That part is interesting, of course, but there’s a look about this guy like he really doesn’t want to be there, that it’s all against his will. He walks like his knees are being lifted by puppet strings, and until he gets to the subway he doesn’t notice much.
Then he notices plenty about the bag ladies, and he seems to have a thing about the moon. It’s always dark when he comes back, and he often stops to look at it. Or what he can see of it. It’s been cloudy lately and the clouds cover the moon most of the time. It’s little more than a sliver anyway, but he stares at it like he hates it. He keeps one hand in his pocket at all times.
Batman says he thinks he’s waiting for a clear night. The idea of the moon being bright ties in with Webb’s writings in Followers of the Razor. He says the weather report says tomorrow will be a little better, especially early morning—some clear moments with a slight threat of rain. He feels things just might break tomorrow.
I don’t know about the moon stuff, but I have a feeling he’s right—just one of those gut things. If Barrett does make his move tomorrow—if he is in fact Subway Jack—I hope we’ll be ready.
GOTHAM CITY STREETS (2 A.M., October 31)
Jack Barrett came out of his apartment and down the steps and onto the street. The tension inside him beat like a drum. He tightened his hand around the razor in his coat pocket and looked at the late night (early morning) moon. It had grown brighter and slightly thicker, and tonight the cloud cover was thin, though the forecast called for rain. The air had a mild tang to it, like the sting of a too-close shave.
He went down the street, walking briskly, not looking at much, except the moon from time to time, and then he heard a horn blare and he turned and looked at the street. There was a taxi rolling along slowly and the window on the passenger side was down. The driver leaned across the seat and called, “Looking for a ride somewhere?”
Barrett shook his head.
“Bad night for walking. Might get wet. You’ll sure get cold.”
“No money,” Barrett said, and walked faster.
The taxi kept coasting, the driver said, “Heck with it, buddy. I hate to see a man walk on night like this, and I’m not getting any action anyway. This one’s on the house if you want to get in. What am I doing anyway, huh?”
Barrett stopped walking and the taxi stopped moving Barrett looked at the moon. It was clear now, and he felt the urge swelling up inside him. The taxi would be better than grabbing the subway at Maynard Street and taking it over to Center. It was still a long walk to Maynard. He looked at the driver and said, “All right.” He got in the back of the taxi and took a sideways look at the driver. He was big, old guy with a touch of gray whisk-white hair, a rubbery mouth, and wrinkles deep enough to hide quarters in. Maybe he reminded the old guy of his grandson or something. “Take me to Center Station, if that’s okay.”
“I invited you,” the driver said, and pulled away from the curb. He glanced in the mirror at his passenger and said, “You look a little under the weather, buddy. You been sick?”
“I been sick all right,” Barrett said. “You wouldn’t believe how I been sick.”
“Another reason not to walk. Nights like this are criminal.”
“Tell me about it,” Barrett said as he leaned back and closed his fevered eyes.
“You know,” the driver said, “You got some problems, there’s guys you can see. If it’s not just physical, there’s people you can talk to.”
Barrett didn’t hear him. He was thinking of the bad things he had to do, and of the ultimate darkness on the other side, a darkness split by the shine of a razor.
“Center Station,” the driver said. “Hey, Center Station.”
Barrett opened his eyes. He didn’t feel rested. His heart was beating faster. He was hot and his head was full of fuzz. He put his hand in his pocket and felt the razor. It was warm. It was starting to sing. He knew the driver couldn’t hear it. It only gave its notes to him.
He wanted to take the razor out of his pocket and throw it away. He wanted to take it and slash someone—the driver maybe. He wanted to do all those things, yet none of them.
He said, “Thanks,” and got out of the taxi. He went down the subway steps and out of sight.
