On the other side, a pile of rubble pushed its way up out of the water, providing dry if rocky ground for a space about the size of a big living room. A handful of candles on makeshift stands—a sheared-off girder, an upended cinder block, a stack of swollen and rotting paperbacks—illuminated the room.
In the far corner, a mass of rags undulated.
Karyn stepped out of the water and onto the little island of rubble.
“Go away,” a voice said. It shook and cracked, surely coming from a throat at least a thousand years old.
“It’s me. Karyn.”
“Adelaide knows. But her head hurts so bad. It’s full of lizards today, spiders and lizards. Come back tomorrow.”
Drew leaned toward Karyn. “She talks about herself in third person?”
“Shh.” Karyn took another step forward. The rags shifted. “I need your help.”
“Always. You always need Adelaide’s help. What do you ever do for her? What do you ever give Adelaide, to ease her conscience for helping you kill your gift?”
“Twenty thousand dollars, last time.”
“Twen—” Drew began, and Karyn elbowed him.
“Gone now. Adelaide used it, used it all. Adelaide gave it to the spiders. The spiders and rats. What will you give her this time?”
Karyn crossed her arms, huddling into herself. “I—I don’t have anything this time. I just need help.” The words sounded pathetic, and she hated them.
The mound of rags erupted, fragments flying everywhere—only they weren’t rags, and they weren’t fragments. They were rats, hundreds of them, from lean gray gutter rats to sleek fat albino pets, red eyes shining in the candlelight, and everything in between. They ran in all directions.
Karyn heard the splash as Drew stepped backward into the water.
From the center of the pile of rats, a woman stood. She wore a simple shift, surprisingly white in this dank underworld, and her thin arms poked out like sticks. Her ancient voice must have been a lie or the result of damage—Karyn had never figured out which—for her skin was unlined, her eyes clear, and her body moved with a fluid grace.
Karyn had a couple of inches on her, but she shrank back anyway as Adelaide approached.
“Nothing?” The voice was jarring coming from a woman who surely couldn’t be thirty yet. “You have nothing for Adelaide? You come here with nothing?”
“I don’t have anything,” Karyn said.
“Adelaide isn’t a charity.”
“Please. I need help.”
Adelaide cocked her head as though looking at a particularly curious specimen of insect. Eyes opened and closed all along her forehead, down her cheeks, in her shoulders and chest. That’s definitely not real, Karyn thought, though the effect was no less unsettling. It got worse when mouths started opening beside them.
“I’ll owe you,” Karyn said.
“Oh, fuck,” Drew said, and he reached out a hand to her arm. “Don’t—”
She brushed him away. “I need this.”
Adelaide’s mouths gaped and tittered. Her eyes—her real eyes, the normal two—stared past Karyn, unblinking. “You’ll owe Adelaide. A favor?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“One favor for blind.”
“Yes.”
“Done.” She put her hand out, a surprisingly normal gesture in this shadowed otherworld.
Karyn shook it.
* * *
“What does somebody like that need with cash? Let alone twenty Gs?” Drew sat on the rubble, leaning against the wall and tapping his hands on his knees. He hadn’t stopped the twitchy jitter-and-jive since Adelaide had left an hour or so before.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to,” Karyn said. She couldn’t fault Drew for nerves—she felt more than a twinge of anxiety herself. Adelaide had claimed she didn’t have any blind, but that she could get the materials together in short order. Stay, she’d said. You stay and wait for Adelaide, and she will help you.
That hadn’t been that long ago, really, but it felt like forever, and Karyn had developed a sour feeling in her stomach.
The rats made her nervous, for one thing. She looked around the small space, and the shiny black beads of rats’ eyes stared back from everywhere. They gnawed on invisible morsels held in their creepy little paws, scuttled along corners, and crouched on ledges and shelves. A few lurked half submerged in the water like crocodiles awaiting prey. Karyn had never seen rats act that way before, and she found it deeply disturbing. If that weren’t enough, the hallucinations were coming back. Twice she’d seen—or imagined, whichever was more technically correct here—something large and vague prowling among the rats, there for a fraction of a second in her peripheral vision, then gone. The ceiling had started to leak blood.
