Angel of Darkness

by Charles de Lint

  8

  “THIS IS SO creepy,” Cathy said. “It’s just like that movie, you know? ‘Freddy’s back.’ “

  When Cathy got excited, she had a way of raising the pitch of her voice so that her sentences ended on a higher note than the rest of the words. Normally Cathy’s enthusiasm made Anna smile, but today it just seemed to add to the headache that was developing behind Anna’s left temple.

  “What do you mean?” Beth asked.

  “That movie, Nightmare on Elm Street. Didn’t you ever see it?”

  Beth shook her head. “I don’t like that kind of thing.”

  “Too spooky,” Anna agreed.

  Cathy smiled. “And no redeeming social value, right?”

  “Well. . .”

  “You want to talk about spooky,” Cathy went on, “what about real life? What about this dream we all had?”

  “Synchronicity—” Anna began.

  “Pardon me, but bullshit,” Cathy interrupted. “Maybe if we’d all just watched some disaster flick together, okay. But not out of the blue like this. This is just spooky. And that place gave me the creeps.”

  Anna nodded. She knew just what Cathy meant. She’d never experienced such a feeling of desolation—and loss—before. It was as though everything good had died and all that was left was pain. And loneliness.

  “I started out feeling scared,” Beth said, “but then I got. . . I don’t know. It was like all of a sudden I was in control. Of everything. For the first time I was the one in charge. I never felt like that before.”

  “Wish fulfillment,” Cathy said. Anna shot her a dirty look but Cathy only shrugged. “I’m sorry, but it’s true. Why else would anybody like a place like that?”

  “It wasn’t the place,” Beth said. “It was the feeling in me.”

  “Besides,” Anna added, “dreams are supposed to be where we work out the stuff that bothers us during the day.”

  Cathy’s eyebrows went up. “More dream psychology? Well, then, what was I supposed to be working out? And how come we were all in the same place—right down to the graffiti on the living room wall?”

  “I didn’t see any graffiti,” Beth said.

  “No, but Anna and I did.”

  Anna shivered, remembering. The crude drawing beside the words had looked too much like a caricature of herself for her to feel comfortable thinking about it.

  “I did that dreaming test,” she said. “You know, where you look away from writing and then look back? If the writing’s changed, you’re dreaming. If it doesn’t. . .”

  “And did it? Oh, please!” Cathy cried when Anna shook her head. “Don’t get me thinking that place really exists somewhere.”

  A wistful look touched Beth’s features. “Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad,” she said. When the other two gave her strange looks, she went on. “Well, not for me, at least.” Her gaze settled on Cathy. “You don’t know what it’s like being me. Or somebody like me. Everybody’s always hitting on me, using me. It was different in the dream. I was the one in control there. I felt like nobody could hurt me—nobody could even touch me.”

  Cathy shook her head. “If that place was real, you wouldn’t catch me wanting to go back.” She gave Anna a look. “Imagine meeting the jerks responsible for that graffiti? Jody and Kirk. Wouldn’t you love to run into them some dark night?”

  Beth went chalk white.

  “But that place isn’treal,” Anna said quickly. “And those feelings you had there, Beth . . . it can be like that here too.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “I know. But you’ve got to try. Here is where the real world is, where we’ve all got to deal with whatever comes our way. Dreams are just. . . well, dreams.”

  When she saw Beth withdrawing into herself, Anna wished she could take her words back. Why did she always feel that everything had to be a lesson? Beth had things tough enough as it was, without being lectured every time she sounded a little unsure of herself.

  Cathy stood up from the table. “So are we still going shopping?” she asked. “The sales wait for no woman.”

  “Do you want to go?” Anna asked Beth.

  “No. You two go on ahead. I’m trying to save some money.”

  Anna had to bite back a “Are you sure you’ll be all right?” Give the lady some slack, she told herself.

  “You know what I wonder?” Cathy said as they went upstairs to get dressed.

  Anna shook her head. “What?”

  “I wonder what kind of dreams Jack had last night.”

