Shivers (14 page)

“Aren’t you drinking?” she asked.

He stopped his manic scratching and grabbed the glass. Taking a swallow, he placed it back down on the counter. He noticed that her glass was empty.

“Do you want another?”

“No. Thank you.”

“Well then, let’s go. I’ve had enough.”

Lina grabbed her bag and they went out into the street. The drizzle had stopped. George was busy looking around, up and down the sidewalk. Lina almost laughed. This silly little man acted as if the entire world was following him. She hadn’t realized he was quite so short.

“Are you a jockey?” she said.
Oops.
The beer must have gone to her head for her to have asked such a
tacky
question.

“No, I’m not,” he said, apparently unoffended.

“What do you do?”

He ignored the question and said curtly, “Cross the street with me. Walk over to that appliance store.”

“Okay,” Lina said. “Whatever you say.”

George grabbed her elbow, pushed her across the street, and pulled her into an alleyway next to the store.

“Look here!” she protested.

“Shut up! I’m not going to hurt you. But
they
will, if we’re not careful.” He took something out of his pocket, another slip of paper, and pressed it into her hand. “Look, they can’t control you the way they can me.”

“What are you talking about, you little—”

“LISTEN! I try to tell people, to warn them— but something comes over me. I try to talk and —I can’t finish. It’s like something gets hold of my—my vocal cords—my speech. I start to stammer and shiver and—oh God! I’m so afraid.” ‘

He stood there quivering like a bowl of jello. Lina looked down at the paper in her hand. It was hard to make out in the dark, but it looked as if a name and address were scribbled on it. She put the paper into her pocketbook.

“Don’t lose it!
I want you to contact that guy—his address is on there. And tell him to meet me at this bar tomorrow night at the same time.”

“But why should I?”

“Because I can’t do it. His phone number’s unlisted. And if I go to his house, somebody might see me, follow me there. He’s got to come to
me.”

“What has this got to do with Brock? I want to know where Brock is!”

“No you don’t, Lina. No you don’t.”

“Tell me what happened to him!”

He pulled her further into the shadows. “I’ve known your boyfriend for a long time. Him and me used to do jobs together. Both of us living high on the hog until the money ran out, and then starving until something else came up.”

“I’ve always known that,” Lina said wiping away the tears that had started to collect in the corners of her eyes. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

“We were buddies, you know. Then I got a job where my father used to work. They offered me a deal that was—” He gestured as if trying to depict something
grandiose.
“For the first time in my life I had—money. So much money.”

“And Brock? What about Brock?”

“He wanted to know how come I was rich all of a sudden. He didn’t understand why I didn’t let him in on it. So I did him a ‘favor’—ha!—got him a job with the company.”

He looked so strange, this little man, as if he was about to sob.

“We had positions of importance. We were foreman over the project. There are a lot of foreman . . . all those people down there . . . need watchin’ over.

“Brock and I got
treated
like the others did so that we couldn’t talk. Nearly drove us both crazy. Brock fought against it, harder and harder all the time. I told him not to, told him not to, told him he’d be killed. But when he found out what they were gonna do to that kid, that Joey, what was gonna happen
because
of him, we had to do something.”

George’s face and clothes were soaked with sweat. His gesturing hands betrayed a constant trembling.

“Then one night something inside Brock just snapped. We were comin’ home from a poker game, switching trains at Broadway Junction. The booze, I guess it must have made him lose his head. He slipped out of their control for a while. He started grabbin’ people, anyone, just grabbin’ them as they walked by, hollerin’ and screamin’—
we’re all gonna die, we’re all gonna die
—started actually
tellin’
everyone what was happening. Everyone thought he was crazy.”

I know how they felt, Lina thought.
This man has to be a psychopath.

“And what happened then,” she said hoarsely. “What happened?” She wanted to grab him and
shake
the truth out of him.

“I can’t tell you.”

