Shivers Read online

  Steven almost laughed. We’ll have to wait. Who was he kidding? He’d spent the night calling hospitals, going from one Third Avenue singles bar—Joey’s haunts—to another asking if anyone had seen him, spent a sleepless night tossing and turning. And he says, we’ll have to wait.

  New York was so huge—when someone disappeared it was like they’d jumped into a slimy ocean of uncaring rabble.

  Steven got up and shook the detective’s hand.

  Neither of them had anything more to say.

  Harriet MacGruder waddled into the elevator of the Berkley Arms Hotel, pressed number nine, and dropped her shopping bags onto the floor. Like the hotel, she’d seen better days. She was a short, squat woman with big, fleshy arms, an imposing bosom, and a homely—but pleasant enough—face. She wore a weather-beaten straw hat at a cock-eyed angle. While the elevator wheezed its way up to the ninth floor, she hummed a tune she had heard in the supermarket.

  When the elevator stopped, she got out and walked down the grimy pink hallway until she arrived at her room: Number 917, completely furnished with a hot plate and a tiny refrigerator. The bathroom—which she shared with three other people of both sexes—was further down the corridor. Now and then she would get down on her hands and knees and scrub it like crazy with detergents and cleansers, but within a week it was just as dirty and smelly as before.

  She couldn’t understand it, as her neighbors appeared to be clean. Especially Mr. Peterson, the man who occupied the cubicle—they called it a room—to the immediate right of her own. Most of her neighbors were old people like herself—spinsters, bachelors, widows and widowers left alone to die by their uncaring children and relatives. It made no difference. Whatever their lives had been like once upon a time, they were all living the same life now. The single-room-occupancy hotels contained so much loneliness and despair they had developed their own special odor. And it was a foul one.

  Mrs. MacGruder entered her room and placed the two shopping bags on her bed. She hadn’t much space to move around in. Most of her clothes were crammed into the wardrobe, and her other possessions were in and on top of the desk in the corner. Little mementoes of seventy eight years. Toys. Old love letters. Souvenirs from trips with her late husband. Trips all over the world, she said, though she had really never been out of the country.

  She opened a can of soup and sat down to read the paper while it heated on the hot plate. She skipped to the movie section. Now and then she and Mr. Peterson would go to see a film together. They had to budget carefully to make their small checks last throughout the month, but they could afford to see a film if the price was right and the theater nearby. One particular movie caught her attention. She took the paper out into the hall with her and rapped on Mr. Peterson’s door. There was no answer, which surprised her. Perhaps he was asleep.

  She went back to check on the soup, glad to see that it had not yet started to boil; she hated the way boiling made it taste. She remembered then that she had not seen her neighbor for quite some time now, and began to worry. She turned off the hot plate, opened her door, and went out to check on him again.

  His door was not locked; a suspicious sign.

  She gave no thought to what she might find, but opened it abruptly and entered. It was hard to see, as the lights were out and very little sunshine filtered through the windows at this time of day on their side of the building. Everything seemed to be in order, except there was an odd, fruity smell in the air. The room was colder than it should have been—no wonder. The window was broken. Now how did that happen? she wondered.

  Mr. Peterson was definitely not there. She snapped on the lights, looked around more thoroughly, including a peek under the bed and in the wardrobe, then went back to her soup and the newspaper. Strange, very strange. Perhaps Mr. Baloos had seen him; she would have to ask him later.

  She ate the rapidly cooling soup, finished digesting the grim news of the day, and took a nap.

  She’d meant only to sleep for a little while, but when she finally awoke it was four hours later. She felt quite refreshed; in the mood for a good movie. She went back out into the hall, opened Peterson’s door once more, and stepped again into his room. Now the sunlight was coming in so brightly through the shattered window that she didn’t need to turn on the lamp.

  Her eyes were attracted to a strange splotch on the wall near the window. When she’d first noticed it before, she had assumed the reddish stain was simply the result of dripping water running down the pink wallpaper. It happened all the time, what with the lousy plumbing in the hotel.

