Nocturnes

The Furnace Room

The Thibault company once made locomotives and carriages for the railroads, famous names that ran on lines all across the Northeast: green cars for Wicasset and Quebec; green and red for Sandy River; yellow and green for Bridgton and Saco. Then the railroads closed down-first the narrow gauge in the forties, then the standard gauge in the fifties-and the trains from Boston no longer made the journey north. Union Station, once the hub of the rail network in that part of the world, had disappeared from the map, to be replaced by an ugly shopping mall. The only reminder of the great trains that had once proudly left the yards were some disused tracks, their sleepers now rotted and overrun by dark weeds. The Thibault company closed its doors, and its buildings fell into disrepair. Windows were shattered, and holes were punched in roofs. Weeds sprouted in the yard, bursting through cracks in the concrete, while the gutters filled with filth and rainwater streaked the walls. Occasionally, there was talk of knocking the whole place down and building something new and impressive there instead, but the city was in decline and no investor could be found who was willing to pump money into the economic equivalent of an open grave. After all, there were malls being constructed on the outskirts of the city, and businesses were abandoning the center of town in favor of covered streets bathed in artificial light, so that elderly walkers could pretend to fend off mortality without being troubled by either the elements or fresh air.

Then, a decade or so ago, the city stopped dying. Someone with an ounce of intelligence and imagination noticed that the port, with its beautiful old buildings and its cobbled streets leading down to the working harbor, was pretty enough to warrant its preservation. True, not every business had closed up shop and headed for the suburbs. There were old bars, and a couple of general stores, even a diner or two. They soon found themselves side by side with chichi souvenir stores and microbreweries, and pizzerias that offered more than one kind of cheese. There was some whining, of course, and claims that the character of the port had been sacrificed for the tourist dollar, but, truth be told, the old character hadn’t been much to write home about to begin with. That kind of nostalgia tends to come from folks who never had to scrape together nickels and dimes to pay the rent on a bar, or who never opened their store and sat there, all the long day, just for a couple of sales and a side order of chitchat.

Soon there were visitors on the streets for more than half of every year, and the old port became a curious mix of working fishermen and gawping tourists, of those who remembered the bad times and those for whom there were only good times to come. The developments began to expand beyond the natural boundaries of the old port, and it was decided to reopen the Thibault company yard as a business park. The old redbrick buildings were converted into specialized engineering works, and boatmakers’ sheds, and a locomotive museum. A narrow-gauge railway ran up and down the waterfront from early summer until Christmas, when the last of the tourists departed after seeing the city’s festive lights. The place wasn’t exactly bustling, since the kind of work it attracted was the low-key sort, done indoors and under cover. It was pretty quiet during the day, but even quieter at night, except for the wind that howled across the bay, bringing with it the sound of breaking waves and passing ships, their horns calling through the darkness, a sound that was either reassuring or lonesome depending upon your frame of mind when you heard it.

I don’t recall much of how I came to the city. It was a bad time in my life. I didn’t care about where I was or where I was going. I’d done some things that I regretted. I guess most people do, somewhere along the line. It’s hard to live any kind of life without building up a store of regrets. The important thing for me was just to keep moving. I thought that if I kept shifting from place to place, then I could leave my past behind me. By the time I realized that I was bringing my past right along with me, it was too late to do anything about it.

There wasn’t much work on offer when I arrived. The season was almost over, and the casual workers in the restaurants and the bars had already departed for Florida and California, or for the winter resorts in New Hampshire and Vermont. I found a cheap room in a run-down house, and spent my nights looking for two-for-one specials in bars desperate for custom, asking anyone who sat still long enough if they knew of somewhere I might pick up a job. But the people who frequented those kinds of places either didn’t much care for work or would take the job themselves if they heard about it first, so I didn’t have a lot of luck. After a week, I was getting pretty desperate.

I don’t think I would even have found out about the job had I not been walking along the waterfront, smoking a cigarette and wondering if I hadn’t made a mistake by coming this far north, but there it was: a hand-lettered sign covered in plastic to shield it from the rain:

NIGHT WATCHMAN WANTED. APPLY WITHIN.

