Ghost Virus

by Graham Masterton

  ‘I told him, “I’m not spending my life unblocking other people’s stinky toilets.” Gordon Bennett, if only I’d known.’

  The first bedroom at the top of the stairs was Mindy’s. Her bed was unmade, with a crumpled Frozen duvet cover and large posters on the walls of Justin Bieber and Harry Styles, each with felt-tip kisses drawn around their heads, like a cloud of black moths. Mindy’s laptop was sitting on her desk, still open, and above her desk there was a shelf crammed with books. Jamila quickly checked the titles, to see if any of them were subversive or inappropriate for a nine-year-old, but they were all Harry Potter and Jacqueline Wilson.

  ‘Oh, well, here goes nothing,’ said Jerry, and pushed open the door to the parents’ bedroom.

  The smell was so rank that Jamila retched. She shook her head and said ‘Sorry.’

  Mindy’s mother and father were lying side by side on the bed. Their blood-soaked sheets and duvet had been dragged off them and lay in a heap at the foot of the bed. Her father’s pyjama jacket had been unbuttoned to expose his chest, and his trousers had been pulled down to his knees. Her mother’s nightgown was bunched up around her neck. Scores of transverse slices had been cut into their stomachs and their thighs, as if somebody had been playing mad games of noughts-and-crosses all over them with a sharp knife. They smelled so foul because in several places their abdomens had been pierced right through, which allowed the gases to escape from their putrefying intestines. Her mother’s right breast had been partially severed, so that its spongy tissue hung to one side, exposing a white glint of ribs. Beneath her father’s flaccid penis there was nothing but a soggy cavity.

  Jerry and Jamila stood on opposite sides of the bed looking down at this carnage in silence. Eventually, with her hand covering her face, Jamila said, ‘I have seen this kind of mutilation before, when a child has murdered its parents. They castrate the father, in denial of where they first came from, and they cut off the mother’s breast, in denial of having been nurtured.’

  ‘Yes, but this isn’t just some kid taking it out on her parents, is it?’ said Jerry. ‘This is the same as all the others, isn’t it, trying to make out they’re possessed? “It wasn’t me, it was my coat, or my jacket, or my sweater.” And this Mindy girl, she was saying that there was someone else inside her.’

  Jamila nodded. ‘Varvara, whoever Varvara might be.’

  ‘And all this cooking and eating – what’s that all about? Zombies like a bit of human flesh for dinner, don’t they, like in Night of the Living Dead or whatever. But zombies don’t fry their victims before they eat them, do they? Apart from that zombies are not only dead, they’re not real, either.’

  ‘Well, there have been cases of cannibalism when victims have been cooked,’ said Jamila. ‘There was that German who advertised for a volunteer who actually wanted to be eaten, do you remember that? He ate about twenty kilos of some young man, sautéed in olive oil and garlic, and he even set the table with his best cutlery and candles and everything. And my father told me about several isolated incidents in Pakistan, but it was mostly children who were eaten, because their parents were starving.’

  ‘Isolated incidents, exactly,’ said Jerry. ‘But like we’ve agreed, this is a bleeding epidemic.’

  He quickly took several photographs with his iPhone and then they left the bedroom and went back down to the living-room. Jerry called in to DI Saunders, and caught him just before he was going out to lunch.

  ‘How’s it all going?’ asked DI Saunders. ‘You can fill me in later – I’ll be back for a media conference at four.’

  ‘Sorry, guv. You’re not going to like any of this,’ said Jerry. He told him about Mindy and Barry, and how they had found Mindy’s dead parents. When he had finished describing the condition of their bodies there was a long silence from DI Saunders – so long that Jerry thought that he might have been cut off.

  ‘Bugger,’ said DI Saunders, at last. Then, even more emphatically, ‘Bugger.’ Then, very testily, ‘All right, Jerry. I’ll get things organised at this end and then I’ll come up to see for myself. But if any media come sniffing around, don’t say a word to them, right? I still haven’t worked out how we’re going to present this publicly without causing widescale panic.’

  ‘OK, guv. Got you.’

