by J. R. Rain
And she was cold to the touch. Always so cold.
Edward had decided he needed to do something about it. He read up on how to kill a vampire. A silver stake or dagger, or anything silver and pointed through the heart.
Edward lapsed into brief silence and I saw the tears in his eyes. After a moment, he said, “I had loved this woman. I had been crazy about her. But something happened to her. Something wicked. And she seemed to welcome it, revel in it. And she was hurting people, too. I couldn’t confirm it, but I knew she fed each and every night. On whom, I did not know. On what, I couldn’t imagine.”
He took in a lot of air. We were down to our last few minutes. Already I saw the guard watching us. He would be coming in any minute now.
Edward continued. “More than anything, I sensed a great...evil coming through her. As if something very dark was now calling her body home. Maybe she could have fought it. I don’t know. But it was in her, and this thing didn’t give a damn about her, or anyone.”
“So you decided to kill her.”
“I had to kill her. To kill it.”
“So you used a silver butter knife?”
“Why not? A knife is a knife. It was heavy. Had a thick handle, long blade. I thought it had been pure silver.”
So one day, with the kids in school, he had come home for lunch from work. He had walked calmly into his bedroom, where his wife lay unmovingly on the bed, the curtains tightly drawn. When she slept, she rarely moved, and, in fact, rarely breathed, if at all. She was dead to the world, and he simply walked over to his nightstand, opened the top drawer, and removed the silver butter knife.
He had stepped to her side, where he looked down at the woman he had once loved with all his heart. He’d spent only a few seconds standing by her side, when he raised the knife, positioned it over her chest, and plunged it down as hard as he could.
Chapter Fourteen
The drive to and from San Quentin had taken all day.
It was late when I arrived back at Roxi’s apartment in Hollywood. She curled her naked body around me, resting her hand on my bare chest and her cheek on my shoulder. Her tan leg slid over my thighs, sending a shiver through me. I automatically curled my arm around her.
These days I didn’t have much interest in sex. But Roxi did. Enough for both of us. And even though she was only half asleep, I knew that she was giving me an opening. I patted her hip like I would a puppy and some of her electrified energy dissipated. A moment later she was snoring lightly.
Edward had gone on to describe some of the more gruesome details of his murder. Or attempted murder, as he put it.
His first stab didn’t kill her. In fact, seventy-two stabs later and she was still kicking, still fighting, until most of her blood finally drained down into the bed sheets. The silver plating had done enough to incapacitate her, but not enough to kill her. Edward was certain that had he tried to stab her with anything other than a silver knife, she would have killed him.
But she had lost enough blood to appear dead, enough to satisfy a medical examiner.
“But that’s not why you’re here, is it, Spinoza?” he asked, as I saw a guard coming toward us. “You’re here because she’s gone missing.”
“How do you know?”
“Call it a hunch. Be careful, Spinoza. Here be monsters.”
And that’s when the guard arrived and took him away. He went willing, but he kept his eyes on me until he was finally led out the heavy door.
* * *
I lay in bed with my hands behind my head.
I’ve been staying more and more at Roxi’s apartment. We’ve been dating now for about three months and, surprisingly, things were going well. Somehow, someway she put up with all my melancholy, shyness, and sometimes impotency. It’s a challenge to make love when your heart is shattered.
But Roxi was showing me something, albeit slowly and sometimes painfully. She was showing me how to love again, and for that I was eternally grateful.
Edward had told me something else, something he had overheard his wife say one night when she was talking to a group of her weird friends...friends, he suspected, that may or may not have been entirely human.
He had overheard his wife mention that another woman, another mother of two, had been attacked in Orange County, no doubt by the same vampire. Edward had vowed to hunt down this mother in Orange County, as well.
As I lay in bed, with Roxi curled up next to me, I briefly considered why a vampire would purposely turn two mothers into vampires. I decided rather quickly that I had no clue, but I made a mental note to keep an eye out for this mother of two in Orange County, whoever she was.
Times like these, I thought, are why people drink.
I rolled over and rested my hand on Roxi’s naked hip, smiled, and finally drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Fifteen
I awoke with a gasp in the middle of the night, after dreaming that a creepy caretaker, the coffin maker, had been watching me from the dark shadow’s of Roxi’s room.
At least, I hoped it was a dream.
I looked now and we were alone. Thank God. I lay my head back down on the pillow and pulled Roxi’s wonderfully warm body to me. She came willingly, mewing slightly in sleep, and I only grudgingly fell back to sleep with my eyes fastened on the far corner of the room. That is, until I could no longer keep my eyes open....
When I awoke in the morning, with Roxi still sleeping hard and the morning light creeping through the edges of the blinds, I knew where to go next.
To meet the one man who, I thought, might have heard the knocking, too. The one man who could have inconspicuously dug up Evelyn’s body.
The creepy caretaker, of course.
The man of my recent dreams.
I got dressed and hit Starbucks and was soon on my way to Forest Lawn just as the morning sun appeared in the east, over the Eagle Rock hills, and shining its morning glory.
