Darkbound 2014.06.12 Read online

  "You go away!" she hollered, her voice thickly accented with the warm tones of tropical upbringing. "No one wants you here!"

  "What right do you have –?" began Freddy. Then Jim found out what had caused the creep to jump and stab himself with his candy in the first place as the older woman unleashed a quick double kick with her right foot, slamming a thick orthopedic shoe into each of Freddy's shins.

  "Shut up," she shouted, punctuating each word with a kick. "Go away, pervert."

  "Pervert?" Freddy looked genuinely horrified. "I'm no pervert. I think kids are… they're angels. They're perfect angels. I coach the soccer team for Christ's – Ow!" He broke into another scream as the old lady tagged him with another kick.

  "Don' you take the Lord's name in vain!" she said, shaking a withered finger in his face as Freddy hopped from one foot to another as though unsure which one deserved more babying. It was a comical scene, and one that Jim would have laughed at if he hadn't been so close to freaking out less than a second ago: the pedophile being faced down by the black-clad old lady who looked like some bizarre escapee from a Mexican ninja training camp, said pedophile doing the hokey-pokey while desperately trying to salvage what remained of his lollipop.

  "What the hell's wrong with – ow!"

  Another kick.

  "You gonna curse, too?" shrieked the old woman. "You one of those naughty boys who needs to be all 'F this' and 'A that' and 'Double-S on those'?" More kicks. Bam-bam-bam. Her voice was starting to rise, moving toward a hysterical shriek, and Jim wondered if Freddy might not be the only crazy on the subway platform: the old lady seemed like she might have a bagful of cats hidden somewhere nearby – or maybe it was an invisible bag and she was already holding it.

  Then Jim saw her eyes. There was a twinkle in them. She was enjoying herself. And not in the maniacal way that the crazies did, not in the way of those who belonged to the Cult of the Tinfoil Hats and Commandeered Brainwaves. No, he could see now that this little woman was in total control of herself. But she had found someone who needed a bit of a talking-to – or shin-kicking – and having found such a person, she was enjoying herself immensely.

  Jim started to smile, the look coming over him unconsciously, but she caught his gaze and gave the smallest shake of her head – a motion so minute that he was certain no one else could have detected it. He understood instantly: it was one thing for him to know what she was doing. But if they were to get rid of Freddy, this had to seem serious.

  The latina kept kicking at the geek, flailing at his legs with her heavy leather footwear until he retreated across the platform. He veered away from the beautiful woman like she was a Gucci-wearing cattle prod. That wasn't surprising, Jim thought: many pedophiles were threatened by anyone who was assured, confident-seeming. It was one of the reasons they turned to children in the first place: they knew they could bully them into subservience, into silence, into invisibility and ultimately into dissolution.

  Freddy moved toward the black guy, but the gangbanger cracked his knuckles and that was enough to send the geek scuttling away, past the gangbanger and then the huge white man, until he had practically disappeared in the shadow of a supporting column at the far end of the platform.

  Jim felt sick. He wished there was something he could call the cops about. Something he could get Freddy in trouble for. But what was he going to do? Call 911 and then say, "Yes, I'd like to report a man looking at a picture of my little girl"? That would just get him in trouble. And he didn't want that, either.

  He looked away from Freddy. Back to the Hispanic gal. She was still staring at Freddy, looking at the man who was now all but hidden in the shadows at the other end of the platform like he was a dangerous life form.

  That's not far off, thought Jim.

  There was no doubt in his mind Freddy was a child molester. He had all the signs. Not just the outfit, but other things. He was fixated on sweets, he had a childlike way of expressing himself. He spoke of children in terms that were over-idyllic, almost worshipful. Looking at him was like looking at a textbook of pedophilia made flesh.

  Without looking away from the creep, the old woman said, "I see him looking at your picture. I don't like him."

  "I don't like him, either."

