Basilisk (29 page)

Twenty or thirty oil paintings were stacked against the attic wall, as well as charcoal studies and pencil drawings and sketchbooks. On an easel in the center of the room stood a half-finished painting of a thin naked woman standing in a forest. Her head, however, was not the head of a woman, but of a wildly staring cat, with yellow eyes.

The painting of the head was highly detailed and so realistic that Nathan could almost imagine the cat-woman leaping out of the canvas. There was something both frightening and pathetic about her, as if she knew how grotesque she looked, and wished that she were a normal woman again, even if she had never been strikingly beautiful.

Rafał looked around the studio, sliding open the drawers in the artist’s plan chest, and rummaging through the sweaters and jeans that were heaped untidily in one of the triangular closets underneath the eaves.

Nathan knelt down and looked under the bed, and under the mattress. Then he turned to Rafał and said, ‘I thought your realtor friend told you that Doctor Zauber had ended this guy’s lease.’

‘He did. But maybe he could find no place to store all of his things, and Zauber allowed him to keep them here.’

‘But there are so many clothes here. And – look – next to the washbasin. A razor, and a toothbrush. He must still be living here.’

They searched the attic thoroughly, looking through cardboard boxes filled with letters and photographs torn out of magazines, as well as books and diaries and bundles of pencils and a plaster hand taken from a store-window dummy. Nathan even took a steel ruler from Robert Cichowlas’ table and pried up two ill-fitting floorboards, but found nothing underneath except plaster dust and a mummified rat and a crumpled pack of
Extra Mocne
cigarettes.

‘There’s something not right here,’ said Nathan. ‘I can feel it.’

‘Well, maybe,’ said Rafał. ‘But maybe not. Maybe Zauber kept him on here simply because he wanted his rent. Even monsters like Zauber need money.’

They took a last look around the attic and then went downstairs to the third floor, where the three main bedrooms were. When they opened the first bedroom door, it was immediately obvious that the Walach family were still here, too. There was a high, old-fashioned double bed, covered with a rose-colored satin eiderdown. On one pillow lay a neatly folded pair of blue-and-white striped pajamas. On the other pillow lay a brushed-cotton nightgown, with a frilly collar.

Rafał turned the key in the closet and opened it. It was full of clothes – mostly dresses, but a brown fur coat, too, and two men’s suits. It smelled strongly of moth repellent. On top of the closet there were two hatboxes and a small leather suitcase.

‘Looks like your friend was misinformed,’ said Nathan. ‘Maybe he was wrong about Doctor Zauber, too. Maybe he
hasn’t
moved back in here.’

Rafał shook his head in bewilderment. ‘He was sure. He said that Doctor Zauber had even come into his office to sign all the necessary papers.’

‘Yes, but if he hasn’t moved back in here, we’re wasting our time. The question is: if he’s not here, where the hell is he?’

They checked the other two bedrooms. One was clearly a teenager’s room, with posters for Coldplay and Oddział Zamkni
ȩ
ty, one of the biggest Polish rock bands. In one corner there was a small white desk with a laptop on it, and a black canvas chair with six or seven T-shirts and two pairs of jeans thrown over the back.

The third bedroom was a young girl’s room, with three shelves that were crowded with Barbies and Bratz and stuffed pandas and teddy bears.

‘That’s it, then,’ said Nathan, closing the door behind him. ‘This whole thing is a total bust.’

He turned to go back downstairs. As he did so, however, he felt an extraordinary
shriveling
sensation in his chest and his upper arms, as if he had been electrocuted, and he almost lost his balance. He swayed, and held on to the banisters for support.

‘Nathan?’ asked Rafał. ‘Are you feeling all right?’

Nathan felt another convulsion, even more painful than the first, and this time his heart seemed to stop in mid-beat, and hesitate before it started up again. He pressed his hand against the front of his coat and realized that the pebbles in Zofia Czarwonica’s charm bag were shaking and clattering and jumping around as if they were alive.

He dragged the bag out from under his coat and held it up. It was rattling so wildly that it looked as if it were filled with struggling scorpions, as well as stones.

