I tried to figure it out as we roared down Michigan. I could see the gleaming lighted spire that chewing gum built, right ahead. I'd be there in a minute now.
What had Varek said? Something about not bothering to kill me because the law would do it.
And here I came riding up to the Wrigley building, with a gun in my pocket. An armed murderer.
I knew what to look for now. It wouldn't be Ahmed's cab; he wouldn't show up at all, I was sure. I was looking for a black prowl car.
I wouldn't see Cono standing in the lobby with a white carnation in his buttonhole, ready to guide me on a conducted tour of Varek's snug harbour. I was more likely to see a couple of downtown boys with their hands in their topcoat pockets. The reception committee from the downtown station.
We started to edge towards the curb, and I added up my score. Exactly 100 per cent right. There was the squad car, there were the boys. They stood patiently, just waiting for somebody to show up. If I knew Ahmed, I felt sure he'd furnish them with a very good description.
We nosed in, slowing down. "Here we are - " the driver began.
"No, we're not," I cut in. "Back to 43 East Brent. And fast. I have another appointment."
We kept going, over the bridge. Nobody looked up. Nobody followed. I kept my hand on the butt of the.38 all the way back. I didn't want to lose it, you see.
It was the Great Ahmed's, and I intended to make sure that I gave it to him.
The house was dark, but then it was always dark. I had the cab park around the corner because I didn't mind walking. In fact, I preferred it. Preferred it so much I went around to the back of the house - the long way around, mind you. Didn't bother me a bit. Nor did it bother me to climb in through a rear bedroom window on the first floor.
I was quiet. Very quiet. Sort of a slow, seething quiet. Little thoughts kept bubbling up in me about what I'd do to Ahmed when I got my hands on him.
So he wasn't the type for a carney grifter, eh? Well, he'd taken me in soon enough. And sold me out even sooner.
I landed on the bedroom floor and padded out, down the hall. No cleaning woman was around and I knew now that there never had been. Ahmed had locked me in to keep me on ice for Vera LaValle or whoever Varek might send.
Ahmed and Varek - a good team. Maybe Ahmed was the guy Varek needed for a front man!
Of course, he wouldn't look quite so presentable after I got through with him…
I tiptoed down the hall, peeked into the library. It was dark. The whole house was dark. I stopped, listened. After a long moment, I became convinced of the truth. I was alone. Ahmed had gone out in his cab but he hadn't returned.
I reached a stairway going up - that led to the bedroom and the other rooms on the second floor. But behind it was another set of stairs, going down. I decided to have myself a look. Curiosity killed a cat of course - but this cat carried a.38.
The basement was big and dusty. Old fashioned furnace, the usual stationary washtubs, a coal-bin, a fruit cellar. I pushed open the door and stared at the usual assortment of dusty, empty jars in the light thrown by a naked bulb dangling from the centre of the small room.
Nothing in the cellar to interest me. My hunch was cold.
I was cold!
Standing in the deserted fruit cellar a little past midnight of a warm May evening, I was cold. Cold as ice! I felt the cold air all around me. But where was it coming from?
A draft blew against my trouser cuffs. I looked down.
There was a round metal lid set in the floor of the fruit cellar. I stooped, touched it. The iron was icy. I groped for the ring, lifted the lid. I gazed down into darkness.
Then I walked away, making a circuit of the cellar until I found what I needed and expected to find - the inevitable handy flashlight.
I returned to the fruit cellar and pointed the beam down. It focussed on the iron rungs of a ladder. I took the flashlight in one hand, the gun in the other, and left enough fingers free on both for me to cling to the rungs as I descended.
I lowered myself into icy cold - the coldness of a vast black refrigerator. I went down, down, rung after rung. Finally my feet hit slimy, damp stone. I joggled the flashlight until it bisected a wall with its beams. Eventually I located a light switch.
I flicked it. The light went on, and I saw everything.
I was standing in the centre of Varek's laboratory.
Varek - Ahmed. Ahmed - Varek.
It all added up now. More lights went on.
