by Tim Kizer
“I’ll help you dig if you want.” said Frank with a weak smile. “I could carry the flashlight. Is it heavy?”
Muttering ‘smartass,’ Graham waved at him dismissingly.
“If I were you, I wouldn't lie to us,” he said. “And you’re damn right you will dig.”
“Are you going to kill me after finding the body?”
“No, Frank. No one’s going to kill you. Relax, bro.”
Okay, buddy, it’s time to make your move.
“It could be over right now if you want, Graham.” Frank touched Graham’s shoulder to catch his attention.
“What do you mean?”
“I know what you are, Graham. And I know what Tony was.”
Frank stopped and so did Graham.
“Oh, really?” Graham narrowed his eyes and smirked. “Why should I give a shit about it?”
“You think Kelly is still alive? You probably think Tony bit her, right?”
The smile had quickly disappeared from Graham’s face. He must have realized that Frank actually knew more than they had thought.
“You’re wasting your time, Graham. Even if you find Kelly’s body, you’re not going to get what you’re looking for. Kelly’s dead. I cut her neck so deep her head was hanging by the spinal cord.”
Frank was lying, but that was the easiest way to make Graham understand that searching for Kelly was pointless.
“Why the hell are you telling me this?”
“I know what you want. And Kelly can’t give it to you because she’s dead. Correct me if I’m wrong, vampires can’t survive decapitation.”
Graham gazed at Frank silently with his unblinking eyes for a few seconds before replying, “You watch too much TV, Frank.”
“Tony’s dead. And Kelly’s dead, too. And it seems that you are about to run out of Tony’s blood. Am I right?”
Graham folded his arms on his chest and raised his chin.
“I guess you’re trying to tell me something,” he said with his stare fixed on Frank’s face. “I’m listening.”
“First of all, my wife’s body is not buried in this forest.”
No, Kelly’s body was not buried in this or any other forest. The night after arriving in Pittsburgh, Frank had remembered buying four twenty pound weight plates at Dick’s Sporting Goods a few days before killing Tony and Kelly. He had tied those plates to his wife’s body so it wouldn’t float up after drowning in Lake Erie. He had made sure to dump the safe with the vampire a few miles away from the spot where he had tossed the corpse.
What had he buried in the forest then?
Nothing. Frank had not gone to any forest after the murders. The whole idea that he had must have been one of those false memories he had read about. He had thought of burying Kelly in the woods and even taken a trip to scout for a convenient gravesite, but eventually decided to save time and effort by throwing the body in the lake along with the safe. The memory of digging a hole might have been real, though: it was possible that he had done it to find out how long it would take him to bury the corpse.
Yes, both Kelly and the safe with Tony were resting at the bottom of Lake Erie about five miles from the shore, within three miles of each other. He and Alex had had to get creative to put them there.
At first, they had planned to open the safe the morning after the capture and let the sunlight incinerate Tony. Then they asked themselves what they were going to do if the fairy tales were wrong and the sunlight didn’t bother the vampires as badly as it was widely believed. After a short discussion, they decided to take a cautious route: dead or alive, Tony would stay locked up forever; well, until the rust ate up the door hinges, to be scientifically precise. Now, they had to find a way to make the safe disappear, which turned out to be a challenge due to the fact that the safe was massive and weighed at least seven hundred pounds.
Dropping the safe from a bridge into a river seemed to be a bad idea because the risk was very high that someone would eventually come across it either by accident or on purpose. Besides, local rivers were too shallow to provide sufficient invisibility. They had to dump the safe as far from people and land as possible, and Lake Erie was a logical choice. After days of intense brainstorming, they came up with a way to tow the safe into the lake.
