The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie) (17 page)

"There are . . ." she began weakly, "there
are explanations for it. All of it."

Clay sighed. He stepped in front of her, forcing the woman
to look at him. "All right. All right. Give me an explanation, then, for
this."

He reached out and touched her hand and in an instant of
painfully shifting bones and flesh that flowed like mercury, he
became
Julia Ferrick, right down to her gnawed fingernails and her white peasant
blouse. The woman blinked and gasped for air, breath hitching in her throat as
she stared at the mirror image of herself that he had become.

And then she fainted, tumbling so quickly toward the floor
that Clay did not have a chance to catch her. He was only grateful that the
living room was carpeted.

"Mom!" Danny called, running to her, kneeling
beside her. The kid twisted his face up into a terrible grimace and when he spoke
again it was in a rasping whisper. "I'm sorry. Sorry I'm not what you
wanted."

Clay decided to give the boy a moment to collect himself. He
stepped back, then looked over to where Eve was unfolding from her chair.

"That went well," she said.

Before Clay could respond to her sarcasm he heard the squeal
of tires yet again from outside the window. He turned, peering through the
glass into the darkness beyond, and saw the limousine barreling through the
suburban neighborhood. Its brakes screamed as it skidded to a halt in front of
the Ferrick home, and then slowly turned into the driveway.

"Eve," Clay said. "Trouble."

Tom Stanley stood above the grave of his recently departed
mother and wept, hot scalding tears streaking his round, cherubic features. It
was this way every time he visited, a deluge of sorrow for the woman who had
meant the world to him.

He crouched upon his mother's grave and used the elbow of
his jacket to rub imaginary fingerprints from her gray marble headstone. It had
been set in place earlier that week by the groundskeepers of the Mount Auburn
Cemetery, and Tom could not escape the certainty that they had marred it
somehow. He paused, studied the gleaming marble, and then shook his head,
buffing the stone again. His mother had been gone for a little more than two
weeks, and already it felt like forever.

Strange shadows moved across the ground and Tom gazed up
from his routine of sorrow, troubled by something he could not put a name to. The
cemetery was strangely deserted this day, perhaps because the weather was so
odd. Far off in the distance he heard what could have been the faint rumble of
thunder. He wished that he had bothered to listen to a weather report before
leaving the house. The sun was partially obscured by weird, shifting, gray
clouds and a strange, reddish fog drifted just above the gravesites.

Like the red tide in the ocean
, he thought.
What
the hell is this? Biologicial warfare in the city of Cambridge?
He chuckled
to himself, a bit giddy, a razor edge of hysteria bubbling just under the
surface, as it had since his mother's death.

His gaze shifted back to the headstone.
Loving Mother
,
he read through teary eyes, and couldn't have agreed more with the simple
inscription. He doubted there had ever been a mother more dedicated to her
child's happiness than Patricia Stanley.

Tom removed a silver flask from his coat pocket and had
another jolt of whiskey. He had been indulging more since his mother's passing,
to help ease the pain of her loss, and was beginning to worry that a problem
was developing.
That's
all I need,
he thought, helping himself to
another large swig before screwing the cap back on and returning the flask to
his pocket,
another problem.

Widowed not long after his birth, she had always been there
for him, playing the role of both mother and father. He could still hear her
voice as she defended her only son from accusations that he had been
responsible for the deaths of some neighborhood cats and dogs. These were
echoes of a past that seemed only yesterday, but in truth was so very long ago.
That was the nature of time, though.

Time was a teasing bitch, and he wished that he could treat
it like all the other teasing bitches who thought they were better than him.

How dare you accuse my Tommy!
his mother had wailed.
To
think my little boy could be responsible for such a thing is a sin!

He was sure she had always known that he
had
killed
the pets. But she wasn't about to let them ruin her son's good name. And
besides, they were only stupid animals, what harm had he really done?

Tom wished that she had been as understanding about the
other killings.

Once again tears filled his eyes and he wondered if he would
ever feel happy again, or if there would only be grief for him now,
forevermore. He had been coming here every day since her burial, hoping to
experience some sense of closure, but all he felt was the gaping hole left by
his loss.

He stared at the ground beneath his feet, imagining the fine
mahogany coffin nestled in the grave below, and the peaceful countenance of the
elderly woman at eternal rest within. How he hated to think of her down there,
alone, without him to take care of her. She had been rather fragile in her
final years, and had needed more of his attention, but it had been the least he
could do after the years she had devoted to him.

"Why did she have to die?" he asked aloud,
dropping to his knees, the moisture from the dewy grass seeping through his
pants. But it was a foolish question. He knew the answer. Tom leaned in and
pressed his forehead against the cool marble of the gravestone.

She had to die, because she was going to tell.

Animals were one thing, but people were another all
together. He wasn't exactly sure how she had found out about his nasty little
avocation. Maybe she'd discovered the trophies he kept hidden in the footlocker
beneath his bed, or even watched one of the special videos he'd made. He didn't
know for sure, which was why it came as such a surprise when she ordered to him
to stop or she'd inform the police.

"You made me so angry, Mom," he said, bringing a
beefy fist up to gently pound the marble. He fished in his pocket for his flask
again, and had himself another drink.

Tom had been doing his thing for years. The pets had been
nothing but a warm-up to bigger and better things. He'd developed a real knack
for zeroing in on the losers of the world, ones who would never be missed. Over
time, he'd actually begun to think of himself as a kind of public servant,
making the world a better place to live, one loser at a time.

How did she think he could just stop? Or that he would
want
to stop, for that matter?

The flask was empty, and he let it fall to the ground. "Why
couldn't you understand?" he slurred, alcohol making his mouth a bit numb.
He recalled her horror as he tried to explain why he did what he did, the
immeasurable joy he received when he watched the light of life go out of their
miserable eyes. But his mother didn't understand. She had begged him to stop,
begged him to be the good boy that she always imagined him to be. But what his
mother had asked of him was impossible.

