A Matter of Taste

'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?'