by Ed Gorman
That's why Andy heard nothing except the clicking when he twisted the key.
My God. No battery.
Sonofabitch.
He felt this great urge to cry. To put his head against the steering wheel and just start sobbing. Like a helpless little boy.
But then he realised that he was safe.
He could sit here all night and Dobyns couldn't touch him. The car doors were locked. He had his Magnum. Dobyns couldn't possibly harm him. No way.
Then he saw the headlights come on to his right, the great glowing eyes of an unimaginable monster.
The headlights belonged to the large truck the hospital used to scrape off the drives in winter and carry heavy loads the rest of the year.
Now, the driver of the truck stepped on the gas while the gearshift was in neutral. The truck roared like a beast that wanted to be fed.
The truck roared one more time, and then leapt forward.
Andy, mesmerised, was blinded by the headlights as they shot closer, closer. The driver had thoughtfully set them on high beam so they'd be sure to be dazzling.
The driver? Dobyns, of course.
The first assault caught Andy's car right in the passenger door. There was a great, echoing crash of shattering glass and twisting metal and Andy's screams.
Andy was knocked clear across the front seat, his head slammed into the window on the passenger's side.
The pain came instantly back to his chest. This time it started running up and down his right arm, too. He wanted to move, scramble out of the car, but he felt confusion and panic and could not concentrate enough to-
The second assault caught the front fender on the driver's side and was delivered with such shattering force that Andy's car was spun halfway around and ended up facing the opposite direction.
Smashed glass tinkled to the concrete, echoing, and Andy's screams were now sobs and pleas for help.
The truck pulled back, tyres squealing, gears grinding, for one last assault.
Andy saw this coming. He put both his hands squarely against the dashboard…
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our-
The truck backed all the way to the garage door. It was going to come at Andy from behind.
And then Andy looked down at the Magnum on the seat next to him.
Of course, My Lord.
He'd been so frightened, so disoriented, so worried about heart attack that he'd completely forgotten his own best defence.
Quickly he unlatched the seat belt, turned around so that he was facing the rear of the car, and set the Magnum on top of the seat.
He aimed directly at the windshield of the truck. You sonofabitch Dobyns. You psycho sonofabitch. Andy was ready.
And Dobyns was more than happy to oblige.
This time the truck's tyres created so much smoke, the rear end of the truck appeared to be on fire as it came piling toward Andy.
Andy opened fire.
It was like target practice on the range.
Even above the screaming tyres, you could hear the Magnum explode, each time Andy's hand and arm jerked back with the recoil.
Indeed it was like target practice.
The closer the truck got, its huge yellow eyes searching mercilessly inside Andy's car, the oftener Andy pulled the trigger.
By the time of the great crash, by the time the truck pushed Andy all the way to the back of the garage and smashed him into the rear wall… by that time, Andy was out of ammunition.
Nothing would have helped Andy in this situation. Not even a seat belt.
When the car met the wall, Andy was thrown upward into the skyliner. To him, it felt as if the impact broke his head apart in three ragged pieces. Then the impact hurled him forward against the dashboard, the edge of which came against the centre of his spinal column with the force of'a well-delivered karate blow. Even as he continued to tumble through the air, Andy could feel his legs go dead and he thought of a terrible word: 'paralysed.'
Then he drifted into blessed unconsciousness.
What he saw next gave him a curious peace. From somewhere high overhead-some unimaginable distance, really-he looked down on the scene in the garage. The smashed up car. The roaring truck. Dobyns racing from the truck now, bloody knife in hand.
And then Andy saw himself. He looked terrible. Covered with his own blood, and at least as smashed and broken as the car he was in.
Then Dobyns was in the car, checking out the body named Andy to see if it was still alive. When Dobyns found a pulse, he took his knife and slashed both of Andy's wrists so that blood flowed freely.
Then Dobyns took his knife and cut Andy's throat. He was very good at it by now, Dobyns was quite efficient. Just one downward cutting slash dragged across the Adam's apple, and the job was done.
Andy watched all this with a growing feeling of peace and security. He was glad that the body named Andy was unconscious because otherwise he'd be panic stricken beyond imagining. Gagging, trying to stop his throat from bleeding- No, the body named Andy had no understanding of the peace that awaited it. But the Andy that watched it all knew it well.
When Dobyns had cut Andy's throat, the fat man had sprayed blood all over himself and Dobyns.
Now, withdrawing from the car, Dobyns wiped blood from his eyes and mouth.
He ran back to the elevator again. It would take him to the floor nearest the tower.
11
"DID YOU NOTICE anything about his stomach, Marie?"
"His stomach?"
"Yes. Anything strange?"
"No, I'm sorry. I guess not." Marie hesitated. "But there was a weird smell."
"Oh?" Emily Lindstrom said. "Can you describe it?"
Marie shrugged. "Well, I guess I don't know what to say except that it was-it smelled like rotten meat or something."
