Earl Eckert feared the light.
His lifelong terror emerged at the age of three, when the soft steps beyond his bedroom door first approached, long after his mother had fallen asleep. It began with touching, Playing a little, as the bastard would whisper, and they would play a great deal more until his sixteenth birthday, the day the engine derailed and the brakeman perished. His mother, deceased these nine years, never knew. His fear grew through his teens and into his twenties as he stalked mark upon mark, usually from a less-than-clever distance as the objects of his desires took walks at night. Sometimes, he would crouch behind bushes in backyards until his legs ached, or risk life and limb in trees—as in the case of “Boom Boom” Tanya McMillan, who became Tanya Sawyer, where he had, for four glorious summers, the most exceptional view of her bedroom window and those unforgettable thirty-eight D’s. Every situation cried for darkness, begged a cower from the light. A beam of headlamps here, a glow from a yard light there, and he would seize up, a hand gripped around his hardness, his body trembling at being caught. Those unwelcome rays breached the seal of his warm, dark cocoon, just as the light from the hall outside his room had done for thirteen years every second Friday, in the early hours after the crews—after his stepfather—returned from Tilsen on the 701.
And now, with his legs, which had been propping him in the corner for the better part of two hours, betraying him, the light from across the corridor threatened to touch him. On top of that, his body ached; he figured at least two of his ribs had snapped when that whore’s car leveled him. His condition, the curse that little fucker had cast upon him, would surely be the death of him: His lungs were drowning in snot. It was only a matter of time before he would have to sit, or worse, lie down and slip into sleep. Then the little fucker would have him.
He stared at the kid. He was a freak all right, something out of those over-the-top horror comics he used to lift from the variety store.
How long could he stare at that goddamn wall?
If only he could get his hands on the little bastard’s throat. He’d show him cold. Just like that bitch.
He shifted his weight to his left leg as his right foot drifted off. He brought his watch into the light. Dead. He tapped it with a finger, but the damn thing had given up the ghost. It had been working fine the last time he checked, but that had been at least an hour ago, just before the earthquake. He must have smacked it against the bars when he tried to brace himself.
It had been the strangest thing. Not the quake—although that had scared the crap out of him—but the kid. As he had grabbed hold of the bars, risking the light the way he had, he had feared the whole place was going to come crashing down around him. The thing was, that little prick sat right through it all, just staring at that goddamn wall in that goddamn fucked-up trance of his. The kid’s bed was rocking like a bastard, but it was almost as if he didn’t feel a goddamn thing.
As if he wasn’t really there.
The kid’s eyes were glassy stones. In the last thirty minutes they had shifted once, maybe twice. Freak.
Eckert straightened suddenly. Glanced at his bed. Looked over at the kid. “Shit—”
He reached for the cell bars and stumbled on his useless legs. His weight swung and he slipped, striking the floor hard. His ribs screamed. He raised his head, the rumble beneath him growing angrier. The bed shifted toward him.
He got to all fours and then struggled to his feet. He could barely stay up. The building was shaking by its foundation now. The rattling bed pushed up against him, and he grabbed hold of it for support. A brick in the wall cracked.
The kid’s bed was on the move, but what threw a fright into him was the boy. Now the little fucker was standing just behind the bars. His arms were folded across his chest. And his eyes, deep and dark like blood, were staring right back at him.
How the fuck was he standing?
“Roach! … Roach! … Get in here, you cocksucker!”
He moved along the side of the bed and grabbed hold of the bars. He pulled himself up and held on as tightly as he could. The lights flickered. The building swayed. The din deafened.
“Roach! Roaaaaaach!”
He can’t save you, the kid said, and Eckert felt his heart skip. He screamed for Roach again. His pleas barely carried beyond his cell.
The crack in the wall widened. A new one opened up behind the boy and grew with every tremor.
“Goddamnit Roach! Goddamn you!”
Roach hurried down the corridor. His face was cold-white, his eyes like golf balls. He staggered between the cells trying to stay on his feet. “Remain calm!”
“Get me outta here, you stupid prick!”
“Listen, Eck—”
Roach nearly fell but managed to snatch a bar to steady himself. “No one’s going anywhere, Eckert. Just hang on—”
Roach fell agape as he looked to the boy.
“Forget him, Roach! Fuck him! Get me outta here!”
No one’s going to save you.
“Shut up, kid! Shut the fuck up! What are you doing, Roach?”
Eckert watched in disbelief as the deputy raised a set of keys to the lock on the other cell. Roach stumbled in the quake but somehow managed to insert a key. He seemed doped, as if he were responding to commands only he could hear.
The little fucker got to him.
Eckert yanked on his cell bars trying to break free. He’d be goddamned if he was going to die in here. Not here. Not in the light.
You hurt my mom.
Roach opened the door. Kelan stepped into the corridor. Another tremor struck, more violent than the last, and Roach slipped to the floor. His limp body pitched and rolled with the building.
Eckert felt his grip failing. He let go and stumbled backwards out of the light. He struck the far wall and slid down with his back against it. His lungs begged for air that would never come.
Kelan moved to the bars of Eckert’s cell. Behind his thick glasses, two inhuman eyes raged like fire.
And now I’m going to hurt you.
Eckert got to his feet as the tremors stopped. Roach lay in a daze, but he seemed to be coming out of it. “Fuck you, kid. Fuck you.”
A mild aftershock rolled the dizzied cop. The world trembled again and kept on going to hell.
Eckert shot forward, stumbling out of the shadows. “Get up, Roach! Get up! Goddamnit … GET … UP!”
But Roach would not get up, he could not get up, Roach was wondering why every time he tried to raise his arms his mind told him SLEEP, and as Earl Eckert felt that sudden fire in his gut curl round him as it ran through his chest and into his extremities, as his muscles and his bones began to scream and his flesh burst into flames, he felt something else wrap round him in the light, something awful and something final … something cold.