The Haunted Earth

by Dean R. Koontz

  "They put it down there unsealed?"

  "Seems that way," Jessie said.

  He uncoiled the line which Brutus had thrown on his head, tied one end of that to the coffin handle, threw the other end up to Helena, then scrambled out of the hole.

  "Now," he told them, "I'll just pull the lid up so we can see inside that box. The raising lid's going to block my view, so why don't you two go around to the other side of the hole, where you can look straight in."

  Helena got to her feet. "I don't like this," she said. "I didn't like it at the start, and I like it even less now. I'm sure we're being watched."

  Jessie looked around the empty cemetery. "Impossible."

  "I feel eyes on my neck."

  "Just go around the other side and tell me whether Tesserax is laid out to rest in a normal manner."

  When she and the hound were around on the other side of the grave, Jessie wiped perspiration out of his eyes, dried his hands on his trousers, then wrapped the rope around his wrists so he wouldn't lose hold of it. Putting his broad shoulders into it, he began to backstep across the yard toward the other aisle of stones, grunting to get himself in the mood, raising the coffin lid an inch at a time.

  "Must weigh a couple of hundred pounds," he called to them. "You see anything in there, yet?"

  Helena hunkered down and probed the grave with her flashlight beam, squinted prettily, either to see better or to register distaste.

  "You'll have to get it open more, Jess," the hell hound said, looking along the beam of Helena's light.

  Jessie's feet were slipping on the damp grass, and the job proved to be more difficult than he had originally supposed. Nevertheless, he gritted his teeth and continued to backstep.

  Something in the hole creaked loudly.

  "Uh — what was that?" Jessie asked.

  "I hope it was only an unoiled hinge on the coffin lid," Helena said, her voice quavering.

  "How far have I lifted it?"

  "Four inches," Brutus said.

  Jessie dug in his heels and began to walk faster, feeling the full weight of the lid coming into the rope.

  "That's it, that's it," the hound called.

  "See anything?"

  "A few more inches," Helena said.

  "A few more inches, and I'll have a hernia," the detective said. Nevertheless, he continued to back up.

  "More, more," Brutus called, his long tail swishing back and forth like a metronome guiding the rhythm of the detective's effort. He had bent his front legs and brought his head level with the edge of the grave, as if he were beginning to catch a glimpse of the interior of the coffin.

  "Now?" Jessie asked.

  "You need some help?" Helena asked.

  "No, no," Jessie said. "I'm doing okay."

  Truthfully, he wasn't doing okay at all; his heart was thudding, and blood pounded like hammers at both temples. However, he felt he had to make Helena think it was a simple matter for him. Already, though she didn't know it, he felt himself to be in constant competition with her, to such a degree that he felt their male-female roles had become too equal. He had been born and raised in an era when women's liberation wasn't a movement, but an accepted part of society — yet his home life had been at variance with much of modern thought. Neither his mother nor his father had held much truck with sexual equality or freedom, so it was perhaps understandable that he was sometimes worried about such things.

  "That's far enough, Jessie," Helena called,

  "What do you see?"

  Neither the woman nor the hound answered, but they both continued to stare into the open hole.

  Jessie began to sweat again. Clear droplets rolled across his face, tickled his cheeks, caught saltily in the corners of his mouth. "Is it that terrible?" he asked.

  "Well, 'terrible' isn't quite the word for it," Helena said. "Something like — oh, 'frustrating' or 'maddening' would do much better."

  "Is the corpse mutilated beyond endurance?" Jessie asked. He had seen corpses mutilated beyond endurance before. "Does it look like the picture of Tesserax we got from Galiotor Fils?"

  "No, the corpse isn't mutilated beyond endurance," Brutus said. "In fact, it isn't mutilated at all. In fact, there just isn't any corpse; they buried an empty casket."

  "Oh," Jessie said.

  "Christ," Brutus said, with feeling, "am I glad that I didn't do all that work for nothing."

  "It wasn't for nothing," Jessie said.

  "It wasn't?"

