by A. L. Mengel
“Will do, thanks.”
Hello there, Mr. Wilkes.
I looked down at the body, now knowing who it was.
You certainly have changed from this photo I have of you here. You are barely recognizable now. I can barely even tell that you are human. What the hell happened to you?
He certainly no longer looked like his picture. I studied it for a moment; Sheldon was his first name, scribbled in blue pen – like the thin sharpie kind of blue pen – at the bottom of the photo (it was a Polaroid so it had the white bottom).
Sheldon Wilkes.
He came down to Miami from Boston in 1985. His office was on Ponce De Leon and 5th. I pulled out some more of the file contents, walking over to the long black hearse patiently waiting a few feet away. I dumped the papers and photos over the hood.
There was a photo of a young, dark skinned man – perhaps in his late teens or early twenties in the file contents. I immediately picked up the photo and studied it, knowing precisely who it was.
Antoine Nagevesh.
“Now why is his picture in here?” I asked myself out loud, thumbing through the papers and news clippings, searching for an answer. I didn’t find one. But I knew who that was. No one in Miami could not know who that was – he has always been such a glutton for the media and the spotlight. But, where has he been lately?
My assistant Pat rolled up a gurney, guzzling a cola right out of the can. “This is a nasty one,” he commented, tossing the can in the woods. “Never seen one like this before!”
“Let’s just get him back to town,” I said, bending over above the head, placing my hands beneath the shoulders, positioning myself to hoist the dead weight onto the gurney. Now, closer than ever, I was hit by the stench of the rotting flesh. I brought my hand up to my face pocket of dead air hit me in the face with full force, almost knocking me back off my feet.
Sheldon’s face was practically discernable.
There were gaping holes where the eyes had once been, the cheeks were sunken and lifeless, and it looked like the corpse had been rotting for years yet it was believed to have just been dumped near the woods recently. The body was dry and dusty, but heavy.
Dead weight.
So dry and so dead yet so heavy. Like his body was freshly gone but almost completely decomposed at the same time. Pat and I strained at the weight of the once overweight man despite his current dried out state and hoisted him on the gurney.
We were both out of breath, and I took a white handkerchief out of my shirt pocket and mopped my sweaty brow.
Yes, I feel like a killer.
This is the type of scene that I am subjected to on a daily basis. Sure, not every scene is as gruesome as dear Sheldon here – and not every scene is so mysterious. A lot of times, it’s your typical gunshot wounds or suicides – the kind where a down and out sorry girl runs the bathtub full of water until it overflows and slits her wrists. Then usually the family doesn’t notice that she’s gone until pink water starts dripping through the ceiling to the floor below.
And then shortly I show up.
That’s a more typical scene. But Sheldon here, he is different. He was found miles from where he had apparently died, and he left all of his liquids and fluids on the sidewalk in front of his office. And here he was, lying on the side of the road, at the edge of the woods, drained and dried, waiting to be discovered.
*~*~*
The drive back to town took roughly thirty minutes. Pat and I did not speak the entire way. I just smoked a steady stream of menthol 100’s, one right after another, and Pat drank another two colas. We had to drive with the windows rolled all the way down so our hair was blowing back and forth in the wind to keep the stench from overpowering us.
But let me tell you how I feel like a killer.
After we had arrived with the body, like so many times, there would be the traditional viewings and services and family gatherings – but not in Sheldon’s case. He apparently did not know anyone. His body sat for days unclaimed and it finally was going to be cremated. At this point, it was so decomposed that he resembled a gruesome ghoul rather than a dead mortal.
And this is the fun part.
Box up the body, slide it in.
Turn the bitch on!
And then reduced to ashes. So many times I light a cigarette and exhale, closing my eyes and listening to the cracking of the flames, the gas. Sometimes I have to interrupt it and reposition the body so the chest remains on the hottest part of the flame, but I have become numb to the half burned bodies of rotted flesh that was bubbling and boiling off of the bones in heat of the chamber.
The cold, pale green tiles – with their crusty old dead mosquito carcasses and dried spots of rust colored blood and bright florescent lights always remind me of where I am. No matter how warm and clean one keeps their house, once they come to me, it’s the dusty tiles. The dead bugs. The cold, stark stainless steel and the harsh florescent lighting.
No more warm dinners at the table. You’re with me now. But I am not in the bowels of hell, I am here working – earning my living.
And damn I’m good at it.
And so I closed the door on poor Mr. Wilkes, as he said his last goodbyes to the world. The bang of the steel door reverberated against the walls of the crematorium, with a deep reverberating echo.
“So long, Sheldon,” I said as I pressed the button to ignite the fire. There was a small, round window to the left of the door that filled with flames as the button was pressed, and the chamber roared to life and shook with heat…
*~*~*
CHAPTER THREE
…Fast forward to Frankfurt.
Darius stepped off of a looming 747 with brown leather suitcase in tow, a small, stone urn tucked under his arm. He held the urn so tight that the veins protruded on the back of his hands and the skin had turned red.
But he would not let go.
