“I'm sorry I did not listen to you sooner, Doctor,” he said to Magaffey's corpse before closing the door on the dead.
He felt he had so needed Magaffey's counsel. Magaffey knew about the properties of the bone marrow drink. He would know how to go about “poisoning” the vampires' supply, stored, no doubt somewhere at the Institute, just as the vampires themselves were stored throughout Andover. Exactly where, he could not be sure. He went to the circular room, only half hearing Mrs. Ashyer tell him that Ray Carroll was on his way this moment, anxious to assist.
In the quiet of the torture chamber, Abe Stroud mulled over his dilemma. He'd brought with him Magaffey's papers on the Banaker Bloody Mary, as the old man called it in his report. The properties were those of a super-charged blood plasma with the added ingredients of an unknown genetic material and bone marrow.
Stroud guessed the unknown ingredient to be a vampire gene. Banaker was into genetic splicing. He'd taken the best of human blood and the best of vampire blood and had created a new strain of the liquid of life. “The life of the flesh is in the blood,” he said, quoting Leviticus 17:11. Stroud knew a lot about blood from firsthand knowledge. He knew that there was nothing in nature that had so profound an emotional effect on people as blood--unless it was the human skull. For blood could cause a person to faint, make his head reel, while at the same time irresistibly attracting him. At the same time that it inspired disgust, nausea, and a desire to murder, it amazed and fascinated. Some police shrinks believed that the underlying motive behind sexual murder was nearly always the desire to shed blood and not the desire to cause death. Some nut they'd caught after a series of murders one year in Chicago had killed people only so he could wipe their blood over his skin in the honest belief that to do so would keep him ever young and ever strong.
The Banaker family had learned medicine and modern technologies enough to know all of this and much more, to use the genetic coding of their race to infiltrate that of the human race, and to become as close to normal people as possible. Banaker had taken the medium of blood to create a new class of vampire. The gods and demons in Ancient Babylonia and Greece, according to the superstitions of the time, were attracted to the smell of bloodshed, especially to the bodies of the violently slain. In which case, Stroud thought, Satan had had a field day in Vietnam, and was now having a merry time in Andover, Illinois.
“From the emanations of shed blood,” he heard himself saying as his thoughts became words, “disembodied entities--spirits--build up appearances and become visible.”
He could not believe the thought that next crossed his mind, and yet he needed counsel--he needed the counsel of his forefathers, of his grandfather! And there might be a way to gather Ananias's ghost here, to him. The way was clear, but it was also ghoulish. It might also backfire. Could he do it? he asked himself moments before bolting off for the bodies in the freezer upstairs.
When he stormed upstairs, shouting for Ashyer to help him transport all the bodies to the central chamber, Ashyer hesitated a moment and asked, “Are you sure, sir?”
“I am certain. Let's do it.”
At the same time the intercom announced a peeling of thunder outside, followed by Ray Carroll's voice. “Let him through, Lonnie!” Stroud told Wilson, who stood at the controls.
When the door opened for Carroll, Stroud and Ashyer were hefting Magaffey's body down the hallway.
-19-
Ray Carroll was aghast at the sight before him, his eyes telling the story, telling the others his immediate thoughts as if they were thrown up on a screen: he had stepped into a madhouse where the inmates had already done considerable damage. He thought he was witness to the murder of Dr. Martin Magaffey.
“Carroll!” shouted Stroud when he realized what must be going through the man's mind. “We need your assistance and help, perhaps the help of your friends, anyone in the town you know whom we can trust. Magaffey's been killed by vampires.”
“Vampires? Vampires? Are you crazy?” Carroll was more than a little skeptical and he held himself firmly at the door which was ajar, rain pelting in, puddling about his feet where he dripped on the tiles.
“Doctor Magaffey, Bradley and his wife, and others, all murdered by creatures that, for lack of a better word, are vampires, yes!”
“Vampires? Stroud, that's ... that's just madness to say that Doctor Magaffey was killed by vampires.”
“A colony of them living in Andover! There's no time to explain. Suffice it to say that Banaker is one of them, most likely the leader. I have irrefutable evidence that this mutated race of demonic creatures does exist, and if you will come with me, I'll show it to you.”
