Lem clomped over to the fire and let his monstrous body sink down in a crouch. He had the same beak of a nose as Grandpaw Carta, but it was half-buried in pads of drooping fat. He giggled hoarsely.
“We like visitors,” he announced. “Maw’s coming down to say howdy. She’s changing her clothes.”
“Putting on a clean shroud, eh?” I hazarded. “Go away, Lem. And don’t peek through the keyhole.”
He grumbled, but shuffled out, and we got into those musty garments. Rosamond looked very pretty—the peasant type, I told her, which was a lie. She kicked me.
“Save your strength, darling,” I said. “We may need it against the Cartas. One big horrid family. This is probably their ancestral mansion. Used to live here when it “was a madhouse. Paying guests. Wish I had a drink.”
She stared at me. “Charlie, are you beginning to believe—”
I said, “That the Cartas are vampires? Hell, no! They’re just local yokels trying to throw a scare into us. I love you, honey.” And I nearly cracked her ribs as I hugged her. She was shivering.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I’m cold,” she said. “That’s all.”
“Sure.” I drew her toward the fire. “That’s all. Of course. Naturally. Toss me that lamp and we’ll go exploring.”
“Maybe we should wait for Maw?”
A bat fluttered against the window. They seldom fly during a storm. Rosamond didn’t see it. I said, “No, we won’t wait. Come on.”
At the door I stopped, because my wife had fallen on her knees. She wasn’t praying, though. She was staring down at some dirt on the floor.
I hoisted her up with my free hand. “Sure. I know. It’s graveyard mould. Count Dracula out west with the Hardys. Let’s go look over the asylum. There should be a few skeletons kicking around somewhere.”
So we went out In the hall, and Rosamond went swiftly to the front door and tried to open it. She turned wise eyes to me.
“Locked. And the windows are barred.” I said, “Come on,” and dragged her after me. We went back along the hall, stopping to peer into the dusty, silent rooms, brimming with darkness. No skeletons. No nothing. Just a mouldy, musty odor, like a house that hadn’t been lived in for years. I thought madly: Rejection-does-not-necessarily-imply—
We went out in the kitchen and saw dim light filtering into it through a doorway. There was a curious swishing noise that puzzled me. A dark lump resolved itself into young Lem, the white hope of the Kallikaks.
THE swishing stopped. Jed Carta’s cracked voice said, “Seems sharp now.” Something came sailing out and smacked into Lem’s face. He grabbed it, and, as we circled him, we saw that he was gnawing a chunk of raw meat.
“Good,” he slobbered, his green eyes glowing at us. “So good!”
“Builds strong, healthy teeth,” I informed him, and we went into the woodshed. Jed Carta was sharpening a knife on a whetstone there. Maybe it was a sword. Anyhow, it was big enough to duel with.
He looked a bit disconcerted. I said, “Getting ready for invasion?”
“Never do seem to get through with my chores,” he mumbled. “Careful of that lamp, there. This place is dry as tinder. One spark and it’d go up like blazes.”
“Fire is such a clean death,” I murmured, and grunted as Rosamond jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow. She said sweetly, “Mr. Carta, we’re awfully hungry. I wonder if—”
He said, in a curiously low, growling voice, “That’s funny. I’m hungry too.”
“Sure you’re not thirsty?” I put in. “Me, I could do with some whiskey. Blood for a chaser,” I added, and Rosamond punched me again.
“There are times,” she said acidly, “when you just ask for trouble.”
“It’s camouflage,” I told her. “I’m scared stiff, Mr. Carta. Honest. I keep taking you seriously.”
He put down the knife and cracked his face into a smile. “You’re not used to country ways, that’s all.”
“That’s all,” I said, listening to Lem gnawing and slobbering over his raw meat in the kitchen. “Must be great to live a clean, healthy life.”
“Oh, yes, indeed,” he chuckled. “Henshawe County’s a nice place. We’ve all lived here a long time. Of course, our neighbors don’t visit us much—”
“You surprise me,” Rosamond murmured. She seemed to have got over her wariness.
“But we’re a pretty old community. Pretty old. Got our customs, going ’way back to Revolutionary times—even got our legends.” He glanced at a side, of beef that hung from a hook nearby. “Got a legend about vampires—the Henshawe vampires. But I mentioned that, didn’t I?”
