Rook & Tooth and Claw

by Graham Masterton

  When he came into class that morning he found his students all standing around or sitting on their desks, talking to each other. He dropped his folder with an emphatic slap, and then he said, “What’s this? You’ve started a debating society? What’s the motion for today? This house believes that all teenagers should tuck their shirts in?”

  Russell Gloach came forward. He still had Twinkie filling around his mouth, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. “No, sir. The motion is, what are we going to do about Tee Jay’s Uncle Umber?”

  Tee Jay was there, too, sitting at the back of the class. Jim approached him and said, “What do you think, Tee Jay? He’s your uncle. What he’s doing, it’s all connected with your religion.”

  “He’s gone too far,” said Tee Jay. “I never knew that he was going to start wasting people.”

  “He’s gone too far and you don’t know how to stop him? You couldn’t try appealing to his better nature?”

  “Uncle Umber doesn’t have a better nature.”

  Sharon said, “You can’t expect Tee Jay to stand up to his uncle. He’s going to get himself killed, same as Elvin.”

  David Littwin put in, “W-w-we’ve b-b. Been trying to find a w-w-way to g-get rid of him.”

  “Any ideas?” Jim asked them.

  “We could go round to his apartment and beat the shit out of him,” Mark suggested.

  “What the hell good would that do?” said Ray Vito. “He hasn’t done anything against the law, has he? Not that we can prove. We’ll end up in the slammer ourselves, for assault and battery.”

  “We could wait till he leaves his body,” said Titus Greenspan. “Then we could board up his front door so that he couldn’t get back to it again.”

  Jim said, “That wouldn’t work. In his smoke form, he can slide through any gap that smoke can get through.”

  Sharon said, “There’s a voodoo ritual in one of my books. It’s got all the words and everything. It’s how to put a curse on somebody so that when their spirit goes out walking, it can’t get back into its physical body.”

  “That could be useful,” Jim told her. “But what we need more than anything else is Umber Jones’s loa stick … the stick which he uses to call on the help of all of the lesser spirits. Without that stick, he has no power at all.”

  “Can’t you lift it when your uncle’s asleep?” Ricky asked Tee Jay.

  Tee Jay shook his head. “If I could, I would. But I don’t dare to touch it. It’s like, sacred.”

  “Sacred or not, if it’s the only way of stopping your uncle …”

  “You don’t understand,” said Tee Jay. “It’s sacred. It’s carved out of a ghost oak which grew in a cemetery … a tree which was fed on dead bodies. The dead bodies belonged to Baron Samedi, and so the tree belongs to Baron Samedi – and that means that the loa stick belongs to Baron Samedi, too.”

  “Tee Jay,” said Beattie. “Baron Samedi is one of those things that aren’t real.”

  “A myth,” said Seymour.

  Tee Jay said, “Baron Samedi is as real as you and me, Beattie. And when I started to study voodoo, I gave my solemn oath that I would never disrespect his name or steal his property or defy his law. If I tried to take that loa stick away from my uncle, I would have the most powerful spirit in the whole damn Western world hunting me down. He’d have my ass. Let me tell you something, man: I’d be lucky to end up like Elvin.”

  There was hubbub of scepticism from the rest of the class. But Jim raised his hand for silence and said, “Listen – whatever the rest of us think about voodoo, Tee Jay’s a believer and we can’t ask him to compromise his beliefs. If he and his uncle were Muslims, we wouldn’t expect him to disobey the will of Allah, even if it was a question of stopping a murderer. Plenty of people have found themselves in the same dilemma in the past, like Roman Catholic priests who hear confessions from serial killers. I think we can count ourselves fortunate that, whatever Tee Jay believes in, he’s drawn the line here and said no more killing, and he’s prepared to help us insofar as he doesn’t commit a heresy.”

  Not many of his class knew what a ‘heresy’ was, but they got the gist. They also began to realise that Jim was making an effort to draw Tee Jay back into the family, and he was asking them not to isolate him. Tee Jay had been attracted to voodoo because in spite of his popularity and his outward cool, he felt isolated and inferior. What was so good about being popular and cool if you were struggling to read Green Eggs And Ham in the remedial-teaching class of a trashy college like West Grove?