“Evidence ... irrefutable...”
“Yes, Carroll! The Meyers boy, the other disappearances, all stem from the fact that Banaker's Institute is a haven and a feeding ground for ghouls, vampires, whatever you wish to call them! I know it's hard to believe, but Magaffey had proof that they're feeding on the unearthed remains of humans, using bone marrow as an ingredient to insure the strengthening of the mutated gene that created them in the first place.”
Carroll found a chair and literally fell into it. “I ... I knew there was something strange going on, but Doctor Stroud, I ... I find this hard to accept.”
“Come with me then. Trust me long enough that I might show you the evidence.”
He nodded. “Yes, of course. I'll follow you.” Carroll glanced again at Magaffey and the throat bandages, soaked in red.
Stroud said to Ashyer, “We'll get Doctor Magaffey to his destination in a moment, Ashyer. I'll be right back.”
Stroud showed Carroll the way to the walk-in freezer, explaining how Magaffey had come to him with the elixir and had convinced him to go with him to the caves where they'd been attacked by batlike creatures, the size and density of human beings. Carroll remained skeptical, just as Stroud expected, and he hesitated at the door to the freezer. He had seen ice crystals forming on Magaffey's body outside. He didn't relish the idea of being locked in the freezer and left there to die a slow death by the madman Stroud. He indicated that Stroud should go first. But he remained reluctant, standing at the doorway, even when Stroud stood on the far side to peel back a blanket that'd been placed over the pod that contained what remained of Pamela Carr. He only came closer when Stroud asked him to do so.
Ray Carroll seemed to have gone white, all the blood draining from his features. He seemed claustrophobic and was visibly shaking, either from the cold or the horror of what lay on the block before him. A second cocoon, that containing the Bradley woman, lay nearby, and this, too, gave rise to a gasp from Carroll.
“This is not the handiwork of any madman, Ray! Ray, this material, this pod is tightly woven like the silk of caterpillars. I know it makes no sense to you. Makes none to me either, but Doctor Cooper was inside one of these too and--”
“Cooper? Cooper from the Institute?”
“He was still alive when we cut into the cocoon.”
“Oh, oh, my...” He looked faint now, as if unable to get air. His gaze over Pam Carr was long and sad. “And you say that Banaker is ... is responsible for ... for this?”
“Banaker, the others at the Institute, Pam here, Cooper, they're all of another race, a mutant race which our forefathers called vampires. I don't know but Magaffey studied the properties of the bone marrow drink and he concluded they've got what science nowadays calls a ... a jumping gene--”
“Jumping gene?”
“Ahhh.” Stroud shook his head, knowing he was on shaky ground. “Jumping gene, pieces of DNA that move about the chromosomes, parasites that actually live inside the DNA that trigger mutations. Magaffey was going on about it for some time before we got to the caves, something about the natural and unnatural order of evolutionary process. At any rate, here is the result.”
“So, the cold storage is to protect the evidence, I see.”
“Without the pods, who'd believe us?”
“But what about Magaffey's body? Where
are you taking it?” Carroll was almost out the freezer door, unable to take anymore, it seemed. Stroud didn't press him any further, allowing him to escape. Outside, he shivered and spoke of how uncomfortable cold places made him. But Stroud sensed that it was not the cold at all, but the pods and their ugly contents that made Carroll visibly ill and shaken, despite the fact he made no reference to being aghast or uncomfortable over the pods or the poor souls inside them. His white face told all.
Stroud thought it odd at first, but the man's mind was being asked to take in so much at once, Stroud knew he must be patient with Carroll. “Now that Doctor Magaffey's gone, I need you with me, Ray.”
“Sure, sure, Doctor Stroud. I've seen enough to convince me.”
“Can you get us additional help?”
“Additional help?”
“Yes, any moment, I believe, we're going to be under attack here by ... by them.”
“I see. Yes, let me get on my CB, see if I can raise some of the boys.”
Stroud recalled how many men had come on the double when the call went out for the Meyers boy. He felt a little comforted in knowing they'd soon have the help of neighbors.
