Basilisk (11 page)

They reached the Murdstone Rest Home and Nathan parked on the opposite side of the street, beneath an elm tree. He took a flashlight out of the glovebox and shone it under his chin to make sure that it was working. ‘That makes you look like a vampire,’ said Grace.

‘You do believe me, don’t you?’ Nathan asked her. ‘I mean, about the face on the ceiling? I genuinely feel like somebody’s trying to make contact with me. I don’t know whether they’re trying to warn me, or whether they’re trying to scare me off. I haven’t felt like this since I was a kid about ten years old, when my grandfather died. I actually heard him say “go fly your kite, Nathan”, right inside my head.’

Grace took hold of his hand and squeezed it. ‘Let’s go take a look, shall we? Then we’ll know for sure.’ She put up the hood of her short black duffel coat. ‘Maybe I should have worn a stocking mask, too.’

They climbed out of the car and crossed the street together. The sky was gradually beginning to grow lighter, with smeary gray clouds. A skein of geese flew overhead, in eerie silence.

Grace said, ‘I think they lock the main doors at night, but they have to keep the back door open in case of emergencies.’

They walked around the left-hand side of the buildings, staying deep in the shadow of the high yew hedge that separated the rest home from the residential property next door. Nathan could see lights in some of the upstairs rooms, and on the main staircase, but most of the ground floor was in darkness.

As they skirted around the rear of the kitchen block, Grace tugged at his sleeve and said, ‘Careful . . . the staff quarters are just around this next corner, and there’s always somebody in there, twenty-four seven.’

Keeping close to the ivy-covered brickwork, Nathan made his way to the end of the wall, and cautiously peeked around it. Immediately, he raised his hand and said, ‘
Ssh
!’

Two members of the Murdstone’s nursing staff were standing outside the back door, talking and smoking. Nathan could smell their cigarettes from twenty yards away. One was a heavily built black orderly, in purple scrubs, and the other was a Korean nurse, in the purple-and-white striped blouse that all of the nursing staff wore.

‘Maybe we should try again tomorrow,’ said Grace. ‘After all, it’s going to be light soon.’

Nathan looked up at the sky. He was half inclined to agree with her. If there was one characteristic that was mentioned in every narrative that he had ever read about the basilisk, it was that it never ventured out during the day. Daylight would do it no harm – unlike vampires, which were famously supposed to catch fire if they were ever exposed to the sun, and burn to ash. But the basilisk’s eyes were highly photosensitive, and it was almost completely blinded by natural light. That was why it always sought out cellars and caves and crevices to hide in, and only emerged when the sun went down. As late as the 1850s, some French vintners refused to go down to their wine cellars during the day, in case they disturbed a basilisk hiding in the darkness.

‘What do you think?’ asked Grace. ‘I don’t mind coming back tomorrow, if you want to.’

At that moment, however, the orderly flicked his cigarette butt into the bushes, and the nurse dropped hers on to the ground and stepped on it. The orderly said something to the nurse and both of them laughed. Then they went back inside, closing the door behind them.

‘Come on,’ said Nathan. ‘We should still have time, if we’re quick.’

‘I’m not so sure now,’ said Grace.

‘Please – you know the layout.’

Grace hesitated, with her hand covering her mouth. Then she said, ‘OK, then. But as soon as it starts getting light, we’re out of there.’

They made their way along the back of the kitchen block to the staff quarters. The first-floor window was lit, but it was covered by a yellow calico blind. Behind the blind, Nathan saw the orderly cross from one side of the room to the other, like a character in a shadow theater. The nurse followed, although she was further away from the window, and her shadow appeared shrunken and misshapen.

He went up to the back door, which had two wired-glass panels in the upper half, and peered inside. Inside, on the left-hand side, over a dozen overcoats and hats were hanging on pegs, like a crowd of strap-hanging monks. There was no light in the hallway, but the door to the staff quarters was directly opposite, and the nurse had left it a few inches ajar. Nathan could see the arm of a red-upholstered couch, and part of a coffee table, and a bookshelf crammed with dog-eared paperbacks. On the wall hung a framed poster for Bartram’s Garden, with a flowering tulip tree.