With nothing else to do, and no other hope for employment on the horizon, I went inside to inquire in the main office about the job. A guy who was sweeping the floors asked my name, then told me to come back the next morning, when the man in charge would be available to talk to me. I was told to bring along a résumé. I thanked him, but he kept his back to me the whole time. I never even saw his face.

The next morning, I sat in the offices of the Thibault company’s administration department and listened as a man in an expensive gray suit explained my duties to me. His name was Mr. Rone, but he told me that most folk just called him Charles. He said he used to be in the marine business, and still liked to keep his hand in. Transport, he explained: animals, sometimes, and people. Mostly people.

The night watchman’s job would require me to patrol the complex, making sure that the vacant premises did not become homes for hobos and junkies, for there were still buildings unoccupied or under development. I was not being paid to sit in a chair and read the sports pages, or snooze. There were no electronic clocks, nothing to monitor my activity, or lack of activity, but, if anything went wrong, then it was my ass that would be in a sling, yessir.

“Any questions?” said Charles.

I was confused.

“You mean I have the job, just like that?”

Charles gave me a 40-watt smile. “Sure, you seem like the guy we’ve been waiting for.”

He hadn’t even asked for my résumé. I’d typed it up at the local Kinko’s the night before, spending money I couldn’t afford to waste. Now I was feeling a little resentful at having spent my time preparing it. True, it maybe wouldn’t stand up much to close examination, and the people included for reference purposes would be harder to track down than dodos, but I’d made the effort.

“I brought a résumé,” I said, and I was kind of surprised at how hurt my voice sounded. Hell, you’d think the guy had refused to hire me, the way I was going on.

Charles’s smile brightened maybe two watts.

“Hey, that’s great,” he said.

I handed it over. He didn’t even glance at it, just put it on top of a trayload of papers that looked as if they hadn’t been touched since the last locomotive left the building. In fact, it was hard to see precisely what Mr. Rone’s company actually did. From what I could tell, we were the only people in the entire building.

Still, that was it. I had the job.

They gave me a brown uniform, a flashlight, and a gun. I was told the paperwork for the gun would be sorted out later, and I didn’t question them. I didn’t imagine that I’d ever have to use it, anyway. The worst that could happen, I thought, was that some kids might try to break in and I’d have to run them off. I figured that I could handle myself against kids. Just in case, I brought my own telescopic baton and a can of Mace.

Each night before I went to work, I filled a small flask with Wild Turkey, just to keep out the cold. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not a big drinker, and never was, but a northeastern waterfront gets pretty cold in the winter. When you’re wandering around the yards, or checking out those unheated buildings, then there are times when you’re pretty glad of something to warm the heart.

I never minded working alone. I’d read some-mystery stories, mainly-or do word puzzles, or watch late-night TV. I didn’t have a wife to worry about. I used to have a wife, but she’s gone now. People think she left me, went to live in Oregon, but I know different.

It was the start of my second week when the noises began. There were two vacant buildings on the site, close by the main road. The larger one was three stories tall, and kind of run-down. The windows were covered with wire screens, so mostly I just checked the locks on the doors to make sure that they hadn’t been tampered with, but I’d never gone inside. I’d never had any call to, until then.

I was doing my usual 2 A.M. round when I heard the sound of doors opening and closing inside the empty building, and thought I saw the flicker of flames. When I checked the doors and windows, they all seemed to be secure and I could hear no voices from within. I shone my flashlight onto the roof, but, as far as I could see, it looked okay. There were no holes, no busted slates through which someone could have squeezed. But those flames were a worry: if some hobo had found a way in, then lit a fire and fallen asleep, the whole place might go up.

I took my keys from my belt and found the one that fitted the main door lock. I’d color-coded them all with Scotch tape, then learned the colors so I’d know them immediately. The door opened easily and I stepped inside, finding myself in a low-ceilinged room that extended the entire length of the ground floor.

At the end of the room was an open doorway from which one flight of stairs ascended to the upper levels, while another flight led down to the furnace room. The light was coming from there. I slipped the Taurus from its holster, and gun in my right hand, flashlight crossed under it, I headed for the door. I was maybe halfway there when footsteps sounded. A little warning noise was triggered in my head, and I twisted the Mag-lite to kill the beam while I waited, quietly, in the shadows.