  Jerry and Jamila went outside and stood by the front gate. It was raining, but at least the air smelled like wet privet and car exhaust, and not of decomposing bodies. Jerry wished that he hadn’t given up smoking. A cigarette would have helped to calm him down, and it would have blotted out the smell and the taste of death. He could almost believe that he had been chewing human flesh himself.

  Jamila said, ‘Do you know something, I have no confidence at all now that Dr Fuller will be able to give us all the answers. Or even half the answers.’

  ‘The trouble is, skip, who the hell can?’ Jerry asked her. ‘Who’s an expert on clothes that have a life of their own?’

  Jerry hadn’t completely closed the front door behind them, but out of the corner of his eye he became aware that it was gradually shuddering open again. He turned around, thinking that the breeze must be blowing it, but with a bang it was suddenly flung wide. A black child-like figure came bursting out, its arms flapping, turning immediately to the left and running across the small York stone garden.

  Jerry shouted out, ‘Hoi! You! Stop!’ and went after it.

  The figure leapt over the low brick wall that separated Mindy’s house from the house next door, and dodged around the silver estate car that was parked in their driveway. It started to run down the road, still flapping its arms, and the way it ran was extraordinary, as if it were being blown by a gale-force wind. Its coat-tails billowed, and its belt waved free, and as Jerry began to catch up with it, he realised that it had no legs. It was flying, not running, and when he was nearly close enough to reach out and seize it, he saw that it had no head, either.

  It was nothing but a black raincoat, tumbling through the air by itself.

  Jerry stumbled and tripped himself up and almost fell over, stupefied and shocked by the weirdness of chasing an empty raincoat down the street. But he felt angry, too. It’s a fucking raincoat, that’s all, with nobody inside it, and I’m running after it like a total twat.

  After a hundred metres his heart was thumping and he was gasping for breath, but he began to gain on the raincoat, and at last he managed to reach out and snatch its collar. He thought that he would simply be able to shake it and fold it up, but it twisted violently around and flailed at him with both of its arms. He staggered back and fell off the kerb into the road, jarring his shoulder. The raincoat carried on attacking him as if it were hysterical with rage, lashing at his face with its buckled cuffs and beating at him with its coat-tails as if they were wings. He felt as if he were being attacked by a furious black swan.

  ‘Skip!’ he shouted out. ‘For Christ’s sake, skip! Jamila!’

  But Jamila was already running towards him, and she was carrying a small black wrought-iron gate which she must have lifted off its hinges from one of the houses along the street. As soon as she reached him, she lifted the gate in both hands and beat it down on the raincoat’s back, again and again. An elderly woman on the opposite side of the road stood watching her with her mouth wide open.

  Jamila hit the raincoat eight or nine times, and once she hit Jerry’s knuckles, too, and he shouted out, ‘Ow! Shit!’

  The raincoat must have been able to feel her beating it, because it jolted with every blow as if there were somebody inside it. Jamila swung the gate at an angle and hit it as hard as she could across the shoulders, first left and then right, and after the second blow it sagged. Its sleeves fell flat, and it collapsed.

  Jerry threw the raincoat onto the ground and climbed back to his feet. He gave the raincoat a kick, and then another, but it lay limp and wet on the tarmac and showed no more signs of stirring into life. Jamila propped the gate against the nearest garden wall. She looked as shocked as Jerry felt, and sh
e was breathing hard, too.

  ‘This is insane,’ Jerry panted. ‘This is just fucking insane. But I owe you one, skip. I really owe you one. I mean, that was inspired. “Detective sergeant uses wrought-iron gate to kill raincoat.” That’s going to be front-page news.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ said Jamila. ‘We’re not going to tell anybody, Jerry, because it’s madness. What do you think the media would say? They’d make out that we’d been smoking something.’

  Jerry gave the raincoat another prod with his toecap, but it still didn’t move.

  ‘Yes, well, you’re probably right. In any case Smiley would go apeshit. He’s already tearing his hair out about how to present this to the press – and to the commissioner. He wouldn’t want her to think that he was heading up an operation run by a bunch of loonies.’

