Atmosphere (31 page)

He backed away and cushioned himself on the edge of his own bed, eyes wandering passionately to the strange object sitting on the dresser. He twisted his head, perhaps to view its beauty from a new angle, then clutched his racing heart, at once struck with an immense determination to discover the true meaning of it.

Ah, and how beautiful it was. Six hollowed prongs, extending out at odd angles like hands reaching from below the surface of a tar pit, each one alluring his mind with uncommon feelings and desires.

Atmosphere...

The sleek voice in his head returned, louder than it had before, helping him recall the overwhelming ambiguity of feelings that had swept over him when he first found it in the alley, feelings of love, hate, fear, excitement, hunger, all interbred as one great emotion.

Suddenly one of the six prongs began to wiggle, like a tired worm on a fisherman's hook. The uncanny sight had Jesus rubbing his tired eyes with disbelief. He blew out an anxious breath of air, and when he removed his hands from his face the fading blackness revealed something extraordinary: all of the little tubes, undulating to and fro, slowly and hypnotically like six tiny charmed snakes.

He genuinely realized that this was his cue, that it, the Atmosphere, was ready for him.

He stood and removed his clothing.

Naked, Jesus reached his hand out to it. All six tubes stopped moving and Jesus froze along with it. The room became uncomfortably warm, sauna-like, and a coat of sweat filmed his body. The air around him suddenly felt thick, like syrup, and within it he could feel an electricity fraught with temptations of immense hunger and desire.

A single tube pointed at him. He stood like a soldier, arms outstretched, prepared to accept its offerings. A few droplets of blood trickled out from the tip of the tube. He closed his eyes in ecstasy. "I am yours..." he muttered, and then the object spat a stream of blood at him.

Jesus relished the wet heat upon his chest, rivulets of crimson painting his torso and legs. He rubbed it into the skin on his chest, shoulders, and face, kept at it until coated.

Fulfil your desire, your hunger!

He turned and walked to the crib, bare feet streaking through the blood on the wood floor. For a brief moment he watched his daughter Elise sleeping, then picked her up and walked to the bed.

F
rank and Hector raced into the alley, the first of the police to arrive. The first thing he saw was the blood, a remarkable puddling of crimson washed across the alley floor as if it had poured down from the sky in a violent storm. A pile of clothes came into view at the base of the dumpster flanking the rear of the alley: a pair of trousers, a tailored shirt, sport jacket, tie, shoes, underwear. It struck Frank that these articles of clothing were the first evidence leading him to believe that all this carnage might have come from a human.

When he first laid eyes the mess, it looked like some kind of
Santeria
practice had taken place, and that all the gore had come from a few slaughtered farm animals. Once in the past he witnessed a horrific scenario similar to this—blood and tatters of viscera strewn about like a sick piece of art, an occurrence of fanatical animal sacrifice.

He walked over, Hector tailing him, stopping near the pile of clothing. Poking the pants with his foot he noticed that the clothing had not been damaged in any way, which meant it had been removed prior to the murder. "See this? Show me a body and I'll show you a guy who spent his last moments as naked as a jaybird."

Hector walked around to the side of the dumpster, placed a foot atop the crane hinge and stepped up. The grimace on his face told the story.

"He naked?" Frank asked, his detective identity already akin to the answer.

"What's left of him. His crotch is gone to the chest."

A flurry of activity ensued as a handful of police from the 57th precinct ran into the alley. They suddenly stopped, the wide-eyed expressions on their faces not necessarily a reaction of shock but more so of surprise, as they most probably had just witnessed a very similar scene just a few blocks away on the el of the 190th Street Station.

A unique feeling of discomfort crept up on Frank, one that finally asked a very simple question: why is all this happening?

Hector stepped down and another cop took his place, looking in at the carnage. "Looks like another poor bastard's been served up through a wood chipper," he remarked callously.

Frank focused on Hector as he walked over to him. His face was as white as sheepskin; it seemed Hector hadn't the knack for hiding his dismay. Frank offered a weak smile then drew his gaze across the sticky pool. Blood, internal organs, used as someone's passion.

Frank's detective personality pushed pass the weak timid personality currently begging him to leave this mess for the other detectives to handle. It made him remember back to when this whole damn thing started, when he got out of his car at four in the morning and stepped out into the puddle with the streaks of blood floating in it.

The blood. It had come all the way from the alley.

He tiptoed from the scene, eyes pointed to the littered ground. Tiny droplets of blood led away, out into the open, down the sidewalk. There were only a few, but they were there.

"Frank?"

Ballaro turned. Hector was in his face, breathing heavy, now all flushed. The sight he beheld in the dumpster had really gotten to him. "Look Hect." Frank pointed to the ground, trying not to make his discovery obvious. Eventually the other detectives would find this trail, but he did not wish to give it away just yet.

"Déjà vu," Hector said.

Frank nodded. "All over again. Let's see where it leads."

L
ike a scant trail of breadcrumbs, the tiny droplets of blood led Frank and Hector away
 
three blocks, up the front steps of a brownstone and into a foyer past a pair of Victorian doors.

Frank and Hector entered the dull unlighted hall and after a quick perusal of the first floor in which they found nothing, they moved upstairs.

The first door on the right had blood smeared on the knob.

Hector gave the door three loud raps with his fist. They waited. No answer.

"Again," Ballaro whispered. Hector banged the door, louder. "Police," Frank yelled, pulling his gun. "Open up." He had to swallow a lump of discomfort in his throat to get the words out.

"Let's go in."

