Basilisk

by Graham Masterton

  He turned around in his chair, knocking over his glass of red wine, as if blood had suddenly splashed across the tablecloth. Standing close behind him – unnervingly close – was Doctor Zauber, grinning at him so that his eyes sparkled and his teeth glistened in the candelight. He was wearing his usual black suit and a black silk shirt, with a black bow tie.

  ‘Please . . .’ he said, lifting one well-manicured hand. ‘Please – you don’t have to get up.’

  Nathan stood up all the same, and Rafał did, too, dropping his napkin on to the table, and aggressively bunching his fists.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Nathan, even though he felt breathless. ‘The good Doctor Zauber. How did you find us?’

  ‘The same way that you found me, I expect. Intuition. Putting two and two together. I have an exceptional talent for it.’

  Doctor Zauber smiled at Denver and Patti, and said, ‘So invigorating to see young people getting involved in scientific exploration, don’t you think? I sense that this young man is your only son, Professor. And this young lady is a very wayward spirit.’

  ‘Hey,’ Patti protested.

  ‘No offense meant,’ said Doctor Zauber, soothingly. But then he turned back to Nathan and said, ‘I knew you would come, sooner or later. If you hadn’t, I would have had to visit you again, and give you more encouragement.’

  ‘Why don’t you cut out the crap,’ Nathan retorted. ‘You need to tell me how to get my wife back, and I need you to tell me right now.’

  ‘I understand your anxiety,’ said Doctor Zauber. ‘But you need to understand that everything in this world has a price. You have eaten this fine meal, you will be billed for it. Your wife, sad to say, was billed for her intervention in my affairs. This account now needs to be settled.’

  ‘She did nothing to you. Nothing at all.’

  ‘Of course she did, Professor. Maybe it was you who shot and mortally wounded my creation, and not your wife, but she aided and abetted you, did she not? It was only by sheer chance that both of you weren’t killed where you stood. You deserved it, God knows. Even a basilisk is a living creature, with a right to life.’

  ‘I want her back, Zauber. And I won’t give you a moment’s peace until you tell me how.’

  ‘What will you do? Beat me? Torture me? Put me on the rack until I squeal? You know what I want from you, Professor. If you give me your co-operation, and your assistance, I will tell you exactly what you need to do to restore your wife to consciousness. I swear on the Bible.’

  Nathan lost his temper. He had sworn to himself that he wouldn’t, when he eventually confronted Doctor Zauber, but all the stress and the anger that had been building up inside him suddenly exploded, and he went for Doctor Zauber with all the pent-up fury of an attack-dog.

  Except that Doctor Zauber was no longer there. He was standing on the opposite side of the restaurant, behind another table crowded with diners, still smiling, his eyes glittering in the candelight.

  Denver stared at him with his mouth hanging open. ‘How’d he do that? I never even saw him move.’

  Rafał crossed himself, twice, and promptly sat down, his face as purple as if he were suffering from a heart attack. But Patti said, ‘Holy moly. What a story this is going to make.’ She dug down into her bottle-green handwoven bag and brought out a camera.

  ‘Patti,’ Nathan warned her, ‘be careful.’ He realized now that they were dealing with somebody far more complex and powerful than he had first imagined. He had tried to explain away Doctor Zauber’s appearances on his bedroom ceiling and the wall of Grace’s hospital room by ascribing them to some kind of extra-sensory perception, or delayed hypnotic suggestion, or by dismissing them simply as nightmares. But he couldn’t explain how a man could instantly move from one side of a crowded restaurant to the other, so fast that nobody saw him do it.

  ‘You should really consider your options, Professor,’ said Doctor Zauber, and now he was standing so close behind Nathan that he could have reached out and put his hand on his shoulder.

  Denver shook his head slowly from side to side and said, ‘Wow, dude. That is awesome.’

  Patti focused her camera but Doctor Zauber raised one hand and said, ‘No photographs, please. It is a waste of time. They will show nothing at all. And I do not care for the flash.’

  Nathan turned around to face him. ‘So what are you proposing?’ he said, although he was still trembling with anger. ‘Come on, what exactly do you want me to do, in exchange for this precious information?’

