Basilisk by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page B

you think? You get some doddery old dear who has everything wrong with her you can care to mention, and she lives to see her hundred-and-second birthday. Then you get a sharp-tongued survivor like Doris Bellman, and what happens? You turn your back for half a minute, and when you turn around again, they’re staring at you like they’re still alive, and just about to say something to you, but they’re dead as a donut. Gone, poof , and there you are! Standing in their room, right next to them, but in actual fact you’re all alone.’
    The squat and ugly nurse smiled, and nodded.
    Grace checked her watch. ‘It looks like I didn’t need to come here, after all.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said Sister Bennett. ‘If I’d known you were coming, I would have called you.’
    No you wouldn’t , thought Grace. But then she didn’t totally blame her. The carers at Murdstone were no different from the nurses at any other institution for the very old and the very sick. Everybody they cared for was going to die, most of them very soon, so they never allowed themselves to become attached to them. They couldn’t be expected to live their lives in constant mourning. On the other hand, that was no excuse for them to be indifferent to their charges, or cruel.
    ‘Do you think I could take a look at her room?’ Grace asked her. She didn’t really know why she wanted to, but maybe it would give her a last sense of Doris Bellman’s presence: the young nurse who had gone out to Europe, in the closing stages of World War Two; and the old woman who had been neglected by her family, and had passed her closing years with nobody except a cockatoo for company, and no view but a parking lot, and some blue-painted drainpipes, and a small pentagram of cloudy sky.
    ‘Be my guest,’ said Sister Bennett. ‘Just be warned that we haven’t had time to service it yet.’
    Grace walked along the corridor to Doris Bellman’s room. On the way, she encountered an old man staring out of one of the windows. He wore a drooping brown bathrobe with his pockets crammed with crumpled tissues, and brown corduroy slippers, and he had a wild white shock of hair like Albert Einstein. As he turned toward her, she saw that one lens of his spectacles was covered up with silver duct tape.
    ‘Didn’t you bring the car round yet?’ he snapped at her, as she approached.
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    He frowned down at a wristwatch that wasn’t there. ‘We’re going to be late, at this rate! We can’t afford to be late! We’ll miss the overture!’
    Grace stopped. ‘It’s OK. You don’t have to worry. We have hours yet.’
    He stared at her with one milky blue eye. ‘Are you sure? I don’t want to disappoint her. She’s been looking forward to this for months.’
    ‘You won’t let her down, I promise you.’
    ‘Ah! Well, that’s all right, then. But you won’t forget to tell me when you bring the car round?’
    ‘Of course not. Do I ever?’
    She was about to continue on her way toward Doris Bellman’s room when the old man snatched at her sleeve. He smelled sour, like the inside of a cupboard that hasn’t been opened in years. ‘You will be super careful, won’t you?’
    ‘I always am.’
    He glanced furtively along the corridor, right and then left. ‘I’ve seen it for myself. They try to pretend that I’m losing my marbles, but they can’t fool me. I’ve seen it.’
    Grace gently pried his hand away. ‘I really have to be going. I hope everything goes well tonight.’
    ‘I didn’t see it face to face,’ the old man continued, as if he hadn’t even heard her. ‘Lucky for me that I didn’t, if you ask me. But I opened my door and looked out of my room and I was just in time to see it disappearing around that corner.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said Grace, ‘I don’t follow you.’
    The old man narrowed his one visible eye. ‘You’re not one of them, are you? One of the gang of witches that run this place?’
    ‘No, I’m a doctor. I came here