  The detective let go of the rope and was instantly jerked off his feet as the coffin lid started to go shut. He slammed into the damp grass, face first, bit his lip, tasted blood, and looked up at the woman and the hound, bewildered.

  "You had the end of the rope lashed around your wrists," Brutus said. "Remember?"

  Jessie looked down at his hands and nodded, sat up and unwound the cord, let it go again and listened as the empty coffin's lid fell shut with a soft whump, the rope rattling drily after it.

  "You were saying this expedition was worthwhile," Brutus said.

  Jessie crawled to the edge of the grave, opposite them, and he said, "That's right."

  A flight of bats, perhaps twenty of them, rose out of the white mausoleum perched atop the second hillock in the graveyard. In an unexpected burst of moonlight, they screeched away, into darkness. The moon, which had only momentarily illuminated them, slid behind the storm clouds again, like a Spanish woman's face slyly shielded by a fan.

  "But we didn't find anything," Helena protested.

  "Oh, yes we did," Jessie said, "We found that there was no body in Tesserax's grave."

  "That's the same thing."

  Jessie got to his feet, brushing himself off, even though he really didn't feel like standing, yet. "No, it isn't the same thing," he said, with brotherly patience, wiping blood from his cracked lips.

  "Then I'm no detective," she said.

  The bats from the mausoleum streaked by overhead, squeaking furiously, their leathery wings flapping moistly.

  Jessie picked up the shovel and began to take it apart as he talked, to repack it in the satchel. "I'm aware that you're not as quick in these matters as I am," he said. "No one would expect you to be; you've not had the experience I have." He was pleased that their roles were now returning to a moderated equilibrium that he could cope with; he no longer felt so damn foolish. "Don't you see, though…. We've got enough evidence to go to Galiotor Fils, enough stuff for him to bring charges against the maseni embassy officials. From here on out, it's all up to the police and the courts. They'll find out what really happened to Tesserax, and why such an elaborate cover-up was done. All we have to do is get the facts to Galiotor Fils."

  From the darkness behind Jessie, a familiar, rasping voice spoke: "However, in order to do that, Mr. Blake, you will first have to get out of this cemetery alive."

  Jessie turned, bringing up his flashlight as Helena raised hers, pressing back the shadows where a dozen vampires stood not five yards away. Their eyes glittered brightly in the twin beams of the hand torches, and they were all smiling.

  The fiend in charge of the group, the tallest and handsomest of the lot, was Count Slavek, the bloodsucker who had almost illegally bitten Renee Cuyler only a brief night or two ago.

  "The bats we just heard—" Jessie began.

  "Us," Slavek said.

  "Jessie?" Helena asked. "What are they going to do with us?"

  "Nothing," the detective said. Slavek laughed.

  Jessie said, "Unless you want to be converted to the life of the undead, a vampire can't touch you, Helena. That's the law."

  "Ah," Slavek said, "but when all is said and done, the law is nothing but a piece of paper."

  "Ignore that piece of paper, and see what happens to you," Jessie said. "An official stake straight through the heart, a quick conversion to a pile of lifeless ashes."

  Slavek took a step forward; his comrades followed after him in a sussuration of flowing capes.

  "Slavek, it is
n't worth breaking the law over someone like Renee Cuyler, especially when I was right and you were wrong."

  Slavek advanced another step.

  The pale-faced bloodsuckers behind him spread out on both sides, in a semi-circle. They all leered at Helena.

  "This hasn't anything whatsoever to do with Renee Cuyler," Count Slavek said, "Oh, she was a tasty little piece, to be sure. But the world is just full of tasty little pieces — like your Helena, for example, who is one of the tastiest little pieces I've ever seen, bar none." He grinned wickedly at her.

  "Oh, fuck off," Helena said.

