Kellerman, Jonathan - The Theatre

Trapdoor in the floor.

Blueprint recall: the auxiliary wine Cellar.

Moving the bed.

The door a solid hardwood rectangle stretching from the center of the room to one wall. The doorknob had been removed, the hole plugged with wood.

Pry marks around the edges. A crowbar or something like it.

He looked for the tool. Nothing-bastard had taken it down with him.

He struggled to pry it open, lost his hold several times, mashing his nails and tearing skin from his fingers. Finally he managed to pull up hard enough. Open the door, then stepped back.

Darkness below.

He slipped into it.

Abba's coming!

He descended silently, frantically, on narrow stone stairs. A score of them, pitched steeply.

The darkness absolute, dizzying. Touching moist stone walls for support and orientation.

Please, God.

The passageway twisted, shifting direction, then more stairs, a dank chill rising from unseen depths.

He sped down blindly.

A deep cellar. Good-perhaps the sound of the gunshot hadn't penetrated.

Another twist. More steps.

Then the bottom, gripping the Beretta, extending his bad hand. Metal. He explored, flumbing with damaged fingers, holding his breath. A low metal door, rounded at the top. Sheet metal-he could feel the seams, the bolts. Took hold of a handle, turned, and pushed.

Opening. Silence. No monster.

But he was assailed by icy white light.

Momentarily sightless, he stepped back reflexively, shielding his eyes and blinking. His pupils constricted painfully.

When they were partially adjusted, he took a step forward, saw that he was in a small, cavelike room, empty save for a troughlike double sink and two floor drains encrusted with something unhealthy-looking.

The floors, walls, and ceilings were rough-hewn stone, the entire space scooped out of bedrock. Age-blackened rock streaked with greenish-blue mold and overlaid with a warped wooden exoskeleton-widely spaced pine laths laid cross-hatched over the walls; knotted overhead beams from which hung panels of fluorescent tubes on chains.

Dozens of fluorescent tubes-half a hundred, emitting an eye-searing flood of light.

He heard laughter, turned toward it.

At the end of the room, beyond the light, was another door-old, flimsy, wooden, banded with rusty iron. He ran to it, nudged it open, stepped into another room, somewhat larger than the first, the light brighter, tinted an odd silvery lavender.

Cold air, chemically bitter. Another trough, more drains.

At the center was a long steel-topped table on stout metal legs that had been bolted to the floor.

Daniel stood at its foot, looking down on soft whiteness, white buds-the soles of two small feet. Two fragile calves, a hairless pubis, spindle ribs, concave belly, flat chest.

His baby's naked body, the dusky skin blanched by the light.

She lay motionless in a nest of white sheeting, a pinpoint of red in the crook of one Jimp arm.

Her neck and shoulders had been propped up on several rolled pillows, thrusting the head back, chin upward, mouth open. Her lily-stem throat forced into the most vulnerable of convexities.

The sacrificial arch.

He yearned to rush to her, cover her, was stopped by the knife that caressed her trachea. Long-bladed, double-edged, pearl handled.

White on white.

So still. Oh, God, no-but no blood other than the needle mark, the body sculpture-perfect, not a wound. Her chest rose and left in a shadow, narcotized cadence.

The gift of time

Behind her, a mass of white. White hands-big hands, thick-fingered. One gripping the handle of the knife. The other submerged in her curls, entangled. Stroking, caressing

Ugly laughter.

Baldwin, standing at the head of the table-looming, naked, Shoshi's head shielding his chest, her life contingent upon the turn of a wrist.

Leering, confident.

The tabletop bisected him at the navel. What was visible of his upper torso was massive, armored with muscle, slathered with something oily.

The fluorescence had bleached him an unearthly lavender-gray. Despite the cold, he was sweating, his thin hair plastered in strands, like wet twine, across the bare gray crown.

His body was shaved girl-smooth and prickly with goose bumps, the flesh glowing moist, shiny, slick as some nocturnal burrowing grub.

