Bloodless

30

Bertram Ingersoll tugged at his tie, pulled the knot down about two inches, undid the top button of his shirt, and plucked the collar away from his sticky throat. He didn’t bother looking at his watch, but he knew it had to be at least three in the morning. When they’d entered Chippewa Hall at 9 PM, he had assumed the heat and humidity would have broken by the time they left. He’d assumed wrong.

“Look, Bert,” said his wife, Agnes, pointing as they crossed East Jones Street. “There’s a perfect example, right on the corner. Gothic revival, with strong elements of Georgian. Just look at that hipped roof!”

Ingersoll grunted and made a show of looking up. To hear the excitement in her voice, you’d think she’d discovered some goddamn rare bird with two beaks and three assholes, instead of just another decaying mansion.

As they continued south on Habersham, she gripped his arm. “And there!” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “What an eccentric example of Regency detail. Imagine: putting a frieze like that on top of ionic columns! I’ve never seen a pediment with such... hold on, dear, I’ve got to take a picture.”

Ingersoll managed to suppress a sigh of irritation, waiting as she fished in her bag for her cell phone. Good luck getting a decent shot at this time of night, he thought.

He should have known what he was getting into after thirty-one years of marriage. Their interests had never been all that compatible, and they’d only diverged further with passing years. On top of that, the damn ED medication he’d started taking wasn’t doing its job at all.

Years ago, they’d made a deal: all their vacations would be two weeks long, one week for him and one for her. This vacation had been no different. He’d spent a fantastic, relaxing week on Hilton Head, playing thirty-six holes of golf a day and hanging out in the evenings at the country club. Agnes had lounged by the pool reading Dorothy Sayers mysteries. They’d seen each other only at breakfast and dinner. Credit where credit is due: she hadn’t complained.

But now it was payback time: a weeklong conference of the Southern Architectural Society. The society’s lectures were held every night at nine, and because of the late hour, Agnes insisted on his company. These were truly hell on earth: professors and architects yammering on endlessly about the most infinitesimal details, followed by the inevitable cocktail reception that never ended before two. Or, in tonight’s case, even later. Ingersoll, who’d been an actuary by profession, found architecture dry and impenetrable. In his job, he’d walked through the lobby of the Birmingham Professional Arts Building — one of the most famous examples of art deco architecture outside of New York City — for twenty years without ever looking up. Who the hell cared how the damn window frames were carved, as long as the building didn’t fall down?

They went another block, Agnes jabbering the whole time, neck craned, until their progress was interrupted by a tree-lined square. “This is it,” she said. “Whitefield Square. I think we turn right.”

“Left,” Ingersoll muttered.

As they turned left onto Taylor, he could see clouds scudding across a bloated moon. A gust of wind blew by, rustling the trees in the square behind them.

“Dear?” Agnes said. “Would you mind terribly if we stayed an extra day? After tonight’s lecture, Dr. Black told me this part of Savannah has some of the most interesting buildings in the entire historical district. He even wrote out half a dozen of their addresses for me.”

Ingersoll almost declared that he’d rather suck the balls of Satan than stay an extra day. But he stopped himself in time. Agnes never got angry with him, not exactly — she just went quiet for a week or two. He’d made it through six days, and he’d be a fool to blow it now.

Twisting his lips into a smile, he turned toward her. “One more day?” he said. “I think that’s—”

His wife suddenly halted.

What happened next, Ingersoll couldn’t exactly say, even when questioned by the police about it later, because nothing about it made sense. They were swept with another gust of wind — only it was not like any wind he’d ever experienced before, thick and deep and oddly low. As it washed over them, accompanied by a horrible odor, he was seized by a feeling of unutterable dread, and the sense that a hideous, invisible presence was above them. And then came a sequence of sounds: a wet, sloppy impact at his feet, Agnes’s sharp scream, and an unearthly beating noise so alien it chilled him to the bone... and then Ingersoll fell sprawling across something soft lying on the sidewalk that, it took him several moments to realize, was a warm dead body.