Immortals Page 2

  He pulled back from the mirror as if he had gotten a whiff of his own stale breath. The abrupt movement sent a sharp pain down through his lower back, making him groan aloud.

  Without further hesitation he approached the bed and stared down at Selina. He looked at the nightstand. Her bottle of tranquilizers was open. He took it, emptied most of it into his hand, and put the tablets into his pocket. Then he slipped his hands under his wife’s body.

  She moaned softly, but her eyes didn’t open. She wasn’t a big woman, only five feet four and a little over a hundred pounds, but the effort to lift her nearly brought him to his knees. He struggled and strained, clamping his lips down on his own cries. His eyes bulged, but he finally stood up with her in his arms. Her head fell back against his chest.

  He carried her out of the bedroom and turned right in the hallway. He went down to the end of the corridor and opened another door, nearly dropping her when he reached for the knob to turn it. He struggled to balance her, again subduing his agony, and walked through the door to another, shorter stairway. Each step was harder than the previous one, but he made it to the attic.

  He sandwiched her between the wall and himself and flipped a light switch. A single light bulb dangling on a thick black wire illuminated the attic and revealed a chair directly under a ceiling beam. Dangling from the beam was a clothesline, the bottom looped and knotted into a hangman’s noose.

  Harris took a deep breath and brought Selina to the chair. He set her down and held her against the back of the chair while he caught his breath. Then he looked up at the rope. He moved around to the front and scooped Selina up so that her head was above his. As carefully as he could, he slipped her head into the loop. The bottom caught under her chin. Moving awkwardly around her body and still holding her, he stood up on the chair. Then he released his hold on her, and she was supported only by the rope. It held. He pushed her head forward so that the rope slipped off her chin and around her neck. Finally he tightened the knot.

  As soon as he did so he stepped off the chair and looked up at her. Her eyes fluttered. He had been hoping she wouldn’t regain consciousness, but apparently the cutting off of oxygen had done something to stimulate her, and her eyes opened. She gaped at him madly for a moment, her eyes bulging, the attic light making them glow with a sickly yellowish tint.

  He stepped back.

  “I’m sorry!” he cried. Her eyes snapped closed just like a toy doll’s eyes. He didn’t wait to see anything else. He turned and started down the attic steps, but he missed one and tumbled the rest of the way. At the bottom he pulled himself up to a sitting position and moaned aloud. Pain coming from everywhere over his body sucked the breath out of him. He gasped, placed his hand over his chest to keep himself from wheezing, and struggled to a standing position. Then he made his way back to the bedroom and collapsed on the bed.

  He lay there for a moment. Every joint in his body ached, and he had a horrible ribbon of pain just above his eyes. It was as if he were wearing a crown of thorns.

  He brought his hands to his head and ran his fingers through his hair. When he looked at his hands he saw they were filled with strands, only the strands were completely gray.

  “No,” he said to his bony-looking fingers and thin palm. “Please.” He reached for the phone and tapped out the numbers, incorrectly pecking at the pushbuttons twice before he put all his concentration on the series of digits and got it right.

  “Leon residence,” Gerald Dorian shouted. Harris heard music and laughter in the background.

  “Gerald, thank heavens.” His voice was cracking. It was hard to speak. “Gerald, please . . . it’s Harris Levy.”

  “Mr. Levy, how are you?” Gerald asked cheerfully.

  “Not well. Terrible.”

  “What?”

  “Not well,” he repeated. “Gerald, tell him I did it. Please . . .”

  “Hold on a moment, Mr. Levy. I have to close this door.” A moment later the background noises were subdued. “Sorry about that. Now, what were you saying, Mr. Levy?”

  “Gerald, I’ve got to talk with Mr. Leon. I did what he wanted.”

  “I’m afraid that’s out of the question. He’s quite occupied at the moment, Mr. Levy.”

  “But Gerald, I’m getting old . . . sick.”

  “You waited too long, Mr. Levy. I pleaded with you.”

