An Old Friend of the Family d-3 Read online

  Between those lipless teeth the snakeskin voice scratched out a question: “He . . . is . . . gone?”

  Falling on her knees beside him, Judy spread helpless arms. “There’s no one here but me. Gran’s dead. Oh love, who did this to you? How did you get here?”

  A dark sleeve tried to gesture. “Pull . . . out . . .”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes . . . I am not . . . as other men. Pull it out.”

  Straddling the shrunken scarecrow, Judy laid hands on the shaft. It felt unyielding, like something fixed to the floor as part of the solid house. Hard as she pulled, it would not move. She bent to get a better grip and tried again. Eyes shut, she twisted and heaved with all her strength.

  The old man made a sound that Judy interpreted as pain. But when she let go of the stake his voice lashed up at her, more terrible for its very weakness: “Pull!”

  Eyes still closed, she straightened for a moment and tried to pray, then gripped the wood again. His fingers, whisper-feeble at first touch, came creeping up the shaft to settle on it beside hers. Now Judy threw her weight sideways, first this way then that, like trying to loosen a nail before you pulled it out. She felt the spasms of quivering in the spear as his arms joined their efforts to her own. She thought of wrenching at a nail with a claw hammer . . . suddenly the stake pulled free, with a cracking as of a barbed head breaking off, down in the solid floor.

  The abrupt release of strain sent Judy staggering back. She threw the horrible, broken-ended thing away from her, and swiftly crouched at Corday’s side again. Fresh blood, dark red, was welling up now from the great wound between his shoulder and his chest. His body shuddered, then lay so still that for a moment Judy was sure that she had killed him.

  But once more feeble movement returned. “Better, better,” rasped his voice, though it sounded as lifeless as before. There was a pause. Then one of his hands, its fingers hardly distinguishable from bones, brushed feebly at the floor, re-creating the sound that had first drawn Judy’s attention to this part of the house.

  He said: “Bring here all you can of the dust . . . earth of my homeland, you see. Fragments of my bed.”

  “Dust?” she wondered aloud. “Bed?” The only dust in sight was that from the crumbling fragments of the shattered sarcophagus. Obedient without really understanding, she began to scrape the pieces and their powder toward him with her hands. “So you rested . . . inside this,” she murmured as she worked.

  “He came upon me sleeping. Otherwise . . . but never mind. He will come back, or another even deadlier than he will come. So you must flee now, love. Run to some house nearby. Tell them to allow no strangers through their door tonight, no matter—”

  “Here, I’ve got a bunch of this dust scraped into a pile. What do I do with it now?”

  The sparks in his eye-caverns glittered at her thoughtfully. He said: “Push the dust under my body, along my side—no, do not try to lift me! I die quickly if you move me now. Else he would have taken me away with him—to her.”

  As though tucking a dry blanket beneath the fragile-feeling body, Judy performed the foolishness with the dust. As if playing a game that had to be won, however childish and ridiculous it seemed on its face.

  She sat back. It was hard for her to look at his terrible face, his wasted form. She fought for control over her face and voice, and asked: “What now?”

  His horrible voice said: “You must flee.”

  “I can run out somewhere, to one of the other houses here, and get them to call for the police. Then I’m coming back to be with you.”

  He shook his head feebly. “Police will be of no help to me. Any doctor they bring will order me moved. That must mean my death. Neither of us will be able to prevent it.”

  “Then I’m not leaving you at all,” Judy decided. “What’s the next thing I can do?”

  “Oh, my dear,” he whispered. And again: “My love.” Then just when she thought her tears were going to break out at last, he ordered: “Gather more of the earth. Crumble the larger pieces to powder. You will find them brittle. It is the earth of my homeland, and very special to me. Mix the dust with my blood, and use it to stanch my wound.”

  Again Judy did as she had been bidden. She pulled back his ruined clothing to get at his parchment flesh, and fought to stem the flow of blood that still oozed richly from God knew where inside his mummified body. In all this nothing now struck her as horrible, except only the chance that she might fail.

