99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale v-2

by David Wellington

  The next door led into an office, with the wordDIRECTOR in gold letters painted on the wood. Caxton touched the knob. Nothing; no sense of unease or disgust. She turned it slowly. It let out a sharp metallic creak and she stopped immediately. Had she felt something move nearby, something hidden in the dark?

  She held herself as perfectly still as she knew how, tried to not even breathe.

  What was it? There, she thought, a puff of breeze had caressed her cheek. She whirled around, ready to fire instantly, only to see that one of the windows was open a crack. A very delicate draft was coming through, nothing more.

  Caxton bit her lip and moved to the third doorway. Her feet made only very soft sounds on the carpet.

  She reached out her hand toward the knob, fear making her arm shake, and let her fingertips graze the brass knob ever so gently.

  Nothing.

  She breathed out, let go a little of her muscular tension. One more door to check. If there was nothing there then at least she would know she was safe, that the vampire was gone and that she wasn’t going to die that night. She moved quickly toward the fourth door, reaching for its knob.

  Behind her the window crashed open, glass cracking with a jarring sound. A white mass shot through like a giant cannonball and blasted down the hall right toward her. Before she could even think the vampire had one hand at her throat. He smashed her backward against one of the marble tables, its edge digging painfully into her left kidney. He lifted her up again and then smashed her against the floor until her bones rattled inside her flesh. Only the thick carpeting kept her leg and arm from snapping on impact. He picked her up again and held her in the air, crushing her neck muscles with his powerful fingers. It felt like she’d had a handful of knives jabbed down her throat. She couldn’t talk—couldn’t breathe. If he closed his hand even a fraction of an inch more, she would die. Blackness swam through her vision as if big blobs of oil were dancing on the surface of her eyes.

  He had spared her life once because she was a woman. He’d let her live a second time because she was useful to him, because she could drive a car. Clearly his patience was all used up.

  Laura Caxton would have died then and there if it hadn’t been for the Mütter’s night watchman. He stepped out of the fourth door just then, perhaps alerted by the gasping, choking noises Caxton was making, and shone his flashlight right into the vampire’s eyes.

  The vampire screamed in pain. He was a nocturnal creature, and that much light hurt him far more than bullets. He dropped her, his arms flying up to protect his sensitive eyes from the bright light. In another second he was gone, down the back stairs and away.

  40.

  I dropped to my knees & peered through the keyhole. The eye that looked back on me from the other side was shot with blood, & quite yellow where it should have been white. But I recognized the brown iris, the color of the rocks on Cadillac Mountain. It was Bill, indeed.

  “Wait there, Bill, I have some others with me. We’ll bring you out of this captivity,” I swore.

  “Alva, no, you have to leave. You can’t be here.”

  “I won’t leave without you,” I told him. “I’m going to force this door, & the noise of it be damned.”

  “No.” The high-pitched voice turned hard as flint. “I…can’t let you come in. I’d have to stop you, Alva. I would hurt you if you tried. Don’t make me do that.”

  “What nonsense you speak!” Yet I felt my heart jump. I knew what Bill had become. My neck still ached, my side still bled with the wounds the fiends had given me, & now Bill was one & the same.

  But it was Bill, my Bill! The only true friend I’ve ever had. A man I slept next to for two years in a tent too small for dogs to use. A man whose life & mine were wound together as tight as the strands of a little girl’s braided hair.

  & yet I knew. I understood. “We can help, Bill. We can get you to a surgeon.”

  “There’s nothing you can do for me now, Alva. It’s too late. You must forget our friendship, & leave me as I am. I beg you just to go! This is all I can do for you. Even as I speak my soul is writhing, my hands are reaching for a knife to stab through this keyhole!”

  I fell back on my haunches, my brains reeling. “Oh, Bill, say it isn’t so.” But it was. He spoke no more, & a moment later, his eye disappeared from the keyhole.

  —THE STATEMENT OFALVAGRIEST

  41.

