Shivers (32 page)

Why not he?

All the departed lovers had
truly
departed, had sincerely left this veil of tears; all of them. They had gone into rivers and basements, abandoned buildings. That’s where they were. Not hiding. No, not hiding. Dead. Each and every one of them.

Why not he?

Those who weren’t dead
the master
had claimed. A fate
worse
than death. Living constantly with that thing a part of his brain, always listening, monitoring his thoughts. He’d rather be dead than live that way.
Why
had he remembered what had happened that awful day when he’d been
treated?
It was true, he knew ignorance
was
bliss.

How should he kill himself? he wondered. Not messy. He couldn’t stand the thought of doing it messy. He wanted to be in one piece, for all that that was worth, when it was over. Nothing too grotesque. But fast, yes. How could he do it fast without doing it messy? There was no way. What to do. How to do it.

Pills? Slow perhaps, but peaceful. Yet vestiges of machismo still clung to him: a
man
wouldn’t kill himself that way. Did he really care any longer? He could not live anymore. There was simply no choice, was there?

He’d lost all stamina and initiative. Gloria and Bobby were lost. The world was lost. He didn’t care what that creature was up to anymore. Didn’t care what happened to Joey Everson. There was no way he could save them. He went into the bathroom and opened the medicine chest.

He didn’t know how many pills he’d consumed when it finally hit him what he was doing.

No!

I will not give up. I will not give in this easily.

In his mind’s eye he saw his wife as she had looked when they had both been younger. He saw his children, his little boy at birth. He felt an ache, a disturbing desire to find out what would happen to the boy when he was grown, a need to see how he’d turn out.
There had to be something he could do!

It was too soon to join his missing persons in their blank, purposeless purgatory, to join the nameless, numberless others that had disappeared before him. Too early. He still had things to do. He would not give up so soon.

The pills he’d already taken were making him sleepy. That terrified him. He’d never really thought about death before. He saw an image of himself lying dead and naked in his bedroom— a
worse
image—his wife and son, his associates, seeing him lying there like that, vulnerable and pitiful, nothing but cold meat. And it chilled him. To think that that was all he’d leave behind him after all these years, just his flesh and blood, the cold meat of his body.

He got up and stumbled into the bathroom. A cold shower, that’s what he needed. A cold shower would set him right. He didn’t think he’d taken enough pills to kill him, but he was afraid if he fell asleep he’d never wake up again.
That must not happen.

He was going to fight back! He was going to storm into the precinct and tell everyone the truth, look for people who weren’t under the master’s influence to help him. Regardless of the consequences, John Albright would not give up without a fight.

He stepped under the cold spray of the shower. It felt good—the sharp chill of the gushing stream was beginning to revive him. Then he’d make a good strong pot of coffee . . .

He was getting the shakes. Was it the pills? It had to be the pills.

It wasn’t the pills. The master had heard, judged, and passed sentence.

Albright leaned against the shower wall for support. The
pounding!
He could hear his own heartbeat as if it were amplified over a million-watt system. The blood seemed to be rushing and rushing and rushing through his circulatory system, through each vein and artery, tearing its way around his body and its hundreds of miles of vessels.

He couldn’t breathe. The pain was indescribable. His eyes started to bulge, almost popping from their sockets.

Albright knew what was happening. They’d warned him it might. Even while it was happening he couldn’t quite believe it. He sobbed in the little time it took, partially in pity for Gloria— she’d undoubtedly walk into his office and have to go through the torment of begging someone —anyone—to care that someone she loved had disappeared.
Like Everson had. Like they all had. They had all begged for someone to be concerned over a dead person whom no one had noticed when alive. Didn’t they know the spaces they left were much too easily filled?

Albright’s flesh began running down the drain with the water, a horrible, swirling whirlpool of white and red and gray.

The skin was gone from his arms and legs, exposing muscles and ligaments. His head was a hollow skull. He slid down the wall and plopped into a puddle at the bottom of the tub.

