by Edward Lee
Why do I feel haunted today? He shook it off, knocked, and was welcomed by a stoop-shouldered man who had to be eighty.
“You must be Inspector Vernon,” the voice cragged. “Do come in. I’m Professor Fredrick.”
“Thanks for agreeing to see me, sir.” Vernon stepped in, his briefcase tugging his arm. At once he stood surrounded by what he might expect of an archaeologist’s abode: walls lined floor to ceiling with books and assorted statues, busts, and old stone nicknacks. Smells like a museum, he thought.
Fredrick walked with difficulty, requiring a cane. Vernon frowned when he noted that the cane’s brass head looked identical to the half-formed face of the door knocker. Its tip snapped along the bare wood floor.
“I thank God,” the old man chuckled, “the man below me is deaf. Have a seat.”
“Thanks.” Vernon sat in an armchair angled before a cluttered desk backed by huge computer screens filled with text. “I can see you’re busy, sir. I hope this isn’t too much of an inconvenience. When Dr. Aured recommended you, he mentioned you were working on a book.”
When Fredrick sat down, either his chair or his bones creaked. “Not busy enough. I’m too old to teach during the summer sessions anyway. We all must pursue our immortality, eh?” He lit up a sweet-smelling pipe. “This book on Daco-Roman Romania is one I’ve meant to write for thirty years but, lo, other things kept popping up.”
Romania, Vernon thought. He got out his notes, and suddenly felt foolish. Home of Vlad the Impaler. “Romania, yes, sir. Dr. Aured said you were an expert on Romanian history.”
Fredrick, in spite of his age, had a full head of black hair that didn’t look dyed. “Oh, I’m an expert, all right. I almost died thanks to that blasted country. Earthquake. Southern Romania lies on a fault line. They get serious earthquakes every fifty years or so. The worst one occurred in 1977, and I was unlucky enough to be there at that precise time. A rectory wall collapsed during the tremor, and crushed my leg.” He absently raised his cane. “It took years to heal.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Vernon said for lack of anything else.
Fredrick smiled aloofly, puffing the pipe. “I suppose I was lucky. My teaching assistant was killed instantly.” He pointed to an old framed picture of a chubby young woman in boots and field dress, with a burgeoning bosom. “Her name was Janice, a lovely girl. At least she died in the midst of her dream.”
“Her dream?”
“It had been her lifelong goal to see Snagov Monastery, a most unique place in the annals of fifteenth-century European history.” Now the old man’s smiled turned sardonic. “It was also the final resting place of the man we’ve come to know as the historical Dracula.”
Vernon looked back at him; he suddenly felt hollow. He cleared his throat, then showed the old man his notes and began to explain his dilemma…
(II)
“Sure, we’d love to,” Britt said in the cab. “It’s the weekend, and your house is a lot better suited for a get-together than ours. We’ll pick up where we left off last night.”
Before I screwed it all up by overreacting about that damn bowl or centerpiece or what ever it is, Cristina thought. This would be a chance to make it up to them by having them spend the night again.
Britt whispered, mindful of the cabdriver. “And there’s something about your house that lights a fire under Jess’s butt. You know. Sexually.”
Cristina smiled. “Good. And thanks for lunch. I’d never been to Four Seasons before. I just wish I could remember where I put that gorgeous dress you gave me.” Cristina had given up looking for it, and worn a nice Gianni summer dress. “I could’ve sworn I unpacked it and put it in the closet.”
“You’ll find it.” Britt looked forward, to the street signs. “I actually have to go home for a few hours, though. I want to call the office and do some e-mails. But what time to night?”
“Just come over when you feel like it. Jess and Paul are bringing pizza when they’re done golfing.”
“Which means they probably won’t be back till seven or eight. Those guys spend more time in the ‘nineteenth hole’ than on the course.”
A sudden distraction infused itself in Cristina as the cab drove on. A bright, hot day passed before her, the city bustling with life. A high billboard showed three beautiful women on a beach, an ad for Victoria’s Secret bikinis, yet the colors of the beachwear were black, green, and red. It reminded her unpleasantly of the night she’d scrawled the same colors on her own body while blacked out. What would compel me to do something so bizarre? she stressed to herself. When she briefly closed her eyes, she saw the three women but now they stood not on a beach but in a dark stone room, naked, their flawless bodies streaked with the same colors. At the corner, then, she glimpsed a black-clad figure in some kind of hood.
