The Heirloom

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Anything else?’ I asked Sara.

  ‘Yes –’ she said, ‘just this. “The Minotaur, however, is mentioned in Carpaccio’s diaries several times, as is a snake-demon, and it may be speculated that the artist had some interest in evil spirits and the supernatural. The Minotaur in those days was quite a common manifestation of the Devil, and he would have been attending the funeral in order to make sure that the immortal soul of the deceased found its way into his custody. An old legend that regained some currency in Renaissance times was that the Devil, after having been banished by the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, could only return to Earth in an enduring physical form if he gathered the immortal souls of a thousand thousand people, each of which had to be offered to him under the strictest conditions, and each of which had to be the soul of somebody who had died as the result of murder, suicide, or extreme pain, notably the pain of being burned alive. Carpaccio is said to have attempted suicide unsuccessfully three times, once by setting himself alight with burning oil.’”

  ‘Is that all?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s all,’ said Sara. ‘After that it goes on to discuss the work of Piero della Francesca.’

  I looked again at the minotaur-shape on our picture. Then I said, ‘Supposing that Renaissance legend was right.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well – supposing it was right – and the Devil did have to collect a thousand thousand immortal souls before He could walk on the earth again in – what do they say there? – an enduring physical form.’

  ‘Supposing it was? What difference would that make?’

  ‘I’m guessing,’ I said, ‘but don’t you think it’s possible that the Devil could have decided that one way to get all the souls He needed would be to bargain for them with human beings who were still alive? Just like Faust. Give me your soul, or the soul of somebody you love, and in return you can have whatever you want. Money, success, a guided-missile contract with the Pentagon.’

  Sara was silent. I sat down on the edge of the dressing-table next to her and took her hand.

  ‘That would make sense of the chair’s desire to take all the souls of those hundreds of people at the religious convention in Los Angeles tomorrow. For all we know, He’s only a few score short of the thousand thousand He needs. So when that missile goes off tomorrow, we’re not only going to see an urban massacre.’

  I pointed to the minotaur shape on the Moreau painting. ‘We’re going to see that, too, in the flesh. The Devil returning to sit on His throne again.’

  Sara looked away. ‘And what will that mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. God had to send his only son Jesus Christ down to earth last time to redeem the sins of a world that was living according to the words of the Devil. It was a world of war, and cruelty, and slavery; and after the Ascension it still was. But at least Jesus had established a powerful way of fighting for human dignity and human life.’

  I picked up the Renaissance book and closed it, shutting away the Devil’s silhouette. ‘The difference is that in the days of Jesus, men fought with nothing more dangerous than swords and spears and Greek fire. These days, we have nuclear weapons.’

  ‘We don’t have any evidence that the Devil’s going to reappear, do we?’ said Sara. ‘You said yourself that you’re only guessing.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘I’m only guessing.’

  She held my hand. ‘You’re not going to get any more ideas about – well, about giving yourself up?’

  ‘I don’t think so. But I still think there has to be a way out of this.’

  ‘Let’s just get the chair down to David,’ Sara begged me. ‘Then we can talk about it some more.’

  I picked up the airline bag and slung it over my shoulder. ‘I hope to God we’re not playing a game we can’t handle,’ I said. ‘You know what they say about supping with devils and long spoons.’

  David was both surprised and suspicious when we arrived. He was getting dressed to go out somewhere, and his shirt tails were flapping out of the back of his pants.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked me. ‘I thought you’d decided that I was too barbarous for civilised company.’

  ‘We’ve brought you the chair,’ I told him, in a soft voice.

  He thumbed a silver cufflink through the buttonhole in his cuff. His expression was as ambiguous as a whipped-up bowl of non-dairy topping. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s as may be.’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d believe me,’ I retorted. ‘But I’ve officially drawn up a paper contract, written in runes, and sealed with living memory.’

  ‘Sealed with living memory? What on earth does that mean?’

  ‘I’m not too sure. But the chair assured me that it was going to take a memory out of my head and use it as a seal. Instead of blood, I suppose.’

