Bragg moaned, “Oh God help me…please help me…the pain…”
Krepsin released his breath in a hiss. The second hand of the stopwatch was sweeping past three minutes. “Check him,” he rasped.
Niles bent over Bragg. “Pulse irregular. The bleeding’s almost stopped. The blood’s coagulated into a hard crust. I… I think the wound’s sealed, Mr. Krepsin.”
“Hurts,” Bragg whispered.
Krepsin’s bulk leaned over the desk. “That man should be dead by now,” he said. “He should be dead!” Breathing like a steam engine, he came around the desk and stepped onto the plastic film, avoiding the blood. “Get away, get away,” he told Niles, who moved quickly aside. Very slowly Krepsin dared to bend forward and touch with one finger the hard crust of dried blood that had effectively sealed Bragg’s wound. He drew his finger back as if it had been burned. “He’s going to live,” Krepsin whispered. Then, in a shout that seemed to shake the room: “He’s going to live!”
Wayne sat up, staring blankly ahead as blood dripped from his nose. His head was full of black, consumptive pain.
“He’s a healer,” Krepsin breathed, his eyes wide and astonished. “He’s a healer, he’s a healer, he’s a goddamned healer! I’ve found a healer!” He turned toward Wayne, one of his shoes sinking into a puddle of blood. “You always knew you could do it, didn’t you? You never doubted it! Oh, I’ve looked for someone like you for such a long time, Wayne! You can heal anything, can’t you? Cancers, fevers, plagues, anything!”
The son of Satan, Wayne thought through a haze of pain. Loose in the world. Mocking me. I always knew I could do it. Death deserves death. Send the demon boy to join the witch in Hellfire. I always knew I could get it up!
“My God, Wayne!” Krepsin was saying. “What a gift you have! I’ll give you anything you want, anything in the world! You want to stay here with me, don’t you? Here where it’s safe, where nothing can get at you? What do you want, Wayne? I’ll give you—”
“The demon boy,” Wayne whispered. “I…want the demon boy dead. He’s loose in the world, spreading death like a plague. Death deserves death.”
“The Creekmore boy? Anything you want done, anything in the world. We know he’s in Chicago, at the…” He couldn’t recall, and snapped his fingers at Niks.
“The Hillburn Institute,” Niles answered. The courier had come this morning, bringing a package containing snippets of hair and an envelope Travis Bixton had found in the Creekmore house. On that envelope had been the institute’s address, and inside a letter from the Creekmore boy.
“Right,” Krepsin said. “But that boy can’t hurt you, Wayne. It was his mother you feared, wasn’t it? And now that she’s…”
“Dead,” Wayne said, his haunted gaze burning toward the other man. “Dead dead I want the demon boy dead.”
Krepsin glanced quickly over at Niles, then returned his attention to Wayne. “I want you to go back to your room now. Mr. Dorn will give you something to help you relax. Tomorrow you can go up in the Challenger with Coombs. All day if you want. Would you like that?”
“Yes sir.”
Dorn helped Wayne to his feet. Bragg stirred and whispered, “Wayne, don’t leave me.”
“Henry’s still hurting,” Wayne said dazedly. “What’s going to happen to him?”
“We’ll see to Mr. Bragg. Go along now. And Wayne—you’ve passed your test magnificently!”
When Wayne had gone, Niles bent down beside Bragg and examined the throat wound as Krepsin raved on about Wayne’s powers. Niles was fascinated at the way the blood had crusted; he’d never seen anything like this before. Bragg’s bloodshot eyes were fixed on him. After a period of observation, Niles knew, Bragg would go into the incinerator. “What about the boy at that institute, Mr. Krepsin?” he asked.
“Wells won’t have any problem with that, will he?”
“No sir.” He stood up and stepped away from the body. “No problem. But aren’t you curious about this Creekmore boy? He has some kind of hold over Wayne. Should we find out what it is?”
Krepsin recalled something Wayne had told him, in one of their first conversations: The Creekmores serve the Devil, and they know all the secrets of death. He narrowed his eyes and regarded Niles for a silent moment.
