DRACULAS (A Novel of Terror) Read online

  Two hours later, sitting on the sofa in my living room, I dialed the number on the slip of paper. Every door to the house was locked, most of the lights turned on, and in my lap, a cold satin stainless .357 revolver.

  I had not called the police for a very good reason. The claim that it was my blood on the woman was probably a lie, but the paring knife had been missing from my kitchen for weeks. Also, with the Charlotte Police Department’s search for Rita Jones dominating local news headlines, her body on my property, murdered with my knife, possibly with my fingerprints on it, would be more than sufficient evidence to indict me. I’d researched enough murder trials to know that.

  As the phone rang, I stared up at the vaulted ceiling of my living room, glanced at the black baby grand piano I’d never learned to play, the marble fireplace, the odd artwork that adorned the walls. A woman named Karen, whom I’d dated for nearly two years, had convinced me to buy half a dozen pieces of art from a recently deceased minimalist from New York, a man who signed his work “Loman.” I hadn’t initially taken to Loman, but Karen had promised me I’d eventually “get” him. Now, $27,000 and one fiancee lighter, I stared at the ten-by-twelve-foot abomination that hung above the mantel: shit brown on canvas, with a basketball-size yellow sphere in the upper right-hand corner. Aside from Brown No. 2, four similar marvels of artistic genius pockmarked other walls of my home, but these I could suffer. Mounted on the wall at the foot of the staircase, it was Playtime, the twelve-thousand-dollar glass-encased heap of stuffed animals, sewn together in an orgiastic conglomeration, which reddened my face even now. But I smiled, and the knot that had been absent since late winter shot a needle of pain through my gut. My Karen ulcer. You’re still there. Still hurting me. At least it’s you.

  The second ring.

  I peered up the staircase that ascended to the exposed second-floor hallway, and closing my eyes, I recalled the party I’d thrown just a week ago-guests laughing, talking politics and books, filling up my silence. I saw a man and a woman upstairs, elbows resting against the oak banister, overlooking the living room, the wet bar, and the kitchen. Holding their wineglasses, they waved down to me, smiling at their host.

  The third ring.

  My eyes fell on a photograph of my mother-a five-by-seven in a stained-glass frame, sitting atop the obsidian piano. She was the only family member with whom I maintained regular contact. Though I had relatives in the Pacific Northwest, Florida, and a handful in the Carolinas, I saw them rarely-at reunions, weddings, or funerals that my mother shamed me into attending with her. But with my father having passed away and a brother I hadn’t seen in thirteen years, family meant little to me. My friends sustained me, and contrary to popular belief, I didn’t have the true reclusive spirit imputed to me. I did need them.

  In the photograph, my mother is squatting down at my father’s grave, pruning a tuft of carmine canna lilies in the shadow of the headstone. But you can only see her strong, kind face among the blossoms, intent on tidying up her husband’s plot of earth under that magnolia he’d taught me to climb, the blur of its waxy green leaves behind her.

  The fourth ring.

  “Did you see the body?”

  It sounded as if the man were speaking through a towel. There was no emotion or hesitation in his staccato voice.

  “Yes.”

  “I gutted her with your paring knife and hid the knife in your house. It has your fingerprints all over it.” He cleared his throat. “Four months ago, you had blood work done by Dr. Xu. They misplaced a vial. You remember having to go back and give more?”

  “Yes.”

  “I stole that vial. Some is on Rita Jones’s white T-shirt. The rest is on the others.”

  “What others?”

  “I make a phone call, and you spend the rest of your life in prison, possibly death row…”

  “I just want you-”

  “Shut your mouth. You’ll receive a plane ticket in the mail. Take the flight. Pack clothes, toiletries, nothing else. You spent last summer in Aruba. Tell your friends you’re going again.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I know many things, Andrew.”

  “I have a book coming out,” I pleaded. “I’ve got readings scheduled. My agent-”

  “Lie to her.”

  “She won’t understand me just leaving like this.”

  “Fuck Cynthia Mathis. You lie to her for your safety, because if I even suspect you’ve brought someone along or that someone knows, you’ll go to jail or you’ll die. One or the other, guaranteed. And I hope you aren’t stupid enough to trace this number. I promise you it’s stolen.”

  “How do I know I won’t be hurt?”

  “You don’t. But if I get off the phone with you and I’m not convinced you’ll be on that flight, I’ll call the police tonight. Or I may visit you while you’re sleeping. You’ve got to put that Smith and Wesson away sometime.”

  I stood up and spun around, the gun clenched in my sweaty hands. The house was silent, though chimes on the deck were clanging in a zephyr. I looked through the large living room windows at the black lake, its wind-rippled surface reflecting the pier lights. The blue light at the end of Walter’s pier shone out across the water from a distant inlet. His “Gatsby light,” we called it. My eyes scanned the grass and the edge of the trees, but it was far too dark to see anything in the woods.

  “I’m not in the house,” he said. “Sit down.”

  I felt something well up inside of me-anger at the fear, rage at this injustice.

