Martin

by George A. Romero

  In the airless room, Martin again lay on his narrow bed, a trembling hand holding the receiver to his ear. He was becoming increasingly annoyed with the announcer’s light treatment of his problems. Christina had said it made her feel better to hear other people’s problems which were rougher than hers. He wondered how many people he was cheering up tonight with his problems, or if they believed him at all. The radio played softly in the background and he could hear the odd echo of his own voice being rebroadcast over the air waves a few seconds after the words had left his mouth.

  “Make a mistake and get caught,” a disembodied voice repeated.

  “Hear that, Nighttimers. The Count is gettin’ thirsty,” the announcer’s voice echoed, “so watch out, Nighttimers. He might be in your neighborhood.” The phone clicked, and Martin dropped the instrument to the floor in disgust. “Oooop, oooop,” the announcer reacted. “I think, yes, yes, the Count has hung up on us. He’s out there somewhere . . .”

  Martin’s thin body trembled as if in the throes of some deadly illness or fever. His eyes opened wide, and he looked about the room. The shade of his window was rolled to the top, and a light breeze caused the filmy curtains to dance in the moonlight, creating a flickering shadow on the ceiling. Suddenly, there was a sound at the door. As the lock clicked opened, Martin sat upright in bed as if on a spring.

  “Check the moon, Nighttimers,” the announcer droned on. “Is the moon full? Is this the night for evil?”

  The bedroom door creaked slightly, and a shaft of light from the hallway tumbled in. Martin’s eyes widened in terror.

  A dizziness overcame him, and he flashed on a déjà vu experience.

  He sees himself backed into a corner, but he is wearing the funny clothes of long ago. A door opens, and he stares at a figure outside, but it is unclear. A slight glow appears as the opening widens . . .

  The announcer continued, “Is this a night . . . for a blood feast?”

  The door to Martin’s bedroom continued to be opened by an unseen intruder. A hand loomed through the crack, holding two lit candles in the rough configuration of a cross. Against the light from the hallway, a dark hooded figure was silhouetted.

  Martin sees a dark hooded figure coming toward him from the open door. He is being followed by the peasant woman and the bearded man. The hooded figure holds up two candles in the form of the cross. The peasant woman rushes into the room and dumps a great turd of excrement at the slippered Martin’s feet.

  In the dimly lit room, Martin saw that the hooded figure with the candles was a very old man whom he had never seen before. He was clothed in the dark robes of a priest. In the other hand he clutched a Bible. Cuda followed him into the room carrying a tray full of bottles. The bottles held oils, wines, and other artifacts of an age-old exorcism rite. The old priest mumbled in Latin.

  In the background, the voice of the announcer formed a stark contrast to the ritual that was happening before Martin.

  “Is this the night?” the electronic sound continued. “Is this the night? . . . Lock your doors . . . Bolt your windows!”

  Martin was horrified by the intrusion of the two old men. His body shuddered with fright. His head swam with images that threatened to topple him into unconsciousness.

  The bearded man is sucking painted eggs and spitting out the contents at Martin. The hooded priest is wailing, moving the candles in circles and patterns around Martin’s face. The peasant woman mumbles over a rosary.

  The old priest made his feeble way across the room toward Martin. He seemed so sickly and weak that Martin felt he could crack him in two like a twig. But a stronger power emanated from the spindly body. It twitched and convulsed as an emotional chant poured from his toothless mouth. He grabbed the oils from the tray which Cuda held out before him. Then he uncapped one of the bottles and sprinkled it over Martin. As he went through the motions with three bottles of the oils, Martin tried to slink away and sink down into his pillows. Cuda moved away and stood by the candlelight, watching the eerie procedure.

  “All right,” the announcer was saying. “Enough of this vooodooo, right, Nighttimers? We’ll be back after this word.” Against the priest’s mournful wailing, a bright and snappy advertising jingle started to play. The old priest was reaching great peaks of emotion. He sprinkled oil and then paused to take a gulp of the wine. Then he spat the wine onto Martin. The thin red stream splashed on Martin’s white shirt. A look of terror crossed the young man’s face. He was slipping backward in time again. The painful memories mingled with the present horror.

