IT WAS A NEW sound. A completely different sound. Almost gentle. A tribal sound, like something from a film on ancient Africa, of hollow logs or old drums.
Lacey had heard the sound before, just as she had smelled the smell before and seen the cloak before.
I have had other lives, thought Lacey. Were they terrible? Was I as afraid during those lives as I am now? Was I glad to pass into other worlds? Did I go with as much pain and fear as I will this time?
The gentle thrumming continued.
It was precise and rhythmic. It reminded Lacey of somebody absently plucking the bass string on a guitar.
It was a waiting sound: background music, rhythm before the action begins.
Sherree laughed hysterically. “It’s the vampire!” she said. “He’s knocking.” Sherree turned to open the door. “Come in, come in,” she sang, like a lost opera soprano. Or a young girl losing her mind.
Only some of the vampire came in. Cloak, rather than teeth: Stench, rather than hands.
Lacey bit her lip, which made her think of teeth, and other, future bites, and she put both hands over her mouth and shuddered behind the wall of her locked fingers.
“Have you made any progress?” said the vampire courteously.
Lacey hated him for being gentlemanly. This was not a mannerly occasion. She found her voice. “We’ll let you know,” she said icily, in the rudest voice she could manage.
“You must feel free to take your time,” said the vampire. “I have all night, of course.”
The cloak evaporated more quickly than before, but his smell was greater and stayed longer. Roxanne had a coughing fit.
“That’s it!” whispered Zach, wildly excited. “We’ll stall. We’ll bluff. We’ll waste time!” Zach choked in his eagerness to explain the strategy to the rest. “When the sun comes up, he’s out of the picture! I saw that in a movie! Vampires can’t live in the sun!”
But the vampire’s voice was still among them. He straightened Zach out. “I can make the night last as long as I wish, you see. You chose a sealed house, my friends. Plywood…nailed over broken panes. Light sockets…without bulbs. Wiring…in which no electricity flows. It is always night in this house.”
His voice went on shivering for some time.
Always night.
Always night.
Always night.
A shutter caught Zach’s attention. It rattled its louvers as if it were talking to him. Zach nearly answered. Then he stopped himself. Those were strips of wood. Nothing else.
I’ve got to get out of here, he thought. Before I lose my mind.
It seemed to grow darker in the tower. The room added shadows and layers. The walls became farther away, the ceiling more distant.
I have to do something, thought Zach, before we are in total darkness and total silence.
Somehow he knew that once the horror became complete, nobody would be able to think, nobody would be able to act, nobody would be able to escape.
His mind tumbled like clothes in a dryer, falling, mindless, knowing nothing but heat and gravity. He could not grip any of his thoughts; he could come to no conclusions; he could plan no strategy.
All night. Their lives would last all night. Their lives would be nothing but night. Endless night.
Unless Zach could find a way out.
“We have to get out of here!” cried Roxanne. “Now! We can’t just stand here and pretend somebody is going to rescue us. Nobody is going to rescue us! Somebody do something!”
Roxanne clung to the hammer.
What would happen to the vampire if she swung the hammer at it? Was there anything to bruise or break? Did it have substance or was it some sort of reflection of itself? Did it need — Roxanne could not bear imagining this part — did it need a meal in order to have flesh and skin?
In her panic, Roxanne pressed down with the hammer. It caught in the crack of the floorboards. Her body was so clenched with fear that she was gripped by an involuntary spasm, and she wrenched the hammer upward. The floorboard under which the claws were hooked came upward a half inch.
What’s under there? she thought. Roxanne did not know what houses were made of. Beneath this floor would be the ceiling of the room below. What was the room below? What were ceilings made of? What would be in the sandwich of top floor and bottom ceiling? For a moment, she worried about live wires that could electrocute her should she stab a hammer claw through one. Then she remembered the electricity was off. She actually blushed in the dark, grateful that people like Zach, who were intelligent, did not know what a stupid worry she had just entertained.
Roxanne looked down. It was much too dark to see anything. She held tightly to the hammer handle. She pulled harder. The strip of flooring came up another inch. Nothing, absolutely nothing, would have made Roxanne stick bare fingers under the floor. With everything else there was to be afraid of, how did she have energy left to be afraid of touching the open edge of a piece of wood? You would think I’d have reached a fear saturation point, she thought.
But no.
Perhaps you could always become more afraid.
After several moments of gathering courage, Roxanne worked the claws of the hammer a few inches down the flooring strip, and pried again.
