He heard Julie rattle her keys. She slipped one into the doorknob. It turned soundlessly, and then he heard nothing.
Was she gone? Was she? He dared to look back.
She had tossed her things inside and was on her knees gathering together the junked roses. She looked misty-eyed and puzzled. Peyton felt a great surge of sorrow for her—and the cold certainty that he had made her life pure hell these last weeks.
When she was done, she went inside and closed the door. The latch clicked softly, and their joyful reunion had changed from something wonderful to something strange and nearly sickening. Peyton came to the end of the corridor and stopped at the window there, looking out over the city without seeing. He propped his hands on the sill and leaned tiredly forward until his nose touched the glass. His breath fogged it immediately. Proof, at least, that though he was dead inside, he was still alive and kicking on the outside. The battle was not over, never would be.
He pushed away and started to walk to the elevator, defeated. Julie’s door wafted open and she stepped out, no more briefcase, no more manila folders and coat. She had wrapped the stems of the roses together in tissue paper, salvaging them from what Peyton might have done to them, given enough time. Peyton flattened himself against a wall, thinking in desperation that he had almost walked into her, and what a neat surprise that would have been. They both would have screamed.
She went into the elevator. He saw her punch the control panel. The doors slid shut and she was gone.
He wiped a hand across his forehead in force of habit from the years when he had had real skin that could sweat. Feeling empty, he went to the elevator and tapped the down button, wanting only to get back to his crumbling hovel and get some sleep. Julie had been almost close enough to touch but he had turned chicken. To his inner list of physical and personality flaws he added a new crime: cowardice.
The elevator climbed back up and opened for him. He punched the L and began the trip to earth in this metal sepulcher made by Otis. The elevator stopped at the sixth floor and a fat lady got in. She gave him a glance and did not scream.
Whoop-de-doo, he thought tiredly. The only monster here is inside me, and he is named Darkman.
The elevator bottomed out and opened. The fat lady hustled away. Peyton strolled to the exit with his hands in his pockets, his face expressionless. Would he have more courage tomorrow? What if his anger ballooned out of control? Would he hurt her?
Please, no. He could not bear to hurt her.
He frowned as he went out onto the noisy street. Is that why he had not showed himself today? For fear of hurting her? What—mentally or physically?
Ah, stop asking yourself unanswerable questions. Get the hell home and curl up with some nice fiberglass.
He turned. Julie was at the curb, waiting for a slowpoke to pay the driver and free the cab for her. He did, and Peyton looked on, too stunned to move. She leaned inside and Peyton heard her tell the cabbie to take her to Eastlawn Cemetery.
And then she was gone, whisked away in a battered old Checker while Peyton stood with his mouth hanging open and his shoulders drooping.
Eastlawn Cemetery? Who was buried there whom she had known? Her folks were still alive, as far as he knew. Anyway, they lived in Chicago and had no business being buried here.
He puzzled for a few seconds while people surged past, most of them looking annoyed at this moody man who was blocking pedestrian traffic. Peyton jerked as the realization stung him. He was buried there. Probably Yakky, too, but Julie scarcely knew him.
A cab drew up and disgorged a passenger. The cabbie leaned over and looked up at Peyton quizzically.
Peyton got inside. “Where will it be?” the driver asked, looking at him in the mirror.
“Eastlawn Cemetery.” He pointed. “Just follow that cab.”
The cabbie snorted. “You ought to hire a new writer, bud. That stuff went out with Bogart.” He chuckled, liking this.
Peyton didn’t smile. “Just hit the road, will you?”
“Hit the road? Man, you are a scream.”
He took off, laughing heartily. Peyton felt like strangling him.
The cemetery was on the north side, eleven dollars’ worth of cab time. Peyton paid the happy fellow and hoped he would be in the middle of a ten-car pileup on the way back. Then he walked under the rusted steel arch and into the broad expanse of parched grass and leaning tombstones that was Eastlawn, a cemetery so unkempt and bedraggled that no one was dying to get in. Arf-arf, Peyton thought with dismal humor, and looked for Julie.
