by Danny Tobey
In that dim glow, I saw the figure, ten yards away, cloaked and hooded, staring at me.
He was tall. There was a slow heaving in his shoulders, a calm low breathing.
He took a step toward me, then paused.
I couldn’t see his face. He said nothing, made no noise.
He took another step forward.
I willed my legs to move. They wouldn’t.
I want to see his face, a crazy voice inside me offered.
Another step. Deliberate. Methodical.
Move, I hissed to myself.
Nothing. Glue legs. Useless, wet, and dead.
The steps came faster then, the stride long and precise. Each step smacking into the thin stream under our feet.
Move. Move!
Now he was charging me.
Without stopping he reached a hand into his cloak, and it came out a moment later with a metallic ping. When his hand returned to his side, there was a long blade pointing down from it.
I moved.
My legs popped out of their paralysis. I took a few steps backward and then turned and ran like hell.
Every step splashed. The water, the stone, the slits of light, it felt like a tomb, and I wondered if I was a ghost who hadn’t gotten the memo yet. My side was screaming—one of those “stitches” you get in high school gym from switching between walking and running. A voice, low and seductive, whispered in my head: You could just stop. It won’t hurt. Now or later. Come on, it’s easy.
I didn’t stop. I pushed through the stitch and it went away. But the hooded man was closer. I don’t know if my legs were giving out or if he was warming up, but I heard his splashing steps faster and nearer. His blade must’ve scratched the wall—I heard a ching! Was he raising it? Was that the sound of the blade up over his head? As I ran, what kept coming into my head was an image of Sarah, standing in that shaft of light at the top of her stairs, her eyes brilliant and hazel brown, almost gold, just after she’d been crying. I wanted to see her again. That’s all I knew. I had to get out of this tunnel. In a straight chase, he would catch me.
The brain is an amazing thing. It wants to live. You know that garbage about how we use only ten percent? Well, I think that other ninety is roped off for moments like this. I heard everything, saw everything. I ran past a gutter and saw the water running into it, and just above, too minor to be noticed by a ten percent brain, I saw the small painting of two eyes on the bricks over the drain. That drain led somewhere. And somewhere was better than here, because I was about to die.
I stopped on a dime and threw myself backward, my hurt leg screaming, aiming low for his ankles. It was a direct hit and he went forward over me, his cloak whipping across my face. It smelled musty. I dove toward the drain, kept my head down, and grabbed the inside and pulled myself through.
I fell into a crawl space, deep in water. There was a ladder, and I took it up. I pulled off a panel and threw it hard down into the shaft, onto the head of the figure who was pulling himself through the gutter below. Light poured out through the opening behind the panel, and I dove into it.
My hand came down on a wall to steady myself, and I felt a searing pain. It was a hot water pipe. I was back in the steam tunnels. I took off down the hall.
Would it have been too much to ask that the panel—not heavy but not light either—might have stunned the person when I slammed it down the shaft onto his head? Knocked him out cold? But it hadn’t. As if in slow motion, I saw his long pointed hood come through the panel into the tunnel. Then his spindly arms unfolded like spider legs and bootstrapped his long body through. The knees unfolded into the hall and he was at full height.
In the light, I could finally see him. A pointed hood and scarlet robes. His face hidden behind a crude mask carved out of wood. Pointed bark teeth, like some hungry demon. Rough triangular cheeks. The wood painted stark white, with streaks of orange and purple around the eyes and mouth, like an eighty-year-old whore out for one last john.
The Puppet Man, I thought.
Then ping, and the blade was back at his side, pointing down.
He started the relentless walk toward my execution.
I wanted daylight. I cut right and left, found ladders and took them up, and when I couldn’t find a single damn open door I finally saw a panel like the one Humpty had shown me. I pried it off and dove into a smaller tunnel that seemed to slope up. I took it until it leveled out and just kept going, and my heart sank, just absolutely broke, when I saw the dead end ahead.
I spun around to backtrack, and he was there. I saw his bright mask at the far end of the tunnel.
There was nowhere to go.
I turned on my back, eyes on him, and started sliding myself backward. If he came close, at least I could kick at his face, maybe smack that wooden mask into whatever soft or skeletal nose was hiding behind it. But I knew that was crazy when I saw the reach of his long thin arm extending that blade toward me. My leg was no match—it would only make a nice little shrimp on the skewer.
I had to stay out of range. I kept sliding backward, gaining speed. The wall was coming closer behind me but what could I do? That knife was hideous—long and covered with markings. He was gaining on me. It slashed closer and closer. I didn’t think. I just slid faster and faster and let the wall come. The blade was so close—it slashed my shirt. I went faster, faster, faster—knew the wall was seconds away and maybe God at least I’d knock myself unconscious before the end and the pain and then I felt the wall slam into me, an instant of explosion and tearing and then I felt cold air sweep around me and I was falling, falling through the air and then there was a great explosion below me, a mushroom cloud of wood and dust and a terrible cracking, stripping noise.
