by Harvey Click
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about her, the one who makes men groan like ghosts in the night. Soon she shall make all of us groan.”
He stared intently at the chessboard as if witnessing a battle of flesh and blood. His hands squirmed and wrestled.
Sarah got up again and this time made it to the door before he seemed to notice.
“Wait,” he said. He hurried to the door and grasped her wrist. His hand felt feverishly hot.
“I like you,” he said.
“I like you too.”
“Get out of here. Get out tonight. You can pick up your things later, just get out. You’re not safe here. Nobody is.”
His grip was stronger than one would expect from such a slender man. Sarah had to unlock his fingers one by one. Darnell seemed hardly to notice; his eyes had become frozen in place. She freed her wrist and hurried down the stairs, her legs rubbery.
When she looked back from the landing, he still stood there, his hand open now like a beggar’s, his eyes gazing at the door across from his.
Chapter Twelve
“Have you learned a name?” a voice kept asking him.
To Paul Finney the words were meaningless. He had been hearing many obscure messages, and he had chosen not to make sense of them because he knew they were malevolent and depraved. The words were abominations, so he had taken refuge in madness to keep from hearing them.
“Tell me what you’ve learned,” the voice said, but the words meant nothing to Finney.
Nothing was real except thirst and hunger and pain and madness. His madness was a shelter from the pestilence. And though the madness rendered him a fool, he felt safe and comfortable inside it. It was a loving madness.
Madness was the ideal marriage.
The voice despised his madness and was trying to lure him out of it. So in his mind Finney turned the words into stones sculpted into unreadable shapes. They were harmless that way.
There was a sharp pain in his head again. The pain was light. Mustn’t open his eyes—too bright out there. But for a moment he did, and he saw her face. The woman, the game-player. Angel.
She had opened the lid of the casket, and the words made of stone were tumbling from her mouth, but earlier they had tumbled from the darkness itself, from something unspeakably horrible that hid in the darkness.
There was a terrible spasm in his back, and he realized that she was forcing him to sit up.
“You have learned a name,” she said. “Tell it to me and you’ll live. If you don’t tell me I’ll cut off your head.”
He opened one eyelid just a crack and saw that she was holding a sword.
“This is your last chance,” she said. “Tell me the name or off with your head.”
But Finney hid inside his madness and turned her words into harmless hieroglyphs.
Suddenly a stark, fiery agony struck his madness away.
“So there!” she said.
An incredible pain had rendered him glaringly sane, and in the sharp light of sanity he opened his eyes and saw her hand reaching down to grab his hair. Then the room tilted and he seemed to be going for a weightless ride up into the air.
She turned his face down so he could see the bloody headless body beneath him. A fat, naked body.
His body.
The decapitated carcass slid out of view as the bright room rotated, and then his eyes were just a few inches away from hers. He was staring at her face, and it wore the same mysterious smile that had teased his desire in some bar one Friday night an eternity ago.
Finney saw her lips move but couldn’t hear her words, not because his madness protected him, but because his ears were dying. Then his eyes began to die too, and as the harsh light faded the room began to disappear into a darkening fog.
And then her face began to disappear too, until at last all he could see were her lips smiling.
***
Sarah sat in her kitchen in the dark drinking coffee at the flimsy folding card table. She was peering through her window at the fire escape, watching for Paul Finney to come down. It was after eleven; she had been waiting since she had left Darnell standing like a statue in the landing.
The old refrigerator chugged noisily and the faucet dripped into the stained sink. Stupid to drink coffee this late: the caffeine was making her head spin. Darnell’s words whirled around in it like a cyclone.
“I always lose. Black always wins.”
“Get out of here. You’re not safe here. Nobody is.”
“She’s getting stronger. I can feel it. It happened again last week.”
The faucet dripped. The refrigerator chugged. Last week the woman had gotten stronger, Sarah thought—after Peter was there.
