The Vampire Files, Volume One

by P. N. Elrod

  “Yes, that’s why I returned early. I thought things might be urgent, so I flew back. It only took five hours, but I’m sorry it couldn’t have been faster.”

  He was sitting, his knees drawn up and his back to the wall about a yard away, a handkerchief tied around his left wrist. With a wry expression, he retrieved a folding knife from the floor.

  “Hadn’t time to sterilize it. If I get lockjaw, it will be your fault.”

  He tucked it away in a pocket and said nothing more of what else had happened.

  “Did they give you any idea where they were going?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Took her away. Another woman with them. Malcolm—” I had to stop for the coughing.

  “That’s all right,” he told me. “I’ll see to it, I’ll do my best.”

  “No cops?”

  “No,” he assured me. “Do you think you can move?”

  “Can try.” One thin, stained hand gripped the stair rail and pulled, the other pushed against the floor. He helped, but it was too much. The cough returned and the convulsions doubled me over.

  “Have to wait.” I whispered. “Weak.”

  He looked away, uneasy. “You can’t wait long, the sun will be coming up shortly.”

  “When?” I had no sense of time passing. The whole night must have slipped by.

  “About thirty minutes.”

  It was no good, I needed hours to recover—and my earth. “My trunk. Bring it here. I have to—”

  “Certainly, if you’ll be all right alone.”

  There wasn’t much choice. He could probably carry me down to his car, but I was in no shape to move. The trip could kill me if I were exposed to the sun in this weakened state. I nodded yes, and hoped I was telling the truth.

  It took him a little longer than thirty minutes. Though I was in a shadowed area, I was too feeble to fight the daylight blaring through the broken windows. I slipped into a half-aware trance, eyes partially open and unblinking.

  He did finally return with the smaller of my two trunks, loaded down with two bags of earth. I must have looked really dead then, for he paused to check for a pulse and heartbeat before putting me into the trunk. There were none to be found, of course, but he was optimistic.

  As soon as I was lowered onto the bags inside I went out completely.

  The next night I surprised myself and woke up.

  Escott was perched on a chair, peering at me. “How do you feel?”

  A reasonably important question, I thought it over while checking things from the inside out. “Alive,” was the conclusion. I didn’t mention the ton of iron wrapped tightly around my chest or that my head felt like a balloon ready to pop. My nose and throat hurt as well, but they were much less noticeable.

  “Bobbi?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I have been trying.”

  We were both silent. If Bobbi were not free by now there was little or no chance of her still being alive. After what Gaylen had done to Braxton and then me . . . The emptiness inside yawned deeper and blacker.

  Escott saw and guessed what was going on. “Jack, I need you thinking, not feeling. There’s still a chance for her.”

  “Yeah, just give me a minute.” It took longer than a minute to shut it all down. I had to make myself believe she was alive. Anything else had to be kicked out or I’d be useless. Bobbi was alive and needed help, and that was that.

  Escott got up while I was adjusting things. We were in his bare dining room, the only place on the ground floor with just one window. The panes of glass were now covered with sheets of cardboard to block out the day’s sun. He pulled it all down, stacking the stuff neatly on a packing crate and twitching the curtains back together. Outside, a steady rain was streaming down the glass.

  I was on a cot set up near one wall, on top of a bedsheet on top of a layer of my earth. It felt much more comfortable and civilized than lumpy bags inside a cramped trunk. My stained clothes had been stripped away and most of the blood on my skin cleaned off. Modesty had been preserved by a blanket tucked up to my chin.

  He came back and sat down. Instead of the handkerchief, there was a neat padding of bandage circling his wrist. The skin on his face was tight, with dark smudges under his eyes from no sleep. Last night and the following day had been no picnic for him, either.

  “I’m glad you’re better. You looked quite ghastly earlier.”

  “How bad was it?”

  “Bad enough. The blood loss was massive—it was as though your death a month ago had caught up with you.” His eyes shifted uneasily away from the memory.

