“I been listenin’ to that since midnight,” he told her. His shift had started at twelve and would continue until eight. “You ever hear anythin’ like it?”
“He alone in there?”
“Yeah. Few people come in, but they couldn’t take it neither. Man, you shoulda seen their faces when they come out! Give you the creeps!”
“Shit, man!” Cecily said. She was the ticket-seller and worked in the booth out front. “I couldn’t stand to sit through two minutes of that movie, all them dead folks and such! Lordy, I sold that guy his ticket three shows ago!”
“He come out, bought a large Coke and buttered popcorn. Tipped me a buck. But I tell you, I almost didn’t wanna touch the money. It looked… greasy or somethin’.”
“Bastard’s prob’ly playin’ with hisself in there. Prob’ly lookin’ at all them dead, messed-up faces and playin’ with hisself! Somebody ought to go in there and tell him to—”
The laughter swelled again. Emiliano flinched; the noise now reminded him of the cry of a boy he’d once gut-stabbed in a knife fight. The laughter broke and burbled, became a soft cooing that made Cecily think of the sounds the addicts made in the shooting gallery she frequented. Her face was frozen until the laughter went away, and then she said, “I believe I’ve got things to do.” She turned away and hurried to the ticket booth, where she locked the door. She’d figured that the guy inside the theater was going to be weird when she saw him: He was a big, husky Swedish-looking man with curly blond hair, milk-white skin and eyes like cigarette burns. As he bought his ticket he’d stared notes through her and never said a word. Weird, she thought, and she picked up her People magazine with trembling fingers.
Come on, eight o’clock! Emiliano pleaded. He checked his wristwatch. In a few minutes, The Face of Death, Part Four would be ending, and Willy, the old drunk of a projectionist, would be changing the reels upstairs for Mondo Bizarro, which showed bondage scenes and such. Maybe the guy would leave when the picture changed. Emiliano sat on his stool and continued reading his Conan comic book, trying to shut off the bad memories that had been stirred up by the laughter from within.
The red curtains moved. Emiliano hunched his shoulders as if about to be beaten. Then the curtains parted, and the man who liked movies emerged into the dingy lobby. He’s leaving! Emiliano almost grinned, his gaze glued to the comic book. He’s goin’ out the door!
But the man who liked movies said in a soft, almost childlike voice, “I’d like a large Coke and a tub of buttered popcorn, please.”
Emiliano’s stomach clenched. Without letting himself look into the man’s face, he got off his stool, drew the Coke into a cup from the dispenser, got the popcorn and splashed butter into it.
“More butter, please,” the man who liked movies requested.
Emiliano gave the popcorn another drool of butter and slid it and the Coke across the counter. “Three bucks,” he said. A five dollar bill was pushed toward him. “Keep the change,” the man said, and this time his voice had a Southern accent. Startled, Emiliano looked up.
The man who liked movies stood about six four and was wearing a yellow T-shirt and green khaki trousers. Under thick black eyebrows, his eyes were hypnotically green against the amber hue of his flesh. Emiliano had already figured him to be South American as soon as he’d walked in, maybe with some Indian blood in him, too. The man’s hair was black and wavy, cut close to the skull. He stared fixedly at Emiliano. “I want to see the movie again,” he said quietly, and his voice carried what might’ve been a Brazilian accent again.
“Uh… Mondo Bizarro’s about to come on in a coupla minutes. Projection guy’s prob’ly got the first reel on—”
“No,” the man who liked movies said, and he smiled slightly. “I want to see that movie again. Right now.”
“Yeah. Well, listen. I mean… I don’t make the decisions here, right? Y’know? I just work behind the counter. I don’t have any say-so about—” And then the man reached out and touched Emiliano’s face with cold, butter-smeared fingers, and Emiliano’s jaw seized up as if it had frozen solid.
The world seemed to spin around him for a second, and his bones were a cage of ice. Then he blinked and his whole body trembled, and he was standing behind the counter and the man who liked movies was gone. Damn! he thought. Bastard touched me! He grabbed a paper napkin and wiped his face where the fingers had been, but he could still feel the chill they’d left. The five dollar bill remained on the countertop. He put it in his pocket and came out from behind the counter, and he peeked through the curtains into the theater.
