Repairman Jack [03]-Conspiracies (17 page)

He looks down and sees a gaping hole in the street below, growing larger, swallowing the asphalt pavement, then the sidewalk.

A hiss above him—the big rakosh, hanging over the sill. It raises its three-taloned hands, dripping red.

"They are gone. Nothing stands in your way now, brother. Join your true family."

"No!" Jack shouts.

"
You must
!" The rakosh hops up onto the sill, poised like a diver. "
Come! We are going home
."

The creature leaps over Jack and plummets toward the ever-widening maw of the hole. With a chorus of shrill cries, the rest of the rakoshi do the same, arcing over Jack in a dark hellish cataract, cascading toward the bottomless pit yawning below.

And finally they're gone, and all is still. But Jack can't bring himself to crawl back into that room and see the torn bloody ruins of the two most important people in his life.

In complete despair, he lets go and begins to fall, crying out not with fear but with the pain of incalculable loss as he tumbles through space, eager for the dark embrace that will blot out the horror of his failure—

But he lands softly ... on a mattress ...

Jack twisted violently and almost fell out of bed. "Wha—?" Dark. He was in his hotel room. No scratching at the door, no odor. He turned on the light—the room was empty. He checked the pistol under the pillow—full clip; a sniff of the muzzle showed it hadn't been fired recently. He looked around the room: everything in its place, the drapes still drawn as he'd left them.

He sagged and moaned, "Oh, Christ!" A dream—it had been a dream. He was so filled with relief he almost sobbed.

He glanced at the clock. 4:32 A.M.

Another rakoshi-mare. And this time Gia and Vicky were in it—torn to pieces in it. The dream had had a premonitory feel. Jack's stomach roiled at the thought. But it couldn't be. The rakoshi were gone. What the hell was going on then?

He shook himself and, pistol still in hand, left the bed. Thirsty. He flipped the bathroom light switch. As the fluorescents flickered to life he jumped back.

A crate, dark, dark green, five feet long and a foot high and wide, floated in the center of the bathroom, maybe three feet off the floor. Smoky wisps trailed off its surface like steam, white tendrils drifting toward the floor like dry ice fumes. Cold air seeped around his ankles ... flowing from the crate.

Jack's first instinct was to point his pistol at it. Then he realized ...

"I'm still dreaming. Got to be."

A glance left showed that the room door was still locked, the sturdy swing latch still in the closed position. But that didn't mean a whole hell of a lot. Jack knew those could be bypassed—he'd done it a few times himself. The gym bag was the clincher—it was still snug against the door, right where he'd left it.

He didn't feel as if he was dreaming. He slapped his face. It stung.

And then with a crash that sent him diving for cover, the box dropped to the floor.

Bomb
was the first thought to flash though his head. But who'd leave a bomb in a big green crate in a bathroom? And it hadn't exploded when it dropped.

He peeked around the corner. The box sat cold and quiet on the tiles. Looked completely harmless. But Jack was in no hurry to see what was inside.

He checked the door again. No way it had been opened. So how—?

He stopped himself.

Wait. What am I thinking? This isn't happening. It's no more real than those rakoshi of a few minutes ago. I keep forgetting I'm still asleep.

This felt pretty damn real for a dream, but what else could it be? Which meant he shouldn't be wasting his time trying to answer unanswerable questions when all this would be gone when the dream ended.

He headed back to the bed, closed his eyes, and waited to wake up.

Roma ...

"Where is it?"

Roma stood in the center of the basement and turned in a slow circle, arms spread in bafflement. The portal had opened and closed—he knew it, he'd
felt
it—but he had nothing to show for it.

Anger mixed with new, unfamiliar emotions: confusion and, strangest of all, uncertainty.

"Where is the device? Why was it not sent?"

"It
was
sent," Mauricio said, tying up his plastic bag. 'I sense it somewhere in this building. But not here."

"But it was supposed to be delivered
here
. To me."

"Obviously it wasn't."

The creature's serene tone rankled Roma. "Mauricio ... "

"Something has gone wrong—as I predicted."

Roma felt his anger flare to incandescence. "I want no more talk of your predictions! I want that device. You say it is somewhere in this building—find it!
Now
!"

Mauricio stared at Roma a moment, then hopped down to the floor.

"It's that stranger," he said. "I'm sure of it."

"Then find him. Let him be a stranger no more. Learn about him—where he lives, who he knows, who he loves—
especially
who he loves. A man who loves is vulnerable. Love is an excellent lever, one we should not hesitate to use should we need to."

Mauricio nodded and, without another word, trotted off, dragging his plastic bag behind him.

Disquiet nibbled at the base of Roma's spine as he watched him go. Could Mauricio be right? Was it not yet his time?

No. That was not in question. Then what had gone wrong? Was he right that the stranger—the insect who called himself Jack Shelby—was the problem?

He would have to learn more about him. And if he proved to be the source of interference, Roma would see to it that he sorely regretted the day he had dared to insinuate his insignificant presence into something so momentous.

1

Jack tried but couldn't sleep. And when dawn came, he returned to the bathroom and found the dark green crate still there.

Impossible.

No, he didn't want to say impossible. Because obviously it was possible. Once you started believing the impossible, the next step was maybe hearing someone speaking to you through your TV.

He pulled the curtains and looked outside. The city was awakening. Garbage trucks rumbling and clanking, people walking their dogs before heading for work ...

Just another day in Hell's Kitchen.

But not just another day in this particular hotel room. That crate wasn't a dream. The part about it floating in mid-air—
that
had been a dream—but the damn crate was real.

Back to the bathroom.

All right, let's think about this, he told himself, staring at the box. If the crate's real and it didn't come through the door, how did it get here? How did someone sneak it into the room without me hearing anything?

