Fortnight of Fear

by Graham Masterton

  Jack said, dryly, “You’re Nevvar Graf, aren’t you? You really are.”

  The boy released Solly’s hand and came back to Jack, and looked up at him, his eyes bright with mischief. “I really am. And what you’re looking at is proof. Look at me, I’m five years old! And that’s the magic of Beijing Craps. You win, you can live your life all over again!”

  Solly nodded toward the table, where the white-haired men and women were rasping their breath on to the dice. “What if you lose?”

  “You won’t lose. You’re too good. You know you’re too good.”

  Jack stepped up to the table, and inspected the layout. “So what’s in it for you?” he wanted to know. “Why’d you want me to play?”

  The boy smiled more gently now. “Same as always, Jack. The odds favor the house; and I’m the house.”

  “Explain it to me,” said Jack.

  The boy came up and stood beside him. “It’s pretty much the same as a regular dice game. You pick up the dice, you make your bet, you shoot; and other players fade your bet. The only difference is that we use special dice, you want to take a look?”

  Jack looked across the table at the withered yellow-faced old man who was holding the dice. He had never seen such an expression of dumb panic in anybody’s eyes in his whole life; not even on the faces of trust-fund managers who had just gambled away their clients’ investments, or husbands who had just lost their houses.

  “Mr Fortunato, will you pass me the dice for just a moment?” asked the boy.

  Old Mr Fortunato hesitated for one moment, the dice held protectively in the cage-like like claw of his hand.

  “Come on, Mr Fortunato,” the boy coaxed him; and at last he dropped them into the boy’s open palm. The boy passed them carefully to Jack.

  They were greenish-black, these dice, and they tingled and glowed. Holding them in his hand, Jack felt as if the ground were sliding away beneath his feet, like jet-lag, or a minor earth tremor. Instead of numbers, they were engraved with tiny demonic figures – figures whose outlines crawled with static electricity.

  “There are six Ghosts on each dice,” the boy explained. “If you shoot Yo Huang – this one – and Kuan-yin Pusa – this one – that’s roughly the same as throwing a seven in craps; and if you shoot Yo Huang and Chung Kuei – here – that’s just about the same as throwing eleven. In either case, these are the Beijing equivalent of naturals, okay, and you win.

  “Yo Huang was the Lord of the Skies; Kuan-yin Pusa was a good and great sorceress. Chung Kuei was known as the Protector Against Evil Spirits.”

  Jack slowly rubbed the dice between finger and thumb. “That’s three Ghosts. What are the other three?”

  “Well,” smiled the boy. “They’re the bad guys. This one with the hood is Shui-Mu, the Chinese water demon; and this little dwarf guy is Hsu Hao, who changes joy to misery; and this is Yama the judge of hell, who was the first mortal ever to die – and do you know why?”

  “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me,” said Jack.

  The boy smiled. “He was the first mortal ever to die because he traveled down the road from whence there is no return.”

  Solly licked his lips. “The road from whence there is no return? What’s that?”

  The boy turned and looked at him slyly. “You’re traveling down it already, my friend. You should know.”

  “Let me feel those dice,” Solly demanded.

  Jack closed his fingers over them. “Solly … maybe you shouldn’t.”

  “Oh, yeah? And any particular reason why not? Seeing as how I’m already supposed to be taking the hike with no return?”

  There was such a crackling charge of power from the dice that Jack felt as if every nerve in the palm of his hand was wriggling and twitching, centipedes under the skin. He had the irrational but terrible feeling that the dice wanted Solly very badly. The dice knew that Solly was there; and they were hungry for him.

  Solly held out his hand, and Jack reluctantly dropped the dice one after the other into his palm. Solly said nothing, but something passed across his eyes like a shadow across a doorway. There was no telling what Solly could feel. Jack suspected that the dice felt different for everybody who held them. It depended on your needs. It depended on your weaknesses.

  “So you place your bet,” said Jack, without taking his eyes away from Solly. “What do you bet? Your soul, something like that?”

  “Oh, no, nothing as melodramatic as that. Anyway, what’s a soul worth? Nothing. A soul is like a marker. Once the guy’s dead, how’s he going to pay?”

  “So what’s the stake?” Jack persisted.