  The air on the platform changed. It was hard to explain to someone who had never experienced it, but you could almost feel the subway train approaching. Certainly there was sound, but even before that the atmosphere got heavier, as though the train was pushing the air before it and compressing the air on the platform, so you were bearing up under more than usual. And yet at the same time you could feel oxygen sucking out of your lungs. Pushing, pulling, pulling, pushing. It was an impossible set of contradicting experiences, but they were real.

  Then the sound came, a rushing noise, the sound of electricity humming and crackling a thousand times a second, the sound of metal wheels on metal tracks that had borne such loads a million million times and would do so a million million more.

  Jim was traveling a path he traveled every day. So he'd done his "pre-walking" – a term that some New Yorkers used to describe getting to the part of the subway train that would have them disembarking the subway at the point closest to the gate they needed. Doing so saved precious moments in a place where every second seemed to count far too much.

  In Jim's case, doing so meant he had taken a position at the end of the platform closest to the place where the subway would emerge from the tunnel. That was why he only got the quickest glimpse of the driver. If he'd been standing at the other end of the platform – where Freddy was sulking, or even where the gangbanger or the big man or the lawyer were standing – he would have been able to see it longer.

  But not here. Not at the very spot where the train emerged. Here he just saw it for a split-second.

  Jim looked over at his tiny savior, at the feisty Hispanic woman who had rescued him from the unwelcome attentions of Freddy. He didn't know why he looked at her.

  No, that's a lie, Jim. Don't do that. Don't lie to yourself. You're looking to see if she saw it, too.

  There was no way. No way she would have seen it. No way she could have seen it. There was nothing to see.

  But as Jim looked, the woman crossed herself. She touched her fingers to her lips and kissed them and whispered something under her breath. Then she turned her face to him – a face grown noticeably paler in the last second – and said, "Did you see it? Did you see the demon?"

  TWO

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  Jim shook his head. "No. No, I didn't see a demon."

  But then what had he seen?

  He looked at the woman again, the little woman who had seemed so imperturbable only a moment before, who had faced down someone that Jim knew in his gut was undoubtedly a child molester without so much as blinking an eye. Now she was sweating visibly, even in the cold winter air.

  Think, Jim. Just be calm, just think.

  The train had come out of the tunnel. It had come out like it always did, with that sound like an ocean wave in need of oiling, with that rush of hot-cold air that push-pulled the wind around it. Everything normal.

  Except the skull.

  The trains on this line ran with a driver, who sat in a small compartment at the front of the lead car. The compartment was sealed off from the rest of the train –

  Thank you very much, 9/11!

  – but you could see the driver's face and torso through the small window that was just to one side of the subway car's center line. The drivers came in all shapes and sizes: fat, thin, tall, short, white, black, Asian, Hispanic, and everything in between.

  But this driver…. This one had been different. He'd been wearing the usual outfit. The usual reflective vest. The usual MTA transit hat that always looked to Jim like it was somehow stuck in a place halfway between "quaint" and "obsolete."

  But below the hat, where Jim should have seen a face, should have seen a bored New York expression readying itself
for one more leg of an endless-seeming shift, he saw only pale white bone, a fleshless skull. The skull swiveled toward him in the instant the subway train emerged from the tunnel. The eyes were black, and the train passed so fast that Jim shouldn't have been able to seen any detail.

  But he did. Or at least, he saw an impression of detail.

  Snakes. Bodies writhing. Liquid pouring over mouths agape and drowning. A fire that was hot but did not warm, flames that burnt but at the same time snuffed out all light. All these Jim thought he glimpsed in the skull's eye sockets, in those black pits above the widely grinning teeth and hollow nasal cavity.

  Then it was past. Gone. A piece of memory. Imagination.

  Impossibility.

  "The demon," repeated the old woman beside him. "Did you see it?"

  Jim forced a smile onto his face. "No." And as he said it, it became real. So many things can be forced away through the power of denial. Even truth.

  "He looked like…." She crossed herself again. "He looked like a skull."

  "Probably just a skinny guy and some bad morning lighting. Plus I haven't had my first coffee of the day yet, so I just assume anything I see is bad lighting."

