Double Cross

by Carolyn Crane

  Suddenly the room is lit up red. Sirens. The three sleepwalkers jerk to attention—including the woman who bit me. Blood drools down her chin. As if on command, they head back toward my living room.

  I gape in disbelief at my stomach; blood oozes from a spot just to the left of my belly button. I want to stick my finger in it and see how deep it is, but I’m afraid to. I roll my T-shirt so it doesn’t get into the wound, and I just watch the blood, feeling sick, pulling mindlessly on my handcuffed hand.

  They’re coming back. I pull the blanket over me but they rush right by, carrying equipment—sledgehammer, blowtorch, welding mask. They’re going for the window. Spidey smashes the pane, and the three of them lumber out to the fire escape.

  Rustling next to me—the woman with braids is waking up! She rises and heads toward the fire escape.

  Sounds in the living room.

  “Hurry up—in here!” I scream. “Hurry!” What’s taking them so long?

  She’s nearly out the window as my room fills with blinding light. Flashlight beams.

  “Police! Stop!” A cop darts after her and hauls her back inside.

  Somebody flicks on the bedroom light.

  I point. “Three more are getting away!”

  A pair of cops goes out the broken window.

  “Are you hurt?” A woman officer comes to my side. It’s obvious I am; the front of my belly is bloody. She looks at it with concern.

  “She bit me,” I say in a strangely calm tone.

  “EMTs will be here any moment.”

  I feel nauseated.

  She asks me if I have a key to the handcuffs, and I point out to the corner where it is. “Please,” I say.

  She retrieves it as other cops march the woman with the braids out. The woman still looks asleep. What does it take to wake these people?

  A different officer, this one wearing latex gloves, presses gauze to my wound. “Ambulance on the way,” he says.

  The first officer, who now introduces herself as Dana, unlocks me. She wants to know who locked me up and why. She looks skeptical when I insist it was voluntary, to prevent sleepwalking. I give them the story of the attack, leaving out the stuff about Ez and Stuart and us disillusionists. No, I don’t know them. They broke down my door and attacked me. The cops don’t seem overly shocked at the biting. Or are they just trying to keep me calm?

  My stomach feels weird and quivery; I can’t stop thinking of the blood I’m losing, and the feel of that woman’s tongue on my skin. And saliva carries pathogens. What diseases has that woman picked up from other victims? What has she transmitted to me?

  I pretend to listen to Dana, who’s giving me information on filing domestic abuse charges for some inexplicable reason that I don’t care about. My stomach is bleeding through the gauze, making bright red splotches. Somebody else assures me an ambulance is coming.

  More cops arrive, including a pair of detectives. The lead detective, a no-nonsense woman named Sara, has light brown skin and short, salt-and-pepper hair. She wants me to repeat my story and I comply. Even through the haze of my medical trauma, I find myself thinking things like I’m glad I sleep in a T-shirt and sweats, and not something sexy or raggedy. And I have this sudden empathy for people who end up on the TV show Cops.

  “She bit at you with her teeth?” Detective Sara asks. “You’re sure about that?”

  “Pretty hard to mistake,” I say, staring at her tiny little dolphin earrings.

  Sara exchanges glances with a pink-faced, sixty-something bald man whom she introduces as her partner, Al. Sara says, “We’d like to keep that detail out of the media for now.”

  It takes awhile for this to register. “Oh my God. That’s what happened to my neighbor, isn’t it? Scott Feethum. That’s why he thought they were perverts!”

  If Sara and Al are impressed by my deduction, they don’t show it, and they won’t confirm or deny it. They do imply that the blowtorch and sledgehammer are new developments.

  “I can’t believe you would make the neighborhood think it’s harmless druggie burglars when people are actually in danger,” I say.

  Detective Al asks me again, more sternly this time, to keep the cannibal detail to myself.

  I snort, wondering if they’ve made the connection to the cannibal cases three years ago, and how many of them understand that it was a dream invader running this show, or if they all still think it’s Satanists gone wild.

