Crucifax (15 page)

When he got outside, he drank in the chilled air, stopped on the sidewalk, and looked up at the sky.

The gray clouds had grown darker.

…
big storm comin'
…

Rain speckled his face and began to fall with a snakelike hiss all around him.

Fifteen

Erin Carr was on her knees searching through a box she'd pulled from the hall closet when she heard something move within the walls behind her.

"Damned mice again," she muttered. They'd had trouble with mice eighteen months ago, and the landlord had taken care of it quickly, assuring his tenants there would be no such problem in the future.

Apparently he'd been wrong.

Unable to find the spool of dark blue thread she needed to sew a policeman's uniform for one of her puppets, she'd taken the box from the closet as a last resort. It was filled with scraps of paper, scores of pens, pencils, crayons, paint brushes, a couple of outdated telephone directories, scissors, balls of twine and rubber bands, paper clips, and thumbtacks, and she hadn't even reached the bottom yet.

While Jeff and Mallory were in school, Erin spent most of her time working on her puppets and talking with Fantasy Line customers. Not long after the kids got home, she'd go to work at the bars. Ten days ago, she'd started working three different bars besides the Playland: Thirsty Jack's, the Playpen, and the Wandering Eye. She was making more money, but working seven nights a week she had little time to herself and even less to spend with her son and daughter.

During the short time the three of them were home together in the evenings, she realized the apartment was just as quiet as when she was there alone. Usually, Jeff and Mallory chattered like two old maids. She'd been too preoccupied to notice, but now, as she sorted through the box, she wondered if there were problems between them.

The weekend was coming up. Maybe it would be a good idea if she made time for the three of them to do something together, go to a movie or play, have dinner.

Erin found the spool of blue thread down in the corner of the box beneath several books of matches. She took it out and put it on the floor beside her and began to load the box up again.

When she lifted an old copy of
The Godfather
to put back in the box, some of the pages fell out, their glue dry and cracked, and with them came a photograph.

Half of the picture had been torn away. In the remaining half, a younger Mallory, about eight years old, was standing in the crook of her father's arm. She cradled Caesar, a stuffed dog she'd kept with her through most of her childhood. She was grinning with the kind of open-armed happiness Erin hadn't seen in her in years.

Erin recognized the snapshot. It had been taken the summer they drove up to Monterey for a weekend. Jeff had taken it. The half torn away had shown Erin standing on the opposite side of her husband, his arm around her shoulders, her face bright with laughter. It had been ripped away, discarded, leaving a tattered edge where Erin had once stood.

Her eyes filled with tears. She wondered when Mallory had torn her from the picture and what had been going through the girl's mind at the time.

Erin remembered Mallory stepping around her father after the picture had been taken and giving her mother a big, grunting bear hug that made Mallory puff her cheeks and clench her eyes shut.

Erin closed her eyes and revived the sensation of Mallory's small arms encircling her, squeezing tight. Tears streaked her face as she pressed the torn picture between her palms.

Since Ronald had left, the only time Erin and Mallory spoke was when they argued or exchanged hesitant apologies. It had been a long while since Erin had taken the time to remember how it used to be between them, and now that she had, she regretted it. Because it hurt.

Erin knew Mallory blamed her mother for the loss of her father; she knew Ronald's absence hurt Mallory most of all, and she had to lay the blame on someone. But Erin didn't know how to bridge the gap that had grown between them. She didn't know how to convince Mallory that she, Erin, had been just as hurt, although not as shocked, by Ronald's sudden departure. Erin wanted to tell Mallory of the sleepless nights she'd spent in her bed wondering what she had or
hadn't
done to chase Ronald away without so much as a "so long" or an explanation. But whenever the two of them spoke, the most trivial exchanges turned into angry, bitter shouting matches. Their relationship had turned into a wound that was never given time to heal; the scab was torn off again and again.

Erin dropped the picture back in the box, unable to look at it any longer, unable even to see it through her tears. She decided she had to do something, anything, about what was happening to her and Mallory. She knew that, as with a decaying tooth, any further neglect would only cause irreparable damage.