They went on in the little room with the big filing cabinets. I pried open a lot of drawers that night; the drawers containing the certificates, the visas, the affidavits, the fake credentials, the diplomas, the letters of identity (hadn't Varek convinced the warden he was Cono's cousin?) and all of the mingled memorabilia of hundreds of years of impersonations, imposture, and disguise. Floods, tons of paper. The dust fairly flew.
And more light was shed. I found the long closet with the wardrobe; the Ahmed wardrobe, the sportsman's garments, the shabby workman's garb complete even to the battered tin initialled lunchbox and the union button. The accoutrements of Varek the wealthy man of the world were there, too - and a box containing diamonds and other gems that reminded me of poor Vera LaValle.
Then there was another room, with more files. Letters and newspaper clippings. Ads from the Personal columns of ten thousand papers, in a score of languages. Help Wanted notices. Lonely Hearts messages. And letters, letters, letters - messages from the millions who later turned up missing. Those who answered Varek's appeal for a wife, a husband, an employee. I got a picture of him sitting there, year after year, sending out his letters, interviewing prospects, recruits for his army of the dead. Recruits who would not be missed, searched for.
There were more lights in other rooms. The big surgery, with the gigantic autoclave; completely modern, completely equipped. I wondered how he'd managed to assemble it here, and then I thought of the dead; the tireless dead who steal, who strain, who slave day and night.
Beyond the modern surgery was medieval horror.
The round, dungeon-like room, dominated by the huge table on which rested the alembics and retorts of an ancient alchemist. The beaker filled with the brownish-red, crusting liquid. The herbs and powders on the shelves; the dried roots in bottles, and the great jars filled with monkeys floating in a nauseous liquid, and other things that looked like monkeys but weren't. The stock of chalk and powders. The great circle drawn upon the floor with the zodiacal signs inscribed in blue before it. The jar of combustible powder -that was used to make the circle of fire inside a pentagon, according to the thaumaturgists. And on the iron table rested the iron book; the Grimoire of the sorcerer.
* * *
Sorcery and science! Surgery and Satanism! That was the link, the combination! Sorcery had led to science, as Varek said. His original alchemic experiments had brought him to actual research and enabled him to perfect his method of reanimating the dead.
But that didn't explain his own continued life, his boasts of eternal youth. That was sorcery. That was selling your soul, after lighting the fires and invoking the Author of All Evil.
The rooms, the lighted rooms, seemed to present a panorama of Varek's entire existence across the centuries. Everything was her - and I wondered, now, if he'd told me the truth. If in every great city, unsuspected, beneath a house or a factory or a tenement there existed a duplicate of this place. What had he said? A sort of "dead storage", that was it.
"Dead storage." But where were the dead?
There was another room, beyond the alchemic chamber. I entered it, and the coldness engulfed me. This was it. The refrigerator storage space. Where you keep the cold meat.
The cold meat…
They lay on slabs, but they weren't sheeted. I could see them all, see their staring faces. Men, women, children, young, old, rich, poor - lavish your categories upon them, they were all here. A host, a hundred or more. Silent but not sleeping, inert but not immovable, rigid without rigor. The
y lay there, waiting, like toys that would soon be wound up by cunning hands and set about to walk in make-belief of life.
It was cold in that room, but cold alone did not make me shiver. I walked through rows of dead, staring into the faces that stared into mine. I don't know what I expected to see. None of them looked familiar - except, perhaps one little blonde who reminded me of someone I'd run into before somewhere.
Then, all at once, I knew what I must do. There was fire outside, and it would serve more purposes than that of conjuring up demons. It could also be used to put them to rest.
I walked back into the other room and picked up the powder box which, when its contents were kindled, traced a pattern of flame on the floor. A circle of fire protected you from demons, it was said, after you evoked them.
I ripped the lid off the box and began to sprinkle the powder about. I worked quickly, but not quickly enough..
Because when I looked up, somebody was standing in the room. He only stood there for a moment, and then he started for me.
It was Cono.
