Dracula Lives Page 20

  Dressed as though going to a premiere, bathed in the red glow of the rising Blood Moon, the ancient drinker of blood fell into a predatory crouch and crept on all fours along the castle wall.

  CHAPTER 45

  Ten minutes after crossing the Vermont state line, Max pulled off the Interstate and into the parking lot of the Olympian. He parked out of sight behind the theater.

  His timing was perfect. There was only one car in the parking lot, and he recognized it as the director’s from the fading bumper sticker advertising some obscure Shakespeare Festival. After getting out of the car he stood looking at the sky for a moment.

  The distant storm he’d noticed when he was at his mother’s grave was getting stronger and closer. It was still many miles away, but it was darkening the sky and bringing nightfall early. Hopefully he could outrun it. Most of the trip from here to the castle was Interstate; driving on the highway in the rain was no problem. It was those last ten miles through the woods that worried him. They were never fun, but in a storm … and the dark.…

  He shook his head to cast out the negative thoughts and opened the trunk. He pulled out the sword and strode confidently toward the rear stage door, as though he were someone connected to the latest production. People in Vermont were trusting souls, so the door would probably be unlocked.

  It was. He went in and took a moment to make sure no one was around, then headed through the scene shop to the hallway that led to the director’s office. Halfway down the hallway was a bulletin board with reviews of the previous season’s productions. The review of the one he’d auditioned for got his attention.

  Last year he had swallowed what was left of his pride to come up here and audition for this community theater production of Dracula, drawn by the chance to play another of the roles he’d been born to play: Van Helsing, the vampire killer. But the director was a gutless stooge who cast the arrogant star of the company, a rank ham, in the role. The spineless amateur had sent his stage manager to offer Max—a professional—the minor role of the buffoonish guard at Seward’s sanitarium. Seething at the indignity of not getting yet another part he was perfect for, he’d turned it down and vowed revenge.

  He eased down the wide hallway and stopped just short of the open door to the director’s office. He heard rustling inside, the sound of someone at their desk. Max called out the director’s name, to be sure he had the right person. “Walter?”

  “Yes?”

  “Hello,” Max said, remaining out of sight while placing both hands on the hilt of the sword and raising it into the ready position.

  “Hello?” came the director’s voice.

  Max said nothing and remained still, waiting.

  “Hello? Who’s there?”

  “The Grim Reaper.”

  A chair scraped as the director got up to come see who it was. The instant he came through the door, Max took a vicious swing.

  The sword sliced cleanly through the director’s neck. His body toppled back into the doorway and his head fell straight to the floor. Max knelt down to stare into eyes open wide in shock.

  “Arrogant fool. You had a chance to cast someone with the blood of Dracula himself running through his veins.”

  The eyes showed confusion just before their light went out. Max watched as a film came over them like a curtain coming down. He felt no remorse, only satisfaction that another psychic vampire would no longer be sucking the creative juices of others to enrich his own. Max knew he needed to get going in case the police were on his trail, but couldn’t resist taking a moment to savor the expression of ultimate defeat on a face that had been so smug and condescending.

  He filled his fountain pen with the blood spilling out from the neck and left his final note:

  By the time you read this it will be too late to stop me.

  Since a severed head has perpetuated the bloody reign of Dracula, it seems fitting to use beheading rather than the stake on this stealer of souls. Especially fitting when the beheading is done with the blood-soaked sword used by Vlad Dracula himself.

  The final swing of this accursed sword shall remove the head of the last loyal subject of Vlad Dracula, the twisted follower who carries out his bidding.

  My father.

  And then we all must die. The foul vampiric bloodline of Vlad Markov must end.

  He stuck the note on the bulletin board on top of the Dracula review.

  CHAPTER 46

  Now aware that any manner of horror could appear at any time, Quinn clicked on his flashlight and followed the spear of light down into the black gloom of the staircase. Other than unlit gas torches along the walls, nothing revealed itself among the eerily dancing shadows created by his light. As he continued his winding descent, he thought of the labor and expense required to carve this staircase out of the solid rock upon which the castle had been built—more stark evidence of Markov’s crazed pursuit of his demented vision.

  Quinn rounded another coil of the spiral and his beam revealed the last section of the staircase. At the edge of his light, he could see the earthen floor of the castle. He descended the final stairs and entered the forbidden chamber.

  A few steps onto the barren hard-packed dirt, he stopped to get his bearings. Somewhere to his left, far beyond the range of his light, was the staircase he had come down before, the one that led to his bedchamber. He estimated the distance between here and there at fifty to seventy-five yards. This staircase had deposited him close to the castle wall that faced the access road and the lagoon.

  The same faint moaning he’d heard on his previous descent began to penetrate the tomblike silence.

  As he strained to determine the direction the sound was coming from, he detected the same smell he’d noticed before. Earthy. Some kind of weed or plant matter.

  He pulled out a canister of bear spray and followed his flashlight toward the sound, staying close to the wall to keep from becoming disoriented in the black void. He knew from his walk outside that this wall was about fifty yards long. Forty-six steps later he reached the back wall.