I was acutely aware that as I awakened with a reasonably fresh cup of coffee, there might be a hidden race of the undead slipping now into a very deep and dark sleep.
* * *
Traffic was surprisingly brisk.
Shortly, I was driving through the open gates of Forest Lawn and over to the maintenance building located on the east side of the sprawling cemetery.
It was a Tuesday morning, and a handful of cars were parked here and there. As I parked and exited my car, a nearby Latino woman was walking slowly between the rows of grave markers with a small bouquet of flowers. She looked lost and grief-stricken.
I knew the feeling well, and, sister, it doesn’t go away.
The head groundsman was sitting at his desk, flipping through a thick stack of stapled papers. I caught the header of one such paper. It read “Lot 126” before he flipped to the next page. What he was going to do in Lot 126 was anybody’s guess, but I figured somebody was getting buried.
He looked up, saw me, and nodded. I never did catch his name, and there was no placard on the door nor was there one on his desk. He was, in my mind, just the caretaker. The uncreepy caretaker, although that might be an oxymoron.
“Still working the Case of the Missing Corpse, huh?” he asked.
“Maybe I was a Hardy Boy in a past life.”
He chuckled. “What can I do you for?” He sounded busy and rushed, and he wanted me to know it.
“Is Boyd around?”
He frowned at that, then jutted a thumb toward the back room. “He’s in the shop.”
“Building more coffins?”
“Always. But be quick. I need him outside soon.”
“Of course. Lot 126?”
His mouth was about to drop open until he looked at the stack of papers in front of him. “You’re good, Spinoza. Anyway, don’t be long.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Chapter Sixteen
The man must have been busy.
There were easily three or four more of the generic coffins stacked along the near wall. Boyd himself wa
s examining a length of wood when I entered the room. He looked up, saw me, and frowned. I get that a lot. Some people are happy to see me. Others, not so much. I casually shut the door behind me.
He leaned the long plank against a workbench and turned to face me. His overalls were covered with dirt. Where the dirt came from, I didn’t want to know. His blond hair was slightly askew and he could have been Gary Busey’s slightly more stable-looking brother. He was a big guy, with a thick chest and muscular arms. The kind of muscles one acquires from years of hammering and digging. Not all graveyard work, I suspected, was performed with backhoes.
“We need to talk,” I said.
He kept looking at me. I decided then that he wasn’t entirely there. Maybe it was the way his left eye seemed to not look directly at me, or the way the corner of his mouth kept twitching. Something was off about the man. Then again, he worked in a graveyard, building generic coffins all day. I think off was a given.
Since he hadn’t spoken and the twitching in his mouth seemed to only have gotten worse, I decided to continue on. As I spoke, I kept the work bench between us.
“I know what happened,” I said.
He tilted his head slightly, like a dog catching a far-off sound. I was suddenly all-too aware of the various armaments hanging from his tool belt. Most notable was the hammer and hand saw. The Batman utility belt for psychos.
I kept talking since he kept staring. His wandering right eye seemed to catch up, but that could have just been my imagination, or the shadows in the shop. I said, “It happened a few months ago. Or maybe even last year. You heard knocking. Perhaps you heard it in during your morning rounds. Or nightly rounds. Or anytime, really. Perhaps someone reported it. Either way, it all started with the knocking.”
He took a small step to the right, and I took one to the left, keeping the wide bench between us.
I continued, “You did what anyone would have. Well, most anyone. Probably most people would have reported it to their bosses. But you decided to act alone. Maybe out of curiosity. Maybe out of fear. Maybe for a reason I never want to know. But one night, with the park closed and the knocking persisting, you secretly dug up the grave.”
Something was going on with Boyd the coffin maker. He wasn’t looking so intimidating. Suddenly, he looked scared. The color had drained from his face and his eyes were now resting somewhere near my navel. Or, at least, one of them was.
I went on, “You kept digging as the knocking grew louder, as more and more earth was removed. No doubt you were terrified. I would have been, too. Anyone would have been. I would have shit my pants, truth be known. Many times over. I mean, something inside a buried fucking coffin was knocking.”
And now Boyd spoke for the first time, and his soft, timorous voice was as chilling as I expected it to be. “Do not use the Lord’s name in vain.”
“My apologies,” I said. But I continued on, finishing up a tale that Boyd had yet to deny. “And so you dug up the casket, using the backhoe in the middle of the night. You were risking your job. But your sanity was more important. So you dug and dug, and the deeper you got, the louder the knocking became. Perhaps you even began hearing a woman’s voice, screaming for help. You probably didn’t need to lift the casket out. In fact, I suspect the moment most of the dirt had been removed and the weight lifted from it, the lid was thrown open and a woman sat up.”
I waited for him to laugh. I waited for him to deny it. I waited for him to wield his handsaw like a psychopathic knight.
Instead, he sat heavily on a nearby stool—collapsing on it, actually—and covered his face with his hands.
