Ullah nodded to the fellow officers stuck at work. He exchanged pleasantries with them and complaints. Chrissie, who ran the dark blue desk at the station’s front door, teased the aging Lieutenant about his growing belly. He responded with a smirk and a comment about her being young enough to be one of his daughter’s friends, but not one of the cute ones. She threw a notepad at him and he ducked as boyish laughter flowed through the room.
Ullah was smiling for the first time since the incident, but a frown asserted itself after he looked at the door behind which Goldstein waited. Peering through the small portal of glass, he watched the petty dealer grab at the bars to the window in an opposite wall and hold himself up. The man was desperately and frantically watching the sky.
When Ullah unlocked the door and stepped in, Goldstein didn’t budge or even acknowledge the cop’s entrance. He just stood, murmuring, eyes fixed on the black storm.
“I think it followed me,” Goldstein said. “I think it followed me here. In between flashes of lightening I can almost see it.” He turned to face Ullah. “It can smell me. Now it’s waiting out there.”
“Sit down,” Ullah commanded.
“You don’t even care! That thing is out there and it’s gonna come in here and get me when it wants to. You haven’t seen how big it is. You don’t c-“
“I said SIT DOWN,” Ullah shouted.
Goldstein’s shoulders slumped foreword. He lifted his shackled hands up and settled into the uncomfortable wooden chair left for criminals to squeal in.
Ullah watched Goldstein for a moment. The man was shaking and sweating. The underarms of the clean, new t-shirt the police had given him were already dark with perspiration. And every couple of moments, the idiot dope peddler glanced nervously toward the window.
Goldstein’s overwhelming fear made Ullah angry.
The Lieutenant shook his head. He cleared his throat.
“What were you doing down by the waterfront tonight?” Ullah asked.
“I told you: I was meeting some kid,” Goldstein said, eyes glued to the window.
“Why were you meeting some kid?”
“Do we have to do this?”
“Goldstein, I found you screaming your head off, covered in blood, scurrying around the BQE. You’re damn right we have to do this. Because I think you got into some awful stuff tonight. Why were you meeting some kid?”
Goldstein didn’t turn his head from the window. “To sell him some the weed you found on me. I’m an old, liberal, Hippy piece of crap – that’s what you’ve already decided probably – who needs to make some cash on the side. I used to be an English professor in the City University system. I lost my tenure because, yep, I like my recreational drugs. Whatever. There. Are we done, mein fuehrer? I don’t want to talk about this. None of it matters.”
Flash.
Blue against the bars, highlighting them.
Goldstein jumped.
Ullah slammed his fist down on the table. He hit the wood with such anxious fury that the sound of the blow almost cancelled a growing thunder clap rumbling down from the darkness. “It matters if you killed someone, Goldstein.”
Slowly, hesitantly, Goldstein turned his head and stared into Ullah’s eyes.
Goldstein looked like a hunted, frightened animal.
“I didn’t do anything to the kid,” Goldstein said in a rising whisper. “It was the gargoyle that crawled out of those dead smokestacks on the waterfront. It tore him to pieces. The blood. Gods. The gore. The kid never even got the chance to scream. But I saw it! I saw it and it looked at me. It looked into me. I thought I’d heard something scratching …but how…”
Ullah said nothing. His fist uncurled slightly.
“I was just standing around,” Goldstein said in a low voice. “Under the overhang of one of those buildings, trying to stay out of the rain. Watching the sun settle and get dark. I was waiting in between those two big industrial blocks. 31st and 32nd. Nobody ever pokes around down there. Nobody bothers to. It’s an easy place to sell from. No hassles. Sunset Park and bored teenagers or college students are nearby. They wait until it gets a little dark and they walk the short few fuckin avenues it takes to get to me. I provide them with an evening free from utter boredom.”
Goldstein rubbed his neck, hard at first before settling into a massaging motion. The handcuffs tinked like the feeble chains of a junior specter.
