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This appears in a pre-2010 issue
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Wrong Number
Craig Nybo
Ever since I received the telephone call I find myself asking: is what I did murder? Sometimes my conscience tells me so, but my logic center seems to have worked out all the culpable parameters. I have found peace. I’m okay with what happened. I have to be or I would probably be in an institution by now.
I sat at my small desk in the back clerk’s office at Smither’s and Andrus Financial—where I work to this day. The two partners’ names remind me of a vaudeville act, complete with magic tricks and unicycles; the partners’ demeanors can’t be further from the whimsical and absurd. I am not a CPA, as they are. I wouldn’t even dare pretend at rich and successful; I don’t have the bank account or perfect, silver hair to show as symbolic badges. The fact is, I’m quick with a ten-key and own a white shirt and tie—all the qualifications I need.
I hate my office. All the best décor bejewels the foyer of S&A, leaving the less important extremities of the suite barren and utilitarian. Someone smoked in my little abattoir before the firm hired me. No matter what salves and sprays I try, I can’t shake the scent of char and ruin—fitting I suppose.
The phone rang, disrupting my cadence. Klak, klak, klak, klak, spacebar – klak, klak, klak, klak, spacebar – ring!
Damn.
I picked up the receiver.
“Smither’s and Andrus: clerical.”
“Is this the exterminator?” The woman’s voice, fragile and trembling, reminded me of Dianne Rehm, that droning old woman who sounds so near death that old grim must have one hand on her shoulder for most of every day—at least during her daily NPR broadcast.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, I’m not an...”
“I have a problem, sir. A serious problem.”
“Ma’am?”
“A vampire problem.”
I paused, arching my eyebrows. “A what problem?”
“A vampire problem, and I need an exterminator.”
“How did you get my number?”
“Out of the phone book.”
Intrigued, I decided to play along. My day, like every other, was filled with incessant uninteresting hours, punctuated by ardent requests from my boss, Mr. Andrus. Mr. Andrus wears blade-starched collars and reminds me of a retired Chip and Dale dancer with an over-tanned face and loafers. He insists that I call him by his sir name, Mr. Andrus, even though he’s shorter than me.
Vampire hunter? I had to dig a little deeper. “Sorry about the confusion; I have a day job on top of my extermination business. I’m surprised you reached me here. What can I do for you?”
“Can you bring your tools right away? I think it’s sleeping.” I couldn’t get the face of my great grandmother Hazel Jessup out of my head. This woman seemed to have taken on some of her traits, senility being at the top of the list.
“I can break away in about a half hour; can you give me your address?”
The old woman gave me a street number; I wrote it down.
“Where are you going? Haven’t you already taken lunch?”
I hunched. Mr. Andrus’s voice, reedy, drove like a 1 millimeter drill bit into the back of my neck; so much for a clean getaway. I wheeled around and looked down at him. He wore a tweed jacket and smelled like sen sen. I wondered if his wife knew he still smoked. “I have a personal emergency. I’ll put in a couple of extra hours tonight.”
“We need your honest eight, Lex. Ad them at the end of the week and the sum should forty. That’s what we pay you for.”
“I understand, Mr. Andrus. Believe me, I’ll be back to clock those extra hours.”
“Very well.” Mr. Andrus’s face creased into a slim smile, I suppose his attempt at professional courtesy. He had, of course, granted me leave from my insipid vestibule and 10-key—the attached cost of working late not withstanding.
I granted him a grin. “Thank you, Mr. Andrus.” I spun around and left, cursing after I closed the heavy oaken door behind me.
“I need something wooden, long and sharp.” I said.
The hardware store nerd blinked, his eyes unnaturally large, amplified behind a pair of dark-framed, near-sited specs. “Like a stake?”
I almost laughed. “Yes. Exactly. I need a wooden stake...and a hammer.”
“Just one stake?” The kid’s name badge said Clyde. The only other Clyde I have known was a porking fifth grader who beat the hell out me near the bike racks back at Burton Elementary. This pencil-neck was nothing like Clyde the clobberer. I still remember those fists, ouch.
“Yea, just one stake. That should do the trick.” I chuckled.
Clyde glanced at me sideways as he turned away. He led me to the gardening center. On the way, we stopped in the tools department where I hefted several steel hammers. I settled on an eight pound, ball-peen clubber. It felt lethal, just what I needed, I suspected.
Clyde checked me out himself. For $16.50 I had become a vampire hunter.
I drove through the upper avenues in town where only two factions live, the old timers who bought their homes when they were still reasonably priced, and the artist wannabees who wear clothes purchase from the art director’s emporium, all turtlenecks and blazers.
