Koontz, Dean R. - The Haunted Earth (v2.0)

by Koontz, Dean R.

  "This way," Brutus said.

  The hound turned, his enormous tail flowing out behind him, and loped swiftly toward the second grave-spotted hillside, across the floor of the narrow ravine, disappearing into the inky, fog-smeared night, making not a sound, leaving them alone.

  They had taken only two quick steps after him when something huge rose up on their left, beside Helena, a lighter darkness against the black curtain of the night. It shuffled out from between two of the high maseni tombstones, moaning loudly, a vicious cutting edge to its voice now, reaching for Helena with a pair of monstrous, cancerous-looking, misshapen hands.

  She gasped and grabbed for Jessie, just as he grabbed for her.

  The monster lumbered forward like a surging ameboid mass, out into the open, towering over them. At that moment, the storm clouds parted a bit and let through a brief stream of moonlight that illuminated the scene for a second or two before darkness rolled in as deep as ever.

  The beast recoiled from the splash of light, then groaned and came at them again, backing them against another row of giant stones.

  "Jessie, what is it?" Helena asked, breathlessly, her hands held out before her, palms flattened as if she were trying to push the beast away.

  "Mabel?" Jessie asked.

  Helena said, "What?"

  "Mabel?" Jessie took one tentative step toward the thing, as Helena held desperately to his arm, trying to drag him back beside her.

  The beast stopped, its mottled black-brown hulk shifting and changing, growing knobs and protrusions, then losing them as concavities took their places and other protrusions formed elsewhere on its hide, expanding and contracting like a sackful of lively eels.

  "Is it you, Mabel?" Jessie asked, stepping closer, not quite so frightened as he had been moments ago.

  The Shambler said, "I go by that name, yes. But I can't place who you might be, sir."

  "I think I'm losing my mind," Helena said.

  Jessie said, "Not at all. Mabel's a hostess at the Four Worlds, downtown."

  "Hostess?" Helena asked.

  "She's the night hostess. She has to hide during the day."

  "I'd disintegrate, otherwise," Mabel said.

  "Haven't you ever seen her at the Four Worlds?" Jessie asked.

  "No," Helena said. "And I go every Saturday, usually."

  "Mabel doesn't work weekends," Jessie said.

  "I have weekends off, for the children," the Shambler agreed.

  "Children?" Helena asked.

  "She terrorizes them," Jessie said.

  "Her own children?"

  "No, no," Mabel said. "Just children in general—anyone's children so long as they'll give me a contract."

  "Mabel's a maseni supernatural," Jessie explained, as the Shambler gurgled and resettled. "According to her mythos, she terrorizes young children who have been bad."

  "I see," Helena said. She put a finger to the corner of her mouth and shook her head and said, "No, I don't see. Look, we're not children—"

  Mabel sighed loudly and settled her great bulk. Her "legs" ceased to exist as her jellied flesh flowed into a gum-drop-shaped lump. "I know you're not. And believe me, I haven't had much fun here, tonight."

  "What's going on here?" Brutus asked, stalking back to them from the second hill, his eyes a furious crimson. He looked at the Shambler and said, "How are you, Mabel?"

  "Not good," the Shambler said.

  "Why aren't you out terrorizing children?"

  "That's what we asked her," Helena said.

  "I was assigned to the graveyard tonight," Mabel said. She grew a big, bubbly head, then lost it as her body shifted, changed. "They came to me and told me my services were needed here, tonight, that I was to terrorize a couple of adults."

  "They?"

  "Some people who are pretty far up in the maseni supernatural hierarchy," Mabel said. "People who would know the chants that could destroy me. They didn't make any direct threats, but they strongly hinted that, if I did not cooperate, I'd find myself disintegrated."

  "That's pretty low," Brutus growled.

  Mabel throbbed with indignation; she pulsed and pounded with indignation. "Isn't that just the case; isn't that exactly how it is: pretty damn low?" She appeared to turn around so that she could look more directly at the detective, though she had no eyes with which to see and could probably have sensed him as well facing one way as the other. "I remember you now, sir," she said. "You came to the Four Worlds Cafe not more than a night or two ago, to have dinner with a demon—Kanastorous, I believe. You gave me an especially generous tip."