He tried the door handle. Its spring made a scrunching noise as he pulled it downward, but the door was unlocked. He turned to Grace and said, ‘OK? When we get in there, which way should we go?’

‘Straight ahead, to the end of the corridor, then left. Then immediately right, and up four or five stairs.’

‘You ready?’

‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’

Nathan opened the door wider and they stepped inside. Behind the door to the staff quarters they could hear some crackly old horror movie playing on the TV, with the sound turned right down. The orderly was complaining about the hours he had to work. ‘Never even gave me no notice – thinks I can change my shift just to suit
him
– I got kids to pick up from school.’

‘You should not tolerate it, Newton,’ the nurse replied. Her voice became louder as she approached the door, and for a heart-stopping moment Nathan and Grace thought that she was going to open it and find them right outside. Instead, however, she closed it, leaving them in almost total darkness.

Nathan took out his flashlight and switched it on. He shone it down the corridor in front of them, and Grace said, ‘Come on, let’s go. You know what some of these seniors are like. They only sleep for a couple of hours. We don’t want one of
them
raising the alarm.’

They hurried down the corridor, turned left and then right, and then up the stairs.

‘Here,’ said Grace. ‘This was Doris Bellman’s room, right here. And if you go that way, that’s where I met “Michael Dukakis”.’

‘Did he tell you exactly where he saw that hunched-up monster of his?’

‘It would have been
there
, coming round that corner, heading this way.’

‘So it could have been coming to attack Doris Bellman?’

Nathan shone his flashlight up and down the corridor. The pale brown carpet was wearing out in places, and its pile had been furrowed by a vigorous going-over with a vacuum cleaner, but there were no signs of any claw marks. There were stains and scratches on the wallpaper, although there was nothing that couldn’t have been caused by wheelchairs bumping into the walls, or coffee being spilled.

However, when he pointed the flashlight upward, it
did
look as if something had scraped the ceiling – and quite recently, too. There were four or five parallel ruts in the plaster, nearly a quarter of an inch deep. They ran all the way from the corner where ‘Michael Dukakis’ had glimpsed his hunched-up monster, ending up abruptly in a wild cross-hatch pattern about four feet away from Doris Bellman’s door.

‘Will you take a look at that?’ he said, hoarsely. ‘I mean, what do you think caused all of those grooves?’ He reached up with his left hand, and stood on tiptoe, but he couldn’t even touch the ceiling, let alone scratch it.

‘That thing I saw in my nightmare—’ he began, but Grace said ‘
Listen
!’ and lifted up one finger. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Did you hear that?’

Nathan strained his ears. From one of the upper floors, very faintly, came the plaintive cry of some old man calling out vainly for assistance. ‘
Nurse
!
Nurse
!’ Apart from that, though, all he could hear was the endless, irritating grinding of the outdated air-conditioning system.

Grace said, ‘That’s funny. I thought I heard a kind of a scraping noise.’

‘Scraping?’

‘I don’t know. It’s hard to describe exactly.’

‘I don’t hear anything.’

They listened some more, but there was nothing. Even the old man had stopped crying for help. Nathan turned his flashlight on to the door of Doris Bellman’s room.

‘Let’s take a look inside, shall we? There won’t be anybody in here, will there?’

‘No. Sister Bennett said the next resident won’t be coming till tomorrow – well, later today.’

Nathan tried the handle. The door was unlocked. He eased it open and shone his flashlight inside. The bed was made, and ready for its new occupant. The birdcage had been taken away, as well as the ivy plants. All of Doris Bellman’s photographs had gone, as well as her crucifix, although there were shadowy marks on the wall where they had hung for so long.

The room smelled strongly of Dettox.

‘Nothing here,’ said Nathan. But he hunkered down and shone his flashlight into the corners of the room, and under the bed.

‘What are you looking for?’ Grace asked him. ‘Come on – I really think we need to get out of here.’

‘Basilisks were supposed to have been like lizards, they were constantly shedding their scales. I was just hoping that this baby might have left one or two of them behind.’

‘Hurry up,’ Grace urged him. ‘I’m sure I can hear somebody coming.’