  9

  AT EIGHT-THIRTY THAT morning Julie Clark had only been asleep for three hours when the pounding came at the door of her apartment on Clarence Street in the Market. Eyes puffy, she dragged her gaze over to her alarm clock.

  It couldn’t be that early, she thought.

  The front door shook again as someone thumped their fist heavily against it.

  Couldn’t be Reggie, she thought. A bomb going off wouldn’t wake him before noon. But if it wasn’t her pimp, then who was it?

  “Open the fuck up,” a too familiar voice shouted through the door, “or I’ll bust my way in.”

  Oh, shit. It was that frigging cop again.

  She’d first run into Hardass Boucher when she almost got picked up for soliciting on a hooker sweep of the Market a couple of months ago. Boucher saw that she didn’t get taken in, but now he came by at least a couple of times a week for freebies. He told her later that he didn’t even work the Enforcement unit; he just liked to tag along with the guys on his off hours to have a little fun. It had been her bad luck to have him pick her to hit on.

  It was all a game to him. That night he had her backed up against the wall of an alleyway, big meaty hands fondling her chest.

  “Kinda young, aren’t you?” he’d asked her.

  She was young, all right, but at fifteen she’d already been working the streets for two years. It wasn’t something she’d aimed for when she’d run away from home to live with Reggie. Back then Reggie treated her like a queen. Like an adult. Got her nice clothes. Dope. Took her places. She thought living with him’d be everything she didn’t have at home.

  When she found out he was a pimp, when she found out she had to hustle her body to keep his loving, it hadn’t been such a hard decision. Not at first. Why not get paid for it, when living at home her old man took it for free?

  And it wasn’t so bad. Reggie still took good care of her. She only had to do this until they got a stake, and then they were going away together. To California. Reggie had some connections there, maybe he could get her into pictures or something. But first they needed some cash.

  By the time she wised up—Christ, only the dumbass kid she’d been could have been so stupid as to have believed that line of crap—and realized that she wasn’t Reggie’s only girl, it was too late to get out. Calmly, sorrowfully, Reggie explained how, if she tried to take off from him, he was going to have to break her face. He wasn’t like her parents, see? He cared about her. Really cared. So it didn’t matter where she went—he’d find her. They were family now, see?

  Two years later she no longer pretended she was anything but what she was: a fifteen-year-old junkie hooker. There wasn’t going to be any trip to California. There weren’t going to be any movies except for the porn flick Reggie’d made her do last year. There wasn’t going to be any loving except what she got from Reggie. And her Johns. And the dirty cop who was hammering at her door right now. The cop who’d told her, that first night he’d grabbed her, “But that’s okay, kid. I like ‘em young.”

  What he didn’t know was that Julie was an old woman by now. An old junkie hooker trapped in some kid’s body that was getting worn out way before its time. Hardass couldn’t know, but he wouldn’t care, either. Just so long as he got his.

  The hammering continued on her front door.

  “Open up this goddamned thing!” Hardass was shouting.

  Wishing she could call a cop—

  (yeah, righ
t—and make it a gang bang)

  —Julie headed for the door. “Don’t make trouble with him,” Reggie had said when she’d told him about Hardass. Make nice, Jools. You never know when a cop could come in handy.

  Hardass’s fist was raised to hit the door again when she opened it on him.

  “You doped up again?” he demanded.

  She shook her head.

  “Then what the fuck kept you?”

  “I was sleeping.”

  “Well, sleep on your own time, kid. I got needs for you to look after.”

  As he pushed by her, Julie felt a stronger repugnance toward him than ever before—if that was even possible. It was like there was a stink about him, except you didn’t smell it with your nose, you smelled it with your soul.

  She stared at him, wanting to run, but she couldn’t move.

  “Jesus Christ,” Hardass said. “You are doped out.”

  He slammed the door, then, grabbing her by the arm, dragged her off to the bedroom.

