"I guess I should apologize for writing that note," he said. "That was silly. Impetuous youth." He grinned boyishly and threw up his hands, dismissing the whole thing entirely. "When two people love each other as much as you and I do, little things like infidelity shouldn't get in the way. Oh, no. And seriously, Mona: I love you just as much as I did the first time I saw you and thought, damn, would I ever love to prong that bitch!"
"Billy," she cried. For real. Tears were running down her lovely face. He had hurt her; and, boy, did he ever feel bad about that.
"Oh, yes, Mona! Yes!" He moved closer still, within arm's reach. "Tell me about it! Tell me what a deeply moving experience this is! Or better yet, don't. We don't want to spoil this magic moment, do we?"
"Billy. Please—"
"Oh, yes!" Billy laughed long and hard."No, please! Don't! Stop!" He laughed some more. "Yes, let's discuss your rape fantasies, my dearingest darling! Let's talk about how bad it felt when the mighty Rex dropped his load inside you—"
"YOU BASTARD!" Mona screamed, leaping forward and swinging. He could have stopped her, but why bother? It just made the whole thing more exciting.
She slugged him: not a slap, not a namby-pamby little whap. She slugged him across the jaw with every ounce of strength in her body. If he'd been an ordinary human, with an ordinary responsiveness to pain, it very possibly would have floored him.
But he wasn't, and it didn't, and he grabbed her wrists before she could try it again, holding them so tightly that the circulation cut off and she started to whine like the doorknob demon in good ol' Stanley Peckard's apartment.
"No, no," he said. "Don't say anything. Please." He stepped backward, dragging her with him. "Talk is cheap, and we're moving up in the world.
"Just show me how much you love me."
He leaned forward to kiss her.
And that was when Larry jerked away from the wall—good ol' Larry the Lobster, with the cherry-red skin—and grabbed ahold of Billy's left arm, yanking away, screaming, "BILLY! NO! STOP!"
Billy pulled away easily. It meant that he had to let go of Mona's right wrist, but that was not an insurmountable loss. He simply hurtled Mona against the wall with his right hand, straight-armed Larry in the chest with his left.
There was only one problem.
His hand didn't stop at Larry's shirt.
His hand didn't stop at Larry's flesh.
His hand didn't stop at the wall of muscle and fat, nor was it intimidated by the breastbone that shattered into a thousand killing pieces of organic shrapnel.
His hand didn't stop until it was wrapped around Larry's heart, which went PA-POOM PA-POOM PA-POOM in the adrenaline-rushing seconds that immediately preceded his death.
And then stopped. In meaty mid PA-POOM.
Forever.
Behind him, Mona was beginning to scream. Billy couldn't hear her; he was too busy screaming himself. Larry tried to join in, but all that would come out was blood. After a couple of seconds, he just gave up. His eyes rolled back. The spark went out.
Leaving Billy with 187 pounds of dead meat dangling from the end of his arm. He screamed again, trying to shake the body loose. Larry's limbs performed a lifeless Funky Chicken, flopping and flapping. More blood came up. Billy very nearly slipped in the pool that it formed on the floor. Together, they stumbled toward the wall and Billy's desk like a pair of tangoing nitwits in a Jerry Lewis film.
The desk made a suitable altar. Larry's corpse slumped sacrificially across it, face up. Billy yanked himself free at last, held his shimmering red hand up in front of his face, and let out one final scream.
And his head, his head, it was going berserk, the tingling turned to prickling turned to
(!!!!!)
the white-hot needles, and it wasn't because he had killed his friend—the murder was fine, the tingling said so—but because he was letting it bother him
(!!!!!)
and then he felt himself moving toward Mona and the window and the fire escape, with the words, "I'm going to kill you now," tumbling off his lips in a dull monotone . . .
. . . and then he heard a voice, his own voice, saying Don't do it Billy, you love her, you don't want to hurt her, they're MAKING you do this, and
(!!!!!)
when he could see again, his hands were already around her throat, smearing her with Larry's gore, squeezing out her life. He was staring into her beautiful bulging eyes, watching her beautiful delicate features contort and swell and move through red to purple . . .
. . . and he fought back with every last ounce of will while his mouth opened wide and screamed, "NOOOOOOOO!"
(!!!!!!!!!!!)
and the pain was unbelievable, but he felt his grip relax, and
(!!!!!!!!!!!)
he staggered backward, letting go, stumbling to his knees, and bringing his hands up to his temples
(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
as he felt the Power well up inside him, and the one voice that was still his own said no, you motherfuckers, and
(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
he flooded his skull with killing white heat, heard it sizzle and sear in the space between his eyes, heard the pitiful dying screams of a million demon voices that were not his own, not his own . . .
Then silence.
Darkness.
One long, sweet moment of peace.
Seven blocks away, on Second Avenue, the night was alive with flashing red lights and police barricades and the squawking of the inevitable vulture contingent. Several cop cars surrounded the object of their attentions, which was a shiny yellow cab that had been idling at the curb for the last ten minutes.
With one extremely dead man inside.
