The Tower

by Gregg Hurwitz

The TV cut back to Alissa. “California’s senior senator, Peter Briggs, also expressed optimism about Marlow’s involvement.”

  She paused momentarily and brushed her hair out of her face. “It looks like we can all sleep easier with Jade Marlow on the case. For Channel 5 Eyewitness News, this is Alissa Anvers.”

  Allander was flushed with anger. He tapped his fingers on the arm of the love seat as he spoke to the television. “How precious,” he sneered. “I’ve become a pawn in their game.”

  He couldn’t believe the audacity of Agent McGuire and the press. The impudence. They’d all but promised he’d be caught. Didn’t they understand what they were up against? He was a mastermind. He’d broken out of a facility that nobody had ever left alive. He’d virtually destroyed it. And they thought that a bumbling agent could track him down like a foolish animal. Some imbecile named Jade, Jade Marlow.

  As quickly as his rage had flared, it subsided. He sighed. “I do love games,” he said softly to the empty room. “Let’s see if Mr. Marlow can keep up.”

  Rising suddenly from the love seat, he began to pace about the room, chuckling softly and shaking his head. He stopped mid-step and whirled to face the television, which was rolling old publicity footage of Jade. His smile fled.

  On the edge of sleep, in the fringes of the dappled orange-and-yellow light that flickered across the insides of Allander’s eyelids, something waited, something terrible, like a dead body in a closet. Years had passed during which he had hardly slept at all, but as he had grown older and stronger, he had learned how to relax himself in the right ways. With all that had happened in the past two days, however, he found that relaxing was not easy.

  Allander lay on the bed in the master bedroom and watched the fan make lazy circles above his head. Every time he began to drift off, he’d awaken with saliva flooding the sides of his tongue and a shallowness in his chest that restricted his breathing to short gasps. He knew that this time he couldn’t push it down. After struggling himself awake a few more times, he surrendered to the terror. He knew that when it came this strong, it was going to have its way with him. He dozed off, and it seized him.

  Allander had been taken when he was seven. The man was thick through the hips and buttocks and had a potbelly that hung over his belt. But worst of all was the gray stubble that peppered his puffy face.

  They had tracked him for three days before they’d caught him. A checkout girl at the grocery store had recognized him from his sketch. They’d followed him to a filth-ridden motel behind a large freeway. When they’d broken in, he’d reached under his pillow for a gun and they had opened fire, making him dance, his body jiggling foolishly as the bullets entered it.

  What they had found inside the motel room was unlike anything the veteran police staff had seen in their careers, and unlike anything they would see again.

  Allander had been tied tightly to a chair, thick rope binding his wrists and ankles. He’d been naked, and a small shock of pubic hair had been painted, with a black permanent marker, above his prepubescent penis. He sat in his own defecation; it was later surmised that he had not been allowed movement except when molested or forced to perform acts.

  The room had seemed the harrowing entrance to a world beyond reality, perhaps even the doorway to hell itself. It had been scattered with feces and blood, and illuminated only by a blinking television screen. Pornographic videos and magazines littered the floor, showing men with chains, women with animals, children with men. Sex tools of extreme perversion lay beside the more traditional handcuffs, whips, and blindfolds. Sets of masks were also discovered—leather masks with zippers crisscrossing the front, masks that merely covered around the eyes, masks of women’s faces.

  Most disturbing of all, however, had been the clown masks found beneath the stained sheets. Months later, some of the policemen still would awaken in a deep sweat, seeing the smiling faces and blank eyes of the clowns laughing at them through the darkness. And through the memory came the stench, and the realization of a horror that went beyond human comprehension.

  Young Allander had been freed from his torture, and was returned home and to counseling. The thick red marks the ropes had left around his limbs soon cleared up. The whip scars on his back took a little bit longer, but eventually they, too, faded. He had seemed perfectly serene for his first three weeks home, his young mind brilliant in its repression.

  Then the clowns had come to visit him.

