Rook & Tooth and Claw by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page B

promising students were taught: the students who would graduate with honours, and find themselves a well-paying job. Very few of them would ever be really famous, or really rich. But the college had taught them to work hard, and to apply themselves; and in return most of them had realised that we can’t all be Michael Jackson, or Demi Moore.
    Jim’s class hadn’t learned that yet, and maybe they never would. But that was what made them Special Class II.
    Jim stopped; and he was about to turn back; when the tall man in the black suit appeared at the very far end of the corridor, half-blurred by the sunlight, and started to tug off his gloves, finger by finger. Jim said nothing for a while, but watched him, his heart beating like an overwound wrist-watch. The man’s face was so overshadowed by the brim of his hat that it was still impossible to tell if he was black or white. His head was slightly lowered and he appeared to be waiting. Jim couldn’t make up his mind if he was waiting for him, or not. He certainly wasn’t going to approach him until he knew for sure that he was unarmed; and even then he was going to be cautious. The man must have been at least six inches taller than Jim: square-shouldered, and brooding, and
shadowy.
Now he knew what Mrs Vaizey meant by an aura. This man carried with him a smoldering, dangerous atmosphere of his own like a thick cloud of volcanic ash. No brilliance here. No rainbow. Not evenany mottled colours. He was burning up as darkly as Mount St Helen’s.
    It sounded as if he were
humming,
too, a strange monotonous drone interspersed with occasional growls deep down in his throat.
    “I don’t know who you are,” Jim called out, trying to sound authoritative, “but this is college property and you’re trespassing!”
    There was a silence as long as the end of a tape-cassette, before it starts playing Side Two.
    Then – “You can
see
me, can you?” the man replied. His voice sounded like somebody dragging a wet sack across a concrete floor.
    “If I couldn’t see you, I wouldn’t be telling you to leave, would I?”
    “Of course you wouldn’t, no.” The man paused again, and thought about that, and then he said, “I suspected that you could see me, the way you came rushing out of that schoolroom yesterday, before nothing had happened. There aren’t too many like you, I’m happy to say. People who can
see
.”
    “I think you and me had better talk to the police, don’t you, sir?” said Jim.
    “The police? What would be the point of that? They wouldn’t be able to see me.”
    “A boy was killed in that boiler-house, and you were the last person to leave it.”
    “You mean Elvin. Alas poor Elvin. I didn’t know him too well.”
    The man was paraphrasing
Hamlet
. “Don’t mock him,” said Jim, although the man was probably mocking
him,
too, the English teacher.
    “I don’t need to mock him,” the man replied. “He mocked himself. He mocked his own race.”
    “And that’s why you murdered him?”
    The man said nothing for a while. Then he held out both of his hands. “Do you know something, you and me ought to be friends. I could use a friend with the gift of sight; a friend who can actually see me. I’ve had friends before, for sure.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?” Jim demanded.
    “Oh, come on, now, Jim; you know what I’m talking about. People who can
see.
Kids who were dropped on their heads. Men who were cut out of automobile wrecks. Women who tried to give birth in toilets, and almost bled to death. They could
see,
those people, but most of the time they were pretty slow on the uptake – even if they hadn’t been brain-damaged. Unlike
you,
Mr Rook. You can see; but you’re clever, too. I could sure use a friend like you.”
    “Who are you?” said Jim. He was quaking with rage, but he didn’t dare to step any closer.
    There was another long silence, but then the man said, “Somebody has to keep the faith, Mr Rook. Somebody has to