by P. B. Kerr
“And who said you couldn’t be an angel if you’re a girl?” demanded Philippa.
The angel advanced on Groanin and Philippa, with his heavily stubbled jaw arriving slightly ahead of him.
“I wouldn’t antagonize him if I were you,” advised Nimrod. “I imagine he’s here to guard something.”
“Sam,” he repeated. “It’s short for Samael. And just so you know, being an angel is man’s work. Always has been.”
“I’m sure it is,” said Groanin.
“Just so as you know,” said Sam. “I’m the angel ruling Wednesday. And I get a bit fed up with all those pictures of angels that make us all look like a bunch of wet girls with big soppy eyes and hairless faces.”
“Um,” said Groanin, “if you don’t mind me saying so, today’s Thursday.”
“Yeah, well, maybe it is,” said Sam. “But I’ve still got to come when I’m summoned. Your boss, the djinn, is right, see? For hundreds of years I’ve been coming here at the request of the monks who run this place, to guard it against intruders.” He nodded at the stretcher bearing Faustina. “So I’d put her down if I were you.”
Nimrod and Groanin placed the stretcher on the floor.
“No offense,” asked Nimrod. “But are you sure about that?”
“What do you mean, djinn?”
“Are you sure you’re guarding the whole place, or someone in particular? After all, a lot of the people who are in here were nobody of any real importance.” He pointed at Faustina. “This djinn girl isn’t even dead.”
“Then why’s she in here?” growled Sam.
“She misplaced her body, that’s all,” said Nimrod. “We’re taking it out of here so it can be reunited with her spirit.”
“That doesn’t alter the fact that I’m supposed to look after this place. So she stays here. End of story.”
“Did they ask you specifically to guard her?” asked Nimrod.
“Ask me to guard some slip of a girl?” asked Sam. “I should say not. Being an angel is man’s work.”
“Yes, you said that,” said Nimrod. “Look here, you said you’ve been looking after this place for hundreds of years. But our friend’s only been filling in here as the Sleeping Beauty for a matter of months.”
“And the real Sleeping Beauty’s only been here since 1920,” added Philippa.
“So they couldn’t possibly have meant for someone as important as you to look after her,” said Nimrod. “They must have hoped you would look after someone else. A saint’s bones, perhaps. St. Bruno, for example.”
“It doesn’t make any difference, pal,” said Sam. “You’re not getting her. Not without a fight.” His eyes brightened and he grinned a big gap-toothed sort of smile. “That’s supposing any of you has got the guts for a fight.”
“Not a very fair contest,” said Nimrod. “Everyone knows that an angel is more powerful than a djinn. Let alone a human.”
“No, no,” said Sam. “I wouldn’t need angel power to beat any of you lot. Djinn or human. All I need is muscle.”
“You seem to have plenty of that,” said Nimrod.
“So how about it?”
“You wouldn’t be the Samael who wrestled Jacob in the Book of Genesis?” asked Philippa.
“Maybe,” Sam said defensively. “What of it?”
“All right then,” said Philippa. “We accept your silly challenge. If you agree not to use your powers as an angel, Mr. Groanin here will wrestle you, won’t you, Groanin?”
“Me?” Groanin’s jaw dropped. “Fight him? Have you gone mad, miss?”
“I had the same thought myself,” admitted Sam.
“And if he wins, we get to take our friend out of here,” said Philippa. “Deal?”
“Could I have a word with you, miss?” whispered Groanin.
Sam’s grin had widened by a couple of feet. “Deal,” he told Philippa. “But it’ll have to be a proper wrestling match. With a ring and a referee and a crowd. Not like that fight with Jacob. That was just the two of us in the desert at night. Not much fun in that. And not much incentive to win. I like a crowd, I do.”
“Yes, I can see that,” said Nimrod, glancing around the catacombs.
“I don’t mean in here,” said Sam. “I mean somewhere you get a decent crowd. Somewhere proper. Like when you see wrestling on the telly. Madison Square Garden. In New York. Agreed?”
“Oh, agreed,” said Philippa.
