99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale

by David Wellington

  “Running Wolf,” they called him, and she finally understood why. He was of average build, but his height made him look lean. He had a sharp nose and sharper eyes, and his head was crowned with a thick shock of silver hair that turned darker in the back. His mustache was thick and bristly, but he didn’t look like one of the Pennsylvania cops she’d seen back at the station. He looked far more distinguished, like some European aristocrat maybe, but with a real streak of wildness. When he spoke to the girls he tilted his head back slightly and looked down at them along his long nose. The gesture didn’t look haughty, however, but almost conspiratorial. He looked as if he were sharing dark secrets with them even as he discussed the topics for their term papers.

  “Professor,” Caxton said. “I hate to interrupt, but—”

  “Trooper, ah, Caxton,” he said airily. “Oh, yes, the police called to say you were coming over. You young ladies had best leave us.” He smiled down at his students and one of them actually giggled. “And do be safe tonight, won’t you? Lock your doors so the beasties don’t get you.”

  The students promised to be good and left, shouldering their bags and giving Caxton a once-over as they passed her. It was only when they were gone that Caxton saw that Geistdoerfer’s arm was in a sling. “Shall we go to my office, where we can sit down?”

  “Sure,” Caxton said.

  He started loading books and papers into a satchel with his one good hand. Caxton helped him and somehow ended up carrying the bag as well. He led her down a long hallway that was starting to get gloomy as the sun fell. His office was at the far end, a cozy room lined with books. He sat down behind a big desk piled with student papers while Caxton took a padded chair on the far side. She glanced around, taking in her surroundings, the way any cop would, but the room offered few secrets at first glance. A cavalry saber hung on one wall, its scabbard mounted just beneath it. The blade was polished to a high shine but still spotted with rust.

  “A horseman of J. E. B. Stuart’s acquaintance dropped that about half a mile south of where we stand,” he told her, “one hundred and forty-one years ago. His head had just been taken off by a cannonball, so he no longer needed it. He was good enough to let it fall in the mud, where it was quickly buried, and in the heat of July the mud hardened to something like cement. The sword lay there for quite some time, almost perfectly preserved, until I had the pleasure of digging it up when I was just a lad. I was a tourist, you know, dragged here by my parents from Nebraska, where we lived. I thought this place was boring until I saw that sword. Now I can’t imagine anywhere more exciting, anywhere else I’d rather live. It is funny, isn’t it, the path things take through history? The way the past intersects with and shapes our so modern lives?”

  Caxton knew a few things about how the past could catch up with you. She didn’t have time for chitchat, though. The sun was down and the vampire would be waking up—hungry. Best to get this interview over with quickly.

  “I apologize for taking up your time,” she said. “I’ve already spoken with Jeff Montrose—”

  Geistdoerfer’s eyes went wide for a moment. “A promising student, though a bit bizarre looking.”

  “Yes,” Caxton agreed. “He showed me the cavern, and the bones inside. I’m pretty sure the vampire I’m chasing came out of the empty coffin down there. Montrose said you were the first person to enter the cavern, and I thought you might have seen something everyone else missed. That you might have some idea how the vampire got out.”

  “You thought, perhaps, that I might have actually seen the vampire leaving the cavern?”

  Caxton squirmed in her chair. “I hardly think that’s likely, no, but I need to check up on every lead. I’m sure you understand, as an archaeologist.”

  “Oh, absolutely.” He tried to gesture with his hurt arm, but the sling wouldn’t allow him much freedom of motion. He grunted and closed his eyes for a moment, as if the pain of his injury had caught up with him.

  He opened a drawer with his good hand and took out a bottle of pills. After fiddling with the cap, he knocked two of them back into his mouth and swallowed them dry. He grunted them down his throat, then sat staring at his desk for a long minute while she waited for him to recover enough to talk.

  He leaned back in his swivel chair, leaned all the way back and looked up at the ceiling. “Well,” he said, finally, “I suppose there’s no point in trying to lie now.”

  “I’m sorry?” Caxton asked.

  “I could feed you some line, and believe me, I’m enough of an orator to probably sell it. I could tell you the coffin in question was already ruined when I found it. Empty and…all that. But there’s hardly any point. You’ve caught me, copper. Red-handed.” He looked down at his arm. She studied the sling closely for the first time and saw a drop of red welling up through the bandage around his wrist. “Oh, that’s kind of funny, isn’t it?”

  Then he started to laugh.

  30.

  It had been a fine house once, with paintings on the walls & plentiful lamps to provide illumination. Now only sunlight, slanting downward from the rent dome of the cupola, limned the place in a yellow radiance that hid as much as it revealed. I could see where the paper on the walls had peeled back, & where the floorboards were littered with the bodies of dead wasps, dry & brittle so they crunched as I trod on them.