  “Please, Gerald,” he cried. “Speak to him. Tell him I did it. He told me I still had time if I acted promptly. Well, I did.”

  “All right, Mr. Levy. I’ll talk to him. We’ll call you back.”

  “But I need immediate attention, Gerald. Please.”

  “Stand by.”

  Before Harris could interject another word Gerald hung up his receiver, and the line went dead. Harris pressed the phone harder to his ear, as if he had just heard his own death sentence.

  His face began to stretch, the skin thinning out until he felt it tearing at his cheek and jawbone. The receiver dropped out of his hand and bounced on the pecan-brown carpet. His arms fell to his sides as if they had weights attached to the ends. He couldn’t lift them.

  Soon his eyes were watering. Just before his vision became blurred he turned to see himself in the pearl-framed vanity mirror. That couldn’t be his face, he thought. The man who looked back at him was as gaunt as a hundred-year-old man. His skull was pressing out, rising up through his scant layer of skin, skin that looked more like thin parchment. Veins were rupturing in his cheeks. There was a ripping just at the crest of his right cheekbone. He screamed with pain, and then his vision blurred and the images before him merged into one liquid mess, colors blending into others, shapes taking on adjacent angles and dimensions.

  He moaned and lay back on the bed, taking the same fetal position Selina had been in. He felt as if he were literally shrinking in his clothing. His body seemed to be retreating toward some center deep within.

  The last sense to go was the sense of smell. It was awful . . . decaying flesh, putrid liquids oozing from his eyes and his mouth. His beautiful sports jacket folded in as he continued to diminish on the bed. The blur was replaced with darkness. For a moment all was quiet.

  Then the peace and quiet he had assumed was death was shattered with the sound of his own bones crumbling. Yet when it was over, he was still there, imprisoned in the dust. Where was he? What was he? He had no form; he saw nothing, felt nothing, yet he was still there. He wanted to scream, but he had no voice.

  Outside, stars glittered and the moon slipped out from behind a thick charcoal-gray cloud. The silvery rays shot through the office window like a spotlight and fell over the sports jacket and pants collapsed and folded over the small pile of dust within.

  Mr. Leon was gazing through the glass doors, sitting in his high-back leather desk chair and turned in the direction of the pool so he could watch his guests. He always wondered what sort of things they said to each other when he was not nearby.

  No sense in wondering, he thought, reaching under his desk to turn a knob. Instantly the voices of the men and women around the pool were brought into his office. He could direct the microphones and center in on anyone he wanted.

  The fools were talking about their investments, laughing about how much wealth they would be able to accumulate with so much time at their disposal. Some of the women were comparing hairdos and talking about clothes. One of the men was thinking about getting a nose job, maybe even having most of his face changed. The people around him thought that wasn’t a bad idea. They were showing signs of boredom, Mr. Leon noted. It was difficult to hold on to employees these days or to find just the right ones, ones who had his vision, ones who had imagination and an insatiable hunger for life.

  Paul Stoddard looked a bit pale around the gills. He wasn’t very talkative, either, and he continued to look to the right, where they had put Brenda. Mr. Leon hoped he hadn’t misjudged the man. Perhaps with more responsibility he would grow and forget. Nothing like a little power to make a disciple more devoted, he tho
ught.

  All of the women were very beautiful. He had chosen well. Everywhere there were floodlights illuminating them, showing their bodies smooth and brown with softly curving necks and perky white bosoms. Some had long legs, their thighs inviting and as pure and rich in promise as birth itself.

  One of the women laughed, her voice musical, innocent, wholesome, yet as sweet and tormenting as rich cream. She made his heart throb the way it had when he first set eyes on a beautiful young girl he knew would be his.

  How long had it been? He laughed, thinking of all the clever ruses he had created to eradicate time, including staging his own death and attending the funeral like a dutiful, loving son. How many times had he died? He laughed at his momentary lapse of memory. What difference did it make if he had died seven or eight times? It kept people from wondering, didn’t it?

