The Light at the End (27 page)

They drove in silence, Stephen already having given up the address. He inspected himself glumly in the rearview mirror, probing tentatively at the full-blown shiner that now graced his left eye socket. Deep reds and purples adorned it in bold, splashy strokes; and the moisture from his icepack gave it the appearance of a high-gloss finish. He briefly considered turning it in as his next art project, then stifled the thought. He was afraid to laugh in Joseph’s presence.

I’m afraid, period,
he admitted to himself as they rolled east on 8
^th
Street toward Avenue B.
I’m afraid of what we’ll find in Rudy’s apartment. What if he’s there? What if there’s a big coffin in the middle of the bedroom? And what if he’s got somebody there to guard him… ?

That last question seemed so pertinent that he almost mentioned it to Joseph; but one look at the man behind the wheel made him promptly reconsider. Joseph looked like a solid mass of vengeance, staring straight ahead with flinty eyes and a dangerous scowl plastered onto his features. He smoked a cigarette mechanically, deriving no pleasure from it whatsoever, just doing it to fill the seconds between this place and Rudy’s front door.

They reached Avenue B and screeched into the only available parking space, moments before a middle-aged Oriental woman could negotiate her old Buick into reverse and parallel park there. She screamed at them in broken English and waved her scrawny fist. Joseph ignored her, shutting off the engine and motioning Stephen toward him. “This way,” he said. “Lock the door. This won’t take long.”

Stephen obediently climbed out the driver’s side, shrugging apologetically at the still-screaming woman. Joseph slammed the door and locked it with his key, then turned and crossed the street without a word. Stephen followed behind, looking nervously from side to side, drinking in the pomp and circumstance of Junkie Heaven.

Because Avenue B was the kind of place people were talking about when they mentioned a “bad section of town.” Young men, not much more than Stephen’s age, were passed out in the filth on the sidewalk. Little kids were running around, calling each other motherfuckers and shouting that they were going to “cut’choo up.” Everybody either looked armed or too wasted to care any more. To someone like Stephen, who was already frightened and miserable, Avenue B was a singularly depressing and harrowing locale.

“This is the place?” Joseph asked, pointing at a doorway as Stephen scurried to catch up with him.

“I think so…”

“You
think
so.” Joseph turned to lay a withering glance on him.

“No, no!” Stephen blathered quickly, fading back a step. “I mean, I’m pretty sure. It’s just that I never came here often. It’s not really my kind of neighborhood.”

“Right,” Joseph said, and began to climb the stairs. Stephen followed closely.

They opened the outer door of the building and stared into a grimy foyer. The smell of derelict piss was ripe and pungent, cutting into their nostrils like ammonia. Joseph winced and brought one hand to his nose, then stepped inward to check the mailbox.

“Jackpot,” he growled nasally, his nose still pinched shut. “Pasko. 3B. Let’s go.”

The inner door to the building was supposed to be locked, but it pushed open easily. They found themselves faced by a ratty-looking stairwell, thick with the smells of greasy cooking and unwashed bodies. The stairs themselves were rickety; they buckled and creaked as the two young men climbed to the third floor landing. A television set was blasting game shows on the second floor, somewhere. It was the only other sound they could hear.

“This is it,” Stephen said finally, leaning on the banister to catch his breath.

They paused for a moment in front of Rudy’s apartment, gauging the atmosphere surrounding the door. It was bad: they both sensed it at once. It was the kind of aura that spoke directly to the nervous system, setting off chills and danger signals, prying the lid off the subconscious mind so that all the deepest mortal dreads could freely run amok.

Joseph stepped hesitantly over to the door, suddenly conscious in the extreme of how loud his footsteps were. He wrapped his right hand around the doorknob, retracted it abruptly with a startled hiss.

The doorknob was freezing. In ninety-plus weather, the rounded piece of plastic was colder than an icebox: so cold that it almost burned.

“Jesus Christ,” Joseph whispered, rubbing his hands together briskly. Stephen’s expression was frightened and quizzical. Joseph shrugged and took ten good paces away from the door before stopping, turning, and bracing himself.

“What are you going to do?” Stephen asked him.

Joseph rolled his eyes and shook his head wearily. “Take a wild guess,” he said.

Then he thundered toward the door at full speed, bringing his left shoulder around in front at the moment before impact. Stephen’s warning cry froze in his throat as the sound of splintering wood exploded in his ears. His eyes snapped shut reflexively, and he half-turned away.

