Rook & Tooth and Claw

by Graham Masterton

  “You’ve cut your face,” she said, concerned. She came forward and touched his cheek and then his nose. “How did that happen? You look like Mr Wallechinsky.”

  “It’s nothing. A window broke.”

  She frowned at him. “Is something wrong?” she asked him.

  He kept thinking of the way that she had half-closed her eyes when she had told him that she loved him; and how furiously she had kissed him, as if she wanted to eat him alive.

  “Everything’s fine,” he said. “I’ve had a crappy day, is all.”

  He tried to leave his desk but she stayed where she was, blocking his way. “I don’t want you to think that I’m angry or anything,” she told him. “I’d still like to see your maps, whenever you have the time.”

  “Susan,” he said. “I don’t have any maps. Ron Philips was stirring things up between us, that’s all.”

  “No maps?” she blinked. “What do you mean, no maps? What about Martin Frobisher’s chart of the North-West Passage?”

  He shook his head.

  “You invented it?” she asked him, incredulously. “Why on earth did you invent it?”

  Even as she said it, of course, she understood why; and she blushed as fiercely as a teenager. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I shouldn’t have asked you that. That was stupid of me. Listen – I’m making a complete fool of myself here. I’d better go.”

  He took hold of her wrist. “Susan … I don’t know what’s happened between us. I don’t know why you said you loved me so much and then you changed your mind. I guess women are entitled to be fickle. But I’d quite like to know what it was that put you off me so suddenly. I mean was it my breath? Did you meet Richard Gere in the supermarket the next morning? What?”

  “I’m at a loss here,” Susan admitted. “You seem to think that we had something going when we didn’t. All that happened was, you drove me home. We talked about maps, and that was it. You bumped into a hedge and got your pants wet.”

  “We didn’t kiss?”

  “We pecked.”

  “We pecked but we didn’t kiss? No tongues or anything?”

  “Tongues?” she said, startled. “Jim… we were talking about Mercator’s projection, that’s all. You don’t go straight from Mercator’s projection to tongues.”

  Jim pressed his hand to his head. “I’m missing something here. I thought we kissed. I thought you said you loved me and we kissed.”

  Susan took hold of his hand. “Jim … I like you. I admire you. All this work you do with Special Class II. But I’m sorry … I never said that I loved you. And believe me, please – and don’t take this wrong – we never kissed.”

  It suddenly came to him. The memory powder. He had tested the memory powder by imagining that Susan was head-over-heels in love with him. He remembered that now. But in spite of the fact that he could remember it, he was still totally convinced that he and Susan had kissed. It was the strangest feeling that he had ever had. He could still feel her lips. He could still feel the softness of her hair and her breath against his cheek. “I fell in love with you the moment I first saw you.” She had said it so clearly that he could imagine each word in shining fruity colour, like a roll of Life Savers.

  “Jesus,” he said. He was so dumbstruck.

  “Listen …” she said. “Give it some time, then maybe we could go out for dinner together. Or maybe a picnic.”

  “Sure,” he told her. He squeezed her hand. “I think I’d better be getting along home now. The feline formerly known as Tibbles will be wanting her supper.”

  “Jim,” she said, as he left the classroom. He stopped, and turned.

  “Nothing,” she said, and let him go.

  On the way back to Venice the atmosphere tightened and Jim could see snakes’-tongues of lightning flickering over the Santa Monica Mountains. By the time he was half-way home there was a deafening barrel-roll of thunder and the sidewalks were instantly spotted with rain. Soon water was cascading off the roof of his car and his windscreen wipers were flapping wildly from side to side. When he reached his apartment block he parked as close to the concrete staircase as he could and climbed out of the driver’s seat with a copy of National Geographic on top of his head. Too bad about the fertility rituals of the Motu-speaking peoples of Papua New Guinea: they were just going to have to get wet.

  He climbed the steps to his apartment. Myrlin was watching him out of his kitchen window but when Jim suddenly turned around and gave him the evil eye he promptly closed his venetian blinds.

