Van Helsing's Diaries (Books 1-3): Nosferatu

by Peter Cawdron

  “Damn.”

  There’s silence for a second, and I sense this isn’t the reason he called me. There’s something else he wants to say, but he’s hesitant. He’s wondering if I can take it.

  “What’s up with our friend?” I ask.

  “Fallon?” the sheriff replies. “He’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “And it’s not just him.”

  I’m silent, listening intently as he continues.

  “You remember the woman by the coffee machine? The one he gave the gun to?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s dead too. Suicide.”

  I’m stunned.

  “Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” I reply.

  “Strange thing is, they both killed themselves at roughly the same time. About 5AM this morning.”

  “And the method?” I ask.

  “They hung themselves.” the sheriff replies. “We had Fallon under a regular watch along with video surveillance. The guards changed at 5AM and the next thing they know they’re watching him hanging, twitching from the ceiling. They got him down as quick as they could and administered CPR, but it was too late.”

  “And Eva?” I say, saddened to hear she took her own life.

  “Yeah, strung herself up in the basement. Heartbreaking, huh?”

  “That makes no sense. I mean, she was traumatized by what she saw, but once she got the gun she was assertive, aggressive. She took charge. She stood over Fallon until the police arrived. She was confident. She doesn’t fit the profile of someone who would commit suicide in response to such an act.”

  “Her husband is shattered,” the sheriff says. “He said she’d only gone down to the gas station to get some Tylenol for their daughter.”

  And I drop the phone.

  “Jane? Jane?” comes from the tiny speaker in the phone as it lies in the snow.

  “Jane?” Alan says, rushing over to me. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I think I have.”

  Chapter 1:03 — Mavis Harrison

  The drive to the state penitentiary is arduous. The roads are slick with ice.

  “Jane. You don’t have to do this,” comes through the speakers as my phone connects with the car stereo.

  “I know,” I reply to the sheriff. It’s been a few hours since the wolf attack and I’m feeling better. Being busy does wonders for stress. I can’t go home. I’d jump at shadows. Alan and I have agreed we’ll stay the night at his folks’ place and figure things out from there. As for me, I never want to set foot in that apartment again, even just to pack up. Sorry, Alan. You’re packing on your own.

  Out here on the road, I feel as though I’m gaining a sense of control over my life. Alan tried to talk me out of going to the prison, insisting I take the gun for safety. That they won’t let me take a gun into a prison doesn’t seem to have dawned on him. I guess it’s the gesture that counts, but I couldn’t hit the side of a barn with ten shots, so I’ve stowed the gun in the glovebox, checking the safety’s on.

  “Case is closed,” the sheriff says. “All we need to do is file the paperwork. As sad as it is, there’s nothing more to be done. You don’t need to be going out there.”

  As I turn into the parking lot outside the prison, I say, “I feel I owe them something.”

  “Them who?”

  “Mavis Harrison, James Fallon and Eva Guntage.”

  “You don’t owe James anything,” the sheriff says.

  “Three people died in twenty four hours. Three strangers were killed in the most bizarre of circumstances. I owe this to their families.”

  “Two of them were suicides,” he says.

  “I know, but they shouldn’t have happened.”

  “But they did,” he replies. “You can’t blame yourself for that.”

  He’s right. Professional pride prevents me from admitting as much, but I should have insisted on Fallon being placed under suicide watch instead of regular surveillance. As for Eva, I don’t know that anyone could have seen that coming, but somehow I feel I should have.

  The sheriff continues, saying, “Now that Fallon’s dead, there’s no case anymore. Regardless of what you find, there will be no hearing.”

  “I’ve got to tie up a few loose ends,” I say.

  “Well, if it helps you get closure, follow your gut. If your hunch leads to something, let me know.”

  “Will do,” I say, hanging up the call by pressing a button on the steering wheel.