  The night watchman—his name tag readHAROLD —helped her sit up and lean back against the wall.

  Caxton rubbed at her throat, trying to get circulation back into the crushed muscles there. “You okay?”

  he asked her over and over, as if through sheer repetition he could make it so. “That guy coulda killed us both, and easy!”

  That was true. The light had hurt the vampire, but only momentarily. He could have smashed it and then returned to his slaughter. He’d been too smart to take the chance, though. He couldn’t have known if Harold was armed, or if a platoon of police were behind him. She tried to explain that to the night watchman, and found she couldn’t. It felt as if her larynx were being rubbed against a cheese grater. She could breathe, though. Her lungs were heaving up and down just fine. So she nodded. She slipped the safety of Arkeley’s Glock back on and shoved the heavy pistol into her empty holster. It didn’t quite fit—the leather holster wasn’t designed for that particular model of handgun. After trying to force it, she finally just let it hang out a little.

  Caxton rubbed at her eyes, her mouth. She let her body calm down on its own, let it take its time in doing so. She’d been very, very close to death. Well, it wasn’t the first time. She knew what to do, which was to try to take it as easy as possible. If there was any real damage to her throat, then running around and chasing vampires would probably just make it worse.

  Besides, the vampire was already gone. Once again he’d escaped her. Once again she’d failed.

  Harold disappeared for a while, but finally came back with a paper cone full of cold water. It felt very good going down and she thanked him, even managing to squeak out her appreciation in words that only felt like butter knives as they came out of her. “I’m,” she said, and paused for a second. “I’m Trooper Laura Cax—”

  “Oh, yeah, I know who you are,” he said, a big goofy smile on his face. He was a short guy, maybe fifty years old with curly scraps of pale hair sticking out of the bottom of a navy blue baseball cap. He wore gray overalls and yellow Timberland boots.

  “Did Ark—” she stopped. Trying to pronounce hard k sounds made her feel as if a nail was lodged in her esophagus. “Did the other officer tell you I was here?” she finally managed to ask. She glanced down at the paper cone in her hand. A single drop of water remained lodged in the fold at its bottom. She licked it out eagerly and wished she had more.

  “What, Jameson? Aw, no. He didn’t tell me about you. I just recognized you, is all. From that movie Teeth . That was awesome.”

  She wanted to roll her eyes. Instead she said, “Thanks.” Then she grimaced. Another hard k .

  “That one scene, where Clara kisses you for the first time? That was so fucking hot. I must’ve watched that like a hundred times.”

  Caxton rolled her eyes. That scene always embarrassed her when she watched it. Had she really been that easy? “I have to see something,” she said. Slowly she rose to her feet, bracing herself against the wall behind her. When she was relatively certain she wouldn’t fall over again, she made her way down the stairs at the end of the hall. At the bottom a fire door stood half open, cool air from outside billowing in.

  She pushed it open and stepped outside, the night feeling good on her face for once. She breathed in a deep lungful that soothed her throat, then looked around. She stood on the edge of the parking lot. The Buick stood just where she’d left it. She saw the Dumpsters as well, one of which held the dead body of Professor Geistdoerfer. “Harold,” she called back over her shoulder, “I need your help.”

  It was not easy getting the corpse out o
f the Dumpster. It took real work to lift Geistdoerfer over the lip of the container. Harold took the weight from her so she didn’t have to just dump the dead man on the asphalt. Once that was done they carried him inside the Mütter building, Harold holding his feet, Caxton carrying him with her hands laced under his armpits. Geistdoerfer’s wounded hand dragged on the ground, but it didn’t leave a trail of blood. Every drop had been drained from his body and none of it had gone to waste.

  Caxton knew that the body was a possible threat. The vampire had killed him and by so doing had established a magical link between the two of them. It was within the vampire’s power to call Geistdoerfer back from death, to literally raise him as a servant who could not fail to do the vampire’s bidding. It could happen at any time, over enormous distances, so they had to watch the corpse every second. She needed a place to keep it while she decided what to do next.

