Shivers (6 page)

Joey was confused, like everyone else who’d been close to her. There had been no inkling, until perhaps right before her death, that anything had been wrong with her. Just some minor complaints, which she usually kept to herself. But he accepted his father’s story. Mr. Everson had figured, however, that Steven could deal with the truth. Steven often wondered if his father had really forgiven his wife for leaving him and the boys. He seemed to understand why she had taken her life; she had told him about the illness. But perhaps he had expected her to be “stronger,” to hang on until the finish, to never give up hope. To look after Joey while he was still too young to go out in the world.

It didn’t matter now. Their father was killed in a blazing automobile accident a year later, leaving behind a charred, unrecognizable corpse that no mortician could prettify with makeup. The coffin had been closed.

Both deaths had devastated Joey. Steven had had it easier only because he was no longer under their wing. When they died, they simply hadn’t been as big a part of his life as they were of Joey’s.

But if Joey was dead, it would hit him harder than both of his parents’ deaths combined. Joey was young. Joey could be an important person someday. Joey had everything going for him, everything to live for. It just wasn’t fair.

Steven was exhausted. He couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. He fell asleep in the easy chair and didn’t wake up for hours.

Vivian Jessup wanted to drink herself into oblivion.

It was the only way she could handle it, the only way she could keep the anguish from overwhelming her.

Joey Everson.

She hadn’t intended to go to bed with him, to do
any
of the things she’d done. She’d only planned to watch him, to warn him, to keep him from his dire fate.

What a fool she’d been. As if anyone could have saved him.

She knew what Joey was going to be used for. Just as Peterson had known. In her lucid moments, when it didn’t have control of her, she knew she had to try and save him, so she’d formulated a plan.

A plan that hadn’t worked.

To think it had been Gerald, her late husband, who’d betrayed her back at the beginning.

She had resigned from the firm several years ago, before the
nightmare
started.’ She found the subtle discrimination against women exhibited by the firm to be a barrier and a burden. She could hardly control her frustration at watching her husband rise on her accomplishments while she remained only his assistant. Never an equal, always a slave. She had almost gotten her first nervous breakdown.

So she had quit—both husband and job—and moved to New York to live luxuriously on her dead father’s legacy.

But then one night Gerald came, muttering obscenities and dripping tears, with a story so incredible . . .

He’d nearly died that night, nearly been killed —as a penalty for talking. It had almost given her her “second” nervous breakdown.

Vivian had wanted to reject the whole business out of hand, but she’d taken it upon herself to drive out to the lab one day and see for herself . . .

That had been the beginning of the end.

They’d taken her into their confidence, so she knew
everything.
At first she’d felt terror. And then—most terribly—indifference. It did to her what it had done to the others—even now she didn’t quite remember what the process consisted of—and made her one of the
damned.

She’d wanted to tell Steven everything—but she’d start shaking, shivering—and she knew, she
knew
that it was listening and would not hesitate to destroy her if she dared to go too far.

Poor Joey. She hadn’t intended to care for him. But the only way she could protect him— short of warning him outright and dooming herself—was to make the boy her lover. She was still attractive. Many young men were flattered by the attentions of sophisticated women. She’d known where to find him, which place to look.

At first she had felt out of place—until she looked more closely at some of the women under the low amber lights and realized that their youth was more artifice than reality. One night she’d seen him, approached him—made messy, rapturous love in her bedroom, enjoying his fine strong boy-flesh as it filled her up to her soul.

She’d never known she’d had such feelings.

She’d tried to live her life as a normal person, as a normal widow—Gerald had died a natural death, a heart attack, some months ago, the lucky bastard—but it was no use. Always she could feel it
listening,
almost
lusting
—God help them—along with her as she kissed and touched and stroked every inch of her handsome, wonderful young man.

She’d only made matters worse. She’d only managed to make Joey more
appealing
in its eyes.

Time and again she’d tried to warn him, only to stop before she could finish.

