Fright Night (6 page)

“You’re sure about this, now.” It was not so much a question as a pronouncement, with the unspoken context
if you’re lying, I will screw you into the wall.

The voice in question was deep and booming. It emanated from the massive form of Lieutenant Detective Lennox. He was a homicide cop from the Rancho Corvallis force, and he wasn’t used to being busy. He also wasn’t used to having his ass on the griddle: screaming from the populace, pressure from on high. And there had been a lot of cranks calling in on the case, a lot of wild geese that he’d grown tired of chasing.

Lennox was one of the few black men on the Rancho Corvallis force; he was also the first. He had a short gray Afro that was rapidly turning white and a mustache that was black against his dark chocolate complexion. He wore a severe gray suit, gray vest, white shirt, striped tie pulled tight. He had no neck. He looked eminently capable of screwing Charley into a wall.

It was not a pleasant thought for Charley. He nodded emphatically at the cop, prayed to God that he
hadn’t
been imagining things, and then the two of them started up the walk to the Dandrige house.

Someone watched them from behind the curtains. Charley could see the shadowed silhouette in the window. It sent a shiver of dread through him that refused to go away, getting worse with every step he took.

They reached the door, and Lennox knocked firmly with his slab of a hand. The sound echoed through the silent house, an effect distinctly audible from the outside. It was as if they’d knocked on the door of a cave.

Footsteps followed, heavy and slow. Charley felt his fear grow nearly intolerable, prickling against the inside of his flesh.

The door opened.

It was the man who had caught him at the storm doors. He didn’t look any prettier than he had the day before. Even when he smiled, as he was doing right now, there was something cold and unpleasant about him.
Something foul,
Charley thought, and an image of maggots crawling through raw meat came unbidden.

“Yes?” the man said, looking from Lennox to Charley and back again.

“Mr. Dandrige?” the detective said.

“No. I’m Billy Cole, his roommate. Why?”

“Lieutenant Lennox. Homicide.” He flashed his badge. Billy’s eyes widened in what looked like genuine surprise. “Mind if we come in?”

“Not at all.” Billy stepped aside, allowing them entrance. Lennox entered first, automatically pocketing the badge. Charley followed, forcing himself to make eye contact, forcing down his fear. The face of his host was inscrutable.

Then he began to look around.

The foyer was huge, with black and white checkerboard tiles in the floor, each tile roughly two feet square. Two black, foreboding statues framed the foot of a massive, Gothic-looking staircase. The place was as imposing as the inside of a cathedral, though somewhat more sinister in tone.

The effect was mitigated slightly by the cardboard boxes stacked in the area, most of them not yet unpacked. There were also several pieces of heavy Victorian furniture, some of them covered with white dropcloths. They did
not
diminish the effect.

Charley checked out some of the stuff in the boxes, making his investigation casual. Nothing out of the ordinary showed: towels, clothes, unexceptional knick-knacks and household goods. He wondered if vampires took showers and stuff. He wondered if they needed to brush their teeth, or woke up in the middle of the day because they needed to take a leak.

Reaching no conclusions, he followed Billy and Detective Lennox into the living room, which was also full of unpacked boxes and crates. As they left the foyer, however, Charley noticed that one wall was completely lined with clocks.

None of them working.

All of them set for six o’clock.

“Is there anything I can help you with?” Billy asked when they had stopped walking.

“There’ve been a couple of murders,” Lennox replied. He was, at this point, taking Charley seriously enough to keep his eye on Cole at all times. “This young man lives next door, and he claims to have seen two of the victims at your house in the last few days.”

Cole looked shocked. “Oh, you’re kidding!” Lennox shook his head. Charley looked for a chink in Billy’s façade, didn’t find one. “This is ridiculous. Nobody’s come to visit since we got here. No Welcome Wagons, no nothing.” He grinned.

“That’s a lie,” Charley blurted. The two men turned to him appraisingly. He felt himself blush as he continued. “I saw him carry a body out in a plastic bag last night.”

