Bloodless

by Douglas Preston

  “Think we’ll see a ghooooost?” Brock said with an exaggerated moan.

  Here was the third path. It was almost invisible, covered in grass, and it wandered behind a row of tombs into a still more overgrown section of the cemetery.

  “This is it,” Toby said with a confidence he didn’t feel.

  The path was hard to follow. They had to step over a few fallen tombstones. The Bird Girl was supposed to be on the right, but there was nothing like that around: just more broken tombstones.

  “Admit it,” said Brock. “We’re lost.”

  Toby ignored him and kept going. The cemetery was huge and Toby hoped they could find their way out again.

  They came to a marble tombstone with a winged angel striding along with one arm raised, splotched with lichen.

  “Now, there’s a zombie angel if I ever saw one,” said Brock. “Man, this is a perfect place to drain the main vein.”

  “Jesus, don’t do that, it’s a cemetery—” said Toby, but Brock was already giving the angel a good hosing down.

  “We’re lost,” said Brock when he was finished. “And you know it.”

  Toby, feeling the liquor kick in, shrugged. “Totally.”

  Brock laughed. “What the fuck time is it?”

  Toby checked his cell phone, momentarily blinding himself with the light. “Three eleven.”

  Brock took another long swig of Southern Comfort, then began singing, using the bottle as a mic.

  Please allow me to introduce myself

  I’m a man of wealth and taste

  His drunken words floated off into the darkness as he hammed it up, dancing around the graves like Mick Jagger. Suddenly he stopped. “You hear that?”

  Toby said nothing. He, too, had heard something, like wind in the trees, and smelled a faint stench like burning rubber. But there was no wind. The air was deathly still. He held the light up as he looked around. Nothing. Brock resumed singing behind him.

  Then Toby heard it again: or rather, felt it. It was a broad flutter, a stirring of air. Brock’s singing abruptly ceased. Toby spun around, but Brock had vanished.

  “Brock? Where are you?”

  There was no answer. Toby waited, holding his breath. And then, off in the darkness, he heard the shattering of the pint bottle.

  “Brock!” he called, taking a step back, blood pounding in his ears. He had a sudden and profound sense of dread. “Cut it out, man, it’s not funny!” He held the cell phone light out in front of him, moving it this way and that, probing the darkness. All he could see were swirling mists.

  And then he felt something warm and humid brush his face.

  He stumbled back, waving the light. “Who’s there?”

  But nothing was there. It must have been just a warm nighttime draft, nothing solid.

  “Brock!” he yelled.

  And now he heard a wet sound, a sort of gush, and then a hot, heavy burst of wind—no mere draft this time—struck his face. The foul smell grew much stronger: burning rubber, but now mixed with something like vomit or old socks. He screamed, stumbling backward, twisting away, and then turning to run. He felt the nightmare wind rush over him again, damp and horribly fetid, and then he tripped over a broken tombstone and fell hard, the cell phone flying out of his hand and off into the darkness. He struggled to his feet. Where was his phone? He looked around but could see no light, the darkness closing in upon him like a damp cloak. Something unlike anything he’d ever felt before suddenly brushed the side of his face and, with a scream, he broke into a blind run, clawing his way through undergrowth, stumbling and rising, choking and sobbing, the dark fastness of the old cemetery absorbing his cracked, shrill cries.

  29

  IT WAS JUST AFTER three in the morning when Constance Greene once again noiselessly ascended the stairs to the hotel’s fourth floor, then paused at the landing to look down the carpeted hallway. All the doors were closed, and everyone, it seemed, was asleep.

  All, that is, perhaps for one.

  Constance stood utterly still, taking in the somnolence of the elegant corridor.

  It had not been so long ago that she’d stood in this same spot and been warned away. She had to ask herself: why was she here again?

  This question had been in the back of her mind ever since she’d decided to return—a decision that had formed almost without her realizing it.

