“Listen to me,” he said. “When I first went searching for you, it wasn’t to help, it was to . . .”
His voice trailed off. It didn’t matter because his expression had told me everything. He had expected me to be another boy in an endless line of Conning boys, another boy he didn’t want to serve.
“You planned to kill me,” I said, watching the glass for signs of Malleus. I was sure the light through the frosted glass was growing more dim.
He turned away, and I saw the shame on his face. It should’ve made me angry—no, furious—but I was too tired, and he had saved my sister’s life. Had saved mine, too, by facing the creature he feared most and sacrificing himself so we could survive.
Still, I was curious. “What changed your mind?’ I asked.
“When I saw you, I realized that I’d done enough killing,” he said softly, wincing. “The things I’ve done, Willow Jane. If only I could undo them. To have clean hands once more . . .”
I caught his eye, the way I’d seen him stare at Siobhan. “Give me your name.”
“Harken.”
“If you want my trust,” I warned him, “you have to trust me, too.”
He seemed taken aback at the command, but he answered anyway. “Edward Bruce Harken. After the last of the Irish high kings.”
“Edward Bruce Harken,” I said and touched his cheek, “I have your name.”
A static charge danced from my fingertips, and my mind was alight with images of a little boy in the highlands snatched by a raven-haired woman with yellow eyes. Then the boy was a young man, and he stood beside a hooded executioner under a great oak tree and kicked the stool from beneath the convicted’s feet. Then he was Harken as I knew him, carrying a flaxen-haired child from the dungeons of Salem, weeping as he buried her in a mass pauper’s grave. Images of faces flew by, all of them ginger, all of them male, until he was running up the fire escape of Devon’s school, terrified, but still swinging the door open and looking into the face of the same woman who had taken his family, his life, and his peace.
“I’m sorry,” I said, opening my eyes. “None of this was your fault.”
“No, it’s all my fault. The Sisters made it my duty to bury Malleus. But she escaped, and I led her right to you.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Boom! A percussive wave shook the corridor, shaking the whole room. Boom! Above, the lights swung back and forth. The machines rattled, and Harken groaned. In the distance, a guttural voice sang, “Will she? Will she?” followed by the grinding of metal against stone. It was Malleus, and she had to be dragging the shears along the walls.
Closer.
Stronger.
“Will she? Will she?” she sang again, followed by a hammering boom! Boom! Boom!
The Shadowless was coming.
Coming for us.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
I grabbed a pillowcase from the basket of dirty linen. I twisted it around the door’s panic handles and tied it in a double granny knot. Then I rolled a cart to Harken.
“That will buy us some time,” I said quietly. “Can you to get into this thing?”
“Watch me,” he said, sucking in a deep breath and the strength to get to his feet. His face was ghostly white, and sweat poured from his brow, but he stood long enough to fall into the mound of linens. “Good God, that hurt.”
“Sorry,” I whispered. “If my plan’s going to work, we have to move fast.”
“Plan?”
“Shh,” I said and grabbed a mop from the closet. I twisted off the head and hid behind the door, my ear next to the glass.
Listening.
Listening to the steel grind of the shears on the wall.
Watching.
Watching the hall lights all but die.
Eyes up.
Head on a swivel.
I could hear the click of her feet on the floor. My pulse quickened, and I felt the sudden urge to attack. I almost called her by name. No. Let her find me. Let her use her theatrics, the sound of the scissors scraping the wall that would’ve terrified me yesterday.
Now I would be the one waiting in the shadows.
As I crouched, ready with the mop handle, the frosted glass began to jangle. Malleus crossed by the window, shears raised, the points as long and sharp as fangs. The tips of the shears scraped the glass, slowly, agonizingly, two long strokes that sent shivers down my spine.
“Will she? Will she?” the Shadowless hissed. “Will Willow be hanging from the willow hanging tree?”
Shut up! I wanted to scream, but I bit a knuckle and held my tongue. I gripped the mop handle tightly and held my breath, counting the seconds.
“Blood,” she hissed again and inhaled. “Blood will have blood.”