  I dimly recalled my hand clutching the stair rail and noting its thinness. In retrospect, it was not so much thin as skeletal. I looked at my hands now. They were normal.

  The movement caused a tugging at my cheek. “What’s all this?” There was tape on my face and a rubber tube leading into my nose. The other end of it was connected to an upside-down glass bottle hanging from a metal stand. The bottle was half-full of some recognizable red liquid.

  He stopped looking so grim. “It began as an experiment and proved successful. I borrowed the equipment from Dr. Clarson—remember the fellow who stitched me up—then made a visit to the Stockyards to obtain six quarts of animal blood. I daresay they thought I was more than a little mad, but they humored me and I returned here to set it up. You looked awful and I couldn’t tell if you were alive or not, but thought it all worth a try. It did help you that time you were sun-blind. . . .”

  I was astonished.

  “You needed it. The first bottle was empty within a quarter hour and the others with decreasing slowness throughout the day, and each one filled you out a little more. With the lack of normal vital signs it was extremely encouraging. I originally considered trying a needle and tube in your arm, but decided against it. Your body, I suppose, has been adjusted to absorb and process blood through the stomach walls, and I was reluctant to tamper with the system by putting it directly into the veins. I’m still very much mystified by your condition. It really shouldn’t work—not without a heart to pump and lungs to oxygenate, it really shouldn’t.”

  He looked as though I should have an answer for him. I shrugged and shook my head, just as puzzled. “Beats me, but as long as it does work I’m not complaining. Where’d you learn to do all this?” I tugged at the tube, which itched where I couldn’t scratch.

  “Please, allow me.” He began gently pulling the tube out; there seemed to be a lot of it. “I learned in a hospital when I was very young. I once thought I wanted to be a doctor, so one of my father’s friends got me a job there, but it never worked out.”

  “Why not?”

  He rolled up the tubing and unhooked the bottle. “Too squeamish,” he said with a perfectly straight face, and carried the stuff off to the kitchen.

  I sat up cautiously, my chest still aching. Some leftover fluid in my damaged lung shifted and burbled with the position change. When I didn’t collapse into a coughing fit, I stood and followed him, but slowly, wrapped in the blanket like a refugee.

  Near the sink were a number of similar glass containers, all empty.

  “All that went into me?”

  He turned on the tap, upended the bottle, and rinsed it out. The beef blood gurgled around the drain, and rushing water diluted it and carried it down. Involuntarily I thought of the walls in the stairwell and looked away.

  “Nearly five out of six,” he said. “There’s one left in there if you need it.” With his elbow he indicated the refrigerator. He’d been through a lot setting this up and then waiting to see if it worked. Faced with the same grim task and my inert and unpromising carcass, I might have given up before starting.

  “Are you all right?” I asked him in turn.

  He knew just what I meant. “A little light-headed when I move too fast, but otherwise there are no ill effects.”

  “Charles . . . I . . .”

  He could see it coming and grimaced. “Please don’t be an embarrassing ass a
bout this. I only did what was necessary.”

  I nearly said something anyway, but held it back. He acted as though he’d done nothing more than loan me a book, and wanted to keep it that way. All right, my very good friend, if you insist. But thank you for my life, all the same.

  The phone rang, and he answered.

  “Escott.”

  The voice on the other end was familiar and not one I expected.

  “Yes, he’s up now. . . . He seems to be. What have you heard? Very well. We’ll talk and I’ll let you know.” He put the earpiece back on the hook.

  “Gordy?”

  “You’re surprised.”

  “The last time you saw him he was poking a gun at you.”

  “Forgive and forget. Besides, he never really wanted to kill me.” Unconcerned, he crossed back with the bottles and busily loaded them into a cardboard box on the table. “From what you told me about him, I decided we needed his assistance. He has a large organization of eyes and ears and is more than willing to help us locate Miss Smythe. I called and told him everything that happened and he’s been tearing this city apart since dawn. He just called now to inquire after your health, but unfortunately has no news for us.”

