Graham Masterton - Prey.html

by Prey (lit)

  "I suppose I ought to thank you," I said to young Mr Billings.

  "You have nothing to thank me for," he assured me. "Your Liz will be wanting her third and last conception; and Brown Jenkin will be coming for Charity; and if I were you I'd watch for that boy of yours, too. All hell is about to open up."

  We walked side-by-side to the patio, and up the steps. Our shoes barked softly on the bricks.

  "Can I ask you something?" I said to young Mr Billings, as he opened the back door for me.

  "I won't guarantee to answer it."

  "There's a photograph of you in the hallway. Sometimes I've seen you moving about in it. I've seen Brown Jenkin in it, too."

  Inside the house, Brown Jenkin had already lit two or three lamps, and was lighting more, hopping up onto the seats of the armchairs in order to reach them. He was clutching a wax taper in his claw, a wax taper which dripped and flared onto his cuff and ran, still burning, down his wrist. There was a sickening smell of singed hair in the room.

  Brown Jenkin eyed me with such carnivorous salacity that I felt a chill right through to my spine, as if I had been sitting on a cold metal-backed chair all day. He didn't have to speak, his one mucus-crusted eye told it all. I'll have your liver out one day, my friendI'll hook it purple and blood-streaked out of your neck-stump, you see if I don't.

  Young Mr Billings ignored him and guided me along the hallway and back to the stairs. "I know the photograph you mean. Kezia's little joke. She still has some of her childish playfulness, in spite of what's hiding inside her soul. She can make all kinds of pictures move. She can touch a painting of a sunny day by the seaside, and turn it into night-time, with high seas and a howling storm. From what I gather, the pre-humans used picture-movement as a way of communicating with each other."

  He seemed matter-of-fact as he spoke, nearly jovial. But there was something disturbing about a man who could speak like a company director taking a visitor on a tour of his carpet-factory when, in reality, he was a haggard and haunted time-traveler, living under the same roof as a half-naked witch, a lice-infested rat and twoscore children who were about to be abducted and killed for the sake of their flesh.

  We passed the children's bedroom. The door was just an inch ajar, and Molly and her two friends watched us with their mouths turned down in disappointment as we passed. Young Mr Billings snapped, "Get to bed, you three," and there was nothing I could do to help them. If young Mr Billings was right, Brown Jenkin would slaughter even more of them if I gave him even half an excuse, and the thought of those skinny, pathetic children being sliced open like rabbits was more than I could bear.

  We reached my bedroom, and young Mr Billings helped me up onto the chair.

  "Don't try to come back again," he cautioned me. "I won't be able to save you from Kezia the next time. She has a keen taste for tearing off faces."

  "All right," I agreed. "But I can't give you any guarantees about what I'm going to do when I get back to 1992."

  "Keep an eye out for your Liz, that's what I suggest you do. And remember what I told you. You can change your fate if you want to. You can change everything. Time's nothing more than a box of minutes."

  "We'll see," I told him.

  I heaved myself up into the attic again. I could see daylight shining up the attic stairs, and very faintly I could hear Danny calling, "Daddy? Daddy? Where are you? Daddy!"

  Young Mr Billings looked up at me with a faint, humourless smile; and now we were more than a century apart, as well as worlds apart. He lifted one hand in a small gesture of farewell.

  "Tell me," I said, as I prepared to close the trapdoor, "what did you sell your soul for?"

  He kept on looking up at me. For a moment, I didn't think that he was going to answer. Then he said, "What would you sell your soul for?"

  "I don't know. Eternal youth, I suppose. Maybe ten million quid. I wouldn't turn down a decent breakfast, to tell you the truth."

  Young Mr Billings very slowly shook his head. "I sold my soul for something quite different, my dear sir. If we ever meet again, I'll tell you what it was. It wasn't thirty pieces of silver, but it wasn't far off it. Meanwhile . . . remember my warning. Keep an eye on your Liz, and take those children as far away from Fortyfoot House as you can."

  "Can I trust you?" I asked him.

  He continued to shake his head. "No," he replied. "You can't."

  17 - The Son of Blood

  Danny and Charity sat foot-swinging at the kitchen table eating their boiled eggs and toast soldiers, while I stood by the sink and looked out of the window and drank a strong cup of black coffee. The sun shone in through the doorway, the breeze was warm and smelled of sea. It was almost impossible for me to believe that only half an hour ago I had been wading out into the freezing November ocean and consigning the ripped-apart body of the Reverend Dennis Pickering to the waves.

  I felt an itch underneath my polo shirt and I scratched myself. I hoped to God I hadn't picked up any of Brown Jenkin's lice.

  I put down my empty cup. "Danny," I said, "I'm sorrybut we're going to have to leave."

  "You keep saying that we're going to have to leave and then we don't."

  "This time we really have to."

  "But why? What's happened?"

