He leaned over the side of the bed and groped frantically around for his baseball bat. But even as he did so he thought: stop, don’t, this really isn’t real. It wasn’t real the last time and it isn’t real now.
‘Look at the beast,’ the man told him. ‘Look into its eyes. Then you’ll know for sure.’
With a harsh grunt, the black creature tossed its head, so that it threw back the stringy rags that half-covered its face. The bedroom was still too dark for Nathan to be able to see clearly what it looked like, but he thought he could make out a beak, of sorts, and rounded white cheeks. He was frightened, but at the same time he was mesmerized. Could this really be a genuine basilisk? If it was, where had it come from, and how had it managed to get into his house?
‘Look into its eyes,’ the man repeated.
Nathan cautiously raised his hand in front of his face. If the myths were true, a real basilisk could kill him stone dead with one stare. But how could it be? It was madness. It was nothing but a nightmare.
The creature’s eyes glowed very dimly at first, like two white lights seen behind layers of grimy net curtains. But very quickly they began to shine brighter, until they were blinding. Nathan closed his eyes tightly and turned his face away.
He felt a cold corrosive sensation that started on his scalp and then crawled slowly but inexorably down the back of his neck and his shoulders and his chest. It was more painful than anything that he had ever experienced in his life – like being frozen and scalded, both at once. As it burned his stomach and started to creep down toward his genitals, he opened his mouth to scream, but the cold was so stunning that he couldn’t find the breath. It felt as if a flask of liquid nitrogen was gradually being poured all over him, freezing his skin and penetrating right through his flesh to his bone marrow.
Stop, he cried out. It hurts too much. Call it off.
‘Now do you believe that it’s real?’
What? What do you mean?
‘Tell me if you believe that it’s real. That’s all I’m asking.’
Yes, anything. Yes, it’s real. Call it off, for Christ’s sake, it hurts.
‘Nathan!’
He opened his eyes. Grace was shaking his shoulder and shouting out, ‘Nathan! Nate! Wake up! What’s the matter?’
He stared at her. Then he reached across and switched on his bedside lamp. The black creature had gone, if it had ever been there. When he looked up, the white face on the ceiling had disappeared, too.
‘Did you have another nightmare?’ Grace asked him.
He nodded. ‘The same nightmare, only it was ten times worse. And so goddamned real.’
‘The creature with the horns?’
‘It’s a basilisk, I’m sure of it.’
‘Nathan—’
‘It’s a basilisk, Grace! I don’t know why the hell I’ve been having nightmares about it. I’m not even sure that they are nightmares. They’re more like – I don’t know – visions. It’s alive. And it’s like somebody’s trying to tell me that it’s real, and it’s out there someplace. And I’m sure that it killed Doris Bellman.’
He swung his legs out of bed, went across to his closet and took out a pair of jeans.
‘What are you doing? It’s twenty after three.’
‘I’m going to the Murdstone Rest Home. If that creature is actually there, I’m going to find it.’
Grace said, ‘Nate, this is totally crazy. You can’t go wandering around the Murdstone in the middle of the night, you’ll get yourself arrested.’
‘I have to go, Grace – even if it’s just to satisfy myself that it doesn’t exist.’
‘Leave it till the morning, at least. I’ll come with you. We could go together and talk to Doctor Zauber about it.’
‘Unh-hunh. If there is a basilisk there, we won’t be able to find it tomorrow morning. It’s totally nocturnal. During the day, it hides itself in the darkest crevice it can find, and sleeps.’
Grace climbed out of bed, too, and watched him in frustration as he pulled on his dark blue sweater. ‘You’ve had a nightmare about it, that’s all.’
‘Two nightmares.’
‘OK, you had two nightmares. But lots of people have recurring nightmares. I’ve had recurring nightmares since I was three years old, about being chased through Strawbridge’s furniture department by the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood. You can have a nightmare a thousand times but that doesn’t make it any more real.’
Nathan pointed upward. ‘I just saw a man’s face, right there on the ceiling.’
‘You saw what?’
