The Pressure of Darkness

by Harry Shannon

  This is definitely a hospital gown. Willie is conscious of the cool air on his bare buttocks. Another sneeze and this fucker hurts. His nose seems to be running like a damned faucet. He pushes on the flat surface outlined in black rubber, but it does not move. Willie Pepper shoves harder, tries to slide it to one side but it is rock solid and perfectly sealed.

  "Hey!" The effort to speak punishes. His sinus passages are on fire. This cold sucks the big one. Willie hears some static coming from a hidden speaker. He looks around for it but can't see anything. Then a melodious, calming baritone voice speaks to him.

  "You are in a hospital, sir. We recommend that you sit down on the bed, if you do not mind."

  The man has an accent of some kind. Willie knows he has heard that accent before, Mexican or Greek or something; he cannot quite place it. Like from the movies maybe. Whoever he is, the dude certainly sounds like he's in charge. Willie considers the request, elects to comply. He works his way across the room again. Once seated on the cot, hands folded in his lap like a good schoolboy, he tries again.

  "Excuse me, but where am I?"

  A hiss, the voice: "This is a medical facility, sir. We are sorry to inform you that you have been quite ill."

  "Somebody tried to kick my ass, is what happened."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Hey, I said some asshole tried to strangle me. What the hell do you mean I've been sick? For how long?"

  The voice laughs, rattling the speaker. Willie begins to search the room again with his eyes, and now he finally notices the small box above the doorway and the four video cameras mounted in the upper corners of the room. "You have been very ill with alcoholism, sir. We have taken the liberty of performing a rapid detoxification procedure."

  "Huh?"

  "We first administered some Halcyon and then used an intravenous solution of glucose and benzodiazepine to slowly withdraw your body from the alcohol while you slept. Except for your cold, you must be feeling better than you have in years, yes?"

  Willie Pepper rolls his shoulders. He doesn't want to admit it, give the son of a bitch the satisfaction, but except for his sinus problem he does feel good. Very good. He grunts instead of speaking.

  After a long moment the voice continues: "May we have your age, sir?"

  "I'm forty-five. No, forty-six." Jesus, am I that old? Yeah, last November. That means it has been nine years since I talked to my sister Lisa up there in Santa Rosa. Willie shakes his head, sets off more throbbing. He is amazed at the passage of time. He also feels something unfamiliar but not entirely unpleasant happening in his midsection. Emotions are surfacing. It has been a long time since he has felt anything but rage, fear, or the ravaging lust of his addiction to alcohol.

  "And have you had any other serious accidents or illnesses in your life?"

  Willie picks at his fingernails absently, mind elsewhere. "Measles when I was a kid, and I broke my leg once."

  "Anything else?"

  "Not that I remember." But he suddenly does remember being a boy, playing with Lisa in the yard of their home in Pomona, waiting for his father to get home. Amazingly, he can recall the scent of the freshly-cut grass and the faint, snoring drone of an airline passing overhead. The back of his neck heats up as if the summer sun was burning down, reddening his skin. Willie Pepper suddenly wants to curl up and cry. He rubs his eyes. Another sneeze.

  "Are you still with us, sir?" the impersonal voice asks. He clearly cares little one way or the other.

  "Yeah. Fine. I'm fine. How did you people find me?"

  The speaker clicks. "We brought you here."

  An odd and chilling thought occurs to Willie Pepper: They haven't even asked me for my name. I don't carry ID, I'm not wearing any bracelet like they give you in the emergency room in Santa Monica or over at Cedars Sinai, so what the fuck is this place? Where did they take me?

  "Doc?" This must be a doctor, right? "You still there, Doc?"

  "Yes," the voice replies, "we are still here."

  Another sneeze, another wipe on the top of his forearm. Hundreds of ants crawling his flesh: this time there is some blood in the clear mucous.

  "Fuck!"

  "What is it, sir?"

  "Look, I want to know where I am and what's going on, all right?" Willie gets to his feet, surprised to find that he feels pretty strong, now. Most of the wooziness is gone. "What have you people done to me?" His limbs are flushed with blood and fear is giving him strength. Weird.

