Nightwalk 2 Read online

  “Thank you! Thank you so much!”

  We never got a very good look at Cassie herself. We didn’t get much of a chance. All I remember was a glimpse of a gray-haired figure wearing pearls and a plain-cut dark dress. It’s weird that I remember the pearls. She quickly opened the side door, and wasted no time in hopping to the ground, and hustling toward the torch.

  And then she died.

  Something big, horrid, and with far too many legs erupted from underneath the very RV she had been sheltering in. She never had time to react. Its legs engulfed the woman in an instant, and the monster snatched her back under the RV a split second later. We never even got a good look at the thing. The vehicle rocked from the sudden violence happening beneath it, and two agonized screams came from the darkness down there.

  Then the rocking stopped and silence fell once more.

  But only for a second.

  Another multi-legged horror, something like a spider with too many legs and a long tail, crawled around the side of the RV and pushed its way into the slightly open door she had left behind. It had been about the size of a cow… not counting the tail. The vehicle rocked again, and another faint cry reached our ears.

  Finally, mercifully, the torch guttered out.

  Blackness fell back over the far side of the chasm like a closing curtain, leaving a horrified audience too stunned to react.

  ###

  It was David who finally spoke first.

  “Did we… did we… did we just kill those people?”

  Had we?

  My thoughts had been wandering uncomfortably close to those lines as well. But hearing David mirror them caused me to shut those doubts down with a ruthless force of will.

  “No,” I stated in flat voice, “No, we didn’t. Whoever caused this night to happen is who killed them. We were just trying to help.”

  The boy looked slightly reassured, and I forced myself to take reassurance as well. This had not been my fault, dammit! I already carried enough guilt for the people who had died two years ago. Cassie and Herman Loomis belonged on Roger Chandra’s tally sheet of the dead, not mine.

  “There’s nothing more we can do here,” I continued, “and now we know which way we need to go. Let’s get moving before the sky predators come back…especially since there’s no damn way we’re going into the storage yard now.”

  I started west toward the highway, and the others fell in line behind me. Lupe had started to get another torch from the bag Darla carried but I waved him off. My flare would do till we got to the next part of our journey. Then it would be time to make some more tough decisions.

  We threaded our way in silence along the narrow strip between the overgrown wreckage of the Rocketwash on our left and the mighty waterfall of fog on our right. The few alien hoots and chirrs from the darkness around us provided more conversation than we needed. And the almost overpowering, invisible enormity hovering in the night sky to the north acted as a constant reminder of things that might very well get worse.

  As a matter of fact, I was almost sure they would.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, Darla’s previous objections to my quest and the arrival of the sky titan were trying to combine to form an idea. An ugly idea. I didn’t exactly know what it was yet, but I already had confidence I wasn’t going to like it.

  But I had other matters to concentrate on at the moment. Like the changing situation now facing me.

  “Okay, hold up,” I said in a soft voice and raised my hand to indicate a halt. “We’re reaching the end of the carport.”

  “So?” Darla grumped.

  “So, we’re going to have to go dark again in a minute. I’ll take the lead with my glowstick, and give the last one to Lupe to bring up the rear.”

  “Ugh! I hate doing that! You’re worrying about the damn T-rex again. Isn’t it possible he’s moved on?”

  “Remember, Darla, he’s still less than a block away. And if he’s moved, then it would most likely be to come back around Madre Mona’s to stuff on the baked jelly-blimp in the parking lot. If we trot out on the highway with this flare burning, we would be in full view of him.”

  “Shit! Fine, but I still hate doing this.”

  Yeah, like the rest of us were big fans of playing monster-tag in the dark. Especially considering the pair of true abominations we had just witnessed right on the other side of the pit. At the moment, I hoped the chasm was as deep as it appeared because those things looked like good climbers.

  “I know,” I agreed in consolation, “I’m going to keep the flare burning just a little bit longer. We’re going to ease up toward the very end of the carport. Once we’re there, I want everybody to look as hard as they can to see if they can make out where those other two people got around the pit while we’ve still got a big light. Maybe we’ll get lucky. If we don’t see anything, we’ll just have to go forward and follow the edge by the light of the glowsticks until we find it.”

  “Oh, great.”

  I shared her dislike for that option too, but we had no others.

  “Okay,” I waved them forward, “Come on.”

  We crept toward the end of the vine-covered carport, peering hard into the blackness ahead. The ditch between the Rocketwash and the highway faded into view. Something dark, about the size of a cat but with glowing yellow spots down its sides, jumped and fled from the encroaching light. It moved fast, but didn’t choose its direction wisely. We heard the small creature’s scream fade in the depths as it discovered its error.

  Then the asphalt faded into view and I started to fret over how far to push it with the flare. I was now officially taking chances. We still had a little stretch before the light source itself would be visible to the shopping center’s parking lot, but what about the light it cast on the ground? Would it catch the beast’s attention? Would it even care?

  I slowed further, but continued to ease forward. I wanted to use the flare as long as possible, and hoped the light on the ground wouldn’t attract undue attention as long as it didn’t come with much motion involved. Even so, I couldn’t push it much further.

