by Brian Lumley
What say you, Jake? said Korath. Are we finally agreed? Do we have a deal? And:
“What would it entail?” Jake wanted to know, the question slipping from his lips (or from his mind) almost of its own accord, as the peculiar lethargy continued to creep over him.
It must be, I think, a very simple matter, Korath answered, his voice the merest whisper now, a sibilant hiss, the brush of cobwebs against Jake’s sleeping being. A simple matter of will, you might say—of your own free will, that is. For I remember upon a time, my once-master Malinari told me, “The mind is like a manse with many rooms, where thoughts wander like ghosts. And I have the power to reach in and exorcise those ghosts, reading their lives and learning their secrets—and then driving them out!” Aye, that is what he said. And there’s a great deal of my once-master in me. I, too, might enter into one of those rooms, one of your rooms, that is, and listen with my ear to the door, until you have need of me …
Korath was very open now; he could afford to be, because he could sense that the hypnotic spell he was casting was working. And even if this initial experiment should fail, still its subject would remember little or nothing of what had gone on here from this time forward.
“What’s that you say?” said Jake, flopping uneasily in his bed, adrift on the mesmeric cadence of Korath’s voice and gradually falling more deeply asleep.
Isn’t there room enough for both of us, Jake, the vampire’s deadspeak voice went monotonously on, in the innocent, echoing, oh-so-spacious manse of your mind? Only say the word, Jake, bid me enter, and I shall be one with you. Ahhhhhh!
“The word?” Jake drifted between levels of sleep, one natural and the other hypnotic. But he felt lured toward the latter because it was so calm, restful, devoid of conflict. Once there he might stop worrying, reasoning, thinking, and let himself be guided by the deep, dark voice of the Other. It would be easier that way, yes …
Not so much a word as an invitation, Korath answered. Only open up your mind, Jake, and invite me in. Let down the shields which even now protect you—and from what? From me? Why, I am your one true friend in a world that fails to understand or appreciate you! What would you rather be: Ben Trask’s puppet, his tool as I was Malinari’s, or a Power in your own right? A Power in our right, Jake my friend?
“Open up … lower my shields … invite him in … my one true friend …”
And are we so very different, you and I? (Korath’s clotted gurgling, his insidious whispering continued.) I think not. For I have seen you perform deeds which the Wamphyri themselves, in all their cruelty, might not have dreamed. But you have dreamed them, and I Korath feel privileged to have witnessed them.
“The Wamphyri? … Cruelty? … Deeds?” Jake rolled in his bed, got tangled in his single blanket.
Your deeds, aye. The things you nightmare. Not so strange, really, that you should feel afraid in the night. Even the most monstrous of creatures nightmare! They dream of what frightened them before they were monsters! Perhaps of what made them monsters, eh? And the ones who made you a monster? … Ah, but what you have done to them! And I wonder, Jake: does this Castellano nightmare, too? And who do you suppose features in his dreams Little wonder he wants you dead.
“Castellano … dreams … nightmares.”
Only let me in, and we shall make his nightmares real, you and I. And who knows what else we shall make? Ahhhhhh!
Jake was struggling now, fighting as a drowning man fights the water, even knowing there’s no land in sight; but he struggled mainly with himself. Tossing and turning, sweating a cold, clammy sweat—with his single blanket wrapped about him like a damp, strangling shroud—he flailed his arms and didn’t feel a thing when his fist struck against the thin wall.
But on the other side of that wall, Liz Merrick came starting awake. Now what in—?
The wall at her ear bounced again, and Liz at once reached out with a clumsily groping probe.
It was Jake … fighting … but fighting what? Something was in there with him, something tangible yet intangible. Something in his room, or in his mind
… his dreams? Not yet fully awake herself, Liz couldn’t tell. But she sensed Jake’s dread, and his determination not to go under. More than that, she also sensed that the Thing he was fighting knew that she was there!
Surprised and angry, it recoiled from her telepathic probe, the probe that only Jake should be feeling, if he felt anything at all. There was no actual contact, no communication with this Thing, not for Liz; it was sensation pure and … not so simple. But without knowing how, Liz knew that the Thing she sensed was utterly inhuman.
