The Light at the End (31 page)

Like a little girl, I take you
, the ancient voice regaled him; and then Ian, as Bullwinkle, saying
watch me pull a rabbit outta my hat!
And again, more recently, not in words but in pictures, the roller-skating one-that-got-away. The mocking sounds and visions ganged up on him, made him feel cheap and shitty as they kicked him around.

So Rudy was not in peak form when the door at the front of the car slid open. He whipped around suddenly, wired-out and startled; when the three men stepped in and closed the door behind him, fear massaged his chest like a cold set of hands. He took an automatic step away from them, watching their faces. They were staring at him.

They were seeing him clearly.

It was the one in the middle that scared the piss out of him. Not the one on the left: he looked like a gimp, a sixties throwback, threatening as a toothpick and almost as thin. Nor the one on the right: he was big, he looked strong, but size and strength weren’t the problem. If they were, the little old man in the middle wouldn’t have rated doodle-e-squat.

But he does
. Rudy knew it. It was something about the eyes. They saw him, they knew him, he could feel them bore into him like hot steel pokers.

But they did not seem to fear him in the least.

Rudy trembled under their gaze. The thought of the ancient one who called himself “Master” leaped into his head, and he almost cried out. For a moment, he was sure that the monster had found him; the chill started at his rectum and worked its way up his spine. Then he realized that, no, it was just a man, just an old man…

Just an old man with something very strange about him.

It’s just an old man
, Rudy chastened himself.
You could waste him in a second. Relax.
He forced himself to look tough and detached, insofar as he could; and his voice trilled slightly in the higher frequencies as he said, “Who do you think
you’re
lookin’ at? Huh?”

Of course, it would have to be the old man who answered.

“We’re looking at you… Rudy,” he said. And smiled.

T.C. reached into his messenger bag and pulled out the .357 Magnum, just as Armond was unzipping his satchel. Danny stood to the right of them, mute and motionless, his hands as limp as his eyes were wide.

Rudy grinned at the round mouth of the Magnum’s barrel as it raised to a level with his face. He sneered, exposing his teeth; and T.C.’s aim teetered slightly as he recoiled in shock.

“You don’t think you could hurt
me
with that thing, do you?” Rudy said, laughing. “Don’t be silly. I could bend it over your head.”

“They’re silver bullets, Rudy,” Armond kindly informed him. “And they’re blessed.”

“
So?
” He tried to act indifferent, but some doubt seeped into his face.

“So you wanna find out?” T.C. offered, flicking off the safety and steadying his aim.

Rudy looked extremely uncertain and not at all happy. Armond watched him wrestle with the fear, was amused by it.
He truly does not know himself
, the old man mused.
What makes him live. What makes him die. Joseph’s friend was right: the monster is a motherless child in the wilderness.

But so dangerous.
He reminded himself not to forget that.
So dangerous.
As his hand reached into the satchel.

“Danny,” he said quietly, nudging the gangly longhair with his elbow. “Danny. Now.” Danny started, his eyes blank for a moment; then he opened his messenger bag and pulled out a mallet and stake. Rudy shrank back, all question removed from his face. Armond nodded his head somberly.

And held up the cross.

Nothing in either life or death had helped Rudy to prepare for the pain that followed. It burned in his flesh like the heat from a building in flames; it ripped through him like shrapnel, like great shards of exploding glass; it screamed through his nervous system like a 220-volt injection. But that was not the worst of it, by any means. The worst of it was to look.

It was like staring into the heart of the sun.

Rudy whirled and screamed, his hands clamped over his eyes.
I’m BLIND!
his mind shrieked.
I can’t SEE! I can’t SEE!
The train hit a bad bump and shuddered violently. He stumbled, reaching out, and his eyes jerked open just as the floor came up to meet his face.

Then everything, all his senses, became very clear. He could hear the footsteps, rapidly approaching. He could smell the adrenaline rush. The floor was crawling with bright dots of white light, big as beach balls; but he could see the floor, behind the dots, stretching all the way down to the back of the car.

