Angel of Darkness

by Charles de Lint

  He stepped out into the hall and followed it past a bathroom and kitchen until it opened onto a living/dining room. Again the sense of déjà vu hit him. The layout was exactly the same as the apartment he and Sheila had. There was more graffiti here— spray-painted this time. A dog chewing out the crotch of a nude woman with a pig’s face, PAIN RULES under it. A crudely sketched but recognizable cop, drawn and quartered. But what caught his gaze like a magnet was a macramé hanging that lay in the middle of the floor beside some broken bottles and other trash.

  He spread it out on the floor as best he could to have a better look at it. An owl. Sheila’d made one just like this, hung it over there where the TV used to . . .

  He looked over to see a TV smashed on the floor—a twin to the Zenith they’d bought a month ago. Their wedding photo lay beside it, the glass cracked. Christ, Sheila’d looked so good that day.

  He stood up quickly and headed for the front door, careful not to step on any glass in his bare feet. The carpet was damp, slick with mold. When he swung the door open and looked down the hall, the sound of the door hitting the wall inside the apartment sent an echoing boom down the hall. He heard a baby cry. Had to be the Wilsons’ kid, just around the corner. Kid was always crying.

  He started down the carpeted hall, which was littered with trash as well. A sense of competency had returned to him. The moment in the bedroom was forgotten, except for the sickly taste in his mouth. But then he turned the corner and saw—

  The kid was howling. Cherub face red with the effort. The kid was—

  Coffey’s footsteps slowed.

  His first impression was that someone had tied—(nailed)

  —her to the door. But as he got closer, feet dragging on the slimy carpet, he could see that the kid was attached to—

  (growing out of)

  —the door.

  Coffey froze, unable to move. He stared at the eight-month-old baby girl, her eyes shut, mouth open, wailing. She was like a bas-relief come to life. He could see where the flesh joined—

  (became)

  —the wood of the door. More graffiti. Over the kid’s head. SUCKS THE BIG ONE. Red spray paint. Some of it had dripped like blood onto the kid’s head. The kid. Attached to the door like it was growing out of it.

  “Jesus . . .” Coffey moaned, backing away.

  It was sick. It wasn’t real.

  He got around the corner and pressed the side of his head against the wall. He banged his head hard against the plaster. Once, twice. Again.

  “Wake the fuck up,” he told himself.

  Nothing changed.

  The baby’s cries followed him around the corner. He fled down the hall, back to his own apartment, slamming the door on the sound. Leaning against the door, he tried to quiet the frantic thumping of his pulse. His gaze settled on the graffiti.

  Sheila. Jesus, where was Sheila?

  Back into the bedroom now. He threw everything out of the closet, looking for shoes, boots, anything he could put on his feet. He couldn’t stand that slime touching his feet anymore. The stink of the room clogged in his lungs. He found one of his uniforms, shredded. He found the holster for his handgun, but the .38 itself was gone. He found his billy club, only something had chewed off and taken the greater part of its length.

  He remembered that show he and Sheila’d watched on the tube last year—about what it’d be like when they dropped the bomb. Was that it? Had he slept through a fucking nuclear war? Where was everybody?

  His hands were shaking so hard, he had to grip his knees.

  Okay, think, he told himself. What do I do now?

  (Sheila)

  He combed his sweaty hair with his fingers. If anybody else had survived, they’d be at the station. He didn’t know about civilians, but that’s where the cops would go. He didn’t have anything to protect his feet. He didn’t have a weapon. But he was going to have to make it there, anyway.

  He bound his feet with the rags of his uniform. From the dining room he took a discarded chair leg and hefted it. There were going to be things out there. Maybe just looters, maybe people looking for help. But there were going to be things too. Like that kid on—

  (growing out of)

  —the door. He suppressed a shudder. Things like her. Maybe worse. But he couldn’t stay here. He had to know what was going on. He had to find Sheila.