“I like you,” Sam told Philippa. “You’re all right. For a girl, that is. But you” — Sam pointed a thick stubby forefinger at Groanin — “I’m going to rip your head off and use it for a paperweight.”
Sam snapped his fingers and they found themselves transported into a wrestling ring in Madison Square Garden, in front of a crowd of twenty thousand spectators. There were vendors selling programs and hot dogs, newspapermen and photographers at the ringside; there were even large blond-haired women, dripping with diamonds, who were holding up signs with Sam’s name on them.
“Blimey!” said Groanin. “This feels as real as a rainy weekend in Manchester.”
“It is real,” said Nimrod, who was hardly surprised to see such a display of absolute power as to see it done so easily and so well. And this served to remind him that in spite of his stubbly chin and rather coarse manners, Sam was an angel after all, and a very powerful one at that. “At least it’s real for now. Reality is something that’s easily made by an angel.”
A loud fanfare of music and several bright spotlights greeted Sam’s arrival upon a stage at the back of the audience. He held up his arms in a gesture confident of eventual victory. The fight was about to begin.
CHAPTER 9
FAUSTINA’S ZOMBIE
John, wake up.”
John opened his eyes. He was sitting on the ground, leaning against a tree, and looking at Mr. Rakshasas and Leo Politi, who were kneeling in front of him anxiously. Then he remembered the Mohicans and scrambled to his feet, full of fear and the still vividly painful memory of what he imagined had just happened to him.
“Take it easy, lad,” said Mr. Rakshasas. “You’re all right now.”
“That was horrible,” he gasped, running both hands nervously through his hair, as if checking that it was still attached to his head. “Horrible. I was back in 1640. I was some Dutch boy running through the forest who was being chased by Indians. And it was … horrible.”
“We were in that boathouse,” explained Mr. Rakshasas. “Do you remember? There was an exorcism. And when all the spirits fled the house, one of them must have got himself mixed up with your spirit for a while. I daresay that you just relived everything that had happened to that poor young fellow and which probably made him the ghost he is now.”
“Those Indians,” said John. Feeling faint at the very thought of it, he sat down again and tried to rid his mind of the memories that still filled it.
“You take it easy for a minute. Sure, there were many terrible things done on both sides, I’m thinking. Human nature is a terrible thing when there’s ignorance and stupidity involved.”
“It wasn’t real,” said John. “But it still feels like it was.”
“Seeing is believing,” said Mr. Rakshasas. “But feeling is the God’s own truth, right enough.”
“Perhaps now would be a good time for you to explain how it is that you were the only two among the spirits in that house, myself included, who were not in a hurry to be gone when an exorcism was in progress,” Leo said stiffly. “It’s my opinion that neither one of you is dead at all. For if you were, you could hardly have stayed there.”
“Fair enough,” said Mr. Rakshasas. “You’re right. We’re neither one of us dead, I’m glad to say. And I’m right sorry for the deception, Leo, for you’re a decent fellow. We’re djinn, and we’re on a mission of mercy.”
“You mean like genies?” said Leo.
“The very same. And before you ask, I can’t give you three wishes because for one thing you’re dead, and for another, djinn power doesn
’t work in the spirit world.” He paused and then added, “Tell me, Leo, are you a good judge of people?”
“I think I’m a good judge of people, I trust, sir,” said Leo.
“That’s a fine answer,” said Mr. Rakshasas. “If you help us, Leo, we’ll do our best to help you when we’re back on the other side. Won’t we, John? You have our word on it. So that you can stop being the Ka servant of that temple back in Manhattan. What do you say?”
“I say all right,” said Leo. “I haven’t got anything to lose. After a hundred and thirty years, I’ve had enough of being a guide.”
“You said that you thought many of those spirits were hiding in that house. From what exactly?”
“It’s like this,” said Leo. “Normally, there are thousands of spirits around. But those were the first spirits we’ve seen since entering the portal. And what’s more, they were hiding.”
“From what?”
“I don’t know. Is it important?”
“It might be.” Mr. Rakshasas shrugged. “Where’s that canoe?”