Two people appeared in the doorway. They wore long black coats over black trousers and heavy-soled black boots. Their faces were hidden in shadow until they stepped into the warehouse itself. A single dusty bulb burned over the doorway, and its faint light briefly illuminated their forms. They were a man and a woman, but they were all wrong. Both were bald, with pale, almost gray skulls, crisscrossed with thick veins that bulged against their skin. The man was bigger, with red eyes set into his hairless face, but he had no other features. There was no nose, no mouth, just a flat expanse of skin below those eyes. The woman stood beside him, the shape of her breasts visible beneath her coat. She had a mouth, and a small button nose, but no eyes, just smooth skin from her hairline to her nose.

From my left came a sound, and two more figures came forward. The first was another tall man, dressed in black like the others. I couldn’t see his face, but the back of his skull was perfectly round and pale. There were no ears to be seen. One hand hung by his side, but the other hand rested on the shoulder of a small, thin man wearing a brown shirt and pants. His back was to me, so I couldn’t see his face, but there was a wound to his right temple and blood on the left side of his head and on the left shoulder of his shirt, as if a bullet had exited from his left temple.

I should have intervened, but I couldn’t move. I was so scared that I forgot to breathe, and when I realized that I was holding my breath I gasped so loudly that I thought they would hear me and come for me too. For an instant, it seemed that the woman’s eyeless gaze searched the shadows, resting momentarily where I crouched before moving on. Then her fingers probed at the darkness, reaching for the bloodied man. Her mouthless companion did the same and, when all three of the figures were touching him, they guided him gently toward the stairs and pulled the door closed behind them. After a moment’s pause, I followed them.

The door was unlocked. Behind it were stairs, one flight leading to the upper levels of the warehouse, the other leading down. The furnace in the building shouldn’t have been lit, but it was burning now. I could smell it. I could feel it.

And so I descended until I came to an iron doorway, almost rusted away on its hinges. It stood open, and I could see the light of flames flickering within, casting an orange glow on the walls and floor. I could hear the roar of the fire within. I moved toward it. There was sweat running down my back, and my palms were slick against the gun and the flashlight. I was almost at the doorway when the fire died, and now there was only the flashlight in my hand to guide me. I breathed deep, then slipped quickly into the doorway.

“Who’s…?”

I stopped. The room was empty. Inside, I could see the great furnace, but it was unlit. I walked over to the system and, very gently, reached for it with my hand. I paused before touching it, conscious that if I was mistaken my hand would never be right again.

The furnace was cold to the touch.

I made a quick check of the room, but there was nothing else to be seen. It was uncluttered, with but one way in and out. I kept my back to the wall of the stairs, and my gun pointing toward the furnace room, until I reached the main warehouse, then left so quickly that I raised dust from the floor. I spent the rest of the night in my office, with my gun on the desk before me, my senses so heightened that my ears rang.

I didn’t say anything to anybody about what I thought I had seen. In fact, when I woke up that afternoon and prepared for another night’s work I thought that I might just have imagined it all. Maybe I fell asleep in my chair with one too many nips from the flask under my belt and then just dreamed my way into the warehouse and back to my desk, where I woke up with a memory of mutilated figures taking a small man with a hole in his head down to a furnace room that created heat without burning.

I mean, what other explanation could there be?

Nothing else happened for the rest of that week. I heard no more sounds from the warehouse. I even took the trouble of putting a lock and chain on the door, and checked it twice each night, but it never moved. Still, that smell, the odor of burnt powder, lingered. I could detect it on my uniform and in my hair, and no amount of washing seemed to be able to shake it from me.

Then, one Sunday night, when I was making my usual rounds, I entered the warehouse and found the stairwell doorway gaping. The main door to the building had been closed and locked when I arrived. Nobody had been in or out of there in the past week except me. But now the door was open and, once again, I could see the light of flames dancing on the walls. I drew my gun and called out:

“Hello, anybody there?”

There was no answer.

“Come out now,” I shouted, sounding braver than I felt. “You come out now, or I swear I’ll lock you in here and call the cops.”

There was still no reply, but, in the shadows to my right, a figure moved behind some old crates to the right of the door. I shone the flashlight and caught the edge of something blue as it slipped back into the darkness.

“Dammit, I see you. You come out now, y’hear?”