A nun?
Cristina squinted forward but saw that it was merely an old woman in a cloak.
“What’s with you?” Britt asked. “You in the twilight zone?”
Cristina flinched out of it, smiling as if all were normal. “No, I was just thinking.”
“Not about that damn centerpiece, I hope.”
“No, no…”
“Did you have the dream again?”
“Miraculously, no. Don’t remember dreaming anything last night, which is surprising ’cos I guess I was really worked up when we found that thing.”
“All that means is you’re getting accustomed to the new house, and your new life here.”
Yes, Cristina felt sure.
They exchanged farewells when the cabbie dropped Britt off at her townhome, then continued on with Cristina. “Just drop me here, please. I’d like to walk,” she said when the cabbie stopped at a traffic light. He seemed about to thank her for an ample tip but was sidetracked when his gaze raked across her bosom in the low-cut dress. Jeez. Drool, why don’t you? But more male heads turned when she proceeded down the street. I guess it’s just a sexist world, she thought, and then noticed more high billboards sporting attractive women with sexual glints in their eyes. Everything’s sex these days.
Why was her mood being mauled? Maybe I SHOULD take Prozac, she considered. She should be looking forward to to night instead of wilting from the glances of others. It only means I’m attractive, so I guess I should be grateful.
“A beautiful woman for a beautiful day,” cracked a voice, and suddenly a hot dog was thrust before her.
“Thank you,” she muttered, halfheartedly, “but I just had lunch.” It was the vendor she saw so often now, who always had a cigar stump crimped between his teeth.
“Have a wonderful day,” he offered, “because it’s a wonderful world, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” she replied and hustled away. Maybe it’s me, she considered next. Maladapted—that was a word Britt used sometimes to characterize most of her cases at social services. Maybe I’M the maladapted one. That vendor was just wishing me well, but I immediately think it’s just lust.
The bleak self-analyses collapsed when she spotted a big poster in the comic shop window. Now THERE’S something to be happy about! The poster bragged of the release of the first four Evil Church Creepies, while a piece of tape informed: SOLD OUT! MORE ON ORDER. Suddenly her day felt reborn. I’m pretty successful for someone so…maladapted! A brisker pace took her down the street, and just as her happiness grew to full awareness, she slowed at the corner and—
Is that Father Rollin?
Another figure in black caught her eye, though not a woman and not becloaked. A priest with the same looks and build as Father Rollin approached the elegant front doors of the Ketchum Hotel. She stared after him as pedestrians swept by on either side. When the crowd cleared, the priest was already inside.
Why is he going in there when he lives right across the street?
A giggling sound, almost like chirping, caused her to spin around. Another throng of pedestrians were crossing the street but between the intermittent gaps, Cristina thought she saw two girls peeking at
her from an alley entrance. Those homeless girls? she wondered. She stood on tiptoes, glared between heads, but then the crowd cleared and no one remained in the entrance.
This day keeps tipping up and down. She took off her high heels and power-walked back to the house.
Once inside, she felt yet another distraction: the house’s silence seemed all-consuming, a great dead space, and in spite of the air-conditioning, her skin prickled with heat. She stepped out of her dress right there in the foyer, then glimpsed herself in the bar mirror near the hall. She looked back at herself, noticing with a slight shock that she was naked. I never leave the house without pan ties on! Yet she couldn’t remember making the decision not to wear them. Sweat glistened on her face, breasts, and stomach. I must be under the weather, she concluded; now she felt burning up. When she checked the answering machine, she didn’t even smile at Bruno’s enthusiastic messages declaring that the first four figures in the Evil Church line were out of stock via preorders, and even after only a day or two reorders were pouring in, especially for the Noxious Nun.
Cristina walked listless to the bedroom, closed all the drapes to make it as dark as possible, and collapsed on the bed.
