The Fading (41 page)

Towels. Enough towels to dry off a small nation. Rolled. Stacked.

Stackable.

If he could arrange enough of them to look like a body … in the steam room … and the steam room continued heating up, filling
up, then maybe …

Noel limped to the nearest wall and took two armfuls of rolled towels, carried them into the herbal room, eucalyptus cleaning
out his sinuses as he worked. Hurried back into the row of shower stalls and grabbed another dozen towels, carrying them like
cord wood. After three such trips he had enough and he wanted nothing more than to lie down and soak his ankle in the
ice tub. Instead he built a crude humanoid shape on the top tier, in the corner beside the bottles of water, and shut the
glass door, noting that the glass walls around it had been drilled and outfitted with steel plates at the bottom.

The glass door could only be opened outward, not into the steam room.

Running now, to hell with the pain, still naked and having no idea if Dalton was watching him put on this charade, he cut
back into the locker bays. He threw a dozen or so towels into the huge wicker basket for spent towels, messed them up and
climbed in. He buried himself, crouching until his knees touched his chin. He needed to stay on his feet, in case he needed
to leap. His ankle throbbed and he forced himself to ignore the pain, put it away somewhere in the trap of his mind, talked
to his ankle and told it to be patient, this would all be over one way or another very soon. Hang with me for another fifteen
minutes, dear ankle, and I promise I will ice you for a month.

Now he closed his eyes, asking his ears to reach out, stay vigilant for any noise. No, not noise, any
change
in the noise that was already here. Very faintly, from behind at least three walls, came the dull drone of the deluge shower
thundering the tile in the elevated room. The deluge was a constant benchmark, just enough to give a background to the otherwise
silent spa. What he wanted now was to listen ever so closely for an interruption in the pattern. Would he be able to hear
a difference, a change in the acoustics, if someone walked
down the hall, between the source of that noise and Noel’s basket?

Probably not, but it was his last hope.

He waited. His knees were cramping and he’d only been crouched this way for a couple of minutes. Dalton had to be in the spa
by now. He might have wasted a few minutes checking the other halls, looking behind the counter in the spa store, peeking
through the barbershop’s glass door. But he would be drawn here, as Noel had been, lulled by the hidden location and relative
calm. More, Dalton would know Noel had chosen this space for the privacy and opportunities to hide, or fight. Knowing Noel
was not able to drop out at will, Dalton would guess that he would choose the next best thing, the steam room. At least, that
was the prayer.

Five minutes passed. Probably not even that, because hiding and waiting in a situation like this, from a murderer no less,
dragged the minutes out like hours. Noel’s knees ached and his left foot, the good one, began to tingle from lack of circulation.
He shuffled side to side, but refrained from too much movement that might stir the towels piled over his head and shoulders.

Where were the police? Security? Someone should have crashed the spa by now.

Either Hector hadn’t called them or Hector was dead.

Noel decided not to think about that. He had to stay sharp, not count on help. He was going to have to do this alone.

How long now? Ten minutes? He hadn’t heard anything new.

He kept his eyes closed and tried to think of nothing except himself as a sponge for sound. I am a blind man, I can hear anything,
he told himself. Listen, listen for the faintest change in the droning water.

His back was stiffening. His thighs burned. He couldn’t do this much longer.

A memory came back, with the sharpness of a vision granted by his heightened senses and scorched raw nerves. He was two or
three years old, playing hide and seek with his mother. Rebecca had fed him waffles, he remembered the smell of syrup on his
fingers, on his nose. She’d flicked soap bubbles at him and turned back to the sink, and he’d disappeared. He remembered it
now as if it had happened yesterday, his first true jump where he’d been conscious of the opportunities it afforded. He hadn’t
known then what it was, that he was doing it to her. That he hadn’t disappeared at all, only erased his presence from some
part of her mind. Taking his body and clothes right out of the junction where the eyes meet the brain, blotting himself from
the nexus of her perceptions and the organs, melting a few synapses, tricking her beautiful loving mother eyes. How cruel,
what an awful thing for a boy to do to his mother. No wonder she’d gone insane. He’d done it to her hundreds of times in the
years that followed.

