Walkers (42 page)

Tebulot dropped to his knee, ready
to snap in one last shot if Kasyx ordered him to; but then they heard a thin,
high, and distinctive scream, and Kasyx shouted, ‘No, Tebulot, leave it!’

‘Henry!’
Andrea
shrieked.
‘Henry, for God’s sake, don’t
leave me!’

Then the octagon touched the floor,
and they were back in Andrea’s bedroom, all four of them, looking at each other
in shock and helplessness.

‘Kasyx – there was nothing you could
have done,’ said Tebulot. ‘Believe me, you did everything you could.’

But Kasyx turned at once to the bed.
Andrea was still asleep, but she was mumbling and tossing and thrashing her
legs.

‘That bastard,’ breathed Kasyx.
‘That
bastard!’

‘Wait,’ said Samena. ‘She’s waking
up.’

Tebulot said, ‘You’re right, look.
She’s opening her eyes. She’s okay. Yaomauitl hasn’t kept her hostage, after
all.’

Kasyx stood over Andrea’s bed,
watching her gradually wake. To Andrea, the Night Warriors appeared only as the
faintest of ghosts, the subtlest of shifting outlines, in the air. She frowned
at Kasyx, and tried to focus her eyes; but then Kasyx turned around and grasped
the hands of his fellow Warriors, and they rose up together through the ceiling
of the house like vanishing memories.

It was past dawn as they descended
through the roof of the house on Camino del Mar. Springer was waiting for them,
cross legged, meditating. His head was closely shaved now, revealing all the
bumps of his angular skull, and he was wearing plain white cotton robes like a
monk. ‘Ah, you have brought back Samena,’ he said, rising to his feet. ‘Are you
safe, Samena?’

Samena said, shakily, ‘They scared
me, but they didn’t hurt me. I’m not sure where they kept me. They took me out
of that desert in the first dream, and then they locked me up in some kind of
room that looked as if it was made out of fog. I sat there for hours and hours,
and then they came to get me again, and then I was taken to that room in Arabia
somewhere.’

‘It sounds as if you were imprisoned
during the day in the dream of someone who was brain damaged, or in a coma,’
said Springer. ‘But, at least you are free now, and the Night Warriors are four
again.’

Kasyx said,’ They tried to take my
ex-wife Andrea, too, but I don’t think they succeeded. We saw her wake up
normally.’

Springer frowned at him. ‘You
actually saw the Devil take her captive?’

Kasyx nodded. ‘Yes – but if he’d
held her – she wouldn’t have woken up, would she?

She would have stayed asleep the way
that Samena did.’

‘No,’ said Springer, emphatically.
‘There is a great difference between capturing someone’s dream-personality when
they are inside their own dream, and capturing them when they are inside
somebody else’s dream. When they are inside somebody else’s dream – as Samena
was – their dream-personality remains in the dream state, because they are unable
to return to their waking body. But when they are inside their
own
dream, they appear to wake up as
normal, and to behave as normal. The only difference is that when they go back
to sleep at the end of the day, their dream-personality is still in bondage to
whoever captured them the previous night. Your ex-wife is as much at the mercy
of the Devil as Samena was.’

‘And he said he was going to get his
revenge on you, too,’ Xaxxa reminded him.

Kasyx looked at Springer anxiously.
‘Is there any way I can tell for sure that her dream-personality is being held
hostage – while she’s still awake?’

‘There are ways. Can you get to talk
to your ex-wife this morning?’

‘I can try.’

‘If the Devil threatened revenge on
you, then you must,’ said Springer.’ Yaomauitl was known throughout history for
his callousness and his brutality. His offspring are just as cruel. When she
sleeps tonight, believe me, he will torture or kill your wife’s
dream-personality, and that will have the effect of destroying her mind
completely.

Her body will live, but her
imagination will be extinct.’

Kasyx said, ‘How do I tell if she’s
been captured or not?’

‘Go talk to her. It doesn’t matter
what excuse you make. Talk about anything you like.