  Sharon said, “Maybe Tee Jay can help us by telling us when his uncle’s left his body … then we can go around and take the loa stick for ourselves.”

  “You won’t be able to get in there,” said Tee Jay. “When my uncle takes on The Smoke, he locks himself in good. He doesn’t want nobody tampering with his body while he’s away.”

  “Can’t you let us in?”

  “No way. He locks his room from the inside and he’s also got this security bar. It would take a tank to get in there. Besides … that would be aiding and abetting you to steal the loa stick, and I’m pretty sure that Baron Samedi wouldn’t take too kindly to that.”

  “I don’t know why you ever wanted to start believing in a mean dude like Baron Samedi,” said Muffy. “As if there aren’t enough mean dudes in the world already.”

  Jim said, “If we can’t physically break in and take the loa stick, then we’ll have to break in another way. I don’t know whether you’re really ready for this, but since all of your lives are in danger, I think you’re entitled to hear it.” And as briefly and as matter-of-factly as he could, he told them what had happened to Mrs Vaizey, and all about Elvin, too.

  When he had finished, the classroom was so silent that Dr Ehrlichman peered in through the window to make sure that they were still there. Jim walked up and down the aisles waiting to hear their reaction.

  Jane Firman had tears in her eyes. “Is this really, really true?” she asked him.

  Jim nodded.

  Ricky said, “When that old woman swallowed herself … Jesus, you must have barfed.”

  “I can’t believe a word of it,” said Rita. “This is just a test, isn’t it? Just play-acting, to make us think about impossible things.”

  “Oh, yes?” said Jim. “And why would I want to do that?”

  “To educate us, right? To stretch our imagination.”

  “Well, I wish it was,” Jim told her. “Sharon, what do you think?”

  Sharon was very subdued. “I’ve read about this thing of people being forced to eat themselves, yes. It’s supposed to be a punishment for sticking your nose in where it’s not wanted. Like treading on magic ground, or walking through a cemetery, or watching a banda without being invited.”

  “A banda … that’s kind of a dance ritual to honour Baron Samedi,” Tee Jay explained. “Most of the time it’s pretty sexy. You know, people dancing with no clothes on.”

  “This eating thing, though,” said Sharon. “I never knew it could really happen.”

  “Lots of things you don’t know about,” Tee Jay told her. “You keep talking about our roots and stuff… you don’t even know the half of it.”

  Sharon was about to protest but Jim interrupted her. “That’s why we need your help, Tee Jay. You know more about this than any of us. And even when you can’t actively help, at least you can try not to obstruct us. It’s the least you can do, considering what happened to Elvin.”

  Tee Jay flapped up his hands from his desk as if to indicate, “OK, everything’s going to be cool.”

  Jim said, “What I propose to do is this: Tonight, if and when his Uncle Umber goes out in his Smoke form, Tee Jay can call me at home and tell me that he’s gone. That’s all I’m going to ask you to do, Tee Jay – nothing else – but it has to be you, because you’re the only other person who can see him. As soon as I get Tee Jay’s call, I’m going to try to leave my body, using the technique that Mrs Vaizey taught me. If I go immed
iately, there’s a good chance that I can get to Uncle Umber’s apartment and get hold of the loa stick before he returns from wherever he’s been.”

  “What if he catches you?”

  “Then I won’t need to worry about dinner tonight, will I?”

  Chapter Eleven

  He parked a block away from Sly’s and walked the rest of the way. The bullet-shaped doorman was even more hostile than he had been before. “You got your nerve, Charlie. If I was you, I’d be in Nome, Alaska, by now.”

  “What is this place?” Jim asked him. “The Nome, Alaska, tourist board?”

  “Chill won’t see you. Chill’s not seeing nobody.”

  “Tell Chill I have something for him. A little gift from Umber Jones.” Jim’s heart was beating more violently than usual, but all the same there was something indescribably exciting about talking to hard men like these and knowing that he had the upper hand. For the first time in his life he understood why some men turned to crime. It was pure adrenaline. He loved the terse, euphemistic conversations that barely kept a lid on ruthless acts of violence – beatings, knee-cappings, killings. He loved the constant threat of saying the wrong thing; of showing disrespect, or weakness; or pushing his luck just a little too far.

