Graham Masterton - Prey.html

by Prey (lit)

  I saw Brown Jenkin tugging Danny through the death-white weeds of the graveyard, and then in through the half-collapsed doors. Danny was trying to pull himself free: he didn't have time to turn around and see that I was following him.

  "Oh God in heaven look after me," I said; although I wasn't at all sure that there was a God, in 2049, or if there ever had been a God.

  Cautiously, I turned around and began to climb down the fire-escape, my shoes scraping on the narrow rusted rungs. I glanced down once or twice to make sure that the rungs were safe, and the garden still seemed to be a dizzying distance below me.

  I was almost halfway down when I heard someone shouting my name.

  "David! David! Wait for me!"

  I looked up, blinking against the rain. D-s Miller was leaning over the parapet waving to me, his blond hair stuck down with wet, his glasses misted, his face even pinker than usual. His face provided the only living color in this whole yellowish-gray landscape.

  "They've taken Danny to the chapel!" I called back.

  He turned himself around and started to climb down after me. "I searched the garden!" he panted. Of course we didn't find anything! It was then that I realized what Fortyfoot House was all about! Different times! Different gardens!

  "Of course," he panted, "I couldn't tell the woodentops where I was going . . . they wouldn't have believed a word of it."

  "Just take it easy!" I called back. He was coming down the fire-escape so enthusiastically that he was making it shake, and some of its anchor-bolts began to joggle loosely in the wall. We didn't want only to get down safely, we wanted to get back up again, too.

  At last I reached the last rung, and dropped heavily down to the patio. D-s Miller dropped almost immediately after me, balancing himself on his hands. He wiped the gray slime from his fingers and sniffed them suspiciously.

  "What the hell's this?" he said. "It's all over everything. It looks like a mixture of jelly-mushrooms and dead bodies."

  "That's probably what it is," I replied.

  We hurried across the sloping garden toward the brook. All that remained of the sundial was a crumbled stump, like a decayed human tooth. Our feet slid on the greasy dead vegetation, and the sulphur in the air irritated our throats and lungs so much that both of us were coughing like spavined horses by the time we reached the brook.

  A brook still trickled down the narrow crevice in the garden, but it was thick viscous brown, and it stank of raw sewage. We tried to jump over it, but D-s Miller slipped on the opposite bank and his foot plunged into it, right up to the top of his sock.

  "Oh, shit," he complained, shaking his ankle.

  "You're probably right," I told him.

  We scaled the hill that led to the graveyard wall. The ground was rumbling beneath our feet, as if an endless Underground train were passing. Behind the walls of the chapel, dazzling white lights flashed, and I heard desperate panicky screams and awful groans, and something elsesomething which sent electric prickles down my back. It was the distinctive voice of young Mr Billings, reciting some hair-raising invocation in a language which I couldn't have hoped to pronounce, let alone understand. It didn't sound like any human language that I had ever heard. It was more like the bristle-throated chirruping of huge insects, mingled with the submarine rattling and clicking of dolphins. Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!

  D-s Miller and I hurried swift and low through the decaying weeds of the graveyard, between gravestones that were now tilted and broken and eroded by years of exposure to acid rain. On many of them, even the names had been obliterated. A stone angel stood with nothing but misshapen lumps for wings, and a head that had been dissolved into the unsettling likeness of a slope-browed ape.

  We reached the doors of the chapel. It would be easier to force our way between them than it would have been in 1992part of the woodwork had rotted away.

  "What's the plan?" asked D-s Miller.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Wellwhat are you going to do, once you get in there?"

  "How should I know? I'm just going to grab hold of Danny and make a run for it. What else can I do?"

  "You need some kind of diversion. Otherwise you won't even get halfway."

  I thought about it. "I suppose you're right. What do you suggest?"

  "The first thing I suggest we do is reconnoitre. There could be three people in therethere could be three hundred."

  He glanced back at the chapel window, through which I had first seen young Mr Billings hurrying across the lawns. "Come on," he said, and led the way between the gravestones until we reached it.

  Even brighter lights crackled and spat from inside the chapelso bright that I had to cover my eyes with my hand to prevent myself from being dazzled. Young Mr Billings' chanting grew fiercer and more complicated, until he was practically screaming. I edged myself upwards until I could just see over the flaking stone window-ledge, and out of the corner of my eye I could see that D-s Miller was doing the same.

  Neither of us spoke when we saw the inside of the chapel. D-s Miller didn't even understand the implications of what we were witnessing, but all the same he stood with his mouth open and his eyes wide, as if he were defying his brain to tell him that what he was looking at was true.

  On the left-hand interior wall of the chapel, all the ivy had shriveled away, to reveal not just the mural of Kezia Mason, but of scores of other young women. By the historical differences in their clothes, they looked as if they were the women who had hosted the witch-entity from one generation to the nextfrom Stuart and Elizabethan times to the reign of Henry Ifrom the Dark Ages to the Roman occupation of Britainand further back still. Each of these women had the same mocking, triumphant expression on her face. Each of them had her own familiar standing beside her, or draped across her shoulders like Brown Jenkin, or cradled in her arms. The familiars included huge brindled cats and lizards and wild boar and things that could only have been a mixture of toads and dogs.

