Personal Effects Read online

  Henry’s eyes ticked across my body. He squinted. He nodded very slowly.

  “Did you find,” he asked, “what you were sent to find?”

  “I … I don’t know. I think so, but it doesn’t make sense. A photo and a letter from Big Brother. The monster was protecting them, like a watchdog.”

  I shivered then, recalling the Dark Man’s fingers shredding my skin.

  “And why doesn’t that make sense?” Henry said.

  “Because what I found basically nullified the only thing going for me in the Drake case. I thought someone else murdered all those people. A Russian. Why did Drake send me there? I didn’t gain anything. Poof, there’s the proof, not true.”

  Henry squinted. “It had a vested interest in protecting them. Maybe there’s more power in what you found.”

  “And maybe Drake sent me there to die,” I said. “He knew his son would be there, knew the Dark Man would be waiting and hungry. I was ‘marked,’ after all. Double cross, kill the threat. I’m the only one, perhaps ever, who’s gotten this close to … to curing him.”

  I sighed. “I think … I think I beat it,” I said. “It saw the photo of the Russian, the man who’d vowed vengeance against Drake. It should’ve killed me, but it vanished.”

  Henry took a deep breath and exhaled. He shook his head as slowly as he’d nodded a minute ago.

  “Know this, son. Things like the Dark Man are never ‘beaten.’ There’s nothing in this world that can beat them. They’re hired guns. They leave when they’ve done their job.”

  “You said you were there, back then, when the Dark Man killed Mom. You told me we were under attack. You saved Lucas, you said. It was beaten. It left. How?”

  “It did what it was told to do. It took a beloved of Will’s, just as Will had …”

  He stopped.

  “Zach, if it’s gone, then you found its secret and put it to rest. Whatever was in that house was the key. The Dark Man has absolutes. It must do what it was born to do. The powers that control these monsters, the terms that govern when an unholy contract has been fulfilled—those are rarely absolute. If it’s gone, its contract was fulfilled. You did it. I’m proud of you.”

  I scrubbed my face with my damaged hands, exasperated.

  “But I don’t know what to do now,” I said. “Everything I’ve done to help Drake has had … heh … catastrophic results. And now he’s getting pulled from The Brink. I’ve got—”

  “Three minutes,” the guard said.

  “—I’ve got no reason to care,” I continued. “I know this. I’ve done everything I can think of, I’ve broken every rule there is to break, I’ve gone emotionally and ethically bankrupt, and look, just look at me. Finally, I’m as banged up on the outside as I am on the inside. This is a job, just a fucking job, and no job’s worth this. But.”

  I looked at him, anguished. Could he possibly understand?

  “But he’s my patient, Henry. Does that make sense, what that means to me? No matter what happens in the trial, no matter what happens to him once he leaves The Brink, I want to help him now. I need to. I … I can’t …”

  “ … let it go,” Henry finished. He gave a serene, bittersweet smile, and lifted his eyes skyward. “That’s why I’m here, Zach. Couldn’t let go. Will finally got his wish because I couldn’t let it go. It makes more sense than you’ll know.”

  Goddamn it, I had so many questions about that day. About the twenty years that had come and gone. But there was no time.

  Always running out of time.

  “What’s left?” I said.

  Henry leaned even closer to the glass. “The Dark Man is an entity of vengeance, son. That’s what it was built to be; it never learned to be this way. It is what it is. Absolute punishment, retribution that’s as compassionless as the sin that brought it here. But is the Dark Man your roadblock?”

  “No. It’s Drake. His insistence.”

  Henry nodded. “He wants the blood washed from his hands. Not for the crimes he’s accused of …”

  I blinked.

  “ … but for the ones he’ll never be accused of,” I said. “Red Show.”

  I finally understood—and my heart ached with the understanding.

  “I should go,” I said. “But I’ll come back. If you’ll have me.”

  For the first time in the twenty total minutes I’d spent with him, my uncle’s face brightened and beamed. He smiled.

  It looked like his first smile in twenty years.

  28

  11:30 AM, the scuffed Eterna on my wrist said.

