Time to end it

31Oct

I set the effigy of wire and straw on the pavement in front of the John D. Bailey Center for Palliative Care and reached in my pocket for my lighter. The “John D,” as it was known, was built in the 60s to be something of an urban fortress of public safety. A striated-brick block jutted from the ground floor into the U-shaped visitor’s parking lot where I stood. A pair of outer doors marked ‘Exit’ and ‘Enter’ led to separate entryways beyond with a heavy wall between. Even if you crashed into it with a truck, all that brick would make sure you never breached the inner doors.

They relied on that. Electronic surveillance was minimal. White-boxed cameras perched like gargoyles over the front and rear doors of the building as well as both side exits, but that was pretty much it. If—hypothetically speaking—someone were to drop a footstool at the corner of the building, where a pair of rectangular sodium lamps jutted from both sides, and if that person were reasonably athletic, they could easily jump from the stool, grab one of the lamps with gloved hands, and pull themselves onto the first-floor roof, all without appearing on a single camera.

Of course, that person would still need some way into the building. All of the ground floor windows were barred. Even the window-mounted AC units were in solid metal cages. Both employees and visitors had to be buzzed into the building—although to be compliant with the fire code, occupants could of course buzz themselves out in case of emergency via the big red buttons on the wall near the exits. That meant someone could rush out of the building very easily—to see what was creating the giant blaze in the parking lot, for example—simply by hitting the red button and pushing through the exit.

But outside of all that, the most important thing to know about the John D was that its doors were pretty much like those of any hospital: they swung shut very slowly so as to leave time for long stretchers and the shuffling feet of the sick and elderly, of which there were quite a few inside. If someone did some rushing out, the inner door, normally locked, would take several long seconds to close.

I crouched on the roof over the exit until an orderly, or maybe a male nurse, ran into the visitor’s lot to examine my burning effigy, now a spiraling column of flame. It was just after 1 a.m. and the lot was completely empty. He passed through the outer door and I hopped down from my perch and made it to the inner door in four strides, slipping my gloved fingers between it and the frame at the last moment. The orderly outside saw me, of course, so I slipped in quickly and slammed the door shut by leaning back with my butt, trapping him outside.

As he ran around to the entrance, hoping to be buzzed back in, the skinny night nurse with the dead eyes, the one sitting behind the desk, grabbed a fat syringe, held it like a dagger, and started toward me like this was all part of normal life after midnight at the John D. She didn’t shout or anything, despite that I was dressed head-to-toe in black, including ski mask and hood.

I had already pulled the first Molotov from my backpack, and I lit the cloth with a Zippo from my pocket. She was halfway to me when I tossed it underhanded into the air. It spun end over end and crashed at her feet, shattering and engulfing her in a swooping dress of flame. Tellingly, she never screamed. Her arm flailed about, but not so much from pain as confusion. I pulled my gun from the holster on my belt and shot her cleanly through the head. Her body dropped with a thud.

I lit the second Molotov a moment later and tossed it underhanded over the desk and into the nurse’s station, where it smashed on the floor of the records room. The color-tabbed paper files caught fire immediately, and in two seconds, tips of the flames were scraping the ceiling. The fire alarm was triggered, sirens sounded, and flood lights above each exit illuminated the dim halls in sideways beams. The orderly outside was banging on the locked entrance, demanding to be let in.

I pulled a pay-by-minute phone from my back pocket, already keyed to 911, and hit the dial button. I tossed it onto one of the seats in the waiting area and moved toward the hall, gun in hand. Smoke from the fire was already moving over the ceiling, and I kept to a crouch.

A man came through the haze. I had plenty of warning since it was backlit by the flood lights in the hall behind. He was nothing but a silhouette and didn’t make any noise as he came at me, not even a shout of surprise, but since I had to be sure before putting a bullet in his skull, I went down and shot him in the knee. He made no sound as his leg gave way and he collapsed forward in front of me. I shot him in the head on the way down.

Behind me, barely audible over the roar of the flames, I could hear a loud voice calling out from the other end of the phone, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

Almost immediately, another man burst through the smoke. My gun swung around, and he jumped back, arms raised.

“I’m human! I’m human!” he called.

I motioned with the barrel to the front door and he slid past me, arms up, like I was contaminated by disease and he didn’t want to be within three feet of me. Then he hit the button and ran out. His colleague, the man I’d tricked, was still by the entrance and cursed in frustration before running back around to the exit.

I made my way past the restrooms and toward the patient suites at the back, keeping low to avoid the smoke. Foam paneling in the ceiling over the blaze had disintegrated in the heat and filled the air with choking particulates. I hugged the left wall, facing right, and made sure the hall was clear. Patient rooms stretched all the way to the illuminated exit sign at the end. There were small dark lights over every door, painted with the room number. All of them were lit, which cast a violet glow over everything, like a blacklight.

