The Strain, the Fall, the Night Eternal (20 page)

“Fuck yeah.”

Gus looked away and saw a family next to him, dressed for the theater, rising and leaving with their desserts unfinished. Because of Felix’s language, Gus guessed. By the looks of these Midwestern kids, they had never heard hard talk. Well, fuck them. You come into this town, you keep your kids out past nine o’clock, you risk them seeing the full show.

Felix finally finished his slop and Gus eased his cash-filled hat onto his head and they sauntered out into the night. They were walking on Forty-fourth Street, Felix sucking on a cigarette, when they heard screams. It didn’t quicken their pace any, hearing screams in Midtown Manhattan. Not until they saw the fat, naked guy shuffling across the street at Seventh and Broadway.

Felix nearly spit out his cigarette laughing. “Gusto, you see that
shit?” He started to jog ahead, like a bystander called by a barker to a show.

Gus wasn’t into it. He followed slowly after him.

People in Times Square were making way for this guy and his pasty, floppy ass. Women screamed at the sight, half laughing, covering their eyes or their mouths or both. A young bachelorette party group snapped photos with their phones. Every time the guy turned, a new group got a look at his shriveled, flesh-buried junk, and howled.

Gus wondered where the cops were. This was America for you: a brown brother couldn’t even duck into a doorway for a discreet piss without getting hassled, yet a white guy can parade naked through the crossroads of the world and get a free pass.

“Wasted off his
ass,
” hooted Felix, following the fool, along with a loose bunch of others, many drunk themselves, savoring the street theater. The lights of the brightest intersection in the world—Times Square is a slashing X of avenues, walled with eye-popping advertisements and word crawls, a pinball game run through with never-ending traffic—dazzled the fat man, set him spinning. He lunged about, lurching like a circus bear on the loose.

Felix’s crowd of carousers laughed and reared back when the man turned and staggered toward them. He was getting bolder now, or a little panicked, like a frightened animal, and more confused and seemingly—sometimes he pressed a hand to his throat, as though choking—more pained. Everything was really lively until the pale, fat man lashed out at a laughing woman, grabbing her by the back of her head. The woman screamed and twisted and a part of her head came off in his hand—for a moment it looked as though he had ripped open her skull—but it was just her frizzy black extensions.

The attack crossed the line from fun into fright. The fat man stumbled out into traffic with the fistful of fake hair still in his hand, and the crowd followed, pursuing him now, growing angry, yelling. Felix took the lead, crossing to the traffic island after this guy. Gus went along, but away from the crowd, threading through the honking cars. He was calling to Felix to come away, to be done with this. This was not going to end well.

The fat man was advancing toward a family gathered in the island to take in Times Square at night. He had them backed up against the traffic shooting past, and when the father tried to intervene he got
knocked back hard. Gus recognized them as the theatergoing family from the restaurant. The mother seemed more concerned about shielding her kids’ eyes from the sight of the naked man than protecting herself. She got grabbed by the back of the neck, pulled close up against his sagging belly and pendulous man breasts. The crazy man’s mouth opened as though he wanted a kiss. But then it kept opening, like a snake’s mouth—clearly dislocating the jaw with a soft
pop.

Gus had no love for tourists, but he didn’t even think before coming up behind the guy and hook-arming him in a headlock. He choked back on him strong, the guy’s neck surprisingly muscular beneath the loose folds of flesh. Gus had the advantage, though, and the guy released the mother, falling against her husband in front of her screaming kids.

Now Gus was stuck. He had the naked man locked up, the big bear’s arms pinwheeling. Felix came up in front to help … but then stopped. He was staring at the naked guy’s face as if there was something really wrong there. A few people behind him reacted the same, others turned away in horror, but Gus couldn’t see why. He did feel the guy’s neck undulate under his forearm, very unnaturally—almost as though he were swallowing sideways. Felix’s look of disgust made him think the fat guy was maybe suffocating under his choke hold, so Gus relaxed his grip a bit—

—just enough for the guy, with the animal strength of the insane, to hurl Gus off with a hairy elbow.

