American Gothic

by Michael Romkey

  “Not everybody’s blood. I doubt everybody would agree, and besides, I haven’t the resources. But I would examine a statistical cross section. It could prove revealing.”

  He looked at Lady Fairweather, thinking of the opportunity such a survey would give him to make up lost ground with her.

  “In Paris, my area of specialization was disorders of the blood. It is one of the reasons I chose to come to Haiti—to study the anemia found here among a segment of the population.”

  “Let me be the first to volunteer,” Peregrine said.

  “And you must test me, too,” Helen said.

  “I’m sure what we’re looking for will be found, if it exists to be found, in the blood supply of the indigenous population. The solution lies in the peasantry.”

  “You never know,” Peregrine said. “The broader the sampling is, the more statistically representative it will be.”

  “That is true enough.”

  “You can draw a sample of my blood, too. It will set an example for others to follow. We must show that we support Michael’s important research.”

  “And you never know,” Peregrine said, “maybe you’ll discover I’ve caught this dread disease and be able to figure out a way to cure me.”

  “It would be my sacred duty to try,” Lavalle said, his eyes on Lady Fairweather’s. “I am a physician. I am here for the people in their time of need. Indeed, that is why I came to this island to open a hospital for the children.”

  “You are a saint, Michael,” Lady Fairweather said, her awe of Peregrine’s Bible knowledge forgotten.

  Lavalle shot a glance at his rival, as if to boast the reversal of fortunes: Advantage Lavelle. His eyes quickly returned to the ravishing Lady Fairweather. She was a feast for the eyes! Peregrine set a fine table, but the lovely Helen was by far the dish he most wanted to taste. If the American hadn’t been sitting at the table with them, Lavalle would have taken Lady Fairweather up in his arms and pressed his lips against hers. He was perhaps a move or two behind in the game, but the chess match was far from over. A chance remained for him to capture this queen.

  20

  Nemesis

  THE ANSWER HAD something to do with blood. That much seemed obvious to Dr. Lavalle, even if nothing else did.

  He sat slumped forward in the saddle, content to let Napoleon plod along at a walk, while he brooded over the game before him, a match he was compelled to begin without all his materials and the obstacles already arranged in a way to make defeat seem likely.

  Lavalle wished he were back in Paris, sitting in a hansom cab instead of riding his horse back to town on a dark and deserted road. At home in the city, he would be able to get up in the morning, post letters to distinguished experts, and spend the afternoon at the university, poring over books in the library, searching for something that might point him toward a solution.

  In Haiti, he had no resources, no allies except the woman he loved, a friend who was his rival for the woman, and a policeman he did not trust.

  On the island there were no certainties, no givens, no colleagues to help him identify the single thread of epidemiological cause and effect that explained the series of deaths. The only research facilities at Lavalle’s disposal were what he had brought with him boxed up in wooden shipping crates. The Haitian public health system was nonexistent. The government was corrupt. The police were undependable. The people were illiterate. The fact that voodoo ruled the islanders’ lives said everything about the hurdles Lavalle would have to clear to apply science to the issue.

  But if Lavalle could end up with Helen Fairweather in bed, perhaps it did not matter if the answer eluded him.

  Napoleon tossed his head as if in dispute.

  “You are right,” Lavalle said, and patted the animal’s neck. The deaths would continue, and since he had told Lady Fairweather he was joining the game, he ultimately would have no peace until the matter came to some resolution.

  The doctor turned his head to the right, standing up in the stirrups as he peered into the darkness. Napoleon paid no mind to the disturbance in the bushes. It was nothing but the wind moving the leafy shadows, making them shake as if concealing someone hiding beside the road.

  Vampires…

  Lavalle nudged Napoleon into a slow trot.

  It had been Peregrine who brought up the absurd idea of vampires the night after the autopsy, when Toussaint admitted he was having the victims’ heads cut off to keep them from turning into zombies. That was an equally preposterous notion—the existence of “zombies,” the favorite folk terror on the island. But perhaps there was something worth thinking about in Peregrine’s comment about vampires.