I saw a starburst of yellow flashes as my head hit something and then my vision dimmed and cleared. I looked on either side of me and saw that a long wooden table had broken my fall and exploded under me. I was in a dining hall of some kind, long rows of oak tables in a vast room. I looked above me and saw a wall of hundreds of portraits—dozens and dozens of oil paintings of old white men. And in the center, high above me, was one empty frame, the shreds of a portrait flowering out from the edges. Leaning from the empty portrait was the Puppet Man, clutching the frame and peering out, the blade still in his hand, the face still masked, blank and demonic. He seemed to be sizing up the jump. He turned his dark eyes right at me, and I felt the hollowness sweep through me. Then he disappeared back into the frame.
I stood up, slow and shaky, and limped out of the dining hall as fast as I could, out the exit and into a quiet campus that was just starting to wake up. There was a dim strip of blue on the horizon, under a purple sky. I had no doubt that in half an hour, a crowd of students would marvel at the soon-to-be-legendary Smashed Table Prank and wonder which fraternity had the balls to pull it off.
And I had no doubt that above them, the frame would not be empty—in half an hour, there would once again be a perfect wall of unbroken portraits.
27
When I limped into the motel room, Sarah was sitting on the bed. She had just showered; her hair was wet, and her body was wrapped in a towel. Her eyes were red. When she saw me, she said, “Oh thank God,” and ran to hug me. I squeezed her hard and buried my nose in her hair. I breathed in deep. She stepped back and looked me over.
“I thought something happened to you.”
“I’m okay.”
“Are you hurt?”
“I don’t know. My leg, maybe. I think it’s all right.” I looked around the room. “Where’s Miles?”
“We wrote everything down while you were gone. Just in case you didn’t . . .” A guilty look crossed her face. “It was Miles’s idea . . .” She let the subject die, but I still felt a shiver. “He went to make copies. Come over here. Let me see.”
She led me to the bed. Without a word, she sat me down and unbuckled my belt. She slid my pants down and pulled them off. She moved with the precision of a doctor, and it wasn’t awkward or embarra
ssing. She sat down on the bed next to me.
“Lean back,” she said.
She examined my leg, pressing her fingers along different lines and spots that seemed to have meaning to her. Each time, she asked if it hurt, and when I said yes or no, she’d nod. It was somewhere between professional and delicate—each mechanical touch ended with a slight linger; once or twice, almost a caress. I closed my eyes and focused on her fingers moving up and down my leg, bending it, tracing on the inside of my thigh.
She paused, leaving the tips of her fingers just over my hip.
“It’s bruised,” she said quietly. “Nothing’s broken or sprained.”
“Oh. Good.”
“Good,” she whispered.
My lack of pants suddenly seemed more awkward. They were sitting on the other side of the bed, behind her. I reached for them, but I think she thought I was reaching for her. She took my hand and put it on the towel over her breast. She put her other hand in my hair and pulled me in and kissed me. Her lips were soft, still damp from the shower. They opened and I felt the soft hint of her tongue. She pulled back and looked at me.
“I was worried about you,” she said.
I tried to say something, something that had been bothering me, but I couldn’t get it out. Her eyes moved over my face, reading it. I put my hand on her chin and held her gaze right at me.
“Sarah, when I was in the tunnels, I realized something.”
“What?”
I told her that tonight, for the first time in my life, I understood what it meant to be afraid of death. I’d lost people I loved before, but all that did was let me understand loss. Death had still been a concept, nothing more. It was impossible to feel that it had anything to do with me. Once, a year ago, I was looking in the mirror and saw my first gray hair. I pulled it out and examined it. It wasn’t fear exactly, what I’d felt then. It was like someone had plucked a string deep in my abdomen, an unsteady vibration in my body. But this, tonight—this was a million times stronger. Now, I understood what my dad had tried to tell me about being fifty: I’d had an acute blast of the dull, chronic terror of real age.
And as a result, for the first time I understood the situation we were in. What we represented to the white-haired members of the V&D, waiting in line for their chance to live on. We represented death.
“Sarah, they’re never going to stop hunting us.”
She gave me a stern look.
“Yes they will. We’re going to stop them.”
“We are?”
“We are.”
She took my face in her hands.
“Do you know why? Because I know what I want. And they’re in my way.”
There was real power, a force in her words. She stood and took the bottom of my shirt in her hands. She pulled it over my head and dropped it on the floor. Then she reached to the corner of her towel tucked above her breast and tugged, letting it fall in one fluid movement. She stood a foot away. I looked at her full curves. I felt the heat coming off her skin. She pressed my face into her stomach.
I looked up at her.
“I’ve never done this before,” I said.
She arched an eyebrow. I started to explain, but she put a finger over my mouth.
“I know, I know. You lived with your parents in college.” She grinned. “You’re a smart guy. You’ll figure it out.”
• • •
Later, she smiled at me with her head propped on her hand.
“Do you think it’s possible?” she asked me.
“What?”
“Possession. Stealing someone’s body.”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
She shrugged.
“I had this patient once. A nice old man. He had a stroke. Every morning, I’d walk into his room and have a totally normal conversation with him. Then I’d point at his right hand and say, ‘Whose hand is that?’ And he’d say, in a completely casual voice, ‘I don’t know.’
