Authors: Jonathan Maberry
“And if we do?”
“First,” she said, “I’d have to believe you. Meaning I’d have to believe that you are telling me all of it and telling me what you believe.”
“Okay,” Newton said.
“Then I’ll tell you if I think this is over or not.”
“From the way you’re talking,” Crow said, “it almost sounds like you believe in this stuff.”
Jonatha didn’t answer. She cut another piece of omelet, speared a piece of grilled potato, dipped it in ketchup, and ate it while staring him right in the eye.
“Tell me first,” she said.
(2)
“Well…that’s kind of weird.”
Nurse Emma Childs looked up from the chart on which she had been recording the doctor’s notes. Pen poised above the paper she said, “Excuse me, doctor?”
The young resident, Dr. Pankrit, was bending over Terry Wolfe, gently moving aside bandages in order to examine the man’s lacerations and surgical wounds. “Look at this. I’ve never seen a surgical scar heal that fast.”
Childs leaned past Pankrit’s shoulder. “Wow. I changed that dressing yesterday. This is wonderful!”
Pankrit turned and gave her an enigmatic stare for a moment, then bent lower to peer at the sides of Terry’s face. “I…guess.” He sounded dubious. “It’s just so fast…and look, see that? That was a deep incision and the scar should be livid. This scar looks like it’s six months old. That’s just…weird.” He put the bandages back in place. “Let’s run this by Dr. Weinstock. He said he wanted to be notified of any changes to the mayor’s condition.”
“Well, surely if the mayor is healing fast it must be a good sign. His system must be getting stronger.”
Pankrit gave her another of those odd looks. “Let’s run it by Dr. Weinstock.”
(3)
Bentley Kingsman, known to everyone as BK, walked the whole route of the Haunted Hayride, pausing every once in a while to make notes on a map of the attraction he carried on a clipboard. He and his friend, Billy Christmas, had driven into town the previous night, stayed at the Harvestman Inn on the town’s dime, and were out at the Hayride by seven in the morning. Crow had met them, introduced them to Coop and a few of the management staff, then left for another meeting.
BK was set to handle security for Mischief Night and Halloween at the Hayride, the Dead-End Drive-In, the College Campus, the movie theater in town, and the main Festival that covered three full blocks in the center of town. BK had a lot of muscle coming in that afternoon and by then he wanted to view every site himself and make decisions on who should go where.
They stopped at a slope that led down to a man-made swamp in which the silvery disk of a spaceship appeared to rise from the muddy water. BK read from the clipboard. “Alien Attack. Five staff as aliens, two as victims, plus mannequins as deceased victims.”
“Cute,” Billy said, sipping from a Venti Starbucks triple espresso. “What happens here?”
“The flatbed stops up there on the road and a lightshow kicks in. Blue and white lights plus a strobe over behind the saucer. The aliens chase the two actors up the slope and shoot them down with ray guns right about where we’re standing, then they start coming after the kids on the flatbed. The driver guns the engine and the flatbed slips away just in the nick of time.”
Billy grunted. “Kids buy that shit?”
“By the busload, apparently. Crow said this is the biggest one of these in the country. Place makes a ton of cash.”
“We’re in the wrong business, Kemo Sabe.” Billy was tall and wiry, with lean hips and long ropey arms. He looked more like a dancer than a bouncer, and two nights a week he did climb onto the stage for ladies’ night male stripper revues. He was tanned and handsome, with white-blond hair, cat-green eyes, and a smile that BK had seem him use to melt just about any woman who crossed his path.
BK was taller, broader, heavier, and darker. Brown hair and eyes, a short beard, and forty more pounds than he would have liked to carry. He was built on a huge frame, though, and carried the extra weight lightly. He did look like a bouncer.
The two of them worked at Strip-Search, the biggest of Philly’s go-go bars. BK was the cooler and Billy was his main backup. Like Crow they were old hands in the Middle Atlantic States martial arts scene. BK studied the same art as Crow, traditional Japanese jujutsu; Billy had years invested in a number of systems, including Muay Thai kickboxing and Wing Chun kung-fu.
“How many guys you figure for this spot?” Billy asked.
“This is the most remote spot, but I think we can get away with three guys for this scene and the next two. One here, one a quarter mile along the path, and one walking the line between the two.”
“That’ll work.”
