The Book of Common Dread

by Brent Monahan

  Simon saw no one.

  He angled around, to take the back of the car into view, the trigger already half depressed. The elevator stood empty. DeVilbiss's words echoed mockingly in his head: brilliant men in his time, and never defeated. Simon's legs jellied. Could the vampire have reversed the roles of prey and hunter so quickly?

  From below came the buzz of someone summoning a car. The relays clicked impotently. Simon flicked the power switch back on. But his elevator, instead of descending, continued to climb, past Floors One, Two, and Three. So DeVilbiss was acting offensively; he had purposely sent Simon's car to the top of the building, planning to take the second elevator in case Simon had boobytrapped the first.

  The doors opened on Floor Four, shut almost as quickly, and the car plunged downward again, straight toward the jaws of Hell. Simon sidled to the edge of the car's roof, eyes straining to make out the second elevator-the one he had earlier disabled. Its dark shape emerged from the blackness. He hopped onto it, slightly unbalanced by the bulk and weight of his coat, catching the cable for safety's sake. He unlocked the mechanism and sent the second car shooting down in pursuit of the one holding the nitrogen tank. The first car had stopped at C Level. Simon halted his car two feet higher, before it had aligned with the floor, making it impossible for DeVilbiss to open its outer doors. Simon reasoned that this would leave DeVilbiss only one path if he wanted to get inside the shaft-he would have to come up through the first car's emergency hatch. Simon hopped down onto that car's roof now, as lightly as he could, and searched out the liquid nitrogen nozzle. The car beneath him rattled periodically, revealing that DeVilbiss had shoved something substantial into the path of its automatic doors, making them open and half-close over and over, imprisoning the car in place.

  Simon prayed for the opportunity to shoot one long, immobilizing spray into DeVilbiss's face, so he could methodically hose him into oblivion. His hands were palsied as he waited, feeling the seconds piling up into yet another impotent minute. A new noise vibrated through the shaft. It had the same timbre as that of the elevator doors, but its sound was continuous rather than periodic.

  Simon knew the meaning of the sound; DeVilbiss was struggling to pry open the second elevator's C-Level outer doors. Despite even the vampire's supernatural strength, Simon relied on the system defeating him. With the elevator stopped too high, the immediately adjacent doors locked the same way file cabinet drawers did when one of their number was opened, to prevent accidents. Simon and three other hearty sophomores had once failed at the same maneuver. He dropped the hose and stood. As he straightened, his ears told him the noise sounded not from the C-Level doors but from those on B-a set of doors that would allow DeVilbiss through.

  There was no time to wrestle with the heavy tank. Gasping out his terror, Simon leapt back up onto the higher elevator, unlocked it and punched the Main Floor button. It started smoothly upward. Just above him, the B-Level outer doors were being wrested apart. From out of darkness emerged the blacker shape of DeVilbiss as he fought the doors. As his elevator continued upward, Simon swung around behind the cables. An arm thrust through the door opening into the shaft, catching the hem of Simon's coat, threatening to rip him from his perch. Simon hugged the cable and kicked out blindly at the hand. He missed, but the roof of the rising elevator saved him, forcing DeVilbiss to release his hold. Simon listened to the outer doors bang shut again, accompanied by no outcry of pain or rage. The elevator reached, then stopped at the Main Floor. His brain seethed with life-or-death calculations. He lifted the hatch and jumped down, landing awkwardly and crumpling to the floor.

  As Simon came up, his hand punched at the Floor Three button. Before the doors began to close, he dashed out and toward the side entrance to the Rare Manuscripts Preparation section, hand digging for keys as he went. Each slap of his foot on the oak floor sounded like a cannon shot to him. He reached the unmarked double doors, grabbed one of the knobs to stop his momentum, and stabbed the key into the lock. Throwing back the door, he was confronted by the illuminated button system that controlled the metal gate. He pushed the red button once, the green button twice, the yellow button once. The gate popped open. Simon swung past and slammed it closed. It latched in place a split second before an inky form hurtled into it, making it clatter raucously. The steel mesh bent slightly inward, but the thicker bars were unaffected and the lock tongue held fast.

