Burial (38 page)

He slowly turned his head forty-five degrees to the left, and then he opened his eyes.

Karen was standing outside his cell. Karen van Hooven, née Tandy, in a yellow linen blouse and a short twill skirt. She looked pale, and her eyes looked strangely colourless and metallic, almost as if they were steel ball-bearings rather than eyes. Her hair was awry, and looked as if it were floating in an unfelt draft.

‘Karen?' said Martin, uncertainly. ‘What are you doing here?' She came up to the bars of his cell, and grasped them in both hands. At first she said nothing, but stared in Martin's direction with her eyes oddly long-sighted, as if she were actually focusing on the wall behind him.

For some reason that he couldn't quite work out, Martin felt afraid of her. There was an unusually
unsettled
feeling about her psychic aura. He had only sensed a similar aura twice before. Once in a woman who was dying from seventy-five per cent burns, after trying to rescue her husband from a house-fire. Once in a nine-year-old boy whose father was abusing him and who would soon be drowned in a washbasin.

It was an aura of darkness. The same darkness that surrounds the sun.

It was an almost-visible aura of death.

‘Karen?' Martin repeated; although he made no move to get up. ‘I didn't know you were coming.'

Karen said, ‘I have to warn you.'

‘Warn me?' asked Martin. ‘Warn me about what?'

‘I have to warn you to take your punishment. We won't be pleased if you don't. You did what you did. Now you have to take your punishment.'

‘I don't understand what you're talking about.'

‘I mean you mustn't interfere. Things will be much worse if you do.'

‘Karen,' said Martin. ‘Does Harry know that you're here?'

‘What?' Her voice was silvery and flat.

‘Does Harry know that you've come to visit me? And in any case, who let you in here? Don't they usually insist on your having an escort? And a security badge, at least?'

Karen repeated, ‘
You mustn't interfere
.'

With no warning whatsoever, she stepped
through
the bars of the cell and stood beside Martin as calm and as expressionless as if she had walked through an open door. Martin jumped up from his chair and knocked it over.

‘Hey, now,' he said, lifting one hand to protect himself. ‘You're not Karen. You're not Karen at all.'

‘Who else could I be?' she asked him. ‘Karen van Hooven, flesh and blood. Here, touch me.'

Martin backed away. ‘Thanks … but I think I'd better not.'

‘You want to find what it was that possessed you, don't you?' asked Karen.

Her smile was faint and eerie. Her eyes still didn't seem to be focused correctly.

Martin blurted, ‘Yes, of course I want to find out what it was. But there's really no rush. I'll try it some other time.'

Karen reached out and laid her hand on his shoulder. It was a real hand, gentle but real. At least it
felt
real.

If Karen was a ghost of some kind, or maybe an ectoplasmic projection, she was the best damned ghost that he had ever seen. Apparently solid, breathing properly —
perfumed
even. Ghosts very rarely smelled of anything, although their imminent appearance could be signalled by a strong distinctive aroma associated with somewhere they had lived, or something they had liked.

Martin walked cautiously around her. She stayed where she was, very calm.

‘You don't believe I'm
real
?' she asked him.

‘Real people can't walk through steel bars. I rest my case.'

She turned her head to face him. ‘Some people can walk through steel bars. It's called willpower.'

He hesitated, tried not to smile back at her. I think it's a little more than willpower, Karen. I think it's material projection. You're here, but you're not really here at all.'

Karen looked at him mischievously. ‘All right, if I'm not really here at all, where am I?'

‘I don't know. But that's what I intend to find out.'

‘You really shouldn't. It's too risky.'

‘What could be riskier than facing an arraignment for first-degree murder?'

‘Martin — you don't know what you're up against.'

‘That's precisely the problem. And that's precisely why I intend to find out what it is.'

Karen lifted one hand, and said, ‘Martin … please don't.'

‘I can't do anything else. What choices do I have?'

‘None, I guess.' She looked away, nervously drumming her fingers against her shoulder, nervously biting her lips. ‘Are you
sure
I can't persuade you?'

‘I'm afraid not.'

‘In that case, do you mind if I stay and watch?'

