The kitchen clock read 23:00 precisely, and he knew that he had to go. The last thing he wanted was for Umber Jones to come back and find him in his apartment.
He swam across the living-room and slid through the quarterlight, which was less than three inches open. The sensation of having no physical substance was exhilarating. Mrs Vaizey had been right: it was like suddenly shedding a heavy topcoat and finding yourself naked. He glided along the balcony, past Myrlin’s apartment, and through the window he could see Myrlin peering intently at a small mirror and clipping the hairs out of his nostrils.
He carried on, down the steps and out of the apartment block, on to the street. He found that he could glide much faster than he could walk. In fact he only had to think that he wanted to reach the next intersection and he was almost there, like a camera-trick. He flowed through the streets of Venice, crossing streets and sliding along sidewalks. Sometimes he passed within inches of people out walking, but nobody saw him.
He knew that he could cross the street right in front of speeding vehicles without any risk of injury. The vehicles would simply pass through him, the same way that they had passed through Umber Jones’s smoke. All the same, he didn’t feel confident enough to chance it, and he waited at DON’T WALK signs, invisibly, like everybody else. On the corner of Mildred he was standing behind a man in a beret who was walking his poodle. The poodle could obviously sense that he was there, because it kept whining and pawing the sidewalk and anxiously looking all around it. “What’s wrong, Sukie?” the man wanted to know. “You’re acting like you seen a ghost.”
At last Jim arrived outside Umber Jones’s apartment. He rose as lightly as a tissue-paper kite until he reached the second-storey windows. In one window he could see Tee Jay, sitting on the couch watching television with the sound turned off. Every now and then Tee Jay checked his watch, and glanced toward the window. Jim’s first reaction was to duck, but while Tee Jay’s initiation into voodoo had made it possible for him to see The Smoke, he couldn’t see Jim’s spirit at all.
Jim floated along to Umber Jones’s window. The drapes were partly drawn, and the room was lit with only two floating night-lights fashioned out of black wax. As he came closer, however, Jim could see Umber Jones’s body lying on his bed. His face was dusted gray with ash and he was dressed in a dusty black frock-coat, complete with grey spats and black funeral shoes. His top-hat lay on the pillow beside him. In his left hand he held a chicken-bone fetish, much more elaborate than the one which he had sent to Chill, with beads and feathers and knots of fur. In his right hand he held a long cane of pale polished wood, topped with a silver skull.
The loa stick. As much a symbol of Umber Jones’s dark authority as a bishop’s crook or a king’s sceptre. Jim had been reading about loa sticks in Sharon’s books – how they were passed from one voodoo practitioner to another, but never owned by any of them. They belonged to Baron Samedi, the lord of the cemeteries, and technically speaking they had to be returned on demand.
The window to Umber Jones’s window was slightly ajar, and Jim poured through it like warm water. The air-conditioner in the bedroom had been switched off, and it was almost unbearably stuffy and hot, and the smell of incense was so strong that Jim felt as if he were suffocating. Strange, he thought, that he had no visible substance, yet he was still aware of the need to breathe. Even spirits have senses, he supposed.
He approached the bed and stood looking down at Umber Jones. Unnervingly, Umber Jones’s eyes were wide open, with pupils as red as garnets. But his spirit was absent, somewhere in the night, and his eyes were sightless and unblinking.
Jim cautiously reached across his comatose body and took hold of the loa stick. He could feel it, but his hand passed right through it. He tried again, but again his fingers couldn’t grasp it. It was exactly like trying to pick up an unwilling eel.
Then he remembered what Mrs Vaizey had told him: a spirit works by will, not by physical strength. A spirit’s strength is in the purity of its essence, its ability to concentrate on what it wants, unhindered by flesh and blood.
Again he laid his hand on the loa stick, and this time he concentrated on its rising out of Umber Jones’s grasp and coming with him. He stared at it harder and harder, willing it to do what he wanted. Gradually he could feel it taking on substance, smooth and hard and shiny. It still didn’t feel like a real stick, at least it didn’t to him: he felt that his fingers could pass right through it at any moment. But he kept on concentrating – rise – rise – you damned stubborn piece of wood – and inch by inch he was able to draw it out of Umber Jones’s fingers.
