by Jon Land
Footsteps in the corridor! Gliding more than stepping, and coming straight toward her door. Lisa held her breath and fought hard to still her shaking. At the last moment she jammed the file into her hair just above her ear and clipped the pen to her belt.
No longer hearing the footsteps in the corridor, she padded lightly toward the door with the Lysol can in one hand and the lighter in the other. She was testing the lighter, watching the flame flick high, when the door exploded inward.
True to his word to Kimberlain, Dominick Torelli had arranged for his private helicopter to take him to the island as soon as the evening’s business was completed. The chopper was streaking toward St. Andrew Sound, with Crooked Bluff behind them, when the pilot handed him a headset.
“It’s for you, boss!” the man shouted over the chopper’s roar.
Torelli held the headpiece to his ear and mouth. He never spoke, just tossed the set aside, his face stiff with rage and determination.
“Step on it!” he ordered the pilot and turned to advise his bodyguards that he was leading them into a war.
Quail had known his time was severely limited, but he couldn’t make himself rush. Such a huge house, so many rooms. Every door on both the second and third floors was locked, as he expected them to be, and looking behind every one would waste too much time.
But how to know which door?
The answer didn’t come to him until he saw it. Halfway down the third-floor hall he found a pair of deep impressions on the carpet running down the center, as if a chair had been there until just minutes ago, occupied by a man of considerable weight. Quail smiled. The woman was clever to have removed the chair, but in that moment of cleverness had given away the fact that she was alone in the room.
Anticipation of the coming kill, of tearing the heart from her chest while it still beat, fueled Quail’s strength, and he flung himself against the wooden door.
Lisa was conscious only of his shape when the figure crashed through the door. She had no true grasp of his size and features yet, other than the bare minimum required to aim the Lysol spray nozzle up and forward—at his eyes. She struck the lighter and sent the spray outward in the same instant his attention settled upon her.
Perfect.
She heard herself screaming as the stream of Lysol was turned into a blow torch speeding toward the figure’s face. The flames illuminated it briefly before getting there and she noted, strangely, that it didn’t look like a face at all. Worse, she had misjudged the figure’s incredible size, so the flames reached him low and missed the eyes, striking lower around the nose and mouth.
Quail squealed in terror and agony as the flames struck him. His beginnings came back in the blue-orange flash, the night the flames had swallowed him in their fury and his new self had been born. But his new self couldn’t be stopped by anything now, including flames, so he determined to race into the jet of fire, swiping at it boldly as if to knock the flames aside.
Lisa saw the arm flailing toward her and flinched, pressure on the lighter lost, reducing the Lysol to mere scent again. A pair of hands black with gloves were reaching for her as she abandoned the Lysol and reached toward the lamp stand holding the first of the plastic cups containing the liquified Drano. Her eyes were already burning from its hissing vapors as she drew it forward in line with the figure’s face.
That face … There was something horribly wrong with the face.
The cup’s contents sprayed out and forward. Some flew past the figure in black, but enough found his face to bring another scream and send his hands flailing up in the direction of his eyes.
I’ve done it! Lisa thought and started round him toward the door. She sensed that he was the only attacker, that he alone had somehow killed or disabled all the guards posted around her.
He reached out and grabbed hold of her just before she reached the corridor. Not a tight grasp, but firm enough to draw her back into the room and toss her against the wall near the window she had opened to allow some of the noxious Drano vapors to escape. Her eyes gazed up into a terrifying visage—what looked like white latex strips hanging from the monster’s face. She knew now that it had been a mask the Drano had melted and not flesh, and what lay beneath the latex was … hideous.
In the darkness broken only by the spill of light through her window, Lisa could see that the monster had no face, just eyes pounded into something ghastly and unreal. She blessed the darkness for keeping that sight from her, but she couldn’t prevent the bottomless scream that escaped from her throat. Despite the terror she managed to find and launch the second cup of her Drano mix straight at the monster’s head.
Quail came straight at Lisa and saw too late that she had thrown another cup of liquid pain at him. Though he closed his eyes and turned his face, the agony burned this time into the side of his head, eating through his mask where it ran from his temple to the remnants of his left ear. He fought to ignore the pain searing his raw, nerve-exposed flesh, reaching again to grab as she darted toward the window.
To Lisa the grip that closed on her felt inhuman, for both its size and its strength. As the monster pulled her back into the room, she felt how useless it would be to resist and reached instead for the dagger-sharp nail file she had tucked behind her ear. In one swift motion she jabbed it as hard as she could into the monster’s arm.
She missed her intended target as he yanked her mightily, but the nail file found the back of his huge gloved hand and dug deep. He lurched sideways in pain, howling, past the window providing her best look at him yet.
Lisa gasped in horror.
No face, no face at all!
Before he could recover, she lunged again toward the window, and this time she got through it and out onto the sloping shingles of the roof. The mansion had roofs at different levels, which meant a leap would take her down one story instead of three. She couldn’t afford to jump, though, for her momentum would certainly carry her over the side of the second-story roof as well. She had to maneuver in a manner she could control.
