From the Heart of Darkness

by David Drake

  Lorne finished his cigarette with a long drag. “Hell, I don’t know, sarge. How many jobs give you a full pension after two years?”

  “See you, snake.”

  “See you, sarge.”

  The big cruiser snarled as Ben pulled back into the traffic lane and turned at the first corner. The city was on a system of neighborhood police patrols, an attempt to avoid the anonymous patrolling that turned each car into a miniature search and destroy mission. The first night he sat on the stump beside his apartment, Lorne had sworn in surprise to see that the face peering from the curious patrol car was that of Ben Gresham, his squad leader during the ten months and nineteen days he had carried an M60 in War Zone C.

  And that was the only past remaining to Lorne.

  The back door of Jenkins’ house banged shut on its spring. A few moments later heavy boots began scratching up the gravel of the common drive. Lorne’s seat was an oak stump, three feet in diameter. Instead of trying to turn his head, he shifted his whole body around on the wood. Jenkins, a plumpish, half-bald man in his late sixties, lifted a pair of canned Budweisers. “Must get thirsty out here, warm as it is.”

  “It’s always thirsty enough to drink good beer,” Lorne smiled. “I’ll share my stump with you.” They sipped for a time without speaking. Mrs Purefoy, Jenkins’ widowed sister and a matronly Baptist, kept house for him. Lorne gathered that while she did not forbid her brother to drink an occasional beer, neither did she provide an encouragingly social atmosphere.

  “I’ve seen you out here at 3 AM,” the older man said. “What’ll you do when the weather turns cold?”

  “Freeze my butt for a while,” Lorne answered. He gestured his beer toward his dark apartment on the second floor of a house much like Jenkins’. “Sit up there with the light on. Hell, there’s lots of VA hospitals, I’ve been in lots of them. If North Carolina isn’t warm enough, maybe they’d find me one in Florida.” He took another swallow and said, “I just sleep better in the daytime, is all. Too many ghosts around at night.”

  Jenkins turned quickly to make sure of the smile on the younger man’s face. It flashed at his motion. “Not quite that sort of ghost,” Lorne explained. “The ones I bring with me.…” And he kept his smile despite the sizzle of faces in the white fire sudden in his mind. The noise of popping, boiling flesh faded and he went on, “There was something weird going on last night, though—” he glanced at his big Japanese wristwatch—“well, damn early this morning.”

  “A Halloween ghost with a white sheet?” Jenkins suggested.

  “Umm, no, down at the church,” said Lorne, fumbling his cigarettes out. Jenkins shrugged refusal and the dart of butane flame ignited only one. “The tower there was—I don’t know, I looked at it and it seemed to be vibrating. No sound, though, and then a big red flash without any sound either. I though sure it’d caught fire, but it was just a flash and everything was back to normal. Funny. You know how you hold your fingers over a flashlight and it comes through, kind of? Well, the flash was like that, only through a stone wall.”

  “I never saw anything like that,” Jenkins agreed. “Old church doesn’t seem the worse for it, though. It’ll be ready to fall down itself before the courts get all settled about who owns it, you know.”

  “Umm?”

  “Fellowship Baptist built a new church half a mile north of here, more parking and anyhow, it was going to cost more to repair that old firetrap than it would to build a new one.” Jenkins grinned. “Mable hasn’t missed a Sunday in forty years, so I heard all about it. The city bought the old lot for a boys’ club or some such fool thing—I want to spit every time I think of my property taxes, I do—but it turns out the Rankins, that’s who the street’s named after too, they’d given the land way back before the Kaiser’s War. Damn if some of them weren’t still around to sue to get the lot back if it wasn’t going to be a church any more. So that was last year, and it’s like to be a few more before anybody puts money into tearing the old place down.”

  “From the way it’s boarded up and padlocked, I figured it must have been a reflection I saw,” Lorne admitted. “But it looked funny enough,” he added sheepishly, “that I took a walk down there last night.”

  Jenkins shrugged and stood up. He had the fisherman’s trick of dropping the pull tab into his beer before drinking any. Now it rattled in the bottom. “Well,” he said, picking up Lorne’s can as well, “it’s bed time for me, I suppose. You better get yourself off soon or the bugs’ll carry you away.”

