Allan Leverone - Mr. Midnight

Franklin hung his head. He thought about Samantha and how this could have been her and almost puked again but swallowed hard and choked it back.

He stood shakily, suddenly very tired, and forced himself to look at the torture chair and the fresh human corpse fastened to it. Strips of skin hung off her body where they had been peeled, presumably while she was still alive, some of them eighteen inches or more in length. Bones were visible beneath the oozing pinkish mess, an ulna here, a kneecap there. A hint of pubic bone.

Veins and blood vessels and unidentifiable gore crisscrossed the areas where the strips of skin had been carved and peeled away. Blood still dripped obscenely off some of the longer strips of skin, pooling on the clear plastic tarp placed around and under the chair. The blood was beginning to congeal around the outermost edges of the puddles, appearing almost black in the dim light struggling through the filthy windows of the apartment, a ghoulish lake lapping at a horrifying shore.

Franklin stumbled to his feet, suddenly sure Strange Dude would return at any moment and find him here. And he now knew who Strange Dude really was. Mr. Midnight—Franklin had heard the name whispered hundreds of times over the last several months, all over the city and by all classes of people, and he knew immediately he was looking at Mr. Midnight’s handiwork—would walk through the door and pull a knife, blood and gristle and human tissue still hanging off it, and he would hold Franklin at knifepoint while he unstrapped the dead girl from the chair. Then he would roll her mutilated corpse onto the floor, and he would replace her with Franklin and he would begin, oh good Lord he would begin peeling, and oh, good Lord he would—

—Franklin forced himself to slow his breathing, to choke back the rising tide of panic like he had choked back the vomit a few moments ago. He had to get ahold of himself. If Mr. Midnight did come back right now, Franklin would rush him before he could get his knife out of his pocket or his scabbard or wherever the hell he kept it. If Mr. Midnight came back, Franklin would deal, as Samantha would say. He would deal somehow.

Right now, the priority was getting to a telephone. He had to get the police here. The very same authorities Franklin had developed a serious mistrust and even hatred of since becoming homeless now looked to him like angels of mercy, like the very guardians of sanity.

He took one last look at the girl—he didn’t want to, wanted nothing more than to drink the memory of the last few minutes out of his brain, to wash it into oblivion with a fifty-five-gallon drum of Mad Dog, and he promised himself he would do exactly that as soon as his task was complete—but he just couldn’t help himself. He took one last look and then he turned and stumbled out of the killing room. He had to get to a phone, to call the police, and he certainly didn’t own a cell phone anymore and there was no earthly way the telephone lines into this piece of shit building were still active.

He staggered into the dingy hallway and realized he was holding his breath. He breathed deeply and yanked the door closed behind him with much more force than was necessary. Then he moved blindly toward the stairs, determined to find someone, anyone, a passerby or maybe a fellow vagrant who had stolen a cell phone. He would grab it and use it to dial 911.

Franklin paused at the top of the stairs as another wave of nausea overtook him. He bent over, hands on his knees, and somehow managed to avoid losing what was left in his stomach, if anything even was left, and then he ran down the stairs, moving much too fast for a shaky homeless alcoholic who had just seen a mutilated dead girl, taking them three at a time, risking a violent fall and a broken neck.

He burst out of the cursed tenement at a dead run— that’s a good one, he thought crazily, a “dead run,” I’ll have to remember that the next time I stumble onto a carved-up human corpse —and turned into the alleyway. It had never looked as inviting as it did right this minute. He sprinted the length of the crumbling pavement toward the front of the building, panting and gasping, trying desperately not to puke again.

Patience had never been one of Cait’s strong points, and it was especially hard to maintain now. The crush of travelers waiting to board the plane was almost as massive as the line for the metal detectors had been. She was tired and dispirited and wanted nothing more than to be back in Tampa, where she could begin to resume a normal life, or at least what passed for a normal life for someone blessed—or cursed—with the ability to receive Flickers.

They had waited seemingly for hours, shuffling forward a couple of feet every few minutes, just for the opportunity to empty her pockets and step through a metal detector while some TSA drone leered at her underwear as her bag rolled through the X-ray machine. That humiliating experience would be followed by hours inside a crowded airplane with a bunch of other tired, dispirited people. The prospect seemed almost too much to bear.

She sighed and leaned against Kevin. “What’s taking so long?” she said, not really expecting an answer.

His arm was draped over her shoulder and he hugged her tightly. He seemed immune to her mood and was making an obvious effort to raise her spirits. “I know you’re vertically challenged, but I can see over the crowd and believe me, we’re getting close to our goal. At least our short-term goal. Before you know it, we’ll be snuggled up with a good in-flight magazine, chomping on our complimentary bag of stale peanuts, winging our way down the East Coast back to paradise. Or at least Tampa.”

“Hmmph. Sounds so romantic.”

Kevin laughed. “Maybe not romantic, exactly, but at least you’ll be getting where you want to go.”

“I suppose,” she said morosely. Cait felt badly for raining on Kevin’s parade, but she just didn’t have the energy to put on a happy face. This trip had been a disaster from the get-go, and at the moment it felt like it was never going to end. Dinner at the airport steak house had been good, better than she had expected, but it had also been exorbitantly expensive, and Cait had felt extra guilty when Kevin picked up the check. She knew his salary as a Tampa police officer, knew what a strain this ill-fated trip had put on his wallet, and yet he refused to complain.

She tried to smile up at him and assumed she had failed when he took one look at her and burst out laughing. “What’s the matter, suffering from gas?” he asked, and she giggled despite her foul mood. She just couldn’t stay upset around Kevin no matter how crappy she felt. It was one of the many reasons she loved him.

“No, it’s not gas,” she said, elbowing him in the ribs. “I wouldn’t dream of trying to compete in your area of expertise.”

“Thanks. And now that you mention it…”

“Don’t even think about it,” Cait answered, wrinkling her nose. “None of these unsuspecting travelers ever did anything to you, there’s no reason to put them through that kind of torture.” She laughed now, her bad mood forgotten, at least temporarily. The line moved forward and they shoved their carry-on bags ahead with their feet.

Finally they arrived at the front of the line and trudged down the jetway into the Boeing 757. Their seats were located toward the back of the plane, the penalty for purchasing tickets only moments before a flight. Cait didn’t give a damn where they had to sit. At least they were getting the hell out of there. They moved single-file down the narrow walkway, stopping next to every row to allow passengers to load their belongings into the overhead bins. Finally they reached their allotted seats, located just north of the lavatory.