Blood of the Impaler (45 page)

Malcolm looked at her with surprise. "When did you do that?"

"I didn't," she replied. "Grandfather did. Remember how he always feared that you and I would give him a big funeral?"

"Yes. What about it?"

"Well, when he started to feel ill last week, he called up the Simonsen Funeral Home and ordered his own funeral to his own specifications. When he started to fail last night before he . . . before he . . ." She neither spoke nor finished the thought. "I called them from the hospital and asked them to get things ready.
If
they can get the grave at Maple Grove open today, he can be buried this afternoon."

Malcolm smiled sadly. "I guess he didn't trust us to do what he wanted."

She returned his smile with one equally sad. "I suppose not."

And then as they looked into each other's eyes, the grief that their fear and worry had suppressed burst through. Their
grandfather was dead. The kindly old man who had bounced both of them on his knee, who had loved them and cared for them since the day each of them was born, was gone now, leaving Rachel and Malcolm the last living members of the Harker family. Rachel and Malcolm hugged each other impulsively and held on tightly as each released a flood of tears. Jerry Herman and Detective De La Vega looked away respectfully, leaving them to their grief, trying not to look at the trembling bodies of the brother and sister as they clung to each other in their overwhelming sorrow.

I
t was later that same day that Malcolm Harker stood by the window of Jerry Herman's apartment on 110th Street in the middle-class section of Forest Hills, watching as the late-afternoon sun began to disappear behind the distant skyscrapers of Manhattan. Jerry sat at a cheap Formica table, nursing a shot of bourbon, lost in his own thoughts. Rachel sat upon the aged, faded sofa, trying not to look at the two enormous breasts that seemed to be shouting at her from the cover of a girlie magazine that lay upon the stained coffee table.

No one was speaking, and Jerry was growing uncomfortable in the silence. At last, for lack of anything else to say, he commented, "That was a nice ceremony."

"It was as he would have wanted it," Rachel agreed, sighing and rubbing her eyes. "Very simple and very small. Just the two . . . I mean, the three of us, and Father Langstone. A few prayers, then burial. It's exactly as Grandfather would have wanted it."

"Yes," Malcolm agreed, turning from the window and walking over to the table where Jerry was seated. "And we can be relieved that it's all over for him. He's at peace now." He sat down beside his friend and asked, "Can I have a shot of that?"

"Oh, sure, Mal." Jerry went to the cupboard and got another shot glass, one of the many he had stolen from the Strand while he was working there. As he filled the glass for Malcolm, he reflected for the first time since returning from Europe that he was now unemployed and had best start looking for a job bright and early the next day. Unless, of course, more important responsibilities interfered, as he
suspected they might. It was with this in mind that he asked, "What do we do now?"

"Well," Malcolm sighed, sipping from the glass of bourbon, "we have to find them, Lucy and Holly, and we have to find the remains of the Count."

"I think you should get some sleep before we do anything," his sister said. "You look terrible, Malcolm. When was the last time you got any rest?"

"Real rest? Real sleep?" He shook his head. "It's been days."

"Well, you won't be able to accomplish anything if you don't get some sleep."

"I can't sleep, Rachel. I'm afraid to sleep, for one thing. I'm afraid of those damned visions coming back. And it's getting dark out. Even though I think I've brought the blood under control by taking the sacrament so much in Rome, it's still having an effect on me. I still feel energetic at nighttime. I couldn't sleep now, even if I wanted to." He put the glass to his lips again and drained it. "No, we have to think and plan." He reached for the bourbon and refilled the shot glass.

"You won't be able to think and plan anything if you fuddle your mind with that liquor," Rachel pointed out.

"I know my limits, Rachel," he muttered, unkind in his distraction.

"Well," Rachel sighed, "no matter what we do, at least we know that Grandfather is at peace."

"Yeah," Jerry said, and nodded, "It's a good thing he didn't get into the ground before the sunlight hit him. That solved one problem for us, anyway."

Malcolm shook his head. "You've seen too many horror movies, Jer, and you didn't read the Stoker book carefully enough."

Jerry frowned, confused. "What do you mean?"

"Sunlight doesn't destroy a vampire," Malcolm said,
sipping again of the bourbon. "That's a Hollywood idea. All that the book says is that they are helpless and largely unconscious during the daytime." He looked around the cluttered living room of the small apartment. "Where's your
copy of
Dracula
?"

"Over here," Jerry answered as he reached over to a stereo speaker and took the tattered volume from atop the imitation wood. He tossed it to Malcolm, who flipped through
the pages until he found the place that would verify his words.

"This is the section of our great-grandmother's diary where she records what Van Helsing told them about the powers of the vampire, and his weaknesses also. Listen: "His power ceases, as does that of all evil things, at the coming of the day." He closed the book and tossed it onto the table "That's all it says, Jer. The idea that vampires disintegrate or die when the sunlight hits them is pure cinema."

Jerry shook his head. "I don't understand it, then. How can you be sure that your grandfather is . . . well, you know . . ."

"For the same reason that we know our father and great-grandmother are at peace," Malcolm answered. "The curse is in the blood, and if the blood is removed from the body, the curse is removed as well. All that is in Gramps's veins right now is embalming fluid."

Jerry nodded. "I get it. You had him embalmed?"

Malcolm glanced at his friend. "Of course he was embalmed. He was buried by a funeral home, wasn't he?"

Jerry looked at Malcolm for a moment, his face expressionless. "You got the bill from the funeral home?"

"I have it," Rachel said, picking up her purse and taking a long white envelope from it. She handed it to Jerry, and as he opened it up and began to examine it, she asked, "Why do you ask?"

