“Yeah?”
“Are you saying he wasn't held at the hospital until he became well? That he--”
“Coopers reacted just like the Meyerses. Snatched him from Banaker's place too soon. Ronnie just never got better, and then one night we were searching for the kid again, but--”
“But he was never found.”
“Right.”
“Like Timmy's dog.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, yeah, the dog, Dish,” Carroll said.
“So where do you suppose the Meyerses have taken Timmy?”
“They got family over near Springfield. I have a suspicion they headed that way. I locked up the house for 'em. I thought it was just Kitty, you know, but I get this weird call from Dave ... seems to have been spooked by your and Briggs's visit to the house.”
“I was in the company of Dr. Magaffey, not Briggs.”
“I see. Look, we maybe will have to finish this talk later. I gotta go.”
“Ray!”
“Yeah?”
“What do you say we take my four-wheel tonight and look for that dog?”
“Sure, sure. About eight okay?”
“Deal.”
Whole portions of the old manse had been shut down to conserve on energy, Abe Stroud supposed. He remembered that his grandfather had closed down the enormous, unused ballroom, for instance. The big ballroom was located at the north end, overlooking the Spoon where it forked around a plot of island the old man called Huck Finn's Island, but it really had no name. The old man had just told him it was Huck's Island because they'd read Mark Twain's novel together and it seemed a fitting tribute to the clump of trees out there.
Abe got a burning desire to look in on the old ballroom and peer out through the floor-length windows that stood opposite Huck's Island. The wraparound porch stopped short of the north end. To go out on the veranda there, he'd have to pass through the ballroom.
The Ashyers whispered between themselves when the key was finally located among a cache of keys on a large jailer's ring in the pantry. Stroud wanted to find the doors that fit each key, and he figured he had the time to do so if he stayed in Andover. He still had not called Merton Cage regarding Iraq. Something was holding him back.
The Ashyers seemed agitated at his opening the ballroom, making him even more curious about the place.
They kept up a constant chatter, taking turns.
“Mr. Stroud never allowed anyone into this room.”
She said, “Something about a murder having been committed here once.”
“Just an old story,” he added with a nervous laugh.
“Mr. Stroud believed it,” she added.
“Who was supposed to have been killed here?”
“Your great grandfather, Ezeekial Stroud.”
“But the death certificate said death by madness.”
“We really don't know the particulars, sir,” said Mr. Ashyer, his tone clearly telling Stroud he wished to say no more.
The reserved couple seemed to be working out very nicely, and Stroud's suspicions had been considerably chased away by the cheery nature of the two and how they seemed to enjoy doing things for him. Still there remained about the couple a strangeness, a deep sadness even.
“I'll just have a look about,” he said, and disappeared into the ballroom alone.
The electricity had been cut to this area. It didn't stand to reason that the place was shut down due to his great-grandfather's having died here. Even if he had been shot or knifed in this room, the furniture and fixtures alone told Stroud that the place had been opened and used in fairly recent times. His grandfather had made use of the room before he had shut it down.
The room was expansive. At its center was a lovely crystal chandelier. But its dazzling beauty refracted the weak light coming in through the thick red velour drapes through a blanket of cobwebs. The furniture--tables, settees, chairs--was covered with yellowed sheets with an inch or two of dust that flew up at the touch, creating a ghostly cloud that whirled like so many misplaced atoms, until the particles finally settled like sediment at the bottom of a spring.
One swirl of dust leapt up at his side as he moved past the table a bit too energetically for here; the current of air coming off him disturbed this place. He looked into the swirl of dust as it created a fairylike presence. It seemed there was nowhere in this house he did not see the spirits of his forebears, for through the swirl of dust particles high over the mantel his grandfather was staring back at him. It was a portrait he'd forgotten but now remembered as always being here. It was not his grandfather but his great-grandfather, Ezeekial Stroud. He looked so much like Ananias that it was uncanny. Standing before the picture as a boy, he'd never seen the resemblance.
He also saw in the stern, hard gray eyes something of himself. He recalled having been frightened by those eyes when last he stood in this room, and he now heard his grandfather, angry with him for having come into the room. It had been off limits to all but his grandfather even then. And his grandfather would come and sit amid the collected dust and stare for hours at the portrait of his father, Ezeekial. One night Stroud snuck down and heard the old man talking gibberish to himself in the room, talking to the painting that Stroud now felt compelled to reach out and touch.
It was layered with dust, but somehow those eyes of Ezeekial Stroud, ever watchful, surveyed the entire ballroom with his unerring, penetrating stare. Right through the veil of dust, right through the years.
Stroud shook himself and went on with his journey across the hardwood floor to the windows where he expected to see the river and the island. He pulled back the drapes, causing a rain of filthy dust to engulf him, making him sneeze.
“Christ, this place needs cleaning!”
The damage done, he pulled back the drapes to reveal the floor-length windows, amazed to find eight-foot-high wrought-iron bars outside them. The gate around the windows was crisscrossed with spider webs, leaves, and blown grass, obscuring the view of the river and the island.
“What the hell ... bars?” Stroud turned on hearing a noise behind him. Deep in shadow on the other side of the room, someone stood and an eerie, unreal whisper said, “Abraham.”