  “Months, that’s what you bet,” the boy told him. From the other side of the table, Mr Fortunato hadn’t lost sight of the dice for one moment, and when the boy said “months”, he shivered, as if the boy had said “millions”.

  “Months?” asked Solly.

  The boy nodded, and then held out his hand for the dice. “The shooter bets as many months as he wants, and the other players collectively put up an equal number of months that he’s going to lose. Lunar months, that is, Chinese months. The rest of the players can bet amongst themselves, too, whether the shooter comes or don’t come, except in Beijing Craps we say dies-a-little or lives-a-little; and there are hard-way bets, too, just like regular craps, whether the shooter throws two Yo Huangs or two Chung Kueis or whether he digs himself a grave and throws two Yamas.”

  “But if you win, what?” asked Solly, hoarsely.

  “If you win, you win months, that’s what. Two, three months; maybe a year; maybe two years, depending what you’ve bet.”

  Solly looked around, found himself a chair, dragged it over, and sat down. His breathing was harsh and irregular. “You mean you actually get younger?”

  The boy giggled. “Look at me, Solly! Nevvar Graf, five years old!”

  Solly rubbed his mouth with his hand, as if he were trying to smear away the taste of greasy hamburger. “Jack,” he said. “Jack, we got to give this a shot.”

  Jack shook his head. “Forget it,” he said; although his throat was dry. “I play for money. Months, what’s a month? Who wants to play for months?”

  The boy shrugged. “What do they say? Time is money. Money is time. It’s all the same. You ought to try it, Jack, you’ll like it. I mean, let’s put it this way. Keeping yourself in toupees and hotel-rooms is one thing; but being ten years younger, that’s something else. How about fifteen years younger, Jack? How about twenty years younger? How about walking away from this table tonight the same age you were when you first started gambling, with your whole life ahead of you, all over again? No more crap tables, no more cards, no more cigar-smoke, no more shills? How about a wife and a family, Jack, the way your life was always meant to be?”

  “How the hell do you know how my life was always meant to be?” Jack retorted.

  The boy’s eyes gleamed. “I’ve been working in this business all my life, Jack. You’re just one of a million. The International Brotherhood of Optimistic Suckers.”

  Jack looked at the table; at Solly; at the mean green lamp; at the strange assortment of faces around the layout. He knew with suffocating certainty that he would have to play before he left. Elaine had died in his arms; Roddy had dwindled to a Kodak photograph tucked in his wallet. The chance of starting over burned in the darkness of his present existence like the molten line of the setting sun, burning on the western horizon. To go back! To catch up the sun!

  He heard himself saying, “Solly and me, we’ll watch for a while.”

  “Hey, you can watch,” Solly told him, abruptly standing up, and sniffing, and clearing his throat. “Me, I’m going to play.”

  “Solly –” Jack warned; but the boy touched one finger against his lips.

  “We’re all playing for time here, Jack. We’re playing for life. It’s your own decision; it’s Solly’s own decision.”

  Jack looked at Solly – tried for the first time in a coon’s age to look like a fr
iend, somebody who cared; although he didn’t find it easy. To the professional craps player, no expression comes easy.

  The boy said, “You’ll have to change. There’s a Chinese screen in the corner, with plenty of robes.”

  “Change?” Solly wanted to know. “Why?”

  “You might win, Solly,” the boy smiled at him. “You might win big. And if you win big, you might find yourself ten years old, all over again. And how would a ten-year-old boy look, hmh? in a 38-chest sport-coat like yours?”

  Solly nodded. “Sure. You’re right. I’ll change. For sure. If I lose, though – you won’t take my suit for collateral?”

  “You’re a kidder, Solly,” the boy grinned at him. “You’re a genuine platinum-plated kidder.”

  Solly disappeared behind the Chinese screen; and while everybody edgily waited for him, the boy whistled, She’s My Jeannie With The Light Brown Hair, over and over.

  At last Solly emerged in his black silk robe. He looked like an invalid, on his way to hydro-therapy. He smiled nervously – first at the rest of the players, then at Nevvar Graf, then at Jack.

  Jack hesitated, and then stepped back. He didn’t shake Solly’s hand. He didn’t say a word. He knew that – inside of himself – he was just as much of a victim as Solly.