As she got to her feet and scooted the box back into the closet she heard the sound inside the wall again, this time accompanied by a thick, muted squeak. Erin pounded a fist on the wall, hoping to scare it, and the gesture felt good. It was a small but welcome release of anger that, she realized, was not for the rodents in her wall but for herself.

Before she could hit the wall again, her phone rang….

After parking his bike on Whitley, Kevin hurried through the rain down a narrow alley, his boots splashing through puddles. Several yards down the alley, he removed the manhole cover and climbed down, pulling the cover back over him; it made a chilling scraping sound as it slid back into place. He descended the metal rungs that stuck out of the dirty, moist cement wall.

The air was damp and thick with the smell of urine and feces. His boots made wet slopping sounds on the grimy puddled walkway that ran along the wall of the sewer. It was wide enough for two people to walk side by side if they were careful; then it dropped off into a swirling, gurgling stream of sewage that flowed in a three-foot-wide gutter. Dirty brown foam licked at the edge of the walkway, pushed to the sides by the stream of black lumpy matter.

Light seeped down through grates and small holes in the manhole covers above, playing deceptively on the pipes and ducts that writhed from the walls like snakes, giving them a sort of peripheral life.

Kevin removed a pocket-sized flashlight from his coat and flicked it on, shining the beam before him. With his back to the wall, he turned right and started along the walkway, sliding his hand over the coarse, wet wall as he walked, carefully ducking pipes.

Kevin was not quite used to going through the sewer yet. While it was not as unpleasant as it had been at first, neither was it any safer. Mace had warned them of the homeless people who lived beneath the streets. They considered the sewer their home, and anyone who went down there was, as far as they were concerned, trespassing; sometimes they became violent.

"Be nice to them," Mace had said. "I want them to know we're their friends."

Once again Kevin had tried to get Mallory to come with him, and once again she'd refused. He was beginning to think that perhaps he was being too nice about it.

He turned right at a corner and came face-to-face with a wet-furred rat perched on a fat pipe. It held something dark and tattered in its mouth, something that glistened in the beam of his flashlight. The rat waddled backward and pressed itself against the wall when it saw him. He stood there a moment, watching, and heard someone laughing somewhere in the sewer; it was a phlegmy cackle that sounded ghostly as it echoed through the tunnels. Gulping back his fear, Kevin tried to ignore the disgust he felt at the sight of the rat's filthy, matted fur and its wet, twitching nose as he ducked down low to pass beneath it. He imagined the rat hunched on the pipe above him, ready to pounce on his back as he moved under it, dropping the dark morsel in its mouth so it could sink its tiny, needlelike teeth into the back of his neck.

The distant laughter of one of the hidden sewer dwellers faded, died.

The hole in the wall that led to Mace's sub-basement was about two feet above the walkway. When he got to it, Kevin climbed up and through, scraping the top of his head on the upper edge. As he entered he could hear footsteps on the metal stairs.

"Kevin," Mace said pleasantly.

Kevin stood up, rubbing his head. He put the flashlight back in his pocket.

Mace was coming down the stairs holding a lantern, his small pipe clamped between his teeth. Two of his pets were following at his heels, and a dark, cross-shaped object hung on a cord around his neck. In his other hand he held a paper bag. He took the pipe from his smiling mouth and handed it to Kevin.

As Kevin inhaled some of the sweet smoke Mace walked around him and crouched in front of the hole in the wall, setting the lantern on a crate. He reached into the bag, pulled out two boxes of Twinkies and a gallon of milk, and set them outside the hole.

"What's that?" Kevin asked.

"A little treat for our less fortunate friends." He stood, took his lantern, and crossed the room to a stack of boxes against the wall. He opened the top box as he asked, "Did you go to school?" He removed something wrapped in delicately thin cream-colored tissue.

"Mm-hm." Kevin slowly exhaled, and tendrils of smoke curled around his face like long, bony fingers.

"That's good." The paper crinkled softly as he unwrapped it. "You're alone. Mallory wouldn't come?"

"No." Kevin took another drag and felt the drug's effect spreading through him, warm and soothing, like liquid sunshine flowing through his veins.

"Too bad." Mace let the paper drop to the floor and turned to Kevin. "The others are upstairs waiting to rehearse. But before we go up, I want to give you something. Come here."

