by Alex Bledsoe
CHAPTER 31
A GRUDGE AT STAKE:
The Tale of Signalman Reynolds
Prepare for a tale of mystery and magic, of love and death, of the living and the undead. This is my tale.
I will not bore you with my biography, except to say that I was the youngest member of the Aviation Section of the Royal Army Signal Corps when it was established in July of 1914. My family was undistinguished, and my accomplishments whilst in the service of His Majesty were above reproach, but below acclaim. I was one of the faceless many dedicated to King and Country.
When I was still young, and green, I journeyed to the Welsh village of Passelwaithe in the company of the great adventurer and scientist Sir Francis Colby. My fortune and my doom were both made that day.
I knew a little of what brought us to that village. Sir Francis, in his gregarious way, explained that the locals suspected a visiting nobleman of being a vampire, a notion we both considered ludicrous. My job was to test out the latest Larkspur transmitter, whilst in the process establishing contact with the outside world so that the local superstition could not sway justice.
Of the results of this trial, much is known. The infamous Baron Zginski was determined, in fact, to be a vampire, and was dispatched accordingly. Sir Francis received much notoriety and acclaim. I was forgotten.
But my story only began that very night.
As we arrived in Passelwaithe, a veritable swarm of village ladies, young and old, waited outside the tavern where Zginski was to be tried. Among them was a slender, dusky-eyed girl who met my appreciative gaze with one of her own. I was spellbound. If I had been more worldly, and less love-struck, I might have noticed that she, too, wore one of the scarves that seemed to swathe the throats of all the women of Passelwaithe. But alas, I did not.
While the authorities questioned Sir Francis over the next few days, I was left to my own amusements, having been given indefinite leave for this assignment thanks to Sir Francis’s reputation with the armed forces. I spent my days ardently pursuing this young lady, Amelia Fulcrum-Jones, and was at last fortunate enough to secure her hand in marriage.
Marriage always brings changes, but this union seemed to alter my very being. On most days I was my normal self; but about once a fortnight, I found myself in the grip of a lethargy that was beyond my ability to shrug off. In those times Amelia would hover about me, cooing and caressing, as I drifted between wakefulness and sleeping. These spells never lasted more than a day or so, and never occurred at a time that threatened my livelihood. It was as if the chronic disease knew precisely when I was best able to indulge its influence.
In the next few years, we watched the world heave around us as the new terror arose in Germany and threatened the entire planet. I wanted desperately to reenlist, but Amelia would have none of it. I was too old to be of use to anyone but her, she often said playfully, but beneath it I sensed a very real fear. In my naiveté, I assumed it was the fear of my death; but again, I was mistaken.
After Hitler’s troops broke their own peace and invaded Poland, I could stand it no longer. I rejoined the Signal Corps and did my part behind the lines to make the world safe again for the monarchy. When V-E Day arrived, I returned home—we had settled near my family in Manchester—intending to re-dedicate myself to beginning the family that had eluded us for so long, despite our best efforts.
Alas, when I returned, I found many things had changed.
A mysterious killer prowled the local factories and townships. Known only as ‘The Bleeder,’ it was said he attacked his victims in such a way that they bled almost all of the precious fluid from their bodies. In no way did this resemble the predations of the infamous Baron Zginski, who took only enough from each victim to sustain himself, and never to my knowledge killed anyone outright. But the ghastly details of the Bleeder’s crimes are not important here, only that the atmosphere among our neighbours was one of constant watchfulness and suspicion. It was commonly thought that the villain had to be a local resident, since he managed to elude detection for so long.
Shortly after I returned home—to find my wife unchanged, and if anything younger and more beautiful than when I left—I was summoned by the local constabulary to assist in their efforts. My skill at communication and my combat experience allowed me to analyse their latest theory: that a gang of some sort was at work, attacking with impunity in locations too far apart to allow any single killer to be responsible. Yet I found nothing to substantiate this, and returned after a weekend of such drudgery to my home, wanting little more than a warm meal and a soft bed. That I returned, in fact, one day earlier than expected proved to be my downfall.