  The woman looked at him with naked hope in her eyes. "You think?"

  "I know," he said. And then, as much to take his mind and the conversation away from what he had just seen, he offered his arm. "I'm Jim."

  The woman almost fell onto him. She wrapped both arms around his for a moment, then seemed to remember her dignity. She straightened and let one of her hands fall away from him, though she kept her closest arm twined through the crook of his elbow. "Adolfa," she said. She said something else, perhaps her last name, but the train shrieked to a halt and he didn't hear it.

  "Charmed," he said, and tipped an imaginary hat to her before leading her toward the train. "Back car all right?"

  She nodded. Jim looked over. Gorgeous lawyer, gangbanger, scary white dude, and Freddy the Perv all looked like they were headed for different train cars. Which was fine by Jim. None of them seemed like the kind of people he wanted to sit down and share secrets or become Bestest Friends with at the moment.

  He led Adolfa to the doors of the back car. Or better said, he tried to lead her: about halfway there he realized that she was actually leading him. Realizing this, and reflecting on how she had handled Freddy, he wondered if he would be able to take her in a prize fight, best two out of three. He decided an experienced Bronx bookie would give him the edge, but only barely.

  The doors of the back car slid open. He waited for the current passengers to disembark, then saw that there was no one in the car.

  "Never seen that before," he said.

  "What?"

  Jim almost leapt out of his shoes. He hadn't been aware he had spoken aloud. "The car. It's early, but usually there are at least a few people getting off."

  Adolfa smiled. She patted his arm with her free hand. "More privacy for us, mi hijo."

  He grinned at her. "You flirting with me?"

  She waved him away with a gesture that managed to be both playful and prim. "Ay, no. You're too old for me."

  Jim laughed at that, then stepped into the train car. He looked over. The next car could be seen through the dividing doors. A few people in it, maybe ten or twelve.

  "This must be the car for the lower class," he said.

  "No," said Adolfa. Gesturing to the commuters in the other car, she added, "This is far too exclusivo for them. None of them could afford this place."

  Jim laughed again. He liked this old gal. He waved grandly, a sweeping bow toward one of the plastic chairs that was held to the wall partly by bolts and epoxy, partly by hardened gum. "Please do sit, milady." He did his best to affect an upper-crust accent, but suspected it came out sounding like Thurston Howell from Gilligan's Island, if good ol' Thurston had just had a root canal.

  Adolfa sat down. She immediately leaned over to massage her calves. Grimacing, she said, "Don't get old."

  "I don't think I'll be able to avoid it."

  She looked like she was going to respond, but there was a double tap of heels on metal as someone came into the car. Jim and Adolfa both looked at the sound and saw the gorgeous woman enter the car, the high heels of her expensive boots ringing sharply on the subway flooring. She barely glanced at them before moving halfway down the car. She leaned against a support pole and immediately began texting on her cell phone.

  Jim was struck again by how beautiful the woman was. Not like his Carolyn – no one was like her – but beautiful, nonetheless. She was dark, with olive skin and eyebrows that were thick without being bushy. Her hair was lustrous and hung in waves to a point just past her shoulders. She reeked of class. Money. A girl on the move, on the make.

  Jim looked back at Adolfa. The old woman was also looking at the newcomer. "Pretty," said Adolfa.

  "Very."

  "Why she not get on the other car, I wonder?"

  Jim shrugged. He would have pointed out that asking a New Yorker about their choice of subway car was definitely against the unspoken etiquette book that every person in the city somehow had downloaded into their brains within their first month of residency, but suspected that Adolfa already knew that.

  Another set of hollow thumps announced the entry of another passenger onto the train car.

  It was the gangbanger. He entered the car with a grunt that spoke of his annoyance and clearly communicated the fact that this wasn't his first choice of travel accommodations. Like the lawyer, though, he moved past Jim and Adolfa before either of them could have spoken even if they were so inclined.

