"Smith, Guy N - Sabat 01 - The Graveyard Vultures" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Guy N)

His voice tailed off and he stared in disbelief; saw the graves, the soil thrown up in a heap, their contents dragged from the open cavities. Oh, Jesus God! Culte des mortes, as it was known in Creole, the native tongue of Haiti - the cult of the dead . . . necromancy! He found himself stepping back in sheer revulsion. Another tortured flash of memory, a visit some years ago to Port au Prince where he had experienced at first hand some of the voodoo rites, houngans digging up corpses in the graveyard at night for a number of revolting ceremonies; the dead walked and having seen it with his own eyes Mark Sabat did not dispute it. And Quentin had been there, too, learning his trade, pandering to these witch doctors who held the secret of the living dead.

Mark could see clearly now that his eyes had accustomed themselves to the dark. Three corpses; peasants, a man and a woman in middle-age, the hessian sacking in which they had been buried having rotted away to reveal their emaciated nakedness, putrid green flesh hanging in strips, the whiteness of the bones beneath almost luminous. And their faces had expressions on them even though they were virtually skeletal. Masks of terror fixed on he who had disturbed their final peace, arms entwined in a horrific embrace. And the child between them, that was the worst of all; a young girl, hairless as a babe, her flesh somehow having defied the damp cold earth and the nibbling worms and remained almost intact. Indeed, she might still have been alive ... a movement, she lurched against the woman as though seeking parental protection a limp hand swinging. Oh Jesus God, Sabat thought, she's still got her eyes! Orbs wide with terror seeing him, pleading with him to save them all from this monster of darkness.

'You'll join them.' Quentin held the axe easily now, no longer struggling to lift it. 'You'll soon be one of the walking dead, Mark. Or perhaps my Master will find other uses for your dismembered body while your soul. . . '

'Stop Mark Sabat advanced into the clearing, the crucifix now clear of his pocket and held out at arms length. 'Enough of these vile practices, Quentin. These people must have eternal peace . . . and you as well!'

But Quentin stood his ground. He should have cowered before the power of the cross and the pungent smell of herbs which emanated from the intruder. Instead he gave a hollow faugh and that was when the younger Sabat knew . . . knew that his own loss of faith had failed him in his greatest hour of need; that he was but a mere mortal facing up to a devil incarnate. And Quentin was fully aware of this, too! No longer was the evil brother a helpless figure; age and decay still ravaged him hideously but his muscles powered him with the speed and strength of one in the prime of life. The cold air hissed as the axe went back and up, a whistling arc of instant death, its blade honed to razor sharpness. A cry left those toothless lips that was more animal than human, reverberating in the still atmosphere, the mountains all around starting to take up the echoes.

Sabat fought against shock and horror which were threatening to petrify him into an easy target. A sideways leap just as the blade came down, hearing it strike the rocky ground amid a shower of sparks. Whirling, flinging the crucifix with desperation, seeing it hit his adversary full in the chest. But Quentin only swivelled round, a horrific sneer on his aged features. 'The cross is powerless without you, Mark. Not even a symbol, just a lump of meaningless metal.'

Panicking now, a Christian in a roman lion pit, knowing that his agility can only postpone the inevitable mauling.

Mental torture added to bursting lungs and weakening muscles. Mark Sabat hurled garlic bulbs and saw them bounce off his brother and roll away. Quentin followed him, the axe poised effortlessly, awaiting the death blow. It was crazy that such a decrepit body could move so swiftly, the brain within the shrunken bald skull tuned perfectly to outwit its retreating foe.

Suddenly Mark Sabat was airborne and falling, a wave of vertigo sweeping through him, a sensation akin to having stepped off a block of high-rise flats into a black nothingness. Then a jerk checked him. He was lying on his back staring up at an oblong that was lighter than the darkness all around; twinkling pinpoints which he recognised as stars. It took him some seconds to realise what had happened and then it all came to him; the musty damp smell of soil which showered down on him from the narrow, sharp sides of the grave into which he had fallen, sharp slivers of rock gouging his back.

