The Stake Read online

  The body was covered, at least to the neck, by an old brown blanket. The blanket was rumpled as if it had been tossed into the coffin by someone who didn’t care to straighten it.

  The corpse had long yellow hair. The skin of its face looked tight and leathery. Larry saw sunken eyelids, hollow cheeks, lips that were stretched back in a mad grin that exposed teeth and gums.

  “You believe this?” Pete whispered.

  Larry shook his head. “Maybe it isn’t real.”

  “My ass. I know a stiff when I see one.”

  “Looks almost mummified.”

  “Yeah. Guess we oughta check it out, huh?”

  Shoulder to shoulder, they moved slowly forward. Pete kept his light on the corpse.

  Hideous, Larry thought. He’d never seen such a thing. His experience with bodies was limited to three open-casket funerals. Those people had looked almost good enough to sit up and shake hands with you.

  This one looked as if it might want to sit up and take a bite out of you.

  Don’t think that stuff, Larry told himself.

  The underside of the stairway slanted down in front of them. They had to duck as they stepped to the foot of the coffin. Pete sank into a squat and waddled in farther. Larry started in, crouching. But after one step a sense of suffocation stopped him. The stairs seemed to be pressing down on him, wanting to shove him lower, to rub his face in the corpse. He dropped to his knees and reached out, ready to brace himself on the wooden edge of the coffin. Just before he touched it, he realized what he was about to do. He jerked his hands back and clutched his thighs.

  The blanket piled on top of the corpse didn’t cover its ankles and feet. They were bare, the color of stained wood, and bones showed through the tight skin. The nails were so long that they curled over the tops of the toes. Larry recalled that hair and nails supposedly continued to grow after death. But he’d heard that that was just a myth; they only appearedto grow because the skin sank in around them.

  “Bet it’s been here a long time,” Pete whispered. He reached over the side of the coffin. With his index finger he brushed the corpse’s forehead.

  Larry moaned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “How can you touchit?”

  “No big deal. Try it. Feels like shoe leather.” He drew his finger across a blond eyebrow.

  Larry imagined Pete’s finger sliding down the ridge of the eye socket, touching the lid, denting it, sinking in to the second knuckle.

  “Go on and touch it,” Pete urged him. “How you going to write about this stuff if you don’t experience it?”

  “Thanks, anyway. I’ll rely on my imagi...”

  “We changed our minds.”

  He flinched at the sound of Barbara’s voice. So did Pete. Pete’s head slammed the underside of a stair. He cried, “Ah!” ducked down close to the face of the corpse and grabbed the back of his head. “Shit! Damn it, Barb!”

  “Sorry.”

  Larry looked over his shoulder at the women and smiled. Though his startled heart was drumming, he was gladthey were here.

  He felt as if some of the real world had come back.

  “Guess you weren’t kidding,” Barbara whispered. “Jesus, look at that thing.”

  “Yuck,” was all Jean said.

  Barbara crouched over the end of the coffin. Jean stayed behind her and peered over her head.

  “Didn’t want us to have all the fun?” Larry asked.

  “That’s about the size of it,” Jean said, her voice hushed.

  “Curiosity got the best of us,” Barbara added. Then she reached into the coffin and touched the foot of the corpse.

  She’s just like Pete, Larry thought. Whatever their differences, they’re sure a set.

  “I think I’m bleeding,” Pete muttered.

  “That makes two of us,” Barbara said, still rubbing the dead foot. “It’s like the skin on a salami.”

  “Salami’s oily,” Pete told her. “This is more like leather.”

  “Okay, we’ve seen it,” Jean said. “Everyone ready to go?”

  “Yeah, just about.” Pete stopped rubbing his head, reached one arm down over the covered torso and snatched off the blanket. Larry lurched backward on his knees, wishing to God he’d known this was coming. He’d already seen too much.

  Now the corpse was stretched in front of his face.

  It was naked.

  It was female.

  It had a wooden stake in its chest.