  He’d awakened screaming himself hoarse and his mother had rushed in and pressed his face to her bosom and made the clowns go away. His father had flicked on the light switch and stood in the doorway, his fists clenched in impotent anger and unfulfilled rage. Tears had traced a path down his face.

  The clowns had come again and again in the night, and soon his momma couldn’t make them go away anymore. Allander would cry hysterically at any prompting. He wouldn’t watch TV because the cartoons sometimes had clowns, and he couldn’t go near McDonald’s because of the laughing white-faced clown that lived there, and even when his momma wore lipstick he would cry and try to smear it off with his child’s fingers, sometimes digging his nails into her skin and leaving red welts.

  The therapy had at first yielded no results, no reactions from the catatonic child. But once the clowns had begun to come in the night, the therapists’ questions had probed like a flashlight shone into widened eyes.

  An older man with long gray curls and a beard had tried to get him to play with dolls and make the dolls act things out. Then he’d tried to get him to draw, but Allander had taken the pencil and put it through the man’s eye when the man’s attention lapsed. He still remembered how the man’s shattered spectacles had dangled from the end of the pencil as he’d screamed and clutched at his face.

  Soon, the dolls had begun to look like clowns with accusing eyes, and so had his stuffed animals. One night, before the clowns could come, he had ripped the heads off all his stuffed animals and hidden them, with their placid, questioning eyes, in the bottom of his closet.

  But still the clowns had come that night.

  When his parents found him in the morning with his toys defaced, they had looked at him, eyes filled with concern and accusation, and had bestowed guilt upon him. He had screamed at them, “I HAVE SEEN THINGS, MOMMA. I HAVE DONE THINGS.” Things incomprehensible, things unimaginable. But of course they could not understand, and they couldn’t make the hurt go away.

  Allander had increasingly felt his difference, for he’d been avoided by his former playmates, and twice a week was sent to a special school where he would talk to adults about ink blots and about “The Period.” There were so many faces that finally he could not tell them apart, or remember what they wanted. When he was nine, he had sodomized a younger boy in the school bathroom during recess. He had been taken away from regular school for good, and had had to spend more time at the special school.

  One of the men who had come and talked to him was different. It was only to him that Allander could show the depth of his darkness. The new man was mostly interested in the monster, though, and not much in the child. He hadn’t stayed long, but Allander remembered him and his gently slanted eyes.

  When he was older, Allander had attacked his mother. He had come up behind her when she was putting on makeup, pursing her lips and winking first one eye, then the other. He had beaten her about the face and had shoved her down, but before he could reach resolution, he had heard the hard, punishing steps of his father on the porch.

  He had fled out the back door into the darkness, traveling through what seemed one endless night of alcohol, prostitutes, sex, and drugs before he’d gotten caught with the five-year-old girl and his pockets stuffed full of her hair. He had been eighteen.

  And still the clowns came.

  Allander slept deeply, more deeply than he would have imagined possible. As he awakened, he had the distinct sensation of swimming upward, rising through levels of water as distinct and varied as the stripes of a rainbow. When he surface
d, he had a tremendous sense of focus.

  He loaded the gray Mercedes he found in the garage with the supplies he needed. He slipped the roll of duct tape into his pocket, where it bulged conspicuously. It would come in handy, he knew.

  He returned to the house and cut up food in little pieces to leave for the children. Gazing out the living room window, he could see teams of policemen with dogs prowling the beach in the distance, and he hoped that his clothes had sunk as he had planned. It was time to move to a less vulnerable position before they discovered a clue and started calling door to door.

  Allander noticed the stench as he reached Leah’s room, the food he had prepared neatly arrayed on a black tray. The children had desperately needed to go to the bathroom, but with no sign of Allander for several hours and no imminent hope of being freed, they were forced to pee themselves. Robbie had also defecated, and the odor rose from the damp bed and filled the room. Both children were crying freely as Allander tiptoed in and slid the tray across their laps.

  “Here’s your food. Stop your tiresome weeping. And about this mess, you could’ve called me and I would have untaped you like before. I’m not barbaric.”

