The Tomb
Page 43
Jack sighed. How could he explain to her that “the woman” might be aging years by the hour, might be a drooling senile wreck by now? How could he convince Gia when he couldn’t quite convince himself?
The rest of the trip passed in silence as Abe wended his way uptown. They saw a few police cars, but none were close enough to notice the missing windshield.
“Thanks for everything, Abe,” Jack said as the truck pulled up in front of the brownstone.
“Want me to wait?”
“This may take a while. Thanks again. I’ll settle up with you in the morning.”
“I’ll have the bill ready.”
Jack kissed the sleeping Vicky on the head and slid out of the seat. He was stiff and sore.
“Are you coming over?” Gia asked, finally looking at him.
“As soon as I can,” he said, glad the invitation was still open. “If you still want me to.”
“I want you to.”
“Then I’ll be there. Within an hour. I promise.”
“You’ll be okay?”
He was grateful for her worried look.
“Sure.”
He slammed the door and watched them drive off. Then he began the long climb to the third floor. When he reached his door, key in hand, he hesitated.
A chill crept over him: What waited on the other side?
Nothing, he hoped. An empty front room and a young Kolabati asleep in his bed. He’d deposit both necklaces on the nightstand where she’d find them in the morning, then he’d leave for Gia’s place.
That would be the easy way. Kolabati would know her brother was dead without his actually having to tell her. Hopefully, she’d be gone when he got back.
Let’s make this easy, he thought. Let something be easy tonight.
He opened the door and stepped into the dark front room. The only illumination leaked down the hall from his bedroom. All he could hear was breathing—rapid, ragged, rattly … from the couch. He stepped toward it.
“Kolabati?”
A gasp, a cough, a groan, then someone rose from the couch. Framed in the light from the hall was a wizened, spindly figure with high thin shoulders and kyphotic spine. It stepped toward him. Jack sensed rather than saw an outstretched hand.
“Give it to me!” The voice was little more than a faint rasp, a snake sliding through dry straw. “Give it back to me!”
But the cadence and pronunciation were unmistakable—Kolabati.
Jack tried to speak and found his throat locked. With shaking hands he reached around to the back of his neck and removed the necklace. He then pulled Kusum’s from his pocket.
“Returning it with interest,” he managed to say as he dropped both necklaces into the extended palm, avoiding contact with the skin.
Kolabati either did not realize or did not care that she now possessed both necklaces. She made a slow, tottering turn and hobbled off toward the bedroom. For an instant she was caught in the light from the hall. Jack turned away at the sight of her shrunken body, her stooped shoulders and arthritic joints. Kolabati was an ancient hag. She turned the corner and Jack was alone in the room.
A great lethargy seeped over him. He went over to the chair by the front window that looked out onto the street and sat down.
It’s over. Finally over.
Kusum gone, the rakoshi gone, Vicky home safe. And in his bedroom Kolabati was turning young again. He fought an insistent urge to sneak down the hall and see what was happening … to watch her grow young. Maybe then he could believe in magic.
Magic … after all he’d seen, all he’d been through, he still found it difficult to believe in magic. Magic didn’t make sense. Magic didn’t follow the rules. Magic …
What was the use? He couldn’t explain the necklaces or the rakoshi. Call them unknowns. Leave it at that.
But still—to watch it happening …
He went to stand up and found he couldn’t. He was too weak. He slumped back and closed his eyes.
Sleepy …
A sound behind him startled him. He opened his eyes and realized that he must have dozed off. The hazy skim-milk light of predawn filled the sky. He must have been out for at least an hour. Someone was approaching from the rear. Jack tried to turn to see who it was but found he could only move his head. His shoulders felt glued to the wingback of the chair … so weak …
“Jack?” Kolabati’s voice—the Kolabati he knew. The young Kolabati. “Jack, are you all right?”
“Fine,” he said. Even his voice was weak.
She came around the chair and looked down at him. Her necklace was back on around her neck. She hadn’t returned all the way to the thirty-year-old he’d known, but she was close. He put her age at somewhere around forty-five now.
“No, you’re not! There’s blood all over the chair and the floor!”
“I’ll be okay.”
“Here.” She produced the second necklace—Kusum’s. “Let me put this on you.”
“No.” He didn’t want anything to do with Kusum’s necklace. Or hers.
“Don’t be an idiot! It will strengthen you until you can get to a hospital. All your wounds started bleeding again as soon as you took it off.”
She reached to place it around his neck but he twisted his head to block her.
“Don’t want it!”
“You’re going to die without it, Jack!”
“I’ll be fine. I’ll heal up—without magic. So please go. Just go.”
Her eyes looked sad. “You mean that?”
He nodded.
“We could each have our own necklace. We could have long lives, the two of us. We wouldn’t be immortal, but we could live on and on. No sickness, little pain—”
You’re a cold one, Kolabati.
Not a thought for her brother—Is he dead? How did he die?
Jack could not help but remember how she’d told him to get hold of Kusum’s necklace and bring it back, saying that without it he would lose control of the rakoshi. That had been the truth in a way—Kusum would no longer have control of the rakoshi because he’d die without it. When Jack compared that to Kusum’s frantic efforts to find her necklace after she’d been mugged, Kolabati came up short. She didn’t know a debt when she incurred one. She spoke of honor but had none. Mad as he’d been, Kusum was ten times the human being she was.