  Lavalle had read an account of a variety of bat plaguing cattle in the tropics. The parasite was called the “vampire bat,” which was appropriate enough, since the creature fed on livestock blood. If he remembered correctly, the treatise hypothesized that the bats’ saliva contained an anticoagulant, which served to keep the blood flowing once the creatures nicked the host’s skin with their razor-sharp teeth.

  It did not seem likely vampire bats were responsible for the island deaths. Bats were small creatures, too tiny to take down a man. Unless, perhaps, they hunted in packs.

  A thin wisp of cloud moved slantwise across the moon, drawing a veil across its face. The doctor squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, forcing from his mind the image of a cloud of bloodthirsty bats descending on him from the sky. When he got home he would look up vampire bats in the encyclopedia of natural history in his study. There might be a clue there, a germ of an idea, something to shape his inquiries.

  The cloud moved away from the moon, blown by the trade winds. The face seemed to leer down at Lavalle, mocking the doctor with the knowledge of what had transpired on those lonely jungle paths. To what countless horrors had the moon borne silent witness? And not just there, on the rim of the world, on the far shore of a wild island, but everywhere. Even civilized men were capable of monstrous behavior. Lavalle knew that well enough.

  A clump of palmetto shook beside the road, the movement too vigorous to be the wind. There was something there, a feral cat or even a wild hog. Whatever it was, Lavalle’s horse sensed it. Napoleon tipped his head and blew out a rough breath through flaring nostrils. Dr. Lavalle kicked his heels against the horse’s flanks and brought the animal to a canter.

  It was so deceptive: the brilliant sun, the turquoise water, the greens, reds, blues, yellows, and purples of the landscape. The more subtle reality was that Haiti was a place of secrets, and perhaps no one was as innocent as he seemed. Lavalle was not. It was likely Peregrine was not. The American had never explained to the doctor’s satisfaction why he had forsaken civilization for exile in a seeming paradise of black magic and fugitives. No doubt Peregrine harbored his own secrets.

  Helen would be home already. It was unfortunate that Fairweather House and Cap Misère lay in opposite directions from Maison de la Falaise, for Lavalle would have preferred it was he, not Peregrine, who escorted her home. Lavalle reached backward and rested on the saddlebag containing the vials of blood he had drawn from Lady Fairweather and Peregrine. He disliked thinking of the vials touching each other, two cork-stopped glass tubes filled with blood that had so recently run through their hearts.

  “Mais non,” Lavalle said to himself, shaking off the anger rising from within. It required special effort to keep jealousy from souring his friendship with Peregrine. Jealousy was an explosive emotion, dangerous anywhere, but especially on a remote tropical island with no real rule of law.

  A limb cracked in the bush along the right side of the road, the dry snap of a dead branch breaking loud enough to hear over Napoleon’s hoofbeats.

  Lavalle squinted into the darkness. There was something there. He could see that from the way the foliage moved, shaken by the violent passage of whatever was keeping pace with the doctor’s horse.

  “Yah!” Lavalle cried, and gave the horse two hard kicks.

  Napoleon broke into a
full gallop, neck thrust out, ears back. The doctor leaned forward on the animal’s neck, the reins in both hands, his knees gripping the saddle. Whoever it was, whatever it was, kept pace with rider and mount. It had to be someone on a horse, though Lavalle had the sense that his nemesis was much smaller and more nimble than a man on a horse. Could it be a man running on foot? That was impossible. No man could run as fast as a horse, much less running through the jungle scrub at midnight, dodging trees, branches, and other obstacles with only the light of the hide-and-seek moon to find the way. What manner of man or beast was this, flying through the night, chasing along for who knew what dark purpose?

  Lavalle switched both reins to his left hand and pulled the revolver from his pocket. He held the weapon as far from his face as he could. He did not aim. He was not so foolish as to think he could hit his enemy while riding at a full gallop. His intention was to frighten the thing. Man or beast, either would respect the sharp report of a pistol shot. And with luck, he might even hit something.