  ‘Let’s get this coat back to the house,’ said Jamila. ‘I’d better put this gate back, too, before I arrest myself for vandalism.’

  Jerry cautiously bent down and took hold of the raincoat’s sleeve. He was sure that he felt it flinch, but he dragged it along the wet pavement behind him, and it didn’t struggle or try to tug itself away from him.

  When they got back to Mindy’s parents’ house, he pulled it in through the front door, intending to shut it in the cupboard under the stairs. He had only taken one step inside, though, when he looked up at the staircase and stopped dead.

  ‘Skip,’ he said, quietly.

  Jamila came through the door behind him.

  ‘Bismillah,’ she whispered.

  From top to bottom, the staircase was crowded with clothes – dresses, sweaters, jackets and trousers. But they hadn’t just been strewn down the stairs, they were crawling down it, as if they were alive. A green turtle-neck sweater had already made its way down as far as the hallway, and it reached out with one of its sleeves for Jamila’s ankle.

  Without a word, Jerry and Jamila backed quickly out of the front door and into the porch. Jerry hesitated for two or three seconds, and then he tossed the black raincoat back inside, and slammed the door.

  ‘It’s not possible,’ said Jerry, shaking his head. ‘I’m asleep, and this is a dream. Well – no it’s not, it’s a nightmare.’

  ‘It is possible,’ Jamila told him. She was clenching her fists and her voice was very level, but Jerry could tell that she was shocked and upset. ‘It is possible in the same way that all spirits are possible.’

  ‘I don’t get you.’

  Jamila looked up at him. He had yet to see her expression so serious. ‘Just because people in the West have lost their belief in their God, and everything that cannot be explained by science, that doesn’t mean for a moment that they no longer exist. I believe that ghosts exist, Jerry, and I believe that evil spirits exist, and that they can possess anything and everything – not only human beings. They can hide themselves inside animals, as any dog or cat owner will tell you. And they can hide themselves inside inanimate objects, too. Where do you think the story of Aladdin and the magic lamp came from?’

  ‘Skip, these are clothes. These are Levi jeans and Marks & Spencer jumpers.’

  ‘It makes no difference, Jerry. I didn’t want to believe this, either, but we have to face reality. There is an infection spreading around this area, like Asian flu, or Ebola. I don’t know what Dr Fuller has found out, but I’m convinced now that this infection is spiritual, rather than viral.’

  ‘So you reckon these clothes have got infected with spirits, and when people put them on, the spirits infect them, too.’

  ‘Of course I have no way of telling for certain, but what other explanation can there be?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jerry. ‘Maybe the Russians are putting something in our water and we’re all hallucinating.’

  He looked back at the front door, wondering what was going on behind it. What would happen to those clothes if they couldn’t escape from the house? Would the spirits that possessed them eventually leave them, or fade away, or die? Or would they remain dormant, waiting for some unsuspecting victim to put them on, so that they could come to life again?

  ‘It’s urgent that we find somebody who has knowledge about this sort of thing,’ said Jamila. ‘DI Saunders thought he was joking when he talked about calling in Father Karras. But that’s the kind of person we need.’

  ‘An exorcist?’

  ‘How do I know? These spirits may have nothing to do with Christianity or Islam or any other religion. Viruses can’t be exorcised by priests, or shamans, or mullahs. Maybe this infection can’t be cured by prayer or holy water, either.’

  31

  Eight uniformed officers arrived first, in three patrol cars, including Sergeant Bristow. They had just started to cordon off the front of the house when two white vans from the forensic unit turned up, and after ten minutes more, DI Saunders appeared, in an unmarked dark blue Vauxhall Insignia. He was wearing full dress uniform, and as he climbed out of the car he put on his cap. The lunch that he had been forced to cancel had clearly been with somebody important.

  Jerry and Jamila were standing side by side in the porch and so far they hadn’t let anybody into the house.

  ‘What’s the SP?’ Sergeant Bristow asked them.

  ‘The crime scene’s a bit unusual, that’s all, skip, that’s all,’ said Jerry. ‘It could be hazardous and we want DI Saunders to give us the thumbs-up before we go in again.’

