by Brian Lumley
‘You think too much!’ Khumeni snarled at him. ‘And mostly you think of women. That’s your trouble, isn’t it? Women! You like to think you’re getting your share – even when you’ve no share coming. It’s what got you on the wrong side of The Family. Shame on you, Garcia! And she was one of theirs, too. Well, these women are mine – mine, you hear? If only for tonight. And I’m far more jealous of them than ever the Mafia could be. Now, when we fly out of here back to America, will you want paying in gold, Garcia – or would you prefer some other heavy metal?’
That visibly shook the other man. He sputtered, made vague motions with his hands. He might have started to protest, but again Khumeni cut him off: ‘Now do as I say! Take her to the second room and put her on the bed next to the English girl. And try to keep your grubby fingers off her. ‘You – ’ Clumsy as a cripple, he half turned to look at the closest of the other two men. ‘You help him.’
The two Americans picked up the doped, unprotesting woman between them as if she was a sack of potatoes. Grunting, they carried her through the open door and out of sight. Khumeni reached out and closed the door behind them, then stumblingly turned to the Englishman. ‘Willis,’ he gurglingly whispered, ‘I think this Tony Garcia is going to be a problem – if we let him. When this is over, remind me to think of a suitable solution.’
The other nodded. Immaculately dressed and straight-backed, he flicked imaginary specks of dust from his sleeve. And in his pure English he said: ‘Like sulphuric acid? That is a solution, isn’t it? I was always very bad at chemistry.’ His voice was cold as ice, so perfectly metrical as to be almost mechanical.
Khumeni chuckled. ‘That’s what I like about you, Bernard Willis,’ he said. ‘Even your jokes are quite emotionless! Perhaps I’ll let you deal with Garcia, eh? Maybe that will give you a real laugh …’
Chapter Four
Kastrouni’s flesh was crawling again.
There was something about this Khumeni, an impossible something which he, Kastrouni, had to find out about, had to discover one way or the other beyond any reasonable doubt. But the way the man talked, the way he stood – like a cripple – his arrogant attitudes of command, authority, threat: they were all identical to that other figure, that figure whose presence at the back of Kastrouni’s mind was like a corpse rotting, whose stink kept wafting up from a mental grave which by now should lie forgotten. Impossible, yes – but there were the books, the paraphernalia from the packs, and there was … there was this Khumeni.
Kastrouni controlled himself, resisted for the moment the temptation to find a new position; but he desperately wanted to get a good look at Khumeni’s face. The others – the American thugs and this Englishman – they were only ciphers; well, perhaps Willis was a little more than that; but Khumeni was the key, the focal point about which all else revolved.
The Americans came back. ‘Done,’ said the one with the cautious voice. ‘All done, Mr Khumeni. What now?’
‘Now, Gillfellon?’ Khumeni answered. ‘Now you two can get out of it. Take your cars back to Nicosia. We’re all four booked on the 2:00 A.M. flight. Wait at the airport and keep a low profile. Willis and I will be there in plenty of time.’
‘And meanwhile – what will you do?’ (This from Garcia.) ‘You and Willis?’
‘Willis will wait for me and bring me to Nicosia, of course.’
Garcia licked his lips, brushed fingers through his grease-shiny, slicked-back hair. ‘And … the women?’ he inclined his head toward the open door to the bedrooms.
‘You never learn, do you?’ said Khumeni quietly, gratingly. And to Willis: ‘Bernard, if this lout isn’t out of here and in his car by a count of ten, I want you to put your gun in his right ear and pull the trigger!’
Garcia stepped back, reached toward his inside jacket pocket, froze. Willis held a weapon on him, its blocky silencer unwavering. The gun had seemed to appear from nowhere. Cool as ice, Willis inquired: ‘Can I put one in his belly first?’ He casually aimed the automatic in the general direction of Garcia’s navel.
Khumeni appeared to ignore him. ‘One,’ he said. And: ‘Two … three …’
Garcia didn’t wait for four. He left the door swinging open on the night. The man Gillfellon backed out after him, looking sickly and shrugging apologetically.
‘Actually,’ said Khumeni when he heard the engines of their cars start up, ‘I don’t like either one of them. Make a note of that, Willis.’
