Creepers Read online

  In the silence, Cora sank to the floor, hugging her knees. Her eyes were vacant.

  “Cut off your head?” Tod frowned.

  “After hours of keeping me tied to that chair, a sack around my head, that’s what they told me. I was sore from bruises and cuts. My bladder was full. I held it as long as I could. I pissed my pants. I sat in my urine and then my shit.”

  The memory seized him. He feared he’d throw up. He had the sense that he was talking faster and faster. “Cut off my head. But first they had to brag that they’d caught me. So they set up a video camera, and then of course, they had to prove who I was, so they took the sack off my head. After I quit blinking and squinting, I saw I was in a battered concrete-block room with a half-dozen men next to me. They were wearing hoods with holes for the eyes and mouth. The guy who threatened me—he was the only one who spoke English—had his hand stuck through a gap in his robe. He was holding something under there, and it didn’t take a lot of thinking to know it was a sword. The video camera was on a tripod in front of me. It had a red light that kept winking, and the guy ordered me to say my name and who I worked for. He told me to beg all Americans to leave Iraq or else what was going to happen to me would happen to them.”

  Balenger knew he was talking too fast, but he couldn’t control himself, just kept spewing out the words. “I don’t know how long I’d been unconscious from the explosion, how long it had been since I’d had anything to eat and drink. Name, rank, and serial number. That’s what they taught us in the Rangers. I sure as hell wasn’t going to beg Americans to leave the country, but there was nothing wrong with buying time and saying my name. When I tried to speak, though, my voice made a croaking sound. They realized they needed to give me water before I could say anything. Somebody shoved a bottle to my lips. I swallowed. I felt water dripping off my chin. I swallowed some more. Then the bottle was yanked away, and the guy ordered me to say my name to the camera. I tried again, and they gave me more water, and the third time I tried to speak and couldn’t, the guy who spoke English pulled out the sword. Seconds. Tick, tick, tick. No past. No future. Just now. Just that sword. I swore to myself that I’d make now last as long as possible. The guy drew back the sword.”

  Balenger told his story the way he always did, the same words, the same torrent, the way the psychiatrist always heard it for what might have been the hundredth time. “I don’t know how, but I managed to say my name. He held back the sword and ordered me to say who I worked for. That was the same as rank and serial number. No harm in it. So I told the camera the company I worked for: Blackwater. Now. I kept making now last as long as possible. Then he ordered me to beg for my life. I thought, what’s the harm in pleading? I knew it wouldn’t do any good, but at least it kept now lasting longer. I couldn’t do it, though.”

  Faster and faster. “Fear made my voice break. I was sobbing, and they had to give me more water, but I still couldn’t force the words out, so the guy drew back the sword, and now was almost over, and suddenly the walls shook. The room filled with dust. Concrete blocks tumbled. My ears were ringing. The guys wearing hoods were shouting at each other. They yanked a door open. Sunlight blinded me. There was another explosion outside. Some grabbed rifles. Two of them threw me in another room, small, a dirt floor. They locked the door. I heard them running away. I heard another explosion. Gunfire. I was still tied to the chair when they threw me into the room. The chair broke when I landed. I twisted away from the shattered wood. Piss and shit were all over me. My hands were still tied behind me. But I could move, and as soon as I squirmed away from the chair, I forced my tied hands down under my hips and legs. Dislocated my right shoulder, but I got my hands in front of me. Like this.” In the flashlights and the wavering candlelight, Balenger raised the hands secured with duct tape.

  “And?” JD asked.

  Balenger rushed on. “The gunfire and the explosions got worse. The room had a closed wooden shutter. I pulled at it, but it was secured from outside, so I grabbed the chair seat, and I pounded. I can’t tell you how hard I pounded. Finally, I broke through the shutter. I squirmed through and fell on my dislocated shoulder. I didn’t allow myself to faint from pain. I had to keep going. I had to keep now lasting longer. People were running in panic from the shots and the explosions, and the next explosion lifted me off my feet. It was shockingly close behind me. This time, I did pass out, and when I regained consciousness, I realized that the explosion came from the building where I was kept prisoner. A mortar round hit it and leveled it.”