Dennis Hamilton was the one who wound up leaning over the eyeless, tongueless, ball-less corpse of Edward Weinstein. The cabbie's manifest was on the seat beside the body. Hamilton grabbed it, holding his breath against the stench all the while.
He barely even needed to look.
"Thirteen Stanton Street," Rizzo said, reading off the clipboard that Hamilton shoved in his face.
"You know what—"
"Don't say it." There was a look of such intense resignation in the older detective's eyes that Hamilton almost looked away out of compassion. But not quite. "Don't even say it."
"So can we go now?"
"Okay." Rizzo sighed, closed his eyes, and nodded. "Okay."
Hamilton was already running for the car.
Billy woke up to an angelic voice that he knew very well. It was calling his name. For a moment, he was quite sure that he'd died and gone to Heaven.
Then he looked up and discovered that quite the opposite was true.
"Oh, Billy," Christopher said. The voice was weary and condescending, redolent with disappointment. "Oh, Billy Billy Billy. Tell me, why'dja hafta go and do a thing like that?"
Billy blinked. The image wouldn't go away. It filled him with a terror so icy and utter that his mind refused to accept it. "No," he whispered, and blinked again.
When he opened his eyes, it was even worse.
Because Christopher was there, as radiant as ever. But Christopher was not alone. He had his friends with him. His little friends.
His little rat-like demon friends, with their empty black eyes and their pink cleft palates and their rows upon rows of sharp yellow teeth . . .
. . . and even as Billy watched, the wall behind Christopher faded back and back into an endless dark cavern that stretched and widened and widened and stretched and went on and on forever . . .
. . . and it was the cathedral of his dreams, only the doors of memory were nowhere to be seen: just miles upon miles of deepening darkness that chittered and crawled with the emerging legions of the damned.
They were coming to meet him.
They were coming to take him home.
"Come on," Christopher said. "On your feet, little man. Show a little self-respect, why don't you. Didn't your mother teach you anything?
"You've got company."
Christopher smiled. A tiny lick of flame flickered out of his mouth.
Billy struggled to his hands and knees in a large cooling pool of blood. Larry's, he heard himself think, and the thought brought him back to where he was and what had happened.
The walls on either side of him were still his bedroom walls; the same went for the ceiling and floor. There was a dry heat emanating from the gateway to Hell, but he could feel the cool breeze from the window behind him.
The window behind him . . .
"Omigod," Billy moaned. "Omigod, please, no—"
Then he leapt to his feet.
And he turned . . .
. . . and Mona was staring staring staring into the yawning black abyss. Past the handsome blond devil with the lapping tongues of flame. Past the monster that had stolen Billy's face. Past Larry's body, and beyond all comprehension.
Staring and staring.
Into the mouth of Hell.
Her body was locked in a series of uncontrollable uttering spasms. She wasn't aware of it. Nothing existed but the darkness that had no end.
Staring and staring.
And utterly blank.
"I know what you're thinking," Christopher said, and his voice was full of fatherly compassion. "You're thinking that I sold you down the river. That I came here to destroy you. But that isn't true."
Billy heard the words as if from a great distance. He was too stunned, too broken, to hear them any more distinctly. The madness in his lover's eyes had done what no knife or bullet had succeeded in doing.
It had destroyed him.
"The truth is," Christopher continued, "that I respect you, Billy. And that I'm deeply in awe of your powers: not the least of which is your ability to bring people together.
"Like on the train tonight, for instance. That was spectacular. You didn't even have to lift a finger." Languid whistle of admiration. "What a gift you have."
Billy was still stuck on the phrase "bring people together." His gaze, scarcely focused, wandered over to Larry, who was still on the desk.
Larry's body was being devoured.
"That's why we need you on our side, Billy. A talent like yours is too good to waste. We believe in you. We can develop you into something like the world has never seen before.
"The man you were meant to be.
"The purpose for which you were born."
And then the terrible truth slammed home to him at last, at long long last. Not the second coining, his mind gasped as his lungs tied knots around his heart. Not the coming of Christ at all.
I'm the other thing.
I'm—
"What's in a name?" Christopher asked him, all cheerful charm and disarming flair. "A rose by any other name you know the rest. Don't sweat it, ace!
"You're the one we've all been waiting for.
"So come give your loving Poppa your hand."
Christopher moved toward him, and the hatred seethed like lava in his soul. All the self-delusion, all the betrayal, reached a head that would not be denied.
The Power was his. That much was true. He had been set up for precisely that reason. The realization was a bright light that cut through the terror.
And told him what he had to do.
"You want the Power," Billy said. He was smiling.
Christopher nodded.
"Okay. You got it."
And then Billy let him have it.
At maximum intensity.
It was a solid wall of focused light and heat and death, slamming into Christopher and the front rank of demons with the force of a nuclear blast. The air was alive with the screams of the dead.
But Christopher held his ground.
Billy pushed harder, his whole body taut as a garrote, straining as he narrowed his field of fire, training the full force of the Power on the one target that really mattered.
Giving it all to the fallen angel.