  Next to the box on the table were some of my things—watch, pencil, keys, wallet, and notebook. He’d made an attempt to clean it all but the notebook was a loss. The pages were rusty brown and stuck together. If he were so squeamish, how the hell had he been able to—

  “Charles.”

  He paused, following my hand as I peeled a page open.

  It was still legible. “There, I wrote it down and forgot it. Can you trace license plates this late? Can Gordy?”

  “Is it Gaylen’s?”

  “No, her bullyboy. That blond crazy, Malcolm.”

  He remembered. “Yes, Gordy and I went to his office, but could trace him no farther. He was very careful about his personal papers; the place was cleaned out.”

  “This was to his Ford, the one he was in outside her hotel. Maybe there’s an address other than his office.”

  “We can try.” His voice was level, but charged with hope as he got back on the phone, relayed the numbers to Gordy, then quickly hung up. “Now we must wait. He’ll call as soon as he has anything.”

  There was someone else waiting. “What about Marza?”

  “She’s still at Miss Smythe’s hotel with Mr. Pruitt. She is upset, but in control, as when I talked with her last night. You’d left for the warehouse quite some time before I arrived, and I got only her version of things. I would be most interested if you could tell me what events led up to your being impaled in a stairwell in such a disreputable neighborhood.”

  It was the way he said it that made it seem funny. I started to laugh. It was probably just a normal release of pent-up emotion, but it turned into a coughing fit. I forced it all back, holding on to my aching chest.

  “You should lie down, you’re not nearly recovered yet.”

  “Nah, I’ll be all right. Lemme get some clothes on and I’ll tell you what happened.”

  I wandered up to the bathroom and tried not to think about Bobbi while I bathed, shaved, and hacked out the last of the junk in my lung. In less than thirty minutes I was dressed and in his parlor, finishing my story to him about last night’s events. I stuck to the bare facts and left out the emotions. The earlier laughter was long gone by now, and my hands were trembling when I’d finished.

  With a pipe clenched in his teeth, Escott listened, with closed eyes, stretched out on the sofa. The only sign he was awake was an occasional puff of smoke from his lips. It drifted up to get lost in the dusk of the ceiling. Only one lamp was on in the room, a boxy brass thing on a table by the window. The rain had slacked off a little, but in the distance, the sky rumbled with the promise of more.

  “Your turn,” I said. “Why did you leave for New York so suddenly, and what were you doing up in Kingsburg?”

  He removed the pipe to talk. “It wasn’t sudden to me. I was here digesting Herr Braungardt’s excellent meal and thinking over our interview with Gaylen. The more I thought, the more my eye kept drifting to my packed bag. There was a night train leaving for New York and I simply saw no reason to delay.”

  “So you left.”

  “When I got to the city and began looking into things, it became obvious that Gaylen’s information was useless. The addresses were nonexistent and the phone number a blind. The address you gave me was real enough, but by then I had reversed things and was intent on backtracking Gaylen rather than Maureen. It did not take long once I located the right papers and records, and then the reasons behind the falsehoods began to emerge. That led me to Kingsburg. Ten years ago Maureen had Gaylen confined to a private asylum located there.”

  “What? She put her own sister in a nuthouse?”

  He opened one eye in my direction. “You know you have a bent toward colorful language that I find most entertaining.”

  “And you’re funny, too. Go on.”

  He shut his eye and continued. “It was an expensive place, the sort that the wealthy patronize when they have inconvenient relatives. The patients, no matter how lively, are treated with velvet gloves, but kept under strict watch. The usual sort found there are alcoholics and drug addicts, but occasionally they take in someone like Gaylen. Her daughter, Maureen, had her declared mentally incompetent—”

  “But they—”

  “Yes, you and I know they were sisters, but I imagine it would have looked odd if Maureen gave that fact to the doctors.”

