In This Skin (30 page)

    I think it's important that I describe its content as best I can.”He smiled. ”You'll gather I'm not the world's best detective if I've been searching for my ex-girlfriend for ten years and still haven't found her.”He pulled papers from the envelope. ”If you'll excuse me referring to notes that I made I'll begin.”

    Benedict told them about how he'd watched the VCR tape, making notes as the extraordinary story unfolded. He explained that the former owner of the Luxor, one Benjamin Lockram, had reached the same conclusions as they had. That certain men and women found themselves drawn to the Luxor. That they believed it contained a supernatural gateway that would allow them to return home. Again, no one could explain what ”home” was, only that the instinct burned so brightly within them they found it hard to resist once that fire had been lit. He mentioned Lockram finding the terminally ill woman in the Luxor at the dead of night, how she claimed she'd experienced visions of finding her way ”home,”that Lockram insisted she'd vanished into thin air as she walked across the dance floor. Benedict noticed they listened closely to what he had to say But when he talked about people making for ”home”through some fabulous conduit in the Luxor, he noticed Ellery Hann lean forward to clutch at every single word, his hands gripping the arms of the chair. The reference to a return to a mysterious home electrified the man. But it would take careful handling to question Ellery further. The stammer was as good as a security guard at protecting the guy's cache of memories.

    When Benedict reached the part about the abduction of Lockram's child from the crib in the apartment, Noel and Robyn shot alarmed glances at each other. Like Ellery, they leaned forward to hear Benedict's every word as he described how he'd watched security footage of the dance floor on that night three decades ago when a figure had emerged through the lobby doors carrying the infant Nathaniel Lockram in a blanket. The figure had turned to look up into the camera- an act of defiance? Or simple curiosity over an unfamiliar device bolted to the wall?

    Benedict saw Robyn shudder when he painted a description of the monster face that had gazed up in stark black and white. That the head bulged as if volcanic forces were pushing from the inside of the skull, how it possessed two eyes round as pool balls. Then there was the mouth…

    Jesus, the mouth… that was the worst. A huge freak of a mouth with lip after lip, one within the other, forming concentric circles that were suggestive of gunnery targets. Of circles of diminishing size-one inside the other-shrinking down to a black hole in the center. Benedict finished by telling them the figure had then calmly walked away, carrying the wailing infant, into a knot of mist on the dance floor and vanished from sight. Vanished from this world.

    ”He's back then,”Robyn said after they'd sat for a while dwelling on the grim abduction image that Benedict had painted.

    ”Who's back?”Noel asked. He looked shaken.

    ”That guy who tried to make off with me. Or one like him.”She tried to laugh, but it looked as if an arctic chill had settled on her shoulders.

    ”Shall we give him a name, so we know whom we're referring to in the future?”

    ”Robyn-”

    ”The Face Monster? Lip Lad? Mush Man?” Her eyes fixed into a glassy stare as recollection of the face reared up in her mind with an ugly power.

    ”Kisser Kid? Mouthy? Lippy? Wonder Chops? King Lip? The Mouth? The Luxor Lip…”

    ”Robyn.”Noel spoke gently. ”It's okay. Take it easy”

    Benedict realized the events of the last forty-eight hours had returned with a savagery that robbed her of peace of mind. She trembled now, and she rubbed her stomach round and round. At last she took a deep breath.

    ”I'm okay. It's just hearing that this guy's been lurking here for years brought it all back to me.”

    ”We'll keep the apartment door locked and bolted at all times.”Noel put his arm around her shoulders. ”Don't worry.”

    ”Good idea,”Benedict agreed. ”We're here with you anyway; you're safe.”

    Noel looked up at him. ”But what's this with the crows? Both you and Ellery were worried about the crows. Surely they've got nothing to do with this?”

    ”They fit in. Don't ask me how exactly”

    ”Psychopomps,”Ellery said.

    ”Psychopomps. What does that mean?”Noel looked puzzled.

    ”The word psychopomp refers to animals that appear as omens of death.

    Sometimes it's moths landing on your pillow, or hearing an owl hoot in the daytime. In local mythology the psychopomps are crows that are harbingers of death.”

