The Light at the End (8 page)

It watched her from the darkness of the tunnel.

She was a fat, ugly, middle-aged woman with a large, hairy wart displayed prominently on her left cheek. Her dress was preposterous: a shapeless mass of fabric that had once been brightly colored, but which had faded and worn away through the years into a dull, dingy opacity. Her hair hung lifelessly down either side of her face, the color of a healthy dog’s stools.

Nobody was near her. A few others were gathered around the middle of the platform, near the safety of the turnstiles; they were not paying any attention to her. She had chosen to wander down to the end, with her grocery bags full of bric-a-brac in a clumsy pile at her feet.

She picked her nose with a flabby finger, indifferent to the reaction it might provoke. She flicked a dry, pale strip of mucus onto the tracks with a graceless minimum of effort.

It was sickened, watching her. It leaned against the cold wall of the tunnel, pressing its cheek against the moist stone, and contemptuous nausea bubbled up in its empty stomach. If the disgust could compete with the hunger, it would turn away now and leave this woman to some other ghastly fate.

But it was hungry. Oh, yes. Unbelievably, ravenously hungry. And this woman, unpleasant as she appeared, seemed to have an awful lot to offer in the way of food.

It considered snatching her from the platform, then decided against the idea. There were others… too many others… and it did not want to be seen. Not now.

Not yet.

It waited, watching. Two more people made their way down onto the platform. They remained near the entrance, as well. It appreciated their good sense, in light of all the nasty horrible things that had gone down in the subway of late. It chuckled, more than a little mad.

And it waited.

Presently, a deep rumbling from the darkness behind it announced the imminent arrival of the uptown local. It ducked deeper into the shadows, waiting for the train to pass, and tried to figure out how to time its next move.

Within a minute, light began to creep along the rails, heralding the final approach. It hunkered back even further, into a niche; and as the train whipped by, the thing in the tunnels was quite certain that its presence had not been given away.

It waited for the train to screech to a halt before moving; even then, it moved as silently as possible. When it heard the doors slide open, it slipped quickly up to the back of the train, then sidled along the far side until it came to the space between the last two cars. It jumped up onto the metal platform. Crouched down, unseen. And waited for the train to start rolling again.

The waiting lasted only a moment.

Then, as the train disappeared back into the darkness, it rose to its feet. Slowly, very slowly, it opened the door to the rear car. Stepped inside. Closed the door.

And, barely realizing that it had done so, ripped the handle off in its hand.

Armond Hacdorian was a quiet, dignified, peaceful old gentleman of Rumanian descent. With his neatly tailored suit and carved walking stick, he bore more than a passing resemblance to Sir Laurence Olivier in
The Boys From Brazil
: the same fragile good looks, not so much withered as weathered and beaten by time.

He had suffered more horrors than most people would encounter if they lived to be two hundred. Armond was only seventy-five, however; and he expected to spend the next twenty years, at least, in an atmosphere of some decency and sanity. That would be sufficient, he felt. That would balance the scales.

If there was one more horror that Armond Hacdorian was
not
willing to suffer, it was the horror of being seated next to a young Neanderthal with a radio twice the size of his head. Not only did it offend his sensibilities; not only did it hurt his ears; not only did it seek to intimidate every other single person on the train;
more
than all of that, it threatened to make him angry.

And anger was something that he wanted no part of. Anger was something that he hoped to have outgrown, like the impulse toward cruelty, or his swaddling clothes. He had seen the wages of anger and its dark brethren. He had been through the wars, and the camps, and the purges. He had lost friends and family to Fate’s brutal, arbitrary blade. And if he never witnessed another act of violence… even of the tiniest sort… then he still would have seen too much.

Rather than dicker with the boy, and endure anything from gross epithets to actual physical assault, he decided to move to the next car down. The boy could then listen to his rhythmic noise until every tooth in his mouth was shaken loose by it, for all it would concern Armond; though the Good Lord knew that Armond wished nothing but the best for the poor, misguided youth.

He got to his feet gingerly… it was difficult for an old man to keep his footing on a moving train, no matter what kind of shape he was in… and turned toward the rear of the train. One step at a time, holding always on to the handgrips that dangled from overhead, he moved slowly toward the door. Once, he glanced back at the boy and his radio. He met a cold, uncomprehending set of eyes, and kept moving.

The train was moving with merciful smoothness; Armond crossed over to the door without incident.
Now will come the tricky part
, he told himself.
Crossing to the next car while the train is in motion. I must be a stupid old man, to try such a dangerous thing.

Still, the train was riding smoothly; and though the split platform between was somewhat treacherous, shifting and bouncing as it did, Armond felt that he should have no problem with the help of the guardrails.

He stuck one foot out onto the platform and stood there, poised like a surfer. It seemed alright. He held on to the door frame and brought his other foot around. When both feet were on the platform, he reached over to the guardrail with his left hand, steadied himself, and pulled himself over to the door of the rear car.

