Rook & Tooth and Claw

by Graham Masterton

  Instinctively, he stepped away from the door. The thrumming grew louder, and as it did so it sounded more like drums beating. Furious, hectic drums. The door rattled and Jim turned around and ran. Half-way along the next block he found an empty doorway in front of an adult bookstore. He pressed himself against the security mesh, his heart beating as madly as the drums. Through the mesh, the faded picture of a plump white-fleshed girl smiled at him, her eyes encircled with thick black mascara.

  After a moment or two he leaned out to see what was happening. The sidewalk was empty except for the drunk, who had managed to slide himself a few feet further away. “Waiting … round the bend …”

  But then the air in front of Umber Jones’s apartment appeared to tremble, like the hot air over a desert highway. The door opened, just a fraction, and smoke began to pour out of it. Dense, black smoke. Jim drew himself back. He knew exactly what this was. The smoke twisted and curdled and slowly rose upward; until it formed itself into the tall, dark, unmistakable figure of Umber Jones. He had emerged through an opening in the door that was no more than two inches wide.

  Jim had two immediate choices. Either he could stay here and risk burgling Umber Jones’s apartment, or he could follow Umber Jones wherever he was going, to see what he was planning next. It made more sense to break into his apartment. After all, once he had the loa stick, Umber Jones wouldn’t be able to call on the spirits to give him strength; that was the way that Jim understood it, anyhow. He may still be capable of using a gun or a knife, but then so what? Jim had taught classes of fifteen-year-olds who had been capable of using guns and knives, and occasionally brought them to college, too.

  Apart from that, Mrs Vaizey had died trying to bring him the loa stick, and he felt he had a moral duty to finish the job that had killed her. He owed her at least that much.

  Umber Jones started to walk away from him, his black suit flapping like a crow’s wings. He passed close to the drunk – who couldn’t see him, of course, but who obviously felt him go by; like a shadow, like a dark summer draft; because he swivelled around on one leg, and stared at nothing at all.

  Umber Jones crossed the street. As he did so, a taxi came speeding toward him, its flag lit up, its suspension bouncing on the patched-up roadway. It headed straight for him, its headlights shone right through his body, as if they were shining through fog. There was a moment when Jim thought that he was going to be killed, but the taxi drove right through him. The smoke that he was made of whirled and staggered, but then it blew itself back together again, and Umber Jones continued to cross to the opposite sidewalk as if he had been hit by nothing more than a sudden gust of wind.

  He disappeared around the next corner. For a few long moments, Jim’s courage failed him, and he stood where he was, pressed against the mesh of the adult bookstore. How could you fight a man who could leave his body and walk through the streets like smoke? But he gave himself his own answer: because you have to. Because nineteen young people are relying on you.

  Because good has to overcome evil. It’s the natural law.

  He took two deep breaths. Then he left the bookstore and walked back to the front door of Umber Jones’s apartment. He took out his screwdriver and carried on twisting at the lock. The drunk caught sight of him and began to shamble toward him. “Waiting round the bend …” he hollered. “My huckleberry friend …”

  The light in Mr Pachowski’s apartment was abruptly switched on, and the drapes drawn back. Mr Pachowski opened up the window and called out, “What’s going on down there? Get out of here before I call the cops!”

  Jim backed away from the door, lifting his hand in a conciliatory wave. “It’s okay … I was looking for number 12002!”

  “Wrong block … 12002 is three blocks west!”

  “Great, thanks,” said Jim. All the same, Mr Pachowski stayed watching him as he walked away. He lifted his hand again. “Thanks,” he repeated. “Good-night.”

  He crossed back over the street. The drunk came weaving after him, still singing. As Jim climbed back into his car he came up and leaned against the roof. Jim put down the window and said, “Go on, beat it. Find yourself someplace safe to sleep it off.”

  The drunk stared at him with eyes that refused to focus. “Tell me something,” he said. “I’ve never been able to work it out for myself and nobody ever seems to know the answer. What the hell is a huckleberry friend?”

