“What’s he so thirsty for?”
“Blood—human blood.”
“You make him sound like a—”
“Like a vampire, yes.”
“Fuck,” August said. “No fucking way. I mean—just—fuck.”
This time, Tony did not reproach his cursing. “After everything you’ve seen—after me . . .”
“Jesus, Dad,” August said. “Why—ahh, shit.” He could feel his lip quivering, his eyes growing moist.
“I’ll take the ‘Dad,’ ” Tony said.
The chorus of screaming went on. After a moment, August said, “You were saying.”
“The . . . prisoner can’t leave the tower, so he has to wait for someone like me to come blundering into it. Complicating matters for him, the tower doesn’t remain in one place for any length of time. It shifts, changes location every few minutes. Based on what I’ve learned, I believe it moves through time as well as space. Though I may be mistaken. Regardless, what this means is, the prisoner’s victims are few and far between. He has to find a way to . . . prolong each one. To this end, he employs a device. It resembles a full-length mirror, but its surface is black. The prisoner positions his victim in front of it, and the mirror splits part of them off. Not an arm or a leg, but a self. One of that multitude of selves Stevenson wrote of, a constituent of the aggregate that is each and every one of us. That new self serves the prisoner’s immediate needs. Once he’s . . . calmer, in better control of himself, he cuts more selves away and sets them loose inside the tower.”
“What for?”
“To hunt them. It’s a form of amusement for him. The original, the prisoner keeps alive for as long as he can, recapturing them when he needs to slice more selves away from them, until the person is little more than a husk. Unless, that is, a new victim wanders in, in which case, he drains the previous one immediately.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?”
“I mean, why not have a couple of food sources available?”
“I’m not certain, but I believe the prisoner is afraid they would find a way to overpower him, destroy him. He’s powerful, but not all-powerful. Together, a dedicated pair of individuals might be able to accomplish what one could not.”
“But what about the copies, the other selves the guy sends off into this place? Isn’t he worried about them ganging up on him?”
“Have you encountered any of them yourself?”
“As a matter of fact, I have. That was what brought me here, actually. He got into the house and killed Orlando. He looked like he was going for Rebecca and Forster next, but I stopped him. He ran, and I chased him here.”
“Orlando’s dead?”
“Yeah.”
“But your stepmom and little brother are okay?”
“Pretty freaked out, but they’re all right.”
“Poor Orlando!” Tony said. “He was such a sweet dog. Not a mean bone in his body, I swear.”
“I don’t know if it’ll make you feel any better, but he was protecting Rebecca and Forster from you—your double.”
“God, how awful for them.”
“They’re okay, really. What about the other selves?”
“Yes, yes. I’m sure you noticed that that version of me was somewhat less articulate.”
“To put it mildly.”
“That tends to be the result of the mirror’s process. Occasionally, one is produced who’s capable of coherent speech, but they’re mad in a different way. In either case, the prisoner doesn’t have anything to worry about from the mirror’s children.”
“Is this what your vampire does when he catches one of them?” August nodded at the corpse.
“No,” his father said, “that was me.”
“You did this?”
“I did all of this.” Tony glanced at the room’s grisly contents. Was the screaming louder in here, more concentrated?
“Jesus Christ.”
“You know how savage the creatures are.”
“I get that,” August said. “Believe me. One of these guys jumps you, you have to do whatever’s necessary. It’s . . .” He waved his hand at the broken ribs fencing the chest cavity, the missing heart. “This seems a little premeditated, you know?”
“It was.” Before August could respond, he said, “I’m trying to starve him.”
“All right,” August said. “I can understand that. Why remove the hearts, though? Does the vampire eat them?”
“No,” Tony said, “I do.”
“What?” August’s stomach lurched. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I read about it. There’s a library in the tower. I was looking for a way out of here, and I thought I might find information about it there. The books on its shelves . . . they’re what you’d expect to find in a monster’s keeping. They’re full of . . . darkness. I found what I was looking for pretty quickly, but I kept reading. It had been so long since I had held an actual book in my hands, turned its pages, let my eyes take in its sentences, its paragraphs. Imagine having been without running water for a month, and then being able to sink into a hot bath. Or picture sitting down to a filet mignon after a year of stale crackers. I luxuriated in the act of reading. When the contents of the pages under my scrutiny became clear, I didn’t credit them. Isn’t that ridiculous? Eventually, I learned that there was something to them.”
“You ate someone’s heart because you read about it in a book?”
“Not someone’s heart,” Tony said, “my heart. My heart sectioned and sectioned again, grown coarse with the use. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve faced the black mirror, watched another piece of me step forth from its darkness. Frankly, I’m amazed there’s any of me left. Consuming the heart was supposed to be a way of taking what I’d lost back into myself.”
“Christ,” August said. “You make it sound so reasonable.”
“It isn’t,” Tony said, “not at all. It’s insane and obscene. But so is the tower. And the prisoner.”
“Has it worked?”
“I’m still here.”
