Part 17 (2/2)

the voice said. ”There at the winnnnnndoing from a different place entirely. ”Come outside!” it called sweetly.

”Won't you come out and be my playmate?”

Wes narrowed his eyes. He was only marginally aware that Solange's fingernails were digging into his arm. Something moved beside that pine tree, and now Wes was sure he could see a little girl down there. She was barefoot and carrying what looked like a Raggedy Arm doll. ”Mister!” she called out. ”Please come outside and play with me!”

There was something in her voice that made Wes want to go to that little girl. That voice was so sweet, so compelling, so innocent. It rang in his head like Christmas bells in the church at Winter Hill, and suddenly there were six inches of new snow on the ground, and he was ten-year-old Wesley Richer, stuck in his room with a head cold the day after Christmas while all the other kids were playing in the snow with their new sleds. He could see the bundled figures of the big kids way out on the frozen, milky surface of Ma.s.sey Pond; they picked on him because he was sickly and skinny, but he'd memorized a lot of jokes from a couple of books at the library, and now even Brad Orr was beginning to laugh at them and call him Funnyman. From his window he could see them skating around the pond, turning slow circles and figure eights like people from those Currier and Ives pictures Mom liked. And the sleds had already left a hundred runner trails on Frosty Slope; ice glittered there in the weak gray sunlight like the dust of crushed diamonds, and a distant figure raised a mittened hand to wave at him.

There was a pretty girl he didn't know standing underneath his window. ”Come outside!” she called, grinning up at him. ”Let's play!”

”Can't!” he called back. ”Mom says no. I gotta cold!”

”I can make you all better!” the little girl said. ”Come on! You can jump right through the window!”

Wes smiled. ”Aww, you're foolin'!” She was barefoot in the snow, and maybe she was so pale because she was really cold.

”No, I'm not! Your friends are waiting for you.” She gestured vaguely in the direction of Ma.s.sey Pond. ”I can take you to them.”

”Oh . . .” He was tired of staying in the house, he wanted to get out and run in the cold wind with the snow crunching underfoot, and maybe he wouldn't even need any shoes either. Sure would be nice to do a bellyflop down the Slope.

”Okay,”

he said excitedly. ”Okay! I'll come out!”

The girl nodded. ”Hurry!” she said.

And suddenly a strange thing happened. There was a pretty chocolate-colored lady standing beside him, gripping his arm. She leaned forward and blew on the window, instantly fogging it. Then she drew a cross in the fogged part with her forefinger and mumbled something: ”Nsambi kuna ezulu, nsambi kuna ntoto!” Wesley Richer said, ”Huh?”

The little girl beneath the window screamed piercingly, her face contorting into a gray mask of horror. Instantly it all changed-Ma.s.sey Pond and Frosty Slope and all the distant figures skating and sledding whirled out of Wes's brain like cobwebs caught in a high wind. The little girl staggered backward, gnas.h.i.+ng her teeth. Solange shouted ”GET AWAY!” and fogged the window again, drawing another cross and repeating the incantation again, but this time in English, ”G.o.d is in heaven, G.o.d is in earth!”

The little girl hissed and spat, her back arching like a cat's. Then she ran across the lawn toward the wall. When she reached it, she turned and screamed, ”I'll get you for that! I'll make you pay for hurting me!” And then she scrambled over the wall, her bare legs the last thing to disappear. Wes's knees sagged. Solange caught him and helped him back to the bed. ”What is it?” he said. ”What happened?” He looked up at her through glazed eyes.

”Gonna go skate,” he said. ”Snow fell last night.” She put the sheet over him and smoothed it down. She was shaking so hard her teeth were chattering. ”No, no,” she said softly. ”You had a dream, that's all.”

”A dream?” He looked at her and blinked. ”d.i.c.k Marx lives across the street, that's who.”

”Go to sleep,” Solange told him, and in another moment his eyes closed. She stood over him until his breathing was even and deep, and then she returned to the window. The pine trees moved fitfully, as if the dull terror that gripped at her soul gripped the soul of nature as well. She wasn't certain what the thing had been, but she knew from its violent reaction to the cross and the name of G.o.d-a powerful talisman in all languages-that it was something terribly evil. She recalled with a shudder the messages from the spirit world as spoken through the Ouija board. Evil. They thirst. Evil. They thirst. She drew a chair up before the window and sat down to meditate. She did not move again before daylight.

THREE.

”You want another cup of coffee, Miss Clarke?”

Gayle looked up. She was huddled on a bench in the main corridor of the Hollywood police precinct building where she'd been brought hours before, after, she'd crumbled in hysterics in front of the officer who'd stopped her for reckless ; driving. She thought she might have fallen asleep for a few minutes or pa.s.sed out because she hadn't heard the patient desk sergeant named Branson come up behind her. She didn't want to sleep; she was afraid of it because she knew she'd see Jack coming for her in her nightmares, those burning eyes set in a bleached skull, the fangs in his mouth making him look like some strange hybrid between man and dog. She shook her head, refusing the coffee, and hugged her knees to her chin. Her hand had been cleaned and bandaged, but the fingers still throbbed, and she wondered if she would have to get rabies shots.