Shortly after his encounter with Tony at the Mantra Lounge nightclub, Frank bought a used fifteen-foot inflatable cataraft, a blend of catamaran and raft consisting of two pontoons connected together with a frame, whose load capacity exceeded fifteen hundred pounds. With the help of an electric air pump, he could fill its twenty-four-inch tubes up with air in twenty minutes. They did a trial run of the cataraft the morning after purchasing it. Frank remembered them going to a garage that belonged to a friend of Alex’s to check if the pump could inflate the tubes with the weight of the safe pressing on them. The pump passed the test with flying colors.
In the middle of April, they rented a thirty-six-foot powerboat equipped with two three-hundred-and-seventy horsepower engines. The lease was in Alex’s name so that there was no paper trail leading to Frank. The boat had a three-foot draft, which meant it could get as close as twenty feet to the shore, and in some places even closer.
Before leaving for the lake, Frank flushed the Ambien-spiked coffee and iced-tea down the toilet. He would thoroughly wash the coffee pot and the jug later in the morning to eliminate all traces of the sleeping drug.
The F-150 was going to work hard that night delivering Kelly’s body, the safe, and the cataraft to the lakeshore. They put the corpse in the backseat while the cataraft went on top of the safe. Frank had previously chosen to do the hardest job—getting the cataraft ready—which had put Alex in charge of the powerboat part. Alex took Frank’s Land Cruiser.
On the way to the lake, Frank reviewed their progress so far. Had they succeeded in killing the vampire? Tony had stopped screaming minutes after getting locked up in the safe and had not uttered a sound ever since, so it appeared that they had. Nevertheless, Frank remained unsure that the stake had worked. Tony could have simply been playing dead, hoping to lull their vigilance and entice them into opening the safe to get rid of the corpse—or out of sheer curiosity. That guy had to be smart enough to realize there was no upside for him to let his killers know that he hadn’t kicked the bucket yet.
As he threw Kelly’s teeth out of the car window halfway to the lake, Frank wondered if the ghouls had pulled his daughter’s teeth after murdering her. It also crossed his mind that he would probably never know where Kathy was buried. When they were twenty five miles away from Frank’s house, they split: Alex went to Sturgeon Point Marina, where their powerboat had been docked since the beginning of the lease, and Frank headed for the secluded spot on the shore four miles north of the marina.
Amazingly, the plan went without a hitch.
Frank pulled the truck as close to the water’s edge as he could without risking getting stuck. When he was done inflating the cataraft, Alex showed up on the boat. Together, they placed the safe across the tubes of the cataraft and secured it with ropes. After they carried Kelly’s body onto the boat, Alex started the engine and slowly pulled the cataraft into the water while Frank monitored the process on the other end of the line.
At a quarter past three, Frank was back on the shore, behind the wheel of the F-150. He returned home thirty five minutes later.
7.
“Where did you bury her?” asked Graham.
“It doesn’t matter. Did you hear what I just said? She’s useless to you.”
“Do you know how Tony died?”
“Let’s talk about it later. Right now I want to show you something you might like.”
“Okay. What is it?”
“Can I have the bottle please?”
After a short hesitation, Graham pulled the bottle out of the bag and gave it to Frank. “I hope you’re not going to try and kill me with it.”
Frank emptied the bottle on the ground and said, “Now I want you to cut my hand.” He held out h
is left hand to Graham, with his palm up.
“Can I ask why?” The expression on Graham’s face changed from puzzlement to confusion.
“You’ll see. Don’t be shy. Cut it.” Frank ran his finger across his outstretched palm, showing Graham where to make the incision.
“Well, you asked for it.” Graham drew his knife from the belt sheath and slit Frank’s palm. He remained silent as he watched Frank pour his blood into the bottle. A flash of epiphany crossed Graham’s face when Frank asked him to have a sip from the bottle.
8.