“Yeah,” I said, rocking on my heels. “You don’t take stock in it, you said.”
“Some folk do, though,” he grinned. “But I don’t hold with them yarns about white-faced devils in black cloaks flying through cracks and turning into bats. Seems to me a vampire might change with the times—you know? A Henshawe County vampire wouldn’t be like a European one. He might even have a sense of humor.” Carta cackled and beamed at us. “I Agger, if he acted pretty much like other folk, nobody’d suspect what he was. And then he might keep on being like he was before he—” Carta glanced at his work-gnarled hands. “Before he died.”
I said, “If you’re trying to frighten us, I’ll tell you right now that—”
“I’m just joking,” Carta said. He turned toward the side of meat that hung from its hook. “Fergit it. You said you was hungry. How’d you like a steak?” Rosamond said hastily, “I’ve changed my mind. I’m a vegetarian.” Which was a lie, but I seconded my wife’s motion.
Carta giggled unpleasantly. “Maybe you’d like something hot to drink?”
“Maybe I—what about whiskey?”
“Oh, sure. Lem!” the oldster called. “Rustle up some likker ’fore I lay into you.”
Presently I was holding two cracked cups and a cobwebbed bottle of cheap bourbon. “Make yourselves at home,” Carta invited. “You’ll run across my datter somewheres. She’ll talk a blue streak.” Some secret thought seemed to amuse him, for he giggled in that oily, unpleasant grate. “Keeps a diary, she does. I tell her it ain’t exactly wise, but Ruthie’s mighty set in her ways.”
We went back to the front parlor, sat before the fire, and drank bourbon. The cups were filthy, so we hoisted the bottle. I said, “It’s been a long time since we’ve done this. Remember how we used to go driving out to the park with a bottle—” Rosamond shook her head, but her smile was curiously tender. “We were such kids, then, Charlie. It seems so long ago.”
“Our second honeymoon. I love you, darling,” I said quietly. “Don’t ever forget that. Don’t mind my wise-cracking sometimes.” I passed her the bottle. “It isn’t bad.”
A bat fluttered against the window pane.
THE storm wasn’t letting up any. Thunder and lightning still made a conventional back-drop. The liquor warmed me. I said, “Let’s explore. Dibs on the first skeleton.”
Rosamond looked at me. “What was that carcass hanging up in the shed there?”
“It was a side of beef,” I explained carefully. “Now come on or I’ll bat your teeth in. Bring the bottle. I’ll take the lamp. Watch out for trap-doors, secret panels, and clutching hands.”
“And the Henshawe vampires?”
“Trap-doors,” I said firmly. We went up rickety, creaking stairs into the second story. Some of the doors had barred gratings let into them. None was locked. The place had once been an asylum, all right.
“Just think,” Rosamond said, drinking whiskey. “All the patients were kept here once. All insane.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Judging by the Cartas, the malady lingers on.” We halted, staring through a grating at an occupied cell. A woman was sitting quietly in a corner, manacled to the wall, tastefully clad in a strait-jacket. A lamp stood near her. She had a flat dish-face, sallow and ugly; her eyes were wide and green, and a twisted half-smile was on her lips.
I pushed
on the door; it swung open easily. The woman looked at us without curiosity.
“You a—a patient?” I asked weakly. She shook off the strait-jacket, shrugged out of the chains, and stood up. Oh, no,” she said, with that same twisted, frozen smile. “I’m Ruth Carta. Jed told me you were here.” Feeling, apparently, that some explanation was called for, she glanced at the strait-jacket. “I was confined in an asylum for a few years, quite awhile ago. They released me, cured. Only sometimes I get homesick.”
“Yeah,” I said nastily. “I can understand that. Like a vampire wanting to go back to the old sod every morning.”
She froze, her shallow eyes like green glass. “What’s Jed been, saying to you?”
“Just local gossip, Mrs. Carta.” I extended the bottle. “Have a drink?”
“Of that?” Her smile got vinegary. “No, thank you!”
It seemed to be a deadlock. Ruthie stared at us, with those green, unreadable eyes and that fixed smile, and the musty smell was choking in my nostrils. What next?
