A Sharpness On The Neck (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 9) by Fred Saberhagen (most read book in the world .TXT) 📗

* * *

… and with that extra touch of horror, the nightmare was finally over, leaving its victim sobbing, cold sweat mixing with the cold rain that fell from heaven on his face.

      Philip Radcliffe was finally, thoroughly, waking up. He had no trouble now distinguishing dream from reality, and he knew that his trip to the guillotine had been no dream.

Chapter Twenty-Six

      Jouncing along inside the gutted and rebuilt vehicle, Radcliffe tentatively decided that it must once have been a school bus. He couldn’t be absolutely sure, because about half the seats had been ripped out, as if at random, and the interior, like the outside, had been repainted in a dull camouflage pattern, mostly olive drab.

      The best thing Philip could find to hope for at the moment was that he was being taken back to Mr. Graves—but he knew that wasn’t what was happening.

* * *

      Every look these people gave him, every word they said, every nightmarish minute that passed seemed to bring some new confirmation of Graves’s warnings. These people, with their foul language and their waving weapons, fit to perfection the role of friends and helpers of the mysterious Radu, the shadowy monster against whom Graves, on tape and off, and Connie had so often and so solemnly warned their coddled prisoners.

      The cruelty of these people, to him, to animals, to each other, was a continuing shock.

      Now he remembered, in bitter contrast, how patiently and persistently Mr. Graves and Connie and the others had kept trying to convince him that their fantastic tale was true.

      Over and over Phil now kept telling himself that there was at least one bright spot in the situation—at least June hadn’t fallen into this horrible mess with him.

      Someone across the aisle between seats offered him a drink of water, then as soon as he reached for the canteen, pulled it away with a giggle, continuing to watch him with bright speculative eyes.

      When chance brought about a pause in the steady drumfire of cursing and taunting, most of it not directed at him, in what seemed to pass for conversation in this group, he spoke up to demand: “Where we going?”

      The old bus lurched along at a good speed, bouncing, roaring as if at the injustice of its fate in being slowly beaten apart by the rough road, which alternated with intervals of roadless land. No one bothered to answer Radcliffe. It was as if they had already disposed of him and he was dead.

      After a minute or two of silence he tried again: “It’s all right, you can just let me out here. I’ll hitchhike.”

      “Sure you will,” said the woman who was sitting next to Radcliffe, in a remote voice. Another man and woman showed their crooked teeth.

      Another minute or two went by before Radcliffe, licking his dry lips, gave way to a wholly unreasoning impulse and suddenly lunged at the nearest door handle. Half the people in the forward seats did not even bother to turn their heads. His arm was caught and pulled back. Weapons were once more displayed.

      One of his fellow riders, who a moment earlier had been whistling a cheery tune, suddenly broke it off and began muttering obscenities, whipped out a pair of handcuffs and manacled Radcliffe’s hands behind him.

      One of the rattier-looking villains abruptly astounded him by starting a song, in which about half the others promptly joined in. They were singing in French, of all things—the ça ira?

Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,

Les aristocrates à la lanterne…

Years ago, Radcliffe had memorized the song for one of his language classes in college. In the present situation it was so incongruous that he wanted to laugh. But who had taught these donkeys French? The singing was raucous and out of tune. Though Philip would have felt helpless if required to conduct a conversation in the language, his memory retained bits and pieces of it from his classes in high school and college. Enough to derive the sense:

That’s just the way it is,

We’re going to hang all the aristocrats…

      Still uselessly erupting with sporadic protests, Radcliffe was driven a few more miles, up a winding road and into a narrow valley in the foothills.

      It was around mid-morning, with the sun definitely getting warm, when the driver pulled onto a patch of bare, rutted ground before the house, and stopped.

      This time no one had made any effort to keep Phil from seeing where they were going.

      Their destination turned out to be an old two-story frame house, starved of paint and maintenance for years, probably once some rancher’s home. The dwelling seemed miles from any other house, and was almost hidden in the midst of a small grove of cottonwoods and Russian olives. A barn a little bigger than the house, standing some twenty or thirty yards behind it, had fallen even more completely into disrepair.

      A battered pickup truck and a late-model sports car with a New York license were parked near the little cluster of buildings. A small stream, temporarily a small torrent fueled by spring snowmelt in the high country, came thundering down past the cluster of buildings, making a steady background noise, a lot of racket for a small amount of water.

      Philip was dragged out of the converted bus, and shoved stumbling into the house. People who had been in the house greeted those returning in the van. The latter were crowing and babbling, suddenly moved to boast in triumph of their capture. Radcliffe wasn’t at all sure why, but it seemed he was considered something special, more than just a chance acquisition.

      He was roughly searched by several people in succession, as if none of them trusted the others to do a proper job, and his valuables confiscated.

      The place was a mess, and it seemed that a sustained effort had been going on for some days to turn it into one. The walls were stained by unknown causes and daubed with graffiti. The windows