One part of her mind had been making dark conjectures ever since she had left Darnell. The other part of her mind was trying to pay no attention to them.
She was pouring another cup of coffee when she heard the fire escape rattle. She hurried to the window. It was the woman, descending carefully in her high heels, peering at the steps through her dark glasses. She was carrying a package wrapped in plastic. Finney wasn’t with her. Sarah watched her pick her way through the litter of the backyard.
Gone every week, Sarah thought, but every Friday she emerges from the apartment. Does she ever go in before she comes out?
Follow her.
By the time she got the deadbolt on the back door unlocked and all the bars unbarred, the woman had disappeared. Sarah hurried down the fire escape and ran to the side of the building, but the sidewalk was empty. She ran around the corner to the front and saw the woman standing beside Finney’s Buick, her package sitting on the car roof.
She was working her way through a ring of keys, trying to unlock the door. She got it open, and as she was reaching for her package, Sarah quickly approached.
“Hey there!” she yelled, a dozen feet from the car. “Doesn’t that car belong to Paul Finney? Where is he?”
The woman stared at her for a moment and then got into the Buick.
Sarah darted closer, grabbed the door handle, and for a few seconds the two played tug of war with the car door while the woman tried to fit a key into the ignition. She got it in, started the engine, and tugged again at the door, but Sarah had wedged her knee in it.
The woman stared at her, inscrutable behind her dark glasses. Now what? Sarah wondered.
But the part of her mind that had been making all the dark conjectures already knew what to do.
“Excuse me,” she said rather absurdly as she pulled off the woman’s glasses.
The glacial blue eyes stared coldly at Sarah. Then Darnell snatched his glasses from her hand, put the car in gear, and drove away.
Chapter Thirteen
Sarah knocked on the door upstairs and called Finney’s name. At first she called quietly, afraid of waking Esther, but when she got no answer she banged hard on the door and shouted, “Paul! Are you in there?”
Her mind waged battle with itself like the two sides of Darnell’s chessboard. Okay, her practical side said, so Finney is passed out drunk. It’s none of your business. Okay, so the weird little asexual monk Darnell is a raging queen. So what? Mind your own beeswax. Get a grip.
She went down to her own apartment and sat in the sunroom, watching for Darnell to return with Finney’s car. The streetlight in front had gone out, but once or twice a minute it would blink on momentarily, a sleepy sentry opening its eyes to see if anything was sneaking up on it. A gang of boys skulked by; the streetlight glanced at them for a moment and went back to its slumber.
The practical side of her mind was trying to convince her that everything added up. Apparently Peter had suddenly discovered a taste for men, a deep hunger to judge by the amount of time he had spent up there. He depended on the hot air of his ego to stay aloft, and much of the heat had always come from believing he was God’s gift to women, so it wouldn’t be easy for him to accept the fact that he was gay. Maybe that explained why he had
gone bonkers in the classroom: he wanted to prove to himself that he was still attractive to young women, so he had stuck his hand down someone’s blouse.
But another part of her mind didn’t buy any of it. Why had Darnell warned her to move out? Why had he raved about the “woman” growing stronger? Why had he said that nobody was safe here? Why did Esther say some men didn’t come down? When was Finney going to come down? What was Darnell doing with Finney’s car, and when was he going to return?
A knock at the door made Sarah jump and then freeze. Had Darnell sneaked back in? She crept through the hallway and leaned her ear against the door. She could hear someone breathing heavily in the landing.
“Who is it?”
“Peter.”
Jeez. Of all the goddamned gall . . .
“Go away.”
“I have to see you. I think you’re in danger.”
Her mind-battle raged. She wasn’t sure which side won, the practical side or the weird, but she undid the locks and bolts.
Maybe Howard hadn’t exaggerated after all: Peter looked awful, a week-old beard, long red hair in a mad nest of tangles, dark sunglasses staring at her like the eyes of an insect. His face was twisted into an ugly expression she had never seen before.
