by Brian Lumley
‘I was supposed to, wasn’t I?’ she was quick to return.
‘Huh!’ came Decker’s snort of derision, and then his whispered, ‘Whore,!’
Khumeni snatched his hand from Trace’s brow, turned on the fat man at once. ‘From you, Decker? Dealer in drugs, murderer, pimp? You surprise me! Also, you forget yourself. People are not generally outspoken in my presence. Rarely twice, and never three times. You would do well to remember that …’
All three then left the room, and as they went Khumeni said to Amira: ‘Yes, wash him. I need him fit and well, and clean certainly. For now … And there’s something else you can do for all three of them. I want you to – ’ but here the conversation was lost to Trace as the door closed behind them.
Out in the corridor Khumeni finished telling Amira what he wanted done, then turned to Decker who was lingering in the background. ‘Was there something, Mr Decker?’
‘Er, I was wondering about … aboutlthe others! I mean, where is everyone? Or is that none of my business, since I won’t be staying?’
‘That was not what you were wondering at all,’ Khumeni brushed him aside, ‘and so I will ignore your question.’ He turned his back on the fat man, spoke to Amira: ‘As for you, Miss Halbstein, I suppose you are wondering about your father. He is not here. He is at the nunnery and clinic in Galilee, once Chinnereth. He prepares the way for me.’
She knew the place he meant: it was run by Italian nuns and stood in the hills, close to Bethsaida’s ruins – also close to Chorazin. Her father had told her once that Khumeni had been making donations to the monastery for years, all to this one end. Travel in Israel, especially close to the borders, was restricted. But because Khumeni was one of the nunnery’s major patrons, his visa had been stamped to give him access. He was using the nuns to his own ends: irony of ironies, their nunnery was his route into Chorazin! As for the three kidnapped men: ostensibly they were ‘potential candidates’ for the clinic, which in fact offered no treatment but was simply a refuge for hopeless catatonics. The beast Khumeni’s plans were well laid.
‘Then my part in all of this is over,’ Amira spoke up. ‘So … am I free to go?’
‘No,’ Khumeni shook his head, ‘for I don’t trust you – not while I am here in your country. You have too many friends here, and your father is not without influence. Therefore the two of you are to be my guests until … until tomorrow night.’
Decker’s wheeze was nervous now: ‘But that doesn’t include me, eh, Mr Khumeni? As you have stated, I have many other interests, all of which await my urgent attention. This is what I had intended to point out but a moment ago. So, if you’ll just pay me what’s owed, I’ll – ’
‘Mr Decker, I do not like you,’ Khumeni cut him off. ‘I have never liked you. I comment upon this strong dislike of mine to impress upon you that each moment spent in your company distresses me just as mine doubtless distresses you. But at the same time I do admit that you perform your duties efficiently and have never failed me. My present plans involved not only yourself but also Mr Klein, who I note is no longer available. You may tell me about that in a moment. But since I am already short-handed, obviously I cannot afford to lose you, too. And so until tomorrow, in a place other than this and when all is completed, I’m afraid final payment must be delayed.’
‘But I – ’
‘You may of course leave now, at once, but if you do then naturally the second half of your payment is forfeit.’
‘What? But – ’
‘– But if you stay on, for just one more day, then not only will you have your money but also transport out of Israel wherever you wish to go. At my expense.’
Decker thought about it for a moment, said: ‘Well, obviously I’ll stay.’
‘Good! Now then, you’ll find four other, er, gentlemen, in the lounge at the rear of the house. One of them will show you your rooms. Sunset is in an hour or so, and the view from the lounge’s windows, across a pool with a fountain in the garden, is quite spectacular, I’m told, as the sun goes down. I’ve arranged a meal for you all for just after sunset, following which I shall join you and detail tomorrow’s schedule. One small thing, however: do not attempt to leave this place tonight. The four gentlemen in the lounge are of Mr Klein’s, er, organization? Indeed, you might even say they’re members of the same “family”. They have arranged a shift system of patrolling the grounds; their orders in respect of anyone attempting to leave after sunset are quite specific and leave no room for misunderstanding or error. Now you must excuse me: I wish to take a longer look at my … acquisitions?’
‘I was going to wash Trace,’ said Amira.
