Out in the hall, June screamed: a long scream he could hear empty her of all breath. Then she screamed again.
Mrs. Richards opened her mouth without sound; one hand shook by her head.
He dashed between the television and the tables, out the door.
June, dragging one hand against the wall, backed up the hall. When he caught her shoulder, the scream cut and she whirled. “Bobby…!” That had almost no voice at all. “I…I didn’t see the…” Shaking her head, she motioned down the hall.
He heard Mrs. Richards behind him, and ran three more steps.
The rug lay on the floor, the last foot sagging over the sill in the empty elevator shaft. The door nudged it, went K-chunk, retreated, then began to close again.
“Mom! Bobby, he fell in the—”
K-chunk!
“No, oh my dear God, no!”
“I didn’t see it, mom! I didn’t! I thought it was the other—”
“Oh, God. Bobby, no he couldn’t—”
“Mom, I didn’t know! He just backed into it! I didn’t see—”
K-chunk!
Kidd hit EXIT with both palms, vaulted down the flight, came out on sixteen, sprinted to the end of the hall, and beat the door.
“All right, all right. What the fuck you—” Thirteen opened for him—“banging so hard for?”
“A rope…!” Kidd was gasping. “Or a ladder. You guys got a rope? And a flashlight? The boy from upstairs, he just fell down the elevator shaft!”
“Oh, wow…!” Thirteen stepped back.
Smokey, behind his shoulder, opened her eyes wide.
“Come on! You guys got a light and a ladder? And a rope?”
A black woman with hair like two inches of Brillo with hints of rust, shouldered Smokey aside, stepped around Thirteen: “Now what the fuck is going on, huh?” Around her neck hung some dozen chains, falling between her breasts between the flaps of a leather vest laced through its half-dozen lowest holes. Her thumb hooked a wide, scuffed belt; her wrists were knobby, the back of her hands rough. Dark skin rounded above the belt and below the vest bottom.
“A boy just fell down the God-damn elevator shaft!” Kidd took another breath and tried to see past the crowd that had gathered at the door. “Will you bastards get a ladder and a rope and a light and come on! Huh?”
“Oh, hey, man!” The black woman looked over her shoulder. “Baby! Adam! Denny, you had that line! Bring it out here. Some kid fell down the shaft.” She turned back. “I got a light.” A brown triangle of stain, that looked permanent, crossed her two, large, front teeth. “Come on!”
Kidd turned away and started back down the hall.
He heard them running behind him.
As he ducked into the stairwell, Denny’s voice separated from the voices and footsteps around it: “Fell down the elevator! Oh, man,” and a barking laugh. “All right. All right, Dragon Lady—I’m with you.”
Sudden light behind him flung his shadow before him down the next flight. At the landing he glanced back:
The bright scales, claws, and fangs careened after him, striated and rigid as a television image from a monster film suddenly halted in its projector: It was the dragon he’d seen his first night in the park with Tak. He could tell because griffin and mantis glimmered just behind it, and sometimes through it. Bleached out like ghosts, the others clustered down, streaked with sidelight. Kidd ran on, heart hammering, breath scoring his nasal roof.
He fell against the bottom door; it sagged forward. He staggered out. The others ran behind. Harsh light lay out harsh shadow, dispersing the lobby’s grey as he crossed.
“How do you get down into the fucking basement?” He hammered the elevator bell.
“The downstairs is locked,” Thirteen said. “I tried to get in when we first got—”
Both elevator doors rolled open.
Dragon Lady, light extinguished, swung around him into the one with the car, wrenched away the plate above the buttons: The plate clattered on the car floor as she did something with switches. “Okay, I got both doors locked open.”
Kidd looked back—the two other apparitions swayed forward among the others standing—and called: “Where’s the rope?” He held the other jamb and leaned into the breezy shaft. Girders rose by hazy brick. “I can’t see too much.” Above and in the wind a voice echoed:
Oh, no! He’s down there! He must be terribly hurt!
And another:
No, Mom, come back. Kidd’s down there. Mom, please!
Bobby, Bobby, are you all right? Please, Bobby! Oh, dear God!.
Kidd strained to see: the vaguest suggestion of light up in the distance—was it some upper, open door? “Mrs. Richards!” His shout vaulted about the shaft. “You get back from that door!”
Oh, Bobby! Kidd, is he all right? Oh, please, let him be all right.
Mom, come back, will you?
Then lights around him moved forward, harshening the brick, the painted steel. On the shaft wall shadows of heads swung; some grew, some faded; new shadows grew.
“You see anything?” Dragon Lady asked, crowding his shoulder. “Here.” Her arm came up, hooked his. “Lean on out further if you want.”
He glanced back at her.
She said, her head to the side: “I ain’t gonna let you fall, motherfucker!”
So he hooked up his arm. “Got me?”
“Yeah.”
Their elbows made a hot, comfortable lock.
He leaned forward, swaying into the dark. She let him slowly out.
The other lights had filled the door, flushing the shaft with doubled shadows.
“You see anything in there?” which was not Dragon Lady’s voice but Denny’s.
The junk down there: On darkness like velvet, cigarette packages, chewing-gum papers, cigarettes and cigarette butts, match books, envelopes and, there to one side, heaped up…the glitter in it identified the wrist. “Yeah, I can see him…I think.”
Can you see where he is? Bobby? Bobby, Kidd, can you see him? Oh, my God, he fell all that way! Oh, he must be hurt, so badly! I can’t hear him. Is he unconscious? Oh, can’t you see where he is yet?
Momma, please come back from there!
Behind him, Dragon Lady said with soft brutality: “Christ, I wish that bitch would shut the fuck up!”
“Look, man,” Thirteen said, behind them, “that’s her kid down there!”
“Don’t ‘man’ me, Thirteen,” Dragon Lady said; and Kidd felt her grip—well, not loosen so much as shift, about an inch; his shoulder tensed. “I still wish she’d keep quiet!”
“I brought the crowbar,” somebody said. “And a screwdriver. Do you need a crowbar or a screwdriver?”
“After that fall,” Dragon Lady said, “there can’t be too much left of him. He gotta be dead.”
“Shit, Dragon Lady,” Thirteen said, “his Momma’s right up there!”
“I said: He’s gotta be dead! You heard me?”
Mom, come on!
Can you see him down there? I can’t see anything. I can’t hear anything. Oh, Bobby, Bobby! Can you hear your mommy? Please, Bobby!
The grip suddenly sagged; for a moment Kidd thought he was falling—Dragon Lady, still holding, had leaned in behind him. Her voice roared about his ears. “YOUR SON IS DEAD, LADY!” And Kidd was pulled away. “Come on, let’s get you back.”
Thirteen, with an unhappy expression, shook his head.
Denny, up front now, gripped a length of wound clothes line. “You want to get him up? You take the rope. We’ll hold you while you go down.”