But he couldn’t explain all this to her now. He didn’t have the strength. And she probably wouldn’t understand anyway.
“Please go.”
She snatched the necklace away and held it up. “Very well! I thought you were a man worthy of this, a man willing to stretch his life to the limit and live it to the fullest, but I see I was wrong! So sit there in your pool of blood and fade away if that’s what you wish! I have no use for your kind! I never have! I wash my hands of you!”
She tucked the extra necklace into a fold in her sari and strode by him. He heard the apartment door slam and knew he was alone.
Jack tried to straighten himself in the chair. The attempt flashed pain through every inch of his body; the minor effort left his heart pounding and his breath rasping.
Am I dying?
That thought would have brought on a panic response at any other time, but at the moment his brain seemed as unresponsive as his body. Why hadn’t he accepted Kolabati’s help, even for a short while? Some sort of grand gesture? What was he trying to prove, sitting here and oozing blood, ruining the carpet as well as the chair? He wasn’t thinking clearly.
Cold in here—a clammy cold that sank to the bones. He ignored it and thought about the night. He’d done good work tonight … probably saved the entire subcontinent of India from a nightmare. Not that he cared much about India. Gia and Vicky were the ones that mattered. He had—
The phone rang.
No possibility of his answering it.
Who was it—Gia? Maybe. Maybe she was wondering where he was. He hoped so. Maybe she’d come looking for him. Maybe she’d even get here in time. Again, he hoped so
. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to spend a lot of time with Gia and Vicky. And he wanted to remember tonight. He’d made a difference tonight. He’d been the deciding factor. He could be proud of that. Even Dad would be proud … if only he could tell him.
He closed his eyes—too much effort to keep them open—and waited.
www.repairmanjack.com
THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WORLD
The preponderance of my work deals with a history of the world that remains undiscovered, unexplored, and unknown to most of humanity. Some of this secret history has been revealed in the Adversary Cycle, some in the Repairman Jack novels, and bits and pieces in other, seemingly unconnected works. Taken together, even these millions of words barely scratch the surface of what has been going on behind the scenes, hidden from the workaday world. I’ve listed these works below in the chronological order in which the events in them occur.
Note: “Year Zero” is the end of civilization as we know it; “Year Zero Minus One” is the year preceding it, etc.
The Past
“Demonsong” (prehistory)
“Aryans and Absinthe”** (1923–1924)
Black Wind (1926–1945)
The Keep (1941)
Reborn (February–March 1968)
“Dat Tay Vao”*** (March 1968)
Jack: Secret Histories (1983)
Jack: Secret Circles (1983)
Jack: Secret Vengeance (1983)
Year Zero Minus Three
Sibs (February)
“Faces”* (early summer)
The Tomb (summer)
“The Barrens”* (ends in September)
“The Wringer”
“A Day in the Life”* (October)
“The Long Way Home”
Legacies (December)
Year Zero Minus Two
Conspiracies (April) (includes “Home Repairs”)
“Interlude at Duane’s”** (April)
All the Rage (May) (includes “The Last Rakosh”)
Hosts (June)
The Haunted Air (August)
Gateways (September)
Crisscross (November)
Infernal (December)
Year Zero Minus One
Harbingers (January)
Bloodline (April)
By the Sword (May)
Ground Zero (July)
The Touch (ends in August)
The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium (ends in September)
“Tenants”*
Year Zero
“Pelts”*
Reprisal (ends in February)
Fatal Error (February)
The Dark at the End (March)
Nightworld (starts in May)
Reprisal will be back in print before too long. I’m planning a total of fifteen Repairman Jack novels (not counting the young adult titles), ending the Secret History with the publication of a heavily revised Nightworld.
*available in The Barrens and Others
**available in Aftershock & Others
***available in the 2009 reissue of The Touch
ALSO BY F. PAUL WILSON
The Adversary Cycle*
The Keep
The Touch
Reborn
Reprisal
Nightworld
Repairman Jack Novels*
Legacies
Conspiracies
All the Rage
Hosts
The Haunted Air
Gateways
Crisscross
Infernal
Harbingers
Bloodline
By the Sword
Ground Zero
Fatal Error
Young Adult*
Jack: Secret Histories
Jack: Secret Circles
Jack: Secret Vengeance
Other Novels
Healer
Wheels Within Wheels
An Enemy of the State
Black Wind*
Dydeetown World
The Tery
Sibs*
The Select
Implant
Virgin
Deep as the Marrow
Mirage (with Matthew J. Costello)
Nightkill (with Steven Spruill)
Masque (with Matthew J. Costello)
The Christmas Thingy
Sims
The Fifth Harmonic
Midnight Mass
Short Fiction
Soft and Others
The Barrens and Others*
Aftershock & Others*
The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium*
Editor
Freak Show
Diagnosis: Terminal
*See “The Secret History of the World”.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE TOMB
Copyright © 1984, 2004 by F. Paul Wilson
This revised edition was previously published in 2004 as Rakoshi by Borderlands Press.
All rights reserved.
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ISBN 978-0-7653-2740-6
First Tor Trade Paperback Edition: March 2011
eISBN 978-1-4299-5671-0
First Tor eBook Edition: March 2011