  “Holy shit,” Barbara whispered.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Jean gasped in a high, tight voice. She didn’t wait for a consensus. She bolted.

  Pete threw the blanket down. It landed in a pile, covering the blunt top of the stake, the corpse’s flat breasts and the slats of its ribs. Barbara leaned forward, grabbed a bit of the blanket and jerked it down to cover the groin.

  Blond pubic hair.

  Larry groaned.

  Then he was scurrying after Barbara. The white seat of her shorts was still smudged with yellow from the rock where she’d rested in the creek bed.

  Seemed like a century ago.

  Why did we do this?

  Larry followed her through the open section of paneling. Jean was still in the lobby. Her fists were clenched at her sides and she was prancing as if she had to pee. “Let’s go, let’s go!” she gasped.

  Larry waited for Pete.

  Together they pushed the slab of wood into place.

  Shutting the door of the tomb.

  Pete backed away as if afraid to take his eyes off it.

  In the beam of his flashlight the crucified body of Jesus gleamed.

  Five

  Pete floored it out of Sagebrush Flat, and Barbara didn’t say a word about the speed.

  Nobody said a word about anything.

  Larry slouched in the passenger seat, feeling dazed and exhausted. Though he stared out the windshield at the sun-bright road and desert, he kept seeing the corpse. And the stake in its chest. And the crucifix.

  It’s behind us now, he told himself. We got away. We’re all right.

  His body felt leaden. There was a shaky tightness in his chest and throat that seemed like a peculiar mix of terror — subsiding terror — and elation. He remembered experiencing similar sensations a few years earlier. On a flight to New York the 747 had hit an air pocket and dropped straight down for a couple of seconds. Some of the passengers struck the ceiling. He and Jean and Lane, strapped in their seats, had been unharmed. But he’d felt this way afterward.

  Probably shock, he thought. Shock, combined with great relief.

  He sensed that if he didn’t keep tight control of himself, he might start weeping or giggling.

  This must be where they get the expression “scared silly.”

  “How’s everybody doing?” Pete asked, breaking the long silence.

  “I want a drink,” Barbara said.

  “There’s more beer in the ice chest.”

  “Not beer, a drink.”

  “Yeah, I could go for one myself. Or three or four. We should be home in less than an hour.” He glanced at Larry. “You believethat back there? That was like right out of one of your books.”

  “He hasn’t written any vampire books,” Barbara said. “You’d know that, if you ever read them.”

  “Bet you will now, right?”

  “I think I’d rather forget about it.”

  “Same here,” Jean said. “God.”

  “That babe had a stakein her heart.”

  “We all saw it,” Barbara reminded him.

  “And how about that crucifix? I’ll bet they put it there to keep her from getting out.” He nodded, squinting at the road. “You know? In case the stake fell out, or something. To keep her from breaking through the wall.”

  “How would the damn stake fall out?” Barbara asked, sounding a little bit annoyed by his musings.

  “Well, you know, a rat could get in there. A rat might pull it loose. Something like that.” />
  “Give me a break.”

  “There’s no such thing as vampires,” Jean said. “Tell them, Larry.”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “Well, there’s plenty of legends about them. It goes way back. Back in the Middle Ages a lot of poor jerks wound up buried at crossroads with their heads cut off and garlic stuffed in their mouths.”

  “Guess ours got off lucky, huh?” Pete grinned at him. “All she got was the ol‘ stake-in-the-heart routine.”

  “She’s not any vampire,” Jean insisted.

  “Somebody sure wasted her, though,” Barbara said.

  “That’s right,” Jean said. “Has it occurred to anyone that we found a dead body?”

  Pete raised his hand like a school kid. “Me,” he said. “I caught that right off the bat.” He chuckled. “No pun intended.”

  “No, I mean shouldn’t we tell the police?”

  “She’s got a point,” Barbara admitted.

  “So does our babe under the stairs,” Pete said, laughing some more. “A point right in her chest.”

