Petrified

by Graham Masterton

  ‘So the flying monkey thing flew up to the roof. Then what happened?’

  ‘I heard a man shout. Just once. Then another thump, not so loud as the first thump, but loud all the same. Then I felt the thing fly away.’

  ‘You felt it fly away? You didn’t actually see it?’

  ‘No. Only felt it. I never in my life felt anything like that before. It was horrible. It was like all of the worst things you ever dreaded, all in one. So cold, you know? Like I said before, it made me shiver. But then it was gone.’

  ‘That was when you went up to the roof?’

  ‘I waited for a short while, just in case. But then I picked up my walking stick and stepped out of my door, and there was Mr Keiller from seventeen twenty-three just coming out of the elevator. He said to me, “Did you hear screaming?” and I told him I sure did. And then another gentleman appeared from downstairs, I don’t know his name, but I think he used to conduct an orchestra before he retired. He said that he had heard screaming, too, although he hadn’t seen anything fly past his window.

  ‘I asked Mr Keiller if he had seen anything, and he said yes, like a darn great flying lizard, that’s the way that he described it. A darn great flying lizard, with horns. Well, he didn’t actually say “darn”. He used another word.’

  ‘So all three of you went up to the roof to find out what had happened?’

  ‘That’s right. Mr Keiller went first. He used to be a Marine, back in the day. Well, he’s seventy-something now, but he’s a big fellow and he still looks tough. We climbed the stairs and went out on the roof. At first I couldn’t work out what the hell had happened up there. But then Mr Keiller took hold of my arm and said, “Don’t look. Go straight back down to your apartment and call the police.” Of course when he said “don’t look” the first thing I did was to look, and that was when I saw a man’s head, off to my left here, and a part of a leg, off to my right, and so much blood.’

  Jenna said, ‘I’m sorry you had such an upsetting experience, Mrs Lugano.’

  ‘Upsetting? You have no idea! I’m going to be having nightmares about it for the rest of my life.’

  ‘All the same, would you mind if I sent a sketch artist around tomorrow morning? It would really help if we had some kind of visual impression of what this flying monkey thing looked like.’

  ‘I guess so, if you have to. All I want to do is forget all about it.’

  Jenna stood up. ‘Let me just ask you one more thing, Mrs Lugano. That feeling you had. That cold feeling. Did you ever have a feeling like that before?’

  Mary Lugano looked up at her. She paused a long time before she answered.

  ‘Only once,’ she said, ‘when my Charlie died. I’d been sitting at his bedside all afternoon, reading to him, even though he was sleeping for most of the time. Around four o’clock, though, I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. I was right in the middle of pouring it out when I went so cold that I started to shake. I knew right away that my Charlie had gone. His soul had been stolen right out of him while I was out of the room. Death had sneaked in and paid him a visit and there was nothing in the bed but a body that looked like Charlie. It took me a long, long time to feel warm again, I can tell you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Lugano. I didn’t mean to distress you. Thank you for your time.’

  Mary Lugano stood up and accompanied Jenna to the door. ‘Do you have any idea what this flying thing is?’ she asked her, before she opened it. ‘I mean, do the police have any idea? Did something escape from the zoo? Something that they don’t want us to know about?’

  ‘I don’t have a clue what it could be, Mrs Lugano. I only hope that whatever it is, it’s flown off for good, and won’t come back.’

  ‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ said Mary Lugano. ‘I get the feeling that it’s circling around, looking to catch somebody else. That’s what evil does, doesn’t it? It circles, waiting for its moment. Just like Death did, when Death sneaked in to steal my Charlie.’

  Jenna took the elevator down to Aartment 1723 where Kenneth Keiller and Christine Takenaka were waiting for her, along with Dan and two police officers. A forty-inch plasma TV was flickering silently in the background, tuned to Everybody Loves Raymond.

  Kenneth Keiller was a huge man who almost filled the whole living room. He was at least six feet three inches tall and he must have weighed close to three hundred pounds. Once he had obviously had a bodybuilder’s physique, but beer, pepperoni pizza and lack of exercise had taken their toll, and his belly hung over his belt like a small boy sleeping in a hammock. His head was shaven and his face was as podgy as the Laughing Buddha’s.

