The poem was longer than August had anticipated. Much of its beginning, he struggled to follow, the fear continually snapping his attention. From the way his father’s voice rose and fell, flowed and ebbed, he had the sense he was overhearing someone talking to himself. As the poem progressed, so did his focus, until with a jolt, he heard Tony describe “ ‘the round, squat turret, blind as the fool’s heart, / Built of brown stone, without a counterpart / In the whole world.’ ” For the remaining lines, all of his concentration was on his father’s words. When the old man finished speaking, August said, “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“But—”
“Can you move?”
He could, if poorly, his leg shuddering madly as he pushed up onto the next step. “Can you recite it again?”
“Of course. Let’s try to keep climbing.”
“ ‘My first thought,’ ” Tony began, and August raised his left leg. The speaker of the poem—some kind of knight, from what August could tell—left the road he’d been traveling to cross a gray field, bare of everything but weeds and scrub grass. On the stairway’s surface, the images of the maze shimmered, as if full of black water. The knight encountered a starved horse, forded “a sudden little river” that was “unexpected as a serpent.” Above and beyond Tony, a doorway was visible. The knight came upon ground churned muddy by a savage fight, beheld an “engine,” a “wheel, / Or brake, not wheel,” a “harrow fit to reel / Men’s bodies out like silk.” Faint light flickered within the doorway. At last, the knight arrived at the object of his quest, the “round, squat turret.” Two steps down from the doorway, Tony paused. He looked back at August.
“That’s a terrible ending,” August said.
“You aren’t the first person to say so. How are you doing?”
“I’m managing. Thanks.”
Tony pointed at the door. “Things are about to get worse.”
“Great.”
“I’d like to ask if you’re ready, but there isn’t much choice.”
“It’s okay.”
“The door should be across from where we emerge. As I’ve said, though, the geography of this structure can be rather fluid, so if you don’t see it where it’s supposed to be, look around. Remember: it’ll be the doorway with the black frame.”
“What about Mundt?”
“Let me worry about him.”
“You’re going to take on a vampire.”
“Remind me of your experience with the subject.”
“What happened to all that overwhelming terror?”
“It hasn’t gone anywhere, don’t worry. But seeing you . . . I’d really like to see your stepmother and little brother again.”
“A knife’s going to be enough?”
“It’s what they use to dispatch Dracula.”
“I never read that book.”
“Neither has Mundt. Don’t worry—I picked up a couple of tidbits from the books in Mundt’s library that should prove useful. Let’s go.”
The room into which they stepped was big as a banquet hall. A scattering of torches set shoulder high cast orange light over plain brick walls, leaving the vaulted ceiling in shadow. Opposite Tony and August, a door with a thick black border opened to a patch of green grass and sunlight, the meadow at the bottom of the back hill. Hope and relief surged through August. Despite his protests to the contrary, he had understood that Tony might not make it out of here with him. August had been trying to work out how he would get his father home should Edon Mundt appear, but the only solution that presented itself—shove the old man through and stay to deal with the monster himself—was not particularly inviting. Now, though, it appeared no such sacrifice would be necessary for either Tony or him. If only his legs would move faster, he would be on the other side of this chamber and out of this nightmare in no time.
They were less than halfway to the door when the voice breathed his father’s name: “Anthony.” It rustled around the room, a breeze rattling dead leaves, somewhere beneath the screaming. “What have you brought me?”
“Don’t stop,” Tony said.
“Don’t worry.”
“Is that little Augustus?” the voice continued. “Your son? Your firstborn? You’ve brought him here to me?”
The doorway was farther away than it had appeared. Or had the room grown larger? In the wavering torchlight, it was difficult to tell. One moment, the space was vast as a cathedral; the next, it contracted to the size of a large hall. It was as if he and Tony were inside a great heart made of brick and shadow. Each time the chamber expanded, August had the momentary impression he glimpsed something out of the corners of his eyes, something awful, but when he glanced in either direction, the room shrank, and all he saw was bare brick.
“The door,” Tony said. “Keep your eyes on the door.”
“Of course,” the voice said, “you never really wanted him, did you? His mother’s decision: wasn’t that what you said? You couldn’t stand that, could you? Couldn’t accept the unfairness of it all, of her having so much control over you. So much power. You’ve never been able to forgive little Augustus for the way his mother used him against you, have you? Never been able to love him all the way, unconditionally. The way a father should. Not like his brother—Forster, isn’t it? You wanted that child. Oh yes you did. And now you’ve brought me this one as what? Payment for your exit from my company?”
“Mundt,” Tony said, “shut the fuck up.”
“Hey,” August said, “what happened to ‘language’?”
“You don’t argue with the devil; he always wins.”
“The two of you have spoken, though.”
“I’ve been in here a long time. So has Mundt. Over the years, he proposed a number of . . . truces, I suppose you could call them. He’d had his fill of blood and was interested in other pursuits, in conversation. It was a while before I accepted his offer. Even then, I was fairly certain I was heading to my death.”
“Why go, then?”
“Curiosity. A change from the monotony of worrying about evading capture by him and running into the mirror’s children. The chance to learn something about my captor that might help me get the better of him.”