Chris Holland and Emily Lindstrom had been in the Fane apartment for fifteen minutes now. While Marie had looked and sounded remarkably good, Chris now saw that the girl was still in the throes of shock. Soon, she would come in direct contact with her feelings about the slaying tonight and then-
Right now, the girl was instinctively using this interview as a way of avoiding her feelings. Chris had seen this following many traffic accidents, how badly injured people suddenly developed this great need to talk-this was just another manifestation of their shock-before they came crashing down.
"Please think back to his stomach," Emily was saying.
Too intense, Chris thought. I've got to get her to ease off the girl or Marie will break for sure.
Kathleen Fane was starting to watch Emily, too. The beautiful blond woman sounded as if she too were on the verge of snapping.
Chris said, "Did he say anything to you while this was all happening?"
Marie's cheeks flushed. "Dirty words."
"I'm sorry."
"The same dirty words over and over again."
"And then he just grabbed Richie?"
"Yes. And-"
And Chris (so worried about Emily's insensitivity) saw that she'd asked exactly the wrong question at exactly the wrong time.
The question forced the girl to confront the images of her friend's murder again.
With no warning whatsoever, she began crying very softly, and then sobbing so hard that her entire body shook
Her mother was up from her chair in moments, and then sitting next to the girl and holding her with great tenderness.
"Please," Kathleen Fane said, "I think it's time you both leave."
While there was no malice in the woman's tone, there was certainly steel. This was not a request; it was an absolute command.
"I'm sorry if I made you mad back there."
"You got pretty intense."
"I just had to know about his stomach."
"I got the message."
"I'm sorry."
"I was just concerned about Marie."
Emily Lindstrom's voice softened. "The poor girl. She'll probably never really get over it."
>
***
Chris was headed back to the station. The harsh wind was blowing litter across the lighted drive of a service station. At a 7-Eleven people were getting knocked around by the same wind as they tried to run to their cars. For a moment Chris felt snug and warm inside her car, even if it was rocking slightly with every other gust.
And that was when, over the rock station that Chris was playing low in the background, they first heard about the killings at Hastings House.
"Two, perhaps as many as three employees of the mental facility have been killed tonight. This is all the information we have right now. But please stay tuned. We'll be updating this story every few minutes."
"To repeat-"
Emily snapped off the radio. "He went back to the hospital."
"But why? I thought he was trying to escape."
"There's only one reason I can think of."
"What's that?"
Emily Lindstrom said, "He wants to get into the tower."
***
For the second time tonight, O'Sullivan saw a section of the city turned into a kind of hell by the lights of emergency vehicles.
Hastings House had always had a quiet dignity for O'Sullivan-if you ever went crazy, this was clearly the place for them to take you-but tonight the dignity was being trampled by cops and reporters and onlookers roaming around the grounds, and by patients standing in heavily barred windows.
From the way the officials were running around, it was clear that they had no idea where Dobyns was.
Near the rear, at the entrance to the underground parking garage, an ambulance attendant was just closing the back doors on his boxy vehicle, three bodies having been set inside five minutes ago.
"Hey, O'Sullivan."
A cop named Schultz came up. In his grey suit and fashionably greasy hair (what was with everybody wanting to look like Jerry Lewis all of a sudden?), Schultz looked to be on the same diet O'Sullivan was-pancakes and malts.
"Nice gut you've got there," Schultz said, beating him to it.
"Yeah, like I didn't notice yours or anything," O'Sullivan said.
"So I've put on a few pounds."
"A few. Right."
"I quit smoking anyway."
"I don't even have that excuse," O'Sullivan said.
The four redbrick buildings that made up the new section of I lastings House had always reminded O'Sullivan of the small liberal arts college he'd gone to, spending four and a half years of wasted time pleading with WASP princesses for just a glimpse of the treasure between their legs.
"The way I get it," Schultz said, "the guy who stiffed the three staffers in the garage is the same guy who escaped from here the other night. Why the hell would he want to come back here?"
O'Sullivan shrugged. "You think he's still here?"
"Probably. There are a lot of places to hide."
"Why wouldn't he run away?"
"The police shrink thinks he probably came back here to turn himself in but then one of the guards spooked him so he killed these three guys."
O'Sullivan felt no temptation whatsoever to mention anything about cults or serpents that slithered inside the human body.
Schultz would never let him forget it.
"You still going out with Candy?" O'Sullivan said.
"Huh-uh."
"How come?"
"Let's just say that Candy wasn't exactly the most faithful woman I've ever known."
"I hear you. That's how my first wife was. I'm just glad she was hittin' on all these guys before AIDS showed up."
Somebody shouted Schultz's name. Then he was gone and O'Sullivan was thinking of what Schultz had said about Dobyns: He was probably still around here somewhere.
For the first time that evening O'Sullivan raised his eyes to the black sky that was streaked with misty moonlight and racing grey clouds.
***
The tower appeared medieval and almost majestic against the night sky.
As they pulled into the parking lot of Hastings House, Emily said, "I'm going up to the tower."
