Sepulchre

by James Herbert

  He was smiling again.

  Quinn-Reece turned his head. Was someone still outside? He was sure he'd heard movement in the outer office. Leaving the glass on the corner of his desk, the deputy chairman walked to the half-open door.

  He pulled it open all the way and looked through. "Anyone there?" he called out, feeling rather foolish.

  There was no response.

  He stepped forward and caught a whiff of spices just before something soft fell over his head and blocked out the light.

  Hands shoved him from behind and he staggered forward, fell, lay sprawled on a hard floor, his head still covered.

  Quinn-Reece remained prone for a few seconds, regathering his senses, terribly afraid to move. He heard the click of a door closing. He was trembling badly.

  The brief, stumbling journey had been one of the worst experiences of his life (so far), for it was a brutally rushed trip toward a fate unknown. He now knew how murderers must have felt in the old days when they were taken hooded from their cell and hurried to the gallows, giving them precious little time to consider the eternity waiting for them at the end of the corridor (except there was always time to consider that prospect, no matter how fast they took you, no matter how roughly they treated you, because part of your mind was quiet, entirely remote from the rest of your feverish thoughts, numbingly and so fearfully aware . . .). He had been held down, and even though no words were spoken, no one answered his demands, nor his pleas, he was sure there were two of them—yet he had felt himself rising. The elevator. They must have bundled him into the elevator. But why? Where were they taking him? Oh God, was it true then? Were these people after Felix Kline? Had they made a mistake, thinking that he was the psychic? That had to be it! So perhaps it was safe to look up, to show them, convince them they'd got the wrong man. He had no allegiance to Kline, far from it: he could tell them all they wanted to know. No need to harm him, he wasn't the one they were after.

  Quinn-Reece hesitantly raised his head and saw the whiteness of the floor below the edges of the cloth. Tentatively, expecting to have his hand knocked away at any moment, he lifted the hem. He could see the room now. Slowly he pulled the fluffy material away (it was a large towel, he realized, probably from one of the executive bathrooms) and looked around.

  He was in the white room. Kline's white room.

  And he was alone.

  He pushed himself to his knees, his eyes half-closed against the brilliant glare. What was happening, what the hell were they playing at? Was the idea only to keep him out of the way for a while? The notion came as a relief. It emboldened him enough to rise to his feet.

  Quinn-Reece went to the double-door and listened with his ear flat against the glossy surface. No sounds without. He tried one of the door handles. Locked.

  Stepping back, he surveyed the entrance for a while, gradually becoming used to the assailing brightness. He turned and began walking toward the smaller door on the opposite side of the room, his footsteps loud because of uninterrupted acoustics. He had reached the low central dais when the harsh whiteness around him collapsed into utter darkness.

  Quinn-Reece cried out, as if the abrupt change had come as a physical blow.

  There was nothing to see, absolutely nothing to focus on. Even the floor beneath his feet had somehow lost substance. His hands— unseen—waved in the air before him, as though grasping for light itself.

  "What are you doing?" he shouted, a feeble entreaty to the blackness.

  Naturally there was no reply.

  So disoriented was Quinn-Reece that he had to will one foot to go forward. The thought that he might be stepping over the brink into an abyss was difficult to dismiss. He moved his other foot, arms still outstretched like a blind man's (which, in effect, he was), even though he knew there were no obstacles in his way.

  Another step.

  His breathing was fluttery.

  Another step.

  He could not see them, but he was aware that his fingers twitched like insect antennae.

  Another step.

  And he touched flesh.

  So unexpected was the sensation, and so tense had Quinn-Reece become, that he shrieked like a woman. He fell away, a leg coming into sharp contact with the dais. He slumped across it and lay shaking.

  Wondering why the fingertips of the hand that had touched whatever—no, he meant whoever—stood in his way were tingling, he brought them closer to his face, disregarding the fact that he was unable to see. He felt something clinging to them.

