Hymn

by Graham Masterton

  The blind Indian boy shook the sundance doll. ‘We don’t have your firepower, man. We never want to, and we never will. But this land is ours, and always will be. So if we want you to go slow, then all we have to do is to ask the land to carry you slow. You don’t even understand “travelling”, do you? Why “travelling” is so important? When you travel, it’s not just you moving over the ground, it’s the ground moving underneath you. Time and distance, they’re elastic, don’t you understand that? After all that Einstein taught you? It’s not fantasy, it’s not magic, it’s true.’

  ‘How old are you?’ Jim Griglak asked him.

  ‘Thirteen come February.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Jim Griglak. ‘When I was thirteen, my parents thought I was a genius because I could recite Casey At The Bat.’

  Ric Munoz took the gum distastefully from his mouth, gum that he must have been chewing for over six hours. ‘Thought the goddamned flavour’d gone out of it.’

  ‘Listen,’ Jim Griglak told Tony Express and John Dull Knife. ‘I don’t know what the hell kind of a stunt you’ve pulled here, but it amounts to interference with officers of the law in the execution of their duty. I don’t have room for you in my vehicle right now, but I’m warning you that you face possible arrest, and that as soon as I’ve delivered these three suspects to San Diego, I’m coming back for you.’

  ‘That could take you many hours,’ smiled John Dull Knife.

  ‘I don’t care how frigging long it takes,’ Jim Griglak retorted. ‘I don’t care if it takes me past my frigging retirement. You’ve been frigging around with me, injun, and nobody frigs around with me and gets away with it, never.’

  ‘Never is a white man’s idea,’ John Dull Knife answered him. ‘My people only say “ever”.’

  ‘Well get this,’ Jim Griglak snapped back, ‘nobody never frigs around with me, ever. Understandee?’

  He jerked his head to Ric Munoz and said, ‘Come on, Munoz. I’m getting hungry.’

  He turned around, but to his astonishment, their patrol car had disappeared. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but empty road.

  He turned furiously back to Tony Express and John Dull Knife, but they had disappeared, too, and the road was just as empty ahead as it was behind. He turned and stared at Ric Munoz but all Ric Munoz could do was stare back at him.

  ‘Where’d they go?’ he demanded. ‘Did you see them go?’

  Ric Munoz shook his head. ‘I didn’t see nothing.’

  Jim Griglak stood in the middle of the Anza Borrego desert, and for the first time in his career he let out a long bellow of frustration and rage.

  To Lloyd and Kathleen and Franklin, who had been sitting in the back of the hot patrol car waiting, it had seemed that Tony Express and John Dull Knife had simply walked around the two Highway Patrol officers, leaving them standing by the side of the road.

  John Dull Knife leaned into the open driver’s window with a smile. ‘Do you think you can drive this vehicle back to the trailer park?’ he asked Lloyd. ‘Then you can collect your own car and be on your way.’

  Lloyd frowned at Jim Griglak and Ric Munoz. ‘What about those two? They’re not exactly going to stand and wave while we take off in their patrol car, are they?’

  John Dull Knife continued to smile, unconcerned. ‘For the next hour, those two will be living at a different pace from the rest of us. By the time they regain their normal perception, we will have long been gone.

  ‘How do you do that?’ asked Kathleen, amazed.

  ‘You must have heard of the Yaqi, and their ability to change perception. What I have done to our friends from the Highway Patrol is a very similar procedure, not at all unusual or difficult to achieve.’

  Lloyd gave Jim Griglak and Ric Munoz a long uncertain stare, and then opened the patrol car door and stepped out. The two officers remained where they were, not even turning their heads around. ‘That’s incredible,’ Lloyd told John Dull Knife. ‘That’s the weirdest thing I ever saw.’

  ‘How do you think Crazy Horse managed to outflank General Custer at the Little Bighorn?’ asked John Dull Knife. ‘So many eyewitnesses said that first the Sioux were there, and then they were not there. But of course they were there. It was simply that Custer couldn’t see them.’

  Lloyd climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘Do you want a ride?’ he asked John Dull Knife, ‘or will you get back the same way you came?’

  ‘I’ll have a ride, thank you,’ John Dull Knife told him. ‘We may have appeared to you to have arrived here quickly, but we still had to walk six miles in hot sun.’