  Simon stood wide-eyed and riveted to the floor, betting his existence on the door's strength. DeVilbiss threw himself against the gate again, then laced his fingers into the woven metal and yanked backward. It gave only so much, then held firm.

  DeVilbiss released his grip, refocused on Simon and took two steps backward. His dress was uniformly black, from leather jacket, to turtleneck sweater, to woolen pants, to what looked like crepe-soled espadrilles. He sucked in several short breaths, followed by one large one, drew himself up very straight and folded his arms across his chest.

  "This is so stupid," DeVilbiss declared. "If the Reverend Spencer had handed me his key he'd be alive right now. I didn't want his blood on my hands; I don't want yours. All I want are those damned scrolls." Simon glowered at him in silence. "You tried to kill me," Vincent went on. "So would I have in your place. But you failed. We must go on with our original agreement. It's the only way Frederika will live."

  "Go to hell," Simon said.

  DeVilbiss lowered his arms. "Those were Spencer's last words." He backed into the darkness until it swallowed him. Simon dared to bring himself close to the gate, but he could not see far around the outer door. Nor could he hear anything.

  Simon retreated down the storage passageway, into the section's main room. He had hoped to save Frederika but conceded that he would be more than fortunate if he could save himself and the scrolls. Switching on lights as he passed, he hurried to his desk. He lifted the telephone handset, to call security.

  The phone was dead. Simon sprinted to the only other phone in the room. It also had no dial tone. He took the cut lines as proof that DeVilbiss had no intention of letting him live. Isolated in the virtual inner sanctum of the library, he had no windows to break, no grates he could remove for easy escape. He looked up to the high ceiling. Across the length of the room ran two sprinkler pipes. If he got a flame close enough to one of the heads, he believed the tire alarm would be tripped. But he had no means. He did not smoke and, fire being the great enemy of books, matches and lighters were never left around. He wracked his brain for some way to create a spark.

  From beyond the main door to the section came deep, vibrating noises. Simon was not particularly worried about that direction, as DeVilbiss would have to penetrate a set of thick oak doors and another wire gate before invading that way. But as he listened, Simon realized the significance of the sound. The old card catalog cabinets stood just outside the doors. Any one of them, filled with thousands of oaktag cards, had to weigh at least a ton. DeVilbiss was moving a cabinet to block the door, denying Simon any avenue of escape but the doors through which he had entered.

  While the heavy scraping sounds continued, Simon rushed across the room and down the corridor to the side door. He hit the inner access buttons in sequence, releasing the gate. He could have saved precious seconds, in fact might have guaranteed his escape, by leaving the gate open and the scrolls unprotected, but he had judged their worth to mankind and could not bring himself to sacrifice them. There was no way to lock the gate without making noise. He prayed it could not be heard around several corners, even by superhuman ears. He yanked it closed behind him and ran for the back stairwell.

  As soon as Simon pulled open the heavy metal fire door to the stairwell he knew what the strange popping and crunching sounds had been. DeVilbiss had knocked out lights, determined to increase his advantage if Simon tried to get out that way. The noises he had heard in the elevator shaft could not have reached him from this stairwell. Evidently, DeVilbiss had blackened the entire path to the loading dock, Simon's only reasonable means of escap
e. The stairwell loomed dark as obsidian beyond the feeble illumination from the Exhibition Hallway.

  Simon took the spotlight from his pocket and thumbed it on. The stairwell filled with light as if a magnesium flare had been lit. Simon rushed down one flight and threw open the next door.

  DeVilbiss stood in the hallway, waiting. His evil smile of triumph vanished when he saw the spotlight. He threw himself toward Simon.

  Simon swung the light upward, directly at DeVilbiss's eyes. As the Undead one rushed at him with frightful speed, he held the light in the same place but jumped suddenly to the side, as would a bullfighter. DeVilbiss stumbled blindly forward, arms outthrust to bat away the instrument that apparently inflicted so much pain. A split second before he reached the light, Simon yanked it away. DeVilbiss, finding no solid body in his path and knowing instinctively that the stairs lay directly ahead, attempted to halt his headlong dash. For a moment, he teetered precariously on the lip of the first step. Then Simon's foot found his rear end, and he hurtled blindly downward, crumpling as he went, striking his head and arms hard.

