In This Skin (32 page)

    He hissed: ”Here we are, holed up like rats in a stinking box. But I'm not taking any more. I've got this.”He held up the handgun that gleamed with all its hard, dark lethality. ”I'm going to search this place-every damn room and closet. If there are any freaks in this building I'm going to find them.”

    He strode from the room, the light of fury burning in his eyes. When she heard a door thump shut in the distance, she knew Noel had left the apartment. Robyn knew, also, she had no other choice of action. She would have to follow her boyfriend into the Luxor's dark and brooding heart.

    

    

    Robyn Vincent followed the man she loved most in the world into darkness.

    Pausing only to light a candle and to drag his denim jacket over her long nightdress, she went downstairs. In his rage, Noel wasn't thinking straight. He'd left the stairwell door open to the lobby, oblivious to the chance of an intruder slipping in.

    This wasn't like Noel. That fury had exploded his reason. But then, he had good reason to be angry. She'd rejected his romantic advances by hitting him on the side of the head with the clock radio. At that moment instinct had overwhelmed reason. If there'd been an axe on the bedside table she'd have struck him with that. The battery-operated timepiece was lightweight. It couldn't have inflicted any real wounds to his head.

    If anything it would have felt more like a slap, but a slap that was charged full of rejection and numerous implications. In the fury of rejection-and denied sex-he was determined to vent that anger.

    He loved her enough not to discharge his fury on her; even so, she was scared of what he'd do. Maybe he'd find an outlet for his sexual and emotional frustration by killing crows with the gun. But what if some vagrant had found shelter in one of the dressing rooms backstage. Sweet Jesus, someone's going to get hurt tonight.

    

    

    Logan waited in the shadows. Twenty paces away, Joe beat on the door to the apartment where Ellery Hann lived with his family. After ten minutes of pounding, a growling bear of a man appeared. In answer to the question, the man told Joe that no, Ellery wasn't home and then snarled at Joe to ”Fuck off.”Joe didn't need telling twice and returned to Logan.

    Joe began, ”Ellery's not-”

    ”I know: not fucking there.”Logan eased the submachine gun back into the folded combat jacket he carried. Even in this district, even at midnight, he wouldn't be careless enough to walk around with the firearm in plain view. He nodded at the streets that wore the weight of midnight with a sinister air. ”I know where the stutter monkey is hiding.”He grinned. ”And if I'm right, he'll think he's sitting pretty where no one can find him. But that's going to suit us fine, Joe, because it's miles from anywhere. No one's gonna hear the stutter monkey scream.”

    Logan and Joe went back to the purple Chevy with its crust of rust defacing once-pristine paintwork. Its motor ran sweetly though. And within moments, Logan was cruising with a menace-laden confidence in the direction of the Luxor dance hall.

    

    

    Robyn Vincent crossed the lobby. The burning candle she carried revealed her ghostly reflection in the glass walls of the ticket booth. All around her, the Egyptian decor seemed to sway in the wavering light.

    Shadows bloomed, to swell across reproductions of tomb paintings, or to run fingers of darkness across plaster moldings of pharaonic faces.

    Above her, the painted Egyptian eye gazed down from the ceiling. Bare feet whispering on carpet, she approached the doors that led to the dance floor.

    ”Noel?”She found it hard to lift her voice much above a whisper. ”Noel?”

    Maybe the savage rage had driven him in a run across the dance floor to that labyrinth of corridors and empty rooms. Even when she paused she couldn't hear his footsteps. She glanced back at the door that led to the apartment, hopeful that Benedict or Ellery would have woken and joined her. Maybe she should have roused them? No, better this way. She didn't want them to see Noel gripped by this ugly anger. He'd never been like this before. Soon it should pass and he'd become the gentle man that she loved.

    Taking a breath as if she was about to plunge into a cold lake, Robyn pushed open one of the large doors that led onto the dance floor.

    Candlelight spilled through to illuminate at least a little of the void.

    She made out the glimmer of bare wooden floors. The stage revealed itself as a faintly pale line in the midst of all that darkness.