Cautiously he stepped into the bathroom. The crate wasn't steaming anymore, the air against his feet no longer cold. He reached his hand toward its surface but didn't touch it: seemed to be room temperature now. Close up like this, he could make out fine traces of black within its dark green surface.

Avoiding contact, Jack knelt and checked the floor around the crate, inspected under the sink counter, opened all the drawers ... no sign of an opening or hidden door.

Baffled, he sat on the edge of the tub and stared at the crate. How had the damn thing got here?

Gingerly, he nudged it with his toe. The wood didn't feel like any wood he'd ever known. The cover moved under light pressure from his toe and he jerked his foot back.

It wasn't sealed.

Giving the crate wide clearance, Jack retrieved the desk chair from the next room. He felt like a jerk, leaning around the edge of the bathroom doorway and poking at the crate with the chair leg, but he freely admitted that this thing had him spooked and he wasn't taking any chances.

Finally the lid slid off. No explosion, no snakes or giant spiders came crawling out. The overhead lights gleamed off ... metal bars.

He stepped in for a closer look. The crate held a jumble of miniature girders. Looked like an oversized erector set, with nuts and bolts and braces, but no plans.

Was he supposed to know what this was? Hell, was it even meant for him?

And then he saw part of the underside of the lid. Looked like a diagram. He flipped it the rest of the way over. Yeah. Plans that looked like an old blueprint for assembling whatever it was, not printed on the material, more like engraved in white into its dark green surface. Some sort of an oil rig, or something that resembled one. But the plans looked incomplete. The top of the structure appeared to be cut off at the upper end of the lid, as if they'd run out of room.

Didn't matter. He wasn't about to start assembling it. He had better things to do. He searched the crate inside and out for an address. He'd take an invoice, or a 'To" or a "From"—he wasn't picky—but found nothing.

He replaced the lid—
weird
texture to that material—and slid the crate under the sink counter.

Is somebody gaslighting me? he wondered.

After all, he was surrounded by loons.

Probably best to sit on it—figuratively—for now and see if anyone asked about it, or came looking for it.

He wasn't too crazy about showering with that crate in the bathroom, but he managed it—warily. He stood under the hot geyser and wondered what he'd got himself into here, that nightmare with the rakoshi and that voracious hole gobbling up the city ... how could a dream leave him so unsettled? Maybe because he couldn't shake the feeling that it was more than a dream ... that it was some sort of premonition. But of what?

And then the crate ...

He pulled back the curtain to see if it was still there. Yeah, right where he'd left it under the counter. A woman disappears, a strange box appears. Any connection? And if so, how?

The hot water relaxed his tight muscles, but did little to ease his mind.

Feeling as if the walls were closing in, he quickly dried off, threw on a flannel shirt and jeans, and called Lew.

2

Jack met Lew outside the coffee shop where they found James Zaleski waiting with a guy in a cowboy shirt and boots he introduced as Tony Carmack. Tony had a more-than-generous nose and wore his hair in a long-banged Caesar cut. He looked like the old Sonny Bono from the '60s, but when he opened his mouth he was pure Dallas-Fort Worth. Zaleski had shed his suit for a long-sleeved red shirt and a dark blue down vest.

The receptionist led them to a rear booth. Jack got stuck on the inside, which he never liked, but decided not to make an issue of it. Lew was next to him on the end. Carmack had the other end; Zaleski was directly across from Jack.

The young, dark-haired waitress with an Eastern European accent left them with menus and a carafe of coffee. Jack jumped on it. Caffeine ... he needed caffeine.

So did Zaleski and Carmack, apparently.

"What a fucking night," Zaleski said, brushing his hair off his forehead. "Worst dream of my life."

"You too?" Carmack said. "I dreamed I was in a cornfield being crushed by a landing UFO."

What is this place? Jack wondered. Nightmare city? He didn't mention his own.

"Are you a ufologist too?" he asked Carmack. He couldn't resist using the term.

The Texan shrugged. "Of sorts. Actually I'm what they call a 'cereologist.'"

"An expert on crop circles," Lew offered.

"Crop circles?" Jack said as he added sugar.

"Yep. Never thought too much of this UFO stuff," Tony said. "Then one day I woke up and found the corn in one of the back fields of my farm crushed flat in three big ol' circles—
concentric
circles, all of 'em perfect. That made me a believer. I just—"

"Yeah, yeah," Zaleski said, jumping in and waving Carmack off. "You and Shelby can trade sheep-humping farm stories later." He stared at Jack through his thick horn rims. "The reason I wanted to talk to you was to find out if Melanie mentioned anything else when she called you."

Carmack grimaced and sighed. Looked like he was used to being cut off by Zaleski.

"Like what?" Jack said as innocently as he could.

"Like about what else she might be working on."

Jack shook his head. "She just asked me to come out to her place to discuss my 'experience.' I was pretty shocked, seeing as I hadn't mentioned it to a soul, and I asked her how she knew. She said, 'I just do.' And that was pretty much it."

This didn't seem to be at all to Zaleski's liking. "Come on, Shelby—"

"Jack."

"Okay, Jack. There had to be more to it than that. Hell, she talked everybody's fucking ears off"—a glance at Lew—"no offense, man." Lew shrugged and Zaleski went right back to Jack. "You're
sure
she didn't say anything else?"

"That's what I told you, isn't it?" Jack said. This guy had the personality of a piranha. "I can make something up if you like ... "

As Zaleski frowned, Jack noticed Carmack grinning and giving him a secret thumbs up.

What's the score between these two? he wondered.

Jack added, "I'd really like to find her so I can ask her how she knew."