The Fading Page 32

  My mind. My mind over hers. Stronger than my own mother’s.

  I couldn’t do it to my dad, but I pulled the veil over Julie’s eyes once, never again. So many people I blinded …

  Why can’t I do it to him? To Dalton? He’s not strong, he’s sick. I’m younger, healthier, better. He doesn’t deserve it. I do. I don’t kill people for sport, he does. I should own him. Where is the God in this? Confidence matters, Dalton had said over lunch. It’s the mind. Mine was stronger than yours. He’s grown confident, powerful on his crimes. He thinks he’s invincible and that I am a rookie, a scared little boy. And why shouldn’t he? What have I done to prove otherwise? Nothing but run and hide.

  He’s dominated me from the first moment I saw him.

  No more. Whether he comes with a knife or a gun, I own him. I can take him down. I will drop out and I will corner him. I will because I can, because I deserve it, because that motherfucker will never get within a hundred miles of my Julie.

  I own him.

  I own him.

  I OWN HIM.

  And with that, Noel opened his eyes, sure to find himself gone, a mass of air tenting the pile of towels.

  But no. There were his feet, turning purple and white with lack of blood flow. His hairy knees. His sad prick, shriveled with fear inside a wicker hamper. His sharp nose, his arms, his long useless body. It hadn’t worked. He was still here.

  I don’t care. I’m taking him down. It’s now or never.

  I will own him.

  Noel took three deep breaths and began to rise. The towels slid from him like leaves from a native creature in a primeval forest. His legs tingled, his ankle screamed, but he ignored the pain. The locker room was empty. Dalton wasn’t here, he could feel that much. He walked calmly to the row of toilets and backed against the wall, peering around the corner, into the central hall. He saw nothing, withdrew. He closed his eyes, listening. The drone of the deluge was louder now that he was not covered in towels, but still steady, constant, the sound of someone showering in the apartment overhead. He wanted desperately to look, to search the rooms, but looking wouldn’t help. If he relied on his eyes, he wouldn’t see Dalton until Dalton had cut him open and tasted his blood. He had to trust his ears.

  His closed his eyes, breathed in and out. He listened.

  A minute passed this way, Noel naked, blind and vulnerable as a newborn, trusting his ears alone.

  Another minute, maybe two.

  And then it came. The blip. No, not even a blip. A one-second, tiny, almost imperceptible flattening in the droning sound wave. As if someone had passed a hand over Noel’s ear without fully cupping it. As if someone in another room had flushed the toilet and caused the shower in the next apartment to hiccup. A tiny, perfect, audible fade. Here in a mental blink, gone just as fast. It might have been anything, a door closing somewhere, the churn of a ventilation fan kicking on. But it was all he had, and if he was going to trust it, now was the time.

  Noel opened his eyes and stepped off the wall, rounding into the corridor of shower stalls. He walked calmly to the other end, into the main hall. If his ears had been correct, this was the hall Dalton had just passed through, dimpling the sound wave.

  At the end, in the leg of the L, were the steam rooms. He walked toward them, hewing close to the right side wall, slowing as he reached the turn. He leaned forward, cheek against the wall, until he could see around the corner with his left eye.

  In front of the three glass doors to the steam rooms, in the small concrete space with its white robes hanging on the pegs, there was nothing. No body, no motion, no disturbance of the stacked towels, no doors opening or closing, no sound …

  The rubber mat. It was wide, a blue runner that stretched in front of each glass door. Maybe an inch thick, with hundreds of small holes cut into the material for water to run through. The surface was pebbled for extra traction, and the whole of it sloped toward the center, under which was drain.

  Noel stared at the mat, focusing, and saw a depression near the far edge. It was not foot-shaped, but it was a dent, rounded, maybe two and a half inches in diameter. A heel print. While he was staring at that, another one appeared about eighteen inches behind the first. Motion, weight, a body.

  Dalton.

  Noel’s heart boomed. The steps were moving toward him and he almost screamed. But Dalton wasn’t coming at him, he realized a second later, because the door to the first steam room was opening. Dalton had simply backed up a pace, turned, and opened the first glass door in the row, slightly to his left.

