A Matter of Taste

Chapter 3

In Angie's dreams the recorded voice of Uncle Matthew Maule continued to hold forth, calmly elegant, just slightly accented, sounding as if it ought to make sense even while it delivered the horrible absurdities of some monstrous and bloody fantasy. When she had turned on the tape in the small hours of the morning she had been in no state to evaluate, to separate fact from fiction. Brandy and weariness had overcome her completely as she listened.

But now the tape machine had somehow been turned off. Perhaps she'd done it herself before collapsing. She was lying in bed, and someone was knocking at her door. Tapping, rather, at the door of the unfamiliar bedroom where she had fallen asleep.

Angie sat up, and there was John in bed beside her, just where he ought to be. But they were in an unfamiliar room—

Her mind cleared somewhat. Yes, this was Uncle Matthew's place. The dimmer component of the bathroom light was still on, indirectly illuminating the bedroom through the partially open door between. On the other side of the bed, the curtained windows were still dark around the edges, showing that the sun wasn't up yet. Still night, and someone knocking persistently on the guest bedroom door. Something must be wrong.

"Just a minute!" Angie called, her voice emerging as an uncertain croak. Climbing groggily to her feet and wrapping a blanket around her, she started for the door. Now, just outside it, a voice—female, low, and anxious—was calling softly, the words impossible to make out.

Halfway to the door, Angie decided that she required reinforcements, mumbled some kind of a reply to the person knocking, and turned back to the bed to wake up John. His wristwatch lay on the bedside table and she glanced at it in passing. Almost five A.M.

John was hard to rouse, but in a few moments he had stumbled to his feet, functional though hardly up to speed, and was pulling on his pants. Angie used the interval to throw on a few garments of her own. Together they went to the bedroom door and opened it slightly. Just outside stood Elizabeth Wiswell. The buttons on her blouse were misaligned, and her clothes in general looked as if they had been hastily pulled on. Down the shadowy hall behind her the apartment was mostly dark; some light was coming from one of the other bedrooms.

The woman looked pale and haggard, appropriately for the hour. Also she was worried. "Something's wrong with him in there," she told them simply.

John opened the bedroom door a little wider. He rubbed his eyes and massaged his day-old growth of beard. "What?"

Elizabeth's voice rose querulously. "I don't know what. He just looks awful. His eyes are partly open but I can't get him to wake up. And there's blood smeared all over his mouth. I'd have thought he was dead, but he moves, a little. Is he subject to fits or something?"

Angie saw that John was staring at the waitress's neck. He blinked his eyes and stared again. Angie could feel her own flesh creep. There was a tiny, fresh blood spot visible on Elizabeth's throat—no, two tiny spots, a couple of inches apart, and around them some dried smears as if the little wounds had been oozing for some time. But the woman seemed completely unaware of the fact.

John muttered something, pushed past her, and led the way down the hall, to the room in which Uncle Matthew and the waitress must have retired not more than a couple of hours ago. After giving a token rap on the slightly open door, John pushed it open and led the others in. A moment later he had reached for a wall switch and turned on an additional light.

The single figure now occupying the queen-sized bed was sprawled across it diagonally and concealed up to the armpits by a sheet. The rumpled cover left bare the pale and wiry arms, the muscle-rounded shoulders. Uncle Matthew's head lifted slightly when the light came on. He turned his face away from the brighter light and toward the visitors.

Or—was this really Uncle Matthew? Angie, coming closer to the bed, paused suddenly, for a moment doubting whether she was looking at the same man. This face looked altogether too young, and at the same time too unhealthy. The pallor of this face was intense, the features somehow altered. The glossy dark hair, now entirely free of gray, was wildly tousled. Angie saw that Uncle Matthew's gaze, pointed in the general direction of his visitors, was unresponsive, his eyes glassy, hardly more than half open. If she hadn't just seen the body move, she might well have thought the face before her now was dead.

And Elizabeth was right, those certainly looked like bloodstains on his lips and chin and cheeks. As if he had been drinking clumsily, or sucking blood—Angie giggled suddenly, a strained and awkward sound.

No one took any notice.

"Uncle Matthew?" There was horror in John's voice. He was wide awake now. As he leaned forward, closer to the bed, something crackled faintly beneath his hand pressing down the sheets. Puzzled, John shifted his weight and pushed again, testing. The effort produced a renewed crunching sound. "Oh," he said then, as if he had just remembered something.