  “Thanks for the beer and the company,” Lorne said. “One of these nights I’ll bring down an ice chest and we’ll really tie one on.”

  Lorne’s ears followed the old man back, his boots a friendly, even sound in the warm April darkness. A touch of breeze caught the wisteria hedge across the street and spread its sweetness, diluted, over Lorne. He ground out his cigarette and sat quietly, letting the vines breathe on him. Jenkins’ garbage can scrunched open and one of the empties echoed into it. The other did not fall. “What the hell?” Lorne wondered aloud. But there was something about the night, despite its urban innocence, that brought up memories from past years more strongly than ever before. In a little while Lorne began walking. He was still walking when dawn washed the fiery pictures from his mind and he returned to his apartment to find three police cars parked in the street.

  The two other tenants stored their cars in the side yard of the apartment house. Lorne had stepped between them when he heard a woman scream, “That’s him! Don’t let him get away!”

  Lorne turned. White-haired Mrs Purefoy and a pair of uniformed policemen faced him from the porch of Jenkins’ house. The younger man had his revolver half drawn. A third uniformed man, Ben, stepped quickly around from the back of the house. “I’m not going anywhere but to bed,” Lorne said, spreading his empty hands. He began walking toward the others. “Look, what’s the matter?”

  The oldest, heaviest of the policemen took the porch steps in a leap and approached Lorne at a barely-restrained trot. He had major’s pips on his shoulder straps. “Where have you been, snake?” Ben asked, but the major was between them instantly, growling, “I’ll handle this, Gresham. Mr Charles Lorne?”

  “Yes,” Lorne whispered. His body flashed hot, as though the fat policeman were a fire, a towering sheet of orange rippling with the speckles of tracers cooking off.…

  “… and at any time during the questioning you may withdraw your consent and thereafter remain silent. Do you understand, Mr Lorne?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see Mr Jenkins tonight?”

  “Uh-huh. He came out—when did you leave me, Ben? 10:30?” Lorne paused to light another cigarette. His flame wavered like the blade of a kris. “We each drank a beer, shot the bull. That’s all. What happened?”

  “Where did you last see Mr Jenkins?”

  Lorne gestured. “I was on the stump. He walked around the back of the house—his house. I guess I could see him. Anyway, I heard him throw the cans in the trash and … that’s all.”

  “Both cans?” Ben broke in despite his commander’s scowl.

  “No, you’re right—just one. And I didn’t hear the door close. It’s got a spring that slams it like a one-oh-five going off, usually. Look, what happened?”

  There was a pause. Ben tugged at a corner of his mustache. Low sunlight sprayed Lorne through the trees. Standing, he looked taller than his six feet, a knobbly staff of a man in wheat jeans and a green-dyed T-shirt. The shirt had begun to disintegrate in the years since it was issued to him on the way to the war zone. The brace was baby-flesh pink. It made him look incongruously bull-necked, alien.

  “He could have changed clothes,” suggested the young patrolman. He had holstered his weapon but continued to toy with the butt.

  “He didn’t,” Ben snapped, the signs of his temper obvious to Lorne if not to the other policemen. “He’s wearing now what he had on when I left him.”

  “We’ll take him around back,” the
major suddenly decided. In convoy, Ben and the other, nervous, patrolman to either side of Lorne and the major bringing up the rear, they crossed into Jenkins’ yard following the steep downslop. Mrs Purefoy stared from the porch. Beneath her a hydrangea bush graded its blooms red on the left, blue on the right, with the carefully-tended acidity of the soil. It was a mirror for her face, ruddy toward the sun and gray with fear in shadow.

  “What’s the problem?” Lorne wondered aloud as he viewed the back of the house. The trash can was open but upright, its lid lying on the smooth lawn beside it. Nearby was one of the Budweiser empties. The other lay alone on the bottom of the trash can. There was no sign of Jenkins himself.

  Ben’s square hand indicated an arc of spatters six to eight feet high, black against the white siding. “They promised us a lab team but hell, it’s blood, snake. You and me’ve seen enough to recognize it. Mrs Purefoy got up at four, didn’t find her brother. I saw this when I checked and.…” He let his voice trail off.

