Frank De Felitta: For Love of Audrey Rose

He did not accelerate, though time was short. Probably the police were alerted. From the sanitarium. From Mario. But he was content to watch the dark alleys drift by, the brilliant pools of light under the streetlamps, a few isolated neon signs, dead-looking trees. It was a malevolent night, soaked in an evil darkness. Yet it was soft and inviting.

“Ekajata!” Bill mumbled.

The one-eyed deity. One-breasted. One-toothed hag.

“Za!”

Serpent with one thousand eyes.

“Damchen Doje!”

He who rides a goat, carries a blacksmith’s anvil and bellows.

Were they really here? Or just articulations of teeth, tongue, and breath? Had they truly deserted him? Or did they wait, far at the end of the cumbersome roads, perhaps at Tanner Street?

Bill grinned. Colman Street. Down the center was a thin layer of snow. Once plowed, now devoid of traffic. Even the shops were dead. The cold wind ran its fingers through his hair.

“Damchen Doje!”

Odd sound. Here in Pittsburgh. Yet how else had his instincts taken him here? Over every obstacle? Out of every darkness? Jennie, through their agency, was Ivy. Ivy called to him through their dark powers.

Tanner Street was blocked with snow. Bill jammed on the brakes, the Dodge swerved sideways, slid, and bumped against a telephone pole. The door buckled. He crawled out the other door.

“Ivy?” he whispered.

All the houses were slums. Derelict shacks. Leaning structures, tucked under the walls of a dark factory. Mountains of junk loomed fantastically in backyards. Bill walked quickly up Tanner Street.

A far garage glowed feebly with a pale yellow light behind a window. His feet, still bare within the tight shoes, cramped. Dizzy, he clutched his forehead. A black branch sank under his weight. He looked up. There was a tangled mass of sawdust, broken snow, and pieces of tree trunk. Behind it was a fence. Behind that, a long green building.

Bill grinned. There were no lights. No tracks in the snow. It was the culmination of his journey. A journey three years in the making. Deftly, he climbed the fence and jumped into the yard.

He struggled to a long, dark window and peered in. Cheerful mobiles dangled from yellow strings. It was a dining room. In the farthest shadows was the kitchen. He stepped around to the other side of the clinic, where a fire escape crawled upward to the second floor.

He paused. Nothing moved. A sensation of breeze. Whispering in his ear. Like a soft, trusting voice, he thought.

Gently, he tiptoed up the iron steps, shuffling his way through thick piles of snow. Shivering at the top, he silently peered into the nearest window.

It was a dark room, oddly decorated. Vaguely red curtains. Icons from India. Hoover’s room? An old-fashioned wooden wardrobe, richly carved. On the chair a pillow. Clothes. Bill licked his lips confused, yet eager to begin. He wiped an oval where his breath had condensed on the frosted glass.

Bill grinned a second time. But it was a death’s-head grin. A spasm traveled through his brain. It shook him like a wire doll. Then the chill passed. An awesome vacuum opened before him. He bent forward to look again.

Janice, as she slept, was completely still. Only her breasts moved as she breathed, a soft undulation like a distant sea, silent, a pale memory of the body that he once had shared. Janice stirred. A man’s hand slipped from her naked hip.

Bill ducked. The neighborhood was utterly silent. The trees were cased in ice. Ice covered the metal rails. The sky was livid pink over the city, but black over the clinic. Shivering, he turned again to the window, furiously wiping another hole in the frost.

The rounded torso, the long, slender arms, small but firm breasts, the jutting pelvis, the black, completely black hair that flowed nearly to the shoulders, that had a fragrance of its own. In the gloomy interior her face was barely decipherable. An amalgam of shadows and deeper shadows. By her side, Hoover’s hand stirred familiarly in sleep.

Bill jerked away. In agony he ground tears away with balled fists. He shook all over with a cold he had never experienced before. Long red marks covered his face where his hands dug in. Violently he spun around, found nothing but the frigid night, and pressed his eyes to the window a third time.

The edge of the bed was crumpled with sheets, soft red blankets, a side of a white bedcover. Janice’s ankles were soft, ivory white in the pale glow of a distant streetlamp.

“Ekajata!” he whispered fervently. “Za, Damchen Doje! Help me!”

Had the deities ridden away? Was Pittsburgh the center of a curse? Weeping, Bill backed away, found a door on the landing, and slipped inside the building.

The tears fell hotly down his cheeks.

“Hare Krishna!” he murmured desperately.

But the Lord of Destruction and Creation had flown beyond all hearing. The clinic was polluted, profaned.

A small blue light nestled in the lower hall. It gave the only light, a glow that extended in an oval over the carpet. He crept to the light and looked in the room.

Jennie stirred. The soft cheek tinged with blue against the sheets. Bill nestled her in his arms, cradled her, and felt the living warmth against his cheek.

“My daughter,” he whispered. “My own.”

No, the deities had not ridden away. They were with him still, and their power was evident, their design clear. They had taken him beyond the crass and mundane realm of earthly deception into the heart of his true and single destiny. Love was no longer Janice. Love moved in his arms, small-limbed, smelling of sleep.

Bill covered her in blankets, listened. There were no movements in the clinic. Holding Jennie close, he edged sideways through the door, onto the fire escape. For a second, the window to Hoover’s bedroom transfixed him. He smiled, then clutched his child tighter and bounded down the slippery steps.

Elliot Hoover had a dream.

He crouched in a cave on the slopes of Mount Everest. Outside, a storm battered the rocks, driving sleet into the cave. He was naked. Suddenly, from the dark interior of the cave came a deity riding a goat. Strings of human skulls bounced against his chest. The goat’s eyes glowed red. Smoke issued upward from the long hair.

For several seconds Hoover did not realize the telephone rang. Then he stirred, shook his head, and went to his desk by the window.

“Yes?” he mumbled thickly. “When? No. No sign. Really? To Pittsburgh? I see. Yes, Dr. Geddes. Thank you.”

He hung up. Mystified, he rubbed his chin. Janice propped herself up on her elbows and saw his nude form, outlined in the gray of the early dawn.

“What’s wrong?”

“Bill’s escaped.”

“What?”

“He went to the apartment.”

“When?”

“A few hours ago. The elevator man told him you were here. They think Bill’s on his way.”

Janice sat up, looked around for her clothes, grabbed them, and without shame, dressed in front of him.

“Look,” Hoover said. “The roads are blocked in with snow. He’ll never make it.”

“He’s going to kill us, Elliot.”

“Now don’t be such an alarmist. He just wants Jennie.”

Suddenly Janice’s hand went to her mouth. She looked white in the first light of day.

“Jennie!” she gasped.

Janice rushed into Jennie’s room. She screamed. Hoover ran in. The bed was empty.

“He’s got her!” she yelled.

Hoover ran his hands through the sheets. “Still warm. Look, there’s water on the carpet.”

They pulled open the door, saw the churned snow all over the fire escape landing. Hoover stared in dismay at the disturbance in front of his own bedroom window.