But no movement.
At all.
“Christ, this is weird.” The flatness of the words didn’t fail to impress him. They sounded empty. There was nobody around to hear them. Nobody. Spoken internally, that word had weight. It thudded in his temples like a big bass drum.
It occurred to Ian that he might want to get his bad self out of the park. He might want to do it soon, before whatever wasn’t out there got him and turned him into nothing, too. In his drunken state, he envisioned a big old void sitting in the middle of the park, just waiting to suck up anything that moved. The idea cracked him up; he stood there, laughing in the middle of the path, until it wasn’t funny anymore.
Then he fell silent, and started thinking again.
“Well, Mr. Macklay,” he informed himself in his soberest tones. “Either you will retreat like a coward or keep going like an asshole. Or you will stand here all night like an idiot, which isn’t much of a choice, either. So … vich vun vill it be, eh?” he concluded in his best sinister Nazi voice.
He wavered through a moment’s indecision.
“So it’s an asshole, is it?” he finally announced. “Well, have at you!” And he moved deeper into the park, toward the heart of the mystery.
He reached the area with the colorful benches and paused again. There were little slogans written on them, a different one for every bench. He took a moment to check them out with growing curiosity.
WHAT IS THE BRIDGE BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR GOVERNMENT? the first one read. Instead of using the word bridge, they had a little stencil design of a suspension bridge that seemed to be the recurring device in every little slogan. WHAT IS THE BRIDGE BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR FAMILY? WHAT IS THE BRIDGE BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR COMMUNITY?
On the bench that asked the question WHAT IS THE BRIDGE BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR HEALTH? some wiseguy had inked out the word health and substituted the word death.
WHAT IS THE BRIDGE BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR DEATH? the bench now read.
“Oh, that’s cute,” Ian observed. “That’s just adorable.” He moved closer, dragged his finger across the addition. It smeared; it was fresh. “Who wrote this shit?” he wanted to know.
The park answered him with silence.
And then he saw, way off to the right-hand side in the center of the park, that they’d actually built a bridge of sorts. It looked like something for kids to play on: a big wooden hulk, maybe thirty feet long, very cubic in design but still suggestive of a bridge’s general contours.
Actually, it looks stupid, he noted. Whose brilliant idea was this?S ome civic organization, turning our city’s parks into monumental think pieces that we can savor for generations to come.
Except that the only people who ever come here anymore are junkies, whores, bums, and dealers.
None of whom, he remembered abruptly, are currently present.
Ian glanced around the park again. He was at a much better vantage point now; the center of the park was essentially a clearing, and the central promenade extended away to either side of him. Still nothing. Still nobody.
“Well, obviously,” he told himself, “this is a setup. They built this bridge because they knew I was coming. They did this just to confound me. You bet.
“Well, I’ll show you!” he announced to the emptiness. “This isn’t any garden-variety twisto you’re dealing with here! This is primo loco!” He drained his beer, tossed the empty behind his back toward a handy waste receptacle, and actually made the shot. “Ta da!” He bowed for his nonexistent audience, did a sweeping gardyloo. Nobody applauded, and the joke wore thin. It occurred to him that Josalyn was probably worried by now; he was roughly forty-five minutes late, by his guesstimate. And here he was, posturing like a clown for nobody at all to enjoy.
In the middle. Of the deathly silence. Of the park.
A thought struck him, suddenly and reassuringly. It had the down-home tone of reason to it, firmly ameliorating the state of mind produced by his wilder flights of fancy.
There was probably just a big bust here, he reasoned. A knife fight, or a big dope deal that brought the cops in en masse. And all that bridge shit really is the work of some stupid civic group, spending thousands of tax dollars on some idiotic renovation that they think is really clever because, gosh, they’ll make us think about how lucky we all are to be rich Manhattanites with this kind of money to throw around in ludicrous fucking displays. Yeah, that’s probably it to a tee.
All the same, I think I’ll check out yonder bridge there. See if they put a sliding board on it, or anything decent. Maybe Josalyn and I can come back here and have a little fun.
If da boogyman don’t git us.
