Before reaching Chinatown she crossed the street and headed down into a small area near the outskirts of the theater district. Seth stepped off the curb, careful to avoid a car that darted in front of him, splashing up some slush from the gutter across his shins. He ignored the wet and cold seeping through his pants and socks and into his shoes and remained focused on Doctor Farrow, who slipped into a narrow side street, the focal point of which was an old rundown tenement that had apparently been turned into a church or revival house of some kind. An enormous red neon cross on the face of the building served to light up the otherwise dim street.
As Seth started after her, he slowed his pace, careful not to get too close now. The street was deserted and garbage-strewn and quite short, and at the far end was a vacant lot covered with piles of bricks and debris where a building or buildings had recently been demolished. Across from the building with the cross was an equally old tenement, but this one vacant and boarded shut. But for a few street people sitting on the steps and huddled in the dull neon glow emanating from across the street, the area was void of people.
Doctor Farrow disappeared into the open front door of the building without once looking back or slowing her stride. The men across the street noticed her but seemed to take little interest, which struck Seth as odd, since she was even more out of place in this area than he was, and since it was clear they had not only noticed him, but were paying particular attention to his presence.
The muffled sounds of a live choir singing with the accompaniment of a slightly out of tune piano bled into the open air from somewhere deep inside the building, and an array of smells ranging from soup to body odor to urine wafted about, some from within the building, some from the street. Seth gazed up at the huge cross. A small scarred sign at its base and just above the front door read: Savior House.
Seth could feel eyes following him as he walked closer to the steps. He looked back over his shoulder at the men across the street. They stared back.
He turned away, and against his better judgment, slowly entered the building.
CHAPTER 27
Seth moved through the open doorway Doctor Farrow had crossed just seconds before and was met by a short hallway. It was a bit warmer than the street, though not by much.
There was nowhere to go but straight, so he followed the hall until he’d reached a room to the left. Several tables were scattered about in a cafeteria style setting, with a series of long tables set along one wall like a makeshift buffet. Through a cutout at the rear of the room, Seth could see a small kitchen area, where an older Hispanic man in a white apron stood stirring a huge pot of soup. The man didn’t notice him, so Seth continued on.
What would Doctor Farrow be doing here? Had she come to see a patient, or did she volunteer here perhaps, counseling the homeless and downtrodden on her free time? But why the lies about the Cayman Islands, and why was she walking by herself in an area like this? Why not drive or take a cab?
The deeper into the building he ventured the louder the choir became.
At the next open door he stopped and saw a large function room with a stage and several chairs set up into a makeshift church setting. A robed, multiracial choir consisting of both men and women was onstage, and an older woman who also seemed to be directing them played a nearby piano. They all seemed consumed with happiness.
Seth quickly looked from one end of the room to the other, but Doctor Farrow was nowhere in sight.
He kept moving through the building until he came across two closed doors. He stopped and listened at both, but the rooms beyond were still and quiet. A staircase to his right lead to a second floor but was cordoned off with yellow police tape. Seth hesitated to inspect the tape a bit more closely. It looked quite old, as if whatever crime scene it had once served to secure had taken place many years before but the tape had never been removed. Odd, he thought. Why would…
Seth craned his neck to try and see up the stairs but it was dark and seemed unoccupied, at least at the moment. Besides, the tape was arranged in a way that would make it highly unlikely Doctor Farrow would or even could climb over it without disturbing it. So she hadn’t gone that way.
Through to the end of the hallway was another door. Seth turned the knob and opened it into an extremely narrow outside alleyway. Beyond it was a small section of ground and the back of another large building, the alleyway separated from it by a tall, severely tattered chain link fence.
Somewhere nearby but out of sight an angry dog barked and snarled.
Seth looked down the alleyway. It led to another small building next to the church. Behind him the hallway remained empty. He closed the door and stepped down into the constricted alleyway, careful not to catch his coat on the rusted fence.
What the hell am I doing? What am I doing here? Seth shook his head and pushed on, ignoring his fears. He’d come this far, he had to see it through.
At the end of the alleyway he walked into an open area and approached the doorway to the other building. Whatever door had once been there was long gone, leaving only an open and rotting doorway. It was quiet inside, no choirs or pianos, and though there were some pungent smells few could be attributed to a soup kitchen. Though two stories, the building was significantly smaller than the one which housed the church, and even more rundown and unkempt, clearly abandoned.
What in God’s name was Doctor Farrow doing in such a place?
Seth stepped cautiously into a foyer of sorts, the ceiling low and the floor covered in aged, stained and cracked linoleum. It was darker here, as most of the windows in the room beyond had been blacked out or boarded over, and only those that had been broken clean through allowed for any outside light. He squinted through the near-dark, trying to gain his bearings, and he noticed a slight trace of light at the far end of the otherwise dark room just beyond the foyer. But this light was different than the small bit leaking from broken windows. It was less pronounced and…was it moving?