So yesterday they’d gone ahead and snatched him. He was as good as dead. She hadn’t really known they’d go through with it until she’d called the boy’s brother . . .

How did she ever get into such an impossible situation? Why
her?
There seemed to be no way out of it. The warning she had received tonight might have been
more
than just a warning. How horrible that would be. She’d spend the night sleeplessly, waiting for it to happen, and then, once she’d dozed off . . . well, she wouldn’t, couldn’t, let it happen to her. She would get away tonight! As for the police, what could she possibly have said to them?

She ran into the bedroom, grabbed a suitcase from the closet, and started to pack. The creature’s influence couldn’t extend everywhere, could it? Surely it had limits. She threw in only the essentials. She extracted several hundred dollars from a wall safe behind a painting over the bed, and changed into a more nondescript outfit. She left the lights in the bedroom on, but switched all the others off. She locked up behind her, went down in the elevator, and walked out of the building.

Around the block was the garage where she parked her car. She hurried there, trying to keep her face hidden from passersby. She might be spotted, might be watched, by another of the creature’s conscripts. They would tell on her just to save themselves. At the garage she asked the attendant to get her car, a blue sedan, up from the lower level.

The attendant was taking forever. She tapped her handbag restlessly, picked at her hair. What was keeping him?

Finally her car was driven up the ramp, and she got inside. She turned right onto Lexington Avenue. Then down to 59th Street. She hadn’t the slightest idea where she was going, only that she had to get out of the city as soon as possible. She swerved around pedestrians and raced dangerously through stoplights. A cabbie hollered after her.

There was some sort of traffic jam near 63rd Street. An accident? She turned the wheel and jumped the curb, almost smashing into several panicking strollers. She drove along the sidewalk until she reached 62nd Street. She turned right and headed toward the river, leaving a dozen startled pedestrians in her wake.

Something started happening to her vision. At first it was just specks. Then large dots. Then a terrible throbbing ache in her head that made her blink furiously. She couldn’t see anything in the road ahead. She felt like she was on fire, and started to tug at her collar. A dizzy feeling began overtaking her system. She stomped on the brake.

She was getting the shivers.
Bad,
this time.

Almost blinded, sick with nausea, Vivian was thrust forward in her seat as the car crunched sickeningly into something in the road. The impact served to jar her into a temporary remission. Her fender had smashed into the back of a double-parked truck. There was no way she could handle the arguments, the shouting, the exchange of phone numbers and data. She got out of her vehicle, and started running down the street, ignoring those pedestrians who had witnessed the accident. Luckily, the truck’s driver was somewhere indoors, unaware of what had transpired.

She almost hailed a taxi at the corner, but was dismayed at the number of people standing on the curb up and down the street with the same idea in mind. What should she do? She couldn’t think straight. She started to run down Lexington toward the subway at 59th, bumping into people, almost knocking some of them down. She accidentally tore a package right out of someone’s arms and sent it crashing to the sidewalk. She ignored the yelling, the curses. She hadn’t time.

She decided to take the subway to Grand Central. Surely she’d be safe right out there in the open. It wouldn’t do to have witnesses, after all. At Grand Central she would take any train to
anywhere,
just so long as it took her out of the city. Hopefully the sick feeling, the shivering, she’d experienced before would not reoccur. She tried hard to close her mind, to keep her thoughts of escape from floating . . .

Finally she saw the stairway down to the IRT. Only a few short stops and she’d be there. No one was going to hurt her. No one.

After an infuriating delay, she’d managed to acquire a token. The clerk on duty had rejected her hundred-dollar bill. She’d scrounged around in her purse until she found the right change.

She went through the turnstile, and waited there with about fifteen other people for the downtown train to arrive. She realized that she was on the local platform. Perhaps the express would get her there faster. She looked around until she saw a sign that read
Take Escalator for Downtown Express.
She walked to the middle of the platform, stepped onto the escalator, and let it carry her down to the platform below.