  10

  JACK FELT STRANGE sitting in the squad room of the General Assignment unit again. It had nothing to do with the detectives. Most of the men treated him like he’d never left the force. Like nothing had changed. Except he had changed. The large dark-blue visitor’s pass clipped to his windbreaker in place of the small light-blue plastic ID badge with a photo on it said it all.

  He was a visitor here. He’d quit the force. He didn’t belong here anymore. And listening to Ned describe what had happened down in the gun room earlier today made him wonder if he belonged anywhere anymore.

  “Could anything be salvaged from Baker’s equipment?” he asked when Ned was done.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What was he working on? What kind of stuff did he have in those computers? What was he doing with what he was record-ing?”

  “How come I get the feeling you know something I don’t?”

  Jack shook his head. “Anything I’ve got, you can have.”

  “Okay.” Ned leaned back in his chair. “The ID boys couldn’t find anything that hadn’t been slagged by the heat.”

  “I’m not just talking about what was in the machines at the time Baker died.”

  “Neither am I. It’s all gone—master tapes, computer discs, cassettes, the works. Nada. Nothing left. Why, Jack?”

  “I . . .” Jack hesitated.

  Flicker.

  Last night’s dream returned, and for a moment he was there again, in that other place. Not the wasteland but the station. This squad room. Deserted. Trashed. Graffiti on the walls. Litter everywhere.

  “Jack?”

  Flicker.

  It was gone.

  “Did you—did you just see anything, Ned?”

  “You mean, like last night?”

  Jack nodded.

  “No. But I could feel it there, just for a moment. That weird sensation of something else pressing in on me. Something I couldn’t see but could feel.”

  “I don’t know where to begin with this, Ned. It’s going to sound so off-the-wall.”

  Ned leaned forward. “Off-the-wall? Have you been listening to me or what? We had a guy just pop in from nowhere, right in the middle of the station, Jack. Basement level. You know how tight the security is here. There’s no way Coffey could have gotten in without being spotted. But he showed up all the same, just like”—Ned snapped his fingers—”that. So don’t talk to me about off-the-wall.”

  “I had this dream last night, Ned. It took me to—I was still in Ottawa, but the place was a ruin. Like nobody’d lived here for years. And I saw that figure I’d seen coming out of Baker’s house before.”

  “Jack . . .”

  “The thing is, there was this music you could hear when you were near her. Synthesized stuff. Voices—not singing so much as being used as instruments. You know about digital samplers, Ned? How they can record any sound now and use it to play a whole keyboard range?”

  Ned nodded.

  “The music was like that. Voices, played like instruments. And they were in agony, Ned. Really hurting.” Jack’s gaze settled on Ned’s and held. “I think that Baker did something to open a . . . I don’t know . . . a door to somewhere else. To that place we saw in the squad car last night, Ned. To the ruined city I was in last night.”

  “You mean someplace real?”

  Jack nodded slowly. “Someplace that lies side by side with our own world, only we just can’t see it.”

  “Jack, this is beginning to sound a little—”

  “See the really weird thing is, I woke up in that dream—I guess you could say I dreamed I woke up—and then I wandered around for a while in it. Through Anna’s house. The floor fell out of one of the rooms I went in and I just about went with it. I managed to jump free, but I was covered in plaster dust and got a bit banged up for my efforts. Then I went outside, down to the river at the end of Harvard, and I woke up.”

  “Jack—”

  “I woke up there, Ned. By the river at the end of Harvard. In the real world. This world.” He rubbed his face. “Unless I’m dreaming this too.” He held up a hand before Ned could speak. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Ned? I woke up and I was standing outside of Anna’s house, down the block from it.”

  “Do you ever. . . you know, sleepwalk?”

  “Ned, I was covered in plaster dust.”

  Ned studied him for a long moment. Finally he asked, “What are you saying, Jack?”

  “You were telling me about Coffey—just popping in out of nowhere in the middle of the gun range? Well, maybe he dreamed himself into the station.”

  “That. . . that’s not possible, Jack.”

