One Foot in the Grave - The Halflife Trilogy Book I

by Wm. Mark Simmons

  No.

  Then how can I help you with your Plan A?

  You can’t.

  I do not understand.

  I want you close to me just in case Plan A fails.

  But if Plan A fails. . . .

  Plan B (I thought), and sent him a mental picture of the probable explosion.

  He left me alone for a while and I turned my attention back to the night sky.

  It calls to you, he whispered, finally.

  What? Art there old mole? “Hic et ubique” and get thee to a nunnery.

  You are drawn to the darkness.

  Not the darkness, old man, but the emptiness.

  The emptiness?

  The sky. It’s empty, you know.

  He had no immediate response.

  When I was a child I used to lie on the ground and stare up at the sky, I mused. I used to believe that Heaven was an actual place. That it lay just beyond those distant blue curtains that shrouded it from earthbound, human eyes.

  Now, looking up at the stars, I know better. The sky is an empty place. And except for a pittance of cosmic matter, the emptiness just goes on and on in all directions. Forever and ever. Amen.

  It is true, Bassarab answered. When the sun goes down and the light withdraws from the world, one can see things more clearly.

  I don’t (I thought bitterly). I don’t see clearly, at all. . . .

  “Headache?” Smirl asked, breaking through my meditation.

  I shook my head. “Just thinking.”

  “About life and death?” He smiled at the look on my face. “No, not telepathic: those of us who dwell beyond the boundaries of humankind think about it, too. Why not? You humans all do. You create religions and philosophies to sculpt sense out of chaos and promise something better on the other side of the dark. We have no theology that grants us eternal souls, existence beyond the grave. So we clutch at the edge of the cemetery gate and refuse to go gently into that good night. We are the embodiment of that rage at the dying of the light.”

  “So what do you believe?” I asked. “That you simply cease to be?”

  He nodded over steepled fingers. “Do the complex array of memories, perceptions, emotions, distinctive selfness that each of us perceive as ‘I’ come undone and sift away into oblivion—irretrievable, nonexistent, forever lost?”

  “Dust in the wind,” I murmured, staring into the darkness, the emptiness outside my window.

  And, when we are gone, our consciousness flown, are there other minds, other—things—waiting in the darkness, waiting to take up residency? Move into an abandoned body before it loses its viability?

  What are you trying to say, old serpent?

  That reality is not a one-way street. That, if there are spirits that grow ancient and strong in the cold and darkness, might not other souls grow great and powerful in the nurturing light?

  Voivode and Poet, Vladimir? What would you know about the light?

  You are young, Csejthe. Come back and prattle your philosophies to me when you have the experience of five centuries.

  “Some of us do terrible things,” Smirl mused. “And we suffer terrible things to be done to us. All because undeath seems better than death final and irrevocable.”

  The plane tilted, making a leisurely turn in the dark emptiness. “We’re here,” he said. And looked at me.

  Pay attention, my dear Christopher: the game is about to be taken to a new level.

  Smirl looked away. Looked back at me. There was something in his eyes—something I wasn’t sure I liked. “May I ask you a personal question?” he asked.

  “I guess so.”

  “What would make you happy?”

  I stared at him. “Happy?”

  “Happy. Assuming you successfully eliminate Kadeth Bey and survive the process.”

  I hadn’t really thought much about happiness, lately. “Peace on earth,” I tried, “goodwill toward men and women.”

  He grimaced.

  “Loose shoes, a significant relationship, and a comfortable bed?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Seriously?”

  He nodded.

  “I don’t know.” I did know. I wanted my life back. I wanted to erase this past year.

  “You want your life back,” he said.

  “What would be the point of wishing?” My voice sounded steady enough.

  “Precisely. So, beyond that, what do you want? Realistically?”

  “Control.”

  “Control?”

  “Of my life. What’s left of it, anyway. Since that day in the barn, I’ve been a dupe or a pawn or a trophy for somebody or something. I want to be left alone.” Bassarab’s words came back to me: serve or be served.

