An Old Friend Of The Family (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 3), Fred Saberhagen [best large ereader .txt] 📗

except maybe after hours when the guard dogs were let in. Anyway the snowfall had now stopped, though the sky was still almost completely overcast. In the west the clouds were stretched to a thin silver sheet covering a sun already on its way to the horizon. The shortest days of the year were here.

    Beside Joe, Judy sat gazing with an unreadable expression at the snow-etched stones of the mausoleum’s front. He studied her with concern for a little while, then asked: “Did you want to look at something in particular?”

    Still looking at the building, Judy shook her head slowly, disappointedly, almost. What could she have been expecting?  She said: “It’s just that the dreams were very real.”

    “But still only dreams,” he told her gently. “Right?”

    She didn’t answer.

    “Get a hold of yourself, kid. How could they be anything else? Kate is dead. Whatever else has…I admit it’s possible that Johnny might be locked up in a closet someplace, the way you describe it in your dream. But—”

    “Joe, I could find that place. I know I could, if you would only drive me around and help me look.”

    “Don’t start that again, please.” And at that moment, beyond Judy’s face, beyond the undisturbed white that covered lawn and walk in front of the Southerland mausoleum, Joe saw the green-aged bronze of the building’s door in motion, opening inward into a contrasting blackness. And despite the hardened realism created by eight years on the force, the sight produced a moment when something in his heart began to open into blackness also.

    Then it was nothing more frightening than a shadowed doorway in a marble building, with the recognized though unexpected figure of a lean man in dark clothing emerging from it in a quite ordinary way. A penetrating voice called down to them: “Judy? Joe?”

    Judy, Joe noticed, seemed not at all surprised. Perhaps she was no longer disappointed, either. Frowning, he shut off the engine. They both got out of the car.

    Corday had remained beside the mausoleum’s open door, frowning through dark glasses at his watch. “I fear I have lost all track of time,” he muttered as Judy and Joe trudged up the virgin walk toward him. “The urns proved more engrossing than I had anticipated.”

“My father did give you the key, then?” Judy remarked placidly, twirling the end of her scarf. Joe wondered suddenly: could she have been expecting that we’d meet him here?

    Corday was smiling at her lightly. “There was no trouble about the key.”

    Joe asked him: “How did you get out here, Doctor? Take a cab?”

    “No, someone kindly offered me a ride from the motel this morning.”

    “Must’ve been early. Snow’s covered all the tracks completely.”

    “Indeed, it was.”

    Judy put in: “If you’re ready to leave, we can take you back to the motel. Or wherever you want to go.”

    “Thank you, my dear, that would be kind.”

    Corday was in the act of pulling the mausoleum door shut behind him when Joe stepped forward, saying: “As long as we’re here, I’d like to take a look at the pottery too…Judy, what’s wrong?”

    “Nothing. I felt a little dizzy, all of a sudden. I’m all right. You go on in, but I don’t want to.”

    She looked so white-faced that Joe and Corday between them, both peering at her anxiously, walked her down to the car and saw her settled in the rear seat.

    “I feel better now. I think it was just a little too much like the dream. Go ahead, Joe, I’m all right.”

    The two men marched back up to the dark doorway, over the now well-trampled walk.

   “You first, Doctor.”

    With a slight bow, the old man went on in. Joe followed.  Once inside, there was really plenty of light, coming in the windows. The doorway had looked so black from outside only by contrast with the snow.

    Plenty of light, but not all that much to see. Joe wasn’t really sure what he was looking for. The tombs and their decorations, and the big urns, and maybe Corday was really enthusiast enough to want to spend a day here in the cold among them. Joe’s breath steamed in the air. To him, the place looked not much different from a fancier-than-usual funeral home, or the inside of one of the older Chicago churches. It reminded him a little of the chapel of Thomas More University, where he had been going to take Kate a couple of days before Christmas, to see The Play of Daniel…there was plenty of pottery here, all right, and in this large urn someone’s crumpled bra, which must have been here since last summer, so evidently the door wasn’t always kept carefully locked.

    As soon as his eyes met Corday’s again, he told the old man bluntly: “Kate’s body was missing from the morgue this morning.”

    Corday’s response was controlled surprise, or at least a very good imitation thereof. “Really? Is such a thing a common occurrence there?”

    “Very uncommon. I was wondering if you might have any ideas about it.”

    “Because I wanted to go there last night? No. No, I should not care to venture an opinion. Joe, what brings you and Judy here to the cemetery this afternoon?”

    Joe sighed. “The kid had a very vivid dream last night. A couple of dreams, rather. She’s upset—of course. Anyway, one dream was that Kate was here, in the family mausoleum, alive, but unable to get out of the place for some reason. And all day today Judy’s been saying she thought she’d go crazy if she couldn’t get out of the house for a while. Andy’s back at the office, being a workaholic as usual. Lenore is—sedated. Clarissa can’t decide anything. I finally just took it