Maybe it was stupid to use the open door, but his internal voice was urging him through it, promising that Barbara would be safe at the end of the journey. The boy had brought him to the museum without killing him, so either there were limits to what he could do which Tietjen needed to understand, or the kid would not hurt him until he had had his say. Against logic, even against fear, the internal compass was a powerful force. Logic and fear trembled like heat mirages, insubstantial and unpersuasive in the dark.
Tietjen rubbed the sweat off the bridge of his nose and stepped through the door.
It was cool inside. At first Tietjen thought it was the cool that massive old buildings have. Then he realized it was so cold inside the museum that his breath plumed before him in the dark. The temperature outside had been in the high eighties, Tietjen thought. Inside it felt like low forties at best. He took a couple of steps into the lobby, letting his eyes adjust. The barosaurus still reared above the skeleton of an attacking allosaurus, protecting its young. He could not dismiss his imagining, of that tail whipping around to slam him against the wall: Tietjen hugged the walls tightly, out of range, he hoped. Once he was on the far side of the lobby the cold lessened a little, although Tietjen kept rubbing his arms fitfully against the chill. There were lights scattered around the lobby which gave off a dull orange light, just enough to throw shadows. Votive candles, Tietjen guessed, judging from the flickering. Then he realized they were battery-powered emergency lights. Surely they had not been shining since the day of the disasters, back in February?
Ahead were the African mammals, with a herd of elephants, some stuffed and posed, some holographic, standing on a plinth at the center of the hall. Tietjen half-expected the exhibits to come alive at any moment, but apart from the noiseless trumpeting of the holographic elephants, nothing moved. Were they running on batteries, or the kid’s goodwill, he wondered. He moved past the lions, the kudus, out of the hall and into a narrow gallery which was almost pitch dark. He heard nothing but the clicks of his shoes on the floor, faintly echoed. He followed the gallery into another hall filled with old-fashioned displays of warriors, hunters, gatherers in grass skirts. The few painted faces he could see in the darkness stared back at him. He moved as fast as he could without stumbling, hating the feeling of those blank, unwatchful eyes staring at him.
At the end of that hall Tietjen turned right. Immediately he recognized where he was: in one of the South or Central American exhibits. The dull orange emergency lights shone on priapic stone fonts and wooden carvings. Tietjen’s inner compass told him he was near, almost there. He scanned the room from side to side, searching for something; he almost overlooked it when he found it. To his right there was an immense Olmec head, taller than Tietjen, its red stone cheeks glistening faintly in the orange light, its eyes watching Tietjen impassively, its smile close-lipped and enigmatic. At its base there was a bundle of clothes, including the coat Barbara had given the kid. Tietjen bent and touched the cloth, then went on.
Twenty yards away he found Barbara, curled fetally against the cold, soundly asleep at the foot of a huge Aztec sun stone. Tietjen looked around, wary of a trap, then bent over her, shook her arm, called her name. She did not move. Fearful, Tietjen tried to find a pulse on her neck and could not—but felt the moist warmth of her breath on his wrist.
“Barbara? Come on, we’ve got to go now. Come on, sweetie, wake up.” She did not stir. He tried again, shaking her harder. “Come on, Barbara. This isn’t a good place to be right now. Come on, honey.”
She did not waken. Tietjen’s sense of urgency was growing steadily stronger; he wanted to be outside, out of the cold and the orange light. It would be close to dawn now. They could go home … .
Awkwardly, Tietjen pulled Barbara’s arm around his neck and took her in his arms. She was lighter than he expected. He settled her quickly in his arms and started back toward the door.
“Don’ go …”
Tietjen almost dropped Barbara; his legs wobbled with the shock of the low, rumbling voice that echoed in the hall. Loud, like the voice of God. He looked around but could not see anyone else. He went forward again.