  Still, there had been three attempts on his life over the years; admittedly not that many, when you consider the prize and the number of years, but still, any one could have succeeded. Was there a potential assassin in this new group of disciples around his pool? No one had shown any signs of wanting more than he had been given, and yet . . . it was human nature to be greedy, wasn’t it?

  Thank goodness for modern technology and all this protection, he thought. Most of the time he lived in a cocoon. True, but he lived, and how he lived!

  Movement on one of his television monitors caught his eye, and he turned to watch Gerald Dorian cross the living room and head toward his office. The cameras followed Mr. Leon’s personal assistant to his office door, where he stood waiting to get Mr. Leon’s attention. Gerald knew better than to interrupt one of Mr. Leon’s moments.

  Mr. Leon spun around slowly to greet him. He leaned back in his chair and pressed the tips of his fingers against each other.

  “Yes, Gerald?”

  “Mr. Levy just phoned, sir.”

  He sat back farther and pressed his palms against his chest. Gerald knew Mr. Leon was in one of his meditative moods, his face complacent, thoughtful; his eyes philosophical, the blue in them deep, dark. Even when he was in deep thought his forehead remained smooth, his eyebrows straight. He wasn’t a very tall man, barely six feet, but to Gerald he sometimes looked gigantic.

  “Oh yes, Mr. Levy. And?”

  “He wanted you to know he had done it. He said you told him if he took action, there was still time, but it sounded too late,” Gerald said. Mr. Leon nodded.

  “Poor man,” he said. “But he who hesitates . . .”

  Mr. Leon reached into the top drawer of his desk and brought out a soft-looking leather-bound book; the brown had faded into a rust. Without looking up, Mr. Leon spoke as he wrote something in it. “Well, then, you had better send Mr. Stoddard in to see me.” He looked up to admire himself in the wall mirror on the left. He looked so much bigger than he had yesterday. He turned back to Gerald. “As I recall, Mr. Levy had made a recommendation to us. Now we’ll act on it.” He smiled. “We need a replacement,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Leon went back to his leather-bound book and wrote something else in it. After a proper pause, Gerald asked, “Will there be anything else, sir?”

  Mr. Leon sharply punctuated whatever he had written in his book and closed it. Then he returned it to the drawer and looked up. For a moment he seemed distracted, his eyes gazing through Gerald, beyond the room, beyond the house, beyond the time. He was like a seaman on the port side of the deck gazing at the horizon, dreaming of home.

  “What? Oh, yes, yes,” he said, gazing through the glass doors again. “Please see how our lobster bake is coming along. Suddenly I’m very hungry. Ravenously hungry.”

  “Yes, sir,” Gerald said softly. Mr. Leon thought he heard a discordant note in Gerald’s voice.

  “Gerald?” Gerald turned back.

  “Sir?”

  “They come and go, Gerald. You of all people must never forget that,” he added, not disguising the threat.

  “I know, sir.”

  “You’re not getting tired, are you, Gerald?” Mr. Leon asked, smiling.

  “Oh, no, sir. No,” Gerald said emphatically.

  “Good. Anyway, it’s a myth, you know.”

  “Sir?”

  “To suggest that if we lived forever, we would grow tired of life. A myth,” Mr. Leon repeated, turning back to look at his guests.

  “Yes, sir,” Gerald muttered.

  He stared at Mr. Leon a moment, fascinated by how still he sat and how intensely he studied the young women. Then he shook his head slightly and left to do all that he had been told to do while Mr. Leon turned up the volume on his speakers and continued to eavesdrop on their conversations.

  2

  Drake Edwards groaned at the sound of the buzzer. He was in the midst of a great dream. He was going up for a jump shot; there were seconds left, and Sandburg was one point behind. Beyond the backboard and all around him the crowd was standing. Cynthia was in his dream, even though she hadn’t attended Sandburg Central. She was holding her fingers to her lips, and her girlfriends were clutching her arms and squeezing themselves together in a clump of hope.

  The ball left his hands as if it had a mind of its own and cut smoothly through the air. It dropped through the hoop so sharply it made no sound and hardly disturbed the netting just as the buzzer sounded.

