Dracula Lives Page 16
“Fine,” Quinn said. “I’ll start with a walk around the grounds.”
“Think of it as my back lot. Go freely, but do not venture too far into the woods. I have seen many of its four-legged denizens on the prowl during my midnight rambles. Even though it is daylight, we cannot be certain that they are entirely nocturnal.”
Just the natural predators on a heavily wooded property this large would be dangerous enough, Quinn thought. Coyotes, bobcats, bears…. If Markov was also one of those four-legged denizens….
CHAPTER 33
Standing in the porte-cochère at the entrance to the castle, Quinn zipped his fleece jacket against the morning chill and took a moment to decide which way to go. The unpaved access road the carriage had used to bring him here continued past the porte-cochère to the left, toward the back of the estate. Running parallel to the side wall of the castle, at barely ten yards wide, it was more of a lane than a road.
He headed down it, counting his paces as he went. Every bit of information he could gather about the layout of this massive estate, and the distances between its various parts, could turn out to be vital if … he resisted the phrase if he needed to escape … if Markov’s game became truly dangerous.
He reached the rear corner of the hulking pile and stopped to get his bearings. He pulled a notepad and pen from his pocket and jotted 49 from entrance to rear corner.
A large clearing had been established around the castle, but no landscaping had been done. The weedy growth had simply been mowed. Clumps of wild brush too hardy to mow were scattered here and there. With such a vast estate, Johnny undoubtedly had far too many things to do to be overly fussy about lawn maintenance.
The lane continued straight ahead through a stand of trees about thirty yards away. To the right, a footpath perpendicular to the lane ran through the woods in the direction of the lagoon.
The humanoid shape Quinn thought he’d seen rising up from the lagoon still nagged. Even allowing for an imagination conditioned by a lifetime of watching horror movies, this was a world where the laws of nature didn’t apply.
The body of water warranted a closer look.
He decided to stay on the lane to see what was beyond the stand of trees ahead, then explore the lagoon on his way back.
Twenty-seven paces later, the lane continued through an opening in the trees. Quinn made a quick note and continued into the opening. He was struck by how well it had been cut to form a precisely defined walkway. Overhead, branches extending from the trees lining each side of the path met to form a natural roof. Quinn imagined that in the summer, when the growth was full, the branches would convey a soothing feeling of walking through a leafy tunnel. Now, however, the bare, gnarled branches appeared more like long bony fingers poised to clamp down on unwary trespassers.
He emerged from the trees into another clearing. In the middle stood a large, weather-beaten barn. He went to take a closer look.
Although the sliding door was pulled shut, the padlock hanging on the hasp was unlocked. Had Johnny purposely left this open for him? Simple forgetfulness was possible, but when Quinn remembered her stopping him with a gun in the forbidden chamber, and later urging him to explore any unlocked doors, that seemed highly unlikely.
Quinn removed the padlock and slid the door open. Late morning sunlight coming through windows on all sides brightened the gloomy interior enough to see. He entered and went to the left to begin his inspection. As he approached the rear wall, he smelled the horses before he saw them. One whinnied as he rounded the corner. The horses in each stall watched him intently. The carriage was parked beside the stalls. Bridles, harnesses, and other tack items were neatly hung and arranged beside the carriage. In the corner were two ATVs, two snowmobiles, and a sidecar, all spotlessly clean and precisely lined up side by side.
Quinn began walking along the other side wall to complete the circuit that would take him back to the front door. Partitions had been attached to the wall to create several large bays.
In the first was a black Hummer H1. Quinn had researched GM’s civilian version of the military’s Humvee when they first came out, thinking the rugged vehicle might be just what he needed to handle the primitive terrain he often encountered in tracking down legends. But with a price tag of over a hundred thousand dollars, and fuel economy around ten miles a gallon, he had quickly dismissed the idea. This one was several years old and still looked in excellent condition.
The final bay held tools and an odd assortment of items. The diving equipment got his attention first. Air tanks, flippers, facemasks, a wet suit, dry suit, and other miscellaneous diving supplies were neatly laid out. Given their reclusive lifestyle, it seemed unlikely Johnny would be a recreational diver. This had to be for the lagoon. The item propped in the corner brought a frown.
A spear gun. What possible use could they have for a spear gun? Despite Markov’s ominous talk of monsters, it was impossible to think there was a creature in his black lagoon.
No. Maybe Johnny went spear fishing somewhere. Or maybe they used it to hunt game instead of a bow and arrow.
Next to the spear gun was a scythe. A scythe made sense, but considering how carefully everything else had been grouped together, why wasn’t it with the lawn implements? A few rust-colored patches marred the otherwise immaculate razor-sharp cutting edge. Wondering if they were rust or blood, Quinn rubbed his fingers across one of the spots, looked at the tiny bits that had flaked off, then sniffed.
It proved nothing. Bits of rust and dried-up blood could look and smell the same. “What am I? CSI all of a sudden?” he muttered. Nevertheless, he made a mental note to see if the Grim Reaper was still holding his scythe.
Several paces farther along, he came to a shelf that held life-sized replicas of instantly recognizable heads.