The Olmec head smiled a serene, close-lipped smile before it spoke again; the stone lips moved slowly to shape the words. The voice rumbled. “Don’ go, Tee-jin. Leave old woman here … she mine now. Jit
like
to have her.”
The smile broadened. “Tee-jin don’t have her now. She like Jit best.” The head displayed blunt round teeth in a huge, openmouthed laugh that echoed like a bell in the room. The laugh undid Tietjen: something in the undertones of it was more frightening than the stone head it came from. The laugh rolled through the room with a malevolent rumble, a hungry demonic sound—the tones in it made Tietjen want to howl, to drop down on the floor and roll around in misery.
Instead he ran, Barbara still clutched to his chest, back the way he’d come, turning a corner and running through the dimly lit hall with the glowering African warriors. The rumbling laughter pursued him, and he thought he heard footsteps as well, though he couldn’t be sure in the echoing hall. There was a long, narrow hallway off to the left; he dodged in there, dropped Barbara’s feet to the floor so that he was dragging her, and felt along the wall for doors. The first he came to was unlocked. He shoved it open, put McGrath down as carefully as he could, and turned around to lock the door. Then he pulled a heavy table up against the door.
Tietjen expected the room to be entirely dark, but as his eyes got accustomed, he saw that there were windows on the far side of the room, and a little predawn light spilling in around the edges of the blinds. He nearly tripped over McGrath on his way across the room, but when he opened the blinds there was just enough fading moonlight to see by. The room was cold, filled with stale, damp air; he was shivering. He pulled his collar closer, and went back to Barbara, who lay still unconscious, dressed only in a lightweight shirt and denim skirt, summer wear for the summer that was happening outside the museum. He had nothing to cover her with. In the thin light Tietjen thought that Barbara’s lips were blue, that he saw her shivering. He turned to watch the door, and slid backward toward the wall until he was sitting beside her.
She lay still as a rock, no shivering. Tentatively, Tietjen stroked her hair back from her forehead, which was cool and dry. The white hair looked greenish in the dimness. After a moment, he put one hand under Barbara’s ear and lifted her head to pillow it on his thigh. Sitting like that, with Barbara curled beside him and his hand in her hair, Tietjen sat watching the door of the room. It seemed impossible to rest with his mind racing, wondering what to do next, but exhaustion won; he fell asleep still wondering.
Barbara was still unconscious when he woke. His body ached in a hundred different directions, protesting the cold, the damp, the position, and the hardness of the floor. Tietjen cradled Barbara’s head in his hand again and moved it off his thigh, settling her gently on the floor before he let himself move. Standing up hurt like hell. The room was no warmer, but the greenish moonlight had changed to the pale watery light of morning.
It seemed impossible to be too gentle with Barbara, too careful. Each time he looked at her, feelings welled up: guilt and pain and fear and love. He wondered if she would ever believe the last. He wondered if she would ever forgive him. If they ever got out of this room and back to the Store again.
“John.”
His back was to her; the hairs on the nape of his neck straightened at the sound of her voice. Then a knot he had not known was there untied itself in his stomach, and he turned to face her.
Barbara had tucked her shirt neatly into the waistband of her skirt and smoothed the wrinkles out of the fabric. As he watched, she ran her hand through her hair and patted it back to its accustomed shape. “Where the hell are we?”
“The Museum of Natural History. I got you away from him and brought you in here—”
“Thank you, John.” She sounded formally polite. Angry with him? He hadn’t apologized yet, he realized.
“Come here.” She held out a hand to him. And smiled. Something was wrong. “John?” she asked. A wounded edge to her voice. “What’s wrong?” There was something wolfish in her smile, he thought. Something peculiar and un-Barbara-like about the way she watched him. “Hey, I won’t bite you. Unless you want me to.” The smile broadened. Tietjen wanted to recoil and fought the impulse, afraid to hurt her. If it was Barbara.
“How are you doing?” he asked haltingly.