  A vampire bat swooped by, invisible in the darkness twenty feet overhead and slightly off to their right; it was identifiable by the sharp chatter it gave out for the benefit of its unholy mates who were searching elsewhere in the cemetery. It had missed them, now, as they stood in the shelter of the double row of canted maseni tombstones. It would soon swoop lower, search the denser shadows that even vampire eyes had trouble with; and then they would be caught.

  "Look," Jessie said to the Shambler, "we haven't got long before Slavek and his friends will be onto us. In five minutes, we'll be surrounded by bloodsuckers, sorcerers and whatever else they have out tonight Maybe you can help us."

  "How, sir?" the Shambler asked. "Believe me, I will help so long as I don't jeopardize myself. I'm not pleased with the law-breaking that's going on here tonight. And I don't want to alienate a good tipper, like yourself; I can't afford to if I'm going to take a few contracts, each week, to terrorize bad children. On the other hand, I don't want them to find out I've helped you in any way. I don't want to be disintegrated."

  "That's perfectly understandable," Jessie said. "You don't have to become directly involved with us. Just provide me with a bit of information, and you can go away and pretend that you never ran into us at all."

  Mabel considered this for a moment, forming and reforming her heavy body while she formed and re-formed her no doubt equally heavy thoughts, all the while gurgling gently in an infectious, syncopated rhythm. "What would you like to know, sir?" she asked at last.

  "What's the mystery behind this Galiotor Tesserax? What's going on here that would compel otherwise honest supernatural to break the laws as they're doing?"

  Mabel sighed. "I haven't the vaguest idea, sir."

  "You've heard of Tesserax?"

  "Oh, yes!'' the amorphous lump of dark ectoplasm said. "The rumor mill is grinding away at top speed. But it's all just that—rumor, easily seen through. But you'll have to question the supernaturals higher up in the maseni nether-world hierarchy if you expect the truth. They strongarmed me into this, without telling me why."

  "Okay," the detective said. "I didn't really expect that you'd know, but asking the question has become a habit. Let's get more practical. Can you tell me how well-guarded the rear gate is?"

  "They have a sorcerer stationed there," the Shambler said. "Just as they have on the front gate."

  "Then that's out," Brutus said.

  "For all of us," Helena added. "Listen, couldn't we send Brutus out on his own, let him phase through the wall anywhere and get help. If—"

  "Another thing," the Shambler began.

  "Yeah?" Jessie asked. He was aware that Mabel was about to throw cold water on Helena's suggestion—aware, too, that Helena's suggestion was really the only good idea they had left.

  "They must have been expecting you to raid the cemetery sooner or later, because they had guards posted. You managed to slip by them on your way in, but they spied you before you got that grave completely open. They called in the heavy artillery—which includes a street-cleaning truck that's been circling the graveyard spraying holy water on the outside of the wall. No human supernatural is going to phase through that wall again until they're willing to let him through."

  "Trapped," Brutus grunted.

  "They can't have thought of everything!" Jessie said. He began to pace, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, kicking up clods of grass and dirt from t
he rounded mounds of the old graves.

  "I'm afraid they have," the Shambler said. She had grown taller in the last minute, legs forming under her, arms sprouting out of the brown-black mass once more. "And I better get going before they catch me here with you and discover that I've gone over to the enemy."

  "Thanks for your help, Mabel," Helena said.

  "It was nothing."

  Groaning, hunched forward, massive "shoulders" drawn up around her blocky "head," she shambled away into the darkness between the big stones, arms swinging at her sides, blobby hands nearly scraping the ground.

  "What now?" Helena asked.

  Jessie said, "If we try to get out of the graveyard, they'll locate us and put an end to us—they'll disintegrate poor Brutus's soul, and—"

  "—give us an unsanctioned bite in the neck," Helena finished, putting one slim hand against her jugular.

