Carrion Comfort (104 page)

A great vise seemed to clamp on Harod’s head, sinking steel clamps into his skull. He clutched his temples and opened his mouth in a silent scream.

“Stop!” snapped Barent and the vise was ripped away. Harod almost screamed again in relief. “He has voted,” said Barent. “He has the right to abstain in any vote. Without a majority, the motion is defeated.”

“
Nein,
” said Willi and a blue flame seemed to have ignited behind his cold gray eyes, “without a majority we are in stalemate.” He swiveled toward Sutter. “What do you say, Jimmy Wayne, can we leave this issue in stalemate?”

Sutter’s face was slick with sweat. He stared at a spot above and to the right of Barent’s head as he said, “Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets made ready to blow them. The first angel blew his trumpet, and there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood which fell on the earth; and a third of the earth was burned up . . .

“The second angel blew his trumpet, and something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood . . .

“The third angel blew his trumpet and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the fountains of water . . .

“The fourth angel blew his trumpet and a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars . . .

“Then I looked and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice, as it flew in mid-heaven, ‘Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets which the three angels are about to blow!’

“And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key of the shaft of the bottomless pit . . .” Sutter stopped, drained the last of his bourbon, and sat in silence.

Barent asked, “And what does that mean, James?”

Sutter seemed to snap out of his reverie. He mopped his face with a lavender silk handkerchief from the breast pocket of his white suit coat. “It means that there can be no stalemates,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “The Antichrist is here. His hour has come ’round at last. All we can do is carry out what is written and witness as best we can as the tribulations descend upon us. We have no choice.”

Barent crossed his arms and smiled. “And which of us is your Anti-christ, James?”

Sutter looked from Willi to Barent with wild eyes. “God help me,” he said. “I don’t know. I have surrendered my soul to serve him and
I do not know.
”

Tony Harod pushed back from the table. “This is too fucking weird,” he said. “I’m out of here.”

“Stay where you are,” snapped Kepler. “No one’s leaving this room until we get this settled.”

Willi sat back and clasped his fingers across his stomach. “I have a suggestion,” he murmured.

“Go ahead,” said Barent. “I suggest that we complete our chess game, Herr Barent,” said Willi. Kepler stopped pacing and stared first at Willi and then at Barent. “Chess game,” he said. “What chess game?”

“Yeah,” said Tony Harod. “What chess game?” He rubbed his hand across his closed eyes and saw the image of his own face carved in ivory.

Barent smiled. “Mr. Borden and I have been playing a game of chess through the mails for some months now,” he said. “A harmless diversion.”

Kepler sagged against the window. “Oh, Jesus Christ God Almighty,” he said.

“Amen,” said Sutter, his eyes unfocused once again. “Months,” repeated Harod. “Months. You mean all of this shit’s been going down . . . Trask, Haines, Colben . . . and you two’ve been playing
fucking chess
the whole time?”

Jimmy Wayne Sutter made a sound somewhere between a belch and a laugh. “If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink the wine of the wrath of God,” he muttered. “And he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torments ascendeth up for ever and ever.” Sutter made the sound again. “And he causes all, small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a MARK in their right hand, or in their foreheads . . . and his number is six hundred, threescore and six.”

“Shut up,” Willi said amiably. “Herr Barent, do you agree? The game is nearly done, we need only to play it out. If I win, we enlarge the . . . competition . . . to a larger scale. If you win, I will content myself with the current arrangement.”

“We were adjourned in the thirty-fifth move,” said Barent. “Your position was not . . . ah . . . enviable.”

“
Ja.
” Willi grinned. “But I will play it. I do not demand a new game.”

“And if this game ends in stalemate?” asked Barent.

Willi shrugged. “You win if it is a stalemate,” he said. “I win only with a clear victory.”

Barent looked out at the lightning. “Don’t pay attention to that bullshit,” cried Kepler. “He’s totally mad.”

“Shut up, Joseph,” said Barent. He turned toward Willi. “All right. We will finish the game. Do we play with the pieces available?”

“That is more than agreeable,” said Willi with a broad smile that showed perfect dentures. “Shall we adjourn to the first floor?”