“What do you mean you can’t tell me!
I have to know! I don’t care about jobs or poker games or Broadway Junction—I just want to know where Brock is! Don’t protect me, George. I couldn’t bear to go on waiting and waiting for him to come home. Don’t do this to me! I’m so
lonely.
Please. What is it—another woman? Did he skip town; is he in trouble? Did he kill somebody, George? Tell me.
Tell me!”

In spite of his trembling, George was like stone. “Just get my message to the guy on that piece of paper.
Then
I’ll tell you.”

“
Why me?”

“Because—because of what they did to Brock. I figured you’d want to help.”

“
What
did they do to Brock?”

He turned away from her. “I need
somebody
to do it for me. I can’t trust nobody else.”

“Well, I won’t do it. Not until you tell me where Brock is.” She was furious and adamant, an unstoppable force.

George looked at her carefully, as if measuring her, trying to determine what she could take and what she couldn’t. A few seconds later, he had made up his mind. “Okay, all right. I’ll show you. But we have to go separately. I’m going to take the J train—toward Manhattan. But we’ll get off long before then. You follow me—but don’t make it obvious! Get on the same car I do and get off when I get off. Then I’ll take you to Brock.”

“God bless you,” she said.

He gave her a look as disdainful as it was pitying.

“I’ll go now. Remember, don’t make it obvious that you’re following me.”

“All right. All right. I promise.”

He took off. Lina waited until he was up the block, starting to climb the stairs to the Cypress Hills station. She walked out of the alley and down the street. She climbed the staircase, bought a token, and went out onto the platform. She saw him way down at the other end. She sauntered down closer, careful never to look in his direction. The train was coming now.

He got into the last car, and she did too, entering through a different doorway. The metal panels slid into place, locking in the passengers, and the train pulled out of the station. She took a chance and glanced over at George; he was sitting way down in the corner. His head was shaking now, back and forth, rapidly. The tic in his eye was going. He looked as if he was terrified.

She was beginning to feel the same way.

The train maneuvered slowly through a curve in the track, the wheels squealing painfully under the weight of flesh and metal. They were practically standing still. Chugging along at a snail’s pace. It seemed to take forever for the train to arrive at the next stop: Crescent Street.

The train moved much faster from then on. As it pulled into the large Broadway Junction station a short while later, George rose to his trembling feet and coughed. Lina followed suit. When the train came to a halt, they disembarked and waited for the platform to clear. The few other people who had exited the train went up the stairs to the left.

They were still above street level, on a narrow platform sliced in half by a central track, in addition to the two on the outside. Concrete beams supported a metal roof that protected waiting passengers from the elements. The wooden benches were painted light green, and big billboards advertising a variety of products were stuck on slates on the corrugated walls. The stop was a junction for several train lines; tracks, from a multitude of platforms, stretched out in all different directions around them. On the ground below them was a train yard, full of cars which were not in service, and beyond that, an overgrown field and warehouses.

They waited five minutes until there was no one about except for an elderly man sitting on one of the benches on the opposite platform facing away from them. George motioned for Lina to approach him.

“Down there.” He pointed to a stairwell at the farthest end of the platform. It went down to street level. Lina looked at George quizzically. Even from where they were she could see that there was a metal chain strung across the top of stairs—the exit was closed at this hour. George grabbed her hand and pulled her after him.

“Now look,” Lina said. She was tired of the rough stuff, scared of this strange man and his stranger behavior. She kept telling herself that there must be lots of people on the other levels even at ten o’clock; she need only open her mouth and scream.

When they reached the stairs, George looked about in every direction. His face was white with fear, his body was shaking, and the tic in his eye was more pronounced than ever. He lifted his legs one at a time over the chain, then turned around to help Lina do the same. Maneuvering her girth took a while longer. She could see that the token booth in the area below was unmanned, that there was no way out. They’d covered the turnstiles with movable grating and locked up the revolving contraptions—made up of iron bars—that were normally used for exiting the station. She looked apprehensively at George. He motioned for her to proceed down the steps.

