When Ann came back I’d turn them off and tell her who she really was, and how much I loved her. I was. always very careful not to call her anything but Ann, even though at times I saw flickers of old Robert George, and even Vera Yount.
The others are all gone now. Usually there is just Ann. We talk about art, and music. I tell her what’s happening around town, what I saw on the evening news. She reads the Wall Street Journal, and keeps track of her own stocks.
The society called once during the first year — fortunately during a lucid phase, and she told them she was quitting, also to ignore any vampire reports from this community. Apparently they’re trusting souls, because they didn’t call back.
I have her checks sent here and she signs them. Since I am her lawyer, nobody asks why I conduct her business affairs. Twenty thousand a year buys us a lot of privacy in Gubb’s Knob. We still need it, though not as much as we did at first, when she used to claw the door and shriek like a banshee in her craving for fresh blood.
Then I’d have to chain her to the wall to keep her from biting her own wrists. I used to wonder if it wouldn’t be better to inject her with potassium chloride and end her misery, then I’d remember that it would only spread to yours truly, Fred Bagram. In the end I was thrown back on the only weapons she’d given me — love, and courage.
It took all I had at first, but now the pressure is off. On pleasant afternoons we take a picnic lunch and drive up to Gubb’s Knob. A week ago she fed a gray squirrel from her hand. I asked if she didn’t feel just a slight urge to bite into its throat and drink the hot spurting blood. She looked at me with a shocked expression and said:
“Of course not. Don’t talk rot.” She meant it, too.
That means that the evil spirit had finally gone, and Ann Valery had full possession of her body. Soon a local minister can come and perform a simple marriage ceremony. Not only will I be the happiest man in Gubb’s Knob then, but also the most relieved.
Five years is a long time to wear a leather collar.
Without Music
by Carl Henry Rathjen
She knew every detail of their plan to rob the bank — though she had never met the men, and was too far away to see much...
“Operator, get me the police! Hurry!”
“Your number, please.”
“888–112... No, sorry, I’m excited, stammering. It’s 888-1202. It’s Shortley’s Music Store. I’m Miss June Patterson and—”
“Police, Sergeant Macauley.”
“Officer, the bank at the corner of Ninth and Orchard is going to be held up.”
“How do you know, Ma’am?”
“Because I heard one of the robbers talking about it. In fact he’s in a car right outside my store now. I can see him as I’m talking to you. And from what he said there are others somewhere all waiting to—”
“How did you hear him say he was going to rob the bank? Were you out there, or is the front door open so that you could overhear—”
“No, the door is closed, so much dust until there’s paving over the new sewer line. And I haven’t been out of the store. I can’t leave, not while Arnold, he’s the manager, is out to lunch...”
“You’re calling from the store, Ma’am?”
“Of course. Where else?”
“What store would that be?”
“Shortley’s Music Store. I work here. I demonstrate the organs and pianos, give lessons. It’s just down the street from—”
“I know where it is, more than a half-block from the bank at the corner. So tell me, Ma’am, if you haven’t been out of the store and the door is closed, just how could you have overheard what this alleged bank robber—”
“But I did overhear him!”
“—and you haven’t been near the bank, then how do you assume—”
“I’m not assuming anything, Officer. I know. Because I heard him. He was talking into a little box and every word he said—”
“He was using a walkie-talkie?”
“Yes, yes, that’s what I mean. And that’s how I overheard—”
“Oh, I getcha, Ma’am. You’ve got a radio turned on in the store and it picked up—”
“No, I haven’t. We don’t sell radios. Only organs and pianos... Hello? Sergeant? Hello?... Operator, I was talking to the police and the connection must have been broken. Will you get them for me again? Hurry. Didn’t you write down my number when I gave it to you before? Well what became of the other operator? Oh, I see. Whichever operator is available plugs in and... Yes, my number. You do need it, don’t you? It’s 888-1202.”
“Police, Sergeant Macauley.”
“Officer, aren’t you being remiss in your duty when a bank robbery is being reported and you hang up and—”
“The hell I hung up! Sorry, Ma’am, but it was you who broke off while I got on the horn to dispatch units to—”
“Oh, thank you. Then you do believe me that the bank is—”
“Let’s just say, Ma’am, I’ve got to swallow everything that comes, in over this line until proved otherwise. And you’d be surprised at some of the way out stuff that—”
“Sergeant, I’ll have you know that I am not way out. Of course, to please potential customers when I’m demonstrating have to play some of this way an electric organ or piano I out cacaphony, with all the dissonances that pass for music nowadays. That’s what I had to play on the new Lowry a little while ago and then forgot to—”
“What was that word you used, Ma’am? Car-what?”
“Cacaphony.”
“That’s a good one. I’ll have to pull that on my kid with his over-amplified guitar.”
“Officer, I heard you correctly, didn’t I? You are taking steps to save the bank?”
“I hope it also saves my neck. If I sent units on a phony call, and if it wasn’t phony and I didn’t—”
“I am not making a spurious telephone call to you. I distinctly heard this man, who is still outside my store, checking that his confederates were where he wanted them to be. Then he told them that something had been grounded so it wouldn’t operate at the bank.”
“He must have meant the silent alarm system, Ma’am.”
“I assume so. I have a nephew who insists on watching all the crime on TV when with a little judicious selection there are many worthwhile—”
“I still can’t figure, Ma’am, how you overheard him if—”
“I hope that doesn’t mean, Officer, that you were... er, phonying to me when you said you have ordered other police to—”
“They’re on their way, Ma’am.”
“I should hope so. The man’s getting out of his car. He’s walking toward the bank. So I guess the ten minutes must be up.”
“What ten minutes?”
“The ten minutes I heard him mention before I called you. He said to them, his confederates on the walkie-talkie, I mean, he said, ‘Ten minutes to countdown zero when the sacks will be ready for Brinks.’ ”
“That would be the shipment to branch banks. Why didn’t you say that first, Ma’am? I would have believed you right off, even though I still can’t figure how you—”
“I’ve been trying to tell you. I’d been demonstrating a— There’s the Brinks truck going by-now. It will stop out front of the bank, double-parking as usual, I suppose. Creating a traffic problem. I know, because I’ve been caught in it sometimes on the days when I go to lunch early. Arnold, he’s the manager, and I alternate on going for early or late lunches and... Hello? Sergeant? Hello?”