‘A man’s face, molded right out of the plaster.’
‘Nate, for goodness’ sake. You’re tired, you’re stressed, your project’s just been canceled. How about I get you a couple of Somnapril and you come back to bed?’
‘I’m going to the Murdstone. I have to. The man spoke to me.’
‘The man on the ceiling?’
‘That’s right. He knew who I was, and all about my mythical creature project. He told me that Doris Bellman was killed by a basilisk, and that your senile old friend in the bathrobe saw a basilisk, too. He showed me a basilisk, for Christ’s sake. It came rearing right up from the end of the bed. It was black, and it had horns, and it had eyes like headlights.’
‘You had a nightmare about a monster and a man’s face on the ceiling and that’s why you’re going to drive ten miles at three thirty in the morning and break into an old folks’ rest home?’
‘Not a nightmare. Not a dream. A vision. And, yes.’
Grace came up to him and brushed his hair with her hand. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Come back to bed.’
She was trying to calm him down but Nathan was too fired up. ‘Everybody said I was out of my mind when I first suggested my Cee-Zee program. But I was proved right, wasn’t I? I did actually breed a gryphon, even if it died. And I could do it again. And next time, I’m going to make sure that it survives.’
‘Nathan, I have total faith in you, and I’m not the only one. Remember what Professor Jung Choi said about what you were doing? “Daring,” he said. “Cutting-edge zoology.” But that’s why you have to stay focused. So many people have so much respect for you. Even Henry Burnside.’
‘Burnside? You’re kidding me.’
‘Believe me, Nate, you should have heard what he said about you at that fundraiser last month. If he had only had the resources, he would have gone on financing you. But he simply doesn’t – and the zoo’s trustees have all gotten cold feet.’
Nathan shook his head. ‘Maybe I’m totally off beam. I mean – I don’t have any empirical evidence whatsoever. But something’s come alive out there, and it’s so close to what I’ve been working on for so long that I can practically feel it.’
Grace thought for a while, and then she said, ‘OK. So you want to go to the Murdstone and take a sneaky look around?’
‘I want to see this sack-dragger that Doris Bellman told you about. I want to see this hunched-up monster that “Michael Dukakis” saw in the corridor.’
‘And if you get caught, what do you say then?’
‘I don’t know,’ Nathan admitted. ‘But I’m sure that I can think of some plausible explanation for being there. Maybe I could say that I’m checking the place out with a view to sending my old man there, but he’s practically blind, so I thought it would be a good idea to see what it’s like in the dark.’
Grace shook her head. ‘You’re mad, you know that? The archetypal mad scientist, from The Twilight Zone.’
‘Grace – if somebody has successfully bred a basilisk – I have to see it. I have to know for sure. It would be the single most significant scientific breakthrough since DNA.’
‘OK, OK. Go. But I’m coming with you.’
‘You can’t.’
‘What do you mean, I can’t? I know the Murdstone like the back of my hand, and I can show you how to find Doris Bellman’s room, and I can show you exactly where “Michael Dukakis” saw his hunched-up figure.�
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Nathan said, ‘Weren’t you listening, when I was reading out that stuff from Bishop Kadłubek’s Black Book? The basilisk can kill any living thing just by staring at it.’
‘So why is it OK for you to go looking for it, but not me?’
‘I’m taking some precautions.’ He went to his nightstand, opened it, and took out the black SK automatic that he had never used, not even once.
‘You’re going to trespass in an old people’s rest home in the middle of the night and you’re going to take a gun?’
‘That’s not all.’ He went into the bathroom and came out with his circular shaving mirror.
‘A gun, and a shaving mirror?’
‘In old Polish legends, the way that people beat the basilisk was to hold up a mirror and the basilisk’s stare was turned right back on it.’
He went to his closet, took out the black necktie that he only ever wore to funerals, and knotted it around the mirror’s folding stand. Then he hung it around his neck and buttoned his shirt up over it.
Grace said, ‘I think we should call the police.’
‘And tell them what? That there’s some kind of medieval monster prowling around the Murdstone Rest Home, and you know that for sure because your husband had two nightmares about it?’
