Repairman Jack [03]-Conspiracies (41 page)

"And there is still the matter of The Lady."

"Forget her! You can await your destiny, Mauricio, or you can go to meet it."

"At least now I know why I could not kill the stranger," Mauricio said. "I didn't know what stopped me or why. It might even have been the Enemy. Now I know. The Otherness wants the stranger for itself." He bared his sharp teeth. "Better for him if I had succeeded."

They paused by the big oak and faced the house. To his right he saw the Ehler woman's husband sitting in his car, waiting in the darkness for his wife. How pathetic.

You will be reunited with her soon, he thought, but not in any way you can imagine.

He returned his attention to the house. His vibrating nerves sang with joyous anticipation. At last, after all this time, at this moment, in this place, in the little town of his reconception, his time had come.

After all I have been through, after all the battles I have fought, the pain and punishment I have suffered, I deserve this world. It was promised to me, I have earned it, and now, finally, it will be mine.

5

As Jack searched around for a way to open the cuff, he felt the breeze pick up against his back ... and continue to increase in force until it wasn't a breeze any more. This was a wind now.

And that hole wasn't any smaller.

Tiny spiders of apprehension ran up and down his spine. He tried to lose them by telling himself that at least the opening wasn't growing. But what was with this wind? Was the gateway going to try to suck him into the Otherness like some giant vacuum cleaner?

Just then Canfield's wheelchair began to roll toward the hole.

As Jack grabbed for it and stopped it with his free hand, he realized, Yeah, that might be just what the Otherness intended.

But no worry. He was attached to a damn near indestructible steel column. He wasn't going anywhere.

So why didn't he feel safe?

Truly, the only place he'd feel safe was out of here and racing for Manhattan. But first he had to get free of these cuffs. Jack gazed longingly at his jacket on the couch against the rear wall ... but no chance. He'd have to be Plastic Man to reach it.

With the steadily rising wind chugging down the stairs, he looked around for another way.

Canfield's wheelchair ...

He reached into its rear pouch and found the tool kit. He fumbled it open and searched through the tools. He snatched up the biggest screwdriver and a couple of slim paneling nails, then tossed the kit back into the pouch.

The wooden desk chair began to slide toward the hole. It toppled into the opening and caught on the edges. It hung there, its wood creaking and cracking, then its back snapped and the pieces tumbled out of sight.

Jack stared at the hole. Had it grown in size, or did it just seem that way? He watched the rope ladder twisting and gyrating in the downdraft. He didn't remember that wooden tread sitting on the edge before ... hadn't it been further back?

Alarmed, he clamped the nails between his lips and jammed the screwdriver through one of the chain links. He twisted the link, using both hands and putting all his weight and strength behind it. He pushed till he thought he might pop a vein in his head, but the weld held fast.

He heard a scraping sound and looked up. The desk was sliding toward the hole. It stopped after moving a foot or so, but the tools and the two remaining crystals atop it kept rolling. The crystals hit the floor and shattered. The amber shards slid and tumbled across the concrete with the tools and disappeared into the hole.

And still the wind increased ... a full-fledged gale now, blasting down those steps. The wheelchair kept wanting to roll away but Jack had the front of his sneaker hooked through the spokes of one of the wheels.

He shoved the screwdriver into his jeans pocket and began trying to pick the lock with one of the nails. He didn't know if it was possible. Hiatts made serious cuffs. Even if he'd had his pick set, the gale buffeting his arms and body would have made the job a tough go. But with a lousy nail ...

He looked up to see plastic containers of liquid detergent topple off the shelf above the washer and dryer and slide into the hole.

Jack jumped and dropped the paneling nail as the door at the top of the steps slammed explosively. A piece of molding flew down the steps and wind screamed around the edges of the door.

Jack felt like screaming too as the air pressure plummeted, driving spikes of pain through his eardrums. He lost the other nails as he shouted and worked his jaw to relieve the pressure. Nothing was working. Just when he thought his ears were going to burst, the high, pint-sized cellar windows shattered, hurling bright daggers through the air and into the sucking maw in the floor.

Jack realized he'd be stew meat now if one of those windows had been behind him. But at least the air howling through the small openings relieved the negative pressure and the pain in his ears.

