Basilisk (33 page)

‘I don’t see why we have to explain it at all,’ said Patti. ‘Let’s just go back to our hotel, pack our bags, and fly out of here before anybody finds out what’s happened.’

‘Oh, you don’t think our fingerprints are all over the house?’ Denver retorted. ‘I promise you, they’re going to arrest us for mass murder and monstercide and we’re going to spend the rest of our natural lives in some Polish slammer, eating cabbage.’

Nathan said, ‘I want to go back down to the cellar first. I don’t really know what we’re going to do about that gryphon. Besides that, I want to take a look at Doctor Zauber’s books. If he has a copy of
De Monstrorum
, I might be able to use it to re-create some more mythical beasts.’

‘You’d really try making
more
of them, after everything that’s happened?’

‘It’s probably not possible. But the work is still so important. I wouldn’t breed anything as dangerous as a basilisk, but there again – if its optic fluid can bring people out of comas . . .’

‘OK,’ said Rafał, climbing to his feet, and gripping Nathan’s forearm for support. ‘I will come down to the cellar with you. I know which books will be useful to you. Especially
De Monstrorum
, if Doctor Zauber had a copy. The legend is that it contains all of the alchemical formulae, as well as the rituals and procedures for bringing such creatures back to life.’

‘We’ll all go together,’ said Patti. ‘Then I think we should hotfoot it out of here, don’t you?’

Nathan led the way back down to the cellar. The gryphon squawked when it saw them, and scrabbled furiously at the mesh of its cage. Nathan stood and looked at it for a while, partly in admiration at what Doctor Zauber had managed to breed, and partly in pity. He couldn’t possibly try to take the gryphon with him. He would either have to put it down, or leave it here to starve.

Rafał was sorting through Doctor Zauber’s papers and books. ‘Look at this, Nathan!’ he exclaimed, holding up a small volume bound in faded red leather. ‘
Die Verwirrung der Sorte
, by Albertus Magnus.
The Tangling of the Species
. This book alone is worth thousands of złotys!’

Nathan had found a clean test tube on Doctor Zauber’s table and was using a glass funnel to pour the basilisk’s optic fluid into it. He stoppered it with a plastic cork and put it carefully into his pocket. He just hoped that it wouldn’t start to decompose too quickly on his way back to Philadelphia, and Grace’s bedside.

‘How about
De Monstrorum
?’ he asked Rafał. ‘Can you see that anywhere?’

Rafał picked up another book, and then another. ‘All of these are amazing. I cannot begin to think where Doctor Zauber managed to find them. Look at this one,
Kitab Al-Ahjar
–
The Book of Stones
by the great Arab alchemist Abu Musa J
ā
bir ibn Hayy
ā
n. He was said to have created living lizards and scorpions in his laboratory, and this book contains all of his instructions, written in code.’

Denver had been rooting around underneath the table, examining all the strange brass instruments in Doctor Zauber’s baskets. He suddenly said, ‘Pops? There’s kind of a clock down here. And it’s, like, ticking.’

Nathan said, ‘Ticking?’ and hunkered down beside him to take a look. In a large basket half hidden by two other baskets, he saw a red plastic kitchen timer, and Denver was right: it
was
ticking. Behind it, there was a folded brown cloth, like a tablecloth, which Nathan cautiously lifted up. He had never seen a bomb before, except in the movies, but here was a large bottle of clear liquid, with two batteries fastened to one side of it with duct tape, and several wires.

And there were less than ten seconds left on the timer.

He thought he shouted out, ‘
Bomb
!
Run
!
Get out of here
!’ although he could never remember hearing his own voice. He pulled Denver out from under the table and grabbed Rafał’s sleeve. Patti was over by the gryphon’s cage, taking footage of it with her video camera, and he grabbed her, too.

They scrambled up the staircase, but they had only climbed up a few steps when there was a deep, shuddering bang, and they were blown against the wall by a blast of superheated air and flying debris.

The gryphon screamed, and Nathan saw it flung across its cage, with its feathers blazing.

‘Come on!’ he urged, and the four of them struggled up the stairs and into the hallway, deafened and shocked. Nathan slammed the cellar door behind them, and they stood there looking at each other, panting. A shard of glass had cut Nathan’s forehead, and Patti had a pattern of five or six cuts on her chin; but apart from half-blackened faces they were otherwise unhurt.

