The Fading Page 28

  ‘Are you fucking sick?’ Noel said, turning to his host in the hall. ‘Let him go!’

  Dalton frowned, shucked off his leather work gloves and walked to Noel, shoving the gloves into his hands. ‘Hold these.’

  Before Noel could respond, Dalton turned to the roped man, removed something from a front pocket Noel could not see, and, with all the fuss of a child dabbing paint onto a canvas, proceeded to poke the hostage in the stomach, once, twice, three four five, pecking here and there without hurry. His movements were so deliberate and patient, Noel didn’t understand that Dalton was stabbing the man with a knife until the sixth or seventh strike, when the blood began to pour from his wounds and the man began to scream against the tape.

  ‘Stop!’ Noel shouted, lunging at Dalton.

  ‘See that?’ Dalton said, turning and jabbing the knife at Noel.

  Noel stopped, the wet red blade inches from his own belly.

  ‘See how easy it is? You never even knew he was here. I could have kept you in the dark all night. That’s power.’

  ‘What did you do?’ Noel groaned, wanting to be sick. ‘What did you do? Why are you doing this?’

  ‘Because I can.’ Dalton grabbed Noel by the wrist and slapped the handle of the knife into his palm. ‘Now finish him.’

  The man tied to the post was writhing, moaning against the gag, sweat bursting from his forehead as blood surged from nearly a dozen wounds in his belly, his chest, his pelvic region.

  Later he would have time to be ashamed of his inaction, but now, in this moment, Noel felt as though he were having an out of body experience. His mouth fell slack. He stared at the knife in his hands. It was an arched flat wooden thing with a silver blade that tapered to a nasty point. A Buck knife or something similar, greasy with warm blood.

  ‘You did it to me,’ he mumbled, unable to look up, wishing he never had to look up again. ‘You do this out there, to others, the witnesses, so you can take people? So you can hurt them and kill them?’

  ‘I told you of my roots,’ Dalton said.

  I was once a pastor in the town of Black Earth, Wisconsin, and before that I was a dairy farmer’s son. When I was nine I fell from the back of my father’s tractor and cracked my skull open on a knob of fieldstone. I spent two days in a coma and did not speak for almost a year, but I survived and in my heart I know that was when the gift was handed down to me.

  Noel wanted to throw the knife away in disgust, but he didn’t. Couldn’t.

  ‘… what I didn’t tell you about was the creatures.’ Dalton was still talking. ‘… all kinds of the smaller living things, how they responded to me after that. I took what I needed on the farm in order to feed it, and for my efforts it repaid me tenfold. First there were baby chicks, then two of the meanest roosters you’d ever hope to meet, and that vicious German shepherd from the Orlanski farm next door. Hogs in need of cleansing. You do what you can to resist, but eventually the fade demands a sacrifice.’

  ‘I’m not like you,’ Noel said.

  Dalton inched closer to him and clutched his wrist, rolling it so that the knife blade turned before them.

  He said, ‘In high school there was a girl, a very dirty girl. Do you want to know her name?’

  ‘No, I …’

  ‘Shirley. Shirley Minturn. She smelled like dirty socks.’

  ‘Stop,’ Noel said, wresting his arm from Dalton’s grip. ‘Get the fuck away from me!’

  The professor was undeterred. ‘You can find her in the news archives, though they never did find her. She drowned. In a river. A dirty river, but one that flowed cleaner than she did.’

  Noel was having trouble breathing. His vision was spotty. Was Dalton still doing it to him, or was he merely about to faint?

  ‘It’s all right, Noel. Don’t be frightened. This is something we both understand. You can trust me. We’re just talking. What is it they say? What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?’

  Noel stared up at the bleeding man strapped to the post. The man was there, then not there, there again, then blurring like melting film.

  ‘I’m not part of this.’

  ‘Oh, Noel. I can see it in you. I can smell it like perfume.’