As he crossed the room to stand before Mace Kevin felt as if he were hovering a few inches above the floor, holding perfectly still while the room moved around him. The sensation made him smile. He handed the pipe to Mace, its ember dead and dark, and Mace tucked it away in one of his deep, baggy coat pockets.

"Everyone will get one of these," Mace said softly, lifting his right hand. Something dangled from his fingers, suspended by a cord of leather. "But you are the first. Because you're important to me, Kevin."

The whisper of the flowing sewage behind Kevin diminished until all he could hear was Mace's voice, all he could see were Mace's eyes framed by the leather cord that he now held up before him with both hands. A shiny, heavy-looking object dangled from the cord, but Kevin saw it only peripherally. His attention was intensely focused on Mace's eyes and gentle, lulling voice.

As Mace continued speaking he lifted the cord above Kevin's head, then slowly lowered it until it was hanging around his neck. The object on the cord rested heavily on Kevin's chest. It felt cool through the material of his black T-shirt.

"Don't take this off," Mace said. "Someday very soon, people will know who you are when they see this around your neck. They'll know that you're a friend of mine, a very good, valued friend of mine. That you're important. And powerful." He fingered the object on the cord, lifting it from Kevin's chest for a moment. "And someday," he went on, his voice a mere breath, "this will be your escape from all that you hate, from all the people who don't understand you, who refuse to accept you as you are, as I do. There's a big storm coming, Kevin, and someday this—" he tapped it with his finger—"will be all you have. So don't ever… take it… off."

Mace smiled as he placed his hand on Kevin's cheek, and his touch had a relaxing, massaging effect on Kevin's entire body, made him feel peaceful, as if all was finally well in his life.

"You're very talented, Kevin," Mace said. "I'm impressed with the progress we've made in the last two weeks. It won't be long now, I promise." He held Kevin's face between his hands. "I have plans for you. For all of you, really, but especially for you. And for Mallory."

Then the long moment ended as if it had never been; Mace's hands dropped, and he turned away, starting for the stairs.

Kevin lifted the object before his face and squinted at it in the darkness. It was identical to the object around Mace's neck.

It was a cross. At first glance it looked black, but a moment later he realized it was a deep, dark red, the color of dried, crusty blood. It was hard and smooth and felt like obsidian. With the exception of the bottom end, each end of the cross flared like the head of an axe, filed to a fine, thin edge. Kevin ran a fingertip along the top edge and immediately jerked his hand away.

His skin had been neatly sliced open, and a tiny bead of blood rose to the surface. He slipped his finger between his lips and sucked on the small cut.

Mace's feet clanked up the first three steps, then he stopped and turned to Kevin.

"Coming?"

"Yeah," Kevin said, frowning at the cross. "But what…
is
this thing?"

"That," Mace said with a smile, "is a Crucifax."

Kevin stared at it a moment longer, said, "Oh," then dropped it to his chest and followed Mace.

Halfway up the stairs, Mace bent down and lifted one of the creatures to his chest. It crawled up on his shoulder.

"Why didn't Mallory come?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"Is she afraid of me?" Mace asked, his whisper sounding metallic in the darkness.

A few yards away from them, soft light glowed from the swimming pool; Kevin heard laughter coming from there, too, and music. And frantic sucking.

"Not you. Those." Kevin pointed to the creature on Mace's shoulder. The lantern below it cast shadows over its triangular face, glinting in its almond-shaped eyes.

"Ah," Mace said, reaching up to scratch the creature's head. "She's afraid of my pets."

Whispers, stifled giggles, and soft moans came from the pool; a haze of marijuana smoke hovered over it like a ghost. They began walking around the pool toward the band instruments; behind them, Mace's generator hunkered like a sleeping beast.

"She's never seen anything like them before," Kevin said. "Neither have I, really. I told her they were rats."

"Rats," he muttered thoughtfully. "Well, they're not too different from rats. Rats have gotten a bad rep, you know. Because they're scavengers. There's nothing wrong with that. They're resourceful, that's all. They feed off what others don't want. That's not so bad, is it? But they're not really rats."