Basilisk (16 page)

‘So what are you trying to tell me? That you’re doing something illegal?’

‘Not entirely. But I did take the precaution of making sure that you came to the Murdstone as a trespasser. Or – who knows? – maybe you are something more than a trespasser? Maybe you came here intent on theft? There are so many defenseless seniors here, with some very valuable items of jewelry, not to mention paintings, and books, and china figurines, as your wife would have told you. And you – you have just lost your job.’

‘Oh . . . you really think that I’d break into a rest home to steal old ladies’ necklaces? Give me a break.’

‘Desperate people have done worse. And for me, the fact that you brought your wife with you is of course a bonus. What would they say at the Chestnut Hill medical practice, if she were to be arrested on suspicion of burglary? All I have to do now is call the police.’

Nathan said, ‘You can’t be serious. You can’t threaten us like that.’

‘Of course not. I am only making a joke, of sorts. But you know that every joke has a tragic side to it; just as every dream can easily turn into a nightmare. Like
your
nightmares, Professor.’

‘What?’

‘Where do you think they came from, your nightmares? That basilisk, that reared up from the end of your bed? That face on your bedroom ceiling?’

‘
What
? How do you know about that?’

Doctor Zauber stepped closer. He took hold of Nathan’s wrist and twisted it upward so that his flashlight was shining directly into his face. Then he took off his reflective eyeglasses, and rolled up his eyes so that only the whites were showing.

Nathan tugged his hand away. It was Doctor Zauber’s face that he had seen on the ceiling. And now he thought about it, it was Doctor Zauber’s voice that he had heard, taunting him.

As I say, my friend, you are the expert in the difference between dreams and reality
.

‘How did you do that? I
saw
you! You were there, on the ceiling! You talked to me! And the basilisk, that was there, too! It almost froze me to death!’

Doctor Zauber made a soft clicking noise with his tongue, as if he were calling a horse, and the basilisk dragged itself a few feet nearer. Grace took three or four steps back. The musty smell was overwhelming.

‘I have the ability,’ said Doctor Zauber. ‘I have always had the ability, all my life. It is something one is born with. Transvection, that is what they call it in English. Psychic transference. But, I had no intention of hurting you, Professor. I wanted to hook you, that was all. Like a fish! To arouse your curiosity and reel you in! And look! You’re here!’

He laid his hand on the basilisk’s hunched-up back. ‘So many creatures used to exist in medieval times, in the days of magic. Dragons! Gargoyles! But I never thought that I would be able to bring any of them back to life. I dreamed about it, of course, but in spite of my natural abilities it needed much more than wishful thinking, or even the rituals of reincarnation that were handed down from one great necromancer to another. The creatures were extinct. They were dead, they were gone. They had fallen from the skies and fossilized into stones. And who can get blood from a stone?’

He replaced his eyeglasses and looked at Nathan ruefully. ‘It needed
science
, Professor. It needed a man like you.’

Nathan was growing increasingly edgy. The basilisk kept shuffling closer and its eyes began to shine brighter, even through three or four layers of blackened sacking.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘it needed a man like me. But what kind of a man are
you
? Are you some kind of psychic or something? Some kind of conjuror?’

‘You will find out, Professor, if you really want to. But if we are to work together, I expect from you equal respect for my abilities. Maybe I am not a scientist as you would recognize it, but what I am able to do is just as powerful. Without my contribution, your project will never come to anything. Ever.’

‘Listen, Doctor, I don’t even know what your abilities are, apart from giving me nightmares, and appearing on my bedroom ceiling like some goddamn Mardi Gras mask.’

Doctor Zauber shook his head. ‘When I first came to Philadelphia, I knew nothing about you, or what you were doing. I found out about your cryptozoology project only three years ago, when your wife came to visit one of our residents and we started to chat together. I pretended to your wife that I was politely interested, but the truth was that I was thunderstruck. Suddenly I saw a way of making these mythical creatures come back to life. I felt that the clouds had parted and God Himself had appeared to me, in all His glory.’

Nathan and Grace looked quickly at each other but neither of them said anything. They both sensed that Doctor Zauber was right on the verge of telling them what Nathan had been missing, and why his gryphon had died. At the same time, however, Nathan could see that the basilisk’s eyes were shining brighter and brighter, so that pencil-thin shafts of light began to play across the corridor.

