“Oh…” He was tired of staying in the house, he wanted to get out and run in the cold wind with the snow crunching underfoot, and maybe he wouldn’t even need any shoes either. Sure would be nice to do a belly-flop down the Slope. “Okay,” he said excitedly. “Okay! I’ll come out!”
The girl nodded. “Hurry!” she said.
And suddenly a strange thing happened. There was a pretty chocolate-colored lady standing beside him, gripping his arm. She leaned forward and blew on the window, instantly fogging it. Then she drew a Cross in the fogged part with her forefinger and mumbled something: “Nsambi kuna ezulu, nsambi kuna ntoto!”
Wesley Richer said, “Huh?”
The little girl beneath the window screamed piercingly, her face contorting into a gray mask of horror. Instantly it all changed—Massey Pond and Frosty Slope and all the distant figures skating and sledding whirled out of Wes’s brain like cobwebs caught in a high wind. The little girl staggered backward, gnashing her teeth. Solange shouted, “GET AWAY!” and fogged the window again, drawing another Cross and repeating the incantation again, but this time in English, “God is in Heaven, God is in Earth!”
The little girl hissed and spat, her back arching like a cat’s. Then she ran across the lawn toward the wall. When she reached it, she turned and screamed, “I’ll get you for that! I’ll make you pay for hurting me!” And then she scrambled over the wall, her bare legs the last thing to disappear.
Wes’s knees sagged. Solange caught him and helped him back to the bed. “What is it?” he said. “What happened?” He looked up at her through glazed eyes. “Gonna go skate,” he said. “Snow fell last night,”
She put the sheet over him and smoothed it down. She was shaking so hard her teeth were chattering. “No, no,” she said softly. “You had a dream, that’s all.”
“A dream?” He looked at her and blinked. “Dick Marx lives across the street, that’s who.”
“Go to sleep,” Solange told him, and in another moment his eyes closed. She stood over him until his breathing was even and deep, and then she returned to the window. The pine trees moved fitfully, as if the dull terror that gripped at her soul gripped the soul of Nature as well. She wasn’t certain what the thing had been, but she knew from its violent reaction to the Cross and the name of God—a powerful talisman in all languages—that it was something terribly evil. She recalled with a shudder the messages from the spirit world as spoken through the Ouija board. Evil. They thirst. Evil. They thirst. She drew a chair up before the window and sat down to meditate. She did not move again before daylight.
THREE
“You want another cup of coffee, Miss Clarke?”
Gayle looked up. She was huddled on a bench in the main corridor of the Hollywood police precinct building where she’d been brought hours before, after she’d crumbled in hysterics in front of the officer who’d stopped her for reckless driving. She thought she might have fallen asleep for a few minutes or passed out because she hadn’t heard the patient desk sergeant named Branson come up behind her. She didn’t want to sleep; she was afraid of it because she knew she’d see Jack coming for her in her nightmares, those burning eyes set in a bleached skull, the fangs in his mouth making him look like some strange hybrid between man and dog. She shook her head, refusing the coffee, and hugged her knees to her chin. Her hand had been cleaned and bandaged, but the fingers still throbbed, and she wondered if she would have to get rabies shots.
“Uh…Miss Clarke, I don’t think you have to stick around here anymore,” the desk sergeant said. “I mean, I appreciate the company and all, but you can’t stay here all night.”
“Why not?”
“Well, why should you? You’ve got a place to live, don’t you? I mean, it’s quiet in here right now, but later on we’re going to have hookers, hustlers, pimps, junkies, all kinds of low-life stumbling in here. You don’t want to be around all that, now do you?”
“I don’t want to go home,” she said weakly. “Not yet.”
“Yeah, well…” He shrugged and sat down on the bench beside her, making a big deal out of checking a scuff mark on his shoe. “It’s safe for you to go home,” he said finally without looking at her. “Nothing’s going to get you.”
“You don’t believe me either, do you? That first dumb clod didn’t believe me, neither did your lieutenant, and you don’t either.”
