99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale v-2

by David Wellington

  50.

  “What of HER?” Eben Nudd asked, pointing at the thing in the coffin. No man made answer. We had not time for demons any more.

  We made for the next doorway down, the one which led up into the cupola. Storrow nearly dragged me.

  We made what speed we could. Chess was on his way up, through the house. We could hear him shrieking, though none could understand the words he spoke.

  Our shoes rang on the iron gallery, which was suspended from the dome by rods. We pushed through the broken section of the cupola & out into the night air, & the light of one million stars.

  Around us the dark trees sighed & cast their limbs about. Storrow & Eben Nudd lifted me through the opening & then set me down on the slope of the roof, to hold on as best I might.

  “We’ll have to climb down. Try not to fall, is my best counsel,” Storrow said. But then he turned.

  “Did you hear that?” he asked.

  “Ayup,” Eben Nudd said. We all had. It was the sound of feet falling on the iron gallery. It could be naught but Chess the vampire, hot on our heels. “I think—” the downeaster began, but we never learned what he thought.

  Chess jumped up through the broken dome as if he’d been shot out of a parrot gun. He grabbed Nudd by the collar & twisted his head clean around, snapping his neckbones with audible sounds.

  He did not bother to suck the erstwhile lobsterman’s blood, but only threw him off the roof to crash to the ground below.

  “I’m not sure we’ve been properly introduced,” Chess said. His eyes burned like coals.

  —THE STATEMENT OFALVAGRIEST

  51.

  “What time is it?” Arkeley asked. He held his arm over a white enameled basin and rolled up his sleeve.

  The gauze bandage around his wrist was brown with dried blood. When he removed it his arm was smeared red, the fine hairs turned dark and stuck to his skin. An ugly wound like a dried-up worm ran down the length of his wrist. “Trooper?”

  Exhaustion passed through her like a cold wind. It had been a long time since she slept. “It’s, uh, four-thirty.” Clara would be asleep. “What—where is it? I put it down for a second.” Harold met her gaze with questioning eyes. She looked down at his hands and took a paper-wrapped lancet from him.

  There were plenty of supplies in the museum basement for what they intended to do. On the table before her sat a graduated glass jar, a fresh roll of gauze, and a roll of surgical tape.

  “We have to keep moving,” Arkeley told her. “If the sun comes up before she’s ready, we’ll waste an entire day. And more blood than I want to spare.”

  Caxton nodded and bit her lower lip. Time to focus. She peeled the paper back from the lancet, a short rectangle of surgical steel with one sharp triangular end. She looked down at Arkeley’s arm. It was the one with no fingers. The palm was a flat square of flesh, so thick with scar tissue it didn’t even look human. It looked more like the paw of an animal. Caxton tried to drag the lancet across the wound but flinched away when Arkeley grunted and moaned in pain. A few dark drops of blood welled up out of the cut but nothing like the flow she’d expected.

  “You can’t hesitate like that,” he said, gritting his teeth. “This isn’t like cutting open a bag of frozen peas.

  You need to dig in. Deep.”

  Caxton got dizzy for a second just listening to him. Holding the lancet very tight in her fingers, she leaned over and stabbed it deep into Arkeley’s arm. He shouted in pain but she ignored him and started reopening the wound with a resolute sawing motion. “Like this?” she asked.

  “That’ll do,” Arkeley said. He moved his fingerless hand back and forth to work the muscles in his arm.

  Blood seeped vigorously from the wound and rolled across his skin. “Now, the jar,” he said. Caxton brought it up underneath the wound to catch the blood. With his good hand Arkeley squeezed at his arm as if he were getting the last toothpaste out of a dried-up tube. Blood surged out of the wound, thick and dark, venous blood the color of red wine. It splashed and pattered on the sides of the jar, then started to fill it up. The meniscus of blood climbed up the white painted graduations on the side of the jar. Two ounces. Five ounces. Ten.

  “Halfway there,” she said, in what she hoped was a reassuring tone.

  “God fucking damn it,” Arkeley bellowed, pushing and squeezing at his arm.

