Tales From The Belfry



  TALES FROM THE BELFRY:

  Gordon's Tale

  by

  Stan Smith

  Published by A Touch of Strange Publications

  Copyright © 2014 Stan Smith

  It stands between a Latino record store on one side and an adult bookstore on the other. You've passed it by a thousand times; there's one in every city. The barber pole is broken. No red-white-and-blue spiral identifies this establishment.

  Few people get their hair cut there. The few who do don't linger long; something about the place bothers them. It's not obvious until you go to another barber shop down the street and notice how much bigger it seems. Then it hits you: there are no mirrors in Gus's place. No wall mirrors, no vanity mirrors in the restrooms. Gus has the only one, and it's a hand mirror that he holds for the customers. He likes it better that way, and he's sure the customers would too.

  You can't see Gus in a mirror.

  There's a back room at the place, with couches, a few chairs and a TV. It looks a little like a college dorm lounge, with some exceptions. There are no vending machines, no coffeemakers, no snack shelves. Those who congregate there don't eat.

  For all that, it's a comfortable room, as rooms go. It has a kind of homey feel that those whom Gus invites to share its ambience prefer. It's a kind of club, really. Every month they get together to play cards, BS a bit, and talk about life, such as it is. There are no mirrors in the back room as well, but it doesn't matter. You wouldn't be able to see any of them either.

  Gus calls it "The Belfry," and these are the stories of the bats in it.

  GORDON

  I wake up feeling nasty. For a moment, I can almost forget where I am, then the neon light outside my window blinks on, flooding the dingy room. Just like the movies. I try to stretch, work out the kinks. One of the boards has fallen during the night and gouges me in the ribs. The sand—what's left of it—is grainy against my skin and chafes me. I'm sore. What a "life."

  I rise slowly to a sitting position, and one of the boards falls off the bed and hits the Drink with a dull thud. He doesn't move, a good thing. I have some time to collect myself before the grim business. I look down at the Drink, poor slob, staring up with glassy eyes. A drunk from skid row, some old pictures of a long-lost family in the tattered pockets. One of the genuine losers in the game of life, he's checked out now, a little sooner than he might have expected. But he's lucky. He'll be really dead in a minute.

  There's a little Juice in the carpet next to where I nicked him, and I fleetingly entertain the thought of breakfast. But the Juice is nearly dry now, and the moment passes.

  The Drink moans—a kind of wheeze, really—and the eyes blink. It's time.

  I look around the barren room. The neon outside blazes again, illuminating a broken chair in the corner. I pick it up, take the rest of the broken leg and stand on it. The wood fractures nicely, leaving a sharp edge. The moans from the Drink are coming more often now—that sign of unholy labor—and I turn quickly and put the chair leg on his chest. I take off my shoe and give the end of the improvised stake a solid smash. It goes through the Drink with a sound like a punch going through twenty sheets of paper.

  The glassy eyes widen a bit, then the sparkle's gone. One last moan of—dare I call it relief?—and the Drink is still once more.

  I turn to the bed and roll up the sheets in such a way as to conserve as much of the dirt as possible. I collect the boards and throw them in a heap on the Drink. The dirt and sheets go into the suitcase, and I open the door of the room to see if the coast is clear. There's no one in the hall, so I go back into the room to get the boards and the Drink. I pick all of it up and carry it the short distance to the door outside to the alley. I throw the body and the boards unceremoniously into a dumpster, and toss in a match. The Drink flares up in a lurid cloud of smoke and flame—as usual—and then the trash and the boards catch as well. It makes a nice fire. I only wish the bastard who nicked me had been as kind.

  Before I knew about Drinking, and Drinks, and all the other dismal attributes of the life of a vampire, I was a writer. That is to say, I wanted to make a living as a writer, something I had yet to do. I had published a few things in the small "literary" magazines, the kind that "pay" you with copies of the publication, but I had nothing of prominence to my credit other than an e-book that had gathered a modicum of critical acclaim and sold a couple thousand copies. I lived in a small Victorian apartment near downtown Pasadena, that community of the "newly-wed and nearly dead" as it's known in Southern California.

