Fortnight of Fear

by Graham Masterton

  Michael stood in front of the man like an obedient soldier reporting to his captain. Then the man raised both hands, and plunged them into the front of Michael’s anorak, plunged them right through fabric and skin and living flesh. With a grisly cracking noise that I could hear even over the screaming blizzard, he literally ripped Michael inside-out, in a storm-bloodied chaos of lungs and heart and wallowing stomach.

  The blizzard blew even more fiercely then, and obscured them. Trembling, muttering with fright, I closed the tent-flap and sat huddled in my anorak and my blankets, waiting for one kind of death or another.

  I said the longest prayer that any man ever said, and hoped.

  The tent flap opened and I found myself sitting in a triangle of sunlight. There was no blizzard, no wind, only the distant whistling of helicopter rotors, and the sounds of men shouting.

  It was Rodney. He said, “James! My God, you’re still alive.”

  I sat with Tania on top of the Lyth, looking out over Selborne. It was one of those still, hot, timeless August evenings.

  She said, “Mike used to love these summer days.”

  I nodded. Two house-martins swooped and dived just above us. Very faithful, house-martins, always return to the same house to build their nests, every year.

  “Sometimes I get the feeling that he’s still with us,” she remarked.

  “Yes,” I said. “He probably is.”

  “He didn’t suffer, though, did he?”

  “No,” I told her. “All three of them were killed instantly, no pain. They wouldn’t even have felt the fire.”

  “You were lucky,” she said, a little sadly.

  “Come on,” I coaxed her. “Let’s get back.”

  I helped her up from the grass, and together we made our way down the hillside, between the gorse-bushes and the brambles. At one point, Tania went on ahead; and I stopped for a moment and looked back, at the warm and fragrant woodland, and those peaceful summer slopes, and at my own shadow, tall and black and motionless, like a memory of something that has never been.

  Beijing Craps

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  No city in the world combines fun and panic in such a heady mixture as Las Vegas. I don’t gamble, but I was completely won over by the glitter, the glitz and the sheer hysteria. Even when people are having a wonderful, wonderful time in Las Vegas, they seem to be conscious that the cold breath of death is blowing down the backs of their necks. It’s not just the desert that surrounds Las Vegas that makes it so surrealistic. It’s not just the lights and the wedding-chapels and the Jetson-style architecture. It’s the feeling that people have come here because they’re desperate, because they need a short-cut to wealth and happiness or whatever other joys that life has never dealt out to them.

  BEIJING CRAPS

  Like all professional gamblers, whose days are measured only in throws, and rolls, and hands, and spins, it had never seriously occurred to Jack Druce that he would ever have to face death. But that Friday morning at the Golden Lode Casino, at the exact instant when the second-hand swept silently past 1 a.m., he shivered, and lifted his head, and frowned, as if he had been momentarily been touched by the chilly breath of impending extinction.

  Alert to the slightest tremor in mood at the craps table, the croupier noticed his hesitation, and said, “Intending to shoot, sir-r-r?” His “r’s” rolled as hard as dice.

  Solly Bartholomew noticed Jack’s hesitation, too, but didn’t lift his eyes from the layout.

  Jack nodded, and scooped up the dice, but didn’t speak.

  He had already stacked up eleven thousand dollars’ worth of chips in three hours’ play. But for no reason at all he suddenly felt as if the layout had gone cold, the same way that (seven years ago) his wife Elaine had grown cold, lying in his arms, asleep first of all, breathing, then not breathing, then dead.

  Jack guessed that he and Solly could make two or three thousand more. Solly was the only other professional at the table; a neat man who looked like a smalltown realtor, but who threw the dice with all the tight assurance of a practised arm. Cautiously, showing no outward signs that they knew each other, or that they were working together, he and Jack were carving up the amateurs between them.

  There was money around, too. Not yacht money, for sure, but lunch money. They had just been joined by a tall horse-faced over-excited man from Indianapolis in a powder-blue polyester suit who was placing his chips on all the hardways bets, and a redhead with her roots showing and a deep withered cleavage who yelped like a chihuahua every time Jack threw a pass. Divorcee, Jack calculated, splashing out with her settlement. She wouldn’t stop playing until every last cent of it was totally blown. It was a form of revenge. Jack knew all about women’s revenge. Elaine had stopped breathing while he was holding her in his arms, and what revenge could any woman have exacted on any man that was more terrible than that?

