Personal Effects: Dark Art

12

When I arrived at Grace’s brownstone, Lucas was showboating for no one, deftly juggling concrete shards from the broken steps.

I pulled up on my bike, tugged off my helmet. He grinned, tossed the concrete, and sprung from the steps like a Pop-Tart.

“Chica sends her regards,” he said.

“No she doesn’t,” I replied. I dismounted the Cannondale.

“Nope,” Lucas affirmed. “But it’s the polite thing to say. Let’s stash the Black Stallion there.”

I followed him to a tight alleyway beside the brownstone. Grace’s building and its neighboring identical twin loomed over us, blocking out most of the afternoon sun. Rusty fire escapes raced down their sides.

My brother pointed to a graffiti-tagged Dumpster. Black sacks of garbage lay inside. I groaned.

“Lucas, this bike cost more than a grand,” I said. “I’m not gonna leave it in the trash.”

“How far up?”

“Five floors.”

“Well, you could make like a Sherpa…”

I sighed, checked my watch. We were already down to fifteen minutes. I prayed Dad’s crony was trapped in Brooklyn traffic.

“Come on,” Lucas said.

“Shit, okay. Just help me hide it.”

We stowed the bike on its side near the Dumpster, covering it with sacks of trash. Our camouflage job was effective; it would take more than a glance for a passerby to spot the bike. I reminded myself that we’d only be gone for fifteen minutes.

We trotted to the front of the building. I unbuckled my satchel, stuck my hand into the envelope Malcolm had given me. Based on the admittance papers, I knew there were three items Grace had had on his person when he was admitted into the system: A wallet, a cellphone and a key ring.

I found the keys. There were tiny, textured stickers on each one. Braille.

Jesus, this was crazy. I looked at Lucas.

“Don’t fret, Z,” he said. “Superglued to your hip. Thick as thieves, you and me.”

“You have no idea,” I replied. “I’ll give you the score on the way up, okay?”

As Lucas nodded enthusiastically, I slid a key—amazingly, the right one—into the brownstone’s deadbolt. We were in.

I can only imagine what we must have looked like, skulking past the battered doorways and water-stained wallpaper. Poseur secret agents, mostly likely. But nobody saw us as we climbed the stairwell.

We faced Grace’s door. Apartment 512. The words Sealed by New York City Police Department DO NOT ENTER glared at us from a vertical strip of tape covering the seam of door, where the door met the frame. It lanced from eye level down to the deadbolt.

“Shit,” I whispered. I had the door key in my hand, but…

Lucas reached into his jeans pocket and removed a foldable multi-tool. As he coaxed a blade from its handle, I shook my head. Cut the tape to get inside, leave proof that an intruder had been here. No go.

“Did you come this far to turn back now?” he said. “Trust me, bro. We’ll put it back.”

He slid the knife’s edge under the tape, gently nicking the wood. Soon, he’d tugged away enough of the strip to grip it with his fingers. He pulled the tape now, slowly peeling it from the door frame.

I nodded, and slid the key into the deadbolt.

From across and down the hall, the tinny rattle of a doorchain against wood. Shuck, went a deadbolt. Shuck, went another. Fuck. 509’s tenant was coming out.

“Wind chill,” Lucas hissed. He nudged me and gave the tape a frantic yank. It snarled as it snaked from the wood. “Motorvate, dude.”

I unlocked the door. It swung open, and Lucas shoved me inside. I stumbled as he followed, the key jangling in my hand, and I heard the door’s latch snap home behind me, and was I gasping now, like a asthmatic, head reeling with fear, it was slick and sickening and everywhere fuck jesus dark, dark not a pinprick of light, fuck

I staggered backward, banging against the door, my hand swishing out into the black, finding nothing.

Blind. Truly blind.

I heard the rapid-fire click-clickclickclick as Lucas flipped a light switch, heard him swear at the thing, it was firing blanks, mocking us, there’s not a single bulb in my apartment, you know, Grace cooed in my ear, keeps things quiet, keeps things sane. Shitshitshit sane, sane for whom, shit

Lucas’ hand was on my bicep, firm and reassuring.

“Right here, Zach, right here, one sec… ″

He faded away, lost in the ink. I couldn′t hear him. I could only hear my heartbeat, a terrible derailed L line train thundering and smashing inside my skull, and my screeching gasps, hyperventilating now, there wasn’t enough air in the world for my lungs, not now, not in the black.

Light, flaring and explosive, filled the room. Lucas looked up from the Sony Handycam in his hand, its pop-up light glowing like a beacon. He dropped the open backpack in his other hand and reached for me. I clutched at his arm, blinking, sucking down air. Ghoulish shadows scratched at his face, lit from underneath.

Lucas’ eyes swept over me, his face grim with concern. He squatted, sweeping the videocamera’s light around Martin Grace’s living room. His free hand fished inside the backpack. I watched the spotlight traverse an unremarkable couch, an easy chair.

He passed me a tiny flashlight. I clicked it on.

“He’s blind,” I whispered, breathing easier now. I slid Grace’s keys into my satchel. “No need for lights.”

“Con Ed must hate the bastard.”

We squinted in the gloom. The absolute absence of light in Martin Grace’s home was unsettling, but even more was its absence of… of what? I flicked my flashlight this way and that. It was an eerie, spartan place. Bare walls. A coffee table, its surface unblemished and blank. Built-in bookshelves near an unused fireplace, all empty. The mantle above the fireplace, also empty. This place was creepy in its whiteness, its utter lack of personality.

Lucas frowned at the curtains beside him. He pulled them aside. The white LED of his vidcam blasted back into our eyes.

“Aluminum foil on the windows,” he said. “This guy’s got a fuggin’ phobia.”

I turned away, flashlight probing my half of the room. “Come here,” Lucas hissed suddenly. “Mother lode.”

Stacked against the wall was a tower of rack-mounted audio equipment—digital receivers, amplifiers, two massive multi-disc CD changers. No recording gear… just premium-brand, audiophile stuff, made for listening.

“Nice,” he said.

“Pan right.”

The shelves of a prefab bookcase sagged with the weight of hundreds of CDs. On the spine of each jewel case was a tiny, Braille-stenciled sticker. Every disc was a clue, a peek into Grace’s mind.

“There’s no time to write all this down,” I said dispairingly.

My brother looked at me with an expression so comical and cartoonish, I nearly giggled. One of his eyebrows was cocked impossibly high on his forehead; his lip was curled in a sneer. He looked like a frizzy-haired Elvis Presley.

“Bitch, I’ve been rollin’ since I flipped this on,” he said, nodding to the camera. “I’ll get this, and then stand watch by the door. Wanna make sure our neighbor out there isn’t scheming. You check out the rest of the apartment. How much time?”

I checked my watch. “Ten minutes.” I walked out of the living room into the cramped hallway. My footfalls echoed off the naked walls.

This tiny flashlight was doing a piss-poor job of beating back the darkness. The day-night slipped around me like a glove, oppressive; I felt it soak my clothes, seep into my pores.

I gave the bathroom a once-over. Nothing of note here; no prescriptions, only store-brand toiletries. The kitchen was equally devoid of personalization. I thought of my apartment; how Rachael and I had done everything we could to make that place special, ours.

How could a man live an invisible life? I wondered. There’s gotta be something here, something his, truly his, something hiding.

I nudged the door at the end of the hall with my foot. The bedroom door swung inward, its hinges stutter-squeaking like a giggly child. The blackness was overpowering here. It hunts best in the pitch, I heard Grace say. I licked my lips. My nyctophobia was slobbering, ravenous now. Gooseflesh was having its way with my skin, cascading down my arms, my chest (I felt my nipples stiffen, and shivered), my balls were digging up inside me, every hair standing on end.

The flashlight in my hand sputtered, spiraling the room into a candlelight flicker show. My teeth gnawed into my bottom lip as I shook the thing—work, work, goddamn you.

The door slammed shut behind me.

I couldn’t scream… and if I had, I would not have heard it now, Jesus Christ, the sound of skittering leaves, of gravel tossed upon hardwood. Tktktk. Blood squirted into my mouth, my incisor gone too far into the flesh, lip cut.

The shadows swirled and jittered and the flashlight failed me. I slapped its head against my right palm now, and there, in my peripheral vision, a shape high on the wall, a thing with horns, now without, a thing with snakes for arms, dancing, looming, and I could hear it speaking now, a cicada hum—

“Would. You. Be. Miiiine?”

The flashlight winked out… and then flashed bright again.

I stared at the wall, wracked with shivers, not blinking at the shade-thing towering above me. It no longer danced. It no longer spoke. But its snake arms still jittered, frightening things.

I blinked. Looked down at my trembling fingers. The fingers on my right hand. The light surged past them, casting their shadows on the wall. My fingers. My fucking fingers.

I pulled my hand away from the flashlight, and the monster disappeared.

“Get a grip, you idiot,” I said. I swallowed the bitter blood mixed with spit in my mouth and swept the light over the room.

It showed a bed—fastidiously made, taut sheets, military corners—an empty night table, a chest of drawers, an open closet door. I looked inside the closet, up to a shelf above hanging khaki pants and dress shirts. It was empty. Light kicking south now, to the floor. Two pairs of shoes. One set were expensive, gleaming Italian dress shoes. The other was a pair of pristine Reeboks.

A search of the nearby chest of drawers was equally fruitless. Socks, briefs and white undershirts glared up at me, their slumber interrupted. God, it was so dark in here.

“Focus,” I said, and did my best to.

I aimed the flashlight toward the far corner of the room. There, beneath another curtain-covered window, was a full-sized electronic keyboard resting atop a metal card table. Its white and black keys gleamed in the light. I thought of Emilio Wallace’s haunted face from this afternoon, of his too-white teeth and the hollow gaps in between. A tiny, ancient television sat beside the piano.

Why would a blind man need a TV? I wondered, and then immediately cursed myself. That was the selfishness of my sighted life spilling into this one. One need not see to watch. Grace had proven that already, hadn’t he?

I leaned in, looking more closely at the twelve-inch TV. What did the man watch? I snatched my untucked shirttail and used it as an impromptu glove. I tugged on the silver volume knob.

It didn’t switch on. I checked the power cable—it was plugged in—and twisted the chunky VHF knob. It dutifully clack-clacked, trying to switch stations. Nothing.

I spun the UHF knob beneath it. It made a subtle ticking sound, like a stopwatch.

I stiffened. I knew that sound.

You surely do, Zach. That’s a tick-tick that takes us way back. Giddy-giddy.

I growled at the voice in my head and leaned closer, nearly placing my ear against the plastic box. I turned the knob slowly. It’d been more than five years, and here I was, sliding on this suit, quietly alarmed at how easy it was to do so… and how well it still fit.

Tick-tick-tick-CLICK.

“Two to go,” I whispered.

The other tumblers soon fell, and the front of the television popped open like an oven door. I looked inside.

The bedroom door behind me screeched open, and I nearly screamed. More light surged into the room.

“We’re in deep shit,” Lucas said. His face was flushed and manic in the light of his Handycam. He slammed the door behind him. “Cops. Lots of cops. Spotted them from the hallway window. Coming up the stairwell now.”

“Cops? I thought it’d be some D.A. intern—”

“Shut up, man. We gotta bolt!”

I reached into the hollow television and pulled out a metal box, about the size of a large paperback book. I slapped it into his free hand, shut Grace’s home-brewed safe and gave the combination knob a spin.

Lucas shook the box. The tinny sound of cardboard or paper clicked against the box walls. But there was something else clanking inside, too. It sounded small and metallic, like a silver dollar.

“Hold this,” he said, passing me the Handycam. He pulled off his pack and slipped the lockbox inside. With one efficient tug, the pack was zippered tight, and our work here was done.

We grinned at each other in the darkness.

“Okay. Katabatic,” Lucas said.

And then the fury of New York’s finest descended upon us.

The voices were not voices; they were monstrous roars, banshee-screams from an unholy two-hundred-foot daikaiju, window-rattling wails.

NYPD! GET ON THE FLOOR! ON THE FLOOR NOW DO IT NOW WE’RE COMING IN ON THE FLOOR NOWONTHEFLOORNOW!

From beyond the room and down the hall, I heard the pistol-shot of wood shattering, hinges swinging madly, a doorknob bashing into drywall. I started, staring at the closed bedroom door.

Lucas punched my arm, hard.

“Help me!” he hissed. I turned and watched him tear the dark curtains off their cheap aluminum rail, watched the plaster dust—exquisitely captured in my trembling flashlight beam—puff into the air as the rail’s screws were ripped from the wall. The curtains tumbled. I dashed to my brother, wrenching the card table, keyboard and TV away from the wall.

We shoved upward together against the window frame, our faces reflected and warped in the foil taped to the glass. I was in sync with my brother, hoping what he was hoping, hissing the same prayer he was hissing.

LIVING ROOM CLEAR! the monsters screamed. TAKE THE HALL! “Come on, you fuckin’ foolbiscuit,” Lucas snarled.

The window shot upward. We squinted together, blinking at the sunlight and the rusted metal of the fire escape beyond the sill. Lucas was a blur now: one leg through the window frame, now the other. He wasn’t a person, he was a snake, sliding his torso through now, head dropping low, now completely on the other side of the glass.

