21

“HELP ME!”

Ron had just been drifting off into sleep. Goddamn that old bastard! Every time he started to fall asleep, the old fart yelled.

Just my luck to get stuck in a ward with three geezers. He elbowed the call button. Where’s that fucking nurse? He needed a shot.

The pain was a living thing, grinding Ron’s hands in its teeth and gnawing his arms all the way up to the shoulders. All he wanted to do was sleep. But the pain kept him awake. The pain and the oldest of his three ancient roommates, the one over by the window, the one the nurses called Tommy. Every so often, in between his foghorn snores, he’d let out a yell that would rattle the windows.

Ron hit the call button again with his elbow. Because both his arms were resting in slings suspended from an overhead bar, the nurses had fastened the button to one of the side rails. He had asked them repeatedly for another pain shot, but they kept giving him the same old line over and over: “Sorry, Mr. Daniels, but the doctor left orders for a shot every four hours and no more. You’ll have to wait.”

Mr. Daniels. He could almost smile at that. His real name was Ronald Daniel Symes. Ron to his friends. He’d given the receptionist a phony name, a phony address, and told them his Blue Cross/Blue Shield card was at home in his wallet. And when they’d wanted to send him home he’d told them how he lived alone and had no one to feed him or even help him open his apartment door. They’d bought it all. So now he had a place to stay, three meals a day, air conditioning, and when it was all over, he’d skip out and they could take their bill and shove it.

Everything would be great if it weren’t for the pain.

“HELP ME!”

The pain and Tommy.

He hit the button again. Four hours had to be up! He needed that shot!

The door to the room swung open and someone came in. It wasn’t a nurse. It was a guy. But he was dressed in white. Maybe a male nurse. Great! All he needed now was some faggot trying to give him a bed bath in the middle of the night.

But the guy only leaned over the bed and held out one of those tiny plastic medicine cups. Half an inch of colored liquid was inside.

“What’s this?”

“For the pain.” The guy was dark and had some sort of accent.

“I want a shot, clown!”

“Not time yet for a shot. This will hold you until then.”

“It better.”

Ron let him tip the cup up to his lips. It was funny tasting stuff. As he swallowed it, he noticed the guy’s left arm was missing. He pulled his head away.

“And listen,” he said, feeling a sudden urge to throw his weight around—after all, he was a patient here. “Tell them out there I don’t want no more cripples coming in here.”

In the darkness, Ron thought he detected a smile on the face above him.

“Certainly, Mr. Daniels. I shall see to it that your next attendant is quite sound of limb.”

“Good. Now take off, geek.”

“Very well.”

Ron decided he liked being a patient. He could give orders and people had to listen. And why not? He was sick and—

“HELP ME!”

If only he could order Tommy to stop.

The junk the geek had given him didn’t seem to be helping his pain. Only thing to do was try to sleep. He thought about that bastard cop who’d busted up his hands tonight. He said it was private, but Ron knew a pig when he saw one. He swore he’d find that sadist bastard even if he had to hang around every precinct house in New York until winter. And then Ron would follow him home. He wouldn’t get back at him directly —Ron had a bad feeling about that guy and didn’t want to be around if he ever got really mad. But maybe he had a wife and kids…

Ron lay there in a half-doze for a good forty-five minutes planning what he’d do to get even with the pig. He was just tipping over the edge into a deep sleep, falling… finally falling…

“HELP ME!”

Ron jerked violently in the bed, pulling his right arm out of the suspensory sling and knocking it against the side rail. A fiery blast of pain shot up to his shoulder. Tears squeezed out of his eyes as breath hissed noisily through his bared teeth.

When the pain subsided to a more tolerable level, he knew what he had to do.

That old fucker, Tommy, had to go.

Ron pulled his left arm out of its sling, then eased himself over the side rail. The floor was cold. He lifted his pillow between his two casts and padded over to Tommy’s bed. All he had to do was lay it over the old guy’s face and lean on it. A few minutes of that and poof, no more snores, no more yells, no more Tommy.

He saw something move outside the window as he passed by it. He looked closer. It was a shadow, like somebody’s head and shoulders. A big somebody.

But this was the fifth floor!

He had to be hallucinating. That stuff in the cup must have been stronger than he thought. He bent closer to the window for a better look. What he saw there held him transfixed for a long, agonal heartbeat. It was a face out of a nightmare, worse than all his nightmares combined. And those glowing yellow eyes…

A scream started in his throat as he reflexively lurched backward. But before it could reach his lips, a taloned, three-fingered hand smashed through the double pane and clamped savagely, unerringly around his throat. Ron felt incredible pressure against his windpipe, crushing it closed against his cervical spine with an explosive crunch. The rough flesh against the skin of his throat was cool and damp, almost slimy, with a rotten stench arising from it. He caught a glimpse of smooth dark skin stretched over a long, lean, muscular arm leading out through the shattered glass to… what? He arched his back and clawed at the imprisoning fingers but they were like a steel collar around his neck. As he struggled vainly for air, his vision blurred. And then, with a smooth, almost casual motion, he felt himself yanked bodily through the window, felt the rest of the glass shatter with his passage, the shards either falling away or raking savagely at his flesh. He had one soul-numbing, moon-limned glimpse of his attacker before his vision was mercifully extinguished by his oxygen-starved brain.

And back in the room, after that final instant of crashing noise, all was quiet again. Two of the remaining patients, deep in Dalmane dreams, stirred in their beds and turned over. Tommy, the closest to the window, shouted “HELP ME!” and then went back to snoring.