Chapter 37

  Dwayne Hartman

  I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun

  My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;

  But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son

  Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;

  And, having done that, thou hast done;

  I fear no more.

  - John Donne, “Hymn to the Father”

  Small children, to Dwayne Hartman, were something like exotic creatures. He was aware of their existence, and he occasionally saw them out and about, but he seldom interacted with them. He could not remember being a child himself. He had little reference for what sort of things a six-year-old girl knew and did not know. He resorted to treating her like Isaac: he respected her intelligence, but assumed that she knew very little of the world.

  As for music, she had learned with incredible speed. Isaac had been among Dwayne’s best students, quick to understand about scales and chords when first starting out. But Leah, in days, had grasped the circle of fifths, the relationship between major and minor keys, and how to identify chords. If only they’d had a piano. And time. Much more time.

  Not much time left now. Dwayne could feel it. Was it the voice of God calling him home? Telling him, soon? Soon. Soon what? Dwayne was not afraid to die. It had been decades since Dwayne had been afraid of death. But now he had a six-year-old girl with him. It was just the two of them, alone in the misty halls of a strange place, the old cripple and the child. And Leah Walker, to Dwayne, seemed like the most precious thing in the world. He assumed without thought the role of her protector. Anything, man or monster, would have to pass through Dwayne Hartman to reach the child.

  He prayed as he crutched carefully over the slippery tile, Leah following in his wake, reaching up a tiny hand to grasp the corner of his coat. Lord, he prayed, don’t much mind what happens to me. I’ll see you soon enough…(the thought of it choked him up)…but please, in the name of Jesus Christ, lay your hand of protection over this girl.

  He was praying thus, concentrating on walking, moving forward though he knew not where, when someone burst through a door nearby. It happened in a place that Dwayne recognized as a laboratory, though he had never been much for science. Machines populated the area, many monitors staring like dark eyes. The few still switched on displayed complex readouts and scrolling graphs.

  The man didn’t say anything. He stumbled, caught his balance, and aimed a shaking weapon at Dwayne. His wide eyes said enough. He was afraid. He was tall, black, flat-featured. He wore a jacket with the colors of OI over khaki pants and a T-shirt with a picture of a tall building on it. Dwayne could tell at a glance that he was no soldier. And he was standing too close.

  “Son,” said Dwayne, his voice grave, “don’t point a gun like that unless you mean it. Put it down.”

  The man did not put it down. His finger trembled on the trigger.

  “There’s a child here,” said Dwayne. The man’s eyes flicked down to Leah. He didn’t lower the gun. Fear controlled him. He gripped the weapon as though the power it held would save him.

  Dwayne shifted his weight off the cane in his right hand. That cane whipped up into the air and snapped the handgun out of the man’s hand with a harsh crack. The gun spun away, struck the ceiling, clattered unseen to the floor across the room.

  The man recoiled, his reaction time slow, as Dwayne lowered the cane and eased his weight back onto it.

  “What’s your name, son?” Dwayne asked. He kept his tone steady, reasonable, even friendly.

  The man edged back, thinking of returning through the door.

  “My name is Dwayne. Dwayne Hartman.”

  The man paused. “…Will,” he said. His voice cracked; he swallowed. “William Terry.”

  Something dripped from William Terry’s fingers onto the floor. Blood from a wound Dwayne couldn’t see. “Come here, William,” he said. “Let’s have a seat. Let me take a look at that.”

  Several rolling office chairs stood nearby. The lights overhead flickered as Dwayne pulled one to him with a cane and pushed another toward Will. He saw Leah slinking away toward the gun.

  “No!” said Dwayne. He didn’t mean to use his full voice, but he did. It reverberated in the room and made Leah cringe in alarm. “Don’t touch it, Leah. Leave it be. Have a seat, William.”

  William Terry, confused and unsure, set himself on the chair beside Dwayne. He looked worn out. Traumatized. The hundred-mile stare in his eyes. Dwayne guessed that this man had just seen death before his eyes for the first time. He had a bullet wound on the back of his arm. It was only a graze.

