The Light at the End (23 page)

Morning came on wings of sweltering humidity, bringing with it a painfully slow day for Your Kind Of Messengers, Inc. Allan bore it with the kind of grim stoicism that only comes with endless repetition, saying, “Nothing on the desk, boss” over and over to thirty messengers who didn’t want to hear it. “I’m sweatin’ my ass off for
nothin’
!” they screamed; and although he sympathized, he really didn’t want to hear it, either. It heightened and expanded the headache that he’d awakened with at seven this morning. It did nothing to brighten his outlook on life.

So when Ian wandered into the office, sweat-drenched and bleary-eyed but grinning like a bandit, Allan was happy to see him.

Until he started to talk.

“Man, you wouldn’t
believe
the morning I’m having!” he began, wiping his forehead for emphasis.

“Yeah, buddy. It’s the pits,” Tony said, shaking his head ruefully.

“Well, I’ve been running around like a goddamn lunatic,” Ian said, laughing. “Hey, Allan. You’re really busy right now, huh? Come here. I gotta talk to ya.”

All at once, Allan remembered why he woke up with a headache in the first place. It made him groan as he rose, meeting Ian’s wild gaze with his own beleaguered one.
It was this crapola, precisely. Sitting up all night, drinking and thinking about it. And now he wants to do it again.
He dry-swallowed another Tylenol, and hoped it would help.

“This has to do with your last run, right?” he inquired, hopeful.

“Yeah, right. That was two hours ago. I just wanted to know if I got there yet. Has anybody seen me?” Ian threw up his arms like the little lost princess. Allan paused to massage his temples. Nobody else responded at all. Ian, buoyed by his success, turned to Tony and said, “Ummm… think you can handle the phones without your sidekick for a minute?”

“Don’t think so, buddy. The way these phones are ringing, it’s driving me beserk.” Everybody laughed at the dead silence of the switchboards. Allan shrugged, doomed, and followed Ian out onto the street.

It was ninety-two degrees in the shade of the doorway. The air was motionless, bloated with moisture. It hit Allan’s head like a wet sandbag, making pain scream through his synapses like a school of electric eels. He winced and grabbed his head.

“Got a headache, huh?”

Allan nodded. “Severe.”

“Why don’t you use what doctors recommend most?”

“Oh, God…”

“Electroshock therapy! It really works!”

“Stop yelling, man. This really is bad.” Ian was mollified. Allan winced again and continued. “So what did you want to talk about?”

“The horse races, shithead. What did’ja think?”

“Okay, okay, all right. I gotcha. Do you want to know what I think?”

“That might be nice.”

“Don’t count on it. No…
ouch
!” Waiting for the latest jolt of pain to recede. “No, I’ll tell you, boss. I did some serious thinking last night, and…”

“You talked yourself out of it?”

“No, no. I came up with a good idea. A strategy for doing this crazy thing.” Allan smiled through the pain. “I think you might like it, so I might as well tell you now.”

“Yeah?” Ian sidled up against his friend and cocked one ear conspiratorially. “Shoot.”

“Well,” Allan said, warming up to the subject, “it occurred to me that we could coordinate the hunt a lot better from the dispatch room than from any other place in the city.”

“You mean
here
?” Ian asked, incredulously indicating the door with his thumb.

“Yeah. We’ve got maps. We’ve got all the beeper numbers. We’ve got a whole switchboard to choose from. We could pretty well keep track of the whole troupe that way; and whatsisname, the vampire, too.”

“That’s
great
!” Ian yelled, beside himself with excitement. “That would take care of
every
…!”

“Please.” Allan looked like he was about to cry.

Ian caught himself, went back to a normal volume. “That would take care of all our problems,” he continued. “That was the missing link, right there. Do you think you could get away with it? Like, how would you do it?”

“Well, I’d have to make up some story about a client doing late runs. I mean,
very
late runs. That way, I could volunteer to handle it, and have the run of the office for the whole night. When the big boss comes in the next morning, we just tell him that the call never came. No muss, no fuss.”

“That’s great,” Ian repeated, slapping his knee with the flat of his hand. “When do you think we could set this up for?”

“Not tonight. Tony’s got a meeting with Mr. Big. They’ll probably be in there all night, knowing them. Tomorrow would probably be the one.”

“It’s gotta be soon,” Ian stressed, adding, “Did you see the
Post
this morning?”