  The moaning grew louder, coming from somewhere to the left, farther along the rear wall. As he walked toward it, the smell became more pungent, and made Markov’s description of whatever was in his Garden as Flowers of Evil seem more apt. This was not the pleasant bouquet of a flower. More like the offensive odor of a weed.

  He came to a wrought iron gate. It was so large he needed to move several steps back to get a better perspective.

  Through the bars, at the edge of a shallow antechamber, he saw a large opening. Another set of stairs, much wider than the others, continued the descent.

  Quinn pulled the skeleton key from his pocket. Expecting a lock that might be frozen from years of neglect, he was surprised when the key turned easily and he heard a click. The hinges groaned a mournful protest as he pulled the gate open.

  He crossed to the opening beyond and looked down. A short section of stone steps led to a landing. Quickly scanning for anything unusual, he saw nothing and went down. The landing opened onto another, larger chamber carved into the rock. As he cast his light about, a disturbing sight met his eyes.

  A dungeon. The barred doors of three large cells ran along the wall to his right. At first he thought the moaning might have been coming from a prisoner, but the cells all appeared to be empty. The moaning was coming from somewhere to the left.

  He went to the nearest cell and unlocked it. The woeful groan of these hinges was worse than the sound of the gate, almost as though the soul of the last inmate were crying for release.

  As he got deeper into a cell about thirty yards square, he saw something on the floor near the rear wall. Several steps later he was looking down at a horror that triggered a memory: Markov’s response when Quinn had asked him what haunted his castle.

  “Bad deeds. Remnants of things I have done.”

  Moldering remains lay on the floor, a collapsed pile of bones and dust clad in the moth-eaten clothes someone had died in. The fetter that
had held the prisoner chained to the wall hung loosely around one skeletal ankle. The decaying clothes—tie-dyed T-shirt, jeans, hiking boots—sparked another memory.

  In researching this area before coming, Quinn had found mention of a hippie commune that had disappeared in the early ’70s.

  How far back and how deep did Markov’s sickness go?

  Quinn shone the flashlight on his watch. 5:19. He closed the door to the cell and made a quick inspection of the others to make sure no one alive was in them, then hurried along the rear wall of the castle toward the sound of the moaning. Forty paces later, he came to a much larger wrought iron gate and aimed his light between two of the bars. It penetrated ten yards or so into the gloom and revealed only barren earth. Faint light glowing from a considerable distance beyond gave Quinn the sense that this antechamber opened into a chamber that was huge.

  The moaning was louder. The smell had become almost smothering.

  He stepped back to aim his light at the ornate lettering he had noticed atop the gate when Johnny had intercepted him before:

  Les Fleurs du Mal

  Quinn stuck his key in the lock.

  CHAPTER 47

  The raspy moan of the hinges as the gate slowly opened was like the death rattle of the damned. The sound left icy trails on Quinn’s scalp and back as he tucked the pepper spray into his waistband. Flashlight in hand, he quickly crossed the craggy stone floor of the antechamber, stopping at the short set of stairs that led down to the sunken Garden. Light from stands placed throughout the vast space, combined with the flickering gaslight from torches along the walls, enabled him to put away the flashlight.

  What lay beyond that threshold was the ultimate realization of Markov’s mastery of set design: a meticulously created burial chamber for the dead.

  The moaning seized his attention and made him revise the thought:

  Or the undead….

  Several stone steps led down to the Garden. Peering out over the vast chamber from this higher vantage point, Quinn looked for Johnny. She had not yet arrived.

  As he continued to scan the macabre scene in the pit below, he thought of Dante’s concept of the Inferno as having ever deeper and more agonizing levels.

  Markov’s Garden of Evil was the nethermost level of his own private Hell.

  Dozens of precisely arranged wooden coffins filled the space. Each rested on its own wooden bier to keep it off the dirt floor. All the lids had been left off and were propped against the coffins.

  In the center of this underground necropolis, a single stone coffin rose higher than the rest. Its lid was in place, and what appeared to be a sculpture of some sort rested atop the lid. On all four sides, precise aisles running through the coffins ended at a neatly cleared perimeter around the stone coffin, as though the sarcophagus were the Capitol in this city of the dead.

  The entire burial ground was situated under an elaborate dome-shaped vault, supported by four columns that created pointed arches on all sides. Obviously the work of skilled stonemasons, the structure conveyed the jarring air of a blasphemous cathedral, consecrating its unhallowed dead. Quinn wondered if the cobwebs scattered throughout were real or more set decoration.

  The moans continued to ripple through the sea of coffins. Remembering Johnny’s warning that he would be entering the bowels of Hell, Quinn continually scanned his surroundings as he warily descended the last section of stairs and made his way to the nearest aisle. Through a mullioned window high up on the castle wall, red-tinged moonlight shone down.

  The pungent odor finally overpowered his jumble of sensory impressions. It had to be coming from the small plants in stands interspersed here and there in the gaps between the coffins. Quinn instantly recognized the flowering shrubs from a Dracula tour he had once taken through the remote villages of Transylvania.

  Wolfbane.