Zach touched the shutter. It felt punky. Rotted. Like a piece of tree fallen years ago in a storm, full of insects and becoming mulch on the forest floor. It contained its own damp. It felt as if he could roll it up in his hand.
Instead, he opened the shutter.
At first, although he knew he was looking at sky now instead of tower wall, he could see no difference. It was nighttime. There was no moon. There were no stars. No plane sparkled red and white in the sky. No immense beam from a car dealership or a carnival circled in the sky.
Zach touched the glass window.
Slowly, he lifted it. It held, staying up.
He put his hand outside into the night air. The vampire might possess the door, but he did not possess this window! Zach said nothing to the others. Who knew what the vampire could feel happening in his own house? Who knew what the vampire saw? Best not to start loud frantic conversations on the subject of getting out via the window.
Zach thrust his head and shoulders through the opening.
The air was fresh and clear.
He had not realized the extent of the vampire’s pollution until his face was breathing in clean air. The vampire had so completely contaminated the tower they might have been breathing the exhaust of decrepit trucks.
Over and over again, Zach filled his lungs with the wonderful clean oxygen of the night sky.
There was no longer a yard around the old mansion. There were ditches and troughs where bulldozers had gouged away shrubs and stone garden paths. The bulldozers had not followed up on their task. Heaped around the ground were dirt and debris mountains. If Kevin had been a little boy, and had had his toy trucks along, he would have had a wonderful time road building.
“There’s the car,” whispered Mardee. “They’re here, all right.”
Randy’s Land Rover was a dark color and blended into the fallen hemlocks like a jungle animal into dense leaves. Kevin had not even seen it. There was something terrifying about the way it was parked. Randy must have driven into the Mall House yard, circled, and backed carefully into the immense black branches with their evil stubs of broken limbs stabbing the air all around them. Somebody had had to get out of the Land Rover first and direct him, or they would have been stabbed onto the prongs of the dead trees like meat on a fork.
The house was sordid and ruined.
There was nothing romantic about it.
It had a caved-in look, a place so completely gone, so completely lost, that even homeless drug addicts and mentally ill street people would not come here. The building itself looked mentally ill, its shutters crooked, its shingles curled upward, its roofing sagged.
The silence around the mansion was complete.
Life had stopped here. No birds, no small animals, perhaps not even any insects. No heart beat here. No lungs filled.
Life had stopped here. No flowers, no shrubs, no trees, perhaps not even weeds or grass. No roots dug into the fruitful earth. No leaves drew sustenance from the heavy air.
The air was truly heavy, as if the weather were about to change. Or as if something evil and unthinkable were passing through.
Kevin and Mardee found that they were holding not hands, but bodies. As if, should they stand apart, something else would fill that little space between them, and separate them forever.
On the lower floor, sheets of plywood had been nailed over the windows. The pale plywood made blind eyes against the dark house walls.
“They can’t be in there,” whispered Kevin. “There’s no way in.”
“They got in somehow; their car’s here,” breathed Mardee. “Let’s go around the house and see how they broke in.”
Kevin did not want to circle that house. He did not want to be near that house, or see that house, or even smell that house. Kevin was not actually gagging, but the smell of the house filled him and became part of him, and he felt weirdly older. As if that smell were carrying his body through its life span, and by dawn he would be ancient, used up, ready for burial.
Kevin wet his lips and regretted it. The smell gathered substance and landed on his damp lips, coating them. He tried to rub it off on his sleeve. It didn’t come off.
Mardee was hanging on to him with both hands now. Kevin tried to enjoy this, but enjoying anything was impossible under the circumstances. Kevin could not imagine his fastidious, careful sister actually going inside.
Lacey wants to be popular, thought Kevin. I guess we all do. Her new friends were going in this horrible place, so she took a deep breath and went along.
Though how anybody could take a deep breath around this house, Kevin could not imagine. Earth and air percolated a vile stench. It was too dark to see the ground.
The source of the smell must be lying open — a septic pit — a sewer tank — a poison-disposal field. Kevin put one foot ahead of the other knowing he had never done anything so stupid, but doing it anyway. They circled the house and found nothing to show where the others had gotten in.
“Maybe they didn’t get in,” muttered Kevin. “Maybe they fell into whatever pit it is we keep smelling.”
