The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie) (10 page)

It was the hardest thing he had ever done, almost as
difficult as what he was about to attempt now.

Doyle unbuttoned the top button of his white shirt, reaching
for the chain that he always wore around his neck. At the end of the chain hung
an old fashioned skeleton key, familiar to all houses of this age. There was a
tremble to his hand as he brought the key to the lock. A spark of supernatural
release was followed by just the slightest whiff of a scent foreign to this
house, the smell of some primeval forest after a drenching rain. He savored the
heady smell, taken aback by the powerful emotions it evoked. He turned the key,
gripped the glass, diamond-cut knob and turned it.

The door opened with a creak, the light from the hallway
eagerly spilling onto an ascending, wooden staircase, illuminating another door
at the top of stairs. The door was of solid iron, made for him in 1932 by a
smith by the name of Hendrickson who hailed from Eerie, Pennsylvania. Doyle had
helped the metal worker make contact with his long dead mother in lieu of
payment for his metal work.

He never imagined that he would look upon that door again. It
had been put there as a precaution, to keep things where they belonged. Now,
Doyle began to climb, gripping the wooden banister as he ascended. It seemed to
take an eternity. On the final step he stopped. There were no keyholes, no
sliding bolts or crystal knobs to turn, just cold and unyielding iron. He
placed the flat of his hand upon the metal, sensing contact with the magicks he
had placed within it so long ago. His palm began to tingle as dormant spell
came sluggishly awake.

"Open," he whispered.

The door shimmered, a tremor passing through it. A tiny hole
appeared and began to grow, the metal now malleable, as if returning to its
molten state. The opening expanded, the substance of the door peeling back upon
itself as it created an entryway large enough for him to pass through.

A warm, humid breeze flowed out from the expanding portal,
and Doyle could hear the gentle patter of a falling rain upon the vast forest
beyond the confines of the hallway and door.

It was just as wild and frighteningly beautiful as he
remembered it, the lush vegetation every conceivable shade of green that could
possibly be imagined. The place was older than recorded time, stirring musings
about origins of the mythical Garden of Eden, but he had not returned here for
intellectual stimulation. Only reasons most dire would have forced him into
this place again.

The sorcerer stepped through the doorway. He let the place
wash over him, turning his face up to the thick canopy of trees that blotted out
the sky. The rain dropped from the leaves upon his upturned face. He opened his
mouth, tasting the purity of the world he had entered.

The moss writhed beneath his feet, and he glanced down to
see that blades of grass bent to touch the soft leather of his shoes.
What a
wondrous place,
he thought, so very sorry that he had ever left it.

The patch of ground before him began to roil, turning over
upon itself, and in the blink of an eye, two pale-skinned creatures erupted
from the earth and crouched before him. Adorned in armor made from the bark of
trees and flat polished stone, the warriors thrust their spears toward him.

Doyle let his hands fall at his sides, tendrils of mystical
energy leaking from his fingertips, showing the pair that he was far from defenseless.

"I have come on a matter of grave importance,"
he spoke in the lilting tongue of the Fey.
"The fate of my world is at
stake, and yours as well. Yes, both our worlds . . . and all of the others
besides."

Clay piloted a silver Cadillac through the streets of
Boston, holding the steering wheel as though it was fragile and might shatter
in his hands. There were very few other cars out on the street, but still he
drove slowly, his speed dictated not by traffic but by his fascination with the
terrible phenomena that were unfolding in the city. The Cadillac feeling like
some protective bubble out of which he and Eve could observe the horrors around
them.

The sky was tinted the dark crimson of drying blood and
swarms of mosquitoes traveled like terrible storm clouds. Clay had been forced
to detour away from the entrance to the Massachusetts Turnpike because manhole
covers had blown out of the pavement surrounding it and raw sewage flooded the
street. Eve had suggested Route Nine to drive out to Newton and he'd headed
that way onto to pause at a place where the road was overrun by rats. But he'd
paused only a moment before rolling the Caddy right over them, hearing them pop
beneath its tires.