  Slavek winced; male vampires were not accustomed, in their male chauvinistic society, to hearing such talk from women. He looked back at Jessie, trying to regain his composure, and he said, "I would not nurture any grudge because of Renee Cuyler. She was a little bit empty-headed, anyway. You understand, I prefer empty-headed wenches to your average smart-assed college girl…. But I have my limits: a minimum IQ of 105 being the bottom of those limits; a top IQ of 120 being the other end. Anyway, Blake, this is no private vendetta."

  "Then, what—"

  "I've been sent here to stop the three of you from messing around in the Tesserax affair. Your hell hound companion will be restrained through the talents of several sorcerers who have been watching you since you first entered the cemetery."

  "I knew it!" Helena exclaimed.

  "Meanwhile, both you and your lady friend will be — ah, converted to the life of the undead," Slavek finished. "And may I say, I am going to enjoy munching on this gorgeous child's neck — and, later, on other things which also appear delectable indeed."

  "Jessie, stop them," Helena said, from the other side of the open grave.

  Jessie said, "Run!"

  Chapter Twelve

  Blake had broken the collapsible shovel into two pieces, and now he used these to divert Count Slavek's attention. He threw the spade section at Slavek's face, then tossed the handle hard at his ankles. As the vampire put up his arms to ward off the blade, he stepped backwards and got his legs tangled hopelessly in the whirling handle. He cried out, stumbled clumsily to the side, fell onto his back, thoroughly confusing his fanged comrades..

  Jessie turned as soon as he had thrown the second piece of shovel, not waiting to see what it would do. Without bothering to scoop up his flashlight, he leaped across the open grave, grabbed Helena's hand and started running — not in any planned direction, just away.

  Brutus ran ahead of them, taking enormous strides, leading them purposefully toward the main cemetery gate. He could have headed for one of the walls and phased right through, Jessie knew, but he had chosen to stay with them. Jessie remembered that it had been the hell hound's touch which had changed him from stone to flesh in the sculpture garden at Millennium City…

  The sound of wings grew behind them.

  "Faster!" Jessie shouted.

  Helena gripped his hand more tightly and increased her pace to match his, issuing not a word of objection.

  He looked at her as they entered an open aisle where there were no granite obstacles to beware of, and he saw that she was holding up quite well. She didn't seem terrified, merely frightened, biting her lip and straining to get all the speed she could out of her fine, long legs. Then he saw the flashlight that she carried in her other hand, and he relized it was proof of his own terror that he hadn't noticed, until now, that it was on and that the bright beam danced across the earth directly in front of them, pinpointing their position for Slavek and his pack.

  "Helena!" he shouted.

  Still running, her breasts shoved out like twin ornaments on a new fluttercar, her yellow hair flying out behind her like a tailfin pennant, holding tightly to his hand, she glanced sideways at him.

  "The flashlight!"

  She didn't get what he meant.

  "Throw the flashlight away!"

  She held up the hand torch, slowing down and thereby forcing him to slow as well, looked wonderingly at the instrument for a moment, then realized what he meant. She pitched it away, to her right. The beam whirled crazily, a spinning yellow lance that shaved paper-thin wafers of darkness off the bulk of the night, then struck a large tombstone and shattered.

  They picked up speed again, running as fast as they could, the grass treacherously damp under them.

  Still, they could hear wings flapping behind them — and the shrill cries of many tiny creatures: bats.

  Ahead, Brutus slowed and came to a full stop, his long tail straight up in the air, his pointed ears thrust forward, the long hair down his neck and back bristling.

  In a moment, they were up with him.

  "What's the matter?" Jessie asked. His heart was pounding so loudly in his own ears that he could barely hear his voice.

  "A sorcerer," the hell hound growled.

  "Where?"

  The hound pointed with his snout.

  The magician was an old man, quite tall and thin as a rail, his long fingered hands raised before him as if he were about to cast a spell or a charm; his gray, frizzled beard fell nearly to his waist, ruffled by the night breeze. He stood directly before the main gates in a pool of unnatural, cobalt blue light that seemed to radiate from the man himself. He was dressed all in black robes decorated with crimson quarter-moons and silver stars. He also wore a peaked hat of the same fabric and design.

