A heavy, balding, middle-aged man lay in the bed, IVs running into each arm, oxygen flowing into the right nostril, a clear tube snaking out the left into a collection bottle, wires running from his chest to a heart monitor, stained bandages across his abdomen. Looked like he'd just come from surgery.
Not good. Didn't know much about hospitals but figured they kept a close eye on postop patients, which meant a nurse could pop in any second.
Turned and opened the closets. Yes! Clothes. So to speak. Faded yellow-and-green checked pants, canvas slip-on boat shoes, islanders ran across the back of the satin jacket and nascar across the front of the cap, but Jack felt like he'd struck gold.
Everything but the hat was too big on him but he didn't care. Soon as he had the cap snugged over his bandage, he peeked into the hall. Big Blue was still yakking with the nurse, so Jack stepped out of the room and strolled the opposite way.
Kept the brim low and his head down, looking up only to check for exit signs. His heart was pounding again, his nervous system taut as he waited for bells to start ringing and security men to come running through the halls. But all remained quiet. Took the stairs instead of the elevator, hurried through the lobby to the front entrance and into the air.
Free. For the moment at least.
The wind was picking up and the clouds looked lower and heavier than before. Rain coming. Wanted to get as far as possible from the hospital so he started walking. Couldn't move too fast, though. Every step sent a stab of pain down his left leg; something was using his brain for an anvil and his scorched face tingled in the breeze.
Other than that, I feel just great.
But where was he? He'd been through Monroe a couple of times last month but didn't recognize this stretch of road. All these post-World War Two residential neighborhoods with their ranches and Cape Cods and neat little lawns tended to look pretty much the same. Then he spotted an arrow-shaped sign for business district and followed that. He'd stand out less in a crowd.
Along the way he searched the pockets of the Islanders jacket and found the hospital admission papers with the owner's name—Peter Harris—along with a few coins and two twenties.
Thank you, Peter Harris. I get out of this, I'll pay you back with interest.
Downtown wasn't exactly chock-full of pay phones—maybe they didn't blend with the old whaling port motif—but he found one in front of a seafood restaurant and made a collect call to Abe.
"Abe, I need a ride."
"A ride to where?"
"Home."
"You can't take a cab?"
"I'm in a bit of a jam."
Abe sighed. "And where is this jam that you happen to be in?"
"Monroe. In front of a restaurant called"—he checked the sign—"Memison's. When can you get here?"
"Oy. Monroe. You couldn't be someplace closer? OK. I'll pick you up in front of this Memison's, but don't figure on less than an hour and a half."
"Thanks, Abe. And listen—call Gia and tell her I'm all right. I'd call her myself but I don't want to hang in the open on this phone much longer. Tell her somebody dosed me with the same stuff that made the preppies crazy but I got through it OK."
"On the run and stranded in Monroe… this is OK?"
"Just tell her, Abe."
Jack hung up and looked around. An hour and a half to kill. The clock on the bank said twelve-thirty. Damn. He'd been out for hours, and by now the cops had to know he was missing. They'd concentrate on the hospital first, but when they were satisfied that he wasn't hiding there, they'd start sweeping the town. Where could he go for an hour where he wouldn't be noticed?
And then he knew.
8
The phone was ringing. Nadia didn't budge. It wasn't her cell phone—that was the only number she'd given the police—so she didn't care who was on the house phone.
She sat in her mother's front room, wiping her eyes. She'd found the little Quisp ring Doug had given her the other night. For an instant she saw him sitting at his computer in his boxer shorts, being so sweet, sexy, and silly at the same time, and she burst into tears.
Forcing herself to move, she rose and stepped to the window and watched the preschool children playing in St. Vartan's Park across the street. She felt lost, sapped of energy. Uncertainty about what to do or who to turn to had gnawed at her, leaving her all but paralyzed.
Doug, where are you? What happened?
"Nadjie!" her mother called from the kitchen. She sounded almost hysterical. "Praise God! My prayers have been answered. It is Douglas!"
