Andrew Klavan - Damnation Street

As she rose from her seat, he could see it was Julie Wyant.

He only glimpsed her for a second. She had a kerchief tied around her head. She had a raincoat with the collar pulled up to her ears. He could see her face. He could see her hair beneath the kerchief. Then she stepped out of the car into the night. She closed the car door and the light went out.

The man who called himself John Foy had to breathe deep to steady himself. The sight of her brought images into his mind in a dizzying rush. It was too much. It made him feel weak and unsteady. He wanted to climb into his tower and breathe the high, blue air until the rush of pictures and emotions went away.

But there wasn't time. She was walking toward the house. He could hear the heels of her shoes on the pavement. She was walking quickly, her body tense, her eyes scanning the night. He smiled. She knew he was here and she was frightened.

The man who called himself John Foy took a last look at the monitor. Weiss was still there, still alone, still sitting where he had been. He knew he had to time this right, just right. He had to give Weiss no chance to move, no chance to try anything.

Julie Wyant reached the house's front walk. She turned onto it. She walked quickly toward the door, glancing left and right and over her shoulder.

The killer watched her. He felt strange, light-headed. He had waited for her so long-and he loved her.

Now she was at the house. At the front door. Reaching for the knob.

The man who called himself John Foy drew the 9mm out from beneath his overcoat. He opened the car door silently.

Jim Bishop opened his eyes. He had to get to Weiss. He had to get to the house in the middle of nowhere or Weiss would die.

He didn't know where he was at first. He had come from darkness into darkness. He had come from somewhere black inside himself into a room that was deep gray with shadow. He was aware of vague rhythms. The click and whisper and peep of machines. His own body, heartbeat, pulse, and breath. He felt he had been away from all this for a long time.

Now things came clear. The rhythms, the noises, the blurred shapes in the shadows. There was a bed, tubes, chairs. He was in a hospital room. There was a woman in one of the chairs. She had a newspaper on her lap. Her head was down on her chest. She was sleeping. He recognized her. Sissy.

Bishop felt a rush of energy. The sight of Sissy reminded him who he was. He remembered how he had come to Phoenix, how he had been shot in the hotel. He remembered the fall from the hotel window, the certainty that he was dying, dying.

But he had not died. That was the point. He was alive in the shadowy room.

And he had to get to Weiss. He didn't know how he knew this, but he did. He didn't know how he knew about the house in the middle of nowhere, but he knew that too. And he knew it was urgent. Everything depended on him. He had to get to the house or Weiss would die.

He lost consciousness again, faded from the surface of the world. Even then, the sense of urgency stayed with him. He fought his way back. He forced his eyes open. He tried to remember how things were. Some of it tumbled into place and some of it wouldn't. The sickening sense that he had failed-that came back to him, all right. He had been trying to help Weiss, but the Shadowman had set a trap for him, and he had walked into it like a prize idiot. That much came back to him, but the rest… There was something he had to say, something he had to tell Weiss that would save him. But what was it? And the house. How did he know about the house? How was he supposed to find it? He tried to remember, but there was nothing. All that was gone.

It didn't matter. He had to start moving. Start moving and he would remember. He would find a way.

So he tried to move. What a comedy that turned out to be. He felt as if he were a tiny little stick figure Bishop trapped inside a full-sized Bishop, trying to lift the full-sized man with his tiny little stick figure strength. There was no chance.

But somehow he had to do it. He had to get to the house, to Weiss. He tried again. He focused on his hand. He closed it into a fist. It took a long time, the fingers slowly curling, clenching. Afterward he fell back inside himself, exhausted. It didn't matter. He had to keep trying. He didn't know what time it was, but he knew there was no time to fuck around.

He went back to work at it. It took… he didn't know how long. He felt the sweat bead on his forehead. He felt the weakness open at his core like a hole. Slowly, slowly, he filled his hollow muscles with his will. He lifted his arm. He reached across himself. He clawed at the tubes that seemed to snake into his flesh from somewhere in the shadows above him. With a hoarse gasp of pain, he dragged the tubes out of himself. He flung them aside. They sprayed drops of clear fluid and drops of red blood over the white sheets.

Then Bishop sat up. He found his clothes. He got dressed. It was a desperately long process, desperately long and slow. Lucky for him he wasn't there for a lot of it. It came to him in strobic flashes of consciousness. Between the flashes, there was only weakness, nausea, blackouts. He didn't feel pain-not pain in one place or another. It was all pain. Pain was the air he breathed.

But now, somehow, it was done. He discovered himself sitting on the edge of the bed. He was panting, sweating, sick-but he had his jeans pulled on and a T-shirt pulled down over his bandages.

He swallowed. He turned his head. Sissy was still there, still sleeping. She hadn't moved.

Bishop began to think about standing. It was not a happy thought. He was bigger inside than he had been, bigger than the little stick figure man he was before. But still. It was an awfully long way to his feet. An even longer way to the door. And a long way to fall if he didn't make it.

Minutes went by. He sat there, sick just thinking about it. He tried to gather his strength for the effort.

Finally, he wrapped his hand around the rail at the foot of the bed. He pushed himself up. All the pain in the world suddenly spun down in a vortex to center in his belly. Bishop grimaced at the agony, his mouth open, his teeth bare. Bent over, he clung to the bed rail with both hands, trying not to tumble to the floor. He breathed hard. He breathed back the pain. Then, with a low growl, he launched himself in the direction of the door.

Now he was traveling down the hospital hallway. It seemed a weird and ghostly place. Nurses and aides floated by him like white phantoms. The walls fogged and melted from the edges of his consciousness. The floor sloped down into misty nothing. He stumbled along it as if drawn by gravity. At one point he must've passed a mirror. He saw his own face. Horrible, horrible. Corpse-white with faint under-traces of corpse-green. The eyes had sunk down into two dark holes. He was afraid someone would notice him looking like that, afraid someone would try to stop him and take him back to bed. But no one did. He stumbled on.

The next thing he knew he was somewhere else, somewhere in the night, moving through the night. Everything was shaking, rumbling. He became aware of nausea, an awful dryness in his mouth, awful pain. Then there was the noise. A rushing, whispered roar all around him. His eyes came open suddenly. He saw a strip of light pass over the leg of his jeans. He tried to lift his head off his chest. He managed to hoist it up, then it rolled back against some sort of seat.

He was in the cab of a truck. Out through the windshield, he saw two-lane blacktop in the headlights. How had he gotten here? He tried to remember. An image came into his mind. He saw himself stumbling along the side of a road. He remembered how grateful he had been for the cool night air on his cheeks because it kept him from fainting. Now he was in a truck. He must have managed to hitch a ride.