  It was almost as exciting as teaching, he thought, wryly.

  The doorman talked in the phone and then he said, “Okay … you know where to go.”

  Jim went down the darkened staircase and the bouncer frisked him and nodded him inside. The same pianist was playing selections from the Broadway musicals. The singer was gone. Jim crossed the floor through the red lights and the cigarette smoke and there was Chill sitting in his corner booth with a white turbanlike bandage on his head and both hands wrapped up like finger-puppets. He was flanked by three stone-faced minders in reflective sunglasses, one of whom kept looking at his watch as if he had an urgent appointment with the hairdresser who kept his pompadour from collapsing.

  Chill said, “Sit down,” and Jim sat.

  There was a very long pause. Chill said, “Cigarette,” and one of his minders tucked a cigarette between his lips and lit it. Chill blew out smoke then leaned back in his seat and said, at last, “This Umber Jones … I need to know some more.”

  “I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can tell you. I just bring the messages.”

  “What I’m saying is … would he be interested in a little gentlemanly negotiation?”

  “No.”

  Chill made a squeezed-up face as if he were constipated. “You see, the trouble here – the trouble we’re facing here is – there’s no way ninety per cent.”

  Jim said, “That’s up to you. I think it’s only fair to warn you, though, that if you don’t agree to Umber Jones’s terms, the consequences could be pretty apocalyptic. For you, anyway.”

  “Say what? Will you talk English?”

  “What I’m saying, Mr Chill sir, is that you and your people had better do what Umber Jones wants you to do, otherwise you’ll be in for a major-league ass-kicking.”

  “Hey!” objected one of Chill’s minders, but Chill waved his finger-puppet fingers at him to keep quiet. He leaned forward across the table and said, “So who, may I ask, is going to be giving me this major-league ass-kicking?”

  Jim didn’t blink. “The same people who set fire to your hair, I should imagine.”

  “You know who they are?” said Chill, fiercely. “Don’t you think you better tell me?”

  There was a moment of spring-tightening tension. Chill stared at Jim with his eyes wide and Jim stared back at him, calm and unblinking.

  After a while, Jim took out the chicken-bone fetish and held it up. At first Chill didn’t want to look at it but then he had to. His eyes flickered once, twice, and then he took his eyes away from Jim’s and focused on the fetish with the kind of expression you would normally see on a man who has been told by his doctor that the lump on his neck is not just an ordinary lump but malignant lymphoma; and that he has less than six weeks to live.

  His minders backed away – clumsy, but with obvious cowardice. They knew what the fetish was, too; and they didn’t want to be too closely associated with a man who was marked for sudden death. One of them crossed himself. Another one spat and made a sign in the air. The third one shielded his eyes with his hand, so that he wouldn’t even have to look at the fetish.

  “Maybe there’s some room for manoeuvre,” said Chill, without much hope in his voice.

  “No,” said Jim.

  “Hey, come on. I should meet this Umber Jones … maybe we can talk this whole thing out between us, man to man.”

  “No.”

  Chill flared up. “I’m trying to be reasonable here, you understand? I’m trying to make some concessions! But you have to be fair! This is my turf! I been operating here for fifteen years, man. Everybody knows the Chill. How is this Umber Jones character going to take over from me? He don’t know jack.”

  “He doesn’t have to. You’re going to do all the work; and he’s going to take his percentage. It’s either that or more of what happened yesterday evening.”

  Chill banged his fist on the table and immediately regretted it: his fingers were still sore. “You can’t prove to me that Umber Jones did that! There wasn’t nobody there!”

  Jim held up the voodoo fetish and shook it like a tiny maracas. “Oh, yes,” he said. “There was somebody there. Just because you couldn’t see them, that didn’t mean that they weren’t there. You’ve heard of The Smoke?”

  Chill’s face drained of blood, and his cheeks were almost as white as his hair. “The Smoke? Is this what you’re talking about? The Smoke? That ain’t possible, man. That’s just a superstition.”