  Brutus said, "He's a danger to both of us. He could cast a spell on the two of you…. And he could dissipate my soul, if he wanted to, and if he didn't care about breaking the law." Clearly, the hell hound was recalling his own treatment of Zeke Kanastorous earlier in the day — and perhaps regretting it just a little.

  "Then we don't go out the main gate," Jessie said.

  "We better go somewhere, and damn fast!" Helena said, pulling their attention back to the aisle down which they had just run. "Slavek will be on us in a minute."

  It came sooner than that.

  Behind them, screaming bats swooped out of the darkness, small, eager shadows that swelled rapidly, cancerously into huge-winged, semi-amorphous creatures that posed a more serious threat than they had in their tinier form. Their dark and wizened faces, once pinched and vicious, fleshed out, turned first yellow and then white, deathly white, like expanding balloons losing their deep color. Their claws changed into hands — human hands with wicked nails that gleamed with reflected moonlight Their scrawny legs lengthened, and the transformation into human form was completed.

  A rush of cold fog rolled over them, as if drawn toward the vampires, and Helena stepped closer to the detective.

  "This way!" Jessie cried.

  He turned and ran toward the ravine, from which the fog had come, down between the two round hills on which the major portion of the maseni cemetery was built.

  "But it's so dark down there!" Helena protested, running along beside him, her breath now making little white clouds before her.

  "I know."

  The fog was thicker now, and it got nearly impenetrable as they fled.

  Brutus said, "And vampires see better than you two — especially in the dark."

  "I know," Jessie repeated.

  Behind: shrill bats. The vampires had taken to the air again.

  "But if we run far enough," Jessie said, "we'll find the back gate. They might not have guarded that."

  "Wishful thinking," Brutus growled. But that was the extent of his sarcasm. He loped out ahead of them, down into the darkness and the cool mist that hung in there like a giant shroud among the stones.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Tombstones loomed out of the fog, like rotten teeth chewing marshmallow candy. Jessie and Helena, still holding hands, weaved left and right to avoid the obstacles, staggering dangerously on the treacherous expanse of short, wet grass. They could no longer hear the shrill, inhuman cries of the vampire bats behind them, but that might be only because their own breathing was so labored that it effectively covered over all of the other night sounds.

  At the bottom of the hill,
as they dug in their heels to keep from plunging into a row of stones that sprang out of the fog immediately before them, Helena said, "Jessie, wait."

  "What?"

  "I have to rest."

  "I thought you would," Brutus said. He appeared out of the syrupy, shifting mist in front of them, only his glowing red eyes visible like puddles of phosphorescent blood in the darkness. "I found some large markers over this way," the hound said. "They'll shelter you from any accidental aerial observation."

  "You're a dear," Helena said.

  "I know," the hound replied.

  He turned and preceded them across the bottom of the ravine to a line of seven-foot stones and funereal statuary which threw even more intense shadows on the wall of night.

  Helena went to the widest of the stones, which was cut deep with maseni letters, and leaned against it. She bent over and rubbed painfully at her thighs. "Not only am I going to have huge biceps from digging open that empty grave — I'm going to have big, knotted, muscular legs from all of this goddamned running around."

  "We'll love you anyway," Jessie said.

  Brutus said, "I like husky women."

  High above, out of sight, the night popped with an animal wail. It struck down on the mist-shrouded graveyard like a note from a precision-made, tiny, silver horn.

  "Passed right over us," Brutus said.

  "This time, yes," Jessie said. "But not for long."

  Helena stood up and moved away from the alien headstone, one hand on each of her buttocks, as if she were holding them in place while she tried a few experimental steps. "I feel better, now," she said.

  "Let's move, then, before—"

  From the darkness close at hand came a moaning sound, an agonized lowing that made their flesh crawl. Deep, gravel-throated, it had not issued from a human being, but from some other sort of creature, surely as large as a man, or larger.

  "What was that?" Helena asked.

  It was naggingly familiar, but Jessie finally said, "I don't know."