He backed away from her. She didn’t move, didn’t so much as twitch. She was murmuring the low, cadenced tones of a liturgical prayer. The sound went on and on and on. It was almost hypnotizing.
Evan was suddenly reminded of the lines on the security tape, the distortions that masked something terrible and true.
What’s behind this?
What am I not seeing?
What’s behind this?
What am I not seeing?
His body twitched, an abrupt jerk that forced him out of the circle of thoughts, yanked him back to the present. Back to the here and now.
As it did, another thought came.
Where’s Listings?
Sound
Evan ran down the steps of the church, hoping to see something, terrified he wouldn’t.
“Listings!”
The steps that led to the front of the church were wide and deep, the kind of thing that had been built before Los Angeles became so crowded it became too expensive to indulge in such luxuries. They swept out to the sides, broadening as they approached the sidewalk so the last stair was a good thirty feet in length.
Evan stepped off, looking up and down the street.
The church was located in the middle of a small road. Not a main thoroughfare, not even a large avenue. Just the church, a few small buildings – mostly offices.
There was no movement.
“Listings!”
His call ricocheted off the steps, bouncing up and out before being swallowed by the night. No one answered. No one moved.
Maybe she’s still somewhere in the church.
Unlikely, but he turned to run back up the steps again.
The door of the church – only visible from this angle as a short sliver of brown that seemed to sit atop the highest stair – slid shut. Evan heard it thunk solidly.
He knew from his aunt that this meant they must have closed for the night. No more mass, no more people coming in to pray or contemplate in the hopes of finding divine answers to mortal problems.
He ran the last twenty steps. It seemed to take far too long. He hammered on the door with the flat of his palm, then with the fleshy part of his fist. The door was solid, old. His hand did little more than make a wet slap. It sounded like he was beating on the side of a rock, and probably wasn’t heard.
“Open up!”
He backed up as he shouted, looking around for another way in or for sign of his partner. Seeing neither.
His hand went in his pocket as he shouted, “Listings!” again. He pulled out his cell. Dialed Listings’ number.
One ring.
Two.
Three.
It picked up.
“Oh, thank God –“
“We’re sorry,” said the oh-so-pleasant and oh-so-false voice. “The number you are trying to reach is busy or no longer in service. Please hang up and try –“
He turned the phone off and shoved it in his pocket as he ran. “Listings!”
His legs pumped fast and hard. He was barely aware of which way he chose to run. Sweat poured down his brow, his neck, pooled at the small of his back.
Sweat….
And he is there again. Looking at Val, writhing under her lover. Smiling at him.
He stumbles back. Away from what he sees. Away from the sounds. Away from her smile.
He trips back into the hall. His knees wobble, his feet mix up in each other and he falls. His hands fly out, but he is moving too fast in his panic, the world has been pulled out from under him far too quickly to stop his tumble into Hell.
He hits his head on the wall opposite the bedroom. The bedroom he and Val shared for so long. The bedroom he thought of not as his or hers but theirs.
The blow to his head makes everything shift, makes everything around him desaturate from lively colors to dead grays, as though he has been thrown back to pre-Oz Kansas. Certainly no twister could have shattered his world so thoroughly.
He is on the floor. He must have blacked out. He gets back up. Goes back through the doorway.
Val is still there. Still in the bed, still smiling.
Her lover is gone. The sliding door that leads to their small backyard is open.
Evan hears birds chirping. He wishes he could poison them all for daring to sing on this day.
Val’s smile doesn’t falter. Not even as she speaks. “You had to find out sooner or later,” she says, and her voice holds no remorse, no guilt. She pulls the sheets up to cover herself, but it is not modesty. He knows that. She simply has no more need to pretend he has any right to look at her.
“Close the door on the way out.”
Evan screams.
And, screaming…
… was back on the street. Still running, still hoping to find the one person he had left.
“Listings!” he shouted again. His voice sounded loud in the night, but the night did not answer him. It simply swallowed scream, took it into itself and hid it away among the many other cries that no doubt had been uttered in darkness, the many other secrets it no doubt kept.
Evan’s phone rang.
He stopped running so fast he felt like his skeleton might just catapult right out of him, leaving him a slowly collapsing pile of meat on the sidewalk. No bones emerged, though, only his cell as he fumbled it out of his pocket.
The caller ID said one word: “Angela.”
He accepted the call as the phone started to chirp again, shouting, “Listings!” before the phone was even to his mouth.
Then he felt sick inside as he heard the voice of madness on the other end of the line. “Sorry, just me,” said the killer.
“Where’s Listings?” Evan tried to push down the terror and sound strong. “You touch her and –“
“Shhh.” The killer’s voice was utterly unfazed. “Shhhhhh….” Evan wanted to keep shouting, but didn’t know where he could go with his threat. Everything Tuyen had said about ghosts of vengeance and needing to speak their names and everything else had been straight-up insane. It didn’t just fly in the face of the rational processes Evan had devoted his life to, it sucker punched them in a dark alley and then rifled through their pockets for the hell of it.
