She laughed; she couldn’t help it. When he was posturing, she often wondered why he’d not gone on the stage.
“And wash yourself,” he continued, wrinkling his nose. “Good lord, you’ll never marry if you insist on behaving like that.”
“Like what?” she asked innocently. “A common slut? Or an uncommon one?”
“Your language, woman!” he yelled, red-faced.
“Go to hell, Sterling,” she said calmly. “Save it for Vera. She thinks it’s impressive.”
And before the sputtering man could say another word, she stalked out of the room, lashing at the walls, the banister, as she retreated to her room. Slammed the door. Threw the crop against the vanity and only stared when several perfume vials toppled to the floor.
“God!” she shouted then. “God, I hate him!”
And shouted, “What!” to a timid knock on the door, groaning when Vera poked her head into the room.
“Are you all right, dear?”
She slumped onto the bed and struggled to pull off her boots. “Of course I’m not all right. That husband of yours — ”
“Enough!” Vera said, striding across the carpet to stand in front of her, arms folded across her chest. “I do not want to hear another word, do you understand me, Betty? We’ve worked very hard for tonight, and you are not going to spoil it.”
Betty tossed the boot against the wall, yanked off the other one and held it in her lap. “What do you mean?” she asked, her temper finally subsiding enough for her to hear.
“It was going to be a surprise.”
“What surprise?”
Vera drew herself up. “The announcement of your engagement.”
Betty felt her mouth open, felt herself leaping to her feet, and couldn’t stop her hand from grabbing her sister’s shoulder. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“To Jeffrey Isle, dear,” Vera said, shaking off the hand as if it were little more than dust. “Sterling and I have decided you’re going to marry Jeffrey Isle.”
Sydney Edmunds stood at the window of his front room, watching the storm scream down Chancellor Avenue, watching a hackney run ahead of it toward the depot. He sighed and lit a cigar. He sighed again and let the drapery fall from his hand, wishing he could think of some way to excuse himself tonight. He was tired. He needed his sleep. He was getting too old to travel for so long at one time and then be expected to be genial at a dinner where he knew there would be bombast and petty temper displays.
He paced the room aimlessly, lifting a shoulder at a strike of lightning, closing his eyes at the thunder.
He stopped only once, to gaze into a glass-and-teak case he kept in the far corner. Lamplight glowed off the gold figure displayed there, on black velvet, and he shuddered when he imagined the jackal’s head turned, and the eyes lifted to watch him.
It was then that he decided he would go.
And he would bring the damned figurine with him.
If Jeffrey wanted it so badly, then he could have it, and that was that. He doubted John would argue very strongly, and he didn’t care what Turnbell thought. Reskin was dead. What was the use of being stubborn?
For the first time that day, he smiled.
But he couldn’t ignore the storm that refused to let the fire warm him.
The telephone lines were down, and Howard Turnbell swore loudly as he dropped the receiver to its cradle. All day he’d been trying to get hold of his wife, to tell her to send their regrets to the Avlocks. He had no intention of going back there this week, not if that cow, Vera, was going to flirt with him again, and not if Sterling was going to trot out his obsequious, obnoxious speeches aimed at improving his credit while, at the same time, trying to convince one and all that Betty didn’t hold the purse strings, not to mention most of the family’s brains.
The hell with them all, he thought as he stalked across the office; and the hell with this stupid thing, he thought as he reached into the wall safe and pulled out the scarab, wrapped in red silk. As soon as he got home, he was going to summon a messenger and send it off to John. Let him do what he wants; this piece of junk had brought him nothing but trouble.
Lightning flared, the lights flickered, and Turnbell said, “Oh hell,” as he shoved the scarab into his pocket.
The echo of footsteps off stone, voices muffled behind cloth, and the wailing wind seeking a way to fall closer to the ground.
“They will be together tonight.”
“I don’t care. It’s madness. You’ll be pointing a finger straight at us.”
