Looking for traces of Doctor Nine became an obsession, but she had to wear the glasses in order to see that kind of thing. Like the black spider crouching inside the left shoe she was going to wear tomorrow when she went out with Sticks. Like the roaches hiding under the fitted sheet on her bed.
No, sleep was going to be impossible.
Working like this made her feel like a soldier going to war. Doing something. Being proactive. It also gave her a measure of power while her inner voices screamed at her about what Monk told her.
They are coming.
Hours passed, and despite the cold, she was bathed in sweat. The apartment stunk of cleaning products and her head ached abominably. Not a full migraine, but close enough to sour her stomach and screw up her balance. She plunked down on the kitchen chair and closed her eyes to try to reset her brain. The small darkness behind her eyelids helped.
She never realized she was asleep until she saw the flashing red hand outside of Torquemada’s.
“What?”
People were crowding into the place, and every time the door opened wide enough, the Music lunged out into the street. Bold and beautiful; dangerous the way the edge of the Grand Canyon is dangerous, the way a screaming tiger is beautiful. Rain saw Snakedancer and his disciples laughing and twirling as they ushered the crowd inside.
Rain saw Joplin go in, and Dylan was with them. They were holding hands and laughing. Joyful laughs, too. Behind them, dressed to kill, were Yo-Yo in a tight glittery sheath dress and towering spike heels, Gay Bob in a gorgeous tight shirt and black pants, and Straight Bob in a nice but old-fashioned business suit. They, too, were laughing. She saw an old Asian man behind them, and with a grunt of surprise, Rain realized that it was the monk she’d met in Central Park all those years ago, on the day Dylan was born. And in the same moment of clarity, Rain knew that the monk was the same person as Mr. Hoto, the latest victim of Doctor Nine.
“Hey!” she yelled, but no one turned toward her. The Music was too loud, and a moment later, they had all vanished inside.
Rain broke into a run and stopped at the edge of the crowd that was still squeezing through the doors. She couldn’t see anyone she knew now, and the faces of the strangers there seemed slightly blurred as if they were moving at a different speed than she was. Only when she angled her head to see them out of the corner of the lenses could Rain see clearly. They were beautiful faces. Elegant, exotic, like the faces of angels in old paintings, or pharaohs from tomb walls. Everyone seemed taller than she was, fitter, stronger. They laughed and chattered in lovely voices, but none of what they said made sense to her, as if they spoke a language different from any Rain had ever heard.
She stood and watched until every single person had entered Torquemada’s. The big doors swung shut, and the Music was gone. It stabbed her with grief not to hear it. Worse still, before the doors shut completely, she saw the dance floor. It was packed with people and bathed in rapidly changing colored light. The bodies all moved to the Music, turned and lunging and spinning with preternatural grace as if they did not dance to the rhythm but were actually part of it. One with it.
It hurt her to see it because Rain remembered dancing like that. On dance floors in schools and studios and on stages, Rain had danced like that. Part of something that was bigger and more profound than sound and motion, more important than choreography and timing. There was dancing, and then there was a level higher, deeper, better, more beautiful. She had been there, had been part of that, and when she was dancing, it made her more fully alive than anything.
Only once had Rain ever experienced anything as perfect.
It was that moment in the hospital when she had seen Dylan and he had seen her. That moment when she had given him his secret name.
After that, nothing was ever beautiful again. Doctor Nine and the nurse took Dylan away. Noah was already dead and buried. And the horror show of complications had stolen her ability to dance. Collectively, it had evicted her from a world like the one beyond those doors.
“Fuck this,” she growled as she grabbed the door handles and jerked them open. They moved so much more easily than she expected.
The Music was there, waiting, crouching behind those doors, and it pounced on her, staggering her, driving her backward, but she still held on to one door handle. The other door swung closed, but Rain hauled herself forward against the tidal surge of Music.
Rain nearly died there. Right there in the doorway to Torquemada’s.
Her legs wanted to collapse, and there wasn’t enough air in the room or in her spasming lungs. She leaned against the inside wall and desperately tried to regain equilibrium. The hammering of the Music was only less explosive than the desperate insistence of her heartbeat. Sweat burst from her pores, and her fevered eyes jumped and twitched as she saw all the things that twisted and writhed within the club. It was like nothing she had ever seen before or even imagined, and her reeling senses could not begin to comprehend it all. It was too much, and the overload bored holes in her head. Unable to resist, unsure if she wanted to, and yet terrified to let go, Rain stood shaking near the door. She felt more than heard the door slam shut behind her with ringing finality.
“God save me,” she whispered, but the Music beat all the tone from the plea.
Torquemada’s was fantastically huge, much larger than it looked from without. The dance floor was a picture of mad infinity, stretching away beyond the reaches of perceptions. It was edged by a broad wooden apron, and the floor itself was clear acrylic. Looking down revealed images of Hieronymus Bosch—but alive and moving. The dancers themselves were insane, trapped within a musical force that was beyond definition: it caught them, spun them violently, drove them into dance steps that human limbs should not be able to perform. Yet faltering was impossible, for the Music held absolute command. With tentacles of force, the Music coiled around each body, probed every private place, discovered every secret; it kept moving, moving—always on the prowl for something deep, something rare. It writhed along the floor, forcing feet to move, buffeting sinuous bodies and making them gyrate in tune with its own pulsations.