  A glob of egg yolk hits Martin squarely in the face. The hooded priest, whose face cannot be seen, holds the candles very close. They singe Martin’s eyelashes. Martin slaps at the candles violently. The flames go out and one of the candles breaks in two. But the hooded priest never breaks his rhythm . . .

  The lined, pale face of the old priest was set in determination. His watery, colorless eyes glared at Martin, although veiled by cataracts. He waved the candles. Cuda came closer again and offered the tray. The priest grabbed up a large medal and a crucifix on a chain. He waved the artifacts in Martin’s face. Martin finally roused himself out of his stupor and managed to scramble out of the corner. In the background the insistent jingle of the advertisement reminded him that he was in the present.

  Martin bolts. He pushes past the hooded priest and the peasant woman. He almost knocks the bearded man over as he crashes through the door . . .

  Suddenly, Martin made a mad dash for the door, as if some primal sense urged him on. He pushed by his chanting cousin and almost knocked over the feeble old priest, who was like a bag of bones in his vestments. With a burst of energy, Martin charged down the stairs and out the front door, into the welcoming darkness.

  Chapter Nine

  After a day of haggling over lost pennies in the gutter, dimes forgotten in payphones, and polishing car windows with spit and a dirty rag for some loose change, Barney was able to scrape together the ninety-nine cents for a bottle of Ripple. He had ambled on over to his favorite drinking spot—a garbage-filled alley in the J&T Produce yard over by the tracks in Pittsburgh. At night it was the perfect place to relax, propped up against the empty crates. Often there were discarded fruits and vegetables which provided a regular feast. Who cared if they were damaged and bruised? At least they had been fresh only a few days before. “Gotta have those vitamins,” Barney thought as he trotted over to a shadowy platform which had held the groaning loads of trucks only that morning.

  Barney wasn’t more than forty years old but with his straggly greasy white hair and his dirt-streaked face, he looked more like fifty. He couldn’t remember when he had last had a bath—probably three years back at the Salvation Army Christmas dinner. Time had lost its meaning for him. All he cared about was the interval from bottle to bottle, which unfortunately was getting longer. His baggy pants were black with grease and sweat, his shirt in tatters. He had found a pair of shoes in the garbage which fit just about perfectly after he had cut holes in the toes.

  “What more could a man want?” he thought as he eased himself down on the cool cement platform and took a big swallow out of his bottle.

  But his pleasure was short-lived. Even before he had taken his second gulp, he caught a glimpse of an intruder. At first he thought it was a cat, or maybe even a big rat, but he wasn’t so lucky. Instead he saw the weasel-like sniveling face of Mad Billy coming his way. And there was one thing about Mad Billy—if there was liquor to be had, his nose would search it out.

  “Howdy, Barney, boy. How’s it goin’?” he asked slurrily.

  “Not bad, Billy. Not bad,” Barney said, and tried to hide the brown-bagged bottle behind his back. “Maybe I can stall the critter,” he was thinking as he felt a cold stream of liquid running down his leg.

  He jumped up and saw that he had overturned his bottle in his haste to conceal it from Mad Billy.

  Billy saw it, too, and in a flash he lurched toward Barney and tried to grab the half-emp
ty bottle away from him. He clawed at the bagged bottle so roughly that Barney fell into the gutter. Mad Billy staggered away, cradling the bottle as if it were a child.

  In a whirling haze, Barney tried to right himself. He watched Mad Billy lean his head back and bring the bottle up to his lips. Barney let out a little yelp as his hard-earned change went down that scoundrel’s throat.

  He managed to stand up and waver over to Billy in a huff. He was just about to grab the nearly empty bottle out of Billy’s hand when he felt a sharp pain on the back of his head. He turned quickly and just before passing out saw a black shadow, which slowly took on the shape of a human being.

