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Chapter Fifteen

It took us two hours to walk two miles. Something about being noncorporeal and being disconnected from the physical plane seemed to put us into a different time/space continuum and bollixed up moving from one point of reference to another. We made deep sea divers look like Olympic sprinters.

There were other issues as well.

"Okay," I said as I looked up at the predawn sky, "I think I've got the basics down: noncorporeality versus surface tension, electromagnetic radiation versus synaptic cohesion, dimensional overlaps."

"Really?" The Kid thrust his hands into his Captain Kangaroo pockets and shook his head. "And here I thought I was giving with the lowdown on how to make the haunty scene."

"If you really want to give me the lowdown, you could tell me where I'm supposed to go now. Heaven? Hell? Purgatory? Paradise?"

"Hey, just because lots of people told me where to go when I was undead don't make me no tour guide now that I'm all phantomy. Dead ain't the same as undead."

He was plainly spooked—no pun intended—and I figured that if someone like The Kid could be afraid long past the point of having a life to hang onto, my chances of R.I.P.ing were sure to get ripped up before the ectoplasm settled. Still, there was no point in getting grave before the grave was actually dug. "Don't fret, Junior," I said, trying to clap his nonexistent shoulder, "you're still the ghost with the most."

He brightened. And I mean that literally. "Thanks, Big Daddy. It's been rough trying to work this out on my own. Now that you're here, I figure on having some kind of purpose."

"Besides annoying me for eternity?"

"Aw, man . . ." He grinned but the smile faded in reverse Cheshire style and he looked away. "See, here's the thing. I been around almost a century, alive and undead, but when I finally get dusted, I dunno whether to be pissed off 'cause I'm so mad or piss on myself 'cause I'm so scared."

"I can relate," I said, thinking that the reality of my own demise had yet to sink in.

"You? You're in a smooth groove. Don't nothin' rattle you even when you buy the big one. Here you're dead without even cashing your three-score-and-ten and you're just as cool as a cucumber. What's your secret, Stan?"

"Spook softly, Junior, and carry a big shtick." I didn't explain that this was a euphemism for maintaining denial and stalling for time.

"Good advice," he decided. "Especially since the sun will be coming up soon. We need to find some shelter and hunker down."

"Why? Do the dead undead burst into flame?" Dead undead? Sounded better than "undead dead . . ."

"What? No. At least I don't think so. It's just that we ghostly types get all watered down and fadey when the sun comes up. Go blind and can't hardly move. Kinda like Superman and kryptonite, ya know?"

"That's what I meant when I said electromagnetic radiation. Maybe I should have called it photonic sensitivity."

"No matter how you dress it up with the fancy language, Chief, daylight can mess with you real good!"

"But does it destroy us? Or just stun us until nightfall?"

"Don't think I want to find out. 'Specially since there's worse things—" He was interrupted by pale fingers of sunlight sliding between the buildings to our left. The night was turning into dark bars of shadow—slabs of darkness that were starting to seep back down into the cellars and basements around us. The Kid stiffened. "Oh crap! It's later than I thought!"

He grabbed at my hand and tried to pull me off the street. His fingers passed through mine again and he staggered through a lamppost. "We've got to get inside!" he said.

"Hey, if I'm dead, what's left for me to be afraid of?"

As if in answer to my question, someone started screaming off in the distance—two or three someones. One of the voices abruptly choked off but the volume of the remaining terror continued to grow. Something came around the corner three blocks ahead of us.

The Kid was doing everything he could to grab onto me and tug me toward the nearest building. "Come on, we gotta scram! They're coming!"

"Who's coming?" The sudden flash of sunlight was dazzling me, making it hard to think.

Two men were coming toward us, running full tilt, but moving in slow motion like the inhabitants of a languid dream. They wore rumpled suits of indeterminate color, the hues bleached out by their flickering transparency. While they moved like film stock slowed down to half-speed, the shrieks emanating from their open mouths were high-pitched like audio set on fast-forward.

"Cséjthe!" The Kid bellowed. "Run!"

I took a step. My foot came up like it was coming loose from hot tar.

