Undead to the World (10 page)

“Everybody in town knows about my obsession, Charlie. I think he was just trying to
freak me out. Or maybe that was vampire humor.”

“If you say so.…”

*   *   *

There’s a major flaw in our plan, of course. The window I smashed doesn’t go unnoticed
for long, and by the time we arrive with a bulging duffel bag slung over Charlie’s
shoulder, Sheriff Stoker is there, too.

“Jace. Charlie,” he says. Yellow crime scene tape is already strung across the window.
“Looks like we’ve got a regular crime wave happening.”

“Hope nobody got hurt this time,” I say.

“Just a steam cleaner.” Stoker points to the machine lying on the sidewalk surrounded
by shards of glass. “Funny thing is, it looks like this was pitched through the window
from the inside.”

“Ah, the wily steam cleaner,” I say. “I’ve heard no prison can hold them.”

“I’d say they broke in through the back,” continues Stoker, “but the security gate
was down and locked.”

“Really?” Charlie says. “That’s … unusual.”

“That it is. I’d like to ask Jimmy Zhang about it, but nobody can reach him.”

“What about his truck?” I ask. “I mean, has anybody seen it?”

“Well, it’s not here. That’s about all I know at the moment.”

Sheriff Stoker regards both of us calmly. A little too calmly. Any second now he’s
going to ask us what’s in the duffel bag.

“Don’t suppose you two heard anything?” he asks.

“Us?” I say. “We just got here. When did this happen, anyway? We’ve been watching
a movie for the last hour.”

“Short movie.”

“Crappy movie. We gave up and went for a walk.”

He nods, slowly. “Well, it’s a nice day for it. Enjoy.” He turns around and walks
back over to the window, kneeling to peer at something on the ground. I hope it’s
not a Jace-sized footprint.

“Let’s go,” I murmur to Charlie.

We cut through the parking lot and back to the alley. Sure enough, Zhang’s truck is
gone and the security gate is down and locked. “How’d he get away?” Charlie asks.
“The sun’s up—it’s not even cloudy.”

“I’m guessing he used some clever, high-tech vampy method to defeat that. Like, you
know, a tarp over his head. Or maybe one of those newfangled umbrella gizmos.”

Charlie grunts in annoyance. “Right. And now we have no idea where he’s gone.”

“Someplace dark, I’d guess. But yeah, there are all sorts of places he could hole
up. So much for a preemptive strike.”

“For our side, anyway.”

I think about that. We’ve got hours to kill until our meeting with Cassiar … but there’s
only one bed-and-breakfast in town. “Maybe not. Maybe we just need to change targets.”

“Sure. You know of another vampire in town, or are we hunting werewolves now? Because
I’m a little low on silver.”

I shake my head. “No, I’m thinking more along the lines of the mysterious Mr. Cassiar.
We could surprise him with an unexpected visit at the B-and-B.”

“I thought you wanted a public meet.”

“That’s the safe way to do it. But fortune favors the bold, right?”

“Fortune favors the survivors, Jace. They’re the ones that are still around afterward
to write down pithy little sayings and stick them in cookies so they can be quoted
by people about to do stupid, dangerous things.”

“Are you agreeing with me or not? I can’t tell.”

He sighs, and hefts the duffel bag on his shoulder into a more comfortable position.
“Neither can I. Let’s just go—if I haven’t turned around by the time we get there,
I guess I’m sticking around.”

I grin. “Now you’re talking.”

*   *   *

The B-and-B is typical. Far
too
typical. In fact, if there were an ultimate example of a B-and-B, some kind of perfect,
iconic version that exemplified not only everything Bed but also everything Breakfast,
then this place looks like three of those smushed together. With extra gables sprinkled
on top.

We stop in front and stare at it. “This place has always creeped me out,” I say. “It’s
like that house on the hill Norman Bates lived in with his dead mother, only it’s
the house itself that’s in drag.”

“What? It’s quaint.”

“No, a dairy churn is quaint. This is quaint cubed, with cuteness bleeding from the
edges. The frilly, frilly edges.”

I don’t really have to describe it, do I? Its curlicues have curlicues, like some
kind of deranged Victorian fractal. Every surface that isn’t a blinding white is a
sunshiny yellow, and I know once we get inside we’ll be overwhelmed by an overstuffed
tidal wave of teddy bears, lace, and flower arrangements.

