The Pariah (37 page)

I left the restaurant and walked back across the cocktail deck. It was so dark outside that I had forgotten it was only just past noon, and that it wasn’t night-time at all. The corroded green casket was still lying on the boat-ramp, under its draped tarpaulins. On the far side of the ramp was a locked cupboard marked FIREHOSE. I walked around the casket to the cupboard, examined its rusted hinges, and then gave it a good kicking with the heel of my shoe until the left-hand door split, and I was able to wrench it open.

Inside was a mildewed hose and just what I had been looking for: a long-handled fire-axe.

I walked back to the casket, and pushed aside the tarpaulins. The casket seemed larger than it had before: green and bulky and silently malevolent. I touched its scaly side with my bare fingers and I felt curiously alarmed, almost as if I had unwittingly put my hand on a giant centipede in the dark. Then, on impulse, I swung back the fire-axe and dealt the side of the casket a tremendous blow with the blade.

There was a deep, reverberating boom, and the casket seemed to shudder. I felt the place where the axe-blade had struck, and I could tell that it had bitten quite deep, and almost penetrated the metal. The copper couldn’t have been more than an inch thick to begin with, and the corrosive salt of the sea had reduced it by more than half.

I swung the axe again. ‘I release you,’ I panted, as the blade banged into the top of the casket. ‘I release you in the name of the Father.’

I swung back the axe again, and struck again. ‘I release you,’ I chanted. I could hear my own voice speaking in my ears, as if I was someone else. ‘I release you in the name of the Son.’

Above me, the sky was threateningly black. The wind began to shriek across the harbour, and the waves rose so high that they were flecked with foam. It was almost impossible to see the farther shore, and on the Granite-head shoreline itself the trees were bending and writhing like tortured souls.

Once more I raised the axe, and once more I brought it down on top of the casket. "
I
 
release you!’
  I shouted.
‘I
release you in the name of the Holy Spirit!’

There was a screech that could have been the wind or could have been something else altogether: the screech of a despairing world. In front of my eyes, the dark green copper casket cracked, and gaped open, and then cracked again, scales of corroded metal dropping to the concrete boat-ramp. A dry, fetid smell arose from the open vessel, a smell like an animal that had long since died and decayed, a giant rat found between the floorboards of an old house, a baby discovered in a chimney.

In front of my eyes, the Fleshless One was exposed, lying inside his casket; and to my horror he was not simply a giant skeleton, but a giant skeleton made of dozens of human skeletons. Each arm was made of two skeletons connected by a skull, each finger was a whole human arm. Each rib was made of curved and twisted skeletons of children, and its pelvis was a white basin of scores of smaller pelvises. And as it turned and stared at me with eye-sockets that were deep and sightless and infinitely evil, I saw that its head was made of hundreds of human skulls, somehow fused together to form the greatest skull I had ever seen.

‘Now,’
whispered a voice that was as thunderous as a church-organ.
‘Now my reign can
begin again. Now I can garner all those souls that my spirit has craved for. And you, my
friend, you will be my high priest. That is your reward. You will stay with me always, at
my right-hand side, interpreting for me my every demand, seeking for me those souls
which will
fulfill
my appetite.’

 ‘Where’s Jane?’ I shouted at it, even though I was utterly terrified by its appearance.

‘You promised me Jane! Just like she was before the accident, unhurt! Alive and unhurt! You promised!’

‘You promised me Jane and I want her now! Just like she was before the accident!’

The wind was howling so loudly that I could scarcely hear what the demon said next.

But then I heard a screaming, somewhere close to the old restaurant building. It was high-pitched, terrified, the sound of a woman in total fear. I made my way around the casket, steadying myself against the wind by holding on to the railings beside the boat-ramp, and stared out into the darkness.

She was there. Jane. It was really her. She was standing by the restaurant door, her hands over her face, and she was screaming, on and on and on, screaming and screaming until I could hardly bear to listen to it any longer. I made my way across the cocktail deck again, tearing my socks against a loose board, and went up to her, holding her shoulders, shaking her.

