by John Burke
The young man paced round the room, examining every last little detail. When he reached the box of chocolates he looked at them dubiously, as though not believing that anything so innocent could achieve their deadly purpose.
Zargo said: “He’s a pig. He won’t be able to resist them.”
Ivan moved on. The strain was telling on both of them. Instinctively Ivan reached for the decanter.
“Don’t touch that!” snapped Zargo. As Ivan backed away, waking to the realization of what all this meant, Zargo bristled at the expression of disgust on his face. “I suppose poison offends your code of etiquette? You’d rather I challenged him to a duel—pistols at twenty paces?”
Ivan slowly shook his head.
Satisfied with the room, they fell into a taut silence. At last Ivan burst out:
“I wish I knew what had happened to Peter. After rushing off like that last night . . . if he found Sonia . . . But if he did, why didn’t he come and tell us?”
“He would have been more likely to go straight to Rasputin—he was that kind of young man, your friend.”
“Don’t say ‘was’,” blazed Ivan. Then he calmed down. “You’re right, of course. But if he went to Rasputin . . .”
“That fiend could break him as easily as snapping a twig.”
Ivan stared at him. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
“Yes. I am sure. Now I must go, before—”
He stopped dead. In the distance there was the rumble of the carriage coming up the drive. Ivan hurried to the door and went out.
“You’d better hurry,” he called back over his shoulder.
Zargo took a last look round. He had inspected the room at least ten times already, but at the very last moment he was scared that something would be glaringly wrong. Then he hurried towards the door. His hip jarred against the table, and the box of chocolates was thrown to the floor.
Zargo let out a sob of dismay. The box had fallen on its side and was spilling chocolates across the rug.
With shaking fingers he picked them up and thrust them back into the box as neatly and quickly as he could manage.
The carriage stopped outside. He heard the mumble of Ivan’s greeting, followed by a brief laugh.
Zargo looked desperately round the room. There was no hope of escaping through the door and down the steps now. He scrabbled to his feet and stumbled towards a curtain which Ivan had hung over a cupboard door, masking the knot-holes and splitting woodwork. Zargo pulled open the door. There was just room for him in the cupboard. As he edged in and tugged the curtain into position, he found that he could peer out through a split down the door jamb.
“In here,” he heard Ivan saying. Footsteps thumped into the room. “Not too opulent, but charming—and discreet.”
There was a long, impossible pause. Then the unforgettable rasp of Rasputin’s voice: “Where is she?”
“You’d hardly expect the lady to be waiting, would you? I mean, from sheer vanity she must keep you waiting ten minutes.”
“Nobody keeps me waiting.”
“You must learn that the exquisite Vanessa is different. It is part of my sister’s charm—as you will learn.” They walked round the room. Zargo prayed that they would not come too close to the curtain. “Oh, yes,” Ivan went on courteously: “the wine—you like a medium sweet Georgian one, I believe? Do help yourself. And I will try to hurry her up for you.”
A grunt was his only answer.
Zargo heard the outer door close. He crouched down and peeped through the slit.
Rasputin moved into the jagged frame of light. He peeled off a splendid astrakhan coat and a dark hat, and tossed them aside. He poured a glass of wine and lifted it to his lips. Then, for no apparent reason, he set it down again on the table. Sweat broke out on Zargo’s brow. Rasputin strode out of his line of vision. What was he up to? Zargo had a terrible picture of the man creeping silently along the wall, cynically assessing the whole situation and preparing to snatch the curtain away and drag him forth.
Then he heard the rattle of the stove door and the clatter of Rasputin’s boot against the coals.
Rasputin reappeared. He threw himself down on the sofa and reached for his glass. Zargo watched the huge hand clamp on the stem. The glass swung from the table, tilted . . . and Rasputin drank deeply.
Zargo could hardly restrain a sigh. He steadied himself with one hand against the inner wall, tense and expectant.
There was no reaction. Rasputin lay comfortably back.
