In This Skin (14 page)

    ”I don't want to go home,”she said. ”Besides, I left Mom a letter to say I was leaving.”

    ”I'm sure she wouldn't mind-”

    ”That I come crawling back to her? No, she wouldn't mind; she'd love it.”

    ”It's late, Robyn.”

    ”We could still find a motel.”

    ”Is that what you want?”

    ”What I really want is not to go home.”

    ”You're money won't last long, Robyn. After a week at a motel, what then? When we can't afford a room?”

    ”I've got my trust fund.”

    ”You said that wasn't released until you're twenty-one.”

    ”Mom said it could be liquidated if we served notice through an attorney." ”Yeah, but you're nineteen; you're still a minor. You need your mother's written consent.”

    ”Shit.”She put her head back on the backrest and gazed up into the fog of shadow. ”No problem. I'll sleep here in the chair tonight.”

    ”Robyn. Be realistic.”

    ”I'm not going back, Noel.”A rock-solid certainty hardened inside of her. ”Listen to me. I'm going to find somewhere to live.”

    The next voice she heard didn't belong to Noel.

    The stranger said: ”Why don't you stay here?”

    

    

    Night had fallen by the time Benedict West pulled into the Luxor's parking lot. He stopped the car with its lights shining on the entrance doors of the dance hall. They brought to life the gold paint detailing and vivid red and blue plaster work that adorned the frontage in the form of a mock Egyptian temple (or was it supposed to be a tomb?). The molded heads of pharaohs gazed down at him with cold, dead eyes.

    OK, he told himself. The plan's simple. Take the lamp from the trunk, crawl into the building through the hole in the door, then search the place for the missing videotape.

    But it's more than that, isn't it? Every time you return here you believe down to the roots of your nerves that you're going to see Mariah skip down those steps (even though logic told him it was impossible, simply because the doors were sealed with heavy-duty boards). Now he realized that the search for the missing Betamax tape was only an excuse to enter the Luxor after five long dead years. If he searched every room, somehow he might miraculously find Mariah in there. In his mind's eye she'd be alive-vivaciously alive at that- with bright, sparkling eyes, her hair gleaming with that just-brushed shine, while her skin would glow with health. There she'd be, slim and beautiful and overjoyed to see him.

    All this diverges from reality, he thought sourly But then, a close relationship with reality was never your strong point was it, Benedict, old buddy? You were an escapist teenager with a love for comic books, Star Trek, Star Wars, prog rock with a cosmic slant. The facts were that if Mariah made a pyrotechnic abracadabra appearance center stage she'd be ten years older-thirty-three, not twenty-three. The other jagged shard of reality he tended to avoid-and he knew it!-was that all those years ago Mariah had walked out on him. She'd quit the relationship, quit the apartment, quit her entire fucking life in Atlantic City to move to Chicago, a place she'd only ever known as a child.

    ”Benedict. Quit brooding. Start searching.”He climbed out of the car with his father's old gas lamp. Despite his attempt to catch hold of the shoe heels of reality, his eyes still roamed over the face of the Egyptian-esque building with its hieroglyphs and dog-headed statues.

    Then he paused. He hadn't noticed that before. A gleam of a metallic surface caught the beams of a distant streetlight. He took a few paces to his right to grab a good look down the side of the building.

    ”That's bombed it,”he whispered to himself. ”So who do you belong to?”

    There, sitting in the night shadow of the building, was a Ford coupe, a fancy model at that, to be here all alone in the lot of a redundant building. Maybe a couple had driven here to make out somewhere quiet?

    Seemed likely Or maybe the car had been dumped after kids had taken it for a joy ride. Also possible. Although car-stealing kids tended to be shy of parking neatly in painted bays. What's more, they tended to flick a lighted match into the car so they could watch the poor machine burn its heart out.

    He wasn't sure whether the car was occupied (seats reclined? Possibly) or the occupants had decided to take a midnight stroll around the Luxor. If that was the case, it would only complicate things if he went blundering in there with his father's old campers lamp hissing light all over the freaking place.

