Basilisk

by Graham Masterton

  Nathan said, ‘Forget it. I need some help now. I need some maturity. I don’t need some arrogant self-absorbed kid who thinks that he knows everything about everything.’

  Denver pointed to the door of the diagnostic ward. ‘That’s my mom in there, in case it kind of slipped your mind! That’s my mom! You call me up and tell me that she’s had some kind of a heart attack, and then you won’t tell me what happened, in case I get angry! Well, I am angry!’

  Nathan said, ‘Angry is not going to solve this situation, Denver. If you want to be angry, then be my guest when your mom’s recovered. Then, you can act as angry as you like. Get down on your hands and knees and chew the goddamned carpet for all I care. But right now I need stable, and calm, because nothing is going to undo what happened last night, except you and me being practical and sensible and working together like father and son. Like friends. You got it?’

  Denver dragged down his hood and wiped his face with his hand. God, he looked so much like Grace.

  ‘All right, Pops,’ he said. ‘You win. So tell me what it is that I’m not supposed to get crazy about.’

  Carefully, quietly, Nathan told him everything. He told him about Doris Bellman dying, and his two nightmares about the basilisk, and the illicit visits that he and Grace had made to the Murdstone Rest Home. When he had finished, Denver sat back for a while with his hand covering his mouth.

  ‘There,’ said Nathan. ‘That’s all of it. That’s what happened. Maybe I should have told you before, but you didn’t seem to be very interested in my mythical creature project. In fact you were downright hostile.’

  Denver said, ‘Jesus. You knew how dangerous this creature was, and yet you still let Mom come with you?’

  ‘She knows the Murdstone like the back of her hand, and she wanted to come. In fact she wouldn’t have let me go without her. Sometimes people take risks for what they believe in, and your mom has always believed in what I’m doing, with a passion.’

  ‘Oh, really. What choice did she ever have?’

  ‘She’s a doctor, Denver. She has to treat people every day of the week with Alzheimer’s and MS and all kinds of diseases that nobody can cure, not at the moment. Sometimes she comes home from house calls and she’s almost in tears. She knows how important my work is.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Denver repeated. ‘If Mom dies, then I’m going to blame you, Pops. Like, for ever. No forgiveness. Ever.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that she doesn’t. But first I need to talk to Doctor Zauber again. I’m asking you to stay here at the hospital and keep me updated while I go look for him.’

  ‘You really think there’s some kind of magical cure?’

  ‘I think that Doctor Zauber understands what’s happened to your mom, and if he understands it, then maybe he knows how to reverse it. That’s the best I can hope for.’

  Denver said nothing for a few moments. Then he nodded. ‘OK. For Mom’s sake. But only if you call me, too, and let me know what you’re doing.’

  ‘I will. I promise.’

  Nathan left the hospital and drove west on the Vine Street Expressway, toward the Schuylkill Expressway and the Zoo. Both expressways were busy now, but the rain had unexpectedly cleared and the sun had come out, and the Schuylkill River was sparkling like a river of broken mirrors.

  When he entered the laboratory, he found Keira and Tim tidying up their work stations and packing their books and their notes and their pot plants into cardboard boxes.

  Keira said, ‘I’ve finished all of the stats now, Professor. I’ve copied them on to a DVD for you.’

  ‘I’m real sorry about going AWOL yesterday,’ Tim put in. ‘They called me from the Wistar Institute and said they had an interview cancellation, so would I like to come to see them straight away.’

  ‘Under the circumstances, you’re forgiven,’ Nathan told him. ‘Any other time and I would have canned your ass. Either of you seen Richard this morning?’

  They both shook their heads. Keira said, ‘Are you OK, professor? You look kind of frazzled.’

  ‘I need to speak to Richard, that’s all.’ He had tried three or four times to reach Richard on his cell that morning, but Richard hadn’t picked up. He had tried the Murdstone, too, but he had been answered only by the rest home’s recorded message, complete with soothing violin music.

  ‘OK, then,’ he said. ‘I probably won’t be coming back today. I’ll try to catch up with you later in the week for a farewell drink.’