And Christopher began to change. Billy could see it, very faintly, through the brilliance. Christopher's clothing and hair were aflame; his flesh was melting and flowing in runnels toward the back of his head, like wax under a blowtorch.
There was another face beneath that beautiful mask.
The true face.
It appeared to be in pain.
But Billy was weakening, he was running out of juice, there was only so much Power in him and most of it was already gone. Fall, God damn you, he heard himself hissing as he pushed and pushed . . .
. . . and Christopher began to stagger, ever-so-slightly, backward . . .
. . . and the last of Billy's Power went-out in a final blistering wave . . .
. . . and Christopher's hideous jaws went wide, in preparation for a scream . . .
. . . and then Billy toppled to his knees and stayed there, spent.
While the monster before him teetered dizzily on its heels, clutching its hairless skull with long, chitinous fingers. The only sound in the room was its quick, shallow breathing, huge against the silence.
Please, dear God, Billy soundlessly prayed. Make him fall. Make him fall.
And then Christopher smiled.
"Damn, you're good," he said with open admiration. Then he cocked one hairless eyebrow sternly and added, "But don't ever do that again."
Mona's mind wasn't working very well. She was in a state of pathological shock so profound as to border on trance. The things that were happening before her no longer registered as real. She was watching a movie, only someone had put her on the wrong side of the screen.
Right now, she was watching a horrible monster. It was standing in front of the big black tunnel. Billy was on his knees in front of it, and it was starting to tell him a story. She just stood there in her space beside the window, leaning against the wall. Watching. Listening.
"What you have to understand," the monster was saying, "is that you're never going to beat me. Ever. And you'll never really get away. Even if I were to let you die, you'd still be mine; I mean, do you really think that Paradise would let you in after some of the things you've done?"
The monster laughed. Mona thought it looked funny. It looked like
(larry the lobster)
a giant crustacean, only it had human features: arms and legs and
(larry's dead he got on the wrong side of the screen and they ate him)
a big shiny head and a torso
(but not until billy killed him)
except that it didn't have skin, it was made out of shells
(that was when the movie started)
and the only skin on it hung from the back of its head in stinking, blackened curls that looked like Rastafarian dreadlocks. The shells were bronze; they pulsed and glowed. The eyes were fiat and black and had no light in them at all.
"So my suggestion to you," the monster continued, "is to go with the flow. Just give in. Just give in. It'll be fine. You'll see. We'll forget this little outburst ever happened, and get cracking on some of those strategies of yours."
Mona was in shock, but a certain alertness was starting to poke through. There were voices in her head, all of them her own, that were starting to make sense of what they were seeing and hearing.
The monster stepped closer to Billy, held out its horrible hands.
"Come on," it said, voice husky-seductive and low. "Come to Poppa."
Very slowly, Billy took his hands away from his face. He had been crying; she could tell because the palms of his hands were wet. She couldn't see his face, but she knew what was on it. She knew Billy.
He was the man she loved . . .
. . . and several things came down on Mona's head with terrible, crashing clarity.One: if the monster still had to seduce him, then Billy still had a chance. Two: it was the monster, not Billy, that was responsible for the horror. Three: if Billy took the monster's hands, it was all over.
Four: this was not a movie, and she was not in the audience.
"NOOOOOOO!!!" Mona screamed, launching forward, away from the wall. It took less than a seco
nd to reach the back of Billy's collar, the rest of the second to yank him away. Billy fell on his back with a loud ka-boom, and Mona slapped him across the face before he had a chance to blink.
When she looked into his eyes, they were crawling with pain.
So she slapped him again.
And she slapped him again . . .
. . . and then he grabbed her wrists. Not to crush them. Just to stop them.
"That's enough, baby." Very softly spoken. "Thank you."
Then he turned, and stood.
And faced his demon.
For the last time.
"I like you better this way," Billy said, looking Christopher up and down. "Now that I know what you really are, life's become so much simpler."
"Oh?" Christopher said, with his hideous smile. "And what am I, really?"
Billy smiled back. "A subhuman piece of shit."
Christopher started to say something, but Billy shushed him, continuing.
"No, no. Don't get me wrong. You had me this close," pinching thumb and forefinger together—"even after I'd made up my mind. You're at your best when you're feeding on weakness, Christopher. That's probably why I hate you.'
Billy took a couple of steps closer to the demon. He had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen. He hoped he was right.
He was looking forward to it.
"You can't have me," he said, stepping closer. Closer. "Not ever. Understand? Not even if I die. Not even in a million years."
"Don't be so sure—"
"Shut up, Christopher! I've had enough bullshit out of you for one lifetime! I renounce you, I renounce whatever Power you've given me, you can take the gift and the guidance and protection and crawl right back down to Hell with it.
"It's over.
"We're through."
Nobody spoke. They just stared at each other. Christopher looked almost sad. And in his own strange way, Billy supposed, he probably is.
Then the demon sighed heavily and nodded its head. The notebook and the silver pen appeared magically in its hands. Christopher turned to the very last page and scribbled something down.
"Yes, we are," Christopher said, meeting Billy's gaze for the last time. "Good-bye, Billy. It's been fun."
The Cleanup Page 36