Suddenly, a door behind him flew open. Stephen whirled to see a round Puerto Rican face pop out into the hallway and yell, “
Who’s makin’ alla this a-noise, eh?
”

“MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!” Joseph yelled, behind him.

“
I call they POLICE!
” the Puerto Rican squeaked shrilly.

“SHUT UP, OR YOU’LL NEED ‘EM!” Joseph bellowed, banging his fist against the wall. The round head popped back through the doorway abruptly, the door following closely behind. There was the sound of multiple locks snapping shut, muted grumbling in Spanish that trailed off like vapor.

Then Joseph said, “Come here, Stevie,” and Stephen turned to see that the door was dangling by one hinge from the frame. Joseph had his back to Stephen, peering into the darkness of the apartment. He was perhaps two feet inside.

“Come here,” Joseph repeated. “You’ve got to see this.”

Stephen dragged himself forward unhappily. About ten feet away from the doorway, his nerves started jangling alarm again. This time, it was accompanied by a genuine forty-degree drop in temperature and a strong, fetid, unfamiliar smell. It all served to make him shiver and flinch as he forced himself into the room.

“Check it out,” Joseph murmured with cruel satisfaction. “This is the guy you were trying to protect.”

Joseph turned on the light.

“Omigod,” Stephen whispered, making almost no sound.

The room showed itself to Stephen in totality first: a single dead organism, reeking of evil, crawling with unnatural life. It flooded his senses with a chittering swarm of nightmare images, hammered down into one solid gestalt impression and left to burn in his mind forever. It gripped him for a long frozen moment of horror, bombarded him from every direction at once, oozed in through his nose and his mouth and his pores, raked his eyeballs with fire, filled his head with its infinite shrieking chorus.

Then slowly, piece by piece, it unfolded itself before him.

It showed him the writing. The blood. The walls. It showed him how the three had merged into a whole more hideous than the sum of its parts. It showed him the furniture, stripped-down and mangled. It showed him the boards, nailed up over the window, totally shielding the room from the sun.

Then it showed him the rats.

There were dozens of them. All shapes. All sizes. The sudden light and intrusion had stunned and confused them. They skittered across the floor in blind waves, screeching. They disappeared down secret holes, through doorways into darkness.

It showed him the shapeless pile of rags in the corner; the rats that surrounded it, reluctant to leave. The hatred in their eyes was a palpable thing as they slid away slowly, their tiny mouths working.

Then it showed him what they had in their mouths.

“Rudy Pasko,” Joseph muttered, “this is your life.”

Stephen puked all over the floor.

Joseph laughed. He couldn’t help it. The insanity of the situation overwhelmed him. He danced to one side quickly, trying to avoid the splatter off the floorboards, and a machine-gun burst of clipped, humorless chuckles escaped him.

The shapeless pile in the comer was composed of more than rags. There wasn’t much left, and most of it was so thoroughly trashed that it defied recognition; but Joseph could still distinguish the remnants of the two tiny pairs of pants, a sneaker, and a T-shirt with the word MENUDO tackily heat-transferred across its front.

And, of course, there were the bones.

Small bones.

Children’s bones.

“You bastard,” he muttered between clenched teeth. “You son of a bitch. God, I wish you were here.”

Behind him, Stephen continued to retch. Suddenly, it wasn’t funny: it was infuriating. A rush of mindless fury overwhelmed him. He moved around the pool of vomit and grabbed Stephen by the back of the neck, forcing the head upright.

“Two little kids,” Joseph hissed in Stephen’s ear. “Your buddy killed two little kids, used their blood to write all over the walls with, and fed ‘em to the rats. What do you think about
that
, Stevie? Huh? How do you feel about ol’ Rudy now?”

Stephen was unable to speak. He was remembering the two little children in his dream. He was seeing their dead eyes and moldering faces as they held up the folds of Rudy’s robe.

He puked again, dry heaving this time.

“Hey! Maybe if I understood his philosophy, I would understand what he’s all about!” Joseph was shouting the words into Stephen’s ear now. “I could relate to his trip, maybe! Hey!”

“What I should do,” he continued, dragging Stephen forward with him, “is read his great words of wisdom here! It might change my whole life! Wutta ya say?”

Stephen coughed and sputtered and moaned. Joseph practically ground Stephen’s face against the wall as they reached it, then dragged him backwards just a step. The writing on the wall refused to focus. There were too many tears in his eyes.

