Rook & Tooth and Claw Read online

  He shook her shoulders, but all that happened was that her head lolled from side to side. She felt as if she were dead – and not only that, she felt as if she had been dead for two or three days. “Mrs Vaizey? Mrs Vaizey? Can you hear me, Mrs Vaizey?”

  The pressure in the room gradually eased. Jim continued to hold Mrs Vaizey’s hand, but he sat back, more relaxed. Her pulse may have been faint but it was regular, and showed no signs of faltering; and she was breathing distinctly, with her mouth open, like someone involved in a very deep dream.

  He looked up, and it was then that he felt the ice-bath sensation of total shock. Here he was, holding Mrs Vaizey’s hand while she lay on the couch. But Mrs Vaizey was also standing by the front door, staring at him.

  At first he couldn’t speak. His throat was completely constricted with fear. But then he managed to say, “You’ve done it. My God, you’ve done it.”

  She made a complicated sign in the air with her hand; like a benediction. Then she spoke, and her voice sounded reedy and distant, as if she were speaking on an answerphone in an empty office, with nobody to hear her. “I’m going now, Jim … I’ll bring back the loa stick… and then you can … mmmmmlllooowwaaaaahhh …” Her words trailed away into a long, echoing distortion.

  She waited for a long, long moment, still staring at him. Then, abruptly, she turned, and walked through the door. It was open only a half-inch, but she seemed to flow through it in the same way that Uncle Umber had flowed through the door of the geography room, like a shadow, like smoke.

  After she had gone, Jim looked down and realised that he was still holding Mrs Vaizey’s hand. That is, he was still holding the hand of Mrs Vaizey’s body, but this was a body without a soul, not dead, but not capable of life. He let go, and folded her arm over her cardigan. Then he sat back and watched her in the way that people at airports watch the arrival gates, waiting for their friends and their loved ones to reappear.

  He checked his watch. He still hadn’t touched his beer. It was 7:06 precisely.

  At seven forty-five he got up and went to the window. Over Venice, the sky was the colour of a bruised cheek. He hadn’t smoked in years but he felt like smoking now. He glanced back at the couch. Mrs Vaizey hadn’t moved, although she had whispered once or twice, nothing that Jim had been able to follow. It was strange, standing over another human being who was so utterly helpless. He couldn’t tell where she was or what she was doing. He began to wish that he had prevented her from going. The incense was all burned out now, but his apartment still smelled like a church.

  All of a sudden, Mrs Vaizey’s right arm flapped up. She twitched on the couch as if she were falling asleep, and her reflexes had tried to jerk her awake. She said something like, “Agnus—” but then she fell back into her coma.

  Jim knelt down beside her and felt her forehead. She was cold, desperately cold, and her pulse-rate seemed fainter than ever. Oh Christ, he thought, what’s going to happen if she dies? How am I going to explain the presence of a dead seventy-five-year-old woman on my couch, wearing nothing but a bikini and a cardigan?

  He thought of dialing 911. After all, Mrs Vaizey’s life was worth more than his reputation. But then Mrs Vaizey appeared to settle again, and breathe more evenly, although her fingers kept on trembling, and her head flopped from side to side, as if she were searching for something.

  Maybe she was. Maybe she was searching for the loa stick.

  It was almost eight o’clock. Jim sat on the end of the couch, worriedly drumming his fingers against his half-empty beer can. Mrs Vaizey’s condition hadn’t changed, but now and again she had whispered a few words, and once she had almost sat up. He wished to God that he had a way of knowing where her soul was, and what she was doing. She had said that Umber Jones would probably keep his loa stick well-hidden. What if she couldn’t find it? What if Umber Jones found her first?

  Eight-fifteen came and went. Mrs Vaizey was still breathing and her heart was still beating, but she felt as cold as if she were dead. Every now and then her fingers jumped or her feet shifted, but it seemed to Jim as if she were further and further away. This was a body that had no soul, and somewhere near Venice Boulevard there was a soul that had no body – a whole personality, disassembled.

  Jim took hold of her left hand and chafed it between his, in an effort to warm it up. “Mrs Vaizey, come on. It’s time you came back. Forget the spirit stick. It isn’t worth it. We’ll find some other way of dealing with Uncle Umber.”