  ‘I never hurt anyone,’ Noel said, his breath escaping in one long shudder. The policeman in the snow … ‘Not like that. I never—’

  ‘You’re lying.’ Dalton’s tongue waved across his upper lip. ‘But you’re a good boy. You fought it, but what’s the use when it’s so easy for us? Your first was clumsy. Perhaps you told yourself it was an accident. It is not an easy task to complete, but I can show you how to make it the easiest thing in the world. Like flicking the heads from dandelion stems.’

  Hop in, Dalton had said from the back of the cab. I’ll take you to my place and show you my collection.

  ‘Get out,’ Noel said.

  Dalton smiled.

  He’s not just some fuddy-duddy professor, a very rational and strangely calm part of Noel’s mind asserted now. He’s a serial killer. An honest to fucking God serial killer. This is what he’s chosen to do with his fading. Or maybe he was always going to be one, and one year his Christmas stocking came packed with an extra special gift to make it easier.

  ‘Get out!’ Noel screamed, and threatened Dalton with the knife.

  Dalton retreated, giggling, and began to circle the room. He ducked behind his bound and bleeding victim, then popped up on the other side.

  ‘Calm down, Noel. You’re going to get hurt.’

  ‘Get the fuck out!’ Noel shrieked, and ran for Dalton.

  The professor darted to toward the door and Noel brought the knife down in the back of his shoulder, stubbing the blade into bone before withdrawing it. Dalton released a high-pitched squeal and ran into the hall. Noel followed for several steps, but when Dalton slammed the bathroom door behind him, he stopped.

  He returned to the bedroom and found the roped hostage no longer struggling. His head was hanging low, chin against chest. Noel put a hand against the stained shirt to feel for a heartbeat. At first there wasn’t one, then something, but it was faint.

  Noel began to saw at the ropes. When he’d cut through two strands, he was able to pull the rest away and the guy crumpled before Noel had time to toss the knife and catch him. He kneeled, rolling the man to his back. What was he supposed to do? He didn’t know how to perform CPR. There were too many wounds. The man was bleeding to death. He needed to call for an ambulance.

  He got to his feet and ran into the hall.

  Dalton emerged from the bathroom and stopped, blocking the exit.

  Noel raised the knife.

  ‘That’s your choice?’ Dalton said. ‘Are you sure? Think very carefully, now. Because there’s no coming back from this one.’

  ‘Get out of my way, you fucking psycho, or I will take you down.’

  The professor hesitated. Considered. Something was twisting behind Dalton’s face, anguish and fear and whatever demons lurked in his soul.

  ‘Don’t be like this,’ he said at last. ‘We can be friends. We have to be friends. We need each other, don’t you see that?’

  Noel stepped forward and jabbed the knife at Dalton. ‘I’m calling nine-one-one. You’re fucked.’

  Dalton backed away, his face changing as swiftly as a flipped coin, this side showing seething hatred. ‘Don’t be naive. It’s too late for the police. Now that you know, we have no choice but to be friends.’

  ‘Move now,’ Noel said, walking forward, backing the man into the living room.

  Dalton laughed, but there was panic in it. ‘Soon as you learn to hate them for their ability to lead normal lives, you won’t be able to help yourself. Let me save you the heartbreak. We can start tonight. You don’t like boys? That’s all right. I know a ranch. In the desert, where they keep the girls. You can choose your own and, trust me, it will be a love like no other. Once you feel that, you won’t ever have to love again. Your precious Julie will have all the sentimental value of a baseball card.’


  Noel stopped, his ears ringing with violence. Julie? Did this piece of shit just say her name? He came forward and took Dalton by the collar and shook him once, hard enough to sprain his neck. He pressed the blade against the professor’s nose lengthwise, ready to swipe it off.

  ‘If you go near her, I will bury you alive.’

  Dalton raised his hands in surrender. Noel threw him to the floor and Dalton landed hard on his tailbone, gasping. He made no effort to stand.

  Noel went to the kitchen and took the cordless phone from its cradle. There was a dial tone. He punched 9-1-1, never taking his eyes off Dalton, knife held up like a crucifix.

  ‘Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?’ a woman said.

  ‘This is Theodore Dalton,’ Noel said. ‘I’ve just killed a man in my apartment. Please send help now.’

  Dalton cackled on the floor. ‘I love it! Now we have a real shooting match!’

