"She"s quite all right. She"s staying with a friend."
"Might I ask where?"
"A chauffeured Rolls picked her up. We checked registration, and it belongs to a Miss Elisabeth Garrington in Maida Vale."
Dr Magnus had been frantic then, had demanded that they take him there instantly. A telephone call informed them that Miss Seyrig was sleeping under sedation and could not be disturbed; she would return his call in the morning.
Controlling his panic, Dr Magnus had managed to contrive a disjointed tangle of half-truths and plausible lies-anything to convince them to get over to the Garrington house as quickly as possible. They already knew he was one of those occult kooks. Very well, he a.s.sured them that Beth Garrington was involved in a secret society of drug fiends and Satanists (all true enough), that Danielle and Lisette had been lured to their most recent orgy for unspeakable purposes. Lisette had been secretly drugged, but Danielle had escaped to carry her roommate home before they could be used for whatever depraved rites awaited them-perhaps ritual sacrifice. Danielle had been murdered-either to shut her up or as part of the ritual-and now they had Lisette in their clutches as well.
All very melodramatic, but enough of it was true. Inspector Bradley knew of the s.e.x and drugs orgies that took place there, but there was firm pressure from higher up to look the other way. Further, he knew enough about some of the more bizarre cult groups in London to consider that ritual murder was quite feasible, given the proper combination of sick minds and illegal drugs. And while it hadn"t been made public, the medical examiner was of the opinion that the slashes to the Borland girl"s throat and wrists had been an attempt to disguise the fact that she had already bled to death from two deep punctures through the jugular vein.
A demented killer, obviously. A ritual murder? You couldn"t discount it just yet. Inspector Bradley had ordered a car.
"Who are you, Lisette Seyrig, that you wear my face?"
Beth Garrington rose sinuously from her bed. She was dressed in an off-the-shoulder nightgown of antique lace, much the same as that which Lisette wore. Her green eyes-the eyes behind the mask that had so shaken Lisette when last they"d met-held her in their spell.
"When first faithful Adrian swore he"d seen my double, I thought his brain had begun to reel with final madness. But after he followed you to your little gallery and brought me there to see your portrait, I knew I had encountered something beyond even my experience." Lisette stood frozen with dread fascination as her nightmare came to life. Her twin paced about her, appraising her coolly, as a serpent considers its hypnotized victim.
"Who are you, Lisette Seyrig, that yours is the face I have seen in my dreams, the face that haunted my nightmares as I lay dying, the face that I thought was my own?"
Lisette forced her lips to speak. "Who are you?"
"My name? I change that whenever it becomes prudent for me to do so. Tonight I am Beth Garrington. Long ago I was Elisabeth Beresford."
"How can this be possible?" Lisette hoped she was dealing with a madwoman, but knew her hope was false.
"A spirit came to me in my dreams and slowly stole away my mortal life, in return giving me eternal life. You understand what I say, even though your reason insists that such things cannot be."
She unfastened Lisette"s gown and let it fall to the floor, then did the same with her own. Standing face to face, their nude bodies seemed one a reflection of the other.
Elisabeth took Lisette"s face in her hands and kissed her full on the lips. The kiss was a long one; her breath was cold in Lisette"s mouth. When Elisabeth released her lips and gazed longingly into her eyes, Lisette saw the pointed fangs that now curved downward from her upper jaw.
"Will you cry out, I wonder? If so, let it be in ecstasy and not in fear. I shan"t drain you and discard you as I did your silly friend. No, Lisette, my new-found sister. I shall take your life in tiny kisses from night to night-kisses that you will long for with your entire being. And in the end you shall pa.s.s over to serve me as my willing chattel-as have the few others I have chosen over the years."
Lisette trembled beneath her touch, powerless to break away. From the buried depths of her unconscious mind, understanding slowly emerged. She did not resist when Elisabeth led her to the bed and lay down beside her on the silken sheets. Lisette was past knowing fear.
Elisabeth stretched her naked body upon Lisette"s warmer flesh, lying between her thighs as would a lover. Her cool fingers caressed Lisette; her kisses teased a path from her belly across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and to the hollow of her throat.
Elisabeth paused and gazed into Lisette"s eyes. Her fangs gleamed with a reflection of the inhuman l.u.s.t in her expression.
"And now I give you a kiss sweeter than any pa.s.sion your mortal brain dare imagine, Lisette Seyrig-even as once I first received such a kiss from a dream-spirit whose eyes stared into mine from my own face. Why have you haunted my dreams, Lisette Seyrig?"
