Nightworld

"Everything's fine. Don't reel us in yet. Play the cable out to the end."

Bill heard the voice over the loudspeaker and froze. That wasn't Nick's voice. And it wasn't the other scientist's either. It was a new voice—different.

He scanned the faces in the control area. No one was reacting. What was wrong with them? It was a different voice! Couldn't they hear that?

Something familiar about it too. He'd heard it before, but where? The answer was tantalizingly close. And then he heard it again.

"That's it," said the loudspeaker in that same voice. "Just keep us going down."

Suddenly Bill knew. And the realization nearly drove him to his knees.

Rafe! It was Rafe's voice! Rafe, Jimmy Stevens, Rasalom, whatever his name was, it was him! The one Glaeken called the Enemy. The one who was shrinking the daylight, who'd dug this huge worm hole in the earth. He'd tortured Bill for years in many forms and many voices, and the voice on that speaker was the one he'd used as Rafe Losmara. There was no mistaking it. Its sound still echoed through his dreams. The Enemy was in that diving bell—and God knew what he was doing to Nick!

Bill forced his wobbly legs into a run toward the control area.

"Bring them up!" he cried. "Bring them up now!"

The scientists and technicians started at the sound of his shouts. They looked at him as if he was crazy.

"Who the hell are you?" someone said.

"A friend of Nick Quinn's. And that wasn't his voice just then. Couldn't you hear that?"

"Of course it was Nick's voice," said a thirtyish woman with short brown hair. "I've worked with him for years and that was Nick."

Beside her, an older man with perfectly combed hair nodded in agreement.

"That was Nick, all right."

"I'm telling you it wasn't. Reel them back up, dammit! Something's happening in there! Get them up!"

Someone grabbed his arms from behind and he heard a mix of voices talking over and under each other: Who is he?…Get security…Says he's a friend of Nick's…I don't care if he's Quinn's mother, get him out of here!

Bill was hustled away from the control area. The security guards were going to take him back to the edge of the Sheep Meadow but he pleaded with them to let him stay near the hole, swore that he wouldn't say another word or go near the control area again. The Roman collar and cassock paid off again. They let him stay.

But it was torture to stand there and listen to that voice tell them to send the bell further and further into the hole. Did it sound like Nick to everyone else? Was he the only one who could hear the Rafe-voice? Why? Another game being played with his head?

Damn you!

He wanted to scream, to charge the derrick cab and wrest the controls from the operator and drag that bell back up to the light. But he had about as much chance of succeeding in that as he had of leaping to the far side of the hole itself. So he stood among the crowd of privileged onlookers and silently endured the clawed terror that lacerated the inner walls of his heart.

Finally, the cable reached its end. No matter what the voice told them, the bell could descend no further.

But the voice was silent.

Bill noticed a flurry of activity in the control area. He sidled in that direction through the crowd. He intercepted a student hurrying away from the area and caught his arm.

"What's happening?"

"The Triton—they're not answering!"

Bill let him go and stood there feeling cold and frightened and useless as the derrick reversed its gears and began to reel in the Triton at top speed. The rewind seemed to take forever. During the interval an ambulance and an EMS van roared into the Sheep Meadow with their howlers going full blast. Finally the bell hove into view again. When it was swung away from the hole and settled onto the platform near the edge, the people from the control area surged toward it.

Bill pushed his way to the front of the crowd until his belly pressed against one of the wooden "Police Line" horses that rimmed the area. He watched them spin the winged lug nuts on the hatch, swing it open, and peer inside.

Somebody screamed. Bill clutched the rough wooden plank of the horse and felt his heart double its already mad pounding. A flurry of activity erupted around the bell, people running for phones, frantically waving the EMS van forward. Good God, something had happened to Nick! He'd never forgive himself for not getting here in time to stop him from going down.

A pair of EMTs, stethoscopes around their necks, drug boxes and life packs in each hand, rushed forward as a limp figure was eased through the hatch. Bill craned his neck to see through the throng. He sighed with relief when he saw that the injured man was white haired and balding. Not Nick, thank God. The other one. They stretched him out prone on the platform and began pumping on his chest.

But where was Nick?

Bill spotted more activity around the hatch. They were carrying—no, leading—someone else out. It was Nick. Nick, thank God! He was on his feet, coming out under his own steam.

Then Bill got a look at his face. Red. There was blood on his face, on his lips. Blood dribbled down his chin. He'd cut his lower lip—looked more like he'd chewed it. But it was Nick's eyes that drove the air from Bill's lungs in a cry of horror. They were wide open and utterly vacant. Whatever he'd seen down there, whatever had happened, it had driven away all intelligence and sanity, sent it fleeing into hiding in the deepest, most obscure corners of his mind.

"Nick!" Bill cried.

He bent to slip under the barricade but one of the security cops was watching him.

"Stay back there, Father!" he warned. "You come through there an' I'll have to toss you in the wagon."

Bill ground his teeth in frustration but straightened up behind the barricade. He'd be no help to Nick in jail. And Nick was going to need him.

He stood quietly as they led a stumbling, drooling Nick Quinn to the waiting ambulance. Those mad, empty eyes. What had he seen down there?

And then, as Nick came even with him, his eyes suddenly focused. He turned his head to stare at Bill. Then he grinned—a wide, bloody-mouthed rictus, totally devoid of humor. Bill started in horror, pressing back against the people behind him. And then as suddenly as it had appeared, the grimace was gone. The light faded from Nick's eyes and he stumbled on, away from Bill, toward the waiting ambulance.

Bill watched a moment, weak, trembling, then he fought through the crowd and began to follow the ambulance on foot as it headed east across the grass. Finally he saw the name on its side: Columbia-Presbyterian. He ran for Fifth Avenue, looking for a cab to take him to the hospital, all the while fighting the feeling that he'd lived through this horror once already. He didn't know if he could survive a second round.