Hellraiser: Hellfire: Part Four

by XanderDig

A base drum attacked the back of my skull with three staccato blasts. I knew it wanted to pull me from safety, that the assault was close to being effective. A soft whimper grew in the back of my throat and I curled my toes in my attempt to bite consciousness back. Mossy earth bunched beneath my feet rather than the uncomfortable heat inside my loafers, and the result was calming. I knew where I was. I knew where I was.

"Mr. Shaw?" asked the majorette responsible for the cacophony. She blared her drum again, but this time I was on the move. I didn't want to hear the insistent woman's mousy voice, so I ran desperately away from it. It was peaceful and dark where I was, and the voice was only a receding echo. The chemical stench from the blue fluid in the toilet was virtually undetectable here. Free of the cell, free of the prison, I was away and the girl could bang all she wanted.

The wood is lit by gentle moonlight, a soft breeze causing the thin mist to swirl. I breathe in deeply, smiling, power coursing through my veins. The scent of grass, of pine and jasmine overwhelm me. So does the smell of meat.

I look around in the darkness, turning a full circle before I take note of the faint orange glow coming from deeper in the forest. With the exception of the noodles back in (the real world) Bangkok, I haven't eaten a real meal in days. The food smell on the breeze sets my teeth on edge, an uncontrolled wave of predatory hunger cinching in my stomach. The saliva comes so quickly that I have to reach up and wipe my forearm across my wet mouth. Then I laugh, loud and long. Why go through the motions of being anything other than an animal here? This is my forest, after all.

I'm God here.

"Mr. Shaw? Are you all right?" whines the majorette, banging her drum. Then, in another, throatier voice: "you're mine, Sebastian." I nearly turn around to see who is speaking, but the nonsense is taken away by the breeze before it can weigh too heavily. I run away towards the orange glow, the fire, the cooking. Tonight I will feast.

The path through the dark is muddy and warm beneath me. It runs parallel to the edge of a reflective lake, and it is only when I glance down into it that I realize I am nude. I stare at my body for a moment, marveling at its perfection. If Leonardo only had me to model, he might have gotten man right. I'm not man at all though, am I? I'm better than man, newer, superior in every way. I am (more delicious by far, we must string it out for eternity) . . .

The ghost of a memory shocks me away from my reflection. It's only hunger. The solution to that little problem only lies on the other side of the next rise. I run from the water, my reflection left to ponder my back. I bound over the perfectly green hill, drool flowing freely now, the cooking meat maddening. When I finally come to the roaring fire I stop short of the stone circle, a bonfire roaring in the center.

There are steps that cannot be taken back. I am no fool. I know this. As I stare down at the perfectly white stones, so pale that they almost seem to be cut out of the fabric of reality itself, I'm aware that there is something final about stepping into the circle. Even as I debate, though, my hunger urges me forward. The *need* to gorge myself on the flesh perfuming the night is overpowering. I wipe my mouth again and step into the circle.

Only when I've crossed over do I notice the woman. She stands across the fire, looking at me with something like a smile. Bathing in the orange-red glow of the flames, her naked skin seems alive. I feel myself growing as I stare at her. Her hair is impossibly long and black, and for a moment it seems that she is a photo negative of Botticelli's Venus, dark and hungry where the other is a creature of the light. The woman's smile widens. Her incisors are long and sharp.

Something mews and whines plaintively, and the woman smiles more broadly. She leans down, and when she stands she holds a small, gray beast in her arms. Shifting in the fire light, she cocks her head at me in a look that would be seductive in any other circumstance. Now it means something altogether different.

"You remember, don't you darling?" she asks. Then she raises the mewling wolf cub to her bosom. The golden-eyed creature suckles voraciously. "Bad from the breast. It's in the blood of all my children."

I step backward when I hear the lower noise, heavy steps on the brittle earth. The woman looks at me sadly as she nurses her infant. Enormous wolves walk slowly around either side of the bonfire, light reflecting off their teeth. Gore covers their glistening snouts, and rivers of saliva drip down from their gaping maws. Impossibly, I couldn't move any farther away. The stone circle holds me as fast as the (walls of the boxcar) bars of a jail cell. Panic grabs me as the creatures approach, and it only now occurs to me that I am not the hungry beast in search of sustenance. I am the cooking meat.

