ted klein Read online

  But by this time he had crept into the hall and was tiptoeing swiftly in the other direction, toward the distant stairs, praying he was too light to make the floorboards creak—and if they did, that the shower would mask their sound.

  Before he’d gone more than a few steps, the telephone rang in the bedroom.

  It was as loud and jarring as an alarm bell. He stopped dead; the game was up. He was old and skinny and wearing nothing but a towel; there was no way he’d escape the hulking creature behind him. He turned to face his antagonist, trying to say in one heartfelt expression, I׳m harmless, please don’t kill me!

  Down the hall, the man by the bathroom hadn’t moved. He continued to stare into the steamy little room.

  The phone rang a second time—and still the man didn’t move.

  Neither did Crumley, the doomed smile now frozen on his face.

  Seconds later, from the bedroom, came an audible click, then a whirring, and then a voice, sinister and insinuating:

  “Grrrreeeetings to you. Theess eess Count Jugula’s... D and D!” The speaker let out a screech of maniacal laughter that sounded as phony as the accent. “I’m tied up right now—or maybe tying up someone else—but you should leave your name and number, and I’ll be sure to get back to you. If you don’t, I’ll be sure to get you! ”

  Throughout the message, Crumley had stood rooted to the spot, and the man in the hall hadn’t moved.

  Now he did—away from Crumley. Farther down the hall. As if he hadn’t heard.

  Like the deaf.

  Crumley watched as the other shuffled slowly into the darkness. Yet he didn’t seize the chance to turn and run. He stood dazed as if poleaxed, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

  Even as the machine in the bedroom emitted an electronic beep, followed by another voice—a woman’s voice, requesting a brochure and leaving an address in Cleveland—Crumley didn’t move. The woman’s message was baffling, yet he was far more baffled by what had preceded it. It had left him stunned.

  He’d gone through a lot of phone machines in his time. From cheesy and primitive to state-of-the-art; he knew how poorly they reproduced voices. But he recognized the voice he’d heard on this one, distorted though it was by the tape and the phony accent. It was his own.

  In the shadows at the far end of the hall, he saw the hulking figure open another doorway, reach inside, flick on a light, and disappear into a room. It was clear that Crumley hadn’t been noticed, and that the phone had gone unheard.

  Pushing all questions from his mind and willing himself to move, Crumley whirled and hurried toward the stairway, where the smooth wooden floorboards abruptly gave way to the roughness of stone. Chilly as the wood had been beneath his bare feet, the stone felt even colder as he padded down the stairs. Behind him he could hear the echo of hollow metal as the other—a mere servant, it now seemed—emptied garbage cans.

  By the time he’d reached the bottom step, he was still in a daze, but his spirits, paradoxically, had begun to lift. He found himself beneath a high vaulted ceiling in what was obviously the front room of the house. Directly ahead, down a short, shadowed passage, lay the entrance.

  He gazed at his surroundings with a growing sense of wonder and relief, like a tourist who, having just survived an air crash, regards the airport’s souvenir shop and luggage carousel with the same astonishment he might normally have reserved for the Eiffel Tower or the Pyramids. His odyssey through the chambers of the house, from shower down to foyer, so nightmarish until just a few seconds ago, had now begun to take on the quality of a dream—and perhaps even a good one. He was starting to feel comfortable here.

  Best of all, there was a spot here to warm his feet, before an imposing stone fireplace almost too grand for the room, where flames fizzed and crackled on freshly stacked logs that looked as if they’d last the rest of the evening. An antique candelabra flickered atmospherically overhead, while the two electric lamps that provided most of the room’s light stood discreetly in the corners. Crumley was especially impressed by the tall grandfather clock, the sort he’d always wanted to own but had never had the space or money for, and by a grim-looking door near the foot of the stairs, adorned with iron bars and an improbably giant padlock, designed to look like the entrance to a dungeon, but in fact, he decided, the doorway to a wine cellar, one that might well be worth a visit.

  Now that he’d begun to get his bearings, he could see what this place actually was: an old stone house converted to an inn—in fact, it appeared, judging from the room and its furnishings, a sort of theme inn. There was even, by the door, a simple check-in counter, complete with oversize guest book and credit-card machine.

