In This Skin (19 page)

    ”Don't worry my little sunshine. I'll be good to go in a minute. Mommy just needs to take it easy for a while.”

    The silence all but snatched the words from her mouth. With her good hand she picked up the flashlight and shone it at the stage. Beyond the table onstage, the drapes that reached up behind the proscenium arch were a drab gray.

    Yawning, Robyn settled deeper into the armchair. All that work (and maybe pregnancy) were catching up. Suddenly a deep exhaustion swept through her. She yawned again. The flashlight wobbled in her lap as she shifted to make herself more comfortable. The disk of yellow radiance wobbled, too, against the curtain. For a moment she was content to leave the light there. She'd rest a while.

    Silence swelled in the darkness above her. It formed a growing presence there, combining with the Luxor's shadows into a vast body that was more than the mere absence of light and sound. That nexus of quiet and shadow seemed to Robyn a living, breathing creature hovering there above her.

    Drowsily, she allowed her head to lean back against the chair so she gazed up at the invisible ceiling in the distance.

    I could be staring up into space, she told herself. I could be looking into darkness that lies between the stars.

    A breath of cooling air slid over her, touching her bare ankles, then caressing her bare arms before running chill fingers around her throat.

    The dimensions of the building seemed to be changing. The walls rolled back on invisible wheels, the ceiling lifted up into the sky… or at least that's what her drowsy mind imagined. Sleep was creeping in from the margins of consciousness. Dimly she realized that. She knew she should rouse herself, return to the apartment where fresh bed linen waited for her. After all, it wasn't wise to simply go to sleep in this armchair on the dance floor, was it?

    The Luxor lay all alone in the middle of a wasteland. Who knew what kind of people had slithered through that hole in the door? This was the kind of place to hide after robbing a gas station. Or maybe this was the destination to bring a victim.

    Her imagination spun out lazy images into the darkness above her head. A teenage girl gagged with tape, her wrists tied with lighting flex. She'd been bundled into the building, then led onto the stage. There're a couple guys smelling of diesel and whisky. Stubble blackens their jaws.

    They strip her… lay her on the table there on the stage… she hears their panting breath filling the room Even when Robyn blinked, trying to shrug off the sleepy weight pressing down on her, she still heard the deep rasp in the building. The currents of air grew colder. The darkness grew deeper, engulfing the hidden places within the room. The void beneath the stage… There was an open hatch to the understage area. She hadn't noticed that before…

    Those currents of air ran fingers of cold through her hair, down her neck. She shivered. The air had a different smell now. Cool, damp places. It reminded her of forests in the early morning, with dew on the grass. The kind of wilderness where huge shaggy beasts grunt beyond the veil of trees. The grunts and snorted breath made her picture a hungry grizzly bear. Her eyes roved across the wall of darkness that surrounded her.

    It's in here with me. The certainty came with a biting ferocity Why can't I shift this drowsiness? It feels as if I've been drugged. I want to stand up. I want to shine the torch at whatever's in here with me… only I can't. I can hardly move. That darkness is pressing down on me.

    More certainty came rolling out of the darkness like a stab of black lightning.

    Noel's not coming back. He left me here alone. I've been abandoned. No one's coming back. I'll never be able to leave. I don't know my way to the bus stop. Gangs roam the streets here. They won't listen when I tell them I'm pregnant. They'll only laugh when I start to beg.

    Once more the image rolled back at her of the teenage girl being dragged to the table on the stage. Wrists bound with wire. Mouth covered with tape. Frightened eyes darting into the darkness. Then the brutal guys with tattooed arms and shadowed faces force her back onto the table. The tape is ripped off, raising a scream from her bleeding lips. In Robyn's mind's eye the girl on the table turns her head to look at her.

    Robyn recognized the girl.

    ”It's me. I'm the victim.”The words roll like stones through her skull.