"Yes, my child," says the woman. My heart is a bomb in my chest and I try to shrink away from the monsters slinking toward me. "You have always been mine." The beasts begin growling then, a bass sound that seems to come from deep beneath the ground. I know their hunt is over when one of the wolves speaks:

"I'm going to come in, Mr. Shaw."

                          ***

The stainless steel of the toilet seat was cold against my face. When I tried to lift my head and peel my sticky face off the rim, my stiff neck cried out, so I gave up the attempt and laid back down. I was almost immediately pulled back into sleep, though there was nothing pleasant about the land of my dreams anymore.

"I'm coming in, sir," said the stewardess.

"No!" I shouted, but all that emerged from my lips was a choked whisper that the drone of the engines smothered mercilessly. The woman's keys jangled as she fumbled with the lock to the cramped bathroom.

"No," I managed. "I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Fine." There was a pause, and beneath the jet's rumble I thought I heard a hushed exchange. I could almost see the blonde, perky girl quietly conferring with one of her coworkers.

"He's been in there for a long time," one of them might have said.

"And have you seen the way he looks? The way he *smells*?" the other probably asked. My eyes lolled open and I winced at the bright light in the bathroom. I was curled around the commode like a spooning lover.

"Okay, Mr. Shaw. I'll check back in a few minutes."

"Fine," I said. "Fine."

I breathed for a moment, summoning my strength. How long had I been here? It was sure to have been more than an hour in this very position. Though I was alive, it felt like the paralysis of the grave had decided to make an early appearance in my muscles. The plane rocked, dropping in the sky slightly, then righting itself. My stomach folded over, but the scent from the toilet told me clearly that there was nothing left to lose.

The electronic tone of a bell rang, and a small light above the toilet advising me to return to my seat illuminated. I would try to comply. I reached up with my stiff right arm to flush, then leaned up on the toilet, getting my bearings. Standing would be quite a chore on legs fully asleep. I lifted my other hand, placed it on the edge of the seat and summoned all my strength to push myself up.

My left hand exploded when I put my weight on it. White sparks popped before my eyes and I cried out, jerking my hand back. When I did, my body slumped forward and I cracked my chin against the toilet seat, power blessedly flowing into my limbs from the force of the blow. All the preternatural strength in the world would not dull the pain in my hand, though. I rolled so my back was against the wall and clutched my hand to my chest while tears rose reflexively in my eyes. Gritting my teeth, I could feel my heart pound through my shirt.

In London, the boy cut my hand deeply, but that wasn't the worst insult it received. There was the hook, too. The hook.

I shook my head, clearing it, chasing off that particular ghost before it had time to make itself at home. I was free now, five thousand miles away from Bangkok over the clear blue Pacific. Scarred, wounded, but free. The plane undulated in the sky again, and I pushed back against the wall, sliding to my feet on wobbly legs. Against my better judgement I pulled my hand away and looked down at the damage. I hissed at the sight.

The makeshift bandage I cobbled together from supplies at the Bangkok duty-free had come mostly undone. Brownish blood and a more insidious fluid had soaked through the gauze, and the tape that held the covering in place came loose. The swelling made it look as though I had somehow attached a large walnut to the back of my hand. More frightening, thin red lines were beginning to bloom out from beneath the edge - infection, warm to the touch. I was in bad shape.

I took a deep breath and took the edge of the dressing between my thumb and forefinger. Slowly, I began to peel it away. After only a moment, it met painful resistance as the wound glued it to my skin. Breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, I tried to calm myself for what I had to do. The cut felt hot and alive beneath the curdled covering. I looked up to the ceiling and jerked the bandage away.

A whimper escaped my throat, though not from the pain. As soon as the dressing tore away I felt warm fluid drip down my fingers. I didn't want to see, but I had to. Cursing Buckman for ever telling me about LeMarchand's Box, I looked down.

