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  PRAISE FOR THE CELEBRATED AND CHILLING NOVELS BY JOHN SKIPP AND CRAIG SPECTOR

  “Slam-bang-no-holds barred horror for those with stout hearts and strong stomachs.” —T.E.D. Klein

  “Skipp and Spector give you the worst kind of nightmares.” —George Romero

  FROM THE CITY OF DREAMS, A BOX FULL OF NIGHTMARES ..

  They were coming up the stairs.

  He didn’t know what they were, what they looked like, how they moved. He didn’t want to know. They made noises that his mind rejected as unreal, though his heart and mind knew better. They skittered and slithered and fluttered and muttered and howled like brain-damaged hyenas from Hell.

  One of them made the walls shake as it approached.

  I will not move, he urged himself with a silent, sickly whining voice.

  I will not scream …

  Bantam Books by John Skipp and Craig Spector:

  THE LICHT AT THE END

  THE CLEANUP

  THE SCREAM

  BANTAM BOOKS

  TORONTO * NEW YORK * LONDON * SYDNEY * AUCKLAND

  DEAD LINES A Bantam Book / January 1989

  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following lyrics: “This Must Be The Place” copyright (c) 1986 Index Music, Bleu Disque Music Co. Inc. Administered by WB Music Corp. All rights reserved. Used by permission. “Take Me To The River” by Al Green i? Mabon Hodges, copyright (c) 19T4. 1978 Irving Music Inc. i? Al Green Music. Inc. (BMI)All rights reserved. International copyright sectired. “Solitude Standing,” “Language,” and “Woodenhorse.” mtisic and lyrics by Suzanne Vega. Copyright (c) 1987 by AGF Music Ltd JWaifer-songg Ltd. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 1988 by John Skipp and Craig Spector. Cover art copyright (c) 1988 by Don Brmitigam. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books.

  ISBN 0-553-27633-6

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the worth “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in US. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 666 Fifth Avenue, New York. Netv York 10103.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  KR 0987654321

  For Mikel Jean

  and

  For Lori

  … with love.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Once again, we’d like to waste valuable wood pulp extending warmest thanks and appreciation to our families and friends for their love, support, and sheer endurance, with special thanks for:

  Adele Leone and Richard Monaco; Lou Aronica, Pat LoBrutto, janna Silverstein, Laura Nixon, Susan Sherman and all the other fine folks at Bantam; Marianne and Melanie, Lori, Linda, Beth and Tappan, JK, Joe and Greg, the Fango gang, Matt and Alii, only sister Kim (for the title assistance), Dave Schow (for the triple-digit phone bills), Everett Burrell and Tom Savini (for the icky pictures), Mr. Page 511 and Mr. Wraparound (just for being themselves), Chris and Mango (for animal antics), Phil Nutman, Jesse Horsting, Bob Sabat, Beth Gwinn, Leslie and Adam, that Amazing Invisible Krafty Polekat, the guys n’ gals at the Edgar Street Bookland Video, and all Steves everywhere.

  Portions of this book have previously appeared in Twilight Zone, Night Cry, Borderland, The Architecture of Fear, and The Year’s Best Fantasy. We’d like to thank everyone involved. Even Stubby.

  SERIOUS AUTHOR NOTES

  Now that John Skipp and Craig Spector have achieved Serious Author status, they want the world to know that they have changed. Grown up. Matured. Gotten … well, serious.

  For example, you’ll notice the absence of a funny author cartoon, as provided in the past by Leslie Sternbergh. Not this time. They’ve outgrown that. Also missing are the whimsical so-called “facts” so prominent in their previous bios, such as, “Skipp enjoys body surfing, so long as the bodies are fresh,” or “Spector s ‘Caramel/Drano Puff Balls’ are a perennial holiday favorite.” AU contraire. As Serious Authors, they have a standard to bear, a great responsibility to themselves and to us all.