  The woman was asking questions but Noel couldn’t understand them. He was pacing in a circle as Dalton began to rise. The professor stood, rubbing his back, and slowly walked around the living room, into the hall, to the front door.

  ‘Get back here!’ Noel said.

  ‘You will never see me coming,’ Dalton said.

  Then, as he opened the front door, he looked back at Noel and wiggled his fingers goodbye, vanishing before his footsteps began to echo down the hall.

  He was gone. And Noel couldn’t stay. The dispatchers would have the address. Emergency responders were already on the way.

  He ran to the bedroom and checked the bound man on the floor for a pulse. He attempted mouth-to-mouth. He clasped his hands together and pumped the breastplate. He used paper towels from the kitchen and hand towels from the bathroom to try and stop the bleeding.

  But the young man who wore sandalwood cologne was gone.

  The sirens grew louder, and everything was moving too fast.

  33

  Footsteps, real and imaginary, roaming the hall. The dying sound of a muffled cough from the next room over. Low voices that fell silent as they passed his door, the intermittent burr of the ice machine drowning out an attempt on the doorknob. The thin blade of light at the threshold, blinking with foot shadows. It could be happening even now: a tentacle-like probing of his mind from the stairwells and elevator shafts, breaching the walls, swirling overhead like invisible smoke, clouding his eyes and blinding him to the evil slug dragging itself within toward its nutrients.

  I see you. I’m coming for you. I’m here now.

  Let me in.

  Solid, unable to flip the switch, Noel lay awake in a vacant room on the Palace Tower’s ninth floor at Caesars, knowing sleep would not come tonight, tomorrow and possibly for days. The moon-gray screen of the alarm clock on the nightstand between the two beds taunting him, daring him to sleep. 3.48 a.m. He sat up, popping his ears to catch the telltale click of a lock being picked. Minutes passed and he felt a draft, air circulating in the room, even though he’d turned the thermostat down to keep the air conditioning in slumber. The idea of invisible molecules parting for an invisible body propelled him from bed to the window. He scooped the curtain to peer down to the pool area and gardens with their stoic winged lion gargoyles that could not protect him.

  Not so much as a lone security patrol walking about, but what did it matter? When Dalton came for him, he would not arrive in his visible element. He would come the way he had come for the others lining the graves in his forty-year serial spree. One minute the coast would be clear, the next Noel would feel a piano wire sinking into his throat, the ice pick gliding into a kidney. Or maybe only a single inhalation through the ether-soaked rag, then darkness … until he awoke in a much smaller room, six feet long, constructed of pine.

  He padded to the bathroom. Checked behind the door, the shower curtain. Stared into the mirror. The reflection was that of a man in the foment of breakdown. A sheen of sweat on his face, neck lined with road grit, puffy gray streaks under his bloodshot eyes, five days of stubble turning into a rash. He was afraid to run the water, to shower, to flush the toilet. Any sound could give him away.

  He’d been trapped in here for almost twenty-four hours. Door dead-bolted, chain in the slot, chair wedged under the handle. Excessive? He might have thought so yesterday, even after the horror of Dalton’s revelation.

  But things had changed.

  *

  After running from Dalton’s condominium, he’d holed up at the same nameless motorcourt motel where he’d taken his shower after his mind-rape in the Bagley residence. Too frightened to do anything other than shower again, washing away the young man’s blood, he’d spent the longest night of his life trying to wrap his mind around what he’d gotten himself into. The guilt of what he hadn’t seen coming, what he could have prevented had he acted sooner. The sheer terror of realizing his fingerprints were on the knife, the young man, all over Dalton’s condo. He’d wanted to curl into a ball and die.

  Eventually daylight returned and he knew he had to move. After hailing a cab at the aging Stardust, his first stop was the guest house. Figured he would pack a small bag, take the shovel back to the saguaro and dig up his cash. He was visible now, ten weeks of missing mobility options slamming back into the realm of possible, easy. He would suitcase as much of the cash as he could carry to the nearest cab line, pay a fare to the rental car agencies at McCarran International, pay cash for something nondescript and drive for two days straight. Florida, West Virginia, Canada, Mexico. It didn’t matter, so long as it was far from Las Vegas and Theodore Dalton. Somewhere along the way he would call Julie from the road, tip off the police, convince them to send her round-the-clock protection.