She was real, and she was alive. She was wearing the same clothes that she had been wearing on the night of the accident. But no matter how hard I shook her and shouted at her, I couldn’t get her to take her hands away from her face, and I couldn’t get her to stop screaming. In the end, I turned away from her, and struggled back to the broken casket, where Mictantecutli still lay, grinning in the fixed grin of all skeletons, a grin that is neither loving nor humorous, but the expression of death.

‘What have you done?’ I shouted at it. ‘Why won’t she answer me? Why is she screaming like that? If you’ve hurt her - ‘

‘She isn’t hurt,’
whispered the demon.
‘She thinks that she is
about
to be hurt, just as
she did in the seconds before her accident. But she is safe, and well, and alive.’

 ‘And terrified!’ I yelled at it. ‘For God’s sake, stop her screaming! How can I live with her when she’s like this?’

 ‘What are you trying to tell me? That she’ll
always
be screaming? That she’ll always be terrified that she’s going to have a crash?’

‘Always and always,’
grinned Mictantecutli.
‘Until the day she returns to the region of the
dead.’

I looked back towards the old restaurant. Jane was still there, screaming at the top of her voice, her hands pressed over her eyes. She had been screaming for nearly five minutes now, without stopping, and I knew that Mictantecutli had tricked me. It had no power to restore the dead as their loved ones had known them: it had only the power to take them back to the moment when they were first fatally doomed. That was the moment when their spirits were first consigned to the region of the dead, and that was the boundary of Mictantecutli’s kingdom.

 I felt tears springing in my eyes. But I was strong enough and determined enough to pick up the fire-axe which I had dropped beside the dark green copper vessel, and carry it with me back to the restaurant. I put it down beside Jane, and took hold of her again, and begged her to. stop screaming, begged her to take her hands away from her face.

But I heard in the back of my mind the soft coldness of Mictantecutli’s laughter, and I knew that it was hopeless.

 ‘Jane,’ I said, trying not to listen to the screaming. I held her tight, trying to reassure her, trying to protect her from the fate which had already happened to her, and from which I couldn’t save her, no matter what I did.

 The screaming went on and on.

 At last, I stepped away from her, and without looking at her, picked up the fire-axe, and swung it straight down so that it buried itself deep between her upraised hands.

 Blood spurted out from between her fingers. One leg jerked uncontrollably. She turned and staggered, and then collapsed. I threw the axe as far away as I could into the wind, and then I walked away from Jane without looking back.

 I passed Mictantecutli’s casket. I didn’t turn to look at Mictantecutli either. I headed for the highway, between the old restaurant buildings, walking at first, and then jogging.

 ‘You will never escape me,’ whispered the demon. ‘I promise you, John, you will never escape me.’

 I reached West Shore Drive, and looked around in the noontime darkness for a car, or a truck, or any sign of Quamus returning. It was then that I saw the pale figures in the distance; figures in rags and tags, like the beggars coming to town. I stared at them for a long time before I realized who they were. There was a whole company of them, shuffling and decaying and blind.

 They were the dead of Granitehead, the corpses from the cemetery. The servants of Mictantecutli, searching for fresh blood and human hearts, anything to strengthen their newly-released lord.

 I started to run.

THIRTY-FOUR

I had never realized that West Shore Drive was so long. I managed to run about a half-mile, but then I ran out of breath, and I had to slow myself down to a brisk, hurrying walk. Turning around, I could no longer see the company of corpses that had been swarming down the road from the direction of Waterside Cemetery, but I didn’t intend to wait and see how long it would take them to catch me up.

I checked my watch, which was still ticking in spite of the sea-water that had gotten into it. It was only 12:30 in the afternoon, but it might just as well have been half after midnight. The wind moaned and whistled all around me, and leaves and sheets of newspaper tumbled past me like fleeing ghosts. There was a feeling of apocalypse in the air: as if this was the end of the world, when the graves would open and the earth would tremble and all beings living and dead would have to stand in judgement. Only this wouldn’t be the judgement of the Lord: this would be the ravenous judgement of Mictantecutli, the prince of the region of the dead, the feaster on human hearts, the Fleshless One.