  Determined to explore the house further—the house? he’d half begun to think of it as his house, for he sensed that the mystery was going to be solved in his favor—he wandered through another doorway into what appeared to be the main room. It was as deserted as the first, dimly lit, and dominated by an even larger fireplace, though at the moment it was bare. The only illumination came from a recessed light in the ceiling. Most of the floor was covered by a thin green carpet and, near the fireplace, by a slightly ratty bearskin rug; as he circled the room the rug felt good against his feet. Along one wall a bay window revealed the dark shapes of trees and what may have been a lawn. Beyond the trees, the night looked almost impenetrable.

  In the shadows against the farther wall, behind a row of high wooden chairs, stood a small but well-stocked bar. He crossed to it and, still in his damp towel, hoisted himself into one of the seats. The air here smelled pleasantiy of liquor. On the bar top, just within the perimeter of light, lay a stack of printed cocktail napkins bearing a cartoon of a grinning ghoul in a cape with a high peaked collar. He noticed, with mingled relief and disappointment, that the ghoul’s face was so crude as to be unrecognizable; after the shock of hearing his voice on the tape, he’d half expected that the face would be a caricature of his own. The creature was welcoming guests into a forbidding-looking mansion, Cartoon Gothic in style, surrounded by a flock of cartoon bats. A sign in front read count jugula’s dead & dreadfast.

  Appalled by the pun, he winced and looked away—and noticed, on the wall above the bar, a set of framed pictures; or rather, he could see now, framed articles. They were in shadow, however; he couldn’t make out what they said. Snapping on a small clown-shaped bar lamp, he got down from the chair and walked behind the bar to examine them.

  The largest of them, an entire page from one of the supermarket tabloids, caught his eye first—not because of its size, but because it bore a muddy black-and-white photo of Crumley himself, or of a man who looked just like him, dressed in an expensive tie and jacket and standing, it appeared, before some sort of public building. He was grinning broadly; Crumley, though troubled, was pleased to see how good he looked. The headline proclaimed, paroled killer all smiles now—but the fangs still show.

  Above it, and already slightly yellowed, hung a small newspaper editorial (“Blood Money”) expressing outrage that “thanks to the liberal court’s so-called ‘Count Jugula’ decision,” a mass murderer could now become rich while serving time in prison for his crimes. It accused the Count of “cashing in on his notoriety.”

  And he’d apparently cashed in well, judging from the Money magazine article next to it: an author invests prudently—from his prison cell. Nearby hung a photo, captioned Jugula Spills All, that looked as if it came from a local pennysaver. It depicted the Count, or Crumley, flourishing a pen before an open volume at a book signing, presumably after his release.

  The Count’s picture appeared again, along with several others Crumley didn’t recognize, on the cover of a true-crime monthly called CrimeBeat. The story, “Men Who Kill Women—and the Women Who Love Them,” contained a display quote in large red type that sprang out from the page: there’s never been a murderer, no matter how depraved, that didn’t have his coterie of fans.

  Beneath it hung an illustrated feature from a travel magazine (cou
nt on this innkeeper—for a vacation off the beaten track), describing how, “mellowed and rehabilitated,” the former convict now devoted himself to his so-called “D-and-D.” He was, the article declared, “the most affable of hosts, his violence all behind him: ‘I’ve gotten it out of my system,’ he explains. ‘I want to get on with my life.’” A photo showed him smiling genially as he greeted two female guests, while their bags were carried upstairs by the shambling creature Crumley had seen in the hall. “I like to call him Igor,” the Count confided in the caption, “but his real name is Bruce!”

  A final photo, a flattering full-face publicity shot, appeared to have been clipped from the TV section of a newspaper. The caption said it all: Nathan “Count Jugula” Crumley tells the NBC audience that life outside prison has been good to him.

  He reached for the nearest bottle, opened it, and drank.

  He drank a good-bye to Nat Crumley—good-bye to “Nat,” hello to the Count—and a toast to his peculiar good fortune. For more than half a century he’d led a life of restraint and strict routine, holding his demons in check; and all the while another man, the man he might have been, had been out in the world accomplishing great things. Instead of reading books on self-realization, Jugula had acted.