  Tony Express sat next to Lloyd, and John Dull Knife climbed stiffly in beside him. ‘Hey man, can we switch on the siren?’ asked Tony Express, as Lloyd started the engine and turned the patrol car around.

  ‘Don’t talk like a child,’ John Dull Knife told him.

  Kathleen leaned over from the back seat. ‘What are we going to do now?’ she asked Lloyd. ‘Once those two patrolmen wake up, they’re going to come directly to the trailer-park looking for us, aren’t they?’

  ‘My laywer has a small beach house at Del Mar,’ Lloyd told her. ‘I’ll see if we can use it for a few days. I don’t think Celia would think of looking for me there.’

  John Dull Knife said, ‘You should take Tony with you. He has told me of your struggle. He knows the magic, and he knows how to use the sundance doll.’

  ‘Why don’t you come along?’ Lloyd asked him.

  John Dull Knife shook his head. ‘I am too old, my friend. My days of adventure are long gone.’

  ‘Tony?’ asked Lloyd. He was more than a little dubious of taking responsibility for a twelve-year-old blind boy, particularly when they were being pursued by somebody as dangerous as Otto Mander.

  ‘Sure, man, I’ll come,’ Tony agreed. ‘Franklin can be my bodyguard, hey, Franklin?’

  Franklin grinned and nodded, although he was still plainly bemused by what had been happening to them. ‘I’ll be your eyes, too. You can do all the thinking. I can do all the looking.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Tony, as if he wasn’t completely convinced by this arrangement.

  They drove back to Tony’s store, where Otto’s Mercedes was still parked. John Dull Knife shook them by the hand, and wished them well. ‘If I had been many years younger, I would have gladly come with you,’ he said, ‘but all I can say to you is what Chief Speckled Snake said to his Creek warriors when the white people began to invade their territory.’

  ‘What was that?’ asked Kathleen.

  ‘You would not understand the Creek, but the words exactly mean, “go out there and kick the crap out of them”.’

  Lloyd used the store telephone to call his lawyer, Dan Tabares. But the phone rang and rang and nobody picked it up. He hesitated for a moment, and then he called Waldo at the restaurant.

  ‘Waldo, it’s me.’

  ‘You’re okay, Mr Denman?’

  ‘I’m fine. But I have to change my plans a little. I’m thinking of using Dan Tabares’ beach house at Del Mar for a few days. The only trouble is, he’s not at home right now. I wonder if you could call him in about an hour and ask him to leave the beach house keys under the step same place as he did when Celia and me—well, the same place as he did before.’

  ‘Okay, Mr Denman, sure thing.’

  After Lloyd had hung up, Kathleen used the phone to call her sister and talk to Tom. Lloyd stood outside the store in the long shadows of the setting sun and watched her. There was no mistaking the light in Kathleen’s eyes when she eventually got through. Lloyd looked away, and thought about Celia, and about the children that they would never have.

  Tony Express came up, carrying an Adidas sports bag crammed with jeans and T-shirts and greyish-looking undershorts, which John Dull Knife had packed for him. A spare pair of sneakers were knotted around his neck, and he was swinging the
shaggy, stringy-looking sundance doll. His eyes were invisible behind his dark glasses.

  ‘We ready to roll, man?’ he wanted to know.

  Lloyd nodded. ‘I guess so. But you listen. If this looks like it’s going to get at all dangerous, then you’re right back here on the next available bus.’

  ‘I can take care of myself, man,’ Tony Express pouted. ‘’Sides, I got my bodyguard now, don’t I?’

  Franklin grinned at him, and said, ‘You bet,’ and Lloyd rolled his eyes up, wondering what the hell he had got himself into.

  Twenty

  Waldo waited until he had closed the door behind Angie, the last waitress to leave, and seen her safely across the sidewalk to her boyfriend’s Corvette. Then he turned the key in the door, shot the bolts, and turned around the American Express placard that said CLOSED. He walked back across the darkened restaurant, between the tables set with fresh napkins and softly gleaming cutlery, and opened the sliding door that led out on to the balcony.