  Christine Takenaka was tall for a Japanese woman, flat chested and very thin. She had long black hair and the kind of features that made her look permanently vexed.

  ‘My partner here tells me that you saw the creature pretty good, Mr Keiller,’ said Jenna.

  ‘It was only for a second,’ Kenneth Keiller told her. ‘It flashed right past my window and it must have been doing ninety clicks an hour, minimum.’

  ‘But you still saw it quite clearly?’

  ‘It was some species of lizard, in my opinion. I saw them when I was stationed in the Philippines, in the jungle. The locals call them dragon lizards, but they’re only small, maybe twenty centimeters from nose to tail at most. But this one was a heck of a lot bigger than that. This one was fricking enormous. And it had horns on top of its head. And look what it did to those two poor bastards on the roof.’

  ‘We don’t conclusively know that the creature was responsible for that.’

  ‘Oh, no? What else could have smashed them apart like that? It couldn’t have been a heely-copter because we would have heard it. And to tell you the truth, they looked exactly like they’d been hit by a truck, except how do you get a truck to the top of a twenty-two story apartment block?’

  ‘Well, we’re still collecting evidence,’ said Jenna. She took out her notebook again. ‘Can you tell me what color it was, this creature?’

  ‘I don’t know. Brownish, I think. Brown or gray, maybe more like khaki.’

  ‘Could you describe it to a sketch artist for me? I’m sending one round here tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Sure thing. Any time. I’m never doing nothing much, except watching TV.’

  ‘How about you, Ms Takenaka? Could you describe it?’

  Christine Takenaka shook her head so that her silky black hair swung from side to side. ‘I saw only the creature’s shadow.’

  ‘OK . . . But what size was this shadow? What sort of shape was it? Mr Keiller here thinks it looked like a flying lizard. Mrs Lugano upstairs says it looked like one of the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. How did it appear to you?’

  ‘It frightened me.’

  ‘It frightened you? Why? What was so scary about it?’

  Christine Takenaka raised her left hand to cover her eyes, as if she didn’t want Jenna to see how upset she was.

  ‘It reminded me of a story that my grandmother used to tell me when I was a small girl in Osaka. She told me about the obake, the things that change.’

  ‘The things that change? I’m not too sure I follow you.’

  ‘Shape-shifters, that’s what they call them, isn’t it? My grandmother said that they were demons that looked like statues most of the time; but now and then they would suddenly come to life and fly out across the countryside. They would search for children who had been disobedient and disrespectful to their elders, and once they had found these children they would snatch them in their claws and fly away with them. Next day their bodies would be found in a field someplace, all torn into pieces, and their hearts missing.’

  ‘Nice bedtime story to tell your granddaughter,’ said Jenna.

  Kenneth Keiller said, ‘You’re not kidding. Jesus. My dad used to read me Suck-a-Thumb, and that was scary enough. The long red-legged scissorman, cutting your fricking thumbs off. Jesus.’

  Christine Takenaka lowered her hand. She looked at
Jenna as if she was urgently searching for reassurance. ‘My grandmother said that you could always tell if one of the obake was after you, because of its shadow. She said they had wings like dragons and long tails. If you saw a shadow like that on the ground beside you, you should never look up – never look back, she told me, never look up! Run as fast as you can to the nearest shelter!

  ‘Once, when I was walking home from school, I thought I saw a shadow like that crossing the path in front of me. Maybe I was mistaken and it was only a bird. A black kite, maybe. Black kites are always trying to steal food. But my heart almost stopped from fright. I ran all the way home and by the time I ran into my mother’s arms I was too scared even to scream.’

  ‘So what are you trying to say to me?’ Jenna asked her. She was feeling deeply tired now, but she could tell that Christine Takenaka was desperate to explain what she had seen.

  ‘The shadow I saw tonight was the same kind of shadow. You see that apartment block opposite? I saw the shadow crossing the windows. An obake. Then there was all of that screaming from the roof. You cannot persuade me that an obake did not come here tonight. I could feel it in every bone. An obake, or something very much like an obake.’