There was a lot of activity around the saucer. Attractions consultant John West and his team were involved in a thorough wiring safety check, so BK didn’t bother them. He and Billy moved on, strolling past the Graveyard of the Ghouls, through the Corn Maze, and into the final trap, the Grotto of the Living Dead. “This is where one of the kids gets pulled out of the flatbed. He pretends to be a tourist and an actress plays his girlfriend. Some zombies sneak up and drag him off into the bushes and tear him up. The girl screams her lungs out and the zombies attack the flatbed, almost catching it as the tractor pulls away. Then it swings around the big bend in the road and back to the starting point where they offload the kids.
BK consulted the clipboard. “I figure it’ll take fifteen guys to secure this entire attraction.”
Billy whistled. “I hope somebody around here’s got some deep-ass pockets.”
“From what Crow says, they do.”
“It’d piss me off if the check bounces.”
“Amen, brother.”
(4)
They took turns telling her the story. Crow started and told her everything about the Massacre, everything about Griswold and the Bone Man. Val picked it up with what happened at her farm, first when Ruger invaded her house and took her family hostage—and mercilessly gunned down her father—to Boyd’s murderous attack. Newton filled in the backstory of the Cape May Killer, the police handling of the case, and what he had found out through Internet searches. It took well over an hour and they were so wired from caffeine that they’d switched to decaf. The owner, Gus, came by several times to see if they needed anything, but the seriousness of their faces and the fact that they immediately stopped talking as soon as he came into the back room finally convinced him that they were involved in something private and important. He stopped seating customers in that part of the diner.
Throughout the discourse Jonatha said very little except to clarify a point, a name, or a date. She made no notes, offered no opinions. When Newton finished his part of it, she leaned her elbows on the table and steepled her long fingers. “Wow,” she said. “And the only other person who knows about this is this Dr. Weinstock?”
“Yes,” Val said, “and we’d like to keep it that way.”
“Have you seen Dr. Weinstock’s evidence? The tapes, the lab reports?”
Crow nodded. “He said that each single element could probably be disproved, or at least discredited if someone wanted to work hard enough at it, but taken en masse it’s pretty damned compelling.”
To Val, Jonatha said, “So, as far I can tell, you three brought me here because of what happened to your brother and his wife, is that correct?”
“Not entirely,” Val said. “Mark is the most important reason to me, of course. I need to know that he’s going to be at rest. That he isn’t infected…but we also need to know if the town itself is safe. We
think
this is over, but how can we ever tell? I don’t want to have to live in fear every day and night for the rest of my life. Crow and I are expecting a baby…we need to know that this town is going to be a safe place for our baby to grow up.” Crow reached over and gave her hand a squeeze.
“Wow,” Jonatha said again.
“We’ve been pretty candid with you, Jonatha,” Val said. “Now it’s your turn. You seem remarkably calm after hearing the story we’ve just told. Frankly, I expected you to laugh in our faces and storm out. But here you are.”
“Here I am.”
“So what does that mean?” Crow asked.
“It means, Crow,” Jonatha said, “that it’s a good thing Newton here didn’t contact my thesis advisor first. Or the department chair.”
“Why’s that?” Newton asked.
“Because neither of those gentlemen believes in vampires.”
“And you do?”
Jonatha paused. “Yes,” she said. “I do.” She shook her head. “Before you ask, though…no, it doesn’t mean that I’ve ever met a vampire. I’m not Van Helsing’s illegitimate daughter. I have never in my life encountered the supernatural. Not once.”
“So…why?”
She shrugged. “Not everyone gets into folklore because of an academic drive. Some of us—quite a lot of us, actually—pursue folklore because we do believe in some kind of
larger
world. I’m from Louisiana…from the real backwoods Louisiana. Before starting college I had a Cajun accent so thick you couldn’t cut it with a knife, but thanks to some undergraduate theater classes I learned to get rid of that. Where I grew up everyone believes in something, even those who swear up and down that they don’t. My grandmother and mother were as much vodoun as Catholic. In Louisiana we have plenty of legends of the loup-garou. I believed those stories as a kid, and still believe some of them.”
“Some?”
“Sure, most of these stories are fake, or tall tales whose origins got lost over time and drifted into pop culture and folklore.”
Val said, “What’s a loup-garou?”
“It’s French for werewolf,” Crow explained.
