Fortnight of Fear

by Graham Masterton

  Mr Graf sensed his hesitation, however, and held the glowing dice suspended in the air, just two inches above Mr Fortunato’s open hand. Jack could almost see the nerves that crawled with anticipation in Mr Fortunato’s palm.

  Solly tugged his sleeve even tighter. “Jack, for old time’s sake, I’m pleading with you now. I never pled before. I never pled to nobody. But please.”

  Jack hesitated for one more second. He didn’t need to look at his watch. He never did. He knew what time it was. He loosened his necktie and said, “Give me a minute to change, all right?”

  He undressed behind the screen. The black dragon-robe was cold and silky on his skin. He tightened the sash, and then he reemerged, and Mr Graf was still waiting, still smiling.

  Jack approached Nevvar Graf and slowly held out his hand. Mr Graf smiled secretively, and dropped the dice into Jack’s palm. They tumbled and turned as slowly as if they didn’t particularly care for gravity. When they touched Jack’s palm, they felt like fire and ice and naked voltage.

  The players gathered around the table again. The lamp was so dim that all Jack could see of their faces was smudges of paleness in the shadows. He shook the dice and tiny grave-worms of bluish fluorescence wriggled out from between his fingers. He bet six months, and stood back waiting while the side-bets were placed.

  He threw the dice across the table. They jumped and sparkled with even more brilliance than they had before.

  “You see that?” said Mr Graf, slyly. “Even the dice know when an expert is throwing.”

  Jack had come out with Chung Kuei and Yo Huang. Solly clenched his fists and breathed. “All right! You goddamned brilliant son-of-a-bitch!”

  Jack threw again, Kuan-yin Pusa and Chung Kuei. He threw them again the next throw, and picked up a whole year. He didn’t feel any different, but it was stimulating to think that he was a whole year younger.

  He continued to win, again and again and again; living-a-little and living-a-little more, throwing naturals and points as swiftly and confidently as if the dice were loaded – which, in a strange way, they were. The years fell away from him with every win, until he was betting two and three years at a time, and his black silk robe began to hang loosely around his slim twenty-two-year-old frame.

  Solly placed numbers to win with almost every throw, and gradually won back the years he had lost before. He played cautiously, however, and didn’t risk more than a year a time, until he reached forty-five.

  Then – just as Jack was about to throw again – he placed a hard-ways bet of twenty years.

  Jack looked at him sharply, but Solly grinned and winked. “One last throw, my friend, and then I’m going to walk away, and never come back.”

  But Jack felt something in the dice; as if they had shrunk and tightened in the palm of his hand; as if they had suddenly gone cold. The dice were not going to let Solly go.

  Jack said, “Twenty years on one throw, Solly? That’s a hell of a bet.”

  “That’s the last bet ever,” said Solly. “You just do your bit, and let me take care of myself.”

  Jack threw the dice. They dropped leadenly onto the layout, scarcely bouncing at all. They came up Shui-Mu and Hsua Hao, a win for Jack; but Solly had bet Shui-Mu and Shui-Mu, and he was immediately aged by twenty years.

  Jack was only a little over twenty years old now. He stood straighter and taller, and his hair was thick and wavy and brown. He took off his toupee and crammed it into the pocket of his robe. Mr Graf smiled at him. “Hair today, gone tomorrow, huh, Mr Druce?”

  Jack scooped up the dice and prepared to throw them again. As he did so, Solly put down the gleaming tokens that showed he was staking another twenty years.

  “Solly!” called Jack.

  Solly looked up. “Don’t do it, Solly,” Jack warned him, in a clear and youthful voice; although he found that he didn’t really care too much whether Solly lost another twenty years or not. Look at the guy, he was practically dead already.

  “Just throw, will you?” Solly growled at him.

  Jack threw; and won; but Solly lost yet again, and so did two or three of the others at the table. Jack heard from Solly a sharp harsh intake of breath, and then Solly staggered, and gripped the edge of the table to stop himself from falling.

  “Solly? You okay?”

  Solly’s eyes bulged and his face was blue from lack of oxygen. “What do you care?” he gasped. “Will you shoot, for God’s sake? Just shoot!”

  Mr Graf was very young again, a small boy peering over the dimly-lit center of the table. He said to Solly with utmost calmness, “Do you want an ambulance, sir? Or maybe I should call the house physician?”

  “Shoot, that’s all,” Solly insisted, and placed another twenty years on the table.

  Jack slowly juggled the dice. Fire and honey in his hand. “Solly … you understand what could happen if you lose?”

  “Shoot,” hissed Solly, through false teeth that were too large for his shrunken gums.

  “Go on,” urged Mr Fortunato; although he too was ancient, with sunken ink-stained eyes and wispy white hair.

  Jack shrugged, shook the dice, and threw.

  Suddenly, the dice crackled with new vitality. They bounced on the opposite cushion, and tumbled across the table in a cascade of glowing Chinese images. They came to rest right in front of Solly.

  Yama and Hsua Hao. Solly had lost.

  “I –” he gargled. But traceries of light had already crept out of the dice, trembling and flickering like static electricity. They forked across the baize to the tips of Solly’s fingers. Silently, enticingly – right in front of Jack’s eyes – the light crept up Solly’s arms, and entwined themselves around him in a brilliant cage.

  “Solly!” Jack shouted.

  But Solly began to shudder uncontrollably. His hair was lifted up on end, and white sparks began to shower out of his nose and eyes. He looked as if fierce fireworks had been ignited inside his head.

  Jack heard a noise that was something like a sob and something like a scream, and then Solly collapsed onto his knees, although his fingers still clung to the edge of the table.

  Twitching electricity streamed out of his body, shrinking down his arms and pouring out of his fingertips, back across the craps table and into the dice. They vanished into the Ghosts on the dice like disappearing rats’ tails. Solly dropped backward onto the floor, his skull hitting the polished wood with a hollow knock.

  The dice remained on the table, softly glowing, as if Solly’s life had given them renewed energy.

  “Well, Mr Druce?” asked Nevvar Graf. “We’re waiting.”

  Jack looked down at Solly’s crumpled, dried-up body; and then at Nevvar Graf; and then back at the dice. The haunted circle of faces watched him expectantly.

  Then – “No,” said Jack. “That’s it. I’m out.”

  “You still have five years on the table, Mr Druce. You’ll lose your five years. Rules of the game.”

  “I’m only twenty-two now. What do five years matter?”

  Mr Graf smiled. “Ask Mr Fortunato what five years matter. It’s an education, Beijing Craps. It teaches you that the time you throw away when you’re young, you’ll bitterly regret when you’re old. Beijing Craps teaches you the value of life, Mr Druce. What does a month matter, to a bored teenage kid? Nothing: he hopes that month will pass as soon as possible. But tell me what a month matters to a man with only one month left to live.”

  Jack took a deep, steadying breath. “Whatever, I’m out.”

  “You’ll be back.”

  “Well, we’ll just have to see about that.”

  “All right,” shrugged Mr Graf. “Carlos – will you escort Mr Druce out of the casino? And make sure you pay him his winnings. Thank you, Mr Druce. You have a rare skill with the ivories.”

  Jack changed back into his loose seersucker suit. Before he left, he nodded to the circle of players. One or two of them nodded back; but most of them seemed to have forgotten him already. Carlos took his arm,
the first time that anybody in the casino had touched him, and he was led back out into the bright glittering world of the Golden Lode.

  When he had cashed his winnings, he went across to the punto banco table. He watched the game for a while, considering a couple of bets. A bleached-blonde girl standing next to him was screaming with excitement as she won her first hand. But after Beijing Craps, the idea of playing for money seemed absurdly petty. He glanced back toward the staircase that led up to Mr Graf’s private craps game. Carlos was still standing at the top of the stairs, and he smiled back at Jack with a smile like curdled milk.

  Jack knew then that he would never escape. He would be back at that table, no matter how hard he tried to resist it. Maybe not tomorrow; maybe not next week; maybe not for years. But he would be back. No real gambler could resist the temptation of playing for his very life.

  He left the Golden Lode and stepped out on to the hot, brilliantly bright sidewalk. He had started playing Beijing Craps at two o’clock in the morning, and now it was well past nine. For the first time in a long time he felt hungry; and he decided to go back to his hotel room and shower and change, and then treat himself to a meal of prime rib and fried zucchini. He could wear his Armani suit, his real suit.

  The sidewalk was crowded with shuffling tourists and squalling kids. Las Vegas wasn’t what it used to be, back in the days of the mob. Bugsy Siegel would have rolled over in his desert grave to see creches and stroller parks and family restaurants, and hookers being turned away from casino doors. But Jack didn’t care. He had found himself the ultimate game, even in this sanitized Las Vegas, and he was twenty-seven again. He had forgotten how much strength and energy he used to have, at twenty-seven – how light and easy it was to walk.

  He went up to his hotel room humming along to the Muzak in the elevator. Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head … they keep fallin’ … He boogied along the corridor, chafing his feet on the nylon carpet, so that when he reached out for his doorhandle, there was a sharp crackling spark of static.

  To his surprise, however, his door was half-an-inch ajar. He hesitated, then pushed it wide. The room appeared to be empty, but you never knew. There were plenty of scumbags who followed gamblers back to their hotel rooms, and forcibly relieved them of their winnings.

  “Anybody there?” he called, stepping into the room. The bed was made, and there was no utility cart around, so it couldn’t have been the maids. Maybe the door had been left open by accident. He went over to the bureau and tugged open the drawers. His gold cufflinks were still there; so was his Gucci ballpen and five hundred dollars in small bills.

  He was just about to turn around and close the door, however, when he heard it softly click shut by itself. A voice said, “Freeze, buddy. Stay right where you are.”

