Angel of Darkness

by Charles de Lint

  It was his apartment, but the place was a shambles. The air smelled bad. Garbage and crap. What was left of a curtain moved limply, a wind blowing in the strong, unpleasant metallic scent of the yellow skies that he could see through the smeared upper pane of the window. The lower pane was broken—just some shards sticking out of the casing to show that it had ever been there.

  Jack sat up and checked his gear. Everything he’d been wearing had crossed over with him. Did that mean he was a good—a lucid—dreamer, or was he really here?

  Don’t think about it, he told himself. Just get to it.

  His gaze shifted to the night table before he got up. Anna’s sculpture was still there, only someone had stuck a nail in its mouth, another between its legs. The disfigurement struck too close to home for Jack right then. It was too real. Red paint around the entry point of each nail completed the illusion.

  He pulled the nails out. Putting some saliva on a finger, he started to rub at the paint, then hurriedly set the sculpture down. It was too much like really putting a finger between his sister’s legs.

  He wiped his finger on his jeans and stood up, testing the floor as he crossed the room. There was no sound from the bottom apartment as he made his way down the stairs and outside. He stood for long moments on the porch, staring at the desolate city spread out before him. The sky seemed to hang low, swollen with sickly clouds. The metallic tang was sharper out here. He listened carefully—for the music, for any kind of a sound—but all he heard was the wind’s mournful passage through the deserted houses.

  There’s the city, he thought. And then the wasteland. Are they separate places? Does this city stand in between the real world and the wasteland? Do you have to pass through the one to get to the other? Or would he find the wasteland lying outside this empty city’s suburbs?

  Well, he had time to find out. The sleeping pills should keep him under for a while. He felt alert here, though. Not at all dragged out as he had when he’d gotten home earlier.

  Time to get moving.

  He had two places he wanted to check out. Baker’s house and the police station. He opted for the station first—that was the last place the killer had struck.

  It was an eerie sensation, walking the deserted streets downtown. Abandoned cars and buses littered the streets. He saw movement from time to time—rats in a heap of garbage behind a restaurant on Bank Street once. Dogs looked at him from the shelter of dilapidated buildings. The only birds he’d seen were a pair of crows winging lazily south.

  An odd memory came to mind as he worked his way north. He remembered sitting around a campfire when he was a teenager—a bunch of the guys just out for the weekend, putting back some brews, shooting the shit. And then someone asked, “What’s the worst thing you ever did?”

  Something about that night, sharing the fire under the cold vault of the night sky, awoke an honesty in the four of them. They were still pretty young then, innocent, really. Not like the kids of today. The evils they’d done were small-scale compared to what you read in the newspapers now, saw on the tube. But they were ugly things all the same.

  Gaff—Tommy Gaffney—had doused a neighbor’s dog with gasoline and then set it on fire. His voice broke as he told them about it, sitting there by the fire, poking at the coals with a stick.

  “I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. It was me and Red—I don’t know who thought of it first. But when the dog was howling . . . Jesus. Just running out into the street, burning . . . I wanted to stop it worse than anything I ever wanted to do in my life, but there was nothing anybody could do by then. That poor fucking dog . . .”

  What Jack had done was take Ellie Dugan on a date. She was the local fat girl—about as wide as she was tall. He took her out for a ride in the country, telling her spook stories, then he just left her out there to find her own way home. Big joke. He was halfway home before it sank in. Ellie out there. Alone. In the dark. Some joke.

  He turned around right then and went back to get her, but she was gone. He spent hours touring up and down the back roads, looking for her, sick with imagining all the weird shit that could have happened to her. He got home just as the dawn was breaking and couldn’t sleep. He sat by the phone, waiting for the day to get on enough so that he could call her house.

  When she heard his voice, she slammed the phone down, but Jack had never been so relieved to have someone so pissed off at him before. Because at least she was okay.

  (no thanks to him)

  At least she was alive.

  After that the talk around the campfire dwindled until someone came up with a new zinger. What was the worst thing you could imagine happening to you? Jack’s reply had surprised even himself at the time.

  “If anything happened to Anna . . .” he’d said.

  And no one laughed, though it was a pussy kind of a thing to say at that age.

  Anna.

  Walking down the streets of the deserted city, Jack couldn’t stop thinking of her. The graffiti in her living room. The mutilated sculpture of her in his own bedroom. Losing Anna would still be the worst thing that could ever happen to him. And here, in this city—

  (just a dream)

  —in that wasteland—

  (except it was real)

  —he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going to take her away from him.

  Forever.

  And there’d be nothing he could do about it.

  Just thinking about it made him feel a little sick. He tried to turn his thoughts to something else, something pleasant, but that was impossible in this place. And then he was getting close to the station. He could see the squat building looming up ahead, walls spray-painted with graffiti. He paused, looking at it, hand reaching in under his bomber jacket to touch the comforting presence of his .38.

  And then he heard it.

  The music.

  The pain in it.

  He searched the rubble-strewn area for its source.

