Rook & Tooth and Claw

by Graham Masterton

  “I don’t know. For Christ’s sake, I don’t even know if he’s going to survive. But we have to do the best we can, right? He tried to take care of us. Now it’s our turn to take care of him.”

  Between them, they managed to carry Jim up the steps to the balcony and drag him along to his apartment door, his shoes scraping along the concrete. They opened the door and manhandled him inside. The feline formerly known as Tibbles came mewling around their ankles as they carried him over to the couch. They laid him down flat on his back and John leaned over him and pressed his ear to his chest. “I was right. He’s alive. You can just hear his heart beating.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Let him rest, I guess. Whatever they’ve given him, it has to wear off sooner or later.”

  With the tips of his fingers, Ray did his best to close Jim’s eyelids. He managed to shut the right eye, but the left one remained open, watching them both accusingly from under a drooping lid. At least it looked accusing, but in fact he was willing them to understand that he was still conscious, that he was still very much alive.

  More than anything else, he was willing them to call their classmates – especially Sharon, with her knowledge of African culture and African spells. He was locked in this unrelenting physical paralysis, but he knew that there had to be a way of breaking it. After all, what did the voodoo sorcerers do, when they had to bring their zombies back to life? It was a chemical spell and there had to be a chemical antidote, even if it was made out of ground-up skulls and spiderwebs and the bitten-off heads of sacrificial chickens.

  Ray said, “I’m going to call the rest of the guys, okay? We have to have a group discussion, do you know what I mean? Mr Rook isn’t just our teacher, yours and mine. He’s everybody’s teacher.” He paused, and then he said, “Besides, I don’t know what the hell to do, do you?”

  He picked up the phone and dialled West Grove Community College. “Hallo?” he said, dropping his voice an octave. “May I speak to Sue-Robin Caufield, please? It’s her father. Yes, I’m afraid it’s urgent. Her grandmother’s suffered a very serious heart attack. Yes. She may not live the night.”

  While he did so, John sat down on the edge of the couch and looked at Jim with a mixture of mystification and sympathy. “Mr Rook, sir? Can you hear what I’m saying? Can you talk at all? Can you tell me how you feel?”

  Jim stared at him one-eyed. He could see him and he could hear him, but he couldn’t say a word because his tongue felt as if it were carved out of balsa wood and his cheek-muscles were clenched tight. He wanted his lips to move; he wanted so much to say something, but his nervous system had literally forgotten how to speak.

  “We’re calling the whole class together,” John told him. “We’re going to find Tee Jay’s uncle and we’re going to teach him a lesson if it’s the last thing we do.”

  Jim lay there, rigid, one eye open and one eye closed. All he could do was wait for Umber Jones’s goofer dust to wear off, or for somebody to bring him something to counteract it. If Elvin had been telling him the truth, it was quite possible that the effects would last for days, or even weeks.

  Ray hung up, and came back over. He took hold of Jim’s shoulder and gripped it tight. “If you can hear me, Mr Rook, everything’s going to be okay. The whole class is coming over. We’re going to see that Umber Jones doesn’t get away with nothing no more. Nobody buries our teacher; nobody.”

  He picked up the feline formerly known as Tibbles and stroked his head. Jim watched him and didn’t move. All of a sudden, however, Ray said, “Shit. That’s it. I understand it now.”

  “What?” asked John.

  “I understand it. Why he stroked the cats. In the poem, you know. Because the whole world was falling apart, all around him, and stroking the cats was like reality. You stroke a cat and it doesn’t give you nothing back, so why do you enjoy it? Because people give something for nothing, sometimes; and they enjoy it.”

  John Ng looked very solemn. “If you say so, Ray.”

  The sunlight was shining through the cotton blinds, and it gave Jim’s face a terrible radiance, as if he were closer to the angels than he was to earth. Inside his mind, however, he was beginning to feel a coming-together, a new sense of relaxation. He managed to open both of his eyes, and he could feel the sides of his mouth flexing a little, like a ventriloquist’s dummy. He still couldn’t speak and his arms and legs were still totally paralysed, but he knew now that he wasn’t going to die.