“Something about that boy and his mother has preyed on Wayne’s mind for a long time,” Niles said quietly. “What could it be? And could it be used to bind Wayne closer to you?”
“He’ll never leave me,” Krepsin said. “How long could a man live, Mr. Niles, if he cannot be touched by injuries or disease? A hundred years? Longer?” Then he said in a soft, dreamy voice, “Not to die, but to know the secrets of death. That would…make a human being godlike, wouldn’t it?”
“The Creekmore boy,” Niles said, “may know something about Wayne that you should know. Possibly we acted prematurely on the woman, as well.”
“What’s your advice, then?”
Niles told him, and Krepsin listened very carefully.
54
IT WAS BILLY’S LAST afternoon at the Hillburn Institute, and he was packing his suitcase when he heard the scream from downstairs. He knew, almost instinctively, that it was Bonnie’s voice.
He found her in the parlor, hugging Mr. Pearlman with tears streaming down her face. A few others were watching something on television. Billy stared numbly at the screen.
It was a nighttime scene of a blazing building, firemen wearing oxygen masks and scaling ladders to the upper floors as sparks exploded into the sky. The camera had caught pictures of people leaping to their deaths from the window.
“…the scene at two A.M. at the Alcott Hotel in South Chicago,” a female announcer was saying, “where a cigarette may have ignited one of the worst hotel fires in the past decade. Officials believe a smoldering mattress burst into flames just after midnight and fire spread rapidly through the structure, which has been used as a refuge for transients since 1968. Two firemen were overcome by smoke, and it’s estimated now that over forty persons may have died in the flames. It may be days before the rubble is cleared away, and more victims may be buried beneath.” The scene changed to an ugly dawn. The building lay in smoking ruins and firemen picked through the debris. “Stay tuned to WCHI’s ‘Eye on Chicago News’ at five.” And then the station returned to “The Wizard of Odds.”
“It wasn’t a cigarette,” Bonnie said, staring at Billy. “It was the wiring. It happened just like I knew it would, and I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t do anything…”
“There’s nothing you could have done,” Dr. Hillburn said. She was standing at the foot of the stairs, and had seen the news bulletin. This morning she’d read in the paper about the fiery destruction of the Alcott Hotel, on South Spines Street, and had known that Bonnie’s messenger had been right again.
“Yes there was. I could’ve told somebody. I could’ve—”
“You told me,” Dr. Hillburn said. She glanced at Billy and the others and then her gaze returned to Bonnie. “I found Spines Street on a Chicago map. It’s in a very bad area on the South Side, full of flophouses for derelicts. Two days ago I called the local police station and the fire department’s prevention bureau. I explained who I was, and my conversation ended with, respectively, a desk sergeant and a secretary. I was told there were dozens of transient hotels on Spines Street, and an inspection of them all was impractical. You did the best you could, Bonnie, and so did I.”
Forty people dead, Billy thought. Maybe more, their bodies buried in the rubble. The Alcott Hotel, South Spines Street. Forty people dead. He could envision them awakening from drunken sleep as fire roared through the corridors. They would’ve had no time, no chance to escape. It would have been a terrifying, agonizing way to die. Forty people.
Bonnie, her face strained and tear-streaked, took her coat from the closet and went out into the cold. She walked into the park, her head bowed.
“She’ll survive,” Dr. Hillburn said. “She’s a fighter, and she knows I’m r
ight. Billy, what time does your bus leave?”
“Four o’clock.”
“Whenever you’re ready, I’ll drive you to the station.” Dr. Hillburn watched Bonnie walking in the park for a moment, then started up the stairs.
Billy kept thinking about the Alcott Hotel. The raw image of people leaping from the windows was imprinted on his brain. What would his mother want him to do? He already knew; but he didn’t know if he was strong enough for that many of them. He had two hours before his bus left. No, he should forget about the Alcott, he told himself. He was going home, back where he belonged.
Dr. Hillburn was about to enter her office when Billy said quietly, behind her, “I’d like to talk to you, please.”
“Yes?”
