What do you want?
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
The room could only be silent.
And I knew what it meant—the silence. I knew without knowing. It was a silence that was there to be broken. I could feel it in the air, in the pit of my stomach, in the core of my bones…
The other world was coming back.
“Candy,” I whispered. “I think we’d better—”
“Shhh…” she said, rolling over and putting her finger to my lips. I watched in curious silence as she slipped off the bed and stood in front of me. For a moment I thought she was going to the bathroom again, but then, with her sleepy eyes fixed on mine, she knelt down on the bed and held my hands.
“No,” I started to say, “I don’t think—”
SLAM!
And Candy’s eyes were suddenly awake. “Shit!” she hissed. “That was the front door.” Her face was white with fear. “Listen…” Heavy footsteps were thudding up the stairs. “Christ, Joe,” she breathed. “It’s Iggy. He’s back…He’s coming up here.”
Q
uick,” gasped Candy, jumping off the bed. “Get in the bathroom.”
“Maybe it’s not Iggy?” I said. “Maybe it’s—”
“It’s Iggy. I know what he sounds like.”
“But I thought you said—”
“Just
move,
” she said urgently. “He’ll be here any second.” She took me by the arm and pulled me off the bed and started leading me toward the bathroom. “Stay in there and keep quiet,” she whispered. “And whatever happens, don’t come out. For my sake.
Whatever
happens…OK? Now go.” She gave me another shove toward the bathroom.
My legs felt numb as I crossed the room, like lumps of wood with shoes on. I wasn’t sure what I was doing. My head was empty—too shocked to feel anything. No fear, not yet. Just killing numbness.
I paused at the beaded doorway, listening to the sound
of approaching footsteps—
boom, boom, boom
…top of the stairs…
boom, boom, boom
…along the hallway…
“Joe!” Candy hissed.
I looked at her—eyes wide, face rigid, teeth bared, hands waving, imploring me to go…What else could I do? I turned around and stepped through the beads into the bathroom.
It was a small room—off-white, damp, dark. A faint shimmer of streetlight dappled the glass of a curtainless window set high in the wall, lifting the darkness just enough to show me my surroundings. There wasn’t much to see: broken tiles on the wall, a stained sink, a toilet, a bath, a rust-rimmed water heater.
I moved to one side and stood with my back against the wall…still numb…but starting to feel it now. The fear. The beating heart, the tightening throat, the rapid breathing…out of control…too fast, too strangled, too loud. I could hear Candy outside, scrabbling around, cursing under her breath…I didn’t know what she was doing, but I guessed she was checking around the room to make sure I hadn’t left any telltale signs. I heard her pause for a moment, and then I heard her skipping across the floor and jumping into bed—and half a second later I heard the sound of the door opening and Iggy’s voice booming across the room.
“What you doing?”
“Nothing,” Candy replied, her voice remarkably calm. “I thought you’d gone over to Karl’s.”
A brief silence—the soundless sound of Iggy’s eyes sweeping the room—then the door closed and I heard his footsteps crossing the floor.
“Yeah…” he said. “You got that number?”
“What number?”
“The guy…what’s the matter with you? What you looking at?”
“Nothing.”
“You out of it?”
“Just a bit…I was hurting—”
“Don’t use it all—you’ll need some later. And you ain’t getting no more—I told you that.”
“I know.”
“Yeah, well…”
I heard him move across the room again…then rummaging sounds, things being thrown on the floor. I guessed he was at Candy’s dressing table.
“Shit,” he said, “look at this mess…You wanna get yourself cleaned up, girl. You living like a sick pig. Where the hell is it?”
“What?” Candy asked him. “What are you looking for?”
“I told you—the guy’s cell phone number…the guy with the gear…”
“What gear?”
He didn’t answer, just kept searching through the stuff on the dressing table. I imagined his big hands sweeping the bottles and jars to the floor, his empty eyes searching…empty of feeling, empty of heart, empty of everything but himself. I could see him. As I stared at the bathroom wall, unable to breathe, I could see him. His heavy head, his close-cropped hair, his death-mask face…
“You dead, girl?” he said to Candy.
