“Hell with it,” Jim announced, his protruding Adam's apple bobbing with irritation. “We'll just park it right here, and to hell with it. Curl up in the back--”
“Sleep in the car?”
“Yes!”
“All right ... I guess....”
“I'll sleep in front. Come daylight, we'll find the interstate easy enough.”
“Wish I'd never heard of Sarah Giddings,” she replied, crawling over the seat.
Jim and Maude Bradley were going to Sarah Giddings's third wedding. Maude and Sarah had been roommates in college, but like Maude, she hadn't finished, marrying instead. In Maude's case, she'd remained with Jim Bradley through the years. “Sarah's somethin',” Jim commented.
“You men ... all alike.”
“Oh, Maudie--”
“So Sarah's got long legs and a pencil-thin waist--”
“Don't start!”
“She's a vamp, Jim. Can't keep a man because she runs right over every man she's ever had.”
Not like you, Jim thought but did not say. “I got to sleep,” he moaned instead.
“Sure, honey ... you get some rest now and things'll look better in the morning. Lock your doors.”
They both worked to be certain all the doors were locked. “Thank God we thought to bring the car blankets,” she said, spreading one over him and then herself. “Night.”
“Night, Maudie.”
An hour into sleep Maude felt the impact of something like a tree fall over the rooftop of the car. It made her sit up and exhale with a gulping scream. Jim was also awakened by the sudden impact of something hitting the car. Whatever it was, it had been heavy. The sudden pound was like the slamming of a door. When he and Maude opened their eyes, however, all their attention was on the strange fog that engulfed the car. He had seen fog over the river when they drove past the bridge before, but this was pretty far from there. Valley fog, he reasoned, but it was an unusual fog in that the windows hadn't become wet with condensation. They were clear, so clear you could see the swirls in the fog on the other side of the glass, swirls that spiraled and dipped and did little loop-d-loops. It was like looking through thick gauze.
“Fog,” he said, having become somewhat mesmerized by the stuff.
“To hell with the fog! What was that noise? What struck the car?” she wanted to know, couldn't let it go.
“I don't know.”
“On your tombstone! That's what they'll put on your tombstone! I--Don't--Know.”
“Probably a tree branch.”
“Can't you just get out and check?”
“It's over.... What's the use of trudging out in the dark and--”
“Flashlight is in the glove compartment. Hand it to me and I'll have a look!” she said in a tone that clearly challenged Jim.
He shoved off the blanket about him and smacked out at the button that popped open the little compartment, sending papers and a screwdriver to the floor. He snatched out the flashlight and turned it on and banged his shoulder on the door, forgetting to unlock it first.
“Christ,” he muttered, “you can't leave it alone, can you?”
Before she could answer, he got out. Two feet from the car he was out of the eerie fog. It was bizarre. The fog seemed to be seeping from the tree under which they'd parked, and the car was rocking, literally rocking now, with Maude inside. He could hear her gulping and shouting as the thing bounced within the fog.
“What the hell ... is going on?”
He flashed his beam up into the tree, the light slicing through the unnatural fog, the edges of light turning the stuff into a gooey, dripping substance. It was like looking through an egg held up to the light. Inside the huge fog egg something dark and large moved, shook, and began to take form. The outline became larger and larger as the fog decreased, sucked up into the black Goliath, until it just hung there at the end of Jim's light, enormous and black, a large, six-foot-long inky seed pod, just dangling in the tree.
“God...” he moaned. It was finally happening, and it was happening to him and to Maude. Aliens ... aliens from another time and place, the fog some sort of protective covering, the seed pod the ship, and inside ... inside?
Fascinated and fearful all at once, he went to stand beneath the looming black form in the tree over the car. The rear car door opened and Maude got out as if in a daze. She walked to the rear of the car and began climbing up the trunk and to the top, reaching out to touch the black conical shape there. She seemed as mesmerized by it as he, maybe more so.
