He grasped the poker in both hands, and stabbed it into the basilisk’s left eye. There was a bursting sound, and a large glob of optic fluid rolled down the basilisk’s cheek, clear and transparent, but lambent, too, with its own pale-yellowish light.
The basilisk screeched, and wildly threw its head from side to side, but Denver stabbed it again, in its other eye.
There was a moment of terrifying fury, when the basilisk screamed and thrashed and beat its black umbrella-like wings. It hurled itself around the room, colliding with the chairs and the side tables, and smashing into the glass-fronted bookcase. Denver pulled Patti behind the door and held her tight. The basilisk crashed into the other side of the door, and Patti squealed, but then it spun around and dropped down on to the couch, quivering and twitching.
Nathan, still lying on the carpet beside the couch, looked up. The basilisk’s horse-like face was staring down at him, but both of its eyes were blinded, and if it wasn’t dead yet, it was very close to it.
As he lay there, a long glistening string of the basilisk’s optic fluid dripped down on to his cheek. It had lost most of its glow, and it felt like cold, runny jelly. He felt it slide into his ear, but he couldn’t move his arm to wipe it away.
‘Denver?’ he whispered. ‘Denver, Patti, are you OK?’
He listened, but he still had a high-pitched singing in his ears. ‘Rafał?’ he said. ‘Rafał, are you still hanging in there?’
He listened again, and as he did so, a large gobbet of optic fluid dropped down on to his lips. He tried to spit it away, but he couldn’t even shake his head to get rid of it. It tasted faintly of oysters, and its consistency was disgusting – not only gelatinous, but stringy, too. He tried to keep his lips tight shut, but after nearly a minute he couldn’t breathe, and he had to open his mouth and swallow the fluid that ran down his throat.
‘Blecchh,’ he said, and almost retched. It was then that Denver and Patti appeared, staring down at him like two anxious ghosts.
‘Pops? How are you feeling?’
‘Just get me out of here,’ Nathan whispered. ‘This damn thing’s dripping glop all over my face.’
Together, Denver and Patti dragged him out into the middle of the floor.
‘How’s Rafał?’ he asked.
Patti went across and said, ‘Raffo? Can you hear me? Are you OK?’ She knelt down and put her ear close to Rafał’s face. ‘I can’t feel him breathing.’
‘Try his carotid pulse,’ said Nathan. ‘Two fingertips, on the left side of his neck, next to his windpipe.’
Patti waited for a moment, and then she shook her head and said, ‘No. I think he’s dead.’
‘Shit. We should call an ambulance.’
‘You need an ambulance more than he does. Poor Raffo. I can’t believe it.’
Nathan suddenly realized that the tinnitus in his ears had faded, and that he could hear Patti quite clearly. He reached up to touch his left ear and that was when he also realized that he could move his arm.
‘Hey,’ said Denver.
He looked at his left hand and flexed his fingers. Then he lifted his right hand, and flexed the fingers of that hand, too.
‘Denver,’ he said, ‘help me to sit up.’
Denver took hold of both of his hands and pulled him up into a sitting position. He found that he was breathing more easily now, and that his vision had brightened. He looked around at the basilisk, hunched up over the couch. One of its wings was still shivering, but he guessed that was nothing more than the last unraveling of its central nervous system.
He reached out for the arm of the nearest chair, and heaved. He dropped back the first time, but when he heaved again, he was able to stand. At first, the living room swam around him as if he had been taking Ecstasy, but after a few moments he regained his balance. He could see himself reflected in the mirror over the fireplace and he looked surprisingly normal, even if his hair was sticking up.
‘How are you feeling, Professor?’ Patti asked him. ‘You look so much better already. Like, you have your color back.’
‘I’m not too bad,’ said Nathan. ‘Not quite a hundred per cent. But let me check Rafał out.’
Rafał’s face was gray and his lips were pale blue. Nathan checked his breathing and his heart rate. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘He could have a very faint pulse. The basilisk only looked at him for a split second, didn’t it? Same with Grace.’
‘But how come you’re OK?’ asked Denver.
Nathan looked across at the dead or dying basilisk. Two shining strings of optic jelly were dangling from its eye sockets.
