Beyond the Pale Read online

  A shiver coursed up Grace’s spine. She had no answer for that.

  Erwin stood. “I’m going to talk to the nurses who assisted you, Dr. Beckett. If you don’t mind, that is.”

  Grace thought of Morty Underwood’s puffy, anxious face. “Be my guest.” She lifted the mug. “And thanks for the coffee.”

  “I bet it’s cold by now.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  Officer Erwin grinned, then moved away across the ED’s admitting area. Grace sipped the cold coffee, and though she wouldn’t have thought it possible then, she found herself smiling. Then her smile faltered, the small hairs of her neck prickled, and she looked up.

  After a moment she saw him. He stood some distance down one of the hallways that led from Admitting, watching her. Dark suit, dark hair. He leaned against a wall in a casual, elegant posture. How long had he been there? For a moment his deep-set eyes locked on hers. His gaze was searching, as if he wanted something of her.

  Curious—or was it compelled?—Grace started to rise from her chair. Just then a gurney rattled by and blocked her view. A moment later the gurney passed through a doorway. Grace looked back down the hall. It was empty. The dark-haired man was gone. She sank back into her chair and clutched the coffee mug. Maybe the man hadn’t been watching her after all, maybe he had been waiting for someone else.

  Maybe, but she doubted it.

  12.

  Leon Arlington liked his job.

  In fact, he liked it a lot. Leon always had been a night person, so he didn’t mind the late hours. And with its thick cement walls, the place was nice and quiet, which made it good for thinking. Leon liked thinking, too. He thought about lots of things while he worked down in the cool silence of the morgue. Things like, how long it would take to walk to the moon, if you really could walk there? And what was the best kind of tree? And if he could drink just one drink for the rest of his life, would it be water or Mello Yello? Hoo boy, that was a good one. He still hadn’t figured that out yet.

  But the biggest reason Leon liked his job was simple: Dead folk gave him no trouble. No trouble at all. He had worked plenty of other jobs where he had had to deal with living people. They were always wanting something different from what he gave them, or telling him how to do things he already knew, or acting like he was stupid just because he was slow and quiet and didn’t easily get mad. Too often in this world people mistook fast for smart, loud for important, and angry for righteous. But Leon knew the difference. Besides, the customers here didn’t care what pace he did things at.

  Whistling a tuneless song, Leon adjusted the plastic sheet that covered a cadaver lying in an open body drawer. He had to make certain there were no gaps in the wrapping. The morticians hated it when the corpses dried out. Leon wasn’t sure why. Maybe it made it harder to paint the makeup on them for the funeral. That was something else to think about. He paused to regard the old woman in the stainless-steel drawer. With her blue-gray skin and white hair it looked almost like she was frozen in a piece of ice rather than wrapped in clear plastic. It made him think of a story he had read as a child, a story about the queen of Snow. Only the queen had been cruel, and she had imprisoned a little kid in her palace of ice.

  Leon slid the drawer shut and shivered. That was the one real problem with this job—it was too damn cold down here sometimes. The chill radiated from the bank of drawers and soaked into the floor and walls, where it lingered like permafrost. The cold had never bothered Leon in the past, but this last year he had noticed it creeping deeper into his joints and bones, like something hungry and alive. Maybe one of these days he would have to get a different job. Something warmer.

  He rubbed his lean hands together for heat and turned to see to his next customer. The naked corpse lay on its back on a stainless-steel table—white male, late twenties, in good physical shape. Leon picked up a clipboard and checked his notes. That’s right. This was the John Doe the police had shot before bringing in. They had cracked this one’s chest open, but the wound was neatly closed up now. Leon recognized the precise stitches that bound together the two raw edges of flesh. Even when they were dead, she always took care in what she did to them. This had been Grace Beckett’s patient.