“Maude, Maude,” he cautioned. “Don't touch it, Maude.”
She acted as though she could not hear.
“Maude!” he shouted, his voice echoing all the way down to the Spoon.
She reached it with her fingertips and said, “Take me.... I want you to have me ... I do, I do...”
The black torpedo opened up and Jim fell back with abhorrence at the power of the wind that hit him like a whale fluke. Two enormous wings unfurled to take Maude in, stabbing her about the shoulders with talons that jutted out, and lifting her large frame into their folds. Jim saw the fetid eyes of the creature and they locked on him with enthusiasm. From its mouth flowed the fog, escaping with it was some dribbling material that was neither saliva nor blood. It plopped onto the top of the car just as the fangs sank deep into Maude's flesh. The creature took another more powerful gripping hitch with those fangs on Maude's throat and began feeding on her.
Terrified, Jim, knew he could not possibly save Maude; he knew instinctively that this creature that traveled by cover of fog, perched upside down in trees, had more strength and power in its smallest part than he had in his entire body. Jim hadn't a weapon on him, nothing beyond the Ford.
He threw down the light and leapt into the driver's seat, turning the key, burning the ignition when it did come on, tearing away from the tree. Tears streaming down his face, he saw Maude's ankles in the rearview mirror in the distance where she hung, lifeless, in the tree beneath the creature.
“God, oh, God!” He shook as he cried and pleaded, hitting the gas full throttle.
He tore back the way he came, rampaging over the little bridge at the Spoon River, rattling the timbers. He screeched tires at the hairpin curve that he'd taken at twenty just hours before. He saw a sign for a main road in the distance and blubbering, crying, he saw that he was going to make it out alive. Maude ... there'd been no way he could've saved her, and had he tried, he'd be dead now, too. This way, at least, he could get help, return with weapons to the scene.
The road here skirted the Spoon, a deep ravine to his left leading to the silvery stream. He was doing eighty, eighty-five in a car that couldn't take it, a car with a four-cylinder engine.
A sign came up so fast he could hardly read it: andover--4 miles.
Then something smashed into the car overhead, denting the top inward. It made him weave, almost lose control. Another powerful pounding rent the top just above his head. It was the thing! Finished with Maude, it was now atop the car, after him. He hit ninety just as the driver's side window was smashed in and his throat was gripped in a powerful vice. The grip choked off his air and suddenly snapped his neck.
The car careened off into the ravine with something large and black atop it, tearing out the human prey from the window, latching onto a passing tree just moments before the vehicle hit the water. The top where the creature had been lying seethed with an acidic smoke at the touch of the water.
Jim Bradley, neck broken, felt his limp body being heaved up and up into the branches of a gnarly tree, his last sensation the smells of pine sap and blood intermingling with the smell of an animal, a smell he had not forgotten since childhood, the odor of a nest of rats found beneath the old rotten boards of his father's tool shed. The last thing Jim saw was the humanlike eyes of the monster which had hooked itself once again upside down to the top of the tree and had hooked its prey up in the manner of a large IV, to feed on Jim's blood.
Only now did Jim realize that he h
ad fallen prey to a vampire bat as large as a man.
-6-
News of a car going off the road at or near the Combs Hill Bridge had the entire town's attention this day. It was towed out of the water and into Andover by Bunnell's Shell Station, old Jacob “Bun” Bunnell doing the hauling himself. Semi-retired, Bun still enjoyed hooking cars out of the Spoon.
A group of interested bystanders were on hand both at the scene of the accident and at the station when Bun finally towed in the wreck. It was chock full of dents and rips, especially to the top, as if it'd flipped over onto an enormous boulder. The windows were all smashed up and the windshield shattered but holding.
“Crazy fool had to be doing a hundred,” Bun told waiting ears.
