Burial

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Does Harry know that you’ve come to visit me? And in any case, who let you in here? Don’t they usually insist on your having an escort? And a security badge, at least?’

  Karen repeated, ‘You mustn’t interfere.’

  With no warning whatsoever, she stepped through the bars of the cell and stood beside Martin as calm and as expressionless as if she had walked through an open door. Martin jumped up from his chair and knocked it over.

  ‘Hey, now,’ he said, lifting one hand to protect himself. ‘You’re not Karen. You’re not Karen at all.’

  ‘Who else could I be?’ she asked him. ‘Karen van Hooven, flesh and blood. Here, touch me.’

  Martin backed away. ‘Thanks … but I think I’d better not.’

  ‘You want to find what it was that possessed you, don’t you?’ asked Karen.

  Her smile was faint and eerie. Her eyes still didn’t seem to be focused correctly.

  Martin blurted, ‘Yes, of course I want to find out what it was. But there’s really no rush. I’ll try it some other time.’

  Karen reached out and laid her hand on his shoulder. It was a real hand, gentle but real. At least it felt real.

  If Karen was a ghost of some kind, or maybe an ectoplasmic projection, she was the best damned ghost that he had ever seen. Apparently solid, breathing properly — perfumed even. Ghosts very rarely smelled of anything, although their imminent appearance could be signalled by a strong distinctive aroma associated with somewhere they had lived, or something they had liked.

  Martin walked cautiously around her. She stayed where she was, very calm.

  ‘You don’t believe I’m real?’ she asked him.

  ‘Real people can’t walk through steel bars. I rest my case.’

  She turned her head to face him. ‘Some people can walk through steel bars. It’s called willpower.’

  He hesitated, tried not to smile back at her. I think it’s a little more than willpower, Karen. I think it’s material projection. You’re here, but you’re not really here at all.’

  Karen looked at him mischievously. ‘All right, if I’m not really here at all, where am I?’

  ‘I don’t know. But that’s what I intend to find out.’

  ‘You really shouldn’t. It’s too risky.’

  ‘What could be riskier than facing an arraignment for first-degree murder?’

  ‘Martin — you don’t know what you’re up against.’

  ‘That’s precisely the problem. And that’s precisely why I intend to find out what it is.’

  Karen lifted one hand, and said, ‘Martin … please don’t.’

  ‘I can’t do anything else. What choices do I have?’

  ‘None, I guess.’ She looked away, nervously drumming her fingers against her shoulder, nervously biting her lips. ‘Are you sure I can’t persuade you?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘In that case, do you mind if I stay and watch?’

  Martin picked up his fallen chair and sat down again. ‘I don’t think I have any option, do I, with a woman who can walk through steel bars? I can hardly keep you out.’

  Most of the time, Martin wasn’t afraid of spiritmanifestations. After all, his brother Samuel had been visiting him regularly since he was ten years old. Most of the time, spirit manifestations were caused by a freak intermingling of unfulfilled desires, unfinished feelings, and a twirl of spiritual ectoplasm, caught on an unexpected current. Two things kept spirits coming back to the world that they should have left behind them: jealousy, and revenge. People who had died contented, amongst friends they loved, were always happy to turn their back on the world and look to the future.

  Martin rearranged his Celtic forks and clasped his hands together, an almost priestly little ritual. He glanced up at Karen’s reflection in the mirror on the wall. For the briefest of seconds, he thought he saw her face darken and distort, but it was probably nothing more than the clouds passing outside.

  ‘You’ll have to stay quiet,’ he told her. ‘And if it looks like anything’s going wrong — ghost or not, you’re going to have to get out of here, and as quickly as you can. The creature I’m trying to track down is capable of tearing up a city. I don’t think it would have very much compunction about tearing up us.’

  Karen said nothing, but stood beside him with her arms folded and waited for him to begin.

  He cleared his throat. Then — placing himself completely at Karen’s mercy — he closed his eyes.

  ‘Samuel,’ he said. ‘I need you to guide me, Samuel.’

  He heard Karen move slightly, move around behind him. He was desperately tempted to open his eyes to see what she was doing, but he knew that would only delay things.