“You said you found a way to escape this place.”
“I did. It took me some time to map out the directions to it, but I should be able to get us there fairly quickly. My God, August, how I’ve missed you. How I’ve missed all of you.”
“I—”
“I know. It hasn’t been that long for you. However, we need to start moving, or you’re going to find out how much time it’s possible to spend in here.” Tony pushed himself off the ledge on which he’d been leaning and strode past August, toward the cave entrance.
With a last look at the carnage his father had wrought, August followed. Tony turned right. After the room’s beams of light, the passageway was dim to the point of blackness. August fell into step beside Tony. “The tower,” he said, “the prisoner: do you know where they come from?”
Tony nodded. “I do. I have to tell you, though, that none of this was what I planned to talk to you about. Were we to meet again, I had a list of things to say to you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes. We weren’t going to spend our time on the origins of the tower and its occupant. We were going to discuss . . . important things.”
“Well, it’s a bit late for the sex talk, so you don’t have to worry about that one.”
“Very funny. I assumed your mother and stepfather saw to that.”
“They did. There was a book.”
“A book?”
“It was pretty horrifying.”
“I’m sure it was.”
“So. Why didn’t you try to leave before this?”
Tony glanced away. “I was afraid to. What I told you about the black mirror—there’s a reason the prisoner kills the first of its creations right away. He does it to intimidate his captive, which it absolutely does. Long before the books I read in the tower’s library, I knew about vampires; I taught Carmilla and Dracula. I had a good idea how to destroy one. Yet
there’s a difference between theory and praxis, isn’t there, especially when a monster is involved. Thus my plan for starving the prisoner until he became weak enough to risk confronting.”
“All right. Well, what about the prisoner?”
“His name is Mundt,” Tony said, “Edon Mundt. He’s from a very old city that stood on the shores of a black ocean.”
“You mean, like the Black Sea?”
“I mean an ocean whose water is black. It isn’t anywhere on Earth; it’s on another plane of existence . . . another dimension.”
“But there are people there.”
“More or less. Mundt was a member of the city watch, the police force. He was good at his job, excelled at it, in fact. His performance came to the attention of his superiors, and he was offered a position on the night watch. This was a group tasked with safeguarding the city’s libraries and cemeteries. It was no ceremonial post. The books in the libraries were of the same nature as the ones I discovered here, while the cemeteries were full of all manner of strange things. Mundt accepted the offer and was made part of the night watch, a process that involved his transformation into a vampire. I’m not clear on all the details, but it involved his having to walk out into the dark. Not the night, or a dark room, but something like death, if death were a place. Mundt entered the dark, and this allowed the dark to enter him. There’s a passage about a vampire in one of Byron’s poems: ‘And fire, unquenched, unquenchable, / Around, within, thy heart shall dwell; / Nor ear can hear nor tongue can tell / The tortures of that inward hell!’ From what I’ve been able to learn, that seems a fairly apt description of his state.”
“Makes you wonder why he did it in the first place.”
“Power. The price he paid bought Mundt enormous power.”
On their left, a gap in the wall: the entrance to another tunnel. Tony took it. Carved from rock, this passage was shorter and curved to the left. Its walls were inscribed with the broken circle and the maze, set one after the other. The tunnel ended in a shallow cave, against whose back wall August distinguished a pale form slumped. At the sound of their approaching footsteps, the figure raised a head that was too long and said, “Help me.” August slowed, but Tony caught his elbow and hustled him to the left, into the next passage. August cast a glance back at the white form but could not make out any details. “Who was that?”
“Not who,” Tony said, “but what. I told you the tower jumps around in space and possibly time. Although a person doesn’t always wander in, other things do. Animals, mostly, which helps anyone alive inside it to survive. Sometimes, other . . . creatures show up. That”—he gestured behind them—“is one of them.”
“What does it do?”
“It hollowed out one of the mirror’s children. Left him looking like an old, empty costume. I’m not sure how.”
Shorter than the last, this tunnel’s walls were also marked with the repeating maze and broken ring. It, too, curved counterclockwise, until it met bare rock face. August saw the passage on their left before Tony could guide him toward it. “You never told me what happened to the prisoner, to this Mundt guy. I mean, after he became a vampire.”
“He committed a crime,” Tony said. “I don’t know what it was, but obviously, it was severe. The penalty was imprisonment in the tower, which was cast loose through the cosmos. The tower is . . . Mundt and the tower are connected, in the most fundamental of ways. Its contains all of him, all of his pain. It traps all the pain of his victims, too.”
“The screaming.”
“It’s supposed to heighten his punishment, though I’m not certain how well it’s worked.”
“That sounds pretty harsh.”
Tony shrugged. “He’s a monster.”
As had been the case with the previous tunnels, this one’s walls were carved with the broken circle and maze, and bent left. “How is it that we can keep going this way without running into the other tunnels?” August said.
“The spatial relations in here are not always consistent,” Tony said. “It’s the same with the passing of time. Depending on your location, time runs more slowly or more quickly. You’ve been down here for what? An hour?”