“Yes,” said Barent. “Just a second, please.” He picked up his headset and listened for a moment. “Barent here,” he said into the bead microphone. “Put one team ashore and terminate the Jew immediately. Is that understood? Good.” He set the headset on the table. “All ready.”

Harod followed them to the elevator. Sutter, walking ahead of him, suddenly stumbled, turned, and grasped Harod’s arm. “An in those days, men will seek death and will not find it,” he urgently whispered in Harod’s face. “They will long to die and death will fly from them.”

“Fuck off,” said Harod and pulled his arm free. Together the five descended in silence.

I
remember the picnics we used to have in the hills outside Vienna: the pine-scented hills, meadows of wildflowers, and Willi’s open Peugeot parked near some stream or scenic overlook. When Willi was not dressed in his ridiculous brown shirt and armband, he was the picture of sartorial splendor with his silk summer suits and a broad-brimmed, rakish white hat given to him by one of the cabaret performers. Before Bad Ischl, before Nina’s betrayal, I took plea sure in simply being with two such beautiful people. Nina was never lovelier than during those final summers of our contentment, and although both of us were entering the years where we were no longer girls— nor even young ladies by yesterday’s standards— merely watching Nina in her blond, blue-eyed enthusiasm kept me feeling and acting young.

I know now that it was their betrayal at Bad Ischl, even more than Nina’s initial betrayal with my Charles years earlier, that marked the point where I began to grow old while Nina did not. In a sense, Nina and Willi have been Feeding on me all these years.

It was time for this to stop.

On the second night of my strange vigil with Nina’s Negress, I decided to end the waiting. Some demonstration was due. I was sure that even with the colored girl removed from the scene, Willi would be able to tell me of Nina’s true whereabouts.

I confess that my attention was divided. For days as I had felt the youth and vitality returning to by body, as the paralysis slowly yielded its twisted grip on my left arm and leg, I felt a commensurate slackening of control in dealing with my family and other contacts. Sometime after Miss Sewell watched Jensen Luhar, the one called Saul, and the other three depart the cell area, I said to the colored girl, “They have your Jew.”

I sensed Nina’s own lack of control in the confusion of her catspaw’s response. I brought my people into tight focus and demanded that Nina tell me where she was. She refused, moving her pathetic little servant girl toward the door. I felt sure that Nina had lost all contact with her person on the island and therefore was also out of touch with Willi. The girl was literally at my mercy.

I moved Culley where he could reach the Negress in two steps and brought the Negro boy from Philadelphia into the room. He carried a knife. “Time to tell all,” I teased Nina, “or time for this one to die.”

I guessed that Nina would sacrifice the girl. No cat’s-paw— no matter how well conditioned— would be worth Nina revealing her hiding place. I prepared Culley for the two steps and swift movement of arms and hands that would leave the girl lifeless on the carpet with her head turned at an impossible angle like the chickens Mammy Booth used to kill out back behind the house before dinner. Mother would choose; Mammy Booth would grab and twist and fling the feathered corpse onto the porch before the bird knew it had been killed.

The girl did a surprising thing. I had expected Nina to have her flee or fight, or at the very least for there to be a mental struggle as Nina attempted to seize control of one of my people, but the colored girl stood where she was, opened her oversize sweater, and exposed an absurd belt— a sort of Mexican bandit’s
bandilero
— filled with what looked like cellophane-wrapped modeling clay. Wires ran from a gadget that looked like a transistor radio to the packets of clay. “Melanie, stop!” she shouted.

I did so. Culley’s hands froze in the act of rising toward the Negress’s skinny throat. I felt no concern at this point, only a mild curiosity at this manifestation of Nina’s madness.

“These are explosives,” panted the girl. Her hand went to a switch on the transistor radio. “If you touch me, I’ll trigger them. If you touch my mind, the monitor here will trigger them automatically. The explosion will flatten this smelly mausoleum of a house.”

“Nina, Nina,” I had Justin say, “you’re overwrought. Sit down a minute. I’ll have Mr. Thorne bring us some tea.”

It was a perfectly natural mistake, but the Negro girl showed her teeth in something not even close to a smile. “Mr. Thorne’s not here, Melanie. Your mind is turning to sludge. Mr. Thorne . . . what ever his real name was . . . killed my father and then one of your stinking friends killed
him
. But it was always you, you ancient bag of pus. You’ve been the spider at the center of every . . .
don’t try it
!”