“The storm will be our cloak. By the time it is over, my darling, it won’t matter if they know it or not.”
Echoes.
And footsteps.
And the keening of the wind.
“And what about him? Can we trust him?”
“We can. Until we need him no longer.”
“Are you sure of that? I mean, are you really sure?”
“We have the book, my love. He has the words, but we have the book. Once it is done, we’ll need him no longer.”
“I can’t help it. I’m worried.”
A match lit and held high, flickering light off red hair and black.
“I love you,” she said.
“And I you,” he answered.
“Tonight,” she said, brushing his lips with a kiss. “A long night, my dear Jeffrey. It belongs to the grave.”
Chapter 14
Khirhal Bey thrown from the black gelding just as he reached the cemetery gates. A bolt of lightning just up the street, a charred and smoking branch sparking to the ground, and the horse reared in terror, screaming, eyes white and ears flat. He slid from the saddle before he could grab the mane, and landed in the road, rolled over and covered his head to protect himself from the hooves that lashed blindly out before taking the gelding into the early night.
He groaned softly as he sat up and wiped mud from his face, groaned loudly as he pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. A trembling hand raised as if to call the animal back, then he staggered to the gates and forced them open, slipped through, and held onto the bars until his legs stopped their quaking.
Lightning, and thunder; the headstones flared and vanished, the trees creaked in their twisting, his feet slipped several times, nearly dropping him again.
The rain paused, the wind sighed to a lull, and he broke into a hasty trot, one hand pressed against his side, his eyes narrowed in pain, his lips parted in a grotesque smile.
The mausoleum then, and around the fence to the back where he pulled at the loose bars and tossed them aside, moaning when his arm moved, nearly collapsing when bile flooded his throat and made him turn his head sharply to empty his mouth.
No sound but the dripping of water from the leaves.
No movement until he made his way across the wet grass and sagged against the marble wall, eyes closed, lungs working for a breath; turning when the pain subsided, lifting a hand head high and pressing against the corner of a stained block.
A rumbling.
The wind.
A narrow section of the wall turning inward, revealing a flight of stairs that led deep into the ground.
The rain.
He fell forward against the inner wall, slipped and slid down the steps into the chamber below where he slumped to the floor and covered his face with his hands.
Not now, he ordered to the agony inside; not now, it cannot be, there are things we must do.
Taking slow shallow breaths, then, he stripped off his wet clothes and donned the raiments of the supplicant to the master he served. Then he took the wooden bowl and placed it on the shallow iron plate over the brazier where a single breath brought him flame that he watched for a full minute. He opened the chest next and took out a handful of long narrow leaves, took the figurine’s head off and brought the body to the fire.
He poured the oil.
He watched it heat.
He dropped the leaves in one by one, stepped back, and began to pray.
> For an hour he said the words he had learned from the stolen book, the tablet of prayers the heathen Reskin had stolen from his people; for an hour he watched the silent fire, watched the black smoke from the boiling leaves, nearly swooned at the fragrance that began to fill the room in spite of the wind cascading down the stairs.
Then he picked up the bowl. not feeling the burning, and poured the libation drop by drop at the foot of the stone cabinet.
“Sakhtu,” he whispered as each drop boiled on the floor. “Sakhtu, it is time.”
Freddy scrambled on hands and knees into the woods as the fire bellowed through the cottage. Sparks spiraled on the wind, pinpricks on the back of his neck, the backs of his hands, smoldering on the back of his long tattered coat. He didn’t look around, nor did he look side to side; he kept his gaze on the trees that leaned away from him in the storm.
He remembered.
He knew what Mr. Vicar had to be told.
But Gert Naysmith’s house was dying, and he couldn’t stop crying, and finally he dropped to his stomach and wept against the mud, sobbing and moaning and beating the ground with his fists because it was his fault the lightning had found where he was hiding, his fault the monsters were still chasing him in his dreams.
