The Book of Common Dread

by Brent Monahan

  The crack of the gun was authentic, as was the disturbance of the Italian's tails, the rending of his dress shirt fabric and the blood that sprang out and besmirched it. Most terrifying was the man's recoil from the impact of the bullet and his cry of pain. The women screamed; a few of the men shouted out. A moment later, Petrie-Jones cried out as well and dropped the bucket.

  'I've been hit!" he said, his voice little more than a whisper.

  The Italian straightened up, looking a bit pale but miraculously fit considering his state. 'I'm fine,' he assured. 'Attend to your friend.'

  We found that Petrie-Jones had been struck in the forearm and the bullet lodged inside. He had felt the impact simultaneous with the firing of the gun and wondered aloud if it had not hit one of the Italian's rib bones and angled off course, missing the bucket and finding his arm. When we determined that Petrie-Jones would survive until we bore him to hospital, we turned our attention to the Italian, who stood over us as if a casual observer.

  'Taking a real bullet through one's body hardly qualifies one as a magician,' I snapped at him.

  'But it did not go through me,' di Bussolotti affirmed hotly. We told him he was ridiculous, that we clearly saw the evidence, no matter how bravely he stood before us. His coat was pierced in front and back, the rear hole in fact closer to his arm. In answer, he very slowly undressed, peeling off the coat and then unbuttoning the shirt. He wiped a cloth over his hairy chest, cleaning away the blood. 'See for yourself,' he invited.

  Examining as closely as gentlemanly decorum, the rather dark theatre and the shadows of his chest hairs allowed, all we found was a closed-in and red dimple of flesh where a gaping hole should have been.

  'The result of a first failure with the trick, a year ago,' di Bussolotti explained, as he attempted to close his damaged shirt.

  'Really?' David Devant asked. 'And may we see the damage to your back?'

  'You may not,' the man said. His face took on an angry pallor. 'You have seen no bullet wound beneath the front holes in my clothing; I stand before you as healthy as when I entered the stage. That is sufficient to hold you to your promise.'

  At that instant, a chilling premonition overcame me. 'Hold him, fellows!' I commanded. Five of our number, including myself, fell upon him and attempted to wrestle him to the floor. We found his power of resistance incredible, beyond that of two men his size. In the melee, his coat and shirt were again pulled away from his chest. To my astonished eyes, the supposedly old wound had formed over even more perfectly. Its angry red hue had faded to bright pink, and I could swear that the puckering of the skin had even smoothed somewhat. And then the creature was free, throwing the lot of us off him. But not before I had seen his prominent incisors. I knew then that my premonition was correct. We were auditioning not a man but a truly magical creature: a vampire!

  Quick as thought, the one who called himself di Bussolotti vaulted to the valves that controlled the gas lights. The theatre was plunged in darkness. Some of us found matches and struck them, but by that time the creature had moved with perfect ease across the pitch-black stage, reclaiming his box with the doll and disappearing out a side door.

  Afterward, my observations were held suspect, owing to the emotion of the moment. My theory was found to be, despite the evidence, too incredible to bear credence. But I know what I saw. The man was a vampire. His petitioning of our club and desperation to join was in my mind absolutely logical. The guise of a magician is exquisitely suited to such a creature. He and we are both denizens of the night, doing our work after the sun's dying. He and we are both required to travel often-we to seek new audiences, he to seek new victims, so that he will not commit too many murders in any single place. He and we require large boxes-we for our large-scale illusions, he for his native soil and the coffin he must inhabit during the day. What better excuse to transport bulky boxes than a magician's life? But he had no assistants, no animals, because his life is that of the unholy and perpetually lone predator.

  I challenged my fellow members to explain in scientific terms how the Italian's clothing was torn, where the blood had been concealed, and how he was left unharmed by the bullet while Petrie-Jones, behind him, was hit. Theories were advanced, but none offered a better explanation than my supernatural one. Nevertheless, the Brotherhood would not allow me to go to the authorities with my story, fearing that it would be perceived as a cheap publicity stunt to increase ticket sales. I succumbed to their wills. Notwithstanding, I know now irrefutably that there exists a real, sinister magic, in which relation our conjurers' art is a mere pale and harmless shadow.

