The Light at the End (13 page)

Her skin was completely white… as white as his had been. He noted with surprise that his color had deepened, become more the color of flesh. He also realized, with a strange blend of horror and amusement, that he was still grinding on her automatically; and that he was still erect.

How long?
he found himself wondering.
How long was I out? How long have I been… humping her like this?
He stopped himself, an act of will, because his body had locked itself into a rhythm that it could probably have maintained forever. He slid out of her immediately, crawling backwards off the foot of the bed and away from the corpse.

Naked but for the pants around his ankles, Rudy stumbled to the middle of the room: his penis caked with the dried lubricants of passion, pointing like a divining rod at his grisly handiwork. Every pore in his body seemed to open wide, screaming with life. He rubbed himself all over to ease the tingling.

Of all the killings that he’d done, this was clearly the most horrible. And yet… and yet…

“I feel great.” He said it so quietly that it was barely audible over the roaring in his temples, the hot pulsation of blood in his veins. “I feel great,” he repeated, as if to convince himself that it was true.

But he didn’t need to. There was no doubt. He felt absolutely invigorated, absolutely without remorse. He felt, to his way of thinking, the way he should have felt
every
time he slipped it to some dumb cunt: the way he should have felt with Josalyn, and every other…

Josalyn
. His thoughts backtracked, riveted on the word with unnatural intensity.
Josalyn
. It rang in his head like a sweet, clear bell. He remembered the night that she tossed him out, swearing at him, trying to make him crawl with the ferocity of her words. He remembered the way that she tried to make him feel small and shitty, less than a man: more like a mongrel, a lap dog, some tiny-brained bundle of Willingness To Serve, yapping and wagging its idiot tail every time she craved affection or understanding or…

Less than a man.
The phrase rankled his ass, filled him with a hatred profound as the heavens.
Less than a man? I’m MORE than a man now! MORE than any pathetic, sniveling little human being!

I’m MORE than that!

And God be damned if I don’t prove it to you, bitch.

All the while that he was dressing, his mind was focused on Josalyn. That tart. That slut. That lousy collegiate whore. As he pulled up his pants and zipped them, he was seeing her: on her knees before him, the two puckered wounds in her neck standing out in sharp relief as she blew him with the abandon of the damned. As he put on his shirt, he was seeing her: her sallow flesh setting off the red luminescence of her undead eyes as she draped a royal robe around him, forever his servant, his jiz bag, his slave. And as he slipped on his boots, he was seeing her: the boot pressed into her face as she groveled in the dirt, begging forgiveness, pleading for the opportunity to go with him, to feed…

Ah, yes
, he thought, chuckling to himself.
The right to feed. A new issue for Gloria Steinem to champion, once she and the rest of those bimbos are mine
. He laughed aloud, an evil rippling against the silence. He laughed, and he laughed, and he laughed.

When he had laughed the image out of his system, he took one last glance at the thing on the bed before turning to leave the room. It was tempting to write, once more… to poke around in the wound until enough juice came out to compose with… but he dismissed the thought.
I don’t want them to make the connection
, he thought.
I want them to believe that their “Subway Psycho” only kills in the subways.

He was about to leave when yet another thought struck him:
what if she gets back up again? It happened to me; it could happen to her
. It was a disconcerting thought. On the one hand, she was beautiful, and great in bed: she’d make a welcome addition to any man’s court. On the other hand, her neck was broken: he didn’t know if he wanted to see anyone, beautiful or not, walking around like that.

Rudy walked slowly over to her. He took her head in his hands, tried to twist it back around. When her glazed, dead eyes met his, he jerked involuntarily.

And her head came away in his hands.

“Wah!” he yelled, dropping it like a hot potato. It bounced on the bed, hit the floor with a thud. Rudy backed away, disgusted, and hurried out of the room.