  “All right,” said the boy, smacking his hands. “Let’s play Beijing Craps!”

  From out of the shadows at the back of the room, three Chinese and a Burmese appeared, dressed in the Golden Lode uniform of overtight black tuxedo and frilled shirtfront. The boy said, “Same as regular craps, a boxman, a stickman, and two dealers. In Beijing Craps, though, we call them Tevodas, which means witnesses who can testify to somebody’s sins.”

  It was Mr Fortunato’s turn to roll. Solly stood beside him, watching him with naked eagerness. “Six months,” Mr Fortunato declared, and placed six shimmering gold tokens in front of him; tokens that shone brighter than the bottle-green lamp.

  “Two weeks he dies-a-little,” whispered a white-haired old man from the far corner of the table.

  “One month he lives-a-little,” said the twelve-year-old girl. Jack looked at her closely for the first time and realized that her hair had been permanent-waved in the style of a woman who was old enough to be her mother.

  “One week he dies-a-little,” said one of the oldest players, a woman whose skull was showing through her skin. Her shriveled hand placed one of her last gold tokens on to the square marked with the face of Yama.

  When all the bets had been placed, Mr Fortunato gasped on the dice, and rolled them. They sparkled and bounced, leaving fluorescent after-images of Chinese ghosts melting in the air over the tabletop. Yo-Hang and Kuan-yin Pusa. Mr Fortunato had won his six months.

  “Mr Fortunato lives-a-little,” intoned the Tevoda, the stickman, and collected the dice and handed them back. Mr Fortunato breathed a little more easily on to the dice this time; but the old woman who had lost a week betting that he would die-a-little had begun to shudder. Jack swallowed and looked at the blond-haired boy; but the blond-haired boy simply grinned.

  Mr Fortunato bet another six months, and rolled again. He threw Kuan-yin Pusa and Shui-Mu. The blond-haired boy leaned toward Jack and whispered, “He’s won again. In Chinese magic, Kuan-yin Pusa trapped Shui-Mu by feeding her with noodles which turned into chains in her stomach and locked her up guts up for good. Throwing Kuan-yin Pusa and Shui-Mu is like a point in craps; and what Mr Fortunato has to do now is to throw them again. But if he throws Yo-Hang and Kuan-yin Pusa again, he loses.”

  Jack watched every roll of the dice intently; and especially the side bets. Some of the players were picking up weeks here and there with easy bets; others lost one month after another with hard-ways bets. Live-a-little, die-a-little. Their lives ebbed and flowed with every roll.

  Mr Fortunato bet a whole year, threw a crap, and lost it. Twelve months of his life, swallowed in an instant. Who knows what age Mr Fortunato had been, when he had started playing this game? Forty? Seventy? Twenty-two? It didn’t matter. His age was determined by the dice now; his life depended on Beijing Craps. He coughed and wheezed with stress and badly-concealed terror, and passed the dice to Solly with fingers that could scarcely manage to open. Nobody else at the table showed any compassion. The blond boy had aged by three years since Mr Fortunato had started to play, and was far taller and more composed; although the woman with the skull-like face seemed to have shrunk in her black silk robe almost to nothing, more like a bewildered vivisected monkey than a human.

  Jack caught Solly’s eyes but he remained impassive. They were professionals, both of them. They helped each other on the tables when the dice were rolling, but they never ventured to give each other criticism, or personal advice, or to warn each other to back off, no matter how cold the table, no matter how vertiginous the bet. You want to fly, you want to die? That’s your business. Under the lights, out on the center, there was nobody else but you, and Madame Luck.

  “Solly,” said Jack; but the adolescent Mr Graf shot him a glance as hard as a carpet-tack, and he said nothing else.

  Solly bet six months. He jiggled the dice in the palms of his hands, and breathed on them, and whispered something, and then he rolled. They had once called Solly the Arm of Atlantic City; and his arm didn’t fail him now. The dice bounced, glowed, and tumbled, and came up Kuan-yin Pusa and Yo Huang.

