The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  It was that very saloon from whence Boone had emerged, with a busty teenage whore in tow. He’d only recently honed his charm abilities enough to seduce women, having until then been forced to rely on his good looks and sweet voice…two things he was blessed enough to have by nature. Still, it wasn’t foolproof. Neither was charming, but it had a better ratio of success than Boone’s Kentucky charisma.

  He knew the dark-cloaked dandy following him was another vampire, an old one, by the smell of him. Boone suspected he may be intruding on another’s turf, but he’d been in the area for weeks and had yet to encounter a hostile claim. In fact, so far as he knew he was the only vampire brazen enough to feed in town.

  Boone put the stranger out of his mind and led the tart into the alley. She promptly obeyed his request to hop on a barrel, though she bent over it at first… force of habit. Boone corrected her, brushing sandy blonde hair from her cheeks as she adjusted her dress below her.

  “That’s more like it,” he said, smiling. She smiled back, though her eyes had a somewhat waxed quality. He hadn’t decided if he found that exciting yet or not. He certainly did enjoy the next part, though.

  Lowering his head to her neck, she lifted her chin and gazed at the moon. Boone smelled her blood mixed with soot and sweat, and the offal of horses in the street. Her neck was filthy, but he’d dealt with worse. She shivered when his tongue touched her skin, moistening her flesh and clearing a patch of her throat for his fangs. He liked to eat clean.

  His fangs slid forth, tipping against her quivering skin. She held her breath as though she knew what was coming, like an instinct possessed by the prey before it is consumed by the predator. Boone took a deep breath before stepping between her legs, adjusting his lips, and moving in for the bite.

  He was stopped short by a hand on his shoulder. The scent of the girl’s blood had masked the stranger’s approach. He did not appreciate the interruption.

  “You’re about to wear my nerve,” said Boone, turning. He kept his hand on the whore’s shoulder, holding her to the barrel as she shivered in the cool night air.

  The stranger’s face was smooth and white, almost pink. He wore dark spectacles, despite the darkened hour. No surprise to Boone, but to any who didn’t know his nature, they’d find it an odd sight. He had a light beard that almost obscured his lips, and wisps of short blond hair poked beneath the rim of his top hat.

  “Daniel Tucker Boone?” the stranger’s voice was curious in its accent and inflection.

  “Who says it ain’t?”

  The stranger smiled. “We must talk.”

  “I ain’t one for talking.” He shook off the hand and turned back to his meal, still paralyzed from the charm. “I’ll get with you in a bit. I got some business to attend.”

  Boone found himself slammed against the opposite wall.

  “And I am not one to be kept waiting,” the stranger replied.

  The impact crippled Boone, and startled away his meal. She ran from the alley with a scream. Boone watched her go, lamenting her loss. It was little matter. He would catch up with her again, as soon as he finished killing his new friend.

  “You gone and made a big mistake, Yankee!” Boone leapt at the stranger, fangs out and fists up. The stranger stepped to the side and Boone passed through the red inner silk of his cape like a bull facing a matador. Half past him, the stranger produced a gentleman’s cane and removed the ground from beneath Boone’s feet.

  “I have made mistakes,” he said, stepping over the downed Kentuckian and pinning him to the ground with the tip of his cane. “Not for some time, though.” Boone struggled to no avail. “I pray you’ll not make one by continuing to oppose me.”

  Though he knew death to be eminent, Boone felt no fear. He couldn’t remember the last time he had, either.

  “What choice do I got? You either kill me now, or kill me after a fight. Either way, I get kilt. Reckon I might as well die without messing my clothes, if I can help it.”

  The stranger’s fangs showed as he threw back his head, laughing. The silk top hat came off in his gloved hand, and he rested it on the silver head of his cane. Once that was moved, he aided Boone to his feet.

  “I’m not here to kill you, Danny-boy.”

  Boone brushed dust from his clothes and nodded. “What do you want, then—aside from keeping a man from his meal?”

  He gestured to the end of the alley with a gloved hand. His shades slid down his nose, revealing blue eyes, stark against his chalky skin.

  “I only wish to talk.”

  “Fine.”