  Smirl shook his head. “You gotta know that’s as unlikely as the first. Even if you were just another ordinary vampire, they wouldn’t allow you to run rogue.”

  Just another ordinary vampire. . . .

  “So, the point is,” he continued, “which demesne are you going to be happiest with?”

  The cat stirred in my lap, cocked its head, and regarded Smirl warily.

  “Given the situation with New York, I’m sure you don’t want to even consider one of their offers. And nothing against our allies in Seattle, but the message I’m getting here is that they’re cramping your style.”

  The cat made a rumbling sound in her throat. It wasn’t a purr.

  “Now, Chicago, on the other hand, has enough territory and opportunities that a man of your needs and resources—”

  The cat hissed and Smirl seemed to suddenly remember its presence. “Anyway,” he mumbled, “the Doman of Chicago has authorized me to offer you an invitation and,” he eyed the cat warily, “it wouldn’t be fair to you to not enumerate all of your options.” He cleared his throat. “That’s all. You make up your own mind.”

  The darkness was suddenly perforated by a double row of runway lights below us.

  “Gone,” Lupé said.

  “Gone,” I said.

  “But not far.”

  “Not far,” I said.

  “Apparently they were using the old hospital complex for a daynest.”

  “What? The remains of the old Mount Horeb Hospital out by Atkinson Road?”

  Lupé nodded. “They vacated early, last night. Headed south. I think they’ve retreated to Weir—possibly to Bassarab’s farm. I didn’t want to get too close: the terrain is so open out there, they’d likely see me coming long before I could get a glimpse of them.”

  I nodded. Yawned. Glanced at my watch: a little less than two hours before sunrise. “Okay. I gotta get some sleep and I imagine you do, too. Let’s get an early start this evening and I’ll have more to tell you then.”

  As I shifted my weight on the bed, my canvas valise toppled over and spilled three old wine bottles that had been recorked and then stoppered with wax.

  “Not more holy water,” Mooncloud said as I righted the bottles, checked the seals for leaks, and returned them to the bag.

  “Not,” I agreed. I handed her the Satterfield’s copy of the Scroll of Thoth. “You once told me that this contains Words of Power—your caps. What does that mean?”

  She unrolled the papyrus and considered the writing. Then she looked at me. “If you’re looking to bring your wife and daughter back—”

  “Will it bring the dead back to life? Yes or no, Doctor?”

  “I’d rather discuss the ramifications—”

  “No ramifications. No moral issues. As I said last night, we are past such philosophical meanderings. Before I take this plan, this crusade, a step further, I need to know what will and will not work. The road to this point has been littered with half-truths and lies and I will not go forward without knowing the truth.”

  “The truth,” she said. And cleared her throat. “The truth is . . . I simply don’t know.”

  I waited.

  “Yes, there are Words of Power here. And, yes, change would likely be wrought upon dead tissue were the
se words invoked. But what kind of change?”

  “So these are the words which Thoth spoke to raise Osiris from the dead?”

  “Maybe. Probably. Who knows? Yes, there is power here. As a shaman I can tell you that powers invoked are designed to return a dead body to some semblance of the living state. But I can’t tell you anything regarding the degree or quality.” She reached out and grasped my arm. “And even should the body grow warm and its heart begin to beat once more, I can’t tell you that the forces invoked by these words could accomplish the rest: could seek out that soul which had departed and return it to its former shell. I can’t tell you that. No one can.”

  I raised my hand. “It is enough if you promise me that you can read the words and make dead flesh a living body once again.”

  She looked down. “I don’t know that I can promise that.”

  “You don’t know that you can? Or only that you will?” I reached out and cupped her chin with my hand. Raised her face and studied her moist eyes. “Taj,” I said gently, “I need your trust in this. Trust me that I will do the right thing with this.”

  “Then trust me, too,” she answered. “Tell me your plan so I can best help you.”

  I looked away. “I can’t.”

