It Drinks Blood

by J. F. Gonzalez

  “No, she doesn’t,” Allison said. “She never talks about them. I have no idea who I’m related to.”

  “Surely there has to be somebody,” I said, finding this hard to believe. “A second aunt, a step-sister…something like that. Hell, your grandmother was married to a man here in town. Your mother was raised here. There has to be somebody here that’s family to you.”

  Allison looked down at the floor. I could tell she felt shame. She sighed. “There’s nobody. And my mom’s drinking problem…the people she associates with…they’re all like her.”

  “They’re all heavy drinkers, too?” Jack asked, his voice soft.

  Allison nodded. She looked at him. “Yeah. I’ve been with her on the carnival circuit and they’re…” She scrunched up her face. Disgust. “Talk about hobos…I think some of them probably are.”

  Jack took a drag on his cigarette. He appeared reflective. “It’s such a shame,” he said, tapping the ash in the glass ashtray I’d set on the table between us. “I take it your mom’s been in and out of jail, too?”

  Allison shook her head. “Nuh-uh. That’s the amazing part. As much as she knocks us around, and as much as she drinks and associates with the wrong kind of people, she’s never been in trouble. I’m not so sure about her boyfriend James, though. I get the feeling he’s been arrested before, just not here in Pennsylvania.”

  “Where’s he from?” Jack asked.

  “He’s from Wisconsin, but he has family in Youngstown, Ohio.”

  “Well, it’s only a matter of time until your mother winds up in the slammer,” Ellen said. She’d finished the dishes and hung the dishtowel to dry. “I was surprised you and your grandmother didn’t press charges that night we rescued you. Why didn’t you?”

  Allison hung her head in shame. “I…I don’t really want to talk about it.”

  “And we won’t,” I said, quickly meeting Ellen’s gaze. My wife nodded and I think even Jack got the hint to end the conversation. Whatever reason Allison and her grandmother had for refusing to press charges, that was their problem. Not ours. We’d tried to help and got nothing but trouble for it.

  Spring slowly arrived with warmer days, interjected sometimes by cold rain and icy mornings. I saw more of Susan now since she appeared to not be hopping around on the carnival circuit; on warmer afternoons she would sit on her back deck, drinking a beer, reading a pulp magazine called Romance Stories. Sometimes James would be over and the two of them would talk, their voices occasionally getting loud and obnoxious. Allison stayed out of their way. She practically lived at my house by then. Every night she accompanied Grace and I on our walks. It was then that she began to open up more and confirm her suspicions to me about Doug Tinker.

  “I watch him, you know,” Allison said casually one day. We were walking along Carmichael Road that day. The week before, a truck had hit a deer and it had lain there for three weeks before the carcass was removed. The smell had been horrible.

  “Oh yeah? How?”

  “I have a pair of binoculars,” Allison admitted. “I sit up late and just look for stuff out the window. Did you know you can see really far into murder swamp with my binoculars?”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Do you know why they call that area murder swamp?”

  I shrugged, trying to remember some of the local gossip. “I’ve heard it got its nickname due to the Youngstown mobsters who would leave their victims there.”

  “My friend Austin told me a guy called the New Castle Butcher cuts people up, sucks their blood and leaves ‘em there.”

  “I’ve heard that, too.”

  Let me make a confession right here: due to the nature of my work, I had a keen interest in human psychology and true crime. After all, I wrote pulp fiction, most of it crime and detective fiction, as well as a lot of horror fiction. The real-life exploits of various crime figures of the time, especially Bugsy Seagel and Al Capone, riveted me. When I was a teenager, I was enthralled by the story of Jack the Ripper, still unknown (even to this day). I’d read about H.H. Holmes, Carl Panzram, Earle Nelson, all who gained media attention in the 1890’s and the early twentieth century. Closer to my own time (and the events that take place in this story) were the cases of Albert Fish, Joe Ball, and the elusive Torso Killer in Cleveland. On a personal level, I was no stranger to crime. I logged my first arrest at the age of twelve for breaking-and-entering. For a while I was a thief, a burglar. I cased various joints and arranged heists for larger gangs. I was never busted for the larger jobs, but I got picked up for smaller ones throughout my teenage years. I finally wised up and stopped that nonsense around the time I started writing pulp fiction for a living.

