Darkman

by Randall Boyll

  His face.

  It looked like the crime game was becoming a little too technical, a lot too strange.

  27

  Later That Same Day . . .

  DARKMAN MADE HIMSELF into Peyton once again, doing it much faster now that the digitization procedure was on hard disk inside his new computer. He could become Durant anytime he felt like it, become Pauly if he needed to come back from the dead, which wasn’t likely. Durant’s other goon, that Smiley fellow—well, there were no photos of him yet. It didn’t matter much, he was not a pivotal part of the plot. He would die, as would the others, when the time came. It reminded Darkman of that old board game called Mousetrap, where a touch of one part of the Rube Goldberg apparatus set the trap in motion and eventually caught the toy mouse. Darkman was not an assassin. He was Rube, and if his traps got set in motion by blundering goons, well, tough luck. There would be no blood on his hands.

  Copping out?

  No. Shut up.

  What kills? The gun, the bullet, or the man holding the gun?

  Do shut up.

  Building the gallows does not obviate you from guilt when the trapdoor opens.

  Yeah? Sez who?

  Never mind. I’ll shut up.

  Thanks so much.

  It took an age to leave the dead part of town behind and find a taxi, and Peyton swore to God and his angels that he would buy a car or die trying. He made it to Julie’s apartment with only thirty-three minutes left on the stopwatch. They went to Baker’s Square, where a carnival had been set up for the upcoming Oktoberfest, and strolled between the rides and gyp joints and food stands, hand in hand, listening to the barkers and the thundering diesel engines and the terrified screams of kids eighty feet in the air and having fun.

  He had called Julie after the desperate escape from Durant and his boys, shaking, knowing he had nearly bought the farm, needing to see her. It was Saturday and she was free. He promised to be at her place by four and he did not lie. She assailed him with a flurry of questions, both on the phone and when he picked her up, and he tried to handle these fastballs and tricky curveballs without sounding defensive. Uppermost on her list was why he had run away at the graveyard. He stuttered something about needing medication, and she had frowned and let the matter drop. Good move on her part; Peyton did not want to lie to her, merely keep a lid on the truth until either the skin was perfected or she was ready to accept Darkman as her lover.

  Hardy-har on that one. He could barely stand to look in a mirror—what would she find attractive in him?

  The answer was, most surely, nothing at all. Thus the lie must live and prosper.

  It was at the carnival, where a mellow afternoon sun beamed down on the whirling rides and the smell of sawdust and pony manure was thick yet somehow exhilarating, that Peyton almost blew the whole thing. Never one to try the booth where crooked BB guns were waiting for a sucker to dump quarters into the barker’s pouch, he let himself pass every rip-off game without a qualm. There were ringtoss and coin tosses, plastic ducklings floating with secret numbers on their undersides, the Wheel of Fortune, the Alligator Lady, the Incredible Two-headed Baby soaking in his jug of formaldehyde, another plastic fraud. He laughed at them, and Julie laughed with him. The air was mildly cool, speaking of winter but not demanding it, and good fun was only a ticket away. It was when they passed the throw-a-softball-at-the-milk-bottles game that Peyton’s descent into horror began.

  It started with Julie suddenly squealing and pointing. Peyton had an arm slung over her shoulders as they walked. She was pointing at a large pink elephant hanging on Peg-Board in the softball booth, an elephant surrounded by other stuffed animals and looking very new and expensive. Peyton shook his head good-naturedly, knowing that once you started, it was hard to quit. Besides, it was just a big rip-off.

  Barely two minutes ago, as they were passing the noisy double Ferris wheel, Julie had made an attempt to close the gulf of silence that had existed during his absence. “Peyton,” she had said, “I’ve been trying to sort out a few things. Things about us. All that time you were gone, when I thought you were dead, I kept thinking about that day of the fire, when you vanished. Do you remember proposing to me?”

  He smiled. “Awkward situation, wasn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh. I tried to call you that afternoon, but no one answered. I wanted to tell you that I had decided about the marriage. I was going to say yes.”