“That hotel fire. All those people, trapped in there. I…think that’s where I should go.”
“Why? Are you presuming that just because there was fast and painful death, discarnates are present? I don’t think that’s a very valid—”
“I don’t care what you think,” Billy said firmly. “I know that some souls need help in crossing over, especially if death came so fast they didn’t have time to prepare themselves. Some of them—a lot of them, I think—are probably still in that place, and they’re still burning up. They don’t know how to get out.”
“So what are you suggesting?”
“I want to go there. I want to see for myself.” He frowned when she didn’t respond. “What my mother taught me had to do with compassion, with feeling. Not with brainwaves or machines. They need me at that place. I have to go, Dr. Hillburn.”
“No,” she said. “Out of the question. You’re acting on an invalid, emotional assumption. And I’m sure that what remains of the Alcott is extremely dangerous. While you’re in this city, I feel responsible for you, and I won’t have you walking around in a burned-out building. I’m sorry. No.” And she went into her office and closed the door.
Billy’s face was grim. He went to his room, put on his heaviest sweater, and tucked the rest of his money into a jeans pocket. A bus stop was two blocks north, he knew. He’d have to find the Alcott Hotel by himself. Anita saw him leave, but he spoke to no one. Outside, small flakes of snow were spinning down from an overcast sky, and the wind was frigid. He saw Bonnie out in the park and almost went over to comfort her, but he knew she needed to be alone, and if he paused he might lose the determination that was forcing him to the Alcott. He started walking north, and didn’t hear Bonnie’s voice when she looked up and called his name.
55
THE BUS DOORS HISSED open, and Billy stepped onto the pavement in a chilly mix of rain and snow. On the corner was a rusted street sign that read South Spines. As the bus pulled away, Billy shoved his hands in his pockets and started walking into the wind, his teeth beginning to chatter.
For the last hour and a half he’d been transferring from bus to bus, heading deeper into Chicago’s grim, gray South Side. He was almost at the edge of the city, and he’d ridden the bus to the end of the line. Rows of square, severe-looking buildings surrounded him, and on the horizon factory chimneys belched brown smoke. Metal shields were pulled down across storefront windows, and the reek of decay hung in the air.
Billy walked south, shivering. In the distance he heard a police car’s siren, the wail strengthening and ebbing. The street was all but deserted. Around him snowflakes hissed as if falling on a hot griddle. From windows an occasional solemn face watched him pass.
After another block, he could smell charred timbers. The air grew denser, thick with a grayish brown haze that seemed to hang in layers. He heard an eerie chorus of police sirens, a noise that climbed the scales to a chilling dissonance. Billy could feel the hair at the back of his neck standing up.
The haze grew denser still, like a filthy fog. Billy walked into it, his eyes stinging.
And through it loomed his destination, a scorched five-story building with the letters ALL OTT HO remaining painted in dark red just under the rooftop, which had collapsed during the fire. Windows were rimmed with black, and rooms and narrow corridors had been exposed when part of the hotel’s brick skin had slid down to the ground. Smoking rubble was piled up all over the street. A safety barricade, yellow sawhorses with blinking lights, had been set up to hold back a group of fifteen or twenty curious onlookers, and two police cars were parked nearby. Firemen in long brown canvas coats were picking through the debris. A group of men in scruffy clothes stood around a blaze in an empty oil can, passing a bottle back and forth. Parked across the street was a fire engine, its hoses snaking into the rubble.
Two firemen were digging something out. A third came over to help. The blackened shape they were trying to lift fell apart in their hands, and one of the men leaned unsteadily on his shovel as the group of drunks hooted and catcalled.
Billy’s heart was pounding, the chorus of sirens making his skin crawl. He saw a couple of policemen moving around in the rubble. Something within the building cracked, and bricks fell from above, causing the officers to scatter.
And then Billy realized those weren’t sirens he was hearing.
They were high, dissonant, eerie screams. Coming from inside the Alcott.
And he knew that he was the only one who could hear them.
“Got another one over here!” one of the firemen shouted. “Get me a bodybag, it’s a bad one!”
