The Neon Jungle (20 page)

He had squatted on the stairs with Vern and he heard the slow creaking as some animal that walked on two legs like a man began to make his cautious way up the stairs. Violator of my house and my pride and my dignity as a man. Someone who waited until the little truck rattled away and who thinks now he is safe from the vengeance of the Lord God Almighty.

And he comes closer and turns down my hall toward my wife, filled with his animal lust, and I cannot keep entirely quiet. I make a small noise and someone near me I have forgotten in this moment puts his hand on my mouth. Then I am still and the one who creeps toward my wife stops and we wait and listen for a sound of each other like animals in the forest darkness. I am still and he walks on and then the one with me fumbles at my hand and my fingers close around the good and familiar handle of the great cleaver, the one kept razor-keen by Rick. It feels good in my hand and by now the animal has had time to reach my wife. I start quietly down, and I am quiet until I reach the hall and then I can be quiet no longer. I run and reach around the doorframe and snap on the light and half blinded I see her eyes and the man who turns is Rick, and as I run at him I swing the good keen weight, swinging it up with all strength and hate, and feel the good deep bite and hear the deep wet sound of the way it bites up into the animal brain of the thing I kept in my house and never knew. And I wrench the blade free as he is falling, his pink hands half lifting as he falls. And her mouth is wide and the cords in her throat stand out and she is sitting, kicking her way back away from me. And I take one step and there is a funny breaking in my chest, with something warm that spreads itself inside there. I am on my knees and the house had tilted so that the floor is a hill that slopes to the window. And I go over face down on the hill slope feeling the warm wetness inside my chest and wondering about it, and at the same time watching the slow rug pattern come up, and come close to my face and strike hard against my cheek, yet without pain. And as I am wondering curiously about these things, the slope becomes steeper and it is very slippery, and I slide down the slope to the dark window and through it and fall down out of the dark window, turning in the air in darkness and thinking that this is something of a great oddness indeed…

He crouched beside Gus on the stairs and together they listened to the silence, and then to the slow creaking as Rick continued on down the hall. He had his hand on Gus’s shoulder and felt the movement of the shoulder muscles. He found Gus’s hand in the darkness and worked the cleaver handle into it and let go cautiously as he felt the shift of weight. He gave a gentle push at the broad old back. The old man went quietly down the stairs, but as he reached the hallway with Vern close behind him, he began to run. Vern ran quickly after him. He saw the room lights shine out into the hall the instant the old man ran through the doorway. Vern stopped in the doorway. He saw the hard swing, matched to the plunging run, and saw Rick’s smile and the soft uplifting of the small hands as the blade hit just under his left ear, upslanting, cutting jaw, brain, and smile. Jana screamed the first time as Rick fell, and she scuttled backward away from the approaching menace of the cleaver. She screamed again and Gus faltered and dropped heavily to his knees, shaking the room, as though the very scream itself had knocked him down. He saw what he had to do quickly and he scampered frantically for the cleaver, snatching it off the floor near the still hand of Gus. She sat back in the corner, eyes squeezed tight shut, chin up, throat taut with the constant nerve-shattering screams. He swung hastily at her but the cleaver tip bit into the wall and the blade stopped an inch from her temple. He wrenched it out and as she began another scream he struck again at the source of the scream, knowing only that he had to make that sound stop.

The sound of the truck driving out awakened Bonny. She thought perhaps it would help Jana if she were to open her door if Vern started out of his room to go down to her. She put on her robe and stood close to her door, listening for any sound. For a long time there was no sound. At last she thought she heard somebody moving about on the floor below. She cautiously opened her door in order to be able to listen a bit better. The slow seconds went by. And then she heard somebody running along the hall below her.

There was then a sound that seemed to come up through the floor. A hard scream of ultimate terror. There was a sound of something heavy falling. Her scalp prickled all over as the scream came quickly on the heels of the last one. Without conscious awareness of how she got there, she found herself at the head of the stairs as the screams kept coming. When she was midway down the stairs the screams stopped and there was a more terrible silence. She hurried down the hall to the patch of light shining through the door. Walter came out into the hall in pajamas too big for him, staring stupidly.

