The Djinn (17 page)

We waited in
silence for at least ten minutes. When it seemed as if a quarter of an hour had
gone by, Professor Qualt looked at his watch. “It’s half past twelve,” he said.
“I wonder what’s holding her
up?
”

“Maybe she
thought she ought to fix her face before she let the djinn out of his jar,”
Anna said sarcastically. “You never know. One good turn deserves another.”

“Oh, bullshit,”
said Professor Qualt affably.
“Harry, why don’t you take a
look out there and see if she’s around.”

“Okay,” I said,
heading for the hallway door. I tried it and it was locked. I rattled and
banged, but there was no doubt that it was chained and bolted. I turned to
Qualt and Anna, and their faces both registered the same doubt and alarm as
mine.

“Try the dining
room door,” said Anna.

I walked
quickly across the room and pushed against it. The dining room door was locked,
too.

And a quick
inspection of the windows showed that every one of them was shuttered and
securely closed with a security bolt. We were trapped-by what
was conceivably the oldest trick in the world
.

We stood
together in the center of the room, listening. We could hear the squeak of
floorboards upstairs and the occasional patter of mice or rats. The wind blew
restlessly against the windows, rattling them softly in their frames, as if
someone was tapping quietly and urgently to come inside.

“My God,” said
Anna. “Supposing she lets out the djinn while we’re still trapped in here.”

Professor Qualt
strode to the door and tried it for himself. Like every door in Winter Sails,
it was made of solid seasoned pine, with brass hinges, and it would have taken
a shoulder much burlier than Professor Qualt’s to smash it down.

“Well, then,”
he said. “What can we do?”

“I don’t know
what we can do,” I said, “except break a window. Do you want to have a try at
that?”

“Wait,” said
Qualt. “Let’s just see what happens first”

Anna was
annoyed. “Happens!” she snapped. “We know damn well what’s going to happen!

She’s going to
let
that djinn
out of its jar, and if she fails to destroy
it, she’s going to appease it with us. I told you not to trust her. Why is it
that men have no intuition about women’s personalities at all?”

I lit a
cigarette. “You mean she’s going to offer us up as a sacrifice?”

Anna started
pacing the floor like a wild tigress and nodded fiercely. “That’s exactly what
she’s going to do. I just hope and pray that she knows what she’s doing. And I
hope and pray that she was telling the truth.”

“About what in
particular?” asked
Qualt.

“About destroying the djinn, and all that stuff.
For all we
know, that’s a pack of lies. Supposing she wants to release the djinn because
she believes it’s going to make her rich or pretty or famous, like djinns are
supposed to do in fairy stories?”

I sat down on
the settee and drew evenly at ray cigarette. “Supposing none of
it’s
true?

Supposing there
isn’t
a djinn
or a jar or anything, and we’re all
being taken for a ride?”

“Oh, come on
now, Harry,” said Professor Qualt “A practical joke is a practical joke, but
this whole situation has gone too far.”

I stared at him
glumly. “I guess you’re right,” I said. “If this is a practical joke, what’s
the punch line?”

Anna meanwhile
was rummaging industriously in the magazine rack. It was mainly stuffed with
yellowed, out-of-date newspapers, all mutilated by Max Greaves’s censorial
scissors. She tugged out one of two magazines, and then finally said, “Here it
is!”

She was holding
up a new copy of Time magazine. It was noticeable because it hadn’t had its
cover torn off and its pictures snipped out. It must have been the copy that
the kid had delivered that afternoon, the copy that had made Professor Qualt
believe that the djinn was on the verge of breaking loose.

“Put it here,”
said Professor Qualt, and Anna spread the crumpled magazine on the table. He
flicked quickly through page after page, checking every photograph for a
missing face or a mysterious blank. When he reached the obituaries, he stopped
and pointed. “There,” he said.

One of the
photographs on the page had been neatly cut out. Underneath the gap was a
caption that read: Max Greaves in oil-boom days. Qualt shut the magazine
thoughtfully and sat down.

“What is it?” I
said. “What does it mean?”

