Disappearing Nightly (23 page)

I felt hot breath on my face. Not exactly like a bad date. More like a blow-dryer on low setting.

“If you can hear me,” a woman said, while the breath fanned my face, “don’t move. She’s really very friendly to people she knows, but strangers make her nervous. Plus, she’s quite hungry by now.”

“Alice?”
I blurted, remaining as immobile as possible while I lay on what I realized was a slimy, uneven stone floor.

“How do you know her name?” The woman’s voice was startled.

“Sarah Campbell?” I asked, keeping very still and not opening my eyes. I didn’t want to see Alice from this position. I felt a muscular leg the size of a young tree trunk pressing against my shoulder as the tiger breathed on me.

“Yes, I’m Sarah!” the woman replied. “How do you know my…My God, someone is looking for us!”

“
Esther?
Esther Diamond?” That was unmistakably Golly’s voice.

“You know her?” a man asked.

“Samson?” I croaked.

“She’s my understudy,” Golly gasped. “They’re doing the show
without
me?”

“Hi, Golly,” I said.

“That fucking asshole Herlihy’s made you disappear, too! And they’re doing the show without
me!
”

Still feeling that hot breath on my tender throat—the breath of a large, carnivorous species known
to prey on mankind—I said, “Can someone do something about this tiger?”

“Alice!” Sarah Campbell said brightly. “Here, Alice! Alice! Let’s roll over! Come on, Alice! Let’s roll over!”

“She tired of that game hours ago,” a new voice said. It sounded aristocratic.

“Clarisse Staunton?” I guessed.

The girl gasped. “Does Barclay know I’m here? Does he know what’s happened?”

“Can someone do something about this tiger?” I repeated.

Several of them started shouting her name, trying to distract her.

Alice growled irritably and kept sniffing me. Apparently I didn’t smell
quite
like dinner to her—at least, not yet. After breathing hotly on me for another few moments, she allowed herself to be lured away.

“You can sit up now,” Samson said.

I opened my eyes. I was a little startled, since I occasionally imagined the first glimpse of single-woman’s heaven might be like this. An absolutely gorgeous man was kneeling at my side. He was smooth and faintly tanned all over, beautifully toned and wonderfully built. He wore nothing but a little gold lamé G-string. He had a chiseled jaw, soft brown eyes and even softer-looking wavy gold hair.

“Delilah and your mom are worried,” I said to Samson.

He looked deeply moved for a moment. Then he helped me sit up. “It’s awful when you first come through that…that…whatever it is. Gateway. Experience.” He put a reassuring hand on my back. “Give yourself a minute.”

“I puked when I got here,” Golly said.

“Yes. You did,” Clarisse said coldly. “And when I arrived, I found myself lying facedown on the
exact
spot where you’d puked.”

They glared at each other. I sensed that shared hardship had not necessarily forged a bond of sisterhood.

There was another woman here, too. Middle-aged, a little plump, dressed in a cowgirl costume studded with sequins and rhinestones. She was lying on the floor, too, and seemed to be out cold. Clarisse was holding her hand.

“Is Dolly all right?” I asked.

“She just hit her head when she fell. But I don’t think it’s too serious,” the society girl said. “She’ll come round.”

Poor Dolly. I continued scanning the chamber.

“Alice,” I said weakly, coming eye to eye with the tiger. In other circumstances—a zoo, a magic show, the Discovery Channel—I’d probably find her quite beautiful. Up close and with nothing between us, though, she just looked terrifying. Especially when she sneered at me.

“We need to get out of here,”
Sarah said pointedly. She was a pretty woman, about my age, wearing a lovely evening gown.

“Yes,” I agreed, eyeing the hungry white tiger. “That much is clear.”

Golly, still dressed as Virtue, looked unkempt, dirty and haggard. Clarisse Staunton was a pretty blonde in her early twenties; she wore a skintight, black leather outfit, which wasn’t how I had pictured Barclay’s stage partner dressing. Dolly looked pale and unconscious. Samson looked chilly.

