"Who can say, Joseph, what would happen then? Perhaps most likely nothing. On the other hand, I can visualize strange possibilities…"
"And Tyrrell was thinking along those lines when he came here."
"I am sure it was not idly, merely by chance, that he came to settle here in sun country, as it is called; on the contrary, anyone coming here as a vampire would require a strong reason."
"Connected with Darwin, maybe?"
"With life, Joseph. Connected with nothing less than life itself.
Chapter 16
Lying side by side in bed, almost silent and almost motionless, Jake and Camilla had clasped hands, his left holding her right. Both were listening intently to the normal noises of late night in the Deep Canyon. Something that sounded almost like a coyote was howling in the distance. Through the open window of their bedroom there drifted, reassuringly, the work-sounds made by the old man, demonstrating that he was on the job as usual.
Neither Camilla nor Jake was anywhere near sleep, though hours had passed since either of them had whispered a word. The night had been hell, any kind of sleep all but impossible. Sleep had become nearly impossible anyway in recent nights, with neither of them able to guess when their demonic master might appear suddenly in their darkened bedroom, demanding the blood, the life, of one or both of them.
Both Camilla and Jake were nearing the last stages of physical and mental exhaustion.
Jake could only thank God that Tyrrell had not intruded on them during the night just past. There was no working timepiece in the cottage. Until the sun actually rose, the breathers had no choice but dumb endurance of the fear that the vampire had somehow discovered their plan. No relief from their suspicion that the satanic Tyrrell was only toying with them, that he would appear to confront them in the last hour, or perhaps even the last few minutes, before dawn. Jake kept going over and over in his mind everything that Tyrrell had said to him yesterday, every change of expression on the vampire's face—had Tyrrell guessed?
One of the windows of the bedroom was on the east side of the house. Jake lay staring at the edge of the curtains, wondering for a long time whether the sky was really, at last, starting to lighten in that direction, or whether he was deluding himself with hope. When he was sure that the night was really fading, he reached out a hand silently and squeezed Camilla's wrist. Thank God, thank God, at last!
Moments later, the sounds of Tyrrell's labors ceased. That was a sure sign that dawn was coming.
Unless, this morning, he was quitting early to deceive them.
"Listen!" Camilla had been lying as tautly awake as Jake.
"Shh!"
No more noise came from Tyrrell. Undoubtedly there was daylight in the east.
Moments after reaching that decision, Jake was up and pulling on his clothes.
The sun had still not cleared the canyon's eastern rim when Jake and Camilla began trying to break into the little shed in which the old man kept his explosives jealously, if not very effectively, locked up. Camilla said that she was certain, or almost certain, that Tyrrell usually wore the key to the explosives store on a chain around his neck. But the long crowbar in Jake's hands proved quite adequate for wrenching away the padlock and its hardware.
Jake pulled open the door of the shed and took out the box of dynamite, stubby sticks wrapped in heavy, waxy paper which bore red warning labels. For a moment his heart sank as he thought the necessary blasting caps must have been hidden elsewhere; but no, there they were, another box, printed with warnings, way back on the top shelf. And there on the same shelf as the caps was the wire, several big spools of it; and down in the bottom of the cabinet the electric blasting machine, a little square box with a big handle sticking up on top, newer-looking than the one the CCC used.
Why hadn't the old man locked this stuff up more securely? He supposed it was because Tyrrell didn't think his current slaves would have the wit and the nerve to do what they were doing.
Now Jake could hear Camilla's hurrying footsteps. She had already drawn kerosene from the drum behind the house, and she was carrying two containers full of the smelly liquid when she met Jake on the way to the little cave across the creek where Tyrrell was supposed to sleep. One container was the two-gallon can normally used to bring kerosene to the house and fill the lamps, the other their biggest cooking pot.
The plan, worked out over a period of days, was to drench the sleeping vampire with kerosene, running the liquid in on him with hoses or a length of metal pipe. Then they would use dynamite in an attempt to blast Edgar out of his snug sunless hiding place—the blast, Jake calculated, might itself set fire to the drenching liquid. If not, they would have to ignite the kerosene by tossing burning rags or torches into the recess.
Jake started carrying the blasting materials to the slab of rock that shielded the vampire. Meanwhile Camilla was busy filling all the glass jars she could find in the house with kerosene.
As soon as she brought them across the creek, Jake took one, screwed the lid on tight, then hurled the container carefully into the vampire's shady recess. The glass shattered quite satisfactorily, and the liquid splashed and dribbled inside the shaded recess. Cam and Jake looked at each other. As far as they could tell, the stuff had gone right where they wanted it.
No reaction had been provoked inside the miniature cave. The smell of kerosene, oily and pungent, quickly filled the air.
"He's got to be covered with it now. He's got to be."
"If he's there. If he's there."
"He's there. He's got to be."
Neither of them could be one hundred per cent sure of that. Yet there was nothing to be done but forge ahead. As Camilla tightened the lid on a second jar of kerosene, Jake wished aloud, not for the first time, that they had gasoline available.
"Why?"
"Burns hotter."
"This won't work?"
"Of course it'll work. Kerosene burns hot enough. I wouldn't be trying it otherwise. Give me that." Jake hurled another missile, scoring another direct hit.
Gasoline just wasn't available, nor was diesel fuel. Tyrrell had no motor vehicles in the Deep Canyon, no need for the stuff, and so none was kept on hand. The generator ran on water power, and Jake had made sure that there was no auxiliary engine for it.
He capped and hurled a third jar, and winced as this missile shattered on the stone atop the cave, wasting most if not all of the precious deadly stuff.
Handing him the last filled jar, Camilla suddenly shouted a question. "Jake, goddam it, Jake, what if this doesn't work?"
"Too late now to worry about that."
"But what if—?"
"You said you'd seen him hurt by burning."
Camilla shuddered. "No, what I said was I never saw him stick his hand in the fire."
"He'll burn, he's got to burn, goddam it. We're going to kill him, one way or another, now we've started. We've got to." He hurled the last jar into the cave.
Their pitifully small collection of jars was used up already. Now it seemed to Jake that the jars hadn't held nearly enough kerosene—it seemed to him crazy that he had ever thought they might. But no time to worry about that now. On to part two of the plan. A piece of garden hose taken from the little irrigation system was pressed into service to convey the flammable liquid to where they wanted it.
As Jake had foreseen, using the hose was very awkward. First one end of it had to be pushed over the barrier slab of rock, well back into the cave where Tyrrell supposedly was sleeping.
(Would the eyes of the vampire open? Jake wondered. Would he see what was coming at him? You'd think he'd have to smell it, anyway, unless he was completely dead.)