She threw herself against the door, a sudden, violent clash that pushed the door as wide as it would go. The pillowcase stretched out, straining against the fierce battering, then like a rubber band, contracted and slapped the door shut.
The next time, she would just cut the pillowcase, and she’d go for Harken first—blood will have blood. I raced to the steam boiler and scanned the controls. We had a machine like this in our triple-decker. A turn valve controlled the temperature gauge, and if you opened the valve too far, too much steam would build up, and bad things would happen.
I cranked the valve wide open. Flipped the switches to start the dryers. Threw the handle that made the ironing presses cough and wheeze, filling the room with more steam. Then I switched on the folding machine, its long rollers clacking and clanking so loud, I couldn’t hear myself think. In a matter of seconds the laundry became a hell house of noise and steam, and I pulled Harken’s cart behind the hanging sheets.
Waiting.
“What are we doing?” he said in a hoarse voice.
“Creating a diversion.” I covered him with a fresh sheet. “You’re not dying in a pile of dirty laundry, thank you very much.”
“Door . . . won’t hold forever.”
“Forever never lasts forever,” I said and watched the shears slide inside and cut the twisted pillowcase like tissue paper.
The outside air hit the laundry room, and the steam turned as thick as fog. The Shadowless stalked inside, head twisting this way and that, nose lifted to sniff for blood, eyes darting. Her head snapped—something caught her eye—and she slid between the hanging sheets, into the maze of billowing fabric, then disappeared.
I snuck away from the cart. Wary and checking over my shoulder. Where did she go? I slid around a linen cart, then stared into the maze of billowing whiteness. She was gone.
Get back, I told myself, she could be behind you. But the thought paralyzed me. What if I moved right into her? I waited another second, then ten more. Get the hell out of here, I thought, and turned back for Harken.
A scream. From Harken!
I ran to him, sneaking be damned, ducking through the maze. Found him and pulled back the sheet, his eyes popping open, surprised, wet hair plastered to his face, but okay. He was okay.
Another scream, then a laugh, high pitched and mocking from the maze. Tricked me. She’d tricked me, made me run, made me reveal myself.
I covered him again. “Be quiet,” I whispered, not daring to look at him.
Mop handle in both hands, I moved quickly toward the sound, then stopped, waiting to hear it again. For several seconds, nothing . . . then a sharp ripple in the sheets to my left. I darted away, opposite, into the center of the room. Vulnerable here, ducking between the long metal folding tables stacked with clean linens, eyes scanning for shadows. No, movements, not shadows. She was the Shadowless.
No place to hide in the open, so I sidled up to the bank of dryers, clutching the handle, ready to strike, coming to the last dryer and finding . . .
Nothing.
She was here—hiding in the maze of steam and wet sheets, but here. Hunting me as I hunted her.
Now beside the presser. Huffing hot air, clacking and ratcheting, the machine hi
d my sounds in its own noise, Buttressed against it, my head throbbing and my eyes again scanning for movement. I could get away. I could. Malleus was lost in the maze, and I could see the door in the miasma of steam, the thick glass clouded with it. I could run upstairs and get the police and bring them back, and they could shoot this bitch, and if she was gone, then she was gone.
No.
There was no running. No leaving Harken, and if I tried to move him, she would catch us.
I slinked past the presser and hid behind the fifty-gallon laundry drums, where there was a clear view of the maze and a straight shot to a utility closet across the room. If I could draw her there, get her to chase me, and then lock her inside . . .
Another glance over my shoulder, and I decided to act.
I sprinted through the maze, screaming and slapping the sheets with my stick. I leaped over a folding table and crashed into the washers, slamming the doors and pounding on the sheet metal like it was a drum. Come get me, the noise was saying, and I hoped she would.
My heart was pounding, too, and the thick, hot air made it hard to catch a breath. The mop shook so hard in my hands, I gripped it like I was in a face-off, ready to sweep Malleus’s feet when she showed up. She had to show up. The commotion had to draw her. She had to take the bait.
