Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition)

by Gail Roughton

  Was he back? Had he ever been gone? She returned to her bed and tossed restlessly until dawn.

  * * *

  At 9:30 the next morning, Ria dialed a phone number. She’d already checked the internet. Mobile’s newspaper was the Press-Register. It didn’t have a Mobile Reporter. And a call to personnel verified that no reporter named Paul Everett worked for it. Or ever had.

  She hung up. Well. If there was no verifiable living Paul Everett, his supposedly deceased double definitely had a verified address. Rose Arbor Cemetery. Today’s schedule was hectic but her plans weren’t daytime plans, anyway.

  She went out of her office to their secretary’s desk.

  “Katie, would you do me a favor? Not professional. Girl stuff.”

  “Sure.”

  “If I’m in the office and I get a phone call from a Paul Everett, interrupt me.”

  Katie narrowed her eyes.

  “I don’t know the name. Out of state attorney? ”

  “Nope.”

  “Adjuster?”

  “Nope.”

  Katie grinned. She gave Ria the devil about her social life, or lack of one.

  “You don’t say! Well, I certainly will interrupt you, don’t worry about it.”

  “And if I’m not in—”

  “Yeah?”

  “Try to get a phone number.”

  “Why would I have to try? Most people leave phone numbers, Ria.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think he will.”

  * * *

  Ria moved through the day by rote, waiting for late afternoon. Finally, Katie turned off her computer and departed. Johnny closed his office door and attempted to lure her to the Rookery, flouncing out the door alone in good-natured exasperation when she refused. The house was hers.

  She went upstairs and exchanged her tailored suit and high heels for jeans and Nikes. Then she ransacked the assortment of small tools, screws and nails her father had put together as things she might need around the house. She picked up a hammer, a small metal file, and her smallest flathead screwdriver and shoved them into a canvas tote. She checked her pocketbook and tossed her wallet, keys, and small metal nail file in after them. The nail file was smaller than the screwdriver. It might come in handy. She grabbed a flashlight from the shelf of her closet and tossed that in, too.

  The sanctity of the Devlin mausoleum was toast. Either it held a coffin wherein reposed the earthly remains of Dr. Paul Devlin. Or didn’t. And she was, by God, going to find out which.

  * * *

  She drove down Orange, turned left onto Walnut, onto College, and ran down the short stretch of hill to Riverside Drive. Operating on the theory that no one notices you if you act like you know what you’re doing, she drove to the main entrance of Rose Arbor and rode slowly down the narrow lanes.

  When she judged she was as out-of-sight as possible from Riverside Drive, she parked and got out, heading back toward the banks of the Ocmulgee and the Devlin mausoleum.

  She glanced around. No one, thank God. And hopefully this close to dark, little possibility of anyone else showing up. She stood in front of the door and considered her attack. There was no padlock to file through. There was no lock panel, so there was no lock to pick. There was no friggin’ handle. There was only the smooth seam of the door and a line of concrete against the marble. Shit. Just shit.

  She stared thoughtfully. On closer inspection, the line of concrete wasn’t so smooth. It was crumbling in spots. And with a tap here and there, and a nudge or two using the file as a chisel, it would crumble a lot more. She looked around again. Still alone. She pulled the hammer out of her bag and tapped carefully up and down the length of the door. A few crumbs of dust fell to the ground and she resisted the urge to tap harder, repeating her series of soft blows. A few more crumbs fell down and she pulled out the file and ran it up and down the length of the door. Particles fell to the ground with a shower of dust.

  She bit back the surge of excitement, put her shoulder against the edge of the door, and pushed. She pushed harder, and then harder still. It gave the smallest fraction. She stopped and looked around yet again. Yeah, she was still the only insane person in the cemetery attempting to break into a hundred year old mausoleum. She took a deep breath, bit down on her lower lip, and shoved, almost falling through the door as it swung open.

