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“You’re easier on him than you ought to be. ” Houjin handed Zeke a lantern and took one for himself. He fished a box of matches out of his pocket and tried to strike one. “Yaozu isn’t so generous. ”
“You act like this fellow is some kind of bogeyman. ”
Houjin stopped fiddling with the match and squinted through his visor. “What’s a bogeyman?”
Zeke said, “A monster, sort of. Something that comes for you at night after you go to bed. ”
Houjin gave this some consideration, and told him, “Maybe that was it—the monster that chased you into the chuckhole. Maybe it was a bogeyman. ”
“It wasn’t a bogeyman,” Rector mumbled unhappily, now wishing he hadn’t said anything at all about the thing he’d run from, or mentioned the bogeyman, either, since Houjin was obviously testing out this new English word and having fun with it. “There ain’t no such thing. ”
“Something chased you into the chuckhole? Was it a rotter?”
“No. ”
And in this way, Rector found himself telling the story to Zeke, just like he’d already told it to Houjin and to Angeline. He relayed it haltingly, stopping often to catch his breath as they went deeper into the building’s interior; and he continued telling it as they took a ladder up one last story to the roof (it was a ladder, not stairs, as Huey was fast to point out). He was finished with the highlights by the time they stood on the roof, testing out the long, narrow bridge that spanned the distance to the third floor of a hotel across the alley below.
Zeke put a foot on the bridge and shoved. It creaked, but didn’t sag.
“Are you sure it’ll hold us?”
“Pretty sure,” Houjin confirmed. “It held Mr. Swakhammer the other day, and he weighs as much as all three of us together. ”
“Maybe he weakened it up for us. ”
“Maybe you’re a chicken,” Houjin offered.
“Calling other fellows chicken is a good way to get your nose socked in. ”
Houjin didn’t look too worried. He said, “I’ll remember that. And you remember that all these things—the lanterns, the bridges, and the stairs—are here for a reason. You can use them, or you can die within a day or two. ”
“What happened to that cheerful son of a bitch who woke me up?” Rector said, rhetorically.
“Guys, knock it off,” Zeke pleaded. “Rector, tell me more about the monster you saw at the chuckhole. ”
“I already told you the whole story. This guy,” he said, cocking a thumb at Houjin, “has heard it three times now, and I bet he’s sick of it. ”
Houjin nudged the bridge with his toes. Unless Rector’s eyes deceived him, it was made of more doors fitted together end to end, buttressed with planks. “At least it’s interesting. The monster, I mean. More interesting than listening to you complain. ”
“You believe him?” Zeke asked.
“I saw it, too. And Miss Angeline believed him, I think. ”
Zeke seemed surprised. “Really?”
Houjin nodded. “She knows a lot about what happens outside the walls. Maybe something lives out there, something we never saw inside here. ”
“Like what?” Zeke asked.
“Like … an animal?”
Rector disagreed. “Never saw an animal like that before. Just like I still ain’t seen no rotters. ”
Both Houjin and Zeke went to the roof’s edge, where there was nothing but a low wall between them and the streets below. They leaned out over the abyss, squinting as far as they could through the thickened air.
Rector joined them, albeit a bit more carefully.
Zeke said, “It’s weird, ain’t it? Up here, we don’t need to worry about getting their attention. They can’t touch us. Or they couldn’t, if they were hanging around. These blocks should be … there should be dozens … hundreds of the things by now. We haven’t been real quiet. ” He sounded almost disappointed, like he’d wanted to show Rector this bizarre, interesting thing about his new hometown, but he’d been thwarted.