A heavily lidded eye, blind and bloodshot, might have taken residence on my hand. The skin had been sliced on a diagonal from the bottom knuckle of my pinky to the soft flesh between thumb and index finger. It had swollen badly from underneath, and the edges of the laceration had been pushed apart, revealing the milky white tissue below. Infection spread from the oozing wound, crawling up my fingers and nearly back to my wrist. Tearing away the bandage had aggravated the cut, and it bled heavily enough that it dripped to speckle dark crimson on the faux-tile floor. The aircraft dipped in the sky and I clutched at my stomach.

I would need a hospital when I returned to New York. And sleep. Good sleep. I reached down to grab a roll of tissue and began wrapping it around the hole in my hand, and as I did, I looked into the small mirror above the sink. My face might have shocked me more than infected fissure. Was I really the same man who had walked out of Studio 54 less than five days ago?

Leaning forward, I took careful note of my drawn features. The circles under my eyes were heavy and dark, and the eyes themselves were nearly devoid of white. My shirt was soaked with sweat and stained with other relics from four days of travel. My skin was pale, almost bluish, and for the first time in my life I found colonies of gray in my hair. It was impossible. Sick or not, I was a young man. Handsome after a fashion and certainly not enfeebled and old. I deliberately reached up and plucked out one of the hairs. Then another, and another, obsessively removing any trace of this false age.

Good God, had I come to this? Impaired and mad before my time? I jerked out the hairs by twos and bunches when I noticed it sitting on the pump above the toilet. My hand froze in my hair.

"No. No. No," I whispered, denying the reality in the mirror. But it was reality, cold and real regardless of its impossibility. Sitting atop the toilet, its golden filigree playing in the bright flourescent light, was LeMarchand's Box. I had left it behind, of course. I had run for all I was worth. Yet here it was.

"No. No. No," I continued reasonably. I did not want to think about what had really brought me to this place. No thought of the boxcar would be useful, for such things were not for the waking mind to ponder. Even in this world of superhuman mutation and heroes in masks, there were puzzles best left unopened. The box, my prize won through arduous journey, sat behind me. It was ripe for the plucking, a key to untold pleasures and infinite power if only it could be mastered. All that remained was to turn around and grab it.

To leave the reflection in the mirror would be to remember, though. It would mean looking back inside the open box. It would mean admitting that my affliction was caught from something more than a knife-wielding boy in England. It would mean recalling *them* again.

My gaze at the puzzle box in the mirror was fixed. I hadn't breathed since I spied it, and my hand was still grasping a white hair. I let it drop to my side and allowed my eyes to fall into the sink. A nest of hair lied waiting only for a bird to make its home. I turned back to the mirror.

"I am not easily defeated," I said. For I had escaped from the dragon's layer, had I not? Even as I stood in this bathroom at thirty-five thousand feet, was I not proving myself more than equal than the forces allayed against me? Buckman, the Rook, Constantine - they had all insisted that I not open the box. I had done so anyway, and I had managed to walk away. I was the hero of this tale, and I had already won the day.

I nodded to myself, summoning my courage. Then I looked to the box, to the devil's own door key, and smiled. Then I turned around to grab my brass ring . . .

 . . . and I was back in the boxcar. I was facing the Gashes again.

                          ***

"You ache for the purity of suffering. You cry out for the absolution of pain. You have called us, Shaw," said the Gash with nails driven into his skull. "We have come."

The dead eyed creature stared at me with an expression that hovered on the border between apathy and sublime contempt. I moved involuntarily backwards, heedless of the rhythmic clopping of the chopping block behind me. Though the leader gave no reaction to my movement, the legless thing took three darting steps forward on its sinewy arms. Its steel fingernails squealed as they scraped along the floor.

Raising my hands to defend myself, the grinning thing was stopped by the obese Gash before it could set upon me. It stroked the legless thing's head like a pet, calming it. The rolls of fat from its forearm lolled down over the other creature.

"Do you see how it backs away?" whispered the female Gash, her pregnant belly moving slightly. "It trembles so."

"Yes," responded the leader. "In its blindness it fears even the enlightenment it seeks. You will not wait long, Shaw. Soon you will see the light."

I raised my hands with the palms forward, trying to explain: "I, I," I said. My vocal cords felt paralyzed. It was as though a stone were lodged in my throat, my terror tasting of bile.

The woman breathed in deeply through her nose, a connoisseur at a tasting. Then she smiled and laughed, a sound more frightening than even her glass-breaking voice.