  Twelve ounces. fifteen. The wound wasn’t closing up, the flow wasn’t slowing down. Caxton gave silent thanks for that. She must have hit a big blood vessel. Would he need stitches? Seventeen ounces.

  Twenty.

  “Okay,” she said, and took the jar away. Blood splattered with a ringing noise in the white basin. Setting the jar aside, she wrapped Arkeley’s arm tightly with the gauze and then sealed the bandage with surgical tape. Red dots appeared on the white gauze almost instantly. “I might have gone too deep,” she said.

  “Don’t worry about that now,” he told her. He put pressure on the bandage with the fingers of his good hand. “Feed her. It has to be warm to have any effect.”

  It has to be warm, and fresh, and human, she thought. As much as vampires scared animals, they would never attack them. The blood had to be fresh, too—if it clotted they couldn’t digest it properly.

  She moved quickly to the coffin. Malvern was straining to lift her head. Her hands were at the level of her throat, reaching up, unable to grasp the jar. Caxton didn’t want to get close enough to her toothy jaws to get bitten. There was no good way to do it otherwise, though. Hands shaking only a little, she tilted the jar over Malvern’s open mouth. The blood poured through the air and splashed on the vampire’s gray, shriveled tongue.

  The effect was electric and immediate. Malvern’s body started to tremble, then white smoke lifted off her tattered nightdress, tongues of it licking up from her armpits, blowing back over her ragged head. The skin started to grow over her half-exposed skull instantly, the old dry leather there inching across the yellow bone. Malvern’s single eye grew wet and started to reinflate. Her hands reached up and grasped at the jar, tore it out of Caxton’s hands.

  Caxton took a step back. She watched in disgust as Malvern licked out the contents of the jar with a probing tongue. The skeletal hands fleshed out visibly, the prominent knuckles and veins smoothing out as new muscle grew in under the skin.

  A noise sagged out of Malvern, a long, whistling moan of pleasure. She dropped the jar, now spotlessly clean, and it rolled across her shoulder. Her hands lifted in the air as if she were giving thanks. Before she had looked like a pile of bones wrapped in a too-big pelt of leather. As Caxton watched the ravages of time reversed themselves until she looked like she’d only been dead a few months.

  “Do it,” Arkeley commanded. “Call him.”

  Slowly, creakingly, Malvern sat up in her coffin, hauling herself upright with her hands. She brought her knees up and hugged them to her chest, her gruesome head resting on protruding kneecaps. Luxuriously, almost dreamily, she turned her face to look on Geistdoerfer, who lay only a few feet away. She opened her mouth and a rattling sound came out, a noise like a metal rake dragging through a pile of leaves.

  Malvern hadn’t spoken more than two words in over a century. And that was after she’d bathed in blood, her coffin filled with the life of half a dozen men. Twenty ounces wasn’t about to restore her rotten larynx.

  Caxton had watched a vampire named Reyes call a half-dead once. He had literally called the corpse back from death. “Will it work if she can’t talk?”

  Arkeley just shrugged.

  Malvern tried again, this time managing a gargling rasp that sounded like she was choking. She turned to look at the three living humans behind her. Caxton grabbed for the charm in her pocket, expecting some kind of trick.

  Arkeley’s Glock came out of its holster and the muzzle pressed against Malvern’s sunken chest in one fluid movement. Right over her heart. The old vampire hunter must have been waiting for just such a move.

  Malvern’s hea
d turned from side to side, just a little. As if she were afraid it might fall off if she shook it too hard. Then she reached out a hand toward the laptop and typed a quick message:

  if i had but a little more…

  “No fucking way,” Caxton said, and Arkeley nodded.

  Malvern’s eye rolled in her head. She nodded, however, and typed some more. She looked back at Geistdoerfer, very pale and very dead on top of the display case. She stabbed at the keys, making a noisy rattle as she typed:

  come to me. come back to me. hear me.

  The words were similar to what Caxton had heard when Reyes brought back his half-dead servant. She repeated them over and over, filling up the screen with her commands. Geistdoerfer’s body didn’t so much as twitch.

  Malvern’s bony fingers stabbed at the keyboard. The laptop jumped with every pounding keystroke.

