“But how will you…?”
“I am equipped.”
Remembering his glimpse of those giant spindly legs, he nodded. “I’m sure you are.”
“Where is the problem?”
“Right this way.”
He led her down the dank stairwell to the archives where he knocked on the door. After a pause, Slootjes spoke from the other side.
“Who is it? Is that you, Drexler?”
Without prompting, the girl answered, “No, sir, it’s me, Ellie.”
“I don’t know an Ellie. Go away!”
“Please, sir. I have something for you—something very important.”
Another pause, and then the sound of someone working the lock. Ernst backed into the shadows where he would not be seen.
The door swung inward a sliver for a moment, enough for a one-eyed peek, then opened the rest of the way. Slootjes appeared, pistol in hand, but he held it down at his side. He looked even more haggard and wild-eyed than when Ernst had spoken to him earlier.
“Who are you and how did you get down here?”
“I’ll only be a moment,” the girl said as she deftly slipped past him.
“You cannot come in here!”
“Just one minute,” Ernst heard her say as the door swung shut.
A momentary silence was followed by muffled shouts, a cry of terror, and then two gunshots. Ernst started forward, but then held back. Did he really want to see? He remembered the eight legs springing from her back and decided he didn’t.
Frantic fingers fumbled with the inner handle, and then the door was yanked inward to reveal…
Loremaster Slootjes stood framed in the doorway, eyes wide, mouth agape, but his sockets were filled with black wriggling things, their legs raking his eyelids. They filled his mouth as well. His throat worked but only faint, strangled sounds emerged. He swayed, clutched frantically at the door frame, then fell back into the room as the door slammed shut again.
Ernst leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. He hadn’t known what to expect, but he hadn’t been prepared for that.
The archives room quieted after a while, then the door opened and the girl, Ellie, stepped out.
“Problem solved,” she said, speaking as if she had just adjusted a crooked curtain.
She passed Ernst and ascended the steps.
“The gunshots?”
“The shots went into the floor,” she said without looking back. “No harm done.”
Ernst started to follow her, then stepped back to the archives door for a look—out of curiosity, certainly, but also to assess how much of a cleanup would be required. He had expected blood but saw not a drop. His attention was drawn to the shape on the floor.
At first he wasn’t sure what he was looking at, then noticed with a start that the disarrayed heap of clothing contained skin and had a human face—Slootjes’s—though with hollow eye sockets and an empty, gaping mouth devoid of teeth and tongue. It resembled a human skin suit filled with a jumble of disconnected bones. Ernst had never seen anything like it and had no desire to see its like again.
When he reached the main floor the girl was nowhere in sight. From the front door he spotted her walking down the steps toward an older woman who could have been her mother. They linked arms and walked back up toward Allen Street.
BARBARA
“What did you do in there?” I asked as we retraced our earlier path.
I felt, as her mother, I should know what my teenage daughter was doing in a strange building in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
“Nothing important. What is important is that now I’m released. No obligations. We can go where we want.”
Could we? Really?
I nodded toward her back where those horrid little things clustered. “What about…you know?”
“They’re content to be with me.”
I experienced a strange, floating sensation, a feeling of unreality. Was this surreality our new everyday reality, Ellie and I? I surrendered to it. At least we were together.
“Where do you want to go?”
“I want to go see Mister Hill.”
“Who’s Mister Hill?”
“The man who carried me from the park last December when the Sheep Meadow signal triggered my…changes.”
That awful, horrible day.
“I’ll never forget,” I said. “I remember his first name was Teel—no, Tier. But we have no idea where to find him.”
“I do.”
“Of course you do,” I muttered.
She laughed. For the first time since Christmas week my Ellie laughed. And it sounded real and…and wonderful.
We returned to the Grand Street station and took the D train to Columbus Circle at the southwest corner of Central Park.
I gestured toward the park. “Aren’t you worried…?”
“No. The Sheep Meadow signal will sing its swan song tonight. I’m actually looking forward to it.” She pointed up Central Park West. “Come. He’s this way…in the Allard Building.”
“He lives in the Allard?” I said.
The Allard had the status of the San Remo or the Dakota. He hadn’t struck me as wealthy.
The walk turned out to be a short one. We stopped before the canopied entrance to an Art Deco apartment building. Its sixteen-story base narrowed to a graceful, streamlined ten-story tower, capped with a heavy-duty antenna from another age.
A liveried doorman with Simón on his nametag greeted us at the front door.
“We’re here to see Mister Hill,” Ellie said.
“Hardly anyone asks for him by that name.”
Curious, I said, “What name do they use?”
“‘Burbank.’ Is he expecting you?”
“No,” Ellie said, “but if you tell him the girl he saved from the Sheep Meadow is here, I’m sure he’ll see us.”
Giving Ellie a suitably puzzled look, Simón retreated to his kiosk and made a call. He returned a few moments later.
“He said to come right up. Take the center elevator and press P for the penthouse.”
The penthouse at the Allard…despite the horrors of the day I wanted to see it. The woodwork in the lobby was stunning—graceful arrays of multicolored inlays and laminates and burled wood veneers. The penthouse had to be even more impressive.
TOWER in Art Deco letters marked the middle of three elevators. Ellie pressed the P button and we whisked to the top where we were greeted by a tall and wiry man I recognized instantly: the same ruddy skin, high cheekbones, and sharp nose.
