Lowland Rider (32 page)

A moan of ultimate relief escaped her. "Jesse," she said, and saw the legs kneel, the strong face she knew so well look into hers.

He stuck his pistol back into the waistband of his jeans and tugged his turtleneck down over it, then helped her out from under the seat, and sat with her, an arm around her shoulders. "Are you all right?" he asked.

She looked on the floor of the car at the shattered bodies of Roy and Al, and nodded. "They were going to . . ." She swallowed heavily.

"They're not going to do anything now," he said. "I saw them take you on the train. I grabbed it just as it left, hung on to the back door until it stopped. Then I got in the car ahead of this one. I was watching you through the window. When those kids jumped them I came in."

"The. . . the boys," Claudia said. "Are they. . .?"

"They're both dead." Jesse replied. "They're all dead, and we've got to get off at the next stop. Come on."

He took her hand and led her through several cars until they were in the one next to the front. When the train stopped at 145th Street, they got off. Jesse paused to see if anyone got into the last car, but no one did, and the train pulled out with its burden of death. They stood on the platform and watched it go. She was with him now, and everything seemed safe again. To her amazement, the whole experience had been placed in the back of her mind, as if it were something that had happened months, even years before. The shots, the knife, the blood, all seemed a dream that was over.

"I wanted to tell you," Claudia said, "about Montcalm."

"Montcalm," he said. "Then you know."

She nodded. "On the news. He's dead." She told him about the news stories, about Sinclair and Rodriguez. "They killed the wrong man, didn't they? They wanted to kill you." His silence told her that she was right. "Isn't that enough then?" she asked him desperately.

"Enough? Enough for what?"

"To make you come back up, come above again. It's over, Jesse. Can't you see, you've won, he's dead. What you wanted to do down here, you've done. You've done good, but you've done enough. You could stay down here forever and it would never be clean. Haven't you done enough?"

Jesse looked at her for a long time. "One more thing," he said. "Just one. And then I'll come back up. Montcalm may be dead, but I'm not finished here yet."

"Oh God, Jesse, when?"

"Tonight. After tonight. I'll finish it, and I'll come above in the morning."

He would answer no more questions. He rode downtown with her and walked her as far as the stairway that led to 86th Street, then held her as a priest might hold a grieving widow.

"In the morning," he told her again. He turned away when she tried to kiss him, and walked back into the tunnels.

He's anywhere, anywhere he wants to be. He want you to find him, you find him
…

Rags's
words came back to Jesse as he stepped off the stairs and onto the platform. He wanted to find Enoch, but did Enoch want to be found? It didn't matter. He would find him if he had to search every tunnel, every hidden spur, every closed and abandoned station on the hundreds of miles of line. But somehow he felt that he wouldn't have to do that, that Enoch would know, and would rise to the challenge.

It was after midnight now, and the station was deserted. That surprised Jesse. Even on a Tuesday night the Upper West Side was a center of activity long into the morning. Yet there was no one here, no one except Jesse.

But when he looked down at the end of the platform he realized he was wrong. There was someone else standing down there, someone in the shadows. At first Jesse thought that there was a small light from overhead shining on the figure, but then he realized that the light was coming from the figure itself, and Jesse began to walk toward it, knowing who it was even before the man turned so that Jesse could see his face.

Enoch was all in white, a white that blazed with brightness. His face was aglow and smiling, and his hands hung empty at his sides. When Jesse stopped walking, only six feet separated them.

"Hello, Jesse," Enoch said. "I'm glad you've come. I've been waiting for you."

His voice was like doves cooing in barn rafters. Jesse could smell the sweetness of hay, the sharp odor of fresh rain on grass, and exhaled sharply to drive the hypnotic scent from him. He would not be seduced. "I'd have found you," he said, "whether you waited or not."

Enoch nodded. "You would have."

"You know that I'm going to kill you."

"I know you bring my end. My necessary end."

Jesse took the pistol from his waistband. There were still four bullets left. "You are this place's heart," Jesse said. "You are the heart of evil, maybe of all the evil in this city, I don't know. It wasn't Baggie, it wasn't Montcalm, all they did was for you."

"That is true," Enoch said. "Baggie knew it, Montcalm did not. But still, it was for me. And for you."

Now it was Jesse's turn to smile. "For me? Father of Lies, isn't that what they call the devil? You're a poor devil, Enoch, but the only true one this place has. I don't know how you use people, how you twist them to do these things for you, but you do. If it was for money, I could understand it. Not condone it, but understand. But it isn't for money, is it?"

"No. It isn't for money."

"Fine." Jesse nodded. "Then maybe you'll understand that I'm not doing
this
for money. I'm doing this—"

"You're doing this," Enoch gently interrupted, "so that your life has meaning."

Jesse smiled a wry and bitter smile. "Maybe. And maybe so that some other deaths had meaning." Jesse brought up the pistol and pointed it at Enoch.

"And that too is true. Your wife and daughter had to die."

"My. . . my. . . how did you. . . " A red tide crossed Jesse's vision.

"Donna," Enoch said. "Jennifer. It was necessary.”

“You
bastard
!" Jesse shrieked, and pulled the trigger.

He fired twice into Enoch's chest at point-blank range, but Enoch did not move, did not flinch. Jesse stepped closer, aimed the gun at Enoch's face, fired again, and Enoch did not move. He pressed the gun against Enoch's temple and pulled the trigger for the last time. The gun recoiled in his hand, and it seemed as though Enoch's flesh parted to receive the lead, then closed up again, clean and whole.

