Congregations of the Dead

by Moore, James A. ; Rutledge, Charles R. ;

  Charon sat very still, and Griffin could almost see her mind working. When he stopped talking she said, “What is it with Wellman? First the Moon-Eyes and now vampires.”

  “We were asking the same thing,” Griffin said.

  “The Moon-Eyes have always been here,” Carl said. “The vampires are new, if that’s what those things were.”

  Charon said, “From what you guys just told me, I think that’s the most likely scenario.”

  Griffin said, “I didn’t think vampires could move around in the daytime.”

  “And they were in a church,” said Carl. “All seated in front of a great big cross.”

  Charon said, “Keep in mind guys, I’m theorizing here. I haven’t had any practical experience with vampires. I wish Decamp were back. But here’s the thing. Most of what people think they ‘know’ about vampires comes from Universal horror movies and the novel Dracula. If you go back to the original folklore, there are as many kinds of vampires as there are cultures.”

  “I though most of the legends were European?” Carl said.

  Charon shook her head. “No, they go way farther back than that. There was a guy named Montague Summers who wrote a couple of books about Vampires back in the early 1900s. He made all kinds of studies of folklore and he found accounts of creatures that lived on human blood as far back as ancient Greece and Rome. An idea like that, one that keeps resurfacing in every culture, has to have something behind it.”

  Griffin said, “Even seeing what I just saw, I’m having trouble believing that vampires actually exist. I mean, wouldn’t someone know about them?”

  “Someone probably does,” Charon said. “But look at it this way, sweetie. You and Carl not only ran into a pre-human race. You also came face to face with one of the Great Old Ones, and those aren’t supposed to be real either.”

  “Girl’s got a point,” Carl said.

  “Believe in one, believe in all, eh?” said Griffin.

  Charon said, “Or at least be open to the possibility.”

  “Okay,” said Griffin, “so say there is a church full of vampires in the mountains. What do we do about it?”

  “I think the first thing we better worry about,” said Charon, “Is what they may try to do about us.”

  “Meaning?” Carl said.

  “You remember Griffin telling you a couple of nights back that something was casing our house?” Carl nodded and Charon went on. “We thought it might be the Moon-Eyes, but what if it wasn’t?”

  “You think it might have been one of the vampires? How would they know where to find you?”

  “I told them,” Griffin said. “I gave the man Fry my business card.”

  Carl said, “Hmmm, in vampire movies, the vampire always has to have a living, breathing human to look after him during the day. You think Fry does that for the Reverend Cotton and his flock?”

  Griffin said, “Seems likely. And since I was snooping around, maybe Cotton sent someone to check me out.”

  “Question is, what might he send now he knows that we know his secret?” said Carl.

  “That is indeed the question.” Griffin turned to Charon. “Your wards will keep vampires from entering won’t they?”

  “They should stop any supernatural being, though I’m not sure a vampire could come in without an invitation anyway. That particular bit of folklore is common to most countries.”

  “Then what was a vampire doing at the house?”

  “Who knows? Maybe he was trying to get a look at us, or just checking security. Like you said, Griffin, they have a human being working for them. Maybe more than one. My wards won’t stop them.”

  Griffin smiled. “If anything human shows up, I won’t need wards.”

  Carl said, “Which brings us to the million dollar question. How can we kill these things? Wooden stakes? Silver bullets? What?”

  “A lot of that stuff comes from movies too,” said Charon. “The only things I’m pretty sure will work every time are fire and decapitation. There may be more, but we need Carter for that.”

  “So a head shot might have done it?” Griffin said.

  “I think you’d have to blow the head off. I don’t think just shooting them in the head would do any good.”

  “I got guns that can do that,” said Carl.

  Griffin said, “Keep calling Decamp, Charon. Let him know we need to see him as soon as he gets back from wherever the hell he is.”

  “My friend Andy is pretty up on his folklore too,” said Carl. “I’ll quiz him about vampires. He’ll probably tell me I’m crazy, but he does that anyway.”

  “In the meantime, don’t invite anyone into your house, Carl,” said Charon.

  Carl made a face. “Only people who’ve come to visit me lately are Blackbournes and ex-wives. At this point a vampire might look pretty good.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Vampires. Carl didn’t know if he should laugh, cry or scream. All three seemed like viable options. Eventually, tongue firmly planted in cheek, he decided the idea of dead people feeding on the living was rather soothing really. After all, if the dead could get up at any time and come chomp on a person’s neck, the occasional risk of an ex showing up to mess up your world seemed somehow less like a major event.

  That mentality helped when it came to dealing with Allan Chambers. Not that he had any problem dealing with his second-in-command, of course, but it helped him keep his calm.

  “How’d the interviews go?”

  Allan coughed through the phone. “Not so great, but it could have been worse. Sarah Phillips lawyered up as soon as we got her in a room. Corey Phillips was heading in that direction until we showed him the pictures of his little girl we got from his computer at work. Then he started talking.”

  “Did we get anything we can use?”

  “Oh, yeah. But we’re gonna have to move fast. The missus of the household wants to get out.”

