"I keep wondering," I mused. "What kind of a creature is this man? And his secret of eternal life - "
"He may have it," Ahmed retorted, "but you don't. And from the looks of you, a little sleep is in order. I'll take you upstairs to a bedroom. You might as well get a good night's rest while I go to work."
I didn't argue with him. The weariness pulled at my knees as I followed him up the stairs.
"You'll have to trust to me and to luck," said the little grey man. "Right now all I can tell you is I'm playing a hunch. That I can go back to the hotel, pick up the trail, and somehow have it lead me to Cono. He's the weak spot in the whole setup, for us. If I can handle him, he'll tell me what we have to know about Varek. Then we'll figure out how to deal with him."
"Sounds logical," I said, as we entered a small bedroom at the end of the corridor.
"Sounds mighty weak and flimsy, to tell the truth," replied my host. "But it's all we have to work on right now. I hope that by the time I return there'll be a little more to work on. Now - here we are. You don't fit into my pyjamas, but I think you'll find the bed is comfortable enough. I'll be on my way. Go to sleep, and pleasant dreams to you."
He waved and went out. I sank back on the bed, scarcely mindful of the click of the key in the lock. Then I sat up. "Here we go again!" I muttered.
My voice must have carried, because he called from beyond the door. "Locking you in. Got a cleaning woman who gets here in about an hour, and I don't want to take any chances. If your description has been broadcast, that is."
"Good enough," I answered. "But you'd better come back."
"I'll be back: And with good news. Don't you worry about a thing. When the Great Ahmed takes over, he takes over."
I lay back, kicked off my shoes, loosened my tie and belt, and then crawled under the covers. His footsteps receded into silence.
Here I was, in a strange house, in a strange bed, my future dependent on the integrity and the ability of a man I hadn't known a half hour.
Somehow, though, I trusted him. I had to trust him, of course, because there was nobody else. I wondered about the Great Ahmed, or Richards - if that was his real name. What he'd been doing hanging around a carney. Why he'd set up a three-dollar-a-throw crystal reading parlour here. Little colourless middle-aged nobody, without even a good line of patter to hand out. But the son-of-a-gun knew how to pick pockets!
That reassured me. He wasn't the schmoe he appeared to be. But was he good enough to handle a man who raised the dead?
I couldn't answer that one now. There was nothing to do but wait. Wait and rest. Rest and sleep.
The room was dark. The night came in at me through the window. I got up and pulled the shade. I didn't want the night. It contained too much that could hurt me. Police, detectives, Varek and the walking dead. Better the special darkness of the room, the special darkness behind my closed eyes. The darkness of sleep.
The darkness of dreams…
Funny, the people you run into when you're asleep. Like this negro, for instance. He was just a common citizen, like hundreds of thousands of others on Chicago's South Side. He was riding on the El and I was riding on the El, hanging on the strap next to him.
I wouldn't have even given him a second glance, except for one little thing.
He was dead.
Yes, he was dead. When the El lurched, and he toppled against me, and I saw the rolling whites of his empty eyes, felt the cold, the ebon coldness of his black skin, I knew he was dead. A black corpse, hanging to a strap in the El.
I knew he was dead, and he knew I knew it. Because he smiled. And the deep bass voice rumbled up from the depths - from the depths of his empty grave, his plundered and cheated grave - and he said, "Don't look at me. 'Cause I ain't the only one. They's a lot of 'em dead around heah. A lot of 'em. Look!"
I looked. I gazed down the aisle of the lurching El and I saw them, recognized them. Some of the passengers were alive, of course, and I could tell that at a glance. But there were others. Many others. The quiet ones. The ones with the fixed, cold stares. The ones who didn't talk. Who sat alone. Who carefully avoided touching other bodies. They were pale, they were stiff, they were dead.
Most of the men wore their good suits, because that's the way they were dressed in the undertaking parlours. Most of the women wore too much powder and rouge, because the morticians fixed them that way. Oh, I recognized them. And the Negro nudged me with his icy finger and grinned a grin that held neither mirth nor malice nor any human emotion.
