An Old Friend Of The Family (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 3)

by Fred Saberhagen

  “Indeed, I should think you—” He broke off, watching her with great intentness.

  Kate’s gradual return to full awareness had reached a critical point. Now she was looking with terror at the marble walls, the stained glass, and the tombs surrounding her. “What is this place?” Her breath momentarily forgotten, the question fell into a mere soundless mouthing of the words. Then she drew in a gasp of air. “I know where I am. I know what this is.”

  “I am your friend,” the old man said with iron will, “and you are safe.”

  Words, even from him, were not going to be enough. Kate screamed and leaped in mad panic from her shelf, a corner of the sheet trailing like a cape. She landed awkwardly, but with catlike new strength supporting unsprained ankles. Without a pause she sprang toward the single door of the mausoleum.

  Before she reached it, though, the old man was beside her, and had an arm around her waist. Despite the new strength with which she struggled, he drew her back and soothed her like a child. “No, no. You do not understand the dangers yet.”

  A moment longer Kate fought for her freedom. Then she slumped in his grip, her eyes crazed. “I want to go home.”

  His clasp was almost tender. “I think you know,” he said, “that you are as close to home right now as you are ever likely to get.”

  A few seconds passed. This time the movement she made to free herself was deliberate an almost calm, and so he released her. She moved a few steps off and turned to face him, now fully aware—and horrified. “I heard a policeman say that I was dead.”

  “Very likely you did.”

  “You can’t convince me that I’m dead!”

  “My dear girl, I have no intention of trying to convince you of such an absurdity. Neither of us is dead except to our old, breathing lives.”

  “Then—what—?”

  “You have been through a great change. And understanding it is going to take some time.” Acceptance and understanding, the old man knew, did not often come fully on the first day out of the grave.

  Kate was frowning down at her swathing sheet.

  “Where are my clothes?”

  The old man walked to one of the crypts and tugged open it’s bronze door. The interior was empty save for two bags, one a white laundry sack, the other somewhat smaller and elegant black. He brought both of them back to Kate. “You have some choice of apparel, though I am not sure the outfit in the white bag is complete.”

  Wonderingly, Kate reached into the laundry sack and extracted from it first her warm blue jacket, rolled up small; then blue pants and a sweater. She looked at the old man with narrowed eyes, then dug into the other bag. Out first came brown slacks, then a brown sweater, shoes to match, a small mass of soft undergarments. “These are mine.” There was more sharpness than fear in her voice now. “But I was wearing the blue. Where did you get these?”

  “Ah, memory is firming up. Good. The brown clothing I obtained very early this morning, from your home.”

  “My home. You’ve been there. What did you tell them, what—?”

  “Gently, Kate, gently. Your family thinks that you are dead.”

  She shook her head. She backed away from the old man a step, her lips forming another word.

  “He thinks so, too. For the time being, at least, it is better so. Later, there will be decisions you must make, regarding those you love. But that must come later, when you know more. Now I am going to look out the window while you dress. Then will we discuss what must be done.”

  When he turned from squinting at the snow, he found Kate garbed in brown. He took from her the blue clothing, including the warm jacket she no longer needed. These garments he put back into the empty crypt, the only convenient drawer this dwelling-place afforded.

  Challengingly, Kate followed him. He smiled to see in her something of her younger sister’s bravery. “Now,” she demanded “I want to know who you are, really. And what has really happened to me.”

  “Very well.” He looked steadily into her eyes. “I am a vampire, Kate. Because Enoch Winter exchanged his vampire blood with you, you have become a vampire also. I am sure that there is in your mind much superstitious nonsense regarding our race, which you must now begin to unlearn. We are not all as bad as Enoch Winter.”

  The girl first tried to laugh at him. Then she tried to look indignant, that he should offer her such nonsense. He could see her wondering what she should try next. He could see also that the energy of terror was fading; a normal daylight trance should overcome her soon.