  She seemed desperate. Maybe she knew that if this failed they would never trust her again. That she would never get a chance at more blood.

  come back. come back. come back and serve.

  Harold gasped in surprise. Caxton turned to stare at the night watchman, who pointed at the corpse.

  “There! His hands, look!”

  Caxton looked. Geistdoerfer’s fingers were moving, it was true. His fingers were curling into tight claws that dragged across the top of the wooden case. His nails dug into the varnish and scratched across the surface, tearing at the wood.

  Then his mouth opened wide and he screamed, a high-pitched, terrible scream that turned Caxton’s blood to ice water.

  52.

  “Take this as my calling card, ya Southron bastard,” Storrow spoke. He was lifting his target rifle to his eye & without further ado he fired, the recoil from the heavy weapon staggering him backward.

  Now, that rifle was custom built for distant work, & could make twelve-inch patterns at some eight hundred yards. By necessity its balls were launched at some high velocity & with much power. This one took the top of Chess’ head & his tarboosh as well & spread them over half Virginia. The vampire’s body tottered for a while, sundered just above the bridge of the nose & thus unable to see, & his arms reached for us, but how could any creature that draws breath live long without the organ of sense?

  It was over. We had won, & now were free to go. I thought of my Bill, & began to weep again, but there was naught for it. & even I felt some soaring of spirit when Chess’ white body finally fell over & lay still, skidding some way on the shingled roof.

  Our peril was ended. We were all but home.

  —THE STATEMENT OFALVAGRIEST

  53.

  Geistdoerfer struggled against his bonds, trying to drag his hands up to his face. He moaned like a starving kitten, cried out sometimes like a man in pain. He writhed on top of the display case until he could press his nose and cheek against the smooth wood. With his shoulder he shoved himself along the surface until his head was hanging over the side. For a moment he lifted his neck to stare at them, to see the strange collection of people who were mute witnesses to his revival. Then he brought his head down fast and hard, smashing the sharp corner of the display case with his nose.

  Caxton winced to hear cartilage snap and part under his pale skin. She watched in mute horror as he brought his head back for another bash that tore open part of his cheek. No blood oozed from the wound, but the skin parted like torn silk, revealing gray muscle tissue underneath. A third time he reared up, but Harold was already rushing across the room, grabbing at the rope that bound the dead professor, pulling him back, away from the edge.

  “He’s gone crazy,” the night watchman gasped. “He’s trying to kill himself, again!”

  “No,” Arkeley told him. “There’s not enough human left in him for that.”

  Caxton turned away in disgust. She knew exactly what Arkeley meant. Half-deads were not human beings. They weren’t the people they had been before they died. The curse animated their bodies and it could read their memories, but their souls were already gone, their personalities completely cut away.

  Half-deads existed only to serve their vampire masters. Beyond that they knew little but pain and self-loathing. The curse hated the body it possessed, hated it so much it took every opportunity to deface the physical form. Literally deface it, in fact—the first thing half-deads did on their rebirth was to tear and claw at their faces until the skin hung down in bloodless strips.

  “Hold him tight. He won’t be very strong,” Arkeley said.

  Harold grimaced. Caxton saw something in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. Had they pushed him past his limit? “This is it, Jameson,” he said. “After this I don’t owe you nothing. You and her get out of here and I pretend like I never knew you. Got it?”

  “Yes, yes, fine, but please,” Arkeley said, “hold him.”

  Harold twisted the rope in his hands. Geistdoerfer loosed a pained howl. He shook and strained and tried to tear free, but the rope just cut into his deliquescing flesh. After a while he started to settle down, and then he turned his damaged face to look right at Caxton.

  A chill ran down her back as his dead eyes studied her. “I was dead. I was happier dead,” he said.

  “What have you done to me?” His voice had risen in pitch and become a perverted mockery of the professor’s easy tenor.

  Arkeley moved closer to the undead thing and crouched down to get on his eye level. “We have some questions for you. If you answer them nicely, we’ll put you out of your misery. Do you understand?”

  The half-dead spat in Arkeley’s face. It was the kind of thing Geistdoerfer would never have done in life—the man had been cultured and refined. “I don’t serve you,” he whined.