  4

  PAT NICHOLS WAS at the Coffeys’ apartment when Ned and Ernie Grier arrived. Sheila Coffey wasn’t holding up well. The disappearance of her husband from their bedroom, coupled with the bizarre discovery of his body in the station’s gun range, had left her grasping for meaning in a situation that held no logic. It was a losing battle, and the wounds showed in her swollen eyes and the deep lines etched in her face.

  She appeared to drift in and out of a catatonic state as Ned gently questioned her. She’d speak for a few moments, then just drift off, eyes losing focus, until Ned asked her another question. She needed to be treated for shock, he realized. After getting the bare bones of the story from her, he left her with his partner and took Nichols aside.

  “It’s a bad business,” he said.

  Nichols nodded. The strain was showing on him as well. He and Coffey had been close.

  “Yeah,” he said. “One minute you’re married, the next you’re a widow. One day you’ve got a partner, the next he’s pushing up the flowers. Jesus Christ. Sometimes you think about the worst that could happen to you, but you never think about how you’re going to feel”

  Ned steered Nichols to a chair in the kitchen. “I know it’s a bad time, Pat, but I’ve got a couple of things I’ve got to ask you. Think you’re up for it?”

  “Sure. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “This business with Coffey disappearing from the bedroom— what do you make of it?”

  “You mean, do I think Sheila imagined it?”

  Ned shrugged. “Or maybe she was turned away long enough for him to get by, only she doesn’t realize it.”

  “You’ve seen the size of this place,” Nichols said. “The narrowness of the hall. If things happened like she said they did, there’s no way he could have gotten by her without her knowing.”

  “Any chance they just had a fight and he walked out on her? Maybe she was too embarrassed to tell you about it when she phoned, and then this shit went down and she was caught in her lie?”

  Fo
r a moment Ned thought Nichols was going to hit him, but then the patrolman sighed, calming down. “You know how civilians react when you tell them you’re a cop? And all the stories about how the job breaks up relationships and marriages?”

  “Tell me about it,” Ned said.

  Anna’s features floated up in his mind with their usual accompanying pang.

  “Well, Sheila was big on Ron being a cop. She was proud of him—no bullshit there. I think maybe it even . . . you know, turned her on?” He shook his head. “Christ, I feel weird talking about them like this.”

  “Look, we can just forget—”

  “No, let me finish, Ned. They were tight. Really in love. Four and a half years down the road from tying the knot and they were still just as much in love as they were the day they got married. So no, I don’t think this is something Sheila made up because they had a fight. And yes, I believe what she says.”

  “Then how’d he get out?”

  “Jesus, Ned. I just can’t figure it. I was talking to Baxter just before you guys showed up. He said Ron was dressed like a bum.” Nichols shook his head.

  “You get any sleep yet?” Ned asked.

  “A couple of hours.”

  “And?”

  Nichols gave him a puzzled look.

  “Did you have any . . . dreams?”

  “What’re you talking about?” Nichols asked.

  “Remember back at Baker’s place when we had them check the air? Well, I still think there was something in it, only it broke up before we had a chance to get the equipment down there to do the testing.”

  “So?”

  “So I think whoever was early on the scene got a whiff of whatever the hell it was and it’s . . . doing something to them.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like giving them weird dreams. Everybody finding themselves in the same places. Either Ottawa looking like it’s been abandoned for a few years—streets deserted, no one around— or in this huge wasteland. An empty plain like the prairie, where nothing’s alive, going on for as far as you can see.”

  The look that came over Nichols’s face told Ned that he’d hit home.

  “Everybody’s having these dreams?” Nichols asked. “Everybody who caught the call?”

  “Ernie has. Jack Keller—remember him? He used to work GA before he quit. He’s had them. I. . . I’ve been having flashes. I haven’t talked to everybody yet, but I plan to.”

  “And you think it was due to some kind of gas?”

  Ned nodded. “Fumes. Strong enough to affect Jack, who never went inside, but it broke up and was gone before we had a chance to go down and test the air.”

  “Jesus.” Nichols ran a hand through his short hair. “I dreamed of those same places, Ned. Not the wasteland but the empty city. Streets deserted. Gave me the creeps. It wasn’t like any dream I’d ever had before. Sheila’s call pulled me out of it, or I’d probably still be there.”

  “There’s got to be a connection.”

  “Yeah, but everybody dreaming about the same place? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Not a whole hell of a lot of any of this does,” Ned said. “But there’ve been group hallucinations before.”

  “Sure. Except the people are usually all together in the same place.”

  “We were . . . at Baker’s.”

  “Yeah, but it didn’t affect us until later.”

  Nichols got up and ran himself a glass of water. He drank it all down in one long chugalug, then filled the glass again and brought it back to the table.

  “You figure Ron had a dream like that?”

  “Stands to reason. He was there.”

  “Right.” Nichols drank some more of his water. “But it doesn’t explain what’s going down.”

  “I don’t have the answers,” Ned said, “but I’m going to keep looking into it.”

  “You talk to your staff sergeant about this? Or to any brass?”

  Ned shook his head.

  “Well, don’t. They’re just going to give you a fast shift into some forced holidays because it sounds too fucking weird.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s too fucking weird,” Nichols said, “but you can count me in to help out. Just give me a chance to run Sheila over to the hospital. I think she needs something to bring her down.”

