Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 35, No. 4, September 1974

The reader should be warned: “The Dead Survive”, the first in our new series, A “DIFFERENT” STORY, is more than a detective tale: in it a young lawyer calls on the services of a strange society and works with their female representative to solve a startling mystery. It is a tale to make your spine tingle, for it is a tale of exorcism and vampirism, a dread tale brought into vivid reality by the extraordinary talents of its author, a truly “different” story!

I

I knew she wasn’t a Gubb’s Knob product. Straight ash-blonde hair combed back from her forehead, long graceful fingers curving around her coffee cup. The pale arch of her eyebrows told me her color was real and not something brewed up in Sadi’s Beauty Saloon.

She sat with her spine straight, legs crossed under the table, powder blue skirt hitting her about eight inches above the knee. She smoked and gazed through the plate-glass window beside the booth, though there wasn’t much to see except a half-dozen cars parked on the asphalt strip outside the motel. Diesel rigs blared past on the two-lane highway, interspersed by an occasional farm truck with an aluminum camper shell mounted on the back. On the river bottom beyond the road, rows of dry broken cornstalks converged to the point of infinity.

Gubb’s knob is country.

I walked into the steamy warmth, through the brewed coffee smell. Standing beside her booth I asked: “Are you Ann Valery?”

She raised her eyes — a dark clouded blue, like some northern ocean. She wore no wedding ring, only a blue sapphire of about four carats surrounded by seven white diamonds. Her nose was thin, narrow, patrician.

“Who are you?”

“Fred Bagram. I called your society—”

“About a man who returned from the dead, right?”

Her voice was calm and conversational, but her words seemed to echo through the place like a Chinese gong. I glanced quickly around: a truckdriver was shoving pie into his face, a salesman scribbled in his order book, Goldie was throwing cups under the counter.

I slid into the seat and leaned across the table. “Tell me, have you ever known of anybody surviving death?”

“An authenticated case? Never.”

“But you think it could happen?”

“In the nature of things, all is possible. But this is one of the least possible.”

“Why do you say that?”

Ann Valery lit another cigaret, clicking a tiny gold lighter with an enameled coat-of-arms welded on its front. “I’d rather not speculate. Why don’t you tell me what you know?” “First I have to know how much your society charges. Since I’m alone in this—”

“The society is merely an information center supported by people like myself. Some charge for services. I don’t.”

“That’s good. I mean, that you give your time.”

“It’s good that I don’t have to waste it on neurotics looking for attention. You’re not one of those, so,” Ann shrugged, “speak. I’m listening.”

I looked out the window, trying to think of a way to begin. My reflection bounced off the glass-square face, blunt features, curly brown hair with thick eyebrows almost meeting across the bridge of my nose. My cheeks were clean-shaven and glossy in the pale light.

“His name’s Robert George. Real-estate agent, heavy drinker, skirt-chaser, mid-thirties, normal in all respects. He had a trailer parked on some property south of town, he used to go there when he got drunk. His old lady, Eunice, had a habit of throwing dishwater on him when he passed out at home. About a month ago his trailer burned down with him inside it. His hair wasn’t even singed.”

“How do you know he was inside?”

“I watched it burn.”

Her brows went up a fraction of an inch. “How well do you know the... non-deceased?”

“We’ve been close friends for years. I’m his lawyer. We hunt and fish together when he isn’t on the bottle.”

“Do you drink?”

“Occasionally. But I wasn’t drinking that day.”

“Please go on. Tell me what you saw.”

“Well, he was on the tail-end of a two week bender, and I drove out to his trailer to see if he was ready to rejoin society. The trailer sits in an open field, hear the edge of the national forest. No houses within a couple of miles. I saw black smoke boiling up from a mile away. When I pulled into the drive the flames were whipping up to the treetops. My hair sizzled before I got within thirty feet of the trailer.

“I wrapped my coat around my head and tried to get closer, but my shirt started smouldering I had to stand back and watch it burn. The steel frame twisted like burnt matches. The aluminum siding peeled off and I saw Robert George’s body lying on the bed. There was heat-warp and smoke but I saw him clearly, believe me.”

“What did you do then?”

“I drove to a service station about three miles away and called the sheriff. Then I drove back to the trailer. Robert George was sitting on a rock, staring at the smoking ruins, I couldn’t believe it. Robert couldn’t remember anything. He didn’t even know what day it was. The sheriff came roaring in and saw Robert sitting there and really blew his screw. He figured we were both drunk and putting him on. Said he’d throw us in jail if we pulled anything like that again. Then he left.”

“And that was a month ago?”

“Yes. Since then I’ve gotten very little sleep. Because I saw and yet I know that crazy people are also sure of what they see.”

I looked down, twisting the gold masonic ring on my little finger. I realized that my hands had been in constant motion while I talked, clenching, flexing, gesturing.

Ann reached out and put her cool hand on mine, looked at me with her smokey blue eyes, and said, “You’re no more crazy than the rest of us, Fred. Can I see the site of the fire?”

II

Nothing remained but a flat slab of blackened concrete, a double axle and wheel rims with the tires burned off, twisted sheets of gray flaking aluminum, a warped metal sink and a tangle of copper tubing.

Ann Valery walked around with her hands in the pockets of her beige carcoat, scraping at the cindery grit with the edge of her brown oxford. She stamped the slab and tilted her head in a listening pose.

“What’s the best way to get under this?”

“Dynamite, jack-hammers, picks...”

“Any quiet way?”

“I suppose you could sink an offset shaft angling down under it, but it would be tough digging through that hardpan clay. Why do you want to go down in that particular spot?”

“If you’ve got a small broom I can show you.”

I walked back to the car and got my whisk-broom. When I came back Ann was busy pulling aside the tangled remnants of furniture and bed springs in the center of the mess. At her direction, I swept off the ashes and saw an oblong patch of clean concrete about seven feet long and three feet wide.

Ann stood looking down at it, her blackened hands at her sides, a smudge of soot alongside her nose. She was frowning and chewing her lip. After a minute she looked at me.

“It’s like a patch of skin that won’t take sunburn. Just stays white all summer.”

I glanced at the square of blackened bedsprings she’d dragged off the slab. “That’s where the bed was. Robert George was lying in it when I saw him.”

She knelt down and flicked her gold lighter. The flame flared blue in the sunlight. She sighed, stood up, and dropped the lighter back in her pocket. “No use to dig. The power’s not here anymore.”

“Maybe Robert carried it with him.”

“Yes, or it could be carrying Mr. George. Let’s go see him.” We walked back to my car, a Ford sedan, conservative except in color, which is engine red. I pulled some tissues from the dispenser under the dash, and she cleaned her hands and face while I drove.

The narrow blacktop twisted through low hills covered with scrub oak, hickory and sassafras. We passed an occasional farmhouse, but these were deserted, their windows broken out, the roofs covered with sheet iron and filled with baled hay Several gray pyramids rose out of the surrounding forest; at their base grew clumps of tarpaper shacks surrounded by rusting hulks of autos.

“What are those heaps of gravel sticking up?”

“Chat dumps. What’s left after the ore is separated from the rock.”

“What kind of ore?” Ann asked.

“Gold. Silver. It played out years ago. All the miners moved south.”

“But not you, obviously. Why did you stay?”

“My dad left me a law practice, so I decided to get some experience before I went out into the world.”

“I see.” She didn’t sound interested, so I didn’t say any more. The road wound around the base of a knob-like mountain that rose a thousand feet above the rolling plain. On top of it stood a fire observation tower, like a grand-daddy long-legs standing on tiptoe.

“Gubb’s Knob,” I said. “Our famous landmark.”

Ann glanced up and stifled a yawn. “How has Mr. George’s health been since his death?”

She said it deadpan, so I didn’t realize how funny it sounded until I’d started answering.

“He’s got no appetite. And he feels cold all the time. Eunice, his wife, you recall, left him three weeks ago.”

“Oh? Why?”

“She’s a hardshell Baptist and whatever she doesn’t like is the work of Satan. That included Robert, finally. Eunice went to live with her sister in Florida. I’m processing their divorce. Robert gave her their house, but she didn’t want it. He won’t live there either.”

“Where’s he living?”

“At the river cabin. It belongs to a little hunting and fishing club we organized about five years ago.”

I turned off the road and stopped at a gate made of steel pipe with chain-link fencing stretched between the bars. I got out of the car and pulled a ring of keys from my topcoat pocket.

Opening the padlock, I slipped out the chain and pushed open the gate. I beckoned Ann Valery to drive the car through. She slid behind the wheel and drove through, then scooted back over when I closed the gate. I drove down the slope, following a double track of crushed grass. The trail ended in a grove of tall sycamores.

I hurried around to open the door for Ann, but she was already standing beside the car with a faint smile on her lips. Together we walked toward a log cabin which squatted on a rise of ground. It seemed to have grown there, amid fallen, rotting trunks, hanging vines, and sinuous creepers which snaked along its eaves.

A set of deer antlers had been nailed to a board above the door. Beneath it was lettered: Gubb’s Knob Hunting Drinking and Fishing Society. NO WOMEN ALLOWED — except by appointment. Ann lifted her pale eyebrows, and I coughed and knocked on the door. Somewhere upriver a kingfisher loosed its harsh rattle.

I lifted my hand to knock again. Ann caught my wrist and pointed to the fuse box nailed under the eaves, just beside the stone chimney. The lever had been pulled down, cutting off the juice to the cabin.

“What does that mean?” I whispered.

“Spirits operate in the electro-magnetic field. They don’t like electricity. It gives them the astral itch.”

This was the first outside support for my theory that Robert George was involved in something supernatural. It should have relieved me, but instead it gave me a cold prickling sensation,

I took hold of the knob, turned it slowly, then pushed open the door. The cabin was uninsulated, unpaneled, with rafters and wall studs extending into its single room. In one corner stood a refrigerator with its door hanging open. It contained only an olive jar one-quarter full of yellowish juice.

In the center of the room stood a cast-iron heating stove with a greasy black skillet sitting on top of it. Nearby stood a table which held a pack of dirty playing cards, an overflowing ashtray, and several dominoes stacked in the form of a derrick. The room stank of stale smoke, bacon grease, and dirty socks.

Three folded army cots stood in one corner like stacked rifles. A fourth cot sagged under the burden of Robert George, who sprawled on his back with his legs spread out. His nose, which was pointed at the ceiling, gave forth the sound of deep snoring.

