Petrified (10 page)

She drew back the chain on the door. Jenna said ‘thank you', and stepped into her apartment. The living room was overheated and airless and smelled of lavender potpourri and dust. It was decorated in a style that reminded Jenna of her grandmother's house, with oversized armchairs upholstered in brown brocade, and a swirly brown carpet, and table lamps with pleated brown shades. On the opposite wall hung a large oil painting of crowds of people hurrying across a city street in a rainstorm. The clouds were brown, the buildings were brown, the people's overcoats were brown, and they all carried brown umbrellas.

Mary Lugano sat down in one of the armchairs and fastidiously drew her robe around her knees. Jenna, uninvited, sat down opposite her.

‘My partner said you saw something fly down from the sky. Something like a bird.'

‘I
felt
it, before I saw it.'

‘I'm not sure I understand what you mean by
felt
it.'

‘Well, I was sitting right here, watching
Access Hollywood.
That Mel Gibson, I don't know. The language! You never heard Cary Grant using language like that.'

‘OK, good. You were sitting here watching TV. Then what happened?'

Mary Lugano lifted one hand and slowly fanned it from side to side. ‘I felt something flying over the top of the apartment building, very low. It wasn't an airplane. It wasn't a helicopter. It was almost completely silent except for this kind of a
swoosh
.'

‘You had the TV on, but you heard a kind of a
swoosh
?'

‘I don't know. Don't confuse me. It's not easy to describe it. Maybe I
felt
it more than heard it. But it was like,
swoosh
.'

‘All right. Something flew over the building, whether you heard it or felt it.'

‘That's right. And that was before I actually saw it. It made me shiver, like a goose walking over my grave. It was evil.'

‘Can you be more specific about that?'

‘What do you mean,
specific
? There's nothing specific about evil. Evil is evil. You're a detective, aren't you? Don't tell me that you can't feel evil when it passes close by.'

‘OK. You felt that it was evil. Then what happened?'

Mary Lugano looked up. ‘That was when I heard a thump.
Thump
! Real loud, like the time when my Jessie was run over.'

‘Your Jessie?'

‘My lovely golden Labrador. That was when my husband, Charlie, was alive and we lived in Bryn Mawr. Poor Jessie. The trouble was she couldn't hear too good. A truck came speeding down the street and she ran out right in front of it.'

‘I see. I'm sorry. So – anyhow – you heard a thump?'

‘Like I say, it was real loud. So loud that it literally
shook
the walls! Then right afterward I heard screaming. A man screaming, but just like a woman screams. Hysterical. And then this thing flew right past my window.'

‘Can you describe it to me, this thing?'

‘First, I only saw a shadow. It flew past the window this way, right to left, so quick that I couldn't make out what it was. But I ran to the window and I could see it circle around. It had wings, more like a bat's wings than a bird's wings; and it had two nubby horns on the top of its head; and eyes like Don Rickles.'

‘You mean, like, protruding?'

Mary Lugano nodded.

‘How big would you say this thing was?'

‘It was big. I don't know. A whole lot bigger than any bird I ever saw. It circled around and then it flapped its wings a couple of times – like the sail on a sailboat when it catches a crosswind – and it was gone. Back upward, headed for the roof.'

‘What color was it?'

‘Black, I think. Or a very dark gray.'

‘Did it have a beak like a bird?'

‘I didn't really see. But its face was kind of pointy. More like a monkey than a bird. And it had a long thin tail like a monkey.'

Jenna jotted this down in her notebook. Then she looked across at Mary Lugano and said, ‘Have a guess, Mrs Lugano – what do
you
think it was?'

Mary Lugano slowly shook her head from side to side. ‘I have absolutely no idea. It reminded me of the flying monkeys in
The Wizard of Oz
, you know? It scared me. It really scared me, the way those flying monkeys did when I was a little girl.'

‘OK . . .' said Jenna. ‘Do you mind my asking you if you're on any kind of medication?'

