The Haunted Earth

by Dean R. Koontz

  "They'll be on your tails in an hour," the demon said.

  "And you will suffer mightily," Jessie said.

  "I don't see how," Kanastorous said, though he watched the detective through heavy-lidded eyes.

  "Even if an arrest order is issued at once, against Brutus and Helena and me, the coppers won't catch us all together or even quickly. At least one of us will have the time to perform the ceremony and summon you up again. And the next time, Kanastorous, we'll snuff out all seven of the black candles and give you eternal rest; you'll never have a conscious thought again, for all eternity; you'll drift, mindlessly, in the void."

  "This is outrageous!" the demon wailed.

  "But that's the way it will be."

  "Throwback," the demon spat.

  "You believe that we would carry out the threat?" Jessie asked.

  "Any of you three?" Kanastorous asked. "Of course I believe it You are a pack of savages."

  "Then I trust you'll know how to act when we let you go."

  "I'll mind my own business," the demon said. "What else can I do?"

  "What else indeed?" the detective asked. He turned, picked up the open Bible and began to chant In a few minutes, though all the chalk marks remained on the floor, Kanastorous had been dispatched.

  As Brutus blew out all fourteen of the candles, both black and white, alternating from color to color as prescribed by ritual, Jessie crossed the room and turned on the ceiling lights, which stung both his and Helena's eyes. Brutus didn't notice. As if the lights had been a signal, the vidphone rang in the outer office.

  "I'll see who it is," Helena said.

  Jessie went to his desk, which was pushed up against the wall where the robot had left it, and he got a narcotic pin gun from the center drawer. He checked the clip to be sure that it was full, strapped the holster on under his jacket and slipped the weapon into its leather pouch. From the same drawer he took a plastic crucifix and a bottle of yellowish garlic oil, which he dropped in a coat pocket.

  Brutus came back from blowing out the candles and said, "What's up? What do we do now?"

  Before Jessie could answer, Helena stepped in from the front office and said, "It's Galiotor Fils, your favorite client"

  The detective glanced around, looking for his extension, couldn't see where the company robot had put it when it was moving furniture, and went into the outer office to take the call. He sat down on the edge of Helena's desk, lifted the receiver and looked at Galiotor Fils' face in the vidscreen. "Yes, Mr. Galiotor?"

  The sad, amber eyes stared back, and the lipless mouth was still turned down at the corners as the maseni said, "I was wondering if you'd made any progress in discovering what happened to my brood brother."

  "We're working on it, Mr. Galiotor," Jessie said. "In fact, we've got a pretty hot lead right now."

  "You have, sir?" The maseni brightened considerably at this bit of news, his mouth leveling out, his deep amber eyes taking on a glint of life, a crinkle at the corners.

  "A very hot lead," Jessie repeated. "And I think that you were close to the truth, when you originally came to me," Jessie told him. "I think your embassy people, in Los Angeles, have indeed been involved in a cover-up of some sort."

  "I knew it!" Galiotor Fils declared.

  "They've tried to keep me from asking questions about Tesserax — and they've gone to the point of violence to take me out of the picture."

  "Good heavens!" Galiotor Fils said. Violence was not much a part of the maseni character.

  "And they did have me out for a short time," Jessie admitted. "However, I intend to be more careful, now that I know how rough they're willing to play."

  The maseni made a face and said, "What have these scoundrels been up to, Mr. Blake?"

  "I can't take time to explain the situation to you now," Jessie said. "We have to move while that tip is hot."

  "Well, yes, I see that," Galiotor Fils said. "But is there anything I can do to help?"

  "Nothing at the moment," Jessie said. "But rest assured that we are going to be digging into this affair quite deeply in the next couple of hours. We are going to dig to the bottom of it."

  "Good luck, then," the maseni said.

  "I'll be getting back to you," Jessie said, hanging up.

  "You have an absolutely fantastic knack for handling clients," Helena said. "It's a whole different side of you: sugar and syrup."

