Charnel house, p.8
Charnel House, page 8
Dr. Jarvis finished his gin-and-tonic and poured himself another. “I don’t see the connection,” he said.
“The connection is that this demon’s motto was some Indian word that means ‘coming back by the path of many pieces.’”
Dr. Jarvis frowned. “So?”
“So everything! So what you said was that whatever power was possessing Wallis’s house, it’s smuggling itself out of there in bits and pieces! First it’s breathing and now its heartbeat.”
Dr. Jarvis looked at me long and level, and didn’t even lift his drink from the table. I said, almost embarrassed, “It’s a thought, anyway. It just seemed like too much of a coincidence.”
“What you’re trying to suggest is that these noises in Wallis’s house are something to do with a demon who’s gradually taking people over? Bit by bit?”
“Isn’t that what you’re suggesting?”
Dr. Jarvis sighed, and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t exactly know what I’m suggesting. Maybe we ought to call at the house again, and ask Mr. Wallis if the heartbeat’s vanished, too.”
“I’m game if you are. I haven’t heard from him all day.”
“He left a message that he telephoned here,” said Dr. Jarvis. “He was probably asking about Corder.”
Dr. Jarvis found the message on the pad and punched out Wallis’s number. It rang and rang and rang. In the end he put the receiver back and said, “No reply. Guess he did the wise thing and went out.”
I finished my drink. “Would you stay there? I wouldn’t. But I’ll call around there later this afternoon. I decided to take the day off work.”
“Won’t San Francisco miss its most talented sanitation officer?”
I crushed out my cigarette. “I was thinking of a change anyway. Maybe I’ll go into medicine. It seems like an idle kind of a life.”
He laughed.
I drank some more. “Did you see the birds?”
“Birds? What birds? I’ve been shut up with Corder all night.”
“I’m surprised nobody mentioned it. Your whole damned hospital looks like a bird sanctuary.”
Dr. Jarvis raised an eyebrow. “What kind of birds?”
“I don’t know. I’m not Audubon the Second. They’re big, and kind of gray. You should go out and take a look. They’re pretty sinister. If I didn’t have better taste, I’d say they were buzzards, waiting for Elmwood’s rich and unfortunate patients to pass away.”
“Are there many?”
“Thousands. Count ’em.”
Just then Dr. Jarvis’s telephone bleeped. He picked it up and said, “Jarvis.”
He listened for a moment, then said, “Okay. I’m right there,” and clapped the phone down.
“Anything wrong?” I asked him.
“It’s Corder. I don’t know how the hell he’s been doing it, but Dr. Crane says he’s been trying to sit up.”
“Sit up? You have to be kidding! The guy’s almost a corpse!”
We left our drinks and went quickly back down the corridor to the observation room. Dr. Crane was there, along with the bearded pathologist Dr. Nightingale, and a nicely proportioned black lady who was introduced to me as Dr. Weston, a specialist in brain damage. Nicely proportioned though she was, she spoke and behaved like a specialist in brain damage, and so I left well enough alone. One day, she’d find herself a good-looking neurologist and settle down.
It was what was happening behind the window, in the blue depths of the intensive-care unit that really stunned me. I had the same desperate breathless sensation you get when you step into a swimming pool that’s ten degrees too cold.
Bryan Corder had turned his head away from us, and all we could see was the back of his skull and the exposed muscles at the back of his neck, red and stringy and laced with veins. He was moving, though, actually moving. His arm kept reaching out, as if it was trying to grasp something or push something away, and his legs stirred under the covers.
Dr. Jarvis said, “My God, can’t we stop him?”
Dr. Crane, a bespectacled specialist with a head that seemed to be two sizes too large for his body, said, “We’ve already tried sedation. It doesn’t appear to have any effect.”
“Then we’ll have to strap him down. We can’t have him moving around. It’s bizarre!”
Dr. Weston, the black lady, interrupted him. “It may be bizarre, Dr. Jarvis, but it’s quite unprecedented. Maybe we should just let him do what he wants. He’s not going to survive, anyway.”
