The Jake Helman Files Personal Demons (20 page)

The phantasms lurking on the front stoop looked as they had before Jake had gunned them down. They appeared to be unarmed, and no one in Manhattan would have given them a second glance, despite Dread’s height and dreadlocks. The dead thugs had not yet looked in his direction.

Jake ducked behind an upright mailbox. Peeking around the metal edge at his stalkers, he reached inside his jacket and closed his fingers around the Glock’s grip. Were they ghosts, like the Soul Searchers, or something else? The Cipher had not killed them; Jake had. No one had stolen their souls. He could not connect them to Old Nick, but he could not accept their presence as a coincidence, either.

A tingling sensation crawled up his right leg, sending waves of panic through him. He had experienced a similar sensation when his hands had made contact with Shannon in the Tower’s lobby. Jerking his body upright, he clawed at his thigh with both hands. His right hand squeezed the source of the vibration and he dug the cell phone out of his pocket. Intending to shut the phone off, he thumbed a switch on it without reading the display.

The phone rang at full volume instead.

Shit!

As he shut the phone off, Dread and Baldy turned toward him. He made eye contact with them as their faces filled with rage. Dread pointed in his direction, and both dead men sprinted toward him.

Jake hurled the cell phone at the sidewalk, experiencing fleeting satisfaction as the device shattered into pieces. Looking both ways, he saw no means of escape along First Avenue. He looked over his shoulder at the traffic light behind him, facing Eighty-fourth Street. It turned yellow, with the cars backed up on First Avenue waiting to proceed. In seconds, the traffic would strand him where he stood.

Dread and Baldy had already covered half the distance separating them from Jake. The traffic light turned green, and Jake charged headlong into the avenue, his shoes pounding the pavement. Horns honked and a car roared by him, its driver yelling out the window. Jake dove to the curb, knocking over a metal trash can, and rolled across the sidewalk. He came up crouching with his back to a corner Laundromat and saw the traffic lurching through the intersection. Dread and Baldy remained on the far side of the avenue, cursing at him from the curb. Baldy’s domed head had turned bright red.

Knowing that they would be on his heels in seconds, Jake leapt to his feet and ran west along Eighty-fourth Street. He pumped his arms and lengthened his stride, running low to the ground. He sped past a woman carrying a poodle in her arms like a baby—God, he hated that!—and closed in on Second Avenue. Fearing he might trip, he did not look behind him. What would happen if he stopped and emptied his Glock into them? If bullets stopped them again, could he be prosecuted for gunning down two men he’d already killed? The traffic ahead ground to a halt. Groaning, he saw no point in boarding a taxi stuck at a light.

He rounded the corner and headed uptown, toward the Eighty-sixth Street station on the new Second Avenue line. Facing congestion on the sidewalk, he snaked around the pedestrians blocking his way. He passed Eighty-fifth Street and sighted the subway entrance ahead. His chest ached and he tasted coppery salt in his mouth. His left hand grasped the yellow metal railing of the subway station and he pedaled his feet down the cement steps. Cool darkness greeted him as he heard the doors of subway cars opening below. Sure enough, a train had just stopped at the platform. Ignoring the Metro card dispensers, he hurdled over a turnstile.

“Pay your fare!” a female Metro worker in the surveillance booth said over the PA speaker.

Jake landed on the dirty floor and sprinted for the nearest subway car doors, but the commuters who had just exited the train blocked his path, eager to get aboveground, and Jake had difficulty fighting his way through the crowd. The doors closed just as he reached them and his body slammed against stainless steel. He looked at the conductor with pleading eyes. Leaning out a window eight feet ahead of him, the man shook his head with a half smile. Jake pounded on the plastic window of the door before him, which splintered into a white spiderweb. The train pulled away as he looked around in desperation. He could cross the tracks to the other platform, but Dread and Baldy might see him.