  I strode through The Brink’s employee parking lot with newfound purpose, sucking in the crisp air, nodding at the gorgeous autumnal spectacle that was Primoris Maximus. And now my feet clomped up the limestone front steps of the hospital, my hands tugged open the two metal doors. I had steel in my veins, and an old friend riding shotgun in my head. I needed his brazen lawlessness, his steel, for the endgame.

  I stopped in the doorway. Malcolm stood inside our sorry lobby, his mop in hand. He saw me and gasped. I shrugged—No time to explain—and glanced at the glimmering tiles. A yellow sign read, CAUTION: WET FLOOR.

  “I owe you a bottle of Grey Goose, right?” I asked.

  Malcolm nodded dumbly.

  “What … what the hell happened to you, boy?”

  “I owe you two bottles now,” I said, moving past him. My mud-spattered Vans left a trail of footprints across the freshly mopped floor.

  “Sheeeeeit,” Malcolm said.

  I passed the scratched window of the Administrator’s Office, heading toward the elevator. Lina Velasquez’s cat’s-eye glasses rose from her computer screen, and her eyes met mine. Her taut face went pale. She peeped a tiny scream.

  I kept walking.

  Behind me, I heard her slapping the glass, her rings clack-clack-clacking.

  “Taylor!” she cried.

  “It can wait,” I said.

  “Taylor! Muy urgente!”

  I turned the corner, not listening.

  More gasps from coworkers as I passed the break room. I heard a coffee mug shatter on the floor.

  The elevator doors were directly ahead now. I walked faster down the long corridor, reached them, jabbed the metal “down” button with my thumb. It gave a loud, satisfying thwack! against the panel.

  Dr. Peterson’s voice called from behind me, his perfunctory staccato filling the hall. I’d never heard him raise his voice before. I’m not sure anyone here ever had.

  “Zachary!”

  The lift beyond the doors began to whine, heading to the attic. I turned around.

  The elderly man stood at the corner of the hallway, fifty feet away, his round face glowing pink from the dash to catch up. His belly rose and fell. Peterson’s eyes were wide, worried and owlish behind his glasses.

  At The Brink, zue give a hoot, I thought, and began to chuckle.

  The noise died in my throat when another man turned the corner. He loomed behind Peterson like a Brooks Brothers grim reaper, an ill omen. The source of Peterson’s worry.

  “Dad.”

  Yes. There to personally oversee the transfer. Behind him stood an NYPD cop, undoubtedly the armed escort for said transfer. The officer’s walkie-talkie snarled incomprehensible dispatch fuzz-speak.

  Across the tiled void, my father’s face was a grim amalgam of disgust, disappointment and determination. He and I were gunslingers again, like we were in the 67th Precinct parking lot, widescreen duelists. Peterson turned and began to say something to the cop.

  “Young man,” Dad said. “It’s over.”

  The whine behind me grew louder. Almost here.

  “High Noon ain’t for another half-hour,” I said. “Pardner.”

  My father growled and began his march down the hall. The elevator doors moaned open behind me and I stepped backward, not seeing the person inside the car as I entered, not really caring as I knocked that person aside, folders and papers swirling to the floor like parade confetti. />
  I punched the button for Level 5.

  “YOU STOP, GODDAMNIT!” Dad said, running now. The policeman made to bolt, but Peterson’s roly-poly body jerked left, then right, trying to get out of the way, unintentionally blocking him. They looked like fevered, awkward new lovers, attempting a first kiss.

  The voice behind me, in the cabin: “What the Christ?”

  Dad, ahead: “STOP! IT’S OVER!”

  The doors: Creeeeaaaaaaaaak.

  Me, as they closed, as my father’s furious face was less than a foot away:

  “Giddy-giddy.”

  The metal box sighed and sank into The Brink.

  “Taylor, what’s your malfunction?”

  I spun around. Staring up at me was Dr. Nathan Xavier. His typically immaculately styled hair was now a tousled mess. His hands snatched at the papers that had tumbled from our impact. He saw my horror-show face and barked a horrified “yahh!”

  “Hi there,” I said.

  “Wha … What …”

  I squatted low. My knees popped. Xavier flinched as if he’d been shot.

  “Let me help you,” I said, and my dirty hands scraped for the papers, collecting them into a haphazard mess. I passed them over. Xavier’s bottom lip twitched and trembled, a pink caterpillar.