“What…? I’m not—”
“You gonna lie there all day?”
“I was just—”
“Move yourself…Come
on
—get this shit cleared up. Christ!” An angry fist slammed on the table. “You
hear
me?”
I heard the sound of Candy getting out of bed. Then silence. Then Iggy’s voice again, hard and low—“Come here.”
Bare feet moved hesitantly across the floor.
Silence.
Iggy sniffed, then spoke again, his voice a polished growl. “What you waiting for?”
“What d’you want me to do?”
“I just
told
you—clean this shit up.”
“What—now?”
“Just
do
it!”
I heard the sound of things being moved—bottles, jars, bits of paper…
“I ain’t got all day,” Iggy said.
“My wrist hurts—”
“You what?”
“Nothing—”
“You got a problem?”
“No, I was just—”
“Here, give me your hand, let me see.”
“No, it’s all right—”
“Gimme your
hand!
”
A frightened silence.
Then, “Where’s it hurt? There?”
Candy yelped.
Iggy laughed.
“Please…don’t,” begged Candy. “I didn’t mean anything—”
As she cried out again, I dug my fingernails into my
palm, trying to take my mind off her pain. It didn’t work. Her pain was everywhere. I could feel it all around me—in the cold bathroom air, in the sickness of my stomach, in the ache of my bones…and the worst thing was, I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t do
anything
…for Candy’s sake. She’d told me to stay where I was—
whatever
happened. For her sake. But I couldn’t do that, could I? How could I do that? How could I stand by and listen to that cold-blooded ugliness next door—the sound of her suffering, her stifled whimpers, his mocking laughter…
How could I listen to
that?
I couldn’t.
But I couldn’t move, either. My back was glued to the wall, my feet nailed down to the floor. I was too scared to move. It sickened me…
I
sickened me. So frightened, so small, so useless…
Then my cell phone rang.
As the piercing ring tone echoed loudly around the bathroom, amplified by the white-tiled emptiness, I yanked the phone from my pocket and—unbelievably—checked the caller ID. Even as I scanned the display—
GINA
—my mind was already screaming at me:
What are you doing? Turn it off; Turn it off; TURN IT OFF!!!
I hit the
End
button and the ring tone stopped, but it was far too late. The damage was done. Iggy was already on his way. I could hear his voice—“What’s that?”—and the sound of his footsteps approaching the bathroom,
boom, boom, boom,
and Candy’s futile attempts to stop him: “No, Iggy…Iggy! It’s nothing…”
There was a brief silence, then
SLAP!
—and Candy went quiet.
And the footsteps started again.
I still hadn’t moved. My body was frozen, my blood turned to ice. Even if I
could
have moved, there was nowhere to go. Nothing I could do. The window was locked and barred on the outside. There was nothing to use as a weapon. There was only one way out—through the beaded doorway—and Iggy was almost there.
I stopped breathing.
The footsteps slowed.
My eyes fixed on the doorway.
A heavy hand appeared, parting the beads…
Then a head…
A skull of black skin.
Eyes of nothing, turning on me.
He smiled, grinning white teeth. “Well, now…look at this.”
I forced myself to look him in the eye as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stepped through the beads to stand in front of me—solid as a rock, muscled and scarred, a huge black anvil of a man. My eyes darted down to the straight razor balanced loosely in the palm of his hand. The handle was bone, as white as his eyes; the blade was stained with dry blood. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry.
“This is something,” he said. “This
is
something.”
The words were directed at me, pushed into my face, but I got the feeling he wasn’t really talking to
me
—he was talking to something else. Something he wanted, something he needed, something he took from other people…something weird.
I didn’t want to know what it was.
I inched to one side…then stopped, the blade of the razor against my cheek.
“Where you going?” said Iggy. “This is good—right here. You want a bath? Take a shower? Get yourself nice before we start? Hey? You listening, boy?”
I didn’t say anything.