  Noel wanted to storm the bastard now, but he forced himself to keep still. If this was going to work, he needed the added element of the towels buying him an extra second or two. He waited, holding his breath, retreating so that Dalton would not see him when he realized Noel wasn’t in the first steam room and exited.

  Dalton needed to check the other rooms. If he only checked door number one before heading back into the hall, he would walk right into Noel and it would be over. If he checked door number two, the herbal steam room …

  Noel counted to ten, listening for the squeak of the door, the hiss of steam jets when the door was open. Neither came. How long does it take to check a steam room that’s hardly larger than your average rich man’s walk-in closet? Five seconds? Ten? No more than that.

  Noel counted to five. When he got to three, a draft pulled by him and the hissing got louder for a moment, then quieted. Dalton had just exited door number one.

  He waited for Dalton to round the corner and run right into him, but he didn’t.

  Another draft, this one softer, with the same escalation of hissing steam. This time the steam stayed louder longer and he knew Dalton was holding door number two open. Which meant he was looking in, with his back to Noel’s position, cautiously trying to decide what was in here as his hackles registered something amiss.

  A three-count later Noel turned the corner and saw, for a period of two or three seconds only, the outline of Dalton’s head and shoulders and half of his torso cutting into the wall of rolling herbal-infused steam. Moving forward, deeper into the room. It was like seeing a ghost and it chilled Noel in a way that seeing the other ghosts never had, terrifying him and exciting him in equal measure.

  I got you, slug. I own you.

  Then the door was closing and Dalton was inside.

  Inside, stirring the clouds with his arms and hands and probably his blade, on his way to stab a dummy fashioned from towels.

  Noel leaped forward and planted himself to one side of the steam room door. He braced his feet as best he could and peered through the glass. The steam was chaotic, swirling, and then the white towels were flying. A water bottle smacked the wall. Dalton’s voice, spewing anger, and then the slapping of his feet as he came back.

  Noel spun and braced the glass door with all his strength, both legs, his back to the glass for maximum surface and leg leverage. Dalton slammed into it, shoved hard, making Noel’s bare feet slip on the rubber mat. Noel set his right foot forward, the good one, making it the anchor. The door had no latch or lock, and for the first minute Dalton managed to jar it open an inch or two, but no more than that. The steam was thick now, much stronger than when Noel had first entered, and there was no rubber mat for traction inside. Only slick tile, wet with condensation.

  Noel prayed the glass would not break, that Dalton had not brought a gun. He didn’t think a gun would be Dalton’s style. The glass was at least an inch thick and safety regulations would require that it be tempered and extremely strong.

  Dalton roared, slamming into the door, but the harder he threw himself at it, the worse he rebounded. Noel took the jarring twice, three times, and on the fourth of the blows he pulled the door toward him, opening it just enough to throw Dalton off stride. He hesitated only a moment before slamming back in place, by which time Dalton’s face was in reach. Dalton crashed into the door with a surprised grunt, then howled and crashed backward into the tiled riser.

  Thoug
h Noel couldn’t see him stand, spots of bright red bubbled into existence within the steam and fell from head height, as if the clouds were beginning to drizzle blood.

  He had broken Dalton’s nose.

  Now the real panic set in and Dalton went wild. Noel braced the door with all he had, used his long frame to lever and focus his mass. Shoe sole prints slammed into the glass, outlined in water beads and trickling condensation. Then his fists or something round and duller thudded, pummeling the glass one inch from Noel’s turned face. Dalton’s bandaged hand, invisible but soaked through, smeared the glass in wide patches, streaked it with more blood as his severed fingertips reopened.

  ‘Sonofabitch I’m going to kill you fucking dead!’ Dalton screamed. ‘Little fucking rat cocksucker I’m going to cut your balls off and rape your girlfriend do you hear me I’m going to destroy you and your family and everyone you’ve ever known!’

