The House That Jack Built Read Free

Broadway. The street was blocked with automobiles, with their windows tightly closed. He splashed across to the nearest taxi and rapped on the driver's window, but the driver emphatically shook his head. He stepped through a deep puddle to the car behind, a blue Buick with a balding shirt-sleeved businessman behind the wheel, and tapped on his window, too, but the businessman locked all his doors and wouldn't even turn to him.
        He knocked on the Buick's window a second time. 'There's a girl being raped in there! Can you hear me? A girl being raped in there! Call the cops, will you, that's all you have to do!'
        The businessman gave a barely-perceptible shake of his head, and edged his car along further.
        Craig stood up straight, dripping and desperate. The girl took hold of his arm again, and screamed, 'Please!' at him. 'Please!'
        'Listen,' he shouted, over the noise of the traffic and the rain, 'is either of them armed? Do they have guns or a knife or anything like that?'
        The girl shook her head. Her face was a sliding mask of glutinous, rain-diluted blood. 'There's just two of them. Please.'
        Craig thought: what the hell, I'm already late, I'm already soaked. I can handle two of them, for Christ's sake. How fit are they going to be? I doubt if they jog six miles every morning, and work out three times a week at the Bar Association Athletics Club. And right now, I'm sufficiently pissed off to handle anybody.
        He went back to the half-open doorway. He could smell damp, and mould, and urine. He pushed the door wider, and stared into the blackness.
        'Who's there?' he called out. 'If you can hear me, you'd better get the hell out of there, and fast!'
        There was no reply. Only the sound of rain trickling down the walls. Craig's eyes were gradually growing accustomed to the darkness, and he could just distinguish a row of free-standing shelves.
        'What's your friend's name?' he asked the girl.
        'Susan,' the girl replied, blinking at him, almost as if she didn't expect him to believe her.
        'All right, then.' He reached into his pocket and produced a dime. 'You go call for the cops and an ambulance. I'll find your friend for you.'
        The girl started to limp towards Eighth Avenue, wiping her face with a handkerchief. Craig stood and watched her for a moment, but he didn't watch her long enough to see her turn her head and smile.
        He stepped into the darkened drugstore, his shoes crunching on ground glass and grit. 'Susan?' he called. 'Susan- if you can hear me, Susan, all you have to do is call out, or make a noise. Kick your heels on the floor, whatever.'
        He reached the row of shelves and stopped and listened. At first he couldn't hear anything, but then he picked up the faintest tapping. Trrapp, trrapp, trrapp , like somebody running their heels from side to side across a bare-boarded floor. His suit dripped onto the floor, a soft, uneven plip… plop… plip . He began to think there was nobody here; that the girl with the blood-covered face had been playing a malicious prank. You never knew in New York City, there were so many wackos roaming the streets.
        'Susan?' he called.
        Nearly a whole minute went by, and still no reply. Craig was ready to turn and leave when he heard a muffled mewling sound. It sounded like a cat, but not exactly like a cat. More like a girl with a gag around her mouth.
        He blundered into the darkness at the back of the store. 'Susan? Is that you? If you can hear me, kick your heels on the floor! Go ahead, kick!'
        He took another step forward and his right foot became entangled with a heap of wire shelves and display-racks. He shook them free, but then he trod on several sheets of glass, and they split underneath his shoes with a sharp, crackling noise.
        That was why he didn't hear them when they rushed right up to him and hit him in the