  And, yes, they know this all too well. Today’s John Skipp and Craig Spector are caring, concerned, socially committed. They’re vibrant, magnetic. They just say “No.” They have little tweed patches on the elbows of their leather jackets. They are every mother’s dream.

  John Skipp. Craig Spector.

  Think about it.

  .......JULY

  They say that New York is the city that never sleeps, and in certain respects that’s true.

  On the other hand, one might also say that New York is a city that never awakens from its long, strange dream of power. They call it the city of dreams, after all; never citing, or minding, the contradiction.

  But you know how they are.

  If you ask me, there are other truths: less often said, but closer to the point. Of all of them, I’d settle on this:

  New York is the city that eats its young, with high-rise teeth and pavement tongue.

  I came.

  I saw.

  I was digested.

  John Paul Rowan July 15th

  1

  JACK IN THE BOX

  Jack wanted only two things out of life, as he watched the sun throw long shadows across the floor leading up to the ladder. He wanted another drink.

  And he wanted the rope to be nice and tight.

  Actually, he’d have opted for a good deal more than that, but Life was a bitch. Life had whittled him down until there didn’t seem to be much that Jack felt up to grabbing at, nothing that wasn’t chock-full to the rafters with pain and pointlessness and rancid, gray despair. No lifelines. No callbacks. No eleventh-hour reprieves.

  No, he’d decided, those two would suffice.

  First things first: a drink. Something strong. He was fairly sure Glen had left a bottle of peppered Finlandia around somewhere. Probably stashed in the freezer, along with the exotic concentrates and the Stouffer’s frozen entrees and the other reasonably nonperishable goodies that would remain preserved, like a woolly mammoth in a Pleistocene ice floe, until Glen returned from his latest bicoastal expedition.

  Glen was like that, Jack knew; he kept his shit wired tight. He’d strike off for la-la land, for weeks unto months on end, secure in the knowledge that no matter how far he strayed in pursuit of his next double-platinum album shoot or magazine cover or MTV video-verite technofest, his funky, stylish loft slash studio would be waiting: the fridge all full, the bills all paid, the CD and the TV and the black-leather passion pit all snug and warm and willing. He was as different from Jack as the sun and the moon. As success and failure.

  As life and death.

  Yep, Jack knew, Glen would probably have the Finlandia tucked into the far left corner of the icebox, right next to the frozen lime juice and the turkey tetrazzini. He checked. Bingo. The liquid inside was slimy green and viscous: itty bits of deadly jalapeno had been stewing within since roughly last October. Fire and Ice, they called it, and Glen always kept some ready for those moments of ritual self-destruction that swept down from time to time.

  Jack pried the bottle out of the freezer’s glacial expanse with no small amount of effort, ice clinging in frozen fingers from its base and sides. A few of the heavier shards fell chattering to the floor, where he crunched them under bared feet. He felt it as he felt everything else in his existence: too intense, like rock salt on raw flesh. And like everything els
e, he took it in.

  But all that was about to change.

  Jack plunked back down on the sofa and stared at the phone, which was slim and black and had lots of buttons. It was a fiber-optic marvel, capable of performing any number of great and important high-tech tasks: it could record messages, wash the dishes, feet the cat, or juggle upwards of a dozen people at once, like the Amazing Wallendas or something. Yep, it could do anything.

  Except maybe ring when he needed it to. Like now, for instance.

  Oh, well. Fuggit. He didn’t expect he’d be hearing from her again. That was all ancient history now. He held the bottle up to the light. It glowed, amber-green. This was his favorite time of day, no doubt: when the sun’s rays were longest, and everything they touched seemed to burn like polished brass. As if lit from within. As if aflame. He couldn’t have picked a better time, he decided. The light transformed the bottle into a magical vessel; the liquid inside, the purest ambrosia.

  He looked up at the ladder to his right, which stood poised and ready to bear his weight. It was glowing, too. Anticipation? Perhaps. Whatever. It would wait for him.