Martin picked up his fallen chair and sat down again. ‘I don't think I have any option, do I, with a woman who can walk through steel bars? I can hardly keep you out.'

Most of the time, Martin wasn't afraid of spiritmanifestations. After all, his brother Samuel had been visiting him regularly since he was ten years old. Most of the time, spirit manifestations were caused by a freak intermingling of unfulfilled desires, unfinished feelings, and a twirl of spiritual ectoplasm, caught on an unexpected current. Two things kept spirits coming back to the world that they should have left behind them: jealousy, and revenge. People who had died contented, amongst friends they loved, were always happy to turn their back on the world and look to the future.

Martin rearranged his Celtic forks and clasped his hands together, an almost priestly little ritual. He glanced up at Karen's reflection in the mirror on the wall. For the briefest of seconds, he thought he saw her face darken and distort, but it was probably nothing more than the clouds passing outside.

‘You'll have to stay quiet,' he told her. ‘And if it looks like anything's going wrong — ghost or not, you're going to have to get out of here, and as quickly as you can. The creature I'm trying to track down is capable of tearing up a city. I don't think it would have very much compunction about tearing up
us
.'

Karen said nothing, but stood beside him with her arms folded and waited for him to begin.

He cleared his throat. Then — placing himself completely at Karen's mercy — he closed his eyes.

‘Samuel,' he said. ‘I need you to guide me, Samuel.'

He heard Karen move slightly, move around behind him. He was desperately tempted to open his eyes to see what she was doing, but he knew that would only delay things.

‘Samuel,' he said. Then, ‘Samuel?'

There was a very long silence, six or seven minutes or more. Martin could feel Karen growing impatient. But this time he could feel that the spirits were moving well. This time he could feel the darkness pouring thick and steady into his mind, filling up his brain, the real seamless darkness of death.

He saw his brother Samuel standing in the corner of the room, white and silent, in his red wool bathrobe.

‘Samuel?' he said.

He had never seen his brother look so sad. He had never seen him look so indistinct. It was like seeing a boy through a grey net curtain, a curtain which stirred in the breeze, so that you could never be sure if he were smiling or if he had just been crying.

‘Samuel?' he repeated. He didn't rise; but he held out his hand, even though he knew that Samuel would never take it.

‘Martin,' said Samuel, without moving his lips. ‘Martin, you should stay away … It's all over, the whole world's turning upside-down.'

‘Samuel, I have to find the spirit that possessed me. I have to. I have to find it, and I have to bring it back here — or part of it, at least. I have to prove that
I
didn't kill those people.'

Samuel was silent for a long time. Then he slowly shook his head. ‘You should stay away, Martin. It's the dark one; the one from underneath. He's going to take all of you.'

‘Samuel, for Christ's sake! I need your help!'

Samuel brushed back his cow's-lick hair, the way he always used to when he was alive. ‘I can't help you, Martin. Not now.'

‘At least give me a guide.'

Another long silence. Samuel's image brightened and faded, brightened and faded, in the same way that the sunlight brightened and faded through Martin's cell window.

‘All right,' said Samuel, at last, and turned his narrow back in a way that he had never done before.

Martin waited and waited, resisting the temptation to open his eyes. He could feel Karen standing close to him, but he knew that if he opened his eyes there could be a considerable risk of disrupting the connection he had formed with the spirit world, with strange and dangerous consequences. Things could be left in the real world which didn't belong there; and vice versa. He had once come across a simple sewing-needle which had penetrated the real world from the spirit world, and which had pricked everybody who had tried to pick it up.

He waited. He tried to meditate. He tried to think how
he was going to deal with the shadow that had possessed him once he found it.

He hummed ‘Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair.' He drummed his fingers on the table.

At last, he felt a spiritual draught. With his eyes still closed he saw a thin man in a bedraggled blue uniform approaching him, walking (as it were) through walls and doors and windows. As the man came closer, he saw that it was the cavalry officer who had first made contact with him when he had tried to search for the shadow-spirit in Naomi Greenberg's dining room.