  Jack blew softly on the ivories, shook them twice, and sent them tumbling off across the soft green felt. “Nine,” commented the croupier, and pushed Jack another stack of fifty-dollar chips.

  “I’m out,” said Jack, and began gathering his winnings in both hands.

  Solly hesitated for a moment; then said, “Me too.”

  “Aw shit,” said the tall horse-faced man.

  The croupier’s eyes flicked sideways toward the pit boss. Jack said, “Something wrong, my friend?” He had spent thirty years of his life dealing with men who communicated whole libraries with the quiver of an eyelid.

  “Pit boss’d like a word, sir. And –” turning toward Solly, “– you, too, sir. That’s if you don’t mind.”

  “I have a plane to catch,” Solly complained. Solly always had a plane to catch.

  “It’s ten after one in the morning,” the croupier told him.

  “Well I have to catch some sleep before I catch my plane.”

  “This won’t take long, sir, believe me.”

  Jack and Solly waited with their hands full of chips while the small neat pit boss approached him. White tuxedo, ruffled pink shirt, smooth Sienese face, eyes like slanted black olives, black hair parted dead-center. The pit boss held out one of his tiny hands, as if to guide them away from the table by the elbow, but he didn’t actually touch them. Players were not to be physically touched. It was bad karma.

  “Mr Newman presents his compliments, sir.”

  “Oh does he?” asked Jack, sniffing and blinking behind his heavy-rimmed eyeglasses. Beside him, he heard the redhead yelping again.

  The pit boss smiled, and went along with the pretense. “Well, sir, Mr Newman is the joint owner of the Golden Lode, sir. And he would like to see you.”

  Jack held up his chips. “Listen, my friend, I have my winnings here.”

  Solly said, “Me too.”

  “Of course,” said the pit-boss. His smile slid out of the side of his mouth like the cottonseed oil pouring out of a freshly-opened can of sardines. “We’ll take care of your winnings, sir. Carlos! Here, take care of these gentlemen’s winnings.”

  “Twelve and a half k,” said Jack, pointedly, as if it were more money than he had ever possessed in his life.

  “Five,” said Solly, without expression.

  “Don’t worry, sir. Carlos will keep it in the safe for you.”

  With a great show of reluctance, Jack handed over his chips. “Twelve and a half k,” he repeated. “What do you think of that?”

  Behind his well-pumiced acne craters, the stone-faced Carlos obviously thought nothing of it at all. One night’s winnings for a mid-Western mark, that was all. The casino would have it all back tomorrow, or the next night.

  “Please … this young lady will show you to Mr Graf,” said the pit-boss, still smiling. From somewhere behind him, like an assistant in one of those corny Las Vegas lounge magical acts, a Chinese-looking girl appeared, in a skin-tight dress of cerise silk, with a split all the way up to the top of her thigh.

  “Please follow,” she said, and immediately turned and began
to walk ahead of them. Jack glanced at Solly and Solly glanced back at Jack. They could cut and run. But Jack had heard of Mr Graf; and Mr Graf had a hard, hard reputation; and if they ran away from Mr Graf, then the chances were that they would have to keep on running, for the rest of their natural borns.

  Whatever had to be faced, had to be faced. Jack and Solly had both been beaten up before, more than once.

  The Chinese-looking girl was already halfway across the casino floor, headed toward the wide violet-carpeted staircase that led down from the restaurant and the offices.

  Solly said, “After you, sport,” and Jack shambled after her like an obedient mutt, tugging the knot of his necktie, although it was already too tight. During his gambling career, he had deliberately cultivated the dislocated mannerisms of a Rube, freshly off the Piedmont redeye from the rural mid-West with a billfold crammed with ready money and no idea of how to play the tables.