  Doctor Zauber raised his right eyebrow. It looked like a crow rising from a barren field. ‘I am doing exactly the same thing that you have been doing, except that I have been working on the project from the other side, as it were. You and I, we have been like two engineers trying separately to build a car. You have successfully designed the engine. I have successfully designed the body. Now we need to get together so that we can finally assemble our wonderful vehicle, and drive off into the future.’

  ‘But to do this, people have to die. Was it you who killed all of those old people on that bus at – where was it?’

  ‘Brzeźnica, just off highway forty-four,’ Rafał put in. ‘Sixteen of them, all together. Most of them were burned beyond any recognition.’

  Doctor Zauber’s expression darkened. ‘I am not admitting to anything, Professor. You think I am a fool?’

  Patti lifted her camera and took a flash photograph. Doctor Zauber whipped up his hand to shield his eyes, and everybody in the restaurant turned around to look. Now the head waiter was weaving his way between the tables toward them, his bald head shining like a bright pink lightbulb, to see what all this disturbance was about.

  Doctor Zauber snapped, ‘I told you, did I not? No flashes!’ Then he faced Nathan and said, ‘You need to think about this very deeply, Professor Underhill. The only lives which will be taken will be lives which in any case are almost at their very end. The loss will be infinitesimal but the benefits will be infinite. If you consider that wars are worth fighting, in which thousands of young men are killed, then surely this is worth striving for. Extinction for a few, yes. But health and happiness for so many more.’

  ‘All right,’ said Nathan. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  Doctor Zauber nodded in appreciation. ‘I will give you one night and one day. Tomorrow evening at the same time meet me at Dekafencja, it’s a café on Slawkowska Street. Then we can talk about this and make the best decision.’

  The head waiter came up to them. ‘There is some kind of trouble here?’

  Rafał shook his head. ‘No. No trouble. Lively argument.’

  ‘How about you, sir?’ asked the head waiter, turning toward Doctor Zauber. But Doctor Zauber was no longer there. He had been talking to Nathan, only inches away from him, but even Nathan hadn’t seen him disappear.

  Nathan sat down again, unsteadily. ‘What are we dealing with here, Rafał?’

  ‘He’s so cool, man,’ Denver put in. ‘The magic disappearing dude.’

  ‘Well, you use the word “magic” so easily,’ said Rafał. ‘But I believe that this is exactly the correct description. However, this is not magic like stage magic, like walking into one closet and appearing out of another, or sawing some pretty girl into two pieces. This is serious control of elemental forces. Doctor Zauber can use light, space, and above all time. This is how he creates his mythological beasts.’

  Nathan said, ‘I think I could use a drink.’

  But Patti was looking at Rafał intently. ‘You’re trying to tell us that Doctor Zauber is a magician? But a real magician, not like Doug Henning or David Copperfield?’

  ‘I think it is obvious that he has learned the knowledge of the ancient alchemists and sorcerers – those people who first discovered how to bring mythological beasts to life. Of course I have read about such processes but I have never known for certain if they really worked. In a similar way that Professor Underhill uses DNA and embryonic stem cells, Doctor Zauber must use his alchemical ability to tu
rn bones and skin back into the creature which they used to be.

  ‘Once he has brought them back, however, it seems that he doesn’t know how to control their growth, so they end up deformed in some way.’

  ‘So what the hell am I going to do?’ asked Nathan.

  Rafał put his knife and fork together, even though he had only half finished his venison. ‘He said you have a night and a day. Well, we must find out more about how Doctor Zauber re-creates his creatures, and most of all we must find out the one thing that you have come here to Kraków to discover: how to save your wife.

  ‘You cannot be party to killing people and taking their life-energy, no matter what the justification. And I know just the woman who can help us.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Mistress of the Dark Arts

  ‘So who’s this woman we’re going to see?’ asked Patti, as they stepped out of the restaurant.

  ‘I regret only Professor Underhill and myself,’ Rafał told her. ‘She is not an easy person.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Pops,’ said Denver. ‘This is just getting really interesting. Real black magic and stuff. I can’t wait to tell Stu.’