  Just a little bit longer.

  Immediately before him was the coffee table, which held the clutter that had come to symbolize his life. The telephone that refused to ring. The ashtray, filled as ever to overflowing. The blank white sheets of bonded paper. His trusty Smith-Corona. The cardboard cathedral— his dead-tree legacy—was already sealed and hidden away. The only words he had left to say, he would say now.

  Or forever hold his peace.

  The typewriter hummed, a crisp white sheet of Strathmore Bond unsullied in its grasp. Hell of a time for writer’s block. “Oh well. Here’s to you, Pop.” He gestured grandly, toasting the fading sky. “Must be in the goddam DNA.”

  He took a long pull straight out of the bottle, felt his sinuses drain in self-defense as first his gullet caught fire, then his stomach, then on, and on, clear down into his emptied bowels.

  “Feh!” He winced. “Oh shit, that burns…” Every inch of the vodka’s wake was ablaze as it churned its way home to his bladder, burning like Sherman marching to the sea. The cloud in his brain was an opaque, instantaneous buzz that burgeoned in the center of his forehead, soft and hot and dimly throbbing. It was good. He leaned forward, fingers hovering above the keys, and typed:

  TODAY IS THE LAST DAY OF THE REST OF MY LIFE

  “Nah,” he muttered, yanking the page. “Too facile.” He crumpled it up, fed another sheet in. This was gonna be a bitch. He had to get it right the first time, because the opportunity for a rewrite looked pretty slim. “How ‘bout, Dear Glen. Thanks for letting me crash here. Sorry ‘bout the mess. “

  He squinted up at the rope.

  It was top quality, scored down on the west side of Canal Street, which was always a good place for hardware bargains: fifty yards for a buck ninety-nine, more than enough good stout nylon cord. He’d considered going natural, but nylon was stronger. It would hold more weight, and longer. The last thing he wanted was a botched attempt, to end up in a fractured heap on the floor. Where was the style in that?

  Jack had come to rely on style. Not the ephemeral, transient trash that fed the fashion machines and media mavens. Piss on that. No, he was talking true style here: the unmistakable voice, the unreplicatable signature. The mark that he would leave on the world.

  As muses go, style had staying power. It had driven him long after the hope of Love or Honor or Understanding had knuckled feebly under to the mean streets and cold sheets of his life. It honed itself within him until it was sharp as a blade of Madagascar steel, and twice as hard; until he could thrust it, Arthurian-like, straight into the stone his own heart had become.

  And it would not accept failure.

  It would not accept defeat.

  It prodded him: to do it right, to forgo food and then enema up til his belly and bowels were yawningly empty, the better to be certain he’d leave no embarrassingly telltale chocolate trail down the back of his pants at that inevitable loss of control. No style in that. You’d better believe it.

  No goddam style at all.

  Beside him on the sofa sat a fat book, profusely illustrated and imposingly titled. Part of Glen’s vast reference library, sick fucker that he was. The cover was antiseptically white and unappealing, the words set in a plain red type, evidence that the publishers felt no need to hype an audience; that those who sought the contents knew exactly what they were looking for. A ripped-open envelope served as a bookmark, sandwiched between the pages after sex crimes and airline disasters but before gunshot wounds and automobile accidents.

  Forensic Pathology:

  The Medicolegal Implications of Death

  Volume III

  Catchy title, Jack thought. He took another hit off the bottle and flipped the book open to the marked chapter.

  Page after well-thumbed page of text rolled by, in clinically obsessive case-by-case detail, interspersed with postmortem portraits of the only souls in the book who actively auditioned for their part.

  Jack couldn’t help but hold them in contempt. They all looked so weak and sad: a cavalcade of the lost, each of whom was saved from complete oblivion—not on the basis of their great works or good hearts or fine family name, but on pure and simple accident of technique. Whether gun or pill, razor or rope, each had done something— some tiny variation on the theme—that set them apart and made them, if not special, then at least noteworthy.