  ‘Something’s wrong, Professor, isn’t it?’ Keira persisted.

  ‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact. It’s Grace. She’s had an accident, and she’s in the hospital.’

  ‘Oh, no! What kind of an accident? Is it serious?’

  ‘She collapsed, and she’s unconscious. They’re running some tests.’

  ‘She is going to be OK?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely. I’m going to make sure of it.’

  Keira came up to him and put her arms around him. ‘If you need anything, Professor – anything at all – you only have to ask.’

  ‘Thanks, Keira. I’ll let you know how she gets on.’ He looked around the laboratory, with most of his experiments dismantled now, and all of his charts taken down from the wall, and the blackboard wiped clean. ‘Now this is all over, you can call me Nathan.’

  He thought of driving home and taking a shower, but Millbourne was nearer. He drove to the Murdstone Rest Home and this time he stopped right outside. He tried calling the rest home’s switchboard one more time, so that he could make sure that Doctor Zauber was actually there, but again he heard nothing but, ‘This is the Murdstone Rest Home for dignified living . . . we deeply regret that we cannot personally answer your call at this moment in time, so please be kind enough to leave a message. Your call means so much to us.’

  ‘Zauber,’ he said. ‘This is Nathan Underhill. Phone me, you bastard.’

  He walked in through the gates. He sniffed. He was sure he could smell smoke in the air. Maybe somebody was burning leaves. His neighbor was always doing it, especially when the wind was in the wrong direction.

  As he came around the corner of the building, he saw Richard Scryman’s red Saturn Sky parked in back of the building, close to the staffroom window – and there, sitting in the driver’s seat, talking on his cell, nodding, repeatedly running his hand through his hair, was Richard.

  Richard didn’t see him at first so Nathan stalked over to him and knocked on his window, hard. Richard jumped, and dropped his cell. Nathan opened the Saturn’s door and grabbed hold of Richard’s coat and pulled him out.

  ‘Do you know what’s happened to my wife?’ he demanded.

  Richard tried feebly to twist himself free, but Nathan pulled him even closer, so that he was almost spitting in his face.

  ‘Do you know what’s happened to my wife? She’s in the hospital, in a coma, because of you and Doctor Zauber and your goddamned basilisk!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Richard. ‘I’m really, truly sorry!’

  ‘You sold me out, you little shit. I trusted you for all these years, and what were you doing? Selling me out behind my back.’

  ‘I’m sorry! But you would never have agreed to collaborate with Doctor Zauber.’

  ‘You’re damned right I wouldn’t! What kind of medical ethic is that, killing elderly people? It doesn’t matter how many goddamned diseases you think you’re going to cure.’

  ‘But it’s the only way! Every mythical creature needs to be fed on human life-energy, or it can’t survive! And we never chose anybody who hadn’t already lived out most of their useful lives.’

  ‘Very considerate of you, not to pick anybody younger.’

  ‘It’s the only way! For Christ’s sake! Don’t you think we agonized over it?’

  Nathan pushed him against the side of his car, denting the door. ‘Agonized, did you? I’m sure that Doris Bellman would have been very reassured to know that.’

  ‘Professor, listen—’r />
  ‘I’m not listening to anything you have to say, Richard. You’re a rat and you disgust me. You’re worse than a rat, you’re a slug. Do you really think that you and Doctor Zauber have some kind of divine right to decide who lives and who gets fed to the basilisk?’

  Richard said, ‘Maybe we don’t. But maybe we’re just trying to act like human beings. If you had a five-year-old kid with cerebral palsy, and there was this ninety-year-old woman who didn’t know the difference between Tuesday and sliced bananas, whose life would you choose?’

  ‘Lucky for me, I don’t have a five-year-old kid with cerebral palsy. But what I do have is a wife who’s in a coma because of your basilisk, and I want to know how to get her out of it.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry. I simply don’t know. If I did, believe me, I’d tell you. Maybe Doctor Zauber knows.’

  ‘So where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know that, either. He called me last night and told me what had happened, but that’s the last I’ve heard from him. That’s why I’ve come around here now.’