  All around him, the lights of La Jolla glittered in the warm night wind, and the sea fussed and phosphoresced on the rocks of the cove. He had rescued a third of a bottle of Barossa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon from a party of elderly ladies who had got too giggly to finish it all, and he poured himself a glass and leaned on the wooden rail and took a deep breath of ocean air.

  Although he wouldn’t have presumed to usurp Lloyd’s authority, he was beginning to enjoy the responsibility and the rewards of running the Original Fish Depot on his own. He had managed to keep the place busy and lively, and he had allowed Louis a free hand to try dozens of new fish dishes, including a spectacularly successful brill with oysters.

  He had also become much more cheerful and sociable, and as his confidence had increased, his French accent had become less and less exaggerated—until, as Louis had remarked, he was practically speaking English.

  He sipped the sauvignon and rolled it around his tongue. It wasn’t quite cold enough but that didn’t matter. He was enjoying the night too much.

  He had been out on the deck for only a few minutes when he became aware that the seagulls were crying. He had never heard them cry in the dark before. He sensed a disturbance in the wind, an anxiety in the seething of the surf. He stood up straight and listened, and he was sure that he could hear somebody calling his name.

  Waldo, don’t run too far, don’t run too fast! Grandpa is coming, Waldo. Grandpa is coming!

  ‘Grandpa?’ he said, out loud. Then he shook his head, and smiled at his own stupidity. He must be really tired to imagine that he had heard his grandpa. ‘Finish your wine and lock up for the night . . . and get yourself some sleep,’ he told himself, trying to sound the way his grandpa used to sound.

  He turned, and shouted out loud in shock. Standing in the shadows at the end of the deck was a black figure with a pale face and dark glasses. A figure that stood and watched him and said nothing at all.

  ‘Who are you?’ Waldo cried out, his throat tight. ‘This is private property. A private restaurant. Nobody is allowed here.’

  The figure stepped forward, into the dim light that shone through the restaurant from the half-open kitchen door.

  ‘Not even the owner’s fiancée?’ she said, with a grey-lipped smile.

  Waldo shuddered, and made an odd noise through his nose that sounded like hnyuh! The figure stepped closer still, so that Waldo could see himself reflected in her glasses, and the air was strong with the aroma of heated metal.

  ‘I’m looking for Lloyd,’ she said, very quietly.

  Waldo breathed with terrified heaviness, and he could feel his heart racing and plunging like a surfer trying to paddle out beyond the incoming waves.

  ‘I am having a nightmare about you,’ he told her. ‘I am asleep, and you have come out of my dream. You must go away.’

  ‘Waldo,’ Celia insisted, ‘I’m looking for Lloyd. I have to find him, before it’s too late.’

  She came a fraction closer, and Waldo screamed and lifted his arm to protect himself. ‘You must go away! You are absolutely dead!’ He stumbled back against one of the chairs and had to snatch at the wooden rail to stop himself from falling. ‘Go away! Go away!’

  ‘How can I be dead, Waldo, when I’m right here in front of your eyes?’

  Waldo had retreated right to the end of the balcony, and his back was pressed against the rail. He glanced quickly behind him, and it was a long drop down to the concrete footpath below. ‘Oh God help me, oh God help me!’ he muttered.

  Celia pushed aside the chair that Waldo had toppled over and came after him. The smell of heated metal seemed even more pungent, and Waldo coughed.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked her. ‘What do you want? You’re a dead person, what do you want?’

  ‘Waldo, I’m not dead. This is me. This is Celia.’

  ‘But you’re hot! I can feel it! You’re hot!’

  ‘Waldo, my earthly body burned but my soul survived. You mustn’t be frightened of my soul! It’s still me, it’s still the same Celia!’

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ shouted Waldo.

  ‘I’m not going to touch you.’

  ‘Then what do you want?’

  Celia took off her dark glasses. In the shadows of the balcony, her eyes appeared to Waldo to be extraordinarily dark. More like pits than eyes. More like holes. He felt that he could see right inside the blackness of her head.

  ‘Waldo—I have to know where Lloyd is, that’s all.’

  ‘He’s not at home?’ Waldo quaked.

  ‘Don’t take me for a fool, Waldo. We both know that the house burned down.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Waldo. ‘He doesn’t tell me nothing.’

