Basilisk

by Graham Masterton

  ‘So what are you going to do now?’

  ‘I haven’t given it a whole lot of thought, to tell you the truth. I’ve been too busy feeling sorry for myself.’

  Grace unpacked her shopping – celery, and green peppers, and hickory-smoked pork sausages. ‘Something happened to me today, too. Something really strange.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  She told Nathan about her visit to the Murdstone Rest Home, and ‘Michael Dukakis’, and Sister Bennett.

  ‘But what was strangest of all was that everything in Mrs Bellman’s room was dead. Not just her, although they’d taken her away by then. But her cockatoo, and her ivy plants, and even the blowflies on the window sill. Everything.’

  Nathan frowned at her. ‘And this “Michael Dukakis” . . . he said that he’d seen a big black creature, with kind of like horns, or a crown, something like that?’

  ‘That’s right. He said it was black, and it was hunched over, with “jaggedy bits” on top of its head. I thought it sounded so much like your nightmare. But it couldn’t have been, could it?’

  ‘Wait up a minute,’ said Nathan. He left the kitchen and went to his study at the back of the house. His desk had long since been buried by an avalanche of cardboard files and newspapers and magazines, but he knew exactly where to find the books he was looking for. On the shelf next to the door there was a thin paperback copy of Natural History, by Pliny the Elder, and a thick volume bound in cracked black leather, Czarny Ksiązka – The Black Book, by the Blessed Wincenty Kadłubek.

  He brought them back to the kitchen and opened them up.

  ‘What?’ asked Grace.

  ‘This creature . . . it killed everything in the room, right? Look what Pliny wrote about a serpent called a basilisk: “There is not one looketh upon its eyes, but hee dyeth presently”.

  ‘And see here: “He killeth all trees and shrubs not only that he toucheth, and that he doth breath upon also. As for grasse and hearbs, those hee sindgeth and burneth up, yea and breaketh stones in sunder, so venimous and deadly is he”.

  ‘“He creepeth not winding and crawling by as other serpents doe, but goeth upright and aloft from the ground with the one halfe part of his bodie.” It also says he wears a coronet or a diadem, on his head.

  ‘And what did your “Michael Dukakis” tell you? The creature he saw had horns on his head.’

  Grace said, ‘I don’t know. He frightened me. The whole thing frightened me. If you hadn’t had that dream, or whatever it was, I would have said that he had senile dementia, and left it at that. But – I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. Maybe there is some kind of creature. But I don’t know how there can be. It’s unreal.’

  But Nathan opened the black-leather book and said, ‘You only have to read this. It was written by Saint Wincenty Kadłubek, who was Bishop of Kraków, in Poland. In the year 1218 he unexpectedly resigned and went to live with the Cistercian monks in an isolated monastery at Jędrzejów. Nobody knew why he had resigned, not until this book was published, about thirty-five years after his death.

  ‘It says here that one April night he was holding a Midnight Mass in St Andrzej’s Church when “the darkest of creatures appeared from the shadows, all swathed in many black robes, and with a black crown of thorns upon its head”. This creature “breathed upon the assembled worshippers with the foulest and coldest of breath, and stared at them with eyes that shone like two terrible lamps”.

  ‘According to this, the congregation all fell to the floor, more than thirty of them, but the bishop was dragged out through a side door by three of his priests, and he escaped. “The next morning, when they dared to venture back inside, they found no sign of the creature, but that all of the congregation still lay where they had first fallen, and that the church floor was strewn with dozens of dead swallows that had been nesting in the rafters, and hundreds of dead flies”.

  ‘Not only that, listen – “all of the flowers with which the church had been decorated had dried up and shriveled, as if they had been scorched by a fire”.’

  Nathan closed the book. ‘The way you found Doris Bellman’s room, that was pretty much the same, wasn’t it? Everything was dead. The flowers, the birds. Even the flies.’

  ‘But a basilisk, creeping around the Murdstone? How can that be?’

