by Peter Straub
“Michael?” Ellen echoed Maggie.
He balled his hands into fists and held them before his face. He could barely see them. He turned around and through blurry eyes looked down Elizabeth Street and saw a stocky body dressed in a long blue coat swing into view like a wandering ox.
“Get back, hide, don’t rush but get out of sight,” he said.
“What—” Ellen began, but Conor grabbed her hand and began walking her up the street. Poole ducked his head and moved into the shelter of the arcade’s entrance, trying to look like a preoccupied citizen on his way home. He felt the policeman’s eyes on him as he slipped into the arcade. He heard a wobbly, unearthly sound and realized that Conor was actually whistling. As soon as he got into the arcade Poole flattened out against the side and peeked out. The stocky young policeman was still looking in his direction. He seemed puzzled. Poole looked across the street, but Maggie and Underhill had disappeared into one of the tenements.
The policeman put his hands on his hips—something had disturbed him. Probably, Poole thought, he had just gotten around to recognizing Maggie and Conor and himself. He looked as if he was trying to work out what they could all be doing on Elizabeth, Street. He looked back down Bayard Street at the other policemen, then took a step up toward the arcade. Poole stopped breathing and looked up toward the other end of the street. Conor and Ellen Woyzak were now doing a better imitation of a tourist couple who had wandered into unpromising territory. The young policeman looked behind him, then back toward the other officers. He stepped backwards and began motioning toward the policemen around the patrol car.
“Oh, shit,” Poole said.
He heard a short, sharp whistle and thought that Conor had relapsed into his Gary Cooper imitation. Poole looked across the street and saw Tim Underhill, like a scarecrow in the voluminous coat and droopy-brimmed hat, just inside the arched entrance of one of the tenement buildings. Maggie Lah was standing slightly behind him, and behind her Poole saw a portion of a little courtyard. Maggie’s eyes seemed very wide. Underhill was gesturing for Poole to join them, waving his arms like a traffic cop.
The young policeman stood down at the end of the street, waiting for someone—he was as impatient as Tim Underhill. Then the young policeman straightened up, and Dalton sauntered into view.
Poole glanced up the block: Conor and Ellen had disappeared around the corner. Dalton could see nothing but an empty street.
For a moment the young policeman spoke to Dalton. Dalton’s only movement was to look once up Elizabeth Street.
Michael wished he could hear everything they said.
Are you sure you saw them? The same ones?
Sure I am. Dey were up dere.
Then did Dalton say I’ll be right back with Lieutenant Murphy, or did he say Keep an eye on things until we finish with Mulberry Street?
Whichever it was, Dalton strolled back out of sight, either leaving Thick-Neck by himself or on his way to get Murphy. Thick-Neck turned his back to stare down at the crowds of Chinese on Bayard Street, and sighed so hugely Poole could almost hear it.
Poole looked back across the street. Underhill was practically exploding, and Maggie stared at him with wide eyes he could not read. The brooding young policeman did not shift his stance as Poole advanced out onto the street. Now Elizabeth Street seemed very wide. Poole moved as fast as he could, trusting that he would not hit a stone or make any noise. The wind seemed to roar around him. Finally he came up onto the opposite sidewalk. Underhill’s whole face was blazing at him. Down at the end of the street, he thought he saw Thick-Neck’s shoulders start to turn his way, a movement as slow and clumsy as that of a large machine, and he flew the final yards across the pavement and into the protection of the arch.
“He might have seen me,” Poole gasped. “What is it?”
Underhill wordlessly moved through the arch into a narrow brick courtyard surrounded on all sides by the dingy high walls of the tenement. A smell of grease and sweat, odd and dislocating in the cold, hung in the air. “We saw it by accident, really,” Underhill said. He was moving toward one of the entrances. Beside the rough peeling door to the ground floor and the staircase was a semi-circular well that allowed for at least one window in a room beneath ground level.