And still, he believed what she’d said. Believed it all.
“I’m going to return her to you,” said the killer. Evan tried not to speak, worried that anything he said would provide leverage the killer could use against him or Listings. “Please go to the alley.”
Evan looked to his right. There was an alley there, a black corridor into the darkest parts of the night.
“Yep, that’s the one,” said the killer.
Evan walked toward it. Slowly. Looking around, trying to spot his enemy. “Where are you?” he said as he stepped into the alley.
It wasn’t a blind alley, no dead end like the alley behind Mystix. Nor was it full of litter and graffiti. Perhaps the presence of the church had exerted a calming influence on the otherwise excitable gangs in this area. Maybe it was simply an area that had gotten lucky so far, but would be vandalized in due course. Maybe it was something else, some unnamed force keeping this place clean and safe from defacement.
Whichever it was, the only thing on the blank walls that shot up on either side of Evan were fire escapes. Each building had one, clinging to its side like a skeletal snake, boney bodies writhing up to the twin roofs, iron ribs jutting darkly from the cement walls.
“Where are you?” Evan said again.
“Does it matter?”
Evan kept moving. His head swiveled back and forth, up and down. He let nothing pass by his notice.
But there was nothing to see.
He was still alone. Alone now more than ever, because the bastard had his partner. Had Listings.
“Let her go.”
The night seemed suddenly silent, and beyond silent. It seemed muffled, as though the universe had inhaled and was now holding its breath. Something was going to happen.
The killer was silent as well. Not ignoring Evan
, he could somehow sense the man on the other end of the phone, could even sense the man’s smile, the confidence that drove him to some unknown and horrible destination.
Then the killer said, “I had other plans for her, but… as you wish.”
There was a short, weak scream. Then a series of thuds, clanks. Flesh on metal.
Evan looked up.
“NO!”
The darkness here was not absolute, not like the alley outside Mystix. There was enough ambient light from the street, from the city itself, that he could see the black form spinning through the air. Could see arms flung out to catch nothing at all, could see legs spasming as they hit the first level of the fire escape.
Could see Listings crash down, down, down. She hit the serpentine cage of the fire escape, bounced off and pinballed across the narrow alley to the metal snake that hung across the way. Her legs hit the skeletal railing that encircled a landing. They wrapped up for a moment and Evan heard a brittle snap but he was glad, glad because he thought she would hang there. Hanging, even hanging with a broken leg, was better than the alternative.
He ran toward the ladder for that fire escape. Thinking he could get up to her. Could save her.
Metal groaned.
Listings was silent.
She fell.
Her body hit the landing below. It spun again, arms and legs now limp, bending in too many places. She flipped over to the opposite fire escape. Hit again. Bounced back. Fell straight down this time.
The impact on the ground made almost no noise at all. Like she had used up her quota of sound on the way down. Just the tiniest of thumps, a sound that was wetter than it should have been.
Evan wished, in that moment that lasted forever, that instant when he saw his partner fall to earth like an angel cast down from Heaven’s highest parapets, that there had been noise. That the sound she made when her body hit the cement was loud enough to shatter windows and set off car alarms. Because the fact of its weakness almost seemed itself like a death sentence. Like she had used up her noise on the way down, and her last gasp of life would be represented in the low, meaty smack of impact.
Something splashed him. At first he thought Listings must have fallen in a puddle.
But no, there were no puddles in this alley. It was too clean.
No puddles.
So it wasn’t water that had flung itself against his feet, against his lower legs.
He ran to her.
Praying she was alive. Praying he could save her.
Countdown
She was only a few feet away. And yet it seemed to take a long time to get to her. So long that for a few seconds/minutes/lifetimes Evan wondered if he was dreaming. This all had that nightmare quality, that feeling every human has experienced where they are caught in the grips of sleeping terror, running forever toward a goal that can never be captured, racing through air that seems thick and finally hardens around them like concrete.
I’m dreaming.
The thought was hopeful. And the hopefulness, ironically, dashed all hope. For hope could not be found in a nightmare. Hope can only be found in the midst of true tragedy. Nightmares are defined by their overwhelming despair, which becomes a caricature of itself and so has no power upon waking. But hope felt in the face of burgeoning calamity makes the shock and horror bite all the deeper when it comes.
So Evan felt hope and, hoping, despaired.
He ran the few steps to the body. One foot fell on dry asphalt, the next splashed in a puddle that was too dark and thick to be water.
The next two were dry.
Then another splash.
Another.
His pants were bloody.
The body lay at his feet. Limbs bent and broken, shattered and crooked with too many joints.
The throat was slashed, the stomach riddled with stab wounds.
And Evan felt elation.
It’s not Listings. It’s Val!
His wife stares up at nothing, throat slashed, body punctured. The blue sheets twisted around her, a snake risen to fee on the carcass of the damned.
She twitches.
And Evan realizes.
No….
