Apocalypso

CHAPTER EIGHT
TODD HOLMES

Perhaps it was the sight of those women that caused Todd Holmes to dream of his own mother. Awake, he blocked her completely out of his mind. He knew the term for it: “post-traumatic stress syndrome,” but he always thought that was just something that happened to soldiers in wartime. Now, in his sleep, he remembered all.

“You must really think I’m dumb. Boy oh boy, you must really take me for a dummy.”

“Huh?”

“Listen, if you hate me so much, why don’t you just go live with him? I’ll tell you why: because he wouldn’t put up with you. You think he wants that responsibility? Don’t bet on it.”

“What are you talking about, Mom?”

“What am I talking about? That’s a good one. Oh, that’s funny. Fun-ee.” Her voice warped like a pane of glass just before it broke. “Don’t play dumb with me. You’ve been seeing him behind my back. Oh my God, how could you, how could you?”

“Seeing who?”

“Your father!”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Why?” She laughed. “You of all people ask why. Oh, that is funny, after all we’ve been through together because of that man. Who do you think keeps a roof over our heads? Who do you think has worked and slaved away to keep us out of the gutter? Not him! He couldn’t care less! And now you stab me in the back! My own son! I can’t believe it, I can not believe it. Oh my God!” At once she seemed far away, lost and weeping in hurt reverie. “What did I ever do to deserve this?” she sniffled. “What did I ever do?”

“Nothing,” Todd said. “It’s not always about you.”

She returned to him, resentful eyes brimming, “You want to know how I found out? Oh, you’ll love this one. He came by yesterday, the bum, looking for forgiveness. He actually had the nerve to ask if he could take you to the plant with him! I couldn’t believe it!”

Unable to listen to any more, Todd made for the door, but his mother jerked him back by his dreadlocks. That wasn’t the worst; when she was really mad, she twisted his piercings.

“Ow! Mom!”

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Out!”

“Oh no, you don’t. I know what you’re up to: You think you can just go cry to him, and the two of you can commiserate about what a horrible bitch I am, what a miserable, controlling harpy. Well, I’m through playing bad cop. Go ahead.” She released Todd, giving his head a shove. “You go! Go right ahead, buddy-boy. But don’t think you’re coming back here, uh-uh. If you leave now, you better plan on staying with him for good. It’s about time he got a turn being the parent. Go ahead. See how fast he takes you in. Go right ahead, fine by me.”

Todd hesitated, took a few steps toward the door, and wavered. “I can’t believe you’re doing this, Mom.”

“Join the club.”

Looking at his mother, so resolute and red-faced, Todd was unexpectedly alarmed. This was no bluff-she meant it. She was prepared to let him go and perhaps never return.

All at once, he knew he couldn’t take another step; things had gone too far already. Though he hated his mother for the ultimatum, the humiliation, he understood in his heart that the blame was not really hers but his father’s, for all the lies and empty promises. If Todd truly trusted his dad, he’d have been out that door without a backward glance. He’d be gone so fast, your head would spin. Much as he wished that could be so, the truth was that his old man remained an unknown quantity. And not really so unknown-the man was simply not trustworthy.

Todd shut himself in his room and threw himself facedown on the bed, sobbing curses and slamming his fists into the pillows.

Shaking her head, his mother finished dressing and went out.

All afternoon Todd stayed in bed, curled against the onslaught of grief like a rolled-up pangolin, his fevered stillness punctuated by fits of hysterical rage. He fantasized at great length about suicide, making specific, elaborate plans and composing various versions of his suicide note. It was hard to strike the right tone. Apologetic? Accusatory? Sad and profound? Snide and angry? Brief and pithy, or a detailed manifesto? He couldn’t decide. Eventually, with evening coming on and the apartment submerged in gloom, Todd fell asleep.

At midnight, he was awakened from a deep slumber by people running up and down the halls, yelling incoherently and slamming doors. A lot of stupid screaming and shouting. Down in the streets there was the crackle of fireworks and a crazy profusion of car horns and sirens. It sounded like the whole city was in an uproar.

It took him a second to gather his wits, then he realized, Oh yeah: New Year’s Eve. The thought that he was missing all the fun made him even more depressed, and Todd disgustedly covered his head with a couch cushion and fell instantly back asleep.

A few hours later, just after 4:00 A.M., he was awakened again.

At first he wasn’t sure what it was that had disturbed him. He was fully awake and clearheaded, staring up at patterns of light reflected on the ceiling. It was quiet now, the urgent sounds of the city muted to a faraway din.