  I propped my forearms on my knees.

  “It’s good you’re here,” I said. The world around us creaked. “You and me should have a heart-to-heart. See, I’m tired. Tired of the games. You wanna gun for me? You want my patients? You want notches in your belt, the spotlight, the media leaving messages on your voice mail. Right?”

  Xavier shook his head, aghast.

  “Nnn—”

  “Sure you do,” I said. I hunkered lower, leaning in. “You’re hungry, ambitious. You’re stuck in this shithole with the rest of us, and you want out, wanna move up, cruise around in your Corvette, live in your Dream House. I dig it. I’m not wired for it, but I dig it. But you listen to me, Doctor Xavier. If you’re gonna screw me over, be a man about it. Tell me. Or go through proper channels. Hell, have the stones to suggest a collaboration; it might be interesting. But don’t slither and scheme and think that I’m not gonna find out about it. And don’t think that I won’t get pissed off about it.”

  I stood up now. My finger tapped another button on the elevator panel. I extended my hand to him.

  “Do we have an understanding?”

  Xavier grimaced at my grubby paw, at the filth under my fingernails. He pulled himself up on his own, ignoring my gesture. The elevator groaned and shuddered as it slowed.

  A static-filled roar blared from beneath Xavier’s white lab coat. We both looked down, equally shocked by the noise.

  “—ach Taylor must not be allowed access to Martin Grace’s room,” my father’s voice barked from the Brinkvale-issued walkie-talkie.

  “He’s en route via elevator. Say again: Zach Tay—”

  “Aw, shit,” I said.

  Xavier’s face went wicked. “Fuck you, Taylor,” he snapped, sidestepping around me, circling toward the doors. “You’re gonna be so fired after I’m done with you.”

  The doors slid open. He turned around to check our location.

  I snatched the radio from the man’s belt and gave him a quick shove. Xavier yelped, staggering into the hallway of Level 3.

  He whirled around, fuming.

  “I don’t think you’ll have the satisfaction,” I said as the doors began to close. “Level 3, more than halfway there now. I’ll probably be shitcanned by lunchtime. Meet me topside then. We’ll scrap in the parking lot then grab beers. My treat, pardner.”

  Xavier gaped at me, his world turned upside-down.

  “You’re mad,” he whispered.

  The doors clanked shut. The elevator chugged on. I glared at the walkie-talkie in my hand, sweating. Seconds. I had seconds to come up with something. My Spock side had apparently taken a vow of silence.

  And then the answer crackled from my hand.

  “Belay that. Hoffacker, listen to me,” Peterson’s voice said. “Zachary has thirty minutes with his patient. You will permit him his …”

  Unintelligible barks, off-mic. And then:

  “ … No, Mr. Taylor. Your meticulous paperwork says noon, and noon it shall be. Hoffacker, I say again: Let Zachary pass. One half-hour.”

  I smiled. Heard a manic titter escape my lips.

  You’re mad, Xavier had said.

  “We’ll see,” I said, “just how mad I can get.” _

  The doors opened on Level 5. Max’s hallway was blissfully flicker-free. I strode past the nurse’s station, passing Annie Jackson, the victim of another double shift, and she called my name, waving her radio, wishing me luck with whatever I was about to do. I waved back and kept moving, now nearing Chaz Hoffacker and Room 507.

  The guard’s arms were crossed. He gave a surly frown, flabby jowls sagging. He looked like a constipated bulldog.

  “Would you feel any better about this,” I said, “if I promise to give ‘Ziggy’ another chance?”

  Chaz harrumphed and unlocked the door.

  I asked my anti-self for another shot of rabble-rouser indignation, one last trick up my torn sleeve, and stepped inside.

  Room 507’s lights were on this morning—whether that was due to the impending transfer or Richard Drake’s nigh-catatonic state, I couldn’t tell. But gone was the ex-spook’s haughty pride and ramrod-straight posture. He sagged in his wooden chair, chin resting upon his chest. His graceful hands, usually folded in his lap, hung at his sides, boneless and swaying. His breathing was thick, sleepy sounding.

  The living dead. Just like me.

  I turned back to Chaz. “Did they medicate him?”