Lon Chaney’s Hunchback and Phantom, Max Schreck’s hideous Nosferatu, Lugosi’s Dracula, Karloff’s Frankenstein Monster, Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolf Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Robby the Robot, King Kong. Beside the head of the Creature was one of its clawed hands that had reached up from the lagoon to strike fear into Julie Adams and generations of movie fans.
Quinn walked back and forth, admiring how perfectly the replicas resembled the originals while wondering where Markov could have gotten them.
He picked up the head of Kong and looked inside, imagining that someone might have worn it during the actual filming. But instead of the hollow interior of a mask, he saw a network of wires running from the various facial features into a hub that must somehow have been the source of power. He checked the others and found the same apparatus in each. These masks had not been meant to be worn. They had been meant to be animated.
Markov had boasted of his advanced special effects and how he had incorporated them into his filmmaking. These might have been some of his early attempts. More questions to add to the rapidly growing pile he had for his mysterious host.
There were wristbands in the spaces between each of the heads. Quinn picked up the one between Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster. Both heads moved slightly toward him as he pulled the wristband away. He moved it slowly back toward them, and they slid closer. When he got to within a few inches, the heads shot forward and stuck to the wristband.
Magnetic. He’d heard of golfers using them to combat arthritis. Maybe Markov had experimented with using them as a better way to move the heads around than stop-motion animation.
On another shelf were several open cardboard boxes. He went to the first and looked inside. It was filled with more magnetic bracelets. At least two dozen. The next three boxes held several dozen more. The final two boxes were filled with large canisters of bear spray. Their purpose was easier to guess. Johnny’s security duties included nightly patrols of the woods, and this was bear country. Next to the boxes was an unusual-looking gun and several darts whose shafts were clear glass cylinders for holding medication.
A tranquilizer gun. Quinn wondered what Johnny might use it on. The horses?
He probably had an hour left before Markov would need him. Spending it looking for signs of a shape emerging from the lagoon—a shape that almost certainly had a simple explanation—would be a waste of time. He needed to use that time to explore inside the castle. Markov would undoubtedly be staging his climactic sequence there. And having seen how Markov’s mind worked, Quinn felt sure the sequence would include a shocking reveal. Whatever unfolded between now and midnight, Quinn couldn’t let himself get cornered in the place that must hold Markov’s darkest secret.
It was time to find out what was hidden away in the forbidden chamber.
CHAPTER 34
Quinn headed for the staircase by the Chamber of Horrors that led to the forbidden chamber below. As he rounded the corner guarded by the Grim Reaper, he pulled up suddenly.
It was still holding the scythe, but—was its head facing in a different direction? He thought it had been looking in the direction of his door. Now it was looking the other way, down the long corridor that ended at the Chamber of Horrors. Growing frustration at his inability to know what was real and what was a special effect propelled him around the corner. A short distance down the next corridor, he came to a door he wanted to check. Johnny’s quarters.
Quinn tried the handle. The door opened. Had Johnny intentionally left it unlocked? When he’d summoned her this morning after the pterodactyl incident, she’d said, “I wish I could help you more,” and made a point of encouraging him to take full advantage of his chance to enter any unlocked doors. As eager as he was to know what was hidden away in the secret chamber, he also needed to learn as much as he could about the human being behind the crumbling mask of Markov’s oddly-named daughter.
Quinn went in and clicked on the lights.
He stood for a moment, scanning the overall layout. Johnny’s quarters were, in effect, a huge apartment. Unlike the square layout of Markov’s laboratory, this was a long rectangular space, about twenty-five yards wide and twice that in length. The high ceiling and open floor plan added to the feeling of vastness. After taking it all in, Quinn was drawn to the array of equipment and readouts running along the left wall, eager to see Johnny’s level of control over the workings of the castle and the digital creatures that haunted it.
It quickly became apparent that her workstation was a virtual duplicate of Markov’s. Aside from providing Johnny the ability to remotely operate and monitor all of the castle’s systems 24/7, the duplication of Markov’s editing/special effects studio made perfect sense. There was no way he could do everything himself; in their many years together, he must have taught his daughter everything he knew. Aside from her countless duties as steward of such a large estate, just the ways in which she could assist him in his filmmaking were endless. Clear evidence of her involvement in that aspect of their lives sat near the large monitor of the editing console: exact copies of the gloves, goggles, and mouse Markov used to manipulate his digital creations.
Whatever he could do, she could do.
Just beyond the left end of the workstation was a door. Quinn had noticed a door in about that location in Markov’s laboratory/studio, which was the next space after Johnny’s. This must be the other side of the same door, put there for easy passage back and forth between the two adjoining rooms, facilitating communication when they were working on projects together.
He tried the door and wasn’t surprised to find it locked. To the left of the door, the panel was divided into sections for controlling the different automated components of the castle. A section labeled Kitchen included buttons for starting the coffee and pre-heating the oven.
The next section, Lighting, included buttons for Torches and Candles. He pushed the button for Candles, and a monitor showing his bedchamber blinked to life. A subset of buttons under the monitor controlled all the candles and torches in the castle. Although he’d seen real candles and torches at various locations, these had to be artificial, probably lit by gas.
