And his beloved Issa.
Randolph walked towards them along the cemetery pathway, ignoring the advancing shadows of the leyaks, and the tears were running down his cheeks. He felt devastated; uplifted but also terrified; his mind bursting with the extraordinary powers of the human spirit. Because he found that he couldn’t call out, he raised his arms, and as he did so, Marmie and the children caught sight of him and their faces lit with sudden joy. Randolph ran now, ran towards them, and then they were together again, and he was holding them, and even though they felt cold, they were his, their spirits were his, and he loved them as he had never loved them before.
‘Marmie,’ he breathed, his voice unsteady. ‘Marmie, it’s dangerous here. You have to come with me, all of you. You have to come now.’
Marmie could not stop touching him in disbelief. ‘How did you get here? Randolph, you’re still alive! How did you get here? I can’t believe you’re here!’
‘Come on,’ Randolph urged her. ‘John, Mark, Issa, we have to get away from here!’
‘Dad,’ frowned John, ‘what’s wrong? Dad, what are you doing here?’
‘We can’t leave,’ Issa pleaded. ‘We can’t.’
Now Waverley stepped forward, his cane resting on his right shoulder like a rifle.
‘This is extraordinarily touching, isn’t it? What a night for reunions! Mothers and wives and children.’
Reece stepped forward too, and he was smiling. Marmie stared at him in horror.
Then she reached out and clutched her children closer. Issa stared too, in abject fear.
‘Why is he here?’ Marmie whispered.
Issa began to weep.
‘Why is he here?’ Marmie repeated, almost screaming.
Waverley said, ‘He’s here for my protection, that’s why he’s here.’
‘He raped me!’ Marmie shrieked. ‘He raped me! He raped my daughter! And then he tortured us, and then he killed us!’
Randolph had to take hold of Marmie’s icy wrists to prevent her from rushing across and attacking Reece with her bare hands.
‘He raped us and raped us, and then he wound barbed wire around our necks, and while we strangled in agony, he took off that mask of his and laughed! Demon!’ she fumed at him. ‘Demon!’
Michael came up now and pulled at Randolph’s shoulder. ‘We have to leave, Randolph, and we have to leave right nowl They’re all around us. Come on.’
Marmie whimpered in Randolph’s arms. From a scream, her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Make sure that he suffers, Randolph. Make sure that he pays for what he did. I was fighting him, Randolph, I was fighting so hard. I caught his dogtags - he was wearing dogtags around his neck and I caught them and tore them off… They fell down between the floorboards - he cursed and he swore and he hit me … but they’re still there, my darling, underneath the floor … his Army dogtags …’
Reece shoved Randolph away from Marmie and held his automatic up close to Randolph’s face. Marmie backed away from him in fear even though he had already taken everything from her that she could surrender: her body, her sexuality, her very life.
Waverley said in a precise but peculiarly deranged-sounding way, ‘We want you to know, Marmie, my dear, that if this husband of yours ever attempts to contact you again, if he ever attempts to winnow out evidence against us by talking to you, we will injure him so severely that he will spend the rest of his days in agony. Not dead -
because that would afford him the ineffable bliss of meeting you again - but painfully crippled.’
Marmie said nothing but shook her head from side to side, traumatized even in death by the sight of the man who had killed her.
‘Waverley, there aren’t any words for you,’ Randolph said.
Waverley beat a tattoo on the ground with his cane. ‘You took away my wife, you took away my children. I did the same to you, Randy. It’s called poetic justice.’
Michael said, ‘They’re here, Randolph.’
Waverley asked, ‘Here? Who’s here?’
And it was then that the leyaks rose out of the darkness, white-faced, snarling, more than fifty of them, with raging eyes. Randolph drew Marmie and the children closer, and he could feel their fear mingle with his. They were completely surrounded; there was no escape.
‘The lykas,’ Waverley breathed in terror. ‘Randolph! Is that what they are? The lykas?’
‘Leyaks,’ Michael corrected him. ‘And everything I said about them is true. You are just about to discover what it feels like to be eaten alive.’
