Hellraisers (10 page)

“I swear,” said Marlow. “I didn't actually get around to drinking. These people, they took me. That's where I've been all day. I mean all two days. They injected something into me, it must have been alcohol.
They
did this.”

“Yeah, and the only reason I get wasted on the weekends is 'cause Officer Settle here keeps spiking my coffee with rum. That right, Settle?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Funny how my wife don't believe that story neither.”

“But I can show you where they—”

“But nothing.” The detective stood up, flattening his hands down his creased shirt. “You were drinking, I believe that much. We found the store, one dead guy, crushed by a collapsing ceiling. So you saw what was going on, a ton of people witnessed the hospital going up in flames. But let me tell you something, kid.” He slammed his hands down on the table, his greasy face looming in, his breath full of coffee and cigarettes. “We drag you in here again, you ever make a threat against one of my officers again, you puke within twenty goddamned yards of a city vehicle again, then you'll be wearing a jumpsuit for real, and not just because you left your pants at home. Clear?”

“I—”

He smashed his palms against the wood, hard enough to shunt the table into Marlow's chest.

“Clear?”

“Yeah,” he wheezed. “Yeah, I got it. No more drink.”

The detective eyeballed him for a moment more, then turned on his heels and smacked on the door. A second later a bolt was pulled back on the other side and it squealed open, the sound grating down Marlow's spine, reminding him of the screams of the creatures. He shook it off, waited for the policewoman to walk over and unlock his cuffs.

“If you want to collect your possessions you have to go to the front desk,” she said as he massaged the blood back into his wrists. “But given that all you had on you is your undershorts, I'm guessing you're good to go.” Marlow stood up, muttering his thanks. She glanced at his jumpsuit and smiled, and it was the first kind expression Marlow had seen since this whole thing started. “But maybe go anyway, we might be able to sort you out something better to wear.”

 

WHO THE HELL IS STEELY DAN?

It wasn't exactly what Marlow would have called “better.” A pair of baggy green shorts. A white T-shirt that was three sizes too big for him, the front plastered with the name S
TEELY
D
AN
in big red letters. He had no idea who or what Steely Dan was but he was pretty sure it wasn't the sort of thing he wanted to be seen in. To top it off—or bottom it out—the only footwear they had in his size was a pair of leather sandals that had been worn so often they had somebody else's footprint permanently mushed into them. They were surprisingly comfortable, but
seriously
—he figured he'd have more street cred walking home in his underwear.

Where do they even get this stuff from?
he thought as he made his way out of the station, hopping down the steps with a hand up to shield himself from the glare. They probably kept the worst bits and pieces of clothing from the drunks and the dead guys just so they could pass it over to people like Marlow.

He looked left and right, not quite sure where he was. Somewhere in lower Manhattan, he figured, where the jumbled streets weren't numbered and there were lots of storefronts with Chinese lettering on their signs. It was quiet for the time of day, just a scattering of people, all of whom looked like they'd rather be cooling down in an air-conditioned apartment or office right now. Only one of them caught his eye—a girl fifty yards away—and Marlow's heart did a cartwheel in his chest. She was familiar, his age, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and a coat, of all things. She had to be dying in there.

Marlow turned away, trying to work out where he'd seen the girl before. At school, probably. So why was there a feeling in Marlow's gut? Like he'd just been kicked hard. He glanced back. She was there, still as a stone, unblinking eyes locked on Marlow.

Twenty yards away.

He hadn't seen her move and Marlow suddenly felt as if he were on a roller coaster car that had reached the top of the slope, that quiet moment before the drop. He reached out, placed a hand on the nearest tree just to stop the world from spinning. Something was wrestling with his intestines, discomfort radiating out from the very center of him, making his spine tingle.

He clamped his eyes shut, and when he opened them again the girl was gone.

You're going mad, Marlow.

