The Heirloom

by Graham Masterton

  ‘But he doesn’t know where the missile’s programmed to strike?’

  ‘That would spoil everything, wouldn’t it?’ Martin Jessop said, in a voice that was light and tense and almost threatening.

  One of the engineers down at the launcher raised his hand and shouted, ‘All okay with the launch system, Mr Jessop!’

  Martin Jessop checked his stainless-steel Rolex watch. ‘Right then, Mr Delatolla. I think we’re all ready to fire. Don’t you think we’d better sort out these contract problems first?’

  ‘There are no contract problems,’ I told him.

  He stared at me. ‘Now, just you hold on a minute. What do you mean, there are no contract problems?’

  ‘Precisely what I said. The contract is fine. In fact, it’s so fine that I didn’t even bother to bring it with me.’ I opened my coat and showed him that my pockets were empty.

  ‘Then what did you come here for?’ he wanted to know, “Didn’t you work everything out between you and Mr Sears here? Or is there something that doesn’t satisfy you?’

  ‘I’m satisfied.’

  ‘Well, in that case, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. You’ve got to understand that this is all high-security stuff we’ve got here. And it’s dangerous, too, for women and children. All deference to the ERA, ma’am,’ he added, with a gratuitous smile at Sara.

  ‘I think we’d prefer to stay,’ I said, firmly.

  ‘Now, I’m sorry, Mr Delatolla – I appreciate everything you’ve done to bring this occasion about – but I’d prefer it if you and your family would leave without any protests. This just isn’t a suitable place for you right now.’

  ‘Mr Jessop,’ I said. ‘If you oblige me to leave, I shall immediately call the police, the FBI, and the Pentagon.’

  ‘And say what? This firing is authorised by the Pentagon, it is covered by all the necessary permits and insurances, and it happens to come under the heading of Urban Defence. Permission has been granted for a fire out towards the Pacific Ocean, overflying unpopulated areas, and you can call all the police you like but you’ll never prove anything.’

  ‘Mr Jessop,’ I said, ‘if I call the police right now and tell them where your missile is accidentally going to fall, ten minutes before it falls there, then you won’t stand a chance.’

  ‘I thought you had this guy tied up!’ Martin Jessop shouted roughly at David. ‘I thought you had him implicated in the death of that priest!’

  ‘I do,’ said David, rather weakly.

  ‘He does,’ I nodded to Martin Jessop. ‘But if you don’t let us stay, I’ll still go to the police and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘What makes you so damned anxious?’ demanded Martin Jessop.

  ‘I’m anxious because I don’t believe you’re actually going to do it,’ I retorted. ‘You see that chair? I’d rather face ten of your missiles than face that chair again. You know what I’m talking about. You’ve lived with the damned thing ever since you were a spotty kid. Well, I want to make sure that you get it out of my life for ever. I want to see you do it and hear you do it, first-hand.’

  ‘Do you believe him?’ Martin Jessop asked David, over his shoulder.

  David looked away, as if he had suddenly seen something on the distant horizon that had interested him, like a purple-throated humming-bird.

  ‘Can we trust him?’ demanded Martin Jessop, more loudly.

  David turned around and peered at me myopically. Despite my feelings, I managed to give him a quick, chummy grin, and one of those shrugs that means, come on, you know me, I’m not that much of a bastard really.

  ‘All right,’ said David, at last. ‘He’s bound by the contract. And he knows what’s going to happen if the firing doesn’t go off according to plan.’

  ‘Sit down over there,’ Martin Jessop told us, pointing to a carved marble bench at the side of the patio. ‘Sit down over there and don’t make a move until we’re all finished here. You got me?’

  ‘We got you,’ I nodded, and I ushered Sara and Jonathan across the patio towards the bench. We sat down, and it was as cold as sitting on someone’s overturned headstone. The sun was still struggling to shine through the grey morning fog. It would probably be a roasting-hot day later.

  ‘I have to warn you that this launch is going to be real noisy,’ called out Martin Jessop. ‘So make sure you stick your fingers in your ears when we reach the count of launch minus three.’

  ‘We’ll stick our fingers in our ears,’ I promised him.