I moved to the right wall and swung left, keeping my gun raised. Without warning, a man grabbed me from behind. I hadn’t seen him, which suggested he’d slipped out of the office door in behind me, or maybe one of the restrooms. He was unnaturally strong, and even though he held me with just one hand, my first attempt to pull free failed miserably. In that moment, he swung a fat hypodermic needle around toward my chest. It hit the pendant hanging from my neck and broke in two. I twisted in rather than out, twisting to face him and shoving my gun under his chin. I pulled the trigger and the splatter hit the ceiling. I felt blood hit my clothes. It was cool, like tapwater.

I checked the halls again immediately, dropping to my knees to lower my profile, as the body behind me slid slowly down the wall, leaving a bloody wake. The fire was growing rapidly, and I began to worry that I might have given my colleagues in emergency services too much credit.

Since I didn’t see my quarry on the ground floor, I crossed the hall to the enclosed stairwell near the back exit and pulled the fire alarm, just to be sure. A stuttering klaxons continued to blare as I walked swiftly but carefully to the second floor, making sure to clear my corners as I went. I leaned out from the stairs and quickly ducked back in. Seeing nothing but an empty hall lit by the flood lamps at both ends and the blacklights over the doors, I repeated my performance from before, hugging the left wall and clearing the right wing, then swinging around and turning left.

That’s when I saw her. She was standing in the hall in a nightgown, tangles of white hair in her face, waiting. Her wheelchair was sideways on the floor behind her. Her arthritic hands made loose fists. She was backlit by the floodlight at the end of the hall, and I couldn’t see her face.

I stepped into the open and put my gun back in my holster. No one in any of the rooms was stirring, but I could hear sirens in the distance, finally. Not police. My colleagues in the NYFD would be first on the scene.

The blacklights over the doors in the hall were lit all the way down, presumably in response to the fire, and it made the pale wildflowers on her nightgown seem to glow. And her yellow teeth too, which revealed her sneer.

I was no match for a witch of her age and skill, I knew. But then, I’d learned a few things from my encounter with the chef.

We squared off like gunfighters. Granny Tuesday’s fingers twitched as if in anticipation of what they were going to do to me. I slipped a hand into my open bag, which hung loose off one shoulder.

“Granny,” I said in terse greeting.

“Told you what you are, did he?”

I nodded. I moved slowly toward her, hand in my bag.

“That’s too bad,” she said. “I was hoping to be rid of one of ya, at least.”

As I approached, I caught sight of the patients in their rooms out of the corners of my eyes. Every one of them looked as if death might find them at any moment—indeed, that their presence there, in the house that Granny built, was all that kept it away. They laid catatonic with their mouths open and their shriveled lips curled over their teeth. Most had plastic oxygen masks over their faces and tubes running from their arms.

The fire trucks were out front of the building now. I could see red flashers reflected in the blinds of the rooms to my right. Wouldn’t be long.

“This how you hang on, Granny? Stealing the last bit of life from folks who have nothing left?”

“Someone may as well get some use of it,” she said, fingers twitching again. “They certainly aren’t. Modern medicine takes everything from them and calls it livin’.”

I was very aware of how close I was getting. I knew that’s what she wanted, for me to get close so she could spring whatever trap she had prepared.

“You set me up,” I accused calmly, not more than ten feet from her.

She nodded, hands still in loose fists, eyes not moving from me.

Don’t ever bargain with a witch, even to avoid disaster. I’d learned that lesson well enough. Nellie Noll was truthful about the origin of John Blymire’s predicament, as far as anyone knew, but she neglected to mention that his spiteful neighbor, Nelson Rehmeyer, had gotten that old German spell book from her. It’s widely speculated that on the night of the assault, she entered the house after the three attackers had fled and snuffed the burning man with a wave of her hand and retrieved her book from its secret resting place—behind a loose stone in the mantle.

Granny’s hands jerked hard, like she was moving to pull an invisible gun, and I tossed an item from my bag like it was a grenade. As it left my hand, I flipped the metal toggle to released the padlock and the carrion ghoul’s smoky form trailed the peglike spirit totem as it flew through the air—right toward the aged woman with the arthritic hands. Granny’s eyes went wide and instantly she stopped whatever spell she had been casting and turned circles in the air with one hand while drawing runes with the other. It was quite a feat to watch, especially considering how difficult it is for most folks to pat their head and rub their stomachs at the same time. It underscored just how outmatched I was.

Her left hand kept turning wide circles as the totem hit the squeaky-clean floor and slid close to her slippered feet. She must have finished tracing the binding runes then because she flat-palmed the space in the center of the circle and pushed down to the totem. She was just closing the padlock again I stepped close enough to attack. I swiped with a knife. She raised her arms defensively, and it cut across them, slicing her gown and the skin underneath. But she hardly seemed to notice. Her hands turned again as she spoke strange words—words I didn’t recognize and couldn’t repeat if I tried. Instantly, it felt like someone’s hand reached through me, through my intestines—which, as odd as it felt, was only the second-weirdest sensation of the evening. Half a second later, I felt that phantom hand grab my spine, just above my pelvis, and pull.

Hard.

I fell face forward as the ligaments in my spine stretched and I screamed. Something was trying to yank my spine out my back, as if to rip both it and my skull free of my body and whip them about in a frenzy. And it would’ve, too, if one of Granny’s deftly spinning arms didn’t crack—audibly—just below the shoulder, and then fall limp.