  He rubbed his fingers together, and whatever had been there flaked away. It had been tissue-thin.

  "Who's there?" he managed to say, and was uncomfortable with the sound of his own voice.

  The silence was more frightening than any reply.

  A warm breath brushed his cheek. He spun around on the platform, scurrying to its farthest edge, away from whoever had leaned over him.

  But a sigh close to his ear sent him scuttling back.

  The men who had dragged him into this room must have slipped inside somehow after the lights had gone out! Yet he hadn't heard the opening and closing of a door, there had been no sudden shaft of light. How could they be in there with him? He remembered the spicy smell before he had been hooded. The smell was familiar. From where, from when?

  A low chuckle. From someone close by. And then a hand caressing his cheek.

  Quinn-Reece flinched violently and quickly squirmed away. The touch against his cheek had been roughened as though the other's skin was crispy with age. When he tried to wipe off the mark he felt had been left there, he discovered flaky tissue hanging to his own skin. He slapped it off in revulsion.

  He twisted his head, this way and that, sightless but attempting to perceive. His whole body was quivering uncontrollably now. He sniffed, for there was a peculiar aroma in the air. Nothing to do with spices, this. Something different, vaguely unpleasant. Like a faint molding dampness. Decay.

  Light lashed out at him.

  He cringed, covering his face with his hands. Peeped through open fingers at the rectangle of vivid colors high on the wall. One of the screens was lit.

  It depicted a relief map of an island. A recognizably irregular shape. New Guinea. The colors merged, became a muddy blur. Faded to white. Became black.

  A new map lit up. He forced himself to look. Was it?— yes, it was. Brazil. There had been a recent find, a low-grade gold deposit. Not by Magma, though. No, by Consolidated.

  As the colors merged, Quinn-Reece looked around the room. The brightness from the screen should have revealed anyone else present. But he was the only occupant.

  Blackness again.

  Another screen came alive, and this time he could guess the location without recognizing it. Namibia. Yes, there had been a new discovery of uranium there. Again, not by Magma. He began to understand some of what was going on.

  "Felix?" he ventured.

  Total blackness. Still no reply.

  "Felix, you're making a mistake. The girl, you said yourself . . ." His words trailed away. Kline wasn't in the room. Why was he talking as if he were?

  Quinn-Reece began to slide his legs off the dais. He stopped when he heard a soft chuckle.

  This time not only three screens lit up: they all did. And the colors ran together, from one screen to the next, frames no longer divisive, blues and greens and browns beginning to streak, to flow around the room, a swift-moving stream, faster and faster, a kaleidoscope of color, dazzling him, mesmerizing him, melting together, faster now, merging, gradually becoming white, an absence of color, a broad pale strip circumscribing the room.

  Things began to break through that white band. Creeping things. Black and shiny like giant cockroaches, although their limbs, three on either side of their glossy shells, were like human arms—but scaly, and dark.

  They hatched from the whiteness, wriggling through, dropping to the floor and into the shadows where only muted reflections on their curved backs could be observed. They scuttled
across the floor toward him.

  Quinn-Reece moved to the center of the platform, drawing up his legs, denying to himself that this was happening, certain it was a nightmare, wondering why he could not wake.

  The cracked band of white vanished.

  Terrible blackness around him once more.

  Nothing at all to be seen.

  But he could hear those things tapping toward him.

  "Felix, please!" he implored, for he knew that Kline was responsible, that Kline was punishing him for his betrayal. But he didn't understand how this could happen, for he realized it was no nightmare, the pain in his lower lip, where his teeth had clamped down, too sharp to be a dream. He shrieked this time. "Please!"

  A chuckle from somewhere behind.

  And a clicking close by as the first of those creatures scrambled over the edge of the dais.

  Sometime later, the doors to the white room opened and Khayed and Daoud slipped in. They went straight to the dead but unmarked body spread across the low dais, lifted it between them, and carried it out.