He saw her a distance ahead, stepping between the graves with the roses held high, obviously looking for something not easy to find. He ducked behind a dead tree and watched her until she disappeared over a rise. Slinking like a criminal, he made his way to the hilltop and hid behind a tall gravestone.
She had found her target and was on her knees. She laid the roses on the hump of dirt and tired sod that was capped only with a small stone marker. She ducked her head and he heard her sob.
He swallowed, not wanting to see her like this. I did this, he thought, not for the first time. Why didn’t I call her from the hospital? Why have I been hiding?
It was too easy to answer. How do you come back into a loved one’s life with your face burned off and your hands baked to cinders? One look at the real him and she would run in terror.
He checked the stopwatch. Nine minutes left. That wasn’t enough time. He needed to go home and make a new batch, maybe make an appearance later tonight.
Okay, then. Tonight it is.
He turned to slink away when Julie tilted her head back and howled. The eerie sound made gooseflesh break out on his back. He turned again. She looked ready to collapse. It came to him what she had howled. A name, one name.
Peyton.
So it was his grave. What they had found to bury was something he would never know. He stood, in full view if she would turn around, his common sense battling with his desire that Julie’s suffering be erased. It was when she pressed her face to the ground, doubled over with agony, that he made the decision.
He stepped away from the tombstone and walked toward her, his heart booming thunderously. He tried to say her name, but all traces of saliva had evaporated from his mouth and throat, leaving him speechless. He cleared his throat and tried again.
“Julie!”
She straightened, turned, and looked at him. The color washed out of her face, which was puffy from crying. Her eyes grew huge. She lurched to her feet, shaking her head in silent denial. Peyton came close enough to touch her.
“You’re . . . dead,” she hissed, backing away. A wisp of hair was stuck to her wet cheek. Peyton moved to brush it aside, and she jumped like a cat, keeping her distance.
“Julie,” Peyton said, “it’s all right. It’s me, really me.”
She shook her head, seeming mesmerized. “No. You can’t be.”
“It was all a terrible mistake, sweetheart. I survived the explosion. I was in a coma. I was badly injured but not killed.”
Her eyes became narrow and suspicious. This was not the reception he had envisioned. “You look the same,” she said thickly. “You look fine.”
“I am the same,” he said, nearly pleading. “God, Julie, give me a hug!”
She came to him, moving slowly. He saw her nostrils flare slightly. “You smell like Peyton,” she said dazedly, and pressed herself to him. He enfolded her in his arms, nearly weeping, wanting her to take him and protect him and make all the terror and misery go away.
“I needed to see you,” he whispered as a breeze made her hair play against his face. He could not feel it. “I need to know if things could be the same between us. The same as before.”
She hugged him fiercely. “Of course they can. But I don’t really understand, Peyton. Where were you?”
He drew back slightly. “I’d like to tell you, tell you everything. But I need more time, a way to figure this thing out.”
“What is there to fi
gure out?” she said, smiling. “You’re back and you’re all right. What else matters?”
He drew fully away and looked at his feet. “There’s some . . . things . . . you need to know. I’m not the same as I used to be.”
“But you—”
He jerked suddenly. A blister had formed on his right cheek. He heard a thin snap as it ruptured. A tiny puff of smoke rose at the edge of his vision, and he slapped a hand over the blister, appalled. His hands were getting mushy, and starting to smell. Why couldn’t the stupid skin last forever?
“Are you okay, Peyton? You look sick. What happened to your teeth?”
“Nothing,” he lied, keeping his face turned. Blisters were beginning to pebble up on his left hand.
She hugged him again. “Hold me, darling, and never let go. I want you to hold me forever.”
She raised her face, eyes drifting closed, awaiting a kiss. What if she smelled his lipstick? What if his lips fell off or stuck to her mouth? Peyton disentangled himself from her arms, nearly faint with horror. His hands and his face were about to self-destruct in full view of Julie. It would be too horrible for her to bear. He wildly looked around, needing a private place where Darkman could mutate unseen.
