by Brian Lumley
Reckless, yes, but … what the hell! The odds against Jilly ever meeting up with old Cat Carter must be a million to one at least.
By the time Trace was ready to leave the flat there were still some twenty minutes of the agreed hour left to run. He opened Kastrouni’s notebook again, frowned at the list of numbers.
Well, 347 less 20 was certainly 327; and 327 less 25 was likewise 302. And so on. But what was the AD? Anno Domini? (Or ‘After Death’, as he’d learned to remember it in school.) After the death of Christ?
‘See MS, 47.’
Trace took up Morgan Selby’s book, My Journeys & Discoveries in the Holy Land, turned to see here. But here Kastrouni had left nothing to chance: the information he had desired to pass on – or at least, that information which had most interested Kastrouni himself – had been clearly indicated down the margins by thick strokes of a pen. Most of pages 47 and 48 were marked up in this way, and certain words and phrases were likewise ringed about in the same ink.
It was a long passage and referred to a ‘lost’ scripture, a scripture so blasphemous (which seemed to Trace almost a contradiction in terms) that it had never been set to print. Where the author had acquired this information wasn’t explained, but he gave his version of the alleged contents of the missing scripture in the following manner:
ACCORDING to the scriptures Jesus damned Capernaum, Bethsaida and Chorazin. More recently, scholars of the occult and the infernal have generally agreed that Chorazin will be the birthplace of the antichrist. How this can possibly come to pass considering that Chorazin has stood in ruins for some fourteen centuries is hard to understand. But in fact the occultists are geographically correct: they are only at fault in their temporal calculations. For according to the natives and local superstition, Chorazin, on the shore of Galilee, was the birthplace of the antichrist.
The lost scripture (according to my sources) alleges that:
The Gadarene swine were not all ‘choked’ in the lake; one at least, a sow, survived. The legion of devils which were in possession of the drowned beasts all fled into this survivor, which was later impregnated with the devil’s seed by Demogorgon, Satan’s emissary. At the very hour Jesus died on the cross, an ugly child in human form was littered by the sow.
Growing up, the child was adopted by a witch dwelling in the wilderness close to Chorazin. The boy ‘spoke in tongues’ and had ‘many demons in him.’ His fostermother, a learned woman and necromancer,’ encoded from his mouthings two texts of demoniac power, one to propitiate the strength of Demogorgon and the devil, the other to rob them of their strength and so put them down or exorcise them. Under the ascending node of the first, all hell might be unleashed; and by the descending node of the second, Demogorgon is made impotent. These texts, graven in stone, are like the scripture supposed ‘lost’, but in fact a rare Gnostic rite of exorcism employs a ‘spell’ or ‘curse’ of alleged Palestinian origin, which in every respect seems derived from the second Chorazin tablet.
As for Ab, son of Demogorgon (or more properly Satan’s son, the antichrist): as a youth he spent half of his time mad, half sane; his witch fostermother used him as an oracle and made great profit from his utterances. For all that he was malformed, having a withered left leg, he fathered many children upon the witch, all of them monsters and every one dying in the light of its first day. Grown to a man and gross in all respects, still Ab and his witch fostermother cohabited; but as she aged, so his lust grew ever more bestial. When she was seventy-seven, in a fit of sexual frenzy that lasted for whole days and nights, the changeling killed her and villagers from Chorazin found her torn up the middle as by an animal; following which Ab ran off into the wilderness and lived as a hermit, practising black magic.
Thereafter, a great many crimes were ascribed to him, including the abduction of girls and women, and their subsequent murders; the slaying of beasts, often in a manner best left undescribed; the defilements of temples and the haunting of all the countryside around. He is supposed to have lived, as did many other biblical characters before him, an inordinately long life: namely 347 years! His actual death, not on record, is also a matter of legend: again according to immemorial lore, in the year 347 A.D., on the night of a fearful lightning storm, Ab entered Chorazin and put a spell on three of the younger men of the village. The result of his spell – and perhaps more importantly its purpose – are not known, except that Chorazin’s inhabitants fled the place en masse that same night, only returning after several weeks.