  ‘I feel the same way as you, Grace. I don’t know what to believe. But that thing I saw in my nightmare, and that hunched-up monster that “Michael Dukakis” saw, going around the corner, and that “darkest of creatures” that Bishop Kadłubek saw in Kraków – they’re all so similar, don’t you think? And they’re all just like Pliny’s description of a basilisk.’

  Grace came around the kitchen table and laid her hands on his shoulders. ‘Nate, let’s be serious. You only dreamed about this creature, you didn’t see it for real. And “Michael Dukakis” is suffering from senile dementia, so you can hardly call him a reliable witness. His real name’s Stavros, or something like that. As for your Polish bishop – well, they were all very superstitious in the Middle Ages, weren’t they? Not only that – April? It was probably Lent, and he hadn’t eaten for days, and he simply imagined it.’

  Nathan looked away. Grace was probably right.

  ‘Suppose for a moment that it really is a basilisk?’ Grace asked him. ‘Where could it have come from? The world’s leading expert on mythical zoology is you, and you haven’t been able to hatch even one living gryphon.’

  Nathan looked down at his books. Next to Bishop Kadłubek’s account of the creature in St Andrzej’s, there was a thirteenth-century woodcut of a basilisk. The creature had the head of a cockerel, with razor-sharp teeth in its beak, and a scaly body that was hideously swollen in the middle, like a boa constrictor that has just swallowed an entire goat.

  He said, ‘OK . . . but just suppose that I’m not the world’s leading expert on mythical zoology. What if there’s some zoological genius who knows a whole lot more about it than I do?’

  ‘Oh come on, Nathan. That’s not very likely. There can’t be more than three people in the whole world trying to breed mythical creatures. If one of them had actually managed to hatch a basilisk, don’t you think you’d know who they were?’

  ‘Maybe they’re keeping it a secret.’

  ‘But why would they? It would have to be the greatest zoological breakthrough ever. They wouldn’t want to keep it to themselves. They would be world-famous. They would be rich. Just like you expected to be.’

  Nathan shrugged. ‘How should I know why they’re keeping it a secret? Maybe they’re simply not ready to announce it yet. And if it’s killed people, like Doris Bellman, maybe they’re scared that they’re going to be held liable.’

  He thought for a moment, and then he said, ‘Maybe they have some kind of evil master plan, to dominate the world with mythical creatures. Or maybe they tried to hatch out dozens more basilisks, but only one of them survived. Maybe it was born deformed, and that’s why they cover it up in blankets.’

  Grace gave him the gentlest of shakes. ‘Earth to Nate! Earth to Nate! You just want to believe that somebody has managed to hatch a basilisk, don’t you, never mind the reason? Because if somebody has managed to hatch a basilisk, that means that it might still be feasible that you could hatch a gryphon.’

  ‘Well? Why not? It makes sense, doesn’t it?’

  Grace kissed him. ‘Sweetheart, let’s try to be reasonable. You had a nightmare about a big black shadowy thing, and “Michael Dukakis” thought he saw a huge hunched-up monster with horns. I agree that was kind of a weird coincidence, for sure. Doris Bellman heard dragging noises outside of her room, although she never saw anything. All the same, she died, along with her cockatoo and her ivy plants. It all sounds very scary. But it doesn’t really add up to much, does it? It doesn’t add up to a real live mythical creature.’

  ‘So you don’t really believe that there is a basilisk on the loose?’

  ‘I’m not saying that. You know me. I always have an open mind about everyt
hing. I’m a doctor, remember?’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But, to be perfectly frank with you, it’s just about the least plausible explanation that I can think of.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So we use Occam’s razor and we look for the simplest theory first. Somebody needs to investigate the Murdstone Rest Home. If not the police, then the Philadelphia health authorities. After all, Doris Bellman must have been frightened by something, or she wouldn’t have called me. And even if his mind is wandering, “Michael Dukakis” must have seen something, too.’

  ‘But not a basilisk?’

  Grace shook her head. ‘You remember that retirement home in Virginia, where the manager warned all the residents that there was a monster prowling around the corridors after lights out? All he wanted to do was scare the old folks into staying in their rooms, because they used to keep wandering around in the middle of the night. But one old woman thought she saw the monster coming up the stairs, and she died of a heart seizure.