  The doctor pulled the trigger, startling Napoleon into a frantic gallop on the dirt road, animal and its clinging rider stretching out faster and faster.

  Holding his breath, he chanced a quick look.

  It was still there, running beside them.

  Lavalle held out the gun again and squeezed the trigger. Whatever it was veered closer, angling toward the road to intercept the doctor and his mount. Ahead in the distance was the outline of Cap Misère, angular shadows against the starry sky. The huts and modest houses were dark, but a lantern would be lit outside the police station and in front of the Hospital St. Jude. The bordello would be well lit, the lamps there not being extinguished until shortly before dawn.

  If he could only make it to town, Lavalle knew, he would be safe.

  The thing was actually pulling ahead of him, which seemed patently impossible, since Napoleon was a very good horse indeed and had the advantage of carrying his rider over an open road. The other continued to angle toward the road, moving to cut him off before he could get to safety.

  “Please help me, God,” Lavalle whispered, too frightened to be confounded by his sudden conversion to faith.

  The doctor pointed the revolver toward the scattering bushes and pulled the trigger again and again until there were no explosions but only the impotent metallic clicks of the hammer falling on spent brass casings. He must have hit or frightened the thing, for it held up just short of the road as Lavalle flew by on his horse. The doctor did not dare look back as something reached out for him. Something clutched at the trouser of his right leg, but horse and rider were too fast. In another few seconds, Lavalle was flying past the first dark house on the edge of town.

  He did not rein in Napoleon until they approached the fountain in the town square.

  Whatever had been following him was not there when he looked back.

  A door opened. One of the whores looked up at him hopefully, not seeing the revolver as he put it back into his jacket pocket with a shaking hand.

  Lavalle walked the sweat-flecked animal home, waking up the manservant who had fallen asleep in front of the stable, waiting for the doctor’s return.

  Carrying the saddlebags that contained his traveling medical kit and the vials of blood, Lavalle dragged himself up to the house feeling utterly drained, and let himself in through the back door with his latchkey, locking the door behind himself. He had never been so glad to be home. He went into his study and put the gun into a desk drawer. He could wait until morning to clean and reload the weapon. He didn’t even put his coat into the wardrobe but threw it over the back of a chair and went to pour himself a brandy.

  Lavalle should have gotten Toussaint out of bed to assemble a posse and search the bush outside town, but that could wait until morning. If there was someone dead along the road outside of town, the body would still be there in the morning. How fortunate he would be if he could boast to Lady Fairweather that he had killed the enemy of the people! It would take more than a glass of brandy to make him think he had managed to kill the beast.

  A floorboard in the hallway creaked.

  Lavalle looked up. The house was locked.

  The board complained again.

  “Annette?”

  There was no answer.

  Locked doors did not mean his house was secure, Lavalle thought. Locks had not stopped whoever put the voodoo talisman in his study. A shadow flickered across the doorway, the hint of a man’s outline in the weak light of the single lamp. There was no time to get the revolver and reload it. Lavalle snatched a scalpel from the open case of surgical tools on the side table.

  “I give you fair warning that I am armed,” he called out.

  Again, no reply. He was surprised his housekeeper hadn’t been awakened by his voice, or the mere sound of him coming into the house. He often wanted a cup of hot cocoa before bed. She was a light sleeper and accustomed to his demands. Unless she was—Lavalle refused to let the thought take form in his mind.

  “You would be well advised to turn around this minute and leave the way you came in. Spending time in Jean-Pierre’s jail will be the best thing that will happen to you if you do not leave this house.”

  There was a small sound, like someone shifting his weight from one foot to the other, but it seemed to come from behind Lavalle. The hair stood up on the back of the doctor’s neck, but he did not turn. He did not want to take his eyes off the door, and he knew it would have been impossible for the shadow man to have moved into the room and gotten behind him, moving too quickly to be seen.

  Nearly a minute passed. Lavalle had frightened off the intruder, he told himself.