  I considered the apartment perfect for a writer. It had hardwood floors, ceramic faucet handles, and a turret at one end of the living room. The atmosphere was terrific. My only problem at the time was that I was alone, and utterly depressed. I'd just ended a four-year relationship with a wonderful woman, and felt the emptiness that one feels with that sort of a loss. I found myself staying up late, listening to sad, romantic music, lying in bed absently staring up at the ceiling and longing for the feel of her head on my stomach, the way it had been at the start of our affair. I missed running my fingers through her curly hair.

  My writing had stopped absolutely. I would walk past my desk, glancing at the computer and wince. It was as if the machine were scolding me each time I neglected to sit down and type. I was reinforcing a classic case of writer's block.

  So it was a godsend when Althea Bishop called and invited me to one of her parties on Halloween. Althea was an established literary agent, someone I'd been aching to have represent me. She had begun to take notice of my work after the publication of the e-book, and had encouraged me to start another, and take a shot at "traditional" publishing.

  "You simply must, my boy," she would say. "You have too great a talent to let it sit idly by."

  Althea knew everyone who was anyone in L.A.'s literary world, and her parties were famous for their wealth of interesting and influential guests.

  "So, Thursday," she said. "It's Halloween, you know. You must come in costume."

  I said I would and wondered just what costume I would use. There were sure to be many original outfits there; Althea wouldn't have a party any other way. I finally decided to go as Cardinal Richelieu, a choice dictated by my lack of funds and the available materials in my possession. I had some old crimson robes left over from my college graduation, and made a miter out of cardboard. For the first time in weeks, I was looking forward to something.

  Thursday finally came, and I drove my beat-up Honda out to Althea's place. She lived in the canyon above Bel-Air, in a home that dated from the golden era of Hollywood. It had belonged to a famous silent-film star at one time and was a mansion of extraordinary beauty. Althea herself had done the decorating, using old props and posters from early films. It was almost like a movie museum, and made a natural setting for the variety of Halloween costumes that her guests wore.

  Among the partygoers were two Catherine the Greats, three Harpo Marxes, A W.C. Fields or two, and some perfectly grotesque creatures done by a friend of Althea's who worked as a makeup artist at one of the studios. There was a Frankenstein monster, complete with flashing electrodes, a Mummy who forever kept bumping into people and things all night because he hadn't made his eye holes large enough, and a really chilling Creature From The Black Lagoon made from the original blueprints.

  There was only one Cardinal Richelieu. And surprisingly, only one Dracula.

  I spotted him almost immediately, surrounded as he was by a knot of rapt admirers. He stood head and shoulders above the crowd, and seemed to hold them in thrall with his conversation. I took Althea aside and asked who he was.

  "Who? Oh, the Dracula. That's Pavel Sted. He's a writer too, you know."

  Althea needn't have bot
hered to add the qualification. I knew who Pavel Sted was. He was only the most sought-after author in the business at the time. His last novel, The Silver Rose, had had an advance printing of over four hundred thousand copies, and was headed meteorically for the top of the best-seller charts.

  I stood on the fringe of the crowd, trying to catch a bit of the conversation. I had never been one to latch on to celebrities; I thought the practice rather juvenile. So I avoided direct contact, content rather to glean what I could from the periphery of the adulatory crowds. It was always more interesting to watch the famous in their element, with the objective viewpoint of distance.

  Sted basked in the admiration. He was, I decided, dressed exactly right for Dracula: the cape was perfect, and the evening dress was the precise shade of black, sooty and ominous. But his makeup was all wrong. His face was radiant, almost glowing with unnatural energy. I expected it to be pasty white, pale and translucent. After all, weren't vampires bloodless zombies?

  The crowd hung on his every word. The women were rapt, the men judiciously grave and respectful. The attention was all the more surprising when I heard pieces of the conversation; Sted was making small talk. He didn't