Down These Strange Streets (George R.R. Martin) (Kitty Norville 6.50)

I looked at the wall. There was no alleyway. It was just a wall plastered in paint designs and spots of blood.

“And if the music stops?” I said.

“I fall asleep,” Tootie said. “Record quits playing, it starts coming.”

For a moment I didn’t know anything to say. I finally got off the floor and sat on the bed. I felt my cheek where the tentacle hit me. It throbbed and I could feel blisters. I also had a knot on my head where I had fallen.

“Almost got you,” Tootie said. “I think you can leave and it won’t come after you. Me, I can’t. I leave, it follows. It’ll finally find me. I guess here is as good as any place.”

I was looking at him, listening, but not understanding a damn thing.

The record quit. Tootie started it again. I looked at the wall. Even that blank moment without sound scared me. I didn’t want to see that thing again. I didn’t even want to think about it.

“I haven’t slept in days, until now,” Tootie said, coming to sit on the bed. “You hadn’t come in, it would have got me, carried me off, taken my soul. But you can leave. It’s my lookout, not yours . . . I’m always in some kind of shit, ain’t I, Ricky?”

“That’s the truth.”

“This, though, it’s the corker. I got to stand up and be a man for once. I got to fight this thing back, and all I got is the music. Like I told you, you can go.”

I shook my head. “Alma May sent me. I said I’d bring you back.”

It was Tootie’s turn to shake his head. “Nope. I ain’t goin’. I ain’t done nothin’ but mess up Sis’s life. I ain’t gonna do it.”

“First responsible thing I ever heard you say,” I said.

“Go on,” Tootie said. “Leave me to it. I can take care of myself.”

“If you don’t die of starvation, or pass out from lack of sleep or need of water, you’ll be just fine.”

Tootie smiled at me. “Yeah. That’s all I got to worry about. I hope it is one of them other things kills me. ’Cause if it comes for me . . . Well, I don’t want to think about it.”

“Keep the record going, I’ll get something to eat and drink, some coffee. You think you can stay awake a half hour or so?”

“I can, but you’re coming back?”

“I’m coming back,” I said.

Out in the hallway I saw the big guy was gone. I took the stairs.

WHEN I GOT BACK, TOOTIE HAD CLEANED UP THE VOMIT AND WAS LOOKING through the notebooks. He was sitting on the floor and had them stacked all around him. He was maybe six inches away from the record player. Now and again he’d reach up and start it all over.

Soon as I was in the room, and that sound from the record was snugged up around me, I felt sick. I had gone to a greasy spoon down the street, after I changed a flat tire. One of the boys I’d given a hard time had most likely knifed it. My bet was the lucky son of a bitch who had fallen on the fire escape.

Besides the tire, a half-dozen long scratches had been cut into the paint on the passenger side, and my windshield was knocked in. I got back from the café, parked what was left of my car behind the hotel, down the street a bit, and walked a block. Car looked so bad now, maybe nobody would want to steal it.

I sat one of the open sacks on the floor by Tootie.

“Both hamburgers are yours,” I said. “I got coffee for the both of us here.”

I took out a tall cardboard container of coffee and gave it to him, took the other one for myself. I sat on the bed and sipped. Nothing tasted good in that room with that smell and that sound. But Tootie, he ate like a wolf. He gulped those burgers and coffee like they were air.

When he finished with the second burger, he started up the record again, then leaned his back against the bed.

“Coffee or not,” he said, “I don’t know how long I can stay awake.”

“So what you got to do is keep the record playing?” I said.

“Yeah.”