The Lower Deep (33 page)

"I don't want to take up your time with needless details, Doctor," Etienne said, "but the fact is, this man thought he was risking his life to help you people. I mean it. I've learned a lot about him, trying to get him to talk. If I were you, I'd forget about firing him. Unless, of course, you have more questions."

"Just two that I can think of at the moment," Steve said. "But I'm sure I know the answer to one of them already." He found he could even smile again now as he gazed at the cook. "Does garlic, too, keep evil spirits away, Ti-Jean?"

"Yes, Doctor. Oh, yes."

"I thought so. Long ago it used to keep away vampires, I've read. Well, the other question I've asked before. Were you ever at the Brightman Hospital in Fond des Pintards?"

"No,
m'sié,
never."

"It wasn't you who—no, you're not old enough. He was an old man. The one who granted me permission to attend La Souvenance, I mean. Damn it, where have I met you before?"

"I was at La Souvenance,
m 'sié,"
Lazaire said quietly.

"You were?"

"I was the keeper of the gate there. The man who begged you not to leave that evening. The man who warned you that certain of the
loa
would be displeased if you did."

The night I almost died, Steve thought. The night I walked out of that place after arguing with this man for what seemed an eternity, and fell flat on my face before I ever reached the road. The night I went into a blackout during which I did something—God knows what—that cost me the love of a woman I wanted with all my heart to marry.

Gazing long and hard at the cook, he slowly nodded. "Yes, now I remember. It was dark or nearly dark both times I talked to you, but now I remember. Ti-Jean, why wouldn't you tell me this before?"

Part of the answer was what he expected. With
a look that begged for understanding, Lazaire said, "As the lieutenant has pointed out, Doctor, if you had known I was a voodoo person, even such an unimportant one, would you have let me continue to work here?"

Then the look changed to one of apprehension, perhaps of fear. More white showed in the man's eyes. He sat more stiffly on his chair, with the soles of his black shoes pressed hard against the
office floor. His hands, on his knees, began to tremble. "And because"—even his voice was trembling now—"the
loa
who punished you might be annoyed with me for talking,
m 'sié.
Certain malevolent
loa
become very angry when their deeds are discussed."

Steve frowned at the change in the man. Was he sincere? Did he really dread punishment for what he was doing? Or was this only a clever attempt to bring the questioning to an end before he had to say more than he wanted to? "Well, tell me just one more thing, Lazaire. Do you know what happened to me that night when I walked out of the gate?"

"I—perhaps I do,
m 'sié.
I mean I saw you fall, of course. I saw the nurse from the hospital—the woman we know as Nurse Palmer here—help you to the Jeep and drive away with you. Later I heard that you were ill for five days." Lazaire turned to look at Roger Etienne, as if imploring the lieutenant to stop what was happening. "But I—I should not be discussing that part of it, Doctor. Believe me, it is not safe—"

But Steve had heard enough to make him relentless. "Why does it matter how long I was ill?" he demanded.

"Because there is one particular
loa—"
Lazaire shuddered so violently that a bead of sweat from his face splashed on the desktop. 'Please,
m'sié—"

"Which
loa
was it? Come on, man, I went through hell because of what happened there at your ceremony. Pure hell, both mental and physical. I want some answers!"

"I—I suspect you were possessed by Gèdé Cinq
Jours Malheur,
m'sié,"
the cook said in a hoarse whisper.

"And who the hell is that? Why are you so afraid to talk about him?"

"The
Gèdés
are the
mystères
of death,
m'sié."
Lazaire looked around him, wide-eyed, as though expecting one of them to be standing behind him to punish him for what he was saying. "He—he of the five days misfortune is especially malevolent, people say. I believe it was he who took over your mind to punish you for breaking the rules. You—you could have died from those five days of punishment, Dr. Spence!"

Steve glanced at the two army men. With his face twisted into a dark scowl, Roger Etienne stared at Lazaire as though trying to assess the sincerity of the man's apparent terror. The younger man looked almost as frightened as the cook did.

"Well, all right, Ti-Jean. Thank you for being honest with me."

"May I—may I go now, Doctor?" The man was still shaking as he struggled up from his chair. "May I go to my quarters?"

"Yes, of course."

With a whispered "Thank you,
m 'sié,
thank you," and a look of enormous relief, Ti-Jean Lazaire hurried from the library. For some reason Steve, too, was relieved when the door clicked shut behind him.

Steve turned to Roger Etienne then. "We have a bigger problem right now, Lieutenant, though I admit I thought that fellow was a major one until now." He told Etienne about the latest nighttime walk of Paul Henninger. "I'm hoping, of course, that Juan Mendoza will be able to bring him back, but it seems more and more unlikely. What do you think of it?"

Etienne said, "Wasn't your Dr. Mendoza himself missing for a few days a while ago?"

"Well, yes, he was."

"And you don't suspect—"

"That he's done it again? No." Steve shook his head. "I'm sure he's recovered from that. Not that he remembered what happened to him, mind you. He didn't. But he's been very much his old self, very active, very busy and helpful around here in recent days."

"Then I think Dion and I ought to have another look at the place where we found a certain name-pin, Doctor."

"Where you found what?"

The lieutenant took a silver brooch from the pocket of his khaki shirt and handed it over.

Steve studied it, then looked up. "Alice? The name has some significance, you mean?" There was no woman named Alice at the Azagon.

"George Benson's wife is named Alice, Doctor."

"Hmm. So she is. Where did you find this?"

"In the gully at Anse Douce. A sort of cave there. And by the number of footprints we found, it would seem more than a few people have used it lately."