“For Christ’s sake!” snapped Dr. Jarvis. “The whole thing’s inhuman!”
Just how inhuman it really was, none of us really understood, not until Bryan suddenly lifted himself on one elbow, and slowly swung himself out of his bed.
Dr. Jarvis took one look at that stocky figure in its green robes, with its ghastly skull perched on its shoulders, standing alone and unaided in a light as blue as lightning, as blue as death, and he shouted to his intern, “Get him back on that bed! Come on, help me!”
The intern stayed where he was, white and terrified, but Dr. Jarvis pushed open the door between the observation room and the intensive-care unit, and I went in behind him.
There was a strange, cold smell in there. It was like a mixture between ethyl alcohol and something sweet. Bryan Corder—what was left of Bryan, stood only four or five feet away from us, silent and impassive, his skull fixed in the empty, revenous look of death.
“John,” said Dr. Jarvis quietly.
“Yes?”
“I want you to take his left arm and lead him back to the couch. Force him to walk backward, so that when he reaches the couch, we can push against him and he’ll have to sit back. Then all we have to do is swing his legs across, and we’ll have him lying flat again. See those straps under the couch? As soon as we get him down, we buckle him up. You got me?”
“Right.”
“You frightened?”
“You bet your ass.”
Dr. Jarvis licked his lips in nervous anticipation. “Okay, John, let’s do it.”
Bryan’s heartbeat, monitored in steady blips through the wires that still trailed from his chest, was still at a slow twenty-four beats to the minute. But right then, my own heartbeat felt even slower. My mouth was dry with fear, and my legs were the bent wobbly legs of someone who wades into clear water.
Dr. Jarvis and I both inched closer, our hands raised, our eyes fixed on Bryan’s skull. For some reason I felt that Bryan could still see, even though his eye-sockets were empty. He took a shuffling step toward us, and the raw muscle that held his jaw in place started to twitch.
“My God,” whispered Dr. Jarvis, “he’s trying to say something!”
For a moment I thought that I probably wasn’t going to have the nerve to grab hold of Bryan’s arm and force him back on the bed. Supposing he fought back? Supposing I had to touch that naked, living skull? But then Dr. Jarvis snapped, “Now!” and I went forward awkward and clumsy, with my courage as weak as a girl’s. I think I even shrieked out loud. I’m not ashamed of it. At least I tried.
Bryan collapsed in our arms. Instead of forcing him back, we had to drag him, and we heaved him up on to the couch like a sack of meal. Dr. Jarvis held the back of his skull to prevent any injury, and we laid him carefully down with his arms by his sides and strapped him tight with restraining bands. Then we stood and looked at each other across his supine body, and all we could do was smirk with suppressed fear.
Dr. Jarvis checked Bryan’s heartbeat and vital signs, and they were still the same. Twenty-four beats a minute and continuing strong. Respiration slow but steady. I took a deep breath and wiped my forehead with the back of my hand. I was sweating and shaking, and I could hardly speak.
Dr. Jarvis said, “This beats everything. This guy is supposed to be dead. Every rule in the book says he’s dead. But here he is living and breathing and even walking about.”
At that moment Dr. Weston came in. She looked down at Bryan Corder and said, “Maybe it’s a miracle.”
“Well, maybe it is,” said Dr. Jarvis. “But maybe it’s a damned evil piece of black magic, too.”
“Black magic, Dr. Jarvis?” said Dr. Weston. “I didn’t think you white folks believed in that.”
“I don’t know what to believe,” he muttered. “This whole thing is totally insane.”
“Insane or not, I have my tests to run,” she said. “Thank you for restraining him so well. And thank you, too, Mr. Hyatt.”
I coughed. “I won’t say it’s been a pleasure.”
We left Dr. Weston and her interns to run through their brain-damage tests on Bryan Corder’s exposed skull, and we went out into the corridor. Dr. Jarvis stood for a long time by the window, staring out across the hospital parking lot. Then he reached into the pocket of his white medical coat and took out a pack of cigarettes.