"What?"
"It's the only way I can convince him to turn himself over."
"But he'll kill you."
"No, he won't."
Chris shook her head. "I don't know how you can be so sure of that."
"The incantation."
Chris pulled the car into a parking space and shut off the engine. Before her, the grounds of Hastings House flashed with lights from the various emergency vehicles. Uniformed men and women with bullhorns and flashlights ran around the grounds. In one corner stood four men wearing flak jackets and holding rifles. This was obviously a SWAT team.
Their leader was talking with somebody over a walkie-talkie. The men looked very military.
"Then let me go with you," Chris said.
"No," Emily said. "I don't want you to risk your life for me." She looked at Chris with her luminous eyes and sombre beautiful face. "I need to do this for my brother, Chris, I really do."
"So you get up there and then what?"
"I ask him to come with me."
"And if he refuses?"
"He won't refuse. He's desperate. It's worth a try."
"It's so dangerous."
"If I can get him to come with me, it will save a lot of lives. The police may think they'll have an easy time of capturing him, but they won't."
Chris nodded to the SWAT team standing on the shadowy grounds in front of them. "What if they already know he's in the tower?"
"They don't. As far as they know, nobody has ever used the tower. They think it's strictly for decorative purposes."
"Emily-"
But as Chris spoke, Emily's hand was already on the door handle, pressing downward.
"I'm scared for you, Emily," Chris said.
"Don't be," Emily said. "Be happy for me. This is what I've been waiting for ever since my brother escaped from here that night."
Chris took her hand. "Just be careful."
Emily smiled her sad smile. "You be careful, too." And then she started out of the car.
"Wait a minute," Chris said.
"What?"
"I didn't think of this before. How're you going to get up into the tower?"
"My brother told me the route."
"You're sure he's up there?"
Emily smiled again. "Positive." She patted Chris's hand. "Now I've really got to be going."
***
Dobyns's hands and arms were soaked with blood as he ran up the winding stairs leading to the tower.
In any structure that has been closed to light and warmth as long as the tower had, a dankness sets in. In Dobyns's case, this meant that his sinuses erupted.
As he felt his way up the wall, wishing he could see better, wishing he did not still hear the sounds of the security men as they'd died, he began sneezing violently.
Maybe I need to buy a little Dristan tonight, he thought. Stop in at my favourite neighbourhood pharmacy and have them fix me up.
Deep within his bowels, the snake moved, turning, shifting.
Below him now, somewhere at the bottom of the stairs, he heard the wooden partition covering the window being pushed back. The window was how he got in and out of the tower. Who else knew how to slide the partition back and forth?
His eyes searched the darkness below, uselessly.
He stood absolutely still, listening.
Footsteps scraped across the sandy floor leading to the staircase that wound to the very top of the tower.
Somebody was coming for him.
He formed a mental image of policemen in dark uniforms and flak jackets. Guns ready. Coming up the steps.
But no; for some reason he knew that this person coming after him was not a police officer at all.
Someone else. Someone with a different mission entirely.
And he chose then-just at this very moment in the cold shifting dusty shadows of the tower-to sneeze.
The footsteps below stopped.
Despite al
l the external noise seeping into the place-two-way radios on emergency vehicles; cops shouting back and forth; a distant siren-something like silence imposed itself on the tower now.
He waited, wondering who was below.
He touched his stomach. Beneath his hairy belly, he could feel the snake writhing.
He started climbing the steps, higher, higher now, clear to the tower.
Below him, the other footsteps began again, too.
Soon enough, he would meet this person.
***
Marie felt unclean. Usually, as in gym class, she liked the sensation of sweating, of cleaning her body of impurities. But tonight sweating felt different, pasty and dirty as she rolled around on the couchbed, sleeping fitfully. Earlier, she'd dreamed of the killer in the bookstore, the man coming closer, closer, and Marie grasping a gun and-
The apartment was dark except for a night-light in the bathroom. Not even a television could be heard on this floor of the apartment house. No, there were just the incidental sounds that all houses made during the night-the furnace, the plumbing, windows rattling faintly in the wind.
She had been to the bathroom, peeing, every fifteen minutes since her mother had gone to bed. Marie always peed when she was anxious. She couldn't sleep. Each time she closed her eyes, she saw the face of the killer. Each time she closed her eyes, she saw him in the bookstore, the knife in his hand, slashing Richie's throat-
In the bathroom she flushed the toilet, washed her hands, and walked back to the living room. She considered turning on the television but decided it might wake her mother. And, in certain ways, her mother needed the sleep worse than she did. She had long known that, in general, she was a stronger person than her mother and had, ever since she was a young girl, felt protective toward Kathleen. Thinking of her mother now, she smiled. She was a 'good egg' (the same phrase Kathleen always used describing people she liked), lonely, frightened, fragile… and a good egg.
Marie walked over to the front window, parted the curtains a half inch, and looked down at the apartment building's parking lot.