    ”That's a picturesque story, but why do we have to worry about these crows now?”

    ”Because they're here. They're gathering on the building.”Through the window Benedict watched crows spiraling in to land. ”When the crows come, it means that someone here will die.”

    

    

    CROWS.

    Big BLACK crows. Black, FRIGHTENING crows. They are omens of DEATH.

    Someone will DIE. Here… SOON.

    Robyn Vincent sat beside Noel on the couch, listening to Benedict speak.

    Ellery sat in the chair, hands resting on its arms, his head tilted slightly, demonstrating the intensity of his concentration. Ellery listened to every word. Lives depended on it. She knew that now.

    Outside in the afternoon sunlight, crows flapped on death-dark wings.

    They homed in on the Luxor. She saw them grow larger as they glided in to land on the roof, just above her head. They must be swarming there in a great glistening black clot. Harbingers of death, Benedict had told them. Someone here in this building would die soon. If anything, Noel rebelled against the notion that these creatures defied the laws of time and space.

    ”You mean,”Noel asked, ”that crows can somehow see into the future?””No.

    Not exactly/' ”But you said the crows knew that someone would die here soon?”

    ”It's an old legend. In most societies there are beliefs in animals being able to sense impending disaster. Certain cultures have developed a more elaborate mythology that describes how animals or insects can predict not only the death of an individual, but that at the point of death the creatures either help the soul's passage into the afterlife, or have a more sinister agenda and try to abduct the soul as it quits the body”

    Robyn shivered. ”And in this locality the crows are the bad guys, right?”

    ”Right. They're not only a sign of an impending fatality, they're here to claim the soul.”

    ”But they're not always successful?”

    ”No.”Benedict gave a grim smile. ”According to local legend, the departing soul is a pretty nimble entity. The crows have a tough chase.

    If they fail to catch the soul, they sulk and sit around for a few hours, not moving or squawking. If they catch the soul…”He grimaced.

    ”Well, it's welcome-to-the-soul party. The crows will fly in circles above the place where the corpse lies, celebrating as noisily as only crows can. After they've sung their own praises for a day or two, then the flocks disperse.”

    ”Until the next time,”Robyn said.

    ”Until the next time,”Benedict agreed.

    Robyn couldn't stop her eyes being drawn to the apartment window. Beyond the glass, airborne crows thickened into a pure black blizzard of the repellent creatures.

    Noel asked: ”Why don't we just leave? Let the damn birds sit here and wait for some other victim.”

    ”The crows aren't perpetrators. They won't cause the victim's death. And running away would do no good.”

    Robyn nodded. ”If fate has its finger pointed at you, I don't think driving over the state line's going to shake it off.”

    Noel became angry. ”If this crow legend is right, that means someone here is as good as dead. For me the two big damn questions are who and when?”

    Robyn watched Benedict give an unhappy shrug. That, I'm afraid, isn't known to us.”He nodded at the crows just beyond the window. ”Those… they're the ones with the answers.”

    Even though her unborn baby must be only a cluster of cells so small you'd need a microscope to see it, it felt as if miniature limbs flapped inside her stomach in eerie mimicry to the dark-as-midnight wings outside the windowpane.

    

    

    Logan sat opposite Joe in the kitchen of his apartment. Frankly, the place was a pile of shit. Water dripped through the ceiling like the whole building wept over its sorry state. Roaches gorged on pizza crusts and dropped fries, along with vomited dinners that could only be identified by a forensic scientist. Even the walls were poop-brown from dirt, nicotine and beer stains. On the table were a hundred silver wraps.

    ”There should be a thousand here,”Logan told Joe.

    Joe looked up from where he'd been picking black gunge out of his fingernail. The kid's eyes bled alarm. ”There are a hundred. You watched me count them, man. Are you saying I'm cheating you?”

    ”No… there should be a thousand. A hundred's not enough to get us out of shit city is it?”He gestured at the fungal kitchen with a cigarette.

    ”There's not enough profit in this to buy me a new refrigerator, never mind a fucking house with a fucking pool and shit.”