  Dalton screamed and yelled and beat against the door, but after three or four minutes the blows were coming softer and Noel was growing stronger, boosted by the taste of victory, by the knowledge that Dalton was doing everything wrong. He was too stupid to stay calm and wait it out. He had discovered he’d been outsmarted, trapped, and now was throwing a hissy fit. And the angrier he became, the calmer Noel was.

  Good. Perfect. Go crazy in there, old man. Run yourself out of breath and hurt yourself. The sooner you expend your energy, the sooner you’re going to collapse.

  Noel didn’t want Hector to come now. He didn’t want the police or security to get involved. He wanted to watch Dalton suffer and go down like the rabid animal he was.

  At what must have been the seven- to nine-minute mark Dalton stopped battering the door. The cursing and screaming stopped. The room went silent but for the hissing steam. Noel couldn’t be sure, but he thought the slug was on his knees, or sitting on one of the benches, lungs heaving and choking on the humidity. Noel was tempted to open the door, but he didn’t trust that enough time had passed. Dalton might have fainted, but could just as easily be hoarding his reserves, mustering one last stand, waiting for Noel to walk into his blade.

  He waited. Keeping his shoulder to the door, adjusting his footing, watching the roiling clouds of steam for any sign of movement. He didn’t like sitting on the other side of the glass, knowing Dalton was probably watching him, studying him, planning. He felt almost as trapped, and, worse, examined like a specimen on a slide. He was an open target. But if Dalton had a gun, he would have used it by now.

  More minutes passed, and Noel thought Dalton had been trapped inside the steam room, fully clothed, for at least fifteen and maybe as many as twenty minutes. How long could a clothed, out-of-shape man survive in a steam room? Surely half an hour or an hour, though he would be severely dehydrated and weakened, possibly on the verge of a stroke. Noel did not want to stay here for an hour, but he knew that he would. If that’s what it took to end this, he would stay all day.

  Noel watched as the last of Dalton’s blood washed down the glass, pushed by smaller beads of condensed steam to the tile floor. He counted off another minute, two, three, and when he was ten seconds short of five, a piercing scream tore through the clouds.

  Noel redoubled his stance and the screaming went higher and higher, and higher still. It was a woman’s scream, then a teen horror movie vixen’s shattering peal, then something sexless and inhuman, a demon being torn apart at the limbs. It almost convinced Noel the man was dying of something new in the room and he was tempted to cover his ears, but just then a tremendous force crashed the door, the hardest one yet, as if Dalton had launched himself from the top riser like a steroidal wrestler.

  The force of it knocked Noel back on his bad foot, and his ankle gave way again. Something inside cracked and Noel growled in agony. He fell to the slick mat and the door swung wide as Dalton tumbled out in a gasping hot sweaty ball. Noel rolled, tried to sit up, but his hands slipped and a terrible weight fell on his chest.

  He was under Dalton, waiting for the blade to plunge, but the killer came equipped with only his fists. The blows started in, cracking into his jaw and neck and temples with frantic energy. The wet bandaged hand pawed at his face and Noel shoved back, using his longer arms to push Dalton away as he lashed out in a series of kicks, one of which struck the killer’s gut or groin.

  Dalton grunted hard and the weight lifted. Noel scrambled across the mat, twisting and shuffling on his knees. As he was rising, another blow caught him in the hamstring, then another in the lower back. Noel allowed himself to fall with the blows and flung himself forward, reaching for the counter as he went down. His right hand caught on the pile of rolled towels and he clenched one before slamming to the floor.

  He spun to his right, rolling like a log two times, until he was looking up again. Something hard stabbed into his sternum – a foot, a stomping foot – and Dalton screamed above him.

  ‘Take it!’ Dalton screeched. ‘Take it, take it, what you get for fucking with me!’

  Noel caught the fucker’s ankle in his left hand and twisted, jerking back and forth as he flapped the towel open with his right. He roped the towel around the limb. He yanked toward his chest until the other foot slipped and the weight left the leg and Dalton was falling.

