by Robert Bloch
Three days later, Carlos shuffled from the hold. Unshaven, fetid, and feverish, he squinted through sickening shimmering vision toward the northern neutral port that was checkpoint three.
But again His Excellency wasn’t waiting. Another sweating messenger rushed on board. “It’s worse than we feared. The rebels are determined to hunt our leader to the ends of the earth. He has to keep running. These are your new instructions.”
Shuddering, Carlos studied them. “To Europe?”
“Marseilles. That’s the only chance to complete the mission.”
“Yes.” Carlos wavered. “To deliver the crate.”
“I know nothing about your purpose. All I know is, it’s imperative. His Excellency said to remind you.”
“Yes, that I swore. . .”
“On your life.”
Carlos trembled. “My promise was solemn. Not just my life. My soul.”
In the hold, enduring turbulence, nausea, and delirium, Carlos gave in to compulsion. During the seemingly endless route across the Atlantic, the crate and its contents beckoned. The coffin—his only companion—obsessed and drew him. As his lantern hissed and his wounded arm throbbed, he paced before his obligation. The crate. The coffin. The corpse.
But whose?
His deprivation destroyed his resolve. Again he grabbed the crowbar, again pried up the wooden lid. He had to know. Leaning down, trembling, he fingered the catches on the coffin’s seam, released them, and pushed upward, gradually revealing. . .
The secret.
This time he gasped not from surprise but reverence. His knees wavered. He almost knelt.
Before Her Majesty.
The patroness of her people. The blessed mother of her country. How many days—and far into how many nights—had she made herself available to her loved ones, allowing endless streams of petitioners to come to her, dispensing food, comfort, and hope? How many times had she interceded with His Excellency for the poor and homeless, the disadvantaged she described as her shirtless ones? The Church had called her a saint. The people had called her a God-send.
Her works of mercy had been equaled only by her beauty. Tall, trim, and statuesque, with graceful contours and stunning features, she embodied perfection. Her blond hair—rare among her people—emphasized her uniqueness, her locks so white, so radiant they seemed a halo.
The cancer that destroyed her uterus had been both a real and symbolic abomination. How could someone so giving, so emotionally fertile, have been brought down by rampant corruption at the source of her female essence? God had turned His back on His special creation. The world would not see her likes again.
The people mourned, the Great Man more so. He grieved so hard that he felt compelled to preserve her memory in the flesh, to capture her beauty for as long as science could make possible. No one knew for sure the process involved. Rumor had it that he’d sent for the world’s greatest embalmer, the mortician who’d been entrusted with the corpse of the secular god of the Soviets, the leader of their revolution, Lenin himself. It was said that, offering a fortune, the Great Man had instructed the embalmer to use all his skills to preserve Her Majesty forever as she had been in life. Her blood had been replaced with alcohol. Glycerine, at one hundred and forty degrees Fahrenheit, had been pumped through her tissues. Her corpse had been immersed in secret chemicals. Even more secret techniques had preserved her organs. Though her skin had tightened somewhat, it glistened with a radiance greater than she’d had in life. Her blond hair and red lips were resplendent.
Carlos froze with awe. The rumors were true. Her Majesty had been made eternal. He cringed with expectation that she’d open her eyes and speak.
In turmoil, he remembered the rest of the tragedy. Her Majesty’s death had begun the Great Man’s downfall. He’d tried to maintain his power without her, but the people—always demanding, always ungrateful—had turned against him. It didn’t matter that His Excellency had legislated impending social reforms while his wife had soothed social woes merely from day to day. From the people’s point of view, the good of now was greater than that of soon. When a charismatic rabble-rouser had promised immediate paradise, a new revolution toppled the Great Man’s government.
Now Carlos understood why the rebels were so determined to destroy the crate. To eradicate all vestiges of the Great Man’s rule, they had to destroy not only His Excellency but the immortalized remains of the Great Man’s love and source of his power, the goddess of her country.