I grit my teeth. “No one said this was gonna be easy,” I mutter, and march through
the little white gate and up the porch steps.

I ring the doorbell. A tinny little version of Pachelbel’s Canon plays somewhere inside.
A moment later, the door opens with the tinkle of a little bell. The owner, Silas
Bloom, stands there: He’s a paunchy man with pale, shiny skin, thick-framed tortoiseshell
glasses, and a pair of red suspenders holding up baggy tweed pants.

“Hello, Mr. Bloom. I was wondering if we could pay a visit to one of your guests.”

Bloom squints at me suspiciously. “I don’t have but one,” he says. “Don’t rightly
know if he wants to be disturbed.”

“Oh, he’s expecting us,” I say. “Mr. Cassiar, right?”

Bloom nods slowly. “Well … I suppose so. No visitors after nine o’clock, though.”

I refrain from pointing out that it’s mid-afternoon. “We won’t be long.”

“Upstairs, first bedroom on the right.”

He steps aside just enough for us to squeeze by. For someone in the hospitality industry,
he’s not exactly welcoming. Maybe he misread the word as
hostility.

The interior is about as bad as I expected: Doilies infest every surface like some
kind of embroidered fungus, there are picture frames so ornate you can’t even focus
on whatever they’re wrapped around, and the floral pattern of the wallpaper is dense
enough to smell. Going up the staircase feels like wandering into an actual thicket;
I almost expect some kind of woodland creature with huge cartoon eyes to burst out
of the wall and demand I sing a song.

But we make it to the top without incident. “Ready for this?” I whisper to Charlie.

“No,” Charlie says. “But since you’re going to do it anyway…”

I knock on the door.

It opens.

SEVEN

David Cassiar is not what I expected.

He’s much younger than I thought he’d be, for one thing—but that’s only at first glance.
When he smiles at me, the wrinkles around his eyes put him in his forties, not the
twenty-something man I initially saw.

He’s tall, well built, his skin that golden color you see in ads for tanning salons.
He’s blond, with deep blue eyes, and damned attractive in a daytime soap kind of way.
He’s wearing a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, tan pants, and
no shoes at all.

“Well … hello, Jace,” he says. “This is a surprise—but a welcome one. Come on in.”
He beckons me inside like it’s pouring rain in the hallway. “And you are?” he asks
Charlie, putting out his hand.

Charlie hesitates, then shakes it. “Charlie,” he says gruffly.

“Nice to meet you. I’m David Cassiar—but I guess you already know that.” He chuckles,
then closes the door behind Charlie. “Please, have a seat.”

I glance around the room. Four-poster bed, of course. Frilly quilt, frilly pillows.
Several antique chairs that seem to have been upholstered in the wallpaper’s inbred
offspring and then doilyed to within an inch of their overstuffed lives. I shudder.
“I’ll stay on my feet, thanks.”

Cassiar shrugs and sits down himself, crossing his legs casually. Charlie picks a
chair and occupies it like it’s enemy territory. He drops the duffel bag down between
his knees.

“I assume you decided you’d rather have your questions answered now instead of later?”
Cassiar asks.

“More or less,” I say. “Okay, more more than less. You told me you knew what was going
on in Thropirelem. What would that be, exactly?”

He looks at me steadily for a moment before answering. “Monsters, Ms. Valchek.”

“Monsters,” I say. I say it the way a farmer might say
gophers,
or a teenager might say
algebra.

“Yes. I’ve been tracking a cult for some time now, and I have reason to believe they’re
based in your little town.”

“Wait,” Charlie says. “Tracking? Who tracks a cult?”

The faintest trace of a frown surfaces on Cassiar’s face. “Well, I do. I’m sorry,
I thought you were familiar with my work—or would have Googled me, at the very least.”

“We’ve been having connection problems,” I say. “Pretend we’re Googling you right
now—what’s getting the most hits?”

“Probably my own Web site, Evilhunter. That’s what I do, you see; I hunt monsters.”

The phrase resonates in my head so strongly I can almost hear echoes. “You hunt monsters.
Like a profiler?”

“No. I don’t seek to understand evil—just to eradicate it. And the Gallows cult is
one of the most evil groups I’ve ever encountered.”