‘What are you trying to suggest?' Mary Lugano demanded. ‘Are you trying to say that I was seeing things? The only medication I ever take is Celebrex, for my osteoarthritis, and nobody ever had hallucinations from taking Celebrex, not so far as I know. Besides – Mr Keiller, he saw it too, and so did that Japanese lady. And all of that screaming, that screaming was no hallucination. Neither was all of that blood.'

‘So the flying monkey thing flew up to the roof. Then what happened?'

‘I heard a man shout. Just once. Then another thump, not so loud as the first thump, but loud all the same. Then I felt the thing fly away.'

‘You
felt
it fly away? You didn't actually see it?'

‘No. Only felt it. I never in my life felt anything like that before. It was horrible. It was like all of the worst things you ever dreaded, all in one. So
cold
, you know? Like I said before, it made me shiver. But then it was gone.'

‘That was when you went up to the roof?'

‘I waited for a short while, just in case. But then I picked up my walking stick and stepped out of my door, and there was Mr Keiller from seventeen twenty-three just coming out of the elevator. He said to me, “Did you hear screaming?” and I told him I sure did. And then another gentleman appeared from downstairs, I don't know his name, but I think he used to conduct an orchestra before he retired. He said that he had heard screaming, too, although he hadn't seen anything fly past his window.

‘I asked Mr Keiller if he had seen anything, and he said yes, like a darn great flying lizard, that's the way that he described it. A darn great flying lizard, with horns. Well, he didn't actually say “darn”. He used another word.'

‘So all three of you went up to the roof to find out what had happened?'

‘That's right. Mr Keiller went first. He used to be a Marine, back in the day. Well, he's seventy-something now, but he's a big fellow and he still looks tough. We climbed the stairs and went out on the roof. At first I couldn't work out what the hell had happened up there. But then Mr Keiller took hold of my arm and said, “Don't look. Go straight back down to your apartment and call the police.” Of course when he said “don't look” the first thing I did was to look, and that was when I saw a man's head, off to my left here, and a part of a leg, off to my right, and so much
blood
.'

Jenna said, ‘I'm sorry you had such an upsetting experience, Mrs Lugano.'

‘
Upsetting
? You have no idea! I'm going to be having nightmares about it for the rest of my life.'

‘All the same, would you mind if I sent a sketch artist around tomorrow morning? It would really help if we had some kind of visual impression of what this flying monkey thing looked like.'

‘I guess so, if you have to. All I want to do is forget all about it.'

Jenna stood up. ‘Let me just ask you one more thing, Mrs Lugano. That feeling you had. That
cold
feeling. Did you ever have a feeling like that before?'

Mary Lugano looked up at her. She paused a long time before she answered.

‘Only once,' she said, ‘when my Charlie died. I'd been sitting at his bedside all afternoon, reading to him, even though he was sleeping for most of the time. Around four o'clock, though, I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. I was right in the middle of pouring it out when I went so cold that I started to shake. I knew right away that my Charlie had gone. His soul had been stolen right out of him while I was out of the room. Death had sneaked in and paid him a visit and there was nothing in the bed but a body that looked like Charlie. It took me a long, long time to feel warm again, I can tell you.'

‘I'm sorry, Mrs Lugano. I didn't mean to distress you. Thank you for your time.'

Mary Lugano stood up and accompanied Jenna to the door. ‘Do you have any idea what this flying thing is?' she asked her, before she opened it. ‘I mean, do the police have any idea? Did something escape from the zoo? Something that they don't want us to know about?'

‘I don't have a clue what it could be, Mrs Lugano. I only hope that whatever it is, it's flown off for good, and won't come back.'

‘I wouldn't count on it,' said Mary Lugano. ‘I get the feeling that it's circling around, looking to catch somebody else. That's what evil does, doesn't it? It circles, waiting for its moment. Just like Death did, when Death sneaked in to steal my Charlie.'

Jenna took the elevator down to Aartment 1723 where Kenneth Keiller and Christine Takenaka were waiting for her, along with Dan and two police officers. A forty-inch plasma TV was flickering silently in the background, tuned to
Everybody Loves Raymond
.

