Rook & Tooth and Claw (15 page)

There was a second burst of thunder as Jim opened up his front door, and the rain clattered down with even more intensity, gushing down the roof and leaping out of the gutters. Jim switched on the lights and dropped
his sodden magazine into the wastepaper basket. He left the door a few inches ajar and a few seconds later his cat appeared, rubbing up against his legs and mewling for him to feel sorry for her. “All right, already,” he told her.

He went through to the kitchen, opened up his freezer and took out a plateful of jambalaya that he had made for himself about two months ago. He didn’t feel particularly hungry, after today, but he had a whole evening’s marking in front of him and he knew that if he didn’t eat properly he would end up at midnight building himself a disgusting Dagwood sandwich out of anything he could find in the icebox – pickles, gorgonzola, out-of-date prosciutto and peanut butter, and he would lie in bed in the early hours of the morning wishing he hadn’t. He slid the plate of jambalaya into the microwave and switched it to defrost. Then he popped open a can of beer, and pulled open a can of catfood. His cat came hurrying into the kitchen on speeded-up clockwork legs, and was gulping down reconstituted lumps of rabbit before he could spoon it all on to her plate. “Look at you,” he told her. “You only love me for my food, and Susan doesn’t love me at all.”

He stood up and looked at himself in the mirror next to the phone, cautiously touching his cheek to see how much it had healed. Umber Jones’s knife must have been sharper than a cut-throat razor, because the wound, although it was quarter of an inch deep, had closed together perfectly. The nick on his nose was more troublesome: it was a tiny semicircular slice close to the tip and it gaped slightly. He would have to ease off blowing his nose for a while.

Taking his can of beer, he walked through to the living-room. He picked up his remote control and switched
on the television. News; baseball;
The Simpsons
; more baseball; disgusting insects in close-up, news. Lightning crackled outside his window and the television picture crackled too, and started to jump. He went over to the set and hit the top of it with the flat of his hand, but the picture continued to tremble. It was then that Jim heard his cat mewling again and he turned around to see a figure sitting on his couch. A shadowy figure, thin and bent and barely-visible; with no more substance than a silhouette cut out of a net curtain.

He stared at it, alarmed, but now that he had begun to accept the existence of wandering spirits, he wasn’t as frightened as he had been when Umber Jones had first appeared. He watched it for a while, waiting to see what it would do, and then cautiously he approached it. It had none of the volcanic malevolence of Umber Jones. It sat with its head bowed and its hands in its lap, patient and quiet. He knelt down on the carpet in front of it, and then he reached out to touch it, to see if it would respond, but all that he could feel was a faint cold prickling, like dipping his fingers into a glass of tonic water.

The figure raised its head. Its face was wan and sad, its eyes concealed by dark shadows. But there was no mistaking who it was. Even after it has left its physical body for ever, a spirit can still be recognised. “Mrs Vaizey,” said Jim. “Can you hear me, Mrs Vaizey?”

“I can hear you,” she said. He wasn’t sure if she had really spoken or not, but he could understand what she was saying.

“Mrs Vaizey … I’m so sorry for what happened. If I’d had any idea—”

“I knew what the risks were, Jim. And now that I’m dead, I think that you can call me Harriet, don’t you?”

“Did Umber Jones catch you in his apartment?”

She nodded and said, “His smoke-spirit was out walking when it happened. His physical body was lying on the bed. His face was painted white with ash so that only his eyes looked out. His hat was propped up on the pillow beside him and he was holding his
loa
stick in his hand, just like Baron Samedi. I tried to take the
loa
stick away from him, but I was too late. His smoke-spirit returned and caught me and there was nothing I could do. He called on Ogoun Ferraille to help him, and Ogoun Ferraille forced me to eat myself.”

“The pain—”

“The pain was more terrible than anything you can think of. But the mercy is that it didn’t last long and now it’s over. I’m never going to feel pain again.”

“What’s going to happen to you now?”

“I’ll fade, Jim, like all spirits do, and then I’ll be gone. There isn’t a heaven. Beyond the light, there’s just a kind of fading away, like a photograph left in the sun. One day there’s nothing left but the faintest of outlines, and then there’s nothing at all.”

“I’m going to miss you. You know that.”