The taxi driver drove around the corner, found a spot with a few shadows, and parked there. He took off his face by grabbing his hair and ripping up. The mask came free with a sound like a grape being sucked. He ran his hand through his dark hair and over his handsome features; the mask had pinched his face some. He slid out of his jacket and pulled at the tear-away pants and kicked off his shoes. He pulled the cowl over his head. He leaned back in the seat and opened the glove compartment and took out a walkie-talkie, switched it on and said, “He’s down there, Jim. He looks rough. I tried to get him to talk. Thought he might spill his guts and I could get him to give up. No soap. You can almost feel the heat coming off this guy, and I got a feeling tonight’s the night. If he’s the one, and I think he is, and if he’s going to do it, I’ve put him right in your lap.”
“We’re waiting,” Gordon said.
Batman clipped the walkie-talkie to his belt, got out of the taxi and stood leaning against it. He wanted to go down there after Barrett, but he had made a promise to Gordon to try not to get involved. If possible, it was a promise he wanted to keep.
JAMES W. GORDON
I was dressed like a bum. I hadn’t shaved in a few days, and my hair was mussed and the overcoat I was wearing had been in police storage so long it smelled mildewy. To add to that, I had poured a little Mad Dog 20/20 over the front of it. The stink of the mildew and the wine gave me motivation for my role. Maybe I could start a new career in the movies. I could play winos. The hours couldn’t be any worse.
I put the walkie-talkie in my coat pocket and got out one of my cigars and lit it. Maybe a bum ought not to have a good, whole cigar, but you got to draw the line somewhere. It was either smoke some of my rope, or start pacing.
I thought of Batman topside, and wished suddenly we hadn’t made a deal for him to try to stay out of things so the department could claim the collar. Now and then I got the heat from the folks upstairs saying we relied on Batman too much. Could be.
Anyway, I had just gotten the cigar lit good when I saw Barrett coming down the steps, into the subway. He was weak and tired and sick-looking. He wore a ring of sweat beads around his forehead like a band of pearls. He staggered a little. He looked mostly at the ground.
I leaned against the subway wall and tried to appear drunk. He went on by me without looking up. I let him go on a ways before I took a gander and saw him walking along the edge of the subway landing. I kept thinking he might fall over onto the rails.
Still, there was something about him, a kind of mood in the air that made me reach inside my coat and touch the butt of my .38 for luck. I make a quick, soft call on the walkie-talkie, warned my people up ahead, then went on behind him at a distance, moving as smoothly and silently as I could.
Finally, I saw the bag lady pushing her shopping cart, coming about even with Barrett, humming to herself. Mertz looked good in the disguise, if a little bulky and broad-shouldered for a washed-out bag lady. He had his head down and the gray wig hung around his face and his his constant five-o’clock shadow.
I went over behind one of the concrete supports, leaned against it, spat my cigar out, and stepped on it. I peeked around the edge of my hiding place and put my hand in my coat and felt the .38, then waited.
Barrett went right on by Mertz.
Well, we had another “bag lady” plant on down a ways, and Crider had the far end cut off with three plainclothes if things got nasty. I have to admit, I was disappointed. I didn’t get out in the field much these days, and when I did, I was there because I expected something to happen. I began to think that mood I had felt in the air was old age.
I was about to step from behind the support and start walking toward Mertz when Barrett turned abruptly and started back.
&n
bsp; Mertz pretended not to notice, but I knew he had because he stopped pushing the cart and put his head inside it, burying it under the junk he had there. I assumed he had a hold of his revolver.
I was about to pull my head back out of sight when I saw something that kept me from it; something that froze my eyes to Barrett and his shadow.
His shadow jutted out long and thick to his right, and suddenly Barrett fell to the left, flat as a cardboard cutout, and the shadow rose upright to take his place—only it wasn’t a shadow anymore. It was a huge, top-hatted figure with a face as dark as tailpipe corrosion, eyes that sparked like shorted-out electrical sockets and this mouth overpacked with teeth as thin and sharp as knitting needles.
His loose coat and pants were ragged and the color of water-stained rawhide. He was wearing human heads for shoes; his ankles tapered like those of a goat and slid snuggly into the open mouths. When he walked, the heads came down on the cement with a noise like overripe fruit falling. To his left, floating flat against the cement, was a pale, pink shadow with the general appearance of Jack Barrett; it twitched in mimicry of the dark man’s moves.
