Джеффри Дивер - Nothing Good Happens After Midnight - A Suspense Magazine Anthology

“There’s someone knocking at my door. Let me just see who it is.”

Jeff could hear Tim put the phone down. In the distance, some indistinct talking. And then, fumbling, someone picking up the phone.

A different voice. Female. She said, “It’s over. Thanks for your help.”

And then she hung up.

That was it.

Jeff put down the phone. “Jesus,” he said, putting his head down on the table.

Larry saw him hang up and ran over.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I guess it was the cops. They knocked, he answered, it’s over. Christ, I’m shaking.”

Larry found that he was, too. “Man, what a night. Holy shit. You know what you did? Do you know?”

Jeff looked at him blankly. “If you mean taking a piss right here, yeah, I can kinda smell it.”

“You fuckin’ just saved a whole bunch of people’s lives.”

Jeff offered another one of his familiar shrugs. “I don’t know. Fuck. I am totally wired.” He ran his fingers through his hair.

The phone on Larry’s desk was ringing. Larry ran back, snatched the receiver up.

“It’s done,” Durkin said. “Just wanted to thank you guys, and ask you a favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Sit on this one for a bit? I mean, I know I can’t tell you what to print and not to print, but this guy, he got inspired by that mass shooting, and you wonder how many others might be feeling the same way. Just... sit on it. Talk to your dayside editor. This guy’s probably going to be taken for psychiatric assessment. He’s probably suicidal.”

“I’ll leave something in my turnover note,” Larry said.

“You guys did good. You did real good. I might actually stop hating your paper so much for how you cover the cops.” He paused. “Nah, I’ll still hate ya. Gotta go.”

Durkin ended the call.

Larry realized Jeff was standing right there next to him.

“Where the fuck do you get a drink at five-thirty in the morning?” he asked.

“I happen to know where the photogs keep a bottle in the darkroom.”

“Lead the way.”

“And that’s what happened,” Larry said. “A crazy night. Jesus, look at the time.”

“Did you ever find out what happened to the guy?” Frank asked, still sitting on the stool next to him.

Larry shook his head. “No, never did. We ended up not doing a story on it. Partly, we thought it would be blowing our own horn too much. ‘Paper saves city from massacre.’ Nah, this was one of those times when we went along with what the cops wanted.”

“What do you think happened?”

Larry tried to get the last drop out of his beer glass. “I don’t know. Maybe he got the help he needed, turned his life around. Or maybe he had just one fuckup after another. Someone like that, who knows. Do they get their life together, or do they get worse and worse?”

“You know what I think happened?” Frank said. “I think that arrest, it was like the first domino. He got dragged into the system, never got the help he wanted. Things got worse and worse for him over the years. In and out of institutions, maybe some time in jail. My guess is, he was having a bad night, that he never would have gone and killed all those people, that he just needed someone to talk to, and he happened to connect with this Jeff guy, started to think he really was a friend, that he honest-to-God actually gave a shit about him, and had no idea that he and his editor were working behind the scenes with the cops to get him, to betray his sorry ass.”

Larry, slightly glassy-eyed, took a closer look at his drinking partner.

“And by the way, my name’s not Frank,” Tim said. “And Jeff asked me to pass on his regrets about not being able to make it tonight. Took a long time to track down the two of you.”

And that was when Tim reached inside his jacket for something.

Larry said, “Son of a—”

“They say she came to life each night after midnight; she traveled like the wind, coming back into town, feeding upon a new person each night. Then, they would awaken in the morning, spitting blood, choking on that blood... dying, in a pool of their own blood!” Marcy announced.

Hayley listened to her cousin, silently shaking her head as she and their friends stood in the old cemetery, staring at the vault that held the remains of the local “vampire,” Elizabeth Barclay.

Those remains were, not surprisingly, in the Barclay Cemetery.

Hayley knew the legend, too. She’d grown up here — or partially grown up here. Her parents had moved a bit east to New Orleans when she’d been twelve. But Marcy’s father, Hayley’s uncle, was the manager and groundskeeper of the small cemetery, and Marcy had spent all seventeen years of her life living in a home that bordered the cemetery.

And she loved the legends — and doing her best to scare others, boys especially.

The wind seemed to breathe out a rush of cold air as Marcy’s words settled on their small crowd. The trees in the center lane of the “city of the dead” where vault after vault arose in majestic lichen-covered splendor rustled, as if someone moved around them.

Yes, Marcy was good.

But her cousin smiled then, saying, “The townspeople found a way to end the horror! They marched to the cemetery with torches. They broke the gate to the vault and battered down the old wooden door. They broke open her tomb and wrenched the coffin from the vault, dragging it back outside. And there, while her poor mother watched and screamed and cried, they opened her coffin. Horrible scratch marks ripped through the lid of the coffin, revealing what was inside. There she lay! Elizabeth, fresh as the day they had buried her weeks before, her beautiful face a soft shade of alabaster, eyes sweetly closed — and blood, yes, blood, a trickle of it, running from her ruby red lips!”

Marcy paused again for effect.

Her little crowd was silent at first; Mary Boucher, pretty and petite, seemed to be shivering, though it was a warm Louisiana night. Tommy Hilliard, captain of the football team, had a crooked smile on his face, but Hayley wondered if even he might be a little bit unnerved. Next to him were Frank Legrand and Art Richard, also on the football team.

Tonight, Marcy’s guests were the cream of the crop of the local high school. She had three of the best players on the football team, and the guest list rounded out with little Mary Boucher — captain of the cheerleaders — and, of course, Hayley.

Marcy wasn’t always in the elite group, though she had managed to stay on the edge of it — and tonight, of course, she’d been able to come up with a great play to get such an illustrious group together — her father was out of town. She’d invited them all on a bit of a dare and an adventure that might not come their way again.

She’d had a crush on Tommy Hilliard forever, and he’d recently broken up with his girlfriend, Tiffany Myers.

Tiffany hadn’t been invited. But just as Marcy had pined for Tommy Hilliard forever, she had hated Tiffany. But then, to be fair, it had always seemed to Hayley that Tiffany had gone out of her way to be cruel to Marcy, mocking her as the “grave-digger’s dirty daughter” and other such names.

Tiffany hadn’t been nice to anyone, really. She was rich and — in her mind, at least — entitled. It wasn’t being rich, Hayley had decided, since she knew other rich kids were darn decent and good to others. It was the way that Tiffany had of mocking anyone poor, anyone with a handicap — anyone she didn’t like or want in her circle.

Hayley had heard Tommy talking earlier; he’d told Frank and Art that he’d probably wind up back with Tiffany. In truth, Tiffany was a stunning blue-eyed blonde with a perfect body that didn’t stop — Tiffany worked hard to keep it that way. Her legs were legendary.