The Taking (23 page)

46

BROODING ABOUT THE DOOR, KEEPING A watch on it, Molly walked to the end of the bar. She opened the gate and peered into the narrow service area where Russell Tewkes had worked the taps and mixed the cocktails.

She probed with her flashlight. No one crouched there among the brittle, bristling ruins of the shattered back-bar mirror.

A sludge of darkness filled the hall that led to the lavatories. Her beam washed it away, revealing no one.

She considered investigating the rest rooms. The prospect didn’t thrill her.

She worried about what size the black fungus had achieved. What capabilities might it possess?

In the women’s room, she had never closed the window following Render’s departure. Anything might have crept in from this goblin night. In that tight space, the three closed stall doors would offer the challenge of three spring-loaded lids on jack-in-the-boxes packed with surprises designed in Hell.

Besides, the two lavatories together could not have accommodated forty people. She didn’t expect to find them in small groups, whether dead or alive, but in one place.

Here again she felt the truth of being at the still point of the turning world, with past and future gathered in the moment.

Although she had resisted this knowledge all her life, had lived determinedly in the future, focused there by ambition, she understood at last that
this
was the real condition of humanity: The dance of life occurred not yesterday or tomorrow, but only here at the still point that was the present. This truth is simple, self-evident, but difficult to accept, for we sentimentalize the past and wallow in it, while we endure the moment and in every waking hour dream of the future.

What Molly had done thus far in her life was the history of her soul, unalterable, ineradicable. What she hoped to do in the future was of no meaning if she failed to do the wise thing, the good thing, moment by moment by moment, here at the still point, here in the dance of life.

Cassie. Finding Cassie. Moment by moment by moment, finding Cassie, the past would be made, and the future.

With pistol, with flashlight, with trepidation, she cautiously approached the door.

Through the open wedge, she saw six or eight candles in glass globes, deposited on the floor. Salamanders of apricot light crawled the walls.

She nudged the door with one foot, and it swung smoothly inward on well-oiled hinges.

Candlelight revealed no occupants. Neither did the flashlight when, from the threshold, she swept the space with it.

Beyond lay what appeared to be a receiving room measuring approximately twelve by fifteen feet. Windowless. Gray tile floor with a drain in the center. Bare concrete walls.

A wide steel door directly opposite the one in which she stood would open to the alleyway behind the tavern. Cases of beer, liquor, wine, and other supplies had been delivered through it.

In the wall to her right, reflections of candle flames purled in the brushed stainless-steel doors of an elevator.

The tavern didn’t have a second floor. The elevator transported supplies down to the basement.

In the wall to her left stood another door, ajar. Logic insisted that she would find basement stairs beyond it.

Between the doorway in which she stood and the basement door, the flashlight beam detailed a trail of wet blood on gray concrete: not a river of gore, just patterns of droplets intact and droplets smeared.

With no electrical service, they had not taken the elevator down to whatever madness waited to be discovered below. Whether under duress or of their own accord, though in either case surely in the grip of unimaginable terror, they had descended the narrow passage in single file, naked and bleeding.

A chill walked the stairs of Molly’s spine as she considered that strange procession and wondered what ceremony or savagery had occupied those people in the cellar.

She glanced back into the deserted tavern. Nothing had changed.

Trying to avoid as much of the blood as possible, she stepped off the threshold and followed the beam of her flashlight along the trail that her neighbors had so recently marked with sanguinary clarity.

The brass doorknob, once shiny, was patinaed with blood from uncounted trembling hands. She toed the door open toward her, into the receiving room.

Beyond this threshold lay a small landing, pale wood stippled with crimson. She hesitated to set foot upon it, leaned through the doorway instead.

A cold draft rose past her, redolent of a scent that she had never before encountered and that she would have been hard-pressed to describe. It was not a foul smell, in fact not even unpleasant, and yet disturbing.

A cramped flight of steep wooden steps descended to a lower landing, from which a second and shorter flight turned left into the cellar.

Apparently, they had taken no candles beyond the receiving room. Only the flashlight brightened the stairs.

The thought of her neighbors’ blind descent struck such pity in Molly that her knees weakened.

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark.

She could not see the last few treads of the lower flight. The cellar lay entirely beyond her view, and she could not angle the beam in any way to illuminate that space.

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

Easier said than done. Fear half throttled Molly, and she had not yet entered the walled and stepped valley before her.

To learn the fate of those who had marked this route with their blood, to discover if Cassie was alive—and the whereabouts of her three guardian dogs—Molly would have to go down at least as far as the lower landing. Once there, she could stoop to the best vantage and with her flashlight pierce the darkness in the lower chamber.

She couldn’t decide whether this was a test of her courage or of her wisdom. Under the circumstances, prudence might be the good thing, the right thing; but how difficult it was, in the quick, to tell the difference between prudence and cowardice.