  Boone rubbed his healing shoulder. The wall he’d struck had cracked, leaving an impression of his body against it. Likely anyone on the other side would have been given quite a start by the crash. He’d never seen such strength, even in another vampire. He turned to the stranger again.

  “You know my name, but you ain’t throwed me yours yet.”

  The stranger’s hidden lips rolled into a smile over shimmering enamel. Standing next to him, Boone found the stranger shorter by a few inches, but powerful in build. He imagined that even lacking vampire strength, he would make a formidable opponent—for a dandy.

  “Maulthaus,” he introduced himself with a bow, something Boone found amusing and respectable at the same time.

  “Maulthaus.” Boone nodded. “Good. But, there’s just one thing.”

  “What?”

  Boone turned to the mouth of the alley. “Don’t be calling me Danny-boy.”

  Maulthaus had a room above the saloon, complete with a fancy table and a bed that hadn’t been slept in. He also had a little black girl. Her skin was dark like molasses, with little pockmarks all over her neck and arms. It was one of the ironies of a vampire’s nature, their saliva stimulated healing in humans on contact, but it could not remove the wounds left by a vampire’s bite. No matter, most humans were oblivious to them anyway.

  “Do you believe in God, Daniel Tucker Boone?”

  “Maybe….” Boone shrugged. “I’d be obliged if you just called me Boone, mister.”

  Maulthaus nodded. “Very well, Boone.” He poured brown liquor from a fancy bottle into a short glass. Once filled, he set the bottle aside and gestured to the glass. Boone took it and threw the liquor into his throat. It burned, but only slightly. Since becoming a vampire, he found drunkenness was not much of a problem. He could still get drunk, it just took longer.

  “More?” He lifted the bottle. Boone nodded and sat down the glass. Maulthaus smiled and filled it again. “You are a soldier?”

  “I was,” he replied, after swallowing another gulp of fancy liquor. His eyes drifted to the girl, standing quietly at his side. She couldn’t have been a slave. The States had done away with that institution a couple of years ago. Still, that only eliminated legal ownership of the child. There were all manner of unofficial ways a vampire could own someone.

  “So am I. If my sources are correct, you fought in two great wars, yes?”

  “Don’t know as I’d call them all that great.” Boone watched him refill the glass. “The last one was a bit bigger than the first one, but we lost so…” He shrugged and took a drink.

  “Yes, a pity.” Maulthaus looked at his girl. “The United States has joined much of Europe in the abolition of slavery, the darker African races in particular.” He shook his head. “They would have done as well to unleash untamed cattle in the streets.”

  Boone took another drink of whiskey and looked over his new friend. The girl took his coat, hat, and cane when they arrived, leaving him in a fancy suit with gold buttons. Boone had never seen such extravagance in a vampire. Most of his kind were relegated to the shadows, and wore whatever clothing they could find. Maulthaus looked quite well-to-do.

  “I’ve come just recently from New York City.” His eyes met Boone’s. “Have you ever been there, Boone? It is a festering mess of miscegenated pus. Freed Negros flood up from the South, bringing their ratty, diseased children with them. The docks and wharfs are clogged
with immigrants, many of them unclean bastards descended from generations of bestiality between degenerates of lower races.

  “I had hoped to find refuge from the infestation in the American South, but with the recent liberation of the servant races, I find having to deal with them as equals tedious at best. Further, the railroads flood our borders with yellow men from the Orient.” He took a moment and stroked his beard. “Though, as far as the non-Aryan races go, the Orientals are refreshingly civilized and intelligent; especially when compared to their swarthy neighbors, the Arabs…lowly abominations spawned by the depredations of our lesser Aryan brothers mating with the negro beasts, or more commonly, the result of a negro man assailing the virtue of one of our Aryan sisters. Unfortunately, New York has become infested with their breed as well, and their Mohammedan heresies.”

  Boone stared, holding the whiskey close to his lips.

  “Glad I never took occasion to visit.”