  He stood up straight. In the mirror on top of the bureau, he saw a young man step out from behind the drapes, holding a handgun, .32 by the look of it, although Jack didn’t know much about guns.

  “Looking for some loose change?” the young man asked him.

  “Maybe I should ask you the same question,” Jack replied. The young man came around and faced him. He was pale and thin-faced and haggard, and he was dressed in worn-out denims.

  “I’m not looking for trouble,” he told Jack. “Maybe you should turn around and walk back out of that door and we’ll forget the whole thing.”

  “I’m not going anyplace,” Jack retorted. “This is my room.”

  “Unh-hunh,” the young man grinned. “I know whose room this is. This is Mr Druce’s room, and you sure as hell aren’t Mr Druce.”

  “Of course I’m Mr Druce. Who do you think I am?”

  “Don’t kid me,” the young man told him, raising his pistol higher. “Mr Druce just happens to be my father; and there’s no way that you’re my father, buddy.”

  Jack stared at him. “Mr Druce is your father?”

  The young man nodded. “You sound like you know him.”

  “Know him? I am him.”

  “Are you out of your tree or what?” the young man demanded. “You’re not much older than me. How the hell can you be my father?”

  “How the hell can you be my son?” Jack retorted. “My son is three years old.”

  “Oh, yes? Well, that’s very interesting. But right now, I think you’d better vamos, don’t you, before Mr Druce gets back and finds you here.”

  Jack said, “Listen, I think we’ve gotten our lines crossed here. You must be looking for the wrong Mr Druce. I’m Jack Druce, this is my room, and there’s no way in the world you can be my son, because look –”

  Jack reached inside his suit for his wallet, and his Kodak photograph of Roddy by the pool. But the young man instantly cocked his handgun and tensed up, and said, “Freeze! Freeze! Keep your hands where I can see them!”

  “But if I showed you –” Jack began.

  The young man screamed “Freeze!” at him, and fired. The bullet hit Jack in the right side of his head, and burst out through the back of his skull. Blood and brains were thrown against the yellow flock wallpaper.

  Jack thought, He’s killed me. I can’t believe it. The punk’s gone and killed me. He opened and closed his mouth, and then his knees folded up under him and he collapsed on to the floor.

  The hotel dwindled away from him like a lighted television picture falling down an endless elevator shaft. Until it winked out.

  Shaking, the young man hunkered down beside him, and reached into his blood-spattered coat for his wallet. He flicked through it. Over ten thousand dollars in thousand-dollar bills. Jesus. This guy must’ve made some killing.

  He found a creased Kodak photograph of a small boy next to a swimming pool. He stared at it for a long time. For some inexplicable reason, he found it disturbingly familiar. Must be the guy’s son. It was weird, the way that he’d kept on insisting that his name was Jack Druce.

  The young man stood up, unsure of what to do next. He couldn’t wait here for his father any longer, and he didn’t really have to. He’d only come to Las Vegas to ask him for money, and now he had all the money he could possibly want.

  He crammed the bills into the pocket of his denim jacket, and stuffed his handgun back into the top of his jeans. He took one last look at the man lying dead on the carpet, and then he left.

  He walked along the sidewalk glancing at every middle-aged man who passed him by. He wondered if he would recognize his father if he ever chanced to meet him. He wondered if his father would recognize him.

  He passed the Golden Lode Casino, and standing on the steps outside was a young boy, no more than seven years old, wrapped in a black Chinese robe. The young boy was smiling to himself, almost beatifically, as if he were a god.

  Roderick Druce smiled at him, and the boy smiled back.

  A Note on the Author

  Graham Masterton (born 1946, Edinburgh) is a British horror author. Originally editor of Mayfair and the British edition of Penthouse, Graham Masterton’s first novel The Manitou was published in 1976 and adapted for the film in 1978.

  Further works garnered critical acclaim, including a Special Edgar award by the Mystery Writers of America for Charnel House and a Silver Medal by the West Coast Review of Books for Mirror. He is also the only non-French winner of the prestigious Prix Julia Verlanger for his novel Family Portrait, an imaginative reworking of the Oscar Wilde novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.

  Masterton’s novels often contain visceral sex and horror. In addition to his novels, Masterton has written a number of sex instruction books, including How to Drive Your Man Wild in Bed and Wild Sex for New Lovers.

  Discover books by Graham Masterton published by Bloomsbury Reader at

  www.bloomsbury.com/GrahamMasterton

  Burial

  Corroboree

  Feelings of Fear

  Fortnight of Fear

  Holy Terror

  House of Bones

  Lady of Fortune

  For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to
the original author have been

  removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain

  references to missing images.

  This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Reader

  Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,

  London WC1B 3DP

  First published in Great Britain 1994 by Severn House Publishers

  Copyright © 1994 Graham Masterton

  All rights reserved

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  may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The moral right of the author is asserted.

  eISBN: 9781448212323

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