Something else came around the corner. It wasn't moving in slow motion.

"Get off the street!" The Kid was shrieking.

The thing that was coming around the corner was joined by two more things. "Things" were the best I could come up with at first. Perhaps they were a trio of creatures, perhaps three distinct "swarms" of many creatures. Whatever they were, they were as scary as hell!

Although the man in front wasn't moving particularly fast, his companion was falling further and further behind. The creatures were gaining on both.

"Cséjthe, don't look at them! Look at me! Run toward me!"

The Kid's words barely penetrated. I was seized with an overwhelming urge to run in the opposite direction. I took another gummy step.

The Old Testament prophet Ezekiel described heavenly beings which resembled wheels within wheels, amalgams of eyes and wings. As they whirled closer, these creatures looked more like the cartoon Tasmanian Devil in full spin mode, only with red eyes and green talons and flashing silver blades.

They caught up to the slower of the two runners in moments, surrounding him like a trio of unholy dust devils. The shrieking intensified, the sound coming from dozens of throats instead of just two. A sound like the howling of the wind—containing multiple velocities, the din of horn and bone and metal all rubbing together with a high-pitched chittering overlaying all. The spinning accelerated and the creatures began tumbling like multilayered gyroscopes made of teeth and claws and spines of rust-spattered iron. Faster and faster they fluttered and flashed, tightening their orbits. Then they rushed together like colliding cuisinarts and the runner at the center disappeared in an explosion of fog and vapor, his screams fading down a long invisible tunnel.

My equanimity evaporated, as well: I turned and began a sticky, slow-motion sprint toward The Kid and the dubious shelter of a flimsy steel and stone building.

The howlingwhirlingshrieking sound off to my left intensified and began to grow in volume as I pushed my feet against the gummy pavement and clawed at the air in an attempt to pull my way forward. With each step my feet seemed to sink a little deeper into the gelatinous asphalt and I fancied I could feel the hint of a breeze against my neck, the backwash of air from the razored Turbines of the Damned as they closed in for their second kill.

The Kid was backing into the outer wall of the building, merging with the stone surface like an entertainer taking his final curtain call. Only there was nothing entertaining in his eyes. They were wide and haunted, eyes that had seen many deaths over the long decades and looked as if they were only really seeing it for the very first time now.

The shrieking intensified behind me and I knew that they had caught up with the second runner just as he was catching up with me. He began to gibber and howl as my toes sank through the edge of the sidewalk and I knew that I had less than a minute before they were upon me, as well.

Don't listen   

 

Don't think  

 

Focus  

 

See the ground as solid  

 

Believe yourself to be as solid as you are real  

 

The voice inside my head wasn't my own but I wasn't inclined to argue. I pushed against firmer ground and accelerated toward the wall where J.D. was submerging into a sea of rock and mortar.

The screaming began in earnest as I leapt across the sidewalk and hurtled into the stone wall.

Except I didn't pass into the wall, I smacked up against it!

I had gained the advantage of a more substantial reality, only to find it shutting me out just short of the finish line.

Okay, okay; not solid! Not real! I thought furiously as I scrabbled against the side of the building. I am such things as dreams are made of . . . a shadow of a thought . . . a fog . . . a mist . . . the reflection of fog or mist! This time the voice in my head was my own and much less convincing. The wall seemed a bit soft but still impenetrable. The sounds of vorpal blades behind me went snicker-snack!

Lemme in! I mind-shouted, pummeling the marshmallow stones with transparent fists. I'm Casper the Friggin' Ghost! The Phantom of the Grand Ole Opera! The Spirit of X-Men Yet To Come! 

The screaming dissolved into tatters of sound that echoed like an army of mice falling down a deep, dark well. The whirring and clicking grew louder and now there was an unmistakable disturbance in the air against my back.

I leaned into the wall, unwilling to turn and face the horrors that were closing in on me.

Something tugged at my left wrist and I lost my balance.

I fell into darkness.