Culley had barely moved. I had him lower his hands, slowly, and step back. I considered seizing the girl’s voluntary nervous system. It would take only seconds— just long enough for one of my people to get to her before she could push that little red button. Not that I believed for a second that there was anything to her silly threats. “What kind of explosive did you say that was, dear?” I asked through Justin.

“It’s called C-4,” said the girl. Her voice was steady and calm, but I could hear the rapid rise and fall of her breathing. “It’s a military thing . . . plastic explosive . . . and there are twelve pounds here, more than enough to blow you and this house to hell and destroy half of the Hodges place too.”

It did not sound like Nina speaking. Upstairs, Dr. Hartman clumsily removed an IV from my arm and began to turn me onto my right side. I shoved him away with my good arm. “How could you detonate this explosive if I took your little pickaninny away from you?” I had Justin ask. Howard lifted the heavy .45 pistol from my night table, removed his shoes, and moved silently down the stairs. I still had the faintest of contacts, through Miss Sewell, of a security guard’s perceptions as they carried the unconscious form of Jensen Luhar back to the security tunnel while others continued to chase after the one the Negress had called Saul. There were alarms audible even to Miss Sewell in the surrogate holding area. The storm was approaching the island; a deck officer reported waves of six feet and rising.

The colored girl took a step closer to Justin. “See these wires?” she asked, leaning forward. Thin filaments ran down from her scalp into the collar of her blouse. “These sensors carry the electrical signals of my brain waves to this monitor. Can you understand that?”

“Yes,” lisped Justin. I had no idea what she was talking about. “Brain waves have certain patterns,” said the girl. “These patterns are as characteristic as fingerprints. As soon as you touch my mind with that filthy, rotten, diseased brain of yours, you’ll create a thing called a theta rhythm— it’s found in rats, lizards, and lower life forms like you— and the little computer in this monitor will sense it and ignite the C-4. In less than a second, Melanie.”

“You’re lying,” I said. “Try me,” said the girl. She took another step forward and shoved Justin very hard, propelling the poor child backward until he collided with Father’s favorite chair and sat down with a rattle of small heels. “Try me,” she repeated, voice rising with anger, “just try me, you desiccated old bitch, and I’ll see you in hell.”

“Who are you?” I asked. “No one,” said the girl. “Just someone whose father you murdered. Nothing important enough for you to remember.”

“You’re not Nina?” I asked. Howard had reached the bottom of the stairs. He raised the pistol in readiness to swing around the edge of the doorway and fire.

The girl glanced around at Culley and the foyer. The green glow from the second-floor landing threw the vaguest of shadows where Howard stood. “If you kill me,” the girl said, “the monitor will sense the cessation of brain waves and detonate instantly. It will kill everyone in this house.” I sensed no fear in her voice, only something approaching elation.

The girl was lying, of course. Rather, it was Nina who was lying. There was no way that some colored girl off the street could have learned those things about Nina’s life, about the death of Nina’s father, about the details of the Vienna Game. But this girl
had
mentioned something about me murdering her father that first time we met in Grumblethorpe. Or had she? Things were becoming very confused. Perhaps death had indeed driven Nina insane and now she had confused things to the point that she thought
I
had pushed her father in front of that Boston trolley. Perhaps in her last seconds of life, Nina’s consciousness had sought refuge in the inferior brain of this girl— could she have been a maid at Mansard House?— and now Nina’s memories were confused and intertwined with the mundane memories of a colored domestic. I almost had Justin laugh aloud at that thought. What an irony that would have been!

What ever the truth of it, I had no fear of her imaginary explosive. I had heard the term “plastic explosive,” but I was sure that such a device did not resemble these lumps of clay. They did not even look like plastic. Besides, I remember when Father had to dynamite a beaver dam on our Georgia property before the War, just he and the foreman were allowed to ride out to the lake with the treacherous dynamite and elaborate care was taken with the blasting caps. Explosives would be much too unreliable to carry around on a silly belt. The rest of the girl’s story— brainwaves and computers— simply made no sense at all. Such ideas belonged in the realm of the science fiction Willi used to read in those lurid, penny-dreadful German magazines. Even if such an idea were possible— which I was confident this was not— it would not lie in the realm of understanding of a Negro.
I
had difficulty comprehending the concept.