* * *
He didn't say anything and I didn't say anything. He came on and I backed away. The cold arms reached out; I'd felt them before. The tic like grimace leered, and I knew it would keep on leering no matter how many bullets I might waste.
Because the dead don't die.
Because this was the end.
Because he was coming at me like a demon.
But demons can be warded off with fire.
I pulled out the.38 and pressed the trigger. I didn't aim at Cono; I aimed at the powder on the floor.
A circle of flame shot up, almost in Cono's face. He stopped. Dead or alive, fire destroys flesh. And he couldn't get through. Not as long as the fire flared.
I wondered how long that would be. When would the powder's potency be exhausted? Ten minutes, five, two? Whatever the time, I had that long to live and no longer - unless I could convince him.
I talked then. Told him what I thought he'd understand. About Varek being the Great Ahmed, hiding out with the carney for a while and perfecting plans. About seeing Cono and deciding to make him a recruit, then rigging up the murder charge by hypnotizing Louie, getting him to drug Cono and kill Flo.
I told him something about what Varek was, what he planned, what he'd do to Cono, to me, to the whole world if he wasn't stopped and stopped soon. I told him about the sorcery and the science and the bodies that walked everywhere in every city.
The fire began to flicker, to fade, to die down. I talked louder, faster.
And it didn't do any good.
It was like talking to a stone wall.
It was like talking to a dead man.
With a sickening feeling, I realized I'd been in this spot once before. I'd tried then, tried to tell Cono I was his friend, tried to reach his heart, his soul. But dead men have no hearts. Varek was his heart. And I knew of nothing that could touch his soul. Nothing he cared for, nothing he loved. Except Flo!
Then I remembered, remembered the next room and the blonde on the slab. The little blonde with the familiar face - Flo!
"Cono," I said. "Listen to me. You've got to listen. She's in there, too. You didn't know that, did you? He didn't tell you. But he's greedy, he wants them all. He not only took your body, he took Flo's too. She's in the next room. Cono. He cut off her head, put in his damned wires and plates, and now she'll walk for him forever!
He was blind. Blind and deaf. The flames died, he moved towards me, he caught me up in his arms. I waited for the squeezing strength of his fingers to wrench my life away. But he merely held me, held me and lumbered across the ashes into the next room.
"Show me where," he said, and the tic rippled horribly across his face.
I pointed. Pointed at the face I remembered from a photograph he'd shown me.
Cono saw her. He released me, and his hands went to his head. He kept staring at her, staring and staring, even after Varek came into the room.
That's how it happened. One second we were alone and the next moment he was there - little grey shadow, silent and suave.
No emotion, no surprise, no tension.
Just his soft, quiet voice saying, "Kill him, Cono."
He might have been asking the big man for a match.
But as I stared at Varek - stared at the quiet little middle-aged man with the paper-thin lips - I saw many things.
I saw a vulgar charlatan in a carnival who was in turn a gypsy in Spain who was in turn a Polish count who was in turn a Haitian planter who was a London barrister who was a Polynesian trader who was a Tulsa wildcatter who was a physician in Cairo who was a trapper with Jim Bridger who was a diplomat of Austria who was - it went on and on that way, a hundred incarnations and a hundred lives and all of them were evil.
He faced us with all of that evil, the evil of a hundred and a thousand men, concentrated but quietly so, and he said to Cono again in the voice that could not be denied because it was the voice of mastery, the voice of life over death - "Kill him, Cono."
Cono set me down and I felt his arms close about my body, his hands grasp my throat. He was a robot, an automaton, he could not refuse; he was a zombie, vampire, all the evil legends, all the fear of the dead that return, the dead that never die.
Cono bent me back. And Varek, with a look in his eyes that was a grey ecstasy, came closer and waited for Cono to finish.
That's what Cono wanted, too.
For when Varek came close, Cono moved. One instant he held me - the next, I was free and those huge arms had reached out to engulf Varek.
The little grey man rose, shrieking, in the air. Cono squeezed -there was a sound like somebody stepping on a thin board - and the body of Varek writhed and twisted on the floor like a snake with a broken back.
