Isle reached into his coat then, and Betty gasped when he pulled out a gun, at the same time slipping his other arm around Yasfiera’s waist as she placed a hand on his chest.
“To live forever, John,” he said proudly. “To know the secrets, and to know the words, is to live forever.” He hugged the woman more tightly. “We, John, shall do it. And you are not going to stop us.”
“I’ll burn it,” John said, his throat suddenly dry.
Isle smiled and shook his head. ‘‘I’ll kill you where you stand, old friend, and still get what I need. Why don’t you hand it over now, and save your life. No. Save Mistress Betty’s.” And he swung the barrel of the gun toward her, his finger visibly tightening on the trigger.
John damned him with a look, and though Betty’s grip told him not to do it, he drew his hand away from the fire and stared at the bowl. “All those people,” he said. “They’re dead because of you.”
“It can’t be helped. It’s the way of it sometimes.”
Yasfiera smiled then, and he wanted nothing more at that moment than to see her in her grave.
“The bowl, John.”
Then Sterling stomped into the room, demanding at the top of his voice that someone get the half-wit out of his kitchen. Isle whirled toward him, and John instantly leapt from the hearth and slapped the bowl against his arm, sending the gun across the floor to stop at Avlock’s feet. At the same time, he slammed a fist into Isle’s stomach, doubling him over, a kick sending him writhing to the floor. Then he ran from the house and raced straight for the stables.
There were footsteps behind him.
He didn’t look back, nor did he take the time to saddle the roan; he only touched its side, said a word, and scrambled onto its back, nearly knocking Betty over as he hurried the animal from its stall.
“John, where are you going?” she called over the wind.
“The graveyard,” he shouted as the roan skittered sideways. “Stay here. I’ll be back.”
And he was gone, low on the animal’s neck as Isle ran from the house, waving the gun uselessly in the blinding, stinging rain.
Into the dark, into the storm.
Using the roan’s mane to halt it when he saw Sgt. Alden in the police carriage careening toward him.
Leaning over and glaring when he heard about Thornbell, and the fire at Sydney Edmunds’; shouting over the wind that the man should fetch Planter and meet him, with guns, at Memorial Park.
He didn’t wait for an answer, but kicked the horse’s ribs and bent low again when it leapt forward with a toss of its head, a baring of its teeth.
To the gates he forced open.
Along the path toward the back.
Lightning over his shoulder; thunder clapping over the graves.
Until he reached the mausoleum and saw the gap in the fence and the open passage in the wall.
He gave himself no time to think.
Slapping the roan’s hindquarters to send it on its way, he slipped quickly through the fence and stood with his back against the wall, trying to take a breath, wiping the rain from his eyes, finally leaning over and peering down the stone staircase.
The leaves, he thought; Freddy had seen leaves and had known someone had been in the mausoleum when no one should have been here.
The bowl was in his pocket.
He touched it, swallowed, and took the first step down.
And the rain abruptly stopped. Thunder rumbling in the distance; a faint flicker of lightning. The wind settling, and the air touched with a mist that rose and turned to fog.
An inconstant light below; the scent of something strong that made him cover his mouth until he no longer felt like gagging.
And a voice — insistent and soft, chanting words he didn’t know.
Downward, one step at a time.
And at the bottom, the stone room, and Khirhal Bey in blinding white kneeling on the floor, arms wide, fingers spread, facing an open cabinet in which he saw the shadow of a sarcophagus whose lid was tipped to one side. Sparks of gold, flares of diamonds.
He saw the table, the brazier, the open chest, and the dark pool of blood that gathered at the man’s knees.
Suddenly Khirhal Bey realized he was not alone. He looked sharply upward and saw John in the doorway. His eyes narrowed, and relaxed, and a feral smile touched his lips.
“You are foolish, Mr. Vicar,” he said without rising to his feet. “You will die when Lord Sakhtu follows you to me.”
“Follows?” And he waved his hand when he understood. The blackshadow, the creature, had killed the others for the artifacts, somehow knowing where they were, and knowing now where he was.
He couldn’t resist a glance behind him, and when he looked back, the Egyptian was trying to stand. But there was too much blood, too much pain, and he soon gave up the effort.
“You will die as well,” he said quietly, stepping deeper into the chamber.