  "Quite right," Jessie said. "On the other hand, if we just sit tight, they'll still locate us and put an end to us—only they'll need a few extra minutes to finish the job." He paused for effect, and as he did the clouds cracked, bringing a thin wave of moonlight across the shadowed cemetery hills. The three of them stepped closer to the big maseni stones, to avoid the notice of aerial patrols. The detective said, "We've got to stay here, somewhere in the graveyard—but give them the idea that we've gotten out despite all their defenses."

  "How?" Helena asked, always the pragmatist.

  "If we hide where they'd never think of looking for us," Jessie said, "their search will prove fruitless. An hour from now, they'll be convinced we got out, and they'll use the remaining hours of darkness to find us—outside the walls of the cemetery. When their search has shifted away from here, then we will quietly sneak off the grounds."

  "In theory," Helena said, "it's fine."

  "In reality, it's a pile of crap," Brutus added.

  "Exactly," Helena said.

  "Criers of joy, angels of light," Jessie said.

  "Where could we hide, in this place, that Slavek wouldn't think to look?" Helena asked.

  "Well—"

  She said, "There's nothing to hide behind except tombstones."

  "We could—"

  "And we can't expect to keep dodging them all night," she said.

  Before she could interrupt again, Jessie said, "We could hide in there!" and he pointed up the second hill.

  At the top of the dark rise, in a clearing where no tombstones had been erected, the white mausoleum was barely visible between the layers of fog that roiled across the brow like steam from a witch's pot. As the currents of mist shifted around it, obscuring some corners while revealing new ones, the place looked unreal, ethereal, part of some nightmare that a single blink of an eye could obliterate forever.

  Helena said, "But that's where Slavek and the others came from, Jessie. It's their home, their grave."

  "Some of them stay there, in daylight, yes."

  The mausoleum's two windows were black, blank, like blind eyes staring down the slope at them. It was flanked by two tall palms whose fronds were in a sad, drooping condition. It looked much like the last outpost on the edge of the world. The straight, undecorated walls were forbidding, so stark and yet so shiny in the fading moonlight that they appeared to be carved from a block of ice.

  "Won't Slavek and the others come back there, and catch us hiding out?" Helena asked.

  "None of them will be back until dawn."

  "You can't be sure."

  Jessie said, "They're not going to rest until they know that we're no longer a threat to the Galiotor Tesserax case—whatever the hell the Galiotor Tesserax case may be. That means they'll take advantage of every last minute of darkness to hunt us down. They won't be back to the mausoleum until dawn's approaching, and we'll be gone by then. We'll wait there just long enough for them to start looking beyond the graveyard, then we'll sneak out."

  She still had her hand up to her jugular.

  "Don't worry," he said.

  "I can't help it. I—"

  The mournful howl of a wolf echoed across the cemetery from the brow of the first hill, behind them. A ululating cry, it rode the rippling rivers of fog.

  "A werewolf," Brutus said.

  "Maybe one of several."

  "I hate werewolves," Helena said. "They don't have any of your charm, Brute. And they slobber so much."

  "If they've brought reinforcements," Jessie said, "we've got to move as fast as possible."

  He wondered if they had also brought any mythical Italians or Blacks, and he shuddered at the thought of meeting one of them—tomato sauce dripping from their chins or watermelon slices in hand—here in the darkness and the tombstones...

  The wolf howled again.

  Another answered it.

  "Come on," Jessie said.

  Brutus loped away, up the hill again.

  "I'm coming," Helena said, casting one last apprehensive look at the mausoleum before the moon slid, once again, behind the dark storm clouds.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The heavy mausoleum door—pressed and painted into a fair imitation of weathered oak planking—was closed but not locked. When Jessie turned the ornate knob, the latch snapped back, and the door squeaked inward a few inches. It barely fit the frame, and it scraped noisily across the concrete floor. The coarse sound rumbled past them, into the fog and, perhaps, into the keen ears of a werewolf lurking nearby.

  "You first," Jessie whispered.

  Brutus stepped across the raised threshold into the lightless chamber, his large, sharp-clawed paws making surprisingly little noise on the cold mausoleum floor.

  Jessie and Helena, still holding hands, followed close behind him, unable to see anything at all, proceeding with caution, feeling their way hike two blind men.