On the screen, in glorious and gory color, were blackened corpses being pulled from the wreckage of cars by firemen. The narrator was saying, “Face of Death will pull no punches. Everything you see will be real. If you are in any way squeamish, you should now be on your way out…”
The man who liked movies was sitting in the front row. Emiliano could see the outline of his head against the screen. The laughter began, and as Emiliano backpedaled away from the curtains he looked dumbly at his wristwatch and realized that almost twenty minutes of his life was a black hole. He went through a door and up a flight of stairs to the projection booth, where Willy sat sprawled on a couch reading Hustler.
“Hey!” Emiliano said. “What’s goin’ on, man? How come you showin’ that shit again?”
Willy stared at him for a moment over the edge of the magazine. “You lost your marbles, kid?” he inquired. “You and your friend just come up here and asked me to. Wasn’t fifteen minutes ago. So I put it back on. Don’t mean shit to me, one way or the other. Anyway, I don’t argue with no old perverts.”
“Old perverts? What’re you talkin’ about, man?”
“Your friend,” Willy said. “Guy must be seventy years old. Beard makes him look like Rip Van Winkle. Where do these perverts come from?”
“You’re… crazy,” Emiliano whispered. Willy shrugged and returned to his reading.
Outside, Cecily looked up as Emiliano ran into the street. He glanced back at her, shouted, “I ain’t stayin’ in there! No way! I quit!” and ran away along Forty-second Street and into the gloom. Cecily crossed herself, rechecked the lock on the ticket booth’s door and prayed for dawn.
In his seat in the front row, the man who liked movies dug a hand into his buttered popcorn and stuffed his mouth full. Before him were scenes of broken bodies being extracted from the rubble of a London building bombed by Irish terrorists. He cocked his head to one side, appreciating the sight of crushed bones and blood. The camera, blurred and unsteady, focused on the frantic face of a young woman as she cradled a dead child.
The man who liked movies laughed as if he were watching a comedy. In the sound of that laughter was the shriek of napalm bombs, incendiary rockets and Tomahawk missiles; it echoed through the theater, and if other people had been sitting there each one would have squirmed with the memory of a private terror.
And in the reflected light from the screen, the man’s face was undergoing a transformation. No longer did he look Swedish, or Brazilian, or have a gray Rip Van Winkle beard; his facial features were running together like the slow melting of a wax mask, the bones shifting beneath the skin. The features of a hundred faces rose and fell like suppurating sores. As the screen showed an autopsy in close-up progress, the man clapped his hands together with merry glee.
Almost time! he thought. Almost time for the show to start!
He’d been waiting a long time for the curtain to rise, had worn many skins and many faces, and the moment was soon, very soon. He’d watched the lurch toward destruction through many eyes, had smelled fire and smoke and blood in the air like intoxicating perfumes. The moment was soon, and the moment would belong to him.
Oh, yes! Almost time for the show to start!
He was a creature of patience, but now he could hardly keep himself from dancing. Maybe a little Watusi up the aisle would be in order, and then he’d slamdance that cockroach behind the candy counter. It was li
ke waiting for a birthday party, and when the candles were lit he would rear his head back and roar loud enough to stagger God.
Almost time! Almost time!
But where would it start? he wondered. Who would push the first button? No matter; he could almost hear the fuse crackling and the flame drawing near. It was the music of the Golan Heights, of Beirut and Teheran, of Dublin and Warsaw, Johannesburg and Vietnam—only this time the music would end in a final, deafening crescendo.
He stuffed popcorn into a mouth that opened greedily on his right cheek. Party down! he thought, and he giggled with a noise like grinding glass.
Last night he’d stepped off a Trailways bus from Philadelphia and, strolling down Forty-second Street, had seen that this film was playing. He took the opportunity to admire his performances in The Face of Death, Part Four whenever he could. Just in the background, of course, always part of the crowd, but he could always recognize himself. There was a good shot of him standing over a mass of corpses after the bombing of an Italian soccer stadium, looking suitably shocked; another brief glimpse showed him, wearing a different face, at an airport massacre in Paris.