  At last the bleeding stopped. Judy had lost track of time, but her neck and back ached as if she had been crouching in the same position for hours. Her patient let out a sigh, and moved his whole body for the first time since she had found him, stretching out to what must be an easier position for him on the floor. Suddenly mindful of her first-aid training, Judy wanted to bring him a blanket, but he insisted that it would do no good. He also refused her offer to fetch an ordinary pillow, preferring that she slide a fragment of the broken sarcophagus underneath his head.

  That done, he took her hand and pressed it in his twig-like fingers. “Thank you. Now, for the last time, Judy, again, I warn you—go.”

  “No.”

  “Listen to me. He who made your sister a vampire—yes, that is the truth—he will soon be back. I am still too weak to fight him, or even to get away.”

  She pushed back brown hair from her eyes. Her voice was hoarse. “I’ll fight him, then. You’ll tell me how.”

  “Oh. My dear love.”

  Her tears were threatening to brim again. “You do look stronger than you were. You can move, now, at least a little. Maybe if you rest a while . . . then I’ll help you get away. Can I lift you now, and hold you?”

  He nodded, feebly. Judy shifted her position, sitting on the hardwood floor. His head weighed almost nothing when she laid it in her lap. Gray hair and paper skin on bone. She stroked his forehead, too fleshless to have wrinkles. She told herself his face did actually look a little fuller now than when she had first found him. Though she had to admit that the improvement was pitifully small.

  The deep sparks in his eyes burned up at her. “You will not leave,” he said, stating a fact.

  “No, I will not.”

  “Then you will be here when he comes.”

  “If he is coming. But yes, I’ll be here till someone comes.” With infinite tenderness she smoothed his hair.

  His mouth emitted a ghost of its old hiss. “Then there is only one thing we can do. For your own sake as well as mine.”

  “What? Tell me.”

  “You know that I am not as other men.”

  “I know.”

  “Even wounded—so—it is possible for me to regain my full strength, or very nearly so, in no more than hours, or perhaps only minutes.”

  “Love, tell me how.”

  “The sun has set now and that helps me—of course it will help them also. Pulling out the spear and stanching the wound have helped me greatly. Yet one thing more is needed.”

  Judy raised her head. Had she heard a footstep, somewhere in the house? No, she thought, only the storm. Just inside the broken window, the narrow wraith of snowflakes danced and melted. “What is it, my love? Anything.”

  “My darling Judy, have I not told you again and again to go, to leave me here?”

  “Stop wasting time and tell me—oh.”

  Her lover’s hand had risen to the back of her neck, caressingly. First feebly now, then with strength surprising in a limb so thin, his arm urged her to bend lower over him.

  Judy rearranged her own limbs, her body, to bend down in the way he seemed to want.

  “Oh,” she said again. His lips, that had appeared so dry and wasted, felt soft and warm upon her throat.

  EIGHTEEN

  Before the immobilizing drug wore off, Carol bound Joe’s arms and legs with strong cord and tape. She worked so cunningly that the bonds were almost comfortable, and yet when he was able to try to move again he soon discovered that he could barely twitch a
muscle.

  A preoccupied expert, Carol smiled at him absently as she worked. “Joe, my little dear, are you awake? Yes. Too bad, in a way. You might just have slept from here on. Don’t worry, though. You’re going to rather enjoy things at the end, I promise you that. It really does work that way. Now, all nicely packaged.” She gave him a pat, then picked him up, dandling a baby effortlessly. “You must be packaged safely, because Mommy is going out for a while. I have to go and play with little Craig once more—to try to salvage him. Because at the moment he’s the only breather I have left who’ll work with me. And you breathers are so useful for some things. Yes, you are.”

  Carol carried Joe into an unfinished side-room, about eight feet by ten, hardly more than a large storage closet. Barrels and crates and boxes almost filled the place. A second door, the upper half of it glass-paneled, led to another, much larger, darkened room or area, where streetlight entering by distant windows showed bare concrete walls and floor, sawhorses, scraps of lumber, a can of paint or two.

