Rook & Tooth and Claw

by Graham Masterton

  Jim was sure that he saw it cross in front of the fire, because the fire momentarily dimmed, but then it vanished altogether, and all he could see was the man and his drum and the hot, dying embers, and all he could hear was Sharon calling him.

  “Mr Rook? Mr Rook? I heard somebody shouting. What’s happening, Mr Rook?”

  Jim climbed to his feet. He was bruised and shocked and hyperventilating. Thank God it’s dark, he thought, and she can’t see Susan’s body. Thank God I can’t, either.

  “It’s OK, Sharon,” he told her. “I was just trying to find Catherine, that’s all. She hasn’t come back yet, has she?”

  “Not yet, Mr Rook. Maybe I should help you look.”

  “No, no. Go back to your room. Please. You’ll be doing me a favour.”

  Sharon waited on the patio a little while longer, straining her eyes out into the night, but then she reluctantly went back inside. It was just after three o’clock. Jim walked back to the place where Susan’s body had fallen. Then he walked over to the fire, and the man with the drum.

  The fire may have been low, but it gave off so much heat that Jim couldn’t stand very close. The man had stopped playing now, and was crouched next to it, completely covered from head to foot in a grey-and-white Navajo blanket.

  “Who are you?” Jim demanded. “What’s been going on here? Do you know what’s happened? A woman’s been killed.” His voice was trembling like a loose bandsaw.

  The man reached into a leather pouch and tossed a handful of powder onto the fire. It briefly sparkled, and gave off the smell of dried herbs, along with another smell, less definable, more like memories. Jim saw himself playing in a wood beside a lake, and then he didn’t.

  “I’m going to have to call the police,” he said.

  The man threw another handful of powder onto the fire. Then he tightened up his leather pouch, and stood up, winding the blanket around him so that he looked like a pilgrim, or a monk. It was John Three Names. His face was impassive. His eyes gave nothing away.

  “You’ve killed my friend,” Jim insisted. He was very close to tears. “She’s – you took her head off – and then you just – snapped her.”

  “I didn’t do that,” said John Three Names. He walked past Jim to a smooth flat rock, where he had left his clothes. Unabashed, he took off the blanket and proceeded to dress himself in a checkered shirt and jeans, with a bolo necktie.

  Jim said, “That thing was here. That beast. What did you do, conjure it up?”

  “I didn’t see anything, Jim. The only person who can see that creature is you.”

  “So how do you think that Susan was torn to pieces? It took her head off, John, right in front of me!”

  John said, “I’m sorry. I saw her go down, and I’m deeply sorry. But that’s all I can say. This is a struggle, and when you have struggles, people get hurt. Particularly when you start struggling with powers that you don’t really understand.”

  “I’m still calling the police. I came here as a favour. Now my girlfriend is dead. Jesus, what’s the matter with you? What the hell do you have to be so calm about?” He was almost screaming.

  John Three Names said, “I’m not calm, Jim. I’m not calm at all. I’m as shaken as you are. But that beast is going to go on killing people until Dog Brother can be talked into letting Catherine go, and calling it off. And only you can do that.”

  “I’m calling the police.”

  “Oh, yes? And what are you going to say to them?”

  “I’m going to tell them the truth, what else?”

  “The truth? An invisible beast came along and took your girlfriend’s head off? I saw you run up to her. I saw her fall. But as far as I’m concerned, there was no invisible beast. So what conclusion do you think the police are going to draw from that?”

  “It ripped her to pieces. I couldn’t have done that!”

  John Three Names shrugged. “They’re still going to hold you under suspicion, aren’t they? They’re Navajo, Jim, the cops around here, and they’re always very intolerant with whites. After all, they have plenty to be intolerant about.”

  Jim looked around in desperation. “You didn’t see anything? You didn’t see the shadow? It was here, by the fire, while you were drumming.”

  John Three Names touched one eyelid with his fingertip. “I don’t have the eyes to see such things, Jim. Most of the time, I’m glad that I don’t.”

