by Amy Cross
"My what?"
She smiled.
He frowned.
"Oh. My shoes. Sorry, they make my feet sweat," Marlowe replied, glancing down and seeing that there was a hole in his left sock, exposing his big toe. "Um... yes, that's bad," he added unnecessarily.
"So what time are they gonna throw you out tonight?"
"They're supposed to close up at midnight," Marlowe explained, "but sometimes I persuade Jerry to..." He paused, before smiling awkwardly. "I shouldn't tell you any of this," he continued eventually. "Forget I said anything. It's just a little arrangement between friends."
"You arranged a lock-in?" Amanda asked, raising a quizzical eyebrow. "Seriously? A lock-in at the museum?"
"They open up again at five in the morning, so it's not that long," Marlowe continued, stammering slightly. "I know it's against policy, but Jerry realizes I'm not going to do anything stupid. I just get on with my work, alone and uninterrupted, and then I head home when everyone else comes in. It's a little anti-social, but I get more done this way." He paused for a moment. "Not that I'm an anti-social person in general, of course," he added suddenly, with a hint of panic. "I just prefer to work in an anti-social manner, and the result is that I don't have time to be social, which..." He paused, aware of Amanda's amused smile. "I suppose that is rather anti-social of me, isn't it?"
There was another awkward pause, which ended as the elevator door slid open. Lately, Marlowe seemed to be bumping into Amanda Carter several times a day, and so naturally he'd begun to think about her a little more than usual. She was attractive and intelligent, but he knew that she was totally out of his league. He'd long ago given up the thought that such a woman would ever be interested in him, although he had to admit that she seemed friendly enough.
"This is my ride," Amanda said, smiling as she stepped into the elevator. "Have a good night!"
Marlowe nodded politely, before turning to walk away.
"Wait!" Amanda said suddenly, reaching out and forcing the doors back open. She had a mischievous glint in her eyes, and a cautious smile on her lips. "Are you by any chance working on the stuff that came in from Bulgaria?"
Marlowe stared at her, startled by such a direct question.
"Well. Are you?"
"Um..." Marlowe paused, suddenly feeling slightly sweaty. "I'm not sure I know what you're talking about."
"The stuff from the burial site."
"Um..."
"Come on, I know you know."
"I... No, I really don't..."
"Liar," Amanda continued, biting her bottom lip for a moment. The elevator door tried again to close, but she held it open. "You know exactly what I'm talking about. The crates that are supposed to be secret, even though everyone's talking about them in the canteen. They arrived three nights ago on a flight from Bucharest. Before that, they'd come up by land from northern Bulgaria. Somewhere near Lovech, I heard. The whole place is buzzing with gossip about them." She waited for a reply, and there was a look in her eyes that suggested she wasn't likely to give up easily. "There's fifteen of them, right? Fifteen bodies in fifteen crates, all found with markings that suggest they were buried as vampires."
"Official policy is to not discuss the bodies," Marlowe replied uncomfortably. "The Bulgarian government put some very strict restrictions on what we can do and who can see them. Their ministry faced a bit of a backlash at home after they agreed to let us have them, so they had to make it clear that we'd be respecting the dead. I'm afraid I can't... I can't..." He paused. "I mean, I just can't talk about it at all."
"I know it's a sensitive subject," Amanda replied, "but it's not like I'm going to tell anyone, is it?"
"That's really not the issue," Marlowe muttered. "We have certain considerations to take into account."
"Of course you do," Amanda said. "You have to be culturally sensitive while you're pillaging the cultural history of a foreign country." She paused, as if she was trying to decide how far she could push him. "So... can I see them?"
"Out of the question," Marlowe replied immediately. People had been bugging him for a peek for days, and he'd turned them all down. He had a strict policy when it came to the specimens, and he was determined to ensure that they didn't become some kind of freak-show. After all, they were people once, and they deserved to be treated with a modicum of respect.