  In reality he had been born in Providence, Rhode Island, the son of a high school principal, and he was both well-educated and extensively-traveled. He had lived in Florence, in Aqaba, and Paris; and in the 1950s he had spent nine miserable months in London. But in the late 1960s he had spent six weeks living in Bellflower, Illinois, painstakingly imitating the local mannerisms and the local speech. These days, only a fully-bloomed Bellflorian could have detected that his accent wasn’t for real. He still said “grass” instead of “grayce.”

  He had altered his appearance, too. He had cropped his hair short and bought himself a vivid chestnut-brown toupee. He had adopted thick-rimmed eyeglasses and sunbathed in his T-shirt, so that he had acquired that farm-style tan, face and neck and forearms only. Every morning he squeezed lumps of modeling clay in the palms of his hands, to give himself cheesy-looking crescents of dirt under his fingernails.

  When he was working, he assumed a crumpled seersucker suit in brown-and-white check, a brown drip-dry shirt, and scuffed tan sneakers. At least, he liked to think that he “assumed” them, and that his “real” clothes were the clothes that hung in the closet of his suite at the Sands hotel. A single gray Armani suit, three handmade shirts, and a pair of polished English shoes.

  In reality, however, the “real” clothes had scarcely been worn, because Jack was always working. Even the soles of his “real” shoes remained unscratched. He spent all afternoon and most of the night as Jack Druce the Rube. The rest of the time he spent sprawled on his back on his hotel bed with his sheet knotted around his waist like a loincloth, dreaming of Elaine going cold in his arms and whispering numbers to himself. But he needed the “real” clothes to be hanging there waiting for him.

  If he ever discarded his “real” clothes, then the “real” Jack Druce would cease to exist; and all that would be left would be Jack Druce the Rube; Jack Druce the Chronic Gambler. The laughing, sophisticated young college graduate would have vanished for ever; so would the husband of Elaine; and the father of Roddy, for what that was worth.

  On the last day of May, 1961, Jack Druce had been a mathematical whiz-kid, the youngest research team-leader that San Fernando Electronics had ever employed. On the last day of May, 1961, San Fernando Electronics had brought two hundred seventy employees to Las Vegas, for the company’s tenth annual convention. That night, Jack Druce had played dice for the very first time in his life, and doubled his annual salary in four-and-a-half hours.

  Jack Druce had woken on the first day of June, 1961, with the certain knowledge that he had been hooked.

  Now his house was gone and his car was gone. Not because he couldn’t afford them. Most days, technically, he was very rich. The simple fact was that houses and cars didn’t figure in his life any more. He lived in hotels; he walked to work; and he subsisted on free casino snacks and Salem Menthol Lights. His home was the Pass line. He never looked at his watch.

  The Chinese girl led Jack and Solly through thick suffocating velour curtains, and then through double doors of heavy carved Joshua wood.

  “I’m not so sure about this,” Jack told her; but she turned and half-smiled and said, “Don’t be afraid.”

  Solly said nothing. Solly had an especially sensitive nose for danger. Solly was sniffing the atmosphere, checking it out.

  Beyond the double doors, they found themselves in a large gloomy room, ferociously chilly with air-conditioning. In the center of the room stood a gaming-table, lit by a single low-hanging lamp of bottle green glass, a dark secretive lamp that scarcely illuminated the table at all, and gave to the six or seven men and women who were hunched around it a ghastly green look, as if they had been dead for several days.

  Jack frowned at them. Two of them looked as if they had one foot in the grave for real. Their white hair shone silvery-green in the reflected light from the lamp; their skin was shrink-wrapped over their skulls, and thick with wriggling veins.

  Yet three of the players were almost children – a spotty boy of sixteen or seventeen; a young girl of not much more than twelve; and a blond-headed boy who was so small he could scarcely throw the dice.

  All of them, however, shared something in common. They all wore loose Chinese robes, of gleaming black silk, with fire-breathing dragons embroidered on the back, and the name Nu Kua in red silk italics.

  “Come,” said the Chinese girl, and led Jack and Solly toward the table.

  Jack was fascinated to see that the dice appeared to glow fluorescently in the darkness; and that when they were thrown, they left glowing patterns in the air. Solly watched the game over his shoulder for a while, and then murmured, “What the hell kind of craps is that?”

