Read Rook & Tooth and Claw for Free Online

both still alive.”
    “Jim, this break happens very, very early in your life. It means that, by rights, you should be dead already.”
    “What?”
    “There’s no mistaking it. It’s very clear. It means that you died when you were eleven or twelve.”
    Jim laughed. “I died when I was eleven or twelve? That doesn’t say much for palmistry, does it? I mean, how dead do I look?”
    “There’s no mistake,” said Mrs Vaizey, and her voice was completely serious.
    “So I’m supposed to believe that I’m dead, is that it?”
    “You’re not dead now; but you were once. Just for a moment, perhaps. But dead.”
    Jim took his hand away, and held it against his chest, as if it were injured. “Listen,” he said. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
    “I don’t know, Jim,” said Mrs Vaizey. “Maybe it could.Were you ever sick, when you were a child? I mean seriously sick?”
    “I went down with pneumonia once, when I was ten or eleven.”
    “Can you remember what happened?”
    “Not very clearly … I was always pretty skinny and weedy when I was a kid. I went down with the grippe and the grippe turned into pneumonia. My dad and mom took me to hospital and there were all these people in white, looking after me. They were great. They took me for walks and they talked to me, and in the end they brought me back to my bed and I was cured.”
    “What do they look like, these people in white?”
    “I don’t know. I guess they were doctors and nurses. But there were dozens of them … all talking to me, all trying to make me feel better. And in the end, yes. I felt better.”
    Mrs Vaizey held out her glass and Jim filled it again. The sun had fallen, and there were wide stripes of light across the only picture which Jim had hung on the wall: a large reproduction of
The Surrender of Breda
by Veláquez, Dutch soldiers handing over the keys of the city to Spanish lancers. Jim had always taken a particular kind of strength from it, because it showed sworn enemies behaving toward each other with courtesy and understanding – two qualities which he had always tried to instil in the students of Special Class II.
    Mrs Vaizey said, “Has it ever occurred to you that those people in white might
not
have been doctors and nurses?”
    “I don’t follow you.”
    “You were very young, and close to death. Clinically, perhaps, you
did
die. But, believe me, there are many kind spirits on the other side who do their best to turn back young souls before it’s too late.”
    Jim shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mrs Vaizey. I don’t believe in life after death.”
    “Even though you probably saw some spirits for yourself?”
    “I was very young. I was probably dreaming.”
    Mrs Vaizey took hold of his hand again, and ran her fingernail up and down his lifeline, again and again. “The point I’m trying to make to you, Jim, is that if you’ve seen spirits once, you can see them again. Coming close to death, that gives you
a facility,
if you understand what I mean. An extra sense that you never lose.”
    Jim said nothing, but watched and winced as Mrs Vaizey pored over his palm. After a few moments, she frowned, and peered even more closely at his lifeline.
    “Something wrong?” he asked her.
    “I don’t know … I can’t understand what this means. You have a double break and then a loop, almost, like an oxbow. You’re going to have a strange meeting, unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before. Then something very frightening is going to happen. But that’s all that I can decipher.” She drew her fingernail along his lifeline yet again, and as she did so, Jim felt a searing pain. Her fingernail scratched against his skin like a safety-match, and flames sprang up behind it, right out of the palm of his hand.
    “Jesus!” he shouted, and instantly clamped his hand shut. But flames burst out from between his fingers and engulfed his whole fist.
    He tried to jump up, but Mrs Vaizey shouted, “No!” She snatched a