  "Never mind clients now," Brutus said. "How are we going to dig to the bottom of the Tesserax affair in only a couple of hours?"

  Jessie smiled. "We can start by tearing up his grave and finding what is at the bottom of it."

  Chapter Ten

  Jessie decided they would go over the cemetery wall on a narrow alley beside the burial grounds, where there were no street lamps, and he sent Brutus through first, to check for sentries on the other side. The hell hound phased through the eight-foot-high stone wall, was gone a long moment, then melted back again.

  "It's all clear," he told them.

  "I wish we could walk through walls like you," Helena said.

  Brutus chuckled. "It isn't easy, and I can't do it very often, but it is a handy talent to have, now and again. But if you're wicked enough, and if you die and go to Hell, maybe you'll be transformed into a hell hound, like me."

  "Never mind," she said. "I'll just go over the top."

  Jessie faced the wall, jumped, hooked his fingers over the top edge, muscled himself up, got a knee over, twisted around and looked down at the hound and the woman. He put a hand down as far as he could reach, and he said, "Come on, Helena."

  Hesitantly, she approached, took his hand, planted her feet against the rain-wet stones and climbed laboriously up to join him.

  In five minutes, the three of them were inside the alien graveyard, where most of the city's prominent people — both maseni and human — were either buried or to be buried when their time came.

  Rain had fallen while they were in the office talking to Zeke Kanastorous and to Galiotor Fils, and now the earth smelled damp, and the newly fallen palm leaves were ripe, daubing a strange perfume on the cool, night air that barely circulated around them.

  In the shallow light of the big moon — almost a gibbous moon, Jessie thought — which shone through a break in the cloud cover, they could see the twin hillocks of the graveyard, though not the small ravine that lay between them much like the fold of Helena's formidable cleavage. The mausoleum stood on the far hill, a square of white stone that seemed to grab the feeble moonlight, magnify and hold it. Human and maseni tombstones, set between well cultivated shrubs and fancy palm trees, dotted the hills and disappeared into the ravine now shrouded in impenetrable shadows spilled there like puddles of ink.

  "We should have asked Galiotor Fils where his brood brother's grave was, exactly," Helena said. "I hadn't realized that, in ten short years, you could fill one of these places to this extent."

  "People die regularly," Jessie said.

  "And a number of vampires have rented plots," Brutus observed.

  The graveyard was a ceremonial luxury that the city had been forced to do without for many years prior to the maseni landing. Since every foot of space, in those overpopulated days, was precious, none of it could be given over to the storage of corpses. Now, however, since the dead and dying Shockies, and all the potential children they never produced, were not cluttering up the place, maintenance of graveyards was again feasible. And popular. Despite the fact that there was no longer any religious bunkum that made burial a necessity, people wanted it done and paid well to have it done. It seemed, to some people, that burial carried with it a certain dignity, an undeniable status. Jessie didn't much care for it himself; he intended to be cremated and to have his ashes thrown into any convenient disposal chute or garbage can. A sentimentalist, he wasn't.

  "Where do we begin?" Helena asked.

  Jessie took a pair of flashlights from the satchel of tools he had brought along, handed one of them to the woman and kept the othe
r for himself.

  Brutus did not require any artificial aids to see well in the dark; when shadows pressed in, his eyes grew a deeper, smolder shade of red, and he went wherever he pleased, as if it were broad daylight.

  "We should split up and take one row each, compare notes when we get to the end, then go on to three more rows," Jessie said. "The stones seem to be in relatively straight lines, for the most part, in harmony with the contour of the yard."

  "Split up?" Helena asked.

  "Why not?"

  She had changed to jeans, a sweater and a thin wind-breaker; now, she pulled the jacket's nylon collar up around her neck. "We're in an alien graveyard at two o'clock in the morning, planning to dig up a corpse," she said. "That's why I don't want to split up."

  "Be reasonable, Helena," Jessie said. "We can get done three times faster if—"

  "I'm being perfectly reasonable," she said. "I was more than reasonable in agreeing to come at all. I'm your Girl Friday, not your partner."

