The Animal Hour (15 page)

Nancy licked her dry lips. They must be heading around to the emergency entrance, she thought. And they were going fast. They'd be there any minute now. She tried to swallow but she couldn't. Christ, what were they going to do to her? Were they going to lock her up? Would she have to be in a cell with crazy people? God, she felt if she couldn't get out of these handcuffs, if she couldn't get free, she'd start to scream. The patrol car barreled down the deserted street. It was all happening so fast. And the silence—the way the two cops didn't even talk to her … She might have been alone in all the world.

She looked up at the backs of the two immobile heads in the front seat. The one on the passenger side was the woman. Her short blonde hair stopped just below the back of her cap. Her neck was slender and smooth.

“Excuse me …” Nancy said. It was a mouse voice. The cops couldn't hear her over the roar of wind at the windows. She cleared her throat. “Excuse me.”

The policewoman barely turned. She glanced at the driver.

“Are we going to the hospital?” Nancy asked. “Are you taking me to Bellevue now?”

The policewoman shouted over her shoulder. “Yeah. Wuh right heah.”

They had come out of the empty lane. The weight inside Nancy grew heavier as she looked out the window. There was a new building. Flat, broad, white. Columns of windows with strips of white stone between. It looked down deadpanned on a wide parking lot below. The road curved around the lot. The cruiser approached the curve.

“Will I be allowed to call someone?” Nancy had to fight to keep the tears out of her voice. “I'd really like … to call my mother. All right?”

The policewoman cocked her head and shrugged. “Shuah. Just take it easy now, okay? Don't get yerself all upset.”

“I'm not upset,” Nancy said firmly. “I'm fine now. I just wasn't feeling very well before. I got confused but … I'm really fine.”

The policewoman didn't answer.

“I would just like to call my mother when we get there,” said Nancy with some dignity.

“Shuah,” the policewoman repeated. “Everything'll be fine.”

Nancy could only nod. I do have the right to a phone call, she wanted to say. But she didn't have the courage. She looked out the window.

The police car rounded the bend. It headed toward the white building. Nancy watched the building growing larger, coming toward her. Suddenly, she heard herself give a nervous laugh, and she blurted out: “Boy, I am just really scared here. I guess it's silly, huh? But I've just never been in a hospital like this.” She fought down her tears. “I am just really, really frightened, I don't know why …”

The policewoman glanced at her partner again, but she didn't say anything else. By now, anyway, they had arrived. The car was slipping into a low-ceilinged bay that ran along the building's side, pulling to a stop at the hospital curb. Nancy pressed her forehead to the window. All she could see was a glass door. Then the policewoman was out of the car. Out on the sidewalk, opening Nancy's door. She reached in and took Nancy by the elbow. Drew her out onto the sidewalk.

“Let's just take it easy now,” the policewoman was saying. “Everything's gonna be awright.”

Nancy pressed her lips together. The policewoman wasn't even talking to her. She was talking to someone else, to some crazy woman she didn't know. Nancy felt alone.

Another cop—a squat black woman—pushed open the glass door from inside. The blonde policewoman gripped Nancy's arm tightly and walked her quickly through the open door. Nancy heard the door swing shut behind her. The sound made her look up. What she saw made her gasp. She cried aloud: “Oh no! Oh God!”

There was a white corridor before her. A corridor of closed doors. Behind the doors, there were whispers. She could hear them.

“Nancy. Oh, Nancy.”

She could hear the singsong whispers calling to her.

Her mouth went wide, but she could not scream. She was being pulled along the corridor and there, at the end, was a figure on a throne. A slim figure in black robes, holding a scepter in a bony hand and …

Nancy dug in her heels. She would not go. “NO!” She started screaming. Twisting to get free. Struggling to pull her arms free from the cuffs. “Please! Please! No!”

She could hear her own high-pitched shrieks. It was odd. She could hear her wild cries and she could see herself as if from a distance. She could see herself twisting and struggling frantically in the policewoman's grip. Her eyes rolling, white. White froth bubbling over her lips onto her chin. She could see her feet kicking and skidding on the slick linoleum floor as she fought against going. Her head thrown back, her neck taut. Every muscle of her slim body strained backward as if she were a child being dragged to the woodshed.

And it was odd—it was really bizarre—because she could also see now that she was not in the nightmare corridor at all. She was just in the hospital. In a hallway. With a policewoman struggling to hold on to her arm. And two more officers were charging toward her from the far end of the hall. And two women in white uniforms were running at her too, shouting over her crazy screams.

She felt as if she were putting on a performance. In front of them, in front of herself. As if she were just pretending to be insane so she wouldn't be held responsible for everything. She could even hear her real self thinking:
Okay now, this is a bad idea. We are not making a good first impression here at all. So let's stop this right now. All right? Right this minute.

And yet she couldn't. She couldn't make the performance stop. She went on screaming, kicking. Lashing her head from side to side, snapping with her teeth. And now came a man in a white coat—a slender young doctor with a pointed beard. He strode through a doorway, walking at her quickly, holding up a syringe. A syringe! She could see him squeezing a spurt of juice through the needle, clearing the air bubble. Two nurses waddled out of another door, holding a terrifying contraption of pads and straps.

That's a straitjacket, Nancy!
she thought.
They are not kidding, all right? Let's knock this off right now.