West Shore Drive runs into Lafayette Street, which itself runs directly into the centre of Salem. But not far from the intersection of West Shore Drive and Lafayette, there is the Star of the Sea Cemetery. And when I came panting and limping along Lafayette, my chest bursting and my throat feeling as if it had been scoured with glasspaper, I saw that the graves at the Star of the Sea had opened, too. Scores of the walking dead were there: in yellowed shrouds and rotting robes, flickering with that cold electrical light which had first announced the presence of Jane.

I slowed down. The dead were shambling all across the -highway, and at first I thought they were simply dazed and disoriented. But then I saw that in their midst there was a stationary car. I ducked down, and weaved my way between the roadside trees, trying to get as close as I could without being seen. But I was still 25 yards away when I realized what had happened. The dead had stopped the car by crowding across the road. They had seized the driver, and now he was lying spreadeagled over the hood, his shirt ripped open to reveal his chest and stomach. The walking dead had torn him open, so that his bloody ribs gaped like gates, and one of them was holding up his red-glistening heart in a skeletal hand, so that the blood ran down the bare bones of his wrist. Two or three more of them, in varying stages of decay, were feeding on his liver and his intestines.

I retched, and brought up swallowed sea water. One of the dead raised her head from the car-driver’s ripped-open abdomen, a string of whitish intestine still dangling from between her teeth. She stared at me with naked eyeballs, and then screeched, and pointed, and the rest of the grisly assembly turned and stared at me, too.

I upped and ran, regardless of the stitch in my side, sprinting along the middle of the highway as fast as I possibly could. I could hear my own breath whining in and out of my lungs, and the flapping of my feet on the pavement. And behind me, far too close behind me, The rushing sound of the dead, rushing and whispering and whooping.

I had almost run back to the intersection with West Shore Drive when the first of the corpses from Waterside Cemetery appeared, and then more of them, spreading themselves out across the road and cutting off my escape. I turned back, and saw that the crowd of corpses which had been pursuing me along Lafayette Street were only a few yards away, their arms triumphantly raised to catch at me.

Desperate, I tried to dodge to the side; but one of the corpses clawed at me and caught my sleeve. I punched him hard in the face, and to my horror my fist went right through his half-rotten flesh, breaking his partly-decayed skull, and my hand was plunged deep into the chilly slime of his liquefied brain. Another corpse, a woman, caught me from behind, and jumped on to my back, tearing with her bony fingernails at my face and neck. Then another, his legs rotted up to the thighs, came grabbing at my ankles and my knees. More and more of them clamoured around me, scratching and tearing, and for the first time in my life I actually screamed out loud.

They dragged me down to my knees by sheer weight of decomposing flesh. They whooped and whistled and screeched, their breath whining in and out of lungs that were ragged with decay, through nostrils that were caverns of wormy meat. I felt hands ripping at my clothes, scratching at my chest, as the corpses obeyed the blind command from Mictantecutli to bring him hearts. Hearts, he wanted, freshly torn from living humans; hearts to gorge on, so that he could rise again, and stalk the earth.

Suddenly, there was a roaring sound, and the corpses started to shriek and clamour and stumble away. I was down on the pavement with my hands held over my head, rolled up into as much of a human ball as I could manage; but I risked a glance to my left, up under my arm, and what I saw was salvation on wheels. It was Quamus, in our refrigerated truck, driving into the corpses with his horn blaring, his engine revving, and his headlights full on. I saw a woman caught beneath one of his front wheels, her body pinned by ten tons of solid truck; I saw her thrash and writhe and then a splash of blackish fluid leap across the road. I saw another corpse frantically trying to scale the side of the cab, and then falling away as the flesh sloughed off his arm. Quamus drove relentlessly through the clamouring tides of resurrected bodies, crushing and smashing them without mercy. Once, they had all been humans, but now they were nothing more than the puppets of Mictantecutli, the pariah.