‘I swallowed some of its optic fluid,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘The stuff that came out of its eyes. I swallowed some. I couldn’t help it.’
‘You’re kidding me. Do you really think that might have cured you?’
‘I don’t know. But it could be like snakebite antidote, which has snake venom in it. Maybe it produces antibodies, which overcome the effects of shock.’
He took off Rafał’s blackened spectacles and gently lifted one of his eyelids with his thumb. ‘His pupils are dilated and fixed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s dead. The same thing happens when you get concussed, or you’re in a coma. Denver – why don’t you bring me that mug from the kitchen? And maybe a spoon, too, if you can find one. Quick as you can.’
Denver returned with the mug and a large metal spoon. Nathan held the mug underneath the basilisk’s eye sockets, and carefully scooped out as much of its optic fluid as he could. As he pushed the spoon deep into the second socket, the basilisk shuddered, and made a clicking noise in the back of its throat, and he froze. But it was nothing more than rigor beginning to set in, and the last exhalation of a creature that was already dead.
Denver blew out his cheeks and said, ‘Phewf’, in relief.
Nathan managed to save almost a third of a mug of jellylike optical fluid. It was wobbly and clear but it no longer shone with any inner light. He carried it across to Rafał, lifted his head, and spooned a little of it down his throat.
‘You really think this is going to work?’ asked Patti. ‘Like, what a story this could make, if it does.’
Nathan looked across at her. ‘You can’t fool me, Patti Laquelle. You’re not just in it for the story any more.’
Patti gave a little shrug. ‘Sometimes, when you go through really scary situations with somebody, you get close, don’t you? I love Raffo. And I love you guys, too.’
Nathan checked his watch. ‘I’m going to give this five minutes. If Rafał doesn’t show any sign of life by then, I’m going to call for an ambulance.’
‘Oh, yes?’ said Denver. ‘And how do we explain to the paramedics what happened to him? I mean, think about it, Pops. And how do we explain this dead monster-thing lying on the couch? Not to mention that live monster-thing down in the cellar?’
‘Denver—’
‘Yes, but we’re totally in shitsville, aren’t we? What about the people who lived here? That artist, and that family? Doctor Zauber said he took their life-energy, didn’t he? I mean, that’s like killing them, right? And I bet the bodies are hidden in the house someplace. Suppose they accuse us of killing them?’
‘Denver, let’s worry about all that if and when we have to. Let’s just see if we can wake Rafał up first.’
With a sudden rustle, one of the basilisk’s wings dropped sideways on to the floor, and they all turned around to look at it.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Nathan. ‘It’s absolutely dead, I promise you.’
‘You’re sure of that?’ croaked a feeble voice.
They turned back. Rafał had opened his eyes, and was trying to focus on them. He reached up with one hand and felt his nose. ‘Gdzie są moje okulary?’
Patti held up his blackened spectacles. ‘Sorry, Raffo. They got kind of incinerated.’
Between them, Nathan and Denver helped Rafał to sit up. ‘What happened to me? I felt as if I fell off a
tall building and hit the ground very hard.’
‘It was the basilisk. It put you into total shock. But I think we’ve found the cure for it, thanks to Denver here.’
He held up the mug of optic fluid. ‘You know what it says in the Bible, about an eye for an eye.’
They gave Rafał a few minutes to recover. Then Nathan said, ‘We’d better get out of here and think of the best way we can explain all this to the police.’
‘I don’t see why we have to explain it at all,’ said Patti. ‘Let’s just go back to our hotel, pack our bags, and fly out of here before anybody finds out what’s happened.’
‘Oh, you don’t think our fingerprints are all over the house?’ Denver retorted. ‘I promise you, they’re going to arrest us for mass murder and monstercide and we’re going to spend the rest of our natural lives in some Polish slammer, eating cabbage.’
Nathan said, ‘I want to go back down to the cellar first. I don’t really know what we’re going to do about that gryphon. Besides that, I want to take a look at Doctor Zauber’s books. If he has a copy of De Monstrorum, I might be able to use it to re-create some more mythical beasts.’
‘You’d really try making more of them, after everything that’s happened?’
