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He felt as if he’d been caught by a vortex of cheering and hooting, but it included murmurs too. “He played with me in the bath.” “He wouldn’t let us in there.” “He made me miss my cartoons.” “That’s right, and he tried to take the control off us.” He was being whirled so fast he no longer knew where he was. “Enough,” he cried, and was answered by an instant hush. Several hands shoved him staggering forward, and a door closed stealthily behind him.

At first he thought the room had grown colder and damper. Then, as his giddiness steadied, he understood that he was in a different room, farther towards the rear of the house. He felt the patchy lack of carpet through his slippers, though that seemed insufficient reason for the faint scraping of feet he could hear surrounding him to sound so harsh. He thought he heard a whisper or the rattling of some object within a hollow container level with his head. Suddenly, in a panic that flared like white blindness inside the hood, he knew Daph’s last remark hadn’t been addressed to him, nor had it referred to anyone he’d seen so far. His hands flew to untie the hood—not to see where he was and with whom, but which way to run.

He was so terrified to find the cord immovably knotted that it took him seconds to locate the loose ends of the bow. A tug at them released it. He was forcing his fingertips under the edge of the hood when he heard light dry footsteps scuttle towards him, and an article that he tried to think of as a hand groped at his face. He staggered backwards, blindly fending off whatever was there. His fingers encountered ribs barer than they ought to be, and poked between them to meet the twitching contents of the bony cage. The whole of him convulsed as he snatched off the hood and flung it away.

The room was either too dark or not quite dark enough. It was at least the size of the one he’d left, and contained half a dozen sagging armchairs that glistened with moisture, and more than twice as many figures. Some were sprawled like loose bundles of sticks topped with grimacing masks on the chairs, but nonetheless doing their feeble best to clap their tattered hands. Even those that were swaying around him appeared to have left portions of themselves elsewhere. All of them were attached to strings or threads that glimmered in the murk and led his reluctant gaze to the darkest corner of the room. A restless mass crouched in it—a body with too many limbs, or a huddle of bodies that had grown inextricably entangled by the process of withering. Some of its movement, though not all, was of shapes that swarmed many-legged out of the midst of it, constructing parts of it or bearing away fragments or extending more threads to the other figures in the room. It took an effort that shriveled his mind before he was able to distinguish anything else: a thin gap between curtains, a barred window beyond—to his left, the outline of a door to the hall. As the figure nearest to him bowed so close he saw the very little it had in the way of eyes peering through the hair it had stretched coquettishly over its face, Shone bolted for the hall.

The door veered aside as his dizziness swept it away. His slippers snagged a patch of carpet and almost threw him on his face. The doorknob refused to turn in his sweaty grasp, even when he gripped it with both hands. Then it yielded, and as the floor at his back resounded with a mass of uneven yet purposeful shuffling, the door juddered open. He hauled himself around it and fled awkwardly, slippers flapping, out of the dark part of the hall.

Every room was shut. Other than the scratching of nails or of the ends of fingers at the door behind him, there was silence. He dashed along the hall, striving to keep the slippers on, not knowing why, knowing only that he had to reach the front door. He seized the latch and flung the door wide and slammed it as he floundered out of the house.

The rain had ceased except for a dripping of foliage. The gravel glittered like the bottom of a stream. The coach he’d heard arriving—an old private coach spattered with mud—was parked across the rear of his car, so close it practically touched the bumper. He could never maneuver out of that trap. He almost knocked on the window of the television lounge, but instead limped over the gravel and into the street, towards the quiet hotels. He had no idea where he was going except away from the house. He’d hobbled just a few paces, his slippers growing more sodden and his feet sorer at each step, when headlamps sped out of the town.

They belonged to a police car. It halted beside him, its hazard lights twitching, and a uniformed policeman was out of the passenger seat before Shone could speak. The man’s slightly chubby concerned face was a wholesome pink beneath a street lamp. “Can you help me?” Shone pleaded. “I—”

“Don’t get yourself in a state, old man. We saw where you came from.”

“They boxed me in. My car, I mean, look. If you can just tell them to let me out—”

The driver moved to Shone’s other side. He might have been trying to outdo his colleague’s caring look. “Calm down now. We’ll see to everything for you. What have you done to your head?”

“Banged it. Hit it with, you wouldn’t believe me, it doesn’t matter. I’ll be fine. If I can just fetch my stuff—”

“What have you lost? Won’t it be in the house?”

“That’s right, at the top. My shoes are.”

“Feet hurting, are they? No wonder with you wandering around like that on a night like this. Here, get his other arm.” The driver had taken Shone’s right elbow in a firm grip, and now he and his partner easily lifted Shone and bore him towards the house. “What’s your name, sir?” the driver enquired.

