The Haunted Earth

by Dean R. Koontz

  Reluctantly, Jessie lowered the plastic icon and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

  Willie Whitlock licked his heavy lips and grinned sardonically as he leaned even further across the open coffin. He stared hard at them, grizzled and mean, his beard stubbly, his face seemed like a piece of crumpled paper. "You robbed a grave tonight, did you not?"

  Jessie cleared his throat and said, "Not actually. There wasn't anything to rob; it was empty."

  "Still and all, you did get to dig up the casket and pry open the lid, didn't you?"

  "Yes, but—"

  "Tell me about it!" The ghoul's voice was a pleading, insistent whine, undignified yet commanding. His eyes glinted more madly than before. "It must have been beautiful — a rewarding experience, indeed! Ah, if only I could have been at your side!"

  "Actually, it was rather awful," Jessie said.

  "Tell me, tell me!" Willie Whitlock cried, leaning so far over the open casket that he seemed in danger of falling right into it.

  "You're a deranged, white faced, dirty little man," Helena said, in a voice dripping with scorn. "You are perfectly disgusting. And your suit is a wrinkled mess."

  Willie Whitlock jerked at each epithet, as if her words were physical blows against his head, and his face took on a grim expression. "Look here, lady, I am only what the damned myths say I am. A ghoul has to be deranged. And white-faced. And sunken-eyed, for that matter. You have noticed, I am sure, that I've a mad glint in my eye. Indeed, at times, it interferes with my sight. I don't want the damn glint, but I have it! And when you live midst glorious decay and incredibly lovely putrefaction, you can't help getting dirty." He looked down at his wrinkled clothes. "And this suit's a part of it, too. I take it to the cleaner's, one of those sonic-press places that does the job in two minutes, but it gets wrinkled again the instant that I put it back on." He looked at her, his expression uglier than ever, and said, "You think it's an easy life, you try it some time." Turning to Jessie, he said, "This woman you've got with you — she's a real bitch. I'd never dig her up and eat her, even if the law allowed it; she'd give me heartburn, sure as hell."

  "Degenerate!" Helena snapped, stepping quickly away from the mausoleum door, bringing her small hands up before her in tight little fists, as if she were prepared to cross that coffin-dotted, dust-filmed room and give Willie Whitlock the soundest beating of his life — or of his non-life.

  "That's the last straw!" the ghoul squealed. "Degenerate, am I? I was going to give you people a break, here. I was going to let you have a few more minutes of freedom while you told me all about digging up that grave. But that last insult just ruined everything for you!" He reached into the open coffin in front of him and lifted out a nether-world communications receiver. Before any of them realized quite what he was doing, the ghoul dialed a single number and said, into the receiver, "They're here, in the mausoleum. Call off the search."

  "Stop him!" Jessie shouted.

  The hell hound leaped, slid across the top of a black casket, leaped again from the end of it and landed on the ghoul, sent the small man crashing backwards into another coffin which fell from its pedestal with a roar that echoed about the room like thunder in a barrel. The nether-world communications receiver had fallen from the ghoul's hand, but the damage was done. The searchers knew where they were.

  Outside, wolves howled maniacally.

  Jessie imagined that he could hear the furious flapping of bat wings on the wet night air.

  "Lock the door!" he shouted.

  Helena whirled, groped around, found the lock and slipped it into place. She grabbed the doorknob in both hands, twisted it and yanked, just to be sure the lock worked. It did. But that really didn't mean too much, because Count Slavek and the others probably had keys…

  Jessie reached the coffin where the nether-world receiver dangled on a lanky cord. He found there was also a regular telephone in that oblong box, resting on the mottled, water-spotted pink satin lining. That seemed odd. But he supposed that a ghoul living in a mausoleum with a couple of dozen vampires felt the need for contact with the outside world, once in a while….

  "You can't win! You can't!" Willie Whitlock screamed. He was lying flat on his back, pinned under the hell hound who stood on his thighs and chest. Brutus snarled at the ghoul's outburst and snipped less than playfully at his neck.

