The Madman's Tale (79 page)

In the darkness, Peter fought hard.

He knew he was injured severely, but how badly was just beyond his understanding. It was as if each piece of the battle he was fighting was separate, distinct, and he tried to concentrate on each individually, to see if he could put together a defense that was whole. He could feel blood throbbing from a wound in his arm, and he knew that the weight of the Angel was bearing down on him. The pistol that he’d gripped so tightly had disappeared, easily knocked
by the force of the Angel’s assault into some black corner, gone from his touch, so that now what he had remaining to fight with was solely a desire to live.

He punched out hard, finding flesh, and he heard the Angel grunt, then followed it up with another blow, only to feel the knife slash at his arm, digging in sharply, furrowing his own skin. Peter shouted out some sound that wasn’t a part of any language other than that of survival, and kicked as hard as he could with his feet. He battled against shadow, against the idea of death, as much as he did against the killer who was pressing him.

Locked together, blind and lost, the two men tried to find a way of killing the other. It was an unfair fight, for time and again the Angel was able to plunge the knife down, discovering purchase in Peter’s body, and the Fireman thought he was going to be sliced to pieces slowly by the repeated blows. He lifted his arms, warding off strike after strike, kicking, trying to find some vulnerable spot in the utter black of the moment.

He could feel the Angel’s breath, feel the man’s strength and thought he would be no match for the deadly combination of the knife and obsession. Still, Peter fought hard, scratching, clawing, hoping for the Angel’s eyes, or perhaps his groin, something that might give him a momentary respite from the knife that chopped at him. He thrust out his left hand, and it grazed against the Angel’s chin, and in a burst of comprehension, knew that the killer’s throat would be close by, so wildly he reached and suddenly felt skin and he closed his hand, choking the man who was trying to kill him. But, in the same instant, he felt the knife suddenly penetrate into his side, digging past flesh and muscle, searching for his stomach, hoping then to turn and rise upward and destroy his heart. Pain sheeted over his eyes, and Peter half gasped, half sobbed at the thought that he was going to die right there, right at that moment, in the darkness. He could feel the knife searching out death, and he grabbed at the Angel’s hand, trying to slow what seemed like an inevitable march.

And then suddenly, like an explosion, an immense force seemed to slam into the two men.

The Angel groaned, knocked sideways, his grip on Peter suddenly halved, and the killer spat wordlessly in rage.

Peter did not know how Francis had managed to assault the Angel from behind, but he had, and now the young man clung to the killer’s back, furiously trying hard to wrap his own hands around the Angel’s throat.

Francis was shouting some great war cry, high-pitched, terrifying, one that combined all his fears and all his doubts into a single immense song. All his life, he had never fought back, never battled for something more important, never taken a true chance, never understood that this moment was either to be his best or his last, until this very second. And so he threw every ounce of hope into his fight, slamming his fists into the Angel’s back and head, then grappling
with the killer, trying to pull him back, off of Peter. He used every ounce of madness to buttress what muscle he had, letting every fear and rejection that he’d ever experienced fuel his battle. He gripped the Angel with a tenacity born of desperation, unwilling to let either nightmare or killer steal from him the only friend he thought he would ever have.

The Angel twisted and shook, struggling terribly. He was trapped between the two men, the one wounded, the other crazed with fear certainly, but more driven by something larger, and he hesitated, unsure which to fight, uncertain whether to try to finish the first battle and then turn to the second, which seemed increasingly impossible beneath the rain of blows Francis threw. Then he was stymied, when Francis suddenly grabbed hold of the Angel’s arm, and twisted him backward. This abrupt change loosened the pressure that the Angel was putting on the knife in Peter’s side, and with a reserve of strength that seemed to well up from some hidden spot within him, the Fireman seized hold of the Angel’s hand with both of his own, neutralizing the pressure on the knife blade, arresting its drive toward his own death.

Francis did not know how long his own strength would last him. He knew the Angel was stronger in many ways, and if he was to have a chance, it would have to be right at that moment, right at the start, before the Angel could direct all his attention to him. He pulled as hard as he could, investing every bit of power he had in the desire to free Peter from beneath the Angel’s figure. And, to his astonishment, he succeeded, at least in part. The Angel twisted back, off-balance, then slammed back farther, so that now Francis was caught beneath his body, under his back. Francis tried to wrap his legs around the killer, and he hung on with deadly determination, like a mongoose biting down on a cobra, as the Angel tried to find a way to beat off Francis’s grip.

And in that second of confusion, the three bodies tangled together, Peter found that the knife in his side was free, and he wrapped his own hand around the handle and, screaming with red pain, he pulled it loose from his body, feeling his life chasing after it with every pulse of his heart. Summoning every bit of remaining strength, Peter grasped the knife, and thrust it forward, hoping that it wasn’t Francis that he killed, searching for the man who he thought very likely had killed him. And when the point of the blade bit flesh, Peter threw all his weight behind it, because, he knew, this was the only chance he had, and all he could hope for was some luck.

The Angel, gripped tightly by Francis’s last bit of strength, suddenly screamed. It was high-pitched, otherworldly, a noise that seemed to combine all the evil that he had done to so many, bursting forth and resounding off the walls, lighting up the darkness with death, agony, and despair. His own weapon betrayed him. Peter inexorably drove it into the Angel’s chest, finding the heart that the killer never thought he needed.