But in the middle of the
conversation, make sure you ask this question:
What are the
seven tests of
Abrahel?’

‘What good will that do?’ asked
Kasyx.

Springer laid a hand on his
shoulder. ‘It is the first question of the Demonic Interrogation, which was
devised by Catholic inquisitors to determine who was possessed by Satan and who
wasn’t. If her dream personality has been held hostage by the spawn of
Yaomauitl, she will answer,
The seven
tests of Abrahel are his and
his
alone.
And she will refuse to say any more about it.’

‘But supposing she says something
else altogether?’

‘Then you will know that the spawn
of Yaomauitl has failed to capture her. There are twelve questions in the
Demonic Interrogation, and every person whose soul is possessed
must
answer them.’

‘But what if she answers the way
that proves she’s been held hostage? What then?’

‘Then you have several choices.
Either to leave her to the Devil’s devices, in which case she will more than
likely be killed; or to wait until nightfall and go to rescue her, the same way
that you did Samena; or to kill the spawn of the Devil himself, during the day,
so that he may no longer dream that he has captured her.’

‘The Devil’s under police guard at
Scripps laboratory,’ put in Tebulot.’ How are we possibly going to be able to
kill him?’ Kasyx said, ‘I don’t know. But we can try, can’t we? Listen, Tebulot
is staying at my place. He can come along to the laboratory with me, and see if
we can get access to the Devil. Samena – you try to get some rest.

You’re going to have a difficult day
today, going back into your body and trying to prove to your grandparents and
your doctors that you’re perfectly okay. Xaxxa – maybe I can call on you if I
need you.’

‘Anytime, man,’ Xaxxa acknowledged.

The four Night Warriors talked for a
little while longer before first Xaxxa and then Tebulot broke free from the
room and floated out into the daylight. Kasyx and Samena were the last to
leave, except of course for Springer, who prowled up and down at the far end of
the room, thinking deeply.

Samena said, ‘I haven’t really had
the chance to thank you.’

‘What for?’ asked Kasyx.

‘For saving my life. That Devil was
threatening to eat me alive.
Literally,
inch
by inch.’

‘I guess you shouldn’t always
believe what Devils tell you, should you?’

Samena reached out and held his
hand. ‘I was frightened, Kasyx. I was sure that they were going to do something
terrible to me.’

‘Did they talk to you?’

‘They talked to each other all the
time, but not very often to me. There were always at least three of them – the
fat man with the dirty suit, the thin man with the pipe, and the Arab. But
sometimes there were more, although I couldn’t see who they were.

Their faces were all masked behind
those veils. The young Arab spoke to them in strange languages. I mean they
weren’t French and they weren’t German and they weren’t Italian.’

Kasyx said, ‘None of them touched
you?’ It was the question that any father would ask his daughter after an
assault, and both were aware of it.

Samena shook her head. ‘They swore
at me, some of them. One of them tried to touch me but the young Arab warned
him off.’

Kasyx was thoughtful. ‘He needed
you, that’s why. He isn’t yet ready to fight us. He isn’t strong enough.’ He
rubbed his hand against the side of his neck, and then said,

‘How many others do you think you
counted?’

‘At least ten,’ said Samena. ‘They
were just the same, all wrapped up in those veils.’

Springer put in, ‘That means that at
least ten of those original eels managed to dig themselves into the beach and
survive. They must still be there now, gestating.’

‘In that case, we’d better start
digging them out,’ said Kasyx.

‘You won’t find them easy to kill,’
said Springer. ‘They are arch-survivors, with a ten-thousand-year history of
staying alive against all possible odds.’

‘I’ll find a way,’ said Kasyx.
‘Believe me, Springer; I’ll find a way.’

