Jack O'Connell - Word Made Flesh

As a child, Gilrein never experienced personal contact with any of these supposed denizens of the station, but he did witness a smattering of physical evidence — pentagrams painted on the tile floors of changing rooms and once a pile of unspecified bones next to an old campfire. Mainly he skirted mean drunks and bewildered junkies and a lot of insane and homeless people speaking in languages foreign to everyone but themselves. However, that was over twenty years ago, and if Gompers’s devolution even parallels that of the city in general, then it’s more than possible, it’s pathetically likely, that the majority of train-house rumors are not only true, but just the tip of a heinously cold iceberg.

Gilrein gets down on his knees and crawls inside the station. He can’t bring himself to believe that Wylie will be waiting for him within, but he’s confident that he knows the layout of Gompers at least as well as any nonresident. And it’s likely he knows it better than anyone who might have come to whack him. His first thought is to get up into one of the old smokers’ balconies that rim the western face of the building, hanging high, marbled clouds where, a hundred years ago, rich Yankee manufacturers could bathe their lungs in the sweet carcinogens of Europe’s best cigars and look down over the rushing ant heap of travelers below and never question for a second whether they were genuinely entitled to the fat bounty of God’s grace.

Once secured in a balcony, Gilrein can protect his back and get an overview of the three most likely entrances. The holes in the ceiling will expose him to a cover of moonlight, but that’s just as much of a drawback to the opposition and there’s nothing to be done about it anyway. His guess is they’ll bring at least two shooters, possibly three, and they may decide to separate, find opposing points of vantage and catch the mark in a crossfire. Meatboys like Raban and Blumfeld always want to reduce the odds to a minimum. They’d kill you in your mother’s womb if it were possible. At the same time, they yearn to find some margin for the satisfaction of their own sadistic fetishes. They’d love to see the mark twist and shout with new innovations of senseless cruelty, but not if it risks botching the job and drawing the wrath of their handler. Creatures like Oster and his Magicians, on the other hand, are less easy to chart. Their motivations are multiple and sometimes conflicting. They will tell you that at the top of their needs is a profit-driven incentive and an inner motivation to do a job well. Sort of a capitalist/marine ethic. And yet, freelancers like Oster and his boys can’t be profiled this easily. There is the issue of their steadfast bachelorhood and their insistent, at times ridiculous machismo posing. There is the confused if passionate amalgam of various nihilistic philosophies, half-digested but completely enactable. And there is a simple and primal bloodlust, the controlled frenzy of an overly trained bloodhound, drives without need of analysis, an uncomplicated desire to put an end to another life and thus manifest a self-evident and absolute power over it. Oster and his creatures enjoy owning death. It’s a drug on the level of money and orgasm and belief. It’s the epicenter of free will and self-determination. Owning death is God’s own impulse, and once it’s rolled through the veins of someone like Oster, there’s no bringing him back to human. You’ve got to kill the monster. Burn the body. Salt the ground where it fell.

There’s a rapping sound that echoes, metal against denser metal. An even, rhythmic noise, neither too fast nor too slow, a measured beat of metronomic intervals. Gilrein concentrates, decides that it’s coming from track 7 and sights in on the mouth of the tunnel. It could be a decoy to turn him in a vulnerable position, but it feels like the real thing. The echo draws nearer. He lifts his gun, works on his breathing.

And a figure emerges from the tunnel, small, possibly a child. It’s walking in the rail bed itself, hunched over and using a cane of some kind, tapping the cane against the rail. It’s wrapped in a black shawl that both covers the shoulder and weaves into a turbanlike veil over the head. Gilrein gets a bead on the head, tenses to fire, and yells, “Don’t take another step.”

The figure obeys, comes to a standstill, as if expecting exactly this command.

“Move your hands where I can see them,” Gilrein yells, and the figure again complies, stretching the arms out at its sides, parallel with the ground.

Keeping the gun sighted, Gilrein surveys the rest of the chamber and sees nothing. He makes his way down to the main station floor, weapon extended the whole way, until he comes to stand before the veiled child. He lowers the gun, takes hold of one end of the shawl and unwraps it until he’s staring into the face of Mrs. Bloch. The blind woman. Oster’s tattoo artist from the Houdini Lounge. And Kroger’s indentured nanny to all the child artists.

She positions her face as if staring back at him, as if offering up a peeved and challenging expression. But there are the two thick and discolored folds of skin where her eyes should be and the sight of these flaps, these pancake tumors, launches a tremor through Gilrein’s body, a quake centered in his stomach, but extending down to his groin.

He tries to think of something to say, but before he can speak, Mrs. Bloch opens her mouth and, in that deep, clipped, guttural, Eastern European accent, she asks, “Ahr du der reeda?”

He’s so taken aback, both by the question and the sound of her voice, somehow both ghostly and deeply authoritarian, that he says nothing.

She asks in a louder voice.

“Ahr du der reeda?” the noise of her harsh, croaking words booming through the cavern of the train station as if amplified in far-off corners by some hidden web of microphones and speakers.

Unsure of what to say, but feeling prodded to say something, as if his silence could be an irreversible mistake, Gilrein mutters, “Yes.”

Mrs. Bloch turns her head into a shaft of moonlight that cuts across her left ear. And taking this as a sign to repeat himself and speak up, Gilrein says, “Yes, I’m the reader.”

Mrs. Bloch doesn’t seem to recognize his voice, or if she does she allows no indication of recognition. She steps in close, reaches up, and starts to run her fingers over his face. Then she abruptly stops and nods, reaching into the folds of her ragged trench coat and pulling out a crumpled brown paper bag.

“Dis,” she says, “ist fur du.”

She places the bag on the ground at his feet, then turns and starts to walk back to the track 7 tunnel, finding the rail with her cane, which, Gilrein sees now, is just a length of lead pipe, and starting a new run of methodically paced clanging.

He waits until she completely dissolves into the shadows, pockets his gun, squats down, and lifts up the bag. He begins to open it and instantly stops himself. This, he knows, is the package. This is the item that Leo Tani died over. This is the book that has caused his beatings, caused his lips to be sewn together. Caused Wylie to betray him. Gilrein has spent the last twenty-four hours trying to convince everyone he’s come in contact with that he has no knowledge of this volume. And now, the only thing he can think of is the fastest way out of the station.

He tucks the bag under his arm and runs for the crevice that exits into the rear yard. He tries to ignore what he thinks is the sound of hushed speech from every shadowed notch that he passes. When he reaches the Checker, he pops the trunk and reaches inside, shoves his father’s wooden tool chest to the side, finds a pile of oil rags, and selects the largest. He wraps the paper bag inside the rag, then hides it in the hollow beneath the spare tire.