Billy laughed. It didn’t sound phony. “That’s terrific,” he said. “I know exactly what he saw. Where he got this
body
business is something else again, but . . .” He shrugged disarmingly and took a couple of steps into the debris.

“Here,” he concluded, stooping to pick up a large Hefty bag. It was stuffed with wrapping paper and mashed cardboard boxes. He brandished it like a trophy.

“The bag I saw had a body in it,” Charley insisted, low.

“Did you actually see a body?” Skepticism was beginning to reemerge on Lennox’s face.

“Well . . .
no,
but . . .”

“But what?”

“. . . but I saw two girls here; one of ’em coming in, the other one through the window. They were the two girls on the news, I swear to God.” The words came out in a flurry. He was afraid that he wouldn’t get to finish.

“That’s completely ridiculous,” Billy insisted. He looked pissed now, and Charley had no doubt that it was genuine. “I think our young friend is lying through his teeth,” he continued, turning to Lennox. “That’s completely off the wall. Look, how about if I take you around back and show you what’s in all of our garbage bags?”

“He didn’t take the bag I’m talking about out back,” Charley insisted. “He put it in the Jeep and drove it away.”

Billy made a disgusted, impatient face. Lennox’s sympathy with Cole was obvious.

“Look. I can prove he’s lying,” Charley said. “Let’s look in the basement instead.”

“What’s in the basement, Charley?” Detective Lennox asked.

“Yes,” Billy echoed, turning to lock his eyes with Charley. “What’s supposed to be in the basement, Charley?”

Charley couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. There was something in Billy’s eyes that held him. Not hypnosis, not supernatural mind control, not anything heavier than basic mortal dread. Charley saw the menace that lurked behind the eyes, saw it clearly. He wished that Lennox would see it, too.

But Lennox didn’t see. Lennox was getting impatient. Seconds ticked past with ruthless precision, and still Charley couldn’t speak. And still Billy bored into him with his eyes. And still Lennox waited, tapping his foot now, waiting for the moment to break.

It did, at last, Billy turning to the detective and saying, “I think it’s pretty clear that the kid doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” He was about to continue when something snapped inside Charley Brewster, forcing the words that he did not want to say out of his throat.

“It’s a coffin!” he yelled. “That’s what’s down there: a coffin! I saw them carry it in!”

“What?”
Lieutenant Detective Lennox looked like he’d been knocked for a loop.

“Yeah,” Charley continued. “And you’ll find Jerry Dandrige in it, sleeping the sleep of the undead!”

“What are you
talking
about?” Lennox was utterly mystified now.

“He’s a
vampire!”
Charley practically screamed. “I saw him last night, through the upstairs bedroom window! He had fangs, and I watched him bite into her neck!”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” the detective muttered. He grimaced, the full weight of human stupidity pressing down on the corners of his mouth. Then he grabbed Charley roughly by the arm and said, “C’mon. We’re going outside.”

“But . . .”

“No
buts.”
Lennox didn’t shout, but he might as well have. Charley could feel his head being drilled into the wall already.

They moved toward the front door: Lennox pulling, Charley dragging along, Billy following languidly behind. The cop wasn’t looking at Billy Cole’s face, but Charley was. It was not the face of an innocent man. He leered as they reached the door, which Lennox threw open. Then it softened as the detective turned and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Cole.”

“Anytime.” Billy was smiling.

Lennox virtually tossed Charley through the doorway and onto the porch, then followed after. Cole shut the door behind them. Lennox quickly grabbed Charley’s arm again and dragged him down the walkway to his car.

“I oughtta take you in,” the cop hissed. “I oughtta take you in on a goddam charge of obstructing justice and nail your little ass to the floor. I could do that, you know? I could do that with ease.”