  The College of Physicians of Philadelphia was mostly a meeting place for doctors and researchers, with lecture halls and conference rooms taking up most of its space. In the basement, however, there was a suite of rooms used for preparing specimens for the museum. It looked remarkably similar to the facilities in the Civil War Era Studies department at Gettysburg College, though the equipment was much older and less shiny. They laid out Geistdoerfer on an autopsy table there. Caxton folded his arms across his chest to try to give him some dignity, then wondered what to do next. They would need an ambulance or a hearse to take him to a funeral home. She would have to try to locate his family to let them know where they could pick him up. Then she would also have to convince them to cremate him.

  First, though, she needed to start coordinating with the Philadelphia police, let them know there was a vampire loose in their streets. Her cell phone didn’t get any reception in the basement, so she left Harold in charge of watching the body while she went upstairs. Halfway there she ran into Arkeley coming down.

  “He got away,” she said.

  “Of course he did.” The scars that crisscrossed Arkeley’s face didn’t constrain him from throwing her a look of utter contempt. If anything, they made his sneer look worse. “You couldn’t wait ten more seconds?”

  She tried to ignore him. “I need to call the loc-c-cal c-, the c-, the authorities,” she gargled, holding up her phone. She tried to push past him, but he stopped her.

  “Don’t bother. I contacted them when I got your text message. I had already warned them something like this might happen.”

  Of course he had. Arkeley had always been ready for bad things to happen. It was how he lived his life.

  It was his most basic philosophy. She let her shoulders sag and put her phone away.

  “They’ll have units all over this part of town by now. Cops flashing their lights down every alley and back lot, helicopters up and scanning the rooftops. Of course it won’t come to anything.”

  No, she supposed it wouldn’t. Vampires were smarter and faster than garden-variety criminals. They knew instinctively how to blend into the shadows, how to use the night to their advantage. The regular police had little chance of finding him.

  Caxton glanced at her watch. It wasn’t even midnight. This late in the year the vampire would have plenty of darkness to work with, maybe seven more hours. How far could he get in that time? Or perhaps he would stay nearby, find a good hiding place where he could sleep through the day. Then he could come back the next night to try to rescue Malvern again.

  “You damned fool. I expect you to screw things up from time to time. But it looks like even I underestimated your ability to ruin a perfectly good plan.”

  Exhaustion pushed down on her shoulders, but anger lifted her up: sudden, hot anger. Indignation. “Shut up,” she said, wishing she had thought of some better words. Like maybe, How dare you?

  “I’m doing my best. You threw me into this shitty situation and I’m doing everything I c-can.” The hard k sounds didn’t hurt so much when she was pissed off, she realized. “I’m the one chasing this bloodsucker, not you. I think I deserve a little respect.”

  “Oh?” he asked.

  “Yes. If I hadn’t taken action he could have revived Malvern. He could have carried her out of here while you just watched.”

  Arkeley’s deep-set eyes twinkled a little, even the one under his paralyzed eyelid. “Interesting,” he said.

  “Fucking fascinating,” she replied, though she had no idea what he was talking about.

  “You seem to be under the false impression that our pale friend came here to rescue her.” Arkeley’s mouth moved in a way that might have conveyed some kind of emotion on a normal face. On his features it just looked like a worm crawling from one cheek to the other. “Come with me.”

  42.

  TIME it was that proved our undoing. We were in danger of our lives all that day. We dared not do anything to alleviate our fears, or to improve our situation. We periodically checked on Simonon & his men, but they did not stir or make any sign of decamping. I think we all guessed what they waited for. For night, & the return of the vampire, from wherever he had gone. We knew he was not in the house, for we had seen his coffin, & it was empty. If he did not return, would we be trapped for the next day as well, & the next? Simonon looked a patient man, for all the tales of his butchery Storrow could relate.

