Death Trance (42 page)

'Randolph, you can't do this. It's far too dangerous. And that mask -’

'I know what I'm doing,’ Randolph reassured her, although - if he had allowed himself to admit it - he was just as frightened as she was. 'All I want you to do is to go someplace safe so I don't have to worry about you. Now, please.’

Wanda held his arms for a moment, her face white and streaked with tears. 'Damn it,’ she said, 'I love you.’

Randolph kissed her forehead. 'And I love you too. So stay safe, and I'll be back.’

'Say that as if you mean it,’ Wanda replied.

They went into the living room. Frank Louv was lying face down on the floor and when Randolph leaned over him, he could see that the man had stopped breathing and that his eyes were wide open and staring.

'Is he dead?’ Wanda asked. When Randolph nodded, she looked across at the mask of Rangda and shuddered.

Randolph said, 'Off you go, and lock the door behind you. I'll lock the French doors and take the key with me when I go after Michael. Whatever anybody says to you, don't let him in.’

Wanda gave Randolph one last, long look, as if she wanted to imprint his image on her mind forever, and then left, turning the key in the living-room door. Randolph closed and locked the French doors and then went over to the middle of the room, where the mask of Rangda was glaring at the sofa, and knelt down cross-legged in the way Michael had taught him.

He bowed his head; he emptied his mind. He let all the furious, frightening, jangling thoughts of the past few minutes tumble out of his brain like fragments of coloured sand tumbling through an hourglass. An inner calm began to envelop him, shining and pale and infinitely restful. He wondered if Waverley and Reece had been able to find such calm, but then he let even that gritty little piece of thinking tumble away with the rest of the coloured sand.

He spoke the words of the sacred mantras. He heard the gongs ringing again, and the
tip-tap-tapping
of the sticks. He heard the furious, irritable shaking of the
ceng-ceng
cymbals and the slow, deep tones of the
trompong.

He was not an adept but he believed, and on the strength of his belief he was drawn slowly and silently into the realm of the dead. Blackness gradually rose up around him like the petals of a night-coloured lotus and then closed over his head. He heard echoing whispers, and the ground beneath him seemed to dissolve, shrinking away like the black sands of Krambitan, shrinking and shrinking until he was balanced on nothing but a single grain. The universe spun around him. The stars came out, one after the other, then more and more and more, whole galaxies of stars, stretching in every direction for unthinkable light-years; and there he was, in the centre of all of these galaxies, the lord of the stars, the lord of time, the master of all space.

The universe tightened. The stars crowded together. Then, like a glittering fireworks display, they burst apart, and Randolph opened his eyes and found himself sitting on the floor of Waverley Graceworthy's living room, in front of the mask of Rangda and the body of a dead man.

He rose up quickly and moved like a figure seen in dreams, across the room, through the French doors and out onto the spotlit lawns.

The Dobermans raised their heads from their gory supper and one of them yowled, but Randolph glided past them so swiftly that all they did was to sniff, lick their jowls and return to the torn meat.

Randolph walked around the side of the house until he reached the driveway. He was just in time to see the front gates of Waverley's mansion open and three cars glide towards the house. He recognized the first car, a long, black limousine with the license plate OGRE 1. Behind it came a silver New Yorker carrying on its door the crest of the Memphis police department, and Randolph, pausing by the side of the driveway, could see that Dennis Moyne, looking serious and unhappy, was sitting in the back with two of his senior deputies. Behind Chief Moyne's car came a Memphis patrol car without lights.

Randolph had no time to stop and see why Orbus Greene and Dennis Moyne had suddenly turned up. He walked on down the driveway until he reached Elvis Presley Boulevard; then he turned north in the direction of Forest Hill Cemetery. The fireworks had finished now; the night was quiet. An occasional car drove past with the strange slowness of everything perceived in a death trance; a plane crawled across the sky, its lights flashing in a slow, measured rhythm. Even the cicadas sang a deep, blurred song.

It took him only five or six minutes to reach the cemetery. The main gates were closed for the night but a small side gate was open and he walked through. He knew where Ilona Graceworthy was interred; the Graceworthy vault was only sixty or seventy yards from the Clare family tomb. He flickered between the rows of headstones, between the obelisks and the angels, a half-real figure in an unreal world. Above his head the sky was humid and overcast and the lights from the city were reflected on the clouds. The headstones gleamed unnaturally white in the darkness, like the teeth of skeletons protruding from the soil. There was no wind. The sassafras trees were silent, not even sighing as they frequently did for the dead.

He reached the end of the row of headstones where the Graceworthy vault was located, and suddenly there they were: Michael, looking strained and agitated; Waverley, his face unnaturally flushed; Reece with his cameras and his disdainfully cold stare, his automatic pushed into his belt as if it could protect him from the dead. Michael had laughed scornfully when Randolph had suggested taking a rifle into a death trance to hunt the leyaks. 'How can you kill something that's already dead?’

Waverley was calling Ilona. It occurred to Randolph that they had probably just arrived, Waverley being older and slower than the others. Randolph stepped quietly back and pressed himself against the coldness of one of the tombs so that Reece would not be able to see him, and he listened and watched in frightened fascination.

'Ilona! Ilona, I beg you! Where are you, Ilona? It's Waverley. I want to talk to you! They said I could talk to you!’

There was no reply. Randolph glanced quickly around the cemetery and realized that there were no spirits here, at least none that he could see. Perhaps all the spirits in Forest Hill had moved on to other destinies, to new incarnations, to other lives.

Waverley repeated, 'Ilona! Ilona, my love!’