    ”I'm seeing what will happen to me.”She shook her head, trying to dislodge the deepening fog of sleep. Why couldn't she rouse herself? Why was she so drowsy? Despite the crimson flare of terror crackling through her brain, her limbs were paralyzed. She desperately longed to run and to scream out loud. But all she could do was turn her head slowly The only noise she could make was the breath coming through her lips.

    And all the time her mind's eye was fixed on the naked girl being tortured by the men.

    Because I'm alone here in the dark. Noel is not coming back. And seeing the terrible things they're doing to the screaming vision of me is what will happen.

    From the darkness, purple death heads bloomed. Blood red streaks flared in gory sunbursts. Cool currents of air slipped inside her T-shirt to touch her stomach, then slithered upward across her chest.

    Onstage the girl choked out a fountain of blood that rose in a crimson plume a foot above her lips. Robyn saw the reason. In preorgasmic frenzy, the two men plunged knives into the girls chest. One point pierced her nipple to run all the way through her torso, nailing her thrashing body to the tabletop. Robyn saw the dying girl, the one who wore an exact copy of Robyn Vincent's face, roll her head to one side.

    Their eyes met.

    I've seen the future…

    Robyn sat up straight with a gasp. Her neck was stiff. Her skin felt colder than glass. Now fully awake, she glanced down at the flashlight in her lap. Its light still burned brightly; the batteries hadn't become exhausted. She licked her lips. Her mouth tasted crappy. The dustcloth had loosened from around her hand. She tightened it again. Jesus, she really needed to return to the apartment and lock those doors. It had been an act of stupidity-no, madness!-to wander down here to sit in the chair and dream of… she shuddered. The vision of her lying there naked on the table as the two men knife-fucked her body blazed with vicious clarity. No wonder the darkness frightened her so much that her heart pounded in her chest.

    And what had happened to Noel? He must be hours overdue. Had he been in an accident? Another vivid image came-of him lying bleeding in a car wreck, his face torn from his skull. She blinked the frightening vision away

    She had to return to the apartment now!

    As she struggled to rise from the deep well of the armchair, her flashlight rolled off her lap onto the cushion, lens down. The moment glass pressed flat against the material it stopped the escaping light.

    Instantly she was plunged into complete darkness. Hungrily the dark leapt at her, smothering her senses. Gasping with fear, she searched down between her thigh and the arm of the chair for the hard cylinder of the flashlight. In a second she had it, dragged it out. Panicky, she slashed the light around the dance floor.

    One sweep of the light revealed a figure. With a determined walk, it hurried toward her.

    Noel?

    No, not Noel. Although her eyes were watery with shock and she couldn't see clearly that burst of white light had revealed a misshapen head set with two blazing eyes. The mouth was a red mass of overlapping lips. One hung low in a loosely swinging flap that covered its throat.

    It began to run toward her.

    

    

    Ellery Hann worked on the VCR. The fault sheet taped to its side read, Chews tapes. Fails to eject cassette fully. As he loosened the screws on the machine's carcass, Logan's threat came back to him-if Ellery walked along the street to work again, he'd become a target of Logan's rage.

    Why had the guy taken an insane dislike to Ellery? Maybe it was the stutter. Who knows?

    Logan didn't make empty threats. If he saw Ellery on Fairfax then Ellery would take what punishment was dealt out. Logan's head was completely fucked. He didn't care about legal retribution. He'd spent six months in jail for biting off a guy's nose in a fight. There were rumors that he'd been quizzed by cops about the fatal shooting of a drug dealer a while back, too, but there hadn't been enough evidence-or witnesses with the guts to testify-so the police hadn't filed charges.

    Ellery lifted the carcass of the VCR. A black clump of tape choked the heads like a glossy tumor. He could fix this easily enough. If only he could fix the Logan problem.

    He glanced up at the workshop clock. Four in the afternoon. Around sixteen hours from now he'd have to walk to work along Fairfax. Logan would be waiting for Ellery with his sidekick. In sixteen hours Ellery might be lying in the gutter with busted kneecaps.