I stood a little ways away, watching him and keeping quiet. I guessed he wanted to be alone right then. He was suddenly faced with something that turned his most basic ideas about medicine upside down, and he was trying to rationalize a bizarre horror that, so far, could only be explained by superstition.
He lit his cigarette. “You were right about the birds.”
“They’re still up there?”
“Thousands of them, all along the roof.”
I stepped up to the window and looked out. They were there, all right, ragged and fluttering in the Pacific wind.
“They’re like some kind of goddamned omen,” he said. “What’s the matter with them? They don’t even sing.”
“They look like they’re waiting for something,” I said. “I just hope that it’s nothing more portentous than a packet of birdseed.”
“Let’s go take a look at Machin. I could use some light relief,” Dr. Jarvis suggested.
“You call what happened to Dan light relief?”
He took a last drag at his cigarette and nipped it out between his finger and thumb. “After what happened just now, a funeral would be light relief.”
We walked along the corridor until we came to Dan’s room. Dr. Jarvis looked through the small circular window in the door, and then opened it.
Dan was still in a coma. There was a nurse by his bedside, and his pulse and respiration and blood pressure were being closely observed. Dr. Jarvis went across and examined him, lifting his eyelids to see if there was any response. Dan’s face was white and spectral, and he was still breathing in that same deep, dreamless rhythm that had characterized the breathing in Seymour Wallis’s house.
As Dr. Jarvis was checking Dan’s body temperature, I said, “Supposing—”
“Supposing what?” he said, preoccupied.
I came closer to Dan’s bedside. The young boy from Middle America was so still and pallid he might have been dead, except for his hollow, regular breathing.
“Supposing Bryan was trying to get here, to see Dan.”
Dr. Jarvis looked around. “Why should he want to do that?”
“Well, each of them has one of the sounds that used to haunt Seymour Wallis’s house. Maybe the two of them have enough in common that they want to get together. All that Indian stuff that Jane was talking about, you know, returning by the path of many pieces, well maybe that means some kind of reincarnation by numbers.”
“I don’t follow.”
“It’s pretty simple. If this power or influence or whatever it is that’s haunting Seymour Wallis’s house was all kind of split up, you know, breathing in one place and heartbeat in another, then maybe it might try to get itself back together again.”
“John, you’re raving.”
“You’ve seen Bryan walking around with no skin on his skull and you tell me I’m raving?”
Dr. Jarvis made a note of Dan’s temperature on his chart and then stood up straight. “There’s no point in trying to find farfetched answers,” he said. “Whatever’s going on, there has to be a simple explanation.”
“Like what? One man goes crazy and another man loses the skin off his head, and we have to look for a simple explanation? James, there’s something planned and deliberate going on here. Somebody wants all this to happen. It’s as if it’s all been worked out.”
“There’s no evidence in favor of that,” he said, “and I’d rather you called me Jim.”
I sighed. “All right, if you want to take it the slow, logical, medical way, I don’t suppose I blame you. But right now I feel like talking to Jane and Seymour Wallis. Jane has a theory that’s worth listening to, and I’ll bet you two Baby Ruths to six bottles of Chivas Regal that Seymour Wallis knows more than he’s told us.”
“I don’t drink Chivas Regal.”
“Well, that’s okay. I don’t eat Baby Ruths.”
I took a taxi down to The Head Bookstore just after noon. As I was driving away from the hospital, I couldn’t help looking back at the birds on the roof. From a distance they looked like a gray and scaly encrustation, as if the building itself was suffering from some unhealthy skin condition. I asked the taxi driver if he knew what species of bird they were, but he didn’t even know what “species” meant.
Surprisingly, Jane wasn’t there when I called at the purple-painted shop on Brannan. Her young, bearded assistant said, “I don’t know, man. She just upped and went out, round about a half hour ago. She didn’t even say ciaio”
“You don’t know where she went? I was supposed to meet her for lunch.”
“She didn’t say a word, man. But she went that way.” He pointed toward The Embarcadero.
