Suddenly, from the left, a light… dim, like a headlight in dense fog, scrolling methodically back and forth, getting brighter. His voice was hollow and hoarse and soaked with malice. “I figured you two were up to something, people don’t sit in the park when it’s raining ice.”
“Why didn’t you bury him in the cemetery?” Priscilla said, and pulled me farther along the wall.
“Old T. William. He had a good brain back then. Sharp. He insisted I bring him down here. He discovered this place way back when he bought a chunk of the building. A few days later he was looking around and there’s this hole in the dirt going down into one of the old ice house tool rooms. It was like finding a secret tomb. I rebuilt the ceiling, put in that door, and bingo! We had ourselves one hell of a secret spot. Damn good place to hide things you don’t want found.
“T. William and Dorthea insisted Jankey be part of their Special Place. Whenever they did someone they always wanted to put the bodies down here, like trophies. And it was also the perfect place for Rundle.”
We lay flattened in the dirt as he drifted by us, his hazy light cutting slow arcs above our heads.
“I was sweating bullets. All that Jankey bitch had to do was ask to have him moved and she would have seen the hole in the back of his head. But T. William had an instinct, insisted she wouldn’t and he was right. Hell, she was crying so damn hard she could barely see anything, and so Jankey joined our little group down here in purgatory.”
With me hanging onto her back, Priscilla half pulled, half dragged me away from the deadly glow of his light. We slithered over an ancient board, and with a loud crack, it broke.
Explosions shredded the air. Like crabs we scuttled frantically along the wall. Dirt poured from the ceiling like a waterfall. Priscilla jammed her mask against my ear and hissed, “The concussion from his pistol, it fills the air with this goddamn dust. We got to get him to shoot more.”
“Are you insane?” I yelped. “That’s how he’s killing us!”
Anderson’s light found us. Priscilla grabbed the front of my sweatshirt and threw me forward as four thunderous explosions engulfed our world. Sudden pain seared my right forearm. Priscilla yelped and fell against me as more explosions cut the air. Anderson’s gun sounded like dynamite going off.
Priscilla grabbed my arm and we lurched to the left. Desperately pawing through the filth, bouncing off support pillars, and stumbling over boards, we scrambled away from the gun, crawling frantically toward the center of the room. Priscilla’s light flicked on for an instant, revealing little more than a thick cloud of dust. Side by side, arms outstretched, we careened across the room until we hit the opposite wall.
We staggered along the wall and dropped to the floor. With his light sweeping rapidly back and forth, Anderson glided by. Slowly we stood, our backs pressed against cold, grimy rock.
Where the hell was he now?
It was as black as my nightmares. I listened desperately for Anderson but all I could hear was a roaring in my ears from the gunshots. My breathing was labored and my eyes teared up like mad, trying to wash the dust away. I rapped my mask several times with my hand and my breathing was suddenly easier.
Beside me Priscilla was doubled over, pressed into the rock, coughing and gasping, retching and unable to breath or move. I put out my hands and found her arms, then her hands. They were brushing feebly against her mask. I pushed her hands away and snapped her mask several times with my fingers. Coughing and choking, she nodded, grabbed my sweatshirt and pulled me off the wall.
That deadly glow slowly turned and headed back our way. We ran, skidding and bouncing along the wall. Another volley of horrific explosions ripped the air. Sudden pain. It felt like I was being stung by yellowjackets. I felt Priscilla jerk. We lurched away from the wall, and bouncing off support pillars, falling over boards, we staggered forward, fell, and lay flat in the dirt.
Close, so very close. Anderson’s light bobbed erratically in front of us. He was almost on us. Above the roaring in my ears I heard other noises, guttural noises… coughing and choking. Priscilla? Priscilla slowly stood, pulling me up with her. Just feet away, immersed in a thick gray haze, Anderson was bent over, coughing hard and savagely rubbing his eyes at the same time. Priscilla pushed me back and I realized that she was going to go for him. I grabbed her and leaned forward, to tell her no!… no! we would do it together. She pushed me, then fell against me, gasping and retching. Bent double, she hugged itself and desperately struggled for air.
