Creepers

Creepers

David Morrell

Review:

Morrell takes a creative kind of breaking-and-entering as the premise for his latest thriller (after Nightscape), a gripping story that demands to be read in a single sitting. Disguising himself as a journalist, Frank Balenger, ex-U.S. Army Ranger and Iraqi war veteran, joins a group of "Creepers," also known as infiltrators, urban explorers or city speleologists--men and women who outfit themselves with caving gear to break into and explore buildings that have long been closed up and abandoned. Though what they're doing is technically illegal, participants pride themselves on never stealing or destroying anything they find at these sites. They take only photographs and aim to leave no footprints. Balenger joins a group of four: the leader, Professor Robert Conklin, high school teacher Vincent Vanelli and graduate students Rick and Cora Magill. This gang infiltrates the Paragon Hotel, an abandoned, seven-story, pyramidal Asbury Park, N.J., structure built in 1901 by eccentric, hemophiliac Morgan Carlisle. Balenger and the professor have a special agenda, but the others are there simply for the thrills. Things quickly begin to unravel in life-threatening ways once the intrepid infiltrators penetrate the building--they aren't the only ones creeping around the spooky hotel. Morrell delivers first-rate, suspenseful storytelling once again.

August 29

Wednesday

Prologue

1:55-2:27 A.M.

Jesus Ortiz switched on his transistor radio and an exuberant salsa melody filled the subway token booth where he sat drinking bitter Spanish coffee brought from home. The music made him daydream about San Juan. If he were back in Puerto Rico he'd be drinking beer and playing dominoes with his buddies instead of making change for the locos who rode the subway at this time of night. Or, if he were lucky, he'd be making sweaty love to one of the local girls who found his particular swaggering brand of machismo so appealing.

He lowered the volume with sudden anger. Who was he kidding? The San Juan he dreamed of was for turistas only. Natives didn't count. He was lucky to be away from there, lucky to be living in a city where he made enough money to buy food and little luxuries like the radio and portable television to keep him company. Jesus Ortiz was no fool. He'd take a lonely job in the New York subway over starvation on the beach any day.

He glanced at his watch. In five minutes, two half-hour episodes of the Mary Tyler Moore show were broadcast back to back. Jesus had a weakness for the good-looking norte americana who seemed to find the world as confusing a place as he did. She was exactly the kind of woman he dreamed of making his wife and the mother of his children. He shook his head sadly at the thought. If only Mary Tyler Moore were Spanish, the dream would be perfect!

A minute later he turned the television on, but kept the sound off. There was still a minute or two before his favorite sitcom, and the salsa's jangling rhythm had once again lulled him into a state nearing contentment. Working all night was considered the graveyard shift, but Jesus liked it. It was quiet. It paid more money. And he was working midtown. The poor bastards uptown in Harlem and out in the bad sections of Brooklyn and Queens were sitting targets for any crazy prowling the subway's darkness. There were enough horror stories of robberies, beatings, even mutilations of token clerks to make Jesus thank God he was working in the IND station at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-third Street. It was a good part of town. A safe part of town--relatively, anyway.

When the Mary Tyler Moore show began, Jesus turned off the radio. It was going to be a peaceful night. The kind of night when nothing happened.

Penny Comstock walked briskly south on Fifth Avenue, heading for the nearest subway station. With each step her resolve not to cry weakened, and by the time she reached Fifty-third Street, tears were streaming down her face. She stationed herself in front of the glamorous Ted Lapidus store and let herself cry very unglamorously. Damn Jack Grenfeld anyway! He was a first-class bastard. She should have recognized it the first time they'd had dinner three months before. Grenfeld was a typical office lothario--a good-looking, snappy dresser with a line that was pure bullshit disguised as sincerity.

Penny sniffed and wiped away a few stray tears. And silly little me fell for it hook, line, and sinker, she thought morosely. It was my own fault. Grenfeld had told her on their first date that he liked her but wasn't interested in any kind of commitment.

"And what makes you think I want to get involved?" she fired back at him. "Jack, you know, a major problem with today's men is that they think the responsibility of getting in and out of relationships is entirely theirs!" She sipped her white-wine spritzer and laughed very confidently. "I don't want any commitments, either."

"That's good to hear," he replied less enthusiastically. "Say, you aren't one of those women's-libbers, are you?" His voice betrayed a slightly wounded ego.

"I'm not into labels, Jack. Let me tell you that straight off. I just want Penny Comstock to be happy. And if that means making Jack Grenfeld happy at the same time, so be it." She shrugged with munificent abandon and that was that.

She slept with Jack that first night as proof positive she stood behind her declaration of independence. And she slept with him two or three times a week from then on, slipping deeper and deeper in love despite his continued warnings. And tonight he'd told Penny he wanted to break it off.

A new wave of despair washed over her and she leaned her forehead against the store window and cried helplessly. It had seemed such a perfect evening--drinks at Harry's Bar, then dinner at the Russian Tea Room. But it turned out to be a nightmare. All night long she thought he was going to propose. He proposed, all right--that she get out of his life. His cool rejection caught her off guard and she'd acted like a complete idiot, crying, then calling him names. And to top it off, she'd slapped him across the face and run out of the restaurant.

Well, crying wasn't going to change anything. She straightened her shoulders and walked to the subway entrance, thinking that a long, hot ride on the E train would end the evening perfectly.

