American Gothic

by Michael Romkey

  “I will dedicate myself to this research as if my life depended on it,” Lavalle said finally, his voice shaking with emotion.

  “And that’s the very thing you need to understand,” Peregrine said, and smiled. “Your life does depend upon it.”

  25

  The Agony

  LAVALLE CUT THE girl open quickly, relying on instinct and adrenaline—and, of course, his medicine.

  “The light, Dr. Duplessy.”

  But the young physician was already adjusting the lamp over the incision in the child’s abdomen as Magalie Jeanty attended to the anesthetic. Lavalle had expected his new assistant to be incompetent, but to his profound surprise, Duplessy proved quite capable.

  Like many Haitian men, Dr. René Duplessy was tall and thin. He kept his black head shaved, a carryover from his brief career as an army doctor. He was the graduate of a medical school in Havana that Lavalle had never heard of, but the Cubans must have known what they were doing to turn out someone as solid as this young doctor. Duplessy was Peregrine’s find. After locating the promising physician, Peregrine had spread enough bribe money around Port-au-Prince to secure his release from the army.

  Thanks to Dr. Duplessy, Lavalle would no longer have to divide his time between research and the hospital. As an inducement to Lavalle to work all the harder at unlocking the mystery of vampirism, Peregrine had promised to pay Duplessy to remain at the hospital even if Lavalle left the island. Peregrine had intervened after the second time Toussaint blackmailed Lavalle, but they both knew it was only a matter of time before someone would betray the French doctor to the authorities in the capital.

  Lavalle reached into the girl’s abdomen and found the diseased appendix. The organ was swollen fat with poisonous infection and ready to burst, which would lead to peritonitis and the girl’s death. After another cut Lavalle threw the rancid organ into a kidney-shaped bowl.

  “The child’s parents nearly killed her waiting for the witch doctor’s potion to work. When will these people learn?”

  “I do not know, Dr. Lavalle,” Duplessy said. He did not yet know his superior well enough to know when Lavalle’s questions were merely rhetorical.

  “Would you like to close up, Dr. Duplessy? Magalie, you assist. I have a house call to make.”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  Lavalle turned, smiling, to wash the blood from his hands. As you wish, sir. Good army protocol was a wonderful thing, especially when one was on the receiving end.

  Napoleon was saddled and waiting in front of the hospital. Lavalle had been on his way to Fairweather House when they brought the girl in, writhing in pain. He climbed back on his horse and headed out of town at a gallop. The darkening sky did not concern him. The murders continued every week or two, but Lavalle had nothing to fear. It was a different story for the others. The people along the coast barricaded themselves inside their hovels at sunset and did not come out again until dawn. Of the establishments in Cap Misère, only the brothel remained open after dark, the appeal of sex and liquor too powerful to be resisted. Most customers stayed overnight. The risk of shame did not outweigh the fear of having your throat torn out but the monster that was, by a peculiar twist of fate, the mentor to Dr. Lavalle’s research.

  Lavalle followed a servant upstairs to Helen’s bedroom. She was on her back beneath a down comforter, though it was a hot, humid night. She reminded him of the child back at the hospital after she had been chloroformed: small, still, feverish, the weak spark of life barely flickering on the edge of eternal darkness.

  “I apologize,” Lady Fairweather said weakly just as Lavalle decided she was unconscious. “I was too weak to get out of bed today.”

  “There is no need.”

  Lavalle sat down on the bed and took her hand. She had lost perhaps a kilogram of weight that week, all the more alarming in one who had not carried any excess weight even when she was healthy. Lady Fairweather was already beginning to look skeletal, as Lavalle had imagined she would when they put her into a casket.

  “Have Colette bring you a glass of wine.”

  He shook his head. “I have work to do when I get back to the laboratory.”

  “Ah, yes, your research. Tell me, Michael, how is it going? Are you making much progress?”

  Lavalle looked at her closely and saw nothing but her usual English detachment. Most people in her position would have been desperate for some thread of hope to cling to, though his solution of the problem of Peregrine’s condition would do nothing directly to help her.

  “A little, my dear. I would be lying if I told you I expected a quick breakthrough. It is one thing to identify a disease of the blood, but quite another to cure one. The leukemia you suffer from is a perfect example. It was described in the medical literature long ago, but treatment remains elusive. Perhaps someday there will be an answer, when we unlock the secrets of the cell and come to understand what causes these malignancies. If we could only understand what factors lead a disease to be switched on in the body, so to speak, perhaps we could find treatments to turn the same switch off.”

  “Tell me what have you learned so far,” she said, and closed her eyes. Lavalle doubted she had much interest, but conversation gave her something to think about besides her misery.

  “An excess of red blood cells, for one thing. It is quite remarkable. The red cells carry oxygen to the body. Peregrine has them in abundance beyond anything I’ve ever witnessed in mammalian blood. No wonder he has such unusual physical strength. His body is supercharged, like a mighty engine that is able to generate extraordinary power. My guess is this is the reason his health has not completely collapsed. His system keeps him one step ahead of this disease, indeed of all diseases—but only just barely.”

