It was the first, and the last, warm moment that they would ever share.
The uptown local was coming. They could feel and hear its thunderous approach, shaking the pavement beneath their feet as they rushed down the subway stairs.
“Damn,” T. C. moaned, puffing and panting between the phrases. He still had Armond cradled in his arms. “Anybody got a token?”
“I’ve got slugs,” Danny offered, panting just as much without the extra burden. Armond gave him a funny look. “Black market duplicates. Work just like the real thing. At five for a dollar, you can’t beat ’em.”
“Where you get those things?” T. C. wanted to know.
“You just have to know the right people,” Danny answered, winking.
They hit the bottom of the stairs. T. C. set Armond down in front of the turnstiles, and Danny doled out the bogus tokens, just as the train stuck its nose into the station. They moved quickly onto the platform and turned toward the sound. Rudy was there, near the end of the platform, alone.
“Claire,” Armond said quickly, turning to her. “I want you to stay here and call the office …”
“WHAT?” she yelled over the roar of the train. A red flush crept into her features.
“Please,” he said. “There’s no time. You must call Allan and have Joseph pick you up. We will need you all at the next station. Please.”
“IT’S NOT FAIR!” she yelled. The tears were starting to come now. She glanced down the platform at Rudy, saw that he was watching them with smug detachment. Without being fully aware of it, she gave him a desperate look. Rudy frowned and cocked his head.
“You better do what he said,” T. C. growled. He didn’t miss the exchange. It filled him with a sudden and deep distrust.
Before them, the train shuddered to a halt.
“Please,” Armond said, but it was not a beseechment. “Believe me; it is for the best.”
Claire looked at Danny for help, but he refused to meet her gaze. The tears had arrived; her hands were balled up into fists of helpless fury. T. C. watched her with impassive eyes. Armond nodded grimly, sympathetically, and conclusively.
The doors opened.
“I’ll do it,” she said finally, her voice cracking under the strain. “But I’ll never let you forget it.” Then, addressing this last part specifically to Danny, “You fuckers!”
Danny took it like a slap across the kisser. He started to protest weakly, but she would have none of it, turning away to watch as Rudy boarded the second car from the rear. Armond took Danny’s arm gently and said, “Come.” Then he led the young man backwards onto the train, T. C. beside them.
“I’m sorry …” Danny called after her.
As the doors slid smoothly shut.
Claire “De Loon” Cunningham stared at her shoes as the train rumbled slowly away from the station. Only once did she glance up, just in time to see a flash of Rudy’s face staring out the window at her with something like confusion. Then he was gone, the last car whipping by her, gradually picking up speed as the dark mouth of the tunnel sucked it in.
Leaving her alone in the Bleecker Street station.
“Be careful,” she whispered, very quietly. “Please be careful.” She was not at all sure to whom the statement was addressed.
It was now 12:25, precisely.
Rudy Pasko was alone in the second-to-the-last car. The two young couples that had shared it with him, for all of forty-five seconds, had moved to the safety of the next car up. Like Doug, they had never felt such evil; unlike Doug, they had no interest in checking it out.
Later, they would remark to friends that every hair on their bodies stood on end when he walked through the door, and that the car had seemed to turn cold as a meat locker. “If we hadn’t gotten out of there,” they’d say, “he would have killed us. We just knew it …”
But in fact, Rudy had barely given them a second thought. He was thinking about the Bleecker Street girls: the one that now decorated St. Anthony’s Rectory, and the one that remained at the station behind him. The former gave him no problems; that was a jolly bit of fun; he’d like to do it again sometime, maybe take a dozen slaves up to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and whip up something really creative.
But the second one bothered him. He wanted to know why she got on the platform if she wasn’t going to get on the train. He wanted to know … not out of humanitarian reasons, of course, but because he sensed that it was somehow important … why she was crying.
And he wanted to know where exactly he’d seen her before. There was something hauntingly familiar about that face, something that stood poised in the back of his brain like a word on the tip of his tongue. He knew that he knew her, and it was driving him crazy, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
Because Rudy’s mind was not working properly. Rudy’s mind was like a train derailment, irreparably twisted and battered, an Independence Day pig-out of fiery explosions. It had more kinks in it than Plato’s Retreat. Killing the girl, and the couple hours of sleep, had helped a little. Now he just felt like someone on a bad acid trip, as opposed to a baby left abandoned on the doorstep of Hell.
He stared out the window at the dark walls of the tunnel, trying to get the night in order. First Josalyn, then Stephen, he thought; but beyond that, things started to get hazy. He didn’t know where to hide the bodies, for one thing … how to keep them safe from the sun, and under his control. Should he lure them down into the tunnels, save himself the trouble of trying to find good stash places? Could he actually lure them anywhere, now that he’d spent so much time scaring them half to death? Could he, perhaps, control them in wakefulness the way he controlled them in sleep? Could he make them come to him?
He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure. Nothing was coming out the way he’d planned it. Everything was going kablooie, blowing up in his face like a loaded cigar. The last twenty-four hours had wreaked serious havoc on more than his balls, brain, and bunghole; they had also done a serious number on his confidence.
