“I’ve never told anyone this. I thought if I kept my silence-if I let it become another rumor-sooner or later it would disappear.”
There was another noise in the hall, a whine like wind through a tiny aperture. And then, a scratching at the door. Whitehead didn’t hear it. He was in Warsaw again, in a house with a bonfire and a flight of steps and a room with a table and a guttering flame. Almost like the room they were in now, in fact, but smelling of old fire rather than souring wine.
“I remember,” he said, “when the game was over Mamoulian stood up and shook hands with me. Cold hands. Icy hands. Then the door opened behind me. I half-turned to see. It was Vasiliev.”
“The lieutenant?”
“Horribly burned.”
“He’d survived,” Marty breathed.
“No,” came the reply. “He was quite dead.”
Marty thought maybe he’d missed something in the story that would justify this preposterous statement. But no; the insanity was presented as plain truth. “Mamoulian was responsible,” Whitehead went on. He was trembling, but the tears had stopped, boiled away by the glare of the memory. “He’d raised the lieutenant from the dead, you see. Like Lazarus. He needed functionaries, I suppose.”
As the words faltered the scratching began again at the door, an unmistakable appeal for entry. This time Whitehead heard it. His moment of weakness had passed, apparently. His head jerked up. “Don’t answer it,” he commanded.
“Why not?”
“It’s him,” he said, eyes wild.
“No. The European’s gone. I saw him leave.”
“Not the European,” Whitehead replied. “It’s the lieutenant. Vasiliev.” Marty looked incredulous. “No,” he said.
“You don’t know what Mamoulian can do.”
“You’re being ridiculous!”
Marty stood up, and picked his way through the glass. Behind him, he heard Whitehead say “no” again, “please, Jesus, no,” but he turned the handle and opened the door. Meager candlelight found the would-be entrant.
It was Bella, the Madonna of the kennels. She stood uncertainly on the threshold, her eyes, what was left of them, turned balefully up to look at Marty, her tongue a rag of maggoty muscle that hung from her mouth as if she lacked the strength to withdraw it. From somewhere in the pit of her body, she exhaled a thin whistle of air, the whine of a dog seeking human comfort.
Marty took two or three stumbling steps back from the door.
“It isn’t him,” Whitehead said, smiling.
“Jesus Christ.”
“It’s all right, Martin. It isn’t him.”
“Close the door!” Marty said, unable to move and do it himself. Her eyes, her stench, kept him at bay.
“She doesn’t mean any harm. She used to come up here sometimes, for tidbits. She was the only one of them I trusted. Vile species.”
Whitehead pushed himself away from the wall and walked across to the door, kicking broken bottles ahead of him as he went. Bella shifted her head to look at him, and her tail began to wag. Marty turned away, revolted, his reason thrashing around to find some sane explanation, but there was none to be had. The dog had been dead: he’d parceled her up himself. There was no question of premature burial.
Whitehead was staring at Bella across the threshold.
“No, you can’t come in,” he told her, as if she were a living thing.
“Send it away,” Marty groaned.
“She’s lonely,” the old man replied, chiding him for his lack of compassion. It crossed Marty’s mind that Whitehead had lost his wits. “I don’t believe this is happening,” he said.
“Dogs are nothing to him, believe me.”
Marty remembered watching Mamoulian standing in the woods, staring down at the earth. He had seen no gravedigger because there’d been none. They’d exhumed themselves; squirming out of their plastic shrouds and pawing their way to the air.
“It’s easy with dogs,” Whitehead said. “Isn’t it, Bella? You’re trained to obey.”
She was sniffing at herself, content now that she’d seen Whitehead. Her God was still in his Heaven, and all was well with the world. The old man left the door ajar, and turned back to Marty.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said. “She’s not going to do us any harm.”