"Is there no chance at all?" Amanda asked, stepping out of the elevator chamber. Seconds later, the doors slid shut. "I just want to see them. You've got them all laid out, right? They're in one of the rooms in this wing, I know they are. Come on, Marlowe, I won't tell anyone and I swear, I won't touch them. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. What are you gonna do with them when the research is over? Ship them back to Bulgaria so they can be buried again?"
"Dr. Carter, please -"
"Call me Amanda," she said with a smile. "And it's not just morbid curiosity. The work I'm doing on Indo-Chinese cultures has some overlaps. Vampires pop up in pretty much every socio-cultural narrative in the world, so the bodies you're studying could have relevance for researchers around the world. All I'm asking for is a little sneak peek at what you're doing, instead of having to wait for your paper to come out next year. I'd owe you a big favor."
Marlowe stared at her, trying to stay strong
"Come on. Please?"
"I really can't..."
"I'd love to pick your brains about the specimens. Maybe after I've taken a look at them, we could get together and discuss them properly some time?"
Marlowe opened his mouth to tell her that it was quite out of the question.
"Maybe over dinner?"
He swallowed hard, feeling himself starting to weaken.
She smiled.
"You can't tell a soul," he said eventually. "Not one person. Seriously, there are strict rules in place and there'll be consequences if it gets out that I've -"
"It won't get out," Amanda said, grinning. She seemed fired up with a rare kind of enthusiasm that had already begun to infect Marlowe. "Come on. It's late. The place is dark and deserted. If we screamed right now, no-one'd hear us. I think there might even be a storm brewing outside. So let's go. Show me the vampires!"
Two
The bodies were laid out on a series of metal trays, each of which was set on a table in the main laboratory. A humming air-conditioning unit kept the temperature of the room low, which was just as well since the bodies were in various states of decomposition. Some were just a collection of bones, while others still had small amounts of skin; some were dull brown and yellow, while a few were bright and white, as if they'd been bleached by the sun. There was a small marker on each tray, giving the bodies an identification number, and various pieces of lifting and scanning equipment waited on the far side of the room for use later.
"People were driven by fear back then," Marlowe explained, as he and Amanda walked slowly between the tables that held the bodies. "The Black Death was spreading across Europe. People were dropping dead, and no-one knew why. I guess it's no surprise that after medicine failed to provide an answer, people turned to other explanations. They started to anthropomorphize the disease, to give it a face. They sought to pin blame on foreigners and people who were different. It wasn't long before folk stories sprang up, warning of ghoulish figures that traveled the world, bring pestilence and death while sucking the blood of fair young maidens."
"Gotta have some fair young maidens in the story somewhere," Amanda replied wryly. "Even back then, sex helped to sell an idea." She paused by one of the trays, admiring a collection of hones. "So these people were killed because they were suspected of being vampires?"
"Killed or exhumed, yes," Marlowe said. "These superstitious beliefs were flexible, so they could adapt to fit changing circumstances. Obviously there was no specific science involved in the various practices, so there tended to be a lot of variation in terms of how suspected vampires were treated. One thing remained constant, however. The main aim was to dismember the dead body in a
manner that would keep the supposed vampire from coming back to life. That's what people were scared of. They believed that the undead were the cause of mankind's suffering. In reality, of course, it was actually all caused by rats and their disease-infested fleas."
The pair of them stopped next to a table that held a complete human skeleton. The bones were laid out fairly conventionally, with one notable exception: a large brick had been rammed into the mouth, evidently with enough force to break the jawbone in several places.
"It seems crazy now," Marlowe continued, "but the idea here was that if the corpse's mouth was kept open, the vampire wouldn't be able to rise and claim new victims. As you can imagine, logic was in short supply. Bodies with bricks in their mouths have been found all across Europe. Based on initial observations of the way in which the bricks were inserted, it seems that some were introduced after death, but some might have been..." He paused for a moment, wondering how much graphic detail he should provide. He usually hated explaining his work to people, but for some reason he was enjoying this little late-night chat with Amanda.
