The Origin of Dracula Read online

  Finally, he strolled back to us. “You got ID?”

  “I don’t. I left my wallet up there and it’s got my driver’s license and pass card in it. It’s got pretty much everything in it—credit cards, you name it. That’s why I had to come back.”

  He looked me up and down without bothering to hide his sneer. Then he shook his head again. “Can’t let you in without ID.”

  “If I had ID, I wouldn’t be here, because I’d have my wallet. You get that, right?”

  Lee flashed a grin, apparently pleased by my aggressiveness. But Callen wasn’t so pleased. His face reddened and his nostrils flared.

  “Listen, buddy,” he said. “Without ID, you’re not coming in.” He headed back to the counter.

  I pounded on the door.

  He whipped around, the fastest he’d moved since we arrived. “Keep your hands off the door!”

  “I have to get in there and get my wallet!”

  “I just told you: You’re not coming in!” He headed back toward the counter.

  I pounded on the door again—and he whipped around again, but he also made the effort to march up to me. “If you don’t get the hell out of here,” he barked, “I’m calling the police.”

  “The police? Are you kidding me? This is why you call the police?” I was shouting now. “My wife was executed right under your fucking nose and you just sat there on your butt and did nothing! Why the hell didn’t you call the police then? Why the hell didn’t you walk her to her car? Why the hell didn’t you do a goddamn thing?”

  Callen’s mouth was agape and the color had drained from his face. He was no longer annoyed. He was frightened.

  Lee was staring at me, wide-eyed. “Didn’t think you had that in you,” he said.

  What I had in me was grief and pent-up anger. And I had spewed it all out at a convenient scapegoat. “Let me into the goddamn building,” I added as a coda.

  Callen didn’t react. He stood there like a frightened animal, unsure what to do next.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lee reach into his jacket pocket—he was going for his gun. Did I want to go that far? If not, I had to stop Lee now.

  “What’s all the racket about?” The raspy voice came from behind Lee. We turned toward it. The homeless man was ambling toward us, a mobile heap of ragged clothes. As he approached, I heard a repetitive ripping sound that matched his footsteps. It came from one of his filthy high-top sneakers, which was fortified with duct tape. In the wake of every step he took came the crackling of tape peeling off concrete.

  “Can you help me out with a little change?” he said, bringing with him an odor so rancid I had to step back. “It’s been two days since I got some food.”

  “Go back where you came from,” Lee said.

  “I’m from here.” The man was staring at me instead of Lee, as if I’d been the one who’d told him to take off. His skin was weather-beaten and coarse. His beard was a mixture of matted clumps and wiry projections.

  I had to turn away from him, as Nate would have done, and now I was facing Callen again. He no longer appeared frightened. His arms were folded in satisfaction as if he was glad to be off the hook.

  Lee took a menacing step toward the homeless man. “Get the hell out of here.”

  The man didn’t budge. “Can you help me out?” he said behind me.

  “No,” Lee said.

  “Come on. A man’s gotta eat.”

  Callen started to walk away, but not before I saw the sneer return to his face. He was getting the last laugh, leaving us to deal with what was probably one of his own recurring problems: a pain-in-the-ass homeless man who accosted the tenants of the building, begging for handouts.

  “Hey! We’re not done here!” I shouted, and pounded on the door.

  “You touch that door again, and the cops will be all over your ass,” Callen said. So he had a short memory. He’d already forgotten my tirade.

  “Open this goddamn door or I break it down!” I said, reminding him that I had every reason to do something violent and stupid—that I held him partially responsible for Lucy’s death.

  “Don’t cause trouble here,” the homeless man said. “They don’t need no more trouble.”

  I glanced at him.

  “Just give me a little change,” he said and moved toward me, accompanied by the sound of duct tape peeling off the pavement. Skrrritt, skrrritt, skrrritt.

  I pulled out my wallet, grabbed a couple of dollar bills, and thrust them at him, hoping to send him on his way. As he took the money, I realized my incredibly stupid blunder.