  "What are we going to do?" Helena asked, joining Jessie at the coffin full of telephones.

  "Call the police," he said, dialing the emergency number.

  "But what if the police are in on this?" she asked.

  "I don't think they are. Flesh-and-blooders don't want us to find out what's behind the Tesserax disappearance — but they aren't ready to kill us to keep us quiet. Our only violent confrontation, so far, has been with the supernaturals."

  Something struck the outside of the mausoleum door.

  "They're here!" Helena said.

  "L.A. Police Department," an efficient, cool voice answered on the other end of the line. "Sergeant Bode speaking."

  "My name's Jessie Blake, and I'm a private investigator in the L.A. area. My secretary and I are trapped in the mausoleum of the maseni cemetery. We desperately need help."

  "Locked yourself in?" the sergeant asked, perplexed.

  "No, no. There are two dozen vampires outside trying to get in at us and execute an illegal bite."

  "We haven't had a case of illegal bite in two years," the sergeant said. "And I've never heard of that many vampires getting together—"

  "Neither have I," Jessie said. "But they're out there all right."

  Sergeant Bode hesitated, then asked, "What number are you calling from, please?"

  Jessie knew better than to waste time arguing; he read off the number.

  Something crashed heavily against the closed door, again, and a hundred shrill voices rose up beyond the mausoleum walls.

  "Two dozen vampires?" Sergeant Bode asked.

  "Or more."

  "Anyone harmed yet? Need an ambulance — or a priest?"

  "Not yet," Jessie said. "But we will if you don't hurry!" He slammed down the phone, hard.

  From beyond the imitation oak door, an inhuman voice cried: "Jessie Black, Jessie Black…"

  "Jessie, the window!" Helena cried, pointing.

  A shadow moved against the outside as some supernatural beast tried to peer in at them.

  "Jessie Black… Jessie Black… Jessie Black…" The inhuman voice was moaning again, filled with an almost tangible evil, like an audible syrup.

  "My name's not Black," Jessie shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth, to be sure his voice would carry through the thick door. "It's Jessie Blake, you idiots!"

  Beyond the door, several voices rose in argument and consternation, gradually subsided. Then the haunting cry came again, hollow and far away, as if it echoed from the far shore of an infinitely wide sea… "Jessie Blake… Jessie Blake…"

  "What do you want?" he asked.

  "You can't escape us…. Why don't you open the door and let us in, make it easy for everyone…?"

  "Never!"

  "Be reasonable," the inhuman voice said. "What have you got to gain by being bullheaded in the face of such overwhelming opposition? Be sensible."

  "You're a bunch of unprincipled hoodlums," Jessie said.

  "If you force us to break in there, you can be certain we'll treat you twice as harshly as we otherwise might. And we will show no mercy at all for the lady."

  Jessie felt like he was in a movie — the one in which the prison rioters are locked in a cell block with the warden as their hostage and the governor pleading with them to give up and come out without their weapons.

  "Have it your own way, then," the inhuman voice said at last. Whatever the creature was — vampire, werewolf or something more strange than that — it sounded hurt, as if it were about to start pouting over his rebuke. "Well just have to come in the hard way, Mr. Black."

  "Blake!" he roared.

  Before the voice cou
ld correct itself, the mausoleum windows to their right and toward the front of the building shattered explosively. Thousands of pieces of dirty glass showered into the ranks of opened coffins, and glass tinkled on the gray cement floor. Both Jessie and Helena were unhurt, for the windows were too far forward to break over them.

  When the last of the glass had fallen, all was quiet as — a tomb. For a brief moment. The quiet was broken, this time, by the sound of wings as bats flapped through the windows into the musty room, banging into the wooden frame and into each other, in their eagerness to attack.

  Jessie grabbed for his luminescent crucifix, caught it in the lining of his jacket pocket, tore his coat getting it out, then dropped it. He felt like Zeke Kanastorous: no thumbs. He bent and picked the cross up again, just in time to face Count Slavek who had metamorphosed from a bat into a man. The Count had stepped forward, reaching for them, grinning a grin that was crammed full of fangs.

