Quotes by Jeff Rice

“I didnt think we wrestled as a team very well. But then, Polk was much better than I thought coming into the match.”

“All the coaches in the 32 schools in the district will meet next week to determine the individual athletes that will qualify for the championships. The top 16 records in each weight class will qualify.”

“I told the guys if we could get past Polk, we have a good shot at surprising West Wilkes (22-1) in the second round. Weve been doing that all year. We beat Myers Park, which is one of the largest 4-A schools in the state, at a Charlotte tournament, so we can surprise some people.”

“We lost 40-37 to Robbinsville, and it came down to the last match of the night. We had a shot at it, but we feel good with where we are at right now. We are hoping the home-gym advantage helps us out, too. Its going to be packed, and thats the way we like it.”

“Basically, [McGavin] was perfect. He didnt have the face of the Kolchak I imagined, but he so quickly merged himself with the character...that he very quickly became Kolchak.”

“As the economy continues to improve, so does MBA recruiting.”

Sherman Reilly Duffy of the pre-World War I CHICAGO DAILY JOURNAL once told a cub reporter, Socially, a journalist fits in somewhere between a whore and a bartender. But spiritually he stands beside Galileo. He knows the world is round. Well, socially I fit in just fine between the whore and the bartender. Both are close friends. And I knew the world was round. Yet, as time went by I found myself confronted with the ugly suspicion that the world was, after all, flat and that there were things dark and terrible waiting just over the edge to reach out and snatch life from the unlucky, unwary wanderer.

That done, I sank into an uneasy sleep wherein I dreamed of an assembly line of pale, bloodless girls walking down an endless dark street and moaning softly for help. Somewhere, toward the edge of my inner vision, a shadowy figure pursued them with long, beckoning arms.Goddamn booze!Somewhere in the midst of this ghoulish girl parade Cairncross materialized and hung a garland of garlic around my neck, glaring at me with his good eye and intoning, Go and sin no more. Vincenzo appeared at Cairncross side and together they laughed insanely, then vanished in a puff of sulphurous smoke.I made several high-minded resolutions, muttered half-heard but sincere-sounding prayers to all the recently deposed saints, thrashed and rolled clean off the bed.I might just as well have stayed up.

This vampire stuff is to stay right in this room. Until we have the assailant in custody we say nothing about these girls being drained of blood. No more rumors. No reports in the papers, he added, looking directly at me and ignoring my colleague from the opposition press. The official opinion at this time is that the cause of death is undetermined and under investigation. We dont want to start a panic. Its bad for police operations. Its bad for the people. And its had for business.

Jenks and I stood there like statues watching him twitch, his eyes rolling up in his head. He clutched at his clothes pulling the wooden pole they hung from down on top of him. Slowly his right hand came scrambling out away from his body to clutch at my left leg. Without thinking I shoved my crucifix at him and he pulled his hand back with a hiss, shielding his face again. As quickly as I could, I dug my tubes of Holy Water out of my coat pocket and emptied them on his head. He shrieked again and clawed at his face. Jenks followed suit, pouring his two vials on Skorzenys body and legs. Skorzeny started to foam and bubble before our eyes.I was paralyzed. I couldnt quite believe what was happening. Those books hadnt described any of this. I was feeling dizzy and sick. The shrieks turned to groans and a gurgling deep in his throat. He pulled his hands away from his face and it looked like the disintegrating Portrait of Dorian Gray. I looked over to Jenks who had an odd expression on his face.I looked over to Jenks who had on odd expression on his face. He motioned to me and reached for my left hand which, I noticed, was still clutching the airline hag with the stake and hammer in it. I dropped it and he grabbed it off the floor, moving over to the smoking form still squirming in the closet which smelled even more foul than before, and oozing a greenish yellow pus from the crumpled clothing on his scarecrow frame.Jenks looked back at me and handed me the stake and hammer. Go ahead. This was your idea. Finish it. I declined, turning away.Jenks spun me around violently and thrust the stake into my left hand. He pushed me toward what was left of Skorzeny and forced me to my knees. He forced my hand toward Skorzeny, positioning the stake over the mans chest. Then he stuck the hammer in my right hand.Do it, you gutless sonofabitch. Finish it... now! And he stepped away.I looked at him and back at Skorzeny. Then I gave one vicious swing and hit the stake dead center. The thing made a gurgling grunt, like a pig snuffling for food, and started to regurgitate a blackish fluid from its mouth. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and hit the stake three more times. Then I fell back and threw up.When I looked back, Skorzenys hands, or what was left of them, clutched at the stake trying to pull it out. Suddenly, he emitted a kind of moaning, sucking sound, gagged and more bile-colored liquid flecked with black and red came coiling up in a viscous rope like some evil worm from his mouth. And he stopped moving, his hands still clutching the stake.Then a sort of gaseous mist started to rise from his body and it was so much worse than the original smell that I pushed Jenks aside and ran from the house. I ran all the way to a patrol car where I slumped against the left front wheel as Jenks slowly strolled toward me. He walked past me, ignoring me, and opened his trunk, taking out a couple of small gas cans, and headed back to the house. I wasnt paying much attention until he left the house again and I saw it was aflame.