The card table and folding chairs fell away from the wall and slid into the hole. Now the desk was moving again, and this time it didn't stop. It skated across the concrete, straight for the hole, and over the edge. But it didn't go down. It hung up in the opening, canted at an angle with the lip of its top caught on the rim.

"Bit off more that you can chew?" Jack said. Maybe there was some hope yet.

The sucking air shrieked around the desk, bucking it back and forth until the top groaned and popped loose. It angled up and snapped in half with a bang as it and the rest of the desk tumbled from view.

And oh Christ, the hole was definitely bigger now. The more it swallowed, the bigger it seemed to grow. The tread that had been on the edge was out of sight now. Only four more treads remained between Jack and the sucking maw.

He was reaching for Canfield's tool kit again when he heard the whine of the air around the door atop the steps change in pitch. He felt the wind grow against his back again. He looked up and saw the door slowly moving back. Fingers appeared, curled around the edge, white-knuckled with the strain of fighting the gale. Finally with a violent lurch the door swung all the way back on its hinges and a tall, ungainly figure appeared in the opening.

"Lew!" Jack shouted. "Jeez, am I glad to see you!"

"Jack?" Lew said as he clumped down the steps, clinging to the banister and the wall to brace himself against the wind at his back. "What's—?"

He stopped and gaped at the partially denuded cellar, then lurched down to the floor.

"Where's Melanie?"

"She left. Look, Lew—"

"Left?" he said, his face screwing up as he stared at the hole. "You mean she went back ... back down there?"

"Yeah. Look, just get me my jacket over there and I'll explain the whole thing."

"But she said she'd meet me out in the car!" Lew cried, his voice rising. He stepped toward the hole. "We were going home together."

"She must've changed her mind," Jack said quickly. If he could just get his hands on that jacket, get hold of the Semmerling in its pocket ... "Lew, my jacket—see it over there?"

But Lew didn't look at Jack ... he started moving away ... never taking his eyes off that damn hole.

"I've got to go find her!"

Jack grabbed his arm. "No, Lew! You can't go there! You'll be killed!"

The movement allowed the wheelchair to slip free of his foot. Jack had to choose between Lew and the wheelchair. He chose Lew. The chair rolled away and tumbled into the hole.

But Lew barely noticed, and he sure as hell wasn't listening. He violently wrenched his arm from Jack's grasp and lurched out of reach.

"I've got to be with her!"

"All right!" Jack shouted. "
Be
with her. But give me my damn jacket first so I can get out of here!"

Jack might as well have been talking to a mannequin. He kept shouting Lew's name but Lew gave no sign that he heard.

Lew slipped and almost lost his balance in the gale that was tearing at his clothes. To avoid being swept into the opening, he crouched and kept hold of the rope ladder as he crabbed along the floor. When he reached the rim, he snaked his good foot over the edge, snagged the dangling end of the ladder as it danced in the wind, and started down.

Not until his head had descended to floor level did he look at Jack.

"I haven't got a second to lose," he shouted. "I need her, Jack."

"Aw, Lew," Jack said, sensing it was hopeless to ask but giving it a shot anyway. "Just get me my jacket first? Please?"

"I've got to find her and bring her back while the gateway's still open. After that I'll help get you free."

"It's not going to close, Lew! It's—"

Before Jack could tell him he was wasting his time and most likely his life, Lew was gone.

Frustration screamed in Jack's brain, almost as loudly as the wind. He was out of options ... the draw was stronger, and the gateway ever larger—only three rope-ladder treads between Jack and the rim.

The white box of the dryer began a shuddering slide toward the hole. Its electric cord snagged its progress for a heartbeat, then pulled free from the outlet. It wriggled halfway there before its leveling feet hung up on a crack in the floor; it toppled forward and shimmied the rest of the way to the hole on its face, then went down.

Jack wondered if it would clock Lew along the way. He almost wished it would ... the jerk.

Like a Romeo eager to join its Juliet, the washing machine struggled toward the hole, but its connections to the water pipes held it back.

But nothing was holding back the hole. Its far edge had undermined the sister column to Jack's, leaving it dangling from the house's main beam, its lower end wavering over infinity.