  “Any idea where they went off to?” Al asks. When I prove to be no help on that count, he tells me what a bad idea it is to have cuffed myself to the bed. While he recites a list of bad things that could’ve happened—things that even my habitually paranoid mind would’ve never thought of—a pair of EMTs pushes through the small knot of people to look at my stomach. One of them, a blond man my age with tiny glasses, pulls up the gauze and washes the wound with a stinging solution and some sort of wipe while I monitor his face for signs of shock and pity.

  “Did it go through?” I finally ask.

  “Through?” he asks.

  “To my intestines?”

  “No, this is pretty superficial,” he says. “And organs like intestines tend to move around, like marbles inside a water balloon.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  He nods. “If this had been a dog bite, you’d need quite a few more stitches.”

  “I need stitches?”

  “We’ll let a doctor decide that. You were lucky.” He sticks a butterfly bandage onto my belly, and more gauze on top.

  “Because a dog’s mouth is bigger?” I ask. “That’s why it would be worse?”

  “And a dog’s teeth are sharper,” he says, “made for ripping and tearing. Human teeth tend to hydroplane.” All this talk is calming me down, even as we move onto the topic of saliva-borne bacteria. He’s not nearly as concerned as I am, though another EMT brings up the remote chance of rabies. I’m just starting to freak out about that when Simon swings in.

  “Justine!”

  I jump out of bed, which kills my stomach. “Thank God!” I say.

  He hugs me, shaggy coat and all. I’m feeling shaky all of a sudden. “She bit my stomach!” I give him the cop version of what happened; he can put together the rest.

  “It’s okay,” he says, clutching me to him. “You’re safe.” He wants to see, and I pull the bandage partway off. The EMT informs him that while it’s superficial, they’re recommending transport.

  The detectives are back with more questions. Did any of the people look familiar? What did they seem to be after? As I tell them the sleepwalkers were focused on my drawers and dresser a horrible thought occurs to me.

  I go over and open the little box where I kept my descrambler. Gone. I look at Simon, who goes rigid.

  “Something wrong?” Sara asks. “You guys notice something?”

  “It’s impossible to tell,” I say. “They messed everything up.”

  “Do you have that bracelet of mine you took?” Simon asks hoarsely.

  “That’s still in my car. Under the passenger seat,” I say. “Here.” I toss him the keys and he takes off.

  “What’s going on?” Sara asks.

  “He’s worried about his valuable bracelet,” I say.

  Sara and Al are suspicious. They think something’s up, and there are more questions, some repeats, and then I catch sight of Shelby and Avery coming up the hall. A uniformed officer won’t let them through, because my bedroom is a crime scene.

  I go to join them in the living room.

  Shelby wraps an arm around my shoulder, and I tell her what happened. Avery stands next to her, monitoring the cops with his intense gray eyes, running his hand through his nut-brown hair.

  “They took my descrambler,” I whisper to Shelby.

  “I know. We saw Simon going out. He thinks they wish to kill Ez. Under command of Stuart. We must go.”

  “I’m coming, too.” I tell Sara that we’re heading out for a bite. She and Al are suspicious, and they don’t want me to leave,
but they can’t make me stay. I take their business cards, promising I’ll come down to the station and make a statement later. I grab a sweater and jeans from my laundry basket and quickly change in the bathroom.

  In a harrowing display of multitasking, Shelby explains the Ez situation to Avery while driving at crazy speeds to the Sapphire Sunset, which unfortunately involves taking the tangle. She leaves the Otto aspect out of it.

  I watch out the window; the lights of the city stream by as her car careens around one turnpike after another. I think about Ez, alone in that booth. Sleepwalkers trying to get in.

  “Highcaps victimizing highcaps,” Avery says. “I don’t know what to think about that.”

  “Sometimes we don’t know what to think about it either,” I say. “But this one’s obviously innocent. And those sleepwalkers are going to …” I tighten my grip on the door handle. “How did they know I had a descrambler?”