We were in some kind of large underground chamber. No windows, of course. The walls were made of stone. Very old. They were damp and cracked, covered in mold with a scattering of fungus. There was an archway leading into what was presumably another chamber like this one. Strange writing—or symbols? glyphs?—was scrawled above and around the arch.

It looked like water often came through the high ceiling above us, perhaps during heavy rains. At the moment, though, the flow was restricted to a fairly generous trickle coursing down one wall to land in a huge puddle.

“That’s how we’ve survived,” Samson said, nodding to the water.

“God only knows what kind of parasites I’ve picked up, drinking that,” Clarisse said.

Samson added, “And he brings us food sometimes.”

“Thai,” Clarisse said. “Chinese.”

“Our leftovers!” I said, realizing.

“Esther, tell me seriously,” Golly said. “Do I look like I’ve lost weight?”

“What is this place?” I asked. “Where
are
we?”

“We’re somewhere beneath Castle Clinton,” Samson replied.

“Ah! In Battery Park. Okay.” That helped me orient myself. Originally an armed harbor fort protecting the city, Castle Clinton was a tourist spot now; people bought tickets and boarded ferries there to see Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. “There probably aren’t people around this time of night,” I said, “but we could try screaming, even so.”

“It’s nighttime?” Samson asked. “We’ve had trouble keeping track.”

“And we’ve tried screaming,” Golly said. “Lots. He told us it was pointless, and he was right.”

“We’re
way
beneath Castle Clinton,” Samson explained. “Or thereabouts.”

“What was this place?” I wondered, looking around. “An arsenal? A crypt?”

“Maybe,” Samson said. “Or something to do with the harbor. Or the water system. Or sewage.”

“Eeeuuw!” Golly said.

Alice growled.

I smelled something that seemed to confirm the sewage theory, then realized it was undoubtedly the natural result of several people and a tiger inhabiting an enclosed space with no plumbing. Shared hardship might be an understatement, I realized.

Samson added, “You go down a couple of levels, and you find weird stuff all over this city. Forgotten tunnels, old caverns, abandoned switching stations…” He shrugged and smiled bashfully. “I was working on a degree in urban planning before I became a performance artiste.”

“How do we get out of here?” I asked.

“We can’t. These chambers were sealed off a long time ago. Probably before the Civil War. There’s no way in, and no way out.”

I gasped. “
That’s
why he needed the conduits!”

“What?”

“He researched what lay beneath the city until he found a private, forgotten place that suited his needs. He could transmute through layers of soil, rock and crumbling stone walls to get here. Through layers of time. But then…” I nodded. “Then he discovered he couldn’t bring his victims here. He couldn’t utter the incantations correctly. So he developed the conduits to get you here!”

“
That’s
why he ruined my performance?” Golly said. “Because of his lisp? He needed Joe? For fuck’s sake! He couldn’t have waited until the show was over?”

“But why?” I wondered.
“Why?”

Sarah gasped. “You don’t know?” She looked at the others. “She doesn’t know!”

“No, that’s what we haven’t been able to…” I looked around at their faces. “
You
know?”

Samson and Sarah exchanged a glance. Then
Samson said to me, “I don’t mean this the way it sounds, but, er…you’re not a virgin, are you?”

Somewhere else in these underground chambers, a woman started screaming.

D
olly awoke. “Dixie?
Dixie!
”

“Dixie!” I jumped to my feet—then froze when Alice growled and crouched like she intended to spring for me. “Is that Dixie?”

As the screaming continued, Clarisse helped Dolly try to rise. Sarah shuddered and tears filled her eyes. Alice gazed at me, her tail swishing back and forth in a way that made me long for a rifle. I like animals, but not as much as I like staying alive and unmaimed.

“Dixie?” Samson repeated. “Yes, that’s the name Dolly started screaming when the new girl appeared here. Just a few minutes before you arrived.”

“
God,
I hope that girl’s had sex,” Golly said.

I blinked. “What?”

Clarisse said, “Dolly tried to protec
t the girl from him. He knocked Dolly down, and that’s when she hit her head and passed out.”