  It could only be here for one reason: to keep the undead at bay. The lights on stands placed throughout the chamber were not for illumination. They were the growing lights for Markov’s botanical Garden of Evil. Their soft artificial glow combined with the flickering gaslight from the torches along the walls to create an eerie, writhing pulsation. Quinn became momentarily spellbound by the throbbing illumination, struck by the notion that it was the fluttering heartbeat of the light, locked in an eternally losing battle against the darkness.

  Finally he began to move slowly between the rows of coffins on either side of the aisle, hoping the wolfbane would keep the restless dead from rising as he struggled to believe what he was seeing.

  None of the bodies had completely succumbed to decomposition. Some were badly gone, with parts of the skeleton showing. On others the skin had remained intact, but had the desiccated, shriveled appearance of mummies. Some had ruddy cheeks and looked fresh.…

  The range of decay was probably the result of the bodies having been harvested over a long period of time, but another factor might be that the elixir worked better in some than it did in others.

  Although all the eyes were closed, moaning escaped from some of the mouths. Standing in the middle of four coffins on either side of the aisle, he noticed that the moaning wasn’t coming from all of the mouths. Sometimes one would fall silent, then another that had been still would emit the mournful sound. Throughout the massive chamber, moans erupted then died out, as though some invisible torturer of souls were floating through space, insinuating itself into one semi-corpse, then another, making sure they never rested in peace. It was like walking through a waiting room for the souls of the damned, trapped at the moment of their death throes, moaning to be released—either to complete their journey into the abode of the dead that waited below, or back into the world above to seek vengeance on the living.

  As Quinn made his way through the coffins, the way the bodies were dressed added to his confusion. Their clothing was not the typical somber raiment of the dear departed. Some wore the attire of hunters or hikers; others wore nice casual clothing. He came to a dozen bodies grouped together that were dressed like hippies. T-shirts and jeans predominated. Some shirts were tie-dyed. On the front of one was the badly faded slogan: Make Love Not War. On another, a peace symbol.

  The hippie commune that had disappeared…. Forty years ago….

  As he continually scanned the vault for Johnny, he kept a wary eye on the corpses, half-expecting one of the undead to latch onto his arm and pull this new source of blood into its coffin. Just as he had convinced himself he was being paranoid, one opened its eyes and licked its lips. A jolt of fear shot through Quinn as he realized the full horror of Markov’s secret chamber.

  No special effects could be this good. These things were real.

  Pale hands began reaching out to grab him as he hurried past the coffins. A few managed to snatch at his shirtsleeve, but they were too weak to hold on. Thankful for the wolfbane, he finally he reached the end of the aisle.

  The elevated stone coffin lay several steps ahead, further offset from the others by a perimeter of smoothly-packed earth that had been left completely clear—even of wolfbane—for easy passage. Curtailing his speculation about what it all meant, he urged himself forward to get an answer to his most pressing question:

  In the twisted movie that had become George Tilton’s life, who was the star attraction entombed in that stone coffin?

  Quinn thought he knew the answer but hoped he was wrong.

  Much wider than a normal coffin, the tomb rested on a trapezoidal stone bier several feet high. The nameplate on the bier confirmed his worst imaginings:

  LADY ELINORE

  1919-

  Markov’s beloved second wife. The one whose “vampiric urges” had become so strong he’d had to “put her away.”

  No death date….

  Quinn went up a ramp at the end of the bier and stood on a wide ledge that ran on all four sides of the tomb. He became momentarily transfixed by the sculpture atop the lid of the coffin.

  A Weeping Angel.

  He’d seen many versio
ns in his graveyard investigations, usually draped across or sitting beside an above-ground sarcophagus, a poignant expression of sorrow on its face.

  This angel, however, did not convey the comforting feeling of a guardian from Heaven eternally protecting or grieving for a loved one.

  This angel conveyed a sense of dread. The way she had thrown herself face down across the wide coffin lid, arms outstretched to their fullest extent so she could clamp her hands over the edge, looked like it had been an act of desperate urgency—as though she had needed to hurry before an evil spirit could get in.

  Or was she trying to keep an evil spirit from getting out?

  The expression on the angel’s face conveyed another, much more disturbing feeling. It was an image like none Quinn had ever seen in a graveyard. Despite the beautifully sculpted wings on the prostrate figure’s back, it was not the face of an angel. At least not the face of any good angel.

  The eyes were open wide and showed only the stone equivalent of the whites, as though the eyes had rolled back in her head and a demon were taking over. The lips were parted far enough to reveal the teeth.

  The incisors were elongated into fangs. Black stains trickled down from each corner of the mouth.

  More evidence of Markov’s mad set design? Or—like the polluted blood that flowed through his veins—had the castle’s poisonous atmosphere seeped into the sculpture, replacing its original benevolent purpose with the soul-stealing thirst for blood?

  The heavy stone lid of the coffin had shifted a few inches until the stone fingers the angel had clamped over the edge had broken off.

  The tomb had been opened.

  From the inside or outside?

  Behind him the familiar voice slashed through the preternatural silence.

  “There you are.”