  When he cracked the door to the hallway, the baby was still howling. He didn’t figure the elevators would be working, so he took to the stairs straightaway. The upper sections weren’t so bad, but the stairs began to get clogged as he got to the last couple of floors. He found himself crawling over furniture and all kinds of crap that someone had just tossed down the stairwell. There was more graffiti on the walls, but it wasn’t so personal now. All of it sexual or violent. Some more PAIN RULES.

  There was only a foot and a half to spare between the piled junk and the top of the door leading into the apartment’s foyer. If someone hadn’t trashed the door itself, he might never have gotten out. As it was, he was cautious in the foyer and heading out the front door, watching his surroundings with a continuous sweeping motion of his head, trying not to focus on any one thing for too long. But once he hit the street, all he could do was stop and stare.

  The skies above were a dirty yellow, as though a high smog bank were hovering over the city. The streets themselves seemed empty. He checked behind the apartment building, but while his car was in the lot, he didn’t have a key for it. And somebody’d stripped the wheels from it, anyway.

  Where the hell was everybody?

  (Sheila)

  Maybe more to the point, where was whoever was vandalizing the empty buildings and cars?

  He’d get no answer standing here, he told himself. He set off on foot from the apartment building on Bronson Avenue, straight across the downtown core for the eight long blocks across and five or so blocks down to the station on Elgin Street. Ottawa’s downtown core looked like photos he’d seen of the South Bronx. Half the buildings were rubble. Gutted cars and buses littered the street. There was trash everywhere. From time to time he caught glimpses of dogs in the ruined buildings but no people. It wasn’t until he was a block away from the station, just cutting through the grounds of the National Museum of Natural History, that he saw a human figure.

  It had its back to him and didn’t turn, even when he called out. He hurried by the museum, noting that its castlelike walls were the least damaged of any he’d seen on his trek so far. His feet were sore and he couldn’t move fast. But neither did the figure. He chased it down Metcalfe to where it turned left on Catherine Street. He could see the station now. The figure disappeared around the front of the squat utilitarian building. Coffey picked up his pace, wincing whenever a piece of stone came between his bandaged feet and the pavement.

  The figure waited for him by the big glass doors of the station, its back still turned. All the glass was missing from the door. As Coffey hurried to close the gap between them, the figure began to shuffle off again.

  “Hey!” Coffey cried. “You there. Stop!”

  The figure turned and all of Coffey’s hard-won rationalizations fled screaming from his mind. The thing coming for him now was the corpse they’d found in the basement of that house last night. Chad Baker. Face burned away to the skull, hair and skin hanging from its back. One hand a skeletal ruin, held close to its chest. The other reaching for Coffey like some ghoul from a late-night horror flick.

  He was dead, Coffey told himself.

  He’d seen the corpse, for chrissake. The guy was dead.

  Yeah, and so was the city now.

  What the fuck was going on?

  He turned from the creature’s shuffling advance. He ran straight for the doors, jumping through the frames, glass crunching underfoot. He staggered as a jagged edge cut into the sole of his left foot but limped on. He was heading for the first basement. There’d be weapons down there. The shotguns you signed out on patrol. Maybe in the gun range. There had to
be something. It looked like he was all alone in the city except for a baby growing out of a door, some wild dogs, and a fucking walking corpse. Well, he wasn’t going down alone. He didn’t know what the hell was going on anymore, but he wasn’t going down alone.

  He got down to the first basement, hobbling heavily now. He couldn’t put any weight on his left foot. Every time he did, it was like his whole leg was on fire.

  There was nothing he could use at the staff sergeant’s desk. Somebody’d already cleaned it out. He could hear the creature still shuffling toward him in the stairwell. He went down the hall. At the next station he could see a tangled mess of trashed walkie-talkies, radar, and other crap, but no weapons. That left the gun range, but it had nothing, either. As he turned to leave, the creature was there, filling the doorway.

  Coffey backed away from it. He’d found no better weapon than the chair leg he’d left the apartment with. He raised it, wincing as his hurt foot bumped against the floor. He was right in the actual target area of the range now, the creature following him through the portals holding the controls that moved the targets.

