by John Skipp
He hoped he’d live to see it.
The upstairs hallway, too, was darkened, lit only by streetlights that filtered in through windows at either end. He tiptoed along, gingerly twisting each doorknob, his heartbeat thudding in his chest.
The fourth one was locked. “Charley?” he whispered, knocking ever so gently.
Charley looked up. “Peter?” he said softly. “Peter?”
“Yes,” came the muffled voice from the other side.
“Peter, I’ve got Amy. She needs help. Get me out of here.”
A moment’s pause.
“Peter?” My God, if anything’s happened to him . . .
“Charley, I’m going to have to break down the door. Make as much noise as you can. Scream. Smash things. Do whatever you can.”
Screaming and smashing things won’t be hard, he thought. All I have to do is look at Amy.
“Okay,” he said.
Downstairs, Jerry and Billy busied themselves in the basement. They emptied out a packing crate and spread a thin layer of dirt from Jerry’s coffin inside it. This they mixed with a thicker layer of local soil.
Rancho Corvallis soil. For Amy.
Billy looked at Dandrige gravely. “Dear me,” he said. “I do hope that she’s a local girl.” Dandrige broke up laughing, and Billy joined in, their glee punctuated by a faraway sound.
The sound of screaming.
They paused in the midst of their preparations. The vampire smiled a sweet, chilling smile, nodding up the stairs.
“I believe someone is waking up,” he said.
Peter considered himself very fortunate that the lock gave out on the first try, as his shoulder felt certain to give out on the second. Real wooden doors were considerably more formidable than their cinematic counterparts, and his shoulder throbbed as he approached Charley.
On the floor, Amy was curled into a full fetal position, her body twitching and slick with sweat.
Charley’s voice trembled with ill-concealed panic. “He bit her, Peter. She’s changing. What are we gonna do?”
Peter knelt over her like a medic giving triage. He pulled back her eyelid, revealing the first traces of red in her swollen iris. Her lips skinned back in a hideous rictus, her incisors veritable fangs now. Her breath smelled like sump water, flecks of foul spittle collecting in the corners of her mouth.
He reached into a secret pocket in his cloak, withdrawing a small vial. Uncapping it, he looked at Charley and said, “Hold her head. We’ve got to get her to swallow some of this.”
Charley regarded the vial warily. “What’s that?” he said. “It looks like more of your bogus holy water.”
Peter shook his head, intent on Amy. “This is real,” he said. “Now, hold her tightly. She may react quite violently.”
Charley nodded and placed his hands firmly on either side of Amy’s face. Peter brought the vial to her lips carefully. Every muscle in her body went rigid. Steeling himself, he tilted the vial back.
Amy exploded in a fit of blind panic, lashing out wildly in every direction. She caught Charley with a backhanded glancing blow that sent him careening into the end table with a crash. Peter leapt back, barely avoiding the hand that clawed at his eyes.
And dropping the vial in the process.
The blessed water leaked harmlessly onto the carpet, leaving a small wet spot. Amy spun wildly about on her hands and knees, seeing nothing, hissing like a lizard.
And placed her hand full upon the spot.
There was a shriek, and the sizzle of blistering flesh. Amy fell back, her features contorting in agony, oblivious to everything but her pain. Her mind was a blank thing, a bottomless murky pit, occupied solely by a single word that looped over and over and over . . .
. . . and that word was “JERREEEEEEEEEE . . .”
Dandrige stopped in mid-shovelful, cocking his head to the side quizzically. Billy stopped as well, regarding his master with open concern.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
Dandrige smiled humorlessly. “We’ve got a visitor,” he said.
TWENTY-FIVE
Charley glanced up from Amy’s trembling body. She had calmed somewhat, settling back into a whimpering stupor on the floor. He gazed fixedly into the middle distance.
His voice, when it came, sounded miles away.
“Is there anything we can do?” he asked. “Is it too late to save her?” He threw a very pointed gaze at Peter. “Is it?”