Dixie screamed again. Dolly moaned, trying to pull herself together and go to the girl, but was obviously disoriented. I tried to move toward the chamber where the screams were coming from—but I stopped when Alice flinched reflexively in my direction, as if about to pounce on me.

“Control your tiger!” I ordered Sarah.

“I can’t! Goudini and her trainer are the only ones who have authority over her!”

“
Take
some authority, damn it!”

“Have you ever tried to take authority over a cat?”

“Oh good God!” I said.

“It’s no use, er…I didn’t get your name,” Samson said.

“Esther.” I took off my shoe.

“It’s no use, Esther.”

“What choice do we have? I’m not going to be hampered in this battle by one of the
hostages,
for God’s sake!”

“No, I mean—”

“Don’t anyone move.” Holding Alice’s gaze, I assumed the role of a lion tamer in no mood for pranks and walked toward her, staring her down. Alice’s tail twitched harder and she growled at me. She looked about five feet long, if you didn’t count the tail, and I estimated she weighed about three hundred pounds. “Alice,” I said firmly, “go to your corner and stay there.”

“She doesn’t have a corner,” Golly said.

“Alice,” I repeated, “go to your corner. Now.”

The tiger glared at me. Praying I would live through this, I whacked her sharply on the nose with my shoe. Alice flinched and ran to a corner, where she crouched and growled, tail still twitching, now doing her best not to look at me.

“I’ll be damned,” Golly said.

“All right,” I said loudly, shaking like a leaf, “let’s go get Dixie from that scheming twerp!”

“But, Esther—”

I crossed the floor and walked through the archway to enter the chamber whence the screams came. Or I tried. When I got to the arch, I bounced so hard off an unseen obstacle that I fell to the floor. Alice’s growls mingled with Dixie’s screams as Samson helped me off the floor.

“I tried to tell you,” he said. “We can’t go into that chamber. I think these symbols he’s written all over the doorway give him power over who can enter and who he can keep out.”

“Dixie!” I shouted through the archway. “Hang on! I’m here! Hang on! And kick that little creep in the balls!”

“Esther?”
she cried. “Esther, is that you?”

“Yes! Are you all right? Dixie? Dixie, answer me! Who’s frightening you? Is that Hiero—Oh, my God, it
is
you!” I exclaimed as Max’s skinny, sullen, young assistant suddenly appeared before me—
in the normal sense: he walked round the corner that hid most of the other chamber from view. Dragging Dixie with him, he stopped when he reached the archway, just on the other side of the invisible barrier. She was struggling against his white-knuckled grip on her arm. He gave her a hard shake to make her hold still.

Glaring at me as if
I
were somehow to blame for all his problems, Hieronymus snarled, “She’th not one, eitheh!”

“Sheathe
what?
” I said.

“She’s not one, either,” Samson translated.

“Not one what?” I asked in confusion.

“A virgin,” Samson said.

“She’s not?” Dolly cried. “Oh, darlin’, thank
God!
”

Dixie’s face was tear-streaked. She looked disheveled and terrified. “Dolly! Are you okay?”

I glanced at Dolly as she staggered toward us, gradually regaining full control of her limbs. “Oh, honey! I was so scared! I’m so glad! Thank
God
you’re not a…Er…” She frowned. “Oh my goodness! I thought
sure
you still were!”

“You won’t tell Daddy, will you?”

“No, of course not, sugar. Women gotta keep each other’s secrets. But, honey, just reassure me. You weren’t, you know…I mean, no nasty young man forced—”

“Oh, no, no! He’s a very
nice
young man, Dolly! Very sweet! You’ll like him! Daddy likes him. But, of course, Daddy doesn’t know about…”

“And he won’t ever find out,” Dolly promised her. Then her face fell when she realized just how true that statement seemed likely to be.

“Shut up!” Hieronymus shouted. “Shut
up,
shut up,
shut up!
I’m tho thick of you! Tho thick of
all
of you!” He glared at me. “Ethpecially you!”

“Gosh, and I just got here,” I said.

“I won’t even botheh with you. I think we can thafely thay
you
awen’t a vi’gin.” His face screwed up with distaste as he added, “An
actweth.
”

“Excuse me, I didn’t catch that final word?” When his face darkened with rage, I added, “Hiewonymuth.”

