Sunglasses After Dark Page 5

  The last thing he saw before he passed out was one of the identical strangers standing over him. The stranger was saying something, but Hagerty's ears were roaring too loud to make it out. The stranger gestured to his companion and Claude saw the streetlight reflecting off his cuff links. Cuff links shaped like little spoked wheels. Hagerty wanted to know where the man had gotten his cuff links, but they kicked him in the head before he could ask.

  He came to in the train yards.

  He was sprawled over the hood of a car. The engine's warmth was pleasant against his back. He wanted to go back to sleep, but there was a horrible roaring in his head that actually shook the ground. Then he heard the train whistle.

  Someone grabbed him by his shirtfront and hauled him upright. Hagerty screamed aloud. It felt as if his head had been sewn together with carpet thread and the sutures were ready to pop. The identical strangers, the ones who'd accosted him in the library's parking lot, were still there. They had removed their sunglasses, revealing eyes as cold and flat as those of sharks. Claude preferred the sunglasses. One of them had a split lip, which he kept fingering as he looked at Claude.

  The other one was talking, asking him questions, but Claude's hearing kept fading in and out. He realized he was suffering from a mild concussion. When he didn't answer their questions, one of them held his arms while the other went to work on his stomach. When the man holding his arms let go, Hagerty collapsed on the ground.

  "Who you workin' for, huh? You workin' for Thorne?"

  The stranger with the split lip gathered twin handfuls of Hagerty's hair, lifting his head off the ground. The pain was immense and tears streamed from his eyes, but all he could do was stare in stupid fascination at the killer's spoked cuff links.

  "Leave it, Frank. Look at him. We're not gonna get anywheres with him. Better just get it over with."

  "She's not gonna like it. She'll want to know." Frank's voice took on the whine of a petulant child, but the other waved him quiet.

  "What difference does it make as long as he's dead? Here, help me with this bastard. The next train will be along in a few minutes. Christ, this fucker's heavy."

  Panic gnawed through the gray cotton of the concussion. Claude wanted to scream, but his tongue had been transformed into a swollen wad of flesh blocking his throat. They were trying to pull him to his feet, one tugging on each arm. Frank was swearing.

  Good. If you're going to kill me, the least you can do is get a hernia.

  Both men bent over Claude, sweat dripping from their brows and ruining their impassive masks. Hagerty was amazed by the purity of the hatred he felt for these killers. It swelled against his breastbone like a helium balloon. Fine. He would die hating.

  The hands emerged from the darkness, moving like moths dancing in the night. They landed on the shoulders of the hit man who'd kicked Hagerty in the head. Hagerty found satisfaction in the look of fear that crossed his attacker's face. The man let go of Hagerty's arm and reached for the gun inside his jacket. He never made it.

  The hands snapped upward, the left clamping over his ear and bottom jaw while the right grabbed his forehead and jerked. The sound of breaking vertebrae was like a gunshot.

  Frank freed his gun and kept his grip on Claude.

  Adrenaline gave him the strength to pull Hagerty off the ground and splay him against the car. He kept his hand on Claude's throat while he held his gun inches from the orderly's face.

  "Cute trick, whore! Real cute trick. Try anything else and I'll blow your boyfriend's brains all over the fuckin' countryside, understand?" Frank shouted into the dark. His eyes jerked back and forth, but they kept straying to his companion sprawled in the dirt.

  There was only laughter in response.

  Frank turned and fired in the direction of the sound. The muzzle flashes revealed only gravel train beds and empty boxcars.

  The hit man's face was the color of clay. Dark crescents had appeared under his arms. He let go of Hagerty, who managed to stay upright by hugging the hood of the car. Frank wrapped both hands around the grip of his gun and fell into a wary shooter's stance.

  She landed on the roof of the car, hissing like a cat. Frank jerked around, his mouth a lipless line, and fired. The bullet struck her in the left shoulder, the impact spinning her backward. Hagerty heard her cry out, then the sound of her body striking the ground on the other side of the car.

  Frank stood and blinked at where she had stood, then began to inch his way around the front of the car, his gun at ready. It was obvious he wasn't worried about Hagerty sneaking up on him from behind or doing anything but falling down.