“Not Thomson, whatever anyone says. Not Tommy Thomson or Tom either. Or rather, it’s Tom all right, but Tom Shone. That doesn’t sound like Thomson, does it? Shone as in shine. I used to know someone who said I still shone for her, you still shine for me, she’d say. Been to see her today as a matter of fact.” He was aware of talking too much as the policemen kept nodding at him and the house with its two lit windows—the television lounge’s and his—reared over him. “Anyway, the point is the name’s Shone,” he said. “Ess aitch, not haitch as some youngsters won’t be told it isn’t, oh en ee. Shone.”

“We’ve got you.” The driver reached for the empty bellpush, then pounded on the front door. It swung inwards almost at once, revealing the manager. “Is this gentleman a guest of yours, Mr. Snell?” the driver’s colleague said.

“Mr. Thomson. We thought we’d lost you,” Snell declared, and pushed the door wide. All the people from the television lounge were lining the hall like spectators at a parade. “Tommy Thomson,” they chanted.

“That’s not me,” Shone protested, pedaling helplessly in the air until his slippers flew into the hall. “I told you—”

“You did, sir,” the driver murmured, and his partner said even lower, “Where do you want us to take you?”

“To the top, just to—”

“We know,” the driver said conspiratorially. The next moment Shone was sailing to the stairs and up them, with the briefest pause as the policemen retrieved a slipper each. The chant from the hall faded, giving way to a silence that seemed most breathlessly expectant in the darkest sections of the house. He had the police with him, Shone reassured himself. “I can walk now,” he said, only to be borne faster to the termination of the stairs. “Where the door’s open?” the driver suggested. “Where the light is?”

“That’s me. Not me really, anything but, I mean—”

They swung him through the doorway by his elbows and deposited him on the carpet. “It couldn’t be anybody else’s room,” the driver said, dropping the slippers in front of Shone. “See, you’re already here.”

Shone looked where the policemen were gazing with such sympathy it felt like a weight that was pressing him into the room. A photograph of himself and Ruth, arms around each other’s shoulders with a distant mountain behind, had been removed from his drenched suit and propped on the shelf in place of the telephone. “I just brought that,” he protested, “you can see how wet it was,” and limped across the room to don his shoes. He hadn’t reached them when he saw himself in the mirror.

He stood swaying a little, unable to retreat from the sight. He heard the policemen murmur together and withdraw, and their descent of the stairs, and eventually the dual slam of car doors and the departure of the vehicle. His reflection still hadn’t allowed him to move. It was no use his telling himself that some of the tangle of wrinkles might be cobwebs, not when his hair was no longer graying but white. “All right, I see it,” he yelled—he had no idea at whom. “I’m old. I’m old.”

“Soon,” said a whisper like an escape of gas in the corridor, along which darkness was approaching as the lamps failed one by one. “You’ll be plenty of fun yet,” the remains of another voice said somewhere in his room. Before he could bring himself to look for its source, an item at the end of most of an arm fumbled around the door and switched out the light. The dark felt as though his vision was abandoning him, but he knew it was the start of another game. Soon he would know if it was worse than hide-and-seek—worse than the first sticky unseen touch of the web of the house on his face.

Edward Lee

ICU

Edward Lee appeared like a gift on my doorstep. I don’t mean literally; I mean only that his story “ICU” is one of the few in this hook that I didn’t specifically commission but which knocked my socks off when I had it in my hands. The story has the finger-snapping graphic-image intensity of a Quentin Tarrantino script, with, I think, a little more juice in the veins and conscience in the cabeza
.

Lee has published steadily in the field since the early 1980s; his work includes older books like
Incubi
and
Succubi,
as well as more recent efforts such as
Sacrifice
(as Richard Kinion). A limited edition short story collection
, The Ushers and Other Stories,
was published in 1998
.

I
t chased him; it was
huge
. But what was it? He sensed its immensity gaining on him, pursuing him through unlit warrens, around cornerways of smothered flesh, and down alleys of ichor and blood …

Holy Mother of God
.

When Paone fully woke, his mind felt wiped out. Dull pain and confinement crushed him, or was it paralysis? Warped images, voices, smears of light and color all massed in his head. Francis “Frankie” Paone shuddered in the terror of the nameless thing that chased him through the rabbets and fissures of his own subconscious mind.

Yes, he was awake now, but the chase led on:

Storming figures. Concussion. Blood squirting onto dirty white walls.

And like a slow-dissolve, Paone finally realized what it was that chased him. Not hitters. Not cops or feds.

It was
memory
that chased him.