It was a voice like Ananias Stroud's voice, but that was impossible.
Stroud rushed at the corner where it came from but there was no one there, only a cold emptiness. When he looked up at the picture of Ezeekial he realized that Ezeekial's eyes were on him, that in fact, no matter which way he moved, from right to left and back again, the ancient eyes seemed directed at him.
“What's the meaning of these bars?” he asked aloud and instantly felt foolish.
Ashyer pushed open the door and said, “Did you call for me, sir?”
“Ashyer, were you just in here?”
“No, sir.”
“Those bars,” he said, pointing to the windows. “What can you tell me about them?”
“They've always been there, sir ... since I've been here, anyway.”
“But why bars on just these windows. If you're going to put bars on windows, shouldn't you do it for all the windows? At least on the ground floor?”
“Doctor Stroud,” said Ashyer, “at one time all the windows on every floor had bars about them. Your grandfather was having them all barred but the job wasn't quite finished when he passed on.”
Stroud nodded. “Thanks, Ashyer.”
“Not at all, sir, now if you like--”
“I'd like to look into getting some cleaning men in to completely sanitize this place. Like to restore it. Will you see to it?”
“If it is your wish, sir.”
“It is, Ashyer ... it is.”
-10-
Abraham Stroud wondered about the bars on all the windows and the coincidence of those planned to be installed over Timmy Meyers' windows.
What did old Magaffey know that he did not know? Why was the old man reluctant to speak his mind completely and freely? Why did he speak
in riddles? Were the bars here at the manse erected to keep people in or keep people out?
Ashyer had left him--a walking mystery himself. The damned house was filled with mysteries--so many in fact he felt he might live a lifetime and never discover them all, certainly not uncover the meanings behind them all. “Sort of like life itself,” he concluded aloud to the watching eyes of his great-grandfather.
Stroud returned to the window covered with bars taller than himself. He opened the windows inward, studying the workmanship of the bars more closely. He wiped away clinging nests of leaves and webs of debris as well as spider webs. Even in the dark, the intricate pattern of spears and crosses that had been created by the craftsman was impressive. It was the kind of work he might expect to find on the gilded ships of the Edwardian era, or perhaps the first grand houses built in New York or Chicago at the turn of the century. Simply beautiful wrought-iron work in thick, powerful proportions.
The tops created a wall of spears garnished with metal leaf outcroppings on either side of the spear point. A third of the way and midway up the spears there was a series of ornate, old world crosses of the type seen in the more orthodox Catholic churches, particularly Greek and Roman. They might even be copied from an ancient era, he thought.
In a dark, heavy-handed, old world way, the bars had a beauty of their own.
Stroud had four, maybe five hours before his planned outing with Ray Carroll. He decided he must put the time to good use and concentrate on Stroud Manse. He must, he told himself, learn as much as possible about the house and its history--bars and scars and skeletons and all. For instance, the strange covered old helicopter that sat in back of the stables on its own pad. Whenever he went near it, the feeble-minded stableboy, Lonnie, became agitated to the point of crying.
He needn't go to the library to search. Stroud Manse had its own library, several in fact. His grandfather had a business area in a den down the hall from where Stroud was sleeping. He had still not been able to take the old man's master bedroom on the floor above, continuing to like the cozier, smaller bedroom where he had slept as a boy, and which he had equipped with video, stereo, and TV equipment as well as an aquarium recessed in the wall. But the old man's bedroom was yet another library, the walls lined with books.
Then, too, there was the circular room in the bowels of Stroud manse, the books there apparently the oldest and the most used, treasured, and valued. Stroud hadn't had time before to peruse them, but now maybe it was time.
Dr. Oliver Banaker paced before his staff, who were assembled in the briefing room reserved for the dissemination of information vital to them all. But today his message was short and to the point.
“I am aware of the problem and who is at the root of it. With this man Stroud in our community, we must be doubly cautious, people! You all know what his forebears have done to our kind--set us back years when this man's grandfather destroyed my father.”
Pamela Carr spoke up, her concern the same as most present. “Doctor Banaker, can you put an end to ... to the killings?”
“It has been done. Worry no more on that score.”
“Then, perhaps Stroud is no longer a threat,” she suggested.
“He is of a kind, just as we are, my dear.... No, he lives to threaten us. Stroud's coming is no accident. On the contrary, it is very much by design.”
“But if we just left him alone, and if the ... the terrorizing is ended--”
“Pamela, the man is dangerous to us. No two ways about that. So long as he remains in that house, living near us ... he poses a threat. Think of all that would be lost if we were exposed now? What would happen to Banaker Institute? Our research?”
“Not to mention your precious food sources,” said Dolphin Banaker. “I can't believe you allowed him to roam freely about the hospital, Pamela.”
“I had nothing to do with that!” she protested.
Dr. Cooper, the newest member on staff, searched about nervously, expecting Dolph to make some remark about his encounter with Stroud near the morgue, and here it was.
“And you, Cooper, chatting with the fiend in the corridor outside the morgue. Christ, why didn't you just invite him in for a better view?”
