The Animal Hour (47 page)

The library door hissed shut, unlocked now. The noise of the parade grew dim. The Perkins brothers stood in darkness together. They listened to one another's breathing.

D
eath slithered through the crowd like a silverfish. The woman in the mask stumbled after.

Me. Supposed to be me
, she thought dimly. Her vision had gone all misty red. It was hemmed in by the black of the mask. She panted and staggered, her arms wheeling.
Me. Supposed to be me.

On the busy sidestreet, the costumed people milled and scuffled. There were shouts and barks of laughter on every side of her. Scarred faces swirled by, tortured with hilarity. Rouged lips grinned. Elbows levered up and down as masks sucked at bottles of beer.

She staggered through it all. Her breath came out of her lungs like dragon fire. Lances of pain went up her legs with every step. Her back twisted like a wrung rag. She ricocheted off the shoulder of a garrulous monster and nearly fell. A man, painted black and draped in red, snatched at her. A woman in spangles fell back a step and cried out “Hey!” She reeled drunkenly past.

Ahead, the swift, zigzagging figure of King Death drew farther and farther away. She saw the shiny white skull dodging this way and that, the colorful quilted shirt billowing. The running figure drew closer and closer to the intersection at Christopher Street, where Christopher slanted back up toward the parade.
Me!
the woman in the domino mask thought desperately. The spittle poured over her lips as she tumbled through the night, as she clawed at the night with her fingers.
Supposed to be me!
She peered at the dodging figure of Death through the thickening red haze. Nausea made her head spin, made her legs go wobbly.
Supposed to be … Oh shit!
she thought. She was going under. No doubt about it, fans. She was going down. Her staggering progress slowed. She was falling from each step to the next, bent forward. She was gasping hoarsely, hotly, for breath. The long corridor. Dimly, she remembered it. Crawling over the floor, the carpet against her belly …

He's getting away!
King Death was at Christopher Street now, just at the corner, just about to rush into the intersection. The woman in the flashing domino was still half a block behind him. Still pushing against the wall of pain, another step and another. She was stumbling past the corner of Gay Street now, a small doglegged Village lane to her right. She was remembering the long corridor. The murmuring voice at the end of the hall.
Eight o'clock. You have to be there.
She had dragged herself down the hall, over the brown carpet that scraped softly at her belly … She remembered the voice murmuring:
King Death. The library. You won't forget now.

“Oh God!” she rasped suddenly. The street and its revelers were swirling away from her in a sickening vortex. She fell. Dropped to her knees at the corner of Gay Street. She wavered there for a moment, her mouth open, the slobber dangling from her lip. Then she pitched forward to the pavement.

“Whoa there, lady!” said a long-haired boy above her. “I mean: party on!”

“Getting away,” she tried to tell him, but the words wouldn't come. She lifted herself on scraped palms. She could see him, the flash of his moving jeans. King Death had shot past the Christopher Street corner now. The strange, small, waiflike creature was braking at the curb, heels braced against the sidewalk. Around him, the clusters of masked people cheered and laughed and staggered aimlessly. Their elbows went up and down, their bag-covered beer bottles tilted up and down. King Death paused among them for only a moment. Then he dodged around the corner and he was gone, out of sight.

Prone on the pavement, her face barely raised, the woman in the domino mask stared at the spot where Death had been. To the right, she thought. He had gone to the right. He had gone up Christopher Street. He was slanting up toward the junction with Sixth, back toward the parade. Up toward that castle of a building she had seen in her dreams. And also, of course, back toward …

Gay Street.

He would have to go past the corner of Christopher and Gay.

“Oh,” she said hoarsely. “Oh.” She was trying to breathe. Trying to talk, to call for help. King Death had made a mistake. She still had a chance. She could still catch him. If she could just get up … She could run down Gay Street. She could cut him off. If she could just get to her feet …

“Help me. Help me,” she whispered.

A hand slid under her arms. Hot beery breath washed over her cheeks. “Whoa! Whoa!” It was the long-haired teen. He yanked up on her. She struggled to get her knees on the pavement. She braced herself against him as he hauled her to her feet. “Party on, Dudette. I mean, party hearty! I mean … Jesus Christ holy shit!”

The woman in the domino mask had reached into the waist of her jeans and pulled out her .38. The long-haired teen fell back from her, his eyes wide, his chin glistening with drooled beer. He stared at the weapon.

“Whoa,” he said solemnly.

The woman in the domino mask staggered backward a step. “Me …” she explained to him panting. “It was supposed to be me.” Then she groaned. A gritty burst of vomit filled her mouth. The brick high rises around her tilted across the sky. The sky swung back up until it was overhead again. She swallowed what puke she could and spat out the rest. Now where the hell was Gay Street? She turned unsteadily, blinking hard behind the mask.

There. There it was.

“Oh, sweet Jesus!” she gasped as the agony went through her legs again. She pushed off and started running.

At the end of the hallway, she remembered, lay the body on the bed.