  ‘Okay, we’re on launch minus sixty and counting,’ said Martin Jessop, checking his watch again.

  I took my eyes off the cruise missile and looked towards the Devil’s chair. There was no doubt now that it was humming like a generator, and that the ground was trembling so much that it felt as if we were in for an earthquake. Sara held her hand out and I squeezed it as comfortingly as I could. We both knew the risks we were running, bluffing our way into the Jessop place. Anybody who could calmly arrange for the ‘accidental’ deaths of a hundred people or more, just for the sake of his own survival – well, they didn’t bear thinking about. I knew exactly how much they didn’t bear thinking about, because I was one of them. If anything went wrong with my plan this morning, then I would be just as responsible for all of those deaths as Martin Jessop and David Sears.

  ‘We’re on launch minus fifty-five and counting,’ said Martin Jessop. Down at the bottom of the slope, where the missile-launcher was parked, the three engineers hurried away and hid themselves behind a temporary barricade of sandbags.

  ‘You’re sure we’re going to be safe up here on the patio?’ I asked, in the kind of naive tone that a tourist from Idaho might use on his first trip into the spray of Niagara Falls.

  Martin Jessop glanced at me in irritation. ‘We’ll be safe, don’t you worry, Mr Delatolla. These missiles don’t go off with much of a blast. Noise – but not much of a blast.’

  David was staying close to the chair, and pacing about impatiently. He could feel the hum of malevolent power as well as I could, but to him it meant only one thing – his Jennifer was soon going to be restored to him the way she was before her accident. His long-dead wife was going to share his life again. The very idea of it made the hairs on the back of my neck tingle.

  ‘Fifty and counting,’ said Martin Jessop. Behind him, the sun was beginning to break through the clouds, and the first gilded light touched the dragon-scale tiles on the rooftops of the Jessop house, and sparkled on its windows.

  ‘Forty-five and still counting.’

  Sara said, ‘Ricky – what are we going to do?’

  ‘Watch,’ I whispered. ‘Watch!’

  The deep hum of the Devil’s chair had become overwhelming, and sitting on the black leather seat there appeared to be a half-invisible presence, a transparent ripple of disturbed air. At first, it was impossible to tell what it was, but then immediately beneath the grimacing face of the man-serpent an outline began to gather itself.

  It was the shape of the minotaur, the bull-creature. The Devil Himself. After almost two thousand years of banishment, He was so impatient to return that He was already beginning to take shape in the grotesque form in which He had terrorised Earth for centuries before the birth of the first of the innocents – the infant Jesus Christ.

  David, mesmerised by the slowly-curdling currents of air that were now filling up the seat of the chair, gradually sank to his knees.

  ‘Master,’ he said. ‘Master of everything.’

  Sara pressed her hand to her mouth. ‘My God,’ she said. ‘My God, it’s the Devil. The actual Devil.’

  Martin Jessop was staring, too, but in his efficient, mechanical way, he still managed to say, ‘Forty and counting.’

  ‘It has to be now,’ I said to Sara. ‘We’ve only got forty seconds left.’

  ‘Ricky, you’re not going to –’

  ‘Sara, I have to! Look at that thing! The minute those people are blown up at that convention centre, it’s going
to take on real flesh and real life, and then this world’s going to be cursed, I promise you.’

  Sara didn’t say anything. So I took Jonathan’s hand, and helped him to hop off the marble bench, and then I led him across the flagstones towards the Devil’s chair.

  It was cold, close to the chair. It felt as if someone had left the door of a meat-freezer wide open. And there was a penetrating smell, too, like the smell of decomposing corpses, and unpleasant acids, and musty fungus. Jonathan glanced up at me, and swallowed hard to show me that he felt sick, but I simply smiled at him, and led him forward. At least, I tried to smile.

  There was no question that the beast was taking shape now. I could see the wavering transparent curve of its horns, and the two dark smudges of its eyes, swimming in the air like the unformed eyes of an embryo chicken swim in their liquid albumen. And there was a sound, an echoing sound, as if someone were breathing down a long echoing metal pipe.

  Above the crest of the chair, purple-throated hummingbirds began to hover – only two or three of them at first – but then twenty or thirty, and more. They made a noise like swarming blowflies.

