Saved! Jack thought."
Almost weak with relief, he slumped against the column. Melanie and Canfield had gone to their new home without an admission ticket. He smiled. He hoped they got a nice warm welcome. Without the Tesla thing to keep it open, the hole would close just as before, leaving the rope ladder embedded in the concrete just as before.
Now to get out of the damn cuff ...
4
"You see, Mauricio? All your fretting was for nothing. The gateway is open, just as planned. My time has come."
"Admit it, though," Mauricio said from his shoulder as they crossed the yard. "Even you must have had moments of uncertainty."
True enough, he thought. But he would never admit it.
"When I learned from the Ehler woman what she had found in one of the buried Tesla caches, I suspected that my time was near. When I saw the plans and read Tesla's notes, I knew."
But the plans had been incomplete. The device they depicted could open the gateway for but a few minutes. Melanie had gone through to the other side to have a completed device sent back from the Otherness, one that would open a permanent gateway.
What matter if forces within the Otherness had directed the device to the stranger instead of him? The first gateway was open ... more would follow, opening spontaneously around the globe. Now that the process had begun, nothing could stop it. The Otherness would seep through, engulfing this world, reshaping it in its own image.
And I will be the instrument of that process.
"Still," Mauricio said, "I would have thought that when your time was truly here, you would need no devices. The gates would open on their own."
He had always thought the same, but the device had presented an opportunity he could not ignore. After all the years, all the ages he had waited, he had grown weary of biding his time until all the signs were right, until something simply happened on its own. He had seen the discovery of the plans as a sign in itself, a chance to make it happen, and so he'd leapt for it.
"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.