If anybody else had been watching, they would have seen the loa stick sliding out of Umber Jones’s hand as if by magic. They would have seen it rise into the air and float unsteadily toward the window. Jim didn’t realise it, but he was using the same psychic energy that so-called poltergeists use, to fling plates and furniture around the room.
It took all of his concentration to keep a grip on the loa stick – or, rather, to will the loa stick to stay in his insubstantial hand. But once he had ‘carried’ it to the window, he would be able to drop it into the street below, and then all he would have to do would be to hide it close by. He could come back later in his physical form to retrieve it. He still wasn’t certain what he was supposed to do with it – break it, or bury it or throw it in the ocean – and none of Sharon’s books made any mention of how to deal with a stolen loa stick. He guessed that the best way of getting rid of it would be to burn it and scatter its ashes, the same way that he had disposed of Mrs Vaizey, God rest her.
He reached the window and manoeuvred the tip of the loa stick into the gap. He looked down at the sidewalk below to make sure that there was nobody around. He didn’t want some passing stranger to pick up the stick and walk off with it, not knowing what it was.
As he was just about to drop it, however, he saw a dark flicker on the other side of the street. At first he thought it was nothing but the shadow from the awning of Amato’s Deli. Then – to his alarm – he saw a tall black figure come striding out of the darkness, making its way directly toward the apartment’s front door. Umber Jones, with his ashy face and his glistening red eyes.
He lost his concentration and the loa stick dropped on to the rush-mat carpeting. Panicking, he knelt down and tried to pick it up, but he was too worried about Umber Jones’s smoke-spirit flowing up the stairs. He grabbed and grabbed, but his fingers went through the loa stick every time. From the next room, he heard voices – Tee Jay’s and Umber Jones’s – and he guessed that Tee Jay was trying to stall his uncle’s smoke-spirit for as long as he could. But it was still no use. He couldn’t even feel the loa stick now, let alone pick it up. He would just have to save himself now, before Umber Jones discovered that he was here and used the power of Ghede to make him eat himself – or punish him in some other horrible and painful way.
He was about to flow through the gap in the window when he felt a strong, calloused hand snatch at his shoulder. He was wrenched around and slapped three times across the face. The slaps were silent, but they were so hard that Jim felt as if his neck had been dislocated. He was gripped by the wrists and pulled up straight, so that he was face to face with the smoke-spirit of Umber Jones.
Umber Jones, to his surprise, was grinning.
“So … you found out how to leave your body and walk the way that spirits walk?” said Umber Jones. Jim tried to struggle free but Umber Jones was gripping him far too tightly. “What brought you here, to my house?” Umber Jones asked him. “Thought that you’d pay me a visit, did you? Thought that you’d be sociable?”
Jim twisted himself sideways but still Umber Jones kept an unrelenting hold on his wrists. He looked around the room – inspecting the cabinet crowded with voodoo bric-a-brac, at the tables with their charms and amulets and silver boxes. “You wouldn’t have come here to steal something, would you, Mr Rook? I wouldn’t believe that of you. I thought it was a teacher’s duty to uphold our mo
ral standards – set an example.”
He gave a dry, thumping sniff. Then he said, “No … I don’t think you came to steal anything, did you? I can’t see anything missing.” He was playing with Jim, taunting him. The moment he flowed into the room he must have seen that the loa stick was lying on the floor.
“Or … wait a minute, what’s this?” he said, looking down by Jim’s feet. “Isn’t that my cane there, down on the floor? What do you think that’s doing down there? I hope you weren’t trying to make off with that, Jim, because that’s a sacred cane. You can knock on any door with that cane and you’ve got the spirits with you, as many as you want. You’ve got Ghede and Ougon Ferraire. You’ve even got Vodun, if you dare.”
