The Night Inside

by The Night Inside (epub)

  But when he looked at the newspapers, he realized that for all that he saw on the street, the world had not altered that much—the faces of those who ruled this vast, polyglot city were white and male. As they always had been.

  Here, as everywhere and everywhen, money meant power. Those who pursued him had money beyond his comprehension. Trapped in this world whose inner working still eluded him, he had no way to fight that. He could not flee to some other land; Ardeth had made that clear. And the shelter of the gothic buttresses of his past was illusory. There was no sanctuary here. Somehow he had to find a way to elude the traps set for him and conceal his nature from the world until he truly understood the way this new world worked, until he could find the weapons this new age could offer him.

  He stared out at the small park that lay before the church, its salvation from the concrete that seemed to have been poured over every other blade of grass. Against the street-lights, the white eyes of the cars, he could see figures moving. Those on the sidewalk strode quickly, sure of their path through the night. The shadows in the park itself shuffled, seeking the shelter of tree-root beds or the bounty of wire garbage cans.

  A dark shape lurched across his vision suddenly, exhaling alcohol and human stench as it stumbled into his alcove and leaned against the wall. “Fuck ’em, fucking assholes . . . that’s what I say . . . fuck ’em,” the man muttered, then seemed to see Rozokov for the first time. “Got a buck, mister,” he demanded, leaning forward to peer into the shadows.

  “No.”

  “Fuck you then. Got any booze?”

  “No.”

  “Fuck you then,” the man repeated, then slid down the wall to sit in a sprawl of dirty rags on the ground. “Need some booze,” he announced at last. “Need some goddamn booze.” The man’s hair was long and unkempt, his features lost beneath a matted beard. His gaunt face and wild eyes reminded Rozokov of the religious hermits of his old land, drunk and demented by God. He twitched his nose in automatic distaste as the man shifted and the night breeze delivered the odour of urine, liquor and despair.

  The mad eyes moved to him again. “Got a buck, mister?” the man asked. Rozokov shook his head.

  “Nobody’s got a fuckin’ buck. Nobody’s got a fuckin’ drink. Fuckers don’t even see . . .” the drunk muttered and his head slumped forward suddenly. He looked as if he were praying.

  “Fuckers don’t even see. . . .” Rozokov whispered and the answer to his dilemma came to him. There were only two paths to anonymity—great wealth and great poverty. One was effectively blocked but the other lay before him, cloaked in the filth and miasma of alcoholism. “Friend,” he said quickly and the man snorted, head jerking, then blinked blearily at him.

  “What? What ya want?”

  “Do you want a drink?”

  “Ya got one? Where ya got one?”

  “Here. Come closer.” The drunk crawled deeper into the shadows, behind the rose bushes that sheltered them. Rozokov felt a stab of sorrow at his trusting desperation. The last two, the woman the first night, the man the second, had known nothing, remembered nothing when they woke in their ground-floor apartments. But this one—this one he could not spare, could not leave as a clue to his new identity.

  “Where’s the booze?” the man demanded plaintively. Rozokov moved forward, caught the filthy hair in this hand, and lifted the man’s face up to his.

  “Just look in my eyes. There is all the wine you want.”

  When he had drunk, he stripped off the man’s filthy clothing and his own stolen attire. He could not help his shuddering as he pulled the greasy, tattered cloth over his body, and eased his feet into the rotting shoes. He bundled up his old clothes—the drunk had no use for them. He crawled from the bushes without a glance at the huddled figure in the sodden underwear.

  He had made sure the man did not suffer; that was the only comfort he took. Once he might have told himself that it was a kinder fate than the wretched existence of the street, a sweeter death than a long, drunken dying, but he was too old for that now. There were few, living or undead, who welcomed the end of whatever life they had. He killed, could not help killing, but he could not delude himself that it was mercy—or justice. It was only survival.