  “Oh, I see. Your minders were stabbed by a superstition, were they? Unusual way to die.” He held out the fetish.

  Chill couldn’t take his eyes off it. It was clear that he was deeply frightened. “Take that away. I don’t even want to look at that, man.”

  “It’s a gift. Umber Jones is going to be seriously upset if you don’t take it.”

  “Take it away, you hear me!” Chill screamed at him. “Tell him he can have what he wants! Ninety per cent, one hundred and ten per cent, whatever!”

  Jim leaned forward, one hand cupped over his ear. “Did I hear that right?”

  “Tell him he can have what he wants! Anything!”

  Jim said nothing for a second or two, but then he nodded, and said, “Okay. I’ll tell him.” He stood up and walked out of Sly’s. When he passed by, everybody gave him plenty of space, staff and customers both, and even the pianist stopped playing.

  He detested Umber Jones for all of his cruelty and his greed and his mumbo-jumbo, but at that moment he felt a huge surge of power. He understood why Tee Jay had felt so attracted by voodoo. It was like sex. It was like beating a man to the ground. It was liberation. It was winning. It was like having the gods on your side.

  He was sitting at his kitchen table eating Chef Boy-ar-Dee Ravioli with heaps of freshly-grated parmesan cheese when the telephone rang. He lifted it off the wall and said, “Yes, what is it?”

  “Mr Rook? This is Tee Jay. Uncle Umber just left the house.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “He locked himself into his room about twenty minutes ago. I kept a watch on the street and I saw his smoke-spirit heading west.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Sure I’m sure. I saw him with my own eyes. Like he was floating across the street.”

  Jim looked at the kitchen clock. It was 22:47. The feline formerly known as Tibbles was sitting at his feet, enthusiastically licking her lips. “Listen,” he said, “you’ll hate ravioli. Remember what happened yesterday.”

  “What happened yesterday?” Tee Jay asked him.

  “Forget it. I was talking to a friend of mine.”

  “Come on,” said Tee Jay, “I don’t know how long he’s going to be away.”

  “All right,” Jim told him. “But don’t go counting on an
ything. I never did this before, and I might not be able to do it now.”

  “You’ll do it, Mr Rook, I’m sure of it,” said Tee Jay.

  Jim had already marked out a circle of ash beside the couch, with his own improvised signs for the sun and the moon and the wind. He lay down and propped a cushion under his head. He felt ridiculous, to say the least. But it had worked for Mrs Vaizey. There was no reason why it shouldn’t work for him. Countless people left their physical bodies at night and wandered around the universe as smoke, or spirits, or summer draughts. There was no reason why he couldn’t, too.

  The feline formerly known as Tibbles watched him with narrow-eyed interest as he started to recite the words that Mrs Vaizey had taught him, as well as a few elaborations of his own. “Set my spirit free … let my spirit go … let my body sleep without it … let me travel where I will. Keep my body safe from evil … keep my body safe from darkness … let my spirit go … let my spirit go …”

  He felt strangely light-headed, as if he had spent all evening in a bar, drinking one shot of whiskey after another. He looked up at the ceiling, at its waves of combed 1950s plaster, and thought, Let my spirit go … The plaster began to undulate, wave upon wave, and all the time he kept repeating to himself let my spirit go … The plaster was the sea, and the couch in which he was lying was his boat; and in his boat he rowed on waving waters, out of his present consciousness, out of his cagelike bones and his heavy, restrictive flesh; shedding the weight of his physical body; and literally rising, into the air.

  He turned, as if he were swimming, and saw himself lying on the couch, his eyes closed, his arms crossed over his chest. He approached himself and stared at himself in fear and fascination. His face looked oddly lopsided, not quite himself. Then he realised that he had never seen himself like this before, except in photographs. Most of the time he looked at himself in mirrors, in which his image was the other way around.

  His cat seemed to be aware that something strange was happening, because her fur stood up, and she took three or four tentative steps away from him. She didn’t look at him directly, though, which meant that cats couldn’t see spirits any more than humans could.