  In what had once been the nave of the chapel, three huge braziers burned. They looked as if they had been made out of salvaged chemical drums, roughly pierced with holes and filled with sea-coal and dead wood. Iron gratings had been laid across the tops of the braziers, and on these gratings ten or eleven huge joints of meat were roasting. I thought they were sucking-pigs at first, until the smoke swirled away from one of the gratings and I saw a charred and reddened face.

  They weren't sucking-pigs at all. They were children. The lost, slaughtered orphans of Fortyfoot House. Some of them had had their arms and their legs hacked off; two more were headless. Some had been tied by wire to the gratingspresumably because they had started to roast while they were still alive.

  From the braziers to the altar, the shattered slates were shiny with human grease and scattered with children's bones. The accumulation of bones grew thicker and grislierand the altar itself was almost buried in them, thousands of themsome of them freshly-picked, some of them dull, some of them so old that they had partially crumbled into dust. Ribcages, pelvises, femurs, scapulasand more small skulls than I could possibly count.

  And on top of this mountain of bones lay the most grotesque creature that I had ever seen. The sight of it almost drove me mad on the spot. I felt my jaws lock with horror, and my skin jangled with sheer disgust.

  Say it's not true my mind kept insisting. Say it's not true!

  But it was true. It was a woman, a vastly-distended woman, lying naked on a heap of rugs and blood-soiled mattresses and burst-open cushions. Her stomach bulged enormously; and what was doubly horrifying was that the bulge ceaselessly writhed and churned, as if some huge creature were trapped inside her, fretful to make its escape. Her breasts were grossly swollen too. I couldn't have carried even one of them in my wheelbarrow. And her neck was so bloated that her face looked like a tiny painted doll's-mask.

  Kneeling beside her on the mountain of bones, his face masked in filthy rags, was the creature with whom Kezia Mason was supposed to have given birth to Brown Jenkinthe king o
f the docklands, underworld, Mazurewicz. With his grimy bare hands, he was feeding her with charred flesh and stringy membranes and bundles of lukewarm fat. With her tiny mouth she was endlessly and greedily gulping it down, most of it unchewed, and the more she gulped down, the more wildly her stomach churned.

  Young Mr Billings was standing not far awaydressed not in black but in a plain white sheet, so that he looked incongruously like Mark Antony in Julius Caesar. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. His eyes were closed and both of his arms were raised, and he was still screaming that eldritch chant, over and over again.

  Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!''

  D-s Miller said, "Fucking hell." Then, "Excuse my French."

  "Where's Danny?" I asked him. "Can you see Danny?"

  He lifted his head a little higher over the window-ledge.

  "There " he said. "Down in the corner, close to the wall. Brown Jenkin's got him. He doesn't seem to be hurt yet."

  "Perhaps they're waiting for all of these poor kids to be cooked first," I told him. I was so disturbed by what I had seen that I had to look down at the ground, and press my hand against my forehead. I didn't know whether I felt frightened or bitter or hopeful or nothing at all.

  D-s Miller lowered his head and came up close to me. "Listen " he said. "The quicker we act, the better. Drugs bust tactics. We'll both come bursting in together, both screaming our heads off. I mean really let go, it helps to put them off. I'll veer to the right, as if I'm trying to take out that chap in the white nightie. You veer to the left, and grab hold of Danny. Then you go back out of the door, while I jump through the window. Then run as if your arse is on fire."

  "What about Brown Jenkin?" I asked him.

  "Kick the fucker right in the balls. That's if he's got any. Don't hesitate. And keep on screaming. And don't stop for me, because I won't stop for you."

  "All right, then," I swallowed. Lights flickered through the window, and the sagging door, and the ground shook violently. I heard the terrible noise of skulls, dislodged by the earth-tremors, rolling hollow and dry down the mountain of bones.

  We crowded shoulder-to-shoulder at the front doors of the chapel. I was so frightened that I could hardly breatheapart from which, the air was so corrosive that I felt like coughing. I had to get rid of a persistent irritation in the back of my throat by going hermmh, hermmmh, every few seconds.

  "Are you ready?" asked D-s Miller.

  I turned and looked at him. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn't have the faintest idea who he wasand yet here we were, in some unimaginable future, risking our lives together against the most obscene creature that I had ever seen.

  I said, "Yes, readyand, thanks."

  He sniffed, and wiped his nose with his finger. "Bollocks," he said. "It's my job."

  We both pushed into the chapel together, roaring at the tops of our voices. At the same time, an ear-splitting thunderclap shook the ruins, and we were dazzled by a crackling tree of lightning that struck the chapel floor and sent bones and slates flying like shrapnel in all directions.

  I hesitated for a second, confused, but then I started roaring again, and bounded over the slates toward Danny and Brown Jenkin. Brown Jenkin had already stripped Danny of his T-shirt, and was prodding the coals of the nearest brazier with a long piece of iron railing. I could see the tears glistening on Danny's cheeks.

