Burial Page 16

  Martin lifted his head. For the first time since the spirit had taken possession of him, he looked uncertain.

  ‘You hear that, you bastard?’ I challenged him. That’s the cops.’

  Martin gave me a dark frown. ‘I promised you death, foolish. I always keep my promises.’

  I lurched backward. I wished to God he hadn’t knocked my sense of balance out of kilter. ‘Just this once,’ I said, ‘I’ll take an IOU.’

  Martin stepped away from the wall, clearing aside Naomi’s bloodied remains with the side of his foot. Her head turned over to face me, her mouth still gaping. I could scarcely bear to look at her.

  ‘I promise you pain, foolish. I promise you soul-torture. I promise that you will kiss my feet and plead with me to tear you inside-out, as I did with this woman. Compared to what you are going to suffer, her fate will seem like pleasure.’

  I took another step back, and as I did so, my heel touched the bowl of water, and almost tipped it over. Martin came nearer and nearer, his feet dragging on the floor as if he were climbing a very steep hill. ‘You will beg me to die even more slowly than she did; as long as I give you the certainty of dying.’

  I heard tires squealing in the street outside. Doors opening. Feet running upstairs, and men’s voices shouting. I heard the doorbell, and somebody beating on the door with their fist.

  ‘You hear that, Martin?’ I asked him. ‘It’s too late for you now, that’s the polizei. You touch one hair on my head and they won’t even give you time to say honest Injun.’

  Martin was still coming toward me, but a whole lot more slowly now. The further away from the wall that he walked, the more effort he had to make. His steps were very slow and deliberate, and after only five or six steps his face was masked with sweat.

  ‘I will destroy you, foolish,’ he said, in a breathless rumble that was more like distant traffic. ‘I will tear off your hair and carry your scalp around my waist for all eternity.’

  I knew then for certain who he was. I knew then for certain why it had been Singing Rock, of all dead spirits, who had warned me about him.

  The water, Singing Rock had told me. Spirits have no command over water.

  I bent down, picked up the bowl, and held it up in the palm of my hand. Martin glanced at it uneasily.

  ‘I’m warning you,’ I told him, in a shaky voice. ‘One more step and I’ll —’ ‘One more step and you’ll what?’ Martin asked me. ‘Soak me? Drown me? You were always foolish, foolish. You don’t even know what to do.’

  Of course he was absolutely right. I didn’t know what to do. I took two or three more steps back, and Martin took two or three more steps forward.

  There was a loud knocking on the door behind me, which made me jump.

  ‘Mr Erskine? This is the police! Are you okay in there?’

  I looked cautiously at Martin and Martin looked contemptuously back at me. ‘Tell them,’ he smiled. ‘Tell them how you are. Tell them I’m going to hurt you badly. Tell them I’m going to turn you inside-out.’

  ‘Mr Erskine?’ the cop repeated.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I called back. ‘Just take it easy, okay?’

  ‘What’s the situation? Can you talk?’

  ‘Not right now.’

  Martin kept on smiling, but now his face was running with sweat, and his eyelids kept flickering. ‘Tell them — ‘he began. Then, ‘No.’

  He clenched his teeth and shook his head from side to side like a dog worrying a rat. The darkness seemed to be draining out of him in the same way that the colour drains out of a dying man. His face looked greasy and pale, and spit began to fly from his lips.

  ‘Tell them, tell them — No!Don’t tell them anything!’

  The police shouted, ‘We’re going to give you a count of three, Mr Erskine, then we’re coming in!’

  ‘Tell them, tell them, tell them — No, damn it! The water! We have command of the water!’

  ‘Hold it!’ I called to the police. I had suddenly realized what was happening. Away from the wall, away from the shadows, the spirit that had taken control of Martin’s body had very much less influence; and now Martin himself was fighting back.

  ‘The water!’ he gasped, his whole body shaking, as if he were being violently thrown from side to side by a man twice his size. ‘Think of anything — think of anything — something that frightens him — No!’

  ‘What the hell’s going to frighten him?’ I screamed at Martin. But the spirit had taken control of him again, and was struggling to crush his mind and his will.

