999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [336]
He was suddenly electrified by a sound. Muted and distant. The yapping of a dog. Dare beamed and then frowned as he realized that the bark was of a larger animal. Yet he called again, “Boys? Men?” The yapping continued. Dare began to move toward the sound apprehensively. At the end of the hall he saw a door and as he neared it the yapping grew louder, more excited, then elided into threatening growls and barks interlaced with piercing whines, as of fright. Near the door, Dare stopped as the voice of a man came through from behind it: “What is it, boy? What?”
So there was someone here, thought Dare. There was staff.
He grasped the doorknob and opened the door.
Dare gaped. He was looking at what seemed to be a kitchen. Trembling, teeth bared, a collie dog was confronting him, alternately whining and growling and barking. At a table sat a man and a woman in their fifties and what looked to be a husky young Catholic priest dressed in cassock and surplice and purple stole, while by a window stood a taller old redheaded priest who gripped a book that was bound in a soft red leather. The man and the woman and the younger priest were staring toward Dare as if in numb apprehension, but the redheaded priest by the window seemed calm as he walked to the table routinely, unhurriedly, to pick up a vial filled with colorless liquid. A woman in a housekeeper’s uniform entered the room. She was carrying a steaming pot of coffee. As she moved toward the table she glanced toward the door, dropped the pot and emitted a piercing shriek, and as she did the old priest uncapped the vial, flicked his wrist and shot a sprinkle of its contents at the dumbfounded author, whereupon the people in the kitchen vanished.
Shaken, Dare whirled about and ran for his life.
Anna Trawley was dreaming that Gabriel Case had walked up to her bedside and put out his hand to her. “Come, Anna,” he said to her gently. And then she was alone, carrying a candle and walking in the underground passage to the crypt. She knew that she was looking for something but she didn’t know what it was. She stopped and raised the candle. The crypt was before her. She listened. A whispering voice. Dr. Case. “Anna,” he was saying. “Anna Trawley.” Then the huge stone door of the crypt came open and out of it floated an open coffin containing the white-shrouded figure of a person whose face was indiscernible, a blank. “Look, Anna! Look!” the voice of Case again whispered. The face in the coffin began to take form and Anna Trawley was suddenly awake.
Screaming.
Chapter Eight
Case lifted an eyebrow.
“Refresh your drink?” he asked.
“Refresh my life,” Freeboard muttered.
Broody, quietly on edge, a little drunk, she was slouched in a stool at the library bar as she tamped out her Camel Lite in an ashtray overflowing with a smother of crushed, bent butts. Behind the counter Case picked up a fluted martini pitcher and poured into Freeboard’s glass before beginning to prepare another batch.
“That’s all of it,” he murmured. “I’ll have more in just a shake.”
Freeboard woozily lifted her glass. “Salud!”
They had been at the bar for almost an hour. Freeboard had wanted a drink. She’d had several, and was verging on fluency in several languages theretofore unrecorded by man. In the meantime, their conversation had been casual, much of it centered on questions by Case about “your fascinating friend, Mr. Terence Dare.” Now the Realtor observed with fogged, droopy eyes as Case poured Bombay gin atop the ice cubes that he had just dropped into the pitcher. They made a liquidy, crackling sound.
“Doc, are you on the level?”
Case looked up at the Realtor.
“Pardon?”
“I mean spookwise. You’re not into this only because of the dinero or you maybe saw Ghostbusters twice and got jazzed?”
“I can virtually swear that number two was not the reason,” Case averred. “And as far as the