The Last Nightingale (22 page)

The pain rolled through him over and over, timed to every heartbeat. His screams stayed bottled up inside of him, and with his mouth completely sealed, most of his energy had to go into breathing through his swollen nostrils. He already knew that the rope holding his neck was tied off somewhere behind him, probably to another eyebolt like the one beneath his feet. But the pain took everything else away from him, making him forget everything except trying to wriggle and squirm out from under it, kicking at it, flailing his whole body all around inside of the heavy fabric cocoon.

Then he remembered. Tommie Kimbrough. Friar John had rolled the dice and hoped to collect the Nightingales’ outrageously high fee without letting Kimbrough know about Shane’s adoption. Using Kimbrough’s reckless financial habits against him was supposed to be Friar John’s own private joke, one for him to enjoy for years to come, a revenge upon Tommie for all of his harassing visits, his late payments, and his surly, abusive attitude.

There was no reason for the plan not to work perfectly—all those years, and Kimbrough never once asked to see Shane. He always just took Friar John’s word about where Shane was and what Shane was doing and how his health happened to be. Friar John’s only solemn duty was to immediately summon Kimbrough if Shane ever gave any indication that he remembered anything of his life before St. Adrian’s. But Shane never had, not a word. Friar John had felt certain that he never would.

He could have told Kimbrough that Shane had gotten sick and died. Maybe he should have. But who could predict a thing like that news article? What were the odds, in a city whose population was only estimated and where feral children of all ages roamed? Everything should have worked perfectly well.

Then his recent memory cleared. He recalled seeing Kimbrough attack the boy, striking him over the head. The blow killed the boy on the spot. Then he remembered Kimbrough turning on him. That explained the pain in his head, then. But what about this other pain in his leg?

The pain flared again. Hard. He tried to pull away, but the teeth only gnawed harder.

Teeth—animal—biting—biting—biting—

Friar John screamed into his gag. He screamed over and over, in pain and sheer horror at the realization that something was trapped inside the wrapping with him. And it was eating him alive.

He felt the four little paws scramble over his midsection and knew then that this thing chewing on him was a full-sized rat. The harder he tried to squirm away from the teeth, the more frightened and aggressive the rodent became. Teeth that could eat through cabin walls now took out the trapped animal’s frustration on Friar John’s mortal coil.

His wounds were soaked with the black rat’s saliva, laced with the potent strain of the Black Plague. Friar John was only aware of the terror and revulsion; there was nothing to let him know that the blinding speed of bacterial replication had already gotten well under way in his bloodstream, before he had even regained consciousness.

He tried to throw his upper body into a seated position, but his struggles yanked the rope more tightly around his neck. He felt it grab hard and tight, and it snapped him back down to the floor with such force that he cracked the back of his head. After that, the rope never eased its grip, even once he stopped moving. Now his swollen nostrils had to pull air in through his garroted windpipe, while the cloth wadding packed his tongue down tighter than the dirt around a casket. He struggled to breathe, pulling in thin wisps of air and shuddering with broken sobs on every exhale. His eyes were still focused up at the copper ceiling when Tommie Kimbrough stepped into view, glaring down at him.

Tommie pulled a chair next to Friar John’s prostrated form and sat comfortably, fitting a factory-rolled cigarette into an ivory cigarette holder. He settled back and lit it with a long opera match. After he puffed out a smoke ring, he paused to let the ring grow wide, then blew a thin stream of smoke straight through it without disturbing the smoke ring itself.

Only then did he turn back, but by then Friar John was losing himself to the pain again and forgetting why Kimbrough was even there. When the rat took a violently aggressive bite and Friar John felt a chunk of his flesh torn away, his useless screams buried themselves in his wadded gag while his entire body convulsed.

Tommie stood back and patiently waited for Friar John to quiet down. He bent over and preened in front of a mirror for a while, but it became obvious that the headmaster was going to be useless for conversation as long as the screaming continued. Tommie glanced at the grandfather clock. Almost six. Barely daylight, but Friar John had already been out cold and feeding the rat for over three hours.

That was plenty of time for this phase of the experiment.