  Mrs Vaizey murmured, “Monstre …”

  “Come on, Mrs Vaizey,” Jim urged her. “Just come back. You said it yourself: your soul can’t stay outside of your body for too long.”

  “Monstre …” Mrs Vaizey repeated. “Monstre …”

  “Please, Mrs Vaizey, you don’t have to do this. You’d be better off coming back and then we can work out some different way of doing it. Come on, you know all about voodoo. There must be some way of getting rid of Uncle Umber without risking your life to do it.”

  At that instant, Mrs Vaizey’s eyes opened. She stared up at Jim, and her expression was one of total desperation. Not fear. It was that stage beyond fear, when people have given up hope that they’re going to survive, and simply want to die with the least pain possible.

  “Mrs Vaizey!” said Jim, and clutched both of her hands, tight. “For God’s sake, Mrs Vaizey, hang on in there!”

  “Monstre!” she screamed, her mouth opening so wide that she almost dislocated her jaw. “Monstre!”

  Jim slapped her. He didn’t really know why. Maybe it would shock her into waking up. Maybe it would bring her soul back.

  She started to shudder, gently at first, but then faster and harder, until the whole couch was jostling and the cushions dropped onto the floor. She flung her head from side to side, and thick white foam began to boil out of her mouth. Jim gripped her wrists and tried to keep her still, hoping that she was going to tire, but she kept on thrashing and shuddering so violently that he could scarcely hold her.

  Suddenly she stopped, and glared into his face. He had never seen so much concentrated fury and contempt, and he was so alarmed that he almost let go of her. “You bastard!” she spat at him. “You liar! You told him you were going to be honourable! You told him you were going to be his friend! A fine friend you turned out to be!”

  Then, right in front of his eyes, something terrible began to happen. Mrs Vaizey’s mouth puckered inward, as if her face were nothing more than an empty rubber mask. Her nose collapsed into her mouth, and then her cheeks were drawn in, too. Her eyes stared at him mutely, as glutinous as oysters, before they, too, were sucked down into the crumpled hole where her mouth had once been. She was literally consuming herself – disappearing down her own throat.

  Her head unrolled into her neck with a sticky, slithery sound unlike anything that Jim had ever heard before. It was Mrs Vaizey’s brain-tissue, sliding down inside her.

  She was still tense, still quivering, even though she had no head. Jim let go of her wrists, and stood up. Her shoulders were beginning to be dragged into her neck now, as well as her cardigan. Her arms were pulled in, right up to the elbows, and for a moment the two of them protruded from her neck, jostling together as if they were waving. Her hands were pressed together in a momentary mockery of prayer, and then they disappeared, too.

  Jim backed further and further away, but he couldn’t keep his eyes away from her. Her collarbone stuck up beneath her skin in a V-shape before it was dragged inward. Her ribcage dropped inward, rib by rib, and Jim heard her lungs collapse with a punctured sigh. She was only two-thirds of a woman – headless and armless, yet her stomach continued to swell, and swell, and her flesh and bones and gristle and fat continued to pour into it.

  Her legs doubled back under her, and her feet were drawn into her stomach first, before her shins and her knees. For a moment there was nothing on the couch but a grossly-distended stomach with two suntanned thighs on either side of it, and Jim was horribly reminded of a gian
t Thanksgiving turkey. Then there was a last crackling noise, as her thighbones were drawn in, and all that remained was a lumpy, bloody stomach-lining, as big as a garbage sack filled to bursting with offal and bones and connective tissue. It was stretched so thin that Jim could see Mrs Vaizey’s right hand pressing against it, with all her silver rings.

  Shaking uncontrollably, he managed to walk stiff-legged to the kitchen, where he vomited warm beer into the sink. He was cold and sweating and he couldn’t even begin to think straight. He couldn’t understand what he had seen, or how it had happened. However, he was sure that Umber Jones had done it. What had Mrs Vaizey said? It’s a mixture of Fon culture and Catholicism, and it has the power of both.