Peter sighed heavily. “She has to escape the power of the undead, and that power emanates from Dandrige. It’s not too late, Charley. Eliminate Dandrige before the break of day, and you eliminate the hold of his power.
“But we’re going to have to kill him; no doubt, his assistant as well. We’ve no other choice.”
Charley looked at him incredulously. “This is news? What the hell do you think I’ve been trying to do all this time? Teach him assertiveness training? Jesus Christ! I know the bastard has to die! I’ve known it all along . . . !”
Peter looked hurt and defensive. “But I didn’t know. And it took all of this to convince me. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to believe, and you are scarcely the world’s most diplomatic salesman.”
Charley stared at him, not wanting to pursue it further, unable to back off. He drew a deep breath and said, as evenly as possible, “Do you believe me now?”
Peter nodded. “Look, let’s not be huffy,” he said. “There’s too much to do, and not much time to do it.”
He glanced at his watch. Four thirty-five.
Time enough.
He hoped.
They stepped out of Dandrige’s bedroom, melding into the shadows of the hall. Peter moved deftly through the darkness, with well-honed precision (just like in Fangs of Night, when you get right down to it, he thought). Charley fell in behind, clutching the stake with sweaty palms, as they made their way silently toward the great staircase.
Unaware of the shadows that closed in behind them.
Billy Cole was waiting for them at the foot of the stairs with hands on hips, grinning like the Cheshire cat. Charley wished he would complete the metaphor by disappearing entirely.
No such luck. Billy opened his arms engagingly and grinned a grin all the more hideous for its apparent sincerity. The checkered tiles spread out behind him like an enormous game board (knight to king four, your move . . .)
“Well, well, well,” he said, oozing charm. “What do we have here?”
Peter stood his ground. “What we have here, Mr. Cole, is the end of the proverbial road.” And with a flourish, he pulled the thirty-eight out and leveled it neatly at Billy’s head.
(Queen to bishop three. Your move . . .)
Billy just smiled. “You got that right.” He began a measured, almost stately walk toward them.
Peter slapped the hammer into half-cocked position. “I’m warning you,” he said. “I will use this.”
(Your move . . .)
Billy smiled on and on. He was five steps away.
Four steps. Peter pulled the hammer fully back. “Stop. Now. Please.” Sweat trickled lightly down his hairline.
Billy took another step.
(Check . . .)
Still smiling. His eyes bored straight into Peter. Another step, almost close enough to reach out and snap his neck like a dry twig.
“Please . . .”
(Check . . .)
Billy took the last step, reaching up with calloused hands and taking the aging actor by the collar.
Peter pulled the trigger.
And the darkness swirled behind them.
It all happened in an instant. The pistol discharged with a report that echoed through the hall like a small cannon. Charley felt the tiny hairs on his backside stand on end, as if hoping to somehow migrate en masse to his front.
To escape the blackness behind them.
The blackness that thickened and solidified, even as he turned, into the killing form of Jerry Dandrige. Sweeping from an amorphous sha
dow into the impeccably corporeal Dandrige in one motion of fluid, lethal grace. He moved in for the kill, nimbly hitting the top step.
Arms outstretched.
Eyes, molten pools of slag.
Peter saw none of this. He stood, transfixed, at the sight of Billy, still smiling as the vast bulk of his lower occipital lobe sprayed down the steps like so much Hamburger Helper. A piece of his skull the size of a Chesapeake Bay clamshell went skittering across the marble floor with a clatter. The sound seemed to trigger a reaction in Billy’s ruined brain. He cocked his head to the side quizzically, as if suddenly realizing that yes, he would be stopping after all.
His eyes glazed over, and he toppled back down the stairs, head hitting the floor with a sound like a ripe melon falling off the back of a truck.
Dandrige roared in outrage as 113 years of carefully groomed and faithful service went careening down to the polished floor, its brains leaking out like oil from a smashed gourd. Where am I to find another one like him? his mind screamed. It was incomprehensible that two such incompetents could be causing him so much trouble. This game had quickly turned from mere sport to veritable life and death.