  "Can you see anything?" Jessie asked the hound.

  "More than you. Seems deserted."

  Outside, moonlight broke through the cloud cover again, throwing a ghostly luminescence behind them.

  In sympathy, several werewolves raised their heads and howled at the low, rushing sky.

  "Better close the door," Helena said.

  The detective turned and pushed the heavy panel shut, until the latch snapped into place. The voices of the werewolves were more distant now, less threatening.

  "It stinks in here," Helena said.

  "Well, it is the home of about twenty of the living dead," Jessie said. There's bound to be a little odor, a smidgin of corruption."

  "A girl like me shouldn't have to work for someone who takes her places like this."

  "If you'd like to resign—"

  "I mean, for God's sake, I'm stacked! I'm gorgeous! I thought that counted for something, even these days. But look at me, standing here in this stinking place, a step ahead of an illegal conversion into a vampire, hiding like a rat in a hole—"

  "And loving every minute of it," Jessie added. "You know it's not just your exorbitant salary or my tremendous sex techniques—which you enjoy as a fringe benefit—that keeps you on the job. You stay because there's more excitement in one day at Hell Hound Investigations than in a whole year anywhere else. You crave excitement, Helena."

  "Yeah, well, right now I crave a little peace and quiet."

  "Where better to find that than in a mausoleum?" he asked.

  Gradually, their eyes began to adjust to the darkness. The moonlight coming through the two windows showed them the outlines of heavy caskets on cement pedestals, thrusting up all across the large room.

  As their eyes adjusted, so did the hound's, and his sight remained constantly superior to theirs. He padded forward, between the coffins, and when he'd gone only a few steps, he growled, "We're not alone, after all."

  As the hound spoke, lights came on: dim, yellow, casting eerie shadows, recessed in the dirty ceiling and shielded both by cobwebs and wire cages, not very bright but bright enough to make Jessie squint and raise one hand to ward off the glare.

  "Who—what is it?" Helena asked, also squi
nting as she backed into the closed mausoleum door.

  "Ifs a dumpy, white-faced, sunken-eyed little man wearing badly wrinkled clothes," the hell hound said.

  "What on earth is a dumpy, white-faced, sunken-eyed little man in a badly wrinkled suit doing here?" she asked. "He isn't a vampire, is he? He doesn't sound like a vampire from your description." She still held a hand over her eyes, squinting.

  "No," Brutus said. "He doesn't have the style for one."

  Jessie fumbled in his pocket and brought out the cheap, multi-colored, glowing crucifix. "He doesn't look like a bloodsucker, but we can't be too careful."

  "I'm no vampire," the dumpy little man said. "My name's Whitlock. First name, William."

  "What are you doing here?" Jessie asked.

  "I live here."

  "With Slavek and his crowd?"

  "Yes," Willie Whitlock admitted.

  "Why?"

  The dumpy man smiled, leaned on the edge of an open coffin—brass fittings on polished mahogany—which separated him from them. There was a mad glint in his eye, either that or a speck of dust. "I'm a ghoul," Whitlock said, smiling. "I like living in a graveyard, with such quiet neighbors. Modern law, ever since the maseni arrived on Earth, doesn't permit me to actually exhume recently buried corpses and consume them as I once did, but I am allowed to live midst the glorious decay and the incredibly lovely putrefaction, which goes a long way toward taking the edge off my otherwise insatiable compulsion."

  "Ecchh," Helena said.

  "You might as well put away your cheap crucifix," Willie Whitlock said, rolling one jaundiced eye at the thing. "Such stuff won't harm a ghoul at all, as you must know. Besides, it is a rather tasteless, grotesque thing to have to look at, especially glowing so colorfully."

  Reluctantly, Jessie lowered the plastic icon and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

  Willie Whitlock licked his heavy lips and grinned sardonically as he leaned even further across the open coffin. He stared hard at them, grizzled and mean, his beard stubbly, his face seemed like a piece of crumpled paper. "You robbed a grave tonight, did you not?"

  Jessie cleared his throat and said, "Not actually. There wasn't anything to rob; it was empty."