  He went reeling off into the night with his arms spread wide, a scarecrow caught in a cyclone. Jim started up his engine and pulled away from the curb. He could see that Mr Pachowski was still keeping a beady eye on him. There was nothing left to do now but drive back home and work out some other way of getting his hands on Umber Jones’s loa stick.

  Or maybe there was something else that he could do. Follow Umber Jones, wherever he was going, and find out what he was up to. It could be highly dangerous, but on the other hand it might give him some valuable knowledge about Umber Jones’s strengths, and maybe his weaknesses, too. There were one or two things that puzzled him about Umber Jones’s behaviour. He had said that he wanted his existence to remain a secret, yet he had repeatedly appeared in a crowded classroom, where it had been almost impossible for Jim to conceal the fact that something strange was going on. He could have manifested himself just as easily in Jim’s apartment, or in the street, and then there wouldn’t have been any chance at all of Jim’s students sensing his presence. There was something else, too: when Umber Jones had wanted to send Jim his instructions to talk to Chill, why had he sent Elvin, instead of visiting him in person – or at least in the form of The Smoke?

  Jim drove to the corner where Umber Jones had disappeared. The street was deserted except for lines of parked cars and a man walking a brutish-looking dog. Jim turned left and drove slowly along to the next intersection, lightly drumming his fingers on the steering-wheel. He had been walking quickly, but he couldn’t have gone more than four or five blocks. Jim stopped at the traffic signals – and then, when they changed to green, he turned right.

  As he drove down the next block, he began to have a growing suspicion about where Umber Jones might be headed. He was now only three blocks away from Sly’s bar, where Chill and his cronies hung out. Chill had told Umber Jones that he would rather see him in hell. Maybe Umber Jones had the same idea about Chill.

  Jim still hadn’t caught sight of Umber Jones, so he decided to risk it and drive directly to Sly’s as fast as he could. He took a sharp left at the next intersection, his tyres squealing like strangled cats; and then a right. He arrived outside the bar just in time to see the dark shadowy figure of Umber Jones rounding the corner at the end of the block.

  At the same time, he saw Chill and three of his minders standing on the sidewalk talking and laughing. Another minder was sitting on the hood of a green Cadillac Fleetwood, smoking a cheroot. Umber Jones approached them at unnatural speed, without once breaking his stride. His face was ghastly with ash and his eyes were scarlet, as if he had been rubbing cinders into them. He came along the sidewalk in his black suit and his black wide-brimmed hat and of course Chill and his minders couldn’t see him at all. He didn’t even throw a shadow.

  Jim’s grip tightened on his steering-wheel. He wasn’t sure what he ought to do. Even if he shouted a warning to Chill and his men, they wouldn’t believe him, because Umber Jones simply couldn’t be seen. And it wouldn’t help them, either. Umber Jones was not only invisible but untouchable. His only substance was his evil; but his power was the power of the loas who were helping him, Ghede and Ougon Ferraire.

  Jim actually took an involuntary breath to shout, “Look out!” but his voice wouldn’t work. All he could do was watch in horror as Umber Jones rotated his hand, revealing the knifeblade underneath.

  Chill leaned back on his heels, his hands in his pockets, laughing. The minder who was standing next to him was wearing a black shirt and a white silk vest. Umber Jones came speeding right up to him and stabbed him straight in the stomach – once, tw
ice, three times. He was even holding onto the man’s right shoulder to steady himself. The man was too shocked even to shout out. He stood with his arms wide, staring down at his vest. It looked as if somebody had crushed strawberries all over it Then – still silent – he dropped on to his knees. He coughed up a huge splatter of blood, swayed, and keeled over sideways.

  The other minders spun around and around, their guns held high, trying to see who had attacked them. At first it looked as if they were blaming each other. After all, there was nobody else anywhere near them. One of them backed away, waving his automatic in all directions. Jim could hear them shouting, and for a moment it looked as if they might even start shooting. But then Chill yelled at them to stop acting like headless chickens. Appropriate, Jim thought grimly, for men being attacked by voodoo.

