The Animal Hour

by Andrew Klavan

  “Mm-hm?” She had turned instinctively back to her work. Corralling the green pepper bag. Twisting off the wire tie.

  “The thing is,” Zachary said behind her, “Oliver should be back any second now. And, uh, I really need to kind of talk to him kind of personally. Okay?”

  “Oh, sure. Okay,” Avis said. “No problem. I’ll take off the second he gets here.” She had her hand in the bag. She squeezed first one pepper, then the other. “I’ll probably have to leave soon anyway cause my … cause, uh, I have stuff to do.” And again, she didn’t mention the baby. And why not, psychology fans? Yeah, yeah, she thought; she knew why not, all right. Because if you tell a guy you have a baby right at the beginning, his eyes go sort of flat on you, don’t they? You get one of those pained smiles. Like he’s wondering how soon he can call for a cab. And she just had to have her little fantasy, didn’t she? Her little flirtation. She pressed her lips together, squeezing her peppers. As if she were really going to be ready for another relationship anytime this millennium. And a relationship with a psychological basket case who already had a girlfriend, a drug problem, and a warrant out for his arrest? And a brother she was secretly in love with? Hey, a computer dating service couldn’t have made a better choice.

  Self-destructive girl seeks emotional cripple for anguish, co-dependency, and moonlight walks …

  Pepper Number One seemed firmer all around. She drew it out and set it on the cutting board. Knife, she thought. Knife, knife, knife. She pulled open the silverware drawer.

  She heard Zach’s footstep behind her—and another stack of books falling over. And he might’ve started to say something too, but he stopped. Avis found herself babbling on again in the silence.

  “It’s really nice that you guys are so close, you know, you and Oliver. You can talk to each other and everything when there’s trouble like this. I’ve got, like, four sisters and they all still live in Cleveland? We never talk. I go out there for Christmas or something, and it’s like all we say is ‘How’re you? How’s the swim team? How’s … this and that?’ We even joke about it, we call it ‘News of the Day.’ “ She had selected a little steak knife from the drawer. She had lifted it out. But now she spotted the butcher’s knife. A monster of a knife, a horror movie special. In the drainer, wedged down among the dishes she’d washed this morning. “Huh!” she said aloud.

  “What,” said Zachary behind her.

  “Oh. Nothing. Just this knife I never saw before.” She put the steak knife back in the drawer. Shoved the drawer shut with her hip. “The thing is,” she went on, “to them I’m like this big shot New York movie person, you know, I’m like too far out of their lives at this point to even, you know, comprehend their trials and troubles. I mean, if they only knew …” She reached into the drainer. The dishes rattled as she drew out the big knife. “Look at this. Where the hell did he get this?” she murmured.

  “Listen, uh, Avis?” Zach said quickly. “Ollie’s gonna be back any second. Really. And the thing is … Um. Um …” He really sounded a little nervous now.

  “It’s okay. Really,” she said over her shoulder. “I promise I’ll do this so fast I’ll be out of here before you know it. It’ll lose some of my customary brilliance but …” She decided to try this monster out. She steadied the green pepper in one hand. Held the butcher knife in the other. “What I was saying, though, is that if they knew this job I had. This reader’s job. I mean, you write these reports.” She let the pepper go then. She had noticed some kind of goo on the edge of the knife’s blade. She reached out and turned on the faucet. Water hissed loudly into the sink. She had to raise her voice to go on. “No one ever reads them. It’s like sending them into a black hole.”

  “What are you doing?” Zach said with a little laugh.

  “You begin to wonder if you even exist,” Avis called. “There’s just some weird … yuch on this knife. I gotta wash it off.” She lifted a yellow sponge from the sink counter and held it under the running water. “I mean, I sometimes think I’m a daydream in the mind of some movie executive, you know?”

  Zach said something, but she didn’t catch it over the hiss of the water. “What?” She examined the blade of the knife in the light. “I swear your Nana spoiled you boys,” she said.

  “I said, can I see that for a second?” Zach repeated, more loudly.

  She glanced back at him. “What?”

