Melody Burning (5 page)
Authors: Whitley Strieber
Flying on with the stars, with the clouds that love me,
flying in the dark when you cannot even see,
flying on forever . ..forever .. .forever . ..
W
hat happened, what happened, what happened
?
They were screaming down there, screaming at each other, and Beresford was frantic, hiding in the crawl space above his new hatch. Something awful had happened. He strained to hear, but they were talking so fast and saying so much he didn’t understand. He was sure of only one thing: the fight was over
Swingles
.
When Beresford finished his hatch, the first thing he’d done was to go down into the apartment. He’d walked through the rooms, touching nothing. Trembling so hard he could barely control himself, he’d gone from room to room. He’d touched Melody’s blue silk bedspread and watched the sun go down through her huge window.
When he’d heard them yelling as they came down the outside hall, he’d levered himself back up into the crawl space and pulled his hatch closed.
As he listened, they came into the living room and Melody screamed, “He attacked me! What don’t you get about that? He’s a druggie and a potential rapist and he’s
gone
, Mom. And it is NOT my fault!”
“Honey, I know it, and I hate it, but we might lose the show anyway. It’s not your fault, but the network is embarrassed.”
“The
network
? You’re scaring me, Mom, you really are.”
“We need the money, Mel!”
“You need it, not me. If I had my way, we’d still be in Calabasas.”
“And you’d be flipping burgers and singing ‘Memories’ in the Calabasas school talent show.”
Their voices drifted off. They’d gone to the kitchen.
Swingles
was over?
Their voices rose again, and then glass broke. He clapped his hands over his ears. They were throwing things, and that could not be good.
He just ached to go down there and take her in his arms and somehow make it all better, but Frank, the new super, was hunting him like crazy, and if he got found, he didn’t know what would happen. He couldn’t get thrown out of the Beresford. This was home.
Melody’s bedroom door slammed. He slid over to the crawl space above it and pressed his ear against the rough plaster of the ceiling.
Crying came up from below, long, bitter sobs.
Very carefully, he moved back off the ceiling and down into the chase between Melody’s room and the stairwell. From here, he could stay near her, and somehow maybe his love and his hope for her would help her.
He settled in, trying to get comfortable. He would guard her all night. Later, he’d sleep in his own tiny space on the roof, but not until after he was sure she was okay. It was real tight in here, and he had to keep twisting and turning so his legs wouldn’t go to sleep. If he was very still, he could hear her breathing.
Instead of the sounds of sleep, he heard a shuffling noise. Then the wallboard seemed to shift a little.
“Get out of my wall, you creep!” Then
bang
, right in his face, and
bang bang bang
! “I know you’re in there, you sicko, and I’m gonna call the cops and get you put away!”
He was frozen with fear. She
knows
, and she
hates me
.
His heart broke as he quickly reached over to the crawl space that crossed 5052, then hurried along the beams. He headed for the elevator shaft, oblivious to the tears that were blinding him.
This was the top floor, so the way to the roof for him was to climb the cables into the elevator room, then go out through the ser vice door. He never, ever used the stairs. He understood cameras very well, and he didn’t want to be seen on any of the security system screens in the basement.
He rushed out onto the roof and ran. He ran all the way to the far end, then around the edges. He got up on the rail and ran the rail, crying out and waving his arms, trying to make the feelings of sorrow and upset leave him.
He ran swiftly, deftly, and when he came to the spot where Daddy had fallen, he stopped. As he always did, he looked down into the alley. At night it was lit only by the one light over the side door. He looked down, and as always, he called out, cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting with all his might, “Daddy! Daddy!” Then he went on—or, he was about to go on—when he saw something below.
What he saw was a face like the face he’d seen peering at him the day Daddy was pushed, the same glittering lenses, the same robot appearance. Somebody was using a set of night-vision goggles to look up the side of the building.
That would be Frank or one of the other workers. They would be looking for him.
Had Melody told them? Were the police coming?
He shrank back from the edge and moved toward his tiny space on top of the elevator control shack, a tool storage shed just four feet high and nine long that had not been pulled off after construction was completed.
As he climbed the side of the shack, he saw one of the doors to the roof slowly open. For an instant, he was transfixed. Disbelieving. He quickly jumped down and in three strides concealed himself behind the shack, back where the water towers hissed and the bats lived.
A figure came out into the middle of the roof and stood. It was all in white, a woman, her back to him. The wind blew the thin white gown around her.
Then she turned a little, and a shock as powerful as lightning went through him. It was Melody.
She walked straight ahead, going toward the edge that dropped down to the building’s marquee and front entrance. As she got closer to the edge, she walked faster. And now she spread her arms out and let the wind blow her white gown back, and he saw her body in its perfection outlined against the glow of the city. He knew that she was perfect and of the high world, and he was not perfect, hardly a person at all.
Her voice rose, magic in the night. She was singing a song he’d heard her working on.
“So not free, so not free, when will you come and take me? So not free, so not free, where is the love I need? So not free, so not free . . .”