It wasn't going to get any better. The rats weren't going to
clear off of their own free will. Whatever this storm was, it wasn't going to
pass without someone doing something about it.

"Pretty unsettling, isn't it?" he said, breaking a
long silence in the car.

"I've seen worse," Eve replied.

Clay shot her a hard look. "You're not the only one,
Eve. But I'm not talking about this." He waved a hand to indicate the
bizarre goings on in the city around him. They passed a Humvee that was pulled
over to the side of the road. The driver had his face pressed against his
window, staring up at the sky. "I'm talking about what it means."

She arched an eyebrow and Clay felt his throat go dry. By
God she was beautiful. He was the last person to be taken in by surface
appearance; he knew better than anyone that it rarely reflected what was
within. Yet there was something so exotic, so ancient about her that she took
his breath away. She had taken the time to change out of the blood-soaked
clothes in which she had met him at the door and now wore black trousers and a
chiffon, embroidered top that was looked both expensive and — with its
spaghetti straps baring her arms, throat and shoulders — more revealing
than what Eve normally wore. There was a silk jacket in the back seat that had
clearly come from the closet of one designer or another. Clothing was Eve's
other
weakness, second only to blood.

"What does it mean, then?" Eve prodded him.

"That's what's so unsettling," he explained. "This
sort of thing is happening all over the northeast, but it's concentrated here. I've
lived as long as you have —"

"And how many can say that?" she whispered.

He ignored her and went on. " — and normally
there's some kind of prophecy, isn't there? You'll get the clairvoyants with
their visions and maybe some ancient writings, omens and portents —"

Eve turned sideways in her seat. "What do you call all
this shit, then? Last I heard showers of blood and rains of toads were
considered pretty ominous. And as for portents, there aren't many that can beat
red clouds blotting out the sun."

Clay took a long breath and shook his head, but he kept his
eyes on the road. "No argument, but normally there's some warning, enough
so that people like Doyle, the kind of people who watch for these things, know
they're coming much earlier."

A streak of black darted across the road in front of them
and he had to jerk the wheel to the left to swerve around it. As the Cadillac
shifted lanes he caught a glimpse of that black streak, but it was not a streak
any longer. It was a dog, maybe a German Shepherd but he could not be at all
certain. Whatever sort of dog it was, it was not the beast's fur that was
black. It was the crows.

The dog had stopped now in the middle of Route Nine and they
had a clear view. Clay slowed down even further and stared. The dog's body was
covered by crows, their wings madly beating the air as their beaks plunged
again and again at the dog, pecking it and tearing its flesh so that some of
the black-feathered birds were splashed with its blood.

"You're right," Eve said softly. "It's
unsettling."

Clay found no satisfaction in this admission. His foot felt
suddenly heavy on the accelerator and the Cadillac sped up. He had had enough,
now, of the signs and portents, had seen far too many people huddled inside
their homes and looking out the windows in panic and wonder. Phone lines were
out. Cellular communication was no better. Television and radio and cable
signals were warped static.

From what Eve had told him, Doyle clearly had some idea what
was going on. And if Clay knew Doyle, there would already be some kind of plan
in motion. He wanted to know what it was and what his place in it would be. The
time for watching it through the windows was over.

"Eve?"

"Yeah?"
Clay glanced at her. "Why are
you always snapping at me? I'm not exactly Mr. Sensitive, but I'd like to know
what I did to piss you off."
"Nothing," she said. "You
didn't do anything."

They drove in silence for several minutes. Clay consulted
the paper in his hand upon which directions to the Ferrick house were written
in Squire's cramped scrawl. He left Route Nine and took them deeper into
Newton, up narrow, tree-lined streets and past wealthy neighborhoods. In time
he turned into a more conventional suburban street and peered at house numbers
as they passed colonials and ranch homes. Many of the houses were dark and
looked empty, their occupants having remained at the office or stuck somewhere
else. But there were lights on in some houses and the sound of the Cadillac's
engine brought faces to the windows.