“Yeah.” Allan knew what he was driving at. The story about the two kids at the Cinema Village made the front page headlines.

“He probably killed ‘em while we were sitting around, introducing ourselves and ordering beer.” A frown creased his features. “That really sucks. It shows how pressing this has gotten.”

“Yeah, I hear you.” They nodded at each other solemnly.

Suddenly, a wave of dizziness swept over Allan. His head felt like a MixMaster set on puree. He teetered, leaned back heavily on the door, and moaned eloquently. Ian took him by the shoulders and tried to steady him. It worked, after a fashion.

“I think I’d better get back inside and sit down,” Allan said.

Ian opened the door and helped him through. The cooler air from the air-conditioned office helped to clear his mind a little, but he still felt groggy as Ian led him back to his chair and sat him down easily.

A pair of phones rang. Chester and Tony answered them. Ian took this opportunity to lean close to Allan’s ear and say, “You feeling better?”

“Yeah.” Allan nodded weakly. It still hurt to move his head. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“Tell me about it. I was up ‘til like six o’clock over at Josalyn’s.”

“Bet that was fun.” Allan managed a halfhearted leer.

“It was… very strange.” Ian stared off into space for a moment, came back. “I’ll tell you about it later.” He smiled. “You know what I’ve been doing today?”

“What?”

“Well, Joseph and I went shopping for all the things we’re gonna need. You wouldn’t believe some of the weird places we hit: occult bookstores, creepy little shops I never even knew existed. This one place was like a warlock Army surplus store: man, it was crazy! I think it’s the only place I’ve ever seen where you could pick up a pair of wolverine testicles on sale.” They laughed riotously, Allan clutching his head but helpless to stop. “No, seriously! They had all those little balls in jars…”

“Shhh. Please. Stop.” Something went
clang
in Allan’s head and let off a thousand volts of sheer discomfort. His eyes locked on Ian’s, pleading for mercy. It was granted.

“The only things we picked up so far,” Ian said quietly, “were a bunch of these hefty crosses. Stainless steel. About five, ten pounds apiece. Vampire or not, you could definitely give that boy a concussion with one of these babies.” He grinned wickedly. “And they’re beautiful, too. I might hang one up in my room when this is all over.”

“Didn’t you get any wolfbane?” Allan asked innocently.

“Wrong monster, man.”

“How about tanna leaves?”

“Jesus!” Ian slapped himself across the face. “For someone who’s gonna be playing Dungeon Master with all our lives, you sure are a goddamn noodlehead.”

That comment knocked Allan back in his seat. The headache gave way to a moving, pulsing wall of dread that wrapped him in its moldering folds. “Whoa,” he muttered, blinking back the vision. “Whoa, I don’t know if…”

“Sure you do,” Ian said, insistent. “You’re perfect for the part. It’s just like Dungeons and Dragons, man. You move us through the twisty labyrinth so we can fight the dreaded bugaboo. Only this time, every corridor is a street down in the Village. Or a subway station. Or a tunnel,”

“But I didn’t
make
this dungeon…” Allan complained.

“Yeah, but you know how it’s laid out,” Ian countered.

“You’re a dispatcher. You know this city better than almost anyone else in it. And you know how to keep track of thirty guys at a time. A dozen of us shouldn’t be any trouble.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know where the monster will be.”

“Yeah, but we’re gonna kill the monster anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Unless it kills
you
, boss.” Allan’s features pulled taut, earnest. “That’s the consideration that nobody seems to be taking very seriously. This isn’t a game of D&D, where you can get butchered by an ogre and resurrect ten minutes later with a roll of the dice. This is real stuff, Ian, and it scares the piss out of me. Honest to God, it does…”

“What in the world are you two
talking
about?” Jerome interrupted suddenly. Ian and Allan turned, startled, to see that he’d caught them with their proverbial pants down. For all they knew, he could have been listening the whole time.

“None of your fuckin’ business, Mary,” Tony interjected, firing up a Parliament while another smoldered, half-smoked, in the ashtray.

“No, really!” Jerome wheedled. “I just want to…”

The phone rang. “Answer the phone, bitch. I heard enough of your fuckin’ mouth to last me a lifetime, I kid you not.”

“Don’t call me a bitch.”

“Answer the phone, whore.”

The phone rang again.

