Lady Ermine raised an eyebrow. “I mean,” said Lord Draining, “one wants to be absolutely sure the child is tied down, quite secured, before getting too close.”
“Children are treacherous,” said Lady Ermine.
“Truer words were never uttered,” said Lord Draining.
Stranger yet, and certainly a sign, she recognized another face. It was the face of Dr. Roald Peake.
She found Dr. Peake’s number in the directory, and she called his office.
The secretary was disinclined to connect Gabriel.
Gabriel said, “I am the major stockholder in Corwin-Smart and Chairman of the Board. I am also a friend of Dr. Peake’s.” She was transferred.
“Gabriel,” that large, hearty voice boomed. “How are you?”
“I’m in trouble,” she said.
“I’m so glad you thought of me,” he said.
“Well.” Gabriel was always uncomfortable renewing an acquaintance with a request for a favor. But there was no way around it. “This is serious trouble, Roald. I’m afraid I’ve killed someone. In fact, he is lying here on my carpet, even as we speak.”
“Anyone I know?”
“Theodore Lavin.”
The phone exploded with laughter. “I’m sorry, Gabriel,” Peake said. “I just…if you were going to kill someone…well, you are just so consistent, Gabriel. Your taste is always impeccable.”
“None of this is funny,” Gabriel said, on the verge of tears.
“Of course it isn’t,” Peake said. “I’ll be right along. I’ll bring Karl; he’s handy in a crisis.”
“Wait,” Gabriel said, afraid he would hang up. “I can’t stay here another minute. I’ve got to go out. I’ll leave the key in the mailbox.”
“Of course. Of course.”
One last distasteful task remained after she put down the receiver. She had to find Gainesborough’s address in the psychiatrist’s pocket. She had seen Lavin tuck the piece of paper away, and so she knew where to look. It could have been worse. But it was nonetheless a terrifying experience. What if he suddenly grabbed her. The way his head was pooched in like a punched milk carton and the large, garish quantity of blood on the carpet were strong arguments that he was dead. But there was a long tradition of corpses coming alive, and although this tradition was a Hollywood one, Gabriel thought it might be based on careful observation, might really be a commonplace occurrence.
Lavin did not grab her however, and ten minutes later, in possession of Harry Gainesborough’s address, Gabriel locked the door, dropped the key in the mailbox and marched down the drive to her Mercedes.
“What do you have in your tea?” Helen asked.
“I don’t know,” Gabriel said. “Anything will be fine.”
Chapter 9
DRIED BLOOD HAD glued the psychiatrist’s face to the carpet. Dr. Peake shook his head as he watched his assistant, Karl, peel Theodore Lavin from the floor, a task accompanied by an ugly, rasping sound.
“Theodore,” Dr. Peake said, “I believe you may be on to something here. Quite an extraordinary therapy. The ultimate transference. You have allowed Gabriel to kill her father.”
Karl, a large, broad shouldered man, grunted as he wrestled the body onto the stretcher. He threw the plastic sheet over the body, covered it with a blanket, and began securing the straps.
“You’ve made a mess of the carpet, though,” Peake said. Roald Peake pursed his lips in thought. His brow displayed distinct ripples, like corrugated cardboard, while he thought. He was the sort of man who was almost handsome, nature having embarked on good looks and overdone it, creating a caricature, the jaw a little too square, the cheekbones too wide, the mouth too full. He wore a dark suit, impeccably tailored to his tall, thin frame, and he held an unlit cigarette between the first and second fingers of his left hand.
Karl stood up, and Peake put an arm on his assistant’s shoulder. “I can’t see replacing the entire carpet,” Peake said. “Let’s improvise here, Karl. Why not a tiled area here, by the door? Black and white tiles, something tasteful and simple. If Gabriel doesn’t approve…well beggars can’t be choosers can they?”
Karl Bahden studied the room with a workman’s eye. He was a square-faced man with clipped, white hair and a perpetual squint. He nodded his head. “Yeah, we could just take a six-foot square, lay down tile there. A design element. Good idea.”