Then he heard it again: a metallic rattling from the front door. It was the doorknob-someone out in the hallway was twisting it, trying to get in. Not just turning the knob, but jerking and yanking at it, as if stubbornly refusing to accept that the door was locked. Todd could see the shadow of the person’s feet through the crack underneath.

He sat up in alarm. Was someone trying to break in? His father maybe, come to sneak him out? He glanced across the room to his mom’s bed, intending to wake her, but the bed was still made up-she hadn’t even been home. This was perplexing, so unlike her, but Todd reminded himself it was New Year’s-perhaps she had been invited to a party after work. Again, very unlikely, but it gave him the fleeting hope that it must be her at the door, tired-surely not drunk-and fumbling for her keys.

Hesitantly, he called out, “Mom?”

In reply to his voice, something like a load of bricks slammed into the door, crunching the frame and shaking the whole apartment. Then came a frenzied, whinnying scream, a shrill eruption of nonsense syllables that made Todd shrivel inside his skin. Far worse than nails on a chalkboard, the weird voice made an arcing live wire out of Todd’s every hair follicle and nerve ending. He almost pissed his pants.

A pause.

Todd slowly got up, trembling hard. Listening. He could no longer see the foot-shadows under the door.

What was that?

He had never heard such a voice in his life; nor could he imagine what would cause a person to sound like that. He couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman. It terrified him to think it was someone who needed help, who was grievously injured, dying or bleeding to death on his doorstep. That’s what the voice evoked: catastrophic pain… or was it laughter? No, it was something more savage-demanding, not pleading-an animalistic keen that resonated in the most primitive part of Todd’s being and triggered a similarly primal response: to flee.

But he had nowhere to go. As the thing outside started jiggling and wrenching at the doorknob again, the confines of the tiny apartment took on the dimensions of a cage, a death trap. Todd picked up the phone and tapped 911. The line was busy-could they do that? He delicately hung up, trying not to clatter the phone with his shaking hand.

Okay… I’ll just wait for it to go away. Someone else in the building must have heard that jibbering outburst-any such disturbance usually caused their Filipino landlady to go ballistic. Never before had Todd so eagerly awaited one of Mrs. Mazola’s tirades. But she didn’t come. No one came. The building was dead silent.

Suddenly, there was a sound he did recognize: the familiar homely jingle of his mother’s key ring! Oh my God-was it her outside the door? But that scream…? The thought was too baffling to contemplate. Before he could stop himself, Todd crossed to the door and listened, heart pounding. Yes, those were definitely her keys… but why was it taking her so long? He started crying with terror and despair, unable to comprehend how it could be her who had made that noise. What was wrong with her? He wasn’t sure he could bear to know.

“Mom?” he whispered, his lips touching the cracked paint.

There was no answer except that idiot jingling. It was taking much longer than it should to unlock the door, as if the person outside was deeply, moronically engrossed in those keys. That was enough; he had to do something. Todd connected the security chain, gingerly turned the bolt, and opened the door a crack…

And slammed it shut again.

And screamed.

The thing out there-that demonic blue hag that somehow resembled his mother-lunged against the door, barely too late. It screeched furiously, and Todd could make out some of the garbled words this time:

“-Heeetoddeeohhtoddeemytod-deesweetbabyohbabeeeee-”

“Mom, no!” he cried, as the thing hit the door again, splitting the frame. Once more, and it would give.

Chest heaving, he ran for the bathroom and locked himself in. As he stood there listening, his gaze was fixed on his own reflection in the mirror: a wiry, wild-eyed boy, skin deathly pale and etched with runic black vines, whose blue eyes stared back at him under an overhanging shock of blond dreadlocks, as if awaiting some cue.

His eyes were drawn past the mirror to the air vent beside the toilet. This was an old building, an old hotel converted to apartments, and instead of a window in the bathroom there was an air shaft covered with a cruddy metal grate. While sitting on the toilet, Todd often heard the intimate sounds of other tenants using their bathrooms, a bit of voyeurism that he found endlessly, disgustingly fascinating. There was also something distinctly creepy about it, that barely visible dark shaft in which anything could be hiding and peeping back at him. Sometimes when he went to the bathroom late at night, he envisioned a weird, spidery man who lived behind the grate, scuttling up and down the shaft or huddling only inches away as Todd sat on the toilet. Mr. Green.

He heard the outer door crash open. The fearsome thing that had been his mother entered the apartment like a violent wind, upending furniture and tearing everything apart as it ransacked the place looking for him.