He smiled faintly. “What’s to believe or not believe? You told us what you saw, and it was checked out. The officers found a lot of empty apartments and a couple of dogs running around…”
“But you’ll admit it was goddamned strange that all those apartments were unlocked at eleven o’clock at night, won’t you? That’s not common in Hollywood, is it?”
“Who knows what’s common or uncommon in Hollywood?” Branson said quietly. “The rules change every day. But this stuff about your boyfriend being some kind of…what did you say he was? Vampire or werewolf?”
She was silent.
“Vampire, didn’t you say? Well, couldn’t he have been wearing a Halloween mask maybe?”
“It was no mask. You people have overlooked the most important point—what happened to all those people in that apartment complex? Did they all step off into the Twilight Zone or something? Where are they?”
“That I wouldn’t know anything about.” Branson said, getting to his feet. “But I’d suggest you go on home now, huh?” He moved back toward his desk, feeling her stare boring into the back of his neck. Of course, he hadn’t told her that Lieutenant Wylie was over at the Sandalwood Apartments right now with a team of officers, going over every room with vacuum cleaners and roping the place off from the street. Branson could tell that Wylie was more than a little worried. When Wylie’s left eyebrow started to tick, that was a sure sign something was cooking. This Clarke woman had answered all the questions she could, and she’d put some questions of her own to the officers, who of course couldn’t come up with any decent answers. Wylie had told him emphatically to get rid of her since she was a real thorn in the ass. Branson sat behind his desk, shuffled papers, and stared at the telephone, wishing it would ring with a good old-fashioned robbery or mugging. This vampire shit was for the birds. No, he decided, make that for the bats.
FOUR
Awaken, the voice whispered. Mitch Gideon heard it quite clearly. But he didn’t have to open his eyes because they were already open; his head simply seemed to jerk backward, and his vision cleared as if he’d been looking through frosted glass. It took him a moment to fully realize where he was. When he did, the shock of it almost staggered him.
He was standing in the entrance foyer of the Gideon Funeral Home Number Four on Beverly Boulevard near CBS Television City. Behind him the heavy, chrome and oak doors stood wide open to the street; a cold breeze was rushing in around him. He heard a noise like the tinkling of Chinese wind chimes and looked to his side—he was holding his key ring with the key that unlocked the front doors still grasped between his thumb and forefinger. He was wearing brown bedroom slippers and his brown velour robe with the initials “MG” on the breast pocket over his usual white silk pajamas. I’m in my pajamas? he asked himself incredulously. What the fuck’s going on here? Am I dreaming, hypnotized, or what?
Overhead a huge chandelier with electric candles lit up the entrance foyer with a rich, golden glow. He didn’t remember flicking the wall switch. Damn! he thought, I don’t remember anything since I got into bed beside Estelle at…what time had that been? He looked at his wrist but knew his watch was sitting on the chest of drawers in the master bedroom where he put it every night before going to sleep. He felt like shouting the two questions aloud: What am I doing here? And how the hell did I get down from Laurel Canyon to Beverly Boulevard in my sleep for Christ’s sake?
Gideon turned and walked back out of the building into the parking lot. There sat his Lincoln Continental in the space marked, “Mr. Gideon Only.” But there was another vehicle in the parking lot as well—a large U-Haul truck.
He stepped closer to it but didn’t see anyone sitting in the cab. And when he looked back at the Tudor-style funeral home, he saw a light burning in a window on the upper floor. My office, he realized. Have I been up there working? How did I get out of the house? By sleepwalking? Didn’t Estelle hear me leave? He seemed to remember being behind the wheel of his car, the hot splash of headlights and traffic signals on his face, but he’d thought that was only a dream. He was grateful that tonight he wasn’t dreaming of that conveyor belt full of coffins where the workmen were beginning to grin at him as if he were one of their own. His brain felt feverish and violated, as if someone or something had peeled back the top of his head and gone to work in there, fitting him with a wind-up key that could be turned to send him spinning madly in any chosen direction.