  “No body?” Lorne asked. He had lighted a fresh cigarette. The gushing flames surrounded him.

  “No.”

  “And Jenkins weighs what? 220?” He laughed, a sound as thin as his wrists. “You’d play hell proving a man with a broken neck ran off with him, wouldn’t you?”

  “Broke? Sure, we’ll believe that!” gibed the nervous patrolman.

  “You’ll believe me, meatball!” Ben snarled. “He broke it and he carried me out of a fucking burning shithook while our ammo cooked off. And by God—”

  “Easy, sarge,” Lorne said quietly. “If anybody needs shooting, I’ll borrow a gun and do it myself.”

  The major flashed his scowl from one man to the other. His sudden uncertainty was as obvious as the flag pin in his lapel: Lorne was now a veteran, not an aging hippy.

  “I’m an outpatient at the VA hospital,” Lorne said, seeing his chance to damp the fire. “Something’s fucking up some nerves and they’re trying to do something about it there. Wish to hell they’d do it soon.”

  “Gresham,” the major said, motioning Ben aside for a low-voiced exchange. The third policeman had gone red when Ben snapped at him. Now he was white, realizing his mortality for the first time in his twenty-two years.

  Lorne grinned at him. “Hang loose, turtle. Neither Ben or me ever killed anybody who didn’t need it worse than you do.”

  The boy began to tremble.

  “Mr Lorne,” the major said, his tone judicious but not hostile, “we’ll be getting in touch with you later. And if you recall anything, anything at all that may have bearing on Mr Jenkins’ disappearance, call us at once.”

  Lorne’s hands nodded agreement. Ben winked as the lab van arrived, then turned away with the others.

  Lorne’s pain was less than usual, but his dreams awakened him in a sweat each time he dropped off to sleep. When at last he switched on the radio, the headline news was that three people besides Jenkins had disappeared during the night, all of them within five blocks of Lorne’s apartment.

  * * *

  The air was very close, muffling the brilliance of the stars. It was Friday night and the roar of southbound traffic sounded from Donovan Avenue a block to the east. The three northbound lanes of Jones Street, the next one west of Rankin, were not yet as clotted with cars as they would be later at night, but headlights there were a nervous darting through the houses and trees whenever Lorne turned on his stump to look. Rankin Street lay quietly between, lighted at alternate blocks by blue globes of mercury vapor. It was narrow, so that cars could not pass those parked along the curb without slowing, easing; a placid island surrounded by modern pressures.

  But no one had disappeared to the east of Donovan or the west of Jones.

  Lorne stubbed out his cigarette in the punky wood of the stump. It was riddled with termites and sometimes he pictured them, scrabbling through the darkness. He hated insects, hated especially the grubs and hidden things, the corpse-white termites … but he sat on the stump above them. A perversely objective part of Lorne’s mind knew that if he could have sat in the heart of a furnace like the companions of Daniel, he would have done so.

  From the blocky shade of the porch next door came the creak of springs: Mrs Purefoy, shifting her weight on the cushions of the old wing-back chair. In the early evening Lorne had caught her face staring at a parlor window, her muscles flat as wax. As the deeper darkness blurred and pooled, she had slipped out into its cover. Lorne felt her burning eyes, knowing that she would never forgive him for her brother’s disappearance, not if it were proven that Jenkins had left by his own decision. Lorne had always been a sinner to her; innocence would not change that.

  Another cigarette. Someone else was watching. A passing car threw Lorne’s angled shadow forward and across Jenkins’ house. Lorne’s guts clenched and his fingers crushed the unlit cigarette. Light. Twelve men in a rice paddy when the captured flare bursts above them. The pop-pop-pop of a gun far off, and the splashes columning around Lt Burnes—

  “Christ!” Lorne shouted, standing with an immediacy that laced pain through his body. Something was terribly wrong in the night. The lights brought back memories, but they quenched the real threat that hid in the darkness. Lorne knew what he was feeling, knew that any instant a brown face would peer out of a spider hole behind an AK-47 or a mine would rip steel pellets down the trail.…

  He stopped, forcing himself to sit down again. If it was his time, there was nothing he could do for it. A fresh cigarette fitted between his lips automatically and the needle-bright lighter focused his eyes.

  And the watcher was gone.

