Stuart Kaminsky - Never Cross A Vampire

“Good work, Gunther,” I said, dropping a glob of butter into the boiling pot of beans.

“Toby,” he said, “I was not giving my investigative mode to solicit approval, but to make clear that she did not know I followed.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, turning to him.

“Yes,” said Gunther. “Well, she came finally to an apartment building in Culver City and entered. I followed after I was sure she was in and took down the names on all the boxes. There were six. By watching the windows from outside, I did manage to see her pass once or twice from the street side. The apartment was thus determined, and, I am sorry to say, it was the one with no name on the mailbox or bell. However, it was evident that she was not alone in the room. There was assuredly the figure of a man, and though I could not be certain, perhaps because my imagination was at this point engaged, I thought I saw what could at one point be interpreted as an amorous embrace. She remained inside for almost one hour and fifty minutes, emerged, looked around, and drove directly back to her home in Bel Air.”

“The plot sickens,” I said, moving to the table and eating directly from the pot with a large spoon and three slices of bread. “And?” he said.

“I’ll investigate in the morning. Gunther, thanks.”

“I found it stimulating,” he said. “Please call upon me if you need further help.”

I told him I would and he left. After finishing my dinner, I checked my wet suit. It was drying reasonably well and might be ready by morning.

It was a little after eight on my Beech-Nut clock. While I got out of my clothes, I listened to the end of “Inner Sanctum.” In bed, I heard Jack Benny and flexed my knee. It was working with some reluctance. I forced myself to exercise-push-ups, sit-ups, and panting. The knee would keep me out of the YMCA for a while, and I needed exercise as much to convince myself that I had an able body as to use that body.

I mixed myself a glass of milk with Horlicks, gulped it down, brushed my teeth, and got into bed with the lights out. I thought I’d rest for an hour or two, plan out the next day, Monday, and then get up and read a mystery. The rest turned to sleep, and I went out firmly except for one roll to my left that sent an icicle into my head wound.

The sound at the door was a scratch, and I couldn’t tell whether the door was in my dream and the scratch outside or the reverse or neither. I struggled toward wakefulness, but it was one of those times when the weary flesh didn’t want to respond to the need. I came out of it and sat up groggily. The scratch was still at my door.

“Just a second,” I said, turning on the light and checking the clock. It was just after midnight. Gunther was probably suffering from his chronic insomnia and checking to see whether I was up for some talk or coffee, but I didn’t take any chances. I got my gun and said, “Who is it?”

“Me, Bedelia,” came the whispered answer. The voice was different from the one I had heard hours earlier in the Personality Plus Beauty School. I turned off the light, thought about putting on something besides my shorts, and decided there was no time. I stood to the side of the door with my gun ready and pushed it open into the room. From the light in the hall I could see the female figure silhouetted clearly. She was unarmed.

She stepped into the room, and I flicked on the light and closed the door. This wasn’t the Bedelia Sue Frye I had met in Tarzana. This was the woman of the Dark Knights of Transylvania, the dark-haired, pale-faced creature slouching slightly, her voice a whisper, her smile a secret, a weary secret. She looked at my gun and let her eyes scan my body with a combination of amusement and approval. She was wearing something made of a red silklike material that hung straight down over her shoulders.

“You wanted to see me?” she said.

“Game time?” I said, looking closely at her. I couldn’t be sure that this was the same woman, but it had to be.

“This is no game,” she said seriously, moving to my one semicomfortable chair and looking at the room.

I put my.38 on a corner of the table opposite her, where I could get to it first if I had to, and scratched my head, being careful to avoid my bump.

“Look,” I said, “things are going from bad to strange with me, and it’d make my life easier if you’d come out of character and tell me what’s up.”

“Up,” she said with a smile, looking at my underpants. “You are.”

I was. I sat down at my kitchen table and crossed my legs.

“Okay,” I sighed, trapped in my own castle. “What’s going on?” “You wanted to see me,” she said.

“I saw you this evening,” I said.

“That was not the real me you saw,” she said, looking at my mattress. “This is.”

“Terrific,” I said. “You really mean this, don’t you? Or are you going to suddenly come out of it and start laughing when my pants come down.”

“You can be amusing,” she said, rising and taking a step toward me.

“Like a fly amuses a spider,” I said.

“Perhaps,” she said, with a pout.

My eyes went to the gun and back to her as she advanced on me. I didn’t want to stand up, but I didn’t know what was on her mind.

“Lady,” I said, “I think you are a little screwy.”

She sat on the table, a cat smile on her lips, and touched my face. I looked at her and wondered whether I was having a nightmare or a fantasy. She inched forward off the table like a cat and sat in my lap. My body told me she wasn’t a fantasy.

“It is after midnight,” she whispered, “when the blood runs free, and passion rises with the full moon.”

“I don’t know what’s making the passion rise,” I answered, “and I don’t care. I’m not going to look a gift vampire in the mouth.”

She took a small nip at my neck, but not enough to draw blood. I hoped she was teasing. Actually, I didn’t know what the hell she was doing. My body told me to find out later. I tried to pick her up to carry her to my mattress-bed on the floor but my sore knee wouldn’t take the weight. Must everything turn into a bad joke with me, I thought, and an echo answered fraud. I rolled her on the floor and time went for a long walk.

When we got up half an hour later, her black wig was still in place and she put her red silk dress on slowly while I sat on the mattress. I considered the fact that she was now closer to the gun than I was and decided that if I was going to be shot it might as well be like this.

“Do you come out of it now?” I said.

“There is nothing to come out of,” she purred.

“Are you the one sending dead bats to Bela Lugosi?” I said.

She looked at me with a smirk. It was a comely smirk.

“He is old and tired and forgotten,” she said. “It is the present that intrigues me. It is fresh blood. Like you.”

“Thanks,” I said, hoping she hadn’t drawn blood from me without my knowing it. I resisted the temptation to examine my body. “I know where I’ve seen you before,” I said. “You look just like the vampire girl in Mark of the Vampire.”

She smiled knowingly, moving to the comfortable chair.

“You know the one,” I said, watching her face. “The one where Lugosi and the girl turn out to be fake vampires.”

A sharp look crossed her face, and she stood pointing her finger at me.

“You have been given much and yet you mock,” she said, walking to the door.

“Shall we make it same time next Halloween?” I said, still trying to shake her out of character, but it was no go.

“Perhaps we will meet again,” she said and went out the door.

I got up and followed her to be sure she was gone. She was. I had been truly vamped, seduced, and abandoned by a wacko of the first order. It had been great fun, but it was just one of those things. I didn’t think I’d be calling Bedelia Sue Frye for further talks unless I had some reason to think she was my harasser instead of the neighborhood schizophrenic.