  Snow flurries drift across an open field beside the prison, passing through the chain-link fence and piling up against the main building. I park in the lot and dart inside, present my ID to security, and leave my phone, purse, and keys in a tray at reception. After passing through a metal detector, the deputy warden greets me.

  “Dr. Langford?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jurgen Aimmes.”

  We shake hands and I follow him down a long corridor, through a guard checkpoint, and into the prison hospital.

  “This was her desk,” he says, gesturing to one of several desks in an open plan office overlooking the snow covered fields beyond the prison.

  “What can you tell me about Mavis Harrison?” I ask.

  “Well, I didn’t have much to do with her personally. She was punctual. Professional.”

  I flick through a file sitting on her desk, not sure what I’m looking for but suspecting I’ll know when I see it. The tag on the side of the file reads: Martin Ellison, life-without-parole.

  “Mavis worked here for just over a decade.”

  He pauses.

  “Sheriff Cann said her killer is dead. Is that right?”

  “Yes,” I say, still flicking through the pages of the file.

  “So the case is closed?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re here to wrap things up?”

  I understand what he’s getting at. From the deputy warden’s perspective, the death of a prison worker is disruptive for both guards and inmates. He’s looking to put this behind him as quickly as possible. He’s not being cold, just practical.

  “Loose ends,” I say. “The case is closed, but I’m here out of professional courtesy.”

  The deputy warden says, “She’s a psychiatrist. You’re a psychiatrist.”

  “Something like that,” I reply. “Who is Martin Ellison? Why was Mavis so interested in him?”

  “He’s a lifer,” the deputy warden replies. “He was a white collar. Shouldn’t have even been in here. He was serving five years for falsifying data on drug trials in response to bribes. He was supposed to be in general population down at Jarden, but they’re overpopulated so he ended up here with the bad boys.”

  I flick through a few more pages. Mavis has extensive notes on his psychological state dating back at least nine months.

  The deputy warden continues, saying, “A fight broke out in the cafeteria not long after he got here. In the melee, he knifed an inmate and a guard. The inmate died. The guard lost half his liver from infection and almost died as well. The state prosecutor threw the book at him.”

  “Why would he do that?” I ask.

  “That’s what Mavis wanted to know.”

  There’s something unusual about the file, something obvious, something staring me in the face, but it’s just out of grasp. I’m so focused on the content and absorbing the notations, it takes me a few seconds to figure out what’s wrong.

  “Was Mavis left handed?” I ask.

  The deputy warden thinks about it for a second, and then points at her computer, pointing out the mouse on the left side of the keyboard as he says, “Yes. Why?”

  “Did anyone else annotate this file?” I ask, ignoring him for a moment and fixating on something that confuses me.

  “No. She’s the only one that handles psych evaluations. Why?”

  “Look at the handwriting,” I say, turning the file around so he can see the pages in more detail. “Look at the notes she made last we
ek.”

  He looks, but doesn’t seem to notice anything out of the usual.

  “Now look at these notes. Look at everything before last week.”

  I flick through several samples across a period of about three months. The handwriting is different, and markedly so. For months leading up until now, Mavis Harrison’s handwriting curls slightly backwards, something that’s characteristic of people writing with their left hand. Instead of leaning into the sentence, the characters are either upright or leaning slightly back to the left. But the notes made over the last week are all in classic cursive, sweeping to the right.

  “And you think this is important?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” I reply, putting the file down for a moment and picturing the video of the shooting in the gas station. I turn to one side, mentally matching the motion Mavis made when her gun fell out of her bag. I’m thinking about the position of her body relative to the camera. She reached for the gun with her right hand.

  “Can I see him?” I ask. “Ellison?”

  “Ah, sure. We keep him apart from the general population to prevent any possibility of retaliation.”

  I doubt that, as the incident occurred almost a year ago. Prisoners end up in solitary for a variety of reasons, seldom is anyone honest about why they’re kept there.

  “Are you sure this is necessary?” he asks. “I mean, Ellison is a weird one. Damn fool eats bugs. Smuggles crumbs in his pocket so he can lure them into his cell.”

