The Light at the End (30 page)

Doug scrambled to his knees and got his wheels under him before Rudy had a chance to think. He was up on his feet and moving before Rudy had a chance to leave the curb. He closed his eyes and pumped his legs with every bit of strength he could muster. His teeth tore into his lower lip; his ears rang with the sound of rapid footsteps behind him, the sudden roar of inhuman rage that grew fainter and fainter as he pushed himself to go faster, go faster…

And he opened his eyes. And Prince Street was before him: twenty yards away and closing fast. He slowed himself down and did a neat 180-degree turn. Far behind him, less than halfway down the block, a dark figure hollered and waved its fists.

“You can’t have
me
, you bastard!” Doug yelled, laughing, out of breath. His voice didn’t carry; he was too happy to care. “Too quick for you, huh? Just a little too quick…” Before he even knew it, the laughter had turned to tears. Tears of joy. Tears of relief. Tears that shouted triumphantly,
I’m alive! I’m alive!

Then he remembered the girl in the stairwell, and his own proximity to death. He remembered the pressure of the hand around his ankle. The sudden glare of headlights. Those eyes: the devil’s own. The full monstrousness of the encounter came back to him; and the tears turned bitter, scalding in his eyes.

Quickly, he turned away and rolled forward to Prince, took a left at the corner and started heading east. At the corner of Prince and Thompson, there was a pay phone; he could see it, rather faintly, through the tears. He moved toward it, digging once again in his pocket for a dime.

He reached the phone, brought the receiver to his ear.
It works
, he marveled, managing a grin as he dropped the coin into the slot.

The phone rang. It rang again. “
Come on
,” he hissed into the mouthpiece, looking over his shoulder to make sure that the dark man hadn’t followed him here. The phone rang again.

On the fourth ring, Allan answered. “Still nothing, damn it,” the dispatcher grumbled.

“
I found him!
” Doug shouted into the receiver, half crazy. “Oh, God, Allan! Oh, Jesus! You didn’t tell me how
bad
…!”

“
You did WHAT?
” Allan’s voice screamed back in his ear. Doug shook his head, heard Allan shout something unintelligible to somebody else, felt the adrenaline rush through his system again. Then Allan was back on the line, speaking to him in a level voice of manufactured calm. “Who is this?” Allan asked.

“This is Doug!” he yelled. “And I found that guy… that
thing
… God, I don’t know…”

“Where are you, boss?” Allan interrupted him, voice crackling with intensity. “Just relax, and tell me exactly where you are.”

“P-P-Prince Street,” he stammered. “I’m on Prince Street and T-Thompson.” Trying to be calm was much harder than shouting. He listened as Allan rattled off the coordinates. Someone else’s voice distantly echoed the words. Listening to them talk made him crazy, and he shouted, “What the hell
is
he, Allan? You’ve got to…”

“I think you’d better come into the office now, Doug.” Allan’s voice was a drone. “I’ll explain it to you here.”

The women in the Laundromat were afraid to venture near the window. They huddled in the back, with the heat from the dryers baking the sweat onto their bodies. They would not so much as glance toward the street.

They’d come running at the sound of the squealing brakes, seen the cabbie drive off, and felt vaguely disappointed. Then the dark man appeared from out of nowhere, rekindling their interest.

When he took off his glasses, one of the women screamed, and they had all recoiled in horror.

And when the wild howling had erupted from the street, they had moved to the rear of the building, where they remained.

Later, when a half hour of silence has passed, they will slink furtively up to the window and look. Seeing nothing, they will venture out into the street. A more observant one will notice the strange new fresco on the rectory’s white wall: a frenetically rendered mishmash of scribbled words and images.

Then all of them will notice the yards and yards of pale white entrails, glistening in the moonlight like fat strands of tinsel, draped over the outstretched arms of the Virgin Mary and then streaming back down to the stairwell and their source.

Then all of them will scream, and several of them will faint, and one of them will find it in her to call the police before blacking out herself.

Thereby alerting the city to Rudy’s first victim of the night.