Waverley, stunned, reached out to Reece for support but Reece backed away and let him stagger.
‘The camera,’ Waverley hissed at him. ‘Damn it, Reece, the camera! Use it! The camera!’
The leyaks edged closer. Marmie, collecting herself now, said, ‘I’ve never seen them before, Randolph, but I know what they are and I know where they come from. I also know what they will do to us.’
‘We’re together,’ Randolph said. ‘At least this time we’re together.’
Issa said, ‘I’m frightened, Daddy. Oh, Daddy, I’m so frightened.’
One of the leyaks lashed out towards Reece with its claws. Reece, seizing the moment, stepped back and took a flash photograph of it. The Polaroid camera whined and a blank white print was fed out. Startled by the flash, the leyaks drew back a little, allowing Reece just enough time. The leyak’s image gradually appeared on the photograph and then Reece held it up between finger and thumb and waved it at the leyak contemptuously. The leyaks shied back even farther. They had crowded so close together that they were obviously unsure of which of them had been caught by Reece’s image-maker, and when he took his Zippo out of his pocket and flicked it alight, they stumbled back with their hands over their eyes.
Reece had been trained in Vietnam. He knew how to survive and he knew how to pick his moment. As soon as the leyaks cowered back, he barrelled his way through them, pushing them aside in all directions, and then he was off running. Waverley tried to hobble after him but Michael seized his arm and held him back.
‘Let him go! They’ll probably run him down anyway. You deserve what’s coming to you, you creep.’
There was an odd comic-book bravado in the way that Michael spoke, and Randolph
- clinging to his family, grasping John’s hand and pressing Issa’s head against his chest - suddenly understood what it was that made it possible for people to live out their lives. He suddenly understood that dignity was not just a word, not just a quality, but the essential ingredient of human existence.
The leyaks clustered nearer again. They made a shuffling, rustling sound as if they were flaking to pieces as they walked. It was like the sound of ashes in a Hindu funeral pyre when the relatives rake through them for the bones of the person they loved.
Waverley took two or three uncertain steps towards the leyaks. Randolph and Michael and Marmie watched him. The leyaks watched him too, their eyes flaming orange with a lust for flesh.
‘They’re not attacking,’ Michael murmured to Randolph in perplexity. ‘They’ve got us cornered but they’re not attacking.’
Randolph did not know what to say. He simply held on to Marmie and shook his head.
It was then that they felt a deep, resonant rumble. The leyaks gnashed their teeth and raked their claws in the air but seemed disinclined to come any closer. As the rumble grew louder, some of the marble urns began to rattle and the lids on the tombs started to vibrate. A marble angel toppled from her pedestal and fell to the ground, breaking in two.
Randolph turned to Michael and shouted, ‘What’s happening? Michael! What’s happening!’
But Michael had covered his face with his hands and was slowly sagging to his knees, and even Waverley was wheeling around in terror.
‘Daddy! What is it?’ Issa screamed.
And for a second time Randolph thought, I’ve failed her. For a second time I’ve allowed her to suffer. Oh, God, take care of my precious children. Oh, God, preserve their souls.
The rumbling grew so loud that they could hardly bear it. Their teeth vibrated and their bones seemed to buzz, and it seemed as if the whole cemetery was going to be split apart. A huge granite tomb cracked with a report as sharp as gunfire and a tall spire shattered into pieces and collapsed. Dust rose into the air, the dust of broken marble mixing with the dust of long-dead lives.
Michael was shouting, ‘Barong Keket! Barong Keket! Save me, Barong Keket!’
But the holy name of the Lord of the Forests was not enough to hold back the huge, dark apparition that now bore down on them. Across the cemetery, blotting out the twilight, blotting out the skyline, massive and black and rumbling and stinking of death, came something as huge as a tidal wave and as terrifying as hell itself.
Issa screamed. Marmie held her hands to her head and stared in hypnotic horror.
The apparition approached them and rolled back the darkness that covered its face.
Then it roared - an appalling, shuddering roar - and more tombs collapsed.
