Burial Page 15

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘Come on, Harry … I know you better than you know yourself. I can remember things about you that you’ve forgotten about.’

  I was beginning not to like the sound of this. The room seemed gloomier and chillier than ever, and Martin had taken on a darkness that was even more overwhelming than the shadows that I had first seen flickering on the wall. His darkness was three-dimensional — a frigid and tangible darkness. I felt that there was every possibility that the sun had set for good; and that the Earth had already started on its long and final journey into endless night.

  I gave Naomi’s chair a quick, forceful pull, hoping to catch Martin off-guard. But he must have been able to read my mind, because he held on to it as tightly as ever.

  ‘What the hell do you want?’ I shouted at him. ‘Is it you who moved all of this furniture? What the hell are you doing it for?’

  ‘Now then, foolish; learn your place.’

  ‘Let her go,’ I insisted.

  Martin slowly shook his head, and gave a taut, unpleasant grin, like somebody peeling back the skin of a strange dried-up fruit, to reveal the structure underneath. ‘Now it’s our turn. I will never let her go. I will never let any of you go. Not until you have been dragged from the face of the Earth, and every last trace of you has vanished as if you had never been, and you have been imprisoned in the place of shadows to which so many of us were once condemned.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Who are you?’

  ‘I am the one who knows you the best.’

  ‘Let the woman go. That’s all I’m asking. She never did anything to you. She never hurt a fly.’

  Martin shook his head again. ‘How can I let her go? How can I release just one of you, when all of you have to die?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Martin — whatever you are, whoever’s inside of you, let her go!’

  With a fierce expression on his face, Martin raised his right arm and tugged at his shirtsleeve, so that his cuff tore open. He rolled back his sleeve in three quick jerky movements. He turned his bare forearm this way and that. Then he seized hold of Naomi’s hair with his left hand and violently pulled her head back.

  Naomi let out a gargling squeal and kicked on the floor with her heels. Almost at once, the dining-room door was snatched open, and Michael came in. He stared at Martin, then he stared at me.

  ‘What in God’s name is going on? What are you doing to her?’

  ‘Michael — it’s okay,’ I told him. ‘Please, just back off.’

  ‘I heard Naomi cry out. Listen — what are you doing? Get your hands off her hair. Listen, did you hear me? Get your hands off her hair!’

  ‘Out!’ Martin commanded him.

  But Michael stalked forward and tried to prize Naomi free. ‘Listen, pal, I gave you permission to hold a seance, not to —’

  Karen was standing in the doorway. ‘Harry?’ she said. ‘Is everything all right?’

  Michael had stopped talking in mid-sentence. He was staring at Martin and quaking all over, as if he were being shaken.

  ‘Not that,’ he said, thickly. ‘You can’t bring that back.’

  ‘I can bring anything back,’ Martin told him, wrenching Naomi’s hair back even further. ‘I know you the best, after all. I know everything about you. Everything.’

  Michael dropped slowly to his knees. He pressed his hands over his eyes, and I could tell by the way that his shoulders were shaking that he was sobbing.

  ‘What the hell have you done to him?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Martin, turning his attention away from Michael as if he were quite confident that he wasn’t going to give him any more trouble. ‘I have shown him himself, that’s all. And I can do the same to you.’ I went over to Michael and helped him up. His face was smothered in tears. ‘Nobody could have known that,’ he wept. ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Come on, Michael, I think it’s better that you stay out of here.’

  ‘What about Naomi? What’s he doing to her?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I reassured him; although it wasn’t okay at all. I had expected to confront some kind of apparition. I had even been prepared for voices; or glowing ectoplasm; or faces that appeared out of the floor. But I hadn’t expected Martin to be taken over so completely. I felt helpless. If Martin couldn’t control this spirit that was using his body, then how the hell could I?

  Michael said — more to himself than to me — ‘Nobody could have known that. Nobody.’

  I put my arm around his shoulder. ‘Maybe it’s better if you leave the room. This is kind of a critical moment.’

  ‘I was only seven when it happened,’ he sobbed. ‘How could anybody know?’