  “But why,” the old man mused aloud, “has the infamous Enoch Winter done this? Under other circumstances we might merely ask why any rapist does what he does. But there is also the attack on your brother to be considered. There must surely be a connection.”

  “What attack?” Kate didn’t completely believe, yet, anything he’d said. But already she was swaying on her feet.

  “Time to discuss that later.” He picked her up, gently; it was almost a matter of catching her as she began to fall. One of her pale hands pushed feebly at his chest in protest, but her eyelids were closing, and she could do no more.

  Now she should sleep, until the night at least. But before he put her in a resting place, he stood for a moment, listening intently. A motor vehicle, a small auto whose sound he thought he might just possibly recognize, was drawing near over the cemetery’s unplowed drives.

  * * * * * * * *

  Joe Keogh’s rabbit crunched to a stop in snow unmarked except for a few tracks left by the fur-bearing variety. He supposed the bunnies had a good thing going in a cemetery, except maybe after hours when the guard dogs were let in. Anyway the snowfall had now stopped, though the sky was still almost completely overcast. In the west the clouds were stretched to a thin silver sheet covering a sun already on its way to the horizon. The shortest days of the year were here.

  Beside Joe, Judy sat gazing with an unreadable expression at the snow-etched stones of the mausoleum’s front. He studied her with concern for a little while, then asked: “Did you want to look at something in particular?”

  Still looking at the building, Judy shook her head slowly, disappointedly, almost. What could she have been expecting? She said: “It’s just that the dreams were very real.”

  “But still only dreams,” he told her gently. “Right?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Get a hold of yourself, kid. How could they be anything else? Kate is dead. Whatever else has…I admit it’s possible that Johnny might be locked up in a closet someplace, the way you describe it in your dream. But—”

  “Joe, I could find that place. I know I could, if you would only drive me around and help me look.”

  “Don’t start that again, please.” And at that moment, beyond Judy’s face, beyond the undisturbed white that covered lawn and walk in front of the Southerland mausoleum, Joe saw the green-aged bronze of the building’s door in motion, opening inward into a contrasting blackness. And despite the hardened realism created by eight years on the force, the sight produced a moment when something in his heart began to open into blackness also.

  Then it was nothing more frightening than a shadowed doorway in a marble building, with the recognized though unexpected figure of a lean man in dark clothing emerging from it in a quite ordinary way. A penetrating voice called down to them: “Judy? Joe?”

  Judy, Joe noticed, seemed not at all surprised. Perhaps she was no longer disappointed, either. Frowning, he shut off the engine. They both got out of the car.

  Corday had remained beside the mausoleum’s open door, frowning through dark glasses at his watch. “I fear I have lost all track of time,” he muttered as Judy and Joe trudged up the virgin walk toward him. “The urns proved more engrossing than I had anticipated.”

  “My father did give you the key, then?” Judy remarked placidly, twirling the end of her scarf. Joe wondered suddenly: could she have been expecting that we’d meet him here?

  Corday was smiling at her lightly. “T
here was no trouble about the key.”

  Joe asked him: “How did you get out here, Doctor? Take a cab?”

  “No, someone kindly offered me a ride from the motel this morning.”

  “Must’ve been early. Snow’s covered all the tracks completely.”

  “Indeed, it was.”

  Judy put in: “If you’re ready to leave, we can take you back to the motel. Or wherever you want to go.”

  “Thank you, my dear, that would be kind.”

  Corday was in the act of pulling the mausoleum door shut behind him when Joe stepped forward, saying: “As long as we’re here, I’d like to take a look at the pottery too…Judy, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I felt a little dizzy, all of a sudden. I’m all right. You go on in, but I don’t want to.”

  She looked so white-faced that Joe and Corday between them, both peering at her anxiously, walked her down to the car and saw her settled in the rear seat.

  “I feel better now. I think it was just a little too much like the dream. Go ahead, Joe, I’m all right.”

  The two men marched back up to the dark doorway, over the now well-trampled walk.

