HIS OTHER SON (11 page)

           
Marlene
Stock had regained her normal colour. Her skin looked fuller, the hair was
almost glossy, and her eyes were open, if glazed over.

           
“What
did you give her?”
Ryker
said.
“Morphine?”

           
All
three women laughed softly. “We don’t use conventional medicines. Dr
Romodon
has travelled and practiced all over the world. He
brings enlightenment and innovation to his healing.”

           
“Except,”
Ryker
said. “No hospital has ever taught him, no
university or college has ever had him as a student. He seems to have simply appeared
out of thin air.”

           
Caroline
touched her mother’s forehead. It was cold to the touch. She recoiled.
“Mother?”
The figure on the bed looked like her mother, but
there was something about it that wasn’t right. The body was frail, but it was
the shape she had become used to, even covered by the white sheets. The face;
the face wasn’t wearing any expression that Caroline recognized. It was as if
her mother was wearing someone else’s face. “What are you doing to her?”

           
The
eldest of the women put her hand on Caroline’s arm. Immediately Caroline pulled
away. She looked at her bare arm, at the red burn mark that had appeared.

           
“I
think you should leave,” the woman said.

           
“Phil.”
Caroline showed her arm to
Ryker
.

           
“Get
behind me,” he said. He drew his gun.

           
One
of the women, the dark haired one, slid to the floor by the bed, and slithered
across the carpet as if she was a snake.

           
The
blonde one bared her teeth and snarled.

           
The
eldest one rushed at
Ryker
.

He shot her; once in the
chest and again in the head.

She fell to the floor,
crumpled and lifeless.

“Jesus, Phil,” Caroline
screamed.

As his attention was taken
momentarily in looking at Caroline, so the other two women were on him. They
pulled him to the floor and were merciless.

Caroline escaped onto the landing.

Ray entered the oak lined study first, with Paula
close behind.

           
The
white robed women turned to intercede but a hand raised by Brother Simon
stopped them.

           
“Raymond,”
Stock said. “Good of you to join us. We were just talking about you.
Simon, my other son, Raymond Stock.”

           
“Always the other son, eh, dad?
Never quite measured up like
good old Frank.”

           
“Don’t
try to belittle him. He was everything you aren’t.”

           
“Except I’m alive.”

           
Stock
laughed humourlessly. “Strange you should say that.”

           
“You
haven’t managed to kill me yet.”

           
“Stop
it.” Paula shouted. “Why does everyone in this family hate one another?”

           
Stock
pushed a button on his wheelchair and moved away from the desk. “You shouldn’t
be here, Paula. You’d be better off leaving us.”

           
“Oh,
I think she can stay,” Simon said. Hands with fingers like slugs curled round
Paula’s wrist. She instinctively flinched away but the fat fingers were
surprisingly strong. “I think we have agreed terms, but there is always room
for embellishment in any deal.”

           
Stock
wheeled round to face the fat man. “Now wait a minute, we agreed…”

           
“Nothing
is agreed until I condone it.”

           
Everyone
turned to see who had spoken.

           
In a
corner of the room that contained a secret door, which Stock believed he had
sole knowledge of, stood a small man of Asian
origin.
He was dressed in a thin white robe that seemed to have been wrapped twice
around his small frame to make it fit. His face was a sun burned brown, and so
wrinkled it looked as if it had been squashed and thrown away.

           
Brother
Simon and the two women changed demeanour immediately. They stood and bowed
long and deep in the direction of the small man.

           
“So,”
Stock said. “You must be
Romodon
.”

           
The
man walked across to Stock and held out his hand. “Mr. Stock.”

           
“Perhaps
now we can conclude our business,” Stock said.

           
Romodon
gestured to Simon, and he and the two women stood
obediently while
Romodon
sat.

           
“Dad,”
Ray said. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

           
“Yes,
dad, why not tell us all.” No one had heard Caroline enter the study.

           
Stock
signed. He moved back behind the desk. He hated explaining himself, especially
to his family. “You’ll get my money soon enough, after I’m gone, have no fears
on that.”

           
“I’m
not interested in your money,” Ray said. “She might be, and that husband of
hers, but I’ve never wanted it.”

           
“I
have never known what it is you do want, Raymond. But then I suspect neither
have you.”

           
Caroline
stormed across to the desk and leaned on it, so that she was looming over her
father. “I’ve just been to see mother. Have you any idea what treatment these
people are giving her?”

           
“Do
you?”

           
Caroline
hesitated, and Stock continued. “Or what Cooperman gives her for that matter?
Of course not.
We just hope and pray it stops the pain and
helps her survive.”