  “Son,” he said, “you don’t look the type to go barging through doors, waving guns at old men.”

  “I…” He swallowed. “Who are you? What are you doing here? What is a child doing here?” He had a Canadian accent. His voice was high and breathy.

  Dwayne shrugged. “Got lost.”

  “Lost? Lost? You don’t get here by getting lost. I lost my security card once, and I got arrested at the gate!”

  Dwayne didn’t rightly remember any gate. “You’ll be fine. Bleeding’s almost stopped.”

  The man slouched in his chair, put a hand to his head, stared at the floor. “You’ve got to get out of here,” he said, his voice a whisper. “Take the kid and go.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Dwayne shrugged again. “Lost.”

  The man stared at Dwayne, eyebrows raised. “Why are you here?”

  “ Lookin’ for a door. So’s I heard. Special door. Nothin’ I know about. Here.” Dwayne fished his flask from the inner pocket of his jacket and handed it to William. William eyed it suspiciously for a moment before unscrewing the lid and taking a few gulps. He spluttered and coughed when finished.

  “Thanks,” he said as he handed it back.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Can I have some?” asked Leah.

  Dwayne gave her a disapproving frown. “I’ve told you, girl. Not near old enough.”

  “But I’m thirsty!”

  “Hmm…” Dwayne was a bit thirsty as well.

  William got up stiffly. He walked to a desk in the corner of the room—not, Dwayne took care to note, anywhere near the fallen gun. He rummaged around in the drawer and returned with four cans of lemonade bound in plastic, the remainder of a six-pack. They each took one in silence and drank it.

  “I work here,” William explained in a calmer voice. “This is Trisha’s. She won’t mind. Since…” He appeared to wish that this too were alcoholic.

  “It was that guy,” said William in a quick, low voice. “The one they were talking about. Black. I think it’s a, a codename. Or something.”

  “Abraham Black,” said Dwayne.

  William nodded. “I couldn’t really see. It—it was over in just a second. It was so loud. And then...everyone was just...” The aluminum can crumpled in his hands; lemonade spilled onto the tile.

  The lights flickered overhead. They heard a sound, the clicking of bootheels echoing down a nearby corridor. It struck Dwayne that such a sound should not be so loud. He wondered: did Abraham have any control over that? How much, if anything, did Abraham have control over?

  The sound terrified William, and Leah did not fare much better. She had been hearing this sound in her nightmares. This sound, along with something she could only describe to Dwayne as “bad thunder.” Leah cowered, clutching at Dwayne’s coat. She seemed to shrink down to an even smaller size, and her wide eyes glistened with tears.

  “We need to run,” whispered William urgently.

  “Can’t,” said Dwayne. He clicked his canes together for emphasis as to why.

  “Hide, then,” insisted William, though he seemed doubtful about the chances.

  “You hide,” said Dwayne. “I’ll have a talk with him.” He rose, wincing at the sharp stab of ice in his hips and lower back. He’d already been walking too much today. But he had to stand for this. You had to stand against evil. He had no armor, no sword or shield. He had two canes, an ancient army jacket, half a flask of whiskey, and the Good Book. By the grace of God, he would need no more than that to stand against the powers of darkness.

  “A, a talk?” said William.

  Dwayne nodded. “Now listen here, son.” He gazed down at William Terry, and the younger man shrank back. “You got a daughter?”

  “N-no...but...a niece.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Simone...”

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  “I got neither daughter nor niece,” said Dwayne, a little sadly. “But I got that girl, now. Leah Walker. Now, if anything should happen to me, I want you to look after her. You hear me, William Terry?”

  William gaped back at Dwayne.

  “Lord,” said Dwayne, “offer this young man your protection, just you have me, all my days.”

  “…what?”

  Dwayne gave William a steely eye. “Unless the Lord watches over a city, its watchmen stand guard in vain,” he said.

  “What?”

