Angel of Darkness

by Charles de Lint

  Ted’s van loomed up and he pulled in beside it. The lake looked nice behind the cottage. Waters calm. Sun going down behind the trees across it. There were lights already on next door. A nice shiny Volvo wagon parked in close to the building. In front of him, Charlie Thornton’s cottage was dark.

  He killed the engine. Dropping the keys into his shirt pocket, he hefted the case of twenty-four he’d picked up at Brewer’s Retail before leaving town. Molson’s Ex—a good Canadian brew. Suit you, Ted?

  The sound of the car door closing was loud in the quiet. Ted was probably sleeping, the lazy fuck. With the case of beer under his arm, Walt went up to the door and tried the knob. It turned easily. There was a funny smell in the air inside the cottage, but it was too dark to see much. He felt around by the side of the door until he found a light switch and flicked it on.

  It seemed as though the ground gave a little jolt underfoot. Walt swayed against the doorjamb and stared at what lay on the floor against the far wall of the cottage. His mouth hung open, and a numb feeling went through his body. He started to get the shakes and put the case of beer down on the floor before he dropped it.

  “J-jesus Ker-ist,” he breathed.

  He took a slow step forward. The corpse lay sprawled, looking like someone had taken a blowtorch to it. Staring at it gave Walt a sick feeling.

  Ted. What was left of him.

  Walt looked around quickly. Holding his hands up to his nose and breathing shallowly through his mouth, he went to try the door to the back bedroom. The knob was locked, the key still in the lock. He turned the key, then swung the door open, sure of what he was going to find.

  Beth lying there dead. His little Beth, fucked over by some maniac.

  But the room was empty.

  As he backed away from the door he remembered something he’d heard on the radio driving up to the cottage. Dead people. On Elgin Street. Popping in out of nowhere, all burned up like someone had doused them with gasoline and then flicked their Bic at them.

  His gaze went to Ted’s corpse.

  Burned up.

  Get the fuck out of here, he told himself.

  But Beth. Maybe she—

  Fuck Beth.

  What about “till death do us part,” huh?

  He continued to back out of the cottage. He wanted to call Beth’s name, but his throat was too constricted to let out more than a croak. As he reached the front door he realized that he couldn’t go. Not without checking out the rest of the place. If Beth was lying somewhere, hurting . . . She’d need him.

  “To have and to hold. In sickness and in health.”

  He started for the other bedroom, and then he heard it. Something like moaning and a weird kind of music all mixed up together. Some kind of hippie shit like you heard from those Hairy Krishner guys, who were usually bald, so why the fuck did they call themselves Hairy. . . .

  The sound got louder. It rasped up his spine like nails on glass.

  “B-Beth . . . ?” he called.

  He took another step and then—

  Flicker.

  The cottage changed. It had already smelled bad from Ted’s corpse, lying there waiting for the maggots to feed. Now it was like standing in the city dump. A raw sewage smell. Everything was mildewed and moldy. The paneling hanging from the walls in strips. The lights were off, shadows growing long. Furniture looked like someone’d driven a sixteen-wheeler over it.

  The music grew louder, and he could hear a buzzing sound under it. Like flies. Hundreds of flies. Whining in his head.

  He shook his head suddenly, trying to dislodge the sounds.

  Flicker.

  The lights came back on. There was Ted, lying against the wall. Nothing broken up. Everything in place. Except the music was still there. And the buzzing.

  “Fuck this,” Walt said, and got out of there fast.

  He was in the Chevy, the engine started, the car turned around and heading back down the narrow road in a blur that seemed all part of one unbroken motion. The car shook as he hit the potholes too fast. He had to fight the wheel to keep control.

  What kind of a guy leaves his wife behind at a time like this? a part of him asked.

  A sane guy, he told that voice. Now get the fuck out of my head.