I went out into the street. Slices of sunlight were falling across the sidewalk, and I was jostled and bumped by the lunchtime crowds. I looked around, but I couldn’t see Jane anywhere. Even if I walked along to The Embarcadero, I’d probably miss her. I went back into the bookstore and told the boy to have Jane call me at home, and then I hailed another taxi and asked the driver to take me to Pilarcitos Street.
I was annoyed, but I was also worried. The way things had been going these past couple of days, with Dan Machin and Bryan Corder both in the hospital, I didn’t like to lose touch with any body. In the back of my mind I still had this un-settling notion that whatever was happening was part of some preconceived scheme, as if Dan had been meant to go to 1551 Pilarcitos, and as if Bryan had been deliberately maneuvered into going there, too. And don’t think I didn’t wonder if something equally horrific was going to happen to me.
The taxi stopped on Pilarcitos, and I paid the driver. The house looked shabby in the sunlight, and as gray as the birds on the hospital roof. I swung the wrought-iron gate open and went up the steps. The doorknocker grinned at me wolfishly, but today, in the clear light of noon, it didn’t play any tricks on me. It was heavy cast bronze and that was all.
I knocked three times, loudly. Then I waited on the porch, whistling “Moon River.” I hated that damn tune, and now it was stuck on my mind.
I knocked again, but there was still no answer. Maybe Seymour Wallis had taken himself off for a walk. I waited for another few moments, gave one final bang on the knocker, then turned around to go home.
But just as I went back down the steps, I heard a creaking sound. I looked around and the front door had opened a little way. My last knock must have pushed it ajar. It obviously wasn’t locked, or even closed on the catch.
Now considering how many bolts and chains and safety locks Wallis had installed on that door, it seemed pretty much out of character for him to leave it completely unlocked. I stood by the gate staring at the door wondering what’s wrong? For some reason I couldn’t even begin to describe, I felt chilled and frightened. Worst of all, I knew that I couldn’t leave the door open like that and just walk away. I was going to have to go into the house, that ancient house of breathing and heartbeats, and see what was up.
Slowly, I remounted the front steps. I stood by the half-open door for almost a minute, trying to distinguish shapes and shadows in the few inches of darkness that I could see. The doorknocker was now looking away from me, up the street, but its smile was as smug and vicious as ever.
I looked at the doorknocker and said, “Okay, smartass. What particular nasty traps have you set up this time?”
The doorknocker grinned and said nothing. I hadn’t really expected it to, and I think I would have jumped out of my skin if it had, but it was one of those creepy situations where you just like to make sure that if the spooks are spooks, and not just doorknockers or shadows or hatstands, then they don’t get the idea that they’re fooling you.
I reached out like a man reaching across a bottomless pit, and pushed the door open a ways. It groaned a little more and shuddered. Inside, the hallway was swirling in dust and darkness, and that musty closed-up smell was still as strong as ever.
Swallowing hard, I stepped inside. I called, “Mr. Wallis? Seymour Wallis?”
There was no reply. Once I entered the hallway, all the sounds from the street outside were muffled and suppressed, and I stood there and heard nothing but my own taut breathing.
“Mr. Wallis?” I called again.
I walked across to the foot of the stairs. The bear-lady, eyes closed, still reared on the banister post. I squinted up into the stale darkness of the second floor, but I couldn’t make anything out at all. To tell you the God’s honest truth, I didn’t feel particularly inclined to go up there. I decided to take a quick look in Seymour Wallis’s study, and if he wasn’t at home, to get the hell out of there.
As quietly as I could, I tippy-toed along the worn-out carpet of the corridor to the door under the stag’s head. The study was closed, but the key was in the lock. I turned it slowly, and I heard the lock mechanism click in that impenetrable silence, disturbing that breathless air that seemed to have hung around the house for all the years that it had stood here.
I put my hand on the brass doorknob, and turned it. The study door opened. It was gloomy in there, and the drapes were still drawn, so I reached around the lintel to find the lightswitch. My fingers groped along the damp wallpaper, and I clicked the switch down, but nothing happened. The bulb must have burned out.