  She braced her hand against the side of one of the marble walls and straightened up to face the shadows. Almost but not yet twilight, the interior of the crypt was thick with darkness. She reached in the bag and located the flashlight by feel, pulled it out and turned it on.

  Training the beam on the wall opposite her, she ran it over the books that stood, thick and crowded, on the shelves running from the floor to the roof. Next to the shelves stood a chest of drawers. On its top sat a silver brush and comb and a small silver picture frame. She walked to it and trained the flashlight on the picture. Chloe Devlin. What a surprise. Not. She turned the flash on the next wall, moving at right angles. A small wall table with a decanter, flanked by crystal goblets. The structure was big, unusually so for its purported purpose. She’d known that, but she hadn’t expected such economy of design. Or any furnishings. A mausoleum designed for use. And not for any use such structures were intended, either.

  She turned slowly, looking for the one furnishing that should be here. The light played along the shadows of the far wall. There it was. Mausoleums were intended to hold coffins. But not open coffins, wherein reposed bodies that could teach the embalmers of the Egyptian pharaohs a thing or two.

  She moved closer. So. The old legends were wrong. Either that or, more likely, they were like Paul Everett’s fabrications of the night before, skillful blends of fact and fiction.

  He lay, not on his back with his arms crossed, but on his side, his hand curled under his cheek, an open book beside him, for all the world as though he’d fallen asleep. She ran the light over the interior again and saw shelves not seen on first glance, full of small modern conveniences of life. A battery radio and clock. Books, books and more books. Beside the coffin, a camping lantern.

  She walked to him, hesitated, and stretched her hand out, placing her fingers lightly on his neck. No pulse point. She moved her hand in front of his nostrils. No breath, not even a faint one.

  She turned the light on her watch. Quarter to seven on an early October evening, before the change back from Daylight Savings Time. Thirty minutes till sunset, maybe less. She needed to move her car. Because she was going to be here when sunset came. She was going to watch him wake.

  The old legends rushed into her mind. The wicked teeth, the mesmerizing eyes, the insatiable thirst. And she was going to watch him rise? Oh, yeah. Hell, yeah.

  She moved outside, holding the edge of the door, and then stopped, frustrated. The door had no outside handle. How to secure it? What if someone came by, saw it cracked open, and decided to investigate? Highly unlikely, but still. Not a risk she was entitled to take. She ran her hands over the outside door, feeling for a hidden catch, and then she felt it. There was a hollowed-out handhold. She pulled the door firmly closed and went back to her car. She didn’t think any security patrols roamed the cemetery past sunset, but there was no reason to take the chance.

  She got behind the wheel, driving back down Riverside Drive to the College Street intersection. A short section of College Street ran down a steep slope, right to the old back gates of Rose Arbor. No one traveling down Riverside in the dark would notice a car parked at the base of that slope in front of the gates.

  She locked the doors and jumped lightly up on top of the long solid wall, hopped down and jogged back to the mausoleum.

  She went inside and pulled the screwdriver out of her bag, inserting the handle between the door and the door jamb to allow herself enough of a handhold to get back out, just in case there was a hidden lock she didn’t know about. She pushed the door closed and trained the flashlight first on the camping lantern. She turned the camping lantern on and turned the flashlight
off. Then she pulled out the straight-backed chair from the small table and positioned it so she’d be the first object in his line of vision.

  She sat. And waited.

  The hands of the clock moved, the battery power measuring the minutes and seconds. Her gaze moved in a steady pattern: Paul’s face, the clock, Paul’s face. 7:00. 7:02. 7:05. 7:06, 7:07, 7:08….

  He stirred and raised one arm over his head, stretching, just as she did when she woke. His eyes opened.

  The silence lengthened. Then Ria spoke. The words weren’t original but she thought them appropriate, all the same.

  “Dr. Devlin, I presume?”

  Chapter Twelve

  He sat up, throwing his long legs over and out of the satin that lined the coffin. He stood.

  “How the hell did you find me?”

  “Long story.”