  “Bitch can’t get out on bond if we don’t charge her. We have forty-eight hours to come up with charges. Make it linger.”

  “Thought you might feel that way. Their lawyer is Louis Ives.”

  “Yeah? You say that like I should know the name.”

  “You should. Does a lot of work for Blankenship.”

  Carl nodded slowly before he responded. Allan couldn’t see him nod, but some habits are hard to break. “Can’t say as I’m surprised. Not happy, but not surprised.”

  “He’s making all kinds of noises.”

  “Let him make noises. He wants to breathe any fire, tell him we’re looking at tax evasion and drug trafficking.”

  “Are we?”

  “No. But now and then I like to pretend I’m a lawyer and muddy the waters. While that asshole is thinking about how to handle those problems, we’ll get on the trail of the people they’ve been working with. Lean harder on Corey Phillips. Guilt him. Remind him we don’t know where his daughter is and let him know I’m probably going to look at this situation as him selling her to pay off some kind of gambling debts.”

  Allan grunted. “You think that’s what happened?”

  “I think it’s possible. I think it’s just as possible that Sarah Phillips is the one who’s got her nose into something she can’t get out of. She was the one playing it cool when Amber was reported missing. She’s the one that lawyered up.”

  “I’ll see if I can’t break him.”

  “Make sure you have someone with you at all times and keep the cameras rolling. No gray areas. Got me?”

  “Got you.”

  Carl killed the call and pulled into Andy’s driveway.

  Andy was delighted to see him and puzzled by the second visit. Andy was one of the very few people who knew something of what had happened with the Blackbourne clan. That meant he was slightly more open to insane notions.

  By the time
he’d covered the basics of the story about the church, Andy had poured them both a new glass of iced tea and made cold ham sandwiches to boot. Despite the firm belief that he would never have an appetite again, Carl wolfed down two of the sandwiches.

  Andy looked at him over the edge of his glasses. “There’s an old phrase about congregations of the dead in the Bible.” He stood and wandered over to his shelves again. Instead of actually pulling a volume off the shelves he tapped a couple of books as if referencing them through contact alone. “You tell me about a church full of corpses, I can’t help but think about that quote. But the interesting thing is that it’s a matter of translation. Some of the versions of the Good Book call it a congregation of the dead and others refer to the same quote as a gathering of the Rephaim.” The old man was moving into lecture mode, and Carl settled back, once again drawn by the strength of the man’s speech when he was talking about the subjects closest to his heart.

  “What are the Rephaim?”

  “I’ll get to it, Carl,” Andy shook his head. “You lack patience.” Carl nodded sheepishly. “There are a lot of phrases that are lost in vagaries. The original term is ancient Hebrew, I believe. The problem there is that the language as written had no vowels, and that means some terms get muddled. We don’t know exactly what was meant because the people who wrote the words down the first time might have assumed everyone would understand, might have misspelled something, or might have simply used a term that no longer exists. One of the possible translations refers to the Rephaite – possibly the same root word as a race of giants the Israelites had to run out of the Promised Land when they got there. Another possible translation refers to recently-dead kings and long-dead kings. Got another that says it’s a race of people who spoke in a language that sounded like buzzing to the ears of most people.”

  Andy paced back into the room, his hands clasped behind his back. “I had many a conversation with an old colleague of mine, man named Crowley, about all sorts of supernatural jibber jabber back in my day. That man loved to go on about the nature of things that go bump in the night. He was the one that told me a slightly different definition of the Rephaim that runs back to the Bronze Age. We’re talking well before Christ came on the scene. I point this out solely because you said there was a cross on the wall and they were in a church and you’re all worried about Hollywood and Stoker and why Christian paraphernalia isn’t affecting the monsters in question.

  “Well, Crowley once told me there were as many types of vampires as there were races of people or species of dogs. Not really a comforting thought but maybe he’s right. If he is, you might be dealing with a species of vampire that simply does not fear religious icons or any particular god. I’ll keep it simple as I can, but the Gilgal Rephaim refers to a burial site in the Golan Heights area, and that particular burial site is possibly the start of the legend I’m referring to. As I said, there’s a goodly deal of time distortion to consider. But the Rephaim, if they come from there, would possibly refer to ghosts or spirits, in particular ghosts or spirits that were hungry. Which could be another name for vampires.”

  Carl shook his head, trying to make sense of what the man was saying. “Want to dumb that down?”

  “Son, that is dumbed down.” Andy cast another withering look at him. “What exactly did you study in college, boy?”

  “Law enforcement, martial arts, criminal psychology and a few dozen other subjects you probably never considered.”

  Andy nodded, as if the smart ass answer was the best possible response. Carl decided that was a victory.

  “Good for you. Now then, I’ll go ahead and lower it to the idiot level for you. You said the vampires, if that’s what they are, were not hurt by bullets or by getting bones broken. So what you might be dealing with would be something more along the lines of a hungry spirit. Remember, there’re a lot of vagaries and you’re dealing with something that has little or nothing to do with the more typical ‘European’ vampire as described by Bram Stoker and adopted and then bastardized by Hollywood. There are no sparkling vampires here, is what I’m saying.”