  ‘Please, Michael,’ I insisted. ‘Take care of Karen for me.’

  Michael sniffed and nodded and smeared his eyes with his fingers. ‘I’m sorry. I apologize. It took me so much by surprise, is all.’

  I led him to the door, and Karen reached out for him. But at that moment, Martin called, ‘Wait! Why shouldn’t he see?’

  We turned. Martin looked thunderously dark. He seemed to be bigger than before, his head throwing a shadow as heavy and ungainly as a buffalo’s. His face was transfigured — his eyes wide, his skin stretched back over his cheekbones, his teeth snarling.

  Before any of us could move, he had thrust his right hand into Naomi’s mouth, his fingers hooked around her lower teeth. Then he wrenched her mouth wide open, audibly dislocating her jaw. Naomi choked and gagged and gave a muffled scream, but Martin was gripping her hair so tightly that she couldn’t move.

  Without a word, I ran across the room and threw Martin back against the wall. I managed to catch him with one awkward punch, but he swung his right arm and hit me so hard on the side of the head that I toppled over sideways. My head sang and for a split-second I didn’t know where the hell I was; or what I was doing. I stood up, staggered toward him, and he hit me again, right on the cheekbone.

  I fell backwards, stumbled, and sat jarringly right on my tailbone. For a moment I saw nothing but darkness, with needle-prick stars.

  ‘Stay away!’ Martin roared at me. ‘You changed the course of our history; now it is our turn to change the course of yours!’

  Without hesitation, he pushed his hand into Naomi’s mouth, and took hold of her tongue. She was struggling and kicking and letting out high, rabbit-like screams. But Martin’s strength — or the strength of the spirit which possessed him — was enormous. I had been in fights before, plenty of fights — you know how it is: jealous husbands, political disagreements after too many martinis, parking-lot tussles over who got to which space first. But nobody had ever knocked me down with two straight punches, not like that. And I had a strong suspicion that he hadn’t even hit me as hard as he was capable of hitting me.

  ‘Martin!’ I shouted at him. But the spirit was in full control now, and the spirit didn’t answer to the name of Martin.

  ‘Singing Rock,’ I breathed. ‘If you can help me now, in the name of all that you hold sacred, then do it.’

  Karen, in the doorway, screamed in fear.

  Michael bellowed, ‘No!’

  Martin had grasped Naomi’s tongue in his fist, so that it bulged out dark and distended, like a huge purplish slug. He started to pull it out of her mouth with hard, insistent tugs. I could hear the floor of her mouth tearing with every tug; the crackle of skin and membrane parting company.

  Michael flew forward, his arms like windmills, his fears forgotten, but Martin was more than ready for him. As Michael rushed up, he let go of Naomi’s hair, and hit him with a left that snapped his head back and stopped him dead. Michael dropped to the floor as if he had been hit by a .45.

  ‘Harry — stop him!’ Karen screamed. But I knew there was nothing I could do. The spirit was far too vicious, far too strong.

  ‘Dial 911,’I told her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s nothing I can do! Dial 911, for Christ’s sake, before he k
ills her!’

  Martin gripped Naomi’s hair again and gave her tongue one last vicious yank. It was ripped away in a welter of blood and Martin tossed it onto the floor. It made a slapping sound that I won’t ever forget.

  ‘It’s your turn now,’ Martin breathed. ‘You thought you were mighty, didn’t you? You thought you were superior! You thought that your laws were more just, that your gods were more powerful, that your destiny was written in letters of fire! Well, you should have killed us all while you had the chance. You should have wiped out every last one of us. At least we would have gone with pride.

  ‘But you imprisoned us on our own land; and degraded us; and brought us low. And that was your greatest mistake. Because the prisoner craves release, my friend; and the degraded dream of walking with a straight back; and those who have been brought low think of nothing but revenge.’

  He stared at me for a very long time, almost as if he were willing me to name him. I had already suspected who he might be. I had already spoken his name in my mind. But I had been hoping with the same unreasonable hope that had made me bet on the New York Yankees year after year that I was wrong; that this couldn’t be.

