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Staten Island: Nighthawk’s Nest
Nighthawk’s hideaway was on a quiet little Staten Island street that could have been in just about any American small town. Cameo parked the car in the detached garage. Nighthawk unlocked the front door and then opened windows to clear out the stale air. He was the only one who had access to the house and it had been some time since he’d been there. Now that someone else knew about it, he’d sell it at his first opportunity. It was too bad, because he liked the place. It was nice and small, private and quiet, yet close to Manhattan. But that was all right. Plenty of houses fit the same bill.
He came back to the living room. Cameo was stretched out on the comfortable old sofa, eyes closed as if asleep. But as soon as he entered the room her eyes flew open, and there was something in them that told him that the old Cameo, the first Cameo he’d met, was looking out at him.
“Back are we?” he asked pleasantly.
Cameo just nodded.
“Would you like some tea, missy?”
“That would be nice.”
“Have to use lemon and sugar.”
“That’s all right.”
He got a couple of mugs out of the kitchen cabinet as he brewed the tea. It was organic Earl Gray, one of his favorites. His real favorite was Gunpowder, but that was best served with cream, and Nighthawk couldn’t keep perishables in his boltholes. They could have stopped for supplies, but somehow that wasn’t the first consideration on his mind when they were running for cover. Too bad. Donuts would have been nice, too.
He brought a tray with mugs, teapot, sugar, and lemon juice into his small living room. The furniture was cheap, but comfy. There were few personal touches about the room, or the whole house for that matter, but Nighthawk didn’t really accumulate material possessions. He knew too well what happened to them over time. For one reason or another, few seemed to last for very long.
“Here you go.”
He set the tray on the coffee table and took the comfy chair set at right angles to the sofa that Cameo had collapsed on. She looked awful. Beyond tired. Beyond frightened. He watched her as she poured a cup, added lots of sugar but no lemon. Her hands shook as they conveyed the cup to her lips. She took a little sip.
“I’m sorry about St. Dympna’s. But things have a way of working out for the best. I think we’re safe here, for now. I don’t think there’s a chance in Hell that the Cardinal will be able to find us here.”
Cameo shook her head, as if trying to clear it. “We’re safe? For now?”
Nighthawk nodded, sipping at his own cup. It was time, he thought to get down to what he really wanted from her.
“How old do you think I am, missy?”
“Umm.” Cameo hesitated, as if not really caring. “Maybe... sixty?”
Nighthawk chuckled to himself, shaking his head. “Nope. Not even close.” He looked at her, his dark eyes haunted by years gone by and the deeds done in them. “Next year I’ll be a hundred and fifty one. If me and world makes it to next year.”
“A hundred...” That caught her attention. She stared at him, her voice trailing off in astonishment.
“Why not?” Nighthawk asked. “The world has changed considerably since the wild card virus came down on Manhattan in 1946. People fly without machines. They leap tall buildings in a single bound. Why, some even can channel spirits through objects they’d used in their lifetimes. Is it so impossible to believe a man could live a hundred and fifty years?”
“How do you do it?” she asked.
“I’ve never told my story to a living soul,” Nighthawk said. He sipped tea thoughtfully. “Perhaps it’s time I did. I was born in Mississippi in 1852, on a plantation. My people were slaves, and so was I. Pa was a field hand. Ma worked in the big house. I was a field hand like Pa. Then came the Civil War. Pa lived through that, but Ma wasn’t so lucky. She died in the Yankee raid when they burned the big house. After the war, Pa stayed on as a sharecropper. It was the only life he knew, but I knew I had to leave. Slave or sharecropper, it was no life for me. I went north in ‘68. Never saw my Pa again. Never knew what happened to him.” Nighthawk paused as if reliving the years and the events that were marked so deeply in his memory. “No sense in telling you about the next seventy-five years or so. I lived. Sometimes good, sometimes hard. I never had formal schooling, but I taught myself a lot of what I needed to know, or joined up with others who could teach me. Only problem was, I got old.
“I come from good stock. My Pa was a strong man, as was his before him, and his before him. So was my Ma’s family. I made it to 1946, but barely.” He looked Cameo in the eye. “You know what happened then.”
She nodded.