Qualt looked
up. “It means simply this,” he explained. “Miss Johnson has taken the face of
Max Greaves out of Time magazine to give to the djinn, The djinn’s master form,
when he is triumphantly resurrected from his jar, will be Max Greaves. The
devil may have been cheated of Max’s face once, but Miss Johnson has made
absolutely sure that he won’t escape again.”

As he spoke
these words, I became aware of a strange stillness in the room. One of the oil
lamps sputtered and went out. Then another one flickered and died. Soon we were
standing in shadowy dimness, and before long, the last lamp was ebbing away,
and the gloom gathered in on us from all sides.

In the
darkness, Anna reached out and held my hand. Qualt said unsteadily, “Can you
light your lighter, Harry? I think I left mine on the mantelpiece. Harry, I
think there’s something-”

We held our breath
and listened. At first I couldn’t be sure if I could hear anything at all. But
somehow, over the soft coughing of the sea breeze and the settling creaks of
Winter Sails, I was sure that I could hear something inside the room.
Something that clung in the shadows.

Something that
flapped, as if on scaly wings . . .

I
struck my Zippo and turned the flame up high. There was a
fluttering, flickering sound, like a bat beating against a bedroom curtain. I
looked quickly and nervously around the long drawing room, holding the
cigarette lighter up as high as I could, but the shadows were too deep and
crowded with movement, and it was impossible to see if there was anything alive
in the room or not. It wasn’t long before the lighter grew too hot to hold, and
I had to blow it out and stand in the dark holding Anna’s hand, listening and
waiting for the slightest noise or flapping of strange wings.

“What is it?”
whispered Anna in a taut, dry yoke.

“Sssshhh,” said
Qualt. “I don’t “know what it is.
A powerful djinn
can
create any kind of monster it wishes.”

“Does that mean
the djinn’s
free?” I said intensely. “Qualt, does that
mean she’s let him out of the jar?”

“Please, don’t
talk so loud! It’s in this room someplace! No, it doesn’t mean that the
djinn is
free.

It could be,
but I doubt it. This is some kind of creature that Miss Johnson has summoned
with the help of the night-clock. This is what she meant when she said she had
called for assistance. It’s some kind of beast or spirit that will help her
free Ali Babah’s djinn without interference. A guard dog, if you see what I
mean, from the spirit world.”

Again, I heard
a creepy fluttering. “Some guard dog,” I whispered. My heart felt as if it were
bound with
elastic,
and my face was covered in chilly
sweat. Anna was holding my hand so tight that her fingernails were digging into
my palms.

“There!” gasped
Anna. “It’s over there by the fireplace!”

I flicked my
lighter again and held it up. I saw something. I was sure I saw something. But
I didn’t see enough to make out what it was. If it was like anything at all, it
was like an oddly deformed child, crouching next to the fireplace amongst the
shadows. It stirred with that same dry flapping sound, and in nervous response
I threw my flaming lighter toward it. The lighter clattered down, and the thing
twisted off into the shadows.

“Out!” shouted
Professor Qualt. “We have to get out of here!”

He barged
through the darkness and pushed us both toward the windows. I banged my shin on
the side of a chair and knocked it over, and I felt Anna stumble on the loose
and tatty nig, but we made it across the room. The flapping sound was more
frantic now, and I could almost feel something clawing and touching at my face
and clothes. I beat my hand toward it, but there was nothing there at all.

“Support me!”
Qualt ordered.

I stood with my
back to the window, and he rested his back against mine and kicked hard against
the glass. There was a ringing, splintering noise, and the glass dropped out.
Then he kicked again, very hard, four or five times, and the latch on the
shutters snapped. The wooden shutters swung open, and we felt the steady cool
breeze from the sea.

“Anna!” I
shouted, grabbing her hand. We climbed onto the splintered glass on the
windowsill and jumped out into the darkness. We landed in the soft,
grass-tufted sand and rolled over a couple of times.

Qualt was
shouting at the top of his voice as he leaped out of the window. In the
darkness, I thought I saw something pale clinging to his shoulders. He fell
heavily and went over two or three times before coming to rest at the foot of
the slope below the drawing room windows. I pulled myself upright and slid
across the sand toward him.