Burdened with greater responsibility, Carlos bowed his head in worship. An hour having seemed like a minute, he lowered the coffin’s lid and resecured the top of the crate. He trembled with reverence. During the turbulent voyage across the Atlantic, he twice gave in to temptation, raised the lids from the crate and the coffin, and studied the treasure entrusted to him. The miracle continued. Her Majesty remained as lifelike as ever.
Soon the Great Man will have you back, Carlos thought, smiling.
But His Excellency wasn’t waiting when the freighter docked at Marseilles. Yet another frantic messenger hurried on board, reporting that the Great Man was still being chased, delivering new instructions. He frowned at Carlos’s beard-stubbled cheeks, flushed skin, and hollow eyes. “But are you well enough to—? Perhaps someone else should—”
“I vowed to His Excellency! He depends on me! My honor’s at stake! I must complete the mission!”
When Maria objected privately that he wasn’t well, he told her, “Leave me alone! You don’t understand what’s involved!”
Distraught, he arranged for the crate to be unloaded from the freighter and placed in a truck. Under guard, it was driven to a secret airstrip, from where the crate was flown to Italy and placed on a waiting train that would take it to Rome. Three times, rebel teams attempted to intercept it, but Carlos took every precaution. The teams were destroyed—though so were several of Carlos’s men.
He paced in front of the crate in an otherwise empty boxcar. How had the rebels anticipated the itinerary? As the train chugged into Rome, he was forced to conclude that there must be a spy. One of His Excellency’s advisers was passing information to the rebels. The itinerary had to be modified.
On schedule, the crate was rushed to a warehouse. But twelve hours later, Carlos had it unexpectedly moved to the basement of a church and two days later to a storage room in a mortuary. After an uneventful week, only then was it taken to its intended destination, an abandoned villa outside Rome. Carlos hoped that his variation of the schedule had confused the rebels into thinking that the entire itinerary had been altered. Further variations tempted him, but he had to insure that His Excellency could get in touch with him and, most important, rejoin Her Majesty.
The villa was in disrepair, decrepit, depressing, gloomy. The windows had holes. The lights didn’t work. Cobwebs floated from the great hall’s ceiling. In the middle of the immense dusty marble floor, the crate lay surrounded by candles, so Carlos could see to aim if any of the ruin’s numerous rats dared to approach the crate and its sacred contents. His men patrolled the grounds, guarding the mansion’s entrances, while Maria had orders to remain in an upper-floor bedroom.
Periodically Carlos opened the crate and the coffin to remind herself of the reason for his sacrifice, of his heed for constant vigilance. His vision of the blessed mystery became increasingly profound. Her Majesty seemed ever more lifelike, beatific, radiant. The illusion was overwhelming—she wasn’t dead but merely sleeping.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d bathed. His hair and beard were shaggy, his garments wrinkled, mired. As he slumped in a musty chair, unable to fight exhaustion, his chin on his chest, his gunhand drooping, he vaguely recalled a time when his dreams had been restful. But now he had only nightmares, assaulted by shades of ghouls.
A scrape of metal jerked him awake. A footstep on dust made him spin. His skill defeated his sleep-clouded eyes. He shot repeatedly, roared in triumph, and rushed toward the enemy who’d brazenly violated Her Majesty’s
sanctum. Preparing to deliver a just-to-be-certain shot to the head, he gaped down at Maria unmoving in a pool of blood, every bullet having pierced her pregnancy.
He shrieked till his throat seized shut.
She was buried behind the villa in one of its numerous, disgraceful, untended gardens. He couldn’t risk sending for a priest, who in spite of a bribe would no doubt inform the authorities about the killing. What was more, to leave the villa to take his wife to a church, then a graveyard, was totally out of the question. At all extremes, his duty remained. Her Majesty had to be guarded. Weeping, he patted his shovel on the dirt that covered Maria’s corpse. He knelt and planted a single flower, a yellow rose, her favorite.
His grief was tinged with anger. “You were told to stay in the upstairs bedroom! You had your orders just as I have mine. Why didn’t you listen? How many times did I tell you? Of all the virtues, obedience is the greatest!”