Willis pocketed his weapon. ‘Where shall I wait for you?’
Khumeni gave a lop-sided shrug. ‘Here, if you like.’
Willis shook his head. ‘No, I think I’d rather be a little more remote than that. You’re in a devilish mood, George, and I’ve been with you long enough to know how unhealthy that is. For anyone too close to you, I mean.’
Khumeni laughed like the gurgling of an underground sump. He nodded. ‘As you will. Then go somewhere and park your car and smoke a cigarette or two, but be back in an hour. By that time it will be over. By then, too, we’ll do well to get ourselves off this island. Tomorrow it will be a bad place to be. The situation, as they say, will be deteriorating. Or if you like, all hell will be breaking loose here.’ And again he laughed.
Willis visibly shuddered, then controlled himself. ‘I have a feeling it will be breaking long before then,’ he said. ‘Indeed, shortly …’ He headed for the door. ‘Very well, I’ll go for a little drive – but tell me,’ he half turned, paused at the door. ‘Why here? Oh, I know that you want to turn Greek and Turk and British soldier each against the others – but why here, this house? You were very specific about that: that it should start in the house of this Costas Kastrouni. And you’ve named him in those messages you’ve arranged. But why him? What’s he done to you?’
‘The old man? Nothing,’ said Khumeni. ‘It was his son, a long time ago. As for what he did … you’ve seen me, Bernard. You know!’
Khumeni’s words froze Dimitrios Kastrouni rigid. Even with his monstrous suspicions, still he believed he could no longer trust his own ears. But he could see Willis’s face: it grew pale as the Englishman said, ‘The old man’s son had something to do with … with that?’
Khumeni nodded. ‘Yes, he had everything to do with it. I suppose you could say he made an ass of me, eh?’ But now there was no laughter, not even a chuckle. ‘I’m just settling an old score, that’s all. I haven’t yet tracked down the man who did this to me, so I’m exacting payment from his father. Payment in full!’
Up above the two, Kastrouni’s thoughts whirled. Feverishly, he tried to make some sense of what he’d heard. It had formed, in effect, a confirmation of everything he’d feared most in this world. And now, as further confirmation, what he wanted most of all was just one good look at Khumeni’s face. Oh, he knew well enough how that face would look, but he must see it anyway. And then there would be only one thing left to do, one last act to perform if Dimitrios Kastrouni was to know any peace at all on this earth. And that would be the killing of the man who now called himself George Khumeni.
As Willis left the house and Khumeni went through into the corridor leading to the bedrooms, Kastrouni squirmed backwards like a lizard until he could reach behind him and locate his speargun. He fondled the pistol-grip and gritted his teeth in the confines and the dusty gloom of the space between the roofs. And awkwardly carrying his weapon before him, he crawled forward again until he was over the first bedroom. There he brushed away a shroud of thick cobwebs and carefully put his eye to a tiny knothole. Any small sound he might have made was drowned out by the crunch of gravel under the tyres of Willis’s car as he drove away from the villa; by that and by Khumeni’s own activity in the room below; or so Kastrouni must hope.
But if he’d thought that at last he might see the supposed Armenian’s face, here he was cheated. The small bedroom below was lighted with a single oil lamp; not only was the light dim but fumes rising from the lamp stung his straining eye where he gazed down into the dusky gloom of the room.
Khumeni was there, a shadow standing at the foot of the bed, head bowed almost as if in supplication. Then, as he began to mumble harshly, Kastrouni saw that it was supplication of a sort. Entreaty, yes. Prayer – but to whom? Or to what … ?
‘Master,’ Khumeni’s voice gurgled up and mixed with the oily smoke of the lamp. ‘Most Devoted Servant of Shaitan – Avatar of the Great Fallen One, Whose Beauty is Unbearable – His Messenger on Earth and among men - Father, aid now Thy son, this wholly worthless one whose only desire is to prosper Thy will abroad, in the Name of Our Lord, Shaitan! Demogorgon, let Thy great lust come into me, that tonight I may father men in my likeness as Thou fathered me in Thine! I call upon Thee in the name of Ab – which was my first name – and by the Unholy Tablet of Power, writ by Shaitan Himself!’