Whoever was in the car was nowhere near the wreck. John McEarn's TV report flashed scenes from the salvage--the license plate number and the car itself as Bun was having it cranked out of the five-foot shallows of the Spoon where it curved away from the bridge some distance down. Everyone was relieved that the car had out-of-state license plates, and that it was an unfamiliar car. The community had had its share of loss already. State patrolmen on the scene were relieved that the old bridge had sustained no damage. The car had apparently come careening off the bridge, barely missed going over at that point, but the driver fought to keep it on the road for another fifth to a quarter mile, one patrolman told viewers at home.
Abe Stroud heard the report and shook off sleep to listen. He must've turned the TV on, but he didn't recall doing so. He didn't remember waking.
“Skid marks and tire trail where it dug up earth and rock tells the tale,” said Sheriff Briggs, inching out the patrolman.
Crazy man.
Drunk.
Cocaine, maybe ... all suggestions from TV reporter John McEarn.
Abe Stroud leaned on his elbows, trying to take in the information as it came over. McEarn was apparently doing this live. Stroud recognized the area as one very near where he and the others had stomped through the woods on the trail of missing Timmy Meyers.
“What about the body?” he wondered aloud, just as John McEarn's voiceover said, “Thus far the body has not been located. It is estimated that the swift current carried the driver downstream, and will possibly deposit her along the shore at some future date. It is not known whether or not there were any additional passengers in the vehicle. A lady's handbag was found on the seat, and police theorize the handbag belonged to the driver, but identification of the victim has not been released, pending notification of the family.”
Stroud saw Chief Briggs hanging about, a look on his face that bespoke his confusion; or was he angry because McEarn hadn't interviewed him on air?
Stroud wondered if Briggs had a diver on his payroll, someone who'd go in after the body. If not, Stroud would put in for the job. He'd done it before, and while he did not welcome the notion ... if there was no one else, he'd do it.
But for now, lying in bed, he still felt weary, his eyes still burning from tiredness. The stress of the last few days had taken its toll. He laid back, wondering if he should not get right up, shower, go into the city for breakfast and see if there was anything he could do. In addition to helping out with locating the body, or bodies, in the Spoon, he still wished to learn if anything new had developed in the Timmy Meyers search. Instead, he laid back, closed his eyes, and allowed the warmth and softness of the big bed to engulf him. He fell back into a slumber.
Stroud's mind drifted through the major periods of his life. Until he was eleven he lived with his parents who were very well off, his father being a physician and his mother being a computer engineer. They'd died in a tragic accident while he was left unharmed physically. The emotional difficulties he faced were helped by the love and devotion his grandfather had shown him. When he became old enough to be on his own, he began college at Northwestern University, quickly changing to the University of Chicago, most anxious to become an archeologist. However, with the growing hostilities in Vietnam, he felt duty bound to join the armed forces and so his education was interrupted. It would take him all these years later to finish what he had started, thanks in large part to the plate in his head and something deep within that told him he was only good enough to perform to someone else's orders--a sergeant's orders. So, he'd enrolled in the police academy, barely keeping track of his grandfather and never coming home.
It had been a period of aloneness and loss. Stroud began to feel the old man's aloneness and loss now, too.
Stroud Manse had the same, empty feel to it: the feeling of aloneness. The old place was dismal, oppressive, and Stroud wondered if he shouldn't simply put it on the market, take the best offer and sever ties for good and all, in order to start fresh.
Maybe it was a dream, or some hallucination brought on by his damaged head. Or maybe something literally came out of the woodwork.
Stroud had lain back just to close his eyes for a moment, still pondering how the TV had come on, and now wondering how it had gone off. He recalled no time when he had actually gotten out of bed or fished about for the remote to do either. Then his eyes locked on a shape, the stretched, taffy-pulled form of a humanlike creature in the wood grain of the oaken door across the room. It looked like a half man, half praying mantis until this image began to move.
He watched the image in the wood, knowing full well that if a man stared long enough at an object all sorts of bizarre tricks of the mind might visit him. Still, he stared and stared, unable to remove his eyes from the coalescing stick man who seemed to be trying to fight his way from the wood he'd become embedded in.