After what seemed a lifetime he took another draught of wine, got up, yawned, and began to pace slowly round the room. He appeared and disappeared, reappeared and was gone again, flickering across Zargo’s baffled vision. Before a mirror he preened himself, fluffing out his beard. Then there was the rustle of paper—it could only be the chocolate box.
Rasputin came slowly back across the room with a chocolate between his thumb and forefinger. As he was lifting it to his mouth he squeezed too hard, and the liquid centre began to ooze down his thumb. With a growl of anger he shook it free and threw it away.
Zargo closed his eyes. Their plan was going to misfire. Deep down he had never really believed that it would be possible to annihilate this monster. He had been driven on by the urge to destroy and had fought down his doubts. But now he was ready to accept defeat.
Rasputin suddenly snatched up a whole handful of chocolates and rammed them into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed.
And still he was on his feet. Still there was not the slightest reaction.
Zargo shook with apprehension. Soon he himself would crack. Soon he would throw himself out of concealment and grovel at the monk’s feet. If he had to die, let it be over, let it be accomplished quickly.
Suddenly Rasputin let out a mighty roar. It was the hideous bellow of a mortally wounded animal. He clutched his belly and began to double up. His whole body twisted with the agony of it and he fell to his knees, retching. Wine slopped over the edge of the glass he still clutched in his hand. Desperately he brought it to his lips and gulped it down, trying to quench the fiery poison.
He was jolted backwards as though he had been kicked. The glass fell and splintered. Bubbles of foam appeared on his lips and he tried to writhe away.
Then, with a last terrible cry, his back arched and he lay still.
Zargo waited. When he was sure that Rasputin was not going to move again he crept out. He edged round the corpse, still not daring to go too close. It was inconceivable that the evil power of the creature had been brought to an end.
Zargo crossed the room now and opened the outer door. He leaned on the stair-rail and looked over it to the ground below.
Ivan emerged from the shadows. “Is it over?”
“All over,” said Zargo.
Before Ivan could make a move towards the steps, a low moan came from the open door of the stables. Zargo leaned farther over.
A dark shape dragged itself along the ground.
“Peter!” Ivan went down on his knees, putting out a hand.
“Don’t touch me!” It was a scream as terrible as Rasputin’s death yell.
“In God’s name, what . . .”
Peter tried to struggle up but could not lift himself. He turned over in agony, and the light from the doorway behind Zargo trickled over his face—or what was left of his face.
“Rasputin,” he whispered hoarsely.
Zargo cried: “Rasputin is dead.”
But he could not be sure that the tormented young man had heard him. Peter stiffened and rolled over once more, and then was still.
Ivan looked up. “He didn’t live to see what we have accomplished.”
He stepped reverently past the body of his friend and began to mount the stairs. Zargo turned back into the room. He began to feel the stirring of pride. He waited for Ivan to join him so that he could display, with the thrill of accomplishment, the stricken heap that had once been Rasputin.
The head lay on the edge of one of
the rugs, eyes closed. And, as Zargo stared triumphantly down, the eyes slowly opened.
Rasputin began to crawl across the floor towards the doctor.
Zargo let out a scream. He looked round wildly, found no weapon. But he must have put the hypodermic down somewhere. He had thrust it behind a cushion before the monk came. Somewhere . . . he made a grab, and Rasputin reared up to his knees and reached for him with warped, clutching fingers.
“He won’t die!” howled Zargo. “The devil . . . I killed him and he won’t die!”
Ivan strode into the room and stopped. Rasputin was on his feet now, quivering yet steady. He drew a knife and looked from one to the other of his enemies. His movements were slow—as slow as those of a leviathan, unconquerable, ready to crush by sheer weight.
Ivan pushed Zargo to one side. As he went forward, Rasputin raised the knife and threw it.
Instinctively Zargo twisted sideways and knocked Ivan away from the knife. As he lurched round, he felt the dull thud of it between his own shoulders. He went down, and Rasputin trampled on him as he lumbered forward.