  But it wasn’t the buzzer of the court’s time clock; it was his alarm clock, waking him and telling him it was time to get up and get ready for work. Cynthia heard him groan and ran her fingers through his hair. Then she leaned over and kissed him on the back of his neck.

  “Sorry, honey,” she said. “It’s seven.”

  He groaned again and turned over, keeping his eyes closed.

  “It’s getting harder and harder to get up in the morning,” he complained. When he moved his legs his old knee injury reintroduced itself, as it had been doing for the last year or so. The doctor suspected he was becoming arthritic.

  “I’m only forty years old,” he had protested, but then he remembered his forty-four-year-old brother Michael and his receding hairline. With his paunch and baggy eyes he looked sixty. It was in the genes. The Edwards boys took after their grandfather. He and Michael would be completely bald by fifty and look years older than they were.

  He moaned and rubbed his knee.

  “Oh, poor Drake. Is your knee bothering you again this morning?” Cynthia asked sympathetically.

  “Not again, still,” he said.

  He knew why he always dreamed of heroic scenes on the basketball court. He had almost been a star for his high school, but just at the start of his senior year, when he was primed and ready to go, he took a terrible fall during the first quarter of the first game of the season. He had been hit just as he had gone up for a jump shot, and when he came down he fell on his right knee. There was no chance to break his fall, no time to hold his hands out, nothing to fall on but the knee.

  The injury not only took him out of the season, it put him on crutches for half the school term, and when he finally got free of the crutches he was still limping so badly that his friends called him Hopalong Edwards.

  Very funny.

  He groaned again and pulled himself into a sitting position. It was Monday morning, and he wanted to go to work at the insurance company as much as he wanted to dig a twenty-foot ditch.

  “I’ll get the kids started,” Cynthia said. She put her hand on his shoulder. “You all right?”

  He nodded and then felt bad for not acknowledging her concern. He turned and kissed her. At thirty-five Cynthia was aging far more gracefully than he was, he thought. But again, that was in the genes. Her mother certainly didn’t look sixty-two, and her father was a hardy, vigorous man at seventy-one. Drake’s parents were dead; his father from a heart attack at sixty-four and his mother from a stroke and heart attack at sixty-six. Some prognosis for the siblings, he thought mournfully.

  Drake hoped his son Stuart and his daughter Debbie had inherited Cynthia’s genes
and not his.

  “Do you remember what today is?” she asked as she caressed his rough, unshaven cheek with her soft one and drew his lips back to hers. They kissed again, and he shook his head. Then he nodded and smiled.

  “Sure.” He leaned toward her to kiss the bottom of her chin. “Our real anniversary,” he whispered.

  They both laughed. It was silly, but after fifteen years of marriage, no one knew but them. They had decided to get married impulsively one night while she was still a senior at SUNY-Albany. Of course, she was old enough, but they both knew Cynthia’s parents would be heartbroken if she told them what they had done. Instead she and Drake continued to date, became engaged shortly after graduation, and got married again the following September.

  “Your father’s still not sure I can support my family,” Drake complained.

  “Every father’s like that, honey. You’ll be the same when it comes to Debbie. You’ll hope for a doctor or a lawyer, too.”

  “Certainly not a salesman, eh?” he said, pulling the blanket off. His back felt so stiff this morning, he thought. Maybe he could try acupuncture treatments.

  “Unless, of course, he’s one as good as you.”

  “Sure, sure.” Drake paused before getting out of bed and smiled to himself as he reminisced. “When I was younger I could sell anything to anybody. Just like my father, maybe better,” he added, nodding.

  “You needed my help once,” she reminded him.

  “What? Oh.” He shook his head. “I staged that whole thing.” He stood up and pretended he was back in Albany, New York, selling used cars. “Oh, miss, can we borrow you for just a moment? Only a moment, please.”

  “I thought you were crazy.”

  “Then why did you stop?”

  “Crazy, but handsome,” she admitted.