‘He’s here,’ he told Rafał. ‘Zauber’s here. Zofia said that I’d know it, as soon as he came close.’

As soon as he said it, he heard a girl screaming. She was so high-pitched and she sounded so terrified that it took him two or three seconds before he recognized that it was Patti. At the same time, Denver shouted out, ‘
Pops
!
Pops
!
Help us
!
Pops
!’

Nathan launched himself down the staircase, four or five stairs at a time. Patti’s screams grew shriller and more panicky, and Denver was so frightened that he was almost roaring.

‘
Pops
!
Help us
!
It’s got her
!
Pops
!’

Nathan reached the hallway with Rafał clambering down the staircase close behind him. He almost tripped on a loose-weave mat at the bottom of the stairs, but he managed to grab the newel post to steady himself, and to swing around and hurry toward the back of the house, where the screaming and the shouting was coming from.

He burst into the kitchen. It was cold and gloomy, with a yellow blind drawn down over the window. The walls were tiled in white and green, and there was a large pine table in the center of the room, with a streaky marble top. Copper saucepans hung from the ceiling, like church bells.

Denver was crouching in the corner, next to the old-fashioned sink. As Nathan and Rafał came in, he shouted hoarsely, ‘
There
!
She’s in there
!
I tried to get her free but I couldn’t
!’

On the far side of the room there was another door, half open. Inside, it was even gloomier than the kitchen, but Nathan could make out the corner of a white-enameled washing machine, and white towels hanging from a wooden frame.

Patti was in there, with whatever it was that caught her, and she was still screaming, although her screams were becoming more like sobs.

Nathan shouted, ‘Patti! It’s OK! We’re coming!
Patti
!’

He crossed the kitchen floor and kicked the door wide open. At first he couldn’t understand what he was looking at, because Patti and her assailant must have fallen against a clothes horse, and they were all tangled up in sheets and pillowcases, so that they looked like two struggling ghosts.

But then Patti twisted herself sideways, and desperately reached out her hand to him, and he understood what was holding her.

It was a huge gray creature, as large as a man, but much bulkier than a man. It had a dome-shaped head, with bulbous black eyes, and glistening pale-yellow eyelids around them that kept on rolling and unrolling, like a snail’s. Yet underneath its eyes it appeared to have a man’s face, with a man’s nose and a man’s mouth, although its lips were dragged downward, as if it were disgusted by its own existence.

It was clinging to Patti with six gray tentacles, rope-like and slimy and constantly waving. The main part of its body was a big shapeless sack, covered with thick corrugated skin.

It had a nauseating smell, like strong human body odor mixed with rotten shellfish.

‘
Patti
!’ Nathan shouted at her, trying to make himself heard above her screaming. ‘
Patti, you have to calm down
!
Patti
!
Take hold of my hand, and try to calm down
!
Patti
!’

He gripped Patti’s hand and it was cold and slippery with the creature’s slime. He tried to tug her free, but the harder he pulled, the tighter the creature wound its tentacles around her. It was holding her around her hips and around her waist and around her breasts, too. One tentacle kept waving and flapping in her face.

Rafał came up right behind Nathan. ‘Holy Mother of God,’ he said. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

‘
Get me free get me free get me free
!’ screamed Patti. ‘
I can’t stand it
!
Get me free
!’

She kept kicking and struggling, and Nathan tried to grab one of her ankles, but the instant he took hold of her, one of the creature’s tentacles wound itself even more tightly around her leg, and made it impossible for him to pull her away.

Patti kept on begging and screaming, but then the creature wound a tentacle around her mouth, and all she could manage was a muffled bleating.

‘No question,’ said Nathan. ‘It’s a living, breathing
Schleimgeist
.’

Rafał took off his glasses, because they had been smeared with foul-smelling mucus, and tried to wipe them on his sleeve. ‘One third squid, one third slug, and one third man. Why would Zauber want to breed anything like this?’

‘Let’s just get Patti free.’

Rafał went back to the kitchen table. He noisily pulled out the drawers underneath the marble top, and found a whole selection of knives and forks.

‘Here!’ he said, holding up a ten-inch boning knife.