From the freezer, they returned to Ashyer who'd patiently waited for help with Magaffey's body, Lonnie Wilson still useless in this regard. Ray Carroll passed by the mirror, his reflection turning eerily and shakily in and around on itself as if the image were one on a computer screen that was not getting enough power to it, but only Lonnie Wilson saw this.
“I'll be right back,” Carroll announced to the others before disappearing for his truck and the CB Radio.
Lonnie watched him intently from the window but the darkness seemed to gobble Carroll up. At no time did Lonnie see the light of his cab go on.
Stroud and Ashyer continued with the work of removing Dr. Magaffey's remains to the circular chamber by the most direct route. Stroud was calling for Lonnie and Mrs. Ashyer to gather up some foodstuffs and blankets, saying they must all seek the shelter of the circle. It would act as their “bomb” shelter from the creatures that sought to take them from Stroud Manse.
Mrs. Ashyer raced to comply with Dr. Stroud, but Abe had to scream again at Lonnie who seemed mesmerized at the big bay window beside the entranceway. “Wish we had the bars back up,” he was saying when he turned to look down the hall at Stroud and Ashyer trundling off with Magaffey's body.
“Two more trips,” Stroud told Ashyer.
“Sir?”
“From the freezer to the chamber.”
“The ... the cocoons, sir?”
“Yes, Ashyer. We must keep them in our sight at all times.”
“Mrs. Ashyer, the boy--ahhh, Lonnie, sir--are terribly upset by them, sir.”
“That can't be helped. We must do what we must do, Ashyer.”
“Yes, sir.”
They laid Magaffey across one of the slabs in the torture chamber. “Shout to Lonnie to get the doctor's bag and bring it down, now! I'll meet you at the freezer. Where the hell's Carroll?”
Stroud and Ashyer did the work of removing the other two bodies which had remained draped in their respective pods. These they placed against a wall as far from the chair and ottoman and bookshelves as possible, Stroud feeling that the evidence could simply be ignored by Mrs. Ashyer, Lonnie, and all of them, if covered with blankets. More blankets were brought in for their comfort. It was dank and chilly here, and the rising hurricanelike attack may take hours.
Ray Carroll returned, drenched, the rain having plastered his hair to his scalp. He explained that it was difficult getting anyone out in a storm such as this, and that he dared not attempt to explain the true nature of the problem over the airwaves, primarily because no one would believe him and consequently no one would come. He had, however, reached some of his closest friends who were driving up this moment to assist.
Carroll asked, “Is there anymore I can do, Doctor Stroud?”
“If you care to put your life on the line. They're coming for us, the whole lot of them. I cannot promise you anything beyond that.”
“Surely you have weapons to combat them with.”
“Come along, I'll show you what we have.”
Stroud led Carroll through the twisting maze that led to the central chamber where he balked at entering as he had at the freezer. “Where are we?”
“This is where we will make our stand. If we remain in the rooms upstairs, they'll destroy us all.”
“But if there's no way out...”
“Nor is there any way in, if all goes as I plan.”
Stroud knew of a passageway out along an underground tunnel, but it would seem foolish to place oneself on the bat creature's turf. They seemed to know every cave and every underground passage intimately.
“What's to keep them from diffusing through in a fog, Doctor Stroud?” asked Ashyer.
“Only these walls and my grandfather, I suppose,” he said enigmatically. “Everyone now, into the chamber. Carroll, you as well.”
The moment Carroll stepped into the circular room he became agitated. His eyes fell once more on Magaffey, whose fatal wound now lay open, the bandage spread like an opened handkerchief now over his chest with the odor of blood rising to fill the room. He also saw that the cocoons had been, in his absence, removed from the freezer to here. He was once more so shaken, his body began to quiver as he tried desperately to maintain his manly composure. Stroud understood why he was so uncomfortable and offered a word.
“Trust me, this is all very necessary.”
“Trust you?” he asked, his eyes meeting Stroud's. “Trust you to be like your grandfather, you mean? Maybe Banaker was right about you, all along ... maybe you're--”
He didn't finish his sentence as suddenly Lonnie Wilson, coming up behind him, stabbed Carroll between the shoulder blades with a hypodermic needle he'd fished from Dr. Magaffey's bag. Stroud rushed to snatch Lonnie away and pull out the needle, half drained of the fluid inside. Lonnie had filled the needle with God knew what.