"Some of them were killed by having the brick rammed into their mouth?" Amanda asked, clearly more fascinated than bothered by such a gruesome idea.
"Possibly," Marlowe said. "As I explained earlier -"
"What about this one?" she continued, walking over to a nearby table where a skull was resting between a pair of skeletal legs. "Tell me about this one."
"This was another common way of dealing with a supposed vampire," Marlowe explained. "The head would be removed, and then it would be placed between the legs. Sometimes the arms would be removed as well, possibly to ensure that the head couldn't be re-attached in the grave. The idea here seems to have been to make sure that when the creature inevitably woke up in the coffin, it'd have no way of escaping. Again, they were trying to ensure that the vampire couldn't put itself back together after it had been killed."
"Quaint," Amanda said with a smile. Like a kid in a candy store, she was making her way from table to table, examining each body in turn. "And this one?" she asked, stopping next to another table, where the bones seemed completely jumbled.
"Another ingenious attempt to prevent a vampire from returning," Marlowe said. "The body would be sliced in half lengthways, and one of the halves would then be placed upside down in the coffin. There are a few different variations of this approach. In some cases, the two halves were even buried in separate coffins. Again, the idea was to provide a physical barrier to the body's reconstitution. In the narrow space afforded to the corpse, there'd simply be no way for the vampire to fix itself. I mean, it's a ludicrous concept, but in the absence of clear and rational thought, people believed this kind of rubbish." He paused, looking down at the nearest body. "These were just innocent people who probably aroused curiosity simply by virtue of looking a little weird or behaving strangely, or happening to arrive in strange lands at a time when paranoia was running high. They were scapegoats."
"And people really believed that this kind of thing happened?" Amanda continued. "They really thought these vampires were gonna wake up down there in the graves?"
Marlowe nodded. "It wasn't entirely uncommon for people to be buried alive by accident. Medical capabilities were somewhat primitive, so people could quite easily slip into a coma and be pronounced dead, only to wake up after they'd been placed in their graves. Imagine walking through a cemetery and hearing a faint banging sound from deep beneath the ground. Doctors often didn't want to admit that they'd made mistakes, so they were happy to encourage more lurid explanations."
"It's freezing in here," Amanda said, her eyes fixed on one of the corpses. "They must be so cold."
"Have you heard of Mercy Brown?" Marlowe asked after a moment. "True story. Rhode Island, 1892. Mercy was a nineteen-year-old girl who died of tuberculosis. When multiple members of the same family were also struck down over the next few years, the locals decided a vampire must be responsible. The bodies of the victims were dug up, and all but one of them showed signs of decomposition. Mercy's body was apparently fresh and clean, as if it hadn't decayed at all. Naturally, this set tongues wagging, so the locals acted on their superstitions." He paused for a moment, enjoying the look of rapt attention on Amanda's face. "They cut out Mercy's heart, burned it, and mixed the remains into a potion that they believed could cure people of various conditions. In their rush to defeat the monster, they acted like barbarians. In their rush to protect the innocent, they became savages."
"The Mercy Brown case was over a hundred years ago," Amanda pointed out. "People don't change, though, do they? Not really." Walking across the room, she stopped next to another of the bodies. "What about this one?" she asked eventually. "The head's still attached. No brick in the mouth. It barely looks to have been touched."
"That's an interesting one," Marlowe replied, heading over to join her. "Look at the neck. Don't you see something?"
Peering more closely, Amanda saw that there was a jagged line running around the circumference of the corpse's neck. This was one of the few bodies that retained some of its skin and hair.
"The head was removed at one point," Amanda said eventually, "and then reattached. Do you know why they'd have done that?"
Marlowe shrugged. "These were panicked, superstitious people. They might well have exhumed each body several times, doing different things on each occasion as they desperately tried to prevent the Black Death from spreading. But you're right, it is odd that they seem to have reversed track with this body. Look at the jaw, too. Signs of fracture around the edges. The only logical conclusion is that a brick was inserted into the mouth and later removed."