  That had been a month ago. Since that night, his existence had been reduced to the essentials—to finding a place to sleep each day, to finding sustenance each night, to finding something to occupy the long hours in between. Ardeth’s mention of abandoned houses had led him to a boarded-up warehouse and in its damp, earth-floored basement he found shelter from the sun. Sometimes, in the dark of midnight, he sat on the roof and counted the few stars that penetrated the clouds and the city’s glow.

  The growing warmth of the summer nights kept the city’s homeless population on the streets and so solved his second dilemma. He was careful and wary, but his victims were often malnourished and ailing; there were deaths despite his caution, and rumours had begun to be muttered on the street corners and in the parks. They were easily dismissed, even by the street people themselves, but they made him even more wary, so that he lived with a constant edge of hunger rather than risk a mishap.

  For the rest of the time, the hours between dusk and dawn, he hunted in garbage cans for newspapers and magazines, which he read word for word until the great gaps in his knowledge began to diminish. He stood outside electronics stores and pawn shops, watching the flickering images on the television sets in the windows. He visited the library in the early evening, poring through books on history and law and economics, seeking ways to penetrate the paper walls that kept him from his remaining resources. He researched the fire that had destroyed his resting place and discovered in the names the confirmation of his own suspicions about who was hunting him. He sat on park benches, invisible to the eyes of those who passed by, those who feared to look at him in case he asked for money and they’d have to decide between anger and guilt, and he watched.

  He was watching tonight, in between careful perusal of The Wall Street Journal stock quotations. All business news had become part of his search for a way to deflect the pursuit set in motion by Ambrose Dale a hundred years earlier. He’d been fortunate to find a two-day-old edition in a garbage can on Richmond Street.

  The street was quiet, except for the women’s customers sliding up to the curb to pay court and then just pay. Rozokov finished the paper and watched the commerce for a moment, trying to decide whether to move on. He was restless tonight, and feeling some measure of his age as a weight on his heart. In a month, he had spoken to another being only rarely, and too often they had been words of hypnotism to lure already clouded minds deeper into darkness. For the thousandth time, he wished that he had not had to send Ardeth away.

  Hunger nudged at his consciousness and he rose to begin the shuffling search for sustenance. “Hey, Grey Man,” May called, “where ya going?”

  “Grey Man’s got business. Places to go, people to see,” Sheila answered for him, as usual, and the trio dissolved into hoots of laughter.

  Stirred by an overwhelming impulse, the sudden need to meet another’s eyes, to use the voice that rusted in his throat, he stopped and looked at them. “Yes, I have business. Unless you fair ladies wish me to stay. Perhaps I could take you up on your kind offers.”

  “Jesus,” May breathed and he saw Carlotta’s hand move, unconsciously sketching a half-remembered symbol in the air between them. Warding off evil, he realized and shuddered, then hunched away from them, muttering his borrowed incantation curing the “fuckers.”

  They will not remember, he told himself. They will cloud their minds with drugs and drink and think they imagined it. And it will never happen again.

  Resolutely, his disguise in place again, he shambled down the first laneway, seeking the various hunting grounds he now knew well. From an open doorway at the end of the alley, he heard the steady thump of the cacophony this age called music. It signalled the presence of one of t
he city’s half-hidden nightclubs that seemed to bloom for a handful of nights on the back streets, then die as some other spot caught the attention of the fickle children who patronized such places.

  He moved carefully then, staying in the shadows. The young moved in packs, and the boys could be dangerous in their alcoholic recklessness. Some nights they seemed to look for prey, and the old, shambling men who crouched in the alleys made suitable targets. He did not fear them but feared the risks he would have to take to defend himself.

  There was a commotion at the other end of the alley and a group of laughing, shouting revellers appeared beneath the streetlight. He froze, invisible in immobility, and waited for them to move on. There was a dispute among them, some pointing down towards the door to the club, others clamouring for some other diversion. Finally, the schism deepened and half of them staggered off into the night. Rozokov waited impatiently for the three remaining to pass through the alley. Two were young oriental men, razored hair like black cockscombs over faces of almost feminine beauty. The third . . . his breath caught, and he wondered how he could have missed the glow of her presence. Once he recognized it, it blazed like the neon that coloured the city nights.