  “What do I look like, Trapper John, M.D.?”

  “Damn it, did they sedate my patient or not?”

  The guard shrugged.

  “Dunno. Don’t think so. Doesn’t look like he needs it.” Chaz closed and locked the door.

  And then it was me and Drake and the murals on the wall.

  I didn’t tug the second chair and place it in front of him, like before. I stood.

  I snarled.

  “You cold-hearted son of a bitch,” I said. “I told you I’d help you even if it killed me—and it nearly did. I went up to your boy’s house, just like you wanted me to. Found a letter with a photo, sent to that address a year after you’d abandoned your son. It shot down my pet theory. According to the U.S. government, Alexandrov is dead. Whatever else you wanted me to see is gone. Daniel burned them. Just like you wanted to burn me.

  “It tore me to shreds. I couldn’t see in the dark, but the dark could sure as hell could see me. Which you probably expected.”

  Drake wheezed something. Gibberish.

  “And that leaves me with two options,” I said. “The first is the one you know oh-so-well, the one that pitted me and mine against your monster. Option one? You’re insane. You deserve to be doped up for the rest of your days, haunted by that fucking creature, tormented in your stupor. You think this is bad? You ain’t seen nothing yet, blind man. Yes. Insane. Unsound. Soft in the head.”

  The patient gave a high moan. He shifted in his chair.

  “That’s right, Richard. You’re not deaf. You heard me. You’re a bowl of soggy Froot Loops. You’re out of your mind.”

  Drake began to mutter something. I stopped talking and watched his quivering lips form the words. “Hhhhh,” he said.

  White vapor streamed from his mouth.

  Oh …

  The chill blasted over me like a gale-force wind, and I stumbled a half-step backward, instinctively clutching my arms, suddenly shivering. The air was brittle, so cold it burned.

  “ … no,” I said. My teeth were chattering.

  “Hhhhh.” The vapor swirled around Drake’s face like cigarette smoke now. He chuckled, a manic, broken sound. “Hhhhere. Arrrrk Man. Here. I … can … feel him.”

  His head flung back as if he’d been hung from the gallows. H
is green eyes flashed open and stared at the ceiling, stared at something a thousand miles above. My furor had been supplanted by fear. Chitter-chitter went my teeth.

  And the walls themselves replied: Tktktk. Tktktk. TKTKTK …

  The light above flickered, buzzed, did what it had done three days ago—but there were new things here now, things that weren’t here during the last light show, the last hellshow, I run the red show, and Jesus Christ almighty, they were moving, turning sour, dying.

  I stared in stone-cold terror as the murals’ colorful, manic lines and blobs came to life, swirling, breathing and undulating, rippling like water. The colors withered as I watched, transforming into a charcoal gray, two walls’ worth of Zach sketches, animated like a Disney film, chaotic and beautiful and terrible.

  The gray lines were black now. They coalesced into arm-thick scribbles that twitched and jigged, swirling like giant ghoul’s eyes, cinderblock snakes. Some were slow, sliding toward the floor like refrigerated syrup—spoiled, bubbling with black curds.

  But much of the dancing blackness was fast. Liquified panther.

  The goop, glittering like crude oil in the strobing light, splashed down with a soul-chilling slurp. It became a shifting mass of pain-bringing things as it writhed on the cracked tile floor: barbs, razors, knives, claws, incisors, all black and wet. I lost a little of my mind in that glimmering, shimmering madness.

  “Richard …” I whispered.

  The cinderblock snakes flopped to the floor now, quivering and gelatinous, leaving ink snail-trails on the walls … and the onyx pool rushed to absorb them, hungry to be made whole. It wasn’t one voice that spoke now. It was legion.

  Tktkpaytktkplaytktkilllnow

  The frigid air was thinner now, harder to breathe. The obsidian pool rose and flattened, dimensionless once more. Black flame, charred paper, Butoh dance-arms, seesaw-seesaw rocking head.

  The light strobed on and on, flashing against black teeth, black pearl, black fingers, long, longer now—growing longer still.

  “ … told you you’d die …” Drake said. “ … hhhhere … with me … .”

  Not going to die, I thought. No one else is going to die.

  I whirled back to my patient. I hissed my words through blue lips.