The Madman's Tale (77 page)

Big Black threw himself down beside her. He immediately started to apply pressure to the wound in her knee, which was pulsing blood. “Somebody get me a blanket!” he yelled. Francis turned and saw Napoleon heading into the dormitory on that task.

Down the hallway, Little Black reappeared, running. “Help’s coming,” he shouted. Peter stepped back slightly, still poised next to Lucy’s form. Francis saw him look down, and both men spotted Lucy’s pistol on the floor. It was as if everything in the Amherst Building was moving in slow motion to Francis right at that instant, and he suddenly understood what it was that Lucy had been saying, and what it was that she was asking.

“The Angel,” he said quietly to Peter and the Moses brothers, “where is he?”

That was it, right then, that moment right there, when everything that I knew as my madness and everything that might one day make me sane coalesced in some great electric, exploding connection. The Angel was howling, his voice a din of angry noise. I could feel his grip on my own arm, trying to stop me from reaching out to the wall, scratching, clawing at the pencil in my hand, wrestling with me, trying to prevent me from putting down in shaky script what happened next. We battled, fighting hard, my body pummeled by his blows, over each word. I knew that his entire being was bent toward seeing me stop, fold up and die right there, giving up, falling short, a few feet from completion
.

I fought back, scrambling to drag the pencil across the dwindling space on the wall in front of me. I was screaming, arguing, shouting at him, near breaking, like glass about to shatter and burst
.

  
Peter looked up and said, “But where …
”

Peter looked up and said, “But where …” and then Francis turned and looked away from Lucy’s prone form and surveyed the corridor. In the distance, he could suddenly hear the caterwauling of an ambulance, and he wondered wildly whether it would be the same ambulance that had brought him to Western State that arrived that night for Lucy.

Francis searched first one direction with his eyes, but he was in actuality
searching his heart. He looked down the hallway past the women’s dormitory, to the stairwell where Cleo had killed herself and then had her hand mutilated by the opportunistic Angel. He shook his head and told himself
No. Not that way. He would have run directly into the Moses brothers
. Then he turned and examined the other routes. The front door. The stairwell at the men’s end. He closed his eyes and thought to himself:
You would not have come here this night unless you knew that there was an emergency exit. You would have thought about much that might go wrong, but far more important, of far greater concern, you knew that you needed to disappear so that you could savor the last moments of Lucy’s life. You would not want to share these with anyone. So, you would need a place where you could be alone with your darkness. I know you, and I know what you need, and now I will know where you have gone
.

Francis rose and slowly walked over to the front doors. Double-locked. He shook his head. Too much time. Too much uncertainty. He would have had to pull out the two keys and let himself out where Security might have seen him. And lock the doors behind him, so as to not draw attention to his flight.
Not that way
Francis’s voices all shouted agreement.
You know. You can see it
. He did not know whether they were crying encouragement or despair. Francis pivoted slightly, and peered down the corridor toward the broken door to the men’s dormitory. Again he shook his head. The Angel would have had to pass by all of them, and that would have been impossible, even for a man who prided himself on murder and invisibility.

And then, Francis saw.

“What is it, C-Bird?” Peter asked.

“I know,” Francis replied. The ambulance siren was growing closer, and Francis imagined that he could hear footsteps on the pathways of the hospital ringing with alarm as they raced toward the Amherst Building. This was impossible, he knew, but still he imagined he could hear Gulp-a-pill and Mister Evil and everyone else rushing there as well.

Francis stepped across the hallway and reached out at the door that led down to the basement and the heating ducts beneath the ground.

“Here,” he said carefully. And like a slightly shaky magician at a child’s birthday party, he pulled open the door that should have been locked.

Francis hesitated at the top of the stairs, caught between fear and some unspoken, ill-defined duty. He had never, in all his years, given much thought to the notion of bravery, dwelling instead on the mere difficulties getting from one day to the next with his tenuous grip on life still intact. But in that second he understood that to take a step into the basement would require some strength that he had never asked of himself before. Below him a single overhead bulb threw shadows into corners and barely illuminated the steps leading
down into the subterranean storage area. Beyond the weak arc of light was a deep, enveloping darkness. He could feel a wave of stale, hot air. It smelled of musty age and filth, as if all the awful thoughts and destroyed hopes of generations of patients living out their madnesses in the world above had seeped down into the basement, like so much dust, cobwebs, and grime. It was a place that whispered disease and death, and he knew, as he paused before descending that it was a place the Angel would be comfortable in.

“Down there,” he said, contradicting the voices that he could hear within his own head shouting
Don’t go down there!
But he ignored everything that was being said to him. Peter was suddenly at his side. In the Fireman’s right fist, he gripped Lucy’s pistol. Francis had not seen the sleight of hand that had plucked it from the corner where she’d lost it and delivered it to Peter’s possession, but he was grateful that Peter had it. Peter had been a soldier, and Francis realized the Fireman would know how to use the weapon. In the black region that beckoned them, they would need some edge, and Francis believed that might be it. Peter hugged the weapon close to his hip, concealing it as best he could.

Peter nodded, then looked back toward Big Black and his brother, who were trying to administer first aid to Lucy. Francis saw the immense attendant raise his head and lock his eyes upon the Fireman’s. “Look, Mister Moses,” Peter said quietly,“… if we’re not back in a few minutes …”

Big Black did not have to answer. He simply dropped his head in agreement. Little Black seemed to comply. He made a fast hand gesture.

“Go ahead,” Little Black said. “As soon as help comes, we’ll follow after you.”