  The day passed as they do. Soldiers know how to wait; it is what they learn best. We passed our time as we might. I longed to return to the door down the hall & speak again with Bill, but I did not.

  As orange light tinctured the sky above the trees I think we all held our breath, uncertain whether to feel relieved, or affeared. There was some excitement in the Reb camp as well, of a not wholly different character, I think. The tension grew, & mounted, but it did not last long. We Yanks, German Pete, Storrow, Nudd, & me, crowded the window, & didn’t worry who might see our faces there.

  None of us saw him come, though the horses smelled him perhaps. They bucked & tore at their lines, & made as if to bolt. Their neighing was the loudest thing I’d heard that day, I thought. & then he was present, the vampire Obediah Chess, standing next to the fire as if warming his pale flesh. As if he’d been there all along.

  —THE STATEMENT OFALVAGRIEST

  43.

  Arkeley led her back to the museum, back to the lower level, where Malvern still lay in her coffin. As they approached Caxton looked down at the old vampire, trying to piece things together.

  There wasn’t much left of Malvern. Her skin had turned to paper, still snowy white but riddled with dark sores. It had pulled away in places, hanging in tatters. Most of her scalp was missing, revealing yellow bone underneath. Her triangular ears hung down ragged and limp. One of her eyes was missing—it always had been—and the other was just a milky blob of flesh that wobbled back and forth in its socket.

  Caxton doubted she could see anything with that eye.

  That didn’t mean she was gone, though. When Caxton leaned down over the coffin, Malvern’s head craned forward on its spindly neck, her jaws opening in slow motion. She could sense Caxton’s presence somehow, and was trying to bite her, to tear into her flesh and suck her blood.

  When Caxton pulled back the jaws closed, just as slowly as they’d opened.

  The vampire from Gettysburg, her vampire, should have looked like that. Any vampire over a hundred years old should be that decayed and weak. Though he had fed on Geistdoerfer’s blood, that should not have been enough. They still had no idea how he was able to walk, even to stand up. Much less how he could outrun a police cruiser or throw her around like a rag doll.

  Arkeley cleared his throat. Caxton turned and saw him standing next to a display case. Inside stood the head and shoulders of a man with his skin and part of his musculature removed. His blood vessels had been painstakingly exposed and plasticized, painted different colors to differentiate between the veins and arteries. On top of the case stood a cheap black laptop computer. Arkeley popped it open and raised the screen so she could see it.

  “Y
ou’ll remember that she warned us,” he said. “She told us that he would come for her.” He tapped the space bar and the computer woke from its sleep mode. On the screen a white window appeared, the text field of a word processing program. Malvern’s original message was displayed there in large italic type, completed and therefore a little more legible now:

  comformeheshall

  “Come for me he shall. Right,” Caxton said. “She was gloating. Laughing at us because she knew that soon enough he would come and take her away from all this. Bring her blood or—something. I thought maybe he knew some spell. She calls them orisons, right? Some orison to restore her.”

  “Yes, I thought that too. Then I realized that she wasn’t that stupid.” Arkeley stepped in front of the screen and scrolled down the page. “Why give us even a cryptic warning? We wouldn’t have expected him to even know who she was. By telling us that he was coming for her she gave us plenty of time to prepare. I knew I needed more information so earlier this evening I set her up and let her type some more.”

  He stepped away so she could see the screen. The next message read:

  proteckt me you must it is your dutie laura

  “Protect—” Caxton put a hand over her mouth.

  “Ah. I think you’ve begun to get the point,” Arkeley said.

  Caxton nodded. Yeah, she was getting it. The vampire of Gettysburg hadn’t dragged her all this way so he could revive Malvern. He’d come to destroy her. “But—they don’t fight among themselves. They cooperate.”

  “Don’t ever assume that what you know about one vampire must be true of them all,” Arkeley told her.

  “That’s a sure way to get yourself killed.” She knew that tone. She’d heard him use it a hundred times before. The tone of a schoolteacher correcting a student who could never seem to learn the most basic lesson.