  “You first, Doctor.”

  With a slight bow, the old man went on in. Joe followed. Once inside, there was really plenty of light, coming in the windows. The doorway had looked so black from outside only by contrast with the snow.

  Plenty of light, but not all that much to see. Joe wasn’t really sure what he was looking for. The tombs and their decorations, and the big urns, and maybe Corday was really enthusiast enough to want to spend a day here in the cold among them. Joe’s breath steamed in the air. To him, the place looked not much different from a fancier-than-usual funeral home, or the inside of one of the older Chicago churches. It reminded him a little of the chapel of Thomas More University, where he had been going to take Kate a couple of days before Christmas, to see The Play of Daniel…there was plenty of pottery here, all right, and in this large urn someone’s crumpled bra, which must have been here since last summer, so evidently the door wasn’t always kept carefully locked.

  As soon as his eyes met Corday’s again, he told the old man bluntly: “Kate’s body was missing from the morgue this morning.”

  Corday’s response was controlled surprise, or at least a very good imitation thereof. “Really? Is such a thing a common occurrence there?”

  “Very uncommon. I was wondering if you might have any ideas about it.”

  “Because I wanted to go there last night? No. No, I should not care to venture an opinion. Joe, what brings you and Judy here to the cemetery this afternoon?”

  Joe sighed. “The kid had a very vivid dream last night. A couple of dreams, rather. She’s upset—of course. Anyway, one dream was that Kate was here, in the family mausoleum, alive, but unable to get out of the place for some reason. And all day today Judy’s been saying she thought she’d go crazy if she couldn’t get out of the house for a while. Andy’s back at the office, being a workaholic as usual. Lenore is—sedated. Clarissa can’t decide anything. I finally just took it upon myself to decide that Judy would be better off getting out, and it’d be safe enough if I rode shotgun.” He blinked at Corday’s blank stare. “Chicago cops always go armed, you know, even off duty. So here we are.”

  While Joe talked they had been slowly gravitating back to the doorway. Now Corday gestured and Joe stepped out. At the bottom of the little slope, Judy’s scarf-wreathed face smiled back from the small car’s window.

  Joe led the way down to her. Behind him he could hear Corday shutting the metal door of the mausoleum carefully, and the key turning, grating in the little-used lock.

  Judy looked well enough when they rejoined her in the car. “I think it was just the idea of going in there,” she said again. “I didn’t want to go in after all.”

  “Natural enough,” said Joe, getting the engine and heater started. Why was the old man here, today? “Where can we take you, Dr. Corday?”

  The old man, in the right front seat, was twisting round to face the back. “Joe tells me you had two vivid dreams last night. What was the second?”

  Judy smiled, a quick little flicker, as if to mark the passage of some secret between her and the old man. Then her face turned bleak. “Towards morning I dreamed of Johnny. He was in a closet somewhere. All naked, and bloody, and…just awful. God, I hope it isn’t true. But I can’t stop feeling that it is.”

  “And can you lead us to this closet?” The old man was intensely serious.

  “I’m taking her home,” said Joe, and reached to move his selector lever into Drive. The old man’s fingers settled gently on his wrist. Joe urged his own hand forward anyway; his hand stayed right where it was, as if he were trying to lift the car with it instead of one thin elderly arm. He felt ridiculous. What was he going to do now, start a wrestling match?

  The old man continued to stare at Judy, and Joe followed the direction of his gaze. He was disturbed to see that although Judy still sat up straight, her eyes were closed and the utterly relaxed expression on her face suggested that she was asleep.

  In wonder, he asked: “Judy?”

  “She is asleep,” Corday informed him soothingly, and at the same time let go of Joe’s wrist.

  “Judy, are you all right?”

  “Answer Joe, Judy.”

  “I’m fine.” Her voice was pleasant, but remote. Her eyes stayed closed.

  Corday asked her: “Can you now guide us to the building where John is being held?”

