mind seemed to be in a fog.
Getting up, she hesitated for a moment, then wrapped one of the smelly blankets about her shoulders like a shawl against the cold and crossed the room to its one doorway. Stepping outside, she found herself in a hall as disrepaired and empty as the room she’d just quit.
The murmuring voice led her down the length of the hall into what proved to be a foyer. Leaning against the last bit of wall, there where the hallway opened up into the larger space, she studied the odd scene before her.
Seven candles sat in their wax on wooden orange crates that were arranged in a half circle around an old woman. She had her back to the wall, legs tucked up under what appeared to be a halfdozen skirts.
A ratty shawl covered her grey hair and hung down over her shoulders. Her face was a spiderweb of lines, all pinched and thin. Water steamed in a large tin can on a Coleman stove that stood on the floor in front of her. She had another, smaller tin can in her hand filled with, judging by the smell that filled the room, some kind of herbal tea. She was talking softly to no one that Harriet could see.
The old woman looked up just as Harriet was trying to decide how to approach her. The candlelight woke an odd glimmer in the woman’s eyes, a reflective quality that reminded Harriet of a cat’s gaze caught in a car’s headbeams.
“And who are you, dear?” the woman asked.
“I ... my name’s Harriet. Harriet Pierson.” She got the odd feeling that she should curtsy as she introduced herself.
“You may call me Flora,” the old woman said. “My name’s actually Anne Boddeker, but I prefer Flora.”
Harriet nodded absently. Under the muddle of of her thoughts, the first sharp wedge of concern was beginning to surface. She remembered taking a fall from her bike ... had she hit her head?
“What am I doing here?” she asked.
The old woman’s eyes twinkled with humor. “Now how would I know?”
“But ...” The fuzz in Harriet’s head seemed to thicken. She blinked a couple of times and then cleared her throat. “Where are we?” she tried.
“North of Gracie Street,” Flora replied, “in that part of town that, I believe, people your age refer to as Squatland. I’m afraid I don’t know the exact address. Vandals have played havoc with the street signs, as I’m sure you know, but I believe we’re not far from the corner of Flood and MacNeil where I grew up.”
Harriet’s heart sank. She was in the Tombs, an area of Newford that had once been a developer’s bright dream. The old, tired blocks of tenements, office buildings and factories were to be transformed into a yuppie paradise and work had already begun on tearing down the existing structures when a sudden lack of backing had left the developer scrambling for solvency. All that remained now of the bright dream was block upon block of abandoned buildings and rubblestrewn lots generally referred to as the Tombs. It was home to runaways, the homeless, derelicts, bikers, drug addicts and the like who squatted in its buildings.
It was also probably one of the most dangerous parts of Newford. “I ... how did I get here?” Harriet tried again.
“What do you remember?” Flora said.
“I was biking home from work,” Harriet began and then proceeded to relate what she remembered of the storm, the giant who’d loomed up so suddenly out of the snow, her accident ... “And then I suppose I must have fainted.”
She lifted a hand to her head and searched about for a tender spot, but couldn’t find a lump or a bruise.
“Did he speak to you?” Flora asked. “The ... man who startled you?”
Harriet shook her head.
“Then it was Frank. He must have brought you here.”
Harriet thought about what the old woman had just said.
“Does that mean there’s more than one of him?” she asked. She had the feeling that her memory was playing tricks on her when she tried to call up the giant’s scarred and misshapen features. She couldn’t imagine there being more than one of him.
“In a way,” Flora said.
“You’re not being very clear.”
“I’m sorry.”
But she didn’t appear to be, Harriet realized.
“So ... he, this Frank ... he’s mute?” she asked.
“Terrible, isn’t it?” Flora said. “A great big strapping lad like that.”
Harriet nodded in agreement. “But that doesn’t explain what you meant by there being more than one of him. Does he have a brother?”
“He ...” The old woman hesitated. “Perhaps you should ask him yourself”
“But you just said that he was a mute.”
“I think he’s down that hall,” Flora said, ignoring Harriet. She pointed to a doorway opposite from the one that Harriet had used to enter the foyer. “That’s usually where he goes to play.”
Harriet stood there for a long moment, just looking at the old woman. Flora, Anne, whatever her name was —she was obviously senile. That had to explain her odd manner.
Harriet lifted her gaze to look in the direction Flora had pointed. Her thoughts still felt muddy. She found standing as long as she had been was far more tiring than it should have been and her tongue felt all fuzzy.
All she wanted to do was to go home. But if this
Perhaps even protection from some of the more feral characters who were said to inhabit these abandoned buildings. Unless, she thought glumly, this “Frank” was the danger himself ...
She looked back at Flora, but the old woman was ignoring her. Flora drew her shawl more tightly around her shoulders and took a sip of tea from her tin can.
Bother, Harriet thought and started across the foyer.
Halfway down the new hallway, she heard a child’s voice singing softly. She couldn’t make out the words until she’d reached the end of the hall where yet another candlelit room offered up a view of its bizarre occupant.
Frank was sitting crosslegged in the middle of the room, the contents of Harriet’s purse scattered on the floor by his knees. Her purse itself had been tossed into a corner. Harriet would have backed right out of the room before Frank looked up except that she was frozen in place by the singing. The child’s voice came from Frank’s twisted lips—a high, impossibly sweet sound. It was a little girl’s voice, singing a skipping song:
Harriet’s wallet into the air, juggling them. Her ID, a credit card, some photos from back home, scraps of paper with addresses or phone numbers on them, paper money, her bank card ... they did a fluttering fandango as he sang, the movement of his hands oddly graceful for all the scarred squat bulk of his fingers. Her makeup, keys and loose change were lined up in rows like toy soldiers on parade in front of him. A halfburned ten dollar bill lay beside a candle on the wooden crate to his right. On the crate to his left lay a dead cat, curled up as though it was only sleeping, but the glassy dead eyes and swollen tongue that pushed open its jaws gave lie to the pretense.
Harriet felt a scream build up in her throat. She tried to back away, but bumped into the wall. The child’s voice went still and Frank looked up. Photos, paper money, paper scraps and all flittered down upon his knees. His gaze locked on hers.
For one moment, Harriet was sure it was a child’s eyes that regarded her from that ruined face. They carried a look of pure, absolute innocence, utterly at odds with the misshapen flesh and scars that surrounded them. But then they changed, gaining a feral, dark intelligence.
Frank scattered the scraps of paper and money in front of him away with a sweep of his hands.
“Mine,” he cried in a deep, booming voice. “Girl is mine!” As he lurched to his feet, Harriet fled back the way she’d come.
“The hardest thing,” the old woman said, “is watching everybody die. One by one, they all die: your parents, your friends, your family ....”