‘Listen,’ said Nathan, ‘I’m getting real uncomfortable with this. Maybe we should talk about this tomorrow, without the basilisk looming over us.’

‘The basilisk senses that I need an answer,’ said Doctor Zauber. ‘It feels its own mortality, too.’

‘So tell me. Where have I been going wrong? What can you and I do together than I can’t do by myself?’

‘Life-energy,’ said Doctor Zauber. ‘All mythical creatures feed on life-energy. They are
mythical
, that is what you have to understand. They are legends, existing halfway between the real and the unreal. Stories made flesh. They find no nourishment in dead meat, or carrion, or grain. They subsist on the souls of the people who believe in them, and any other kind of life that they can.’

‘They feed on
souls
?’ said Grace. ‘What exactly does that mean?’

‘Exactly that. Take Doris Bellman. Physically, she was close to the end of her natural life, but her soul was just as vibrant as it was when she was a young girl.’

‘So you let the basilisk take it from her? Is that it?’

‘The basilisk needed sustenance, or else it would have died; and if the basilisk had died, all of its resident stem cells would have died with it. As misshapen as it is, this one creature can save thousands of people who suffer from serious degenerative illnesses. Multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy. Don’t you think that the soul of one elderly woman is worth that?’

Grace said, ‘For God’s sake . . . you can’t kill people for the sake of medical research. That’s what the Nazis did, and the Japanese. Some people think you shouldn’t even sacrifice animals.’

‘Anyhow,’ said Nathan, ‘how can you physically do it? How is it possible to take someone’s soul?’

The basilisk had started slavering and whining, and he couldn’t stop himself from glancing at it with increasing unease. Its eyes were shining almost as brightly as car headlights, and if they hadn’t been covered in layers of sacking, they would have been dazzling. As a precaution, Nathan reached for the mirror that was hanging around his neck, and held it ready in his left hand.

Doctor Zauber said, ‘If you agree to come here and work with me, Professor, in a spirit of true co-operation, then I can demonstrate it to you. It is not easy to explain it in words. It involves procedures which date right back to the Middle Ages, to the times of the great shamans – especially the
táltos
of Hungary.’

‘The
táltos
? Who the hell were they?’

‘They were like guides to the spirit world. People who could find the souls of the living when they inadvertently strayed into the world of the dead, and the souls of the dead when they inadvertently strayed into the world of the living.’

‘This is insane,’ said Nathan. ‘Even if I believed you, I couldn’t agree to take anybody’s soul, no matter how many other people were going to be cured.’

‘How can you possibly not believe me? Here in front of you is the basilisk – the living, breathing evidence that everything I am telling you is true. And you were equally instrumental in its creation. Without you, without your research, this basilisk could never have come to be.’

He briskly clapped his hands and shouted out, ‘Bravo, Professor! Your gryphon died, but your basilisk still lives!’

Nathan dragged out his gun again. ‘This is over, Doctor Zauber. If this is the only way that the Cee-Zee program can work, then I don’t want to have anything more to do with it.’

Doctor Zauber warned, ‘Please, Professor. Put the gun away. It really isn’t necessary.’

Nathan stepped sideways, raising his gun so that it was pointing directly at the basilisk’s head. He put his arm around Grace’s shoulders, and pulled her in close to him.

‘What we’re doing now, Doctor Zauber, we’re leaving.’

‘Oh, yes? And after you have left, what are you going to do then?’

‘You’ll find out.’

Doctor Zauber took another step closer, so that the SK was leveled at his heart. ‘You won’t leave here, Professor. Not without agreeing to help me. You can’t.’

‘I can, and I will.’

‘This creature behind me, it’s your whole life’s work, and mine. This is everything you studied for, worked for, argued for. This basilisk is
you
, Professor. How can you possibly leave? How can you possibly walk away?
Es ist total unmöglich
.’

‘Oh, and what will you do, if we
do
walk away? Call for the cops, have us arrested?’

‘Maybe. Maybe something much more simple than that, something more terrible. Maybe the creation could devour its creator.’

