The Possessors

by John Christopher

  There was also, he thought with grim humor, a kind of retribution in this, as far as he was concerned, anyway. The years of lighthearted unorthodoxy, of poking mild fun at the shibboleths of medicine, or gently dynamiting overearnest colleagues, narrowed down to this focus, and left him as helpless and ignorant as the most devoutly orthodox G.P. More helpless, possibly, because he had no defense against the bizarreness of it all, no means of retreat into complacency. Something had changed the Deepings—changed them both physically and mentally—and what that something was existed no more in his philosophy than it had in that of poor old Horatio. A disease? Hysteria? One might as well settle for Marie’s Alpine devils. A more embracing, and therefore more satisfactory theory.

  A sound disturbed him, and he looked up quickly. From the stairs. But from the upper part of the house, not the basement. He had a moment’s apprehension—that they had somehow got past him, that everyone up there had been changed, leaving him terribly alone—but pulled himself together. Most likely it was George, kept awake by conscience and coming down to make sure everything was all right. Another sound. Yes, someone coming down. But not George. Too light of step. Bedroom slippers, a glimpse of white ankle, a blue silk housecoat.

  She came downstairs and, unhesitatingly, crossed the hall to the bar. Her face, Selby noted, was made up, her hair brushed to neatness. He said quietly, “What is it, Diana? Couldn’t you sleep?”

  “No.” She leaned against the bar, and looked across the room at him. Her voice, too, was quiet; nothing so conspiratorial as a whisper, but deliberately pitched low. “Jane is asleep, but I was restless. I wondered … do you think a drink might make me more sleepy?”

  Selby pondered this judiciously for a moment.

  “Do you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. Not at all surprised. Let me get one for you.”

  He had to pass close to her to get behind the bar. The scent she was wearing was one he had encountered before, but not on her. She normally used a light scent, girlish; this was much heavier. Femme? Something like that—he could never remember their names. And fairly liberally applied. He was a few feet from her now, but it was still strong.

  “What’ll it be?” he asked her. “I’m drinking whisky, but George has left me carte blanche”

  “Whisky will be fine.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind bringing my glass over, I’ll join you.”

  That kept the bar between them. This was not, Selby thought as he poured a whisky for her and weakened it with water, at all characteristic of the girl. He was sure he had not been mistaken about her; she was—or he would be very much disappointed—seducible, but she was no man-eater. And yet there could be no mistaking what this visit was all about. It was not merely the scent and the careful grooming. There was provocation in her manner, restrained, but very obvious. Her fingers touched his as he passed the glass to her. The housecoat covered the top of her nightdress. The vee was deep, showing a little of the white curves of her breasts, the beginning of the valley between them.

  Selby took a deep breath, and raised his glass.

  “Cheers.”

  “Cheers,” she said. “There’s something funny about being awake when everyone else is asleep. Don’t you think?” She looked about her. “And with this lamplight … It makes everything strange . .

  Her voice trailed off. “… and romantic,” Selby decided, was to be inferred. No, not characteristic. She might even say no, if he did pick up the cue, though he did not think she would. It was the crisis atmosphere, probably, which had done it. Weren’t some forms of danger supposed to have that effect on women? But there was no point in wasting time in abstract speculation. The situation demanded action or, rather—if everyone were to be kept happy and future doors, at the same time, kept open— some fast talking.

  He said, “Is your sister a fairly heavy sleeper?”

  She rose to that one, and bit hard. “Jane? Very heavy.”

  “Yes, I would have thought that. People are sometimes a bit misleading, though. Take Elizabeth. Very restless at night—always waking up. And given to wandering. I’m surprised we haven’t had her down here already.”

  An arrant lie, but one of which, he was fairly sure, Elizabeth would approve. He looked across the bar, and held the girl’s eyes for a long moment. She smiled at him, and gave a tiny shrug. Accepted, he thought with relief. The danger was over.

  She said something about the Deepings, but perfunctorily, and soon switched to a less disturbing topic. The good thing about taking a holiday at this time of the year was that one got back home to find spring beginning— trees budding, evenings drawing out … The office in which she worked was near Marble Arch, and she liked walking across the Park and getting a bus in Knightsbridge. When she wasn’t burdened with midday shopping, that was. Though that was easier now that they had a delicatessen quite close to the flat, which stayed open in the evenings and on Sunday mornings.

  She chattered on, and Selby listened to her with pleasure. She was a pretty, lively little thing, and there would be a proper time and place for doing something positive about that. For this hour, it was quite enough to have her company, to listen half-attentively to what she said, to be aware of future possibilities and, at the same time, stay smugly armored in present virtue. Where had she got to? The summer. It was attractive to contemplate the summer.

  “We eat sandwiches in the park,” she said, “or in the queue if it’s a Beethoven night.”

  “The Proms?” Selby said. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a Prommer.”

  She said, with some indignation, “This will be my fifth year.”

  He was delighted. “And do you queue all night for the last performance? And wave banners at Sir Malcolm Sargent?”

  “I don’t wave banners. I was picked to give him a bouquet last year, though.”