Like a little girl, I take you, the ancient voice regaled him; and then Ian, as Bullwinkle, saying watch me pull a rabbit outta my hat! And again, more recently, not in words but in pictures, the roller-skating one-that-got-away. The mocking sounds and visions ganged up on him, made him feel cheap and shitty as they kicked him around.
So Rudy was not in peak form when the door at the front of the car slid open. He whipped around suddenly, wired-out and startled; when the three men stepped in and closed the door behind him, fear massaged his chest like a cold set of hands. He took an automatic step away from them, watching their faces. They were staring at him.
They were seeing him clearly.
It was the one in the middle that scared the piss out of him. Not the one on the left: he looked like a gimp, a sixties throwback, threatening as a toothpick and almost as thin. Nor the one on the right: he was big, he looked strong, but size and strength weren’t the problem. If they were, the little old man in the middle wouldn’t have rated doodle-e-squat.
But he does. Rudy knew it. It was something about the eyes. They saw him, they knew him, he could feel them bore into him like hot steel pokers.
But they did not seem to fear him in the least.
Rudy trembled under their gaze. The thought of the ancient one who called himself “Master” leaped into his head, and he almost cried out. For a moment, he was sure that the monster had found him; the chill started at his rectum and worked its way up his spine. Then he realized that, no, it was just a man, just an old man …
Just an old man with something very strange about him.
It’s just an old man, Rudy chastened himself. You could waste him in a second. Relax. He forced himself to look tough and detached, insofar as he could; and his voice trilled slightly in the higher frequencies as he said, “Who do you think you’re lookin’ at? Huh?”
Of course, it would have to be the old man who answered.
“We’re looking at you … Rudy,” he said. And
smiled.
T. C. reached into his messenger bag and pulled out the .357 Magnum, just as Armond was unzipping his satchel. Danny stood to the right of them, mute and motionless, his hands as limp as his eyes were wide.
Rudy grinned at the round mouth of the Magnum’s barrel as it raised to a level with his face. He sneered, exposing his teeth; and
T. C.’s aim teetered slightly as he recoiled in shock. “You don’t think you could hurt me with that thing, do you?” Rudy said, laughing. “Don’t be silly. I could bend it over your head.”
“They’re silver bullets, Rudy,” Armond kindly informed him. “And they’re blessed.”
“So?” He tried to act indifferent, but some doubt seeped into his face.
“So you wanna find out?” T. C. offered, flicking off the safety and steadying his aim.
Rudy looked extremely uncertain and not at all happy. Armond watched him wrestle with the fear, was amused by it. He truly does not know himself, the old man mused. What makes him live. What makes him die. Joseph’s friend was right: the monster is a motherless child in the wilderness.
But so dangerous. He reminded himself not to forget that. So dangerous. As his hand reached into the satchel.
“Danny,” he said quietly, nudging the gangly longhair with his elbow. “Danny. Now.” Danny started, his eyes blank for a moment; then he opened his messenger bag and pulled out a mallet and stake. Rudy shrank back, all question removed from his face. Armond nodded his head somberly.
And held up the cross.
Nothing in either life or death had helped Rudy to prepare for the pain that followed. It burned in his flesh like the heat from a building in flames; it ripped through him like shrapnel, like great shards of exploding glass; it screamed through his nervous system like a 220volt injection. But that was not the worst of it, by any means. The worst of it was to look.
It was like staring into the heart of the sun.
Rudy whirled and screamed, his hands clamped over his eyes. I’m BLIND! his mind shrieked. I can’t SEE! I can’t SEE! The train hit a bad bump and shuddered violently. He stumbled, reaching out, and his eyes jerked open just as the floor came up to meet his face.
Then everything, all his senses, became very clear. He could hear the footsteps, rapidly approaching. He could smell the adrenaline rush. The floor was crawling with bright dots of white light, big as beach balls; but he could see the floor, behind the dots, stretching all the way down to the back of the car.
All the way down to the door …
… the open door …
… and suddenly he was scrambling toward it, getting to his feet before the first startled roar erupted from behind him, on his feet and running now, running, as the train threw him from side to side and the chorus of shouting voices mounted in intensity and the first shot went off, a thunderclap followed by a whistling past his ear that turned into a pwinging and a pwinging and a shattering of glass as the bullet ricocheted off one wall, then another, and then smashed through a window, but none of that mattered because he was running, running faster, and the door was right in front of him, he could see the floor buckling on the platform between it and the door that lay beyond it, also open, also waiting for him as he went through the first door and leaped across the space between and landed in the last car of the train with both feet, still running, still running, toward the back …
… toward the end …
There was a window in the back door of the uptown local: a goodly sized, rounded, porthole type of affair. A stout iron bar, several inches in diameter, ran horizontally through the dead center of the circle. The back door, of course, was eternally locked; its window was designed to remain shut forever.
As T. C. and Danny raced into the last car, they didn’t notice the half-dozen staring commuters who speckled the seats to either side. Nothing to either side of them held the tiniest bit of interest.