“Thank you. I’ll leave it to you. But first let’s remove the good doctor.” Peake walked into the living room. “I’d better take a look around, see if Gabriel hasn’t left any other bodies lying about.”
Peake put the cigarette between his lips as he walked into the living room. He was trying to stop smoking—and having some success—but he still liked the feel of a cigarette in his mouth; it focused him somehow.
“What’s this?” he said, picking the book up from the end table. He sat in an armchair and opened it.
He was unaware of Karl speaking his name, and it was not until his shoulder was touched that he looked up.
Karl’s face seemed far away.
“Ah,” Peake said, resurfacing from a welter of thoughts and emotions. “Karl.” Peake closed the book and rested it in his lap.
“You okay?” Karl said.
“Karl,” Peake said, “I have found something quite extraordinary.” Peake stood up. He noticed that the cigarette was still between his lips, and he lit it and inhaled. Just the one. “You remember that unfortunate business with Gabriel’s husband?”
Karl nodded. “Yeah. That’s one of the things we don’t talk about.”
Peake nodded, beaming. He slapped Karl on the shoulder. “Well, it was too painful to talk about, of course. It was so full of frustration and failure. All that work destroyed. And the widow, dear Gabriel, she was no help at all, another dead end. Well, this just demonstrates the truth of my philosophy.”
Karl blinked. “What’s that?”
“Always be a friend.”
“Ah,” Karl said.
“Yes. Here we are, helping out Gabriel for no better reason than a desire to be of service, and perhaps, one day, acquire Corwin-Smart Pharmaceuticals, and because our hearts are in the right place, because we are doing the right thing, we are rewarded.” Peake clasped the book to his chest. Suddenly he thrust it forward. “Do you know what this is?”
Karl squinted negatively.
Peake nodded. “Well, of course you don’t. It’s a book written—I’m sure of this—under the influence of Ecknazine. These drawings are of Harwood patients and staff.” Peake paused, such a wealth of good feeling rising within him that he was suddenly mute with joy.
Karl grinned.
Peake nodded twice, shook off the paralysis of delight and said, “There’s even a caricature of me. I am someone called Lord Draining. It’s quite good, actually…although I could choose to be offended at the length of my nose and the way he’s given me such an excessive number of sharp teeth, but all and all…” Peake stopped. “The point is this, Karl: unless I am sadly mistaken—and I’m not Karl, I’m not—these are the subjects.”
Karl smiled, but it was the smile of a man trying to share a joke that had eluded him.
Seeing his assistant’s confusion, Peake spoke slowly. “These are the Ecknazine subjects. These are Marlin Tate’s guinea pigs. We only have to find out who these faces belong to and…” Peake paused, shrugged. “Well, I don’t know what exactly, but I think…I think we’ll be back in business.”
Peake held the book in front of him and gazed at it lovingly. He stood enraptured until Karl coughed.
Peake looked up. “Of course. We have pressing business. Let’s get the good doctor out of here. Let’s get him back to the lab and reduced to a more compact and elegant form.”
They carried the stretcher out to the van, moving under a vast canopy of stars. Peake had waited until dark to visit Gabriel’s mansion. If the body had been discovered in the interim that would have been too bad—there were limits to the risks he was willing t
o take in order to secure a better bargaining position with Gabriel.
Peake stood in the darkness under the stars, clasping the book to his chest. He heard the muffled sound of the rear doors slamming shut on the company van. He inhaled the rich, turned-earth air, fruit of the gardeners’ industry.
“Mother,” he said, looking heavenward, “don’t let me be disappointed.”
“I hope I’m not disappointed,” Lord Draining said.
“Ah,” said Lord Lepskin.
“I hope, for everyone’s sake,” Lord Draining said, studying the Frozen Princess as she lay on the table, “that I’m not disappointed. You remember the last time I was disappointed, don’t you Lepskin?”
The Lord Lepskin nodded gravely. Oh, he remembered. The servants had been a week scrubbing the blood from the council room walls.