  There was a second burst of thunder as Jim opened up his front door, and the rain clattered down with even more intensity, gushing down the roof and leaping out of the gutters. Jim switched on the lights and dropped his sodden magazine into the wastepaper basket. He left the door a few inches ajar and a few seconds later his cat appeared, rubbing up against his legs and mewling for him to feel sorry for her. “All right, already,” he told her.

  He went through to the kitchen, opened up his freezer and took out a plateful of jambalaya that he had made for himself about two months ago. He didn’t feel particularly hungry, after today, but he had a whole evening’s marking in front of him and he knew that if he didn’t eat properly he would end up at midnight building himself a disgusting Dagwood sandwich out of anything he could find in the icebox – pickles, gorgonzola, out-of-date prosciutto and peanut butter, and he would lie in bed in the early hours of the morning wishing he hadn’t. He slid the plate of jambalaya into the microwave and switched it to defrost. Then he popped open a can of beer, and pulled open a can of catfood. His cat came hurrying into the kitchen on speeded-up clockwork legs, and was gulping down reconstituted lumps of rabbit before he could spoon it all on to her plate. “Look at you,” he told her. “You only love me for my food, and Susan doesn’t love me at all.”

  He stood up and looked at himself in the mirror next to the phone, cautiously touching his cheek to see how much it had healed. Umber Jones’s knife must have been sharper than a cut-throat razor, because the wound, although it was quarter of an inch deep, had closed together perfectly. The nick on his nose was more troublesome: it was a tiny semicircular slice close to the tip and it gaped slightly. He would have to ease off blowing his nose for a while.

  Taking his can of beer, he walked through to the living-room. He picked up his remote control and switched on the television. News; baseball; The Simpsons; more baseball; disgusting insects in close-up, news. Lightning crackled outside his window and the television picture crackled too, and started to jump. He went over to the set and hit the top of it with the flat of his hand, but the picture continued to tremble. It was then that Jim heard his cat mewling again and he turned around to see a figure sitting on his couch. A shadowy figure, thin and bent and barely-visible; with no more substance than a silhouette cut out of a net curtain.

  He stared at it, alarmed, but now that he had begun to accept the existence of wandering spirits, he wasn’t as frightened as he had been when Umber Jones had first appeared. He watched it for a while, waiting to see what it would do, and then cautiously he approached it. It had none of the volcanic malevolence of Umber Jones. It sat with its head bowed and its hands in its lap, patient and quiet. He knelt down on the carpet in front of it, and then he reached out to touch it, to see if it would respond, but all that he could feel was a faint cold prickling, like dipping his fingers into a glass of tonic water.

  The figure raised its head. Its face was wan and sad, its eyes concealed by dark shadows. But there was no mistaking who it was. Even after it has left its physical body for ever, a spirit can still be recognised. “Mrs Vaizey,” said Jim. “Can you hear me, Mrs Vaizey?”

  “I can hear you,” she said. He wasn’t sure if she had really spoken or not, but he could understand what she was saying.

  “Mrs Vaizey … I’m so sorry for what happened. If I’d had any idea—”

  “I knew what the risks were, Jim. And now that I’m dead, I think that you can call me Harriet, don’t yo
u?”

  “Did Umber Jones catch you in his apartment?”

  She nodded and said, “His smoke-spirit was out walking when it happened. His physical body was lying on the bed. His face was painted white with ash so that only his eyes looked out. His hat was propped up on the pillow beside him and he was holding his loa stick in his hand, just like Baron Samedi. I tried to take the loa stick away from him, but I was too late. His smoke-spirit returned and caught me and there was nothing I could do. He called on Ogoun Ferraille to help him, and Ogoun Ferraille forced me to eat myself.”

  “The pain—”

  “The pain was more terrible than anything you can think of. But the mercy is that it didn’t last long and now it’s over. I’m never going to feel pain again.”

  “What’s going to happen to you now?”

  “I’ll fade, Jim, like all spirits do, and then I’ll be gone. There isn’t a heaven. Beyond the light, there’s just a kind of fading away, like a photograph left in the sun. One day there’s nothing left but the faintest of outlines, and then there’s nothing at all.”