  “Change of plan,” I said. “I’m going to hang up, dial nine one one, and take my chances. You can go-”

  “If you aren’t motivated by self-preservation, there’s an old woman named Jeanette I could-”

  “I’ll kill you.”

  “Sixty-five, lives alone, I think she’d love the company. What do you think? Do I have to visit your mother to show you I’m serious? What is there to consider? Tell me you’ll be on that plane, Andrew. Tell me so I don’t have to visit your mother tonight.”

  “I’ll be on that plane.”

  The phone clicked, and he was gone.

  Dweller

  A bonus excerpt from Jeff’s novel, DWELLER, also available in the Kindle Store…

  When Toby next met the monster, his hair still had traces of Nick Wyler’s urine. Nick hadn’t actually peed on Toby, thank God, but he’d seasoned the toilet bowl before Toby’s head plunged into the murky depths.

  “C’mon, hurry up!” urged Larry Gaige, moments before the dunking. Larry was far and away the biggest creep at Orange Leaf High. His physical build would’ve made him football team material, if he had any interest in fighting other kids his size. He held Toby against the wall of the bathroom stall, with Toby’s head pressed next to a detailed but inaccurate drawing of a vagina.

  “I’m trying!” Nick insisted. He stood next to the toilet, trying to relieve himself but suffering from performance anxiety. Toby personally had always had a real issue with the lack of doors in the bathrooms, so he could understand why it might be difficult for Nick to pee with two other guys in the stall.

  Toby struggled some more, mostly for show. He was short, thin, and outnumbered, and knew he wasn’t getting out of this bathroom undunked unless a teacher happened to walk in, searching for smokers. Calling for help was not an option. Larry got his thrills by causing humiliation, not pain, but he would hurt you if he had to.

  “Let’s go, let’s go!” said Larry, kicking Nick on the back of the leg. Toby heard a few drops hit the water and a few more hit the seat.

  “Why don’t you do it? I haven’t had enough to drink today.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Larry gave his friend a look of absolute disbelief. “Just yank the stopper out of your dick and take a piss!”

  “Maybe if you left the stall for a minute…?”

  For a moment, Toby thought that Larry was actually going to let him go so that he could focus his attention on beating the crap out of Nick.
His optimism was quickly extinguished as Larry slammed him against the wall hard enough to make him bite his tongue. He winced and tasted blood.

  The sound of a healthy stream of urine hitting the toilet water filled the stall. Nick was cured.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” said Larry. “We’ve gotta hurry up.”

  “I can’t stop once I’ve started!”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “Just let me finish!”

  Larry stood there, visibly fuming, as Nick continued the challenging process of relieving himself. Toby kept praying that a teacher or some other adult visitor would walk in and question the presence of three teenage boys sharing a restroom stall, but as the stream slowed to a trickle and then to a spatter, Toby knew his moment of extreme indignity had almost arrived.

  Larry shoved Nick out of the way before he was completely done. Nick punched him in the arm. “I bought these pants with my own money!”

  Ignoring his friend, Larry pushed Toby to his knees in front of the toilet bowl and then quickly pushed his face toward the aromatic liquid. Toby squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath as his face dipped into the warm water. He gagged and desperately tried not to inhale as the toilet flushed and the water swirled around his head.

  Once the water had completely exited the bowl, Larry let go of his neck. He and Nick walked out of the stall, laughing. Another scrawny twerp successfully humiliated.

  Could’ve been worse. Had been worse, several times. Still, Toby’s cheeks burned from shame and he felt like he was going to throw up as he coughed and gagged and gasped for breath.

  Toby left the stall, turned on one of the faucets, and tried to rinse the piss out of his hair. He could tattle on those jerks and get them suspended, but suspensions were temporary, and there wasn’t much the school board could do if the bullies decided to lie in wait for him next to his front porch with tire irons and broken bottles.

  Okay, he didn’t actually believe that Larry and Nick would kill him, or even hospitalize him. The most violence they’d inflict was a hard punch to the stomach, maybe some light bruises elsewhere. But there was a code of honor at Orange Leaf High: you didn’t rat out your peers. Not even awful, reprehensible, deserve-to-die peers. Nobody liked a rat fink. If Toby went to his parents or a teacher, he’d be scorned by every kid in school.

  He was already the Weird Kid in a school that was severely lacking in other weird kids. If he became the Weird Kid Who Was Also A Rat Fink, he might as well kiss any glimpse of hope for making friends—real friends, maybe even a girlfriend—goodbye. He didn’t have many friends in elementary school or junior high, but at least the kids there talked to him, sometimes. But most of his half-friends had gone to West End High, and his out-of-the-way address put him in the Orange Leaf High district, so he was starting over.

  Anyway, someday he’d get Larry and Nick back. He was doing chin-ups every day. He could do eleven or twelve of them now. By the end of the year, who knew how big his muscles might be?