"Oh, yes," she said. "I know your kind. I remember your sweet taste." Then her distended belly moved with inner life. Something dark peered out into the world.

"So long," the thing in the woman's torn womb intoned in an innocent child's voice. Ichor flowed freely from the Caesarian cut.

"I think there's been a mistake." It came out at last. Perhaps if I explained about Buckman. If I blamed the White King . . .

"So long since we have tasted his like," said the thing in the belly.

"Yes, but we will make it last," the mother said in a loving voice. She stepped forward, a Mona Lisa smile playing on her black, chapped mouth. "It is strong. It will last."

"There has been an error. It's not me you want. I didn't mean to open the box . . ."

"There has been no error, Shaw," spat the leader. "No mistake. Only once before in history have we tasted your kind, and that one's pain was so sweet that it nurtured even the innocent. Yours will be greater still."

"But. But."

"More delicious by far," said the woman.

"We must play it out for eternity," said the stillborn child.

"You don't understand," I pleaded. "It wasn't me! I'm only on an errand!"

"Always excuses, always lies. You will find the truth within yourself soon enough." The leader held up the Puzzle Box, and it dissolved. A small diamond was all that was left in its place. "We will burn it free."

"You will find clarity in our pleasures . . ." breathed the woman. She licked her necrotic lips.

"You will find illumination in our pain . . ." added the unborn.

"You will know the truth in your own endless suffering."

"No. No. I didn't want this. I didn't want . . ."

"All you have done is want, Shaw. Now . . . you shall have." The leader looked above me to the left and I heard the jangling of chains for an instant before the back of my hand was torn skyward. A barbed fishhook tore a hole into reality, slicing through the ether as it did the back of my hand. It bored through where the boy in London had cut me and then pulled taut, jerking my arm into the air. I screamed both in pain and at the maddening impossibility of it all.

But I was deep within impossibility now, wasn't I?

"What are you?" I cried.

"We?" asked the woman. The fat creature gently removed his hand from the legless one, and the grin on its hungry face spread. It raked its talons across the floor and began to slowly circle me, clicking its teeth as it moved.

"We are the shadows at the edge of perception," said womb-thing.

"We are the guides at the precipice of eternity. We are the guardians of the divine," said the leader. He reached up to his breast and slowly extracted one of the brass sickles. He looked at it for a moment, then turned back to me. The blade reflected light into his nightmare face, and the nails driven into his skull formed a peculiar halo. "What you have dreamt, we know."

Panic set in when the legless thing began to lightly run a single fingernail down my bare back, creating a thin zipper of blood. I screamed as the leader began moving toward me with the knife extended. All I could think of was the chopping block. I jerked my arm against the chain, the pain providing a kind of clarity.

"Your will is strong, Sebastian," giggled the voice from within the female's birth wound.

"More the delicacy when it lies broken." The pincushion leader raised the blade and I yanked my arm with all my strength. The chain snapped, but I didn't try to fight them. I whirled and ran straight at the wall of the compartment. All of the fear and pain had dropped great amounts of strength into my muscles, but I was beyond calculating.

I charged forward blind with fear. When I hit the wall, it gave way and I fell to the gravel of the rail yard. The sun was low in the sky and I ran toward the light heedless of the stones tearing at my feet. I was sure that the legless thing was sprinting behind me, that any second I would be pulled to the ground and devoured.

Instead of the sounds of chase, though, all I heard from behind me was laughter. It was dark and melodic, the laughter of a parent with an unduly precocious child. The Gash with nails in his skull was laughing back in the boxcar, but he was also laughing in my head.

"Run, Shaw. Run," he said. "You will find what you seek."

I did run. I ran out of the train yard. I ran past a group of workers who grinned at the shirtless, panting white man. I ran all the way to the banks of the Luk Luang but still I heard the laughter deeper in my skull than the nails were in his.

Bringing my hands to the side of my head to drown out my internal noise, I waded into the water. It was a ritual of the lizard brain, of course, a faint attempt at purification or baptism. Despite my usual contempt for such displays, though, I slogged deeper into the muddy water, dunking my head. Clearing it.

