Blackbone (28 page)

Loring held the flashlight over Kirst and directed the beam into his eyes.

His head jerked sideways and his lids snapped down.

She waited then put her thumb against his left eye, pried up the lid, and directed the beam into his pupil—

Kirst’s arm shot up and hit her wrist, knocking the flashlight to the floor. Loring grimaced at the pain.

Kirst’s arm fell to the bed. His head rolled up, revealing unseeing eyes open again. Everybody stared at him. Loring twisted her hand to counteract the pain. “It doesn’t like light,” she said.

“What do you mean, it?” said Gilman.

“A creature of darkness, Major Gilman. Haven’t you noticed that all three deaths occurred at night?”

Gilman had visions of Kirst rising in the night like Bela Lugosi and gliding forth for a midnight drink.

Loring watched a slight flicker in Kirst’s eyes. “I think he’s going to wake up soon,” she said. “Perhaps someone should make coffee.”

While Cuno got the water boiling, Loring reached for the lump of tar. Using the edge of the magnet, she pried off a bite-size chunk and held it over Kirst’s parted lips. “Now keep your eyes on him,” she said, and quickly jammed the lump between his teeth then held her hand over his mouth. Steuben moved to stop her, but he wasn’t fast enough. Kirst’s jaws flew open. His teeth clamped down on Loring’s hand, and she screamed. Steuben froze, frightened by her scream and by a menacing growl from Kirst. Gilman reached over but Loring was quicker. She slammed her fist down on Kirst’s chest. His grip relaxed and she yanked her hand free.

Gilman stared at the bloody teeth marks in her flesh then watched her rush to the sink and hold her hand under running water. As he turned back to the cot, he saw Kirst’s head again loll sideways. Hot melting tar leaked from his lips and spread in a steaming pool under his head.

Gilman, Steuben, Borden, and Cuno—all were immobilized, staring at the black goo on the sheet. Borden finally reached over and cautiously dipped a finger into it, scooping up a glob and letting it run down the back of his nail. “Jesus Christ,” he said, staring at Kirst’s blistering lips.

They waited while Cuno used disinfectant on Loring’s hand. When she returned to the chair, she was pale and shaky.

“Maybe we’d better call a halt before he bites your head off,” Gilman suggested.

“No.”

“It’s your party, but I’m beginning to wonder what you’re going to do with that rod.”

“Very funny.” She unbuttoned Kirst’s shirt and exposed his torso. They were all surprised at how thin and gray he was; his rite stood out. “There are certain substances that he—that
it
—reacts to violently. Kirst is permitted to eat only enough solid food to keep his body in minimal working order. Eventually, though, he’ll die. Major Borden, would you lift him, please?”

Borden raised Kirst by the shoulders, allowing Loring to arrange the rod on the bed so it would lie parallel to Kirst’s spinal cord, then she gestured for Borden to lower him on it. She picked up the magnet and gripped it so the polarized tips pointed downward and were just touching the surface of Kirst’s flesh at his collarbone. His skin at that spot quickly blackened to the color of a bad bruise. As Loring drew the magnet down the length of his torso, following the approximate position of the rod beneath his back, the blackening followed.

Kirst began to writhe painfully. His mouth opened. He made a choking sound.

“All right, Miss Holloway, that’ll do...” Gilman said.

Loring ignored him. She held the magnet directly over his belly and worked it up and down. The blackness rippled with the motion. Kirst’s head rolled from side to side. His hands snatched at the bedclothes. His body stiffened.

They were all staring now.

“It was in the flask,” Loring said, glancing at their astonished faces. “It was in the crate he climbed into after his submarine sank. He threw everything else out, but not the flask. He opened it, and the thing that was inside got out. And now it’s in him.”

“What
thing?”
Gilman said hoarsely.

“Can you see it?” she snapped, indicating the rippling blackness
. “Tell me you can’t see it!”

They exchanged looks.

“All right,” said Gilman. “We see something.”

