by Simon Clark
When they'd checked out the last room she held out her hand to Ellery Shyly, he looked at it, then reached out to shake it. Robyn's eyes widened in surprise. A tingle ran through her fingers and along her palm. She must be overtired, but it seemed as if a surreal energy had crackled through that handshake.
”I'm Robyn, by the way, and this is Noel.”
For a moment she thought there'd be an awkward moment when Ellery offered his hand to Noel. Noel looked at the man's slender hand with its evenly trimmed nails. But hesitation was negligible. Noel shook Ellery's hand. ”Thanks for helping us out, Ellery”
”No problem. I… I'll leave you to make yourss… selves at home.”
”Thank you.”
He handed Robyn the keys. ”Only keys… you'll have com-complete privacy”
When Robyn said good night to Ellery it shared the same sensation of saying farewell to an old friend from a place she'd lived in for years.
After he'd gone, she sang brightly. ”Home sweet home.”
Noel shook his head. Despite his natural caution he was smiling. ”I can't believe I'm doing this… camping out in a derelict dance hall.”
”It's not derelict, it's-”
”I know. Hibernating.”He put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her tight. ”Hell of a day, kid?”
”You can say that again.”She kissed his lips.
He glanced at his watch. ”It's late.”
She yawned, enjoying a warm glow inside. ”We'll make an early start tomorrow”
”How early?”
”We need to make this place properly habitable. We'll buy food, towels, bed sheets, cleaning materials. You name it.”The glow spread through her entire body. She wanted to hug herself, she felt so happy. ”This is our great adventure, isn't it?”
***
Ellery Hann caught the late bus home. Beyond the window most of the houses were in darkness. In the distance he caught glimpses of skyscrapers that still bore a dusting of silver lights against the night sky. Every so often he allowed the focus of his eyes to shift so he looked at his reflection in the window. The moment he'd seen the couple of runaways talking in the Luxor he knew that they were meant to be there. What's more, he knew with a conviction that hummed in his bones that they'd agree to stay in the apartment.
At times it puzzled him why he'd cleaned the rooms so thoroughly after he'd found the key. Because there was a purpose, he told himself.
There's more to the Luxor than meets the eye. It's more than a refuge where I can go dream of other worlds. The Luxor is waking from its ten-year hibernation. He knew in his heart of hearts that things were going to happen soon-amazing things, miraculous things-but what?
And the girl, Robyn? A shock had run through his body when he first saw her, a lightning bolt of energy that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He was sure he'd seen her somewhere before. But when? She was more than just a familiar face. She seemed significant to his life somehow.
Ellery watched as houses gave way to apartment blocks. A stolen car burned brightly on wasteground down near the railroad track. It was just another night in this low part of town. Most of its inhabitants lived in fear. Even now they'd be lying in bed praying that those raised voices in the street wouldn't draw close to their door. Or that when they woke in the morning their TV would still be in the living room or their car still parked in the street where they'd left it. This was the kind of place that crushed hope under the heel of a boot. Miracles died at birth. But just a little distance away in an old dance hall called the Luxor, everything was different.
Ellery gazed at his reflection in the glass. Miracles in the 'burbs of Chicago were scarce… but not impossible. He angled his face to see faint bruises on his cheek and jaw. Three days ago his old compatriots from school had deployed their fists and feet as vicious weapons. His face had been blackened, the skin grazed, bloodied; his eyebrow had split when his face had been smashed against the sidewalk. In less than seventy-two hours the wounds looked a month old. Who ever said there was no magic left in the Luxor Dance Hall?
***
Benedict West sat in the car beneath the overhanging fringe of branches.
He chewed gum, listened to the radio at low volume. Every few seconds another black feather from the crows in the trees floated down onto the car. By this time the pale hood was spotted with feathers, a Dalmatian pattern that crawled across the metal every time a breath of night air disturbed them. At a little after midnight Benedict had seen a figure emerge from the rear of the Luxor. The owner of the car?