  “Oh, it is not without its charm, friend! And it is, like America, a place worth saving.” He chuckled and patted the table. “But New York, much like my ancestral home of Amsterdam, is infested with the lower races. They seek to drag it into the mud from which they spawned, led by the Old World Jews.” He seemed to notice the confused look on Boone’s face, and smiled. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

  “No sir. I ain’t never met me a Jew. Or at least, wouldn’t know it if I had.”

  Maulthaus chuckled. “My dear boy, I have so much to tell you.” He slid the bottle across the table to him. Boone could see to his own whiskey for the duration of their meeting.

  “You see, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. You’re familiar with this, yes?”

  “I remember from Sunday meetin,” Boone said with a nod. “The old pastor would hand out the snakes; show the power of the spirit…” He looked down at the table with a grin. “Leastwise he would, till a copperhead took a nip at him.” He laughed. “Ain’t had much use for Sunday meetin’ since.”

  Maulthaus turned his head and gave him a sideways glance. “Have you read the Good Book?”

  “No.” He laughed and took a drink of whiskey from the bottle. “Ain’t never read no book, good or otherwise.”

  “You cannot read?” He smiled. “Well, we shall have to see to that.”

  “What?”

  “In good time, my boy, in good time. First, you must know what purpose God has for you on this Earth.”

  Maulthaus explained that God created Adam and Eve in His own image: white. Blond haired and blue eyed, to be exact. They were the first Aryans. To these Aryans, God gave dominion over all the beasts of the Earth. That included the apes, which had evolved into the degenerate races of Africa.

  “The negro is a natural slave to the Aryan race, Boone. Look at how they live in the wild, without a white master to guide them. Uncivilized, spear-chucking imbeciles! Their cultures are wanton and careless, full of cannibals and animal fornicators. Surely you’ve seen this to be true?”

  Boone shrugged. “Ain’t never been to Africa, but the ones I’ve known all been pretty filthy and stupid.” When he thought about it, so had most of the white folk.

  “Of course they have.” Maulthaus laughed. “They are animals, Boone. Pack mules. That they bear some cursory resemblance to the Aryan race in that they walk upright and speak doesn’t make them any more than what they are, any more than an ape trained to work a plow would be a man.”

  “Yeah…I can see that.”

  “Of course you can. What’s more, the negro would be happy to serve the Aryan, as even living as a slave he is better off than in the wilds of untamed Africa. It is only through the interference of the Jews that they seek freedom from the succor of bondage.”

  “What business do the Jews have in all this?”

  Maulthaus’ blue eyes seemed to glow as he spoke of Jews.

  “By the nature of his hateful race, the Jew seeks to undermine God’s chosen people. You see, those who masquerade as Jews are not the chosen people spoken of in the Holy Bible, my friend. No, they are a race of vipers, sired from the seduction of Eve by the Serpent, Lucifer, who gave to her fruit of the tree of knowledge.”

  “You mean the apple?”

  Maulthaus laughed a little harder than Boone was comfortable with, but endured it in memory of the thrashing he’d received earlier at his hands.

  “The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil isn’t an apple. It isn’t even a fruit, nor is the tree a tree.” He gestured smoothly. “That’s a mistranslation, propagated by the Papists who dominated Christendom for so long. The tree of knowledge is symbolic of the Earth, my dear boy. Eve was innocent of the world, like Adam and as the Good Lord intended, until she was seduced to partake of the fruit.” He lowered his eyes. “You know what that means, don’t you, boy?”

  Boone swallowed another gulp of liquor before answering. “Sex?”

  Maulthaus slapped his shoulder, shaking him in the chair. “There you have it, boy! The serpent seduced or, raped, if you will, God’s Aryan creation and she took this knowledge back to her Aryan man.”

  “So… Eve done it with a snake?”

  Maulthaus didn’t laugh that time. “The serpent is symbolic, too. Don’t take everything so literally.”

  “I’ll try,” he replied, though not with any idea what his host meant.

  “Their first child was Cain, who was hated by our Lord because of his fouled blood. And I’m sure you remember how that worked out…”

  “Cain killed his brother, I think… Abel?”

  “That was it! Abel was the union of God’s Aryan creations, but Cain was the spawn of Lucifer and Eve, and when God cast him out, he found a wife among the beasts and spawned the race we now know as the Jews.”

