. I'll even give them Dawn's name so she can be buried with her mother. "

  Weezy thought about this for a moment, then nodded. "Okay. I guess that's the best we can do. It means she won't be out there for long. I'll help you wipe down and - "

  "No. You take the baby and head for the city. "

  "The baby?"

  "Well, yeah. You've just become his unofficial guardian. "

  "But I don't know the first thing about babies. " Her hand shot up as Jack opened his mouth. "And please, no Butterfly McQueen references. "

  How had she guessed? Was he that predictable?

  "You mean there's something you don't know?"

  "I never found babies very interesting. "

  "Better start reading up on them because you just became Aunt Weezy. "

  Her expression reflected mild panic. "This is serious, Jack. I've never had contact with children, especially babies, and this is no ordinary baby. "

  "That's for sure. "

  "I mean, what does he eat? Formula? Cereal? Were they feeding him Jell-O or jelly or something?"

  "What?"

  "He's got red smears on his face. "

  "Oh, um. . . " He decided not to burden her with that detail. "I have no idea what Gilda was feeding him. "

  "Jack, what'll I do?"

  "You're the smartest person I know. You'll figure it out. "

  Weezy looked ready to cry again. Jack couldn't help it. To do what he needed to do, he needed her and the baby gone.

  They packed up Dawn's things and Weezy's things, and within half an hour she and the baby were on their way, leaving Jack at the door staring across the empty yard at the equally empty mansion on the far side of the street.

  Dawn had deep-sixed his original plan. Had to be another way to salvage this opportunity. He'd have to improvise.

  Jack hated to improvise.

  SATURDAY Chapter 11

  After wiping down the O'Donnell place as best he could, he went to the garage and opened his trunk. He stared at all the ordnance he'd acquired and might never get a chance to use.

  The octol and the copper cones - what good were shaped charges now? The double-whammy roadside IEDs were out. Even if Rasalom decided to return to the mansion on his own, Jack would have no idea how he was arriving. If he rented a car, Jack wouldn't know what it looked like. He couldn't simply incinerate the first car that passed between the charges. And if he took a taxi, he'd have somebody driving - Jack had had no qualms about Georges, but he wasn't about to kill an innocent cabbie.

  He grabbed the golf bag and checked inside: the M-79 nestled among the clubs. Easy enough to use. He leaned that against the wall and pulled out one of the two carpet-clad Stingers. He unwrapped and inspected it. The missile and its launcher ran about five feet long and weighed north of thirty pounds. Not exactly a concealable weapon. He'd never fired one, but Abe had included instructions. He'd have to read up on the procedure if he was going to use it.

  A big if.

  He leaned the Stinger next to the golf bag and stared at the makings for his shaped charges. He'd had big plans for those - taking out Rasalom before he made it to the house. Now, if he showed up at all, Jack would have to try to take him down on his own turf.

  He stepped out the side door and stared at the mansion. Launch a grenade and missile attack on the place once he was inside and reduce it to rubble? A possibility.

  But first Jack had to get him out here. How to do that? How to explain Georges's no-show at the airport without arousing suspicion? Couldn't send a stand-in driver - he'd never go for that. Had to be a way.

  Jack made a mental list of the elements he had to work with - all the people and things that involved Rasalom's life in Nuckateague: Gilda, Georges, the baby, the car, the house. Some combination of those might provide the key.

  First thing he needed was a plausible reason for Georges not to show up at JFK . . . and for both him and Gilda to be incommunicado. And he needed a way to get that information to Rasalom.

  Did Rasalom carry a cell phone? Well, why not? Glaeken carried one, no good reason Rasalom wouldn't.

  He ducked back into the garage and made a beeline for Georges. He'd left the guy's phone with his corpse. Yep, there it was. Jack flipped it open, found the address book, and began going through it. He tried "Osala," "Boss," even "Rasalom," but no luck. He did find "One. " A New York City code. Pretty good chance that was it. But just to be sure . . .

  He had to roll Gilda over to check her pockets. He'd placed her facedown to hide her gory front from Weezy. He'd found o
nly one knife, and he doubted that Dawn had stabbed herself, so the most logical scenario was that Gilda had found the baby gone, grabbed a knife, and run over here to stop Dawn. Dawn had somehow disarmed her and given her a dose of her own medicine. Many doses.

  He shook his head at the butchery. Dawn had continued stabbing long after Gilda was gone. Weezy wouldn't want to believe that her Dawn was capable of that.

  He found Gilda's cell in a pocket of her coat. He searched for "One" first this time but came up blank. No luck either with "Osala," "Boss," or "Rasalom. " While searching he noticed a number of texts from "Kris" and a reply to each. So, the murderous old broad liked to exchange texts with her equally murderous son. How sweet. The family that kills together, what? - chills together? - heads for the hills together? - stomps anthills together? He wondered if they discussed their favorite blades for cutting off eyelids.

  Gilda didn't seem to have many names in her address book so he went through them one by one. He stopped when he reached "Master. " That number matched the one in Georges's.

  Got it.

  A phone number for Rasalom . . . how weird that seemed.

  But then he remembered Glaeken's warning of a few weeks ago: Rasalom was human. He had a few enhancements that weren't standard equipment in the off-the-rack members of the species, but he wasn't a god - not even a demigod. Another thing he wasn't was telepathic, so he had to resort to prosaic methods to stay in contact with his minions.

  The number glowed on the displays of the two phones. Great.

  Now what?

  An idea, barely formed, began to tickle his brain. He didn't jump on it. That might scare it away. Better to leave it alone and let it develop on its own.

  He'd need some luck - the good kind. Plenty of bad luck today . . . he was due for some good. Yeah, with a little luck and a lot of fancy footwork, there might, just might be a way.

  SATURDAY Chapter 12

  A man who was something more than a man, who was known as the One to many and as Rasalom to a few, who had numerous names, the most important known only to him, strode through the airport toward the baggage area.

  The solid floor of the terminal felt good beneath his feet. Such a relief to tread solid ground again - ground that would soon be his. He was not one for anxiety, yet he'd experienced a few moments of concern during the flight, especially when the plane had dipped and yawed in the rough weather toward the end. The pilot had mentioned something about an East Coast storm. He could survive far more trauma than any of his fellow passengers, but he had limits.