  Constance had as much self-awareness as any human on earth. Her unusually long life span had given her time to understand her own motivations and desires. She was here, she understood, for more than one reason. The first involved Pendergast. Curiously, he had made no attempt to question the old proprietress himself. He had glanced over the police interview with Miss Frost—if interview was the correct word, as it consisted of only six sentences, questions and responses that had passed through a locked door. The responses were of no use beyond underlining that Miss Frost had nothing to say. Normally Pendergast would find some way to charm Miss Frost into unlocking her door. She was an obvious person of interest. Although it was absurd to think she could have killed Ellerby herself, she knew him well and they had had a blazing argument two days before he died.

  And yet, whenever the subject of Felicity Winthrop Frost came up, Pendergast had simply nodded…and glanced pointedly in Constance’s direction. It hadn’t taken long for Constance to realize the task of approaching the recluse was hers.

  The old lady’s mysterious past and great age intrigued Constance. So did the wild rumors beginning to surface, that Miss Frost was a vampire who revivified herself through drinking the blood of others. In poking around the web, she could find no record of the woman’s existence before 1972. She had communicated all of this to Pendergast, who had drily replied that perhaps she and Miss Frost should have tea some fine evening.

  Almost of their own accord, her feet had begun moving down the corridor, toward the unmarked door on the right. Nobody wants to go in. It could be…dangerous. Perhaps the staff members she’d spoken to also subscribed to these vampire stories. The rich and eccentric drew rumor to themselves like iron filings to a magnet.

  As she came near to the door, her pace slowed. It’s past ten, the nervous maid had told her. She’s likely to be waking up any moment now. Another stimulant to the vampire rumor.

  As she stood outside the door, Constance heard piano music once again: faint, romantic, dolorous…and echoing from above. A Chopin nocturne.

  She glanced both ways along the corridor. All remained still. Moving quickly, she turned the handle. The door was unlocked, which surprised her. She opened it, slipped inside, and eased the door shut behind her.

  She found herself in a steep, narrow stairway, with no light except what seeped out from beneath a door at the narrow landing above. The music was louder here. Constance, used to darkness, felt no fear; instead, she stood motionless until she could distinctly make out the stairs, covered with a beautiful old Persian carpet. As she began ascending the steps to a crescendo of piano music, she became aware of a strange mixture of scents: sandalwood, moth balls, and, beneath it all, a note of some exotic perfume.

  With exquisite care, Constance noiselessly climbed another step, then another, until she reached the landing. As she did so, the music abruptly stopped.

  How odd. Constance could move more quietly than most cats. Surely the old lady had not picked up her footsteps?

  It could be…dangerous.

  The light coming from beneath the door winked out.

  As she stood in sudden, utter darkness, she thought back to the room service maid and the anxiety she had displayed at Constance standing by the door to the fifth floor. It was more than anxiety; it was terror. Was it possible the maid’s fear had less to do with Constance disturbing the old lady—and more with what might happen to Constance should she ascend?

  And it was then that the door in front of Constance swung wide with a crash, and a towering figure—black upon black—loomed menacingly over her.

  30

  BERT
RAM INGERSOLL TUGGED AT his tie, pulled the knot down about two inches, undid the top button of his shirt, and plucked the collar away from his sticky throat. He didn’t bother looking at his watch, but he knew it had to be at least three in the morning. When they’d entered Chippewa Hall at 9 PM, he had assumed the heat and humidity would have broken by the time they left. He’d assumed wrong.

  “Look, Bert,” said his wife, Agnes, pointing as they crossed East Jones Street. “There’s a perfect example, right on the corner. Gothic revival, with strong elements of Georgian. Just look at that hipped roof!”

  Ingersoll grunted and made a show of looking up. To hear the excitement in her voice, you’d think she’d discovered some goddamn rare bird with two beaks and three assholes, instead of just another decaying mansion.

  As they continued south on Habersham, she gripped his arm. “And there!” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “What an eccentric example of Regency detail. Imagine: putting a frieze like that on top of ionic columns! I’ve never seen a pediment with such…hold on, dear, I’ve got to take a picture.”