  “I’d love to hear it.”

  “Not as much as I’d love to hear yours, buddy.”

  He laughed suddenly, the laugh that had so delighted her in the time they’d spent together the prior night.

  “Did you know last night?”

  “Let’s say I had a real strong suspicion. Do we talk here? Or take a stroll?”

  “You know, I most generally do a few things when I first get up. Change my shirt and brush my hair. You know, personal things like that.”

  “So change your shirt and brush your hair. I’ve seen a man’s chest before,” Ria assured him. Including yours, she thought, though she wasn’t going to tell him that. Yet.

  He threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Or in other words, you’re not going to let me out of your sight, are you?”

  “Not for the next few hours, no.”

  “But I could, you know. Very easily. Get out of your sight.”

  “And that surprises me not why? Because I’m all surprised out, you think? But it doesn’t matter. Because I know where you are and I don’t think it’d be real easy for you to move. And I will cheerfully haunt the holy hell out of you, just like you’ve haunted me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Long story. Do your thing if you want to hear it.”

  He smiled and crossed to the chest of drawers. He pulled out a fresh shirt that smelled of April Fresh Downy. Ria closed her eyes and shook her head. Surrealism, much? His back was to her as he unbuttoned the shirt he was wearing. Her story was undoubtedly shorter than his. She might as well get it out of the way.

  “I live in your house,” she said. “On Orange Street.”

  He turned around, hand poised on the last button, and stared at her.

  “My house, did you say?”

  She scarcely heard him as she stared at his chest, the hard chest she’d seen before in the Devlin bedroom as he stripped his shirt off and tossed it aside. But it hadn’t looked like this.

  “Oh, my God, Paul!” She stood up and moved to him, her hand outstretched. She caught herself before her fingers traced the lines of scar tissue on the huge X forming the cross mark on his chest. They ran from his shoulders to his abdomen, intersecting above the navel. Never, never, had she seen cuts so deep, so wide, that had healed unstitched. She didn’t know how they’d healed unstitched. Surely, anyone with cuts this bad would have—

  “You bled to death. Didn’t you?”

  “Well, actually I did, but not from these. Though I would have.”

  “What happened?”

  “Here, let me get changed. We’ll go outside and talk.”

  He moved rapidly, yanking a fresh pullover shirt down over his head. He grabbed the silver hairbrush and ran it through his hair.

  “Let’s get you out of here,” he said, and took her arm. He laughed as he bent over to retrieve the screwdriver pressed into service as a doorstop.

  “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time,” she said.

  “Very resourceful. That’s you in a nutshell. Very resourceful. I—are you chilly? Breeze off the river has a lot of fall in it tonight.”

  “A little. I guess I wasn’t thinking about being outside after dark.”

  “Wait a minute. And don’t panic, I’m not running out on you. Be right back.”

  She expected him to reopen the door, but he didn’t. He just disappeared. One minute he was there. The next, he was gone. And just as rapidly, he was back, with something over his arm and something else in his hand.

  “How—what—how did you do that?”

  “Thought you were all surprised out.”

  “Well, saying it and then seeing that—”

  “I call it casting out. I just empty my mind and think about where I want to be, and there I am. Here, could you take these?”

  She held out her hands and took the two wine goblets he held. He retained possession of the wine bottle and she saw a light jacket tossed over his arm.

  “There’s a spot I like very much down by the riverbanks. And I think this should keep you warm enough,” he said, moving his arm slightly to indicate the jacket.

  Ria looked down at the glasses in her hand. They had the feel of fine crystal. “How old are these?”

  “I don’t know exactly. They were my grandmother’s.”

  Ria immediately slowed and began to feel for irregularities in the grass before she stepped. “I’m stumbling around in the dark carrying two hundred year old crystal?”

  Paul laughed. “Grandmama’d be pleased to see them put to use.”

  “Don’t you need a jacket or something?” Ria asked.