The sum and substance of John Mortimer Albright was completely washed away by the water.

Gloria Albright put the key in the lock, entered the foyer, and looked around nervously, almost shamefully, for her husband. She’d finally returned from her brief vacation, having found herself at the last moment without the courage she needed to
stay
away. She called out her husband’s name.

How would she explain? Surely he must have checked with her mother by now and knew the truth. She
had
planned on going to her mother’s, but hadn’t wanted to deal with the questions, the hurt look that would surely have been there in her mother’s old-fashioned eyes. She and Bobby had gone about like widow and child, suddenly free. It had been so . . . so strange, but peaceful. But how could she have let John worry so? What had possessed her to do such a thing? She
loved
the man for all his faults, that much was certain.

Bobby ran into his room to change out of his good clothes.

Gloria heard the sound of the shower running. She opened the bathroom door. “John. John?” she called.

Funny. The shower was on but John wasn’t in it. He wasn’t anywhere. His wife didn’t know it, but John Albright had become a statistic.

Ralph dug a candy bar out of his jacket pocket and offered it to Valerie. “Want a piece?” .

She leaned back in the passenger seat of the company Chevy and smiled. “No thanks. I’m still full from the lunch we had.”

Ralph turned the wheel and they pulled out into traffic. “I think we’ll take a look at HGC’s New York office before we head out to Long Island.”

“But why? I’ve been there. It appears to be just a tiny office in a big warehouse. Spare parts, I guess. That sort of thing.”

“I wonder what
kind
of spare parts. Look, it won’t take long to check it out. If the place isn’t manned on a weekday, you can be sure nobody’ll be there on a Sunday.”

“I hope so.” She shifted in her seat. “Ralph, we’re not going to break in, are we?”

“If this
is
a drug case, I want to know. I want to see exactly what they’ve got in that warehouse anyway. We may not find any drugs but there’s bound to be some evidence of some kind. Though evidence of
what,
I’m not sure.”

“Well, if you think we ought to . . .”

Ralph drove down toward Tribeca instead of heading out of the city as had been his original intention. Tribeca was a small area on the west side of Manhattan between Greenwich Village and the Financial District. Once dominated by warehouses and small factories, it had recently become a fashionable place to live. Expensive lofts full of upwardly mobile urbanites shared space with art-deco restaurants and discos.

HGC’s office, however, turned out to be on one of the lesser blocks of Tribeca, a narrow, dirty street of large, gray buildings and parking lots. Ralph parked the car around the corner under a large tree and turned off the ignition. They got out of the auto, locked it, and walked around to the other side of the block.

Aside from one man who was patiently waiting for his dog to relieve himself near where they had parked, they saw absolutely no one on the street. This was not at all a residential block. There was no traffic either.

The HGC building was still several yards distant. As they walked past the lot of an auto-parts dealership, Valerie’s gloved fingers played along the grill of the metal fence across the driveway.

Suddenly something jumped up out of the shadows and lunged at her hand. She stepped back quickly, withdrawing the hand from the gate, and turned to see a pair of snarling German shepherds.

“God, they scared me!”

Ralph chuckled. “Good watchdogs, eh?”

“I’ll say!”

The dogs continued to bark and growl until Ralph and Valerie were down the street. “I hope they don’t alarm the neighborhood,” Valerie said.

“I’m sure if anyone lives on this street they must be used to the noise by now. Those animals are trained to bark at
everything.”

There was no fence around the HGC warehouse, and no guard dogs either. They walked past the large garage door at one end of the building and approached the smaller entrance to the right of it. It led into a small foyer and hallway. Ralph looked around and got out his key chain.

Val giggled. “Don’t bother, Ralph,” she said, holding open the door for him. “It isn’t locked. It never has been.”

Ralph motioned for her to go inside. The actual office was behind another door to the right, and this door was locked securely. A door on the left led directly into the warehouse. This was also locked.