Gus fell to the sidewalk hard and his hat popped off. He turned in time to see it roll off the curb and into traffic. Gus jumped up and started after his hat and his money—but Felix’s yell spun him back. The guy had Felix wrapped up in some kind of maniacal embrace, the big man’s mouth going at Felix’s neck. Gus saw Felix’s hand pull something from his back pocket, flicking it open with a wrist flip.

Gus ran toward Felix before Felix could use the knife, dropping a shoulder into the fat man’s side, feeling ribs crack, sending the tub of flesh sprawling. Felix fell too, Gus seeing blood spilling down the front of Felix’s neck, and—more shockingly—a look of outright terror on his
compadre
’s face. Felix sat up, dropping the knife in order to grip his neck, and Gus had never seen Felix look that way. Gus knew then that something bizarre had happened—
was happening
—he just didn’t know what. All he knew was that he had to act in order to make his friend right again.

Gus reached for the knife, taking its burled black grip in his hand as the naked man got to his feet. The guy stood with his hand covering his mouth, almost as though trying to contain something in there. Something squirming. Blood rimmed his fat cheeks and stained his chin—Felix’s blood—as he started toward Gus with his free hand outstretched.

He came fast—faster than a man of his size should have—shoving Gus down backward, before he could react. Gus’s bare head smacked against the sidewalk—and for a moment everything was silent. He saw the Times Square billboards flashing above him in a kind of liquid slow motion … a young model staring down at him, wearing only a bra and panties … then the big man. Looming over him. Something undulating inside his mouth as he stared at Gus with empty, dark eyes …

The man dropped to one knee, choking out this thing in his throat. Pinkish and hungry, it shot out at Gus with the greedy speed of a frog’s darting tongue. Gus slashed at the thing with his knife, cutting and stabbing like a dreamer fighting some creature in a nightmare. He didn’t know what it was—only that he wanted it away from him, wanted to kill it. The fat man reeled back, making a noise like squealing. Gus kept up his slashing, cutting the man’s neck, slicing his throat to ribbons.

Gus kicked away and the guy got to his feet, hands over his mouth and throat. He was bleeding white—not red—a creamy substance thicker and brighter than milk. He stumbled backward off the curb and fell into the moving traffic.

The truck tried to stop in time. That was the worst of it. After rolling over his face with the front tires, the rear set stopped right on the fat man’s crushed skull.

Gus staggered to his feet. Still dizzy from his fall, he looked down at the blade of Felix’s knife in his hand. It was stained white.

He was hit from behind then, his arms wrapped up, his shoulder driven into the pavement. He reacted as though it were the fat man still attacking him, writhing and kicking.

“Drop the knife! Drop it!”

He got his head around and saw three red-faced cops on him, two more behind him aiming guns.

Gus released the knife. He allowed his arms to be wrenched behind
him, where they were cuffed. His adrenaline exploded. He said, “
Fucking now you’re here?
”

“Stop resisting!” said the cop, cracking Gus’s face into the pavement.

“He was attacking this family here—ask them!”

Gus turned.

The tourists were gone.

Most of the crowd was gone. Only Felix remained, seated on the edge of the island in a daze, gripping his throat—as a blue-gloved cop shoved him down, dropping a knee into his side.

Beyond Felix, Gus saw a small black thing rolling farther out into traffic. His hat, with all his dirty money still inside the brim—a slow-rolling taxi crushing it flat, Gus thinking,
This was America for you.

G
ary Gilbarton poured himself a whisky. The family—the extended family, both sides—and friends were all gone finally, leaving behind stacks of take-out food cartons in the refrigerator and wastebaskets full of tissues. Tomorrow they’d be back to their lives, and with a story to tell.

My twelve-year-old niece was on that plane …

My twelve-year-old cousin was on that plane …

My neighbor’s twelve-year-old daughter was on that plane …

Gary felt like a ghost walking through his nine-room home in the leafy suburb of Freeburg. He touched things—a chair, a wall—and felt nothing. Nothing mattered anymore. Memories could console him, but were more likely to drive him mad.

He had disconnected all the telephones after reporters started calling, wanting to know about the youngest casualty on board. To humanize the story. Who was she? they asked him. It would take Gary the rest of his life to work on a paragraph about his daughter, Emma. It would be the longest paragraph in history.

