The hint of panic in his command told me he knew who was out there, too.
'Don't open that door!'
My grin may have been nervous, but it
I stared at the figure on the step, stunned speechless.
Because, of course, I was wrong again.
She marched by me, grousey as ever. 'I thought you'd never open up,' Val complained, well into the kitchen before turning to face me. 'I saw the cars parked outside and assumed you were entertaining, but I've been ringing that bell and thumping on that door for ages. I was just about to come around to the other side.'
Big, bristling Val; tweed two-piece suit, heavy brogues and thick stockings. Gorgeous, mustachioed Val.
'Val,' I croaked. I wasn't angry like last time.
The breeze from the open doorway cooled the back of my clammy neck.
'Good Lord, you'd think I was a ghost the way you're standing there. Are you all right, Mike? I drove down because I was anxious over what we discussed earlier today. You know there's something very odd—'
Val had obviously noticed him immediately she'd stepped into the cottage, but now she gave the Synergist her full attention. 'I beg your pardon?' she said, and I'd withered under that tone and that glare myself a few times in the past.
Mycroft spoke in a low, even voice, but I could tell his rag was going. Me, I was glad to see her, although I realized her presence didn't help the situation any; formidable though Val was, we were up against something more than mere numbers.
'Mike, I'm sorry if I've interrupted anything, but will you kindly inform this ill-mannered cretin . . .'
She'd spun toward me again and indignation trailed off with the sentence as she looked beyond me at the doorway.
The breeze wafting in was even more chilly, bringing with it a faint and peculiarly sour-sweet fragrance.
A hand touched my shoulder from behind.
Afraid to look all at once, I twisted my head and saw the shadow. Her breath touched my cheek.
I turned all the way.
She was small, much smaller than I'd expected. Tiny. And frail. And she had the oldest and sweetest face I'd ever seen.
Her eyes were pale, paler even than Midge's, and it seemed as though clouds drifted in them. Her lips were ancient-thin, the edges curled under; but all the same, it was a kind mouth, the lines at each end not spoiling her expression. And although her nose was sharp, it portrayed no arrogance, only a determination of will. Wrinkles splayed around her features in whorls and ridges, yet it was a clear, unsullied face, full of vibrancy and compassion, a Mother Teresa vision that had seen so much and felt so much, the experience etched in with those age-lines as explicitly as words in a book. Around her head she wore a shawl, many colors woven into its coarse material with no distinctive pattern formed; white hair, strands seeping over her shoulders, peeked from beneath the shawl. Her dress was long, high-necked, and dark gray in color, of a vogue in favor with Whistler's Mother.
Flora Chaldean stretched up her other hand, so that both rested on my shoulders.
I suddenly understood with that touch the extraordinary gathering of spiritual energy it had taken for her to reach this point. Her past peripherality, her gradual drawing closer to the cottage, had been no more than a visual (or visionary) representation of her struggle for materialization, the accumulating of psychic forces, the molding of her spirit existence into tangible form. Yet somehow I felt that only what was happening inside Gramarye that night had allowed the final barrier between the spiritual and the physical world to be breached.
I saw all this in her cloudy eyes, as though those vapors were her very thoughts. And I was aware that her presence was a warning, as it had been throughout our time at Gramarye, when her form had been observed only as a spectral shadow in the distance.
She drew close and her mouth opened, but again, I've no idea whether I heard the word or sensed the thought.
But what she said with her mouth or with her thoughts, was:
And then she began to decay before my eyes. It was as though she had burned up all the psychic energy it had taken to bring her to this moment, the final thrust of entering Gramarye using the last of her strength; now the process was going into reverse, into decline, the advancement toward the physical sense backtracking like a video rewind. Soon I was glad I hadn't got close during those early stages, those times I had seen her out there near the forest watching Gramarye.
The wrinkles in her face and hands deepened then dropped away leaving only faint lines, as her flesh became . . . loose. Passion went from her eyes as if the clouds had joined in a blanketing fog. Her hands shook on my shoulders, tapping a soft, irregular drumbeat, and her skin became waxen, almost shiny like glazed meat. It began to stretch, become paper-thin; it began to tear.
Her decomposition was rapid, taking no more than a minute or two, yet each second was timeless in itself.
The festering of her body started.
Where flies had settled on her as she had lain slumped at the table in Gramarye's kitchen all those months ago, so their spawn reappeared, white rippling maggots that feasted and grew, forming a correlation of restlessness, a superbly drilled regiment of minute carnivores. They disappeared into holes that they, themselves, created.
The deep stench poured over me and I held my breath, afraid to take in the fumes.
Her meat began to sag, to drop away, exposing muscle and bone, uncovering those crawling things busy inside. Her eyelids were no longer firm enough to contain her eyes, which drifted out onto her ravaged face. One hand that had rested on my shoulder slowly slid down my chest, the bones of the fingers—there was little flesh left on the hand—snagging against the tattered material of my shirt.
She shrank before me, a figure that had been small in life becoming smaller as bones and muscle relaxed into each other. Her other hand—the skeleton of her other hand—fell away.
Other things wriggled in those dark, bone-ridged eye cavities, black things that scuttled over each other, things like pieces of string that curled and slimed, all glorying in their treasurehouse of sustenance. Her jaw gaped open, nothing left to control its movement, and it seemed that even her blackened, withered tongue had joined the ranks of the crawling beasts, had become one of them.
The shawl slipped from her head and her white hair hung in sparse, limp clusters, and skin was only islands of tissue layers on the gray skull.
Her body slowly collapsed and mercifully started dissolving before reaching the floor. Clothes, bone, and liquefying flesh lay in a heap on the tiles, but within moments, those too were gone. There was nothing left of Flora Childean save for the smell.
I staggered backward, jolting hard against the door frame. Val was staring at the kitchen floor in disbelief. Mycroft had all but collapsed against the stairs. I saw that his eyes were half closed as though he had been wearied, drained of strength.
Yet strangely, I felt charged, a kind of chemical energy sparking within me, sending blood pounding around my body, causing nerve endings to tingle and throb. She had touched my shoulders and her eyes and thoughts had filled me.
Until I found Mycroft watching me warily and I sensed his fear and respect. Then I began to know . . .
THINGS UNLEASHED
MYCROFT VANISHED back up those stairs—and there were other footsteps too, obviously of those followers who had remained out of sight—as I held up my hands and studied them, wondering why they palpitated so and why my scalp (and other hairy parts of me) prickled and felt so itchy-dry. I touched my head and my hair was brittle (I'd almost expected it to be standing erect, punklike). So was this the physical sensation that came with the