The man dragged one of his feet in a weary limp, and his uniform was powdered with white dust. He had been horribly scalped, ears and all, because the Oglala Sioux always preferred their scalps with ears on. His head was matted with blood, thick black clots of it, except where the bone of his skull showed through. His drooping mustache was bloody, too. He came up close to Martin, standing in front of Martin's desk, and eyeing him up and down. Martin could see that the crotch of his cavalry pants was dark with blood.

‘I thought once would have been enough,' the officer remarked. He was very laconic in spite of the fact that he was dead; and that he still bore the terrible scars of his torture.

Martin was shivering. ‘I need to find him. I need to prove that he's real.'

The cavalry officer said, ‘He's real all right. Real as rain. Don't know how you go about proving it, though.'

‘I must.'

The cavalry officer looked bloody and reflective. ‘It'd be a darned dangerous business.'

‘But you came to help me all the same.'

‘Yes, sir, I suppose I did.'

‘Can I ask who you are?'

‘I'm Daniel McIntosh, sir, first-lieutenant, company G, Seventh Cavalry.'

‘What happened to you, Lieutenant McIntosh?'

‘I died at Greasy Grass River, sir, the battle they called the Little Big Horn.'

‘And what do you know about the shadow?'

‘I saw it, sir. I saw it right behind Crazy Horse the first time the Indians came riding up that northerly hill.'

‘You
saw
it?' said Martin.

‘Yes, sir, we all did. It was like a shadow, sir, black as a shadow, with things moving in it, things like snakes or maybe coils of smoke. We couldn't rightly decide. The day was pretty dark in any case, on account of the firing and the gunsmoke.'

‘What did it do?'

‘It moved so quick it was hard to say, a whole great rush of shadow — scared the living shit out of all of us. First it dragged some of the horses down the hill and they was screaming like human women those horses. It was the worstest thing I ever did hear, apart from the screaming when the men was dragged down the hill after them.'

‘The shadow-thing was dragging them down?'

‘That's correct, sir, exactly that. I felt it myself. It was like the whole hill was moving under my bootheels. I never felt anything like it before.

‘I swear to you, it wasn't Crazy Horse or any of his men who killed us that day, it was the shadow that dragged us down, and it was only then that Crazy Horse started counting coup and torturing and all.'

‘Did you see where the shadow went?'

‘No, sir. I was hurt by then. I was pulled to the ground and my back was broke. I couldn't get up to my feet at-all. Then there was four or five Sioux standing over me and they shot arrows between my legs into my privates. Then they cut off my scalp and my ears and left me to die. I lay on the
ground and I dreamed of my dear mother and it was almost like being a boy again. Then my mother came through the smoke and knelt down beside me and touched my forehead as cool as buttermilk. She said, ‘Come on, son, everything's fine,' and then I knew that I was passed over, and all my suffering was at an end.'

Martin covered his closed eyes with his hand, but he could still see Lieutenant McIntosh just as clearly.

‘Think, lieutenant … did anything happen that could have
proved
it was the shadow that killed you, rather than the Indians?'

‘Well, I'll tell you, sir, several of the men were turned completely outside-in, like gloves, and I don't know how an Indian could have done that, even the strongest.'

‘But you were all killed, weren't you? Nobody survived to bear witness to that.'

‘Well, sir, photographs were took.'

‘Photographs? Somebody took photographs?'

‘Mr Kellogg of the
Bismarck Tribune
, sir, although what became of Mr Kellogg or what became of his photographs I never shall know.'

Martin was about to ask Lieutenant McIntosh where Mr Kellogg had been standing when he took his photographs when the cavalry officer seemed to shiver and fade.

‘Lieutenant, what's happening?'

Lieutenant McIntosh opened and closed his mouth, but if he did speak Martin couldn't hear him. His image grew dimmer and darker, as if a shadow were falling across it, and Martin began to be aware that a shadow was building up in front of him. The temperature in the cell began rapidly to drop, and Martin was aware of a strong and familiar smell. The smell of prairie burning. The smell of Indian fires. The smell of buffalo meat and magic herbs and a wind that stayed silent, because it had too many tragic stories to tell.