Something was dragging itself across the floor.
“Hey,” Will said, approaching the heap cautiously. Rebar lay beside it, three pieces interlaced like pick-up sticks. A bearded man, barefoot in a dirty fur-lined parka, his thick jeans smattered with oil and mud, large lateral slashes in the fabric, the skin beneath a color past purple, before black.
“Are you okay?” said Will.
“Returning to the place. I spoke of that once,” the man whispered, his forehead pressed into pigeon droppings. The familiarity of his voice launched a flock of chills up Will’s spine.
“Jonah, let’s go call an ambulance,” Will said, still unable to move.
“No!” the man hissed with coals in his eyes, and both boys backed up. “This is an uncomfortable setting, Aurelius,” he said, twisting onto his back, sweeping the palms of his big-knuckled hands above him. “Those cruelties may revamp,” he added with a wheeze, then fought to rise, smearing more blood into his jeans.
“Please don’t move,” said Will. “You’re bleeding.”
The man chuckled. “The sound is perpetual. I’ve surrendered to it.”
“Still bleeding, dude,” said Jonah. “You should get your legs elevated.”
“I’ve surrendered to it,” he repeated, as though the middle syllable contained a special malevolence. By now the man had managed to stand, wobbly as a bear on a ball.
“My quarters,” he said, eyes on Will.
“What?” asked Will.
“Sorry buddy, we don’t have any quarters for you,” said Jonah.
“My quarters!” he howled, pointing his elbow at a door across the room. “Aurelius, invigorate your blood bank,” he said, now pointing at Will with a defocused expression.
“I think he wants us to take him somewhere,” said Will.
“He’s already there,” said Jonah.
The man shambled forward, painting a bloody masterpiece of his progress on the concrete. He threw open a heavy door and lurched Outside. The boys followed cautiously through the doorway and onto the high platform they’d glimpsed from the ground.
From this height Will could see all the way up the hill to his school and Grandview Gardens. Between this landing and the other tower was a rusted wrought-iron walkway and the man plodded out upon it. Will tested the bridge with his foot, trying not to see through its gaps.
Jonah joined Will at his side. “So this guy wheezes like a busted vacuum and is not making too much sense. It’s him, right?” he said.
Will nodded. “It’s the same voice. He’s got plenty of grain dust on him, but he’s not wearing the boots. We can follow hi—”
“Will! This is crazy,” Jonah pleaded. “Maybe he deserved to get beat like that. Who knows? Let’s just go. This is plenty of information to offer up to your constable buddy. Or we could come back with my brothers and make him talk.”
Will met Jonah’s eyes. “He could’ve broken my neck that night he grabbed me. But he didn’t. You heard the Bald Man himself say this guy was protecting kids. And he just said Aurelius. I remember my mom reading a book that was supposed to make her less scared of the world written by some emperor guy named Marcus Aurelius. What if the Wheezing Man thinks I’m Marcus? Or wants to lead us to him?”
They watched the man continue over the bridge on wrecked legs to a faraway doorway, into which an immense black iron boiler was wedged, making the way impassable. He swung open the heavy door with a rusted wail. He stooped, then stuffed himself inside, fitting narrowly.
“Come on, megapussy,” Will said, then bent his head, took the cold railing, and stepped out, without glancing back to see if his friend would follow. Frigid squalls launched themselves into his eyes, and the high, rusty bridge turned Will’s knees to gelatin. When he reached the boiler, he set his skateboard inside, then crawled through the soft ash and through the identical opening on the other side.
He emerged, swatting ash flakes from his pants, into a grand room high above the harbor with huge windows and plank floors without an ounce of pigeon droppings. There was a scattering of old furniture and small rugs, a few plants. Judging by the large desk near the window and the shelving on the walls, it was probably once an office of some kind. No sign of garden hoses, or Marcus.
By the time Jonah wrestled himself through, the man moaned and collapsed to the floor, clunking his head soundly on a table leg. Will hurried to his side. He pulled his sweatshirt from his bag, unrolled the knife, stuffed the shirt under the man’s head, then stashed the knife back in the bag. Will got a good view of him now, mid-thirties, except he looked older and younger at the same time, his long hair graying, the skin around his hollow eyes thin as lavender petals.
“Those two men did this to you?” Will asked. “Was it because you’re protecting Marcus?”
“You’re right, Aurelius. They’re unconglomerated,” he said with the hollow gaze of a man recently subject to an explosion. “But you’ll be tacking in the rip soon,” he continued as his teeth hissed and chattered. Then he coiled with a violent cough, his legs smearing blood like a gory snow angel.
“Why’s he shivering so much?” said Will.
“He’s in shock,” said Jonah. “Textbook. We need to keep him warm.”
Will surveyed the room and spotted an old woodstove obscured by a stack of old books. “I’ll start a fire,” he said, scanning for matches and finding none, vowing to stuff his G.I. Joe–torching barbecue lighter in his backpack the next time he went Outside.
“This castle!” the man belted loud, straining up with a gurgle, “is full of gas—the grain, rotting. You’ll sail us to the ether!”
Will regarded Jonah quizzically, and he shrugged.
“Okay!” said Will, nearly yelling in the man’s face, hoping to lodge the words in his brain through sheer volume. “Do you have any blankets!”
“Abysmal,” the man said, cinching his eyes closed.
Jonah found a heavy-duty sleeping bag on a mattress set atop some pallets. Rather than risk getting too close by attempting to shove the man in, Jonah unzipped the bag and draped it over him. Soon the pace of the man’s shivering slowed. Will cracked the water bottle he’d brought and set it beside him on the floor.
“Will, will, will, will you find me again?” the man called with a strange tenderness. “Is that my voice?” he said. “I’ve been eating birds for so long—” Then he began to retch. Will held the bottle to his lips, allowing him a long, desperate slug.
“Pththththththt …,” he said spraying the liquid broadly, aerosoling it in the sunlight. “Pestilence!” he shrieked.
With this rebuke the man seemed to have burned up a final reserve. His wheezing slowed before slipping into something near sleep, a rest unsettled by winces of pain and his mouth’s own involuntary workings, emitting sounds halfway between word and dream.
Jonah put his fingers over the man’s wrist, then lowered his ear near his mouth. “His vitals are fine,” he said. “But looks like we won’t be finding Marcus tonight.”
They sat cross-legged beside the man, collecting themselves while monitoring the buzzy, tortured lift of his breathing and listening to the bleat of gulls and the rumble of the occasional train that ran without stopping through the yard far below. Through the window they could see dozens of birdfeeders made from old oilcans fixed outside the window to the concrete. The air was thick with the tang of rust, the funk of wharf, iron, and blood. Will knew about iron in blood because sometimes his mother had claimed hers was low and made them steak, slow-cooked for an ungodly duration until it became something closer to jellyfish. Before long the sun dipped behind the hill and the sky ignited orange. The man’s sweat had already soaked his sleeping bag like a dishrag.