  "You're not going to leave, are you?" Jessie asked. "Look, Helena, I need your help. Brutus has a powerful set of claws on him, but he can hardly help me dig open a grave. You're a big, strong girl, and you can take the shovel, at least a little bit, to give me some rest."

  "If that's all I'm needed for," she said, "you could have brought the company robot."

  "And have him store the whole illegal affair in his microdot memories? Besides, he'd have made a hell of a clanking racket coming over the wall."

  "Well, if you need me so badly," Helena said, "you'll just have to give up the idea that I'm going to go off, in here, by myself and prowl around a bunch of tombstones."

  "Look," Brutus said, "nothing can happen to you in here, Blue Eyes."

  "Don't be condescending with me," Helena snapped. "I'm not fearful simply because I need to play any female role. I'm just being sensible. How can you know what sort of — thing may be lurking about?" She studied the trees, the larger stones, anything that might be large enough to conceal a dangerous adversary.

  Jessie said, "If you encounter a vampire, it has to read your bill of rights and question you according to the Kolchak-Bliss Decision, and it has to gain your explicit approval of the bite. Pretty much the same thing goes for a werewolf. And most other creatures are required to provide you with a contract… In short, you aren't going to be attacked, ruthlessly, as you might have been in the old days."

  Helena switched on her flashlight and pointed it at the nearest stone, played the beam quickly along a row of markers, the splash of yellow luminescence flitting here and there like an agitated specter moving with the currents of the night air.

  All was still.

  And quiet.

  Not even a drying palm frond rattled in the gentle stir of air.

  "I've made up my mind," she said.

  The detective sighed and said, "Okay, Helena. Brutus will take one row by himself, while you and I look at the second."

  "That's better," she said.

  "Let's get going," the hound growled.

  The moon went behind a dense expanse of clouds; both Jessie and the woman used their flashlights as they started down the avenue of monuments, reading the names.

  "This one's blank," she said, pointing at the fourth stone. "Why would they put up a blank stone?"

  "The plot's being rented by a vampire who likes his privacy," Jessie said. "Look. Stand back a minute."

  When she stepped aside, Jessie searched the base of the tombstone until he found a switch, which he threw.

  The sod in front of the stone lifted up, smoothly, silently, revealing a fancy metal coffin in an open grave. "When he goes inside there, during the day," the detective said, "he'll lock this outer door to keep any playful kids from letting the sunlight in on him."

  Helena shuddered. "Close it, Jessie, please."

  The detective pushed the switch back the other way and watched as the slab of hand-sewn sod moved into place once more, leaving a smooth expanse of wiry grass and no evidence at all of the hollow spot that lay directly underneath.

  "I don't think it'd be a bad way of life, really," he said.

  "You can't be serious."

  "Well, it is eternal, barring a stake through the heart or an unexpected exposure to sunlight. And the whole vampire lifestyle is a sensuous one. It's better than some other things I can think of."

  "For instance?"

  "Well, I don't think I'd want to die and take the chance of coming back as a ghost, a spiritual gumshoe haunting the offices of Hell Hound for a couple of hundred years, moaning about all the cases I've handled, sitting in my old chair… That would be pretty grim."

  "I guess it would," she said.

  "When I get near my time," Jessie said, "I'm not going to wait around to die and take my chances. I'm going to find me a cute little vampiress with a nice body, and I'm going to shack up with her for a few days, until I've been converted." He looked at Helena and said, "What about you? What are you going to do, if you've got warning that death is coming?"

  "I haven't thought about it," Helena said.

  "Oh, but you should!" Jessie said. "It's as important as preparing a will — more important, actually."

  "I suppose it is," she said. "I'll give it some thought."

  Brutus came back from checking the first row of tombstones, and he stared hard at both Helena and Jessie, his red eyes unable to shield his vexation with them.

  "Is this all the two of you have accomplished?" he growled, lowering his burly head.

  "Well—"

  "What have you been doing, screwing between the tombstones?"