Sarah tried to slam the door, but his foot was wedged in it, and he forced it back open with ease. His expression crawled into a horrid new shape: he was grinning.
“Go away!” she shouted. “I don’t want to see you! Goddammit, I said scram!”
But Peter was already halfway to the living room, pulling her along with him, the door still gaping open. He had a hold of her from behind, or else he would have received his second knee to the groin this week. His breath smelled sour, and the rest of him smelled like cologne dumped over a wino in the gutter. He was gasping, but it sounded more from excitement than exertion.
“Fucking asshole!” Sarah shouted.
Peter clamped his hand over her mouth, forced her face-down onto the sofa, and threw himself on top, crushing the air out of her.
“Cunt!” he said.
He was panting like a dog, struggling to pin her arms and keep her feet from kicking without letting go of her mouth, his cock hard as a hammer against her hip.
Sarah bit his sour-tasting hand and screamed as he wrenched it away, but her face was pressed so hard against the sofa that the scream didn’t go far. His fingers slipped around her neck, an iron vice wringing the air out of her windpipe, and her eyes exploded with red shapes.
Her heartbeat pummeled her ears, and through the throbbing noise she could hear Peter swearing: “Stinking gash. I’m going to kill you, bitch, and then I’ll fuck you. You’ll be a good piece of ass when you’re dead.”
Red splotches hammered her eyes like fists, bruising and blotting every thought but one: I NEED TO BREATHE!
“I’m going to show you the darkness, bitch,” he said. “Darkness like you’ve never seen. I’m going to poke out your eyes and fuck your eye sockets.”
She felt herself losing consciousness and knew that very soon she would be dead. Then a voice came faintly from a mile away: “I giving you ‘xactly three seconds and then I gonna give you a new eyehole.”
The pressure on her windpipe eased, air at last, though it felt like a fiery fist in her throat as she gasped for it.
“Get yourself offa that girl and lay down with your ugly face flat on the floor, and I ain’t half joking.”
The room pounded painfully back into focus: Esther with a revolver trembling in her bony hands, Peter crouching down on all fours.
“Get flat down there with your hands straight out, and I plain mean business. There, that’s pretty good. Don’t have no thoughts ‘bout squirming around. My ol’ fingers ain’t too steady. I see you budge just a little bit, they’s likely to start pulling this trigger.”
***
First two cops, then four, then six, but once Peter was cuffed and led away the six quickly dwindled to two, and they seemed too absorbed with the difficulties of spelling the words in their report to show much interest in what had transpired. After all, they saw plenty of these domestic cases every week. Likely as not, the woman had provoked her boyfriend’s wrath by floozing around.
Her nerves jangling with caffeine and adrenaline, Sarah kept telling the police over and over about Darnell and about Peter’s sojourn in the strange love-nest upstairs and about Paul Finney still being up there.
“She took Finney’s car,” Sarah said. “I mean he. Isn’t that a crime anymore?”
“Look, lady, you ever have a guy spend the night with you? You ever borrow his car to get some cigarettes or something? So you want your neighbors to call the police every time that happens?”
“He’s pretending to be a woman. Isn’t that sorta strange?”
“Lady, half the hookers we pull in are men pretending to be women.”
Sarah refused to be taken to the hospital, even though the cops said that having a doctor see the bruises would be helpful in court. She could tell they believed that she, like so many other battered women, would decide not to press charges. Maybe they were right; she didn’t want to think about it now. No wonder cops got so disgusted, she thought.
By the time they left, it was nearly 2:00 a.m. Esther looked tired, and Sarah said, “You better go get some sleep.”
“I’ll get outta your way if you really think you can sleep after all this, but if you want a little company then I’m staying right here. Ain’t no one would pay a nickel for the amount a sleep I get no how.”
“I don’t know how to thank you,” Sarah said. “I mean, how do you thank someone for saving your life?”