Cono helped me with the powder, then. There were chemicals, too; enough to start a good-sized blaze.
"Come on," I said. "Time to get out of here."
"I'm staying," he said. "I belong here."
I had no answer to that one. I turned away.
"You got to go now," Cono told me. "Leave me the gun to start the fire. I give you five minutes to get out."
The thing on the floor was mewing. Neither of us looked at it.
"One thing," Cono said. "I want you should know it so you'll maybe feel better. About that bartender. You didn't knock him off. You hit him with a bottle, but that didn't kill him. Varek killed him, later, when they dragged him in back to see how bad he was hurt. But he was going to pin the rap on you. I found out at the funeral home."
"Thanks," I said.
"Now go away," said Cono.
And I went. I walked through the rooms and didn't look back. I climbed the ladder back to the basement. When I reached the top I heard the muffled sound of a shot from below me, far away.
Long before the flames spread, I was out of the house and on my way to the Loop.
Next morning I read about the place burning to the ground, and that was the end.
But this is a story that never ends.
I keep thinking of those "dead storage" places in other cities. I keep wondering if Varek had turned everybody off that night - or if others walked in other places. The way he and Cono and Vera had all told me. "If you only knew how many…"
That's what frightens me.
That's why, wherever I go now, I'm afraid of women wearing high collars and chokers. Men in turtleneck sweaters or even a clergyman's collar. I think of the red scar under the scarf. And I wonder.
I wonder when someone or something will float through my window again. I wonder what walks abroad at night and waits to drag me down.
I wonder how I, or you, or anyone can tell, as we go about our daily rounds, which are the living and which are the dead. For all we know, they may be all around us. Because:
The dead don't die!
25 - Kim Newman - Patricia's Profession
When the call came, Patricia was going FF through the latest snuffs. She was a subscriber to the
120 Days in the City of Sodom part-work, but, since Disney had run out of de Sade and been forced to fall back on their own limited psychopathology, the series had deteriorated. After a few minutes of real-time PLAY, she had twigged that the 104th day was just one of the fifties with a sexual role reversal, Mouldy chiz. Colin broke into the vid-out.
"Patti," he said. "Goto PRINT."
Colin had blanked before she could work out whether he was live or a message simulacrum. The printer retched a laconic strip.
JAY DEARBORN, DEARBORN ESTATE, TWENTY ONE O'CLOCK HIT, 2-NITE.
The mark was on screen. The Firm had a four-second snip from regular call, Dearbone was a sleek, expensive, youngish man. He had on a collarless, fine stripe shirt. Silently, he repeated a phrase. Something about cheekbones, Patricia's lip-reading was off.
She switched to greenscreen and speed-read Dearborn's write-up. Executive with Skintone, Inc., the second-largest fleshwear house. Married, Euro-citizen. Not cleared for parenthood. No adult criminal record. Alive. Solvent.
Colin came back, real-time. "Our client is Philip Wragge. More middle management at Skintone. He likes us. He's used us before."
"Why does he want Dearborn hit?"
"Getting curious, Patti?" Colin smiled. "That's not in your usual profile. I think it's the mark's birthday."
Patricia's birthday was in August. When she was little, her parents had always taken her to their cottage in Portugal for the school holidays. She had escaped until she was twelve. That year, Dad's job became obsolete, and the cottage had to be marketed. At tea-time on her birthday, the other children had come round to Patricia's house and killed her.
Colin faded, and the scheduled program popped up on the slab. Patricia rarely watched real-time. A Luton house-husband guessed that Seattle, Washington was the capital of the US. The Torture Master grinned, and his glamorous assistant thrust his/her bolt-cutters into the hot coals. "Wrong," sang the man in the dayglo tux, "I'm afraid it's Portland, Oregon. That puts you in a tricky spot, Goodman. You have only three questions and two toes left, so take your time with this next one. Who, at the time of this recording, is the Vice-President of the Confederate States of America…'
Stephen Jones (ed) Page 58