  “Do you think you will ever find a cure?” There was a faraway quality to Helen’s voice. Perhaps she was becoming delirious. The end wasn’t very far away for her, unless she changed her mind.

  “Perhaps someday. It would help to relocate the research somewhere near a major teaching hospital, perhaps in the United States, where the facilities are up-to-date and there are colleagues whose assistance I could enlist. Money is not an issue for Peregrine. You can buy a lot of expertise with unlimited funds.”

  “Then will you both go to Boston or Philadelphia when I am gone?”

  “I don’t know. There would be complications.”

  “You mean because of the problems you left behind in France.”

  Her eyes were open again and she was looking at him, not blinking.

  “Did he tell you?” Lavalle said, feeling his anger rise.

  “Who—Nathaniel? No. Before he died, my poor husband told me you had to leave Paris and would go to jail if you ever went back.”

  “That’s all?”

  She nodded, barely moving her head.

  “Do you want to know what happened?”

  “Only if you want to tell me, Michael.” She summoned the strength to smile. “You know that confession can be good for the soul.”

  “It was over a woman,” he said, unable to meet her eyes.

  “I thought perhaps it was.”

  How best to frame the story? Lavalle thought. It was a good thing he’d been frightened into laying off the cocaine and had regained some perspective.

  “I fought a duel over a woman. I know that must sound hopelessly romantic. But I am, after all, French.”

  Helen smiled. The poor, misguided Christian soul: fortunately for Lavalle, Lady Fairweather didn’t have it in her to condemn him.

  “The man was killed, unfortunately. And so I came to Haiti to open the children’s hospital, which had always been one of my dreams.” He took a deep breath before going on, knowing the boldest lies are often the easiest to believe. “And, frankly, to atone for my sins.”

  He almost expected her to burst into laughter, but she continued to look at him with the same compassionate smile.

  “You’re a good man, Michael. No matter what happened in the past, in your h
eart you are a good man.”

  Lavalle enjoyed the adulation for the few moments he was able to keep himself from acknowledging that none of it was true.

  “Now, as for you, my darling Helen.”

  Lady Fairweather’s head came up a little from the pillow.

  “I do not mean to be melodramatic,” Lavalle said, “but you realize your time is growing short.”

  She nodded.

  “I understand your hesitancy to take our friend up on his unusual offer. I cannot recommend it to you as a physician. There are too many unknowns. The first law of medicine is ‘Do no harm.’ There is no telling how long it will take to find a way to reverse the process. To be perfectly honest, a cure for vampirism may never be found. But…”

  Helen Fairweather’s eyebrows rose. She had known there was going to be a but, and she was waiting for it, knowing Lavalle would eventually come around to employing it.

  “…as your friend—as someone who loves you, Helen—please let Peregrine help you. It is your only hope.”

  “That’s not true, Michael. I have the only kind of hope that matters. My hope, and my faith, are in the Lord. I am going to a better place.”

  “No one wants to die,” Lavalle said hotly, like a prosecutor objecting to an absurd claim in court.

  “I do not mind dying, if it is God’s will.”

  “I thought you loved me.” Lavalle felt a stab of uncertainty, which was immediately replaced by jealousy, the twisting of the dagger in his entrails. “Or it is Peregrine you love?”

  “I care very much for both of you, Michael.”

  Dr. Lavalle threw up his hands. “Then how can you leave us? How can you lie there and let life slip away from you when there is an alternative?”

  “Don’t think that it is easy,” Lady Fairweather said as a single tear began to trace its way down her feverish cheek. “This has caused me more agony than you could imagine. I would have this cup taken away from me the same as you, and yet I am determined to let God’s will be done.”

  “But why, for the sake of all you hold holy?” Lavalle slid off the bed onto his knees. “I’m begging you to reconsider. I am begging,” he said, his hands clasped together in supplication.

  “I can’t become like him.” She was shaking a little. “I refuse to become like him.”

  “A vampire, you mean.”

  She shook a little as she nodded, as if nearly bereft of strength. “To be forced to prey on the innocent—I would rather die a thousand deaths than hurt even one person, Michael.”

  “But Peregrine says you don’t have to kill to get the blood you need.”

  “As if he doesn’t? You are too intelligent for such a disingenuous argument, Michael. If Nathaniel can’t control his appetite for blood, how could I expect to be any stronger?”

  “Because you are strong. I’ve never known a woman who possessed half as much will as you, Helen. You’ve proven that with the way you’ve run your plantation. Look at it in comparison with Peregrine’s place. And besides that, you are good. You could never let your desires lead you to stoop to killing. You don’t have that in you.”

  “If only I could believe that were true. Nathaniel was good once, too. He’s confided in me a little about his past life. He was once a husband, a father, and judge. Then his family was murdered, and he met the beautiful creature who transformed him into a—I can’t even say the word. It is too monstrous. I can never become one of them. I could never prey on the living for their blood to prolong my own life. Blood is like a strong drink to a drunkard or drugs to an addict: it exerts a power over these pathetic creatures they cannot control.”

  Lavalle stood up and walked to the window. Did her remark about drugs mean she knew of his dalliance with cocaine? Was she hinting that she knew? Perhaps her husband had known more, and had told her more, than Helen let on.