* * *

I stared at a multitude of feet as they padded around on the carpeted floor. I stared because they were at eye level for me and I wasn't quite ready to leap to my own feet, yet. J.D.'s feet were just a couple of feet away. But they were turned the wrong way. I knew they were his feet because nobody else was wearing transparent two-tone broughams. The rest of the feet in the room were bare but solid. They were also feminine—for the most part. I looked up.

We were in a ladies locker room.

"Which explains," I observed, "why you're paying no attention to me even though I've just narrowly escaped death."

"How can you escape death—narrowly or otherwise—when you're already dead?" he asked, concentrating on the new arrivals from the shower room.

"Aye, there's the rub."

"What? A massage?"

I ignored that. The Kid was probably pulling my leg. Probably, but I couldn't be completely sure, given our current issues of corporeality. "What the hell were those things?"

Perhaps I should have been more specific: The Kid obviously had other "things" on his mind, now. But, after a moment, he grunted and said: "Threshers."

"What? As in bringing in the sheaves?"

He shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe. I thought they was angels the first time I seen 'em."

"As well you might," I said. "'As for their rings, they were so high they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four. And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.'"

"Now yer scarin' me!"

"Because you think they're angels?"

"No. Because you can quote chunks of the Old Testament right outta thin air. I already figured they might be the Big G's huntin' dogs. And if they're angels, well I don't figure on ever going into the Light. I'll take my chances with the Dark."

"So what do these wheelie things do exactly?"

"Exactly? Look-it . . . all I know is they come in the sunrise. They sweep through the open spaces like the Wild Hunt, looking for disconnected spirits—those who haven't moved on to wherever it is that we're supposed to go next."

"Earthbound spirits?"

"Yeah. If you ain't tied to your body, you're fair game. They tear you up and some of 'em even burn the pieces! I seen 'em do it a couple of times now! It's horrible!"

And that was all that he knew. Or wanted to know.

Me? I was wondering if they were intelligent beings with a higher purpose—like sending unanchored spirits on to their final destinations. Or maybe they were just something feral, bestial, stalking the afterlife for the remnants of consciousness like dire wolves of the damned. While I had never bought into the cartoon depictions of clouds and harps and halos, I had scarcely imagined the flipside of "Life After Life" being "Death After Death."

The Kid had cause to be scared. Apparently I did, too.

I sighed and started to get up. It wasn't easy with barely dressed women walking about. Even harder when one walked through me. Woooo: a pulse of warm darkness, a flash of a boardroom meeting, and a condensed internal debate over the office politics of looking too good or not looking good enough. She passed on and so did my little trip down Memory Lane Bryant.

"Unlax, Doc; you're safe now," he said as I staggered to my feet. "The Threshers won't bother us in here. We're safe as long as we stay put until nightfall."

"Nightfall?"

"Yeah. Ain't it a bitch?" A couple of towels hit the floor. "Too bad we can't go anywhere without risking afterlife and limb." His tone belied his disappointment.

I stumbled over to an unoccupied bench. I sat down and promptly fell through it to the floor. Why didn't I keep on falling? As that thought coalesced I felt the floor start to give beneath my derriere. Solid! Solid! Very hard floor! I thought furiously as I bounded to my feet.

And a solid bench, too!  

I sat again—gingerly this time—and stayed in place. "So, these—Threshers—you call them?"

He shook his head. "I don't call 'em, Chief. That's what some other spook was tellin' me—hey now, pretty mama! No need to be shy! Just us girls in here so why don't you turn around?"

"Come on, Junior." I snapped my fingers but they made no sound. "A little focus, here. What are they? Where do they come from? Where do they go? How do you know they won't come in here?"

"Don't know much." He came over and sat beside me as most of the exposed flesh disappeared beneath street clothes. "I mean, how do you research things like that? They come with the light, disappear with the dark. They're the reason we go bump in the night instead of haunt around the clock. The only way to be safe is to stay out of the light."

"Don't go into the light, Carolann!" I mimicked in a falsetto voice.

The Kid stared at me.

"It's—um—a movie. Poltergeist? There's this—okay, never mind. How do you know we're safe in here? We're still in the light."

The Kid gazed up at the fluorescent tubes that hummed overhead. "I dunno. Don't think it's the same thing as that sailor photography."