  "It's this house. It's sort of a magic house; only some of the magic's dangerous. I'm worried that you and Charity might get hurt."

  "What about Liz?"

  "Yes well, I'm worried about her, too."

  "When do we have to go?"

  I checked my watch. "Just as soon as you've finished your breakfast. We don't need more than one suitcase. We can come back for the rest of our things later."

  "What about me?" asked Charity.

  "Oh, you're coming, too. You do want to come, don't you?"

  Charity nodded. I was beginning to like her a lot. Perhaps it was the Victorian formality of her manners; or the way in which she offered to help with everythingthe breakfast, the bedmaking, the clearing-up. Children like Charity you only dream aboutat least these days, when you're lucky to be able to shift them from the television to the lunch-table and back again, just to keep them fed.

  I went upstairs to the bedroom, slid out our old blue British Home Stores suitcase from under the bed, and opened up the rusty catches. As I folded up shirts and pants and pressed them as neatly as I could into the bottom of the case, I looked across at Liz's green T-shirt lying on the bed, and a pair of her discarded nylon panties. I wasn't at all sure how I was going to deal with Liz. I had seen for myself the flickering, unearthly apparition that had appeared to sink itself inside her. But had young Mr Billings been telling the truth? Had that really been the pre-human entity called Sothoth, or had it been nothing more than an optical illusiontoo much wine and too much worrying about money and not enough well-balanced meals?

  On the other hand, supposing he had been telling the truthand Liz was now possessed by the same entity that had cuckoo-nested inside Kezia Mason? Supposing she was pregnant with two life-forms that were going to come bursting out of her body and blow her apart? Should I tell her? Or should I keep quietespecially since young Mr Billings had said there was no way of aborting the creatures? Should I take her to a hospital? Or should I run, and forget all about her, and close my eyes and close my ears and pretend that I was somebody else and that I had never even heard of Fortyfoot House?

  There was one aspect of all this which really irked me . . . and that was why young Mr Billings had taken such trouble to warn me about the dangers of staying at Fortyfoot House. He could have let Brown Jenkin have me. He could have let Kezia Mason rip off my face.

  But I had the feeling that he needed me, for some inexplicable reason. I had the feeling that he had somehow involved me, without my knowledge, in some kind of secret conspiracy.

  He had mentioned the ultimate betrayal of all time . . . the thirty pieces of silver. Perhaps that had been more significant than I had first imagined.

  But I couldn't spend any more time worryin
g about it. I had to think of Danny and I had to think of Charity. Every minute we stayed here increased the risk of Brown Jenkin catching us; and I didn't have any illusions about what he would do to the children if he managed to abduct them.

  door flew openin he ran

  I packed Danny's pajamas and then went to the bathroom to collect our toothbrushes. I looked at myself in the medicine-chest mirror. Shagged-out wasn't the word for it: I looked appalling. I had washed the blood off my chin, but my lip was still badly split, and there were scratches and red bruises all around my nose and mouth.

  When I came downstairs again, I found to my surprise that Liz was already back from work, sitting at the kitchen table, stirring a freshly-made cup of instant coffee. The children were out on the patio, kicking a half-deflated beach-ball around. Liz smiled at me strangely as I hefted the suitcase across the kitchen and put it down by the open door.

  "You're all packed," she said, but without much surprise.

  "I, eryes. I'm all packed. I've decided to go. I think I've had enough."

  "Oh," she said. "You were going to leave without telling me?"

  "Of course not. I was going to come around to the bird park and tell you."

  "But you weren't going to ask me if I wanted to come with you?"

  I didn't know what to say. I didn't even know if I was talking to Liz any more, or some cold and formless being that just happened to look like Liz, and sound like Liz, and tease me like Liz.

  "It didn't really occur to me that you'd want to come with me," I lied. "Surely you can't be interested in staying with an older man with no money, no prospects, no car and two children to look after."

  "Can't you let me be the judge of that?" she asked me.

  I glanced out at the children, laughing in the sunshine, and thought of the children locked up at Fortyfoot House, all those years ago; hopeless and half-starved; and with no other prospect but mutilation and death.

  "How come you're home so early?" I asked Liz. "It's only eleven."

  Her spoon tinkled in her coffee mug, around and around and around. "I didn't feel very well," she told me. "I've got a funny sort of stomach-ache."

  I nodded. "I see."

  "One of the cashiers brought me home. He's nice. His name's Brian."

  "Your age?"

  "You're not jealous, are you?"

  I thought I caught that reddish fire in her eyes again. I had the strongest feeling that somebody else was watching me intently through Liz's eyes, like somebody looking through the cut-out eyes of a portrait.

  "Do you know what it is?" I asked her.

  She gave a little questioning shake of her head.

  "The stomach-ache, I mean," I explained. "Do you have any idea what it is?"

  I thought that I might see some hint of a clue on her facesome indication that she wasn't what she seemed to be. But she simply shrugged and made a moue and said, "It could be an early period. Perhaps I haven't been eating properly. I always get a stomach-ache when I don't eat properly."