But the memory of
what?

The thoughts surged.
Where am I? What the hell happened to me?

This latter query, at least, shone clear. Something
had
happened. Something devastating …

The room was a blur. Paone squinted through grit teeth; without his glasses he couldn’t see three feet past his face.

But he could see enough to know.

Padded leather belts girded his chest, hips, and ankles, restraining him to a bed which seemed hard as slate. He couldn’t move. To his right stood several metal poles topped by blurred blobs. A long line descended … to his arm.
IV bags
, he realized. The line came to an end at the inside of his right elbow. And all about him swarmed unmistakable scents: antiseptics, salves, isopropyl alcohol.

I’m in a fucking hospital
, he acknowledged.

Someone must’ve dropped a dime on him. But … He simply couldn’t remember. The memories hovered in fragments, still chasing his spirit without mercy. Gunshots. Blood. Muzzleflash.

His myopia offered even less mercy. Beyond the bed he could detect only a vague white perimeter, shadows, and depthless bulk. A drone reached his ears, like a distant air conditioner, and there was a slow, aggravating beep: the drip-monitor for his IV. Overhead, something swayed.
Hanging flowerpot?
he ventured. No, it reminded him more of one of those retractable arms you’d find in a doctor’s office, like an X-ray nozzle. And the fuzzed ranks of shapes along the walls could only be cabinets,
pharmaceutical
cabinets.

Yeah, I’m in a hospital, all right
, he realized. An ICU ward. It had to be. And he was buckled down good. Not just his ankles, but his knees too, and his shoulders. More straps immobilized his right arm to the IV board, where white tape secured the needle sunk into the crook of his elbow.

Then Paone looked at his left arm. That’s all it was—an arm. There was no hand at the end of it. And when he raised his right leg …

Just a stump several inches below the knee.

Nightmare
, he wished. But the chasing memories seemed too real for a dream, and so did the pain. There was
plenty
of pain. It hurt to breathe, to swallow, even to blink. Pain oozed through his bowels like warm acid.

Somebody fucked me up royal
, he conceded. The jail ward, no doubt.
And there’s probably a cop standing right outside the door
. He knew where he was now, but it terrified him not knowing exactly what had brought him here.

The memories raged, chasing, chasing …

Heavy slumps. Shouts. A booming, distorted voice … like a megaphone.

Jesus
. He wanted to remember, yet again, he didn’t. The memories
stalked
him: pistol shots, full-auto rifle fire, the feel of his own piece jumping in his hand.

“Hey!” he shouted. “How about some help in here!”

A click resounded to the left; a door opened and closed. Soft footsteps approached, then suddenly a bright, unfocused figure blurred toward him.

“How long have you been awake?” came a toneless female voice. “Couple of minutes,” Paone said. Pain throbbed in his throat. “Could you come closer? I can barely see you.”

The figure obliged. Its features sharpened.

It wasn’t a cop at all, it was a nurse. Tall, brunet, with fluid-blue eyes and a face of hard, eloquent lines. Her white blouse and skirt blurred like bright light. White nylons shone over sleek, coltish legs.

“Do you know where my glasses are?” Paone asked. “I’m nearsighted as hell.”

“Your glasses fell off at the crime scene,” she flatly replied.

Crime scene
, came the bumbling thought.

“We’ve sent someone to recover them,” she added. “It shouldn’t be too long.” Her vacant eyes appraised him. She leaned over to take his vitals. “How do you feel?”

“Terrible. My gut hurts like a son of a bitch, and my hand …” Paone, squinting, raised the bandaged left stump. “Shit,” he muttered. He didn’t even want to ask.

Now the nurse turned to finick with the IV monitor; Paone continued to struggle against the freight of chasing memory. More images churned in some mental recess. Fragments of wood and ceiling tile raining on his shoulders. The mad cacophony of what could only be machine gun fire. A head exploding to pulp.

Blank-faced, then, the nurse returned her gaze. “What do you remember, Mr. Paone?”

“I—” was all he said. He stared up. Paone never carried real ID on a run, and whatever he drove was either hot or chopped, with phony plates. The question ground out of his throat. “How do you know my name?”

“We know all about you,” she said, unfolding a slip of paper. “The police showed us this teletype from Washington. Francis K. ‘Frankie’ Paone. You have seven aliases. You’re thirty-seven years old, never been married, and you have no known place of legal residence. In 1985 you were convicted of interstate flight to avoid prosecution, interstate transportation of obscene material depicting minors, and multiple violations of Section 18 of the United States Code. Two years ago you were released from Alderton Federal Penitentiary after serving sixty-two months of concurrent eleven- and five-year jail terms. You are a known associate of the Vinchetti crime family. You’re a child pomographer, Mr. Paone.”