  “Who knows what tax such a change could levy against my eternal soul?” Lady Fairweather said to his back. “Have you read Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula? They have all lost their souls, these undead beings.”

  “I do not have time for novels,” Lavalle said briskly. “Does Peregrine strike you as ‘undead’? He seems very much alive to me.”

  “You will not be able to persuade me to ignore the moral dimension to this, Michael. I know Nathaniel far too well to believe he is evil, but we can never forget that he has done many, many evil things.”

  “He has changed. There have been no more deaths.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Yes,” Lavalle lied. “Not a one.”

  Lady Fairweather relaxed back into her pillow. “Then I have done at least that much for him. You must do the rest, after I am gone.”

  “Do you really think he’ll let you die?” Lavalle said, exasperated and afraid at the same time. Peregrine expected him to convince Lady Fairweather to change her mind. “He is in love with you, you know. No, that isn’t putting it strongly enough: he is obsessed with you. He will not rest unless he can possess you.”

  “He said as much when he was here last night. Do you know what I told him?”

  Lavalle did, but he waited for her to say it herself.

  “I told him he could kill me, if he wanted to, for I was already in great pain and death would come as a relief. I also acknowledged he could turn me into a vampire against my will, if he wanted. In this remote corner of the world, Nathaniel clearly has the power to do whatever he wishes. But if he did force me to become like him, I told him I would hate him forever. Far better for me to go to the peace of my grave loving him—and loving you—than to be turned into a monster doomed to hate him with every fiber of my being during an eternity spent dragging myself from one vile, bloody crime to the next.”

  Her hand slid across the comforter and took his, her grasp for one brief moment as firm and strong as it had once been.

  “You must both be as brave as I am, Michael, and face death without bitterness or remorse,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion. “My death and your death, when it comes. We must be obedient to God’s will.”

  26

  The Fallen

  NATURE IS AN indomitable power in the tropics, the heat, rain, and sun creating paradoxically twin drives for growth and decay that can be resisted but never overcome. The coastal jungle quickly reclaims gardens, farm plots, and plantations that are not constantly maintained.

  The plantation surrounding Maison de la Falaise had the look of abandonment about it, as if disease or war had carried away the inhabitants, leaving the vines, ferns, and monstrous orchids to reclaim their humid kingdom. The gravel of fine white shells paving the lane from the road to the great house had almost completely disappeared beneath Bahama grass and overgrown oleander bushes that slapped Dr. Lavalle’s legs as he rode, leaving the trousers above his riding boots wet with dew.

  But the workers had not run away—or been murdered. They had merely abandoned their former duties. Their presence was plain enough in the drumming and firelight flickering against the trees from a clearing beyond the cottages where the field hands lived. Peregrine allowed voodoo to be practiced openly on the plantation. And why not? The American had abandoned all pretense of civilization, even to the extent that he participated in whatever dark rituals were carried out around the huge bonfires that sent sparks mingled with pagan incantations into the starry Caribbean night sky.

  Lavalle did not turn Napoleon toward the ceremony but continued to the house. If Peregrine was off with the witches, dancing around the fire, he would wait until the American returned to the house to deliver the news.

  Maison de la Falaise was lighted but in a haphazard way—a lamp here, a candle there, more dark than not. The house was disintegrating at an amazing rate. One corner of the porch was sagging—termites had gotten into a pillar—but Peregrine apparently had no interest in having his people repair it. One of the shutters had come loose during the last thunderstorm and hung against the house at a crazy angle. It was madness to let the property go, especially when P
eregrine had the employees and money to maintain the plantation as it deserved to be kept. But then there was a madness to the American that Lavalle was only beginning to appreciate. Peregrine had given up on Maison de la Falaise as he had given up on almost everything and seemed content to wallow in misery as his world disintegrated around him.

  There was no way of knowing how Peregrine would react to the sad news of Lady Fairweather’s death. Lavalle would have preferred to flee the island than to be the one to tell him, but he knew there was no way to escape the vampire, and even if he tried, Peregrine would hunt him down.

  Science was the doctor’s only hope now, which was fitting enough, for he had lived his entire adult life as if the laws of science, as postulated and proven by research, were the only laws that applied to him. If he could make Peregrine understand he was beginning to make progress with the research, the monster would not kill him. It ought to be easy enough to convince him, with Lady Fairweather dead, that the best course for them was to leave their green hell for somewhere civilized, where Lavalle could avail himself of the laboratory facilities required for the breakthrough that would lead to a treatment for Peregrine’s bizarre condition.

  A woman was sitting on the top porch stair of Maison de la Falaise, her figure silhouetted against the light shining through the open entryway. She sat with head slumped forward, knees far apart, like one of the bawds at the whorehouse in Cap Misère. The doctor didn’t see the second woman until he got closer; she was lying on her back at the bottom of the steps, arms and legs splayed out, as if she had been shot at the top of the stairs and fallen backward, dead.

  Napoleon sensed death, the way animals do, and began to shy. The reins snapped against the horse’s neck as Lavalle pulled them sharply back just short of his destination.