Lisette returned her gaze silently, without emotion. Nor did she flinch when Elisabeth"s lips closed tightly against her throat, and the only sound was a barely perceptible tearing, like the bursting of a maidenhead, and the soft movement of suctioning lips.
Elisabeth suddenly broke away with an inarticulate cry of pain. Her lips smeared with scarlet, she stared down at Lisette in bewildered fear. Lisette, blood streaming from the wound on her throat, stared back at her with a smile of unholy hatred.
" What are you, Lisette Seyrig?"
"I am Elisabeth Beresford." Lisette"s tone was implacable. "In another lifetime you drove my soul from my body and stole my flesh for your own. Now I have come back to reclaim that which once was mine."
Elisabeth sought to leap away, but Lisette"s arms embraced her with sudden, terrible strength-pulling their naked bodies together in a horrid imitation of two lovers at the moment of ecstasy.
The scream that echoed into the night was not one of ecstasy.
At the sound of the scream-afterward they never agreed whether it was two voices together or only one-Inspector Bradley ceased listening to the maid"s outraged protests and burst past her into the house.
"Upstairs! On the double!" he ordered needlessly. Already Dr Magnus had lunged past him and was sprinting up the stairway.
"I think it came from the next floor up! Check inside all the rooms!" Later he cursed himself for not posting a man at the door, for by the time he was again able to think rationally, there was no trace of the servants.
In the master bedroom at the end of the third-floor hallway, they found two bodies behind the curtains of the big four-poster bed. One had only just been murdered; her nude body was drenched in the blood from her torn throat-seemingly far too much blood for one body The other body was a desiccated corpse, obviously dead for a great many years. The dead girl"s limbs obscenely embraced the moldering cadaver that lay atop her, and her teeth, in final spasm, were locked in the lich"s throat. As they gaped in horror, clumps of hair and bits of dried skin could be seen to drop away.
Detective Sergeant Wharton looked away and vomited on the floor.
"I owe you a sincere apology, Dr Magnus." Inspector Bradley"s face was grim. "You were right. Ritual murder by a gang of sick degenerates. Detective Sergeant! Leave off that, and put out an all-points bulletin for Beth Garrington. And round up anyone else you find here! Move, man!"
"If only I"d understood in time," Dr Magnus muttered. He was obviously to the point of collapse.
"No, I should have listened to you sooner," Bradley growled. "We might have been in time to prevent this. The devils must have fled down some servants" stairway when they heard us burst in. I confess I"ve bungled this badly."
"She was a vampire, you see," Dr Magnus told him dully, groping to explain. "A vampire loses its soul when it becomes one of the undead. But the soul is deathless; it lives on even when its previous incarnation has become a soulless demon. Elisabeth Beresford"s soul lived on, until Elisabeth Beresford found reincarnation in Lisette Seyrig. Don"t you see? Elisabeth Beresford met her own reincarnation, and that meant destruction for them both."
Inspector Bradley had been only half listening. "Dr Magnus, you"ve done all you can. I think you should go down to the car with Detective Sergeant Wharton now and rest until the ambulance arrives."
"But you must see that I was right! " Dr Magnus pleaded. Madness danced in his eyes. "If the soul is immortal and infinite, then time has no meaning for the soul. Elisabeth Beresford was haunting herself."
Neither Brute Nor Human.
The first time that Damon Harrington saw Trevor Nordgren was in 1974 at Discon II in Washington, D.C. It was the thirty-second World Science Fiction Convention, and Harrington"s first convention of any sort. He and four friends had piled into a chugging VW van (still bearing a faded psychedelic paint job and inevitably dubbed "The Magic Bus") and driven approximately nonstop from Los Angeles; they were living out of the van in the parking lot of someone"s brother who had an apartment on Ordway Street, a short walk from the con hotel.
They had been reading each other"s name badges, and their eyes met. Harrington was of average height and build, with wheat-colored hair and a healthy California tan and good enough features to fit the Hollywood image of the leading man"s best buddy. He had entered adolescence as a James Dean lookalike, emerged as a Beach Boy, and presently clung to the beard and ponytail of the fading hippie years. Nordgren was half a head taller and probably ten pounds heavier, and only regular sit-ups could have kept his abdomen so flat. He was clean-shaven, with a tousled nimbus of bright blond hair, and blue eyes of almost unsettling intensity dominated a face that might have belonged to a visionary or fallen angel. They were both wearing bell-bottomed jeans; Harrington sandals and a tie-dyed T-shirt, Nordgren cowboy boots and a blue chambray workshirt with hand-embroidered marijuana leaves.