There was nothing to it. Chuckling slightly, he reached over to open the door, pleasantly aware of his heart’s quick pounding in his temples.

The door wouldn’t open.

What?
he thought, as the handle clicked futilely; and for the first time since he made up his mind to move, he was afraid. He twisted on the handle again, vainly, and grappled for a moment with panic.

It’s alright
, he thought.
I can always go back
. It seemed to help pacify the little voices that were gibbering in the back of his head, like the voices of people in cattle cars being led to the ovens. It seemed to calm them down.

He paused for a moment in the doorway, catching his breath and resting. When the rate of his heartbeat returned to normal, he took just a quick peek in through the window before turning to go back…

The lights went out.

From somewhere in the darkness ahead, a fleeting movement.

What?
he thought again. With his failing eyesight, he could only dimly perceive the shape on the right-hand side of the train. It seemed to be thrashing, making some sort of rapid movement, although Armond couldn’t really tell if he was imagining it or not. He stared concertedly, trying to make sense of the shadow-play before him…

…and then the lights flashed on again, and he saw the dark, slim figure standing over the enormous pale one, with its fat limbs kicking and flailing while the dark one leaned over and…

The lights went out again.

“My God,” Armond whispered. The shapes blended back into one again; he could no longer distinguish between them. He saw the one dark shape rise from the seats, hang there for a moment, and then fly to one side…

…as the sound of shattering glass drifted quietly to his ears like a distant, delicate music box…

…as the lights came back on, and he saw the dark shape dragging the other one’s throat across the windowsill, while hot blood gushed over the wall and the seats and into the tunnel beyond…

…as a scream strangled in Armond Hacdorian’s throat, and…

The light went off again.

And stayed that way.

There, in the dark space between cars, Armond Hacdorian stood with his face pressed against the window of the broken door. There, immersed in the wind and the roar of the train, he watched the monster feed. Unnoticed, he watched. Until it was done.

It was not easy for an old man to maintain consciousness under such circumstances, no matter what kind of shape he was in; but Armond managed to pull himself back into the car that he came from, find a seat, and ease himself into it before he blacked out.

Perhaps it was because he’d seen more horror than most people would if they lived to be two hundred; and, whether he liked it or not, he could handle it.

When it had finished with the headless, stinking thing beside it, the thing from the tunnels paused for a moment in bloated, almost drunken elation. Then, remembering its situation, it rose to its feet and looked out through the door to the next car.

Nothing. It appeared that no one had seen it. And that was very, very good.

It returned its attention to the terrible dead thing on the seat. There was blood everywhere. The rich, ripe smell burned in its nostrils, reawakening the hunger. But it had had its fill.

A strange idea came to it, then: something so marvelously, thoroughly twisted that it was amazed with itself for not having thought of it sooner. With a tittering, high-pitched giggle, it leaned over the corpse and dipped a finger into the jagged, dripping stump of the neck.

Withdrew the glistening tip.

Smiled.

And began to draw.

On the newsstands the following morning, both the
Post
and the
Daily News
had a common message for their common readership, as expressed in almost identical headlines which could be boiled down to this: SUBWAY PSYCHO’S MESSAGE IN BLOOD… “I’M BACK!” Both were accompanied by a grainy black-and-white photographs of a figure under a sheet, being carried off a train by MTA workers with decidedly queasy expressions.

For the ghoulish delight of the millions who purchased these papers, there was another photograph to grace the story on page 3, just above the shot of the long-legged actress who proclaimed in bold type, “Playing WINGO Turns Me On!!!”

This was the shot of the writing on the wall: of large, ornate letters, gracefully rendered above a bloodstain roughly the size of an upright piano. A smiley face, also in blood, dotted the exclamation point at the end of the killer’s pronouncement.

Easily half of the 600-plus commuters on the 14
^th
Street subway platforms were taking in all the gory details while they waited for their trains. They were reading about the horrified group of teenagers who discovered the body, tearfully swearing to God that “we didn’t do it”; they were reading about the sole witness, an old man who subsequently fainted and proved unable to give any description of the killer; they were reading about redoubled police patrols on the trains, a massive manhunt for “The Subway Psycho,” and an appeal from the police and the MTA to avoid the trains at off-peak hours until “this nightmare is ended.”

Because they were so busily engaged, very few of them noticed the figure staggering out of the tunnel.

Peggy Lewin: a pretty girl, slightly overweight and modestly trendy. Formerly a receptionist with a major New York graphics firm. Last seen over three days ago by an ex-boyfriend whom she referred to as “that bastard Luis.”

