Everville (74 page)

"Stop right there," the creature said when Harry was a yard from the bed. It was shuddering from head to foot. "If you come any closer, I'll kill Little Stevie. And I'll throw him down the stairs, just like Hess."

Harry raised his hands in mock-surrender. "Okay," he said, "this is as close as I get. I just wanted to check the fainily resemblance. You know, it's uncanny."

The Nomad shook his head. "I was an angel, D'Amour it said, its voice troubled. "I remember Heaven. I do. @s though it were yesterday. Clouds and light and-2' "And the seat'

"Me sea?"

"Quiddity." "No!" it yelled. "I was in Heaven. I remember God's heart, beating, beating, all the time@'

"Maybe you were born on a beach."

"I've warned you once," the creature said. "I'll kill the boy-,,

"And what will that prove? That you're a fallen angel? Or that you're the little bully I say you are?"

The Nomad raised its hands to its wretched face. "Ohh, you're clever, D'Amour," it sighed. "You're very clever. But so was Hess." The creature parted its fingers, exhaling its sewer breath. "And look what happened to him."

"Hess wasn't clever," Harry said soffly. "I loved him and I respected him, but he was deluded. You're pretty much alike, now that I think about it." He leaned an inch or two closer to the entity. "You think you fell from Heaven. He thought he was serving it. You believed the same things, in the end. It was stupid to kill him, Nomad. It's not left you with very much."

"I've still got you," the creature replied. "I could fuck with your head until the Crack of Doom."

"Nah," Harry said, standing upright. "I'm not afraid of you any longer. I don't need prayers-2'

"Oh don't you?" it growled.

"I don't need a crucifix. I just need the eyes in my head. And what I see-what I see is an anorexic little shit-eater."

At this, it launched itself at him, shrieking, all the wounds in its head wide. Harry retreated across the filthy floor, avoiding its whining talons by inches, until his back was flat against the wall. Then it closed on him, flinging its arms up at his head. He raised his hands to protect his eyes, but the creature didn't want them, at least not yet. Instead it dug its fingers into the flesh at the back of his neck, driving its spiked feet into the wall to either side of his body.

"Now again, D'Amour-" the creature said. Harry felt the blood pour down his spine. Heard his vertebrae crack. "Am I an angel?" Its face was inches from Harry's, its voice issuing from all the holes at once. "I want an answer, D'Amour. It's very important to me. I was in Heaven once, wasn't I? Admit it."

Very, very slowly, Harry shook his throbbing head.

The creature sighed. "Oh, D'Amour," it said, uprooting one of its hands from the back of Harry's neck and bringing it round to stroke his larynx. The growl had gone from its voice. It was no longer the Nomad; it was Lazy Susan. "I'll ss you," it said, its fingers breaking the skin of Harry's at. "There hasn't been a night when I haven't thought of "-its tone was sultry now-"here, in the dark together."

On the bed behind the creature, the boy moaned.

"Hush... " Lazy Susan said.

But Stevie was beyond being silenced. He wanted the comfort of a prayer. "Hail Mary, full of grace-" he began.

The creature glanced round at him, the Nomad surfacing again to shriek for the boy to shut the fuck up. As it did so, Harry caught hold of the hand at his neck, lacing his fingers with the talons. Then he threw his weight forward. The Nomad's feet were loosed from the wall and the two bodies,. locked together, stumbled into the middle of the room.

Instantly, the creature drove its fingers deeper into Harry's nape. Blinded by pain, he swung around, determined that wherever they fell it wouldn't be on top of the boy. they reeled wildly, round and round, until Harry lost his balance and fell forward, carrying the Nomad ahead of him.

Its body struck the charred door, which splintered under the combined weight of their bodies. Through his tear-filled eyes Harry glimpsed the misbegotten face in front of him, its hands slack with shock. Then they were out onto the landing. It was bright after the murk of the bedroom. For the Nomad, painfully so. It convulsed in Harty's embrace, hot phlegm spurting from its maws. He seized the moment to wrest its talons from his neck, then their momentum carried them against the banisters, which cracked but did not break, and over they went.