  Chill pointed up at the opposite buildings and the minders took off their sunglasses and peered frantically across the street, to see if their friend had been hit by a sniper. But one of them was down on one knee beside him, opening up his bloody vest, and he turned to the others and shook his head. These weren’t bullet-holes: these were oval, gaping stab wounds.

  All the time, Umber Jones was circling around them, his blade gleaming, his teeth gleaming, his eyes so wide and unblinking that he looked as if he were mad. He approached the minder who was kneeling over his fallen friend, bent over him, and hooked his arm around his throat. It looked as if he were holding him in a wrestling grip, but then he whipped his arm away and his knifeblade cut across the man’s jugular vein and half-way through his Adam’s apple. He tried to get up, but blood was pumping out of his neck so wildly that it sprayed all the way across the sidewalk and all over the windows of Chill’s Cadillac.

  That was enough for Chill. He shouted to his two remaining minders and they climbed into the car as if the devil was after them. And he was. Before Chill’s driver could start up the engine, the black smoky shape of Uncle Umber glided over to the Cadillac and literally poured itself in through the half-open window at the back.

  The Cadillac’s engine whoofed into life. The tyres screamed, and smoke billowed out of the rear wheel arches. Then the car pulled away from the curb and out into the street.

  It didn’t get very far. It hadn’t even reached the end of the block before it abruptly swerved and collided with a deafening smash into the back of a double-parked garbage truck. There was a moment’s silence and then it exploded. A ball of orange fire rolled up into the night. The blazing spare tyre was hurtled thirty feet into the air and landed on top of a parked car on the opposite side of the road.

  Jim thought that everybody in the car must have been killed. But suddenly the passenger door opened and Chill dropped out on to the road, the back of his hair smoking. He managed to get up onto his hands and knees and crawl away from the wreck like a beaten dog. The heat from the burning car was so intense that the soles of his yellow suede shoes momentarily burst into flame. At last he was dragged to safety by two garbage collectors, who laid him on the sidewalk and covered him with coats.

  Jim stayed where he was, watching the car burn itself into a skeleton. Only he could see the ashy-faced figure in the Elmer Gantry hat who was watching the wreck, too; unmoving; but with a look of ghoulish satisfaction.

  At three o’clock in the morning, Jim was awakened by a light, insistent tapping noise. He sat up in bed, suddenly alert, listening. There was a moment’s pause but then he heard the tapping noise again, like somebody’s fingernail against the living-room window.

  He climbed out of bed. The feline formerly known as Tibbles had been curled up against his legs, and she opened one eye and gave him a look of intense irritation. He padded on bare feet across the living-room carpet. The cotton blinds were drawn down over the window, but there was a three-quarter moon tonight, and Jim could clearly see the shadow of somebody standing out on the balcony.

  He stood in front of the blind for a very long time, wondering if he ought to put it up, or pretend that he was asleep and that nothing could wake him.

  But then he could see the shadow raise its arm and tap at the window once again. It would probably tap all night if he didn’t answer it, and he was exhausted enough already. After he had gone to bed, he had fallen asleep almost at once, but he had woken up after only ten minutes beating and flapping wildly at his bedsheet because he thought that he was on fire.

  He had managed to get back to sleep shortly after two – but now he was faced with this. A shadow who stood outside his window, patiently tapping.

  At last he took hold of the toggle and tugged the blind open. Standing in the moonlight was Elvin, so pale that his skin was almost luminous, his wounds looking even more than ever like the gaping mouths of dead fish. He tapped the glass yet again. He was smiling in an odd defensive way, the way that blind people smile when they think that they’re approaching an unfamiliar obstacle.

  Jim covered his face with his hands. He wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take. But when he took his hands away Elvin was still there and he knew that he didn’t have any choice but to open the door.

  Elvin came shuffling into his apartment and stood staring at nothing at all.

  “Hallo, Elvin,” said Jim. The smell of decay was much stronger now and he thought that Elvin looked much worse. How long could Umber Jones’s magic drag this poor mutilated body around, carrying his messages?