Frank had made this startling discovery the morning after arriving to Pittsburgh. As he stared at the half-eaten cheeseburger he had left inside the mini-refrigerator earlier, a sharp, unbearable burning sensation suddenly enveloped his right forearm. It felt as if someone had spilled a pot of boiling water on his arm—and kept pouring it as the pain was growing worse with every fraction of a second. Grimacing, Frank let go of the fridge door, pressed his burning forearm to his chest, and started rubbing it with his left hand. To his relief, the pain quickly subsided and almost went away. Frank scrutinized his forearm for a spider bite, the first thing that had occurred to his mind as he had tried to explain what had happened to him. He had been bitten by a spider when he was in high school, and that feeling was similar to the sensation he had just experienced. At least, this was how he remembered it.
There was no spider bite. And his forearm did not hurt at all now.
He reached for the refrigerator door, grabbed the handle, and winced in pain as his right forearm was wrapped in fire again. This time, he knew exactly what had caused it: it was the sunlight sneaking into the room through the thin gap between the window curtains. Frank was standing in the shaded area, but his arm had had to cross into the sunlit slice of space in order to open the refrigerator and hold its door.
Then he recalled what had happened to Alex. Tony had managed to bite them both during that fight in the garage, either attempting to turn them into vampires or simply out of desperation. Frank had no clue whether the three weeks that his transition had taken to complete was typical or not.
Well, at least the process had been smooth and painless for him. In Alex’s case, the vampire’s bite had had a different effect: within thirty five hours of having Tony’s fangs buried in his arm, he had begun feeling exhausted and sleepy. Alex struggled getting up from bed when Frank left him at their lair in Erie the day of his fateful car crash.
Could Alex still be alive?
He certainly could. The exhaustion and fatigue might have simply been his body’s own unique way of dealing with the challenge of turning into a vampire. Who said that everyone’s transition to a vampire had to be peaceful and pleasant?
If Alex was indeed in torpor, a state of hibernation a vampire fell into after staying off blood for an extended period of time, a sip of human blood could be all that was needed to get him up and going. The question was how big that sip would have to be.
Would Alex even remember him or Marilyn when he woke up? Would he be the same cheerful and funny guy he had been before falling asleep? And more importantly, would Alex want to be a plain mortal human again? Frank had no clue.
Are you sure you want to be a plain mortal human again, buddy? Can you vow right now to never stop until you find a way to reverse your current condition?
Speaking of the vampire’s bites: Frank still couldn’t remember what exactly had caused him to lose control of his car that Monday three weeks ago, and it seemed like he was never going to find that out. It was possible that he had blacked out as his body had begun to react to Tony’s bite. And it was also possible that he had simply made a driving error.
Another thing he had been curious about lately: was it the brain concussion or the secretions (or whatever that stuff was officially called) from Tony's fangs that had made him lose his memory? And had the vampire’s bite played any role in his quick recovery after the crash? After all, he had gotten off really easy, according to the doctors.
Yeah, you know, buddy, you might have probably guessed weeks ago that something was up had you paid attention to the fact that you’ve had no migraines, sleep disorders, body aches, or any other post-traumatic miseries the doctors warned you about before you left the hospital.
By the way, he had finally remembered that one bedroom condo in Erie, Pennsylvania, they had rented as their hiding place in the middle of April. They figured they were going to need a safe house until all of Tony’s ghouls were dead. Alex had immediately begun to call the apartment the lair. It was this apartment that Marilyn was supposed to be at right now: the lair’s exact address had popped up in Frank’s memory shortly before he had spoken to his nephew, and Marilyn had volunteered to go to Erie and try her luck picking the lock or getting inside through a window.
Had he told her about his new condition? Had he warned her that Tony had probably turned into a vampire, too?
He sure had. After all, someone had to do his grocery shopping for him.
“You’re not going to drink my blood, are you?” Marilyn joked with a weak smile.
Was there a way for him to turn back into a human? Frank had found no definitive—and more importantly, tried and proven—method so far. The only sensible looking solution mentioned in the traditional lore was to kill the vampire that had given you the fateful bite. Not surprisingly, different sources had different takes on how this method worked: some claimed that killing a vampire would reverse its every single victim back to the human state and some believed that only the person committing the murder would enjoy this benefit. And some suggested that only the killing of the vampire king, whatever it meant, could help you become a human again.
