I hesitated again at the hallway lintel. Sylvie’s bedroom was down the narrow hall to the left, the girls’ smaller bedrooms to the right. I could just make out the egg shell white glow of the hallway walls in both directions. I turned toward Sylvie’s room…
Something moved behind me in the living room.
I whirled--too fast--banged my elbow on the molding and felt numbing pain up my elbow, biting my tongue to keep from crying out.
I stared wide-eyed into the living room.
Nothing moved.
I could just make out a chair, the coffee table, my couch; Sylvie had pulled the veranda curtains so I could sleep, only a dim block of Chicago night light glowed behind them. Nothing else.
Rats?
My over-pumped imagination?
I told my jolting heart to stop it—slow down—it was nothing!
Then I turned back and padded on down the hallway soundlessly to Sylvie’s door.
It was open.
There was a pale nightlight on her dresser, a dimly glowing plastic cat that cast a weak light around the room. Mitzi must have loved that, I thought absently.
I squinted at the bed…could see the curving length of Sylvie under the blankets. But nothing more. No dog. My heart sank.
I stepped another few feet into the bedroom to be sure, checking the carpet around me as carefully as I could in case the poodle had left the bed for the roomier floor.
She wasn’t on the floor.
In fact, she wasn’t in the room at all.
Goddamnit, Mitzi!
I fought back the flood of anger, turned and crept back to the doorway.
Okay, I’d double-check the twins’ rooms but it looked as though I’d be prowling dark Chicago streets tonight. Either that or just waiting there on the couch for her. With a baseball bat in my hands…
I’d just re-entered the hall when I heard the sound again.
A kind of quick rustling. Maybe paws… maybe small feet, I couldn’t tell. I craned about, ears peeled…and the sound came briefly again. It seemed to come from one of the twins’ rooms back down the hallway.
I crept down the narrow hall, stole silently up to Mindy’s open door—or was it Mandy’s?
Whomever’s it was, she didn’t use a nightlight like Sylvie: inside it was dead black.
I stood listening for a full minute, hoping against hope I’d hear the distant scratch of impatient paws from the living room front door. Nothing.
I took a deep breath and stepped quietly inside the twin’s bedroom.
Blackness. Silence.
Either the girls weren’t home yet or…
Only one way to be sure, even if it meant waking one of them. I swept both sides of the doorway wall until I located the light switch. Took another cleansing breath, and flipped it on.
The ceiling light bloomed brightly, wrecking my night vision. But Mandy/Mindy’s neatly made bed finally came into focus. The girls were still out on the town.
Except—
--just because they’d left together didn’t mean the girls came home together, probably the opposite, in fact. To put my mind completely at rest, I’d have to check both girls’ bedrooms.
I switched off the light and made my way carefully down the hall, passed the bathroom and came to the open bedroom door of the other twin. I stepped in.
Again, blackness inside. But that creepy feeling had begun to fade inside me—at least I no longer entertained visions of my vampiric poodle feasting on our hosts—so I wasn’t truly surprised when I didn’t find the other twin snoozing peacefully against her pillow when I hit the light switch.
What surprised me was finding both of them cuddled together in the same bed.
A lot of crazy thoughts flitted through my logy brain before my eyes acclimated themselves to the brightness again. None of them included what I saw.
The girls weren’t cuddled at all. They were sprawled like rag dolls, limbs thrown wide, long, elegant legs tangled in zebra striped pajamas. Except there were no pajamas, of course, they were nude, and the zebra stripes weren’t black, but dark red.
Like the once snow white sheets, striped now and spattered with gore.
I think I screamed.
Or maybe not.
Some kind of strange coagulated sound filled the room…maybe it was someone else’s throat…or something else’s.
One good thing about blinding fear: it can act as a kind of buffer against total terror.
And there’s nothing like raw panic to really send the ole adrenalin spiking. Mine was somewhere off the chart and into the next apartment building. Or city. Or planet.
