Read Online Walkers by Graham Masterton - Free Book Online Page A

tried to
recall the name of the book. Day something. Day something. Day After Day . Day For Night . Day of the
Triffids .
    He heard a voice, different from
Santos’s voice, and he opened his eyes again. He was startled to see that the
floor of the room was bright blue, and swirled with streaks of white that
looked like horsetail clouds. One second he was sitting still, the next he was
travelling over the floor at what seemed like sixty or seventy miles an hour,
the clouds flashing past underneath him. The voice said, ‘Remember nothing.
    Remember nothing.’ And then he was hurtling even faster, even though he was still sitting
with his legs crossed.
    There was a flash of ultimate speed.
Then the opposite wall of Santos’s room came rocketing towards him, and hit him
straight in the face. He was conscious of falling, tilting sideways. Then he
looked around him and he was lying on the tiles, and there was blood splashed
everywhere. Santos was kneeling beside him, staring at him in fright.
    ‘Hey, you’re not dead?’ Santos asked
him, anxiously. His high seemed to have vaporised.
    Gil touched his nose, and then his
forehead. His fingers came away bloody, and his head pounded.
    ‘What happened?’ he croaked.
    ‘What happened? I wish I knew. One
minute we were sitting there talking, the next minute you jumped up like a
fucking space shuttle and banged your face straight into the wall.’
    ‘Did you hear anything?’ Gil asked
him, gripping hold of the edge of the bed, and sitting up.
    ‘Hear anything? Like what?’
    ‘Like a voice, another voice. Not
yours, and not mine.’
    ‘I didn’t hear anything like that,
but what I did hear was quite enough.’
    Gil tugged out his handkerchief, and
dabbed at his nose. He hoped his face wasn’t going to be bruised for this
evening’s date.
    ‘What did you hear? You mean you
heard something from me?’
    ‘Sure, you said the name of the
book.’
    ‘Well. Day something was all I could
remember,’ Gil told him.
    ‘No, no, you said the name. And,
believe me, that’s all I needed to hear. De Sortilegio.’
    ‘Hey, that was it!’ Gil responded. ‘De Sortilegio. That was the book she
bought.’
    Santos shook his head. ‘No way did
she buy De Sortilegio at any
second-hand bookstore in Solana Beach. You were right, she was giving you a
message. Pity you were too dumb to understand it.’
    ‘Well, what is it, then, this De Sortilegio? Sounds like some kind of
Italian cookbook.’
    Santos said, ‘De Sortilegio was written by some guy called Paul Grilland in
fifteen – something. It’s a famous book, if you’re into mysticism and magic and
all that kind of stuff. You don’t find it in any second-hand bookstore, though.
No way, Jose. It’s rare, and what’s more it’s all in Latin, because it’s so
dirty.’
    ‘What are you trying to say? This
Paulette was trying to talk dirty to me in Latin?’
    ‘Are you kidding? De Sortilegio is only dirty because it
explains how the Devil, who happens to be a spirit, can have physical sex with
mortal women. I mean it tells you how he uses living ectoplasm to provide
himself with a viable dick.’
    Battered and sore as he was, Gil was
still a little bit high. He kept a straight face as long as he could, but then
he burst out laughing, and rolled on to the bed, laughing so much that he could
scarcely breathe.
    ‘Oh, God, Santos, you had me fooled
with that one! Oh, God, I can’t stand it! A viable dick! Oh, God, that’s the
funniest thing I ever heard!’
    But as Gil laughed, and pounded his
fists on the bed, Santos remained unsmiling.
    He waited for Gil to finish, and
kept his eyes fastened on the crucifix that hung on the wall of his room.
    He closed his eyes for a moment, and
prayed, and then he crossed himself twice.
    Gil abruptly stopped laughing, and
stared at him, his forehead marked with a glaring crimson bruise, his upper lip
caked with dried blood from his nose.’ What are you doing?’ he asked, in a
hollow-sounding