  “I’m going to miss you. You know that.”

  “Well… so long as somebody still remembers me, I won’t be gone for good. But you still have to find a way to deal with Umber Jones, or else he’s going to plague you for the rest of your days.”

  “I’ve tried dealing with him,” said Jim, turning his face so that she could see the cut on his cheek. “Look at the result. He’s threatened to hurt my students if I don’t do what he says.”

  He told her what had happened in the classroom today and she listened thoughtfully. In the end she said, “You’ll have to take his loa stick. It’s the only way. Do you think you might be able to persuade this boy Tee Jay to do it?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s very upset about the way that his uncle killed his best friend, but he’s very frightened of him. I don’t think he’d want to risk his uncle’s anger by messing around with something as sacred as a loa stick.”

  “Well, that doesn’t surprise me. He must be a full convert to voodoo or he wouldn’t be able to see his uncle’s smoke-spirit. I guess you’ll have to get it.”

  “You mean break into Umber Jones’s apartment?”

  “Either that, or do what I did, and visit it in spirit. Just make sure that he doesn’t come back and catch you, the way he caught me.”

  “How can I do that? I don’t have the first idea how to leave my body.”

  “It isn’t difficult. You make a circle of ash and use your finger to make three signs – the moon, the sun and the wind. These will guide your spirit out of your body and guide it back again, like the markings on an airport runway. Then all you have to do is lie quietly on your couch and recite the three verses of leaving.”

  “I don’t know the three verses of leaving. Was that all that Latin-sounding stuff you were saying?”

  “You can say it in any language you like. In some languages it works much more quickly and whisks you out of your body almost at once. Creole, for example; and Yoruba, because they have very strong words for magic.”

  “My Yoruban is kind of rusty.”

  “Then say it in English. Set my spirit free … let it wander where it will. Let my body sleep without it. Set my spirit free … keep it safe from evil and darkness.”

  She repeated the words three times and Jim repeated them after her.

  “You don’t have to worry if you change them a little … it’s your will that sets you free, not what you say.”

  “There’s just one thing,” said Jim. “What’s it actually like?”

  “You’ll feel as if you’ve taken off a heavy coat which you’ve been wearing all your life. You’ll feel so free that you won’t want to come back. You’ll fly. You’ll flow. Once you’ve done it for the first time, you won’t be able to wait to do it again.”

  Jim wasn’t sure that he liked the sound of that. Up until Umber Jones had appeared on the scene, his life had been reasonably straightforward and contented. He didn’t want to have his contentment disturbed by a strange craving which he could never satisfy. It would be like being an astronaut, forever yearning to go back to the moon.

  “If I can fly … if I can flow … if I don’t have any physical substance, how do I pick up the loa stick?”

  “A spirit doesn’t work by substance. A spirit works by will. A spirit’s strength is its ability to concentrate, unhindered by flesh and blood.”

  Mrs Vaizey’s outline began to dim. Jim said, “Listen … once I’ve got the loa stick, what do I do with it?”

  Mrs Vaizey said something so faintly that he couldn’t make out what it was. It could have been take it or break it. It could have been something quite different. She became so dim that she looked like nothing more than a faint shadow cast across the couch. Then she was gone altogether.

  The feline formerly known as Tibbles gave a mystified miaow. Jim stood up and paced around the apartment for a while, wondering what the hell he ought to do.

  There was a ring at the doorbell. He answered it, keeping the door on the security-chain. It was Geraint, in a violent green-and-scarlet shirt. “Do you have my mother in there?” he demanded.

  “Your mother? Of course not. What gave you that idea?”

  “Myrlin said he thought he saw you talking to her.”

  “And how did he manage to do that? Does he have X-ray vision or something?”

  “He was just walking along the balcony and he just happened to glance over at your apartment.”

  “Oh, just happened? I might have known.” Jim took the chain off the door and opened it wide. “You want to come in and search the place?”

  “No thanks,” said Geraint uncomfortably. “But I’m getting real worried about her, you know? She never took off like this before. I’ve looked all over, but zip.”

