Late at Night (27 page)

“Let me ask you one question, my friend, and I want an honest answer from you.”

“What is it, Anton?”

“Did you read, did you find out, what happened, what’s supposed to happen to you?”

Ernie looked at the pianist, wondering what he was driving at. Had Anton managed to peek at the final chapters during those few minutes he’d had the book? The rest of them had concentrated on the sections describing what was supposed to have happened that day and “now”—early in the evening. “I never got to the end,” he finally replied. “I don’t know what’s to become of my counterpart, ‘Andrew Tennington.’ I don’t know if he lives or dies.”

“I don’t know what happens to you, either,” Anton admitted. “But I did come across the passage describing what was going to happen to
me.
Yes, Mr. Thesinger. I know how it comes out —for
me.

“And I don’t mind telling you it isn’t pleasant.” Anton put his face in his hands, his body trembling. He looked up after a few moments, a study in abject human misery. “Mr. Thesinger. Help me.
Please!”

Chapter 46

They’ll never find it. Never. No one will think of looking for the book there. It’s mine for the taking. Once I’m through with all of them, I can pick it up at my leisure. The book is mine the book is mine the book is mine the book is mine the book …

All around them, around the others on the island, there was
the maelstrom.
Fear. Terror. Disbelief. But through it all the necromancer, hidden beneath its odious human mask, would stay calm, would walk among them unbeknownst and lead them all astray.

Soon now. The last few remaining victims would rush headlong to their fates, and there would be no one left alive to interfere.

The necromancer stood amidst the turmoil, pretending, always pretending, giving its last great farewell performance for the dirty, frightened masses. The necromancer thought back to what it had once been, before it had developed its uncanny powers, before it had been
transformed
into what it was today.

Once the necromancer had been a mere human, like all the rest of them, a mere pathetic piece of flotsam buffeted by the winds and tides of humans far more powerful than itself. Then, in that miserable human form, seeking a release from its torment, seeking a way to become less vulnerable, it had come upon the dark arts, chanced to delve deeper into their mysteries and learn how to summon magical forces beyond all comprehension. And then: slowly, carefully, it had learned how to use those forces for its own ends. Somewhere along the way it had turned into the being it was now.

Now there was no more pain, no more torment. All those who had caused the necromancer suffering would pay and pay dearly. No one would get in its way.

They would all pay now for what had gone before.

When Hans got back to Mrs. Plushing’s room, he could scarcely believe his eyes.

Betty was at the foot of the bed, her hand in her mouth, looking helplessly at the horrifying specter in front of her. Mrs. Plushing’s condition had deteriorated incredibly in the past half hour. Hans took one look at Betty and knew the poor girl was near the breaking point. Betty looked over at him and he could read her eyes:
I don’t know what to do.

Only a doctor would know what to do, and there wasn’t one available. Hans stood near the top of the bed and looked down at the pathetic figure lying there. Mrs. Plushing’s hair was almost all gone now; her wrinkled scalp was covered only with a few white wisps of cottony curls. There were open sores dotting her scalp and face, awful-looking lesions from which ran an odorous yellow fluid. The face had swollen to almost twice its original size. The lips had puffed up monstrously, curling under themselves and exuding the same whitish pus. The eyes were tiny craters surrounded by flesh. Hans looked away from the face, and studied the rest of her body. Unaccountably, there were red stains—lines, really-dissecting her body crossways every few inches. Was she bleeding?

Hans looked at Betty, who was trembling, on the edge of hysteria. He pointed at the red stains on the blankets, his eyebrows raised in puzzlement. Betty flapped her mouth open and shut, raising her hand and trying to gesticulate an answer. She settled for shaking her head back and forth. She didn’t know where the stains had come from, why they were there. Then she bent over to one side and retched, her heavy body heaving and her throat emitting wracking coughs. Hans went to her side, trying to help.

Betty stood up abruptly, held him at arm’s length. She was white-faced, trembling. “No, I’m all right. It’s just—I’ve been standing here watching her get sick—sicker and sicker, and there’s nothing I can do. What’s wrong with her? She was just a little dizzy before, a little tired. That’s all. And now?”