  ‘And there was another rest home – in Maine, I think. The trustees persuaded their residents to include them in their wills, and then a couple of months later they filled up their bedrooms with carbon monoxide. The old folks died, and their pets died, too.’

  Nathan said, ‘Sure. I remember that case in Maine. But even if Doris Bellman was killed by carbon monoxide, and her cockatoo, too, it wouldn’t have had any effect on her ivy plant.’

  ‘OK. Fine. That’s a very reasonable point. But like I say, let’s start by thinking simple.’

  Nathan dry-washed his face with his hands. ‘You’re right, as usual. What it is to be married to an MD.’

  Grace kissed him. ‘At least you’re not married to a professor, like I am.’

  EIGHT

  The White Face

  Grace cooked her famous jambalaya with smoked sausage and green peppers and marinated chicken, and they sprawled on the couch in front of the TV with their plates on their laps, which they never did when Denver was home. Nathan thought that Denver had inherited enough of their bad habits already.

  They didn’t talk about Doris Bellman any more, although Grace could tell that Nathan was still thinking about the basilisk, even when he was pretending to laugh at David Letterman.

  The phone rang twice, but each time it was for Denver. The first caller was a boy who even sounded as if he had raging acne; and the second was a breathy girl with a very strong South Philly accent. She called herself Whimzy (‘that’s with a zee . . . he’ll know who it is, aayt?)

  Nathan put down the receiver. He had been expecting a call from Richard, with the early results of his necropsy; and he had secretly been hoping that Dr Burnside might ring him, suggesting that if he was more disciplined with his budget, he could carry on with his breeding program.

  ‘Does Denver have a girlfriend called Whimzy with a zee?’

  Grace shook her head. ‘I didn’t know that Denver had a girlfriend. Not since Marian Mellenstein, anyhow.’

  ‘Marian Mellenstein wasn’t a girlfriend. She was a three-toed sloth, with curly hair and glasses.’

  ‘Oh, don’t. She couldn’t help it, poor thing.’

  ‘I didn’t say she could. But just because I breed creatures from different species, that doesn’t mean my son has to try it.’

  They went to bed around eleven thirty p.m., and a few minutes later Denver came home. They heard him come upstairs, and knock at their door.

  ‘Pops?’ he said, in a throaty voice, holding up the note that Nathan had left him. ‘What did Whimzy want?’

  ‘She didn’t say. She just said you’d know who she was. Least, that’s what I think she said.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘There’s jambalaya in the Dutch oven,’ said Grace. ‘You may need to warm it up a little.’

  ‘So who is she, this Whimzy?’ asked Nathan. ‘Is she pretty? Will we ever get to meet her?’

  ‘Just some girl I know, that’s all. Thanks, Mom.’

  Denver closed the door and went downstairs. Nathan and Grace looked at each other.

  ‘Did you see that?’ said Nathan. ‘He definitely blushed.’

  ‘At least it proves he’s not gay.’

  ‘I’m not worried about him being gay. But I am worried if he’s going out with girls with accents like that, aayt?’

  Grace laughed, and switched off her light.

  Two hours later Nathan was still awake. The bedroom was airless and far too warm, and the wind must have been blowing from the south-west, because planes were turning and decelerating almost directly overhead as they made their approach to Philadelphia International Airport. Every time one of them came over, the low thunder of their engines made the window frames buzz like trapped blowflies.

  He heard a man angrily shouting in one of the houses opposite, and then he heard accordion music, and laughter, and doors slamming. He heard a car slowly trundling down West Airy Road, as if its tires were all punctured and it was rolling along on its wheel rims. He was sure that Grace murmured something, but he couldn’t be sure what it was.

  ‘Grace?’ he said, and leaned closer to her. ‘Grace, are you awake?’

  ‘Never,’ she said. ‘Never looks once. Never.’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’ he asked her. He waited for her to explain what she meant, but she turned over and started to breathe steady and even, and it was obvious that she was deeply asleep. Nathan lay back on his pillow but he couldn’t close his eyes. His bedside clock said seven minutes past two.

