An Old Friend Of The Family (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 3) Fred Saberhagen (books to read in your 20s txt) 📖

weathered stones of the cemetery’s old section, and clung to the wrought-iron fences, obscuring the signs that warned about the guard dogs being loosed here after dusk. The snow and the dogs were all fine with the old man who stood looking out from inside the Southerland mausoleum, his eye to a small chink he had broken in one window of stained glass.

    He supposed that this mausoleum was old and large, as such things went in this young country. It was a one-room house of marble no warmer and no colder than the snow, or than the bones in the sheltered—or than the living but unbreathing flesh that it concealed today.

    At intervals, when he grew weary of looking out, five or six long paces took the old man from one end of the cold room to the other. This included a slight detour around the empty sarcophagus and the decorative urns that had been planted in the middle of the space. Looking at them, he could see why Andrew exiled them here, ugly decorations no one wanted to behold. The central sarcophagus was unoccupied; so far all interments had been in the vaults built into the thick outer walls. Southerlands and their kin who had died in the past seventy years or so were there, behind waist-high doors of green-painted bronze.

    Kate was lying just above one such door, on a wide marble ledge set below another stained glass window. She had been lying there since just before the wintery dawn, curled up like a sleeper, wrapped in a sheet that revealed only her head.

    Kate lay on her left side, facing the room, but with her eyes closed. One arm tucked beneath her head, she had scarcely moved for hours. The coarse sheet wrapping her from toes to neck bore on one corner the stamped legend, PROPERTY OF COOK COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICE. While she was not fully awake, she was not fully asleep either; which was one reason why the old man, finding himself thrust into the role of midwife for her new life, hesitated to leave her alone, even though other important matters demanded his attention.

    This half-sleeping condition of Kate’s had him somewhat puzzled. No reason, he thought, why she should not be able to sleep the daylight hours away, in this her native sepulcher. In fact when he brought her here he had expected her to slip into a deep sleep at once.

    He came back now from another squint out of the broken window, to stand motionlessly regarding her. His black topcoat was open, his dark hat set at a slightly jaunty angle, his dark glasses off, his hands behind his back.

    Suddenly Kate’s eyes flew open. “I don’t know you,” she said, in dazed mistrustfulness. Her speech was newly awkward: sometimes she forgot to take a breath before she started talking, for breath was no longer a requirement of her life; sometimes she drew in too much air, and the end of a phrase was punctuated with a sharp puff of the surplus.

    She had protested that he was a stranger enough times for him to have lost count. But if patience with her confusion was costing him an effort, he had not let that effort show as yet. “I am an old friend of the family, Kate,” he repeated, yet again. “Of your Grandmother Clarissa’s in particular. I have brought you here for your own protection.”

    Kate moved her body substantially now for the first time in hours, rising on one elbow. “How did you bring me here?”

    This question and answer too, they had been through several times before. “Think back, girl—what do you remember of our journey?”

    Kate’s blue eyes looked into the distance. This time round she was going to manage to take the conversation at least one step farther than before. “There were doors, somewhere…in a couple of different places…and you told me that because it was after dark we needed no keys; we could slip through.”

    “What else?”

    “It seems to me that I can remember—flying. Like something in a dream.”

    “Trust your memory, Kate. It was no dream. Now, what is the last thing that you can recall before our journey? Think carefully.”

    Obediently she retired into her own thoughts, to surface again in a few moments. “I can remember being at a party.”

    “Excellent! We are making progress. Where was the party?”

    “I…can’t remember.”

    “Try.”

   Kate seemed to be trying, but had no success. He pressed on: “After the party, then. You perhaps left with someone?”

    “Yes…”

    “Who was it?” The old man could hear, perhaps half a kilometer away, the snowplow scraping slowly.

    “He said…” Suddenly Kate sat bolt upright on her shelf, clutching the sheet about her. “He said his name was Enoch Winter.”

    “You have said that name before.” The questioner nodded with satisfaction. “And what does Enoch Winter look like, little one?”

“He’s big. Very tall. Very strong.” The last word ended with a little shudder, wherein horror and repulsion were mingled with the memory of delight.

    “Taller than I am? Look at me.”

    Obediently Kate looked. “Oh, yes. By several inches.”

    For a long time, he mused, I was considered very tall myself. Now I am scarcely above the average, I suppose. Shall I someday qualify as a midget?

    Aloud, he asked: “His hair? His eyes? His face?”

    “Dark curly hair. Sort of a deep voice, but much rougher than yours. His eyes are blue, maybe gray. I’ll know him if I see him again.”

    “Indeed, I should think you—” He broke off, watching her with great intentness.

    Kate’s gradual return to full awareness had reached a critical point. Now she was looking with terror at the marble walls, the stained glass, and the tombs surrounding her. “What is this