Rosamond broke the silence. ”Are you Mrs. Carta?” she asked. “How is it you have the same name as—”
“Be still,” I said softly. “Just because we’re married doesn’t mean everybody is.” But Ruth Carta didn’t seem annoyed. “Jed’s my father. Lem’s my son,” she explained. “I married Eddie Carta, my cousin. He’s been dead for years. That’s why they put me in an asylum.”
“Shock?” I suggested.
“No,” she said. “I killed him. Everything went red, I remember.” Her smile didn’t change, but I saw sardonic mockery in it. “That was long before such a defense was laughed out of courts. Just the same, it was true in my case. People make a mistake when they think clichés aren’t true.”
“Seems to me you’ve a lot more education than Lem or Jed,” I remarked.
“I was at a girl’s school in the east, when I was young. I wanted to stay there, but Jed couldn’t afford it. It made me pretty bitter—tied down to drudgery here. But I don’t mind the dullness now.”
I wished Ruthie would stop smiling. Rosamond reached for the bottle. She said, “I know how you must feel.”
Mrs. Carta moved back against the wall, placing her palms flat against it. Her eyes were preternaturally bright. And her voice was a whining rasp.
“You can’t know. A young thing like you—You can’t know what it’s like to have a glimpse of glamor and excitement and pretty clothes and men, and then have to come back here, shut up to scrub floors and cook cabbage, married to a stupid lout with the mind of an ape. I used to sit by the kitchen window and look out and hate everything and everybody. Eddie never understood. I used to ask him to take me to town, but he couldn’t afford it, he said. And somehow I scrimped and saved enough for a trip to Chicago. I dreamed about that. Only when I got there I wasn’t a kid any more. People on the streets stared at my clothes. I felt like screaming.”
I drank bourbon. “Yeah,” I said. “I know—I guess.”
Her voice rose higher. There was saliva dribbling from her lips.
“So I came back and then one day I saw Eddie kissing the hired girl and I took up the axe and I chopped at his head. He fell down and jerked like a fish and I felt like I was a girl again. And everybody was looking at me and saying how wonderful and pretty I was.”
HER voice was like a phonograph. It screamed monotonously. She slid down against the wall, till she was sitting, and froth foamed on her lips. She twitched all over. She began to scream hysterically, but it was even less pleasant when she started to laugh.
I took Rosamond’s arm and propelled her out into the hall. “Let’s find the boys,” I said. “Before Ruthie finds an axe.”
So we went downstairs, to the kitchen, and told Lem and Jed about it. Lem giggled, his fat face quivering, and headed for the hall. Jed drew a pitcher of water and followed. “Ruthie gets them spells,” he said over his shoulder. “They don’t last long, as a rule.” He vanished.
Rosamond still had the lamp. I took it from her, set it down gently on the table, and gave her the bottle. We finished it. Then I went to the back door and tried the lock. It was, of course, fastened.
“Curiosity was always my weakness,” Rosamond said. She pointed to a door in the wall. “What do you suppose—”
“We can find out.” The liquor was having its effect. Armed with the lamp, I tugged at the panel, and we stared down into the darkness of a cellar. It was, like everything else in this house, musty-smelling.
I preceded Rosamond down the steps. We were in a dark chamber like a vault. It was completely empty. But a strong oaken trap-door was at our feet. The open padlock lay near it, and the hasp had been clicked free.
Well, we continued on our merry way by means of a ladder. It went straight down for perhaps ten feet. Then we found ourselves in a passage, dirt-walled. The noise of the storm was shut out.
On a shelf at our side was a tattered notebook, with a pencil attached to it by a bit of grimy string. Rosamond opened it, while I peered over her shoulder.
“The guest book,” she remarked.
There were a list of names, and, under each one, were significant notations. Like this:
“Thomas Dardie.
$57.53. Gold watch. Ring.”
Rosamond giggled, opened the book to the last item, and wrote:
“Mr. and Mrs. Denham.”
“Your sense of humor kills me, darling,” I said coldly. “If I didn’t love you, I’d wring your neck.”
“It’s safer to wisecrack, sometimes,” she whispered.