"Zombies," he said. "Tha's what they calls us. Zombies. Walkin' dead. Walkin', talkin' dead. Walkin' and talkin' because the Man say so. The Man. The Big Voodoo Man."
"Varek!" I said.
The El lurched again. The lights went out. Something was happening to the power. Maybe because I'd spoken the name.
The black corpse thought so. In the darkness all I saw was eye-white and tooth-white, flashing at me. "You went and done it," the voice rumbled. "Sayin' the name!"
And all the corpses in all the cars groaned and murmured, "He said the name!"
Suddenly the car gave a sickening lurch and I knew we were going off the track, going over. The corpses rolled against me in waves, and we were twisting and turning, falling, falling…
I landed. You're supposed to wake up before you land, but I didn't. Because I went too deep. The car crashed down into the sewers. I wasn't hurt. I was flung free. And I crawled along in the darkness, without eye-white and tooth-white flashing. Just red, this time. Little red lights.
"Rats," I told myself. "Rat eyes."
"We take the form of rats, yes. And of bats. And of other things. But we are not animals. We are not men either." The voice at my ear was soft but imperative. "They call us - vampires!"
I couldn't see him, or the others, but I heard the chittering laughter rise all around me, rise and turn to metallic mockery as it boomed off the sewer walls.
"Vampires. He raised us from the dead, he made us. In the big church up on Division Street, Father Stanislaus makes the Holy Sign against us. But we do not care. He is fat and old, that priest, and he will die. We can never die. We walk the night, we feast, and we own the world below."
Another voice droned in: "It's like this under the whole city, did you know that? And under every city. There's always places to hide, if you're clever. You can tunnel from place to place, come and go as you please, and nobody knows. Nobody sees. Nobody hears. And you can lift the manhole covers, drag down what you want, and dispose of what's left without leaving any evidence. Oh, it's clever and no mistake, and we can thank the Master for it all."
I nodded. "You mean Varek," I said.
They howled at that, and the sound nearly tore my head in two as the echo hammered from the metal walls. They howled, and then they scrabbled towards me in the darkness, but I ran. I ran and waded and crawled and swam through muck and filth, seeking an opening, seeking a light, seeking an escape from the world of death and darkness here below.
I found it, found it at last. The round metal lid above my head which led to safety. Safety and the cool darkness of a cellar. A chink of light guided me to a stairway and the door above. I came out into a kitchen, moved past to the bedroom, and peered through the door.
Edgar Allan Poe sat by the bedside and made strange motions with his slim white hands. Two doctors were in attendance, and all focussed their gaze on the apparition lying on the bed; the gaunt, skeletal countenance peered up from the pillows with glazed and glassy eyes.
The patient had white whiskers and incongruously black hair; outside of the animation in his eyes he might have passed for dead, and none would be the wiser.
But Poe's hands moved, commanding the sleeper to awake, and as I watched, he awakened.
Ejaculations of "Dead! dead!" absolutely burst from the tongue and not the lips of the sufferer, and his whole frame at once -within the space of a single minute or even less, shrunk - crumbled - absolutely rotted away. Upon the bed, before that whole company
, there lay a nearly liquid mass of loathsome, of detestable putridity.
Then I fled, screaming, from the house of M. Valdemar.
But wherever I went, there were the dead.
Poe couldn't raise Valdemar. But Varek could. And he had. In my dream, I saw the proof. I tramped the streets of Chicago and recognized the faces. That stiff-lipped, unsmiling doorman in front of the ritzy Gold Coast hotel - he was dead. The black-haired girl on the end of the switch-board at the Merchandise Mart, the one who said, "Number please?" in such a mechanical fashion - she was Varek's puppet, too. There was an elevator operator at Field's and three men who worked the night shift at a big steel plant out near Gary. An old precinct sergeant over in Garfield Park was a walking corpse and even his wife didn't suspect. But what the precinct sergeant didn't know was that his captain was also a cadaver, and neither of them knew the secret of one of the Cook County judges.