  He explained how the real Hebrews were the Aryan people, freed from captivity by Almighty God by the Aryan prophet Moses. When the Aryans forgot their ways, God punished them by delivering them into the hands of the Assyrians, who spread them throughout what is now known as Europe.

  “The Aryan races of Northern Europe are direct descendants of the lost tribes of the Hebrews. Those who call themselves Jews now are either the seed of Satan, or imposters from the Khazak Mountains who converted into the fold with those mentioned earlier. They seek to defy God’s will by hindering his chosen people, the Aryan race. That is why they betrayed his son, Christ our savior.”

  “So, the Jews ain’t really the Jews, but snake-people pretending to be what white folks really are?”

  Maulthaus closed his eyes for a second. “Sure… I think you have it.”

  He drank from the bottle. “What’s this all got to do with me, mister?”

  Maulthaus leaned forward and smiled. “I’m here to show you what you really are!”

  “I’m really a Jew?”

  Maulthaus’ laughter shook the walls.

  “My dear boy, you are an Aryan! You are one of God’s chosen people. More so, you are a vampire. Do you know what that means?”

  “Means I ain’t going to get old, and I got to drink blood to live.”

  “More than that, my boy. Few humans are worthy of the gift of vampirism. God has chosen you, a warrior, a soldier, a fighter to become a vampire. You are a vampire because God wants you to defend his chosen people.”

  “But I weren’t made what I am by a white vampire. It was a mixed race whore name of Emily—”

  Maulthaus waved his hand. “I am familiar, yes. It isn’t important how you were blessed, only that you see the path God has for you, and take it.”

  Boone took a drink of whiskey. It hit his empty belly like a sack of grain. His host appeared to notice his hunger and nodded.

  “There will be time for more. First, you should eat.” He gestured for the girl. She came to Boone’s side, filling his nostrils with the scent of her blood. “I’ll tell you more when you’re finished.”

  Boone ran his eyes over the child, suspicious. “If they’re supposed to be animals, why
is it we can feed on them?” He tried to feed on a dog once, but was sickened to the point of near death. That was when he learned he could only palate human blood.

  “That they are more advanced than simple beasts is undeniable.” He leaned in and began unlacing the girl’s bodice. “In fact, a great many of the negros and other races have faint traces of Aryan blood in their bodies. But, they have no souls…look at this child?”

  Her bodice fell from her shoulders, sliding over her budding breasts until it dangled around her belly. Her skin was covered with bite marks, and the thought of tasting her made Boone hard. Maulthaus took the girl by her shoulders and pushed her into Boone’s arms.

  “Does she look like she has a soul?”

  “But…” Boone fought hunger and his fingers slid over the girl’s arms. She shivered at his touch. “I don’t understand.”

  “What more do you need to know, my boy?”

  “I ain’t never seen an ape vampire, nor a mule turned to one of us either. But I’ve met me a colored vampire. A couple, in fact…almost got killed by one of ‘em. And I think I recall meeting me a Chinaman vampire, and heard tales of a pack of Indian vampires off a ways in Oklahoma.”

  “Your point?”

  “If they is a lesser race, why can they become vampires, too?”

  Maulthaus chuckled. “You are more clever than I gave you credit, my boy.” He stroked the child’s spongy black hair and stood behind her. “Have you noticed that when an Aryan receives our gift, they become fairer in tone?” He lifted his neck to demonstrate the whiteness of his skin. “Yet, when the other races are so turned, they become darker?”

  Boone sat the now empty bottle on the table and nodded. “I have noticed that, I reckon!” He grinned.

  “We get whiter because we’re chosen of the Almighty. Certainly, the lesser races have trace amounts of Aryan blood in their bodies… that is undeniable, especially after centuries of interbreeding.” His mouth puckered when he mentioned that part, as though he could taste the filth in a mixed race union. “As such, they are able to receive a portion of the gift…so vampires are known among the lesser races. But the diluted blessing mixes with their beast blood and exposes their impurity. With those of the master race, we become—” He gestured to his own chalky pallor. “—perfected!”