Like an enraged bear, Anderson growled, straightened up, and thrust out his arm. I dug into Priscilla’s sweatshirt with both hands and flung her away from me. The world exploded. Balls of fire flashed in front of me. The noise was overwhelming. My left leg was suddenly a thousand needles of pain. Swirling masses of dust smothered the air. Flailing my arms, I staggered forward, hit a support, bounced off, and lurched into Anderson.
My mind flooded with sick terror, I pawed at him, frantically trying to avoid his gun, his bullets. My face was below his, hard against his chest. I grabbed his gun arm and pushed it away.
He pushed back, slapping his pistol flat against my head. His strength was immense. The side of his pistol dragged along my skull. With my head hard against his chest I pushed back. We were locked in a motionless dance, our groans of effort the only music. Sounding like an old man dying, I sobbed with the strain. Anderson, making noises that belonged in a swamp, dragged his pistol toward my face.
Suddenly his arm became a weak, spastic thing, jerking in my hand. He began to sink. His face scraped against my cheek and I felt a gentle puff of air on my neck. He slowly slid down my body and settled in the dirt where I could feel him twitching against my legs. He reached out, and like a curious child, brushed his fingers along the top of my shoe. I jumped away. Priscilla, hunched over, retching steadily, reached out of the gloom and grabbed me.
Following Priscilla’s light, we lurched from support to support, slid along the rock wall, and staggered through the door. Arms linked, we stumbled through the first room and up the stairs to the basement.
I realized I was babbling and sobbing, and Priscilla, her voice hollow and strange, was saying over and over, “Come on Harry, come with me Harry, it’s all right Harry, it’s all right, you got the bastard, Harry.”
… . .
WE SAT ON COLD CEMENT. I was terribly thirsty and in pain. I compulsively rubbed my head while taking deep shuddering breaths. Gradually the roaring in my ears subsided to a constant ringing and the pain became specific. I felt old and worn and soiled and I wanted to go home.
Through the ringing in my ears I heard the sound of tearing cloth and turned on my flashlight. Priscilla was pulling at a hole in her sweatshirt. Protruding from the hole was a large spike of wood. She eased out of the sweatshirt, lifted her purple Tee shirt away from the spike and took it and her bra off. She then ripped her tee shirt into strips. The piece of wood protruded from her chest just above her left breast. Erratic streams of blood ran over her breast and down her abdomen. Her filthy hair was matted with blood, and jagged rivulets of it ran down her dirty face like twisted ribbons. Blood followed the big veins down her right arm, and more blood ran from a long rent in her side, coating it in a translucent smear of red dust.
She looked at me, smiled coyly and said, “Keep your light on my tits and I’ll pull out the splinter.” She reached down, and without hesitation yanked the wood out of her flesh. Blood gurgled freely from the wound, painting her torso red. She looked at the hole and said, “I don’t think it’s going to be an issue, no punctured arteries.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you when I shoved you away,” I whispered.
She reached over and cupped my cheek in her palm. “Listen, it wasn’t you, one of his bullets hit a beam and blew splinters everywhere. A few inches south and I’d have a wood nipple.”
She bent over, coughed several times, hacked, and spit a gob of black mucus on the floor. She hugged herself and kept coughing and spi
tting out mucus. I moved closer and put my hand on her back, then ran my hand through her hair. She flinched, briefly gripped my arm and let it drop. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Your head, II thought he was going to shoot you.”
She looked at me and smiled. “He was going to shoot me, and you saved my ass, no doubt about it. But next time let’s do it together okay? Don’t throw me into a hunk of wood and go charging off like Danger Mouse. I mean hell, look what happens when you do that. You get shot, or end up wrestling with some crazy bastard so you don’t get shot, and I get splinters in my tit.”
“You were coughing so bad I thought you were helpless,” I said.
“I was helpless. It’s the goddamned dust, I’m supposed to carry an inhaler, but I usually forget. I should have cleared the mask more.” She reached out and stroked my face and kissed my cheek. “Sorry Harry, it was a very bad time to go spastic.” She moved back and picked up her sweatshirt, looked at me looking at her and smiled. She slipped the sweatshirt over her head and pulled it down.
She picked up her flashlight and scanned me. She stopped at my legs and said softly, “You and me Harry, we’re splinter city.”