  I looked back into the lobby. Callen was staring at my wallet—the one I’d supposedly left upstairs. Then his eyes met mine for a beat. His smugness was blatant. He walked back toward the counter.

  “Thank you, mister,” the homeless man said, and began his retreat. “God bless you. This ain’t no place for trouble. Somethin’ wicked this way comes.”

  What the hell? The homeless guy was throwing off Ray Bradbury titles? Was this novel therapy or just a coincidence? For the second time in less than a few minutes, I didn’t react the way I normally would have. First I had stepped out of character and unleashed my anger at Callen, and now I was going to hold a conversation with a homeless man.

  “What you do mean, ‘something wicked this way comes’?” I said.

  The homeless man stopped his retreat, turned back, blinked two or three times, slowly, as if he was rebooting himself, then stuffed the money into his soiled and ripped navy pea coat.

  “I told them already,” he said. “Yep, they know.” He shivered, then started to amble away, accompanied by the duct tape symphony. Skrrritt, skrrritt, skrrritt.

  I went after him. “You told who what?”

  “Let him go,” Lee said. “He’s off his rocker.”

  Lee might have been right, but I was conjuring up a scenario where Lee was wrong. Perhaps when Otranto had said face your fear, she meant this fear. The fear of descending into despair, which the homeless man represented for me. Did she want me to talk to this man?

  And then came the answer to that question: I glanced back once more toward Callen, and in the glass door, I saw my reflection and Lee’s reflection—and no reflection for the homeless man.

  Sure, it was possible that he was standing in a dead spot, or at the wrong angle, but I knew that wasn’t so. My pulse raced and the night rushed in on me. I looked back at the man, then again at the glass. There was no doubt: he wasn’t casting a reflection. My chest tightened as I realized that the netherworld of Cold Falls was exerting itself right here, right now.

  “Tell me what you mean by ‘something wicked this way comes,’” I said, “and I’ll give you more money.”

  The duct tape symphony stopped, and the homeless man turned back to me. I pulled out my wallet and fished out a couple more dollars.

  He stared at the cash, then looked at me and blinked that slow measured blink again. A second later, he plucked the money from my hand and stuffed it into his pea coat.

  “I mean that lady who was killed in the parking lot,” he said.

  I swallowed. “… You saw it?”

  He nodded. “Yep.”

  I was flabbergasted. My anger rushed back, but this time my fury felt like molten steel burning in my gut. It was so painful that it hindered my breathing. There had been no witnesses to Lucy’s murder.

  I forced myself to breathe. “Why didn’t you tell the police?”

  “I told ’em.”

  That couldn’t be right. Detective Wyler had told me there had been no witnesses. I pulled out my cell phone, ready to call him right then, my rage dictating my actions, but then I glanced at the glass door and saw the man’s lack of a reflection again and realized that this wasn’t under Detective Wyler’s jurisdiction—it was under my jurisdiction. I tried to push my rage away.

  “Please tell me what you saw,” I said.

  He blinked a few times. “He was back there, in the bushes. Right outside my place.”<
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  “Your place?”

  “I got a good setup back there. A nice tent. He was looking to steal it.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “I’m telling you that. I looked out of my tent and saw him. He was crouched down, or kneeling down or something. It was hard to tell. And I couldn’t really see his face neither—like it was covered or something. But it wasn’t. ’Cause I saw his eyes. They were black, with some gold in ’em, too.”

  That hit a nerve, and I glanced over at Lee to see how he was reacting to this man’s tale. He was already riveted by it.

  “Then he goes over to the opening in the hedges and crawls through. That was my door. I made it. They closed it now. They put new bushes there. I see him go out into the parking lot—but he doesn’t walk normal. Like he don’t wanna stand up or something. Maybe he was staying low so no one would see him. I don’t know. But when he gets near the building, he stands up. He’s tall. Real tall. Then he kinda disappears in the shadows or something.”