  “I know that. You know that. But I know where I woke up this morning. I washed that plaster dust off me. And you’ve got a couple of cops downstairs who’ll swear that they saw Coffey appear out of nowhere. Did you figure they were lying?”

  Ned shook his head. “They believed they saw what they saw.”

  “This is one weird fucking mess, Ned.”

  “Tell me about it.” Ned hesitated as if he didn’t know where to take the conversation next. “This guy, Baker,” he said finally. “You think he was . . . what? Making some kind of a doorway to another world, is that it? Like he was planning to do it, or maybe it just happened—like an accident?”

  “We’re probably never going to know.”

  “And the . . . things that are happening to us. . . . You figure we’re going to move back and forth between that place and here?”

  “Maybe it’ll wear off, Ned. The way I see it, we got caught up in some residuals of whatever it was that Baker was up to. That’s why we can see into it. Why Coffey and I were in it.”

  “How do we stop this from going on, Jack?”

  “Christ if I know.” Jack rubbed at his face again. He felt worn to the bone. “What did you dream last night, Ned?”

  “I haven’t slept yet.”

  “Well, just be careful when you do.” He rose wearily to his feet. He was just starting for the door when Ernie Grier came in the room.

  “We’re on,” Grier said.

  “What’s up?” Ned asked.

  Grier glanced at Jack, then back at Ned. When Ned nodded, he went on. “You think things weren’t fucked enough, we just got a call from Pat Nichols. He’s over at the Coffey place. Went over because Coffey’s missus called him. Seems. . .” Grier shook his head. “Christ, I don’t believe this. It seems Coffey vanished from the apartment about an hour or so before he showed up downstairs.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Yeah. He was sleeping in the bedroom. The missus looked in on him, then got to folding some laundry right outside the door. When she looked back in, he’d vanished. No way Coffey could have gotten by her—not without her seeing him go. That’s what she told Pat.”

  “Ned?” Jack said quietly as Ned stood up and grabbed his sport jacket.

  “Yeah?”

  “Think about what I told you.”

 
“I will.”

  “What’s going on?” Grier wanted to know.

  “I’ll fill you in on the way to Coffey’s, Ernie.”

  They rode the elevator together, Jack getting off at the main floor, the other two continuing down to the garage in the first basement.

  “When you get some sleep,” Jack said as he stepped out. “Hang on to your gun or something when you go to bed, Ned. You might need it.”

  “I’ll be careful. You watch out for yourself, Jack.”

  “Always do. See you around, Ernie.”

  As Jack walked away he could hear Grier’s voice coming from between the sliding doors of the elevator. “What the hell am I missing here, Ned?”

  Everything, I hope, Jack thought as he turned in his visitor’s pass at the desk and left the station. Maybe whatever Baker had set loose would be satisfied with what it had now, but Jack wasn’t ready to make book on it. He had the feeling that things were just starting to heat up.

  11

  WALT HAWKINS AND Ted Rimmer slouched in the front seat of Walt’s old Chevy, watching the front door of a semidetached in Sandy Hill, that area of Ottawa just south of the Market that was getting its turn at a face-lift as the yuppies continued their upgrading of the city’s core. The half of the house in which they were interested belonged to a guy named Alan Haines—the bartender at Mexicali Rosa’s.

  The name had been easy to get. They waited until noon, then Ted went into the restaurant with a ten-spot and asked the daytime bartender what the name of the guy on the night shift was. When the guy behind the bar wanted to know why, Ted left the ten-spot on the bar.

  “Because I owe him this. You wanna pass it on to him?”

  “Sure. I’ll give it to Alan.”

  “Alan?”

  “Alan Haines.”

  “That’s the guy,” Ted said, and left with a breezy wave.

  After that it was just a matter of looking the guy up in the phone book and cruising on out to his place. Piece of cake. A bit of fun. Except sitting in the car for forty-five minutes plus was getting to be a royal pain in the ass.

  “You get your old lady back,” Ted said, turning to look at Walt, “what’s the deal then?”