Descendant

by Graham Masterton

  “How are you feeling, mate?” said an elderly man in a cloth cap, leaning over me with a worried frown. He reached into his pocket and took out a pack of Woodbine cigarettes. “Bet you could do with a fag.”

  For some reason, I couldn’t stop myself from bursting into tears.

  Days of Silence

  I was taken by ambulance to East Grinstead, in Sussex, to the Archibald McIndoe Burns Unit, which had cared for so many young Spitfire pilots during World War Two. I spent six weeks there, recovering from my injuries, while August turned to September, and the sweltering heat of the summer became a memory.

  My burns were mostly first-degree, although I needed a skin graft on the left side of my neck and two fingers on my left hand were permanently crooked. I broke my collarbone, too, when I hit the water, and fractured three ribs.

  It was a peaceful, almost dreamlike time. Out of my window I could see a red-tiled rooftop and the top of a large horse chestnut tree, with bright green conkers beginning to ripen on it. The sky seemed to be the same pale blue every day, as if it were a child’s painting, rather than a real sky.

  I had plenty of visitors, of course. Charles Frith came to see me two days after I was admitted, along with George Goodhew and a bespectacled woman from the Home Office, who said nothing at all but took pages of notes in Pitman’s shorthand.

  Charles Frith brought me a large box of Cadbury’s Milk Tray chocolates, which he immediately opened and proceeded to eat.

  “Hope you don’t like coffee creams,” he said. “They’re my favorite.”

  “No sign of Duca, I suppose?” I asked him.

  Charles Frith picked out another chocolate and shook his head.

  “We’ve had Royal Navy divers searching the whole area,” said George. “They’ve even been diving as far away as Pilsey Island, where they found Commander Crabb.”

  “Thanks to your efforts, Captain,” Charles Frith added, “I think we can safely say that Mr. Dorin Duca has had his chips. Not only that, we’ve tracked down three of your dead Screechers and given them polio jabs, too. Two in London and one in Birmingham.”

  “Heads removed, bodies buried in consecrated ground?”

  Charles Frith put his fingertip to his lips. “The Health Minister is going to announce to the press tomorrow that the Korean Flu epidemic has been successfully contained.”

  “Isn’t that kind of premature? We still don’t know how many strigoi mortii there might be.”

  “True. But when we do find them, we know how to deal with them, don’t we, thanks to you.” He stood up. “By the way, the police dug up the back garden at the Laurels. They found poor old Dr. Watkins, and his receptionist, and they found Professor Braithwaite, too, and his two assistants from the Royal Aircraft Establishment. All of them gutted like herring.”

  He put another chocolate into his mouth, but promptly spat it into my wastebasket. “Ye gods! Pah! Turkish delight!”

  On the afternoon of my third day in hospital, I phoned Jill. Her father answered, and he didn’t sound at all pleased to hear from me.

  “Jill’s not here, Captain.”

  “Is she OK?”

  “I said, she’s not here.”

  “Well, can you ask her to call me, please? I’d really like to talk to her.”

  “I’m sorry, old man, but I think you’ve already caused us enough trouble, don’t you?”

  He hung up. For a moment, I thought of calling back, but then I hung up, too.

  I telephoned Louise every day, however, and on the third week she flew over from New York to see me. I was out in the hospital garden by then, in a wheelchair, with a thick plaid blanket wrapped around me. She came across the lawn carrying a large bunch of flowers and a shopping bag full of books.

  Her hair was cut short and pixie-feathery, so that she looked even more like Audrey Hepburn than ever. She was wearing a smart lemon-yellow suit with white piping around it. She smelled of Chanel No. 5.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. “You can’t kiss me yet. Risk of infection.”

  She sat down on the green-painted bench next to me. “My God, Jim. Your poor face.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s not so bad as it looks. My left hand got the worst of it.”

  “Jean and Harold send you their best. So does Mo. When do you think you’ll be able to come home?”

  “Soon as the doctors give me the all-clear. Three or four weeks, not much longer.”

  “I wish you could tell me what happened.”

  I laid my bandaged right hand on her knee. “I think it’s better if you don’t know. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.”

  “You won’t have to do this again, though?”

  “No. But it’s possible that I’m still at risk.”

  She raised one of her perfectly plucked eyebrows. “I don’t understand. What kind of a risk?”

  “Well . . . the people I was brought over here to deal with . . . they’re not very good at forgiving and forgetting. I think we’ve managed to catch up with most of them, but there’s always a chance that one or two of them might have slipped through the net.”

  “Meaning what? That they’re going to come after you?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Even in the States?”

  “They don’t give up easy, I’m afraid.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Move, I’m afraid. Go live someplace else, under a different name.”

  “Move? Are you serious? Where? I can’t move . . . I have all my friends in New Milford. My work. Besides, I don’t want to move. And I happen to like the name Falcon.”

  “Sweetheart . . . these people are very, very dangerous.”

  “So why did you agree to get mixed up in this at all? Didn’t you spare one single thought for me?”

  “I didn’t have any choice. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh—you’re sorry? That makes it all right, then.”