My hand smarted in the cold, so I pulled it from the water to have a look. The hook was still there, gored deep into the soft flesh between the bones. Though my mind was already defensively trying to block the boxcar, here was tangible evidence. It had to come out.

It was rusty and large, the barb at the end sharp and mean. The hook hurt even when I took it between my fingers. When I slowly began to pull it around and out, the pain was excruciating. The metal almost felt textured, every moment I pulled was agony. Then the barb tore into my skin as I tried to bring it through, and the blood began to flow in earnest. It made a plopping sound as it fell into the water, more and more steady. Finally, I began to lose a steady stream.

Two fishermen in an ancient boat floated by in front of me. The men on board stared at me apathetically, apparently unmoved by the kabuki mask of pain and concentration tattooed onto my face. At last, it seemed that the hook was nearly free. I could see the edge of the barb clearing the bloody hole in my hand - only another moment. I shut my eyes and pulled.

At once, the metal grew soft and slick in my grasp. It slipped from between my fingers. My eyes popped open and I screamed. What had been a fish hook, sharp and painful to be sure, but a fixture of the every day, had become something else again. A thick black worm squirmed into my hand, boring deeper, deeper.

"No!" I screamed. I fumbled desperately to grab hold of the larva as it wriggled into my flesh, but its skin was oily and viscous. Finally, I got the maggot in my opposite fist and began to pull it free. I felt the thing come out a fraction of an inch, a moment of triumph.

Then it began to dig in, incredibly tenacious. The oily monstrosity slid through the inside of my fist like a lover's tongue. When I felt it slip past, I held my hand out to see the very end of the worm disappear into the gaping wound. Even after it was gone, I held my hand before my face. It trembled as blood flowed into the water.

I began to cry then, weeping openly for the first time since I was a child.

"Yes, Shaw. Run. Cover. Hide," said the demon's bass voice inside my own head. "When the hunt has finally ended, we will have all of eternity to know your flesh." And I knew he was right.

                       ***

But he wasn't, was he? I had escaped, and if I had to go to a doctor back in New York to clear up an infection, that was all right. Whatever supernatural forces I had unleashed left me with scars. They *had* left me, though. Thousands of miles ago. And with a gift, apparently.

I picked up the Box and turned back to the sink. Being careful of my hand, I splashed some cold water on my face. It had been nearly four days since my last significant sleep, close to the point of hallucinations. I didn't have far to go, though.

"Miles to go before we sleep," I said to my pallid reflection.

From the river, it hadn't been hard to take a shirt from a passing fisherman. It was ill-fitting over my large frame, but covered me well enough. At the airport I explained that I had been mugged and made a great deal of noise about international incidents. The airline made a few perfunctory calls and after confirming my identity, all was well. They gave me a pilot's jacket without the little eagle for my lapel.

Pushing my hair from my face with wet fingertips, I made myself look as presentable as possible. I wrapped my hand in paper towels and shoved it into the pocket. Then I picked up the Box and stared at it for a moment.

"Fuck it," I said. I would figure out a way to deal with Buckman. I tossed the accursed thing into the waste basket, then threw a bunch of towels on top of it. Let it molder in the Staten Island landfill.

When I opened the door, I discovered the stewardess close enough that she had to be eavesdropping. I gave her my most charming smile, a look that often gave women pause between their legs, but she averted her eyes.

"I hope you're feeling better, Mr. Shaw," she said, and she scurried away. Though it might not have looked it, I was. I watched the girl move away down the aisle, at the way she moved under her clothes. If I weren't in such pain, if I were not delusional with sleeplessness, I might have cleaned myself up a bit more and made a play. Regardless, it was good to be feeling like myself.

                         ***

Customs was impossible, of course. The officer took one look at me and decided to pull me from the line. I suspect that the other travelers could not have been more pleased. They placed me in a small room whose greenish light did nothing to improve my complexion. They made me undress, an insult that would have demanded a small army of lawyers at any other time. Now, though, I wanted to make no calls that would alert the attention of the White King. I would deal with him soon enough. I would handle him when my mind was sharp again.

They asked questions. Questions and questions and questions.

"I have nothing to declare," I said.

"Business," I said.

"I am not carrying drugs; three days; 217 Park Avenue; I'm in construction; I am not carrying firearms; I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the communist party," though they did not get the joke.

