================
================
A moment
later Adolfa sat up
again. Not dead after all. Jim was relieved. He hadn't been
able to get up the courage to check for a pulse, or even to listen closely for
breath. He hadn't wanted to get that close to her. To whatever she
had become.
"You're
awake."
Adolfa
snuffled. He thought she might start crying again, but she held it
together. Her face had stopped sliding off her bones, but now strange
sores had appeared on it. They were crusty and painful-looking, scabrous
tissue that oozed pus and blood. They clustered around the old woman's
mouth especially, and the first time she tried to talk a number of them cracked
open and seeped into her mouth.
"What I
deserve," she whispered.
"What?"
said Jim.
"What we all
deserve."
Jim shook his
head. "I don't understand." He thought Adolfa must be
delirious. Whatever sickness she had contracted must be giving her a
fever. Maybe she was hallucinating.
"This
place," she said. "It's taking us to what we deserve."
"I don't think
so," Jim said.
Adolfa clutched at
him with fingers that suddenly seemed to have the power of a dozen strong
men. "It's true," she whispered. Blood sprayed out of her
mouth. Jim felt it speckle his face, and gorge rose up in his
throat. "Each car is for one of us. To punish one of us.
Freddy. Xavier. Karen. Olik. The doors didn't open in
each car until one person had died." She swallowed, grimacing in
pain. "This car must be mine."
She started
coughing again. More blood poured from her mouth. Her body slumped,
as though all the strength had gone from her.
Jim caught
her. "Adolfa, don't be silly. You're an
abuelita
, a
shop keeper. Why would anyone want to punish you?"
Adolfa pushed
herself up a bit. Her drooping eyes focused on his. She
laughed. Then the laugh turned into a cackle. "A shop
keeper?" The cackle increased in volume, growing hysterical.
"A
shop keeper
?" She coughed. Blood. She
inhaled, coughed more. Then seemed to stop the hacking coughs by force of
will. She smiled, the grin a horrific sight in the sagging mask of her
face. "I took over the family business when my husband died,"
she said. "Selling drugs. The largest cartel of cocaine,
heroine, and meth in seven countries." Another cough. Another
gout. "I was in New York to negotiate a new market, a business
agreement with a rival family."
Jim shook his
head. He didn't believe that. "No," he said.
"Adolfa, this is insane."
Her face was
drooping more now. Her eyes were lost, gone from the folds of skin that bore
no relation to the place they should have been. "Insane?"
She laughed. "A pedophile, a skin-merchant, a rapist, a killer, a
drug dealer." She grew suddenly serious. "No, we all
deserve this,
mi hijo
." She started to sag again.
"This is my car. This is my place to go." Jim caught
her. She looked at him. "It is only you I do not understand,
mi
hijo
. The only good man in a den of thieves and killers."
She touched his cheek. The beds of her nails were ruptured, star
hemorrhages that oozed bloody trails across his skin. "Perhaps you
were here to bear witness. To give final rites and comfort to the
damned."
Adolfa's fingers
fell away from his cheeks. She slumped forward and Jim lowered her to the
gently rocking floor of the still-rocketing subway train.
Click-clack
click-clack click-clack
.
Adolfa's face was
an amorphous mass, gone, lost in folds of featureless flesh. Her bony
body started to twitch.
"Adolfa?"
She began to
convulse. Somewhere from within the folds of what had once been her face,
a muffled scream sounded. Her body flopped like a fish.
The door at the
front of the car slid open.
Jim looked down at
Adolfa. Looked at her like he had looked at someone long before.
(
so much
blood. so much blood.
)
Then he
stood. Walked toward the open door.
Adolfa was lost.
He had to get off
this train. Had to get home, had to get to his girls.
================
================
The open
door beckoned at the front of
the subway car. Jim could only hope that what Adolfa had said was true –
that he was here to bear some sort of horrific witness, a dark apostle to an
evil gospel, and that now the others were gone he would be free to go.
He cast a last
backward look at Adolfa. She was still seizing, her frail body thrashing
against the floor, her feet tapping and rapping and her shoulders thumping as
she twitched her way back and forth across the center aisle. How long
would it take her to die? Jim didn't know.
He turned back to
the door.
And there were two
people standing there. A man and a woman. They were tall.
Good-looking. They were in their mid-thirties, both blondes with blue
eyes that looked at him for only the barest instant before they stepped into
the car.
The door shut behind
them.
Jim's heart
lurched. This wasn't right. This wasn't the way it was supposed to
go, the way it
had
gone. He was supposed to get
out
of
here. What was happening now? What new awfulness was about to
descend on him?
The man and woman
stepped toward him. Jim fell back a step, sure that they would attack
him, certain that they were the next wave of terror sent to torment him.
But they took no
notice of him. They stepped past him. Went to the still-stuttering
form of Adolfa. They knelt beside her. The blonde woman cradled
Adolfa's head – what was left of her head, the deformed mass of skin and bone
that her head had become – in her lap. The young man passed his hands
over her spasming body.
Jim watched,
transfixed, as Adolfa's body stopped convulsing. It relaxed so fully and
completely he thought at first she must be dead. Then he realized that
her dress was rising and falling, rhythmically and regularly. She was
breathing.
And looking at her
breathing, Jim saw with amazement that her body had filled out again. It
was returning to its previous health.
"Who are
you?" he said.
Neither the man nor
the woman paid any attention to him. He wondered if they were
angels. But they couldn't be, could they? Not if they were come to
save an admitted drug dealer, especially if they were doing so in lieu of
saving someone whose girls were waiting for him, depending on him.
