Part 11 (1/2)

He wasn't going to die after all, wasn't going to die, wasn't . . . Hotshot grinned.

The four fangs in his mouth-two protruding from the upper gums and two from the bottom-were yellow and dripping with fluids. The lower fangs curved inward slightly, like fishhooks; the upper ones were slanted toward each other, making a hideously efficient V. Hotshot's face glowed white, like the moon; his fingers, skinny and clawlike, dug deep into Luis's flesh to keep him from twisting away.

And now Hotshot was bending forward, the eyes in that terrible face starting to roll up into the head with greedy expectation.

Luis screamed a single word, the word that had carved itself into his brain as if from a red-hot switchblade-”Vampiro!”

Above him Hotshot cackled and bent forward to his feast. The lower fangsnt pierced flesh and hooked. Hotshot twisted his head a fraction to home in better on the flaming river of life that flowed just beneath Luis's chin. Luis's hands came up to push Hotshot's head away, but they moved too late with too little strength. When the V of Hotshot's fangs came down, blood spurted across his face. He blinked, s.h.i.+fted his position again, and as if from a great distance Luis heard his blood being sucked, the sound like someone sucking Coca-Cola through a straw or sniffing fine cocaine from a golden spoon. Luis's hands fluttered, one finger digging into the corner of Hotshot's eye. Instantly he heard a voice in his brain, something dreamy and soft-Lie still, little brother. Lie very still. Luis's hands fell to the floor like dead birds.

He was beginning to feel cold, really cold, but where Hotshot's lips were pressed against his flesh, an inferno raged. He lay very still while the arctic cold crept through his veins, inch by merciless inch. Winds were rising in his head, deafening him with their shriek. And by the time his jugular vein collapsed, as flat as a gutted worm, Luis was fast asleep. Gradually the hideous sucking noises that echoed through the many rooms were quiet. But in a few minutes they were replaced by another noise-the sound of bodies being dragged across the floors.

NINE.

Roach-much younger, but with an agonized madness already fermenting in his brain-pushed open the door.

In the small bedroom, with its mustard-yellow wallpaper and acrid smells of tobacco smoke and sweat, another stranger was astride his mother, riding her roughly with flesh-smacking thrusts. The man's b.u.t.tocks and thighs tensed and untensed like the action of a mindless machine. Bev's hands gripped his shoulders, and the man's broad back was gridded with scratches. The bed trembled, springs squealing beneath their combined weight. There was an empty whiskey bottle at the foot of the bed. Roach moved into the room, bent, and picked it up. He could see Bev's face-blank, drunken, bloated. She seemed to be looking right at him, her eyes lascivious and br.i.m.m.i.n.g with invitation. His groin was throbbing that hateful ba.s.s drum beat of desire. He lifted the bottle by the neck and stepped forward, already choosing the spot he would strike. As the bottle came down, he heard Bev scream, ”NO!” And then it had crashed down not upon the stranger's darkhaired skull but across his right shoulder because he'd twisted with the scream. The bottle broke across a shoulder blade, jagged edges digging into the flesh. The man shrieked, ”G.o.dd.a.m.n it, you crazy little bas-” and then struck out with the back of his hand, hitting the boy across the nose and dropping him to the floor. Roach, blood stringing from his nostrils, scrabbled to his feet and, whining like an animal, rushed forward. The bottle was forgotten now, he was going to kill this man with his hands. The stranger twisted off Bev and drove a solid blow to the boy's chin that lifted him off his feet and then down again like a heap of laundry. ”You stay away from me!” the stranger shouted, bending quickly to retrieve the broken bottle. ”You stay away or I swear to G.o.d I'll kill you!” Roach started forward again, his beady black eyes as dead as marbles, but then Bev s.h.i.+fted in the bed, and he stopped. Her thighs were exposed, and between them her s.e.x glistened like a gateway to all the pleasures he'd ever imagined in his tortured dreams. He turned toward her, the stranger forgotten now, and approached the bed on trembling legs. Bev's face flushed red. She closed her thighs and pulled the sheet up to her neck. Her son stood at the foot of the bed transfixed, his hand moving in slow circles at his crotch.