  When the doors closed behind them, the room swiftly regressed to black.

  KHAYED AND DAOUD

  DISPLACED AND FOUND

  They were not truly Jordanians. Asil Khayed and Youssef Daoud were, in fact, displaced persons, their families having fled Palestine when the independent State of Israel was declared in May 1948. Their parents were of the same clan and came from the same village, which was close to Jerusalem. They had been led to believe by those who had their own political motives that the Zionist forces would destroy their homes and meager crops, would slaughter their children and livestock, would rape their women, would torture and murder the men. Flight to the River Jordan was their only hope.

  They came to the refugee camp at Ein es Sultan, one of many such sites scattered around the city of Jericho and along the West Bank. The two Arab boys had been born within weeks of each other, and were now to be raised in the squalor of a vast tent city containing tens of thousands of grieving migrants, where there were no toilets, kitchens, or medical facilities, and where most days were spent awaiting the arrival of water trucks and supply convoys from Damascus and Amman. The tents provided by the International Red Cross were of thin canvas that, unlike the tough Bedouin tents of animal skins and furs, were virtually useless against the rains and sandstorms. Their beds were nothing more than light sleeping mats. Running, open sewers and hills of rotting garbage were everywhere, attracting flies and mosquitoes by the millions. Severe dysentery was rife. Cholera, typhoid, and other diseases claimed thousands of lives. Fierce rainfalls and then intolerable heat brought in by khamsin winds from the desert weakened all.

  The mukhtar of their old village, whom the clans gathered around, could offer no comfort, for his spirit had been broken by the ignoble flight of his people and the hopelessness he saw all around. Hate with all your heart, he could only tell them, despise the Zionist dogs who have brought you to this. Nurture the hatred, live for revenge against the Jews.

  Typhoid took Youssef's father, along with his two older brothers and a sister. That the youngster and his mother survived was no miracle, for death was indiscriminate. The widow and her child came under the protection of Asil's father, there being no energy for jealousy among the women. And the Koran, which spoke severely against adultery and fornication, also preached the blessedness of caring for cripples, idiots, blind men, and widows. The boys grew up together and became closer than natural brothers.

  Although rough hovels of mud bricks gradually replaced the tents, a form of rough villages taking shape along the Jordan, the rule of kaif—a passivity that might be described as idleness—prevailed. Few businesses were set up, no industries were started. There were no schools for the younger exiles, no games or activities organized for them. The demoralized Palestinians relied on the charity of others, as if content to wallow in their own hatred for the Jews and the foreign powers that had betrayed them. The Moslem Brotherhood was eager to exploit the persecution and never tired of stoking the fires of vengeance against these infamous "invaders," while at the same time extolling the virtues of martyrdom for the great Arab cause of repatriation.

  Asil and Youssef were children of a rubbled ghetto, existing on whatever was sparingly given, thriving on bitterness that was generously supplied. When Asil's father was killed in a riot against the reviled Arab Legion of Jordan's King Abdullah, who, along with certain leaders of other Arab states, saw the political advantages in keeping the Palestinians a nation in exile rather than welcoming and absorbing them as true brothers (acceptance of the State of Israel would be a threat to his own power in the Middle East), the boys took on the responsibility for their family. By then the United Nations had taken charge over the welfare of the refugee camps and at least some progress was taking place in these humble villages. In Ein es Sultan there were mosques, a ritual slaughterhouse, stores, warehouses, and food distribution centers. The boys were lucky enough to find jobs as coffee vendors, passing from shop to kiosk with their trays bearing coffee finjans, cups, and sticky sweets, often trekking out to the lines of trucks awaiting customs clearance at the Allenby Bridge.

  For pleasure they hung around the cafes and listened to the elders reminiscing about the old life in their villages, of the main square always awash with the aromas of pungent spices, cardamom in coffee, incense, and camel, donkey, sheep, and goat dung. They spoke of important feasts, sighing over the exotic foods once served, while the boys would drool at their mention.