Rasputin and Ivan met with a groan of fury in the middle of the room. They wrestled for a moment and then went crashing away into one wall. The decanter fell beside Zargo and the dregs of the poisoned wine soaked like blood into the rug.
Zargo tried to get up to his knees. The ache in his back became a dreadful pulsation. He was in no acute pain and yet he knew that he was dying. Weakness turned his limbs to water.
He had difficulty in keeping his head up. Through a blur like that of a fine, shifting curtain he saw Rasputin forcing Ivan back against the window. Glass cracked and then the whole frame shattered and fell outwards. There was a long delay before the faint sound of its fall came from below. Zargo remembered that here the parapet above the river curled in close to the coach-house. A long drop—a murderous fall to the thick ice where the Tsarevitch had so recently had his accident. Recently . . . or an age ago?
Zargo dragged himself across the floor. If Rasputin could rise and fight off death like this, then he, Zargo, must show what he was made of. With a grinding effort he threw himself forward and grabbed Rasputin’s ankle.
Ivan was being forced backwards out of the window. Rasputin held him firmly and tried to kick Zargo away. His foot hammered brutally against Zargo’s ear.
But Ivan had been given a respite. He made a wild lunge and got a grip on Rasputin’s head. They wrestled for a moment and then Ivan pulled. Zargo saw the mad monk’s whole body lurch forward. It fell across the shattered window frame, balanced for a timeless instant, and then plunged out.
Rasputin’s scream fell away into the night. And then there was a crash of stonework, and a heavier crash as fragments of the parapet went skidding out over the ice.
Ivan, bloodied and gasping for breath, tottered back into the room. He bent to take Zargo’s hand.
“He’s dead. This time he’s dead.”
Zargo was hauled to his feet. One last effort was all that he was capable of. But he must make it; he must see.
Ivan supported him as they went back to the window. The night was dark, but on the pallor of the icy surface it was possible to make out a scattering of dark stains. There were jagged pieces of wood and masonry. And to one side a softer, more human shape. Human . . . ? The smashed body of Rasputin.
Now Zargo thankfully let his knees give way. It was over. He gave himself up to death. In his last moments he had only one fear; that somewhere beyond, somewhere in hell, Rasputin was waiting for him.
The Plague of the Zombies
1
The altar in the rock face was stained with runnels of dried blood which had blackened over the years. The remains of slaughtered animals were heaped up round the base of the rough stonework. Sometimes, when the flickering glow of torches fell on them, the remains of these decapitated, limbless creatures seemed to dance a fitful dance of death in the shadows. Smoke from the torches blackened the walls and the low ceiling that led away from the mineshaft.
On one of the appointed nights of ceremonial, two men approached the altar. Around them a small group of drummers, their dark bodies shining with sweat, pounded out a beat which rose to a frenzy. The first man was gowned in white, his follower in bright colors which seemed to answer the sputtering flames.
As they came to a halt before the sacrificial block, the second man held before him a small box wrapped in a silk cloth. Balancing it on one arm, he removed the cloth to reveal a tiny model coffin. Within it was a rag-doll effigy of a woman.
The first man bent over the box. He took it in both hands and murmured over it as though intoning a lullaby. Gradually the drumming died away, leaving the incantation hanging on the air like a wisp of evil fumes.
“Kada nostra . . . kada estra . . .”
In a house in the village a mile away a young woman stirred in her sleep and then smiled a secretive yet puzzled smile. Her lips moved silently as she echoed the mystic phrases.
“Kada nostra . . . kada estra . . .”
The man in white laid the diminutive coffin carefully on the altar. From his robes he produced a glass phial with an ornate silver top and raised it into the light. The red flames produced a deeper redness from the blood within the phial.
There was silence. The man removed the silver top and slowly raised the phial to his lips. He poured the contents into his mouth and then leaned forward and swiftly, violently spat blood upon the effigy.
And a mile away the young woman cried out and sat up in bed. From her bandaged wrist the blood began to seep gently down over the back of her hand.
