Basilisk

by Graham Masterton

  ‘What are you trying to tell me?’ asked Nathan, as if he didn’t know. If they hadn’t succumbed to smoke inhalation, they hadn’t been inhaling when the fire was set. They had all been dead already.

  ‘Well, let’s put it this way,’ said Detective Cremer. ‘It’s much too soon to jump to any conclusions. We haven’t even identified them formally. But we’d just like to know what you saw when you first went in there. Was the smoke pretty thick?’

  ‘Not on the first floor, no. Not to begin with. I went into two rooms off the first floor corridor, and I found a woman and a man, both dead, as far as I could tell. But there was very little smoke in their rooms.’

  ‘Any sign of physical injury?’

  Nathan shook his head. ‘Not as far as I could tell.’

  ‘You went up to the second floor, too?’

  ‘I tried to, but it was too smoky and too hot. I opened one door, and there was a woman inside, and she was actually burning. She was, like, chargrilled. That’s the only word for it.’

  Denver had just taken a large bite of cheeseburger, and he looked across at Nathan in slowly dawning disgust. He picked up his napkin and spat it out, and pushed his plate away, as well as his Oreo Twisted Frosty.

  Nathan said, ‘I’m sorry, Denver. I should have waited till you’d finished eating.’

  ‘Oh, great. So that I could puke?’

  ‘I’m sorry, really I am. But that’s what I saw. I’m not an expert, but I would have guessed that the fire was started on the second floor someplace.’

  ‘You think that somebody might have started it deliberately?’ asked Detective Crane. Even his voice was sad.

  ‘I don’t know. It was very fierce, and it spread really quickly. But like I say, I’m not an expert.’

  Detective Cremer drained his coffee. ‘OK, Professor. We’ll probably need to talk to you again later, if you don’t mind. But thanks for that.’

  He pointed toward Denver’s half-eaten cheeseburger and said, ‘Do you mind? I didn’t have time for breakfast this morning.’

  Denver said, ‘Be my guest. It’s like, you know, chargrilled. Cremated, even.’

  He drove Denver back to West Mount Airy. Even though Grace was rarely home until six or seven, because of the home visits she had to make to her housebound patients, the house still seemed silent and empty, and dusty, too. Specks of dust were falling through the sunlight that shone through the living-room windows, as if they were settling on Grace’s life.

  ‘OK if I stay with Stu tonight?’ asked Denver.

  ‘I guess. I was thinking of going back to the hospital, in any case. Do you think that his parents will mind?’

  ‘I asked him already. He said it’s OK.’

  Nathan sat on a stool in the kitchen, and opened up a can of Dale’s Ale. ‘Fine, then. I’ll call you if anything happens.’

  Denver hesitated by the door. ‘Pops . . . I know that this wasn’t your fault. Well, it was your fault, kind of. But it was Mom’s fault, too. Both of you wanted to do this together.’

  ‘No,’ said Nathan. ‘I should have said no. I shouldn’t even have suggested it. It was much too dangerous, and I knew it.’

  ‘Sure, but that’s Mom, isn’t it? Always taking risks. You remember that time, when we were snowboarding, at Aspen? She was crazy, the way she was always catching air.’

  Nathan nodded. ‘Don’t you worry, Denver. We’ll get her back. I promise you.’

  Early that evening, Nathan went back to the Hahnemann to sit beside Grace’s bed. He took with him her favorite book, The Process, a dreamlike story about an American university professor crossing the Sahara.

  Doctor Ishikawa had gone home, but a young blonde intern came in to tell him that Grace was stable, and that an EEG had indicated that her brain activity was normal. There was no reason to suppose that she wouldn’t eventually wake up.

  Nathan sat down and took hold of Grace’s hand. God, it was cold – as cold as it had been when she had gone snowboarding and lost one of her gloves.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Grace,’ he told her. ‘I don’t know what else to say. I just hope that you’re having sweet dreams in there, and not nightmares.’

