living room toward the kitchen and the garage beyond. As he climbed into the cab of the pickup truck, groping for the remote control that would open the garage door, he was no longer certain whether the weakness he was feeling came from the degeneration of his body or the fear of death that was overwhelming his mind.
Phillips.
He had to get to Phillips before it was too late.
The garage door behind him ground slowly upward, seeming to take forever before he could finally back the truck out into the street, but at last he was on his way. He shifted the truck into forward, moving quickly off into the brightening light of the summer morning.
• • •
Kelly stood frozen at the window long after her grandfather’s pickup had disappeared around the corner.
She’d stayed awake all night, watching the telephone, waiting for the red light to blink on in the darkness, signaling that her grandfather was once more calling Dr. Phillips. Each time the telltale light had come on, she’d picked up the phone, pressing it to her ear as she heard her grandfather leaving another message.
With each call his voice had sounded weaker, until finally, on the last call only a few minutes ago, she’d barely been able to distinguish his words at all.
She was certain he was sick, and getting sicker as the night went on. For a brief moment, three hours ago, she’d wondered if she shouldn’t go to him and find out what was wrong. But even before she’d left her room, she’d remembered that distinct feeling she’d had earlier that he was part of the dreadful evil that was being carried out deep in the swamp.
At last, when she’d heard him coming out of his room, she’d gone to her own door, opening it just far enough to press her eye against the crack and peer down the stairs into the foyer.
She’d gasped when she’d seen him moving through the shadows toward the kitchen, his tall figure stooped as he shuffled across the flagstone floor, his pace slow and careful, as if he was afraid of losing his balance.
Then, as he’d backed down the driveway, she’d gotten a clear look at his face, and it was that vision that had made her blood run cold.
This morning it truly was the face from her dreams; the face she’d glimpsed in the mirror sometimes, leering over her shoulder.
The hands she’d seen clenching the steering wheel of the truck were the same hands that she’d shrunk away from in her dreams, the clawlike hands that reached for her, as if intent on choking the life out of her.
But it wasn’t her life those hands had been reaching for at all.
It was her youth.
That hideous being wanted the resilience of her flesh, the suppleness of her muscles and strength of her bones, the freshness of her skin, the brightness of her eyes and lushness of her hair.
Did he, and the others like him, even know what else they had stolen from her?
A cold knot of hatred filled her heart, and she knew now the feeling that Michael had known just after midnight, when he was sure his sister had been taken from her crypt.
They would find a way to take back what had been stolen from them, find a way to end the evil.
At last she turned away from the window and returned to her bed, the exhaustion of the long night finally overcoming her.
She drifted into sleep, and once more the nightmares came, but when the ancient visage appeared out of the darkness this time, it was no longer the face of a stranger.
It was the face of her grandfather.
• • •
The sun was creeping over the horizon as Carl Anderson arrived at Warren Phillips’s house, and as its first brilliant rays struck his rheumy eyes, Carl blinked, cringing away from the light as a creature of the night slinks to its den at daybreak.
He felt exposed, and imagined there were eyes everywhere, watching him, uncovering the secret he’d protected for so many years, recognizing him for the skulking thief he knew he was.
He pulled the truck around to the back of Phillips’s house, abandoning it with the key still in the ignition as he staggered to the back door, pressing the doorbell with a shaking finger.
He heard the soft chime of the bell within, echoing oddly, as if to signal him that the house was still empty.
Defeated, he sagged down onto the back steps, coughing roughly to clear his throat of the thick mucus that was coagulating there, his breath rasping as he struggled to keep his lungs filled with air.
Hearing a car, he shrank back until he recognized Warren Phillips’s Buick gliding down the driveway, then hope surged within him.
Phillips, seeing him, braked the car to an abrupt halt. Then he was at the foot of the steps, helping Carl up, supporting him with one arm as he opened the back door.
“I’ve been calling all night,” Carl rasped as Phillips helped him through the house to the library. “Where the hell—”
“I’ve been at the hospital,” Phillips snapped. “Just take it easy.”
“A shot,” Carl pleaded. “I’m dying …”
Phillips disappeared for a moment, returning with a hypodermic syringe. Carl’s eyes fixed greedily on the needle as he struggled to roll up his sleeve. But then a doubt came into his mind.
“It’s not full. Why isn’t it a full dose?”
Phillips swabbed Carl’s arm with alcohol, and inserted the needle. “You’re lucky I even have this,” he said, pressing the plunger. “If it weren’t for Jenny Sheffield …”
Carl felt the restorative fluid spread through him, reveled in the miraculous warmth that seemed to wash the pain from his body. Already, only a few seconds after the shot, his pulse was smoothing out, the irregular spasms of his heart returning once more to the strong steady beats that would keep his blood surging through his body.
The panic that had consumed him only a moment ago began to recede, and the words Phillips had just spoken slowly sank in. “Jenny Sheffield?” he repeated. “But she’s—”
“Don’t be stupid, Carl. She’s not dead. She’s in my lab. And if you’re lucky, she’ll keep you alive until you can find someone else.”
Carl Anderson felt the panic creeping back up. “I can’t do that,” he muttered. “I pay. I pay a lot—”
“It doesn’t matter how much you pay if I don’t have anything to sell,” Phillips told him. His eyes fixed darkly on the old man. “And if I were you, I’d stay out of sight for a while, Carl. You look terrible.”
There was a cruel note in the doctor’s voice that chilled Carl’s soul. “But you said—”
Warren Phillips cut him off before he could finish. “If you want to live, you know what you have to do.”
Ted Anderson came into the kitchen, stopping short when he found no one there except his wife. “Where’s Dad?” he asked.
Mary shrugged. “He must have gotten up early. He wasn’t here when I came down, and the truck’s gone.”
Frowning, Ted went to the door leading to the garage. Save for his own worn Chrysler, the garage was empty. Puzzled, he moved to the stove and poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot on the back burner. “Where the hell would he go this early?”
Mary glanced archly at her husband. “I’m afraid he didn’t leave a note. Would you call Kelly?”
Ted went to the bottom of the stairs leading to Kelly’s room, calling out, then went up and knocked on the door. “Kelly? Time to get up.” There was a silence, then he heard his daughter’s voice.
“I’ll be down in a second.”
Returning to the kitchen, he sat down at the table just as Mary slid a plate of bacon and eggs in front of him. A minute later, wrapped in a robe, Kelly appeared. Ted glanced up at her, then looked more closely. Kelly’s face was pale and her eyes were edged with dark circles, as if she hadn’t slept at all. “Honey? Are you okay?”
For a moment he wasn’t sure Kelly had even heard him. She was staring off into space, lost in some world of her own. Then her expression changed, as if a veil had dropped over her eyes.
“I guess I didn’t sleep very well last night,” she said, her voice flat.
Mary, hearing the strange vacant note in her daughter’s voice, looked worriedly at her. “Do you feel all right?”
Kelly said nothing. What would they say if she told them what had happened last night and what she’d seen