But the performance would not end. The doctor, the straitjacket—these only seemed to crank her hoarse shouts louder. She hurled herself to the floor, her body whipping and bucking even harder in her efforts to get free. Her real self watched helplessly as policemen, orderlies, nurses, and the doctor converged quickly on the shrieking performer. Only once, at the very end—only for a second, with an insinuating little chill of nausea—did it occur to her that this was not a performance at all.

And then they swarmed over her.

P
erkins managed to vomit on the floor. He flung himself away from the toilet. Away from the glassy eyes, the severed, blood-drenched head. He fell to his hands and knees as his stomach disgorged Avis's scrambled eggs and toast. The loose yellow mess splattered on the white tiles. Perkins could not lose the image of the woman's slack and ghastly face beneath him, and he vomited again. He groaned, his eyes closed. Then, still spitting bits of undigested toast, he started crawling to the door. He wiped his mouth with his hand. He kept crawling. He had to get away from it. He had to get out of there.

The second he was in the hallway, he climbed to his feet. He braced his hand on the phone table and got his wobbly legs under him. He was gasping, out of breath. But he had to get out of the mews, get away from it. He stumbled to the top of the stairs, grabbed the newel post. He could see light below, gray light in the living room. He realized he had left the front door open.

That was the project: Get out that door. Get out of here and back into the sweet, bright, busy city. Get to a telephone. Call the police. Get out of …

He was about to start down the stairs when he heard something that made his breath stop. It was the creak of a floorboard. Somewhere in the house: a footstep.

His first crazy thought was to look down the hall. At the gray door, the door to his old bedroom. What if the sound had come from in there? What if the headless thing on the bed was moving? Rising … coming into the doorway … A silhouette in the rectangle of dim light.

Look, Oliver. Look what they did to me. Let me show you what they did to my head.

Then he heard it again. Another step. He stood absolutely still. He listened. It was coming from downstairs. Someone was moving around down there. Moving stealthily, slowly. Crossing the kitchen. Just out of his view. Coming toward the stairway. He heard a deep murmur, a few low syllables.

Shit, they're still here.

He backed away from the head of the stairs, back into the shadows. Another floorboard creaked.
They're still in the house
, he thought. Whoever they were, whoever had done this. They were still in the mews. The woman's face seemed to appear before him again, her dead stare up from the toilet. They had carried her head from the bedroom down the hall … She had been alive just before. She had been a woman. She had had blue eyes. A woman's voice. She must have thought thoughts—
lived—
even as they put the knife against her throat…

And they were still here. The people who had done this. They were in the mews. In the kitchen. Creeping quietly toward the stairs.

Perkins dragged his hand across his damp mouth. He looked right, down the dark hall, toward his old bedroom. He looked left. It was the only way to go. The way to Nana's room. The outline of the door was dark. The room was dark, darker than the hall.

With a last glance down the stairs, Perkins moved. He took long strides along the passage. Going quickly, trying to stay quiet. If he could get to the room, get a window open … It was only a one-story drop, and even a broken ankle was a lot better than meeting up with these guys.

He reached the doorway and paused. Listened. A stair creaked—one of the bottom stairs. They had started up.

He entered the small room cautiously. The air was musty here, but the smell of butchery was not as thick. He could see the wooden shutters on the windows to his right. Lines of white light between the slats. Then he pulled up short as a movement caught his eye. But it was only a dresser mirror against the far wall. He could make out the dim shape of it. And the queen-sized bed against the wall beside him. A rocking chair … He scanned the room slowly. No other shapes. No human silhouettes …

Look, Oliver. Look what they've done.

He heard another step on the stairs. Closer to the top now. He moved swiftly around the end of the bed. Crossed the room to the shuttered window.

Come on, come on.

His fingers fumbled with the metal hook that held the shutters closed. He couldn't hear the footsteps anymore. He didn't know where the hell they were. The hook swung up with a little rattle. He folded back the shutters.

The light hit him bright and hard. The white-blue sky over a Tudor cottage. A car parked quietly at the alley curb. A woman walking her corgi turning the corner onto MacDougal … Christ, to be out there in the light … Perkins pushed open the double casements. The crisp, autumn air sighed in to him. He glanced over his shoulder once, to check the door …

Something stopped him. He saw something. On the bed. Frightened, he flicked his eyes over it. There
was
a shape. No. Just an impression. The imprint of a head on the pillow, of a figure on the spread. Someone had been lying there and …

And there was a gleam. He was about to turn away, about to go out through the window when he saw that, that little gleam of light. A thin line of silver. It lay on the pillow where a head had been. A single silver hair.

Perkins hesitated a second, his eyes fixed on it.

Tiffany?

And that was one second too long.

The floor creaked again. At the threshold. Right here. Perkins's stomach dropped as his eyes flashed up from the bed to the doorway. A shadow stepped through into the room.

My head, Oliver.

But it was a man. Or not a man—a kid. A boy, still in his teens it looked like. He came into the light, blinking. A kid with a thin, pimply face. Blond hair in a crewcut. Frightened eyes—he looked almost as scared as Perkins. The two of them stared at each other. Slowly, the kid lifted his hand. The sunlight glinted blackly off the barrel of his gun. His lips worked silently for a moment before he could get the words out.

Then he said: “All right. P-P-P-Put your hands up. NYPD. You're under arrest.”