Unable to control his shudders, he returned to the villa’s great hall, relieved the guards who’d taken his place, and commanded them to remain outside. He locked the great hall’s door and wearily approached the crate to open the coffin, wavering before Her Majesty. Her blond hair glowed. Her red lips glistened. Her sensuous cheeks were translucent.
“Now you understand how solemnly I swore. On my honor, my life, my soul. I sacrificed my wife for you. My unborn child. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. Sleep in peace. Never fear. No matter the cost, I’ll always protect you.”
A tear dropped onto her forehead. Her eyelids seemed to flicker. He gasped. But he was only imagining, he told himself. The movement had simply been the shimmer of light through his tear-misted eyes.
He wiped the tear from her forehead. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty.” He tried to resist but couldn’t, gave in to the impulse and kissed her brow where the tear had fallen.
A messenger at last arrived. After nights of sleeping in turmoil beside the crate, Carlos sighed, anticipating that the Great Man had escaped and intended to reclaim his treasure. At the same time, he surprised himself by feeling regret that his mission had come to an end. He quickly learned that it hadn’t. With an odd relief, he learned that the rebels were adamant, the Great Man was still being chased. He studied his new instructions. To take the crate to Madrid.
“His Excellency,” the messenger said, “is obliged to you for your loyalty. He told me to tell you he won’t forget.”
Carlos fought to still his trembling hands, tugged at his unkempt beard, and brushed back his shaggy hair. “It’s my privilege to be the Great Man’s servant. No sacrifice is too burdensome.”
“You’re an inspiration.” The messenger frowned at the wild look in Carlos’s eyes. “His Excellency heard about the unfortunate loss of your wife. He sends his deep condolences.”
Carlos gestured, in grief as well as devotion.
But devotion to whom? he wondered. The Great Man or Her Majesty? “As I said, any sacrifice.”
In Madrid, he noticed Her Majesty’s lips move and knew he had to feed her.
Three months later, having been ordered to move the crate to Lisbon, he knew that Her Majesty would be cold en route and covered her with a blanket.
Six months later, having relocated in Brussels, he ordered his men to bring him an electric drill.
And finally the message he’d dreaded arrived. Escape accomplished. Sanctuary achieved. Faithful friend, your obligation is about to end. Directions enclosed. With heartfelt thanks and my immense anticipation, I ask you to return what is mine.
Yours?
Carlos turned to Her Highness and sobbed.
The motorcade fishtailed up the snowy road that approached the château outside Geneva. The Great Man waited anxiously, breathing frost as he paced the porch. Pressing his chilled hands under the crate, he helped his servants lug it through the opened double door. Impatient, he ordered it placed in the steeple-roofed living room and escorted everyone out, except for the genius mortician who for a fortune had used his secret skills to attempt to preserve the Great Man’s love and who now had been summoned to validate the guaranteed results of his promise.
Each breathed quickly, hefting crowbars to raise the crate’s lid but finding that the lid was not secure. Distressed, they fumbled to open the coffin but discovered that it wasn’t locked.
Her Majesty looked exactly incredibly lifelike as the genius had guaranteed.
Although a hole had been drilled in the lid of her coffin. (For air? As if someone had believed she was truly alive?)
With a matching hole in her skull, the drill having gone too deep.
And rotten food bulged from her mouth.
And brains and blood covered her face.
And her dress was raised, Carlos lying obscenely on top of her, a wound in his eye and the back of his skull, a pistol in his hand, a beatific expression on his face.
No Love Lost
T. N. Williamson
After Dad became too ill to handle Joshua Addams at home, it seemed perfectly natural for Josh’s younger brother, Craig, to make arrangements for Josh’s continuing care. There was no consideration given to the possibility of the forty-two-year-old mental patient going to live with Craig Addams and there were sound reasons for that.