“Oh, yeah. This is great,” Joseph said. His voice was quiet and deadly. “This is the work of a true fucking genius. I feel a lot better already. Are you reading this?”

Stephen tried to shake his head, but Joseph held the back of his neck too tightly.

“Read it.”

A whimper, slowly burgeoning into a scream.

“I said READ IT!”

Slowly burgeoning into a scream, the sound welling up from his diaphragm and expanding into his lungs. Slowly burgeoning into a scream that cut off abruptly, as Joseph grabbed him by the throat and squeezed with both hands.

Stephen’s bugged out, his tongue swollen and flopping, as Joseph violently jerked him around like a joystick. His face flooded with color, deepening to rival the purple welt around his eye. The scream sucked back into his lungs. His hands came up weakly, in futile resistance. The world began to gray out.

A strange sound came into his ears, then: by turns the roar of an ape, the rumble of a train, the howl of a baby at night. It was a mad chaotic sound that came from far away…

…and suddenly he was falling, the pressure around his neck released. His forehead cracked against the wall, and he crumbled to the floor, gasping for breath and clawing blindly at the air.

It took a full minute for him to begin to get his bearings. It was then that he figured out the source of the sound.

Joseph Hunter was crying.

Stephen looked up at him meekly, disbelieving. He rubbed his right eye and blinked the tears out of the other as best he could, trying to ascertain that what he was seeing was real. It was. Joseph had slumped to his knees, the massive body folding up like a switchblade while fierce spasms of sorrow racked him over and over. He was utterly oblivious to Stephen’s presence now. He was utterly oblivious to everything.

Stephen crawled away from the wall quietly, staring up at the bloody smears upon it. His eyes could focus upon them now. His eyesight was clearing remarkably.

I AM KING

I AM GOD

I OWN THE KEYS

TO THE CITY

read the first stanza.

NONE SHALL ENTER

THE KINGDOM

EXCEPT THROUGH

ME

The column ended. There was more, written next to it. Stephen’s eyes scanned over to the next section, while Joseph continued to cry.

I KILLED THE PIG

THAT TRIED

TO MAKE ME

CRAWL

There was more. There was more. Stephen choked down the fear that rose up sickly from his bowels, threatening to make him heave again. He steadied himself with his hands against the floor and read the last block of gore-smeared, artfully rendered print.

I WILL KILL THE CUNT, AND

I WILL KILL THE TOADIE

AND THE OLD ONE WILL FALL

BENEATH MY HEELS

AND THE SHEEP

WILL BECOME WOLVES

THAT WALK BEHIND ME

I AM KING

I am king
. The words rolled around in his mind like living things.
And the sheep will become wolves that walk behind me
. Stephen closed his eyes, and the children were there: as they’d been in his dream; as they remained, in a pile on the floor beside him. Nothing on earth could spare him from those visions. They would haunt him for as long as he lived.

“Tonight, motherfucker,” he heard Joseph Hunter sob. “Tonight is the
end
.”

And he heard his own voice, in the back of his mind, whisper
yes
.

The clock on the wall said 6:05.

In the dispatch room of Your Kind Of Messengers, Inc., the last of the hordes were trickling out for the evening. Tuesday marked the end of the pay week, which made checkout time drag out to twice its normal length. Allan had forgotten about that; he cursed the luck that put Ian’s death, the hunt, and weekly checkout all together in the same festive package.

There had been questions… too many questions… as the news of Ian’s death worked its way through the messenger ranks. Ian was well-liked, by and large; and everybody knew how tight Ian and Allan had been. It was inevitable that the topic would come up, over and over, as each new handful of messengers wandered into dispatch.

And there were very few people that Allan really cared to discuss it with.

A handful of them were waiting outside, by the curb. Allan had asked them to wait around until checkout was done; he was pleased to see that they’d obliged him. He watched through the window as they passed an end-of-the-working-day joint around in an indiscreet circle and swigged on the beers of their choice.

Doug Hasken, the roller-skating messenger, was the last one to finish checking out. He and Allan were the only ones left in the office, now… Chester and Jerome having departed with the last big wave of messengers to leave… and Allan found himself looking at Doug more closely than he ever had before.

He’s a good man
, Allan noted.
Been with us less than a week, and already you can tell that he’s gonna be an ace. Plus, he seems like someone you can trust.

I wonder if I should ask him?