The man who was lying across the bed suddenly rolled over on his back, an abrupt, almost convulsive movement. His eyes opened a little wider, and then sought those of the younger man. The gory lips twitched, revealing stark white, pointed teeth. It looked as if he were trying, so far without success, to communicate something to John.

"Sir? What is it?"

A straining, an evident attempt to answer, but no speech, hardly any sound.

Angie chimed in, pleading, "Uncle Matthew?"

The man in the bed gurgled, gasped for air, and murmured something. It was at last a response, but far from intelligible. He made an abortive effort to raise himself, but could get his head no more than a couple of inches from the pillow before falling back.

Elizabeth the waitress had followed John and Angie into the bedroom and had been hovering uneasily in the background. Now she said: "At first I thought he was just drunk, but—I don't remember that he even had a drink. We'd better call a doctor. If he's bleeding like that around his mouth." She giggled inappropriately. Unlike Angie's nervous laughter earlier, Elizabeth's went on for some time.

But John was shaking his head emphatically before Elizabeth had even finished speaking. "No," he said decisively. "No doctors."

Angie looked at him with a questioning frown, but said nothing for the moment.

"Well, he's your relative. Me, I don't like the way he looks. In fact I think I'm getting out of here. Where'd he put my coat? In the front closet, I suppose." The woman was obviously growing more and more upset every time she looked at Uncle Matthew in the bright light.

"I'll help you find your coat," said Angie, turning away from the bed. Meanwhile she was wondering whether she ought to try to break it gently to Elizabeth that her throat was bleeding slightly, but before she could decide the doorbell chimed.

"Who could that be?" asked Elizabeth automatically. Angie thought that after several hours of quiet it wasn't likely to be the neighbors complaining about noise.

All three of Uncle Matthew's guests moved into the living room, approaching the front door and its closed-circuit color video.

John turned on the viewer beside the door, and all three looked at the little wall-mounted screen. Angie started to speak, then bit her tongue. From the corner of her eye, she saw Elizabeth raise her fingers to her mouth; then the women looked at each other in puzzlement at their shared reaction.

Before either of them could decide what to say, John made his own comment. "Some young guy," he muttered. "Whoever it is, I never saw him before."

"I think I have," said Angie timidly.

Valentine Kaiser, wearing a trench coat, was standing there front and center, posing accommodatingly right in front of the electronic eye so anyone inside could get a look at him. Somewhat vague in the background was the figure of another man, who appeared just about tall enough to look over Kaiser's shoulder. Angie couldn't be sure, but she didn't think the second man was anyone she'd ever seen.

Despite the hour the celebrity publicist appeared cheerful, clean-shaven, and wide awake, swinging his arms a little, shifting his weight restlessly as he waited. As she watched, Kaiser extended his arm and pressed the chime again.

John was looking at her now, and she turned slowly away from the viewer, trying to think of how to explain to him who Kaiser was. "I think I—" Angie began, and then was distracted by Liz.

The waitress had already retrieved her coat from the front closet and put it on. In the act of adjusting a scarf she paused, dabbed with her hand at her shapely neck, then looked at her fingers. "Oh, my God, I'm bleeding too," she murmured. Eyeing her companions she giggled once more, and Angie wondered suddenly if Liz might be drunk or high on some other drug.

"Angie," John was asking, an edge in his voice, "do you know who this guy is out in the hall?"

Elizabeth, with coat and scarf now firmly on, was holding her right hand stiffly out in front of her. For the moment, as she regarded the fingers marked with pinhead red spots from her throat, she looked completely sober. "I don't want to meet him," she muttered. "Is there a back door?" she asked distractedly. "A service door? I'm going to just slip out that way, if…"

"Wait," said John sharply. He looked from one to the other with a hard gaze that puzzled Angie, then concentrated on her: "Were you going to say you know him?"

"I recognize him," she admitted in annoyance. If he would only give her the time to explain properly…

"You do? Who is he, then?"

"Tell you in a minute." Angie, her anger suddenly flaming because of being barked at, stepped quickly to the door and started to open the locks while keeping the security fasteners in place. Two of these, designed to allow the door to open no more than about six inches, guarded the front portal of Uncle Matthew's residence. Both were made of thicker steel, were more elaborate in design, and looked much stronger than the usual door chains that served as household protectors in the city.