It wasn’t Val. His memory clouded, disappeared. He wasn’t looking at Val.
He was looking at his partner, his lover, his friend.
Listings spasmed again. She reached for him. Blood pooling around her, leaking from the wounds all over her body, the cuts and stabs that were exactly the same as the ones inflicted on Val.
The killer was mocking Evan with his partner’s death.
Evan knelt next to her. He didn’t expect her to say anything, not with a cut throat, but apparently the gash wasn’t deep enough to sever her windpipe or her larynx. Listings managed a few words.
“Never… never told you,” she said. Her voice was low, rough. It burbled like a brook. Lungs filling with blood, and red bubbles burst on her lips.
“Shh. Don’t talk.” Evan’s eyes filled with tears. He expected Listings to call him a pussy for that, then realized she probably couldn’t see him. She wasn’t going to be saying any of those nasty, acidic, wonderful things anymore.
“Never told you I knew. Everything. How you felt.” She hitched in a breath. Tried to cough. More bubbles burst. “I know it hurt. What Val did. But I was glad. Meant I had a chance.” She smiled a bit. Or maybe it was just a trick of the light, a hope in Evan’s heart. “More than just partners in crime.”
“Hold on, Listings.” He crushed her hand to him. “Stay with me, Angela.”
“Angela.” The smile broadened. He wasn’t imagining it. “You never called me that before.”
She died.
The smile was broad. And it was, somehow, the same smile as the one Val had worn.
He couldn’t look at it.
He closed his eyes. Kissed her forehead. Still warm. He didn’t know why that surprised him, but it did. As though the dead should cool and their memories fade in an instant. It would be better, easier.
But that wasn’t reality. Reality was a dead wife, a dead mentor and friend, and now this.
His lips lingered against her forehead. He had a moment of insanity, a terrible instant where he thought about pulling out his gun and ending it here. Blowing out his brains while still kissing the warm forehead of the woman he loved, the woman who had really loved him back.
Then he realized he had a better use for his gun.
He drew back from his partner. He could look at her now. Her smile wasn’t like Val’s. Nothing like it at all.
“You always had a chance,” he said.
His gun was in his hand. He didn’t remember drawing it. Didn’t know if he had taken it out to kill himself, or because he knew that he was going to find a way to destroy the man – or ghost, or demon, or thing – that had killed Listings.
And he didn’t care.
Evan ran for the fire escape on his right. The ladder stretched nearly to the ground, close enough that he didn’t even have to jump for it. He just reached up and began climbing. Hand over hand, barely hampered by the gun that he held.
First landing. A few steps, a sharp turn. Then he was on the steps, the iron ribs of the snake. He sprinted up the stairs, the treads clanking underfoot as he ran. He was panting by the end of the second flight. By the third his heart felt like it might explode.
He pushed himself faster. Turn, turn, turn. He circled up the spiraling steps, not looking up, not daring to look down. For a moment the stairs were all that was, like he was a hamster in a wheel, a creature that had fallen into a life-sized Mobius strip.
Then the stairs ended.
Up a short ladder, only ten rungs.
His mind returned enough that he stopped for an instant before poking his head over the rooftop.
What if the killer was just waiting for this? Waiting for Evan to poke his dumb head over the edge? Waiting to shoot him or bludgeon him or stab him? There was no way he could have missed the sound of Evan rushing up the steps.
He heard nothing. Nothing but himself. Alone in a world composed only of grief and the shattered body of his friend. Just him and memory, and that was too terrible to be borne.
So he went over. Kill or die, he couldn’t stand this any longer.
Onto the roof.
The tar paper roof was coated with pebbles that crackled under his feet. It sounded like breaking bones, like the shattering of hundreds of femurs as they hung for an instant on metal railings.
He turned left and right.
Crackle, crackle.
His gun swung in front of him, leading the way, searching for the killer as much as Evan was. He could feel it, hungry for the murderer’s life.
The roof was empty.
There were a few small air intakes with fans that spun in the night, aluminum blades glinting in the reflected lights of the city. A pipe or two that might house electrical conduits. Nothing large enough for a small dog to hide behind, let alone a man. There didn’t even seem to be a roof access door – probably the reason the fire escape was so easy to get onto.
He was alone.
Only one way up or down: the way he had taken. No other way to get here, and no one had passed him, but he was alone.
Evan screamed. Rage, frustration, terror, grief. They all poured out of him in a primal cry that flew to the night sky and disappeared and left him still alone.
He screamed again, and again.
Then heard something.
Tinny, tiny laughter.
He realized that he had never turned off the cell phone. It was in his pocket. He pulled it out, jammed it against his jaw and his ear so hard that he knew he’d have a bruise there later.
The killer was laughing on the other end of the line. Giggling like a child on Christmas morning… but a terrible Christmas, and a terrible child. A kid who delighted in unwrapping his presents to find out what kind of body each box held.
“I’m not there, Evan,” he said. “Not anywhere, it seems. But everywhere, all the same.”
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