It was in that well, Poole knew. Tim Underhill had stationed himself beside the tenement door. He grimly looked down at whatever was in the well. Poole hoped that it was not Beevers’ dead body. But that was what would be in the well. Koko had yanked Harry Beevers out of the arcade, dragged him through the arch, and then slit his throat. After he had performed the operations that were his usual signature, he had dumped Beevers’ body into the window well. Then he had melted away.
For the first time, Poole really feared for his own life. He moved up to the well and looked down.
His certainty about what he had been going to see was so great that at first he saw nothing at all. The back wall descended seven or eight feet down to a dirty concrete floor before a window that had been painted black. Yellowed bits of paper and old beer cans lay on the dirty concrete. There was no body. He looked up at Underhill’s face, then at Maggie’s. Both of them were regarding him with a wild impatience. Finally Maggie pointed down at one of the corners where the curved brick wall met the tenement wall.
A shiny steel knife lay on top of a nest of old papers. A smear of bright blood lay across the blade.
Poole looked up and saw Conor and Ellen coming toward them through another arch set in the west wall of the tenement. They had circled around the block onto Mott Street and ducked into the first entrance they had seen.
“I think Lieutenant Murphy is probably right behind us,” he said. “I want to go inside the building.”
“Don’t,” Maggie said. “Michael—”
“I know Dengler. Murphy doesn’t. Maybe Beevers is still alive.”
“You might know Dengler,” Maggie said, “but what about Koko?”
This was an excellent question, and the response that came immediately to Michael Poole’s mind made so little rational sense that he stifled it before it was born. Koko’s mine, was what he almost said—he belongs to me.
“He probably left hours ago, Maggie,” Tim said in his low calm voice. “I’ll come with you, Michael.”
“If Murphy shows up before we come back, tell him where we went,” Poole said, and pulled open the rough, sagging wooden door that was the tenement’s entrance. Poole stepped inside and found himself before an iron staircase, painted dark green, which ascended up into the tenement; on its far side another section of the staircase went into the darkness beneath ground level. To his left was a door to one of the rooms. Poole rapped on the door, thinking that the tenant might have heard what had happened just outside his door. He rapped again, but no one came.
“Let’s start taking a look through the building,” he said to Underhill.
“I’m here too,” Conor said from behind him.
Poole looked back and saw Conor pulling Ellen’s fingers off his arm. “We’ll be safer if we all go together.”
Maggie put her arm around the taller woman.
Poole moved toward the staircase. For a moment he paused and looked up toward the six or seven flights through which the staircase turned; then he continued around the front of the staircase and took the downstairs steps.
As soon as his head passed beneath ground level, the staircase became as dark as a grave. The walls were cold and damp. Just behind him, Conor and Tim were moving so quietly he could still hear Maggie and Ellen Woyzak shuffling their feet on the floor above. Poole slowly groped down the steps. The air grew colder around him. Underhill had to be right: Koko, who had once loved Babar, had fled hours before, and somewhere down here in a cold shabby room, they would discover the dead body of Harry Beevers. Poole wanted to find it before the police did. He knew it would make no difference to Beevers, but he thought he owed him at least that much.
At last Poole saw yellow light outlining a door at the bottom of
the stairs. He leaned over the railing and looked up. A milky nimbus of light hovered over the top of the stairs.
He came down onto the landing. Through the crack in the door he could see a fragment of wall painted the same green as the staircase. It was splashed with red and black.
Either Conor or Tim squeezed his shoulder again. Poole noticed a dark smear of blood on the section of landing before the door.
Poole gently pushed open the door. The chill inside the room, colder than the staircase, drifted out toward him. In the thick motionless light within the room, Harry Beevers sat strapped into a wooden chair facing the door. His body leaned against thick straps. Blood had run down the side of his face, over the white rags that gagged him, and down into his sweater. At first Poole saw that Beevers’ left ear had been cut off, and he knew that Beevers was dead. Then Beevers’ eyes snapped open, bright with pain and terror.