Thereafter, for one hundred and fifty years, gradually the village fell into decay until it was finally deserted for good. Wandering tribes made their homes there down the centuries, but none settled. When I saw the place it was in utter ruin and abandonment. The tribesman I had much of this from would not enter Chorazin with me but kept his distance. The place was cursed, he said.
In this respect it can be seen that Jesus’s prophecy was borne out fully: ‘Woe unto thee, Chorazin!’ indeed!
Trace glanced over the text again; the words ringed about were these: ‘Chorazin tablet’, ‘withered left leg’, ‘347 A.D.’, ‘lightning storm’, and the word ‘three’ in ‘three of the younger men of the village.’
According to Kastrouni, George Guigos had also taken three young men with him into Chorazin on that night back in 1936. And here again was that date, A.D. 347 – the date of Ab’s death? And yet Selby had clearly stated that Ab’s actual death was not on record …
Trace glanced at his watch. It was time he went to meet Jilly. The rest of the puzzle would have to wait. But one thing was certain: now that he’d started it he would finish it. If there was one thing Trace couldn’t abide it was an unsolved riddle …
Chapter Four
Jilly was waiting for Trace at The Ship; a couple of yobby strangers were trying to chat her up at the bar, which was nothing unusual; the place was packed with arty types, queers, and Irishmen from Crouch End and Hornsey. Trace rescued Jilly, grabbed drinks – whisky for himself, a gin and tonic for her – and was lucky enough to take possession of a booth as its 4-person gaggle of spike-headed punks careened squawking out of the place on shoes like columnar clogs.
He wasted no time but gave her the necklace; her mouth fell open as she took it from him, opened up the tiny matchbox and looked inside. Trace hadn’t thought to do that, but anyway there was nothing in there. The interior of the matchbox had been done out as a locket. ‘I can put a tiny picture of you in there,’ she said. ‘And the chain is just long enough to dangle in between my breasts. That way you’ll always be touching them.’
Trace knew it was now or never. ‘Jilly, I’m moving on.’
She looked up from putting the necklace carefully into her handbag, her eyes slowly coming up to meet his. ‘You’re what?’
‘That’s to say goodbye,’ he told her. ‘Put someone else’s picture in it. I’m not for settling down, Jilly.’
She let it sink in, said: ‘You give with one hand, take with the other.’
‘We said there’d be no strings,’ he felt impelled to remind her. ‘But if we go on the strings will come – and then when it’s over they’ll choke us off. I’ve loved you, but I don’t love you.’
As if she hadn’t heard, quite conversationally, she said, ‘You know, I’ve often wondered what it was that attracted me to you. I do like you a great deal. But I’m damned if I know why. You’re not especially handsome – in fact you’re quite skinny – and you’re not terrific in bed. I think it’s because you’re … I don’t know, mysterious?’
‘Deep, you mean?’
‘I suppose that’s what I mean, yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, deep.’ Trace sensed she was about to get up and go. She looked deep into his eyes. ‘Charlie, you’re sure?’
‘Yes,’ he nodded. And with Kastrouni still on his mind, colouring his words, he lied: ‘See, I’ve a girlfriend in Paris. We holiday together every year in Greece. I’m meeting her in Athens and we’re going on from there – the Greek islands. A week, maybe two.
I didn’t want to have to cover up for my absence, so …’
‘And when you come back?’ She stood up, looked down on him. Her nostrils were pinched and her eyes were slitted as he’d never seen them before.
‘It’s no good, Jilly,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘I’ll keep the necklace and locket,’ she said. ‘Always. To remind me of you.’
‘Thanks.’ He didn’t know what else to say.
‘To remind me how easy it is to make mistakes.’
‘Jilly, I – ’
‘Fuck you!’ she said without malice, turned and melted away into the bustle of customers.
Trace finished his drink, let himself settle down into himself, gradually began to feel good. It must be like this when they take off the handcuffs, he thought. He went to the bar, ordered another drink. And as he swirled the whisky in his glass and let the babble of the pub wash over him, so he slowly became aware of someone watching him. A man at the bar, tight in a corner where the bar met the wall.