Satisfied, Loring continued. “It’s not a trick. I didn’t make him swallow iron filings while your backs were turned.”

“What
thing?”
Gilman demanded again.

“A demon.”

There was silence. Not even a look was exchanged. They watched the moving magnet and Kirst alternately writhing and stiffening.

“It holds itself together by manipulating its molecules inside a magnetic field. Historically, this type of demon reacts adversely to iron, and it was easy to figure out why—iron disrupts its magnetic field. Right now it’s helpless.”

Gilman’s anger grew. He was tired of this, tired of her tricks and pronouncements. For a moment he watched her continue to draw patterns on Kirst’s stomach, then abruptly he snatched the magnet from her hand and returned it to the tray. “All right, Miss Holloway, do you work for State, the museum, or Blackstone the Magician? Which is it?”

Loring was quiet a moment.

“What else are you going to do? What about the salt?”

Loring reminded Cuno about the coffee. Gilman angrily hoisted Kirst up and yanked the rod out from beneath him.

“Look!” said Borden.

The black bruise was still there on Kirst’s belly. As they watched, it continued moving, as if the magnet were still manipulating it. It burrowed up to Kirst’s throat and pulsed there, changing color back and forth from black to gray, then it shot back down and described figure eights on Kirst’s chest. Borden choked on a laugh.

“Oh, Christ,” said Loring. “It’s playing with me.”

As if it heard her, the black spot stopped moving and gradually disappeared. Steuben reached for a chair and sat down. Loring leaned back, some of her anxiety going. It was there, no longer a figment of her imagination. It really existed. She had chased across half a continent to find it and now she knew—

There is a djinn. And it’s inside Kirst.

They sat around a card table and had coffee, and Loring told them where it came from, how she had found it, how it draws energy from fear, how it gains power by killing its victims, how it thrives on an atmosphere of chaos.

The djinn moved inside the body. It used Kirst’s eyes to watch the little group around the table. It had mixed feelings about the woman. On the one hand she was a nuisance, but she could be dealt with. She could sit there and talk to them until the seasons changed, but they would still not be convinced. The djinn could sense that they didn’t believe her yet, and that was good, it gave him more time.
Confusion, indeed.
The djinn chuckled and rolled inside Kirst—
How could she know she was only adding to the confusion?
And when she finds out how little she has accomplished her fear will return. And that will bring us to the other hand: she too could make an excellent new host.

“If it’s not stopped,” she was saying, “it will kill everyone within reach.”

“I’m sorry. I just don’t understand this,” Borden said. “You mean at night Kirst walks around like some zombie and does these things?”

“No. The djinn comes out of Kirst in some way, does what it wants, and goes back in. All it requires in order to function is a host to live in during the day and the regular consumption of emotional energy.” She glanced at Kirst. “It’s in there right now. We’ve got to keep it in there.”

“How?” Gilman said.

“I don’t know.”

Gilman’s chair scraped loudly as he got up. He went all the way to the back of the infirmary, found a sink with a medicine cabinet mirror over it, ran some water, and washed his face. He couldn’t decide whether or not he believed her. He didn’t
want
to believe her, that was the whole thing. Would it make his job easier if he did? God, no. He reached for a paper towel. She was standing a few feet away.

“I’m a scientist,” she said. “I’ve got nothing to gain by promoting a load of hogwash. What has to happen for you to believe me?”

He chucked the towel away. “It just seems so convenient. The thing never shows itself, yet people get killed. I’m not as scientific as you claim to be, but I want
proof.”

She glanced around to be sure the others couldn’t hear. “The biggest danger we’re facing right now is that it wants to get outside this prison compound and into a more wide-ranging host. And if that happens, there’s no way to stop it. It can go on and—”

Disgusted, Gilman walked away from her. She followed him back to the table and watched him sip coffee. She felt angry and hurt but tried to get past that.