  Leon grabbed a pen and made notes concerning the corpse’s condition: height, weight, appearance, the locations of the two bullet entry wounds. He turned the body over, then noticed a small tattoo on the underside of the John Doe’s forearm. He bent closer. No, it wasn’t a tattoo, but a brand. The puckered scar tissue formed a symbol:

  It wasn’t anything Leon recognized, although it did make him think of some sort of religious sign. If it was from a religion, then it had to be a crazy one to brand its disciples like cattle. Leon shook his head at the sorry state of the world, then turned the corpse back over and scribbled some more on his clipboard. A moment later he halted and frowned.

  “Now, I thought I already shut your peepers.”

  The cadaver only gazed upward with unseeing eyes. Leon snapped on a fresh pair of latex gloves and closed the corpse’s eyelids. Staring was one impertinence he did not tolerate of dead people. He made a few last notes, then prepared the cadaver for storage. Leon had it down to a system these days. Toe tag, plastic bag, then into the deep freeze.

  “You were a healthy boy, now weren’t you?” he grunted as he wrangled the heavy corpse from table to drawer. Sometimes the bodies seemed to fight him in this, as if they did not want to be shut away in the dark, as if they wanted to hold on to the lighted world for a little while longer. Mostly, though, it was just rigor mortis and the slippery plastic that made it so hard. At last Leon succeeded. He leaned on the open drawer to catch his breath. Maybe he really was getting too old for this job. He supposed he could go work at his cousin Benny’s upholstery shop. It sure would be warmer, and he wouldn’t have to talk to customers if he didn’t want to, not if he stuck to the shop’s back room. Besides, Benny owed him a favor. He resolved to call his cousin in the morning, then started to slide the drawer shut.

  The cadaver stared up at him through the clear plastic sheet.

  Leon halted. “What the hell …?” he whispered. He was sure he had closed them this time. But the corpse’s dull eyes were wide-open. Leon shuddered, the damn chill again. He leaned over the drawer and bent down for a closer look, to be sure he wasn’t mistaken. His breath fogged on the plastic as he gazed into the dead man’s eyes.

  A hand punched through the clear sheet, reached up from the drawer, and closed around Leon’s throat. Leon tried to struggle, tried to scream, but the grip on his throat was far too tight: He could not break it. Even as his mind fought to understand what was happening, his lungs started to burn for want of air. Bright pinpricks exploded in his brain like fireworks. Somehow he managed to look down at the cadaver. His gaze locked with that of the dead man in the drawer, and in those dull eyes he saw … evil. It was a malevolence so vast, so deep, that suddenly he knew it was ancient beyond all reckoning. In that second, Leon Arlington understood everything. A darkness was coming. His very last thought was of how cold he felt, how awfully cold. Then, with terrible strength, the dead fingers tightened around his throat.

  The sound of snapping bones echoed off the hard tiles.

  13.

  Grace drained the last of the coffee, then stared at the bottom of her empty mug. Despite the sense of disconnection she had felt earlier that day, she thought maybe she could return to her apartment after all. Maybe she could curl up with a blanket on her futon and fall asleep to the drone of late-night TV, and when she woke in the morning, things wouldn’t seem so strange, so alien, and so like she didn’t belong.

  Grace rose and headed for the break room to rinse out the coffee mug. Along the way she nodded to Officer Erwin. He stood at one of the nurses’ stations and talked with the intern who had assisted Grace earlier. Erwin nodded in reply. Nearby, Morty Underwood looked on with a sour expression and fumbled as he tried to unwrap a roll of antacid tablets. Grace did not resist the sma
ll wave of satisfaction she felt as she continued past.

  She was halfway across the admitting area when the elevator let out a chime. Afterward, she was never quite certain what made her pause and turn to stare as the elevator doors slid open. Maybe it was that, in the back of her mind, the chime sounded almost like a death knell. She watched transfixed as the doors rolled to either side, like an opening eye turned on its side. A figure stood inside the elevator, silhouetted by fluorescent light. Grace blinked against the sterile glare. The sounds of the ED receded into the distance, yet her pulse throbbed in her ears, mixed with the thrum of a hundred other heartbeats, as if the very air had become a stethoscope transmitting the life and sudden fear of all those around her. The figure stepped out of the elevator.

