Charnel House (20 page)

SIX

Clouds had begun to drift across from the ocean, and by the time we reached Mission Street, the day, which had started off bright, was humid and dull. The taxi let us off at 1551, and with a feeling of dread we stood on the sloping sidewalk and looked up yet again at that dead and dilapidated house that just wouldn't let us go. George Thousand Names said, “Whatever happens now, I want you to trust my knowledge and my wisdom, such as it is, and do what I tell you. It could mean the difference between life and death.”

I gave a nervous laugh. “You really have a way of putting things that uplifts the weariest heart.”

He looked testy. “Just do what I say, right?”

“You're the boss.”

We swung open that groaning gate, and went up the steps to the porch. The fragments of doorknocker had gone, although there was still a mark on the old gray paintwork where it had been, and blisters from the freezing cold that George Thousand Names had used to break it. There was something else, too. The word
“Return”
had disappeared.

I pushed the door and it seemed to be locked.

“Maybe the police locked it,” I said. “The SWAT squad could have been round here at some time.”

I stepped back down the porch and stared up at the house. It looked grim and photographic under the gathering clouds. There was a feeling in the air that something dark and unpleasant was going to happen, and I couldn't resist a shiver.

For a second, something seemed to flicker in an upstairs window. It was pale, and it only appeared for a brief moment. But I clutched George Thousand Names's shoulder. “I saw something. They're in there. I swear it.”

The old Indian turned, and there was an airplane thundering low across the sky toward SF International Airport. “It was just a reflection from the plane. You mustn't get yourself upset.”

“George, there's something
in
that house.”

He stared at me. There were forty years and two divided culture's between us, and I guessed nothing could really bridge that gap. But something was working between us, too, some kind of trust, and I was grateful for it.

We approached the door again, and George Thousand Names reached out for the lock. He muttered quickly under his breath, gestured three times with his left hand, and the door clicked and swung open. Inside, there was that same dusty, forbidding darkness, and I smelled again that stale smell that would remind me of 1551 Pilarcitos Street to the moment I went to my grave. The Indian said, “Come,” and we stepped in.

First, we checked the downstairs rooms. Seymour Wallis's study, the dining room, the deserted kitchen. In the sitting room, gloomy behind closed shutters, we looked over the spooky dust-sheeted furniture, the gold ormolu clock silent under its glass dome, and the oil paintings of grotesque hunts across nightmare landscapes that were so dark it was almost impossible to make out what they were. The house was so silent around us that we held our breath, and walked with as little noise as we possibly could.

In the hallway again, George Thousand Names stood and listened. He frowned. “Do you hear anything? Anything at all?”

I stood still, and strained my ears.

“I don't think so.”

“I feel that someone's watching,” he said. “Whoever they are, whatever they are, they know that we're here.”

We stayed silent for a few moments more, looking around at the dingy wallpaper with all the faded marks where the pictures of Mount Taylor and Cabezon Peak had once hung, but the house stayed so quiet that I began to think we'd made a mistake. Perhaps it
was
empty, and all that I'd seen flitting across that window was a passing reflection. I sneezed a couple of times from the dust and blew my nose.

As I was putting my handkerchief away, I looked up the stairs and I went cold.
There was a small face watching me from the top step
. A face that was evil and hairy, with red-lighted eyes, and a grin so wolfish and vicious that I couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't even reach out for George's arm to warn him.

It was the doorknocker. The living doorknocker. Back in one piece again, and even more hideous and terrifying than it had been before.

George Thousand Names suddenly saw that I was gaping up the stairs, and he looked, too. But before he could do anything, there was a loud crack, and the doorknocker broke into pieces of dull bronze, which rolled and bounced and clattered down the stairs.

The pieces came to rest on the hall floor. The medicine man looked down at them with a sober face. “That's Coyote's idea of a warning. He's just reminding me that whatever I can do, he can undo and do again.”

“We're not thinking of going upstairs after that performance, are we?” I said in a dry voice.