I might have screamed twice, actually. I recall my ears ringing from something.
I don’t recall how I got back in the hallway, or even that I was running blindly, only that something was brushing under my bare feet that must be the carpet and the hallway walls had suddenly become one of those strangely elongated fun house halls that seem to recede before you the closer you get to the end. Everything moved in slow-motion, like running through clear glue, while at the same time my mind felt sped up artificially, filled with all kinds of funny things like flashing lights and bloody images that weren’t there anymore and thoughts like, where exactly the hell do I think I’m running to!
Was it the front door?--which I vaguely seemed to recall locking. Or was it the kitchen, maybe to find a carving knife or meat cleaver or small sledgehammer to smash Mitzi with when she came through the front door? Or was Sylvie likely the type to keep a sledgehammer in her kitchen? And, by the way, what happened to whatever it was that made those furtive scuttling sounds earlier--?
I didn’t know.
But way in the back of my brain I must have remembered that the one light I hadn’t turned on yet was the ceiling fixture in Sylvie’s room; all I’d had to go by was that glowing cat on her vanity. Which is probably why I ended up back there in her bedroom. Still screaming, I think. Sylvie! Sylvie! Sylvie!–part of me wanting desperately for her to wake-up and part of me not wanting me to discover that the lump under her covers was more of that mess in the twins’ room down the hall.
Then somehow I was beside her bed again and the lights were on brightly and I was standing smiling above my thunderously pounding heart. Smiling because there wasn’t a spec of red to be seen anywhere on the sheets, just the sweet hills and valleys of Sylvie’s sleeping figure. The slender, beautifully shaped not-quite-long-enough-to-get-her-more-modeling-jobs legs, the wasp waist, porcelain smooth arms at her sides, generous bosom crowning that delicate ribcage…
…that delicate ribcage, which wasn’t moving, wasn’t rising and falling in peaceful sleep!
Was that because someone had apparently placed a pillow over her face…was that why my lovely Sylvie of the sexy smile wasn’t breathing?
Because if so, I’d better move fast and pull the pillow off.
Which is what I did.
But which did no damn good at all. She still wasn’t breathing.
Possibly due to her lack of having a head.
Now, wait a second, don’t freak out!
You’re just hallucinating! She does have a head! Don’t get upset! She does have a head! Do not get upset!
Which turned out to be true.
I found it when I yanked off the sheet, staring up at me from between her legs where some idiot had lodged it.
Okay, now you can get upset.
Strangely, I didn’t.
Shock, I suppose.
Or maybe I’d convinced myself by then the whole thing was some lunatic dream, some small uncooked part of Sylvie’s Chicken Catchetore. Though deep inside I knew this wasn’t true, it really was happening, really was all quite real.
I stepped backward reflexively from the dead, glazed eyes, strangely smiling teeth…reaching behind me for the bedroom door and tripped over something on the rug. The something was Mitzi. Also missing her head.
I kept on tripping after that…back and back until I crashed into the closet door
and then through it.
Sylvie had an incredible wardrobe—I mean, she was a part time model, after all—but I don’t think Mitzi’s headless torso was supposed to be part it…hanging there all bloody by a handsome new pink leash, which, in retrospect, I guess was supposed to be somebody’s idea of a big joke I didn’t seem to get. Dead dogs telepath no lies, was that it?
Can’t remember if I screamed again then or not.
Probably not.
I think whatever rose up in my throat was cut off by that furtive scuttling sound again, this time in the hallway right next to me.
I turned that way and felt all the blood drain from my face at once.
“Good evening, my boy,” smiled The Count, “sorry about the mess!”
* * *
I was way too far gone to run. No strength in my legs at all.
I just stood there wobbling like one of those inflatable arm-waving balloon men and gaped at The Count as he came smiling graciously to me, fangs gleaming.
He lifted his wonderful black cape with the magnificent red lining and put a clawed-handed arm paternally over my shoulders.
