“My name’s Peters. Your name is really Count Sforzni?”

“Well,” he said, between rattling his fangs above the hub-bub of conversation nearby. “I’m Count Sforzni here. You know, honorary title. My name upstairs is Sam Billings. This is my theater.” He let his eyes float upward to indicate the space over us.

Although the lights had been out in the theater when we came in, I had been able to make out the lobby posters for the current triple feature, Host to a Ghost, Revolt of the Zombies, and Murder in the Red Barn.

“Nice theater,” I said, shifting my weight on the hard coffin. I reached back to see whether I had picked up a splinter and tried to catch a bit more of the Lugosi conversation.

“They’re real,” Billings-Sforzni whispered with what I took for pride.

“The fangs?” I whispered back.

“No,” he said, pointing to my rear. “Coffins. I bought them at a funeral supply place. Read about them in Casket and Sunnyside, the undertakers’ trade journal. Real bargains. Add to the atmosphere.”

The atmosphere of the basement could be described as storefront funeral parlor with pieces of old theater lobby thrown in. Besides three coffins there was a small table with a black cloth over it and six candles burning on it. Three walls were gray and bare with a few movie posters, Dracula, White Zombie, and The Black Cat, covering holes or looking like they were pasted up by a drunk. The fourth wall, the one against which Lugosi had been trapped, was covered by heavy, blood-red, and very worn velvetlike drapes.

“Nice place,” I told Billings, whose bald pate was doubly red from shyness or heat in the weird light and the air rapidly turning to atmospheric fog from Lugosi’s cigar.

Lugosi caught my eye, a massive false smile on his face, and nodded toward the door in a way that would make it clear even to the Frankenstein monster that he wanted out.