He stood slightly right of table-center, left leg exposed. Swastika-shaped scars covered his thigh-malignant purple brands. A fresh swastika wound had been incised just above the knee, the surrounding skin rosy with smeared blood.

Staring at Daniel, the eyes cold, flat, twin peepholes into hell.

Laid out before him was a sparkling array of surgical instruments-knives, needles, scissors, clamps-on a precisely folded napkin of white linen. Next to the napkin was a hypodermic syringe half-filled with something milky.

Shoshi dead-still.

Abba's here.

A carotid pulse bounced bravely under the knife blade. Daniel aimed the Beretta.

Baldwin pulled Shoshi's head higher, so that her curls bearded his chin. He laughed again, unalarmed.

"Hi, I'm Dr. Terrific. What seems to be the problem?"

All at once the knife began sawing across Shoshi's neck. Daniel stopped breathing, started to scream, pounce-but no blood.

Laughter. A game. The grin widening. More sawing.

"Like my fleshfiddle, kikefuck?"

The pearl handle of the knife caught the light and tossed it back in Daniel's face.

White on white.

On white.

A white swastika painted crudely on the dark stone floor. Painted words, familiar English block letters:

HEIL SCHWANN!! THE SCHWANN SEED LIVES!!!

Baldwin's face constricted with ecstasy. Drunk on the game, not noticing as Daniel shifted to the right. Took a step. Another.

"Don't move, kikefuck."

The warning uttered around that sickening grin. A harsh voice. Mechanical. No trace of the cowboy drawl.

Deep, yet topped by a strident tentativeness-echoes.

The echoing screams of abandoned, victimized women. Daniel swore he could hear them, wanted to cover his ears.

Baldwin's mouth spread the grin wider.

The fingers of his left hand fanned down over Shoshi's face, spatulate tips fondling her cheekbones, her lips, as the right one held the knife in place. Baldwin moved it back and forth in a horror-tease.

A giggle: "Never had one this tender."

Daniel moved another centimeter to the right.

"Drop the bang-bang or I'll whittle on her." Grin. Long white teeth. Purple tongue. Lavender lips.

Daniel lowered the Beretta slowly, watched Baldwin's eyes follow the weapon down-poor concentration. He pushed forward with his toes. Another quarter-step, and another. On the right side of the table now. Closer.

"I said drop it, nigger-kike. All the way." Baldwin pressed the flat side of the knife blade against Shoshi's neck, obscuring the pulse. He stretched luxuriantly, gorging himself on power. But shifting to the right, simultaneously, in unconscious defense.

It exposed his crotch. His penis was semi-erect, a starched-white cylinder hovering tentatively above the branded thigh.

He removed his left hand from Shoshi's body, lowered it to himself, began stroking himself. Leering.

"Two weapons." Giggle. "Real science."

Daniel lowered the gun until it was level with the organ. Took another step forward.

Baldwin laughed, quickened his stroke. Kept sawing the knife in counterpoint.

"Silly millimeter, bye-bye kikette."

The voice rising in pitch, the erection hardening, tilted upward.

Power was everything with this one. Control, the key.

Daniel played along with it. Said, "Please."

"Please," laughed Baldwin. He masturbated a while longer, stopped, and ran his nail along the upper cutting edge of the knife. The lower edge still resting on Shoshi's windpipe.

"This is a Liston amputator, kikescum. It knows how to fast-dance, cuts through bone like butter." Grin. Giggle. The knife lifted, then descended.

"Please. Don't hurt her."

"Blink the wrong way and we'll be playing football with her fucking head."

"Please. I beg you."

Baldwin's eyebrows arched. He licked his lips.

"You really mean that, you insignificant piece of roach shit, don't you?"

"Yes." Forward.

"Yes, Doctor."

"Yes, Doctor." Begging, putting on a servile face and keeping Baldwin's eyes off his legs. Moving close enough to Shoshi's leg to grab her ankle, pull her away. But the knife was still kissing her flesh. A muscle twitch could sever her jugular.