  “Just a quick chat,” I say warmly, “and I’ll be out of your hair.”

  The deputy warden speaks into his radio, asking for the whereabouts of Martin Ellison.

  “He’s got half an hour in the rec room before lunch. Only time he gets there.”

  We walk to another internal guardhouse. Prison bars open electronically before us, providing us with free passage through the metal labyrinth. An armed guard joins us. He’s carrying a pump action shotgun. The deputy warden doesn’t say anything about his presence, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out he wouldn’t be escorting us if he wasn’t needed.

  The rec room is a gymnasium with a high, lofty ceiling. Dumbbells and weights line a variety of racks, along with a few basketballs lying carelessly on the wooden floor of a half court.

  “Ellison,” the deputy warden says, calling out to him as we walk into the gym. The air is brisk. Mist forms on my breath. Ellison is dressed in shorts and a t-shirt. He’s sweating, having worked out with free weights. His biceps are pumped, with thick veins winding their way around his forearms

  “What’s up, warden?” he says, wiping his hands on his shorts.

  “This is Dr. Langford. She has some questions for you.”

  The deputy warden is no dummy, keeping his cards close to his chest and letting me carry the conversation.

  “Don’t get too close,” he whispers, stopping almost thirty feet away from Ellison. I continue on, with my boots sounding lonely as they echo across the wooden floor.

  Ellison is intimidating, especially to a woman, and he grins, sensing my nerves are on edge.

  “I’m here to talk to you about Mavis Harrison,” I say, projecting my voice a little more than usual, compensating for how I feel.

  “Where’s Mavis?” Ellison asks, and I’m surprised to hear genuine concern in his voice.

  “Do you know James Fallon?”

  “No. Where is Mavis?”

  “You’re sure? You’ve never heard of James Fallon?”

  “I want to speak to Mavis,” he says, and to my surprise, his shoulders stoop. Whereas moments ago he was an alpha male, now he seems disturbed. It’s almost as though he knows.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, sensing genuine grief in his posture.

  “How?” he asks, his voice quivering.

  “She was shot during a robbery at a gas station.”

  His head hangs low. Tears fall to the wooden planks lining the floor. Quietly, he sobs. Grief is an overwhelming emotion. Ordinarily, I’d want to comfort someone with such a strong reaction to death, but Ellison scares me. Even with an armed guard standing to one side, I feel dangerously exposed. It’s as though I’m in a cage with a tiger.

  “She promised,” he says, looking up with tears still rolling down his cheeks. “She said I could go back. She said she’d find a way.”

  “Go back where?” I ask.

  “Not where,” he says.

  I’m confused.

  Ellison softens his voice, saying, “You won’t understand. You couldn’t.”

  With trepidation, I reach out and touch softly at his arm, saying, “I want to help.”

  Ellison grimaces, pulling away from me as he say, “Touch. Whatever happens, don’t let her touch you.”

  “Who?” I ask.

  “Mavis.”

  “Mavis is dead,” I say, confirming what I thought he had already deduced. Ellison looks confused.

  “If she touches you,” he says.

  “She’s dead,” I repeat, wondering about his mental state.

  “You—” I suspect he’s going to say, ‘you won’t understand’ yet again, but his lips quiver as he points at the center of his chest. Ellison whispers softly, saying, “I’m Mavis Harrison.”

  I step back.

  He nods, and in that moment, I see something beyond his eyes. I see her.

  “Mavis?” I ask gently.

  Ellison nods again, wiping tears from his eyes.

  “But how?” I ask, stepping forward and taking a good look at his face. Perhaps it’s just the soft light coming in through the windows, but for a moment, he looks almost feminine.

  “I don’t know. But she promised.”

  The deputy warden and the guard are out of earshot, but they look nervous at how close I am to this musclebound criminal clearly undergoing a mental breakdown. The guard has his pump action shotgun at the ready.