“Uh-huh. So what’s it like having dinner with a vampire?”
“Like sitting at the table with a cobra. I think I was even more afraid than I was when I first arrived here, when I watched him slash open my double’s throat. Every time we met, I was aware that I was in the presence of a creature utterly lethal. He wears death like a waistcoat.”
“Which didn’t stop you from telling him all about me.”
Tony paused. They had drawn nearer the doorway, though exactly how close they were was difficult to ascertain, as the distance kept telescoping out and in with the shifting light. “August,” he said.
“It’s fine,” August said, pushing past him. “None of it’s exactly a surprise.”
“None of it’s exactly true, either.”
“But true enough!” the vampire said. “And that’s too true for comfort, isn’t it, Augustus?”
“Fuck off,” August said.
The strip of grass visible through the doorway was fading. “What’s happening?” August said.
“The tower’s shifting,” Tony said. “We don’t have that far. Run.”
Although his legs were not fully recovered from their paralysis on the stairs, August lurched forward. As he did, the air filled with the sound of flapping, as if a great flock of birds were taking wing. From all over the room, pieces of blackness loosened themselves from the surrounding shadow and darted to a point to his and Tony’s left. They spiraled into a whirlwind that reached to the ceiling, then shrank and condensed into the form of a man. Dressed in black robes that eddied about him, Edon Mundt wore a mask shaped to resemble the head of an ebony bird with a long, cruel beak. Without hesitation, he strode toward August and Tony, his robes catching on shadows as he came. The torches flickered, dimmed.
�
��Almost there,” Tony said.
The light flared, and August saw that the floor was crowded with corpses, with dozens of bodies torn asunder. August had the sense that they had always been there, he had simply been unable to see that he could see them. All of them were Tony. Here was his father with his throat torn out. Here was his father with belly opened, his intestines strewn about him. Here was his father with the top of his skull gone and its contents removed. Here was Tony’s right arm. Here was his blue eye staring. Here was a scattering of his fingers. Here was his father’s mouth open again and again, as if the true source of the screaming that rang the air.
“August!” Tony shouted. “Keep moving.”
August was almost at the door when Mundt slid in front of him with a sinuous motion that, yes, called to mind an enormous snake. August staggered to a halt, almost tipping forward into the vampire. “Augustus,” Mundt said, as if they were old friends who had run into one another unexpectedly. This close, Mundt was unbelievably tall. His robes were bedecked with long feathers or scales that clacked and clashed as he moved; his mask was sewn of a leathery material that appeared to grow out of the exposed flesh of his cheeks and jaw. His teeth were not visible, but his breath was foul, as if his gums and tongue were diseased, rotten. His presence flooded August with despair immediate and total. How had he thought—how had he dreamed he could escape this creature? His father had compared Mundt to a cobra; August suddenly knew what a mouse must feel, watching the hood open, the jaws part, the tongue flick out, tasting the fear in the air.
“Go!” Tony shoved him to the right, away from Mundt. He could see the doorway in which the rectangle of sunlit grass had not faded completely from view. Tony uttered something he didn’t understand, and white light burst in the room. Mundt shrieked, a pair of knives scraping together. His eyes dazzled, August stumbled in the direction of the exit.
“That will not save you,” Mundt said.
“It wasn’t supposed to,” Tony said.
August stretched out his hand and touched the smooth wood of the door frame. Concentrate on where you want to go, Tony had said. He pictured the meadow, the hill sloping up from it, the yellow cape visible beyond the crest. “All right,” he called, “I’m here. Dad! Come on!”
Tony repeated the strange syllable, and brightness scorched the air. “Go!” he shouted. “Go on! I’m right behind you!”
August stepped through the door, glancing back as he did. In the instant before he passed through the fall of black water, he watched his father drive his knife into the center of Mundt’s form, twisting his body to give the blow all of his strength. At the same moment, Mundt’s head surged forward, joining with and absorbing his mask, becoming a black scythe that he drove into the base of Tony’s throat. Tony’s blood hissed over Mundt’s flesh.
August’s cry accompanied him out the doorway’s other side, into the meadow on whose grass he collapsed. He had not moved when the pair of sheriff’s deputies charged down the hill a minute later. While one surveyed the meadow, the trees beyond, the other knelt beside August. “You’re August?” the deputy said. “Your father—where’s your father?”
He could no longer hear the tower. If he looked, he knew, he would not see it. “He isn’t here,” August said. “He’s gone. My dad is gone.”
—For Fiona
MOTHER
JOE MCKINNEY
The cruiser fell in behind him as soon as he crossed the DeWitt County line.
Ed Drinker glanced at the cop car in his rearview mirror, then at the white envelope on the passenger seat, and prayed he wasn’t about to make the worst mistake of his life.
He was passing through desolate country, thousands of acres of flat farmland stretching off to the horizon in every direction. They grew sweet potatoes down here, and the leaves were just taking on their color, carpeting the endless fields in green. He was alone out here with the cop. If he played this wrong, he was toast. The surrounding countryside was so huge, so vast and empty, nobody would ever hear a gunshot.
He continued on several miles until he saw an abandoned gas station up on the right. It was the first structure he’d seen in a long while.