‘It’s probably not possible. But the work is still so important. I wouldn’t breed anything as dangerous as a basilisk, but there again – if its optic fluid can bring people out of comas . . .’
‘OK,’ said Rafał, climbing to his feet, and gripping Nathan’s forearm for support. ‘I will come down to the cellar with you. I know which books will be useful to you. Especially De Monstrorum, if Doctor Zauber had a copy. The legend is that it contains all of the alchemical formulae, as well as the rituals and procedures for bringing such creatures back to life.’
‘We’ll all go together,’ said Patti. ‘Then I think we should hotfoot it out of here, don’t you?’
Nathan led the way back down to the cellar. The gryphon squawked when it saw them, and scrabbled furiously at the mesh of its cage. Nathan stood and looked at it for a while, partly in admiration at what Doctor Zauber had managed to breed, and partly in pity. He couldn’t possibly try to take the gryphon with him. He would either have to put it down, or leave it here to starve.
Rafał was sorting through Doctor Zauber’s papers and books. ‘Look at this, Nathan!’ he exclaimed, holding up a small volume bound in faded red leather. ‘Die Verwirrung der Sorte, by Albertus Magnus. The Tangling of the Species. This book alone is worth thousands of złotys!’
Nathan had found a clean test tube on Doctor Zauber’s table and was using a glass funnel to pour the basilisk’s optic fluid into it. He stoppered it with a plastic cork and put it carefully into his pocket. He just hoped that it wouldn’t start to decompose too quickly on his way back to Philadelphia, and Grace’s bedside.
‘How about De Monstrorum?’ he asked Rafał. ‘Can you see that anywhere?’
Rafał picked up another book, and then another. ‘All of these are amazing. I cannot begin to think where Doctor Zauber managed to find them. Look at this one, Kitab Al-Ahjar – The Book of Stones by the great Arab alchemist Abu Musa Jābir ibn Hayyān. He was said to have created living lizards and scorpions in his laboratory, and this book contains all of his instructions, written in code.’
Denver had been rooting around underneath the table, examining all the strange brass instruments in Doctor Zauber’s baskets. He suddenly said, ‘Pops? There’s kind of a clock down here. And it’s, like, ticking.’
Nathan said, ‘Ticking?’ and hunkered down beside him to take a look. In a large basket half hidden by two other baskets, he saw a red plastic kitchen timer, and Denver was right: it was ticking. Behind it, there was a folded brown cloth, like a tablecloth, which Nathan cautiously lifted up. He had never seen a bomb before, except in the movies, but here was a large bottle of clear liquid, with two batteries fastened to one side of it with duct tape, and several wires.
And there were less than ten seconds left on the timer.
He thought he shouted out, ‘Bomb! Run! Get out of here!’ although he could never remember hearing his own voice. He pulled Denver out from under the table and grabbed Rafał’s sleeve. Patti was over by the gryphon’s cage, taking footage of it with her video camera, and he grabbed her, too.
They scrambled up the staircase, but they had only climbed up a few steps when there was a deep, shuddering bang, and they were blown against the wall by a blast of superheated air and flying debris.
The gryphon screamed, and Nathan saw it flung across its cage, with its feathers blazing.
‘Come on!’ he urged, and the four of them struggled up the stairs and into the hallway, deafened and shocked. Nathan slammed the cellar door behind them, and they stood there looking at each other, panting. A shard of glass had cut Nathan’s forehead, and Patti had a pattern of five or six cuts on her chin; but apart from half-blackened faces they were otherwise unhurt.
‘That was not a very big bomb,’ said Rafał, pronouncing it ‘bom-buh’. ‘An incendiary device, yes? Doctor Zauber must have planted it there to destroy all of his work, in case events did not work out the way that he had planned them.’
‘Which, of course, they didn’t,’ said Nathan.
‘What about the gryphon?’ asked Patti. ‘The poor thing’s going to be barbecued.’
Nathan opened the cellar door, but only by two or three inches. It was already an inferno down there, and the draft moaned like a banshee as it was sucked past them by the heat. They heard glass shattering – Doctor Zauber’s retorts and test tubes and pipettes – and a single desperate cry that sounded more like a baby than a mythical beast. Then there was only the deep roaring of a fire that was already out of control.