Of course, there was this little problem: Frank couldn’t kill Tony because the guy was already dead.
Or was he?
Frank couldn’t but begin to hope that Tony had survived the attempt on his life and now was in torpor, waiting for someone to stumble upon him. It was certainly possible, even probable, that the stake had missed the vampire’s heart. At any rate, in order to know this for sure Frank had to look inside the safe, which had become the next major item on his agenda.
Were the ghouls going to play any role in his plans?
They sure were. Especially Albert, with his access to blood. There was one wrinkle, though: Frank would love to see Josephine gone for good. Hopefully, Graham would agree to replace her.
So it’s a case of “the king is dead, long live the king,” isn’t it?
Yes, you could certainly put it this way.
Was Frank happy to succeed Tony as a blood farm for ghouls?
No, of course not. But did he have any other realistic choice at the present moment?
9.
Josephine strained her eyes, looking for Albert, who, according to her estimates, was a couple of hundred feet ahead of her. She had already crossed the southern half of the forest three times, which had taken her about half an hour. Since the average distance from the edge of the forest to the road was half a mile, Josephine calculated her speed to be three miles an hour—not too bad, considering the rugged terrain.
She quickly abandoned the attempts to find Albert’s silhouette: it was very dark now, plus the trees and bushes were too dense. Josephine was an in a fair mood. She had already covered about five percent of the area she was responsible for, which meant she could be done as early as eight o’clock the next morning if she took no breaks and maintained her current speed.
With her gaze fixed on the Collie’s fluffy tail, Josephine thanked God for giving the dogs the sense of smell that was a million times better than that of a human. She was glad that all she had to do was mindlessly follow this capable canine. She finally didn’t have to torture her brain to get the job done.
Shortly after she turned towards the road, the walkie-talkie came alive.
“Josephine, it’s Graham,” she heard Graham’s voice. “Are you there?”
“Yes. What is it?” Her heart began beating
faster in anticipation of good news.
“Josephine, can you meet me by the cars? I want to show you something.”
“Did you find Kelly?”
“No. But you have to see it. Can you meet me?”
Josephine glanced at her watch. 9:46 pm. Well, she was heading for the road anyway, so why not. After all, the five-six minutes she would have to waste on whatever Graham wanted to show her was no big deal.
“Okay, I’ll be there.”
10.
Graham brought his mouth close to Josephine’s ear and asked in a low voice, “So what do you think?” He appeared giddy as he waited for Josephine to express her expert opinion on Frank’s blood.
Josephine licked her lips and shifted her eyes from the bottle, which now had less than half an ounce of Frank’s blood left in it, to Frank and then back to the bottle, a radiant smile growing on her face.
“Yeah, that’s the real deal,” she said. “Where did you say you got it?” She stepped up to Frank and inhaled deeply through her nose, as if trying to catch a scent.
With a nonchalant air, Graham took his gun out of the bag and screwed the silencer on it. Then he aimed the pistol at Frank and pulled the trigger. The bullet pierced Frank’s abdomen, came out of his back, and hit the tree behind him.
“Just checking,” Graham said matter-of-factly several seconds later, when it became clear that Frank was not going to collapse and writhe in agony. “How are you feeling, bro?”
“I’m okay.” Everything happened so quickly that Frank didn’t have time to be shocked. He ran his hand over the wound, scrambling to wrap his mind around the fact that the through-and-through hole in his body was causing him as much pain and suffering as a wood splinter.
“There are bandages in the car,” said Graham. The next moment he shot Josephine in the back of the head. When she fell down on the ground, Graham glanced at the bleeding hole in her forehead, shoved the gun into the bag, and looked at Frank. “You said something about me being in charge.”