  “Umber Jones wants you to go see Charles Gillespie again,” said Elvin, his voice almost unintelligible. “He wants you to tell Umber Jones the same thing you told him the last time. If he still won’t agree, he wants you to give him this.”

  He reached with a white, spongy hand into his suit and produced a chicken’s wingbone tied with hair and feathers and coloured thread. It looked like a giant fishing-fly. Jim stared at it but he wouldn’t touch it. Elvin waited patiently for a moment and then laid it down on the table.

  “Another voodoo curse, I suppose,” said Jim.

  “Another way to make Charles Gillespie see sense,” Elvin replied.

  He turned to go, but Jim sharply said, “Elvin!” and he stopped where he was, with his back turned. His hair was tufty with dried blood.

  “Elvin – is there anything left inside you of what you used to be, before Umber Jones took control of you?”

  There was an achingly long pause, and then Elvin said, “I don’t understand the question.”

  “I just want to know if I’m talking to Elvin Clay, the real Elvin Clay, Mr and Mrs Clay’s favourite boy, Elvira’s brother; or whether I’m just talking to a lump of submissive meat.”

  “Umber Jones is my houngan. I do whatever Umber Jones asks me to do.”

  “I know you do, Elvin. But what I want to know is whether there’s anything left of you. Any will-power. Any strength. Any mind of your own.”

  Elvin hesitated. Despite his revulsion, Jim put his hand on his shoulder. His flesh felt unnaturally soft beneath his suit. Jim could feel his putrescing muscles slide across his bones. Elvin bowed his head and the wounds around his neck opened up as if they were capable of speaking on their own.

  Then he turned around, and his face – as hideously mutilated as it was – was filled with almost childish pleading. “Why doesn’t he let me go, Mr Rook? Why doesn’t he just let me die?”

  “I don’t know, Elvin. It seems like he needs you, the same way he needs me.”

  “Can’t you just ask him to let me go? You don’t know what it’s like, feeling yourself rot. It’s like there’s something gnawing inside of my guts, something that won’t stop gnawing and gnawing, and I’m scared that it’s maggots.”

  Jim swallowed, and then he managed to say, “Listen, Elvin … I’ll do everything I can. I promise.”

  Elvin gave him a blind, pathetic nod. Then he turned around again and shuffled out of Jim’s apartment. Jim watched him grope his way down the steps and out into the night. God alone knew where he was going, or where he stayed when Umber Jones wasn’t sending him out on errands. Maybe the ceme
tery. Maybe some cellar. And what was going to happen to him when his body began to decompose so badly that he couldn’t even walk?

  He picked up the chicken-bone fetish. There was something indescribably nasty about it. It was dry and old but it had a strong, unpleasant smell that put him in mind of everything that had ever made him nauseous, from a lump of gristle to the stench of sewage. He didn’t know what Chill would make of it, but it certainly frightened him.

  He couldn’t think of going back to sleep. He went into the kitchen and made himself a strong cup of coffee. He sat at the table, wearily staring at the fetish and wondering if he were ever going to be able to free himself from Umber Jones’s service. He was still sitting there when he heard a sickening, regurgitating noise from the living-room. It sounded like somebody choking for breath on their deathbed.

  Cautiously, he slid open the cutlery drawer and took out the largest knife he could find. Then he tiptoed out of the kitchen and stood outside the living-room door. The noise was repeated – a horrible gagging, cackling sound.

  He said to himself: come on, you managed to face Elvin. You touched him, even. Whatever this is, this can’t be worse.

  He reached around the living-room door to find the light-switch. He counted to three, and then he simultaneously switched on the light and swung into the living-room with his knife held high, shouting, “Right!”

  The feline formerly known as Tibbles looked up, startled. She had just vomited all of her supper on to the carpet. Jim stood and stared at her, his knife in his hand, and he was sorely tempted to use it. But then, well, it was his own fault for giving her jambalaya. He knew that chillis always made her sick.

  He went back to the kitchen to find a bucket and a wet cloth. He had never felt so tired and dejected in his whole life.