Marc Zicree - Magic Time

Hank was quicker. He slipped through the crosscut bore, seeing the things ahead of him clearly, easily, in the pitchy black of underground. Ryan was struggling, flailing with his right arm, his left clearly useless. Broken collarbone. Hank grabbed a handful of mud-colored clothing, elbowed the flat, gray face that came around to gnash undershot teeth at him; kicked hard at a bent and crouching groin. The narrowness of the seam gave him some advantage, since all six of them couldn’t come at him at once. They had weapons, wrenches and hammers from toolkits; edged metal tore his arm.

Kicking, snarling, he managed to shove down one of the attackers and get to Ryan, dragged him away, thrust him in the direction of the torchlight that appeared in the end of the seam. “Go!”

Stumbling, Ryan fled in the direction of the sudden tiny flare of new-made light.

Hank kicked, cursing, at the things that clutched at him and felt another slash on his arm, and the hot wetness of blood. Bartolo’s voice yelled, “Hank!” behind him and the light came closer.

The attacking things squinted against the flame, snarling, rage and hunger warring with pain and fear. They fled stumbling, loping, swallowed into the blackness of the shaft.

“Hank, you okay?”

“Gimme a minute!” yelled Hank leaning against the wall, trembling so hard he thought he’d fall. “I’m okay! Just gimme a minute!”

The light stopped, though its ruddy glare continued to flicker over the coal wall. Hank kept his back to it. The cold of the rock under his shoulder steadied him. His blood felt hot, running out over his arm and soaking into his shirt and coverall. His headache had returned, and with it wave after wave of dizziness that he knew had nothing to do with the wound, nothing to do with his earlier fever and aches.

Or nothing obvious, anyway.

“What the fuck were they?” he heard Gordy demand, and Ryan gasping over and over again, “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Jesus,” said somebody, and somebody else, “Oh, man. What the hell’d they want?”

“What you think they wanted, meathead?” demanded Roop McDonough’s voice. “They’re these things wanderin’ around down here a mile below the surface, way too far from the nearest take-out, what the hell you think they wanted? Took one look at us and thought, Hey, it’s Pizza Man! He delivers !”

“Fuck,” said somebody.

Hank thought, Fuck .

They were right. They hadn’t even seen what he’d seen, and-hungry, angry, strange animal instincts whispering in his own bones-they were right.

What the hell had happened? The words came back to him, echoing in circles, riding over the chopped meaningless yammering of the men.

What had happened to him?

And what had happened to Sonny Grimes, whose mutated features he had recognized on the slumped, huge-eyed troll he had just fought?

NEW YORK

He couldn’t stop his hands shaking. But then, he had always been prone to physical manifestations of anxiety.

Dr. Louis Chernsky stood by his desk, drapes open, picture window revealing the blackness that had settled on the city like a shroud. An aromatherapy candle sat atop his desk, flickering pitifully, exhaling a pine scent that utterly failed to soothe him.

He shook out two more Xanax, filled a paper cup from the cooler and gulped them down. He nearly choked as a chuckle sounded from the shadows near the door. A denser silhouette stood framed against the dimness spilling from the hall.

“Still here. I always figured you had no life of your own.” The voice was thick and husky, halfway between three packs and throat cancer. Chernsky shouldn’t have been able to recognize it, but the scorn was familiar.

“Mr. Stern.”

Stern walked slowly into the room, seeming to draw the waiting room’s shadows with him. There was an odd stiffness to his movements, as though his bones had broken and been reset strangely. “I need a session, Louis. I seem to be going through some changes.”

The candlelight touched him, and Chernsky gasped. Stern’s appearance was shocking. It wasn’t just that his black suit, ever so immaculate, was scuffed and torn, sleeves mere tatters. He seemed larger somehow, more muscular. And his face, lined and pitted now like distressed leather. The wavering candlelight cast hard shadows on distorted bones: the eye sockets more sunken than before, the nose and brow and cheekbones more pronounced.

Chernsky had a sudden vision of the gargoyle he had seen by moonlight atop Notre Dame years ago. If it could move and walk. . Chernsky had to stifle a giggle, felt hysteria rising. Stern tilted his head quizzically, and his eyes-in the yellow light, it was hard to tell- but were they yellow?

“You, uh, should see a physician,” Chernsky said. “This time of night? Emergency room would be hell.” Stern belched, a sound far louder and deeper than it should have been, it came up from the depths of him and assaulted the room. “Pardon me. I have got the worst heartburn.”

“What do you want?” Chernsky became aware he was wheezing thinly. He longed for the inhaler in his desk but didn’t dare to look away from his terrible visitor.

“Answers would be nice.” His lips edged into a smile, but his eyes stayed cold.

“I-don’t have any.” Chernsky tried to swallow, found he couldn’t. Stern was right up to him now.

He ran a pointed nail delicately across Chernsky’s cheek, not hurting him. “No, that’s right, you’re process oriented. Has to come from within, new experiences to discover.”

With a cry, Chernsky tried to bolt from the room. Almost at the door, Stern rose up behind him, yanked him back by the collar of his coat. Chernsky screamed, feeling himself pulled off his feet by a strength far beyond anything he would have thought possible.

In the part of him that was the detached observer, he watched as he flailed and shrieked, the thing that had been his patient shaking him as a dog worried a doll. Then, flying through the air toward the big glass pane, he thought of Susan, of the Winnebago, of Zion and Yellowstone and the decals that went on the back bumper. There was a shattering that filled the world and a coldness of air like a blow and a falling that was all waiting.

Stern stood back from the jagged, glinting hole, counting the seconds. He didn’t need to see it; it was sweeter this way. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three… From twelve stories below came a sound like a bag of glass breaking. He sidled to the broken pane and looked down, saw the sprawled figure in the splash of moonlight, even more silent than it had been during their sessions.

“We have to stop now,” Stern said. “I gotta tell ya, it felt different. . but good.”

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Rioting started in Petworth as soon as the sun went down. Maybe someone had gotten scared, thought Shango; thought to do a little hoarding when it became clear no lights were on and no cops near. Grocery shelves might be empty tomorrow, and no money to pay prices suddenly escalated to profit from the panic.

Maybe the Army, guessing what McKay may have guessed, had tried to lock the stuff down. Childhood in the projects had taught Shango everything he needed to know about the fear that stalked Washington’s squalid ring of slums and the violence that lay just below that fear.

From the window of the duty room of headquarters, across the street from the White House, Shango could see the glow of fire in the sky, hear the steady beat of boots as National guardsmen double-timed it down the streets. More National Guard showed up at about the same time to harden the cordon around the White House itself, and through the trees Shango and the other agents could see the ruddy light of torches illuminating the grounds.