" Yes, please, Herr Doktor Professor!"

"Yes, please, Herr Doktor Professor."

Baldwin smiled, sighed. Then his face creased abruptly into a livid hate-mask.

"THEN DROP THE BANG-BANG, FUCKHEAD!"

Daniel lowered the Beretta further. Begging for mercy as he did it. Scanning the room and taking in the layout.

No more doors. This was the end point.

"Please, Doctor, don't hurt her. Take me instead."

Idiocy, but it amused the bastard, purchased time.

Shiny things hanging from a nail embedded in a lath. Gold hoop earrings. Three pairs.

In the corner, an ice cooler. Next to it a crowbar. Too far.

Wall racks holding two large flashlights, more sheets, pillows. Stacks of folded clothing: Dresses, undergarments. A white dress striped with blue, torn, a strip missing.

Next to the clothing, jars filled with clear liquid and labeled with gummed stickers. Soft, pinkish things floating within.

Two he recognized as kidneys.

Others, unfamiliar. Roundish, clearly visceral.

"DROP IT, SHITBRAIN, OR I CUT HER!"

Bellowing, but subtle aftertones of panic.

Cowardice.

A passive monster, picking off the weak. Even after he had them in his clutches, putting them to sleep before doing his dirty work-terrified of resistance. Cutting himself superficially, but Daniel knew he'd chance nothing that endangered him.

He lowered the gun all the way. Baldwin was distracted, again, by its descent.

Daniel moved closer to the head of the table, looked at Baldwin, then past him, at a stuffed animal perched on the rack below the jars. Then he saw the black patch over the eye, realized it was Dayan. Stiff as a toy. No-paralyzed, the big brown eyes moving back and forth, following him. Begging for rescue.

"ON THE FLOOR OR FOOTBALL!" screamed Baldwin, sounding like a child having a tantrum.

Daniel said, "Yes, Doctor," and flipped the Beretta across the room, to the left. It hit the side of the sink-trough, clattered to the ground.

During the instant that Baldwin's eyes followed its trajectory, his knife hand lifted.

A millimeter of air between blade and throat.

Daniel lunged for Baldwin's wrist with both of his hands, pushing the knife up and way from Shoshi. Lowering his head, he drove it hard into Baldwin's oily abdomen, pushing the monster back.

Monster was heavy, a twenty-kilo advantage. Rock-hard. Thick wrists, A head taller. Two good hands.

Daniel injected the full force of his rage into the attack. Baldwin stumbled backward, against the wall racks, The baths vibrated. A jar tilted fell, shattered. Something wet and glossy skidded across the floor.

Earrings tinkling.

Baldwin opened his mouth, roared, charged, swinging the knife.

Daniel backed away from the death-arcs. Baldwin stabbed air several times in succession. The inertia threw him off-balance.

Big and strong, but no trained fighter.

Daniel used the moment to head-butt Baldwin again, drove his fists into the monster's belly and groin, kicking at naked shins, reaching upward, grabbing a wrist, struggling to gain possession of the knife.

Baldwin fought free. Stab, miss. Stepped on broken glass, cried out.

Daniel stomped on the wounded foot, went for the knife with his good hand, tried to claw Baldwin's chest with his bad one. The fingernails made contact with oily flesh, slid off ineffectually.

He looked for the gun. Too far. Kicked at Baldwin's knee. Punishing, but not damaging. Got both hands around Baldwin's hand, felt the smooth pearl of the knife handle.

Go for the fingers, stuffed with nerve endings.

He tried to bend back Baldwin's index finger, but Baldwin held fast. Daniel's leverage was poor, his hand slipped, came perilously rose to the knife blade. Before he could regain his hold on the handle, Baldwin yanked upward, gear-shifting the knife, up and down, back and forth, stabbing, wrenching, controlling it, as Daniel held on and pivoted to avoid being slashed.

The pinkie of Daniel's bad hand grazed the blade. The nail split open, then the soft flesh under it. Electric pain. A warm bath of blood.