  Except he didn’t feel sane. Not wheeling down this road at this speed. He lost his muffler at the next big pothole. It came off with a grinding shriek of tearing metal. When he reached the highway, he put the gas pedal to the floor. The drone of the engine with the muffler gone sounded too much like the buzz he’d heard at the cottage. Only amplified.

  And following him.

  What was left of Ted rose up in his mind’s eye.

  He glanced in the rearview mirror and thought he saw something pale floating above the highway behind him.

  Following him.

  He kept the pedal to the floor, knuckles whitening as he clenched the steering wheel in an ever-tightening grip. The pale shape he could see in the rearview mirror kept pace.

  Still following him.

  7

  I T WA SAN odd feeling for Ned, lying on a cot in the interrogation room, knowing the brass was out there looking in at him through the two-way mirror as he tried to fall asleep. Alone with Ernie but with the attention of those watching eyes upon them. The weight of the shotgun was heavy on his chest. He had one hand on the wooden grip, the other on its cold metal barrel. He could feel the press of that other place against his eyelids every time he closed his eyes. The dead city, leaning up against his mind. It felt more real than the intent gazes he knew were invisibly fixed on them through the two-way mirror.

  What were they going to find when they crossed over?

  His grip tightened on the shotgun. The pair of sleeping pills he’d taken soothed his jangled nerves. The exhaustion he’d been holding at bay came riding up through his body.

  “You think we’ll both show up in the same place?” Ernie asked quietly from the cot beside him.

  Ned turned his head so that he could look at his partner. “Yeah.”

  “What if we don’t? We’re not going to both fall asleep at the same time.”

  “Whoever gets there first,” Ned said, “doesn’t do a thing. He just waits for the other guy to show up.”

  “And if nothing happens?”

  “Then we let Bohay call in the shrinks for us.”

  Ned turned his head again so that he could stare up at the ceiling. The ceiling tiles were perforated with hundreds of holes. He could remember being bored in high school and counting the dots on the same kinds of tiles there. You worked out how many there were on one tile. Multiplied it by the number of tiles in the classroom. Multiplied that times the rooms in the school. Figured in the hallways, the library, the gym, the offices . . .

  He could feel himself drifting away.

  Ernie’s breathing was slow and regular beside him. He shouldn’t have let Ernie come. He had a wife. A kid. Yeah, Ned thought. And they’d both caught the creeps from the virus that was touching Ernie. The virus that had touched everybody who was involved with the Baker case. Spreading like a cancer.

  This thing had to be stopped now. Before it got out of hand.

  He laughed silently. Out of hand? What the hell did you call what was going down now? But then he thought about this thing spreading. Ottawa first. Across the country, maybe. Goddamn world already felt like it was going down the tubes. It didn’t need this kind of shit to give it that final push over the edge.

  He could remember the way everyone had backed away from the pair of them when they’d come into the briefing room. It wasn’t a physical withdrawal so much as a repugnance that lay there, plain in their eyes. He’d been feeling it all day, from everyone. Except from Anna. But then she’d caught the virus too.

  Virus. Whatever the fuck it was.

  Ernie’s breathing had evened out. Stop thinking, Ned told himself, or you’re never going to cross over. He went back to counting the dots in the ceiling tiles, eyelids fluttering. Gettin
g heavy. Drooping. He realized that he couldn’t hear Ernie’s breathing anymore, but then he was drifting off himself.

  Crossing over.

  He wondered if he’d ever feel comfortable going to sleep again.

  Get through this first, he told himself.

  A rush of images flickered through his mind, flipping past like the faces of playing cards manipulated by a gambler’s hands. Images of corpses. Ravaged by fire. All the dead. The last card was the joker. Untouched by fire. It had his own face under the cap and bells. Then, like the pinpoint of fire that comes from the sun channeled through a magnifying glass onto paper, the face started to burn.

  Get through this first, he repeated.

  Then sleep finally claimed him.

  8

  “JESUS CHRIST,” CHIEF Gauthier said softly on the other side of the two-way mirror.