“You're the one who told the interns they could have at it with old Mrs. Lowenthal! It wasn't proper, Doctor Banaker! She wasn't fully prepped and here they come tearing in. Your son's got everyone breaking the rules! Hell, Oliver, she was still alive ... hell.”
Banaker's back stiffened and his eyes glowed with anger. “Dolph has been trying everyone's patience lately ... but then, is not that the mandate of youth? To test the boundaries, push back the perimeters? He is a bit wild, yes ... not unlike myself when I was younger. I expect great things from Dolphin, people. If something should ever happen to me, he will carry on my work.”
Dolphin gave Cooper a cold, animalistic glare from across the table. Spoiled devil, Cooper thought. Pamela feared for Cooper. One day the weaker man who still pined for his lost boy would be devoured by Dolphin. There'd be no place at Banaker or anywhere else for Cooper.
More important than Cooper, or Dolph, or Banaker himself, however, was the work.
Years of painstaking study and literally hundreds of thousands of man-hours had gone into the research and education of the “family”--Banaker's euphemism for what they were.
At Banaker Institute everyone was regarded as part of what he jokingly called the “Corporeal Family.” Everyone at Banaker shared the same blood. Fed from the same vats that purified and strained the fluid of life. The Institute's true work was not in patients and billing, but in carrying on a race so alien to most humans that some very wise forebears of the race had created children's stories and fiction around them so that they might continue to thrive and multiply. But no one had done as much for them as Banaker and his father before him. Banaker had uncovered secrets that made living among human beings virtually second nature to members of his family. They could come and go, day or night, as they pleased, without fear of detection or harm, as from the otherwise killing rays of the sun. No longer a problem, thanks to Banaker research, and the special genetically altered mix of Banaker blood plasma.
But now all their work--everything Oliver Banaker stood for--was jeopardized by the recent spat of killings and near killings that had erupted like a plague epidemic in the community. No one in the family seriously doubted that it was one of their own. Reverting back to the old ways, one among them had done the horrible deeds that could expose them all.
Outbreaks such as these had occurred before. They all knew the thin line each of them walked. Any one of them might fall prey to the ancient desire for fresh and hot and pumping blood taken from a cowering victim. Any one of them ... maybe even Banaker himself.
All of them knew the real meaning behind the much touted Devil of Andover, the black panther creature that was carted out every so often in the neighborhood to explain away the unexplainable, the unspeakable.
Everyone who worked at Banaker knew the dark secret. All of them had the lust and craving. It was in their blood, so to speak, to become such a creature as the one who'd taken the Cooper offspring, and more recently the Meyers boy, as well as the couple from Missouri.
The people from the “Show Me” state, Pam mused, had been shown....
“So, we all know the consequences. What is at stake here? Peace, my children ... peace and cohabitation in our little corner of the planet! Our forebears were wiped out, literally made extinct ... but we are making a dramatic return ... rather like the gray whale, I'd say. Then for one of us to go rabid on the scent of man, for the sake of our god, people ... Is a moment's passion worth all the risks to your fellow family members? Not to mention the several hundred disease organisms contained in the blood of mankind. AIDS is rampant. The most disturbing new development in our Andover Devil is that this one appears to cannibalize on our own kind! As attested to by ... by--”
Cooper suddenly bolted from the room, unable to hear anymore.
; “Cooper, Doctor Cooper!” said Banaker.
“I'll drag the wimp's ass back here,” said Dolph, about to pursue.
“No, no! Let him go, Dolph.”
“But, Father!”
“Dolph! Sit down.”
“I'm not a dog you can order around, Father!”
“We will speak of this later, young one!”
Dolph's color raged in his face, his huge nostrils flaring in and out, but he said no more.
Pamela saw the leer on Dolph's face when he caught her staring at him. He flexed his huge biceps and planted his elbows back on the table.
His father continued the weary speech. “Do you wish to trade all you have in this place for one moment of passion? Take that message to your children as well.” He saw that everyone had stopped listening. “Very well,” he said with a sigh. “See to your duties, everyone, and continue to set the fine example you do to the others.”
Everyone began to depart.
“Oh, Pam, if you will. I'd like a word.”
She held back as Dolph, holding onto the door, looked back inside at his father and Pamela. He winked at her and disappeared. “I have a special task for you, Pamela, and forgive me, but I will be asking much of you.”
She knew he had wanted her to flirt with Stroud, and now she knew he wanted her to take it further when he said, “You're happy here, aren't you, Pamela?” He didn't expect or want an answer. “When is the last time you ... had a man, Pamela?”
“I swear to you, Doctor Banaker, I'm not the one. I swear to you--”
He laughed. His laugh was so full and resounding it filled the room. “Please, Pamela, I don't for a moment suspect you of being the cause of our, and Andover's, problem.”
“Oh?”
“Now, answer the question.”
“The question?”
“When was the last time you had a man?”
She swallowed hard, feeling it was a test. “You ... you have my records.”
“Must I go to the trouble?”
She shook her head. “When I was eleven. It was just after you had me.”
“A long time.... Do you remember it?”
“Very much.”
Vampire Dreams (Bloodscreams #1) Page 10