  And right behind him was the huge white man. Up close he was even more formidable than he had previously appeared. At first, Jim had taken him for a meatpacker who'd made good. Now, he realized that the man looked more like a dock worker. His face was tough and leathery, though not suntanned. Indeed, he wasn't tanned at all. No, what gave his skin its leathery impression was the fact that it was criss-crossed with dozens of thin scars, as though someone had gone at him with an extremely fine razor blade long ago.

  The huge man ducked to get through the doors. His eyes flicked up and down the subway car, took in its occupants in an instant, then he sat down across the aisle from Adolfa and Jim. He closed his eyes. Jim had the impression, though, that the man was about as asleep as a member of a bomb squad working on defusing a tactical nuke with a hole-punch and a Swiss Army Knife.

  Two softer thuds pulled Jim's attention away from the big man. He looked over to the still-open subway doors –

  (why are they still open, they never stay open this long, how long are we going to wait before we just get going?)

  – but even before he shifted his gaze, he knew what he'd see. Freddy.

  Adolfa started to stand, and Jim could see from the murderous gleam in her eyes that another round of shin-kicking was in the offing.

  Freddy must have seen it, too, because his hands went up. "Whoa, whoa," he said. A disgusting whine had crept into his voice. "Do you think I want to be here?" His voice cracked in the middle of the question. Jim smelled the man's odor, that candy-infused scent, and had to concentrate on quelling the nausea that accompanied it. He didn't want to add the reek of vomit to the air.

  Freddy took a nervous chew of his lollipop, which by now was little more than a white paper stick with a ragged purple ring on the top. He gestured with it to the platform outside. "All the other cars are stuck," he said.

  "What?" said Jim.

  "Stuck," repeated Freddy. "The doors won't open."

  "Baloney," said Adolfa. The word sounded funny coming from her, but the look in her eyes was anything but. She started to stand again.

  Freddy's hands started waving frantically. He could have taken first place in a jazz-hands competition. "No, I swear, I swear," he said. He took a half-step back, seemed to realize that would have him outside the subway car, then moved back in. "None of the other doors opened."

  "Ba-lo-ney," repeated Adolfa. S
he pulled herself fully upright, using a pole for support. Or maybe, Jim thought, she was just getting ready to use it as extra leverage to kick Freddy the Perv off the train.

  "Is true," said a deep voice.

  Jim looked at the older man across the car. His eyes were still closed, his thick arms crossed across a barrel chest. But it was definitely him who had spoken. And he did so again. His voice was seeped in an accent that Jim couldn't quite place. He thought it might be Russian, or perhaps Armenian or Hungarian. Certainly something from that neck of the woods. "Is why we get on this car. Other doors refused open."

  "How is that possible?" Jim said. He looked down the car's length, through the dividing doors; saw the dozen or so commuters in the other car. "How did they get in the car?"

  The huge man cracked a single eye. It only opened about halfway, but that was more than enough to show a dangerous glitter. "You call Olik a liar?" said the man – Olik.

  "No," said Jim. He felt suddenly like doing one of those cartoon gulps, maybe even pulling at his collar with his forefinger. "No, not at all." He looked at the people in the other car. Normal early morning commuters. Coats, hats. Black, white, brown. Rich, poor. New Yorkers. "Just… wondering what's going on."

  Olik's eye slowly closed. "Not important. Train goes to where we need. Is all that matters."

  "Yeah, see?" Freddy stepped tentatively forward. "That's all that matters, right?"

  As though they had been waiting for Freddy to do this, the doors slid shut. The train lurched forward. Freddy was caught off guard by the sudden motion and had to scramble to grab a support pole.

  Adolfa, light and steady on her feet as a cat, sank back to her seat with a grin, clearly amused at Freddy's inability to stay upright. She winked at Jim.

  Jim didn't feel like smiling. The day wasn't a laughing one. Not after the fight he'd had with Carolyn and Maddie.

  Besides, the trains on this line usually had a piped-in announcement system that said when the train was going to leave, where it was headed, when it would probably get there. None of that had happened.

  And the doors to the other cars hadn't opened? What was that about?