Billy stared across the barricades into the blackened remnants of the lobby. Furniture had been charred into lumps. A tangle of pipes leaked dirty water, and a narrow staircase, warped by intense heat and the weight of water, ascended along a sooty wall. The screams drove themselves into his brain like spikes, and he knew there were too many. He couldn’t handle them all, they’d kill him. He’d never tried to help this many, not at one time!
“Step back,” a policeman told him, and he obeyed.
But he knew that if he didn’t at least try, give it his best and strongest effort, he’d hear that terrible screaming in his mind for the rest of his life. He paused, waiting for the chance. I am strong, he told himself. I can do it. But he was trembling, and he’d never been more uncertain in his life.
The drunks started shouting at the firemen who were zipping a black form into a bodybag. The policeman hurried over to shut them up, his broad face reddening with anger.
And Billy slipped under the barricade, then into the Alcott Hotel’s ruined lobby.
He ascended the stairs as quickly as he could, ducking low beneath twisted pipes and dangling timbers. The stairs groaned under his weight, and around him shifted a curtain of gray smoke. Above the sound of the ghostly screams he could hear restless wind roaring along the upper floors. As he reached the dank second floor, noises from the outside world faded away. He could sense the pulse of agony at the heart of the Alcott Hotel.
His foot plunged through a step; he fell to his knees, ashes whirling around him, as the entire staircase shook. It took him a moment to work his foot free, and then he forced himself upward. Cold sweat and soot clung to his face. The screaming spectral voices led him to the third floor; he was aware also of individual voices—low, agonized moaning, snippets of shouts, cries of terror—that he seemed to feel vibrating in his bones. The third-floor corridor was dark, puddled with ashy water, clogged with burned, unidentifiable shapes. Billy found a shattered window and leaned against it to inhale some fresh air. Down on the street, a white van marked WCHI THE EYE OF CHICAGO had pulled up to the barricade. Three people, a woman and two men—one with a camera unit braced against his shoulder—were having a heated argument with the cop while the drunks shouted and whistled.
The voices of the dead urged Billy on. He continued along the corridor, feeling something like a cold hand exploring his features as a blind man might. The floor groaned under his weight, and from above ashes shifted down like black snow. His shoes crunched on a layer of debris.
To his right there was a doorway that had been shattered by firemen. Beyond was a thick gloom of gray ashes. Billy could sens
e the terrible cold in that room, leaking out into the corridor. It was the chill of terror, and Billy shivered in its frigid touch.
Beyond that doorway, he knew, was what he had come here to find.
Billy braced himself, his heart hammering, and stepped through the doorway.
The voices stopped.
A pall of black ashes and smoke drifted around him. It had been a large room; he looked up, saw that most of the ceiling had collapsed in a morass of charred timbers. Water was still seeping down from above and lay a half-inch deep around the objects on the floor: charred rib cages, arm and leg bones, unrecognizable shapes that might once have been human beings. Around them, like black barbed wire, was a metal framework that had been melded together by intense heat. Bed frames, Billy realized. Bunk beds. They were sleeping in here when the ceiling collapsed on top of them.
There was a silence, as of something waiting.
He could feel them all around him. They were in the smoke, in the ash, in the burned bones and malformed shapes. They were in the air and in the walls.
There was too much agony here; it weighed heavily in the dense air, and terror crackled like electricity. But it was too late to run, Billy knew. He would have to do what he could.
But there was something else here, as well. The hair at the back of his neck stirred, and his flesh prickled. Hatred oozed from this room. Something in here seethed; something wanted to tear him to pieces.
A shape stirred in a far corner and rose up from the ashes, taking hideous form. It stood seven feet tall, and its narrowed eyes glittered like red beads. The shape changer’s boarlike face grinned. “I knew you’d come,” it whispered, in a voice neither masculine nor feminine, young nor old. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Billy stepped back, into puddled water.
“Oh, you’re not afraid, are you?” The shape changer came out of the corner like a drift of smoke, its bestial gaze fixed on Billy. “Not you, no. Never afraid. You’re strong, aren’t you?”