    ”Beard said that you were on probation. He said if you sold these without bringing any hassle down on him, he might supply you one-fifty”

    ”Joe, shit to Beard. He's only the fucking supplier. He's not the boss of me, is he? Is he?”

    ”No, Logan. I'm with you, man. But if he doesn't sup242 ply any more, what the fuck we going to… Hey Hey! It's cool, buddy I'm with you. I'm on your side. Its cool!”

    Joe was reacting with plenty of emotion… the right emotion: fear.

    Because Logan had just pulled a submachine gun from a sack on the floor.

    He laid it on the table by the parade of silver-uniformed crystals of crack.

    Joe was still bug-eyed at the gun, figuring that Logan planned to start shooting. ”Logan, I'm your buddy. You know that. Please, man… it's cool, take it easy. We'll sell the crack, then go back to Beard. He'll give us one fifty. We-”

    ”I'm not bothered about Beard. Not yet, anyway!”

    ”Look, I'm your buddy… your best buddy Logan.”Joe looked to be having plenty of trouble swallowing the lump in his throat. He still figured that by nightfall he'd be chilling on the big slab with a nametag knotted to his big toe.

    ”We need to make a statement,”Logan told him.

    ”A statement?”Nerve spit glistened on Joe's lip. ”We're not gonna do any writing lessons, are we?”

    ”Listen. If we do something that makes all the dealers and suppliers and fucking users in the neighborhood take notice of us, then we'll advance our career prospects. You follow, Joe?”

    ”Sure. Sure I follow;' Joe responded eagerly. ”A big statement. Advance our career prospects.”He still found it hard to pull his eyes away from the snub-nosed machine gun. ”One look at that baby will earn you plenty of respect, Logan. Plenty”

    Logan picked up the gun and kissed the muzzle. ”This fires thirty rounds in three seconds flat. And this baby ain't for looking at, Joe. It's built for using.”

    ”Using? Hell, Logan. That's heavy shit. 'Specially if you take on Beard.

    He's got a Yardy crew pulling his strings.”

    ”Beard's a future project. I just want the word on the street that we're two guys to be respected. And taken so fucking seriously like you wouldn't believe.”

    ”This is freakin' heavy, Logan. You know that? Machine guns and shit.”

    ”You think that people out there should say we two are a joke?”

    Joe stared at the machine gun dominating the table-hell, it dominated the whole freaking apartment. ”No, no way, Logan. I'm there with you, buddy.”

    ”Yeah, well, that's good to know. Because I've got a plan that's going to give us career enhancement. I'm going to use this baby to rip up Ellery Hann. Once this beauty's done with Stutter Boy, you'll be able to spread him on a cracker with a butter knife.”

    ”Ellery Hann? I know you hate the motherfucker's guts, but he's nothing to us.”

    ”And nothing to anyone else. But once word gets out on the street that we gunned him because we were so inclined”-Logan grinned-”that's when we get respect from everyone… and I mean everyone. You follow, Joe?”

    Joe stared at the gun with a lethal fascination. ”I follow. Ellery Hann, it is. Bang, bang…”

    

    

    After Benedict had finished talking, they settled into uneasy silence, interrupted only by patchy attempts at small talk that quickly petered out. Robyn poured more coffee, then went into the kitchen to cut slices of cake. She didn't know if her guests would want any. The discussion they'd just undertaken might suppress any appetite for some time to come. But she needed the ordinariness of opening the cake carton, removing the cake. Setting it on a plate. Cutting nice even slices of the moist delicacy. Those ordinary actions might help soothe her nerves.

    ”Calm down, Junior,”she murmured as she eased the blade through moist lemon cake. Her stomach still fluttered as if tiny legs kicked and matchstick-sized arms windmilled in her stomach. When she returned to the living room, Benedict was slipping papers into the envelope. He looked like a man on the move. Noel donned his jacket.

    ”Cake, anyone?”she asked, wondering if the invitation to eat after all that had happened didn't sound blindingly trite.

    Benedict shook his head. ”We'd best make a move now before it gets dark.”

    ”Make a move?”Robyn experienced a jolt of surprise. She glanced at Ellery who sat motionless in the armchair. His expression revealed a cloud of worries. ”We have nowhere to move to.”