  Frank cleared the hood of the car and stared at where her body should have been.

  "Oh, shit."

  Her fingers dug into the back of his neck before he had time to realize she was behind him. Her grip was so tight it pinched the nerves, temporarily paralyzing him. She reached around with her free hand and squeezed the wrist on his gunhand. Delicate bones ground together and collapsed, splinters of bone spearing the pulse point. Frank screamed like a girl.

  Hagerty wasn't surprised when Frank came flying over the hood of the car. Sonja Blue followed at her leisure, boot heels ringing against Detroit steel.

  Frank wallowed in the dirt, clutching his ruined hand to his chest. It was black with congested blood and resembled an inflated surgeon's glove. The hit man's face was white with shock and his lip was bleeding again. He babbled to himself in a sibilant whisper, "Antichrist, Antichrist, Antichrist."

  Sonja Blue bent over and grabbed a handful of suit, pulling him upright without any noticeable effort. "Now, is that any way to talk?"

  Frank's only answer was a high-pitched, nasal whine.

  She dragged him back to where Hagerty stood propped against the car. She glanced at him and Claude saw his own battered, bleeding face reflected in twin mirrors where her eyes should be. Still more sunglasses after dark.

  "Tell your playmate good night, Mr. Hagerty." Placing her hand at the base of Frank's skull, she slammed his head against the hood of the car. It sounded like a watermelon dropped on a gong. Frank's body jerked spasmodically under her hands. Claude was reminded of the full-body immersions he had witnessed as a child at the Baptist church his grandparents attended, only there wasn't any water this time. Just a spray of brains and blood and bone.

  But that's not what made him faint.

  It was when she pulled her lips away from her teeth, revealing canines that belonged in the mouth of a wild animal, and tore open the throat of the ruined thing that had been Frank. That's when he fainted.

  Hagerty's dreams were not empty.

  He was wandering through a library with bookshelves as tall as skyscrapers. He could hear a train roaring down one of the aisles, its passage shaking the stacks.

  He glimpsed movement ahead, where the bookshelves intersected. He didn't want to go any farther, but felt trapped in the book-lined maze.

  Two men loitered on either side of the shelves, watching Claude as he approached. They wore dark suits with narrow lapels and narrower ties. They both wore sunglasses. Claude recognized them as the identical killers. Only they were no longer identical. One of them stood with his head propped against his left shoulder; when he shifted his weight to the other foot, the head lolled onto his chest so that he was staring at his feet. The other's hands resembled a cartoon animal's. His forehead was cracked open and the brains spilling out of the wound ruined the cut of his suit.

  They moved in concert to block Claude's path.

  "Get out of my way, assholes."

  The mismatched killers turned sideways and disappeared. Claude kept moving.

  Archie Kalish leaned against one of the bookshelves, smoking a cigarette. Or trying to. Most of the smoke escaped through the ragged hole in his throat. He grinned at Claude, as sleazy in death as he was in life.

  "Hey, Hagerty! So what d'ya think? Some kinda piece, huh?"

  Claude watched Kalish's larynx vibrate as he spoke. Claude kept walki
ng. Kalish's laughter sounded like whistling.

  Dr. Wexler was thumbing through a leather-bound volume of Freud. There was something wrong with his face. He did not offer to speak to Hagerty.

  There was a door up ahead. An exit sign glowed over the threshold. Claude picked up his pace. He could see someone waiting for him by the door. A woman.

  Denise Thorne looked very sad. Her long, straight hair was the color of raw honey. She was wearing a paisley miniskirt with a buckskin vest, the fringe longer than her dress. She was wearing white go-go boots and held a bouquet of flowers in her hands.

  "I told you to get away while you still could," she said.

  Claude felt it was important to speak to her. He stopped and tried to touch her shoulder.

  Denise Thorne shook her head. "Too late."

  Lozenges of mirrored glass dropped from her brow ridge, merging into the cheekbones and sealing away her eyes. Her hair writhed, drawing in on itself. Darkness welled from her scalp, radiating outward like ink in a water glass.