He whirled around and stared into the dark distance. It was that goddamned house, he thought suddenly, that castle where some maniac had sawed Orlon Kronsteen’s head off. The place was preying on his mind, intruding into his thoughts both day and night, making him crazy. He thought he could see the castle even now outlined against the darkness in bloodred neon. Crazy, he thought, I’m going fuckin’ crazy!
And from the corner of his eye, he saw the light go off in his office. Gideon stared at the black window, his heart beating rapidly. Chill bumps had risen on his arms and legs beneath the silk pajamas. My God, he thought. Oh, my God…did I unlock the doors for someone else? He walked back across the parking lot to the building’s threshold. The only sound in the entire funeral home seemed to be the ticking of a large grandfather clock at the far end of the central corridor where a wide marble staircase with black, cherrywood banisters curved gracefully up to the second floor. Gideon moved along that corridor until he could make out the hands on the clock—two-ten. He’d closed his eyes in his own bedroom at just after twelve o’clock.
From somewhere upstairs there came a muffled, soft thump. Gideon knew what that sound was from years of hearing it—the noise of a coffin lid closing, probably in the first of the three display rooms. He came to the end of the corridor, the grandfather clock ticking madly in his head. And he started up the long stairway, hand clenching the banister. There was another corridor on the second floor and several rooms on either side; at the corridor’s end a shorter stairway led up to the third floor and the administrative offices. Gideon’s searching hand found the wall switch, and instantly the corridor was lit by a dozen wall-mounted electric candles. On the first of the polished oak doors there was a golden plaque that said Blue Room, and underneath that in white plastic letters pressed against a black velvet background, Mr. William R. Tedford. Gideon opened the door and pressed another wall switch. A sapphire-colored chandelier blazed to life. Everything in the room was blue—walls, ceiling, carpet, sofa, and chairs. Blue flowers peeked from azure vases; a six-foot statue of a blue angel with unfolding wings stood in a corner; the guest book, powder blue, sat atop an indigo pedestal. But the room’s main fixture, supported on a royal blue dais, was a closed ebony coffin containing the remains of a certain Mr. Tedford.
From farther along the hallway came the quiet sound of a door closing. “Who’s there?” Gideon said, his voice sounding weak and defenseless in the thick silence. He stood where he was for a moment, listening, and then moved forward past the Gold Room, past the Green Room, past the Amber Room. He peered cautiously into the Red Room, switching on a chandelier that lit up the place like the center of an inferno. He could almost smell the sulphur and smoke. But then he saw that the coffin’s lid was propped open and, as he neared it, he realized with a start of alarm that the corpse—an elderly woman in a pale pink gown—was smoking a cigarette.
Or rather, a burning cigarette had been forced between the dead lips. It was almost out now because, of course, she wasn’t inhaling. A few ashes lay on her cheek, gray against artificial peach. Someone’s playing a joke, Gideon thought angrily as he plucked out the cigarette and tossed it aside. It’s not very funny. Not very funny at all!
He was answered by a single peal of laughter from one of the other display rooms. He went back out to the corridor, trembling, wanting to run but knowing he couldn’t hide. “Where are you?” he shouted. “What do you want with me?” There were two more rooms further along the hall—the Violet Room and the White Room. Gideon looked from door to door, his legs refusing to move. “What do you want?” he shouted again. “I’m going to call the police if you don’t get out of here!”
Dead silence.
Gideon threw open the door to the Violet Room. It crashed against the wall, knocking down a gilt-framed picture of purple flowers in a dark green and lilac field. He approached the coffin and looked in, recoiling instantly. The corpse—a shrunken old man with sharply protruding cheekbones—had been painted to look like a clown. There were red spots of lipstick covering his cheeks and the bulb of his nose, the lips had been painted bright red and the sewn-shut eyelids as well. Gideon slammed down the coffin’s lid and backed away into the corridor where he turned to face the White Room’s door.
He stepped inside, holding his breath in this place of glacial, heavenly whiteness. In this room, the most expensive and ornate of all the display rooms, even the coffin was white with gleaming, gold-plated trim. There was a white grand piano with gold-plated keys replacing the black ones, and a long, black-and-white checked sofa. Two tall, golden candelabra stood on either side of the coffin dais, each holding six electric candles that now guttered with golden light. But there was no one in here, no one at all. Gideon, bloated with relief, turned toward the door.