  He had no place left to go, Coffey realized. He had to make his stand here.

  But then the creature stopped. It was hard to tell with just a skull to go by, but its attention seemed to be focused on something behind Coffey and to his left. Coffey moved slightly to one side so that he could check out his rear while still keeping his eye on the creature. He almost dropped his makeshift weapon.

  Drifting out of the wall—right through the wall—was the most beautiful woman Coffey had ever seen. Looking at her was like the first time he’d seen Sheila—when everything was still new between them and the world had a sparkly cast to it. The floating woman brought it all to mind. Just looking at her eased the tension that had been knotting Coffey’s muscles.

  He barely noticed the dead creature flee the woman’s presence. His arms went limply to his side as she drifted closer to him. Her feet touched the ground, light as feathers. She went to her knees, moving like smoke. Her hair was so bright—especially after the dullness outside—that it hurt his eyes. He could see right through the filmy robes she was wearing. Her body was a perfect shape.

  She looked up at him with her angel’s face. She pressed her breasts against his knees—a cool, soft pressure. Her hands, fingers as delicate as butterflies, rose to tug at the fastenings of his jeans.

  “I . . .” Coffey cleared his throat. “I don’t think we should . . . uh . . . you know . . .”

  Because he was thinking of—

  (Sheila)

  The woman made a soft growling sound, deep in her throat. She leaned a little away from him, fingers tearing at the material of his jeans. One of her nails caught in the sturdy material and ripped right through it, drawing blood from the flesh underneath. Coffey stumbled out of her reach. Hot red pain fired up from his left foot as he put pressure on it.

  Coffey lifted the chair leg. “Get back. . . .”

  There was something different in her eyes now—nothing soft. He saw with a shock that her canines protruded a quarter of an inch from her lips.

  She’s a fucking vampire, he thought. Some kind of mutant—

  The woman lunged at him. Without even thinking, Coffey swung the chair leg. It broke against the woman’s head, not even fazing her. Her jaws opened—wide enough to swallow his head. From the darkness of her throat emerged dozens of wriggling tongues.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Coffey moaned, trying to get away.

  Her breath hit him in the lower torso like a concentrated blast of liquid fire. It boiled away skin, muscle, intestines, major organs, leaving a hole the size of a watermelon. Coffey had long enough to smell the stink of his own burned body, and then he was dying. His last thought was that he’d never see—

  (Sheila)

  —again.

  7

  IT WAS CHAOS in the gun range. Ned stood over Coffey’s body, staring down at the corpse for long, silent moments while a babble of conversation rang all around him. Ned gave the body a careful study. Whoever had killed Coffey had had access to the same weaponry that had killed Baker. The hole in Coffey’s lower torso looked like someone had just taken a blowtorch to him. A big blowtorch. Coffey also had a bullet wound in his shoulder from where one of the officers on the range had shot him. Supposedly Coffey had just appeared on the range, popping in out of nowhere, just as the officer was firing.

  When Constables Petrin and Lachance wheeled in the equipment from the IDent van, Ned moved away and went to talk to the officer who’d shot Coffey. Constable Gilles Myre was a first-year rookie, a brawny dark-haired man who stood just over six feet. Right now he looked badly shook up. He sat in Sergeant Alec ShoLildice’s office, slouched in a chair. Shouldice was in charge of the gun range.

  “He was just there,” Myre was saying. “Jesus, I don’t know where he came from. I was already firing, and then he . . . he . . .”

  Shouldice touched his shoulder. “There was nothing you could do, Gilles,” he said. “The man was dead before you ever hit him.”

  “His eyes . . .” Myre looked up at Ned’s approach. “I could see him looking at me. I was already firing, and it was too late to do anything.” He pushed his face into his hands. “Where the fuck did he come from?”

  Ned crouched by his chair. He glanced at Shouldice, got a nod that said okay, then laid a hand on one of Myre’s arms, gently pulling the man’s hand from his face.

  “Think you can backtrack for me?” he asked.

