The Animal Hour

by Andrew Klavan

  The woman in the domino climbed the stairs. She could not climb fast. Her legs were like slabs. She drew them up the high steps stiffly, slowly. She felt her way up along the banister.

  Please, she thought. Please.

  She climbed past stained-glass windows set in niches in the wall. Ghostly faces gleamed in them. The murmur of voices grew louder above her with every step she took. She became aware, too, of another sound. A distant sound that sent a chill into her. A dim howl, growing louder. Sirens. The police. They were coming to get her.

  She dragged her legs up the stairs, clutching the banister, clutching her gun. Please, she thought, Oliver. Please.

  The upper room came into sight above her. It was a corridor of a room. It was lined with books. She tried to breathe more softly as she crested the stairs. She bit her lips. She saw the two figures standing together in the center of the room.

  “You see, you’ve got to look deeper into things sometimes,” one of them said. “Then they begin to make sense.”

  That voice. She knew that voice. It was the voice she had heard as she dragged herself down the hallway. The urgent, murmuring voice: Eight o’clock. You have to be there.

  The woman in the blinking domino mask reached out to one side. Her hand touched the wall. Her fingers crept along the stone. She felt a metal plate. The light switches. Three of them in a row.

  She heard the sirens growing louder outside. She heard their scream pierce the rhythms of the distant music.

  She pushed up the light switches, all three at once.

  Oliver faced his brother. His breath came shallow, trembling. He saw Zach’s black eyes suffering at him out of the shadows. He saw the outlines of the sweet, smooth face.

  Don’t go over the bumps, Ollie.

  Oliver’s lips parted and he wanted—something—to speak, to scream, to say … anything … He wanted to say: Remember? How Dad used to complain over dinner? Remember the time I pretended I’d caught that trapped ball? Remember how Mom burned the carrots and cried? He wanted to talk to Zach about the things they knew. The things only they knew …

  But Zach’s face jutted toward him out of the dark. His painful smile, his fever-bright eyes. The muzzle of his gun. And the words stuck in Oliver’s throat. He was too weary to speak. He could not stand the effort. Every word he thought of was so freighted with meaning. Anything he said, anything he did, would give him away, would give it all away …

  Because he had known. Somewhere inside him. He had always known. And every word that came to his mind was a confession of it.

  Zach took one more step and they were face-to-face in the center of the room. The faint music filtered in to them. The sturdy books stood solemn in the shelves along the walls. The faces on the arches, at the windows, watched them. And Oliver looked down at his brother, and he did not care what happened anymore at all. He looked down at him and he looked so much like her. Zach looked so much like their mother that the yearning was unbearable and he just did not care. She had been, like Nana, a nervous, birdlike woman. Jittery gestures, darting eyes, fingers fiddling with one another. She had had gentle cool hands and they were only still when they were holding someone or stroking someone. When she could worry about you—when you were sick or you fell off your bike or something like that—then she could be calm for a few moments about herself.

  Oliver knew that Zach had killed her. Somewhere inside him, he had always known. He had known without knowing. He had kept it hidden from himself forever. But he had known, too, every day. Every hour. In his sleep, minute by minute. He had always known.

  Why? he wanted to ask. He shaped the words with his lips, but they didn’t come. He was too tired. He just didn’t care anymore. But he tried again. Looking down at Zach, at his face so much like hers. Hoarsely, quietly. He forced the words out: “Why’d you do that to her, man?” Then he made a noise and tears came down his cheeks. “She never hurt you,” he said. “I mean, she never hurt you. You know? I mean, Dad—he—I know—he was angry, he … But she … I mean, gee, Zachie,” he said, crying. “I mean, gee, I really loved her. What’d you go and do that for?”

  Zach was inches from him. Oliver could see his face contorting. He could see the skin go red. The lips twisting together. The eyes glowing like coals. A mask of rage. Zach snorted once, and then again. And he said: “She let him hurt me, didn’t she? Huh? Didn’t she? Didn’t she? And you …”

  The two brothers stood facing each other, both in tears. Zach couldn’t speak anymore. He let out a cry of frustration and anger. Grimacing, he stepped forward. He planted the muzzle of the gun against Oliver’s head.

  Oliver looked down at him. He didn’t care what happened. He felt the cold steel of the gun. He saw Zachie’s hand trembling.

  Zach hesitated like that for one more second.

  Then he smiled. His finger tightened on the trigger. “You broke the typewriter,” he said.

  There was a flash. A faint one. Like lightning at the vanishing point. The fluorescents in the ceiling crackled. They all started to flicker on at once. All along the length of the ceiling, they sent down a faltering purple glow.