“I’m fine. Don’t I look okay?” She held her right hand out to him, palm up. “What’s the matter, John, are you scared of me?”
Yes.
“No,” he said. “Are you warm enough?”
“Come warm me up.” She reached her other hand to him, her arms open in a broad embrace. Her expression became hungrily sexual. Tietjen managed not to recoil, but he did not move toward her. Her smile slipped. “Don’t you owe me that much? A little warmth?” Her hands clawed up, and she ran her thumbs over her fingertips as if she were sharpening talons. “You made me feel like shit, John. Did you know that? Was it so grotesque to you that I wanted you? Am I supposed to be dead from the neck down because I’m twenty years older than you are?”
“I never said that,” he blurted out, stung.
“You didn’t have to.” Her manner was again flirtatious, airy. “It was quite clear. Poor John, you’ve got a face like a billboard sometimes:
dis
may,
dis
gust,
dis
tress.” On each
dis
she took a step closer, poked her chin at him as if she could knock him down with it. “I thought it was me that disgusted you at first,” she said slowly. “Then I realized: you can’t handle anyone caring about you.
Dis
may,
dis
gust,
dis
tress. So you pushed me away, and you, you poor bastard, don’t even know what you’re missing.” She smiled seductively, licked her lips and caught the lower one between her teeth in a parody of a courtesan’s gesture.
From her left eye one tear launched and lazily slid down her cheek.
Tietjen took a step toward Barbara. Her smiled ripened. Her hand came up and her fingers combed the hair back from her forehead, a kind of gesture he had never seen McGrath make, like something from an old video.
“Jesus,” Tietjen murmured. Whose gesture was it? It was not Barbara smiling; the gestures and the words were not hers. All that he saw of her was in the expression of her left eye, the one the tear had fallen from, as if everything that was Barbara was trapped inside her, being run by someone else. By the kid, Jit, Tietjen thought. But why? How?
Barbara’s body took an awkward step, moving like something out of an old horror movie, with the stiff, hanging gait of Frankenstein’s monster. “Come on, John,” Barbara’s voice said. “Live a little. It’ll be better than my dreams … .” With one hand she toyed with the buttons on her shirt; the other rubbed open-palmed along her thigh. The whole thing was a parody of an old porn seduction. What was horrifying about it, what made Tietjen frightened and achingly sick, was that
it was not Barbara.
Barbara was trapped inside somewhere, acting under force. God knew where Jit had found the fantasies she was acting out—whether they were her own or someone else’s. If they were Barbara’s fantasies—no one should be stripped this way and exposed against her will to even the most sympathetic audience. If the fantasy was someone else’s, no one should be forced to be a vessel, a vehicle for another person’s dreams.
Another tear dropped from Barbara’s eye. Tietjen thought he saw entreaty there, anger and despair. Barbara’s body stepped closer; the right hand came up and wrapped loosely around the nape of his neck; the left hand stroked her own breast, then moved to run across Tietjen’s chest.
“Come on, John. You know what I want, don’t you? You’re not afraid to give me what I want, are you?” Tietjen took a step backward. Her smile broadened and another tear welled in her eye.
Tietjen’s hand closed into a fist. With all the strength he had, he hit her.
THE
Man took the Old Woman and carried her away. Jit scrambled to his feet atop the big stone head, howling. The Man did not stop and that only made Jit angrier. Tee-jin was gone, running into the black hallway while Jit stood on the stone head, screaming. “Jit get her,” he screamed after. “Old Woman awake, Jit get her again.”
His voice echoed, grew smaller, weaker, as it bounced down the halls. Jit’s rage changed, for a moment he simply hated the walls and floors and stone of this place. With all Jit’s power it still felt dangerous—too many walls, too many places to be cornered. The memory of being caught teased at him: “Whose little boy are you?” Panic fluttered in Jit’s stomach. “I Jit!” he yelled loudly. His name made a hard echo through the hall. “Jit kill Gable! Jit do
things.
