Vampire Dreams (Bloodscreams #1) (8 page)

Only now did Jim realize that he had fallen prey to a vampire bat as large as a man.

-6-

News of a car going off the road at or near the Combs Hill Bridge had the entire town's attention this day. It was towed out of the water and into Andover by Bunnell's Shell Station, old Jacob “Bun” Bunnell doing the hauling himself. Semi-retired, Bun still enjoyed hooking cars out of the Spoon.

A group of interested bystanders were on hand both at the scene of the accident and at the station when Bun finally towed in the wreck. It was chock full of dents and rips, especially to the top, as if it'd flipped over onto an enormous boulder. The windows were all smashed up and the windshield shattered but holding.

“Crazy fool had to be doing a hundred,” Bun told waiting ears.

Whoever was in the car was nowhere near the wreck. John McEarn's TV report flashed scenes from the salvage--the license plate number and the car itself as Bun was having it cranked out of the five-foot shallows of the Spoon where it curved away from the bridge some distance down. Everyone was relieved that the car had out-of-state license plates, and that it was an unfamiliar car. The community had had its share of loss already. State patrolmen on the scene were relieved that the old bridge had sustained no damage. The car had apparently come careening off the bridge, barely missed going over at that point, but the driver fought to keep it on the road for another fifth to a quarter mile, one patrolman told viewers at home.

Abe Stroud heard the report and shook off sleep to listen. He must've turned the TV on, but he didn't recall doing so. He didn't remember waking.

“Skid marks and tire trail where it dug up earth and rock tells the tale,” said Sheriff Briggs, inching out the patrolman.

Crazy man.

Drunk.

Cocaine, maybe ... all suggestions from TV reporter John McEarn.

Abe Stroud leaned on his elbows, trying to take in the information as it came over. McEarn was apparently doing this live. Stroud recognized the area as one very near where he and the others had stomped through the woods on the trail of missing Timmy Meyers.

“What about the body?” he wondered aloud, just as John McEarn's voiceover said, “Thus far the body has not been located. It is estimated that the swift current carried the driver downstream, and will possibly deposit her along the shore at some future date. It is not known whether or not there were any additional passengers in the vehicle. A lady's handbag was found on the seat, and police theorize the handbag belonged to the driver, but identification of the victim has not been released, pending notification of the family.”

Stroud saw Chief Briggs hanging about, a look on his face that bespoke his confusion; or was he angry because McEarn hadn't interviewed him on air?

Stroud wondered if Briggs had a diver on his payroll, someone who'd go in after the body. If not, Stroud would put in for the job. He'd done it before, and while he did not welcome the notion ... if there was no one else, he'd do it.

But for now, lying in bed, he still felt weary, his eyes still burning from tiredness. The stress of the last few days had taken its toll. He laid back, wondering if he should not get right up, shower, go into the city for breakfast and see if there was anything he could do. In addition to helping out with locating the body, or bodies, in the Spoon, he still wished to learn if anything new had developed in the Timmy Meyers search. Instead, he laid back, closed his eyes, and allowed the warmth and softness of the big bed to engulf him. He fell back into a slumber.

Stroud's mind drifted through the major periods of his life. Until he was eleven he lived with his parents who were very well off, his father being a physician and his mother being a computer engineer. They'd died in a tragic accident while he was left unharmed physically. The emotional difficulties he faced were helped by the love and devotion his grandfather had shown him. When he became old enough to be on his own, he began college at Northwestern University, quickly changing to the University of Chicago, most anxious to become an archeologist. However, with the growing hostilities in Vietnam, he felt duty bound to join the armed forces and so his education was interrupted. It would take him all these years later to finish what he had started, thanks in large part to the plate in his head and something deep within that told him he was only good enough to perform to someone else's orders--a sergeant's orders. So, he'd enrolled in the police academy, barely keeping track of his grandfather and never coming home.

It had been a period of aloneness and loss. Stroud began to feel the old man's aloneness and loss now, too.

Stroud Manse had the same, empty feel to it: the feeling of aloneness. The old place was dismal, oppressive, and Stroud wondered if he shouldn't simply put it on the market, take the best offer and sever ties for good and all, in order to start fresh.