‘Now it’s time to get the hell out of here,’ said Nathan. Denver led the way back to the kitchen, but when he tried to open it, he found that the kitchen door was locked, too, and that Doctor Zauber had removed the key.
‘Shit, man!’
‘We’ll be OK,’ Nathan told him. ‘We’ll just have to go out the same way that you broke in. And don’t say “shit”.’
He went to the window in the hallway and opened it up. It was covered by brown-painted wooden shutters, which were fastened together with a rusted hook, but he gave them three hard jabs with his elbow, and they juddered apart. Nathan lifted Patti out first, then he and Denver laced their fingers together to make a step for Rafał, who by now was wheezing like an asthmatic.
‘I am too old for adventures like this,’ he gasped, as he rolled over the window sill, and dropped down into the alley. ‘Next time I stay in my library!’
‘Go on, Pops,’ said Denver; but Nathan said, ‘No – you go first.’
Denver climbed out of the window, while Nathan went back to the cellar door. He carefully placed his hand against it, and the woodwork was almost too hot for him to touch. He tugged down the sleeve of his coat so that it covered his right hand, and then he took hold of the door handle, and pushed the door inward.
There was a loud thump – almost as loud as Doctor Zauber’s original bomb – and a huge ball of orange flame rolled out of the door and up to the ceiling. Inside, the cellar was a crawling mass of fire, and the staircase was already burning like the staircase down to Hades.
Nathan hurried back to the window, and awkwardly climbed out, jarring his knee. The old woman had gone, her knitting abandoned on her chair. The mangy Pomeranian raised its head for a moment, and stared at them as if it were trying to remember who they were. ‘Let’s hit the bricks,’ said Nathan. Smoke was already starting to pour out of the open window, and it wouldn’t be long before the entire house was blazing.
By the time they reached the Amadeus Hotel, a tall column of brown smoke was hanging over Kupa and Izaaka Streets, and they could hear the wailing of firetrucks.
They flew out the following afternoon from John Paul II International Airport. It was a gray day, but a warm wind was blowing from the south-west, and drying
up the overnight rain.
Rafał gave each of them one of his bear hugs. He was wearing his spare spectacles, which had very thick tortoiseshell frames, so that he looked more like somebody’s uncle than ever.
‘I keep open my ears, Nathan,’ he promised. ‘But from what they say on the news, all of that house is destroyed. The policja will puzzle over the bones, of course, and wonder what kind of strange animals were kept there. But we have left no evidence that we were there, or of what really happened.’
‘Goodbye, Rafał,’ said Nathan. ‘And thanks for everything.’
‘Remember a good Polish saying,’ Rafał told him. ‘Marz o tym, jakbyś miał wiecznie żyl, żyj jakbyś mial umrzeć dziś. This means, “dream as if you will live forever, live as if you will die today”.’
‘Hey, that’s so cool,’ said Denver. ‘How about one for me?’
‘Well, here is an easy one you can say to your friends,’ Rafał told him, with a smile. “.’Moja dupa i twoja twarz to bliźniacy”
Denver repeated it, and then again, just to make sure he was pronouncing it correctly.
‘That is so cool,’ he said. ‘I can go back to school and speak Polish. My science teacher is going to be so impressed: he’s Polish. What does it mean?’
‘I recommend you not to say it to your science teacher. It means “my ass and your face are twins”.’
Nathan and Denver had to wait for over an hour when he arrived at the Hahnemann, because Grace had to be washed and then Doctor Ishikawa wanted to run a series of routine tests. By the time he was allowed into her room, the sun was already setting over City Hall, and the sky was streaked with crimson and purple.
He told Denver to keep watch in the corridor outside, and then he went into Grace’s room and sat down close to her bed. She was even whiter than she had been before, as if she were a statue, rather than a real woman, and her hand when he held it was icy.
He took out the test tube of optic fluid, and unstoppered it. He had taken it to the Zoo during this morning’s lunch-break, and borrowed a corner of his old laboratory so that he could analyze it and make sure that it hadn’t started to break down.
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