"But if it healed," Amanda said, examining the clear signs of trauma around the body's mouth, "that suggests..." She turned to look at Marlowe. "This one was alive when it was... for want of a better term, un-bricked."
"Apparently," Marlowe continued. "They inserted the brick and then, for whatever reason, they removed it and the poor bastard began to heal. At a later date, they also seem to have tried staking him." Grabbing a pair of latex gloves from a nearby counter, he made sure to cover his hands before pointing at a contusion on the ribcage. "See here? We've already done some scans of this body, and most of the heart seems to be missing, so I'm guessing they staked him and then opened him up to take the heart away. As for why they didn't take the whole heart, that's something of a mystery. Blind panic, I guess. The procedure was most likely carried out by someone who lacked medical training."
"Death by mob," Amanda replied. "I doubt it's a very pleasant way to go."
"Excruciatingly painful, I'd have thought," Marlowe said, “and probably quite terrifying. At least we have a name for this one, or at least a possible name. Edgar Le Compte. I can't help wondering what poor Edgar did to deserve such a horrific death. Whatever it was, it's almost as if the locals remained scared of him. The evidence suggests that he was dug up and re-buried half a dozen times. They must have been particularly scared of him."
"The terrifying Edgar Le Compte," Amanda said, staring down at the bones. "A man to be feared, huh?"
"You want to know something crazy?" Marlowe asked with a half-smile. "When this specimen arrived, the jaw was closed, but last night I noticed it seemed to be open just a fraction of a millimeter. And tonight, it's open a little more. It's almost as if he's slowly opening his mouth. It's undoubtedly the result of structural pressures, and possibly a change in the gases deep within the bone, but nonetheless, it's a fascinating phenomenon. Even today, and even in death, the human body retains the capacity to spook us a little."
They stood in silence for a moment.
"Do you ever..." Amanda started to say, before pausing.
"Do I ever what?" Marlowe asked.
"Well," she continued, looking around at all the bodies. "I know these were all normal humans who fell victim to superstition, but when you're working here alone, late at night, don't you ever feel..." She smiled nervously. "You know what I mean, right? None of
us can truly say that we don't think about things like that."
"Do I ever wonder if they were actual vampires?" He paused. "No. Never. I've studied this kind of thing for too long to let it affect me. It's all about knowledge. If you can explain something, there's no need to be scared of it. If you can't explain something, put aside the fear and keep going until you have an answer."
"You really believe that?"
"I think humans are humans," Marlowe replied. "Any place, any time, humans have certain basic fears. Other animals do, too. Superstition is part of being alive. Until the day when we understand everything around us, every phenomenon and every event, we as a species are going to be prone to this kind of fear." He looked back down at one of the skulls. "Given the right circumstances, this kind of thing could easily happen again. This kind of paranoia and superstition, it's still inside us all, waiting until the next time we're scared."
"Edgar Le Compte," Amanda said, staring down at the nearest body. "What a way to die. Poor Edgar, huh?"
Three
"You're in a good mood," said Wade early the following morning, as he carried a set of beakers over to his desk.
"Am I?" Marlowe replied, not looking up from his examination of some scar tissue on one of the bodies. "Sorry. I didn't mean to worry you."
"Quite the reverse," Wade continued, pausing for a moment to watch his supervisor. "I might be out of line here, but I can't help noticing that every time I look over at you today, you have this weird little smile on your face. Don't get me wrong, it's a good thing, but you're normally less..." His voice trailed off as he realized there was no appropriate way to finish that sentence.
"Less?"
"Less... happy?" He watched Marlowe for a few seconds. "Did you talk to that woman again?"
"What woman?"
"That one you keep bumping into. The kinda hot one from down the hall."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Marlowe said gruffly, focusing on his work.
"Yeah, you do. Medium tall, good figure, dark hair, dresses plain but has a smile like maybe there's a bit more to her when you get under the bonnet."