“Right,” Jonatha agreed, “and it’s because of that part of your story that I’m here. You see, after Newton here contacted me and I started reading up on Pine Deep’s history, I saw the name of the last known victim of the Massacre. Or, at least the person most of your town believes was the last victim.” She paused. “Ubel Griswold is why I’m here.”
Crow winced at the name.
“I’m not following this,” Newton admitted.
“Ubel Griswold is a fake name. It’s one of several false identities used by the most famous werewolf in European history.”
“Peeter Stubbe,” Crow and Newton both said together.
“Bonus points to you for knowing that. Most of the pop-culture books on werewolves mention Peeter Stubbe, though often the accounts are missing many details that can, however, be found in the scholarly literature, among which is Stubbe’s probable birthplace.”
“I thought he was German,” Crow said.
She shook her head. “No, and that’s part of the problem. He started using the name Peeter Stubbe when he moved to Germany, but he had already committed a series of murders in several countries before that. The earliest accounts of Stubbe’s crimes date back to fourteenth century, and that and other historical details suggest that Serbia, or possibly what is now know as Belarus, is where he was born.”
“I’m sorry,” Val said, “but isn’t this all rather beside the point?”
“Oh, no, Val…it’s not. It’s the reason I believe so much of your story.”
“Then you’ll have to explain, because I haven’t read many of these books.”
“Okay, the short version is that there are hundreds of different werewolf and vampire legends. They occur in every country, and except in the case of folklore following population migrations, these creatures are all different. The Japanese vampire and the Chilean vampire bear almost no similarities. You with me? Well, the werewolf legends of Belarus and Serbia are different from those of Germany, and if Stubbe was born in one of those countries, and if he
was
actually a werewolf, then he would have very likely possessed the qualities of the
Vlkodlak
of Serbia or the
Mjertovjec
of Belarus. Those are the dominant species of werewolflike creature from those nations. Now, the thing is that even though most of the qualities of those two monsters are different, they share one really dreadful thing in common.”
“And what is that?” Val asked. Tension etched lines in her face.
“In both countries, when either a
Vlkodlak
or a
Mjertovjec
werewolf dies and is not properly buried, it comes back to life…as a vampire.”
Val’s face lost all color and she gripped Crow’s hand with desperate force.
“Holy mother of God,” Crow whispered.
“That,” Jonatha said, “is why I believe you.”
(1)
Crow said nothing as he drove. He just put a Solomon Burke disk in and headed north. The sunny morning had given way to a thin cloud cover that was starting to thicken as they drove. Val used her cell to fill Weinstock in on what they’d learned.
“She said that the psychic vampire is the root of the word
nosferatu
. It’s funny, after all those Dracula movies I thought that
nosferatu
meant ‘undead.’ I guess we can’t trust any of what’s in fiction.”
“So what does it mean?” Weinstock asked.
“Jonatha said that at least a third of the world’s folkloric vampires were bodiless and invisible spirits who spread disease. The Romanian word
nosferatu
actually translates as ‘plague carrier,’ which she thinks might explain our blight.”
“Swell.”
“The main thing is, if Griswold was one of the werewolf species from Belarus or Serbia, and if he was killed, as Crow suspects, by the Bone Man somewhere in Dark Hollow, then it’s likely he’s the one who somehow turned Boyd and the others into vampires.”
She told him the rest of it and then made arrangements to meet later on. For the next ten minutes of the drive north, Val stared out at the cars passing in the other direction, her fingers tracing the outline of the small silver cross she wore around her neck. Crow knew that she must be in hell. If Griswold’s spirit was lingering in town, then Mark and Connie might also be caught in the polluted etheric tidewaters of Pine Deep.
“Whatever it takes,” he said, giving her thigh a reassuring squeeze, “we’ll take care of Mark—”
“I want to go back to the farm,” Val interrupted. “Now. On the way back to town.”
Crow nodded. “Okay. Any particular reason?”
“Dad’s guns.”
He studied her face for a moment and then looked at the dark clouds building in the direction they were headed. “Works for me,” he said.
(2)
Newton used his credit card to pay for Jonatha’s room at the Harvestman Inn and trailed behind her as she opened her door and went in. Like all of the rooms at Pine Deep’s premier hotel, it was spacious, accented in autumn colors, and very expensive. The numbers on the bill caused Newton real pain.
“I’ll be back to pick you up at six,” he said, fidgeting in the doorway.
Jonatha turned around and sat down on the edge of the big queen bed that dominated the room. They had barely spoken a word since she dropped her bomb at the restaurant, and now she sat there and chewed her lip, giving him a long and thoughtful look.