As the last words were spoken – invocation to forces Kastrouni knew now existed, and not merely in some mazed corner of his mind – so there came … a change. It was as quick as that: there was an immediate alteration in the atmosphere (in the ether?) and a terrific and very tangible depression of Kastrouni’s spirit; his soul at once felt weighted with lead. The knothole, which only a single tick of a clock ago had issued thin oil fumes and a weak beam of light, now vented a continuous icy blast, so that the hidden watcher almost cried out loud as he jerked his face to one side and dabbed furiously at his watering eyes with the back of his wrist. But as the blast of frozen air died down a little, determined to discover exactly what the man – the creature? – below was about, he once more lowered his face into position.
And at once some of the words Khumeni had spoken made sense. ‘Let Thy great lust come into me,’ he had begged, and certainly something appeared to have come into him. His outline was dimmer now in the guttering light of the lamp, but it was an outline filled with motion. As Kastrouni watched, so the shape below seemed to swell larger as Khumeni literally tore off his clothes and hobbled to the single bed. Upon it, for the first time, Kastrouni saw the sprawled form of a female: one of the women Garcia had mentioned, but not the Turkish-Cypriot woman. This one seemed dressed more in the mode of a Greek peasant girl, though in this poor light Kastrouni couldn’t be sure. In any case, he was more interested in Khumeni.
Glaring through his knothole in red-eyed, morbid fascination, he strained to make out the figure of the man more clearly. His figure and his face. But uselessly; the room below might as well be in total darkness.
Now Khumeni had stripped the woman, turning her face downward, mounting her like a beast where he stood upright beside the bed and gripped her to him. And his grunting and laughter and bestial slobbering almost completely drowned out the moaned and sharply gasped protests of his only half-conscious victim. Hearing those protests, Kastrouni saw that indeed she was Greek-Cypriot; he felt the hot blood surge in his veins, gripped his speargun tighter yet. It could be of course that these women were here of their own free will, but he doubted it. Then, with a final cry from the girl and a howl from Khumeni – of pleasure and seeming agony combined – the throbbing shape below split in two parts as the girl was thrust aside, to lie sprawling half-on, half-off the bed. And as Khumeni staggered to the bedroom door, opened it and went out into the corridor –
It was the merest glimpse, only that – the sight of Khumeni silhouetted like a blot against the comparatively bright light of the corridor, a glimpse almost as brief as a camera’s shutter opening and closing on its subject – and yet it drew that loud gasp which had been threatening to break from Kastrouni’s lips with each passing moment, so that only the slamming of the bedroom’s door and the moaning of the raped girl drowned the sound out.
Then Kastrouni was rolling, holding his speargun before him in both hands and rolling as silently as possible, trying in this fashion to cover the greatest distance in the shortest time. Calculating that distance, and as he heard from below the opening and closing of the second bedroom door, Kastrouni stopped rolling, began searching for a peephole. Nothing!
He peered all about, saw close to the plywood perimeter a thin crack of light streaming upward, crawled swiftly, silently to that vantage point. Then a desperate pause as he fought to hold back a sneeze brought on by a sudden puff of dust, and precious seconds wasted as he pinched his nose to clear it and wiped spontaneous tears from his eyes.
This second bedroom came up against the end wall of the house; to its front was the corridor, to one side a shuttered window looking out on the garden. Kastrouni remembered well the layout of the villa and wished now that he was down in the garden, where he might be able to look in on what was happening. Instead … all he had was this narrow crack where a board had warped and split. He put his eye to the fault and viewed an empty corner of the room. That was all, and no way to change the angle of view. Except –
No, the corner wasn’t empty: there on the wall hung an old mirror! And the scene in that tarnished glass was one of such sheer unnatural horror as to cause Kastrouni to doubt his very sanity – or would have had that effect if he had not twenty years ago seen something equally monstrous – or might have if he had not at least half expected it. However distorted that picture, however warped by the bad glass and flattened by the angle through which it was viewed, still its content could not be disguised. The light in the second bedroom was electric and good; Kastrouni’s worst suspicions were suspicions no more; his eyes told no lie.