He pushed himself off the tree and started walking, no idea where he was going. The sun was right overhead, beating down on the city like a hammer on an anvil, and he was sweating after half a block. The air—as fresh as it ever got in New York—was good, though, helping to clear his head. The world was still spinning, but slower now. He didn't know what they'd shot him with, but it must have been strong. He peeked over his shoulder. No sign of the girl.

He waited for a truck to rumble past, followed by a couple of honking cabs, before crossing an intersection. The whole thing felt like a dream now, because of the alcohol, fading away like the last few scraps of a nightmare. Here, in the sun, in the melting pot of the city, surrounded by people going shopping, going to work, going to school, the thought of monsters and soldiers seemed ridiculous, impossible.

But
she
was still there. Pan. He could see her now, like she was standing right in front of him, and he wasn't sure whether the ache in his stomach was because he liked her or hated her. She'd left him for dead, after all. Treated him like dirt. All the same, though, she was hot.

Leave it be,
said Danny.
Girl like that, she'll be the death of you, literally.

“You're one to talk,” he muttered. “Didn't you sign up to the marines so you could impress Marcie Jones?”

No …
said his brother. Danny had never been much good at lying, his mom had told him.
I signed up to serve my country. Marcie had absolutely nothing to do with it. Besides, she worked at Walmart. She didn't run around with a crossbow, killing things.

“Fair point,” he said, earning a suspicious look from a couple of old ladies walking past. Marlow clamped his mouth shut, keeping his eyes down. He already looked like a crazy bum, talking to himself wouldn't help. He crossed onto the next block, sunlight flashing off the windows of the apartment buildings, everything drowning in the liquid heat, sounding muffled but perfectly clear in that weird way things always sounded in summer. Yeah, Pan was real, no doubt about it.

And if she was real, so was everything else.

He swore, reaching the end of the block. There was a whole bunch of green up ahead, a park or something, but halfway down to his right were the steps to the subway. He jogged down them, happy to get out of the sun, less happy to be back underground. He kept expecting something to explode, a creature to wrench its impossible body from the walls and lumber toward him. Keeping his head down, his fists clenched, he shouldered his way through the thin crowd toward the turnstiles. He didn't have any money on him but it had never stopped him before, and he checked that the coast was clear before leaping the barrier and sprinting to the downtown platform.

It was a cattle train, rammed tight with sweating livestock, and Marlow clung on to the handrail as it tore beneath the city. As hot as it was down here, it felt good to be moving. Moving away from the police, away from the place where he'd been held prisoner. Away from his attackers, who'd filled his veins with poison. It's what he did best, after all. He ran.

Now that he had some distance, it kind of made sense. They'd dosed him up so that nobody believed his story. It was a madman's tale anyway, he figured, but making him a drunken madman had to help. What was it they'd said? The first rule or something, that the world couldn't know.

“Steely Dan!” yelled a voice, right in his ear, almost making him jump out of his skin. He looked up, saw a guy with a huge belly and an even bigger beard breaking the cardinal rule of the subway—under no circumstances acknowledge any other passenger—in order to give him a rocker's salute. Marlow smiled nervously at him and edged down the train, stopping only when that same thumping discomfort began to creep into his guts, vertigo making the whole train feel like it was tilting upside down.

He grabbed for the handrail, closing his eyes against the rush. When he opened them again and stared through the crowd he could have sworn he saw the same girl there, that stab of familiarity. Their eyes met for a second before the train rocked around a bend and she was lost in the swaying bodies.

Losing it,
he told himself.

With any luck, the fact the police had let him go meant they were done with him. Nobody would believe his story, nobody would investigate it. He could just get on with his life. He sighed, loudly. His amazing, fulfilling, fantastic life. Now the churning in his gut was something else, something that might have been disappointment. It was making him feel hollow, like part of him was missing.
Secrets are like a hole in your life,
Herc had said. And he was right. Marlow would have to live with the not knowing for the rest of his days.

It doesn't matter,
he told himself.
Just forget it.