He was frightened.
The house was burning.
And when the storm returned in a great fall of thunder, he· leapt to his feet and began running.
Cab Planter lay on the wooden bench in the station’s front room, his hat for a pillow, his feet crossed at the ankles. He hated staying home on a miserable night like this; there was no one he could complain to, no one he could hold, and those on the night watch were better than nothing.
The telephone rang, and he stared at the empty desk, grunted to his feet and pushed through the gate. When he picked up the receiver and held it to his ear, all he could hear was a faint hissing, like someone whispering from the grave.
“Jesus,” he said to Alden when the sergeant came back into the room, “this is gonna be one hell of a night.”
The doors of the stone cabinet opened without a sound.
Khirhal Bey bowed his head and gave the blackshadow the first of three names.
“There is never,” Howard Turnbell snarled to the empty office, “anyone around when you need them. Jesus, this world is going straight to hell in a handbasket and nobody gives a damn!”
He was standing in his office, coat and hat on, gloves in one hand. A messenger had come to him an hour before, requesting an urgent meeting, there in the bank. Had it been anyone else but Syd Edmunds he would have given the messenger an answer that would have curled the kid’s hair; but for friendship’s sake, he waited, and waited for the hour before his patience grew thin and he turned off the lights.
“The hell with him, “ he muttered as he backed out of the office and locked the door behind him. “The hell with them all.”
Then he dropped the key into his pocket and turned around, and for a moment his ill humor passed as he surveyed his domain — the checkered marble floor, the gleaming marble pillars, the elegant desks, the tellers’ cages, the paintings on the wall and the mural on the ceiling. Lit now only by the glow of a streetlamp outside, the high and wide windows running with rain and running blacksnake shadows across the floor.
A deep breath as if he could smell and taste the money; a satisfied smile and a slow shake of his head.
He would be generous. He would stand here, in his kingdom, and give Syd another chance. But he would not speculate; speculation was for fools like Jeffrey Isle and poor young John. He would wait for five minutes before going home, to the warmth of his fire, his brandy, and the clever chatter of a wife he’d been with forty years.
He smiled.
He adjusted his hat.
He saw the large shadow pass across the window and pause at the doors.
Your five minutes are up, Syd, he thought as he pulled on his gloves.
A shadowarm lifted, and fell against the frame, an echo in the empty room, hollow and loud.
Turnbell started forward, his mood broken, his heels firm. “We’re closed, you idiot,” he called. “Don’t you know the time?”
The shadowarm again, and the heavy frame trembled.
“Damn you,” the banker muttered in disgust, quickening his pace and raising his voice. “Come back tomorrow! We’re closed, damnit, we’re closed!”
And the doors shattered inward, splinters cast by the wind, rain sweeping across the marble.
Turnbell cried out in anger, and cursed because he’d left his walking stick back in the office.
Then he saw it in the doorway.
“My god,” he whispered. “My god, who are you?”
It stepped over the wreckage, sending its shadow out before it, pushing Turnbell back a pace until he spun around with a gasp and ran for his office. There was a special telephone line there, connecting the bank directly to the police station; he would use it, he would be all right, be wouldn’t look around though he heard the footsteps following-slow, and heavy, crushing wood and glass, while the wind tilted with the paintings and cleared the desks of all their papers, and why, he thought in panic, wouldn’t the goddamned key fit?
A fearful glance over his shoulder, and he snapped his head back around, to stare at the keyhole, watch his hands insert the key, watch his fingers slip off, grab hold, slip off and grab again.
The door opened.
A desk was tossed aside, crashing into the wall like the thunder detonating outside.
“No,” the banker gasped as he slammed the door and locked it. “No,” as he ran to the wall phone and lifted the receiver.
The door shuddered.
The wind slipped in underneath.
A crank, then two, then one again, and the door exploded, the blackshadow stepped in.