Mr. and Mrs. Ashyer looked on in stunned horror as Ray Carroll wheeled, reaching for the center of pain. He raced from the confines of the room, clawing his way up the stone stairs, Stroud shouting after him.
“He's one of them!” Lonnie was shouting as Stroud raced after Carroll. On the stairway, amid the shadows there, Stroud saw Ray Carroll's form change before his eyes. His human body turned to an elastic outer shell that ripped through his clothing, and from his back burst a pair of thick wings made of dark hair and skin attached to his true limbs, bony arms with extended fingers. His features became ratlike and the eyes went from sight to nonsight as he sent up a silent-to-the-human-ear screech to alert his fellow creatures to his present location. Stroud saw the familiar pucker beneath the snout as the thing that Carroll had become sent out its pealing, high-pitched distress call.
Stroud raced back for the circle where he grabbed a weapon of his grandfather's making, a long standard pole at the tip end of which was a metal stake. The Ashyers and Lonnie Wilson looked on as he took the lance and went out once more in pursuit of Carroll.
He hadn't far to go, however, as Carroll's body came tumbling down to the bottom of the stairwell at Stroud's feet, apparently dead, as it began to wither and age and liquify and finally crumple into dust before the excited stares of everyone in the chamber.
“He's killed him. Lonnie killed him,” said Ashyer in stark amazement.
Stroud heard the thunderous roar of the others as they tore down the door and crashed through the windows upstairs. The others heard the commotion coming from above as well, the Ashyers huddling together like frightened children now, Lonnie staunchly at Stroud's side, taking the lance from him and saying, “I knew when he went to his truck that he was one of them.”
“Good man, Lonnie,” said Stroud. “He was casing the place, and if we'd left the bodies in the freezer upstairs, they'd have gotten them, including Magaffey's.” Stroud then kicked at the dust that was Carroll and shoved the thick, dungeonlike door to t
he chamber closed.
Stroud rushed to Magaffey's bag, taking Lonnie with him, asking, “What did you put in the hypodermic needle, and how'd you know it would kill Carroll?”
“Doctor Magaffey told me to stay away from it once,” he said, innocently. “Once when I was asked to bring his bag along.” Lonnie brought out a small vial of the stuff marked succinylcholine.
Stroud knew enough about medicines to know that most, given in too great a dose, were poisonous. Succinylcholine apparently was no good to the average vampire, and was perhaps the best hope they had, should they live to use this new knowledge past tonight.
Overhead, the manse sounded overrun by the creatures tearing through it in a rage, unable to find what they'd come for, searching every nook and cranny. Stroud's time had become much too limited for explanations to the Ashyers or to Lonnie for what he was about to do.
Another thunderous crash like a gale force wind overhead made Mrs. Ashyer weep in fear. Her husband saw to her. “All of you,” said Stroud, “must not under any circumstances leave this room, and you must obey me to the letter if we are to survive. You know to what extremes my grandfather had to go to save you from becoming one of them. Now, my friends, I'm here to save you once more, but you must do as I say without hesitation or question. At times I may not be able to speak, and you may see some terrible and frightful sights here tonight, but you must have faith, faith in me, faith in my family, my grandfather, and faith in God that we will beat these demonic creatures. Are you all in agreement on these items?”
“Yes,” said Lonnie, showing that he intended to maintain his newfound courage.
The Ashyers nodded their agreement.
“Good, then take these knives I procured from the kitchen and open Doctor Magaffey's wound further.”
The Ashyers looked at one another, swallowing hard. Lonnie bit his lip. For a long moment no one said anything.
“In order to gain the help of Ananias Stroud, we must sacrifice some blood here. Will it be ours, or Doctor Magaffey's? If it is ours, then it will be too late, and nothing my grandfather's ghost can do to help us can come in time. If we further spill Doctor Magaffey's, if Ananias's spirit is likely to come and we can gain his help in all of this, it will be through the spirit of Magaffey's blood.”
Vampire Dreams (Bloodscreams #1) Page 20