  Next, he bet a year, and threw another natural. He threw again, and won again. Roll after roll, he played like a genius; played like Jack had never seen him play before. With each win, he gradually began to look younger. His gray hairs wriggled out of sight, his wrinkles unfolded like a played-back film of crumpled wrapping-paper. He stood taller, straighter, and played with even more confidence; and all the other players bet along with him, hardways bets, right bets, they shed years and years in front of Jack’s eyes. After twenty minutes, he was watching a game played by young, good-looking, vigorous people: attractive young women and smiling young men. Their shriveled skin was plumper and pinker; their hair was thick and shiny; their voices roared with vigor and health.

  “How about some champagne?” called Mr Fortunato.

  A twelve-year-old Mr Graf snapped his fingers stickily to one of the girls. “Bring these people champagne.”

  Jack didn’t bet. Not yet. He was tempted to. But he wanted to bide his time. He wanted to see the losing side of this game, as well as the winning side. He wanted to work out the odds. And although Solly was winning, and consistently winning, it occurred to Jack that the younger he became, the less experienced he became, the more risks he was prepared to take, the wilder his arm.

  “Ten years!” grinned a 24-year-old Solly, shaking the dice in his hands. “I’m betting ten years! Fourteen again, and screw the zits!”

  He rolled. The dice glowered, shimmered, sparkled. They bounced off the cushion on the opposite side of the layout, but then they seemed almost to slow down, as if they were bouncing through transparent glue. The Ghosts glowed malevolently for all to see. Yama and Shui-Mu. Craps. An entire decade was silently sucked from Solly’s body and soul; and he visibly shuddered.

  After that – as far as Solly was concerned – the table turned as cold as a graveyard. Mr Graf was shooting, winning a little here and a little there; but Solly was stacking his counters on all the impossible bets, trying to win time, trying to win time, but losing it with every roll. When Mr Graf finally missed, Solly was white-haired; on the verge of respiratory collapse. He sat hunched over the opposite side of the table, his hands dry like desert thorns, his head bowed.

  Jack approached him but didn’t touch him. Bad karma to touch him; no matter what affection he felt.

  “Solly,” he said thickly, “pull out now. You’ve lost, Solly. Call it quits.”

  Solly raised his head and stared at Jack with filmy eyes. His neck hung in a brown-measled wattle.

  “One more bet,” he whispered.

  “Solly, for God’s sake, you’re falling apart. You look about a hundre
d years old.”

  Solly wasn’t amused. “I’m eighty-seven, two months, and three days exactly, you unctuous bastard, thanks very much. And if I win another thirty on the next roll, I’ll be only fifty-seven. And if I bet another thirty after that … well, then, I’ll be happy to quit. Life was good to me when I was twenty-seven. Twenty-seven is a pretty good age.”

  Jack said nothing. If Solly bet thirty years and won, then Jack would be happy for him. But if he bet thirty years and lost …

  He looked at Mr Graf. Mr Graf had lost six or seven years betting on Solly’s last roll, and was looking much older again, and more like the Mr Graf that Jack had seen hurrying in and out of the Golden Lode, hedged in by minders and shills and hard-faced accountants. Mr Graf’s eyes turned like a lizard’s toward Solly. What could he say? Solly had lost and those who had lost were always hooked. Those who had won were hooked, too. So what could he say?

  “You’re not playing, Mr Druce? It’s your roll, if you’re playing.”

  “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll stay out of it,” said Jack, although perspiration was sliding from his armpits and his fingernails were clenched into the palms of his hands.

  “Sure thing. It’s all the same to me,” said Mr Graf, immediately offering the dice to Mr Fortunato. With the unashamed greed of the truly fearful, Mr Fortunato held out his hand.

  “Wait, Jack!” wheezed Solly, and took hold of Jack’s sleeve, and twisted it. He bent his head close, so that Jack could smell his unexpected age, chalk and cloves and geriatric staleness. “Jack, you’re the best arm there ever was. If anybody can win back those years for me, you can. Jack, I’m begging you, Jack. We never did nothing for each other, did we? Never expected nothing, never asked for nothing. You know that. But I’m asking you now, Jack, I’m down on my knees. If you let Fortunato shoot next, I’m dead meat, Jack. I’m gone. You know that.”

  Jack sniffed, the way that a heroin addict sniffs. He feared this game of Beijing Craps more than any game he had ever come across. It had all the glamor of punto banco and all the fascinating horror of standing in front of a speeding express train. He knew that if he rolled those dice just once, he would be caught for good.