           
“When
I saw her not ten minutes ago I would have said she was dead. She was lifeless.
Then the sisters gave her some stuff out of a glass bottle, and it was as if
she was a different person.
Still ill, but so much
more…robust.”

           
Romodon
clapped his hands together slowly and deliberately.
Everyone stopped and looked at him.
“A different person.
Very perceptive.”

           
Ray
stood next to Caroline, so that he was looking directly at
Romodon
.
“What do you mean by that?”

           
Romodon
drew in a breath and exhaled. “Mrs. Stock died some
weeks ago. We have maintained the illusion of life by feeding her some surplus
souls we have no other use for.”

           
“Surplus…”
Stock clutched the arms of his chair.

           
Romodon
shook his head as if at a small child who was slow
to catch on with what he was learning. “The illusion fooled everyone, including
the man of science, Cooperman. Mrs. Stock only appears to be alive, but once we
cease the daily ingestions, she will be as dead as she actually is.”

           
Caroline
began to cry.

           
Paula
raised her hand to strike
Romodon
but one of the
women grabbed her arm, bent it back behind her, and pushed her to the floor.

           
The
door opened and two more white robed women entered.

           
Stock
swallowed the rest of his whisky.
“All right.
My wife
is dead. I had hoped I would have her for a further few months, but…What about
the rest of our bargain?”

           
Romodon
smiled as a spider smiles at the heart of its web.
“The main
event, as I believe you Americans are
fond
of saying.”

           
Caroline
took Paula in her arms and the two women hugged.

           
Ray
turned to his father. “He’s not talking about what I think he means is he?”

           
Stock
waved his hand dismissively. “What would you know about it? I’ve had this dream
for almost twenty years. Whatever the price, it’s worth it.”

           
“It’s
not real, you must know that. Keeping mother alive was a trick and this is too,
it has to be.”

           
Two
of the white robed women moved to the hidden door in the corner of the room.
The door opened and the women took hold of one arm each of the figure that
entered the room.

           
Caroline
screamed.

           
“Frank,”
Stock’s voice cracked with emotion.

           
The
women escorted between them a frail man. He was tall, though stooped. He was
young, but he looked weary. He was breathing, but he looked like a dead man
walking.

           
“Your
son, Frank,”
Romodon
said.

           
Randolph
Stock manoeuvred his wheelchair so he was facing Frank.

           
He
placed both hands on the arms of the chair and began an attempt to lift himself
out of it.

           
Caroline
moved to help him, but Ray held her back.

           
It
was a supreme effort but Stock lifted his body out of the chair and hovered,
half in and half out. His feet touched the floor, and for several moments they
were like fish sliding on the deck of a boat. Then, they seemed to find
strength from somewhere, and he placed his weight onto his legs. He let go with
his hands and, swaying slightly on his feet, he stood, for the first time in
almost two decades.

           
“Frank,
you’ve come back to me. Can you give your old man a hug?”

           
The
figure that was Frank looked blankly at him.

           
“Frank?”

           
One
of the women tapped Frank on the shoulder and he shuffled forwards.

           
Suddenly
Ray sprang into action. He pushed his father back into the seat of his
wheelchair and ran across to Frank.

           
One
of the women stood in front of him, fingers raised like claws. She hissed at
him. Ray kicked her legs from under her, and as she fell he hit her on the side
of her head, so when she went down she stayed down.

           
Frank
mumbled something that didn’t sound English and flinched away.

           
“Stop
him.”
Romodon
shouted.

           
The
other women moved towards Ray. Simon sidled over to Caroline.

           
Before
any of them could do anything Ray reached behind his waist, beneath his shirt,
and pulled out a fish-gutting knife. He drew the blade fast and firm over
Franks’ throat, instinctively ducking to avoid the torrent of blood that
spurted out like a fountain.

           
Stock
uttered a cry of despair that left him gasping for breath.

           
“That’s
no more Frank than the person in the other room was your wife. They’ve used
tricks and magic to reel you in, dad.”

           
“I
don’t care,” Stock thundered. “Can’t you see, I didn’t
care.
I just wanted…”

           
“He
just wanted his favourite child back,” Caroline said.

           
Ray
was surrounded by the women. They looked at
Romodon
.
Simon, standing close to Caroline and Paula, looked too. They were all awaiting
instructions.

           
Romodon
stood. He looked at Ray. “You have wasted the work
of many months. That will have to be dealt with.” He snapped his fingers. “Take
him, and these two.”

           
Ray
felt hot fingers grab his arms. He flashed out with the knife and felt soft
flesh yield to the blade. One of the women fell clutching her face.

           
The
others swarmed over him likes ants and he struggled to fight them off.

           
Romodon
knelt over the prone body of Frank and was doing
something that Ray couldn’t see,