Jesus caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eyes and tensed. When a lone woman came into sight he relaxed. She walked slowly down the few steps opposite him and approached the token booth. She was tall and foxy--black hair, nice tan, and lips painted so red he immediately thought of the hidden parts of her body. She wore a light, gauzy dress that clung to her long legs and outlined her good-sized breasts. Jesus wasn't a tit man, but he examined them carefully, nevertheless. From the sexy way she swung her hips he guessed this beauty was definitely una mujer bellaca--ready for some hot loving--and he felt a stab of desire in his groin. She wouldn't be the first customer he'd sweet-talked into bed.

"Two, please." Penny pushed a twenty-dollar bill under the bulletproof glass that enclosed the upper part of the token booth.

"You got somethin' smaller?" There was plenty of cash, but Jesus wanted to stall her a little.

"Oh, sure." She removed the twenty and replaced it with a five.

"It's hot out there, ain't it?" She looked blankly at him, then nodded. "It's nice inside here. Air-conditioned."

"Lucky for you." Penny's voice was heaped with leftover sarcasm from her parting conversation with Jack Grenfeld.

Jesus stared at her a moment, then scowled. She was just another New York bitch. Christ, the class of people he had to deal with! He shoved two tokens under the glass just far enough so Penny had to scrabble for them. Then he poured fifty cents into the trough, folded three one-dollar bills into a long packet, and flicked them so hard they shot past her hand and fell to the floor at her feet. That would show her.

Jesus returned to his television program, forgetting Penny even existed.

Penny hated the subways. She hated the dirt and the noise and the inefficiency of the ailing system. And most of all she hated the people she was forced to ride with, to touch when packed into a crowded car at rush hour. There was a class of New Yorker who seemed to thrive in the subterranean world of the subway. The dark platforms and grim stations were the ideal backdrop for acting out their self-loathing as blatant disregard of the law and violence directed against innocent victims. To Penny, nowhere was it more evident than in the subway that the rabble was quickly, methodically destroying the quality of life in New York City. Still, it was the cheapest and fastest way to travel.

She stepped off the escalator and breathed a sigh of relief--the platform which stretched into the hazy, hot distance toward the Madison Avenue exit was deserted. She was alone. That, at least, was something. Still, just to be safe, she'd station herself near the up escalator after taking a quick look for her tram. She walked to the edge of the platform and leaned out over the tracks, looking down to the right to search for the E. Her feet were well over the yellow danger line, but it hardly mattered. Penny was used to the subways. There'd be plenty of time to step back before the train barreled into the station.

A rustling noise from inside the tunnel to her left startled her. She snapped her head around expecting to see workmen approaching. TA crews often traveled the tunnels late at night repairing sections of track. But there were no lights in the tunnel to indicate men working, only the soft swooshing sound that edged closer and closer to where she stood.

Penny knew there were rats living down here in the filth. Many times she'd seen them scurrying along the tracks, and once on a platform, careening along the wall behind waiting passengers. Rats bothered Penny a lot less than people did, and as the noise became more distinct, she perked up her ears. It was more a rustling sound than anything else, as if something were creeping along the tracks, rubbing against the inside wall of the platform just below her feet.

The irrational part of Penny wanted her to be afraid, to pull back and to run upstairs. But that was the side of her that had told her to slap Jack's face in the Russian Tea Room. One dramatic scene was enough tonight! No, she'd stay put She glanced up and down the platform once again, then over her shoulder to the escalator and back again. She was alone. The sound was rats. Only rats.

Once again Penny edged over the yellow line to survey the dark tunnel. She was tired and hot and she was beginning to wish she'd taken a taxi instead of thinking about saving money. The familiar sound that had kept her company the last few minutes suddenly stopped. Whatever was moving along the roadbed halted directly in front of her, exactly where her shoe tips touched the edge of the platform.

Penny looked down with an almost detached curiosity, not really expecting to see anything, yet somewhere in the back of her mind prepared for the rat scurrying along the tracks. But this time it wasn't a rodent; no rat was as big as the thing that raised its head before her. At first Penny didn't recognize as hair the tangled mat of gray that slowly rose up over the edge of the platform. But when she did, her first thought, silly really, was how filthy and wild it was, shooting off in all directions like knotted branches of an ancient tree. The poesy of the image was quickly dispelled as the eyes appeared. The eyes were narrowed against the harsh light of the station and filled with a primitive animal intensity. They were the eyes of a hunter.

Penny wanted to move; she wanted to run down the empty platform, up the stairs and out into the hot New York night. But her reflexes failed. And in that moment of inaction, she was captured by the ankles and held prisoner. Penny screamed and began to fight desperately to maintain her balance; it was futile. With one sharp pull forward, she was toppled. Her head hit the platform with an echoless crack and she lost consciousness.

Moments later, Penny Comstock had been eased off the platform and was being dragged along the rubble-strewn roadbed toward the protective darkness of the subway tunnel.

Jesus thought he heard something. He lowered the television's volume and listened. Nothing. Then, a scream. A distant woman's scream. Maybe coming from all the way down two flights on the lowest level. Jesus froze. The hair on the back of his neck bristled as another scream spiraled up to him. Christ, what was he going to do? He wasn't supposed to leave his post, no matter what. He cautiously opened the booth door and winced as the station's fetid air invaded his fortress. Another scream rang loud and clear up the escalator. Now Jesus knew what he had to do. The Transit Authority be damned.

He grabbed his keys and a small baseball bat he kept hidden near the door and deserted the token booth. Seconds later, after taking the down escalator two steps at a time, he reached the first level. The platform was vacant. Without a second thought he bolted down the last flight of stairs to the deepest level, steeling himself to encounter a woman passenger being mugged by some punk. Or worse, to find her dead body. But this level was vacant too. No one. Nothing. No signs of a fight.