Glaeken tried once more to pull his feet free but they would not budge. He took a deep breath and stood quietly, waiting, listening to the hated voice in his mind.
"You knew it was too late, Glaeken. You must have known all along. Yet knowing it was useless, still you took up the weapon and came to me instead of waiting for me to come to you. I don't understand that. Can you explain your madness, your arrogance? We have some time. Speak."
"If the answer is not apparent to you," Glaeken said, "no amount of talking will make you understand. Where do we go from here?"
"We wait. I'm almost ready. At the undawn I will be complete. When I emerge from my chrysalis I shall leave you here and move to the surface where I shall deal with your little circle of allies. And as I gut them I shall let you see it all through my eyes. And as for your wife, I shall keep my promise to you: I will restore her youth and her mind before she dies—after all, we wouldn't want her to die without knowing exactly what is happening. And when all that is done, I'll return for you. And then the fun shall truly begin."
Glaeken said nothing. There was no use in asking for mercy for himself or the others—there was no mercy to be had. So he closed his eyes and willed his insides to stone to inure them from the sick fear coiling through him.
"And while we wait, I believe I'll close that tiny wound in my perfect night. Too many people are taking undue pleasure in it. Imagine their fear when it starts to fade and they realize that they are naked prey to all the night things encircling them. Yes, I like that idea. I should have thought of the pinhole myself. Allow a little cone of light through here and there about the world, let the locals run to it like moths to a flame, let it shine long enough to lift hopes, and then douse it. Thank you, Glaeken. You've given me a new game."
"Look at them all," Bill said. "Must be thousands down there."
Carol had returned with the others to the living room of Glaeken's apartment and now she gazed down through the broken windows at the crowd below, listening to the noise floating up as each new arrival was greeted with cheers and hugs. It was a good sound, the noise of people taking a break from unrelenting fear. Some of the more daring revelers were following the channel of light that wound into the Park—but not very many and not very far.
"It's the radio," Jack said. "The only station in town still on is playing a message sending everybody here."
Suddenly it was quiet below.
"What happened?" Bill said.
Carol's heart thudded with alarm and she clutched his arm.
"I think the light just dimmed. Tell me I'm wrong, Bill. Tell me I'm wrong!
Bill glanced at her, then back out the windows.
"No…I'm afraid you're right. Look—it just dimmed a little more!"
"It's Glaeken's fault," said a familiar voice.
They all turned. Nick was still sitting on the couch where they'd left him, still facing the dead fireplace.
"Glaeken has lost. Rasalom is ascendant."
"Glaeken is…dead?" It was Sylvia, stepping forward, hovering over Nick.
Carol was surprised at her concern. She'd thought Sylvia blamed Glaeken for Jeffy's condition.
"Not yet," Nick said. "But soon. We'll die. Then he'll die. Slowly."
Carol heard a new sound well up from the crowd outside—murmurs of fear, wails of panic. She turned back to the window and had the sudden impression that their cries of despair seemed to chase the light. She watched with growing dread as it faded from midday glare to twilight glow.
They're afraid again.
"Afraid!" she cried. "Maybe that's it." Suddenly she knew what had to be done—or thought she knew. "Bill, Jack, everybody—downstairs. Now!"
She didn't wait to explain and she didn't wait for the elevator. Filled with a growing excitement and a desperate urgency, she galloped down the dizzying flights to the ground floor, dashed through the lobby, and out into the crowd on the twilit sidewalk.
Bill was right behind her, then Jack. Ba brought up the rear, carry Jeffy and guiding Sylvia through the restless, panicky people. Carol led them to the edge of the fading light, right to the shadow border facing the Park, then grabbed Bill's hand in her right and took a stranger's—a frightened looking black woman's—in her left.
"I won't be afraid anymore!" Carol shouted at the huge outer darkness that tried to stare her down. She squeezed the woman's hand. "Say it," she told her. "I won't be afraid anymore! Grab somebody's hand and say it as loud as you can." She turned to Bill. "Shout it, Bill. Mean it. Take a hand and get them to say it!"
Bill stared at her. "What's this—?"
"Just do it. Please! There's not much time."
Bill shrugged and grabbed someone's hand and began repeating the phrase. She noticed that the black woman to her left had taken a young man's hand and was repeating the phrase to him. Carol turned and saw a very grim Jack standing behind her, his arms folded across his chest. Sylvia was beside him, equally stone faced.
"Come on, Jack," Carol said.
He shook his head. "This is nuts. It's—it's hippy bullshit. Like those peaceniks back in the sixties trying to levitate the Pentagon. You can't chant Rasalom away."
"I know that, Jack. But maybe we can put a kink in his plans. His whole thrust has been to isolate us from each other, to use fear to break us up into separate, frightened little islands. But look what's happened here. One little ray of light and we've suddenly got a crowded little island. What if we refuse to play his game anymore? What if we refuse to run screaming in fear back to our hidey holes? What if we stand here as a group and defy him? There's a defect up there, a hole in Rasalom's endless night. Maybe we can keep it open. Maybe we can even widen it. What have we got to lose that's not already lost?"
"Not one damn thing!" Sylvia said. She pulled Jack's arm away from his chest and grabbed his hand. "I won't be afraid anymore!" she said through tightly clenched teeth as she clutched Jeffy's hand in one hand and Jack's in the other. "Do your worst—I won't be afraid anymore!"
Carol felt her throat tighten at the defiance in Sylvia's voice.
"Come on, Jack," Sylvia said. "I'm not a joiner, either. But this is one time you can't hang back. Say it!"
"All right, dammit," Jack said. He looked uncomfortable as he repeated it in unison with Sylvia, but then he reached for a stranger's hand and got her to join in.
The chant was becoming more organized, picking up a rhythm as it spread through the crowd, growing in volume as more and more voices chimed in…
And then the light around them brightened. The increase was barely noticeable, but it was noticed. A cheer rose from the crowd and suddenly everyone was a believer. The chant doubled, tripled in volume.
Carol laughed as tears sprang into her eyes. She heard Jack's voice behind her.
"It's working! I'll be damnedl It's working!"
Everyone in the crowd was involved now, shouting at the tops of their lungs. And the light continued to brighten. Carol had no doubt of that now. The light was growing stronger. Even the light in the bright channel that had trailed Glaeken into the Park was growing brighter.
But more than that, the cone of brightness was growing wider, inching across the pavement toward the Park, pumping pulses of brightness along the luminous channel that led to the Sheep Meadow hole.
And more people were coming, running to the light, swelling the crowd, swelling the sound of defiance.
Something was happening.
Rasalom had been uncharacteristically silent. And his huge new form did not lie quiet in its amniotic sack. The membrane rippled now and again, like a chill running over fevered skin, and occasionally it bulged in places as Rasalom shifted within.