"Solar photonic sensitivity."

"Whatever. Besides, I don't think they can pass through solid walls."

"Hmmm." I stared down at the floor. Dipped a translucent toe in the concrete. "Hey, Junior?"

"Yeah?"

"I gotta point out that 'don't think' isn't the same as 'know for a fact.' But here is something that I do know for a fact: women don't pass through solid walls."

"So?"

"So, there were close to a dozen in here a little while ago. How did they get in and out?"

The Kid's eyes grew big as the concept of doors and windows jumped into the equation. Then he forced a smile. "H-hey, Big Daddy, I don't think these things can fit through any human-sized openings."

"Again with the 'don't think'."

"Look-it, they haven't followed us in or they'd have been here by now. We're safe and sound, right where we are. Nobody can see us. Nobody can hear us. Nobody can mess with us!"

I grunted. "That's what Polyphemus said."

"Poly who?"

"The Cyclops. He learned that, in the country of the one-eyed giant, Odysseus was king."

"I don't get it," J.D. said as the last of the ladies closed her locker and exited the changing area. "I thought it was supposed to be something about the one-eyed man bein' king in a country full of blind men."

I thought of spending eternity babysitting The Kid. Maybe this was Hell nor was I out of it. "Look, Junior, the floor show's over. Let's move on. I got a body to catch up to and time's a-wasting."

He scowled—maybe at me, maybe at the emptiness of the room. "Now who's not payin' attention? We can't go nowhere during the day unless you want to get up close and personal with one of the ghost grinders out there!"

"Maybe," I said. "Maybe not. There might be some ways of getting around without risking exposure. We could try some things."

"We could end up deader than we already are!"

"Look," I insisted, "I am not going to spend the rest of the day cowering in a ladies' locker room."

"Who's cowering?"

"Leering, then. Having slipped the bonds of the flesh I'm surprised you still have any vestiges of its appetites."

He looked at me as if I was from another planet. Maybe I was. "Hey, the day I stop looking will be the day that I'm—"

"Dead?"

We both turned toward the sound of the new voice. Something crouched at the end of one of the benches. It was dim and shadowy and suggested something vaguely manlike.

"Er," The Kid said, "hello. Come here often?"

"Best peepshow in this part of town," the new scrim shady murmured. It had a low, smooth voice that lapped against one's ears like an oil spill. "You can't beat a woman's locker room for balancing quantity and quality."

"Come again?"

"Would that I could," the voice purred. "You can't beat the meat when there's nothing left to greet."

"Come on, Junior," I made a grab for his arm with all of the success of Anna Kournikova taking on the Williams sisters at Wimbledon, "let's go."

"Do you know what Hell is?" There was a shadowy movement, the suggestion of a dim head being shaken as if to imply of course you don't; you're still too new at this to understand anything.

"Sartre suggested that Hell is other people," I said.

"Yeah. Yeah! That's it exactly. Hell is other people. Take my harem . . ."

The Kid perked right up. "Harem?"

"I start my rounds at 4:30—in the a.m., you know. Brunette, a couple of blocks from here."

"Handy," I murmured.

"And leggy," he agreed. "I think she's a stockbroker. Wears these businesslike suit-and-shirt tops but likes the short skirts. And boy, do they like her! Shaves her legs every morning in the bath. And it takes awhile because her legs go all the way up to her—"

"Okay," I said, "we get the picture."

"Oh, it's more than a picture, my friend. It's performance art. A 3-D movie with Sensurround seating and unrestricted viewing. Everything else is choice. But the legs are the main attraction. Best I've ever seen and I seen a lot—hundreds before and tens of thousands since—"

"You died . . . ?" I offered, filling in the blank.

"Just sayin' I know what I'm sayin'."

"Because you're a connoisseur."

"Damn right. I'm normally not here this early because it takes so long for her to slide that razor all the way up from her ankles to her—"

"So you travel after the sun comes up?" He had my full attention now.

"What do you think?"