  She looked faintly embarrassed. Peyton caught her chin with a gentle hand and guided her into a kiss.

  When she pulled back, she rubbed her lips, frowning. She looked at her fingers. “What’s this?” she asked, and Peyton’s chest felt suddenly hollow. It was lipstick.

  “Medicine,” he said. “Burn ointment.”

  She frowned, looking puzzled, rubbing her fingers together, then bringing them up to her nose. “Lipstick,” she murmured.

  He forced a laugh. “Next you’re going to say I’m gay.”

  “Don’t be silly. But why do you need burn ointment? You look fine.”

  He searched his mind for new and better lies. Something clicked, and he had it. “I inhaled a lot of superheated air. It burned my entire respiratory system, including my mouth and lips.”

  “Is that why you smell a bit odd? Does the medicine have mineral spirits in it?”

  He almost panicked. It was the mastic she was smelling, that dumb, stinky glue that held his lie together. “Must have,” he said, growing nervous. He pulled the stopwatch out and furtively checked it. Eight more minutes and he would have to ditch her. How long could she go on with a man who ran away so often? He ground his teeth, feeling helpless and ashamed. Goddamn Durant . . .

  “When do you want to get married?” she was asking.

  He ducked his head. “Springtime would be nice.”

  “All right, then. April first it is.”

  “April Fools’ Day? Heavens.”

  She laughed and changed the date to April second. They walked on a bit, barkers shouting at them, and then he stopped. “I have a question, Julie. A delicate one that I shouldn’t even ask.”

  “Ask away,” she said sprightfully.

  “Sure. Um, while I was gone, did you happen to, ah, find someone else?”

  “Find someone else? Hardly. I did meet a nice man who helped me through the grief as best he could. I respect him for his kindness but he’s only a friend. You’ll meet him, I’m sure.”

  “Okay.”

  They walked on toward the softball booth—and the catastrophe that was waiting. He checked the stopwatch again, trying to dredge up a decent excuse for leaving abruptly.

  She saw him do it. “Will you please stop looking at that watch, Peyton? To hell with the time. Let’s spend the whole day together, the whole night. The whole week, maybe.”

  He grunted a temporary answer as apprehension slithered up his spine and oozed fear into his brain. What now, Mr. Bright Guy? Spill the beans? Let the cat out of the bag? Open a can of worms? Pandora’s box?

  “Julie,” he said, almost breathless, “the fire . . . it changed me. Both physically and, well, mentally. I—”

  A shout interrupted him. Ahead, a greasy-looking barker was loudly inviting people to come into his show of nature’s freaks for only a dollar. Beside him was a man in a rubber lizard suit, snarling and hissing. Though it was fake, it turned Peyton’s stomach. Why wasn’t he up there, a living freak with no face?

  He decided that Julie must never know.

  And at this moment, sure that his secret would die with him, they crossed in front of the softball booth and Julie saw the pink elephant and pointed. Glad for the change in subject, he decided to try for it, hoping Julie was done with her questions. He looked at his watch.

  Three minutes left. Would the elephant help placate her when he traipsed off to nowhere? Better than nothing, maybe.

  He laid down a dollar, which the barker snatched up. He was the perfect gyp-joint operator: dirty blond hair, blackheads all over his face like blown p
epper, no shirt, a filthy baseball cap on his moron’s head. He thumped three softballs onto the dirty counter.

  “Pink elephant if I nail it?” Peyton asked.

  The kid made a noise. “Good luck, Pops.”

  Pops? Did he look that old?

  He threw the first ball, ignoring the taunt, missing the stack of wooden bottles entirely. He gave Julie a grin and threw the second one. It hit the stack at the base, where the ones weighted with lead shot were. The softball bounced off. The kid barked a short laugh.

  Peyton picked up the last ball, growing angry. Sure it was a rip-off, sure it was rigged. But he wanted that pink elephant because Julie did.

  He threw the ball hard, the adrenaline of anger pumping through his veins and making his ears ring. The ball hit the lower tier, the weighted bottles. They exploded off the stand and thumped against the canvas behind.