  Jack looked around the table. “I’m supposed to be talking to Mr Graf,” he said, loudly.

  The blond-headed boy left his place and came around the table, smiling and holding out his hand in greeting. He looked no older than five or six.

  Jack smiled. “How’s tricks, kid?”

  “I’m Nevvar Graf,” the boy told him, in an unbroken but carefully-modulated voice.

  “Sure and I’m Tammy Wynette.”

  The boy continued to hold out his hand. “You don’t believe me?” he asked, tilting his head to one side.

  “Nevvar Graf has owned the Golden Lode Casino for twenty years, minimum. He’s just about old enough to be your grandfather.”

  The boy smiled. “There are more things on heaven and earth, Horatio.”

  “Oh, sure,” Jack nodded. “Now is Mr Graf here, because if not, I intend to leave.”

  “I told you, Mr Druce, I’m Nevvar Graf.”

  There was something in the tone of the boy’s voice that caught Jack’s attention. Something far too commanding for a boy of five. And how did he know Jack’s name? Jack took off his spectacles and folded them and tucked them slowly into his pocket.

  The boy said, “I’m Nevvar Graf, and you’re Jack Druce. I’ve been watching you for years, Mr Druce. You’re good, one of the best arms in the business. Everybody knows Jack Druce. It’s always beaten me why you dress so crummy, and talk so dumb, when everybody knows who you are. You saw Carlos downstairs? The minute you leave the Golden Lode, Carlos always gets on to the radio-transmitter and warns the doorman at the Diamond Saloon.”

  Jack said, hoarsely, “Young fellow, I don’t know what the hell you think you’re playing at, but my name is Keith Kovacs, and I came here from Illinois for the week to gamble a few hundred dollars, just like I’ve always promised myself; and when my money’s all gone, I’ll be gone, too.

  “Jack Druce?” he added. “I never even heard of anybody called Jack Druce.”

  The boy popped his knuckles, one by one. “You see that game going on behind me?”

  “I see it,” said Jack. “Some kind of fancy dice.”

  “Beijing Craps,” the boy told him, with a smile.

  Jack shook his head. “Never heard of it.”

  “Never heard of it, huh?” The boy turned to Solly, and said, “Have you heard of it? Beijing Craps?”

  Solly nervously sniffed, and lowered his eyes. “Sur
e. I’ve heard of it.”

  The boy circled around Jack and took hold of Solly’s hand. “Solly Bartholomew,” he said, in that piping voice. “The greatest arm in the east. The scourge of the Atlantic City boardwalk.”

  Solly didn’t attempt to deny it. He stood holding the boy’s hand with his eyes on the carpet and said nothing.

  “Beijing Craps,” the boy repeated. “The legendary magical mystical Beijing Craps. Banned in China since the revolution; banned in Thailand where they don’t ban nothing; punishable by flogging in Japan; punishable by death in Viet Nam. Illegal in every country in the world, with the exception of Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and that’s where these dice were smuggled in from.”

  He tugged Solly’s hand. “Come on, Solly, come closer. Take a look.”

  Solly stayed where he was, his head still lowered. The boy tugged his hand again, then smiled. “You don’t want to take a look? You don’t have to play.”

  “You know just what the fuck you’re talking about,” said Solly, his false teeth clenched together. “If I look, I’ll have to play.”

  The boy laughed. “That’s up to you, Solly. You’re ready for it. You know that you’re ready for it. That’s why I asked you up here, you and your friend Jack Druce. I’ve been watching you two lately and you’re the cream de la cream. But you’re getting bored, too. You’re too damned good for your own damned good. What’s the fun, when you don’t play the game to the limit – can’t play the game to the limit, because the pit boss is going to suss you out and then you’re finished at the Golden Lode; and then you’re finished at Caesar’s Palace and Glitter Gulch and even Sassy Sally’s, and before you know it you’re finished in Vegas altogether, then Reno, then Tahoe, then Atlantic City.

  “That’s when clever men like you start to play Russian Roulette, and hoping you’ll lose. But Nevvar Graf here has an alternative for you, a different way out, a new life maybe, leave the old life behind, all or nothing. Beijing Craps.”