  ‘Mr Erskine, that’s it, we’re coming in!’ the police barked at me, from the other side of the door.

  ‘Not yet!’ I shouted. ‘For Christ’s sake, not yet!’

  It was then that I had about the first and only brilliant inspiration of my whole life. I remembered a colour illustration in one of my childhood cowboy books, of a Cheyenne medicine-man recoiling from a rattlesnake. Eyes wide, shadows looming up behind him. His own buffalo-headed shadow; and the vicious S-shaped shadow of the rattler.

  I held out the bowl of water with trembling hands, splashing it all over my cuffs, and thought: rattlesnake.

  Martin screeched and grunted as he fought the spirit inside him. Veins wriggled like speeded-up tree-roots on the side of his head; and his neck swelled with strain. He started to jerk his head backward and forward, as if he were trying to break his own neck; and I was so horrified by what he was doing that I didn’t see the water in the bowl beginning to rise. It was only when I felt the bowl stirring in my hands that I looked at it, stared, and then dropped it in shock.

  The bowl fell to the floor, and tipped over. Immediately a long glistening snake poured out of it — a full-grown rattlesnake, with stretched-open jaws and viciously curved fangs and a sleek, thick body. The incredible thing about it was that it was totally transparent, and it shone as bright as glass. It was formed out of water, and nothing else. White man’s water — dead water, as the spirit had called it — had suddenly come to life.

  The rattlesnake gave a sharp, watery rattle. Without hesitation, it lunged at Martin’s leg. Martin shouted, ‘No!’ in tones of thunder. But then he suddenly stopped shaking, and lowered his head, and stood like a man who has won the greatest of battles, but lost everything he held dear while doing it

  I looked down. There was no rattlesnake, only a narrow splash of water where the bowl had tipped over.

  ‘Coming in!’ yelled the police, and kicked open the door, splintering the doorframe. Two officers, one black and one white, hustled into the dining room with guns held high. ‘Police officers! Put your hands up!’

  Being an innocent bystander, I didn’t think I had to put my hands up, and Martin obviously hadn’t heard them, so neither of us did.

  ‘Put your hands up!’ the black officer screamed at me, and so, slowly, I lifted them.

  The other officer frisked Martin quickly, then looked around at the bloody carnage that had been Michael and Naomi Greenberg. ‘Jesus, what happened here?’

  Martin said, ‘It wasn’t me.’

  The black officer stared at his gory right arm. ‘You’re all covered in blood and it wasn’t you?’

  ‘It was my body that did it. It was my arm that did it. But it wasn’t me.’

  The officer unhooked his handcuffs and said, ‘Put your hands behind your back. I’m arresting you on suspicion of homicide. You have the right to remain silent, but anything you say can and will —’

  ‘Officer,’ I interrupted. ‘I know it sounds wacky, but he’s telling the truth. It wasn’t him. I promise you.’

  The officer stared at me without blinking. ‘You can promise me whatever you like, sir. I’m charging you with homicide, too.’

  They finally let me leave the precinct house at a quarter after six the following morning, after they had questioned Karen and after the medical examiner had assured them that it was Martin alone who had killed both Naomi and Michael.

  Martin was charged with two counts of f
irst-degree homicide and refused bail. When Karen came to collect me, the precinct was crowded with newspaper and TV reporters and ENG cameras. The killings were already being called The Black Magic Murders. ‘Evil spirit made me do it, protests alleged slayer.’

  Karen drove me in her red VW Jetta to her aunt’s apartment on East 82nd Street. Her aunt was nearly ninety now, and spent all of her summers in New England, with Karen’s parents, because she couldn’t stand the heat and the pollution. Karen unlocked the door and I stepped inside. The apartment hadn’t changed much in all of the years since Amelia and MacArthur and I had first held a seance here. It was a big, grand place, decorated in a wealthy but anonymous style — big upholstered armchairs and couches, thick red velvet drapes, antique tables and paintings.

  It had once been warm and bright; but now there was a feeling of neglect and emptiness about it. Some of the brocade fabric on the arms of the chairs was wearing out, and there were threadbare patches in the carpet.