  "Stop right where you are!" the detective ordered, brandishing his plastic weapon.

  The bloodsucker saw the crucifix and recoiled from it in a flurry of satin-lined cape.

  Jessie waved the cross again, to make his point.

  Slavek hissed and held out one long-fingered, fish-belly-white hand, as if he thought his pointed finger would somehow destroy the hated object. Then he looked more closely at the crucifix and said, scornfully, "How crass. How cheap. How little-minded and tasteless."

  Hugging Helena against his side, Jessie said, "Well, it only cost two credits in a relic shop, so you can't expect too much."

  The other vampires formed into men, the little animal faces giving way to human countenances that looked no more innocent, no less terrifying. All eyes were on the detective and the girl; many pairs of saliva-wet fangs shone in the dim, yellow light. Bloodshot eyes were more in evidence than at the second morning of an Elks convention.

  A werewolf leaped through the broken window, foam flying from its open mouth. It raised up onto its hind feet and clawed the air with manlike hands whose claws must have measured nearly six inches.

  "You can't last much longer," Slavek said.

  "Sure we can," Jessie said, clutching the crucifix so tightly he was afraid it might shatter in his hand. He couldn't loosen his grip, though; he hoped it was made of tempered plastic. "This little device I'm holding will keep you, and the werewolves, away from us."

  "But it will mean nothing to the sorcerer," Slavek said. "He'll be here in a moment, to put a spell on you. When you're both mesmerized, he'll make you drop the cross. Then we'll move in."

  The bloodsuckers murmured excitedly. Several of those watching Helena licked their pale lips with relish.

  Even as Slavek finished speaking, the sorcerer levitated through the nearest broken window. He was lying in the air, flat on his back, his arms folded across his skinny chest. His black robes hung straight down from him. Oddly, his beard had risen straight up, and although the sorcerer was horizontal to the earth, the beard was vertical; it met his chin at a ninety-degree angle. The old man rotated slowly, until he was vertical himself, and his feet touched the floor. Now, his three-foot-long beard stuck straight out from his chin, horizontal to the earth, still perpendicular to the rest of him. He slapped at it with both hands, to no avail, then gripped it firmly and dragged it down until it hung straight. However, when he let go of it, it snapped up again, jutting out three feet in front of him.

  "Excuse me," the old man said. "I always have problems with that spell. I'm afraid I've never mastered levitation as well as some." He turned his back on everyone, huddled against himself and muttered some chant in a language that Jessie did not understand. When he turned around, his beard was hanging straight down, as it should be. "There," he said. "Now, we're ready to get on with it."

  "Get this bastard off me!" Willie Whitlock said, as Brutus snapped at his pallid nose.

  "I'm afraid the young couple is our first order of business," the sorcerer said. "Will you put down the crucifix, Mr. Blake?"

  "No."

  "Then I must make you put it down," the old man said. He raised his arms and began another chant.

  "Look," Jessie said, "the Tesserax affair can't be so important that it's worth breaking the law over."

  The sorcerer continued to mumble.

  "You know you can't keep this atrocity hidden forever, don't you? You know that one day you will all be severely punished for what you're doing to us. Some of you might even have your souls dissipated. Think about that. No more bites after that, legal or illegal!"

  The sorcerer chanted, unmoved.

  "Jessie," Helena said, "I'm getting numb."

  He felt his own feet turn into twin blocks of ice. As the chill rose swiftly above his knees, he said, "There's still plenty of time to reconsider this, gentlemen."

  Slavek grinned fiercely and tested the points of his handsome fangs against the ball of his thumb. He seemed to feel they were sharp enough.

  The chill was up to Jessie's hips.

  "Brutus, can't you stop them from doing this?" the detective asked. "Can't you go for the sorcerer's throat?"

  The hell hound said, "I'd love to. But I'd have to get off Willie to do that, and then he'd be up and after you; he'd knock the crucifix out of your hands anyway."

  "Jessie, no!" Helena cried.