Khumeni, as he – as it – called himself now, was finished with the Turkish woman. As he withdrew himself from her, Kastrouni should not have been surprised by the size of his erection – but he was anyway. And now it was the turn of the English girl. She was dressed in uniform (that of the QARANC as it would later turn out, Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps, but that meant nothing to Kastrouni, except that she must be from the garrison at Dhekelia) which the lusting thing in the room must first at least partially remove. This he did while still the watcher gawped, paralysed by shock and horror. And when the girl lay naked, her clothes from the waist down literally ripped from her, once more Khumeni turned her to the preferred position of the beast.
And as he entered her without pause … that was when Kastrouni knew that this thing had to die. Ab, Guigos, Khumeni, spawn of Satan: whatever he was, he had to die. And Kastrouni would never have a better opportunity than the one he had right here and now.
Heedless now of any noise he might make, he turned on his back, swivelled his legs round until his feet came up against the perimeter of ply panels, bent his legs at the knees and drove his feet forward. The panel gave at once, shattering from its fixtures as it was driven out into the soft starlight of the garden; and Dimitrios Kastrouni following it, tossing his speargun into the lower branches of a pomegranate tree and lowering himself by his fingertips, then dropping lightly to the ground. Up on his feet in a second, he tore his weapon from where it was tangled in the trees, turned to the shuttered window of the bedroom.
But as the speargun had come free, so its hurlers had slipped from their notch in the spear’s shaft, whipping forward and cracking against Kastrouni’s knuckles. He cursed, dropped the weapon, and at that precise moment heard Khumeni’s muffled cry of surprise and outraged inquiry from the room beyond the shutters:
‘Who … ? WHO … ?’
The English girl, perhaps part-shaken from her drugged state by Khumeni’s hoarse shouting, gave a cry of pain and protest – cut off by a curse from Khumeni, a ringing slap and a dull thud.
Frantic motion then inside the room, and the sound of someone snatching at the catches on the windows. Khumeni must be going to take a look outside! Kastrouni quickly wrapped a handkerchief round the numb, bleeding knuckles of his right hand, grabbed up his speargun and somehow managed to reload it, started to come upright holding the weapon awkwardly in his left hand. But he was much too close to the window, and that was a mistake.
He had expected the startled creature in the room to move with a degree of caution: he knew it was half-crippled – indeed, only half man – and fairly slow-moving.
Also, the memory would not leave him of the other Khumeni, which had been called Guigos: that ancient, diseased and infirm bag of bones he had known in Israel. He could not yet wholly tie that memory, that mental picture of the cripple together with this new, much more vigorous incarnation.
But the Khumeni avatar was vigorous, so that when the louvred shutters smashed open outwards – smashed into Kastrouni and knocked him from his feet – he was taken completely by surprise. On all fours, dazedly he looked up. And there at the window, silhouetted against the bright light of the bedroom, stood Khumeni glaring down on him. His eyes found Kastrouni, knew him, and in the next moment the look on his awful face changed from outrage through astonishment to vengeful triumph.
Looking at that face, Kastrouni knew that hatred was mutual, knew now why Khumeni was here in the first place. Just as he wished Khumeni dead and would now try to kill him, so the monster wanted him dead, and that was the real reason for his being here. He had not succeeded in finding Kastrouni and so would do that which must surely bring Kastrouni to him: he would strike at Kastrouni’s very heart, strike at his family, his home.
Khumeni filled the window, arms wide where they held back the shutters, eyes glaring down on Kastrouni from a face filled with poison.
And now those eyes filled with something else: a terrible malice, an awful intent.
‘You?’ Khumeni growled, bending to reach down his arms and hands. ‘But of course. Who else would it be?’
His eyes, his voice, his very presence – all were hypnotic, like a snake’s hypnosis when it holds a bird in thrall. As the hands reached down for him, so Kastrouni felt this hypnotic paralysis – felt and fought it. He glared at that monstrous composite face and poured his hatred on it. The face of Ihya Khumnas with his hooked nose and gleaming white teeth, which even now bared themselves in a snarl; the face, too, of Yakob Mhireni, with its livid blaze of scar tissue; and what of the coarse, hairy trunk from the waist down, for the moment hidden by the wall between?