  “You okay, doc?” the deputy warden calls out, and I gesture with a wave of my hand, signaling I’m fine, but those few words by the warden are enough to break the spell. Ellison snaps his head to one side, arching his back and flexing his shoulder muscles.

  “Tell me more,” I say, but Mavis is no longer there. Whatever distorted schizophrenic persona had seized Ellison moments before, it’s gone now. Too fragile. The bitter reality of prison life has destroyed the connection we had.

  “There’s nothing to tell,” Ellison says. His voice is abrupt and harsh.

  He turns to the deputy warden, saying, “We’re done here.”

  “No, wait,” I say, reaching out to touch him again, but I stop short. The fire in his eyes suggests it would be a mistake.

  Ellison turns and picks up a ragged paperback novel, gripping it with the intensity of a weightlifter pumping iron. The thin book crumples in his fist, folding around his clenched fingers.

  “What’s that?” I ask as he goes to step past me.

  “Nothing.”

  “Wait. I want to see it.”

  “Show her the book,” the guard says, taking a particular interest in Ellison now he’s grown outwardly hostile.

  Ellison doesn’t move. Both of his fists clench in anger. The guard pumps the shotgun, loading a round into the chamber, and I step back, suddenly realizing how vulnerable I am. Ellison could grab me as a hostage. He’s so strong he could snap my neck like a twig.

  “Now,” the guard says, leveling the shotgun at him. The deputy warden is on his radio, calling for backup. Within seconds, four more guards have entered the gym. One of them has a baton out, the others have Tasers drawn. They jog toward us, spoiling for a fight.

  Reluctantly, Ellison hands me the book.

  The pages are old and worn. The back has been ripped off, along with several pages. I turn the book over and look at the cover. There’s a wood etching of a castle set on a barren, rocky hill. The title reads:

  Dracula

  Bram Stoker

  Ellison lowers his head, acting more like a petulant child than an adult. His mood swings ar
e alarming, even for someone with schizophrenia, especially as his moods seem to relate to different personas.

  I flick through the book. Several sections have been underlined. Notes have been scrawled in the margin.

  “Can I borrow this?”

  “No,” Ellison replies, but I’m not talking to him, I’m facing the deputy warden.

  “If you think it will help,” he says.

  “I think it will,” I say, backing away from Ellison.

  “No, please,” he pleads as several of the guards come up beside me. “Please don’t.”

  Suddenly, Ellison is deceptively calm, appealing to my reason.

  “It’s mine. It’s my only book.”

  “I’ll bring it back,” I say. “I promise.”

  His visage changes. Rage floods his face. His muscles flex and his face hardens.

  Ellison lunges at me.

  The guard next to me fires his Taser.

  Ellison staggers back. Metal prongs tear through his shirt, sinking into his chest. A dull buzz emanates from the gun, but Ellison will not be deterred. He races forward with his hands reaching for me. Another guard fires, and a third.

  “It’s mine!” he yells, falling to his knees and shaking with the shock of the Tasers, but he refuses to collapse to the cold wooden floor. “Mine!”

  “We need to get you out of here,” the deputy warden says, taking me by the arm and rushing me to the door.

  “MINE!” Ellison yells, as several guards beat him with batons. It’s as though he feels no pain. He doesn’t seem to realize they’re there, let alone that they are hammering him with hardened wooden batons. He keeps calling out, “It’s mine. You can’t have it.”

  Beyond the gym, the prison is in an uproar. Prisoners bang on steel doors and rattle bars. Hands reach for me as I’m dragged down the corridor by the deputy warden, marching at a frantic pace. He escorts me through the guardhouse and out past the checkpoint into the entryway. Even from where we are, I can hear the prisoners yelling.

  “That damn book had better be worth it,” he says.

  “Thank you,” I say as he walks off, but my words are meaningless to a man trying to prevent a riot. He’s on the radio instructing the guards to get everyone back in their cells. Our wing was closed, but the unrest seems to have spread like wildfire to the other sections of the prison.