  “I’ll bet you were. Can I come with you once or twice next summer? Not on a Beethoven night. I’m getting too old to queue for things.”

  “But queuing is part of the fun! You get to know people.” She looked at him seriously. “What kind of music do you like?”

  “All kinds, as long as it’s a big orchestra with lots of luscious strings. Tchaikovsky, even.”

  “I like Tchaikovsky!”

  She spoke with a fascinating indignation, leaning toward him across the bar counter to emphasize her point. For the moment, quite irresistible. Selby leaned forward himself, and kissed her. She was taken aback, then smiled, tongue delicately held between teeth. He kissed her again, at greater length and more effectively. But the effectiveness was considerably limited by the barrier between them. He released her, with the intention of doing something about that. Drawing back, he looked, past her head, at the window. The face stared at him through the glass.

  Neither suppliant nor menacing; but much worse. A face expressionless, calm, observant. Like a marine biologist gazing through the plate glass of an aquarium. Except that this was the face of an eight-year-old boy, and the temperature out there nearly ten centigrade degrees below freezing point.

  He said to Diana, “You’ve finished your drink. I should think you will sleep all right now.”

  She looked slightly disappointed, but his voice carried a decisiveness which she accepted without demur. He watched her go upstairs before he went to the window. He did not expect to find anything: the face had dropped at the moment of realizing that it had been seen. And there was nothing—nothing but darkness and the pale glimmer of snow. He thought about the position of the window. The ground fell sharply away there; the bottom ledge of the window would be, on the outside, six feet from the ground. So the child had been lifted up, perched, presumably, on his father’s shoulders. A very ordinary, human act. Selby shivered.

  He poured himself another drink, and then went the rounds, carefully checking doors and windows.

  In the morning, he told George and Douglas about the appearance at the window, although not, of course, that Diana had been downstairs at the time.
/>   Douglas said, “Not trying to get in?”

  “No. Merely looking.”

  “Seeing what you were up to,” George said. Selby glanced at him sharply, but there was nothing behind the remark. “A recce party.”

  “Something like that.”

  “No sign of them this morning?” Douglas asked.

  “No. Not that one would see much, in this.”

  They were in the bar. Selby gestured toward the window. Outside, gray mist swirled in small currents of air. The mist had come down or, more likely, up from the valley cloud, toward dawn, and was thick all around the house. Visibility was about ten yards at most.

  Douglas said, “One really does feel cut off.”

  There was an uneasiness in his voice which reflected, Selby felt, the mood of all of them. They had been looking to have their anxieties put to rest by day, by the sight of the empty sunlit snow slopes, the reasssuring immutability of the distant peaks. Instead they had the mist all around them, cutting them off from the world more completely than the night’s darkness did. At night there was a chance of seeing the moon, stars, the lights of St. Gingolph on the faraway shore of the lake. Now there was nothing to see but the mist itself, eddying, coldly seething, but never changing. It was depressing, and unnerving.

  George said, “I thought they might have come back.”

  A silence followed. Each minute that went by, Selby reflected, hammered one more nail in the coffin of the comfortable satisfying solution they all so desperately wanted to find. He said sharply, “What sort of weapons do you have in the house?”

  George looked up. “Weapons?”

  “Any guns?”

  “A twelve-bore. I do a bit of rabbiting in the summer.”

  “Cartridges?”

  “A couple of boxes. Look, Selby, what are you driving at? There are only three of them, one a kid. They’re not likely to attack us.”

  “Not when we’re together, I agree. We outnumber them too greatly. But if anyone were to go out on his own, I thing he would need protection.”

  Douglas said incredulously, “Protection? From the Deepings?”

  But there was apprehension in his voice, as well as incredulity. There was a danger, Selby thought, which was independent of any particular menace the metamorphosed Deepings might present: the danger of panic here in the house. To that extent, George had been right the previous evening, and he had been wrong. But they had to realize a menace existed. He thought wearily, I’m not seeing straight, probably. Two nights running with no more than a few hours’ sleep. He shook his head, and drank the coffee Mandy had brought them.

  George said, “No one’s going out. It would be lunacy to go out in this, anyway. All we can do at present is sit tight, and see what happens. In the end, they’ll have to come to us. Hunger will bring them. At the rate they rushed out, they didn’t have time to pick up any rations.”

  “You may be right in the long run, but I wouldn’t bank on quick results.”

  “Why not?”

  “As far as subjective hunger’s concerned, I don’t see why it should bother them any more than cold appears to do. They just aren’t responding to ordinary physical stimuli in the normal way. Even so, they would still need food as a fuel, of course, but probably not as much. That lower metabolism rate means less energy expended. And they may be able to blank things out much more when there isn’t a need for activity. Remember the boy’s coma, and his little hibernation stunt when he dug himself into the snow? And they can probably utilize reserves. It’s not so much the case with the boy, but the two adults have enough body fat to keep them going for quite a long time, on the basis of which they seem to be operating.” George said, “That’s bloody cheerful, I must say. How long do you think?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  Douglas said, “We’re discussing them as though they aren’t—well, human.”