At 11:43, when all the beepers started going off at once, Armond’s hunting party was deep in the grip of a long and protracted silence. The joking, the theorizing, the brief personal biographies had gradually given way to complaints, brief flirtations with mutiny, and conflict. At just the point where everybody’s control was threatening to snap, the silence had set in. It was the only thing that kept them from each other’s throats. It was a blessing in a very uncomfortable disguise.

Even Armond’s patience had been wearing thin, listening to the chatter. Danny’s glibness, Claire’s catlike detachment and T.C.’s blunt impatience had become an annoyance, like the buzzing of flies in his ears. What made it worse was the fact that they seemed to be missing the point; everything they said seemed so extraneous. They seemed to have no sense of how
real
the situation had become… how
real
, their proximity to genuine evil. Listening to them, they could have been kids waiting to be picked up for a show, pissed off because their ride was late. Despite Armond’s best efforts, it was really starting to get under his skin.

That was why he was grateful for the silence: it gave him the chance to realign himself, to be ready when the moment came.

That was why, when Danny’s beeper erupted into song, Armond was already moving out of the shadow and over to the phone before Danny had a chance to turn it off.

Suddenly, all of their beepers were beeping together. It sent a shock wave through the group, set off a flurry of motion. T.C. and Claire grappled with their messenger bags, trying to locate the little buttons that would shut off the sound. Armond let his beep for a minute, patiently punching dispatch’s number into the pay phone. After several hours of repeated dialing, he had it down pat. Only after the phone had begun to ring did he calmly silence the beeper.

Josalyn answered on the second ring with a nervous, “Hello? Who is this?”

“This is Armond. You have heard something, yes?”

Allan clicked instantly onto the line, heard the tail end of the question. “Armond?” he said, and his voice was profoundly agitated. “Good. We’ve spotted him, not too far away from here.”

“You are certain?” Armond, trying hard to restrain his own rising excitement.

“Oh, yeah.” Allan’s quick laugh had the taint of hysteria. “The kid who saw him is half-scared out of his mind. There’s no question about it. Its Rudy, all right.”

“Where?” Armond heard a rustling of paper behind him, turned to see that the others were gathered by the phone. Danny had his pen and clipboard ready.

“In SoHo, right around where Thompson hits Prince. That’s where he was spotted…”

“Wait a moment,” Armond interrupted, repeating the location to Danny. He could see that the others were studying their maps closely. “Yes,” he said finally. “Go on.”

“Just look for him in that general vicinity. Joseph and the others will be down to help. Just look for him, and
stay in touch
. If we can pin him down now, it’s all over.”

“How long ago was he seen?”

“Less than five minutes. He couldn’t have gotten far.”

“Thank you,” Armond said, and hung up.

“We’re supposed to go look for him?” Danny asked. His eyes were huge as Armond nodded.

“We need a cab,” T.C. muttered, sourly scanning the length of Mercer Street.

“Lots of cabs on Broadway,” Claire pointed out. “It’s only a block over this way.”

“That’s the wrong way to Thompson,” Danny interjected whinily.

“We need a cab, man,” T.C. reiterated, nodding at Claire. “Let’s go for it.”

They all looked at Armond. He nodded and said, to Claire and T.C., “If you would run quickly to hail a cab, Danny will accompany me. Yes?” They nodded and took off toward Bleecker, disappeared around the corner. “Come,” he said to Danny. “We must go as quickly as I can.”

Danny grinned and paced him as they moved slowly toward the corner.

Danny’s smile did nothing to hide his terror. Armond had considered talking seriously with him about Claire, urging him toward caution and a watchful eye; but it was clear now that Danny would come apart like a rag doll. As it stood, he was hanging together by a thread.

So instead, Armond reached up to take the young man gently by the forearm and say, “You will be fine, Danny. Of that much, I am certain.” Danny looked down at him questioningly. Armond smiled back at him. “I cannot see the future, my friend. But I can feel things coming. I can sense them in the air. And I feel very good about you now.”