It was a fall of perhaps ten feet, the Nomad under Harry, shrieking still. they hit the stairs, and rolled and rolled, finally coming to rest a few steps from the bottom.

The first thing Harry thought was: God, it's quiet. Then he opened his eyes. He was cheek to cheek with the creature, its sweat stinging his skin. Reaching out for the spattered banister he started to haul himself to his feet, his left arm, shoulder, ribs and neck all paining him, but none so badly he could not enjoy the spectacle at his feet.

The Nomad was in extremis, its body-which was even more pitiful and repulsive by the light of day than in the room above-a mass of degenerating tissue.

"Are... you... there?" the creature said.

It had lost its growl and its silkiness too, as though the selves it had pretended had flickered out along with its sight.

"I'm here," Harry replied.

It tried to raise one of its hands, but failed. "Are you... dying?" it wanted to know. "Not today," Harry said softly.

"That's not right," the creature said. "We have to go together. I... am... you... "

"You haven't got much time," Harry told it. "Don't waste what you've got with that crap."

"But it's true," the thing went on. "I am... I am you and... you are love... "

Harry thought of Ted's painting; of the snake beneath his heel. Clinging to the banister, he raised his foot.

"Be quiet," he said.

The creature ignored him. "You are love it said again. "And love is.

.. "

Harry laid his heel upon its head. "I'm warning you," he said. "Love is what...

He didn't warn it again, but ground his foot down into its suppurating face as hard as his weary body would allow. It was hard enough. He felt its muck cave in beneath his heel, layers of wafer-bone and ooze dividing under his weight. Small spasms ran out along the creature's limbs to its bloodied fingertips. Then, quite suddenly, it ceased, its schtick unfinished.

In the hallway below, Loretta was murmuring the prayer her brother had begun above.

"Hail Mary, full of grace, the L4ord is with thee, blessed art thou among women-"

It sounded pretty to Harry's ears, after the shrieks and the threats.

"And blessed be the fruit of thy womb, Jesus-"

It would not turn death away, of course. It would not save the innocent from suffering. But prettiness was no insignificant quality, not in this troubled world. While he listened he pulled his heel out of the Nomad's face. The creature's matter, stripped of the will that had shaped it, was already losing distinction and running off down the stairs.

Five steps to the bottom, Harry saw. Just like Hess.

The victory had taken its toll. In addition to his lacerated neck and punctured throat Harry had a broken collarbone, four cracked ribs, a fractured right arm, and mild concussion. As for Stevie, who had been the Nomad's hostage for three days, his traumas were more psychological than physical. they would take some time to heal, if they ever did, but the first step on that journey was made the day after the creature's death. The family moved out of the house on Wyckoff Street, leaving it to the mercy of gossip. This time there would be no attempt to redeem the house. Untenanted, it' would fall into disrepair through the winter months, at what some thought an uncanny speed. Nobody would ever occupy it again, One mystery remained unsolved. Why had the creature plotted to bring him back to Wyckoff Street in the first place? Had it begun to doubt its own mythology and arranged a rematch with an old enemy to confirm its sense of itself'.) Or had it simply been bored one September day and taken it into its head to play the old game of temptation and slaughter for the sheer hell of it?

The answer to those questions would, Harry assumed, join the long list of things he would never know.

As for Ted's magnum opus, after a few days of indecision Harry elected to hang it in the living room. Given that he was presently one-handed, this took him the better part of two hours to accomplish, but once it was up-the canvas nailed directly to the wall-it looked better than it had in the gallery. Unbounded by a frame, Ted's vision seemed to bleed out across the wall.

Of the lovely Sabina, who had presumably been obeying the Nomad's instructions when she'd delivered the painting, there was no further sign. But Harry had two new deadbolts put on the front door anyway, just in case.

A little less than a fortnight after the endgame in Wyckoff Street, he got a call out of the blue from a fretful Raul.

"I need you to get on a plane, Harry. Whatever you're doing-"

"Where are you?"

"I'm in Omaha. I came looking for Tesia."

"And?"

"I found her. But... not quite the way I thought I would."