  “And if Gaylen insisted—”

  “Which she did at first, according to the doctor I talked to, and that insistence only reinforced the reasons for her being there, at least for a while. It was there she became friends with another patient, Norma Gryder.”

  “The woman helping them. Why was she there?”

  “Morphine addict. They escaped together in 1931 and vanished.”

  “Maureen found out and had to run to protect herself and me, to try and prevent what I walked right into.”

  “It seems likely. Perhaps all this time they were keeping an eye on you through your ad just as Braxton had been doing. She would also need more dependable help than Norma could provide and would be looking for someone like Malcolm. When your notice was canceled they had to find out why. I should never have brought it to your attention.”

  “You couldn’t have known. They were worried, though. She was genuinely relieved when I showed up on the doorstep.”

  “And genuinely horrified about Braxton, and she lost no time in trying to persuade you to this blood exchange when she knew I’d be going to New York. My return or an untimely telegram would have ruined it all for her, but your own instincts made you turn down her request, causing her to make it a demand. Either way, you lose.”

  “Not me—Bobbi. Why didn’t you send a telegram?”

  “I did. One here and the other to Miss Smythe’s hotel. Both must have been intercepted by Malcolm or Gryder. I received no replies and decided to take an aeroplane back. An interesting mode of transport, I quite enjoyed it, despite the noise.

  “I checked with her hotel the moment I was back, and they told me she was out, then I went looking for you. This morning I called Gordy and he started his own investigation. We visited Gaylen’s room, of course, but she was gone. She went to a great deal of trouble to set up the facade of a harmless and endearing soul, no doubt to arouse your sympathies before making her request.”

  “I suppose all that stuff about Maureen’s death was a lie.”

  “I don’t know. I had no time to trace down those records; perhaps on the next trip. At the moment we can do nothing. The management at her hotel hasn’t seen Gaylen since she left yesterday evening. Her clothes are still there, but some few personal items, toiletries and such, are gone, and I doubt if she will return now. Gordy has men watching just in case, but if she’s anywhere, it will be with Malcolm and Gryder.”

  “And Bobbi. It’d have to be isola
ted, maybe out of town.”

  His pipe had gone out. He sat up and fiddled with it. “Not necessarily. You saw how isolated you were in the warehouse. I also checked on it. The owners are bankrupt and because of legal problems it’s been unrented and empty for months.”

  “Then who paid the electric bill?”

  “There’s a generator in the basement. Gordy has two men waiting there as well, just in case Malcolm returns to dispose of your body.”

  “He didn’t strike me as being that neat. What about the kid?”

  “Kid . . . Oh, yes, the Braxton shooting was given an excess of coverage in the newspapers, but the police have little to go on. Young Webber received a concussion, but is recovering in hospital. He described Malcolm as his attacker, which is in your favor, as the police are looking for you.”

  “For me?”

  “Several people could not help but notice your disheveled appearance as you tore around the building looking for Miss Smythe. The police want to talk to you and have inquired after Miss Smythe, but Marza told them she’d left town to be with a sick relative.”

  “She could have come up with something better than that.”

  “I believe it was Mr. Pruitt’s suggestion.”

  “Bright guy. With him on their side, the Communists don’t stand a chance.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Has Matheus talked?”

  “I wasn’t able to see him, but did manage a brief chat with a hospital orderly who is fond of gossip. The boy is feeling better, but naturally upset at the inexplicable death of his friend. The police have been in to see him, but no one else except his parents has spoken to him.”

  “And everyone full of questions.”

  “True, but what can he say?”

  “Yeah, if he tells the truth about hunting down a vampire, they’ll think he’s nuts.”

  “You had better hope they do,” he said with meaning.

  I took it. Either way somebody would be in trouble; me if they believed his story, and him if they didn’t.

  His pipe relit and drawing, he leaned back on the sofa. “How much time passed between Miss Smythe’s call and Malcolm’s?”