  Louise stayed all afternoon but I guess I already knew that our marriage had been torpedoed below the waterline. Louise lived for her social life—her dinner parties and her charity drives and her craft classes. She would never be able to tolerate a solitary existence in a strange city, under an assumed name, jumping every time the phone rang and checking every stranger who came knocking at our door.

  But until I was sure that Duca’s remains had been quartered and beheaded and buried in holy ground, and until I was sure that every other strigoi mortii had been hunted down and destroyed, I would always have to live with the fear that they would be trying to find me.

  The living Screechers I was less concerned about. Without a dead Screecher to guide them, and to give them the final drink of blood they needed to become immortal, they would soon decay so much that they would be beyond any hope of transformation. Their bodies would eventually be discovered in cellars, and attics, and under railroad arches, so extensively decayed that nobody would ever realize that they had once been vampires.

  Louise flew home five days later. She was still advised by my doctors not to kiss me, and it occurred to me that I might never kiss her again.

  Napa, 1957

  I returned to the States on November 22, leaving Heathrow Airport in a silvery-gray fog. With George Goodhew and Warrant Officer Tim Headley I had tracked down only two more strigoi mortii—one close to Oxford and the other in Swindon—but I was pretty sure that we had now caught all of them. There had been six or seven more outbreaks of “Korean Flu” in the London suburbs, but as far as I could tell these were the last desperate feeding frenzies of the few live Screechers who were left. After Guy Fawkes’ Day, on November 5, there were no more reported killings.

  Charles Frith came to the airport himself to see me off. He wore a gray suit and tan leather gloves. “I want you to know that we deeply appreciate what you’ve managed to do for us, Captain. It’s a great pity that ah. We can never give you the public credit you so richly deserve.”

  George had been carrying my Kit for me and when I reached the
gate he handed it over. “Let’s hope you won’t be needing this again.”

  “Thanks, George. Let’s hope so.”

  I returned to New Milford but when I arrived the house was empty. Louise was in Boston, visiting her sister. I was pretty sure that she had timed the trip deliberately, so that she wouldn’t have to welcome me home, but I didn’t have any proof of it.

  I had been back less than a day when I was visited by the two counterintelligence officers from Fort Holabird who had first briefed me on my mission to London—the one with the sandy hair and the one with the Clark Kent spectacles.

  They came into the house with their caps tucked under their arms.

  “We’ve received a very positive report back from MI6,” said the sandy-haired officer. “This little operation has done great things for our relationship with British intelligence.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that I wasn’t half-cremated for nothing.”

  “You won’t be staying here for very much longer?”

  “I need to pack some things, make some arrangements. Talk to my wife.”

  The officer in the heavy-rimmed eyeglasses looked around the room and said, “Expect you’ll be sorry to leave. But we’ve fixed you and your wife up with a very pleasant home in Louisville.”

  “Louisville, Kentucky?”

  “That’s the one. A four-bedroom house with an orchard in back. And we can handle all the moving for you.”

  “Why the hell would I want to live in Louisville, Kentucky?”

  “Because . . . it’s a very friendly city. And it’s very central. And that’s where they invented the Hot Brown sandwich. And . . . who’s going to think of looking for you there, of all places?”

  Louise refused to come with me. I can’t say that I blamed her, but she put me into an impossible position. If I stayed in New Milford with her, there was always the possibility that one of the strigoi mortii would find me, and kill me, and kill her, too, and I couldn’t expose her to a danger like that, especially since I wasn’t even allowed to tell her what the danger was.

  We said a very polite good-bye, almost as if we scarcely knew each other. I took my Kit and a single suitcase and climbed into my car. There was a fresh breeze blowing and the street was filled with whirling storms of red and yellow leaves.

  Louise came out of the house and I wound down the car window. “I’ll call when I get there,” I told her.

  She nodded, but said nothing.

  “You know that I haven’t stopped loving you, don’t you?”

  “Love doesn’t mean anything without trust, Jim.”

  “I’m sorry. I never wanted to have a double life. I just wanted to spend all of my time with you.”

  “You can’t, though, can you?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  I sat there for a little while longer. Louise started to shiver, so I started up the engine and said, “I’ll be seeing you, sweetheart.”

  “No you won’t.”

  At Christmas I flew out to San Diego to see my father. Earlier that year he had sold the house in Mill Valley and moved south to Rancho Santa Fe, a small retirement community in the hills near Escondido. It was very quiet here, and the weather was always warm, and there was a strong fragrance of eucalyptus in the air.

  He lived in a small Spanish-style cottage with a walled garden filled with flowers. He was white-haired now, but the sunshine and the gentle lifestyle had been kind to him. We sat on the red-tiled veranda on Christmas morning, drinking champagne and orange juice.

  “You don’t want to get the sun on those burns of yours,” he cautioned me.

  “They’re healing, Dad. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Still can’t tell me what happened?”

  “Secret stuff. Sorry.”

  “Goddamned oppressive interfering government. If a son can’t even tell his own father how he ended up with burns all over his mush . . .”

  “Just like you never told me the truth about what happened to Mom.”

  He looked at me over his half-glasses. “You know about that?”