Nadia scrambled out of the chair and almost tripped in her mad dash to the kitchen where she snatched the receiver from her mother's hand.
"Doug?"
"Nadia! How I've missed you!"
She burst into tears at the sound of his voice. It was him; oh sweet God it was him.
"Oh, Doug! Doug, where have you been? I've been worried sick about you!"
"I'm so sorry about that but this is the first chance I've had to call. I'm in trouble."
"What kind of trouble?"
"I can't go into that now. Let's just say I shouldn't show my face for another week or so."
"Oh, God! This is crazy!"
"I know it is. Look, can you help me out with a little cash? I don't dare use my ATM."
"Of course."
"Great. Can you draw out a thousand and meet me?"
"I don't think I have that much."
"Whatever you can spare."
"OK. Where do I find you?"
"I'm hiding out near a little town called Monroe. You know it?"
"Near Glen Cove."
"Right. Come there and wait near the pay phone in front of Memison's restaurant right on the main drag.
I'll call you on that phone at two and tell you where to meet me."
"Doug, this sounds like something out of a bad spy movie."
"I know, and I'm sorry. But I don't have anyone else to turn to. Please, Nadia. Hang in with me on this one and I'll explain everything once we're face-to-face."
Face-to-face… God, she wanted that. More than anything in the world. She wanted to see Doug, touch him, make sure he was all right.
She glanced at the clock. Go to the bank, rent a car, drive out to Long Island… she'd have to get moving if she was going to make it by two.
"OK. I'm on my way."
"Thank you; thank you! I love you. And you won't regret this, I promise you."
She double-checked the name of the restaurant, then hung up and hugged her mother.
"He's all right! I'm going to meet him!"
"Where is he? Why can't he come here?"
"I'll explain everything later, Ma. The main thing is he's all right! That's all that matters!"
"Call me when you meet him," her mother said. "Just to let me know that you are all right."
"Sure! Soon as I give him a big fat kiss!"
She felt almost giddy with joy and relief as she ran to find her pocketbook.
9
The rain came in tropical style. One minute it was simply threatening; the next Jack was treading through a waterfall. Tried to run the remaining quarter-mile to the entrance but his banged-up legs and bruised ribs allowed for a trot at best. Arrived soaked and mud-splattered and in a foul mood. At least the main tent was still up, although the front flap was down and no one was selling tickets. Place looked pretty much deserted.
Jack slipped through the flap. The stale air trapped under the leaking canvas was redolent of wet hay and strange sweat. His feet squished within his wet deck shoes as he made his way toward Scar-lip's cage but stopped short, stopped stone-cold dead when he saw what was behind the bars.
Scar-lip, all right, but the creature he'd seen thirty-six hours ago had been only the palest reflection of this monster. The rakosh rearing up in the cage and rattling the bars now was full of vitality and ferocity, had unmarred, glistening blue-black skin, and bright yellow eyes that glowed with a fierce inner light.
Jack stood mut
e and numb on the fringe, thinking, This is a nightmare, one that keeps repeating itself.
The once moribund rakosh was now fiercely alive, and it wanted out.
Suddenly it froze and Jack saw that it was looking his way. Its cold yellow basilisk glare fixed on him. He felt like a deer in the headlights of an 18-wheeler.
He turned and hurried from the tent. Outside in the rain he looked around and found the trailer Monnet had entered the other night. Its canvas awning was bellied with rain. A plate under the office sign on the door read : "Ozymandias Prather." Jack knocked.
He stepped back as the door swung out. Prather stood staring down at Jack.
"Who are you?"
"And hello to you too. I was here the other night. I'm the 'Hey, Rube' guy."
"Ah, yes. The defender of rakoshi. Jack, isn't it? I barely recognize you. You appear to be a bit worse for wear since last we met."
"Never mind that. I want to talk to you about that rakosh."
Oz backed up a step or two. "Come in, come in."