He hummed the theme to the Twilight Zone as he vaulted over the bench marked WHAT IS THE BRIDGE BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR DEATH? and into the center of the park.
All the way over to the bridge, he felt fine. There was an oddness to knowing that he was alone, and that civilization was getting farther away to either side with every step; but it wasn’t anything grimly foreboding. No alarms were going off in his head. No cold chills were racing up or down his spine. He felt great.
He had shifted over to the Perry Mason theme by the time he reached the bridge, scrutinizing it from every side. No slides. No stairs. No fun stuff at all. He sighed in disappointment, realizing that namby-pamby community spokespeople actually were responsible for the whole silly affair after all: only well-meaning people could possibly build toys that were no fun to play with.
Oh, well, he thought. At least it brought me to this side of the park. I’ll write a letter to my congressman in the morning.
He started to saunter away, toward Josalyn’s apartment.
Suddenly, for some reason, a scene from Stephen King’s The Shining leapt to mind. It was the one where Danny, the little kid, was playing in the snow outside the Overlook Hotel, and he found one of those big concrete tubes that kids like to climb through, and he got in, and suddenly he became aware of something else that was in the tube there with him: a kid who had climbed in there and couldn’t get out, who had died there, who clamored toward Danny with a pathos that bordered on revulsion and then surpassed it, clearly wanting Danny to die there, too, to stay with him, forever …
Ian found himself simultaneously wondering why Kubrick didn’t put that in the film and thinking, Momma, get me outta here, this place is starting to give me the creeps. He was not surprised to find himself walking at a highly accelerated pace.
“This,” he told himself aloud, “is ridiculous. Fucking Stephen King. This is all his fault.” But he couldn’t joke away the terror that was building inside of him, like a tornado gathering fury, as he moved step by step toward the promenade.
He reached the first of the inner ring of trees, a massive oak that could easily hide a man. He peered behind it cautiously, stepping away gingerly, though he knew that there was nobody behind it. There wasn’t. He patted the tree like an old pal and moved beyond it.
And something stepped into his path.
“I knew you’d come,” it said, with a voice both mellifluous and menacing. “I’ve been waiting here for you.”
Behind the next tree, Ian’s mind blurted irrationally. It’s always behind the next tree. But he didn’t show any of this to his assailant, opting instead for what he hoped was dispassionate cool.
“I don’t suppose you baked me a cake,” he said, freezing in his tracks and grinning like Dr. Sardonicus.
Rudy grinned back. His teeth gleamed in the diffused moonlight.
“No, I didn’t,” Rudy said, taking a long step forward. It made Ian recoil despite himself, made him edge backwards entirely against his will. “But I brought you something else that you might find reassuring.”
He extended his hand toward Ian. His fingers were wrapped around a sharp wooden stake.
“That’s what we’re traditionally killed with, the way I understand it,” Rudy said. “Since you think you’re such a hotshot, I thought you might like to give it a try.”
�
��I don’t suppose you brought a hammer with you, either,” Ian replied, shaking in his shoes and trying hard not to betray it. “What am I supposed to do: chase you around with that thing and wait for you to let me stab you? Come on. That’s ridiculous.”
“It certainly is,” Rudy quipped. “That’s why I wouldn’t put it past you.” Touché, said a sick part of Ian’s mind: the craziest part, the one that’s suicidal.
Ian wrestled severely with that part of his mind as he dragged out the best response he could come up with, under the circumstances. “You’re a really funny guy,” he said. “Why waste your time with this Bela Lugosi shtick? You should check out Robin Williams. He’s got a lot more to say to the eighties.”
“Keep laughing,” Rudy said. “Keeping hamming it up. The fact of the matter is that I’m going to kill you.
“Unless you kill me first.”
“Zat so?” Ian did his best to suppress the laughter, purely hysterical, that wanted to climb up through his throat. Some inner well of strength … the same one that had bailed him out the night before … whispered softly in his ear before exploding outward. Be cool, it said. Buy time. Wait for your moment and get out of here alive.
