Warren Murphy: Next Of Kin

The boy looked up, his eyes frozen with terror. He abandoned his cards with a sniff. No, Jeremiah thought. As the boy bounded away on all fours, Jeremiah ran with all his strength in the other direction.

At the end of the sleeper car, he smashed full force into a man who had emerged from one of the cabins. A witness! Jeremiah looked around wildly to see if others had been standing around while he had turned the boy into a rabbit. There was only this single passenger, dressed in a blue suit like any businessman, whose face was expressionless as Jeremiah disengaged himself and continued running.

But what a face, he thought as he ran cold water over his head in the lavatory. It was the strangest face he had ever seen. A face that was human, and not disfigured, but unlike, any face he had ever looked upon. The color, the shape, the features. He had never seen a face that even remotely resembled it...

The man was waiting for Jeremiah when he returned.

The boy didn't acknowledge him, but he knew that the strange man was following him through the cabin. When he arrived back at the welfare lady's side, the stranger sat down opposite them. Jeremiah trembled with fright. But the man opened a newspaper— harmless enough— while the welfare lady slept.

More than an hour passed. Outside, snow was falling in wet, fat flakes that coated the landscape as the train chug-a-chugged slowly through the Kentucky highlands. The boy dozed. Chug-a-chug, chug-a-chug. A hypnotic stillness fell over the car. The snow was falling with a chug-a-chug beat, chug-a-chug and the snow, the bright, white snow, bright and white, too bright, the snow, chug-a-chug...

The snow!

Jeremiah snapped awake to the sounds of people shrieking wildly as a storm of whirling snow blew through the train.

"What— what's this?" the welfare lady grumbled as the snow slowed and ceased and disappeared without a trace of moisture. She looked around for the source of the noise, then went back to sleep.

"It isn't even wet," someone called from a distance. And everyone turned and marveled about what could have caused such a mass hallucination, except for Jeremiah, who fought back tears of panic and sorrow and shame because he knew that he had caused it. He felt as if he'd just had a wet dream in front of fifty people, and he knew they would continue. He was a freak, a dangerous, uncontrollable menace who'd be locked up in prison or killed as soon as people found out about him.

He straightened up. What if nobody did find out about him? If he could get away from the welfare lady who was already beginning to snore, perhaps never reach the home in Dover City... If he could live alone in the mountains, no one would ever know...

But someone did know. The strange-looking man with the newspaper was staring straight at him, unsmiling, appraising. He knew. It was all over. He knew.

With a movement so fast that Jeremiah didn't know what was happening, the man lifted him off his seat and clamped his hand over the boy's mouth. He carried him to the sleeper cabin where Jeremiah had first seen him and threw him inside.

Before Jeremiah could get to his feet, the man swatted him across the cabin with the back of his hand. The motion looked effortless, but the boy felt as though all his bones were broken.

"If you scream, I'll kill you," he said.

He walked in a slow circle around the whimpering child. For several minutes he paced in silence. Then he said, "You are a most exceptional child." He spoke elegantly, unlike the rough Southern mountain twang Jeremiah's ears were accustomed to.

"Where are you going on this train?" the stranger asked.

"Dover City."

"Is that woman your mother?" He inclined his head in the direction of the passenger car.

"No. My parents are dead." He burst into tears. "I killed them."

The man's eyelids lowered and the corners of his mouth curved upward. "Good," he said softly. "Does anyone know what you can do?"

Jeremiah stammered, confused.

"The snow. The boy in the corridor. Things like that."

The boy shook his head.

"You know, if anyone finds out about you, they'll kill you."

Jeremiah's trembling worsened. "I won't do it anymore," he said weakly.

The man laughed. "You know as well as I that you can't control this— this ability of yours. You were asleep when you caused the snowstorm. Stop that sniffling at once." He shoved the boy's shoulder painfully. "It can only be directed. And used. Yes, this talent of yours could prove to be quite helpful."

"At the home in Dover City, they're going to put me in jail, aren't they?"

The man smiled a sly, oily smile. "But you're never going to reach Dover City," he said. "This encounter with me has changed your fate finally and inexorably. You will be rich. You will be free to take anything you want on the face of the earth. You will lead a life that is both unique and invincible. And you will be, with proper guidance and discipline, of invaluable assistance to me."

"Who are you?" the boy asked, ignorant of half the words the strange man had spoken.

"I am the Master," he said.

Then he shattered the glass in the cabin's window, gathered the boy up in his arms, and hurled them both outside into the cold to roll down the snowy, bramble-coated hillside as the train coughed on and out of sight.

* * *

Outside the castle's slit windows, the sea rumbled close to the palm trees. High tide. The Dutchman had been in the same position for hours. Waiting. A stranger from the outside would have thought he was resting, but the Dutchman never rested. He waited, and that was different.

The door opened with a soft knock and a squat, dark-haired man wearing a shabby seafarer's uniform entered carrying a red lacquer box.

"What's this for?" the Dutchman asked.

The mute stared at him intently, watching the shape of his lips. He handed the Dutchman the box with a slight bow, then gestured with practiced, fluttering hands a message that made the Dutchman shudder to the tips of his fingers. "It can't be true," he said as the mute drew a long beard in the air. Two men— a tall young white man and an aged Oriental. The mute bowed again, picked up a quill pen and a sheet of rice paper from a table in the room, and wrote with large, difficult strokes:

THEY HAVE COME.

He handed the Dutchman the paper, bowed again, and left the room, again sheathed in darkness except for the eerie light of the full tropical moon outside. The Dutchman looked at the lacquer box in his hands and willed his, fingers to stop trembling. When they steadied, he tossed the box into the air, thrust his right hand upward, and with a delicate dancing rhythm of his fingers, shattered the box in midair into a thousand pieces.

An envelope fluttered from its place in the box, where it had rested for many years, and drifted into the Dutchman's hands.

"At last," he said quietly, clutching the envelope to his chest. He rose, feeling the chains of a lifetime loosen and break. He walked to the door, handed the envelope to the mute waiting outside, and said, "Take this to the man called Chiun."

When his servant had disappeared into the night, the Dutchman walked through the castle into a room with a hidden panel that led to another room, a tiny, square black box occupied by a small ebony shrine. The Dutchman knelt before it.

He spoke softly. "O Master of Darkness," he whispered. "Thank you for delivering these men into my hands. Their arrival is premature, but I promise I will not fail you. Your will is mine. I go forth into death without fear. You will be avenged."

The waiting was over.

?Two

His name was Remo and he was bellysmacking. It smarted, diving forty feet from a cliff and landing on his stomach in the reef-shallowed waters of L'Embouchure Bay.

"No, no," Chiun shrieked from the shore, his thin arms waving wildly over a 1920s red and black striped, knee-length bathing costume. "Come back. Come back at once."