  A low chuckle. "You are feeling somewhat better now, sir. Quite suddenly, yes? We can see that."

  Willie rubs his belly. "Yeah, but I have a shitty cold, man. And I think I'm gonna be sick to my stomach. Can I have some more water?"

  "I doubt you would be able to keep it down at this stage."

  The fuck does he mean by that? Willie shivers abruptly, licks his lips. His now chattering teeth really hurt. He stumbles to the mirror while the cameras carefully track his every move. He opens his mouth and shrieks. There are pustules on his gums, black dots that look like blood blisters. Before he can manage to form new words the drinking water comes back up in a rush and splatters the mirror.

  "Doc, h-h-help me!"

  "Be calm. It will not be long, now."

  What won't be long?

  Willie Pepper looks at the pustules again. He watches himself in the gooey mirror, helpless to intervene or cry out, as his facial muscles begin to twitch and tremble. The right side of his body goes completely numb for a few seconds. Now that his mouth is open, it seems to lock into place as if he had rabies. He cannot close his jaws or move them to speak. He feels an electric shock run through his entire body and he stiffens, like a mannequin. After a long moment his rigid body leans forward against the mirror, tilted like a fallen statue. He is silent, still. The cameras zoom in for a close-up of his full body.

  "Hunh!"

  The frozen feeling only lasts for a short time. It is followed by something akin to an epileptic seizure. Willie Pepper hits the hard surface of the floor, twitching and moaning and grunting like an animal. He chews in a grinding, devilishly effective manner until he begins to devour his own lips and tongue. A few seconds later he hears a voice, from somewhere far away, say something about damage to the mid-brain and basal writhing.

  Willie shits himself. Bowels evacuated.

  His spine arches hideously, impossibly, until it bends so far back it seems certain to break. Blood is gushing from his nose and eyes, now (meanwhile, the voice says epistaxis) and Willie Pepper knows in some dark and dim corner of his mind that he is going to die. He no longer cares. His eyes have rolled back into his skull and he is rigid and silent and nearly insane from the pain. A deep and racking cough occurs; another gout of blood, this one bursts from his mouth like an alien creature to land on the now-messy floor, a foot or so away. Willie Pepper feels all of the tension leave his body and it feels good, almost orgasm good, to have the fit over with. His eyes glass over and his vision darkens. It comes to him that he is no longer breathing, he tries but cannot breathe. The image of his sister in the sunshine returns.

  The voice: "We have respiratory failure at 10:19:26."

  . . . Willie Pepper gives his little sister Lisa a big hug. It is so good to see her again, and wonderful that she is still a child. Then the most remarkable thing happens, Willie can really feel the hot sun on his skin, warm and gentle, smell that newly-cut lawn. He lets himself slide down a hill made of that fresh, green grass and drops away into an endless summer . . .

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  "Okay, one more time from the top."

  Less than an hour after the fight with Dinky Martin, Gina brought a weary Burke an ice bag and commenced playing mother hen. They were seated in the office, blinds lowered and lights high. Gina had proffered five aspirins and made coffee strong enough to lube a lawn mower. Burke held the ice close to the bruised rib on his right side. He cleared his throat, but carefully. "Your turn, run it down."

  Gina was wearing a tight tee shirt and jeans wit
h a large belt and cowboy buckle. She was a night person anyway, so she was already focused. "Okay, we have a horror novelist who likes silly word games. He seems to have committed suicide at the Universal Sheraton. Cuts off various body parts, anesthetizes his ass, and then starts up again. He does it all over several hours. The daughter probably wants more money from insurance, wants it to be foul play, so Bowden turns her on to you and me."

  "Check."

  "You go to toss the guy's house and somebody else has already been there, in fact is still there. There's a load of books on all kinds of spooky stuff, religious artifacts, a couple of hidden panels. He has some kind of symbols on pieces of paper in a hidden place, they get swiped."

  "Uh huh."

  "Lots of people hate Stryker, the daughter says. You interview Merriman and Pal in the same day and come up empty both times."