” That felt better. But he had to think.
The Man had run away. Jit made a face of disgust: the Man he had seen in his head, in the Old Woman’s dreams, had been big, powerful. Wise. The man who had crept through Jit’s shadow men in the Park, who had groped his way to the Old Woman, was
small.
The shadow-men had not stopped Tee-jin; he had found the Old Woman … but the keeping-going, the finding had been
small.
Jit had wanted to see the Man’s power. Disappointment stung him, and Jit wanted to show Tee-jin how nothing he was, making him cry before Jit’s power.
The big stone head grinned at Jit in the thin orange light. Jit wanted to be gone from this place. He reached out for Tee-jin’s voice, and the Old Woman’s; they were somewhere inside, in the dark. Outside, the sun was coming up; Jit felt the sun reaching to him. The Man wanted to leave too. Jit imagined the Man on the big steps of this place, running away. Saw him looking up, scared.
Scared as big as the Park
, Jit thought.
Scared as big as the city
. What would scare the Man that big? Gable had, but Jit did not want Gable or Gable’s people. Something else. Fierce. Cold as stone. Jit remembered the stone lions he had sent to help Tee-jin and his people in the battle with Gable. He could bring the lions again. And other things, ugly stone men with wings, bears and snakes and elephants. All the stone animals in the city, come not to help Tee-jin this time, but to make him scared. They would bow to Jit, show Tee-jin Jit’s power. Jit reached out through the city, reaching for stone, for iron and brass. He felt the creatures rising up, turning toward the museum. Then, as he reached, Jit found something new. Close to his own old home, the tunnel in the park, they were carved from stone, huge and beautiful and terrifying, but broken, buried deep in the earth. Jit would make them whole and strong. Tee-jin would be afraid.
Jit smiled, slid down from the stone head, and crouched in the darkness working.
McGrath stirred in Tietjen’s arms. He had hit her, then caught her as she fell, and sat holding her, wondering who would wake up with him, Barbara or her dreadful parody. His hand stung like hell, and he thought he saw a bruise purpling along her jaw.
Barbara moved again. “He’s gone,” she said. Her eyes were closed and her head was tilted to one side, but her voice sounded normal.
“He’s left the museum?”
“No.” Her voice was sharp. “He’s gone from
me.
Thank you.” Barbara opened her eyes and turned to look at him; she touched her jaw lightly with one finger. Her tone was matter-of-fact. “Thanks, John. It was—pretty unbearable being trapped in here, watching what I was doing. I couldn’t stop, couldn’t change a damned thing. He went rattling around in my head like someone pawing through my underwear drawer.” Her carefully neutral tone failed her. “He probably knows everything I know. All about the Store, and our defenses, and—”
Tietjen touched her hand. “Barbara, do you think anyone who can move into your head and take over needs to worry about the defenses at the Store? Go easy. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Wasn’t it? If I hadn’t been so angry, maybe he couldn’t have got into my head. Shit, John.” Barbara’s voice trembled. “You have no idea how horrible it was.”
Tietjen thought of the dreams he’d had. Irene dying, the boys dying, his mother cursing him with her last breath. “You’re right,” he lied. “But it wasn’t your fault. That I do know. Look, can you walk?”
Barbara cleared her throat and smiled. “He messed with my mind, not my legs.”
“Okay. He hasn’t come after us, and it’s been a few hours. Let’s get out of here now, before he comes up with a new idea.”
“Okay,” Barbara said, but reluctantly. “I don’t want—I’m afraid—Jesus, John. I don’t think I could bear it if he took me over again.”
“I won’t let him,” Tietjen said. He was conscious of how stupid a promise that was, but Barbara seemed comforted by it. He had another thought. “Barbara, when he had you, was there—did you find out anything about
him?