Lisa reached the bottom of the roof’s slope and knelt down. Her intention was to grab hold of the rain gutter and then lower herself, greatly reducing the distance covered and thus the risk involved. She had started to ease herself into position when the monster’s huge black hands grabbed her and flung her backward toward the window once more.
She landed hard and looked up to see the monster stalking her, angling himself so he could cut off her two possible escape routes. Whichever she chose—the ledge or back inside through the window—he could get there ahead of her. She found her feet again and then her balance.
Through the stillness of the night, a new sound reached her ears.
Wop-wop-wop …
A helicopter! It was a helicopter!
A beam sliced through the blackness, rapidly brightening as it neared the island, giving her a surge of hope. If she could avoid the monster for another minute or so, help would be here. But he saw it too and charged. Lisa tried to sidestep, but the slope of the roof betrayed her and she slipped, crashing hard onto the shingles. The dark shape loomed above her now, ready to pounce. The steady, vibrating wop-wop-wop of the helicopter was very loud, and the edges of its powerful beam were reaching the house. But none of that mattered, because the faceless monster was over her, his bulk blocking out even the night.
Quail hesitated, with his hand in the air. Tonight he was going to do it. Tonight he would call on the pain springing hot from his face and hand to tear this woman’s heart still beating from her chest. He felt a hate for her like none he had felt before for any of his victims, because she had surprised him with her strength and determination to live.
His hesitation gave Lisa Eiseman the chance she needed to remember the Cross pen clipped to her belt. She grasped for it as a last resort as the monster uttered a throaty scream and started his hand down for her chest.
Lisa shoved the pen upward, steel ballpoint first.
The monster’s blow pounded her ribs and kn
ocked the breath from her body. But the blow had been slowed enough to save her at the last moment, when the pen lodged deep in the monster’s throat. His eyes bulged as he swiped to tear it free. In the process he lost his precarious balance on the sloped roof and went tumbling.
Lisa watched him pitch over backward, heard the thud on the second-floor roof below, and found strength enough only to cry out. The helicopter had come directly over her, illuminating the whole back half of the house as it lowered, with Dominick Torelli already halfway out. Lisa slid to the ledge and gazed over into the light cast down onto the various roof levels and the ground below.
Nothing.
The monster was gone.
The Sixth Trumpet
The Chamber of Horrors
Saturday, November 21; 4:00 A.M.
Chapter 21
IT WAS FOUR A.M. when the phone’s ring jarred Kimberlain from a restless sleep.
“I’m sorry for calling at this hour,” Torelli said, and went on to provide an extremely brief summary of the night’s events.
“I warned you.”
“I’ve been punished enough already for not listening. Twenty-six of my men are dead.”
“But Lisa’s all right.”
“Shaken and talking gibberish. Something about the man who attacked her having no face.”
Kimberlain felt himself go cold. Quail! Peet had been right. Peet had known!
“We’re trying to figure out how they got onto the island,” Torelli was saying. “Helicopter must have spooked them, and they fled before we could—”
“Not ‘them.’ ”
“What?”
“Not ‘them,’ not ‘they.’ Him, he.”
“One man?”
“Just as Lisa said.”
“Be serious. There isn’t a man alive who could do what was done on the island tonight.”
“His name is Dreighton Quail, also known as the Flying Dutchman.”
Torelli hesitated. “You know him?”
“Of him, mostly.”
“I’ll move Lisa somewhere safer, triple the guard, bring in a fucking army, seal her in a vault if I have to.”
“He’ll get her. She needs something more than you’re capable of providing, Dom.”
“More than a friggin’ army?”
“That’s right.”
“And I suppose you just happen to have it handy.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Kimberlain in spite of himself, “I do.”
He had not been able to fall asleep again from the time Peet left the room. He could have rushed into the corridor seconds after him, had the hospital sealed and police on the premises within minutes. Or he could simply have waited and given the authorities the phone number Peet had given him. In the end he did neither. He tried to fall asleep again, only to dream different versions of the same dream every time he managed to doze off. In each he would awaken with Peet hovering over his bed with a vicious smile on his lips. In one the giant would be holding a gun, in another a knife; the weapon was different, but the intention was the same. Finally Kimberlain gave up and tried to keep his eyes open.
Why didn’t I turn him in?
Because inside I know he’s right.
Because I need him.
It was the second response he had dwelled on the most. If Peet was right and they were the same in more ways than they were different, that alone might have stopped him from calling the authorities. He hadn’t killed the monster when he had his chance, and had chastised Kamanski and the system when they proved no more able to. Inwardly, though, he supposed he was glad when Peet had been spared, and perhaps just as glad when he had escaped. It was as if Peet provided scale, purpose, and definition to his being. Everything he had based his new life on concerned abstract differences between good and evil, extremes pulling and pushing, needing each other to justify themselves. But did good and evil exist independently, or were they simply differing interpretations of the same material, as Peet believed?
Kimberlain turned his thoughts to the practical now, still lingering on that second rationale for leaving Peet at large. He did need Peet, because Quail wasn’t finished with Lisa yet, and Peet was her only hope of surviving his next assault. What was the phrase—set a thief to catch a thief? In this case it was set a monster to stop a monster.