“I wasn’t lying,” Charley insisted. He was scared and hurt and angry enough to piss himself and slug Lennox simultaneously. “Jerry Dandrige
is
a vampire! If you just woulda
looked—”

“Now listen, kid.” Lennox slammed Charley into the side of the police cruiser—not hard enough to damage, but enough to show that there was more where that came from. “And listen good. If I ever see you down at the station house again, I’m gonna throw you in jail. And I don’t mean overnight.”

“But . . .”

Lennox wasn’t listening. He pushed Charley aside, threw open the car door and slid inside. The door slammed shut.

“Please,
sir! I’m—”

The cruiser’s engine kicked in with a murderous roar.

“—I’m telling the
truth!
I’m—”

Rubber and asphalt came together in a squeal of motion. The car fired away from the curb like a bottle rocket, tearing down the street.

“THEY’RE GONNA KILL ME!” Charley screamed, and then Lennox and his vehicle screeched around the corner, disappearing from view forever.

The front door of the Dandrige house creaked open. Billy Cole stood there.

He was smiling.

EIGHT

T
he door went flying inward and Charley followed suit. There was a narrow flight of stairs directly before him. He took them two at a time.

“EDDIE!” he hollered. “EDDIE!”

Evil Ed’s room was at the end of the hall. Charley sprinted toward it, not thinking about the members of the Thompson household, not thinking about anything but the coppery taste of horror on his tongue. When he reached Ed’s door, he threw it open.

Evil Ed was parked in front of his desk. He held a delicate paintbrush in his right hand and a hideous monster model in his left. It was The Ghoul, as advertised in the back pages of
Famous Monsters of Filmland.
Like the magazine, it was old, and had been out of distribution for many years. Ed had the whole set, treasured them enormously and periodically did touch-up work on their bloody jaws and pasty green complexions.

He was doing so now, and he didn’t appear thrilled at the interruption. “And to what,” he said, cocking one eyebrow disdainfully, “do I owe this dubious pleasure?”

“You gotta help me!” Charley gasped, out of breath.

Eddie sneered. “That’s Amy’s department.”

“No, no! You don’t understand! The vampire knows that I know about him.”

“What?”

“The vampire! He knows . . . or he will when he wakes up. Shit!” Charley glanced at his watch. It was four thirty-five.

Eddie glanced at his own watch instinctively, then looked back at Charley, disgusted. “What vampire are you referring to? There are so
many
of them, you know.”

He gestured snidely around the room. It was a virtual monster museum. Posters of old Karloff/Lugosi/Chaney, Jr. screamfests covered the walls. The rest of his models shared bookshelf space with half a ton of paperback horror novels, a boxed set of vintage
Tales From the Crypt,
complete collections of
Creepy, Eerie
and
Vampirella
and a vast assortment of creepy rubber monstrosities.

Charley stamped his foot, gritted his teeth and tried to pull himself together. “Look, I’m not kidding. A vampire moved into the house next door, and it’s going to kill me if I don’t protect myself.”

“Right.” Eddie snorted. “You’re a fruitcake, Brewster, I swear to God.”

“You’ve got to believe me!”

“No, I don’t.”

“But—”

“Listen.” Evil Ed gestured impatiently with his paintbrush. “I don’t know what
your
problem is, but it isn’t mine. Understand? Ever since you started hanging out with Amy, I’ve hardly seen you. You never have time, you never have anything nice to say. It seems to me like you sorta wrote me off. So I’m writing
you
off. Hit the road.”

“Eddie, please.” Charley’s voice had gotten softer. The truth of his old friend’s words—his ex-friend, from the sound of it—hit home. “I’m sorry. You’re right. But I really need your help. I’m scared.”

“You’ve got a vampire living next door.” Evil Ed nodded his head condescendingly. “Okay. I can see why you’re scared. Fer sure.” He grinned at The Ghoul and said, dotingly, “You’d be scared,
too,
wouldn’t you, Punkin’?”

“Don’t make fun of me!” The outburst of anger seemed sudden, but it had been building for a while. “I’m getting tired of everybody treating me like I’m crazy!”