“‘Well,’ I’d ask him, ‘it’s connected to this wrist, isn’t it?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘And that wrist is connected to this arm, right?’
“‘Right.’
“‘And this arm is connected to your shoulder, isn’t it?’
“‘Uh-huh.’
“‘So whose arm is it?’
“‘I don’t know,’ he’d say. ‘Is it yours?’”
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“I’ve seen patients with multiple personalities. People who smell colors and taste sounds. What I’m trying to say is, we don’t know anything about the brain. Not really. All our technology, all our research, we’re just scratching the surface. It’s still basically a black box. So, yes, I think it’s possible. But I’ve been thinking, lying here.”
“About what?”
“Jeremy, if we’re right, then they’re killing people. Strip away all the bullshit and chanting and superstition, that’s all they’re doing. It’s human sacrifice. We can’t let that go. If we do . . .” Her smile was completely gone now. “Then we deserve whatever they’ve got planned for us.”
28
By the time Miles got back, Sarah and I were dressed and sitting at the small table in the kitchenette by the window.
He barreled in with a smile on his face.
“Done!” he said, “done done done done done. Twelve copies, stamped, addressed, ready to go . . . assuming you got what you needed . . .”
He looked at me.
“I did.”
“Our theory checked out?”
I told him the story.
“Holy crap,” Miles said, rubbing his woolly beard. “Curiouser and curiouser. Call me crazy, but I love this place. The rest of the world, it’s all Starbucks and Subway. We are into some seriously macabre shit.”
“Miles.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re crazy.”
He clapped his hands.
“I owe it all to you, Jeremy! I was just a lonely grad student until you brought magic into my life! ‘Oh go do, that voodoo, that you do, so well . . .’” he sang, channeling Tony Bennett.
“Miles. What now?”
“Now? Now we go mail these bad boys. I want them mailed from out-of-town mailboxes. The more the better. Brownsville, Mason, Orange . . . Once the horses are out of the barn . . . we’re golden . . .”
Miles paused. He looked at Sarah. He looked at me. Then back and forth between us.
“Wait a second . . .”
He wrinkled his brow.
“Something’s different here . . .”
I hadn’t noticed it, but there’d been a looseness between Sarah and me at the table. I was suddenly very aware of my body language. I let my arm slide a millimeter away from hers. My legs had been crossed in her direction. I crossed them the other way. But it was too late.
“Oh,” Miles said, feigning indignation. “Oh, I see.”
“Miles . . .”
“Well I’m just very happy for you both.”
“Miles, stop it!”
He grinned ear to ear and gave us a double thumbs-up. I saw Sarah turn bright red.
“Mazel tov!” Miles burst out, which was odd since he was Episcopalian, and he did a little dance.
“Are you four years old, Miles?”
“If I were four years old,” Miles said, “I would’ve done this.”
He made his index fingers kiss passionately with a giant smooching sound. He wiggled his eyebrows up and down.
“Don’t we have a job to do?” Sarah blurted out, not quite making eye contact with Miles or anyone.
“Yes, of course!” Miles said. “Let’s take three cabs. We can cover more territory that way. And an hour from now, we’ll be home free!”
Miles divided the packages between us.
And I headed to the train station for a last trip to New York.
On board, I tried to focus on the small towns and lakes passing by, but I couldn’t keep my mind off Humpty Dumpty. It was like quicksand in
my brain: the harder I tried to fight the image of Humpty collapsed on his desk in a red pool, the deeper I sank into it. He turned on his club, and they killed him. What would they do to me?
I thought of my grandfather, the only other person I’d really known who died. After his funeral, the family entertained visitors in his small house until the last one left, and then we sat in the living room. My mom and dad were on the sofa. My little cousins played at my aunt’s feet, oblivious of the whole thing. My brother wasn’t there, of course. My grandfather’s easy chair, the one he always sat in with an old plaid bedsheet over it, was conspicuously empty. Nobody had the heart to sit in it. What was strange about that moment was that I didn’t feel the slightest bit sad. I missed my grandfather terribly, and I’d grieved up to that moment and for weeks after it; even to this day, I still sometimes received unexpected pangs that were gone as fast as they came. But in that moment, sitting in his room looking at my family, I felt inexplicably, outrageously happy—a happiness that I can describe only as a buzzing through my whole body. Happy might be the wrong word. It was giddiness. Elation. I’ve never heard anyone else describe something like it. Frankly, I’m too embarrassed to ask.
I wondered now, on the train: what would my grandfather think of me today?
I left the train and called my brother from a pay phone.
“We need to meet.”
“Why? What’s up?”
“Nothing. I just need to see you.”
“Fine. Come to my office.”
“No. Someplace random. Where no one knows you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just do it. I’ll explain everything.”
A pause on the line.
“Intersection of Clinton and Delancey. There’s a little place called Mico’s. They serve burritos that taste like sand. Is that crappy enough for you?”
“This better be good,” Mike said to me. He looked tired.
“Late night?”
“I’m in the Model-of-the-Month club.”
I took a breath. The restaurant had shades over its small windows, and we were in the back in a dark booth. The service was so surly no one had even acknowledged our existence. I had to admit, it was perfect. We finally got two coffees.