  Rafał laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Why don’t you take Patti maybe to a club for a while, relax, have some fun? I recommend Frantic Club, on Szewska Street. Good drink, good food, also house and techno.’

  ‘House and techno?’ said Denver, in amazement. ‘You know about that?’

  ‘I have daughters,’ said Rafał. ‘You may even meet them there.’

  He hailed a taxi for Denver and Patti, and then he linked arms with Nathan and said, ‘Let us walk there. It is on Szeptem Street, not so far. And I need some fresh air, I think, after our little confrontation with Doctor Zauber. You know something, he does not look a single day older than he did when he was lecturing at the university.’

  Nathan said, ‘What would you do, in my position?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The street lights were reflected in Rafał’s spectacles and made him look blind. ‘I think it is very hard choice for you to make. But if there is one thing I have learned in my life, it is to make my own choice, and not the choice that somebody else expects of me. If anybody offers you this, or that, like Doctor Zauber, you should decide on something else altogether. Your own way. That is why we go to see Zofia Czarwonica.’

  They crossed the main road together and then Rafał led Nathan along a dead-end street, lined on both sides with tall brown-painted houses, most of them with peeling stucco and darkened windows and soiled net curtains. Their façades were streaked with damp and some of them had weeds and wildflowers growing high up in their guttering. Nathan and Rafał had been walking arm-in-arm but now they had to make their way along Indian-file because there were so many cars parked halfway up on the sidewalk. Nathan could smell the sweet mustiness of old buildings.

  ‘Not so long ago, most of the old Jewish Quarter was like this,’ said Rafał. ‘Now they have renovated so many buildings, a single-bedroom studio can cost you quarter of a million euro.’

  They reached a narrow, maroon-painted building with a gray stone porch which was overhung with ivy, its leaves dry and white with disease. The paint on the door was blistered and the brass doorknocker was black. It was a wolf’s head, snarling. Rafał banged on the door three times, hard.

  They waited for over a minute. Rafał banged again, but there was still no answer. ‘Seems like nobody’s home,’ said Nathan.

  ‘Zofia is always at home. But I should have called her, maybe, to let her know that we were coming. Sometimes she is involved in ritual, or cooking her magic herbs.’

  He stepped back and shouted, ‘Zofia! Zofia Czarwonica! This is Rafał! Open the door!’

  He was still looking up when the front door suddenly opened and a woman appeared. She was white-faced, with smudgy black eyes and wild black hair that was brushed up into an alarming shock. She was wearing a clinging black cotton dress that revealed a thin, almost emaciated body, but disproportionately large breasts. On both wrists she wore at least half a dozen silver bangles, decorated with Polish amber and turquoise and multi-colored enamels.

  ‘Rafał Jasłewicz!’ she said, in a high, dry voice as if she had been smoking too much. ‘What are you doing here? Such a long time since I see you! I think you forget me!’

  Nathan was surprised that she was speaking to Rafał in English, but she immediately turned to him and said, ‘You are American. It is only polite.’

  ‘Do I look that American?’ said Nathan.

  Zofia tapped her forehead with one very long black-polished fingernail. ‘Zofia Czarwonica sees everything, sir. Besides, I heard you talking outside my door. I listen. I am always suspicious who comes to my house.’

  Rafał gave Zofia one of his bear hugs and kissed her on both cheeks, twice. Then he stepped back and said, ‘You look even more beautiful than ever, Zofia.’

  ‘You want something,’ Zofia retorted.

  ‘Of course. I would not normally come to visit you so late. This is my friend Nathan Underhill, he is professor of zoology from Philadelphia.’

  Zofia looked at Nathan directly. ‘He has very bad problem,’ she said.

  Nathan nodded. ‘You guessed it. I’m sorry if we’re disturbing you.’

  ‘Come in. You must tell me everything about it. I am one of the znakharka, and it is my duty to protect people from bad things.’

  Rafał looked at Nathan and pulled a face which meant: Why not? Let’s go for it. What do we have to lose?