Danny didn’t know what to make of this information, coming from the old Van Helsing surrogate. He didn’t know whether the old man was being legit, or just making it up as he went along. Armond, too, was momentarily confused. He’d started by just trying to comfort Danny; but when he’d started to talk, a very clear picture had come into his mind.

A picture of Danny, laughing and pointing at something that signified victory, comforting another in their time of deepest despair…

And then it was gone.

They rounded the corner in silence now, each one lost in his own private speculative Hell. They had not gone more than ten feet when Danny noticed the Checker cab backing toward them, T.C. hanging out the back window and waving at them. They exchanged tense smiles, and Armond squeezed Danny’s arm once more for good measure, before the cab pulled up in front of them and they hopped inside.

The chase was on.

The time was 11:55.

For the next fifteen minutes, they conducted a fruitless search of SoHo, whipping up and down every side street within a ten-block radius of the sighting, alternately shouting conflicting directions as the poor, disgruntled cabbie did his weary best to oblige them. He was right on the verge of kicking them the hell out of his cab when Armond slipped him a ten-spot and assured him that it was very important. Grudgingly, the cabbie accepted it. The search continued.

Armond’s beeper went off just as they hit Lafayette Street on Houston, one block away from dispatch. They briefly considered just stopping by the office; while they debated it, the cabbie pulled over to the curb and put it in park, impatiently drumming his knuckles on the dashboard.

That was when a sudden cry from Danny ripped through the cab like a poison-tipped spear. That was when they turned to stare in the direction of his trembling, pointing finger. That was when they noticed the dark figure that moved slowly up Lafayette, with the street light dancing briefly on the bleached blond pompadour that crowned his head.

“Omigod,” Claire whispered.

“Let us out here, man,” T.C. told the cabbie, nudging Claire toward the door.

“Wait a minute!” the cabbie yelled. “You owe me…” He looked at the meter; it added ten cents before he shut it off. “…seven-anna-half bucks, buddy!”

“Here,” Armond said, slipping another ten dollars through the slot. “We thank you for your kindness.”

“Let’s go,” T.C. said, nudging Claire again. She snapped out of her little trance and opened the door, stepped numbly onto the pavement. They piled out after her, slammed the door, caught a glimpse of the cab driver’s head shaking exasperatedly as he peeled out and away from them.

Leaving them on the corner, across the street and a block away from the dark figure that disappeared now, slowly, into the uptown entrance of the Bleecker Street subway station.

“We got to move fast,” T.C. muttered, “before he gets away again. We be chasin’ him all over town.”

“I’m embarrassed…” Armond began, looking up at T.C. with a sheepish grin that made the big man pause. “I am so slow, and so small, and… and I wanted to ask you…”

T.C.’s woolly features cracked into a smile. “You want a
lift
, my man? You got it!”

“I thank you so much,” Armond responded as he was hoisted up and cradled to the big man’s chest.

“I promise I won’t break ya, all right?” T.C. said, laughing, as he stepped out into the street at a rapid clip. Armond was pleased to see that Danny and Claire were smiling as well; in that moment, he found that he both loved and feared for them very much.

It was the first, and the last, warm moment that they would ever share.

The uptown local was coming. They could feel and hear its thunderous approach, shaking the pavement beneath their feet as they rushed down the subway stairs.

“Damn,” T.C. moaned, puffing and panting between the phrases. He still had Armond cradled in his arms. “Anybody got a token?”

“I’ve got slugs,” Danny offered, panting just as much without the extra burden. Armond gave him a funny look. “Black market duplicates. Work just like the real thing. At five for a dollar, you can’t beat ‘em.”

“Where you get those things?” T.C. wanted to know.

“You just have to know the right people,” Danny answered, winking.

They hit the bottom of the stairs. T.C. set Armond down in front of the turnstiles, and Danny doled out the bogus tokens, just as the train stuck its nose into the station. They moved quickly onto the platform and turned toward the sound. Rudy was there, near the end of the platform, alone.

“Claire,” Armond said quickly, turning to her. “I want you to stay here and call the office…”

“WHAT?” she yelled over the roar of the train. A red flush crept into her features.

“Please,” he said. “There’s no time. You must call Allan and have Joseph pick you up. We will need you all at the next station. Please.”