I swallowed once and the noise of it seemed to echo in my head. Although it was a cold night, there was sweat on my forehead and my upper lip. My shirt was soaked in it. Heat was coming from somewhere; intense, searing heat, as if the whole warehouse were ablaze with some hidden fire.

And I heard the furnace roar.

I kept the gun level with the flashlight as I stepped softly toward the crates. As I drew closer, the light revealed a bare foot, with filthy, twisted toenails and thick, swollen ankles marbled with blue veins. The hem of a dirty blue dress was visible just below the knee. It was a woman, a down-and-out taking shelter in the warehouse. Maybe she had been there all along and I had just never seen her. There must have been another way in and out for her: a busted window or a concealed door. I’d find it, after I rousted her ass.

“Okay, lady,” I said, as I drew almost level with her, “out you-”

But it wasn’t a hobo. Like the old joke goes, it wasn’t even a lady.

It was my wife.

Except I wasn’t laughing.

Her dark hair had grown, obscuring most of her face, and the mottled skin seemed to have tightened on her bones, drawing back her lips and exposing long yellow teeth. Her head was down, her chin almost resting on her chest, and she was looking at the wound in her stomach where the knife had entered, the wound I had made on the night I killed her. Then she raised her head and her eyes were revealed: the blue had faded from them, and they were now almost entirely white. The rictus that was her mouth stretched further, and I knew that she was smiling.

“Hi, honey,” she said. I could hear the dirt moving in her throat. There was more beneath her broken fingernails, left there as she dug herself out of the shallow grave I had made for her far to the south, where dead leaves would cover her resting place and wild animals would scatter her bones. She moved forward in an awkward shuffle and I backed away from her: one step, then two, until my progress was halted by an obstacle behind me.

I turned my back on her and found myself staring into the pale face of the earless man in the black coat.

“You have to go with him,” said my wife, as the man in the black coat laid his hand upon me. I looked up into his face, for he was taller than me by a foot or more. In fact, he might just have been the tallest man I’d ever met.

“Where am I going?” I asked him, before I realized that he couldn’t hear me. I wanted to run, but the pressure of his hand kept me rooted to the spot.

I looked over my shoulder to where my dead wife stood. This had to be a dream, I thought, a bad dream, the all-time worst nightmare I could ever fear to have. But instead of struggling, or crying out, or pinching myself awake, I heard the sound of my own voice speaking calmly.

“Tell me,” I said. “Tell me where I’m going.”

The dirt in her throat shifted again. “You’re going underground,” she said.

I tried to move then, but all the strength seemed to have left my body. I couldn’t even raise my gun. In the doorway beyond, two figures now stood: the woman without eyes and the man without a mouth. The mouthless figure nodded to the man now holding me, and he began to guide me firmly toward the stairwell, oblivious to my words.

“No,” I said. “This isn’t right.”

But, of course, there was no sound from him, and at last I understood.

Earless, so that he could not hear the pleas of those for whom he came.

Eyeless, so that she could not see those she fed to the flames.

And the mute judge, the repository of sins, unable to speak of what he had seen or heard, merely required to nod his assent to the passing of the sentence.

Three dæmons, each perfect in its mutilation.

My feet were sliding on the dusty floor as I was dragged by the collar toward the waiting flames. I looked to the doorway of the warehouse and saw a man in a gray suit watching me. It was Mr. Rone. I cried out to him, but he merely smiled his dim smile and closed the door. I could hear the sound of his key turning in the lock. I remembered the papers on his desk, old and dusty. I recalled the absence of a secretary, and a man sweeping the floors whose voice, now that I thought of it, might have sounded something like that of Charles Rone himself.

I was nearly at the doorway when I spoke for the last time.

I looked up at the dæmons standing before me and said simply: “But I’m not dead.”

And at that moment, I felt my right hand start to raise my gun to my temple and saw, in my head, a small, thin man with blood on his shoulder walking to the stairs. Beside me, I heard my dead wife’s voice beside my ear. There was no breath, only sound.

“Let me help you with that,” she whispered. Her hand closed upon mine, pressing my finger against the trigger as she lifted the gun to my skull.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

The sound of the furnace filled my head. Its heat rose through the floor and melted the soles of my shoes. Already, I could smell my hair burning.

“Too late,” she replied.

The gun exploded and the world was shrouded in crimson as I prepared to descend.