Seconds ticked away. My heart beat faster, but the sheets did not move. She wasn’t coming for me. Dear God, no. She could’ve sneaked around me, could’ve found Harken. Where was she?
In the maze. Hiding in the maze. Waiting for me.
Find her.
I crept away from the washer so very quietly, my shoulder low, legs wide and ready to take a charge, my boots skating over the wet floor, mop handle waist high, ready to slap-shot the bitch. Into the open again, crossing behind the linen drums and curling around the edge of the maze, ever watching, head on a swivel.
Ready. Chin up. Eyes opened.
Then, in the all the rumble and shadows, I felt her.
Nearby.
I shoved a barrel into another, and ten feet away the sheets billowed up. There she is! I slipped around the folding table in the middle of the room, on hands and knees, and waited for the sheets to be still.
My head whipped around, in time to see the shears rip through the sheets. Not just rip, but shred like Malleus was trying to gut them. I screamed, ducked under the table, and crawled out behind the next clothesline.
I slid on the slick floor as Malleus laughed and tore down the sheets, one by one. She shoved aside a folding table like a child’s toy as I fled to the rolling machine and its hungry mass of clattering rollers and bearings and gears. I jumped over a pile of linens, Malleus screaming and stabbing, right behind me. Turned and broke the mop handle on her head, knocking her off-balance, making her slip on the wet floor. She fell toward the folding machine and put out a hand to catch her herself.
“Bad move,” I said.
A spinning roller caught the fringe of her bell sleeve, and the machine snapped it—and her arm—right up. Her head repeatedly smacked against the safety guard as inch by inch the rollers ate her and the fabric, trying to chew her whole arm off.
“Uncanny!” she screamed at me, eyes bulging with rage, not fear.
I wanted to stand and watch the machine chew her to bits, but I took off across the laundry room, tearing down the sheets as I ran. I grabbed Harken’s cart and, slamming against the door, burst into the hallway, leaving Malleus behind to die.
The corridor ahead curved like a bend in a river. I pushed the cart around the corner toward the exit signs. But instead of an escape route, I found a dead end.
The hallway had been stripped of its plasterboard walls and drop-down tiles. Nothing of the building remained but naked columns and bare floors. The ceiling was clogged with loose wires that ran like arteries in a milieu of different directions, and the darkness was lit by a few bare bulbs hanging from those wires, which reminded me far too much of the Hellesgate Hotel.
Twenty yards ahead, the corridor stopped. No, it transformed. The smooth concrete floor became a brick path with half the bricks missing. The solid walls turned into arches, also made of bricks, many of which had fallen and were littering the ground. Now three large conduit pipes carried the current into the darkness, and a temporary plywood gate blocked the tunnel. It was covered with six strips of overlapping caution tape. As if that would stop anyone.
“An abundance of caution,” I joked halfheartedly. “That must be where they’re hiding the major construction.”
Harken didn’t answer. He lay in a crumpled ball, blood soaking the linens beneath him. His eyes were closed, and I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. I looked behind me. Should I go back? Rush past the laundry to the elevators? Malleus had to be dead, right? But even as the thought coalesced in my mind, I knew it was false hope.
“Harken?” I shook his shoulder. “It’s time to spill on how to kill your old boss.”
His lips moved. I pressed my ear against his cold cheek and heard only one word: “Poem.”
“What poem?” I said. “My dad’s poem?”
He nodded and reached for my coat.
“Uncanny!” Malleus screamed. She came around the bend, all sound and fury. The sleeve of her robe was gone, exposing a gangrenous arm that was more sinew and bone than flesh. But the arm was still intact, and so was she.
There was murder in her eyes.
“You shall pay for that affront!” she bellowed.
“Oh, shit.”
I tore the caution tape away and pushed the cart through the plywood gate. There was a bolt on the back side, so I threw it, laughing at how flimsy it was. I tipped the cart to its side and rolled Harken out. His eyes were fluttering when I dragged him to the only safe place I could see—a chain-link fence that housed an old-fashioned electric switchboard, with a dozen knife switches and open-link fuses, as well as six monitoring dials as big as a dinner plate. It was caked in dirt from years of neglect, and bundles of wire and lengths of conduit were piled inside the cage, along with outdated electrical boxes and switches. The power was still hooked up, though, and humming like a song.
“Some sanctuary, huh?” I said, nodding at the DANGER: DEATH sign.
“One man’s poison,” he managed to say, “is another man’s cure.”
I unlatched the chain–link gate, helped him inside, and placed him against the switchboard. I turned to go, and he caught my sleeve.
“Don’t fight her,” he said, wheezing. “Just protect . . . the egg.”
“All I need,” I said, grabbing a piece of steel conduit pipe, “is to bust some Shadowless ass.”
I had just stepped outside the cage and closed the gate when behind me, bam! the plywood door blew open. With a rending screech, a monstrous crow ripped past me, its wings wide, talons out.
“Damn it!” I said, ducking. “Freaking birds! In a freaking basement! If I ever see another goddamn crow again, so help me.”
“Do we frighten you?” Malleus stepped forward. Her body was covered with molted feathers, and her eyes were the color of vomit. “How lovely.”
I held the pipe out like a sword. “It won’t be so funny when I shove this pipe down your throat.” I whirled and backed up, keeping it between us. “Want the egg back? You’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.”
“The thought of your cold, dead hands thrills us in ways you cannot imagine.”
I expected her to charge, but Malleus drew something dark around herself, and with a sound like flapping wings, she dissipated. “Now you will know why we are called the Shadowless.”
Darkness fell like a smothering blanket, constricting me, squeezing the air from my lungs. I pulled my phone out. Swung the light around, chasing sounds, making shadows. The light was too bright. It blinded me. Hid her from me. I don’t like the shadows, I thought. They protect her and leave me naked. She could be anywhere. Beside me. Behind me. Or . . .
I flicked the light to the ceiling, remembering the hallway in the Hellesgate wh
en she dropped like a spider from above. Nothing. Just mold-coated bricks and a steady drip of water.
“Willow!” Harken cried.
Sharp talons raked my neck, and I cried out, too, a hand going to the wound, stumbling away from the attack, away from the cage and Harken. Another flutter of wings, and something rammed my back, and I pitched forward, the phone clattering over the bricks, the light shining on the ceiling. Laughter now, echoing, and I crawled toward the phone, my neck stinging, hearing Harken calling my name, his voice weaker and weaker, the crumbling bricks chewing up the skin of my hands.
Another laugh, and another swoop of wings, and I dived, hand outstretched, grabbing the light and swinging it around, crazy spinning, trying to find her in the darkness. But it was shadows, all shadows, and she melted into them.
“Will she? Will she?” Her voice echoed, impossibly far away, “Will Willow be hanging from the willow hanging tree?”
I swept the light toward the sound. It found a wall, a solid brick wall so close I could reach out and touch it. How? Slowly, raising the pipe and turning, I cast the beam on the walls. Four walls. A room, not a tunnel. A rectangular room no bigger than a classroom, a ceiling so low I could almost touch it, smelling dank and moldy. How could she hide? How could she sound so far away?
“Foolish child,” she whispered, breath on my neck, “the shadows go on forever.”
I screamed and swung the light and the pipe, striking nothing but shadows, and she was laughing again, the voice behind me. Swinging again. Swinging and cursing and chasing her with the light, following the singsong, Will she? Will she? Running now. Running toward the sound. Running deeper into the shadows.
“Willow Jane,” Harken whispered. “Don’t follow . . .”
His voice trailed off, so far away now. Go back to him. Go back. But there was another sound, lilting and happy, a child’s laughter. Devon? Wait! I ran toward the laughter, nothing but me and the familiar tug of a rope on my belly button, pulling me forward into a glimpse.
“Stop.” The dead girl was there. She stood alone in the blackness, with her hands raised. “Stop,” she said again. “Go no farther into the shadows lest you be lost. Go back. Go back. The familiar needs you.”
Uncanny Page 27
