Facts Relating to the Arrest of Dr. Kalugin

To do something; to this day I haven’t remembered what I was about to do. In any case I never did it. What happened, you see, was that I looked into the creature’s eyes. Black reflecting mirrors, its eyes, and what they showed me was a nightmare thing like the nightmare thing I was fighting! So taloned, so razor-grinned, with just such a glittering stare. A monster in the disintegrating clothing of a Russian gentleman. Me.

I fell back from it, staring at my hands in horror: my nails had grown with fantastic acceleration into serviceable claws. My horrified cry joined the creature’s as it leapt at my face. I rolled away from it, shielding myself as best I could, and burst out through the doorway. Babin and the others, drawn by the commotion, were just arriving at the end of the corridor. I flung myself down, covered my face with my hands and yelled: “A dybbuk ! Run for your lives, it’s a dybbuk !”

My speech was hissed and slurred, but I doubt if anyone noticed, for the thing hesitated only a moment before plunging across the threshold after me. As it tore strips out of the back of my coat, what was I doing? I ask you to believe I was biting my nails, frantically. I didn’t want to be a devil with talons. I was a man, a superior man!

“Run, you fools!” I cried. Yes, yes, I was speaking with a man’s voice now, I was changing back.

Babin at least took a step backward, crossing himself, and the others shuffled back behind him. Courier’s head snapped about to stare.

“QUANTO COSTA IL BIGLIETTO PER MARSIGLIA?” he demanded. I used the opportunity to open my door and scramble in on my hands and knees. Courier’s neck snaked around with the fluid movement of a Harryhausen demon. He snarled and sprang into the room after me.

“Mixaham beravam! Bayad beravam!” he roared, coming for me with talons raised to rake. I scrambled backward, I hit the wall with such force the building shook and the planks of the wall, thick as Bibles, cracked and started. Something was knocked loose. I caught it in midair as it dropped past my face. My Imperial Navy saber. In the same second I had put my boot up to halt Courier’s oncoming rush and kicked him in the chest with all my strength. He flew backward and hit the opposite wall, crash, and more planks split. There was a thunder of running steps as the mortals rushed down the hall to look through the doorway.

“LE BATEAU-MOUCHE EST EN RETARD!” Courier cried, in a voice that made the mortals cover their ears. I was desperately trying to shake the scabbard off the saber; something was wrong with the mechanism of my left arm. Blood and oil were drooling from Courier’s jaws as he sprang again, straight for me, and my good arm went up and whipped the saber in an arc that passed through his neck. His head flew off, hit the wall and rolled to Iakov Babin’s feet.

All my strength left me. I became aware that I was badly damaged. I slid to the floor. Courier’s body was already still, having gone into fugue at the moment my blade broke the connection between the Sinclair Chain of his spine and the titanium gimbal of his skull. Already the neck arteries had sealed themselves off and a protective membrane was forming. His head was doing the same. Eyes, ears, nostrils were exuding a thick substance that would seal them against further injury.

“God damn, Doc!” Babin broke the appalled silence. “That was one fine sword cut! You fought like a man.”

I had, by God. “Thank you,” I said with difficulty. My lips were split and bruised. The rest of my fleshly parts hurt as well. “You were right, Iakov Dmitrivich. He was a dybbuk.”

“I told you.” He stepped into the room cautiously, edging around the body. The other mortals cowered in the doorway. Someone was whimpering hysterically. “I seen devils in this New World just as ornery as any we got in Mother Russia. You ask the Indians. I reckon this one killed that boy, whoever he was, and possessed his body. Are you hurt bad, Doc?”

“I think my arm is broken.”

“And some ribs, too, I reckon.” He squatted down and peered at me in awe. “God Almighty, Doc, you’re beat up black and blue. You sure put up one hell of a fight, though. Wouldn’t have thought you’d had it in you. Come on, boys, let’s get him up on the bed.”

“What are we going to do with that ?” The junior manager pointed with a trembling finger at the body.

“Take it out and bury it at a crossroads?” The farm foreman stepped in and gingerly lifted the head by its hair. “That’s what the stories say to do. And put a stake through its heart, or it’ll come back to get us!”