The Djinn (20 page)

“Of course,”
said Max. “That’s the deal.”

Qualt raised
his head and listened. From the turret room we could hear the gathering
whispers and a high-pitched wailing from Miss Johnson that sounded like the
climax of a long and complex incantation. The thick pulse beat throbbed through
the house, and there was a dense miasma of evil in the air.

“She’s deceived
us all,” whispered Qualt. “She has no intention of restoring your face, Mr.

Greaves.
She simply wanted to use all your knowledge and all
your books and magic artifacts.

She wanted your
picture for its master form. She wants to raise the djinn out of its jar and
use it for-
well,
God only knows what she wants to use
it for.”

Suddenly, from
the corridor, Anna said, “Hurry!
Hurry, Professor.
Something’s happening!”

F
rom the inside of the Gothic turret, we heard booming voices,
harsh and guttural and cruel, so loud that they seemed to be amplified. They
were speaking in the same strange tongue that Marjorie Greaves had spoken
before she died. They were menacing and grotesque, like a groaning chorus of
demons, and for the first time I felt so frightened that I could hardly move my
arms or legs, or even speak.

“Open the
door,” said Max Greaves, who was dose behind us. “Whatever happens, you must
open the door.”

“Open it?”
questioned Professor Qualt. “But what if the
djinn is
out of its jar?”

“Open it,”
repeated Max dully. “It’s the only way.”

Professor Qualt
looked at me, biting his lip nervously. Then he moved toward the door, his
hands
raised
in front of him as if he were crossing an
unfamiliar room in the dark. I edged forward, too, and we stood side by side in
front of the solid pine, trying to convince ourselves that we were brave enough
to face whatever was behind it. Anna was right behind us, looking strained but
determined.

There was
another burst of loud, guttural speech, and then a thin, urgent voice that
sounded like Miss Johnson. Professor Qualt said, “Here we go,” and raised his
leg to kick at the door.

Before he could
move, there was a terrifying noise like a thousand pairs of snapping scissors,
and the air was filled with a blizzard of razor-sharp blades. Qualt threw
himself one way and I threw myself the other, our hands covering our faces. The
cloud sliced past us and vanished.

Max had thrown
himself to the floor, too, pulling Anna down with him.

“What was
that?” said Qualt “What the hell was that?”

Max raised his
hooded head. “The knife-storm, they call it in the Sudan. A little magical
ambush for the unwary, that’s all. Be careful there may be more.”

We climbed
cautiously to our feet and stood by the door again. “Are you ready?” said
Qualt, looking me steadily in the eye. I don’t suppose he saw anything there
but sheer fright, but I gave him a sick little grin of encouragement, and he
reached out for the handle.

With a quick shove.
Professor Qualt pushed the door of the
turret inward. It swung back as if someone were opening it from the inside and
inviting us in.

It was the
intense heat that hit us first. It roiled out of the open door in shuddering
waves, dry and baking like the heat of the desert. The only time I had ever
experienced heat like that before was out in Nevada, at midday, when your own
shadow hides under your feet for protection.

Inside the
turret, it must have been 110 and rising.

But it was not
the heat that horrified us. Shielding our eyes against it, we saw Miss Johnson
in her silver wig and her rust-colored robes, standing in the center of the
room with her legs apart and her arms
raised
. She
still held the scimitar and the smoking censer, and the room was dense with
smoke. Her face seemed to be dragged upward in a wolfish mask, as if she were
standing in a cyclone.

In front of
her, the Jar of the Djinn was now unsealed. It was a tall jar, as tall as my
chest, and it was decorated in blues and pale greens and subtle pinks. Out of
its open neck, on an impossibly thin stem, rose the head of Max Greaves, its
face uplifted toward Miss Johnson. It was this head that was speaking to her in
deep, booming voices-twenty different voices issuing simultaneously from the
same mouth.

“Oh, Christ,”
said Professor Qualt.

This time,
although she was still in a deep hypnotic trance, Miss Johnson recognized us
for what we were. Her eyes glistened blank and glazed, but she pointed her
scimitar toward us and screamed; “Intruders! Infidels!
Intruders!”

