Darkborn (11 page)

He heard every step he made.

Cars in the distance.

The creaking of the leather bag as it swung back and forth, back —

Halfway down he felt lost. Park Avenue was a million miles away, and he had just passed the point of no return.

More steps. More creaks.

And then another sound. Just behind him .
 
.
 
.

He stopped.

So much like a movie, Will thought.

Wondering, at the same moment, why am I sweating? Why do I feel all itchy and sweaty when it’s cold out? Damn cold.

He listened.

Thinking: I fucked up. I let myself get spooked and now I’m out there and I’m the one being followed, I’m the one being tracked .
 
.
 
.

Will turned.

Half expecting a big leering face to be there, right in front of him, to go: Boo! Looking for someone?

I’ve got my knife. Want to play mumblety-peg? And
I
go first.

No one would see me here, Will thought. It could all be over so fast.

He looked .
 
.
 
. and there was no one behind him. “Shit,” he said. He stayed there. A car went by, a big purple car, some Impala or Buick that was an easy dozen years old. Blasting music, thumping, pounding sounds that made Doppler-like shifts as the car screamed by, the Spanish rhythm rising, swelling, then trailing away in the distance.

But no one’s following me, he thought.

No one.

So get a fucking grip on it and start walking.

He turned around, facing Park Avenue again.

He shifted the bag to his other hand.

The stuff inside shifted.

He fought to get his breathing under control. Nice and steady does it, he thought. One breath after another. Just take it easy. That’s all. That’s —

Wait.

Oh, I heard something then, he thought. Oh, yeah, I damn well
know
I heard something.

He kept walking. Park Avenue was only a bit closer now, still miles away.

I could run, he thought. Tear off down the block and —

He turned and looked over his shoulder again.

He wished he hadn’t done that.

Because this time someone was there.

Someone not too far away.

And Will —

Still walking, still putting one foot in front of the other, wondered:

Where did he come from? When I looked before, no one was there. And now.

Will moved faster, not yet running, but picking up speed. Running was the wrong thing to do. He thought of a gazelle. cautiously stepping away from a cheetah. slowly, knowing that if it ran it would be all over.

He looked back again.

And he fell. Something tripped him.

His knees slammed hard onto the sidewalk.

His hands splayed out to break his fall, landing in something wet. He hoped it was water. Maybe some rain.

Except it hadn’t rained in a week. It felt oily, greasy. He turned.

The man was running toward him.

A lean, dark shape. A skullcap pulled low on his forehead. His sneakers white, too white, catching the light.

I could get the gun, Will thought. I’ve got a few seconds. I could pop the latch and get the gun. That’s why I brought it.

But as Will got up on his knees — both of them throbbing from the pain — and stood up, he knew he wouldn’t have time.

“Yo, man,” the voice called out. “You okay?”

Up, and then Will started running.

“Hey, I gotta ask you something.”

Pumping now, and Will wished he’d kept jogging in the morning. I used to have wind when I jogged, he thought. Wind and stamina and my heart was probably in real good shape. I haven’t run for years now.

“Hey, man!” The voice screamed, real close now, gaining nicely on Will.

I’ll never make it, he thought.

“I said wait a fuckin’ minute, I got somethin’ —”

But then the corner was nearly there. And at the corner, there was a light.

It was someplace, a store, something open. Will looked at the sign.

Chock Full o’ Nuts.

A coffee shop.

Please be open, he begged.

“Hey!”

Will reached the door.

A black waitress, oversized and wearing a tiny starched orange cap that was much too small for her great tuft of black hair, looked up.

The door didn’t open.

It’s fucking closed, Will thought. But then — amazingly — the doorknob turned.

It wasn’t closed at all.

And he stepped in, pushing the door behind him ..

He heard music on the radio. Not too loud, but it was there, amid the overpowering smell of coffee and hot dogs turning on a rolling grill.

Will stood there.

The woman looked scared.

“I think —” he said. “I mean, there’s someone —”

He turned and looked out the window.

There was no one there.

“I —” he said to the glass.

“Can I help you, sir?” the waitress said nervously.

Will turned back to her. It had to be near closing time. She must get a lot of strange customers, even here, at the corner of Park and —

What street am I on? That would be important to know. To figure out how long I can stay here .
 
.
 
. hide here .
 
.
 
.

If
I can stay here.

“Can I help you, mister?” the waitress said, a nasty edge creeping into her voice. “’Cause if you don’t want to order something, then you gotta leave. No loitering allowed. And we don’t have any public rest rooms so —”

Will took a step. All the stools — red-topped, looking like giant mushrooms — were empty. He took the closest one and sat down.

“Coffee, please. And —”

Will looked around. What else could he order? What would sound normal?