Turnbell felt his heart racing, felt his legs begin to weaken, and he almost made it to his desk and the gun in the center drawer before the blackshadow’s hand closed around his neck.
He screamed.
He lashed out with his fists and his feet.
He looked into its face, and saw his kingdom explode.
Sgt. Alden stared sullenly at the board on the wall behind him. There were ten rows of red lights, five lights across, and the third one, third row, was blinking in time to a soft chime from a bell mounted above.
“It’s the damned storm,” he said, getting out of his chair to slap the board’s side. “Always happens in a damned storm.”
Planter, once more reclined on the bench, was tempted to agree. He had no wish to go out there tonight, no wish to get soaked to the skin just because some old maid or old man working late in a shop had panicked at a shadow.
Then he sighed and pushed himself up.
Unfortunately. this wasn’t a shop. It was a bank. Worse, it was Howard Turnbell’s bank, and if someone didn’t go over there and have a look around, Stockton when he returned would have Planter’s scalp.
“Hell,” he said, and reached for his coat.
“You going?” Alden asked in surprise.
“Yep. Have to. Get your hat, you need the fresh air.”
“Me?” Alden scowled. “It’s raining out there!”
“Right.”
“Jeez, c’mon, Cab, have a heart.”
“Your coat, Tom,” he said.
“But it’s the storm, I tell you!”
“And if it isn’t? You want to tell Turnbell?”
Alden sighed. “Damn. Planter, you know, you’re a goddamned pain in the ass.”
John listened to the return of the storm and decided he would pass on the dinner tonight. He needed time to think, because he’d done too much thinking already, and every answer he could find always sent him back to the page where he saw the blackshadow, lying in a sarcophagus, arms folded across its chest. And beneath the sketch the. legend that claimed the body belonged to a minor priest who called himself Sakhtu.
On the page the eyes were closed.
He
shuddered and went to the phone, and cursed when he heard the dead silence of a dead line. With Karragan gone, there was no way now he’d be able to get in touch with the Avlocks. He would have to go. Indeed, perhaps it would be better that he did. Then he would be able to talk with someone about what he had found, and they in turn would tell him what an ass he was being.
Betty would laugh and show her concern, Syd would bluster and Howard would scoff, and it would be worth it even to hear Jeffrey sneer.
He started to snap off the light, then changed his mind. Instead, he scribbled a note reminding the Karragans of his invitation just in case they should return. All he needed now to complete the day would be Mary carping at him for scaring her half to death, not being home when she stepped in the door. He brought it to the hall and left it on the table, in the center of the silver plate where the calling cards should be.
Say, Betty, he thought, turning toward the stairs, did you know that there’s a dead man walking around Oxrun Station? Syd, old man, I have solved another murder and you won’t believe the killer’s name.
“Johnny,” he told himself as he hurried to his room to dress, “this is crazy. You’re crazy.”
But on the page the eyes were closed.
Chapter 15
Freddy tumbled from the trees onto Williamston Pike, heedless of the clinging mud, the dead grass across his chest. He tripped into a run, arms spread to give him balance, mouth open to give him air. He ignored the rain lashing his face, ignored the stinging the fire had lashed to his skin. He could only see the road ahead, the way it shimmered in the lightning, the way it tilted left and right to throw him off his stride, the way it stretched into a tunnel and shrank to a serpent’s back.
He ran.
And he cried.
And a branch cracked off a pine tree and cracked across his skull.
“Not bad,” John told himself as he examined his reflection in the mirror that stood framed beside his closet. The evening jacket was cut a bit too snugly for his comfort, and the collar was impossibly stiff, but the cravat was finally right and the shirt had stopped bunching at the waist, and he liked the way the black-and-gold waistcoat gave him just that right touch of ostentation. Sterling, he thought, will have a field day with that, and he grinned and hummed all the way down to the foyer.
The Universe of Horror Volume 3: The Long Night of the Grave (Neccon Classic Horror) Page 10
