Duma Key

My mouth was very dry. I went to the bathroom, drew myself a glass of water, and drank it down. "I don't know what I believe about this," I said, "but I have a general rule of thumb in life, Wireman. If one person sees a thing, it could be a hallucination. If two people see it, chances of reality improve exponentially. Elizabeth and I both saw the Perse."

"In your imaginations, " Wireman said. "In your imaginations you saw it."

I pointed to Wireman's face and said, "You've seen what my imagination can do."

He didn't reply, but he nodded. He was very pale.

"You said, 'Once she saw what it really was,'" Jack said. "If the boat in that picture is real, what is it, exactly?"

"I think you know," Wireman said. "I think we all do; it's pretty damned hard to miss. We're just afraid to say it out loud. Go on, Jack. God hates a coward."

"Okay, it's a ship of the dead," Jack said. His voice was flat in my clean, well-lighted studio. He put his hands to his head and raked his fingers slowly through his hair, making it wilder than ever. "But I'll tell you something, you guys: - if that's what's coming for me in the end, I sort of wish I'd never been born in the first place."

x

I set the thick stack of drawings and watercolors aside on the carpet, delighted to get the last two out of my sight. Then I looked at what had been under her pictures, weighing the picnic basket down.

It was ammo for the spear-pistol. I lifted one of the stubby harpoons out. It was about fifteen inches long, and quite heavy. The shaft was steel, not aluminum - I wasn't sure aluminum had even been used in the nineteen-twenties. The business-end was triple-bladed, and although the blades were tarnished, they looked sharp. I touched the ball of my finger to one, and a tiny bead of blood appeared on the skin instantly.

"You ought to disinfect that," Jack said.

"Yes indeed," I said. I turned the thing over in the afternoon sun, sending reflections bounding around the walls. The short harpoon had its own ugly beauty, a paradox perhaps reserved exclusively for certain weapons of efficiency.

"This wouldn't go very far in water," I said. "Not as heavy as it is."

"You'd be surprised," Wireman said. "The gun fires off a spring and a CO₂ cartridge. She bangs pretty good. And back in those days, short range was enough. The Gulf teemed with fish, even close in. If Eastlake wanted to shoot something, he could usually do it at point blank range."

"I don't understand these tips," I said.

Wireman said, "Nor do I. She had at least a dozen harpoons, including four mounted on the wall in the library, and none of them are like these."

Jack had gone into the bathroom and come back with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Now he took the harpoon I was holding and examined the triple-bladed tip. "What is it? Silver?"

Wireman made his thumb and forefinger into a gun and pointed it at him. "Hold your cards, but Wireman thinks you have scored a Bingo."

"And you don't get that?" Jack asked.

Wireman and I looked at each other, then at Jack again.

"You haven't been watching the right movies," he said. "Silver bullets are what you use to kill werewolves. I don't know if silver works on vampires or not, but obviously somebody thought it did. Or that it might."

"If you're suggesting Tessie and Laura Eastlake are vampires," Wireman said, "they must have built up a hell of a thirst since 1927." He looked at me, expecting corroboration.

"I think Jack's onto something," I said. I took the bottle of peroxide, dipped the finger I'd pricked into it, and splashed the bottle up and down a couple of times.

"Man- law," Jack said, grimacing.

"Not unless you were planning to drink it," I said, and after a moment's consideration Jack and I both burst out laughing.

"Huh?" Wireman asked. "I don't get it."

"Never mind," Jack said, still grinning. Then he grew serious again. "But there are no such things as vampires, Edgar. There could be ghosts, I'll give you that much - I think almost everyone believes there could be ghosts - but there's no such thing as vampires." He brightened as an idea struck him. "Besides, it takes a vampire to make a vampire. The Eastlake twins drowned."

I picked up the short harpoon again, turning it from side to side, making the reflection from the tarnished tip tumble along the wall. "Still, this is suggestive."

"Really," Jack agreed.

"So's the unlocked door you found when you brought the picnic basket," I said. "The tracks. The canvas that was lifted out of the rack and put onto the easel."

"You saying it was the crazy librarian after all, amigo?"

"No. Just that..." My voice cracked, broke. I had to take another sip of water before I could say what needed saying. "Just that maybe vampires aren't the only things that come back from the dead."

"What are you talking about?" Jack asked. "Zombies?"

I thought of the Perse with her rotting sails. "Let's say deserters."

xi