Steve handed the pin back. "May I go with you? I'd like to."

"Of course."

"Just give me a few minutes to tell Dr. Driscoll
what's up, so he can take over while I'm gone. I won't be long."

Etienne nodded, and Steve hurried from the room.

Tom Driscoll still occupied the room at the far end of a first-floor corridor in which Steve had first talked to him on coming to the Azagon—that room across the hall from Paul Henninger's, which of course was empty now. On the way, Steve looked at his watch. The talk with Ti-Jean Lazaire had taken some forty minutes, and the hour was now just after nine A.M.

It felt like late afternoon, he thought dourly. How long ago had Louis Clermont waked him with a phone call and asked to speak to Paul Henninger about something so important it couldn't wait? Only a little over three hours ago? That was hard to believe.

Now, at nine, Tom Driscoll could be anywhere. He no longer sat in his room all day.

The door opened, though, when Steve rapped on it. Driscoll stood there with a letter in his hand. The window was open, the room was full of good fresh air, and a pile of other mail lay on a desk the Azagon head had recently acquired, held down by that handsome silver letter opener given to him years ago by a grateful patient.

"Steve, come in!" The older man's voice was as bright as the streak of sunlight gilding the window. "Want you to read this letter I received yesterday from that fellow Fairleigh, in Dayton. You remember him, the one we almost gave up on? By
heaven, he's not only got his job back since his stay here, he's been promoted to—"

"Tom, I'm sorry." It was criminal to have to wipe that look off a face that for so long had seemed half dead, but Etienne was waiting. "I've just come to ask you to keep an eye on things for a while. I have to go out."

Driscoll listened in silence while being told about the latest developments. Then, nodding, he said, "Of course. And I hope you're on to something."

"I hope to God we are, this time." Steve touched the man's hand, then turned and walked out.

But in the corridor he found himself face-to-face with horror.

The thing had been waiting for him, apparently. About ten feet away, in a crouch, it looked like some kind of ape about to spring. But it was no ape. It was still a man, and a man he knew, though a twisted one now with a face that had become a living death's-head, mouth writhing and eyes aglitter with some hellish fire.

Frozen in his tracks, Steve voiced a gasp. The creature responded with a snarl that dripped saliva. Then, instead of leaping, it began to shamble forward like a huge attacking crab, waving its malshaped arms above its head and jerking its twisted body from side to side on bent legs.

One of those crab claws gripped a knife with a blade at least ten inches long. A butcher knife from the Azagon's kitchen, where this creature had been in charge. And Steve had nothing to counter it with.

Then all at once the thing was no monster at all
but Lazaire himself—the same middle-aged peasant he had always been, with the same very ordinary face. Still brandishing the butcher knife, though. The knife had not changed.

"Lazaire . . ." The word shuddered from Steve's mouth as he took a backward step. And—click—he faced a nightmare thing again. It was like a special-effects trick in a movie, man into monster, monster back into man, man into monster again.

But no trick. Not that kind, certainly. This ongoing metamorphosis was real.

Watching the thing flick from nightmare to reality every few seconds as it lumbered toward him, Steve mastered his fear and sized up his chances. Retreat would not help. The corridor ended behind him only a few feet beyond Tom Driscoll's door, which Tom had closed when he left. Nor could he hope to get past that keen-edged butcher knife by darting forward, no matter whom those waving arms really belonged to.

One move remained. In college he had played some football. Not enough to become good at it, but he knew the moves. Sucking up a breath, he dropped into a lineman's crouch and hurled himself at the twisted legs, praying the knife would not slash down and split him open when Ti-Jean Lazaire, or the hellish creature he kept becoming, was slammed off balance.

But the thing did not lose its balance. A monster again at the moment he dived, it leapt aside with awesome agility and avoided the contact, at the same time bringing the knife down so swiftly that the blade missed Steve's eyes by barely an inch. Then when Steve scrambled wildly to his feet again, the creature was again Ti-Jean Lazaire, but again the glittering blade barred his escape.

The gate at La Souvenance, Steve thought. The confrontation there. And that's why this is happening, isn't it? That's why this man keeps changing into something else that wants to kill me. The
loa
he told us about

"Tom!" he yelled in desperation. "Tom, send for help!"

But how could Tom Driscoll do that? He had no phone in his room. There was no way he could get past this thing and go for assistance.

Driscoll did respond by opening his door, though, and by stepping over the threshold into the hall. Wide-eyed, he seemed to take in the situation—Steve against the wall near the corridor's end, the thing that kept shifting in and out of its nightmare image cutting off his escape. Suddenly the doorway was empty again.

So much for that, Steve thought. But what more could he have hoped for? Tom had been ill. Tom was in his seventies.

"Lazaire!" Steve spoke loudly but tried to put authority into his voice. There was no point in trying another headlong attack against such a creature. "Lazaire, listen to me! Put the knife down. You hear me? I'm Dr. Spence, the man you work for. Put the knife down and stop this!"

But—click—Lazaire was the thing again, and the death's-head mouth widened in a leer that seemed to be all teeth. All huge white teeth, through which poured a river, now, of spittle and froth.

"Lazaire, for God's sake get hold of yourself. Come to your senses—"

"Yaaaaaah!" Thrusting the butcher knife out like a sword, the creature lunged forward.

Steve threw himself violently aside and the blade passed between his left arm and his body, slashing only his shirt. Thudding into the wall behind him, it snapped off—at least, he heard the thud and what sounded like metal breaking. Jarred off balance, his assailant ended up on one knee, snarling with rage as it struggled to rise. And across the threshold of Tom Driscoll's room came Tom, with a weapon of his own.