  "Yeah."

  "And finally Doc does a little digging for you, and among other things says the baby powder from the adjoining suite doesn't match yours. So now we have to figure somebody else did go in there to slice-and-dice Stryker."

  Burke sat up carefully. "You left something out."

  "Dinky Martin?"

  "No, I doubt that's related to any of this. I think Dinky just wanted to even the score for the whipping I gave him Sunday night."

  "So what are you talking about?"

  "I meant the fact that Doc has gotten some serious heat for helping me out. And add to that Scotty Bowden suddenly acting so weird. Jesus, you'd think he was on the other side, or something."

  "Other side of what, Burke?"

  "That's the question, isn't it? Beats the hell out me."

  Burke leaned forward, elbows on the desk. He'd been pounded on before, but not at this advanced age. He remembered a line from an old Indiana Jones movie, something about it not being the speed but the mileage that finally got you.

  "Okay, Suite 1124."

  "Say what?"

  "That old couple who rented the suite next to Stryker at the Sheraton," Gina said, impatiently. She looked down at her notes, unconsciously pursed her lips. She looked like a small child. "Here it is, Dorothy. Clinton and Dorothy Farnsworth. I looked them up on the Internet, Burke. They pop up on the society pages a lot. Fund raising for hospital wings, doubles tennis for the prune juice set, that sort of thing."

  Burke grunted. "Likely to be squeaky clean, in other words."

  "Well, I got to wondering. What would a rich Bel Air couple owns their own mansion be doing renting a not-that-swanky suite at the Sheraton for a night? Construction on their mansion, what?"

  He felt a chill jogging on thin, hairy legs. "You know something, that is a damned good question, isn't it? So you checked on their whereabouts the night of Stryker's death, just to be sure."

  "Oh, they were in town all right, but they were supposedly attending a private birthday party at Shutters in Santa Monica, and stayed quite late. Whoever checked into that suite, Burke, it wasn't them."

  "Did you get a description from the staff? I don't remember there being anything in the police report we could use."

  Gina produced a folded piece of paper. "I schmoozed, I wheedled, I begged. Scotty almost shit himself, but then he faxed it over."

  Burke grabbed it from her hand. It was a copy of the hotel's registration documents for Mr. and Mrs. Clinton Farnsworth. "The handwriting?"

  "It's a reasonably good forgery," Gina said, "but it's fake. I checked." She yawned. "But witness the colossal arrogance, my man. The business address is correct for the real Farnsworth, over on Avenue of the Stars in Century City. But take a look at the home address they gave."

  "Did the cops ever follow up on this?"

  "Not so far. And trust me, Scotty sounded scared."

  "Tell him I'll be dropping by his second office later tonight, okay?"

  "Oh, fuck. You're going there, aren't you." It was not a question. They both knew Burke had no choice. The address given as the Farnsworth residence was not in upscale Bel Air. It was in Panorama City. That meant the barrio. Gang country.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Twenty minutes later, Burke was on his way.

  Sepulveda showed signs of strain around Burbank Boulevard, near the overpass entrance to the 405 freeway. That's where the crack whores started to appear, at first half in shadow, like emaciated citizens of a third world country, but eventually strutting openly along on the sidewalk. They wore butt-floss shorts, halter tops, and black high heels, and sported a carpet of goose bumps from the cold night air. Some were still adrift in puberty, some nearing menopause, but their faces looked the same due to makeup thick as dry-wall mud. A few were bold enough to stick their thumbs out as though asking for a ride, not looking for a john, but most merely paced in circles, waiting for work.

  Burke continued north, past the rows of neon strip malls packed with middle-class cars and shopping carts. At around Victory, the first signs of gang graffiti appeared, one florid NHBZ, the spray-painted signature of the North Hollywood Boys. Crowds of rootless young men and women dominated the cracked sidewalk by the time Burke neared Saticoy, still heading upstream. The males had their heads shaved close to the scalp and sported sagging blue jeans, wife-beater tee shirts, and padded fluorescent jackets baggy enough to hide automatic weapons. The police working this neighborhood did so with considerable anal tension.

  Burke drove on, the address repeating itself in his brain like a mantra. Lawrence Street finally appeared just north of Roscoe. He turned right into the gloom, down a row of pastel-painted 1940s wood frame homes fronted by stacks of tires and used cars that were works-in-progress. His shoulders tensed a bit. Two of the four weary streetlamps had been broken, or perhaps shot out.

  The house was at the end of the street in a cul-de-sac. It looked deserted, nearly uninhabitable. The slatted wood was splintered, peeling, and in places regurgitating large nails already orange with rust. Burke pulled to the curb and parked just two doors away and on the opposite side of the street. He checked the rearview mirror. A group of five adolescent boys had followed his slow progress down the street. Their body language was already agitated and stiff, sporting various hand signs. They were working themselves up, discussing this arrogant gringo invading their turf. He hadn't much time before the young sociopaths—and perhaps several of their erstwhile friends—decided to challenge his presence.

  Burke armed his 9mm Glock, grabbed his flashlight. He stepped out of the car into the humid night air. The nearest street lamp was still working, making him clearly visible to the gang. After a moment Burke allowed his gun to hang loose at his side, in plain view. He hoped to read like a private citizen out to settle a score, maybe with some drug dealer. Perhaps that impression would slow the boys down. Of course, another possibility was that the kids came down the block ready for all-out war. If that was the case, things could get ugly in a hurry.

  The lawn was thick with weeds and piled high with trash; the ground parched. There were footprints everywhere, going across and in and out of the area, so Burke's own would be impossible to identify. He walked across the cluttered lawn, stepped on cans or crushed fast-food containers wherever possible, and got to the foot of the wooden steps. Nothing moved within the darkened house. Burke glanced back over his shoulder.

  Like a trick shot from a horror movie, the clump of angry boys had gotten one hell of a lot closer; they were still doing exactly what they were doing before, but were now less than half a block away. Their hostile muttering became audible.

  Burke used the flashlight to nudge the door open and roll back the darkness. He discovered a room filthy and reeking of decay. There were needles, condoms, empty bottles, and all manner of cushions, pillows, and lawn chairs. This was a former crack house, from the look of it, although the dust everywhere suggested it has not been used for some time. He stepped wide over the threshold and into the living room, listening intently. A vague humming sound caught his attention. It was the faint sound of static from a radio that had lost signal, or perhaps fr
om a broken television set.

  Another glance over his shoulder. The gang members were now spread out on the sidewalk, arms hanging loose at their sides. Three of them carried baseball bats, one seemed empty-handed, but the last was holding a shiny silver automatic. They moved no closer, almost as if they were afraid.

  Of what? Something that lives in this house?

  Burke swallowed dryly and moved deeper into the gloom. He swept the dark with his flashlight. More trash, traditional waste products from drug use and prostitution. He moved toward that annoying, low humming sound, eased down the hallway and closer to the back rooms. Soon it was not a humming sound. It was a buzzing.

  A stench assailed his nostrils. Burke knew what he'd find. He kicked open the bedroom door, recoiled in disgust. An ugly little man seated on a pile of reeking corpses, rocking back and forth and laughing and laughing . . . Burke blinked away history. He saw an elderly man and woman hanging upside down from a wooden beam. Their bodies were covered with an excited, rolling carpet of gorging, black and green bottle flies. They had been gutted, and their darkening entrails were festooned along what seemed to be a piece of thick, plastic drop cloth spread beneath them. Burke had seen death many times, but the disrespectful abuse of these old people made him tremble. He moved the beam of the flashlight. Pieces of their flesh had been carved away. They had been butchered, but the coroner would have to determine what had happened before and after death.

  Burke heard a sound behind him. He raised the 9mm and turned.

  "Madre de Dios!"

  A stocky gang-banger wearing a checkered scarf as a headband was two yards back in the living room. His mouth was hanging open, eyes bullfrog wide. The handgun was hanging useless at his side. His friends were behind him. Burke twirled the light and pinned them in the glare. They were all visibly upset, a bunch of bewildered, shaken kids.