  The woman in the domino mask saw the two figures in that strange and strobic light. She saw Oliver

  alive!

  looking up in surprise. She saw the other man spinning toward her. His face whipping around toward her, his open raincoat fanning out.

  That’s him! That’s him!

  She recognized King Death, the real King Death. Zachary, that was his name. The man who was supposed to be beneath the skull mask. He was spinning toward her in the flickering light. His arm was whipping around with him. His hand was pointing out toward her. The purple light was flashing on the silver barrel of his automatic.

  The lights snapped on. She saw it all frozen in glaring white. She started to bring her own pistol up from her side. She saw Oliver reaching out. She saw Zach aiming the gun at her: the twisted, scarlet, coal-eyed face of rage sighting her along the gun barrel.

  Oliver cried out, “Zachie! No!”

  She leveled her pistol.

  And then Zach shot her.

  Oliver had seen the woman first. He saw her mask wink red, green, and yellow out of the dark as she crested the stairs. Then the fluorescents above him were flickering on. He saw the woman’s small pathetic figure. Her torn black jeans, the bloodied gray turtleneck. He saw the face in the cheap mask streaked with grime, sagging with exhaustion.

  That was when Zach pulled the gun away from his head. He started spinning away from him. Spinning toward the girl in what seemed slow strobic motion so that Oliver had time to think, Christ! Christ! He’s going to shoot her! And then he heard himself screaming, “Zachie! No!” His hand was flashing out toward Zach’s gun arm. His fingers were scraping the slick raincoat sleeve, touching the sinewy arm beneath, pushing it to the side.

  Zach fired. The automatic kicked and slammed. Oliver saw the masked woman thrown back a step as the bullet drove into her. He saw her stagger back to the edge of the stairs. She planted herself there, set her feet on the floor, bared her teeth in mindless determination. Zach was bringing his automatic to bear on her again, but the woman already had her revolver trained on him. Once more, Oliver shouted, “No!” but the word was blown away by the next explosion. The blast seemed to fill the room. To shake its heavy stone. To widen out to the walls in a deafening red roar. And then, slowly, the noise sank down, drifted down like ashes. The room became utterly silent, trembling. Then utterly still.

  Zach stepped backward once and dropped his arms to his sides.

  Oliver stared at him. “Zach?” he said.

  He moved up behind the younger man and took him by the shoulders. Zach’s shoulders felt flaccid and weak. His arms just hung down. Oliver heard a dull thud as Zachary’s automatic dropped to the floor.

  Zachary’s knees buckled.

  “Zach?” Oliver whispered. He held his brother on his feet for another moment, but Zach seemed drawn down by an irresistible
force. Oliver wrapped an arm around him. He sank down with him. He sank down to his knees beside him. He held Zachary in his arms, pressed him against his chest. He stared at his brightly colored shirt for a long moment before he found the black hole in it. He saw the flesh of Zach’s chest through the hole, and a red-black hole in the flesh. Frightened, he looked quickly at Zach’s face. The large eyes gazed up at him, still alive. Zachary’s lips moved. He licked them. They were white. He whispered something. Oliver leaned down close to listen.

  “… remember …?” Zach said.

  Oliver leaned closer, pressed his ear to Zach’s lips. He thought Zach was going to ask him if he remembered sledding down the snowy hill behind their house. And he did remember. Yes.

  But Zach did not go on.

  Oliver looked at him again. Zach was still gazing up at him. The light of life was still in his eyes.

  And then the light went out. Perkins lowered his head. He held his little brother close to him and patted his cheek, his hair. He rocked him back and forth, thinking: Don’t worry, Zach. Don’t worry anymore. His tears fell on Zach’s face and rolled down his cheeks, as if it were the dead man who was crying.

  Eesh, thought the woman in the domino mask. She dropped to one knee at the edge of the stairs. Her hand went lifeless. The revolver slipped from it, fell to the floor. Eesh, eesh, eesh, she thought. A wave of nausea rose up from her belly. She blacked out for a second. And then she was tilting over the side of the top step. She was falling. A long, dizzying fall, it seemed. And then her head cracked against the stair. She felt a jolt, no pain. Her body tumbled to the side, and she went down another stair, and then another, her head thudding against the steps, thud, thud, thud.

  She came to rest finally with her feet sprawled on the steps above her. Her arms flung out at either side. Her head thrown back. Her eyes staring up through the mask into a shifting blur.

  Did I do it right? she wondered vaguely. In the end, did I even do it right?

  The first agony burst all through her. She gasped. Her whole body went taut. She saw red. Then the pain subsided to a low throb. She lay on her back on the stairs, staring upward. She knew she had a bullet in her, somewhere high on her left side, somewhere around her collarbone. Her left arm was entirely numb. The rest of her was pulsing with that dull ache. She knew the real agony would flare again. Soon.

