by P. N. Elrod
Like a lot of chores, the digging took longer than anticipated and, coupled with the delay of dealing with the tramps, severely cut into my travel time. I could have probably made it all the way to Chicago the same night, but not without a lot of speeding. Allowing for state cops, unexpected flat tires, washed-out bridges, and other hazards, I could still easily make it to Indianapolis with a comfortable margin of time.
With the last dusty bag tied up and stowed in the trunk, I drove back to town in search of a phone, turning one up at a gas station. While a kid in greasy overalls fed the tank, I made a call to the Cincinnati police. After giving them the name of another farming family on the same road, I extracted a promise from them to investigate and, if necessary, roust the tramps from the Fleming place. They were given the impression the intruders were still there because it would do no harm for them to be cautious. I gave them my dad’s name and number so they could inform the owner, and hung up.
Having the time and inclination, I decided to indulge in some nostalgia and drive through my old neighborhood. I needed some reassurance that the haunts of my youth were still there, still in use by another generation of kids.
I wasn’t going to visit my parents, only look at the house and drive on. Visiting them would have been too complicated and painful. I’d be expected to stay the night and stuff myself with food and there was no way I could fob them off with some light excuse. I could also be honest and tell them the truth about myself and hope they’d understand and accept it, but that was something I absolutely was not ready to try yet.
Dad had moved off the farm years ago to be closer to the store he owned and to give Mom her long-coveted indoor plumbing. Their neighborhood looked smaller and dowdier to my eyes now, but still homey. There was ample evidence that the radio had not yet destroyed the quality of family life as had been predicted. There were plenty of people lounging on their front porches, seeking a cool breeze from the darkness. Windows were open and shades were up, their softly lit squares revealing a minute glimpse into other lives. I observed each with the detached interest of a gallery patron.
The detachment evaporated the second I saw the black Lincoln parked in front of my parents’ house. Now I was really angry. They could follow and harass me, but not my family. I braked and was out of the car and halfway up the walk before common sense took over and counseled caution. My sudden appearance at the front door might send Braxton into a fit of cross-waving hysterics, which was the last thing my mother needed.
Crossing the yard, I stationed myself in the bushes just under the open parlor window. Like most families, our friends usually ended up in the kitchen for their visits; strangers were shown to the parlor. Mom was running to form, and through the gossamer curtains of the open window I could see them all, and my sensitive hearing picked up every word. Braxton and Webber had apparently only arrived and were just settling in for a talk. Braxton was doing most of it, the padded and polite kind of speech reserved for people that you want something from.
None of it impressed my father, for he dealt with salesmen every day.
“Mr. Braxton, you said you wanted to talk with us about Jack,” he said, interrupting the flow of words.
“Indeed, yes, Mr. Fleming.” Braxton’s voice was smoother and more cultured than I’d thought possible, no longer strident with vanity or fear. It was that persuasive tone that kicked my memory into gear. “How long has it been since you last heard from him?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“At the moment that might be difficult to explain.”
“He sent us a postcard just this week,” said my mother.
“Did he mention anything unusual?”
“Like what?” asked Dad.
“An odd experience, perhaps?”
Mom was worried now. “Why do you ask? Has something happened to him? What is it?”
“Please, Mrs. Fleming, so far as we know he is all right and we are doing our best to see that he remains so.”
Dad’s temper was starting to flare. “Out with the story, Mr. Braxton.”
“Of course, of course. Your son, unknown to himself, may have gotten into some trouble when he moved to Chicago.”
“How so? What kind of trouble?”
“When he lived in New York he often wrote stories on the criminal element there for his paper. He had access to information sources that they would like to see eliminated, what we call informants and the like. Some of these criminals became very suspicious at his sudden departure and they are anxious to find out why he left. Matheus and I must talk with him about this and we must see him personally.”
“His moving was hardly sudden,” said Mom. “Besides, he moved nearly a month ago.”
“Yes, unfortunately certain individuals from the underworld were arrested at the same time, and they are blaming him for their capture. Whether he was responsible or not makes little difference to them.”
There was a pause as Mom and Dad exchanged worried looks.
“Then we have to warn him, send him a telegram or something,” said Dad.
“No, you must not do that, such things can be intercepted. I know that from experience.”
“What experience?”
“I work for the government; I must ask you to keep this meeting secret, of course.”
“Government?” Mom echoed uncertainly.
“Here, my identification.”
Dad looked at something Braxton passed to him. “You don’t look like a G-man—neither of you,” he added, to include Matheus, who was being very quiet about things.
Braxton chuckled easily. “None of us really do. For instance, young Webber here is one of our trainees. This is his first assignment, you know, so you see there is no real danger involved, but that does not lessen the importance of what we are doing. We must make contact with your son as soon as possible. We have to warn him about what is going on.”
“We’ll call him, then.”
“I’m afraid he’s no longer at the place he was living in. He moved out last night and we were only able to trace him part of the way here.”
“He’s coming home, then?” Dad was puzzled.
“Possibly, perhaps he learned of the trouble independently from us and he may try hiding out from them here.”