  The vagrant stopped talking and stared at me. He wasn’t blinking slowly anymore. He wasn’t blinking at all. It looked like he was studying me, gauging my reaction to his story, as if he was expecting me to cut him off. I wasn’t going to, though—not yet, anyway. His story tracked, but just barely.

  “Then I see him again. Close to the building. But he wasn’t moving, and I got to thinking it wasn’t him. It was just a shadow. A dark one. So after I stare it awhile, and it don’t move—at all—I go back into my tent and fall asleep. Not sure for how long. But I wake up and hear a click, click, click. Someone’s walking across the lot. Click, click, click, you know, like ladies’ shoes.”

  Lucy’s shoes.

  “So I get out of the tent and look through the bushes. There’s a lady walking across the lot. And then I see him again. It had to be him, but he looked different.”

  “How?”

  “This time I see his face. It’s kinda white, but not white like paint—white like maybe he’s sick. Like maybe he got a disease. But she didn’t see him. Or I’m guessing she didn’t see him. Or she woulda run. She’s just walking to her car. Click, click, click. The only car in the lot. He’s moving toward her, fast. Only he isn’t running, he’s kinda gliding. I crawl through the bushes—I’m gonna warn her. When I get out, I see him wrap around the lady, kinda like a blanket. Except this blanket is as black as the night. Like she’d walked out of the light. Or he blocked the light or something. She screams, and then he comes at me. But he’s hunched down again—like an animal coming at me and—”

  “The lady—what happened to her?”

  “She was on the ground—not moving—didn’t know if she was—”

  “He didn’t shoot her?” Though his story was far-fetched, almost hallucinatory, I’d been following along, sucked into it, until this detail.

  “He came after me and I ran. I had to run—”

  “Did he shoot her?”

  “I headed for Ma—”

  “Did he shoot her or not?”

  “No—I told them no—”

  “Told who?”

  “The cops.”

  “You told them no shots?”

  “I didn’t hear nothing. No gun.”

  Maybe this guy was off his rocker after all. And that was why Detective Wyler hadn’t told me about this supposed eyewitness account. Or there was another possibility—

  “So the lady you saw that night wasn’t the lady who was shot?”

  “I’m telling you about something wicked this way comes. That’s what you wanted me to—”

  “This happened back there. In the parking lot. In the middle of the night.” He must’ve been talking about Lucy, even if this detail wasn’t right.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay… What happened after he came after you?” Maybe he’d give me something to verify that he was talking about Lucy. Or that he wasn’t.

  “I run outta here, down Maple Avenue. I get to Jefferson. It’s all lit up there. So I finally look back. He’s gone. All I see is some dog, one of those big ones. You know, kinda wild, but smart-looking. That dog mighta scared this guy away.”

  “Then what?”

  “I stay there in the lights. Near the Best Buy sign. Don’t know for how long. Then I hear sirens and see cop cars coming. So I go back and tell ’em what I saw.”

  He stopped and stared at me intently for a few seconds, then concluded: “You don’t believe me, do ya?”

  He may have been off his rocker, but he was reading me perfectly. I was thinking that he’d come up with this story after he’d heard what had happened in the parking lot, and that he’d added his own bizarre elements. I’d have to see if Detective Wyler or another officer had interviewed him on the night of the crime.

  Lee hadn’t said a word up to this point, but now he passed judgment. “Let’s move on. You threw your money down a rat hole.”

  If this vagrant was the reason Otranto had sent me to Lucy’s office, then I wasn’t picking up on the next breadcrumb yet. Oh, I got that he was connected to Dantès. If the lack of a reflection wasn’t enough to make that point, his story about a black-eyed man with white skin and the big, smart-looking dog on Maple Street—which I took to be a wolf—clinched it.

  “You don’t believe me, ’cause you can’t see it,” the homeless man said to Lee.

  “See what?” I said, not ready to give up.

  “You’re stuck in the cave. That’s why you can’t see.”

  Lee shook his head and smirked. “Enough already.”

  “I’m stuck in a cave,” I said, “but what can’t I see?”

  “Everything,” he said, and started to walk away. Skrrritt. Skrrritt. Skrrritt.