  “Perhaps Simon’s questioning of old witnesses led Stu to you,” Shelby says as she barrels down a ramp. “Perhaps they spied on Ez and saw you breach the field.”

  “There are always people lurking around that booth,” I say. “It would’ve been easy to eavesdrop. Could Stu have people watching her?”

  “Man who commands sleepwalking cannibals can make people do many things, I think,” Shelby says.

  The street in front of the Sapphire Sunset is brightly lit and quiet. The building itself looks quiet, too. Even sleepy.

  Shelby pulls up behind Simon’s black beater and we hop out. There’s still dirty snow around the sides of the building, and Avery spots the footprints.

  We follow him around and down the steep, dark, slippery side of the building. You can see the lake beyond the rooftops, moonlight in the waves. My stomach wound feels wet, but at least I’m not freaking about my head.

  Around in back we find a small window—the men’s bathroom?—that’s been thoroughly mauled. The bars are bent willy-nilly, likely through a combination of the blowtorch and the sledgehammer, and the glass is gone, aside from bloody shards around the edge.

  “These nuts don’t fool around,” Avery says, knocking the last of the glass away with a piece of cardboard. He goes first, stepping up on an orange milk crate Shelby found.

  “Once you’re in, you want to go out to the bar area and turn right,” I tell him as he scrambles in. “Take the stairs up to the kind of balcony catwalk thing!” I whisper loudly.

  “We’re right behind,” Shelby says as he disappears.

  I help Shelby through. “I like that he didn’t tell us to stay here and wait,” I tell her as I hoist myself over the ledge. It hurts when I use my stomach muscles. Did she bite a muscle? Should I have gone to the ER?

  “Avery does not believe in infantilizing women,” Shelby informs me.

  Thumps overhead. We rush out the bathroom into the dim piano bar, rounding tables and chairs to get to the stairs. A thud, and a woman’s moan. I take the stairs two at a time.

  Up top outside the coat check booth, Avery’s trying to shake off the two sleepwalking women, whose faces are attached to each of his arms; it’s like they’re human barnacles, clinging, biting. I rush over and grab the one woman’s long brown hair and pull, which takes her mouth off Avery at least. Shelby jabs the other with the stun gun and she collapses, then Avery and I hold the other woman still while Shelby zaps her. The one who bit me.

  Crashes from inside the coat check booth. I peer in to see Simon and the man in Spidey pajamas, both bloody, swinging at each other as they stagger through piles of coats and smashed furnishings. The sleepwalking man’s eyes look dead, and his movements are clumsy, but he’s an effective fighter all the same. I remember how impervious to pain he seemed when I kicked his face back in my bedroom.

  Ez huddles in a corner, hugging her legs. Is she hurt?

  Avery slams into the coat check room door with his right shoulder. “Is there a key?”

  “Stop, you won’t get in,” I say. Blood on his left arm. Bitten.

  “We have to try!” He bangs on.

  “Stop!” Shelby grabs his shirt. “Is fielded,” she says. “Force field! Human flesh cannot pass through.”

  “We need a descrambler.” I spy one on the floor inside the room and I slap the window. “Ez!” I call. “Ez! Can you hear me?”

  She looks catatonic. The men fight on, just feet from her.

  “There are two descramblers in there,” I say. Avery and Shelby peer in—I point out one descrambler near the door, the other under an overturned lamp. Spidey plows Simon into a wall, like a quarterback smashing up against a dummy.

  I pound on the window. “Ez! We need your help. We need you to help us help Simon.”

  She holds her stomach, rocking.

  Simon and Spidey careen to the floor, knocking over a bookcase. Spidey is on top of Simon, punching him. Simon fumbles around with his hand, grabs an iron, and smashes it, point first, against the man’s ear. It stops him long enough for Simon to drive it into the man’s eye, and still the sleeping man won’t stop fighting. Spidey grabs the iron and they fight over the iron now. Blood is everywhere, but most of all on the man in Spidey pajamas.

  “There has to be another way,” Avery says. “It’s a damn coat check booth. How do the coats get in?”

  “There—” I point to the carousel. “And this gully for money. But no human flesh can pass.” The iron flies into a paneled wall. The man tries for a head butt; Simon slips the worst of it. “And because of the angle of the gully, we can’t fire our stun guns. There’s no straight shot.”

  “Okay, okay.” Avery whips off his belt and kneels on the floor, seeming to disassemble it and reassemble it. Feverishly he builds a contraption that involves a lever, a spring, a rubber stopper, and a bendy tube. His belt is some kind of James Bond weapon.

  More crashes from inside.

  Shelby screams. The man’s punching Simon, who looks awfully floppy. Ez stands and starts punching Spidey’s back.

  Meanwhile, Avery’s added another section of tube to his thing. He stands and slides it under the little semicirclular holes in the window, along the gully.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Corner-shooting tranquilizer dart gun.” He aims. “Damn.”

  Ez is in the way.

  I feel something brush my legs just as Shelby screams.

  “What?” Avery says, still aiming.

  “We got it!” I haul the woman off Shelby’s leg. Shelby stuns her and she goes down. Shelby stares vacantly at her torn pants. A woman bit her. I know how she feels. I grab her stun gun and shock the other, just for prevention.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes,” Shelby says morosely.

  A low moan from inside the coat check booth.

  “Direct hit,” Avery says. I pop up and peer into the window. The man in pajamas lies on the floor. Simon grabs the descramblers, puts one in Ez’s hand, opens the door, and pulls her out of there.

  Ez looks dazed. I wonder how much of it is her injury—she’s holding something bloody to her side—and how much is being out of that tiny room for the first time in years. She takes a deep breath and looks all around, then her legs give out. Simon catches her, but he’s not much better off.

  The three of us help them to the floor—Simon leaning against the wall, Ez laid out prone. She’s got a bar towel. She’s been stanching her wounds with it.

  “Justine, you’re a nurse,” she whispers. “Help me.”

  I’m about to tell her I’m not, but I don’t want her to be even more upset, so I say, “Let’s take a look.” I peek under her towel. It’s so bloody, it’s hard to see. Do we need an ambulance?

  “Did he get my intestines?” she asks.

  Simon takes her hand as I examine the area.

  She groans. The blood isn’t gushing as bad as I worried it might be. Even the worst of the three gashes doesn’t appear to go deep. It’s long, though, like the man tore a swath of flesh. “Looks like Simon stopped him before he could reall
y dig in,” I say. “None of these wounds look deep. Still, we’ll get you to the hospital.” I nestle the towel back. I’ve never wished so badly that I was a real nurse, and that I could truly help her. “Luckily, human mouths aren’t as good at biting as a dog’s.”

  “You can’t let them go,” she says. “They won’t stop eating people.”

  Simon strokes her hair from her forehead. “We won’t let them go,” he says.

  Behind us, Shelby and Avery drag the unconscious women into the coat check booth—no easy feat with just two descramblers. From their discussion, it sounds like a math story problem—it takes two people to carry a person into a force-field prison, and a body has to be touching a descrambler to get through, and there are two to bring in, et cetera.

  “Hurry up,” I say over my shoulder. We may not need an ambulance, but Ez and Simon both need attention—Simon possibly more than Ez. His face is grotesquely red and puffy, and blood from his mouth covers his chin and much of his neck.

  “I couldn’t believe they finally got in,” Ez says.

  Simon squeezes Ez’s hand. “What do you mean, finally?”

  “They’ve come by a couple times this week. Late, around closing,” she says.

  I’m shocked. “Like this? Sleepwalking?”

  Simon hisses out a breath.

  “Yeah,” she says. “I could tell they were … like that. The one good thing about being in there. See, Stu—my old boyfriend. Long story. He’s—”

  “We know about Stu and you,” Simon says. “God, did I lead them to you?”