Kim Newman - Castle In The Desert-Anno Dracula 1977

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Castle in the Desert: Anno Dracula 1977

by Kim Newman

The man who had married my wife cried when he told me how she died. Junior—Smith Ohlrig, Jr., of

the oil and copper Ohlrigs—hadn't held on to Linda much longer than I had, but their marriage had

gone one better than ours by producing a daughter.

Whatever relation you are to a person who was once married to one of your parents, Racquel Loring

Ohlrig was to me. In Southern California, it's such a common family tie you'd think there'd be a

neat little name for it, pre-father or potential-parent. The last time I'd seen her was at the

Poodle Springs bungalow her mother had given me in lieu of alimony. Thirteen or fourteen going on

a hundred and eight, with a micro-halter top and frayed jean shorts, stretch of still-chubby tummy

in between, honey-colored hair past the small of her back, an underlip that couldn't stop pouting

without surgery, binary star sunglasses and a leather headband with Aztec symbols. She looked like

a pre-schooler dressed up as a squaw for a costume party, but had the vocabulary of a sailor in

Tijuana and the glittery eyes of a magpie with three convictions for aggravated burglary. She'd

asked for money, to gas up her boyfriend's "sickle," and took my television (no great loss) while

I was in the atrium telephoning her mother. In parting, she scrawled "fuck you, piggy-dad" in red

lipstick on a Spanish mirror. Piggy-dad, that was me. She still had prep-school penmanship, with

curly-tails on her ys and a star over the i.

Last I'd heard, the boyfriend was gone with the rest of the Wild Angels and Racquel was back with

Linda, taking penicillin shots and going with someone in a rock band.

Now things were serious.

"My little girl," Junior kept repeating, "my little girl …"

He meant Racquel.

"They took her away from me," he said. "The vipers."

· · · · ·

All our lives, we've known about the vampires, if only from books and movies. Los Angeles was the

last place they were likely to settle. After all, California is famous for sunshine. Vipers would

frazzle like burgers on a grill. Now, it was changing. And not just because of affordable

prescription sunglasses.

The dam broke in 1959, about the time Linda was serving me papers, when someone in Europe finally

destroyed Dracula. Apparently, all vipers remembered who they were biting when they heard the

news. It was down to the Count that so many of them lived openly in the world, but his continued

unlife—and acknowledged position as King of the Cats—kept them in the coffin, confined to joyless

regions of the old world like Transylvania and England. With the wicked old witch dead, they

didn't have to stay on the plantation any longer. They spread.

The first vipers in California were elegant European predators, flush with centuried fortunes and

keen with red thirsts. In the early '60s, they bought up real estate, movie studios, talent

agencies (cue lots of gags), orange groves, restaurant franchises, ocean-front properties, parent

companies. Then their get began to appear: American vampires, new-borns with wild streaks. Just as

I quit the private detective business for the second time, bled-dry bodies turned up all over town

as turf wars erupted and were settled out of court. For some reason, drained corpses were often

dumped on golf courses. Vipers made more vipers, but they also made viper-killers—including such

noted humanitarians as Charles Manson—and created new segments of the entertainment and produce

industries. Vampire dietary requirements opened up whole new possibilities for butchers and

hookers.

As the Vietnam War escalated, things went quiet on the viper front. Word was that the elders of

the community began ruthless policing of their own kind. Besides, the cops were more worried about

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draft dodgers and peace-freak protesters. Now, vampires were just another variety of Los Angeles

fruitcake. Hundred-coffin mausolea were opening up along the Strip, peddling shelter from the sun

at five bucks a day. A swathe of Bay City, boundaried by dried-up canals, was starting to be

called Little Carpathia, a ghetto for the poor suckers who didn't make it up to castles and

estates in Beverly Hills. I had nothing real against vipers, apart from a deep-in-the-gut crawly

distrust it was impossible for anyone of my generation—the WWII guys—to quell entirely. Linda's

death, though, hit me harder than I thought I could be hit, a full-force ulcer-bursting right to

the gut. Ten years into my latest retirement, I was at war.

To celebrate the bicentennial year, I'd moved from Poodle Springs back into my old Los Angeles

apartment. I was nearer the bartenders and medical practitioners to whom I was sole support. These

days, I knocked about, boring youngsters in the profession with the Sternwood case or the Lady in

the Lake, doing light sub-contract work for Lew Archer—digging up family records at county

courthouses—or Jim Rockford. All the cops I knew were retired, dead or purged by Chief Exley, and

I hadn't had any pull with the D.A.'s office since Bernie Ohls's final stroke. I admitted I was a

relic, but so long as my lungs and liver behaved at least eight hours a day I was determined not

to be a shambling relic.

I was seriously trying to cut down on the Camels, but the damage was done back in the puff-happy

'40s when no one outside the cigarette industry knew nicotine was worse for you than heroin. I

told people I was drinking less, but never really kept score. There were times, like now, when

Scotch was the only soldier that could complete the mission.

· · · · ·

Junior, as he talked, drank faster than I did. His light tan suit was the worse for a soaking, and

had been worn until dry, wrinkling and staining around the saggy shape of its owner. His

shirtfront had ragged tears where he had caught on something.

Since his remarriage to a woman nearer Racquel's age than Linda's, Junior had been a fading

presence in the lives of his ex-wife and daughter (ex-daughter?). I couldn't tell how much of his

story was from experience and how much filtered through what others had told him. It was no news

that Racquel was running with another bad crowd, the Anti-Life Equation. They weren't all vipers,

Junior said, but some, the ringleaders, were. Racquel, it appears, got off on being bitten. Not

something I wanted to know, but it hardly came as a surprise. With the motorcycle boy, who went by

the name of Heavenly Blues but liked his friends to address him as "Mr. President," she was

sporting a selection of bruises that didn't look like they'd come from taking a bad spill off the

pillion of his hog. For tax purposes, the Anti-Life Equation was somewhere between religious and

political. I had never heard of them, but it's impossible to keep up with all the latest cults.

Two days ago, at his office—Junior made a pretense of still running the company, though he had to

clear every paper clip purchase with Riyadh and Tokyo—he'd taken a phone call from his daughter.

Racquel sounded agitated and terrified, and claimed she'd made a break with the ALE, who wanted to

sacrifice her to some elder vampire. She needed money—that same old refrain, haunting me again—to

make a dash for Hawaii or, oddly, the Philippines (she thought she'd be safe in a Catholic

country, which suggested she'd never been to one). Junior, tower of flab, had written a check, but

his new wife, smart doll, talked him out of sending it. Last night, at home, he had gotten another

call from Racquel, hysterical this time, with screaming and other background effects. They were

coming for her, she said. The call was cut off.

To his credit, Junior ignored his lawfully-married flight attendant and drove over to Linda's

place in Poodle Springs, the big house where I'd been uncomfortable. He found the doors open, the

house extensively trashed and no sign of Racquel. Linda was at the bottom of the kidney-shaped

swimming pool, bitten all over, eyes white. To set a seal on the killing, someone had driven an

iron spike through her forehead. A croquet mallet floated above her. I realized he had gone into

the pool fully-dressed and hauled Linda out. Strictly speaking, that was violating the crime scene

but I would be the last person to complain.

He had called the cops, who were very concerned. Then, he'd driven to the city to see me. It's not

up to me to say whether that qualified as a smart move or not.

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