Стивен Кинг - If It Bleeds

“So he wouldn’t hear me coming. Even with the world’s worst headache, I knew where he’d be. You were the only one in the building.” He pauses. “Not Kozlowski. Ondowsky .”

Barbara returns with the clean clothes bundled in her arms. She has begun crying again. “Holly… I saw him change. His head turned to jelly . It… it…”

“What in God’s name is she talking about?” Jerome asks.

“Never mind now. Maybe later.” Holly gives her a brief hug. “Clean up, change your clothes. And Barbara? Whatever it was, it’s dead now. Okay?”

“Okay,” she whispers, and goes into the bathroom.

Holly turns back to Jerome. “Were you tracking my phone, Jerome Robinson? Was Barbara? Were both of you?”

The bloody young man standing in front of her smiles. “If I promise to never, ever , call you Hollyberry again, do I have to answer those questions?”

In the lobby, fifteen minutes later.

Holly’s pants are too tight for Barbara, and they’re highwater, but she managed to get them buttoned. The ashy look is fading from her cheeks and forehead. She’ll survive this, Holly thinks. There will be bad dreams, but she’ll come through.

The blood on Jerome’s face is drying to a crack-glaze. He says he has a bitch of a headache but no, he’s not dizzy. Not nauseous. Holly isn’t surprised about the headache. She has Tylenol in her purse, but she doesn’t dare give him any. He’ll get stitches—and an X-ray, no doubt—at the ER, but right now she has to make sure their stories are straight. Once that’s taken care of, she has to finish cleaning up her own mess.

“You two came here because I wasn’t at home,” she says. “You thought I must be at the office, catching up, because I’d spent a few days with my mother. Right?”

They nod, willing to be led.

“You went to the side door in the service alley.”

“Because we know the code,” Barbara says.

“Yes. And there was a mugger. Right?”

More nods.

“He hit you, Jerome, and tried to grab Barbara. She got him with the pepper spray in her purse. Full face. Jerome, you jumped up and grappled with him. He ran off. Then you two came inside to the lobby and called 911.”

Jerome asks, “Why did we come to see you in the first place?”

Holly is stumped. She remembered to reinstate the elevator fix (did it while Barbara was in the bathroom cleaning up and changing, easy-peasy), and she dropped Bill’s gun into her handbag (just in case), but she hasn’t even considered the thing Jerome is asking about.

“Christmas shopping,” Barbara says. “We wanted to pry you out of the office to go Christmas shopping with us. Didn’t we, Jerome?”

“Oh yeah, that’s right,” Jerome says. “We were going to surprise you. Were you here, Holly?”

“No,” she says. “I was gone. In fact, I am gone. Christmas shopping on the other side of town. That’s where I am right now. You didn’t call me right after the attack because… well…”

“Because we didn’t want to upset you,” Barbara says. “Right, Jerome?”

“Right.”

“Good,” Holly says. “Can you both remember that story?”

They say they can.

“Then it’s time for Jerome to call 911.”

Barbara says, “What are you going to do, Hols?”

“Clean up.” Holly points at the elevator.

“Oh, Christ,” Jerome says. “I forgot there’s a body down there. I clean forgot.”

“ I didn’t,” Barbara says, and shudders. “Jesus, Holly, how can you ever explain a dead guy at the bottom of the elevator shaft?”

Holly is remembering what happened to the other outsider. “I don’t think it will be an issue.”

“What if he’s still alive?”

“He fell five stories, Barb. Six, counting the basement. And then the elevator…” Holly turns one hand palm up and brings the other down on it, making a sandwich.

“Oh,” Barbara says. Her voice is faint. “Right.”

“Call 911, Jerome. I think you’re basically okay, but I’m no doctor.”

While he does that, she goes to the elevator and brings it up to the first floor. With the fix in place again, it works fine.

When the doors open, Holly spies a furry hat, the kind the Russians call an ushanka. She remembers the man who passed by her as she was opening the lobby door.

She returns to her two friends, holding the hat in one hand. “Tell me the story again.”

“Mugger,” Barbara says, and Holly decides that’s good enough. They’re smart, and the rest of the story is simple. If everything works out the way she thinks it will, the cops aren’t going to care about where she was, anyway.

Holly leaves them and takes the stairs to the basement, which stinks of old cigarette smoke and what she’s afraid is mold. The lights are off and she has to use her phone to look for the switches. Shadows leap as she shines it around, making it all too easy to imagine the Ondowsky-thing in the dark, waiting to spring out at her and fasten its hands around her neck. Her skin is lightly sheened with sweat, but her face is cold. She has to consciously stop her teeth from chattering. I’m in shock myself, she thinks.

At last she finds a double row of switches. She flips them all, and banks of fluorescents light up with a hive buzzing. The basement is a filthy labyrinth of stacked bins and boxes. She thinks again that their building superintendent—whose salary they pay—is your basic man-slut.

She orients herself and goes to the elevator. The doors (the ones down here are filthy and the paint is chipped) are firmly shut. Holly puts her bag on the floor and takes out Bill’s revolver. Then she removes the elevator drop-key from its hook on the wall and jams it into the hole on the lefthand door. The key hasn’t been used for a long time, and it’s balky. She has to put the gun in the waistband of her slacks and use both hands before it will turn. Gun once more in hand, she pushes one of the doors. Both of them slide open.

A smell of mingled oil, grease, and dust wafts out. In the center of the shaft is a long piston-like thing which she’ll later learn is called the plunger. Scattered around it, among a litter of cigarette butts and fast food bags, are the clothes Ondowsky was wearing when he went on his final trip. A short one, but lethal.

Of Ondowsky himself, also known as Chet on Guard, there is no sign.

The fluorescents down here are bright, but the bottom of the shaft is still too shadowy for Holly’s liking. She finds a flashlight on Al Jordan’s cluttered worktable and shines it carefully around, making sure to check behind the plunger. She’s not looking for Ondowsky—he’s gone—but for bugs of a certain exotic type. Dangerous bugs that may be looking for a new host. She sees none. Whatever infested Ondowsky may have outlived him, but not for long. She spies a burlap sack in one corner of the cluttered, filthy basement, and stuffs Ondowsky’s clothes into it, along with the fur hat. His undershorts go last. Holly picks them up between two tweezed fingers, revulsion pulling her mouth down at the corners. She drops the shorts into the sack with a shudder and a little cry (“ Oough! ”) and then uses the flats of her hands to run the elevator doors closed. She relocks them with the drop-key, then hangs the key back on its hook.

She sits and waits. Once she’s sure Jerome, Barbara, and the 911 responders must be gone, she shoulders her purse and carries the bag containing Ondowsky’s clothes upstairs. She leaves by the side door. She thinks about tossing the clothes into the Dumpster, but that would be a little too close for comfort. She takes the bag with her instead, which is perfectly okay. Once she’s on the street, she’s just one more person carrying a parcel.