  ‘Samuel,’ he said. Then, ‘Samuel?’

  There was a very long silence, six or seven minutes or more. Martin could feel Karen growing impatient. But this time he could feel that the spirits were moving well. This time he could feel the darkness pouring thick and steady into his mind, filling up his brain, the real seamless darkness of death.

  He saw his brother Samuel standing in the corner of the room, white and silent, in his red wool bathrobe.

  ‘Samuel?’ he said.

  He had never seen his brother look so sad. He had never seen him look so indistinct. It was like seeing a boy through a grey net curtain, a curtain which stirred in the breeze, so that you could never be sure if he were smiling or if he had just been crying.

  ‘Samuel?’ he repeated. He didn’t rise; but he held out his hand, even though he knew that Samuel would never take it.

  ‘Martin,’ said Samuel, without moving his lips. ‘Martin, you should stay away … It’s all over, the whole world’s turning upside-down.’

  ‘Samuel, I have to find the spirit that possessed me. I have to. I have to find it, and I have to bring it back here — or part of it, at least. I have to prove that I didn’t kill those people.’

  Samuel was silent for a long time. Then he slowly shook his head. ‘You should stay away, Martin. It’s the dark one; the one from underneath. He’s going to take all of you.’

  ‘Samuel, for Christ’s sake! I need your help!’

  Samuel brushed back his cow’s-lick hair, the way he always used to when he was alive. ‘I can’t help you, Martin. Not now.’

  ‘At least give me a guide.’

  Another long silence. Samuel’s image brightened and faded, brightened and faded, in the same way that the sunlight brightened and faded through Martin’s cell window.

  ‘All right,’ said Samuel, at last, and turned his narrow back in a way that he had never done before.

  Martin waited and waited, resisting the temptation to open his eyes. He could feel Karen standing close to him, but he knew that if he opened his eyes there could be a considerable risk of disrupting the connection he had formed with the spirit world, with strange and dangerous consequences. Things could be left in the real world which didn’t belong there; and vice versa. He had once come across a simple sewing-needle which had penetrated the real world from the spirit world, and which had pricked everybody who had tried to pick it up.

  He waited. He tried to meditate. He tried to think how he was going to deal with the shadow that had possessed him once he found it.

  He hummed ‘Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair.’ He drummed his fingers on the table.

  At last, he felt a spiritual draught. With his eyes still closed he saw a thin man in a bedraggled blue uniform approaching him, walking (as it were) through walls and doors and windows. As the man came closer, he saw that it was the cavalry officer who had first made contact with him when he had tried to search for the shadow-spirit in Naomi Greenberg’s dining room.

  The man dragged one of his feet in a weary limp, and his uniform was powdered with white dust. He had been horribly scalped, ears and all, because the Oglala Sioux always preferred their scalps with ears on. His head was matted with blood, thick black clots of it, except where the bone of his skull showed through. His d
rooping mustache was bloody, too. He came up close to Martin, standing in front of Martin’s desk, and eyeing him up and down. Martin could see that the crotch of his cavalry pants was dark with blood.

  ‘I thought once would have been enough,’ the officer remarked. He was very laconic in spite of the fact that he was dead; and that he still bore the terrible scars of his torture.

  Martin was shivering. ‘I need to find him. I need to prove that he’s real.’

  The cavalry officer said, ‘He’s real all right. Real as rain. Don’t know how you go about proving it, though.’

  ‘I must.’

  The cavalry officer looked bloody and reflective. ‘It’d be a darned dangerous business.’

  ‘But you came to help me all the same.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I suppose I did.’

  ‘Can I ask who you are?’

  ‘I’m Daniel McIntosh, sir, first-lieutenant, company G, Seventh Cavalry.’

  ‘What happened to you, Lieutenant McIntosh?’

  ‘I died at Greasy Grass River, sir, the battle they called the Little Big Horn.’

  ‘And what do you know about the shadow?’

  ‘I saw it, sir. I saw it right behind Crazy Horse the first time the Indians came riding up that northerly hill.’

  ‘You saw it?’ said Martin.