  Peyton breathed easier, glad that he had kept control. He grinned at the kid. “The pink elephant, please.”

  The kid stuck a cigarette between his lips, looking bored. “It don’t count if you’re not behind the line,” he said.

  Peyton looked down at the dust between his feet. “There is no line.”

  “Pity, huh?” The kid’s eyes twinkled, showing that, at the very least, he was actually alive.

  “Do you see this woman?” Peyton asked, feeling the adrenaline again. He touched Julie’s face. “This is my fiancée, and she wants the pink elephant.”

  “Tell her to buy a bottle of booze. Pink elephants guaranteed.” He laughed again and lit his cigarette.

  A dark pall seemed to descend over Peyton, a billowing red shroud called anger. With tremendous effort he reined in the feeling. “The pink elephant, if you please!”

  Julie tugged at his sleeve. He jerked away.

  “Peyton, it doesn’t matter,” she said, putting a hand on his arm.

  He jerked away again. “It does too matter. I won a pink elephant for you. For my fiancée.”

  “Buzz off,” the dirty kid said, and flipped ashes at him. “I got other customers.”

  “The elephant!”

  He sighed and prodded Peyton’s chest with two dirty fingers. “Get out of my face, asshole, or I’ll knock you upside the head with your own fucking leg. Scram.”

  The shroud became complete. Peyton’s right hand swooped to his chest. It wrapped itself around the two prodding fingers there. The kid’s eyes became larger.

  Peyton bent his fingers until they touched the back of his hand. There was a short, damp snap as one of them broke. He twisted tighter. Another snap. The kid uttered a hoarse, breathy moan. Peyton hoisted him by the hand, tossed him up as easily as he might toss a balloon, and caught him by the neck and crotch. He hurled him through the other standing bottles. They clattered like loud bowling pins. The kid flopped through the canvas back of the booth and was gone. A moment later he ran out onto the fairway, hands clamped together, leaving a trail of drops of blood in the dust.

  Peyton leaned over the counter and unhooked the elephant. He jerked it away and thrust it at Julie.

  She took a step backward, shaking her head slowly, eyes wide with terror.

  “Take it!” Peyton said in a voice hoarse with rage. His hands were shaking and his face was twisted into something obscene. A blister formed on the back of his neck where the sunlight had played longest. It popped. Yellow smoke rose in a tiny cloud.

  “Peyton, please,” she said, her eyes jerking to the people who were beginning to stop and stare at the spectacle of a man about to clobber his date with a stuffed elephant. “Please,” she said again.

  He bared his teeth while more smoke bubbled from the back of his neck. “Take the fucking elephant!” he screamed.

  Julie blanched, frozen, staring at him with incredulous eyes. Boils were forming on his cheeks and nose. One popped with a puff of yellow smoke. He covered his face with a hand, but the hand was alive with rising blisters.

  He turned and ran, the elephant tucked under one arm, forgotten. Julie broke out of her shock and ran after him. The trail was easy to follow. She only had to follow the wispy smoke and the smell of Peyton as his face and hands disintegrated into mush.

  PART THREE

  Unmasked

  28

  Julie

  HE SHOULD HAVE bought a car.

  Julie, not quite thirty yet, was occasionally known to go insane and get up before dawn, slip into her Jordache jogging sweats, and put in two miles before sunrise. She didn’t do it regularly or often, but it proved to her that she still had the strength, if not the willpower. And unfortunately for Darkman the man named Peyton was a notorious couch potato whose only passion was research. He didn’t have a potbelly yet, and his years prevented any possible heart disease, so he was, Julie had sometimes thought, a guy who would wake up one morning and find himself forty going on dead. Then he would go insane, as she did, and he would jog and play racquetball and tennis, and he would begin to eat bran flakes because he couldn’t stand the thought of wearing a colostomy bag as he cruised toward fifty and the health-horrors that waited there.