    

    

    Robyn Vincent ran back to the doors that led to the lobby. She hadn't played the light on the monstered face for long. A mask… yeah, gotta be a mask. But those eyes? They bulged out hard from the head like glass balls. And they fixed on her. They burned like… like… oh, Jesus Christ, she wanted out!

    The void of the dance hall swallowed her cry of terror, so it sounded strangely small… more of a whimper than a cry. And suddenly the floor between her and the twin doors stretched out as a huge plain. A cold breeze-that cold, impossible breeze!-blew in her face; laden with moisture, it made her shiver to the roots of her bone. Behind her, feet made a slushing sound as if they ran through leaves. She ran hard, breathing in the sharpness of the air.

    Dear God, he was closer. That face with the red blossoming mouth… she closed off the image.

    Whatever you do, don't look back. Concentrate on getting back to the apartment. Lock the doors. But I've got the flashlight in one hand. The other hand's ripped open and bloody. How will I manage to handle the key? It'll slow me down.

    He'll be on me before IOh God. The image came of her lying naked on the table as the men with the knives stabbed her. It must have been a vision of the future…

    That's what will happen. Only it's minutes away, not days, not weeks.

    Panic detonated inside her head. Lights flashed before her eyes as emotion overloaded her nervous system.

    She raised the light, trying to pick out the doors to the lobby…

    They'd gone. Stunned, she searched the wall for them. Phantom lights surged in front of her to form a wall of misty gray It had to be shock that was doing this. She was hallucinating; sheer panic blew apart her ability to think straight. Robyn lunged forward, scything with the flashlight, hoping to pick out the doors. At last she could bear it no more and glanced back. The man followed. That horrible face fixed on her. His arms were extended toward her. Again she had the impression that the arms didn't end in hands, that they were long, tapering…

    A blow knocked her down. Gasping, her heart pounding, she looked up at the tall dark column that she'd just run into. It must be one of the mock Egyptian pillars. Dazed, her side aching from the concussion, she pulled herself up with it. But the pillar wasn't smooth and dry. It was rough and slimy. Before Robyn moved away from it she caught a glimpse of bark mottled with dark green moss. Moisture glistened. A tree? How can I run into a tree inside a building?

    But she didn't have time to figure it out. She had to escape from the man with the monster face bearing down on her. As she ran she swept the light to her right and behind her. The lobby doors! Goddamn. She must have been running away from them in confusion. She'd been heading for the stage. Then how in God's name had she run into a tree growing from the dance floor?

    Its shock. You imagined it.

    To her left, the figure tried to cut her off. He ran at her, arms reaching out. That red mouth dilated, showing a dripping hole that stretched deep into the face. Rimming that was an aureole of teeth.

    Oh, God, oh God… Chest burning, heart hammering, legs weakening, she willed herself to run faster. Suddenly the doors were in front of her; she crashed through them. At the same time she tried to fumble the key from her pocket.

    Please don't drop it. Please don't drop it.

    If it slipped from her fingers there'd be no time to pick it up. The man would be on her, grabbing her with those tapering arms. She imagined his face looming up close to hers. Dear God, to look into that monstrous face so closely would be enough to kill her, she was certain. Only there was no danger of dropping the key, because with the makeshift bandage her hand was too bulky to even reach into her pocket for it.

    With a scream of frustration as much as fear, Robyn bounded across the lobby, then by the glass-fronted ticket office. Ahead was the stout door that led to the stairwell. A second later the man crashed through the door behind her. He was just feet away from her. Glancing back, she saw the figure appear in the wildly ricocheting light beams from the flashlight. The huge glistening balls that were his eyes fixed on her with all the intensity of a predator locked onto its prey.

    ”No!”The word burst from her lips in something close to a scream.

    The figure turned sharply-too sharply for the tiled floor. His feet carried on from under him and he went skidding into the shadows with a crash. With one hand gripping the flashlight, she shook the duster bandage from her other hand and then used her bloodstained fingers to fumble the key from her pocket.

    No… no!

    The key flipped from her fingers, just like she knew it would. She'd dropped it. She saw it tumble end over end in the light from the bulb.