  Zofia disappeared back into the darkness, and Nathan and Rafał followed her. Inside the house, they found themselves in a gloomy hallway, with a highly polished floor of green and black linoleum. It smelled of lavender wax and boiling cabbage. On the right-hand side stood a dark mahogany hall-stand, with umbrellas in it, and assorted hats hanging from pegs. It had a mottled mirror in the middle of it, and Nathan caught sight of his reflection as he walked past. He looked like a man drowning in an algae-covered lake.

  They climbed a very steep, creaking staircase. At the top, a door led off to the left-hand side, and Zofia opened it and beckoned them in.

  This was her living room, with a window overlooking Szeptem Street, although it was dark now, and all Nathan could see was the window of the house opposite, with sagging orange curtains. The room was warm and stuffy, and smelled of dried herbs and old books. There were books everywhere: in bookcases, and stacked on the table, and built into teetering stacks of their own.

  Two brindled cats were sleeping on a worn-out brocade couch. Zofia shooed them off and invited Nathan and Rafał to make themselves comfortable.

  ‘You would like tea?’ she asked them. ‘I can make you saxifrage tea which will protect you against evil magic. Or coffee, if you prefer. I have decaf.’

  ‘We just came from Wierzynek Restaurant,’ said Rafał. ‘Maybe a glass of water.’

  Zofia’s kitchen was divided from her living room by a black-beaded curtain. She disappeared through it, and then returned with a red tumbler filled with water, like a conjuring trick.

  ‘So, you have a serious problem,’ she said. ‘Nathan is very worried about somebody he loves. She is sick, maybe. He wants to find a way to cure her sickness, but something is preventing him. Some knot. Some dilemma.’

  Nathan glanced at Rafał. ‘I’m impressed,’ he said.

  Zofia raised one hand, with silver rings on every finger. ‘No, no. It is not magic. It is sensitivity. Observation. Like Sherlock Holmes. You come to a znakharka because you are looking for some kind of cure. You do not yourself look sick, so I say to myself that you have come here on behalf of somebody close to you. You are American, and United States has most advanced medical treatment in whole world, so why has Rafał brought you here to see me?’

  She made a twisting motion with her hands. ‘Because of a knot that United States medical treatment cannot untie. Because of a dilemma.’

  Nathan said, ‘I’m still impressed.’

  Zofia turned to Rafał. She
had a wide, feline face with very high cheekbones. She was strikingly pale, as if she never left her apartment, but her skin was so flawless that her face could have been carved out of ivory. Now that he could see her in the lamplight, Nathan realized that she was also much younger than he had first supposed: no more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight, he would have guessed.

  ‘You know of Christian Zauber?’ Rafał asked her.

  ‘Of course. What of him?’

  ‘Nathan will explain to you.’

  Nathan told Zofia all about his Cee-Zee project, and how his gryphon had died, and how Richard Scryman had stolen his research. He told her everything that he had told Rafał – all about the Murdstone Rest Home, and the fire, and the basilisk – both the real basilisk and the basilisk that he had seen in his nightmares.

  ‘Basilisk,’ Zofia whispered, when he had finished. ‘Such a terrible creature. Why should Doctor Zauber wish to bring such a thing back to life?’

  ‘I’m guessing that he plans to use a basilisk to cure cancer patients, or anybody else who suffers some kind of invasive disease.’

  ‘How could he do that?’

  ‘Think about it. When the basilisk looks at anything – human, animal or vegetable – that organism instantly dies. If a surgeon could direct and concentrate that look, he could kill metastasizing cancer cells, or staphylococcus, or virtually any kind of bacteria. He wouldn’t need a knife, or a laser, or any kind of chemical therapy.’

  ‘Well, you are right,’ said Zofia. ‘It is the eye of the basilisk that holds the secret. The water inside, what do you call it?’

  ‘Optic fluid.’

  ‘That is correct, the optic fluid. In a basilisk, this can sometimes shine like a very bright light, as you have seen for yourself, and dazzle you. It has the same effect as what the Greek people call matiasma and the Italian people malocchio, the evil eye. It can make babies sick, or cattle to stop from giving milk, or crops to wither up. If it is powerful enough, it can stop a man’s heart where he stands. Or – as you know – a woman’s.’