  But it was just as I stopped to stub out the flare that Lupe spoke up.

  “There…” he pointed into the darkness ahead, “…puente…”

  “Huh?”

  “Uh…puente…” he shrugged helplessly.

  Then he held his forearm vertically before him, before letting fall to a horizontal position.

  An unhappy suspicion rose in my head. I had been hoping for an end to the canyon, not the picture suddenly crossing my mind. And even as I winced at the thought, David confirmed it.

  “Oh! I see it!” the boy exclaimed, his eyes narrowing “There’s something lying down in the darkness where the hole should be. It’s… I think it’s gray… and… Oh! I know what it is!”

  Yeah, so did I. My older eyes couldn’t see it yet, but I now knew what it had to be. I’m surprised I didn’t think of it sooner.

  “It’s a light pole! One of those metal light poles in the divider fell down across the hole!”

  Oh sure, the kid sounded enthusiastic now. Just wait.

  “Well, I guess that’s it then,” I sighed. “We know where we’re going. Darla, pull the last glowstick from my pack and hand it to Lupe please. It’s still lights out time, and there’s no point in hanging around and waiting.”

  ###

  “Oh, hell no,” David moaned.

  We now stood at the base of the fallen light pole, our eyes tracking rivers of fog as they fell into the impossible depths at our feet. Our glowsticks were not strong enough to reveal the other side of the chasm, meaning the metal pole seemed to jut out over the precipice before vanishing into the darkness.

  “It’s okay, kiddo,” I whispered, “We can do this. That’s a steel pole and it’s a foot wide. It will be easy.”

  I imagined it narrowed toward the other end, but this didn’t seem a good time to mention that. I felt a great deal less than thrilled with this development myself. A v
ery great deal. I just tried to draw what scant comfort I could from knowing two other people had crossed this way.

  “Easy?” he practically squeaked, his eyes wide behind his tortoise-shell glasses. “That thing goes down forever! And I’m carrying a baby! I can’t do this!”

  He had a point about the baby. He would need his hands free for this stunt, although I didn’t think the baby had been the true cause of his resistance. But his objection was valid and needed to be addressed. I figured I might as well deal with it while building momentum to get this show on the road.

  “I’m going to take the baby,” I said. “We’ll remove a lot of the stuff out of my backpack and use it as a papoose. We’re getting close to the end of this trip so we won’t need most of it anyway.”

  “Yeah, but still…”

  “I know,” I reassured him, “I know. But you can do this, and I’m going to tell you how.”

  I reached over and pulled the coil of rope from Tommy’s bag. It was half-inch nylon cord, and going by its size and number of coils I judged it to be about fifty feet long. Good enough.

  “I’m going to go first with the baby,” I continued. “I’m also going to have this end of the rope. You’re going to hold the coil and keep letting out more rope as I crawl across. Once I get there, Darla and Lupe will tie your end of the rope around your chest and you’ll crawl across after me. That way, you’ll have a safety line. Okay?”

  In truth, I didn’t envy anybody hitting the end of a half-inch wide rope after a thirty or forty-foot fall…or being smashed into the ravine wall after such a drop. But the idea was simply to help the kid work up the nerve to do this. Besides, I would be taking up the slack as he crawled toward me, so even if the worst happened he hopefully wouldn’t fall too far.

  The kid didn’t exactly erupt with enthusiasm.

  “Okay?” I repeated.

  “Okay,” he conceded with all the gusto of a condemned man signing his own death certificate.

  Good enough. I was hunting results, not high fives.

  Of course, there remained the small matter of me working up the nerve to do this as well. A disgruntled part of me wondered if the previous two crossers had been mountain climbers or traveling circus performers. It would just be my luck for me to be following in the footsteps of a couple of tightrope walkers. Once again, I tried to figure out what part of my career as an author qualified me for this kind of crap.

  But I kept those misgivings to myself as Darla unloaded my pack and snugged the wrapped baby inside. She hadn’t said much since coming over here. I figured she was dealing with the situation by simply trying to stay focused on the matter at hand.

  “I’m going to pull the flap back down and tie it,” she muttered as she worked. “That will still leave plenty of air to get in to the kid, but leave no way for him to slide out. Or her. Hell, I don’t know, just remember when you get to the other side not to roll over on your back.”

  “Right.”

  “You still have the remaining flares tucked in at the baby’s feet, but I pulled out the ammo and put half in each side pocket. There wasn’t room for much else.”

  “Got it.”

  “I also tied the end of David’s rope in a loose knot to your belt loop, so your hands will be free. And I hooked your air horn through a little loop at the bottom of your backpack by its handle. It may slide out and fall anyway, but I thought it was worth a try.”

  “Makes sense,” I replied, carefully keeping the surprise out of my voice.

  What the hell? Now she was being helpful again? Without prompting? Without even trying to persuade me into anything? Oh well, I didn’t get it, but I certainly didn’t intend to complain.

  Unfortunately, I had other matters to attend to, and putting them off didn’t do anything towards the goal of getting us out of here alive.

  I turned to face the chasm, and the all-too-slender thread of salvation stretching out into the darkness. This was going to suck so hard… so, so hard.

