Death Trance (43 page)

'Randolph!’ Michael urged him. 'If they find her, and if they start threatening her… Well, you know what Reece is like.’

'Mother,’
Randolph said desperately and kissed the cheek of the dead woman who had given him life. Then he turned away and ran after Michael.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

When they reached the crest of the hill, they stopped among the rows and rows of gleaming white headstones. Waverley and Reece were some distance behind but even so, they were nearing the site where Marmie and the children were buried and Waverley was shrieking at the top of his voice, 'Marmie Clare! Marmie Clare! Let's have a look at you, Marmie Clare!’

'She won't come out for that kind of screaming,’ Randolph panted.

'She's a spirit now,’ Michael reminded him. 'Spirits don't feel the same kind of hostility that living people do.’

'I'm going to kill that bastard,’ Randolph vowed, aware that those were the most vicious words he had ever spoken in his life, even more vicious because he meant them.

Randolph and Michael started jogging again, through the chilly marble forest of angels and spires and blind-eyed effigies of Christ. They could still hear Waverley screeching out for Marmie, his voice sounding like the cry of a buzzard, or a crow. 'Marmie Clare! Marmie Clare! Let's see you, Marmie Clare! Come on, Marmie, where are you hiding?’

But then Michael looked quickly to one side and said, 'Randolph!’

Randolph halted abruptly. 'What-is it?’

'There! Look, and there!’

Randolph shielded his eyes and peered into the grainy gloom. 'I don't see anything. What is it?’

Michael held his shoulder and directed his gaze to a tall catafalque in the near distance. Randolph saw nothing at first but gradually he detected a slight movement, an inky shape detaching itself from the shadow of a tomb and pouring itself into the shadow of another.

'Do you think somebody's watching us?’ he asked. 'Police maybe? Security guards?’

'Leyaks,’ Michael said.

'Leyaks? But I thought America was safe!’

‘There, look, and there! And
there!’
Michael ordered.

This time Randolph saw the sultry burning orange of slanting eyes. This time he saw the ash-white radiance of grisly faces.

'My God, you're right. Leyaks.’

Michael said, 'Ambara, it must have been. Have you talked to Dr Ambara?’

'Not since yesterday morning. I couldn't raise him. Why? What does Dr Ambara have to do with it?’

'I wouldn't take him into a death trance. I said it was too dangerous and that I was going to do only one more and that it would be for you. He was pretty angry about it. He said he was going to try it on his own.’

'You didn't stop him?’ Randolph asked incredulously.

'How could I stop him? I'm not his
pedanda.
He's a grown-up man, or at least he
was.
That's what he must have done though, gone into a death trance and aroused the leyaks. Now they're really after us. Look, there must be a hundred of them out there!’

Randolph asked tightly, 'What the hell are we going to do?’

'Run,’ Michael said. 'And I mean
run.’

'But Marmie and the children! If Waverley calls them out, the leyaks will get them too! Damn it, Michael, they'll be torn to pieces!’

'Randolph, they're dead already; there's nothing you can do about it. Now come on. Let Waverley get what he deserves. Reece too.’

Randolph hesitated. Waverley, fifty or sixty yards away, was standing in front of the Clare tomb now, rapping his cane on the path and shouting, 'Marmie Clare! Marmie Clare! Come on out, Marmie Clare!’

Unseen by Waverley
or
Reece, dark and threatening shapes were altering the skyline of tombstones, shapes that had deathly white faces and eyes that flared orange with incandescent hatred. The tribe of leyaks, the children of Rangda; scores of them rustling through the cemetery, hungrily converging on live spirits and dead souls.

Michael pulled at Randolph's sleeve. 'Last time you were lucky. But not this time, buddy boy. Look at them, Randolph! If we don't get out of here, we're going to end up as dead as they are! Do you want to be one of them? A leyak? A zombie, for Christ's sake?’

Randolph was about to edge away, about to abandon Waverley and Reece, when a chill ran down his backbone and he stood up straight, staring, and there was nothing Michael could do to pull him away.

'It's them,’ he said in a haunted voice, not caring if Michael heard him or not. 'Michael, it's them.’

Michael let go of Randolph's sleeve, stood where he was and stared. With the greatest of grace and simplicity, in ordinary clothes, hand in hand, Marmie and John and Mark and Issa had appeared and were standing in a line in front of Waverley and Reece.

Marmie, beautiful Marmie, with her hair looking just as it had on the morning he had left her. John, even taller than he remembered. Mark, with that mischievous smile. And his beloved Issa.

Randolph walked towards them along the cemetery pathway, ignoring the advancing shadows of the leyaks, and the tears were running down his cheeks. He felt devastated; uplifted but also terrified; his mind bursting with the extraordinary powers of the human spirit. Because he found that he couldn't call out, he raised his arms, and as he did so, Marmie and the children caught sight of him and their faces lit with sudden joy. Randolph ran now, ran towards them, and then they were together again, and he was holding them, and even though they felt cold, they were his, their spirits were his, and he loved them as he had never loved them before.

'Marmie,’ he breathed, his voice unsteady. 'Marmie, it's dangerous here. You have to come with me, all of you. You have to come now.’

Marmie could not stop touching him in disbelief.
'How did you get here? Randolph, you're still alive! How did you get here? I can't believe you're here!’

'Come on,’ Randolph urged her. 'John, Mark, Issa, we have to get away from here!’

'Dad,’
frowned John,
'what's wrong? Dad, what are you doing here?’

'We can't leave,’
Issa pleaded.
'We can't.’

Now Waverley stepped forward, his cane resting on his right shoulder like a rifle. 'This is extraordinarily touching, isn't it? What a night for reunions! Mothers and wives and children.’