He pushed his way back into the laundry room. The slug-creature had dragged Patti into the corner now, and it was winding its tentacles tighter and tighter around her chest, until she was gargling for breath. Rafał dodged to the left, and then to the right, with the carving knife held low. Then he stabbed the slug-creature in the side, twice, as hard as he could.

The slug-creature let out a harsh, angry screech, but the point of the knife hadn’t even pierced its skin. Rafał stabbed it again, and then again, and then again, but he couldn’t make any impression at all.

‘It is too solid!’ he panted. ‘It is like rubber! Like – medicine ball!’

Nathan was tugging at the slippery gray tentacle that was wound around Patti’s mouth. It had slipped between her lips and was pressing up against her tightly clenched teeth. She was staring at him, her eyes wide with fear. But the tentacle was far too muscular for Nathan to pull it away.

Rafał was holding the knife in both hands now, and furiously stabbing at the slug-creature’s sides, grunting loudly with every stab. But he couldn’t even make it bleed.

‘It’s no good,’ Nathan panted. ‘Slugs don’t have exterior shells, but they can contract their bodies so hard that almost nothing can hurt them.’

‘So what can we do? We cannot just stand here and let this monster crush her alive!’

Nathan turned back toward the kitchen. Denver was standing up now, both hands raised, biting at his knuckles in helplessness. His eyes were bursting with tears. ‘Pops, it’s going to kill her, Pops! Don’t let it kill her, please!’

It was then that Nathan thought:
slugs
. And he remembered his mother, after it had been raining, and those huge gray
limax maximus
came crawling across the path, intent on eating her geraniums.

He crossed the kitchen to the pinewood hutch which stood beside the door. Behind him, in the laundry room, Patti must have managed to twist her face away from the tentacle that was wound around her mouth, because she let out three more hysterical screams.

‘
Nathan
!’ called Rafał. ‘
What are you doing
?
Come back
!
Help me
!
Please
!’

‘Hold on!’ Nathan shouted back. ‘I’m coming!’

On the second shelf of the hutch there was a line of large white ceramic jars, with green italic lettering on them.
Cukier, pieprz
and
sól
. Nathan picked up the jar marked
sól
and opened it. It was almost full.

‘
Nathan
!’ Rafał bellowed. ‘
It is breaking her ribs
!’

Nathan pushed his way back into the laundry room. Rafał was still frantically chopping at the slug-creature’s back. He had managed to puncture its skin two or three times, because it was oozing glossy black blood, but he obviously hadn’t succeeded in piercing the bony internal keel which protected its lungs.

Patti was in a bad way now. The slug-creature had managed to wrap two of its tentacles around her face, and the other four were tightly entwined together around her chest. Nathan knew that it would be almost impossible to cut through them, or pull them free. Slugs themselves often became entangled with each other when they were mating, and the only way in which they could get free was for one slug to eat the other’s penis.

Holding the ceramic jar up high, Nathan circled around behind Rafał until he was almost standing on the gray frill that surrounded the slug-creature’s foot. Then he leaned forward as far as he could, placing one hand on the slug-creature’s side to steady himself. The slug-creature felt disgusting: chilly and slimy and hard, like an inflatable boat smothered in jelly. Nathan tipped the jar so that cooking salt poured steadily out of it, all across the slug-creature’s back. He kept on pouring, shaking the jar from side to side as he did so, until it was empty.

He stepped back, dropping the jar and wiping his hand on his coat. For a few dreadful moments, he thought that he might have made a fatal mistake, because the slug-creature seemed to react to the cooking salt only by contracting its muscles even tighter, and he heard Patti gasp as even more breath was squeezed out of her.

Then, however, Rafał said, ‘
Look
!’

Where the point of his kitchen knife had managed to nick the slug-creature’s skin, milky white slime-bubbles were beginning to froth up. The slug-creature suddenly shuddered, and started to writhe, and ripple. Its skin started to melt, turning from black to liquid gray. Fumes poured off it – choking, acrid fumes that smelled like charred fish-skin.

‘Salt!’ Rafał exclaimed. ‘Yes! I should have thought of salt!’