  "We got to talking," Jessie said.

  "Well, we aren't here to talk," the hell hound said. "We're here to rob a goddamned grave," he snorted with disgust. A veil of ectoplasm exploded from his wet, black nostrils, rose over his head and floated away across the cemetery, slowly dissolving.

  "I'm sorry," Helena said. "It was my fault."

  "Let's get going," the hell hound said. "I'll finish this row while the two of you start on a third."

  They worked their way slowly along the crest of the hillock, toward the deeply shadowed ravine, reading the names on the stones, few of which they had ever heard of, some of which — in the cases when they were maseni — they could not even pronounce.

  The moon came out again for a short while, shedding cold light upon the yard. Then, before long, it was concealed again by clouds, thick and purple-black.

  "I have the feeling we're being watched," Helena said, as they looked at the stones in the ninth row.

  "Watched?"

  "I don't see anyone," the woman said, "but I sure do feel as if—"

  Brutus, two rows of tombstones out in front of them, interrupted her with a long, mournful howl.

  "He's found Tesserax's grave," Jessie said. "Come on!"

  Chapter Eleven

  Jessie gave Helena a hand, pulled her out of the grave and hunkered down to help her brush the wet clumps of earth from her jeans, taking an especially long time to brush off her round little rump, though the seat of her pants was not anywhere so dirty as the knees or the cuffs or the hips.

  "Well," he said, "that ought to be the last time that you'll have to spell me."

  She sat down by the hole and dangled her legs over the edge, put her arm around the hell hound, who had been watching the two of them take turns in the open grave. She said, "I'm going to be the only well-stacked girl I know who has huge, muscular arms."

  "You'll be able to scare away unwanted suitors with them," Jessie suggested. "Just flex your biceps a few times, and you'll terrorize any would-be rapist."

  "It isn't funny," she said, feeling her biceps through her sweater and jacket, as if they might already have begun to swell.

  Jessie jumped into the grave and picked up the collapsible shovel he had brought along in the tool satchel with the flashlights. "We're down to almost four feet," he said. "And that's about as deep as they bury them around here. So—"

  A
s he stamped the spade into the hard-packed earth, it rang against a large, metal object.

  Helena picked up her flashlight and directed its strong beam down at the point of the shovel, revealing a long, twisting streak of silvery metal like a vein in the earth. The casket lid caught the light and shimmered with it, new and slightly burnished.

  "Eureka," Brutus said. "The daring group of coffin prospectors has struck another lode."

  "Thank God," Helena said, feeling her biceps.

  Jessie set to work more industriously than before, clearing away the last couple of inches of earth, until he had the entire face of the casket revealed. It was a plain model, not what one expected the second-ranking embassy maseni to be laid to rest in, without curlicues or decorations. It was smooth, slightly raised, and very difficult to stand up on, as he was forced to do. Starting at the top, right corner, Jessie worked his way around the oblong box, cutting the dirt away from its lid so that they could open the thing when the time came. At a quarter past four in the morning, he tossed the shovel out of the hole, finished.

  "Are we going to have to fill this back in again?" Helena wanted to know, her lips pouted, one hand gingerly testing her other biceps.

  The detective said, "Well worry about that later."

  "I'm worrying about it right now."

  "There's a length of rope in the satchel," Jessie said. "Would you toss it down to me?"

  "I'll get it," Brutus told the girl.

  "You're a charmer."

  The hound got up and walked over to the open satchel, peered inside, plucked out a coil of rope with his teeth, brought that to the open grave and dropped it on Jessie's head.

  "Why didn't you warn me, for Christ's sake?" Blake asked, stooping to pick up the rope, rubbing his head with the other hand. "This is steel-link covered by nylon, you know; it isn't quite so light as a feather."

  "Why weren't you looking up?" Brutus asked, sitting down beside Helena again.

  Still rubbing his head, Jessie said, "I was looking at the twin locks on the casket lid. I thought I'd have to hammer them off, but it looks like they were never engaged."