  Afterward, she and Dan went back up to the roof, where the crime scene specialists were still trying to identify which grisly lumps of flesh belonged to William Barrow and which belonged to Chet Huntley. Everything on the rooftop looked as if it had been painted red.

  Ed Freiburg came over with his bloody gloves held up in front of him. ‘This is going to take hours. I don’t think there’s any point in you guys hanging around any longer. I’ll be in touch tomorrow morning.

  He paused, and sniffed, and then he said, ‘By the way, we found Mr Huntley’s head. It was lying in the parking lot at the Carpenters’ Union on Spring Garden Street.’

  ‘My God,’ said Jenna. ‘That’s over a block and a half away.’

  ‘Well, that goes to show how hard that thing hit him, whatever it was. I surely don’t envy your job, having to catch it.’

  ELEVEN

  Wednesday, 7:13 a.m.

  Braydon was woken up by rain pattering against the window and at first he couldn’t think where he was. He sat up, blinking his eyes into focus. He was in a small, unfamiliar bedroom, with magnolia-painted walls and a framed print of ferries on the Delaware River hanging beside his bed. It was only when he saw the sign on the back of the bedroom door saying Cell Phones Must Be Switched Off As They Can Interfere With Vital Equipment that he remembered that he was in one of the relatives’ rooms at Temple University Hospital.

  He climbed out of bed and tugged open the drapes. Outside, he could see a rainy, windswept park, and pedestrians with umbrellas hurrying across a wide intersection. The clouds were ragged and low, and they were brown, more like smoke from a burning building than clouds.

  He hobbled into the bathroom, splashed his face with cold water and combed his hair. He was wearing his T-shirt, his pale blue shorts and his socks, because he hadn’t brought pajamas or a change of clothes with him. He had expected to be home before midnight last night.

  ‘Braydon,’ he said to himself, ‘what the hell have you done?’

  He lifted his red plaid shirt and his jeans off the back of the chair and got dressed. He was sitting on the end of the bed, lacing up his Timberlands, when there was a knock at the door and a large black nurse appeared.

  ‘Mr Harris? Good morning to you, Mr Harris. I was hoping to find you awake.’

  ‘What is it, nurse? How’s my daughter?’

  ‘Doctor Berman would like to see you and talk to you.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’

  ‘You need to talk to Doctor Berman.’

  Braydon followed the nurse along the corridor and down in the elevator to the burns unit. She bustled along so quickly that Braydon found it difficult to keep up with her, and he began to feel that he was dreaming. He passed people wearing clear plastic masks, and people with strangely-stretched faces, and other people with their heads completely wrapped in white bandages, with holes for their eyes, like The Invisible Man.

  When he reached Sukie’s room he found that Miranda was already there, talking to Doctor Berman and a tall Arabic-looking doctor with wavy gray hair. Miranda immediately turned her back to him. That narrow, spiteful back.

  Braydon approached Sukie’s bed. She was sleeping, her face still covered by the Jaloskin mask, and he was relieved to see that her face looked less fiery than it had yesterday. He looked across at Doctor Berman and said, ‘How is she? Everything’s OK, isn’t it?’

  Doctor Berman grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Physically, she’s doing as well as anybody could expect. But she’s had a very disturbed night, in spite of being sedated. In fact we had to restrain her to prevent her from causing herself any further injury. Why don’t you talk to Doctor Mahmood here? He’s in charge of our psychological rehabilitation program for burns victims.’

  Doctor Mahmood came around the bed and laid a reassuring hand on Braydon’s shoulder. When it came to his personal space, Braydon was usually highly defensive; but he wanted to appear cooperative and reasonable, especially with Miranda here, so he forced himself to tolerate Doctor Mahmood touching him. Doctor Mahmood had tangled eyebrows and a hooked nose and his eyes glittered like two black beetles. He stood so close that Braydon could smell his spearmint mouthwash and a spice that could have been fenugreek.