  Dwayne turned to go. Then he saw Leah trembling with fear. He wanted to kneel down before her, but his kneeling days were more or less finished. So instead he collapsed back into the chair, nearly toppling it with his sudden weight. “Leah,” he said. “Look at me.”

  Leah looked at him, her dark slanted eyes wide and frightened. “I know who it is,” she whispered to him, softly as though afraid of being overheard. “I…” She couldn’t finish.

  “I know,” said Dwayne. She’d been having nightmares. “But you have to be brave, Leah.”

  “I am not brave,” she said. A simply stated fact, in her typical way.

  “But Leah,” said Dwayne. “I heard that you were…a dragon.”

  That gave her pause. She considered this carefully.

  “Are you a dragon, Leah?”

  She nodded, cautious. “Dragons are…they aren’t afraid?”

  “Well. Sometimes they get scared,” Dwayne admitted. “But you know what they do then?”

  Leah, all at once fascinated, whispered, “What?”

  “They eat their fear,” said Dwayne.

  This astonished her. “They eat it?”

  Dwayne nodded seriously. “They bite down hard on it. Then they gobble it up. That’s how, even though they’re scared sometimes, they can still be dragons. You must be a dragon, Leah. Bite your fear and don’t let it go.” This, more or less, was how Dwayne’s commanding officer had explained it, long ago on the other side of the world, minus the dragons. It had helped Dwayne, at any rate, until he had lost his fear for a greater glory.

  Leah clenched her teeth. She thought carefully, eyes flicking back and forth as she analyzed things that only she could see. “I can do it,” she said at last.

  The ominous sound, that click of approaching bootheels, was close now. And another sound came with it: a metallic snick…snick…snick… Dwayne knew it. It was the sound of the hammer of a firearm being pulled back and released. Abraham Black was almost upon them. He was coming the same way that William had.

  “Quickly,” said Dwayne. “Take shelter.”

  Will nodded. “I know where it is,” he blurted. “That door you mentioned. We…I can take you there.”

  “Take the girl,” said Dwayne. “If anything happens to me…” He turned to Leah. “Go with him, Leah. And remember.”

  “I’m a dragon,” she said. She wasn’t crying anymore. She still looked scared, but that was fine.

  William Terry peeled Leah away from Dwayne, took her awkwardly by the hand, led her to a door on the far side of the room.

  That door had closed for only a moment before the other burst open. Dwayne had already stood to meet Abraham Black. But there was only darkness on the other side of the door, a coiling, hungry emptiness.

  “Though I limp through the valley of the shadow of death,” Dwayne muttered, “I will fear no evil.”

  “Shpeaking of fear,” said the void behind the door, “I wash shurprished to shmell you here.” The voice of Abraham Black was worse than Dwayne remembered it. It rang hollow and cold and harsh. It grated strangely on the ears. Dwayne had never heard or imagined a voice like this. But he stood his ground.

  “Let’sh shee,” said the void, “if you shtill think I’m a man.” And he stepped through the door. Phlegmy strings of shadow clung to him as though he passed through slimy black cobwebs. The skin of his face fit poorly, like a thin plastic mask saggy in some parts and stretched too taught in others. In some places it pulled so tight it broke and oozed a dark viscous matter, a film of sludgy creosote. It was white as paper except for where it was stained yellow and brown, or veined in black. His teeth, glistening white, dripped oily darkness down over cracked and bleeding lips. His hair, draped around and behind him from under his broad hat, was one substance with the residual threads of darkness that clung to him from behind. All of his attire looked drenched in tar. He dribbled darkness as though he had just walked through a rain of slimy ink; the drops became shadows and vapor when they struck the floor.

  But his eyes were the worst. The whites were yellow, black-veined, bloodshot but not with blood. Those eyes were wide open, staring with manic intensity, and he never blinked. The eye is the lamp of the body, thought Dwayne. If that which gives light is dark, how great is that darkness.

  Abraham Black hacked. He coughed up a wad of blackness that struck the ground and squirmed away like a handful of slugs to add themselves to the ever-mounting cloud of shadow infecting the laboratory.