“Zat a fact?” he repeated, taking an unexpected step forward. Rudy jerked back a step by reflex, and Ian smiled. “Maybe we oughta just go back and forth for a while. I mean, hey! We could trip the light fantastic out here! Just you and me, baby: dancing the night away.” He took another step forward and did a simulated cha-cha-cha.
Rudy didn’t back off; Ian found himself suddenly closer than he liked. Fear rippled visibly through him; he stopped dancing and stood there awkwardly.
It was Rudy’s turn to smile.
“You still don’t understand what you’re up against, do you?” He shook his head and went tsk-tsk. “You don’t realize what I’m capable of.”
“Do you?” Ian grinned fiercely, put on his best Cecil Turtle imitation. “Help, Mr. Wizard!” he yelled; then, in his regular voice: “Have you seen those cartoons, or am I wasting my time?”
“You’re wasting your time,” Rudy growled, taking several quick steps forward. Ian was backing off before he even knew it. “You won’t make a fool of me tonight, my friend. Tonight, you’re mine. Tonight, and forever after.”
“You don’t say.” Ian’s voice sounded remarkably calm and glib, but it was a façade. The cold hand of fear had wrapped itself around his nuts and was squeezing him slowly, flooding his guts with weakness and sickly discomfort. His heel struck an exposed tree root, and he stumbled, nearly losing his composure entirely. His mind told him to be cool, buy time, but there was a rising note of panic in the voice.
“You’re not so tough after all, are you?” Rudy asked, stepping closer, keeping Ian off balance and in retreat. “I’m a lot scarier when you’re not with a bunch of your little friends, aren’t I? Oh, yes. Much scarier indeed.” His eyes flashed bright red, almost blinding, for a moment. “You little shit. This is too easy.”
“Oh, YEAH?” Something snapped in Ian at that moment; he lurched forward, knocking Rudy back a couple of feet, and stood his ground in shivering anger. “Well, let me tell you something, pinhead! You’re not nearly as scary as you are obnoxious! I oughta snap your ass in half!”
Rudy smiled boyishly, biding his time. “Then take the stake, hotshot,” he said. “You’ll need it.”
“Piss off!”
“C’mon. Take the stake.” Rudy slowly proffered it, point first. It looked extremely sharp. Ian eyed it nervously; every muscle in his body tightened.
And then he remembered his knife.
“For you, man?” Ian roared. “Don’t make me laugh! You say that you’re a terrifying vampire? Ha! I wanna see some fireworks!
“Let’s see you turn into a bat, okay?” Rudy looked uncertain; Ian pressed on. “Surely you can pull that one off! It’s the easiest trick in the book! Or how about a wolf, or a weasel, or a wombat? Boy, I’d love to see a wombat right now, if you could swing it.”
“Shut up.” Rudy’s voice was a menacing hiss.
“Hey! How ’bout a rat?” Ian yelled, undaunted. “You’ve got all the requisite character traits …”
WHAP! Ian didn’t even have time to see the left hand come up and smack him across the face; it was that fast. He staggered backwards, his mind gone white-hot and blank for a minute. Then his vision cleared, and the pain set in. God, that mother is strong! he flashed, and then Rudy was advancing again.
“That’s it,” Rudy snarled. “No more games.” He took another two steps forward. “It’s time for you to die.”
Ian backed up and into something large and solid. He jumped; his hands jerked back to see what he’d hit. The tree, he noted. The first one. Oh, boy. Automatically, his right hand slipped into his back pocket and wrapped around the hilt of the stiletto. He hoped that Rudy wouldn’t notice.
Slash him and run, he thought, even as his voice said, “Get out of my face.”
“Time to join your girlfriend,” Rudy drawled malignantly. “Won’t that be fun?”
“WHAT?” Ian yelled, all the air rushing out of him.
“She’s mine now,” Rudy hissed, watching the way that Ian seemed to deflate and loving every second of it. “I got her …”
“You LIAR!” Ian shrieked, whipping out the stiletto. He made a roundhouse swing, the blade flicking out about midway to the side of Rudy’s head and gleaming in the darkness as …
… something much too quick for the eye to catch whooshed between them, striking Ian’s hand with sledgehammer force. The knife went spiraling crazily off into the dirt. Ian stared in shock and pain at the stake in Rudy’s hand, its point now hovering between their faces. Rudy had disarmed him with it, and brought it back around, before Ian even knew what happened.