Jerry looked up and down the itemized bill and then he sighed heavily. "I don't know how to tell you this," he began.

Malcolm was suddenly very attentive. "Tell us what?"

"You remember that I handled my dad's funeral a couple of years ago, and my aunt's funeral last year?"

"Yes. So?"

"Well, you know how my dad wasn't religious . . . I mean, a totally nonpracticing Jew . . . and my aunt Carmen was a Catholic . . . she wasn't really my aunt, she just married my uncle Dave . . ."

"Jerry, will you get to the point?"

"Yeah, right. The point is that in Jewish funerals, the bodies don't get embalmed, but in gentile funerals, they do. And both my dad and my aunt Carmen had gentile funerals, and I was the one who had to make all the arrangements for both of them."

"Okay. So what?"

"Well, there are a couple of things I learned about the
funeral business from those experiences. It's all part of consumer protection and all that stuff."

"Jerry," Malcolm said heatedly, "what the hell are you talking about?"

"Funeral homes only embalm people in this state if the family specifically requests it," Jerry explained, handing the bill to Malcolm. "Look. No embalming charge."

Malcolm looked at the bill and then jumped to his feet. "Holy shit!" he screamed. "Those stupid assholes!"

"Malcolm, it's the law," Jerry said quickly. "Your grandfather arranged his own burial in advance. He probably didn't
want to spend the money on embalming, and since it was a closed casket anyway, the funeral home never even mentioned the option to you."

Rachel's face had lost every bit of its color. "Then he . . . then Grandfather . . ."

"'Fraid so," Jerry said. "Damn it, I thought the sunlight had taken care of him. It never occurred to me—"

"Christ Almighty!" Malcolm shouted. "It's almost night! He's going to come back, he's going to come back!"

"He won't come here," Jerry said, trying to calm his friend. "He doesn't know where I live."

"Sure, and Lucy didn't know what hotel we were staying in over in England, but she found you and attacked you, didn't she? Do you think that was a coincidence?" he shouted. "And that's not the point, anyway! He's going to kill people tonight, and we have to stop him!"

"Yes," Rachel said, strangely calm. "We have to get to the cemetery before the sun is down—"

"The goddamned sun is setting right now!" Malcolm Said.

"Then we have to leave right now," Rachel said, getting to her feet. "I have a crucifix in my purse. We can buy some garlic at a fruit stand along the way. All we have to do is contain him, just for tonight, and then we can . . . well, I don't know, but whatever we can do, we'll do tomorrow."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" Jerry said as Malcolm and Rachel grabbed their coats and went to the door. "You don't go vampire hunting after dark! That's nuts!"

"We don't have any choice, Jerry," Malcolm said. "Are you coming with us?"

Jerry paused. He had no desire to go to the cemetery and wait in the darkness for the emergence of the undead,
but neither did he relish the thought of waiting alone in his apartment with the knowledge that the vampires might know where he was.

"Come on, Jerry, make up your mind, will you?" Malcolm said urgently.

"Yeah, yeah, okay, okay, I'll come," he said miserably, following them out the door of the apartment.
This is wonderful
, he thought.
This is just great
.

Rachel had parked her BMW on the street outside Jerry's apartment building, and after unlocking the passenger door, she handed the keys to her brother, indicating that she wanted him to drive. Malcolm drove off even before Jerry had pulled the car door completely shut.

It took a scant two minutes for Rachel to run into a fruit stand and buy some garlic while Malcolm double-parked outside the store, and they drove up Queens Boulevard toward Kew Gardens at breakneck speed. As they reached the still-open gates of Maple Grove Memorial Park, the last rays of the sun were fading behind the already glowing skyline of Manhattan. Malcolm parked the car just inside.

The sign on the driveway gate warned all visitors that the cemetery was locked up daily at sunset, as is customary, and that meant that they would have to get to Quincy's freshly dug grave quickly, hoping that the caretaker and the security patrol would not see them before they were able to place the garlic and crucifix onto the mound of earth. They were not certain that this would keep their grandfather imprisoned beneath the ground, but they had to try.

"Let's go this way," Malcolm said, leaving the paved road and walking up onto a grassy knoll to the left of the entrance. "We'll be less likely to be seen if we aren't on the road."

"Good idea," Rachel said, following him. The entire expedition seemed like a bad idea to Jerry, but he trailed behind her in disgruntled silence. He stopped when Rachel stopped. "Malcolm," she said softly.

"What?" he asked in the same hushed tone, turning to her.

"Look"—she pointed into the distance—"over there."

He followed the direction of her finger with his eyes. "What are you pointing at? I don't see anything."

"Over there, near Grandfather's grave. It's all foggy." Malcolm looked again. He could see the oblong mound of freshly turned dirt where Quincy Harker had been buried
earlier that day, and it was in fact quite misty there. He shrugged. "
So what
? The weather is always weird in cemeteries. It doesn't mean anything."

"Except that vampires can turn themselves into mist," Rachel pointed out. "I've read the Stoker book also, you know, long before you did."

Malcolm looked hard at the distant fog. He clutched the garlic tightly in his hand and took a deep breath. "Well, let's go see." He walked ahead. Rachel followed him and Jerry walked beside her, not wishing to be isolated in the rear.

They reached their grandfather's grave site and stood for a moment as the fog swirled about them. Then Malcolm stepped over and placed the fresh, acrid plant onto the mound of dirt. Rachel placed the crucifix upon the mound also. They turned and looked at Jerry, who was holding his portion of the garlic close to his chest, and Malcolm said, "Come on, Jerry."

Jerry shook his head. "No way, man. I've got this stuff with me, and I'm keeping it!"