I found the woman’s address. The house stood 2 stories high, casting a dark shadow over me as I got out of my hybrid car and walked the concrete path towards a voluminous, Victorian porch that wrapped around three-quarters of the building. I mounted the steps and made my way up to an expensive-looking cast iron and stained glass door. I didn’t recognize the image in glass—impressionistic, modern but done with an arcane medium—interesting. I knocked with the assistance of a classic Scrooge brass knocker, complete with a slack-jowled face that reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock. I almost expected the little head to come alive and warn me away.
The door swung slowly open, creaking, mysterious. I expected a prim butler with dignified, greased back hair and a fine Roman nose. Instead, a pair of soft eyes peered up at me through oversized bifocals. The woman seemed sincere and clean. She stood with nice posture. I could tell she had lived well.
“Are you the exterminator?”
“I am.” I used my best used car salesman voice.
“You don’t seem dressed for this line of work.”
I glanced down at myself: white shirt, yellow tie, dockers, loafers. How is a vampire hunter supposed to dress? What should I tell her? I left my cape and crucifix at home? Damn, I left my crucifix at home. I smiled down at her. “Like I said, I have a day job. I can’t exactly make a full time living doing this.”
She smiled and opened the screen door. “Come in, dear boy.”
I followed her through a darkly finished living room. An upright piano grinned at me from one side of the wall. Above the piano hung a heavy portrait of a man, sepia and dreamy. The face in the photo reminded me of Douglass Fairbanks in his prime, wearing a white turtleneck sweater and a muffler.
“My husband, God rest his soul.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No matter. He’s been dead for fifty years years. He was a movie star, you know. Lived a fast life and ran with bad people. I fear it killed him in the end, God rest his soul.” She looked up at the photo and crossed herself.
I rocked awkwardly from one foot to the other.
She led me through the kitchen. I smelled cloves and tarragon. Oak cupboards and an ancient stove stood against one wall. A late model refrigerator ducked back into an elegant cove. She hadn’t spared any expense on the house. The marks of a typical old woman, the curio filled with knick-knacks, the plates with John Wayne’s face painted on them, were absent. The home beckoned, a warm sanctuary that set my soul at ease.
We exited through a French door and walked across the back yard, perfectly clipped. A small pond, stocked with orange carp, fronted a bird-bath where several sparrows busied themselves, tossing water on their feathers with needle beaks. A Turkish gazebo shaded a family of expensive lawn chairs. I noticed a copy of East of Eden by Steinbeck on an end table.
“Right here, in the wine cellar.” The woman pointed with one bony finger. “You first, if you please.”
I passed her and led the way down a case of dusky stairs. I heard a click; a beam of light speared over my shoulder from behind. From somewhere in the dark she had procured a flashlight, long, the kind cops carry, the kind that holds five D-cells.
We reached the bottom of the stairs. Racks of empty wine shelves stood like skeletal remains of times gone by, stinking with the rot of ages, swarmed with spider cotton and dust. Girthy whisky barrels lined one wall, short henchmen skulking about, up to no good.
“My late husband; he was an appreciator of fine wines. Never was my fancy.”
I looked down at her.
She smiled. “This way.” She led me around a series of racks to a stone wall. “Here.” She trained the light on an iron grate, three feet square, almost rusted through, orange with decay and corrosion.
“What is it?”
“The vampire, he lives behind the grate in the root ante.”
I crouched down and tried to look between the bars of the grate, but black choked my vision. “Can I borrow your light?”
“Certainly.” She handed it to me.
I shined the light through the grate, but couldn’t see any better.
“It must be strong, the vampire, to get in and out I mean. I’ve tried; I can’t budge the grate free.”
I clamped my fists on two bars and pulled. It wouldn’t move.
“Try this, young man.”
I turned. She stood above me with a crow-bar. I jumped, startled; for a moment I thought I had fallen into a sick trap. She would brain me and burry me behind the grate, breast to breast with her latest victim.
“Well? What are you waiting for?”
“Sorry.” I took the crowbar and hitched it into the groove along the top of the grate. I winced and sweated, exerting myself. After ten minutes, the grate finally came free. I sidestepped just before it clattered on the concrete floor.
“Mind the racket, young man; you’ll wake the dead.”
I turned to her and put on my best tough guy smile. “Not on my watch.” I turned back to the open root ante and shined the light in. I gasped, rocked back on my haunches, and fell on my butt.
“You didn’t believe me did you?” She scoffed.
Lying in the root ante, in the spear of my pallid light, was a coffin—dusty, choked with web and damp. I looked up at her. She appeared calm, prim. “Well, get on with it.”
I took a deep breath of the dank air and crawled into the short chamber. I put my ball-peen hammer and stake on top of the oblong box and, with both hands, clamped down on a brass rail bolted into the back of its girth. I pulled, using the strength of my legs against the concrete floor. The coffin scraped along, inch by inch. Within a few minutes, it sat clear of the root ante, so damn big, so damn out of place.