We went on. At the end of the passage was a small cell, with a skeleton chained to the wall. On the floor was a wooden circular lid, with a ring in it. I lifted the disk, held the lamp low, and we looked into the black depths of a pit. The odor wasn’t by Chanel.
“More skeletons?” Rosamond asked.
“Can’t tell,” I said. “Want to go down and find out?”
“I hate dark places,” she said, quite breathlessly, and suddenly I let the lid slam back into place, set down the lamp, and was holding Rosamond very tightly. She clung to me like a child afraid of an unlit room.
“Don’t, darling,” I muttered, my lips against her hair. “It’s all right.”
“It isn’t. This awful—I wish I were dead. Oh, I love you, Charlie! I love you terribly!”
We broke apart then, for footsteps were sounding through the vault. Lem and Jed and Ruthie appeared. None of them seemed startled to find us here. Lem’s eyes were fixed on the skeleton; he licked loose lips and tittered. Ruthie was staring blindly, with that same fixed, twisted smile. Jed Carta gave us one look, green and malicious, and put down the lamp he was carrying.
“Hello, folks,” he said. “So you found your way down here, hey?”
“We were wondering if you had a bomb shelter,” I told him. “One feels a bit safer, with world conditions as they are.”
He cackled. “You don’t scare easy. Here, Ruthie.” He took a cattle-whip from where it hung on the wall and thrust it into the woman’s hands. Instantly she was galvanized into activity. She walked toward that chained skeleton and began to lash it. Her face was a dreadful smiling mask.
“It’s the only thing that’ll quiet her when she gets these spells,” Jed told us. “Been worse since Bess died.” He looked at the skeleton.
“Bess?” Rosamond asked weakly.
“She—used to be a servant girl here. We figger this don’t hurt her none now, and it keeps Ruthie quiet, mostly.”
MRS. CARTA dropped the whip. Her face was still frozen, but, when she spoke, her voice was perfectly normal.
“Shall we go upstairs? It must be unpleasant here for our guests.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s do. Maybe you’ve got another bottle kicking around, Jed?”
He nodded toward the wooden disk on the floor. “Wanta look down there?”
“I already did.”
“Lem’s pretty strong,” the old man said, apparently at random. “Show ’em, Lem. Us
e Bessie’s chain. Won’t matter if it’s busted now, will it?” All the Cartas seemed vastly amused.
Lem lumbered over and snapped the chain easily. “Well,” I said, “that’s that. Small Fry here uses his hands. You’ve got a knife. What does Ruthie use? Axe, I suppose.”
He grinned. “You don’t think we really kill people who stop by here, now! Or, if they have cars, drive ’em into the big pool back of the house.”
“Not if you’re the Henshawe vampires, too,” I said. “You’d be scared to death of running water.”
“It ain’t running,” he said. “It’s stagnant. You shouldn’t take any stock in such things.”
Rosamond said softly, “All the doors are locked, and the windows are barred, We found your guest book. We looked into your oubliette. It adds up, doesn’t it?”
“You fergit such notions,” Carta advised. “You’ll sleep better if you do.”
“I’m not sleepy,” Rosamond said.
I picked up the lamp and took her arm. We preceded the others along the passage, up the ladder into the cellar, and thence to the kitchen. I noticed that a huge tub filled with water stood in a dim comer.
We could hear the storm now, in all its raging fury.
Carta said, “I aired out a bed for you two. Want to go now?”
I shook the lamp. “Put more kerosene in this, will you? It’d scare my wife frantic if it went out in the night.”
Jed nodded to Lem, who shuffled off and came back with a sloshing can. He refilled the lamp.
We all went upstairs. Jed went first, a scarecrow figure with a coarse black wig. After us followed Lem, loutishly grinning, and in the rear Ruthie, with her fixed smile and wide, shallow green eyes.
“Hey,” I said, “you’re going to have to drag our bodies downstairs to the cellar, Jed. Why make more work for yourself?”
“Figgered you might be tired,” he chuckled. “Anyway, I got a few chores to tend to—but I’ll see you later.”
It was a nightmare procession upstairs that screamed protest under our feet. I said so, flippantly.
Rosamond pursed her lips. “A bit too melodramatic.”
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