Spatters of blood lay on the floor around Harry Beevers. The walls were covered with waves and writing, and a slender man sat cross-legged on the floor with his back to them, gazing in rapt concentration at the painted walls. Directly before him was the crude representation of a small, black-haired Vietnamese girl, stepping forward with her hands outstretched, smiling or screaming.
Poole scarcely knew what he felt, or why—there was too much sadness in all this. Koko, who was M.O. Dengler, or was the person who had once been M.O. Dengler, seemed like a child himself. Poole did not know that he was going to speak, but he said, “Manny.”
M.O. Dengler swiveled his head and looked at him.
4
Poole stepped forward into the cold green room. Until this moment, some part of him had resisted believing that Dengler really was Koko. Despite everything he had said to Maggie and Lieutenant Murphy, Poole felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him. He did not have even the beginning of an idea of what he was going to do now. It was still hard to accept the idea that Dengler could wish to do him harm. Harry Beevers uttered a keening sound through his bloody gag. Poole heard Conor and Tim pad in behind him and spread out on either side.
Dengler seemed not to have aged at all. He made Poole feel old and out of shape and almost corrupt with experience. He felt almost shamed before Dengler.
Over Dengler’s alert nineteen-year-old face, Poole saw that what he had taken for a pattern of waves was a row of children’s heads. Their bodies had only partially been painted in. Some held their hands upraised, others reached out with sticklike arms. Red paint wound through them like a skein. Dengler’s young face tilted up toward Poole, his lips slightly parted as if he were going to say—I was right about God. Or—Whatever it was, it was a long time ago.
On the side wall had been painted, in large black letters, the same slogan Poole had seen in the police Polaroids: A DROWSY STIFLED UNIMPASSIONED GRIEF. And beneath that, in the same large letters: PAIN IS AN ILL-U-SHUN.
Poole took in all this in less time than it took to blink. He understood. He was in no-place, all right. He was back there. This was where Koko lived all the time, in that underground chamber he and Underhill had visited twice.
I’m here to help you, Poole wanted to say.
Dengler smiled up at him from the center of his uncannily preserved youth.
You been bad? Dengler seemed to ask him. If you haven’t…
Harry Beevers squealed again, and his eyes rolled up into his head.
“I’m here to help—” Poole started to say, and the words seemed almost dragged out of him, as if he were in one of those dreams where every step requires immense effort.
“Come out with us, Dengler,” Conor said, very simply. “It’s what you want to do.”
The smiling child with outstretched empty hands seemed to step out toward Poole as if from the back of a shadowy hootch, and for a second he thought he heard wingbeats in the cold air above his head.
“Stand up and come toward us,” Conor said, taking a step forward with his own hand held out.
Beevers squealed in pain or outrage.
Then Poole heard the sound of men thudding down the iron staircase. He looked at Dengler’s calm empty face in horror. “Stop!” he yelled. “We’re all alive! Don’t come any further!”
Almost before he stopped shouting at the policemen, Poole saw Dengler move up off the floor in a fluid, uncoiling motion. In his hand was a long knife.
“Dengler, put the knife down,” Underhill said.
As Dengler stood and moved closer to the light bulb, the startling innocence and youthfulness of his face disappeared like a mirage. He smashed the bulb with the handle of his knife, and the room went dark as a mineshaft. Poole instinctively crouched.
“Are you okay in there?” called a voice from the stairs.
“Dengler, where are you?” Underhill whispered. “Let’s all get out of this alive, all right?”
“I have work to do,” came a voice that Michael did not immediately recognize. The voice seemed to come from everywhere in the room.
“Who’s inside that room?” shouted Lieutenant Murphy. “I want to know who’s in there, and I want to hear everybody’s voice.”
“Poole,” called Poole.
“Underhill.”
“Linklater. And Beevers is in here, but he’s injured and gagged.”
“Anybody else?” the lieutenant yelled.
“Oh, yes,” came a quiet voice.