It was slimy, sluglike, sentient. And it battened on Jake like a leech. Then it dawned on Liz that she wasn’t reading the Thing itself, but only what Jake was reading of it: his fear of it, and the fact that his shields were going down before it! It couldn’t be read, not by Liz, but only sensed—in the same way that it was sensing her—and then not by any of the five mundane senses, or even telepathy. But it was more than any nightmare, she was sure. Nightmares are personal things; they don’t recognize or react to outsiders, and they certainly don’t snarl at them but confine themselves to their victims!
There was a telephone in the corridor. Liz reached it in a tangle of bedsheets and a fever of trembling. The duty officer. She had to call the D.O.
But damn it to hell, she couldn’t remember the number! And just a few paces away Jake’s door, behind which something terrible was happening or about to happen. And Liz the only one who could stop it.
When she had called on Jake for his help in that hellhole at Xanadu, he had come to her without reckoning the danger. Yet here she stood like a ghost in her sheet, trembling for him but unable to do anything about it for fear that she would give herself and Ben Trask and E-Branch away. And no physical danger in it at all, not to Liz, not that she knew of. Only to Jake—or to his mind.
Well then, to hell with E-Branch!
She clutched at her sheet, stumbled to Jake’s door, began to hammer on it with her small fists—and only then thought to try the eye-level scanner. Her hidy-hole, before they walled it off, had been a rear annex to Jake’s room. If the scanners were still linked, his might identify and accept Liz’s corneal patterns in addition to Jake’s own.
Tilting her head, she stared up at the ID spot and forced herself to stand still. A small light glowed into life, scanned her eye and “recognized” her. And the door clicked open. Almost falling inside, she tripped on her sheet and went sprawling towards Jake’s bed.
And as the door closed behind her, Liz fell on him, grabbed his shoulders, shook him with all her strength.
“Jake!” she slapped his face. “Jake, wake up!”
His body and legs were wrapped tight in his blanket; only his arms and hands were free, and they at once grabbed hold of her as his terrified eyes blazed open. “Korath!” he said. “Korath!” In the gloom, Liz felt her hair grabbed in one hard hand as the other released her and balled itself into a fist.
She managed to get a hand up, groped above the bed’s headboard, found the overhead light cord. And giving it a yank, she flooded the bed with light. But only just in time.
The look on Jake’s face was vicious, a snarl, and the muscles of his arm were bunched, coiled-spring tight, on the point of driving his fist into her face. Even now she feared he might do it!
But no, he was awake.
“Liz?” Jake said, his voice a shudder at first, a breathless gasp, and then a sigh of relief. “Liz? But I thought that you were—?”
“No, it’s only me,” she said, and fell against his chest—and in the next moment realized that only his blanket separated their naked bodies.
“God!” He held her tightly for a second or so, then kicked his legs in an attempt to free himself from his blanket. “I was—I must have been—nightmaring?” And then he, too, realized that they were both naked. “But how—?”
“You … you called out to me,” she lied. “I had been working late and st
ayed over. My room is close by. You were calling out to me … and my telepathy … I heard you. I’m a receiver, Jake. And whether you’ll admit and accept it or not, we do seem to have this rapport. You woke me up.”
“Well, thank God for this rapport!” he gasped. And now she saw that he was shaking.
“What was it, Jake? What was it that scared you so?”
He shook his head, sending droplets of cold sweat flying. And blinking his eyes, he looked anxiously all about his small room. But of course there was nothing and no one there—only Liz. Then, getting a grip of himself, he said, “It was a dream, or a nightmare. Or something.”
She sat up, wrapped herself in her sheet again, told him, “You said a name. Korath. And that’s a name we’ve heard before, Jake. You asked me to write it down for you, so that you’d remember it. That was just before we started our simultaneous assaults on Xanadu and Jethro Manchester’s island. So now perhaps you’ll tell me: Who is he? Who is this Korath, Jake?”
But he was fully awake now and in control of himself.
