Gateways. Part 45

The screen had been shredded; gray, moss like tatters fluttered within the frame. The wooden door behind it stood open.

"Anya!" Jack shouted as he pulled open what was left of the screen door and stepped inside.

He stopped suddenly, just beyond the threshold, causing Dad to b.u.mp into him, pushing him forward.

"Oh, dear G.o.d!" he heard his father gasp.

"Didn't I tell you?" Carl said. "Didn't I?"

The place was a shambles. That was the only word for it. The furniture had been torn apart, the carpet gouged up, and the plants...they'd been torn from their pots, their roots savaged, and every leaf had been torn from the ravaged branches.

Jack forced himself to move forward, calling Anya's name as he checked both bedrooms and behind the kitchen counter. He found a small spatter of darkening red fluid, and something that looked like a severed finger on the floor.

Jack knelt for a closer look. It was pale, the size of a finger, but it was covered with fur.

What the-?

And then he knew: Oyv's tail.

Christ! The blood...Oyv had to be dead-died defending Anya no doubt. A slow wave of sadness settled over him. But what could have killed that preternaturally tough little dog? It had to be something bigger and meaner than a giant alligator. But what? And where was the rest of him?

Jack noticed something glittering on the floor. He bent closer: three little slivers of gla.s.s. He looked around for a broken window but didn't see one. Maybe a gla.s.s had been knocked off the counter and shattered.

He was pushing himself to his feet when he noticed that all three shards appeared identical. Each about an inch and a half long, with the same curve, and the same taper from thicker base to needle-fine point. He picked one up and rotated it in the light. Its edges were smooth, rounded. If he didn't know better, he'd have said it was a fang of some sort. But he didn't know anything that had gla.s.s teeth.

He touched the point with the tip of his finger and it slipped through the skin like a bird's beak dipping into water.

d.a.m.n! He started to toss it back to the floor, then decided not to. Maybe he should find out what it was before he threw it away.

He rose and grabbed a paper towel from the roll suspended from the underside of a cabinet. He rolled the needle within and used it to blot the drop of blood oozing from his fingertip.

He turned to his father and Carl, still standing in the doorway.

"What the h.e.l.l happened here?"

Dad could give him only a stunned look, but Carl held up his plastic shopping bag.

"It's all here!"

"What's all there?"

"What happened. The camera caught it all. Or at least most of it."

2.

"When I picked up the camera this morning," Carl said, "I was in a hurry so it just sat in the bag till after I got home. Long after I got home."

They'd all hurried back to Dad's place to set up the camera for playback.

"You didn't check it right away?"

"Nuh-uh. I figured, what for? I mean, I ain't never seen nothin' before and figured this wouldn't be no different. So I just left it be until I was watchin' the Dolphins game. That's when I checked it and found the battery didn't have no charge left. That ain't happened before. So I recharged it and took a look to see if somethin'd set it off."

"What's this camera about?" Dad said.

Jack ran through a quick explanation of Dr. Dengrove's attempts to catch Anya watering her yard.

"Dengrove," Dad said. "Cheats at golf but G.o.d forbid anyone sneaks a little water onto their lawn. What an a.s.s."

Jack had the two-inch LCD screen flipped open. He hit PLAY and started to watch. Dad hung over his shoulder, Carl crouched farther back. The screen lit with green and black blobs that quickly stretched and coalesced into recognizable shapes-the side of Anya's house, her plantings, the doo-dads, the lawn furniture in her front yard. And then a set of legs went by. Then more.

"Doesn't this thing have any sound?" Dad said.

"If you hook it up to your TV you can get sound. Want me-?"

"We can do that later if we need to," Jack said. He had a sick cold feeling in his gut that they'd be listening to the high-pitched barking he'd ignored last night. "First let's see what's to see."

Carl jabbed a finger toward the little screen. "There they are! See?"

Jack saw. A crowd was gathering in an irregular semicircle around the edge of Anya's lawn. Light from the front windows lit their faces. His intestines began to writhe as he recognized Luke and Corley and a couple of the others. Looked like the whole gang had shown up.

"The clan," he said.

"All cept Semelee. I didn't see her nowheres when I watched."

Jack stared at the tiny screen. He now wished they'd hooked it to the TV. Probably would have lost some resolution, but maybe he'd have a better view of their faces. Beyond a few grins, he couldn't make out much in the way of expressions. He could read their postures, though, and they radiated something between revulsion and avid fascination, as if they wanted to press forward for a better look, but fear held them in check.

He kept watching, waiting for the clan to do something. He searched for Semelee but couldn't find her. That white hair of hers would be hard to miss. Why were all the men there? What did they have against-?

Oh, right. The big ugly alligator...her dog had chewed a hole in its side. And the bees yesterday...Anya had chased them off. Yeah, he could see where Semelee could have a bone or two to pick with Anya. But how was she going to get her if Anya's promise-Nothing on earth can harm you here-was true?

Obviously it wasn't. Someone had got to her-and to poor little Oyv. What had Semelee-?

"There!" Carl cried. "Didja see that?"

"No." Jack's attention had been wandering. "What?"

"I saw something too," Dad said, "but I don't know what."

Jack found the reverse b.u.t.ton and backed up the recording. Again he watched Luke and the rest of the men standing in their semicircle, eyes fixed on the front of the house. The camera angle didn't include the front door, but they were staring like there was a stripper doing her thing there. And then something-maybe three somethings, two feet long at most-suddenly streaked out of the house and over their heads. The way the men ducked and covered made it pretty obvious that they were afraid of the things, whatever they were. More flew out. Once they were gone, the clan came to life. Luke swung an arm and they all charged toward the house.