The dark man’s right arm went up and I could see a flash of metal in his jug-size fist. The arm came down as Mertz jerked the revolver from the cart, turned, and fired. The dark man soaked the bullet up and kept coming. The razor flashed and I saw Mertz’s hand fly onto the subway tracks. It twitched there momentarily like a spider trying to crawl.
Then the world went hot and kaleidoscopic. There was a sensation of reality collapsing in upon itself, of a malignant universe pushing into our own, like a greased weasel attempting to navigate a tight tunnel.
Blood spurted from Mertz’s wrist, made an arc, and hung in the air like a twisting tube of red neon. Shadows fluttered damply and the light flowed as if it were boiling honey. The subway rails quivered and writhed. The support I was leaning against turned soft as a sponge. The inside of my head was on fire and I was melting. The air screeched.
Then it all went away. I felt solid again. The rails quit moving. Shadows ceased to flutter. The light was firm and bright. Blood from Mertz’s wrist shattered its neonlike tube and splattered to the cement and blossomed into rosy puddles.
The razor wove through the air like a conductor’s baton during a tense musical movement. Mertz, without time for so much as a wimper, went to pieces.
Then the dark man came for me. I pulled the revolver and snapped off six shots. It didn’t bother him. I fumbled for my speed loader and pushed in six more. I shot straight at his face now, all six, rapid fire. I could see where the loads were striking him on the cheeks and chin and below the nose, but the holes closed up rapidly as if his flesh were quicksand and my bullets were no more than a series of sad little victims who had stumbled in.
He was so close I could smell him. An odor like exhaust fumes, factory smoke, and open sewers.
The razor went up and caught the light. I ducked low, leaped, and rolled and tumbled over the subway landing, hitting my back across one of the rails. The impact sent a jolt through my spine, and momentarily I was paralyzed. I expected to look up and see the leering face of that big bastard looking over the landing at me, showing me his razor.
That didn’t happen. I felt a vibration in the rails that told me a train was coming. I managed to get up and limp to the far side, nestle myself into an indention there with my back against the wall.
I still had my .38, but I was out of shells, and besides, what did it matter? As a matter of habit, I put it in its holster.
Crider and the three plainclothes had heard the shots and they came running. They were almost on the big guy. They were firing their guns, and not having any better luck than I had.
I yelled, “Run for it,” but they didn’t hear me above the shots and the thunder of the oncoming train. Just as that top-hatted behemoth grabbed Crider by the throat and lifted him above his head and slashed at one of the plainclothes with the razor, the train jetted in front of me and all there was for me to see was its metal side and its many lighted windows—a rickity-tick-tack of glass and steel.
I pushed back as tight as I could against the wall and felt the wind from the train and heard the screech and rattle of the rails, trying not to imagine what horrors were occurring across the way.
It seemed like a century, but the train finally went by and I saw that the big man was gone from the landing. Crider and the plainclothes were spread all over it. It looked like a slaughterhouse floor. On the wall, written in large, bloody letters was: COMPLIMENTS OF SUBWAY JACK—5 MORE AND THAT MAKES 8. I DON’T JUST DO THE LADIES. Some distance away, heading topside up the steps, I could see Barrett. He was stumbling. The razor dangled from his hand as if it were a long, silver finger.
I got out the walkie-talkie and tried to make my voice firm. “Batman. He’s coming up. He’s Barrett now. It’s like that book says. It’s for real. He changes.”
“I got him, Jim.”
Under most circumstances I would have believed that. I’ve seen Batman take some weird ones. But this time . . . even Batman might not be enough.
I got my feet under me and went across the rails and pulled myself onto the landing, then started toward the steps after Barrett.
BATMAN (topside)
Batman, he’s thinking about what Jim said, about how Barrett changes, about that book, Followers of the Razor and about the God of the Razor; he’s thinking if Jim says it’s so, then it’s so, and he feels something rare for him, something that matches the moments in his dreams when he sees his parents die and feels the presence of the man-bat at his back, and that rare thing is almost impossible for him to identify—but that rare thing is fear. A quick skuttle goes up his backbone and hits his brain, and then melts away as all his experience and training takes over and he sees Barrett coming out of the subway, wild-eyed, looking up at the sky, trying to spot the moon.
