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

not been opened for him. Judy rang the doorbell at once, heard the faint chime, and only then wondered what she would say if someone came. Her car had broken down, that would be it.

    But no one answered.

    A quick glance to her rear showed only the darkening gloom of woods and lawn and fields, but she knew Corday was there. Before her, she could still feel the habitation of the house. But there was no sound or light to give corroboration to the feeling.

    She knocked, then rang again. Inside, she felt—she knew—that Johnny heard the bell. Johnny, locked up in fear and pain and darkness, unable or afraid to even cry out.

    The window beside the front door, Judy soon discovered could not be opened from the outside. Not by her pulling or pushing at it, at least. She balled a fist inside her mitten, then paused long enough to take off her scarf and wrap it round her hand.

    Judy’s first blow at the glass was not wholehearted enough to break it in, and she gave a little cry of frustration before she punched again. This time there was a satisfactory crash, followed by a tinkle on the floor inside.

    As if the crash had been a signal prearranged, the front door was suddenly thrown wide. A young man, thick-necked and muscular but rather small, stood there wearing faded jeans and an old army shirt. One hand was out of sight on each side of the door frame. His neatly trimmed hair was somehow incongruous. His eyes were partially hidden behind the distortion of thick glasses; his mouth, twisted in rage or fear or both, was open on uneven teeth.

    “What’re you doing?” The man’s voice was breathless, almost unintelligible with apparent strain.

    Its urgent menace for the moment made Judy forget everything else and she took an involuntary step backward. “I—I need help with my car.”

    “For that you break the window? Who was that guy who was just here?”

    “I…” From some inward source, invention came. “I asked a man to help me. Now I don’t know where he’s gone.”

    “No help here. There’s a gas station down the highway, east, about half a mile.” The man’s extreme excitement had perhaps eased just a little. He had not changed his position in the doorway yet.

    “I don’t think I can walk that far.” Judy pleaded. “Please, let me use your phone.”

    “Get outta here,” he muttered, almost as if his thoughts were already on something else. He kept darting glances past her into the snowy dusk.

    Judy was mastering her fright. Her nerves still vibrated in sympathy with her brother’s unceasing pain. “I won’t go away,” she said, regaining her lost step toward the door. “I can’t.”

    The young man looked at her with very ugly eyes.

    She faced his look. “I’m just going to stand here and scream until you let me in.”

    Her desperation, though not the reason for it, evidently impressed itself upon him. Several things, most of them frightening, passed through the young man’s face in quick succession. Finally caution in some form prevailed.

    “All right, I’ll come take a look at your goddamned car,” he muttered. “Breaking the goddamned window—” He turned away as if meaning to grab a coat from somewhere close at hand. As he retreated he pushed the door from inside, shutting it almost completely.

    Not giving herself time to think, Judy sprang forward, throwing her body against the closing door. It burst open before her rush. “Johnny!” she screamed.

    A ceiling light just inside the entry had now been switched on. The rest of the house, as far as she could tell, was all in darkness. The floor of the large entryway was tiled, and on the opposite side of it the young man stood before an open closet door. Not the closet that she wanted, no. He was in the act of pulling on a bulky sheepskin jacket, and in his free hand there dangled a long-barreled, very real looking revolver. His face was just now turning toward Judy in fresh astonishment.

    To Judy’s left, a great living room, devoid of furniture but thickly carpeted, stretched to a distant red-brick fireplace wall. Somewhere in that direction, a little farther off, Johnny was cowering in his prison, chained and gagged by fear, radiating pain like heat from glowing metal. Judy’s scream of his name still rang like a distant alarm in his dazed brain, and from there back to her own mind again.

    “Johnny!” she cried again. “I’m here!” And she moved toward the living room, to place herself between her helpless brother and this armed maniac.

    The young man in the sheepskin stepped across the entry and slammed the front door closed again. His face was evilly contorted now. Without a word he moved toward Judy, the weapon in his had rising with what seemed like endless slowness.

    At last remembering what she was supposed to do, Judy cried out: “Come in, Dr. Corday, help me!” As she cried she ducked away from her attacker, to find herself falling softly down the single step from entryway to sunken living room. Her arms were raised to protect her head from blows or bullets. Her last glimpse of the young man as she turned away showed him reaching toward her with his left hand.

    Even as the house spun with her spinning fall, she heard the front door fly open with a violent crash. There was a roaring of cold air in the room, an incomprehensible sudden wind that had blasted open the closed door. The hand that had just brushed Judy’s arm fell away. The door slammed shut again with a thunderous bang.

    The wind gave one last, trailing howl, and disappeared.

    The house was quiet.

    Judy