“Young man?”
I turned to the old woman. She held the crowbar out to me. I took it warily and stepped up to the side of the coffin. I lodge the hook end of the bar under the lid and wrestled it back and forth. There was a crack and a hiss as I penetrated the hold and depressurized the coffin’s volume. I moved to another location and worked the lid afresh. The lock snapped and the door popped free.
I glanced over my shoulder, up at the old woman. She fixed me with a stern well-get-on-with-it, stare, her arms crossed in front of her. I shook my head. What had I gotten myself into? My stomach rolled forward. There was only one way this could end; badly. I kept one eye on the woman—I had no intention of becoming her next victim—and reached under the lid with my fingers. I took a final breath and pulled up on the lid.
It creaked on ancient hinges, groaning, the voice of a dying hog. The lid stopped, jammed six inches open. I had to put the hammer and stake town to bear my strength on the half opened box. I put my shoulder to it and exerted everything I had. Something on the back of the coffin broke free and the lid shot upward, slamming open, loud and resonating, like the whamming of a castle dungeon door. I lost my footing for a moment and almost fell into the oblong box. Catching myself on the edge of the coffin, I righted myself and glanced over my shoulder at the old woman.
She stood board rigid, one hand over her mouth, her eyes wide behind her bifocals. Tears welled as she looked into the coffin.
I looked into the box. Lying in the coffin, hands crossed over his heart, was the man I had seen in the heavy photograph that hung above the piano. The same pencil mustache, the same slicked back hair. His body, perfectly preserved, looked almost angelic, dressed in an alabaster tuxedo and black bow-tie.
“Oh, Frederick.” The old woman said. “They got to you, didn’t they; those bastards got to you.”
“Ma’am?” I didn’t know what to say at that moment. But there was one thing for certain, I would have a hell of a story to tell later.
The old woman sniffed and shut her eyes for a moment, composing herself.
“Ma’am, what do you want me to do?”
She opened her eyes and folded her arms, stern, resolute. “Well, what are you waiting for? Do what you have been hired to do, young man.”
I stalled, not knowing what to say.
“Are you or are you not an exterminator?”
I swallowed then said the first thing that came to my mind. “Yes, ma’am; but I’ve never had a case quite like this.”
She sniffed once, temporarily loosing hold on her emotions. “I understand. But I also understand that what lies in that coffin is not my husband. It is a vile aberration that resembles what my husband once was. If it would make you feel more comfortable, I can wait upstairs.”
“No, that won’t be necessary.” I picked up my stake and eight pound hammer and moved in on the corpse. I placed the tip of the stake firmly on poor Frederick’s heart and drew the hammer up with my right hand. It astounds me what one can be driven to do when placed in unusual circumstances. The thing that I find most surprising when I think about that moment in the wine cellar is that I only hesitated for a second, just long enough to ensure a good swing with plenty of impact on the head of the stake.
The hammer came down, smacking on the stake with a dull thud. The tip of the stake drove into the corpse’s heart, true and fixed. That’s when Frederick’s eyes burst open and he barred his fangs. I stood up too quickly and pin wheeled away, lucky to keep my grip on the hammer.
Frederick reached for the stake and struggled to pull it free, but his strength seemed to fade with the copious amount of blood that poured from the wound.
“What are you waiting for! Finish him!” The old woman shouted, her voice booming and raspy, like that of a magpie.
I glanced at her. She seemed possessed by something much angrier. I looked at Frederick. His mouth and eyes twitched in anguish. Panic rose within me, a shaft explosion leaping from my stomach up through my throat. I quelled it with one hard swallow and ran at the coffin, raising the hammer over my head with both hands. With one graceful swoop, I let the hammer fall. It smacked down on the head of the stake. The shaft broke through skin and sternum, running straight through Frederick’s chest into the wooden bottom of the coffin. Frederick writhed and undulated for a few more seconds then went still.
I dropped the hammer into the coffin and staggered back, away from Frederick.
The old woman strode across the concrete floor to the coffin. With one firm flick, she slammed the lid down, the loud boom reverberating in the cramped cellar. She wheeled around to face me. “Well done, young man. And what do I owe you?”
“Ah... er... two-fifty... I guess.”
“That’s reasonable. Follow me back to the kitchen and I’ll make out a check.”
Since then I have decided that my act in that cellar was not murder. To kill that which is already dead is not killing at all. As for me, my life hasn’t changed much. I still work at Smithers and Andrus. I still put in my honest forty every week, klattety-klacking on the 10-key. But there is one difference. If you flip in the Lakeside yellow pages to the V section, you will find an ad that reads:
