Tears pooled in Roger’s eyes. He looked pathetic but sexy, like Johnny Depp in Junie Moon. He needed to get his priorities straight. Sure, he’d been searching for his kidnapped baby brother for most of his life, but now he had a son on the way.
“I thought you didn’t believe in predictions. You traded our baby’s safety for your brother who is probably … never mind.” I came close to saying words I wouldn’t be able to retract.
He avoided eye contact. “Mrs. MacGuffin told me things no one else could ever know. My entire life I have blamed myself for …” He dropped his head into his hands as he choked on the words.
“I was a curious kid. I foolishly left my little brother in his stroller with some people so I could see the Lugosi Comet. I just thought they were nice peasants, I didn’t know they were gypsies. I hid in a cave and watched the comet sweep through Loutish. When I returned my baby brother was gone. I don’t know if the gypsies took him or the comet carried him off, but I must find the answer.”
I felt my heart split open. He’d never shared that part of the kidnapping with me. That was a lot of guilt for a kid to carry, but even as I stroked his head, logic replaced pity.
Could this be a trick to bait us into bringing our unborn baby to Loutish? Mrs. MacGuffin appeared to be a sweet little fairy godmother and afterlife coach, but could she be something more?
“I told Squirl I saw a monster in our bathroom mirror. She told me about Vlad and his Impala. He steals babies. Keep your eye out for a guy who looks like Donald Sutherland but shorter.”
“That’s Kiefer Sutherland,” Kit said. He squatted on the ground next to me in his satin pajamas and fluffy slippers. It was minor miracle the way he was dressed that we made it past the lurking Louts outside the Van Helsing.
He placed his arm around me and squeezed. “No one is going to get my godson before or after birth.”
Bracing my hand on my friend’s shoulder and then on top of his head, I stood, pushing Roger away. I didn’t need or want his help. Not right now. “What if the gypsies are still here? What if there’s a ring of baby thieves?” I yelled.
Roger balled his fists. “Now that I’m here in Loutish, I feel that my brother is still alive. I just need to get inside the monastery. That place holds the key.”
Torn between father and unborn son, my head ached trying to figure a safe course of action. I couldn’t let Roger go alone and I wasn’t about to let Kit accompany him and leave me with only a toilet plunger for protection. Roger’s determination would be the end of us.
I stood, gripped the plunger and marched ahead of the guys. So be it. If that’s the way Doctor Roger Stubborn-Head Jolley wanted it.
Mrs. MacGuffin dumped a prophecy on me before I became pregnant. “You will find your home, though it will not be where you left it,” she said. Did that have anything to do with home being in Loutish? Cripes, I hoped not. There wasn’t even a Starbucks here.
Chapter Eight
The monastery was a white stucco Alamo with a simple cross on the roof. The front door stood open a smidge, enough to make our entrance semi-legal. Roger led our little party into a rapidly darkening courtyard. It was as if someone had hit a rheostat and turned down the sun though it was early in the day.
A statue of Saint Francis, the patron saint of animals, stood in the stagnant moat of a stilled fountain. Arches surrounding the darkened piazza gave it a Corpse Bride setting.
I grit my teeth and bore down, trying to control the shivers that took over my body. Cobwebby, but clean to the point of obsessive-compulsive, the building looked to be a thousand years old and definitely monk-less. I knotted my left fist and held the toilet plunger at the ready in my right. If that Vlad guy appeared from the shadows he was going to get his eyeballs sucked out of his head.
Roger stood a few feet ahead of me, hands on his hips, turning his head like an owl. “When I was last here, the monks had this place locked up tighter than a jar of olives. I couldn’t open the door and they wouldn’t respond.” He kicked the base of the fountain and a chunk of stone shot loose.
“The cemetery is on the other side of that wall. Some people say the place is haunted. The furniture in the cellar is said to move and the walls vibrate. At least that was according to the priests.”
“I thought they didn’t speak.”
“They kept a log. Eventually it made its way to the archives in the British museum. Morris Quincy was director then, he shared that they found two unusually tall men buried under the altar. Never explained, but certainly odd.”