“Or at the farm—no one would think to look for him there,” Mom said helpfully. I groaned inside.
“Farm?”
Dad began explaining about the farm, with Braxton avidly listening, and I could see the next question coming a mile off. They didn’t need to be nosing around my home earth and learning of my excavations. Before things could go further, I picked up one of the whitewashed stones that divided the lawn from the bushes and sent it crashing through the parlor window.
Mom screamed and I was sorry for that, but I wanted those bozos out of the house, where I could deal with them. Dad was roaring mad and the first one out the front door, with Braxton and Webber at his heels. But I wasn’t hanging around, and bolted for the Lincoln. Opening the driver’s door, I released the hand brake and pushed. It wasn’t so dark that they couldn’t see their car moving off by itself.
Matheus noticed, yelled, and gave chase. I had a good lead; he was out of shape and Braxton on the arthritic side. It was a good block’s run before they caught up with the car. I ducked low, seeping into the backseat, and waited for them. They were both wheezing when they tore the doors open. There was no sign of Dad. They’d left him back in the yard looking in the bushes for the vandal.
“I’m sure I set the brake,” Matheus insisted in reply to Braxton’s irritated question.
“Well, start it up and let’s get back there. I almost had him.”
“But who broke the window?”
“I did,” I said, leaning forward to clamp a hand over their mouths. For once the lack of an image in the rearview mirror had worked in my favor. They gave only a token struggle—I was strong and they were pretty winded after their dash to the car.
“I told you to
go back to New York,” I reminded them.
Braxton mumphed something loud and defiant. He squirmed and twisted, trying to get something from his pants pocket. I could guess he was after his cross again and shifted my hand until it was over his nose. He was already short of oxygen, in a few seconds he was weakly trying to tear free.
“You gonna behave?” I asked him.
He mewed desperately down in his throat and I eased off just enough so he could breathe.
I looked at Matheus, who was too scared to move. “Okay, kid, you drive to my directions, understand?”
He gurgled.
“You drive nice, or I’ll break the geezer’s neck.”
Another gurgle. It sounded like an affirmative.
I let the kid go and he started the car without any argument. He seemed used to taking orders. Our drive was not a cordial one, and out of necessity I was forced to keep both hands tight on Braxton—one over his mouth and the other encircling his wrists. After several miles I was feeling very cramped.
We drove northeast until I judged that the distance was enough to keep them busy, then had the kid stop. He was visibly trembling and Braxton was sweating bullets. The area was well clear of the city, dark and deserted. They must have concluded that I was going to kill them and leave the bodies in a roadside ditch. It was tempting, but only as a joke. Instead I pushed them out of the car, got behind the wheel, and turned the big machine back toward the city. They gave an angry and halfhearted chase, but were easily left behind in the exhaust fumes.
If they got lucky they might turn up a ride in Montgomery, but in the meantime I planned to head for Indianapolis.
I left their car parked across the street from a fire station and had a brisk walk back to my own. By this time the neighborhood had settled down. The lights were still on in my parents’ house, but the rest were dark, their occupants sensibly asleep. Dad had nailed a board over the broken window. I rolled quietly away to look for another telephone.
Dad answered on the first ring and I blandly said hello.
“Jack!” He sounded excited.
“Is something wrong?” I asked innocently.
“I’ll say there is.” He gave me a slightly garbled account of what had happened earlier and wanted to know if I knew there were some gangsters after me.
“Wait a minute.” I tried to sound skeptical. It wasn’t hard. “How do you know these guys were G-men?”
“He had an identification card, it said he was with the FBI.”
“Those can be printed up by the hundreds in any joke shop. What did they look like? Was it a little guy and a chubby kid with bad skin?”
“That’s them.”
“Dad, I hate to say it, but you’ve been had.”
“What d’ya mean?”
“I did a story on those fish last year. They’re a couple of con men. Because of me, the cops went after them, a lot of their victims turned up in court, and these guys got sent up. Did they try talking you into buying anything?”
“No, they wanted to know where you were, and then someone broke the window—”
“That was the third man in their team. They’ll be coming back and trying to sell you some kind of phony U.S. government insurance. . . .”
I gave Dad an imaginative account of their criminal career, stating that Braxton was a dangerous crazy and that he and Webber indulged in some bizarre sexual practices. Then I held my breath to see if he believed it, because I’d always been a lousy liar.
Dad said a few well-chosen obscenities, but they were directed at his recent guests, not me.
“Watch out for them,” I suggested enthusiastically. “The little one’s a real weasel when he’s cornered. If they bother you again, just call the cops. Don’t let them back in the house.”
“I won’t, I just wish you’d called earlier. Why are you calling now?”
“I’ve been moving, I wanted to give you my new number.”
“They said you’d moved. Where are you?”
“I found a nice boardinghouse. If there’s an emergency they’ll get a message to me.” I gave him Escott’s office phone number and told him to keep it to himself.
“What about the address?”
“I’ll be getting a box at the post office, the landlord likes to steam things open.”
“That’s illegal.”