“Well… so long as somebody still remembers me, I won’t be gone for good. But you still have to find a way to deal with Umber Jones, or else he’s going to plague you for the rest of your days.”

“I’ve tried dealing with him,” said Jim, turning his face so that she could see the cut on his cheek. “Look at the result. He’s threatened to hurt my students if I don’t do what he says.”

He told her what had happened in the classroom today and she listened thoughtfully. In the end she said, “You’ll have to take his
loa
stick. It’s the only way. Do you think you might be able to persuade this boy Tee Jay to do it?”

“I don’t think so. He’s very upset about the way that his uncle killed his best friend, but he’s very frightened of him. I don’t think he’d want to risk his uncle’s anger by messing around with something as sacred as a
loa
stick.”

“Well, that doesn’t surprise me. He must be a full convert to voodoo or he wouldn’t be able to see his uncle’s smoke-spirit. I guess
you’ll
have to get it.”

“You mean break into Umber Jones’s apartment?”

“Either that, or do what I did, and visit it in spirit. Just make sure that he doesn’t come back and catch you, the way he caught me.”

“How can I do that? I don’t have the first idea how to leave my body.”

“It isn’t difficult. You make a circle of ash and use your finger to make three signs – the moon, the sun and the wind. These will guide your spirit out of your body and guide it back again, like the markings on an airport runway. Then all you have to do is lie quietly on your couch and recite the three verses of leaving.”

“I don’t know the three verses of leaving. Was that all that Latin-sounding stuff you were saying?”

“You can say it in any language you like. In some languages it works much more quickly and whisks you out of your body almost at once. Creole, for example; and Yoruba, because they have very strong words for magic.”

“My Yoruban is kind of rusty.”

“Then say it in English. Set my spirit free … let it wander where it will. Let my body sleep without it. Set my spirit free … keep it safe from evil and darkness.”

She repeated the words three times and Jim repeated them after her.

“You don’t have to worry if you change them a little … it’s your
will
that sets you free, not what you say.”

“There’s just one thing,” said Jim. “What’s it actually
like
?”

“You’ll feel as if you’ve taken off a heavy coat which you’ve been wearing all your life. You’ll feel so free that you won’t want to come back. You’ll fly. You’ll flow. Once you’ve done it for the first time, you won’t be able to wait to do it again.”

Jim wasn’t sure that he liked the sound of that. Up until Umber Jones had appeared on the scene, his life had been reasonably straightforward and contented. He didn’t want to have his contentment disturbed by a strange craving which he could never satisfy. It would be like being an astronaut, forever yearning to go back to the moon.

“If I can fly … if I can flow … if I don’t have any physical substance, how do I pick up the
loa
stick?”

“A spirit doesn’t work by substance. A spirit works by will. A spirit’s strength is its ability to concentrate, unhindered by flesh and blood.”

Mrs Vaizey’s outline began to dim. Jim said, “Listen … once I’ve got the
loa
stick, what do I do with it?”

Mrs Vaizey said something so faintly that he couldn’t make out what it was. It could have been
take it
or
break it.
It could have been something quite different. She became so dim that she looked like nothing more than a faint shadow cast across the couch. Then she was gone altogether.

The feline formerly known as Tibbles gave a mystified miaow. Jim stood up and paced around the apartment for a while, wondering what the hell he ought to do.

There was a ring at the doorbell. He answered it, keeping the door on the security-chain. It was Geraint,
in a violent green-and-scarlet shirt. “Do you have my mother in there?” he demanded.

“Your mother? Of course not. What gave you that idea?”

“Myrlin said he thought he saw you talking to her.”

“And how did he manage to do that? Does he have X-ray vision or something?”

“He was just walking along the balcony and he just happened to glance over at your apartment.”

“Oh, just
happened
? I might have known.” Jim took the chain off the door and opened it wide. “You want to come in and search the place?”

“No thanks,” said Geraint uncomfortably. “But I’m getting real worried about her, you know? She never took off like this before. I’ve looked all over, but zip.”

“I wouldn’t worry. You know what she’s like. Wherever she is, she’s bound to be happy.”

Geraint was about to leave when he wrinkled up his nose and sniffed. “You know something … I’m sure I can smell her perfume.”