“Roughly, yeah.”
“Yet for anyone standing at the tower’s door, I’d guess no more than two or three minutes have elapsed.”
The passage ended in a narrow archway, through which a flight of stairs led up. Tony halted at its foot. The blended screams of Edon Mundt and his victims poured down it. “These,” he said, “will take us to the tower’s central chamber. Directly across from the top of the stairs, there is a doorway out of the tower. It has a black frame. That is our destination. The chances are excellent that Mundt will be somewhere in the room. As far as I know, he hasn’t fed in some time. He should be weak enough for me to occupy while you make your escape.”
“While I—what are you saying?”
“At the door, touch the frame with your right hand and concentrate on where you want to go.”
“Where we want to go,” August said. “You’re coming with me.”
“We’ll see.”
“ ‘We’ll see’? What do you think I am, five? I am not leaving you here. I—I didn’t realize how long I’d lost you. Shit, I didn’t know you were missing to begin with.”
“You know I love you, right?”
“Stop,” August said. “Do not say that. You think I don’t know what you’re doing? That’s the kind of shit you say when you’re preparing for the big sacrifice. No. You are not doing that. No way.”
Tony smiled. “Here we are, arguing again.” With his left hand, he reached behind his back and withdrew a sizable knife from the waistband of his pants. “But we’re wasting time.”
“Where did you get that?” August said. The blade of the knife was a foot and a half long, grooved up the center; its handle was bone.
“One of the mirror’s children. I’m not sure how he obtained it. There are still parts of the tower I haven’t explored. It’s possible it was in one of them.”
“You know how to use it?”
“Did you think I killed my doubles with my bare hands?”
“I guess not. Lucky for me you didn’t stab me before you knew who I was.”
“I almost did,” Tony said. “At the last minute, something stopped me.”
“Well, that’s reassuring.”
“All right; we’d better get a move on.”
Here, the walls were cut with a single character, the maze, repeated every few feet. The lines of the symbol shone, as if they opened to a blackness more total than August had known. He was overcome with the desire to speak to Tony, to tell him he loved him, too, he enjoyed their intermittent phone conversations, he no longer held his divorce from August’s mom against him, all the platitudes brought shuffling to the fore by extremity. However, the words could not find their way out, because they were drowned by the almost-visible wave of fear that swept through the stairway and over him. The temperature might have dropped fifty degrees. His legs shook; goose bumps roughed his skin; the hair on the back of his neck stiffened. Worse, it was as if the cold had passed into him, freezing his heart, his gut, his balls. The screaming seemed to be his own, except his mouth would not open.
On the job, August had experienced moments of intense fear. His second month on duty, he’d been part of a three-man team that searched a condo in whose upstairs bedroom an old woman lay a week dead. The death had appeared natural—the woman was lying on her bed with no sign of violence done to her—but the next-door neighbor who’d called 911 in the first place claimed the old woman had taken in a young, mentally disturbed woman a few days prior to the neighbor’s last contact with her. Sidearms in one hand, flashlights in the other, the smell of rot in their nostrils, August and his fellow officers had cleared the condo’s surprisingly large first floor and basement. Although he feigned nonchalance later, when the residence had been found empty, during the actual process of opening doors to rooms and closets, he had bee
n certain he could feel the madwoman in the house with them, waiting like a cliché from a horror film to leap out at them, butcher knife in hand. The air had seemed to vibrate around him, the way it does the instant after a loud noise.
Intense as it had been, the fear that had made the beam of his flashlight tremble had been generated from within, the sight of the old woman’s cadaver merging with his memories of one too many slasher films. What halted his advance up the tower stairs was the polar opposite, a sensation that assaulted him entirely from without, as if this portion of the tower were subject to its own weather of the emotions. It was forty below and terrifying. He wanted to move in the worst way, to lift his foot onto the next step, but he was filled with dread that, were he to raise his leg, it would shake so badly that, when he tried to set it down, he would fall on his face, unable to rise, defenseless against whatever used these stairs, against the vampire.
“August.”
He raised his eyes. Tony had stopped five steps ahead of him. “August,” he said, “come on.”
August tried to speak, to say he couldn’t, he was too afraid, but his teeth chattered too much for him to say anything.
“Mundt,” Tony said. “Your body is reacting to him.”
August nodded, his head jerking as he did.
“It’s a natural response,” Tony said. “He’s completely antithetical to everything in you. I’m sorry; I should have thought of this. If you can focus on something else, it helps. Do you know what I do? I remember all the poems I know, all those fusty Victorians I used to teach. Would you like me to recite one for you?”
Why the hell not? He nodded.
“ ‘My first thought,’ ” Tony said, “ ‘was, he lied in every word / That hoary cripple, with malicious eye / Askance to watching the working of his lie / On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford / Suppression of the glee, that purs’d and scor’d / Its edge, at one more victim gain’d thereby.’ ”
Seize the Night Page 33