So Tommie reached down and pulled the slipknot around Kimbrough’s neck and peeled back the thick fabric of last winter’s drapes. He rolled the layers down past the groin area to reveal his special friend, wrapped in a little harness made of rawhide strips and tied to Kimbrough’s leg by a short cord—with nowhere to go and nothing to do but eat.

Tommie was amused by the way that Friar John watched him with blazing intensity while he snatched up the rat and dropped it into a nearby glass-topped box. He had shown Friar John where his pain came from, but that was all right. It didn’t tell the real story.

There was nothing to be done about the real story now, anyway. Instead he poured the rest of his bourbon into the wound and ig-
nored the fresh screams while he stuffed it with a wad of rags and bound it up just tight enough to keep up a gentle pressure. There would be no bleeding to death here.

With that thought, Tommie realized that he was quite possibly missing an opportunity. Why worry about keeping Friar John’s plight a secret from him now? Why not tell him? Let him burn up his last few hours on Earth in the maximum state of terror. Who in all the world deserved it more? Because of Friar John’s betrayal, it was Shane who flawed Tommie’s finest hour of justifiable revenge. Friar John had sold Tommie out for money. He was Judas, with his thirty pieces of silver.

Tommie focused on Friar John’s terror-bugged eyes while he pulled the heavy fabric back into place and tied it snug at the neckline. When he was all done, he spoke but did not deign to look at Friar John.

“The most important thing about this experience for each of us, Friar John, is that we
savor
it.” He thought a moment, then laughed. “On second thought, it’s important that
I
savor it. You? You can choose for yourself.” He gestured over to the box. “You think the bites hurt? They’re nothing, Friar John. The bites are nothing! It’s what they
do
that matters. So let me spare you the suspense—you’ll be dead by this time tomorrow.”

Friar John made a little whimpering sound and tried to shrink from him.

“What’s that?” Tommie asked. “Oh, no, you misunderstand. I’m not going to be the one who kills you! No, sir. Not at all. I am merely hosting your experience.” He pulled his chair a bit closer.

“Let’s start with symptoms. Ordinarily, you would already be feeling a nagging little tingle of sickness worming its way into you. You know the feeling, yes? Something is gnawing at you, but you still think you can just tough it out. Right? Your mouth should be getting dry by now, but you probably can’t tell, with all that cloth stuffing. And your eyeballs. You know that feverish feeling, when
your eyes feel like they’re too big for the sockets? The way it hurts just to turn your eyes one way or another? Oo! Tell me when you get that. Or better yet, don’t tell me and I’ll try to guess.”

Friar John slumped in despair and tried to turn his head away from Tommie. Tommie picked up a rag and used it to protect his hand while he reached down and grabbed Friar John’s face and turned it back to him. The uncontrollable noises from his victim sounded like a cross between sobbing and strangulation.

“No, you probably haven’t noticed your eyes yet, because your head still throbs from that thumping I had to give you, just to get you calmed down and ready to receive.” He smiled in satisfaction.

“But that’s all right. Receive you did, and what you received is now growing inside of you.” Tommie broke into the silly voice that he used for cute toddlers. “You are a garden, Friar John. Did you know that?” He dropped the voice and continued.

“But here’s the thing—you’ll
really
know that the Devil is coming for you when the pain starts in your gut. Sharp pain, according to my research. A few hours after that, your blood pressure will drop so low that you’ll start feeling dizzy. Too dizzy to stand. Even when you lie flat, you’ll still keep getting dizzier and dizzier. Finally, when you can’t hold on to this world anymore, you’ll have to let go. And right up until that last instant, the pain in your gut will be like a stoked fire. Problem is, after you’re so dizzy that you just can’t help but puke yourself right on out of your body, I am afraid you’ll be going straight to Hell. Frightfully sorry. You know what for, though, yes? Oh, don’t look at me that way. Of course you do.”

He leaned in close to whisper to Friar John with sensual intimacy. “So since we only have a day or so, I propose we share in this whole experience. And if you agree, why then I promise you that every step of the way—” He let out an involuntary laugh. “It will be just as new to me as it is to you!”