Jim knew what he meant. She had left not only the smell of her perfume behind, she had left the vibrancy of what she once was. He laid a comforting hand on Geraint’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Geraint. Wishful thinking.”

Chapter Ten

He managed to eat half his jambalaya and the rest he scraped into the cat’s dish. Then he took a shower and changed into a black turtleneck shirt and black pants. He found a pair of black leather driving gloves, too, that his mother had bought him for Christmas and which he had never worn. He slicked back his wet hair and looked at himself in the mirror. He might not have any burgling experience, but he certainly
looked
like a burglar.

He opened the kitchen closet and took out the blue plastic container in which he kept his motley selection of tools. He chose a long screwdriver and a thin paint-scraper. There was also a bent piece of wire with which he had once opened a college locker when a student had lost his key, and he optimistically put that into his pocket, too.

He drove to Umber Jones’s apartment feeling totally unreal, as if this couldn’t be him at all. He parked across the street, tucked in closely behind a carpet-delivery van. There was a dim amber light shining through the blinds in Umber Jones’s upstairs window and Jim could see the silhouette of a figure moving to and fro. From this side of the street, it looked like Tee Jay.

Jim checked his watch. It was 11:11 on the nose. He settled back in his seat, preparing for a long wait. It was going to be highly risky, breaking into Umber Jones’s
apartment when he and Tee Jay were asleep, but he would rather do it while Umber was in his physical form than when he was in the form of The Smoke, with all the destructive strength that the
loa
could give him.

He passed the time by reciting poetry to himself. “‘
But death replied: “I choose him.” So he went, And there was silence in the summer night.’”

Unexpectedly, the street door to Umber Jones’s apartment opened and Tee Jay emerged. He was wearing a blue-and-white nylon windbreaker with his hands thrust into the pockets. He looked right and left and then he headed off westward, walking fast.

Five or six minutes passed and then the light in Umber Jones’s window was switched off. Maybe Umber Jones had retired to bed. Jim thought that he would give him about a half-hour, and then see if he could manage to break in. There would be a few minutes of maximum danger while he tried to locate the
loa
stick, but once he had it, there would be nothing that Umber Jones could do.

He waited twenty minutes. Umber Jones’s window was still in darkness. He must be asleep by now. Jim gave him another three minutes and then climbed out of his car, leaving it unlocked in case he needed to make a quick getaway. “You’re mad,” he told himself, matter-of-factly, as he crossed the street. “This is never going to work. He’s going to wake up and he’s going to cut you to bits. Not only that, you’re talking to yourself.”

But what was the alternative? Continuing to act as Umber Jones’s ‘friend’ – running errands for him and helping him to extort money out of pimps and drug dealers, under constant threat of him killing his students? Or staking out Umber Jones’s apartment for days on end, waiting for him to leave it as The Smoke? But supposing
he returned, and caught Jim right in the act of stealing his
loa
stick, the way he had caught Mrs Vaizey? Jim didn’t relish the idea of eating himself, and of ending his life as nothing but a heap of dust.

He reached Umber Jones’s front door. He looked anxiously around but there was nobody in sight except for a very drunk man who looked exactly like Stan Laurel. He was leaning against a wall as if he were in love with it and occasionally bawling out random lines from
Moon River: “Wider than a mile … I’m croshin you in shtyle
…” The door was old and didn’t fit very well. There was at least a quarter-inch gap between the frame and the door itself, and the wood looked pretty rotten. Jim took out his screwdriver and forced it into the gap, next to the lock. Then he pulled it back as hard as he could, and part of the frame splintered. Next he managed to work the screwdriver blade right into the gap until he could feel the tongue of the lock. He was just about to force it open when he suddenly became aware of a deep, thrumming sensation, as if a subway train were passing right beneath his feet. Except that here in Venice, of course, there
were
no subways.

Instinctively, he stepped away from the door. The thrumming grew louder, and as it did so it sounded more like drums beating. Furious, hectic drums. The door rattled and Jim turned around and ran. Half-way along the next block he found an empty doorway in front of an adult bookstore. He pressed himself against the security mesh, his heart beating as madly as the drums. Through the mesh, the faded picture of a plump white-fleshed girl smiled at him, her eyes encircled with thick black mascara.