“Tell me something, Newton.”
“Call me Newt. Everyone does.”
“Okay. Tell me…what are you and the others going to do now? With everything that’s happening, I mean?”
“I don’t know. I think Crow will want to go down to Dark Hollow again, to Griswold’s house.”
“Why? If he’s a ghost, or some kind of psychic vampire spirit, then what do you think you’ll be able to accomplish? You can’t shoot him and you can’t dig him up and run him out of town on a rail.”
“I don’t know what we can do. Spray garlic over his house, or set it on fire.”
“Was he buried there? At the house, I mean?”
“I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“Sure. What good would burning his house down do for us if he’s buried on the other side of town?”
Newton frowned. “Well…we told you what happened to us. The bugs and all. Something’s there. Crow saw that the doors were all locked from the inside. He figures Boyd was using it as a hideout. Maybe Griswold’s buried in the cellar or bricked up in a wall or something.”
“That would be very convenient, and if this was an Edgar Allan Poe story I’d even say likely…but something tells me it’s not going to be that easy.”
He gave her a tired smile. “This is Pine Deep…nothing here is ever easy.”
(3)
He wanted to do one thousand cuts and then go back inside and work the store, but he lost count somewhere in the three hundreds and that was forty minutes ago. The sword handle was starting to slip in his sweaty palms and Mike’s shoulders ached as he raised the wooden blade over his head and brought it down, over and over again. He strived for the rhythm that Crow always had when he used the
bokken
, the hardwood training sword, but knew that his blows were clumsier, rougher, driven more by rage than art. Each time the dull edge whacked the leather wrapping of the striking post the shock through his wrists and up his arms; the ache that had started early on had blossomed into burning bands of pain that tore across his chest with each blow. Lactic acid coursed through him; his blood was a hellish cocktail of adrenaline, endorphins, and pure hate.
His eyes had long ago turned from blue to red and black flowers seemed to bloom in his vision as he hit and hit and hit.
One blow was for Vic.
The next was for his
father
.
The next for Vic; the one after that for his father. Over and over again, as the minutes shattered into fragments under the blows, Mike’s face twitched and snarled as he struck. A hundred blows back his nose had started to bleed, and although Mike was aware of that on some level, he just didn’t give a shit. The rage felt good. The violence—however much a sham—felt good.
The burn in his muscles felt good. Felt great. Hate felt
wonderful
.
The sword rose and then slammed down, first on the right side of the post, then up and down on the left side. The leather was beaten black and then pale and finally it split. Threads of it jumped into the air with each blow.
His cuts had started sloppy, had been a child’s attempt to do a man’s cut. That was two or three thousand cuts ago. Now the sword rose and struck, rose, changed angle and struck; the wood was a blur, the rhythm far better than Mike thought it was. The timing and angle and efficiency of each cut was better than it should have been.
Far, far better.
If Crow had been there, if he could have seen the unrelenting frenzy of Mike’s attack on the forging post. If he had seen the demonic fury in Mike’s eyes and the sneering brutality on his face, he would have done anything he could to stop him. He would have seen the
dhampyr
crouching inside the boy, and the nameless
other
crouching inside the
dhampyr.
Had Crow seen that he would have been more than just terrified for Mike…he would have been terrified
of
him.
(4)
It wasn’t until they pulled into the parking lot of the hospital that Val broke the long silence that had endured while they’d gone to her house to get the weapons and ammunition that once belonged to Henry Guthrie. She rubbed her palms over her face, careful of her battered eye socket, then looked at her hands for a moment as if she expected to see something there.
“Where the hell are we?” she asked as Crow turned off the engine. “I mean…I don’t know about you but I’m ready to go on a bear hunt here, but how do you hunt a ghost?”
“Damn if I know, baby. This is new territory for me. I went down to Griswold’s place and got run off by cockroaches. That’s as much as I know about what he is and what he can do.”
“As frightening as that must have been, Griswold doesn’t seem to have had that much actual power. He dropped the porch and sent the bugs, but you and Newton escaped.”
“Seemed like a pretty big deal at the time. But I see your point. If he was all that strong, wouldn’t he have just snuffed me out like that?” He snapped his fingers. “The whole bug thing didn’t really do me that much harm. Mind you, I’ll have a case of the butt-rattling shivers forever, but it’s not like I lost a leg or anything.”