(III)
Laura “cooped” in the middle of her shift. Cooping was security-guard parlance for sleeping on the job. But why not? Her rounds were all made. Just a nap, she told herself, stretching out on the couch in the old employees’ lounge. Half-drowsing, she smiled at the knowledge that not only had she gotten a lot of shut-eye on this couch, but she’d made love with a number of men. All on the clock. Each time she nodded off, however, some dream-snippet would shove her back to wakefulness, along with a jolt in her heart.
Was it a naked woman she saw in the flash, with fangs?
Jesus …
And in the next drowse—
Shit!
—she bolted wide awake because she thought she heard a voice.
Just more dream shit, she concluded. The words had sounded foreign and accented, whispered by a woman.
Get a catnap. I’m working a sixteen-friggin’-hour shift …
Her eyes slowly closed again; she felt fogged in darkness, then saw a great white wash of blood behind her eyes and—
“Singele lui traieste …”
“Damn it!” She sat upright, her attempts to “coop” ruined. What the hell is this? Had she heard the words in her head, or for real?
She looked immediately at the old boiler room door…
Sounded like it…came from there.
When she pushed herself off the couch, her hand accidently slipped between two cushions, and touched something metallic. Couldn’t be, she challenged herself when she flipped the cushion up.
There, amid nameless food crumbs, petrified french fries, and an old porno novel that looked thirty years old, lay a metal ring full of keys.
No way, she felt convinced; then her jaw dropped when she saw one key marked BOILER ROOM.
“I do not believe this,” she said aloud when she turned the key and heard the bolt release.
She pushed the door open and almost gagged at the sour stench that drifted out. Probably dead rats. She’d smelled that on many different job sites. She flicked the wall switch but nothing happened, then checked the circuit breaker near the couch. How do you like that? All of the circuits for the building were on, save for one slot—BOILER ROOM—whose breaker had been removed. Laura grabbed her flashlight out of her bag, snapped it on, and stepped into the black doorway.
Were her batteries weak? It seemed that with each step, the surrounding darkness sucked away at the flashlight’s beam. The smell was revolting. She saw boxes filled with garbage and stubby candles burned down. Hypes, she guessed. Heroin addicts would sneak into closed buildings just to heat up their works and shoot up. But if so, how would they get in here? There’s no exterior door.
She turned the corner, then, and the door slammed behind her.
Laura held her ground, even as the flashlight beam grew undeniably deficient. Keep cool. Don’t freak out. Now the light’s intensity seemed to pitch up and down. She grabbed her Mace with her other hand. Get out of the room, there might be someone in here, was her first thought.
Her second thought, less than wisely, was to proceed.
She took several more steps, then turned a cinderblock corner.
Laura was a gutsy girl, but not this gutsy. When the meager thread of the flashlight beam crawled upward—
“Singele lui traieste…”
—she screamed, staring right into the face of the woman whose image had marauded her sleep. The woman stood gloriously naked, full breasts thrust forward. Her hands, first, bid the rest of the filthy room, then extended toward Laura.
Oh my God oh my God oh my God! her thoughts shrieked as she swept the flashlight to turn but saw slivers of more faces: pallid women grinning like the nude woman, then the faces of corpses somehow mounted in the darkness.
One of the faces was George Gemser’s, besmirched with streaks of black, green, and red…
A piece of rebar knocked Laura’s Mace away, and then the atrocious room’s darkness exploded with a cackling as dirty hands shot forward, grabbed her, and dragged her down.
Accented words fluttered: “Me enamourer…for infinitum.”
Laura was being mauled, bitten, beaten about the head with the rebar. Her struggles didn’t last long. Just before her consciousness would be knocked out of her, she saw the nude woman’s face closer this time, her grin wider and sporting long, thin fangs.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
(I)
“Man, Paul, I’m sorry,” Jess babbled at the golf course. “I fucked up, I really fucked up.”
Paul smiled cockily. “What are you talking about? Those lease arbitrations?”
“No, no, man.” They walked into the bar at the nineteenth hole, Jess having arrived too late to play at all. “The bowl.”
“The—oh, the centerpiece our nutty girlfriends saw fit to dig out of the basement?” Paul laughed and ordered drinks at the bar. “What, you dropped it?”