  ‘Twenty-five, and counting,’ said Martin Jessop flatly.

  David, on his knees in front of the chair, turned around to stare at Jonathan and me as we approached. His face was already pinched with cold, and his eyes were as wide as a lunatic’s.

  ‘Get away,’ he told us, and then he shouted, ‘get away!’ because he must have sensed the purpose of what we were doing. But together, my six-year-old son and I kept walking closer and closer to the Devil’s chair, until we were standing right in front of it.

  The Devil, already half-formed out of the promises that David and Martin Jessop had made Him, stared at us out of the slanted darkness of His eyes.

  ‘Why have you come?’ He whispered, in my mind.

  ‘You know why,’ I replied.

  ‘Your efforts are futile,’ He said. ‘It is already too late. My Kingdom is about to come.’

  ‘Your Kingdom will never come as long as there are innocents. And it will never come as long as there are people who believe in God, and do whatever they can to emulate Him.’

  The cold, congealed air that was sitting in the Devil’s chair began to ripple and shift, and I thought that I could see the shadowy outline of bones.

  ‘You can never defeat me,’ whispered the voice. ‘You have no strength and no determination, and you have already contracted with Me to sell your so-called Christian morality. To every one of those pilgrims at the convention centre, my friend, you will be Judas.’

  ‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘Jonathan – I want you to sit on the chair.’

  Martin Jessop said, ‘Fifteen, and counting. What’s going on there, David? Get Mr Delatolla away from there.’

  I grasped Jonathan’s hand, and led him to the chair. Jonathan’s teeth were chattering, and he stared up at me in terror.

  ‘Daddy, I don’t want to. Daddy, there’s something there. I’m frightened.’

  I hunkered down. The cold was so intense that my hands were white. ‘Jonathan,’ I said, ‘you remember when you were asleep? What it was like there? Well, the people who looked after you then will protect you now. I promise you. But it’s very important for you to sit in that chair. It’s the most important thing in the whole world. And if you’re brave enough to do it, you’re going to be a great big hero, bigger than Superman, bigger than anybody. Now, will you do it for me?’

  Jonathan, trembling, nodded. And it was then that David grabbed hold of my coat and jostled me sideways, so that I lost my balance. ‘Get away!’ he screamed. ‘You’re going to spoil everything! Get away!’

  I heard Martin Jessop say, ‘Ten seconds, and counting.’

  I rolled over in what seemed like slow-motion. For a split-second, as I fell, I could see two of Martin Jessop’s blue-uniformed engineers running up the slope of the garden towards us – presumably to come and sort me out. Then I collided with the chair, and reached out a hand to stop myself. My fingers gripped the black leather seat.

  I felt – I experienced – Hell.

  No matter how many medieval paintings and writings talk about eternal fire and burning, Hell is cold. Colder and more painful than anything you can imagine. Think of pressing your head up against a block of ice until your actual brain begins to suffer frostbite. Think of every thing inside you shrinking and tightening up and prickling with agony.

  I don’t know whether I screamed or not. I heard someone screaming, far away, as if they were screaming in another city, on another world. And then I felt myself irresistibly drawn towards the back of the chair, towards that dark endless crevice into which every damned soul is tumbled. It was Jonathan’s dream coming true – the dream he had told me about the first day the chair had arrived. The dream of his father disappearing down the back of the chair, lost and shrieking and gone forever.

  I heard a deep blurry voice mouth the words, ‘Eight... seven… six…’ And as if I were able to be everywhere and anywhere at once, I saw people all around me, felt them jostling against me. I saw them crowding into a large hall, and taking their seats. I felt the warmth of their bodies, the palpitation of their hearts, their fears and their loves and their friendliness. I was cold, frozen, and suspended in darkness, yet I was amongst them. I could almost teach out for them.

  I was actually inside of the Devil’s consciousness, sensing the souls that He was about to take for Himself, relishing their vulnerable humanity like a fierce beast outside of a cabin door, relishing the flesh of the people he can scent inside.