  ‘Richard, I’m going to tell you this, straight to your face. Nobody in my whole life has ever betrayed me as badly as you have.’

  Richard waved his arms around like windmills. ‘But don’t you dig it? You never could have pulled it off! None of those creatures that you were trying to recreate could ever have lived! Don’t you understand that?’

  ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me earlier?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t. Because you wouldn’t have listened to me. God knows, Professor, I wanted that gryphon to hatch out. I prayed for it. I did everything I could. You don’t know how much I wanted to go back to Doctor Zauber and say, “forget it, man, Professor Underhill has cracked it and we don’t need your old peoples’ life-energy any more.”’

  Nathan turned away from him. He didn’t know what else to say. All through history, scientists had been obliged to make decisions between life and death. Oppenheimer, and the A-bomb. How can you decide to kill two hundred thousand innocent people to save hypothetical numbers of other innocent people? Is one life worth more than another? If so, whose?

  Richard said, ‘I’m sorry. This all turned out wrong. I should have been straight with you, Professor, but I wasn’t. Doctor Zauber gave me money in return for our Cee-Zee research, but you have to believe me. It wasn’t just the money. More than anything else, I wanted to see one of those mythical creatures come to life. And it has. And I did.’

  ‘Right,’ said Nathan. ‘We’re going to find Doctor Zauber right now, wherever he’s gone.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Richard told him. ‘I think I’m going to leave now, and forget that any of this ever happened.’

  Nathan pulled his SK automatic out of his belt and pointed it directly under Richard’s nose, so that Richard would have been able to smell the gun oil. ‘No, Richard. You are coming with me. You and I are going inside, and if Doctor Zauber really isn’t here, we’re going to track him down, together, wherever he is.’

  ‘Professor—’ said Robert, lifting both hands.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re scaring me. I’m scared.’

  ‘That’s wonderful, Richard. That’s just what I was trying to do.’

  He grabbed Richard’s right arm and half-danced him toward the back door of the rest home. ‘Open the door, Richard.’

  It was then that Richard said, ‘Smoke, Professor. Can you smell smoke?’

  ‘Just open the goddamned door, will you?’

  But Richard said, ‘I can smell smoke, Professor. I swear it. And what’s that noise?’

  Nathan sniffed, and sniffed again. Richard was right. There was an acrid smell of burning in the air. Not just leaf smoke, or smoke from somebody’s log fire, blown across the street by the mid-morning wind. It was much more poisonous than that, like burning plastic. And there was a soft whistling sound, too, like somebody sucking air in, between their teeth. Air, being drawn under the door, into the rest home. Air that was feeding a fire.

  ‘Christ almighty,’ said Richard. ‘The whole place is going up.’

  THIRTEEN

  Inferno

  He had hardly spoken when they heard a sharp fusillade of splintering cracks, just above their heads, and they were showered in fragments of glass. They stepped back, and looked up, and Nathan could see that all of the windows along the second-story corridor had burst open. Only a few seconds later, six or seven windows on the right-hand side of the rest home exploded, and pieces of white-painted sash scattered on to the driveway. Smoke began to pour out of the windows, filled with sparks and cinders and pieces of blazing drapes.

  Nathan took out his cell and pressed 911. ‘Fire department! There’s a really serious fire at the Murdstone Rest Home, in Millbourne! And we’re going to need the EMS, too. There are elderly people here, at least thirty of them!’

  ‘Just look at this sucker,’ said Richard. More windows exploded on the third floor, and then the fourth, and woolly gray smoke was already piling out of the building’s seven chimneys and up into the morning-blue sky. The Murdstone Rest Home looked like the Hindenburg going down.

  ‘Richard!’ Nathan shouted, as yet another row of windows burst open, one after the other, and flames began to wave out of them, like orange banners. ‘I’m going in there!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m going in there! Doctor Zauber could still be inside!’

  ‘You’re crazy! The whole place is full of smoke!’

  ‘But he’s the only one who knows how to get Grace out of her coma!’