Frank stepped back, picked up his right leg and gave the door a swift kick. It stuck. He kicked again, and again, sharp pains jolting the muscles in his leg. The fifth attempt proved successful and the door broke open, shards of wood splintering in all directions. Hector raced in, gun poised to the left, Frank gun-ready behind him. Instantly there was a rush of malodorous air. Cold, primal, dead. It made him shudder.

"
Frank...?
" Hector's eyes were wide with apprehension.

In the silence they heard heavy breathing emanating from the apartment's only other room.

Frank and Hector stepped cautiously to the threshold of the other room. Frank could feel his eyes bulging, and his hand reached for his mouth to hold back the nausea caused from the thick, coppery odor issuing from within. He glanced at Hector. His face returned to white, like parchment.

The partners readied their guns, hurriedly edged the opposite sides of the doorjamb to the second room. They gave each other nods of reassurance, then whirled in.

There was a moment's hesitation, and in that horrifying amount of time Frank Ballaro had to question his sanity as the sight before him nightmared its way into his line of vision.
"Dear...God..."
he heard Hector say in a voice thick with nausea, and then at once tried to convince himself that insanity couldn't possibly be contagious, that the only madness in the room was wholly within the occupant facing them.

A young Latino man, maybe twenty years if that, sat naked on the bed. His body was entrenched in blood, from hair to toe, the mattress saturated likewise. He looked like some God-forsaken fetus newly emerged from a wicked, monstrous womb.

And then, the boy's face. A visage of the Devil himself: eyes widened and unblinking, the whites four small pearl crescents floating in a crimson sea, the irises blackened like two charred wounds. And his mouth, smiling broadly, so happy, or so insane, perhaps a perfect combination of the two. The scene was a sickening reminder of the unidentified boy from the alley yesterday morning, the only difference being that instead of a strange black object, this boy displayed a bawling infant in his hands, holding it out as if it were a generous offering to be graciously accepted by a willing hand.

And beneath it all, a bloodied erection stood tall.

Frank felt his face drip with icy sweat as he tried to make sense of the sight, but none of his personalities could come up with any form of rational explanation. "Don't move," he finally uttered, albeit weakly, gun shaking wildly, not sure if his words had been directed to the boy or his partner.

Suddenly the man's teeth began to chatter, head shaking wildly, like a ventriloquist's dummy possessed by some cold malevolent evil. Slithering whispers tremored from his lips, and Frank knew with little doubt the soul of the young father inside was desperately trying to get out, trying to release itself from the evil that had him caged in his own body.

More tortured whispers. Almost words.

Frank twisted slightly toward Hector. "What's he saying?" he whispered.

"He's trying to tell us something."

Then one word slithered past his lips like a worm's last effort to escape a fish's mouth:

Atmosphere...

The room fell deadly silent. Not a breath was heard.

"Atmosphere, " Frank repeated, gently as if not to let the baby hear.

All of a sudden the boy jerked up, legs wobbling in a grotesque dance, efforting to secure balance. Crazily, Frank thought of a marionette.

Through clenched teeth, Frank forced, "Whatever in God's name happens, don't kill him."

And at that moment the boy was dividing the air in front of them, like a fleeting shadow in the night. There hadn't been enough time to even transfix their eyesight on him, much less try to stop him as he dropped the baby and leaped through the only window in the room.

Glass rained everywhere. Frank shielded himself with his arms. Hector made a half-hearted coughing sound, and then there was a
crunch!
as the boy slammed into the sidewalk two stories down.

"I'm going down!" Hector yelled, speeding from the apartment. Frank ran to the bloody baby, checking for injuries; his cursory glance showed that the blood had come from elsewhere. He carefully picked up the bawling infant, then scanned the red room. It looked like a slaughterhouse, blood and gore everywhere. Like the alley.

He heard a gathering of noises outside. He shuffled towards the window, then stopped.

Something sitting on the dresser grabbed his attention.

F
leeting visions came and went, like tiny bubbles of dream material bursting to reveal only snippets of scenario not quite visceral, yet clearly understandable. His senses prevailed beyond his mindlessness, remained acute, and amidst the prominent haze obscuring his consciousness, the visual smatterings of controllable thought continued to flash in his mind's eye, maintaining his awareness of existence, of his true identity.

Harold Gross, Harbinger for the Giver.

In the past he had been only one or the other, Harold or Harbinger. But now? His feelings clearly spelled out an intermingling of the two personalities, a partial retention of each of the two people, a perfect combination of the two perhaps. Even now, in his swoon, the ability to comprehend this newfound state of being seemed easy, clear and precise.

However, although his mind had seemed to keep up its execution, the complication of his incapacitated body had him puzzled. Although he tried and tried for what seemed like hours, he could not coerce movement into his limbs, his mind straining at its unsuccessful effort. So he lay dormant, for now at least, waiting in the dark of this strange room, concentrating solely on his mind and the growing wealth of lucidity seeping through. It seemed his only viable alternative.

Suddenly something else broke through to his working cognitive mind, and he immediately cleared his psyche of all inner activity in effort to concentrate solely on the distant sound.

Oh yes...it was
here.

The pulse. The Giver. It was coming for him.

J
aimie awoke, unsure of the time that had passed. She lay in darkness, unbound, yet mysteriously paralyzed. In the distance she heard the incessant beat of music, heavy bass drums, deep droning tones. Techno music. The sensation of it reverberated through the floor directly into her muscles and bones, tingling them. It brought the sensation of feeling back into her skin and she tried to move. Pain darted through her body in tiny bolts, each joint, every muscle discomforted in its effort to find itself once again.

She remembered her crude passage through the strange nightclub, the sleek jet walls, the humid air and blue neon lights. And then the giant dance floor, its workers so intensely involved in their project that her presence had gone unnoticed.