And then the ice-white coffin began to open.
He whirled around, a long whine beginning in his throat. The coffin’s lid rose, pushed by a bare arm. When it was fully open, the corpse sat up. It was a young Chicano boy with shining black hair, wearing a white T-shirt and dirty jeans. Gideon could see that he’d been lying on top of the other corpse in the coffin, a blue-haired society matron who’d kicked off in her sleep, and now the boy started to climb out of the coffin, his dark eyes transfixing Gideon. He reached out, felt the silk lining of the coffin, and grinned. “Real nice, man,” he said softly. “You know how to make ’em real good, don’t you?”
Gideon couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t think.
“Just trying it on for size, Mr. Gideon,” the boy said, his gaze flicking to the corner.
And the black-haired girl who’d been standing there leaped for Mitch Gideon’s throat.
FIVE
“Ah,” Prince Conrad Vulkan said softly, pressing his white fingers to his temple. He opened his green cat eyes and looked across the room at Phillip Falco. “There. Mitch Gideon is ours. We can begin mass production tomorrow night.”
“Sir, if you’ll allow me,” Falco began quietly, “you took a great risk in bringing him down from his home like that…”
“Risk? What risk?” Vulkan’s eyes moved, green marbles in a pallid face, toward his servant. “If the police had stopped him, he simply would have awakened from his trance. That’s all. We need the coffins; we need his factory. And what military leader in all of history has been a stranger to risks?” He sat motionless for a moment, then rose to his feet and moved across the stone-floored room to the huge fireplace. It was large enough to hold more than a cord of wood, but now only six or seven logs blazed in there, and the yellow-orange glow splashed across the vampire’s face. There were crates scattered about the room, some of them open, with old, rare books spilling out. Beautiful paintings, many of them cracked and faded but obviously the work of masters, hung on the walls along with delicate fragments of rotted tapestries. At the center of the room there was a large, blue and red Oriental carpet and a long, polished table on which sat a silver candelabra and eight guttering black candles. Before Vulkan’s black velvet chair were maps of L.A., Torrance, Glendale, Pasadena, Compton, and most of Orange and Los Angeles counties. Vulkan stared into the fire, his eyes glittering. Soon the servant who called himself Roach would be bringing him his food for the
night, and the prospect of drinking hot blood made him eager and impatient. He had missed his feeding last night because he felt it unwise to use that human again so quickly. He’d been reading the newspapers Falco brought to him, and he knew that it would be foolish to do something that would call needless attention to his servant. “Roach will be here soon,” he said, watching a log burst into flame. He pondered what had to be done tonight; fast or slow, that was the question.
“Master,” Falco said, stepping closer. “That man is dangerous. He takes chances. He’s going to cause you harm…”
“Why should you care?” the prince asked softly.
Falco paused for a moment, watching the slight figure dappled red and black by the flames. “I only mean to say, Master, that the police are bound to catch him sooner or later. I know you’ve chosen him because you found his mind most…receptive, but the time is coming for you to dispose of him. I could bring them for you. Why not let me?”
Vulkan turned toward the other man, smiling slightly. “Let you? Let you, Phillip? Time has used you all up. There’s nothing left of you. You’re old and weak, and the women would get away from you too easily. No. Roach is young, strong, and…new.” Vulkan regarded him in silence for a moment, then shook his head. “No, Phillip. If anyone causes me harm, it will be you. Won’t it?”
“Me?” A cold flame of terror flared in Falco’s soul. “I don’t understand what you’re—”
“Oh, yes, you do. It’s time to stop the charade. Do you think just because I sleep during the day I know nothing of what transpires? You sadly misjudge me, Phillip.” Vulkan’s voice had dropped to a soft, gentle whisper. “How unfortunate. The Headmaster visits me as I sleep, Phillip. He sees everything, even what hides in your heart and mind. That is how I know you’ve been thinking of betraying me…”