  “Afraid?” said Black. His lips were parted in a broad, ghastly revelation of his incongruously brilliant teeth, but Dwayne could not tell whether it was a smile or a wince of pain.

  “The Lord is my light and my salvation,” Dwayne replied. “He is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?”

  “Of me!” A shadowy vortex turned. Dwayne had a silver revolver in his face, glinting like a constellation of stars in the night. The hammer of the gun clicked back. Somewhere to his left, a small girl squeaked in horror.

  Dwayne felt the tension. He knew right enough he might die at any moment. His legs hurt, and the sight of all the shadows around Abraham Black unnerved him. And he was sad—that he might never get to see Isaac again, to teach Leah the piano. But in all this, he was not afraid. Be strong and courageous, for the Lord is with you.

  “My life is not in your hands,” he said.

  The barrel of the revolver moved forward until it touched Dwayne’s forehead. It was icy cold. “Shay I’m a monshter,” said Abraham in a low voice.

  Dwayne had known men who might be called monsters. Not because they bled darkness, and often not even because they killed people. But he understood by now, there were really no such things as monsters. There was no line anywhere separating the good people from the bad, separating Dwayne from Abraham Black. The thought filled his mind, as he gazed into Abraham’s twitching, blackened eyes: there but for thy grace go I.

  Abraham Black clenched his jaw so hard that several of his perfect white teeth cracked with little crunching sounds. He spoke through his teeth. “Grashe? How dare you shpeak to me of grashe.”

  “Ain’t no such thing as monsters, Abraham,” said Dwayne, his voice trembling but strong.

  The shining weapon dropped away. It gestured at Abraham. “Look, preacher man. Shee what I’ve become? What would she think? Death and vengeanshe is all that’sh left for me now.”

  “You do that, you’ll only spread the darkness.”

  “It ish much too late to try to talk me out of thish, preacher. We are enemiesh. The darknesh and the light. That’sh how thish shtory goesh.”

  You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart.

  Dwayne shook his head, slowly, firmly. “No,” he said, and the dark recoiled from the sound. “We are men, Abraham. We have a common enemy. Only difference is, you have been defeated by it. But it’s not too late. It’s never too late.”

  Abraham Black stared at Dwayne. “It’sh a shtrange thing…” he said. His gaze drifted up and away, to the distance behind Dwayne. “It’sh a changing shadow that’sh inshide me. But I don’t think I can change, even if I wanted to.”

  “Don’t matter,” said Dwayne. “All things change, whether we want them to or not.”

  Something came over Abraham when he heard these words. His ill-fitting mask of a face twisted in fury. The blackness boiled behind him like oil. His mouth worked, struggling to shape words, but in the end his guns spoke for him.

  He shot Dwayne twice, once with each revolver, in rapid succession. Thunder crashed, shuddering the screens and computers stained by darkness.

  Dwayne did not cry out as he fell to the ground, but a girl screamed somewhere nearby before being stifled.

  For Dwayne, everything went dark.

  And then, very bright.

  Abraham Black stared for a moment at Dwayne Hartman.

  He had missed. Twice. Oh, the preacher man had been shot. Twice. Chest, stomach. Both shots had bypassed all vital organs.

  What bothered Black was this: he didn’t know whether he had missed on purpose.

  It didn’t matter. The man named Dwayne was unconscious and would bleed out soon enough. The job was done.

  Abraham Black turned to the scream he had heard earlier. He knew who that was. The one that had run away, and the girl who had been haunting him. They were going where he was going. To the door.

  He started after them, heels clicking. He wouldn’t miss next time. He would kill them all. Every person he saw. Whoever crossed his path. They would meet death. He would not stop, he could not be stopped, not until he finished with those who had done this to him.

  He stepped through the shadows, crossing a distance, and emerged in front of the coward and the girl.

  “It ish at an end,” he informed them. By ‘it’, he meant everything. All things, soon enough. But first, their lives.