  Something had poised to kill Lorne, and had then passed on without striking. It was as unnatural as if a wall collapsing on him had separated in mid-air to leave him unharmed. Lorne’s arms were trembling, his cigarette tip an orange blur. When Ben’s cruiser pulled in beside him, Lorne was at first unable to answer the other man’s, “Hey, snake.”

  “Jesus, sarge,” Lorne whispered, smoke spurting from his mouth and nostrils. “There’s somebody out here and he’s a bad fucker.”

  Carrier noise blatted before the car radio rapped a series of numbers and street names. Ben knuckled his mustache until he was sure his own cruiser was not mentioned. “Yeah, he’s a bad one. Another one gone tonight, a little girl from three blocks down. Went to the store to trade six empties and a dime on a coke. Christ, I saw her two hours ago, snake. The bottles we found, the kid we didn’t.… Seen any little girls?”

  There was an upright shadow in front of Ben’s radio: a riot gun, clipped to the dashboard. “Haven’t seen anything but cars, sarge. Lots of police cars.”

  “They’ve got an extra ten men on,” Ben agreed with a nod. “We went over the old Baptist church a few minutes ago. Great TAC Squad work. Nothing. Damn locks were rusted shut.”

  “Think the Baptists’ve taken up with baby sacrifice?” Lorne chuckled.

  “Shit, there’s five bodies somewhere. If the bastard’s loading them in the back of a truck, you’d think he’d spread his pickups over a bit more of an area, wouldn’t you?”

  “Look, baby, anybody who packed Jenkins around on his back—I sure don’t want to meet him.”

  “Don’t guess Jenkins did either,” Ben grunted. “Or the others.”

  “PD to D-5,” the radio interrupted.

  Ben keyed his microphone. “Go ahead.”

  “10-25 Lt Cooper at Rankin and Duke.”

  “10-4, 10-76,” Ben replied, starting to return the mike to its holder.

  “D-5, acknowledge,” the receiver ordered testily.

  “Goddam fucker!” Ben snarled, banging the instrument down. “Sends just about half the fucking time!”

  “Keep a low profile, sarge,” Lorne murmured, but even had he screamed his words would have been lost in the boom of exhaust as Ben cramped the car around in the street, the left wheels bumping over the far curb. Then the accelerator flattened and the big car shot toward the rendezvous.

  In Viet Nam, Lor
ne had kept his death wish under control during shelling by digging in and keeping his head down. Now he stood and went inside to his room. After a time, he slept. If his dreams were bright and tortured, then they always were.…

  * * *

  “Sure, you knew Jackson,” Ben explained, the poom-poom-poom of his engine a live thing in the night. “He’s the blond shit who … didn’t believe you’d broken your neck. Yesterday morning.”

  “Small loss, then,” Lorne grinned. “But you watch your own ass, hear? If there’s nobody out but cops, there’s going to be more cops than just Jackson disappearing.”

  “Cops and damned fools,” Ben grumbled. “When I didn’t see you out here on my first pass, I thought maybe you’d gotten sense enough to stay inside.”

  “I was going to. Decided … oh, hell. What’s the box score now?”

  “Seven gone. Seven for sure,” the patrolman corrected himself. “One got grabbed in the time he took to walk from his girl’s front porch back to his car. That bastard’s lucky, but he’s crazy as hell if he thinks he’ll stay that lucky.”

  “He’s crazy as hell,” Lorne agreed. A spring whispered from Jenkins’ porch and Lorne bobbed the tip of his cigarette at the noise. “She’s not doing so good either. All last night she was staring at me, and now she’s at it again.”

  “Christ,” Ben muttered. “Yeah, Major Hooseman talked to her this morning. You’re about the baddest man ever, leading po’ George into smoking and drinking and late hours before you killed him.”

  “Never did get him to smoke,” Lorne said, lighting Ben’s cigarette and another for himself. “Say, did Jackson smoke?”

  “Huh? No.” Ben frowned, staring at the closed passenger-side windows and their reflections of his instruments. “Yeah, come to think, he did. But never in uniform, he had some sort of thing about that.”

  “He sheered off last night when I lit a cigarette,” Lorne said. “No, not Jackson—the other one. I just wondered.…”