  ‘Yes, sir, we all did. It was like a shadow, sir, black as a shadow, with things moving in it, things like snakes or maybe coils of smoke. We couldn’t rightly decide. The day was pretty dark in any case, on account of the firing and the gunsmoke.’

  ‘What did it do?’

  ‘It moved so quick it was hard to say, a whole great rush of shadow — scared the living shit out of all of us. First it dragged some of the horses down the hill and they was screaming like human women those horses. It was the worstest thing I ever did hear, apart from the screaming when the men was dragged down the hill after them.’

  ‘The shadow-thing was dragging them down?’

  ‘That’s correct, sir, exactly that. I felt it myself. It was like the whole hill was moving under my bootheels. I never felt anything like it before.

  ‘I swear to you, it wasn’t Crazy Horse or any of his men who killed us that day, it was the shadow that dragged us down, and it was only then that Crazy Horse started counting coup and torturing and all.’

  ‘Did you see where the shadow went?’

  ‘No, sir. I was hurt by then. I was pulled to the ground and my back was broke. I couldn’t get up to my feet at-all. Then there was four or five Sioux standing over me and they shot arrows between my legs into my privates. Then they cut off my scalp and my ears and left me to die. I lay on the ground and I dreamed of my dear mother and it was almost like being a boy again. Then my mother came through the smoke and knelt down beside me and touched my forehead as cool as buttermilk. She said, ‘Come on, son, everything’s fine,’ and then I knew that I was passed over, and all my suffering was at an end.’

  Martin covered his closed eyes with his hand, but he could still see Lieutenant McIntosh just as clearly.

  ‘Think, lieutenant … did anything happen that could have proved it was the shadow that killed you, rather than the Indians?’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you, sir, several of the men were turned completely outside-in, like gloves, and I don’t know how an Indian could have done that, even the strongest.’

  ‘But you were all killed, weren’t you? Nobody survived to bear witness to that.’

  ‘Well, sir, photographs were took.’

  ‘Photographs? Somebody took photographs?’

  ‘Mr Kellogg of the Bismarck Tribune, sir, although what became of Mr Kellogg or what became of his photographs I never shall know.’

  Martin was about to ask Lieutenant McIntosh where Mr Kellogg had been standing when he took his photographs when the cavalry officer seemed to shiver and fade.

  ‘Lieutenant, what’s happening?’

  Lieutenant McIntosh opened and closed his mouth, but if he did speak Martin couldn’t hear him. His image grew dimmer and darker, as if a shadow were falling across it, and Martin began to be aware that a shadow was building up in front of him. The temperature in the cell began rapidly to drop, and Martin was aware of a strong and familiar smell. The smell of prairie burning. The smell of Indian fires. The smell of buffalo meat and magic herbs and a wind that stayed silent, because it had too many tragic stories to tell.

  He felt Karen moving around behind him. He didn’t know what she was doing, but he didn’t dare to open his eyes and find out. This was Samuel’s trance, using Samuel’s spiritual energy, and if Martin were to break it off now, without warning, he might cause Samuel severe harm. He might even silence his spirit for ever.

  The darkness in front of him was dense and smoky. He thought he could detect things moving about in it, black glistening things that coiled and uncoiled.

  ‘What are you?’ he demanded. ‘What do you want?’

  There was a long silence, and then Martin heard a breathy, reverberating voice, more like the wind blowing down a hollow reed than a voice.

  ‘You thought to find me?’

  Martin licked his lips. ‘Yes, I thought to find you.’

  ‘You thought to defeat me?’

  ‘You killed Michael and Naomi Greenberg, not me. That was why I wanted to find you. I wanted to prove that it was you.’

  ‘You are a fool.’

  ‘Maybe I am. But I’m going to prove that you exist, even if it kills me.’

  ‘Are you not afraid to die? I thought that all white men were afraid to die. At the Greasy Grass River they threw down their rifles and they cried out, “Spare us!” And we spared not a single one.’

  Martin was shuddering with cold and fear. He had come across dozens of unpleasant spirits before now; mean-minded spirits, angry spirits, bitter spirits. He had talked to murderers, bigamists, you name it. But the spirit that was hiding itself in this shadow was something else.