  He was standing in the center of the room. Standing as if he were frozen there, surrounded by Ollie’s piles of classics, the pinnacles and steeps. He had his legs akimbo, his hand out to her, one hand. He was smiling eagerly. There was a bright light winking in his black eyes. “The knife,” he said. “Could I just see that knife for one second?”

  “Oh,” said Avis, “sure, let me just wash it off.”

  “No, I meant before.”

  “What?” She squeezed the excess water from the sponge.

  “Before you wash it off.”

  “Wait, I can’t hear you over the water. Hold on.” Avis brought the sponge to the blade of the butcher knife.

  “Could you put the sponge down?” Zach said.

  “What? Hold on just a …”

  “Would you put the sponge …”

  “I just want to …”

  “DROP THE FUCKING SPONGE, YOU STUPID BITCH!” Zach screamed.

  Avis looked around quickly and saw the gun. She spun then, her back against the counter. Zach was standing straight as a steel rod. He was clasping the pistol clumsily in both hands. Sticking it out at her. Waving it back and forth so that the bore crossed and recrossed her forehead.

  Avis gave a bewildered laugh. “Uh, wha …?” she said. The water hissed into the sink behind her. She stared at the gun. “Oh God, Zachary …”

  Zachary’s eyes were wide. He waved the pistol at her. “I said drop the sponge, drop the sponge, damn it.”

  Avis nodded quickly and dropped the knife. It clattered loudly on the floor.

  “The sponge, the fucking sponge!” Zach shouted. “Oh Christ, it doesn’t matter now.”

  All the same, she let the yellow sponge fall from her other hand. She heard it squish as it hit the floor. Avis stared into the wavering bore of the gun.

  He is a murderer, she thought. She could see it when she glanced up at his wide, bright, frightened eyes. That’s why the police were after him. They were no fools. He really was a killer. “Oh Jesus,” she whispered. “Oh Jesus Christ.” On the instant, she was thinking about the baby. The little lump of him asleep in his crib upstairs, his cheek against the mattress. The thought was like an ice bath. A painful, paralyzing chill over her whole body at once. What would he do without her? “Please,” she said. “Just don’t hurt me, all right?”

  “Well, I mean, shit!” said Zach. His cheeks were getting very red, apple red. He looked from side to side once, as if he were trapped, as if he were searching for the way out. “I mean, I’m telling you to get out, I’m telling you to give me the knife. I mean, what the fuck’s the matter with you? What if I have to kill you too now?”

  “Please …” Avis couldn’t get the word out of her throat. She knew Zach couldn’t hear it over the hiss of the water. Please, God, she thought, please, Jesus, don’t let him. Don’t let him. Think about the baby, God, my sweet baby … She felt as if her legs would not support her. As if her whole body had gone soft inside.

  “Huh?” said Zach, and Avis jumped. “You see what I’m saying?”

  “I’ll do anything you want,” she managed to stutter. “Really. Please. Don’t hurt me, don’t kill me, it’s important, I’ll do anything at all …”

  Zach’s hands trembled violently. He let go of the gun with his left and ran the palm up over his short hair. “Oh Jesus, it must be close to seven now. Oliver’ll be back any minute,” he said softly, almost to himself. “Now what am I supposed to do?”

  “Please,” Avis whispered. Her eyes filled with tears. Please, God. What would happen to her baby? Who would take care of her baby? Please. Pl
ease.

  “All right,” said Zach. His voice was suddenly like a tinker’s hammer: a finite and decisive sound. Avis looked into his distorted, terrified, and still somehow boyish face. She was unable to speak. Too weak to do anything but pray and wait. She waited, praying, Please, God, please …

  And Zach said again: “All right.” And then he said: “We’re going up to your place.”

  They were still screaming at her when Nancy threw herself out the window. Her mother was screaming: “Murderer! Murderer!” Her father was screaming: “You! Get out of here! I’m calling the police! I’m reporting this to the police right now!” And in her mind: chaos. Flashes of memory beyond knowing. Faces flashing at her. Half phrases. Evocative, vanishing smells. She had her ears covered with her hands. She was shrieking wildly for her mother. She was watching herself shriek as if from a distance and thinking: This family visit is not going very well. And meanwhile, these two people, the woman and the man, were closing in on her. Stalking her, shoulders hunched, faces jutting at her. Screaming and screaming. And, well, the window happened to be right beside her, already half open. And the lace curtains were rising in a cool fresh evening autumn breeze. And she had to get out …!