  "Can I get you something for it?"

  She grinned lasciviously. "A little of Dr Williams' special medicine might help."

  "I'm ah leaving," I said, crisply. I felt like a character in a Noël Coward play. "I'm taking the children to Brighton. Then, wellI'll just have to see what happens after that."

  "Can't you take me with you?"

  I sat down at the kitchen table beside her. "I've just been back through the trapdoor."

  There was a very long pause. Then Liz put her coffee-spoon down on the tabletop and said, "You went back?"

  "I had to. The police came around looking for Dennis Pickering.

  "After he killed him, Brown Jenkin buried him under the floorboards, and he was still there. Like a dried-up mummy, after all these years. That's why I went back, this morning, after you'd gone to work. I went back to 1886 to bury him. Wellnot exactly bury him . . . I put him in the sea. You knowconsigned his body to the deep."

  "What are you trying to tell me, David? Something's wrong, isn't it? Something's really wrong?"

  "I don't know. I'm not at all sure. I met young Mr Billings, and young Mr Billings told me all about his father, and Kezia Mason, and Fortyfoot House."

  God almighty, how was I going to tell her that she was pregnant with two parasitic creatures? I couldn't! But what if I didn't, and she was killed without knowing what was happening to her?

  "Young Mr Billings told you all that?"

  "Yes. I met himdown by the garden gate. I met Kezia Mason, too, and Brown Jenkin."

  She laid her hand on top of mine. "David . . . has it occurred to you that you're not sounding very rational?"

  "What do you mean? I was thereI talked to him. I was there in November, 1886. Young Mr Billings said that Kezia Mason wasn't an orphan at all, she was sort of occupied by this really ancient creature that wasn't human. He said that was what witches really are . . . ordinary women who have been occupied by pre-human creatures.

  "He said that " I stopped. Liz was looking at me with the oddest expression I had ever seen. Amused, affectionate still with that sharp red gleam in her iris, but then perhaps that was natural, after all.

  ''Go on," she coaxed me. "What else did he say?"

  Slowly, haltingly, I told her all about the Sumerian ziggurats and the doorways through time. I told her about Mazurewicz and Brown Jenkin and Dr Barnardo. In the end, I told her about the Old Ones and the three sons that would eventually become the Unholy Trinity, and dominate the world.

  When I had finished, she looked at me for a very long time without saying anything. Then she reached out and touched my cheek.

  "Do you realize what's happened to you?" she said, in the gentlest of voices.

  "I know what's going to happen to you. I know what's going to happen to those children."

  "Davidever since you've been here, you've started to imagine wilder and wilder things. You've been under stress, your marriage has broken up, you've totally lost your grip. You don't really think that you've been back in time, do you? People can't go back in time!"

  I was dumbfounded. "What are you trying to say to me? You're trying to say that I've been imagining all this? 'He woke up, and it was all a dream'? Come on, Liz, you've seen young Mr Billings for yourself, and Sweet Emmeline, and Brown Jenkin! Jesus ChristI didn't imagine that!"

  She stroked my knuckles, over and over, round and round, in the same persistent way in which she had stirred her tea. "David, this house is full of all kinds of noises and electrical faults and things like that. It has an atmosphere, yes, I'll admit it. But it isn't haunted, not really hauntedand all of this stuff you've been telling me about young Mr Billings and Brown Jenkinyou've just been letting things get on top of you."

  "Oh, for Christ's sake, Liz! Look at my shoes, look at my trousers! I've been wading in the damn sea!"

  "So? You've been wading in the damn sea. What proof of anything is that? I can go and wade in the damn sea if I want to."

  "All right, all right," I agreed, furiously. "If all of this is happening inside my headwho, may I ask, is she?"

  I stood up, went to the kitchen door, and pointed out to the patio.

  Where Danny, alone, was kicking around that half-deflated beach-ball.

  I looked left, I looked right. I shaded my eyes against the glare, and looked out over the lawns. There was only a squirrel, leaping across the grass like a living croquet-hoop.

  "Danny, where's Charity?"

  Danny was pretending he was Gazza, scoring against the Italians. The ball slapped flatly against the kitchen wall. "Who?" he asked me.

  "Charity, the little girl."

  He stopped playing and stared at me, his arms by his sides. "What little girl?"

  "The little girl you were playing football with. The little girl you had breakfast with. The little girl who spent the night here last night and you spent all night swapping jokes with. That's what little girl!"

  Danny looked so blank that I realized that he was telling me th
e truth. He genuinely didn't know what I was talking about. And this meant that either I really was losing my marbles, or that Lizpossessed by the witch-entitywas conjuring up some unbelievably cunning visual and mental deceptions. I know which seemed the more feasible. I came back into the kitchen and said, "Okay, I'll prove it. They both had eggs, two eggs each. The shells are in the"