  But did they have style?

  Ah, that was the question.

  Jack was not inclined to think so. His new peers, as reflected by Forensic Pathology, were a sorry, threadbare lot: largely illiterate, incapable of articulating what drove them to the brink beyond the barest, hastily scrawled sentiment—i am sory please forgive me god will hate me o god im so sory.

  Jack had no such illusions, about gods or forgiveness, and no one left to apologize to. Fuck God. And piss on forgiveness. God had not lifted so much as His finger to help these people in this their hour of need. Jack knew better than to even ask.

  And as for what had driven him to this, the answer was simple as simple could be: When he had stared into the abyss too long, he found it staring back.

  And Jack blinked.

  Suddenly, inspiration struck. Oh, wonder of wonders: his muse had stuck around til the bitter end. He leaned over and typed furiously for a moment, then sat back and sadly smiled. A masterpiece of understatement.

  Perfecto.

  Which meant that the time had come.

  It’s time, he thought, and the moment jarred. No more excuses, and nothing left to do. He looked at the bottle, thought about taking a farewell swig. There was no point. He left it go.

  Then he turned off the typewriter, got to his feet, walked over to the ladder, and started to climb.

  His legs shook on the way up, which surprised him. He actually lost his balance a bit near the top, and scuttled to regain his footing. An adrenaline rush flooded his senses, making his heart pound in his ears. The irony of it all was not lost on him—that he could be so prepared to die, and yet flinch at the prospect of falling. Wouldn’t want to break a leg or anything, might spoil the suicide. A little gallows humor, hyuk hyuk hyuk.

  The view from the top was very high; it occurred to him that most people in his place would opt to tippy-toe off the perch like a swimmer inching into a freezing pool, or kick over the ladder and let gravity do their dirty work, or just piss their pants and crawl back down and wait for old age to claim them.

  Not Jack. No fucking way.

  Only a swan dive would do.

  He reached the last step, calves trembling, and reached for the rope, for tenuous balance. Fear and anticipation did a Keith Moon solo on his heart, going bubbada-bubbada-bubbada-bubbada in mad, terminal polyrhythms. He noted, appalled by the perversity of it, that he hadn’t felt this alive in ages.

  The rope felt waxen and slick in his hands. He placed it carefully—carefully—around his neck. I
t occurred to him that it would probably rip off one of his ears if he lost his balance and fell before it was properly seated. That did not pose a pretty picture. No style in that. Oh, jesus god…

  A sense of perspective was sinking in. He was standing on a ladder, with a rope around his neck. Is this trip really necessary? lisped across his consciousness in Daffy Duck’s voice. When he laughed, there were tears in his eyes.

  Yes, he was definitely getting scared. No, he amended, scared didn’t quite cover it. Petrified, maybe. Or abject terror. He looked at the bottle of Finlandia below, had second thoughts about that final swig

  (don’t be a wimp, just do it)

  as he pulled the cord over his head, tightening it at the base of his skull. He closed his eyes, could see himself swinging, and

  (do it)

  his hands reached out to heaven, as if the Big Guy’s

  booming voice might rescue him just in the nick of time, and

  (DO IT)

  suddenly he was flying.

  For an instant, it was almost like he’d pictured it: time stretching like an old rubber band as he hurtled toward the floor, the wind whipping past, feeling that nine-alarm adrenaline surge that screamed holyshitireallyfuckingdidit…

  … then came the unforgiving snap, as the rope played crack-the-whip with his spinal column, shearing the vertebrae at the juncture of head and neck with an audible pop. .

  .. . and then there was nothing but white heat and pain, incredible pain, incomprehensible pain, rendering him oblivious to the whirligig motion, oblivious to his body’s swing back into the ladder, the ladder’s collision with Glen’s big-screen TV, the shower of sparks and glass that littered the carpet beneath his spinning legs, his legs which wouldn’t stop kicking…