“Qualt!”
I said. “Are you all right?”

“Only just,” he
panted. I could see the sweat on his forehead glistening in the moonlight. I
helped him to sit up, and he felt his ankles to see if either of them was
sprained.

“I thought I
saw something,” said Anna.
“On your back, as you jumped out
of the window.”

“You did,” said
Qualt, “And look what saved me.” He pointed into the sky. We peered around, but
we were none the wiser. There were clouds, a few stars, some distant trees.
“The moon,” said Qualt quietly. “Tonight, there’s a beautiful crescent moon.
The crescent is the magical shape that dismisses evil, and the moon dismissed
that thing as soon as it shone on it.”

Anna shuddered.
“You mean if it hadn’t been a crescent moon, you would have-”

Qualt climbed
clumsily to his feet “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what that thing
was, and I hope I never find out. It had claws or sharp little fingers. It was
digging itself into my neck, and I thought it was going to choke me. Just don’t
ask. As long as the spirits are on my side just some of the time, that’s enough
for me.”

We skated
slowly through the sand down toward the beach. From here, on the moon-silvered
shore, we had a good view of the Gothic turret on the seaward side of Winter
Sails. The moonlight turned its windows into blind squares, and we could see
nothing inside it at all, but there was a dim orange light further along the
house, in one of the upstairs windows, and that probably meant that Miss
Johnson was still preparing for her grand act of occult vengeance.

“She’s blessing
the scimitar, I expect,” said Professor Qualt. “I know those
old
Persian blessing ceremonies, and they’re usually pretty lengthy and elaborate.
If we hurry, we should be able to get back into the house before she starts.”

“Get back?” I
said distastefully. “We’ve only just managed to get ourselves out!”

Anna took my
hand. “Harry,” she said, “we must get inside there. We must stop Miss Johnson
from opening that jar herself. She thinks she knows what she’s doing, but she
doesn’t know half of it Please, I need your help.”

I sighed. She
was very beautiful, and the sea breeze was blowing her dark hair in a
particularly attractive way. She was breathing deeply after our struggle in the
drawing room, and her large breasts rose and fell in the kind of distinctive
rhythm which I’ve always found hard to ignore.

Apart from
that, I objected to being locked up in my own godparents’ house by a frustrated
spinster with protruding teeth, and I began to feel that I wanted some revenge
of my own.

Above us, the
weathervane squeaked plaintively on the Gothic cupola, and the wind blew sadly
along the broken tiles and gutters of Winter Sails.

“All right,” I
said. “If we’re going, let’s go.”

We skirted the
seaward side of Winter Sails and climbed up onto the main lawn. The dry grass
swished against our legs as we made our way through it, and every cricket and
mouse that rustled in the grass made my hair prickle and my heart pound harder.
A dark smudge of cloud rolled across the moon, and the lawn grew even gloomier.
The house itself kept its strange bonelike radiance, like all old houses do
when their timbers are parched by the sun and the sea.

We had been
walking so close to the side of the house that, at first, we didn’t look out
across the lawn toward the sundial. But as we neared the steps that led down to
the gravel driveway, Professor Qualt suddenly reached forward and held me by
the arm. “Look,” he whispered.
“The night-clock.”

I turned and I
actually jumped in nervous shock. Across the cloud-shadowed grass, by the white
stone pillar of the sundial, a tall figure was standing, hunched over the
Arabian night-clock with deep concentration. The figure was dressed in a long
hooded robe. The hood was so voluminous that, inside it, I could see nothing
but darkness.

“Oh my God,”
said Anna. “It actually exists. It’s here.
Oh my God.”

“Why doesn’t it
do anything?” I whispered to Qualt. “It doesn’t even seem to have seen us.”

Qualt strained
his eyes in the darkness. “It’s working the night-clock,” he said. “When you’re
working the night-clock, no earthly considerations will ever worry you. You see
what it’s doing?

It’s bringing
power down from the stars, from the great beyond out there, and it’s directing
all that power toward the turret. It’s the power that Ali Babah’s djinn will
need to revive itself.”