  The elders' conversation would turn to memories of the houses they once dwelled in, solidly built with mud bricks and dung, brightly whitewashed to deflect the sun's rays, with a single color outlining doors and windows, the roofs flat for collecting water during the rainy season. They spoke of village tradesmen, the potter, the carpenter, the sandal maker, the basket and cloth weavers. Their eyes brimmed with tears as they remembered what had been lost to them. How life once centered around the village square with its well and ovens, the store and cafe where they could listen to the radio all day while they watched the passing activity, the cameleers, the peddlers on their loaded donkey carts, the knife and scissors grinders—the veiled women going about their daily tasks.

  Eventually, when nostalgia held them in its soft-edged grip, they would boast of their feats in battle, their bravery, their cunning. And they would dismiss the Arab defeat by the Jews as a misconception, for they had been tricked by the agents of the devil, jinn—evil spirits—in human form. The Jews were not a worthy enemy. The Jews had an alliance with unholy forces. Mohammed himself had declared that the Jews had been led away from the edicts of Allah, and for that their punishment would be burning.

  Asil and Youssef listened and absorbed. They wept for their homeland and for the life they had never known but missed dearly. They seethed with hatred for these people who called themselves Israelis.

  The boys grew and became wise in the ways of survival. Schooling, even under the auspices of the UNRWA, was little more than a revolutionary training ground, the Arab tutors organizing their students into cells, each with its own aggressive title, incitement against the so-called State of Israel and Us treacherous allies the main lesson of every day. Physical education included weapons training, knife fighting, tracking, and the negotiation of assault courses.

  Black-marketeering became the most profitable occupation, stealing and intimidation the second best. Asil and Youssef became the runners for dealers in hashish, then lookouts for raids on supply depots.

  Crude and boastful chatter between the two boys of the sexual delights they would bestow upon females soon faded when awareness took on physical actuality and they discovered their true yearning was for each other, their experiments resolving in glorious consummation. Asil and Youssef could imagine no other form of lovemaking surpassing the pleasure they had given one another. Although males were allowed to hold hands and kiss in public, homosexuality was frowned upon generally in the Arab world; Asil and Youssef kept the inti
mate side of their relationship to themselves, the illicitness adding to its deliciousness.

  As with other Palestinian youths, they were pressured into joining the fedayeen when they were old enough, its members' violence and unruliness directed toward the jihad, the holy war, and against the oppressor. The Jordanians encouraged guerrilla raids into Jewish territory, the killing and maiming perpetrated in the name of Allah, and the more youths lost in such expeditions, the more martyrs the Arabs had to hold up to the world. A mark of manhood for the fedayeen recruits was to bite off the heads of live chickens and snakes, or to strangle puppies and cats.

  Although they had never been considered outstandingly bright by their superiors, Asil and Youssef's performance in the field and their cunning in fighting was impressive. And the elders were suitably struck by the youths' cruelty.

  Their missions into enemy territory became more frequent —and more hazardous. It was on one such expedition that they discovered for themselves the extent—and the true nature—of their own barbarity.

  Avoiding Israeli patrols, they had slipped across the border, their venture more of a test than a serious assault (the fedayeen were considering the two youths for important work in the revolutionary movement), their destination a kibbutz somemiles from Bira. Dunams of marsh and swampland there, as at countless other settlements in this relatively new state, had been skillfully irrigated and cultivated, so that what was once barren land had become areas of rich soil suitable for vines, orchards, and grain. The fields were protected against incursion with nothing more than fences of cactus and thorny jujube, although the living quarters themselves were behind a tall stockade. Asil and Youssef's intention had been to blow up one of the water towers located outside the compound with explosives readily supplied by their Jordanian hosts. But as they broke through the crude boundary under the cover of darkness, they came upon a young Israeli couple, a youth and a girl, who had found a remote spot where they could make love without being disturbed.