Jim said, “You know damn well what I’m doing here. The killing has to stop.”
Umber Jones tilted his head forward so that he and Jim were almost nose to nose. “The killing can never stop, Mr Rook. Not until everybody in this city pays their respects to Umber Jones. Not just their respects, neither. Their money, too, and anything else that might catch my eye.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Maybe I am, Mr Rook. But you’re something much, much worse. You’re out of your body.”
“You really think you can force every pimp and drug-dealer in Los Angeles to hand over ninety per cent of everything they make?”
“Think it? I know it. What did Chill say to you today? Don’t tell me he’s still holding out.”
Jim said nothing. Umber Jones gave him a long, blood-coloured stare and then released his wrists. He leaned down and picked up his loa stick, sliding his hand down the length of it as if to reassure himself that it hadn’t been bent or damaged. It was the loa stick that gave his smoke-spirit the ability to be able to intervene in the physical world – to pick up objects, to cut people, to stab them to death. He walked over to his body on the bed, opened up his own fingers, and returned the loa stick to its original position.
“I thought I could trust you,” he said. “You don’t know how much you’ve disappointed me. You’ve let your students down, too.”
“Don’t even think about touching my students.”
Umber Jones came right up to him and towered over him. “You won’t be able to stop me.”
“Oh, I’ll stop you. I’ll find a way, believe me.”
“And supposing I make you eat yourself, the way that I made your lady friend eat herself?”
Jim said, “You need me too badly. How are you going to talk to all of those drug dealers if you don’t have me?”
“I can always find another friend.”
“Maybe you can. But it isn’t easy, finding friends, is it? Especially friends who are easy to blackmail, like me.”
Umber Jones grinned at him. “You’re right. But I think you need to be taught a lesson. I think you need to be given a little instruction in obedience and humility.”
Jim didn’t know what to say. He had never felt quite so frightened in his life. In his spirit form, outside his body, he felt naked and vulnerable, and as helpless in front of this smoke-black figure of spells and witchery as a newly-born child. He hadn’t even known before Umber Jones had slapped him that spirits could even feel other spirits, let alone hurt them. Apart from what Mrs Vaizey had told him, and what he had read in Sharon’s books and National Geographic, his knowledge of spirits had been limited to Jacob Marley and Casper the Ghost.
“What are you going to do?” he asked Umber Jones, tightly.
“You’ll find out.”
“You’re just going to let me go?”
“As you said yourself, it isn’t easy, finding friends.”
“So what about this little instruction in obedience and humility?”
“You’ll find out.”
With that, he turned his back on Jim and went back over to the bed. He stood beside his physical body and laid his hand on its chest. He crossed himself and muttered a few incomprehensible words. His physical body began to breathe more and more deeply, its nostrils flaring, its ashy black coat-lapels rising and falling. Soon its breath was coming in huge agonised groans, like a man trapped in a submarine.
The black image of Umber Jones’s smoke-spirit began to tremble. With every inward breath that his physical body took, it seemed to be pulled toward it. Then it started to fold in on itself, and become smokier and even less substantial. Right in front of Jim’s eyes, Umber Jones’s physical body breathed in his smoke-spirit, little by little, until there was nothing left beside the bed except a few dark wisps that floated and curled until they were breathed in, too.
Jim heard Umber Jones murmur something, and his fingers stirred like spiders disturbed by rain.
Now was the time to leave. Jim turned away, and flowed through the gap in the window, into the night, floating down toward the street with the lights of Venice sparkling all around him. He reached the sidewalk and looked back toward Umber Jones’s bedroom window. Umber Jones was standing there, silhouetted by the dim, flickering candelight, watching him.
Jim started to make his way home, gliding from one street to the next. All he wanted now was to be back in his physical body before Umber Jones decided to teach him his lesson. It didn’t look as if he was going to be forced to consume himself, thank God. But not knowing what punishment Umber Jones had in store for him was almost as chilling.