Jesse sobbed convulsively, and the gun dropped from his hand. He began to hammer his fists against Enoch, crying as he did, but Enoch stood like rock, immovable, his flesh unyielding. Jesse pounded his fists against skin more solid than steel, putting every ounce of effort he possessed into this all-encompassing need to destroy this man, this creature, this thing.

And slowly his muscles weakened, his will subsided, his hatred was drained by exhaustion until he fell against the very being he longed so to annihilate, and he felt Enoch's arms around him, no longer arms of stone, but of flesh, comforting him as he wept.

He looked up into Enoch's face, and saw there all the things he had hoped he would not—caring, sympathy, and a trace of sadness. "What. . . are you?" Jesse asked.

"I am the Axis."

"The . . . the what?"

"The Axis. The pivot, the balance."

"The balance," Jesse said, remembering his own words spoken what seemed like centuries before. "The balance. Between what?"

"Between good and evil," Enoch answered.

"But . . . you
are
evil!"

Enoch smiled, his face full of love, and shook his head. "You do not know what evil is. But you have begun to learn."

Jesse's legs gave out, and he slumped to the cold concrete, his arms wrapped around Enoch's legs. Enoch knelt and sat beside him, holding him again. "Jesse, there was purpose," Enoch said. "What happened to you was ordained. But not to bring you down here to kill me. It was to bring you down here to
speak
to me. Not like the others spoke to me and served me, for you are not
like
the others. You came here to be tempered, to be tried in the furnace, to be turned to stone . . .

"To be
apotheosized
."

Jesse had not heard the word in years, and its meaning was nearly lost to him. He looked up, his face streaked with tears. "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you mean!"

"I mean that you will take my place."

Jesse's body trembled as though a train had crashed out of the darkness beside them. But there was no train, there were no people, and there would be none, Jesse knew, until Enoch willed it so. Jesse could not speak. He was afraid to.

"We were all men once," Enoch said, "until we were chosen to be more than men, and we were afraid, just as you are. But when we understood, when we knew, we made our choice, as you will make yours." Enoch paused. "It is the only choice you can make."

"Then," Jesse said in a voice pinched with ignorance, "it's really not a choice at all, is it?"

"When you know," Enoch said, "then it will be the only choice you can make."

"The Axis, you said," Jesse went on weakly. "What does it mean? What is this . . .
balance
?"

"Good and evil, Jesse. We feed the evil so the good can survive. We're God's servants. We do His will."

"Feed evil? I've seen
how
, oh Christ, have I seen. But
why
?"

"Because if it was not fed, if it was not satisfied, held at bay, it would overcome the world."

Jesse pushed away from Enoch's embrace, and Enoch let him go. He crawled several feet away, then said, "I don't believe this. I can't."

"You've seen the power I hold. It comes from God. How else can you explain it?"

"I don't
believe
it!" Jesse shouted. "I see what you do, but I still don't believe it! It doesn't make sense! Holding evil at bay? That's bullshit! This is evil, this place, the things people
do
here, good
Christ
, what greater evil could stalk the world than what I've already
seen
?"

"If I show you—"

"Oh yes!" Jesse shouted, pushing himself to his knees. "Oh, by all means,
show
me, Enoch!" He laughed brokenly. "You just show me if you can!"

Enoch stood effortlessly. "Close your eyes then. And see."

Jesse laughed again, the flat, barking laugh of a man close to madness, the laugh of a man who fears no longer. He laughed, and then pressed his eyes closed, a wide, white grin slashed across his face.

And he saw.

He saw the blade of a knife sliding down the front of a body, and skin and breasts laid back like a leather shirt, and arms slipping in under the skin and embracing the living viscera, and wet, red organs slapping against flesh,

saw a young boy with hair the color of honey and skin the color of milk held over a velvet chair, a line of naked, laughing men behind him, each taking their turn, fat, dripping, black candles in their free hands,

saw an old woman hanging by her neck from a rope, her sister, a white-haired and wrinkled crone, jerking on her legs so that the neck stretched, the rope dug under and broke the jaw, the blood pumped from the dead woman's nose, bathing the grinning sister,

saw a soldier in a room full of bound men, castrating each one, then slicing each across the eyes with the same razor,

saw priests and nuns drinking each other's vomit, rolling in each other's filth while they prayed the Our Father,

saw a mountain of dead women rotting in the sun, while their children played about them, throwing balls and sticks onto the pile for dogs to fetch, urinating on the faces of their mothers' corpses,

saw limbs and heads hewn off in joy,

saw babies raped and smashed on stones,

saw the wombs of pregnant women sewn up,

saw flesh ripped open and fire forced in the rents,

saw agonies and abnormalities and sicknesses, and founders of plagues and murders
thousandfold
, and curses and abominations and blasphemies, and excremental baptisms and the incestuous births of monsters and tortures unimagined, and cannibalism and self-mutilation and semen splashed on crosses, and hatred and terror and blood, always blood, drowning everything he saw in red rain.

He saw.

And what he saw drove him beyond fear, beyond nausea, beyond repulsion. What he saw, so much evil compressed into an instant of understanding, took away his words, refused to even allow him to think, to correlate that multitude of sights into one unforgivable whole.

He opened his eyes, and saw Enoch, and Enoch was no longer smiling. On his face was the expression of the crucified Christ. "What…" Jesse whispered, “what could be. . ."

"No, Jesse," he said. "Not what
could
be. What you saw was what
exists
, and what has existed. What walks the earth now. I have not yet shown you evil's true face, evil set free. I have not shown you the ultimate potential of evil, the evil that would become reality if not for me, for you, for those like us."