Damon Harrington smiled, feeling extremely foolish in the silly Styrofoam boater hat the con committee had given them to wear for the meet-the-pros party. Discon with its thousands of fans and frenetic pace was a bit overawing to the author of half a dozen published stories. He"d had to show his S.F.W.A. card to get his pro hat and free drink voucher, and already Harrington was kicking himself for not staying in the hucksters" room. He"d carried along a near-mint run of the first dozen issues of The Fantastic Four, saved from high school days, and if he could coax one of the dealers out of a hundred bucks for the lot, he could about cover his expenses for the trip.
"Hey, look," Harrington protested, "I"m only doing this for the free drink they gave up for being put on display."
Trevor Nordgren tipped his Styrofoam boater. "Don"t forget this nifty ice bucket."
Harrington swirled the ice cubes in his near empty plastic cup, trying to think whether Trevor Nordgren should mean anything to him, painfully aware that Nordgren was puzzling over his name as well. An overweight teenage fan, collecting autographs on her program book, squinted closely at each of their badges, stumped away with the air of someone who had just been offered a swell deal for the Washington Monument. She joined a ma.s.s of autograph seekers clumped about a bewhiskered Big Name Author.
"G.o.d, I hate this!" Nordgren crunched his ice cubes. He glowered at the knots of fans who mobbed the famous authors. In between these continents of humanity, islands of fans milled about the many not-quite-so-big-name authors, while other fans stalked the drifting Styrofoam hats of no-name authors such as Harrington and Nordgren. An ersatz Mr Spock darted up to them, peered at their name badges, then hurried away.
"It would help if they just would give us T-shirts with our names printed across the back," Harrington suggested. "That way they could tell from a distance whether we were worth attention."
A well-built brunette, braless in a T-shirt and tight jeans, approached them purposefully, selecting a copy of the latest Orbit from a stack of books cradled against her hip. "Mr Nordgren? Mr Harrington? Would you two mind autographing your stories in Orbit for me?"
"My pleasure," said Nordgren, accepting her book. He scribbled busily.
Harrington struggled over being "mistered" by someone who was obviously of his own age group. He hadn"t read Nordgren"s story in the book-had only reread his own story in search of typos-and he felt rather foolish.
"Please, call me Trevor," Nordgren said, handing the book to Harrington. "Did you read "The Electric Dream"?"
"I thought it was the best thing in the book." She added: "I liked your story, too, Mr Harrington."
"Is this your first con?" Nordgren asked.
"First one. Me and my old man rode down from Baltimore." She inclined her head toward a hulking red-bearded biker who had materialized behind Nordgren and Harrington, a beer bottle lost in one hairy fist. "This is Clay."
She retrieved her book, and Clay retrieved her.
"My first autograph," Harrington commented.
Nordgren was gloomily watching her departure. "I signed a copy of Acid Test about half an hour ago."
Recognition clicked in Harrington"s memory: a Lancer paperback, badly drawn psychedelic cover, bought from a bin at Woolworth"s, read one weekend when a friend brought over some Panama red.
"I"ve got a copy of that back in L.A. That was one far-out book!"
"You must have one of the twelve copies that were sold." Nordgren"s mood openly brightened. "Look, you want to pay for a drink from these suckers, or run up to my room for a shot of Jack Daniel"s?"
"Is the bear Catholic?"
When Nordgren poured them each a second drink, they agreed wholeheartedly that there was no point in returning to the ordeal of the meet-the-pros party. Nordgren had actually read Harrington"s story in Orbit and p.r.o.nounced it extremely good of its type; they commiserated in both having been among the "and others" on the cover blurb. They were both products of the immediate post-war baby boom; incredibly, both had been in Chicago for the b.l.o.o.d.y demonstrations during the Democratic primary, though neither had been wounded or arrested. Nordgren was in the aftermath of an unpleasant divorce; Harrington"s lover of the Flower Children years had lately returned to Boston and a job with the family law firm. Nordgren preferred Chandler to Hammett, Harrington preferred Chandler"s turn of a phrase; they agreed modern science fiction writers were nothing more than products of the market. The Stones and the Who were better than the Beatles, who actually weren"t innovative at all, and listening to Pink Floyd while tripping had inspired at least one story from them both. Val Lewton was an unsung genius, to which ranks Nordgren added Nicholas Ray and Harrington Mario Bava, and Aldrich had peaked with Kiss Me Deadly.