  “No. I mean, I know it’s getting a bit nippy. I know when it’s cold and I know when it’s hot. But the cold and the hot don’t bother me. Here we are. Can you see?”

  Paul stopped on a mound overlooking the Ocmulgee River. The lights of the city played over to their left, and directly in front of them, the lights of I-75 burned brightly. The headlights of the passing cars swept past them, moving rapidly.

  “How beautiful!”

  “Isn’t it?” He sat the wine bottle down and reached for the glasses. Then he sat himself, bracing his back against the base of a marble statute that stood on the hill. He gestured for her to join him and draped his jacket over her shoulders, along with his arm. He pulled her gently back and settled her comfortably against his shoulder as if they’d known each other for years.

  “And now,” he said, “now that you’re a captive, explain, please. Just how in the hell did you know a man named Paul Devlin ever existed? And why you’re not screaming in terror to find out he still does.”

  She did, leaving nothing out. He sat in silence as she wound down her explanations.

  “Well?” Ria asked, when she could stand the silence no longer. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  He sighed. Then he gave a soft laugh.

  “And I thought my cover story was such a good one.”

  “Oh, but it was! I mean, it is! Nobody else would ever have doubted a thing you said. Nobody.”

  “Except you.”

  “Except me.”

  “You being the type of girl who watches dead people live and then goes to the library to look them up. You know, most sane people would’ve run out of the house screaming. What’s the current phrase? Oh, yes! ‘What planet are you from, anyway?’”

  “Oh, you were easy to find. You just have to know where to look.”

  Paul shook his head. “You just don’t get it, do you? You’ve been watching dead people live, Ria. And you never turned a hair. And tonight. It just didn’t occur to you that it might not be the smartest thing in the world to sit there and watch me wake up? Knowing what I am?”

  “Well, it’s a little hard to be scared of a man you’ve watched cry over his wife’s things. And anyway, I don’t know what you are.”

  Paul raised one eyebrow. “You don’t? C’mon, Ria Knight. Tell me another one.”

  “But I don’t, not exactly,” she protested. “I mean, I know what you seem to be, what you’re closest to, but so many things don’t fit. After all, you ate and drank and you never so much as gl
anced at my jugular vein—”

  “Certainly I did. It’s amazing, just like everything else about you.”

  “Paul.”

  “Sorry. You know, when I was in medical school—you said you knew from the old society registers that I studied in Scotland?”

  He felt her nod against his shoulder.

  “Well, since it was too far to come home to America during holidays, I used to ‘holiday’ in London. That’s what the English call it, going on holiday. Lord, I loved London. Anyway, there was one type of little book they used to sell at the bookstalls called ‘penny dreadfuls’. Forerunner of today’s horror novels, you know, like Stephen King, Dean Koontz—”

  “Robert Bloch, Ramsey Campbell, Rick McCammon, Clive Barker, John Saul, Graham Masterson. I’m addicted.”

  “You who read Shakespeare because it’s soothing?”

  “I am a lady of many and varied tastes and talents.”

  “You don’t say,” Paul said dryly. “Anyway, they were full of monsters. Werewolves and goblins and ghouls and vampires. I’ve thought of them often over the years, poor misbegotten creatures.” He smiled slightly and continued. “There was a time, long ago, when I did stalk prey and guzzle blood.”

  He felt her start against him. “Oh, not for a long time. And not human, never—well, except for—no, I stand with that, never human. Not all creatures who walk upright on two legs are human, even if they look it. But the woods are full of prey.”

  “And you don’t now?” Ria hesitated. “But if you are what you seem to be, don’t you need it? Sometimes?”

  “I did at first. But I learned to control that need. And I hunted less and less and finally, one night, I just decided I wouldn’t. And if that decision did destroy me,” he shrugged, “small loss to anyone. But it didn’t.”

  “So all the old legends are like you. A curious blend of truth and fancy. The blood’s an addiction and not a necessity?”

  “Oh, it’s a necessity. At first. But it can be overcome.”