Chapter 10
THE YOUNG MAN, Allan, was driving Helen Kurtis’s big, white Lincoln. He leaned forward, studying the road with that intensity characteristic of new drivers. The girl Rene sat next to him, her black hair alive in the night wind.
The side of her face was silhouetted against the pale headlight glare, and Harry, from his vantage point in the back seat, was struck again by her beauty. It was a rare beauty that could assert itself in shadow.
Raymond was speaking. “We must make haste. Things are happening too fast. I hadn’t anticipated the princess awakening so soon. If we can find the Duke quickly, we’ve got a chance. But I won’t sugarcoat a bitter pill, Lord Gainesborough. There is a possibility the Duke will be dead, or so immersed in spiritual matters that our interests will mean nothing to him.”
Harry felt as though he were coming out of anesthesia. The source of his immediate confusion crowded him on the car’s seat. Raymond’s blue eyes glowed with the off-kilter ardency of a nun who has gone over the edge. Those large, sky-blue eyes were less than a foot from Harry’s face—Raymond was no respecter of personal space—and Harry slid back on the seat until his spine pressed painfully against the window crank.
“Raymond,” Harry said, speaking slowly, “Don’t call me Lord Gainesborough. Call me Harry.” It seemed to Harry that he might wrest control by degrees. Fear had caused him to flee a hospital, and fear had put him in a car full of maniacs, but he was all right now; he had his faculties in tow again.
“Call me Harry,” he repeated.
“My station will not allow it,” Raymond said.
“I demand that you call me Harry!” Harry clutched Raymond’s coat, which was not a coat at all but a brown terry cloth bathrobe of ancient appearance, bald in spots. Harry looked past Raymond and saw the dark, muffled form of Emily. Her head was nodding slightly, perhaps to the sprung rhythm of the big car’s motion, perhaps in time to some internal music. She was not, in any event, chatting up a blue streak. Had she spoken at all? The monkey lay sprawled in her lap, probably sleeping, although it had the aspect of something dead for several days. Is this the way most monkeys slept, arms akimbo, mouths wide open? This monkey seemed more dissolute, more unsavory, then did the monkeys of Harry’s zoo-going days. Granted Harry hadn’t been to a zoo in a long time, not in fact, since he took Amy which had to have been…a long time ago, in another life.
“True hearts,” Raymond said. “Evil always underestimates the strength of a true heart.”
Raymond seemed to be offering some sort of consolation here, but Harry had missed its context.
“Stop the car,” Harry said.
“I’m sorry. Every second is essential. We must move southward without impediment.”
“I order you to stop the car.”
Raymond sighed, leaned forward, and tapped the giant on the shoulder. “Pull over, Lord Allan.”
When the car came to a full stop, Harry climbed out. His legs were untrustworthy, not shaky exactly but possessing more elasticity than was warranted. The sound of gravel crunching under his shoes was consoling, however, a stolid, physical voice. They were on a stretch of two-lane blacktop, telephone poles marching into the distance, the lights of a Texaco station illuminating the horizon’s last hill. A field of pale, tall grass rolled out into darkness. Harry took a few deep breaths—the air had a damp, doughy consistency that was not at all bracing—and got back in the car.
“Raymond,” he said, “what you do with your life is your affair. We met briefly under unpleasant circumstances, but there is no fate that binds us together, no special karmic bond or whatever. I’m sure all this will be clear to you as soon as you are properly medicated again. In the meantime, I am not available for pursuing the fancies of your fertile imagination. Let’s go back to the cabin now. Your parents will be arriving in the morning, and we can sort everything out then. I am sure they are worried sick. And they aren’t the only ones. Allan’s mother is already at the cabin.”
A door slammed open, and Raymond leaned forward. “Allan. Allan, wait!”
That young man was already charging across the field, a diminishing white shape sinking into the darkness. The pretty girl named Rene turned around and glared at Harry, her eyes lighted with passionate disgust.
“That was smart,” she said. “Everyone knows the bitch scares him shitless.”