The first thing that he remembered when he walked through the Frankfurt airport was the overpowering, sweet intoxicating smell of cigarette smoke. The terminal was teeming with activity, despite the early morning hour. The sun had already risen, and he stopped for a moment, looking out the expansive windows to the tarmac, and watched the sun rise. The hue of the sky turned from dark blue to pale as the sun made itself known to the world. The rays began to shine across the airport, catching the gleaming airplanes and shining in his eyes.
He stood and gazed out the window until the sun had risen fully and had to shield his eyes. The glorious sunrise was something that he had forgotten about when he was immortal, something that he had taken for granted before he had transformed and lived so much in the darkness of night.
But as a mortal again, as he sat and drank the beauty, he paused. He looked at the sky and the sun through human eyes once again, and made himself a promise to that once he became immortal again, he would no longer take the pleasures of being a mortal for granted ever again.
Looking down at the urn, he made a promise to Antoine to find a way to resurrect him.
Tonight I will bury you, where you had buried me. And then the quest begins.
Darius checked his watch, noticing the time but also noticing his skin.
It was aging.
He saw spots that weren’t there a short time ago. Time was running out fast.
He turned and exited, hailing a cab, and it sped away into the chaotic airport traffic.
As the cab weaved into traffic, he began to doze and remember…
…It was a sunlit afternoon, the sun was shining through the canopy of the trees and the cicadas were singing in the middle of a hot and sticky southern summer. It seemed like the ocean and its cooling breezes were miles away, yet in reality they were a short walk.
It was summertime in Miami.
The hottest southern city.
Darius remembered that much.
The shade of the canopy above offered some relief from the pounding sun, and he walked down the center of the street. The street was quiet and lazy, and
there wasn’t a car in sight except for one small silver Escort sitting at the end of the street, parking on the side half on the grass and half on the blacktop right in front of a stop sign.
He stopped and stared through the voluptuous blooming bushes that lined the sides of Andelusia and waited. He saw the grand mason columns on the largest, imposing mansion on the street – and they beckoned to him to come and enter.
But things were different now. The sun was shining, and the heat was stifling. And the sweat poured down his brow.
Oh to be a mortal.
The door opened. He moved closer to the bushes, parting the leaves, and peered through the foliage at the door. He desperately tried to see how the door had opened. But he could not see. He saw the white paint on the door reflecting the bright afternoon sun, he saw the lion shaped knocker and the potted palms that lined the expansive porch.
He strained to hear. He strained to hear what might be transpiring. But all that he had heard other than the chorus of cicadas had been the creak of the door. And that creak had pierced the quiet hot air.
Darius quietly moved down the hedges towards the entrance to the front garden. His curiosity overtook him. What a mortal curiosity. Upon reaching the edge of the bushes, he peered around towards the house, being careful to keep his body concealed by the foliage. The front door was standing wide open. The front garden was in full bloom – full of rainbow colored hibiscus flowers and birds of paradise – and eerily bright. The door led to total darkness. Not even the afternoon sunlight could penetrate.
But Antoine was dead. He was sacrificed and burned to ash, and waiting in his urn. Antoine was dead. Plain and simple. Sheldon was dead, and there was his car, right where he last left it. But somehow that door opened. Someone was either inside Antoine’s house – or had just entered. And Darius had not heard or noticed anyone else on lazy Andelusia.
So was someone inside looking out?
*~*~*
“Sir? Are you awake? Baumholder sir!”
Darius slowly opened his eyes, temporarily forgetting where he was. He looked around groggily. The cream colored interior of a taxi-cab slowly came into focus. A fat, mustachioed cab driver, facing him from the front seat, looked at him expectantly, eyebrows raised. “We are here at Baumholder, sir,” he said in a thick German accent.
Darius yawned and stretched, gathered his belongings and paid the cab driver. Once outside, he felt the chill in the air. It was quite damp and cloudy, a far cry from the weather in Miami that he had grown accustomed to, and it started to drizzle shortly after the cab sped away.
He looked around at his surroundings.
There were rolling hills and small houses, the town looked very quaint and very European. He still had some of his journey left before he could bury Antoine, but for tonight he would rest. He walked to a small Inn that had a pub on the first floor. He ate a dinner of bratwurst and beer, and retired early, with Antoine’s urn on the dresser next to his bed.
It took a long time for him to get to sleep that night despite his sheer physical exhaustion. It was the first time that he had lain in a bed since he had been in America, but his mind was racing too much. The anxiety that ate at him prevented his mind from shutting down. He didn’t know how much time he had left as a mortal. It seemed that his former immortality had caused him to age much more rapidly, as if his former mortal body was trying to catch up in the aging process.
And it scared him.
He had to get the Cup before he died.
And the only one who could direct him to it is closed up in an urn on the bedside table. He had no choice but to bury Antoine as was the custom, but the only one who could raise him was the one who loved him and then betrayed him.
Nesmaron.
He remembered Nesmaron, who had betrayed Antoine, and was the reason he was in this situation now.
Yes, Darius noticed a lot of things that he had taken for granted during his hundreds of years as an immortal. He noticed the sunrises and sunsets, which had had not seen since before he transformed; he noticed the heat from the flames that surrounded him the moment after his immortality had left his body; he felt the heat from the afternoon sun that he began walking in again as a mortal; he noticed things like food and drink, pleasure, and pain – all things that he had literally forgotten about.
