"Kim Newman - Castle In The Desert-Anno Dracula 1977" - читать интересную книгу автора (Newman Kim)

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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. JuniorтАФSmith Ohlrig, Jr., of
the oil and copper OhlrigsтАФhadn'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 тАж"

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
unlifeтАФand acknowledged position as King of the CatsтАФkept them in the coffin, confined to joyless
regions of the old world like Transylvania and England. With the wicked old witch dead, they