Theirs, or his.
The vampire hissed involuntarily, eyes glossing over, red, and slitted. The transformation mounted inside him, yearning to spill out and slaughter these insects. He held off in much the same way an adept lover might delay the finality of orgasm.
He waited a grand total of ten seconds before the hunger and blood-lust became an all-consuming need. Then he dived for them, screeching.
And came face to face with Charley’s crucifix.
“Back off, mother-fucker!” Charley exclaimed, straight-arming the cross.
Dandrige halted, dead in his tracks, surprising both of them. He felt an enormous surge of emotion, a coalescence of every miserable ounce of self-hate and misery he had inflicted in the last few days.
All coming home.
Tonight.
Charley felt it, too: a pulsing energy that started somewhere in the center of his chest and radiated out in waves. The vampire had stolen his woman, murdered his best friend, and seduced his mother . . .
. . . and tonight he’d pay up. In full.
It was a rare feeling, this.
The feeling of tables turned.
The vampire smiled a sly smile, as if reading his thoughts. “Are they now?” he asked. His gaze shifted down to the foot of the stairs, where Billy lay in a crumpled heap. His eyes blazed for a moment, narrowing to slits as he sucked in a sharp breath.
“Yes, perhaps they are, at that,” he said, then turned and receded swiftly into the shadows at the head of the stairs.
Charley and Peter stared after him, puzzled at this apparent victory. “What did he mean by that?” Charley asked.
The answer came from the foot of the stairs. Peter and Charley turned in horror to find Billy impossibly, inexorably rising.
Turning.
And coming up the stairs.
He looked up, fixing them with dead, staring eyes. His face still bore a trace of the same idiot grin that he’d worn on the way down. The dime-sized hole in the middle of his forehead leaked as he lurched up the stairs, sending a thin trickle of blood to collect in a pool under his right eye. One hand clutched the banister desperately as he ascended. The other made clenching, circular motions in the thin air.
Killing motions.
Peter Vincent’s twenty-five-year romance with the macabre held little to prepare him for the mindless horror of this moment. There were no technicians, tubes or squibs; no one to yell “Cut!” and bring everyone coffee. Life was a cardboard tube; a smoking gun on the one end, a walking corpse with a gaping hole in its haircut on the other.
He brought the revolver up again, leveling it at the Billy-thing’s chest.
“God help us,” he mumbled, and fired.
The first bullet hit Billy square in the heart, exploding the left auricle on its way out. The second destroyed the superior lobe of his right lung and lodged under the lower rim of the shoulder blade. The third, fourth and fifth scattered about, randomly taking out the left lung, a kidney and his spleen . . .
. . . all of which mattered to the Billy-thing about as much as a Congressional Medal of Honor. He was a blank-faced killing machine, running on automatic pilot, as he closed the distance with reflexively clenching hands.
Peter was rigid with disbelief, every neuron in his brain on overload. The delicate fabric of reality was blown away along with any hope in the gun clicking emptily in his hand. He was utterly frozen as the Billy-thing completed its earlier goal, wrapping its calloused fingers around his throat and starting to squeeze . . .
And Charley stepped forward, ramming his stake four inches into the creature’s heart.
The Billy-thing relaxed its grip momentarily, allowing Peter to pull away. The actor fell back, choking and rasping for breath.
Then Charley kicked the creature down the stairs. It pinwheeled down, clawing and caterwauling, hit the floor hard. The force of the impact drove the stake fully through its chest.
And the Billy-thing began to decompose.
It bubbled and spattered on the floor, head lolling back and forth spastically, skin falling away in sheets, creating a pool of viscous slime.
In less than ninety seconds, it was done.
Charley and Peter stood on the landing, staring down at the steaming remains for several seconds. Charley grabbed Peter by the shoulder. “C’mon, let’s go,” he said.
Peter looked at Charley, the shock slowly receding. “He wasn’t human . . .” he said, whispering hoarsely.
