The world shook around them again, dust and mortar sifting down from the walls and ceiling, the metal creaking underfoot. Dr. Cocteau let go of her arm to get a better grip on the iron railing. His breathing came hard and rasping, and she wondered if his heart would fail him. But every time she thought he might fall, he redoubled his effort and labored along behind her, wheezing and moaning. The stairs seemed to go up forever and her legs began to burn with the exertion, but she kept climbing. The gas-men weren’t human, but how Dr. Cocteau kept up with her, she did not know.
At last he began to falter, and then paused to rest.
“Don’t let her … get away,” he rasped, practically choking on the words.
The gas-men stayed with her, not trying to stop or even hold on to her, but never letting her get more than a step or two above them.
Another tremor struck, this one so strong it threw her against the wall. From far below there came the high-pitched skree of weakening metal. Molly wondered how many stairs they had climbed, how many feet, how far they had to go before they reached the surface. Then a bang thundered up along the spiral stairs and the whole structure of the staircase shook from the sudden onslaught of water. The door had not held, and now the maelstrom would be rushing up beneath them.
Inside her air mask, Molly screamed in frustration and regret. She imagined the water surging upward, churning as it filled the spiral. Dr. Cocteau roared at his gas-men to hurry, commanded two of them to carry him, and Molly glanced back in horror to see that they had lifted him on a bucket made of their arms and were running upward. They slammed into her and she hit the railing before she fell backward, tumbling end over end down a dozen stairs, only catching herself on the railing because her body struck a turn in the spiral at a bad angle.
Hauling herself to her feet, Molly starting running again. Her ankle hurt, but it wasn’t broken. Full of fear and anger, she chased Cocteau and his creatures, aware of the irony but unable to appreciate it through the storm of emotions already swirling inside of her. She heard the roar of water rushing up beneath her and she knew that the air mask would not be enough to save her.
And then she reached the landing. The metal hatchway door hung open ahead of her, but as she approached, the gas-men were beginning to close it. She hurled herself through the open door, slamming her shoulder against it as she forced her way past the gas-men. Dr. Cocteau screamed at them as they spun the wheel to seal the hatch.
The water struck it from below with such force that it squirted out around the rim of the door, even as the wheel was spun tight.
“I don’t know if that’s going to hold,” Molly said.
Cocteau sneered at her but didn’t reply. He turned and lumbered toward another door, this one entirely ordinary wood with a heavy latch handle. They were on a broader landing than in the spiral staircase. To the left a wall had been built, sealing this small space off from one she imagined to be much larger. It had been done with brick and mortar, but she had a feeling there was more to the wall than just masonry, like the huge wall erected down in Cocteau’s lair, keeping the river out.
“Where are we?” she asked as she rushed to catch up.
Still he ignored her, tearing open the door, which opened on an ordinary set of granite steps that led upward. Molly followed, hurrying, and soon they were struggling up the last of four flights of stairs to a locked door. With a gesture from Dr. Cocteau, the gas-men threw themselves at the door, and it crashed open, letting a rush of night wind into the stairwell.
Chapter Twenty-two
Shaking with effort and relief, Molly emerged onto the roof of an old building and glanced around. She breathed in the salt air, looked up at the moon and starlight peeking through the clouds, and tried to figure out where they were. Somewhere way Downtown, she knew that much. The rain had stopped at last, but the thought filled her with a fresh wave of sadness, making her think of Joe, and then of Felix.
Lost in her own city, forever cut off from the only things in her past that had ever given her comfort, she nearly collapsed then. If she survived the night, what future lay ahead for her? She had friends and acquaintances, and there had been clients who had been kind to her when they came to see Felix, but she had no family except him, no home other than the one she had shared with him. Whatever future she might have, it would have to be of her own construction.
The building bucked and shook beneath her, a quaking that knocked her off her feet. She sprawled on her hands and knees on the roof, glancing around in terror, wondering if the old building would crumble and sink into the river, making her one more victim of the Drowning City. Gas-men toppled all over the roof. Dr. Cocteau had fallen to his knees but managed to stay there, propped up on one arm, the other hand frantically searching deep inside the pocket of his singed, bloodstained burgundy jacket.
Had he lost the Pentajulum? Molly hoped he had. The bastard could only do more harm with it.
A thunderous clamor reached her, and she turned toward it. Uptown quaked and buildings crashed together. A gleaming tower had given way, and she watched as it toppled. The upper floors of a landmark building imploded, windows vaporized. For generations the denizens of wealthy Uptown had turned their backs on the squalor and ruin to the south, pretending that no one would choose to live there, fancying themselves untouchable in their office spires and corporate battlements. Now they were crumbling, and Molly wondered if Upper Manhattan would sink the way that Lower Manhattan had so many years ago, if the streets would flood, making Uptown a part of the Drowning City. Part of her thought it served them right, the rich elitists who abandoned and ignored those less fortunate. But then she thought of the families, the children, the happiness devastated with every passing second, and she felt ashamed.
Yet ashamed or not, Uptown was falling. Soon, it would be drowning.
