With the coming of day the bugs fled back to the darkness where they lived and the peasants trooped out of the keep with their children and animals, crossing the causeway to what was left of the real world, leaving Bill and Nick and their vehicle behind with the ashes of the night fire.

Bill knew he should head down into the gorge with Nick to search for the shards of the shattered sword, but he could not leave this place. Not just yet. The keep took him in, wrapped him in the arms of its walls, and demanded his attention.

It was the crosses, he knew. How could he spend thirty years of his life in the priesthood and not be taken in by a place so thoroughly studded with crosses? Not dull, dreary, run-of-the-mill Latin crosses, but strange thick ones, with brass uprights and nickel crosspieces set high, almost at the top. Like a tau cross or what was called St. Anthony's cross.

Not all of the villagers left. An ancient, white-bearded gent—eighty if he was a day—named Alexandra remained behind. He spoke as much English as Bill did Rumanian, but they found common ground in German. Bill had studied the language in high school and college and had been fluent enough to read Faust in the original text. He found he remembered enough to communicate with Alexandru.

The old man showed him around the structure. His father, also named Alexandru, had been the keep's last caretaker in the days before World War Two. It could have used a caretaker now—a whole crew of them. Snow, wind, rain, drought, heat, and cold, all had left their mark on the keep. All the upper floors within the tower had collapsed, leaving nothing but a giant, rubble-choked stone cylinder. Yet although crumbling and in sad disrepair, it still exuded a certain power.

"It used to be a bad place," Alexandru said. "Now it is a good place. The little monsters will not come here. All around they fly, but never in here."

He went to the gate and gestured off to the left. Bill's gaze followed the pointing arm to a black circular area, hundreds of feet across, marring the verdant floor of the pass.

A hole.

"That is where they come from, the little monsters."

"I know," Bill said. "The holes are everywhere."

Alexandru then led Bill to the keep's cellar and showed him the opening in the stone floor there. He told of how the Germans had camped in the keep in the spring of 1941 and nearly wrecked the place, of how something immeasurably evil had awakened and slaughtered all the soldiers, of how it had almost escaped before it was destroyed.

Alexandru looked at Bill with watery blue eyes.

"At least we thought it was destroyed. Now I am not so sure."

"How was it destroyed?"

"A red-headed stranger came and slew it with a magic sword—"

…a magic sword…

"—then he limped off with a Jewish woman from Bucharest and was never seen again. I wonder whatever happened to him."

"He's old and gray like you now," Bill said, wondering what Glaeken had looked like in his prime. He must have been magnificent. "And he and the woman are still together."

Alexandru nodded and smiled. "I am glad. He was a brave man, but terrible to see when he was angry."

With the aid of Alexandru's directions, Glaeken's notes, and a flashlight, Bill led Nick down through the utter blackness of the subcellar to the lower segment of the tower. A narrow stairway wound down to the base where an iron ring was set in the stone block. Bill pulled. Part of the wall separated from the rest and swung inward. Light flooded the base of the keep's tower. Bill wondered when was the last time sunlight had shown on these stones.

"All right, Nick," he said, leading him outside. "Do your thing. Where are they?"

Nick stood blinking in the light. Thin, and paler than ever, he didn't look well. And he'd crawled back into himself.

Bill scanned the ground, looking for the shards Nick had said he'd seen. It was like river-bottom here, fist-sized stones jumbling down a gentle slope to a sluggish stream. Bill looked to his right up at the mountains soaring skyward behind the keep. This gorge was probably all water in early spring when the snows melted. Half a century had passed since the sword blade had shattered here. How could anything be left? How could they hope to find the remnants even if any still existed?

"Well, Nick?" he said. "Where are they?"

Nick said nothing, only stared ahead.

Desperate, Bill knelt and picked among the stones and gravel. This was impossible. He'd never find anything this way.

He straightened up and brushed off his hands. It had been earlier, in the dark, when Nick had said he'd seen the pieces, glowing "with bright blue fire."

Maybe he could only see them at night.

"Damn!"

He'd risked their lives rushing to get here so he could get back to Ploiesti as soon as possible so they could start their homeward journey in the light. Now he was going to have to wait until dark.

He turned and aimed a kick at the tower's granite-block hem. The keep, a dark, brooding, lithic presence looming over him, took no notice.

Bill led Nick back inside the tower to a gloom as deep and dark as his spirits. The delay meant it would be Wednesday before he got back to Carol. He wondered how she was doing, and if she'd heard from Hank?

Where had he run off to, anyway?

The Movie Channel

Joe Bob Briggs' Drive-In Movie—A Special All-Day Edition.

Eaten Alive (1976) New World

Day Of The Nightmare (1965) Herts-Lion

Nightwing (1979) Columbia

Raw Meat (1972) AIP

The Devils of Darkness (1965) Twentieth Century Fox

Tentacles (1977) AIP

Phase IV (1974) Paramount

It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958) United Artists

They Came From Beyond Space (1967) Amicus

The Last Days Of Planet Earth (1974) Toho

The Flesh Eaters (1964) CDA

They Came From Within (1975) Trans America

The Earth Dies Screaming (1964) Lippert/Twentieth Century Fox

THE NEW JERSEY TURNPIKE

Hank wasn't sure if he was awake or dreaming. He seemed to be awake. He was aware of noises around him, of a stale, sour odor, of growing light beyond his eyelids, but he could not get those eyelids to move. And he could feel nothing. For all he knew, he no longer had a body. Where was he? What—?

And then he remembered. The millipedes…their queen…a scream bubbled up in his throat but died stillborn. How can you scream when you can't open your mouth?

No. That had been a dream. It had all been a dream—the holes, the flying horrors, storing up the food, deserted by Carol, the rest stop, the trooper, the gun, the bullet, the millipedes—a long, horrible nightmare. But finally it was at an end. He was waking up now.

If he could just open his eyes he'd see the familiar cracks in the ceiling of their bedroom. And then he'd be free of the nightmare. He'd be able to move then, to reach out an arm and touch Carol.

The eyes. They were the key. He concentrated on the lids, focusing all his will, all his energy into them. And slowly they began to move. He didn't feel the motion but he saw a knife-slit streak of light open across his eyes, pale light, like the glow on the horizon at the approach of dawn.