As she reached the doorway she heard the odd sound. She looked into the room. She saw the split melon that had been Rick Stussen’s head. She saw Gus, face down. She saw the man who knelt on the bed. He held a red cleaver in both hands. He struck with solemn intentness, like a small boy hammering nails. For a moment her mind could not encompass the enormity of what she was looking at. She stood and frowned and in the moment of his turning to look at her she was able to focus her mind on what the eyes had already seen. The room turned vague and she swayed sideways against the doorframe.

She would have fainted, she knew, had he not turned and looked at her. He wore a dead face. From the eyes down, the face was utterly, hideously slack, as though all the muscles of cheeks and mouth had been removed. The slack face seemed to hang from the eyes. And the eyes were utterly dull, absorbing all light and reflecting none. And as he started toward her, smeared, stained, hideous out of the charnel stink of the room, she turned and ran for the stairway, wanting only to get out into the night, to run down the dark street.

She blundered hard into Paul Darmond, hearing behind her the bang of the door as Walter popped back into his room. She clawed at Paul as he tried to hold her, and she yelled, “Run! Oh, run!”

His dullness of wit in that moment infuriated her. She heard the familiar clattering sound of the truck coming into the drive and, out front, a hard screech of tires as a car stopped quickly. She knew that she could not bear to scramble past Paul and leave him to face what came down the hallway. Perhaps only a moment passed before he sensed and comprehended the immediacy of the danger. His fingers locked hard on her wrist and they went down the stairs and she could hear it coming after them. It was like one of the nightmare of childhood, like running through glue, your steps a slow drifting, while something comes after, comes nearer.

They went out the front door and across the porch and down the front steps, and Rowell, with the gun in his hand, was one of the most comforting things she had ever seen.

“What is it?” he demanded, his voice unexcited.

“Vern,” she said. “He’s killing them.”

Rowell went across the porch and into the dark house. Paul said, “Wait in his car, Bonny.”

“No. You can’t do anything. There’s nothing you can do. Don’t go back in there.” She was beginning to shake all over, her teeth chattering, wavering as she stood. He put his arm strong abound her shoulders. There were lights on in most of the houses. People had come out on porches in robes and coats.

Another police car came riding in on the siren’s wail and two uniformed men piled out and trotted heavily toward the house and the sound that came out of the open front door stopped them in their tracks. A chittering whinnying sound, a sound of pure madness.

There was a thrashing and a scrambling and silence. The porch light came on and the hall light came on. Rowell appeared in the doorway, his face cramped with pain, nursing his right hand against his stomach.

His voice was ancient and rusty with pain, yet full of authority. “Moran. Get out there and call in. There’s some deads upstairs and a crazy in the hall and I need a doc. I got a busted hand. Bracelet that crazy while he’s still out, Schantz. Wrists
and
ankles. There’s a kid sitting on him.”

Inside the house a woman began to scream. It was not like the other screaming. This was thin, weak, petulant. One cop had trotted out to the prowl car. The other had gone in the house. Walter came hurrying out onto the porch. “The baby’s coming!” he hollered. “The baby’s coming!” Sirens grew in the distance. “Do something, somebody!” Walter yelled.

The intern on the first ambulance, at Rowell’s request, gave his attention first to Doris Varaki. She was sent off in the family sedan, Walter driving.

Paul said to Bonny, “You can’t stay here. I’ll have one of the police sedans drive us to my place.”

“I’m all right. I’ll be all right.”

Rowell said, quite softly, as though explaining to himself, “Not a sound when I went in there. Not a damn sound. Some light coming down the stairs. Then something moves right beside me and as I start to turn around he chops at my hand, chops at the gun with that cleaver. Didn’t know what it was then. Thought is was a club. Handle must have been slippery and turned in his hand, because he broke my hand with the flat of it. Had me trapped then, right against the wall at the foot of the stairs. Saw what he was holding. Saw that face. My God! Never closer to dying. Couldn’t even twitch. Then that punk came out of nowhere. Came in through the back someplace. That pet of yours, Preach. One of those gutless wonders of yours. Oh, damn him! Saw everything in a split second and banged into Lockter so the swing of that cleaver missed my face by a half a whisker. And Lockter turned around and the punk ducked the swing and grabbed him. I came out of the trance and yanked that cleaver away from him. Then the crazy started making those gobbling noises and going for the kid’s eyes with his hands. That punk kid, Paul, he shoved him away and chopped him one right on the button. Oh, God, a pretty punch.”