"I'm infected by a bot fly," I lied when they asked about my hand. The agents eyed each other and I realized that I should have said something earlier. The very word has a talismanic power: "infect." Particularly something not on the quarantine list. While they did not fork the sign of the evil eye at me, they did the next best thing. Twenty minutes later I was walking across JFK

All that remained was to call my driver and head for home. I moved across the brightly lit concourse at a speed barely beyond crawling. Wearing a captain's uniform was a cause for private amusement. The sidelong glances of passengers heading toward international were laden with concern and trepidation. My pale countenance and sallow appearance worried them endlessly. How much money did the airlines lose that day from people canceling their flights due to my unsteady gait?

The room grew momentarily unsteady so I shifted over to the side to lean on a wall. Customers wandered in and out of a newsstand up ahead. They had not a care in the world. I shook my head and moved on, "to bed, to sleep, perchance to dream." Though everything was already dreamlike.

When I finally passed into the chaos of the central terminal, any attention on me evaporated. It was a city within a city at this time of the early evening, and everyone appeared to be late for their appointed place. I looked around for a moment before I saw a long phone bank along the wall.

With the speed of a 97-year-old man I approached an open phone and was cut off by a spiky-haired punk rocker. Any other time, I would have hung up for him and sent the boy on his way. Now I was too tired. I moved up to the end of the line and found an opening.

I stepped forward and sat down on the small, stainless steel bench Ma Bell obligingly provided. Once, when I was very young, my dad and I had gone to the Greyhound station in downtown Philly. We were picking somebody up - my grandmother I think - and were walking with a sense of excitement. On the way inside we walked by a phone kiosk with a bench very like this one.

An obviously homeless man was curled up on the child-sized seat, sound asleep. My father shook his head at the hobo (for all homeless people were hobos to me then), and I expected him to tell me for the thousandth time that only hard work and dedication stood between a man and the street. Instead, he winked at me and pulled out his wallet.

He pulled out a five-dollar-bill, a 1960 five, and tucked it into the man's open hand. Then he patted me on the head and walked on. On the way out, I was toting a bag nearly as big as myself. Father and the person we had come to pick up were walking up ahead, and when we passed the unconscious man in the nook, I paused.

I stepped close to the hobo and caught a deep smell of the hooch on his breath. Hooch. He would not be awakening any time soon. For a moment I only stood there, my blood boiling that my father had given the man money simply for lying asleep while I had to haul trash and carry bricks for my pittance. Then I put down the bag and reached forward.

"Where'd you disappear to, hoss?" asked my father when I caught up to him in the parking lot.

"Nowhere," I answered. "Just dropped the suitcase."

Shaking the vision off, I dug through the pockets of my navy blue outfit until I found a dime. I popped it into the coin slot and reached forward to pick up the receiver. Thoughts of a real sleep were so heavy that when the phone rang my first thought was that the alarm beside my bed was already going off.

It rang again, my hand paused above the cradle. Pick it up. It was obviously only a wrong number - there was nobody standing by the phone expectantly waiting for a call. Just pick it up.

By the fifth ring, my mind was made up. I moved my hand from the phone to the coin return, toggled it and retrieved my dime. I slowly stood up, found the next open phone and sat back down. The phone was still ringing where I had been sitting - take the hint, you damn fool. No one's home. I reached to drop in the dime when the phone before me rang.

Butterflies swarmed in my empty stomach and I stood bolt. I backed away, moving down the line of phones. Another began to ring as I passed it, then another. I turned and began to walk quickly away. When I passed the punk, his phone blared out despite the fact that he was on it. When a banker in a Brooks Brothers' suit suffered the same noisy calamity, I began to run. I ran until I was outside in the cold.

Though I could see my breath as leaned forward, my elbows on my knees outside the massive double doors, I still felt hot. I was burning up.

"Excuse me, sir." I looked up at a red jacketed man pushing an enormous luggage cart. He stared at me impatiently. "Wanna move, buddy?"

My mouth worked for an answer but nothing came. I walked away from him, away from the crowd, from the cabs, from everything.