My mind. My mind over hers. Stronger than my own mother’s.

I couldn’t do it to my dad, but I pulled the veil over Julie’s eyes once, never again. So many people I blinded …

Why can’t I do it to him? To Dalton? He’s not strong, he’s sick. I’m younger, healthier, better. He doesn’t deserve it. I
do. I don’t kill people for sport, he does. I should own him. Where is the God in this?
Confidence matters
, Dalton had said over lunch.
It’s the mind. Mine was stronger than yours.
He’s grown confident, powerful on his crimes. He thinks he’s invincible and that I am a rookie, a scared little boy. And why
shouldn’t he? What have I done to prove otherwise? Nothing but run and hide.

He’s dominated me from the first moment I saw him.

No more. Whether he comes with a knife or a gun, I own him. I can take him down. I will drop out and I will corner him. I
will because I can, because I deserve it, because that motherfucker will never get within a hundred miles of my Julie.

I own him.

I own him.

I OWN HIM.

And with that, Noel opened his eyes, sure to find himself gone, a mass of air tenting the pile of towels.

But no. There were his feet, turning purple and white with lack of blood flow. His hairy knees. His sad prick, shriveled with
fear inside a wicker hamper. His sharp nose, his arms, his long useless body. It hadn’t worked. He was still here.

I don’t care. I’m taking him down. It’s now or never.

I will own him.

Noel took three deep breaths and began to rise. The towels slid from him like leaves from a native creature
in a primeval forest. His legs tingled, his ankle screamed, but he ignored the pain. The locker room was empty. Dalton wasn’t
here, he could feel that much. He walked calmly to the row of toilets and backed against the wall, peering around the corner,
into the central hall. He saw nothing, withdrew. He closed his eyes, listening. The drone of the deluge was louder now that
he was not covered in towels, but still steady, constant, the sound of someone showering in the apartment overhead. He wanted
desperately to look, to search the rooms, but looking wouldn’t help. If he relied on his eyes, he wouldn’t see Dalton until
Dalton had cut him open and tasted his blood. He had to trust his ears.

His closed his eyes, breathed in and out. He listened.

A minute passed this way, Noel naked, blind and vulnerable as a newborn, trusting his ears alone.

Another minute, maybe two.

And then it came. The blip. No, not even a blip. A one-second, tiny, almost imperceptible flattening in the droning sound
wave. As if someone had passed a hand over Noel’s ear without fully cupping it. As if someone in another room had flushed
the toilet and caused the shower in the next apartment to hiccup. A tiny, perfect, audible fade. Here in a mental blink, gone
just as fast. It might have been anything, a door closing somewhere, the churn of a ventilation fan kicking on. But it was
all he had, and if he was going to trust it, now was the time.

Noel opened his eyes and stepped off the wall,
rounding into the corridor of shower stalls. He walked calmly to the other end, into the main hall. If his ears had been correct,
this was the hall Dalton had just passed through, dimpling the sound wave.

At the end, in the leg of the L, were the steam rooms. He walked toward them, hewing close to the right side wall, slowing
as he reached the turn. He leaned forward, cheek against the wall, until he could see around the corner with his left eye.

In front of the three glass doors to the steam rooms, in the small concrete space with its white robes hanging on the pegs,
there was nothing. No body, no motion, no disturbance of the stacked towels, no doors opening or closing, no sound …

The rubber mat. It was wide, a blue runner that stretched in front of each glass door. Maybe an inch thick, with hundreds
of small holes cut into the material for water to run through. The surface was pebbled for extra traction, and the whole of
it sloped toward the center, under which was drain.

Noel stared at the mat, focusing, and saw a depression near the far edge. It was not foot-shaped, but it was a dent, rounded,
maybe two and a half inches in diameter. A heel print. While he was staring at that, another one appeared about eighteen inches
behind the first. Motion, weight, a body.

Dalton
.