Behind him, the police car’s emergency lights came on.
The deputy blipped the siren.
Ed put on his blinker and pulled into the lot, driving around to the back.
The deputy who climbed out of the patrol car was tall and lanky and red as a boiled crawdad from the South Texas sun. Like every other small-town cop Ed had ever met, the man looked arrogant and imperious behind his sunglasses.
Ed rolled down the window as the man approached.
“I’ve got the money.”
Deputy William Kohler didn’t speak—just stood there watching him. Not knowing what else to do, Ed reached over to the passenger seat, retrieved the thick white envelope, and stuck it out the window for Kohler to take. Kohler opened it and fanned through the bills. Ed watched him count, the deputy’s mouth moving silently as the numbers got bigger, and tried not to feel too bitter about the payoff. He’d scraped most of that money together after a recent visit to a used bookstore, during which Ed had offloaded nearly all of his reference library.
Twenty-five years of work.
“There’s only twelve hundred here,” Kohler said.
“That’s all the money I could come up with.” It wasn’t a lie. Selling his library had only gotten him so much. The rest he’d taken out of the three-hundred-dollar travel budget the Patterson Cryptozoological Institute had given him.
And even that hadn’t been enough.
Still, it’d be worth it if Kohler came through for him.
Ed held his breath.
“How soon will you have the rest?”
Ed allowed himself a glimmer of hope. They were negotiating, at least. “I get paid again on the first of the month.”
“That’s eight days away.”
“That’s the best I can do,” Ed said. “Please.”
Kohler put the money back in the envelope and tapped it on the magazine pouch on the front of his gun belt, evidently thinking it over.
Then he went back to his patrol car without another word.
Ed watched him in the rearview mirror. “Please, please,” he muttered.
A moment later, Kohler came back carrying a thick accordion folder.
“Yes!” Ed said.
Kohler held out the accordion folder but pulled it back when Ed reached for it. “You better be good for the rest.”
“I am,” Ed said.
Kohler nodded, then turned to study the surrounding fields. “You know, what you need to do is get a TV show, like Marsh has. He came in here two days ago buying drinks for everybody at the Holiday Inn, promising to put everybody in his show. People love being on the TV.”
“Tell me about it,” Ed said under his breath.
“He’s got everybody all fired up. I haven’t seen folks this excited about the chupacabra since the last time you were in town.”
“I bet.”
“It’s the cameras that does it, you ask me. Everybody thinks a little better of you if you been on the TV.”
“I’ve been in documentaries,” Ed said, all the while telling himself to please, please hold it together, don’t draw this out more than necessary. But the slope got slippery pretty fast whenever he talked about Charles Marsh, and he couldn’t help that.
“Yeah, but you ain’t famous like Marsh is. He’s the real deal. He’s got his own TV show. You ever thought of doing that?”
There’d been a time, years ago, when the idea of buying off local cops would have turned Ed’s stomach. But what other choice did he have, really? Charles Marsh, who had the financial backing of the Science Network, had used his clout to get a federal circuit judge to clamp a gag order on the local cops. That was his way. Once Marsh smelled blood in the water, he moved in and muscled everybody else out. It was a strategy that served him well. There was no way to fight an opponent like that, and as much as E
d hated to admit it, he was close to being beaten.
But he wasn’t down for the count. Not yet anyway.
After all, they had five dead kids down here in DeWitt County, and if that wasn’t a story tailor-made for the bestseller lists, he didn’t know what was.
“I’m just calling it like I see it,” Kohler said. “You get yourself on TV, like Marsh, and you could write your own ticket.”
Ed glanced over at him, surprised that he’d let himself wander. It was the heat, he thought. It made him miserable. “Thanks for the tip,” he said sullenly.
“No problem.” Kohler handed him the case file. “Listen, I’ll do you one better.”
“Yeah?” Ed said. “How’s that?” He steeled himself for the insult that was surely about to come.
“You know we got a lot of wetbacks down in the southern part of the county, right?”
Ed hadn’t expected that. Insults to his professionalism were old hat these days. When you worked with cryptids, one learned to live with the occasional sneer from one’s colleagues. But Ed’s mother was Hispanic, Indio actually, and even though he’d inherited many of her features, like her short stature and her dark skin and her round, plump cheeks, racism wasn’t something he’d had to deal with since he was a teenager. “Excuse me?” he said.
“Just what I said. Nobody ever talks to the wetbacks. You guys didn’t talk to them the last time you was here, and I know Marsh ain’t talked to them yet this time around neither. It’s their kids getting murdered, is all I’m saying. Seems to me, if you really wanted to know what was going on, that’d be the place to start.”
Despite his indignation, Ed was suddenly interested. “Are you sure Marsh hasn’t talked to any of them yet?”
“Positive. Something to think about, if you ask me.”
“Yeah,” Ed said. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Ed knelt down next to the bed in his motel room and pulled out the contents of the accordion file Deputy Kohler had sold him. Research had always been Ed’s thing, what he did best, and combing through old books and autopsy reports and microfiche facsimiles of long-dead newspapers was like putting on a comfortable pair of shoes.
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