I wanted to know how he moved about in daylight without fearing photonic paralysis or the Threshers. I think I wanted to follow him out of here whistling "Me and my Shadow" . . . so I wasn't about to tell him what I really thought underneath it all. Still, if I had been in full possession of my flesh it would have been crawling by now.

"—called in sick this morning and went back to bed so no early show today. At least I can always depend on the health clubs. The old and fat ones are automatic no-shows. Perfection is rare but at least these broads are trying to refine the product."

"The product," I said.

"And even if there's a fair number of skanks, the volume of members guarantees a few worthwhile shows each day."

"Shows," I said.

"For lunch I head down to The Village where this lezbo couple get together every day for a nooner. The strawberry blonde is actually bi and married and gives it to her old man every Friday night after dinner out on the town—it's pretty much like clockwork, a sure bet. But I digress . . ."

"Early evenings I like to drop by Blondes-in-a-Box. It's what I call this apartment over—well, that's a trade secret. Two secretaries, both blondes, share the rent but they're straight so they got their own beds. They actually time-share with a stew who comes in and uses the fold-out couch two to three nights a week. She's blonde, too. After work, it's time to come home, change, bathe, shower, shave—three pairs of legs that can't hold a candle to the stockbroker but, hey, a little variety is a good thing and the razor always moves toward the same destination. By the time the bathroom is empty, the strip clubs are kicking into high gear." The shadow seemed to turn to The Kid. "Hey, I know what you're thinking . . ."

Looking at Junior's face it would be difficult to not know what he was thinking. If "thinking" was truly the appropriate term, here.

"Anybody can go to a strip joint. The real action, as the Silver Fox used to sing, is what goes on behind closed doors. That may be true but I bet ole Charley never watched a pole dance from ground zero. And the bouncers tend to keep the backstage area off limits to anybody with a body. Hey, let me give you the real tour tonight! I can show you who's hot and who's not—especially after the stage show!"

"Actually, I'm more interested in the daylight tour," I said.

"Sorry. The daylight tour's private. Strip clubs, health clubs—open memberships. When it comes to private residences, you gotta collect your own petting zoo."

That did it. "Look, you pathetic sack of ectojism, I could care less about your perverted little corner of Hell—"

"Hell?"

"Hell, yes! Hell! Filling your hours, your days, your own little corner of eternity with an endless round of peep shows. Never mind that you're violating the privacy of the living; is this how you plan on spending the rest of your afterlife? Always looking backward? Always lusting after what you can't have? What you can't touch?"

"Well, if you don't like it," the dark space shot back, "just take your snooty friend, there, and leave."

"Watch who yer callin' snooty," The Kid snapped.

"Not you. The other one. Behind him."

We both turned. If there was someone behind me, he was invisible. The three of us appeared to be alone in the ladies locker room.

But not for long: the outer door eased open. A little Hispanic girl entered, dragging a pink backpack by a broken shoulder strap behind her.

"Okay, look," I said, "I just want to know how you get around the city while the sun is still out."

"I don't know how I could explain it to you, you being so superior to me and all."

I sighed and closed my eyes. It didn't work so well when your eyelids—assuming you still had any—were all transparent. I wondered, briefly, if I might be able to concentrate on visualizing myself and our shadowy pervert as being a little more corporeal. That way I might be able to kick his dim ass until he told me something that I actually wanted to hear.

"Um, chief?" The Kid was making an equally ineffective attempt to tug on my noncorporeal sleeve. I looked where he was looking.

The little caramel-colored girl was standing a few feet from the door, staring at the space we occupied as if she could either hear or see us. She couldn't have been more than six, maybe a precocious five.

"Do you think—?"

I shrugged. "I'm the newbie, here. You tell me."

The door opened again and the child's mother came in, toting a large tote bag.

She had high cheekbones suggesting Aztlan blood in her Spanish heritage and a thundercloud of black hair that crackled with a storm of static electricity. Her eyes tilted in a mysterious, exotic fashion and she had an elegant air that seemed at odds with the sweatshirt tucked into the overalls that lapped over a pair of cheap sneakers.

"Yeah! Now that's the kind of thing worth waiting around for!" the spook enthused. "I may have just found me a new addition to Merve's Harem!"