  She looked completely different than the pale, haggard woman he had known in the asylum. Inky hair framed a pale face dominated by the red slash of lips. Her dress was short and black, revealing long legs in dark stockings, white arms that looked shockingly naked. Only her eyes, when she stopped and faced the darkness, were the same, incongruously soft among all her sharp angles and uncompromising colours.

  She could not see him, her senses not mature enough to find him when he cloaked himself from her, but she stared uneasily down the alley until the young men tugged on her arm and pulled her into the dark mouth of the club.

  Rozokov let out his breath slowly. Hide, he had told her. Change yourself so their eyes will not find you. And she had, with an efficiency that was almost fearsome. His heart ached for her suddenly, loneliness and sympathy combined. He knew the terrors of youth in this state, the desperate groping for some guide, when the only models were the one who had killed you and the accumulated misconceptions of the dark and fearful folklore. And you abandoned her to that struggle, his conscience reminded him.

  He could force his way into the dark confines of the club, or linger amid the garbage bins to catch her as she left. But then the memory of Roias returned, along with the thought of what he could be forced to do if she were held hostage, and so he shuffled on, melting back into the skin of his disguise with more ease than he cared to consider.

  Chapter 20

  The street was in full swing by the time Mickey and Rick arrived to set up their gear. Memory of the day’s ninety-degree temperatures hung like a scent in the sultry air. The heat brought out the crowds but stripped them of the leathers, boots and great coats with which they declared their allegiances all winter. Mickey had shed his customary leather jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his “Death from Above” T-shirt. Rick had even tied back his shoulder-length hair in concession to the heat. And, Mickey thought with a private grin, because with his hair tied back and his round sunglasses on, he looked just enough like U2’s guitarist to get him a second look from the girls passing by.

  There wasn’t much room on the corner, but the recessed doorway to one of the used-clothing stores provided a space to duck when the flow of pedestrians got too heavy. The traffic crawled along, windows down and stereos blaring—competition they could do without on a night when they’d brought only two acoustics.

  “Holy Roller’s here, right on schedule,” Rick observed as he started to snap open his guitar case. Mickey finished slinging his Ovation over his shoulder and glanced down the street.

  “He’s closer tonight.”

  “I think the waiters at the Flamingo called the cops the other night. It made it hard for the people to eat on the patio with him ranting about AIDS and the wages of sin all night long. Wonder what the sermon is tonight?”

  “I hope it’s the evils of rock and roll. I like that one,” Mickey joked, though he shot the preacher another careful glance. The consensus on the street was that the Holy Roller was harmless—just another lost soul driven crazy by too much religion or too many drugs. He wasn’t a street person—he was too clean for that, a kind of hard-scrubbed cleanliness that suggested that it ranked somewhere on par with godliness. The face was craggy, edged in a shock of muddy brown hair. It was very different from the bland visages and capped smiles of the television preachers. But if his face kept him off the dollar-mill to glory on TV, his voice put all the Falwells and Swaggarts of the world to shame. Or it must have once, Mickey thought, with the musician’s ability to hear the echoes of beauty in it. Now, drink or illness or merely the endless duty of haranguing their oblivious world had taken their toll and when the Holy Roller preached, you heard crows, not angels. Mickey hated to have to sing over that strident rant, though he and Rick both took a wicked delight in playing songs that ran in ironic counterpoint to the preacher’s sermon.

  The strum of Rick’s guitar brought him back to the moment and they began to tune their guitars, pausing once in a while to scan the street. When the two instruments sounded almost like one, Rick settled his felt hat farther over his eyes and grinned sideways at Mickey. “Well, pal. Shall we try to make this week’s rent tonight?”

  “Why not?” Nothing else to do, Mickey thought with a wry grin, realizing they were in for a long night’s work. “Start with ‘I Knew the Bride’?” Rick nodded, counted in with the bob of his head and they started out the night with a quick pop beat.