He sniffed. “I don't see what else we can do. Do you smell anything?”

I couldn't really, but I said, “Dogs?”

“I think so. It's faint at the moment, but it seems to be coming from upstairs.”

The Indian set a foot on the first step, but I held his arm, and looked him straight in the face. “George, I have to tell you this. I'm scared shit.”

He was silent for a moment, then he nodded. “So am I,” he confessed.

Slowly, quietly, we climbed the first flight of stairs until we came to the landing. Just in front of us was the room where Bryan Corder had lost the flesh of his head. There was a window at the end of the landing, but it was so dirty and stained, and the sky was so cloudy outside, that only the weakest light could penetrate. Coyote, after all, was a lover of darkness.

We looked at each other. “Shall we check the rooms?” I asked.

“We'd better.”

We went across to the first bedroom, hesitated, and then flung open the door. It was a silent, dreary room, with a dilapidated brass bed and one of those massive walnut wardrobes that looks as if it's veneered with strange feral faces. I could see myself in the dressing-table mirror, and I suddenly realized how rough and pale I looked. Two days of shock and tension don't do much for your outward glow.

“Nothing in there,” he whispered. “Not unless there's somebody hiding under the bed.”

“Are you going to look?”

He managed a lopsided grin. “Are you?”

“Forget it. We'll
both
look.”

We got down on our hands and knees, lifted the bedspread, and peered into the shadowy darkness under the bed. There was nothing there except dust.

“Okay,” he said. “Let's try the rest of the rooms.”

One by one, we flung open doors and looked nervously inside. The bedrooms were silent, cold, unused. Depressing and run-down reminders of the people who had once lived in this house. They could never have been happy, not with the evil presence of Coyote built into their walls and their cornices and their chimneys, not with the demon's haunted breath whistling under every door with the midnight draft; and their unhappiness showed in the sparseness of their furnishings and the incongruous attempts at gaiety in their pictures. On one wall, there was a painting of mimosa. On another, a drawing of children dancing around a Maypole. Somehow, all these pictures did was emphasize the chilling sensation of dread that soaked through every wall, the dank terror that must have made every night under this roof a carnival of nightmares.

“I guess we'd better try further up,” the Indian said. “There's one more floor, and then the attic.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay, if you insist. But when we come to the attic, I think we'd better toss a coin for the privilege of going first.”

We stepped out on to the landing again, ready to go up to the third floor, but all of a sudden we heard voices. They were coming from downstairs, in the hall. A man and a woman. I froze for a moment, but then I leaned over the banister, and saw Jim and Jane standing in the hallway. Jim was saying, “They must have been here already. The door's wide open.”

“Maybe they were,” Jane said. “But it doesn't matter. The main thing is that you're here.”

I turned back to George Thousand Names. “It's
her
,” I hissed. “And she's brought Dr. Jarvis.”

He tugged me gently back to one of the bedrooms. He closed the door, and gave me a long, intent look.

“This means one thing. Coyote must be here, in the house. She's probably brought Jim along as a sacrifice. A little wedding present from Bear Maiden to Coyote. Quite a succulent treat for a demon who's been dead for hundreds of years.”

I pressed my ear to the door. I could hear Jane and Jim mounting the stairs, and talking in subdued voices. I whispered, “What can we
do?
”

George Thousand Names put his finger to his lips, and said, “Wait.”

Jane and Jim reached the landing and walked along it toward the next flight of stairs. Jim said, “Are you sure John said he'd meet us up here? It seems kind of strange.”

“Of course,” asserted Jane. “Isn't the whole thing strange?”

As they passed our door, George Thousand Names opened it, and stepped on to the landing. I came out after him, my heart palpitating and my throat tight with fear.

“John! You're here!” said Jim, grinning. “What's going on here? Hide-and-seek?”

George Thousand Names snapped,
“Don't move!”

“What?”

“Don't move! Stay right where you are! That woman you're with is dangerous!”