On his way to the front door, he noticed another open doorway in the apartment. A quick glance inside revealed a pale, familiar nightmare countenance that made him giggle when he saw it. He stopped in the doorway—the giggling giving way to howling now—and stepped inside.

The room was plastered with vampire posters. The first one, Bela Lugosi, leered at him in black and white with his ridiculous, limp-wristed predatory stance. Surrounding Bela were shots of Frank Langella, Christopher Lee, Klaus Kinski, Max Shreck, and Lon Chaney. In addition, there were half a dozen David Bowie shots, all of which clearly showed why he’d been chosen to play John Blaylock in
The Hunger
.

One more picture hung on the wall, a photograph in an expensive frame. The light glared across the glass. He moved closer, in order to see.

He smiled.

If only she knew
, he mused, looking at the pictures of an attractive girl, dressed entirely in black and red, with the bat wings painted across her features. He had never seen Claire before, but he knew all too well what she was trying to be.

In fact, the entire room was a sort of shrine to vampirism, strewn with regalia from the popular mythology. Her bookshelves were cluttered with vampire titles:
I Am Legend
,
Interview With The Vampire
,
Salem’s Lot
,
Dracula
, the whole Fred Saberhagen series. There was a candle in the shape of a human skull. There was a large mirror with a black tapestry slung over it, a bureau covered with conventional and theatrical makeup.

There was an inverted cross hanging over the bed; but instead of Jesus Christ, Bozo the Clown was nailed to it, his red hair jutting out in either direction.

This is tremendous
, Rudy marveled, clapping his hands with childlike glee.
This is really incredible. I’d like to meet this chick, whoever she is. I might even let her reign at my side.

The thought inspired him. Up to now, he’d been thinking exclusively in terms of slaves. This vampire lover, however, set up another line of reasoning entirely. He played it over and over in his mind, excited by the prospect.

Why not?
he thought.
Why not a queen? There are eight million people in New York City… more than enough for me. And with so many servants, I couldn’t possibly keep track of them all.

He moved to the bookshelf, perusing the contents.
Interview With The Vampire
stuck out in particular; there was something gratifying about the title, a touch of glamour to what he already knew was a superior status. “Why, yes, Johnny, I’ve killed over ten thousand people,” he said out loud, imagining himself on the
Tonight Show
, Ed McMahon’s mangled body at his feet. “And you’re next.”

He picked up the book, began to flip absently through it. His eyes stopped on page 83, riveted to a particular passage near the bottom of the page. He read:

“Vampires are killers,” he said now. “Predators. Whose all-seeing eyes were meant to give them detachment. The ability to see a human life in its entirety, not with any mawkish sorrow but with a thrilling satisfaction in being the end of that life, in having a hand in the divine plan.”

That’s nice
, Rudy observed.
I don’t know about this “divine plan” crap, but that’s very, very nice, I like that
. He began to flip ahead, see what other gems of sterling wisdom the author had provided for him…

…when there was a sound at the front door.

What?
he thought, his heart suddenly pounding.

And in that moment, quite contrary to his own desires…

He underwent a transformation.

Claire hesitated for a moment at the door, listening. She wouldn’t have been surprised to hear them going at it from the stairwell. At the very least, she expected some kind of loud music, some laughter, some of Dorian’s characteristic drunken shouting.

But she heard nothing. Absolutely nothing. And the absence of sound confused her.

Maybe they went to his apartment
, she thought, but that didn’t sound like Dorian. Dorian always had to flaunt her new boyfriends, invite Claire in for a naked peek before telling her to get out and change the record or something.
No, she would have definitely brought him here
, she confirmed with a nod.
So where are they?

Claire fit her key into the lock, struggled for a moment to make it turn, and then pushed open the door…

With a screech, something small and squat and dark rushed past her feet. Claire let out a screech of her own and stepped back, terrified, staring after it.

It was the largest rat she’d ever seen.