“Are you talking about the Gallowsman?” Charlie asks.

“Yes. You know it as a local legend, but it pops up all over the Midwest. Minor details
change, but the central story is always the same. Local man named Jump—or Leap, or
sometimes Hopper—has a run of horrible luck. Coldhearted villagers turn their backs
on him, or execute him outright. He promises to come back and share his pain with
them. Then people start to die. There are many variations of how they die, but it’s
usually something bizarre or improbable and always involves strangulation. The only
way to stop it is for someone to hang themselves on purpose—to show the Gallowsman
that somebody understands his pain.”

Terrance hadn’t told me the last part; then again, maybe he hadn’t known it. Or maybe
he hadn’t wanted to risk the guilt in case somebody found me hanging from the rod
in my closet. “So if this is such a widespread story, then why is the cult based here?”

“Because all stories have some element of truth to them, or they die out. This is
the town where the actual event took place, over two hundred years ago.”

“Hold on,” I say. “Let’s go back to the whole I-hunt-monsters bit. For whom?”

“For the good of all.”

“Oh? That must be hard to bill.”

“I write books about my exploits. They generate enough income to keep me going.”

What I wouldn’t give for an Internet connection right now—I can smell scam all over
this guy. “I hate to be picky, but I’m not sure you’re really what we’re looking for
in a monster-hunter right now. Do you have a résumé you could leave with us?”

Cassiar sighs, uncrosses his legs, and leans forward. “I don’t blame you for being
skeptical, Ms. Valchek. Monsters, for the most part, are fiction. I’ve never come
face-to-face with a vampire or a werewolf, though I have found evidence that suggests
such creatures did once exist. And I believe they might again, if the Gallows cult
has its way.”

I pluck a porcelain knickknack from a shelf and toy with it. I’m not even sure what
it’s supposed to be—a puppy? A kitten? A horribly deformed duck? “If you don’t hunt
vampires or werewolves, what
do
you hunt? Sasquatches? The Loch Ness Monster?”

“Oh, I’m intimately familiar with the supernatural, Ms. Valchek. Demonic possession
is all too real, as are malevolent spirits like poltergeists. But what the Gallows
cult is trying to do is far worse; they’re trying to drag something physical across
the Great Divide. Not a spirit, not a nebulous entity, an actual
being.
In fact, they may have already succeeded—and it could lead to something utterly catastrophic.”

“What, an evil undead hangman isn’t bad enough?”

“He is only the first. Should the cult be able to bring him through, others may follow.
As terrible as the Gallowsman is, his threat is nothing compared to monsters that
could turn others into beings like them.”

“Others. You’re talking about the
V
and
W
words, right? Or should I throw a
Z
in there, too?”

He shakes his head gravely. “At this point, I don’t know. But yes, vampires and werewolves
are certainly possibilities. The living dead are less likely, for occult reasons that
are difficult to explain—essentially, the Gallowsman already fulfills that role, which
makes it difficult for anything similar to cross over without his active help.”

Charlie nods. “And he doesn’t play well with others. Luckily for us.”

“Exactly.”

I toy with the knickknack and don’t say anything for a minute. I don’t know what to
think; Charlie clearly believes him, but I’m not so sure.

No, that’s not quite it. Everything he’s saying makes sense and fits with what we’ve
discovered so far—it’s the man himself I’m having trouble with. There’s something
off about him, something not quite right. It’s like if I caught a glimpse of him out
of the corner of my eye, I’d see someone else.

But so far, he seems to know more about the situation than we do, and that’s worth
a lot. “Tell me about the cult. Why are they doing this? What do they stand to gain?”

“Beyond occult power? The Gallowsman’s a locus, not just for despair but for bad luck
itself, the swirling destructive side of chaos. Like a curse come to life.”

“Doesn’t sound as if he gets invited to a lot of parties. So why would the cult want
him around?”

“When brought here by the death of a suicide, the Gallowsman has a specific purpose—to
bring suffering to the one the suicide blames for their pain. But when there’s no
suicide, he has no focus. He can be directed by those that summoned him.”

“Like a weapon,” Charlie says.

“When needed, yes. But there is another very real, very tangible benefit to summoning
the Gallowsman. He draws ill fortune and hopelessness to him—and
away
from those he is bound to.”