  The slug crashed to the floor and Noel crawled up onto his attacker, until he was straddling Dalton’s belly. The towel was still clenched in his right hand and he whipped it around now, spread it, smothering the man’s face. Noel saw the shape of the mouth in white cotton a split second before he felt the bite on his knuckles.

  He yelled and punched down with his left fist, striking something hard, maybe Dalton’s forehead, and the mouth released his fingers. Noel punched again, three times with his right, until more red appeared in the towel. Dalton’s head floated off the floor a moment, dazed, and Noel used the towel to render the head shape fully, mapping it, striking the center repeatedly before twisting and looping the towel into a thick cord around the back of Dalton’s neck. He crossed the strands, yanking the towel as tight as it would go. Dalton gagged and Noel slammed the back of his head against the floor. If they had not been on the rubber mat, this would have ended it, but they were and it was not over because the old professor had gone wolverine with survival rage.

  Dalton kicked and thrashed and tried to buck Noel off, and Noel rode him down like a cowboy grinding a steer into the sod. He jerked the neck, slamming the head into the mat, raising and then dropping his full weight on Dalton’s chest, pulling the towel ends until his arms screamed and burned.

  Dalton’s legs jimmied and the man choked and choked and Noel pulled the towel ends tighter still, his arms filling with flaming nitroglycerine. He had been winded a moment ago but now was in a surge and his arms passed through pain into an ecstasy. He intended to pull the towel until Dalton’s head popped off like a dandelion stem.

  ‘I own you,’ Noel whispered. ‘I own you. I own you. I own you …’

  He said it over and over, calmly, staring into the invisible mask beneath the now visible runners of blood pouring from Dalton’s nose and the flecks of white spittle ejecting from the invisible mouth. Noel pulled the towel ends with all he had and leaned down close, until his face was in the seizing sprinkler of blood.

  ‘I see you, fucker, I see you now. Are you listening, Theodore? Can you hear me inside your prison cell? You don’t see me, you don’t ever see me. I see you. I see you now and I own you.’

  Slowly, resolving in a time-lapse reel, stage by stage, no more than a shadow at first, then a colorless shape, then as skin seen through a sun-warmed bed sheet, and finally into wet living color, Dalton exited his fading. He was losing his control, his strength, his ability, and Shaker was the force relieving him of it.

  Fascinated, never relenting, Noel stared down in wonder as Dalton filled in, became whole, and with eerie coordinated timing, as if one man’s color and life and life force were flowing into the other’s, Noel’s throbbing arms and clenched hands began to seep away with the
lingering liquid retreat of a sunset sky, with the slow ballet of camouflaging octopus arms sliding into the coral den. In all his other turns, for twenty-four years, at the beginning and end of every episode, there had been no graceful transition, no sense of easing into the pool where light could not go. He had only ever blinked, been flipped, shut out, locked out of his life and the world. Or snapped back and paroled into the larger prison of his life with the cruelty of a heart attack. For Noel there had never been a fading, only a switch, a brute shock, a life sentence.

  But this time was different, this one was unique. He rode it, accepted it, let it come slowly and took the reins atop it, telling it not yet, not yet, a little more, a little more, I own you. You are mine, sweet precious thing. I am your source, I am your power, I am your Lord. You listen to me now. I am your father, you are my child, we are one. The color was him. The light was him. The dark was him. He chose it, he chose how much, he chose when. He chose now, on his own terms, and he knew that from this moment on, for all the reaming days of his life, the fading would serve him.

  He released the towel and roared.

  ‘I OWN YOU!’

  By the time he had vanished in total, Noel Shaker was standing free of all his pains, and the killer beneath him was nothing more than a ruined old man with burst eyes, piss-stained trousers and the bloodied pig face of an errant playground bully.

  Dead as dead could be done.

  38

  Hector was in the spa supply closet, crunched down in the corner beneath vats of laundry soap and stacks of toilet paper, clutching the handle of a broom whose whiskers bristled against the door when Noel entered. His belly and lap were soaked with blood. He had been stabbed at least three times, twice in the stomach and once under the sternum to puncture the heart. Noel checked for a pulse and any sign of breathing.

  Hector was not coming back.