Vampire Blood (6 page)

“You didn’t have to go to all this trouble, Maude,” Jenny exclaimed, touched by the woman’s thoughtfulness. “I brought a lunch.”

Maude’s white eyebrows shot up. “Anything left in your father’s old rattletrap of a car on a day like this is probably a melted lump of debris by now.”

She pointed to the meat on the sandwiches. “While this is sliced from a whole ham I baked last night, cool from the ice box, and much better than those peanut butter and jelly sandwiches your dad and you probably brought along.”

“Cheese sandwiches.” Jenny laughed then and nodded her head in full agreement as she started gulping down the sandwich. The lemonade was frosty and felt good going down her parched throat.

“Thanks, Maude. This is scrumptious.”

“Glad you like it.” Maude smiled graciously and paused. “Where’s that father of yours?”

Jenny raised her shoulders, a resigned expression on her face, and took another sip of lemonade. “Said he would be right behind me. You know him, a real workhorse when he gets going.”

“Yeah, an
old
workhorse.” Maude chortled lightly and then as swiftly her eyes grew troubled.

“I hope he’s along pretty soon. Being out too long in this killer sun is no place for a man his age to be. It’s ninety-nine degrees out there and climbing. Your dad’s not looking well, either.” She hesitated uncomfortably, catching Jenny’s eyes. “I wasn’t sure about giving him the job.” There was doubt in her soft voice. “The way he’s been acting lately.”

“Tell me about it,” Jenny moaned. “I’d do anything to get him to quit. Take it easier. I worry about him, but,” Jenny gazed thoughtfully out the kitchen window, “he can’t.”

“Needs the money too much, I know. The story of his life.” Maude’s compassion was evident on her face. “That’s why I went along with it when George proposed him for it. We know he’s having hard times right now with Estelle gone and all; we’ve been friends for a long time. We wanted to help, but we don’t want him to kill himself. You two take your time. There’s no rush.”

She perceptively read the frightened look in Jenny’s eyes.

“Don’t worry. I can give you the money up front if you need it. We trust you.”

“Thanks, Maude.” Jenny lowered her eyes, feeling like a beggar anyway. She went back to her sandwich.

Maude continued reading the paper.

“By the way, where is George?” Jenny inquired as she was mopping up crumbs with a wet fingertip.

“Downstairs in the basement fixing the washing machine, I hope. It broke down yesterday, and I wasn’t half done with the washing. I hope George finds the problem.”

“Hmm. Me, too,” Jenny mumbled, distracted, still thinking about her father.

“I wish Dad would get in here and eat.” Jenny’s eyes searched out the window. What was keeping him so long? Maybe she should go check on him.

She was mulling that thought over when she noticed the same article on the front page of Maude’s newspaper that she’d been reading earlier that morning.

“Have you read that yet?” Jenny leaned over and tapped the story with her finger.

Maude’s eyes sharpened. “Yes, and I don’t like it one bit. Something’s not right. My old newspaperwoman’s intuition is screaming bloody murder. Too many mutilated animals lately for me. Says here that in Thorpsville they’ve found three horses and two cows completely drained of their blood in the last couple days. Hideous.” She shivered visibly. “The authorities suspect it’s some satanic cult or something.”

“You don’t?” Jenny smiled sweetly, Maude’s seriousness tipping her off.

“No, I don’t. There were no footprints or tracks left. Nothing. It doesn’t sound like any cult I’ve ever heard of. No trophies taken, either. No hearts or eyes gouged out. Cults go in for that sort of gruesome stuff, usually.” Maude touched Jenny’s hand. “You should know what it sounds like, Jenny. As I recall you’re the expert.”

Jenny frowned. She’d written three horror novels about vampires, and she was considered an expert? Ha.

“Let me take a wild stab at it. Vampires?” Jenny’s face shadowed with amusement when Maude simply nodded. “Oh, Maude, you know I merely wrote
about those things. I don’t believe
in them.”