    Shoot. Probably best to kill the lights of his car than sit tight for a while in the hope that they'd get bored and quit the place. Also better to be discreet. After all, he was technically trespassing with intent to steal. Even if he was only entering an abandoned building that was destined to die beneath a wrecker's ball. And what he intended to steal would have a value of less than ten cents, if that.

    Benedict sat back in the car, started the motor, then eased it slowly and quietly to the far side of the lot where the fringe of trees that separated the blacktop from the river cast a protective, and secretive, canopy of branches over his car. There he'd wait. He'd give the sightseers an hour to leave the Luxor. If there was still no sign of them he'd go home and try again tomorrow night. With the engine and car lights off he sat there in silence. This area was an eerie, desolate place. Even though the towers of downtown Chicago were little more than half an hour away, he could have been sat on the far side of the moon.

    Here there were no people, no houses, no traffic. Years ago this had been an industrial zone. Factories, warehouses, smoking chimneys, trucks, goods trains-the works. Now industry had shut down in this part of town. The last factory to close had been three years ago when its owners had transferred the manufacture of computer monitors to Vietnam.

    Labor costs were lower there.

    ”So, welcome to Dead-Endsville,”he murmured as he unwrapped a stick of gum.

    As Benedict sat with the window down to admit the warm night air, he noticed a flake of sooty material drift down in front of the windshield to settle on the hood.

    He allowed his eyes to rest on it for a moment, but it seemed nothing of interest or potential harm to the car's paintwork, so he skimmed his gaze back to the Luxor. The place looked as deserted as ever. Maybe he should risk a peek inside? The owner of the coupe parked on the far side of the building might be snuggling up to the love of his or her life in the vehicle after all.

    A scrap of black spiraled down from the trees above to alight on the windshield. Another joined it. Then another slid down the glass to the wiper blade. He glanced sideward out the open window. Black motes spiraled earthward. A couple more fell whisper-silent in slow motion onto the car's hood.

    Black snow? Benedict leaned forward to take a closer look. More flakes of black stuff rode the warm, stifling air. The sight was uncanny.

    Frowning, he shook his head, trying to makes sense of the freakishly dark snow.

    Black snow that isn't black snow, he told himself. It must be flakes of soot from a fire, or… He held out a hand through the window to catch one of the flakes. Then pulled it close to examine it.

    ”I'll be damned… a feather. But where are you all coming from?”

    Flipping down the glove compartment hatch, he pulled out a slender penlight. Then he leaned his head out through the window while shining the thin beam of light upward into the canopy of branches.

    A deep grunting told him he'd disturbed something that didn't want to be disturbed. Dark shapes moved on the branches, ruffling wings, sending more feathers spiraling down. Tiny eyes like splinters of sharp glass blazed at him.

    ”Good God,”he breathed. ”Crows.”

    There were hundreds of them in the trees. Big black crows. Restlessly, they shifted on their perches. Feathers dislodged from twitchy wings drifted down in that black magic snowfall. What on earth were those birds gathering here for? They could've been assembling for the biggest crow party of the year. Only there was something so antsy about them. They couldn't sit still; they shuffled, some used their wicked yellow beaks to tug a feather from their breasts or even from their backs of their tightly packed neighbors. And, sweet Jesus, crows are satanic-looking things this close up.

    So what's the deal? Why the mass gathering? And what's the collective noun for a bunch of crows? A murder? Yeah, that's it. A murder of crows waiting impatiently for the big event.

    Then, as if a play button had been touched in his mind, he remembered the videotape shot by Lockram, the owner of the Luxor. The old guy had stood in the parking lot, talking to the video camera that he'd set to run by itself. Lockram had discussed the history of this plot of land and how a sawmill had once stood on the site of the Luxor. The man had repeated an old legend that hereabouts people once believed having a flock of crows coming to roost in trees nearby, and on the house itself, was an omen with lethal implications. The gathering crows-a murder of crows-were a sign that someone in the house would soon die. Legend stipulated that the crows waited for the death of the victim so they could catch the soul as it left the body. If they failed to grab the departing soul, the birds would fall into a glum silence before dispersing. If they captured the soul for the devil they'd caw and scream excitedly, and wheel in huge flocks above the house-an airborne victory dance, celebrating the soul's seizure.