  Someone said, ‘Mel… there’s a seat here, Mel…’ and someone else said, ‘Isn’t that beautiful… that cross all made out of flowers…’ and I tried to reach out of my coldness and touch them but they were miles away in Los Angeles, and when the deeper voice said, ‘...four... three... two...’ I knew that they only had minutes left to live before the roof came in and they would all be blasted into bloody pieces. Then a brassy blaring voice commanded, ‘Come back!’ There was a moment when I felt as if my whole mind was being wrenched inside-out. Every memory of every day that I had ever lived, every word that I had ever spoken, every sunrise and every sunset, ripped out of my head like the multicoloured wires out of the back of a television, set. Then I was hurtling in slow-motion away from the chair, out of the darkness, and into the glare of the morning sunlight – falling across the stones of the patio with the awkward grace of an action replay.

  Martin Jessop, in a voice so slurred that I could hardly understand what he was saying, said, ‘…one…’

  I sat up with dream-like slowness. I saw David lunging towards the chair, his face contorted with fear. I saw the hideous outline of the Devil. And I saw my son, Jonathan, climbing on to the black leather seat with all the confidence of an angel.

  Everything snapped back. David screeched, ‘Jennifer! You promised me Jennifer!’

  Martin Jessop said sternly, ‘Ignition! Fire!’

  And Sara was screaming, ‘Ricky! Ricky! The chair!’

  ‘No!’ I yelled at Martin Jessop, but he had dropped his arm as a signal, and I heard the first ignition of the missile’s engines, a popping, crackling bellow that frightened the birds out of the surrounding trees. It was too late. It was all too late. There was nothing I could do. The pilgrims at the Los Angeles convention would all die, and if Martin Jessop had anything to do with it, so would Sara and Jonathan and I.

  Half-deafened by the mounting thunder of the missile, I turned towards the chair again. Jonathan was now taking his place on the seat as if he owned it – as if it were his own personal throne. He was actually sitting within the wavering shape of the Devil Himself, smiling, calm, and self-confident, and there was a radiance about him which reminded me of the-brightness that had shone from his eyes last night.

  David went down on his knees in front of the chair, scuffing and tearing his immaculate trousers. His face was extraordinary – crimson with anger, and knotted up with fear. He reached t
owards Jonathan as if he wanted to take hold of him and strangle him, but Jonathan simply smiled in his direction with all the composure of a Christ-child, and David seemed powerless to move any further.

  ‘Jennifer!’ raged David. ‘Jennifer!’ And at that moment, the cruise missile roared away from its launcher on a stiff lance of blue-and-white flame, and disappeared over the treetops with more noise than I can ever remember hearing in my whole life. It sounded as if the whole world had been swallowed up by fire.

  Jonathan stood up on the seat of the Devil’s chair. Without a word, his eyes radiant with light, he pointed to an upstairs window of the huge Gothic building behind him. David, shaking like an epileptic, staggered to his feet and stared.

  ‘Jennifer,’ he whispered, ‘Jennifer. My God. Jennifer. She’s, there. Martin! Jennifer’s there! Martin!’

  Shuddering with fear and disbelief, I looked up at the house. In the leaded window to which Jonathan’s finger was so steadfastly pointing, I could see a woman, pale-faced and still. Sara came towards me, reaching for my hand as if she were blind. ‘Is that really her?’ she asked me. ‘Do you really think that’s her?’

  ‘Martin, it’s her!’ shouted David, and began to run towards the house. Martin Jessop, confused, did nothing more than stare at me fixedly and then stalk as quickly as he could in pursuit. The two blue-uniformed engineers came puffing up to the patio, but when they realised that Sara and I were no longer of any apparent interest to anyone, they stopped, and looked at us with obvious uncertainty, and then gradually retreated back down the sloping garden towards the missile-launcher.

  But Jonathan stayed where he was.

  He stood on the seat of the chair, his face transfigured, his arms crossed on his chest, and he was smiling the most electrifying smile.

  ‘Ricky…’ said Sara. ‘He looks like… I don’t know… he looks like God.’

  I could still vaguely make out the shape of the minotaur-beast. But then Jonathan raised his hands, and lifted them to the sky, and the shape began to twist and writhe all around him like a whirlpool. There was a grating, groaning noise, and gradually the shape began to lose its definition.