I know that everyone in this room, Bernie Fain included, thinks Im some kind of a nut with my so-called fixation on this vampire thing. OK, maybe Im wrong. Maybe he only thinks he is. But there are things here that cant be explained away by so-called common sense. Not even Bernies report can explain some of them.I was at the hospital yesterday. I looked directly at Butcher. Your own people fired maybe fifty or sixty rounds at him, some at point-blank range. How come this man never even slowed down? How come a man seventy years old can outrun police cars for more than fifteen blocks? How come when he gets clubbed on the head he doesnt bleed like other people? Look at these photos! Theres a gash on his forehead... and whatever is trickling down from the cut is clear... it isnt blood.How come three great, big, burly hospital orderlies weighing an estimated total of nearly seven-hundred fifty pounds couldnt bring one, skinny one-hundred sixty pound man to his knees? How come an ex-boxer, a light-heavyweight not long out of the ring, couldnt even faze him with his best punch, a right hook that should have broken his jaw?Face it. Whether its science, witchcraft or black magic, this character has got something going for him you dont know anything about. He doesnt seem to feel pain. Or get winded. And he doesnt seem to be very frightened by guns, or discouraged by your efforts to trap him.Look at these photos! Look at that face! That isnt fear there. Its hate. Pure hate! This man is evil incarnate. He is insane and he may be something even worse although youd laugh at me because I have no scientific documentation to back me up. Hell, even Regenhaus and Mokurji have all but confirmed that he sucks blood.Whatever he is, hes been around a long time and this seems to be the closest any police force has come to putting the finger on him. If you want to go on operating the way youve been doing by treating him like an ordinary man, go ahead. But, Ill bet you any amount of money you come up empty handed again. If you try to catch him at night hell get away just like he did last night. Hell...Jesus Christ! bellowed Butcher. This son of a bitch has diarrhea of the mouth. Cant one of you people shut him up?

Carol, a swing-shift cocktail waitress in the Bird of Paradises show lounge had gotten home (guesswork, here) around 2:15 - 2:30, poured herself a glass of milk, and had opened the back door of the kitchen for reasons unknown. (Fingerprints were later found on the outside knob that, while smudged, didnt belong to either girl.)She had opened the door, and died. Suddenly, quietly, without disturbing her sleeping roommate only a few feet away.

It was getting difficult to see exactly what was going on in the pool and a fourth officer jumped in as one came up with the unconscious form of the first cop. While others pulled the half-drowned man from the pool, three more wrestled Skorzeny to the surface and dragged him to the steps at the shallow end of the pool. He wasnt struggling any longer. Nor was he breathing with any apparent difficulty. The biggest of the three cops later admitted to punching him as hard as he could in the stomach and Skorzey doubled over. Another half-dragged him, still on his feet, shirt torn, jacket ripped, out of the pool and put a handcuff on his left wrist.Skorzeny pulled his arm away from the cop and, suddenly straightening, elbow-jabbed him in the gut, sending him sprawling and rolling back into the pool. Skorzeny turned toward the back fence and was now between the pool and a small palm tree. Before him were two advancing officers, pistols leveled. Behind him two more circled the pool. Skorzeny lunged forward and all fired simultaneously. The noise was deafening. Lights in neighboring houses began to go on.Skorzenys body twitched and bucked as the heavy slugs ripped through his body. His forward momentum carried him into the officers ahead of him and he half-crawled, half-staggered to the southeast corner of the yard where another gate was set into the fiberglass fencing. Two more officers, across the pool, cut loose with their pistols, emptying them into this writing body which danced like a puppet. Another cop fired two shots from his pump-action shotgun and Skorzeny was lifted clean off his feet and slammed against the gate, sagging to the ground.En masse from both ends of the pool they advanced, when he gave out with a terrible hissing snarl and started to rise once more. All movement ceased as the cops, to a man, stood frozen in their tracks. Skorzeny stood there like some hideous caricature, his shredding clothing and skin hanging like limp rags from his scarecrow form. His flesh was ripped in several places and he was oozing something that looked like watered-down blood. It was pinkish and transparent. He stood there like a living nightmare. Then he straightened and raised his fist with the cuff still dangling from it like a charm bracelet.Fools! he shrieked. You cant kill me. You cant even hurt me.Overhead, the copter hovered, the copilot giving a blow-by-blow description of the fight over the radio. The police on the ground were paralyzed. Nearly thirty shots had been fired (the bullets later tallied in reports turned in by the participating officers) and their quarry was still as strong as ever. Hed been hit repeatedly in the head and legs, so a bulletproof vest wasnt the answer. And at distances sometimes as little as five feet, they could hardly have missed. Theyd seen him hit.They stood frozen in an eerie tableau as the still roiling pool water threw weird reflections all over the yard.Then Skorzeny did the most frightening thing of all. He smiled. A red-rimmed, hideous grin revealing fangs that would have done justice to a Doberman Pinscher.

Something of a pattern had started to form and it was ugly.

“Sherman Reilly Duffy of the pre-World War I CHICAGO DAILY JOURNAL once told a cub reporter, Socially, a journalist fits in somewhere between a whore and a bartender. But spiritually he stands beside Galileo. He knows the world is round. Well, socially I fit in just fine between the whore and the bartender. Both are close friends. And I knew the world was round. Yet, as time went by I found myself confronted with the ugly suspicion that the world was, after all, flat and that there were things dark and terrible waiting just over the edge to reach out and snatch life from the unlucky, unwary wanderer.”