Nope… now there's a mystery He watched the figure of a young man run across the parking lot away from the building and the parked car. So where's the driver?
The man had turned right to follow the industrial service road back to the highway. Just for a second, Benedict had caught sight of the face beneath a streetlight. It was too far away to be sure, but…
”Good God, it's the guy I saw on Friday night,”he breathed out loud.
”Ellery… what was the name?”He brought to mind the library card in the wallet. ”Ellery Hann.”The same guy with the savagely beaten face who'd appeared at his apartment door just hours later with only the faintest of bruises. So tell me, how does anyone heal that fast?
Moments later, Ellery Hann had vanished into the shadows as he headed for the distant highway. Either he'd not noticed Benedicts car parked beneath the crow-laden trees or he'd chosen to ignore it. Benedict returned to his vigil. Maybe the driver would appear next; then Benedict could search the Luxor, maybe track down that elusive videotape. And yet for all he knew there might be an all-night party going on in there.
Promising himself to give the occupants of the parked car another hour to leave, he settled back into the driver's seat. The glow from the radio lent a green tint to his hands as he drummed his fingers on the wheel. The numerals on the dash clock had just flicked to 12:37 when Benedict noticed a stillness extend its dead hand over the trees.
Switching off the radio, he realized there was no longer any movement in the branches above the car. Feathers had stopped falling. There came a sense that the entire world was holding its breath at that moment, expecting something to happen. He leaned out through the side window to look up. The crows were still there. Carved lumps of darkness hunched on the branches. They no longer moved, or cried out, or pecked restlessly at their neighbors' backs. What on earth were they doing? They hadn't all gone to sleep, surely?
He thought: Crows are harbingers of death. They're here for the soul of the victim.
The words pealed through him with all the morbid force of a funeral bell. At that moment the entire feathered nation of birds erupted in furious calling. Without rising from the branches, they flapped coal black wings. Feathers swirled in front of the windshield, a dark fog that obscured his view of the Luxor. And at that instant he heard a scream rise into the night air.
CHAPTER 12
It started with a scream… an awful scream, rising and rising in pitch, until Benedict had to slam his hands over his ears.
Above him, birds beat their wings with frantic violence even though they remained on the branches, talons dug into bark. Their cries echoed from the building, multitracking the cacophony into a vortex of distorted screeches.
The scream rose further in pitch and volume. Benedict still forced his hands against his ears, trying to dampen the sound so it would no longer hurt his ears. Just feet from the car a blurred shape tore past him in a thunderbolt of noise, light and fury. Benedict flinched, half expecting the speeding object to crash into the front of the Luxor. A split second later he realized what the projectile was: a motorcycle ridden at a speed that had to be little short of madness. Its rider had already lost control. The bike slid from under the guy, who tumbled across the parking lot. In a blaze of dazzling sparks the bike skittered across the pavement, too. Two seconds later both bike and rider slowed to a stop outside the main entrance of the Luxor.
Benedict swung himself out of the c
ar to walk-not run-toward the fallen rider. He swallowed, queasy. He anticipated finding a torn corpse, not a walker. Behind him, crows unfurled wings, creating a black surge through the branches-a weird Mexican wave effect. This surge of darkness ran along the line of trees from one end of the lot to the other. And all the time the infernal birds kept up their damn cawing. Hell… now he noticed even more birds on the roof of the building.
As he closed in on what he'd taken to be the corpse of the rider, the guy suddenly sat up on the ground and dragged off his helmet, letting it roll out of his hands and across the blacktop. Benedict moved faster.
Ever get that feeling of deja vu? he asked himself. This came close to an uncanny replay of Friday night, when he'd followed Ellery Hann to the steps. A shiver trickled up his spine. Come to that, was this Hann again? Had he grabbed a bike from somewhere then come tearing back to spill himself all over the asphalt?