He saw just a few hot dogs, brownish orange, shriveled, turning on the silvery grill. And small cakes, wrapped in plastic, but sitting under a plastic dome just the same.

“A hot dog,” he said.

The woman nodded. She pulled up an odd bun. More like a slice of bread folded into a U shape. She fitted it into a cardboard holder. She forked one of the hot dogs and then pulled it off the fork with the bun.

She placed it in front of him.

Then the waitress poured some dark coffee into a heavy orange cup. She placed the cup in front of him and then balanced a spoon across it, a metal bridge from one side of the cup to the other.

He nodded.

“Thank you.”

He reached for the spoon.

And the waitress backed up a step.

“Hey, are you all right?” she asked. “What happened to you?”

Will looked up. “What? What do you mean?”

He stirred the coffee, and the smoky swirls streamed left and right.

“Your hand,” she said. “It sure looks like you did something to your hand.”

What is she talking about? Will wondered.

Then he let go of the spoon and looked at his hand.

It was red.

Covered with a thick red smear. As if someone had painted it.

He opened it and closed it. Some of the smear cracked. Peeled. Flaked.

It’s blood, he thought.

The wet spot .
 
.
 
. on the ground.

I landed in a little puddle of blood.

He looked up at the waitress.

“Can I — can I wash up? I —”

She looked about to say no. Get the hell out of here. Nobody liked blood these days. Blood no longer just meant that something bad had happened.

Now it meant that something bad could still happen.

But then she nodded. And she pointed to a stainless-steel sink near the back wall.

And Will got up and walked over to it.

Later, when his coffee was gone and he’d chewed up his hot dog as much as he was going to, the waitress said, “I have to close up.”

A car was outside. A man waited outside. The woman’s husband, she explained.

Just in case he got any ideas .
 
.
 
.

Will nodded.

He dug into his back pocket. He put down five dollars.

Cheap at twice the price, he thought.

Got to get a grip on it, he thought. Can’t get freaked again. Can’t —

“Thanks,” he said. “Thanks a lot.”

And he pushed open the door and walked out .
 
.
 
. thinking:

This has got to look like that Hopper painting. The lonely coffee shop where it’s always the Hour of the Wolf.

He went out the door.

The woman’s husband watched him carefully.

Will smiled.

And then he turned left, onto Park Avenue.

And when he got to the corner, he looked at his watch.

Midnight.

It’s time, boys and girls.

He thought of Becca. The kids. Sleeping, so distant from all this. As though they were living in another world.

And Joshua James, he thought, sitting with his family, inside my house .
 
.
 
. and what —

Praying? Reading? Thinking? Sleeping?

Watching Johnny Carson sputter through another monologue .
 
.
 
.

Will walked. He passed a card and gift store. Party Time Gifts. The window was filled with Halloween stuff. Witches on crepe-paper broomsticks and articulated skeletons that could hang on your door. Little ghost candles.

Halloween has gotten big, Will thought.

Too big, if Dr. James was to be believed.

Too fucking big.

And Will stopped a second.

There was a clown face in the window. A big toothy grin and giant pie-plate eyes. And the lips making a big “Ooooh.”

Weird.

But not as weird as the grinning rigor-mortis face of Steeplechase, he thought. An amusement park .
 
.
 
.

Steeplechase. The Funny Place.

And as much as he didn’t want to, as much as he knew it wouldn’t be good to think about it, not now, not here —

He did.

Because now it seemed as though it happened yesterday.

Funny idea, that.

When, in actuality, it was still happening .
 
.
 
.

* * *

Friday

* * *

9

Friday took forever.

It was the day favored by the teachers for their quizzes.

The regularly scheduled Latin quiz vied for attention with a bimonthly full-blown calculus test, a real mother .
 
.
 
.

And Father Ouskoop — perhaps in retaliation for Kiff’s leisure time reading — dished up a pop quiz.

Dubbed a jap quiz, in memory of Pearl Harbor.

Before lunch, during study hall, Tim passed Will an atlas.

A pencil was stuck into the oversized book marking a page showing the coastline of Brooklyn. And there, circled right at the edge, was a place called Manhattan Beach.

Manhattan Beach was right next to Brighton Beach — a place that conjured up images of bathhouses and apartment buildings. And right next to that was Coney Island, on a spit of land that clearly was really once an island.

Good, Will thought. So now I know where Manhattan Beach is .
 
.
 
.

Will nodded and passed the atlas back to Tim.

Was the adventure still on? he wondered.

Because Jim Kiff was nowhere in sight .
 
.
 
.

Will got the story on Kiff as he went down to lunch.

“A full fucking suspension,” Tim said, whispering in the stairs lest some back-robed spy would swoop down and visit the wrath of St. Jerry’s on them. “He’s really done it this time.”