Candlelight, it—was it candlelight?
From the darkness to his right came a disturbing noise that sounded like labored breath. He spun quickly in that direction and saw a dark figure sitting on an old bench against the wall. “Jesus Christ!” He staggered back a few steps and nearly lost his balance. As his eyes focused and adjusted to the sparse light he realized there was a woman sitting there. She had to be well into her nineties and was dressed as if in mourning—entirely in black—including a kerchief that covered her head and tied beneath her chin. At her feet was a small chipped basin and a scrub brush, but she looked so old and frail surely her days of scrubbing floors were well behind her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there,” he said, deliberately keeping the volume of his voice low. “You startled me; I wasn’t expecting anyone to be sitting there.”
He attempted a quiet bit of nervous laughter but the woman simply looked at him as if she were not quite sure what she was looking at. Even in meager light Seth could see the network of deep spidery lines traversing her face and neck. There was a palpable sorrow to her, but despite the cold temperature her body remained eerily rigid and still. She wheezed with each breath she drew or expelled, and she held something in her arthritically gnarled hands he couldn’t quite make out.
“Ma’am?” he asked, heart still racing. “Are you all right?”
She continued to stare at him, her eyes dull and covered in milky cataracts.
“I’m looking for someone,” he told her.
No response, no reaction.
“A woman just came in here a minute ago, a woman with blonde hair and a black beret. Where did she go? Ma’am, can you tell me which way she went?”
Very subtly, the old woman’s eyes shifted to the dark room then back to him.
Seth looked to the room and the odd light flickering deep within. He forced a swallow and felt a current of terror surge through him. His hands were so cold they were growing numb. “Is there anyone else here?” he asked. When the woman didn’t answer he turned back to her. “In the bu
ilding, ma’am, is there anyone else here?”
This time her eyes looked up to indicate the floor above them.
“Who are you?” he asked, moving closer to her. “Why are you here?”
The woman stared at him.
“You need to get to where there’s some heat. You’ll freeze to death if you stay here after dark. You’ll die, do you understand?”
Her mouth slowly curled into a toothless grin.
“What the hell is this place?” Seth backed away. “What are you doing here?”
The woman’s smile faded, and her dead stare returned. Her hands moved about slowly in her lap, tinkering with whatever they were holding, but he still couldn’t quite see what it was.
In the distance the faint sounds of the choir could just barely be heard, but they seemed so far away now, so very far away.
The woman watched Seth without comment as he searched the foyer quickly for anything of use he could find.
Just inside the door, amidst a pile of debris, junk and scraps of metal and wood, he noticed a small length of old pipe. He bent down and carefully pulled it free of the pile, feeling the weight of it in his hand. If necessary it would make a passable weapon.
With the sound of his own frightened breathing ringing in his ears, he glanced at the old woman a final time then walked into the dark room, heading directly for the flickering light at its far end.
* * *
In an instant, Darian’s entire life with his daughter flashed before his eyes. Every vision of her, every moment he’d ever spent with her from the moment he saw her born to the present exploded across his mind in one whirlwind of panic and terror.
He spun around and saw Debra standing behind him, so small and innocent, so pure. “Baby,” he said, collapsing to his knees before her, hands reaching for her tiny body, “are you all right?”
Debra nodded calmly, her focus solely on her father, as if all that was going on behind him with Cynthia no longer existed, as if they were the only two in the room, in the entire universe. “Don’t be mad, Daddy,” she said quietly.
“I’m not mad, sweetheart.” He touched her shoulders, expecting her to react as she always had, by nearly throwing herself into his arms in a loving hug. But instead she stood curiously taut, arms at her sides. “Are you all right?” She nodded with a look of confusion. Darian’s eyes inspected her frantically, but she seemed physically unharmed. He looked back over his shoulder at Cynthia. She hadn’t moved but was watching him intently. He turned back to his daughter. “Don’t be frightened. Mommy’s not feeling well. I want you to go to your room for me and wait for me there, all right? I’ll be right there, I promise.”
Debra looked past him to her mother.
He tightened his grip on her shoulders until her eyes returned to his. “Debra, I need you to do exactly as I say now, do you understand? Go to your room and I’ll be right there.”
“But I need to tell you something, Daddy.”
“You can tell me in a minute, right now I want you to—”
“I need to tell you something now, Daddy, right now.” She leaned in close to his ear so only he might hear. “Let Them Out.”
Darian fell back, scrambling to get away from her while also attempting to regain his feet in one frenzied motion.
Cynthia grinned at him, standing there in her underwear.
“What did you do to her?” Darian moved toward her. “What have you done to her? If you’ve harmed one hair on her head I swear to God I’ll kill you. You hear me? I’ll fucking kill you.”