Reece stepped forward too, and he was smiling. Marmie stared at him in horror. Then she reached out and clutched her children closer. Issa stared too, in abject fear.

'Why is he here?’
Marmie whispered.

Issa began to weep.

'Why is he here?’
Marmie repeated, almost screaming.

Waverley said, 'He's here for my protection, that's why he's here.’

'He raped me!’
Marmie shrieked.
'He raped me! He raped my daughter! And then he tortured us, and then he killed us!’

Randolph had to take hold of Marmie's icy wrists to prevent her from rushing across and attacking Reece with her bare hands.

'He raped us and raped us, and then he wound barbed wire around our necks, and while we strangled in agony, he took off that mask of his and laughed! Demon!’
she fumed at him.
'Demon!’

Michael came up now and pulled at Randolph's shoulder. 'We have to leave, Randolph, and we have to leave right
now!
They're all around us. Come on.’

Marmie whimpered in Randolph's arms. From a scream, her voice dropped to a whisper.
'Make sure that he suffers, Randolph. Make sure that he pays for what he did. I was fighting him, Randolph, I was fighting so hard. I caught his dogtags - he was wearing dogtags around his neck and 1 caught them and tore them off… They fell down between the floorboards - he cursed and he swore and he hit me… but they're still there, my darling, underneath the floor… his Army dogtags
…’

Reece shoved Randolph away from Marmie and held his automatic up close to Randolph's face. Marmie backed away from him in fear even though he had already taken everything from her that she could surrender: her body, her sexuality, her very life.

Waverley said in a precise but peculiarly deranged-sounding way, 'We want you to know, Marmie, my dear, that if this husband of yours ever attempts to contact you again, if he ever attempts to winnow out evidence against us by talking to you, we will injure him so severely that he will spend the rest of his days in agony. Not dead - because that would afford him the ineffable bliss of meeting you again - but painfully crippled.’

Marmie said nothing but shook her head from side to side, traumatized even in death by the sight of the man who had killed her.

'Waverley, there aren't any words for you,’ Randolph said.

Waverley beat a tattoo on the ground with his cane. 'You took away my wife, you took away my children. I did the same to you, Randy. It's called poetic justice.’

Michael said, 'They're here, Randolph.’

Waverley asked, 'Here? Who's here?’

And it was then that the leyaks rose out of the darkness, white-faced, snarling, more than fifty of them, with raging eyes. Randolph drew Marmie and the children closer, and he could feel their fear mingle with his. They were completely surrounded; there was no escape.

'The lykas,’ Waverley breathed in terror. 'Randolph! Is
that
what they are? The lykas?’

'Leyaks,’ Michael corrected him. 'And everything I said about them is true. You are just about to discover what it feels like to be eaten alive.’

Waverley, stunned, reached out to Reece for support but Reece backed away and let him stagger.

'The camera,’ Waverley hissed at him. 'Damn it, Reece, the camera! Use it! The camera!’

The leyaks edged closer. Marmie, collecting herself now, said,
'I've never seen them before, Randolph, but I know what they are and I know where they come from. I also know what they will do to us.’

'We're together,’ Randolph said. 'At least this time we're together.’

Issa said,
'I'm frightened, Daddy. Oh, Daddy, I'm so frightened.
’

One of the leyaks lashed out towards Reece with its claws. Reece, seizing the moment, stepped back and took a flash photograph of it. The Polaroid camera whined and a blank white print was fed out. Startled by the flash, the leyaks drew back a little, allowing Reece just enough time. The leyak's image gradually appeared on the photograph and then Reece held it up between finger and thumb and waved it at the leyak contemptuously. The leyaks shied back even farther. They had crowded so close together that they were obviously unsure of which of them had been caught by Reece's image-maker, and when he took his Zippo out of his pocket and flicked it alight, they stumbled back with their hands over their eyes.

Reece had been trained in Vietnam. He knew how to survive and he knew how to pick his moment. As soon as the leyaks cowered back, he barreled his way through them, pushing them aside in all directions, and then he was off running. Waverley tried to hobble after him but Michael seized his arm and held him back.

'Let him go! They'll probably run him down anyway. You deserve what's coming to you, you creep.’

There was an odd comic-book bravado in the way that Michael spoke, and Randolph - clinging to his family, grasping John's hand and pressing Issa's head J against his chest - suddenly understood what it was that made it possible for people to live out their lives. He suddenly understood that dignity was not just a word, not just a quality, but the essential ingredient of human existence.

The leyaks clustered nearer again. They made a shuffling, rustling sound as if they were flaking to pieces as they walked. It was like the sound of ashes in a Hindu funeral pyre when the relatives rake through them for the bones of the person they loved.

Waverley took two or three uncertain steps towards the leyaks. Randolph and Michael and Marmie watched him. The leyaks watched him too, their eyes flaming orange with a lust for flesh.

'They're not attacking,’ Michael murmured to Randolph in perplexity. 'They've got us cornered but they're not attacking.’

Randolph did not know what to say. He simply held on to Marmie and shook his head.

It was then that they felt a deep, resonant rumble. The leyaks gnashed their teeth and raked their claws in the air but seemed disinclined to come any closer. As the rumble grew louder, some of the marble urns began to rattle and the lids on the tombs started to vibrate. A marble angel toppled from her pedestal and fell to the ground, breaking in two.

Randolph turned to Michael and shouted, 'What's happening? Michael! What's happening!’

But Michael had covered his face with his hands and was slowly sagging to his knees, and even Waverley was wheeling around in terror.

'Daddy! What is it?’
Issa screamed.

And for a second time Randolph thought,
I've failed her. For a second time I've allowed her to suffer. Oh, God, take care of my precious children. Oh, God, preserve their souls.