“Don’t call me a whore, either. Or a faggot, or a homo, or a queer…”

The phone continued to ring.

“I’m a man,” Jerome concluded emphatically.

“Answer the phone, Queen-fucking Matilda, I’ll break your queen-sized fucking ass. Jesus Christ, you can’t get that cunt to do
nothin’
around here without a fucking argument, I kid you not.”

Jerome answered the phone. Ian stared at Allan in disbelief. Allan shrugged. “Are they always this charming?” Ian wanted to know.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuckin’ sonofabitchin’
cunt
,” Tony chanted, conspicuously pleased with himself.

“I gotta get out of here,” Ian moaned. “These people are crazy.”

“You get used to it,” Allan offered. “I guess.”

“Fuck you both, you scumbags. Who needs you?” Tony casually remarked.

Ian blew him a kiss and tiptoed toward the door. Allan waved prettily and called out, “Bye-bye, darling.”

“Whores, faggots, and junkies,” Tony mumbled to himself. “That’s all I got to work with. Whores, faggots, and junkies.”

“I’ll talk to you later, man,” Ian said to Allan as he opened the door.

“Yeah, later,” Allan replied, smiling. Ian smiled back.

The door closed behind him.

Allan Vasey watched Ian disappear into the street. He looked at the spot where his friends smiling face had been, saw only the refracted light glaring at him through the window. It sent a white-hot sliver of pain through his forehead.

And the headache. And the dizziness. And the terror.

Came back.

With a vengeance.

Night fell, and the shadows took over, deepening as they swallowed the last of the sunlight. Street lights took over. And headlights. And neon. They twinkled like the jewel-encrusted scales of a dragon, poked tiny holes in the fabric. No more.

The shadows took over. They owned the night.

In Madison Square Park, an ominous figure moved between the rows of benches that lined its central promenade. The usual crowd of junkies, faggots, whores, and dealers were assembled on the benches and under the trees, making their moves with ritual abandon; but they faded back into the bushes silently…no pitches, no lines, no come-ons, no jive… when this one approached. They could sense the danger, like dogs scenting death, from twenty-five yards away. They were afraid to even breathe until he was safely out of range.

The dark man, the deadly man, moved to the farthest easterly extreme of the promenade. There was an unfenced section, between the benches, that allowed one to enter the tree-lined clearing that made up the center of the park. He stepped through the gap, squatted at the base of an enormous tree, looked up through the leaves at the ghostly haze of the moon, and smiled.

In one hand, he held a short, stout piece of wood. In the other, he held a very sharp carving knife.

“Tonight,” he whispered. ‘Oh, yes.”

Softly whistling a cheerful tune, he whittled away at the piece of wood until one end tapered down to an imposing point.

Meanwhile, further downtown, on a side street just south of Astor Place, a derelict was passed out on the cold gray of the sidewalk. He snored, the sound of a rusty ratchet being spun by a tireless child. A thin mist of fragrant spittle hovered around his mouth; his pants, as usual, reeked of urine. He could not see, or hear, or feel.

When it came, he didn’t even know it.

Not until the cold hands took him by the shoulders and roughly shook him. Not until he felt himself rising from the pavement, the empty bottle of muscatel slipping from between his fingers and shattering at his feet. Not until the touch and the motion and the sound coalesced, forcing open his eyes, did the bum see what had found him.

“
Louie.
” A whisper like a charnel house breeze. “
Hey, Louie, I got a bottle. Hey… hey, Louie, I got myself SOMETHING TO DRINK!
”

One word… a name… strangled and died in Louie’s throat. His rheumy eyes bugged out obscenely; his jaws locked open in a silent rictus of terror. He flailed at the air in a ludicrous backstroke, tried vainly to pull himself free.

“
SOMETHING TO DRINK, LOUIE! COME ON! I’LL SHOW YA!
” The left side of his face was a mass of scabs and protruding bone. There was a moist twinkle in the back of the gaping socket, a trick of light that made the nightmare visage seem to be winking playfully. The other side of the face was pale and withered, one eye glowing red above a hideous half-smile.

The throat had been gnawed open, forming a second crooked mouth that grinned with lips of black, scabrous meat. Louie took one look at it and pissed himself for the very last time.

“Nooooooooooo…” he whined, his famous last words.

And then Fred dragged his old buddy down the workman’s entrance to forever night, where the serious drinking got done.