The little doglegged lane was lined with quaint brown-stones. It was washed in the misty light of a single street lamp. There were fewer partyers here. The woman in the electric domino stumbled past them swiftly, giving little cries of pain and anguish. She tore around the bend with her gun raised up beside her ear. She could hardly see anything now. Just a blur of light and shadow. She felt the wet on her cheek, in her mask, but she hardly knew that she was crying. She only wished she could tear her head open; that she could reach into her mind and rip out the throbbing memory of that body. That headless body. She had seen it from the doorway. She had dragged herself into the doorway. She had dragged herself up along the jamb and then she had seen and she had reeled back, her arms before her eyes. The sight of the headless corpse had hit her in the head like a baseball bat.
Oh God, God, God
, she thought,
I was supposed to protect her. I was supposed to
be
her, to
be
Nancy Kincaid, so
she'd
be safe! If anything happened, it was supposed to happen to
me
I It was supposed to be
me.'

Now, ahead, yawing under the tilted sky, the junction with Christopher Street came into view. She could see the thicker, swifter packs of revelers there. She could hear their shouts. She could hear the
Danse Macabre
again, the hammering music of the parade. One step more, she thought, hauling in the air as she stumbled to the corner. One step—and then another … She pushed herself on, the gun up by her ear, the muzzle up beside her flashing mask.

And then she was there, in the intersection. Plunging out of the little alley onto the broader, slanting street. And there was King Death, right there, his skull gleaming white amidst the blackened and reddened faces all around him. He was running right toward her. He was looking back over his shoulder, as if he thought she must still be behind him. The woman in the domino mask halted. She swung around. She lowered the pistol, brought the muzzle to bear on the onrushing skull. A woman screamed somewhere, and then another. A man shouted, “Watch out.”

Death collided with her head-on. He never even looked around; he just ran right into her. She was knocked off her feet, her gun hand flying wide. She went sprawling backward. Her back slammed into the pavement. Her breath went out of her with a loud “whoof.” Still, she reached out, her hands like claws. She clutched desperately at the quilted shirt. She threw her arm around the frail figure of the King. The two of them went down together, clutched together, rolling on the pavement. King Death broke away. Struggled to his hands and knees. With a loud shout, the woman in the domino pushed up too. She was on her knees, both hands wrapped around the gun. She pointed the gun at the death's head.

“Aa-aa—ah,” she said. It was all she could get out. Her whole body heaved and buckled with her breathing.

A crowd of people was gathering around them. No one said anything. The parade music filtered into the silence. The silence seemed bizarre. They could hear the wind blowing in the dying leaves.

Slowly, the death's head turned. The woman in the domino saw the pale blue eyes in the skull's sockets. She heard the heavy breathing beneath the mask.

“Dead,” the King whispered—it was a strange, high whisper, almost melodious. “You're dead. You're supposed to be dead.”

And then he began to cry. It sounded that way, at least. He stayed on his hands and his knees, his skull hanging down, his shoulders hunched. The sounds that came out from beneath the mask sounded very much like sobbing.

The woman in the domino let go of the gun with her left hand. Just as she had in her dream, she reached out for the mask.

Me
, she thought.

She felt the fleshy latex in her grip. She tugged it, almost pulling the figure forward. She tugged again. The mask started coming off. On the third pull, the skull was pulled away.

There was a cascade of black hair. The hair was streaked with silver. It spilled forward, hiding the face beneath. Then the figure sank to the pavement, rolled miserably onto its side. The woman in the domino looked on, appalled. It was
not
him. It was not the face she had thought to see. It was a woman. A woman with a lovely, porcelain face, her rose cheeks splotched with tears. A stranger.

The black-haired woman stared at the woman in the domino and shook her head, sniffling.

“You're supposed to be dead!” she complained, and she shook her head bitterly.

At first, the woman in the domino did not answer. She stared at the other. Slowly then, she brought her left hand back to the gun. She pulled back the gun's hammer. People in the crowd gasped and stepped back as the hammer clicked. The woman in the domino trained the revolver at the other's head. She was still gasping for breath, but she managed to speak clearly.

“Tell me where Oliver is or I'm going to kill you,” she said.

The black-haired woman cried harder, staring into the gun's muzzle. Her whole body shook.

She said: “At the library.”

On the word, a bell tolled sonorously in the library tower. It was finally eight o'clock.

T
he bell tolled again. Oliver and Zach moved deeper into the library. The music of
Danse Macabre
was dim now. The noise of the crowd seemed to have faded completely. The whole place was sunk in silence and shadow. Gothic arches hung blackly overhead. Blank-eyed busts stared out of sculpted medallions on the wall. The bell tolled in the tower again. They moved through the dark toward the stairs.

They began climbing. The stairs swept up in a graceful curve along the rounded wall. Oliver started up first and Zach trudged after. He climbed slowly behind his older brother. Slowly, he removed his cap and stuffed it into his coat pocket. He unbuttoned the coat for greater freedom. Now—now that the time had come—he found he felt almost calm. He felt almost nothing. Like the noise of the parade, the termite hum of mundane detail had sunk away from him. It was quiet inside him. He felt he was floating through a sort of liquid mist. A dreamy atmosphere. He watched his brother's back rising up the winding stairs ahead of him. He smiled sadly at the sight, and at everything he remembered. He did feel sad, in a wistful way. This was harder for him than for anyone after all. He suffered more than anyone, really. All the trouble and the pain and the killing: It had been forced on him. It had been all so unnecessary. And this, killing his brother. It was a shame. He really thought he would feel bad about this for a long, long time to come.