Now it was her turn to scream. She clutched her elbow to support her dangling arm and fell to her knees. For a moment, neither of us did anything but pant in pain. Whether it was because I was younger or just that much more pissed off, I stood first, a bit wobbly. I showed her the wax voodoo doll in my wand. It was missing one of its stubby arms. I had snapped it off.

When it comes to voodoo dolls, hair works. So do very personal possessions, like a keepsake from childhood. But nothing works quite as well as blood. The effect is temporary, and there’s a reason why people do little more than stab the dolls with needles. Distance is a factor. You can only do so much from far away. But I was standing right next to the woman. I’d wiped my knife through a crease in the doll, sealing it shut. I hadn’t intended to snap the arm off, to be honest, but given the amount of pain I was in, I no longer cared for subtlety.

Granny’s was on her knees. Her left arm dangled. She opened her mouth to speak words I knew shouldn’t be spoken and I jabbed the tip of my thumb so hard into the doll’s neck that the soft wax spread under the crease of my glove. She fell to the ground choking and gagging. Her eyes bulged from her head while her tongue squirmed like a snake with its head cut off—and I wondered if maybe it was.

A hard sound echoed up the stairwell behind me. I heard heavy pounding on the front doors. The firemen downstairs were battering their way into the building.

I lifted my thumb from the doll and Granny gasped loudly before coughing over and over between huge, gulping breaths.

“How’s that feel?” I asked

“Fuck yo—”

I pressed again. Again she started gagging and choking.

I let go and knelt over her.

“Where is he, Granny? Where’s he hiding?”

“You don’t know wha—”

I snapped a wax leg off the doll. Granny shrieked with such air and volume that it even surprised me, and I moved back. She clutched her leg. I’d heard it snap.

Her body shook in heaves, and she alternated between holding her breath from the pain and gasping for much-needed breath.

“Wrong answer,” I said. “Where’s the Lord of Shadows?”

The firemen broke into the building. I heard the shatter echo up the hall. A moment later, the klaxons ceased and I heard water and footsteps.

“Where?” I urged.

“Feol ulgaith—”

I snapped the other leg. Her eyes widened. Her mouth parted. But she wasn’t able to scream this time. She was in too much pain. Her lips quivered in a silent ‘O.’

I stood and took a deep breath. I heard shouting at the stairs. I pulled my gun and put it to the doll’s head.

“What happens if I blow your head off, Granny? I honestly don’t know. Does your mind go? Does it ever come back?”

“Downtown!” she screamed, as if pushing the word over a cliff, before holding her breath again from the pain.

She took two more panting breaths, holding each for a moment before attempting another. Her shaking body was bordering on convulsion. She was going into shock.

I wasn’t sure she was going to survive.

I cocked the gun.

“O—Omin,” she stuttered. “Omin! Top floor. Downtown. Wall Street!” she screamed. “That’s where they are. They’re all there!”

“HEY!” A fireman in bulky gear stepped into the hall behind me.

I snatched the locked totem from the ground and ran for the end of the hall. I fixed my bag on my back and shot the window four times without stopping.

I’d tried Muay Thai. And CrossFit. And Rugby. Maybe it was time for a little Parkour. I dove through the glass.

By the time the man with the ax and heavy oxygen tank on his back checked the old woman on the floor and chugged his way to the shattered window, I’d reached the ground, covered the gap to the fence, and was climbing over it, my face obscured by the hood and ski mask.

I didn’t know whether Granny would survive. But honestly I wouldn’t put anything past the old bird. The important thing was that the John D was going to be swarming with cops and firemen. With any luck, the right folks would ask how it was two men and one woman who were thought to have died months or perhaps even years before were lying in that hall with their heads blown off. And of course all of the patients would have to be moved to new facilities. Questions would inevitably arise. With the John D’s records burned, people would have to do something more than stamp a file and validate whatever paper lies had sustained the place all that time. Someone would have to go out and talk to real people, which is always your best shot at the truth.

Maybe Livonia Tuesday would make it through all that. Certainly, as I’d left her, she looked more like the victim than the perpetrator. Maybe that and her gray hair and homespun manner would be enough. But either way, she’d be off my back for a few months, at least.

An hour after crawling down from the window, I was sitting in my car at the end of an industrial pier. The door was open and my feet were on cracked asphalt. I’d wiped the gun clean again, just to be sure, wrapped it in a towel, and thrown it into the East River. My bag and clothes were burning in a rusted steel drum nearby. There was an irregular breeze coming off the water, and with each gust, the embers in the drum flared and I felt the heat.

Time to end it.

 

I’m posting the chapters of my forthcoming urban paranormal mystery, FEAST OF SHADOWS, in order until the book is released. A blend of hard-boiled whodunit and contemporary urban fantasy, it’s been described as “Tolkien meets Dashiell Hammett for dinner in the present day.”

You can sign up here to be notified when the book is released.

You can start reading in order here: The old ones are patient.

The next chapter is: (not yet posted)

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