As the door clicked shut, he jerked upright, snorting, looking around him with his eyes wide with terror. He saw me and relaxed slightly, then saw Ann and rose to his feet, He stood blinking, looking vague and bewildered.

He was a big man, six feet three and broad-shouldered, but his large frame seemed loosely put together. A dark beard covered his jaws and chin. His eyes were squinty and red-rimmed; they widened as Ann walked toward him.

His nostrils flared, and he turned slightly as if about to run away. Then Ann lifted her hands, palms toward him. George bowed his head and accepted her touch with the dumb docility of a sheep. For a minute the two stood like that, Ann with her eyes closed, her face calm and composed, George staring from me to her, blinking and twitching the muscles around his mouth.

She dropped her hands and said: “You’ll be all right, Mr. George.”

Then she turned and walked out. George sank onto the cot breathing heavily, wiping his face with the sleeve of his plaid flannel shirt.

“Who’s she, Fred?”

“Ann Valery. The psychic research society sent her down to look at you.”

“Oh, hell! Just because you thought you saw me in the fire...”

“It didn’t hurt you to have her look, did it?”

“Does she know what she’s doing?”

“I get the impression she does. But I’m in no position to judge. How about you? How do you feel?”

The big man’s shoulders sagged. “I feel like I belong in a grave. Really, Fred, I’m not kidding. I’m stone cold inside. I could eat a whole handful of Mexican chili peppers and not turn a hair.”

“You feel like something’s trying to take you over?”

Robert George shook his head, a rapid motion that was more like a shudder. “No I wouldn’t care if it did at this point.” He looked up, tears swimming in his eyes. “Why me, Fred? I just want a normal life. If Eunice was right, if I really did give my soul to the devil, then where’s the payoff? The gold, the girls, the good times. When do I get that?”

“That’s a good question. Where’d you go last night?”

“Nowhere. I stayed here and played solitaire.”

“In the dark?”

“Well — mostly I slept.”

“You were sleeping when we came in. What are you doing, giving up?”

He dropped his head, his bony wrists resting on his knees, his big veined hands hanging limp between them. I looked at him a minute, then shoved my hands in my topcoat and walked slowly to the door. Then I turned. “Why’d you cut the fusebox?”

“Oh, it’s that refrigerator. Belt’s loose or something. Sounds like a chopper taking off. It finally got under my skin.”

You could have pulled the plug. I thought it, but didn’t say it. “Can I bring you something? Pizza? Cheeseburgers?”

George shook his head without looking up. “I’ve got no, appetite, Fred. Thanks, but I couldn’t eat a thing.”

I looked at him another minute, trying to think of something to say. “You just hang on, Robert. Ann Valery’ll come up with something. Don’t give up.”

He said nothing, gave no sign of having heard me. I shrugged and walked out, circled the cabin once, then walked back to the car. Ann was sitting on the hood, her legs crossed, her coat open, her cigaret burning between her lips.

She said nothing when I walked up, but slid off onto the ground and climbed into the car. I got in and drove up the lane. I opened the gate, waited for her to drive through, then got behind the wheel and shut off the engine. Then I leaned back, resting my arm on the back of the seat, and looked at her.

“Well?”

She nodded. “Maybe.”

“Maybe what?”

“It’s hard to explain to someone who’s... uh...”

“Stupid?”

She flashed me a quick annoyed frown. “Intelligence has nothing to do with it. I was going to say insensitive, but a better term would be unwakened. All living beings project a vital aura. This reveals the state of the psyche.

“Good psychic health comes through as a sort of electric blue shimmer, not visible to the eye, but evident to those who have opened other channels of perception. Evil, or let’s say those carnal desires which bind people to earth, comes through as a red tinge, shading to purple, and finally, when one completely gives up, black.”

I wanted to ask what my own color was, but sitting in the closed car and breathing the fragrance of her perfume, noting the way her nylon-clad knee pressed against the shift knob, I had a feeling I would register well into the red. Instead I asked what George had radiated?

“Nothing,” Ann said.

I blinked. “Nothing?”

She shook her head. “It was like standing in front of a post. As far as the psyche is concerned, Mr. George is dead.”

“Then why did you say he’d be all right?”

“What did you want me to say? ‘I see you in there, Monster?’ ”

“You really think—?” I broke off. Obviously she thought so, or she wouldn’t have said it. Ann Valery was clearly that type. I started the car and backed into the road. After about a mile I asked her if she was ready to have lunch.

“Nice of you to ask, but I think not. I’d like to visit the courthouse, if you don’t mind dropping me off.”

“No problem,” I said quickly, clamping off my disappointment. “My office is right across the street. What are you looking for?”

“Death records.”

“Oh? Whose, specifically?”

“Everybody’s. I want to find out if there are any others around here like Mr. George.”

III

Mid-afternoon. From my office over the bank, I saw Ann Valery standing on the curb with the wind blowing the hair off her face. Behind her loomed the courthouse, a three-story limestone structure of a style best known as WPA-Gothic. It looked squat and vulgar in the center of a mounded lawn spotted with evergreens and ornamental spruces.

Ann stepped off the curb and crossed the street toward me, disappearing under a corrugated iron awning. A minute later I heard her climbing the wooden steps to my floor. I jumped up, ran out through the reception room, and opened the door with my name reversed on the frosted glass.

I escorted her into the inner office, went to a cabinet, and took down a bottle of scotch. I took two water glasses off a shelf and lifted the lid of the ice bucket.

“Water or soda?” I asked her.

“I’ll take mine on the rocks.”

I tonged two ice cubes into each glass, submerged them in amber liquid, and gave her one. Then I hooked my hip on the desk and looked down at her.

“Find anything significant?”

Ann lifted her glass, sipped, and ran her tongue over her pale lips. “Not yet. But I’ve got a map of your city cemetery showing the graves of those most recently dead. Know what I need now?”

“I’m almost afraid to ask. A shovel?”

“An auger. One of those with a long shaft and a hollow center. I want to drive a probe into each of those caskets.”

I put my fist against my chest to still the sudden lurch of my heart. “I could never get the city council to agree to that.”

She nodded, taking another sip. “They never do.”

“Is it necessary?”

“Essential.”

I let out a sigh. “All right. We’ll do it after dark. I’ll pick you up at the motel around nine.”

She agreed and left. I spent the rest of the day trying to make discreet inquiries, but I didn’t find the kind of auger she asked for. Maybe I was too discreet.

And I wasn’t too clear about her needs.

I think she referred to some special tool which grave-robbers used, or some instrument for taking core samples on archeological expeditions. What I got was a line-locating bar from my friend the city engineer. It’s a long steel shaft with a crossbar on top, and they use it for locating buried sewer lines and cables.

I showed it to Ann when we met at nine. She asked me if I could sharpen it. It took time, but I used my bench-grinder to put a sharp point on it and along about midnight we drove out to the cemetery.

I felt a bit queasy sinking that steel shaft into that mound of dirt, but Ann was standing there with her pencil flashlight checking the names on her pad against the names on the stones just as if she were judging petunias at a flower show. I kept pushing until I felt the point thunk against the top of a casket, then I took a ball-peen hammer and hit it a hard lick right at the crossing of the “T”.

It popped through the metal and sank into a soft pillowy resistance that made my stomach drow up like a clenched fist. I pulled it up and Ann flashed her light on the tip. I didn’t have to look because the stench of decay hit me in the nostrils.

“A ripe old cheese: Who is it?” I asked.

“Hubert Viertel,” Ann said. “Born 1890. Died September twelve. Three weeks ago.”

“I thought embalming was supposed to keep them, pickled for years.”

“You know how it is. Everybody skimps on materials. Why should undertakers be different? Let’s try another one.”

I wiped the point of the bar on the grass and followed her. I was wearing striped coveralls of the type used by service station attendants; she wore a dark brown jumpsuit with orange laces binding it to her wrists and ankles.

I can tell you now there’s no harder place to walk at night than a graveyard; it’s an obstacle course of slabs, pillars and crypts, with the ground humping up where you least expect it.

The cemetery covered, about twenty acress of rolling ground; it’s almost bigger than the town, since the living population has dropped to about twenty per cent of what it was when the mines were running. I guess Ann’s map was accurate enough, but one slab looks like another in the dark, and she had to get right up against the stones to read the inscriptions.

By the time we’d checked seven graves I’d begun to feel guilty about puncturing the mortal remains of former friends and neighbors. The minute I sank the probe in number eight I knew we had something different. The soil was loose, and the bar slid in almost without effort. The point struck the casket with a hollow thunk, and I had just about the same empty feeling in my chest.

Ann lifted the hammer and swung it in the awkward way most women have, with her elbow held out and forward, and I admit I shut my eyes and turned my head, wondering if I could still practice law with mutilated hands. But she hit the “T” square on, and I felt the bar make its brief empty plunge through space and then hit the bottom of the casket.

“Empty.” I forced the word through my tight dry throat.

She nodded, then opened her pad and made a notation beside the name. “Vera Yount. Did you know her?”

“Too well. She was a barfly. Honky-tonk queen grown old in the trade. Her liver gave out finally.”

Ann closed the pad and walked on. I pulled out the probe and followed her.

Dawn was flaring up in the east when I probed the fifteenth grave; it was unoccupied, just as numbers eight, twelve and thirteen had been.

The last six graves were on a hillside sloping down toward a wooded creek. My feet were dragging by this time, and I was sort of trailing the bar behind me, but then we went over the top of the ridge and a warm moist breeze hit me in the face.

I stood for a minute looking down the slope, at the ground fog swirling around those gray silent stones, and for a second it all seemed unreal — Fred Bagram, respectable attorney, out all night puncturing cadavers with a woman who looked like she’d have been at home on a millionaire’s yacht. Then I saw Ann standing beside what looked like a fresh yellow mound of clay.

“This girl was buried day before yesterday,” she said when I got there. “Look at that.”

I saw a large shoe-print mashed into the damp yellow clay. I put my foot inside it and saw that it extended at least two inches in front of my shoe.

I looked at her. “According to standard police procedure, we should make a plaster cast of this print and match it against the shoes of our suspect.”

“Good idea,” she said. “Who’s our suspect?”

“Just off-hand, I’d say Robert George, judging from the size of the shoes. We used to call him Gunboat George. He could squeeze his foot into a twelve double E, but it pinched him.”

Ann walked around for a minute, examining the ground and kicking the dirt, sniffing the air and looking in all directions. Then she bent down and picked up the hammer.

“Let’s make sure it’s empty, shall we?”

It was. So was another of the graves on that slope. Out of twenty-one graves we’d examined, six had been empty. My mind kept spinning around that fact. The deaths had been spaced out over a period of at least two months; so, apparently, had the grave-robbing.

I back-tracked and found footprints on at least four, but they’d been almost obliterated by the heavy rains we’d had at the end of September. Each of the prints were of those supersized clodhoppers which I suspected belonged to Robert George.

The sun was edging up like a tangerine slice, and cars were beginning to roll past on the highway. Both of us were too tired to talk much; I dropped Ann off at the Inn, and she said she was going to take a hot shower and then eat. I said I guessed I’d do the same, and would meet her for breakfast before we went out to visit George again. I really felt like driving off toward the sunset with Ann Valery at my side, but she didn’t seem frightened and I certainly wasn’t about to show the white feather in her presence.

IV

It seemed strange, as we sat down to breakfast, to think that only twenty-four hours had passed since I’d first met Ann Valery. I didn’t feel quite the squarish lump that I’d felt the first time, though she’d changed very little, except to put on a tweed pants-suit in a dark brown herringbone pattern.

I got a whiff of her perfume and that was another oddity, to sit across from a beautiful woman after digging in graves all night, with an, assortment of deliverymen, businessmen, and traveling salesmen sitting around us and none of them knowing.

Ann didn’t speak until she’d hacked her way through a stack of leathery hotcakes. Then she lit one of her long French cigarets, took a swallow of coffee, and pulled the notepad out of her purse. She slid it across to me, open.

“These are the people whose graves were empty. See if they have anything in common.”

Her list was written in a slashing diagonal script, and she’d drawn a round “O” before the name of each person who no longer occupied his grave.

“Let’s see. Zach Harbin went down a couple of times for hog-stealing. Ten years the last time. He got taken off in a knife-fight about six weeks ago. Vera Yount, I told you about her.

“Burt Reisner... I don’t know his record. He was a traveling man, came, home after a six-month absence, opened the door of his apartment, and got a bullet in the head from his wife’s boy-friend. Ira Hastings. No trouble with: the law, but his hardware business went bankrupt. Lots of bad loans. He was trying out one of the guns in his store and it went off, so they say. Most people assumed he committed suicide.

“Bill Means was a local bad-boy who played with drugs: too long and got hooked on smack. He dealt in small quantities, just enough to support his habit. They found him dead with the needle stuck behind his eyeball. I guess he’d run out of veins. Carla Frick? That’s the grave where we found the footprint. She’s a juvenile. I think she died of convulsions, but I don’t know anything else about her.”

“How do you know about the others?” Ann asked.

“I was prosecuting attorney for a couple of years. It’s a common practice to put new lawyers to work for the county. Idea being that they’ll be hard, energetic prosecutors, eager to show their mettle. The fact is that they’re intimidated, brow-beaten, teased and laughed at by older lawyers. You wind up feeling like an enemy of society. I suppose it’s good training, but I’m not sure it’s good law.”

Ann flashed a smile.

“You seem to have retained some idealism.”

I felt embarrassed by her steady gaze, and looked down, muttering to change the subject: “As far as having anything in common, I guess you could say that these six, with the exception of the girl, who was a ward of the county, were not what we call respectable elements of society. At least here in Gubb’s Knob, they weren’t highly regarded.”

“As a result of what?”

“Well, personal habits. Drinking, dope...”

“So if they started behaving strangely nobody would be surprised?”

“They wouldn’t even notice.”

“And you said Mr. George had a heavy drinking habit, didn’t you? He used to go out to his trailer and drink himself into a stupor?”

“Yes.”

“And the little girl, why was she a ward of the county?”

“I think she was feeble-minded or something. Her parents couldn’t take care of her.”

“Could she have been epileptic?”

“She could have been. What are you getting at?”

Ann’s forehead wrinkled as she looked down, tipping the ashes off her cigaret into the ashtray. Sunlight came through the window and made her hair glow like spun silver. I couldn’t help wondering what had turned her onto a study of the other world, when she was obviously so well-equipped to excel in this one.

She laced her fingers under her chin and said: “Spirits prefer a tabla rasa, a body in which the ego is very weak. Alcoholic blackouts, drug freak-outs, attacks of gran mal, all these tend to blow out the ego and leave the body temporarily unoccupied. A roving spirit wanders along, finds one and says, ‘Ah-ha, a vacant house.’ So he slips in and takes up residence. When the ego reawakens, it may not be able to kick the spirit out.”

“What happens then?”

“Sometimes they share the same body, with control seesawing back and forth until the original possessor goes insane or gives up and dies. Sometimes the occupying spirit is lazy and doesn’t try to dominate. It just rides along, looking over your shoulder. Some are even benevolent, and try to help their hosts.”

“Would you say Robert’s is benevolent?”

She shrugged. “It protected him from the fire, apparently.”

“That could be enlightened self-interest. If he’d burned up, the invader would have had to find a new body, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes.” Ann frowned and stabbed out her cigaret. “Whatever it is, it’s been very active.” She closed her pad and slid out of the booth. “Let’s go and see Mr. George again, shall we?”

V

We drove out and I parked in the lane outside the gate. It was her suggestion; Ann wanted to approach without warning. That alone was enough to raise the hair on my neck.

All the way down the hill I kept getting hot and cold flashes. I was so nervous that if a twig had snapped I’d have done a backward somersault and come down running the other way.

Even the cabin looked foreboding. Wild grapevines trailed down from tall sycamores like webs of a giant spider. The scent of damp decay filled my nostrils like glue. Once I’d loved the smell of rotting wood; now it spelled only death.

Ann, stopped suddenly and pointed at the doorstep. Somebody had scraped a slab of yellow clay off his shoe.

“Do you have that kind of dirt around here?” she whispered.

“No, it’s all river bottom, gumbo and sandy loam.”

“So where did that come from?”

“The graveyard?”

She nodded. “Open the door.”

I reached out and turned the knob, then flung the door wide. The body on the cot was a faceless ruin. Judging from the double-barreled shotgun which lay between his legs, Robert George had tucked the muzzle under his chin and pulled both triggers. The blast not only removed his face but the front half of his skull.

But that was not the ultimate horror. Inside the flannel shirt and stained khaki pants lay a body well advanced in decay. The hand dangling at the side of the cot was held together only by a few cords of dried sinew.

Ann stood, her nostrils flaring, then she choked, gasped and, putting her handkerchief to her mouth, ran outside. I walked out a moment later, saw her with one arm braced against a tree, vomiting. I sat down heavily on a cracked wooden bench which had once been a church pew. Ann stumbled over wiping her eyes, collapsed beside me and lit a cigaret. Her voice was flat and unemotional, as if the horror was too much to be conveyed in verbal terms.

“That was Mr. George?”

“Near as I could tell. That’s the shirt he had on yesterday.”

“How far along would you say the decay process was?”

“It takes animals a couple of months to get into that condition at this time of year.”

She let her head drop onto her fist, supporting her forehead. “I never ran into anything like this before.”

She looked suddenly shrunken, defenseless, and I realized with some surprise that she must still be in her early twenties. She drew on the cigaret as if smoke were her only link with life. I sensed a subtle shift in our relationship.

Before, she’d been the leader, and I the faithful, stupid servant. Now at least we were at an equal level of ignorance. For some reason it made me feel stronger. There’s nothing quite so enervating as carrying out complicated instructions when you don’t know the reason for them.

I stood up. “The law’s clear on one point. Find a body and you must report it to the proper authority. In this case, the county sheriff. Let’s go get him.”

Ann stood up. “You go ahead. I’ll stay here and look around.”

“Now listen — I’m not leaving you alone. Not after what happened to Robert.”

“You think you know what happened to him?”

“Well, he shot himself, for one thing.”

“I don’t intend to shoot myself, dear.”

The word brought a sudden splash of warmth in my chest. I stammered, then backed up and started over.

“No, but if you get caught by the thing that had him, if it’s still here—”

“It’s gone. Otherwise I’d feel it.”

“You didn’t feel it yesterday when you stood right next to George.”

“Oh, stop being chauvinistic. Go get the sheriff. I’ll stay within shouting distance.”

I watched Ann walk toward the river, hands shoved in the pockets of her belted beige car-coat, her blue headscarf hanging out like a tail. She paused at the river bank and then stepped over the edge, clutching a birch sapling to keep from sliding.

I resisted the urge to follow her, turned and trotted up to the car. Rather than drive all the way back to town, I drove three miles to the intersection and phoned the sheriff from a service station. I told him Robert George had apparently been fooling with his shotgun and shot himself dead. The sheriff sighed and said he’d be right out with the meat wagon, and there’d better be a corpse this time or I could consider myself under arrest.

I drove back to the place and opened the gate for him, let him drive through with the ambulance behind him, then closed the gate and followed in my car. The sheriff was a squat, heavy man with bristly gray hair, coarse features, and small squinted gray eyes. He wore matching gabardine shirt and pants separated by a wide leather belt to which was buckled a .45 automatic.

When I drove up he was walking toward the cabin with that king-swagger a country boy gets when he hangs a gun on his hip. But when he opened the door all his bravado leaked out of him. He hunched over and shot me a scared look from the corner of his eyes, then backed off and stepped outside the door.

His face was white.

He looked like he wanted to barf like Ann had done, but instead he motioned the ambulance driver and his assistant inside and told them they’d need the plastic bag. I could see he was shook but didn’t want to show it; he pulled out his pad and unclipped his ballpoint and slid his eyes over to me, like he wasn’t sure just who or what I was.

“You sure that was Robert George?”

“Pretty sure. He was wearing those clothes yesterday.”

“Yesterday, huh? Then how come he looks like he’s been dead a couple of months?”

The sheriff looked like he was about to flap his arms and take wing. I couldn’t do anything but shrug, and he shoved the pad to me and told me to fill the damn thing out myself. Then he got in his car and started tuning his police radio, as if the county were seething with crime and unrest which required his personal attention.

I filled in Robert George’s vital statistics and where it said time of death I put the magic word: Unknown. Human nature was funny that way; people could be faced with the entire riddle of existence and the minute you put a label on it, they were satisfied.

By then the ambulance boys were coming out with their burden in the black plastic bag; it seemed to hang light between them, and I decided there was probably nothing left of Bob George but skin and bones. I gave the sheriff his pad and he looked at it with eyes like boiled eggs, then stuck it in his pocket and muttered that he hoped this was the last he saw of that S.O.B. I guess he had some premonition that it wouldn’t be, because after he started his car he leaned his head out the window and said:

“Fred, you got any more little surprises, hold ’em til after I retire, okay?”

He shook his head and rolled up the window, muttering to himself, then spun up about a half-acre of grass getting his car turned and headed back up the slope. I couldn’t help wondering what he’d do if I told him there were six corpses at large in his fair county.

VI

I found Ann sitting on a drift log with her hands folded in her lap, watching the river suck and swirl around a submerged snag. When I sat down beside her she sighed and lit a cigaret.

“I’ve worked out a theory,” she said.

“I’d love to hear it.”

“This creature has learned to reactivate the dead. Somehow it managed to solve the basic problem, which is getting the initial energy boost to keep the body going until it can make up for the lack of blood. Maybe it does it with breathing. You can force oxygen into your cells by a yoga routine known as bhastrika. Once the corpse is risen, the first thing it must do is find fresh blood. Otherwise it merely dies again.”

I felt a prickly rising at the back of my neck. “You’re talking about vampirism.”

Ann paused.

“Yes, that’s the popular term. I’ve never had a chance to investigate the phenomenon, nor do I know anyone else who has. Old records indicate that it used to be widespread, but we’ve since improved our burial procedures: A specified number of clamps on the coffin, a certain amount of earth above it. Reason for this in ancient times, being...”

“To keep the vampires from getting out?” I broke in.

“Well obviously. What other reason could there be?”

“And the embalming fluid?”

“Prevents revival by denying blood to the new spirit. In times of disaster, or on the battlefield when corpses lie unburied for days, we get reports of vampires. But these are impossible to check immediately, and when our investigators get there the vampire has usually managed to blend with the rest of the populace. They still practice their art, but they learn to cover their crimes by mutilation or fire, so they’re never actually caught.”

I opened my mouth a couple of times, but was unable to marshall any arguments against her. I’d always suspected that the undertaking profession was based on superstitious fear; it made sense only when one accepted her theory.

I bent over, dipped my hand into, the water, and bathed my forehead. I was beginning to feel feverish. “How do you account for Robert getting caught by this thing?”

“I don’t really know. I suspect that he died or was killed put in the open, where his body was not immediately discovered. The spirit took over, revived him, used him until as long as it could, and then...”

“Wait a minute, Ann. If he was occupied, how was he able to live with Eunice as long as he did? And talk to me about things that only Robert George could have known?”

“I don’t know. How is memory stored in the brain? How long does it survive death? Electroencephalographs have picked up brain waves as long as twelve hours after the heart stops beating. I’d guess that the invading spirit would have access to the memories and habit patterns of the original personality.”

I frowned, stamping my heel in the thick rubbery mud. “Tell me why Robert shot himself?”

“You mean, why did the creature destroy the body?”

“Okay, put it that way.”

“I think it was aware of me yesterday, even though I didn’t see it. It decided it was time to shift to a new body. The shotgun was an attempt to cover its tracks. Maybe it didn’t know deterioration would be so rapid.”

“Shifted? You mean into one of the missing corpses?”

“Of course. This is a nonphysical entity. It can’t function in this world without a physical body. No more than you could cut steel without a blowtorch.”

I stood up, looked at the yellow-brown river and the sycamores and birches arching overhead. Usually there were kingfishers, crows, jaybirds, and ducks and all manner of hummingbirds gliding and flitting through the tunnel under the trees. Now there was only stillness, and a light warm mist drifting down like smoke. I’d done enough hunting to understand what the quarry feels: a jittery crawly sensation of unseen eyes peering out from cover. And that’s exactly how I felt.

“You can’t sense the creature?”

“No. Perhaps it’s learned to shield its emanations.”

“All right then.” I put down my hand to help her to her feet. “We’ll resort to primitive methods. If it has a body, it also has feet. And feet leave tracks.”

We started our spiral search pattern at the door of the cabin. Three hundred yards out we found a dead doe lying in a fence-row overgrown with sassafras and prickly ash. My first thought was that hunters had nailed it out of season and flung it into the brush; we got a lot of city people who come down and shoot everything that moves. Then I saw that its throat had been torn open.

“Couldn’t have been dogs,” I said. “They’d have ripped her belly open.”

Ann looked at me in surprise. “Can’t you smell it?”

I drew a deep breath, then I caught it — a sharp, rank sickening stench that didn’t stop at my nose but went straight to my guts, congealing me with cold fear.

“What is it?”

“Scent of the beast. It keeps scavengers away from the body in case it wants to use it.”

She was kneeling beside the deer, peeling back its fur to study the gaping raw slash in its throat. It had been drained of blood, though there was none on the ground beneath it.

“How did you know that?” I asked.

She raised her head and looked at me. “What, Fred?”

“About the creature marking its kill. You said you’d never studied vampires.”

Ann blinked. “I don’t know. I just knew.”

“Is it possible you could pick up emanations without being aware of them?”

“Well yes... but if we start thinking like that we won’t be able to trust our own senses, will we?”

I already felt myself sinking into mental quicksand. I was glad when she finished her inspection and we resumed our search for tracks. It didn’t feel good to stand in one place for more than a few seconds.

We found the first print in the pasture about twenty yards from the dead doe. Water had run down into the hollow and then evaporated, leaving a pan of soft fine sediment. In it was the imprint of a bare foot no more than seven inches long.

“How old was Carla Frick?” she asked.

“Around twelve, I think.”

“So this would be about right. Now we know what we’re looking for.”

VII

The print gave me a bearing, and I started walking across the meadow toward a high limestone bluff overlooking the river. I found another print in the middle of an old cow pile. That reminded me that I’d often seen Roy Grant’s herefords grazing here on the rye grass.

They were gone now, and that led me to remember reports of calves slaughtered and left lying in fields. This coincided with the beef shortage, so people just assumed that rustlers had gotten scared off before they finished butchering. Now it seemed clear that it had been a vampire seeking blood, and I asked Ann Valery why the creature chose animals instead of humans.

Her answer was cold.

“No reason at all, except convenience.”

“So if it activates another corpse, and there are no animals available, it may kill humans?”

“You’re learning,” she said.

I found two more prints before our way was intersected by a creek. We followed it into a dense thicket of wild blackberries. The hooked barbs caught our clothes and kept forcing us to back up and free ourselves. We were both scratched and bleeding when we reached the pool where the water bubbled out from beneath the cliff.

“It went underground here” Ann said.

“Apparently,” I said. “But I don’t see how.”

“Easy. It doesn’t have to breathe.”

I walked around the pool looking for tracks but found none. When I returned, Ann had taken off her coat and spread it on the spongy turf. She sat down, pulled her feet into her lap, and rested her hands on her thighs, palms up.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to show my ignorance again,” I said. “Why are you sitting like that?”

“It’s a stable posture. I withdraw my mind from the physical world in order to pick up emanations on the energy level.”

“You said it was probably shielded.”

“Apparently, when other people are around. Right now I’m hoping it thinks its safe and doesn’t have to be on guard.”

I waited. Again, I noticed the dead silence, the lack of birdlife which I’d come to associate with the beast. The sun hung in the overcast sky like an anemic eggyolk.

After about five minutes Ann began speaking, not like somebody in a trance, but as though she were getting her thoughts out where she could look at them.

“When all is well, the energy flows in a perfect circle. Each level has its own unity. When there is a break between, portals, the circle is pulled off-center, like a tilted carousel. It’s tilted now in that direction.”

Ann pointed with her eyes closed. I followed her finger and looked up at the towering cliff.

“Could you follow it?” I asked.

“If I concerned myself with walking, then I’d be drawn down to the physical level. I’d lose it.”

“Suppose we climb to the top of the cliff, and I’ll carry you piggy-back.”

I was only half-serious, but she liked the idea. Unfortunately we lost ten minutes finding the switch-back path leading up, and spent more time slipping, sliding and dragging ourselves up to the top. We found ourselves in a rocky glade overgrown with dark fragrant cedars. Ann sat down to take another fix, and I stood waiting, pleasantly anticipating the task ahead of me.

“It’s moving away,” she breathed after a minute.

“In a straight line?” I asked Ann.

“Lots of turns and cutbacks. But it tends to go in that direction.”

She pointed toward the northeast, where the land sloped up to the summit of Gubb’s Knob.

“Let’s go,” I said.

She didn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds live-weight, but the going was all uphill and the slope was littered with loose chunks of flint which kept turning under my feet. I had my elbows hooked under her knees with her thighs resting on my hips, and every time I let my mind dwell on what I was carrying, I got weak in the knees. We’d gone maybe a quarter-mile when Ann said in my ear:

“It’s gone out of range. You can let me down.”

She slid off, leaving my back suddenly cool. I threw out my chest and took deep breaths of the cedar-fragrant air. Ann shook down her slacks and started walking uphill.

“Hey!” I yelled, surprised.

She called over her shoulder: “If I walk in a straight line I can probably intersect its path.”

I ran up and caught hold of her arm. “What if you intersect it on the surface?”

“It’s only a twelve year old girl—”

“It ripped the throat out of a deer. Tell me how it did that.”

“Sneaked up—”

“You don’t sneak up on a white-tail. They can hear falling dandruff at fifty yards.”

“Well, there’s some hypnosis involved.”

“Right. And you’re hypnotized. You know that? You’re like a hound dog after a rabbit. They’ll run through a barbwire fence once they’re on the scent. And you might run into a trap.”

I convinced Ann finally that it was better to take a line of sight, then drive along roads which intersected the line. Then she could get out and find out if the creature was behind or in front.

Ann congratulated me on my ingenuity, which I’d always thought of as a lazy man’s way of thinking.

We made a couple of east-west passes through the country. Each time Ann got out of the car and assumed her cross-legged position, the lotus-posture, she called it, the course of energy was a little bit north. The third time I stopped she got out and sniffed the air, turned right and then left, then climbed through the fence and walked through down into a hollow which was covered by wheat-stubble. She sat down in the middle of the field and went into her trance.

Since it usually took about five minutes for her to get a fix, I prowled along the fence row to see if I could flush some quail. There wasn’t even a titmouse in the brush, and that gave me a warning. I looked down into the hollow and saw Ann down on the ground. It looked like she was wrestling with something.

I vaulted the fence and ran down, and she was clawing at the dirt and making sobbing sounds deep in her throat. I hollered at her, What is it? but she just kept digging and making this horrible sound: Uh-uh-uh-uh...

It finally struck me that Ann was out of her mind. I grabbed her shoulders and tried to pull her up, but she turned op me like a cat and scratched my face. Her face was distorted, her eyes wide, and her pupils dilated. I fended her off with my hand, but she kept coming, backing me up until I felt that barbed-wire stabbing into my back.

I got her wrists trapped in my hands but Ann wrapped her legs around me and threw herself backwards. I put out my hands to keep from falling, on her, and she clamped my neck in a strangle-hold, with her right hand gripping her left wrist.

A dark film came over my eyes. Her teeth raked my neck. I remembered the deer with its throat torn out and realized this was no time for half-measures. I chopped my hands down on her neck but she tightened her tendons so I couldn’t hit the nerves. I gritted my teeth and wrapped my hands around her throat and squeezed, feeling her wind-pipe moving under my thumbs.

Ann stared at me with her eyes bulging, then she collapsed. I caught her in my arms and carried her across the fence. When I reached the car, I sat in the seat and held her across my lap, with her head against my shoulder. I felt a bitter rage at myself for lacking the skill to knock her out painlessly, the way it shows in the karate books.

Still, she didn’t look damaged. With the madness no longer twisting her face, she looked angelic, her eyes closed as if in sleep, her lips slightly open. I bent down and felt her warm breath, against my face. Ah inch more, and my lips touched hers. I tasted the salty tang of my blood on her lips.

When I quickly lifted my head she was looking at me, her eyes tranquil but vaguely puzzled.

“How’d we get into this situation?”

I felt a hot flush of embarrassment, but Ann didn’t try to pull away, so I kept my arms around her while I told her what had happened. Male-female chemistry began to take effect, and a warmth grew where our flesh came into contact. She must have felt it too because she sat up in the seat and said:

“I’m still cold... inside.”

“I’ve got a thermos of coffee in back.”

“Just what I need.”

While Ann sipped the hot brew, I examined, my throat in the mirror. One pink spot showed where her canine tooth had broken the flesh. I touched it and felt a sick-sweet thrill run through my body.

“Now I know how a vampire victim feels,” I said.

She shuddered, holding her cup in both hands. “You’re taking it well. How do you know I’m not still possessed?”

“Oh, wow! If you could have seen yourself—! Don’t you remember anything?”

“I remember... hate. There was something evil beneath me. I wanted to dig down and get it, destroy it.”

I took her hand and saw that two nails had broken off. Blood oozed from the quick. I opened the glove compartment and took out a vial of merthiolate.

“Why’d you attack me?”

“I thought you were going to do something to me. Something terrible. Oh!”

Ann jerked as I daubed the merthiolate on her fingertips. I held her hand and blew softly. “You know what I think? You tried so hard to find a vampire you turned into one — just for a minute. Hunters do that. To find a rabbit you have to think like a rabbit.”

“Maybe.” Ann looked out the window and frowned. “What do you suppose is under that spot?”

“It used to be a sinkhole, but old Charley Grant kept throwing in bed-springs, old mattresses and dead cows until it got plugged up.”

“I see. And what’s beneath the plug?”

“An underground river. We can get a good view from the knob.”

I drove up Gubb’s Knob, and we climbed the fire tower. I showed Ann the blotches of richer vegetation forming a sinuous line across the valley.

“There’s only a thin limestone mantle covering the granite. Used to be full of gold and silver, but that’s gone now. This knob we’re on is what’s left of a volcanic plug that spewed out when the granite formed. The reason we’ve got an underground river is that water sinks through the porous limestone, hits the hard granite, and can’t go any deeper. So it cuts a channel through the limestone.

“Sometimes the roof caves in, and the surface of the ground sags like wet ceiling plaster. That’s your sinkhole. I didn’t remember it until now, but Robert got drunk and fell into one about two months ago. He was lucky to get out alive.”

“Which one?”

I traced a line with my finger, starting at the cliff near the river cabin to the valley below Robert George’s trailer. “You see that black smear where the trailer burned? And down at the bottom of the hill, a circular grove of tall trees? That’s it.”

“How do we get down into it?”

“You’re not going. You’re too susceptible.”

“Don’t, talk rot. I got caught because I let my guard down in order to track the beast. It won’t happen again.”

I gave in and took Ann back to the motel, where she changed into her jumpsuit. Then I drove to the house of a mountaineering friend and borrowed rope, cleats, pitons, pick, spray paint, flashlights with extra batteries and drinking water.

VIII

The sun was sinking when we walked down the hill past the blackened concrete slab. Inside the ring of trees the ground sloped down like a gigantic funnel. I tied the rope around a sycamore, and we passed it through our beltrings and rappeled down. The limestone blocks pinched into a circular hole about three feet across.

I played out the rope until it hit bottom, then took hold and slid down until my feet struck rock. I jerked on the rope and after a minute Ann slid down beside me. I held her around the waist until she found footing on the damp rocks. The entry hole was a pale silver coin hanging high above us.

I unclipped my flashlight and played the beam around. We were standing on a pile of rocks washed clean by the inflow of water. A domed chamber had been gouged out of_ the soft rock, and a black stream trickled around the foot of the mound.

“That way,” I said, pointing downstream.

We followed the flashlight beam into a narrow tunnel. Rats perched at eye-level along niches in the wall, and I could hear them scurry and chitter behind us after we passed. After about twenty yards the roof dipped down and forced us into a crouching duck-walk. Then it lowered still more, and we had to drop to our hands and knees.

After what seemed twenty minutes, we came to a narrow crevice which could admit only one person at a time. I squeezed in first, shining the light on the ground. The stench was a forewarning. There was nothing I wanted to do less than go on, but Ann was behind me, so I dragged myself forward on my elbows. After a minute I froze and let out a yelp.

“What did you see?” Ann’s muffled voice sounded behind me.

“A foot.”

“Alive?”

“Dead. Long dead.”

I pulled myself forward and stood upright in the fetid chamber. The foot belonged to a male corpse in a rumpled, mud-stained business suit. Patches of white hair clung to his dry wrinkled scalp. I moved the light and saw four other bodies sitting up in their burial finery, their jaws gaping wide.

“Recognize any of them?” asked Ann, standing beside me.

“Of course.” There was Vera. Death had continued the process of decay I had seen in her face the last time I’d been forced to take her into court. Her baby-blue burial dress was twisted askew on her body, her arms twisted impossibly behind her back. A cast-off doll. And Burt Reisner with the bullet hole in his forehead leaking a powdery brown stain down into his right eye socket.

I played my light across the grisly rank, holding my hand over my nose. The others, I supposed, had died much earlier; in any case they were too far gone in decay for recognition.

My hand jerked as the light struck a figure hidden behind the others. “My God, what’s that?”

“A baby,” Ann breathed.

“You mean it was a baby.”

Now it was a monstrosity. A huge leathery abdomen swelled out; it must have been at least a yard in circumference. Patches of fuzz grew on a wrinkled gray-white scalp. Grime encrusted a toothless slit-mouth. Its legs were thin as pipe-cleaners, with joints swollen like grasshopper legs. Obviously it had never used them for support; they were set too wide on the pelvic cradle.

A sheet of callous on its belly revealed its method of locomotion. Long nails curved like sabers. It seemed to look at me with its large dark eyes, but the sockets were empty. It was like all the others in this devil’s displayroom. Dead.

“That could be the original,” said Ann, “A baby fell in, couldn’t get out. It grew in here, living off lizards, rats, insects. Then Robert George fell in and the creature shifted to George, took him over, and then...”

I interrupted. “Ann, I don’t think we ought to stand here theorizing. The body of Carla Frick is missing. That’s the one that’s inhabited.”

“Yes, you’re right. But where—?”

I felt an icy chill on my back. I whirled and aimed the flashlight, and the light went out.

I reached back and grabbed Ann’s hand, pulling her down with me to the floor of the cavern. I lay holding her tight, breathing her hair which lay across my face, curving my body around her in a protective fetal posture. You never know real darkness until you’re underground. It doesn’t stop at the eyeball, but presses in upon your brain until you can’t think for panic.

I whispered in her ear: “Did your light go out too?” It was a dumb question.

“Yes. Try a match.”

I had to stretch out my leg to get my hand into my pocket. The match flared, enclosing us in a capsule of flickering light. I reached back into my pack and fumbled for the spare batteries. Fire nipped my fingers and I dropped the spent match. I found Ann’s hand and pushed the match folder into it.

“Light another match while I change batteries.”

Haste and nervousness combined, so that I dropped one of the cylinders into the dirt. I finally got the batteries in and the cap screwed on, then I fixed Ann’s light. When both flashlights were working, I took my snub-nosed automatic out of the pack and attached the clip-holster to my belt.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Fred.”

“Why not?”

“The body is only a carrier. The nature of the beast is non-material. If you destroy its present body, you will provide the new one.”

“I think that’s superstition.”

“Believe me. That’s how it works.”

Reluctantly, I shoved the pistol back in the pack. I dropped to my stomach and wormed my way through the narrow tunnel, scraping my shoulders against the rock. I had the distinct impression that the rocks were swelling in around me like a gigantic esophagus. Clammy sweat greased my body. I snorted often, trying to blow the stink of death out of my nostrils, but it was lodged somewhere up behind my eyeballs.

From forty feet away I could see our rope trembling.

I started crawling, stumbling and falling up the slick wet rubble. I caught the rope and pulled, feeling a soft springy resistance. I shifted my grip and swung my weight from it. Resistance ceased, dropping me to the stones. I pulled on the rope, sick with fear that it might have been cut, but it held firm. I pulled myself up hand over hand, levered myself up through the hole, and called down to Ann.

“Hook the rope to your belt and I’ll pull you up.”

The constellations were spread out like diamonds when we walked out from under the trees. A breeze rustled the sedge-grass. Our shoulders touched, and it suddenly struck me how warm she was, how precious and fleeting was life, and how ridiculous the ponderous conventions of courtship. I slid my arm around her waist and we walked up the hill.

The hood of my car gaped open like the jaws of an alligator. A quick inspection showed me the clamps had been pulled off the distributor cap. The rotor was missing.

I shivered.

“This scares me, you know. Worse than those corpses.”

“Yes,” said Ann. “It seems to retain the memories of those it inhabits. Carla Frick would never have known enough to do this. Would Mr. George?”

“Yes. He was mechanically clever.”

“So the creature is getting his bearings here. Learning the way of this world. It’ll be more effective now. More efficient. I wish I knew what it wanted.”

“What do you think it wants?”

“There’s no way to tell. It would have an alien set of values and referents. It couldn’t have desires like you and I, because there can be no material rewards, no time-things on the astral plane of existence. It—”

Ann broke off suddenly and stared across the road. I held my breath as ten seconds went by. Then I heard the deep frantic barking of a dog, ending in a gurgling yelp which raised the hair on my scalp. A man yelled. Four rifle shots punched neat spiral holes in the silence.

IX

All this happened in less than thirty seconds, but Ann Valery was already across the road and climbing through the fence on the other side. Curse her impetuous soul. I ran after her, ripped my pants jumping the wire, and caught up with her at the edge of the woods.

There was no need to go further. A dead coon-hound lay with his lips peeled back in a snarl, its throat ripped open, blood matting his fur. About ten yards away, lying under a prickly scrub-oak, lay the body of a young girl.

“Carla Frick,” said Ann, matter-of-factly.

It seemed a reasonable as sumption, though the black swollen face revealed no clue to what the girl had looked like when she was alive. A frilly white party dress was twisted around her bloated midriff; her legs were only partly clothed in flesh. Four bullet holes punctured the front of her chest. I could have covered them all very easily with my outspread hand.

“Good shooting,” I murmured.

“So much the worse for whoever did it.”

“What? Oh, I see. You think that now the hunter...”

“Isn’t it reasonable? Picture the scene. Carla Frick, call it that for convenience, comes out of the hole. Exertion of the body burns fuel which must be replenished. Dead organs cannot digest food and manufacture blood, therefore the raw substance is needed. She scents the dog, attacks.

“The hunter watches in horror, seeing what looks like a young girl gnawing at the throat of his dog. He yells a warning. The girl walks toward him, he preceives that she is... something else. He shoots. The figure keeps coming. He empties the chamber and stands paralyzed by fear. I don’t know the details of the occupation, but I rather suspect that the hunter is now the creature we’re looking for.”

While Ann talked, I’d been playing the flashlight on the ground. I couldn’t find the rifle. That gave me an urge to get the hell out. A spook was bad enough, but a spook with a rifle was something else.

It must have been morbid fascination which drew me back to an inspection of the girl. The bloated face, the frozen snarl of lips that once drew sweetly on lollypops, would fuel my nightmares for years to come — but what caught my eye was a black object clenched in her fist. I reached down and pried the rotor cap out of her fingers. Part of her flesh came away with it. As I wiped the cap on the dead grass, Ann was saying:

“Now the creature knows. He has taken one more step. Always before he relied on those already dead. Now he has learned to create his own corpses.”

The dog wore a leather collar. I twisted it around and angled the light so I could read the stamping on the metal tag: BOB WESTLAKE RT 3 GUBBS KNOB. There was a phone number.

I straightened up and saw Ann walking off into the woods. I called her once, but she kept on with her eyes straight ahead. I ran after her and caught her arm. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

She turned and stared, not at me, but through me. Her eyes were glassy and unfocussed.

I wasted no time talking. I took her hand and led Ann back to the car. She stood without moving while I replaced the rotor and clamped on the distributor cap I opened the car door and lifted her into the seat. Her body felt light and waxy, without strength.

Not until I started the engine did she blink and look around. I pulled a half-pint of Early Times out of the glove compartment, uncapped it, and shoved in under her nose.

“Drink!”

“What—?” Ann stared at me, then seized the bottle and tipped it up. I heard three distinct glurks, then she lowered the bottle and gave a long, moist sigh.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to... I just happened to slip into its wave-length.”

“What’s it doing?”

“Moving fast, across country. It’s hungry. It seems to know where it’s going.”

“Which direction?”

“That way.” Her finger pointed to the glow of Gubb’s Knob.

I burned rubber backing out of the drive and heading north.

I passed a camper-truck parked at the entrance to a field. I hit the brakes and jumped out, leaving the engine running. The registration on the truck’s steering shaft showed that it belonged to Bob Westlake.

“Why didn’t it use Westlake’s truck?” I asked as I got back in the car.

“I told you, spirits don’t like electricity, not even the small amount generated by a car’s ignition system. It makes them nervous, upsets their perceptions.”

“Are you nervous?”

She put her hand over mine. It felt reassuringly warm. “I’m all right now. What are you going to do?”

“I know where Westlake lives. I’ll stop by his house and pick up his wife, then go on from there.”

Westlake was a junker. Behind his six-foot board fence stretched a five-acre sargasso of derelict autos, trucks, busses, vans, motorcycles, and boats. Usually the place was lit by a dusk-to-dawn light blazing atop a thirty-foot pole. Now only the rising half-moon glowed dully on thousands of domed roofs.

The windows of his ranch-style house were dark when I drove up. I switched off the engine and said: “Tell me if he’s in there.”

Ann closed her eyes. After a minute her breathing slowed to a hoarse, deep rhythm.

“Well?”

Ann jumped, and her eyes flew open. “I don’t pick up anything, Fred. But you know, that doesn’t mean...”

“I know. I’ll have to go in. You stay here with the engine running.”

“Oh Fred! You wouldn’t know what to do if you rah into it.”

“Well, tell me.”

“The best thing is not to be afraid.”

“What’s the next best thing? I’m already terrified.”

“No, really. It works by paralyzing your will, through fear. The bird and the snake. You hate what you fear, and your hatred consumes you. Thus you become what you hate. Is that clear?”

“No, but I’m going in anyway. Lean on the horn if you see anything. Don’t leave the car!”

I opened the screen door and walked across the wooden porch. The kitchen door hung open; I stuck my head into the dark room and breathed the smell of stale food and dishwater. My flashlight beam found the fuse-box in the hallway. The insert which held the cartridge fuses had been pulled out and dropped onto the floor. I picked it up and, shoved the prongs back into their slots.

The flourescent kitchen light blinked, flickered, and settled into a dull hum. Naked white light bathed a woman’s body sprawled across the bedroom door. She wore a blue nightgown and what looked like a wet red bandanna around her neck. Her throat was a ragged gash from jaw to collarbone.

I heard Ann gasp beside me. She ran forward and slipped her hand into the woman’s armpit.

“Still warm.” She jumped up. “I can track him—”

“No!”

Ann looked at me in surprise. “No?”

“No. We’ll go back to the motel and call the sheriff.”

Her chin jutted. “Suppose I follow him anyway?”

“I’ll stop you.”

Ann tilted her head and squinted at me, looking more puzzled than angry. “I’m not used to being told what to do.”

“Sorry about that. I’ll keep you safe if I have to cripple you in the process.”

I found a sheet and covered the body of Rose Marie Westlake. I didn’t like to think about the manner of her death. Probably she’d gotten up to fix her husband a snack, knowing he’d be hungry after his coon-hunting.

I turned out the lights and we drove back toward town. Ann rode in silence. She didn’t seem to be brooding, just thinking.

I called the sheriff from her room. The night deputy said Sheriff Hoffer was investigating a disturbance at Chuck and Patty’s Tavern, and he would try to patch me into his car phone. While I waited, Ann peeled off her coveralls and opened her suitcase to take out a sheer nightdress. I guess she was so completely attuned to the spiritual plane that she didn’t realize how her body affected a carnal person like myself.

The sheriff answered in a gruff, angry voice. I gave my name and then Ann leaned over and whispered in my ear:

“Tell him not to shoot. Whatever he does, don’t shoot.”

The sheriff growled: “Goddammit, Fred, say your piece and get off the line. A guy and his gal got murdered in a parked car out here and I got no time—”

“How were they killed?” I asked, afraid I knew.

“Shot, through the windshield. Then the bastard crawled in and cut their throats.”

My scalp drew, tight. “Nobody heard the shots?”

“No. The damn lights went out inside, everybody was hollerin’ and grabbin’—”

“Sheriff, the man who did it is Bob Westlake.”

“Are you out of your mind? I’ve known Bob since the sixth grade. He’s harmless as a kitten.”

“He’s changed. He just killed his wife.”

There were three ticks of silence. Then the sheriff said in a tight silky burr: “Fred, boy, where are you callin’ from?”

“Never mind that. You go on out to Bob’s and look. But if you see him, don’t shoot. Just get a lot of men and surround him, take his gun away but don’t hurt him. Hear, sheriff? It’s important. It’s not a joke! Sheriff—”

The receiver clicked in my ear. I hung up and looked at Ann. She was stretched out on the bed with her arms at her sides, palms up. Without taking her eyes off the ceiling she said:

“You can’t keep a sheriff from using his gun, any more than you can keep a bull from using his horns.”

I swung a chair over beside her and sat down. “What are you doing?”

She reached out and took my hand. “Stay with me, I’m going to try to communicate.”

“I think it’s too dangerous.”

“No. Lock the door and windows. It can’t hurt us physically if it can’t get to us. There’s just one thing. Whatever I do, whatever I say, don’t let me leave the room. Remember that. Don’t let me out!”

“I won’t,” I promised.

X

Ann began breathing evenly. I took the burning cigaret from her fingers and lay it in the ashtray. Her breath slowed, deepened. I got up and opened the window at the end of the room, looking across the open field which stretched out behind the motel. Dark forested hills reared up a quarter-mile away. Near the crest, where the highway curved, I saw the blue-red splash of neon which marked Chuck and Patty’s tavern. The beast had been very close.

I closed the window and yanked down the inside lever, wedging it tightly into its socket. Then I went into the bathroom and fastened the hook on the window. I turned the key in the door and fastened the night-chain. Then I turned out the light and walked back to the bed. Ann was murmuring softly:

“I know how it feels. Hates everybody, everything. Motorcars, buildings, people. I remember the old legends of trolls and little people of Ireland who lived under the ground. I’ve seen their fairy castles and the magic circles where they dance in the moonlight. This isn’t one of those. This is something strange, twisted — OH!”

Ann shrieked and went rigid. I tried to smooth her body with my hands but she was vibrating like a taut doorspring. I found a bottle of scotch in her suitcase, poured a glass full, and let it trickle through her clenched teeth. She snorted and spat, then sat up flailing her arms, knocking the glass out of my hand. I backed away, and she bounced off the bed, like an uncoiling spring, crossed the room in two leaps, and started clawing at the door latch.

I ran over and grabbed her arms, pulling them up behind her back. She snarled and kicked backward, her soft heel striking my kneecap. I imprisoned both her wrists in my left hand and clamped my right forearm under her chin. She twisted her head, her teeth flashing white in the dim light.

I saw her eyes; the pupils were almost out of sight under her lids. I lifted my knee and shoved it against her rump, pushing her pelvis against the wall while I pulled her head back. She writhed, jerked, clawed tracks of fire on the backs of my hands — and then collapsed.

I carried her back to the bed and stretched her out, sliding a pillow under her head. Then I refilled the whisky glass and pushed it under her nose. Ann raised up, took a huge swallow, then lowered her head to the pillow.

“Again?” she asked.

“Yes. How do you feel?”

Ann stretched out her hands and pressed the covers beside her, then reached up and put her hands beside my ears, touching my neck, my shoulders, my body.

“It hates me. I’m the enemy. It feels that I’m persecuting it. It wants to kill me, but it knows it can’t.”

I held the glass to her lips and she took another sip. “Why can’t it?”

“Because I don’t hate it.”

“You don’t?” My voice rose in surprise.

“No. It couldn’t have been more than three years old when it fell in that hole. God knows how long the parents looked for it, or how many years ago it happened. I get the impression of decades, but it knew neither day or night, just unending gloom. Maybe the child’s hips were broken, so that it couldn’t walk, and had to crawl around on the floor of the cave.

“It ate frogs, snakes, lizards... who knows what it ate? But imagine what it would be to grow up in total darkness. You wouldn’t have any sense of your body. You wouldn’t be aware of your mouth, eyes, lips, teeth. You could be a sludge, a pool, a gas, a thought. Unable to walk or see or talk, you would develop your nonphysical powers to a fantastic degree. Can I have another drink, love?”

I filled the glass and put it in her hand. Ann drained it in three swallows and gave it back.

“Helps me wall off part of myself,” she mumbled. “People do that. They put a brick wall over what they don’t want to see, and it just gets bigger and bigger. I’m gonna take a li’l nap, sweetheart. Don’t go ’way.”

Ann’s eyes closed, and her head flopped to one side. Her lower lip, hung open, and I heard the soft snore of alcohol-induced slumber. I hoped it would give her a few hours’ rest. I don’t know what the night’s events had done to her nerves, but mine were jumping like cats in a gunny-sack.

I turned on the dresser lamp and sat in an armchair, programmed to jump and hold her down if the light so much as flickered. After awhile she started muttering, and I went over and put my ear to her lips.

“I live in a hole. I see lights at the top of the world. Animals come, fall in. I eat. Learn. Man comes! He sucks on bubble-shape, drinks blood. I do not know this blood. It makes him fall. His mind breaks into little pieces. I gather up the pieces and make him get up, walk around. It is good. I like the feel of earth moving under my feet.

“I cannot return to my old body. No matter. That body does not walk. Legs too small. It has no eyes to see, no teeth to eat live flesh. Only what is long dead. You think of me evil. Not evil. Buzzard not evil when eat dead cow. Being is. I am. I find forms that others make. Now I know to break minds into little pieces. I pinch out each little I am and put myself there. I eat more now. I grow strong. I will grow stronger...”

“What do you want?” I whispered.

“...Life. Life. I was cheated. I want... to live. I want to play in the sun and drop the handkerchief. I know of these things. I have the thoughts which come in to me, I know of cars and radios and flat people who dance on funny glass...”

The light went out. I heard screams and the shriek of breaking glass from the bar at the front of the motel. I heard the pounding of feet down the hall, and I threw myself on top of Ann and held her down on the bed. The door thundered, something-hard was striking it, perhaps a rifle butt. I stayed where I was, watching the door, holding my breath, waiting for the shots which would shatter the lock.

They didn’t come. The footsteps moved down the hall. I heard the rear door open and wheeze shut. A few minutes later the lights came on.

I rolled off Ann. She sat up, brushed her hair out of her eyes, and stared at me. “It was out there,” she said.

“Where is it now?”

“It walked off into the woods. I could go talk to it.”

“You’re crazy,” I told her.

“No, listen. Life is a unity. There is no evil outside the mind. This creature has never known anything but darkness. It doesn’t know about the higher worlds. It thinks this is all there is. If I could find it, tell it how to break out...”

“It would kill you first.”

“I don’t think so. I think I could conquer its will. Anyway, what are the alternatives? Somebody will kill Westlake. Then that person will be possessed until he in turn is killed. It would just go on and on. Isn’t that a terrible thing to think of? My way is the only way, believe me. Risk one life to save many. Isn’t that a beautiful principle?”

“I don’t object to the principle. But it’s your life, it’s not a matter of principle.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“Not a damn thing,” I told her. “At least until it gets day-light. We’re staying right in this room.”

Ann gave a long sigh. “All right. Pour me another drink. The vibes in this joint are a shrieking jangle.”

Soberly she held out her glass and didn’t pull it away until I’d poured it full. I screwed the cap on the bottle and watched her down half the glass and then blink back tears.

“You’re not a regular juicer, are you?”

Ann shook her head. “Only when I work. Or rather, when I’m trying to rest.” She raised her glass and looked through the amber. “I sensitize myself in order to work. When I try to relax, I pick up emanations from everyone — waitresses, bartenders, people on the street. There’s a lot of hate in the world, Fred. This helps to blanket the impressions.”

“Does it bother you to be around me? Don’t I emanate anything?”

“Yes. Love. It’s very restful. Healing.”

I looked down, feeling the blood rush to my neck. The bite on my throat burned like the sting of a fire-ant. To change the subject I asked: “What do you do when you’re not spook-hunting?”

“I have a little house on a cliff in the Canaries. No electricity, no appliances. Just me and the sea.”

“You’re like those spooks you’re chasing.”

“There’s not much difference really. They’ve lost their physical bodies, but I still have mine. Otherwise we’re the same. You are too, you know. Trouble is most people live completely on the physical plane. They choke off their astral body, it grows twisted, warped... sometimes insane. Like the one we’re looking for now. Ugh. Look, just talking about it, I get goose-bumps.”

I slid my hands over Ann’s forearms. They felt like course sandpaper. Sparks of body electricity crackled between us.

I poured her another drink and moved to a chair. She lay on the bed and we talked. Instinct told me that her will to live needed to be reinforced, so I asked about her past.

XI

Ann hadn’t had what you’d call a family life. Mother and father divorced early, mother descended from some wealthy clan. She’d spent her life in gilt-edged institutions, girl’s schools and summer camps where one sought to learn the impractical: horsemanship, music, drama, the arts...

She rejected all, had no interest in boys, did not marry. Her income of twenty thousand a year came without effort, from rents on property she’d never seen, interest on bonds she had never purchased.

She didn’t think of herself as parasitic; the certainties of life were food, clothing, warmth and the respect of tradesmen and workers. She had no concept of class; being a member of the wolf family, she could never understand the rabbit’s fear of wolves.

I didn’t bother to propagandize her. She rejected life on this earth as meaningless because she was not involved in the struggle for food and shelter. I was willing to admit that she had been excused from the moiling toil in order to pursue higher things, but what about others who had to supress their spiritual talents in order to scratch in the dungheap?

Ann said, “Show me one and I’ll help him.”

So I told her about my practice, how I tried to balance out my term as prosecutor by defending drunks, long-hairs, unwed mothers and other social outcasts.

She said this was my task, she thought that if I’d been meant to work on the spiritual plane then I’d have been born with a free conscience.

Maybe she was right. Anyway that’s how we passed the time until daylight. I felt like I’d been dragged through a rose bush when we finally left the room for coffee and breakfast. As we passed the bar, I saw the door hanging on one hinge, with plywood nailed up where the glass had been.

I asked the girl behind the switchboard what had happened, and as she turned I saw the spreading green-purple stain of a fresh shiner. She explained that there’d been a fight. “The lights went out and everybody lost it. Who threw the first bottle? Who the hell knows? Next it was chairs, and somebody heaved a table over the bar. When the lights came on everybody just stood around gawping at each other.”

Ann and I walked down the corridor to the restaurant. Without discussion, we took the same table we’d occupied that first morning. Only two days ago? I could hardly believe it.

The waitress looked sullen as she set our water in front of us and pulled out her order pad. I asked about her husband, whom I had gotten to know during my term as prosecutor. Goldie said she’d thrown the drunken S.O.B. out last night along with bag and baggage and didn’t care whether she ever saw him again or not.

She went back to the kitchen and after a terrific clatter of pots and pans she came out with four slabs of burnt toast and said the cook had quit, and did I want to wait on the eggs or go to a decent restaurant? I said we’d wait, and then I looked at Ann and asked:

“You think there’s any connection?”

“Maybe. But you’d have to catalogue every husband-wife quarrel in the county before you got a directional fix.”

I got up and went down the hall to the telephone booth. I stepped inside and called my successor in the prosecutor’s office. When I asked him what was happening, he wanted to know if I wanted the bad stuff, or the horrible stuff. Then he said never mind, it was all horrible. Apart from numerous beatings, muggings, fights and inexplicable power failures, there appeared to be a mad killer loose in the country.

First, the double murder outside Chuck and Patty’s. Then a supermarket cashier had found a customer lying dead between the aisles, without a mark on her except that her throat had been cut. Neighbors helping put out a fire in a retirement village claimed to have seen an elderly couple lying dead in their bed just before the roof fell in. Their throats had been cut. The same with Rose Westlake.

The sheriff had called in all his deputies, got old blind Judge Grable out of bed, and got warrants against the community’s known troublemakers. There’d been no word on him since four a.m., when his deputy called in and said he’d just shot Bob Westlake in self defense—

I gasped. “The sheriff shot Westlake?”

“Killed him right in the driveway of Kupp’s service station. The deputy said Bob fired first. They figured he must’ve gone crackers when he found his wife dead, or else he went nuts first and did it himself. Anyway the sheriff couldn’t see any way to take him, so he shot him dead.

“He told his deputy to wait for the coroner, then drove off. Hasn’t been seen since. His deputies have already locked up a dozen people and I can’t find out what they’re charged with. I heard there was even a warrant out for you. If you’ve got time you might look into it.”

“I’ll do that, Norman.” I hung up and went back to the booth. Ann was digging into a duet of fried eggs, but she pushed her plate back when I told her the sheriff had shot Westlake and disappeared. Her face was as white as the napkin she raised to her lips.

“He’s at the jail, of course,” she said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because that’s where the food is. To the creature who inhabits the sheriff is would seem like a gigantic smorgasbord. When he gets hungry he just reaches in and... oh God! Look out the window!”

I saw a pale blue car pull into a parking slot. The gold shield on its door glamed in the early sun, its red flasher splashed light in all directions. Sheriff Wade Hoffer stepped out, shut his door, straightened his white stetson, and jerked his wide leather belt up over the paunch that swelled like a bloated dumpling against his shirt. He strode toward the front entrance, his face wearing the dull truculence of a law enforcement officer about to do his painful duty.

I looked at Ann. “Suggestions?”

“Go with him.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No, listen. He’ll hunt you down and kill you if you don’t. You can’t fight him with force. He’s tied to our world through hate and fear. Only love and courage will drive him away. Do you understand that?”

“No. I can’t see laying myself out on the smorgasbord either.”

“Don’t think about it. Act natural, don’t be afraid. Fear will excite him. Once you’re inside, start organizing the prisoners for a breakout. You’ll hear from me.”

I opened my mouth to ask what she planned, but then I heard the sheriff growl at the desk: “Fred Bagram here?”

The girl tinkled with respect: “You’ll find him in the restaurant, sheriff.”

Ann put her hand on mine. “Don’t fight him. Remember: Love, and courage. I’ll get you free.”

She slid out of the booth and glided behind the counter. As she disappeared through the swinging doors to the kitchen, I turned and saw Sheriff Hoffer come into the restaurant. Love and courage. Those two things were hard to remember when I saw the sheriff’s eyes. They looked like a pair of burnt-out fuses.

I stood up and faced him. “What do you want me for, sheriff?”

He stopped and began shuffling through a bunch of warrants. His thick fingers were stained the rusty color of barn paint — but I knew the sheriff hadn’t been painting any old red barns.

He pulled out a sheet and read in a dull monotone: “Fred Bagram... murder of Robert George,”

“You know I didn’t do that!”

“You gonna come peacable or do I hafta handcuff you?”

I knew one thing — I didn’t want handcuffs. I walked down, the aisle and sidestepped past, him, careful not to touch him, aware that he’d unbuttoned his holster and was resting his hand on his gun.

My back itched all the way to the car. I was happy to sit in back, with wire mesh separating me from the beast, though I admit the lack of door handles gave me worse claustrophobia than I’d had in the cave.

XII

Our new jail stood on the edge of town, not far from the sewage treatment plant. I saw several cars in the lot, but no people. I walked ahead of the sheriff up the short flight of concrete steps and entered the room where prisoners were checked in. Nobody stood behind the counter, nor was anyone at the radio.

I could hear vague murmurs from the lockup area, but these were peevish rather than panicky. As I walked back toward the cells, I glanced into the room where off-duty deputies and lawyers usually sat around chewing fat and drinking coffee. It was empty and dark. I realized the electricity was off.

The sheriff pulled out his keys and unlocked a steel door with a high barred grill in its center. He pushed it open and stepped back, gesturing with the keyring. I stepped through the door. A clamor erupted from the gloom, then subsided to a groan as the door clanked shut.

The trusty who came waddling down the aisle — Dan Kobbe — looked worried and harrassed. He saw me, halted, blinked, and shook his head.

“Fred, I never expected to see you in the slam, considerin’ you’re the one put me here. What the hell’s got into the Man?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” I peered into the bullpen — our brochures call it the dayroom — and saw a milling jam of men and boys. There were also a couple of women, which was decidedly against jail policy. I couldn’t see well enough to identify anyone. As the trusty inserted his key, the huddled mass crowded against the door.

“I wanta call my lawyer!” “One phone call. I got rights!” “Wife! Gotta call my wife, I just went out for a pack of cig—” “Food! When we gonna eat?”

Kobbe growled out of the side of his mouth: “I’ll yank open the door and you jump in quick. Those guys are about to get outa hand.”

“Kob, do I look like a fool? I’m not going in there.”

“Yay!” “Tell him, prosecutor!” “Sue the bastard!”

Kobbe looked bewildered. He was a product of the prison system, beat-down and confused, tyrannical toward those under him and obsequious toward those above him. Right now he wasn’t sure where I fit into the pecking order. I decided to use his confusion to my advantage.

“Listen, Kob. The sheriff’s dropped his marbles. He fell out of his tree, know what I mean? Where’s the chief deputy?”

“I dunno.”

“Well, where’s the radio dispatcher?” I put the whiplash of authority into my voice. “You know the phone’s dead? What if the governor calls? What if Mr. Kelly calls?”

“Who’s Mister Kelly?”

“Head of the FBI, you idiot!”

“I dunno, Mr. Bagram. I just do what the sheriff says. He comes up and wants a prisoner for interrogation, I let one out. Sheriff takes ’em down to that soundproof room in the basement and interrogates ’em.”

“Then what?”

“Let’s ’em go I reckon. They don’t come back here.”

Let’s ’em go, I thought, into the great courtroom up yonder.

“How many so far?”

“Four.”

“Oh God! Listen, Kob. The sheriffs having head trouble. We’ve seen it coming a long time, but we couldn’t move until it came out into the open. This is it. Since there aren’t any deputies in the building, you’re in charge. Now what are we gonna do?”

Kobbe looked suddenly trapped and frightened. He stared at the sullen faces inside the bullpen and shook his head. “I dunno.” He turned to me. “You tell me. What should we do?”

“First thing is to get that gun away from the sheriff so he doesn’t hurt somebody. You go to that grill and holler that there’s a prisoner hangin.’ himself in one of the cells. When he comes in, a bunch will rush down the corridor. We’ll have two guys hidden behind the door. You two,” I pointed to a pair of husky construction workers who’d probably been hauled in for double parking. “Let ’em out, Kob.”

Kobbe unlocked the door without hesitation. The two men stepped out into the hall and stood blinking at me. The other prisoners stood back from the open door, waiting. The place was so quiet I could hear a faucet drip in one of the cells.

“Now,” I pointed to the largest of the two men. “You land on the Sheriffs back, and your friend will grab his gun hand. Don’t let go, even if you get thrown against the wall. The rest of you wait until I open this door, then rush out and pile on. Smother him. I don’t mean kill him, but get him closed in so he can’t move. Knock him out if you can, but don’t let him use his teeth on you. Kob, you grab his handcuffs and pass them to me. All ready? Okay, Kob. Go to the door and start yelling.”

It was a marvelous plan, and I felt sure it would work. Unfortunately Kob took only one step before the key rattled in the iron door. I heard the sheriff bellow:

“Fred Bagram! Send him out, trusty.”

Kob looked at me, waiting. I weighed the chances of a headlong rush and wondered how many .45 slugs would rip through our flesh before we got him down.

At that moment the overhead light flickered, hummed, and blinked on. The loudspeaker made a loud squawk, and Ann’s voice blared out into the building:

“Sheriff! I’m speaking to you, Sheriff!”

I heard the scrape of shoes outside. The iron door crept open about an inch. I tiptoed forward as Ann’s voice continued:

“...I know you aren’t Sheriff Wade Hoffer, hut who are you? This is the question you must be asking yourself. The answer is that you are nothing. You were given one body on this earth and what you do with it decides your place in eternity. Are you happy?

“The longer you claw in this dungheap the less are your chances to attain a state where there is no hunger, no cold, no loneliness. Your crimes weigh down upon your back like a sackful of rocks. Leave them. Let the flesh fall to the floor. Cast off that cumbersome garment and rise with me into the world of the spirit.

“I will help you. I can show you how. Do you hear me? Don’t gorge yourself any further. The more you eat the more the appetite grows, and you will never find satiety on this earth. Leave the body now, give up the flesh, and rise up to where you belong...”

I looked through the grill and saw the sheriff walking away. He planted his feet wide apart and shuffled as if struggling through deep snow. Had Ann’s pitch worked? I didn’t think so, judging from the snuffling, growling noises which came from Hoffer’s throat.

I pushed the door open and stepped through, motioning the others to wait. I had the idea of sneaking up behind the sheriff while he approached Ann, but a sudden outburst of snarling from the front office made me forget caution. I ran into the room and immediately wished I’d picked up some sort of a heavy weapon.

The sheriff was bending Ann backward over the switchboard, and though her neck tendons swelled with effort, the sheriff doubled her in weight, and she had no chance. I saw his bristly head dip down toward her throat. I leaped on his back, at the same time jerking his gun from the holster and throwing it behind me.

I managed to pull him backwards, and we staggered against the desk. Pain shot out from the base of my spine, numbing me from the waist down. The sheriff heaved his bulky shoulders, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he tossed me over his head. I saw Ann rise from the switchboard with blood oozing from her neck.

“Grab the handcuffs, Ann, in his belt!”

She stumbled forward. I saw her white, rolling eyes and realized she was out of her head and into the killing madness which had seized her twice before. I heard the moaning deep in her throat as she came slowly toward the sheriff, uh-uh-uh-uh... Her teeth flashed as her head came down like a striking cobra’s.

“Aggggg hhhh!”

The sound came from the sheriff, and it was the last sound he made in this world. His body jerked and went limp. I pulled the handcuffs from his belt as he slid to the floor. Ann followed him down, her face hidden by her flowing hair. I heard the steady drumming of the sheriff’s heels on the floor and the sickening slurping sound of a vampire feeding on its kill.

Ann hardly noticed when I pulled her hands behind her and fastened the cuffs.

Epilogue

Five years have passed since those tragic events, and the population of Gubb’s Knob continues to decrease, though not so rapidly as it did in the months right after our “vampire scare.”

I still have my practice. The newspaper folded, so did Sadie’s Beauty Saloon — with no noticeable increase in the ugliness of Gubb’s Knob women. The bank downstairs is open one day a week, though most folks do their banking in the new city out on the Interstate. People wonder why a youngs lawyer stays on in a dying community — but they don’t usually ask me personally. If they did, I’d just say I liked the fishing.

The problem is that it’s hard to move Ann. I’ve got the grid around her room covered with paneling, so that you can’t see the copper wires. I go in and we visit every day. I wear a leather collar which is scarfed with her teeth marks, but those are from the early years, when the alien personality was dominant.

Each time it came out I would electrify the grill inside her walls. I would start my power lathe, my drill, my bench-grinder, power saw and all the other machines. I guess you’d call it pain therapy.

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.