  “I wouldn’t worry. You know what she’s like. Wherever she is, she’s bound to be happy.”

  Geraint was about to leave when he wrinkled up his nose and sniffed. “You know something … I’m sure I can smell her perfume.”

  Jim knew what he meant. She had left not only the smell of her perfume behind, she had left the vibrancy of what she once was. He laid a comforting hand on Geraint’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Geraint. Wishful thinking.”

  Chapter Ten

  He managed to eat half his jambalaya and the rest he scraped into the cat’s dish. Then he took a shower and changed into a black turtleneck shirt and black pants. He found a pair of black leather driving gloves, too, that his mother had bought him for Christmas and which he had never worn. He slicked back his wet hair and looked at himself in the mirror. He might not have any burgling experience, but he certainly looked like a burglar.

  He opened the kitchen closet and took out the blue plastic container in which he kept his motley selection of tools. He chose a long screwdriver and a thin paint-scraper. There was also a bent piece of wire with which he had once opened a college locker when a student had lost his key, and he optimistically put that into his pocket, too.

  He drove to Umber Jones’s apartment feeling totally unreal, as if this couldn’t be him at all. He parked across the street, tucked in closely behind a carpet-delivery van. There was a dim amber light shining through the blinds in Umber Jones’s upstairs window and Jim could see the silhouette of a figure moving to and fro. From this side of the street, it looked like Tee Jay.

  Jim checked his watch. It was 11:11 on the nose. He settled back in his seat, preparing for a long wait. It was going to be highly risky, breaking into Umber Jones’s apartment when he and Tee Jay were asleep, but he would rather do it while Umber was in his physical form than when he was in the form of The Smoke, with all the destructive strength that the loa could give him.

  He passed the time by reciting poetry to himself. “‘But death replied: “I choose him.” So he went, And there was silence in the summer night.’”

  Unexpectedly, the street door to Umber Jones’s apartment opened and Tee Jay emerg
ed. He was wearing a blue-and-white nylon windbreaker with his hands thrust into the pockets. He looked right and left and then he headed off westward, walking fast.

  Five or six minutes passed and then the light in Umber Jones’s window was switched off. Maybe Umber Jones had retired to bed. Jim thought that he would give him about a half-hour, and then see if he could manage to break in. There would be a few minutes of maximum danger while he tried to locate the loa stick, but once he had it, there would be nothing that Umber Jones could do.

  He waited twenty minutes. Umber Jones’s window was still in darkness. He must be asleep by now. Jim gave him another three minutes and then climbed out of his car, leaving it unlocked in case he needed to make a quick getaway. “You’re mad,” he told himself, matter-of-factly, as he crossed the street. “This is never going to work. He’s going to wake up and he’s going to cut you to bits. Not only that, you’re talking to yourself.”

  But what was the alternative? Continuing to act as Umber Jones’s ‘friend’ – running errands for him and helping him to extort money out of pimps and drug dealers, under constant threat of him killing his students? Or staking out Umber Jones’s apartment for days on end, waiting for him to leave it as The Smoke? But supposing he returned, and caught Jim right in the act of stealing his loa stick, the way he had caught Mrs Vaizey? Jim didn’t relish the idea of eating himself, and of ending his life as nothing but a heap of dust.

  He reached Umber Jones’s front door. He looked anxiously around but there was nobody in sight except for a very drunk man who looked exactly like Stan Laurel. He was leaning against a wall as if he were in love with it and occasionally bawling out random lines from Moon River: “Wider than a mile … I’m croshin you in shtyle …” The door was old and didn’t fit very well. There was at least a quarter-inch gap between the frame and the door itself, and the wood looked pretty rotten. Jim took out his screwdriver and forced it into the gap, next to the lock. Then he pulled it back as hard as he could, and part of the frame splintered. Next he managed to work the screwdriver blade right into the gap until he could feel the tongue of the lock. He was just about to force it open when he suddenly became aware of a deep, thrumming sensation, as if a subway train were passing right beneath his feet. Except that here in Venice, of course, there were no subways.