  He got only one glance out through the glass panel, for Carol promptly lowered him to the floor, left him sitting there leaning against something solid at his back.

  Before she straightened up, she kissed his forehead briskly, as people who kissed their dogs might do. “I’d like to give you a real kiss, Joey, of a kind you’ve never had. But there just isn’t time. Not right now.”

  Her feet in high heels tapped back into the finished rooms of the apartment. The door closed solidly behind her, so only the street lighting, very distant and indirect, reached him now. He could hear vague sounds of movement from the apartment for a little while, then there was silence.

  They hadn’t bothered to gag him, so it seemed he was free to yell for help as much as he liked—Johnny hadn’t been gagged either. Well, maybe later he would try.

  They hadn’t even bothered to take away his gun.

  * * *

  The viewer built into Craig Walworth’s back door showed him that Kate Southerland was standing just outside. She looked just about as she had when he had seen her last, blue jacket and all. Without consciously intending to do so, he spoke her name aloud.

  His voice was low, but Kate evidently heard him through the door, for at once she rattled its handle.

  “Craig?” Her voice coming through the thick wood sounded dazed and empty. “Craig? Let me in, please.” Her image in the viewer appeared dazed too, staring glassily forward as if she could see him through the door.

  Taking his eye from the viewer, Walworth turned himself around in a full circle, looking at his brightly lighted kitchen. He did not really see anything of the cheerful colors. His mind was devoid of plans, and he felt that he was waiting for something to be explained to him. When he had turned to face the door once more he tried looking through the viewer again. She was still there, and once more the handle of the door rattled.

  “Hell, why not?” he said aloud. “Come in. If you’re a phantom I won’t be able to keep you out anyway, will I?”

  It took him a full ten seconds to undo all the alarms and fastenings armoring the door, and then he swung it wide. Kate walked in at once. Before he did anything else he locked the door completely up again. Then he turned to look at her.

  She certainly looked real and solid enough, and her confused state was even plainer than it had been through the viewer. Her face was paler than he remembered it, her hands kept rubbing each other nervously, her eyes jumped erratically about the kitchen, looking everywhere but straight at him.

  Abruptly she began to speak in a staccato voice. “This place where I’ve been staying—you see, he broke in there today, while it was still daylight. Cloudy, but still so bright when I ran outside that I thought I was going to die.”

  “Huh.” He studied Kate’s face desperately, trying to make sure that it was real. If he fired his pistol at it, what would happen? “Somebody broke in on you somewhere, huh?”

  “Enoch Winter.” Her empty blue eyes flicked at Walworth, then past him at the stove. “He was looking for the old man, I know. He said—he said Joe had told him where the old man might be sleeping. He looked in all the vaults, I think.”

  “Joe,” said Walworth, just to be saying something.

  “Yes.” Kate’s eyes fixed on him suddenly. “Do you know where Joe is?”

  “I don’t know any Joe, lady,” he said, suddenly remembering who Joe must be.

  “I have the feeling that Joe has been here recently.”

  “Why in hell should Joe be here?”

  “Joe shouldn’t be in hell,” Kate answered instantly—making as much sense, Walworth thought, as anything else she had said so far. She appeared to stop to think. “I don’t know why he should be in this place, then,” she went on. “But he was here.”

  “My God.” Walworth was speaking to himself again. “I think it really is Kate. Then there must have been someone who looked just like her in the morgue—someone they found in that rooming house—I don’t know. God, what a day and evening this is turning out to be.”

  Kate nodded at him, a wise-old-woman sort of nod that made her look crazier than ever. “You speak of God a lot, don’t you? They can, too, you know. It’s not really like it is in the stories. They can handle holy things. They’re no worse than we are, really.”

  “Sure, whatever you say.” Suddenly Walworth remembered leaving the phone off its cradle, back in the other room. Immediately he felt pleased with himself for having his head on so straight now that he remembered that. “Excuse me one second,” he said, and left the kitchen.