“Oh, my God, she breathed, bringing one hand up to her breasts involuntarily. She watched as the rat disappeared into the darkness of the stairwell, and fell back against the door frame.

“Dorian!” she called, backing nervously into the apartment. “Dorian, did you see that… ?”

Then she turned.

The words froze in her throat.

The door slid shut behind her, forgotten.

And she collapsed to the ground, unconscious, while Dorian’s head stared across the floorboards at her with eyes of bright, forever-unseeing blue.

It was now 2:35 in the morning.

Ian sat at the bar of the Shamrock Pub, alone. To either side of him, empty barstools jutted from the floor like black, bloated mushrooms on fat chrome stems. In his left hand was a cigarette with an inch-long ash. In his right was a red Flair pen.

Spread out before him were a series of notes and diagrams, drunkenly scrawled on the backs of several blank messenger manifests. He stared at them, red Flair poised, while his mind grappled with the details of the plan.

One of the pages was labeled TOOLS. On it, he had all the traditional implements of vampire-hunting: wooden stakes, mallets, crucifixes, silver bullets, garlic, holy water. To this, he had added an innovation or two: compact mirrors, to spot the monster by his absence of reflection; and, most important, a pair or more of data pagers, a dozen street guides, and the number of every subway pay phone in lower Manhattan.

As for the plan itself… well, it was an iffy proposition at best. It
could
work, if all went properly. Ian didn’t doubt that. But it had some major holes in it, any one of them big enough for a full-grown vampire to slip through.

Twelve guys, say
, Ian thought, musing over the notes on the page marked THE PLAN.
Split up into groups of three. A data pager in each group. We leave Joseph and two other guys in the van; the other three groups hit strategic subway stations around the city. When somebody spots the vampire, they beep everybody else. The number of the pay phone shows up on the data pagers; they look on their charts for the location of the phone, then surround the area within a three-stop radius in either direction…

Damn!
Ian stomped on the barstool footrest in frustration, knocking the long cigarette ash onto his lap.
Goddamn it, this is never gonna work
, he added miserably, and turned to the page marked PROBLEMS.

There were already more problems than anything else, he noted; and he’d just come up with another. Running down the list, they read:

1) Data pagers cost $150 apiece.

2) What if the phones busy, doesn’t work, doesn’t have push buttons?

3) How does everybody get to the right station fast enough?

4)
What
twelve guys?

5) We don’t even know what the vampire looks like.

6) Do we kill him right there on the platform, or what?

7) Who’s gonna get the number of every goddam pay phone in lower Manhattan?

8) Where do you get silver bullets: a sporting goods store? Weapons cost money!

To all this, he now had to add:

9) Twelve people aren’t enough to surround
anything
in groups of three!

“Well, that just about does it,” he complained to himself. “No way in Hell.” Then, silently,
if twelve people aren’t enough to do it, then how is Joseph supposed to do it all by himself?

And how am I supposed to explain that to him?

The door behind him opened. He turned automatically, with a start; even after a dozen beers or more, his nerves were still horribly on edge. Like Joseph, he couldn’t close his eyes without seeing Peggy Lewin’s spontaneous decay.

Ian turned toward the door and watched as two large men stepped into the pub, wearing the orange Day-Glo vests, rubber boots, and grimy work clothes of the MTA. Their eyes shone white in their dirty faces, darting this way and that with an expression that took only a second to read.

Those guys are terrified
. Ian stared at them for a moment, his jaw hanging slack. He felt like laughing, like curling up in a ball. He watched as the second man closed the door with a bang that made the first man jump. Ian jumped, too, then giggled involuntarily. His flesh was crawling.

He could feel their fear from halfway across the room.