The dead - there were hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. Because Chicago isn't the only city in the world, and Varek had been everywhere.
I walked along, and then I ran. Because I couldn't stand it any longer, couldn't stand to see the faces, the empty eyes. I couldn't stand being jostled by a corpse in the crowded Loop. I ran and I ran until I came to the Great Ahmed's house and I came up to the bedroom, battered down the locked door, and crawled in bed here with myself again, knowing that I was safe at last, I was here, I could wake up into a world of reality - where dead men still walked]
"And they have other powers, too."
Who had told me that? Varek himself, in the bartender's body. Other powers. Powers like levitation - like floating through space, through windows high off the ground…
It had happened once before in a dream, and now it was happening again.
I could see her face at the bedroom window. Vera's face. The pale blonde hair. The diamond choker. Floating outside the window, bumping against it. Her hands groped out. She was opening the window from outside.
Funny that I should see it that way, because I'd pulled the shade down, and it was up now. So was the window. She was coming into the room, floating in gently, softly, ever so quietly. And now she landed, without a bump or a thump or a shudder, on the tips of her delicate toes. She was dead, too, of course. I knew it now. Her stare was glassy. She moved by automatic compulsion only. It was like a hypnotic trance, with every motion directed by an outside, an alien force.
Glassy-eyed, like a drugged Assassin. And like an Assassin, she drew the dagger from her waist. It was a long, slim, feminine-looking weapon, but it was deadly. The steel was diamond-bright. Why did she remind me of diamonds? Because of the choker. I gazed at the choker now as she tiptoed over to the bed. I wanted to watch it.
Better than watching the dagger. Because the dagger was a menace. It was coming up over my throat. In a moment it would come down, the point would bury itself in my neck, over the jugular.
All I had to do was watch the diamonds in her choker. And in a minute it would be all over. The knife was coming down, the knife that would end my life, the knife that would make me one with Varek's army - the army of the dead.
It came down, fast.
The glitter of that frantically falling blade broke the spell. Instantaneously, I realized that I was seeing it. There was a knife, and it was coming down at my throat.
I jerked my head to one side on the pillow and slammed my body forward, upward. My hands closed around solid flesh. Cold flesh.
Vera LaValle twisted wildly in my arms.
I sat up, hands moving to her wrist. I pressed it back until the knife dropped to the carpet. She fought me silently, her face a Medusa's mask, blonde curls tumbling like serpents over her cold, bare shoulders.
Suddenly her head dropped. I caught a glimpse of strong white teeth grimacing towards my neck. Vampire teeth, seeking my jugular.
I tore at her throat. My hands ripped the choker, dug beneath it. It came free, and fell. My hands closed around her neck, then came away.
I could not touch the thin red line, the scar that encircled her neck completely.
My hands came away, and I slapped her, hard.
Abruptly, she sank to the bed. The glassiness left her eyes and something like recognition flooded her face.
"Where am I?" whispered Vera LaValle.
"In a bedroom on Brent Street," I answered. "The Great Ahmed's place. You floated through the window and tried to kill me."
"He put me under," she murmured. "Then he sent me here and levitated me. I didn't know."
I nodded, but said nothing.
"You believe me, don't you?" she implored. "I didn't know. He promised me that he'd never make me do that again. But he did. He always does. Even now, I can't trust him. He can do anything he likes with me, because I'm - "
She stopped abruptly, and I filled it in for her.
"Because you're dead," I told her. "I know."
Her eyes widened. "How did you find out?"
For answer, I pointed at her throat. She noticed then that the choker had been torn away. Her hands covered the red scar on her neck and she stared at me for a long moment. Then, with a sigh, she swept her hair back into place.
"Tell me about it," I said. "Maybe I can help."
"Nobody can help. Nobody."
"I can try. And the more you tell me, the more I have to work with. That is, if it's safe to talk."
She thought that one over for a moment. "Yes, it will be, for at least a half hour now. He goes into a sort of coma when he levitates one of us; it requires terrific concentration. But if he comes out of it and discovers I've failed, anything can happen."
The fear was coming back into her eyes, and I sought to capture her attention again, quickly.