“Peyton?” she said, puzzled.
He turned and bolted for a field of scrub brush and thick trees some two hundred yards away. Julie screamed at him to come back. He kept a hand on his cheek. The skin was running like thick candle wax, emitting that terrible odor that was burned hair and rotting flesh. When he crossed the graveyard boundary and was safely in the dark shadows of the trees, he looked back to see what had become of Julie.
She had followed him a short distance. Now she was on her knees again, screaming for him. He watched her, torn with helpless despair.
She finally got up and left, staggering past gravestones gone blank with age, obviously crying, obviously bewildered. By the time she had disappeared behind the hill, Peyton’s face had sloughed off and he was Darkman again, and none too happy about it. Getting angry, as a matter of fact. Very angry.
He let the rage take over, let it blot out reason, and for a very long time he howled and screeched while unearthing weeds in a frenzy of destruction.
And when it was dark, he went home, using back streets and alleys, his face bare and horrible. He only stayed there long enough to wrap himself with fresh gauze and pick up the cassette recorder Millings had supplied.
It was time for Darkman to take care of business.
24
Eavesdropper
DARKMAN WAS AT the point where it was getting necessary to purchase a car, that or walk his feet off. The house belonging to Mr. Robert G. Durant, local hood and graduate of a correspondence course in taxidermy from a dubious outfit called the Institute of Wildlife Restructure, was so far away that Darkman finally nabbed a taxi on the dark streets and had himself driven to within a block of the address Rick had said was Durant’s street and number. The cabdriver had not said a word until it came time to pay, letting it suffice to stare at him in the mirror with huge eyes. Darkman tipped him two bucks. He was a softy for terrified people.
Durant lived in a very fashionable suburb that called itself Briar Wood Estates. His house had not been on this earth three years ago. In order to have it built he doubtless paid a very huge sum of money. For him it couldn’t have been much of a financial burden. As the underworld king of the city he handled more money every day than most bankers.
When the taxi let him out, Darkman hurried away from the glow of the streetlight above him, needing shadow. He darted across someone’s lawn, managing to wake up the family pooch, and set it yapping. The houses here were all dark. It was nearing three o’clock in the A.M., but Durant’s house had a single window lighted. Darkman fought his way through a thick row of hedges to reach Durant’s backyard.
A shadow was moving in the room. Darkman blessed the gods of fate for this bit of good news. He had been prepared to camp overnight and catch him in the morning. Right now was better. He flopped down on the cold, damp grass, and low-crawled military-style to the window and the rectangle of darkness beneath it. Already he could hear Durant speaking. Was he married, chatting with the wife? Perhaps enjoying a late-night brandy with a friend? It didn’t matter one bit.
He put the tape recorder on the ground and tried to make sense of it in the dark. It had five square push-down buttons, no doubt eject, fast forward, rewind, play, and record. The cassette inside was a new Memorex, fully rewound. The player had both a built-in microphone and an external one. But which frigging button was record?
He cursed his stupidity for not having examined it before. A match would be handy now, or a penlight, but he had neither. The only light available was inside the house.
He thought that perhaps he should break in and simply kill Durant by turning his criminal head in a swift three-sixty, perhaps gouge out his eyes first and slice off his tongue. Hell, with a little lighter fluid he could be made to burn. Slowly. From the feet up, like Joan of Arc at the stake. Or electrocution, don’t forget that. That would be even more fun to watch. He deserved it, yes?
Darkman’s heart was already beating too fast as he envisioned Durant’s upcoming destruction. Broken neck, no eyes left, no tongue, feet burning while he shrieked and whooped and his brain oozed out his eyeholes, jittering helplessly while a hundred and twenty volts baked him alive. He did indeed deserve whatever Darkman chose to give him.