  “So what were you doing here, lighting this fire and beating that goddamned drum?”

  “I was making a prayer to my ancestors. I was asking them to help us when we go to see Dog Brother tomorrow, so that we should be successful, and that Dog Brother should let Catherine go.”

  “So why do you think that the beast showed up?”

  “Perhaps to show me that tomorrow’s confrontation will not be easy, and that we still have much to fear.”

  “There won’t be any confrontation tomorrow. After tonight, I quit.”

  John Three Names looked taken aback. “How can you quit, when you are the only person who can make sure that the beast who killed your girlfriend is sent back to the world in which it belongs? How can you quit, when so many others might die?”

  Jim looked back in the direction of Susan’s body. “How do you expect me to go on with this, after what’s happened tonight?”

  John Three Names took hold of his arm. “Jim, you have to go on. You don’t have any choice. Destiny only goes forward. It can never go back. The door behind you is closed. The door ahead of you may be difficult to open, but it is the only way out.”

  “So what can I do with Susan’s body?” asked Jim. “It’ll be dawn soon.”

  John Three Names nodded toward the fire. “It’s very hot now, Jim. We can cremate her.”

  Jim took a deep breath. Hiding a body was illegal, and deeply incriminating, if it were ever found. But shocked as he was, he knew that there wasn’t a court in the country that would believe that Susan had been killed by an invisible spirit-beast – not until he could prove that it existed, if he ever could. He said, “All right, then. But I’m going to need your blanket, to wrap her up in.”

  “This is a Ganado,” said John Three Names, clutching it tight.

  “I don’t care if it’s the Turin Shroud. I need it.”

  John Three Names reluctantly handed over his rug. Jim trailed it over to Susan’s remains, and laid it on the dirt beside her. He reached out once to touch her, and found that he couldn’t. But then he quickly tugged at her bloodsoaked bathrobe and rolled her onto the rug. The noise of bones and sloppy viscera almost made him sick – but what was worse was that, headless, she sighed as he rolled her over – a faint, regretful sigh.

  “Just a little air left in her lungs,” said John Three Names, pragmatically.

  Jim wrapped up the blanket and John Three Names helped him to carry it over to the fire. It swung heavily, like somebody in a hammock. They raked back the embers with sticks and lowered the blanket right into the hottest part. Jim’s eyes watered, not only from heat. The blanket scorched and flared and there was a choking smell of burned wool.

  “We have to find her head,” said John Three Names, grimly.

  Jim said, “I don’t know. I don’t think I can.” He was so overwhelmed by grief and shock that he could hardly stay standing.

  John Three Names gripped his wrists. “You have to. What do you think you’re going to do – leave her head here for the dogs to find?”

  They spent the next twenty minutes bent double, peering into the darkness for any sign of Susan’s head. The sky began to lighten and the stars began to fade away. The noise of cicadas was almost overwhelming. At last, his back aching, Jim looked up. Along the back perimeter of the Inn there was a corrugated-iron fence, with a top that had been cut into serrated spikes. Three-quarters of the way along it, he saw a pale, cross face. For a split-second he thought that a woman was watching him, over the top of the fence, and he half-lifted his hand to wave at her. Then he realized that he was look
ing at Susan’s head. It had fallen with appalling neatness and landed on top of the fence, and it was still frowning at him in the same way that she had frowned at him before she died.

  He said, “John,” in a hollow voice, and approached the fence with knees like water. As he came closer, he realized that her head was nearly seven feet off the ground. Her eyes were open, and if he hadn’t known that the rest of her body was burning in the pit behind him, he could have easily believed that she was still alive.

  He couldn’t touch the head himself, and he had to turn away as John Three Names used a dry stick to dislodge it. All the same, he heard it thud to the ground. John Three Names picked it up by its blood-matted hair and carried it over to the fire. Jim couldn’t look. He stayed where he was, gasping for breath, with tears running down his cheeks.