He picked up his knife and began to sharpen it on a pocket-sized whetting stone. He slowly brought the blade and stone to a point just under Friar John’s nose.

“Now,” Tommie began, “you little trouser-cough of a man. Let’s see if we can find a reason for me not to slowly carve away your entire face like pulling a fat tick off a dog.”

Friar John launched into another fierce set of convulsions, which Tommie watched without comment for a few moments before he continued. “You would prefer that I not, then. So for the sin of double-crossing me, adopting Shane out despite having accepted my money for years to safeguard him, you will tell me where I can find him today.”

He brought the knife edge to within a millimeter of Friar John’s right eyeball and tested the edge with his thumb. “This thing could peel the skin off a gnat.”

He reached behind Friar John’s head and pulled the release knot. The gag fell out of his mouth. For a few moments, the headmaster could only gasp and wheeze. Tommie gave him a glass of whiskey and allowed him to drain it. Why not? The condemned man and his last drink, Tommie thought.

“You could tell me now, or I can reintroduce our rodent friend.”

“Mr. Kimbrough,” the headmaster gasped. “In the name of God!”

“I did not ask you where to find God, Friar John. I asked you where to find Shane.”

“Mr. Kimbrough, I’ll do whatever you say! Please! Let me out!”

“So I’m going to have to get the rat again, then?”

“No! No! God! I’ll tell you! I mean I don’t know, but— He didn’t tell me exactly where, he just said that Shane is living at one of the Missions. Here in the city.”

“Who said that?”

“A policeman. A sergeant. Name of Blackburn. He’s with the City Hall Station. He’s the one who knows, not me! I don’t know! He never told me! I would tell you! I swear on the Blessed Virgin Moth—”

Tommie clubbed him over the head with the same heavy statuette. In the hush that followed, he stepped back and took a breath of relief. The silence was sweet. He replaced the gag cloths and
quickly tied the wad back in place, before Friar John could shake off the effects of the blow.

“I’m afraid that you’re too noisy to leave without a gag, and I have a vital errand. I’ll be back in a few hours at the most. Now, this is very important, so listen carefully: I want you to pay close attention to your symptoms as they come over you, so that we can talk all about it when I get back. No memory problems allowed, now, all right? I’ll be pressing for clear answers, so stay awake and pay attention.” He poked Friar John in the scalp a few times with the tip of the blade, just for emphasis.

“I’ll take those grunts for acquiescence.”

Tommie stood up and gave Friar John’s bindings a once-over to assure that there would be no escape. Then with a cheerful wave, he left him bound up in his thick fabric cocoon while he went upstairs to get dressed.

Late that morning, Shane and Vignette began working side by side near the front of the long carry-away line. Rumor had it that the padres were tired of all the physical labor of toting away the crumbled remains of the big modern church, and more laborers were needed to handle the ant-like task of carrying off a large building, brick by brick, while avoiding damage to the older one next to it. Shane was not under any pressure to work there because of his night schedule, but nobody was going to turn him away if he felt like joining in.

Vignette had on the larger of her two pairs of pants, plus a thick and baggy shirt. With her short-cropped hair, she looked as much like a boy as Shane did. Nobody questioned her presence there, as long as she kept working. It was not a time and place where a person’s identity mattered, so long as they could stay sober and work like a mule. The job paid nothing in wages, but there would be soup, bread, and coffee waiting for the hungry workers at lunchtime. That slim promise alone had been enough to replace every one of the ex-
hausted padres with someone who, months before, would never have considered doing such work.

The food line was already being constructed, and now the workers could catch whiffs of the meal that was about to open up for them. They worked at top speed without realizing they were doing it. Shane and Vignette were caught up in the rhythm of the line as they passed bricks back down the line toward the debris bins. Shane had spent the last several passes with his eyes fixed in space, imagining words written in block letters. When he could see them clearly enough, he read them out loud to Vignette while he handed her a brick. “Don’t stop until everybody else does.”

She handed the brick to the man behind her and turned back to Shane while he took another brick from the man in front of him. “What if we’re the last ones there and they run out of food?”