Lately he’d been on tour, riding the bus from city to city, seeing America. There were so many terrorist groups and armed firebrands in Europe that his influence was hardly needed, though he’d enjoyed helping plant that nice potent bomb in Beirut. He’d stayed a while in Washington, but none of the theaters were showing The Face of Death, Part Four there. Still, Washington held so many possibilities, and when you mixed and mingled with Pentagon boys and cabinet members at some of those parties you never knew what you might stir up.
It was all coming around to him now. He sensed the nervous fingers hovering near red buttons all over the world. Jet pilots would be scrambling, submarine commanders would be listening to their sonars, and old lions would be eager to bite. And the amazing thing was that they were doing it all themselves. It almost made him feel useless—but his starring role was coming around very soon.
His only concern was that it wouldn’t be finished yet, not even with all the lightning soon to strike. There might still be pockets of humanity left, and small towns struggling to survive in the dark like rats in a collapsed basement. He understood very well that the firestorms, the whirlwinds of radiation and black rain would destroy most of them, and the ones that remained would wish they were dead a thousand times over.
And in the end, he would Watusi on their graves, too.
It was almost time. Tick tock tick tock, he thought. Nothing ever stops the clock!
He was a patient creature, but it had been a long wait. A few more hours would only whet his appetite, and he was very, very hungry. For the time being, he could enjoy watching himself in this fine film.
Curtain’s going up! he thought, and the mouth in the center of his forehead grinned before it disappeared into the flesh like a gray worm in damp ground.
It’s showtime!
Seven
Judgment Day
10:16 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
New York City
A blue light was spinning. Cold rain came down, and a young man in a yellow rain slicker reached out his arms. “Give her to me, lady,” he said, his voice as hollow as if he were speaking from the bottom of a well. “Come on. Let me have her.”
“NO!” Sister Creep shouted, and the man’s face fragmented into pieces like the shattering of a mirror. She thrust out her hands to push it away, but then she was sitting up and the nightmare was whirling away in pieces like silver bats. The sound of her cry echoed back and forth between the walls of rough gray brick, and she sat staring at nothing for a moment as the sputtering of nerves shook her body.
Oh, she thought when her head cleared, that was a bad one! She touched her clammy forehead and her fingers came away damp. That was close, she thought. The young demon in the yellow raincoat was there again, very near, and he almost got my…
She frowned. Got my what? The thought was gone now; whatever it had been, it had flipped over to the dark side of her memory. She often dreamed of the demon in the yellow raincoat, and he was always wanting her to give him something. In the dream, a blue light was always flashing, hurting her eyes, and rain was hitting her in the face. Sometimes the surroundings seemed terribly familiar, and sometimes she almost—almost—knew what it was he wanted, but she knew he was a demon—or probably the Devil himself, trying to pull her away from Jesus—because her head pounded so badly after the dream was over.
She didn’t know what time it was, or whether it was day or night, but her stomach was rumbling with hunger. She had tried to sleep on a subway bench, but the noise of some shouting kids scared her, so she’d trundled off with her bag in search of a more secure place. She’d found it at the bottom of a ladder that descended in a darkened section of subway tunnel. About thirty feet beneath the main tunnel was a drainage pipe, large enough for her to move through if she stooped over. Dirty water streamed past her sneakers, and the tunnel was illuminated by an occasional blue utility lamp that showed the network of cables and pipes just overhead. The tunnel shook with the thunder of a subway train passing, and Sister Creep realized she was under the rails; but as she continued along the tunnel the noise of the trains faded to a polite, distant growl. She soon found evidence that this was a popular place for members of the Ragtag Nation—a beat-up old mattress pushed back into a cubbyhole, a couple of empty wine bottles and some dried human excrement. She didn’t mind; she’d seen worse. And so she’d slept on the mattress until the nightmare of the demon in the yellow raincoat had awakened her; she was hungry, and she decided she’d climb back up to the subway station to search for scraps in the garbage cans, maybe try to find a newspaper, too, to see if Jesus had come while she was sleeping.