“Forget it,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s—I don’t know—a recurrent thing, a nightmare, something I dream from time to time, that’s all. It’s not usually as bad as this, but tonight it was. It was getting kind of … well, kind of rough. So I’m really glad you came …” It was all lame stuff; he wasn’t nearly as good a liar as Liz, but it was the best he could do.
And suddenly she felt for him, really felt for him. Whatever it was about Jake Cutter, Liz knew that she was involved. Just a few weeks ago he’d come into her life and was now a big part of it. And she’d been telling herself to hold him at bay; but not really, for he hadn’t tried that hard, hadn’t tried at all; or maybe she’d simply been fooling herself that she wasn’t getting involved, and trying to fool him, too.
But damn it, she was involved! And suddenly she was saying it, admitting it in a way that must be unmistakable:
“Are you really glad I came, Jake? I mean, I don’t have to go, not if you want me to stay …”
“No, it’s okay,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll be trying to sleep anymore anyway, not tonight. Maybe I’ll read up a little more on the files that Trask has given me, and—” And then he paused, for like a fool he hadn’t seen her meaning, until now.
Then she was in his arms, feeling his body—and his longing—trembling against her. But only for a moment, before she felt the change in him, too, the need turning to fear. But fear of what? Of loving, and perhaps of losing again?
Instinctively, she tried to probe him, to look inside, but his shields were there as ever. And now he was holding her away from him, at arm’s length, while the look in his deep brown eyes expressed his torment, the fact that he was torn two ways.
“What is it, Jake?” she said.
His shields wavered a little and she saw …
… Longing, and denial of that longing. Need, and fear of that need. Not fear of Liz herself or of sex, nor even of failure. No, it was something else.
But when she went to probe deeper, Jake’s shields firmed up again and she was out. And.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he said.
“I couldn’t help it,” Liz answered. “Don’t you know that I … that I feel for you, Jake?” She got up and went to the door. “But is that what it is? My telepathy? Are you afraid that I’ll see too much? That I’ll see what you’re hiding?”
“No,” he said. “Yes.” And then, shaking his head, “I can’t say, can’t explain it. I mean, I’m not ready to explain it.”
“Well, when you are,” she said. “I’m not far away. And try not to nightmare, Jake. But if you do, well,” she shrugged helplessly. “Just remember: I’m not far away.”
When he nodded, she stepped back out into the corridor and let the door close quietly behind her …
When Liz had been gone awhile, Jake relaxed his shields completely and listened. He listened to the far, faint, barely discernible whispering of the dead in their graves, to the ebb and flow of the deadspeak aether, like the hush of wavelets on some ethereal shore, and to a distant humming and throbbing that was composed of the “real” sounds of the downstairs hotel, and outside the rumbling of the metropolis, and farther yet the wheels of the world turning.
Korath wasn’t there, but Jake was sure he would come if he called out to him. The trouble was that he might also come without being called. That was the trouble, yes.
For Jake wanted to be sure that if or when he made love to Liz Merrick, he would be the only one doing it …
6
OF THE DARK PLACES
The high mountain road was as still and quiet as the night air, with only the molten-silver, one-note call of Greek owls to disturb the gloom. To the south, out across the sea, a sprinkle of bobbing lights spoke of fishermen in their boats, intent on securing their catch of what few fish remained in the still beautiful but decimated Aegean, whose temperature was up three degrees on the norm for this time of year.
The moon rode low in the sky, casting the shadows of Mediterranean pines over the marble-chip gravel of an empty parking lot that fronted the arched entrance to a cliff-clinging monastery—the same monastery that, only a few hours earlier, Manolis Papastamos had passed in a hired Fiat on his way to disaster.
From the roadway (had anyone been standing there) the fortresslike building’s silhouette against the jewel-strewn indigo of the vaulted sky was not unlike that of some ancient Crusader castle, its bell towers rearing up like horns on the head of a creature risen from the deep. Nor would this picture have been so very far from the truth.