  “Do you think the New Castle Butcher was really Doug’s father?” Allison asked.

  “Looks like it,” I said. “The murders stopped after he was lynched.”

  “Wasn’t a dead hobo found in an abandoned railroad boxcar a few years ago not too far from here?”

  I nodded. “Yes, there was. But that doesn’t mean anything.”

  Allison didn’t say anything. She appeared to be deep in thought. After a moment, she said, “Doug goes there all the time.”

  “Goes where?”

  “To the woods near the railroad tracks.”

  “Really? How do you know?”

  “I watch him.”

  We stopped at the corner of Baker and Clay Street, about four blocks from our rural neighborhood. The day was brisk, slightly warm, but with a cool breeze. The leaves on the trees were a bright green. “What do you mean, you watch him?”

  “I look through my binoculars out my bedroom window,” Allison explained. “And I watch Doug leave the house in the middle of the night, after he gets home from work. After he gets home, he sets off again down the street. Thirty minutes later, he returns from the back and enters through the rear yard of his house—from murder swamp!”

  I was failing to see what Allison was getting at, although it should have been obvious. “I’m afraid I fail to see what the big deal is, Allison,” I said.

  “Doug is creepy! I told you he looks at me funny, right?

  “Yes, you did. What are you insinuating?”

  “What if he’s not only the New Castle Butcher…but he’s a vampire?”

  The idea was so absurd, I didn’t know what to say at first. Grace sat down, looked up at us, and wagged her tail.

  “You’re joking,” I said.

  “No, I’m not. I’m telling you, Mr. Brennan, I get a weird feeling about him. He’s not only creepy, he does weird things. Walking through murder swamp is one thing, but he also talks to hobos. I’ve seen him! I bet he and his father were in on those old murders together! I bet he learned everything from his father and now he’s a vampire or some other kind of ghoul, just like him! And—”

  “He talks to hobos?”

  Allison nodded. Her face was flushed with excitement.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Maybe he kills them and drinks all their blood!”

  “Now you’re just being ridiculous!”

  “I’m serious!”

  I shook my head. I had to admit, I was starting to get weird feelings about Doug for the past few months, especially after my initial conversations with Allison from last summer. In the intervening months, I’d see him on my walks with Grace. He seemed like a nice-enough, normal fellow on the surface. But there was something about him…his pale complexion, the dark clothing he wore, how he always stayed indoors during the day and only came out at night…

  …how all those murder victims that had been left decapitated and dismembered in the woods had also been drained completely of blood…

  “Well, I don’t think you have much to go on,” I said. I gave a slight tug at Grace’s leash, indicating that she should get up so we could resume our walk. Grace got up and heeled, staying close to my side as we kept walking. “I think you’re letting your imagination run away with you, Allison. Doug may be queer, but he’s not t
he legendary Butcher of New Castle, nor is he a vampire or a ghoul.”

  “But what if he is?”

  “He isn’t!” I insisted, perhaps a little too much. My heart was racing at the implications and I did my best to keep my feelings to myself. “What you’ve told me proves nothing! So he goes into the woods by himself at night? Big deal! You need solid evidence. And you can’t just spy on people like that!”

  “You’re no fun,” Allison said, and then she changed the subject to the carnival and her dread at this season.

  In early June, I went out of town on business to meet with some editors in New York. Susan and Allison had left town a week before me to work the carnival circuit. When I returned two weeks later, there was tremendous buzz in town over another murder that occurred three days after I left.

  Ellen told me about it: a group of scavengers came across the body on the north end of murder swamp, lying on a scrap heap. A second body was found close by, this one disarticulated and nothing but a skeleton. As with the previous murders in New Castle, there were no traces of blood anywhere. The remnants of scant clothing found nearby suggested the murderer’s typical victim: tramps and hobos. Sure enough, both victims were never identified.