“That punk kid,” Paul said softly.

Rowell looked up at them. “I know. I know. What am I going to do?”

“Thank him, I’d imagine.”

“Back up, you people!” Moran bellowed. “Nothing to see. Nothing to see here. Back up. Break it up!”

THERE IS A STONE city and in it a gray neighborhood, and in the neighborhood there is a small market, a cement block structure with an umbilical shed attaching it to a large shabby house.

Trade is fairly good these days. People who traded there before the bloody maniacal mess on that soft June night say that all Walter needed to turn him into a man was the sudden hard burden of responsibility. Doris works in the store. She has grown considerably more plump, but that is not unbecoming. She has a sharp tongue, but Walter is able to quiet her infrequent tantrums with a single look or a word. Anna looks after the child, a boy who is just learning to walk, and the more eagle-eyed customers predict another.

There is a new butcher, a quiet, soft-eyed man, but he is not as good as Stussen was. James Dover does a lot of the buying and handles all deliveries and manages also to attend adult-education courses three nights a week at the university. The heavy schedule has leaned him and matured him. He and Teena had no time for a honeymoon. There was talk, of course in the neighborhood, but there would have been more if that hideous night in June had not provided a more drastic subject. But talk falters and dies and time changes things, and in one year a good true thing can be built on marshy ground. Rumor and suspicion dilute the few known facts until at last there is a mere residue of vaguest doubt that can be washed out of the mind of him who chances to see the look in a young bride’s eyes as she looks at the clean strength of her young husband.

As the papers in the newspaper files slowly yellow, the facts are forgotten. A few people remember the four-teen-hour tape recording made from the babblings of the crazy man. One hour of useful information was edited out of that tape. The information had no legal status, of course. Yet it was used to hound those mentioned in the tape until Karshner himself, in an almost apoplectic rage, quiet suddenly died. Certain newspaper correspondents pointed out the wry fact that death came from the bursting of the same great artery that had burst in the thick chest of Gus Varaki.

Certain tentacles of the Johnston wholesale-retail drug organization were chopped off, and the organization suffered a temporary inconvenience. Yet the head of the beast was not touched, and in time new tentacles have grown, extending themselves cautiously through the dark places of the city. New children are learning how to float. Folded packets of hand-hot money are passed in the lobbies of the cheapest movie houses, in alleys, in the men’s rooms of cheap bars, in the candy stores near the high school. It goes on because as yet the rewards are greater than the risk for the conscienceless.

Perhaps, as Bonny believes, for people in the jungle of the city it is a matter of luck. Luck with, as Paul insists, a bit of faith, too. Not a specific faith. Just an ability to believe in something. Luck seems to have come back to the high-shouldered old house and the oblong fluorescence of the market.

Bonny and Paul went there last night at closing time for a reaffirmation of their own faith, their own luck. They are together, and they are married, and they are not as yet happy, though they hope to be. They swing between high peaks of great joy in each other, swing through the valleys of bitterness, of trying to hurt each other. They had to come across the city because they rent one of the faculty houses at the university and hope to furnish it properly with the money from the consultant work Paul is doing outside the classroom. They are not yet sure, either of them, that this marriage will work, yet they are trying to make it work.

They went to the market at closing time and after the door was locked Jim opened some cans of cold beer and the six of them talked for a time. They talked of small things and they laughed together in a good way. At one point Doris brought tension into the place by speaking bitterly of the money that was found in the coin locker with the one clear fingerprint that was identified as Lockter’s, and the impounding of that money, and how it ought to have been turned over to what was left of the Varaki family. Lockter, incurably paranoid, would certainly never see any of it, or see anything beyond the walls of that place where he is kept until the day when he will die, a crazed old man of many visions. But Walter gave her a short harsh look and she returned it for one antagonistic moment before her eyes softened and she smiled at some private secret and began quickly, almost apologetically, to speak of other things.