Between the terminals, neither entrance nor exit, there was a single payphone. Most of the full kiosks in New York had been replaced - they even joked about it in the "Superman" movie. One wondered where the real life spandex heroes changed their gear. As I knew it would from the moment I saw it, the phone began to ring as I approached. Despite the lump in my throat, I walked forward.

I stepped into the dark compartment and closed the folding door behind me. There was a buzzing pause before the light flickered on. The phone rang. I answered. Simple as that.

"Don't let me go," said a forgotten voice.

"Dad?"

"Hold on, Hiram. I've almost got it," he said. His breathing was strained.

"I got you, dad," I said.

"Don't let go, boy."

"I won't," I said. "I got you, daddy. I've got you now."

My hand was shaking as I touched it to my closed mouth. How could someone have heard that conversation - we were the only ones on the roof. We were alone.

"I got you, daddy. I've got you now."

I let the phone go. It hung on the end of its cord, swinging too and fro like a fisherman's prize. Whirling maniacally, I tried to open the door and it wouldn't give. It was jammed. I shook it, tore at it, but it would not budge.

"I've got you now."

A thin sound was escaping my throat. I bashed my elbow into the plexiglass, cracking it. Spinning around, I cracked my injured hand against the iron phone itself and pain shot up my arm. I cried out, attacking the inside of the booth in a paroxysm of rage.

"I've got you now."

I tore the phone from its cord, silencing the voice. Silencing my voice. I ripped the box half-way off its moorings, kicked out the lower pane of plastic, tore the yellow pages from their plastic protection. With each action my exhaustion grew, as did my strength. I was blinded by anger, so sightless that it was moments before I realized that I had destroyed the light in the vestibule. Before I realized that I could see the concourse drive. Cabs were speeding by. Back at the entrance to international, a limo had pulled up.

A familiar driver opened the door, and the Rook emerged. I stopped my assault on the phone company, my self-loathing quelled by fear. For a moment I actually held my breath.

Fifty yards away, the Rook walked to the terminal's sliding doors. Just as I began to wonder how he could possibly have discovered that I was returning on a flight I never booked, he stopped. He stood in the entryway for a time, the crowd parting around him as if he were a natural obstacle. Then he slowly turned his head and met my frightened eyes.

He began walking toward the kiosk. I wrenched at the door as he came for me. Pulling. I pulled with all my might and the door came free of its hinges. I lunged out and the incensed kiosk decided it would pay me back for the damage I caused. The broken skeleton of the enclosure snagged my ankle, sending me sprawling.

The Rook continued toward me, his pace unhurried. When he passed under a light, I could see that his eyes were totally black. I leapt to my feet and took only a step before I realized that my foot was badly hurt. I looked over my shoulder to find the Rook had a smile on his mouth - I knew this was no call to collect an item. If he caught me, he would kill me. The limo paced him in the parking lane. There was only a chance.

I ran into the street as fast as my broken body would carry me. A Holiday Inn shuttle slammed on its breaks and jumped the curb to avoid me, and two cabs squealed into other lanes. I barely avoided a red passenger van careening by close enough that I understood the driver's curses. A yellow taxi hit its breaks too late and I thought the end would come.

He tapped my thighs with his bumper. The driver and I looked at each other in thankful disbelief. I looked to the curb and saw the Rook was continuing on his unhurried way. He stepped off the sidewalk with none of the hubbub that accompanied my perilous endeavor. The cars speeding past simply weren't anywhere near him.

Keeping my hands on the cab to still the man inside, I hobbled around the side of the car. Just as I put my hand on the handle of the back door, the driver dropped the lock. The Rook was only a lane away, a distorted smile stretching his face. My oily hair blew in the wake left by a passing bus, and I caught the eye of the frightened cabbie.

"Please," I mouthed. He blinked in the mirror, then looked forward. The lock popped and I dove into the back seat. I looked up to find that the Rook was at the window. He tilted his head at me, heedless of the honking vehicles speeding by. Then the monster smiled.

"Drive!" I screamed when the small man reached for the door handle. Miracle of miracles, the driver did just that. When I looked out the rear window, the Rook stood in the middle of the lane we were speeding away in. Cars simply changed lanes to avoid him.

"Where to, crazy mister?" asked the cabby. I turned to the front and found that he might also have come from Bangkok.

"I wish I knew."

[next part]

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