They were totally and exclusively engrossed in the spectacle of Rudy Pasko, bearing down on that big fat bull’s-eye in the middle of the door. Even as they barreled toward him, dodging the poles in the middle of the aisle, their eyes helplessly locked upon him.
They knew what he was going to do.
“STOP, MAN!” T. C. yelled, dropping back and drawing a bead on the junction between Rudy’s shoulder blades and spine.
Rudy kept on running.
“I SAID STOP!”
He kept running.
“MAN, THAT’S IT!”
Rudy hurled himself forward, like an arrow, toward the window.
T. C. fired.
… and he felt himself flying, a remarkable sensation, as the twin thunderclaps went off in unison, one from behind him that shot the whistling out past his ear again, the other wrapping around his ears like a symphony as the top of his head struck the stout iron bar and bent it, stretched it, snapped it in half, while the glass sprayed and tinkled all around him like confetti, like the brightly colored crystals of a kaleidoscope that was being spun as he was being spun, end over end, by the impact and the wind and the force of his own momentum, carrying him outward into the darkness of the tunnel, sending him downward in a mad loop-de-loop, spiraling crazily toward the tracks …
Danny’s face was framed squarely in the shattered window opening. He saw, with exquisite clarity, the way in which Rudy hit the tracks, flipped over precisely five times, landed on his feet, regained his footing, and continued to run as if nothing had happened.
Running back the way he came.
Behind him, T. C. was yelling something about how nobody better say a word about this, not a goddamn word to anyone. But Danny didn’t hear him.
There was only one thing on his mind.
Claire was still alone on the uptown platform. A dime was poised uneasily on the lip of the coin slot as she leaned against the pay phone, the receiver to her ear. She listened to the dial tone for about thirty seconds, shook her head, hung up the phone, sulked for a few more seconds, picked up the phone, and listened to the dial tone. She had been doing this for the last three minutes. It had worked itself into sort of a routine.
I feel so stupid, she thought. Standing around like this. But she couldn’t help it. She was genuinely torn, her mind at war. The fact that one side was completely insane did nothing to mitigate its power and influence.
Especially when the other side had just finished pissing her off.
Her arguments for outrage were many and varied, beginning with the obvious (why did I have to be the one that called? Why couldn’t somebody else have done it?), moving on to the politics of gender (women always get left behind, those macho sexist assholes, they’ll want me and Josalyn … The Amazing Collapsible Woman … to make them coffee when all the fun is over), wading knee-deep into jealousy (what does he see in her, anyway? Why do men get to have all the excitement?), and winding up in the Grand Corral of Spite (you left me holding the bag, I hope you screw it up and die).
But the bottom line, once all the petty dross was swept away, came down to this:
1) the monster is horrible, and it needs to be destroyed;
2) the monster is gorgeous … and if they kill it, I’ll never know what might have happened …
Come on, Cunningham, said a voice in her mind. Shit or get off the pot, alright? The voice startled her for a moment, largely because it was not her own, and also because it took a moment to recognize. It had only been four days, but it seemed like forever.
Maybe it was because she’d never really liked Dorian all that much. Dorian was much more of a slut than Claire would ever be, and Claire resented it in a strange way. It was, like, Dorian seemed to feel that she was playing the only game in town: if you were with her, you had to compete. And Claire would always lose.
In a way, she wanted to win the game that Dorian lost.
But if you lived with a person, whether you liked them or not, you got close to them. Little things became precious … in a very subconscious manner, of course: you adjusted to them, they became part of your w
orld, you came to see the bits of diamond in the coal. It was like living in a harsh environment: a desert, a jungle, a city. Oppressive conditions at every turn, but how many people would ever think of leaving?
Claire never really did like Dorian that much, but she did like her a little. Enough to live with her since January, and consider renewing the lease.
She saw Dorian’s head on the floor, in her mind, and knew that she’d liked Dorian better than that.
Shit or get off the pot, alright? Dorian used to say that all the time, when they were alone together. You want him? Go get him. Shit or get off the pot, alright? Somebody’s gonna jump his bones if you don’t hurry up. And it might be me.
She was saying it again, her head on the floor. Claire heard it, and saw it, very clearly.
Claire put the dime in the phone.
On the second ring, Allan answered. “Armond?” he said.
“No. Claire. Listen …”
“Why hasn’t Armond been answering his goddamn beeper?”
“Because he hasn’t had a chance. Now listen a minute.”
Allan paused, apparently listening.
“I’m at the Bleecker Street station, where the 6 train comes. We followed Rudy down here …”
“WHAT?” Allan shrieked. It was hard to tell what he felt.
“We followed Rudy down here,” she repeated, refusing to be cut off, “and the boys went on the train with him up to Astor Place. I’m supposed to get Joseph to pick me up so we can all drive up there together …”
“Jesus Christ! How long ago did this happen?”
“Oh, about …” She decided quickly not to lie. “Four minutes ago.”
“Why didn’t you call sooner …?”
“My dime was stuck in the slot.” Not entirely a lie. “You better call Joseph, and …”
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