  He tried to say, “Thank you,” and it came out as “mah-hoo”. But that didn’t matter. He was rapidly coming out of his paralysis. He was out of his coffin. He was back at home, with people who cared whether he lived or died, and that was one of the best curatives of all. “Mah-hoo,” he repeated.

  John looked up at Ray with a serious face. “What’s he saying, for Christ’s sake?” Ray asked him.

  “He’s saying ‘mah-hoo’.”

  “Oh. Right. ‘Mah-hoo’,” said Ray, and knelt down beside the couch. He wiggled his fingers and said, “Hallo, Mr Rook! Can you hear me? Mah-hoo, Mr Rook! Mah-hoo!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The rest of the class arrived within twenty minutes. “We didn’t ask no permission,” said Muffy, with bright-eyed bravado. “We just walked right out of the door. Didn’t nobody ask where we was going. Didn’t nobody try to stop us, neither.”

  “It was cool,” said Russell. “We came down here in a convoy, right. Six cars and a pick-up, nose-to-tail. Cool.”

  They gathered round the couch where Jim was lying, and he looked up and saw all of their faces. The slow, the dyslexic, the fat, the disturbed. The children who would never be bright. The children who would never be glamorous. They were rebellious, most of the time. They bullied more successful students, and they caused disruption everywhere they went. Special Class II had always been a synonym for educational mayhem. But Jim had learned that if he showed his students that he cared about everything they tried to do, no matter how crass or clumsy it might seem to a non-remedial teacher, then his students cared, too. They couldn’t spell, they couldn’t add up, they couldn’t draw a dog without making it look like a trash compactor. But Jim encouraged every one of their efforts – “Come on, let’s not call this ‘Fido’. Let’s call it … trash compactor.” In return, they were here, when he was paralysed, trying to get him back on his feet.

  “Mr Rook?” said Sue-Robin, leaning over him so far that all he could see was her wide blue eyes and her warm, Babe-scented cleavage. “Are you still alive, Mr Rook?”

  “Meathin,” said Jim, between clenched teeth. He was trying to say “breathing”, but it didn’t matter. He must have been breathing to have spoken at all.

  Sharon X was in the kitchen, furiously leafing through the books that she had lent him. “Here—” she said at last, lifting her hand.

  “What?” said Ricky.

  “It’s here … the stuff they use to bring you back to life. It’s called vive mixture.”

  “They got a recipe for it?” asked Russell.

  “Well, it’s kind of vague,” said Sharon. “Something called blood root and something called betony, mixed with chicken’s blood and celery.”

  “Sounds delicious,” said Titus. “Where are you going to find that?”

  “There’s one of those occult herb stores two blocks down,” said Muffy. “My aunt Hilda used to go there for musk oil and myrtle wood. She used to make this little fire every morning to bless her day.”

  “Right,” said Russell, “I’ll take Sharon down there right now. The rest of you … see what you can do to wake him up. He’s starting to talk, right? Maybe you can get him to move.”

  Jim still lay rigid on the couch. His face was as white as a papier-mâché mask, and his eyes were circled in red. His whole system was gripped by tetrodotoxin – 160,000 times stronger than cocaine. He still had a chance of revival. In the 1880s, a Japanese gambler had been poisoned with tetrodotoxin after eating fugu fish and recovered in a mortuary
over a week after he was declared dead. But Jim had been poisoned with datura, too, and bufo marinus. He was a classic zombie – pale, rigid and unmoving – waiting to give his gratitude to anybody who brought him back to life.

  Sue-Robin stroked his forehead. “Don’t you worry, Mr Rook. You’re going to be fine. You’re going to be back in that classroom boring our asses off with all of that poetry before you know it.”

  Jim’s eyes flickered. He looked up at Sue-Robin’s smile and thought that if any one remark could be guaranteed to bring him back to life, that was it. Sue-Robin had sat at the back of the class, dewy-eyed, while he read out Wild Peaches by Elinor Wylie. It had bored her ass off, had it? He wouldn’t read any more poetry. She could sit in class reading Igrat, Hell’s Assassin comics, for all he cared.