Quinn shifted his attention to a section with a much more intriguing label: Robotics. Among the buttons in that section were ones labeled Robby, Kong, and Reaper.
Reaper? Maybe he wasn’t imagining things when he thought the Reaper’s skull had been looking in the opposite direction.
His attention was drawn to two larger labels, the only two he’d been able to read on Markov’s panel: GARDEN and LAGOON. As on his, the labels were under two larger monitors positioned side by side, and both screens were dark.
Quinn pushed the on/off button for the LAGOON monitor. The screen remained dark. He followed its cord to make sure it was plugged in. It was.
Dismissing it as a technical glitch, he shifted his attention to the GARDEN monitor. He pushed its power button.
Nothing. It too was plugged in.
It seemed beyond coincidence that among Markov’s advanced technology these two monitors would be the only things to malfunction. Further evidence that the garden—and possibly the lagoon—must hold the darkest secrets of the castle. Secrets that apparently were being guarded very closely.
When Quinn had gone down that hidden staircase in his bedchamber, Johnny had intercepted him at gunpoint and warned him never to come down there. But that aborted encounter had left him with the nagging memory of a strange moaning and smell, coming from a chamber sealed off by a locked gate, over which was the inscription Les Fleurs de Mal.
The Flowers of Evil. Flowers grew in gardens. Was the GARDEN monitor blacked out to keep any prying eyes from discovering what horrors were being kept in that secret chamber?
He moved to the final section of the control panel: Security. The first labels that caught his eye were Front Door and Cameras. Under the label for the front door were buttons marked Open, Close, and Lock. That solved the mystery of how the door was able to open when no one was around.
Quinn pushed the button under the label for Cameras. Fifty thumbnail images came up on the large widescreen monitor, one for each camera, showing the area it covered. He found the one for his bedchamber and clicked on it. A full screen image of his bed came onto the screen.
Each camera’s movements could apparently be controlled by a single cluster of buttons beside the one he had pushed. They were labeled Tilt, Pan, Zoom, Dolly.
Dolly? Markov couldn’t possibly have an apparatus for dolly shots on all these cameras. He must have them on some kind of extendable mounts that made simulated dollies possible. Quinn pulled up the monitor that showed the Grim Reaper standing in his corner. He pushed Dolly and got an error message: NOT AVAILABLE ON THIS CAMERA. There were two buttons for panning—one with an arrow pointing right, the other an arrow pointing left. He pushed the one pointing right.
The Reaper’s head swiveled to the right. Johnny must have panned it toward his door for some reason. Or had she? Since Markov’s instrument panel was a duplicate of this, that meant at any given moment either of them might be in control. Either way, it was disturbing to know that the Reaper was robotic. What else was it capable of?
He quickly scanned the other thumbnail images and saw that there were two for his guest quarters—one showing his bedchamber and the other showing the oriel. He pulled each one up and moved their cameras in all directions, looking for blind spots. There weren’t any.
Quinn stepped back to look at the control panel in its entirety, and realized that Markov had not exaggerated his genius for technology. The software program alone that he must have developed to control all this would put him in the genius category.
A small shelf extended out from the base of this section of the control panel. Resting upright in the center of it, as though to make sure it wouldn’t be overlooked, was a cell phone. Next to the phone was a large skeleton key—the master key for the entire castle.
As the person in charge of security, it
was conceivable that Johnny would place two of the most important security-related items by the word Security to always know where she had put them—but it was a stretch. Had she left the phone and key laid out for him to find?
He picked up the phone, turned it on, and dialed his home number as a test. After the usual three rings he heard his answering machine message loud and clear.
He stuck the phone and key in his pocket. With a heightened sense of urgency, he went on with his exploration of Johnny’s apartment.
The overall décor was in keeping with the Gothic theme, but she had added many feminine touches to brighten the gloom.
Wall hangings depicted colorful birds in beautiful seasonal landscapes. Here and there were tastefully arranged bouquets of wildflowers in handcrafted vases. A living room, kitchenette, and modern bathroom made this a self-contained unit with everything Johnny needed to live independently. Apparently none of her quarters would appear in Markov’s movie. In most other areas of the castle, anything not in keeping with the Gothic set design was kept hidden. In here, concessions to modern living were plainly visible.
The rear third of the cavernous apartment was her bedroom. Angled into the corner was a king-sized canopy bed, impeccably made and set off by a stunning royal burgundy satin coverlet. Near the large fireplace to the side of the bed, she had set up a cozy seating area consisting of two high-backed chairs and a small desk. Atop the desk were a few books, some stationery and a quill pen. Recessed into the rear wall was a large wardrobe, the castle version of a closet. Its contents were nothing fancy: simple functional clothing for the various tasks she might need to perform, neatly grouped together and arranged by color. At the far end of the wardrobe, a separate section a few feet wide had been partitioned off. A simple folding door concealed what was inside. Quinn knew he needed to keep moving, but couldn’t resist seeing what was behind that door. He opened it and flinched in surprise at what hung there.