Cohen took the “Missing” flyer from Hippie’s hands. It had been nearly thirty-six hours since they had tracked the Beast from the funeral home. The poster was wet through, wilted by the still-falling snow. He balled it up into a tight sphere and stuffed it in his pocket where it bulged, a lump against his thigh. He thought of his father. He wondered if he was out looking for him, or if the despair of a lost son had driven him further into a drunken stupor.
Cohen thought of Ava too, wondered at her friendship, the constancy of it, the persistence. He had been so obsessed with Hippie and Than that he had been avoiding her, not returning her calls. But she was still out there. She might have been the last person on earth looking for him, concerned with his whereabouts.
The siren whined louder, and the three of them stepped into the shadow of the alley, waiting for it to pass. A police car screamed by, its flashing lights pushing back the dark, but only for a moment. In a flash it was gone, and the darkness washed back over everything, thicker than before.
Hippie pulled her hand away from the brick wall of the house lining the alley, raised it into the slanting light they had withdrawn from. Her fingers were coated in black, and with her other hand she gripped her wrist. The look on her face was pure anguish.
“Are you okay?” Cohen asked.
She grimaced, bent over at the waist, still clinging to her wrist. She moaned, and it was a low, mournful sound, like an animal giving birth. Something was wrong.
“Hippie?” Than asked, moving closer. “What’s up?”
“It’s different,” she said, the words barely emerging. She wrenched her torso around, twisting as if that was the only thing keeping her from crying out.
“The Beast’s shadow?” Than pressed.
She nodded without speaking, not looking at them, not wanting them to see the mounting pain on her face.
A sense of panic rose up in Cohen. He paced out onto the sidewalk, back again, out, back. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Than said in a grim voice, holding up Hippie’s hand to peer at it.
She moaned again when he moved it, pulling away. “Than, careful,” she whispered. “I think I have to sit down.”
Another police car flew past them, siren on, lights flashing.
“What is going on?” Cohen asked no one in particular. “When it was on me before, it was cold, it hurt, but not like this.”
A flash of light caught his attention and he looked up at a second-story window in a house across the street. An old woman had pulled back the curtain and looked down at them. She had a round face and her gray hair radiated out around her head like a wiry halo. When she saw Cohen looking up at her, her eyes went wide and she threw the curtain closed.
“I think we should go,” he said.
Than muttered something.
“I can’t, I . . . don’t . . .” Hippie gasped when she spoke, unable to get a full sentence out.
“Why is this happening?” Cohen aimed his confusion at Than, demanding answers.
Than shook his head. “Something about the Beast has changed. Maybe it’s dying and its shadow is more powerful. Maybe . . .” He paused. “Maybe Hippie is more vulnerable. I don’t know. It’s like acid on her.”
“We have to wash it off,” Cohen said.
They left her there at the edge of the light, and she seemed to be losing her mind. She sat down and moaned and rocked back and forth, side to side, as if the movement kept the worst of the pain at bay. Both scoured the alley for something, anything they could use. Cohen found an empty five-gallon paint bucket. He tripped over it before he saw it, sending it clattering through the alley, its metal handle pinging against the sidewalk.
“There’s a faucet back here,” Than said. They turned on the water and it came out ice-cold. The bucket filled slowly, the water gurgling and rushing. It had a crack in the bottom, and the water leaked out almost as fast as they could fill it.
“That’s good,” Than said when the bucket was only half full. He carried it to the edge of the alley, water slipping through the bottom, and set it down beside Hippie, raising her to her knees. When Hippie lifted her hand, the one that had been covered in the shadow, Than paused. Her skin seemed wilted under the tar, as if it had eaten its way inside and corroded her flesh.
When Cohen realized Than was frozen in place, he crept forward, reached out, and took her blackened hand in his own. “Here,” he whispered. “I’ll do it.”
He rested the top of her wrist on the edge of the bucket so that her palm faced upward. He had to coax her fist open—at first it was clenched in pain, and as he slipped his thumb under her fingers and gently eased them back, Hippie clenched her teeth and screamed through her closed mouth.