She watched Drew carefully for his reactions. In Adelaide’s strange place, Karyn was even less sure than usual what was real or not, so she trusted her own perceptions very little. Drew hadn’t so much as flinched when blood started dripping onto his pant leg, so Karyn thought it was safe to assume that was in her head.
“Hey,” she asked, a worrisome thought having occurred to her, “do you see a bunch of rats?”
“I’ve never seen so many fucking rats in my whole life.”
“Ah. Good.”
Drew shifted, hefting a piece of brick in his hand. He appeared to weigh the idea of tossing it at one of the rats, then came to his senses before Karyn had to stop him. “How do you know that, um, person anyway?”
“A friend of mine introduced us.” Anna. God, that had been—how long ago? Ten years, at least. Adelaide had been a waiflike teenager at the time, though knowledgeable beyond her years. Karyn had found her frightening even then.
“Some friend.”
“What’s your problem?” Karyn snapped. The image of Anna kneeling in blood and dirt sprang immediately into her mind. You don’t think maybe you coulda cracked open the future and looked around for this? Anna had said, and she’d been right.
“Look around, lady. This is some crazy shit you’ve gotten yourself into. How did this ever seem like a good idea?”
“I didn’t ask you to come with me.”
“I know.”
“So, what is your problem?” she asked, gently this time.
“I must be nuts.” He put the brick down and rested his head back against the wall. “Hell, I don’t know. Sucker for a damsel in distress, I guess.”
“Don’t give me that crap.”
Drew frowned. “Look, I was just trying to help. Really. Doing my good deed for the week.” He paused, rolled the brick away with his hand. “Christ knows I’ve got some things to make up for.”
Part of Karyn wanted to go over and kick the hell out of him for treating her like a charity case, but the sadness in his voice was too sincere, the sentiment too close to home for her to ignore. She went over, sidestepping a couple of rats, and sat next to him. “Yeah. Me, too.” She gave him a tight-lipped grin.
Something moved in her peripheral vision, and she turned her head. A man emerged from the low tunnel. Karyn could hear his back crack as he stood to his full height.
He pulled a gun from the waistband of his pants.
Karyn started, adrenaline flooding her system, then froze halfway to her feet. The guy was standing on the water. And, now that she looked, he didn’t cast a shadow.
“Uh-oh,” she said. The man pulled the trigger, but no sound came from the gun, and he disintegrated.
“What?” Drew said.
“We have to go.”
“Why?”
“They’re coming for us. You or me, I don’t know which. Wanna stick around and find out?”
“Hell, no.”
“Then come on.” She reached a hand down to help Drew stand.
“Wait. What about that shit you need? How
do you know you’re not just seeing things?”
“Because I never just see things. They always mean something, even if I’m too stupid to figure it out. We need to go. Now.” She stepped toward the water.
Drew got up behind her. Through some malign magic, he had made a gun appear. It was a short pistol, some kind of semiautomatic. He held it like a man who had maybe fired it twice, once to see if it worked, and once by accident.
“Put that damn thing away before you hurt yourself.”
“We might need it,” he said, his eyes wide.
“No way.” She tipped her head toward the exit. “You go first.”
Drew put the gun in his waistband, then looked back at Karyn. “Yeah. All right.”
He crouched, heading through the half-collapsed tunnel, and Karyn crowded close behind him. “Faster,” she said. How much time did they have?
“Shit!” Drew said from ahead of her in a loud whisper. He turned around. In the light from the candles, the whites of his eyes shone wide and yellow. “I heard somebody coming down the stairs. How do we get out of here?”
Karyn pushed past him out of the tunnel and stood up straight. To the left, the doorway they’d come in through had transformed into a giant mouth, bristling with foul black teeth a foot long and dripping venom.
Karyn pointed to the right. “That way.”