  Now, thanks to the tiniest of breaks in that routine, with a single unwitting step out of character, he was that man.

  Or almost. He certainly didn’t feel very liberated. He was still an angry soul, a finicky misfit who smashed his possessions and forced himself to paint within the lines. Not like the genial Count Jugula.

  But then, the Count was different; he had, so he claimed, gotten it all out of his system. Crumley had not. Not yet.

  He was going to have to think about that.

  Meanwhile, he had new responsibilities: the house to maintain, a reputation to uphold, a world full of enemies to occupy and obsess him. And right now there was cleaning up to do; the shower was still running, and he was still damp. He would have to wipe up all the spots where he’d been dripping. Guests were on their way, that’s what the woman had said. The Wykoffs, they were called. He would have to get things ready for them. Tightening the towel around his waist, he hurried upstairs to turn off the shower.

  Camera Shy

  (from 100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories, ed. Robert Weinberg, Stefan Dziemianowicz, and Martin H. Greenberg)

  EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally written to accompany a series of photographs.

  “Why would anyone take a picture of an empty chair?”

  The front door slammed; he was back early today. In silence Mrs. Melnick worked her pudgy fingers through the dough, a cookbook propped open before her. Jennifer and Laszlo would be coming home later this evening, and she wanted to have the cake ready in time for their arrival. Only yesterday, it seemed, she had waved goodbye to them as they’d marched up the steps of the airplane; later she had watched the plane’s winking yellow taillights disappear into the eastern sky. Yet soon—in a matter of hours—the two would be returning to the States, their honeymoon behind them. Imagine, she thought, married one whole month...

  “I swear to God,” called Mr. Melnick from the living room, “it’s nothing but a goddamned empty chair!” The closet door banged open as he hung up his coat. “I told you not to hire that photographer!”

  Mrs. Melnick stopped what she was doing. “Photographer? What photographer?”

  “The one who took the wedding pictures.”

  “You mean they’re here?” She hurried from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. “So don’t keep me in suspense. How did they come out?”

  “Terrific—if you like pictures of furniture!” He was sitting penseur-like upon the edge of the couch, gloomily examining the photo in his hand. Others lay before him on the coffee table, piled atop a large manila envelope. He looked up as she came in.

  “I found them in the mail just now. God knows what to make of this one.” He held up the photo for her inspection. “See? If you ask me, it’s a waste of perfectly good film.”

  Mrs. Melnick glanced at it and shrugged. “Just practice, I guess. Come on, let’s see the others.” Seating herself heavily beside him, she reached for the pile, then drew back her hand. “Go ahead. I don’t want to get them sticky.”

  The photo on top showed the same empty chair from a slightly different angle, but the one beneath it was an ordinary snapshot in which wedding guests stood stiffly round a punch bowl. Behind them a trio of musicians were setting up their instruments, perspiration gleaming from their faces. The reception had been held at a local country club, early on a warm September evening. The sky, she recalled, had been brilliantly flooded with moonlight, yet in the photograph—due, no doubt, to some trick of the flashbulb—a row of windows in the background appeared to look out on a world of impenetrable darkness.

  Her husband turned over the next photo, and the next; smiling pink faces passed glossily in review. “A nice shot of Aunt Ida,” he said, apparently surprised, “and this one of you and Jennifer is decent enough.”

  The sight made her wince. “God,” she moaned, “I look so fat! And so does Jennifer. I only hope she’s had the sense to keep her weight down over there, with all that continental cooking.” She thought briefly, guiltily, of the cake she’d been preparing for Jennifer’s return, and of the letters they’d received from her this past month: ecstatic reports of the Alhambra by moonlight, Paris after dark, the best night-spots in Rome, dining by candlelight in Vienna—and then that odd, half-scrawled postcard from Laszlo’s native village outside Budapest...

  “Jennifer’s not fat,” Mr. Melnick was saying. “She’s just a little on the zoftig side. And better zoftig than this.” He pointed grimly to the next photo in the stack.