Maude stared at her with pity in her eyes. “No, Jenny, my girl, never make fun of such things. I’ve lived longer, seen more, and believe me; there are things on this earth that are unexplainable and dangerous. Never doubt it. Some of the mysterious incidents I had to investigate as a newspaperwoman were spooky, to say the least.” There was an apprehensive nervousness in her manner, a strange glint in her eyes.

“Yeah. Well, whoever or whatever is doing the killing, I hope they catch them. Soon,” Jenny remarked and quickly changed the subject before anything else could be said.

“Maude, Joey told me this morning that someone’s bought the old Rebel theater after all these years. Isn’t that something?”

“You’re not serious? Someone’s bought the Rebel?” Maude’s face was incredulous.

“I’m serious. Why are you looking at me like that?”

Maude paused before she answered, “Oh, nothing, Jenny.”

“It must be a mess
inside.”

“It’s been closed for so long. I’m sure it is. It’ll take a great deal of work before they can open it again to the public,” Maude mused.

“I guess the guy, an eccentric older man according to Joey, is going to renovate it.” Jenny stretched, her body sore from the climbing, bending and scraping.

“He’ll have to,” Maude‘s response was thoughtful. “I’d love to get a peek inside now. I did a series of stories on the Rebel for the newspaper, right before it went bankrupt and closed the last time. It wasn’t always called the Rebel. Did you know that?”

Jenny shook her head.

“When it was first built, it was called the Grand, because it was fancy and rich inside. Then sometime later, a new owner tacked on the word Rebel. The Grand Rebel. Eventually the Grand was dropped, and over time it just became known as the Rebel.” Then she fell silent.

“Maude?” Jenny pressed, waiting. She knew Maude too well and she’d seen that look before. “What is it?”

“Did you know that George and I used to go there every Friday night when we were courting? Nearly forty years ago now.”

Jenny could tell by her expression she was revisiting those long-ago days, wandering in the past.

“That place holds a lot of memories for us, but for others it has always held ... questions.” Uneasiness tainted her voice.

“About what?”

“It frightened some people, that’s all. Some people thought they ... saw things.”

“Saw things?” Jenny chuckled. “My brothers and I used to go there all the time when we were children; it never scared us, and we never
saw
things
.”
She started to dismiss the subject with a lazy gesture, but then asked, “What sort of things?”

Maude sighed. “Things that go bump in the night. Ghosts, you might say. Some remembered that in the early days, there’d been disappearances.” Maude had tilted her head and was rubbing her chin lightly with her fingers.

“Like as in ... people?” Jenny pressed her.

“Yes. People. Quite a lot of them actually.”

“I never knew that. Did they ever find out what happened to them?”

“No. Not a trace.”

Jenny was staring out the window.

“That was years ago,” Maude said. “It’s been closed for a long time. Nearly twenty years, at least. This time.”

“This time?” Jenny’s eyes reflected interest.

“A fire burnt the place to the ground a few years after it’d been built. There were people trapped in the auditorium who couldn’t get out and many lost their lives or were horribly disfigured. The place was rumored after that to be not only haunted, but jinxed, evil, and that the fire had been purposely set.”

Maude evaded Jenny’s gaze in a most peculiar way, as if she’d already said more than she wanted. She had the unsettling feeling that there was something else Maude wasn’t telling her.

“Why did they think that?” Jenny was growing intrigued by the story now in spite of herself.

“I never found that out. People, when I was a girl, didn’t want to talk about it,” Maude finished, staring down at the article about the butchered animals.

“It seems kind of strange to me—I don’t know exactly why but it does—that all these mutilations and killings have begun, and suddenly the theater is opening again.”

“What would one have to do with the other?”

Maude refused to answer, only shrugging. She shoved the paper aside, finished with it.

“Anyway,” Jenny talked on, not noticing how concerned Maude was over the situation, “it’ll be great to have the theater back. Haunted or not. Great to have any theater in this town again.”