Francis did not think that either man had actually taken note of the weapon in Peter’s hand. He took a deep breath, tried to clear his heart and his thoughts of everything other than finding the Angel, and with a hesitant stride, started down the stairs.

It seemed to him that the tendrils of heat and darkness tried to envelop him with each step. It was impossible to move as quietly as he wished, uncertainty seemed to encourage noise, so that every time he placed his foot down on the ground he thought it made some deep, booming sound, when in truth the opposite was the case, his footsteps were muffled. Peter was directly behind him, pushing him slightly, as if speed was an issue. Perhaps it is, Francis thought. Perhaps we have to catch up with the Angel before he is absorbed by the night and disappears.

The basement was cavernous, wide, lit only by the single bulb. Cardboard boxes and empty canisters that had once held something or another, but had long been forgotten, created an obstacle course of debris. A thin layer of grimy
soot seemed to cover everything, and they moved as quickly as possible through discarded iron bed frames and musty, stained mattresses, pushing ahead on a path that seemed no different from moving through a dense jungle of abandoned items. A huge black boiler rested uselessly in one corner, and a single shaft of light shed a little clarity on the immense heating duct that penetrated a wall, creating a tunnel that rapidly became a single black hole in the world.

“Down there,” Francis pointed. “That’s where he went.”

Peter hesitated. “How can he see his way?” he asked. He indicated the unending, gaping blackness of the tunnel. “And where do you suppose it will take us?”

Francis thought the answer to that question far more complicated than the Fireman intended. But he responded, “It will come out either in another building, like Williams or Harvard, or else lead back to the power plant. And he doesn’t need light. He only needs to keep moving, because he knows where he’s going.”

Peter nodded. More than a few things had occurred to him. First, there was no way of telling if the Angel knew they were in pursuit, which he thought might be an advantage, but also might not be. And second, whatever path the Angel might have been taking on his prior trips to the Amherst Building, tonight would be different, because he was no longer going to be safe at the Western State Hospital. So this night the Angel meant to disappear.

But precisely how, Peter was unsure.

These things had occurred to Francis, as well. But he understood one additional thing: There would be no underestimating the Angel’s rage.

The two men pushed forward, into the darkness.

It was tough to maneuver down the path of the heating duct. The tunnel hadn’t been designed for anything except the equipment of steam, certainly not for men to use as an underground conduit between buildings. But even if not designed for that purpose, it still had that result. Francis could feel just enough space to half crouch, half stumble forward in a world better suited to the rats and other rodents that thought it a fine home. It was an antique space, built in a different era, left crumbling and ancient over all the years, its usefulness questionable to everyone except the killer whom they trailed.

They traveled by touch and by feel, stopping every few feet to listen for sounds, their hands stretched out in front of them like a pair of blind men. It was oppressively hot, and sweat soon rimmed their foreheads. They both could feel themselves covered with grime, but they maneuvered on, penetrating farther into the tunnel, squeezing past any obstruction, clinging carefully to the side of the heating duct, an ancient tube that seemed to be disintegrating under their touch.

Francis’s breath was coming in short, tense bursts. Dust and age seemed in every tug of wind that his lungs demanded. He could taste years of emptiness with each step forward, and he wondered whether he was lost or whether he was finding himself, with every stride down the tunnel.

Peter remained directly behind the younger man, pausing every so often to strain his ears and eyes, inwardly cursing the darkness that crippled the speed of their pursuit. He was overcome by the sensation that they were traveling half as fast, half as steadily, as they should, and he whispered urgently to Francis to move quicker. In the darkness of the tunnel, it was as if any connection they had to the upper world had been severed, and the two of them were alone in the chase, their quarry somewhere ahead, hidden, invisible, and very dangerous. He tried to force his mind to be logical, to be accurate, to assess and consider, to anticipate and predict, but it was impossible. Those were qualities that belonged in the light and the air up above, and Peter found he could not summon them any longer. He knew the Angel would have some plan, some scheme, but whether it was escape, or evasion or merely concealment, he was unable to grasp. All he knew was to keep moving and to keep Francis moving, because he had the awful fear that no jungle trail he’d ever walked, or any burning building he’d ever stepped into, was quite as dangerous as the path he was on. Peter made certain that the safety on the pistol was clicked off, and he tightened his grip on the butt.

He stumbled once and swore, then swore again as he regained his balance.

Francis tripped on some ill-defined piece of debris and gasped as he thrust out his arms to steady himself. He thought each step was as uncertain as a child’s. But when he looked up, he suddenly saw the slightest yellow light, seemingly miles ahead. He knew that darkness and distance were tricky, and after a second, he understood that ahead of them was something different, and he tried to hurry himself toward the light, eager to emerge from the darkness of the tunnel, regardless of what might lie ahead.

“What do you think?” he heard Peter whisper.

“Power plant?” he answered softly. “Another housing unit?”

Neither man had any idea where it was that they were arriving. They didn’t even know whether they had traveled in a straight line from the Amherst Building to wherever they were headed. They were disoriented, frightened, and filled with the unruly tension of the moment. Peter clung to the weapon, because, at least for him, that spoke of some reality, something firm in an unsettled world. Francis had nothing so concrete to rely upon.

Francis pushed ahead toward the pale light. With each stride it grew, not in strength, but in dimension, a little like some weak dawn rising over distant hills, battling against fog and clouds and the residue of some immense storm.
He thought, at the least, that they were being drawn to it with the same determination that the moth has when it spots the flickering candle. He wasn’t sure that they would be any more effective.