  He didn’t know how much time went by before Sharon returned. He saw her in the kitchen under the strong fluorescent light, her hair decorated with beads, pulping up roots and powders with the pestle-and-mortar that he usually used for crushing mustard seeds. He slept with his eyes open. He heard voices moving to and fro. The feline formerly known as Tibbles jumped on the couch next to him and purred loudly in his ear; more of a death-rattle than a purr.

  Then his head was lifted by Sharon’s hand and something bitter-sweet and liquid was being poured between his lips. He could feel it running down his neck and into his collar, but he didn’t care. He lay back and closed his eyes. He didn’t even realise how significant it was, the fact that he could close his eyes.

  He slept – and as he slept, his toes relaxed, and his legs shifted sideways; and suddenly he lifted one arm and flung it across his chest. The class sat around and watched him, not saying much; passing round the beer they had found in his icebox. Sharon stood a little way away from the rest of them, very quiet, because she knew what a risk she had taken, giving Jim the the vive potion. Betony and bloodroot could have killed him, instead of bringing him back to life. Bloodroot was so dangerous that mystics always labeled it under a false name. If betony leaves were placed in a ring they were supposed to keep out all evil spirits, but betony taken as a drink could cause death by vomiting.

  Hours went by. The class watched television, smoked, and read all of Jim’s copies of Playboy.

  “No wonder he’s one of the those men who looks down on women,” said Beatrice.

  “Oh, come on,” said David Littwin, “j-just b-because you d-don’t have b-b-big enough t-t-t …”

  Myrlin peered into the window to see what was going on and eighteen pairs of eyes stared back at him. He retreated into his apartment and pulled down the blinds.

  David Littwin said, “Tits,” and everybody turned and stared at him.

  At three o’clock in the afternoon, Jim slowly sat up. “My God,” he said, pressing the heels of his hands against his forehead.

  “What is it?” said Sue-Robin, hurrying over to the couch and busily parking her bottom next to his.

  “I’m fine,” Jim told her. “I feel like I’ve been drinking all night, that’s all.” He reached around and kneaded the back of his neck. Then he stretched and tried to stand up, but he couldn’t quite make it. He looked around at Special Class II and he couldn’t help smiling in pride. “You made it, then. You saved me.”

  They all nodded wildly. “Ray and John dug you up, but we all saw the message.”

  Jim looked around. He still felt stiff, and oddly detached, but Sharon’s elixir had definitely broken the grip of his paralysis. “I messed up,” he admitted. “I managed to get out of my body and float down to Umber Jones’s house, but it took me far too long to pick up the loa stick. I mean, when you’re a spirit you don’t have any hands, not in the physical sense. You have to will that thing into your fingers, otherwise it won’t come. Same as that stick of chalk. Did you ever see that film Ghost, with Patrick Swayze, when he was trying to pick things up? That was exactly the same. I could only write with that stick of chalk by willpower. Nothing to do with muscular strength.

  “But the trouble was, while I was trying to steal Umber Jones’s loa stick, Umber Jones was taking my physical body right off this couch and burying me. With Elvin’s assistance, of course. When I tried to come back to my body, it wasn’t there.”

  “Hey, man, that must of freaked you out,” said Ricky.

  “You’re right, it did. But Elvin showed me where my body was buried, and I was able to slide right back into it. Don’t ask me how I did it. I just kind of soaked right into the ground. Mrs Vaizey told me that if I managed to leave my body just once, I’d always want to do it again. But after today … let me tell you something, no way.”

  “So you didn’t get the loa stick?” said Sharon.

  Jim shook his head. “We’re going to have to work out another way.” He looked at his watch, and said, “I’m going to have to grab some zees. If you guys want to stay here, you’re welcome. Order some pizza or something. Then we’ll talk about what we’re going to do next.”

  A little after six, when they were all drinking mugs of coffee and talking about spooky encounters, Jim walked into the living-room and gave them a quick, short hand-clap to catch their attention. He had showered and changed. His hair was still wet and he was wearing his pink checkered shirt and his owlish Armani glasses. “Okay … I think that I’m pretty much recovered. I’m a little stiff – but then, who wouldn’t be, after their own funeral? I had some dreams, but that was all. Nothing too frightening, unless you count a sexy dream about Dr Ehrlichman. Next time you see him, don’t mention black stockings and garter belts, okay?”