“I was dying in a charity hospital full of sad old cases like me. Full of old men and women worn down by age, young men and women, worn down by drink. By injury. By disease. Just by life. When the virus came it was like nothing you could imagine. Like Hell, I guess. We must have been hit by a good dose of it ‘cause most everyone on the ward caught it all at the same time. The docs just ran away. Those that could, that is. They left us all to die, and most of us did. I saw people just melt away to puddles. Saw them turn hard like rocks, screaming for breath. Saw them turn all funny like they was inside out, and flop and twist before they huddled down on their dirty sheets to die. A couple just walked away changed some, but still living. One just rose out of his bed and flew out through a window. Never saw him again.”
Nighthawk fell silent. He couldn’t help the sudden tears that traced twisting paths down his cheeks, but neither was he ashamed of them. He wiped them away with his thumbs.
“What about you?” Cameo asked quietly.
“Me?”
“Yes. What happened to you?”
Nighthawk sighed. “I was a dying old man. I was frightened. I didn’t want to die. I felt sure that I would go to Hell for some of the things I’d done over the years. I surely didn’t want to turn into a pile of goo, or grow extra legs, or turn inside out. I just kind of reached out, crying for help. I needed strength to live. I took it from the man in the bed next to me. Old Robert Nash.”
“Took it?”
“Drained it right away from him. Took it right out of his body and old Robert died looking at me, knowing what I did. I felt bad because we were friends. We talked all the time. He played music on his mouth harp. He was a blues man, nicknamed Lightning. When I knew I killed him I was even more scared. I reached out and took more from others. I felt stronger. More powerful. In the end, I didn’t even know what I was doing. How many I killed. I just know that I walked out of that hospital when I’d been days, maybe hours from death. Walked away with a spring in my step, black hair on my head, and juice in my lemon, if you know what I mean. It was like I was fifty years younger.”
“You turned over an ace,” Cameo said. “You tapped into their life force. Somehow converted it for your own use.”
“Which I’ve been doing ever since,” Nighthawk admitted. “But usually carefully, taking the energy mostly from those about to die a violent death, drawn to them by my other power—visions, unclear and uncertain, of the future.”
Cameo pursed her lips. “Awesome,” she said.
Nighthawk nodded. “Yes. So you see. I have to find the answer to my question. You can tell me.”
“Your question?”
His eyes were pleading, even tortured. “Have I been stealing their souls? Have I been using them up, condemning them to limbo, or worse?”
They looked at each other in silence for a long moment before Cameo spoke. “How can I know that?” she asked quietly.
Nighthawk reached into his jacket pocket and held up an old mouth organ. “I took it from Robert’s bedside before I left the hospital,” he said. “I’ve carried it with me for almost fifty-seven years.”
Cameo stared into space, fingering the jewelry around her neck, and her eyes changed again. As did her voice when she spoke. “What’s in it for me?” she asked.
Nighthawk smiled. “Fair enough,” he said. He got out of his comfy chair, and moved it aside as Cameo looked on curiously. There were seams in the carpet under the chair. Nighthawk removed a square of pile, and flipped up the trap door that was revealed underneath. He took a metal box from the small cavity under the flooring. From the metal box he took half a dozen bundles of hundred dollar bills and put them on the coffee table. They were thick bundles. “How about,” Nighthawk asked, “sixty thousand dollars?”
Cameo laughed out loud, uproariously. “Don’t you trust banks?” she asked.
“They keep inconvenient hours, “ Nighthawk said.
Cameo grew quiet. She looked serious. “I think I should get out of town for awhile.”
“That’d be real smart,” Nighthawk said, but he said it flatly, without emotion or hope.
“For that,” she said thoughtfully, “I’ll need money.”
Nighthawk’s face suddenly shone. “We best be careful,” he said. “If Contarini catches us we’d both be consigned to the pits of St. Dympna.”
“I’ll leave it up to you,” Cameo said, “to keep us out of there.”
Nighthawk nodded. He gave the old mouth organ a last loving glance and put it away in his jacket pocket. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in a hundred and fifty years, it’s caution.”
Cameo laughed again. “I see. That’s why you cross men like Contarini. Don’t they ever go after you?”
Nighthawk smiled. “Not more’n once,” he said.