  “Do you know John Paige?”

  “He’s the guy from Traffic who was at Baker’s last night.”

  “Maybe you could talk to him and Benny.”

  “Can do. What’re you going to do?”

  “I’ll be heading back to the station with Ernie to file this report. I’ll see what I can get out of some of the people from ID that were there. Lou Duchaine too. Then I’m heading for some sack time.”

  I just hope to hell I don’t dream, Ned thought. He didn’t speak, but he could see that Nichols knew just what was going through his head.

  “One more thing,” Ned said as he rose from the table. “Ernie pointed this out, and I’ve been picking up on it ever since. People seem to be uncomfortable around us. If you’re around anyone who wasn’t at Baker’s last night, I’d like to know their reactions. I think it ties in—and don’t ask me how.”

  “Weird.”

  Ned nodded. “You ever bitch about everything being too routine?”

  “Sure. Who doesn’t?”

  “Well, right now that’s all I can think of. I just wish we were back on our routines again—I don’t care how much fucking paperwork I’d have to push around.”

  “The Chinese call it living in interesting times,” Nichols said. “This kind of thing.”

  “Yeah. I heard that somewhere.” Probably from Anna, he thought.

  “I read it in a book,” Nichols said.

  Ned paused at the doorway. “You read too much,” he said, then he went down the hall to collect his partner.

  “Maybe I don’t read enough,” Nichols said to the empty room. “Maybe I should’ve gone on to be a lawyer like Dad always wanted me to. Then I wouldn’t even be thinking about this kind of shit.”

  5

  IT WAS THE sudden shift in the bedsprings that turned Julie around. Her eyes went wide. She knew the feel of someone getting out of her bed while she was lying in it, and that’s just what had happened. The cop had gotten up. Except he wasn’t standing by the bed. He wasn’t anywhere in the room.

  Weird, she thought. How’d he get out of the bedroom so fast?

  She lay there listening to the sounds of her apartment, waiting to hear a footstep—the fridge door opening, maybe—or Hardass in the can, taking a leak.

  Nothing.

  Not a sound, except for the hum of the fridge and her alarm clock. Traffic outside. The sound of a radio coming from one of the other apartments in the building.

  This was very weird.

  She got up and padded out of the bedroom in her bare feet. A complete search of the apartment showed that the cop was gone. Except that his clothes were still in her bedroom.

  What gives? she wondered, feeling a little creeped out. He’s gone out on the street bare-assed?

  Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe he’d get picked up, and then, cop or no cop, they’d put him away and he wouldn’t show up on her doorstep anymore.

  When she returned to the bedroom, she went through his clothes, found his wallet, but didn’t take any money out of it— three bucks and change, big-time spender—picked up his gun, still in its shoulder holster.

  She hefted its weight in her hands.

  Something like this could solve a lot of problems. She imagined having the cop in her sights. Or Reggie. Dead people didn’t hit on you. If she had the nerve, she could just—

  The sound of the bedsprings shifting made her drop the gun back onto Boucher’s suit and turn nervously.

  He was back.

  Sitting up on the bed like he was just waking up.

  Like he’d never been gone.

  Hardass wiped at the sweat beading his face
.

  “Jesus fuck . . .” he muttered.

  There was a wild look in his eyes that slowly faded as he took in his surroundings. Julie didn’t say a word. She just stood there by the chair, staring at him, trying to understand what was going on. How could he just. . . appear like that? Out of nowhere. Because she knew—she knew—he hadn’t been in that bed a second ago.

  “How . . . how did you do that?” she finally managed to ask.

  Hardass focused on her, his eyes narrowing. “Do what?”

  “Disappear—I mean, you were gone—and then you just appeared again . . .”

  Her voice trailed off at the look he gave her.

  “I told you,” he said. “Lay off the fucking drugs, kid.”

  “But I’m . . .”

  Not high, she thought. She hadn’t hit up since a couple of hours before she finally collapsed in her bed this morning, drifting off as the high faded, before the downer blues set in.

  “What’re you staring at me for?” Hardass demanded.

  “N-nothing.”

  “I just had a dream—that’s all. A weird fucking dream, okay?”

  She nodded. His eyes were haunted as he remembered whatever it was he’d seen before he’d woken up.

  Dreaming. Right.

  Maybe she was high.

  “Get your ass over here,” Hardass told her.

  She scurried back to the bed, not wanting to even be in the same room with him, too scared to do anything but what he told her. As soon as she was close enough, he grabbed her and pushed her down on the bed, then climbed up on top of her.

  “Gotta forget,” he said. “That’s all. Just gotta forget all the shit.”

  She closed her eyes at the pain as he entered her. She wasn’t ready, she didn’t want it, she was too dry, he didn’t care, the feel of his body was like having a corpse rubbing up against her. . .

  Her hands gripped the sheets, convulsively knotting them as she tried not to scream.

  6

  JACK HAD TO cast around a bit before he could pinpoint the direction from which the music was coming. It was disconcerting to be in the city and to have it be so quiet. Just the wind, moving through the deserted streets, drifting through the broken windows and doors. And the music. Low but impossible to ignore. Seeming to come from everywhere at once.