  Turning to it, Mrs. Melnick sighed and shook her head. “Poor Pamela,” she said. “Such a tragedy. Jennifer will be so upset when she finds out.”

  Pamela Lebow had been the bridesmaid. She had been ill at the time of the wedding, but she nonetheless managed to attend, rising from her sickbed to join, albeit lethargically, in the nuptial rites. Afterward, however, as if exhausted from the strain, she had taken once more to her bed. While the bride and groom were winging majestically toward Europe, she had sunk into the all-embracing darkness of a coma. Less than a week later she was dead. The doctors had blamed an obscure form of anemia, and checked to see that their malpractice insurance was paid up.

  “She looks so happy, somehow,” observed Mrs. Melnick. “As if she knew she hadn’t long to live and didn’t really care.”

  Mr. Melnick nodded. “Sad, very sad.” He avoided mentioning to his wife that, with her deathlike face and shadow-haunted eyes, the young lady had in fact given him the creeps. In the photograph the two Melnick women, mother and daughter, were beaming at the camera like a pair of Brueghel peasants, shoulders broad and foreheads shining rosily, while Pamela stood beside them looking pale and oddly distracted. She was smiling a wan Mona Lisa smile and seemed to be staring at someone just beyond the edge of the picture.

  Perhaps she was looking at Laszlo. The two of them had dated for a while, shortly before he’d met Jennifer, and they’d remained close even during Laszlo’s engagement. Pamela had proved a good friend to them both; she had never shown an ounce of jealousy.

  “The poor thing,” said Mrs. Melnick. “It meant so much to her to come to the wedding.” She handed the photo back to her husband. “We’ll have to send a copy to her parents. You really must admit, dear, the photographer did a very fine job.”

  He grunted noncommittally, already peering at the next one in the pile. “Well, this shot of the three of us is okay, I guess, except my goddamned tie is crooked.”

  “Of course it is, silly! That’s what I kept telling you.”

  “And look, here’s one of that woman Seymour brought, who drank so much—”

  “Ugh! Don’t remind me!”

  “—and who made that awful scene outside the ladies’ room.” He flipped through several more. “
This one of Cousin Oliver’s not bad”—Oliver had doubled as Laszlo’s best man, since Laszlo’s friends and family were, all of them, in Hungary—“but I still say I’ve taken better pictures myself, and for a hell of a lot less money.” He reached for another. “The trouble with these so-called ’professionals’ is that they don’t know the first thing about— Hmm. Now this is strange.”

  Mr. Melnick squinted at the photo in his hand. His own plump face grinned back at him above a crooked tie. He was standing by the doorway of the reception room, one arm thrust awkwardly in the air. There was something terribly unnatural about the pose, something in the placement of the arm. He felt a tiny chill.

  His wife leaned forward to study the photo more closely. A smile crossed her face. “He’s certainly caught you at an odd moment,” she said. “You look just like a lamppost!”

  Or a gallows, he thought. He searched his memory, then gave up. “I can’t understand it,” he said, “I’m sure I never posed this way for anyone. Believe me, I’d remember if I did. The closest thing was... Well, you remember, don’t you? That photographer asked me and Laszlo to get together for a close-up, and Laszlo didn’t seem to want to, and I made a joke about how maybe he was afraid to have his picture taken alongside a handsome guy like me. In the end, of course, he agreed, and we posed together by the doorway—me and Laszlo, standing arm in arm...”

  He fell silent.

  “Well,” his wife said at last, “Laszlo certainly isn’t in this one.”

  Mr. Melnick frowned. “The odd thing is...” He cleared his throat. “The odd thing is, he doesn’t seem to be in any of them.”

  Indeed, he was not. What’s more, the photographs looked terribly strange without him. Cousin Oliver turned up in another close-up, but from his position at the left half of the picture it was clear that a second figure was supposed to have been standing by his side. Jennifer, in a later photo, was shown feeding a slice of wedding cake to thin air, while a ring of smiling faces looked on. In still another, the young woman appeared to be dancing with herself, while poor Pamela gazed longingly at the place where Laszlo should have been.