  For months we searched the Empire's newspapers and all our connections for news of the vampire/magician, but he had vanished from the British Isles apparently as totally as he had from St. George's Hall. It was a disappearing act as clever as any I have ever witnessed on the stage.

  ***

  Simon closed the book and took it back to its place on the shelves. He went from there to the library employees' time clock and examined Frederika's card. He found an isolated room with a phone and a Princeton directory, looked up a number and made a call. The man he called had rotating shift hours, so Simon had a good chance of reaching him.

  "Hello?"

  "Ray?" Simon asked.

  "Yeah. Who's this?" Ray was a local policeman who had a gift for acting. He and Simon had earned Equity wages together in a couple of McCarter Theatre productions.

  "Simon Penn. We worked together in A Christmas Carol and A Phoenix Too Frequent."

  "Sure. What can I do for you?"

  "I need some advice. Say a woman's been missing since four-thirty p.m. yesterday, when she left work. She-"

  "You writing a play?" Ray asked.

  "I'm thinking about it, and I'm sure you can help," Simon said, switching to the safer hypothetical mode.

  "Glad to. Go ahead."

  "Anyway, she promises to come directly home, but she doesn't. She's still missing by the middle of the next morning."

  "How old is she?"

  "Twenty-four."

  "And who did she promise she'd be home to?"

  "A guy."

  "Is this guy a husband or boyfriend?"

  "Neither."

  "Does she have a boyfriend?" From the background sounded the cries of children squabbling. "Hey, girls, be quiet! Go ahead, Simon."

  "She's seeing this other guy, who's very good at hypnosis. The guy's a no-good character."

  "Has he got an arrest record?"

  "I don't know. I mean, I haven't thought about it yet."

  "She lives with the one guy but dates another one?" Ray asked.

  "The first guy rents a room from her. He's worried the other one's done something to her. Can he call the police?"

  "Not unless he wants them pissed off at him. First she's not even gone for a whole day. Secondly… wait. Is this gonna turn out to be a kidnapping or a murder?"

  "A kidnapping."

  "There's no ransom note at this point?"

  "No."

  The little-girl noises grew more vociferous. "Hey! I'm on the phone here. I don't care who hit who first. Alison, go upstairs. If I were Santa I'd fly right by this house tonight. Sorry," Ray apologized. "So your fictional lady's of age. No sign of foul play. The police wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. If the guy who rents a room from her is your hero, have him go to the bad guy's place and confront him. That would make a better scene anyway, right? You want to work on it, Simon, and get back to me? I gotta go."

  "I understand. Thanks, and Merry Christmas."

  "Same to you."

  Simon recradled the telephone handset. So he was on his own. He realized he had left the wooden stake lying on the floor by the old stuffed chair. He made no move to retrieve it. The more time passed, the more he doubted his acceptance of an ancient bloodsucker's presence in Princeton. And yet DeVilbiss was far beyond the ordinary. Simon hunted up a scrap of paper and a pencil. He wrote down everthing he knew. First, the description of the It
alian magician and his Pierrot Lunaire exactly conformed to DeVilbiss and his doll. From the date mentioned in the passage, the man had to be at least a hundred and thirty years old, but DeVilbiss still looked forty. But he moved in daylight, and he owned no coffins filled with native soil. Simon knew so firsthand, from having minutely examined DeVilbiss's house. Frederika had eaten and drunk with him, so he didn't exist solely on blood. Then again, he slept during the day, and he had a grip of steel. And amber eyes. He haunted the library. Tommy Wheeler, the guard, had been killed and the alarms had gone off right right after Simon first saw the man there. He was evil and somehow ancient. And, for some reason, he wanted the Ahriman scrolls badly enough to kill for them.