  Andy sat back in his seat and took a bite of his sandwich before continuing. “If these are more like ghosts or spirits, then the same rules that apply to ghosts and spirits from the Middle East might better apply. No crosses. No holy water. Sunlight wouldn’t necessarily kill them or make them catch fire if that’s even a real part of the standard legends. Instead it might weaken them, or make them need to rest. You said the ones you saw seemed dead until they took notice of you. That might explain why. They are nocturnal in nature but not necessarily any more allergic to sunlight than most people are to moonlight, if you see my point.

  “The area I’m talking about was allegedly used as a burial site. There’s evidence of tombs there, but no one ever found so much as a single bone to show that anyone was actually buried. It’s possible that if vampires are real, they might have originated there and moved on after, well, after whatever made them into vampires happened to them.” He shrugged. “Who can say? We’re dealing with hypothesis here. At any rate, let’s go back to the concept of hungry spirits. Some legends say that running water will stop a ghost. Some say salt will do the trick. I’ve heard legends of vampires being taken out with wooden stakes, same as you, but some say it has to be a particular type of wood, often with religious significance. If that doesn’t work, try cold cast iron, which is also supposed to have an effect on spirits.”

  Andy crossed his arms and got that disapproving look on his face again. “Carl, son, am I talking for my own benefit?”

  “I’m sorry?” Carl sat up straighter, suddenly feeling like he’d been caught cheating in class. Andy could do that to him.

  “I’m talking for your sake, boy. Take notes.”

  Carl nodded and Andy went over the details with him again. “So another friend said beheading might work?”

  “That’s another fairly typical response to ghostly assaults. Behead or desecrate the corpse. Also, sometimes, that could mean the spirits are tied to certain locations, like where they were buried, so you might want to look around for a cemetery near the church.”

  Carl wrote as quickly as he could. And when he was done, Andy was staring out the window.

  “You think there’s anything to the whole idea of invitations, Andy?”

  Andy nodded without even bothering to look back his way. “Oh, I don’t doubt that one for a second.”

  “No?”

  “No. That man I told you about, Jonathan Crowley. He once told me there are always rules the supernatural must follow and that one of the reasons there are still people left in the world is that a lot of the evil things out there have to be invited into your home or your heart before they can do any harm.”

  “Makes it sound easy.”

  “Oh, no, son. It’s not easy at all. Humans still don’t need an invitation to cause damage. They can just do as they please.”

  Carl shook his head. “That’s why we have laws.”

  “That’s why we have you, son. You and the rest of the police.”

  “So who polices the monsters?”

  “Well now, I guess maybe you do these days.”

  “Think I can demand a raise?”

  “Good luck with that.”

  Carl saw the man still staring out through his window and frowned. “Are you okay, Andy?”

  “Hmm? Oh, yeah. I was just thinking I should pull in my Welcome mat. You know, just in case.”

  Carl nodded. “I’ll take care of it on my way out.” He also thought he’d pull the one from his own threshold, and maybe burn the damned thing while he was at it.

  * * *

  The sun had set and Carl had finished a late-night meal of cold breakfast cereal and two boiled eggs before the knock came at his door. He answered with caution in his heart and a .357 held at the small of his back.

  The man stan
ding on his porch was not familiar to him. He was a stocky man, solidly built and dressed in clothes that would have worked just as well back in the 1940s or 50s. The man had a fringe of hair around the sides of his head and a bald pate, a broad, friendly face and a faint smile plastered on his generous mouth.

  The stranger gave a small nod. “Good evening, Sheriff. I was wondering if I could have a word with you.”

  Carl stared at the man for several moments, not quite sure what to make of him. He looked more lively than the people Carl had seen at the church with Wade, but he didn’t know if that was because the man was actually alive or if the vampires looked different in the night. He wasn’t sure if he was staring at a regular man or someone else, but whatever the case, he got an unpleasant shock when he looked the man in the eyes.

  “Most times people can reach me at my office. How can I help you, Mister…?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’m being rude. I’ve had a very distressing day, you see. My name is Lazarus Cotton. I’m the reverend at the Mount Zion Church of Faith. Something has happened to my parishioners, and I was hoping I could discuss the matter with you personally.”

  The reverend looked at him with dark eyes, an expectant half smile on his face. Under a lot of circumstances Carl might well have invited a stranger in that position into his home, but not this time. Two people he trusted had warned him against that notion and he intended to listen.

  “You certainly can. Why don’t you come by my office tomorrow morning.”

  “Well, I just thought since I was here…”

  “You’ve caught me at a bad time, Reverend Cotton. I’m afraid I can’t help you just now.”

  The man stared at him for several seconds, his face locked in an expectant expression. Clearly he was not at all used to being denied.

  “Are you sure I couldn’t come in for just a moment?”

  “If you absolutely have to speak now, you can do so from where you are. My house is a mess just now.” Carl allowed a tight smile on his face and wondered if the bullets in his weapon would have enough kick to take the man’s head off. It was an idle curiosity. He wasn’t foolish enough to consider the idea on his property, not unless the man got in his house somehow, and according to what he’d heard that couldn’t happen without an invitation.