  Grace continued to breathe softly and steadily. It was obvious that she was dreaming, because he could see her eyeballs flicking rapidly from side to side under her eyelids. But there was no way of telling if she was out in the yard, cutting her roses, or whether she was running down the corridor in the Murdstone Rest Home, pursued by the basilisk, its lungs gasping like black leather bellows.

  A nurse brought him a cup of coffee and he started to read.

  ‘In Morocco, it is spring and the hills wash in torrents of color. One mountain is blue, the next mountain is red and the mountain behind it bright yellow with borders of purple. White valleys below are great lacy aprons of waterwort meadow, smelling even more hauntingly rotten-sweet than the orange blossom odor of honey that sets my head spinning as it pours through this train.’

  He went on reading for nearly two hours, until his throat was dry. Then he left her for a while, and went for a walk along the corridor to the reception area. Two nurses were sitting at their station, and both of them smiled at him in sympathy.

  ‘Anything you need, Mr Underhill?’

  ‘A miracle would be good.’

  ‘Believe me, Mr Underhill, we’re all praying for that.’

  He stayed at the hospital until the sky began to grow pale, and the street lights flickered off. One of the nurses came in and said, ‘We’re going to give your wife a wash now, Mr Underhill, and change her sheets. Why don’t you take a break, get yourself some sleep? We don’t want you to be sick.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, wearily. ‘Good idea.’

  He drove home. He had only just stepped in through the front door when he heard the phone warbling. He picked it up and carried it across the living room, so that he could sit down and ease off his shoes while he answered it.

  ‘Professor Underhill, this is Detective Cremer. How’s your wife, Professor? Any improvement?’

  ‘Still stable, but still comatose.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that, sir. Hope she gets out of it real soon. Listen – the reason I’m calling you is that we now have a final count of the victims we recovered from the Murdstone Rest Home. Twenty-nine, all told. Twenty-six residents and three staff. Some of the bodies were very badly burned, but we managed to identify them all from the rest home’s records.’

  ‘How about Doctor Zauber? Did you find his body?’

  ‘No, sir. No sign of Doctor Zauber in the building, alive or dead. He wasn’t at his home, either. We went around there and found that he had left. A neighbor said that she saw him carrying a suitcase out to his car around six thirty in the morning. We searched the house and there was no sign of any personal papers or documentation, and no personal items of any value except for clothing and shoes in the bedroom closet.’

  ‘So he’s vamoosed?’

  ‘It sure looks like it. We checked every conceivable form of transportation. Airlines, buses, trains, rental cars. Then about an hour ago we discovered that he chartered a Cessna Citation out of Brandywine Airport. He took off around twelve noon headed for Montréal. I’m waiting for the Mounties to get back to me, to see if they can find out where he went after that.’

  Nathan felt a cold sliding sensation in his stomach: a sensation of utter hopelessness. If Doctor Zauber had managed to leave the country, God knows how he was ever going to track him down. Maybe he was being hopelessly optimistic in thinking that Doctor Zauber knew a way to rouse Grace out of her coma. But if anybody could, he could, and Nathan had to find out for sure.

  ‘If you find out where he went, you’ll be sure to call me, won’t you?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Detective Cremer. ‘No problem at all. Oh – and there’s one more thing I meant to tell you. The fire at the Murdstone was started deliberately, as far as the fire guys can tell. But there was no trace of your usual accelerants. They said it looked more l
ike somebody walked around the second floor with a giant blowtorch, playing it all over the walls and the carpets and the woodwork.’

  ‘Strange way to set a fire.’

  ‘Tell me something about this case that ain’t strange. So far, the MEs haven’t found a single victim that died of smoke inhalation. All twenty-nine of them must have cashed in their chips long before the fire was started, including the nurses and the orderly. They weren’t shot and they weren’t stabbed and nobody used a blunt instrument to whack them over the head. There’s no trace of poison in their systems, either, so nobody laced their bedtime chocolate with strychnine. So how do you kill twenty-nine people without leaving a trace?’

  Nathan could think of only one answer to that. Basilisk.

  He showered, and then he made himself a pot of strong black coffee and a slice of wholemeal toast, with honey, although he could manage only one bite before he dropped it into the bin. His mouth was desert dry and his throat was constricted with tension, and he had no appetite at all. He chewed, and chewed, and then he spat.