Peter determined to use everything he had left in that final assault, and he kept all his weight bearing down on the knife blade until he heard the Angel’s breath rattle with death.

Then he fell back, thought of a dozen, perhaps a hundred questions he wanted to ask, but could not, and closed his eyes to wait for his own end.

Francis, however, could feel the Angel stiffen and die beneath his grasp. He stayed in that position, holding the dead man for what seemed to him to be a very long time, but was probably only seconds. The voices he’d heard for so long seemed to have fled from him in that moment, taking their fears, their advice, their wishes and demands along with them, and he was only aware that everything was still dark, and that his only friend on earth was still breathing, but that it was shallow, labored, and closing in on some end that Francis did not want to consider.

And so Francis carefully unwrapped himself from the embrace of the Angel, whispered, “Hang on,” in Peter’s ear, although he did not imagine that the Fireman actually heard him, seized hold of his friend’s shoulders, tugging him alongside, and a little like a baby let loose from his mother’s grasp, slowly, tentatively, began to crawl through the pitch-black basement, searching for the light, hunting for the exit, hoping to find help somewhere.

T
he noise in my apartment had reached a crescendo, all memory, all rage. I could feel the Angel choking me, clawing at me, years of festering silence building, his fury unending, unlimited. I cowered down, feeling his blows batter me around the head and shoulders, tearing inwardly at my heart and at every thought I had. I was shouting, sobbing, my tears streaking my face, but nothing I spoke out loud seemed to have any effect, or make any sense. He was inexorable, unstoppable. I had helped to kill him that night so many years earlier, and he was with me now to exact his revenge, and he would not be dissuaded. I thought that it was probably fitting, in some perverse way. I’d had no real right to survive that night in the hospital tunnels, and that now he’d come to claim the victory that was truly his. In a way, I recognized, he had always been with me, and as hard as I’d fought then, and as hard as I’d fought this night, that I’d never really had a chance against the darkness he delivered
.

I twisted about, throwing a chair across the room at his ghostly shape, watching the wooden frame splinter and shatter with a crash. I shouted defiance, measuring what little resources I had left, hoping that in the moments I had remaining, and the small space at the bottom of the wall that awaited my last words, I could finish my story
.

I crawled, just as I had that other midnight, across the cold floor
.

Behind me, I could hear pounding, a repetition of fierce demand, on the door to my apartment. Voices called out to me that seemed familiar, but far away, as if
they came from a very great distance, across some divide I could never hope to traverse. I did not think they existed. I screamed out, “Go away! Leave me alone!” not knowing whether the sound was real or fantasy. All these things had become jumbled in my imagination, and the curses and screams of the Angel filled my ears, blocking out whatever cries came from somewhere beyond the few square feet remaining in my world
.

I’d pulled, half carried, half dragged Peter across the basement storage room, trying to get away from the killer’s body remaining somewhere in the void behind us. I was feeling my way, pushing aside whatever obstacles tumbled into our path, dragging us both forward, not really knowing if I was heading in the right direction. I could sense that each foot traveled brought him closer to safety, but also to death, as if they were two convergent lines being plotted on some great graph, and when they came together, I would lose my struggle and he would die. I had held little hope that any of us would survive, and so, when I saw a door ahead of me open, and a small shaft of light tumble unheralded into the darkness that surrounded me, I swam toward it, gritting my teeth against all that had taken place. The Angel howled behind my head, but that was this night, for on that night he was dead, and I reached out toward the wall, and thought that at the very least, even if I were to die within the next few moments, I still needed to tell about looking up and seeing the unmistakable great wide shape of Big Black hovering in the tiny sliver of light, and the music of his voice, when I heard him call out: “Francis? C-Bird? You down there?”

“Francis?” Big Black shouted, standing in the doorway leading down to the power plant’s basement storage area and the heating tunnels that crisscrossed beneath the hospital grounds, his brother close by his side, and Doctor Gulptilil only a foot or two to the rear. “C-Bird, you down there?”

Before he could reach out and find a switch for the solitary light that might illuminate the rickety stairs, he heard a faint but familiar voice penetrate the darkness in reply, “Mister Moses, please, help us!”

Neither of the brothers hesitated. The reedy, thin cry that seemed to slice up through the pit below told them more or less everything they needed. Bounding toward the sound, the Moses brothers raced ahead, while Doctor Gulptilil, still holding a little reluctantly in the rear, finally located the switch to give them some light, and flicked it on.

What he saw, in the faint glow from a yellowed, weak, exposed bulb, pitched him into action. Struggling through the debris and abandoned equipment, streaked with blood and grime, was a teary-eyed Francis. Right behind him, being dragged forward was Peter, who seemed to be near unconsciousness,
though he held his hand over an immense wound in his side that had left a shocking path of red across the cement floor. Doctor Gulptilil looked up and was startled by the sight of a third patient deeper in the basement, eyes open in surprise and death, a large hunting knife lodged firmly in his chest. “Oh my goodness,” the doctor said, as he hurried to catch up with Big Black and Little Black, who were already trying to administer some help to Peter and Francis.