  He looked at them disdainfully. “Well, you’ve made your proverbial bed, so lie in it. I’m leaving you here, but when I’m safely away, I’ll call and have you delivered to the authorities.”

  Allander paused for a minute and rubbed his eyes with his fingers. He began to pace around the room, running his fingers through his hair and letting it fall back over his face.

  “I’m sorry, my dears, that time doesn’t allow me to continue your education. Just remember that your parents—or ‘mentors,’ whoever they’ll be—will try to ‘bring you up right,’ but they’ll have no concept of what that is. They’ll raise you to be functional and to imitate them and indulge in petty little successes. Resist them with all your might.

  “They won’t ready you for the time when reality rears its head. They’ve worn blinders for so long they’ve become a part of their heads. Maybe that’s what they desired all along—to have their vision restricted, expurgated.”

  Allander’s words rose in excitement. He felt his voice come to him, clear and strong. The children began to cower from his voice, but the direction kept shifting as Allander moved around the room, sometimes even circling behind them. He didn’t really address them; he seemed to be thinking aloud.

  “God and country will step in to fill the void, offering you laws and equations, rules and punishments to carry you through those lonely, restless nights you spend tossing and turning in bed as the moon slides whispering in your window.

  “They’re worse than an opiate for the masses. They’ll turn you into deaf sheep standing in line as the truth bleats fearfully at the altar. They’ll have you standing in line for slaughter.” His eyes narrowed. “They’ll deafen you to the roar of your inner voice. That’s what they do. Soon, you won’t even be able to hear yourself.”

  Robbie choked on a sob and Leah clamped down on his hand. Not now, not here, she was telling him. They had to go unnoticed. She squeezed Robbie’s hand, closed her eyes, and pretended she was shrinking away to nothing.

  Allander continued, his words taking on the color of a rant. “Your educators will embark with you on a supposed journey for the truth, but they’ll deceive you. They’ll say things that mean nothing—they always do—and you’ll be forced to nod and agree as if they’re profound.”

  Leah held Robbie gently and quieted him as Allander paced and raved. “Sssshhhh,” she whispered. “Just don’t say anything and the man will go away.”

  “They’ll tell you that when people are moved by the spirit of art or the Good, they are speaking in tongues,” Allander continued. “What is it to speak in tongues? It’s to babble incessantly, to fill the air with phrases and words that mean nothing, nothing at all. Your educators will think that they’ve been moved by an intellectual spirit, and they’ll speak all the time, but in truth, they’ll say nothing.”

  He paused and his shoulders rose and fell with his deep breaths. His nostrils flared and his eyebrows furrowed with rage.

  “BLIND, DEAF, and DUMB!” he shouted, pounding his first into his palm. The children jerked violently.

  “They don’t want to see or admit that which is difficult. And what happens to you when you’re touched by an evil, one of their evils? They get you out of the way, sweep you under the carpet, into the closet, into prison!” His voice broke and he paused before continuing softly. “They repress you.”

  Allander felt the tears rising, but he fought them back. The children suffered through a long, painful silence as he gazed at the carpet.

  Robbie whimpered again, and Allander’s eyes snapped up to focus on him. He was suddenly back in their world again. Back where he could hurt them. His jaw shifted forward and his bottom lip stuck out as he clenched his teeth. He started toward the children.

  Sensing his movement, Leah shook her head vehemently, warding off the uneasy darkness. Allander saw the line of duct tape around her eyes move back and forth, and halted. It would be too easy.

  He cleared his throat and started again. As he heard his words, he relaxed.

  “What I hope I have done is to show you, to show you what lies beneath all this corruption. Others want you to see, or hear, or speak their truths. I offer you no values, no workbooks, no catechisms.

  “Peel back the unblemished flesh that covers the face of reality, and then you’ll see the real truth pulsing beneath. More than that, you’ll feel it, and that’s my lesson for you—always reach for what you desire, what you truly desire. Your wishes lie like fish beneath the water’s surface. Call to them and they’ll come to you, and you’ll understand and be alive.