Which meant he'd be following her home when she finished her workout.

Now I was in a quandary. I had pretty much reached the limits of my tolerance for keeping company with Merve the Perv. It wasn't just the "ick" factor; there was something also infinitely sad about his voyeurism, a succession of libidinous peep shows that occupied his every waking minute, encounters without hope of any possibility of physical consummation. Not exactly Sartre's take on "Hell as Other People" but a perverse twist of French existentialism all the same.

That was Merve's Hell. What Hell waited for me now that I had shuffled off this mortal coil? And how long before I recognized it? Or was I already caught in its embrace and doomed to be as eternally clueless as Merve?

In addition to my growing desire to quit our shadowy companion's company was my growing discomfort with our present hideout. Despite the purity of our motives—or mine, at least—I was vastly uncomfortable loitering in the ladies locker room.

But if spooky ole Merve was going to follow his latest obsession home through the bright light of day, I needed to hang around to see how it was done.

As mom opened the locker, the shadow moved in closer for a front-bench seat. I retreated to the far end of the room to weigh my options. The Kid followed. "Hey, chief," he murmured, "maybe we should check out the rest of the building."

"Really." I gave him "the eye." At least I think I did. I wasn't sure about any of the physical business anymore.

"Hey, I like to look at the ladies as much as the next guy but I ain't no pedal-file!"

"Good point, junior. We can always cover the exits and follow him when he leaves." I looked back at the Hispanic woman as she unhooked the straps of her overalls. If motherhood had enhanced her figure, trips to the gym were keeping it from becoming too enhanced. Her cinnamon skin practically glowed with health. I blinked. And, for a moment, saw the traceries of veins and capillaries, pulsing like threads of golden light, a subdural doily of toaster wires carrying the burning essence around her body again and again as her heart stroked the ancient rhythm of the dance of life.

I was powerless to move as she pulled the sweatshirt up and over her head. Her hair crackled with additional lightning as the collar combed her thundercloud tresses into an expanding nimbus of dark energy. But my eyes weren't drawn to the private lots of flesh, the secret places kept hidden from the purview of the world and the gaze of strangers. Don't get me wrong: I could certainly appreciate this sculpture of muscle and skin and feminine ripeness—this Venus de Milo in ochre and burnt umber. But I would admire that as an aesthete, beauty for beauty's sake, sans the passion of carnality.

Sans the lust of the beast.

Or so I thought as my gaze moved from the private to the public sector, traveling over swell and then up slope, across incline, and climbing the shelf, the wall, the cliff, the side of the neck. A pulse fluttered there like a plucked string, the echo of life's sweet music, an eddy in the swirling lights of her flesh.

And something did seem to stir in my own depths. Through dimensions I thought left behind, elements that could only be nonexistent, came a feeling that was impractical—even blasphemous—for anyone and anything inhabiting this plane.

Perhaps I had left elements of my humanity behind.

But I had brought the Stain into the next world with me.

Merve might spend eternity with his nose pressed to the metaphysical glass of every peepshow in town but where must I eventually be drawn? Back to the demesne where I could watch my fellow blood-drinkers dine? Or, perhaps, haunt the night shift at various hospital emergency rooms? If my spectral thirst grew, perhaps I would head south, looking for the killing fields of some Central American junta . . .

Perhaps the Threshers were God's mercy to the deceased, after all.  

"What is it, Honey?" The mother didn't actually say that. Or she did, but she said it in Spanish. Which I suddenly understood a lot better than I should have, given the years that had passed since my grade school language lessons on the classroom TV.

The little girl continued to stare as if she could actually see us, turning her head here and there as if she were following our conversation, as well. Now that my attention was turned back to her, I could see that she glowed, as well. Only she was enveloped in an outline of blue light. It surrounded her like a second skin.

"Are they here?" the mother asked.

The little girl nodded. "Only not the same ones. These are different."

"Are they like the others?"

She cocked her head, regarding the bench where Merve perched, then the far corner where J.D. and I had retreated to. "One is. The others are kinda sad. Except for the fairy."