She bent over and the words went away, and she was sobbing into her hands.
He wanted to help her so much that he actually reached out and took a few steps toward her.
She straightened up and went even closer to the edge. She was right against the railing now, and he was thinking that she must not get up on it, that she was not like him; she didn’t know how to climb and balance. She raised a leg, and he almost moaned aloud.
Then she leaned forward. If she went just a few more inches, she was going to topple over the edge.
She held her hands to her head and uttered the saddest cry he’d ever heard in his life.
She bent forward further. Her thighs were tight against the rail.
No!
She stood very still now, her hands at her sides as she looked to where the moon hung low. Every inch of his body and every whisper of his soul made him want to run to her and put his arms around her fragile waist and draw her back from the edge. But if he surprised her, she would lose her footing.
Now she sang again, her voice climbing the tower of the air, pealing through the wind as if there was no wind. “So not free, so not free, please come for me, please come for me. Unlock the perfect prison of my life, make me new, make me true, ’cause I’m so not free, so not free.”
The words moved him to his core, and he felt their meaning, the eternal sense of loss that is at the center of every human heart, and he thought they were the truest words he had ever known, a cry to the night and the moon to come and unlock the prison of life.
Again she swayed, and once again she raised her arms. He could see her naked form in the thin robe, outlined by the moonlight.
He thought if he ran fast enough, he could maybe grab her from behind and pull her back, then throw himself to one side among the air-conditioning equipment to her left. Once he was up under there, he would somehow make his way to the other side of the roof, where there was more than one place to slip away into the building and be gone.
Sure, but what if he missed? Or was too slow? If she heard him coming? It was just too dangerous to even try.
He stepped back into the shadows of the elevator shack and cried out as loud as he could, “So not free, so not free!”
She froze. It looked as if she was riveted to the rail.
He bit his tongue almost to bleeding, then covered his mouth with his hands. He stood as still as a statue.
Suddenly she whirled around. Her eyes were glaring, her lips twisted with pure hate—it was like the face of some kind of beautiful monster—and her hands were out in front of her like claws.
“I hate you,” she said, venom in her words. Then her eyes widened and she screamed, “I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU!”
He smashed his hands against his ears and cried out as if he was being struck, because that’s how it felt.
She was looking right at him. Did she see him? The light was behind her, but it wasn’t very bright, so he couldn’t be sure.
With a single broad step, he slipped behind a cooler tower. Now peering through the falling water, he watched her as she turned once again toward the edge.
For another long moment, she leaned out over the abyss.
Then she straightened up. Turned around. Without looking again in his direction, without making a sound, she strode to the stairway door.
Then she was gone, back into the building that was her home and, he now understood, her prison. He didn’t know if she would actually have jumped, not even if she’d been planning to. But he feared it.
His heart went with her down the hard steel stairs to the luxury and torment of the fiftieth floor. In his mind was the image of her glowing in the moonlight, and another image, of her lying in the alley as his father had, arms spread, absolutely still.
He slid into his space and closed his eyes. He stayed there a while. He lay listening, determined to stay alert in case she came back. But his thoughts went to those night-vision goggles.
He got his rose and cradled it.
The rose of life and the rose of happiness, he thought, and in that moment he made a decision. It was dangerous, he knew, and it was foolish, and it would take from him the thing he loved the most. But he also knew that his rose could bring Melody happiness, too, and maybe even help her somehow.
He slipped into the electrical room through the hatch he’d made from his little space, then dropped down along the hot, humming cables and into the fiftieth-floor crawl space. There was rock music coming from 5052 and, from across the hall, a man and a woman arguing. Apartment 5050 was silent. He went out across the ceiling of the den and did something he never did when somebody was home.
He put his hand on his hatch. Closed his fingers around the little latch he’d screwed into it and opened it.
Silence below. Darkness. A faint odor of something sweet—perfume, he thought.
He dropped down into the closet. Hardly breathing, he listened for movement in the room beyond.
Not a sound.
He stepped into the hallway, then stopped listening.
All he could hear was his own thrashing heart.
Why was he doing this? Was he crazy? But he had to. He wanted to give her the rose.
He stood before her door, pressed his ear against it, listened, and heard nothing from inside. Was she asleep?
Turning the handle carefully, he opened the door a crack. He waited. No sound. He opened it further. Her bed was a dark pool, her form on it a curled shadow.
In three long, silent steps, he was beside her. He looked down at her face, shadowy and gorgeous, the full lips held in a line that suggested great sadness.
Trembling, he laid a hand on her broad forehead, feeling fear and electric pleasure as he touched her for the first time. For a moment he was paralyzed, unable to break the connection.
Then he took his rose from his pocket and placed it on the pillow beside her face.
He stepped quickly out of the room and slipped ghostlike down the hall and through the den, drawing himself into the crawl space and closing his hatch behind him.
He slipped into the darkness and hidden passages of the building, leaving behind, like a sacrifice and a talisman, the most precious thing he possessed.
