Dracula Lives (12 page)

“I have many secrets … some are quite dark….”

“… descent into the maelstrom….”

Finally the echoes died out. Somewhere in the uncharted region between wakefulness and sleep, Quinn saw himself fleeing for his life.

Something was chasing him through deep woods. Hopelessly lost, he kept changing direction but could find no way out. No footpath, no light hinting at a clearing or civilization in the vast impenetrable forest.

Where was he?

Behind him heavy footsteps crashed through the thick underbrush. Faster. Closer.

His eyes sprang open wide.

Quinn stared into the darkness for a long time, seeing nothing. Then a flash of light appeared beyond the foot of the bed, in the direction of the fireplace. The burst came and went so quickly he thought he’d imagined it. His eyes stayed fixed on the spot to see if there would be another.

Yes. Bright white. This time it didn’t go away. The light hung suspended in the middle of the fireplace. Not quite round. More elliptical. Indistinct shadows inside it.

Again the light vanished, plunging the room into darkness.

It flashed again. Bigger. Closer.

Again.

Closer.

Now the shape stayed visible. Hovering in midair, flickering like the hand-cranked image from a silent film, a head floated slowly toward the bed. No body, just a disembodied head.

It was the hideous vampire from the short they had just watched. Lon Chaney’s
Un-Dead
. The perfect teeth were bared in a malevolent grin. Suddenly, as they had done in the film, fangs popped down. The head floated toward him until it got almost close enough to touch.

Quinn leapt from the bed, shooting both palms at the face like a pile driver. His hands went through it and the face blinked out. Unexpectedly meeting no resistance, Quinn stumbled forward. When he turned around, the face was back again, only a few steps away, eyes boring into him, lustful predatory grin sending icy splinters up his neck and across his scalp.

The lips began to move. The mouth opened. It spoke a single word.

“Beware.”

The eyes stayed locked onto his for a long, unsettling moment before the face began disintegrating into tiny squares like tiles from a mosaic, as a satellite television image does during a thunderstorm. The face expanded and distorted as the space between the bits increased. Eyes that had been as big as quarters stretched into insanely misshapen saucers. The hellish grin broadened from a few inches to a foot wide. As the disintegration continued, the fangs elongated and the mouth opened into a gaping maw. The head kept swelling like something out of a funhouse nightmare until it silently exploded and thousands of bits were flung into the darkness.

Quinn kept turning in circles, expecting some new horror to come from any direction. None came, and the heavy mantle of dark silence settled back over him. He groped blindly through the room until he reached the bed. From there he used the glow from his digital traveling clock to find the nightstand where he’d left his flashlight. He grabbed it and noted the time before clicking it on.

Almost one-thirty. Time was running out for him to get some sleep before meeting Markov.

Simmering anger at apparently being used for Markov’s amusement smothered a spark of reluctant admiration for his special effects wizardry. The anger drained away as Quinn remembered that Markov had warned him about potential danger in the castle.

He began walking around the chamber, probing the darkness with his flashlight, trying to convince himself that the leers of the gargoyles hadn’t become more sinister, that the disembodied vampire head had been part of his dream. Wanting to clear his head for whatever chance he had at sleep, he went to the window in the oriel.

The light of the waxing Blood Moon was strong. The way it fell on the gnarled leafless branches of the trees created an eerie tapestry of shadows on the ground below. Occasional flickers of moonlight reflected on the surface of the otherwise black lagoon. Shadowy movement at its far end caught his eye.

For one fleeting moment, a single wave rose above the surface like a mound. Quinn thought it might be the tide, pulling the water across a large rock or boulder, but that theory quickly faded as the swell rose higher and assumed a more definite shape. It was too far and too dark to make out clearly, but for an instant the watery silhouette vaguely resembled the head and shoulders of something almost human but not quite.

Humanoid.

He rubbed his eyes. When he looked again the shape was gone.

Is Markov playing tricks again? How could he know that I’d be standing here looking at the lagoon?

Quinn glanced around, looking for a camera but finding none. That didn’t mean one couldn’t be hidden somewhere.

He remembered coming home from horror movies when he was little and seeing monsters in the wallpaper when he went to bed. Here he was, fifty years later, a grown man, professional folklorist, debunker of legends, still turning shadows into monsters.

Unless there actually was a Creature in Markov’s Black Lagoon.

Quinn focused on the spot where he’d seen the shape. The water’s surface was smooth.

Move along, Adam. Would you even be thinking this if Markov called his body of water a tarn instead of a lagoon? Go to bed.

He set his alarm for 3:35 and lay in darkness for what seemed like a long time before finally sinking into sleep. In his dream world, another scene unfolded in the projection booth inside his head:

A handheld shot from Quinn’s point of view edged up to the yawning mouth of the secret passage, stopping to peer into darkness that would be the perfect shroud for the creeping undead.

A slow iris fade-out began. Before closing all the way it froze, taking one long last look to be sure nothing lurked in the ominous gloom.

Two disembodied eyes began to glow in the blackness below. Dimly at first, but getting brighter and larger as they came steadily closer, their sinister gaze exerting a magnetic pull.

Quinn’s closed eyelids clenched tighter, and the fade-out went to black.

Quinn’s attempt at sleep didn’t last long.

With his eyes still closed, he sensed movement in the darkness. His eyes popped open and probed for the source.

To his left, on the far side of the chamber, an indistinct shadow shifted on the oriel wall.

He shot a glance at the clock.

3:12.

Could the shadow be from one of the tree branches blowing in the wind?

The shadow moved a little farther along the wall and became utterly still.

It can’t be from a tree. A tree blowing in the wind would flutter, not stay perfectly still like that.

He went to the oriel.

Nothing was amiss. All was still, including the shadow.

Quinn had almost convinced himself the movement must have been a trick of the moonlight as it filtered through the fluttering branches—until it began moving again. He snapped his head around to find the source.

Outside the right edge of the bay window, along the ledge that jutted out from the castle wall, a hulking figure emerged from the darkness. Moving slowly toward him. Its shadow preceded it, creeping across the floor with jerky, ungainly movements. Quinn strained to make out what was coming toward him, but in the murky light could see only the silhouette of something very large.

Something not human.

When it got within a few feet of the window, he stumbled back. Heart pounding, he stared in awe.

A large, black, unblinking, predatory eye stared back at him. The eye was imbedded in the face of a creature that didn’t exist. Clinging to crevices in the stonework, the nightmare held perfectly still, its evil eye riveted on him.

The beast was huge—at least ten feet from top to bottom. Its pointed beak was several feet long, and a swordlike crest of equal length protruded from the back of its head. The beak was open enough to reveal rows of savage teeth like conical needles. Its wings were bent in half and held tight against the sides. At the midpoint where each wing folded, talons atop the wing opened and closed, as if questing for prey.

The thing began to move.

It shifted itself around so the talons on top of the wings could find purchase on the stonework. Clinging to the castle wall, the huge creature contorted its body until the lower talons came to within a foot of Quinn on the other side of the window, snapping open and closed, as if eager to snatch him up.

Suddenly the nightmare beast released its hold on the wall and spread its enormous wings. Quinn watched in disbelief as it glided across the face of the Blood Moon, a creature of the night returning to its lair.

Even as the chills ran down his neck and spread across his back, he knew the vision couldn’t have been real. It had to be one of Markov’s special effects.

Because this creature existed only in dinosaur movies.

The pterodactyl was extinct.

Johnny responded promptly to Quinn’s pull on the rope bell. Judging from the puffy eyes, he had awakened the steward from a deep sleep. He briefly described the Chaney and pterodactyl visions. “Markov said I’d be dealing with monsters, but I thought he’d wait until I agreed to be in his film. Is he toying with me for his amusement?”

Johnny gave another pat response. “He told me he is meeting you at four, to show you what you are getting involved in, should you agree to be in his movie. He will tell you whatever he thinks you need to know.”

“You’re right, Johnny. I shouldn’t have called you. Go to back to bed.”

“If you decide to stay, he will need some time to write you into whatever climactic sequence he comes up with. He is very fast, but that would still take at least a couple hours.” The caretaker made pointed eye contact. “I’m sure he has told you that you are free to enter any unlocked doors.”

“Yes, he has.”

“After your meeting, if you decide to stay, that would be a good time to take him up on his offer. Familiarity with your acting space can only help. If there is time, you should explore the grounds as well. The sun starts coming up around seven.”

“I’ll do that.”

When Johnny made no move to leave, Quinn thought the caretaker might be waiting to be formally dismissed. “Get some sleep, Johnny.”

“Very well. I shall leave you to your own devices. Take care that you do not become lost in your wanderings. Particularly outside, if you are here when night approaches. Especially this night. The nocturnal creatures that haunt our woods seem to be more active when the moon is full.”

Knowing how steeped Johnny must be in the Universal classics, Quinn tried to lighten the moment by reciting the famous rhyme from
The Wolf Man
: “Even a man who is pure in heart, and says his prayers by night, can become a wolf, when the wolfbane blooms, and the autumn moon is bright.”

Quinn waited for a reaction. Other than a slight narrowing of the eyes, Johnny gave none, so he went on. “The autumn moon will be at its brightest tonight. Is Markov … pure in heart?”

Johnny hesitated. “Is anyone?”

“Touché,” Quinn said.

“If there is nothing else,” Johnny said.

“No, thank you. I need to get ready for that meeting.”

Johnny went to the door. “Keep this locked.” The steward took a step to leave but stopped again, apparently wanting to say something else, but searching for the right words. “I wish I could help you more.” Johnny quickly turned and left.

In that brief hesitation, Quinn had seen something churning beneath the neutral mask, something hinting at troubling secrets too long held inside. He sensed a rift between the Lord of the Manor and his loyal servant—a growing fissure that ran deep, perhaps deep enough to threaten the foundation of the cloistered fantasy world they’d lived in for half a century—the strange edifice Markov had referred to as his version of the House of Usher, calling it his doomed House of Markov.

Did Markov actually believe he was headed for an ill-fated destiny, or was his characterization simply his tendency toward melodrama, derived from a lifetime of movies and Poe?

Whatever the case, somewhere in Johnny’s furtive glances and veiled statements, Quinn thought he saw a cry for help.

Johnny had just gotten back into bed when the buzzer on the nightstand made its irritating short burst: Markov summoning his “right arm” to the laboratory. Slipping back into clothes just taken off, Johnny entered through the door connecting the two adjoining spaces and a moment later was at Markov’s side, dreading his instructions if he had seen his guest’s trespass.

Markov stood in front of his control panel. An array of monitors and gauges and buttons took up a third of the long wall adjoining Johnny’s apartment. On the shelf that extended out beneath the monitors were the gloves and goggles he used to manipulate his special effects. He pointed to the monitor showing Quinn’s bedchamber. “I have been watching our guest’s reaction to my creations. He handled them reasonably well, but then he went into the oriel and seemed to become fixated on the lagoon.”

Johnny showed no reaction but was inwardly relieved. Markov must not have been watching when Quinn entered the forbidden chamber. If he had been, he’d be in a rage now and demanding punishment.

Markov nodded toward one of the monitors that was larger than the others. The label underneath it said LAGOON. “I pulled it up on the infrared camera and noticed a shape that seemed to be moving under the water. Have you been doing your inspections to make sure all is well down there?”

“Yes. Weekly.” Of all the tasks necessary for maintaining the security of their hellhole, Johnny hated the underwater inspection of the lagoon the most. Even more so at night. “All is … I wouldn’t say ‘well,’ but all is as it should be.”

“I’m in no mood to argue semantics, Johnny. Please go check to make sure nothing has gotten loose from its moorings. Woe betide anything—or anyone—that interrupts us now that we are so close to the end.”

The end
. The two words Johnny most longed to see in the horror movie that had been their life. It was impossible to know what the ending would be, because real life wasn’t a movie. It couldn’t be storyboarded, no matter how much Markov tried. Still, he hated improvisation. He would certainly have a plan—a plan that no doubt would include putting their guest in peril.