He reached his apartment block and flowed in through the window. He crossed the living-room, where the feline formerly known as Tibbles was sleeping on the floor beside the couch.
The couch itself, however, was empty. Jim’s physical body had gone.
Chapter Twelve
He glided through to the bedroom. His body wasn’t there, either. With rising panic, he glided through to the bathroom. The tub was empty. The shower-head dripped with its usual plangent plink, plank, plink, plank.
He went back to the living-room. He laid his hand on the couch but he couldn’t feel any warmth. He could see, however, that the ash had been scuffed, as if somebody had stepped on it. His cat must have felt his presence, because she lifted her head and opened one eye.
What the hell was he going to do now? Was this Umber Jones’s punishment, to take his physical body away and leave his spirit without anywhere to go? From what Mrs Vaizey had told him, a body and a spirit could only survive for a very limited time without each other. What if Umber Jones had taken his body away and hidden it, so that he would have to beg to have it returned?
But then again, what if his disappearance wasn’t anything to do with Umber Jones? What if Myrlin had seen him lying in a coma and had him taken away by ambulance? How could he find his body then?
He circled the living-room again and again. Nobody could have seen him, but as he circled he disturbed the air. Ghosts and spirits are not completely undetectable. They raise and lower temperatures, they slow down clocks. Their breath can always be faintly felt, or sometimes even seen, especially on a fogged-up windowpane.
He was still frantically circling when he heard a familiar tap at the living-room window. He couldn’t open the door, so he flowed out through the fanlight and reassembled himself on the balcony outside. Elvin was standing by the railings, smiling at nothing at all. He was even more decomposed than he had been before. The wounds in his face were gaping open and they had started to suppurate – a thick, glistening pus that had dried around each stab-wound like the crusts around a jar of mayonnaise. Blowflies crawled in his eye-sockets, giving Jim the impression that his eyes were sparkling, and that he could see.
“I suppose you’ve come with another message?” said Jim.
Elvin opened and closed his mouth. His tongue was so swelled up that it was almost impossible for him to speak.
“You don’t happen to know the whereabouts of my body, do you?” Jim demanded. “If this is Umber Jones’s idea of a punishment, then you can tell him that I’m sorry; that I’ll never touch his loa stick again and that I’ll do whatever he wants me to do, in perpetuity, no argument. But he has to g
ive me my body back.”
“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” whispered Elvin.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
A blowfly flew out of Elvin’s eye-socket with a sharp, echoing buzz. “I’ve taken your body to the place where it belongs … the place where everybody’s body belongs.”
“What do you mean? The cemetery?”
Elvin nodded. “All bodies belong in the ground; yours as well as mine.”
“My body’s been buried? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“Boxed and buried, Mr Rook. But don’t you worry. I said some comforting words over your grave.”
Jim felt even more naked and transparent than ever. It had been wonderfully liberating, to leave his body, but now he was beginning to feel as if he had been sitting in a cold bath for far too long. If a spirit could shiver, he was shivering. He began to long for his body. He missed its warmth and its security, for all of its heaviness.
Elvin said, “Nobody will ever find you, Mr Rook. You’ll have to wait for Umber Jones to dig you up again.”
“And how long is that going to be?”
“A day. Two days. A month-and-a-half. Three months. Maybe never.”
“But my body’s not going to survive without my spirit.”
“Don’t worry, Mr Rook. I’m going to show you where you’re buried, so that you can slip back into your skin.”
“But even if I do that – how can I survive if I’m six feet under?”
“Goofer dust,” said Elvin, with a smile. “I blew some goofer dust on you, while you were lying on the couch. You don’t need to eat. You don’t need to drink. You scarcely need to breathe. You’re a zombie, Mr Rook. You’ll survive for months.”
Jim couldn’t think of anything to say.
Elvin shuffled closer and he smelled so sickly that Jim would have retched if he had had a stomach to retch with. “Follow me,” said Elvin. “It isn’t far.” He turned and made his way back along the balcony.
Rook & Tooth and Claw Page 18