  There was no point, Selby felt, in commenting on that. George appeared to take the same view. He said, to Selby, “But they would still take food, if they got a chance, wouldn’t they? They must have it at some stage.”

  “The boy took food out with him, the first time he left the house. Yes, they will need food eventually.”

  “I wondered if we could figure out some way of trapping them,” George said. “Put food out as bait. Something like that.”

  “You could try.” Selby yawned. “We don’t know very much about the way their minds are working, but it wouldn’t do to regard them as being any less intelligent than they were … before they changed.” He paused, remembering the face he had seen. “No, it wouldn’t do at all.” He drained his coffee. “God, I’m tired. I’m going up to get some sleep. Give me a shout if anything happens.” He fell asleep almost as soon as he climbed into bed, and slept heavily, dreamlessly. Elizabeth had to shake him to rouse him. He opened his eyes, and looked at her muzzily.

  “Twelve o’clock,” she told him. “That’s when you said you wanted calling.” She smiled unsympathetically. “You look a bit bedraggled, though. How much whisky did you get through during the night?”

  “Thirsty,” he muttered.

  His glass was empty. She took it to the tap, filled it and returned it to him.

  “Would you rather have lunch in bed?”

  He shook his head carefully. “No, I’ll get up.” As she turned to leave, he asked, “Anything happened while I’ve been asleep?”

  “Nothing. And we’re still fogbound.”

  His gaze went to the window, a bleak gray square. Not very encouraging. But it was a relief to know that the morning had passed uneventfully.

  Selby bathed, dressed, and went downstairs. He found Douglas and George in the bar, the former with a beer, the latter with what looked like brandy and ginger ale. George said, “All fit? What will it be?”

  “Beer for me, too, I think. I gather all is well.”

  “So far. I wish this mist would clear.”

  “How long does it usually hang around?”

  George shrugged. “You can’t tell. It stuck with us for a week once.”

  “That’s cheering.”

  “Yes.” George poured himself another slug of brandy and, after a moment’s consideration, added a little ginger ale. “This is our third day of being cut off. Since they haven’t been able to get through by road, this is about the time I would have expected them to send a chopper in—making sure we’re all right, maybe dropping provisions, that sort of thing. But they couldn’t risk it in this muck.”

  “No,” Selby said, “I suppose not.”

  It was tantalizing to think about it. One could have got some sort of message out, alerted people somehow. And a helicopter could search for the Deepings far more effectively than people on foot. Still, the mist must lift eventually. And they were forewarned now, and holding their own.

  Mandy came into the bar. Her face was hot from cooking, and there was a smudge of flour on one cheek. She said, “George?”

  “Yes, love.”

  “Peter.” He raised his eyebrows. “Did you give him a job to do?”

  “A job? No. What kind of job?”

  “I thought he was downstairs. But …”

  Selby saw George’s face tighten, and felt his own tighten also. George said quietly, “How long is it since you last saw him?”

  8

  After breakfast, Elizabeth had got hold of Jane while she was smoking a cigarette over the remains of her coffee.

  She said, “Ah, there you are. I’ve found a Monopoly set, and I thought we might organize a game.” She added, by way of explanation, “For Steve’s benefit, chiefly. Something to do on a miserable morning.”

  Jane nodded. “Yes, of course, I’ll play.”

  It was typical of Elizabeth, she thought, and tried to make the thought wholeheartedly admiring. While they were in their parents’ care she had paid less attention to the Deeping children than anyone else in the party; not seeming to notice them apart from an occasional remote, tolerant smile. Now that Stephen
was left alone, however, she had taken him over briskly and efficiently. The boy, for his part, was clearly appreciative of her attentions, and felt flattered by them. She had confidence in her power over the male, Jane thought, of whatever age group, and the confidence was far from being misplaced.

  Diana played with them, in the salon. She seemed tired, and was yawning a lot. Jane did her best to repress her annoyance at this. Uninhibited yawning in public was one of the things she most disliked, especially in a sister, but there had been two broken nights and at her age she needed a full measure of sleep. In the end, though, she said, “You could go back to bed, if you’re tired.”

  “Tired?” Diana said. “I’m not tired.”

  “You seem to be.”

  “Just yawning.” She yawned again, noisily, then grinned. “You must be the tired one—grouchy like that. Or envying me my property. Steve, I’ll have another house on Piccadilly before Jane gets round there.”

  Stephen gave her the house and put the money in the bank. He said, “They aren’t going to come back, are they?”

  There was no need to ask who “they” were. In the silence that followed, Elizabeth rattled the dice loudly. She said at last, “We don’t know, Steve. They’re ill, and they’ve gone away. They may come back.”

  “Perhaps they’ve found a way of getting down to the village.”

  “Perhaps. Steve?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mandy told you, didn’t she, that if you did see them —you know, near the house—you shouldn’t go to them? Even if they tell you to?”

  “Yes. It’s because they’re ill.” He thought about this. “Dad as well?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  He said, “I know about it. It’s their brains being sick. A chap at school—his father was like that. They took him to a hospital and gave him electric shocks, and he got all right again.”