A familiar silhouette above him obliterated the starlight. Quentin. Old or young, it was the Quentin he had hunted from Haiti to Bavaria, axe poised for the final blow, savouring this moment of fratricide. And it was at that instant, even as he was preparing himself for death, that Mark's fingers closed over the cold metal of the .38 in his jacket pocket. His movements were instinctive, an act of hopelessness tinged with defiance, a condemned man spitting in the face of his executioner. A salvo of shots, so rapid that they sounded like a single peal of cannonfire coming up out of the ground, stabbing flame that burned its way through the material of the pocket in which the gun was fired, and gave off a stench that was a mixture of singed cloth and cordite. And bullets thudding into a human body with a noise like catapult slugs striking wet cardboard.

Quentin was thrown back up to his full height even as he started to bring the axe down, the hail of slugs ploughing up his body, churning a furrow that began in his groin and ended with a savage gash across his throat, as though a ferocious wild beast had savaged him. His scream of anger was drowned by the blood gushing from the severed jugular vein, the agony arching his back so that his bowed spine threatened to snap. One suspended second when he tottered on the narrow brink that divides the chasms of life and death, his own death-wish suddenly expedited yet instinctively clinging to the life he had known, reluctant to relinquish it. Tottering, swaying.

Mark's finger checked in the trigger. He heard the axe thud harmlessly on the ground, saw Quentin coming at him, airborne, arms flailing like some ungainly prehistoric bird attempting to take flight, spouting warm, thick blood.

Mark Sabat felt the rush of air, covered his head with his arms and braced himself. A sickening impact, smothered by the still kicking body of his brother, feeling and tasting warm blood on his face.

And the younger Sabat was fighting for his life again. Somehow he managed to push the other off him, struggled up so that they were wedged side-by-side in the deep, narrow grave. Only then did he open his eyes, and even the darkness failed to hide the awfulness of it all. Quentin's face was only inches from his own, a grotesque countenance that showered him with bloodied curses, feeble fingers clutching at him, broken filthy nails scraping his flesh. Mark heard the words clearly although it must have been impossible for the other to speak. ' You fool! Idle and yet I shall live again. It is you who will moulder in this grave, Mark!'

Somehow Mark Sabat managed to extricate himself from those death clutches, vomiting as he did so and trying not to breathe in the foul stench of putrefaction and death. Dimly he was aware that he still held the revolver and this time there was a deliberation in the way he brought the barrel to bear on his brother's forehead, almost a regret in the way he applied pressure to the hair trigger like a grieving jockey about to despatch his favourite but wounded mount. The report was deafening in the confined space, the stab of flame lighting up the scene vividly and implanting it indelibly on Sabat's brain.

In that terrible lingering second he saw the other man's skull split like a cracked egg, grey yolk showering up the earthy walls and stringing back in tentacles which adhered to his clothing. One last curse from that cavity of a mouth before it was swamped by a tidal wave of crimson fluid.

Sabat pulled the trigger again but the hammer fell on an empty shell. He scrambled up, felt his feet squelching on the soft body beneath him, somehow secured a grip on the top of the grave and pulled himself up amid an avalanche of soil and stones. Then he lay there on the ground, gulping in great lungfuls of freezing air and trying not to look at the three puppet-like corpses who sat closely by as though watching him, their expressions seeming to have changed to one of pleading; a mute request to be returned to their graves.

And Sabat knew that he would have to re-bury them.

Dawn was turning the eastern sky a pale grey by the time he had finished. Every muscle and nerve in his lean body raged its protest as he finally flung down the broken spade which he had found behind the hut and stared at the three fresh mounds of earth. The man and woman now occupied a single grave, the child a smaller one, and in the deep one lay Quentin. Six feet of earth and rock covered the most evil man the world had ever known. Yet Sabat was uneasy, now glancing about him. It seemed colder than ever in spite of his exertions. Almost as though night was coming back to cast its mantle over this bloodied clearing and hide the shame of a once noble family.

He turned away, tried to hurry, then pulled up, cringing, not daring to look back. A voice, a whisper on the early morning breeze, yet so familiar.

'Idle and yet I shall live again, ft is you who will moulder in this grave, Mark'

Sabat's lips moved in a hoarse answering croak.

'No! You're dead. I killed you.'

A laugh answered him, a shrill peal that might have been the wind freshening and rusliing through the leaves, howling down from the mountain passes above. But there was no wind.

•Running, his limbs now responding to the desperation that whipped him. Stumbling. Falling and picking himself up, clothing torn, grazed hands beginning to bleed. On down that narrow track, daylight coming quickly now. And behind him the laughter becoming fainter and fainter.