    Swallowing, she moved out onto the dance floor. An uncanny excitement at being here traded sparks of fear with what she might encounter and a fear of what might happen because of Noel angrily storming through the building with the loaded gun in his hand.

    And above her head, above the roof, the crows must still be squatting there, waiting to capture a soul that would be released here soon. Robyn shivered. Hot dry air seemed to be yielding to a cooler draft. The shiver ran deep into her bones. This was the place where others had passed through a supernatural gateway to The Place, as Ellery had called it. A cool, dripping woodland Place. Populated by… shivering, she closed off the thought. Moving farther across the dance floor, she saw the armchair in its center emerge from the darkness as candlelight touched it. Only from here it had the loathsome squatting presence of a huge toad, the kind of monster toad that would come hopping all bulging-eyed from The Place. The Place would breed creatures like that, just as surely as it bred the distorted men and women she had seen.

    Refusing to be frightened into retreat by what both candlelight and her imagination conjured for her, she walked slowly forward, holding the candle high like she'd become some fragile Statue of Liberty with a living, beating heart. Once she'd taken enough steps toward the squatting toad monster that waited for her on the dance floor, the candlelight killed the object's toadiness. She saw it was nothing more than the armchair after all. Still she walked forward. Now the light revealed the raised stage that contained the table. Beyond the table hung the stage curtain that was high as the wall and as wide as the stage itself. In the center, standing close to six feet tall, a stain had formed in the lower part of the curtain. In the dim candlelight it showed as an elongated shadow, bulbous at the top, narrowing toward the bottom. Robyn walked toward it, watching the candle's radiance brighten against the material of the old stage curtain. Again her imagination and the candle's random trickery conjured odd images-just as they'd conspired to make the armchair resemble a toad. Now, there in front of her, the curtain appeared to bear a kind of Turin Shroud image. The stain in the fabric forming the silhouette of a man with an odd lumpy head, long arms256 Robyn stopped sharply and drew in a breath of shock. That's no stain.

    There, in the faint light of the candle, stood a figure. It had remained as still as if it had been carved from granite. It had been watching her all the time as she'd walked across the dance floor.

    ”Robyn. You shouldn't have followed me down here.”

    Startled, she nearly dropped the candle as she spun in the direction of the voice. Noel had walked onto the side of the stage from behind the curtain, then called out to her. He was perhaps fifteen paces to the right of the figure standing stage center.

    Noel shone the flashlight in her direction, temporarily dazzling her.

    ”Robyn? Has something happened?”

    Even though blinded by the light, she still stared at the misshapen figure. What's more, she guessed Noel had suddenly figured out what she was looking at. He turned the flashlight from her. Through phantom light spots that haunted her dazzled retina, she could see what happened next only too clearly. He directed the hard beam of light full onto the figure. She saw the shellfish gray pallor of its skin, the same misshapen head, its glass ball eyes that blazed at her. The mouth pulsed like an excised heart there on its face. A pulsating flapped and flanged thing that burned a shocking crimson against the lifeless gray. Then it turned and raised an arm toward Noel-an elongated arm that tapered to a point where a human hand should be.

    Robyn caught her breath. She saw that Noel not only pointed the flashlight; in the other hand he aimed the gun, too. The flash lit up the dance floor like a lightning burst. The report sounded more brittle than an explosion. It was the same sound as a bone snapping, only amplified to earsplitting volume. The creature spun around, slashed open the curtain with its stalk-like limbs, then vanished into the backstage area.

    Gunsmoke hung there, a ghostly blue presence on the post-midnight air.

    Noel ran to the center of the stage where the monster had stood. He shone the light at the boards, then he turned to her and called out, ”There's blood… I've hit it!”

    

    

    Benedict West pushed through the lobby door onto the Luxor's dance floor. Behind him, Ellery followed, still pulling his T-shirt over his head. Both men carried flashlights. The time was fifteen minutes past midnight.

    Benedict had woken hearing voices. Realizing it was Robyn and Noel talking in angry whispers, he decided to stay put in bed. Maybe Noel had taken the opportunity to try persuading Robyn to leave the Luxor. It was only when he heard the apartment door bang that he'd woken Ellery.