Trace looked at him out of the corner of his eye, then openly glanced at him. But just a glance. That was all it took. A mental photograph etched itself into Trace’s brain, was locked away for future reference in some cranial filing cabinet.
The stranger was straight as a ramrod, his suit expensive, his general image impressive. He could be anything between forty-five and fifty-five years old, with iron-grey hair, blue eyes, pale, unblemished skin. Not quite as slim as Trace but a little taller, he managed to look somehow remote, cool – no, cold – and his voice as he looked away from Trace across the bar to order a brandy was very correct and Old Etonian. Trace wasn’t sure what ex-Guards officers looked like – except for vague TV stereotypes - but he suspected that this must be very much it. Or maybe a male model for the glossy ladies’ magazines?
Anyway (he gave a mental shrug), he must be mistaken, the man hadn’t been watching him after all. On Trace’s other side a very attractive girl was getting giggly on vodka. That’s who the stranger was watching. Maybe he contemplated a cradle-snatch.
Behind the bar The Ship’s boss, Freddie, held up a bottle of whisky questioningly. Trace shook his head, signalled that he had all he wanted. Freddie went off to serve someone else but was back moments later, ‘Blower,’ he said. ‘For you.’ He tilted his head toward a door at the side of the bar. The door led to a corridor, the corridor in turn to the telephone, the toilets and the street.
Trace raised his eyebrows. The telephone? For him? He shrugged, headed for the corridor. Probably Jilly telling him to fuck off or something. In the corridor the telephone hung loose, bobbed up and down on its coiled plastic lead. With the dregs of his drink in his right hand, Trace took the phone awkwardly in his left, stuck it in the crotch formed of his neck and shoulder. ‘Hello?’
‘Charlie Trace?’ inquired a coarse voice faintly tinged with some unrecognized foreign accent.
‘That’s me,’ said Trace.
‘Just thought you’d like to know,’ said the phlegmy voice. ‘Mr Carter is cutting his holiday short by a week. He’ll be on the first available flight home. Next Thursday, I believe.’
Trace came close to dropping his drink, grabbed the phone tightly to stop from dropping that, too. His mind whirled as he answered: ‘Carter? I don’t know any Carter. Who’s speaking?’
There was a throaty chuckle. ‘It seems Mr Carter has received a very annoying – one might say worrying – anonymous message concerning an interest of his back here in England. A warning, as it were, just like this warning.’
‘Warning? What the hell are you talking about?’ Trace snarled. ‘I tell you I don’t know any Carter! Who is this?’
‘Goodbye, golden boy!’ said the voice – and the phone went dead.
The door to the street opened, letting in traffic sounds, and Trace looked up in time to see the ex-Guards officer flicking imaginary dust from his sleeve as he stepped out into the street …
It was Sunday and it was hot. Trace considered packing a few things, getting out his Triumph and going for a spin out of London. Blow away some of the cobwebs, think things out. He could- go up to Yorkshire, stay at old country inns, spend a few days sitting in orchards sipping ice-cold beer, or soaking up the sun on a blanket stretched out over springy moors heather. No, he couldn’t; on Tuesday he had to deliver the stuff to Joe Pelham in the Holloway Road.
It was just that he suddenly felt like getting away from it all. Getting away from everything. Running away from everything. It was all getting to be too much.
Memories had been shaken awake that should lie sleeping. He’d been handed a past he didn’t want, an unsolvable riddle he couldn’t rest until he’d solved. He’d heard a wholly fabulous story (or mostly fabulous) about a monstrous creature who was something more, or less, than human; he’d seen freak lightning strike a taxi and blow it to hell; he’d been threatened or ‘warned’ by an unknown someone about a job he’d done which no one else on earth could possibly know about …
Could they?
If he’d given Jilly that bloody trinket yesterday, then there might – just might – be an explanation. Someone could have seen it, recognized it, asked her where she got it, put two and two together, come up with four. But not in five minutes. Not by any stretch of the imagination. And as for getting in touch with Carter, and knowing he would be back home on Thursday … !