She was still shivering. Her fingers wouldn’t stop shaking. She was finally having that nervous breakdown. She just knew she was.

She started gasping for air. Something told her it was a mistake to go too far below the ground. Her heart pounding inside her, she absurdly tried to climb back up the motorized metal stairs. In her breathless, panicky state she was certainly unable to perform the maneuver. She could only ride down helplessly.

She stepped off the escalator when she reached the lower section. There were fewer people here than there had been on the platform above. Only four or five, most of them congregated around a bench down on the other end of the platform. Vivian felt all alone again. Terrified.

She heard the train. She was in luck—the express had arrived before the local. Staring down into the tunnel with impatience, she could see the widening twin lights of the first car as it approached.

Then the pounding started. Not just her heart. Not just her blood. But every cell of her body—every bone, artery, vessel, muscle—was starting to throb, to
vibrate.
Vivian’s eyes started to bulge out of their sockets, almost bursting from demoniacal pressure.

Not like this,
Vivian gasped.
Not like this. 1 won’t let it kill me. I’ll do it myself first!

The train was about to enter the station. Her face a mask of horror and determination. Vivian stepped over to the rim of the platform—

The tracks were full of writhing, twisting shapes, men and women in straitjackets, screaming and cursing and weaving baskets, urinating upon each other. It was a crazy house.

A
crazy house.
Her nervous breakdown had arrived and
she was crazy . . .

—and hurled herself onto the tracks.

Vivian’s body was spread-eagled across the sizzling third rail. Sparks erupted from beneath her as her body began to smoulder.

The train roared into the station, its massive wheels grinding along the tracks.

Vivian’s body was neatly sliced into several uneven parts.

Eric Thorne got off the train and walked along the downtown twin of the platform he had been on earlier that evening. If he looked across the tracks to the other side he could see the turnstile that the derelict had watched him from before. He went through the turning exit gate, walked up the stairs, and crossed the street so that he stood precisely at the spot where the man had first approached him. There was no one around.

It was quite cold this evening. His long gray jacket was missing the top button, so Thorne pulled the sides of the coat together with his fingers. He wondered if he’d be needing gloves. He didn’t know how long it would take for him to find the man. But he must find him. It was an opportunity not to be missed.

He felt no psychic emanations, saw nothing, heard no voices in his subconscious. Not a trace. He was afraid that the man might have moved into another section of the city. Thorne
had
been gone over four hours. He had gone home, made and eaten the elaborate feast he’d been planning, then relieved himself and headed back to the subway. Fortified thusly, he felt able to take on this rather grim assignment. And a dangerous one too, perhaps.

During the day it may have been desolate enough, but the area was empty beyond belief in the evening. The night intensified its bleak open spaces and hollow shadows. Most of the buildings were large warehouses or plants. Several of them in the immediate area housed printing presses. A few buildings contained offices for obscure organizations which thrived on cheap rent. The liquor store on the corner was closed at this hour, as was the sleazy, greasy coffeeshop across the street. Thorne decided to walk down to the Institute.

The building where he worked was a large, brown, unattractive structure that had at one time been a home for—depending on the decade —the elderly and infirm, unwed mothers, or orphans. Sometimes he picked up thoughts, desperate feelings, that had been trapped within the walls for many years. He had learned to deal with them.

He opened the front door with his keys, peeking in through the large rectangular panes of glass to see if anyone was about. There shouldn’t be. No one had been there when he’d left two hours previously. He stepped into the hall, pulled the door shut, and snapped on the light. The corridor was long and in need of a paint job. More of the pale green coat on the walls was chipping off each day. He walked down the hallway, and turned to the right into a tiny kitchen. He’d make himself a nice cup of coffee, then resume his search. He went to the sink, extracted a cup from the cabinet above, and filled a pot with water from the faucet. Putting the pot on the hot plate, he switched on the current.