The crowd dispersed and he ran behind the departing train to the far end of the platform. Hunched over, his breathing ragged and his chest on fire, he watched the train recede into the dark tunnel. Looking back at the turnstiles, fifty yards away, he saw a domed head and a tall scarecrow with orange dreadlocks pass through them.

Jake took an automatic step toward the subway exit halfway between him and his pursuers and hesitated. Even if he reached the steps before Dread and Baldy reached him, they would spot him and the chase would resume. Seeing no other option, he stepped off the edge of the platform. Landing hard on the railroad ties five feet below, he rolled over gravel and under the platform so that Dread and Baldy would not see him from the edge. He smelled rust and urine and the ground still vibrated from the departing train. Getting on his hands and knees, he crawled toward the gray concrete at the tunnel’s mouth. He flattened his back against the support as he crept into the clammy darkness. Ignoring the third rail, which ran along the far side of the tracks, he stood up, his trousers torn at the knees. Blackness swallowed him, making him confident that he could no longer be seen from the platform. He glanced over his shoulder, and as far as he could tell, Dread and Baldy had abandoned the station. Perhaps they had boarded a downtown train.

The light from the Ninety-sixth Street station winked at him like a twinkling star, ten city blocks ahead. He needed to rest, but dared not stop, and pushed forward. Putrid odors rose from stagnant water between the rails. Stepping from trestle to trestle in the dark, he stumbled over one, caught his balance, and tripped over another. Pitching forward, he banged his right forearm trying to protect his face. Lying across the railroad ties, he smelled rotting wood and heard rats scurrying in the darkness. He clambered to his feet, felt a breeze behind him, and turned around.

Another train had pulled into the Eighty-sixth Street station.

Fuck me
, he thought. Never before had a train arrived at that platform so soon after he had just missed one. Looking ahead, he estimated that he still had the equivalent of more than nine city blocks to cover. Behind him, the train barreled forward.

There was no way he could reach the next platform before the metal juggernaut would overtake him, and a concrete wall now separated the downtown tracks from their uptown counterparts. The train entered the tunnel, gathering speed. He felt along the cold wall and found a ledge approximately one foot wide, four feet above the ground. Setting his palms on the ledge, he scrambled up the wall. He stood up just as the light from the oncoming train illuminated him. He stepped sideways along the ledge, his arms spread wide, hugging the wall. The sound of the approaching train filled the tunnel and wind chopped at him. The light intensified and the roar of the engine grew deafening. His destination remained far ahead.

I’m not going to make it
.

He could not find anything to hold onto, and he knew that when the train passed him the ensuing wind would snatch him from his perch and suck him beneath the steel wheels. If he was lucky, he would die instantly; if not, he would remain conscious for at least a few minutes while black rats feasted on his bloody limbs, and then he would die alone in the dark. Other trains would pass over his remains, dicing them until they became unrecognizable. When some unfortunate Transit worker discovered him, Forensics would need a DNA comparison for identification.

Poor Sheryl
. Would she be able to live with the guilt?

The train had almost reached him when his left hand groped at empty space. He lost his balance and nearly fell off the ledge, then moved before the opening in the wall.

The train bore down on him.

He dove through the opening, arms and legs flailing. Solid ground rushed up to meet him, and the palms of his hands slapped concrete a moment before his chest absorbed the brunt of the impact, which knocked the breath from his lungs. The right side of his face turned numb, and he gasped for breath as red spots flared before his eyes. The train rocketed past the opening and wind blew into the space like a cyclone, kicking up powdery dust that made him squeeze his eyelids shut and cough. The light from inside the passing train flickered around him like a strobe in a nightclub, and he glimpsed rusted metal drums and discolored boxes stacked across the wall nearest him. The sunken storage cellar must have been used while the Second Avenue line had been under construction.

The stench of decomposing rats filled his nostrils, forcing him to cover his mouth and nose with one hand. Rolling onto his back, he gazed at the open doorway six feet above him. Through it he saw the train streaking by, the backs of passengers’ heads visible in the windows. The passing light revealed the silhouette of a metal ladder bolted to the wall beneath the opening. A drop of cold water splashed his forehead and he looked at the ceiling, crisscrossed with industrial pipes.