They ran into the next room and slipped away from the door opening. Drew started toward the window ahead of them, but Karyn grabbed his wrist and pulled him back. Glorious daylight shone through the window—but blood ran down the glass in viscous red streaks. Clots fell off and plunked in the water. Karyn remembered that the window was visible from the way they’d come in. With her luck, she’d get halfway out the window and somebody’d shoot her in the ass. They might get me, but I’m not going out that way.
She pointed to the left, and the two of them started moving.
“Don’t splash,” she whispered.
“Why’d she rat you out?” Drew asked. “I thought you knew her.”
“A little louder, please. They can’t follow us as well if you don’t speak up.” A few more steps, and they went through yet another doorway, this one in a half-rotted wall with pieces of moldering plaster crumbling off it. The doorway slanted precariously to the right. The space beyond was, Karyn thought, a veritable labyrinth, the walls of which were equally dilapidated walls of decaying two-by-fours and plaster. There wasn’t shit for light, and the walls made it impossible to tell where—or if—there was a window anywhere in here.
“I don’t know,” Karyn said softly as they picked their way through. “I don’t even know if it’s you or me she ratted out. Maybe both. If I had to guess, I’d say she was pissed that I didn’t bring her anything, so she went and found somebody who would. She’s not my friend any more than any dealer is friends with their clients.” Though she had been Karyn’s supplier for going on ten years now, so something bad was up. Equally bad—maybe worse, long-term—Karyn had no idea where else to get blind.
She didn’t want to think about that just then.
Dim light made its way through the standing wreckage in the room, and Karyn’s heart leaped. Finally!
Drew sped up. Karyn took a few steps after him and froze.
“What?” he asked.
“We’re about to get fucked,” Karyn said. A huge shark fin stuck out of the water ahead of them. Behind, flames rained from the ceiling.
“What?”
This was Adelaide’s place, and Adelaide had the same condition Karyn had, only a thousand times worse from years without treatment. Karyn couldn’t begin to imagine what that was like. No wonder Adelaide was insane. But insane or not, she’d also had years of practice at sifting through thousands of overlapping and contradictory images, and she knew better than Karyn how to manage her gift. Adelaide would know where the exits were—and she’d know which ones Karyn would be most likely to take. She’d be waiting ahead, or somebody would, and somebody was already coming from behind.
Back the way they’d come, beyond the sheet of fire, something splashed.
“What?” Drew asked for the third time.
“Somebody’s ahead. And somebody’s coming from back there.”
“What are we going to do?”
Karyn looked around. The light was terrible, barely enough to see the shapes of the walls, but she had an idea.
“Follow me,” she said, and rather than go forward or back, she ran straight at the nearest wall.
Rotten wood cracked and moldy sheetrock exploded outward. A nail dragged a bloody line across her cheek, missing her eye by the width of a finger.
Somebody swore, and a shot rang out, sounding like a detonation in the wet basement.
“Go!” a man’s voice yelled.
Karyn hit the next wall and bounced off, though she’d felt it give when she hit. Before she could make another go at it, Drew plowed into it with a lowered shoulder. There was a soggy crack, and he went through. She kicked a fragment of two-by-four out of her way and ran after him.
On the other side, light spilled down the stairway like rays from heaven.
Two gunshots punched holes in the wall near Karyn’s head, and then she and Drew were charging up the stairs.
They stumbled out into the light moments later. At the curb ahead, Drew’s car sat on four flat tires. A white pickup truck with an oversize cab idled right behind it. The truck hunched and growled, and a bulging white eye the size of a basketball peered out at Karyn.
“Gun,” she said.
“Um . . .”
“Give me the gun, now.” Whatever misgivings Drew had crumbled under her glare, and he handed her the gun.
Karyn hurt nearly everywhere, but she forced herself to run to the truck. The locking mechanism clicked just as she reached the door. Gonna take more than that, buddy, she thought, and she thumbed the pistol’s safety off. The driver’s-side window exploded with one shot. The guy inside held up his hands. Glass fragments peppered his hair, and his face bled from a dozen tiny cuts.