  ‘So where did you draw up a runic contract?’

  ‘It appeared out of the chair. Look.’

  I held it up in my hand. David stared at it for a few long seconds, and then reached out for it. I drew it away. ‘It’s genuine,’ I said. ‘You’ll find out how genuine it is when we leave. The chair will stay here.’

  ‘What made it… agree to leave you?’ asked David, uncertainly. ‘This isn’t some sort of elaborate trap, is it? Because if it is –’

  ‘It agreed to leave us on the condition that we delivered it to you,’ I explained. ‘It knows all about your scheme to fire a guided missile at the Los Angeles Convention Centre, and as it turns out, it approves of it. It’s hungry for souls, David, and it would rather have a hundred than one or two.’

  David bit his lip. He still appeared unsure. ‘It will get Jennifer back for me? Unscathed?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask it. It’s yours now. As soon as you help me carry it up from the car.’

  ‘And Martin Jessop? Martin will be allowed to survive?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  David sat down. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what to say. This is marvellous. Martin will be absolutely delighted.’

  ‘I thought he might be. But I don’t suppose the people at the Los Angeles Convention Centre are going to feel quite as happy.’

  ‘Don’t start getting moralistic,’ replied David, in a caustic tone. ‘You and your wife are just as much a party to this as we are. You could have saved those pilgrims’ lives, couldn’t you, by sacrificing your own?’

  ‘I could have done,’ I replied. ‘But there was always the risk that you would have gotten hold of the chair anyway. Heroic gestures are only worth making if they’re effective.’

  David took out a cigarette and lit it. He smoked for a while in silence, still looking at me, but lost in a memory. I thought I knew what the memory was, too.

  ‘You’re thinking about Jennifer?’ I asked him.

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘She was the most beautiful girl I ever met in my life,’ he said. ‘The idea that I might actually be able to hold her in my arms again…well, it’s quite devastating.’

  ‘I’m glad you think she’s worth it.’

  He breathed out smoke. ‘She is, Ricky. I assure you she is.’

  ‘You’d better help me carry the chair up here,’ I told him. ‘I want to get back to the hospital in case Jonathan wakes up.’

  ‘You think he’s going to?’

  I held up the runic contract. ‘It’s part of the deal. At least, it had better be.’

  While Sara waited in the car, David and I carried the chair, wrapped in a blanket, up to his friend’s apartment. We set it down in the centre of the room, and David unveiled it. It appeared to be taller than ever, like some grotesque ladder, and when David raised his hand up to touch the man-serpent’s face with soft, reverent fingers, he could scarcely reach higher than the demon’s beard.

  ‘I want to thank you for this,’ said David. ‘You’ve really been most intelligent and considerate. When you left here this afternoon in such a temper, I was very worried that you might do something rash.’

  ‘Like what? Like trying
to save the lives of a couple of hundred unsuspecting people? How could you have thought such a thing?’

  ‘Do we have to be enemies?’ asked David. ‘I thought, once Jennifer was back, we might perhaps get together for dinner… something like that.’

  I looked him up and down with as much contempt as I could manage. It wasn’t all that easy, because I felt pretty contemptuous about my own behaviour, too. But somehow the thought of going to dinner with a woman who had been resurrected at the cost of over a hundred violent deaths wasn’t exactly my idea of a tasteful evening out.

  ‘You can keep your precious zombie to yourself,’ I told him. ‘And apart from that, I don’t ever want to see you, or that chair, ever again in my whole life. Because if I do, so help me, I’ll try my darndest to get my revenge on you, and it, and I’ll destroy you both.’

  David cleared his throat. Then he gave me the sort of smile that company presidents give you before they tell you that you’re out of a job. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘If that’s the way you feel, then there isn’t a lot I can do about it, is there? I’m sorry it all has to end like this. But it’s been good to know you, and I must say you’ve really turned up trumps.’

  ‘Goodbye, David,’ I said, sourly.