Clay hated to ignore them, but he had no choice. If they
tried to soothe the fears of every person who was afraid, they would lose focus
on the larger picture, and the peril would only grow more dire.

At number seventy-two, a sand-colored split level with dark
blue shutters, he turned into the driveway. The garage door was open and a
Volvo wagon was inside. That was good. Mrs. Ferrick had called Doyle, but the
phones had gone out shortly thereafter and there was no way to be sure she
would stay put when the chaos had worsened.

"This should be interesting," Clay murmured,
mostly to himself, as he put the car in park and killed the engine. He opened
the door but paused when he felt Eve's hand on his arm.

"Hang on."

Clay turned to her and was surprised to see pain in her
gaze. Eve was usually all hard edges and slick smiles.

"It's really nothing you did," she said. "It's
me."

One leg already out the door, he held it open and studied
her more closely. "How, exactly? How is it you, I mean? We've worked
together before, Eve. I've got you and Doyle to thank for setting me straight
when my life was a mess. But it's obvious I get under your skin. Why is that?"
Eve
nodded slowly, then pushed her hair out of her face and met his gaze. She could
be fierce, but at the moment there was vulnerability he had never seen in her
before.

"Think about it. Think about what you are."

"What I am?"

She gave him a look that made him feel incredibly stupid,
and then pointed upward. "You're
His
clay. You're connected to Him
in a way that nothing else on Earth is. After the suffering he's put me
through, you have to ask why being around you hurts me?"

His heart went cold. Clay stared at her but Eve looked away,
opened her door and stepped out, the soles of her boots clicking on the
pavement. She shut the door and started toward the house. After a moment Clay
followed her, pocketing his keys. He wore the same face, the same form, he had
worn in New Orleans, a persona had adopted many years before to make himself
feel more human. But he had never been human. Sometimes, when he was
particularly fortunate, he forgot that.

Eve rang the doorbell. With the buzz of mosquito swarms and
the blood-red sky the utter normality of that sound seemed grotesquely
incongruous, and yet for some reason it set him at ease.

They stood side by side on the doorstep.

"You're not the only one He has made suffer," Clay
said, his voice low, unwilling to look at her now. "Perverse as it might
be, I'd rather be suffering because I was the subject of His vengeance, as you've
been, than because He couldn't spare a moment's thought to my fate."

There were noises inside the house, voices and the staccato
noise of rushing footsteps on wooden floors. Clay's attention was drawn to the
curtains in the bay window upstairs and he saw the face of a woman appear amidst
the bone-white, lace-trimmed fabric. She was perhaps forty and might have been
attractive without the fear that was engraved upon her features. Mrs. Ferrick,
he assumed. She stared at her two visitors for a moment and then gestured to
him to be patient, that she'd be right down, almost as if they were ordinary
callers at her door and that the city was not being besieged by hellish
occurrences fit for the Biblical book of Revelations.

Once more Eve gripped his arm, but this time her touch was
gentle.

"You remind me," she said. "But maybe that's
not so terrible. Hard as it is, you also remind me that I'm not alone."

Clay smiled and then there were footsteps on the stairs
inside and the sound of the chain being slid off the lock, and the door was
pulled open from within. In the woman's hands was a white business card that
had once been crisp and new but had now been bent and had its edges made ragged
by Mrs. Ferrick's anxiety. According to Squire, Doyle had given her the card
years earlier. She had lent him little credence then, but Clay figured recent
events had made her more open-minded.

"He sent you? Mr. Doyle?" she asked hopefully.

"Yes. You're Mrs. Ferrick?" Eve asked.

She nodded. "Can you . . . can you help Daniel?"

Clay felt for her. This woman's world had started to fall
apart long before the sun had disappeared from the sky. "We can try. But
it might be better if we talked about it inside."

Mrs. Ferrick glanced upward and then looked around her
neighborhood, the landscape cast in a crimson gloom, and she nodded. "Of
course, I'm sorry." She stepped away from the door. "Please, come in."