S
amena blew Kasyx a ghostly farewell
kiss as they parted company over the rooftops of Del Mar. She would now return
to her earthly body to recuperate after her ordeal as the Devil’s hostage;
Kasyx would go back to
his
earthly
body, and attempt to find out if Andrea had been captured ; by the Devil. ‘

Samena turned towards La Jolla, and
flew like a rippling wraith towards the University. The Sisters of Mercy
Hospital was a large white building on the slope overlooking the freeway, with
cedars of Lebanon standing around it, and windows that reflected the hills and
the traffic and the morning sky. Samena could feel the tug of her own body,
somewhere within the hospital, and she allowed that tugging to guide her down
through the building’s roof, down through its concrete floors, down through its
electrical conduits and its air-conditioning pipes. At last she located the
private room on the fourth floor in which her body lay comatose, her own
white-faced body connected to a saline drip, and to scores of electrical
contacts that measured her heartbeat, her respiration, her blood-pressure, and
the electrical impulses that flickered within her brain.

Although it was only six-thirty in
the morning, her grandmother was there, sitting beside the bed, watching her.
There was a half-empty cup of coffee on the bedside table, which showed Samena
that her grandmother must have been keeping a vigil all night. This fussy
irritating woman who had built her whole life around television soap operas had
been watching over her, praying for her, ever since she had failed to regain
consciousness yesterday morning.

Samena hesitated for a moment, the
scene was so poignant. Her grandmother said nothing but sat with her hands
clasped together, her eyes red with tiredness and tears.

Slowly, silently, invisibly, Samena
sank into Susan’s body. Susan’s skull encased her mind; Susan’s flesh enrobed
her limbs. She waited, with her eyes closed, feeling her muscles, feeling her
nerves, feeling the blood that circulated around her arteries and veins;
feeling the suppressed thumping of her heart. The sensation of returning to a
physical body after so long as a dream-personality was extraordinary. It was
like being dressed up in five overcoats, six pairs of gloves, fur-lined boots
and a thick woollen face-mask. All of the agility and responsiveness which
characterised her life as Samena was buried inside her flesh; all that
spiritual buoyancy was now susceptible to the pull of gravity and the pressure
of the atmosphere.

She opened her eyes. Her grandmother
had her head bowed down, and was whispering something that sounded like the
Lord’s Prayer. Susan watched her for a little while, and then reached out her
hand. ‘Grandma?’

Her grandmother slowly lifted her
head. At first, she couldn’t believe that Susan had spoken. Then she said,
‘Susan?’ and clutched Susan’s hand tightly, and burst into tears. ‘Susan, thank
God, you’re awake! Nurse, she’s awake! Oh, Susan, Thank God! Thank God!’

Susan and her grandmother clung
together as close as they could, and in spite of herself Susan started sobbing
too, releasing at last all the terror she had felt during her long day in the
hands of Yaomauitl’s bastard. She wept and wept uncontrollably, and it was only
when her doctor came in to see her, and administered a sedative that she
gradually settled down.

The doctor stood beside her bed and
kept watch on her until she had stopped crying.

‘You gave us quite a scare, young
lady,’ he remarked. ‘We thought we might have lost you for good.’

‘I was just as scared as you were,’
said Susan.

The doctor gave her an uncertain
smile. ‘I’m not quite sure what you mean by that.’

‘I just mean that I was scared,
too.’ ‘You were
unconscious,
my dear.
You can’t actually be scared when you’re unconscious.’

Susan realised that she was making
things dangerously complicated. ‘I was dreaming, that’s all,’ she told the
doctor. ‘I was dreaming, and I was scared in my dream.’

‘I see. Like Dorothy, in Oz.’

‘Yes,’ said Susan, and she thought
to herself; if only you knew how right you were, doctor.’ Just like Dorothy in
Oz.’

Kasyx returned to his sleeping body
just in time to be woken up by his alarm-clock.

He sat up. There was a good smell of
fresh coffee in the air, and he suddenly remembered that Gil had spent the
night at his cottage, instead of going home.

Henry stretched, and then pushed
back his comforter and stood up. When he went through to the living-room, he
found Gil sitting at the table eating a large bowl of muesli and reading the
paper.