First, Joshua was a paranoid schizophrenic, and his steadily deteriorating psychosis included hebephrenic symptoms of worsening hallucination. Second, Craig simply had no room for his brother—nor time, if it came down to that. A thirty-nine-year-old bachelor engaged in a fruitful law practice now approaching its next well-planned peak, Craig was buying a small but tasteful condo and lived alone. As Creggie saw it—that was what Josh called him from the start and it was the name Mom and Dad instantly began to use too—their parents had wanted to make room and time for Joshua.
Dad understood.
Even Josh did. Both Dad and Craig believed that, when they were through explaining why a nice, long drive in the country with Creggie was a fine idea. That it was also a fine idea for Joshua to stay at the nice place Creggie had found for him, at least until Daddy got better. That Josh would like it a lot because he was going where Doctor Ben used to say he should go, until Mom got real sick. He remembered that, didn’t he, Joshie did remember Mom, and Doctor Ben? It was back when poor Mommy was dying and begged for both her boys, Joshie and Creggie, to live with Daddy and her, until. . .
Josh, Craig felt certain, had understood. Well enough, anyway. As well as ol’ Josh ever grasped any facts that weren’t involved with his toys, his red rubber balls.
Creggie had also given no consideration to his older brother moving in with him because he had picked out this private institution they were headed for three years ago, shortly after Mom died. When Craig caught the unmistakable glint in Dad’s eye of a man who was consciously opting out of life. Who’d depart it as soon as he learned how to reverse the will to live and then began shutting down his vital organs. As soon as he could coax cancer to gobble those organs up, one after another.
Which was exactly what Dad had done and was doing, merely at a more accelerated pace than anybody had expected. And, however hard it was for Craig to comprehend that, his dad’s love for his wife—Craig’s and Josh’s mother—was literally motivating him to die. Which made Dad, in his second son’s private view, an intriguing intellectual exercise. Craig’s hobby for years had been psychology, at least since he’d become old enough to perceive how different his big brother was from him.
Thankfully—because of his own customary foresight—Craig had pulled some political strings and called in a few old fraternity favors. No member of his family would be living out his days in any state-run asylums! Instead, he was driving his tall, much bulkier brother to a privately operated institution where the majority of patients were afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease, presenile psychosis, or were just too aged and infirm to get around without assistance. The price Craig was obliged to pay was dear, but Joshie would be tucked safely away in a discreet, unused wing of Colindale.
Wh
ere he’d kill nobody. Not anyone important or conspicuous, at any rate.
There was one other primary reason why Craig had closed his condo to Josh, and it was prudent. There was no way he intended to let himself be strangled or stabbed to death by a psycho whose inner demons might suddenly see Craig as the Enemy. It seemed obvious to Craig that Josh was getting nearer the edge, the springboard, with every week. It might have been all right for their parents to keep him at home despite Dr. Ben Larkin’s rueful advice, especially when Joshie’s condition hadn’t worsened noticeably and when Dad was still watchful and strong enough to cope. Or when Mom was alive, and there were two people who truly did not want Josh climbing out on that mental springboard.
But if either of the two Addams brothers was destined to jump deeper into any shining seas of life and celebrity, it was not going to be the human anchor who had been hung around Craig’s neck since before kindergarten!
There were limits. Virtually any price was worth it to avoid incidents that put blemishes on the Craig Addams’s career—and dying was definitely one of them!
Besides, there was nothing wrong with how Colindale looked, its reputation, or its location. Deceptive of size, lacking any hint of spiraling staircases leading to Inquisitional attics or cells studded with glittering manacles, the institution was a well-kept one-story structure located in a once-fashionable suburb of the city. It was still a middle-class neighborhood in excellent repair. Though Josh would not be among them, elderly residents whose attention spans and vision were up to it could squint through neatly draped windows at children on the sidewalks, headed to or from grade school. And even in the new wing where Craig intended to deposit his brother, prying visitors would never discover any surgical theaters where lobotomies were performed or electroconvulsive therapy—shock treatment—was covertly performed during the dead of night. Colindale was respectable. It would tarnish no one’s reputation.