He moved his face to within an inch of mine, then slowly ran the edge of the razor down my cheek, over my chin, and onto my throat, resting the blade just below my Adam’s apple. I felt no pain, just a cold metallic shiver, so I guessed he hadn’t cut me yet. But I was in no doubt he meant to. I could feel him turning the blade in his hand, lightly pricking my skin. I could feel his eyes boring into mine, searching for the fear and the pain.
“See you smile,” he whispered. “Let’s see it…”
The blade pressed harder, breaking my skin, and I knew it was too late to do anything. The slightest movement from me, and the razor would tear open my throat.
I closed my eyes, hoping for the calmness I’d heard about—the calmness you feel just before you die. It’s supposed to anesthetize you, to make your death a pain-free experience. But I couldn’t find it. All I could find inside myself was the sniveling voice of terror:
I don’t want to get hurt. I don’t want to die. I’ll do anything to stay alive…anything…anything at all. Just don’t kill me…please. For God’s sake, don’t kill me…
“You ready?” said Iggy, tensing his arm. “You ready to smile?”
I opened my eyes, not wanting to die in the dark, and just for a moment I saw the light of my death in Iggy’s eyes, the black light he lived for—and then his head exploded in a crashing red fury of stars, and all the lights went out.
I
’m not sure what I thought in that instant—maybe nothing, maybe everything:
Am I dead? Is this what happens? Is this how it ends? With a crash, a heartbeat, a dancing explosion of red and black sparks…?
Is this
it?
It wasn’t, of course.
I knew it wasn’t the end. It couldn’t be. The end is
not
knowing. The end is senseless. And this wasn’t senseless; this was just another world. I could see things, hear things, feel things. I was sentient. In the dim light of the window I could see Iggy’s body lying on the bathroom floor. I could see Candy standing over him, breathless and tense, still holding the base of the cylindrical lamp in her hand. I could see the shards of broken red glass, the explosive remains, scattered all over the bathroom—on the floor, in the bath, in the sink…in the thickening blood on the back of Iggy’s head.
I could hear my heart.
And Candy’s shallow breaths.
I could feel the fear of death.
Candy looked at me. “Are you all right? You’re bleeding.”
I put my hand to my throat and touched a small nick of pain. It felt sharp and moist. When I looked at my fingers, the thin smear of blood seemed incredibly bright. Like toy blood. Too pink to be real.
I looked down at Iggy. He wasn’t moving.
I looked at Candy. Pale and wild.
She said, “He’s still breathing.”
Her voice was strangely remote.
“Are you sure?” I asked her.
She nodded. “We’d better do something…before he comes around.”
“Do something?”
She looked at me. “We’re both dead if we don’t.”
I looked back at her, wondering what kind of
something
she meant. Tie him up? Run away? Or maybe she was thinking of something more permanent? It was a possibility—I could see it inside her. The way she was looking at him. The long-held hate in her eyes. The way she was standing, gripping the base of the lamp in her fist.
She could kill him,
I thought.
If she wanted to.
She could end it right now.
How did that make me feel?
I don’t know. I didn’t know
how
to know. The truth is, at that moment,
my
feelings meant nothing. They were irrelevant. This was nothing to do with me. I was just a bystander. A spectator. Someone who just happened to be there. This was all about Candy: her life, her death, her choice.
It’s up to you,
I thought, looking into her eyes.
I can’t help you decide. All I can say is, whatever you do, it’s OK with me.
I’m not sure what I thought I was doing—sending unspoken messages, assuming she could read my mind—but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. And whether it worked or not, I still don’t know. But as we kept looking at each other, breathing in the silence, I saw something fade from Candy’s eyes, and I felt as if she’d pulled herself back from a place where she didn’t really want to be. The hate and the tension gradually eased from her body, her eyes came slowly back to life, and eventually she blinked and relaxed her shoulders and dropped the base of the lamp on the floor.
“We’d better go,” she said wearily, glancing down at Iggy.
“OK.”
“Find something to tie him up with, and I’ll get dressed. All right?”