  “That’s what I’ve done. I’ve looked beneath the surface and I’ve seen what’s really there. I’m one of civilization’s discontents, but I’m not forging any false paths. What we’ve called fantasy is reality. It always has been. We’ve just forgotten that.” His eyes were distant, impassioned. “Well, it’s time to remember. I’ve seen who’s wrong and what needs to be done to them. And now I have the power to make them see, to understand.”

  The back of Allander’s shirt was darkened with a circle of sweat; the fabric clung to him. He had been running his hand through his hair, pulling it in the back as he spoke. It was wildly disheveled now. A small trickle of blood ran from a scab on his upper lip that he had chewed open.

  Allander focused again on the children. They squirmed at the sudden silence, for they couldn’t see the expression on his face. The air was choked with tension.

  Allander leaned over them and patted their cheeks, and both children drew back from his touch. “You’ll be seeing me again, I’m quite sure of it,” he said. “Not in body, of course, but surely in spirit.”

  The children felt a rush of air across their flushed cheeks as the door swung shut.

  24

  JADE pressed on the accelerator and gunned his car to eighty-five. He swerved between lanes, cutting in and out to pass cars going the speed limit.

  Joe Henderson blared from the speakers, and Jade tapped the wheel enthusiastically as he sped along, occasionally adjusting the treble and bass dials. His fingers stole to the line on his left cheek and ran gently over it.

  After driving south on 280, Jade cut over to Highway 17 and exited at the Alameda. As he drove through back streets, he checked the directions that were lodged in his ashtray. He was looking for 624 Pepper Lane.

  Through his windshield, Jade saw a small one-story house that looked comfortable, if slightly decrepit. A white knee-high fence ran along the front of the yard, blocking off the spotted brown grass from the street. A little gate stood open at the head of the walkway. It hung at an angle, clumsily but warmly inviting visitors.

  Suspended from a large maple in the front yard was a rope swing. Jade could imagine Allander as a child swinging from the tree, kicking his legs up toward the summer sun, the smell of lemonade and mown gra
ss in the air.

  Jade adjusted his rearview mirror and noticed the dark Cadillac parked behind some bushes at the corner of the street. He opened his door, swinging his legs from the car. Admiring the sunflowers growing from the brown planter boxes, he walked along the sidewalk up to the gate. Decent place, he thought. A little midwestern, but decent.

  Above the doorbell a small placard proclaimed, “Our House.” A welcome mat showed a gaggle of geese in a pond.

  He stepped up to the door.

  The coolness of the white beauty mask calmed Allander. He saw the flashing red lights ahead and slowed the Mercedes to a halt before maneuvering it into the lineup of cars.

  A young policeman with a mustache was peering intently into each car before clearing it with a thumbs-up. They always have a mustache, Allander thought.

  He heard the officer shouting above the noise of traffic up ahead. “Yes, ma’am. No problem, ma’am. We’re just on the lookout for somebody. No, you shouldn’t be concerned.”

  Allander’s eyes peered out from behind the beauty mask and he counted the cars in the line in front of him. There were four. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

  Allander wore a white terry-cloth bathrobe over a long nightgown that ran up to his chin. He had stacked two sets of shoulder pads and taped them to his chest to make an outline of breasts beneath the folds of cloth. He wore thin leather gloves to conceal the wound on his finger, and the white beauty mask over his face had hardened slightly. His hair was tightly curled in rollers.

  He rolled down his window as he approached the young officer, and switched the radio to a soft oldies station. Smokey Robinson’s voice wailed through the speakers singing “The Tears of a Clown.” Allander hummed along.

  The officer peered in and pressed his lips together to avoid smiling at the ridiculous outfit the woman was wearing. Allander smiled amiably at him.

  “Go ahead, lady,” the officer said, his voice hinting at both disgust and amusement. He waved the Mercedes through with his baton, shaking his head as Allander sped away on the open highway.