Nightworld

1 • DAWN

Monroe, Long Island

It took her a moment or two to appreciate the silence, but shortly before dawn she realized that the incessant beating on the windows had stopped.

Sylvia was the first to know because she hadn't slept a wink all night. Jeffy had fallen asleep half way through his umpteenth viewing of Pete's Dragon. Alan dropped off a short while later in his chair. Ba had spent much of the night working on some sort of weapon—carving tiny niches into the wood of one of his billy clubs and fixing chew-bug teeth in them with Crazy Glue. But even he dozed now and then. Sylvia had sat by the door of the movie room, keeping it open an inch or two, listening at the gap.

Silence. She was almost afraid to believe it could be true. As she rose from her chair, Ba sprang up, instantly alert.

"Missus?" he whispered.

"It's all right, Ba. I'm just going to take a look outside."

"I'll come."

"That's okay. I'll just be—"

But he was already by her side, peering into the hall. When he was satisfied that it was safe, he stepped out and held the door for her. Sylvia sighed, smiled her thanks, and followed him.

She wondered if she'd ever get used to having someone around who was ready to lay down his life for her at any moment. How long had it been? Sometime around 1979 or 80 when she'd recognized Ba in a TV news story about the boat people arriving in the Philippines after crossing the South China Sea with nothing but the clothes on their backs. He'd stood out because he towered above his fellow Vietnamese; she'd dug out the picture her late husband Greg had once shown her, telling her about this huge South Vietnamese fisherman his Special Forces group had trained as a guerrilla, how they'd become friends. The man in the photo and on the tube were the same. She'd rushed to Manila, brought Ba and his wife Nhung Thi back here, and paid all of Nhung Thi's medical bills when the cancer hiding in her lung broke out and spread through her body. After her death, Ba had stayed on as driver, groundskeeper, and one-man security force. Sylvia had told him a thousand times that he didn't owe her a thing, but Ba didn't see it that way.

Now, as he glided ahead of her, as silent and fluid as a shadow in the pale light that filtered down the hall from the rooms on either end, his newly customized billy club poised at the ready, she was glad he'd never listened to her.

They entered the dining room and went directly to the windows. Sylvia pulled back the sheers and gasped. The screens hung in tatters, the panes were smeared and fouled, the mullions gouged and splintered.

But no bugs. Not a single chewer or booger bug in sight. It was as if they'd evaporated in the morning light—or gone back to where they came from.

"Let's take a look outside, Ba."

He led the way to the front door, motioned for her to stay back, opened it, then slipped outside. A moment later he returned.

"It is safe, Missus, but…"

"But what?"

"It is not nice."

Sylvia strode to the door and stepped outside. Down the steps, into the driveway, then she turned and faced the house.

"Oh…my…God!"

Toad Hall looked like a disaster area—as if it had sat empty for a decade, then been struck by a hurricane, a hailstorm, a horde of carpenter ants, and a plague of locusts all at once. Besides the shredded screens and splintered mullions on the widows, all the wooden siding looked gnawed. The chewers had left hundreds, thousands of their sharp, crystalline teeth in the wood. They gleamed like diamonds in the morning sun. And the trees—her beautiful willows! Half the branches, the ones facing the house, had been denuded of their leaves, as if the creatures had been so frustrated by their inability to get into the house that they'd attacked the trees in retaliation.

"Why, Ba? Why'd this happen? What's going on?"

Ba said nothing. He never offered opinions, even when asked. He stood beside her in silence, his tooth-studded club at the ready, his head swiveling as he scanned the grounds in a smooth, continuous motion, like a radar dish.

"Stay here," she told him. "I want to take a look next door."

Ba didn't stay, of course. He fell in behind her. It was a good fifty yards to the stone wall that ran three sides of Toad Hall's perimeter. When Sylvia reached it she fitted her foot into a crevice and pulled herself up to where she could see over. She peered through the shrubs at the house next door, a contemporary that had fallen into disrepair for a while after its previous owner, a golden oldies DJ named Lenny Winter, disappeared a few years ago, but the new owners had done a complete overhaul. She pushed a branch aside for a better look.

Her stomach turned. The house was untouched. Well, not completely untouched. She noticed a few ripped screens flapping in the breeze, and a wet smear or two on the cedar siding, but nothing near what had happened to Toad Hall. It was very possible the occupants weren't aware of the damage yet.

Weak and shaky, she dropped back to the ground. As she stared again at the violated exterior of her home, Jeffy's voice echoed in her brain.

They want to eat me!

He was right. They'd concentrated their attack on the house where he lived and they'd come after him when they broke into the house.

Why? Did it have anything to do with the Dat-tay-vao!

She couldn't let them hurt Jeffy. She'd risk anything to protect him. Even…

"Ba, do you remember that older man who was here the other day? He left a card on the foyer table. I told Gladys to throw it away. Do you know if she did?"

"No, Missus."

"Oh. Then I guess I'll have to wait until she arrives. I may just have to—"

She noticed that Ba was holding out a piece of paper.

"No, Missus," he said. "Gladys did not throw it away."

She took the card. G. Veilleur was embossed at its center.

She looked at him. She saw only devotion and fierce loyalty in his eyes. But she remembered the fear there last night when he'd pulled her away from that mucous creature. Alan wanted her to contact the old man, and Ba obviously agreed.

Now it was unanimous.

"Thank you, Ba."

With her heart weighing heavy in her chest, she headed for the backyard, toward the garage. She hoped the car's cellular phone still worked.