After a moment or two he leaned out to see what was happening. The sidewalk was empty except for the
drunk, who had managed to slide himself a few feet further away. “
Waiting … round the bend
…”

But then the air in front of Umber Jones’s apartment appeared to tremble, like the hot air over a desert highway. The door opened, just a fraction, and smoke began to pour out of it. Dense, black smoke. Jim drew himself back. He knew exactly what this was. The smoke twisted and curdled and slowly rose upward; until it formed itself into the tall, dark, unmistakable figure of Umber Jones. He had emerged through an opening in the door that was no more than two inches wide.

Jim had two immediate choices. Either he could stay here and risk burgling Umber Jones’s apartment, or he could follow Umber Jones wherever he was going, to see what he was planning next. It made more sense to break into his apartment. After all, once he had the
loa
stick, Umber Jones wouldn’t be able to call on the spirits to give him strength; that was the way that Jim understood it, anyhow. He may still be capable of using a gun or a knife, but then so what? Jim had taught classes of fifteen-year-olds who had been capable of using guns and knives, and occasionally brought them to college, too.

Apart from that, Mrs Vaizey had died trying to bring him the
loa
stick, and he felt he had a moral duty to finish the job that had killed her. He owed her at least that much.

Umber Jones started to walk away from him, his black suit flapping like a crow’s wings. He passed close to the drunk – who couldn’t see him, of course, but who obviously felt him go by; like a shadow, like a dark summer draft; because he swivelled around on one leg, and stared at nothing at all.

Umber Jones crossed the street. As he did so, a taxi came speeding toward him, its flag lit up, its suspension
bouncing on the patched-up roadway. It headed straight for him, its headlights shone right through his body, as if they were shining through fog. There was a moment when Jim thought that he was going to be killed, but the taxi drove right through him. The smoke that he was made of whirled and staggered, but then it blew itself back together again, and Umber Jones continued to cross to the opposite sidewalk as if he had been hit by nothing more than a sudden gust of wind.

He disappeared around the next corner. For a few long moments, Jim’s courage failed him, and he stood where he was, pressed against the mesh of the adult bookstore. How could you fight a man who could leave his body and walk through the streets like smoke? But he gave himself his own answer: because you have to. Because nineteen young people are relying on you.

Because good has to overcome evil. It’s the natural law.

He took two deep breaths. Then he left the bookstore and walked back to the front door of Umber Jones’s apartment. He took out his screwdriver and carried on twisting at the lock. The drunk caught sight of him and began to shamble toward him. “
Waiting round the bend
…” he hollered. “
My huckleberry friend
…”

The light in Mr Pachowski’s apartment was abruptly switched on, and the drapes drawn back. Mr Pachowski opened up the window and called out, “What’s going on down there? Get out of here before I call the cops!”

Jim backed away from the door, lifting his hand in a conciliatory wave. “It’s okay … I was looking for number 12002!”

“Wrong block … 12002 is three blocks west!”

“Great, thanks,” said Jim. All the same, Mr Pachowski
stayed watching him as he walked away. He lifted his hand again. “Thanks,” he repeated. “Good-night.”

He crossed back over the street. The drunk came weaving after him, still singing. As Jim climbed back into his car he came up and leaned against the roof. Jim put down the window and said, “Go on, beat it. Find yourself someplace safe to sleep it off.”

The drunk stared at him with eyes that refused to focus. “Tell me something,” he said. “I’ve never been able to work it out for myself and nobody ever seems to know the answer. What the hell
is
a huckleberry friend?”

He went reeling off into the night with his arms spread wide, a scarecrow caught in a cyclone. Jim started up his engine and pulled away from the curb. He could see that Mr Pachowski was still keeping a beady eye on him. There was nothing left to do now but drive back home and work out some other way of getting his hands on Umber Jones’s
loa
stick.