John at first moved as if he would prevent her from opening the door, but then stepped back. "All right," he muttered. "I want to get a look at him directly."

In another moment, confronting Valentine Kaiser face-to-face through a six-inch gap, Angie tried to summon up her best skill at vituperation, but found that any talent she might ordinarily possess along that line had deserted her. "What in the world do you want?" was the nearest thing to scathing words that she could think of. "At this hour?" She did her best to make her tone compensate for the deficiency.

Seen directly, Kaiser looked worried, or at least concerned, rather than jaunty. Not that he was lacking confidence. Sounding almost cheerful, he answered her question with one of his own. "How's Mr. Maule doing?"

"What do you want?"

Their visitor looked grave. "I had an impression that he might be ill. One gets these feelings sometimes, you know, when one has known someone for a very long time. May I talk to him, please?"

"No. Go away." Angie paused. "You say you know him?"

"For a very long time, as I say." As if in afterthought he pointed behind him with a thumb. "Forgive me, this is my associate, Mr. Stewart." The trench-coated figure nodded. Kaiser gave Angie a reassuring smile. "Now, may we come in?"

"No!" This from John, standing close behind her. Angie, who had been able to feel herself wavering, felt grateful for the support.

Kaiser did not look grateful at the refusal. "So? Then he is ill I was afraid of that. Sorry to disturb you now but it can't be helped." His tone was not exactly repentant. "Believe me, it can't. Let us in and we'll talk about it." He made a little movement forward, stopping just short of the doorway.

Valentine Kaiser… who was he? A young man, yes, but still definitely one you could turn to with a problem. Almost, Angie found herself willing, hoping, to be convinced that he might after all have some good reason…

"You're not coming in," said John firmly, from just behind her.

That stiffened her backbone. "Who are you, really?" she demanded. "What was all that story about publicity?"

Kaiser shook his head. Then somewhat plaintively, making an awkward gesture with both arms, he appealed: "Do we have to talk out in the corridor?"

Angie turned to look at John, but he was not softening. "Who are these people, Angie? We're not letting anyone in."

Kaiser ignored him. He craned his neck, trying to look in past both of them, as if trying to spot someone else. The waitress had retreated around an angle of wall, but that didn't let her escape. Kaiser raised his voice slightly. "I see another young lady in the background. How about you, miss? You think we ought to come in?"

Elizabeth Wiswell, looking dazed and not exactly young, took a few steps forward, as if unwillingly. She moved until she could peer through the doorway at the young man in the hall, and then she stared at him as if in the grip of some terrible fascination. The blood spots showed dark upon her pale throat. Her mouth opened, but what she might have said was never heard.

John suddenly let out an inarticulate cry and hurled himself against the door, slamming it shut. One of the men outside—Angie had a blurred impression that it was Stewart—reacted, lunging forward and trying to hold the door open, but that effort came too late. The heavy, dull slam the barrier made in closing suggested to Angie the thickness of the wood.

In the next instant Liz screamed loudly and put her hands up over her face.

At the same moment Angie shouted: "John!" She had recoiled against the wall; startled by the violence of what she perceived as John's overreaction, she stared at him in wonder.

John didn't answer. With his shoulder still braced against the wood, his face pale, his fingers working with desperate haste, he was turning the heavy bolts on each of the four separate locks and latches that held the door shut tight.

The expression he turned to Angie stilled her startled questions in her throat.

"Angie, we can't let them in," he was beginning, in a frightened voice. Then he stopped, looking wildly about. "Where's Liz?" he demanded, a sudden edge of panic in his voice.

For a moment Angie only continued to stare at her fiance in astonishment. She had never seen him look like this—he was pale to the lips and absolutely terrified.

But in the next moment she turned her gaze around the living room and entryway. The other woman was gone. "She said something about going out the service entrance. I guess there must be one…"

"Oh, my God!" John's words were quiet, but desperately urgent. Already he was running at top speed for the back door, or for the place where Angie supposed the back door would have to be if it existed.

"What is it?" But he wouldn't delay in his headlong flight, wouldn't pause to answer. Angie followed, helplessly infected by his fear.