I looked at Kit. “Relatives?”
“Another legend is that the friars fearing invaders dug tunnels from the abbey to the Van Helsing where they kept huge black horses to be used in an escape.”
Voices came from beyond the wall.
Kit took a deep breath. I sensed he was about to let go with a hello yodel. I jumped up and slapped my hand over his mouth. “Shh!” His blue eyes peeked over my hand, fear registering as his orbs grew.
I waved the guys to follow me. We inched along the stucco barricade looking for an opening, perhaps a gate. Withered rose bushes littered the path and crumbled blossoms clung to the dried vines. I stumbled and Kit caught me, freeing my foot from a cluster of thorny plants. The roots of the bushes were still moist. Pruning shears and a basket lay between the bushes and the stone path. Someone had been tending these plants just recently.
One finger to his lips, Roger motioned us toward a rusty gate in the far wall. Pressing my face to the metal scrollwork I strained to peek between the iron swirls. I could see the higgidy-jiggidy tops of tombstones in the fading light. Each tombstone had a wire spiral on the top right hand corner. Were they antennas for some Vulgarian form of communication?
Kit and Roger put their shoulders to the gate, but it swung open easily with a feeble squawk. We stepped into the graveyard. Overhanging trees and a soupy mist turned the cemetery into a city of terrors befitting Madame Tussauds chamber of horrors. Torches twinkled in the half-light cast by an orange glow. Could they be crime lights?
We skirted between two open graves. I tried to look away from the pits, but as if passing an accident, my eyes were drawn to the holes in the earth. A bare yellowed head showed from one of the graves, a long broken stake extended from the corpse’s chest. I felt the earth move under my feet and my knees came a tumbling down. I reached for Roger and caught him just in time.
Steadying myself, I spotted a gang of men standing under a low-hanging willow tree. Two shotgun-wielding Louts in gray baggy pants, tattered shirts, and leather vests trained their eyes on me.
A man in a black suit, taller than Roger but shorter than Kit, stood with his back to us. His light brown hair cropped close, his suit a nice conservative fit. It spoke of Italian clothiers.
“Hey, there!” Roger called out.
His yell startled me and I stumbled on the crumbly earth, my foot performing a Fred Flintstone dance on the lip of a grave. I fell into Roger knocking us both to the ground and sending him rolling from the impact.
Mister World-Famous Archaeologist bowled into the hole landing face down on a moldy monk barely missing the stake protruding from the clergyman’s chest. He was almost pinned to a cleric for eternity.
Roger bounced into a pushup and jumped from the corpse to the edge of the pit, sweat pouring from his brow and a lunatic look in his eyes. He mounted the slippery soil, skidding and sliding. Kit extended a hand and Roger grabbed it with a smack. He climbed out of the grave and fell on the ground panting.
If the guy in the suit was in cahoots with Vlad the baby stealer, we had just revealed one of our slickest Miami Vice moves, the one where we imitate idiots.
I scrambled to my feet. The musty smell of tomb soil snuck up my nostrils and down my throat. Coughing and sniffling, I approached the suited dude who had turned in time to witness our performance.
The man in the Italian suit was wearing a priest’s collar. I was relieved to see he was not Vlad of the mirror although his
face was familiar. I hoped he wasn’t the priest who had heard my two confessions. I was only fourteen at the time. My mind flipped through my catalogue of sins, I think I was still wearing sin training wheels, so how bad could it have been?
Roger extended his hand and introduced himself, “Doctor Roger Jolley.” He scanned the graveyard with the excitement of a kid finding a train set under the Christmas tree.
“I’m Reverend Bram Soaker, you can call me Father Bram,” the priest said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, doctor.”
Kit bowed his head as if Bram were the Pope. “Kit Kennedy, Your Honor.”
Brushing the damp dirt off my knees, I hobbled closer and extended my hand to the priest. His palm was cold and soft; his eyes deep pools of sadness.
“Wendy Darlin,” I said. “I’m so sorry for your incredible loss.” My hope that the story of the slaughter of the monks was a boogieman tale now firmly dashed.
“Ah … the Americans.” He placed his other cold grave-digging hand on top of mine. “Blessings on your marriage.”
“You know?” I said.
“Loutish is a small village, the slightest news travels quickly. Your celebration will bring some modicum of joy to the town.”
“The Louts have a strange way of expressing happiness,” I said. “The staff is deserting the hotel and the villagers have been downright hostile toward us.”
“Please forgive the Louts. Right now they live in terror and confusion.” Father Bram dropped my hand moving his arm in a sweeping arc. “This savagery has the villagers falling back on their primitive beliefs. As welcome as you are, you are also strangers and so they fear you.”
“Do you know how your fellow clergymen died?” Roger asked scanning what looked like a scene from the Night of the Living Dead before they went for a stroll.
“The villagers discovered the bodies of the entire abbey displayed in open graves.” The priest hesitated. “I was raised by these very friars. They are my family and they have all been staked through the heart, murdered within the fortnight. I’ve been sent here on behalf of the Vatican to investigate their deaths and protect their bodies.”
“Protect the bodies?”
“You can see they are staked. The villagers would desecrate them further by beheading them, stuffing garlic down their necks, and then burning the remains or perhaps throwing them into the sea.”
That was more detail than I needed. My stomach rolled and it wasn’t from Little Roger.
“Were the stakes the cause of their deaths?” Roger asked.
“As you are a doctor, I would welcome your thoughts, but from what I can tell they were exsanguinated in another location and their bodies dumped here. The stakes were driven through their hearts once they were placed in their coffins.”
Kit cut me a questioning look. “Exsang…?”
“That means they died from loss of blood. Lots of blood,” I said, turning in time to catch Roger under the armpits, breaking his fall. I let him slump to the ground.
Father Bram seemed not to notice Roger’s stumble and he clambered to regain his footing. “We have one body in the tent for closer examination. It was the only corpse not drained of blood. If you would be so kind, Doctor Jolley?”
The tent was made of bug netting. A body was visible on a table. Even at the distance of twenty feet, I could see it was a bloody body.
“Father, Roger is not that kind of doctor. His field is archaeology. And he has a slight handicap. He passes out at the sight of blood.”
An expression of compassion passed over the priest’s face. “Sometimes the Lord sends a sheep to do a lion’s task. Perhaps Doctor Jolley can assist me in the investigating the graves? Those bodies are bloodless.”
The cemetery grew even darker. What was going on? It was daytime. Hey, get your mitts off the dimmer switch whoever you are. More and more I was feeling as if I’d stepped into an old black and white vampire movie and an evil force was screwing with the continuity.
I glanced back at the monastery wall. “Have you inspected the church?”
“My first duty is to protect these bodies before the villagers whip themselves into a frenzy and lay siege to the bodies.”
I couldn’t get over the feeling that I’d met Father Bram before. There was something in his eyes and the way he carried himself. It would come to me—I just hoped it didn’t hurt when it arrived.
Chapter Nine
Forty dead monks and only one priest for protection? “This is more than one man can handle,” I said. “Why are you here alone? Where are the Loutish police? Doesn’t the Vatican have a version of the FBI? I think I saw that on the Discovery Channel.” Little Roger gave a swift kick under my left rib. I took that to mean you tell him, mom.
Father Bram shook his head. “The local authorities are all native Louts and harbor a natural fear of vampires. This has been staged to appear to be the work of Nosferatu but my training tells me otherwise. I have requested backup from the Vatican’s VVI. I expect assistance within a few days.”
“VVI?” I asked.
“Vatican Vampire Investigators. We have special divisions for all sub-genres. Unfortunately, our best VVI agents are working a case in a remote place called Forks. A SWAT team is flying in by Vaticopter day after tomorrow, until then John, Paul, and I are on our own.”
“SWAT?”
“Yes. Like in ‘swat them down’.”
“So you don’t believe this is the work of a vampire?”