  Ingersoll managed to suppress a sigh of irritation, waiting as she fished in her bag for her cell phone. Good luck getting a decent shot at this time of night, he thought.

  He should have known what he was getting into after thirty-one years of marriage. Their interests had never been all that compatible, and they’d only diverged further with passing years. On top of that, the damn ED medication he’d started taking wasn’t doing its job at all.

  Years ago, they’d made a deal: all their vacations would be two weeks long, one week for him and one for her. This vacation had been no different. He’d spent a fantastic, relaxing week on Hilton Head, playing thirty-six holes of golf a day and hanging out in the evenings at the country club. Agnes had lounged by the pool reading Dorothy Sayers mysteries. They’d seen each other only at breakfast and dinner. Credit where credit is due: she hadn’t complained.

  But now it was payback time: a weeklong conference of the Southern Architectural Society. The society’s lectures were held every night at nine, and because of the late hour, Agnes insisted on his company. These were truly hell on earth: professors and architects yammering on endlessly about the most infinitesimal details, followed by the inevitable cocktail reception that never ended before two. Or, in tonight’s case, even later. Ingersoll, who’d been an actuary by profession, found architecture dry and impenetrable. In his job, he’d walked through the lobby of the Birmingham Professional Arts Building—one of the most famous examples of art deco architecture outside of New York City—for twenty years without ever looking up. Who the hell cared how the damn window frames were carved, as long as the building didn’t fall down?

  They went another block, Agnes jabbering the whole time, neck craned, until their progress was interrupted by a tree-lined square. “This is it,” she said. “Whitefield Square. I think we turn right.”

  “Left,” Ingersoll muttered.

  As they turned left onto Taylor, he could see clouds scudding across a bloated moon. A gust of wind blew by, rustling the trees in the square behind them.

  “Dear?” Agnes said. “Would you mind terribly if we stayed an extra day? After tonight’s lecture, Dr. Black told me this part of Savannah has some of the most interesting buildings in the entire historical district. He even wrote out half a dozen of their addresses for me.”

  Ingersoll almost declared that he’d rather suck the balls of Satan than stay an extra day. But he stopped himself in time. Agnes never got angry with him, not exactly—she just went quiet for a week or two. He’d made it through six days, and he’d be a fool to blow it now.

  Twisting his lips into a smile, he turned toward her. “One more day?” he said. “I think that’s—”

  His wife suddenly halted.

  What happened next, Ingersoll couldn’t exactly say, even when questioned by the police about it later, because nothing about it made sense. They were swept with another gust of wind—only it was not like any wind he’d ever experienced before, thick and deep and oddly low. As it washed over them, accompanied by a horrible odor, he was seized by a feeling of unutterable dread, and the sense that a hideous, invisible presence was above them. And then came a sequence of sounds: a wet, sloppy impact at his feet, Agnes’s sharp scream, and an unearthly beating noise so alien it chilled him to the bone…and then Ingersoll fell sprawling across something soft lying on the sidewalk that, it took him several moments to realize, was a warm dead body.

  31

  COMMANDER DELAPLANE, TIRED, IRRITATED, and still covered with bug bites from the excursion the previous day, was not happy at being roused at three thirty in the morning. When she reached the scene of the incident, what a sight greeted her eyes: a body lay sprawled on the brick sidewalk, on his back—a young man in jeans and a T-shirt. The CSI team was setting up lights while McDuffie and his assistant crouched over the body. The couple who had found the body were off to one side, being questioned by Sheldrake. She could hear the husband’s voice, shaky and trembling, and the wife’s quiet sobbing. She felt a pang of sympathy for them, but it was overridden by her need for information, and she intended to wring what she could from them now, while the memory was still fresh.

  Boom, the lights went on, and now the horrible whiteness of the body stood out: the skin like marble, the blue eyes staring upward, wide open in astonishment, limbs splayed as if on a torture rack. McDuffie stepped back while the CSI team surged in and began their work.

  She waved McDuffie over. “What have we got?”

