Tim Powers - Hide Me Among the Graves

He stood up and crossed to the brick street-side wall and leaned against it between two of the gray-glowing windows, so that his expression was hard to make out.

“Have any of you read my book, Adventures of a Younger Son ?” he asked. “No? Well, I never took you for a literate lot. It concerned my desertion from the British navy in India, and my subsequent career as a pirate on the Indian Ocean. In it I described my rescue of an Arab princess, Zela, and how I married her, and how she died in my arms. I know Byron always thought the whole thing was a bundle of lies.”

He sighed. “And — though I can still call poor lovely, loyal Zela up in my memory more clearly than I can my last wife—” He paused and then laughed softly. “Byron was right! This is difficult for me to admit, even to myself, after all these years, but — I didn’t desert the navy. I was honorably discharged at the age of twenty, in Bristol, because of having caught cholera. I was never a pirate, never met or married any Zela. I can hardly get my memory past the fictions now, all the sea battles and piracies, but I do know that they are fictions.”

He laced his fingers behind his head and stared at the ceiling.

“But then in Pisa in ’22 I met Shelley, and Byron, and became their friend. And after Shelley drowned, I sailed with Byron to Greece to fight for that nation’s independence from Turkey. Byron died in ’24, but I allied myself with a mountain bandit-king whose lair was a cave on Mount Parnassus. And I married his young sister — so in a way my imaginary Zela was really just a … premonition! And when we had a daughter, I named her Zella, slightly different spelling, to honor that dear figment.

“But — my bride’s brother, the mountain bandit — was one of several powerful men vying for the leadership of Greece in those days, and he was resolved to establish an alliance with the — the stony children of Deucalion and Pyrrha.”

Evidently stung by Trelawny’s assessment of her literacy, McKee explained stiffly to Johanna, “In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Deucalion and Pyrrha survived the great flood by setting sail in an ark, and they repopulated the earth afterward by throwing stones behind them, and the stones grew into people.”

“Into things that looked like people, sometimes, at any rate,” said Trelawny, nodding. “Deucalion and Pyrrha resurrected the Nephilim, pre-Adamite godlike monsters. By 1824, the Nephilim had been banished, but this chieftain was determined to call them up again and become something like a god himself.”

Trelawny rubbed one hand over his white-bearded face. “I — was young! — and I wanted the same, and I was willing to commit the large-scale human sacrifice the Nephilim required. In Euboea I killed … many Turks. Men, women, and children.” For several seconds he was silent. Then, “And I was betrayed,” he went on. “I was shot in the back with one of the living stones, so that I would merely become the bridge between the two species. The ball was fired clay, and it broke against my bones, but”—he paused to touch the base of his throat—“as you know, it’s been growing back, and with it the power of the Nephilim.”

Crawford was sure the old man was about to volunteer to kill someone in order to perform the procedure Maria’s ghost had described.

Instead, Trelawny stepped forward into the light and glared at him and said, “Cut it out of my throat.”

CRAWFORD BLINKED, AND his mouth was open for several seconds before he spoke. “Very well,” he said. “Where?”

“Right here in the kitchen. Where did you suppose, out in the street? You’ve got hot water in the boiler, there’s brandy in the cupboard — and I can fetch my sewing kit for you to stitch me up with afterward.”

Crawford pushed his chair back and stood up, wishing that he had got some sleep last night. “You’ll be fine,” he said, with more confidence than he felt. “I’ve cut around dozens of horse arteries without losing the patient.”

“Horse arteries,” echoed Trelawny. “Excuse me while I fetch needle and thread.”

The old man turned and clumped away up the stairs, shaking his head.

“It’s brave of him,” said Johanna.

“At this point,” said McKee, “it would have been cowardice not to do it.”

“Well, that’s what I said. There’s no neutral place.”

Crawford had stepped across to the knife rack, and after looking over the variously sized blades, he just picked up a whetstone and was rubbing his thumb across it.

“Go through the drawers in the pantry too,” he said. “See if you can find a knife with a short blade. These here are all for hacking joints apart.”

“Well, that would do ,” said McKee, standing up and walking into the pantry.

Trelawny came downstairs carrying a small leather box. “I’ve got a pocketknife with a short blade,” he said. “I’d just as soon not have you hacking joints.” His voice was light, but Crawford saw the pallor under the old man’s eternal tan. “I’m not afraid,” Trelawny added.

“I’ll go out and find a chemist’s,” said Crawford, “and fetch some ether. I’d rather use that than chloroform.”

“It’s not even half an inch deep!” said Trelawny scornfully. “Just cut, I promise not to flinch.”

“No, cutting so close to the vein, I—”

“And what’s happening to Rose, while we wait for you to find a chemist’s? Just cut; I won’t move.”

Crawford frowned at the defiant old man, then shrugged.

“Would you,” ventured Johanna, “like me to return a favor? I could … baptize you.”

“Me loyal old Lark,” said Trelawny, turning to her with a smile. “No, thank you, my dear, though I—” He shut his mouth, and after taking a deep breath and letting it out, he said, “I appreciate the thought behind the offer, more than I can say.”

Crawford eventually settled on one of the short blades in Trelawny’s bone-handled pocketknife, and when Johanna had lit a candle and brought it to the table, he held the blade in the flame.

“Open your shirt and lie down across the table,” he told Trelawny. His eyes were stinging from not having slept last night, and he squeezed them shut and then opened them wide; he looked at his hands and was reassured to see that they were not trembling.

The old man took his shirt off, exposing a broad chest matted with white hair and shoulders still corded with muscle. He touched a spot on his throat just above his collarbone, on the left side. “Here’s your target, Doctor.”

The lump did appear to be firmly stuck in place, very close to the jugular vein.

Crawford took off his coat and rolled his sleeves up past the elbow. “Pour a lot of brandy over my hands,” he told Johanna, “and then soak a towel in it and—”

“—Scrub where you’re going to cut,” said Johanna.

“That’s it.” He looked up at Trelawny’s drawn face. “I’d really like to get some ether. This is likely to hurt quite a bit.”

“I don’t mind hurt,” said the old man through his teeth. “Me and hurt go way back.”

Crawford shook his head. “As you please. Just, whatever you do, don’t twitch.”

When Crawford had rubbed his hands in the sluicing brandy and Johanna had swabbed the old man’s throat with the soaked towel, Crawford held the lump in Trelawny’s throat with his left hand and reached out with the knife in his right—