I felt my
heartbeat falter as the head of Max Greaves, on its slender snakish stem,
turned slowly around and faced us. Its eyes were bright and glittering, and it
gave me a faint smile. It was so familiar, yet so hideously unfamiliar, that I
felt drained of all strength and totally overwhelmed with fear.

The head spoke.
The voices that came out of its mouth were huge and stentorian. They said
something in that obscure and frightening dialect,
then
the head turned away again.

“What did it
say?” I shouted at Professor Qualt. “What are we going to do?”

Qualt stayed
where he was, tense and alert. “It said something to the effect that we are too
puny to harm it,” he said, without turning round. “It welcomes us as witnesses
to its restoration, and it will devour us when it feels ready. I didn’t catch
the rest.”

“Is that all
there is-just a long neck and a head?”

Professor Qualt
shook his head. “There’s much more of it still inside the jar, and it’s all
just as hideous as that. Anna?” “I can hear you, professor.” “Have you got any
bright ideas?” Anna, white-faced and shaking, could only say, “There’s nothing
we can do. At the moment it’s protected by the night-clock. Until it’s
completely restored, until it’s completely out of the jar, the night-clock’s
spell is absolutely unbreakable.”

Max Greaves
whispered, “She’s right. Only when the spell has gone through the full cycle
does the protection of the astral powers cease. And even then-”

“Even then what?”
I asked him.

“Even then
we’re trying to pit ourselves against the strongest and fiercest djinn that
ever existed, ever, in the whole of the old Arabian world.”

“I’m going in,”
said Professor Qualt. “I want to take a closer look.”

“In that case,”
I said with a dry mouth, “I’m going in with you.”

“You don’t have
to, Harry.”

“What do you
think I’m going to do?” I asked him. “Stand at the door and watch you get
yourself devoured?”

Professor Qualt
turned to Anna. “Wait here,” he told her. “If it looks like we’re in trouble,
shut the door and get the hell out of here.”

We lifted our
hands against our faces to shield our eyes from the heat,
then
we dodged through the open door and around the side of the turret.

We kept as far
back against the wall as we could. It was fiercely hot in there, so hot that my
eyeballs dried up and the back of my throat felt like a sand dune. There was
something else about the atmosphere, too, apart from heat. I felt that my body
was distorted, and that I was looking at everything through the refracting
mirror of a desert mirage. It was a weird, inflated sensation, and when I
looked down at my legs, they appeared to be bending away from me, short and
peculiar like a stick appears to bend in water.

Miss Johnson,
on the far side of that terrible jar, was continuing her songs and
incantations. The head of Max Greaves swayed and nodded, turning around from
time to time to regard us with its baleful, inhuman eyes.

Professor Qualt
leaned over toward me and shouted, “There are forty songs and incantations to
be sung. Each revives a different part of the djinn’s personality. This one
she’s singing now is the Song of the Evil Lung Termite.”

“Jesus,” I said
unsteadily.

“I’ve had an
idea,” said Professor Qualt. “It might give us some time, even if it doesn’t
get rid of the djinn.”

“You mean we
rush it? Break the jar or something?”

“That wouldn’t
do any good. But why not make a grab for Miss Johnson? If she can’t finish all
her songs, then the djinn won’t be able to leave its jar.”

I tried to rub
my irritated eyes to restore some moisture to them. The heat was getting worse;
I pulled my shirt collar open wider and wiped my forehead with the back of my
hand.

“What about the
spell? I mean, the night-clock will still protect the djinn, won’t it, even if
we hold the restoration up? I guess that sooner or later it’s going to work out
a way to get out of there, and if we haven’t thought up some way to destroy it
by then, it’s going to be twice as angry as it is now.”

“At least it’ll
give us some time!”

I coughed.
“Well, I can’t think of a better idea. Maybe if we both go around the turret in
different directions, we can grab her before she starts swinging that sword
around.”

“Okay,” shouted
Professor Qualt. “I’m ready when you are.”