The roof she was on slammed upward, unbalancing her again, and she struck her head. Dazed, she tried to rise but succeeded only in tumbling a few feet closer to Dr. Cocteau. The roar of the earthquake filled the sky and drilled into her bones. From somewhere not far away she heard voices screaming and imagined them as frightened prayers that would go unanswered.
But in the midst of those screams, there came another sound—one she had heard before, only minutes ago. The eerie cry could only be the plaintive wail of the strange being that Felix Orlov had become. Now it grew louder and louder, and Molly scuttled toward the edge of the roof. A crack formed forty feet away from her and she hesitated, thinking the whole building would fall out from beneath her, but then the trembling began to subside.
A low wall ran around the edge of the roof. Molly edged toward it, gripped the top of the wall, and rose to her knees. If the quake worsened again, it might hurl her from the roof, but that awful, keening, sorrowful wail reached out to her, and she had to look. She had to see him.
Molly peered over the low wall, and what she saw paralyzed her. The water churned with the rumbling of the earth. The old City Hall had half collapsed into the river, and as she glanced at it, the water dragged more and more of the structure into its current. But in the intersection ahead, loomed over by half-submerged pieces of old New York, the thing that had been Felix Orlov thrust itself from the water and cried out its pain to the cosmos. The sound tore at Molly’s heart, and she found herself weeping at the anguish in it. It didn’t matter if the voice he spoke with had not been heard in her dimension since before time began; she could feel the sorrow and confusion in him, and it broke her heart. Some part of the creature was still the man who had cared for her so gently and with such warm humor.
“Felix!” she screamed. “It’s all right! You’ll be all right!”
And then she covered her mouth as if she had uttered some horrible profanity, because how stupid was that? Of course he wouldn’t be all right. Even to suggest it was ridiculous. What she really wanted to tell him was that he wasn’t alone, but that wasn’t true, either, was it?
Molly pressed her face to the cold stone on top of
the wall and peered down from the roof. The creature did not appear to be swimming so much as floating there in the river, half of his body above the waterline. The undulating waves and the current had no evident effect on him. The tentacles where his face should have been coiled and uncoiled, reaching skyward as if waiting for some un-dimensioned angels to come to its rescue. Felix had so many eyes now, and when Molly saw the strange collection of limbs moving under the water, she realized just how huge he had gotten. His reach beneath the river must have spanned the entire intersection, and she thought he might still be growing.
A voice rose above the chaos, a deep chanting baritone. Molly spun to see that Dr. Cocteau had risen from his knees and now stood by the edge of the roof thirty feet away, holding the Pentajulum up in both hands like an offering. His eyes were closed and despite the blood that matted his beard and the soot on his face and clothes, he looked radiant in his zeal.
Around him, the gas-men waited. Some of them were on their feet, but others had mimicked his kneeling posture before and now remained in that pose as if worshipping him—this monster who had taken men and twisted their flesh into something that should never have existed. One of them had transformed and its rubber suit lay empty, a yellow gas spreading out from it. A long, green-black leech slithered across the roof, moving away from the gas mask and leaking a trail of blood and viscous slime. It must have sustained damage in the ruckus down in Cocteau’s lair, or during the quake as they ran up the stairs.
Taking a deep breath, Molly rose. She pounded the heels of her hands against her skull, trying to force herself to stop listening to Felix’s anguished wail and to stop imagining the people dying all around them, the carnage of Uptown’s collapse. But she could not scour any of these thoughts from her mind, and perhaps that was best, for they drove her forward. The building shook, but not so much that she couldn’t stay on her feet.
“What have you done?” she screamed.
Dr. Cocteau faltered, glancing her way, and then he lowered the Pentajulum, holding it protectively, this artifact that had become the only thing in the world that was precious to him. She shoved past a couple of the gas-men, but his thuggish creations did nothing to stop her, little more than toy soldiers without orders from their master.
“Get away from me,” Dr. Cocteau snarled. “You’ve ruined everything, you and Joe. It may not be too late, but if I can’t get the Pentajulum working—”
“It doesn’t work, you stupid son of a bitch!” she cried. “All of this is for nothing!” She swept one hand out to take in the catastrophe unfolding around them. “All of these people are dying, the city is being destroyed, because you set something in motion that you thought you could control, and you can’t!”
Dr. Cocteau laughed, eyes sparkling with madness. “Weren’t you listening? I never thought I could control what happens to this world. And I don’t care. I’m going to be leaving it all behind. You can all drown as far as I’m concerned. But the young god is fully formed now, and once he hears me—”
The madman’s eyes went wide with fear and wonder. A beatific smile spread across his features and tears of joy sprang to his eyes. His mouth hung open; he couldn’t even form words anymore.
Molly turned to follow Cocteau’s gaze and saw that he wasn’t looking at the buildings behind her—he was looking at the sky above them. One of the gas-men was blocking her view, and she slipped around it, then stood and stared, her breath hitching in her chest.
There were slashes in the night sky, strips of blue-black void where there had been clouds, stars, and infinite space a moment ago. Molly thought of the curtains that had been hanging down in Dr. Cocteau’s home and the way she had peered through them into the room beyond, but she did not want to see past these curtains. Through those rips in reality, even the darkness seemed different, and it went on forever, as though her whole world could fall through and be eternally lost in the void.
