He shrugged. 'As you wish. But answer me a question, Miss Jones: Have you come here searching for a madman? Or a sane one?'
He did not wait to hear her answer, which was slow in coming anyway. Instead, the doctor pushed Cleo's body back into the refrigerated unit with a grunt and a squealing sound of the runners complaining under her weight and said, 'I must go to find the undertaker, who is expected shortly and has a busy day ahead. Good day, Miss Jones.'
Lucy watched the doctor exit, his plump body swaying a little under the harsh overhead lights and she thought to herself that she was a little in awe of the killer who had managed to find the hospital. Even with all her efforts, she recognized that he was still concealed within the walls, and probably, for all she knew, utterly immune to her powers of investigation.
That is what you thought, right?
I closed my eyes, knowing that it was inevitable the Angel would be at my side within moments. I tried to calm my breathing, slow my racing. heart for I thought that every word from here on was dangerous, both for him and for me.
'Not only was it what I thought. It was true.'
I pivoted about, first right, then left, trying to see the source of the words I heard in the apartment. Vapors, ghosts, filmy lights that wavered and blinked seemed on either side of me.
'I was completely safe, every minute, every second, no matter what I did. Surely, C- Bird, you can see that?' His voice was rough-edged, filled with arrogance and anger and each word seemed to slap against my cheek like a dead man's kiss.
'You were safe from them,' I said.
'They did not even understand the law,' he boasted. 'Their own rules were completely useless.'
'But you weren't safe from me,' I replied. Defiant.
'And do you think you are safe from me, now?' the Angel said harshly. 'Do you think you are safe from yourself?'
I didn't answer. There was a momentary silence and then an explosion, like a gunshot, followed by the shattering sound of glass breaking into hundreds of shards. An ashtray, filled with cigarette butts had burst against a sidewall, thrown with lightning speed and force. I shrank back. My head spun drunkenly, exhaustion, tension, fear all vying for purchase within me. There was a smell of stale smoke and I could see some dusty ashes still fluttering in the air next to a dark smudge against the white paint. 'We are closing now, Francis, on the end,' the Angel said, mocking me. 'Can't you feel it? Can't you sense it? Don't you understand that it is almost all over?'
The Angel's voice ragged me.
'Just like it was all those years ago,' he said bitterly. 'Dying time getting closer.'
I looked down at my hand. Did I throw the ashtray at the sound of his words? Or did he throw the ashtray to demonstrate that he was taking form, gaining substance, slowly returning to shape. Becoming real once again. I could see my hand quiver in front of me.
'You will die here, Francis. 'You should have died then, but now you will die here. Alone. Forgotten. Unloved. And dead. It will be days before someone finds your body, more than enough time for maggots to infest your skin, your stomach to be bloated and your stench to penetrate the walls.'
I shook my head, fighting as best as I could.
'Oh, yes,' he continued. 'That is how it will be. Not a word in the newspaper, not a tear shed at your funeral if there even is one. Do you think people will come together to eulogize you, Francis, filling up the rows of some fine church? To make nice speeches about all your accomplishments? All the great and meaningful things you did before you died? I don't believe that's in the offing, Francis. Not in the slightest. You're just going to die and that will be it. Just a lot of relief by all the people who haven't cared a whit for you, and will be secretly overjoyed that you are no longer a burden on their lives. All that will remain of your days will be the smell you leave behind in this apartment, which the next tenants will probably scrub away with disinfectant and lye.'
I half gestured toward the wall of words.
He laughed. 'You think anyone will care about all your stupid scribblings? It will be gone in minutes. Seconds. Someone will come in, take one look at the mess the crazy man created, fetch a paintbrush and cover up every word. And all that happened a long time ago will be buried forever.'
I closed my eyes. If the words pummeled me, how long before his fists? It seemed to me, right at that moment, that the Angel was growing stronger every second, while I was growing weaker. I took a deep breath, and started to drag myself back across the room, my pencil in hand.
'You will not live to finish the story,' he said. 'Do you understand that, Francis? You will not live. I will not allow it. You think you can write the ending here, Francis? You make me laugh. The ending belongs to me, It always has. It always will'
I didn't know what to think. His threat was as real at that moment as it was so many years earlier. But I struggled forward and thought I had to try. I wished Peter was here to help, and he must have been able to read my mind. Or perhaps I moaned Peter's name out loud, and wasn't aware of it, because the Angel laughed again. 'He can't help you this time. He's dead.'
Chapter 30
Peter hustled through the Amherst Building corridor, sticking his head into the dayroom, pausing outside the examination rooms, taking a quick glance into the dining area, dodging clusters of patients, searching either for Francis or Lucy Jones, neither of whom seemed to be anywhere close by. He had the overwhelming sensation that something was happening that was critical, but that he was being prevented from witnessing. He had a sudden recollection of walking through the jungle in Vietnam. At war, the sky above, the moist earth beneath his feet, the superheated air and clammy foliage that caressed his clothes, all seemed the same as they were every day, but that there was no way of knowing, other than some otherworldly sixth sense, that around a corner there might be a sniper in a tree, or a waiting ambush, or perhaps just a nearly invisible wire stretched across the trail, patiently awaiting an errant step to trigger a buried mine. Everything was routine, everything was in place and ordinary, just as it was supposed to be, except for the hidden thing that promised tragedy. That was what he saw in the hospital world surrounding him.
For a moment, he paused by one of the barred windows, where an old man in a dull steel wheelchair had been left unattended. The man had a little white line of spittle meandering down his chin, where it mixed with gray stubble. His eyes were fixed on the outside land beyond the window, and Peter asked him, 'What can you see, old man?' but he got no response. Rivulets of rain distorted the view, and past those haphazard streaks, it seemed there was little but a gray, damp, muffled day. Peter reached down and took a piece of brown paper towel from the man's lap and wiped his chin. The man didn't look toward Peter, but nodded, as if grateful. But the old man remained a blank slate. Whatever he might have been thinking about his present, remembering from his past or even planning for his future, was all lost in whatever fog had descended right behind his eyes. Peter thought there was little more of permanence to the man's remaining days than those raindrops dripping down the windowpane.
Behind him, a woman with long, unkempt, and wild gray-streaked hair flowing electrically from her head lurching from right to left down the corridor a little drunkenly, suddenly stopped, looked up at the ceiling, and said, 'Cleo's gone. She's gone forever…' before putting her engine back into its never- ceasing gear and moving off.
Peter headed into the dormitory area. Not much of a home, he told himself. One day, he thought to himself. Two days. That was all it would take. A flurry of paperwork, a handshake or a nod of the head. A 'good luck,' and that would be it. Peter the Fireman would be shipped out and something different would take over his life.
He was a little unsure what to think. The world of the hospital did that to one rapidly, he