“This thing has a history,” she went on. “It’s been written about. There are similarities between some of the deaths it caused in Ur-Tawaq and what’s been going on here.”

“What similarities?” Borden asked.

“Major Steuben, why did Eckmann kill Schliebert?”

Steuben hesitated. “He imagined Schliebert was making love to his wife.”

“Which sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

Steuben was silent.

“But suppose Eckmann really did see Schliebert with his wife? Suppose he didn’t imagine it but
believed
he was seeing it. It was as real to him as I am to you. Were Eckmann and Schliebert friends or enemies? Did they like each other or hate each other?”

Steuben thought carefully. “It was... Hoffman and Dortmunder, and a few others, that Eckmann didn’t get along with. Schliebert was a friend.”

“So why would Eckmann imagine the worst of a friend? There would have to be a history of frustration and mental pressure with Schliebert at the center of it. Even a psychotic behaves within a discernible pattern. But the djinn doesn’t care about human motivations. It induces psychosis! It feeds on the fears of its victims, setting friend against friend—you see, there were
two
victims in that murder. Schliebert
and
Eckmann!”

They still weren’t sure. Loring grabbed a notebook out of her suitcase and slapped it on the table. She flipped pages until she found the one she was looking for.

“Here. This is an account of two citizens of Ur-Tawaq. A blacksmith, believing that his wife had been unfaithful with a carpenter, killed the carpenter. But his wife was able to prove her innocence—she had never even met the carpenter. Just before he was to be trial for the crime, the blacksmith hanged himself in despair.” She closed the notebook and looked at Gilman. “I think that’s goddamned similar, don’t you?”

No one answered.

Loring shot a finger in Kirst’s direction. “It worked so well twenty-five hundred years ago that the djinn thought it would be swell to try it again! Don’t you see what you’re up against?”

Borden frowned skeptically. “How does it accomplish these things?”

“By conjuring delusions. There’s a lot of fear and demoralization floating around this camp. It capitalizes on that, provokes more of it by applying a form of hypnosis to weakened, fearful minds. It can pick these men off one by one or in twos or—In the city of Ur-Tawaq, eventually there were mass delusions!”

Gilman’s hand lashed out and swept his tin coffee cup off the table. It clattered off to a corner. Fixing Loring with an angry glare, he said, “You’re not making things easier, Miss Holloway. You’re telling Major Steuben that there’s a monster after his men.”

“It’s after all of us, Major. It’s only starting with the prisoners.”

“Presuming you’re right, how do you propose to stop it?”
 

She indicated the tray. “That’s what I’m trying to find out. We’re testing it.”

Borden shrugged. “Why don’t we just kill Kirst?”

Steuben jumped up. He assailed them with a string of German epithets. He shouted and thundered then stopped abruptly and crossed to the cot. He stared at Kirst.

“I guess that’s one vote no,” said Borden.

“We may have to at some point,” said Loring, “if only to expose the djinn, force it out in the open, deprive it of its host. But it won’t do any good—in fact, it would be more dangerous—unless we have a surefire method of killing it.” She looked at the cot and raised her voice for Steuben’s benefit. “Kirst is going to die anyway. He can’t last long with the djinn draining him this way. He’s not really in a coma, you see. There’s just... nothing left of him. No will, no emotions, no thoughts of his own. Arid now that the djinn knows we’re aware of its presence, it
has
to find a new host. And soon.”

“How will it do that?” Gilman snapped.

“I don’t know. The same way it got into Kirst, I suppose”

Steuben studied Kirst’s staring eyes. Some of his superiors’ orders had defied credibility, but this woman put them all to shame. She was remarkable—so convincing!

Bruckner is right—the Americans are up to something. They brought her here, just like they brought Kirst. They’re all in it together. But why? What are they doing to us?

He moved to the tray and picked up the bag of herbs. “What is this for?” he said. At that moment, his gaze fell on the window and he saw something happening outside, between Huts 9 and 10, that made his blood freeze.