  “Same deal,” McDuffie said. “Trocar, or big needle, to the femoral artery; same greasy lubricant; blood totally drained. Body temperature is still almost normal—I would guess this person’s been dead less than thirty minutes. His head is fractured, but the injury appears to be postmortem.”

  “How do you know?”

  “No bleeding—because he had no blood left to bleed.”

  She shook her head. “Fractured how?”

  “I’ll have to examine the corpse more closely in the lab. But from what I could see, there’s some hair and scalp on the pavement where it might have struck. Perhaps he fell.”

  Delaplane looked up. There was a three-story brick building rising above the street, painted gray with white trim. The windows were all closed, but the building had a flat roof with a parapet. A light had just come on in an upstairs window, and she could see the outline of a person at the curtain, peering out at all the activity.

  “Jumped or thrown?” she asked.

  McDuffie nodded. “If he did fall, he must have been thrown after he was dead.”

  “Anything else?”

  “The individual was intoxicated. Strong odor of liquor, although it may be hard to get a blood alcohol reading, since there’s no blood left. We have other ways.”

  She nodded.

  “And there’s a trace of fresh vomit on his shirt.”

  “Right. Thanks. I’m off to talk to the witnesses.”

  The couple looked pretty destroyed, sitting on a bench while Sheldrake asked questions and took notes. Delaplane took out her cell phone and turned on a recording app.

  “Commander Delaplane, Savannah Police. Mind if I ask a few questions? I’m taping, just so you know.”

  The man nodded dumbly.

  “Did you see what happened?” she asked.

  Neither answered, so Delaplane asked the question again. “Mr. Ingersoll?”

  He was a heavy middle-aged man wearing a light jacket, open collar, of completely unremarkable appearance.

  He shook his head. “I can’t say. I felt this…this wind, and suddenly there was something on the sidewalk, and then…I fell over it.” He shuddered. “There was…” He halted.

  “There was what?”

  “Something brushed me, something horrible. A presence.”

  “A presence? Like what?”

  “No idea.”

  “A person?” Delaplane tried to keep the impatience out of her v
oice.

  “Not a person. A presence…”

  “An animal?”

  “I can’t begin…to describe it.” He put his face in his hands.

  Delaplane turned to the wife. “Mrs. Ingersoll, did you see anybody?”

  She shook her head wordlessly, trying to stifle a sob.

  “Is it possible the body fell from above?”

  More mute headshaking of uncertainty.

  Neither was much help—at least not now. “Thank you,” Delaplane told them. “We’ll need to interview you tomorrow in more detail, so please don’t go anywhere.” She gave them her card. “Get some rest. Officer Rudd will see you back to your hotel.”

  She gestured to Sheldrake and they stepped to one side.

  “Got an ID from the wallet,” Sheldrake said. “Name’s Brock Custis, nineteen, college student, Auburn University. He was out drinking, which means there were others with him. We need to find them.”

  “Christ, why don’t they go to Jacksonville and puke on the beaches like everyone else?”

  Delaplane saw a shadowy figure at the edge of the crime scene. The black suit he wore made him looked disembodied, just a ghostly head and hands. There was someone else with him. They were standing back, motionless.

  “Don’t look now,” she said, “but it’s Gomez Addams and his sidekick.”

  The CSI team was now placing numbers on the sidewalk, marking where evidence was being collected. Delaplane watched for a moment, then turned back to Sheldrake. “I want to interview everyone, everyone, connected with this. The Ingersolls, any people the kid was drinking with, the bartender who served them drinks.” She pointed up to the house and the person at the window. “And that person. Eleven AM sharp in the precinct house. Think you can pull that together for me?”

  “I believe so, Commander.”

  She thought for a moment. “Invite the feds. I don’t want any ex post facto whining.”

  “Will do.”

  And with another glance in the direction of the spectral FBI agent—who was now pointing at a large white Victorian house across Whitefield Square and telling his partner, of all things, about an excellent wine tasting he’d once enjoyed there—she left the scene, shaking her head.