Not the faintest murmur rose with the curiously scented draft. Not a sigh. Not a cough. Not a whimper. Not a word of whispered prayer.

With forty people pressed into a cold storeroom, a sound or two of discomfort might be expected, an agitated movement motivated by distress.

Although the thunder of forty fearful hearts might be entirely contained in forty breasts, surely the frightened breathing of so many would raise a betraying susurration. Not all of them would be holding their breath simultaneously, waiting for Molly to stop holding hers.

Yet, coiled in a stillness deeper than mere silence, the tavern cellar waited in a hush.

Her mouth seemed too dry for speech, but she worked up a simple question: “Cassie?”

The cellar took in the name and gave nothing back.

Sweat as cold as ice water trickled along her right temple and curled around her ear.

She raised her voice because she had previously spoken in little more than a whisper: “Cassie?”

A response came not from the girl, not from the realm below, but from the receiving room behind Molly: “I can bite, but I can’t cut.”

47

CROUCH, PIVOT, POINT, SQUEEZE, ALL IN ONE fluid action: Molly did the first three, checked herself halfway through the trigger squeeze, and did not shoot the woman.

Clarinetist, lover of swing music, waitress at Benson’s Good Eats, twentysomething, dark-haired, gray-eyed, Angie Boteen stood in the receiving room, naked, holding a broken Corona bottle by the neck.

“Always been squeamish, especially about knives, razor blades…broken glass,” Angie said.

She sounded like herself, yet didn’t. She looked like herself, yet wasn’t. Anxiety in her voice made it real, but at the same time she seemed to be dreaming on her feet, detached.

“I need to be cut, I want to be cut, I want to obey, I really do, but I’ve always been afraid of sharpness more than anything.”

Relying on the candles, Molly shoved her flashlight under her waistband, in the small of her back, freeing both hands for the gun.

“Angie, what the hell happened here?”

Ignoring the question, as if she didn’t hear it, Angie Boteen appeared to have stepped out of the dance of life, out of the still point, and stood in the past:

“When I was six, Uncle Carl, he cut Aunt Veda ’cause she cheated on him, slit her throat. I was there, saw it.”

“Angie—”

“She lived, croaked when she talked, scar on her throat. He went to prison, and when he got out, she took him back.”

Molly felt as naked as Angie, exposed, standing in this doorway with the basement stairs at her back.

“After prison, people treated Uncle Carl different. Not worse. More careful, more respectful.”

Reluctant to look away from Angie Boteen, Molly nevertheless glanced back, to her left, and down. No one on the stairs.

Refocusing on Angie and on the jagged bottle, she discovered that during this moment of distraction, the woman had taken a step toward her.

“No closer,” Molly warned, thrusting the pistol at arm’s length, in a two-hand grip.

In the globes on the floor, inconstant candle flames leaped, languished, and leaped, fattened and thinned, so upward across the woman’s face flowed light, flowed shadow, continuously distorting, making it difficult for Molly to read her expression.

“So then what happened,” Angie said, “is I hook up with Billy Marek, he’s been in trouble with knives, cut some people, done time.”

Under the appearance of a trance, repressed emotions tore at the woman and could be detected in her voice. Anguish. Anxiety. Wild terror on a choke chain. But what other sensibilities did the fluctuant candle flames disguise? Psychotic needs? Anger? Homicidal rage? Hard to tell.

“I know he’ll never cut me ’cause I’ll never cheat, but people respect him, so they respect me.”

Although Molly had a moment ago checked the stairs, already she imagined an ascending presence. Maybe it wasn’t imagined. Maybe it would be real this time.

“He cut someone for me once,” said Angie. “I wanted it done, and Billy did it. I felt bad later. I was sorry later. But he did it. And he would’ve done it again if I asked, and that made me feel safe.”

Molly eased out of the doorway, to the left, her back against the wall, putting distance between herself and the naked woman but also between herself and the stairs.

“If he was here,” Angie said, “I’d ask him, and he’d cut me, Billy would, he’d cut me just right, not too deep, so I wouldn’t have to do it myself.”

Molly could almost believe madness was in the air: contagious, carried on dust mites, easily inhaled, following a path of infection straight from lungs to heart to brain.

Reminding herself of her purpose, trying to get control of the situation, she said, “Listen, there was a little girl here earlier. Her name was Cassie.”

“I want to obey, I really do, I want to obey and satisfy like the others. Will you cut me?”

“Obey
who
? Angie, I want to help you, but I don’t understand what’s going on here.”

“The cuts are an invitation. They cluster at the cuts. They come in through the blood by invitation.”

Fungus,
Molly thought.
Spores.

“Thousands of them,” Angie said, “coming through the blood. They want to be in the flesh, in the live flesh for a little while, before I’m dead.”