  Simon had hidden Willy Spencer's bundle of notes within the library's B level, behind a storage room's air return grate. Simon rode the elevator down and shut himself in the tiny space. As he cut open the envelope and pulled out the pages of translation, his mind labored to prepare itself for a description of a similar amber-eyed creature, not hundreds but thousands of years old. Spencer's beautiful penmanship did nothing to soften the profound shock he received on reading the final pages.

  ***

  These instrumentalities of evil may no longer walk the earth, as they did when they were beings of the light. The blessed air is to them as the sea is to man; if they enter it for any time they may perish. The air protects man as the ocean protects fish, an ever-present refuge. Nevertheless, the legion of darkness are an enemy of vastly superior intelligence, who will devise methods of harvesting despite the hazard.

  Their most diabolical method is to turn man against his own kind. This they do by finding those who do not fear God, offering such ones unending life in exchange for doing their bidding. To help these venal creatures in their tasks, they change them into something more powerful and vicious than their kind, as a shark is to a sturgeon. For their own sake, they cause these supermen to drink the blood of their own kind to survive, and to move in the same darkness to which they themselves are confined. Such servants of evil are known by their pale skin and the amber hue of their eyes.

  ***

  Simon searched the pages in vain for instructions on killing this foe. Obviously, whatever weapons the forwarned Willy Spencer might have devised had proven useless. Or perhaps DeVilbiss's expertise at murder, his willingness to kill and vast experience at survival had overcome the wily old man's preparations.

  Simon closed his eyes and vigorously massaged his lids. Even if logic insisted he disbelieve the words of both the magician biographer and the scroll's author, he knew in his gut that true evil was at work in Princeton. Firsthand, he had learned that DeVilbiss slept in the daytime. He had also personally felt his superhuman strength. A guard of the scrolls had been found swinging from a rope. Then the nervous translator of the scrolls had died in a gas explosion. Then Frederika had disappeared. Simon realized he would be at a fatal disadvantage unless he allowed himself to suspend his disbelief. By his meddling in Frederika's life and because he worked in the Rare Manuscripts section, Simon had become part of DeVilbiss's plan to reach those scrolls. If Frederika were safe, he would have hopped the next train out of Princeton Junction, security key in his pocket. With her survival dependent solely on his decision, he had no choice but to fight.

  Climbing the stairs to the main floor, translation in hand, Simon remembered with disquiet the sweatshirt an old athlete had once sported on an adjacent tennis court: Old age and guile defeats youth and skill every time. As he walked off the campus, he reviewed the pitiful amount of information he possessed. His feet turned automatically toward the Vanderveen mansion. When he thought about his destination he stopped short, changed direction and found a sidewalk telephone. He dialed the number from memory and, while he waited for the connection, consulted his watch. The time was eight minutes before noon.

  "Vincent DeVilbiss."

  "Simon Penn." Simon pictured sharp incisors, millimeters from the phone's mouthpiece.

  "Mr. Penn!" DeVilbiss exclaimed brightly. "Where are you?"

  "Near enough. Where's Frederika?"

  "Not here-as you know firsthand."

  Simon felt a panicky loss of advantage, then told himself DeVilbiss's list of suspects for breaking and entering his house could not have been that long. "But you do know where she is?" he pushed on.

  "I do."

  A frisson rippled through Simon, icing down his hot panic, as he listened to the affable facade of evil. "Then you admit to breaking our agreement."

  "I only said I would consider it," DeVilbiss reminded. "At any rate, I don't want your money."

  "But you do want my key and my help to get the scrolls," Simon anticipated.

  After an assessing silence, DeVilbiss said, "We need to speak in private."

  "Wrong," Simon answered. "First you prove to me that Frederika's under your power. I don't believe you have her."

  "And why is that?"