  At the top of the bedroom drapes, there was a small triangular gap where Grace hadn’t quite drawn them together tightly enough, so that the moonlight shone in a wide fan pattern across the ceiling. Where the plaster was uneven, the moonlight cast irregular shadows; and as Nathan stared up at them, he began to distinguish patterns, and shapes. He saw a curve that looked like a man’s cheek, and another curve that could have been the side of his nose. Then he made out a ripple that formed the shape of his mouth.

  A rough semicircle of plaster made him look as if he had a high forehead with his hair brushed back.

  ‘It can’t be,’ Grace insisted.

  ‘Grace? You’re talking in your sleep, sweetheart.’

  ‘I don’t care what you say about it, it can’t be. It simply isn’t possible.’

  While Grace was talking, the man’s face in the ceiling began to grow more and more distinct. His eyes were closed, as if he were a death mask, but as the minutes passed, his features appeared in greater depth and greater detail – his eyebrows, his cheekbones, the curve of his lips. Nathan was tempted to pull back the bedcover and stand up on the bed, so that he could actually touch the face with his fingertips, but he was sure that it was only a trick of the moonlight. The moon must be sinking, that was all – and as it sank lower, it was casting longer and longer shadows, which made the man’s face look increasingly three-dimensional.

  He stared at the face for more than twenty minutes. When it was daylight, he would probably look at exactly the same place on the ceiling and see nothing but lumps and bumps. He remembered that when he was six years old, he had been convinced that there was a wolf in his closet door, but it had only been the pattern of the walnut veneer.

  ‘You won’t leave me, Nate, will you?’ said Grace, and turned over, so that her hand accidentally struck his shoulder.

  ‘No,’ he reassured her, even though she was fast asleep. ‘I won’t leave you. I promise.’

  At last his eyes began to close. His mind was still churning over and over, but his exhaustion was gradually dragging him off to sleep. He kept seeing flickering images of the gryphon, and the resentful way in which the gryphon had stared at him with its single orange eye. And he could hear Dr Burnside’s voice in his ears, whispery and harsh. ‘We need to discuss your future, Nathan, here at the zoo.’

  ‘Future?’ said a thick, guttural voice. ‘You have no future.’

  Instantly, he opened his eyes, and raised his head. He looked around the bedroom, frowni
ng. He thought for a split second that it had been Grace talking to him, but then he lifted his eyes toward the man’s white face on the ceiling. The man had opened his eyes, too – eyes that were totally white and apparently blind.

  I’m dreaming, Nathan told himself. I’m having another nightmare.

  ‘You think so? How can you possibly be dreaming, with your eyes open?’

  The man’s lips moved, but somehow his words and his lip movements didn’t quite synchronize, as if his voice had been dubbed. His eyes opened and closed in a mechanical way, like a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  I’m dreaming because you can’t be real. You’re nothing but shadows, on a badly plastered ceiling.

  ‘What? You of all people should know the difference between dreams and reality. You’re the one who wants to breed gryphons, and gargoyles, and bennu birds.’

  Yes, but those creatures, they’re not dreams. They all existed, once, and I can bring them back to life.

  ‘Like the basilisk?’

  If there is a basilisk, yes.

  ‘You doubt it? How do you think that Doris Bellman died? What do you think it was that old Mr Stavrianos saw outside his room? And what kind of a beast did you see, when you had that nightmare?’

  I’m having a nightmare now.

  ‘You think so?’ the man challenged him, and his eyelids blinked even more rapidly. ‘Then what do you make of this?’

  Nathan looked down toward the foot of the bed. A black shape was rising up from the floor. It was huge, and hunched, with a complicated array of twigs or horns on top of its head. Like before, it was covered in layers of tattered sacking, and out of the sacking two claws emerged, gleaming in the moonlight.

  Oh shit, said Nathan. This time it’s real, isn’t it.

  ‘Maybe it is. Maybe it’s not. As I say, my friend, you are the expert on the difference between dreams and reality.’

  The black creature began to drag itself around to the side of the bed. With every breath it was wheezing and whistling, as if its lungs were clogged with phlegm, and Nathan could smell again that nauseating combination of dust and decaying poultry.