"What's going
on?" he said a moment later. Still no answer.
Adolfa's face
shifted. It pulled back to its moorings on the bone below. It began
to resemble itself again. The blood seemed to seep into the skin and
disappear. The rotten teeth that remained in her mouth grew bright and
white once more, and the gaps where no teeth were suddenly held molars and
incisors and bicuspids again.
The old woman
opened her eyes.
"Adolfa!"
Jim said.
Adolfa didn't seem
to notice him. She looked up at the man and woman who knelt beside her,
who held her in their arms and who had brought her back from doom's door.
Her eyes moved from the man to the woman, and back again.
"Scott," she said. "Kim."
"Hello,
Mamá
,"
said Kim, and Jim remembered Adolfa telling him, several cars and forever ago,
about her son marrying a girl and bringing her into the family business.
"You came for
me," said Adolfa, and pulled Kim down into a hug. Kim didn't return
the hug, only seeming to endure it. After a moment, Adolfa let go.
"What?" she said. "What is it?"
Kim and Scott
exchanged a look that spoke of untold secrets. Finally Scott, in a
curiously emotionless voice, said, "You were supposed to die."
"What?"
said Adolfa.
"You kept
living," said Kim. "Kept living and living, just getting older
and older and never dying. Never dying."
"So we had to
hire someone," said Scott.
"To help you
along," said Kim. Both of them spoke strangely, almost like they
were being
made
to speak, as if the words were coming forth against
their will.
"What do you
mean?" said Adolfa.
"You know what
we mean," said Kim.
"It's why
Karen was here," said Scott.
Jim started.
But he remembered. Remembered Karen grabbing Adolfa and saying she was
here for the old lady; something about her "commission." He
gaped. Had Adolfa's family
hired
her?
Adolfa must have
been thinking the same thing, because her face registered shock. Then
disappointment.
Then rage.
"You
hijos
de
–" she began. But never finished.
Kim waved, and the
aluminum poles nearest Adolfa detached from the ceiling. They writhed
like snakes, suddenly flexible, then as Jim watched they seemed to shift in
appearance. No longer aluminum poles, now they resembled tubing.
The bottoms were still anchored in the floor, but the tops glinted. Like
something sharp.
Needles.
The pole/tubes shot
out, and wrapped themselves around Adolfa's arms and legs. Another one
trussed around her neck. The needles at the ends of the tubes buried
themselves in her wrists and thighs and chin. Then the tubes darkened as
something flowed through them… and into Adolfa.
Her body convulsed
again. The skin pulled from its bones. The sores reappeared, and
blood poured from every orifice on her body. She screamed.
Jim edged away from
the scene. His only hope was to get away before the homicidal relatives
of the old drug dealer noticed he was there.
He glanced at the
front door.
It was still
closed.
Adolfa shrieked
again. Her scream bubbled around skin that had the consistency of loose
putty. Jim looked back at her.
And saw that Kim
and Scott were staring right at him.
================
================
Jim held
up his hands. "Please,"
he said. Hot tears burned behind his eyes. "I don't know
what's going on, but I don't belong here." He glanced over his
shoulder. The door was still closed.
He looked
back. Scott and Kim were still kneeling beside Adolfa. Still
staring at him. Adolfa was screaming, and the scream burrowed like a tick
into the deepest parts of his mind, shaking loose everything that he had ever
suffered or hoped to bury there.
Kim and Scott
looked at each other. Then back at Jim.
"I have a family
waiting for me. I don't belong here." Jim pointed at Adolfa as
she flailed on the floor. "She said it herself."
Kim looked at
Scott. "Should we kill him?" she said. Her voice still
sounded queer.
Scott nodded.
"I think so."
They looked at Jim.
He flicked one more glance over his shoulder. The door was still
shut. And he knew that it was because this car hadn't claimed its victim
yet. Hadn't claimed its due.
He ran. Not
toward the door – that would have been useless – but toward Scott. Toward
Kim.
Toward Adolfa.
As he ran, he
reached toward his pocket. Not for his journal, though. His hand
veered aside at the last second. He pulled something from his waistband.
Xavier's knife.
Kim and Scott
reached for Jim.
He dodged their
hands.
He dropped
down. Looked at Adolfa's spasming body. "You were right about
me," he whispered. "I really am a good person. And I
don't belong here."
And then he drew
the knife across the old woman's throat. It was a perfect, practiced
cut. Carotids and jugular were severed in an instant.
Jim felt the
fingers of Kim and Scott on his arms and shoulders. And felt them
changing. Claws emerging, flesh growing scaly and hard.
But at the same
time, the blood from Adolfa's body spattered against the floor of the subway
car. At the same time, the lifeblood splashed from her in a gout.
At the same time,
the door at the front of the car opened.
At the same time,
Jim ran.
Fingers grabbed for
him, tearing his shirt from his back. They raked bloody furrows in his flesh.
But then the things that Kim and Scott had become turned to lap up the blood
that still spilled on the metal floor.
Adolfa screamed,
sputtered, gurgled. An impossible sound through her cut throat, but still
she made it. Her skin fell from her bones, her body emptied of
blood. But still she screamed. As Freddy had screamed, as Xavier
and Karen and Olik had screamed. She screamed though dead, a wail of
never-ending pain and betrayal and agony.
Jim threw himself
through the door. Nothing followed him. Nothing but the scream.
And the subway
continued on.