Why?
he asked again.

Tom pushed the troubling recollections from his mind and
replaced them with thoughts of happier times — his memories of each
murder — and immediately he felt soothed.

It was darker now, as if the sun had decided to pack it in
early. The red mist continued to swirl about him. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen
a fog so unusual. It was kind of creepy. Gripping the tombstone, he pulled his
powerful bulk up, the bones in his knees popping in protest. It was times like
these that reminded him there might come a day when he wouldn't be able to do
what his mother so desperately wanted him to stop, that he would be too old. Just
thinking it was enough to stoke the fires of his urge. It was as if a switch
had been flicked inside his head, and he knew what he wanted to do — what
he
had
to do.

It had been a little over two weeks since the desire was
last satisfied. The memory of it flashed before his mind's eye. His mother was
crying and carrying on, telling him that what he was doing was wrong, that he
would go to jail, and who would take care of her then? She had been upstairs in
the house they had shared since forever, changing the sheets on his bed, as she
had every Tuesday for as long as he could remember. Dirty bedclothes in her
arms, she had pushed past him, saying that he had left her no choice. She had
to tell someone what he was doing, that it was all for his own good.

Tom had never thought of her as one of them — the
losers that wanted to hurt him, to keep him down, but for a brief moment she
had become the enemy. As she prepared to descend the winding staircase, he had
thought about how dangerous it could be for an old woman to be performing the
duties of a household. One terrible fall, and that would be that.

His left hand tingled with the memory of the act, and he
brought it slowly up to his face, flexing his fingers. It had been the gentlest
of pushes that sent the woman he had loved most in all the world tumbling down
the wooden steps. She had landed in a twisted heap, her face covered with his
dirty laundry.

She had still been alive. He'd gently pulled back the sheet
that covered her face and found her wide-eyed and gasping, her neck bent in a
most unnatural way. But the look in her eyes told him that death would soon
claim her. He had seen that look many times before, and when it finally did
come, the first tears of mourning had fallen from his eyes.

A horrible accident,
the neighbors had whispered, and
he had almost started to believe it was true.

Almost.

Tom wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his sports jacket and
reached out to retrieve his empty flask. He slid it into a pocket, and told his
mother that he would be back again tomorrow. The urge to kill was growing
stronger. He placed a kiss upon his fingertips, and touched his mother's
headstone.

As he turned away from the grave he noticed movement in the
fog. It was a woman, slowly walking amongst the graves. Tom squelched the
murderous hunger that began to urge him on.
This is not the time or place
,
yet he continued to watch the woman who moved stiffly toward him.

And then he noticed the others. They were all heading toward
him, walking through the strange, red mist. It was a strange sort of exodus
from the cemetery and he wondered if there was anything was wrong. Puzzled, Tom
fished through his pockets for the keys to his car and turned down the winding
path that would take him to the parking lot.

A grave at the left of the path exploded, and Tom stumbled
backward, reeling, as cold muddy earth and pieces of rotten wood pelted his
face. The heel of his shoe caught the edge of a marker, and he went down on the
grass.

The crowd was closer now and he prepared to yell to them, to
ask for help. The words had almost left his mouth when he became distracted by
motion in the darkness of the now open grave.

There was something, somebody crawling up out of the dirt. He
guessed that it had been a woman, but only because it wore the tattered remains
of a navy blue dress, and he could see a string of pearls still adorning the
dry, leathery-brown skin of her throat. The woman hauled herself up out of the
hole, rose stiffly to her feet, and shambled toward him with a gaseous gurgle.

He knew, then, of course. Knew exactly what he was looking
at. But that did not stop his mind from attempting to rationalize. The poor
woman had somehow been buried alive and had managed to free herself. That was
the only explanation he would allow.

"Are you all right?" he asked, as she lurched
closer.

The mist cleared. And he
saw
her.

Her hands were covered in loose flesh like gloves two sizes
too big. She had no eyes, just two empty sockets that squirmed with life
uncomfortable being above the ground.

Tom Stanley began to scream, just as his victims had done.

All around him graves exploded and he scrambled to his feet,
lashing out at the decaying woman who blocked his path. The animated remains of
the woman fell sideways, her skull striking a stone marker and shattering. He
did not want to see what was inside the corpse's head and was thankful that the
red mist obscured it from his view.

He screamed for help into the fog. There had to be other
mourners nearby. From the corner of his eye he saw movement upon the ground. Hissing
things clawed their way up from other graves and dragged what remained of them
across the grass toward him.

A powerful hand came down upon his shoulder, skeletal
fingers digging into his flesh. He spun out of its grasp and turned to see that
it was the woman he had first noticed in the red mist. He tried to flee,
hopping over the things crawling on the ground in the swirling fog. But she
grabbed him again and he was forced to push her away, to
touch
her.

Her flesh was like wet clay.

"Bitch," he snapped, stepping back as she reached
for him. Savagely, he slapped her hand away as the others slowly emerged from
the crimson fog, all of them decayed and covered with grave dirt.

Part of him wanted to cry, to lie down upon the ground and
curl up into a ball, begging for his mother's protection. But he knew he couldn't.
He had to get away or they would get him for sure. It had to be the mist,
something in the weird fog that made them come back from the dead.

They surged toward him, the noises they made horrible. He
turned to run, but the ground erupted beneath his feet and he felt his ankle
clutched in a powerful grip. He fell hard to the ground, the wind knocked from
his lungs in an explosive wheeze. Tom rolled over, gasping for air, trying to
free himself from the grasp of the pale hand that had reached up through the
dirt and grass.