  ‘Susan’s mother tells me that she has always been prone to having nightmares, ever since she was very small.’

  Braydon looked at Miranda’s back. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘That’s true. And mostly the same nightmare, every time. Scary things flying through the sky, like shadows. She calls them Spooglies.’

  Doctor Mahmood nodded. ‘Of course, she wasn’t able to tell us what she was so frightened of, because she was wearing her oxygen mask, but we could tell from her vital signs that she was in a high state of panic.’

  ‘I blame her grandmother,’ said Braydon. ‘Her grandmother claims to be some kind of psychic, and she’s always filling Sukie’s head with crap about ghosts and spirits and dead people coming back as animals.’

  Miranda whipped around and snapped, ‘My mother has never claimed to be a psychic. She’s a sensitive, which is totally different! She can sense when something bad is going to happen, and Sukie’s the same. She’s a sensitive too. The trouble with you, Braydon, is that you’re totally insensitive, and you always were!’

  ‘Your goddamned mother is a goddamned witch. She even looks like a goddamned witch. And she’s a fraud. If she can really sense when something bad is going to happen, why didn’t she warn me on Monday that Sukie was going to get hurt? Like, Q.E.D.’

  ‘Oh, you think she’s a fraud?’ Miranda retorted. ‘She told me that I shouldn’t marry you, and she was right, because it was just about the worst thing that ever happened to me. She told me so many times but I was stupid enough not to listen to her. If I hadn’t married you, you wouldn’t have kidnapped Sukie and Sukie wouldn’t be lying in this bed with half of her face burned off.’

  Braydon shook his head in disbelief. ‘You’re even dumber than I thought. If I hadn’t married you, Sukie would never have been born, would she?’

  ‘Yes, she would. I believe that some people are destined to be born, no matter what, and Sukie was one of them. She’s my little girl. She’s my mother’s little granddaughter. The only disastrous thing in her life is that she has you for a father.’

  ‘Who else would she have had for a father? Not that asshole of a realtor you used to go out with? What was his name? Trenton. What an asshole.’

  Doctor Mahmood lifted both of his hands and said, ‘Mr and Mrs Harris – please don’t argue like this! I am begging you! You should be putting aside your differences and working in harmony to help your daughter to recover. If there is hostility in the air, patients are always aware of it, especially when they are very sick. Burns victims in particular need a very posit
ive environment if they are to heal successfully. We have to nurse their minds with just as much care as their bodies.’

  Miranda glared at Braydon. He could tell that she was biting her tongue to stop herself from spitting out another corrosive comment. He was almost surprised that she didn’t have blood dripping down her chin like the vampire she was. She turned away again, and he could have put his hands around that stringy neck and strangled the life out of her, except that he probably would have needed to drive a stake through her heart, too.

  ‘OK,’ he told Doctor Mahmood, although he was still breathing hard. ‘My apologies. I guess we’re both pretty distressed right now.’

  ‘Distressed?’ said Miranda, with a shrill whoop of mockery. ‘Distressed doesn’t even begin to describe it! How about shattered? How about totally destroyed?’

  ‘Of course you are both suffering equally from shock and anxiety,’ said Doctor Mahmood. ‘But that is why, for your Susan’s sake, you both have to work very hard to reconcile your differences. It is highly likely that the antagonism between you two creates in her mind an emotional landscape in which these frightening apparitions can materialize. These Spooglies, as she calls them – in my clinical experience they may well represent the fear and uncertainty she feels when you two are at each other’s throats.’

  ‘My God, if anybody’s a Spoogly—’ Miranda began.

  But Doctor Mahmood put his fingertip to his lips and said, ‘Sshh! The watchword is compromise, Mrs Harris, and your sole consideration should be your daughter’s well-being.’

  Miranda blew sharply out of her nostrils, like an impatient mare, but didn’t say anything more.

  Doctor Berman said, ‘We’ll be keeping a very close eye on Susan’s physical progress, especially over the next five days. But we also need to keep her as calm as we can. If she has any more nightmares of the intensity that she had last night, we might have to consider a stronger sedative, which is something I really don’t want to do.’