Christ, a fuckin’ burn
, Paone realized.
Somebody set me up
. By now it wasn’t hard to figure: lying in some ICU ward strapped to a bed, shot up like a hinged duck in a shooting gallery, one hand gone, one leg gone, and now this stolid bitch reading him his own rap sheet off an FBI fax. He sure as shit hadn’t gotten busted taking down some candy store.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

Her eyes blazed down. Her face could’ve been carved from stone.
Yeah
. Paone thought,
I’ll
bet she’s got a couple kids herself flunking out of school and smoking pot. Bet her car just broke down and her insurance just went up and her hubby’s late for dinner every night because he’s too busy balling his secretary and snorting rails of coke off her tits, and all of a sudden it’s my fault that the world’s a shithouse full of perverts and pedophiles. It’s my fault that a lot of people out there pay righteous cash for kiddie flicks, right, baby? Go ahead, blame me. Why not? Oh, hey, and how about the drug problem? And the recession and the Middle East and the ozone layer? That’s all my fault too, right?

Her voice sounded like she had gravel in her throat when again she asked: “What do you remember?”

The query haunted him. The bits of memory blurred along with the room in his myopic eyes—bullets popping into flesh, the megaphone grating, spent cartridges spewing out of wafts of smoke—and chased him further, stalking him as relentlessly as a wild cat running down a fawn, while Paone fled on, desperate to know yet never daring to look back. …

“Shit, nothing,” he finally said. “I can’t remember anything accept bits and pieces.”

The nurse seemed to talk more to herself than to him. “A transient-global amnesic effect, retrograde and generally nonaphasic, induced by acute traumatic shock. Don’t worry, it’s a short-term symptom and quite commonplace.” The big blue eyes bore back into him. “So I think I’ll refresh your memory. Several hours ago, you murdered two state police officers and a federal agent.”

Paone’s jaw dropped.

At once the chase ended, the wild cat of memory finally falling down on its prey—Paone’s mind. He remembered it all, the pieces falling into place as quickly as pavement to a ledge-jumper.

The master run. Rodz. The loops.

And all the blood.

Another day, another ten K
, Paone thought, mounting the three flights of stairs to Rodz’s apartment. He wore jersey gloves—no way he was rockhead enough to leave his prints anywhere near Rodz’s crib. He knocked six times on the door, whistling “Love Me Tender” by the King.

“Who is it?” came the craggy voice.

“Santa Claus,” Paone said. “You really should think about getting a chimney.”

Rodz let him in, then quickly relocked the door. “Anyone tailing you?”

“No, just a busload of DJ agents and a camera crew from
60 Minutes.”

Rodz glowered.

Fuck you if you can’t take a joke
, Paone thought. He didn’t much like Rodz—Newark slime, a whack. Nathan Rodz looked like an anorectic Tiny Tim after a bad facelift: long, frizzy black hair on the head of a pudgy medical cadaver, speedlines down his cheeks. Rodz was what parlance dubbed a “snatch-cam"—a subcontractor, so to speak. He abducted the kids, or got them on loan from freelance movers, then shot the tapes himself. “The Circuit” was what the Justice Department called the business: underground pornography. It was a 1.5-billion-dollar-per-year industry that almost no one knew about, a far cry from the
Debbie Does Dallas
bunk you rented down at Metro Video. Paone muled all kinds of underground: rape loops, “wet” S&M, animal flicks, scat, snuff, and (their biggest number) “kp” and “prepubes.” Paone picked up the masters from guys like Rodz, then muled them to Vinchetti’s mobile “dupe” lab. Vinchetti’s network controlled almost all of the underground pom in the East; Paone was the middleman, part of the family. It all worked through mail drops and coded distro points. Vinchetti paid two grand for a twenty-minute master if the resolution was good; from there each master was duped hundreds of times and sold to clients with a taste for the perverse. “Logboys,” the guys who did the actual rodwork, were hired freelance on the side; that way, nobody could spin on Vinchetti him-self. Paone had seen some shit in his time—part of his job was to sample each master for quality: biker chicks on PCP blowing horses and dogs, addicts excreting on each other and often consuming the produce of their bowels. “Nek” flicks. “Bag” flicks. Logboys getting down on pregnant girls, retarded girls, amputees and deformees. And snuff. It amazed Paone, in spite of its grotesquery: people
paid
to see this stuff. They
got off
on it.
What a fucked-up world
, he thought a million times over, but, hey, supply and demand—that was the American Way, wasn’t it? If Vinchetti didn’t supply the clients, someone else would, and as long as the money was there …