“Don’t shoot!”
“Out.”
A chasm opened in the road outside the guy’s door, its mouth wet and sucking. Karyn flinched, but kept from stepping back. “Move!”
The guy got out, and the hole disappeared just before his foot hit the ground.
Karyn pointed with the gun. “Over there.” The guy took several large steps backward in his haste to comply.
“Come on,” she said, tilting her head toward Drew. “Let’s get out of here.” She slid into the vehicle, over the driver’s seat and into the passenger’s. Drew got in behind her. He didn’t need to be told what to do—he put the truck in drive and hit the gas as Adelaide’s building belched forth a couple of gun-waving goons.
The truck wobbled as Drew got the hang of it, but he kept control and the building receded. The guys got off a couple of shots, and Karyn ducked, but if they hit anything important she couldn’t tell.
Moments later, Drew took the vehicle around a corner, cutting off any further shots.
“Don’t slow down,” Karyn told him.
“Where are we going?”
“Straight, for now.”
“OK.”
Karyn glanced back and saw no sign of pursuit. She slumped back in her seat, slouching down so her eyes were level with the dash. “Friends of yours?”
“Friends of—no!” Drew took his eyes off the road, and the vehicle swerved as he jerked to look at Karyn. “But, yeah, I think I recognized the driver. One of Mendelsohn’s guys.”
“Figures. If anybody would know who to sell me out to, it would be Adelaide.” Karyn craned her neck, peeking over the dash. Big guys with guns crowded the sidewalk and lined the streets, and seething creatures with giant black claws and multiple yawning mouths sprawled across the street in front of her, to the sid
es, and behind. The subtext was not hard to figure out—nowhere was safe. Not now.
“We need to get rid of this car,” she said.
“Can we get a little more distance from your friend and her new set of borrowed rent-a-thugs first?”
“Yeah. More distance would be good.” Karyn peeked over the dash again, then pushed herself lower in her seat. There was nothing out there she wanted to see. “You can ditch me, you know. I won’t hold it against you.”
Drew made a pained face, but at least this time he kept his eye on the road. “I don’t know what good it’s going to do me to ditch you. At least one of those guys got a good look at me, which means they know I’m still around. I’m fucked.” He considered. “I should have got out of town.”
“How much money do you have?”
“Six bucks.”
“So Tahiti is out.”
Drew nodded, then looked down at the instrument panel. “Hell, there’s only a quarter tank in this boat. Santa Monica is out.”
Great. No money and no gas meant only one option, as much as Karyn disliked it. “Pull over,” she said. “Let’s ditch this thing, and I’ll take you somewhere safe.”
* * *
“That’s a terrible place to keep your key,” Drew said.
Karyn ignored him as she tipped the heavy potted plant up. The plant’s dry stalks rustled, and a few desiccated leaves fell to the sidewalk. Under the pot was a small square cobblestone, one of many on this side of the front stoop. She flipped that over, pulled out the house key, and returned stone and plant to their previous positions.
The house was a small, one-story home sheathed in cracked vinyl siding, looking out on a tired yellow lawn. In that respect, it was no different from the other houses lining the street, though there were no abandoned plastic toys here. No one had lived here for a long time.
Karyn unlocked the door. It opened with a creak when she pulled, and a hot, musty smell wafted outward like the dry cough of a very sick person. Karyn wrinkled her nose. They’d need to open the windows if they didn’t want to catch something. Or catch fire, for that matter.
Drew gave her a skeptical look, but he’d followed her this far, so she doubted he’d have a change of heart at this point. The two of them had taken the subway as far as they could, and then found a taxi. Karyn had watched the meter until they were down to the last dollar, and then she’d paid the cabbie and walked the rest of the way. Drew had complained, but not overmuch after she’d reminded him he could take his chances on his own. And anyway, the walk had given their clothes some time to dry.
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