‘That was not a very big bomb,’ said Rafał, pronouncing it ‘bom-buh’. ‘An incendiary device, yes? Doctor Zauber must have planted it there to destroy all of his work, in case events did not work out the way that he had planned them.’

‘Which, of course, they didn’t,’ said Nathan.

‘What about the gryphon?’ asked Patti. ‘The poor thing’s going to be barbecued.’

Nathan opened the cellar door, but only by two or three inches. It was already an inferno down there, and the draft moaned like a banshee as it was sucked past them by the heat. They heard glass shattering – Doctor Zauber’s retorts and test tubes and pipettes – and a single desperate cry that sounded more like a baby than a mythical beast. Then there was only the deep roaring of a fire that was already out of control.

‘
Now
it’s time to get the hell out of here,’ said Nathan. Denver led the way back to the kitchen, but when he tried to open it, he found that the kitchen door was locked, too, and that Doctor Zauber had removed the key.

‘Shit, man!’

‘We’ll be OK,’ Nathan told him. ‘We’ll just have to go out the same way that you broke in. And don’t say “shit”.’

He went to the window in the hallway and opened it up. It was covered by brown-painted wooden shutters, which were fastened together with a rusted hook, but he gave them three hard jabs with his elbow, and they juddered apart. Nathan lifted Patti out first, then he and Denver laced their fingers together to make a step for Rafał, who by now was wheezing like an asthmatic.

‘I am too old for adventures like this,’ he gasped, as he rolled over the window sill, and dropped down into the alley. ‘Next time I stay in my library!’

‘Go on, Pops,’ said Denver; but Nathan said, ‘No – you go first.’

Denver climbed out of the window, while Nathan went back to the cellar door. He carefully placed his hand against it, and the woodwork was almost too hot for him to touch. He tugged down the sleeve of his coat so that it covered his right hand, and then he took hold of the door handle, and pushed the door inward.

There was a loud thump – almost as loud as Doctor Zauber’s original bomb – and a huge ball of orange flame rolled out of the door and up to the ceiling. Inside, the cellar was a crawling mass of fire, and the staircase was already burning like the staircase down to Hades.

Nathan hurried back to the window, and awkwardly climbed out, jarring his knee. The old woman had gone, her knitting abandoned on her chair. The mangy Pomeranian raised its head for a moment, and stared at them as if it were trying to remember who they were. ‘Let’s hit the bricks,’ said Nathan. Smoke was already starting to pour out of the open window, and it wouldn’t be long before the entire house was blazing.

By the time they reached the Amadeus Hotel, a tall column of brown smoke was hanging over Kupa and Izaaka Streets, and they could hear the wailing of firetrucks.

They flew out the following afternoon from John Paul II International Airport. It was a gray day, but a warm wind was blowing from the south-west, and drying up the overnight rain.

Rafał gave each of them one of his bear hugs. He was wearing his spare spectacles, which had very thick tortoiseshell frames, so that he looked more like somebody’s uncle than ever.

‘I keep open my ears, Nathan,’ he promised. ‘But from what they say on the news, all of that house is destroyed. The
policja
will puzzle over the bones, of course, and wonder what kind of strange animals were kept there. But we have left no evidence that
we
were there, or of what really happened.’

‘Goodbye, Rafał,’ said Nathan. ‘And thanks for everything.’

‘Remember a good Polish saying,’ Rafał told him. ‘
Marz o tym, jakby
ś
miał wiecznie
ż
yl,
ż
yj jakby
ś
mial umrzeć dzi
ś
. This means, “dream as if you will live forever, live as if you will die today”.’

‘Hey, that’s so cool,’ said Denver. ‘How about one for me?’

‘Well, here is an easy one you can say to your friends,’ Rafał told him, with a smile. “
Moja dupa i twoja twarz to bliźniacy
”
.’

Denver repeated it, and then again, just to make sure he was pronouncing it correctly.

‘That is so cool,’ he said. ‘I can go back to school and speak Polish. My science teacher is going to be so impressed: he’s Polish. What does it mean?’

‘I recommend you not to say it to your science teacher. It means “my ass and your face are twins”.’