The crying of the thing Felix had become filled the city now, echoing off of buildings and churning with the rough river currents. It grew louder and louder, pleading and almost petulant.
But Molly barely noticed. Her skin began to crawl with the wrongness—the otherness—of the scene unfolding above her. Something had begun to manifest itself in the sky, a presence that seemed to have no definable shape, only coils that turned in upon themselves, or dangled down toward the city. Its tentacles, so much larger than those of its offspring, seemed to slither along the tops of buildings or to pass through them, solid one moment and ephemeral as a ghost the next.
“This isn’t what you said was going to happen,” Molly said, turning toward Dr. Cocteau even as she began to shudder with revulsion. The air itself felt like insects crawling all over her skin.
Dr. Cocteau shook his head, blissfully mesmerized. “I didn’t know. But don’t you understand what you are seeing? This is one of the old gods, a being from the other cosmos. You are seeing the face of God.”
“Not my god,” Molly said, glancing back at the thing whose very existence seemed uncertain. It shifted in and out of reality, edges blurring, its shape altering as though the physics of her world would not allow it to manifest its true self.
Dr. Cocteau lifted the Pentajulum in his hands and started pulling at it, first idly and then frantically. He pressed its coils and edges, held it between his hands and prayed to it, felt for some kind of trigger, and his expression went from joyous to helpless to frantic. Dr. Cocteau had run out of time to figure out how Lector’s Pentajulum worked.
“Hey!” she shouted, but he ignored her, so she shouted again and punched him as hard as she could in the arm.
Two gas-men reacted, reaching for her. One got a good grip on her shoulder, but she squirmed away and they hesitated, waiting for orders.
Dr. Cocteau flinched and staggered away from her, still protecting the Pentajulum. He glared at her, and she remembered that he had promised to kill her. The gas-men would certainly murder her if he commanded it. Yet somehow she was not afraid. In the face of the anguish and the destruction all around them, her own life seemed such a small thing to risk.
“You are not going to figure this out in time to keep yourself from dying,” she told him, shouting to be heard over the cacophony of the city’s woes. “If you don’t stop it, you’re going to be killed with the rest of us!”
Dr. Cocteau stared at her, eyes wide, and a giddy laugh bubbled out of him. He turned from her to try to work the Pentajulum again. Molly reached for him, exploding with fear and grief, but Dr. Cocteau shoved her away. She slammed into the wall at the edge of the roof, pain shooting across her back, and nearly tumbled over the side.
Thirty-five feet below, in the turmoil of the river, Molly saw a flash of gleaming black and then the giant eel surged from the water. Coiled in its body, Joe battered at the creature’s skull. Part of the eel’s head had caved in, and slick blood and gray sludge dripped from within. The eel crashed back down into the river, taking Joe with it—or the stone man Joe had become, yet another thing she did not understand.
Molly turned to look at the gas-men, then at Dr. Cocteau. To her astonishment, the Pentajulum had begun to glow in his hands, light flashing along those strange coils and impossible angles. She looked up at the slits of darkness torn in the sky, at the eternity of nothing inside them, and the thing materializing there. Her skin crawled with its presence and she felt sick, but somehow she knew that whatever happened now, it would not go according to Dr. Cocteau’s plan.
The thing that had been Felix still hovered half in and half out of the river, the tentacles on his face reaching up toward the old god in the sky, which she knew must be his father. He screamed his pain and sadness even more loudly, and Molly froze, staring at it, thinking of Felix, realizing that a part of him was still there, terrified.
He didn’t want to go.
That was what had drawn the old god here. Felix didn’t want to go. And as much as she didn’t want him to go, she feared for the city—for her world—if the thin
gs that had abandoned this reality decided to inhabit it once again.
“Dr. Cocteau!” she shouted. “You’ve got to…”
But she never finished the sentence. He wouldn’t listen to her. All he cared about was his own contact with this cosmic intelligence, as if he would attain some sort of godhood himself if it noticed him, as if he could even survive if his plan worked and he could travel between realities and explore the limbo of un-dimensioned space.
Molly darted up beside him. One of the gas-men noticed and tried to stop her, but not before she shot out a kick with all of her strength behind it. Cocteau’s knee caved sideways, broken or torn, and the madman screamed in ferocious pain as he fell. Molly grabbed the Pentajulum from his hands. He tried to hang on, but she stomped on his arm and then danced beyond his reach as he shrieked in agony.
She knew that he deserved whatever pain she and the world could give him, and yet still she felt guilty. But now wasn’t the time for guilt.
Molly spun, facing the intersection where the Felix-creature still wailed his sadness. She held the Pentajulum in front of her, running her fingers over its coils, wishing she could find some way to make it work. There were so many theories about this thing. Maybe it did amplify existing magic, in which case she would be out of luck, for she had none. But its coils felt like a tangle of hot and cold in her hands and it glowed a queer green and magenta, neither quite like any colors she had ever seen. The colors began to shift and undulate, and somehow she knew that what it reacted to was need. Desire. If it had worked for occultists in the past, it had responded to their yearning more than anything else.
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