  But now she could see the stain more clearly, more distinctly. She went over to it, and saw that it was actually composed of a rather sticky, dripping substance not unlike blood, but with the consistency of jelly. She reached out to touch it, but drew back, suddenly frightened. She stepped back a few feet, staring at the wall, and it was then that it hit her. The shape on the wall had a very familiar outline.

  Mrs. MacGruder could have sworn that it was shaped just like a man.

  Joey, where the hell are you?

  I was supposed to take care of you, that’s what Dad said. In case anything happened, I was to take care of you. I’ve done a lousy job, huh?

  Steven sat in the living room of his apartment, a converted brownstone, staring at the couch his brother had been using for a bed. They hadn’t had much time to talk. Joey was always on the run—an interview, a date, a night on the town. He’d saved up a lot of money by working part-time while he’d been in college. He’d even intended to pay Steven back the money he’d lent him for tuition as soon as he got a job.’

  Only twenty one. Twenty one years old. What a time to die.

  But he wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be! He had to stop thinking that way. Joey would walk in the next morning, bright and smiling, with some story, some sensible, if infuriating, excuse. And Steven wanted to be infuriated tomorrow. He’d take anger over sorrow anytime.

  He couldn’t sleep. He knew that. He sat down on the sofa and thought about his brother for what seemed like hours. His brother was missing and nobody cared. He’d learned so much from Joey. The boy had taught him to open his eyes about so many things. Joey was so much more involved in everything—so much more of a political person, a realist—while Steven was the impractical dreamer. Steven had been caught up in himself all the time, while Joey often seemed to be carrying the woes of the world on his back. That’s why Steven had been glad to see Joey gallivanting around the city like a kid in a candy store; he’d been such a serious youngster, concerned that every person be given a fair deal. In contrast, Steven had thought of almost nothing but what he could get out of life—he could see that now—as if he was the center of all existence. He had spent his time embroiled in a writer’s fantasies. Joey could have offered so much more to the world, given half a chance. It just wasn’t fair. Not fair at all.

  Damn it. He had to stop thinking about his brother as if he was dead. Save the eulogies for later.

  Steven wished there was somebody he could talk to about this. Andrea—his girlfriend? lover? combatant? What could he call her these days seeing as how their relationship was crumbling? Anyway, she was out of town and, if she knew when she planned to return, had kept it a secret. He’d taken a well-deserved two weeks off from work—he was Senior Editor of NightLife Magazine—and wasn’t really all that close to any of the people he worked with, not enough to call them up at home just to burden them with his problems. At least he was free to give Joey’s disappearance his undivided attention.

  Of course there was always his old buddy, Harry Faulkin, the weatherman. Harry and he had grown up together, gone to school together, built snowmen together as children. But Harry’s best friend was Harry, of that there was no doubt. He was not the shoulder-to-cry-on type, no sir. Steven was fond of the fellow, but only to a point. No, Harry was not the one to turn to when in need of comfort. Still, he did work for a TV station. Maybe later, if Joey had still not returned, Harry could pull some strings
, get the boy’s picture on the air.

  The house was so empty without Joey. Steven hadn’t realized how lonely he’d been.

  It was six o’clock. He realized that he hadn’t had a bite to eat all day. He got up, went into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. He looked through the shelves carefully, searching for something bland but with substance. He had no real appetite. All he wanted was something to keep up his energy.

  The phone rang? Police? Joey?

  It was a woman. She said her name was Vivian Jessup.

  Vivian? Joey’s Vivian?

  “I just wanted to know if Joey is okay. He is all right, isn’t he?”

  How did she know that Joey was missing? Or did she mean something else?

  “He hasn’t come back yet,” Steven said, wondering exactly how close this woman had been to his brother, and what part she might have played in the boy’s disappearance.

  “Come back? You mean you don’t know where he is?”

  Steven quickly told her what had happened.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Then they’ve done it.”

  “Pardon me?”

  She didn’t explain, so Steven continued. “I filed an official report earlier today at the precinct. They just told me to wait and see, they’d do all they could.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Not much.” He told her what Albright had said.