My Amelia was nowhere to be found. I searched the house, the yard, and the forest. I questioned the neighbours, but none save an old German woman, ostracised for her nationality by most of the citizenry, had any conception of what might have occurred. The woman muttered the word ‘blutsauger’ and told me to search where all such blutsaugers are found: among the dead. I dismissed this as senile rambling.
I returned home, much dismayed, and fell asleep in my great chair. Evening fell, and I was awakened by the soft creak of the opening door. I opened my eyes without moving, and beheld my Amelia, whole and apparently sound. But just as I was about to call her name, I was struck with ghastly horror.
She wore only her nightdress, and from chin to toes was stained with blood. Her hair was a fright, tangled and matted with leaves and twigs. But it was her eyes that bespoke the greatest change. They were the piercing eyes of an animal, a fiend, a monster—eyes that I had seen before, in the moment when Sir Francis unmasked the Baron Zginski’s true nature.
I watched her ascend the stairs to the bedroom, and when I heard the door close, I followed. I opened our bedroom door to find her asleep, as naked as when she was born, her body plump and pink and positively gorged with blood. Crimson trickles ran from the corners of her lips, and she seemed to smile.
I acted quickly. Whilst she was unconscious, I lashed her hand and foot to the bed with the stoutest cord I could find. I placed a crucifix upon her neck, and readied a sharp stake for the awful work ahead. Then I waited, breathless with anticipation, for the fluttering of her eyelids that signaled wakefulness.
It came just after dawn. At first she tried to stretch luxuriously and then, finding herself immobilized, struggled frantically. But the sunlight had robbed her of her satanic strength, and when her gaze finally fell upon me it was full of unimaginable pity.
‘Oh, my husband, what have you done?’ she exclaimed.
‘I wonder, rather, what you have done,’ I responded. ‘You are the infamous Bleeder, are you not? The fiend who has been murdering throughout the region. You are a vampire, as that monstrous Baron Zginski was so long ago.’
‘Alas, it is true,’ she wept. ‘He seduced me in my youth, and when he was destroyed I became so distraught I took my own life, and thus damned myself. I have in fact been dead since shortly after you met me, my husband, but I loved you so much I restrained my nature, taking only what I needed from you as you slept. You were never the wiser, and all would have been well, except you heeded the call of duty. In your absence the hunger grew unbearable, and I became the fiendish hell spawn you see before you.’ She managed to control herself. ‘Do as you must, my husband. Free me from this curse, and the world from my horror.’
I raised the wooden stake above her breast. ‘I will release you from this torment, my precious Amelia. And I will stamp out this curse!’ With that, I drove the stake through the heart of the woman I loved.
My life changed dramatically after that. I journeyed back to Passelwaithe, and found that many of the other victims had similarly tormented their loved ones. With the help of the good Dr. Jermin, I dispatched them as well. None escaped our crusade.
But along with this experience came knowledge, knowledge of the most nefarious sort. I realized that Sir Francis had not, in fact, destroyed the Baron Zginski, but instead had reduced him to immobility so lon
g as the knife remained imbedded in his heart. Should it be removed, the monster would rise again and resume his predation.
At first I approached Sir Francis himself, in the weeks before his death. I offered to purchase the remains, but he rebuked me, and had me arrested when I attempted stealthy entrance to his home. He felt that any being capable of such deception deserved the courtesy, as he put it, of possible revival at some future time when he might be safely awakened, contained, and studied. In this I felt he was being unutterably, unbelievably foolish.
After Sir Francis passed from this world, I kept track of the Zginski coffin, offering many times to buy it for exorbitant amounts. I was always turned away, and often ridiculed. Twice I was imprisoned.
I also began to study. I immersed myself in the legends of the undead, from the Philippine aswang to the Greek vrykolakas. I sought common denominators that might help me identify the process by which a flesh-and-blood mortal became one of these fiends. Eventually I was able to make certain determinations about the nature of vampires, and this allowed me to create a substance that would destroy the vile beings from within, in the same way opium and other drugs left even the strongest man a helpless, doomed addict.