  As soon as I had seen Singing Rock’s face on that book, I had realized who was threatening me, maybe even sooner — when Karen had first walked into my office.

  It wasn’t a coincidence. I didn’t believe in magic and I didn’t believe in what the tea-leaves told me and I didn’t believe that I had found myself here in this apartment by accident. I had faced this spirit before and this spirit now wanted to confront me again, face to face, and show me at last who was stronger.

  ‘We won’t make the same mistake as you,’ Martin told me. ‘We won’t wish on you the living death that you wished on us. We won’t pretend to protect and revere your culture while treating your people like filth.

  ‘By the time we have finished, you will be gone. You will be gone. There will be no trace of you, no single footmark, anywhere.’

  I touched my swollen cheekbone. I felt as if I had been hit by a hammer. ‘What are you talking about?’ I asked him, in a cotton-packed voice that sounded like Marlon Brando in The Godfather. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  Martin smiled. ‘I am talking about this, foolish,’ he said. ‘I am talking about turning your whole world inside-out.’

  With that, he thrust his whole fist down between Naomi’s dislocated jaws, straight into her throat She heaved and retched, and her eyes goggled as his arm blocked off her windpipe. But he continued to push and push, until he had forced his arm right down her throat to the elbow. Blood ran from her lips like overflowing soup: dark blood, arterial blood, which soaked her dress. Martin’s invading arm swelled her throat up obscenely, so that she looked as if she were goitred.

  ‘What can I feel?’ he asked, twisting his arm around. ‘I can feel her lungs; I can feel her belly, warm as a cut-open buffalo.’

  Michael, stunned, had managed to struggle onto his knees. First of all he tried to focus on me, then on Naomi.

  ‘What’s — what’s —’ he began. But Martin had hit him so hard that he couldn’t see properly and he couldn’t understand what was going on. He sat back on his haunches with his hands over his face, while only a few feet in front of him Naomi was dying.

  I managed to climb onto my feet, and stood in front of Martin. I guessed I must have been swaying, because the whole room seemed to be tilting from side to side like a showboat, and Martin kept advancing and receding, advancing and receding.

  ‘Singing Rock,’ I whispered. ‘Help me.’

  Martin thrust his arm deeper into Naomi’s mouth. Her cheeks were grey from oxygen starvation, her eyes were almost bursting out. But one hand still feebly flapped, as she tried to fight against this monstrous invasion of her body — the most complete and devastating rape of a human being that I had ever seen. Tiny bubbles of blood frothed around the corner of her mouth as she tried to drag air into her lungs past Martin’s arm.

  ‘I can feel a heart, beating its last frantic beats,’ said Martin. ‘I can feel a liver, slippery and dark. I can feel a womb, like the softest of fruits.’

  Singing Rock said, ‘The water.’

  I turned around, still half-poleaxed, almost losing my balance. Singing Rock was standing by the door, his arms by his sides, in his horn-rimmed spectacles and his sober business suit; yet his face as hawklike as ever.

  ‘The water,’ he repeated, in a voice that sang in my ears like the dying reverberations of a tuning-fork. ‘Spirits have no command over water, that is why your friend brought it here!’

  I turned back in horror to Martin and Naomi. Martin had plunged his arm into Naomi’s mouth right up to his bicep. Her lips were stretched so wide that she looked like a snake swallowing a sheep. He had plunged his hand deep into her intestines and was stirring them around, so that even beneath her dress her stomach rippled and churned.

  ‘Singing Rock,’ I said, softly. Then, ‘Singing Rock’! But as I turned around again, he disappeared through the open doorway, as silently as a switched-off light.

  I staggered after him. ‘SingingRock, help me!’ My shoulder collided with the doorframe and I bruised the back of my hand on the handle.

  The living room was brightly-lit, another world. Karen was just putting down the phone. ‘They’re coming as quick as they can,’ she told me, her face white.

  ‘Did you see him?’ I demanded.

  ‘Who? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Singing Rock was here — he just came through the door.’

  ‘Harry, there was nobody.’

  ‘I saw him! He was here!’