  The spirit that was hiding itself in this shadow was something infinitely old, darkly terrifying, and possessed of powers that Martin could only guess at.

  He suddenly understood that he was very, very frightened. More frightened than he had ever felt before.

  ‘You want to see me?’ the breathy voice asked him.

  Martin swallowed and nodded.

  ‘If you wish to see me, you must open your eyes.’

  ‘You’re a spirit,’ said Martin.

  ‘How can I see you if I open my eyes?’

  ‘Open your eyes,’ the voice insisted.

  Martin hesitantly opened his eyes.

  And saw.

  And literally jolted with terror. And closed them again, tight, in the hope that it couldn’t be real, that it couldn’t be true.

  But then he felt a sharp, chopping pain in the sides of both his eye-sockets. He yelled out and twisted in his chair, but he felt as if his skull were caught in an iron clamp. The pain in his eyes was so intense that he stayed where he was, sitting upright, shivering.

  Inside his eye-sockets there was a deep, agonizing crunching of skin and flesh and nerve-fibre. His eyes were bloodily, forcibly opened, and then pulled right out of their sockets.

  ‘Oh Christ! he screamed. ‘Oh Christ, don’t blind me!’

  It was Karen. She had taken each of his Celtic forks and dug them into his eye-sockets, dragging out his eyes. His optic nerves were stretched between the tines of the forks, so that he could still see, even though his eyes felt as if they were on fire. Blood coursed hotly down his cheeks and pattered onto the table.

  ‘Karen,’ he babbled, ‘oh Christ, Karen, don’t blind me. Karen, what are you doing, Karen, what the hell are you doing don’t blind me don’t blind me don’t blind me-e-e-ee!’

  ‘You wanted to see me,’ the voice breathed. ‘So shall you see me; and so shall you never look away.’

  Through a scarlet fog of pain and bursting capillaries, his bare eyeballs wincing, Martin stared at the apparition that stood in front of him
, half-buried in the wall and the table, a being that could live both inside and outside a spiritual trance simultaneously, a wonder-worker of such enormous powers that the darkness shifted and trembled all around him as if an earthquake were imminent.

  Martin knew who he was; and the fear that he felt was as great as the terrible thing that Karen had done to his eyes. He was Misquamacus, the greatest of all the Indian medicine-men. Misquamacus, who had walked through time and space. Misquamacus, who had travelled through fire and death and every level of cosmic consciousness.

  It was said that the face of Misquamacus had appeared in trees and rivers, and that his voice had chanted in the wind. In the 1870s he had been photographed in a Sioux encampment near Fort Snelling, Minnesota, on the same day that he had been photographed with Etchemis Indians in north-eastern New England, more than 1,500 miles away.

  But now he was here, in Martin’s cell in the 13th Precinct, and even the air was softly thundering with his presence.

  He was tall — almost monstrously tall. His face was slablike, impassive, high-cheekboned, and decorated with flashes of red and white clay. His eyes were totally dark, like perforations in a curtain.

  But it was his headdress that horrified Martin more than anything else. His scalp and his neck and his shoulders were completely covered in a swarming mass of struggling, shiny beetles-cockroaches and black-beetles and weevils and whirligigs and death-watch beetles. His head was alive with beetles, and as he stood and stared at Martin with dispassion they clicked and struggled and occasionally dropped to the floor.

  Misquamacus himself was afflicted by hideous growths on his torso and his upper arms, patches of black insect hair and lumps of maroon, insect-like body-sections. On either side of his body, all the way down his ribs, pale tendrils like millipede legs waved and rippled.

  What did you expect? he whispered, inside Martin’s mind.

  The pain in Martin’s eyes was now far too intense for him to be able to answer. He thought he was probably having a nightmare, and that he would very soon wake up. But then Misquamacus lifted a huge buffalo mask onto his head — a mask already swarming with beetles — and Martin knew without a doubt what the wonder-worker was going to do to him, and why; and that his chances of survival, blind or not, were almost nothing at all.