“No, man.” Jess worriedly pushed his hair off his brow. “It…got ripped off.” And then he explained the bizarre encounter with the woman who’d masqueraded as the jewelry appraiser. “The cunning bitch even stole my wallet.”
Paul sipped his drink. “I’ve heard screwy things before, Jess, but not that screwy. How would this woman even know you’d called for an appraisal? She would’ve had to know in advance since she arrived before the real appraiser.”
“You got me.” Jess downed his beer in two slugs, then ordered another. “I figure she was either standing right outside my office when Ann called, or maybe she overheard the information from the jeweler’s office.”
Paul frowned at him. “That’s ridiculous, Jess.”
“Don’t you think I know that? But I can’t think of any other way she could’ve known about it.”
Paul chuckled. “So, what, you were sitting there and this ‘woman who looked like a bum but in a fancy dress’ picked up the bowl and walked out with it? And your wallet? With you sitting there?”
“Not…exactly.” Jess shook his head. “She kind of…tried to seduce me, I guess ’cos I refused to sell it to her.”
“And?”
“And, well, she took me back in my office—the bowl was on Ann’s desk—and, well, you know, she, uh—”
Paul stared incomprehending.
“She blew me,” Jess whispered.
Paul almost spat out his drink.
“Then, uh,” Jess continued, “she left. I went to the bathroom, and—”
“She ripped off the bowl while you were getting your Johnson back in your slacks,” Paul finished.
“Yeah.”
“After hearing that, I need another drink.” Paul gave Jess the eye. “If I didn’t know you better I’d say you sold the bowl for a bundle, and are bullshitting me about the rest.”
“Hey, I’m a lawyer, not a thief.”
�
�Meaning?”
“I’d never steal from a close friend.”
Paul just laughed out loud and shook his head.
Jess looked dismayed. “Man, I thought you’d be pissed at me.”
“About that dumb-ass thing? I’m glad it got ripped off.”
“Glad?”
“Sure. There was a bad vibe about it—whatever it was. Cristina’s off-balance enough as it is, that thing just made her worse—I don’t need something else twisting her out of shape. For a while I think she believed she’d dreamed about the fucking bowl before she actually saw it for real.”
“Women,” Jess muttered.
“Like they say, can’t live with ’em…”
“I’ll drink to that,” Jess said. “But what should I say when they ask about the appraisal?”
“I’ll bet you the pizza tab they’re both at the house now half-plastered on mimosas. They’ll forget all about it.”
(II)
“Well,” Vernon said after explaining the case and augmenting it with Dr. Aured’s less-than-serious insinuations. “You’re not frowning, you’re not laughing, and you haven’t thrown me out yet.”
“It’s…interesting,” Professor Fredrick remarked. He had the habit of sometimes making comments with his eyes closed and face raised, as if in a muse. “Fascinating, actually.”
“Come on, Dr. Aured said the same thing, but he did laugh at me. Vlad the Impaler?”
“It’s not that uncommon, is it, or have I watched too many murder movies? Copycats. That’s what you call them, right?”
“Over the past few days, I’ve been forced to think along the same lines, sir,” Vernon chuckled. “I feel a little bit more assured now.”
“Why?”
“Because, like I said, you haven’t thrown me out and dismissed me as a nut.”
“There’s nothing ‘nutty’ about the historical figure known as Vlad Tepes,” Fredrick intoned, serious and also at odds with something. “And part of his name really was Dracula; he actually signed his name as such. Vladislaus Dracula is the phonetic equivalent. As for your copycat murderers, however, I’m a little mystified. Homeless women, you say? Inspector, it would take someone who’s quite adept at historical research to perpetrate these crimes to such detail. Not the impalements themselves—everybody knows that Vlad engaged in this atrocity quite without restraint. But the colors—your average ‘Dracula fanatic’ would have to dig deep for that accuracy, not just the colors but the order of the colors. And then the words themselves—they’re even more disturbing.” He looked back at Vernon’s notes, toking his pipe. “I’m sure the good Dr. Aured informed you that these sentences seem to be Vulgar Latin peppered with Saxon, Old English, Finno-Ugris, and others.” And then the professor paused. “Tara flaesc Wallkya,” he uttered under his breath. He seemed coerced by a studied enthusiasm. “Molested aspects of Latin.”