  There was a puff of air on his neck, warm air—someone’s breath, Lavalle realized, but by then it was already too late. The lamp went out at the same instant something struck his hand, sending the scalpel flying away. Lavalle was falling, knocked forward to the ground. His assailant was on his back, a viselike grip on his shoulder. Before he could cry out, something sharp tore into the skin of his neck, piercing his jugular vein.

  The doctor did not cry out to God this time, for he knew that not even God could help him now: he was going to die.

  21

  The Public Welfare

  DR. LAVALLE STABBED the hypodermic into his vein with a quick, expert movement. He depressed the injector, sending the drug into his bloodstream. Through the hollow steel needle came the sharp, rising joy mingled with a sensation of raw animal power. The cocaine raced through his body, leaving no room in him for anxiety, fear, and helplessness. The formless torment that had possessed him since the housekeeper found him unconscious on the study floor that morning was ended.

  Lavalle’s medicine. What would he do without it? Cocaine was the only thing that made life bearable among the godforsaken heathens dwelling, as he did, at the very end of the earth.

  Lavalle slumped in his chair, eyes closed, smiling a crooked smile. The hypodermic was forgotten in his hand, the bubble of blood trembling over the wound on the inside of his left forearm unnoticed.

  Where did the runner run when his sanctuary was betrayed? There was always somewhere else to go, as long as his money held out—and he had plenty of money, as the last surviving member of an ancient and wealthy French family. If not for Helen Fairweather, he would be already gone, but he could not bear to think of her with Peregrine.

  And what was it about Peregrine? Lavalle could not remember. There was something that happened after the encounter with the person who had tried to attack him along the road. Lavalle reached for the memory, but it remained just beyond his grasp. He had gone home, badly shaken by the experience on the road, then something about Peregrine, before Lavalle fainted from nervous exhaustion and spent the night on his study floor. It didn’t matter, the doctor thought finally, and abandoned himself to rising bliss.

  His heart was beating fast, and the breaths he drew deep into his lungs seemed to glow with energy. Lavalle’s skin tingled from the acuity of his hyperreceptive nerve end
ings. The drug had penetrated the tiniest capillaries, flooding him with well-being and strength.

  It had been a long time since he had invited his old friend, cocaine, into his body for a visit. He had forsworn the drug after the terrible ordeal of his wife’s death, and yet Lavalle had known all along that once an addict, always an addict. He always kept some of the drug in his apothecary as a topical numbing agent for minor surgeries. Sometimes he would take a vial out of the locked cabinet and look at it, testing his resolve. What false exhibitions of strength! Once he was over the physical craving, it was easy enough for a disciplined mind to resist the needle, at least as long as life went along on a steady, predictable course, everything under the careful control of Monsieur le Docteur. Yet Lavalle knew, in the secret innermost chamber of his heart, that it was only a matter of time before something would come along to shake him out of his complacent stability; and when the stress became too great, the doctor knew he would return to the drug. It had never been more than a question of time. Once the soul is surrendered in weakness, it is never completely reclaimed.

  Outside the window of his hospital office, a bird began to sing. It was not a pretty sound, like the songbirds in the parks back in Paris, but a harsh and wild complaint, the creature crying out perhaps in fear at the sight of a snake lurking among the mangoes, waiting for its chance to strike.

  If Lavalle went away from Cap Misère, Magalie Jeanty could care for the sick children until chaos overwhelmed what little progress he had made there. That would happen whether he stayed or went. Things ran down. They fell apart. Entropy always triumphed in the end. It was a law of physics. And it was only worse in the tropics. Mold, rot, and decay constantly did their quiet work where the sun was hot and it rained almost every afternoon. In France, a man could build something and sit back to admire the progress he had wrought. There was no such respite in the islands. The fight against creeping corruption could never pause, and if it did, the forces of decomposition easily won. Man might have been nature’s master, but on the bit of rock where Lavalle had come to hide from the past, nature refused to be subjugated for long.