"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.

WOR-TV

Hello, I'm Alice Gray, and we interrupt our usual Saturday morning programming to bring you this special news report. Sunrise was late again for the fourth morning in a row. But it never rose for many of our fellow New Yorkers. As most of you are no doubt already aware, chaos reigned in Manhattan last night as the midtown area became the set of the world's goriest horror movie. Only last night the horrors were real. Real people died, hundreds of them, perhaps as many as a thousand. The police and emergency services are still counting at this time. And these are the killers.

roll tape of dead insects

From what we can gather, these creatures flew out of the hole in Central Park last night and attacked everyone in sight, leaving the streets littered with corpses. They were indiscriminate in their choice of targets, attacking men, women, children, even dogs and cats, creating a reign of bloody terror. But shortly before dawn they fled, forming swarms that streamed along the streets back to here …

roll tape of Sheep Meadow hole

Witnesses describe the smaller swarms gathering and mingling above the mysterious Central Park hole, swelling to a huge swirling mass before plummeting again into the depths of the earth where they originated.

back to tape of dead insects

But what are these things? No live specimens are available, but there are plenty of dead ones around. It appears that the ones that didn't make it back to the hole before dawn died in the daylight. People have already begun referring to them as "vampire bugs." Scientists from a variety of fields—biology, chemistry, even paleontology (that's the study of fossils)—are working at identifying the creatures and devising ways to combat them. State and federal authorities have already arrived and are conducting studies to find a way to prevent them from getting loose again. Talk of placing a huge metal mesh over the hole is circulating.

back to Alice

But that may prove futile. Chilling news just in from Long Island and New Jersey of other bottomless holes, identical to the one in our own Central Park, opening up in Bay side, Glen Cove, Hackensack, and other places. These reports are unconfirmed as yet, but we have a team racing to St. Ann's Cemetery in Bay side at this very moment and will bring you live coverage from Queens as soon as they arrive and set up…

2 • GATHERINGS

Manhattan

Glaeken handed the drawings of the necklaces to Jack and watched the younger man study them. These were xeroxes. He had the original drawings safely tucked away in a vault.

"These are good," Jack said, nodding appreciatively. "Great detail. Just what I need. Where'd you get them?"

"I've kept them in a series of safe places over the years," Glaeken said. "On the outside chance that I'd need them some day. That day is here."

"Yeah," Jack said glumly. He rubbed his gauze-wrapped forearm. "I guess it is."

He rose from the chair and began pacing the living room. Glaeken sensed the tension coiled within Jack, the frustration boiling just under the skin. Jack was used to solving problems, usually other people's problems. Now he himself was faced with a problem for which he had no solution.

"About your fee," Glaeken said, allowing a smile to show. "What made you change your mind?"

Jack stopped his pacing and faced Glaeken, his eyes flashing.

"Not funny, Mr. V."

Glaeken sighed. "You're right. The events of last night are nothing to take lightly. And call me Glaeken."

"Glaeken…that's a new one."

"No, it's a very old one. Not at all an uncommon name in the time of my youth."

His youth…images seeped up from the deep past…sunlit forests…laughing and running with other boys. It seemed almost inconceivable that there had ever been a boy called Glaeken, and that he had been that boy. So many names since then. But now he was an old man with no further need of pretense, so he might as well revert to his given name.

"Whatever," Jack said, folding the drawings of the necklace into a neat square as he began roaming the living room again. "All hell seems to have broken loose out there. I saw those things come out of that hole last night. And now there's rumors of others holes opening up all over the place."