  Simon did not wait to assess the damage. He lowered his shoulder to the closing fire door and muscled through, increasing his speed as he drove it back, thrusting the light ahead of him into the darkness. He played the beam down the length of the corridor, did a quick calculation of how long it would take him to escape the building, and made a righthand turn down one of the twenty or so rows of shelves between himself and the far wall, moving away from the loading dock. The row was less than thirty feet long. Only when he had run its full length did he switch off the light, concealing himself in absolute blackness.

  The B-Level stairwell door burst open, striking the wall with force. In the absence of light, the noise seemed magnified greatly. Simon shuddered but refused to be shocked into paralysis. He re-pocketed the light, then removed both shoes. Clutching them in his right hand, he used his left to guide himself along the wall, doubling back in the direction of the library's center. He knew the vampire had hypersensitive eyes, but he hoped no creature, superhuman or otherwise, could see in such total absence of light. He moved slowly but steadily, skimming his feet along the cool surface of the concrete floor.

  DeVilbiss gave out one howl of rage, then lapsed into silence. Although he also sought to move with silent stealth, he neglected to remove his shoes. Simon caught their passing along the far end of the row, moving toward the loading dock. Simon continued slowly but steadily in the opposite direction, picturing the area in his mind's eye, reorienting himself when a door appeared sooner than expected in the wall. Some fifty feet ahead, around a corner, the farthest spill of a single lightbulb created dim shapes in the tenebrous surroundings. Simon headed for the light, moving with ever-greater assurance. He had lost DeVilbiss's position in the library. For all he knew, the vampire was just then hurtling noiselessly toward his back. His skin crawled with the idea, but he pushed steadily toward the light without turning.

  Simon reached the end of the rows, where a large corridor ran at a right angle to his path, across the middle of the library. He turned right and edged along one book-filled set of shelves, until he was confronted by a yawning and well-lit intersection. On the opposite side lay a door and, beyond it, the central staircase. Simon drew in a deep breath and stepped into the open. He looked right, into the blackness leading to the loading dock entrance. From far down its length, faint footfalls raced in his direction.

  Simon sprinted toward the central staircase, pulling a book re-shelving cart into the opening as he passed. He took the cold marble steps two at a time, swinging wildly around the turn, bursting into the library's grand foyer, leaping the turnstile, skittering around the corner into the Exhibitions area, zigzagging around the exhibit cases with the assurance of long acquaintance, finding the Rare Manuscripts side door with no trouble, stabbing at the sequence of buttons, charging through the gate and slamming it shut.

  Again, less than two seconds behind, DeVilbiss threw his weight against the gate. This time he hung on, shaking it like a great ape outraged at capture. Getting no farther than he had the previous time, DeVilbiss stepped back. Simon noted that he no longer wore his leather jacket. His black turtleneck sweater had ridden up slightly in front, exposing what looked like a quilted fencer's chest protector beneath. With affected dignity, he stood erect and straightened his clothing. A goose egg bump swelled prominently from his right temple.

  Simon looked at the luminescent hands on his wristwatch, then through the wire mesh at DeVilbiss. "Half an hour gone and you're still outside. A security patrol will come through in a few minutes," he bluffed. "Five minutes after that, half the police in Princeton will be in here." As he said his final words, he withdrew the spotlight and shone it on DeVilbiss's face.

  DeVilbiss took a step backward and shielded his eyes. "You're a fool, Penn."

  "I know," Simon agreed. "But there's no fool like an old fool, and there's no one older than you." He angled the light away and saw in the reflected light that, considering his insult, DeVilbiss's expression was remarkably calm.

  "You may be right," the vampire said. And then he vanished into the darkness.