“Just make it quick,” I muttered, not caring about the pain or becoming a vampire myself or poor headless Mitzi or anything at all but a quick, black death.
The Count chuckled amusement, guiding me down the hall and back to the comparative peace of the living room. “Nothing at all, my boy? Even the golden crowned Ms. Clancy? Though her hair seems to have acquired a lighter hue of late, eh? Well, I warned you.”
He guided me across the carpet to one of Sylvie’s lounge chairs and deposited my limp form with a flop. Then he moved to the veranda curtains, pulled them and stood for a moment looking out at Lake Michigan’s twinkling lights.
“It really is a magical city, isn’t it?” he admired.
I groaned from the chair. “Under more pleasant circumstances.”
The Count turned with a toothy grin. “And I apologize again for that. Maybe I overdid it, do you think, Edward?”
I could barely focus on him.“Well, you could have left out the beheadings. And did you have to kill poor Mitzi? Couldn’t you have—I don’t know—locked her in a closet or something? She is a fellow vampire, after all.”
“Who turns door knobs with her teeth.”
I nodded, suddenly sleepy. “True. Smart pooch. Did she get a few good licks in first, I hope? Take a piece of your ankle here, a bit of your thigh there?”
The Count sat across from me in the room’s only other chair. “She did indeed. Went down like a trooper. Died with her boots on, as they say.” He perked up. “Did you ever see that one, by the way? Errol Flynn at his peak? A real corker! All about General Custer! Totally erroneous, of course, but you know the studios in those days, couldn’t have the Indians be the heroes.”
I sat there giving back a kind of lifeless look. “So you really are the original Dracula, right?”
I could swear the aged face almost blushed. “My boy, there’s only one real Dracula!
“Yeah?”
“Indeed! The divine Bela!”
“Lugosi.”
“Brilliant casting on Tod Browning’s part!”
I gave a weak shrug. “Kind of stagy for me…”
“Well, it was a play, dear boy!”
“I don’t know. Chris Lee was pretty great.”
“True, but he made too many films. That Hammer! Cranking them out like hamburgers! Whatever possessed a once so elegant film company?”
“Money, I suspect.”
I looked around the room, clean and dry. But my mind kept drifting back to the other rooms. “God, I wish this were a nightmare. I really do enjoy talking with you, Count. Usually. But it isn’t a dream, is it? It’s all real. It can tell.” I patted the arm of my chair. “I can feel it this time. We’re sitting here in this lovely living room with this lovely view, and the girls and poor Mitzi are down the hall there, in not so lovely rooms. It’s all real.”
“Real as rain,” the Count agreed. “But something, I think, you needed to see.”
I started in my chair. Needed? “Why? Why the hell didn’t you just do me first? Save me the agony.”
The Count leaned forward, eyes glowing, and for a second I was sure that was the moment he was going for my throat. “Because you needed to see it, my boy. See it and smell it ‘till it burned into your brain. So you would not forget.”
“Not much chance of that.”
“Good! That was my intention. Now come here, please…”
I came.
I mean, what was the point in fighting?
“Close your eyes.”
“That isn’t necessary. You know, Count, I really thought you were my friend.”
“I am no man’s friend. However, in your case, I may make an exception. Close your eyes.”
In my darkness I felt his aged, long-nailed hand across my forehead.
In a moment, I opened my eyes.
He was still there. “That’s all?”
“That’s it. Painless, eh?”
I looked down at myself. “I’m a vampire?”
He stepped back, appalled. “Good gracious, I should hope not!”
I scrutinized the old man a moment, then turned and looked back at the hallway entrance again. “This is reality—right?”
When I turned back, The Count was out on the veranda admiring the view again. “You should have seen this place in the 15th Century—Chicago, I mean! Did you know the lake was actually blue then? Not a drop of sewage!” He gestured outward, ruminating. “Indians all over the place. Forests, lush and green. No smell of gasoline anywhere. Pine. Everything smelled of pine and grass. Ah me…maybe the vampires should have won…”
“Count? Kindly answer me. Is this reality or not?”