  He told the driver to leave him at the corner, two blocks away. When he reached the cul-de-sac on foot, the scene before him zoom-leaped and distorted with its own Hitchcock score. Three police units – two sedans in the driveway and a hulking SUV slanting across the lawn. Sirens and cherries off, but no fewer than four officers circling the premises – windbreakers on, evidence bags in gloved hands. And who might that woman be? Why, it’s Nora the Missing Realtor, a lady he hadn’t seen since she had rented the place to him and Julie almost two years ago. But here she was, summoned for a matter far more serious than a delinquent rent check, standing beside a deep green BMW, pacing with a cellphone stuck to her ear.

  Dalton had called them.

  Want to locate millions of dollars in missing funds from that spate of casino muggings? Want to know who killed the guy in my condo last night? I know the address and he’s a bad, bad boy.

  LVPD scouring his residence, taking fingerprints, dusting his toothbrush and flipping through his sock drawer, sifting through trash.

  And yet they were still working on the house. What if they hadn’t yet found exactly where X marks the spot?

  Noel backed off casually, as if he had been waiting for a ride who hadn’t showed, glanced at his imaginary watch, and walked away. Four blocks north through the subdivision, another six east, into the desert, circling in a wide arc, shuffling low to the sand and scrub. He got lost for twenty minutes, so frightened was he of walking up on uniforms with shovels. He doubled back, closed in. The backyard was clear, no sign of the police. Hope – Dalton had known where he lived, but maybe he hadn’t been there to see Noel burying his stolen funds. It took him another ten minutes to find the courage creep up and locate the saguaro, his marker.

  At its base was a raw hole more than seven feet deep and four feet wide. Empty as vampire’s grave. They’d already found it. Six million and point-three change, the future he’d risked his life for, was at this minute bouncing downtown to an evidence locker. He was flat busted, poorer than he had been on the morning of his birthday. The gutting horror of it was so grand and complete, there was nothing to feel. His entire nervous system had been surgically removed in one swift yank. Dalton could be following him right now, he realized, and it mattered not at all.

  Noel turned and wandered deeper into the desert
, a mortar blast victim. He got lost for three hours before the sun’s descent finally scared him back toward civilization.

  Julie.

  Dalton had struck back with one anonymous phone call, but would it be enough? Would tattle-telling about the money satisfy someone as deranged and compulsive as Theodore Dalton? No, not even close. Because this wasn’t about anger, hurt feelings, or even the fact that Noel knew what Dalton was. This was how the former teacher and minister from Wisconsin had his fun. This was sport to him, his calling. If he’d wanted to merely to kill Noel, he could have faded at the condo and found a way. But instead he had run, so that the game could continue. Dalton would go after Julie next because that would inflict the most pain on his rebellious almost-disciple, and because he could, because using his power to take inferior life forms made him feel like a god.

  Noel needed to find a phone. He needed to call Julie at her mother’s house, hear her voice, warn her of what was coming. Then he needed to get to Calabasas, California, as soon as possible, because, against a killer with Dalton’s powers, Julie would never stand a chance. The police might have just become an option out of necessity, meaning discovery and capture for Noel. But that was of minor concern when weighed against the possibility of Dalton. His father John, her mother Lisa – they couldn’t protect her. Julie first, everything else later.

  But the Strip was blown for him, he realized within the first two blocks. Looking for a payphone, scanning the streets and sidewalks for his enemy, Noel realized he wasn’t safe out here. Dalton could be anywhere. In this car, in that cab, inside that store, around the next corner, right behind him, one hand over his grinning mouth. The far bigger problem was almost laughable – Noel didn’t have any change in his pockets. He’d left his wallet in the guest house, a habit whenever he went out during one of his spells. The risk of blinking back, in the presence of others, of being trapped and ID’d, was not worth the value he got from carrying an ID, cash, credit cards. These were things he couldn’t very well use while faded anyway.