‘Yes, in a few moments. Five minutes at most. You are most assiduous in your duties – your self-imposed duties - Miss Halbstein. That is very good, or so I most sincerely hope. For your sake …’ He smiled hideously in the corridor’s faint light, turned and went back into the shuttered room.
Trace had been about to get up off his trolley and go to the door. He’d hoped to catch something of the muted conversation from the corridor. Also, there were two other surgical tables in the room and he wanted to have a look at what was, lying on them: his ‘brothers’, he supposed. But as Khumeni came in and closed the door behind him, so Trace was caught red-handed, seated upright on his trolley with one hand to his head, swaying to and fro. For a moment the robed figure stood there uncertainly in the gloom, his hand on the doorknob. Then he strode to Trace’s side and gripped his shoulder, gazed into his eyes.
Trace could only act it out, pretend that he had just this moment regained consciousness. But the way he felt, that should not prove too difficult. ‘What …?’ he mumbled. ‘Who …?’
‘Most remarkable!’ Khumeni whispered gruffly. ‘Remarkable indeed! Now, tie down again, my son, and don’t weary yourself. All is well and you are cared for, believe me.’ His voice was almost hypnotic. The thin, hard hands on Trace’s shoulders forced him unresistingly back; he gazed into Khumeni’s sulphurous eyes as his own slowly grew accustomed to the room’s gloom. And at last Trace knew what Kastrouni, Gokowski and Amira had meant. Knew, too, that they had been correct.
‘So you are the third one, are you?’ Khumeni continued, more to himself than to Trace. ‘But you are strong, clever, lusty – and a thief. And you are not unhandsome. Perhaps, then, you are not the third but … the first?’
His voice was hypnotic, Trace knew it. But had to listen to it, could not draw his eyes from Khumeni’s eyes or extricate his mind from the sucking aura of this man … this Thing? He panicked inside. He mustn’t listen to his voice! He must find a distraction, another point on which to focus.
Trace drove out the voice from his ears, forced his eyes to unfreeze in their orbits, studied Khumeni’s face instead. And yes, now that he could see it properly, that face was as Kastrouni had described it; but not exactly as he’d described it. No, for Khumeni was older now by almost thirty years, and they had been years of black, seething evil! Simple flesh, even the stolen, mutated flesh of others, could never stand up to the uses to which this monstrous creature had put it.
Teeth which had been strong and gleaming white – Ihya Khumnas’s teeth – were white no longer but yellow as old ivory and jagged as broken fangs. And Khumeni’s hooked nose was fallen in a little – though not so badly as George Guigos’s before him – and eaten away at the rim of the left nostril. The white blaze of Yakob Mhireni’s scar was like a strap of pale leather now against ancient hide, and all hair had receded into coarse white tufts at the rear of an elongated, wolfish skull. The creature wore some cloying scent; but even so a bad-lobster smell, Khumeni’s real smell, came through it.
Worst of all were his eyes: those volcanic blowholes that smouldered with a rotten phosphorescence, those windows on the sheer hell of the thoughts inside! And again those terrible eyes held Trace captive, and again Khumeni’s voice seeped like old oil into his head, his reeling brain:
‘But you must tell me all about yourself, Charles Trac
e, for I perceive that you are not like these other sons of mine. I had thought I knew all there was to know, but now I’m no longer sure. Indeed, I would now say that you were more changeling than even I suspected. Trace felt the blanket drawn from him, heard Khumeni’s treacly voice oozing on:
‘For see, although you bear the true mark, you are not crippled. Oh, your brothers have marks, too, but not like this. This was Ab’s birthright, his great misfortune – and I know for Ab abides in me even to this day. Aye, and this mark has spanned all the centuries between then and now; and now you have it. But what can it mean, Charles Trace? What can it mean?’
Trace could neither close his eyes nor avert them. He was Khumeni’s now, the beast’s to command. ‘Now answer me this,’ said Khumeni. ‘Am I as wise as I am evil, or am I in fact a great fool? Are you really my son, Charles Trace? Are you, or are you perhaps – ’
There came a quiet knock at the door, distracting Khumeni and simultaneously setting Trace free of his spell. Before the beast could deny entry, the door opened and Amira came in. She carried a bowl of steaming water, a towel, soap. Seeing Khumeni standing there beside Trace, she said, ‘Oh!’