Jane looked at me and then at George Thousand Names as if she really couldn't understand what we were talking about. I said,
“Jane?”
but I saw that her face was unusually white, and that her eyes were as blank as two clams on the half-shell. There was no trace of the cut that I'd inflicted on her forehead, but then after all I'd seen in the past two days, I believed Coyote capable of healing and mending anything that he felt like.

“John …” said Jane, in a slurry voice. “How nice to see you …”

George Thousand Names butted in, “Don't answer. Don't talk. She's not human right now, and anything you say can help her destroy you.”

Jim frowned. “Not
human?
What the hell are you—”

“Shut up!” barked the medicine man. Then, quieter, “Shut up, please, I need to think.”

Jane stood where she was in the dusk of the corridor, upright but very tense, and when I looked at her it seemed as if her face kept subtly altering and flowing, like a white drowned face seen through running water. I knew she wasn't Jane; not the Jane that I knew. But she looked so much like her that it was impossible for me to feel anything but affection. Almost involuntarily I stepped forward, but George Thousand Names was quick and he held my sleeve.

“I know what you feel,” he said softly. “But have patience.”

Jane suddenly laughed and snarled at the same time. It was such a horrifying sound that Jim, in spite of what George Thousand Names had told him, jumped away. In front of our eyes, Jane was melting and changing like one photograph overlaid on top of another, layer after layer, until I could see that dark hair was covering her hands, and her nails had become curved claws.

Jim said, “Oh, my God.”

But George Thousand Names had this lesser demon under control. He lifted one of his amulets, and Bear Maiden shied back against the wall of the landing, snarling and growling, her eyes blank and red.

“I command you to obey me,” he said. “Bear Maiden of the southwest, sister of those who loved you, constant until Coyote beguiled you. I command you to obey me.”

Bear Maiden stood on her shaggy hind paws and roared, her eyes blazing like a devil. At her full height, she almost touched the ceiling, and I was far from sure that George Thousand Names could control her. The medicine man raised both of his hands and shouted, “Your mind and your will are mine. I command you to obey me!”

Jim was shaking his head in fear. “I don't
believe
it,” he whispered. “That girl was at my apartment. I was
kissing
that girl. We had drinks.”

For a moment, George Thousand Names faltered. I could sense his wavering control. I guess our combined nervousness and lack of faith wasn't doing much to help him, and the fierce strain of keeping a monster like Bear Maiden at bay must have been enormous.

“Don't speak,” he hissed. “Don't speak, don't speak.”

“But I can't believe it,” said Jim, in a hollow, frightened voice.

The control snapped. I could feel it go like a dam bursting, like a tidal bore. With a shattering growl, Bear Maiden launched her massive bulk at Jim, and her jaws crunched into his neck with a noise that still makes me feel cold all over. He shrieked in an agonized falsetto, and then with one jerk of her massive head, she ripped the skin away from his neck and chest in one bloody rag. He collapsed to the floor, twitching, while she turned on George and me with her eyes blazing.

“Stop!”
shouted George Thousand Names, lifting his arms once again. “By the powers of the Great Spirit, by the powers of the woods and forests,
stop!
”

Bear Maiden snarled and tossed her head. But then she gave another softer growl, and turned away, dropping on to all fours. The medicine man stepped forward with his amulet held in front of him.

“I command you to obey me for one night and one day by the unbreakable spell of the greatest of those who lived at Sa-nos-tee. I command you to obey me until the sun's second sinking, and you will not defy me. This I command you in the name of the Navahos of old and the Hualapai of ancient times. Now, be silent and sleep.”

Bear Maiden snarled once, and then sank down on her haunches. In a few moments, the red eyes closed, and she slept. I looked at George Thousand Names, impressed, but I saw what a toll that spell had taken. His face was glistening with sweat and he was shaking.

I knelt down beside Jim. His eyes were still open, and he was rigid with shock, but he was still alive.