Dracula Lives Page 10

  Because this creature existed only in dinosaur movies.

  The pterodactyl was extinct.

  CHAPTER 18

  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.

  CHAPTER 19

  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.

  On the long walk to the outbuilding they used for storage, Johnny tried to work out the details of a real-life ending that would undoubtedly be far different from whatever twisted Tod Browning-influenced movie version Markov had in mind. But it was hard to concentrate while having to listen for any unusual sounds in the surrounding woods. Still, one image remained unwavering in Johnny’s brain: those two words, emblazoned over a beautiful natural landscape, while a lush string orchestra played a sound track of soaring happy-ending music.

  The End

  For Johnny, those two words couldn’t come soon enough.

  CHAPTER 20

  Quinn took a quick shower, got dressed, and headed for his four o’clock meeting with Markov in the den. It was only 3:40, but he wanted to have time to mull over his decision about whether to stay or leave. Ten minutes later, he had finished his pastry and was sitting at the hearth by the fire, sipping coffee as he contemplated the irony of his situation.

  He’d come here to get away from the ever-darker evil he’d been seeing in his work with law enforcement, excited about a chance to escape into the world of someone who had not only worked on one of his all-time favorite movies, but had to be a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes stories going back to the dawn of motion pictures.

  Instead he had walked into a world so warped by the movies that it rivaled Norma Desmond’s in Sunset Boulevard. But where she had preserved her dead pet monkey, Markov seemed to be preserving his dead pet monsters. He had said his castle was “extremely haunted” by his “bad deeds.” Was there any genuine danger here, or was Markov merely preparing Quinn for his role in the movie?

  The floating Chaney head and the pterodactyl had been special effects. Surely all the monsters in and around this castle were nothing more than digital smoke and mirrors.

  But that moaning sound coming from the forbidden chamber below.… Another special effect?

  In his years of studying the horror genre, Quinn had given a lot of thought to the nature of evil, especially as it manifested itself in movies and books. That line of reasoning had invariably led his philosophical nature to contemplate the much larger picture: why does evil exist, and where does it come from? Even staring into its darkest face as a consultant on the sickest murder cases, he’d never come up with any satisfactory answers to those questions, finally deciding they were probably unanswerable.

  But working on those cases had opened his eyes to an obvious, inescapable tru
th—a truth he’d known all along, but never seen so clearly. More than opened his eyes. Had driven the truth home like a stake through the heart.

  Evil thrived in the hidden places where no one ever went, when no one was looking. Or—much worse—when people saw it and looked the other way. Whenever any of us comes face to face with evil, there are only two choices: face it head-on, or look away. Confront it or turn and run. Fight or flight. It was that simple.

  If, after Markov gave him the full tour, it became clear that this was truly a house where evil dwelled, Quinn would become the only witness. The only one who could stop it. Leaving would not be an option.

  And if he decided to stay, Johnny was right. It would be time to find out all he could about his “acting space”—a lost world where pterodactyls still existed, and something moaned in a forbidden chamber.

  CHAPTER 21

  Feeling ridiculous dressed in a diving outfit and carrying a spear gun, Johnny came to the end of the underground passage that connected the outbuilding to the lagoon. Markov’s tortured rationale for having the tunnel dug was as a security measure for keeping their clandestine activities out of sight. As though anyone would ever see or care.

  When the tunnel had been completed, Markov had indulged his auteur fantasy and had a second one dug. Connecting the lagoon to the castle’s subterranean chamber, he’d envisioned it as a setting for spooky, atmospheric scenes—especially ones showing creatures from the lagoon creeping along it to infiltrate the castle and threaten its inhabitants.

  Like so many of his harebrained ideas, those scenarios had never materialized.

  Johnny hesitated a few feet from the water’s edge. It wasn’t the plunge into the cold water that was causing the hesitation, although even with the insulation provided by the full-body dry suit, a water temperature around forty degrees would not be pleasant.

  The hesitation was dread over what might be waiting at the bottom. In Markov’s insane desire to create the most realistic movie monsters ever—unstoppable killing machines he tried to bring to some semblance of actual life—Johnny could never be sure that the corpses of the failed experiments down there hadn’t come back from the dead.

  When Markov had first bought this property with the intention of creating a self-contained world for making movies, he’d hired an excavator to create the lagoon. Aside from lending atmosphere to the Universal-inspired horror movies he planned on making, it could also be used for any water scenes.

  But the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and as Markov began to see himself as “the Orson Welles of horror,” those movies never got made. Instead he had spent—wasted—their lives, trying to create a single horror masterpiece that would give him the screen immortality he so dearly coveted.

  The problem, Johnny had wanted to scream at him, was that—aside from the fact that Markov was no Orson Welles—he could never figure out the story he wanted to tell. All he knew was that he wanted to make the ultimate monster rally picture with the most realistic monsters the world had ever seen. That, too, was the problem. The monsters would be the stars. Humans, for him, were only fodder for the monsters.

  Several times Markov had started production only to shut it down because he wasn’t happy with the robotic monsters he’d created. By the time he finished tinkering with them and was ready to resume shooting, his contract with the actors would have expired and he’d have to recast. The result was a bunch of interesting but disjointed scenes that no amount of clever editing or scriptwriting could pull into a coherent narrative.

  He had finally put the picture on hold while he spent decades in his laboratory, trying to develop more realistic monsters he could insert anywhere in the film and make them do anything. But the more real they became, the deeper Markov slipped into madness.