  “Give it a rest, would you? This is serious business. We can’t just find a body and pretend it never happened.”

  “Right. We’ll just tell the cops we broke into a locked hotel.”

  “Youbroke into a locked hotel.”

  “Hey, you want to be married to a jailbird?”

  “We could make an anonymous call,” Jean suggested. “Just explain where the body is, so they can go out and get it. Really. I mean, whoever she is, she deserves a decent burial.”

  “I wouldn’t want it on my conscience,” Pete said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They won’t bury her with that stake in her chest. Some poor slob’ll pluck it right out. Next thing you know, he’s a vampire cocktail.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Jean muttered.

  “Is it?” Making an evil laugh, he grinned over his shoulder at her.

  “Watch where you’re driving,” Barbara said.

  “I don’t think we should call the cops,” Larry said. “Even if we do it anonymously, there’s still a chance we might get dragged into the situation.”

  “I don’t see how,” Jean told him.

  “How do we know we weren’t seen? Somebody might’ve driven through town and spotted the van while we were admiring the jukebox.”

  “Or the vampire,” Pete added.

  “And might’ve noticed the license plate number.”

  “Oh, there’s a pleasant thought,” Barbara muttered.

  “You just never know. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Hey, somebody could’ve even been watching us from a window or something.”

  “Thanks, Peter. I really needed to hear that.”

  “Even if nobody did see us,” Larry went on, “we undoubtedly left physical evidence behind. Fingerprints, footprints, tire-tread marks where the van drove over dirt. The police would probably treat the whole area as a crime scene. There’s no telling what they might find. Next thing you know, they could be knocking on the door.”

  “We didn’t kill her.”

  “Have you got an alibi,” Pete asked, “for the night of September 3, 1901?”

  “A pretty good one. I wasn’t bora yet. My parentsweren’t bom yet.”

  “You think she’s been dead that long?” Barbara asked.

  “Sure looked old to me.”

  “I have no idea when she might’ve been killed,” Larry said, “but I bet she hasn’t been under the stairs there for much more than twenty years or so. I imagine she was put there afterthe hotel closed down.”

  “Why’s that?” Pete asked.

  “The guests would’ve smelled her.”

  “Gross,” Jean muttered.

  “Well, it’s true. Assuming she was put in there right after she was killed, people would’ve noticed the stink. She doesn’t smell now, but...”

  “You’re making me sick, Larry.”

  “Why do you say twenty years?” Barbara asked.

  “The jukebox.”

  “Ah-ha. The oldies-but-goodies.”

  “I don’t think any of the songs I noticed were much later than the mid-sixties. That’s probably when Holman’s went out of business. I figure the hotel might’ve closed its doors around the same time as Holman’s.”

  “Makes sense,” Barbara said. “So you think the body was put under the stairs sometime after, say, ‘sixty-five?”

  “It’s just a guess. Of course, she could’ve been dead fifty years before somebody put her under the stairs. If that’s the way it went, there’s no telling how long she’s been there.”

  “Yeah,” Pete said. “You eliminate the stink factor by having her someplace else while she’s ripe, you could stick her under the stairs and nobody’d be the wiser.”

  “I don’t see how it matters,” Jean said. “The thing is, she’s dead. Who careshow long she’s been under the stairs?”

  Pete again raised his hand. “I myself find it to be of more than passing interest.”

  “So would the cops,” Larry added. “I think it’d make a big difference in the way they look at the situation. If she’s been dead half a century — and they have ways of figuring that stuff out — she’s almost like an historical artifact. If she was only killed twenty years ago, they might very well start an active homicide investigation.”

  “That’s right,” Barbara said. “Whoever put the stake in her could still be alive and kicking.”

  “Speaking of which,” Pete said. He glanced at Larry, arched an eyebrow and stroked his chin. “Wait’ll you hear this one.”

  “We know,” Barbara said, “Youdid it.”

  “Hey, I’m being serious here. Anybody happen to notice anything odd about the front doors of the hotel?”