Allan was still debating it when Doug called him over to look at a particularly weird run: thirty-five minutes of waiting time to pick up a fifteen-pound bag of self-help books and take them to three incorrect addresses. It was the kind of snafu that would make an ordinary messenger break into an animated war dance; Doug had taken it so gracefully that Allan wondered if the kid had been nominated for sainthood.

“Well, I guess I did alright, then,” Doug said, staring at his totals for the week. “$150 in four days.”

“If we were doing any business, you’d be clearing $250, easy,” Allan assured him. In his mind, the debate had worked its way into a draw.
Speak now, or forever hold your peace
, it informed him unanimously. He decided to go for it.

“Uh…” he began, “…uh, I wanted to ask you what you’re doing tonight.”

“What I’m doing tonight?” Doug’s eyebrows came up, a bit defensively.

“Yeah. Like if you had anything in particular going on, or… if you were going to be in the area.”

Doug considered it for a minute before answering. There was an obvious conflict in his mind that he left unstated.
That makes two of us
, Allan noted bitterly, and then Doug began to speak.

“Yeah, I’ll be hanging out in the Village for a while. Why? What’s up?”

Now it was Allan’s turn to be put on the spot. He wrestled with the words, with the idea of pursuing it at all… Doug’s response so far had been less than heartening… then said
fuggit
to himself, motioned for Doug to wait a second, and moved across the room to rap on the window and beckon the others inside.

“I’ve got to ask you a favor,” he said finally. “I’ll tell you about it in a minute, when the other guys get in here.”

Moments later, the door opened, and five crazy guys came spilling into the room: Navajo, a lean black dude whose wardrobe tended toward leather, feathers, and beads; Dean, a lunatic biker with a perpetual wildass grin; Art Dodger, with his long blond hair and battered top hat, looking like he just stepped out of a Freak Brothers comic; Jimi, the sax player, blowing Ornette Coleman noise through a plastic kazoo; and Zeke, the eternally serious elf, letting an uncharacteristic guffaw rack his diminutive frame.

When these are your most trustworthy men
, Allan mused with a private grin,
you’re in serious trouble
. Even Doug looked crazy: with his knee and elbow pads, bike-racing helmet, and
Road Warrior
jumpsuit, he could have played a character in
Plan 9 From Outer Space
.

But they’re the best. Aces, every one of ‘em. I don’t care how weird-looking they are: not one of these guys has ever let me down.

“So what’s happening?” Dean wanted to know. “We blowin’ up the office tonight, or what?” Before Allan had a chance to respond, three possible approaches to the demolition had been cheerfully advanced.

“No, no.” Allan laughed, in spite of himself. “I’d rather not think about anything blowing up around here tonight, thank you.”

“You’re no fun,” Jimi informed him flatly.

“I’m gonna
be
here all night!” Allan fired back. “And that’s kinda… why I asked you all to hang around. I need for you to do me a favor.”

“I knew it,” Dean groused. “Overtime runs.”

“Hey! You get paid double for that action!” Navajo yelled in his ear. “You doin’ somethin’ better with your time?”

“Well, it’s not exactly overtime runs,” Allan continued. “It’s a favor for me. And there is a little bit of money in it for you.”

The mention of money sent a tangible shiver through the room. It had been a bad week, and people were hungry.

“How much?” Dean queried, beady-eyed. Jimi elbowed him in the side and shushed him quickly.

“Well, it’s like this,” Allan said, pulling a small stack of Xeroxes out from under the counter and setting it down on top. “I need to find this guy tonight. I don’t really want to tell you why, but it’s very important.”

He passed the Xeroxes around. They were grainy, black-and-white copies of a photograph culled from Stephen’s collection. The shot was of Rudy. The pale face sneered up at them, seven times over.

“He ripped you off,” Navajo ventured to guess.

“This has something to do with Ian, doesn’t it?” Zeke suddenly inquired.

And a graveyard silence enveloped the room.

“We’re pretty goddamn stupid, aren’t we?” Dean mumbled shamefacedly. He spoke for all of them.

“I didn’t really want to bring it up.” Allan stared at his shoes as he said it, painfully aware of all the eyes upon him. “I hoped I wouldn’t have to…”

“Hey,” Art Dodger interrupted. “Don’t sweat it, Allan. Really. We all loved Ian. He was a great guy. We understand.”

Why Allan didn’t start crying again, he would never know.

“You think this is the guy that killed him?” Jimi asked.

“Yeah,” Allan admitted. “We’re pretty sure.”

The question flew around the room, unspoken:
you and who else?
Allan had the face of a man who’d already said far too much. Nobody was about to push him further.