  ‘I don’t know that for sure! Jesus – you probably know more about basilisks than he does!’

  ‘Well, that’s a risk I’ll have to take.’

  He opened the back door. Inside, the corridor was hazy with smoke, but it wasn’t too thick yet. He lifted one of the monk-like coats off its coat hook, and struggled into it. There was a plaid scarf tucked in the pocket, which he pulled out and tied around the lower part of his face.

  Richard caught at his sleeve. ‘You can’t go in there, Professor! It’s too dangerous!’

  ‘I don’t think I have any choice, do you?’

  ‘But who’s going to breed those Cee-Zees, if you don’t?’

  ‘Is that all you care about? Goddamn it, Richard, you’re even more obsessed than I am!’

  He tugged himself free, and set off along the corridor. Behind him, silhouetted against the smoky sunlight, Richard called out, ‘I’m sorry! I’m really, truly sorry!’

  He opened the staffroom door. There was nobody in there, although the TV was still on, playing a Spongebob Squarepants cartoon. He went further along the corridor, opening every door that he came to. A closet, filled with blankets and laundry. An empty bedroom with a bare bed in it, and no drapes at the windows. A staff toilet, with the seat up.

  The smoke began to grow thicker and more eye-watering, and Nathan started to cough. All the same, he pulled down the scarf for a moment, and shouted out, ‘Zauber! Doctor Zauber! Are you in here anyplace?’

  There was no answer, only the crackling of the fire in the upper stories, and the twang-snap! of windows breaking in the heat.

  He reached the room that Doris Bellman had occupied, and opened the door. A new resident had moved in, because there were china figurines on the table on which Harpo the cockatoo had once had his cage, and a large family photograph on the wall, all smiling at him through the smoke.

  He drew back the drapes to let some light in. At first he thought the bed was empty, because all he could see was a huddle of pink loose-woven blankets. But then he saw curls of white hair, on the pillow, and he tugged back the blankets and shouted out, ‘Ma’am? Ma’am! You have to wake up, ma’am! There’s a fire!’

  The elderly woman in the bed didn’t stir. She must have been eighty-five to ninety years old, with high cheekbones and a hooked nose, and skin that was blemished with large coffee-colored moles. She was wearing a bottle-green hand-knitted bedjacket.


  ‘Ma’am!’ Nathan repeated. He took hold of her bony shoulder and shook her. She could have been drugged, or deaf, or both.

  ‘Ma’am, you have to get out of here! The place is on fire!’

  He leaned over her, with his cheek close to her open mouth. He couldn’t feel her breathing.

  ‘Ma’am, wake up!’ He started a coughing fit, but at the same time he managed to place his fingertips against the woman’s neck to feel her carotid pulse. He waited for twenty seconds, but he couldn’t feel anything. He was pretty sure that she was dead.

  He stood up. He didn’t have any choice but to leave her where she was. He left the room, closing the door tightly behind him.

  ‘Doctor Zauber!’ he yelled out. ‘If you’re there, Doctor Zauber, if you’re trapped, all you have to do is shout!’

  Still there was no answer, and now the fire was raging even louder, as if it were a huge beast with a voracious appetite, devouring banisters and floorboards and doors and window frames. Smoke billowed down the staircase, thick with sooty sparks.

  Nathan opened another door, and switched on the light. On the bed, lying on his back, was an emaciated old man in a blue striped nightshirt. Both of his hands were drawn up to his chest, like a praying mantis. His pale blue eyes were open and his toothless mouth was gaping. On the nightstand beside him stood a brass-framed sepia photograph of a young man in naval uniform, with a battleship in the background.

  Nathan left him, too, but he was seriously beginning to question what had happened here. There had been very little smoke in either of the rooms that he had entered – not enough for anybody to die so quickly of smoke inhalation – even if they were old, and their lungs were weak.

  Coughing, he managed to climb the stairs to the second-story landing, but here the smoke was so dense that he had to crouch down low. He made his way crabwise to the first door that he could find, and reached up to open it. The aluminum handle was hot, but he decided to risk it anyhow. He pulled it down, and gave the door a kick.