  As summer continued, I settled into my routine. Susan and Allison blew into town every few weeks, staying a day or two, a week at most, then left again. I learned that Doug Tinker was home when it was estimated the unknown murder victim was probably killed. Meanwhile, over in Cleveland, there was a break in their case with the arrest of a fifty-four year old bricklayer who had confessed to two of the Cleveland Torso murders.

  I read about the arrest in the newspaper with avid interest. The suspect, Frank Dolezal, was by all accounts a troubled man. He was odd, had a tendency to be violent, and he hung out in the same area the murders occurred in. He was an immigrant from Bohemia, and lived within the Roaring Third section of Cleveland where most of the Cleveland Torso Slayings took place. It was reported he’d even bought drinks for one of the identified victims not long before she was murdered (a part-time prostitute named Florence Polillo). The trouble was, he kept changing his story. First, he denied killing Florence Polillo, then he admitted to the crime and attempted to lead detectives to her still-missing head. When investigators failed to find the head, he changed his story again, telling them he’d thrown it into Lake Erie. Later, he claimed he’d poured oil over the head and set it on fire. He kept changing his story until the editorial pages of the leading newspapers began to question the case. Later that summer, in August, he committed suicide in his jail cell. The sheriff of Cuyahoga County announced the case cleared, but others wanted an inquest.

  Allison became interested in both cases. She always made an effort to seek me out whenever she was in town for a brief stop during the carnival circuit. She changed that summer; she became brooding, wary, her mood dark and suspicious. There were times she rarely talked to me. I’d have to initiate the conversation, and she’d always answer in a gruff tone, like I was intruding on her space. This was not her typical behavior. It was only when I came outside with Grace and the dog leaped over to Allison, jumping all over her and showering the girl with face licks, that Allison’s façade would break. She’d laugh, take the dog in her arms and hug her while Grace wriggled in her grasp. Only then would she become the Allison I’d come to know.

  * * *

  On days or evenings when she was more herself, we’d talk about the latest murder victim in New Castle. And it was on one of those nights, when Jack and his family were at the house when Allison blurted out, “I think Doug’s a vampire!”

  Jack and I stopped our discussion and turned to Allison. Our wives and Jack’s kids were in the kitchen, getting dessert ready. Jack and I were sitting outside with Allison on lawn chairs, watching Grace chase fireflies. “You think Doug’s a what?” I asked.

  “He’s a vampire,” Allison stated. She was chewing on a piece of grass. “Only he didn’t kill those people back in the 1920s. His father did that…only his father did that to help his son. See, Doug’s always been a vampire, and his father knew it, so his father would—”

  I scowled at her. “You’ve been reading too many of those yarns in Terror Tales and Horror Stories. That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard come out of your mug.”

  “Just listen to what I have to say,” Allison began. “I’ve been watching Doug a lot lately, and—”

  Cathy came out with a batch of cookies. She heard Allison and said, “You think Doug is responsible for these new murders now? It wouldn’t surprise me. Like father, like son. I don’t like that man.”

  “Now honey, just because he lives by himself, doesn’t make the man a killer,” Jack said.

  “Not just a killer,” Allison stated. “A ghoul! A vampire!”

  “What’s a ghoul?” Cathy asked.

  I cut in before Allison could get a word in edgewise. “A ghoul is a creature that dines on corpses. It’s a horror fiction staple.”

  “It makes perfect sense!” Allison exclaimed. “Doug is a vampire! Allen killed those hobos to help his son. That’s why Doug never comes out, because people will see his pale skin and his creepy appearance. Only people found out about Allen and they lynched him. Now Doug has to go out himself to get food, only he’s not very good at it. Have you seen how thin he looks lately?”

  “No, I haven’t,” I said, frowning. The more I thought about it, the more I realized Allison was right. The talk around town said Doug had been a chunky fellow, like Susan. Now he was beanpole-thin and lanky. His pale skin made him seem downright cadaverous.

  “Aren’t ghouls supposed to be like dead bodies?” Ellen asked, frowning. “Like the zombi?”

  “It depends,” I said. “There’s no hard and fast rule. They typically haunt graveyards, cemeteries, churchyards. They dig up graves, live beneath the ground where they dine on freshly interred corpses.” I turned to Allison. “You’ve been reading too many of these stories, Allison. You’re letting your imagination get the best of you. Doug is no more a ghoul or a vampire than I’m Superman.”