Running on bare feet, they pounded through the apartment to the kitchen. There, set in one wall of the tiny adjacent laundry room, the back door stood open as far as its security devices, similar to those on the front door, would allow. Elizabeth was standing just inside, talking to someone through the gap. When John shouted at her she turned, as if with great difficulty, to present a face of helpless horror to John and Angie.

Knocking her out of the way, not pausing to see who might be outside, John leaped at this door as he had the other. Again a heavy barrier slammed shut. Again Angie had the impression that whoever was outside might have made an abortive effort to hold it open.

In another moment John had the locks on this door fastened.

Then he turned, leaning his back against the door, fixing the trembling waitress with a baleful stare. "Don't call out. Don't ask any of them in. I'm warning you."

Elizabeth, shivering despite coat and scarf, had retreated to sit in a chair at the kitchen table. She shook her red curls. "I didn't," she said in a tiny, helpless voice. "I won't."

Angie, scowling at the man she was planning to marry, moved to stand beside Elizabeth, silently stroking the woman's hair with her right hand. Meanwhile Elizabeth had seized Angie's left hand and was clinging to it, almost as if she needed help from drowning. Liz was still trembling. Angie was silent now, but her anger was going to burst out at John in about fifteen seconds, unless he came up with some very good explanations.

The video panel beside the back door was identical with the one in the front room. John, having made sure the door was sealed—and having terrorized everyone in the process, Angie thought—had switched on the video and was studying the screen intently. He muttered: "Not a real hallway at this end, just service stairs. There's a landing, and the back door of someone else's apartment. He's still there. Know this guy, Angie?"

Angie looked at the viewer, and beheld another male figure, not Mr. Stewart, also unfamiliar. How many people were with Kaiser, and why would he send someone to the back door, when he came to the front? Was he some kind of a policeman? Or—

The buzzer on the back door sounded, and simultaneously the door chime from the front.

John ignored the nearer summons. Moving at a reluctant walk, almost a sleepwalker's groping stumble, he was halfway back to the living room when Angie gave up calling his name—he couldn't seem to hear her—and ran to stop him with a hard pull on his arm.

Once she had his attention, she said, calmly and firmly: "I don't know what it is about the people out there that upsets you so. If they're so scary, don't you think it's about time we called the police?"

"No!" It was anything but a sleepwalker's answer. "Don't you see? That's just what they want us to do."

"What?" The two of them were arguing on the threshold of the living room, with the front door in sight, its adjacent video screen showing that Valentine Kaiser was out there still. Elizabeth Wiswell, moving like a lost soul, still in coat and scarf, came wandering past John and Angie and sank down in a chair at some distance from the door.

John must have seen his fiancee's fear and confusion. He made a conscious, visible effort to speak to her calmly. "If we call the cops, those people out in the hall will disappear. For the time being. And if the cops get a call saying there are mysterious people in the hall threatening us, they'll insist on coming in and looking the place over. Just to make sure we're not lying when we meet them at the door and say everything is fine now. The cops will want to make sure there's no one being held hostage in here."

"All right! So, let them come in and—"

He overrode her. "No! Once the cops see Uncle Matthew, in the shape he's in, nothing will stop them calling an ambulance and having him carried out."

"Frankly I think we ought to call one ourselves. John, he really looks like—"

"I know what he looks like. The trouble is, once they move him outside the walls of his own house—well, there'll be no way we or the police can protect him, if your acquaintance who came to the door means to do him harm."

Angie blinked "Protect him?"

"It looks to me like someone's poisoned him. Then those—strangers show up out in the corridor and want to see him. I don't like it."

"You mean—you're saying the police couldn't protect him from Valentine Kaiser and his—"

"Do you know what Kaiser is?"

"What he is? He gave me a card that said he was a 'publicist,' whatever that is. I don't—"

John, shaking his head hopelessly, switched his attention to Elizabeth, who was sitting huddled in one of the living room's soft chairs. "Liz?" He had to call her name several times to get her attention.

At last she raised green, frightened eyes.

"They sent you, didn't they? That man out in the hall? They told you to come in here and then call one of them in?"

She nodded. Her eyes were dreamy. "The big young fella there, he talked about that, telling me I ought to invite them in if they asked me to. I don't know why he wanted that. I never expected he"—her eyes moved in the direction of the bedroom where their host still lay—"was going to—to—" She raised her fingers to her throat And giggled, faintly, once again.