  She threw the window up, threw it wide. Her mother wailed. Her father cried out, “What are you doing?”

  Without thinking, Nancy ducked under the sill. She set her two feet on the thin, alabaster ledge. She stood up, facing the building, holding on to the raised stone around the window recess, clutching it with her nails.

  And in that moment, everything became suddenly quiet, suddenly cool. A stream of autumn air trailed along the building’s brickwork. Traffic hushed and grumbled in the distance somewhere, three stories below. The lights of Lexington Avenue ran uptown, brilliant and still in the dark. She tasted the faint tang of exhaust fumes. And heard no voices. No human voices.

  Nancy clung to the building. Leaned her face against the cold stone, panting, staring along the brick facade. The stone gargoyles squatted under the ledge on the floor above her. Squatted with their hairy thighs splayed, their horny heads protruding, their arms lifted and their armpits to the world. All gaping grins, all teeth, all saucery eyes …

  Whoa! Nancy thought, breathless, clinging to that wall. Whoa-de-yo-do!

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  The sudden bark of her father’s voice nearly sent her over the edge. She tilted backward. Her hands fluttered off the stone. Then she fell forward. Got her grip again. Her father must have stuck his head out the window, but she couldn’t turn her head to look down at him. She just leaned her cheek on the stone and panted, wide-eyed.

  “Did you hear me? What’re you doing?”

  What am I doing? Nancy thought. What am I doing? What the fuck are you asking me for?

  “I’ve called the police. Do you hear me?” the man barked. “They’re coming now.”

  Nancy stared along the face of the building. About ten yards ahead of her it ended, just disappeared. No, wait. There was a small, one-story structure after that. A connecting structure with a flat roof. It linked one wing of the building with another. Oliver, Nancy thought, mouthing the word. Oliver Perkins. I have to be there.

  “You might as well come in from there. You’re going to fall,” said her father. If he was her father. Wasn’t her father dead? Didn’t he fall into something and leave her with that empty hallway. Her mother’s lullaby. The scary dark at night.

  A horn honked somewhere below. People shouted laughter from a car window. The voices faded as the car whisked past. Nancy lightly thumped her head against the stone, closing her eyes. Oliver, Oliver Perkins, she thought. That was all she knew. Oliver Perkins was going to die. The lonely-eyed poet. With those descriptions of twilight that made her feel sexy and melancholy like a schoolgirl. Someone was going to murder him at eight o’clock. In just about an hour from now.

  She had to be there.

  She started to sidle along the ledge.

  “Wait a minute! Where are you going? What the hell are you doing?”

  Don’t know. Don’t know. Don’t know, thought Nancy. She slid her right foot along the narrow edge. Her left foot inched up after her. Her fingertips danced over the rough brick. Clung to the lines of mortar. In the whisper of air around her, in the whisper of traffic that rose and fell below, she heard her own breath. Harsh pants. Huff, huff, huff.

  “Goddamn it!” she heard her father yell. And then he must have pulled his head in because his voice grew fainter. She heard him talking to her mother inside. She couldn’t make out the words. She slid forward. Right foot out again. Left foot following. Fingertips like spiders on the brickwork. Huff, huff, huff. Her lips parted. Spittle on her chin, cold in the wind.

  “Nancy …”

  The harsh sound of her breathing stopped then, stopped cold. She stopped cold on the ledge over Lexington Avenue. Her name.

  “Nancy …”

  Someone was calling her name!

  Her fingernails bit into the mortar lines. Her breasts flattened against the brick. Her sweater buckled around her in the breeze. She cocked her ear.

  “Nancy, Nancy …”

  It was not her father’s voice. It was too high, too thin. Whispery, like silk sliding over silk. Like breezes in the night forest; something she remembered … Beckoning voices, voices in corridors, voices behind doors …

  Afraid, she lifted her head. She had to raise it by increments to keep steady. Bringing her chin up inch by inch. Bringing her eyes up.