  He knew exactly what had caused her terrified exclamation. The chill had reached his own shoulders. In a moment, it would travel down his arms, would affect the hand that now held the crucifix.

  "Soon," Slavek said, clearly thinking of Renee Cuyler as he stared at Helena's breasts and then slowly upward to her slim neck.

  The chill reached Jessie's hands.

  He watched his fingers open.

  The crucifix fell to the floor.

  Screeching with delight, Slavek started forward.

  "Stop where you are! Police!" The voice came from the broken windows, behind the vampires and the two werewolves.

  Jessie looked up and saw uniformed men leaning into the room, holding long-snouted guns. They opened fire on everyone, attackers and victims alike. Some of the weapons were narcotic pin guns, these to affect the humans; others were garlic oil pistols that spat out droplets of fluid from which the maddened vampires withdrew like vipers from the mongoose. He saw Slavek leap across two rows of coffins and flatten himself, in terror, against the far wall, and then he slumped forward into unconsciousness as the narcotic darts had their effect on him…

  Chapter Fifteen

  The low, waffled ceiling was white, the walls a soft blue. The only furniture was the comfortable but narrow bed on which he lay. The room had no windows and only the single door which was wide and padded to resist damage. It all had the look of a prison of some sort. The light source was a recessed panel in the ceiling, protected by a sheet of plexiglass. As Jessie sat up on the edge of the bed, he saw that the floor was the same pleasing shade of blue as the walls. It was every bit as clean and as spotlessly shiny as everything else in this place.

  Standing, he felt slightly woozy and weak, as if he hadn't eaten in a day or so. Indeed, as he recalled the events which had led up to his incarceration, he realized that this might easily have been the case. How long had he slept, dreamlessly, in this room? If he had been hit by several narcotics darts from the police weapons, the cumulative effect could have kept him out for as much as twelve hours.

  And what of Helena in all that time?

  And Brutus…?

  "You're awake, are you, Mr. Blake?" a voice asked, from behind the light fixture in the center of the ceiling.

  He looked up, squinting at the soft glow. "Who's that?" he asked.

  "Just the prison computer," the voice said. "One of my duties is to keep an eye on the inmates and welcome them when they wake."

  "I'm in prison, then?"

  "Oh, you needn't be so down-at-the-mouth, sir," the computer said. It sounded as if its voice tapes had been recorded by an old maid school teacher from Altoona. "You aren't in the prison proper, b
ut in the protective-custody wing."

  "I see. And the others?"

  "They've been put in a special subterranean prison vault, in padlocked federal coffins with samples of their native soils to sustain them until the sun sets and they can be questioned."

  "I didn't mean the vampires," Jessie said. "I'm not at all interested in them right now. But what about my secretary, Helena? And what about my business partner — a hell hound named Brutus?"

  "Oh, they're fine, sir, fine," the computer said. "They've been ready to meet with the proper officials for some time now; we've all been waiting for your revival."

  "I could have been given drugs to counteract the narcotics. I could have awakened much earlier."

  "Well," the computer said, "certain arrangements had to be made anyway, before anyone could talk to you. So it was just as well that you slept."

  "What time is it?"

  "Seven in the evening, sir."

  "I slept the entire day away?"

  "You did that, yes," the computer said.

  "Then let's get on with this meeting that you've made 'special arrangements' for."

  "Someone will be around shortly, sir, to speak with you. In the meantime, perhaps you would like to watch some entertaining Tri-Dimensional shows." A panel slid open in the left-hand wall, revealing a Tri-D set When it popped on, the computer said, "There are no controls in the room with you — in the past, some prisoners have broken them off either in anger or in an attempt to find something to use as a weapon — but I'll tune in whatever you ask to see. Right now, the early evening Pritchard Robot Show is on. Would you like to watch that? Most everyone does."

  Jessie looked away from the light fixture and stared at the padded door. "How long until I can see someone?"

  "Only a few minutes, sir. A quarter of an hour."

  "I demand a lawyer."

  "But you aren't under arrest, sir. Therefore, we are under no obligation to secure your counsel."

  "I feel like I'm under arrest."