  “Buena suerte,” Lupe murmured beside me, his eyes also on the gulf before us.

  The meaning of that one came through loud and clear.

  “Yeah, I’m gonna need it,” I tried not to whimper.

  I straddled the base of the light pole, then gently sat down upon it. So far, so good. Then I scooched forward and let my legs hang over the edge at my knees. Not so good. The steel felt unnervingly damp and slick under my hands. It was wet enough that I knew my butt would be soaked when I reached the other end.

  Of course this assumed my butt would make it to the other end. I could think of a whole lot of ways things could go wrong before that happened. For instance, it occurred to me this would be a really bad time for the sky predators to come back…

  …which was another reason to quit delaying and get on with this.

  With the mental image of flying carnivores approaching to spur me on, I started scooting myself forward and out over the abyss. I moved slowly, yet as fast as I dared.

  I tried to ignore the cliff edge receding behind me. I tried to ignore the unbelievable void beneath me. I struggled to shut out the sickening premonition of overbalancing to one side or the other out of fear of it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. I fretted over the slickness of the pole under my hands and quickly learned not to lean and put too much pressure on them. Yet I didn’t dare stop because what little forward momentum I had seemed to help with my balance.

  And to make matters worse, the pole had started to grow more slender. What had been over a foot in diameter now measured about ten inches. I knew this would happen but still found it unnerving.

  Nobody spoke behind me. Only my harsh breathing and the occasional alien sounds of Coventry Woods disturbed the surrounding darkness. At least I didn’t have to worry about looking down. There would have been nothing but blackness to see.

  Or would there?

  As I reached what had to be the middle of the span I noticed speckles of pale and distant light beneath me. What the hell? I would have probably noticed them before but for the reflected light of my glowstick off the light pole. Now I fumbled to do a quick one-handed closure of my glowstick tube in the hopes of making out this new phenomenon.

  I almost wished I hadn’t.

  Because as my eyes adjusted from the removal of the glowstick’s glare, I found myself facing another impossibility. One that made no sense whatsoever.

  The pale speckles beneath me were stars.

  Not distant bioluminescent creatures floating below. Not glowing flowers clinging to the great chasm’s wall. But stars.

  A distant night sky, utterly foreign to any that had ever hung over our world, now stretched beneath me. It was a fearfully beautiful sight. Clusters and rivers of stars burned like cold jewels in the distant firmament below. They crowded the blackness, and two small reddish moons, never beheld by man, drifted in those strange heavens. And those moons settled any doubt of the celestial nature of this phenomenon.

  The rift I climbed over wasn’t just an impossibly deep wound in the earth.

  It was a tear in the fabric of reality itself.

  And now it plunged to depths beyond all reason.

  Vertigo threatened to overwhelm me as my mind tried to wrap itself around the insanity below. I had already been fighting off the same acrophobia that plagued me at the cell tower. Discovering I now hung over an infinite cosmos didn’t do much in the way of helping matters.

  “It’s still just a hole,” I panted to myself. “Nothing important has changed. It’s still just a hole.”

  I started inching forward again, desperately trying to ignore the view beneath my hanging feet. It wasn’t easy. I would have liked to twist my glow tube open again, but I no longer dared remove my hands from the pole. It also didn’t help that the pole continued to grow narrower as I advanced.

  When I finally pulled myself on to the other side of the abyss, my hands and legs shook like leaves. It took a full minute before I found the strength to stand.

  Onc
e I did, I twisted open the glow stick tube and heard muted sounds of relief come from the other side. They had lost sight of me when I closed the light, and I assumed the fact they hadn’t heard me scream was the only reason they still held hope I lived.

  Now I had to get them across, and not forget the fact I now stood on the same side of the chasm as the storage yard, and the multi-legged killers hidden within. I needed to get the other three over here fast so I could light my flare. I could easily picture one of those things spidering its way over the chain link fence in the darkness while I focused on my companions.

  It was a picture vivid enough to get me to wrap my forearm with the rope and then put my free hand back on the butt of my pistol. Better safe than sorry. With my greatly reduced circle of light, I would only have an instant to react if one of those things came flying out of the darkness.

  But back to the business at hand…

  “Okay! I made it!” I called softly. “There’s really not much to it. Just scoot across.”

  Yeah, I’m probably gonna go to hell for lying. But my motives were pure. Somehow I felt that telling them there was a sky at the bottom of the scary black pit wouldn’t do much for morale. Yet at the same time, I supposed I owed them a little more warning than a pep talk.

  “But I’m serious about this,” I continued, “do yourselves a favor and don’t look down. Just focus on my glowstick, and come to me. Is David ready?”

  “Just a second,” Darla answered back.

  They were three dim silhouettes, huddled together in a tiny puddle of green light.

  I heard muted conversation, yet despite the fact they conducted it in hushed tones it also gained in intensity. I guessed David didn’t feel enthusiastic about taking his turn. Not that I blamed him. A few hours ago the poor kid’s biggest problem in the world had probably been being called a geek in school. Now he was trying not to die, and being forced to climb over a bottomless pit to do it.