I looked down. Sticking out of the top of my left leg were three pencil sized spikes of that age-old wood. I looked at them for a time while gathering strength, then moved my hand to the first one. I hesitated, yanked it out and quickly pulled out the other two. The pain shot skyward, hesitated, and tumbled back down to tolerable levels. “We’d better hope we have good immune systems,” Priscilla said. “Every fucking germ in the world is probably living in that wood.”
… . .
WE SAT IN THE DARK, ARMS and legs touching, Priscilla’s head on my shoulder. Gradually, her coughing subsided, and my various pains eased. I let the cold seep into my bones and avoided any thought of what was to come. Priscilla pulled my sleeve. We cleaned our masks, put them on, and went back into that venomous netherworld.
The dust had settled somewhat. Ronald Timothy Anderson lay on his right side, his body curled in a tight fetal position, his face caked with dirt. It filled his eyes, his nose, and his mouth. Priscilla squatted and felt for a pulse. She looked up and squinted in the glow of my flashlight. Under the mask I knew an icy grin was on her face.
“Dead Dead Dead,” the little girl said.
“Dead Dead Dead,” I repeated, and leaned against a support and stared at Anderson.
Priscilla stood up, gripped my shoulder and said, “Come on, Harry, let’s do it. And listen, I wanna take Watson with us, from most accounts he was a fairly nice guy and I think he’s spent enough time in this hell hole.”
I nodded. I was past concern or caring. If Helen Watson talked, she talked. We each grabbed an ankle and dragged Anderson through the dirt into the tool room. We stacked Frank Jankey’s and Charles Watson’s bones into sad awkward bundles and wrapped shoelaces around them. All the little bones went into our pockets.
Getting Anderson into Frank’s coffin took a lot of grunting and convoluted moves but we did it, mainly by using Priscilla’s brute strength. Afterwards we stood in that suffocating, silent hell, and let the minutes pass until my mind stopped stuttering like a dying motor, and Priscilla’s gasping ebbed to a gentle wheeze.
We left the crypt and propped the iron door shut. Clutching skulls and bundles of bones, our lights bouncing in erratic cadence, we shuffled out of T. William’s special place. We closed the secret door and covered it with dirt and blended the dirt to match the floor.
Priscilla did most of the work.
We climbed out of the basement to the outside door. Priscilla put an arm on my shoulder and said, “Wait here, I’ll be back in a bit.”
“Wait here!” I almost yelled. “What the hell do you mean, wait here?”
“Look at your watch, Harry, it’s still early. We can’t be wandering around town, filthy dirty and bloody and carrying human bones. If the two of us are walking around out there with the bones, we may get spotted, and then it’s cop shop time. I’ll go get the bikes. Even the cops won’t look too close at two people in rainsuits pedaling through town, and the rainsuits will cover the dirt and blood.” She brushed her hand across my cheek. “Of course, since you pull that trailer everywhere so the hairball isn’t inconvenienced, when and if we do get spotted, nobody’s gonna have a clue who we are.”
I nodded, smiled ruefully, slowly sank to the cold cement and whispered, “Christ.”
She put her hand on my cheek, smiled and said, “Stay mellow and depend on me, I’ll be right back.”
I nodded and shined the light on her. Her hair, face, and clothes were covered with blood and that ancient powdered earth. Cobwebs hung on her like Christmas tinsel and her right arm was filthy and bloody, as was most of her torn sweatshirt. Her hair stuck out every which way and was matted with blood and dirt. I knew I looked the same and felt worse. I stated the obvious, “You look like you just crawled out of a grave.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll creep along the sides of the buildings. Anyone sees me, I’ll tell them I got a late start Trick or Treating.” She took a deep, wheezing breath, then another. “Don’t worry, okay? Turn your light off.”
I did. She opened the door a crack, peered out and was gone. I sat on the cold cement, laid my head in my arms, and listened to the rain beating on the door. Time stopped. I began to shiver. I kept my head down, closed my eyes, and tried to keep my mind empty, but it was no good.