He screwed his eyes shut, feeling the motion of the train, imagining the city far behind him, fading fast. The memories would be the same. They had to be. If he kept moving, then they'd vanish, in time. Yeah, it was good to be moving.

And he almost smiled, until he remembered where the train was taking him. South, to the ferry terminal. Back toward Staten Island. Back into the nightmare.

*   *   *

“Mom?”

Marlow hovered on the steps that led up to his front door, shuffling his feet. It was a decent enough place that he'd lived in since he was born, although it had seen better days. The blue paint had all but peeled away, like leprous skin. The filthy windows, too, were like eyes dulled with cataracts. The only new thing on the whole building was the satellite dish that spoon-fed his mom her stories day in, day out. He could hear the TV now, the dull roar of applause from some game show.

He eased the door open a couple of inches, his face pressed into the gloom beyond. It was dark inside, the way it was always dark inside, even on a day like this when the sun seemed hot enough to burn a mile underground. His mom had closed the curtains on the day of Danny's wake and the shadows had never left.

“Yo, Mom, it's me.”

There was a scrabbling of claws, a soft bark, then Donovan came trotting around the corner. The old mongrel—part Doberman, part English sheepdog, maybe part dalmatian, nobody really knew—slipped and slid on the wood, his tail beating so hard that his ass was almost ping-ponging off the walls. Marlow crouched down and ruffled the dog's fur, that big, wet tongue slobbering over his face.

“Yeah, yeah,” Marlow said, holding Donovan's massive paw. “I know, I missed you too, boy. Where's Mom?”

There were noises in the kitchen, the clink of a glass.

“Mom?”

“Marly?” His mom's face appeared around the corner, smiling, and he walked over and wrapped her in his arms, feeling like he couldn't hug her too hard or he might break her. She was a bag of bones wrapped in a velour jumpsuit, her hair unbrushed, her skin too loose on her face. A badly made doll. But she hugged him back as hard as her skinny arms would let her, her glass slopping booze over his T-shirt. When he finally let go she smiled at him again.

“I was worried, sweetheart. You weren't answering your phone. Where you been?”

“Nowhere,” he said, patting the dog as it limped in behind him. “Just out with Charlie. I crashed at his place. And I lost my phone.”

“You're lying to me,” she said, walking across the tiny kitchen. There were bottles on the counter and it took her a couple of attempts before she found one that wasn't empty, topping up her glass. His mom's drunk wasn't the kind that you could really notice—she never fell over, never started shouting and screaming, never really even slurred her words. But it was there, quiet, patient, like a parasite that controlled its host without them knowing.

“No, Mom, I—”

“Charlie stopped by, yesterday evening,” she said, leaning on the counter and taking a sip. She swallowed, grimacing. “Said he was looking for you.”

“Yeah, um,” Marlow tried to find an excuse inside the storm of his head. “Well, we had this school thing, we were supposed to be working on together, research and stuff, and—”

“And I got a call, from your principal.”

Oh crap.

“Mom, it's not my fault.”

“I don't want to hear it, Marlow,” she said. “You promised me.”

“He had it in for me, I could have been the model student and he still would have kicked me out.”

“So you didn't scratch a … a nasty picture onto his car?”

Marlow chewed his knuckle, shuffling uncomfortably. The dog whined, his tail hanging between his legs, his eyes big and wet and sad. Marlow tickled his ear, more to cover his shame than anything else.

“It was a rocket ship,” he muttered, too low for her to hear.

“Marlow, you're nearly sixteen. Why do you insist on acting like a child? This was your last chance. Your
last chance.
What about that was hard to understand?”

She took a sip of her drink and smudged a tear away, her tiny body shuddering.

“I don't know what to do, Marly,” she said. “I don't know what to do. I wish Danny was here, I wish your brother was here. He'd know.”

It was like a slap to the face, and Marlow couldn't help but turn to the photo on the wall. Danny grinned at him through his shades, his skin thick with dust, his teeth the brightest thing in the kitchen.