All the way down to the door…

…the
open
door…

…and suddenly he was scrambling toward it, getting to his feet before the first startled roar erupted from behind him, on his feet and
running
now,
running
, as the train threw him from side to side and the chorus of shouting voices mounted in intensity and the first shot went off, a thunderclap followed by a whistling past his ear that turned into a
pwinging
and a
pwinging
and a shattering of glass as the bullet ricocheted off one wall, then another, and then smashed through a window, but none of that mattered because he was running, running faster, and the door was right in front of him, he could see the floor buckling on the platform between it and the door that lay beyond it, also open, also waiting for him as he went through the first door and leaped across the space between and landed in the last car of the train with both feet, still running, still running, toward the back…

…toward the end…

There was a window in the back door of the uptown local: a goodly sized, rounded, porthole type of affair. A stout iron bar, several inches in diameter, ran horizontally through the dead center of the circle. The back door, of course, was eternally locked; its window was designed to remain shut forever.

As T.C. and Danny raced into the last car, they didn’t notice the half-dozen staring commuters who speckled the seats to either side. Nothing to either side of them held the tiniest bit of interest.

They were totally and exclusively engrossed in the spectacle of Rudy Pasko, bearing down on that big fat bull’s-eye in the middle of the door. Even as they barreled toward him, dodging the poles in the middle of the aisle, their eyes helplessly locked upon him.

They knew what he was going to do.

“STOP, MAN!” T.C. yelled, dropping back and drawing a bead on the junction between Rudy’s shoulder blades and spine.

Rudy kept on running.

“I SAID STOP!”

He kept running.

“MAN, THAT’S
IT!
”

Rudy hurled himself forward, like an arrow, toward the window.

T.C. fired.

…
and he felt himself flying, a remarkable sensation, as the twin thunderclaps went off in unison, one from behind him that shot the whistling out past his ear again, the other wrapping around his ears like a symphony as the top of his head struck the stout iron bar and bent it, stretched it, snapped it in half, while the glass sprayed and tinkled all around him like confetti, like the brightly colored crystals of a kaleidoscope that was being spun as he was being spun, end over end, by the impact and the wind and the force of his own momentum, carrying him outward into the darkness of the tunnel, sending him downward in a mad loop-de-loop, spiraling crazily toward the tracks…

Danny’s face was framed squarely in the shattered window opening. He saw, with exquisite clarity, the way in which Rudy hit the tracks, flipped over precisely five times, landed on his feet, regained his footing, and continued to run as if nothing had happened.

Running back the way he came.

Behind him, T.C. was yelling something about how nobody better say a
word
about this, not a goddamn word to
anyone
. But Danny didn’t hear him.

There was only one thing on his mind.

Claire was still alone on the uptown platform. A dime was poised uneasily on the lip of the coin slot as she leaned against the pay phone, the receiver to her ear. She listened to the dial tone for about thirty seconds, shook her head, hung up the phone, sulked for a few more seconds, picked up the phone, and listened to the dial tone. She had been doing this for the last three minutes. It had worked itself into sort of a routine.

I feel so stupid
, she thought.
Standing around like this
. But she couldn’t help it. She was genuinely torn, her mind at war. The fact that one side was completely insane did nothing to mitigate its power and influence.

Especially when the other side had just finished pissing her off.

Her arguments for outrage were many and varied, beginning with the obvious (why did
I
have to be the one that called? Why couldn’t somebody
else
have done it?), moving on to the politics of gender (women
always
get left behind, those macho sexist assholes, they’ll want me and Josalyn… The Amazing Collapsible Woman… to make them coffee when all the fun is over), wading knee-deep into jealousy (what does he
see
in her, anyway? Why do
men
get to have all the excitement?), and winding up in the Grand Corral of Spite (you left me holding the bag, I hope you screw it up and die).