”My G.o.d,” the stranger whispered, droplets of blood tapping to the floor. ”My G.o.d . . . how long . . . has this been going on . . .?”

”It's not what you think, Ralph!” she said, avoiding her son's languid gaze.

”Please . . .!”

”You . . . and him?” The stranger's eyes moved back and forth between them.

”Your own son?”

”Not long, Ralph ... I swear to G.o.d, not long!”

He saw it all then. ”You . . . you like it, don't you? Jesus! You like it with your own son?”

And suddenly it all came bursting out of her before she could stop it, the anger and fear and black guilt that was her legacy to her son. ”YES, I LIKE IT!” she shrieked. ”I like it when he touches me! Don't you dare look at me like that... get out of here! GO ON! GET OUT!”

The man was already struggling into his pants. He grabbed his s.h.i.+rt from the back of a chair and shrugged it on over his injured shoulder. Bev was screaming now, a high, drunken scream. ”I'm glad we do it! He's more of a man at thirteen than you'll ever be . . .!”

”Sure, sure,” he said, working his shoes on. ”You're both nuts, aren't you?

Christ, I knew he was off his rocker, but you, too?”

”GET OUT!”.

The man paused at the doorway, fumbling with his wallet, and flung a few bills at her. They spun like dead leaves at the boy's feet. ”Maybe they'll give you the same room at the nut house,” he said, and whirled out. A door opened and closed, and then there was silence but for Bev's harsh breathing. She stared at her son, tears beginning to slide down her cheeks. ”It don't matter,” she said softly. ”Not a bit. We've got each other, don't we? We'll always have each other. They don't understand how bad it is to be alone, do they, Waltie?

Nothing matters. Come on. Hurry.”

And he did.

The bedroom and Bev and the mustard-colored walls rippled like a pond into which a stone has been tossed. The ripples strengthened, moved faster and faster, and suddenly the whole scene vanished as if it had been sucked to the dark depths of a whirlpool.

Roach rubbed his eyes and sat up in bed in his dark apartment. It was still very dark outside, and somewhere jukebox music was playing. He could hear the black c.o.c.kroaches scrabbling in their gla.s.s tanks. He stood up and went to the window, looking down on Coronado Street. Dreaming about his mother made him nervous; sweat had come up on his face. It made him angry, though he couldn't exactly figure why. Perhaps it was because he knew now how much of a liar she was; she had left him after all, and because she had, they had sent him off to a place-the Crazyhouse-where people laughed and shrieked all the time, where he had to take pills and drink a lot of water.

Something within him needed but hated that need. A When he found his mother, as the Master had promised him he would someday, he wouldn't have to fear going back to the Crazyhouse again. Everything would be all right. He walked across the room to the table on which sat the little tanks filled with roaches. Their backs glistened like black armor in the darkness. He picked up a matchbook, struck a match, and held it to one of the tanks; the roaches scrambled away. When the flame died down to a red pinpoint, he could hear them scurrying back over each other again.

Walter Benefield was dead now. His name was Roach, and it was a name he liked. Ever since he'd gotten the job at Aladdin Exterminators four months before, he'd been studying them in their death agonies when he sprayed Dursban or Diazanon in cracks between floors and walls. Sometimes the roaches would flood out in a strange kind of dance, flopping and running and falling as the chemical began to drown them. Often there would be large black roaches, the bulls of the nest, that would start to recover and scurry away; they were the ones he would catch by hand and drop into a plastic bag to bring home for his experiments. He was awed by their strength, by their sheer tenacity; very few things could kill a ma.s.sive three-inch bull. The Diazanon might make them crazy for a little while, but without a good second spray they would recover. Even stomping on them couldn't do it; they played dead for a few seconds and then zipped away with their guts hanging out, like relentless tanks. They were so fast, natural survivors that had remained virtually the same for millions of years. Over the months he'd burned them, tried to drown them in the toilet, tried to suffocate them, cooked them in a pot of boiling water, and performed a dozen other experiments in death. Very few things worked. It had just been luck that he'd had a bag of them in his car the night he'd picked up that first girl. After she was dead, he wondered whether the roaches would suffocate inside her mouth, and so he went to work. They had, finally, and he'd been very pleased with himself. Doubly pleased when he realized the papers were calling him Roach. It was an honor to him, and so he continued doing it just for fun because the papers and the police seemed to expect it. Now when he saw himself in a mirror, it seemed he was beginning to look like them. His shoulders were broad and slightly stooped, his hands and forearms as muscular and large as steel clamps; he had the heavy, dark-browned forehead and small black eyes that missed nothing. Once his hair had been black and curly, but when he started working for Aladdin, he cut it very short, right against a large, bulbous skull. Very small ears and jutting, bony elbows completed the image he had of himself-that he was undergoing an evolutionary change, crossing the line between man and insect, becoming stronger and smarter and almost invincible, just like them.