“So what would you like us to do?” Doug inquired, speaking for the first time. Allan and the others looked over at him, pleased by how neatly the conversation had been turned around and put back on the track.

“Okay,” Allan said, leaning his elbows against the counter. “We expect this guy to show up in the Village somewhere between nine and eleven tonight. What I’d like you to do is just cruise around and look for him. If you spot him, for God’s sake don’t get near him. Don’t let him know you’re watching. Just get to the nearest pay phone and call me here. That’s all I want you to do.”

“How about if we just grab him and knock his head in?” Navajo suggested.

“I’d love to grease that fucker’s skids,” Dean agreed.

“NO!” The violence of Allan’s response startled them. “You’ve got to promise me to stay out of his way. Otherwise, forget it.”

“Why?” Navajo spoke for all of them.

“Because…” He wanted to say
because you don’t know what you’re up against
, but decided against it. They’d go out of their way to prove how tough they were; he’d be forced either to deflate their collective machismo or explain that Rudy wasn’t exactly human… and then they’d
really
want to be in on the action.

Which would be terrific, except that… I’ve already got enough people to fear for. I don’t want to be responsible for any more.

“Because,” he repeated, “we already know how we want to handle this. When you tell us where he is, we’ll get him. That’s just the way I want it done. Now, will you do that for me?”

The six messengers glanced back and forth at each other, considering it, weighing each one’s reaction against their own, struggling toward consensus.

“I’ll give you each ten dollars to kill the time with,” Allan added, shrugging a bit foolishly at the piddliness of the sum.

“You already cut us out of the action,” Dean pointed out abruptly, “Don’t insult us by offering money.”

“This is the guy who wanted to know how much,” Jimi chided him.

“Actually,” Art Dodger said slowly, embarrassed, “I don’t even have enough money for a beer…”

“I’ll
lend
you the money, you heartless little twerp!” Dean yelled, but his grin gave him away. He turned to Allan, then, looking him straight in the eye and saying, “I don’t know about anybody else, but I’ll do it. You need a scout? You got one.”

Jimi, Art Dodger, and Navajo were already nodding agreement. Zeke thoughtfully played with his beard, the eyes unfocused like a dreamer’s. Doug watched him, also not decided yet, his own heavy considerations dangling before him.

Like
good
and
evil
, just for starters. Then on to
right
and
wrong
.

They were not considerations to be taken lightly. Not to Doug Hasken, at any rate. His continuing peace with God depended entirely on his obedience; and sometimes, it got awfully tricky to figure out what God’s will actually was.

So when Zeke finally came out of his trance to answer in the affirmative, leaving Doug as the last one to commit himself by word or deed, he gave the only response that he honestly, safely could.

“I have something very important of my own to do tonight. It’ll last until ten, I figure. As soon as I’m done, I’ll give you a call.” He shrugged. “That’s the best I can do. I’m sorry.”

Once again, as with Allan, the impulse was to ask him what was so godawful-damned important. Once again, the question was allowed to go unasked.

“Well, if that’s it, then,” Allan said, loudly sighing, “I won’t hang you up any longer. I’ll just need to start hearing from you around nine o’clock, okay?”

“You got it,” Dean said, “speakin’ for me and my cronies here.” He made an unsubtle point of excluding Doug from their number.

Dean and his cronies departed then, noisily, leaving Allan and Doug alone in the office once more. Each of them had an unearthly secret that he dared not divulge to the other. But both of them wanted to. And both of them knew it.

“I really will call you,” Doug said. His eyes were earnest.

“Okay,” Allan answered. “That’s all I can ask.”

When they smiled at each other, it was in perfect understanding.

After Doug left, Allan slumped back in Tony’s chair at the chief dispatcher’s position. He thought about Tony and the rest of the guys in the office: the way they’d reacted after he gave them the bogus story about the late runs and asked them to back him up on it. “I don’t know nothin’ about it, buddy,” Tony had said. “You took the call. That’s all I know.” Chester and Jerome had also agreed to silent complicity. But in all of their eyes, it was the same story again: the same curiosity, fear, and concern.

He thought about what was going to happen tonight: if they would find Rudy at all; and if so, what the final results might be. He wondered if anyone would die tonight; at the same time, he wondered how many. And who.

Then he thought about Ian again.

The clock on the wall said 6:20 now. That piece of information pleased him.

It gave him ten full minutes to cry and think and clear his mind before Joseph arrived, and the hunt began.