  So it was not all that surprising that Julie could keep up with him as he ran, smoking and blistering, back to the only refuge he knew now. Julie stayed about a block away, slinking into alleys and shadows when she thought he might turn around, flattening herself against dirty brick walls when her instinct told her he was about to glance over his shoulder. As soon as he left the lively part of town he slowed, seeming to feel more at peace in the ravaged section where nobody went, and his pell-mell run became an easy, fast walk.

  Julie was wondering about many things as she followed. Uppermost on the roster, though, were what was wrong with his skin and what was wrong with his temper. She had never seen him so enraged. Her Peyton shuffled along with his head full of formulas and his feet stuffed into Hush Puppies, the world’s kindest man, if a bit eccentric. When he wasn’t deep into a research project, he was as nice as you please. Behind the hard blue of his eyes was a brain that never stopped, always running in high gear on an eternal speed trip to the farthest reaches of human knowledge. Julie wondered if this was why she loved him—for his brain and the places it could carry him.

  What had happened to him? What was he hiding?

  It struck her that she should not ask and never know. The baloney about superheated air cooking his lips was barely plausible, if at all. That stuff on her fingers had been lipstick. And when he held her face to be kissed, his hand had been as cool as a corpse, his lips as cold and unyielding as ice in the sunlight. And that other smell, the turpentine. What was it?

  Go back.

  No, not quite yet. First we must discover what has become of Peyton Westlake.

  You don’t want to know, Julie. He is kind and good and is hiding a dark and terrible secret. Let him work things out by himself.

  A block ahead, he slowed and turned his head.

  Julie shrank back, in time to miss his gaze but with enough time to see one side of his face.

  He had a halloween mask on, some plastic device that looked like running tallow and bare bone. She dived into the protective shadow of an alley, panting, her face red and slick with sweat. Okay, Julie, she said to herself, you’re a lawyer. Put this case together. Assemble the facts and damn the torpedoes.

  Fine. Something was wrong with Peyton’s face. Something was wrong with one of Peyton’s hands, maybe both. He had mentioned a coma and severe burns.

  But . . . he didn’t have any burns.

  She frowned. Still frowning, she peeked around the corner.

  He had veered left, crossing the street. Ancient factories and high rises bulked to the sky around him, buildings black with coal soot and decay. He looked over his shoulder once more, pulled the elephant free from its position under his arm, looked at it, then banged open the door of a squat two-story building and vanished inside.

  Huh?

  No problem here, she thought in an attempt to remain cool. Peyton has become a fan of drear
y darkness, slum dwellings, and half-starved pigeons. The guy always had one strange quirk after another, as genius scientists tended to. And if he wanted Julie here, he would have asked her to come.

  She walked to the building, pulling her sweater tighter against the windy gusts of the oncoming season, determined to follow him until she knew everything, and then she would help him. No matter how strange his affliction might be, she would help him.

  She came to the door and touched it gently. It did not open. She pushed harder and the hinges squealed a metallic protest. Pulling her hand away, the door still open a crack, she was still debating, still unsure.

  A noise from inside caught her ear. Something—cloth?—was being torn in there. Someone—something?—was shouting and grunting, the echoes in the abandoned building rebounding off the walls two times before evaporating. It was as dark as a cave inside, vaguely damp and cool. A breeze wafted out of the crack in the doorway and reeked of dust and rotten meat.

  She gathered her nerve and pushed the door fully open.

  Something large and whitish was hanging just above eye level, hard to see in this light. Under a cloak of dead varnish and dust was a sign proclaiming this place to be

  REYTON SOAP COMPANY

  HOME OF FRESH SPLASH SOAP

  AND OTHER HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTS.

  How nice, she thought. Peyton has purchased a soap franchise. Time to go now, Julie, old pal, and on April second we shall be wed.

  She stepped inside, wrinkling her nose at the smell. The place was dimly lighted by old lamps hanging on chains from the ceiling. She stayed motionless, waiting for her eyes to adjust, seeing big blotches of purple and silver where the sun had shined in her eyes. In thirty seconds she was less blind.