“I second that,” Maude agreed, lightening up. “I’ll have to keep an eye peeled for the grand reopening and pry George away from the television long enough to take me. We haven’t been to an indoor theater in ages.”

Maude got up and went to the refrigerator; opening the freezer door, she offered, “George made homemade peach ice cream for dessert. Made it this morning, in honor of the house being started.”

“He always made the best peach ice cream I’ve ever eaten,” Jenny reminisced aloud.

“If that father of yours doesn’t get in here soon, he just won’t get any,” Maude threatened. “We’ll devour it all ourselves.” She was already digging Jenny and herself out generous scoops and slamming them into large bowls.

“Maude,” Jenny sighed. “You’re too good to a lowly house-painter.”

Maude set the dish down with a clatter in front of Jenny and threw her a piercing look. “Jenny, Jenny, my girl. You are no lowly housepainter—not by a long shot. You’re simply drifting for a while. Trying other things, like most writers. Pretending to be something you’re not. Right?”

The questions in Maude’s eyes made Jenny nervous. They said,
One writer to another, I know you well.

Jenny ate her ice cream, ignoring the obvious challenge. “I believe this truly is the best batch of ice cream George has ever made.”

Maude patted Jenny motheringly on the arm. “You dickens, you. Always was stubborn as a mule, like your daddy, even as a child. Talented too.

“When’s the next book coming out, Jenny?”

“I told you I don’t write anymore. I don’t want to.” Jenny wouldn’t meet her eyes. She could feel her face turning red, probably even brighter than her sunburn. Of all the people in her life, she couldn’t be angry at Maude. Maude had been her mentor, her teacher, her friend and her most devoted admirer. They understood each other.

“That’s what you say. When are you going to stop acting like a little nitwit and go back to what you’re really good at?”

“Never.” Jenny’s answer, so full of finality, stunned the older woman for a moment.

Maude exclaimed, “That’s nonsense. You were once a best-selling novelist, Jenny.
A Summer’s Night
was excellent, for horror.” Maude’s tone was cajoling.

“If I could write like you—” Maude let out the breath she’d been holding, exasperated at the distant look on Jenny’s face. “You have a great gift, child, and you can sit there and tell me with a straight face that you’re never going to use it again? That’s almost a sin.”

“In your eyes, Maude, not mine. So I wrote a bestseller once. So what?” Her voice held a tired note. “Whatever I had once is gone, and you know what? I don’t care. I don’t want to waste anymore chunks of my life at the damn typewriter or the computer. Doesn’t anyone understand that? I don’t owe anyone anything. It’s my life, and I don’t want to write anymore, that’s all,” Jenny said through gritted teeth, turning her head away, wanting to be left alone about it.

For Maude, it finally soaked in. “Sorry, Jenny. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s just that
A Summer’s Night,”
her face filled with awe, “to this day, I’m still haunted by certain passages of it. It was so beautifully written, so believable. Your characters touched something in me.” She shook her head. “I guess it’s only selfishness that makes me want you to write another story,” her voice was apologetic.

Jenny rubbed her eyes and strained neck, sorry she’d snapped at Maude the way she had. The woman meant well. She just didn’t get it.

From downstairs, George’s gruff voice could be heard swearing good-naturedly at the washing machine. Something clanked to the floor, a tool perhaps, and the metallic sound echoed throughout the house.

Jenny’s eyes returned to the door. How much time had passed since she’d come in? Twenty minutes? Her dad should have been in by now. His lemonade was warm. Was she going to have to go out and drag him inside to eat and take a rest? Her eyes were gazing through the windows again.

It was then the scream echoed in the still afternoon, and Jenny, her heart plunging to her feet, bolted from the kitchen and flew out the door towards it.

Her father wasn’t on the walk board. She found him lying, panting and groaning, in a heap behind a bush under the scaffolding.

“Dad!” Jenny wailed and ran to kneel down beside his body, afraid to touch him.