Or maybe there was something else that he could do. Follow Umber Jones, wherever he was going, and find out what he was up to. It could be highly dangerous, but on the other hand it might give him some valuable knowledge about Umber Jones’s strengths, and maybe his weaknesses, too. There were one or two things that puzzled him about Umber Jones’s behaviour. He had said that he wanted his existence to remain a secret, yet he had repeatedly appeared in a crowded classroom, where it had been almost impossible for Jim to conceal the fact that
something
strange was going on. He could have manifested himself just as easily in Jim’s apartment, or in the street, and then there wouldn’t have been any chance at all of Jim’s students sensing his presence. There was something else, too: when Umber Jones had wanted to send Jim his instructions to talk to Chill, why had he
sent Elvin, instead of visiting him in person – or at least in the form of The Smoke?

Jim drove to the corner where Umber Jones had disappeared. The street was deserted except for lines of parked cars and a man walking a brutish-looking dog. Jim turned left and drove slowly along to the next intersection, lightly drumming his fingers on the steering-wheel. He had been walking quickly, but he couldn’t have gone more than four or five blocks. Jim stopped at the traffic signals – and then, when they changed to green, he turned right.

As he drove down the next block, he began to have a growing suspicion about where Umber Jones might be headed. He was now only three blocks away from Sly’s bar, where Chill and his cronies hung out. Chill had told Umber Jones that he would rather see him in hell. Maybe Umber Jones had the same idea about Chill.

Jim still hadn’t caught sight of Umber Jones, so he decided to risk it and drive directly to Sly’s as fast as he could. He took a sharp left at the next intersection, his tyres squealing like strangled cats; and then a right. He arrived outside the bar just in time to see the dark shadowy figure of Umber Jones rounding the corner at the end of the block.

At the same time, he saw Chill and three of his minders standing on the sidewalk talking and laughing. Another minder was sitting on the hood of a green Cadillac Fleetwood, smoking a cheroot. Umber Jones approached them at unnatural speed, without once breaking his stride. His face was ghastly with ash and his eyes were scarlet, as if he had been rubbing cinders into them. He came along the sidewalk in his black suit and his black wide-brimmed hat and of course Chill and his minders couldn’t see him at all. He didn’t even throw a shadow.

Jim’s grip tightened on his steering-wheel. He wasn’t sure what he ought to do. Even if he shouted a warning to Chill and his men, they wouldn’t believe him, because Umber Jones simply couldn’t be seen. And it wouldn’t help them, either. Umber Jones was not only invisible but untouchable. His only substance was his evil; but his power was the power of the
loas
who were helping him, Ghede and Ougon Ferraire.

Jim actually took an involuntary breath to shout, “
Look out
!” but his voice wouldn’t work. All he could do was watch in horror as Umber Jones rotated his hand, revealing the knifeblade underneath.

Chill leaned back on his heels, his hands in his pockets, laughing. The minder who was standing next to him was wearing a black shirt and a white silk vest. Umber Jones came speeding right up to him and stabbed him straight in the stomach – once, twice, three times. He was even holding onto the man’s right shoulder to steady himself. The man was too shocked even to shout out. He stood with his arms wide, staring down at his vest. It looked as if somebody had crushed strawberries all over it Then – still silent – he dropped on to his knees. He coughed up a huge splatter of blood, swayed, and keeled over sideways.

The other minders spun around and around, their guns held high, trying to see who had attacked them. At first it looked as if they were blaming each other. After all, there was nobody else anywhere near them. One of them backed away, waving his automatic in all directions. Jim could hear them shouting, and for a moment it looked as if they might even start shooting. But then Chill yelled at them to stop acting like headless chickens. Appropriate, Jim thought grimly, for men being attacked by voodoo.

Chill pointed up at the opposite buildings and the
minders took off their sunglasses and peered frantically across the street, to see if their friend had been hit by a sniper. But one of them was down on one knee beside him, opening up his bloody vest, and he turned to the others and shook his head. These weren’t bullet-holes: these were oval, gaping stab wounds.

All the time, Umber Jones was circling around them, his blade gleaming, his teeth gleaming, his eyes so wide and unblinking that he looked as if he were mad. He approached the minder who was kneeling over his fallen friend, bent over him, and hooked his arm around his throat. It looked as if he were holding him in a wrestling grip, but then he whipped his arm away and his knifeblade cut across the man’s jugular vein and half-way through his Adam’s apple. He tried to get up, but blood was pumping out of his neck so wildly that it sprayed all the way across the sidewalk and all over the windows of Chill’s Cadillac.