“Why?” she said. “Why should I go down there? It’s all locked up!”

“You wanted to see your lover, didn’t you? You wanted to see Brock?”

“Yes. But I wonder if you really know where he is.” She carefully watched every move the man made, hoping she could overpower him if necessary. “I wonder if I should ignore you and just go straight to the police.”

He went rigid with horror. “No! NO! You can’t go to the police! They’d kill me! You’d be responsible for my death—
and
yours! You mustn’t see the police!”

“Why would the police harm us?”

“Not the police.”

“Then
who?”

“You mustn’t go to the police, that’s all.”

“Then tell me what we’re doing here. I don’t see Brock. Where is he?”

“I’ll show you. If you really want to see, I’ll show you. It happened right here. A couple of weeks ago. I didn’t care what they did until then, but Brock—he was my friend. Just about my only friend. But he wouldn’t listen to me. He had to start talking at the top of his lungs.” George began to sob from the memory, his whole face covered with moisture made of equal parts tears and perspiration. “It was the most horrible thing I ever saw. They had to punish him for what he did.”

“Punish him? What did they do?
Where is he?”

“He started shiverin’ and couldn’t talk no more. Most of the people were gone, and I grabbed him and led him to the stairs, these stairs.” He stopped to swallow the mucus that had collected in his throat. “There was nobody around, no witnesses. It was late and the trains didn’t come too often. I figured I could get him out of here and home before . . . Then I realized that this exit was closed. Brock broke away from me, hurdled the chain, drunk. When he collapsed halfway down the stairs I thought it was liquor—but it was the shiverin’ that done it. I was so scared—there wasn’t nothin’ I could do. I just ran home and pretended it didn’t happen. I was so scared!”

“Will you tell me what happened to Brock before
I kill you!”

“They killed him, Lina. Murdered him. Just to shut him up. They killed him, Lina. Killed him.”

“
No!
”

“He was on the stairs, sprawled out lengthwise, when it happened. His whole body . . . it just melted away, just
dissolved,
right there on the steps.”

“Are you crazy? What are you talking about?”
Did someone throw acid at Brock?
she wondered.
What else could it be?

“All that was left was a kind of jelly, a thick, sticky jelly on the stairs. Take a look—maybe there’s some left. Down there. ‘Bout halfway down.”

Lina braced herself for the ghoulish task.
Might as well see it through—but keep one eye on George!
She told herself she would find nothing. What kind of acid could dissolve an
entire body?

Disbelieving, she followed his pointing hand and started down the stairs.

Before she had gone two steps she could already see it.

It was hard to make out now, what with the thousands of people walking over it day after day, scraping the stuff away on their shoes . . . but it
was
there. The red outline had
soaked into
the wood, become a permanent part of the surface—unmistakably the outline of a man.

She continued down the stairs until she was standing right on top of it. She knelt, touched the underside of one of the steps—where feet could not reach. Her fingers came up bloody, a reddish viscous substance staining the tips.

She still refused to credit George’s incredible story,
but . . .

She stood up, turned to look at George, and saw that something had happened to him. His eyes were bulging from their sockets, his tongue sticking out like a tentacle. His entire body was shaking uncontrollably. It was such a terrifying sight that Lina recoiled, took a careless step backward, and lost her precarious footing.

The last thing she saw before she toppled down the stairs was the sight of George holding on desperately to the chain. As Lina rolled over and over the hard wooden steps, his blood-chilling cries were drowned out by the sound of a train.

PART III

Friday, October 18th

SIX

A
FTER A RESTLESS
night of constant tossing and turning, in impatience, he supposed, for the morrow’s meeting, Steven got up early in the morning and ate a very light breakfast. As usual, he hadn’t much of an appetite. He crunched his teeth into the toast and chewed listlessly, masticating each morsel until the bread was soft and gooey on his tongue. He washed it all down with yesterday’s reheated coffee. He was not even in the mood to make a fresh pot.