  “I’m so sorry. I was . . . very fond . . . of Joseph. I . . .”

  “Vivian,” he interrupted. “Have you seen my brother? Did you see him yesterday or any time last night? Do you know where he is now? You’re about the only person he knows in New York.”

  She didn’t answer at first. Then she said, very quickly: “No, I haven’t seen him. I—look, I can’t talk on the phone. Please understand. I would like to talk to you privately. Could you come see me this evening about nine o’clock?”

  “Yes, I guess so. But what is this about? Do you know something about Joey’s disappearance?”

  “I’m not sure.” She paused, as if trying to get her breath. “I really can’t talk now, not on the phone. Come by tonight.” She gave him her address.

  Steven scribbled quickly in a note pad by the phone. Madison and 68th.

  “You will come?”

  “I will. But can’t you tell me what this is all about?”

  “Tonight. Nine o’clock. Goodbye.”

  She hung up.

  Eric Thorne left the Institute at 8:15 P.M. and headed towards Broadway. His “friend” was missing tonight. His “friend” was an old drunkard who each night sprawled outside the entrance to a shuttered restaurant, and had done so at one spot or another for several years. Eric wondered what the hell had happened to the guy. He was always there.

  He walked on toward the subway thinking about the nice dinner he’d be consuming in approximately an hour, but his thoughts kept returning to the derelict. Now that he thought about it, most of the bums who had hung out in this section of the city had disappeared. Other people might have assumed it was the advent of cold weather that had driven them elsewhere, but Eric knew better. He had worked in this area long enough to know that that wasn’t true. When winter came, they would just huddle up with a bottle somewhere, the alcohol warming them and pickling their brains to beyond the point where they could distinguish heat from cold. Of course many of them died. But not all. Not this many. And they were almost all gone now. Poor souls.

  He was about to descend to the subway when an old sot approached him from behind the darkness of an abandoned car in the alleyway. “Fifty cents, mister? Got fifty cents?”

  Was this the last remaining tramp? Eric wondered. He almost laughed at his own suspicious mentality.

  He was almost sure that he had seen other figures back there in the shadows, nestled in alcoves, hiding next to garbage cans. But they’d darted out of sight—with a speed too fast for any derelict—before he could make certain. Perhaps they’d been figments of his imagination, products of his worsening eyesight. Well, at least this one was real.

  “Fifty cents, please?”

  Eric dug into his pocket for change. A quarter and two dimes. Well, it would have to do. Even as he handed the money to the man he knew it was more an act of futility than of kindness.

  “Thank you, mister. God bless ya. God bless ya.”

  There was something odd about the man. Beneath the smelly rags he wore for clothes, behind his dead, almost unseeing eyes, there was something there. Instead of the blank expression, the vacuous gaze of the typical drunk, there was a palpable feeling, an emotion made up of equal parts confusion, loneliness, and terror. They stood there at the top of the stairs staring at each other, both waiting for the other to speak. The drunk wanting and needing explanations; Eric waiting to hear the man before him give voice to the unspeakable horrors he had witnessed. Why could neither of them speak?

  Eric turned away and started down the steps. Before he had gone even halfway, the drunk called out.

  “Where are they?” he said. “Where have my friends gone?”

  Eric turned back, saw the look of horror on the old drunk’s face, read his feelings and emotions, arid almost reeled. He started back down the stairs again, practically running toward the token booth. He quickly bought a token, raced through the turnstile, and just made it onto an uptown train.

  He found a seat. He glanced out the window behind him as the train left the station, and saw that the drunk had followed him down the stairs, and was even now staring at him from the other side of the turnstile. The sight chilled Thorne’s blood. He pressed his hands over his eyes and did not remove them until the train had arrived at the next stop.

  Amid the bustle of people who boarded and departed, he felt more secure. He tried to determine why that old man had so unsettled him. Certainly he’d dealt with derelicts before. Why such distress?

  Because the man had read his mind.