They hit it off rather well.
Nordgren punished the bottle, but Harrington decided three drinks were his limit on an empty stomach, and concentrated on rolling joints from some leafy Mexican Nordgren had brought down from New York. They had both sold stories to Cavalier, and Harrington favorably remembered Nordgren"s one about the kid and the rubber machine in the redneck filling station. Harrington sc.r.a.ped along as cashier at an all-night self-service gas station, which afforded him lonely hours to write. Nordgren had been writing full time up until the divorce (he admitted to a possible cause-effect relationship there), and he was just completing his tenth novel-the second under his real name. Nordgren confessed to having paid the bills by writing several p.o.r.no novels for Bee Line and Ess.e.x House, under the unsubtle pseudonym Mike Hunt.
He was quite proud of the Ess.e.x House novels, which he said developed science fiction themes that Britain"s New Wave would have deemed far too outrageous, and he produced a copy of Time"s Wanton and incomprehensibly inscribed it to Harrington. It was about a woman who used her psychic powers to project her consciousness through time, Nordgren explained, emptying the bottle, and she took possession of various important historical personages and goaded them through extravagant s.e.xual excesses that changed the course of history. It was, said Nordgren, a theme not dissimilar to his almost completed novel, Out of the Past, in which a Victorian medium projected her consciousness into the present day to control a teenage girl"s mind. Harrington warned Nordgren that the market for fantasy novels was about nil, but Nordgren thought he could push the psychic powers angle enough to qualify as science fiction. Harrington allowed that his only novel to date had been a near miss-a post-nuclear holocaust thing sold to Powell Publications, a Los Angeles shoestring operation that folded with his Iron Night already in galleys.
It was a tough game, and they both agreed they considered themselves outlaws. Nordgren suggested they check out the parties for some free drinks, and Harrington suggested they look for something to eat. Somewhere along the way Nordgren ran into some New York friends and was carried off, and Harrington wandered into the night in search of cheap pizza.
They managed to get together several more times over the course of the convention. Harrington found a three-year-old copy of F&SF containing what he considered his best story published to date, and he presented it to Nordgren in return for Time"s Wanton. They exchanged addresses, agreed to stay in touch, and parted on the best of terms.
They actually did stay in touch, although correspondence was sporadic. Nordgren wrote long letters of comment on books and films he"d caught; Harrington was inclined to talk shop and discuss possible fiction markets. Nordgren kept him posted about his progress on Out of the Past, its completion, its rejection by various publishers. Harrington sold a short story to F&SF and was contemplating a major revision of Iron Night after having had it rejected by every publisher in the English-speaking world. Nordgren asked to read the ma.n.u.script, offered some badly needed criticisms ("Writing a short story all in present tense may be artsy as h.e.l.l, but an entire novel?"), and grudgingly Harrington followed some of his advice.
On its second time out, the newly revised Iron Night sold to Fairlane, who expressed interest in an immediate sequel. The $2 500 advance was rather more than the sum total of Harrington"s career earnings as an author up until then, and he was sufficiently a.s.sured of financial success to quit his job at the U-Sav-Here and send tidings to Nordgren that he was now a full-time professional writer. His letter crossed in the mail with Nordgren"s; Trevor had just sold Out of the Past to McGinnis & Parry.
McGinnis & Parry elected to change the t.i.tle to The Sending and went on to market it as "an occult thriller that out-chills The Exorcist!" They also proclaimed it to be Nordgren"s first novel, but it was after all his first hardcover. Harrington received an advance copy (sent by Nordgren) and took personally Trevor"s dedication to "all my fellow laborers in the vineyard." He really did intend to read it sometime soon.
They were very much a pair of young lions at the Second World Fantasy Convention in New York in 1976. Harrington decided to attend it after Nordgren"s invitation to put him up for a few days afterward at his place (an appalling dump in Greenwich Village which Trevor swore was haunted by the ghost of Lenny Bruce) and show him around. Nordgren himself was a native of Wisconsin who had been living in The City (he managed to p.r.o.nounce the capitals) since student days at Columbia; he professed no desire to return to the Midwest.