“Lieutenant,” Poole called out, “if you come in here shooting, we’ll all die. Go back up the steps and let us come out. We’ll need an ambulance for Beevers.”
“I want each man to come out alone. He will be met by an officer and escorted up the steps. I can offer the services of a hostage negotiator, if the man holding you will deal with one.”
Poole steadied himself by putting his hand on the floor. That too was cold and wet, even sticky, and Michael realized that he was touching Harry Beevers’ blood.
A high-pitched terrified squeal came to him from everywhere, bouncing from wall to wall.
“We’re not hostages,” Poole said. “We’re just standing around in the dark.”
“Poole, I’m sick of talking to you,” Murphy yelled. “I want to hear from this Koko. After we get you out of there, Doctor Poole, that’s when I’m going to be interested in talking to you. Then I’ll have a lot to say to you.” His voice grew louder as he bawled out the next words. “Mister Dengler! You are in no danger as long as you do exactly what I say. I want you to release the other men in the room one at a time. Then I want you to surrender yourself. Are you clear about that?”
Dengler repeated what he had said when he had put them in darkness. “I have work to do.”
“That’s fine,” Murphy said. Then Poole heard Murphy say to some other policeman, “I have work to do. What the hell does that mean?”
A voice whispered into Poole’s ear, so close and unexpected it made him jump. “Tell him to go all the way up the stairs.”
“He says he wants you to go all the way up the stairs,” Poole shouted.
“Who’s that?”
“Poole.”
“I should have known,” Murphy said in a quieter voice. “If we go back up the stairs, will he release all of you?”
“Yes,” the voice whispered in Poole’s other ear.
“Yes!” Poole shouted. He had not heard the faintest sound as Dengler moved around him. Now he could hear the sound of wingbeats again, which was really the sound of ceaseless movement, as of a large group of people moving all about him, whispering to one another. He could smell blood.
“Any other requests?” Murphy shouted, sounding sarcastic.
“All the police in the courtyard,” the voice whispered directly into Michael’s face.
“He wants all the police in the courtyard.”
“While the hostages are being released,” Murphy said. “He’s got that.”
“Conor, are you okay?” Poole asked.
There was no answer. The others were dead, and he was alone in the no-place with Koko. He was in
a pool of his friends’ blood and Koko was fluttering around him like a hundred birds, or bats.
“Conor!”
“Yo,” came Conor’s voice, quieting his dread.
“Tim?”
Again, no answer.
“Tim!”
“He’s fine,” came the whisper. “He’s just not speaking at the moment.”
“Tim, can you hear me?”
Something painful and red hot happened to Michael’s right side. He clapped his hand over the pain. He felt no blood, but there was a long clean cut in the fabric of his coat.
“I went to Muffin Street,” he said. “I talked to your mother. Helga Dengler.”
“We call her Marbles,” came a whisper from somewhere off to his right.
“I know about your father—I know what he did.”
“We call him Blood,” came the whisper from where he had last seen Conor.
Poole still held his hand to his side. Now he could feel the blood soaking through his coat. “Sing me the song of the elephants.”
From different parts of the room Poole heard snatches of unmelodic wordless song, the music of nothing on earth, the music of no-place. Sometimes it sounded as if children were speaking or crying out a great distance away. These were the dead children painted on the walls. Again Poole knew that no matter what he might hear in this room, he was alone with Koko, and the rest of the world was on the opposite side of a river no man could cross alive.
As Koko’s song flew through the dark, Poole could also hear the sound of the policemen retreating up the iron steps. His side flamed and burned, and he could feel blood soaking into his clothes. The room had widened out to the size of the world, and he was alone in it with Koko and the dead children.
Finally Murphy’s voice came crackling through a bullhorn. “We are in the courtyard. We will remain here until the three men with you have come out through the door. What do you want to do next?”
“We waste no part of the animal,” came the hissing voice.
The dying children wailed and sobbed. No, the children were dead, Poole remembered: that was Harry Beevers.