For a good five to seven minutes, nothing happened, and then the clan reemerged. A group of them seemed to be carrying something but the way they were bunched together prevented him from seeing exactly what. He didn't have to see. He knew.

"They've got Anya."

"The sons of b.i.t.c.hes," Dad said, straightening and reaching for the phone. "I'm calling the cops."

Jack grabbed his arm. "Hold on a sec. I want to see this again-on the TV."

"Fine. And while you're setting that up, I'll be calling-"

"Just wait, okay? Just let me see it again before we get officialdom involved."

Dad reluctantly agreed, grumbling about wasting time as Jack wired the camera to the audio-visual inputs on the backside of the TV.

"This happened at least twelve hours ago, Dad. Maybe more. Another ten minutes isn't going to matter."

He finished plugging in the wires, then reran the movie. The TV screen offered over one hundred times the viewing area of the camera's LCD. It offered sound as well. The movie began with the rattle of the lawn-ornament cans and Oyv's barking, but that broke off with a high-pitched squeal just as the last of the clan reached the front of the house. A couple of minutes later the things streaked away. Jack was ready with his finger on the PAUSE b.u.t.ton.

"Got 'em!" he said. He leaned closer to the screen. "But what the h.e.l.l are they?"

The camera's image intensification coupled with the speed of the things left little more than amorphous, blurry streaks on the screen, but there was enough resolution to reveal five shapes instead of three in the first batch. He'd missed the other two because they were farther from the camera and hadn't caught as much light. He could see that the three in front had slightly curved bodies that reflected light like a sh.e.l.l might; their wings were fuzzy blurs.

"Y'ask me," Carl said. "They look like flyin' lobsters."

Not a bad characterization, Jack thought. But lobsters didn't fly, so what on earth were these?

Jack felt his neck muscles tighten. On earth...

Nothing on earth can harm you here.

But what if those flying lobsters weren't from anywhere on earth? What if they were somehow from the Otherness? Semelee had gone down into that sinkhole. Maybe she'd found something down there that she could control like she did the creatures in the Glades.

Jack pulled the rolled-up paper towel out of his jeans pocket and unwrapped the little crystal shard.

"What have you got there?" Dad said.

"Not sure." He handed it to him on the towel. "Careful. It's sharp. Ever seen anything like it?"

"I did," Carl said. "Saw one just like it stickin' outta the tore-up wood on Miss Mundy's door. I just figgered it was gla.s.s."

Dad was holding it up, rotating it back and forth in the light. "You know, it almost looks like some weird sort of fang."

Carl laughed. "Gla.s.s teeth! That's funny!"

Dad lifted the beer bottle he'd been sipping at during the endless weather reports and scratched the fang's point along the gla.s.s. It gave out a faint, high-pitched squeak as it scored the surface.

Dad frowned. "Not gla.s.s. Much harder. The only thing I know that can scratch gla.s.s like that is a diamond."

"If it is a tooth," Jack said, "that means that Anya was attacked by things with diamond teeth."

They all sat silent for a moment, then Jack restarted the movie. They watched more of the things fly out, then the clan crowd into the house. When they emerged this time he kept freezing the frames but got no better view of what they were carrying than before. What else could it be but Anya?

But alive or dead?

As the movie ended again, Dad slapped his thighs. "That does it. Time to call 9-1-1."

"Don't bother, Dad."

"Why on earth not?"

Jack pulled the Glock from the SOB holster and checked the magazine: full.

"Because I'm going after her and I don't want them getting in the way."

3.

Tom could only stare at his son. He'd sensed that the Jack who had gone into Anya's ruined house was a different Jack from the one who'd come out. But now he'd changed further. His mild brown eyes had turned to stone; he seemed remote, as if he'd left the room without moving his body.

"After her? Are you crazy? We trumped a couple of them once because it was a controlled situation and we had surprise on our side. But all that's changed now. You can't expect to stroll in there alone and-"

"Won't be alone," Carl said. "I'll come along."

Tom noticed Jack's cold eyes warm briefly at this simple man's unadorned courage. And in that moment he wished Jack were looking at him like that.

"Not necessary, Carl," Jack said.

"'Tis. She's a good lady. Lotsa people look at me funny, some don't even want me around. But she always smiled at me and when it was hot she gave me lemonade and cookies and stuff like that. My own mother never treated me that good. And besides, the clan ain't got no right to do that to her. Semelee's gone crazy. Ever since she come up outta those lights she's been different. Scary. Who knows what she's got in mind for Miss Mundy. We gotta get her back."

"But that's what we have police for!" Tom cried.

He'd resisted the urge to chime in and say he'd go along too. Anya was a friend, a good one, and his blood curdled at the thought of her in the hands of a bunch of swampland inbreds. But it was just because he cared about her that he had to stop this craziness. Jack's gung-ho plan might wind up putting Anya in greater danger. Might even get her killed.

"And in case you two would-be vigilantes haven't noticed," he added, "there's a Category-Three hurricane blowing out there."

"Exactly why we've got to take care of this," Jack said. "Who're you going to call? The Novaton police? Their whole department, along with every other cop south of Miami, is going to be tied up with the hurricane emergency. They'll be busy with evacuation, shelters, looting prevention. You know the drill. A missing-person problem will be put on a back burner till the storm's pa.s.sed. h.e.l.l, we don't even have proof she was taken."

"But the movie-"

"-will be great in court. But do you think it will get a bunch of cops running around in boats out in the Everglades looking for a particular hummock in the middle of a hurricane?"

Tom had to admit he doubted it-but only to himself. Under no circ.u.mstances did he want Jack going out there-not even with Carl, who Tom couldn't see as much help.