“IT’S NOT FAIR!” she yelled. The tears were starting to come now. She glanced down the platform at Rudy, saw that he was watching them with smug detachment. Without being fully aware of it, she gave him a desperate look. Rudy frowned and cocked his head.

“You better do what he said,” T.C. growled. He didn’t miss the exchange. It filled him with a sudden and deep distrust.

Before them, the train shuddered to a halt.

“Please,” Armond said, but it was not a beseechment. “Believe me; it is for the best.”

Claire looked at Danny for help, but he refused to meet her gaze. The tears had arrived; her hands were balled up into fists of helpless fury. T.C. watched her with impassive eyes. Armond nodded grimly, sympathetically, and conclusively.

The doors opened.

“I’ll do it,” she said finally, her voice cracking under the strain. “But I’ll never let you forget it.” Then, addressing this last part specifically to Danny, “You fuckers!”

Danny took it like a slap across the kisser. He started to protest weakly, but she would have none of it, turning away to watch as Rudy boarded the second car from the rear. Armond took Danny’s arm gently and said, “Come.” Then he led the young man backwards onto the train, T.C. beside them.

“I’m sorry…” Danny called after her.

As the doors slid smoothly shut.

Claire “De Loon” Cunningham stared at her shoes as the train rumbled slowly away from the station. Only once did she glance up, just in time to see a flash of Rudy’s face staring out the window at her with something like confusion. Then he was gone, the last car whipping by her, gradually picking up speed as the dark mouth of the tunnel sucked it in.

Leaving her alone in the Bleecker Street station.

“Be careful,” she whispered, very quietly. “Please be careful.” She was not at all sure to whom the statement was addressed.

It was now 12:25, precisely.

Rudy Pasko was alone in the second-to-the-last car. The two young couples that had shared it with him, for all of forty-five seconds, had moved to the safety of the next car up. Like Doug, they had never felt such evil; unlike Doug, they had no interest in checking it out. Later, they would remark to friends that every hair on their bodies stood on end when he walked through the door, and that the car had seemed to turn cold as a meat locker. “If we hadn’t gotten out of there,” they’d say, “he would have killed us. We just
knew
it…”

But in fact, Rudy had barely given them a second thought. He was thinking about the Bleecker Street girls: the one that now decorated St. Anthony’s Rectory, and the one that remained at the station behind him. The former gave him no problems; that was a jolly bit of fun; he’d like to do it again some time, maybe take a dozen slaves up to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and whip up something
really
creative.

But the second one bothered him. He wanted to know why she got on the platform if she wasn’t going to get on the train. He wanted to know… not out of humanitarian reasons, of course, but because he sensed that it was somehow important… why she was crying.

And he wanted to know where exactly he’d seen her before. There was something hauntingly familiar about that face, something that stood poised in the back of his brain like a word on the tip of his tongue. He
knew
that he knew her, and it was driving him crazy, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

Because Rudy’s mind was not working properly. Rudy’s mind was like a train derailment, irreparably twisted and battered, an Independence Day pig-out of fiery explosions. It had more kinks in it than Plato’s Retreat. Killing the girl, and the couple hours of sleep, had helped a little. Now he just felt like someone on a bad acid trip, as opposed to a baby left abandoned on the doorstep of Hell.

He stared out the window at the dark walls of the tunnel, trying to get the night in order.
First Josalyn, then Stephen
, he thought; but beyond that, things started to get hazy. He didn’t know where to hide the bodies, for one thing… how to keep them safe from the sun, and under his control. Should he lure them down into the tunnels, save himself the trouble of trying to find good stash places? Could he actually lure them anywhere, now that he’d spent so much time scaring them half to death? Could he, perhaps, control them in wakefulness the way he controlled them in sleep? Could he
make
them come to him?

He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure. Nothing was coming out the way he’d planned it. Everything was going ka-blooie, blowing up in his face like a loaded cigar. The last twenty-four hours had wreaked serious havoc on more than his balls, brain, and bunghole; they had also done a serious number on his confidence.