‘Oh, yes? And where would that leave you? With one deformed basilisk, and no idea of what to do next?’

‘
So können Sie nicht mit mir sprechen
!
Ohne mich würde es kein Geschöpf geben
!
Ohne mich würden Sie noch Jahre brauchen, um überhaupt anfangen zu können, geschweige denn Fertig zu werden
!’

Doctor Zauber was shaking with anger. ‘Without me,’ he translated, ‘you will be nothing at all. So the choice is yours. Fame, and wealth, and a place in biological history. Or obscurity.’

‘Come on, Nate,’ said Grace. ‘We’re going.’

‘No!’ shouted Doctor Zauber. He stalked forward, and pushed Grace to one side.

Nathan pushed him back, so hard that he collided with the wall, and almost fell over.

‘Didn’t you hear what she said? We’re going!’

‘You cannot! You cannot! You have to work with me!’

Nathan pushed him again, harder this time. ‘Can’t you get it through your head, Doctor Zauber? The answer is no, never!’

‘You want never? You are asking for
never
?’ Doctor Zauber raised his riding crop and jabbed it furiously into the layers of sacking that covered the basilisk’s head. The basilisk hissed and snarled, and swung its head around and around, so that the sacking fell down to its hunched-up shoulders. Instantly, the light from its eyes flooded the corridor, so that Nathan could see nothing at all, but blinding whiteness, as if he were staring straight into an arc lamp.

His first thought was:
Grace, she mustn’t look at it
. He held up the mirror in front of his face to protect his own eyes, and tilted himself sideways, grabbing hold of Grace with his left arm and pulling her into him, so that her face would be shielded by his chest.

Then he reached back behind him and fired three shots toward the light. The automatic kicked much more violently than he had thought it would: it was like somebody hitting his hand with a hammer. But he must have struck the basilisk at least once, because he heard a throaty cry and almost immediately the light from its eyes began to dim.

‘What have you done?’ he heard Doctor Zauber screaming at him. ‘What have you done? Are you some kind of madman?
Sind Sie verrückt
?’

But he wasn’t interested in Doctor Zauber. All he cared about was Grace. She had collapsed in his arms and was dangling like a puppet.

‘Grace!’ he shouted at her. ‘Grace!’

‘The creature is hurt! You have hurt it!’ said Doctor Zauber. In the criss-crossing beams of their flashlights, Nathan saw him kneeling on the floor, rummaging wildly through the black sacking wrappings. On the wall behind the basilisk, there was a slanting spray of dark brown blood, which ended in a question mark.

‘Grace,’ he urged her. ‘Grace, baby, come on, sweetheart.’ He shone his flashlight in her face and saw that it was colorless. Her greeny-gray eyes were wide open but they were focused on nothing at all.

He turned to Doctor Zauber. ‘You’ve killed her!’ he screamed. ‘You’ve killed her! You and your fucking monster! You’ve killed her!’

Doctor Zauber stood up. Both of his hands were smothered in blood. ‘Whose monster?’ he shouted back. ‘Whose monster?
Our
monster, Professor – yours and mine!’

Nathan didn’t have time to argue. He lifted up Grace in his arms and elbowed past Doctor Zauber and back along the corridor. Doctor Zauber called, ‘You have to come back! You have to come back! The basilisk is badly hurt!’ But Nathan continued to walk along the corridor as fast as he could, his knees slightly bent, Grace’s arm swinging against his thigh.

‘Come on, Grace, you’re going to make it, sweetheart. You’re not going to die. Nobody’s going to take your soul, not tonight.’

As he tilted his way down the stairs he met the shaven-headed orderly and the Korean carer, both on their way up.

‘Call nine-one-one!’ he shouted at them.

‘Hey, what’s happened?’ blinked the orderly. ‘We heard shots! Who the hell are you, dude, and what are
you
doing here? And who’s
that
?’

‘Call nine-one-one!’ Nathan repeated.

‘But—’

‘
Call nine-one-one
!’

The orderly dug into his overall, but came up empty. ‘My cell – left it in the office.’

‘Then use mine . . . it’s in my left-hand pocket. Hurry, for Christ’s sake!’