"Well," said her mother, in that matter-of-fact way that parents have of discussing monsters in the closet and boogie men under the bed, "you just do what your grandmama told you." She reached into her tote bag and pulled out a spray bottle.

It looked like one of those brand-name cleaners with the label torn off. It was a white plastic container with a nozzle and a pull-trigger handle. A decal of the Virgin Mary was pasted lopsidedly on the side so that only the original letters FOR and 09 were visible to either side.

"Go away!" the child shouted in our direction. "You shouldn't be in here! It's just for girls!"

"That's why I'm here, darlin'. Tell your mommy—"

Merve was under the impression that she couldn't actually hear him any more than she could see him. I certainly hoped not considering the miasma that was pouring out of this man-shaped sack of darkness. But she made a face as if she actually could and said: "You're nasty! Go away!" And then she pointed the spray bottle right at his misty mug as if she could see him and gave the trigger a couple of confident pulls. The spray hissed through the vague shadow of his head like he wasn't even there.

A moment later he wasn't.

He was up and running around the room, shrieking like one of those car alarms that invites a sledgehammer solution at two in the morning.

Just before he went barreling through the outer wall I noticed something. While his outline hadn't been too distinct to begin with, his head was even less so, now. As a shadow fades with the coming of the sun or a fog disperses into wisps of vapor, his cranial area seemed to be dissolving like a blot of grease in a cleaning commercial.

Although he passed from sight, we could still hear his cries through the muffled barrier of brick and steel. I started to follow him but stopped as his shrieks turned to screams and the deadly whines of multiple Threshers became audible.

So much for learning the secret of Merve's Voyeurs to the Bottom and go See . . .

"Are they gone, honey? Did grandmama's philter work?" the mother asked.

"The nasty man's gone but there's still three others."

I looked around, did a hasty head count, only came up with two including myself. "The girl can't add," I murmured.

"Mebbe not, chief," The Kid observed, "but she sure knows how to subtract. I vote we blow this joint."

I nodded. "Since she's between us and the door, we're gonna have to make our own. But inner walls, only! The coffee grinders of the gods are still outside."

We took a step toward the inner row of lockers but the girl said, "Oh, no you don't!" and twisted the nozzle. This time she shot a stream of liquid instead of a misty spray. I looked at the wet line that was drawn across the wall and the floor. I blinked and it suddenly seemed to glow orange with a pulsing viciousness. I blinked again: a clear fluid, maybe water. Blink: the orange juice of death. Blink: water.

"I think we're in trouble, here," The Kid said.

"My mother always said the company I kept would get me into trouble."

"Nyuk . . . nyuk. I'm thinking we're not going to do any better in trying for the door."

"Doubtful. How about the basement?"

"Basement?"

"Yeah," I said as she gave the nozzle another twist, "I think our best bet is down."

He shook his head. "Not if there ain't no basement!"

The nozzle tracked our way. "Well, we can't stay here!" I dived into the floor thinking, not solid, not solid!

It was like jack-knifing through marshmallow paste.

Then emptiness.

Solid, I thought, solid!

I came to rest on the basement floor. The Kid was right behind me.

"Shit!" he said. "She nearly got me! If there hadn't been a basement here . . ." He shuddered.

"What?" I managed to wobble back up to my feet: no easy feat when nothing else is solid enough to use as leverage. "What if there hadn't been a basement here?"

"Think about it, chief. You got imagination enough."

I thought about it. Passing through a foot or so of wall or floor was disorienting, difficult. But, being wider than a foot, myself, I wasn't likely to lose my way in the process. Dropping into the earth, however . . .

Now I repressed a shudder. Maybe I couldn't suffocate but the idea of wandering through the earth—lost, blind, deaf, disoriented, searching for a way out and possibly working your way deeper—swimming through stone and sand and dirt for days or months or years, not knowing which way was up and whether you were pulling an Arne Sacknussemm instead of finding your way back out. No more floor-diving without a look at the blueprints, first!

"Hey," said The Kid, "I think I just found Merve's tunnel o' love."

He was pointing at a manhole cover.

 

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Framed