  He could only think of Grace, in her hospital bed, and Doctor Zauber, wherever he was. He wondered what Doctor Zauber had done with the basilisk. He could hardly have taken it with him, especially since he had left Philadelphia in daylight, when the basilisk would have been hiding in some darkened crevice – in an attic someplace, or a closet, or a crawlspace.

  He called Denver. Denver’s voice sounded as if his nose was stuffed up. He was subdued but no longer angry. He and Stu had decided to take the day off school so that they could chill together and listen to deathgrind music. He promised to come back later, in time for supper.

  Nathan said, ‘I’m not too sure I feel like cooking. I’m not too sure I feel like eating. But I think we should try to have regular meals. Maybe we’ll go the Trolley Car Diner for quesadilla.’

  ‘OK, Pops. Sounds cool to me.’

  He sat down on the couch, eased his feet up, and tried to read through the final notes and graphs that Keira had prepared for the gryphon project. Nearly an hour later, the file dropped on to the floor and woke him up. At first he couldn’t think where he was, or why. But then he sat up and looked around. The house was almost silent, except for the skittering of dry leaves across the yard. It had become very gloomy outside, as if a storm were brewing up.

  He thought that he might as well get dressed and go back to the hospital. He couldn’t concentrate on work; and there was nothing he could do to find Doctor Zauber, not until Detective Cremer got back to him.

  He was just about to go upstairs when the doorbell chimed. He tightened the sash of his bathrobe and went to open it. It was Patti Laquelle, with a sympathetic smile on her face.

  ‘I heard your wife is still sick. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Thanks. I was just about to go back and sit with her. What do you want?’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about the way you went into that burning rest home. I mean, that was an incredibly brave thing to do. But I’m really interested to know what you were doing there, and why you went inside. It has all the makings of a great Web story.’

  ‘Oh, really? “Dragons’ Egg Egghead Scrambles For Safety”?’

  ‘You’re a funny guy, Professor. In both senses of the word, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

  Nathan held the door open wider. ‘You may as well come inside. You’ll have to excuse the way I’m dressed.’

  Patti stepped inside. ‘I’ve seen worse. Councilman Pobjoy answered the door to me once wearing nothing but a kitchen apron. You should have seen him when he turned around. Well, as a matter of fact, you shouldn’t have seen him when he turned around. What a GPA.’

  Nathan led her into the living room. She perched herself on the arm of one of his armchairs, and took out her digital recorder.

  ‘What I’m really interested in is whether you knew any of the people in the rest home. Is that why you were there, visiting somebody?’

  ‘Do you want to keep this off the record?’ Nathan asked her. ‘Just for now, anyhow.’

  Patti looked dubious, but she said, ‘OK . . . so long as I don’t go away with no story at all.’

  ‘I was looking for Doctor Zauber, the owner.’

  ‘Oh, yes? And did you find him?’

  ‘Doctor Zauber had left, maybe only minutes before I got there. The night before, my wife and I had entered the rest home looking for something very special.’

  He stood up, went across to the bookcase, and came back with a copy of The Black Book. He opened it, and showed her the woodcut of the basilisk.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Patti. ‘You were looking for this book?’

  ‘Unh-hunh. We were looking for that thing. Part-lizard, part-cockerel, with some unidentifiable mammal DNA thrown in, for good measure. The basilisk, which actually means “little king” in Latin, on account of the horns that grow on top of its head, like antlers.’

  ‘You’re kidding me.’

  ‘Not at all. I explained to you, didn’t I, all about the mythological hybrids that I was trying to breed? The basilisk is one of them.’

  ‘And you and your wife thought that there was a basilisk at the Murdstone Rest Home? Even if a thing like that really exists, what was it doing there?’

  Nathan told her everything. He told her about Richard, stealing his research. He told her about Doris Bellman, her cockatoo and her ivy plants. And he told her what had happened to Grace, when Doctor Zauber and his basilisk had cornered them on the second floor of the rest home.

  When he had finished, Patti sat with her mouth wide open, saying nothing.

  ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ Nathan asked her.

  ‘I saw the gryphon you were trying to hatch out, and that was like nothing that I ever saw before, and I mean not ever, and I’ve seen a German shepherd that was born with two bodies, and a goose with no head that could walk around the barnyard and lay eggs.’

  ‘So you do believe me?’

  She came up close to him and spread her arms wide. ‘I want to believe you. Like, what a story that would be! “If Looks Could Kill”! But let’s face it, Professor. If I tried to file anything about a basilisk, my editor would definitely think that I had a hole in my screen door. Or else he’d fire me.’

  Nathan looked her straight in the eye, trying to convey how serious he was. ‘Patti . . . I’m telling you the truth. That was what actually happened. I know you can’t file a story like that. But you could help me to locate Doctor Zauber, couldn’t you? If you can ask your readers if they’ve seen him anyplace, or know where he might have disappeared to, that would be terrific.’

  ‘What about my story? “Egghead’s Hair-Raising Rescue Bid”?’

  ‘How’s this: I was driving past the Murdstone Rest Home when I saw smoke coming out of the upstairs windows. My wife treats some of the residents there, so I stopped and ran inside, to see if anybody needed to be rescued. Unfortunately the smoke and the heat were too much for me, so I had to come back out again, without being able to save anybody. That’s all you have to say.’

  ‘And Doctor Zauber?’

  ‘The Philly police want to ask him some questions about how the fire might have gotten started.’

  ‘Do they suspect him of torching the place himself?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask them that.’

  ‘I already did,’ said Patti. ‘They wouldn’t say yes and they wouldn’t say no. They wouldn’t even say maybe. What do you think?’

  ‘I think that I’m very worried and I’m very tired, but if there’s anything at all that you can do to help me, I’ll appreciate it more than you can know.’

  Patti stood up. She took hold of his hands, and squeezed them, and then she gave him an unexpected kiss on the forehead, as if he were her favorite uncle. ‘I’ll see what I can do. No promises. But the deal is, you have to let me know everything that happens. On the record, and off. Even if you think it sounds totally loony, like everything you’ve told me today.’

  ‘O
K, deal. I need to tell somebody, and apart from Denver, who else is going to believe me?’

  Patti picked up her purse and walked to the front door. Before he could open it for her, she looked up at him and said, ‘So what happened to the basilisk? I don’t see how Doctor Zauber could have taken something like that on a charter jet, do you?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been asking myself. I shot at it, and he said that I’d hurt it, but I don’t have any idea how badly. Maybe I killed it, and he’s buried it. Maybe he’s put it down, and disposed of its body somehow. But you’re right. I don’t think he took it with him to Montréal.’

  ‘OK,’ said Patti. ‘But if you have any brilliant ideas—’

  ‘I’ll call you. Don’t worry about it.’

  She opened the front door, and as she did so Denver was walking up the driveway, wearing his big loose khaki jacket and his Blue Jays cap on sideways.

  ‘Hey, Denver!’ said Nathan. ‘Somebody here I’d like you to meet!’

  Denver came up to the porch. His face looked pasty, and there were plum-colored circles under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept. Inside the porch, above his head, there was a dreamcatcher, which Grace had bought in Colorado. As Denver came to stand underneath it, it slowly began to circle. It was only being blown by the breeze, of course, but the effect was strangely unsettling, as if he had brought last night’s nightmares with him.

  ‘Patti, this is my son Denver. Denver, this is Patti Laquelle, from The Philadelphia Web.’

  ‘How’s it going?’ asked Denver. He was trying to act all cool and offhand, but Nathan could tell that he liked her by the way that he was shuffling his feet.

  ‘Pretty good, thanks. I’ve been talking to your dad about things that go bump in the night.’

  ‘Oh, really? What did he tell you?’

  Patti turned to Nathan as if to ask him how much she was supposed to know. Nathan said, ‘I told her everything. No reason not to. She’s going to post an article on the Web, asking if anybody knows where Zauber’s disappeared to.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to try,’ said Patti. ‘Depends on my editor. Pernickety schmuck that he is.’