"Is she okay?" Harry said. There was a silence down the line. "Raul?"

"Yeah, I'm here. I don't know whether she's okay or not. You have to see for yourself.

"Is she at Grillo's place?"

"Yeah. I tracked her from L.A. She told her neighbors she was heading out to Nebraska. That's proof of insanity in Hollywood. How soon can you get out here?"

"I'll catch a flight today, if I can find one. Will you pick me up at the airport? I'm not in the best of shape."

"What happened?"

"I trod in some shit. But it's dead now."

Phoebe didn't tell Jarrieffa that she knew the identity of their visitor. It was too painful, for one thing, and for another she was afraid the result would be to scare the woman and her children out of the house. She certainly didn't want that; not just for their sakes, but for her own. She had become used to their mess and their ruckus, and it would make the recognition of what she'd done all the more unbearable if she was left alone in the O'Connell mansion as a consequence.

Jarrieffa had a lot of questions, of course, and she was less than satisfied with some of the answers Phoebe furnished. But as time slipped by, and the children's nightmares and spontaneous bursts of tears diminished in frequency, the house returned to its former rhythm, and whatever doubts Jarrieffa still had she kept to herself.

Phoebe, meanwhile, had begun a systematic search of the city, looking for some clue as to Joe's whereabouts. Assuming he had not simply evaporated upon departing the house (this she doubted; rudimentary he'd been, but still solid), his escape through the streets could not, she reasoned, have gone completely unnoticed. Even in this city, the streets of which boasted more strange forms and physiognomies with every new vessel that dropped anchor, Joe's appearance had been to say the least noteworthy. Somebody must have seen something.

She soon came to regret that she'd been so tardy warming up relations with her neighbors. Though most of them were reasonably polite to her when she came asking questions, they were all wary of her. As far as they were concerned she remained an outsider, and she feared that even if they had answers to her questions they would not be forthcoming.

Several days in a row she returned to the O'Connell house frustrated and exhausted, having traipsed from door to door (on some streets from construction site to construction site) asking for information, the parameters of her search steadily expanding, along with her sense of desperation. She lost her appetite and her sense of humor. Some days, having skipped two consecutive meals, she'd wander the streets lighthearted and close to tears, calling Joe's name like a crazy woman. Once, finding herself at the end of the day lost and too weary to discover a way home, she slept in the street. On another occasion, wandering into the middle of some territorial dispute between two families, she almost had her throat cut. But she continued to journey out every day, hoping for some clue that would eventually lead her to him.

As it turned out, the sliver of information she'd been searching for came from a source close to hand. Preparing to step into her bath one day, having walked the city for twelve hours or more, there was a knock on her bedroom door, and upon her invitation Enko entered, asking to speak to her for a few moments. He had always been the least friendly member of Jarrieffa's brood; a gangly boy, even by adolescent stan- dards, his face human but for the symmetrical patches of mottling upon his brow and neck, and the vestigial gills that ran from the middle of his cheeks down to his neck. "I've got a friend," he explained. "His name's Vip Luemu. He lives down the street two blocks. The house with the boarded up windows?"

"I know it," Phoebe said. "He told me you'd been round asking about... you know, that thing that was here."

"Yes I was."

"Well... Yip knew something about it, but his mother told him not to speak to you."

"That was neighborly," Phoebe remarked.

"It's not you," Enko replied. "Well... it is and it isn't.

It's mainly what happened here, you know, in the old days, and with the ships coming back in again, they think you're going to start up business like Miss O'Connell."

"Business?" said Phoebe.

"Yes. You know. The women."

"I'm not following this, Enko."

"the whores," the boy said, the mottling on his face darkening.

"WhoresT' said Phoebe. "Are you telling me this house... used to be a brothel?"

"The best. That's what Vip's father says. People came from all over." Phoebe pictured Maeve, sitting in regal splendor amid her pillows and her billet-doux, opining on the imbecility of love. And no wonder. The woman had been a madam. Love wasn't good for business.

"You could do me a great service," Phoebe said, "if you'd tell Vip to spread the word that I have no intention of reopening this house for business any time soon."