Wiping blood away from my mouth, I climbed up on to the truck and knocked on the side door. Quamus saw me, and unlocked it, and I climbed gratefully in. He locked the door again, and immediately pulled away, blinding and killing three or four more living corpses who stood in our path.

‘You stink,’ he said, sharply. ‘You stink of the grave.’

They were going to tear my heart out,’ I told him. They were clawing at my chest, you know that? Clawing at me, like vultures.’

There was a long silence between us. Quamus pulled the truck in to the side of the road, and then slowly manoeuvred it around, so that we were driving back towards Salem.

‘You let Mictantecutli go,’ he said.

I looked at him. There was no point in denying it. He knew as well as I did that when the graves of Granitehead opened, that meant that the Fleshless One was free.

‘Yes,’ I said.

Quamus kept his eyes on the road ahead, and his foot pressed hard against the floor. In a minute or two we would be passing through that crowd of walking dead for a second time, and he wanted to make sure that we hit them at a good 80 miles an hour, unstoppable, and invincible.

Quamus said, ‘Mr Evelith said that you would probably let the Fleshless One go free. He suspected it. So did Enid. Enid said that she had read your fortune in the tea which you drank when you first came to visit us, and she could see uncertainty there, and extravagant promises from a supernatural force. The Fleshless One promised you your wife back, I suppose?’

‘Do you blame me for saying yes?’

Quamus shrugged. ‘We are dealing with a greater force here; a force of magic and terrible malevolence. We cannot talk in terms of blame or recrimination. You did what you felt was right. We know that you are not a bad man.’

At that moment, we collided with a whole congregation of walking corpses, at almost 90 miles an hour. Decayed flesh flew in all directions, and there was a hideous pattering sound on the windshield, as disembodied hands were flung against it by our slipstream.

Quamus impassively checked his side-mirrors, to make sure that none of the corpses were still clinging to the sides of the truck, and then slowed down, and drove into Salem more sedately.

There was no need to observe the speed limit: the police were already too preoccupied.

Salem lay under the midnight-black sky like a vision of Hell. Fires burned all over the city, the Roger Conant Co-operative Bank, Parker Brothers Games factory, One Salem Green, they were all alight, and burning like Satan’s ovens. The city was a city of historic cemeteries, and all of them had spewed out their dead: Harmony Grove, Greenlawn, Derby Street, Chestnut Street, Bridge Street, and Swampscott. The dead crowded through the streets savaging the living, and the malls and pavements were splattered with blood and strewn with freshly-killed bodies.

Several times, as we headed out of the city towards Tewksbury, walking corpses clutched at our truck and tried to cling on; but Quamus kept barrelling on until they dropped off, and once he swung the side of the truck against a street-sign to dislodge three of them who were holding on to the nearside fender. I glimpsed them in my rear-view mirror, rolling over and over, limbs and skulls tumbling in all directions.

We reached Tewksbury in 15 minutes, and Quamus blew the airhorns in front of old man Evelith’s wrought-iron gates. Enid shooed the dog away, and opened up the gates for us, and Quamus drove speedily inside, jumped down from the cab, and helped Enid to lock up behind us.

Old man Evelith himself was standing on the top of the front steps, leaning on his walking-cane. When he saw me climbing down from the truck’s cab, he raised one hand in salute, and said, ‘You’ve done it, then? You’ve brought Mictantecutli back?’

I hesitated, but I could see that Quamus was holding back, so that it would have to be me who explained what had happened. I walked slowly forward across the shingle, and then stopped, and cleared my throat.

‘I have a confession to make,’ I said, hoarsely.

Old man Evelith stared at me for a very long time; fiercely at first, but then more understandingly; and then he turned away to look up at the darkening sky, and the rooks which circled in it like the vultures of hell itself.

‘Well ,’ he said, ‘I guessed this would happen. But you must come in. You look tired, and cold; and you have the smell of death upon you.’