Chapter Seventeen
I stopped by my apartment in Los Feliz before I headed out to the mansion.
My heart was racing. Sitting next to me was an-honest-to-God crossbow. Sitting next to it was a leather quiver containing three silver-tipped bolts. I happened to know first hand that these bolts were the real deal. Nothing silver-plated here.
With only a few slight variations to my story, Boyd had confirmed the crazy details. He had watched in stunned silence as the woman climbed awkwardly out of the casket and up to the surface. Her clean clothing was filthy by the time she stood on shaky legs. She had stared at Boyd blankly, and then she turned and stumbled through the graveyard, looking pale and impossibly thin. By Boyd’s estimation, she had been in the grave for three months.
It was mid-morning as I headed up Los Feliz Blvd. I considered calling Hammer, except I knew he would never believe me. I even considered calling the old man, Arron King, but I didn’t want to endanger him.
Boyd, an expert groundskeeper as well, had shut the now-empty coffin, re-covered it with the soil, and then carefully replaced the grass as well. This had happened 18 months ago, and he had never told another living soul his story.
My heart was beating steadily, loudly. Adrenaline was flooding my blood stream. A good thing, because I suspected I was going to need all my strength.
Traffic on Los Feliz was sick, but I knew some short cuts, and after winding my way through some back streets that bordered some truly impressive homes, I soon pulled up in front of the mansion. The same mansion I had been in just a few days earlier.
Where I had seen a woman who had looked like Evelyn Drake’s younger sister or cousin.
Only I was now certain she hadn’t been Evelyn’s younger sister.
I was certain it was her.
Evelyn Drake.
Back from the dead.
Chapter Eighteen
So how does one hide a crossbow in plain site?
Very carefully. The crossbow in question was smaller than most, designed to shoot shorter bolts. It had come into my possession last month after I had dealt with an author who not only wrote about the undead, but was also one of them. Method acting, as my theater friends would call it. Method writing, perhaps?
So I grabbed the emergency blanket I always kept folded on the back seat and wrapped it around the crossbow. At least no one would be calling the cops on the crazy guy walking up to the mansion carrying a medieval weapon.
At the door, I took in some air, listened to the all-pervasive silence, and then rapped loudly on the frosted glass.
I gripped the crossbow under the blanket while I waited.
* * *
Did I come here to kill a vampire? Hell, no. Was I protecting myself in case something very strange was going on? Hell, yes. And things only seemed to be getting stranger by the minute.
I heard footsteps well before anyone got to the door. That’s what happens when you have a massive home covered in polished marble flooring. The footsteps grew louder, appearing just behind the door, where they paused. No doubt I was being peeped at through the peep hole. I must have passed the peep test because a moment later the door clicked open.
“Mt. Spinoza,” said Mrs. Perkins. She tried to sound surprised but I knew a fake surprise when I heard one. A sort of unnatural rise in octave. Prior to life as a private eye, I had spent years investigating insurance claims—and frauds, too. I knew bullshit when I heard it. “What brings you back here?” she asked.
“I’d like to speak with you inside,” I said, “if you wouldn’t mind.”
Her eyes briefly darted up...up to where I knew a woman was hiding—and with this being daylight—no doubt sleeping. Her gaze settled back on me and she nodded reluctantly. “Okay, but please be quick about it. I have...some errands to run.”
I said I would, and she let me inside. I followed behind her, my blanketed arm behind my back. For now, she hadn’t noticed it.
She led me deeper into the mansion.
Chapter Nineteen
We were soon in the same wide-open living room.
She motioned for me take a seat on the couch, with my back to the hallway. She asked if I wanted a drink and I said no. She said she wanted some hot tea and I said fine. I recalled it had been 98 degrees outside and suspected I might have been hoodwinked.
When she left the room, I immediately switched
positions to an overstuffed chair-and-a-half that gave me a good view of anything approaching from the hallway. I also felt more comfortable with my back against a wall.
Vampires, I suspected, were sneaky.
My heart rate increased considerably while I waited. I adjusted my grip on the crossbow, which now rested in my lap, partially hidden by the chair’s overstuffed pillow. From my position in the living room, I couldn’t see the upstairs landing.
Mrs. Perkins returned five minutes later, carrying a steaming cup of tea.
“Now,” she said, as she sat on the couch across from me. “How can I help you, Mr. Spinoza?” She didn’t seem to notice that I had switched spots. If anything, she seemed very distracted.
I heard movement upstairs. Something heavy fell. I looked up at the sound, but Mrs. Perkins ignored it completely. Her demeanor was different this time around. Gone was the sour old lady, replaced now by something overly friendly.
And that’s when I noticed the white cloth wrapped around her neck; in particular, what appeared to be a splotch of blood.
“What happened to your neck, Mrs. Perkins?” I asked.
The question seemed to shock her. She jerked a little and sat up straighter. She reached for her neck but never quite touched it. “Oh, that?” Her strange, pleasant demeanor never wavered. “Oh, that was just a minor...thing I had removed at the doctor’s the other day.”