The Heirloom by Graham Masterton

Author:Graham Masterton [Masterton, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Head of Zeus Ltd.

6

Alarmings

We drove out to Escondido with the radio tuned to KOGO 6 Radio News. I just wanted to hear something normal, something real. I just wanted to know that thé world was still going on outside of my house at Rancho Santa Fe and the Hospital of the Sisters of Mercy.

David said, ‘You’re sure you saw that face? You’re not letting your anxiety run riot?’

I glanced across at him stonily.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I still believe we ought to challenge everything we see and experience. Otherwise our own minds are going to start working against us, too. One panic leads to another.’

I flicked my eyes at the rear-view mirror, and depressed my lane-change signal to overtake a rattling bus crowded with Mexican roadworkers. The dark freeway rose ahead of us towards the cutting at Del Mar, and then dipped down again, an endless river of red lights.

Back at the hospital, the elevator doors had rumbled open almost as soon as I saw the man-serpent’s face, and the nurses and interns had all pushed their way out into the lobby before I was able to make up my mind which of them had taken on the demon’s features. Even if I’d caught up with the right intern, and stopped him, I probably would have found that he was quite normal and ordinary and didn’t have the faintest idea what I was babbling about. I’d already allowed the chair to make a fool out of me in Jonathan’s room. I didn’t want to be banned from the hospital altogether.

‘I’m going to drive back to the house after we’ve seen Jessop,’ I said. ‘I want to see if the chair’s made its way there… or whether it’s decided to leave us alone for a while.’

‘It won’t leave you alone,’ said David. ‘Until you confront it, and deal with it according to the proper rituals, it won’t ever leave you alone.’

‘Now you’re beginning to sound like the chair yourself.’

‘Is that what it told you?’

I nodded. ‘It won’t release Jonathan out of his coma, and it won’t allow me to get rid of it, not until I accept what it has to offer.’

‘And you still can’t work out what it is that it’s offering?’

‘I can’t even begin to guess. Mind you, I haven’t really been trying. That chair is so damned evil, I can’t think what it could possibly do for me that wouldn’t be illegal, or immoral, or downright homicidal.’

David thought for a while. ‘You want to be rich, don’t you?’ he asked me.

‘I’d like to be slightly wealthier, but then who wouldn’t? I don’t actually have a burning desire to be a zillionaire.’

‘Is there any antique you’ve ever wanted to own? Some fabulous piece that you could never hope to lay your hands on?’

I shrugged. ‘I’ve always wanted the “Diana and Minerva” commode in Harewood House in England. Do you know that Chippendale charged less than two hundred and ten dollars for it? But, you know, I can live without it.’

‘What about women? Is there a woman you covet?’

‘Yes.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.