Todd opened the medicine cabinet. On the bottom was a plastic margarine tub full of tweezers and toenail clippers, and there was also a small multipurpose tool with pliers and a screwdriver. Using the screwdriver, he knelt on the toilet lid and went to work on the screws securing the air-shaft grate. Musty warmed air blew in his face. At first he almost gave up-the screws were old, tight and thickly painted over-but he stuck with it and suddenly the yellow enamel cracked off like candy coating. The first screw turned.

The thing outside grabbed the knob and slammed into the bathroom door.

Todd flinched, fumbled, then got the screw off. The second screw was easier, and the third and fourth didn’t have to be removed at all-he found he could pry the grate open without touching them.

He stuck his head into the shaft and looked down. It was gross, black with greasy lint, utterly dark and forbidding. Not to mention deep-their apartment was up on the third floor.

The bathroom door was warping, cracking, sending splinters of wood bouncing off the walls. Any second it would give, and that would be it-there was no place left to hide. A hideously mangled blue arm snaked through a hole in the plywood and thrashed around in the close space, straining for him. It could just touch, its fingertips grazing his shirt.

Ducking and dodging, Todd grabbed an armload of towels off the shelf and stuffed them down the chute. He did the same with the towels on the racks, then with the thick, shaggy bathmat. Finally, he climbed up on the toilet lid and squirmed feet first into the tight shaft until he was completely inside, painfully dangling by his armpits.

The bathroom door smashed inward.

Todd let go.

It was over very quickly: a brief plummet down a furry chimney, then his body slammed through something soft with a loud, concussive bang-it was his towels on a sheet-metal panel that collapsed beneath him and tumbled him into the basement.

Todd came to his senses in a pile of gallon jugs of used fryer oil. The wind had been knocked out of him, and he was covered with sticky black fluff, but he was not in pain. Later, he would feel it. He had bottomed out in the big main heating duct that fed the building, the force of his impact popping all its metal rivets and collapsing the duct like a cardboard box. Beside him, the ancient furnace was shuddering, squealing as if mortally wounded, its flame snuffed out. The basement was filling with the stink of gas.

Though still stunned, Todd forced himself to move; he didn’t want to see what might follow him down that chute. He was nearly up the stairs when the gas exploded.

The force of it hurled him out of the basement like a powerful shove. He picked himself up, shrieking, “Help! Help!” as he ran down the building’s back corridor. He was facing an array of doorways: the restaurant kitchen, the utility room, the stairway to the apartments, the fire exit. He was surprised to see the exit door wide open to the back alley, and a trail of odd debris-shoes and torn clothing-strewn across the floor. That door was never supposed to be left open; Mrs. Mazola was a fanatic about that, just as she was about any kind of mess in her building. But Todd didn’t have time to think about Mrs. Mazola-all he saw was the open door to the outside.

As he rushed for it, something flew out of the stairwell and knocked him down. Crazy whipcord arms skinnier than his own wrapped around his neck, and a gaping, ravenous fish mouth sought his. In the sickly, strobing fluorescents, Todd recognized the overpowering perfume of his tiny landlady, Mrs. Mazola.

If he had been caught completely off guard, Todd would have had no chance against the rabid attack, but his blood was already running so high with adrenaline that his own panicked reflexes bordered on the supernatural.

Screaming, he dove with his clinging attacker straight into the sharp steel edge of the doorjamb, using it as a wedge to pry them apart. Already he could feel his thoughts blurring from the lack of oxygen. He tried to say, Lady, quit it! but no words would come out. The woman showed no signs of slacking, and Todd kept frantically thrusting her against the metal door flange as if trying to saw off an unwanted Siamese twin. The sharp edge gashed Mrs. Mazola’s purpled face and arm to the bone, smearing inky black blood all over Todd and the wall… but she just wouldn’t let go.

In a final, extreme feat of desperation, Todd lugged her over to the big industrial fire extinguisher. Todd and his buddies often dared each other to shoot this thing off in the alley, but they had never gone through with it. They were too terrified of the wrath of his crazy landlady. Little had they known!

Blacking out, barely able to think another second, Todd yanked out the extinguisher’s safety pin, grabbed the rubber hose, and rammed its nozzle down Mrs. Mazola’s yawning black gullet. Then he squeezed the handle.

The result was instantaneous-and spectacular: She broke off in a backward somersault, vomiting incredible billows of white chemical dust all over the room and vanishing in the cloud.

Without looking back, Todd scrambled clear and bolted through the red fire door to the alley.