‘Five minutes!’ he snapped. ‘I said five minutes, Miss Halbstein!’
She looked taken aback. ‘But it’s been more than that. And until I’m done with these three I can’t put my room in order.’
‘What?’ Khumeni took two loping strides towards her. ‘You’re to be here for only one night and yet you desire to “put your room in order”? And you can’t bear the thought of this one lying here, stinking through the night? Who seduced who, Miss Halbstein? It strikes me you’ve led far too soft a life! But very well, see to it. I merely indulged an odd fancy, that’s all, or would have if you hadn’t returned so quickly.’ He glanced toward Trace. ‘A fancy, yes; but one way or the other, it can make little difference now.’ He moved past her, swirled out of the room, let the door slam behind him.
Trace and Amira looked at each other. ‘Saved by the belle!’ he finally punned. But sweat, miraculously held back until now, suddenly flooded from his pores like water from an overloaded sponge. He felt weak from the narrowness of his escape. For if Amira hadn’t come in, surely he would have been obliged to answer the beast’s questions. Now he could at least breathe deeply again, lie back, try to compose himself.
Amira started to wash him. ‘What did he want?’ she asked.
‘He asked me if I really was his son,’ Trace answered – and heard her gasp.
‘Charlie, he what? But that means … Do you think he’s guessed that – ’
‘No,’ he cut her off. ‘He seems pretty damn sure this foot of mine is his doing. And as you just heard him say, it would make little difference now anyway. He needs three and I’m to be one of them, son or not. But I reckon he’ll try to question me again. He knows there’s something fishy about me; he’s suspicious, anyway.’
‘So you’ve decided to join us?’ she said.
He frowned, looked at her quizzically. ‘What?’
‘This was your chance,’ she shrugged. ‘You could have told him about your brother, told him his real son was dead. It’s obvious why he’s curious about you: he knows Dimitrios Kastrouni came to see you, and if he doesn’t know already about your seeing Saul Gokowski, he soon will – when Decker tells him how Klein died. So … you could have tried to get out of this. I don’t think it would have worked, for it’s surely too late for him to change his arrangements now, but at least you could have tried. You didn’t, so …’
‘I’ve joined no one!’ Trace’s voice was harsh. ‘I want this bastard dead just as much as you do – but for purely personal reasons. Mainly, for my mother. Maybe for Kastrouni, too. And at the moment I have the advantage of being not quite so helpless as he thinks. So you see, even if your lot doesn’t get him, I shall certainly try. The main worry – something I have no answer for – is that he …’ he paused and shuddered. ‘I don’t know; it’s like he’s hypnotic.’
‘He is,’ said Amira. ‘Not especially so with me, for I’m a poor subject, but he is a powerful hypnotist, yes. You’re worried that he’ll read your mind, see through you?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Well, not tonight he won’t.’ She finished washing him, produced a hypodermic.
‘Oh no you don’t!’ said Trace at once. He made to sit up. ‘I know what that stuff will do to me!’
She shook her head. ‘Not this time, Charlie. This is a simple sleeping-draught – to put you down for the night. A drug, of course, but nothing like that first jab I gave you in Pighadia. The others get it, too, but in the morning they’ll still be feeling pretty rough for they’ve had the full treatment. You’ll be weak – that’s only natural – but you’ll also be pretty much in control of yourself. It will let you keep the edge you’ve got.’
Trace warded her off. ‘You’re not sticking that – ’
‘Charlie, trust me.’
‘Do you know what you’re asking?’ he grated. ‘That I allow myself to be knocked out, put to sleep, in this place?’
‘This place is safe,’ she said. ‘And this way we know Khumeni won’t be able to get to you. It’s Chorazin we have to worry about. Look, Charlie, I know what I’m talking about. At least, God help me, I hope and pray I do! Now give me your arm.’
He knew she was right, gritted his teeth, sat still and turned his face away. ‘OK,’ he said at last. ‘Get it done.’
Feeling the needle go in and deliver its load, he gazed across the gloomy room toward the other trolleys where his ‘brothers’ lay. For all he knew they might well be equally blameless; he didn’t even know what they looked like yet. Then the room began to grow darker, and Trace knew it wasn’t just the setting of the sun.
