A Matter of Taste

Chapter 5

Angie, retreating into the guest bedroom to get away from that soft terrible sound at the front door, turned on the tape machine again. For one thing, she was terrified at the idea of falling asleep; and for another, she had an urge to hear more of the fantastic story on the tape. Her urge was perhaps illogical, but really it was not as crazy as the nightmare into which she and John had fallen during the past few hours. She had a feeling, strong though impossible to justify, that the tape might tell her something that would be useful in getting out of the bad dream again.

Some fifteen minutes later she turned the tape player off again. Unable to resist a horrified fascination with what might be happening at the front door, she returned to the living room.

Here all was silent. No one beat at the front door or pushed the bell. The viewer was still turned off. John, sitting in one of the armchairs, looked up, hollow-eyed, when Angie appeared. Clutching the arms of his chair, he said: "The pounding stopped a few minutes ago."

Feeling compelled to look, Angie went to the viewer near the door and turned it on.

The screen showed that the hallway outside was deserted.

John had got up to stand behind her, staring over her shoulder at the viewer. Now he let out pent-up breath in an exhausted sigh. "They may have let her go," he said.

Angie didn't answer.

"We couldn't have helped her, Angie. With you in here I couldn't take a chance on letting them get in." Then he paused. "Hell, I wouldn't have let them in anyway. I couldn't."

She sighed. "Did you ever get through to Joe?"

"I left a message on his phone. That's all I could do. I know Joe and Kate sometimes turn off the ringer on the extension in their room at night."

A wise move, Angie thought silently, for someone like Joe Keogh, who counts a vampire among his friends, and has married into a family where they call a vampire uncle. Who would be insane enough to do a thing like that?

Angie raised her hands, spread her fingers out, and looked at them. Suddenly she found herself wondering what it would do to you, inside, to have a couple of those little parts of yourself hacked off or torn off or whatever. She was going to have to get the story from John, someday, in detail.

At least her hands weren't shaking. But there had been moments during these last few hours when she'd had trouble deciding whether she was awake or asleep. Or simply losing her mind.

The phone in the alcove rang. John hesitated, gave her a look as if warning her to be on guard, and answered.

"It's Joe," he said a moment later, and she saw his shoulders slump with relief.

Angie at the moment was too tired, too seriously disconnected from events, to feel much of anything. Sitting down on the sofa, she listened to John relating, in the manner of one who expected to be believed, the events of the night just ended. Then, marvelously, what Angie could deduce of Joe's responses to this story suggested strongly that Joe did not think they were crazy. Joe was evidently not demanding to know why the police had not been summoned. It even sounded as if he were ready to give them some kind of help.

At this point Angie began to come out of her dazed state.

Presently John hung up the phone. Obviously he had found his talk with Joe enormously reassuring. Now he announced in an almost normal voice that Joe had promised to come around as soon as possible, probably within a couple of hours. Angie began to be comforted; even if Joe thought he was only humoring a couple of lunatics, something would be resolved now, decisive action would be taken.

While they were waiting for Joe Keogh to arrive, John stalked from room to room of the locked and sealed apartment. He paused frequently to listen at the front and back doors, flicking the viewers on and off. Only once was there someone in the hall, an innocent passerby apparently. He paused also to look out of the windows. Outside there continued to be nothing but grim Chicago weather, once more turning foul enough to hide most of the city even in broad daylight. Several times in the course of his restless prowling John went into the one room where the curtains were still drawn against the daylight, where Uncle Matthew still lay in silence. Twice Angie followed him.

On the third of these visits they paused beside the bed. Now she thought, and John agreed, that the patient's color was a little better. But his lips still looked very dry.

"Shouldn't we get him a drink of water? Or—

"No. He only drinks one thing."

Angie was about to ask John again whether he was serious, but bit back the question just in time. Then she suddenly remembered something. "John?"

"What?"

"I've been thinking all along that I've heard the name 'Matthew Maule' somewhere before. I just remembered where. It's in Hawthorne."

John looked at her, uncomprehending.

"Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables. Matthew Maule is the old wizard who's burned at the beginning of the book. What was the curse he called down on the Pyncheons, the people who'd destroyed him? 'God has—' " She suddenly bit her lip.

"What?"

" 'God has given him blood to drink.' That was it."

The two of them stood looking down at Uncle Matthew.

Angie said: "I think he definitely looks a little more—normal."

"Yes, I think you're right. Despite the fact that it's daytime, which ordinarily makes him weaker. God, I hope he's starting to come out of it." The last sentence had the sound of a fervent prayer.

Taking Uncle Matthew by his limp right hand, speaking clearly and distinctly, John did his best to pass along the good news that help, in the person of Joe Keogh, was on the way. But the dried lips would not speak in response, the glassy eyes remained unfocused.

At last John dropped the pale hand and straightened up. "I don't have any idea if he hears me or not. I hope he understands."

"At least he does look a little better. And Joe's coming."

They retreated to the kitchen, where Angie on an impulse began looking into the refrigerator and cupboards.

Somewhat to her surprise she discovered clean dishes and silverware, unopened containers of untouched food, including a fresh carton of milk. Sink and dishwasher were empty. It looked to Angie as if the apartment had just been cleaned up and stocked with supplies in anticipation of guests. The coffeemaker sitting on the counter was new, and as far as Angie could tell still entirely unused. She decided to brew a pot in an effort to stay awake. She still wasn't hungry, but once the smell of coffee hit the air, John decided that he was starving. He found a melon in the refrigerator's vegetable bin and cut it up, then started to open a package of bacon and a carton of eggs. Bread came out of the freezer. Morning daylight, food, and domesticity could hold nightmares at arm's length.

Angie joined in the breakfast preparations, moving about the kitchen chores mechanically, her mind still trying to fight free of terror and shock. Coffee didn't help very much. When she'd had two cups and had eaten something without really being aware of what she swallowed, she sat in the living room and tried to rest while John methodically took care of the dirty dishes. But every time her body started to relax, her eyelids began to sag, an onrush of unreasoning terror came to jerk her wide awake again. The memory of Elizabeth Wiswell's face, her bloodstained throat, her voice, her feeble pounding on the door, would not be exorcised.

Not only was Angie's exhaustion growing, but anger swelled up in her too, making room for itself by forcing layers of fear aside. Several times she asked John: "But what did they want with him?"

"All I know is somehow they managed to—poison him. Drug him. And then while he's knocked out they come around and try to get at him. So what they want can't be anything good."

"How did they poison him, do you suppose?"

John only shook his head.

Giving up for the moment on her attempt to rest, Angie walked to a window and looked out past the wide-open curtains. There was the lake, three or four blocks away horizontally and a comparable distance below. At such a remove, in a momentary patch of sunlight, the water looked tranquil.

She said again, more hopefully this time: "Maybe they've really gone away."

John snorted. "Maybe they want us to think so. I wouldn't bet on it. I wouldn't bet on it at all. Maybe they hope we'll run out on the old man while we have the chance. But I think they'll be back, when the sun goes down if not before."

"And Liz?"

"I don't know what happened to her. I just don't know. But we couldn't have helped her last night. There was nothing we could have done."

"Anyway, you think we're safe in here for the time being?"

"If they couldn't break in last night, I don't think they can do it now." John turned his gaze toward her and his shoulders slumped. He looked exhausted. "I'm sorry, honey."

"Not your fault." Though deep inside, justly or unjustly, she felt angry at him for getting her into this. And for not trying somehow to help the waitress.

John started thinking aloud. "One thing that worries me is that not all of them are vampires. That Stewart wasn't."

"You said that before."

"Yes. That means some of them will be as active as we are during the daytime."

"We're going to have to sleep sometime!"

"Take it easy, honey." He looked at her in a kind of critical horror. "You're moving around like a sleepwalker and your eyelids are falling shut. You get some sleep now, before Joe gets here. It's as good a time as any."

Angie tried, taking off her shoes and stretching out on the sofa in the day-bright living room. But she still kept waking up with a start of terror every time she started to doze off. Between them they decided that John had better take the first nap.

At a little before nine o'clock, a brisk tap came at the door. Angie, slumped in an armchair in a state between sleep and waking, jumped up, but she couldn't make herself go to the viewer. She hastened to wake John, who was lying on the sofa fully clothed, snoring heavily.

The tap was repeated, urgently, even as he awoke and hurried to switch on the viewer. In a moment his shoulders slumped with relief, and he was opening the door. "It's Joe," he said.

In another moment Joe Keogh, wearing a topcoat, was in the room. Angie had met him a couple of times, briefly, over the last few months. Joe was about forty, his fair hair beginning to be streaked almost invisibly with gray. Of average size and sparely muscular, he couldn't have put on more than a few pounds since his days as a Chicago cop. Today his tough-looking face was set in a grim expression.

John did not waste a second in barring and chaining the door again behind him.

Joe looked quickly around, while in the process of pulling off his topcoat and tossing it on a chair. He was wearing a sportcoat now and an open-collared shirt. He nodded to Angie and gave her a smile calculated to be reassuring. "How you doing?"

She was sitting in a chair, feeling weak in the knees.

"Better, now that you're here. You must think we're crazy, but—"

"Oh, no. I know better than that. John and I have both been through this kind of thing before. How's the old man doing?"

"No change," said John. "Still the way I described him to you on the phone."

"Let me see him."

In Uncle Matthew's bedroom Joe, frowning, bent over the bed and inspected the patient without touching him. He could only shake his head afterward. Angie observed that he looked more worried now than when he'd entered the apartment. "Damned if I know. I've never seen anything like it." He studied Angie. "I suppose Johnny's been explaining a few things to you?"

"I don't know if I can make myself believe what he's told me. I keep thinking we ought to call the police."

The ex-cop shook his head. "No, John's right, that wouldn't be a good idea."

Johnny interrupted to ask their visitor, "Was anyone watching the place when you came in?"

"No. But that doesn't mean they're not around. Angie, tell me more about this guy who calls himself—what? Valentine Kaiser?"

Angie repeated in more detail the story of her phone call from Kaiser, and her coffee-shop meeting with him. Joe, who hadn't heard any of this before, listened with intense concentration.

When she'd finished, John contributed his own description of the man, as he had seen him briefly standing in the hall. He added: "No doubt about what he is."

Joe was nodding slowly. "I think I could tell. Hell, I know I could. And you should be able to tell better than me."

"After what I went through eleven years ago, there was no doubt in my mind. I don't have any trouble recognizing one of them when I see one."

Joe was suddenly sounding like a cop. "Is this Kaiser one of that bunch who were involved in your kidnapping?"

"No. I'm sure he's not. I never saw him before. But I can tell what he is."

Something else was beginning to bother Angie, bother her more and more, and she decided that she was going to take care of it. Maybe she couldn't do much for the old man, as Joe called him, but at least she would wipe the blood off his face. While the men talked, she went into the adjoining bathroom to wet a towel.

While in the process of doing this she discovered that in this bathroom there was no mirror over the sink. A flat, glassy screen of the proper size and shape was there. But it reflected only dully.

The screen was built right into the wall, and wouldn't open when Angie tugged at a corner—no medicine chest behind it. And just above the screen, angled down to aim directly at her, was the glassy end of a dark cylinder, recognizable as the eye of a video camera

Wondering, Angie observed and touched a switch beside the screen. Extra vanity lights came on, and in a moment her own image had appeared, in color and close-up, on the screen that took the place of a mirror. The picture had something odd about it, and Angie needed a moment to realize that this was not the reversed image that an ordinary mirror always presented. When Angie raised her right hand, the right hand of the young woman in the electronic picture, not the left, went up.

Leaving the video turned on, she finished wetting her towel and came back out into the bedroom. "John? Did you see this?"

Following her gesture, he went into the bathroom and looked at the camera and screen. Joe, who tagged along, grinned faintly and shook his head as if in admiration. "Kind of unusual, huh?" But in fact neither of the men seemed especially surprised.

Back in the bedroom, Angie bent over the man in the bed and gently wiped the dried gore from around his mouth, his chin, and his bare chest. His eyes blinked once. Despite everything, she found much that was attractive about his face. Then, shuddering just perceptibly, she threw the towel into a laundry basket.

Speaking about the video arrangement, she said, "I've never seen anything like it. But I can see there are advantages. You see yourself the way you are, I mean not reversed."

The men looked at each other. John drew a deep breath. "Honey? The real point is that Uncle Matthew doesn't care for mirrors."

"He doesn't—?"

"No. And they don't do him any good anyway. I'm only surprised that some of the other rooms, like the one we slept in, do have them. No, I guess I'm not surprised. He likes to be courteous to his guests."

Angie was thinking aloud "It's almost like he's—disfigured somehow. Though of course he isn't, he's very handsome. I mean, about the mirrors, and being a recluse—" But no, she wasn't thinking straight at all. If you wanted to avoid seeing your own disfigurement, how would a video camera be any better than a mirror? Of course you could leave it turned off—

Joe cut in. "Angie, you haven't got it yet."

"I haven't?"

Joe looked around the room. "Have you got a small mirror? In your purse, maybe?" He sounded calm and deadly serious.

Without asking any questions Angie went out of the room and came back in a moment with her purse, from which she extracted a small mirror, holding it out to Joe.

"Don't give it to me, hold it yourself. And take a good look at him. In your mirror." Joe gestured toward the man on the bed.

She tried, and blinked, and rubbed the compact glass. She tried again, from several angles, and in several intensities of light. There were the upper bedclothes, cleanly visible, but they were mounded up over nothing but hollow invisibility. And there was the lower sheet, with its crackling plastic envelope of earth beneath it, pressed down as if under the weight of a solid body. But if there was a body there, the mirror was letting her look right through it. She needed a minute to convince herself that the image of the being she had been calling Uncle Matthew was not going to appear as a reflection.

Once having achieved this understanding, she turned a helpless face to Joe.

"Don't ask me why or how," he said. "I've heard of the laws of optics and all that. Maybe there's really an image there in your mirror, but the human brain just won't see it."

And that of course was no help at all.

Angie still had had no sleep to speak of, and in her present state of exhaustion she was turning abnormally suggestible, likely to accept almost anything without an argument. Now she began to fear hallucinations. But reason and fear were both losing the struggle against sleep. At last, on a sofa, in the security of as much daylight as the apartment afforded, she succumbed. Her slumbers were beset by dreams, dreams of pale anonymous faces that came drifting in the night outside the windows of the apartment, mouthing pleas and threats. In her dreams she thought she could hear the creatures through the thick and otherwise inviolable glass, but their voices had no power to awaken her.

When Angie did wake up she felt rested, and more herself than she had for a long time. It was almost as if she had slept for many hours, though the time was only a little after noon. The day was cloudy as before, but the light was still comfortingly full. Angie, now starting to feel hungry, stretched, wondered if she should take a shower, and instead went first into the kitchen where the men were seated at the table with coffee mugs in front of them. Abstractedly she gathered materials and made herself a cheese sandwich. There was mustard in the refrigerator. She poured herself coffee, and prepared to make a second pot.

Then, chewing her first bite of sandwich, she turned to the men. Her voice was deadly serious. "I've had some sleep and I think I'm in my right mind. And now, you are going to tell me what it's all about. Starting from the beginning. The truth and the whole truth. Or else, I swear to both of you, I am going to run out into the hall and scream and scream until the cops come."

Joe was not impressed. He shook his head. "I wouldn't bet it'll be the cops who reach you first if you do that," he said. "Anyway, John told you right. We don't want the cops in here. Not now. They'll come in and see the old man and call an ambulance—"

Angie interrupted. "I know! I know. And we can't afford to let him be taken out of his dwelling place. I just hate to believe I don't have running out and screaming to fall back on as a last resort."

"I think among the three of us we can come up with some better ideas than that."

She pulled up a chair to the table and said to Joe: "Let's hear yours."

"All right. First of all, the people who are trying to force their way in here are vampires, or at least their leader is." He looked at her searchingly. "It's important that you believe that."

"If you and John both—yes. I can believe it."

"Good. Next, there's something they want from"— Joe jerked his head in the direction of the bedroom—"him. From what you tell me they did last night, and what they said, all too probably it's his life. Most likely it's a matter of revenge. But John and I both owe him our lives, or the equivalent. So, we're standing by him."

Angie tossed her hair back. "I wouldn't want you to do anything else. So if I'm going to be a part of this crazy family I stand by him too."

"Good." Joe's expression relaxed a trifle. "But you're in a somewhat different position, Angie. You had no idea what you were getting into here. I'd like to be able to offer you a way out, but that's not possible. It's too late. You're in it now, hell or high water, and all we can do is fight it out together."

In the silence that followed all three people at the table distinctly heard a faint groan from the direction of the bedrooms. After exchanging startled glances they were pushing back chairs, bumping into one another, rushing to get a look at their host

The one they called the old man had raised himself on one elbow in the bed. He groaned again as the three breathing folk rushed into his room, and he seemed to be trying to speak. Angie, with a rush of relief, thought that he looked much more human than he had for many hours.

The three clustered around him, all talking at once, then all falling silent as they concentrated on trying to understand what he was trying to say. Their efforts were still in vain.

Then Uncle Matthew collapsed, groaning, flat on his back once more. He gave up trying to talk. Still, he looked better, more alive, than he had for many hours.

Joe went to the bedroom windows, making sure that the special curtains were tightly drawn. The old man now looked as if he were sleeping peacefully. Except that there was no sign of breathing. But Angie noted a faint pulse visible in his temple; when she put her fingers on the wiry arm she could feel it in his wrist as well.

Joe, leading the others back to the living room, looked almost elated "He's starting to come out of it, and that's great. Especially in daytime. His vitality's usually down once the sun's up. I'd say if he makes it through the day there's a good chance he'll really snap out of this tonight."

John expressed agreement. "Then he can tell us what happened."

"God, I hope so. He just doesn't get sick, in my experience. Actually he looks like he's been drugged. But I never heard of any drug that would take effect on one of them… tell me again about this woman who was with him last night."

Angie and John obliged. Shortly after Joe had heard that episode in greater detail, he put on his topcoat and got ready to depart. On the verge of leaving, he delivered a few hearty comments obviously meant to boost their morale, capped by his firm promise to return. He also advised against their leaving the apartment for any reason.

"But right now I'd better move along. There're things I can do better from outside, and I'm going to start doing 'em." He looked at Angie. "I'm not going to offer to escort you away from here. I honestly don't know if you'd be safer staying here or coming with me, but I suspect that staying here is best."

"If John's staying here, I'm staying too. What would I do, go home and wait alone for them to catch up with me there?"

Joe, looking gloomy, thought about it and shrugged. "I don't know if they'd try to do that or not. I just don't know."

"What're you going to do?" John asked him.

"Try to contact Mina, for one thing." He looked at Angie, groping for some quick way to explain. "An old friend of an old friend. She might be a big help." John nodded.

In another moment Joe was gone, out the front door. The viewing screen gave no sign that anyone had observed his departure.

"I feel a lot better with Joe on the job," said John after the door was bolted up securely after him.

"I do too. At least I certainly did when he was here. Johnny, I wish you'd tell me more about this mess we're in."

John led the way back into the kitchen, where he started to make himself a sandwich. "I'll tell you what I can," he said. Then he nodded in the direction of the bedrooms. "He could tell his own story much better than I can. I guess he thought that listening to the tape would break it to you gradually—I don't know. I've been trying to figure out how to tell you about him for about a month now, and I'm still trying."

"Go ahead." Now her voice was subdued; John had his sandwich made, and she was starting mechanically to clean up the coffee cups, the paper towels, the knife with cheese on it.

John sat at the table, munching between sentences. "All right. He's not really my uncle, and his name isn't really Matthew Maule. At least that's only one of a number of names he uses. When I was kidnapped, at the age of sixteen, he was calling himself Dr. Emile Corday. Just an old friend of the family, visiting from London. The Chicago cops are probably still looking for Dr. Corday. Not that he did anything to be ashamed of then. The people he hurt were all kidnappers."

"Oh."

"So I'll tell you what I can. But I can't tell it the way he would. I can't even find the right place to begin."