  Now it was Allison’s turn to frown. “Who’s Superman?”

  “Never mind.” The story of Superman was fresh on my mind that summer. I’d been devouring the story since it first appeared in Action Comics earlier that month.

  I turned to Jack and shrugged. Jack shrugged back. “If you ask me, Doug seems like a nice guy. He’s quiet, keeps to himself, he’s respectful.”

  “And he’s creepy!” Allison said. With that, she proceeded to lay out her case to Jack, who listened with growing interest. Cathy and Ellen helped the kids to the table where they proceeded to gnaw on chocolate chip cookies and slurp up milk. Twice, Cathy had to tell Allison to quiet down so the kids wouldn’t overhear their discussion. While most of Allison’s theory I’d heard before, she added two new tidbits: she’d taken to sneaking over to Doug’s house when he was out and poking around. One time she’d even broken in.

  “You broke into his house?” Ellen, Cathy, and I exclaimed in unison.

  “Yeah,” Allison said. “And he’s even weirder than I thought! Did you know he keeps a bunch of little dolls in a spare bedroom?”

  “No!” Now Ellen was interested. She leaned forward, eyes wide.

  “You don’t say!” Cathy exclaimed.

  “And the door to his basement is locked!” Allison said. I could tell she was thriving on the attention. “I tried to get it open, but the lock is on good and tight. But get this…the kitchen floor has these stains on it. Like blood!”

  I didn’t know what to make of her story. I shot a glance at Jack, who looked at Allison thoughtfully.

  “You know, Allison,” Jack said very carefully. “It’s not a good thing what you did, breaking into the man’s home. Suppose he returned early and caught you?”

  “But he didn’t!”

  “Suppose he did, though?”

  Allison shrugged. “I would’ve heard him. I’d’ve just snuck out the back window again.
”

  “What you’re insinuating doesn’t prove anything,” I said. “I admit, the guy’s a little strange. But just because he has a lot of dolls in a back room, and a locked basement, and you think the kitchen floor has bloodstains, and that everybody thought his father was the New Castle Butcher…well, that doesn’t make him a killer.”

  “The room with the bed is made up like a little girl’s room,” Allison said, and with that statement I think my stomach plunged down an elevator shaft. Cathy’s face turned white with the implications. “The dolls are all along the bed, on the dresser. Some are dressed, others…aren’t.”

  Us adults gave each other sidelong glances, not knowing what to make of this information. Ellen was shaking her head. “I don’t like this,” she said. “I know it’s wrong for what Allison did, but I don’t like the idea of that man living near us!”

  I scooted my chair closer to Allison and made sure my tone of voice was measured and controlled. “Allison, you have to promise us you won’t break into Doug’s house again.”

  Allison regarded me, then the other adults. I continued. “This is serious stuff. I admit, it’s suspicious. But it isn’t solid proof that he’s the New Castle Butcher.”

  “I know the New Castle Butcher cuts their heads off,” Allison began. “And that he sometimes takes the heads with him.”

  I nodded. “Yes, he does.”

  “And that the bodies are drained of blood,” she continued. “It’s like he drinks their blood. My friend Austin told me everybody thought Allen, Doug’s father, was weird too. He walked around town by himself at night and muttered to himself. He would go out of his way to be friends with the hobos and derelicts. And when he was lynched, the murders stopped!”

  “That doesn’t mean anything, Allison!” I protested.

  “I’ve seen Doug talking to hobos, too,” she blurted. Her eyes darted from me, to Jack, to Cathy, then to Ellen. “One time my mom and I were on our way into town from the carnival. We passed downtown and Doug was standing on the corner talking to a hobo. My mom gave him a dirty look as we went by. Even she knows there’s something wrong with him, and my mom’s crazy. And sometimes when he takes his walks, he stops in front of my house and looks at it. My Grammy gets freaked out over that. Doug’s father probably killed hobos because he knew nobody would miss them. I think Doug learned from his father. I think he really wants to get kids, though. But he doesn’t. He goes after hobos.”