”Uh ... Miss Clarke, I don't think you have to stick around here anymore,” the desk sergeant said. ”I mean, I appreciate the company and all, but you can't stay here all night.”

”Why not?”

”Well, why should you? You've got a place to live, don't you? I mean, it's quiet in here right now, but later on we're going to have hookers, hustlers, pimps, junkies, all kinds of lowlife stumbling in here. You don't want to be around all that, now, do you?”

”I don't want to go home,” she said weakly. ”Not yet.”

”Yeah, well . . .” He shrugged and sat down on the bench beside her, making a big deal out of checking a scuff mark on his shoe. ”It's safe for you to go home,” he said finally without looking at her. ”Nothing's going to get you.”

”You don't believe me either, do you? That first dumb clod didn't believe me, neither did your lieutenant, and you don't either.”

He smiled faintly. ”What's to believe or not believe? You told us what you saw, and it was checked out. The officers found a lot of empty apartments and a couple of dogs running around . . .”

”But you'll admit it was G.o.dd.a.m.ned strange that all those apartments were unlocked at eleven o'clock at night, won't you? That's not common in Hollywood, is it?”

”Who knows what's common or uncommon in Hollywood?” Branson said quietly. ”The rules change every day. But this stuff about your boyfriend being some kind of ... what did you say he was? Vampire or werewolf?”

She was silent.

”Vampire, didn't you say? Well, couldn't he have been wearing a Halloween mask maybe?”

”It was no mask. You people have overlooked the most important point-what happened to all those people in that apartment complex? Did they all step off into the Twilight Zone or something? Where are they?”

”That I wouldn't know anything about,” Branson said, getting to his feet. ”But I'd suggest you go on home now, huh?” He moved back toward his desk, feeling her stare boring into the back of his neck. Of course, he hadn't told her that Lieutenant Wylie was over at the Sandalwood Apartments right now with a team of officers, going over every room with vacuum cleaners and roping the place off from the street. Branson could tell that Wylie was more than a little worried.

When Wylie's left eyebrow started to tick, that was a sure sign something was cooking. This Clarke woman had answered all the questions she could, and she'd put some questions of her own to the officers, who of course couldn't come up with any decent answers. Wylie had told him emphatically to get rid of her since she was a real thorn in the a.s.s. Branson sat behind his desk, shuffled papers, and stared at the telephone, wis.h.i.+ng it would ring with a good old-fas.h.i.+oned robbery or mugging. This vampire s.h.i.+t was for the birds. No, he decided, make that for the bats.

FOUR.

Awaken, the voice whispered. Mitch Gideon heard it quite clearly. But he didn't have to open his eyes because they were already open; his head simply seemed to jerk backward, and his vision cleared as if he'd been looking through frosted gla.s.s. It took him a moment to fully realize where he was. When he did, the shock of it almost staggered him.

He was standing in the entrance foyer of the Gideon Funeral Home Number Four on Beverly Boulevard near CBS Television City. Behind him the heavy chrome-and-oak doors stood wide open to the street; a cold breeze was rus.h.i.+ng in around him. He heard a noise like the tinkling of Chinese wind chimes and looked to his side-he was holding his key ring with the key that unlocked the front doors still grasped between his thumb and forefinger. He was wearing brown bedroom slippers and his brown velour robe with the initials ”MG” on the breast pocket over his usual white silk pajamas. I'm in my pajamas? he asked himself incredulously.

What the f.u.c.k's going on here? Am I dreaming, hypnotized, or what?

Overhead a huge chandelier with electric candles lit up the entrance foyer with a rich golden glow. He didn't remember flicking the wall switch. d.a.m.n!

he thought, I don't remember anything since I got into bed beside Estelle at.

. . what time had that been? He looked at his wrist but knew his watch was sitting on the Lj chest of drawers in the master bedroom where he put it every night before going to sleep. He felt like shouting the two questions aloud: What am I doing here? And how the h.e.l.l did I get down from Laurel Canyon to Beverly Boulevard in my sleep for Christ's sake?

Gideon turned and walked back out of the building into the parking lot. There sat his Lincoln Continental in the s.p.a.ce marked ”Mr. Gideon Only.” But there was another vehicle in the parking lot as well-a large U-Haul truck. He stepped closer to it but didn't see anyone sitting in the cab. And when he looked back at they Tudor-style funeral home, he saw a light burning in a window on the upper floor. My office, he realized. Have I been up there working? How did I get out of the house? By sleepwalking? Didn't Estelle hear me leave? He seemed to remember being behind the wheel of his car, the hot splash of headlights and traffic signals on his face, but he'd thought that was only a dream. He was grateful that tonight he wasn't dreaming of that conveyor belt full of coffins where the workmen were beginning to grin at him as if he were one of their own. His brain felt feverish and violated, as if someone or something had peeled back to the top of his head and gone to work in there, fitting him with a windup key that could be turned to send him spinning madly in any chosen direction.

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