  ‘You’re running the restaurant. You’re in charge of his pride and joy. You must know where he is.’

  ‘Ms Williams—I swear—I don’t have no idea.’

  Celia unbuttoned her glove, and rolled it up. She tucked it into her raincoat pocket. Then, without warning, she snatched hold of Waldo’s hand, and squeezed it tightly. Waldo shouted out, ‘Hey!’ and shook his arm violently, to break free of her. But Celia clung on, and her fingers weren’t only tenacious but burning hot.

  ‘Hey, you’re hot, you’re hot, you’re burning my hand!’ Waldo shouted out. ‘Get off me, go away!’

  ‘Where’s Lloyd, Waldo? I have to know!’

  ‘I don’t know where he is. I swear it! He went away and he didn’t tell me where he was going! He did it on purpose, in case somebody should find out. I didn’t know it was you!’

  ‘Waldo—I don’t believe a word of it. Lloyd is one of those careful, careful men who never leaves anything to chance. He doesn’t leave his restaurant to chance, he doesn’t leave his house to chance, he doesn’t leave his life to chance. But here’s some unpredictability, Waldo. Here’s a bit of improvisation. If you don’t tell me where he is, I’m going to set fire to you.’

  Gasping, Waldo tried to pull his hand away from Celia’s, but suddenly her fingers flared so hot that she burned through skin and muscle and tendons, and fused their hands together. Waldo shrieked in pain, and dropped to his knees on to the balcony, but still he was unable to pull himself free. God, if pull myself free, I’ll pull my whole hand off!

  ‘Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!’ he cried, but then Celia tugged open her raincoat with her free hand, and revealed herself naked and grey-skinned, and smelling of molten zinc. A curl of metallic smoke rose out of her coat-tails.

  ‘Tell me where he is, Waldo,’ Celia insisted. ‘I have to know!’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know. I swear to God I don’t know!’

  But then Celia tugged off her left-hand glove with her teeth, and placed her bare hand on top of Waldo’s balding head. There was a furious sizzling noise, and his scalp puckered up red and blistered. Smoke poured out from between Celia’s fingers, and Waldo opened
his mouth wide and let out a white scream of agony and fear.

  Celia abruptly stopped that. With her fingers burned deep into the flesh on top of his head, so that Waldo couldn’t have wrenched himself away without being scalped, she pressed his face flat against her bare stomach. His scream was muffled for two or three seconds. Then smoke billowed up between Celia’s breasts, the smoke of Waldo’s face burning; and she breathed it in with lubricious satisfaction.

  ‘Haven’t you wanted to do that to me ever since you first saw me?’ she taunted him. Then she rubbed his face up and down her stomach, and between her thighs, and he shuddered and shook in overwhelming agony. It was like having his face rubbed against an electric hotplate. With each rub, more strips of burned skin were dragged from his face. He felt the flesh seared from the side of his nose. His cheeks almost seemed to melt, like wax. But Celia kept on rubbing his face against her until his nose-bone was being clicked up and down against her like a skeletal trigger.

  He could scarcely speak. His face was raw and blistered, and nobody would have recognized him now, nor would again. His eyes bulged from reddened sockets, his nose was nothing more than a twist of fried gristle, with two huge gaping nostrils, and his lips had swollen to three times their normal size. He was trembling in shock, but still Celia wouldn’t let him go.

  ‘Listen to me, Waldo! I have to know where he is!’

  She began to pull his face toward her again, but Waldo lifted a hand to stop her. His fingers crackled against the ferocious heat of her thighs, but he was too far gone to scream any more.

  ‘Be-beach-house. Dan Tabares’ beach-house. Up at Del Mar.’

  ‘Thank you, Waldo,’ said Celia. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place? You could have saved yourself such pain!’

  Waldo tried to climb to his feet, but he was shuddering too much. Celia stood watching him, her coat flapping softly against her naked body, her skin subtly fuming like a metal baking-sheet. ‘You know what your trouble is, Waldo?’ Celia asked him, although he probably failed to hear her. ‘You were always too loyal! A man like Lloyd needs people to question him. He needs people to needle him, people to upset him. You shouldn’t give a man like Lloyd too much of an easy life. He’ll take advantage of you, and forget to pay you for it, too.’