“It does not matter. I will live again.”
John shook his head. “Not if you’re hoping for help from Jeffrey Isle. The man has plans of his own, and I doubt they include you.”
Khirhal Bey smiled without mirth, managed a quick mirthless laugh that soon turned to a hoarse gagging. He swayed, nearly toppled, then abruptly became rigid.
“My Lord,” he whispered.
And John saw the shadow burying his own on the floor.
Chapter 17
John didn’t look around until he’d put the brazier between himself and the blackshadow slowly moving down the stairs. Khirhal Bey was groaning now, whatever words or prayers there were trapped in the agony of a fresh flow of blood.
John paid him no attention; he could only stare through numbing fear at the creature moving into the light, its right arm extended while its left hand carried the statuette and the scarab. There were bloodstains on its chest, droplets shining about its shoulders, and the first blur of fog began to twist around its feet.
And the eyes where the deathwrap had been cut away on its face-nothing more than holes that revealed the same cold black emptiness of a starless winter sky. Watching him as it stood uncertain, its head slightly cocked to listen to Bey’s moaning.
Then a hand grabbed at John’s leg, and he lashed out to drive the dying Egyptian to his side, turning as the creature threw its burden on the floor and came at him, head palsied, legs stiff, hands out and clawed as it reached for his throat.
The fog thickened.
There were voices outside.
“Here!” John cried. “Here, I’m in here!”
Feinting a run for the stairs, and when the creature awkwardly turned, grabbing the brazier by its center and lifting it, tipping it so that the bowl on the iron plate fell off and rolled empty to the wall.
The creature’s bound jaw worked as if it were trying to speak; its hands still reaching, the embers glowing into low flame.
Footsteps then, and a woman’s insistent voice.
It turned just as Isle and Yasfiera Bey charged into the chamber, grabbing each other when they saw Khirhal on the floor and the blackshadow watching them, indecisive in spite of the words the woman gave it in a tongue John didn’t understand.
“Put it down, John,” Isle said quietly, taking his hand from his pocket and showing the gun.
Yasfiera spoke again.
Blackshadow, waiting.
And John thrust the brazier out as hard as he could, the flaming coals and ash showering over the creature, its wrappings immediately bursting into flame.
Yasfiera screamed and covered her face with her hands.
Isle hesitated before firing twice, but John had already turned and threw the iron stand at him. The shots ricocheted off the ceiling; Isle crumpled to the floor, grasping the brazier where one of its raised spikes had pierced his chest, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth, his eyes opened and dazed.
Yasfiera, screaming, her flesh flaking to dust.
The blackshadow, ablaze and stumbling around the room, toppling the t
able, passing over Khirhal Bey and setting his robes afire.
John backed away from it all, swallowing to keep himself from joining the woman, his hands stretched behind him, searching for the entrance because he dared not take his gaze from the torch that finally found him.
Jeffrey, moaning.
Yasfiera, slowly dropping to her knees, dust and yellowed bone.
And he reached the stairs a step ahead of the creature, stumbled as he ran up, splitting the skin on one knee. Biting back a groan and running again. Falling over the top step and tumbling onto the grass where Betty and Cab Planter were racing toward him, through the fog.
He looked behind him and down, and saw the torch following still, blackshadow still clear in the colorless fire.
“John, for god’s sake,” Planter said, hauling him to his feet.
But John shook him off and fell against the wall, slapping at it, shouting for the others to help him, feeling his frustration growing, feeling the heat, the cold, until something gave beneath the marble and the door began to close.
“Jesus Christ,” Planter whispered.
Blackshadow, and fire, and as the door sealed itself without making a sound, a sudden bellow of anguish that echoed over the graves.
He sat before the fire, a lap robe over his knees.
Betty knelt beside him, holding a glass of red wine.
“John,” she said, as she’d said a hundred times over the past several weeks. “John.”
And he stirred.
First a quivering of a hand, then a blink of an eye, and finally a wan pull at his lips to make himself smile.
“I’ve been away,” he whispered hoarsely.
She smiled, and rose, and gave him a long gentle kiss. “You have indeed, John Vicar.”
A long breath, a longer sigh.
“Poor Jeffrey,” he said. “Oh my god, poor old Jeff.”