  ‘What do you mean, “unusual”?’

  ‘What went on at the nick with that Nelson bloke and his runaway sweater – it’s similar to that. Only worse.’

  ‘You’re not pulling my leg, are you?’

  ‘Yes, of course I am. That’s why we’re standing out here soaked to the skin and freezing our arses off waiting for Smiley to show up. Oh look – here he is now.’

  DI Saunders manoeuvred his way through the small crowd of uniformed officers and forensic experts and came up to the front door.

  Without any preamble, he said, ‘What’s the problem? What are you all doing out here?’

  ‘There’s been a development, sir, since DC Pardoe called you,’ said Jamila.

  ‘What kind of development?’

  Jamila explained that Mindy’s parents’ clothes appeared to have made their way downstairs by themselves, in the same way that David Nelson’s sweater had crawled along the corridor at the station. She didn’t tell him about the raincoat, and how Jerry had run after it down the road. She had decided that she would leave that until later, when they had contained this situation, and he was calmer.

  ‘So there’s clothing inside, all over the floor?’ asked DI Saunders.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And it didn’t occur to you that there might be somebody else in the house, apart from the deceased, who might have slung it all around while you were outside?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Did you search every room, apart from the parents’ bedroom?’

  ‘Only Mindy’s, sir.’

  ‘So there could have been somebody hiding in another room and you wouldn’t have known?’

  ‘That’s possible, sir, except that I actually saw some of the clothing move by itself. A sweater tried to touch my foot.’

  DI Saunders took off his cap and stared into it as if he expected it to be filled with raffle tickets. ‘A sweater tried to touch your foot,’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, we have officers here now with batons and Tasers and at least two of them are armed. I think they’ll be more than a match for a few rogue woollies.’

  ‘Whatever you decide, sir.’

  ‘Two people have been murdered on these premises, DS Patel, so I decide that we gain access as a matter of urgency and investigate the crime scene.’

  Jerry took out his skeleton key again and unlocked the front door. He pushed it wide open and they all looked inside. The clothes were still there, piled up on the floor and halfway down the stairs. None of the coats or jackets or sweaters appeared to be moving, althoug
h Jerry noticed that the raincoat was lying by the kitchen door, much further away than he had thrown it.

  DI Saunders stepped into the hallway and sniffed. ‘How long deceased, did you say?’

  ‘Not even twenty-four hours, guv,’ said Jerry. ‘But they’ve both suffered penetrative wounds to the abdomen, apart from all their other injuries. Hence the Dame Judy.’

  DI Saunders bent down and picked up the green sweater that had reached out for Jamila’s ankle. He turned it this way and that, and shook it, and then he dropped it again. Next, he picked up a brown herringbone jacket from the stairs, and held that up, too.

  ‘Well, Jerry, however they got here, there’s not much life in them now, is there?’

  ‘No, guv. Not unless they’re playing dead.’

  DI Saunders didn’t answer that. Instead, he said, ‘All right, then, let’s take a look at the victims. Sergeant Bristow! The CSEs can come in now. Tell them to start by taking pictures of all of these clothes.’

  With that, he mounted the stairs, taking care not to step on too many of the trousers and shirts and sweaters that had tumbled down them. Jamila raised her hand and was about to remind him that he ought to be wearing Tyvek booties, but then she decided to leave it. Considering the mood he was in, there was no future in antagonising him even further.

  Jerry looked at her and pulled a face. Up until today, DI Saunders seemed to have accepted that some kind of highly unusual virus had infected the clothes that had been clinging to their four murder suspects, as well as Samira Wazir and the drug-addict who had been arrested for importuning. But now Jerry had the distinct impression that he was trying to dismiss any suggestion that anything weird was going on. Perhaps he was under pressure from his senior investigating officer, his SIO. More likely he was afraid of ridicule in the media, and jeopardising his chances of being promoted to DCI. He didn’t want to end up stagnating, like DI French, with nothing to look forward to except an early retirement.

  Jamila shrugged and said, ‘The evidence is all here, Jerry. He’ll have to believe it.’