Maybe he was,
but neither of us was ready for Max Greaves. Before we could do anything at
all, he stepped into the turret in his flowing robe. His hood was folded back
to reveal his scarred and chopped-up face. His eyes were still visible in the
crimson and brutalized flesh, but his nose was gone, and there was nothing
there but a dark cavity. His arms were lifted, and he was calling something in
his odd, palate less voice-a voice that sounded like some distressed creature
calling from a swamp.

“Max!” I
shouted. “Max, don’t go near! Max!”

Max Greaves
ignored me, or didn’t hear me, and shuffled forward until he was standing only
a couple of feet away from the jar. For one eerie moment, he stood staring at
his own curiously smiling face, rising from that jar on its serpentine neck,
and his mutilated features showed something that could have been fear, but even
more than that was sorrow.

“My face,” he
said.
“My face.”

And then he
lifted his arms again and screamed in that terrible noseless voice: “My face!
You promised my face! You promised it!”

There was
nothing we could do. Miss Johnson, her eyeballs solid white, with the pupils
rolled up into her head, moved toward Max with the slow gliding step of a
dancer. I tried to move but my muscles refused. As if in slow motion, I saw the
scimitar flash and flicker. It curved through the smoky air and sliced deep
into Max’s neck. A spray of blood fanned across the room, and without a sound,
Max Greaves twisted and dropped to the turret floor, where he lay twitching but
dead.

Professor Qualt
and I both stepped forward then, but Miss Johnson swung the scimitar at us, and
we knew it was going to be useless. The professor reached out and pushed me
back against the wall of the turret. “Wait, Harry. Wait. We’ve lost our
advantage for now. Wait.”

Miss Johnson,
seeing us retreat, threw back her head and let her long blue tongue hang out on
her chin, and laughed. The scimitar was tinted pink with Max’s blood, and she
lifted the blade to her mouth and licked it. I felt sick and turned away.

We watched,
powerless as children, as Miss Johnson swung her censer and chanted her
monotonous chants. At last she came to the fortieth and final song, the Song of
the Nameless Wind, and began to recite the ritual for the raising of a djinn, a
ritual so ancient that it was in a Persian dialect that must have died
centuries before the birth of Christ The words were aspirate and hissing, and
the very sound of them was enough to make me feel chilled and feverish, even in
that furnace like heat.

“Hatkoka hathka, fethmana sespherel.
Jinhatha
lespoday nen hathoka, jinhatha fethmana!”

The jar, with
its hideous head, stirred and groaned. The turret room was crowded with
whispers and strange noises. Even the joists of the ceiling seemed to creak and
murmur, and the heat rippled the air until Miss Johnson, her head back and her
white throat working like someone in an epileptic convulsion, appeared to be
melting and dissolving in front of my eyes. She shrieked and choked, her tongue
hanging out of her mouth, and she called on the djinn of Ali Babah, the djinn
of the N’zwaa, the great and loathsome one, the Forty Stealers of Life, the
tearers and renters of flesh, the most terrible of ancient spirits, to arise!

I could hardly
look. The djinn rose slowly from the neck of the jar, and anything less like
the friendly turbaned genies of story books would be hard to imagine. It was
more like a glistening amorphous string of intestines and tubes. It rose up
higher and higher, coiling itself in the air above the jar, yard after yard of
sickening, pale-colored stuff. It smelled of some terrible sourness, and I was
almost suffocated by the heat and the stench,

“Oh God,” said
Professor Qualt “Oh God protect us.”

Miss Johnson,
wielding her sacred scimitar, pointed toward us. Swaying like decomposing weed
in a sultry ocean, the djinn began to move in our direction, and I knew that we
were marked for whatever grisly death the djinn deigned to grant us. A
crumbling, enervating paralysis came over me, and I could do nothing at all but
watch the thing sway closer and closer. These gruesome strings and cords were
the djinn’s raw master form, the sickening ectoplasm from which it could
magically transform itself into any one of the Forty Thieves and inflict on us
a terrible and painful end.

Miss Johnson
began to speak, but then a curious thing happened. The djinn swayed away from
us, as if recoiling from something it didn’t like. I turned my head on a
grindingly paralyzed neck, and there, in the doorway, stood Anna. In her hand
she was holding up a crescent-shaped piece of silver, the pure and holy token
of Islamic devotion.