  I went to the window and looked down at the trees and sidewalks of East 82nd. Karen came up behind me and said, ‘Do you want some breakfast?’

  ‘Hmm? No, coffee’ll do.’

  She was wearing a white linen blouse with patch pockets and a short twill skirt. Her hair needed washing so she had tied it back. There were plum-coloured circles under her eyes but I thought she looked as delicate and pretty as ever. She was about two houses, a BMW 5-series, an account at Saks Fifth Avenue, and $1.23m out of my league, but she had a natural sweetness about her which made the social and financial differences between us irrelevant.

  I followed her into the pale green kitchen. In the 1950s, it must have been the last word in fitted units, but now it looked like something out of an early episode of I Love Lucy. It even had a dome-topped Westinghouse icebox.

  ‘Espresso?’ asked Karen.

  I leaned up against the counter next to her. The extraction fan above the hob slowly rotated. It reminded me of that movie Angel Heart. I very rarely went to see movies like that because I happened to know how much of that kind of stuff is real. One of the things I tried to do after Singing Rock died was to write a book about Indian magic, a true book, explaining all about manitous and wind-spirits and devil-dolls, but when I showed it to a literary agent she said that my viewpoint was all wrong. I couldn’t possibly assume without any demonstrable proof that Indian magic was — ahem — real

  She should have been with us in the Greenbergs’ apartment, that literary agent. Then she could have asked me about demonstrable goddamned proof.

  ‘Are you all right now?’ Karen asked me.

  ‘Tired, I guess. Shocked. How about you?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I can’t yet believe that it actually happened.’

  ‘Oh, it happened all right. Something took over Martin’s body and soul completely — something very strong. And when I say very strong, I mean we’re talking major league here. The Hulk Hogan of evil spirits.’

  I took the coffee-mugs and carried them through to the living room. The sun was well up now, and it lay across the well-worn carpet in gilded rhomboids.

  We sat side by side on one of the huge overstuffed couches and propped our feet on the coffee table. There was a 1920s statuette of a leaping Isadora Duncan-type dancer next to my foot. She was pointing accusingly at the large hole in my sock.

  ‘You said you saw Singing Rock,’ Karen remarked, without looking at me.

  I nodded. ‘I saw him in Martin’s apartment, too. Apparently he was following me around. Martin sensed him the moment I walked in. He kind of-well, conjured him up, I suppose you could say. He made his face appear; he even made him talk.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Still she wouldn’t look at me.

  ‘He gave me some sort of a warning. I can’t say that I really understood it too good. It was something about the Great Outside, and clearing the sacred lands. Martin said something similar last night. Well, I don’t mean Martin, but the spirit who was in him. He kept saying that he wanted to get rid of every trace of us … whoever he meant by us.

  I paused, sipped coffee, and managed to scald the roof of my mouth. ‘I thought at first that it might be a Nazi spirit — the Greenbergs being Jewish and everything. The Nazis dabbled a lot in spirit-travel and reincarnation. I think I was almost hoping that it would be a Nazi spirit.’

  Karen turned and looked at me at last. ‘It isn’t, is it?’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s an Indian spirit, no doubt about it.’

  ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’ she said, unconsciously lifting her hand and touching the back of her neck.

  ‘I think so. I won’t be able to tell for sure until they let me talk to Martin.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘Not for quite a while. Not till he’s talked to his lawyer, anyway.’

  Karen said, ‘I feel terrible about dragging you into this. If I’d had any idea …’

  I took hold of her hand. ‘If you ask me, you and me were going to get dragged into it whatever. We’ve been involved in all this before, we believe in it. That makes us much easier for him to manipulate. Besides that, I think he’s after some good old-fashioned getting-his-own-back.’

  Karen, unexpectedly, leaned across the couch and kissed me on the lips. I stared at her. ‘What was that for?’ I asked her.

  ‘Bravery.’

  ‘Bravery? The only award I deserve is the Father Karras Award for Total Stupidity in the Face of the Supernatural.’

  ‘Don’t be so modest. Not many people would have faced up to any of that. Not many people would have faced up to what happened to me. Besides,’ she said, ‘I happen to have realized that I like you. I always did.’