    Benedict's eyes flicked from tree to tree, at branches swollen black with the sinister birds. ”Okay, I know why you're here, guys,”Benedict breathed. ”So who's going to die tonight?”

    

    

    After the silence…

    The stranger repeated the words: ”Why don't you stay here?”

    Robyn rose from the chair. She looked about her, searching the shadows for the source of the voice, and all the time she thought of the monstrous figure in the dressing-room doorway How those bulging eyes had blazed at her as she'd run by ”You can stay here.”

    Noel clutched her by the elbow as he swept the light through that cavernous room.

    Good God, she thought, in wonder as much as fear. There was something about that voice… it seemed to ghost here from another world.

    Noel bristled aggression. ”Who's there?”

    A sound came, an intake of breath, as if the unseen man tried to speak but couldn't all of a sudden.

    ”Stop jerking us around,”Noel snapped, still searching the corners with the light. ”Come out here where we can see you!”

    ”Ah… I…”

    Robyn heard strange inflections in the start of the failed sentence.

    Could such a voice come from that weird configuration of a mouth she'd seen on the figure earlier? With lips like the overlapping petals of a blood red rose. She looked around the dance floor, expecting at any moment to see eyes burning with a cold fire.

    ”Hey, buddy!”Noel's voice sharpened with anger. ”Better show yourself.”

    ”I'm…”That's all the stranger said, but the sound of a foot scraping against the floor made both her and Noel spin to face the doors to the lobby. Noel aimed the flashlight at a bulky pillar. A figure stepped from behind it.

    That was the second the flashlight failed again.

    ”Blast the thing.”

    Robyn heard Noel twisting the battery cap, then slamming the flashlight against his hand to get it working. It stayed dead. That all-encompassing darkness pressed hard against her eyes. She could see nothing. When she stared in the direction of the pillar from where the figure had stepped, she saw nothing but black. Struggling to force herself to see only produced purple blotches flecked with crimson to bloom in front of her, phantom images produced by an optic nerve striving to catch a glimpse of the figure.

    But just before the light had failed, she'd glimpsed the stark, white face. Two wide eyes had fixed on her.

    She reached out for Noel but he must have moved a step away from her as he struggled to fix the light. But which way did he step? Heart thumping against her ribs, she reached out to where she thought he was. All her fingertips touched were cool currents of air. Noel muttered, cursing the flashlight, but the acoustics of the hall bewildered her. ”Damn light…” The words came from behind her, while his ”Stay close to me, Robyn,”floated from some distance in front. She turned around, taking three steps forward with her hands out, but her eyes registered nothing.

    ”Noel?”

    ”Damn… I dropped one of the batteries.”He sounded preoccupied with his problem now. Probably he was on his knees searching.

    From somewhere in front of her came a steady footstep. She caught her breath. The beat of her heart grew fiercer against her chest, for she knew that the figure with the starkly white face walked across the dance floor toward her. She could hear the slow but rhythmic step of his foot.

    Her mind whirled back to seeing the figure in the dressing room. The monstrous face set with eyes like glass balls, the red mouth that looked like the freeze-frame of an explosion. And those arms? They were long and tapered. They tapered to pointed tips, not hands. If he should reach out and touch me with one of those? ”Noel?”She clutched where she anticipated he might be in the darkness.

    Nothing but air… cool, moist air that sent a shiver up her bare arms.

    Noel? Now she could no longer bring herself to utter his name out loud, because she knew it would erupt from her mouth as a piercing scream. The footsteps were closer. Slow, methodical, almost clinical… the touch of the alien limb… a tentacle that would caress her lips… It would happen soon, she was sure.