In the throes of madness, the dancers were stretched and contorted like hot plastic, their bodies warping and changing according to the whims and demands of the Music. The fabric of material existence was altered so that the fingers of a stretched hand would suddenly fly off to the end of the room, but the stumps would not bleed. People exploded and became fragments of light. Off in one corner, a leg danced with itself, then grew a new body that was far different from the one it had lost. A man fell upward into the air and melted into the swirling plasterwork of the ceiling. These things—these mad things that Rain saw and felt—convinced her that her earlier guess had been right: she was either dead or insane, and this was all some kind of drug-induced nightmare.
Yet … the Music felt real, and the vibrations of the bass notes through the floor felt real, and the lights burned with stinging reality in her eyes. Rain tried to stand her ground, but her mind was already tumbling. Caught at the deadly edge of the whirlpool, she fought for balance but knew that she would be dragged down if she took even the tiniest step forward. Nothing she could do would prevent that. As she swayed, the rhythms pounded at her, tugged her, enticed her, cried out to her in siren voices, teasing her to succumb, to simply step off the precipice and plunge into the abyss that was the Music.
The Music closed itself as one song finished, and there was a trembling second of relief. Rain felt faint; her face was hot and running with sweat. She tried to concentrate, but the whole place seemed to be out of focus. Then the next song began, and it began with such intensity that Rain stumbled backward, crying out, gasping, and clutching at her chest as the first notes struck her above the heart.
Her back struck the door, and she fell outside into the cool air.
… jerked awake at the kitchen table.
The clock insisted that it was nine o’clock in the morning, but outside it was black as night. S
he started to get up and then saw something sitting on the counter beside the sink. Not one single thing.
Three things.
A crack pipe. A shooter, like the kind she used to have, with a small glass tube she’d bought at a liquor store in Jersey, fitted with a screen made from a copper Brillo pad.
A fat vial of beautiful crystals.
And a neatly folded shower curtain. Her curtain.
Rain screamed.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
Alyson Creighton-Thomas sat on her couch in exactly the same place where she had been for eleven hours. She had twice gotten up to go to the bathroom, and twice more to get a bottle from the freezer. Otherwise, that couch was her throne, her electric chair, her place.
Watching the DVD. Watching the two little girls dance. They looked so much alike. Little Alyson and little Lorraine. Watching them touched that part of her that was still alive, still connected to life, to remembered joy. To hope.
But then other thoughts and feelings intruded. The babies. The one that had ruined her and the one that had ruined her daughter. When those feelings surged up inside of her, Alyson snatched up a Xanax or a Zoloft or an Amytal and washed them down with white wine or vodka. Or swallowed them dry if her bottles were empty and there was something happening on the screen she wanted to watch. The dance competition in Westchester. The recital in the arts center near the park.
Some of the video segments were as recent as eleven years ago. Some were as old as forty years in the remembered past. Two girls. So alike they could be twins. Two girls who looked more like sisters than mother and daughter. Dancing, dancing, joyful, elegant, talented, dancing.
The video ran all the way to the end, and Alyson restarted it.
She did not notice the birds on the windowsill. She did not notice the tall, thin, pale man in the dark suit standing behind her couch, his mouth carved into a jack-o’-lantern grin as he waited for tricks and treats. Even if she turned, she would not see him.
It wasn’t time for that quite yet.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
It took Rain nearly an hour to cut the shower curtain into pieces so tiny that no part of the swirling star pattern was recognizable. She was deeply afraid of the sounds she made as the scissors went snip-snip-snip. She only stopped crying when the curtain was so badly mangled that there wasn’t enough of it left to be used as a noose. That seemed to matter to her; it was an important early goal in this process.
As she worked, her eyes, her traitor eyes, kept darting over to the pipe and vial on the drainboard. Those things were so beautiful. Those things were so ugly. She wanted them so badly.
Snip-snip-snip.
She cut the curtain into pieces and cut the pieces into confetti. Rain would have flushed them if she wasn’t positive they would clog the toilet.
Snip-snip-snip.
Listening to music way too loud for this early so that she could not hear the storm. Heard the storm anyway. Mentally begged the phone to ring. It refused.
The pipe whispered to her. Not in the voice of her parasite. Not anymore. It had tried that before, and Rain cursed it to silence.
Nor did it whisper in his voice. The pipe knew better.
Instead, it whispered in the voice of her son. In Dylan’s voice.
It’s okay, Mom. Go ahead. You can’t save me anyway, so smoke some rock. It’ll help. You won’t be able to hear what Doctor Nine does to me. I promise. The smoke loves you as much as I do.
Like that.
On some level, Rain knew that she was framing the argument. It had her overblown sense of drama. She also knew that it was saying all the right things.