  A lousy day, she thought, her eyes rolling. A truly, truly bad day.

  She cried out in pain a second time before Perkins could let his brother go. He heard it and looked over his shoulder, and saw her foot sticking up above the top of the stairs.

  Reluctantly, he lowered Zachary’s head to the floor. Zach’s eyes stared up like marbles. Perkins closed them with his hand.

  The woman on the stairs was moaning steadily now. Perkins heard her babbling, a low rush of words. He stood away from Zach’s body and took a deep breath to steady himself. He wiped the tears off his cheeks with his hand.

  The sirens stopped. It was the first time he was aware of them. They had hit a squealing peak on the street outside and then gone off suddenly. That would be Mulligan, Perkins thought. Mrs. Wallabee had called him like he’d asked. That reminded him of Avis, lying in her apartment with her throat cut. He did not look down at Zach, but felt him there, lying at his feet. And Nana … He would have to break the news to Nana …

  The woman on the stairs moaned again. Perkins turned to her.

  Alone, he thought. Now he was going to be alone.

  He moved heavily across the room to the top of the stairs. He saw the small figure sprawled there upside down. The lights that dotted her mask like jewels flashed ridiculously, dim now under the bright fluorescents.

  The woman stirred. She moaned, mumbled. She was trying to get up.

  Perkins moved around her, down the stairs. He crouched down next to her.

  “Hold on there, kid. I got you,” he said. “Just lie still.”

  The woman rolled her head back and forth. “Don’t know …,” she mumbled. “Scared … scared … shoulda been me … so scared … please …”

  “Ssh,” said Perkins. He had to wipe his cheek again. He saw the woman try to open her eyes behind the mask. But the eyes fell shut heavily. Perkins reached down and pulled the mask up. Gently, he worked it up over her hair and tossed it aside where it blinked against the wall.

  The woman’s pile of reddish brown curls spilled out around her face. Perkins recognized her right away. The broad cheeks, the strong jaw. Mulligan had shown him a picture of her. She was the FBI agent they had sent after Zach. What was her name again? Stallone. Gus Stallone.

  Her head thrashed back and forth on the stairs. She would not stop moving her legs. “Scared … Oliver … Oliver,” she whispered. He stroked her forehead, brushing back the curls. She opened her eyes wide. She stared up at him. She lifted her hand weakly to his mouth. She pressed her fingertips against his lips. “You … Ol …” she muttered. “Know you. I know who you are.”

  She tried to turn to him.

  “All right, all right,” Perkins said. “You’re gonna fall. You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

  “Lousy … lousy day,” she muttered.

  He laughed mirthlessly. “Yeah. Me too. Come on, I better take you down.”

  He got her to hold her wounded arm close to her side. He coaxed her right arm around his neck. He knelt and worked one of his arms around her back, the other beneath her knees. He stood up, hoisting her into the air, holding her against his torn sweater, her hair warm against his bare chest. He began to carry her down the stairs. Around the curve of the wall. Under the watchful windows shimmering in their fissures. Below him, beyond the darkness on the ground floor, there appeared a large rectangle of white-gray light. The library’s front doors had been pushed open. A man was standing in the doorway, silhouetted against the streetlights’ glow. Behind the man, there were crowds of people. Some were staring through the doors—eyes behind contorted masks, burning white in made-up faces, peering in at them. Most of the others were still gathered by the barricades. Perkins could see them pumping up and down, their hands upraised. He could hear the music still playing, the racy jangling brass from the parade. He saw some clowns still capering in the street, though they had to dance around the police cars. The police cars blocked the avenue, their white and red flashers whirling.

  Perkins carried the woman down the stairs, holding her against him. Her head shifted and he glanced at her. He saw the purple bruises on her forehead. Streaks of dirt and scratches on her cheeks. He noticed that the bullet wound up by her neck was bleeding. The blood had soaked the upper left side of her shirt.

  “Oliver,” she muttered, turning in his arms. “Alive … Stay alive … Oliver …”

  Perkins shook his head down at her. Gus Stallone, he thought. Dumb name for a babe. Augusta. It must really be Augusta.

  “Do you … do you know …?” she murmured. She turned her face to him, opened her eyes again. “Do you know the magic word?” Her eyes fell shut. Her head lolled to the side. He felt her cheek against his chest, her lips moving. He heard her babbling softly.

  He turned away. He carried her down the stairs. Toward the masks. Toward the music. Toward the flashing lights.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

&
nbsp; copyright © 1993 by Andrew Klavan

  cover design by Jason Gabbert

  This edition published in 2011 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media

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