  Sure enough, there was the loose phone; score one for the consistency of the world and dependability of his brain. He hung it up, not bothering to find out if there was someone on the other end of the line now or not. He could call back later for help if it was necessary, but right now it looked like maybe he was going to fly home from this trip on his own.

  On his way back to the kitchen he hoped fiercely that his visitor was still going to be there. She was, he saw with considerable relief, and she still looked like Kate. But a Kate still really out of it, staring now with great apparent interest at the icemaker on his refrigerator door—

  Why couldn’t he see her reflection in the chrome?

  Some trick of angles—

  Going up to the girl, Walworth quietly touched her on the elbow. She started, not at all the way a phantom ought to behave, and turned her quietly wild gaze on him.

  Those eyes of hers made him shaky. “Kate, d’you know what? Everyone thinks you’re dead. Hey, now, don’t start flying around outside the window, or do anything silly like that, hey?” He could hear the real pleading in his own voice, and it disgusted him.

  She looked at him with a total lack of intelligence. “What?”

  “I’m just telling you, don’t do anything silly until I have the chance to show the world that you’re still alive and in one piece. That’s going to get me off one hook, anyway. Now you are here, right?” He squeezed her jacketed elbow. “Sure you are.”

  “I’m here. Of course I am.”

  “Great. What brings you to my place tonight, anyway? Not that I mind.” His hand, falling back to his side, brushed the butt of the gun still stuck in his belt, and he wondered if it would be smarter now to put the weapon away. He decided to carry it with him a little longer, just in case . . . in case of what, he didn’t exactly know.

  “I must find Joe.” Kate’s fine forehead creased in puzzlement. “I went to his apartment tonight, right after sunset, but he’s not there. He’s been here, I can feel it.”

  She raised both hands to her head. “Oh, those people drugged me, that night when I was here . . . maybe you . . . but you’re not one of them.”

  “No, no I’m not.”

  Kate let her hands drop to her sides, and her speech fell back into its earlier lifeless tone. “I think I left something here . . . I didn’t have any money with me when I wanted to go shopping.”

  “Shopping. Sure.” Walworth stared at
her for a little while. “My God, they really dosed you good, didn’t they? Well, welcome to the club. I knew they were giving you something good that night . . . how many days ago was that? Almost a week, I bet, and you’re still wandering. I hope it’s not the same thing they gave me. God.”

  She looked at him as if she were trying hard to understand.

  “So, what do I do with you now, Katie? Just call up the cops, I suppose. No, my lawyer first. Then the cops. Tell ‘em you’re here. Say you just wandered in. I know you slightly.”

  He decided to take a look around the apartment first, because there were probably a few things he’d rather the cops didn’t see. He had better put the gun away, to begin with—suddenly recalling something else, Walworth turned his back on Kate and walked out of the kitchen again. When he reached his bedroom, the little shot-to-splinters table was lying just as he remembered it, on its side against the wall, dusted with a little plaster from the cratered wall above.

  So, the shooting incident had been real enough—except of course he must have been shooting at a drug-induced hallucination. Carol herself had doubtless been long gone before things started to get dangerous. Her idea in drugging him must have been that he would eliminate himself with his own crazed violence—an unreliable method, it would seem, of getting someone out of the way. And why should she want him out of the way anyhow? Maybe this was only her idea fun. He himself, he knew, had some ideas on how to have a good time that would seem far out, to put it mildly, to most people. But Carol and her pal the ape-man must be completely crazy. . . .

  He righted the little table. Still, there was no way that the damage wouldn’t be noticed if anyone came into the bedroom. I was cleaning my gun this afternoon, officer, and it just . . . they must hear that pretty often. But still the gun had nothing to do with Kate, or with her brother’s kidnapping. So that would be all right. What he had to do now was show the world that Kate Southerland was still alive. After that, there ought to be lawyers around sharp enough to demonstrate to the world that whatever had been happening to Kate lately was not Craig Walworth’s fault.