  My anger boiled up again. The homeless man—my lead—had gone from recounting a semi-coherent story to spewing crazy talk.

  “Did Dantès tell you to say that?” I said, harshly.

  Skrrr—he stopped in mid-step. “Dantès?” he whispered, almost to himself, then glanced back at me. “Are you looking for Dantès’s Firegrill?”

  Lee’s eyes went wide, surprised by this reversal of fortune.

  “Yes. Yes I am,” I said. Wasn’t I? “Where is it?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “What do you mean you don’t remember?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t got too good a memory when it comes to the good times.”

  “You had a good memory when it came to what happened in the parking lot.”

  “Bad times got a way of sticking with me.”

  I couldn’t argue with that—the same was true for me. “So what’s Dantès’s Firegrill?” I said.

  “It’s where the good times roll.” He walked away again. Skrrritt. Skrrritt. Skrrritt.

  I was about to start after him when Lee said, “Let the good times roll—it’s some bar. It’s a place where he used to get drunk.”

  I pulled out my cell phone, looked it up, and hit my first snag with this clue. There were pages of Google hits for Dante’s Firegrill, but not one of them was in Virginia. Granted, I hadn’t looked up the name with the spelling D-a-n-t-e-s-apostrophe-s, because I made the assumption that whichever bar used this name was playing off of the name “Dante” as in Dante’s Inferno, so that’s the way I spelled it.

  Dante’s Inferno was a celebrated work of fiction, part of the trilogy known as The Divine Comedy. In it, the Roman poet Virgil guides Dante through hell. There was no doubt the bar owner had replaced “Inferno,” the fires of hell, with “Firegrill” and thought himself or herself clever.

  As for me, I realized that this meant Dantès had changed the meaning of his pen name. Rather than referring to Dantès in The Conte of Monte Cristo, the master of revenge, he was now referring to Dante from Dante’s Inferno, as if he was now guiding me toward hell.

  But since there were no Dante’s Firegrills in Virginia, I took a chance and tried searching with the spelling D-a-n-t-e-s-apostrophe-s. As I’d expected, I came up empty. Not one hit.

 
“What you got?” Lee said.

  “Nothing in Virginia. Maybe we’re going to have to go down to North Carolina. There’s one there. Or maybe it’s not the clue.”

  “We should check out your wife’s office. That’s why we’re here, right?”

  “Dante’s Firegrill,” I said, wondering how it could not be a clue.

  “He didn’t say Dante’s Firegrill,” Lee said. “He said Dan T.’s Firegrill.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I wasn’t the smartest kid in the class, but I wasn’t the dumbest either. I know the difference between ‘Dante’ and ‘Dan T.’”

  I typed Dan T.’s Firegrill into the Google search bar, and the first hit was a bar in Alexandria, less than twenty minutes away.

  Chapter Eight

  After I got onto Leesburg Pike, heading toward the GW Parkway, which would take us into the heart of Alexandria, I told Lee why I had jumped on this lead. Because of novel therapy. I explained that Dantès was plucking his breadcrumbs from fiction. From Dante’s Inferno, to Something Wicked This Way Comes, to The Castle of Otranto, to William Faulkner’s quote.

  Lee listened more patiently than I would’ve expected, so I went on to tell him how novel therapy had started. How I’d lost my dad. How my dad had been rambling with me at the dinner table one night, and was gone the next, the dinner table silent, cold, and distant.

  “I liked your dad,” Lee said. “I know that sounds stupid, since I met him only four or five times. But he seemed like a nice guy.”

  “He was,” I said, but I didn’t as feel sorry for my sixteen-year-old self as I usually did. My childhood had been a blessing when compared to Lee’s. He’d had indifferent, selfish parents, and his dad had turned him into a home healthcare worker at the age of six.

  I also told Lee what worried me about using novel therapy to uncover Dantès’s identity: “Garbage in, garbage out.”

  “Yeah—but you’re going with the cards you’re dealt,” he said.