Caster Bootey sure as shit did not show up to help her out. As figments of her imagination went, he’d turned out to be as useful as a baseball bat to the back of the head.
Snip-snip-snip.
The last pieces of the curtain fell to the floor, and there was nothing left big enough to cut.
Rain chewed her lip for a moment, considering what else to do with the scissors. Bad things. Very bad things.
She got up and forced herself to put the scissors away. The debris littered the floor, and tiny pieces clung to her sweat. Rain opened a drawer and rooted around until she found a meat tenderizer. An item she had never once used for cooking because she was a lousy cook. It was a pretty good hammer, though.
The pipe stood on the drainboard.
Rain raised the tenderizer so that the overhead light cast its mallet shadow across the pipe and the vial. She had no idea at all how long she stood there, poised to strike, still as a statue.
The phone rang.
The hammer was clutched in her hand when she went over to the table to answer the call.
“Rain?” asked Sticks. “I’m downstairs. Are you ready?”
She hefted the tenderizer and looked at the pipe and vial. “Almost,” she said. Her voice sounded way too normal. Scary.
She fed Bug and spread out some newspapers on the floor in case she’d be home late. Then she picked the dog up and held her so tight for so long, burying her nose in the little animal’s fur.
“Be good,” she whispered as she kissed Bug and set her down. “Mommy loves you.”
Bug whimpered softly but wagged her crooked tail. The innocence and trust in the little dog’s eyes came close to breaking Rain’s heart.
Five minutes later, she left her apartment. The vial and the pipe stood there, untouched, waiting for her return. Certain that she would come back for them. Come back to them. Come back.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
Doctor Nine reached out his hand and pushed against the skin of the world.
“Almost,” said the nurse.
His smile dimmed, though. “No.”
She looked at his hand. All she could see were his long, thin fingers and black fingernails clawing at the empty air inside the car. Bethy could never see what he saw. Not even now. Not even with all that had changed for her and in her and of her.
She was greedy for more. She was greedy for all of it, and she rubbed her hands on his arm and along his thighs.
“Tell me,” she begged. “Make me feel it.”
But Doctor Nine withdrew his hand, his smile still gone but his eyes burning. The window was open and rain whipped into the car. Nightbirds perched on the frame, dripping dirty water onto the upholstery. Doctor Nine bent and kissed the closest one. Kissed its black head and licked the length of its neck.
“I’m hungry,” he murmured. “Bring me something delicious.”
With a cry like a beaten child, the nightbird twisted away and threw itself into the storms. The other birds—the ones on the car and the dozens perched on rooftops and wires—followed. The beating of their wings was like drums of war.
Doctor Nine’s pale hand snaked out and caught a vicious handful of the nurse’s hair and pushed her head down toward his lap. She was willing, eager, and tried to show him by moving quickly, but he pushed her faster. At his speed. In his way. She fumbled for his zipper while he clenched his grasping hand into a fist and blood ran from her tortured scalp.
Behind them, in the trunk of the car, the sound of a child weeping drove them both to madness.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
The Red Rocket idled at the curb, smoke curling from the tailpipe, the red paint burning in the light drizzle. Steam rose from the hood as if the big car had driven straight out of a furnace. It crouched there, powerful and threatening, but not to Rain.
It made her smile.
She got in, buckled up, and looked at Sticks. He frowned.
“What’s wrong?” he asked at once.
Rain smiled at him. “Everything. Let’s go.”
He studied her for a moment longer, then nodded and drove away, heading toward the city. However, when they stopped at a light, Sticks said, “Look at me. Let me see your eyes.”
“Why?”
“I want to see your pupils.”
“Fuck you,” she snapped. “I’m not high.”
“No,” replied Rain with a protracted sigh. “It’s all good. It was a bad night, and I have a lot to tell you.”
“Guess I have some things to tell you, too,” he said. “You first.”
Rain went over it all again. After having shared with the Cracked World Society and Monk, she felt more free to talk about these things, but she still stumbled when she mentioned Doctor Nine. She told him Monk’s story, too. All of it. They were in Manhattan before she finished.
Sticks’s hands were tight on the steering wheel, and that had nothing to do with the traffic. He kept giving her frightened sidelong looks. “Jesus Christ,” he said, over and over again.
“Yeah,” said Rain. “I know.”
They drove in silence. “Before I get to my stuff, let’s figure out what we’re doing, okay? We’re looking for Boundary Street, and we’re both hoping that we can actually drive to the Fire Zone, right?”
“That’s the plan, I thought.”
“I’m wondering, though, what exactly we’re hoping to accomplish here.”
“What do you mean? We both know the answers are in the Zone.”
“Do we, though? I mean, which actual answers are we talking about?”
“To what’s happening,” she said.
“No,” countered Sticks, “which specific answers. A lot of weird shit’s been happening over the last few days. This monster who’s after you, this boogeyman of yours, he seems to be messing with a lot of folks. Now we’re going to a place that maybe exists only in dreams. This ain’t going to be on Google Maps, I can tell you that.”
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