Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 6. Whole No. 766, June 2005

I drew my revolver and walked down the hill toward the spot where he had disappeared. I wondered if I needed silver bullets. If he didn’t go up, he had to have gone down, I figured. I looked back at Caleb Potter’s gravestone to calculate distance and line. When I arrived at the spot where I had last seen him, I stopped. I used my flashlight and searched the ground. It took a few minutes. Next to a clump of winterberry I saw the trapdoor. The vampire had done a good job with it. He had covered the lid with sod and had placed the hole back among the plants so that no one strolling through the cemetery would step on the trapdoor. He could disappear quickly and he could reappear when he liked. It would freak kids out to see him suddenly materialize in the cemetery when no one had seen him coming. Maybe Wolf walked kids nearby, escorted them to a fixed point, and then the vampire would appear magically.

I was still admiring his work when he suddenly snorkeled a periscope out of a breathing hole. Again, a pretty slick feature. He could scan the area to make sure no one was around. He probably told himself that he was smarter than anyone else and no one could catch him. The periscope scanned slowly in a circle.

I put my hand over the periscope lens.

I resisted the impulse to say peekaboo.

Out on Millcross Road, I heard Wally arrive in the department Cherokee.

I pulled some wolfsbane out of my pocket. Garlic, too. I pushed the periscope back in, then dropped the wolfsbane in and the garlic. I stepped on the trapdoor.

“Wally,” I yelled, “bring the wooden stake and the holy water.”

The vampire started yelling under my feet.

Two days later Wally gave me the report. The vampire’s hideout had been an old refrigerator, enlarged at the foot and head with two plastic boxes. It had been tight, but he had been able to go inside, fish out whatever he needed, then tuck it into his jacket. He had three flashlights, a PVC air stack, and a blanket. He could sleep in there to hide out. Maybe it made him feel like a vampire.

He also had a small pharmacy.

“Did you watch a lot of vampire movies as a kid?” Wally asked.

He sat next to my desk in the rolling chair. He liked the rolling chair because he could push back and glide to his desk. He delivered the report by sliding to me.

“As many as I could.”

“I always thought they were stupid,” Wally said. “All that hypnosis. The bats in the eyes.”

“The vampire could control Frankenstein. That’s something.”

“But didn’t the wolfman kill the vampire?”

“In Abbott and Costello. Real vampires would never let that happen.”

Wally looked at me.

“You meeting the vampire’s parents?”

I nodded.

“You think they can get him to admit selling the stuff to the Adelar kid?”

“Doubt it.”

“Then what’s the point?”

“You never know until you know.”

“Is that Zen?”

“If it’s not, it should be.”

The vampire didn’t look great in orange. His Concord State Prison jumpsuit sagged around him. His pointed teeth looked merely old and decayed. When he sat down across the table from us, his mother reached for his hand. He let her hold it. She was a gray woman who wore a gray raincoat and brown slacks. She wore Merrells on her feet. She made no sound when she walked. She reminded me of smoke.

“You have to stop all this nonsense,” his father said. “No more of this vampire crap.”

His dad wore plaid. Plaid coat, plaid shirt, plaid hat. He looked like a Scottish potato. He was no taller than his son, but twice as broad.

“My lawyer said not to say anything,” the vampire said.

“You don’t have to,” I said. “But you could help yourself. Tell us who supplies you, who else is selling things. All you need to do today is agree in principle. Then we can talk about the details later.”

“Alan,” his mother said, “you listen to Chief Poulchuk.”

“I can’t squeal on other people. It wouldn’t be good for my health. I’ll tell you this much, though. Ricky Adelar helped himself to whatever drugs he took. He used to sell the stuff all the time. One of my competitors.”

His dad blew air between his lips. His mom kept the vampire’s hand in hers. She looked at my expression to see if her son’s confession had any impact on me.

“Interesting,” I said.

“So he got a little nutty from the stuff and he had to blame someone. So he blamed me,” the vampire said.

“Might make sense,” I said.

“Put me out of business and cover things with his parents.”

“Got it,” I said.

I stood. Mom and Dad remained seated.

“What was that shit you threw down at me?” the vampire said. “Into the hole, I mean.”

“Wolfsbane.”

“Thought so.”

“And garlic.”

“Cut it out,” his dad said. “Just cut it out.”

Copyright © 2005 by Joseph Monninger.

Stanley Cohen’s short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including The Year’s Best Mystery and Suspense Stories and World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories . In 2002, one of his tales appeared in the Mystery Writers of America’s collection Murder in the Family , edited by Lawrence Block. He joins us here with a tale of pure suspense.

Soaking wet, he emerged from the mouth of the cave into the chill air. Nothing looked familiar. After hesitating a moment, he broke into an exhausting dead run, straight ahead, through the snagging underbrush. His feet were cold and leaden in his waterlogged shoes. He had to get help and get back to the cave. He had to get her out of there, if possible before nightfall. The sun was already down into the tree line, dusk less than an hour away.

“There’s just one way out of here,” he’d told her. “And that’s by swimming. Underwater. We’ve got to dive in and swim underwater toward that spot of light, and when we come up on the other side of that big rock, we can walk right out.”

“Why’d you bring me here?” she’d said.

“It was a mistake. But that’s not what’s important now. What’s important is that there’s only one way out: by diving right toward that spot of light and coming up on the other side of the rock.”

“You know I can’t swim.”

“You’ve got to. Don’t you understand?”

“I can’t.”

“But we don’t have a chance of getting out any other way. Don’t you understand? It’s the only way out. There’s no use trying to get back out the way we came.”

“I can’t swim.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“It’s no use. I can’t swim at all, much less dive down there. You knew that.”

“We’ve got to. It’s the only way. I’ll help you. I’ll pull you through it. But we’ve got to.” He’d turned the flashlight into her face briefly at that point and, seeing her expression, knew she’d never make it. For a moment he’d pictured in his mind trying to pull her down through it. And as he did, he experienced the kind of panic he knew must have gripped her. She was right. It was hopeless. You can help a nonswimmer on the surface of water but never, never downward through water. He’d imagined the two of them underwater, upside down, trying to move downward, deeper, toward nothing more than a glow of light, she desperately clutching at him and drowning and he losing control and feeling the cold underground water flowing into his own mouth and nose.

He’d had to give up the idea. It couldn’t be done. How deep was the pool? How far down was the pass-through? How large was the pass-through? Could he make it himself? Alone? He thought about getting stuck in it and thrashing helplessly until dead. He imagined her watching his legs as he’d start through, stop, and then kick until he stopped kicking. But that wouldn’t happen. Others had made it. Lots of them. He’d make it. But only alone. There was no other way.