2
The letter arrived while Sir James was sorting out his fishing tackle. He was in no mood to deal with his correspondence at this hour of the morning. Tomorrow they would be on their way north, and by the day after that he hoped to be sitting beside a Scottish river without a thought of London in his head. A few weeks of tranquillity and then he could plan his new series of lectures—which, after so many years, ought not to give him too much trouble. Already he was putting out of his head every thought not connected with the holiday. When his daughter came into the study and dropped the batch of envelopes on his desk he studiously avoided looking at them.
Sylvia stood by the desk watching him. He gave her a quick smile which should have told her that he was busy and didn’t much want to be interrupted. She was used to his ways by now. But she stayed there, fidgeting slightly.
Sir James sighed. “All right. What is it, my dear?”
Her eyes twinkled at him. She had her mother’s eyes, sparkling with a tantalizing flash of hazel and green. For a while, at first, he had been saddened by these beautiful echoes of the woman he had loved, the wife who had been snatched from him by death; but now he was grateful to see in Sylvia, as she grew to womanhood, the same gracefulness and the same impetuous charm. Like her mother, she was slender but strong. Like her mother, she was a wonderful companion. He was quietly proud that when he travelled or went on holiday his daughter came with him not because she felt it her duty but because she wanted to do so. Yet she was not a dull, submissive girl: she soothed him even in his most unreasonably crotchety moods, but when she wanted her own way she had sly, endearing methods of getting it. They laughed and argued together, outwitted one another with relish, and regarded their differences of opinion as light-hearted challenges.
Now she said, nodding at the pile of letters: “There’s one from Tarleton.”
“Tarleton? Who’s he?”
“It’s not a person, it’s a place. A village in Cornwall.”
“And who do we know there?”
Sylvia frowned. The spattering of fine freckles below her deep auburn hair darkened slightly. She knew that he was being wilfully obtuse.
“We could open it, couldn’t we?”
He made her wait for an exasperated moment, then held out his hand. Sylvia took the letter from the top of the pile and gave it to him. Then she handed him the paper knife. With unnecessarily
protracted ceremony Sir James slit the envelope.
The name of the place rang a faint bell in the back of his mind. As he unfolded the letter he realized why Sylvia had been so eager for it to be read. Of course—her school friend Alice had married the young doctor. Must be two years since they moved out into the wilds.
Sir James leaned against the bookcase and glanced down the first page. Then he stiffened, pushed himself upright, and read it again. It was difficult to make sense of it. He could hardly believe that his star pupil should write so incoherently.
“What’s wrong?” demanded Sylvia, impatient to hear what was going on in Tarleton.
“Wrong?” he muttered. “Looks to me as if . . .”
His attention came back to the letter and he ignored his daughter. He had resolved to put professional matters behind him, but somehow the scrawled words on this sheet of paper spoke to him as plangently as an agonized voice in the same room. The appeal was a desperate one; yet at the same time he could not credit that it was Peter Tompson’s voice that he heard.
The letter must have been scribbled in a moment of terrible despair. There was no preamble, no calm assessment. The young doctor said merely that his village was beset with a number of mysterious and fatal maladies. People were dying like flies. This loose conventional simile annoyed Sir James. For young Tompson of all men to commit such platitudes to paper . . . ! Then he rambled on, saying that he must have Sir James’s advice, but without giving any indication as to what form this advice should take. Consultations, second opinion, official help in some roundabout way? Without specifying this, the letter went back to a vague description of symptoms—no single cause, apparently; faintness, lassitude, no will to live . . . as though the life blood of the victim were slowly ebbing away, so that in many cases death was welcomed.
“Father, please,” Sylvia implored him.
Sir James read the last couple of paragraphs. The writing, bad enough to start with, degenerated almost into illegibility. Baffled, he gave the letter to Sylvia. While she was reading it he plucked unhappily at his lower lip—a habit which was a standing joke in the lecture rooms of the Royal College of Physicians and for which Sylvia persistently reproved him. At the moment she was too absorbed to complain.