But the bottom line, once all the petty dross was swept away, came down to this:

1) the monster is horrible, and it needs to be destroyed;

2) the monster is gorgeous… and if they kill it, I’ll never know what might have happened…

Come on, Cunningham
, said a voice in her mind.
Shit or get off the pot, alright?
The voice startled her for a moment, largely because it was not her own, and also because it took a moment to recognize. It had only been four days, but it seemed like forever.

Maybe it was because she’d never really liked Dorian all that much. Dorian was much more of a slut than Claire would ever be, and Claire resented it in a strange way. It was, like, Dorian seemed to feel that she was playing the only game in town: if you were with her, you
had
to compete. And Claire would always lose.

In a way, she wanted to win the game that Dorian lost.

But if you lived with a person, whether you liked them or not, you got close to them. Little things became precious… in a very subconscious manner, of course: you adjusted to them, they became part of your world, you came to see the bits of diamond in the coal. It was like living in a harsh environment: a desert, a jungle, a city. Oppressive conditions at every turn, but how many people would ever think of leaving?

Claire never really did like Dorian that much, but she did like her a little. Enough to live with her since January, and consider renewing the lease. She saw Dorian’s head on the floor, in her mind, and knew that she’d liked Dorian better than that.

Shit or get off the pot, alright?
Dorian used to say that all the time, when they were alone together.
You want him? Go get him. Shit or get off the pot, alright? Somebody’s gonna jump his bones if you don’t hurry up. And it might be me.

She was saying it again, her head on the floor. Claire heard it, and saw it, very clearly.

Claire put the dime in the phone.

On the second ring, Allan answered. “Armond?” he said.

“No. Claire. Listen…”

“Why hasn’t Armond been answering his goddamn beeper?”

“Because he hasn’t had a chance. Now listen a minute.”

Allan paused, apparently listening.

“I’m at the Bleecker Street station, where the 6 train comes. We followed Rudy down here…”

“WHAT?” Allan shrieked. It was hard to tell what he felt.

“We followed Rudy down here,” she repeated, refusing to be cut off, “and the boys went on the train with him up to Astor Place. I’m supposed to get Joseph to pick me up so we can all drive up there together…”

“Jesus Christ! How long ago did this happen?”

“Oh, about…” She decided quickly not to lie. “Four minutes ago.”

“Why didn’t you call sooner… ?”

“My dime was stuck in the slot.” Not
entirely
a lie. “You better call Joseph, and…”

“He’s on another line,” Allan said impatiently, “Hang on.”

He put her on hold. She sighed, listened to the complete absence of sound coming from the receiver, and turned toward the front end of the station.

Just as Rudy appeared in the mouth of the tunnel.

*

“I’ve been driving around for
twenty minutes
!” Joseph screamed into the phone. “Why didn’t they call you sooner?”

“I guess they just didn’t know any sooner, boss.” Allan was freaking out, but trying hard to contain it. He wished that Josalyn would get out of the bathroom… not that she’d been in there long, just that she had to pick now to do it, with everything going berserk.

There were two empty Buds next to his phone. He swigged heavily on the third.

“He’s probably up there already!” Joseph’s voice hollered tinnily in Allan’s ear.

“Excuse me… ?” Pulling the can from his lips.

“Up at Astor Place! I gotta get there!”

“But what about Claire… ?”

“Fuck Claire! She’s safe, isn’t she?”

…
and he was climbing now, climbing
…

Two more phones rang. Allan desperately eyed the bathroom door. Josalyn was not forthcoming.

Two phones?
Allan marveled, flustered.
Who else could be calling?

“Hang on,” he said, and put Joseph on hold.

…
climbing up onto the platform
…

He was climbing up onto the platform now. Claire watched him, not really believing, the dead phone still pressed to her ear.

“Hello?” the voice said. “This is Vince…”

“OH, JESUS CHRIST!” Allan screamed, slamming down the hold button. “JEROME! WOULD YOU DEAL WITH THIS IDIOT?” His voice remained at a uniform pitch throughout.

There were three lines on hold now, and one line still ringing. Allan reached for the ringing line and punched it in.