Randolph had seen the face on the mask but he had not been prepared for anything like the face itself. A face as wide as a car, with bulbous eyes that were not painted this time, not varnished, but glutinous and real. A nose with cavernous, gaping nostrils. A dripping mouth with vicious fangs that were curved and gleaming and as strong as elephant tusks.
Most frightening of all was the apparition’s crown. Around her forehead, instead of hair, hundreds of human heads protruded, living human heads, each screaming and weeping in endless torment. For one moment Randolph glimpsed the screaming face of Dr Ambara among them, and he knew that what Michael had said earlier had been true. Dr Ambara, rest his soul, had brought the leyaks here.
‘What is it?’ Waverley asked querulously.
Michael slowly took his hands from his face. ‘The Witch Widow Rangda,’ he said over the rumble of the apparition’s arrival. ‘It looks like she has come to collect her souls in person.’
Waverley was white. ‘It’s a stunt! It isn’t true! It’s a nightmare!’
Michael tautly shook his head. ‘It isn’t a nightmare, my friend. It’s real and it’s going to eat us.’
‘God in heaven!’ Waverley cried. He covered his eyes with his hand.
At that moment, however, Ilona appeared beside him, materializing out of the darkness as if she had stepped through a photographer’s curtain. She held out her hands and touched him, and he jumped and stared at her in terror.
She mouthed something, but the noise of Rangda’s approach was so devastating that at first he couldn’t hear her.
‘What? What did you say? Ilona, for God’s sake, help me!’
‘Only you can save these people now,’ said Ilona. ‘Only you can save my son.’
‘Me? What do you mean? Ilona, for God’s sake!’
‘// was your crimes that brought them here, Waverley. Only your sacrifice can save them.’
Waverley looked around in absolute horror; then up at Rangda. The Witch Widow’s breath was stomach-churning, like a railroad car filled with rotten meat. ‘You don’t seriously expect me to -?’
Ilona was expressionless and white, a living statue. ‘It’s the only way, Waverley. It’s the only way to prove that you love me. It’s the only way that the gods of heaven and hell will ever forgive you, for what you’ve done. If you let my son die, I will never forgive you, not for all eternity. But if you sacrifice yourself now, and save him, then you and I will always be together, always at peace.’
Waverley was shaking. ‘Ilona, you can’t ask me that.’
Her face shifted and flowed as if they were looking at it through clear running water.
‘I can, Waverley, it’s the only way. Without this, you will never know any peace, ever; and you will never see me again.’
Without saying anything else, Ilona vanished.
Waverley looked at Randolph and then at Michael. At last, turning his back on the huge black bulk of Rangda, he approached Marmie, and John, and Mark, and Issa.
He was pale but calm. He took off his glasses and tucked them into his pocket.
‘I beg your forgiveness,’ he said huskily. ‘If it were not for me, you wouldn’t be here now, exposed to this danger. I cannot change myself; I cannot feel contrite. But I have been the author of everything evil that has happened to you, and if it is possible for me to put it right, I shall.’
He held out his hand to Randolph and said softly, ‘Forgive me if you can. It may be no use.’
Waverley then turned back and directly confronted the huge, glaring presence hovering over them. The ground began to shake and thunder rumbled through the cemetery. Lightning crackled everywhere, illuminating in fitful flashes the distended, staring eyes and the long, curved teeth and the mouth that dripped with a distillation of human juices. Rangda, the goddess of death, the carnivore of the cemeteries, an ancient evil as old as the planet itself.
‘Have me and all my malevolence!’ Waverley screamed up at Rangda. ‘Have me and let these others free! You will have your fill with me, my lady. I will be enough to satisfy your appetite.’
‘My God, he wants it,’ Randolph breathed. ‘He wants Rangda to take him; he wants to suffer.’
Michael stood up and watched Waverley in fascination, still fearful for his own life but gripped by the spectacle of one man offering himself that others might go free.
Waverley could see for himself what his punishment might be, that of crowning Rangda’s forehead, and he suspected there were worse punishments that remained darkly invisible.