Nathan and Denver had to wait for over an hour when he arrived at the Hahnemann, because Grace had to be washed and then Doctor Ishikawa wanted to run a series of routine tests. By the time he was allowed into her room, the sun was already setting over City Hall, and the sky was streaked with crimson and purple.

He told Denver to keep watch in the corridor outside, and then he went into Grace’s room and sat down close to her bed. She was even whiter than she had been before, as if she were a statue, rather than a real woman, and her hand when he held it was icy.

He took out the test tube of optic fluid, and unstoppered it. He had taken it to the Zoo during this morning’s lunch-break, and borrowed a corner of his old laboratory so that he could analyze it and make sure that it hadn’t started to break down.

As far as he had been able to tell, it was still unspoiled by bacteria. He had also made the discovery that it contained luciferase enzyme – similar to the enzyme that makes fireflies glow. Each of the basilisk’s eyes, in effect, had been like ten million fireflies, giving off a light that could shock any living cell into total paralysis and death.

‘Grace?’ he said. ‘I know you can’t hear me, but I’m praying for you now. May God bring you back to me.’

His hands were shaking as he parted her lips and poured a little of the optic fluid into her mouth. Then he stoppered the test tube again, and sat back, and held her hand.

Denver poked his head around the door.

‘How’s it going, Pops?’ he asked him. ‘Did you give her the gloop?’

Nathan nodded. ‘All we can do now is wait. I just hope I’ve given her enough, or that I haven’t given her too much. I just hope I haven’t left it too late.’

Denver came into the room and stood beside him.

‘Pops?’ he said.

Nathan looked up at him. ‘What is it?’

‘I don’t know. What happened in Kraków—’

‘I don’t think we need to talk about it yet. It’s going to take some time for it all to sink in. Give it a couple of weeks, then we can go for a beer together and chew it over.’

‘Patti could come too.’

‘Sure. Patti could come too.’

Outside the window, it began to grow dark, and the city began to sparkle. Nathan kept on holding Grace’s hand, but he couldn’t think of any words to say to her. Denver went and sat in the corner and watched TV with the sound turned right down.

Three hours went by. Denver dozed off. His head tilted sideways and he started to breathe deep and slow, and occasionally to mutter. ‘
Didn’t want to – you can’t . . 
.’

Nathan was determined to stay awake, but his eyes began to close. He was almost asleep when he became aware that there was somebody else in the room, apart from himself and Denver and Grace.

‘Well, well,’ said a smug, Germanic voice. ‘You think that you have discovered a cure, do you?’

He jolted and opened his eyes. Doctor Zauber was standing so close to him that he could have touched him. He was dressed in black, as usual, and he was looking down at him with one black eyebrow raised.

‘You are not the genius I thought you were,’ said Doctor Zauber. ‘How could you have thought that the optical fluid from a dead basilisk could revive your poor sleeping wife?’

‘It worked for me. It worked for Rafał Jasłewicz.’

‘No, Professor, your wife is destined to sleep for ever, in the castle of nightmares, surrounded by thorns which you can never cut your way through. That is your punishment for what you did to me, and my basilisk, and my entire life’s work.’

‘Damn you,’ said Nathan. ‘Damn you and damn you and damn you.’

He was so exhausted and so disappointed that he started to cry, and tears ran down his face. ‘Damn you,’ he repeated. ‘Damn you.’

Doctor Zauber reached out and took hold of his hand. But then he realized that it wasn’t Doctor Zauber at all. Doctor Zauber had been wearing black leather gloves, and this hand was much smaller, and much colder, and it wasn’t wearing a glove at all.

‘Nate?’ said a soft, hoarse voice. ‘Nate? Where am I?’

TWENTY-ONE

A Gift from Poland

F
ive weeks later, Grace came into his study and said, ‘You’ve had a package from Poland. Save me the stamps, will you? They’re so pretty.’

She handed him a padded envelope with his name scrawled on it in large letters. The sender was Rafał Jasłewicz, from Kraków. He cut it open, and drew out a red leather-bound book. It was very old, with brown-spotted pages. On the title page, in smudgy black letters, it said,
Kitab Al-Ahjar
,
The Book of Stones
, by Abu Musa J
ā
bir ibn Hayy
ā
n, printed Cairo, 1818.