  She caught my chin with her hand, turned my face back to hers. “Can’t,” she asked pointedly, “or won’t?”

  “Both, actually,” I said. “I won’t because we are plotting against creatures that are inherently telepathic. They have been one step ahead of us throughout this entire pursuit. The more each of you knows about the final plan, the greater the likelihood that a stray thought will be overheard. The greater the chance someone will unwittingly betray all of us.”

  And I “couldn’t” because I still had to arrange a betrayal.

  “Oh! Amon Ra,” moaned a voice in the darkness.

  “Oh!” echoed the sepulchral sound.

  “God of Gods,” it sighed in the blackness.

  “Death is but the doorway to new life,” the voice intoned, seeming to come from the earth itself.

  “We live today. . . .” The hair on the back of my own neck was starting to rise. “We shall live again. . . .”

  Cold, clammy hands clutched at me and—

  I awoke to the sound of thunder and the rattle of rain against my motel room window. I rolled over and pulled my watch from the nightstand: 1:22 p.m. Outside it was dark.

  I closed my eyes but sleep would not come. Perhaps I was feeling a little ambivalent about putting out the welcome mat.

  I got up and began dressing. The cat merrowed from the foot of the bed and I found myself the object of its unblinking stare.

  “What are you looking at?”

  The cat merrowed again.

  “I’m going out to the lobby for a paper.” I pulled on a pair of cheap running shoes and Velcroed them snugly. “Don’t wait up,” I said, going to the door and palming my room key. “And don’t use my toothbrush while I’m gone.”

  Locking the door behind me, I moved down the hallway, thinking furiously. First, I needed a taxi: the Chevy van was too hot to be driving about in broad daylight—even if it wasn’t exactly daylight, now. Which was why I was going out, now. Which was why I needed an umbrella, first.

  And then a taxi.

  The motel lobby was devoid of pay or courtesy phones. I turned to the desk clerk, a plump, middle-aged woman with a greying beehive hairdo. She was lowering the receiver back into the cradle of the multiline at the back of the counter. “I was going to call a cab for you,” she said, “but there’s already one waiting outside.”

  Sure enough, a taxi crouched just beyond the glass door wrapped in gauzy curtains of rain. I looked around the lobby but no one else was in sight. I wondered how soon the real fare would show up and if they’d be inclined to share. Unless things had substantially changed since my departure, there was only one taxicab servicing Pittsburg and Frontenac combined.

  I looked back at the desk clerk. I still need an umbrella, I thought.

  “Here,” she said, reaching under the counter, “you’ll be needing an umbrella.”

  Interesting: unconscious domination coupled with telepathy. That thought was chased from my mind as I took the umbrella and moved toward the door. There was something else, now—something like an invisible force, an airy riptide that pulled me toward the hunched vehicle. As if the car were a domelit magnet and I was an iron filing with legs.

  Get in.

  The thought reverberated in my mind, but it didn’t originate there.

  Get in. Take a ride.

  Why the hell not?

  I opened the umbrella and pushed out into the rain. As I opened the back door of the cab a sodden brown mass of fur splashed past my feet and catapulted into the backseat. Twin tails attempted to wring each other dry.

  “Hey,” said the cabbie as I slid in next to the cat, “no animals without a carrier!”

  “Don’t mind the cat,” I said, trying to reclose the umbrella and the passenger door simultaneously.

  “I don’t mind the cat,” the driver said.

  “She won’t be any trouble.” I hoped.

  “Won’t be any trouble,” the driver said.

  The cat seemed oblivious to the exchange, giving all her attention over to grooming her waterlogged fur.

  “Serves you right,” I said. “You should’ve stayed in the room.”

  “I should’ve stayed in the room,” the driver said. The cab lurched forward and made a U-turn into the heart of the storm.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Atkinson Road ran a portion of the boundary line that separated northernmost Pittsburg from southernmost Frontenac. There, girdled by three vacant lots, a pond, and a building that once served as the old student nurses’ dormitory, stood the vacant shell of the original Mount Horeb Hospital. It was abandoned and bricked up when the “new” hospital had opened on the south side of town some decades past.