“Gimme-gimme,” he said, hands beckoning. “Hurry.”

“Wha?”

“Your bag, dude. The camera! Nitro your ass, hand ’em over!”

BATHROOM! CLEAR!

I didn’t hesitate. The satchel was off my shoulder and in his hands. In another whip-snap maneuver, Lucas slipped the thing over him, its strap crossed across his chest. The Handycam went in next. He twisted his body on the rattling fire escape, his back facing me now.

“Careful on the way down,” I said.

He glanced back, his eyes glimmering and gleeful.

“I ain’t going down, bro. I’m going up.”

And then he was off, his left leg swinging toward the handrail of the escape, his foot planting on its rusted surface, his leg tensing, propelling himself skyward…

…and then he was soaring, falling, soaring.

My brother plummeted toward the concrete below, his lanky form—now in a crazy primate, parkour-predatory shape—arcing toward the building across the alleyway. He slammed onto the railing of the neighboring brownstone’s fire escape two floors down, grappled there for a half-second, legs swinging in space, and then pulled himself onto the grated landing. He didn’t look down, didn’t look back. He simply ascended the escape, determined and single-minded. Destination: roof.

Boot clomps, a stampede, behind me.

KITCHEN! CLEAR!

“Shit fire, here we go,” I said, and wedged my body though the window frame. I was nowhere near as fast or as elegant as my kid brother. My head slammed against the wooden underside of the window—pow—and bright flashbulbs filled the world. I shook my head, scrambling outside, my Vans ping-pinging on the metal, my arms snatching at the fire escape ladder.

NYPD WE ARE COMING IN ON THE GODDAMN FLOOR DO IT NOW NOW NOW

I took the rungs two at a time, scrabbling like a mad crab. Letting go now, feet slamming on the landing below. The frame of the escape groaned and trembled, displeased.

NOW

Another ladder, hand over hand, sneakers squeaking on metal.

DO IT NOW

A crack above; the sound waves blasting through the open window like a discordant bass drum, sound of the door splintering.

My feet slammed against the next landing. Gong, down here everybody, heart thundering now, running, I’m running like the old days, the bad days, Anti-Zach is here, breathing and laughing again…

A voice above, crisp now, like a flapping bed sheet: RUNNER! HE’S RUNNING! STOP! NYPD! STOP!

But I didn’t stop. No, no, no, I didn’t stop.

Space, empty space, free falling, ten feet, zero-g, 2001: A Space Odyssey; I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.

My body slammed onto the alley concrete. Another comic-book pow of pain surged through me, this one from my elbow. I heaved myself upright, staggered to the pile of trash where I’d left my bike. I stole a half-heartbeat to glance at my arm, saw the blood flowing through the torn fabric of my button-down—Rachael got me this shirt for Christmas, ah jeez, ah shit—and tuned out the pain. The trash bags were airborne now, victims of my adrenaline rush, and then the Cannondale was up on both wheels again.

Helmetless, hopeless, I mounted the bike and pedaled away from the building’s entrance on East 32 Street, heading east, toward New York Avenue. The passage’s end was closer now, the light at the end of my tunnel, if I could break through this then I’d be home free, could call Lucas, catch up, see what was inside the dark man’s box and oh yeah, giddy up pardner, what a fuckin′ rush, Zach, we′re back on the wild ride, ohhhhh

“…no,” I said.

A police cruiser swept into the alley, its metal rear fishtailing and rocking, emergency lights spattering blue-white-blue on the brown bricks surrounding it. It screamed up the narrow space toward me.

But I didn’t stop.

The Crown Vic’s tires squealed as it braked, headlights flashing, siren yowling.

I saw the reflection of myself in the interceptor’s gleaming black push bumper. I saw the cop inside, a young black guy, barking into his radio. I thought I could hear the flickering bulbs inside the cruiser’s light bar, a samba beat, cha-cha-cha.

The Cannondale’s front tire was cocked in mid-air now, a wheelie. I pedaled faster.

My bike raced up the hood of the car, spider-cracking the cruiser’s windshield, rubber treads squealing, triumphant.

Bouncing over the light bar now, cha-cha-cha, down the rear window, out of the alley, into the free and clear.

But my grace and luck had limits. The bike’s handlebars twisted in my hands. I fell and slid, slid past the sidewalk, past screaming pedestrians, past it all, into the traffic of New York Avenue.