When he was thirty paces from the biker, he saw it wasn't Hann. Whereas Hann was slender, almost elfin-like, this guy was chunkier, with a dark beard. The man climbed to his feet and began to run. In an echo of Hann three nights ago, the biker lurched up the stairs to the Luxor's main doors. He pushed at the boards, then grabbed the leading edge of one and tried to tug it free.
Christ, what now? Do I check the guy out? He took a hell of a fall. Or do I write him off as some crackhead and return to the car and go home?
As for searching the Luxor for that damn videotape, tonight was a total bust. The place was busier than Grand Central Station. Noisier, too; the crows were going ape shit in the trees-flapping, crying out, calling like they'd seen something that excited them.
Benedict stood at the bottom of the steps, watching the guy trying to break through the doors. But those things had been battened down firmly with slabs of timber. You'd need a 'dozer to bust through. One moment the guy had been battling with a furious kind of passion to open the doors, then he stopped. He'd not said a word but Benedict had heard his panted grunts. All of a sudden he leaned forward against the door, then slowly turned so he could slide down to a sitting position on the top step, his back to the building. Even in the postmidnight gloom, Benedict saw the streak of glistening black down the pale hue of the board.
Only it wasn't black, Benedict realized on looking closer. Dear God. It was red. A wet, living red, rendered dark by the sodium flare of distant streetlights.
Benedict ran up the steps. ”Hey, buddy, take it easy. I'm going to call an ambulance.”He unclipped the cell phone from his belt.
The biker's face sagged as he began to lose consciousness. Even so, he shook his head. ”No,”he grunted. ”Take me inside.”
”Don't you worry I'll get you to a hospital.”
Again the guy shook his head. Escaping his lips, a guttural ”No.”
Benedict crouched down to see blood dribbling down the guy's chin. He also saw a bloody hole in his T-shirt just beneath the collarbone. As the guy sagged forward a few inches before pushing himself back up against the door, Benedict saw a corresponding hole high between the shoulder blades. The man had been shot.
Benedict knew this didn't look good. The bullet must have top-sliced one lung before it exited. Blood pooled around the guy's buttocks, so it looked as if he sat on a red cushion. Benedict checked the cell phone.
Damn, it was showing the ”no signal”icon. He had to make the call fast.
This guy wasn't going to make it. He could hear the labored breathing; the ruined lung was working hard but it wouldn't be enough to…
Benedict paused, then looked back. No. It wasn't the man's breathing he could hear. The birds made a sound that imitated the respiration of the wounded man. It was close to the rasping tone of a carpenter sawing wood. A slow tearing inhale, followed by a long sighing exhale.
Crouching down beside the man, Benedict looked closely at his face. The man had a knife tattooed on his cheek and a swastika between his eyes.
Now the eyes gleamed with a dull light as if a murky film oozed over each eyeball. The man found it hard to keep his head up. Gravity drew the man's chin to his chest with its gory hole. His breathing slowed, yet the rhythm stayed even.
In the trees and on the roof the birds mimicked the sound of the breathing. Slowing the copycat sound of breath in, breath out. They were still again. Expectant. Waiting for the inevitable.
Harbingers of mortality. Benedict found himself remembering the legend again. Crows were messengers of an imminent death. They gathered at places where doomed people would expire. They synchronized their cries to the rhythm of the dying's breath.
What was it the old man had said in the video? Crows gathered here to try to capture the soul as it fled the deceased's body. If they were successful they flew in jubilant circles while crowing triumphantly. If, however, the soul was nimble enough to elude them, then they'd sit there despondent, before dispersing in ones and twos to fly miserably back to the cornfields outside town.
Benedict felt a hand touch his foot. He looked down. The man had rolled his eyes up toward Benedict's face.
”I'm going to have to drive to a pay phone,”Benedict began.
The man shook his head hard enough to send blood drops flying from his chin. ”No… don't even think about it. Get me inside.”He snapped his head back, knocking the boarded door with his skull. ”Get me in there!”
”The place isn't used anymore. There won't be a phone that works.”
