Headhunter

Now he was turning, cutting a ragged circle in the snow, endeavoring to gain a position from which he could make a stand. Inch by inch, like the hands of a clock, he rotated around.

Eight o'clock… nine o'clock… you're halfway there, he thought. Think of her… don't pass out.. do what must be done…

And then he saw the window.

The window was set in the alcove wall now in front of him. It was long and narrow and two feet high, eight inches up from the ground. Though Flood had passed here countless times he had never seen it before. Whatever its use — perhaps as a light source for a building basement — it had not been opened in years. The windowpane was grimy and caked with layers of soot.

Flood used the butt of his.38 to smash through the glass and clear away the shards.

The pain was fierce, but he crawled in and fell eight feet down to the floor.

8:00 p.m.

Sparky heard the crash of glass and moved toward the alcove.

Easy. Take it very easy. Don't expose yourself.

Gun in hand, crouching low, Sparky peered around the corner just in time to see Al Flood's legs disappear in through the window.

The killer moved into the alcove, closing the gap between them.

8:01 p.m.

It was strange down here.

It was so eerie, so weird, so surreal, that at first Flood thought he had passed out again and that this was another vision. Who were all these people and what were they doing? Living in a madhouse?

For a moment the cop was certain that he had stepped back in time, that now he was a younger man lost on a carnival midway.

Was this some sort of nightmare? Was this what you saw when you died?

Mickey Mouse and Mortimer Snerd and the Count of Monte Cristo? The Connecticut Yankee, Marie Antoinette, the Last of the Mohicans? Alonzo from The Tempest leaning against the wall?

For there were costumes on tables and draped on the floor and hanging from the ceiling. Lurking in shadows about the room were men in uniform: a Russian Cossack of the Guard, a Sepoy of the Second Gurkhas, a Hussar, a Roman Centurion.

Between two tables and blocking the end of one aisle were a French Poilu in his horizon bleu greatcoat from the trenches of Verdun and a red-coated Scottish Highlander of the Ross shire Buffs, ostrich feathers in his bonnet and a goatskin sporran at his groin.

There were clowns with red noses, and Hamlet. There was the Scarlet Pimpernel.

There were Yoda and Punch and Judy and Azuncena from II Trovatore.

Off in one corner by herself was Lady Livia from Women Beware Women.

And everywhere that Al Flood looked there were Monster masks.

Each head was stuck on a hat hook that angled out from one of the walls. In his fall from the window Flood had knocked two of these masks to the ground. They now lay beside him: the face of Fu Manchu to his left, and to his right, Fredric March as Stevenson's Mr. Hyde. When Flood glanced up, the other heads still on the hooks were beginning to come alive.

That's it, he thought. You're going. Then his mind was in a whirl.

'I'm Count Orlock,' Max Schreck said, 'from Murnau's Nosferatu.'

'And I'm the Frankenstein Monster,' whispered Boris Karloff. Then the walls were rife with laughter.

Al Flood felt sick. Bile rose to his throat.

Think of her… forget them… just keep moving…

'He's moving,' hissed Vincent Price with his face from House of Wax.

'Out of sight, out of mind,' screamed the Phantom of the Opera.

The Mummy did not say a thing.

Flood felt empty, drained, exhausted, as he crawled beneath the table spread with props. He could hear the sirens drawing near, close now, closer, but he was aware that they would never arrive in time. His chest was leaking blood in a trail smeared across the floor. 'He's hiding in here,' the blood mark said, pointing in his direction.

Flood put down his head. Too late,he thought as tears came welling to his eyes. Sorry, Genny. I should have stayed back there in the alley. Should have given it all I had…

Have, you mean.

All right, have. What's the difference now?

Think of her.

I can't.

Fight for her.

I can't.

Die for her.

I can't.

Then die.

Yes. that I can do.

He hit the leg of another table with his shoulder and the table began to rock. Something above him was moving, rolling, now falling over the edge. Each time he took a breath there was a wheeze from his punctured lung. He felt himself slipping away — like snow must slip in the springtime from the slope of his father's grave — and he knew that whatever he had to do was never going to get done.

Something hit the floor to his left and rolled in his direction.

His eyes took a look.

And then he wanted to laugh.

God, how he wished he had the strength to laugh as loud as he could, just to go out laughing at this Joke we know as life.

Is this it! Flood thought. Is this my final vision!

Then the pod that looked like it belonged to Invasion of the Body Snatchers bumped against his gun and came rolling to a halt'.

Flood opened his mouth, thinking, I'll damn well laugh if I want! Here's one for you, life! Here's how I go —

But he didn't laugh after all: his muscles froze instead.

For now there was another sound with him in this room. The sound of someone at the window through which he had come.

The sound of someone falling, feet on the floor, a body rolling, feet on the floor again.

Then came the sound of a.38, the unmistakable click as its hammer cocked.

8:03 p.m.

Sparky crouched among the theater costumes, taking in every sound.

The whistle of the wind blowing in through the shattered window. The rap of a pipe as it rattled deep within one of the walls. The wail of the police sirens less than a block away.

The hiss of Al Flood's wheezing lung near the center of the storage room.

Then like a cat ready to pounce. Sparky began to move. Circle the room, he killer thought, and keep yourself down low. Use the figures for camouflage and come up from behind. Take him from the rear.

Furtively Sparky moved past the wrinkled, waited faces of a Witches' Sabbath, past an orange orangutang, past the Mummy of Kharis with its rotting bandages, its cracked and withered and dry facial skin, its one remaining