He was more focused on Emma than he was Berwyn, his wife, because children are our second selves. He loved Berwyn, and she was gone. But his mind kept circling around his lost little girl like water circling an ever-emptying drain.

That afternoon, a lawyer friend—a guy Gary hadn’t had over to
the house in maybe a year—pulled him aside in the study. He sat Gary down and told him that he was going to be a very rich man. A young victim like Em, with a much longer timeline of life lost, guaranteed a huge settlement payout.

Gary did not respond. He did not see dollar signs. He did not throw the guy out. He truly did not care. He felt nothing.

He had spurned all the offers from family and friends to spend the night so that he would not be alone. Gary had convinced one and all that he was fine, though thoughts of suicide had already occurred to him. Not just thoughts: a silent determination; a certainty. But later. Not now. Its inevitability was like a balm. The only sort of “settlement” that would mean anything to him. The only way he was getting through all this now was knowing that there would be an end. After all the formalities. After the memorial playground was erected in Emma’s honor. After the scholarship was funded. But before he sold this now-haunted house.

He was standing in the middle of the living room when the doorbell rang. It was well after midnight. If it was a reporter, Gary would attack and kill him. It was as simple as that. To violate this time and place? He would tear the interloper apart.

He whipped open the door … and then all at once the pent-up mania went out of him.

A girl stood barefoot on the welcome mat. His Emma.

Gary Gilbarton’s face crumpled in disbelief, and he slipped to his knees in front of her. Her face showed no reaction, no emotion. Gary reached out to his daughter—then hesitated. Would she pop like a soap bubble and disappear again forever?

He touched her arm, gripping her thin biceps. The fabric of her dress. She was real. She was there. He grasped her and pulled her to him, hugging her, wrapping her up in his arms.

He pulled back and looked at her again, pushing the stringy hair off her freckled face. How could this be? He looked around outside, scanning his misty front yard to see who had brought her.

No car in the driveway, no sound of an automobile engine pulling away.

Was she alone? Where was her mother?

“Emma,” he said.

Gary got to his feet and led her inside, closing the front door,
switching on the light. Em looked dazed. She wore the dress her mother had bought her for the trip, that made her look so grown up as she twirled around when she’d first tried it on for him. There was dirt on one sleeve—and perhaps blood. Gary spun her around, looking her over and finding more blood on her bare feet—no shoes?—and dirt all over, and scrapes on her palms and bruises on her neck.

“What happened, Em?” he asked her, holding her face in his palms. “How did you …?”

The wave of relief struck him again, nearly knocking him over, and he grasped her tight. He picked her up and carried her over to the sofa, sitting her there. She was traumatized, and oddly passive. So unlike his smiling, headstrong Emma.

He felt her face, the way her mother always did when Emma acted strangely, and it was hot. So hot that her skin felt sticky, and she was terribly pale, nearly translucent. He saw veins beneath the surface, prominent red veins he had never seen before.

The blue in her eyes seemed to have faded. A head wound, probably. She was in shock.

Thoughts of hospitals ran through his head, but he wasn’t letting her out of this house now, never again.

“You’re home now, Em,” he said. “You’re going to be fine.”

He took her hand and tugged on it to get her to stand, leading her into the kitchen. Food. He installed her in her chair at the table, watching her from the counter as he toasted two chocolate chip waffles, her favorite. She sat there with her hands at her sides, watching him, not staring exactly, but not alive to the room either. No silly stories, no school-day chatter.

The toaster jumped and he slathered the waffles with butter and syrup and set the plate down in front of her. He sat in his seat to watch. The third chair, Mommy’s place, was still empty. Maybe the doorbell would ring again …

“Eat,” he told her. She hadn’t picked up her fork yet. He cut off a corner of the stack and held it before her mouth. She did not open it.

“No?” he said. He showed her himself, putting the waffles in his mouth, chewing. He tried her again, but her response was the same. A tear slipped from Gary’s eye and rolled down his cheek. He knew by now that something was terribly wrong with his daughter. But he shoved all that aside.