Mardee shook her head. Her hair brushed his cheek and he briefly forgot the house and turned his face down into her hair, intoxicated by it. It was satin compared to his own. His was like the tips of old paintbrushes; hers was like ribbons. In the deep darkness he could see into her eyes, the only bright spots on the earth. Kevin forgot the cesspits he had worried about and fell into Mardee’s eyes instead.
Mardee whispered, “Let’s go up on the porch and see if we can peel back any of the plywood.”
Girls were supposed to be so romantic. How come he had chosen one who concentrated on things like this?
I’m wasting time, Zachary thought.
Zach came from a family in which time was never wasted. It was important to make the best possible use of all time. Zach’s mother had had an extensive program of cultural activities for Zach when he was young; they had always been going to the Egyptian wing of the museum, or the children’s concert and lecture at the symphony. Zach’s father set an example of always having a book on tape should they be caught in traffic or a book to read should they have to sit an extra half hour in a doctor’s waiting room. Zach’s parents saw to it that all summer vacations were Important Experiences and all evening events were Meaningful and Packed with Knowledge.
Zach counted his breaths, and when he had taken ten lung-restoring heaves, he knew that was sufficient and he had no right to waste time tasting air, when he could be planning an escape.
By now his eyes were used to the dark and that made Zach feel better; time had not been wasted; he had just been acclimating himself to the dark.
He was three very high stories up in the air. If he were to jump, he would certainly break a leg. If not a spine. Zach had no desire to be a paraplegic. On the other hand, he had no desire to be a vampire’s long-awaited dinner.
“Actually,” Lacey was saying, in her methodical way, “we wouldn’t be his dinner. The correct meaning of breakfast is to break the fast, and the vampire has been fasting for a long time now. So we’d be breakfast.”
“Thank you for clearing that up,” said Roxanne sarcastically.
Zach actually grinned. Then he studied the roof. There was a sort of gutter around the base of the tower. If he could wriggle out, he could perhaps use that as a crawl space, and inch his way to the roof beam of the rest of the house, which was, of course, lower than the tower. Perhaps he could slither along the roof beam and find his way down to the roof over the big porch. Then when he dropped to the ground he’d have a much better chance of living through it.
But what if the gutter were as rotten as the shutters? He’d still fall.
Zach was not a physical daredevil.
That was Bobby’s style.
Zach preferred to let others take the risks, while he got the excellent grades, made the brilliant jokes, and led the pack.
But he did not see any way out of this except physical daring.
The thought was exhilarating. Zach had been brought up to conquer the world. This was his moment. Yes. It was time. Now he had to take the world by the shoulders and show it what he could do.
Once I’m down, thought Zach, I’ll get my cell phone out of the car and call the fire department. They have the high ladders. They’ll get the rest out.
Zach knew that he would not call the fire department. He could not dial 911 and tell them to rescue his friends from a vampire. It was too ridiculous. Nobody would believe him. He would be laughed at. Zach could take anything except being laughed at. People would point at him, and chuckle, and call him names. That’s the kid who thought there was a vampire in that old shack they’re tearing down to build a mall, isn’t that hysterical?
The tower’s exterior shutters banged eagerly, a drumroll for whatever happened next.
His right leg felt the air. His hands gripped the sill tightly. He tried not to think of the great distance to the hard, hard earth. He managed to press his knee against the steeply sloping slates and drag the other leg out.
Good thing I’m not a big guy, thought Zach, who had always before wanted to be a big guy.
His shoes tried to find the gutter he had seen from the window.
But all they found was slick roof, and more slick roof.
His fingers began to ache. He could not grip the sill much longer. He had to put some of his weight on his feet instead of his hands. He kicked, trying to find a footrest.
Something touched his right hand.
Something foul and wet, like a moldy leftover in the refrigerator. He hung on only because his life was in the balance. He could not see what touched his hands. After a few seconds, it did not simply touch his fingers. It applied pressure.
Something was peeling his fingers off the sill.
Somebody had decided to help him fall.
Zach began to scream. He tried to shift his finger grip, but the sill was slick.
He began to fall.
I’m going to die, thought Zach, quite clearly.
He tried to dig his fingernails into the punky wood. He tried to haul himself back into the tower. He screamed for the others to grab him, but nobody came.
With a satisfied little chuckle, the creature peeling him away finished its task, and it leaned forward to watch Zach’s fall.
The last thing he saw was a face neither white nor black, skin neither tanned nor pale — but absolutely clear. A face that went right through to the other side, all its interior on display, like some horrible living laboratory model.
And then he was airborne, and screaming his last scream.