  Simon stood for a moment, shining the light into the empty Exhibitions area. His words might have frightened DeVilbiss out of the building, but he could not take the chance. He had to remain in the Rare Manuscripts Preparation area until help came, defending his position however he could. He dropped his shoes and scudded his feet into them. Then he backed down the wire-mesh-lined corridor, repocketing his spotlight as he came into the room's full brightness. Attached to his keys was his old Swiss army knife. He took it out and exposed the larger blade. It looked puny in his hand. He glanced around the room for something potentially more lethal. His eyes fell upon a long-handled push broom, leaning in a shadowy corner. He stepped on the broom bottom and twisted the five-foot handle out of its socket. The wood was dense, probably oak. He began whittling the upper end, shaving off curling pieces. Within five minutes, he had fashioned a good, conical point.

  As Simon looked around, to expand his arsenal, he heard a deep, resounding clang from the Exhibitions area. He set the makeshift lance upright against the end of the mesh corridor and moved toward the door to investigate.

  DeVilbiss turned into the door's alcove, holding a hose in one hand and the cryogenic tank in the other. He smiled as he had when Simon opened the B-Level door.

  "Turnabout is fair play, Penn." When Simon made no reply, he said, "One last chance. We have between us the keys necessary to open the scroll cabinet. Let me in and use your key, and I promise I'll let you go. I truly shall."

  "Truly?"

  DeVilbiss sighed. "We shall discover the depth of your pluck once I've breached this gate."

  "The scrolls will still be locked up," Simon reminded him.

  DeVilbiss raised the hose and curled his finger around the trigger. "One challenge at a time." He released the liquid nitrogen. A white cloud enveloped the gate. Metal groaned from superfast contraction. Simon retreated to the end of the corridor. DeVilbiss paused his spraying for a moment and kicked at the gate. Chunks of white mesh burst away and skidded down the corridor. He had created half the opening he needed to pass inside. He lifted the hose again and fired the liquid at the metal. An icy, masking fog rose again.

  Simon took his lance in both hands and moved toward the crumbling gate. He could see virtually nothing of DeVilbiss as he advanced. He paused ten feet from the gate and waited. Finally, the hissing spray stopped. Simon charged, lance lowered. By the time he reached the gate, the fog had dissipated enough so that he could make out the black form beyond. DeVilbiss already had one leg lifted, to kick out the last of the mesh. Simon aimed below the place where he had seen the quilted vest, trying to catch DeVilbiss just below his navel. Instead, he speared the crease between thigh and torso, ramming through until the oak point collided with hip bone.

  Screaming, DeVilbiss collapsed backward through the ruined gate. The buried lance ar
ched toward the ceiling. Simon retreated several steps, hardly able to believe he was capable of such violence, even to defend his life. DeVilbiss rolled slowly from side to side in his agony, then lay quietly in the dissipating nitrogen fog. Simon held his ground, waiting. It was too much to hope that he had defeated DeVilbiss with a simple piece of wood. He saw a pooling of blood under the man's thigh and felt simultaneously revolted and elated, until DeVilbiss reached to the lance with both hands and yanked it out of his flesh, moaning deeply as he did.

  Simon fell back farther as DeVilbiss first sat up, then pulled himself into a stooped position, using the broom handle for support. The pointed end, aloft, showed darkly stained with blood. Unbelievably, DeVilbiss took a small step, then another. Simon backed into the Rare Manuscripts Preparation chamber. His adversary pursued on his makeshift crutch, almost as quickly.

  "Better regroup and attack right now," DeVilbiss mocked. "I won't be completely healed for minutes."

  Simon's back collided with the stainless steel coffin that held the scrolls. He spun around it and hastened to the far end of the room, to heed DeVilbiss's admonition. While he searched frantically for another weapon, DeVilbiss reached the sealed steel cabinet. He peered through the Plexiglas.

  "So this is the cause of all my trouble," DeVilbiss said. He looked up at Simon, his face seeming, impossibly, paler. "You know, for all the centuries they've plagued me, I've never seen them before."

  Simon glanced down from DeVilbiss's chalky countenance to the floor. The vampire's path to the scrolls had been traced by a stream of blood. Around his left leg formed a widening red pool.