  “Time for a dunking!” Larry might say, pulling Toby into the stall. Toby would drop to his knees, and Nick would laugh and laugh at how easy it was to overpower him. But, oh, how his laughter would stop when Toby suddenly used his brute strength to rip the toilet right out of the floor!

  “Holy cow!” Nick would scream. “How many chin-ups has he done?”

  Toby would smash the toilet into Larry’s face, shattering the porcelain and splashing its abhorrent contents all over him. As Larry dropped to the tile floor, unconscious, Nick would stand there, paralyzed with fear.

  “Please don’t kill me,” Nick would whimper.

  Toby would shake his head and chuckle. “I’m no killer,” he would say. But then he would give Nick a stern glare, a glare that chilled Nick’s blood. “Dunk yourself.”

  “But I’ll be shamed and ridiculed!”

  “Don’t make me tell you twice.”

  Nick would thrust his own head into the toilet, sobbing like a baby. Toby would watch him flush and flush and flush, inwardly amused but far too mature to point and laugh. Perhaps he’d allow the other students to file through the restroom to witness the defeat and learn from it, or perhaps he’d keep it to himself and merely raise an eyebrow at Larry and Nick when they started to get out of line. Either way, Toby Floren would be the victor.

  But that would be later. For now, he had to go back to class with wet hair and embarrassment scorching his cheeks.

  A few of the other kids snickered as Toby returned to history class, but Mr. Hastings didn’t say anything about his appearance or tardiness.

  During lunch, kids continued to snicker when they looked at him, even though his hair was dry. Clearly, Larry and Nick had shared the uproarious news of their latest conquest. Toby hoped for a sympathetic glance from somebody, anybody, but didn’t receive one. At least a couple of the kids who smiled in his direction had been dunkees themselves.

  He sat in his usual spot at the corner table, doodling in his notebook while he ate a roast beef sandwich. There weren’t enough tables in the lunchroom for him to sit by himself, so he sat with his standard group, but an empty seat separated him from the others.

  At least his sandwich was good. Mom had made an outstanding dinner last night, and the leftovers were even better in sandwich form.

  “What’re you drawing?” asked J.D. Jerick, through a mouthful of potato chips.

  “Nothing.”

  “Let me see it.”

  Toby shook his head. He’d fallen for this before. J.D. had expressed an interest in his art, and Toby had proudly explained exactly how the robot’s jet pack functioned in zero gravity. Then J.D. had let out a donkey-like laugh, grabbed Toby’s notebook, and showed it to everybody at the table. Robots weren’t cool at Orange Leaf High.

  “C’mon, I just want to see what you’re drawing.”

  “No way.”

  “I’m not gonna do anything.”

  Toby closed his notebook. There wasn’t much he could do when he was overpowered by physically imposing bullies like Larry and Nick, but J.D. was a different kind of bully, and Toby wasn’t threatened by him at all.

  J.D. made a lunge for the notebook, but Toby slid it out of the way. “Just let me see it, Zit Farm. What is it, naked pictures of the teachers?” He raised his voice. “You really shouldn’t be drawing naked pictures of teachers, Toby Floren!”

  Toby gave him the finger.

  “By the way, you reek. What have you been doing, swimming in the toilet?”

  Toby gave him the finger with both hands.

  “Loser,” said J.D.

  Toby returned his attention to his notebook and his sandwich while the other kids at the table laughed. Why were they on J.D.’s side? Couldn’t they see that he was a complete cretin?

  He sketched for a few more minutes, knowing that J.D. was watching him and wasn’t going to let the matter drop.

  “What’re you drawing?” J.D. finally repeated.

  Toby held up the picture: a hand giving the finger.

  J.D. frowned, obviously not thinking that the drawing was very funny. Toby grinned, but stopped grinning when he saw Mr. Hastings staring right at the drawing from across the lunchroom. The teacher made a beeline toward him, and Toby knew that his day was about to get even worse.

  Toby wanted to take a shower when he got home, but he wasn’t up to explaining the need for the shower to Mom. He also didn’t want her to think that he had a different, much more private reason for taking a shower at an unusual time. Though he supposed he could just make something up, he’d probably get caught in the lie—he had an active fantasy life, but his skills at deceit were almost non-existent.

  “I’m home!” he shouted out, hurrying up the stairs to his room and hoping that Mom wouldn’t ask him to sit with her in the living room and talk about his day.

  “Do you have any homework?” Mom called up to him.

  “Lots!” he called back. He dumped his backpack on his bed, then pulled out the unnecessary books. He
had to do about twenty math problems, a 250-word essay on chapters six and seven of Robinson Crusoe, and study for a history quiz. No problem. He picked up the backpack, slung it over his shoulder, and headed back downstairs.

  “Where are you going?” Mom asked. She was seated on the living room couch, half-watching television while writing a letter. She wrote to Grandma once a week, every week, and had ever since she married Dad, even though she hadn’t mailed the letters for a couple of years.

  “Woods.”

  “I thought you said you had homework?”

  He lifted his shoulder, bouncing the backpack. “It’s in here.”