Earl awoke with a craving for coffee. The physiology of the undead was such that caffeine, like most any other foreign substance, did nothing to vampires. He could drink a gallon of arsenic or pop cyanide tablets all day long with no ill effects. He'd been bitten by rattlesnakes and swallowed Liquid-Plumr on a dare without even getting nauseous. Eating garlic soup made him break out in itchy, pus-filled sores, but barring that one exception, there wasn't a drug or food on this earth that could bother him to any noticeable degree. It had seemed a good thing at first, but, like most gifts of eternal life, it came at a high price.
He couldn't get drunk anymore. He still drank, but it was only a lingering habit from his breathing days. Much as he might like to drown his sorrows in a night of alcohol-induced debauchery, it just wasn't possible. Such simple pleasures were sadly denied the undead. That didn't mean he didn't still give it a try every now and then. He'd always entertained the notion that there was a brand of beer out there, somewhere, that would do the trick. His holy quest for it had yet to yield anything worthwhile, but he refused to give up. Even if it took a thousand years, he would find it.
In the meantime, he really needed a cup of strong black coffee this evening. The desire was purely psychological. Just the same, when the thirst for a hot cup of joe hit, it was every bit as compelling as his vampire craving for blood. Even more so.
Which only made it all the more unsettling when he dragged himself into the kitchen to find it politely ransacked. Cans and boxes strewn about in neat gatherings on the counter, pots and pans littering the floor. Somewhere amidst the clutter were the various odds and ends of an unassembled cup of coffee. His mood had worsened by the time he found them all.
He shuffled out of the kitchen. Loretta sat at a table covered with newspapers.
"Evening, Earl."
The vampire grunted and went to the coffee machine. He set it to its sacred task, leering at the blinking lights the whole while. When it finally spit out enough for a small cup, he hastily poured it into a dirty mug that he'd found somewhere along the way from his trunk to the machine. He gulped down the piping hot elixir. It seared his tongue and throat raw. Third degree burns regenerated in seconds. Even if they didn't, the pain was worth it.
"Loretta," he said while the tip of his tongue was still crispy. "Where's Duke?"
"Elmyra Werner havin' some problem with her chickens. She asked Duke if he wouldn't mind taking a look."
Earl poured another cup. "What sorts of problems?"
"They ain't dead or nuthin'. Said she'd checked on that after hearing about Walt's cows."
The vampire strolled over to the table and had a seat. He picked up a yellowed newspaper. "What's all this for?"
"Research. On the diner."
"Anything interesting?"
"Kind'a hard to tell."
The placebo effect of the caffeine had yet to fully kick in, but Earl picked up a paper anyway with mild interest. He perused the whole thing. It didn't take long. It was only three pages, and most of that was editorials, weather reports, and a word jumble. He glanced through another paper after that. And a quick scan of a third revealed Loretta's problem.
Rockwood had a rich and colorful history of the unnatural. Every edition of the Rockwood Examiner had something along those lines. Everything from rivers of blood and cow mutilations to more unconventional phenomena such as the day all the cats in town lost their tails or the night that lasted three weeks. Corpses disappeared from their graves with fair regularity. Mysterious deaths were not uncommon. And, judging from the number of reports, every third house had to be haunted. The moon did something odd at least every couple of months: either becoming full out of its phase, or changing color, or once, disappearing altogether for an entire week. Unfettered by the laws of normality, the unnatural ran rampant in Rockwood County. It made it hard to pin down any particular pattern.
Earl finished reading an editorial debating on the civil rights of the restless dead and whether blowing off their heads was a violation of these theoretical rights. Interesting points were made on each side. The pro-rights opinion was that dead people were still people and still endowed with certain basic rights according to the Constitution. The con argument went along the lines that someone, living or dead, forfeits most their rights when they start gnawing on your limbs.
Earl set the paper aside and went for his third cup of coffee. "You got a map of town?"
"Think I got one somewhere. Want me to get it?"
He nodded while filling his cup to the top.
Loretta found her map, a simple rendering by a local map-maker several years out of date. She spread the crumpled paper across the table, smoothing out the wrinkles.
"Will this do?"
He sipped from his steaming mug. "Should. You got any thumbtacks?"
"What for?"
"So we can mark the map."
"Can't we just use a marker?"
He shrugged. "Don't see why not. It's your map."
She removed a pen from her pocket and tapped it on the table. "What do you got in mind here?"
"We go through these papers and mark every point of reported activity, year by year. Maybe they'll show some sort of pattern we just aren't seeing."
"That's not a half-bad idea."
"Saw it in a movie once. There was this serial killer running around, and the police detective, he puts this big map on the wall and puts pushpins in each of the murders and reckons the killer's writing out a sign of the zodiac. Capricorn or Cancer or sumthin'. Once he figures that out, he's able to track down the killer and stop him from killing the next victim, who just happens to be the cop's girlfriend. Cop shoots the killer just in time, but 'course he ain't dead the first time. He gets up when nobody's looking, even though he's got six bullets in him, and the girlfriend ends up having to shoot him a coupl'a more times."
