Again, she kept quiet. The doctor looked down at Cleo's face and shook his head. "Ah, poor Cleo. I enjoyed her antics so much of the time, for she had a manic energy that was, when under some control, most entertaining. Did you know that she could quote the entirety of Shakespeare's great drama, line for line, word for word? She is, alas, destined this afternoon for our own potter's field. The undertaker should be here shortly to prepare her body. A life lived in turmoil, pain, and a great deal of anonymity, Miss Jones. Whoever cared for her once, and might at some point have actually loved her, has disappeared from our records and what institutional memory we have. And so, her years on this planet amount to very little. A most modest sum. It doesn't seem altogether fair, does it? Cleo was rich in personality, decisive in opinion, strong in belief. That all these were mad in nature doesn't diminish the passion that she had. I wish that she could have delivered a little mark on this world, for she deserved an epitaph larger that the notation in the hospital record that she will receive. No headstone. No flowers. Just another bed in this hospital, only this one will be six feet under. She deserved a funeral with trumpets and fireworks, elephants, lions, tigers, and a horse-drawn cortege, something fit for her queenliness."
Lucy heard the doctor sigh. He looked up at her, pulling his eyes off the dead body. "And so, Miss Jones, where does it leave you?"
"Still searching, Doctor. Searching right up to my last moments here."
He looked slyly toward her. "Ah, obsession. Single-minded pursuit in the face of all obstacles. A quality which you might admit comes closer to my profession than yours."
"Perhaps persistence is a better word."
He shrugged. "As you wish. But answer me a question, Miss Jones: Have you come here searching for a madman? Or a sane one?"
He did not wait to hear her answer, which was slow in coming anyway. Instead, the doctor pushed Cleo's body back into the refrigerated unit with a grunt and a squealing sound of the runners complaining under her weight and said, "I must go to find the undertaker, who is expected shortly and has a busy day ahead. Good day, Miss Jones."
Lucy watched the doctor exit, his plump body swaying a little under the harsh overhead lights and she thought to herself that she was a little in awe of the killer who had managed to find the hospital. Even with all her efforts, she recognized that he was still concealed within the walls, and probably, for all she knew, utterly immune to her powers of investigation.
That is what you thought, right?
I closed my eyes, knowing that it was inevitable the Angel would be at my side within moments. I tried to calm my breathing, slow my racing. heart for I thought that every word from here on was dangerous, both for him and for me.
"Not only was it what I thought. It was true."
I pivoted about, first right, then left, trying to see the source of the words I heard in the apartment. Vapors, ghosts, filmy lights that wavered and blinked seemed on either side of me.
"I was completely safe, every minute, every second, no matter what I did. Surely, C-Bird, you can see that?" His voice was rough-edged, filled with arrogance and anger and each word seemed to slap against my cheek like a dead man's kiss.
"You were safe from them," I said.
"They did not even understand the law," he boasted. "Their own rules were completely useless."
"But you weren't safe from me," I replied. Defiant.
"And do you think you are safe from me, now?" the Angel said harshly. "Do you think you are safe from yourself?"
I didn't answer. There was a momentary silence and then an explosion, like a gunshot, followed by the shattering sound of glass breaking into hundreds of shards. An ashtray, filled with cigarette butts had burst against a sidewall, thrown with lightning speed and force. I shrank back. My head spun drunkenly, exhaustion, tension, fear all vying for purchase within me. There was a smell of stale smoke and I could see some dusty ashes still fluttering in the air next to a dark smudge against the white paint. "We are closing now, Francis, on the end," the Angel said, mocking me. "Can't you feel it? Can't you sense it? Don't you understand that it is almost all over?"
The Angel's voice ragged me.
"Just like it was all those years ago," he said bitterly. "Dying time getting closer."
I looked down at my hand. Did I throw the ashtray at the sound of his words? Or did he throw the ashtray to demonstrate that he was taking form, gaining substance, slowly returning to shape. Becoming real once again. I could see my hand quiver in front of me.
"You will die here, Francis. "You should have died then, but now you will die here. Alone. Forgotten. Unloved. And dead. It will be days before someone finds your body, more than enough time for maggots to infest your skin, your stomach to be bloated and your stench to penetrate the walls."
I shook my head, fighting as best as I could.
"Oh, yes," he continued. "That is how it will be. Not a word in the newspaper, not a tear shed at your funeral if there even is one. Do you think people will come together to eulogize you, Francis, filling up the rows of some fine church? To make nice speeches about all your accomplishments? All the great and meaningful things you did before you died? I don't believe that's in the offing, Francis. Not in the slightest. You're just going to die and that will be it. Just a lot of relief by all the people who haven't cared a whit for you, and will be secretly overjoyed that you are no longer a burden on their lives. All that will remain of your days will be the smell you leave behind in this apartment, which the next tenants will probably scrub away with disinfectant and lye."
I half gestured toward the wall of words.
He laughed. "You think anyone will care about all your stupid scribblings? It will be gone in minutes. Seconds. Someone will come in, take one look at the mess the crazy man created, fetch a paintbrush and cover up every word. And all that happened a long time ago will be buried forever."
I closed my eyes. If the words pummeled me, how long before his fists? It seemed to me, right at that moment, that the Angel was growing stronger every second, while I was growing weaker. I took a deep breath, and started to drag myself back across the room, my pencil in hand.
"You will not live to finish the story," he said. "Do you understand that, Francis? You will not live. I will not allow it. You think you can write the ending here, Francis? You make me laugh. The ending belongs to me, It always has. It always will"
I didn't know what to think. His threat was as real at that moment as it was so many years earlier. But I struggled forward and thought I had to try. I wished Peter was here to help, and he must have been able to read my mind. Or perhaps I moaned Peter's name out loud, and wasn't aware of it, because the Angel laughed again. "He can't help you this time. He's dead."
Chapter 30
Peter hustled through the Amherst Building corridor, sticking his head into the dayroom, pausing outside the examination rooms, taking a quick glance into the dining area, dodging clusters of patients, searching either for Francis or Lucy Jones, neither of whom seemed to be anywhere close by. He had the overwhelming sensation that something was happening that was critical, but that he was being prevented from witnessing. He had a sudden recollection of walking through the jungle in Vietnam. At war, the sky above, the moist earth beneath his feet, the superheated air and clammy foliage that caressed his clothes, all seemed the same as they were every day, but that there was no way of knowing, other than some otherworldly sixth sense, that around a corner there might be a sniper in a tree, or a waiting ambush, or perhaps just a nearly invisible wire stretched across the trail, patiently awaiting an errant step to trigger a buried mine. Everything was routine, everything was in place and ordinary, just as it was supposed to be, except for the hidden thing that promised tragedy. That was what he saw in the hospital world surrounding him.