  "Pretty fire, oui? You like the pretty fire?"

  I don't think that Brown Jenkin saw me coming, but Danny did. He dropped abruptly out of Brown Jenkin's graspand as Brown Jenkin scrabbled around for him, he came pelting towards me as if he were running a relay race on sports day.

  "Ahhhhhhhhh!" screeched Brown Jenkin, and came whirling after us with his black cloak flying, his claws patter-scratching across the slates.

  Danny literally flew into my arms. I scooped him up and went running with him, around the braziers, through the filthy smoke of charring children, my shoes smashing through bones and slates and crumbled debris. I forgot to keep on screaming, but since I was carrying Danny in my arms, I wouldn't have had enough breath anyway.

  "Bastard-bastard I cut out your lunch-pipes!" howled Brown Jenkin, dancing and hopping after me. I stopped for a second, put Danny down, and kicked the last of the braziers, so that Brown Jenkin was showered in fiery coals and blazing wood and the half-roasted bodies of his innocent victims. His cloak caught alight and he wildly beat the hem against the ground, cursing and spitting and snarling.

  I was away clear now. I was halfway towards the door, and nobody could touch me. I held Danny tight, and I could hear him gasping in my ear as I jolted across the slates. But as I reached the doors, and I was just about to step through, I turned around and saw that D-s Miller hadn't been so lucky. Mazurewicz had scuttled down from the mountain of bones, and had snatched hold of him. Now he was gripping D-s Miller's hair, and holding his long-bladed carving-knife close to his throat.

  "Go!" shouted D-s Miller. "For Christ's sake, David, go!"

  I slowly put Danny down. "Listen," I told him. "You have to run back to the house. Don't stop for anybody. Climb back up the fire-escape and back through the skylight. Go straight downstairs and find Charity and stay with Charity. Whatever you do, don't talk to Liz. Liz is bad. It's not her fault, but she's bad. So stay with Charity."

  "David, do you hear me? Go!" D-s Miller repeated.

  "You're not staying here?" asked Danny, terrified.

  "Not for long. Just a couple of minutes. Now, run!"

  Danny gave me the quickest-ever peck on the cheek, and then ran pell-mell back through the graveyard and into the sulphurous gloom. At that moment, Brown Jenkin came rushing up to me, his cloak still smoking, slashing his claws from one side to the other, and gibbering hysterically.

  "Merde-fucker I rip you to pieces!"

  I dodged, ducked, and then swung my leg and kicked him as hard as I could. He screeched, and showered lice. I kicked him again, it was appalling, it was like kicking a dead chicken wrapped in a blanket. Brown Jenkin screeched again, but this time he slashed my leg, ripping my trousers, and opening up a deep six-inch cut in my calf-muscle.

  At that instant, as I lost my balance and hopped backward, I seriously believed that he was going to kill me. I suddenly thought of Dennis Picketing and my guts dissolved into water. I didn't know whether to hit him or kick him or what to do. My whole nervous system seemed to be paralyzed with funk.

  "Bueno, bueno, now I cut out your chitterlings, ja?" cackled Brown Jenkin, and slowly came nearer and nearer, yellow eyes narrowed, rattling his claws together like ghastly castanets.

  21 - Ritual Birth, Ritual Death

  But above the thundering and rumbling and clattering of bones; above the sizzling of flesh and the cackling of Mazurewicz, I heard a strong imperious voice. "Jenkin! Stop that! Bring him here to me!"

  Brown Jenkin snarled, and slashed at me one more time, out of spite. But it seemed that he had no choice but to nudge me up towards the altar, where young Mr Billings was standing in his long white sheet.

  Young Mr Billings looked very different from the last time I had seen him. His hair was completely white, and his face was engraved with the inky lines of exhaustion and moral degradation. He looked like a man who had given everything: body and soul.

  He gave me a strange, disassembled smile, and held his hand out as if he expected me to shake it.

  "You didn't take my advice, then, and leave?" he said. His voice was very much harsher than it had been before, although it had lost none of its authority. "I knew you wouldn't leave, no matter what. And now you're here, just where I wanted you!"

  He tapped his forehead. "Psychology . . . that was always my strong point. I wanted you here and here you are."

  "How the hell did you know that I was going to stay?"

  "Well . . . of course you stayed," young Mr Billings told me. "You were in love with Liz, weren't you, and lovers always do exactly the opposite of what they're advised to do. Anyway, you're here. You must have stayed. At
least, you stayed long enough for your Liz to become three times pregnant, which was all that she wanted. Of course, sad to say, her offspring didn't survive. Too nice a year, you know, 1992! You could still breathe the air without coughing. But the witch-entity left her, when she died, and hid itself back in the walls of Fortyfoot House, and eventually found itself another host; a charming lady estate-agent. And so the process went on, until today, when we are ready at last for the final great Renewal!"

  He took hold of my unwilling hand and led me across to the mattresses where the vastly bloated woman was lying. Her tiny face stared at me blankly. Her chins were smothered in grease, and grease was running down into the depths of her cleavage.