  I didn’t know whether Karen felt genuine affection for me, or whether she was clinging to the only other person on the planet who knew for certain what had happened to Michael and Naomi Greenberg. Maybe it was a little of one and a little of another, with a dash of tiredness and shock thrown in for good measure. I don’t usually think about love, not in the context of my day-to-day relationships. Love was something that got bored with sitting on the end of my bed, and which one day just got up and walked out, without even bothering to close the door behind it.

  After I had finished my coffee I went into the spare bedroom for a couple of hours’ sleep. I didn’t want to go back to my consulting-rooms on East 53rd because I knew that there would be more reporters lying in wait for me; and I wanted to forget about the Greenbergs for a while. I could still see Martin’s fist clutching Naomi’s bloody, hairy flesh; and I thought that I would probably go on seeing it for ever.

  The spare bedroom was small but pretty, wallpapered with faded gilt flowers. I looked at myself in the dressing-table mirror. The left side of my face was hugely swollen, like a cartoon character, and my eye was almost closed. I hadn’t realized I looked so bad. I slowly undressed and climbed into bed, and eased my cheek onto the cool, slightly musty-smelling pillow. Next to me, on the wall, there was a gold-framed engraving. It depicted a fierce nineteenth-century lady traveller in a large ostrich-plumed hat staring through opera-glasses at a Red Indian in a magnificent war-bonnet. The caption read Our Feathered Friends.

  I couldn’t help smiling at its naïveté. The Indians had never been our friends and never would be; and we would never be theirs.

  I closed my eyes and fell asleep almost at once.

  After about a half-hour, I began to dream. I dreamed that I was running upstairs in the Greenbergs’ apartment-building. Their front door was ajar, and a cold blueish light was shining out of it, like a television flickering in a strange motel-room. I could hear people talking in muffled voices, and somebody saying, ‘Neeim … neeim … Nepauz-had …’ again and again.

  Then I realized that somebody was standing close behind me — so close that I could feel their chill, even breathing on the back of my neck. I tried to turn around but I couldn’t. A hand had gripped my hair and was tearing it out by the roots. I felt panic more than pain, but I knew that my assa
ilant was hurting me badly. He might even be disfiguring me for life.

  The next thing I knew, my head had been pulled back, and somebody was trying to cram their fingers into my mouth. I gagged, struggled, and tried to wrench my head away. I shouted, ‘Get off me! Get off me! I can’t breathe! You’re choking me!’

  At least I thought I was shouting ‘Get off me!’ I was probably screaming ‘Gruggle-uggle-grogghh!’ instead. Suddenly I opened my eyes and said, ‘Ah!’ because I found Karen lying right next to me, smoothing my forehead. She whispered, warmly, ‘Ssh! You’ve been having a nightmare. You’ve been screaming and groaning at the top of your voice.’

  I let my head drop back onto the pillow. I looked up at her. It didn’t take much waking-up for me to realize that she was naked. All she was wearing, as far as I could make out, was a thin gold chain around her neck, with a gold S-shaped pendant dangling from it. Singing Rock had sent her that pendant, after he had helped to save her life. It was the prehistoric Alqonquin hieroglyph for ‘secret sign’; and according to Singing Rock it was supposed to have the same deterrent effect on evil Indian spirits as crucifixes had on vampires.

  Karen kissed my forehead and ran her hand through my hair.

  ‘I’m not sure that I’m ready for this,’ I told her.

  ‘Why not?’ she smiled. ‘I’ve always liked you, right from the moment I first met you.’

  ‘Karen, you don’t owe me anything. You know that. Besides … you and me, they didn’t exacdy find us under the same bramble-bush, now did they? I’m a Bronx boy, always will be. Sniffy suburban Bronx, with the fancy lace curtains, but Bronx all the same. And what are you? New England and upper East Side. Private education, designer duds.’

  She reached across to the nightstand and produced a square foil envelope. ‘I took the liberty,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to put it on for you?’

  ‘Karen …’ I protested, as she drew back the sheet, ‘think of the age difference. If I’d married your mother when I was fifteen, I could have been your father.’

  ‘My mother doesn’t like younger men,’ she said, biting open the condom packet.