The rage was there again suddenly, plodding through his brain like a trusted plow horse, digging up chunks of gray brain matter with its red-hot steel plow, furrowing his mind and leaving runners of blood and crescent hoofprints filled with the acid of slow insanity. Darkman saw himself performing these atrocities on Durant; screw the tape recorder, screw the methodical plan he had devised, just jump on in and make some blood flow.
His hands dug up clots of grass and moist dirt, turning his bandages there into strange paws. He pounded the ground, barely able to suppress a bellow of white-hot rage while the toes of his shoes rattled out a furious drumroll on the lawn. Durant could not be killed enough; every method was too easy. Now he could see Durant strapped to a tree while the inhuman creature that was Darkman slowly carved his flesh with a straight razor and peeled it from his body like the husk from an ear of corn. Salt, then, a bucket of salt to throw on him and rub in with a wire brush while he drooled with pain, screamed in an agony more exquisite than anyone ever had experienced before. And then alcohol, don’t leave that out of this satisfying little movie. Boiling hot alcohol, pails full of it to splash on the naked red muscle. More salt. More alcohol. Drano in the eyes, gunpowder in the mouth, a ten-foot match through the nose to light the explosion.
Darkman got to his feet, his eyes burning with animal hate, his body trembling with the desire to kill—and kill again. He came fully into the light cast through the window and saw Durant at his desk, a phone held to one ear, a cigar idling in an ashtray while smoke rose up in silver strings.
The rage dimmed a bit. Darkman dropped back down, breathing hard, his real skin pasty with sweat. Adhere to the plan, he told himself with a demanding mental voice. You are a scientist, you are in control, you have plotted and planned for too long to ruin it now. Durant will meet his end but only when the time is right.
The pounding of blood in his ears lessened. He forced himself to breathe easier. No rush to kill, promises to keep. After the incident with the three punks he had sworn he would not go berserk again. But that morning seemed faded and old now, ready to be forgotten. The rage he had felt then was nothing compared to today’s.
So it was getting worse, this disease of the mind. Somehow it seemed oddly sexual, a desire that needed to be fulfilled and was only under minimal control. He imagined it must be the way a rapist feels as he cruises the street looking for victims. It was a lust, an inner hunger, a desire too powerful to ignore.
He needed blood, guts, screams, terror. He was a hollow shell without it. He desired it as much as he was revo
lted by it.
Darkman was becoming a monster. Peyton Westlake was about to sign off the air forever.
No, it won’t happen, I can control it, I am master of it. I am a stronger and better man than any other currently alive. Durant did not kill me. He invented me. He was Viktor Frankenstein, and Darkman was the monster he had created.
A tiny voice informed him that he was going loony. He pounded his head with his padded fists, needing to scream.
Durant chatted on, his voice muffled and serene. Darkman stopped hitting himself and listened.
“Okay, Rudy . . .”
Martinez!
“. . . go ahead and plan to meet me tomorrow. Are you certain Mr. Fong won’t change his mind?”
Darkman thumbed the buttons of the recorder. One clicked down and sprang back. Had to be record. Only one button worked now, and that was play, so he pressed both buttons at once and let it play, even though it wasn’t playing at all but recording. He hoped his knowledge of eavesdropping was adequate. He held the remote mike against the window ledge.
Durant was sighing. “All right, then, we’ll just have to see him tomorrow and convince him of the error of his ways. After losing that bundle to Rick and Pauly I don’t feel like getting fleeced again. If Mr. Fong doesn’t like it, he gets to be number seventeen in my collection.”
Darkman imitated a frown. Collection?
“I’ll meet you at nine. Yeah, Fong’s place. We’ll give him a fortune cookie he won’t forget.”
He was silent for a moment. Then: “That would be . . . just fine.”
He hung up. Darkman raised himself slowly, interested in this collection business but doubting that it mattered.
Durant was still sitting at his desk, turning lazily back and forth on his office chair. He picked up a rolled-up white cloth from the blotter and unfurled it, revealing some kind of short, pale cigar. He began brushing it with something from a small can on his desk, using a minuscule paintbrush.
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