Bram shook his head, his brown hair falling into his eyes. “Forty victims in
one night? The vampire would be the size of the Goodyear blimp. And why stake them since they are drained?”
Kit squeezed my arm. It hurt. I pulled away with a jerk and accidentally landed a dull punch in the priest’s solar plexus.
He raised his hand in forgiveness before I could apologize. “Someone left these graves open, intending they be found. I believe it was done to scare the villagers.”
“I’ll be glad to assist you in any way, except blood.” Roger rolled up his sleeves.
Bram smiled. “You have only just arrived in Loutish with a bride and a baby on the way. Please have a good night’s sleep, and get your Vulgar legs under you. My brethren are not going anywhere. No one will spirit them off. Not with me here.”
“Perhaps in the morning when the light is better you can return to help me. I don’t know where to begin. My education in Rome did not prepare me for this whether it is bogus or… real.”
Roger paced around one of the graves deep in concentration. Did he notice something I missed?
Kit’s circled in the opposite direction sneaking peeks at the corpses. His pompom slippers about as out of place in a graveyard as a ballerina in a mudwrestling ring.
A peculiar look passed between the men with the shotguns. Were they nailtechaphobic? They’d have to deal with me. I tightened my grip on the plunger.
“Mayor Peter Cushion has vowed to cleanse the monastery of supposed vampires by burning the good brothers’ bodies and throwing their ashes into the Black Sea.”
The poor monks. Dead with worse to come.
Bram continued, “I speak Loutish but I will need help reasoning with the mayor and protecting the graves. Cushion is up for re-election and is an opportunist. In the last twenty-four hours he has rebuilt his campaign based on cleansing the village of vampires.”
“Do you think the mayor could be behind these murders and the stakings?” I asked. “After all, he is a politician.” I resisted the temptation to touch his grave-germy arm. I’d already shaken his hand. “We can’t leave you here alone. You might be the next victim.”
He looked over the cemetery. “I have two assistants besides these Louts.” He motioned to two young priests dressed entirely in white. The men stepped from the shadows. “This is John and this is Paul, they are postulants, trainee priests.”
The duo bowed.
Kit bowed.
Roger bowed.
I tugged Kit’s elbow. �
��Enough bowing already.”
One of the postulants dusted off a tarnished lamp and lit the candle in the glass compartment while the natural light grew even dimmer. I scanned the graveyard for vampires, werewolves, and politicians. Nothing.
The spirals on the tombstones bugged me. They bent and twisted like the decrepit television antennas I had once seen in Warsaw. The coiled wires resembled miniature tornadoes, each cemented into the upper right hand corner of the tombstones. Did they perhaps have something to do with the murders? Maybe the gypsies had a secret Internet.
“Are those wire thingies for television reception or communication?” I asked.
Roger moaned.
Father Bram looked at me as if I grown a second head. “This is a cloistered order. They have no contact with the outside world and certainly no interest in television,” he said.
“It’s the hormones,” Roger said patting me on the head in a move that would cost him dearly when I got him alone.
“Those wire spirals are flower holders. That’s where bouquets are placed on the anniversary of the deceased death.” A smile played at the edge of Rodger’s mouth as he explained the tombstone Slinkies.
Mister Smartass Grave Expert.
Father Bram smiled benignly. That cued the postulants who joined in the soft chuckle at my expense. The Louts leaned on their shotguns and laughed out loud.
I turned to Kit, who was busting his cheeks holding back laughter. “Don’t let me stop you.” He joined in the male bonding at my expense. Screw them.
I felt my face redden. “Gentlemen, far be it from me to poop on your party, but you’re standing over a passel of dead clergy. There’s nothing to laugh at here.” They didn’t look like flower holders.
Roger hugged me. “It’s past her naptime and she hasn’t eaten. We’ll take her back to the Van Helsing. Will you be okay here tonight? I’ll return in the morning.”
I fumed. Roger was so going to pay for patronizing me.
Father Bram nodded. “The Lord will protect us but your expertise is most appreciated.”
Vulgarian Vamp (A Wendy Darlin Comedy Mystery Book 5) Page 4