Along the approach road from both directions, and in the car park itself, prominently posted signs told of certain restrictions. Apparently the sweet Sisters of Mercy who inhabited the high stone sanctuary considered this a time of solitude and abstinence, and as an order they were repenting the sins of the world. Daytime parking was allowed in the parking lot—for the taking of panoramic photographs from dizzy vantage points—but not at night. The sounds of revving engines and slamming doors, even the murmur of voices, might distract the nuns at their devotions. Tours of the inner gardens, courtyard, outer balconies, and the order’s gift- and workshops, had been curtailed indefinitely, or “until such time as the world’s dark forces were in retreat.” Other, older notices, inviting visitors in—“ladies, wearing bead-scarves, skirts … limbs covered down to and including knees. Men: no shorts or lettered T-shirts, please!”—had been crossed through with thick black X’s, or pasted over with signs that read:
NO VISITORS—
NO TRADESMEN—
EXCEPT AS AUTHORIZED!
It made for a severely austere scene, where in certain of the tower windows even the interior lights seemed dim, burning with only a flickering candle’s strength. This, too, wasn’t so far from the truth; for the convent’s mother superior of three years disdained electricity and had banned its use—except in the telephone, of which she had charge, and several other vital areas, such as washing, cleaning, and cooking, lacking which the monastery couldn’t function.
Right now she was asleep. She had been out in the car earlier—on monastery “business”—and wished to recuperate. For being up and about in the hours of daylight, and even the evening hours, depleted her. “Daylight is a wickedness created for the seeing and saying and thinking of things that shouldn’t be seen, said, or thought. Likewise electrical communications that might be used to spread silly rumors abroad in the world, and artificial lighting systems other than good fat candles. What? Wax? Ah, well then, let it be wax. But fat has a certain agreeable pungency …”
Also, she had probably been weakened by her own passions. Before her drive, her voice had been heard raised in angry complaint against “father” Maralini, a guest from Rome (or so she said), who had been at the monastery for a week and a half now, despite a rule of long-standing that banned all men from residence here. But various sisters had seen this “reverend” figure, and knew that his nature was no
t unlike that of the Lady of the sanctuary (ahhh, no, no—be carefull—of their “mother superior”) herself …
Now, against all the rules that Vavara had introduced oh-so-gradually during the three years of her takeover, two of the sisters, stronger than the rest, were out in the cloisters that surrounded the courtyard, seated on a bench in the shade of the fig trees. The one was Sister Delia, from Southern Ireland, the other Sister Anna, from New York. And they were out there talking during what was or should have been their watch:
“We are doomed, of course,” said Delia, once a pretty redhead, now shorn of her hair and gaunt in a hooded cassock. Her Irish brogue was a thick, guttural whisper; her altered voice was hoarse or coarse, as were those of all the sisters. “If we tried to escape, went venturing out from here, we’d be doomed. Even if she didn’t find us, still we’d be without hope. Driven by … by our unnatural lusts and desires” (a small shudder) “and forced to take blood, the lives of others, we’d be hunted down and destroyed by men. Or sooner or later by the sun—”
“Or by the Son,” said Anna, who was once a dreamy one and something of a poet, and seemed bent on remembering and trying to retrieve that time. “The Son of Him on High. We served them both, and Mary, too, do you remember? And now we serve another, who serves the devil! The sun or the Son, or the ‘mother’. One of them will destroy us, for sure. Now say, Sister Delia: What does one call that? Poetic licence, or poetic justice?”
“One calls it no justice at all, at all,” said the other. “And you’d best forget all that. We’re bound for hell, you and I, and all the rest of us together. God has turned his back on us, which has come of us living unnatural lives, so it has. No, I’m not just talking about Vavara’s kind of unnatural. I mean, did you never fancy a man? Maybe the lad who brings the honey? Oh, I’ve seen you look at him from time to time. I’ve seen you smile at him, too. Or I used to, when you dared to smile! That was natural. Natural to love and lust, and to have a man lying on our bellies now and then, or even to imagine one there. But the way we were, never! All covered up and cowed and afraid of our own bodies? And certainly not the way we are now, which is utterly beyond nature.”
