Nightworld

"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.