  After a while, however, John Three Names called him, and he managed to compose himself enough to rejoin him beside the embers. John Three Names said, “We’ll have to let this burn itself out … then I’ll come and cover it with dirt. I asked the Inn management if I could light a ceremonial fire here tonight… there’s no reason for them to get suspicious about it.”

  “But what happens when Susan doesn’t appear for breakfast?”

  “You’ll just have to persuade your students that she was taken sick in the night, and decided to go back home. I’ll take her clothes and her suitcase and keep them hidden.”

  “But if anybody finds out what we’ve done, they’re going to think that we killed her.”

  “Exactly,” said John Three Names. “Just as the police in Los Angeles think that Paul and Grey Cloud killed Martin Amato.”

  “So what the hell are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to have to do what we always intended to do… what you came here to do. We’re going to have to talk to Dog Brother and see if he’ll be prepared to let Catherine go.”

  “That still won’t prove our innocence.”

  “It’ll prevent any more killings. And maybe we can discover a way of proving what Dog Brother did.”

  Jim looked down at the fire. It was still very hot, but it was much more ashy now, and the early morning breeze blew some of the ashes across the ground, so that they clung in the thorn-bushes. He said a quiet prayer for Susan’s soul, and hoped that wherever she was, she could find it in her heart to forgive him.

  It was then that he heard Sharon calling him again, “She’s back, Mr Rook! Catherine just came back!”

  While John Three Names continued to rake over the ashes, Jim returned to to his room and quickly dressed in jeans and a blue checkered shirt. His fingers were trembling so much that he could hardly fasten his buttons. Then he went across to the girls’ room and knocked on the door. Sharon opened up immediately. Jim walked in and found Catherine sitting on the end of her bed in a green nightshirt, thirstily drinking from a can of Coke. He looked down at her feet and they were dusty with ashes.

  “Do you want to tell me where you’ve been?” he demanded. “We’ve all been worried about you.” He paused, and then he said, “Ms Randall’s been so worried it’s brought on her asthma, and she may have to fly back home.”

  Catherine looked up at him and there was the strangest expression on her face. Dark, suspicious, almost creepy. “Asthma?” she said.

  “That’s right. She suffers very badly when she’s stressed.”

  “You mean she has difficulty breathing?”

  “Yes.”

  Catherine lowered her head again and Jim had a suspicion that she hiding a smile.

  “You still haven’t told me where you’ve been,” he insisted.

  “I couldn’t sleep, that’s all. I went for a walk.”

  “That wasn’t particularly wise, was it, under the circumstances?”

  “Sometimes wisdom is a matter of opinion,” said Catherine. “You told us that yourself.”

  Jim hated it when his students quoted his own words back at him, particularly when he didn’t agree with what he said. He opened his mouth but then he closed it again without saying anything. He had intended to ask Catherine if she had heard the drumming outside, and if she had seen the fire. But he decided it would be better to hold his tongue, just for the moment. If Catherine were involved in Susan’s death in any way, then she knew about it already. If she weren’t, then it was better that she didn’t know anything about it.

  Mark appeared, his hair all scruffed up, wearing a T-shirt and droopy shorts. “What’s going on?” he wanted know. “I keep hearing people shouting and doors banging and stuff. Any chance of getting some sleep?”

  Jim took his arm. “I’m sorry, Mark. Catherine went for a walk and I guess we all got a little over-excited.”

  “OK, then,” said Mark, “but keep the noise down, hunh? I was having this terrific dream that I was the drummer for REM.”

  Jim met John Three Names in the corridor and took him back to his room. Susan’s door was locked, and the interconnecting door was still locked, too, but Susan had left her sliding patio door slightly ajar. They climbed over the railings that separated the two patios, and let themselves in.

  Jim immediately went to the closet and took down Susan’s dresses. They smelled of her perfume and he had to bite his lip to stop himself from bursting into tears. He took down her case, opened it up, and quickly packed. John Three Names came out of the bathroom with her toothbrush and her toiletries.

  “Is that everything?” said Jim. “Look under the bed, in case she’s left anything there.”