Peggy Lewin, no longer pretty, staggered up the thin stairs that lead to the uptown platform. Half of her head had been staved in from the impact of being thrown from a moving train. Her neck was bent backwards and to the left at an impossible angle. Her right arm was crushed and dangling; her right leg, blackened and stiff. Her dress had been shredded in innumerable, revealing places, but it showed nothing that anyone would want to see.

Peggy Lewin, over three days dead, dragged herself up the last remaining steps and onto the platform, still shrouded in darkness. She fell back against the wall for a moment, panting, then pushed forward into the light.

The first scream rang out. Followed by another. Followed by twelve more, as startled eyes turned away from their papers and focused on the thing that shambled toward them, moaning piteously, coated with dirt and mottled gore.

Fifty people retreated, shrieking, on the already-crowded platform. From behind them, shouts of anger and excitement, as the throngs were pressed dangerously close to the edge. People coming down the stairways paused, gaping; a few of them ran back up the way they came.

The thing that had been Peggy Lewin continued to advance, waving its good arm as it reeled forward, dragging the bad leg behind it, hissing now through broken teeth. It advanced steadily, forcing back the crowd even further, until the front ranks broke and ran for the stairs as well.

Panic erupted. The screaming spread to the platform across the tracks, where commuters were swarming down to the end for a glimpse of whatever the hell was happening. On Peggy Lewin’s side, people knocked each other over and trampled each other in the grip of mindless mass terror. The platform began to clear.

Something in Peggy Lewin’s mashed, malfunctioning brain told her to escape. It didn’t think to go back the way it came. It was incapable of that kind of thought. It saw, with its one still-functioning eye, that people were pouring up the stairs. Just as mindlessly, it decided to follow.

She pulled herself up the stairs, laboriously breathing, her ruined arm flapping at her side. Above her, she could dimly hear the screams, the sound of retreating footsteps. Her one eye rolled; her broken throat emitted a howl. However obliquely, the monster inside of her sensed that it had the people right where it wanted them. A vague feeling of victory flowed through her, mingling with the unbelievable pain of her broken body and what it had become.

Peggy Lewin reached the top of the stairs, struggled to pull herself upright, and headed for the turnstiles and the streets beyond.

“Jesus Christ,” Ian droned, his voice barely more than a whisper. “What the hell is going
on
down there?”

He and Joseph had just crossed 14
^th
Street to Union Square Park. They were roughly fifteen yards from the subway entrance when the first wave of howling humanity came surging up the stairs at a breakneck pace. Now they stopped, Ian grabbing his friends arm involuntarily, as the hysterical stream continued to gush forth from below.

“This is
insane
,” Ian continued, slapping his free hand to his forehead in disbelief.

“Let’s go check it out,” Joseph said. Ian looked up at him, stunned, and saw the cold set of Hunter’s features. He smacked himself across the face again.

“What are you
talkin
about… ?”

“I want to see what’s going on.”

“But…”

“I thought you said your name was Butch Sampson,” Joseph said, and the delivery was so straight that Ian had to laugh. “Now are you gonna help me fight crime, or what?”

“What?” Ian said, but the point was moot. Joseph started to drag him toward the stairway. He shrugged helplessly and then cooperated, standing just behind Joseph as they hit the last of the fleeing crowd.

“DON’T GO DOWN THERE!” someone screamed as they muscled past.

“Bullshit,” Joseph mumbled, and then they were at the mouth of the stairs.

Staring downward.

Halfway up, the dull semi-darkness of the underground gave way to sunlit radiance. Slightly below that halfway point, a dark shape made its way laboriously toward them. Joseph took two steps downward and squinted, but still couldn’t really see what was coming. He called to Ian. Ian reluctantly came to his side.

“What
is
it?” Ian’s whisper was nervous, sharp.

“I don’t know,” Joseph whispered back, “but I…
wait a second
.”

At the foot of the stairs, an amorphous black mass surged into view. A crowd, from the looks of it. It filled the passageway and then froze. A ripple of motion ran through it, and Ian noticed the glint of light off of eyeglasses, metal clasps, and something else.
A gun?
he thought, and then the sight no longer interested him.

Because the thing on the stairs let out a low, yowling cry; and with a massive effort, it dragged itself into the sunlight.

It screamed, then. It screamed the way Peggy Lewin screamed the first time she died: a high-pitched wail of agony that wound out and out, echoing madly, as though it had traveled all the way up from Hell to split the morning air. It screamed, and it whirled, and it dropped to its knees, weakly clutching the railing. Then it pulled its terrible face around to gaze, one last time, in the direction of Ian and Joseph and the sky.

And before their horrified eyes, Peggy Lewin’s flesh began to pucker and sputter and turn a grayish green: the color of meat left to rot in the sun. Tiny patches of furry turquoise mold formed in the open wounds. She fell sideways, her head striking the stone step with a wet thud. She kicked once, twice. A last dying rattle poured out of her throat like sand. Then she was still. Forever still.

Peggy Lewin had escaped, after all.