But obviously there was something vital he was missing. The Hashi had tried to kill him at Mendelson’s office and by extension were behind the murder of Lime and the others. Now, seemingly out of nowhere, the Flying Dutchman had entered the scene. Evidently he had been called in to finish a job the Hashi had bungled, and what Kimberlain needed to know was who had contacted him. Where was the link?
For the moment, Kimberlain gave up thinking and reached for the phone to dial Peet’s number.
“You didn’t tell me you’d called in Zeus, Jared,” Kamanski shot out as soon as he came through Kimberlain’s door later that morning. “You involved him in this, and you didn’t tell me.”
You don’t know the whole of it, Kimberlain thought as he finished dressing. “You said it yourself last night, Hermes. We’re both just private citizens now. Since we’re facing far more than we bargained for here, I thought some outside help might come in handy.”
“I won’t work with him anymore. I can’t believe you would.”
“Don’t compare my case to yours,” Kimberlain said harshly. “My term was up; yours wasn’t. You abandoned the old man at the first sign of the investigation. Didn’t want to risk a blemish on your outstanding career. The FBI opened its doors to you, and you walked right on through. Zeus could have pulled the plug on you at any time, but he didn’t, which probably means I had him a little wrong. I certainly would have.” He started putting on his shoes, taking one of the chairs Peet had sat in the night before. “What have you got on Jason Benbasset?”
“What do you know?” returned Kamanski, glad to be off the subject of Zeus and the past.
“Assume I know nothing.”
“Benbasset was a billionaire five times over, but one who was charitable and civic-minded on an international scale. Hell of a man. Three years ago on Thanksgiving Day he and his family fell victim to a terrorist bomb in the Marriott Marquis on Broadway, where they were spending the day. Benbasset was killed along with his wife, two sons, and a daughter. There was incredible damage—most of three floors totally wiped out. I’ll leave you the file so you can go over the details for yourself.”
“Now I know why it wasn’t clear to me,” the Ferryman realized. “It was just after Peet, and I was in the hospital. Were there any survivors in the family?”
“No. A bunch of Arab groups claimed credit for the bombing, and it’s a safe bet one was responsible. Figured they had good reason since Benbasset was very big with the United Jewish Appeal and a public advocate for Israel. What the Arab bastards didn’t know was that he had visited a half-dozen Palestinian refugee camps and was in the process of setting up a fund to care for them. He was a man who shot from the hip and didn’t play favorites. He had a dream of world peace and was willing to fight for it. The fight died with him.”
“Maybe not,” said Kimberlain, not sure yet exactly what he meant.
Kamanski fumed in frustration when Kimberlain left the room soon after without offering an explanation of his plans. He told Kamanski simply to have the complete file on Benbasset ready for inspection by midnight, when they would meet with Zeus in an attempt to sort out what was going on. That gave the Ferryman nearly sixteen hours to accomplish what he regarded as an equally important task.
A rental car brought him to a private airfield in northern Massachusetts, where he arrived just in time to see Dom Torelli’s private plane come in for a landing. He was out of the car and standing next to the runway by the time the jet squealed to a halt.
“I expected a larger reception committee,” Torelli noted from the steps before allowing Lisa Eiseman to emerge. “If I was smart, I’d get back on that plane and take Lisa somewhere safe.”
“The only place safe would be the sky, and sooner or later you’d run out of fuel. There’s a different level,” Kimberlain added, feeling the need to elaborate, “beyond all the commandos and Green Berets and hired killers. It’s a level of existence where few men operate and even fewer are aware of.”
“Yeah,” said Torelli, his deep voice resonating. “I’m starting to figure that myself. See, I’m not crazy about handing Lisa over right now, and I wouldn’t to any man but you. She’s pretty scared, and as I see it you really are the only man who knows how to keep her alive, ’cause I gotta figure you’re on that different level too.” He hesitated, the next words clearly coming hard. “Last night, if it had been you after her on my island, things would be pretty much the same, wouldn’t they?”
“Except she’d be dead.”
“Yeah, I figured that too. Like I said on the phone before, I got the rundown on you. Pretty impressive, but I gotta figure it don’t tell half the story.”
“You wouldn’t want it all, Dom.”
“Maybe, but I still wanna help. Anything I can do, friend, you just name it.”
Kimberlain named it.
Quintanna stood before the black curtain, waiting to be recognized. He had formed the lie over and over again in his head. No reason for the man to be told the truth, because the truth was inconsequential—as was the lie. He could not dare risk further disappointing the man who had brought him so close to achieving the goal he was born to achieve. The man needed Quintanna, but Quintanna needed the man more. There was still information to be passed on, information that was vital to the fulfillment of his goal. If the man denied it to him for any reason … Well, Quintanna had to avoid any distractions that might bring that about. The mystery of the man, the certainty of his goals, made him someone to be feared.
Beep … beep … beep …
“Good morning, Mr. Quintanna,” the voice greeted finally.
“The woman is dead,” Quintanna reported.