Jack stepped up and inside, just far enough to get out from under the dripping awning. The rain paradiddled on the metal roof, and Jack knew he had about five minutes before the sound made him crazy.
"Have you seen it?" Oz's voice seemed to come from everywhere in the room. "Isn't it magnificent?"
"What did you do to it?"
Oz stared at him, as if genuinely puzzled. "Why, my good man, now that I know what it is, I know how to treat it. I looked up the proper care and feeding of rakoshi in one of my books on Bengali mythology and acted appropriately."
Jack felt a chill. And it was not from his soaked clothing.
"What… just what did you feed it?"
The boss's large brown eyes looked guileless, and utterly remorseless. "Oh, this and that. Whatever the text recommended. You don't really believe for an instant that I was going to allow that magnificent creature to languish and die of malnutrition, do you? I assume you're familiar with—"
"I know what a rakosh needs to live."
"Do you now? Do you know everything about rakoshi?"
"No, of course not, but—"
"Then let us assume that I know more than you. Perhaps there is more than one way to keep them healthy. I see no need to discuss this with you or anyone else. Let us just say that it got exactly what it needed." His smile was scary. "And that it enjoyed the meal immensely."
Jack knew a rakosh ate only one thing. The question was: who? He knew Prather would never tell him so he didn't waste breath asking.
Instead he said, "Do you have any idea what you're playing with here? Do you know what's going to happen to your little troupe when that thing gets loose? I've seen this one in action, and trust me, pal, it will tear you all to pieces."
"I assume you know that iron weakens it. The bars of its cage are iron; the roof, floor, and sides are lined with steel. It will not escape."
"Famous last words. So I take it there's no way I can convince you to douse it with kerosene and strike a match."
"Unthinkable."
Jack flashed on something a couple of the troupe members had said the other night.
"Why? Because it's a 'brother'?"
Oz didn't flinch from the term. "In a manner of speaking."
Jack leaned back against the door frame. This was beginning to make some sense, but not much.
"This is all related to the Otherness, isn't it."
That got a reaction. Oz did a long, slow owl blink and sat down. He motioned Jack toward the room's other chair but Jack shook his head.
"What do you know about the Otherness?"
"I've had a couple of people lecture me on it."
The Otherness… a force, another reality, inimical, implacable, impinging on this world, hungering for it. It had spawned the rakoshi and had almost killed him—twice. Still he didn't quite understand it, but he believed. After what he'd seen since last summer, he had no choice.
"And I've been up close and personal with a few rakoshi." He gestured through the door, toward the tents. "Your cast of characters out there—they're all…"
"Children of the Otherness? Not all. Some are merely accidents, victims of genetics or development gone awry, but we do feel a certain kinship with them as well."
"And you?"
Oz only nodded, and Jack wondered how the Otherness had marked him.
He took a gamble and said, "How did Dr. Monnet learn about the rakosh?"
"He received a call that—" Oz broke off and exhibited his crooked yellow teeth in a sour smile. "Very clever."
Jack pressed. "A call. Maybe from the same person who tipped you off about where to find the rakosh?"
"Perhaps yes, perhaps no."
Jack was pretty sure it was perhaps yes. Which gave everything that was going on a shape, the semblance of a plan: save the rakosh; cull a chug from its blood; spread that drug everywhere to cause a slow tsunami of violence and chaos.
And chaos was a bosom buddy of the Otherness.
"Does Monnet know about the turnaround in the rakosh's health?"
Oz shook his head. "Not yet. He finds its blood… interesting. He's terribly distraught over the fact that he's losing the source of that blood." He smiled. "Somehow I just haven't got around to telling him yet."
Leave him twisting in the wind, Jack thought. Serves him right.
"You seem to be remarkably well informed about this," Oz said. "But I don't sense that you are one of us. How does an outsider come to be so involved?"
"Not by choice, I can tell you that. Just seems that everywhere I turn lately I keep bumping into this Otherness business."
"Does that mean that you were here in Monroe last month when something… something wonderful almost happened?"