  The class laughed, but they were aware of Jim’s tension, as well as his tiredness.

  Much more quietly, he said, “We’re dealing with some serious voodoo here. No point in trying to be sceptical. Umber Jones has amazing supernatural powers. He can use his loa stick to call on any one of two hundred different spirits. He can walk through the streets like smoke and he can kill people without them seeing who did it.

  “I’ve been thinking about the way that he caught me last night. To begin with, I couldn’t understand how he knew that I was going to be out of my body. But when I was buried in that coffin, I had plenty of time to chew it over, you know, with all of the benefit of total silence and total darkness. It’s really incredible how clearly your mind can work, when you don’t have any external stimuli to distract you. No airplanes passing overhead. No hookers bouncing the bedsprings in the room upstairs.”

  Again, the class laughed – not because he was funny, but simply because they were relieved to have somebody back in control. A class lost all of its cohesion without a teacher, no matter how laidback that teacher might be.

  “Okay, informal registration,” said Jim. “Is everybody here?”

  “Everybody excepting for Tee Jay,” said Seymour.

  “Well, that’s what I expected,” Jim told him.

  “You expected it? Why?”

  Jim said, “Think about it. You all knew that I was thinking of leaving my body yesterday evening and trying to break into Umber Jones’s apartment – but I was only going to do it if his smoke-spirit was out walking somewhere else. Only Tee Jay knew that his uncle had done it, and, when. So only Tee Jay knew exactly when I was going to leave my body to come looking for the loa stick. He sent Elvin here to bury my body, and that was that.”

  “It was a trap,” said Sharon.

  “That’s right,” Jim nodded. “It was a trap. I wanted to believe that Tee Jay wasn’t totally dominated by Umber Jones. I wanted to believe that all of his interest in voodoo was a teenage fad; that one day soon, he’d get over it. But he knew what he was doing when he called me last night … and as much as I hate to say it, I think he knew what he was doing when Elvin was killed. It was nothing to do with a fight in the washroom. He was making a human sacrifice to Vodun.”

  “Jesus,” said Mark.

  “It says in Sharon’s book that making a human sacrifice is the quickest way to have yourself accepted as a voodoo convert.”

&nb
sp; “All the same. Jesus.”

  “So what are we going to do now?” asked Titus, blinking behind his glasses.

  “If you’re willing, we’ll tackle this problem together. I realised today that I can’t handle it all on my own. I need my class to help me.”

  They glanced at each other. Jane said, “Not me. Not if it means looking for ghosts.”

  “Hey, come on, you can count me in,” said Russell.

  “Me too,” said Mark.

  David Littwin raised his hand and said, “You c-c-c. Can. C-c-c.”

  “Thanks, David,” said Jim. He didn’t want to be unkind, but he didn’t have all night.

  All but two of them wanted to join in. Jane was shy and badly dyslexic; Greg Lake had to be home early because his grandparents were visiting. Jim knew that Greg’s parents were very severe: that accounted for his facial grimaces. He didn’t want to give Greg any more stress in his life than he could handle.

  In the end, he lifted one hand for silence, and said, “We’re going to have to deal with Umber Jones on two fronts. The next time he leaves his body, a bunch of us will have to follow his smoke-spirit and keep it busy while two or three others break into his apartment and take his loa stick. They should also recite the chant that stops a smoke-spirit from re-entering his physical body. He won’t have a loa stick, to call on the loa to help him. He won’t be able to return to his body. After a while he’ll simply fade away, like everybody else fades away, when they die.

  “I think it would be a good idea if the group that’s following the smoke-spirit is divided into two smaller groups. I can go with one group, because I can actually see him. The other group can take Mrs Vaizey’s ghost-dust. If you suspect that he’s anywhere near you, you can throw some dust and it should show him up.

  “We have three mobile telephones between us, don’t we? That’s okay … we can all keep in touch.”

  “What about Tee Jay?” asked Sharon. “The way he’s been talking about voodoo, he could be pretty powerful, too.”