Charley looked at him in disbelief, then smiled and turned up the steps.
“No shit,” he said. “Now let’s go.”
It was five minutes past five.
TWENTY-SIX
Charley and Peter hit the top step like a juggernaut, then made their way cautiously down the hall. The shadows seemed alive, undulating patterns of dark on dark that opened inches before them and closed inches after. They moved without speaking, the silence punctuated only by their breathing and their pounding hearts.
The sound of splintering wood cut through the stillness like a knife. And behind it, a woman’s cry.
“Omigod!” cried Charley. “AMY!”
He bolted down the hall, Peter hot on his heels. They hit the door like a SWAT team, spilling into the room with near-suicidal determination.
Only to find it empty. One window (the one that faced his bedroom, Charley realized ironically) had been broken open. The heavy boards so recently nailed up had been rudely wrenched off, and now lay scattered about in disarray. Through the window, his room seemed a million miles away.
Dandrige, and Amy, were nowhere to be found.
Peter went to the window, peering out into the night. Charley stood in the middle of the room, waving his cross and stake impotently and screaming.
“YOU BASTARD!” he cried. “WHERE IS SHE? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HER?”
The answer came from further upstairs, as the sound of something landing—something heavy—reverberated down. Peter looked at Charley.
“He’s in the attic,” he said. “Come on.”
The attic seemed fairly typical at first glance. Huge, sprawling gables shrouded in darkness, boxes and crates piled up along the walls. Rodent droppings crunched underfoot. The musty smell of time.
Peter reached inside his cloak, pulling out a small, high-intensity flashlight. He flicked it on, a ribbon of light cutting through the darkness. Dozens of glistening shapes scurried for cover.
Rats.
The attic was filled with them. Fat, bloated little suckers scuttling in the corners, on the crates, over the bundle by the smashed window . . .
The bundle! Charley thought. “NO!” he cried, racing across the attic. Rats dived for cover, chittering madly.
It was Amy. She lay trussed in a bedsheet, covered with shards of glass, as though hurled through the window like a sack of p
otatoes. Rats crawled over her prone form at will. She looked dead, or very, very close.
Whimpering, near hysterical, Charley swatted the rodents away with his bare hands. He checked her pulse and murmured her name.
Not dead yet, he thought. But damn near. He looked up at the shattered window, then turned to Peter. “God damn him, where is he?”
Dandrige hunkered on the roof like a nightmare weather vane, eyes rolled back in his head. He rocked back and forth on his haunches, feeling the tendrils of awareness snake out and down to his seed. His lips stretched back in a grimace, revealing his teeth.
“Awake, Amy! Awake!” he whispered sibilantly. “I command you! Rise!”
In the attic below Peter cried out. “Charley, come here quickly!”
Charley pulled himself away from Amy, hurried to Peter’s side. He didn’t notice her eyelids flutter, snap open, bright red.
(Show me how much you love me, Amy.)
Silently, she rose.
(Kill them. Kill them both.)
Peter was standing by the window. Before him was a large, ornate chest. His flashlight illuminated the polished wood, the brass fittings. Charley looked at him. “Do you think it’s his?” he asked.
Peter regarded it suspiciously. “Only one way to find out. Brace yourself. We’ll have to act fast.”
Charley nodded, grabbing the lid. Peter readied his stake, prepared himself and gave the signal. Charley yanked the lid open hard, Peter stabbing down . . .
. . . and impaling half a dozen bedsheets.
“Shit,” Peter muttered. Charley looked up at him, half smiling . . .
. . . and saw Dandrige, hovering impossibly outside the window, one taloned hand reared back and ready to strike.
“Peter, behind you!” he screamed.
Peter whirled and dove for cover as the hand smashed through the glass. Charley backed away instinctively.
Right into Amy’s outstretched arms.
“Charleeeee,” she croaked, her voice an insane parody of human speech. She smiled, her lips cracking as they stretched over newly-grown fangs. Her tongue flitted in and out, dry and swollen.