"Don't know about you, but I don't call a house disappearing 'wonderful.' And it didn't 'almost' happen—it's completely gone."
"I was not referring to the house but to what took it."
"Yeah, well, you might have a different opinion about that if you were there." Jack studied Oz's bright eyes. "Then again, maybe you wouldn't. But we're straying from the main subject here. It's got to go."
The boss's face darkened as he rose from his chair.
"I advise you to put that idea out of your head, or you may wind up sharing the cage with the creature."
He stepped closer to Jack and edged him outside. "You have been warned. Good day, sir."
He reached a long arm past Jack and pulled the door closed.
Jack stood outside a moment, realizing that a worst-case scenario had come true. A healthy Scar-lip… he couldn't let that go on. He still had the can of gasoline in the trunk of his car. As soon as he was back in Manhattan he'd return to Plan A. And if he had to take the whole tent down to get it done, then that was how it would go.
As he turned, he found someone standing behind him. His nose was fat and discolored; dark crescents had formed under each eye. The rain, a drizzle now, had darkened his sandy hair, plastering it to his scalp. He stared at Jack, his face a mask of rage.
"You're that guy, the one who got Bondy and me in trouble!"
Now Jack recognized him: the roustabout from Sunday night. Hank. His breath reeked of cheap wine. He clutched a bottle in a paper bag. Probably Mad Dog.
"You look like shit, man!" he told Jack with a nasty grin.
"You don't look so hot yourself."
"It's all your fault!" Hank said.
"You're absolutely right," Jack said and began walking back in the direction of town to meet Abe. He had no time for this dolt.
"Bondy was my only friend! He got fired because of you."
A little bell went ting-a-ling. Jack stopped, turned.
"Yeah? When did you see him last?"
"The other night—when you got him in trouble."
The bell was ringing louder.
"And you never saw him once after that? Not even to say good-bye?"
Hank shook his head. "Uh-uh. Boss kicked him right out. By sun up he'd
blown the show with all his stuff."
Jack remembered the rage in Oz's eyes that night when he'd looked from the wounded rakosh to Bondy. Now Jack was pretty sure that the ringing in his head was a dinner bell.
"He was the only one around here who liked me," Hank said, his expression miserable. "Bondy talked to me. All the freaks and geeks keep to theirselves."
Jack sighed as he stared at Hank. Well, at least now he had an idea as to who had supplemented Scar-lip's diet.
No big loss to civilization.
"You don't need friends like that, kid," he said and turned away again.
"You'll pay for it!" Hank screamed into the rain. "Bondy'll be back and when he gets here we'll get even. I got my pay docked because of you and that damn Sharkman! You think you look bad now, you just wait till Bondy gets back!"
Pardon me if I don't hold my breath.
Jack wondered if it would do any good to tell him that Bondy hadn't been fired—that, in a way, he was still very much with the freak show. But that would only endanger the big dumb kid.
Hank ranted on. "And if he don't come back, I'll getcha myself. And that Sharkman too!"
No you won't. Because I'm going to get it first.
Jack kept walking, moving as fast as he could back to town. When he reached Memison's he saw no sign of Abe's truck so he stepped inside.
"We're closed for lunch and we don't start serving dinner till five," said someone who looked like a maitre d'.
"Just want to check the menu."
Taking in the sodden, ill-fitting clothes and muddy shoes, he gave Jack a please-don't-even-think-about-eating-here look as he handed him the laminated card.
Jack kept one eye on the street while he pretended to read about Memison's "Famous Fish Dinners." He saw a black-and-white unit roll by, the cop inside eyeballing everyone on the sidewalk. About ten minutes later Abe's battered panel truck of indeterminate hue pulled into the curb.
"Maybe some other time," Jack said to maitre d' and handed back the menu.
The relief on the man's face said that Jack had made his day. Always nice to bring joy into someone's life.
Outside, Jack darted across the sidewalk and into Abe's truck.