“Didn’t come over here to get thanks. I come over ‘cause I heard you say scram and I didn’t hear nobody scramming. Ain’t the first time I had to pull a gun on someone, but I haven’t had to pull a trigger yet. Good thing too. Them bullets must be older’n you. I be plain surprised if they still work.”
“Darnell told me to move out,” Sarah said, though Esther had already heard her tell the cops the same thing. “He said nobody’s safe in this building.”
“He’s probably right about that. I told you ‘bout the strange business I been hearing up there—things falling, things bumping, things moaning, things dragging. Body-sounding things.”
“Something happened to Peter up there,” Sarah said. “He wasn’t like this before. He even looks different.”
“Girl, everybody’s on drugs these days, and some a these druggies start looking so different you don’t hardly know who they are anymore.”
“I’m not so sure it’s drugs,” Sarah said. “I’d give anything to see what’s in that apartment.”
Esther sat quietly for a while. “Got me a plan,” she said.
Chapter Fourteen
Monday morning, Sarah, Esther, and her daughter Marcy were waiting in Esther’s apartment when the landlady arrived. Frieda Moskowicz was a small widow in her early 70s with a somber, heavily powdered face. Her thick glasses seemed to magnify the sense of loss that haunted her eyes. She stepped into Esther’s bathroom and listened carefully, cocking her head to aim her hearing aid at the ceiling.
“I hear nothing,” she said.
“That’s cause you ain’t got my ears,” Esther declared. “There’s a bust pipe up there I’m sure.”
Marcy nodded in agreement and said, “I sure hear something. Sounds like plaster washing away, doesn’t it, Momma?”
Sarah nodded too, thinking how embarrassing all this was going to become in a few minutes. Embarrassing enough that there wouldn’t be a broken pipe. Worse, the landlady was likely to find Paul Finney sprawled out drunk and naked. One thing she wouldn’t find was Darnell; he hadn’t returned after driving away in Finney’s car.
Mrs. Moskowicz cocked her head and listened as alertly as a bird. “I hear nothing,” she said.
“Sure be something if that whole ceiling comes down on top of our heads,” Marcy murmured. She shook her head and added, “Mm mm mm.�
��
Esther’s description of her daughter had been true enough: she didn’t look her 76 or 77 years. She was still a handsome woman, a full foot taller than her mother.
“I’m not supposed to enter a tenant’s apartment without 24-hour notice,” Mrs. Moskowicz said. “Except in emergencies.”
“Sure seems like an emergency to me,” Marcy said.
“Sure does,” Sarah said. “I’d hate to see that ceiling come down. If anybody gets hurt there’d probably be a lawsuit.”
Sarah’s body was dead tired but her brain was wide awake and jittery. She hadn’t slept at all last night, and Esther had slept only a little on Sarah’s sofa.
“Of course, the woman has never given me her phone number,” Mrs. Moskowicz said.
“What’s that girl’s name anyway?” Esther asked.
“Angela Dietrick,” the landlady answered.
“Well, she ain’t no woman, I can tell you that,” Esther said.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Just speculating out loud.”
“Well, I suppose there’s little choice,” Mrs. Moskowicz said.
“I be happy to come with you,” Esther said. “Maybe I can be a some help.”
“No, I can’t let you. She has a right to privacy.”
“She!” Marcy said. “Mm mm mm.”
Mrs. Moskowicz started up the stairs clutching her ring of keys. The other three women waited a moment and then crept up halfway up to the first landing. From there they could see the upper landing.
“Maybe she need some help up there,” Esther said.
“Don’t go poking your nose, Momma.”
A few seconds later they saw Frieda Moskowicz emerge from the apartment. She was walking backwards with the weightless, slow steps of a sleepwalker. When she got to the center of the landing, she collapsed with a moan to the floor.
The three women hurried up the stairs and bent over the landlady. Her eyes were open, but she seemed too weak to get up. She was reciting something that sounded like a Yiddish prayer.