When cold, frightened, and wanting your mommy and mommy won’t be coming, seek routine, immerse in habit, focus on repetition. I bent and touched my toes, held it for a slow count of ten, straightened, raised my arms above my head, pushed them back and focused on the count. My leg brushed against one of the bundles of bones and I thought of the future, the not very distant future, when I would be a forgotten pile of bones laying… where?
Stretch… hold… count… stretch. I’ll be gone. Extinct. A pile of stained bones concealed in dirt, and children will still play in the park and won’t know and wouldn’t give a damn if they did. I stopped, took a deep shuddering breath and felt the tears slid down my face. I sobbed and pulled in another quivering breath as the door opened and Priscilla whispered, “Harry?”
She shoved something against my chest. I wiped my face and grabbed it, stuck my flashlight in my mouth and looked. It was a laundry bag, tan, with a black, poorly rendered figure of a bodybuilder on it. Printed under the figure in black letters, was: The Muscle Stop.
I cleared my throat and said, “Stop and have a leisurely supper at Gretchen’s?”
“Listen, I was gone less than twenty minutes. Sitting in this black hole with a couple of skeletons might have made it seem a little longer.”
“Not really, I didn’t think you were gone more than a year or two. How about Cat, is she all right?”
“She is she is. But I don’t think she was too impressed with the way I look or smell. She hissed and batted my nose.”
“Yes, well, it’s the obvious target.”
“Thank you so very much. Now let’s cut the bullshit and get out of here, we’ve got a long night ahead of us.”
Priscilla held the bags open and I put the bones in. “Not that it really matters,” she said. “But don’t get them too mixed up. Helen might get a little testy if her long lost hubby turns up with two left femurs.”
… . .
WE EASED OUT THE DOOR AND pressed against the brick. The cold rain felt wonderful and I lifted my face to it. Priscilla did the locks, grabbed my sleeve and pulled. “Stay against the building,” she whispered.
Hunched over, shuffling along like an old man, the kind of old man that drools, I followed. The lights from Main Street were a dull glow that faintly lit our way. Priscilla was Santa Clause, the Muscle Stop laundry bag slung over her shoulder, her grandfather’s bones clacking softly as she walked.
The bikes were in the shadows where Kreb’s loading dock met the building. I unzipped the trailer top and fumbled around for my rainsuit. Cat meowed, licked my hand an
d tried to crawl out. I petted her on the head, picked her up and held her while Priscilla put the bones in the trailer. “Put the quilt near the side,” I said. “She likes to look out when we’re moving and… ”
“Harry, she’ll cope. It’s pitch black night, so the little hairball doesn’t really need to look out the goddamn window, so just put a sock in it okay?”
Sensing that Priscilla might be a bit irritated, I silently donned my rainsuit and put on my helmet. I made a note to myself that if I made it through the night I’d buy some rubber boots to fit over my hitops. My feet were already wet and cold, much like my brain.
We were all dressed up and ready to go. We looked at each other. I nodded and made a heroic gesture with my arm and immediately felt stupid. Priscilla smiled with her eyes and pushed her bike to the end of The Chapman Building. We waited a minute or two. A car glided by, then another. After that: nothing.
We stood on the pedals and headed down the road.
We pedaled onto a tree lined side street a block from the Chapman Building. At the intersection we stopped and looked down Main Street. It was deserted, with no sign of Anderson’s stationwagon, so at least he hadn’t parked it on Main Street. The center of town glistened in the rain, silent, empty, and post card perfect.
I found a good gear, and taking back streets, we headed out of town toward the trail and home. My left arm was bleeding from the stone chips that Anderson had blasted out of the wall, and warm blood trickled down my leg and right arm from puncture wounds caused by the splinters. I was tired and in pain and knew Priscilla was in worse shape.
We should stay on the road, it’d be so much easier. The odds were in our favor and I was desperate to get home as quick as possible. I pointed this out to Priscilla who listened patiently, patted me on the cheek, coughed, spit, and said in a wheezing voice, “No way Harry, no way at all. We didn’t come this far just to end up at the Cop Shop trying to explain it all away. We’ll do the trail. We’ll deal with it, just like last time, and that’s the name of that tune.”
Bentley Dadmun - Harry Neal and Cat 09 - Dead Dead Dead, the Little Girl Said Page 22