They were together on a panel- Harrington"s first-designated "Fantasy"s New Faces"-although privately comparing notes with the other panelists revealed that their mean date of first publication was about eight years past. The panel was rather a dismal affair. The moderator had obviously never heard of Damon Harrington, introduced him as "our new Robert E. Howard," and referred to him as David Harrington throughout the panel. Most of the discussion was taken over by something called Martin E. Binkley, who had managed to publish three stories in minor fanzines and to insinuate himself onto the panel. Nordgren was quite drunk at the outset and continued to coax fresh Jack Daniel"s and ice from a pretty blonde in the audience. By the end of the hour he was offering outrageous reb.u.t.tals to Binkley"s self-serving pontification; the fans were loudly applauding, the moderator lost all control, and the panel nearly finished with a brawl.
That evening found Nordgren"s state of mind somewhat mellower, if no closer to sobriety. He and Harrington slouched together behind a folding table at the meet-the-pros autographing party, while Nordgren"s blonde cupbearer proudly continued her service.
"Together again!" Harrington toasted, raising the drink Nordgren had paid for.
"The show must go on," Nordgren rejoined. He looked about the same as he had two years ago, although the straining pearl b.u.t.tons on his denim shirt bespoke a burgeoning beer-belly. Harrington had in the interim shaved his beard, trimmed his hair to the parted-in-the-middle-blown-dry look, and just now he was wearing a new denim leisure suit.
Fairlane had contributed two dozen copies of Iron Night, free to the first lucky autograph seekers, so for about fifteen minutes Harrington was kept busy. He grew tired of explaining to unconcerned fans that the novel was set in a post-nuclear holocaust future, and that it was not at all "In the Conan tradition!" as the cover proclaimed. After that, he managed to inscribe two copies of New Dimensions and three of Orbit over the next half hour.
Nordgren did quite a brisk trade in comparison, autographing a dozen copies of The Sending (on sale in the hucksters" room), as many copies of Acid Test (which had begun to gather a cult reputation), and a surprising number of short stories and essays from various magazines and anthologies. The room was crowded, hot, and after an hour Nordgren was patently bored and restive. In the jostled intervals between callers at their table, he stared moodily at the long lines queued up before the tables of the mighty.
"Do you ever wonder why we do this?" he asked Harrington.
"For fame, acclaim-not to mention a free drink?"
"p.i.s.s on it. Why do we put ourselves on display just so an effusive mob of lunatic fringe fans can gape at us and tell us how great we are and beg an autograph and ask about our theories of politics and religion?"
"You swiped that last from the Kinks," Damon accused.
"Rock stars. Movie stars. Sci-fi stars. What"s the difference? We"re all hustling for as much acclaim and attention as we can wring out of the ma.s.ses. Admit it! If we were pure artists, you and I and the rest of the grasping lot would be home sweating over a typewriter tonight. Why aren"t we?"
"Is that intended to be rhetorical?"
"All right, I"ll tell you why, said he, finishing his drink." Nordgren finished his drink, dug another ten-dollar bill out of his jeans, and poked it toward his cupbearer.
"It"s because we"re all vampires."
"Sweetheart, better make that mo b.l.o.o.d.y Marys!" Harrington called after her.
"I"m serious, Damon," Nordgren persisted, pausing to scrawl something across a copy of The Sending. "We"re the psychic vampires beloved of fiction. We need all these fans, all this gaudy adulation. We derive energy from it all."
He handed the book back to its owner. "Have you read this?"
The fan was embarra.s.sed. "No, sir-I just today bought it." He continued bravely: "But a friend of mine sat up all night reading it, and she said it gave her nightmares for a week!"
"So you see, Damon," Nordgren nodded. He pointed a finger at the fan. "I now possess a bit of your frightened friend"s soul. And when you read The Sending, I shall possess a fragment of your soul as well."
The blonde returned bearing drinks, and the stricken fan made his escape.
"So you see, Damon," Nordgren a.s.serted. "They read our books, and all their attention is directed toward the creations of our hungry imaginations. We absorb a little psychic energy each time they read us; we grow stronger and stronger with each new book, each new printing, and each new fiction. And see-like proper vampire fodder, our victims adore us and beg for more."
Trevor squinted at the blonde"s name badge. "Julie, my love, how long have I known you?"
"Since we met in the elevator this morning," she remembered. "Julie, my love. Would you like to drop up to my room with me now and peruse my erotic etchings?"
"Okay. You going to sign your book for me?"
"As you see, Damon." Nordgren pushed back his chair. "The vampire"s victims are most willing. I hereby appoint you my proxy and empower you to sign anything that crosses this table in my name. Good night."