  After a long while he rinsed out the sink with a sharp blast of cold water, and then splashed water in his face. It was no good him falling to pieces. Mrs Vaizey must have been aware of the danger of what she was doing, and yet she had volunteered to do it, anyway. Maybe she had wanted to end her life doing something strange and spectacular, instead of slowly ebbing away in a sunset home.

  Now he knew why Mrs Vaizey hadn’t allowed him to come along with her. Sending your soul out to burgle a man like Uncle Umber wasn’t a game for novices. God alone knew what kind of spell he had worked on her, to force her to devour herself.

  He went back to the living-room and confronted the terrible thing on the couch. Somehow he was going to have to dispose of it, without anybody finding out. Fortunately, nobody had seen Mrs Vaizey come up to his apartment, as far as he knew. But it would be madness to call the police. What would he say to them? “She just sort of imploded”? “She ate herself”? “Her soul was out burgling this voodoo houngan and he got real angry and turned her inside out”?

  He went to the bedroom and dragged the quilted cotton cover off the bed. It was bright red, which would help, in case Mrs Vaizey’s stomach-lining burst. There were maroon pools of blood inside it, as well as viscous yellowish fluids and a half-digested spaghetti bolognaise.

  He spread the bedcover on the floor next to the couch. Then he laid his hands on Mrs Vaizey’s remains, and gently rolled them toward the edge. They were so disgusting to touch that he had to stop for a moment, and close his eyes, and take five or six really deep breaths. He hadn’t realised that they would still be warm, and how much all of her limbs and organs would roll and slither together when he started to move her.

  But, mercifully, the stomach remained intact, even when it dropped on to the floor with a dull, soggy thump.

  He rolled the bedcover around it, and tied each end with cord. Then he went back to the kitchen and scrubbed his hands until they were sore. He could see himself in the mirror next to the telephone, but he thought he looked like a stranger. He didn’t dispose of dead bodies, not Jim Rook, the teacher. He spent his evenings marking papers or going to concerts or meeting his friends – not trussing up the mutilated remains of old ladies.

  He called his father in Santa Barbara. “Dad? It’s Jim. Yes, I know, I meant to call you back but everything’s been so hectic since yesterday. No – well, the police have one boy in custody, but I’m not at all sure he’s the one who did it. No.”

  He paused, and then he said, “Listen, Dad, is it okay if I borrow the boat tomorrow evening? Well, just for three or four hours. Well, I’ve met this girl and I thought it might be romantic to take her out for a picnic on the ocean. I think I need to take my mind off things. Okay. Fine. No, that’ll be fine.”

  He hung up. He hated involving his father in getting rid of Mrs Vaizey’s body, but he couldn’t see any other way out. If he tried to bury her, there was always a chance that somebody would dig her up, and he wouldn’t be able to feel safe for the rest of his life. But scattered in the ocean, her remains would be lost forever; and he thought that somehow it would give her back the dignity and peace that Umber Jones had so savagely stripped away from her.

  For now, he dragged Mrs Vaizey’s remains into his small spare bedroom and pushed them under the bed. In the small hours of the morning, he would carry them down to his car and lock them in his trunk.

  He took the cushion covers off the couch and took them down to the laundry in the basement. They weren’t badly stained, but even the smallest trace of Mrs Vaizey’s DNA could prove fatal. As he switched on the machine, Myrlin Buffield came in, from Apartment 201, carrying under his arm a purple plastic basket crammed with withered shorts and misshapen T-shirts.

  “Hi Myrlin,” said Jim, attempting a grin.

  “Hi yourself,” he replied. He began to stuff his clothes into the next machine, but every now and then he gave Jim a sneaky little sideways glance.

  “What?” asked Jim, after a while.

  Myrlin shut the washing-machine door. “Was your apartment on fire before?”

  “On fire? Of course not. What do you mean?”

  “I happened to be passing and I smelled this strange like burning smell.”

  “Oh, that! That burning smell! I was burning some incense, that’s all.”

  “Incense?” said Myrlin, darkly, as if to say, “Everybody knows why people burn incense.”

  “I’m into this meditation thing,” Jim told him. “Tibetan transcendental yogarology. You have to burn incense to get into the mood.”

  Myrlin slowly scratched his behind and continued to stare at Jim like a baleful child. “You know that there are rules in this apartment block?”