  I nodded. “Let’s just put it this way . . . what I was doing in England, that was connected with that. And a debt got repaid. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “I see. Well, as a matter of fact, I don’t see.”

  He sipped his champagne and orange juice for a while. Then without another word he got up from his chair and went into the living room. It was cool in there, with a draft that stirred the zigzag-patterned drapes. Most of the ornaments and pictures were familiar to me from the house in Mill Valley, although there were quite a few photographs that I didn’t recognize.

  Dad sat down at the piano and started to play.

  “ ‘Who made doina?

  The small mouth of a baby

  Left asleep by his mother

  Who found him singing the doina.’

  Remember that one? Your mother loved that one.”

  On top of the piano stood a framed photograph of a handsome-looking woman in a smartly pressed US Army uniform. One hand was raised to shield her eyes from the sun. The other was holding the collar of a glossy-looking bloodhound.

  “Who’s this?” I asked my father.

  He carried on playing—very softly, his wrinkled hands barely touching the keys, as if he were remembering the music in his mind, rather than listening to it. “That? That’s Margot Kettner. Friend of your mom’s, during the war.”

  “That’s a bloodhound. A man-trailer.”

  “Really? I wouldn’t know. All I know is, Margot Kettner and your mom, they were very close.”

  “I never heard her mention any Margot Kettner.”

  “More than likely you weren’t listening.”

  I put the photograph back on top of the piano. “No, Dad, you’re right. I probably wasn’t. You know me.”

  A Postcard from England, 1961

  I settled down in Kenwood Hill, Louisville, under the name William Crowe. They gave me a new social-security number and a new bank account and even a new passport. I started up a freelance business consultancy, pretty much along the lines of the work I had been doing before I was sent to England.

  I made friends, I joined a couple of local charities, I played golf at Quail Chase. I dated a few women, and with one of them (a vivacious redhead called Mandy Ridgway) I had a long and serious relationship that almost went as far as marriage. Somehow, though, I could never bring myself to make the commitment. Every time I thought about marriage I thought about my Kit, lying on the top shelf of my bedroom closet, and the possibility that I might be called on to use it again.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me,” said Mandy, one September evening in 1961, as we sat in Stan’s Fish Sandwich on Lexington Road, eating rolled oysters.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s always like there’s something on your mind. Something private. Something that’s worrying you.”

  “Such as what?”

  “You tell me. But wherever we go, you’re always looking around you, like you’re checking everybody out. Look—you’re doing it now. You’re not looking at me, you’re looking over my shoulder.”

  “Sorry. It’s a bad habit, that’s all. Guess I’m just nosey.”

  She reached across the table and held my hand. “There’s something else, too. A couple of times lately you’ve been talking in your sleep.”

  “Oh, really? Don’t tell me I’ve been calling out another woman’s name.”

  “Not unless ‘Duca’ is a woman.”

  The next morning, I opened up my mailbox and found a plain yellow envelope in it, postmarked Washington, DC. Inside was a compliments slip from MI6 in London, and a picture postcard of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, with an improbably blue sky.

  The postcard was dated June 12, 1961, so it had taken nearly three months to reach me. Presumably it had been vetted by MI6 and then by US counterintelligence before it had been decided that it was harmless, and that they could send it on. />
  The writing was loopy, in smudged purple ink. “Dear Jim, Even after all this time I still think of you. I am so sorry for the way things turned out. Poor Bullet died late last year. I would love to know how you are. Yours, Jill.”

  I felt as if I had been punched in the stomach, very hard. I sat down at the kitchen table just as Mandy came in, tightening the belt of her robe. “Jim? Are you OK?”

  “Sure. I’m fine.”

  “I was thinking maybe we could go to Shakertown today. You’ve never been, have you? It’s really fascinating. Actually, I have an unnatural craving for a slice of their lemon pie. I hope I’m not pregnant.”

  “Not today, Mandy, OK? Something just came up.”

  She came over and sat on my lap and kissed my ear. “I certainly hope so,” she said, suggestively.

  It was Jill herself who opened the front door. Her hair was different, flicked up like a tulip, and she was wearing a tight white sweater and a russet-colored tweed skirt. She looked even more beautiful than I had remembered her—dark-skinned, with those dark feline eyes, and those full, suggestive lips.

  “Jim!” she said, in total shock, and clapped her hand to her mouth.

  “Hey, I got your postcard,” I told her, holding it up. “I thought of writing back—but then I thought—nah, I’ll come over to see you instead.”

  She rushed out of the doorway and threw her arms around me and kissed me. I felt like I was in one of those ridiculously romantic TV commercials. But she felt so good, and she smelled so good, and she seemed to be so delighted to see me, that I really didn’t care.

  “Oh God,” she said. “I thought I was never going to see you again.”

  “Oh, yeah? I hope you didn’t think you could keep me away that easy.”

  “Why don’t you come inside? Mummy and Daddy are both out for the day. When did you arrive?”

  I followed her into the house. Outside the living room window, a gardener was raking up beech leaves from the lawn and burning them on a bonfire. There was a melancholy smell of smoke in the air.