Still, it made little sense to push Nina further. There was always the remote chance that something in her catspaw’s apparatus might include real dynamite. I saw no reason not to humor Nina a few minutes longer. The fact that she was as mad as a proverbial hatter made her no less dangerous. “What do you want?” I asked.

The girl licked her thick lips and glanced around her. “Get all of your people out of here. Except Justin. He stays in the chair.”

“Of course,” I purred. The black boy, Nurse Oldsmith, and Culley left by separate doors. Howard stepped back as Culley passed, but he did not lower the pistol.

“Tell me what is happening,” snapped the Negress. She remained standing with her finger near the red button of the device on her belt.

“What do you mean, dear?”

“On the island,” demanded the girl. “What’s happened to Saul?”

I had Justin shrug. “I’ve lost interest in that,” I said.

The girl took three steps forward and I thought she was going to strike the helpless child. “God
damn
you,” she said. “Tell me what I want to know or I’ll trigger this right now. It’d be worth it just to know that you’re dead . . . frying in your bed like some hairless old queen rat held over the flames. Make up your mind, you bitch.”

I have always despised profanity. My repugnance at such vulgarity was not lessened by the images she conjured. My mother was unduly afraid of floods and rising water. Fire has always been my bête noire. “Your Jewish person threw a rock at Willi’s man and ran into the forest before the game was to begin,” I said. “Several of the others followed. Two security guards carried the one called Jensen Luhar into the infirmary area of this absurd little tunnel complex of theirs. He has been unconscious for hours.”

“Where’s Saul?”

Justin made a face. His voice conveyed more of a whine than I had intended. “How should
I
know? I can’t be everywhere.” I saw no reason to tell her that at that moment the guard I had made contact with via Miss Sewell had glanced into the infirmary in time to see Willi’s Negro rise from the table and strangle both the guards who had carried him there. The sight caused me a strange sense of déjà vu until I remembered going to the Kruger-Kino in Vienna with Willi and Nina to see the motion picture
Frankenstein
in the summer of 1932. I remember screaming when the monster’s hand had twitched on the table and then risen to choke the life out of the unsuspecting doctor bending over it. I had no urge to scream now. I had my security guard move on, passing the room where other guards watched banks of television sets, bringing him to a halt near the administrative offices. I saw no reason to tell Nina’s Negress about these developments.

“Which way did Saul go?” asked the girl.

Justin crossed his arms. “Why don’t
you
tell
me
if you’re so smart?” I said.

“All right,” said the Negress. She lowered her eyelids until only a hint of white showed. Howard waited in the shadows of the foyer. “He’s running north,” said the girl, “through heavy jungle. There’s a . . . some sort of ruined building. Headstones. It’s a cemetery.” She opened her eyes.

Upstairs, I moaned and thrashed in my bed. I had been so
sure
that Nina was unable to contact her catspaw. But I had seen that very image on the security guards’ television less than a minute before. I had lost track of Willi’s Negro in the maze of tunnels. Was it possible that Willi was Using this girl? He seemed to enjoy Using colored and other less-developed races. If it was Willi, then where was Nina? I could feel a headache coming on.

“What do you want?” I said again. “You’re going ahead with the plan,” said the girl, still standing near Justin. “Just the way we discussed it.” She glanced at her wristwatch. Her hand was no longer next to the red button, but there was still the matter of brainwaves and computers.

“It seems to make little sense to continue with all this,” I suggested. “Your Jew’s bad sportsmanship has ruined the evening’s program and I doubt if the rest of them will be . . .”

“Shut up,” snapped the girl, and although the language was vulgar, the tone was Nina’s. “You’re going to go ahead as planned. If you don’t, we’ll see if the C-4 can level this entire house at once.”

“You never liked my house,” I said. Justin extended his lower lip. “
Do it, Melanie
,” ordered the girl. “If you don’t, I’ll know it. If not at once, very soon. And I’ll give
you
no warning when I detonate this stuff.
Move
.”

I came very close to having Howard shoot her at that instant. No one speaks to me that way in my own home, certainly not a colored wench who should not even be in my parlor. But I restrained myself, made Howard gently lower the pistol. There were other things to consider here.