  "Because otherwise she'd have told you I'm staying at her house, and you'd have paid me a return visit last night. Wouldn't you?" Simon listened to a second silence. He felt a rush of relief that his opponent's intelligence was not as superhuman as his strength.

  "I can prove my control… very soon," DeVilbiss answered, his voice sounding like a steel spring under high tension.

  "Then I'll call back… very soon," Simon replied. A police car had appeared at the corner and waited for the traffic light to change. He wanted to run to the man in the black-and-white, but his conversation with Ray had told him what he could expect.

  "We're at something of an impasse," DeVilbiss noted. "Let rne suggest an alternate proof: pose a question only she can answer."

  Simon understood the delicacy of their negotiation. He was unwilling to reveal his location and DeVilbiss was equally unwilling to produce Frederika. "All right," he acquiesced. "Ask her what I bought my father for Christmas."

  "What present you bought your father?"

  "That's right. I'll call again at two o'clock." He thumbed down the switchhook, denying DeVilbiss opportunity to refuse. He stared across the street at the sprawling university library, wondering as he did what price Frederika had paid in keeping his sleeping place secret from her captor. Simon walked briskly in the direction of Richard Chen's garret.

  ***

  DeVilbiss opened the back door to his duplex, found Frederika huddling without a coat in the shadows of the porch, and yanked her roughly inside. Almost an hour after Simon Penn's call, his blood still boiled. Mental lapses and ill fate continued to befall him, crushing him inexorably under their accumulated weight. In all his years he had never been forced to labor under such a combination of adversities. When Frederika reported that Simon had rejected her sexual advances, it had never occurred to Vincent that the two librarians might be sharing the same roof. He feared the possibility of creeping senescence, that though Nick's powders and human blood kept his body perpetually youthful, the human mind could not so easily be preserved. Perhaps, he thought, no elixir could hold senility at bay more than five hundred years. But what explained the barrage of bad luck that teamed with his mental failings? Why, in the time he had known Frederika Vanderveen, before he hypnotized her and reduced her to a purely responsive automaton, had she not volunteered or at least let slip the fact that Simon lived with her? Had she not wanted him to suspect that there was a rival for her affections?

  For all his troubled musings, the one possibility Vincent felt unwilling to consider was that his cerebral matter had been common and fallible since the day he arrived squalling into the world. Vincent DeVilbiss, born Innocente Farnese, had long ago forgotten the mediocrity of his mind, soon after the powers of his body had been augmented. Reveling in heightened senses, speed, and strength, he fell willing victim to the assumption that his thinking had also improved. His invulnerable body had survived numerous mental mistakes that would have killed a normal man, lessons learnable only by the Undead. And he never considered how easy the demands of his existence were. His vi
ctims rarely expected attack; few owned weapons; virtually none were trained in self-defense. Those he preyed upon for blood were despatched at random, in situations advantageous to him. The simple truth behind Vincent's recent bad fortune was the inaccessibility of the scrolls. Before he had been able to overcome the defenses of the academic fortress, two of its employees had come to know him for what he was. Self-doubts, bad luck, true adversities, and the hectoring voice of the Dark Forces combined to whip up his fear. When the woman finally arrived at his back door, he was ready to vent his full fury on her.

  Frederika winced from the talon grip around her wrist, but she made no protest. DeVilbiss spun her into the kitchen and slammed the door shut.

  "About time," he fumed. "Did you park your car away from here?"

  "Yes. At the Choir College."

  "Where does Simon Penn live?" He had purposely refrained from asking her over the telephone when she checked in at noon, determined to see her face when he posed the question.

  "He rents a room from me," she replied, without hesitation.

  DeVilbiss exhaled loudly and struck the kitchen table a resounding blow with the heel of his hand. Frederika flinched and looked frightened.

  "It's all right," DeVilbiss soothed, sucking in his anger with a mercurial lack of effort. "If he were in trouble and not at your house, where would you look for him?"

  Frederika thought. "He eats with a friend named Rich."

  "And where does Rich live?"

  "I don't know."