  “I . . .”

  “Take your time.” Ned glanced at Shouldice.

  “Gilles Myre,” Shouldice said.

  “It’s okay, Gilles,” Ned went on. “There was nothing you could do.” And even if there had been, Ned wasn’t about to bring it up right now. “Just run through it for me, would you? And take your time.”

  Myre swallowed thickly and nodded. He was pale from shock, but Ned was pretty sure he’d pull through okay. It’d take some time. Maybe he wouldn’t sleep too well for a while. . . . Sleep. Adrenaline was burning through Ned’s body right now, but he could feel his lack of sleep lying under it like a deadweight. There just didn’t seem to be enough time for anything.

  “I . . . I was taking my six-month,” Myre began.

  Ned nodded encouragingly. Twice a year every officer had to be tested on the gun range. No exceptions.

  “Alec had set up the target,” Myre went on. “We did the seven-foot, I reloaded, then Alec set up another target. He got it into position. When I was ready, he hit the switch. The target swung around and I was pulling the trigger and then . . . then he just. . . the guy just appeared in between me and . . . and the target.”

  “Appeared?” Ned asked.

  Myre nodded. His gaze fixed on Ned’s. “One minute I had my sights on the target, the next the guy was stumbling in front of it. It was like . . . like he was stepping out of nowhere. I saw his head and shoulders first, then my bullet hit him, spinning him back, and the rest of him appeared. Christ, I didn’t have a chance to stop. I was already firing.”

  “It’s okay,” Ned said. He glanced up at Shouldice. “You saw all this, Alec?”

  “It’s like he said, Ned. Sucker just stepped in out of nowhere.”

  “No chance he came in behind you?”

  Shouldice shook his head. “We were both looking at the target and Coffey just appeared there. I never saw anything like it. Did you see the way he was dressed?”

  Ned nodded. Like a rubbie. Bloody rags on his feet like he’d walked across town in them. Old clothes that smelled like a wino’s. A broken chair leg lying just beyond the reach of one hand.

  “What do you figure?” Ned asked.

  “It’s a fucking Twilight Zone” Shouldice said simply. “No ifs, ands, or buts about it.”

  “Anybody else down here at the time?”

  “Just me and Gilles.”

  And they’d already checked with the staff sergeant’s desk. Coffey hadn’t come in that way. Nor t
hrough the main doors upstairs. Looking like he had, there was no way anyone would have missed seeing him.

  “You about finished, Ned?” Shouldice asked.

  “Sure.” Ned looked at Myre. “You can make your report later, Gilles. Right now, why don’t you get away from all of this”— he waved a hand behind him to the range where the investigation was under way—”maybe grab yourself a coffee up in Fuzzie’s. We’ll talk to you later when you’ve had a chance to come down a little.”

  “I’ll get someone to go up with him,” Shouldice said.

  Myre just shook his head. “Jesus. He was just there, you know?”

  “I hear you,” Ned said. “Just take it easy, Gilles.”

  He got to his feet and waited while Shouldice found an officer to go upstairs with Myre. The Sergeant returned to stand beside Ned, the two of them looking out at the gun range.

  “The burns on Coffey,” he said. “It’s the same deal as that case you caught last night, right?”

  “Pretty much. Only Baker took it in the head. He also had a defense wound on one hand.”

  ANGEL OF DARKNESS 105

  Defense wound. Right. Would you believe no hand left, period?

  “What the hell are we dealing with here?”

  Ned sighed. “Looney tunes,” he said. “That’s all I can figure, Alec. We’re going looney tunes.”

  “I saw it go down,” Shouldice said. “No bullshit here, Ned. It happened fast, but I saw that guy step in out of nowhere.”

  Ned nodded. “No one’s saying you didn’t—it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

  Before Shouldice could reply, Ned went to rejoin his partner out in the gun range. Earlier, people’d been thinking that whoever had killed Baker had done them a favor. But nobody would be thinking that now, Ned thought. Not with a cop dead. Only where the hell were they supposed to turn now?