“When this is all over I’ll buy you some shares in Raid.”
“I’m a Black Flag man myself, ma’am.”
She gave him a spoonful of a smile, which was a larger portion than he’d seen since Mark’s death. “My point is, honey,” she said, “that I don’t know how much of a real threat Griswold is.”
“He made Boyd and Ruger into vampires. Jonatha said that psychic vampires can make ordinary humans into vampires.”
“True, but she didn’t know
how
that was done,” she said. “Maybe it involves actually
going
to that house or those woods. Maybe when Ruger was on the run after the fight at the farm he somehow found—or was drawn to—that place. Jonatha said that all it takes is for a person to die evil and unrepentant. Well if you wounded Ruger badly enough and he died there, then maybe that’s how it happened. If so…it’s the first time in what, thirty years?”
“But then Ruger probably bit Boyd and Boyd bit Cowan and Castle. It just takes one Typhoid Mary to start a plague.”
“Okay, so where are you going with this? Do we put up signs: No Trespassing—Danger of Vampire Infection—all over the Hollow?”
She shot him a look. “No, I’m saying that maybe what needs to happen is that we find some way to sterilize that place. Some kind of ritual, or something. Maybe find a way to bring a couple of pieces of heavy equipment and tear that house down, maybe a backhoe to dig up the swamp. Till the soil and plant garlic everywhere. Something like that.”
“I love you, Valerie Guthrie. I love your strength and I love your practical mind. Those are great ideas.”
“Great ideas, but not practical,” she said. “Getting the equipment down there will take some doing…but before we go in and bust everything up I think someone needs to go back to Griswold’s house and search it from top to bottom. If he’s buried there, then we can bury him with the rituals Jonatha talked about. If he’s not, maybe there’s something else of use. Evidence, books, I don’t know what, but we should find out.”
“Roaches?”
She waved a hand. “Insects can be dealt with, that’s not the main problem, Crow. Man power is. Literally
man
power. I can’t do it right now—between my head and the baby I wouldn’t be any use. Newt’s…well, he’s Newt, and I don’t think he should go down there again. I doubt Jonatha would go, and Weinstock’s not the backwoods type.”
“Who’s that leave other than me?”
Val shrugged. “I think it’s time we called the cops.”
(5)
The trees grew close and blocked the sunlight, keeping the Hollow in shadows. Not that it mattered. Only a few of them were vulnerable to sunlight, and any one of those would have gladly, gleefully ignited himself if
he
asked it of them.
All through the morning and into the afternoon they came to him. Creeping through the forest, picking their way through sticker bush and vines, hurrying to be in his presence. They clustered around the swamp in a loose circle, each one dropping to his or her knees as they came close, their eyes fluttering closed with ecstasy as he called them and whispered to them. There was a long, continuous moan as the faithful flocked to their master, and in ranks they swayed back and forth like cornstalks in the wind.
There were hundreds of them now.
Hundreds.
Ruger walked among them, his face protected from the direct sunlight by a broad-brimmed hat, his long white fingers snugged into leather gloves. The sun caused him pain but no damage. He was smiling as he walked the inner circle of the first ring of worshippers. He could feel their passion, could taste their bloody intensity on the air, and his own heart lifted in glory.
A murmur of delight suddenly went up and Ruger turned to see the surface of the swamp bulge upward, methane bubbles bursting, steam rising from the muck as the Man moved. Ruger was well pleased. He had worked hard for this, had made sure everything was done just right.
With every kill the Man’s army got stronger, but more than that—far, far more than that—with every kill the Man
himself
got stronger. The release of energy from fear and despair and the horror of death—all of that was channeled along unseen energy lines to this Hollow. As each of the faithful killed and fed on blood or flesh, the Man fed on the psychic energy, growing stronger minute by minute, forming, taking shape.
Becoming.
Ruger turned and surveyed the masses. “The Red Wave!” he yelled, and they screamed it back to him.
“The Red Wave!” Louder, his voice shaking the withered leaves on the trees.
They chorused it back to him, their voices shivering the bark from the trees.
He went on yelling it and they kept replying in the litany of the damned. Each time those words pummeled the clearing the great, shifting mass that was Ubel Griswold trembled with red joy.
It was near sunset on October 29. In two days the Red Wave would wash the town of Pine Deep in blood. In two days Ubel Griswold would rise. Pine Deep would die. The world would scream.