He untaped a corner of the waxed paper that covered the top of one of the tanks and reached down inside, grasping a roach between his thumb and forefinger. It got away, and it took him a few more seconds to get another one. Then he pressed the corner back so none of them could escape and, holding the squirming roach inside his balled left hand, he turned on the lights. The overhead fixture, an opaque umbrella of dirty gla.s.s, lit the room with a harsh glare that threw the man's huge shadow out around him. He went to the stove, turned on the gas flame, and dangled the roach over it. The insect scrabbled frantically at his fingers.

He had the power of life and death over it, just as he did over those girls who were friends of Bev and who laughed at him when they thought he wasn't looking.

Oh, he knew how they laughed; he was much smarter than he let on. Some of them he'd seen with Bev before, when he was just a kid and she used to walk the street. They were her friends, and they were hiding her from him. It used to be he could fix them with his hands and stop them from laughing; but the Master had said that was a waste. The Master wanted them for himself, so he'd told Roach that he should take poisons from where he worked-liquids and powders-and use them on those girls to make them sleep for a while. Roach had taken some of them-Sevin dust, V-1, Dursban, Diazanon and a few others-from the stockroom at work late on Sat.u.r.day night; he knew very little about them except that Mr. Lathrup had warned him to wear his mask when he used them. So he did just that when he mixed the chemicals in bottles on his stove. Then he tore up an old towel and soaked the rags in the solution for a long time, pouring what was left-an oily brown liquid-into an orange juice bottle which he stored under his sink. The first time he used it was the next Tuesday night, and the Master was very angry at him because the girl was dead when they reached Blackwood Road.

After that he cut the mixture twice with water, and it worked just fine. The roach caught fire. He watched it sizzle and then dropped it into the sink, where it writhed and ran around in circles. He turned on the water, and the roach spun down the drain, still kicking.

He looked up suddenly, his eyes glowing. He thought he'd heard a faint whisper coming in through a crack in the window, filling the room. He stepped to the window and put his palms against the gla.s.s, staring out into the darkness. He listened, his head c.o.c.ked to one side. The Master was going to need another one tomorrow night. Now he wanted Roach to sleep, to forget all the bad things, to think only of tomorrow and the new kingdom that was to be. Roach pressed his forehead against the gla.s.s for a few minutes and then wentjit to turn out the lights. When he was in bed again, he picked up his handgrips from the floor beside him and began to squeeze them. Squeeze . . . hold . . .

release, J1'1 squeeze ... hold ... release: he would do that two hundred times before he went to sleep, and in the darkness the springs sounded like the rubbing together of hungry I;, mandibles.

Monday, October 28

THE GRAVEDIGGER.