At last, unable to procure the coffin for myself, I followed it and the rest of Colby’s collection to America, to the museum he had endowed in his will. The Red Palace became my new home, and I, employed as a lowly exhibit technician, began my search through its disorganized holdings for the remains of my mortal foe.
I also perfected the substance I called poudre de la mort vraie and sought a member of the infernal brotherhood on which to test it. I found one named Toddy, a singularly unintelligent nosferatu who easily became addicted to heavily diluted samples, returning each Saturday for more. At last I entrusted him with an entire bag of the full-strength powder, hoping that, like the poison tracked to its nest by a cockroach, he would carry it back to his brethren.
Eventually I also identified the crate containing Zginski’s remains. By then, I was too old to risk opening it myself and facing off against the creature that, although weakened by his imprisonment, would nonetheless still possess his demonic energy. So through forged memoranda and other means, I arranged for it to be opened at the local university. It is unfortunate that it cost the life of the woman in charge, and more unfortunate that others may have suffered since I was unable to be there myself. But if you, Baron Zginski, are reading this, then my trap has been sprung. I have tested my formula, and know that it is effective. A single dose will incapacitate even one as powerful as you, and then you will know you have been defeated. My wife will be avenged, and your scourge will be eliminated from God’s creation. The chase of a lifetime, of my lifetime, nears its end.
CHAPTER 32
ZGINSKI CLOSED THE folder containing the neatly handwritten confession and placed it on the table. “Concise and well done. And I must say, much better written than Colby’s. That certainly explains everything, Signalman Reynolds.”
“ ‘Signalman’ who?” Fauvette asked. “So that isn’t Sir Colby?”
“No, as I believe I told you, Sir Francis is, apparently, truly dead.”
“Alas, it is so,” Reynolds agreed.
“Never heard no one really say ‘alas,’ ” Leonardo said softly to Mark.
“Then who is this?” Olive demanded, expressing her confusion with a belligerent head bob.
“An old acquaintance,” Zginski said. Now that he knew their pursuer was not Sir Francis, he was ashamed of his own faltering resolve and furious with himself for his cowardice. “The manuscript explains it all.”
“That was its purpose,” Reynolds said. He placed the spray nozzle in a rack with three others; the compressor beneath the table continued to softly hiss. He carefully adjusted the valves, then stood with apparent great effort. He was pitifully frail, and his clothes hung awkwardly on his bent, gnarled form. He trembled as he tried to straighten his stooped body. “My memory of specific events grows blurry on occasion. This way, you can have no doubt as to who I am and why I must finally, genuinely, kill you.”
He peered up at Zginski over his half-glasses. His eyes sparkled with an intelligence unbowed by the passage of time. “I have so looked forward to this moment, Baron Zginski. You can have no idea.”
“So this old fart came up with that powder?” Leonardo asked. The suspense had also gotten to him, and like Zginski he now felt foolish. “That means he killed Toddy. Figures the dumb peckerhead would get taken out by someone like this.”
Reynolds pulled another pair of glasses, this one with full lenses, from his pocket and replaced the half-spectacles he wore for work. He smiled at Leonardo, revealing irregular yellowed teeth. “You would be Leo. Leonardo, the ‘soul brother,’ who likes to sit in the rafters. Your friend Toddy told me much about you. He thought you a credit to your people.”
“That sounds like him,” Leonardo said. “He mean niggers or bloodsuckers?”
Reynolds ignored the question. He looked at the others and pointed a gnarled finger. “Olive, correct? Who is so smart and lovely.”
“He thought I was smart?” Olive said, eyes wide.
“Well, it was Toddy,” Mark said.
“And Mark, who thinks he’s everyone’s big brother. Or should that be blood brother?” Reynolds laughed, but it quickly devolved into a wheeze. “And this lovely creature would be Fauvette. Toddy thought you the most beautiful thing in the world. He called you his ‘shadow goddess.’ ”
“We shall waste no more time on this,” Zginski said. “What is the purpose of this charade?”
Reynolds smiled. “Charade? This is no charade, I assure you. I have invented a way to rid the world of your kind’s pestilence by providing you with an irresistible way of destroying yourselves. And the purpose? Why, I should think it clear. I mean to avenge my wife’s untimely demise and prevent others from sharing her fate.”
