F. Paul Wilson - The Tomb

But he could not move! Fear as he had never known it gripped him in a clammy fist and pinned him to the couch. He was paralyzed by the alienness of those eyes and the sheer malevolence behind them.

Kolabati had to be aware that something was wrong—there was no way she could not be. She leaned back and looked at him.

"What do you see?" Her eyes were wide and her voice barely audible.

"Eyes," Jack said. "Yellow eyes. Two pairs."

She caught her breath. "In the other room?"

"Outside the window."

"Don't move, don't say another word."

"But—"

"For both our sakes. Please."

Jack neither moved nor spoke. He stared at Kolabati's face, trying to read it. She was afraid, but anything beyond that was closed off to him. Why hadn't she been surprised when he told her there were eyes watching from the other side of a third-story window with no fire escape?

He glanced over her shoulder again. The eyes were still there, still searching for something. What? They appeared confused, and even when they looked directly at him, they did not seem to see him. Their gaze slid off him, slithered around him, passed through him.

This is crazy! Why am I sitting here?

He was angry with himself for yielding so easily to fear of the unknown. There was some sort of animal out there—two of them. Nothing he couldn't deal with.

As Jack started to lift Kolabati off him, she gave a little cry. She wrapped her arms around his neck in a near stranglehold and dug her knees into his hips.

" Don't move !" Her voice was hushed and frantic.

"Let me up." He tried to slide out from under but she twisted around and pulled him down on top of her. It would have been comical but for her very genuine terror.

"Don't leave me!"

"I'm going to see what's out there."

"No! If you value your life you'll stay right where you are!"

This was beginning to sound like a bad movie.

"Come on ! What could be out there?"

"Better you never find out."

That did it. He gently but firmly tried to disengage himself from Kolabati. She protested all the way and would not let go of his neck. Had she gone crazy? What was wrong with her?

He finally managed to gain his feet with Kolabati still clinging to him, and had to drag her with him to the tv room door.

The eyes were gone.

Jack stumbled to the window. Nothing there. And nothing visible in the darkness of the alley below. He turned within the circle of Kolabati's arms.

"What was out there?"

Her expression was charmingly innocent. "You saw for yourself: nothing."

She released him and walked back into the front room, completely un-selfconscious in her nakedness. Jack watched the swaying flare of her hips silhouetted in the light as she walked away. Something had happened here tonight and Kolabati knew what it was. But Jack was at a loss as to how to make her tell him. He had failed to learn anything about Grace's tonic—and now this.

"Why were you so afraid?" he said, following her.

"I wasn't afraid." She began to slip into her underwear.

He mimicked her: " 'If you value your life' and whatever else you said. You were scared! Of what?"

"Jack, I love you dearly," she said in a voice that did not quite carry all the carefree lightness she no doubt intended it to, "but you can be so silly at times. It was just a game."

Jack could see the pointlessness of pursuing this any further. She had no intention of telling him anything. He watched her finish dressing—it didn't take long; she hadn't been wearing much—with a sense of déjà-vu . Hadn't they played this scene last night?

"You're leaving?"

"Yes. I have to—"

"—see your brother?"

She looked at him. "How did you know?"

"Lucky guess."

Kolabati stepped up to him and put her arms around his neck. "I'm sorry to run off like this again." She kissed him. "Can we meet tomorrow?"

"I'll be out of town."

"Monday, then?"

He held back from saying yes.

"I don't know. I'm not too crazy about our routine: We come here, we make love, a stink comes into the room, you get uptight and cling to me like a second skin, the stink goes away, you take off."

Kolabati kissed him again and Jack felt himself begin to respond. She had her ways, this Indian woman. "It won't happen again. I promise."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I just am," she said with a smile.

Jack let her out, then locked the door behind her. Still naked, he went back to the window in the tv room and stood there looking out at the dark. The beach scene was barely visible on the shadowed wall across the alley. Nothing moved, no eyes glowed. He wasn't crazy and he didn't do drugs. Something—two somethings—had been out there tonight. Two pairs of yellow eyes had been looking in. Something about those eyes was familiar but he couldn't quite make the connection. Jack didn't push it. It would come sooner or later.

His attention was drawn to the sill outside his window where he saw three long white scratches in the concrete. He was sure they had never been there before. He was puzzled and uneasy, angry and frustrated—and what could he do? She was gone.

He walked through the front room to get a beer. On the way, he glanced at the shelf on the big hutch where he had left the bottle of herbal mixture after taking the swallow.

It was gone.

14

Kolabati hurried toward Central Park West. This was a residential district with trees near the curb and cars lining both sides of the street. Nice in the daytime, but at night there were too many deep shadows, too many dark hiding places. It was not rakoshi she feared—not while she wore her necklace. It was humans. And with good reason: Look what had happened Wednesday night because a hoodlum thought an iron and topaz necklace looked valuable.

She relaxed when she reached Central Park West. There was plenty of traffic there despite the lateness of the hour, and the sodium lamps high over the street made the very air around her seem to glow. Empty cabs cruised by. She let them pass. There was something she had to do before she flagged one down.

Kolabati walked along the curb until she found a sewer grate. She reached into her purse and removed the bottle of rakoshi elixir. She hadn't liked stealing it from Jack, for she would have to fabricate a convincing explanation later. But it was his safety that counted, and to assure that, she would steal from him again and again.

She unscrewed the cap and poured the green mixture down the sewer, waiting until the last drop fell.

She sighed with relief. Jack was safe. No more rakoshi would come looking for him.

She sensed someone behind her and turned. An elderly woman stood a few dozen feet away, watching her bend over the sewer grate. A nosey old biddy. Kolabati was repulsed by her wrinkles and stooped posture. She never wanted to be that old.

As Kolabati straightened up, she recapped the bottle and returned it to her purse. She would save that for Kusum.

Yes, dear brother, she thought with determination, I don't know how, or to what end, but I know you're involved. And soon I'll have the answers.

15

Kusum stood in the engine room at the stern of his ship, every cell in his body vibrating in time to the diesel monstrosities on either side of him. The drone, the roar, the clatter of twin engines capable of generating a total of nearly 3,000 b.h.p. at peak battered his eardrums. A man could die screaming down here in the bowels of the ship and no one on the deck directly above would hear him; with the engines running, he wouldn't even hear himself.

Bowels of the ship … how apt. Pipes like masses of intestines coursed through the air, along the walls, under the catwalks, vertically, horizontally, diagonally.