“Yeah, but the rent’s cheap and the food’s good. How’s Mom?”
He put her on the line and we exchanged reassurances and other bits of information. She thought I had a job at an ad agency and asked how it was going. I let her keep thinking it. Except for the Swafford case, my modest living expenses and the money I sent home to help them out had come from an inadvertent theft from a mobster and some engineered luck at a blackjack table. Neither of them would have won her approval.
I promised to call again in a day or two for further news and hung up, grinning ear to ear.
A few years ago I walked into a small bookstore in Manhattan. The window on the street was just large enough to display the painted legend: BRAXTON’S BOOKS, NEW & USED, and the inside sill held a few sun-faded samples of literature. In the last few weeks I’d seen a hundred hole-in-the-wall places like this; I liked them.
A bell over the door jingled as I entered. Dust motes hanging in the sunlight were stirred by the draft and I sneezed. By the time I straightened and wiped my nose he had appeared out of one of the alcoves formed by bookshelves.
“Good afternoon, sir, may I help you?”
He was shorter than me, with dark wrinkled skin like a dried apple. There was a suggestion of black shoe polish in his hair, but the world was full of people who didn’t want to look their age.
“Got anything on folklore or the occult?”
“Yes, sir, in this first section.” He indicated the area and watched with a pleasant smile as I went to look it over.
It was a fairly complete selection. There were copies of Summer’s works on witchcraft and vampires, even Baring-Gould’s book on werewolves, but nothing I hadn’t already seen and read before. I checked the fiction section, drew a blank, and finished off with the occult shelves. They were also very complete, but only with the usual junk. I said thank you to the general air and started for the door.
“Perhaps,” he said, stopping me, “if you’re looking for something special I could be of help. I have other books in the back.”
It was my day off, I was in no hurry. “Well, sure, if you don’t mind.”
“What are you looking for?”
Speaking the title always made me feel vaguely foolish. “A copy of Varney, the Vampire by Prest.”
He knew what I was talking about, not surprising considering the contents of his well-stocked shelves. His brown eyes got brighter with interest. “Or the Feast of Blood,” he said, completing the title. “Yes, that is a rare one. I have a copy, but it’s part of my own collection and not for sale.”
“Oh,” I said, for want of something better.
“May I ask why you are interested in it?”
The real reason I couldn’t talk about, so I had a fake one practiced and ready. “I’m working on a book, a survey of folklore, fact and fiction.”
“That is a very wide field.”
“Not when you’re tracking down certain books.”
He looked sympathetic. “I’d like to help, but it could only be in a limited way.”
Strings of some kind? He’d find out real soon I wasn’t rich.
“You’d have to read it here in the shop, that is if you want to. I value it too much to loan it out.”
“I can understand that,” I said gratefully. “Are you sure it wouldn’t be too much trouble?”
“Not at all, but it would have to be during working hours.”
“That would be fine, thank you.”
He offered his hand. “I’m James Braxton.”
“Jack Fleming.”
“Come in the back, I’ll show you where you may read.”
“You have it righ
t here?”
“Oh, yes. Yes.” He threaded past ceiling-high shelves, leading me deep into the narrow shop. He switched on the light over a desk and chair and swept some account books to one side. The light revealed shelves crammed with a faded patchwork of book spines of every shape and age. It looked like a duplicate of the folklore section out front, but more so. Some of the volumes were very old, with odd titles, others were recent and by skeptical writers. One shelf held only copies of Occult Review. He was more than casually interested in the subject himself, and I wondered if he sincerely believed in it. If so, I’d have to watch my lip.
He knew exactly where his copy was located and pulled it out, placing it on the desk. “I hope you enjoy it,” he said.
“Thank you, you’re very generous to do this.”
“I’m just in favor of expanding knowledge in a neglected area,” he smiled.
“You have quite a collection.”
The bell on the door out front rang, interrupting his reply. He excused himself with a rueful smile, and for the next few hours was too busy to return.
I’d already read the first chapter in another book, so I skipped it and went through the second and third in short order. I was a fast reader, but did not plan to spend the rest of my life poring word by word through the book’s more than two hundred chapters. In its original state, it had been published a chapter at a time for weekly consumption by the newly literate masses. A fast writer could keep himself employed for years with a popular series. In the previous century, the penny dreadfuls were just as popular as the current radio and movie serials were now.
I skimmed the pages, reading the brief descriptions given under the chapter titles, and touching on the dialogue whenever it popped up. The gist of it centered on the tribulations of the Bannerworth family as they nobly bore the attacks of Varney upon their daughter, Flora. A good family, but not too bright: if they’d simply moved away at the start they would have saved themselves a lot of trouble, but the plot dragged on regardless of such logic.
It was really better than I expected—at least at first, then the quality of the writing began to deteriorate along with the continuity. A cliff-hanger ending was never resolved and one of the Bannerworth brothers seemed to disappear completely from the story. When he did return, the author had forgotten his name. Whole sections written for no other purpose than to fill a word quota tried my patience and I skipped them altogether. I focused on the few scenes where the vampire appeared and had dialogue.
