“Fred, you got any more little surprises, hold ’em til after I retire, okay?”
He shook his head and rolled up the window, muttering to himself, then spun up about a half-acre of grass getting his car turned and headed back up the slope. I couldn’t help wondering what he’d do if I told him there were six corpses at large in his fair county.
VI
I found Ann sitting on a drift log with her hands folded in her lap, watching the river suck and swirl around a submerged snag. When I sat down beside her she sighed and lit a cigaret.
“I’ve worked out a theory,” she said.
“I’d love to hear it.”
“This creature has learned to reactivate the dead. Somehow it managed to solve the basic problem, which is getting the initial energy boost to keep the body going until it can make up for the lack of blood. Maybe it does it with breathing. You can force oxygen into your cells by a yoga routine known as bhastrika. Once the corpse is risen, the first thing it must do is find fresh blood. Otherwise it merely dies again.”
I felt a prickly rising at the back of my neck. “You’re talking about vampirism.”
Ann paused.
“Yes, that’s the popular term. I’ve never had a chance to investigate the phenomenon, nor do I know anyone else who has. Old records indicate that it used to be widespread, but we’ve since improved our burial procedures: A specified number of clamps on the coffin, a certain amount of earth above it. Reason for this in ancient times, being...”
“To keep the vampires from getting out?” I broke in.
“Well obviously. What other reason could there be?”
“And the embalming fluid?”
“Prevents revival by denying blood to the new spirit. In times of disaster, or on the battlefield when corpses lie unburied for days, we get reports of vampires. But these are impossible to check immediately, and when our investigators get there the vampire has usually managed to blend with the rest of the populace. They still practice their art, but they learn to cover their crimes by mutilation or fire, so they’re never actually caught.”
I opened my mouth a couple of times, but was unable to marshall any arguments against her. I’d always suspected that the undertaking profession was based on superstitious fear; it made sense only when one accepted her theory.
I bent over, dipped my hand into, the water, and bathed my forehead. I was beginning to feel feverish. “How do you account for Robert getting caught by this thing?”
“I don’t really know. I suspect that he died or was killed put in the open, where his body was not immediately discovered. The spirit took over, revived him, used him until as long as it could, and then...”
“Wait a minute, Ann. If he was occupied, how was he able to live with Eunice as long as he did? And talk to me about things that only Robert George could have known?”
“I don’t know. How is memory stored in the brain? How long does it survive death? Electroencephalographs have picked up brain waves as long as twelve hours after the heart stops beating. I’d guess that the invading spirit would have access to the memories and habit patterns of the original personality.”
I frowned, stamping my heel in the thick rubbery mud. “Tell me why Robert shot himself?”
“You mean, why did the creature destroy the body?”
“Okay, put it that way.”
“I think it was aware of me yesterday, even though I didn’t see it. It decided it was time to shift to a new body. The shotgun was an attempt to cover its tracks. Maybe it didn’t know deterioration would be so rapid.”
“Shifted? You mean into one of the missing corpses?”
“Of course. This is a nonphysical entity. It can’t function in this world without a physical body. No more than you could cut steel without a blowtorch.”
I stood up, looked at the yellow-brown river and the sycamores and birches arching overhead. Usually there were kingfishers, crows, jaybirds, and ducks and all manner of hummingbirds gliding and flitting through the tunnel under the trees. Now there was only stillness, and a light warm mist drifting down like smoke. I’d done enough hunting to understand what the quarry feels: a jittery crawly sensation of unseen eyes peering out from cover. And that’s exactly how I felt.
“You can’t sense the creature?”
“No. Perhaps it’s learned to shield its emanations.”
“All right then.” I put down my hand to help her to her feet. “We’ll resort to primitive methods. If it has a body, it also has feet. And feet leave tracks.”
We started our spiral search pattern at the door of the cabin. Three hundred yards out we found a dead doe lying in a fence-row overgrown with sassafras and prickly ash. My first thought was that hunters had nailed it out of season and flung it into the brush; we got a lot of city people who come down and shoot everything that moves. Then I saw that its throat had been torn open.
“Couldn’t have been dogs,” I said. “They’d have ripped her belly open.”
Ann looked at me in surprise. “Can’t you smell it?”
I drew a deep breath, then I caught it — a sharp, rank sickening stench that didn’t stop at my nose but went straight to my guts, congealing me with cold fear.
“What is it?”
“Scent of the beast. It keeps scavengers away from the body in case it wants to use it.”
She was kneeling beside the deer, peeling back its fur to study the gaping raw slash in its throat. It had been drained of blood, though there was none on the ground beneath it.
“How did you know that?” I asked.
She raised her head and looked at me. “What, Fred?”
“About the creature marking its kill. You said you’d never studied vampires.”
Ann blinked. “I don’t know. I just knew.”
“Is it possible you could pick up emanations without being aware of them?”
“Well yes... but if we start thinking like that we won’t be able to trust our own senses, will we?”
I already felt myself sinking into mental quicksand. I was glad when she finished her inspection and we resumed our search for tracks. It didn’t feel good to stand in one place for more than a few seconds.
We found the first print in the pasture about twenty yards from the dead doe. Water had run down into the hollow and then evaporated, leaving a pan of soft fine sediment. In it was the imprint of a bare foot no more than seven inches long.
“How old was Carla Frick?” she asked.
“Around twelve, I think.”
“So this would be about right. Now we know what we’re looking for.”
VII
The print gave me a bearing, and I started walking across the meadow toward a high limestone bluff overlooking the river. I found another print in the middle of an old cow pile. That reminded me that I’d often seen Roy Grant’s herefords grazing here on the rye grass.
They were gone now, and that led me to remember reports of calves slaughtered and left lying in fields. This coincided with the beef shortage, so people just assumed that rustlers had gotten scared off before they finished butchering. Now it seemed clear that it had been a vampire seeking blood, and I asked Ann Valery why the creature chose animals instead of humans.
Her answer was cold.
“No reason at all, except convenience.”