  Although I gave no destination, offered no directions, the cab pulled over onto the muddy, rutted path that parted the weeds between us and the ancient, three-story brick edifice. Vacant-eyed, he half-turned in his seat. “Jeez, mister,” he asked through slack lips, “you sure you wanna go here?”

  I looked up at the weathered brick walls. Unlike the old Tremont Hotel, these windows had long outlived their plywood barriers and had finally been mortared shut. And now the mortar was crumbling with age. I thought about the labyrinth of rooms and corridors and operating theaters inside that had been evacuated before I was even born.

  And so Childe Roland to the dark tower came. . . .

  A moment later we were sheltering under my borrowed umbrella as the taxi plowed twin trails of mud in its wake. “I still say you should’ve stayed in the room,” I said as the cat looked up at me and merrowed piteously. “No, I’m not going to carry you. You chose to come along on your own, so you can just hoof it, the same as me.”

  Come. . . .

  The cat stiffened, its tails forming twin exclamation points.

  “So, you felt it, too,” I murmured.

  Come inside. Come out of the rain. . . .

  The cat yowled and took off after the cab like . . . well . . . a cat out of hell.

  “Wuss,” I said as it streaked off, a brown blur melting into the grey mists behind me.

  Come. . . .

  “Okay, okay; keep your cape on.” I turned back toward the old hospital complex and began picking my way through a minefield of mud puddles.

  A mental voice has no tone or timbre in the way that speech does when produced from human vocal chords. Even so, there was no mistaking the signature of this summoning: Elizabeth Bachman was putting out the welcome mat.

  I could turn back even now. At least that’s what I was telling myself. The possibility remained that any willpower I felt was an illusion itself.

  But I moved toward the daynest. The plan was not complete: even now it might go one of three ways. Within the hour the final course would be set and t
he plan locked in. The important thing was to not die prematurely: I had to rescue what remained of my wife and daughter, first.

  And then all bets were off.

  Climb . . . came the thought as I reached the side of the building.

  Of course. With the windows and doors mortared shut. . . . I laid the umbrella on the ground. Then I thrust my fingertips into the slotted spaces between the bricks over my head. Red chips and grey powder sifted down as I pulled myself up. Bricks fractured and mortar crumbled as each new handhold pitted transformed flesh against ancient masonry. I scaled the three stories effortlessly, like a human fly. Or bat. Or something. . . .

  Once on the roof the way in was obvious: an access hatch jutted from the flat, tarpapered surface and had been capped with a metal trapdoor. Superhuman strength had wrenched the cover free of its latching mechanism and curled it backward like so much tin foil. No attempt had been made to bend the metal back into a semblance of its original shape: a reminder that these people were careless and sloppy.

  But still dangerous.

  Come down . . . come inside. . . .

  I started across the roof but never made it to the trapdoor. The tar paper sagged beneath my feet and tore like soggy cardboard. I fell ten feet, passing through the remains of a secondary ceiling and landing on a sodden mass of debris on the floor of the third story. The room was empty save for the rusted, skeletal remains of an old metal bed frame. I stood up and allowed the dribbling waterfall that followed me down from the roof to wash the grit and detritus from my already rain-drenched clothing.

  “Christopher. . . .”

  I scrambled down off of the mound of trash and stumbled to the door.

  “Christopher. . . .” No mindspeech, now, but an actual voice drifting up from the depths below.

  My night vision was compensating for the narrow cone of uncertain light filtering down from the hole in the ceiling and roof. But, as I moved out into the hall and approached the stairway, the visual greyscale faded to near-black. For the moment, there was only my own, cooler-than-human body heat to provide illumination in the infrared spectrum. The only other source of light was an occasional crack or chink in the mortar of the outer walls and rain-swollen clouds had already turned day into the equivalent of night.