  An hour later, a small shifting circle had gathered around them. Some people stayed only for a bar or two, some for a whole song if it caught their fancy, and some hung around longer just to catch some free entertainment. Or nearly free. Mickey’s guitar case lay open on the ground, a mute invitation for payment. As usual, they had spiked the pot with a few bills of their own, just to plant the idea of generosity in the audience’s mind.

  It seemed to have worked, Mickey thought, doing a quick tally of their take. They might really make a dent in their rent, maybe even before midnight.

  When he looked up again, the girl was standing in the front of the circle, watching him. Mickey stared for a moment because he couldn’t help himself. Her hair was startlingly black, a dye job, he realized. Beneath the line of ragged bangs, sunglasses covered her eyes. Trying too hard to be cool, he decided. Or covering up the bruises and lines of too hard a life. Her face was pale, except for her lips, which bloomed red-rose on her snow-white skin. There were faint lines around her lips, and a barely perceptible indent beside her mouth. Mickey wondered if she were chewing the inside of her mouth, keeping the tension inside.

  She wore a battered khaki trench coat over a black mini-skirt, dark stockings, and a loose black T-shirt. There was a faded design on the T-shirt but he couldn’t make it out. He could only see the suggestion of a pattern and gothic lettering that shifted as she breathed.

  The Holy Roller cried out, almost in anguish, and the girl turned her head suddenly. Blood swung around her neck and Mickey started, staring, until he realized the red gleam was only a stone in her earring. She looked back and he saw the twin pewter winged faces suspended from her ears, red glass dangling from their throats like drops of blood.

  She tilted her head a little and he felt the basilisk gaze, the sunglasses settle on him. Uneasily, Mickey dropped his glance, strummed aimlessly on his guitar. “For temptation is everywhere, my children, and we are lost in the wilderness. The wilderness is the devil’s and the devil takes all forms here—many of them pleasing.” The Holy Roller’s rant echoed in his ears suddenly, the shattered voice rolling the last words around like a grape before spitting out the seed of meaning.

  When Mickey looked up, the girl was still there, the black-lensed gaze turned to Rick. A sideways glance at his friend revealed the familiar slow grin of interest. Normally
, Rick’s salivating over the women who gathered around them amused Mickey. Tonight, he wished the thin trickle of sweat down his back hadn’t turned to ice.

  “Come on, man,” he said desperately and nudged Rick with his guitar. “Let’s give the old Holy something to really rail about.” The crowd had gotten restless and if they wanted any more cash that night they’d better start the show again.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah,” Rick answered, dazedly, barely looking away from the black-clad, black-eyed girl.

  “‘Wild Thing’?” Mickey suggested?

  “Yeah.” The affirmative was stronger this time, and when his friend’s gaze returned to the dark-haired girl, Mickey realized he’d picked the wrong song. But they were committed now, the first chords hit and the song begun.

  To give Rick credit, he was trying to be subtle. He smiled at all the women in the crowd, and kept the lyrics and the chords straight. But he was singing it for her, his voice drawling and dipping over the chorus, stuttering and sighing over the verses. In the end, even Mickey was drawn into the intensity of the song, his guitar solo sliding achingly up and down the scale, echoing Rick’s voice.

  The girl stood there, smiling faintly, swaying just a little to the beat. The wind fanned her hair into a dark halo around her head and the streetlights fired the crimson gems hanging from her ears. For a moment, in the night heat and the thunder of the guitar rhythm, even Mickey wanted her.

  Then the song was over, the last words a shout of “Wild Thing!” that the crowd joined. There was applause, and the clatter of money into the guitar case. All of which Mickey heard only distantly.

  Because the girl had taken off her sunglasses and smiled at Rick.

  You’re not jealous. Staring into his coffee cup, Mickey repeated the words to himself. And he knew that they were true. It wasn’t jealousy that had made him angry when Rick started packing up his guitar, ignoring the crowd that thinned and drifted until only the girl stood there. It wasn’t jealousy that made him insist that Rick meet him at the street-side diner in half an hour. It wasn’t jealousy that kept him sitting here on the stool, staring out onto the street, while his coffee went cold and the blonde at the end of the bar went colder.