Feeling her hands guiding and lowering his trunk to the trolley’s padding, he heard her say: ‘I love you, Charlie Trace, and I’ll kill myself if anything happens to harm you. But I love the world, too; and though it’s an old, old cliche it really is bigger than both of us. If Khumeni were to win, the whole world would be the loser, Charlie …
The last thing he felt was her mouth on his as it turned numb and lost all feeling, along with the rest of his body …
Morning came with sounds of movement in the large house. Trace came awake, lay still, listened. People were up and about. On a nearby trolley, one of his ‘brothers’ groaned. I know how you feel, Trace thought, checking out his faculties. Everything seemed to be working. That stuff Amira had put into him had in fact been a sleeping-draught, a sedative, and nothing more.
But stiff! – he felt as if his back and limbs were bolted in position; he could almost hear himself creaking as he slowly, painfully sat up on his trolley. And he was hungry, starving – and thirsty. Especially thirsty! His mouth felt full of decaying fish or something similarly rotten, but he was still very weak. That was all bad enough, but at least he no longer felt sick.
Footsteps outside the door sounded just as he was levering his legs down to the floor. He saw no point in pretending, and in any case had no time to lie down again. He simply froze as the door opened and a stranger came in. The man was short, stockily built, pale-faced. He wore dark spectacles supported on a nose badly broken at some time or other, had ‘heavy’ written all over him. ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘A live one!’
Decker followed him into the room. ‘Oh, he’s a live one, all right,’ the fat man wheezed. ‘Isn’t that so, Charlie boy? A right little shagger! But at least he can walk – apparently. Take him to the toilet, Lou, while I start getting these two ready.’
The heavy took Trace’s arm in a stubby, hard hand, guided him to the door, half-supported him along the corridor to a toilet and shower. Inside the small room, he said: ‘Can you make it on your own? Clean-up, shower?’
Trace nodded.
‘OK. I’ll be outside. Don’t take all day.’ His accent was American; New York, Trace guessed. At least it wasn’t a Texas drawl or a New England twang, but certainly it was har
d-edged.
Trace tossed his dressing-gown in a corner, relieved himself, showered. As he was drying himself broken-nose came in, helped him into a full-length robe of white towelling. ‘You need a shave,’ the stubby man grunted. And: ‘Here,’ he stuck a cigarette in Trace’s mouth, lighted it. Trace had washed out his mouth in the shower; the cigarette tasted like something exotic, heaven-sent. ‘Good, yeah?’ said the stubby man. ‘So enjoy it.’
Then Trace was led through the house to a cool room with large square windows looking out on a spacious garden with a pool. Beyond the pool a high stone wall was decked with ivy, cacti, flowering plants. Beyond that the tops of tall palms made motionless, dark green umbrellas. Trace collapsed into an easy chair, was handed an electric razor. The man called Lou plugged it in for him, said, ‘Shave.’
Trace shaved, taking his time and acting more dopey than he felt, and while he was shaving he checked out the room and the people in it. There was Lou – a Mafia hireling, he’d already decided, – and another heavy with his feet up on an occasional table, panama hat pulled down over his eyes, and a big-nosed Palestinian type fetching and carrying and readying a large table for breakfast. That was it so far. No sign of Amira or Khumeni.
Trace guessed the time would be a little before 10:00 A.M.; half a day left to zero hour. He finished shaving, sat back in his chair. The effort of showering and all had drained him. Which didn’t say a lot for the shape his ‘brothers’ must be in. And despite everything he began to drowse, started up briefly as one of the other zombies was brought in and dumped in a chair, finally fell into a sleep which might have been pleasant – but for Saul Gokowski’s rite of exorcism repeating over and over in his subconscious mind …
… He came sharply awake.
‘Breakfast, Charlie boy,’ Decker wheezed, shaking his shoulder. Then Khumeni’s unmistakable rustle of a voice:
‘You seem to be doing a little better than the others, Charles. And so you may go to the table and feed yourself.’ Trace slowly looked up and saw the beast standing just inside the door. Khumeni had on his hooded robe, with the hood up. His eyes were small fires in a shadowy face.