"Okey," he garbled in a guttural lipless slur, teeth clicking like a typewriter. "Doot!"
A flame flared in the hands of one of his cronies and a glass bottle of gasoline appeared in the hands of the other. The rag atop the bottle burst into flame and for a moment they stared wide-eyed. The dead feared fire. Their bodies go up like tinder. I knew this. With all the preservatives and oils they used they burned like torches. I'm glad I knew this because when the dead leader took the bottle and raised his arm to pitch the cocktail, my gun roared once. The bottle disappeared in a ball of flame-so did the dead men. The shotgun blazed, and the wall came away over my head.
I glanced in and saw all three doing a fiery dance. They were screeching, staggering and rolling-setting the whole room on fire. The outer doorframe burst into flame along with the hallway outside. They must have splashed a lot of gasoline around. In a moment, I knew the whole building would go up.
I turned; the only way out was the window. Twelve stories down-no net. That was the flaw in my plan. I slipped my gun away, and tore the sheets off the bed. I caught a glimpse of myself in the vanity mirror. In the eerie red light, I looked like some terrified clown in Hell. I knotted together the sheets and a blanket, then kicked the window out. Above me, I could see the fake Arab minaret hanging drunkenly over the street. It was about fifteen feet above me, but its wooden supports looked inviting. A quick climb up onto the roof, and down the fire escape. Easy.
The dead men were silent, and the heat of the flames was growing intense accelerated by the tough old flesh and ratty clothing. I turned back to the room to attack the vanity chair. In moments, I had it apart and had fashioned a crude grappling hook from its chromium legs. I knotted the sheets to this and leapt to the window. The flames were already licking the frame of the bedroom door. I glared down at the street below. News of the fire had traveled fast. A crowd had gathered. They chanted, "Burn, burn, burn!"
I tested the weight of the hook in my hand and swung it upwards. It lodged in the wooden framework on the first try. Doing my best to grin like Captain Blood, I tugged twice on the sheets and launched myself into space.
There wasn't even a single sound of protest as the whole structure came off the building. Not a creak of wood, no groan of tortured nails, it just came off of the building like it had been balanced there awaiting the exact addition of my weight to upset its ancient equilibrium.
I think I screamed once as I fell toward the street with the strange, crumbling structure. I clung tight to the sheets. I really didn't have anything else to do. I remember a sharp, searing jolt to my shoulders, and a powerful tearing of wood. Then falling again. Then another jolt, a wild swing and a tooth chipping slap into bricks. More falling.
I tasted blood-there was another crash of wood and bricks and human-then a darkness that was complete. Which was strange.
Chapter 7
I awoke with a dizzy, sickening sensation. Strange, because since I had become what I am, incorporeal, a spirit, whatever, I had never lost consciousness. In the two years since my emergence from utter blackness, I had never felt any sensation that could be termed physical when dispossessed. I could hear and see-nothing else. Now nausea. I floated over Tommy's body where it sprawled across the back seat of the Chrysler.
"He g-going to be all right…" Elmo's muttered to himself behind the wheel. His worried eyes appeared in the rearview mirror. "Yeah, he going to be f-fine."
The closest thing I ever had to sensation when in my nonphysical state occurred during the process I used to prepare for possession. To take over, I had to link up with the pleasure center in Tommy's brain. I don't know if that's what really happened, but I seemed to have some ability to excite his lower brain functions and trick him into an internal world of fantasy. I would begin by broadcasting provocative sexual images until I felt or saw their echoes mirrored in the nervous activity of his brain-tiny motes of light appeared like fireflies. At the right moment whatever force separated us seemed to disappear and the vacuum created sucked me into the driver's seat. The odd time I could sense Tommy's soul flit past me like a shadow before it disappeared. Most often I experienced nothing more than a moment of transition, of null space and it was done.
As I struggled with this impossible nauseous echo, I listened.
"Jesus, Boss, that was somethin'-shit!" He glanced quickly over his shoulder. "Swingin' down like a j-jungle man."
I looked Tommy over and saw that he was breathing; though his body was peppered with cuts and bruises. On his left temple, an ugly gash oozed pink into his makeup.
"Holy Moses, Boss." Elmo almost hooted. "You're the luckiest man I ever met. If that p-power cord didn't slow you down-you'd be as dead as me-but flatter!" His laugh was like dry leaves rustling.
Tommy moaned menacingly below me.
"Shit-sorry, Boss-ress, ress!"
As Elmo focused on driving, I tried to concentrate on my problems. I'd been possessing Tommy's body for about two years now and had never lost consciousness. The closest I came to that was a strange hallucinogenic trance I experienced in the wee hours of the morning. I thought of it as sleep, but the images I saw in these trances occurred within my field of vision, overlapping reality and would cease the moment I wanted them to. In the past, if I got into a scrape and Tommy was knocked out, I was simply expelled from his body. There was some slight disorientation of transition, but nothing more. Transition. That was the way it always happened.
I looked down at Tommy and chased all thoughts of possession from my mind. I had no desire to feel his pain. Egocentric of me, but I had to think. Who had sent the arsonists? They were looking for the room, so either they were there to get me, or just the room. I couldn't imagine that it was an old score being settled. No one could have known I was there. If they came to get the room then Billings' murderer had hired them to hide evidence. Unfortunately, there would be nothing left of them to question after the inferno.
Elmo took a corner at about seventy and Tommy slid headfirst across the back seat into the door. He muttered and moaned-snatched at his belt-there was no gun-then at his head. He looked at the hand that came away red. He struggled upright, and for an uncomfortable moment his head entered the space I was occupying.
"Where the hell am I?" he grunted, leaning forward. "Fuck, what a dream!"
Silently, he watched the road, forehead wrinkled, mouth moving like a sleep talker's. Elmo answered in his dry-lipped lisp.
"Took a fall, Mr. Wildclown. Course the fire was already lickin' yer b-boots when you made like the jungleman."
Tommy's face looked quizzically at Elmo, then he burst out. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
It was Elmo's turn to stare. His dead eyes were cue balls as he gaped over his shoulder.
"The Morocco…"
While these two conversed, the car took the opportunity to drive off the road, crush the fender of a parked truck and bend a street lamp forty-five degrees before Elmo could wrestle it back under control. I was glad Chrysler made big cars.
"Christ!" scolded Tommy, hands clutching Elmo's headrest. "Would you watch what you're doing?" His fingers dropped to the skipping rope at his waist. "Where's my gun?"
Elmo related the story of going to the Morocco Building and waiting in the car while Tommy looked over the murder scene for clues to Van Reydner's whereabouts. Tommy listened blankly; giving no impression that he heard anything at all. Elmo ended the tale with an enthusiastic narration of Tommy's escape from the fire-his incredible jerking, jarring descent as the old minaret fell with him. A thick power cord bolted up the front of the building slowed its fall. I tried to imagine the ridiculous thing lit up like some Islamic casino…but was cut off by Tommy.