“It’s okay,” Cohen whispered over and over again. He reached down into the icy water, drew out as much as he could with one cupped hand, and let it drip down. He touched the tar. It sent needles of cold into his own hand, but he kept rubbing and rinsing and scrubbing.
Soon Hippie went limp, her back against the brick wall. She had passed out. Than sat beside her, propping her up. The water in the bucket was gone, so Cohen went back and refilled it. When he returned, he continued cleaning her hand, whispering the entire time. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
In some places on her hand, like the wrinkles at the base of her fingers and the bent sections of her knuckles, he had to use his fingernail to peel back the Beast’s sludge from her skin. This scraping seemed to disturb her even deep in that unconscious state, and she gave a heavy, hoarse sigh, her head listing from one side to the other. After what seemed like a very long time, he had removed almost all of it.
What remained in him were questions. Why this effect, when before Hippie had seemed immune to the Beast’s residue? And what if she accidentally bumped against more of it? How would she survive?
More sirens. Police cars approached. This time there were three of them. They stopped directly in front of the alley, parked in the opposite lane of the one-way street. Than and Cohen watched, trying not to move, as the three officers crawled out of their patrol cars and walked to one of the doors across the street. Two of them stood back as the third knocked loudly, a thudding they could hear where they sat. Any sound they made seemed suddenly amplified. Everything else on the street was silent except the police officer knocking on the door and the beating of their own hearts and the raspy breath of Hippie regaining consciousness.
The police officer waited. He peered through the glass and knocked again, even louder this time. The other two officers turned and looked up and down the street. They seemed bored, preoccupied, looking for something out of order. The police officer raised his hand to knock again, stopped, peered through the glass, and took a half step back. The door opened.
Cohen looked closer. It was the woman from the window, the one who had looked down at them and thrown the curtain shut.
“We should go,” Cohen said.
“Why?” Than asked. Hippie stirred.
“C’mon,” Cohen hissed, rising carefully. “That woman saw me in the alley. I think she called the police on us.” He felt the grit of the bricks scrape the back of his coat as he pushed himself up. He tried to get farther back into the shadows.
The woman was nodding to the police. One of the officers took out a small notebook and scribbled some things. The woman pointed across the street to the alley where they sat.
Than grabbed Hippie’s face between his hands. “Hippie,” he said. “Hippie, get up. Wake up. We have to move, now.”
She tried to open her eyes, but her lids seemed to weigh a million pounds. Cohen saw the whites of her eyes, two crescent moons. They closed, she shook her head, and her body went limp again.
Cohen bent over and put his arm under her back. “Help me.”
Than came in close, and they picked Hippie up, arranged her so that she was between them with one arm around each of them, and started waddling down the narrow alley, her feet dragging beneath her. They got to the back alley and Cohen looked over his shoulder. The three police officers had left the woman at her front door—she peered curiously into the night, craning her neck. They were coming across the empty street, walking toward the alley, and three flashlight beams winked on.
Cohen and Than dragged Hippie across the narrow street that separated the backs of the houses and farther into the alley, over a grate, past a telephone pole, and into the shadows behind a dumpster.
A burst of cold air swept through the city. The police officers came deliberately through the shadows.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” Cohen hissed.
Hippie started reviving. Her feet weren’t dragging anymore. She was walking, albeit with their help. They made it out the other side, all the way to the neighboring street. They turned right and walked quickly, still helping Hippie along.
“Hey!” a voice shouted. “Wait!”
Cohen looked back. One of the police officers had come out of the alley, now a block behind them. He motioned for the other two to hurry, and the three of them started jogging lightly in and out of the streetlights. Darkness, light, darkness, light. Their shoes made thudding sounds on the sidewalk. They had not turned off their flashlights, and they made glancing, stabbing beams that bobbed against the houses and the street and the sky.
“Run,” Cohen said calmly.