Betty didn’t have to say anything more. The pitiful sight of the wasted woman on the bed was eloquent enough.

Hans stepped away from Betty, who was trying to wipe away the tears collecting in the corners of her eyes. He knew he should wait for Mr. Everson to get back, but he also knew his employer would be just as helpless in this situation as he himself was. He grabbed the top of the covers under Mrs. Plushing’s neck, and prepared to pull them down. He glanced at her face for a second, reassured by the breathing sounds she made that she was still alive. For a moment his eyes passed over her eyes, those little black pools sunken beneath those folds of swollen flesh. The eyes seemed—agitated, alert. Was Mrs. Plushing somehow conscious, aware of what was happening to her, but unable to communicate, unable to tell them what it was that might have affected her this way? He hoped for the woman’s sake that she was unable to understand what was happening to her, even though he knew that consciousness would be the first sign that she was on the road to recovery. If only the swellings, the sores, could disappear first. And her hair—what would she do when she saw what had happened to her hair? The
eyes,
though; Hans could not shake the feeling that Mrs. Plushing was trying to tell him something. The eyes did not follow his movements, did not move around, gave no appearance of being capable of actually focusing on anything. Yet—they spoke volumes. The eyes were full of terror, a numbing, mind-snapping kind of terror that had struck the woman dumb. But the eyes could not speak, could not tell Hans what had done this to her. He was left to his own devices.

He held the ends of the blankets firmly, then yanked them down and off the woman’s body. The red stains were darker on the sheet underneath. Hans reached out to touch the reddish fluid, which he now was sure was blood, but thought better of it at the last second. He took the sheet and braced himself, preparing to fully expose the woman’s body.

Before he could pull the sheet down, Betty whimpered loudly and ran out of the room. It was just as well; he didn’t need her getting hysterical on him.

The sheet was pulled down and piled at the bottom of the mattress.

Mrs. Plushing was dressed in pajamas and a blue bathrobe. Her clothes were soaking red with blood. For a second Hans’ heart literally ceased to beat. He was looking down at a corpse. Mrs. Plushing’s limbs had all been severed; lying in the bed was a collection of fragments. Hans turned away, stifling a scream by biting down hard on his lip.

He had to have been mistaken. He forced himself to take a closer look.

Yes, he
had
been mistaken. On closer inspection, he saw that the woman’s body parts were mercifully still attached to one another. But at each joint, at every point where the different bones connected there was a circle of dripping gore. Carefully, Hans opened her robe; then pulled up the sleeves and legs of the pajamas to expose the sick woman’s flesh. For some reason, deep, livid wounds had erupted at the spots where her appendages joined her trunk—as well as at the knees, ankles, waist, and elbows. The wounds were so deep that at some points the bone was exposed. The injuries were circular, running entirely around each body part, dividing Mrs. Plushing into sections. It was as if the fibers of flesh were being pulled apart, torn and shredded as she lay there.

Hans heard a kind of scratching sound. He looked down at her left ankle, lifted the leg. The wound did not yet run around the whole ankle, but even as Hans watched, the slit was extending
right in front of his eyes,
as if an invisible surgeon was standing there slicing the flesh with a scalpel. He carefully studied the other wounds, knowing that she was in more danger of dying from loss of blood—the mattress was soaked with the woman’s blood and body fluids—than from catching a chill because her body was exposed. In each case it was the same; something was tearing the flesh where her body parts connected. As he watched, the cuts got deeper and deeper, wider and wider. He could see muscles, individual fibers, of skin beginning to pull apart, separate. If it kept up eventually she would indeed become just a bedful of body parts.

Feeling utterly helpless for the first time in his long life, Hans started crying, pulling his hair, gnashing his teeth in fear and terror. He chewed on his fingers, oblivious to the pain, the taste of his own blood. This could not be happening— what he was seeing in front of his own eyes was an impossibility. There were no diseases that could do this. Mrs. Plushing had not been cut with knives, scissors—it was her own body turning against her.