‘No – that my husband is thinking of breaking into a home for seniors, and he’s armed and unhinged.’
Nathan lowered his head. ‘Grace, I know this sounds nuts. But it’s my whole life’s work. Recreating these creatures – it’s what defines me. It’s what they’re going to put on my headstone, when I die. He Made Mythical Monsters.’
Grace came up to him and kissed him. ‘OK, Nate. But you’re not going alone. We’re husband and wife, remember? Hart to Hart. If you absolutely insist on doing this, then I absolutely insist on coming along with you to watch your ass, because your ass is very precious to me, as well as the rest of you.’
It took them less than twenty-five minutes to drive to Millbourne. There was hardly any traffic around, apart from a mechanical street sweeper and three buses crowded with tired-looking shift workers.
‘Now that’s a rare sight in Philly,’ said Grace, as they overtook the street sweeper. ‘Even rarer than a basilisk, probably.’
Nathan said, ‘You don’t have to mock me. If there’s nothing there, I’ll admit that I’m ready for the funny farm. But at least let’s check it out, OK?’
‘I’m not mocking you, Nate. I’m trying to lighten the mood, is all.’
They crossed the Schuylkill River. The moon was sinking toward the horizon, and the smoggy atmosphere had turned it blood-red. Another blood-red moon was rising from the river to meet it.
They reached the Murdstone Rest Home and Nathan parked on the opposite side of the street, beneath an elm tree. He took a flashlight out of the glovebox and shone it under his chin to make sure that it was working. ‘That makes you look like a vampire,’ said Grace.
‘You do believe me, don’t you?’ Nathan asked her. ‘I mean, about the face on the ceiling? I genuinely feel like somebody’s trying to make contact with me. I don’t know whether they’re trying to warn me, or whether they’re trying to scare me off. I haven’t felt like this since I was a kid about ten years old, when my grandfather died. I actually heard him say “go fly your kite, Nathan”, right inside my head.’
Grace took hold of his hand and squeezed it. ‘Let’s go take a look, shall we? Then we’ll know for sure.’ She put up the hood of her short black duffel coat. ‘Maybe I should have worn a stocking mask, too.’
They climbed out of the car and crossed the street together. The sky was gradually beginning to grow lighter, with smeary gray clouds. A skein of geese flew overhead, in eerie silence.
Grace said, ‘I think they lock the main doors at night, but they have to keep the back door open in case of emergencies.’
They walked around the left-hand side of the buildings, staying deep in the shadow of the high yew hedge that separated the rest home from the residential property next door. Nathan could see lights in some of the upstairs rooms, and on the main staircase, but most of the ground floor was in darkness.
As they skirted around the rear of the kitchen block, Grace tugged at his sleeve and said, ‘Careful . . . the staff quarters are just around this next corner, and there’s always somebody in there, twenty-four seven.’
Keeping close to the ivy-covered brickwork, Nathan made his way to the end of the wall, and cautiously peeked around it. Immediately, he raised his hand and said, ‘Ssh!’
Two members of the Murdstone’s nursing staff were standing outside the back door, talking and smoking. Nathan could smell their cigarettes from twenty yards away. One was a heavily built black orderly, in purple scrubs, and the other was a Korean nurse, in the purple-and-white striped blouse that all of the nursing staff wore.
‘Maybe we should try again tomorrow,’ said Grace. ‘After all, it’s going to be light soon.’
Nathan looked up at the sky. He was half inclined to agree with her. If there was one characteristic that was mentioned in every narrative that he had ever read about the basilisk, it was that it never ventured out during the day. Daylight would do it no harm – unlike vampires, which were famously supposed to catch fire if they were ever exposed to the sun, and burn to ash. But the basilisk’s eyes were highly photosensitive, and it was almost completely blinded by natural light. That was why it always sought out cellars and caves and crevices to hide in, and only emerged when the sun went down. As late as the 1850s, some French vintners refused to go down to their wine cellars during the day, in case they disturbed a basilisk hiding in the darkness.
