The Storm King(111)
“There’s no other way to do it.” Tom said this in a way that told Nate that his thoughts had already moved on, up the spiral stairs to the Century Room to meet whatever awaited him there.
Nate nodded and turned back to the boy. He inspected the bandage to make sure it would hold. He handled the teen’s skull as delicately as if it were a cracked egg.
“I bet you’re a good doctor.” Tom’s voice was thick and just a whisper above the lashes of rain whipping the windows. “I bet you’re a good dad.”
When he was finished, Nate shoved his hands under the boy’s frail body. He grunted with exertion as he hefted the skinny form. The kid couldn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds, but Nate knew he had to make it look good.
He started to favor his right hand, and let his right knee buckle under the new imbalance. All the while cradling the boy’s head and keeping his cervical spine as straight as possible.
“He must only weigh, like—” Tom dove to catch Nate from toppling.
“My hand,” Nate said. He made his thumb tremble as he raised it to the light. Even without the tremor it looked convincing. The base of the digit was a swell of flesh the color of roast beef and the size of a baseball. “Wait, maybe I can—” He tried to rearrange the boy over his right shoulder while trying to stabilize his head. It was impossible, of course, but he needed Tom to see that for himself.
It took Tom a moment, but he got there eventually. He swore under his breath. “Goddamnit.” He pulled the boy out of Nate’s grasp. “I’ll be back in a minute. Stay here. Don’t go upstairs without me.”
Nate made sure the boy’s head was as supported as it could be, then he pulled the flashlight from Tom’s hand. “I’m just going to take a quick look at that hatchway.”
“Hold up,” Tom said. “Nate!”
But Nate didn’t hesitate as he hurried back toward the kitchen and jammed his head into the strange space in the wall. He flicked the light up and down. It was a shaft of raw wood, ribbed with supports that could serve as a ladder. The base of the chute terminated in the undercroft, but the top of it appeared to go above the Century Room, perhaps all the way up to one of the Night Ship’s decorative spires. Generations of cobwebs clotted with dust tensed and relaxed as if caught in a giant’s breath. Had that been a leg? Nate adjusted the light to see straight up the shaft. Impossible to tell.
“Must’ve been a tight fit. He’s built like a sasquatch.” Tom was behind Nate, squatting on the floor and peering over his shoulder. In his arms, the boy was dramatically motionless. “I don’t think we should split up.”
“We’ve got to get this kid out of here, and you’re the only one who can carry him. I’ll wait for you and keep my eyes and ears open.”
“I don’t believe you’ll stay put.”
“Then you’d better hurry.” He shoved the flashlight back into Tom’s hand.
“Wait,” Tom said. He maneuvered himself and the boy so that Nate could reach his sidearm.
“Keep the light and keep the gun,” Nate said.
“If I can’t be here, then I want you—”
A cascade of crashes quaked the pier. It wasn’t thunder this time. It was shattering glass and screaming steel and splintering wood. The Night Ship was dying.
Tom was going to say something else, so Nate beat him to it. “The last time I shot a gun, all I had to do was spam the A button. If you weren’t talking so much, you’d already be on your way back.” He allowed a hint of the Storm King into his voice. “Go, Tom. And cradle his head.”
Nate couldn’t see Tom’s face, but he didn’t need to. He could have sketched it line for line. He held the kitchen door open, then helped support the boy as Tom scaled the oven that blocked the entrance to the undercroft. Before taking the service stairs, Tom turned back to him.
“Nate, I—”
“Christ, Tom, just go. Try to get back before the entire pier collapses.”
He listened to his friend descend the dark stairs.
Nate didn’t know what would be necessary to get the children off this pier alive, but he knew it would be unpleasant. The future branched in a hundred ways, and the doors at the end of those halls opened into pain. Tom already carried all the burdens he could bear. If he could, Nate wanted to spare him from whatever came next.
Young lives were in the balance, among them Lucy’s own brother and sister. Nate had to save them. No matter what it cost, he had to save them.
He slid out of his wingtips and padded once more across the kitchen to the swinging doors. His night vision had always been good. The nightclub was etched in gray scale pushed to the darkest edge of its spectrum, but not quite black.
Gradations of shadow and memory’s blueprints guided him to the spiral stairs draped in disintegrating velvet. As he ascended, he let his hand brush against the shreds of fabric. Decades ago, it’d been lush and deep and rich, but everything decays. Everything ends.
He reached the top of the staircase and walked across the balcony that overlooked the dance floor. The shapes of rotting banquettes and chaise lounges stood sentinel along the walls. A hallway beyond the balcony led to a series of rooms once used for a panoply of illegal activities. Chandelier light used to catch the silk of men’s tuxedos as they threw dice and laughed with one another. Upon these scarred floors, women in lace and feathers danced in clouds of cigar smoke. They were ghosts, but now something worse haunted these halls.