  “And?” Tod asked.

  “An American Ranger patrol found me. The company I worked for, Blackwater, arranged for me to have medical attention. I’d been in Iraq only two weeks. They gave me the full month of wages. They paid for me to fly home. I had an insurance policy they’d gotten for me. Fifty thousand if I was killed. Twenty-five thousand if I was injured. Twenty-five thousand. That’s what I’ve been living on. The Veterans Hospital psychiatrist I go to says I have post-traumatic stress disorder. No shit. ‘Stress’ is right. The world’s a waking nightmare. There’s plenty of stress, especially if you try not to think about a guy wearing a hood who wants to cut off your head.”

  Balenger was aware of switching from “I” to “you.” The psychiatrist called it disassociation. His voice shook. His heart beat so fast, pressure swelled the veins in his neck. “So now you know I’m not a cop.”

  “Do we? How did you and the professor get together?”

  “I told you I took a course from him.” Balenger’s clothes were soaked with sweat. “When you live a waking nightmare, how do you get away from the world? Iraq. It’s everywhere. How do you get away from fucking Iraq? The past. All I wanted to do was escape into the past. My psychiatrist thought it would help to read old novels, books that made me feel I was in the past. I tried Dickens. I tried Tolstoy. I tried Alexandre Dumas. But that chapter in The Count of Monte Cristo, where the hero’s in a sack and gets thrown over a wall into the ocean, was too much like reality to me. So I started reading history books. Biographies about Benjamin Franklin and Wordsworth and the founding of the House of Rothschild. I didn’t give a shit about Franklin or Wordsworth or the House of Rothschild, but it was in the safe, unthreatening past. Anything before the twentieth century. Big fat books that almost gave me a hernia. The thicker, the better. The more details, the better. Footnotes. How I love footnotes. The only modern novels I read were by Jack Finney and Richard Matheson. Time and Again. Bid Time Return. Characters who wanted desperately to leave the present. They concentrated so hard they went into the past. If only. I went to the State University at Buffalo and pretended I was a student and took as many history classes as I could sneak into. When the professor realized I wasn’t enrolled, we had a conference in his office. I told him about myself. He let me go to more of his classes. We talked more, and a month ago, after he got fired, he asked if I’d help him. He said we’d have so much money, we’d never have to worry about the present.”

  A faint rumble shifted through the building.

  “Sack over your head, huh?” Tod asked.

  Balenger nodded.

  “All that time in darkness,” Mack added.

  “Yes.”

  “And you made yourself go through those tunnels into this hotel, and you made yourself come all the way up here through the darkness,” JD said. “You must have been reminded a lot of what happened to you in Iraq.”

  “A couple of times,” Balenger said flatly.

  The rumble sounded again.

  “You’re tough.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Sure, you are. You saved Big Ears over there. You saved the professor.”

  But God help me, I couldn’t save Rick, Balenger thought.

  “Yeah, a hero,” Tod said.

  The rumble was a little louder.

  “But if you try to be a hero again…” Tod raised the pistol, aimed at Balenger, and fired.

  The bullet snapped past Balenger’s head. He felt the sh
ock of air it displaced, heard it slam into the wall behind him.

  “Jesus!” Vinnie said.

  “It didn’t come anywhere close,” Tod said.

  “My ears!” Mack put his hands over them. “For God’s sake, why didn’t you warn me? They’re ringing like crazy!”

  So were Balenger’s, but not so much that he didn’t hear another rumble.

  “Don’t try to be a hero,” Tod said. “Otherwise, that ‘now’ thing you talked about won’t last much longer.”

  “All I want is to walk out of here.”

  “We’ll see how this goes. So far you’ve been useless. Where’s the vault?”

  “What’s that noise?” Mack asked.

  “The ringing in your ears.”

  “No,” JD said. “I heard it, too. A rumble.”

  “Thunder,” Balenger said.

  They stared toward the ceiling.

  “Thunder?” Vinnie shook his head. “There aren’t any thunderstorms predicted. Only showers around dawn. The professor said…” Vinnie’s voice dropped. “Professor?”

  No answer.

  “Professor?” Vinnie started toward the sofa.

  “The crowbar!” Tod warned, aiming. “Put it down before you come near us!”

  Vinnie dropped it and crossed the room. He passed Cora, who continued to hum in shock, and reached the professor, whose head was back, his eyes closed.

  Vinnie nudged him. “You told us the weather report was for showers around dawn.”

  Conklin’s eyes remained closed.

  “You told us—”

  “I lied,” Conklin said wearily.

  “What?”

  “Next week, the salvagers are coming. I needed all of you to help me scout the building tonight.” Conklin breathed. “Tomorrow night, after we showed Frank how to get into the building and into the vault…” Conklin took another breath. “He was supposed to return and take as many coins as he could carry. Tonight and tomorrow night. That’s when it needed to happen.”

  “You prick.”

  “I estimated that we’d be out of here before the storm arrived.” The professor’s bearded face was ravaged with regret. “Apparently I was wrong.”

  “What’s the big deal about a storm?” JD wanted to know.

  “Getting out of here,” Vinnie said in despair. “Depending on how hard it rains, the tunnels might be flooded.”

  “Right now, you’ve got bigger problems than worrying about a flooded tunnel,” Tod said. “We’ll just have to wait and get more acquainted.”

  “Yeah,” Mack said, putting a hand on Cora’s shoulder. “We’ll just have to find ways to pass the time.”

  She was on the floor now, sitting bent forward with her arms around her raised knees and her head braced on them. She didn’t seem aware of Mack’s touch.

  “Leave her alone,” Vinnie said.

  “Make me.”

  Balenger tried to distract them. “The vault.”

  “Your great idea didn’t work out, smart guy,” Tod said. “The wall on that side sounds hollow, too. If this stuff about the vault and the gold coins turns out to be bullshit…”

  Balenger examined the holes in the wall. He went over and peered into the dark bedroom, then studied the doorjamb and the space between the rooms. “Looks like five inches wide. Bob, are you sure the diary didn’t say it was a wall safe?”

  “A vault,” the professor murmured through his pain. “That was what Carlisle always called it.”

  “Then we’re wasting our time on this wall. It’s too narrow.” Balenger stared at the long living room wall, at the metal shutters and the metal door between them. “No room for the vault there, either.”

  He tugged open the closet door and saw coats and suits, all in a style that suggested the 1930s. Their smell was nauseating. He yanked the garments off a wooden rod and hurled them across the living room, then entered the closet and pounded on the wall.

  “Normal. That leaves the far bedroom wall, or maybe the bathroom.”

  “Careful, hero,” Tod said.

  “I’ll need light in the bedroom.” Balenger picked up the crowbar. “Vinnie, help me.”

  With an angry look toward Mack, whose hand remained on Cora’s shoulder, Vinnie followed Balenger into the bedroom. Their headlamps revealed a lacquered black dresser with red trim, a chrome strip at the bottom and a circular mirror on top. A reading chair had the same black with red trim.

  So did the bed, but Balenger hardly noticed as he and Vinnie shoved it away from the wall. Standing in the doorway, Tod and JD aimed their flashlights as Balenger pounded the hollow-sounding wall.

  “Black and red,” Tod said. “Who did Danata think he was, the Prince of Darkness?”

  “I’m sure all the men he shot believed it,” Balenger said.

  Vinnie took an ashtray off a nightstand. “I’ll check the bathroom.”

  As Balenger swung the crowbar against the wall, he heard Vinnie pounding the wall in the bathroom. Even at a distance, the hollow sound made it obvious nothing was behind the wall. At last, Balenger ran out of surface. He stepped back, breathing heavily, scanning his headlamp along the holes he’d made. “Nothing.”

  He started back toward the living room.

  “Drop the crowbar!” Tod warned from the doorway.

  Throwing it onto a chair, Balenger entered the living room.

  “Bob!” He roused the professor. “Try to remember the diary. The vault isn’t here. Did the diary mention any other place the vault might be?”

  “All bullshit,” JD said.

  “Danata’s suite,” Conklin said. “The ceiling, maybe. The floor. Leg hurts.”

  Balenger stared at the duct tape around it. The tape remained gray, no blood leaking, but the leg was alarmingly swollen. He should have been in an ambulance a half hour ago, Balenger thought. “Does it throb?”

  “Constant pain. Sharp.”

  Maybe I left a shard in there. Balenger put a hand on the professor’s forehead. “He’s got a fever.”

  “Gosh,” Tod said.

  Mack was still rubbing Cora’s shoulders.

  “The first-aid kit,” Balenger said. “We need to give him more painkillers.”

  “We?” JD said. “All we care about is—”

  “All right, all right, if I can find the vault, will you give him the painkillers?”

  “Sounds like a deal to me.”

  Balenger thought frantically. “The ceiling’s out of the question. Danata would have wanted easy access. That leaves the floor. Vinnie, get the crowbar. Maybe there’s a trapdoor.”

  Vinnie didn’t answer. He was staring at Mack’s hands on Cora’s shoulders.

  “Vinnie! The crowbar!” Balenger shoved furniture away, pulled up a rug, and knelt to study the floor. The strips of hardwood showed no obvious gaps. “We need to clear the room, move all the furniture.”

  Balenger’s headlamp swept along the first wall and the holes he and Vinnie had pounded into it. The beam illuminated the darkness behind the holes. He shivered with understanding. “There’s a lot of space behind that wall.” He aimed his headlamp through the biggest hole. “A hell of a lot of space.”

  He shoved his gloved hands into the hole and tried to pull at the plaster’s edge, but with his wrists taped together, he couldn’t manage a grip. “The crowbar! Where’s—”

  Abruptly, Vinnie was next to him, ramming the crowbar into the hole. He pried out a chunk of plaster. “There’s something in here!”

  “The vault?” JD asked quickly.

  Vinnie pried away more plaster.

  “No! Not the vault!” Balenger threw debris onto the floor. “It looks like…”

  “A staircase!” Vinnie said.

  “What?” Mack moved away from Cora.

  “A circular staircase!” Vinnie pried at the wall. Balenger kept throwing the plaster away. They soon had an opening large enough to squeeze through.

  The roar of a shot made Balenger flinch. A bullet slammed the wall to his
right.

  “Stay,” Tod ordered. “Nobody’s going in there till that hole’s a lot wider and we can see everything that happens. One of you might get tempted to run down that staircase. Bear in mind we’ve got the professor here and what’s her name—Cora.”

  “Sweets,” Mack said.

  “I’ll shoot them if anybody tries to escape. Do we have an understanding?”

  Balenger’s voice cracked. “Yes.”

  “Then open that wall.”

  Vinnie pounded with the crowbar, enlarging the hole. By angling his taped hands sideways, Balenger was able to grip chunks of plaster and tear them away. Joists were exposed, two-by-fours, a frame onto which plasterboard had been nailed. More and more of the space behind the wall became visible.

  “Hell, you could have a party back there,” Tod said.

  There was a six-foot gap between Danata’s living room and the wall for the next room. On the right, close to the balcony wall, a spiral staircase led up and down. It was metal, and reminded Balenger of a gigantic corkscrew.

  “Explain it,” JD said.

  “Carlisle used the staircase to move secretly behind the walls,” Balenger told him. “I’ll bet the staircase goes all the way to the ground floor.”

  “And I’ll bet there are other staircases,” Vinnie said.

  “The nutcase that built this hotel was a Peeping Tom?” JD asked.

  “He lived through other people. He had to limit contact. He was afraid of injuries. A hemophiliac.”

  “What’s—?”

  “A blood disease. Carlisle’s blood didn’t have thickening agents. The slightest bump or scratch could cause him to bleed, and stopping it could seem impossible.”

  “So he got his jollies spying on his guests?” Tod asked.

  Balenger’s headlamp revealed the wall on the other side of the passageway. Every five feet, what looked like the eyepiece of a microscope protruded from the wall. “With those. The wall on the opposite side probably has tiny holes hidden at the side of a painting or under a light fixture attached to the wall. Lenses on this side magnified the image.”

  “He could watch people undressing?” Mack said. “Or going to the bathroom or screwing?”