It was twelve minutes before three in the morning. Noel Alcavar had his feet propped up on his desk, and beside him a transistor radio blared Latin disco loud enough to wake the dead. No, not quite, Alcavar mused as he slid his gray cap forward over his eyes. At least the stiffs out there weren't sitting up in their graves yet, he thought. If they did, I'd kick 'em in their a.s.ses and send 'em back to h.e.l.l. Ai-yi-yi, what a job this was! He closed his eyes and moved one foot to the dis...o...b..at, trying to forget that there were about fifty stiffs lying out in the darkness under huge gnarled trees filled with the green drip of Spanish moss. j-For the last five nights, Alcavar had been covering for his brother Freddie, who held the dubious t.i.tle of Head Watchman for the Rarnona Heights Cemetery in the Highland Park district, dubious because Freddie Alcavar was the only real full-time watchman, and he held rank over one skinny Chicano kid who was mentally r.e.t.a.r.ded but smart enough to play sick most of the time. And now Freddie had been hit by a virus that kept him in the bed between dashes to the toilet, and the doctor had told him to stay home and rest. So Noel was helping out, playing loud disco so he could imagine that he was boogying with the foxes at the Disco 2000 on North Broadway. Freddie had told him he was supposed to take his flashlight, leave the green-painted shelter, and stroll through the cemetery every half hour or so. Noel had done it twice since he'd gotten here at ten, and that had been enough to leave him with a lingering case of the chills. In every whisper of wind he thought he heard the icy tinkle of ghostly laughter, and every mound of gra.s.s seemed to be pressing upward, about to split open for a skeletal hand covered with mold. This ain't a job for a young man, Noel had told himself as he hurried back to the shelter and turned the latch on the door. Bet old Freddie's fakin'. Bet he's at home laughin' his a.s.s off right this minute If he hadn't felt sorry for Freddie because of the way his ex-wife had treated him during the divorce, Noel would never have volunteered for this graveyard s.h.i.+ft. But as it was, he was going to be stuck with it until Freddie was back on his feet, which might be another day or two. Noel s.h.i.+vered when he thought about that and turned the radio a bit louder.

He was about to close his eyes again and drift into the spin of Disco 2000 dancers when he saw the two headlights right up against the front gate about thirty yards away. Noel straightened up in his chair and peered out the window.

Now who the h.e.l.l is that? he wondered. High school kids parkin, maybe? Doin'a little drinkin' or dope-smokin'? No, they wouldn't have their lights s.h.i.+ning like that. He stood up, moving to the window. In the dim backwash of the lights, he could see that it was a large vehicle, some kind of truck with markings on it. The thing was just sitting there, and now Noel could see a couple of shadowy figures moving alongside the gate. One of them stopped and looked in through the bars. What is this? he asked himself and quailed at the thought-Trouble? No way! He remembered what Freddie had said just before he made a flying leap into the bathroom, ”Is easy job, Noel. No trouble, n.o.body bothers you. You jus' make your rounds and look like you know what you're doing. Everything is okay. No trouble.”

Now both figures were standing at the gate, peering through the bars; the headlights made their shadows thin and gigantic on the cemetery drive. They seemed to be waiting, taking their time. But suddenly one of them rattled the gate, and Noel felt his stomach roil.

He took his flashlight from atop the desk, and went outside, the single thought, no trouble, no trouble, repeating over and over like an incantation against harm. He neared the gate, the headlights blinding him, put a hand over his eyes, and switched on his own light. The large vehicle was a U-Haul truck, and the two figures were kids younger than he, maybe in their late teens. One was a black dude wearing a headband, the other was white with shoulder-length brown hair; he was wearing a T-s.h.i.+rt that bore a cartoon, a Big Daddy Roth beach b.u.m smoking a bomber joint over the message King Kahuna Wants You! Noel moved uneasily toward them and saw that they were both smiling. But their smiles hardly made him feel better because their eyes were as cold as those of a dead fish. Noel stopped and shone his light in their faces. ”Cemetery's closed,” he said stupidly.

”Yeah, amigo,” the white one said. ”We see that.” He reached over, pulled at the gate's padlock, and grinned. ”You got the key to this?”

”No.” The key was in his breast pocket, but he didn't want these two to know. Somehow he didn't feel safe, not even with the gate between them.

”Yes you do,” the black dude said very quietly, his gaze boring into Noel's skull. ”You got the key, don't you? Got it right . . . right in your pocket. Yeah.”

”No, I don't. I don't ... uh ... have ... a key ...”

”Open the gate.” The black dude coiled his fingers around the bars. ”Come on ...

Noel? Open the gate, Noel.”