Vampirus (Book 1) (10 page)

But then he looked out the window and changed his mind. It would wait until tomorrow. It would have to.

It was dark out now.

30

He
called Alger twice after first light, then went over there around ten and knocked. Nothing. The front door was locked, same for the back. He went home and drank for awhile, but he couldn’t stand it. The Jim Beam tasted like water and he couldn’t sit still and the reason for that was that he was worried about Alger, about the neighborhood, about the whole goddamn town.

Around two, he went back over there.

The door was still locked. On his tiptoes in the snowdrifts, Luke peeked in what windows he could, seeing nothing. He had a very bad feeling and planned on following it to its source, which meant getting in there somehow.

Using a prybar (the same one
Alger and he had used out at Salem Cross), he popped the front door open without damaging the lock itself. Soon as he stepped in, he was hit with a warm stink that nearly pushed him back out the door. It was sharp and pungent, like wine gone to vinegar. An absolutely unnatural smell.

He called out A
lger’s name a few times, but his voice just died away.

There was something about the house that made
him want to turn and run. The atmosphere was spoiled, noxious. He got that feeling in his gut like he’d had at the Crossik’s and The King’s: cold steel claws unfolding in his belly. He looked around and saw absolutely nothing out of the ordinary downstairs save a nearly full can of Budweiser sitting on the kitchen table next to a bologna-and-cheese sandwich with a single bite out of it. It looked like Alger was having a snack and a drink and had gotten called away suddenly. The bread was hard, the bologna darkening. Luke figured the sandwich was a couple days old. A few flies were investigating it. He saw three or four others on the kitchen window.

He had to go upstairs then.

Climbing those steps, he was reminded of going up them almost two weeks before when they’d taken Anne’s body to Salem Cross. The stairs creaked as he went up like someone was coming up behind him, but stairs often did that in old houses, he knew. Not that it stopped him from looking back and seeing the front door down there and how easy it would have been to escape.

He
reached the top of the stairs and there was a quick bumping sound from up there. He stopped. The dread was rising up from his belly, so thick in his throat he could not swallow. The silence was so heavy it was nearly palpable.

“
Alger?” he called out and the sound of his voice in that stillness almost made him run back down the stairs.

There was no reply.

He heard that bumping sound again.

What he
’d smelled downstairs was stronger up here, concentrated. It was enough to ream the hairs out of his nose, not just that sharp vinegary stink, but a putrid, flyblown kind of smell. He knew then as he’d known from the moment he stepped into the house that he was going to find something he would not like.

It was cooler in the upstairs corridor, almost brisk. He heard that sound again and traced it
down the hall to the spare bedroom. The door was lightly bumping against the jamb. He quickly went over to it so he could not second guess himself, and threw it open. It was empty but the window was open. The air was nearly glacial in there.

Why the hell was the window open at this time of year? They
’d had a high of nineteen degrees the day before.

He stepped
towards the window, very aware of how close he was to the closet door. At the window, he looked out at rooftops white with snow, icicles hanging from eaves, the trails of dark crematory smoke in the sky. Because of the overhang he hadn’t spotted the open window from below. If he leaned out at the proper angle, he could see his own footprints coming around the side of the house. The overhang was nearly covered in snow, but he saw that something had disturbed it. A bird. A pigeon maybe. That’s what he told himself.

He shut the window and locked it.

Alger must have been using the guest room, not wanting to sleep in the master bedroom after what happened with Anne and who could blame him? The bed was unmade, some empty beer cans and an overflowing ashtray on the nightstand. Luke told himself that was why the window was open, to clear out the smoke, but he was kidding himself and he knew it. Alger didn’t give a rat’s ass about his smoke and any non-smoker who dared comment on it was accused of being in the employ of the Tobacco Nazis.

There was a reason why the window was open, but Luke wasn
’t about to think about it any more than he was going to look in the closet.

He found a book on the nightstand called
The Harrow King and Other Wisconsin Folk-Tales.
The author was H.R. Shanks, a.k.a. Hawley Shanks, the local weaver of wild ones. Luke stuck the book in the pocket of his coat. In the drawer, he found a Smith & Wesson .45 and a box of shells. He took these, too. The gun was a recent acquisition, he figured. He didn’t remember Alger ever having a gun before.

He went down the hall, peeked in the bathroom, and pushed open the door to the master bedroom. Right away he wished he hadn
’t. It was dim in there, the shade drawn. There was someone on the bed, a form covered with a sheet and nothing more. He could have left, but he knew that if he did he was going to be more haunted than he already was.

His mouth was dry and his guts
were desperately trying to crawl up the back of his throat. He could feel the beating of his own heart. The wind was moaning around the window, cold and rattling. If death ever sang a song, it would sound like December wind.

Keeping an eye on the still form, Luke drew the shade up. It did little good; the outside pane was covered in ice and frost, a shadow of the chimney thrown over it. What light came in was weak and dirty yellow, like sun
shine through cellophane.

He took hold of the sheet and pulled it back.

And as he did so, a cloud of flies rose from beneath it in a wave of sickening heat. He swatted them away.

Anne was laying there.

He nearly fell backwards at the shock of it, breath wheezing in his throat. His head filled with rushing blood and he knew there were only two possibilities and the rational, sane one was that Alger had fucking lost it and went out to Salem Cross and brought her back. Luke couldn’t conceive of him doing so, but grief can be weird and devastating, it can tear minds right open and he knew all about that. The other possibility was flying around in his skull with the sound of night-black wings and Luke refused to consider it.