"You see," said John to Angie, "this is someone's home. They can't get in here unless they're invited. I don't know why it works that way, but it really does." His voice sounded reasonable, even if what he was saying made no sense at all.

Angie hesitated. " 'They'? Who're 'they'?"

"Kaiser and his buddies out there. His friend Stewart wasn't, he was a normal man." John's voice was growing ragged again. "But they can't just push a door in, not a door to someone's house. They can't stop me from shutting them out, though God knows they're strong enough."

"John? I think you better get hold of yourself. If you—"

"Who is this Kaiser, anyway?"

"I don't really know."

"Angie, that guy in the hall is working every trick he can to get someone to invite him through that door. But once he's in the apartment—we're dead, if he wants us dead. And when I look at him I'm scared shitless. It's like eleven years ago."

"I want to go home," said Elizabeth Wiswell suddenly. "I don't feel good." Her slight body made convulsive nodding motions; in a moment, hand to her mouth, she had leaped from her chair and was hurrying down the bedroom hallway. In another moment, sounds of retching came from that direction.

The other two paid her little attention. Something, Angie suddenly understood, in this situation is taking John back to when he lost his fingers. She had a question ready, but before she could ask it, John pushed past her and went to stand beside the viewscreen, just as the door chime rang yet again.

Putting his hand on Kaiser's miniature image, in an urgent whisper he turned his head to Angie and ordered: "Whatever you say, whatever you do, don't invite any of those people in. Okay? I'll do my best to explain the rest of this to you later."

She was angry, perhaps because she knew she had once been on the brink of issuing such an invitation. "Do you need to keep saying that? Do you think I'm crazy? Or are you?" Then she wished she hadn't asked the question.

"No, I'm not." He paused. "That's the least of my worries." Suddenly he held up his four-fingered hands, wiggling the digits briefly like someone miming quotation marks. "This experience," he said, "taught me something."

The door chime sounded yet again. John turned swiftly and pushed the button, beside the video panel, that allowed voice communication.

"What is it?" he demanded

Kaiser's voice, distorted by the system's third-rate audio, came through. "I said, would you open the door, please?"

"No!"

The man in the hall did not sound discouraged.

"John? Angie? Let me talk with the young woman who's with you, please. I want to satisfy myself that she's free to leave this apartment if she wants to. Then I'll go away, if you insist."

"How did you know my name?" John demanded.

"Angie called you by name. Don't you remember?"

John looked doubtful, of his memory if not his purpose. And Liz, emerging feebly from the bedroom hallway, looking almost as pale as Uncle Matthew, shook her head silently and shivered.

Angie said to the intercom: "She doesn't want to talk to you. Go away."

John turned off the sound again. He was looking at her fiercely, but his voice was so low that she had to strain to hear him. "Angie, you really know that man?"

"I told you, or I've been trying to tell you, I've met him once. That's all."

"Where'd you meet him? When?"

"Yesterday afternoon. I was going to tell you all about it, but—I've got his business card in my purse." She looked about. The purse would be back in the bedroom. "His name's Valentine Kaiser, and he's a 'celebrity publicist,' whatever that is, or he claims to be."

That provoked from John a burst of near-hysterical laughter. "I haven't met him. I've never seen him before. But, I told you, I know what he is."

"So? What are we doing now, just letting him stand around out there, and his friend, and harass us all night? I say call the police. Maybe Uncle Matthew really needs an ambulance." And she too laughed. It was a foolish, panicky sound and she hated herself for making it.

He was shaking his head emphatically. "No ambulance and no police. Uncle Matthew's not like other people. Believe me, honey, I know what I'm doing. I'm calling Joe."

That made her pause, with its sheer apparent irrelevance. "Joe Keogh?"

"Yes." He was already picking up the phone, in a little alcove off the living room.

"Why? What's Joe Keogh got to do with this?" Then Angie turned to look at the silent video screen. Valentine Kaiser was waving his arm in an unmistakable gesture of farewell.

"Look, John. I think he's leaving."

Receiver at his ear, John came far enough out of the alcove to look. Now Kaiser, with the smaller figure of Mr. Stewart staying shadowlike behind him, had definitely turned and was moving away. Almost at once they were gone out of the camera's limited range.

"They're going," Angie said doubtfully.

"Let's hope so." John didn't sound as if he even considered it a possibility. In another moment he was addressing the phone, in the careful voice of one confronted with an answering machine. "Joe, this is John. We're at Uncle Matthew's, and I'm afraid we've got an emergency. Uncle's sick, passed out, I don't know what. And we've got nosferatu in the hallway, trying to talk their way in. Three of 'em at least. I don't like their looks. Give me a call back here as soon as you can."

With a look at Angie, as if to say: That's all we can do at the moment, he hung up the phone.

Angie asked him: "What was that word you said? The name you called them?"

"Oh. Nosferatu? It's an old word from some European language, I forget which. It means vampires."

"Vampires."

John was looking at the viewer again, listening at the door. "Honey, I don't think they're really gone."

When she went into the bedroom to look at Uncle Matthew again, the translation of nosferatu didn't sound so crazy.

Time passed. When John made his first attempt to reach Joe Keogh, it was five-thirty. Now it was six and still dark outside, the long autumnal night persisting. Angie and John monitored the video panels almost continuously, but the presences that had haunted the front hall, and the rear-service landing and stairs, failed to reappear.

Everything outside the apartment looked and sounded absolutely peaceful.

Liz still sat in her living-room chair, looking as if she were numbed, or stunned. John tried to question her once more, but found it difficult to provoke a response.

Angie, heavy-lidded, told herself that she would hang on until daylight. Then it might be possible to get some sleep. If Uncle Matthew, who looked as hideous as ever, didn't die in the meantime. And John remained adamant on what not to do for him. "We can't call a doctor for him, Angie. We just can't. If we do, whatever else happens, Uncle Matthew is going to be carried out of here on a stretcher. And believe me he's not going to survive that. Especially with those—people—waiting to get at him."

Angie looked at her lover's four-fingered hands, and Uncle Matthew's face, and didn't know what to think.

At some point after the curtains began to show light around the edges, Liz departed. She went out the back way, after John, with the air of a man performing an heroic act, had first unlocked the door and stuck his head out and looked around. Then Liz went out, waved once, and went on down the stairs; they could hear her feet on the concrete for a couple of flights before the sound disappeared.

With the back door locked and bolted up again, John went to one window after another in the apartment to confirm the reality of daybreak. Since all of the windows looked out on the north side of the building, all the daylight they could gather, at this season of the year in particular, was indirect. The fog had largely dispersed; in early morning light the city below looked as mundane and busy, the lake as calm and mysterious, as ever.

The last room they entered on this tour was their host's bedroom, and here John, without offering any explanation, insisted that the curtains should remain tightly closed. In this room they were really special room-darkening draperies, Angie noted.

The condition of the patient, as seen by artificial light, was little changed.

As they were adjusting the bedclothes, something under the bottom sheet again made a faint, peculiar crackling sound.

Angie prodded at the bed, calling forth the noise yet once more. "What's this crunchy stuff under the bottom sheet?"

John, as if he already knew, didn't bother to look. "I'd say it's a garment bag, or something very like one. Plastic, filled with dried earth."

"And why's it there?"

"Because. He needs it, if he's going to sleep."

Angie thought it over. She'd known a good many people with stranger health quirks than that. Well, one or two anyway. Then she paused, looking at Uncle Matthew's corpselike face. Something else was not so innocently explained. "Seriously, it looks like he's been drinking blood."

John, on the other side of the bed, paused for a full ten seconds before answering. "I'm sure he has been," he said at last in a dull voice. "Blood is what he lives on."

"John, I said I'm serious."

"And I'm very serious too. He does live on blood. In fact it isn't always human blood, but blood is all he drinks. The only nourishment he needs."

Angie couldn't think of anything to say.

John was gazing at her sadly. "You saw Liz's throat."

"I…" Angie was about to protest this outrageous, unbelievable line of argument when a new observation drove even blood-drinking momentarily from her thoughts. Looking back at the man on the bed, she stared for a few moments and then whispered: "John? I think he's dead."

John hardly bothered to glance at the man whose nature he was trying to explain. "No, he isn't."

"I'm serious. I don't think he's breathing. I—"

"He's not supposed to breathe."

