The Devil in Silver

She would curl into a ball, protect her head with her arms. She imagined that was the best way to do it, but she’d never tried anything like this before. Unbidden, she saw herself falling at the wrong angle. Flailing. Her head smacking the Dumpster. Her body crumpled on the ground. Bleeding out, alone. Just some trash. She couldn’t stop imagining it now. She talked to herself, trying to calm down. But there is only so much that talking can do. She had to move. Right now. Right now.

Lucretia Gardner went out.

41

PEPPER LEFT THE air duct and tracked his way back down the hall. He passed the single off-kilter chair in the oval room. He reached the hall right above Northwest 2. He passed the room right above his own, the one with the machine inside. The half-open door made him scurry past, as if the big machine inside might reach out to snatch him. Then he entered the room with all the old equipment. As he felt his way through the filing cabinets, stepping over errant typewriters, he hoped Loochie was safe. Then he reached the other door. He stepped back out to the second-floor landing. Moonlight still filtered down in a beam cast through the glass eye in the pavilion’s ceiling. Pepper felt as if he’d been gone from here for quite awhile. That was because Pepper didn’t hear anything. Meaning that the screaming, those howls, had ceased. Just a heavy silence now.

His valiant urge had already ebbed. He should have gone with Loochie. She was probably getting on a bus right now. Already a guest of the MTA. They were shuttling her to safety. Meanwhile he was here. You volunteered to return to this? he asked himself. You must be fucking crazy after all.

Pepper walked with hunched shoulders, his head swiveling left and right. He didn’t see the others until he was practically on top of them. Their backs were to him. He counted six standing together. And farther back, in another clump were three more. He couldn’t say who was who. They were all so still, so quiet, he felt like he’d stumbled across a crew of sleepwalkers.

“It’s Pepper,” he said, just to avoid startling them.

They didn’t answer. The six people with their backs to him stood adjacent to the silver door. When Pepper got closer, he could finally hear something. This group breathed hard, grunting and panting. Their shoulders rose and fell.

Pepper walked around the group. He stood between the cluster of six people and the clump of three others. He wasn’t sure who he should be wary of. From his new position he could make out the trio: Redhead Kingpin, the Haint, and Wally Gambino. Proton, neutron, electron, that’s how tightly packed they were. They didn’t even seem to notice Pepper. Their gazes trained intently, guardedly on the six: Doris Roberts, Heatmiser, Still Waters, Sandra Day O’Connor, Yuckmouth, and Mr. Mack.

Pepper moved toward the larger group. His boots squelched, like he’d stepped in jelly. The floor between him and them was slick.

Pepper’s eyes followed the trail of slickness, more like oil really. To their feet. All six of them were standing in it. There were blotches of it, like dark paint, on the fronts of their clothes. Their hands were so wet they dripped.

Of those Pepper had accounted for, Loochie and he made eleven.

“Where’s Frank Waverly?” Pepper demanded.

No one answered. No one moved.

Pepper padded to the edge of the landing and looked over the railing, but Frank Waverly wasn’t down there. The moonlight brightened Pepper’s boots here at the edge of the landing. The soles, the toes, they were almost a reddish brown. The stuff he’d just stepped in almost looked like mud. Pepper returned to the others. Stood in front of Mr. Mack directly.

“Where is Frank Waverly?”

Mr. Mack raised a fist slowly. It looked like it had been dipped in balsamic vinegar.

The fingers opened. A small gold key sat on Mr. Mack’s palm.

“They just …” Redhead Kingpin whispered.

Pepper looked back at her.

“They just … opened him,” she said blankly.

It wasn’t possible. Pepper couldn’t move.

“They just …” Redhead Kingpin began again.

Where was Frank Waverly’s body? Tossed aside, in some dark corner, like a torn candy wrapper? If breathing wasn’t an involuntary function, Pepper would’ve choked.

Mr. Mack walked to the silver door. Triumphant. Not only did the man have numbers on his side, he also had insanity. Not mental illness, but true madness now. Mr. Mack slipped the key in the lock. The other five members crowded closer to Mr. Mack. Imagine trying to talk them down at this moment, to bring them back to the rational, even if ill, human beings they’d very recently been. Pepper doubted that even a volley of tranquilizer darts could stop those six now.

The silver door unlocked with a click as loud as a grandfather clock.

Mr. Mack waved the others back so he could open the door.

The doorway was as dark as an elevator shaft.