  John Three Names ducked down and came back up with a pair of flowery cotton mules and a dog-eared copy of The San Andreas Fault.

  “Geography teacher,” said Jim, flicking through the book. “She’s a geography teacher.”

  John Three Names picked up the case. “OK,” he said, “I’ll take this back to my house. Why don’t you go back to bed for a couple of hours? Even if you don’t sleep it’ll give you a chance to settle your nerves. I’ll meet you back here at eight thirty, say.”

  Jim said, “It’s unbelievable. You didn’t see that thing at all? Not even a shadow of it?”

  John Three Names shook his head. “I only saw your girlfriend die … and I know that you couldn’t have done it, not like that.”

  “It was … huge,” said Jim. “It was black, and tall, like a bear. And fast. Susan didn’t stand a chance.”

  “You mustn’t blame yourself. There was nothing you could have done to stop it.”

  “I shouldn’t have asked Susan to come to Arizona in the first place.”

  “Jim … life is always dangerous. She might have stayed in Los Angeles and died in a traffic accident. Only Gitche Manitou knows the ways that we’re going to walk.”

  Jim couldn’t think of anything else to say. He looked around Susan’s empty room, and then he opened the door. He checked that there was nobody in the corridor, and then he beckoned John Three Names to follow him out.

  “Eight thirty,” he said, and went back into his own room. He went to the bathroom, switched on the light, and stared at himself in the mirror. There were two ashy smudges on his cheeks, but apart from that he looked completely normal, as if nothing exceptional had happened at all. Behind him, through the patio windows, he could still see the smoke rising from the fire, and it was almost impossible to believe that it was Susan’s funeral pyre, and that he would never, ever see her again. Just at the moment he was beyond tears.

  He tried to watch some television, but all he could find was The Prisoner of Zenda in black-and-white, and a Mexican program about the Day of the Dead. He switched the television off and closed his eyes. Almost immediately, he opened them again. Under his eyelids, he had seen the dark, bristling beast rushing toward him, its claws upraised.

  He thought: it’s Thursday already, the day I’m supposed to die. He lay back, staring at the ceiling, with a sweaty sensation of dread. He couldn’t begin to imagine what it must be like, to have your head ripped off, or your body slashed open. You must feel something, surely,
if only for an instant. Weren’t there stories of people’s eyes moving, after their heads had been cut off – staring in horror at their own severed neck?

  He climbed off the bed and went to the mini-bar. He poured two miniatures of bourbon into one glass and drank both of them, straight down. He coughed, and wiped his eyes. He was shaking so much that he dropped the glass onto the floor.

  At a quarter past eight he went to the girls’ room and knocked. After a while, Sharon answered it. “Just thought I’d give you a wake-up call,” he said. “John Three Names is picking us up in forty-five minutes.”

  “How’s Ms Randall?” asked Sharon. “Did she get over her asthma?”

  “Her asthma? No – no she didn’t. It got worse. Terrible. She could hardly breathe. I sent her back to Albuquerque. She’s going to have some treatment there, and then she’s going to fly back to LA.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Catherine, sitting up in bed and swinging her hair behind her.

  Jim said, “Yes. But anyhow, I’ll see you after breakfast.”

  He closed the door. He didn’t know what to make of Catherine at the moment. She seemed to be changing. When she had first arrived at West Grove, she had always been open and friendly. She had been first in class to put up her hand and ask questions, and she had never been afraid of expressing her feelings. She had loved the poetry of Delmore Schwartz, and recited in class: ‘The heavy bear who goes with me, A manifold honey to smear his face, Clumsy and lumbering here and there, The central ton of every place.’ At the time, he hadn’t thought anything much of it, but after what had happened tonight, it seemed to have a new and threatening significance.

  Here, on her own territory, Catherine had become remote and prickly, and had withdrawn deeply into herself. This morning he hadn’t seen any sign of the shadow over her, but her tension was almost visible, like the heat waves that had risen from John Three Names’ fire.