“Yeah.”
She turned to go, then paused and looked back at me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have—”
“You saved my life,” I said. “You don’t have to be sorry about anything. It was my idea—”
“He would’ve killed you.”
Just then, Iggy groaned—a low, grunting breath. We both looked down at him. He was still out cold, but his breathing was getting stronger. Candy and I looked at each other for a moment, then we both got moving.
While Candy quickly got dressed and started throwing some stuff into a bag, I found a roll of tape and began tying up Iggy. Even though he was still unconscious, my hands shook with fear as I knelt down beside him. Up
close, his body was enormous. His skin rock-hard. Scarred, patterned, tattooed. His muscles were bigger than my arms. As I unwound the tape and cautiously positioned his arms behind his back, I felt like a vet in a safari park, tending to an anesthetized beast—ready to jump and run at the slightest sign of life. As quickly as I could, I wound half the roll of tape around his wrists, then I shuffled down and wound the other half around his ankles. It was a lot of tape and I wound it as tightly as I could, but I didn’t think it’d hold him for long when he finally woke up. It was better than nothing, though.
I looked around, found the straight razor, picked it up and closed it, and put it in my pocket. I was just standing up as Candy appeared in the doorway. She looked fantastic—hair tied back under a little black hat, jeans, T-shirt, a scruffy old coat.
“OK?” she said, looking at Iggy.
“Yeah—let’s go.”
“Just a minute.”
She came over and knelt down beside Iggy and started going through his trouser pockets—first the back pockets, then she pulled him around to get to the ones in the front. As she pushed and pulled at his legs, he started groaning again. His head began to move, too.
“Come on,” I urged Candy. “He’s coming around…”
“Just a minute…”
She was digging desperately into his pockets, her face creased in concentration. His body began moving, rolling from side to side. His head turned. Eyes fluttering. Mouth muttering…
“Gnuhh…uh…uh…”
“Candy!” I hissed. “Leave it…come
on.
What are you
doing?
”
She was pulling out the contents of his pockets and stuffing them into her jeans. Cash, keys, credit cards…and other things, too. Little packs, plastic bags, bottles of pills…
I reached down and grabbed her arm. “That’s enough,” I said. “We have to go—right now.”
“OK,” she said, shoving something else in her pocket, “I’m coming.”
As she went to stand up, Iggy suddenly flexed his arms and rolled his head to the side. His eyes were still glazed, but the look he gave Candy was enough to stop her in her tracks. She froze, staring back at him.
“Yuh…” he muttered, his eyes flickering weakly to me. Without meaning to, I stepped back. His arms tensed again, getting stronger, and his eyes refocused on Candy.
“Yuh…dumbitch…” he whispered, a pained grin cracking his face. “Yuh…yuhshoulda yuh shoulda killed me…”
Candy’s face had ghosted over. The awe had come back. The hate, the fear…even the adoration. It was all still there. Iggy knew it. Candy knew it. And I knew it, too. There was still a part of her that couldn’t resist him. I didn’t understand it and I didn’t want to believe it, but it was there, in her face…
And I wondered then if Iggy was right.
She
should
have killed him.
“Maybe I will,” she said, her voice barely audible.
Iggy laughed, coughed, swallowed his breath. “Too late…” he spluttered. “You had your chance.” Suddenly
he opened his mouth and lunged at Candy, as if he was trying to bite her. She flinched away, half stood up, then lost her balance and toppled back against the bathroom wall.
Iggy laughed again and started slithering toward her, his arms and legs wriggling hard against the tape, his body snaking from side to side. Christ—it was
horrifying.
Like something out of a terrible dream. Candy was transfixed…couldn’t move…couldn’t take her eyes off him.
He started humping his back, lurching across the floor, grunting under his breath, “Come to Daddy…Come to Daddy…”
I couldn’t stand it anymore. I stepped up and swung my foot at his head. A juddering pain shot up my leg and for a moment I thought I’d kicked the wall by mistake, but then I looked down and saw that Iggy had stopped moving and there was a faint red mark on his cheek, so I guessed I must have hit the target. Not that it made much difference.