Sister Creep stood up, put the strap of her bag around her shoulder and left the cubbyhole. She started back along the tunnel, tinged by the dim blue glow of the utility bulbs, and hoped she’d find a hot dog today. She’d always been fond of hot dogs, with plenty of good spicy mus—
The tunnel suddenly trembled.
She heard the sound of concrete cracking. The blue lamps flickered, went dark and then brightened again. There was a noise like the howl of wind, or a runaway subway train speeding overhead. The blue lamps continued to brighten until the light was almost blinding, and Sister Creep squinted in the glare. She took three more uncertain steps forward; the utility bulbs began to explode. She put her hands up to shield her face, felt pieces of glass strike her arms, and she thought with sudden clarity: I’ll sue somebody for this!
In the next instant the entire tunnel whipped violently to one side, and Sister Creep fell into the stream of dirty water. Chunks of concrete and rock dust cascaded from the ceiling. The tunnel whipped back in the other direction with a force that made Sister Creep think her insides were tearing loose, and the concrete chunks hit her head and shoulders as her nostrils filled with grit. “Lord Jesus!” she shouted, about to choke. “Oh, Lord Jesus!”
Sparks shot overhead as the cables began to rip free. She smelled the wet heat of steam and heard a pounding noise like the footsteps of a behemoth treading above her head. As the tunnel pitched and swayed Sister Creep clung to her bag, riding out the gut-twisting undulations, a scream straining behind her clenched teeth. A wave of heat passed over her, stealing her breath. God help me! she shrieked in her mind as she struggled for air. She heard something pop and tasted blood streaming from her nose. I can’t breathe, oh sweet Jesus, I can’t breathe! She gripped at her throat, opened her mouth and heard her own strangled scream wail away from her through the shivering tunnel. Finally her tortured lungs dragged in a breath of scorched air, and she lay curled up on her side in the darkness, her body racked with spasms and her brain shocked numb.
The violent twisting motion of the tunnel had stopped. Sister Creep drifted in and out of consciousness, and through the haze came the distant roar of that runaway subway train again.
Only now it was getting louder.
Get up! she told herself. Get up! It’s Judgment Day, and the Lord has come in His chariot to take the righteous up into the Rapture!
But a calmer, clearer voice spoke, perhaps from the dark side of her memory, and it said: Bullshit! Something bad’s happened up there!
Rapture! Rapture! Rapture! she thought, forcing the wicked voice away. She sat up, wiped blood from her nose and drew in steamy, stifling air. The noise of the runaway train was closer. Sister Creep realized that the water she was sitting in had gotten hot. She grasped her bag and slowly rose to her feet. Everything was dark, and when Sister Creep felt the tunnel’s walls her fingers found a crazy quilt of cracks and fissures.
The roaring was much louder, and the air was heating up. The concrete against her fingers felt like city pavement at noon in August, ready to fry eggs sunny side up.
Far away along the tunnel there was a flicker of orange light, like the headlamp on a speeding subway tram. The tunnel had begun to tremble again. Sister Creep stared, her face tightening, as the orange light grew brighter, showing streaks of incandescent red and purple.
She realized then what it was, and she moaned like a trapped animal.
A blast of fire was roaring toward her along the tunnel, and she could already feel the rush of air being sucked into it as if into a vacuum. In less than a minute it would be upon her.
Sister Creep’s trance snapped. She turned and fled, holding her bag close, her sneakers splashing through steaming water. She leaped broken pipes and pushed aside fallen cables with the frenzy of the doomed. She looked back and saw the flames shooting out red tendrils that snapped in the air like whips. The vacuum suction pulled at her, trying to draw her backward into the fire, and when she screamed the air sizzled in her nostrils and at the back of her throat.
She could smell burning hair, felt her back and arms rippling with blisters. In maybe thirty seconds she’d be joining her Lord and Master, and it astounded her that she wasn’t ready and willing to go.
1987 - Swan Song v4 Page 7