”
“When the abyss was looking into me, was I able to look into the abyss?” Barbara stood up and paced back and forth a few times. The room they were in appeared to be a laboratory or workshop with benches, sinks and cupboards lining the walls; Barbara paced among high metal lab stools, her mouth twisted in concentration. “He hates
you
,” she said. “I don’t know why, exactly. And he’s like—this is difficult to explain. It’s as if he’d poured every thought and memory and idea that everyone he ever met had into his head, but he doesn’t know how to make sense of them. He picks ideas that he likes and plays with them. The thorns outside are from Sleeping Beauty.”
“What?”
“Someone, some memory someone had of the story Sleeping Beauty; the castle gets overgrown with thorns, and the prince has to cut his way in with his sword in order to kiss the sleeping princess. Talk about literal thinking.” Barbara closed her eyes.
“I need a sword?” Tietjen asked.
“It wouldn’t hurt. Though, come to think of it, you’ve already got into the castle and rescued the sleeper. It’s not my favorite fairy tale.”
Tietjen stood up and shook the stiffness out of his legs. “It’s my favorite,
now
.” He smiled. “We’re going to grab a sword and get the hell out of here and go home. Then we’ll figure out what to do about the damned kid.” He held out his hand to Barbara, tucked her arm through his own, and started bravely out into the hallway.
There was nothing there. No one. The light from the room behind them mingled with the sullen orange glow of the emergency lights. Ahead, Tietjen saw the cases of the African tribal exhibits. There were spears, and something that looked like a machete. Nothing else. The biting cold was gone, the halls were warm and humid. The elephant holograms in the African hall had shut off, leaving only a few sad-looking stuffed elephants at the center of the room. In the main lobby, sunlight poured through the lacy vines that covered the windows, making pools of light on the floor that were almost too bright to look at. Tietjen and Barbara threaded their way through the dappled light to the doorway, which stood open. It was completely blocked by the thick thorn vines.
“Sword?” Barbara asked.
“Damn, I forgot.”
They began to search the lobby, finding nothing more useful than a pair of scissors at the information desk. “Wait,” he told Barbara. Tietjen went back to the hall with the tribal displays. He had a feeling of cringing sacrilege as he kicked off one shoe and hammered at the glass of one of the display windows until it broke. He took a spear, machetes, another spear, a knife. “Sorry,” he said to the plaster mannequin that stared at him. “Emergency.” He went back to the lobby.
Even with both of them using machetes, it took a long time to hack through the vines; his shoulders began to ache and he could feel a new blister starting at the join of his palm and thumb. Barbara cut at the vines with small, savage chops, stopping only to push her white hair off her face. When they had made a hole in the latticework of vines large enough to climb through, they crawled as fast as they could, both of them haunted by the idea of being impaled on the fast-growing thorns. The vines grew as they pushed through them, grasping at them with the appearance of intent, but they got out, they got free, and stood in the middle of Central Park West, looking up at the museum and its veil of thorns.
Tietjen had his arm around Barbara’s shoulder, his face thrown up to the midday sunlight. He felt her stiffen beside him. “Look,” she whispered. He followed her gaze: the street at the south end of the museum was a clutter of stone. At first it looked like a huge mass of fallen rocks or construction debris. Then Tietjen realized there were shapes: lions, birds, gargoyles, griffins, most of them stone, a few made of metal, many of them cracked or damaged. All of them waiting.
“They helped us before,” Barbara said quickly.
“Not this time. When we fought Gable, the kid was on our side. This time they’re
his
. Barbara,” Tietjen turned away from the sight of the stone creatures. “I want you to get back to the Store.”
“Like hell,” she said warmly. “Like bloody hell.”
“Exactly,” he said. “I don’t have time to argue with you. Be a good soldier and get the hell out of here.”
“No fucking way.”
“Barbara—” he broke off. The ground under his feet shook. “Jesus, what now?”