  “Nancy …”

  The gargoyle just above her grinned down. His hands hung before him like an ape’s. His tongue darted out between his gaping lips.

  “Nancy,” he whispered.

  “Oh …!” She looked down so fast she scraped her cheek on the brick. Her arms and legs had turned to water. She was going to lose her balance. Her heart was beating so hard against the brick that she felt it might knock her off …

  But she managed to keep her place there, her eyes closed, her mouth open. Her panting breaths coming again, little cries in them.

  “Nancy …”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she whispered.

  She opened her eyes. She braced herself. She began to sidle forward again. More quickly. Toward the end of the wall. Right foot, inch by inch. Left foot after.

  “Nancy. Naaaanceeeeee …”

  She had reached the next window. Stepped into its recess. Resecured her grip on the decorative stone. She had to stop there, catch her breath. Steady her head. Close her eyes and tell herself: I don’t hear those voices. I do not hear them. I do not.

  But she did. Wheedling, airy, ghostly whispers. Beckoning to her. Taunting her. Slipping her name into the wind, blowing it to her like a kiss. And something else now. Another sound. Starting, stopping. Chiggachiggachiggachigga … A sort of scratching noise. Scrabbling. Like a cat clawing for purchase.

  I do not … she thought. And then her will broke: She had to look up. She craned her neck recklessly, swiveling her head back and forth until she caught sight of something. Another gargoyle. A horn-headed devil with a cocked eye. But this one was upside down. Showing his ass to heaven. His fingers reaching below him, right over Nancy’s head, clutching the brick. And then, suddenly … he was moving! Like a cockroach on the wall. Scrabbling down over the bricks suddenly. Just a foot or two toward her, closer to her. Pausing there. Grinning at her, bright-eyed. Then—again—chiggachiggachiggachigga—spindly arms and hairy feet quick as an insect’s on the brick. Closer. Scrabbling toward her.

  “Hello, Nancy,” he whispered.

  Nancy screamed. Twisted her head around even farther. Yes, the other one, the one who had waggled his tongue at her before. He was also upside down now. He was also pausing like a wary bug. And then—quick!—he started crawling down the brick face. Coming at her on the diagonal. Pausing. Lifting his head up to grin and wink.

  “Nancy!” And he laughed and stuck out his tongue.

  Nancy burst out laugh
ing. Great, just great, she thought. She closed her eyes and giggled. She rested in the window nook, holding on to the stone. Her shoulders shook with laughter. Tears squeezed out from under her lashes and rolled down her cheeks. Simply terrific.

  She opened her eyes and saw the others. The ones up ahead. Two more of the white stone creatures angling down at her in fits and starts. Their lancet nails, their simian feet, made that insidious scratching noise on the brick. Their twisted lips shaped her name. Their whispers were in the wind all around her.

  This is not, is not happening. You are experiencing an episode of … of weird … gargoylemania … But she had stopped laughing. She was all heartbeat and nausea and tears. The wall was undulating beneath her fingers. She was ready to let herself fall—to throw herself to the street below—just to stop them, just to make them disappear. The bastards. Terrifying her, crawling down at her.

  “Nancy. Oh, Nancy.” Calling to her.

  She gritted her teeth in defiance. Oliver, she told herself. Oliver Perkins.

  The wind lifted a moment. It played at her hair. She forced herself to squint into it. To look forward along the wall toward the place where the wall ended. She could jump down to the connecting building from there, to the flat roof. From there, she could probably climb down to the street. She made an angry noise, shaking her head. Trying to get those giggling whispers out of her ears. The scrabbling of those nails …

  But they were getting louder. Closer. She had to move—she had to move right away. She didn’t care if she fell. She hoped she did fall, it would serve the little stone shitheads right. Her right foot darted forward—she really was careless now. Her lead foot was moving again even as her left foot trailed to keep up. Her fingers danced over the brick. Her nipples dragged chillingly, painfully over the stone. Her eyes were tearing in the wind.

  And they kept calling her. She could hear them. Their voices were trapped in her head. Their whispers were like tendrils of smoke twisting and coiling around each other. Their scrabbling on the brick seemed so loud to her now it almost drowned out the soft honks and distant rumbles of the cars below on Lexington.