  Not long after they’d moved here, he’d summoned Johnny to his laboratory in a panic, pointing to two of his earliest creations that lay dormant on the floor: The Watcher in the Crypt, and his much more terrifying version of the Gill Man. Full-scale models of robotic monsters he’d built, for scenes that would feature the lagoon.

  “I no longer have complete control,” Markov had said. “They must be destroyed while they are sleeping. Nothing can live if it cannot breathe. Drown them. And weigh them down somehow, so that if whatever infernal spark of life is in them flares up, they will not be able to come up for air.”

  With the usual feelings of self-loathing at continuing to be a party to such madness, Johnny had done his bidding, tying the monstrosities to cinder blocks to keep them from floating to the top. When Markov heard how flimsily they’d been weighted down, he’d immediately hired a heavy equipment operator to deposit a block of granite in the lagoon and instructed Johnny to chain them to that.

  Now, awkwardly high-stepping because of the flippers, Johnny took the last few steps, hesitating briefly to quiet the whisper that always came at the water’s edge:

  It’s only the current that makes them twitch and float upward, like they’re straining to break free.

  Johnny clicked on the diver’s light secured to the forehead like a miner’s and jumped in feet first, quickly sinking to the bottom ten feet away. After taking a moment to stabilize, the usual inspection began, which consisted of floating around the aborted monsters as they gently swayed in the current, making sure they were still chained to the block while looking for anything unusual. When the circuit around the granite slab was complete, Johnny resisted the powerful urge to be gone and took a moment to study the things for any sign of life.

  Disturbing as it was, their ghostly swaying was only the normal ebb and flow to be expected underwater. There was no twitching or otherwise unnatural movement. Finally came the most hated part of this task: looking into the eyes to make sure they were still closed.

  They were.

  Johnny’s feeling of relief was abruptly cut short by an odd movement. The Creature from the Black Lagoon’s arms started drifting upward, as though reaching for the surface. Then the Creature itself starting floating toward the top. Johnny hadn’t noticed if the monster’s slow ascent had been aided by a kick of the scaly webbed foot.

  The Gill Man’s head was nearing the surface when the chain became taut. From several feet below in the murky water, it was impossible to tell, but the head might be poking through. Alarmed, Johnny swam up fast to check.

  The head was below the surface. Its eyes were still closed.

  Johnny looked down.

  Visibility was too poor to tell if the thing was straining against the chain. The arms slowly floated back down to the sides, and the Creature just hung there, a few feet below the surface—not alive, but seeming as though any moment it might be.

  Markov had said nothing can live without air, but the Creature was amphibious.

  Johnny finned to the bottom and used the chain to pull it back down, then coiled the chain to make it shorter and wedged it under the block of granite, knowing it would eventually come loose again and making a mental note to get a shorter chain. Far from convinced that the thing was dead, the head of security swam not to the surface, but to the ten-foot wide opening into the underground tunnels. Eager to be away from robotic corpses that may have been prematurely buried, Johnny plunged into the hole and swam into the tunnel on the left that led to the castle.

  A short distance in, the upward-sloping tunnel became free of water except for a trickle glimmering along the bottom. Pieces of slimy marine vegetation were scattered here and there, but there were no signs of life. Johnny replaced the flippers with sturdy slip-ons and moved up the passage.

  Moments later, it opened into the Garden. Hastening through the nightmare chamber, Johnny went up a stone staircase that led to the only safe haven in the castle—the private apartment Markov had so generously included for his steward.

  Steward. Caretaker. Head of Security. Groundskeeper.

  Servant? Slave? Prisoner?

  What am I? Johnny thought. A human being. Trapped in a world of the inhuman.
<
br />   CHAPTER 22

  Markov joined Quinn in the den promptly at four. He fixed himself a coffee and pulled the other chair around, until they sat facing one another from a few feet apart. “How did you sleep?”

  “Not well.”

  “Oh? Were the accommodations not to your liking?”

  “The accommodations were fine. But there were some disturbances.”

  “Disturbances?”

  “Lon Chaney and a pterodactyl made appearances.” Uncertainty about the shape he thought he’d seen in the lagoon kept him from mentioning it.

  Markov showed the vaguest hint of a smile. “I told you there would be previews of coming attractions.”

  “So they were your handiwork.” Again Quinn’s flare of annoyance at being manipulated was quickly extinguished by the truth of the matter: he’d been warned. “Impressive,” he said. “Revolutionary. The ability to project a special effect like a hologram anywhere you want and control its movement. But why a pterodactyl? Are you making a dinosaur movie?”

  “No. That was just me showing off, I’m afraid. One’s ego can become quite large, living alone for so many years.”

  Quinn resisted saying something about becoming a legend in one’s own mind. “Mr. Markov—should I call you Mister? There was a Doctor Markoff in The Monster Maker.”

  “I am no doctor, and Count or Baron would be such a cliché. I thought of Morbius, living on his own Forbidden Planet, but that seemed too … on the nose. Markov will suffice.”

  “I know that is not your original name. Did you take it from that movie?”

  “You are most well-informed. Yes. Given the movie reality I have created, it seemed appropriate. And it has that eastern European ring to it.”

  “You keep hinting at all sorts of dangers—monsters, ghosts, some alternate reality. I had been looking forward to a companionable weekend, discussing your experience on Dracula and whatever else you wanted to share. But our visit seems to be turning into something else. If this is your version of The Most Dangerous Game, then I need to know exactly what the rules are.”