Maybe it was a dream, or some hallucination brought on by his damaged head. Or maybe something literally came out of the woodwork.

Stroud had lain back just to close his eyes for a moment, still pondering how the TV had come on, and now wondering how it had gone off. He recalled no time when he had actually gotten out of bed or fished about for the remote to do either. Then his eyes locked on a shape, the stretched, taffy-pulled form of a humanlike creature in the wood grain of the oaken door across the room. It looked like a half man, half praying mantis until this image began to move.

He watched the image in the wood, knowing full well that if a man stared long enough at an object all sorts of bizarre tricks of the mind might visit him. Still, he stared and stared, unable to remove his eyes from the coalescing stick man who seemed to be trying to fight his way from the wood he'd become embedded in.

The haunted manse, so full of bizarre objects and memories, was, at this moment, outdoing itself.

Stroud threw his legs over the edge of the bed and in his underwear stepped toward the door tentatively, one hand extended to the milky, moving image before him. It could not pull free of the wood, but it sent out messages, not in a voice but through his brain, saying, “Leave this place. Leave this place.”

“Who ... what are you?” Stroud asked in a choking voice.

“Leave ... before it is too late ... leave.”

Stroud turned to see himself still asleep in bed when suddenly he was shaken by the rattling ring of the telephone. The noise and the start instantly put him back together again, and he found himself rousing from sleep and the solid door still just a door. In its grain, if he worked hard at it, he could, however, see the faint outline of the image that had spoken to him in his dream. Unable to make head or tail of it, he grabbed for the phone and at the same time saw that indeed, somehow, the TV had been shut off.

“Sheriff Briggs, here!”

Stroud's ear was hurt by the man's loud voice. “Oh, yes, Sheriff...”

“Good news, Doctor Stroud! Good news!”

“Indeed?”

“The Meyers boy? He's been found, Stroud, and--”

“Found, really? Alive, you mean?”

“In one piece and alive, yeah! We got damned lucky, damned lucky. Course men like you and me, we always think the worst ... but you can never tell, now, can you? Hard work pays off.”

“What about the other boy?”

“Other boy? Oh, Ronnie Cooper?”

“Yes, did Timmy Meyers offer up any information about the other missing--”

“I really don't think the two cases are, you know, related. Anyway, Timmy's not talking. He's kinda in what you'd call ... shock.”

“Shock?”

“'Fraid so.”

“Where is he now?”

“Banaker has him under observation.”

“I see.”

“Best facilities in all the county.”

“Yes, of course.”

“That's right.”

“Unharmed?”

“Narry a scratch on him. Physically, he's none the worse for wear. Emotionally, well ... boy spent a rough night.”

“Where'd they find him?”

“Up near Twin Bluffs. Hell, nobody was even lookin' up that way when--”

“Who found him?”

“Some of Banaker's people, on their way toward the Institute, found him wandering around, lost and cryin'.”

“I see.”

“Well, all's well that ends well, Doctor Stroud.”

“But what about the other boy?”

“Lost cause, that one. Been too long in them woods. If anyone ever does stumble onto the body ... won't be recognizable.”

“Well ... I guess we can all breathe easier.”

“You bet we can.”

“What about the bones, Sheriff?”

“What about 'em? Banaker's explained that to you, hasn't he?”

“Ahhh, the graveyard theory.”

“Not no theory.”

“Oh, right, city records ... all that.”

“Right. Well, rest easy.”

I was, until you woke me,
 he wanted to say but instead replied, “Did your people get the package out to Chicago, the UPS package?”

“Hey, not to worry.”

“Thanks.”

“Thank you, Doctor Stroud, for showing such civic duty.”

“No more'n anyone else would do.”

He laughed lightly. “Your old grandfather would've sat up there in that house and done nothing, not a damned thing.”

He hung up before Stroud could protest what seemed to him to be a slur against his kinsman. The man he had known would not have idly sat by while the entire town was on a night search for a missing boy. Unless the old man changed near the end. Unless his personality had altered.