The light died as the train rumbled away, leaving him in darkness once more. He held his right hand before his face, but he could not see two inches in front of him. He had a vague impression of the opening, but he no longer saw the ladder. Sitting up with a groan, his chest aching, he probed his face. A cut on his forehead oozed sticky blood.

Something brushed against his shoulder, as if the darkness itself had taken shape, and terror gripped his heart like a cold metal vise. Whatever the thing was, it must have been big to have reached his shoulder.

Then he recognized the scent of foul human body odor.

Leaping to his feet in the suffocating darkness, he pulled his Glock free of its holster and pulled back its slide, ready to fire. He heard footsteps and shuffling all around him.

There’s more than one of them
.

He knew that mole people lived beneath the streets of Manhattan, and for a moment he imagined cannibals living in the tunnels, waiting for stray victims to prey upon. He had no intention of becoming anyone’s lunch, and he reached into his pocket with his left hand, grasped his cigarette lighter, and sparked it to life. Turning around in a full circle, he waved the tiny flame. He still couldn’t see anything, but the shuffling sounds retreated and stopped. A frustrated moan escaped the darkness. He sprinted in the general direction of the ladder, plastic crunching beneath his feet. He had heard that sound many times before, in the elevators and basements of housing projects in Alphabet City, during drug raids: the sound of feet crushing empty crack vials.

His left hand grasped a cold, rusty rung of the ladder and the lighter’s flame shut off. He scrambled up the ladder, toward the ledge of the opening, but two hands seized his right leg below the knee. Unable to see his attacker, he swung his pistol until it connected with flesh and bone, and he heard a bestial cry as the thing released him. He sprang onto the ledge, grateful to be free of the stench and the wretched creatures that survived on tunnel rats. Turning back, he gazed into the pit but heard nothing. He jumped onto the tracks and headed toward the platform ahead, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that another train had not entered the tunnel and that nothing else had followed him. When he felt safe, he holstered his gun and lit a cigarette.

M
arc Gorman wiped his sweaty palms on his thighs. The Widow had called him to make certain he’d be home to receive her. She rarely visited him these days, so he knew there had to be an important reason for her to call on him. He hadn’t been so excited by the prospect of a session with her since his release from the Payne Institute fifteen months earlier.

On that September afternoon, he’d taken a bus from Albany to Binghamton, and then a taxi to the Motel 6 on Front Street. He gave his real name to the desk clerk, who handed him a key. Inside his room, he flicked on the lights but left the curtains drawn. He showered, turned on the TV, paced. Someone knocked on the door, and when he opened it, the Widow glided past him. When he closed the door, she turned around and kissed him on the mouth. Minutes later, after they had stripped off their clothing, their arms and legs tangled on the bed. She had touched him in his private room at Payne, teased him really, but this was the first time they’d engaged in intercourse, and she exhausted him.

“I have a present for you,” she said when they had finished. Reaching into her purse, she took out an envelope and handed it to him. He tore it open with eager fingers and pulled out a piece of paper. Tears welled up in his eyes as he read the name and address. She reached into her purse again, then handed him two thousand dollars in cash and a special care package. “This will get you started.”

“I’m grateful. For everything.”

She arranged their next meeting and departed.

The following morning, Marc took a bus to Allen-town, Pennsylvania. He hiked to the outskirts of the steel town and followed a dirt road to his destination, which reminded him of the house he and his mother had shared in Redkill. Trees surrounded the isolated property, and the dirty blue siding of the ranch house needed replacing. The roof sagged in the middle, a tattered screen door creaked in the breeze, and cardboard filled one window frame instead of glass. Rust ate at the metal skin of a red truck parked in the driveway, and spare automobile parts littered the overgrown lawn. A stack of lumber rotted out back, near a stone well with a winch.