When the four students left the hospital building they exchanged meaningful glances.
"Were in the clear,” said Limerick. "He didn’t even catch a glimpse of Simeon.”
"And where does that leave us,” retorted Cummings. "Someone knows, someone is in on it. Who returned Simeon to the cemetery? It’s blackmail I’m worrying about.”
"Who would want to blackmail us?”
"I don’t know. But someone pulled off a complicated body-snatching stunt. Did he do it for his health?”
"I’ve warned you,” said O’Rourke. "Simeon Hodges is a vampire. He attacked Freddy, sucked his blood, and fled back to the cemetery.”
Three scornful medical students, their skepticism restored by the sunlight, parted on the campus from orte whom they considered a craven, superstitious fool, going their separate ways in silence.
Limerick and Slater had lectures to attend, and O’Rourke a gymnasium workout. Cummings headed for the school library. He wasn’t quite as skeptical as Limerick and Slater.
THE small, dark girl at the withdrawal
desk was Cummings’ consolation date.
Her name was Sally Sherwin and she was
almost as good-looking as Nancy.
"What do you want with all these scary books, Empty?” she murmured, as she passed over the counter Merrick’s Vampirism in Europe, Dwight’s The Vampire, Dunn’s Superstitions of the Dark Ages, Aldrich’s The Witch Cult, Street’s Magic Talisman, and Wayne’s Hungarian Legends.
"Just amusing myself, Sally,” Cummings said. "Sometimes I enjoy that sort of reading. Deep inside me there is a repressed Edgar Allan Poe.”
"Well! I didn’t know you had literary talents, Empty.”
"I have many talents,” said Cummings. He put his arm about Sally Sherwin and kissed her till she gasped. Fortunately the library was deserted.
"Now why did I do that?” he asked himself as he carried the books into a secluded alcove. "I’m not in love with her. There is supposed to be some connection between fear and amorous impulses. Perhaps I’m more frightened than I suspect. I wish to hell O’Rourke had kept his trap shut.”
The books were horribly depressing. Merrick, Street and Wayne professed to disbelieve in vampires, but something had unquestionably scared them. Every page he turned carried shrill and hysterical admonitions. Dwight refused to commit himself. Dunn wavered between belief and skepticism.
The most reassuring sentences were in Superstitions of the Dark Ages.
It was commonly believed that no vampire would attack a man or woman bearing a cross and protected by a necklace of garlic. It was also believed that no vampire could leave its grave before sundown.
Ambrose Pere observes, however, that heavily overcast skies often lure vampires from the earth and that during thunderstorms they range the countryside with a hellish and illicit greediness.
It was also believed that vampires could imitate the voices of the living, and insinuate themselves with diabolical cunning into the domiciles of maidens.
Cummings was so absorbed in the Middle Ages that he scarcely noticed how dismal the library had become. Hunched and purplish shadows clustered about the deserted book racks and the sunlight which had been pouring down through the tall