”No. I've got to get in there… You're gonna help me.”The man's eyes burned with a sudden intensity ”You've gotta get me inside.”
”There's nothing in there.”
”There is.”
”Is there someone you know in the building?”
”No. I've gotta get home.”
”Home? It's an old dance hall. There isn't any-”
The man stiffened as a sudden pain shot through him; he bunched one hand into a fist on his lap. All of a sudden the pace of his breathing changed. It quickened. It was shallower, too.
In the trees, the crows matched the shift in respiration. Their cries became a rapid pulsing ah-ah-ah-ah-ah. They kept perfect time with the wounded bikers respiration. Damn the fucking things. It's just a fairy story, Benedict thought in dark fury. Those damn birds can't actually predict a man's death. They can't parody his dying breath.
But they are! They're matching every stroke of his breath. When a blood clot caught in the back of his throat and he had to labor painfully to cough it free, the birds copied the crackling cough with mocking cruelty. When the pain from the man's smashed ribs made him grimace and stop breathing for a moment, they paused, too, filling the night with uncanny silence. Then he started aspirating again-faster, shallower, panting. The flooded lungs were failing to deliver oxygen to heart muscle. And the birds copied the sound, too. A shallow rasping sound issued from hundreds of beaks in diabolical harmony.
Benedict knew that the time for an ambulance had passed. The man's breathing (echoed by the birds) built to a climax. His body shook. His face lifted to stare in horror at the sky then with a single wrenching spasm, his body slumped sideward, his eyes fixed. The eyelids froze, too, in mid blink.
With a shudder, Benedict climbed to his feet. The crows were still again. They'd stopped calling. Not one moved in the darkened trees.
But according to the myth this isn't the end of the process, is it?
Benedict asked himself. He stared at the dead biker at his feet. Then the shrill, excited cries of the birds drew his attention back to them.
In less than a second the birds had taken off in one shrieking black mass. A thousand feathered demons, baying excitedly calling to each other. He watched them ascend in a swirling mass against the stars. For all the world, it looked as if they plunged through the night sky in search of prey. They zigzagged, lunging after something that Benedict could not see.
The birds pursue the fleeing soul of the dead man, Lockram had said.
Right at that moment Benedict believed. The birds were in pursuit. They c
alled to one another, urging their neighbors to fly faster and not let their quarry escape.
The sound came all too suddenly And Benedict flinched. With the abruptness of a roar of victory from the crowd at a football game the birds all cried out at once. The cries quivered with a nerve-bruising intensity At that moment he realized he could also hear sirens emerging through the whoops of the birds. He looked across the parking lot to see half a dozen patrol cars come swinging through the entrance. Blue lights spun.
Above them, a helicopter hung in the sky Benedict turned to gaze down at the man with a bullet hole in his chest.
The chase was over.
***
The detectives would need a statement later. Benedict had no problem with that, although the cop reassured him that the helicopter had recorded all the important details with its nightscope TV camera.
Benedict's involvement was strictly limited to that of innocent bystander who just happened to witness the closing stages. The cop didn't show any reticence in reporting the facts to Benedict as they watched the coroner's van pull away with the corpse in the back.
The biker had been a two-bit crook, by the name of Garth Pearson, who'd been out of jail for a month. He'd stolen a motorcycle, bought a gun, then gone out to raid an all-night store. An off-duty policeman picking up a snack happened upon the robbery and planted an accurate.38 round through the chest of the crook who was threatening to blow the clerk's head off. The crook dropped the gun. Fled to the bike. Made it as far as the Luxor, where Benedict saw him die. The cop's matter-of-fact tone told Benedict that the situation was a regular occurrence. If anything, a single shot had saved tax dollars on a trial and jail time. The police weren't even interested in why Benedict had chosen to spend the middle hours of the night sitting in his car in a lonely parking lot. But then, insomnia, or solo jaunts to deserted industrial zones weren't illegal.