  She opened her mouth, letting the lower jaw drop impossibly low, like a snake swallowing an egg. Her teeth were way too long and sharp to fit into a human mouth. Claude could hear the train coming. The whistle blasts sounded like a woman screaming.

  And he woke up.

  * * *

  Chapter Four

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  He was surrounded by white. At first he thought he was in a hospital, then his eyes focused and Claude found himself staring at egrets. The birds were frozen in a ritual dance on the translucent surface of a rice-paper screen.

  There was a sound from the other side of the divider. The egrets folded in on themselves, allowing Sonja Blue to come forward and place a damp washcloth on Claude's brow.

  Hagerty dug his elbows into the mattress, desperate to avoid the touch of the woman who'd saved his life. He wanted to scream, but all that came out was a stream of profanity.

  "Stay the fuck away from me. Get your goddamn mother-fucking hands off me!" His throat tightened as if the words meant to choke him.

  To his surprise, she flinched.

  "I should have expected this." She sounded tired.

  A sledgehammer caught him between the eyes as he tried to sit up. He struggled to keep from fainting. He did not want to lose consciousness in the presence of this woman.

  "Don't move so fast, you'll black out again." Her voice carried a note of concern. She stood at the foot of the cot and watched him with twin panes of polarized glass in place of eyes.

  Hagerty cursed and dragged the washcloth off his forehead. He didn't want to look at her. Her very existence made his forebrain swell until it threatened to leak out his sinuses. It dawned on him that he was very thirsty.

  She suddenly moved from out of his line of sight. Claude fought a surge of hysteria; as much as he hated having her around, at least he knew where she was. Careful of the malignant throbbing in his skull, he studied his surroundings.

  He was in a warehouse loft; the ceiling loomed far above him and the room was poorly lit. He could barely make out the geometric shapes of the rafters overhead. He wondered how he might escape, but his mind refused to stay on the subject.

  Sonja Blue returned with a Mason jar filled with water. Hagerty stared at the proffered glass but made no move to take it from her hand.

  "Okay. If that's how you want it." She set the water on an upended orange crate next to the cot and stepped away.

  Hagerty lifted the container with shaking hands, slopping water onto his bare chest.

  "It's after ten p.m., you've been out for nearly two hours. Thought you might like to know." She crouched at the foot of the bed, hands dangling between her knees. Without wanting to, Claude found himself looking at her.

  Her hair was shoulder-length and black as goddamn, as his grandpa used to say; styled in the bristling fashion made popular by music videos, it rose like the crest of an exotic jungle bird. She wore a battered black leather jacket a size too big for her over a sleeveless French-cut T-shirt of the same color. The jacket was going out at the elbows, and an attempt had been made to repair it with electrician's tape. The legs of her tight-fitting black leather pants were tucked into a pair of scuffed, low-heeled engineer boots. Her hands were encased in fingerless black leather gloves. And, of course, there were the mirror shades. Claude's dream tried to resurface, but it was quickly banished.

  "You, uhhh, look different," was all he could come up with.

  "I no longer look like a drugged-out madwoman, is that what you mean?" She laughed without smiling. "Yeah. I guess I do look different."

  Claude heard himself speaking before he knew what he was saying. "What are you?"

  She did not seem to take offense. She cocked her head to one side and regarded him with polarized eyes. "Do you really want to know?"

  "Do I have a choice?"

  She shrugged. "Not anymore."

  She stood up. It was a simple, fluid motion, like the uncoiling of a snake. She moved across the floor of the loft to the opposite wall and drew back the heavy blackout curtains that covered the windows. The staccato glow of neon illuminated the room, revealing a maze of rice-paper screens. Sonja Blue leaned against the windowsill, arms folded. Claude sat upright, clutching the mattress with both hands until his knuckles ached.

  "You must have an idea as to what I am. And it's not an escaped lunatic, is it, Mr. Hagerty?" She pushed the mirror shades onto her brow, exposing the eyes they hid. Hagerty began to shiver like a man with fever. She let the glasses drop back into place.

  "Welcome to the Real World, Mr. Hagerty."