  After the thud and the sound of bone and glass shattering, Martin’s dark figure stepped over the fallen hobo and started toward the other. Mad Billy looked up into the young man’s eyes. Their luminous green gaze frightened him, and he stumbled backward. In his drunken state he lost his balance easily and careened before the young intruder.

  Martin lunged at Mad Billy with a huge piece of lead pipe that he had picked up along his way. It knocked against the old man’s head of filthy, long hair. But Martin didn’t want to kill him—only to knock him down, daze him a bit. The man staggered from the blow, but it wasn’t hard enough to fell him. Martin shivered in his thin shirt. His quivering was getting more and more intense. Through the tears forming in his eyes, he took aim and swung the pipe again. The man moved at the right moment and avoided the pipe. The blow hit his shoulder, and he staggered and fell. Recovering, he tried to crawl away, but Martin was upon him again and swung the pipe once more with greater force. This time it connected, and the man rolled over onto his back, bringing his arms up to protect himself.

  Martin looked at the pitiful huddled form through streaming eyes. Then he started to shake. He knew that he could wait no longer. The still figure started to move.

  “No . . . no . . . go to sleep,” Martin cried.

  He raised the pipe again and brought it down on the man’s already battered skull, which was barely protected by his arms.

  “Go to sleep . . . I just want to put you to sleep,” Martin chanted his desperate lullaby.

  The pipe came down again upon the man’s arms. He rolled over onto his stomach. His hands were clenched behind his head. Martin reached down and tried to unpry the clutching fingers. The hobo looked up at him with eyes widened in horror. He couldn’t understand the young man’s comforting and soothing tone.

  “Just go to sleep,” Martin said softly. “I don’t need to kill you . . . I don’t need to kill you, too . . .”

  Suddenly, Mad Billy used all his energy to scramble away from the slender young form hovering over him. Martin kept his grip on the man’s slimy wrists. He pulled him back as if Billy were on a leash. The old man reeled and fell onto his back again. As his free arm came up over his head, Martin planted a well-placed blow to his skull. This time the blow hit its mark, and the man went limp and fell stunned into the gutter. His stringy hair was pulled into the rushing stream of gutter water, which brought with it old beer cans and litter from the uptown streets and funneled it to the river.

  The old hobo’s eyes refused to close. Desperate, Martin dropped his pipe and picked up the man by his stained and disgusting shirt. The old fabric tore off in his hand, and the hobo fell back into the filth. Martin pulled him up again and sat the body upright. Then Martin brought his hands together and raised them back above his head. With the force of a battering ram, he brought his clenched hands down, swinging his doubled fists hard against the hobo’s head. The old derelict finally fell over, unconscious at last.

  Martin’s body convulsed with the spasmatic motion of his affliction. Dirty tears streaked his face. He rushed over to the other hobo and fell on the body. With trembling hands, he searched the street for a piece of broken glass from the bottle of wine. Clutching his makeshift scalpel in his hand, he studied the man’s arm for a place to make the deadly incision. Finally, he crouched down and with one sudden slash cut right through the shirt at the bum’s inner elbow. Despite the constraints of the shirt, the blood poured out like a ruby geyser. Martin brought his mouth over the wound and drank in its warmth.

  In the damp, glistening street the lights illuminated the hunched form, which looked like an animal feasting on its prey.

  • • •

  After a while, Martin found himself in front of the darkened windows of an army-navy store. He didn’t know how he’d gotten there but was glad to be able to rest. He leaned against the glass window trying to catch his breath. The front of his shirt was covered with the sprayed blood of his victim. His shaking had subsided, but his heart was still beating furiously since he had run for what seemed like hours, darting in and out of the shadows like a bat.

  He looked at the mannequins, which stared at him through the glass. They were dressed in blue jeans, heavy sweat shirts, red and black plaid hunting jackets, and green army parkas. Rows upon rows of work boots in varying shades of brown lined the other window. Martin looked around and finally found a big stone in the alleyway behind the store. With a quick perusal up and down the deserted street, he lifted the heavy stone over his head and threw it at the expressionless mannequins. The huge window shattered into a million tinkling pieces and an ear-shattering alarm sounded. Martin scrambled through the jagged opening and climbed over the tumbled bodies of the dummies. He charged into the dark aisle of the store, knocking items off the racks and bumping into stacks of shoe boxes and cartons of shirts.