He turned away abruptly, staring straight ahead. In the mirror behind the bar, his reflection stared back at him: a pale, ghastly mockery. He tried to grin reassuringly, the traditional hambone response to discomfort; but the face that grinned back at him was so drained… so
dead
… that his eyes snapped shut in revulsion…

…
and Peggy Lewin was screaming, one eye rolled back into darkness, the other gone entirely, as the flesh surrounding her tensed jaws began to split and reveal the straining muscles beneath
…

“
No
,” he whispered through clenched teeth, eyes snapping open again to rivet on his hands, clenched into fists on the bar before him. Behind, he could hear the two men, their steps slow and halting, as they made their way toward the bar.
I’m not going to look at them
, he told himself.
I don’t want to see any more
.

But he found himself listening as they seated themselves about four stools down to his right, ordered double shots of Johnnie Walker Red with a pitcher of beer for a chaser, and… softly, tentatively… began to talk.

“Yo… T.C.?” This from the white guy, the first one in the door. He sounded, predictably, like Sylvester Stallone.

“Go ahead,” his black companion muttered without much enthusiasm.

“It’s… I… I don’t know if I want to go back down there again.” The black dude let out a derisive snort. “No, really, I…”

“You had to go right up to that thing, didn’t you? Shine your goddamn flashlight right in its face.” He snorted again, furious. “You’re one bad-ass dude, Tommy. You know it. You as bad as they come…”

“Hey! You ran,
too
, buddy! Don’t give me that crap!”

“I didn’t even want to check it out, blood!
You
were the one who had to be so inquisitive!
You
were the one…”

“Hey, just lay off me, would’ja?” The white dude, Tommy, stared sullenly down at his knees, grimacing. T.C. glared at him, then chugged heavily on his beer and ruminated. Finally, he spoke.

“I’m goin’ back down,” he said. “I can’t be quittin’ no job just because of this. I got alimony to pay. I got child support. I got bills crawlin’ up my butt like you wouldn’t believe…”

“Yeah, yeah, but…”

“But
nothin’
, you stupid Pollack sonofabitch! Now, if Weizak wants to make some kinda big deal outta this, he can just deal with that thing himself! I just needed a drink to mellow myself out. Thass all.”

“That fuckin’
thing
!” Ian glanced over and saw that they had both paused to drain their double shots in unison. Then Tommy slammed his empty glass down and said, “I don’t even wanna
think
about it!” Ian looked quickly away.

What did they see?
The question tugged at the base of Ian’s brain like a spoiled brat at the hemline of his mother’s skirt. He found himself grinning wildly, grinning at his knotted hands, while his mind repeated the question:
what did they see? What did they see down there?

As the net closed inexorably around him.

One minute
, he thought,
you’re allowed the illusion that things are pretty much the way they’ve always been and always will be. Next time you turn around, some pinhead rips the world out from under you, and the weirdness starts pouring in from every direction…

Like these guys. If they didn’t see the vampire down there, I’ll eat my hat. I’ll buy a hat and eat it.

*

In the tunnels…

T.C. Williams and Tommy Wizotski, cleaning up after a water main break on the Broadway line between 8
^th
and Prince. Not thinking about the murders, the rumors of things even worse than death; not thinking about the bodies that sporadically turned up in one section of tunnel or another, even in the most ordinary of circumstances… MTA workers stumbling into third rails, junkies and winos crawling down there to die…

Not thinking about any of that.

T.C. and Tommy, drenched with sweat and filthy water, nodding at each other like conspirators do. T.C. and Tommy, leaving the mess behind them as they moved to a niche in the wall on the uptown side. Withdrew a joint of exotic pot, valued at $120 an ounce, from a grease-stained pocket. And proceeded to fire it up.

A train, rumbling toward them. Pausing to blow blue smoke defiantly against the approaching lights, laughing in the grip of a steadily mounting high, before pressing back into the niche and safety.