The thought shook Abe Stroud along with the memory of finding the secret chamber below the manse.

It seemed, for the moment, that all the trouble that had rocked Andover and its people was contained now, wrapped up neat and tidy by Briggs and Banaker, as tight and proper as the package Stroud had sent off to Chicago for examination. So why was it so difficult to put it from his mind?

Something like a nagging whisper in his ear, so strong he felt as if someone were standing over his bed breathing into his ear, except that the exhalations were chilling instead of warming. Something suggested itself to him and made him sit up in bed. He wanted to see and talk to Timmy Meyers.

Fifteen frustrating minutes later he learned by phone that no one was permitted near the boy, not even his parents, as yet. It seemed the boy's condition was far worse than Briggs had allowed. It seemed total isolation was necessary, according to Banaker, if the child was to regain his former strength and identity. According to reports circulating about the Institute, the boy had gone into a kind of walking coma, unable to speak or feed himself. Such a condition was typically brought on when the mind shut down in the face of unacceptable horror and fear.

Abe Stroud felt he understood the child's plight. He placed himself in the boy's position and he experienced the old wounds that had once threatened to lock him away deep within himself to emotionally bleed to death deep inside a silent frame.

Stroud got up suddenly, tossing the covers aside, but when he stood, he found himself in a cold, chilling, and damp circle. He involuntarily shivered and looked around for the vent which was allowing the chill in. But there was no vent and as suddenly as he'd touched on it, the cold spot disappeared. He shivered again and rushed to find a change of clothes, shower, and go into town for breakfast. He meant to be at Banaker's Institute to see the boy one way or another.

He got as far as the front door of the huge manse, where he was stopped by an elderly couple calling themselves the Ashyers who wished to become his house servants. “We served your grandfather in his last years,” said Mrs. Ashyer.

Mr. Ashyer had with him a collection of newspapers--the 
Chicago Tribune, New York Times,
 the 
Springfield Herald
 and the Andover 
Sentinel.
 ”With my compliments, sir,” he said.

“If you will permit, Doctor Stroud, I will see to your breakfast,” said Mrs. Ashyer.

“I ... I don't know what to say,” he replied. “How long were you with my grandfather?”

“Thirteen years. Before us, he had a lovely couple, did everything for the master. We ... we worked for Mr. Gilcrest on his estate--now, in terrible condition. The place fell on hard times.”

“Gilcrest?”

“On Barnstable Road, some distance from here, but within a half day's drive, and if you should want references--well, there is an address I have here you may wish to write, a previous employer, sir.”

Stroud looked into the man's eyes, and then into his wife's. They were the picture of English servants, down to the unremarkable features and clothing, and yet there was a gentle light in their eyes and an aura given off by the pair that defied any doubts he might have about the couple.

“Tell you what. I'll have you on, and we'll see how it works out. But tell me, where've you been all this time? Why'd you wait so long to return to the manse?”

“We were told you'd be selling. We didn't know you'd be settling down here, and although Mrs. Ashyer and I felt as if we knew you--from what your grandfather related--we had no reason to believe otherwise. And with the promise of work upstate...”

“Didn't work out?”

“Afraid not, sir.”

“Their loss, my gain?”

“You might say so, sir.” He was charming and she was as demure and politic a woman as Stroud had ever met.

“You may move your things in. Take whatever rooms you had previously--or bigger ones, if you choose--and we'll see how it goes. God knows I could use the help, and perhaps you can tell me something about my grandfather's last days.”

“Whatever we might,” said Mr. Ashyer. “He was a grand old fellow, your grandfather.”

“Thank you, I've always believed that.”

“We heard about your part in finding the boy,” said Mrs. Ashyer. “When we did ... we knew you were like your grandfather.”

Just the opposite of Briggs's view,
 he told himself. What could cause such contradictory opinions of a man's memory?

“I'll get right to work on your breakfast, sir,” she said.

“I'll see to having our things brought out,” he said.

Stroud accepted the newspapers and Ashyer's ushering him into a large chair in the den where his grandfather did most of his reading. Ashyer told him to relax and that all would be taken care of.