“Maybe I can’t thacwifithe you to Avolapek,” he said furiously, “but I
can
kill you.”

“So you
are
sacrificing the victims!” I paused, confused for a moment, and then it hit me. “Oh good grief! You’re sacrificing
virgins?
”

“Twying to,” he said sulkily.

“You can’t be serious!” I said.

Glowering, he replied, “Do you have
any
idea how hawd it ith to find a vi’gin in thith thity? Juth
one?
One little vi’gin! That’th all I want! That’th all I need! One vi’gin! One! But
noooo!
”

“You had sex with Barclay?” I blurted, looking at Dixie.

“You won’t tell Daddy?”

“When did you and Barclay have
time
to—Oh! Of course. The night you went out for a nightcap.
Barclay took you back to your hotel after Duke was already asleep in his own room?”

Dixie nodded, blushing.

“And none of us is a virgin, of course,” Samson said to me.

Golly Gee snorted. “Not for a
long
time.”

“And Alice has had cubs!” I said, remembering.

“Even the goddamn
tigeh
ith not a vi’gin!” Hieronymus shrieked, little flecks of spittle flying out of his mouth.

“So you’re trying to sacrifice a virgin? Oh, Phil, Phil,
Phil.
” I shook my head while Hieronymus gasped at my use of his alias. “Oh, of all the pathetic, misogynistic, cliché-ridden, phallocentric, stereotypical, B-movie bullshit!” He sulked as I continued, “Hieronymus, don’t you see how
sad
this is? How absurd? How bourgeois?”

“It ith
not
bouwgeois! I’m going to wule Manhattan! Wule New Yo’k! Become mo’e powe’ful than Twump, biggeh than Bloombe’g!”

“You? Who are you kidding?” I shot back. “In one of the biggest population centers on the planet,
you
can’t even find a virgin!”

“I am thtwanded in Thodom and Gomowah!”

“What?”

“He’s stranded in Sodom and Gomorrah,” Samson said. “We’ve heard this rant before.”

“Dare I ask what you need a virgin
for?
” I said.

Samson said, “To summon Avolapek.”

“Who’s Avolapek?”

“Some demon that he thinks will make him bigger than Trump, more powerful than Bloomberg,” said Clarisse.

“And once you summon this demon and become all-powerful throughout the five boroughs,” I said to Hieronymus, “do you think you’ll suddenly gain the ability to translocate these people back
out
of this hole in the ground? That’s why they’re all trapped down here, isn’t it? You developed conduits to bring a virgin sacrifice here, and instead you got stuck with hostage after hostage who isn’t a virgin and can’t call forth Apolamak!”

“Avolapek!” Hieronymus snapped. “He will only come in anthweh to one who ith clean.”

“Oh, that old ‘sex is dirty’ pathology? Please! Grow
up,
” I snapped. “Now that you’ve brought half a dozen people and a tiger down here, you can’t figure out how to get rid of them! Some threat to Trump and Bloomberg
you
are!”

“Avolapek will get wid of them!”

“Oh, really?” I said with a sneer. “How?”

“He will eat them.”

I flinched. “What?”

Clarisse said to me, “You just
had
to ask, didn’t you?”

Hieronymus said, “He will claim hith vi’gin pwize—”

“Gross,” Golly said.

“—and then he will be hungwy and need food. For him, that meanth people.”

“He eats people?” I blurted.

“
Many
people,” Hieronymus said. “Big appetite.”

“
How
many?” There were seven of us…

“A few hundwed a day.”

“Whoa! Let me get this straight,” I said. “You want to rule New York, so you’re trying to summon a demon that will rape a virgin and then eat hundreds of people a day?”

He shrugged. “No pain, no gain.”

“Are you
insane?
” Dolly cried.

“He’s evil,” I said.

“I’m twying to get ahead in a
vewy
competitive town,” Hieronymus said.

I said, “Well, it’s not going to work, you slimy punk. Max is on to you!”

“That pathetic old man?” he said with a sneer. “He ith a fool. I am not afwaid of him.”