Rangda reached down from the blackness of her cloak and even the leyaks hissed and cowered back. Waverley, however, remained unflinching, his head lifted, his eyes still challenging the Witch Widow to take him as her sole sacrifice.
‘Dear God,’ whispered Marmie, and at that moment the goddess seized Waverley in her scaly claws and lifted him to her mouth.
Her fangs gaped open. Waverley - perversely or bravely, or simply because he was too frightened by what was happening to him - remained silent. No scream as the first curved fang plunged into his stomach. No scream as his arms were ripped out of their sockets. No scream as the last of the old-style Southern gentry disappeared from sight between those voracious lips, leaving nothing behind but a momentary runnel of blood.
Randolph and Michael waited, numb and shivering, while Rangda loomed over them.
Michael said, ‘She’s going to take us too. I know it. Say your prayers, old buddy. This is eternity coming up.’
Rangda darkened the sky directly over their heads. Her power was so thunderous that the ground beneath their feet shook like an earthquake, and the air rumbled against their eardrums as if a 747 were passing directly over them. Michael dropped to his knees, but Randolph stayed where he was, rigid with terror. He could feel the hair rising on the back of his neck.
Rangda tossed her head, and as she did so, a beige string of half-chewed intestine was stretched between her jaws.
It was then, though, that a strange pale green glow began to suffuse the place where Marmie and the children were standing. Rangda visibly shied away from it, her grotesque head nodding like a black mastiff bitch. Randolph turned and stared at Marmie and the children, and already they were shining with soft phosphorescence.
Marmie was smiling that sweet distant smile that he had always loved, and holding out her arms towards him, as if she were saying goodbye.
The rumbling of Rangda began to die down; and at last the Witch Widow drew down the blackness that covered her face and turned away. At that, the leyaks began to disperse, slowly at first, but gradually in increasing numbers, their eyes narrowed until they were nothing more than slits of orange fire.
‘Michael!’ said Randolph. ‘Michael, they’re leaving! Michael, what’s happened?’
Michael rose to his feet. ‘Barong Keket, the Lord of the Forests. He has come to protect your family.’
Randolph watched in silence as Marmie and John and Mark and Issa moved closer tog
ether, holding hands. They were completely surrounded now by the steady pale green glow; and while Randolph was watching their feet slowly rose from the ground until they were floating three or four inches above the pathway.
‘Barong Keket,’ Michael repeated, in a whisper. ‘The lord of all that is good and green and peaceful. The lord of serenity and the lord of love.’
Randolph glanced towards the shrinking black cloud that was Rangda. ‘You told me that Barong Keket was no match for Rangda.’
‘On his own, no. But Rangda has been given a willing human sacrifice, and she’s not entitled to take any more. Just as my father died to protect me from Rangda, so Waverley Graceworthy died to protect Marmie and the kids.’
‘Marmie!’ called Randolph. ‘Marmie, can you hear me?’
Michael took hold of his arm. ‘I don’t think she can. She belongs to Barong Keket now. Look - she’s fading. They’re all fading.’
‘What the hell do you mean - she belongs to Barong Keket?’
Michael wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘She’s all right, Randolph; she couldn’t be better taken care of. I mean that. For all eternity, amen.’
‘Marmie!’ called Randolph, in desperation. But Michael was right. Marmie and the children were dissolving in the pale green light. Soon he could see only the faintest shadows of his lost family. Then they were gone.
He stood for a long time with his head bowed. A light rain began to fall across the cemetery as dawn broke. Randolph looked up, and whispered, ‘Wait for me, Marmie. I’ll come back to you someday.’
Michael was waiting for him under the shelter of a tree. ‘We’d better get back,’ he said. ‘A new day. The death trance is over.’
Together they walked back in silence along Elvis Presley Boulevard until they reached Waverley Graceworthy’s mansion. As they approached the entrance, walking under the dripping trees, they were surprised to see that OGRE 1 was still parked in the driveway, as were Chief Moyne’s car and the Memphis police patrol car. There were also three other police cars, their lights flashing, and two station wagons from the Shelby County coroner’s office.
Death Trance Page 42