Instinctively, Batman cranes his neck and sees that the moon is behind those rain clouds that were promised, and then he looks back at Barrett who is racing across the street at a lumbering run that makes him look like a puppet being jerked along by strings.
Traffic is nonexistent at this early morning hour, and Batman crosses the street easily, making good time and gaining on Barrett. Then everything becomes lighter, touched with silver, and Batman knows the moon is out. He sees that when Barrett puts his right foot forward it is dressed not in a shoe but in a head, and then the left foot goes forward and it is the same, and then the man running before him, moving much faster, is not Barrett, but the dimensional creature Webb called the God of the Razor.
The God of the Razor leaps more than he runs, and Batman thinks of the legends of Spring-heel Jack, then pours it on, trying to close, wondering in the back of his mind what he’ll do with this thing if he catches it.
Up they go, the God of the Razor leading Batman through a narrow, twisting path that winds its way through brush and shrubs and trees, and Batman knows they are fast approaching the top of the hill where the walls of Old Gotham Cemetery stand.
The God is really moving and he’s almost to the cemetery wall, and with a flex of his whip-thin legs he leaps up and out and over it, effortlessly as a kangaroo, and the weak little shadow of Barrett follows after him and slips over the wall like a wet, pink sheet.
Batman reaches the wall, jumps and grabs and swings himself over. And the clouds have done their trick again. Standing by the stone cross that marks the grave of Rufus Jefferson—the dark open tomb yawning to his right—is Barrett, head hung low, the razor held loosely against his leg.
“It isn’t me,” Barrett says, his voice weak as a signal from space. “I got no control. Nothing stops the power of the moon but the clouds. Just the clouds. Long as he’s got the moon and the need, he’s got control. You got to know it’s not me. It’s him.”
Barrett waves the razor at the God’s shadow that is thin and watery, bent, and partially out of sight down the open grave.
“I know, son,” Batman say
s, and he moves quickly toward Barrett. “Give me the razor and we’ll set you free.”
“Not like that,” Barrett says. “Can’t give it to you. Not the way you want anyway. Not the way I want. Just the way he wants. I . . .”
The clouds twirl away from the face of the moon.
JAMES W. GORDON
I saw Batman cross the street and head toward the brush and trees that bunched at the bottom of the cemetery hill. I went after him.
I couldn’t keep up with him, he was moving too fast. The cigar smoke that lived in my lungs wasn’t helping either. When I got to the cemetery wall I saw the last of Batman’s cape going over. Then I saw Barrett topping the rise of the hill inside the cemetery; the hill that was higher than the cemetery walls.
My back was killing me. My sides felt as if they were being skewered. I couldn’t help myself. I dropped to one knee and tried to get my wind.
When the skewers quit twisting, I got up, staggered to the wall, and dragged myself over.
When I hit the ground it wasn’t Barrett standing on the hill, it was the big top-hatted monster. The little pale shadow of Barrett was thin as watered milk and getting thinner. I guess the God of the Razor was growing stronger and stronger, and Barrett weaker and weaker, with every transformation.
Batman was charging up the hill with his head slightly bent, charging like a locomotive. His cloak fanned out high and wide behind him like a Japanese fan. Then he ducked and the cape dropped down some and I could see the faces of the monster and the flash of his razor as it sliced off part of Batman’s cape and sent it fluttering away. Then Batman leaped high as the big guy bent low and swiped back at Batman’s ankles. When Batman came down, he brought his fists together at the back of the big guy’s head.
It didn’t seem to do much. Maybe it made him mad. The big guy jerked upright and his top hat didn’t even sway. He raised his arm above his head and brought the razor down like a hammer.
Batman shot out a hand and grabbed the big wrist, stopping the blow. The big guy used his other hand to grab Batman’s throat and—
The Further Adventures of Batman Page 12