Noel’s heart boomed. The steps were moving toward him and he almost screamed. But Dalton wasn’t coming at him, he realized
a second later, because the door to
the first steam room was opening. Dalton had simply backed up a pace, turned, and opened the first glass door in the row,
slightly to his left.

Noel wanted to storm the bastard now, but he forced himself to keep still. If this was going to work, he needed the added
element of the towels buying him an extra second or two. He waited, holding his breath, retreating so that Dalton would not
see him when he realized Noel wasn’t in the first steam room and exited.

Dalton needed to check the other rooms. If he only checked door number one before heading back into the hall, he would walk
right into Noel and it would be over. If he checked door number two, the herbal steam room …

Noel counted to ten, listening for the squeak of the door, the hiss of steam jets when the door was open. Neither came. How
long does it take to check a steam room that’s hardly larger than your average rich man’s walk-in closet? Five seconds? Ten?
No more than that.

Noel counted to five. When he got to three, a draft pulled by him and the hissing got louder for a moment, then quieted. Dalton
had just exited door number one.

He waited for Dalton to round the corner and run right into him, but he didn’t.

Another draft, this one softer, with the same escalation of hissing steam. This time the steam stayed louder longer and he
knew Dalton was holding door number two open. Which meant he was looking in, with his back
to Noel’s position, cautiously trying to decide what was in here as his hackles registered something amiss.

A three-count later Noel turned the corner and saw, for a period of two or three seconds only, the outline of Dalton’s head
and shoulders and half of his torso cutting into the wall of rolling herbal-infused steam. Moving forward, deeper into the
room. It was like seeing a ghost and it chilled Noel in a way that seeing the other ghosts never had, terrifying him and exciting
him in equal measure.

I got you, slug. I own you.

Then the door was closing and Dalton was inside.

Inside, stirring the clouds with his arms and hands and probably his blade, on his way to stab a dummy fashioned from towels.

Noel leaped forward and planted himself to one side of the steam room door. He braced his feet as best he could and peered
through the glass. The steam was chaotic, swirling, and then the white towels were flying. A water bottle smacked the wall.
Dalton’s voice, spewing anger, and then the slapping of his feet as he came back.

Noel spun and braced the glass door with all his strength, both legs, his back to the glass for maximum surface and leg leverage.
Dalton slammed into it, shoved hard, making Noel’s bare feet slip on the rubber mat. Noel set his right foot forward, the
good one, making it the anchor. The door had no latch or lock, and for the first minute Dalton managed to jar it open an inch
or two, but no more than that. The steam was thick
now, much stronger than when Noel had first entered, and there was no rubber mat for traction inside. Only slick tile, wet
with condensation.

Noel prayed the glass would not break, that Dalton had not brought a gun. He didn’t think a gun would be Dalton’s style. The
glass was at least an inch thick and safety regulations would require that it be tempered and extremely strong.

Dalton roared, slamming into the door, but the harder he threw himself at it, the worse he rebounded. Noel took the jarring
twice, three times, and on the fourth of the blows he pulled the door toward him, opening it just enough to throw Dalton off
stride. He hesitated only a moment before slamming back in place, by which time Dalton’s face was in reach. Dalton crashed
into the door with a surprised grunt, then howled and crashed backward into the tiled riser.

Though Noel couldn’t see him stand, spots of bright red bubbled into existence within the steam and fell from head height,
as if the clouds were beginning to drizzle blood.

He had broken Dalton’s nose.

Now the real panic set in and Dalton went wild. Noel braced the door with all he had, used his long frame to lever and focus
his mass. Shoe sole prints slammed into the glass, outlined in water beads and trickling condensation. Then his fists or something
round and duller thudded, pummeling the glass one inch from Noel’s turned face. Dalton’s bandaged hand, invisible but soaked
through, smeared the glass in wide patches,
streaked it with more blood as his severed fingertips reopened.

‘Sonofabitch I’m going to kill you fucking dead!’ Dalton screamed. ‘Little fucking rat cocksucker I’m going to cut your balls
off and rape your girlfriend do you hear me I’m going to destroy you and your family and everyone you’ve ever known!’