Glimpsing, in the moment before caution forced them to retreat, something small and pale that lay by the side of the shuddering rails…

…and then moving back, watching the faces in the brightly lit windows flash by, too quickly to be distinguished, as the train thundered past. Communicating with a glance, because words could not possibly cut through, while the joint passed back and forth in the constricted space of the niche. The first glimmers of fear, constricting that space even further…

…as the train continued to stretch out before them, a solid wall of power and motion…

…and then was gone, the last car whipping past them and off into the distance, leaving them bathed in dope smoke, darkness, and reverberating sound…

…that dissipated, gradually, into silence.

Moving, then, away from the wall. Stepping carefully over the deadly third rail and into the center of the still-thrumming tracks.

Moving toward the thing…

Ian had made up his mind.

They had been talking together for the last fifteen minutes. Little by little, the story was coming together, as the steady flow of alcohol began to loosen them up. But they were still beating around the bush, and Ian couldn’t stand it much longer.

He closed his eyes. The darkness was softly spinning, but at least Peggy Lewin wasn’t in it.
I’m going to regret this in the morning
, he informed himself, grinning lopsidedly. Then he opened his eyes, waited for the room to steady itself out, and motioned for the bartender.

“What are those guys drinking?” Ian asked, leaning forward and cupping his hand to his mouth. The bartender squinted at him darkly, suspiciously. Ian was confused for a second; then he rubbed his eyebrows and leveled a cold gaze at the man.

“Look. Just set ‘em up with shots of whatever they’re drinking,” he said, “and bring me another pitcher, okay?” The bartender nodded, slowly, and turned away.

What does he think I’m gonna do? Get two big transit workers drunk, lead ‘em out back in the alley, and mug ‘em?
Didn’t seem too likely; they were both about six feet tall.
Probably thinks I want them to take me home
, Ian continued, laughing at the thought.
Christ. In a sane environment, that wouldn’t even come into the picture.

But this isn’t a sane environment
. The thought clung for a moment.
This is a place where bodies come climbing out of subway tunnels. This is a place where, if you have three guys sitting at your bar, chances are all three of them saw a monster today.

Which reminded him. The bartender was setting up the shots now; the two guys were staring over with blank surprise. Ian motioned for them to wait a minute, then gathered up his belongings and rose from the stool.

God, this is going to be weird
, he thought, and then he was moving toward them.

It was the head. Tommy had suspected it from the first glance. As they got closer, it became more and more evident that this was no handbag, no crumpled-up newspaper, no discarded underwear: none of the options that T.C. had stubbornly posed.

It was the head, all right. The one from the murder of a day before. Upside-down and at an angle, forehead half-buried in a pool of water, stringy hair dangling downwards . A dirt-caked expanse of blackness at the base of the neck, bone poking out and toward them like an accusing finger.

A large, hairy wart displayed prominently on the left cheek of its fat, lifeless face.

“Aw, come on, Tommy,” T.C. had almost whined. “Leave it alone, now. I’m serious.”

“Wait a minute. Just wait a minute.”

“You don’t wanna see that…”

And they had come closer, to within five feet of it. They had come closer, almost on tiptoe, as though they were afraid of awakening it.

Then Tommy had knelt down in front of it; and, pausing to make absolutely sure that T.C. was watching, he unhooked the flashlight from his belt. Flipped it on.

And shone its light into the dead thing’s face…

…and the eyes shot open, twin crimson reflectors that stared blindly back at them, while the jaws widened into a silent, screaming rictus of horror…

Tommy and T.C. had screamed then, too: sonic accompaniment to the soundless howl of the thing at their feet. The flashlight had slipped from Tommy’s fingers and rolled, its beam trailing off into darkness and distance. Then they turned and ran, crazily: away from the nightmare, away from the tunnels, out into the street and the dull, comforting light of the nearest bar.

And into the tightening net.

*

Breaking into the conversation wasn’t easy. T.C. and Tommy weren’t inclined to talk. It took forty-five minutes, two more rounds of shots, and the story of Peggy Lewin to get anything out of them.

But by 4:00, when the Shamrock closed its doors for the night, they had discovered that there was, indeed, a lot to talk about.