Everything Angie's lover was telling her, in this new, numbed voice of his, struck with an impact against her sanity. Every time her mind rejected what he was saying, she had to draw new energy from somewhere to try again. "What?"

John spoke slowly and carefully, though now with a little more animation. "He doesn't need to breathe except when he wants to talk. That's the only time he needs the air. His chest doesn't move up and down when he sleeps. But ordinarily you don't notice that unless you look for it."

Angie looked. The figure in the bed remained as immobile as a corpse. The rumpled sheet above its chest stood absolutely still, as if it were covering a statue. "But you can't be serious."

"I wish you'd stop telling me how serious you are, and that I can't be serious."

Her eyes fell again to the man in the bed. The deadly immobility, the pallor of the skin. The predatory teeth, partially visible through parted lips. The blood.

She said, involuntarily: "He looks like… like…"

John went on in the same tired, careful monotone. "I know what he looks like. He looks like a vampire. Nosferatu, remember? Because that's what he is."

"A vampire? You're trying to tell me that this man is actually—that he's a vampire."

Her fiance's numbed lethargy began to crack. "Not trying anymore, honey. I've given up trying to break it to you gently. I'm telling you, because that's what he is. And so is Kaiser. Angie, whatever you do, never say a word of invitation to any of those people who were out in the hall. They can't come into someone's house if they're not asked." John, for the moment looking totally insane, leaned toward her as he uttered the last sentence.

But this time Angie didn't think that he was crazy. Crazy would have been easier to deal with, somehow. She could only wish for some answer as manageable as that.

"Thanks," Angie said vaguely. "I wasn't going to do that."

Recovering somewhat, John seemed ready to talk plainly and sanely once again. He gestured toward the window. "The sun's up now. They may have to lie low for a while."

"That's great—if they have to hide from sunlight."

"They sure don't care for sunlight much. A large direct dose can even kill them. But that doesn't mean they can't come out at all in the daytime. They love our Chicago climate. You met Kaiser in the daytime, right?"

"Right. I met him indoors. And the day was cloudy."

"Sure. And he looked just about normal?"

"You saw him in the hall. Sure he looks normal."

"But he isn't. I've had experience. Honey? I know how this must sound, but it's real. This isn't like the movies."

"No," she said. "It isn't anything like that."

John looked at his wristwatch and moved toward the bedside phone. "I'm going to try Joe again."

"Joe? Joe Keogh? Why is it important to call him?"

But John didn't answer. He had already picked up the phone and was punching numbers.

Angie looked once more at Uncle Matthew, shuddered, and started to move out of the room. At that moment the front door chime sounded.

John put down the phone and came with her to the door. The color images of two people showed on the little screen. One was Valentine Kaiser. The second, standing beside him and locked in the circle of his arm that came around her neck and shoulder, was a woman with red hair, wearing a cloth coat.

John switched on the sound.

The switch caught Elizabeth Wiswell's voice, softly desperate, in the middle of a sentence. " —me in, please, you've got to let me in. He'll let me go if you do. If you don't, he's going to drink my blood. All of it. He says that and I'm sure he means it."

Kaiser's arm moved slightly and her voice fell silent. Another image hurried across the screen, someone on the way to work most likely. When Liz and Kaiser had the corridor to themselves again, her pleas resumed, low, quavering, and sometimes hard to understand.

"He means it. They all do. Please, you've got to let him in now. He won't hurt you. If you don't, they're going to—" John hit the speaker switch, and a moment later the switch that turned off the video. The little screen went blank.

Now someone had begun pounding, though feebly, on the door. If Elizabeth was still trying to talk to them, from out there in the hall, it was impossible to hear her through the soundproofing of the walls and the door's thick wood.

John and Angie looked at each other. He said: "There's a chance they won't hurt her. I think a better chance than if we let them in. And it won't do any good to call the cops. It won't do any good at all. Do you believe me, Angie? Do you understand me?"

She made a gesture between a nod and a shrug.

John hurried back to the phone in the nearby alcove.

Someone was still thumping weakly on the door.

Aimlessly, moving in shock, Angie turned away and wandered back down the hallway, into the guest bedroom where she had had about two hours' sleep before the vampires—the bad, dangerous vampires, not the one that wasn't quite John's uncle—came on the scene.

Sinking down into a chair, she stared at the tape machine. In a moment she began to cry.