The sound of furious movement behind him stole his attention. He turned in time to see his daughter—or something like his daughter perhaps, something that had once been his daughter—shaking about like she was being throttled by some invisible force. With movements inhumanly fast and spasmodic, she jerked about as if electrocuted, her small body jolting about with such speed she became blurred.
Cynthia began to laugh. It was a hollow, lifeless sound.
Debra grew still. Blood leaked from the corners of her eyes and something moved beneath her skin, crawling along her throat and across the side of her face as she broke into a wide smile, laughing with her mother now.
Small dark things joined them. On the walls…in the doorway…from the closet and beneath the bed…scurrying across the ceiling and gawking at them through the open windows.
Horrible pains fired through his temples, and the night at the cabin came to Darian at once, no longer in flashes and pieces but in one tremendous flowing wave where sight and sound and sensation blended into a single ghostly memory. And all he had been unable to remember for so long, he suddenly remembered.
The others watched as Cynthia and Debra moved closer, grinning and circling him the way lions size up wounded prey.
Darian dropped to his knees, hands desperately clutching either side of his head as the pain became too much to bear.
Something blurred his vision. Blood or tears—perhaps both—he couldn’t be sure which. The only thing Darian Stone could still be completely certain of was that his mind was ripping apart and that something was trying desperately to crawl inside of what was left of it, something ancient and deadly and alien, something that brought with it the winds of time and space, something that wanted to coil there and nest in his warm blood, in his memories and dreams and fears.
He closed his eyes; saw Louis falling out the window of his apartment.
And then he felt their hands all over him—their repulsive inhuman hands—and a thousand whispering voices screeching in his head.
Let Them Out, the voices told him. Let Them Out.
And finally, screaming in furious agony, he did.
* * *
Seth crossed the dark room carefully but quickly. Debris scattered about everywhere made it tough going, and though he lost his balance more than once as he made his way toward the flickering light, he managed to reach it without falling.
Sounds of the city had all but vanished, relegated to distant hums overpowered by faint whistles of wind passing through various openings in the building.
The light was not a candle, rather a small hurricane lamp sitting atop an old crate. Seth approached it cautiously, searching the small area the light provided.
A middle-aged man sat on the floor, his legs out straight in front of him and his back against the wall. His hands sat in his lap lifelessly. He looked as if he’d been dropped there from some great height and seemed too weak and disoriented to pose a threat. Obviously homeless, he was filthy, dressed in tattered clothes and had several days growth of salt and pepper beard. He saw Seth but didn’t seem terribly interested in him. Beyond the crate and lamp was a staircase leading up into the darkness of the second floor. Checking first to make certain the stairs were clear, Seth crouched before the man. Up close he looked even more unhealthy and lethargic.
“Are you all right?” Seth asked quietly.
“Sick,” the man said in a gravely voice. “We’re all sick.”
“What is this place?”
“Don’t nobody use the building but us. Sometimes the church and shelter next door gets full—no more beds—so we stay here. Sucks, but it’s better than outside.” He looked at Seth listlessly. “Nice coat you got on.”
Seth again glanced at the stairs. He could hear occasional muffled voices seeping down through the darkness from the second floor. “The woman that just came through here,” he said, “did she go up there?”
The man nodded.
“How many others are up there with her?”
“I don’t know, maybe four, five. Looks warm, that coat.”
“Do you know who they are?”
“Just guys like me. Always some new guys passing through, staying here to beat the cold. Tough times, chief. Lots of homeless in the city, but that’s changing. It’s all changing now.”
“What’s the woman doing up there?”
The man shrugged. “Same as always.”
His answer stopped Seth in mid-t
hought. “She’s been here before, the woman?”
“Couple times I know of.”
“For what—why?”
“The sickness.” He coughed and spat a ball of phlegm to the floor. “We’re all sick.”
Seth’s head was spinning. “She counsels you, helps you with your sickness? Here?”
“Got to get sick before you can get better.” He gave a tired sigh. “She spreads it like the rest of them, makes us sick. Then we get better.”
Seth stood up, his entire body trembling. He tightened his grip on the pipe.
“But you already knew that.” The man’s bloodshot eyes glistened in the dancing lamplight. “‘Cause you got it in you too, chief.”
Seth backed away from him as a pain shot through his temple, bringing with it flashes of memory.
He is on his knees in a clearing ringed by a thick forest of enormous trees.
The pain disappeared faster than it struck, leaving more memories in its blurry wake.
Snow blows about like dust, but just above the treetops, through the darkness and swirl of flakes, he makes out a section of cobalt sky.
“You’re still sick, though,” the man said softly. “I can tell. It’s bleeding out of you.”
Breath surges in thick clouds from his nostrils and open mouth.
“I died here once,” the man told him. “In this place.”
His chest rises and falls, lungs sore from the cold and straining for more oxygen.
“Where’d you die, chief?”
Deep Night Page 28