But there were some things that he failed to notice. Certain things that he became oblivious to once stripped of his powers. There were two things that he didn’t notice that he would have had he still been immortal: a red haired woman, standing and smoking a cigarette across the airport terminal, observing him appreciate the morning sunrise gleam across the planes, and a dark figure standing in the doorway of Antoine’s foyer staring out at him in the hot afternoon sun.
And so the quest begins…
*~*~*
But the quest hadn’t yet begun for Douglas Kahn, as he slept soundly in the Hotel Ponce de Leon. It rose from the downtown sections of Coral Gables in its signature yellow, with steel railings in front of the windows, and exhibiting the Mediterranean style architecture of the buildings in the area.
When the sun rose and highlighted the Ponce, the rays shimmered through a gap in the drapes, through ivory shears, and roused Douglas from his dreaming.
He looked over at the clock.
It was quarter to eight, and he knew that he would be meeting Jim in the lobby soon. So he swung his legs from the bed, fished his way to an oversized bathroom and marble laden shower.
When he was dressed in a short sleeve white button down and beige slacks, which had been a far cry from his customary darker pants and grey cardigan sweaters that he wore repeatedly at Boston College, he made his way down to the lobby and got inside a small, dusty elevator. There was a bellhop in the elevator who politely confirmed that he was headed downstairs to the lobby. And then, when the doors closed, he closed his eyes for a just a moment.
And then he saw the bodies again, and shuddered.
There were bodies lining the streets, on the sidewalks; cars were abandoned, doors left open; windows were cracked and dusty. But this time, he wasn’t on the side of the street in downtown Coral Gables. He opened his eyes, and looked over at the Bellman, who returned a smile and nodded. Had the young man been reading his mind?
Douglas brushed off the thought and dashed across the lobby, ignoring the sign for the breakfast buffet. He found his way through the lobby doors and out into the morning sunshine.
There was certainly something about Ponce de Leon, perhaps about the explorer’s quest for youth, but the fact that he had been sitting on that boulevard in his original dream seemed to have no bearing on the second dream he had after he spoke with Jim on the phone.
The car was waiting outside of the hotel lobby, and Douglas got inside and didn’t say a word. He rested his chin on his hand and stared out the window as the city passed him by. Douglas didn’t notice Jim looking in the rearview mirror repeatedly, and he didn’t notice the look of concern that washed over the driver’s face. Douglas remained in his trance until Jim lowered the dividing glass and cleared his throat.
Douglas looked forward. “Oh, good morning, Jim.”
“Are you down sir? Is everything alright?”
Douglas shook his head and stared out the window, watching the tropical landscape fly by. “No, it’s not alright Jim. I honestly don’t know what I’m doing down here. I don’t know what Sheldon was doing down here. Nothing feels right here.”
When they approached a traffic light, Jim turned around for a moment. Douglas noticed the sweat on his brow, despite the air-conditioning running at full blast. Jim raised his eyebrows. “Do you want to tell me a little more about that dream you had?”
Douglas shook his head. “No Jim, I don’t. I am just starting to get an off feeling about this place. I just want to get done what I have to do and get the heck out of this place.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Before his journey to Miami, Douglas Kahn sat at his paper-strewn desk in fro
nt of a small picture window overlooking the gardens of Boston College. He had tired looking eyes and his salt and pepper hair was mussed. He sipped a steaming cup of black coffee as he scanned The Boston Globe, reading about the strange and mysterious disappearance of Sheldon Wilkes. As he read, he rubbed his puffy eyes, and every so often he checked his appearance in a small mirror that he kept in his upper right desk drawer.
It was early in the morning; the eastern sun was barely peeking into the eastern facing windows of his office, creating a warm glow. CNN was playing on a small television in a sitting area across from Doug’s desk that had a glass coffee table, several brown leather smoking style chairs (the kind with the brass buttons) and a large sofa.
But Doug wasn’t listening to CNN. He was engrossed in the article about his friend, despite his exhaustion.
He had heard about some strange happenings at The Vampire Society’s Coral Gables chapter. He read the article about Sheldon, which appeared in the Boston paper at the request of his family since he had attended Boston College in the sixties.
MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES IN MIAMI; FORMER BC SCHOLAR FEARED DEAD
Miami, FL –
One of Boston College’s most distinguished, honored and controversial alumni has gone missing in the city of Miami. Sheldon Wilkes, class of 1968, moved to the city in 1985 and quickly formed the southernmost chapter of The Vampire Society a year later in Coral Gables. That chapter quickly became one of the most active chapters in the nation; located in a diverse metropolis such as Miami that chapter was certain to flourish.
Sheldon promoted his chapter as a research facility and always dismissed the hocus-pocus attitude of the general population. In the mid 1990’s, he lobbied to change the name of his chapter to “The Astral”, dropping the Vampire distinction, as he was trying to gain the support of all forms of Christianity and drop the stigma of being a horror cult society.