Harry sat in the backseat with Emily while Raymond and Rene hunted for Allan. Harry could hear their shouts through the car’s open window. He had watched them run across the field until the darkness had settled like ink in their clothing, blotting them out, and now he had only their voices to tell him they were out there. He could distinguish the girl’s high, irritated holler from Raymond’s robust boom, but both voices were growing fainter.
Harry was aware that there were things he was not thinking about, that he was keeping a kind of mental stillness, as though any sudden, psychic motion might cause him to fall. And if he fell, he would fall back into what he thought of as the time of the Great Tiredness. The Great Tiredness had come on him after Amy’s death, it had settled like thick tar on a dinosaur’s bones, and it had wrapped the outrage and the pain and the craziness in a blanket of fatigue. It was in the time of the Great Tiredness, when he was at Harwood Psychiatric, that he had written Zod Wallop.
A hand clutched Harry’s wrist, and Harry jumped. “Ah!” Harry said.
He looked down at the grinning monkey. It looked like an evil mendicant in a bad dream. “Jesus,” Harry said, feeling his heart jump like a willful child.
The monkey released Harry’s wrist, leapt to Harry’s shoulder, and darted out the window.
“Hey,” Harry said, but the monkey was gone, scampering through the tall grass in pursuit of his master.
An hour passed and Raymond and his companions did not return. The night breeze carried the sound of crickets and a single, insistent frog. Harry closed his eyes and slept.
He woke abruptly to stillness. His heart was beating rapidly, and he felt the dank reek of the pond constricting his throat.
He shook himself upright. He glanced to his left, and froze.
Emily was staring at him. There was just enough light for her face to coalesce in a grainy, black-and-white image, a blurred, guesswork vision, but the look of supplication was so intense that she might as well have shouted.
“Emily,” Harry said. “What is it?”
He moved forward and touched her hand, which lay like white, broken crockery in her lap. Her hand was surprisingly warm.
She was trying to speak, the words a buzz in her mouth, and Harry leaned forward. Lowering his ear to her mouth, Harry smelled the forgotten sweet, acrid smell of childhood fevers and unarticulated fears.
“Close,” Emily said, the word coming out amid Ss, wrapped in sibilance and urgency. “Close…”
Harry felt her fear, and his own fear translated the single word. She wanted him to close the windows, to lock the car doors. Her instructions were entire in the single word, and it was only later, in the desperate business of rationalization, that Harry claimed the thought for his own.
He did as she asked, in a flurry of clumsy motion, banging a
knee on a door handle, bumping his head on the map light.
“There,” he said, settling back next to her and patting her shoulder, “it’s done.”
They sat then, close to each other, shoulders touching, the both of them waiting. Harry could not say what he waited for, but he could almost chart its approach, and so when something slammed into the car’s roof, Harry did not cry out. He hugged Emily and held his breath.
It made a noise as it crawled over the roof. Two noises actually. The one noise was like sandpaper on slate, a noise made by the thousands of small, hooked claws on the underside of its wings. The other sound, more unsettling if you knew its nature, was a series of short screams, like sonar—if sonar were designed to bounce off fear. It was fear the creature sought.
I made this thing up, Harry thought. There is no such thing.
It was, of course, a Ralewing. Harry was surprised at how his reason sought no other explanation.
Now it would find him. It would find him and suck the flesh from his face.
It would dine on his eyes. A Ralewing could pluck an eye from its socket and swallow it as effortlessly as a rat snake scarfing a robin’s egg. Except there is no such thing as a Ralewing.
And it is going to get me, he thought. This no-thing.
Unless, of course, he kept his fear at bay. It would be blind to him if he were fearless.
But there was no way not to fill with panic. Fear was the proper response to the terrible cry it uttered. Unless you went elsewhere. Unless you just stopped hanging on the edge, just sighed a long, low sigh of resignation and let those numbed psychic fingers go limp—and fell back. Fell back into the Great Tiredness.
They told him he had tried to kill himself, and they refused to believe that it was an accident, that the sleeping pills, the tranquilizers, the alcohol that almost shut his system down were merely the result of absentmindedness.
Zod Wallop Page 7