Ralph tried several different keys until he found one which would open up the latter. “Bingo.”

“Well, at least we aren’t exactly
breaking in,”
Valerie said. “You first this time.”

Valerie followed Ralph into the warehouse and closed the door behind them. The room was dark and cavernous. Ralph pulled his flashlight out of his pocket and shined it around the enclosure. The floor, as well as pile upon pile of wooden crates, were coated with a layer of dust. Many of the crates were stamped HGC in red; any other writing was difficult to make out under the covering sheath of gray matter. Ralph cupped his hands in front of his face and tried not to cough as his advancing steps stirred up the “blanket.” Valerie pulled out a handkerchief and clamped it over her nose.

“Ralph, no one’s been here in
decades,”
she said. “And it smells awful.”

“Well, let’s look around anyway.”

“I suppose you’ll want to open one of those boxes.”

“Hadn’t thought of that, but it might be a good idea. See a crowbar anywhere?”

“Fine. It’s my time to get an asthma attack.”

They traversed the large room and discovered Iwo smaller offices in the back. Another door led back into the hallway from which they’d come in. “Look how the dust is disturbed here. See the footprints,” Ralph said. “People have been in here. And fairly recently.”

Ralph opened yet another door and found that it led into a small garage—empty except for a rusty old truck—that opened out onto the street around the corner.

Valerie prevented him from closing the door. “Not so hasty. Let me check the dashboard. You never know.”

“Okay. I’ll be back inside the warehouse.”

She went over to the truck and pulled open the door, half expecting a body to fall out of the seat. She was so jumpy lately. Still holding the handkerchief over her nose, she climbed in and looked around.

Back in the storage area, Ralph had looked up and noticed that the ceiling was surprisingly low. Judging from the height of the building, there had to be a second story. Where were the stairs? he wondered. He went back into the small offices in the rear.

Sure enough there was another tiny area behind the offices that one could reach through a door which he had at first assumed led only to the bathroom. There was a small bathroom, all right, but there was also a staircase which led to the upper level. He took that first dusty step and made his way to the top of the stairs.

It was much darker up here than it had been below—it would be safe to turn the lights on, he figured—but when he found the switch he discovered it didn’t work. They must have turned the electricity off. He held the flashlight in front of him and proceeded down the corridor, not even sure of what he was looking for. Here too the dust was voluminous.

The narrow hall was lined with several doorways. He stopped now and then to shine his light into the small rooms they led into. All of the rooms were empty, as he had expected. There was nothing up here, that much was certain. He was just wasting his time. He had just decided to go downstairs again when something caught his eye at the end of the hallway: a large open space—doorless, black, like an empty eye socket. He
had
to walk toward it. He was drawn to it, compelled to investigate.

It appeared to be some sort of open shaft—an abandoned freight elevator perhaps? The dimensions were about right. Webs clung to the sides of the opening and a musty, dank smell issued from below. Ralph aimed his light down into the abyss and saw that there was a floor several feet beneath him. Metal rungs were attached to the front side of the shaft. Ralph would use them to descend.

The rungs were strong and firm, easily supporting his weight. Balancing the flashlight in the crook of his arm, he started to make his way down. He assumed that he would find himself in a closet or storage space adjacent to the room with all the boxes. He reached the last rung and placed his right foot on the floor. Then brought his left foot down beside it.

His full weight was on the wooden floor. He had at first thought that the floor was secure, but he now felt it beginning to yield. There was a creaking noise, the sound of groaning, twisting metal, and the platform caved in under him. His body shot through the remnants of splintered wood and hurtled down into the darkness.

Ralph’s scream echoed throughout the building.

He was in free fall, in utter darkness. He tried to grab on to something but he was traveling too fast, a bulky piece of meat caught helplessly by gravity.

His body hit bottom like a sack of water thrown against a wall. There was a brief jolt of agonizing pain—then nothing.