Kenneth Keiller was a huge man who almost filled the whole living room. He was at least six feet three inches tall and he must have weighed close to three hundred pounds. Once he had obviously had a bodybuilder's physique, but beer, pepperoni pizza and lack of exercise had taken their toll, and his belly hung over his belt like a small boy sleeping in a hammock. His head was shaven and his face was as podgy as the Laughing Buddha's.

Christine Takenaka was tall for a Japanese woman, flat chested and very thin. She had long black hair and the kind of features that made her look permanently vexed.

‘My partner here tells me that you saw the creature pretty good, Mr Keiller,' said Jenna.

‘It was only for a second,' Kenneth Keiller told her. ‘It flashed right past my window and it must have been doing ninety clicks an hour, minimum.'

‘But you still saw it quite clearly?'

‘It was some species of lizard, in my opinion. I saw them when I was stationed in the Philippines, in the jungle. The locals call them dragon lizards, but they're only small, maybe twenty centimeters from nose to tail at most. But this one was a heck of a lot bigger than that. This one was fricking enormous. And it had horns on top of its head. And look what it did to those two poor bastards on the roof.'

‘We don't conclusively know that the creature was responsible for that.'

‘Oh, no? What else could have smashed them apart like that? It couldn't have been a heely-copter because we would have heard it. And to tell you the truth, they looked exactly like they'd been hit by a truck, except how do you get a truck to the top of a twenty-two story apartment block?'

‘Well, we're still collecting evidence,' said Jenna. She took out her notebook again. ‘Can you tell me what color it was, this creature?'

‘I don't know. Brownish, I think. Brown or gray, maybe more like khaki.'

‘Could you describe it to a sketch artist for me? I'm sending one round here tomorrow morning.'

‘Sure thing. Any time. I'm never doing nothing much, except watching TV.'

‘How about you, Ms Takenaka? Could you describe it?'

Christine Takenaka shook her head so that her silky black hair swung from side to side. ‘I saw only the creature's shadow.'

‘OK . . . But what size was this shadow? What sort of shape was it? Mr Keiller here thinks it looked like a flying lizard. Mrs Lugano upstairs says it looked like one of the flying monkeys from
The Wizard of Oz
. How did it appear to you?'

‘It frightened me.'

‘It frightened you? Why? What was so scary about it?'

Christine Takenaka raised her left hand to cover her eyes, as if she didn't want Jenna to see how upset she was.

‘It reminded me of a story that my grandmother used to tell me when I was a small girl in Osaka. She told me about the
obake
, the things that change.'

‘The things that change? I'm not too sure I follow you.'

‘Shape-shifters, that's what they call them, isn't it? My grandmother said that they were demons that looked like statues most of the time; but now and then they would suddenly come to life and fly out across the countryside. They would search for children who had been disobedient and disrespectful to their elders, and once they had found these children they would snatch them in their claws and fly away with them. Next day their bodies would be found in a field someplace, all torn into pieces, and their hearts missing.'

‘Nice bedtime story to tell your granddaughter,' said Jenna.

Kenneth Keiller said, ‘You're not kidding. Jesus. My dad used to read me
Suck-a-Thumb
, and that was scary enough. The long red-legged scissorman, cutting your fricking thumbs off. Jesus.'

Christine Takenaka lowered her hand. She looked at Jenna as if she was urgently searching for reassurance. ‘My grandmother said that you could always tell if one of the
obake
was after you, because of its shadow. She said they had wings like dragons and long tails. If you saw a shadow like that on the ground beside you, you should never look up –
never look back,
she told me,
never look up
!
Run as fast as you can to the
nearest shelter
!

‘Once, when I was walking home from school, I thought I saw a shadow like that crossing the path in front of me. Maybe I was mistaken and it was only a bird. A black kite, maybe. Black kites are always trying to steal food. But my heart almost stopped from fright. I ran all the way home and by the time I ran into my mother's arms I was too scared even to scream.'

‘So what are you trying to say to me?' Jenna asked her. She was feeling deeply tired now, but she could tell that Christine Takenaka was desperate to explain what she had seen.