  I heard a coarse, jerky tearing sound behind me. I looked back, and saw that Martin had reached forward with his left hand and ripped open Naomi’s floral dress. Karen came hurrying across the living room but I said, ‘No — stay there. Wait for the cops.’

  ‘But, Harry —’

  ‘Stay there, for Christ’s sake!’ I shouted at her. She had already seen more than enough: I didn’t want her to see this. I blundered back into the dining room and slammed the door behind me.

  ‘Inside-out,’ said Martin, his breathing as thick as the lowest of organ-pipes. He pulled apart Naomi’s dress, then dragged her pantyhose halfway down her thighs, exposing white skin, veined with blue, and a bush of black pubic hair. With a grin of sheer triumph, he said, ‘Watch.’

  At first I couldn’t understand what he was going to do. I stood blinking, swaying with concussion. But then, blurrily, I saw Naomi’s stomach bulging, just above her mound of Venus. Then her thighs parted and I saw her vulva running with blood. Her vaginal lips peeled apart like the mouth of a freshly-clubbed fish, and Martin’s fingers emerged, glistening with blood, his fingernails snagged with fragments of internal tissues.

  He had thrust his arm down her throat right up to his armpit, so that blood was soaking his shirt, and now his entire hand emerged from her widely-stretched vagina, a sight so surreal that I felt I was going to suffocate from shock. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. I felt hysteria rising up inside me as if my lungs were filling with iced water.

  ‘Inside-out,’ Martin thundered; although I felt him rather than heard him.

  His fingers dug into the plump, hairy flesh around her vagina, and then he pulled. I heard a hideous suction sound, and a repetitive snapping of ribs, and then Martin dragged Naomi’s stomach and lungs and liver and endless yards of intestines out of her mouth. It heaped and slithered all over the floor; I thought it was never going to end. The stench of blood and bile and half-digested food was unbearable.

  At the very end, Martin slowly withdrew his fist from Naomi’s bloody, gaping mouth. Between his fingers he was still clutching the hairy flesh of her sex, which he had pulled up through the whole length of her abdomen and thorax. He held it up, triumphantly, and said, ‘What warrior has ever taken a scalp like this?’

  He opened his hand and Naomi’s shapeless body fell from the chair on top of her
own insides, one sightless eye staring in perplexity at her own bladder.

  Michael lowered his hands. He was still punch-drunk, and I doubted if he could see anything. I prayed very much that he couldn’t. He crawled on all-fours towards Naomi’s body and touched it He must have been able to smell it. He must have been able to feel its slime.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he asked. ‘Naomi?’

  ‘No more Naomi,’ Martin told him, rolling his sleeve back down his bloodied arm.

  ‘No more of you, or any of your kind.’

  ‘Naomi?’ said Michael, blind with shock. ‘Naomi?’ He crawled around her grisly remains, dragging guts and lungs after him. ‘Naomi?’

  Martin gave him a contemptuous sideways look. He buttoned up his cuff. Then he hit him on the back of the neck with the edge of his open hand — so fast and hard that I scarcely saw it. Michael’s head dropped at an odd angle, and he rolled over onto what was left of Naomi’s thighs. He lay there quivering for a moment and then he was still.

  ‘You’ve killed him too,’ I said, hoarsely. ‘Jesus Christ, Martin, you’ve killed him too!’

  ‘As I shall kill all of you, foolish. And you shall be next.’

  With that, he raised both his fists and threw back his shadowy head and let out the most chilling cry that I had ever heard in my life. It was joyful, bloodthirsty, and overwhelmingly frightening. It was a cry that didn’t belong in this age. Not in this city, not in this house. It belonged on wind-furrowed prairies; or on snowcapped mountains; or in the smoky, mysterious twilight of river banks, among the lodges of the cruel and the proud and the warlike. I had heard it only once before. I had never thought I would ever hear it again.

  I had woken up sweating in the night and prayed that I would never hear it again.

  ‘Ak! Ak! Ak! Ak! Ak! Akkkrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!’

  Seven

  As the warcry died on Martin’s lips, another warcry was taken up. It came from the streets outside, and it echoed for block after block. It was the whooping and screaming of police sirens, as Karen’s 911 call was answered.