  He stood in the doorway of the condominium, watching me walk away. Behind him, down the corridor, I could see the tall and diabolical outline of the Devil’s chair. From far away, it took on the appearance of a horned bull, or a minotaur. The Mystery Guest at the Funeral.

  Sara was listening to a Mozart tape in the car. She hardly said a word as we drove out of the underground car park of Presidio Place and made our way back along the freeway to the Hospital of the Sisters of Mercy. In the distance, across the bay, we could see the lighted funnels of two Navy destroyers, and the dancing glitter of a helicopter. The music was Mozart’s Fantasia in F Minor, and the sound of the two pianos seemed to fill the interior of the car the way the flock of hummingbirds had filled our garden. At last, at long last, I felt myself beginning to relax.

  Dr Rosen was waiting for us impatiently when we arrived. ‘You said you would be here much earlier,’ he said, tapping the face of his watch. ‘I was worried that Jonathan was going to come out of his coma to find you absent.’

  I took his arm. ‘It was very important, Doctor, believe me. Is he actually waking up?’

  ‘Come see for yourself.’

  ‘Oh God,’ whispered Sara. ‘Please let him wake up.’

  We tiptoed together into the room where Jonathan was lying. There was another specialist there, two nurses, and an intern. Jonathan was still unconscious, but Dr Rosen took out his silver propelling-pencil and pointed to the electrocardiograph.

  ‘Heartbeat much quicker – and look here – the electroencephalograph is showing signs of much more responsive brain activity.’

  ‘Could I try talking to him?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure. Go ahead. It’s the best thing you could do for him right now.’

  I stepped forward and leaned over Jonathan’s small sleeping form. His eyes were closed, but there was far more colour in his cheeks than there had been yesterday. I had the feeling that he was right on the brink of coming back – that it would only take a little coaxing for him to open his eyes and say hello.

  ‘Jonathan,’ I called him.

  His eyelids flickered.

  ‘Jonathan.’

  Again, a slight response.

  ‘Go on,’ Dr Rosen encouraged me. ‘You’re really beginning to get through to him now.’

  Hoarsely, I sang:

  ‘Johnny shall have a new bonnet,

  Johnny shall go to the fair,

  And Johnny shall have a new ribbon,

  To tie up his bonny blond hair.’

  Gradually, as if he were waking up from his usual afternoon rest, Jonathan opened his eyes. The silence in the hospital room was breathtaking. Even the regular bleep – bleep – bleep of the electro-cardiograph seemed to diminish. Jonathan looked at me sleepily and I could feel my eyes fill with tears. Right behind me, her hand clasping my shoulder, Sara started to sob.

  ‘Daddy?’ said Jonathan, in a slurred voice. ‘Mommy?’

  He lifted his arms and I bent over and held him tight. He was so warm and young and defenceless, and he depended on me so much.

  ‘You’re all right,’ I told him. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

  ‘Where is this place, Daddy?’ Jonathan asked, trying to focus on all the faces around him, all the gleaming chrome apparatus and all the white starched hospital coats.

  ‘You’re in hospital. You had an accident,’ said Sara, a little shakily. ‘You’ve been asleep for four whole days and three whole nights. Can you imagine that? Daddy and Mommy were worried you were going to sleep for a whole week.’

  Jonathan smiled, and touched Sara’s hair, and then her face. ‘I’ve been dreaming,’ he said.

  ‘Well, you can tell us all about your dreams later,’ said Sara. ‘Right now we’re just pleased that you’re awake. Do you feel okay?’

  Jonathan investigated the bandage on his left cheek. ‘That’s sore,’ he said. ‘Did I hurt myself there?’

  ‘You fell over and cut yourself on Daddy’s axe.’

  We thought for a moment that Jonathan was going to say that he hadn’t – but he simply nodded and smiled and half-closed his eyes again.

  ‘I’ve been dreaming,’ he repeated. ‘I dreamed I was someplace bright and sunny.’

  ‘At least he didn’t have nightmares,’ put in Dr Rosen. ‘Sometimes a coma patient can have really horrendous dreams.’

