The Seventh Candidate by Howard Waldman
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12
She ran out onto the platform but didn’t look where he was pointing across the rails. She didn’t look at Theo. He realized what he must look like from the expression on her face and became aware of his torn and dirtied suit, the scuffed black shoes gray with dust, the filth and blood on his hands from crawling in the tunnel that led to the padlocked iron door. “What happened to you?” her lips questioned without sound. “I’ve found him,” he said, still pointing. Theo hadn’t left the platform. He hadn’t come close to finishing the posters there. Since the phone call, twenty minutes ago, he’d done no more than five of them. Each one had taken longer to do. His performance had steadily worsened. His last corrections now looked like clumsy graffiti themselves.
The two young adolescents, maybe thirteen and clearly SubCons or Berbs, had noticed Theo and had strolled over to examine his corrections. They laughed. The smaller and darker of the two had very white even teeth. They imitated the languorous postures of the models. They laughed. Then they made squalling sounds before the baby and the diapers. They laughed harder. The alarming blotches meant to be squares or rectangles offered them a surface. They took out felt-pens and started scrawling on them, purple and black, probably restoring in aggravated form what was below the Basic White. The posters were too far off to tell. They did poster after poster, drawing closer to Theo. He had stopped trying to efface the graffiti on Helena’s dress and was staring at them and at what they’d done to his posters. Gobs of white from the number three brush fell on his sweatshirt and bare forearms. He climbed down the ladder stiffly.
“Go away!” she cried to them. “Keep away from him!” Her voice was covered by a train pulling in at the other platform. It masked what was going on. When it pulled out the adolescents were much closer to Theo. He was moving toward them. “Go away!” she cried again and once again a train came, this time on their side, another express slowing down because of the curve. They heard nothing but the roar of the train going by for a few seconds, then long screams and then the train was gone. It was like a horizontal curtain being pulled back.
One of the children was sprawled on the ground. His head was at an impossible angle. Theo had the other child by the neck and was banging his head against the tiled wall at the foot of the poster. The methodical impact wasn’t covered by his assistant’s screams. There was blood on the tiles and, astonishingly high, on the posters.
Unable to bring it out in words or to act (the skull on the sign spoke of imprisonment and fine and of 5,000 volts) Edmond Lorz stood stock still. He tried to summon up words to communicate across the third rails again, as his assistant let herself down onto the ballast and started across. What he wanted to say was that it was all colored dots, no more than that. He tried to utter the command to stop the logical consequence of that error, what he was doing to the boy’s head against the tiles below the poster where, maculated by his blood, she sat high in the swing smiling up at the blue sky, but the impacts went on. They went on and on and the words couldn’t come. He raced for the stairs.
His assistant leaped over the first third rail. A train roared out of that other tunnel. The boy’s head was being worked methodically. The blood on the tiles had dripped onto the ground. She crossed the second third rail as the train started braking and emitted a warning blare. She lifted herself up to the platform just in time as the second express powered past, slowing down in a squealing of brakes and furious showers of sparks.
The director stumbled up the flight of stairs and suddenly recalled that for days now he’d been frequenting the third rail and could have crossed over as she had done. He ran on and then down the stairs to the other platform.
His assistant was behind Theo, her arms about his neck, as in a kind of embrace, her hair wild, trying to pry him away from the boy’s throat. She was biting his shoulder. The director saw Theo release the boy who slumped to the ground. Theo turned round and grabbed her by the throat with one hand. His fist smashed her face. He lifted her up by the waist and hurled her against the wall. She slumped to the ground her mouth and one eye open. He returned to the boy, clearly dead, replaced his hands about his throat, lifted him to operating posture and went on with the methodical impacts.
The express train had finished braking. Half of the carriages were in the tunnel. It started backing up. The doors would open any second.
“Theo!” he cried. “Theo!”
On her back, paralyzed with pain, she could see as in a mist the train doors opening, people emerging at the far end of the platform, running toward them. There were cries. She could see in a thickening mist how Teddy stopped suddenly. Still holding the child by the throat he moved toward the director, the boy’s sneakered heels dragging in the puddles of blood. It was like an offering. “No,” said the director and shrank back. Released, the boy pitched forward and sprawled on the pavement.
Something was broken inside. She choked on blood that came up from deep within. Teddy was approaching her. His forearms and hands were patterned with red and white.
“Edmond, help me. Help me, Edmond,” she tried to cry.
Teddy broke into a trot. He loped past her and reached the mouth of the tunnel. He leaped down onto the tracks. She saw the director like a sleepwalker going past her, past the corrected posters with the dead children’s graffiti of lollipop trees, stick-men, suns. Now he broke into a run. He was waving something.
“Theo, your pills, your pills!” she heard him crying and saw him clumsily letting himself down on the tracks and running toward the mouth of the tunnel where the other had gone into the darkness. He vanished in turn there.
More blood came up. She too went into darkness.
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