  It was him. The man she had pronounced dead three hours ago. He was naked, his skin mushroom pale. Black blood oozed between the stitches that bound the wound in his chest. His eyes stared forward with dead intensity. Then, with mindless deliberation, the man with the iron heart walked forward, his bare feet slapping against the tile floor.

  Sound rushed back into the ED. Screams sliced the air in all directions as people scrambled to get out of the dead man’s way. One EMT was too slow. The dead man thrust out a hand, and the EMT was hurled to one side. He slid a dozen feet along the floor before he struck a bank of chairs. He twitched but did not get up. Morty Underwood stood only a few feet from the crumpled form of the EMT, but the Chief Resident did not even glance at the fallen man. Fear twisted his mealy face. He tossed aside a handful of papers in a multicolored flurry and turned to flee the admitting area. The dead man walked on, headed for the main entrance of the ED. Grace backed up against a wall. She knew she should run, but it was a dull knowledge, and could not connect with the nerves and muscles of her limbs. The coffee mug slipped from numb fingers and shattered against the floor with a sound like breaking bones.

  A dark blue blur moved past her. Erwin. The police officer approached the dead man, one hand held out before him while the other reached for the gun at his hip.

  “Just stop right there—” Erwin began.

  He never got any further. The corpse shot out a hand, contacted Erwin’s forehead, and thrust the officer backward with brutal force. Erwin’s skull struck the wall an arm’s length away from Grace. There was a sharp noise, like a firecracker exploding. Then, as if all his bones had turned to jelly, Erwin slid to the floor. His head left a trail of gore on the green paint.

  The walking corpse did not pause. Staring forward with hideous calm, he continued toward the automatic doors and passed within five steps of Grace. A paralyzing odor rose from his body: the foul reek of congealed blood and the sweet taint of decay.

  It was the smell of death.

  The admitting area was virtually empty now. Most had fled, although a few people peered out of side corridors in dread fascination. The EMT had crawled away. Only Grace and the fallen officer did not move. Then, along with the damp flop-flop of the dead man’s feet, another sound drifted on the stifling air: a metallic creak accompanied by a fearful muttering. Grace cast her gaze over the room in search of the sound’s source.

  In front of the ED’s automatic doors, a white-haired woman in a bathrobe struggled with her wheelchair. One of the wheels was stuck and would not turn. With arthritic fingers she tugged at the brake, then tried again. The wheelchair spun in a slow circle but did not move forward. Confused by its proximity, the automatic doors slid open, then shut, then open again, as if wracked by silent, spastic laughter. The woman looked up, and fear touched her faded eyes. Her wheelchair stood directly between the dead man and the doors.

  He was going to kill her. The dead man would not move to one side, would not go around her. Instead, he would destroy anything that lay in his path. That was the nature of this … creation. Grace knew it—knew it with strange and perfect certainty. But then, this was not the first time she had come face-to-face with evil.

  In that fractured moment, Grace made a decision. She could not allow this thing to do whatever it was it had been made to do. The naked man bore down on the wheelchair. The woman had stopped struggling and now simply gazed at the approaching corpse. Like all the very old, she knew the Angel of Death when she saw It coming.

  With dreamlike calm, Grace knelt beside Erwin, unbuckled the leather holster at the dead officer’s hip, and pulled out the revolver. She stood, turned, and pointed. The gun seemed an extension of her arm.

  The dead man reached for the old woman. Grace did not hesitate. She squeezed the trigger and called down the thunder. The dead man jerked and arched his back, as if struck a blow by an unseen enemy. A wet blossom appeared on his right temple. He took a staggering step forward. Grace pulled the trigger again. Light and sound shattered the air like crystal. The corpse’s arms flew out to either side, the wings of a weird bird trying to take flight. Again she fired, and again. With the last shot the entire right side of the man’s skull exploded. Dark fluid stained the old woman’s face, and she watched in dull amazement as Death died before her.

  The man with the iron heart toppled to the floor. For a minute he convulsed violently, legs jerking, hands scrabbling at the tiles. Then he went still. One last trickle of blood oozed from his chest before the flow ceased. Even this thing needed a brain to function. It was over.