  “Aside from the fact that we were the first to break in?” Barbara asked.

  “Very good, hon. That’s one thing. The place was still sealed when we got there. Just about every other joint in town was wide open. People’d busted in and done some exploring. But not the hotel. What else?”

  “Are we playing Twenty Questions? Is it bigger than a bread box?”

  “Here’s a clue. Bright and shiny and brand new.”

  “The padlock,” Larry said. “The hasp.”

  “Right! The way those suckers looked, I’ll bet they were sitting on the shelf of a hardware store a month ago.”

  “So?” Jean asked.

  “Who put them on the doors? Who wanted to keep intruders out of the hotel?”

  “Could’ve been anyone,” Larry answered.

  “Right. And it could’ve been someone who hid a body under the stairs. Someone who’s still around and trying to make sure nobody stumbles onto his little secret.”

  “The same person who put the crucifix on the wall,” Larry added.

  “Right.”

  “Sort of a guardian, a keeper of the vampire.”

  “It’s more likely,” Barbara said, “that whoever put the lock on the doors doesn’t know a thing about it.”

  “More interesting if he does,” Pete told her.

  “Maybe for you.”

  “Any chance we might stop talking about it?” Jean suggested. “I wish we’d never set foot in that damn hotel.”

  “You know,” Pete said, “we should’vepulled the stake. You know what I mean? Just to see what happens.”

  “Nothing would’ve happened,” Jean said.

  “Who knows?” He leered at Larry. “Hey, want to turn around and go back and do it?”

  “No way.”

  “Aren’t you curious?”

  “Not that curious.”

  “Just try turning the van around,” Barbara warned, “and I’llbite your neck.”

  “Pussy.”

  “Don’t push it, buster. It was your big idea that got me messed up like this.”

  “You could’ve stayed outside. Nobody was holding a gun to your
head.”

  “Just shut up, okay?”

  He cast a glance at Larry. His expression was somewhat amused. “Guess I’d better shut up before I get her riled, huh?”

  “I would if I were you.”

  “Whatever happened to freedom of speech?” Though the words were spoken quietly to Larry, they were aimed at Barbara.

  “That freedom ends where my ears begin,” she said.

  Pete grinned at Larry, but said no more. He drove in silence.

  Larry looked out at the desert. He still felt a little lightheaded and nervous, but much better than before. He guessed that the discussion had helped. Putting words to it. Sharing their concerns. Especially the playful way Pete had turned the whole godawful experience into a vampire story. And the bickering between Pete and Barbara. Their nice, normal, everyday quarreling. It all helped a lot. Leached the horror out of their encounter with the corpse. Like throwing sunlight onto a nightmare.

  But his anxiety started to grow when they came to Mulehead Bend. Not even the familiar sights along Shoreline Drive were enough to dispel the dread that seemed to be swelling inside him.

  Pete drove slowly through the traffic — a few automobiles surrounded by the usual mix of off-road vehicles, campers, vans, pickup trucks, and motorcycles. The road was bordered by motels, service stations, banks, shopping centers, restaurants, bars, and fast-food joints. Larry saw the bakery where he’d bought a dozen doughnuts early that morning. He saw the supermarket where Jean did her grocery shopping, the computer store where he regularly bought floppy disks, paper, and printer ribbons for his word processor, the movie theater where they had attended a horror double feature Wednesday afternoon.

  Every now and then he caught glimpses of the Colorado River just east of the business district. A few people were still out, water skiing. He saw a houseboat. A shuttle boat was carrying passengers toward the casinos on the Nevada side of the river.

  All so familiar, so normal. Larry thought he ought to feel some relief in returning to home turf, leaving behind the strangeness and desolation of the back roads.

  But he didn’t.

  It’s splitting up with Pete and Barbara, he realized. He didn’t want to part with them. He was afraid. Like a kid who’d been telling spooky stories with his friends and now had to walk home alone in the dark.