  Arkeley stood up and wiped the spit off his face with a handkerchief. He looked back at Malvern in her coffin and cleared his throat pointedly.

  The vampire’s hand glided across the laptop’s keyboard.

  i have raised him and it has drained me

  i have not the strength to compel him

  Maybe, Caxton thought. Or maybe she’d gotten what she wanted out of the exchange and she no longer cared what happened next.

  The half-dead stared at the thing in the coffin and laughed, a fractured, ugly sound that bounced around the corners of the room. “You’re working with her ?”

  “Why is that so strange?” Arkeley asked. “She’s the enemy of your killer. I’d think you’d want to help her.”

  “Then you don’t know how it all works.” The half-dead let out another laugh, this time almost giggling.

  “Oh,” Arkeley said, “I think I understand a little. I didn’t really expect you to be reasonable, but I thought we’d give you the chance. It didn’t work. So I guess we’ll have to go the more traditional route.”

  Without warning he grabbed a handful of the half-dead’s hair and yanked upward, dragging his head up, wrenching his neck around. “What’s his name?”

  “Who?”

  Arkeley bounced the thing’s head off the top of the display case. “Harold,” he said, “maybe you could find me a toolbox from somewhere. I need a hammer and maybe a pair of needlenose pliers.”

  “No,” the abomination moaned, and bounced on the wooden case as he tried to break free of Arkeley’s grip. As infirm and decrepit as he might be, though, Arkeley was still stronger than any half-dead.

  “I think we’ll start by pulling his teeth out. Then maybe his fingernails.”

  “Don’t—”

  “Don’t what?” Arkeley asked. “Don’t hurt you? I tried to be nice.”

  Harold let go of the rope and walked off into the shadows. Arkeley placed his good hand across the half-dead’s temple and cheek and then leaned down hard, using all his weight, pressing Geistdoerfer’s skull into the wood of the case. The thing screamed horribly.

  Caxton licked her lower lip. It was suddenly very dry. “Arkeley,” she said. “You’re going too fast. Give him another chance, for God’s sake.”

  The old man stared at her with pure anger bu
rning in his eyes. Then one of his eyelids drooped down and flicked back up. Was that?—yes. Yes, it had been a wink, Caxton thought. A wink.

  He thought she was playing a game. The oldest interrogation game: good cop, bad cop. That hadn’t been her intention. She just didn’t think she could bear to watch Arkeley torture even a dead man.

  “Listen,” she said, leaning over a little to look into Geistdoerfer’s bloodless face. “Listen, maybe if you just tell me a few things, maybe this doesn’t have to be so bad. I mean, is that something you might do?”

  The half-dead’s face writhed as if bugs were burrowing under his cheeks and lips. “I don’t know his name,” he said, quickly. “He never told me. He just said he was a soldier. And then he said he had been tricked, that he’d never wanted to be a vampire. That it was all a trick! Please!”

  Caxton looked up and Arkeley let a little of the pressure off.

  “Who tricked him?” she asked. She threw a thumb over her shoulder, gesturing at the coffin behind her.

  “Her? Was it somebody named Justinia Malvern?”

  “I…I’m not sure. I think so.”

  Arkeley leaned on his head.

  “Yes! Yes,” the half-dead screamed. “It had to be! That was why—why he wanted to kill her so badly.

  Oh God! Tell him to stop!”

  “I will,” Caxton said, “but first I need something more. Something we can use. You have to tell me what he’s going to do next. Will he try to kill Malvern again?”

  “Y-yes. I think—I mean, I know he will. It was the one thing he wanted to accomplish. He knows you’ll catch him eventually. He wants to kill her first. That’s all I know—I swear!” His eyes swiveled to look past her. “Oh, God, please please please please please…”

  Harold had returned. He had a long red toolbox in one hand. The other held a big power drill.

  “You don’t have much time left,” she said. “You need to tell me something more. Just think, okay?

  Don’t guess, but think. Will he come back tomorrow night?”

  “I don’t know—I don’t know,” the half-dead creaked.

  “Think!” she shouted.