  “Yes.” Her voice held sudden urgency. “Turn west as soon as you leave the cemetery.”

  Joe looked at her a moment longer, then got the car in motion, this time without interference. “What is she, hypnotized? Whatever you’re doing with her, I don’t like it. She’s going home.”

  “Joe, don’t” Judy’s voice was intense but calm. “I’m all right. If you love Kate, you’ll help to find her brother.”

  Joe glanced into the rear-view mirror. Judy’s eyes were open again and she looked quite normal.

  She said: “Do you think the police are ever going to find him? They don’t have a single clue, do they?”

  They had reached the plowed section of the cemetery roads by now. The gate was only a quarter mile or so ahead. Joe said: If you want the truth, I don’t think they’ll ever get him back alive.”

  “There you are. But we can. He’s in a white house, out in the country just a few miles west of here. I think the roof has shingles.”

  “I think you better go home.”

  “If you try to take me home I’ll jump out of the car before we get there. I’ll fight and scream. If you humor me a little I’ll be just fine.”

  Joe slowed, indecisively. Half angry, half pleading for help, he turned to the old man. “Doctor?”

  Corday’s face was altered by a smile, small, confident, and almost irresistibly comradely. Softly he said: “Turn west.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Your hour’s almost up,” Joe commented. Almost an hour after leaving Lockwood Cemetery, they had at last penetrated the western belt of suburbs and were entering real countryside. The two-lane highway, coated in salted slush, ran northwest. On the left were cornfields, snowy stubble now, and on the right at the moment was a new apartment development, decorated barracks that seemed to have been extruded against the road’s shoulder by the congestion to the east.

  “Keep going,” Judy urged. Again, as happened every time Joe so much as hinted at giving up, there was an underlevel of panic in her reply. “Joe, he’s so badly hurt. We’ve got to get to him right away. There’s a man in the house with Johnny, but he’s not helping Johnny at all. I can feel how close it is. We’re almost there.”

  “Six more minutes,” said Joe firmly. “Then we’re going to find a phone and call your home and tell ’em you’re all right. I agreed to spend an hour at this, and we will, and then you’re going home. Right, Doctor?”

  No answer came from Corday, who had his hand in h
is coat pockets, and was gazing fixedly ahead, as if he were lost in his own thoughts.

  Joe did not repeat the question. There had been moments during the ride when mentally he swore at himself for being taken in by Judy’s hysterics and Corday’s strange act, and came very close to turning the car around at once. These moments were followed by others in which he nursed the feeling, hardly suitable for a cop but inextinguishable anyway, that weird things in the field of ESP did sometimes happen. His own mother and father had testified to mutual experiences. And the rational part of his mind suggested that the best way to cure Judy of this dream-idea might be to let her see that there was nothing to it. And, again, to get a kidnapping victim back, any effort at all was worth a try.

  They were approaching a highway intersection. “What do I do here?” he asked his guide.

  “Turn left,” Judy ordered. Give her credit, she was always decisive in giving directions. “We’re very close now. Another mile should do it.”

  “Left it is,” Joe agreed. He could just picture himself talking to the sheriff’s office on the phone: Yes sir, we know where the boy is now. His teenage sister saw it in a dream, and sure enough…

  The new highway ran ahead of him almost straight, and almost empty. The sun, after almost breaking through the clouds a little earlier, had been smothered again in thick gray masses from which it did not seem likely to emerge again today. Although theoretically it was still daylight, Joe had already flicked his headlights on.

  The last housing developments had now fallen behind. To right and left the road was bordered by snowy farm fields, brown hedgerows, patches of woods, wire farm fences. A narrow highway bridge came leaping up to bear the Volkswagen over a still narrower stream, a country creek that twisted its way in a frozen course to right and left. For just a moment the engine stuttered—

  “Here!” The word burst out of Judy in a shriek. Joe looked wildly around for some impending accident. He braked, avoiding a skid in the freezing slush by fancy footwork on the pedals.