Then one of the overhead bulbs shattered, the pieces darting into the hole like glass buckshot.

Jack found it increasingly difficult to hold his position against the gale blasting down the staircase and into the maw. He put the column between the hole and himself, and braced his back against it—safe for now, but when the edge of the hole reached the base of his column ...

He squinted at the couch. It was tucked in a corner with no window, so it had remained unaffected by the draw from the hole. If only he had a stick, a metal rod, anything, he might have a chance to reach his jacket. He wished he'd thought to grab that piece of door molding as it flew down the steps a few minutes ago.

And then, to his horror, he saw the couch move.

Only an inch or two, but that was enough to jostle his jacket, and now one of its sleeves was fluttering in the wind that swirled around it.

"No!" Jack shouted as the lighter side of the jacket flipped over and tugged toward the floor, dragging the heavier, gun-laden pocket after it.

God, he had to get to it. This was his last hope. He dropped to his knees, pulling the loop of chain down to floor level after him.

Another bulb shattered as the jacket hit the floor and began to slip toward the hole. Jack dropped flat, his cheek on the concrete, and stretched his free hand toward it, feeling the edges of the steel cuff dig into the skin of his trapped wrist as he strained every joint and ligament to the max and beyond.

"Damn it to hell!" he gritted as he realized his fingertips would fall at least a foot and a half short. "Not enough!"

Frantic now as he saw the jacket begin to tumble toward the hole, Jack flipped his body around and stretched his legs to the limit—just in time to trap one of the sleeves under the toe of his right sneaker.

"Made it!"

But he began to think he'd spoken too soon as he tried to drag the jacket toward him. With more surface area to work on, the wind was tugging the sleeve from under his sneaker. Jack rolled onto his belly and jammed his other toe onto the sleeve. He trapped a tiny fold of the fabric between them and bent his knees to draw it to his hand.

"Gotcha!" he said as his fingers closed around the fabric, and it sounded like a sob.

The last two bulbs blew, plunging the cellar into darkness as a sudden blaze of pain shot through the small of his back. He hadn't even been aware that the couch was moving until it had slammed into him, and now it was jammed against his spine, crowding him toward the opening that was closer than ever.

The jacket tore from his grasp and flew toward the hole.

Jack cried out and made a desperate blind lunge for it. Searing pain from the torn skin on his left wrist against the cuff registered only vaguely as he caught hold of the zipper. The rest of the jacket went over the edge, pulling and twisting in his grasp like a hooked fish, but Jack held on, even as he found himself sliding toward the hungry maw.

His head and right shoulder slipped over the rim. Pink-orange light flashed impossibly far below. And nearer, he saw a figure clinging desperately to the whipping end of the ladder, looking as if he was trying to climb back up.

Lew ...

The couch against Jack's back lifted then and rolled over, knocking the wind out him as its full weight slammed onto his body. It slid forward and slipped over the edge, an armrest banging against the side of his head as it tumbled past.

Jack's vision blurred as he fought to breath. He saw the couch go into a spin as it fell, narrowly missing Lew, who seemed to be making progress up the ladder.

Couldn't worry about Lew now.

Jack wrestled the jacket out of the pit and clamped the sleeve between his teeth. He grabbed hold of the first tread on the rope ladder and fought the hurricane-force wind back to the column.

Gasping, dizzy, nauseated, he wrapped himself around the column and fumbled the Semmerling out of the pocket. The tiny pistol felt wonderful in his palm. Now he had a chance—he just hoped it would work. He'd wished for fully jacketed rounds on Friday night, but after emptying the pistol, he'd reloaded with the same frangible hollowpoints. Once again he could have used solid rounds. He promised himself that if he got out of this he would always load the Semmerling with at least one 230-grain hardball.

The steadily brightening flashes from deep within the hole were the only illumination as Jack pulled the chain tight with his knees and held his cuffed hand on the far side of the column; the links slipped in the blood seeping from his wrist. He reached around with his left and pressed the Semmerling's muzzle against the link between the cuffs. The pistol kicked and the cuff bucked as he fired, but the report was barely audible in the howling gale.