Nathan was about to leave the bedroom when he saw what looked like a black stick, protruding two or three inches from the back of the nightstand. He bent down and picked it up, and examined it closely. It wasn’t a stick, but a fragment of black horny material, like an antler. He showed it to Grace and said, ‘What do you make of this?’

Grace peered at it closely but she wouldn’t touch it. ‘It could be anything. I don’t know. Piece of a broken walking-stick?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll take it back to the lab and analyze it.’

He dropped the black stick into his shirt pocket, and quietly closed the door of Doris Bellman’s room. It was then that they heard another scraping sound, much louder this time, much sharper, and followed by a complicated shuffle.

‘What’s that?’ said Grace. She was frightened now.

‘Whatever it is, it sounds like it’s coming closer.’

‘Nate, I seriously think we should go.’

There was yet another scrape, and then a harsh, high-pitched whine, like somebody trying to breathe with clogged-up lungs. Grace started to head back toward the stairs, but Nathan caught hold of her arm.

‘Grace – wait up – it sounds like it’s just around the corner. Come on, sweetheart, if it’s really here, I need to see it.’

‘No – we need to go. I’m sorry. This is crazy.’

She tugged herself free, but as she did so, a shadowy figure appeared around the corner of the corridor. It stood there, swaying slightly. It was hunched, and it appeared to have spines on top of its head, but it didn’t look nearly as bulky as Nathan had expected it to be. After all, whatever had made its way along this corridor to Doris Bellman’s room had been tall enough to scrape furrows in the ceiling.

He shone his flashlight at it, and he saw at once that it was an elderly man in a sagging brown bathrobe, with his hair sticking up. One lens of his eyeglasses was covered up with silver duct tape, but he lifted his hand to shield his other eye. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded. ‘What time is it? Didn’t you bring the car round yet?’

‘Michael?’ said Grace. ‘Michael Dukakis?’

‘That’s right. Who is that? You want to take that flashlight out of my face?’

‘It’s OK, Michael. We’re just making sure that you’re safe.’

‘Michael Dukakis’ came shuffling toward them in his worn brown slippers. ‘None of us is safe. Not one of us. Not while that creature’s still here. It took Doris and it’ll take the rest of us, if we give it the chance.’

‘Have you seen it again?’

‘Michael Dukakis’ shook his head. ‘Haven’t seen it, but I’ve sure heard it. Late last night, dragging its way down the corridor. Went past my room, and paused awhile, and I swear that I could hear it breathing. I was lying there, and I was sure that it was going to come for me, but in the end it moved on. But who knows, it could be my turn next time around.’

‘What time did you hear it?’ Nathan asked him. ‘Can you remember?’

‘Exactly. I was waiting for them to bring the car round. I was late. The overture was supposed to start at eight o’clock, and they were five hours and eleven minutes late.’

‘So, one eleven?’

‘Five hours and eleven minutes late, exactly. Saw it on my bedside clock.’

Outside the windows of the Murdstone Rest Home, the sky was growing paler and paler. Nathan said, ‘We’d better leave before anybody sees us. It’s too late now, in any case. Not dark enough for a basilisk.’

‘What time are you bringing the car around?’ asked ‘Michael Dukakis’.

‘After breakfast, I promise you,’ said Grace. ‘Meanwhile, why don’t you go back to bed and catch yourself a few more zees?’

‘Michael Dukakis’ thought about that, and then nodded. ‘You’re a good woman, Belinda. Always said you were. You always took care of me, didn’t you, even when Ruby passed over, God rest her poor bewildered soul.’

Nathan and Grace left ‘Michael Dukakis’ still talking to himself. They made their way down the stairs and along the corridor to the back of the building. The door to the staff quarters was still closed, and the television was still playing loudly –
Gilligan’s Island
.

‘
That hair, I could run my fingers through it – up to the elbows
,’ and then a burst of studio laughter.

They let themselves out of the back door, into the gradually lightening day.

NINE

Test of Loyalty

A
s soon as they got home, Nathan took a long hot shower. He stood in the shower stall with his head bowed and the water turned on full, trying to wash the madness out of his brain. But he couldn’t wash away the image of the white blind-eyed face that had appeared on the ceiling, and the huge black creature that had reared up at the end of his bed, with eyes that had frozen him right through to his backbone.