Rudy lowered the stake and took a step forward, grinning.
I’m fucked, Ian’s mind informed him in a voice that was strangely calm. His body started to twist away in a last desperate attempt at flight.
And something punched in through his belly.
Ian let out a strangled yelp of agony; his body doubled up slightly, then sagged and slumped back against the tree. His bulging eyes stared down in disbelief at the foot and a half of wooden stake that protruded from his belly, the oil-black gouts of blood that drenched the stake, Rudy’s hand, the ground at their feet. His own hands came up weakly to clutch the wooden shaft. Rudy twisted it ever so slowly, pushed it in another inch.
Ian tried to scream; he gagged instead, and thick freshets of blood streamed out from his mouth and nose. He choked again, the pain receding now into merciful shock, his eyes glazing over. He looked up into Rudy’s face. The image grew hazy, distorted, then blank …
… and he was watching a stranger named Ian Macklay: an old man on a porch swing, with a corncob pipe in his hand and a gaggle of wide-eyed grandkids at his feet, spinning a yarn that held them in joyful captivity. He watched the man grow magically younger, slip backwards through a life that was marked by love and laughter, dance madly past the marriages of children, the births of children, the man’s own marriage and then further back, further back, to a barroom where the young man sat with his good friends Allan and Joseph, to a bedroom where he coupled with a lovely young lady named Josalyn Horne on a hot, muggy night that seemed so far away …
He saw all the things that would never come to pass.
“Now,” the voice hissed, right next to his ear. Ian jerked back instantly, the clouds rushing away. Much too clearly, he saw that Rudy’s face was only inches from his own. He saw the eyes, bearing down on his like crimson headlights. He saw the teeth; they were the ones from the dream.
So long. So sharp.
“No,” he burbled through a mouthful of blood. It sprayed in Rudy’s face, sent tiny rivulets trickling down the cheeks and forehead. He brought his left hand up to Rudy’s face and tried to hold it back. Rudy pushed forward, forcing the hand back slowly, until Ian could feel the cold breath on his throat.
Rudy bellowed and squealed and twitched like a bird on a high-voltage fence. Ian had just enough time for one tight-lipped grin of victory. Then Rudy’s arm slammed forward.
And the point of the stake ripped through Ian Macklay’s back, sinking four inches into the great oak behind him.
Josalyn sat at her desk, trying vainly to concentrate on her work. The typewriter was silent before her, a blank piece of paper jutting impotently from it. A Number 2 pencil, extremely sharp, trembled in her hand above some scratchily rendered notes.
All day, Josalyn had been unable to think straight. Ever since Ian awakened her this morning, and her eyes opened to see his tired-but-smiling face, the image had imposed itself at every opportunity. It simultaneously frightened and delighted her; her little heart was all atwitter.
She’d spent the day making the apartment look nice, cleaning and rearranging things with almost maniacal fervor. At a certain point … just as she’d caught herself rearranging the throw pillows on the couch for the fourth or fifth time … it had occurred to her that she was acting very strangely, not at all like her usual self. That was when she’d realized how much he’d come to mean to her, in just a very short time.
Then, after an hour of prettying herself up, she’d decided to do some writing while she waited. There was an hour to kill before he was due, and she couldn’t just spend it twiddling her thumbs … although, as it turned out, that was exactly what she’d done.
It was now 10:40, and Ian was just slightly more than an hour late. Despite herself, she had begun to worry. There was probably a reasonable explanation, she knew; as crazy as he was, it wouldn’t surprise her if he turned out to be one of the world’s least punctual guys. But all the fears that she’d spent the day repressing bubbled up to the surface, unstoppably; her worst fantasies came to visit her, one by one.
I just wish he’d call, she thought, and let me know what’s going on. Even if he said that he wouldn’t be able to make it, at least I wouldn’t have to worry. This is crazy. Why doesn’t he call?
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