He was already starting to move again—straining his arms, his shoulders, his neck…stretching the bands of tape on his wrists…
I took Candy’s arm and pulled her to her feet. She felt like a puppet in my hands—loose, limp, lifeless.
“Come on,” I said, pulling her toward the doorway. “Come
on.
”
She started moving, but her eyes were still fixed on Iggy and she was walking in a trance. I put my arm around her waist and dragged her through the doorway.
“Where’s your bag?” I said.
“Uh?”
“Candy,” I said firmly. “Look at me.”
Her head lolled loosely in my direction.
I reached out and balanced her chin in my hand. “Look
at me…Candy. Come on, snap out of it…
Candy!
” Her eyes blinked at the sharpness of my voice. “Where’s your bag?” I asked her again.
“Where?” she said.
“Your
bag
…the bag—where is it?”
She looked at the bed.
I took her hand, walked over to the bed, and picked up the bag. She was beginning to move a little less stiffly now. Still holding her hand, I led her over to the door.
“Where are we going?” she said, frowning.
“I’ll tell you later. Do you need anything else?”
“What?”
“Do you need—”
A loud crash came from the bathroom.
“Forget it,” I said. “Let’s go.”
I opened the door and ushered her into the hallway. The crashing from the bathroom was getting louder by the second. Crashing, smashing…then violent shouting: “Yo,
bitch!
BITCH
BOY
! You running? Hear me? YOU HEAR ME! You better run…You meats now…you
my
little meats…”
I shut the door.
The voice kept on.
I turned around.
Candy was holding a key in her hand.
“Lock it,” she said. “Lock the door.”
“Are you all right now?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “Lock him in.”
I took the key and locked the door, then took Candy’s hand and walked her quickly down the hallway. She was beginning to look all right again. Not great, but not too bad. Her eyes were fixed to the floor. Her breathing was a
little strange. But she seemed to be walking steadily enough. Heading for the stairs, I picked up the pace. Candy responded.
“OK?” I said.
She nodded.
At the end of the hallway, a group of girls were gathered together on the landing, watching us curiously. I recognized the girl in the bathrobe and the one who’d told me where Candy was. I guessed they’d been alerted by all the noise. As we approached, they stepped aside to let us onto the stairs.
“Candy?” one of them said.
Candy looked up at her. “Hey, Janine.”
“You OK with this?” Janine asked her, glancing at me.
“Yeah,” Candy smiled. “He’s OK.”
We passed the girls and started down the stairs.
“Good luck,” someone called out.
“She’s gonna need it,” another voice added.
All the way down the stairs, I kept expecting to hear the sound of raging footsteps clattering down behind us, or the sound of the front door opening and Iggy’s crew piling up the stairs to meet us…and I couldn’t stop thinking,
Is this really happening? Is this really me? Am I really doing this?
Doing what?
asked a voice in my head.
You don’t
know
what you’re doing. You don’t
know
where you’re going. You don’t
know
why you’re running down the stairs of a dingy old house, with a traumatized girl by your side and a slithering black razor-monster haunting your mind…You don’t
know
anything, do you?
“No,” I replied out loud, “I don’t.”
“What?” said Candy.
“Nothing,” I said. “Is there a back way out of here?”
“Yeah, but it’s locked. Iggy hides the key.”
We were downstairs now, in the hallway. The lights were on. I could see the woman called Bamma standing in a doorway at the end of the corridor, her impassive figure blocking the background of a dim white kitchen. She wasn’t doing anything, just staring at us.
“What about her?” I asked Candy. “Can she get us out the back?”
“I don’t know…” She glanced at Bamma. “Maybe…but if Iggy found out she’d helped us…” She shook her head. “Why can’t we just go out the front?”
“Because that’s where people come in. I don’t want to meet anyone else.”
“No one else comes here.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded.
“OK,” I said, moving toward the front door. “Let’s get out of here.”