  The bodies of the two detectives had just faded away, as though erased by the hand of an invisible artist. There, then gone. Not even the cots remained.

  “I didn’t see that,” Deputy Chief Bohay said beside him. Sweat stood out on his brow. “It’s just not possible.”

  Gauthier nodded to one of the detectives standing with them. The man left their vantage point to enter the room. He walked through the space that had been occupied by the cots, moving slowly, brushing his hands back and forth through the air. He looked up at the window and shook his head.

  “I want somebody watching this room—around the clock,” Gauthier said.

  “It’s got to be some kind of a trick,” Bohay said.

  “If it’s a trick,” Gauthier said, “then it’s a very effective one. Gentlemen, we have work to do.”

  “The press . . . ?” someone began.

  “Are just going to have to wait. We have two men in a critical situation. I want weapons issued to every officer at the station. Those men are going to need backup.”

  “We’re sending people . . . after them?” Bohay asked, plainly unable to accept what his own eyes had shown him.

  “If possible,” Gauthier replied.

  He was thinking about what Detective Meehan had said in the briefing. About the ability to cross over spreading like a virus. How those initially involved in the investigation were more susceptible to the virus.

  “Let’s see if we can get some volunteers,” he added.

  Without waiting for a reply he set off for the gym, where all the rest of those connected with the case were being kept together in hopes of protecting them against whatever it was that was decimating their ranks.

  “This is nuts,” Bohay muttered as he followed.

  Gauthier nodded in agreement and simply kept on walking. He agreed wholeheartedly with Bohay, but he didn’t see that they had any other choice. Politics be damned. He’d rather be lambasted as a fool for setting into motion such unorthodox procedures than lose any more men.

  “Is there anyone already involved in the case who’s also a member of the Tactical squad?” he asked Bohay, who hurried to catch up when the Chief spoke.

  9

  NED’S PARTNER WAS standing by the door, looking out into the hall, when Ned opened his eyes. Grier started when Ned called out softly to him.

  “Jesus,” Grier said, turning from the door. The shotgun had swung around to cover Ned. Grier lowered its muzzle point down to the floor. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  “Been here long?”

  “A couple of minutes.”

  Ned sat up slowly, cradling his own shotgun. No matter how much he’d been expecting it, it was still a shock to be back here again. Really here. With his partner.

  The room stank. Paint was peeling from the walls. The carpeting underfoot was moldy. There was trash lying around, graffiti spray-painted on the walls. In other places it had been applied with excrement, which had dried to a dull brown. A man sucking on a revolver. A woman with a cobra coming out of her vagina. She held a bloody heart in her hand. EAT YOUR GUN, it said below the first. BE MY VALENTINE, read the other. Another showed two men, one getting bumfucked by the other. PARTNERS DO IT BEST, it read under that one.

  “Is this place real?” Grier asked as Ned got to his feet.

  “What do you mean?”

  Grier shrugged uncomfortably. “I can’t help thinking I’m just really fucked up,” he said. “If I’m dreaming . . . how do I know I’m not just dreaming that you’re here with me?”

  “People die here,” Ned said, “then their bodies get dumped back in the world that they came from. How much more real than that can you get?”

  “I guess. What do we do now? We proved our point, right?”

  Ned thought of the brass standing behind the two-way mirror, watching the two of them disappear. They’d believe him now.

  “So do we go back now?” Grier asked.

  “How do we wake up?”

  “How do we . . . ? Jesus. You mean, we’re stuck here until. . . when, Ned?”

  “Take it easy, Ernie. We’re here. We proved our point. So we’ve got to wait around awhile. We might as well check things out.”

  He wasn’t feeling nearly as calm as the tone of his voice made him sound, but the matter-of-fact setting-forth of the situation did its job. He could see Ernie relaxing, shifting from just being fucked up to being a cop again. The change in his partner helped Ned bring his own fears under control.

  “Where do you want to—”

  Ned held up a hand, stopping Grier in midsentence. Grier cocked his head, listening, then he heard it too. Someone out in the hallway. Trying to be quiet. Moving very carefully.