  It was usually the opposite. Thorne could pick up thoughts and feelings from other people, had been able to do it all his life. He had picked up frightening thoughts from that man, horrible images of living nightmares, of death and decay. That man had seen things, seen repulsive things done to other people. And though Thorne had caught only glimpses of the horror, that had been more than enough.

  But it was not the images that had left him so shaken, but rather the fact that the man had willingly transferred those images to Eric’s mind, had even, in fact, picked up Eric’s thoughts as he’d walked by. He had known that Thorne had been wondering where the other derelicts had disappeared to! He had approached Eric not for money, but for the exchange of information.

  Damn it! Thorne swore to himself. This is what my life has been devoted to. Why did I run away? Why didn’t I stay there with him, learn what he had to say?

  Because the implications were just too horrible. The images he had picked up were too unreal, the product of a crazed consciousness. He would have learned nothing from a man whose mind had long since abandoned him. Surely he had not been sane. He couldn’t have been.

  But nevertheless, he had definitely been a sensitive. Thorne could not ignore that. He would have to find him again.

  And God help him when he did.

  * * *

  Steven left for Vivian’s apartment at 8:35. He walked down to Lincoln Center to catch the crosstown bus at 66th Street. The bus cut through Central Park and would stop not far from Ms. Jessup’s apartment house. He boarded, paid his fare, and sat down in the back. There were only a few other passengers.

  As the bus turned into the road through Central Park, he stared out the window, trying to see past his reflection, to catch a glimpse of the darkness outside and whatever it might have been hiding. He felt chilled—not just by the cold weather, but by the eerie quality of the park at night. Was his brother in there somewhere—in pain, crying, bleeding to death—or dead? Last night he’d looked all over the area where Joey had gone jogging, and again this morning before he’d gone to the police. No
thing.

  The bus went through a tunnel, and the moonlight was blocked. Steven thought for a moment that he had seen someone walking through the tunnel, someone hunched over, tired or ill. Joey? He turned his head and stared into the tunnel as the bus pulled out, but the figure was gone, if it had ever been there at all. Stop seeing Joey in every shadow, he told himself. It won’t do any good.

  He got off at Madison and 65th Street, walked up three blocks, and turned right at 68th. The woman’s home was located in the middle of the block. It was an old, but swanky, apartment house, with an aging doorman and a big, mirrored lobby full of plants and cushioned chairs. The doorman checked with Vivian Jessup via intercom, and Steven was allowed to proceed to the elevator. He stepped into the car, pushed the correct button, and tried to summon up a mental image of the woman he was about to meet. Her voice on the phone had been sultry, husky, sensual even, and she’d sounded older than he’d expected. Wasn’t that the rage these days—older women, younger men? He’d never really known what type of women his brother had gone for, but there was no reason to assume he stuck to women his own age. Maybe the two of them had had some kind of crisis—like he and Andrea had had. They’d spent plenty of nights staying up discussing their future, hadn’t they? Couldn’t Joey and Vivian have been doing the same?

  There were only two apartments on each floor. He pressed the buzzer outside 14A and listened as soft, delicate footsteps approached from within. Please be there, Joey. Be inside “shacked up” with Vivian.

  The door opened. A cautious face looked out. Pretty, soft. Tense.

  “Are you Mr. Everson?” the woman asked.

  “Yes. Ms. Jessup, I presume?”

  She nodded. “Mrs. Jessup. Come in, please.”

  She was a beautiful woman, but even more “mature” than Steven had expected. She appeared to be at least in her mid-forties, maybe older. There was a glamorous aura about her, a sort of fading loveliness recaptured in part by paint and powder. She had an upswept hairstyle and wore vivid red lipstick. Golden earrings dangled from her creamy lobes. Her face was narrow, small, with hazel eyes, high model’s cheekbones, and a slightly longish—but attractive—nose. Her lips and eyes were small—made larger by the lipstick and mascara. The eyelashes may have been false. She was about five-foot-five, and slender. Her outfit—though a casual one—was chic and expensive, not the thing one wore to the supermarket.