I wanted to hit the skinny creep. I wanted to hit him
so
much. Instead I tried to think of a way to distract him. “Forget it, Phil. After half a dozen disappearances, you still haven’t got a virgin. Face facts, you’ll never find one. This is New York, kid!”

“I will engage anotheh conduit! And anotheh, and anotheh! I
will
find a vi’gin.” He looked at Dixie with disgust. “But not tonight.”

Using the leverage of his grip on her arm, he flung her through the archway. She cried out in surprise and flew straight into me, Samson and Dolly. All four of us fell to the ground togethe
r. I got up as fast as I could untangle myself and tried to get through the archway so I could strangle Hieronymus. But I bounced off the invisible barrier again. Samson was right. I could only pass through that thing if Hieronymus willed it. And I could tell by the look on his face that he knew exactly why I wanted to join him in his separate chamber, and he had no intention of letting it happen.

Suddenly his whole body stiffened and he inhaled sharply. “Anotheh…”

“What?” The floor trembled. “Is that the subway?”

“No.” Samson looked distressed. “That happens when…”

The walls started trembling, too.

“Anotheh ith coming!”

Hieronymus closed his eyes and raised his arms. He shouted a few hoarse, guttural words, but otherwise just stood there with his eyes closed, apparently welcoming the new arrival.

The floor and walls were shaking hard now. I felt sick. The air started glowing, and I prayed for unconsciousness as something eerie passed through the air, through me, through my blood. This wasn’t as bad as being translocated, but it was pretty nauseating, even so.

“I
hate
this!” Golly said.

Dixie clung to Dolly as the older woman said, “It’ll be over in a minute, honey, don’t you fret.”

The glowing air started to descend and resolve into a distinct shape on the ground b
etween me and Hieronymus. Its nearness burned my foot. I fell back a few steps. As it became more solid, Hieronymus made a sharp summoning gesture with his hands—and the glowing shape slid closer to him.

“No!” I ran forward, realizing what he was doing. But I couldn’t touch the shape, it was too hot. I tried again anyhow—and this time, I bounced off the invisible barrier. Whoever was being translocated was on the other side of that thing now. Alone in the other chamber with Hieronymus.

When the glow faded, I recognized the new arrival. “Lysander!” He didn’t stir.

He must have entered the mirrored vanishing-box after me, trying to rescue me and Dixie. A terrible coldness flooded me. Where was Max? Still unconscious? Or about to follow Lysander’s path and wind up in the same predicament?

Lysander gasped, choked a little, and then started breathing hard but evenly. His eyelids fluttered and his fingers moved, but he wasn’t in control of his senses yet.

Hieronymus smiled at me. A ghoulishly smug grin. “I’ve found one.”

“No!” I cried.

He kicked Lysander in the head, hard enough to ensure a few minutes of unconsciousness, then bent down, grabbed him under the arms and dragged him away, hauling him around the corner.

“No! Lysander! Hieronymus!
Stop!
”

“What are we going to do?” Dixie asked me.

“Why’s he taking him back there, where we can’t see?” I asked.

“That’s where his altar is,” Samson said. “The one he built to make a virginal offering and summon Avolapek.” After a moment, he added, “The altar’s kind of cool, actually. Very ritualistic. Something like that might be a neat backdrop to design for our show, the next time that Delilah and I start working on a new…oh.” It apparently dawned on him that there might not be a next time.

We heard chanting. It didn’t sound like Latin to me. Greek, perhaps? I didn’t know.

Golly said, “Maybe he can’t do the spell right?”

I said, “We can hope. But I have a feeling that if you’ve got a virgin staked out on your sacrificial altar, a man-eating demon probably overlooks your pronunciation errors.”

Behind me, Alice growled. I glanced over my shoulder to see her pacing nervously. When I looked back into the other chamber, I saw shadows dancing on the walls now. Hieronymus was lighting candles, creating a substantial glow. A pool of light spread gradually across the floor, and the shadows we could see on the wall became more pronounced, more discernible. I could identify Hieronymus moving around while he chanted.