  Her back against the wall, Grace slid to the floor and crouched beside the dead police officer. No, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t over. Somehow she sensed it was just the opposite. She leaned her cheek against the wall, cradled the gun against her chest, and gazed into Erwin’s peaceful, empty eyes. The words whispered by the purple-eyed girl in the park drifted once more in her mind, and with them came a strangely exultant sensation.

  Yes, a darkness was coming.

  Excited voices sounded around her. People rushed into the admitting area now. Two police officers knelt by Erwin and swore as they examined him. Grace did not look their way. Instead, her gaze was drawn to the floor before her, to the shards of the broken coffee mug. A faint smile of wonder touched her lips. So sometimes the containing circle could be broken after all, and the ripples sent free.

  14.

  It wasn’t until he saw the revival tent glowing in the distance that Travis realized where he was going.

  How long he stumbled through the night after fleeing the destruction at the Magician’s Attic he didn’t know. Perhaps it was minutes, perhaps hours. For a time the keening of sirens echoed in the distance. Then the blocky shapes of Castle City shrank behind him, and his boots scuffed against weathered asphalt. After that there was only darkness and the hiss of the wind.

  As he walked, he rubbed his right hand—the hand Jack had clasped just before everything had gone mad. It still throbbed, but now the pain had dwindled to a swarm of pinpricks, like the aftereffects of an electrical shock. Travis remembered the fierce light that had blazed in Jack’s usually kind blue eyes. You are our hope now, he had said, and even more mysteriously, Forgive me, my friend. Travis didn’t know what to make of those words. None of this made any sense. All he knew was that his best friend in the world was quite possibly dead.

  Through his sheepskin coat he felt the small, heavy lump of the iron box. What did it contain? Whatever it was, it couldn’t possibly be worth all that had happened. Or could it? After all, Jack had told him to keep the box safe—no doubt from the people who were after him, the people who had broken into the antique shop and had set it ablaze. Except, now that he thought about it, Travis wasn’t so certain it had been people who had attacked the Magician’s Attic. At least not any sort of people he knew. He saw again the silhouette he had glimpsed for a fleeting second. So tall, so thin, moving with eerie grace. It might all have been a trick of the light, but even the light itself had seemed wrong. Too bright, too piercing. Travis shook his head. He had so many questions and no place to go for answers.

  His boots ground against the pavement as he slowed to a halt. For a moment he considered returning to the light and warmth o
f the Mine Shaft. But that wasn’t possible, was it? Maybe they were following him, the beings in the light. What would happen if he led them back to the crowded saloon?

  Travis shivered inside his coat. He supposed it was midnight by now. Far below, the lights of Castle City gleamed in the mountain dark, beautiful as stars, and as utterly unreachable. His eyes traveled up the desolate stretch of highway, and for a moment he wondered if maybe he had been following the road back to his cabin, with its drafty log walls and leaking roof—if maybe he had been going home. Yet even as the thought occurred to him, he knew it was not so. He did not belong there any more than he belonged amid the lights shining in the valley below. Somehow, during the course of that night, Travis had stepped outside the boundaries of his usual world—he had gone beyond the pale—and he did not know how he would ever return. It was the loneliest feeling he had ever known.

  “I’m afraid, Jack,” he whispered, but the words turned to fog on the cold air and melted away.

  He turned to continue on, and that was when he saw it, beside the highway not far ahead. The old-fashioned circus tent. Golden light spilled from the half-open entrance flap and through rents in the canvas to give the big top the aspect of a great, grinning jack-o’-lantern. Travis stared for a long moment. Then, before he even knew what he was doing, he started walking toward the tent. But the man in black had gazed into the darkness gathering on the horizon with knowing eyes, and Travis had nowhere else to go.

  As he drew closer to the tent, he passed the blotchy white school bus he had seen earlier. Parked beside it was a motley collection of vehicles, ranging from pickups and rusted-out station wagons to suburban minivans and gleaming sports cars. Travis hesitated a moment before the entrance. Did he really think he would find answers here?