So Carter was breaking off his holiday, was he? So what? He couldn’t connect his loss with Trace. He didn’t even know Trace. And nobody – with the exception of a handful of fences, smelters and iffy jewellers – knew of Trace’s penchant for raffling.
‘Raffling’: that was a word he’d coined himself. It meant doing a Raffles. And it rhymed with snaffling. Oh, Charlie Trace was a high-class tea-leaf, all right – an ace thief – but no one knew it. Or at least they shouldn’t …
These were some of the thoughts Trace turned over in his head as he walked London’s dusty summer streets, his jacket over his arm. He hadn’t gone straight back to the flat but had taken a long detour instead, through a park and down avenues of trees, keeping to the shade wherever possible, just letting things buzz about and find their own level in his mind.
‘Buzz about’, yes. Like bumble-bees. But so much had happened in the last two-and-a-bit days that he felt his head must be starting to resemble a hive of the bloody things!
And there was Jilly, too. At another time he mightn’t have broken it off. Not just like that, anyway. And that story he’d told her. He snorted: ‘Huh!’ and almost wished he really did have a French girlfriend. As for holidays in the Greek islands: he’d never been anywhere near the Mediterranean. What was it Kastrouni had called him: ‘Not much travelled’?
Kastrouni: on the run for almost half a century. According to him, anyway. Afraid of storms, and now cindered in a weird blast from summer skies. In London, of all places!
In a street of shops Trace stopped to stare in through the window of a travel agency. Almost of their own accord his eyes ran vacantly, then avidly, down the glossy, gorgeously adorned covers of the neatly displayed brochures. Girls, girls, girls. And beaches. And a sea so blue it was almost painful to the eyes. Even here, reproduced on paper, painfully bright and glittering.
CRETE: ‘The Island That Dreams Are Made Of!’
And, CORFU! – with a full-page view of a place called Kaminaki Beach that made your mouth water.
SKIATHOS.
SKOPELOS.
ALONISSOS.
And all of them with scenes of empty beaches. Beaches deserted. Except, of course, for those nearly nude nymphets dipping their toes in the blue, blue sea, or gazing thoughtfully, with brown-tipped breasts a-tilt, into incredible sunsets.
I should have been a poet, Trace thought.
And, RHODES! – ‘Historic, beautiful Rhodes, with 300 sunny days in every year …’
And, KARPATHOS: ‘Darling of the Dodecanese!’
Karpathos …
Yesterday morning Trace hadn’t even heard of
Karpathos.
But as he turned away from the window and headed his feet in the direction of home … an idea, several, quickly blossomed in his quicksilver mind. After all, when had he last had a holiday? What? He’d never had one! Not a proper holiday. And it wasn’t as if he couldn’t afford it, now was it?
Growing excited with the idea, Trace unconsciously allowed his feet to pick up speed. And as he paced out the mile and a half to his home, so he made his plans and plotted a way to cover his tracks. That was something he’d never really had to do before: create alibis for himself. But now …
If someone – and it was still a big if, surely? – if someone suspected he’d done that job in Radlett, and if that someone should try to finger him for it … oh, yes, it would be as well to be prepared. For then, if Trace could show that he’d been out of London, even out of England, at the time of the theft … ? A lot of ifs.
How many people had he talked to in the last week? How many who knew him well or would remember him? A handful, that’s all. And all of them trusted friends. Almost all of them, anyway.
Tomorrow he’d find out about a holiday abroad, the Mediterranean, the Aegean … yes, Karpathos. He’d be out there inside a week, even before Cat Carter had returned to England and discovered his loss. And before then:
Before then Trace would contact that handful of friends of his (who were, let’s face it, all a bit iffy themselves) and use up a little of his native charm on them. And if anyone should later question them about his whereabouts just recently …
Karpathos.
Why not? He could use the trip to kill two birds with one stone. It would provide the foundations for his alibi, and at the same time he might visit a certain old monastery in the mountains there. Kastrouni’s words came back to him: