HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (44 page)

Dr. Alan Star had
been working on Charles Upton's case for nearly a year. Upton's
porphyria was unrelenting, taking the old man in one of the most
horrible ways anyone could meet his end. The disease being quite
rare, this was only the second case Alan had attended in his career
as a specialist in blood diseases. The first one had been a woman in
Birmingham, Alabama, where Alan had finished his residency. Maggie.
She had been elderly like Upton, and finally untreatable, dying in
the hospital while Alan sat by her side, watching and agonizing.
Maggie of the bright eyes, dimming into stillness. Yet there had been
no reproach there for him that he hadn't done all that he could.

Alan hated to lose
a patient. All doctors were wretched when it happened, but Alan truly
counted a loss as a personal failure. With all the modern drugs and
technology at his disposal, he couldn't believe something hadn't been
found yet to counteract the finality of many blood diseases. Yes,
people died; it was to be expected. Some came to him as a last
resort, already too far gone to save. But that didn't matter. As a
blood specialist, when Alan couldn't change the course of a disease
or at least alleviate the worst symptoms, he felt devastated. He knew
he wasn't responsible—he always did everything he could to
prevent a death. Yet the few losses he'd suffered haunted him. They
were never far from his mind.

So when Charles
Upton requested to see Alan at his penthouse, Alan found the time to
make it. Perhaps it was best to talk to the old man and give him the
bad news—that there was little that could be done now—in
person, in his own home.

It surprised Alan
when he was let into the extravagant apartment and ushered by a man
in uniform into Upton's private bedroom. On the edge of the bed sat
the old man in the last stages of his disease, but he was brimming
with energy and excitement. He stood and greeted Alan, shaking his
hand before resuming his place on the bed.

Most people had
trouble even looking at Upton. The disease had deformed his face,
caused hair to grow in tufts on the backs of his hands and in spots
on his upper arms, and then there were the open sores covered by
bandages. Upton was so swathed with white wrappings that he looked
like a torn-up accident victim.

"Dr. Star!
What a lucky last name you have. Has it given you any trouble?"

Alan wasn't quite
sure what Upton meant. Had his name given him trouble? As in grade
school when kids could be unusually cruel?

"Uh … I
don't think so," he said cautiously.

"Never mind,
come and sit down. I have a proposition to put to you."

Alan sat in an
imported French ivory-and-gold chair that he guessed might be worth
more than a Porsche. Money had never humbled him, but this kind of
money, out of all proportion to common incomes, could daunt anyone.

What Upton had just
said intrigued him. Everyone knew Charles Upton had more money than
God. Most of Alan's colleagues knew Alan sought capital for a new
research center for blood diseases. Maybe Upton had found that out,
and was about to finance his dream. Maybe today was not the best of
times to give the bad news to the old man. It could wait … at
least a little while. Upton's demise wasn't imminent. Yet.

"What
proposition is that, sir?" Alan asked.

"What do you
know about the vampire legend?"

The first thing
that popped into Alan's mind was, Oh, my God, he's lost his mind. It
was possible the disease had affected his thought processes.
Vampires, for Pete's sake!

He cleared his
throat and looked at his shoes on the beautiful carpet. They needed
cleaning, his shoes. Actually, they needed throwing away. He should
buy a pair of new shoes occasionally, it certainly wouldn't be a sin.
He'd worn these leather loafers for years only because they were
comfortable and he hated to break in a new pair.

"Well?"
Charles said, squirming on the edge of the bed. "Are you deaf?"

Alan looked up. He
was being rude, and it was irritating the old man. He'd talk about
anything, he supposed. He had a little time before his patient rounds
at the hospital. "No, I was just thinking. I don't suppose I
know very much at all about vampire legends. I've never gone in for
horror."

"I hear you
are looking for someone to back you for a new research center,"
the old man said, seemingly changing the subject.

Alan brightened.
"Oh, yes, I certainly am. Porphyria, for instance—if we
had a facility where we could run more tests and try out more
combinations of drug treatments, do experiments on DNA . . ."

Upton waved him off
and he let the sentence die. He frowned in confusion.

Upton said, "I
have no illusions that I am going to live long enough to benefit from
your research, Dr. Star."

"But …"

"Yet I have a
real proposition for you, regardless. How would you like to have that
research center, paid for, free and clear? All the latest equipment
money can buy, staff, a modern facility in the heart of this city?"

Alan didn't know
how to respond. Was he hearing the man correctly? Was he being
offered all that, just out of the blue, out of the kindness of the
old billionaire's heart? It couldn't be. There were always strings.
This was Earth, not Mars. Millions of dollars were not invested
without some kind of return.

He thought his best
bet in this instance was to reply calmly and carefully, just as if he
were offered this kind of thing every day. "I would love to have
that, sir. It would mean the world to me."

"Well, that's
what I'm offering. Naturally, I want something from you. You're not a
stupid man. If you were, I wouldn't have called you and made the
offer. I've done my own . . . research. You're one of the brightest
physicians in the state. Just because you can't cure me doesn't mean
I don't understand how brilliant you are."

"Thank you,
sir." Alan realized he didn't have to tell Upton he was losing
the battle with porphyria. The man knew he was dying. He knew there
would never be a cure in time. So what could he want from him?

"I asked you
what you knew about vampires. The legend of the vampire?"

Alan nodded,
wondering what that had to do with the offer of a research center.

"I guess
you've heard some of the other doctors who have been on my case refer
to me as 'The Old Vampire.' Don't deny it. I heard them, so I know
you must have."

"That was an
unfortunate . . ."

"I don't want
your sympathy, Doctor, and there's no point apologizing for those
idiots. I'm trying to get you to understand where I'm going with the
vampire thing."

"Yes, sir."
Now he was thoroughly confused. He knew Upton had fired and sued his
last doctors for referring to him as a vampire in a rather cruel,
mocking way in what they thought was privacy. But what …?

"I want you to
know, first of all, that this disease has not affected my mind,"
Upton said.

Alan thought that
might be debatable, but he kept his peace.

"Secondly, I
want you to know that, though I was furious with my last doctors and
I have a lawsuit pending against them for defamation of my good name,
I've come to look at myself as they must have. I know I look like a
monster. I know that with my distorted face I could shame a special
effects master. I'm not fooling myself. I'm sick, disgusting to look
at, and dying. But what if …" He paused and Alan
straightened in his chair. Upton was being honest with him and though
he didn't know where he was going with his confession, it was
intriguing to see a man so beset by fate find a way to face the truth
about his condition.

Upton continued,
"I'll just blurt it out. I've done some study into the vampire
legends, and some of them seem to indicate that it isn't all a myth.
There might have been people who lived after death. Who came back to
life. I know it's fantastic, but … what if it's true? How many
medical marvels do we enjoy today that would have seemed fantastic to
us fifty years ago? Twenty years ago! And if there were vampires,
real vampires in the past, what if there are real ones living and
moving around among us today?"

Alan was
flabbergasted. He hadn't expected this. Not anything like this.
Though Upton claimed to be in his right mind, all indications were he
was suffering from psychosis. The thought of his dream research
center coming true faded like bright cloth left for a month under the
hot Texas sun. He couldn't take money from a madman. He couldn't use
him that way.

"I see how
you're looking at me," Upton said, scowling. "You think
I've lost it. Well, think again, Dr. Star. I'm as sane as you are. I
did not live sixty-eight years and amass the fortune I have today by
being a flake."

"But, Mr.
Upton, we're talking about fictional creatures, horror movie actors,
not reality."

"What if
you're wrong?"

Alan tried to
consider it, but every time he tried to think about fictional
vampires as real he wanted to burst out laughing. That would be worse
than rude; that would get him booted out of the apartment. "If
I'm wrong?" he said.

"Here's the
deal. I don't have time to waste trying to convince you of anything.
I've read the literature. You haven't. I'm going to send along what I
have with you; my man's got it packaged and waiting in the other
room. Take your time reading it. Meanwhile, here's what I propose.
You'll have nothing to lose and a great deal to gain. No one has to
know anything about all this, not a soul. Not my partner in my
business, not my butler, no one. It's strictly between you and me."

"What do you
want from me?"

"I want you to
search out and find me a vampire. I want the thing brought to me. I
want it to give me my life back. I refuse to die."

There it was. On
the table. A dead man's hand, aces and eights. Alan flinched in
surprise and tried to compose his face. He couldn't look at the old
man again. He stared at the floor. His shoes needed cleaning at the
very least if he wasn't going to replace them.

"Dr. Star?"

Alan glanced up.

"You may think
me insane if you like. That's your prerogative. What I'm offering is
simple. I'll write you a check to cover any kind of medical facility
you want. I don't care if it costs four million or forty million."
He waved his hand to dismiss the spending of money that very soon
would mean nothing to him. "In fact, once you start work for me
on this, I'll fund the buying of the land and have construction begin
right away. You pick the architect, and I'll write him a check. All I
ask is that you do as I say. You search, put on an honest search for
me. If I die before you find a vampire, I'll leave enough in my will
for you to finish your research center. You're not going to lose on
this. No one will ever know why I have given you the money. Your
reputation as a doctor of medicine will remain pristine.

"But I will
demand your complete loyalty and will expect you to devote yourself
to what I ask."

"But my
patients . . ."

"Let me be
perfectly honest with you, Alan. I know this means you have to take
time off from your real work. I know this might take more time than
you want. But I don't have any choice in this matter. If you share
your time with me and the hospital, you may never find what I need.
I'm asking a great favor. I'm willing to pay for it. When this is
over, you can return to your work, all the richer."

"But I don't
know how I'd start. I mean, where would I look? Don't you need an
investigator instead? Someone professional, who knows what to do?"

"Except for me
and my partner, David, I'd say you're one of the smartest, most
intelligent men in the state of Texas. I wouldn't have come to you if
you hadn't been. You'll find a way to do this. You're not a private
investigator, but you have a wonderful mind. You know how to research
problems, it's your business. You know how to track down symptoms and
diseases. Turn those traits to tracking down a living vampire, and I
expect you'll turn up something. In fact, I believe it to the tune of
forty million, if that's what it takes."

Alan sat biting
down on his tongue. He couldn't say no, and he couldn't say yes. If
he said no, there went his dream in a puff of smoke. He'd never again
find someone willing to build him a research center, and if he tried
to do it on his own he would be a very old man before he got the
money and the credit.

If he said yes,
he'd be saying yes to a crazy project that made no real sense. He'd
be playing into the psychosis of a desperate, dying man.