  ‘Tell us later,’ I said to Jonathan. ‘Now you’re awake, we’ve got all the time in the world.’

  ‘They said he couldn’t hurt me,’ said Jonathan, in a matter-of-fact way.

  ‘Come on now, Jonathan, I think it’s time for a few quick tests and some rest,’ said Dr Rosen. ‘Mr and Mrs Delatolla, if you’ll just excuse me for one moment –’

  ‘Daddy,’ Jonathan said clearly, ‘they said he couldn’t hurt me. Not unto death.’

  ‘Jonathan,’ I grinned, ‘please do what Dr Rosen says. I love you, and I’d love to listen to all of your dreams, but Dr Rosen wants to make sure that you’re okay.’

  ‘He cannot hurt your son unto death,’ somebody said. A ringing, brassy sort of a voice, as if they were chiming bells at the same time.

  I looked around. ‘Who said that?’ I asked Sara.

  Sara frowned. ‘Who said what?’

  ‘Who said “He cannot hurt your son unto death”?’

  ‘Well, wasn’t that just what Jonathan said?’

  ‘Not like that. That sounded like the trump of doom.’

  Dr Rosen pouted at me questioningly. ‘I didn’t hear anything. Anybody in here hear anything?’

  Everybody shook their heads. I sat on the bed and looked around at them appealingly, but none of them had heard it. I felt as if I were suddenly revealed as the village fruitcake.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’m tired, and I’ve got ringing in the ears. But that’s what it sounded like. Bells.’

  ‘Bats in the belfry?’ one of the nurses whispered, and the other one giggled.

  Dr Rosen snapped, ‘That’s enough,’ but I couldn’t help noticing that he was smiling too.

  Jonathan gripped my sleeve. I turned to see what he wanted, and to my fright and amazement his eyes appeared to be on fire. They were shining at me in brilliant gold, so bright that I could hardly look at them. And there was that sound again, that bell-chiming sound, and it was ringing and reverberating through every bone in my body. It even jarred the fillings in my teeth.

  ‘He has been safe with us, your son,’ said the same voice as before. It was so majestic, so rich, that it gave me that cold shrinking feeling all over. I raised my hand against the dazzle of Jonathan’s eyes, but nothing could blot out the overwhelming echo of that stentorian voice.

  ‘Is it not written in the sacred book: “Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished,
being innocent?’ And is it not also written that they who plough iniquity, and sow wickedness, shall reap the same?’

  ‘What are you trying to tell me?’ I asked Jonathan. ‘Jonathan – what are you trying to say?’

  All around me, Sara and Dr Rosen and the rest of the hospital staff appeared to be frozen. I felt as if time had stood still; as if the room had been suspended in brilliant amber. Jonathan’s lips moved, but not in exact synchronisation with the voice that blared out of his mouth. He looked like a fiery puppet, a dazzling marionette.

  ‘He whose throne you kept in your house attempted to slay your son,’ the voice rang out. ‘But your son could not be killed. Even when He whose throne you kept in your house attempted to stop your son’s heart beating and to numb his brain forever, your son could not be killed. Your son has been sleeping under our protection, and has always been safe. He cannot be hurt unto death by the One whose throne you kept in your house because of his innocence. He is one of Our Master’s children; and Our Master will not let him die. Do you know what I am saying to you? Do you now know what you must do?

  ‘Our Master will not let him die.’

  The ringing began to fade. Jonathan’s eyes dimmed, and returned to normal. As suddenly as it had begun, the visitation was over. Dr Rosen scribbled a note on his clipboard and Sara leaned over and blew Jonathan a kiss just as if nothing had happened at all. One of the nurses dropped her pen, and out in the corridor the plangent voice of the receptionist called for ‘Dr Helmuth… Dr Helmuth to pediatrics, please.’

  ‘Why don’t you go get yourself a cup of coffee?’ suggested Dr Rosen. ‘Then we can run our tests on Jonathan without any hitches. You don’t mind if Mommy and Daddy go for a cup of coffee do you?’ he asked Jonathan.