  “Against Tibetan transcendental yogarology?”

  Myrlin lifted an imaginary roach to his lips and deeply inhaled.

  “Against drawing in your breath?”

  “You know what I’m talking about,” said Myrlin.

  “I wish I did, Myrlin. I really wish I did.”

  He went back to his apartment with his damp cushion-covers. He locked and chained the door behind him and stood for a moment with his back against it. The shock of what had happened to Mrs Vaizey had left him feeling exhausted, and his hands were still trembling. He went into the kitchen and poured himself a large whiskey, which he drank without taking a breath.

  He poured himself another one, but he didn’t drink it immediately. Instead, he opened up the kitchen cabinet and took down the bag of memory powder that Uncle Umber had given him. He found a small knife and cut the hairy, waxy cord that fastened it. Inside, when he unfolded it, there was about a tablespoonful of fine brownish dust, as soft as ground cinnamon, with a pungent aroma that reminded Jim fleetingly of something from his childhood. He tried to focus on it, but it was gone, and he was left with an unexpected sense of loss.

  He pinched a little of the powder between his finger and thumb. So this was the drug that could enable you to remember people and events and places that you had never known. He wondered what it would be like if he could remember being wealthy, with a twenty-bedroom house in Bel Air and a pair of matching Maseratis; or his affair with a ravishing French movie actress in Provence, days of sun and kisses and chilled rosé wine. Or if he could remember seeing his dead brother Paul only last weekend, for a game of tennis and a long walk along the shoreline.

  If you could remember it, did it matter that it hadn’t happened?

  He drew out a chair and sat down. He decided to remember something comparatively modest – something which could be easily tested. He decided to remember that Susan Randall had kissed him and told him that she had fallen in love with him the moment she first saw him. I mean, that would be harmless, right, because she obviously quite liked him anyway.

  He held the dust up under his nostrils and cautiously sniffed. Then he sniffed again, more sharply this time. He sneezed, and sneezed again, and then he clamped his hands over his face. He felt as if he had breathed in spice-flavoured fire. It burned his sinuses and made his eyes feel as if they had swollen up to three times their normal size. He sneezed yet again, and stood up to get himself a glass of water from the sink.

  He saw the sink. He reached out for the tap. But then suddenly the world was at a different angle, and the floor was tilting.
He tumbled over sideways, hitting his shoulder against the table, and lay on his back sweating and trembling. He thought he could hear voices. He thought that there were other people in the room, people with dark faces and dark suits and sunglasses. He thought that he could hear drums; or maybe he could only feel them, throbbing through the floor.

  He was aware of a sudden wind, blowing through the room, and a whispering voice that said, “Ah, oui… il est triste … il est solitaire … ha-ha-ha … un spectre qui se glisse le long des allées ses pas l’ont conduit… de son vivant, ha-ha-ha …”

  He thought that there was somebody crouched down next to him, staring him right in the face. A black man, with pitted cheeks and a high sheen on his forehead. A black man with eyes that were filled with blood.

  He heard a bell ringing, shrill and urgent. He sat up, shocked. At first he didn’t know where he was. He felt as if he had been away for years. But then he managed to grab hold of his chair, and ease himself up. The bell was still ringing and it was his doorbell.

  For a moment the bell stopped, and somebody started knocking. Then the knocking stopped and the bell started again. Then there was ringing and knocking together.

  With his arms held out on either side to balance himself, he made his way to the front door and opened it.

  It was Mrs Vaizey’s son Geraint, a short bullet-shaped man with greasy black curls and a bright red face. He was wearing a jungle-patterned shirt and huge Bermuda shorts. “Hey, I’ve been ringing for five minutes,” he protested.

  “How did you know I was in?”

  “That Myrlin geezer told me. He said to keep on trying on account of you might be taking some kind of trip or something.”

  “That Myrlin geezer should keep his nose out of other people’s business.”

  “I’m looking for my old lady,” said Geraint, trying to peer past Jim’s shoulder into his apartment. “You seen her, or what?”

  Jim could never understand how a civilised, well-educated woman like Mrs Vaizey could possibly have given birth to a coarse, overweight loudmouth like Geraint. Geraint ran a video rental store, with a big line in horror and violence.