He looked south and saw dinosaurs. There were three of them, made of stone, lumbering up the avenue. The smaller stone creatures parted to make way for their coming. Two of the dinosaurs were unfinished: their feet were clubbed in blocks of uncarved stone. All three were detailed with rich swoops of stone, serrated eye ridges, flared and chiseled jaws, dragonish and ornate like Victorian decorations grown huge. Across the gray stone of the dinosaurs ran cracks, as if they had been broken up and reassembled.
“Sweet Jesus,” Tietjen said again. “What does he want?” He looked back at Barbara. “Go,” he said again.
“Like hell,” she said grimly.
The dinosaurs began to charge.
They couldn’t run fast: Tietjen and Barbara were able to move back into the shelter of the vines before the dinosaurs were on them. But the monsters stood in a ring around the steps, holding the two humans there in the tangle of vines that grew more close and confining with each moment. The air was thick with steamy dust that sent Barbara into a coughing fit.
They’re breathing,
Tietjen thought.
None of this can be happening.
Barbara coughed again, shuddering with spasms. The vines danced around her as she shook, and she backed into a close canopy of thorns. One scratched her deeply along her temple; the smell of blood seemed to madden one of the dinosaurs—the one that looked like a stegosaurus designed by William Morris. It brought its head down and began cropping angrily at the vines on the steps, breaking off pieces and chewing them between huge, flat stone teeth, pulling up another mouthful, exposing the steps and part of the Roosevelt statue. Another few mouthfuls and Barbara would be out of the thorns’ shelter completely.
Barbara stood up, away from the vines, and struck at the stegosaurus with the machete she still held. The iron made a grating sound against the gray stone of the dinosaur’s fluted nostrils and the machete blade snapped in two. The stegosaurus dropped back, shaking its head; Tietjen saw a few faint marks where the machete had scratched the stone.
The apatosaurus came closer, weaving its head back and forth on its long arched neck; its breath left a film of stone dust on Tietjen and the vines around him. This close, he could see the fissures that ran across its neck, small holes where whatever had repaired the statues had lost chunks of stone. Old stone, dry and brittle. Once cut, some stone becomes more brittle, more easily broken. I know stone, Tietjen thought. If it broke once, it will break again. I need a hammer, a chisel. He looked over at McGrath, shrunk back against the stairs as far as she could get. The stegosaurus was eating vines again, tearing at Barbara’s cage of thorns, sniffing at her like a dog at a rabbit; the vines did not grow back. This time Barbara didn’t try to strike at the dinosaur. She lay back on the stairs, eyes closed. Behind the first two dinosaurs, a third watched: a tyrannosaurus with the same elaborate style of carving, but less finished, as if someone had stopped halfway through.
“Stone, stone, stone,” Tietjen hummed under his breath. “If it broke once, it will break again. Stone, stone, stone.” He feinted to the left, as if he might leave the dense shelter of the vines. The long-necked dinosaur darted after him, moving clumsily so that its head scraped along the stairs striking sparks. The cloud of stone dust thickened and Tietjen sank back under the vines, trying not to cough. The apatosaurus took a dainty mouthful of vine and pulled, rearing back, until the stairs below Tietjen were laid bare.
“Fight stone with stone,” he called out to Barbara. She didn’t answer, but opened her eyes to look at him, one eyebrow raised. “I’m going to try something.”
“What?” Barbara cried out. Her eyes were fearful. “Don’t do anything, John. Stay there, we can wait them out.”
“The hell we can. Sooner or later we’re going to need food and water, and anyway, we can’t stay on these steps too long or we won’t be able to get out of the vines. It’ll be okay. I know stone, okay? These guys don’t have a chance.” The bravado distracted him from how frightened he was. Gingerly—the vines had very nearly overgrown his hiding space—he slid out from their shelter and crouched on the uncovered stairs. The apatosaurus reared its head back like a snake. Tietjen kept his weight on the balls of his feet, rocking from side to side, watching the small stone head follow his movements. Can I do this? he wondered, calculating. And tried it.