  Can't push it too fast. I'll lose him if I force too much on him. I wanted it to go down quick and clean, damn it. Just go in there and take out those bozos and get him to safety. An impersonal kill, that's all I wanted. But I lost control! It couldn't resist playing with them. I've got to be careful. Ever since the escape, the Other's been strong. Too strong. It's just waiting for me to screw up. Looking for a chance to get out. I can't let my guard down. Not with him around. It's not his fault he was drawn into this. He's innocent.

  Since when did that make any difference?

  Shut up, damn you. Just shut up!

  Hagerty wished he knew what was going on. As dangerous as Sonja Blue might be, that wasn't as disconcerting as his not knowing what part he was playing in this horror show. Was he the hero or the victim? And if Sonja Blue was the monster, why did she go out of her way to rescue him?

  She was no longer in the loft, although he could not recall hearing her leave. He shuffled around his "prison" in his underpants, trying to decide what kind of movie he was in. If he could figure out the movie, then he stood a chance of surviving to see the credits. But only if he could figure out the rules. If it turned out to be one of those slasher films… The thought depressed him so badly he gave up on the analogy and focused on exploring the loft.

  The room was subdivided into cubicles by a network of painted rice-paper screens. He walked among sock-eyed carp, grinning lion-dogs, grimacing dragons, prancing monkey lords, glowering no-tail cats, and stalking tigers, their presence oddly comforting. He moved from compartment to compartment, searching for clues to what was going on. What he found made his head hurt.

  One cubicle contained a videoplayer and monitor. The extension cord hung from the rafters like an orange python. An unmarked cassette jutted from the mouth of the player. Claude nudged the cassette, and the machine obligingly swallowed it. For a moment Claude felt safe, involved in the mundane ritual of technology. Then the tape began to play on the monitor: a woman in a gold lamé pantsuit exhorted her audience to stand up and sway from side to side, hands held over their heads. The sound was off, but Claude knew what she was saying. He watched the mascara mingle with her tears and trickle down her cheeks. It looked like her face was melting. He hit the stop button and the monitor screen returned to the gray nothing of an empty channel.

  Another cubicle contained a low, Japanese-style table. Three books rested o
n the table. One was a large, very old-looking tome with metal edges and leather binding. Claude did not recognize the language, but there were several pages of complex, overlapping illustrations that made his eyes throb when he tried to decipher them. The second was a slender, hardbound volume in German. The third looked to be far more accessible. Claude turned the book over in his hands, noting the brittle plastic binding protecting the dust jacket and the shelving code affixed to its spine. The title was The Vanishing Heiress: The Strange Disappearance of Denise Thorne. The book fell open to a page with two photographs on it.

  The larger picture was a photoportrait of the Thornes in happier days: Jacob Thorne stood in the background, looking every inch the self-made captain of industry. His women were seated on a small divan in front of him, his hands resting on their shoulders. Shirley Thorne, a delicate woman with a gracious smile, held her daughter's hand in her lap. Claude was surprised rich people could look so normal.

  The smaller picture was blurred, obviously blown up from a snapshot. It showed a slightly older Denise Thorne in a crowded nightclub. She was not looking at the photographer. She seemed distracted but otherwise enjoying herself. She held a champagne glass in one hand. The caption read: Last known photo of Denise Thorne, taken by club photographer the night of her disappearance at the Apple Cart Discotheque, London, August 3, 1969. A ballpoint circle hovered just over her shoulder. Inside it was the blurred outline of a man. The man remained a grainy, ill-defined blot even on close inspection. Scrawled in the margin, in the same blue ink as the circle, was the word "MORGAN."

  Claude shut the book and replaced it on the table. For the first time since waking up, he noticed the dust coating everything. His hands were grimy with it and the soles of his bare feet itched. His hostess obviously had not yet found the time to catch up on her housekeeping.

  The kitchen was located in a corner where the raw brick met the jutting angle of the roof. The only piece of furniture was a Salvation Army-issue dinette set. A pair of midget iceboxes, stacked one atop the other, sat on the rickety table. Claude tried the taps on the double-basin sink, only to be rewarded with the plumbing equivalent of an epileptic seizure and water the color of rust.