He came back into the living room. “Indeed it is. An unfortunate one, but a very real one. Lucky for you it is but one of many.”
I stared blankly. “Meaning?”
“Ever read Peter Pan, Edward? Pretty little book!”
“Count—“
“‘Now this has all happened before, ‘” it begins, “’and it will all happen again. But this time it happened—“
“Alternate realities, is that what you’re saying?”
The tall gentleman in the tux smiled wide, kind eyes crinkling like an elf’s. “Smart lad! Knew straight away we should be fast friends!”
I looked around me, fought a sudden urge to rush back to the bedrooms.
“Don’t bother, my boy. Look…” and he pointed at the floor beside the couch. Mitzi snored obliviously on the carpet.
I started to rush to her but the old man caught my arm. “Wouldn’t do that, Edward—he might not like it.”
“Who--?” But then I saw the figure stretched out on the couch.
“Oh, shit. I knew there’d be a catch.”
He patted my arm reassuringly. “No catch at all. Just a simple demonstration. Of what will come to pass if things continue in the present vein--you should pardon the pun.”
I gaped at him. “You didn’t do this?”
“Edward. Really. I’m crushed.”
“But who then!”
He was returning to the veranda. I think he was beginning to fade a little at the same time. “I think you know who. The important question is ‘when.’”
I raced after him. “Ivan! Is it Ivan? Ivan and his goons killed them? Oh God--Clancy too?”
“Some things I can show you…few things I can tell. Not my choice, it simply works that way.”
He was leaning out against the railing and I could just tell he was about ready to take flight.
I grabbed at his cape. “But what—how do I—“
“Prevent the carnage in the next room? That must be of your own making, Eddie. As I said, the important thing is time. And that, unfortunately, is running out…”
“But can’t you--?”
He shook his head firmly, definitely fading now, and held out his arms. “Come say good-bye n
ow.”
I took his bony arms in mine.
“There’s a limited number of times I can interfere, Eddie…make good use of them all!”
And I was sure he was going to hug me.
As opposed to throwing me over the rail.
I couldn’t even scream in all that black, rushing wind, just watch the Count’s smiling face grow smaller as I plummeted backward to the dark, hard (very hard) street below. In the last moments I thought I knew why.
After all, there couldn’t very well be two of me sleeping on that crummy couch.
Right?
TEN
I woke with sunlight from the veranda streaming across the couch, across my face.
And across the face of the vampire perched on my chest, eyes like live coals, fangs gleaming, mouth dripping saliva and blood.
A low rumble of threat rising from within her.
Then she smiled and snickered at me. Or as much as a dog can smile and snicker, anyway. “Scare you?”
I rubbed sleep from my eyes, shoved Mitzi off my tortured sternum with a growl of my own. “You’re gaining weight!”
She slid happily onto one of the cushions, whacking it with her tail. “But I got you, right? You thought I was going straight for the old carotid!”
I pushed up on my elbows, winced at the pain in my neck, yawned in her face. “Yeah, yeah, I completely soiled myself. What’s that crap on your muzzle?”
She licked my face with her sandpaper tongue.
I gagged and pushed away, wiping my mouth. “Blech! What is that!”
“Raspberry jam!”
“Where’d you get that?”
“In the bathroom, Ed, behind the toilet. Where do you think I got it, Einstein?”
I turned my head toward the kitchen, smelled the pancakes now, heard the sound of feminine chatter and laughter. “Everybody’s up, I see.”
“Some people actually go to work, Eddie.”
I grunted, shoved the rest of the way up and located my pants. “I’m just glad the girls made it back all right.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean…”
It took me a second, I was shrugging into my shirt before I turned to the poodle. “You know what what means?”
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