‘What do you think?’ asked Grace. ‘I don’t mind coming back tomorrow, if you want to.’
At that moment, however, the orderly flicked his cigarette butt into the bushes, and the nurse dropped hers on to the ground and stepped on it. The orderly said something to the nurse and both of them laughed. Then they went back inside, closing the door behind them.
‘Come on,’ said Nathan. ‘We should still have time, if we’re quick.’
‘I’m not so sure now,’ said Grace.
‘Please – you know the layout.’
Grace hesitated, with her hand covering her mouth. Then she said, ‘OK, then. But as soon as it starts getting light, we’re out of there.’
They made their way along the back of the kitchen block to the staff quarters. The first-floor window was lit, but it was covered by a yellow calico blind. Behind the blind, Nathan saw the orderly cross from one side of the room to the other, like a character in a shadow theater. The nurse followed, although she was further away from the window, and her shadow appeared shrunken and misshapen.
He went up to the back door, which had two wired-glass panels in the upper half, and peered inside. Inside, on the left-hand side, over a dozen overcoats and hats were hanging on pegs, like a crowd of strap-hanging monks. There was no light in the hallway, but the door to the staff quarters was directly opposite, and the nurse had left it a few inches ajar. Nathan could see the arm of a red-upholstered couch, and part of a coffee table, and a bookshelf crammed with dog-eared paperbacks. On the wall hung a framed poster for Bartram’s Garden, with a flowering tulip tree.
He tried the door handle. Its spring made a scrunching noise as he pulled it downward, but the door was unlocked. He turned to Grace and said, ‘OK? When we get in there, which way should we go?’
‘Straight ahead, to the end of the corridor, then left. Then immediately right, and up four or five stairs.’
‘You ready?’
‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’
Nathan opened the door wider and they stepped inside. Behind the door to the staff quarters they could hear some crackly old horror movie playing on the TV, with the sound turned right down. The orderly was complaining about the hours he had to work. ‘Never even gave me no notice – thinks I can change my shift just to suit him – I got kids to pick up from school.’
‘You should not tolerate it, Newton,’ the nurse replied. Her voice became louder as she approached the door, and for a heart-stopping moment Nathan and Grace thought that she was going to open it and find them right outside. Instead, however, she closed it, leaving them in almost total darkness.
Nathan took out his flashlight and switched it on. He shone it down the corridor in front of them, and Grace said, ‘Come on, let’s go. You know what some of these seniors are like. They only sleep for a couple of hours. We don’t want one of them raising the alarm.’
They hurried down the corridor, turned left and then right, and then up the stairs.
‘Here,’ said Grace. ‘This was Doris Bellman’s room, right here. And if you go that way, that’s where I met “Michael Dukakis”.’
‘Did he tell you exactly where he saw that hunched-up monster of his?’
‘It would have been there, coming round that corner, heading this way.’
‘So it could have been coming to attack Doris Bellman?’
Nathan shone his flashlight up and down the corridor. The pale brown carpet was wearing out in places, and its pile had been furrowed by a vigorous going-over with a vacuum cleaner, but there were no signs of any claw marks. There were stains and scratches on the wallpaper, although there was nothing that couldn’t have been caused by wheelchairs bumping into the walls, or coffee being spilled.
However, when he pointed the flashlight upward, it did look as if something had scraped the ceiling – and quite recently, too. There were four or five parallel ruts in the plaster, nearly a quarter of an inch deep. They ran all the way from the corner where ‘Michael Dukakis’ had glimpsed his hunched-up monster, ending up abruptly in a wild cross-hatch pattern about four feet away from Doris Bellman’s door.
‘Will you take a look at that?’ he said, hoarsely. ‘I mean, what do you think caused all of those grooves?’ He reached up with his left hand, and stood on tiptoe, but he couldn’t even touch the ceiling, let alone scratch it.
‘That thing I saw in my nightmare—’ he began, but Grace said ‘Listen!’ and lifted up one finger. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Did you hear that?’
Basilisk Page 8