From a distance he gave Anne the once-over.

She had not decayed really, but in the cold of the mortuary he supposed that wasn’t so surprising. Flies were still crawling over her face and neck. She was wearing the same royal blue gown she’d had on when he wrapped her up for the trip out to The Cross (of course she did). It was low-cut and one pale breast had fallen out, the nipple a dull gray. He didn’t know what disturbed him more: her being there or the flies she had seemingly brought in the house with her.

The ghostly white pallor of death was evident on her face and exposed skin, but her cheeks were ruddy, almost gaudy with
a rose-pink vitality like a young girl experimenting with makeup for the first time. Her belly was swollen like that of Linda King. Her long white fingers were laced over it like women will do when they carry child. He didn’t know what she was carrying, but he had the feeling she was swollen with more than gas.

He covered her back up, hoping she
’d stay that way.

He was numb by the time he got downstairs. He didn
’t know what to think or even how to reason by that point. Everything he saw and—more importantly—
felt
was circumventing reality at every turn, pushing him farther into the darkness of superstition until he would have to admit the worst possible things to himself.

He looked in the cellar and garage for Alger, but he wasn
’t there. Not that Luke could see. But his real fear, of course, was that he
was
there, sleeping in some dark closet or cellar damp, hidden from view.

31

In his green notebook that night Luke wrote:

Here’s something that keeps me from sleeping. That YouTube video my sister sent me, the one that showed those…individuals walking the streets during a snowstorm in some little Utah town. Well, get this. I checked my mail (the Internet being my only real connection with the world) and there was a frantic message from Peggy to check the video. No problem. I had downloaded it. Here’s what keeps me awake: those figures on the video are gone. The feed shows nothing but snow falling on empty streets, nothing else. Even that close-up of the freaky “girl” at the end is gone.

How do I explain that rationally?

I went out to YouTube. The video is still there, but like my copy, the figures are gone. Now usually I don’t read comments on YouTube because they’re mostly assholes trying to pick a fight (these guys can only do this online because the idea of an actual physical confrontation with someone makes them piss their Batman underwear), but I had to see what people thought of this. There were a lot of crazies posting out there, quoting despairing shit from the Bible and what not, but one woman said that you cannot photograph vampires. She was quickly contradicted by another guy who said, yes, you can, but the image will fade quickly. He said the reason for this was unknown. Other people had ideas and the debate went on and on, everything from astral bodies to demon lights to subatomic shifts. It became the typical YouTube piss-match quickly enough.

All that aside, I can
’t explain it.

What possible digital or
encoding flaw could cause the same images to disappear from EVERY copy of the video? It’s getting to where I have to accept that the plague is caused by more than an invading germ, but maybe the microbial basis of evil itself (to quote a guy on YouTube). Crazy, but it seems to fit.

32

To his
amazement, he saw Cliff Corbett out shoveling his driveway down the block. Luke was starting to think he was the only one left in the neighborhood now that he couldn’t find Alger. There were others, he supposed, but he hadn’t bothered knocking on doors; he was afraid of what he would find. Afraid that he might discover what he discovered over at Alger’s house (which was something, sooner or later, he knew he’d have to deal with). Anyway, Cliff was outside so he walked over and was greeted happily by Bob, Cliff’s Border Collie.

Cliff
’s tale was soon told. The Army came and took Nicole, his wife, three days before. Luke felt yet another pang of sadness at this. Nicole was a good kid. Everyone had liked her. When Sonja and he had moved into the neighborhood, Nicole had come over with a loaf of cinnamon bread fresh from the oven. She was good like that. Real good. There were tears in Cliff’s eyes as he told about the Army taking her.

“
I didn’t try to stop them,” he said, leaning on his shovel. “They came to the door and I let them come in. I just….just let them come in and take her.”

“
You did the right thing.”

“
Did I? I’m not so sure.”

Oh, but you did, Cliff,
a little voice in Luke’s head said.
Because if they didn’t toss her remains into the burning pit, she might just come home one night like Anne came home for Alger and Sonja will be coming for me.

He
hated himself for thinking that. He felt like some superstitious peasant. Yet, with what he’d seen and what he felt to be true in his heart, belief in the unbelievable was getting easier every day and when the sun went down, there was no room left for doubt. There was only stark certainty. As they said, there were no atheists in foxholes.

“
Have you seen Alger around?”

Ordinarily, that question would have been answered with something like,
No, and thank God for small favors,
but the old petty squabbles of the neighborhood had now been forgotten for the most part.

Cliff just shook his head.
“No, I haven’t seen him around in days. Then again, I don’t get out much anymore.”

Which was commonplace for just about everyone on
13
th
Street by that point. Most stayed behind locked doors and didn’t mix much. They were all suffering, all grieving over their losses. There wasn’t anyone now that the Red Death had not touched. It was easier to nail yourself shut in your private box and hide from the world that for most had simply stopped turning. Day bled into day, seamless and gray and empty. There were other reasons, of course. When a deadly communicable disease was making the rounds people weren’t much inclined towards dropping by. Visiting was a thing of the past. Even if you got up the nerve to be social, most people wouldn’t let you in. Hell, Luke knew from experience that most wouldn’t even answer their doors.

“
I was hoping maybe you’d seen him.”

“
No.” Cliff shrugged. “Maybe he’s sick in bed.”