The haunted manse, so full of bizarre objects and memories, was, at this moment, outdoing itself.
Stroud threw his legs over the edge of the bed and in his underwear stepped toward the door tentatively, one hand extended to the milky, moving image before him. It could not pull free of the wood, but it sent out messages, not in a voice but through his brain, saying, “Leave this place. Leave this place.”
“Who ... what are you?” Stroud asked in a choking voice.
“Leave ... before it is too late ... leave.”
Stroud turned to see himself still asleep in bed when suddenly he was shaken by the rattling ring of the telephone. The noise and the start instantly put him back together again, and he found himself rousing from sleep and the solid door still just a door. In its grain, if he worked hard at it, he could, however, see the faint outline of the image that had spoken to him in his dream. Unable to make head or tail of it, he grabbed for the phone and at the same time saw that indeed, somehow, the TV had been shut off.
“Sheriff Briggs, here!”
Stroud's ear was hurt by the man's loud voice. “Oh, yes, Sheriff...”
“Good news, Doctor Stroud! Good news!”
“Indeed?”
“The Meyers boy? He's been found, Stroud, and--”
“Found, really? Alive, you mean?”
“In one piece and alive, yeah! We got damned lucky, damned lucky. Course men like you and me, we always think the worst ... but you can never tell, now, can you? Hard work pays off.”
“What about the other boy?”
“Other boy? Oh, Ronnie Cooper?”
“Yes, did Timmy Meyers offer up any information about the other missing--”
“I really don't think the two cases are, you know, related. Anyway, Timmy's not talking. He's kinda in what you'd call ... shock.”
“Shock?”
“'Fraid so.”
“Where is he now?”
“Banaker has him under observation.”
“I see.”
“Best facilities in all the county.”
“Yes, of course.”
“That's right.”
“Unharmed?”
“Narry a scratch on him. Physically, he's none the worse for wear. Emotionally, well ... boy spent a rough night.”
“Where'd they find him?”
“Up near Twin Bluffs. Hell, nobody was even lookin' up that way when--
”
“Who found him?”
“Some of Banaker's people, on their way toward the Institute, found him wandering around, lost and cryin'.”
“I see.”
“Well, all's well that ends well, Doctor Stroud.”
“But what about the other boy?”
“Lost cause, that one. Been too long in them woods. If anyone ever does stumble onto the body ... won't be recognizable.”
“Well ... I guess we can all breathe easier.”
“You bet we can.”
“What about the bones, Sheriff?”
“What about 'em? Banaker's explained that to you, hasn't he?”
“Ahhh, the graveyard theory.”
“Not no theory.”
“Oh, right, city records ... all that.”
“Right. Well, rest easy.”
I was, until you woke me, he wanted to say but instead replied, “Did your people get the package out to Chicago, the UPS package?”
“Hey, not to worry.”
“Thanks.”
“Thank you, Doctor Stroud, for showing such civic duty.”
“No more'n anyone else would do.”
He laughed lightly. “Your old grandfather would've sat up there in that house and done nothing, not a damned thing.”
He hung up before Stroud could protest what seemed to him to be a slur against his kinsman. The man he had known would not have idly sat by while the entire town was on a night search for a missing boy. Unless the old man changed near the end. Unless his personality had altered.
The thought shook Abe Stroud along with the memory of finding the secret chamber below the manse.
It seemed, for the moment, that all the trouble that had rocked Andover and its people was contained now, wrapped up neat and tidy by Briggs and Banaker, as tight and proper as the package Stroud had sent off to Chicago for examination. So why was it so difficult to put it from his mind?
Something like a nagging whisper in his ear, so strong he felt as if someone were standing over his bed breathing into his ear, except that the exhalations were chilling instead of warming. Something suggested itself to him and made him sit up in bed. He wanted to see and talk to Timmy Meyers.
Vampire Dreams (Bloodscreams #1) Page 6