Leo took them to the canoe. And while they paddled their way up the Hudson River, John and Mr. Rakshasas told him a little about Faustina and a little bit more about being a djinn.
“To have the power to give someone three wishes must be a tremendous responsibility,” said Leo. “But to have three wishes given to you would also require great intelligence to handle well. It is perhaps not always good to receive exactly what you want.”
“Sure, with wisdom like that, you could be a djinn yourself, Leo.”
They reached Bannermann’s Island in the early hours of the morning. Gray dawn was breaking and the creepy-looking gray house in the center of the island was at its most still and quiet, and just as John remembered it. More or less. The grave where he and Dybbuk had buried Felicia’s butler, Max, was now marked by an ape-shaped headstone.
They went into the living room where the remains of a fire were still smoldering in the fireplace, and sat down underneath the black-and-white oil painting of Faustina. To John’s eye, she looked even more like Dybbuk than he remembered. Willful and mischievous. It was hard to believe that the last time he had been in the room she might have been there, too. Invisibly. In spirit. Watching them.
“Do you think we should call out to her?” John asked Mr. Rakshasas.
“If she’s here, she’ll come. Remember, it’s the quiet pig that eats the meal.” Mr. Rakshasas leaned back on the sofa and then yawned. “This was always a fine room for waiting in.”
But they did not have to wait long.
“Who are you?” said a voice. “And would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?”
Faustina was taller than John had supposed from her portrait, and much lovelier. John thought she looked exactly like what she had been on the day her spirit had lifted out of her djinn body: a twelve-year-old girl. And yet he knew that it was twenty-four years since she had been born. Did that make her twenty-four years old? Or just twelve? He very much hoped the latter and felt his heart miss a beat as he stood up and looked into her gray eyes for the first time.
“My name’s John,” he said a little awkwardly. “I’m a friend of your brother, Dybbuk.”
“You’ve been here before, haven’t you?”
“Yes. A few weeks ago.”
“I thought I recognized you.”
“We’ve come to bring you back home,” he said. “So you can regain possession of your body.”
Faustina let out a breath and sat down heavily, opposite her three visitors.
“Don’t you,” John asked anxiously, “want to go home?”
“Always,” she said. “At first, I prayed that someone would come and find me and take me home. But no one came.” Faustina started to cry. “No one came.”
“We’ve come now,” said John. And he proceeded to tell her how Nimrod and Philippa had gone to London to recover her body from the wax museum, where she had left it while taking possession of the British prime minister.
Eventually, when Faustina had stopped crying, she wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and said, “I don’t see how you can help. I tried to get back into my body before. But I just couldn’t.”
“That’s because the Indian doctor who was summoned to treat the prime minister took a small sample of his blood,” explained John. “Some of that blood contained a few grams of your own spirit. Which meant there was part of you missing when you tried to regain control of your own body. But it’s going to be okay now. My uncle Nimrod has got a sample of your mother’s blood and we’re going to use that instead.”
“D’you really think that’ll work?” she asked.
“Sure, we wouldn’t be here now if we thought we were after a tartan-colored unicorn,” said Mr. Rakshasas.
“This is Mr. Rakshasas,” said John. “He’s a very wise djinn. Although sometimes the wisdom is a little hard to understand.”
“That’s the way with wisdom when you’re young.” Mr. Rakshasas smiled at Faustina and nodded.
“And this is our friend Leo Politi. He’s been our guide through the spirit world. Leo knows everything about the world of spirits.”
“I wouldn’t say ‘everything,’” said Leo, a little embarrassed. He bowed very politely. “But I am a proper ghost.”
“Well then. Perhaps I can go home,” she said. “Even if it’s for only a short time.”
“What do you mean?” asked John, who was already blinded by Faustina’s beauty and had quite forgotten the reason why he and Mr. Rakshasas had come to find her in the first place.
“I’m going to be the next Blue Djinn of Babylon,” said Faustina. “That was always my destiny. When Ayesha dies, I’m going to take her place. Isn’t that right, Mr. Rakshasas?”
“Aye, it is. And it’s news I have for you,” said Mr. Rakshasas. “Ayesha, blessed be her name, is dead.”