Fighting against madness, Hans raised his head towards the ceiling and screamed.

Chapter 47

Lynn Overman raced back to the guest house and wondered at what point everything had started to go wrong.

This is all my fault, all my fault,
she repeated to herself over and over again, knowing that no one would deny it. She had to go and fool with the very forces of nature, and now she—and everyone on the island—was paying the price.

It’s all your fault, Bob,
she thought,
all your fault for having dumped me on that awful day in the restaurant in Boston.

But she knew she couldn’t really blame Bob for what had happened. It was
her
fault, and hers alone. No one else could bear the responsibility.

And now, because of her, John Everson was probably dead.

Flashlight in . hand, she’d gone through the woods, following ancient paths that had led nowhere, dodging tree branches and prickly thorns and pushing her way through foot-high weeds. But she couldn’t find her way to the old Foundation. She was tired and scared; lonely and depressed.

Oh, John, John. I’ve failed you.

She stopped for a moment, resting, letting misery wash over her. Why did it have to end up this way? An afternoon’s amusement had turned into … into a nightmare. And she had involved a lot of innocent people. Inadvertently perhaps, but in the long run did that really make a difference?

She should have known better.

It was true, it was all true, what Anton had said up in the master bedroom. She had gone from occult enthusiast to active practitioner; nothing serious, of course, just a few minor spells. But she had become so obsessed with it, so completely carried away, that her friends—especially those who did not share her interest—had become alienated. One boyfriend after another, except Anton —no matter how much he said to the contrary. Who knows? Perhaps if she had stuck it out with Anton in time even he would have been turned off by her interest in the supernatural. He certainly seemed impatient with the whole subject.

How often had she intended to share her new knowledge, her obsession, with Andrea. Andrea, her old friend who lived only a few blocks from her in Boston. But she held back, wanting to keep her new interests, her new friends who shared those interests, to herself. She realized she had always been jealous of Andrea. She did not want her obsession to turn into an area of competition between them; she knew she would lose. So, although Andrea had once confessed, after they’d graduated college, that she was
more
than a believer—she was a genuine psychic, something she had not even shared with Cynthia—Lynn had not returned the favor.

Lynn had known for some time now that she and John were not going to make it as a couple. But she hadn’t been in any hurry to end it; let the ball drop when it may. But if he was dead, really dead—and she refused to completely accept that no matter what the evidence might be—she would feel a definite loss, and a guilt she would carry with her always.

It all started the day when she’d lunched with Bob on Newberry Street, the day he’d told her they were through. She remembered running out of the restaurant, going home, feeling lost and alone and miserable, not wanting to go on unless she had some assurance that it was worth it, some indication that real love and purpose might at last come her way.

So bored, lonely, haunted and driven by forces she had no control over, Lynn had cast that spell, never daring to dream it might actually work. She had said all the right things, concentrated, worked her little magic, and
voila—
it had happened; she had stepped into the
future,
one year into the future to be exact. She had wanted to see something, anything, in that room—one year hence—that would indicate future happiness. Instead she had seen nothing, just the same old bed, posters, furnishings, nothing to indicate her life had changed; but nothing that made it clear that it had
not
changed either. The only thing in the room that was different was the object she’d seen lying on the night table. She’d picked it up, wanting to see what it was. Her attention had been diverted by the figure standing off to one side in the shadows. To this day she wondered if it had been someone who had been—would be—in that room on that day one year in the future, or something else, some person or thing coming out of the ether, the astral plane between dimensions.

She wouldn’t know for another six months, when that day arrived. Perhaps that other figure had only been herself, her future self.

Anyway, distracted by that shadowy, menacing figure, she had
held on
to that object without thinking, had brought it back to her own time with her. She knew then that it had automatically become a mystical object, source of great power to anyone daring enough to use it— but it had frightened her. She was wary of it. Without stopping to give it more than a perfunctory inspection, she had put it away. She had resisted the thought of hiding it, placing it under lock and key, like the precious object it was, afraid someone would take it to be a valuable. Instead, she left it right out in the open like the “purloined letter,” sure that no one would give it the slightest notice.