  “Showtime,” Ned whispered.

  The two men moved toward the doorway, shotguns leveled, fingers taking up the slack on their triggers.

  10

  DETECTIVE STAN LYNCH had it all figured out.

  He sat in the General Assignment squad room, looking at Jack Keller’s little sister. She was nodding where she sat, all drawn in on herself. Part of him was just enjoying the sight of her—even at a time like this—though he felt bad for what she was going through. Still, Meehan was a lucky stiff to have hooked up with her. But another part of him was getting some weird feelings from her. She was a looker, all right, but there was something kind of creepy about her at the same time.

  He looked away and went back to chewing on the problem at hand.

  He figured it for a scam.

  Ottawa, being the nation’s capital, was an embassy city. It had representatives from most countries in it—including most of the wacked-out places. He wouldn’t put it past one of them to be running a number. Bunch of terrorists wiping out people, making it look spooky. He hadn’t quite figured out how they were doing it, but it was the only thing that made sense.

  You hit a city where it hurt. Take out the guys that kept it in line and all you had left were civilians and assholes. With the force all tied up, trying to get a handle on what was going down, they’d just move into the next phase. Scare people enough and even a quiet place like Ottawa could explode. Riots and violence. Some jerk-ass group taking credit for it. Making demands.

  Christ, when you came right down to it, it didn’t even have to be some backwater Third World country running the scam. Not when you had Uncle Sam right next door. The president had just been in town for a visit and they’d been kept busy with the security, but they’d been fielding a lot of complaints too. Civilians getting hassled by U.S. Secret Service agents in the fucking hotel—that kind of thing. Guys thought they owned the frigging world. With the trade talks floundering and ill will building up between their governments, who knew just what the president’s boys might try to pull off.

  A little warning, like.

  Don’t fuck with us, Canada. We’re big-time.

  Could be, he thought. He read about that kind of thing in Ludlum’s books and the like. No way it was all bullshit. And when you thought of Nixon and Iranscam, you had to know that you couldn’t trust any of those—

  “They’re gone!”

  Lynch blinked, lookin
g up to see Andy Coe standing in the doorway.

  Coe snapped his fingers. “Just like that. Ernie first, then Ned.”

  “You’re shitting us,” said one of the other detectives in the squad room.

  He had to be shitting them, Lynch thought. There was no way that. . .

  His gaze had drifted over to the corner where Keller’s sister was sitting, and his jaw went slack. The corner was empty. Even the frigging chair was gone. He looked around the room, expecting to see her standing somewhere else, maybe having dragged the chair over to another part of the room, but she was definitely gone.

  “Keller’s sister,” he said hoarsely. “Did . . . did anyone see her leave?”

  He pointed to the corner where she’d been sitting. One by one the other detectives looked over.

  “She never left the room,” one of them said. “She never walked out of the room. . . .”

  Lynch felt a sick feeling start up in his stomach. “Then how the hell . . . ?”

  “I’d better tell the chief,” Coe said.

  He turned and sprinted down the hall. Behind him, the detectives shifted uncomfortably in the squad room, looking at each other, no one quite making eye contact. There was only one thought in their minds right then.

  Which one of them was next?

  11

  BETH WAS ONLY one of a host, riding in the creature’s body, but she was the one who recognized her ex-husband.

  After the fire cleansed Ted Rimmer, the creature had returned to sail the dead plains, gliding like a manta ray through the thick, smog-laden air, coasting on a wind that carried a metallic tang in its teeth as it nipped the brittle vegetation and woke swirling dust devils in their wake. Beth rode with it, the wasteland unwinding below them.

  There was peace to be found in the empty reaches, a peace that could only be found in its desolation. Music followed the creature—

  (Beth)

  —in its flight. The agony of the synthesized voices lent an edge to its—

  (her)

  —indolent mood, giving it a bright blade of strength. A promise of peace.