For a long time nothing happened. Waverley called 'Ilona!’ two more times but his voice sounded broken and hopeless. Michael remained where he was, his head bent forward. Reece was shuffling his feet, sniffing and looking around belligerently. Recce's image seemed to constantly waver and change as if he had not managed to completely manifest himself into the realm of the dead.

Randolph pressed closer against the tomb, breathing slowly and evenly. Whenever Reece turned away, he allowed himself a quick look around the cemetery to make sure there were no leyaks, but in the artificial twilight created by the light-pollution from downtown Memphis, no eyes burned, no ashen faces appeared.

When Randolph turned back, however, he saw something remarkable. The wrought-iron gates in the front of the Graceworthy vault were being opened from within by dead-white hands. The rusted hinges grated like the teeth of men in agony. And then, as Waverley Graceworthy stepped back in dread, a woman appeared: a woman in white with a face of white. A woman with dark, impenetrable eyes; long, dark hair; and a coronet of tangled flowers.

Randolph shook with simple fear. The woman stood in the gateway of the Grace worthy vault, one hand still resting on each open gate, and she stared at Waverley as if she were trying to draw everything out of him: his soul, his feelings, his very life essence.

'Ilona,’ Waverley whispered, loud enough for Randolph to hear. He dropped suddenly to his knees on the pathway.

'Ilona, this is Waverley. This is Wave, my darling, your own dear Wave.’

The woman remained silent and unmoving.

‘Ilona, I wanted to tell you that I loved you. Ilona, I loved you, do you hear me? I always loved you, and I love you still.’

The woman slowly came forward across the neatly cut grass, her bare feet making no impression. Reece took two or three steps away from her and fumbled in his bag for his Polaroid camera. Michael saw what he was doing and waved irritably to tell him that Ilona was not a leyak and that they were in no danger.

Ilona laid her hand on Waverley's head.
'You loved me?’
she asked in a voice as cold as quicksilver.

T loved you always.’

'You never loved me. Why do you trouble me now?’

‘Ilona,’ Waverley begged and raised his head; Randolph could see the tears glistening in his eyes. ‘Ilona, please forgive me.’

'There is nothing to forgive,’
Ilona said.
'You meant nothing to me, ever; you mean nothing to me now.’

That can't be true. Why did you stay with me, why did you keep coming back to me?’

Ilona smiled. Randolph stared at her and was suddenly unnerved by the feeling that this woman, this spirit, this walking apparition from the grave…
this
was his mother come to life again. He resolved then that - Reece or not - he was going to talk to her.

Waverley insisted, 'You never left me, did you? You must have felt something for me. Even after you had his child, you came back.’

Slowly Ilona shook her head.
'You never understood me, did you, Wave? You never understood anybody. I came back to you only because he couldn't leave his wife and because I didn't want anybody else. You gave me a home, you gave me money, you didn't demand too much. I had to sleep somewhere at night when I wasn't with him. I had to have somewhere to hang my clothes. Perhaps you think I was weak. Perhaps you think I should have left you and made a new life on my own. But after the child was born, I felt closer to him than ever, and at least when I was with you, 1 could keep on seeing him. I could see the baby too, and you will never know how much that wrenched my heart. But he brought the baby up so well. He brought him up to be wholesome and moral, and I was never ashamed of him. He was mine.’

Randolph left his hiding place beside the tomb and stepped out into the open. He walked slowly towards Waverley and Ilona, ignoring Reece as if he didn't exist. Reece drew out his automatic but kept it pointing upward; he was spooked now, afraid that mortal weapons would not be of any use. Michael, surprised, came hesitantly forward too, but Randolph raised a hand to wave him away.

Ilona turned as Randolph approached. Her dark eyes stared at him unblinkingly; her hands, which had been slightly lifted, fell slowly to her sides. Randolph walked up to her so they were scarcely three feet apart and looked, for the first time, into his mother's eyes. The flowers that formed her coronet were wild flowers, and they were dead.

'It's you,’
Ilona whispered.

Randolph nodded. ‘I never knew until today. Waverley told me. Father never did.’

'Father,’
repeated Ilona gently and reached out her hand to touch Randolph's hand. ‘
I
never thought I would ever hear you say that to me, either living or dead.’

A single tear sparkled in her eye, as bright as a diamond.

Down on his knees beside them, Waverley stared from one to the other. Then it's true,’ he said hoarsely. He groped for his cane and tried to get up. He almost lost his balance and Reece came over and helped him. Waverley leaned on Recce's arm, white-faced and shaking. 'It's true! It's really true!’

'You knew it all along,’ Randolph said. 'What's making you so upset now?’

'Because,’ Waverley breathed. 'Because I always prayed that it was my own meanness, my own suspicion, my own small-mindedness. I always prayed that it wasn't true.’

He turned aside, a glint of light sparking in his glasses. 'I always prayed that she loved me,’ he said mournfully.

Ilona stroked Randolph's hand, separating each finger, caressing the line of each vein.

'Do you know something?’
she asked, her voice sweet and cold like chilled white wine.
'Families are not parted by death. I understand that now. Mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, nothing can ever untie them.’

She leaned her head against Randolph's shoulder. She was intensely cold and her hair seemed to crackle with static electricity. Randolph was frightened, but also very moved.

'My son,’
she breathed, and even her breath was cold. 'My
son, I have held you at last.’

It was then, however, that Michael laid his hand on Randolph's shoulder and said, 'Randolph,’ urgently.

Randolph raised his head. Waverley and Reece had turned away from the Graceworthy vault and were making their way uphill.

‘
What's the matter?’
Ilona asked.’
Where are they going?’

Michael said, 'Quick, Randolph. They're looking for Marmie.’

Randolph took Ilona's ice-cold fingers between his strong warm hands. 'I have to go,’ he told her. 'Later I'll try to come back. I promise you.’