"I think I saw that one."
"Blood Hunt or Dark Blood or Blood Stalker," Earl recalled. "Sumthin' with blood in it. Anyway, it worked in the movie. Might work here."
"Worth a shot," Loretta agreed.
Earl started with the most recent edition of the Examiner and worked his way backwards. He read off the relevant articles while Loretta marked the map. She scribbled the year in small circles. Forty-five minutes later, a pattern was indeed evident. They were in the middle of deciphering it when Duke showed up.
"How were the chickens?" Earl asked.
"They just needed some better feed." Duke pulled up a chair and picked up a newspaper.
Earl pointed to the map. "Look here. There's a steady increase in phenomena each year. Not a whole lot. Just a small rise every year."
"Yeah, so?"
"So, if you go back far enough, you'll see that 'bout eighteen years ago, there was a huge jump. There's still stuff going on before that, but not near as much. And it's not as powerful either. Goes from poltergeists and crop circles to zombie outbreaks and massive rodent migrations." He snapped his fingers. "Just like that."
Loretta screwed up her face in a quizzical expression.
"You're right. Funny. I've lived here all my life, and I never noticed that."
Duke spoke up from behind his paper. "Likely you wouldn't. It's like watching water heat up. Don't really notice until it's boiling. And whatever caused the rise probably made it seem perfectly normal."
"It messed with my head?"
"Messed with everybody's head."
"Don't think I like that much." She snarled. "Nope, can't say I care for it at all. Feels like I've been, well, I don't know, like I've been violated."
"It's just your mind," Earl said. "Not like someone poked out your eyes or broke your fingers."
"Guess so."
"Anyway," Earl continued, "there's gotta be sum thin' that happened eighteen years ago that made this happen."
"How do we figure out what it was?"
"Look through the papers again, I guess."
"Don't think that'll be necessary." Duke held up the Examiner he was reading for them to see. "Eighteen years ago, fifteenth of March." He jabbed his finger in a human interest story in the corner.
GIL WILSON OPENS ALL-NIGHT DINER. A grainy black-and-white photograph of Wilson sat under the line. He was a small, unremarkable man. As indistinct and bland as his restaurant.
Loretta snatched the paper from Duke's hands. "Damnation. How can you be sure it ain't just a coincidence?"
Earl marked the map where the diner stood. The big, black X sat in the rough center of a circle of supernatural activity extending fifty miles in every direction.
"Maybe it's just a coincidence?" Loretta said.
"Hector has a rule 'bout coincidences," Duke replied. "One don't mean much. Two means the universe is trying to tell you something. Could be we're sitting in another St. Louis Arch."
"Maybe," Earl agreed.
"The arch isn't just a landmark," Duke explained to Loretta. "It's a transdimensional portal. 'Least, that's what it was supposed to be. Some demons were plannin' on opening a door to Hell with it."
"Not Hell," Earl corrected. "Purgatory."
"Same difference. Didn't work anyway."
"And Big Ben ain't just a big clock. It's actually the Stopwatch of Infinity. Some mystics put it together to keep the world from ending. There's a cog in there that literally carries the fate of the world."
"Don't forget about the Great Pyramids," Duke reminded.
"What about them?" Loretta couldn't resist asking.
Earl leaned in closer. "Turns out they really were landing pads for ancient astronauts."
Her left eye widened in astonishment while the right narrowed suspiciously. "You're kiddin'."
The vampire couldn't hold back his chuckle any longer. "You're right. I'm lying. The pyramids are just giant Egyptian tombstones. But the rest is all true." He raised a hand, palm forward. "Bloodsucker's honor."
"Point is," Duke said, "just 'cuz this place looks like a diner, don't mean it's just a diner. The Chinese believe places can channel the power of the Earth."
"Fung shee," Earl said.
"Fong si," Duke corrected.
"Fing chu."
"Fung soy."
"Whatever you call it, if Gil Wilson knew the right way to put this diner up it could amplify the weirdness factor this particular spot throws out."
"Now that I think about it," Loretta mused, "it does seem kind'a odd that somebody would build a diner this size this far from the highway. So you're saying Gil wanted this to happen?"
"He wanted sumthin'. The supernatural jump might have just been a side effect. Guess the best thing to do now would be to take Polaroids of the whole place, top to bottom, and send it off to Hector. He might be able to spot sumthin' we missed."
"And you think that'll help us figure out why someone wants me out of here so bad?"
"No guarantees, but it's a start."
Loretta went off in search of her camera.
Earl poured his fourth cup of coffee of the evening. It'd get him jittery, but at least he didn't have to worry about being kept awake all day.