“I saw this kid approaching me from the street after he’d passed under the expressway,” Goldstein continued. “White or Hispanic. Could have been either. He made eye contact and nodded. He knew why I was there. So we started taking a little stroll to make the exchange on the move. Harder to tell quite what we were doing, you know? We walked toward the water, towards those damn, silent smokestacks. I almost said ‘empty smokestacks’ – can you believe that? I almost said ‘empty.’ Oh, God.
”He gave me fifty. I gave him a nice fat 20 bag. Good stuff. And then we turned to split. He was going one way, I was going the other. We were walking away from each other when he fell. He tripped over some busted up concrete at the bottom of one of those stacks. He cursed and shouted. I guess he busted his knee or something. I don’t know. I helped him up and he grabbed the big chunk of granite or concrete or whatever that had made him fall. He hucked it against the smokestack’s tiles. It was a big rock. Big enough to bash your head in. Big enough to bash my head in. It broke some of the tiling off. Bits of that sort of beige siding tumbled down. It made a hell of a racket. The kid threw up his hand and gave the stack the finger.
“I laughed. I said something stupid like, ‘Yeah, fuck those things.’ Something dumb. Didn’t matter. Chucked a piece of rock like I was some idiot kid, too. Because, screw it, right?
“And then I heard this scratching.”
Goldstein glanced at the window. Thunder boomed. The fluorescent lights in the room flickered, the brzzt of an insect buzzing.
Goldstein rubbed his neck again. “Imagine the sound of a thousand rats clamoring and digging their nails into the walls of a wet stone well. That is what I heard. And the sound moved up. It moved up the stack. I followed the noise. The rain made it hard to see, but I could hear it all through the storm.
“The kid heard it and followed it, too. We covered our eyes with our hands and gazed up through the streaming water that pelted us. There are red lights at the top of those stacks, you know. The light bouncing off the water … it made the rain look like blood. A volcano of blood.”
Goldstein started to tear up. He sniffed snot back into his runny nose. Ullah felt awkwardly sorry for the man, though he made no effort to comfort him.
Goldstein lowered his glistening eyes. He spoke again in a whisper. “The noise changed once it got to the top. There was no more scurrying. No more scratching. We heard something else. At first I thought someone had started up one of the big eighteen-wheelers used to haul whatever shit there was to be hauled from the warehouses.
“But no. No, no, no. God.
“It was that thing – growling.
“It emerged. Slowly, like a titan from deep sleep. Its horrible face glared at us from the top of the stack. Its eyes blazed yellow. It moved left and right, like it was stretching. It was black, or dark grey, I can’t be sure. It spread its huge wings and I swear, I think it smiled.
“I lost track of it, but not for long. There was a crash a few feet away from me. Whoever the kid had been, and whatever he had done, I don’t think he deserved to go the way he did.
“I told you the kid didn’t even have time to scream. That was because the thing landed and smashed his head against the ground and destroyed it like a goddamn melon.
“I threw up. The gargoyle held him down and tore one of the kid’s legs off. I heard the splashing of something other than rain. Thicker than rain. The creature brought a leg up to its mouth and started chewing. Eating. When it was done with that I, ugh, I think I saw it hand the leg off to something else.
“I was turned to run, but watched over my sh
oulder. It split the kid like a wishbone. I felt warmth. I felt stickiness on my face. Some of it landed in my mouth – that wretched, coppery taste of blood.
“I ran. I ran fast and hard through the rain.
“And then …” Goldstein threw his hands up in a surrender gesture.
“Wait,” Ullah said, “Why was it a gargoyle. What makes you think it was a gargoyle. Doesn’t it make more sense, if any of that is even remotely true – if you didn’t murder someone – that an animal got loose and attacked this kid?”
“I saw it,” Goldstein said. “I saw it, and it saw me. It was a gargoyle. A gargoyle like we used to put on buildings. A big, angry, pissed off gargoyle. It may have been a whole damn gargoyle family. But it was –
“Listen, I’ve been stuck in here with nothing but my thoughts for a while. With you taking your time out there to file papers or whatever. Gargoyles were originally put on buildings to ward off evil. They were supposed to protect people. Like supernatural cops. That’s why they became so insanely popular in medieval times.”
Ullah glowered angrily at Goldstein. “I know where you’re going with this. Don’t give me any hocus-pocus horseshit. And how do you even know any of that?”
“I told you: I used to be a professor. We tend to read a lot,” Goldstein said airily, momentarily taken away from the vileness of the night. “Point is, these things were there as guardians. They stopped bad things from getting to humans. That’s the mythology. What if it was true?”
“What if it was,” Ullah exhaled heavily through his nose, annoyed with himself that he’d let the conversation take this turn.
“How angry would you be if the people of New York City decided to throw you in a scrap heap because you didn’t fit in with modern ‘architecture’?” Goldstein leaned over the table, his face hovering just above its pockmarked surface. “How angry would you be if the entire world decided to throw you away after hundreds and hundreds of years of silent, thankless service?
“I bet you’d be really angry.
“Maybe they just want to be left alone. Maybe they’re territorial. Maybe it’s easier on them to avoid people. But one’s thing’s for certain: They don’t like humans anymore. I think I’m marked. I think they want to get rid of me because of what I saw. They don’t want to deal with people poking around where they tried to retire…”
Ullah tightened his fists until his knuckles turned white. He laughed, “Or maybe they’re just pissed because you decided to act like a little fat vandal and throw shit at their home!”
Ullah slammed the table again and walked out.
Goldstein sat staring out the window, watching.
Flash.
Lighting tore at the night sky. It left deep, white wounds.
There were no cheers or smiles or smart remarks waiting for the Lieutenant in the hall. Some of the officers had heard the insanity coming from the room. They had seen their superior’s anger blossom.
Chrissie approached the Ullah with a fresh cup of coffee and a concerned look.
Ullah didn’t say anything. His lips began to form a wary smile, but stopped.
The lights went out.
Ullah heard the coffee cup shatter on the ground, fallen from Chrissie’s grasp.
Younger cops shouted, wondering when the emergency lights would come on.
Some of them noticed that the stores and bodegas nearby still had power.
Ullah got nervous. Nervous that there was truth in Goldstein’s story.
Was the pudgy petty dealer even capable of murder? An old teacher?
Suddenly, Ullah couldn’t see the old, self-described ‘liberal Hippy’ as a killer. Couldn’t even suspect the aging bastard.
Something. Something crawling out of the dark.
Ullah yanked the Glock from its holster and turned back to the room where Goldstein had told his nightmare tale. There was a terrific smashing sound, like someone had hit the building with a bulldozer, as he tried the handle on the door. It wouldn’t turn. He lunged at it using his shoulder as a battering ram. It still wouldn’t budge.
Ullah squinted and tried to peer into the blackness beyond.
With each flash of lightning, he got a stuttering snapshot of the chaos.
Flash: a massive chunk of the wall had been removed. Flash: rain poured in and created a small flood. Flash: Goldstein was standing in the corner. Flash: his hands were covering his face. Flash: he was sobbing.
“I told you. I tried to tell you!” the old dealer cried.
“Open the goddamn door!” Ullah shouted back.
Flash.
Goldstein’s eyes met Ullah’s as he shook his head somberly. He pulled at his hair with his right hand, cuffs now dangling, and tried to motion with his left, but there was nothing except a leaking red stump. He sobbed more. He pointed low with the dripping appendage.
Flash.
Ullah stood on the tips of his toes and looked down toward the floor. He saw some big black thing with a vaguely feline face rising from the floor. It shook itself free of water and started toward Goldstein. Ullah heard a low growl that sounded like a massive truck rumbling. At the hole in the wall, another, bigger shape moved and blotted out the sky.
Flash.
Goldstein was gone.
And so were the things.
Ullah holstered his gun and ran to his patrol car. He tripped and slid through the spilled coffee. He ignored the questions of his fellow officers.
He just needed to know.
With sirens blaring and lights blazing, he raced back to those haunted industrial buildings. He looked out at the horizon as he sped and with each streak of lightening tried to glimpse what he hoped was impossible. He let his lead foot push the accelerator pedal down to the floor. His Charger roared at the Lieutenant’s demand for speed and happily obliged.