Betty pulled a chair beside his, reached over and took his hand. “Sterling had another wall built over . . . that one. He complains that it ruins the symmetry of the thing, but he did it.”
He turned his head. “You had nothing to do with it, I suppose?”
“Not I,” she said, a hand to her throat. “Whatever makes you think that, John?”
The smile to a grin, and he squeezed her hand. ‘‘I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For . . .” And he nodded to indicate his helplessness, the fog-filled shell he had crawled into after the marble door sealed the tomb.
“Vera says I shall have to marry you now. It just isn’t proper for me to be here all the time, looking after a single man with no chaperon to be sure you won’t do something dreadful.”
A footstep behind the chair, and Mrs. Karragan placed a tray of drink and sandwiches on a low table. When she saw John’s face, she smiled and nodded and said not a word as she hurried from the room.
“Help me up,” he said then, and brooked no arguments as he pushed himself to his feet. His legs were a bit wobbly, but the shell was broken, the fog gone. and when she helped him to the porch and he saw the blue sky, felt the summer warmth, he nearly burst into tears, with both joy and sorrow.
Leo was busily trimming the shrubs by the wall.
A crow stalked the lawn, warily followed by a sparrow.
“Ned is back,” Betty said as they walked toward the road.
“Oh?”
“Cab hasn’t said a thing. There’s some story or other, but he hasn’t said a thing.”
“Two bowls,” he said then.
“John, please.”
“No, it’s all right.” He took her arm, kissed her cheek. “The first set — bowl, scarab, statuette — were to bring that monster back to life when none of us would sell. The second set was for Jeffrey and Yasfiera; that was the way of it, I think, the way to keep them from dying.” He shook his head. “All gone now, and somehow, it’s a shame, don’t you think? All that knowledge lost. Thousands of years before this country was even dreamt of, and now it’s all lost.”
“Past,” she told him softly. “It’s past, John.”
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
And they stood at the wall watching the trees dance, watching a flock of geese swing over the village.
“You know,” he said suddenly, “I’m awfully hungry.”
She laughed. “Well, you should be, you dope. You’ve scarcely eaten for a month.”
“Then it’s settled. We will have lunch before we go into town.”
“John, you’re not well enough yet.”
“I certainly am. And if you don’t want to make your sister out a liar, you’d better listen to me, woman. There are judges to see, and all those damned papers.”
Betty stood away from him, her hands on her hips. “That’s it?” she said. “That’s all the proposal I get?”
He shrugged. “But I’m ill,” he told her. “You just said so yourself. Surely you don’t want me getting down on one knee and catching a chill which will give me a cold which will — ”
“All right,” she said. “God, you’re going to be a chore, John Vicar. You’re going to be one damned big chore.”
He laughed and moved to embrace her, then widened his eyes when he saw a familiar figure riding down the Pike on a gleaming new bicycle. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
Betty took his hand and they hurried through the gate. “I didn’t think you’d mind,” she said as Freddy Jones pedaled toward them. “Someone had to take care of the Hall until the estate was settled. And Freddy absolutely refused to set foot in the Park.”
Freddy stopped in front of them, grinning broadly as he pumped John’s hand until John thought his shoulder would come off.
“You look good, Freddy,” he said.
“I am, Mr. Vicar,” Jones said, nodding. “I’m very good. You know, Miss Jerrard, she’s even teaching me to read and do my numbers.”
“Is that so?”
“And he’s a marvelous student,” Betty said with some pride. “Nobody makes fun of him anymore, isn’t that right?”
“Right,” the man said, reaching into his shirt. “I can read, and I can add, and pretty soon I’m going to have my own business and be rich, just like you.”
The laughter was friendly, and only John noticed what the man held in his hand.
“Every night,” Freddy said. “I read every night. Out loud to myself so I can hear my mistakes.”
It was a book.
“I just wish,” Freddy said, “there weren’t so many noises at night. They’re scary, you know?”
Bound in dark leather.
“It’s only the house, Freddy,” Betty said.
“I guess,” he said.
On the cover the figure of a jackal-headed man.
“But sometimes I think I can hear people walking.”
The Universe of Horror Volume 3: The Long Night of the Grave (Neccon Classic Horror) Page 12