"Half an hour," I said. "That's time enough. Tell me about it from the beginning. What happened to you?"
Vera LaValle sighed. Her hands stroked the scar, softly. "All right," she said.
I lighted a cigarette and sat up, offering her the pack. She shook her head and I said. "Oh, that's right, I remember now. You don't smoke, do you?"
"I can't," said Vera LaValle. "I haven't been able to smoke, or drink, or eat. Not since I was beheaded - in 1794."
In 1794, the Terror ruled France. You could run into almost anything under the Terror. You might encounter a Citizen Robespierre or a man called - ironically enough - St Just.
If you did so, the chances were that they would introduce you to still another man with a more apt name - Samson, the executioner.
And Samson, in turn, would direct you to La Guillotine.
Everybody in France knew La Guillotine. Despite the feminine appellation, La Guillotine was not a giddy female - although she turned a lot of heads.
La Guillotine was the Terror incarnate. The head-chopping Terror. The beheading blade that waited until you were ripe for it, then chopped and filled the basket beneath it with rich and rotting fruit.
In 1794, the Terror ruled France, and you might run into almost anything. If you were Vera LaValle, age 20, daughter of Lucien LaValle the wealthy merchant, you walked in constant danger of your life.
Wealthy merchants were not popular these days. Wealthy merchants had to twist and turn, fawn and cringe, resort to almost any stratagem in order to try and escape from Paris before the order came - the fatal summons to the Tribunal. Better to ride out of the city in a dung-cart than to the Place de la Concorde in a tumbril.
No wonder Lucien LaValle betook himself to desperate measures and consorted with strange people in an effort to procure a means of deliverance before it was too late. Paris was aswarm with rogues and adventurers, thieves and sharpers who fattened on the misery of the remaining members of the nobility or the well-to-do. Some of them, for a price, could procure passports or arrange an unauthorized passage across the border or the English Channel.
Lucien LaValle, wealthy widower with a handsome, marriageable daughter, thought that he had found a solution.
Somewhere, somehow, in heaven knows what den or dive or
stew, he encountered Nicolo Varek. Varek, the friend of the illustrious Comte St Germain. Varek, the confidant of the mighty Cagliostro. Varek, the alchemist, the mystic, the seeker of the Philosopher's Stone. Varek who boasted of powers greater than those of the two great charlatans he claimed to have known - and taught. Varek, the unsmiling, the cold, the ageless. But - and this was the crux of the matter - Varek the foreigner. Varek, the holder of the priceless possession, the Russian visa. The passport to freedom for himself and family.
Varek had no family, now. But Vera LaValle was young, she was chic, she was eminently well dowered. If she were a wife, and Lucien LaValle an official member of Varek's family - then what would there be to stop the menage from leaving France?
It was a reasonable proposition, and Lucien LaValle presented it to Varek on many occasions.
He shrugged. There was work to be done here in Paris, he said. Great things were afoot. He had never been presented to Mademoiselle LaValle, and no doubt she was all her fond father proclaimed her to be but still… A man in Varek's position is above matrimony and the calls of the flesh. And as to money (and here Varek shrugged again), he fortunately was in a position to command a fortune whenever he wished. No, it would not be advisable to leave the country now. As a matter of fact, everything depended upon remaining.
Lucien LaValle was eloquent. When eloquence fell upon deaf ears, he was insistent. When insistence failed, he resorted to tears. He sank to his knees. He wept and implored. And in the end, Nicolo Varek consented to meet the merchant's daughter, to talk to her.
That was enough for La Valle. He returned home elated, and put his case to Vera.
"Consider now how much depends upon your conduct," he told her. "Be charming - sprightly - gay. This Varek, he has a long face. He needs cheering. He needs your youth."
Vera LaValle nodded dutifully. No need to instruct her in coquetry. Long before he revealed his hopes and plans, she was miles ahead of her father. He had found a man who could save them - at a price. What the price was did not matter. Her father would pay his share and she would gladly pay hers.
The Mammoth Book of Zombies Page 55
