Jimmy coughed once, and then again, and then he went into a spasm and had to rummage inside his satchel for his inhaler. He took two deep squirts of albuterol, and then he closed his eyes and counted to five. But when he opened them again, the man had disappeared. He looked around, his eyes still watering, trying to suppress any more coughs.
“Excuse me? Excuse me, sir? Are you still here?”
A pause, and then trrrrrrtttt! on the opposite side of the office.
“Excuse me, sir, I seriously need to find a way out of here! I could lose my job if I don’t get up to my office!”
Trrrrrrrtttt!
It was no use. The man was either some kind of nutjob or else he was deaf and dumb, or maybe he was one of those street people who refused to talk to anyone but their own kind. Jimmy started to walk back along the corridor, glancing behind him now and again to make sure that the man wasn’t following him. Maybe the elevator was working now — or even if it wasn’t, maybe he could make enough noise to attract Mr. Kraussman’s attention.
He reached the elevator. The indicator was still pointing at the twenty-fifth floor. He pressed the button and held his finger there.
Please, God, come down and get me out of here.
At first nothing happened. He took his finger off the button, and then he pressed it again. There was a moment’s pause, and then he heard the elevator mechanism whining, and the indicator crept down to the twenty-fourth floor.
Jimmy coughed and took another puff from his inhaler. The indicator came down to the twenty-third floor, and then the twenty-second.
“Leaving so soon?” said a thick voice close behind him.
Jimmy jerked sideways, almost losing his balance. The man was standing less than five feet away from him. He was even bulkier than he had appeared when he was standing in the cubicle, and much more threatening. It was the way he was standing, tilted slightly forward as if he were straining at a leash, his head lowered between his shoulders, his arms crossed over his chest.
He was wearing a red shirt, but his face was even redder. It was tight skinned, like a mask, with slits for eyes and a slit for a mouth. It had a sheen to it, too, as if it were varnished. But, strangely, it looked blurred, as if he were staring out through a smeary window.
Jimmy opened his mouth and then closed it again. He almost blurted out, You’re him, aren’t you? Red Mask? The guy who stabbed those people in the elevator? But the words got tangled up in his throat, and all he could manage was a cough.
The elevator indicator went bing! Jimmy glanced upward and saw that it had come down as far as the nineteenth floor.
“Do I scare you?” asked the red-faced man. “You look for some reason like you’re gravely alarmed.”
Jimmy said, “I’m just — I just want to get out of here, is all.” He could hear his own voice, and it didn’t even sound like him. More like a frightened twelve-year-old. “I have all of this work to do, you know? All of this animation. If I don’t get it finished on time — ”
“Animation, eh? Bringing things to life?”
Jimmy nodded. The elevator indicator went bing! as it reached the eighteenth floor.
“No going back, is there, once you’ve brought something to life? What’s created is created. What’s done is done. Like genies, released from their lamps. Or cats, let out of their bags.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jimmy. “I’m really not too sure what you’re trying to say to me, sir. But it looks like the elevator’s finally decided to behave itself, and I’m going to have to say ciao. And very interesting to meet you. And, you know, hasta luego.”
The elevator indicator went bing! and to his supreme relief, the doors slid open smoothly.
“What’s done is done, son,” said the red-faced man. He was tilting forward even more aggressively, even though his feet hadn’t moved. “And once it’s been done, it has to be done again and again. No rest for the wicked — that’s what they say, isn’t it? No peace for the innocent, neither.”
Jimmy stepped backward onto the elevator. “I really don’t know what they say, sir. But it’s been very enlightening. Or something like that. So long.”
He pressed the button for the lobby, and the elevator doors began to close.
Don’t jam this time, please. Just close, and close tight, and let me be carried safely up to my office.
The doors closed. The elevator sank. Jimmy had never said a prayer of thanks before, but he said one now. Dear God, thank you for fixing the elevator and saving my ass. I shall never doubt thee again, ever. In fact, I shall walk up every one of the two hundred thirty-five steps outside the Immaculata church on Mount Adams and say, “Thank you, Lord,” on every single step.
He went up close to the mirrored wall and peered at himself. He thought he looked surprisingly unruffled, considering how scared he had been. But he would have to decide what he was going to do next. He would have to call the police and tell them that Red Mask was hiding out on the seventeenth floor. And then what? Go back to his line-dancing pop bottles, as if nothing had happened?
The elevator went bing! and stopped on the sixteenth floor. The doors slid back, revealing another abandoned reception area, with a sign saying KINGS COMMUNICATIONS, INC. This floor was much gloomier than the floor above, because all of the blinds were drawn. There were stacks of plywood chairs all the way along the corridor.
“Come on, for Christ’s sake,” said Jimmy, and prodded the button for the lobby.
The doors began to close, but as they did so, he heard a rushing noise, like somebody running. He prodded the button again, but he was too late. The red-faced man came hurtling through the gap between the doors with both arms raised high above his head. In each hand he was holding a large triangular butcher knife.
Jimmy ducked to one side and lifted his left elbow to protect himself. But the red-faced man attacked him with unstoppable fury. He stabbed him in the elbow, and then the forearm, and then his other knife slashed Jimmy’s right cheek.
To his surprise, Jimmy didn’t feel that he was being stabbed, only struck, and he reached up and tried to twist the knives out of the red-faced man’s hands. But the red-faced man kept on stabbing and stabbing, and the knife-blades sliced right through Jimmy’s fingers and the heel of his hand, and blood was spraying everywhere.
The tendons in Jimmy’s wrists were cut through, and his hands helplessly flapped like red rubber gloves. The red-faced man stabbed him in the forehead, and in the nose, and took a slice out of his chin. Then he stabbed him simultaneously in both eyes, and blinded him.
Jimmy fell sideways to the floor. All he could hear was the pounding of his own blood as it rushed through his eardrums, and the faintest of chopping noises. He didn’t feel any pain, only a vague discomfort at being jostled so often and a deep coldness in his stomach.
“Where am I?” he whispered, through bloodied lips.
A voice very close to his ear said, “Hell, son. Where you belong.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Signs and Wonders
They heard about it on the TV news as Sissy was making lunch: a Swiss cheese and ciabatta sandwich with plum tomatoes.
“This just in,” announced Marcia LaBelle on WLWT. “A twenty-eight-year-old man has been found stabbed to death in an elevator car in the Giley Building in downtown Cincinnati — less than twenty-four hours after the knife attack in the same building that left one man dead and a young woman seriously injured.”