“I see,” said Faustina. “That explains why you’ve come to get me.” She shrugged sadly. “I guess I’m needed now, when before, I wasn’t.”
“That’s not quite true,” said John. “We didn’t know where to find your spirit until very recently. It was only after I came here the first time, with my sister and your brother, that we guessed where you were to be found.”
“So she did hear me then. Your sister.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me, who did Ayesha appoint as Blue Djinn in my absence?”
John hesitated to say. He knew that telling her the truth would only confirm Faustina’s suspicion that there was a hidden motive behind her rescue. But he also knew he could hardly lie about such a thing. And to her of all people. John thought Faustina was much too pretty to be deceived about anything.
“My mother,” he said.
“Ah,” she said. “That explains why it was you who came to get me, John. You need me to prevent your mother from leaving you and your sister. Isn’t that right?”
“That’s true,” John said unhappily. “At least it was true until I met you.”
Faustina smiled courageously, which seemed to touch John deep inside his own brave heart; he was already certain that there was nothing he would not have done for her.
Leo looked at Mr. Rakshasas, who smiled back at him; both of these older men recognized what had happened between these two young ones, even if they didn’t realize it themselves.
A little awkwardly, as if conscious that he was breaking a kind of spell that hung in the air, Mr. Rakshasas said, “You’ll never cook a pancake by tossing it over in your head, so I’m thinking we’d better be making a move.”
“Wait,” said Faustina. “Before we go back to the physical world, there’s something important I have to tell you, which we might need Leo’s help to understand. I’m not sure what exactly, but something very strange has been happening in the spirit world.”
“There is always something strange happening in the world of spirit,” said Leo awkwardly, a little unwilling to contradict this lovely young girl. “Indeed, I should go so far as
to say that ‘strange’ is the one word that perfectly characterizes the spirit world.”
“What I meant to say was that this is something stranger than the merely strange. This is something abnormal and bizarre. It may even be something evil.
“In the last twelve years I’ve learned to know my way around the spirit world and to recognize the merely strange.” Faustina glanced at Leo as if challenging him to disagree with her definition. “I’ve met poltergeists, banshees, ethereal beings, wraiths, specters, even a demon or two. As you have no doubt gathered for yourselves, the spirit world looks a lot like the physical one. But just a couple of weeks ago something happened that I just can’t explain. I was walking around the gardens here when this enormous power started to drag me along like some huge magnetic force. And amazingly quickly, too. I had no idea where I was going. Only that it was quite irresistible. At the same time, I was aware of all these spirits running in the opposite direction. Away from their usual haunts. And that they were being pursued by these strange-looking men. It was only later on that I managed to get a good look at them.”
“That’s what I was telling you about back at the museum,” Leo told John and Mr. Rakshasas, excitedly.
“At the time I didn’t see them very well,” said Faustina. “Indeed, the power was so strong that I may even have blacked out for a while. I have no idea how long it lasted. Perhaps several hours. When it finally stopped, I didn’t have the first clue where I was. No idea at all. Except that I was in a huge underground cavern with a great sea made of liquid silver that surrounded a humongous green pyramid.”
“An underground green pyramid,” said Mr. Rakshasas. “Sure, I never heard of such a thing.”
“There were lots of these men I mentioned earlier who were working around this pyramid,” continued Faustina. “Although I’m not too sure what they were doing. I didn’t hang around there for long. Especially when I realized they weren’t men at all. They just looked like men. In fact, I think they were zombies.”
“Zombies?” exclaimed John. “You mean like dead people walking around?”
“Sort of,” agreed Faustina. “They weren’t dead. And they weren’t alive, either. It’s like they were living and dead. So I guess they must have been zombies. But to be honest, I’m only calling them that because there was a man there — I don’t know who he was — who used that word. At least that’s what I think he said. Fortunately, they didn’t see me because these zombies looked none too friendly. Anyway, I wandered around for a while trying to find some way out of the cavern. Eventually, I did find my way out, of course. And you can imagine my surprise when I discovered I was in China.”