Even if the bolero of shadows and candlelight had not flung distortions across Angie’s features, the woman’s dementia would have prevented Molly from reading her emotions and inferring her intentions.

“Angie, honey, you’ve got to put down the bottle and let me help you.” Molly didn’t have to fake compassion. In spite of her fear, she was shaken by sympathy for this distraught and confused woman. “Let me take you out of here.”

This offer was met with agitation, anxiety. “Don’t bullshit me, you bitch. That’s not possible, you know it’s not. There’s nowhere for me to go, nowhere to hide, nowhere, ever. Or you, either. You’ll be told what to do, you’ll be told, and you’ll do it or suffer.”

The cold concrete wall against Molly’s back pressed its chill through her clothes and into her flesh, her bones, brought winter to her spirit. She was shivering and couldn’t stop.

“I’ve got to obey.” A long harrowing groan came from her, and she struck her breasts with one fist. “Obey or suffer.”

With growing desperation, Molly tried again: “Cassie. A nine-year-old girl. Blond hair. Blue eyes.
Where is she?
”

Angie glanced toward the basement stairs. Her voice was sharp, urgent: “They’re all below, they made the invitation, they cut, they cut, they opened their blood.”

“What’s happening down there?” Molly demanded. “Where will I find the girl if I go down there?”

Holding out her left hand, palm up, Angie said, “I bit. I bit so hard, and there’s blood.”

Even in the shimmering deceptions of candlelight, the teeth marks were clearly visible in the meaty part of the woman’s hand, and thick clotted blood.

“I can bite, but I can’t cut. I can bite, and there’s blood, but that’s not acceptable, because I was told to
cut.
”

Stepping between the candle globes, she moved toward Molly, and Molly backed off, circled away.

Offering the broken bottle, the jagged end still first, Angie said insistently, angrily,
“Take this and cut me.”

“No. Put the bottle down.”

Sorrow welled in those mad eyes. A warm salty tide brimmed, spilled. Anger instantly became despair and self-pity. “I’m running out of time. He’s going to come up those stairs, he’s going to come back for me.”

“Who?”

“He rules.”

“Who?”

Her eyes burned red in scalding tears. “Him. It. The thing.”

“What thing?” Molly asked.

Hot tears washed years off Angie Boteen’s face, and rendered it the countenance of a terrified child. “The thing. The thing with faces in its hands.”

48

THE HOSPITAL OF ST. MARY OF BETHLEHEM, which opened its doors in London in the fifteenth century, served as an asylum for the insane, was known as Bedlam, and closed its doors to that purpose in an age distant to this one, but now Bedlam existed again, and it was the entire world, pole to pole.

Maybe a creature with faces in its hands stalked the tavern cellar, something that Goya might have imagined and painted in his darkest hours, or maybe this menace existed only in Angie Boteen’s mind. Whether real or not, it was real to her.

“Afraid of sharpness. I’m weak,” she said. “Always been weak. I want to obey, they expect obedience, but I can’t cut myself. I can bite, but I can’t cut.”

Molly retreated, circled, stepping cautiously among the candles, like a conjurer trying to stay within her protective pentagram.

Circling, advancing, holding out the broken bottle, Angie said, “Take this. Do me, slash me. Before he comes back.” A glance at the stairs. Then at Molly. “Slash me, before he comes back angry.”

Molly shook her head. “No. Put it down.”

Simultaneously imploring and furious, Angie advanced: “Whatever you hate, see that in me. Whoever you envy, everything you fear, see all that in me—then cut,
cut me, CUT ME!
”

Tough as she was, tough as she always had been, boiled in terror at a young age, Molly nonetheless felt something cracking in herself, a barrier that must hold if she was ever to find Cassie, if she was to be the rescuer of children that so many children needed her to be.

Incipient tears welled in her eyes. She blinked them back, fearful that they would blur her vision. In the blur, she would be vulnerable to Angie, to whatever had driven the forty people into the basement, to the thing with faces in its hands if it existed.

“Angie…” Molly’s voice broke, speaking to the wounded child at the heart of this woman. “What’ve they done to you?”

Even in her madness, Angie Boteen recognized the tenderness that wrung tears from Molly. Understanding the finality of those words, she threw the bottle aside. It shattered on the elevator doors.

“Wish I was dead already.” Angie began to shake as though she’d only now become aware of being naked in a cold room. “Wish I was.”

Lowering the pistol, Molly said, “Let me take you out of here.”

Angie stared with dread toward the cellar stairs. “It’s coming.”

Edging closer to the door to the tavern, Molly also aligned herself with the cellar door and raised the pistol once more.

The woman cared nothing for Cassie, only for her own plight, but Molly persisted: “A nine-year-old girl. You must have seen her. She was the only child left here.”

Angie Boteen began to sink into the floor as if she were standing in quicksand.