  Although the ringing of the alarm was incessant and shrill, Martin worked with the coolness of a surgeon. He pulled off his bloody shirt, the buttons flying wildly, and picked a blue work shirt off the countertop. It looked like it might fit. He unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants to pull them off, but they got caught on his shoes. By now the ringing had gotten to him and he couldn’t stand one more minute of the racket. Kicking his shoes off his feet, he struggled with the laces to make it easier.

  Finally, after much struggling and sweating, a pile of bloody clothes—shirt, pants, and the uncooperative shoes—lay at Martin’s bare feet. He stood in the middle of the darkened store, the sound of the alarm running through his body with its incessant screeching, clothed only in his bloodstained underpants and socks. With wild eyes, he stared into the darkness as if he could see something moving in the shadows. Then his ears perked up at the wail of a siren coming closer. A vision flashed into his brain.

  Martin is at the river trying to wash the blood from his clothes. The mob is approaching through the woods, their torches glittering like stars in the sky.

  Martin ran over to a rack and grabbed a pair of jeans which seemed to be his size. He tried to untangle the shirt from its pins and cardboard as best he could but froze as the sound of the siren got louder.

  The dancing flames come closer and closer. The sound of the roaring mob travels through the trees. Martin scrambles into the river . . . their lights fill the sky . . .

  Martin looked up from the tangled shirt and saw splashes of red light against the window. He could make out the bubble on top of a police car. Still in his underwear he grabbed up the new clothes and his bloodied ones and his shoes into a great bundle and juggled them in his arms.

  The cold water of the river sends shivers up his spine. He is slipping in the muddy bottom. The torches show him his way . . .

  The police car screeched to a halt outside the store. One officer jumped out while the other continued talking on the two-way radio to headquarters.

  Martin splashes through the river with numbed legs. The crashing roar of the mob is behind him.

  The first policeman, a young man with sandy hair and a baby face, flashed a beam of light that caught Martin squarely just as he lunged past. The officer staggered back against the wall, and Martin was able to bolt out of the store and onto the street. The other officer, an older balding man with a slight paunch, was caught in mid-sentence, dropped the microphone, and drew his gun to pursue Martin as he ducked into an all
eyway, still clutching his clothes and shoes. Instead of continuing the chase, however, the older cop returned to the car and gunned the engine while his younger partner trotted after Martin. Then the police car pulled out and followed the two running men.

  Tearing around another corner, Martin could see that there was more light. Panting with fear and exhausted from his struggles in the store, he had barely enough energy to pick up his legs. He ducked past a vacant loading dock and weaved in and out among the huge empty trucks waiting for their morning cargo. A beam of light shone in the area, and the younger policeman followed it. Behind him, his partner edged the black-and-white into the alley. Over the purr of the engine, the radio blared out requests for information and location from the station house.

  Martin bolted from behind a truck and lurched into a wooden loading bay just inside the great doors of an open warehouse by the railroad tracks. As he ran out from behind a stack of crates, he startled and almost knocked over a man dressed in black leather from head to toe with studded decoration all over his waist-length jacket. The man was tall with a very pale complexion and a black handlebar mustache.

  Two other men, both black, who were crouching nearby, jumped up at the intrusion. They, too, were dressed in street-cool fashion with high-heeled leather boots, wide-brimmed hats, and several gold and silver chains around their necks.

  “Hey . . . look here . . .” the white man was saying to the two others as he held out a packet of white powder wrapped in cellophane. “I don’t want no stuff that’s been cut—” he said as Martin crashed into them. The young policeman appeared around the bend with his flashlight shining before him. The men all scattered, dropping the white packets and drawing their assorted weapons in one continuous motion.

  The officer stopped in his tracks when he realized that he had come upon something much bigger than a breaking-and-entry charge.