Zginski evaluated his options. Killing the old man was the most expedient resolution, and would certainly take little effort. Yet the man’s continued existence seemed a fitter punishment. There was no way this feeble creature could be a threat to him. He would never become addicted to Reynolds’s gray powder, the poudre de la mort vraie; his elaborate scheme had come to nothing. “We are leaving,” he said to the others.
Reynolds’s doddering suddenly vanished. With a snarl of contempt he snatched one of the compressed-air sprayers from the rack and shoved the nozzle into Zginski’s mouth. A loud emphatic hiss followed and a cloud of the gray dust filled the air, most of it forced straight down Zginski’s throat. Reynolds fell back against the table, his limited energy spent in that one forceful action.
“No!” Fauvette shouted and pushed Reynolds across the room. He struck the wall between the tables and slid to the floor.
Zginski gagged and clawed at his throat. The powder had been injected down his inert windpipe into both lungs and stomach, and was already doing its damage. A numbness spread within him like a ball being inflated. Worse was the growing emotional turmoil, dredging up every cowardly, base, or demeaning feeling he’d ever experienced. He was a walking corpse, feared and unloved, and his diabolical existence was an affront to everything good and beautiful. The memory of all those he had killed, used, or injured rose with lifelike vividness; the women of Passelwaithe swarmed around him, screaming their pain and fury from the hell to which he had condemned them. He deserved this dry, desiccating death.
Fauvette and Leonardo grabbed him as he collapsed. Mark yanked all the air nozzles free of their compressor and threw them aside. Olive just stared, hands clapped to her face.
Reynolds laughed as he slowly stood. A trickle of red streaked his white hair, and his eyes gleamed with demented triumph. “He is already dead, truly dead. Only living blood can save him, and none of you can provide it!”
Leonardo glared at the old man. “You full of blood, honky. Don’t make me chase you down.”
Reynolds pushed up his sleeves to reveal scabbed needle
tracks. “My blood is laced with the powder. Drinking from me would only hasten the inevitable. His arrogance has doomed him at last.”
He stumbled past Mark and Olive and stared into the vampire’s fading, dull eyes. “Your soul will be free, Rudolfo Vladimir Zginski. It is more than you deserve. As to where it ends up, that is between you and the devil.”
“Rudy!” a new voice cried.
Lee Ann stood in the doorway. She was disheveled, wide-eyed, and sported cuts on her arms. She dashed into the room, pushed Fauvette aside, and ran her hands over Zginski’s stiffening body. “Oh, God, Rudy, what’s happened?”
“No!” Reynolds screeched. “No, no, no!” He grabbed Lee Ann’s shoulders and feebly tried to push her away. “Get out of here! This doesn’t concern you!”
Zginski’s head lolled back. His eyes were now cloudy and blank.
“It would take all your blood to save him,” Reynolds cried desperately to Lee Ann. “You would die! You would become one of them! Run, while you can!”
Mark pulled Reynolds away. Lee Ann brushed Zginski’s hair back from his face. His skin was stained gray from the burst of powder. “Rudy, please, say something, tell me what to do!” Tears ran down her cheeks. “Please, don’t leave me, I need you!” Zginski’s body grew rigid and immobile. His mouth gaped in a static, silent cry.
Lee Ann looked at Fauvette. In her desperate eyes, Fauvette saw the last thing she expected: real love. “Will my blood save him?” she demanded.
Fauvette shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Lee Ann whirled to Reynolds. “Will it?”
“Moments to go,” Reynolds cackled. “Mere moments. The dose he got was a thousand times what killed Toddy. No one can save him. Look, he’s not even struggling. He wants this!”
Lee Ann took Fauvette’s face in her hands. “Don’t let me come back,” she said softly.
Fauvette nodded. “I promise.”
Then Lee Ann tossed her long hair to one side, exposing Fauvette’s bite. She worked her neck against Zginski’s mouth until she felt his fangs slice into the flesh over her carotid. She pressed against him, driving the teeth through her skin down to the artery. It burned like a branding iron. Then she gasped as blood burst from her neck into his slack mouth.