    Together they'd headed downstairs. And together they'd stopped dead by the ticket booth when they'd heard the gunshot.

    Racing through the doors, they saw the scene that now confronted them.

    My God, they're staging a play… That was the conviction that for a split second occupied Benedict's mind. Standing there on the stage, gun in one hand, pointing it toward stage center, smoke still drooling from the muzzle in veins of blue, was Noel. In the other hand he held a flashlight, which he directed to that same part of the stage. And there was such an intense expression molding his face: fascination, mingling with horror and amazement. A wide-eyed look that had been frozen on his face as he held that immobile, gun-in-hand pose. Meanwhile, on the dance floor, equally statue-like, stood Robyn in a white nightdress and denim jacket. No… not a play-reality. Cold, hard reality. Something had happened to them.

    Benedict moved forward. ”Robyn. Noel. Are you two okay?”

    Robyn remained fixed in that position. Noel seemingly could only move his head. He rotated it so he turned his face to Benedict. Now the man's expression morphed to one of triumph. ”I've shot it,”he told them. ”I've gone and damn well shot it!”

    The act of Noel speaking dissipated Robyn's shock. She let out a breath, her knees buckling a little as she glanced back at Benedict and Ellery.

    ”It was right there on the stage. It was looking at me when Noel came through from the backstage area. It was looking at me, then-”

    ”Then it turned, saw me, and lunged at me,”Noel interrupted. ”I squeezed off a shot before it could touch me.”

    Benedict reached Robyn. ”It was the same one?”

    Robyn gave a laugh that was glittery with shock. ”Lip Boy? The Mouth Monster? Yes, it was the same one.”

    Benedict turned to Ellery. ”Stay here with Robyn.”He ran to the stage and vaulted onto it. Then he swept the blazing light over the area Noel had indicated. A Frisbee-sized pool of red glistened on the boards.

    ”Noel hit it,” Benedict confirmed. ”There's blood… lots of it, too.”He looked up as Noel walked forward to stare in fascination at the disk of gore. At last he lowered the gun. ”Noel? Do you know where the bullet struck?”

    ”I didn't see the point of impact. But I aimed at the center of its chest.”

    ”There's no doubt it's comprehensively wounded.”Benedict glanced at drops of blood that formed a trail away from the big scarlet disk. ”And there's no doubting its direction.” He nodded at the curtain that separated the boards from the backstage area. ”Ellery take Robyn back to the apartment. Make sure you lock the door after you.”

    Ellery nodded, although Robyn took a step toward the stage. ”Wait, you're not thinking of trying to find that thing, are you?”

    ”We need to.”Noel sounded like a man with a hunter's spirit upon him.

    Benedict knew he had to add a justification. ”If we can find this creature it will be evidence. We need to show the police something solid they can believe in.”

    ”Oh, they'll believe in that monster!”Noel said with conviction.

    ”Robyn, please return to the apartment with Ellery. We won't be long.”

    Fear flared in her face. ”Listen. What if there are more of them. It won't be-”

    ”Robyn. We'll be fine.”Noel presented the gun, muzzle pointing upward.

    ”We're protected.”

    ”Please,”Benedict insisted. ”Return to the apartment and lock the door.

    We need to do this and we can't afford to wait any longer. From what we've seen before, it's the nature of this beast to vanish into thin air.”

    Benedict watched Robyn nod an assent, then allow herself to be guided back to the apartment by Ellery. Waiting just long enough for the pair to pass through the lobby door, Benedict turned to the eager Noel and jerked his head at the curtain. ”Come on, we've got to find this thing.”

    

    

    At the same time that Benedict and Noel pushed through the now wetly stained curtain in the Luxor, Logan and Joe were twenty minutes away from the building. Street lamps trailed through the sky, looking like processions of shining spaceships at this time of night. Logan carried the submachine gun on his knee as he drove the Chevy. The pockets of his combat jacket were stuffed tight with lovely; lovely ammo. Hot shit! Excitement buzzed from his gut to his brain. He turned to grin at his buddy in the passenger seat beside him. ”Ever seen a dead man, Joe?”