At 32nd street, he slowed. He left the sirens and lights on as he jumped out. Cold rain pelted him. Ullah hadn’t bothered to grab his jacket. He couldn’t feel the chill. His mind was elsewhere
Cautiously, he jogged up to the base of the giant dead smokestacks Goldstein had spoken of. The lights that adorned their tops bled red. As water cascaded down the structure’s slopes, Ullah was plagued by the images of blood-fed fountains.
The low rumbling sound returned.
And a wet screaming was added to the cacophony.
Flash.
The Tartarean shape at the top of the smokestack was holding something that looked hideously like a struggling human being. Its legs were limp, but its arms were flailing. The screaming didn’t let up.
Ullah heard something else, then. A terrible scratching. The scurrying of a thousand limbs. All wet. All moving. Moving up.
Flash.
Claws reached out of the top of the smokestack. All of them grabbed for the writhing, sobbing figure. They took arms. They took legs. They took pieces.
The screaming was suddenly cut short.
Down the sides of the smokestack, true red flowed.
The big shape shifted on its high perch.
Before Ullah could race back to his cruiser, he saw something else.
A smile.
The creature stood majestic as the others below and behind it feasted. It looked up into the sky, yellow eyes drooping closed as drops splashed and burst along its snout. The monster sat there for what seemed like an eternity, enjoying the cold.
Ullah, stupefied, fought the urge to run and watched instead of fleeing.
The gargoyle scrunched its nose and shook the beading water from its head. It locked eyes with Ullah.
The NYPD vet put his hand on the butt of his service pistol, getting ready – just in case.
The gargoyle, of course, saw. And in a slow, startling motion, shook its head.
No.
Ullah let his hand drop back down to his side. He stared into the titan’s big, old eyes.
The gargoyle smiled again. A big, tooth-filled grin. It looked now almost like a massive, winged housecat. And if Ullah hadn’t
been so ready to collapse in panic, he might have even found it cute.
The old officer put his hands up in a shrug. He asked without speaking: what exactly am I supposed to do now?
The creature’s smile faded. It put one thick claw in front of its mouth and pouted.
Shhhh.
With that, the gargoyle turned and crawled into its dark, dead smokestack.
Ullah walked back to his cruiser and fell into the driver’s seat. He stayed there, half in the rain, half out of it, for over an hour. He did little more than stare at the smokestacks and wonder. He ignored the calls on his radio. Ignored the calls from his girl on his phone.
Then he started the car, intent on dealing with the damage and the insanity at the station house.
He looked up at the stacks one last time, peering through the rain-splattered windshield.
He saw a dozen tiny claws, all waving.
Bye-bye, now.
It took Aarif a while to realize that something had gone wrong. Not because he was dim-witted or ignorant, but because he was isolated. He couldn’t see much from behind the Plexiglass and the signs on his Halal cart – signs that promised the most savory $3.50 lamb anyone in Brooklyn had ever tasted. On 86th street in Bay Ridge (and perhaps beyond), along the slope of the street, he was the master of the delicious.
High school kids, locals, and folks from Jersey and Staten Island would all line up. His cart was more of a hot spot than the bars nearby. He loved catching the rush of hungry drunks when the pubs closed at 4am. He watched girls trying their fathers’ patience with short skirts and boys trying to outdo their fathers by conquering.
But, hey, they were not his girls and they were not his boys. His children (one boy, Bahir, and one daughter, Sabirah) were at home, sleeping. His wonderful girl Zahrah, who had come with him from Jordan, kept a faithful watch over them.
Aarif started cooking up extra rice around three-thirty, expecting a flood of booze-fueled kids.
Around four, Aarif heard footsteps run past his cart. He looked up, hoping for a customer, but only caught a fleeting glance of their sneakers. Instinctively, he followed the noise with his eyes, but could see nothing through the sides of his seven by three stainless steel enclosure.
The Space Whiskey Death Chronicles Page 4