  The entrance gave on an elaborate spiral staircase that must once have risen majestically to a second floor. An enormous finial in the shape of a chess pawn stood at the bottom of the railing, & it remained in fine shape, but shortly past that point the stairs had collapsed, or been pulled down. They had been reduced to a heap of plaster & broken marble that filled much of the room.

  Beyond these stairs I proceeded, & found a luxurious parlor, reduced to a shambles. Shattered mirrors lined the walls while elegant chairs had been shoved to the back of the room like so much rubbish, some broken down to kindling, some still showing satin upholstery. In the center of the room stood a raised platform, perhaps like an altar, but with a rounded top. It was made of alabaster & chased with gold. I stepped closer & saw that it was hinged on one side & would open like a chest. Then I sucked in a deep breath & tried not to sicken. It was a sepulcher I had found. A gilded coffin.

  “They cain’t hurt ya by daylight,” Storrow hissed at me from behind. I looked back & saw the other men standing in the doorway, peering over each others’ shoulders but unwilling to take one more step forward.

  I screwed up my courage & grabbed the side of the sarcophagus & threw the lid open. It rose easily on springs & I let go & jumped back, ready for anything.

  Inside I saw a lining of stained red velvet, & nothing more. Not so much as a mouldering bone or scrap of a shroud.

  “Nothin’ ever was that easy, I s’pose,” Storrow said, sounding almost regretful. For myself I was glad enough to find the vampire missing. I did not look to tussle with it again, at least not so soon.

  “Bill’s not here,” I told the others. “Come on, let us keep searching.”

  I grasped the lid again & tried to close it, but it felt as if it had locked into place & all my strength could not move the lid. There must be some hidden catch or a release lever, I thought, & I bent to look closer.

  At that moment some hard metal object caught the back of my collar, & jarred the very bones of my spine. Had I not been leaning forward it would have caved in the back of my skull, I am sure. Stunned, my arms tingling, I turned as quick as I could to see my assailant bringing his weapon back for another blow. It was a gold candelabra, I saw, with white wax still clotted in its receptacles. The man who wielded this expensive club wore a long nightshirt & had a stocking cap on his head. His face hung in tatters, the skin peeled back from the grayish muscles underneath. Just as Bill had come to look.

  There was a struggle; the short of it is, I lived, and he did not. I would have studied the dead man in more detail, I think, had we not at the moment heard footsteps scuttling on the floor above our heads.

  �
��THE STATEMENT OF ALVA GRIEST

  31.

  Caxton squinted. “If you’re making a joke I’m afraid I don’t get it.”

  “Then allow me to explain. You were quite right to come here, quite right.” He leaned forward again and opened his eyes, and they flashed with a wild light that made her flinch. “I’m your culprit. I opened that cavern not knowing what I would find inside, but once I saw those coffins, once I saw the first set of bones, I saw the potential. I sent Montrose and the rest of the students away. I don’t think any of them even saw the heart.”

  Caxton sat up very straight in her chair. Her Beretta was holstered under her left arm and she was very much aware of it.

  “If they did they probably didn’t know what they saw. It looked like a lump of coal, because someone had been good enough to coat it in tar. I imagine they meant to preserve it, though for how long I could not tell you. It was sitting on top of one of the coffins. Just one out of the hundred but I understood. It was meant to go inside—there might as well have been written instructions. I opened the coffin and placed the heart in the center of the rib cage and it started to work almost instantly. You’ll wonder why I did such a stupid thing, of course.” He nodded at the saber on the wall. “I have longed, my entire life, to speak with the poor man who dropped that. I have spent decades imagining what he would say to me, and the questions I would ask him. I thought the fellow in that coffin would be quite forthcoming. And I was right, in a way. He had plenty to say. Of course, he asked most of the questions.”

  The temperature in the room had dropped ten degrees while Geistdoerfer spoke. Caxton reached for her handgun, but before she could get her hand up someone reached down from behind her and grabbed both her arms in an iron grip. She didn’t have to look down to know that the hands holding her down would be as pale as snow. She could feel the vampire behind her, feel the way he made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up straight.

  “I knew what I was doing. I knew that it was probably a mistake. I felt a certain compulsion, though he tells me he had no power over me at that time. It was pure curiosity that moved me, then. Exactly the thing that killed the cat.”

  Geistdoerfer started to remove the dressing on his arm. It took some doing, as he only had one free hand and his mouth to work with. The vampire didn’t speak while Caxton waited to see what lay beneath. The vampire didn’t even breathe on her neck.

  The vampire didn’t tear her head off, either, or suck out all her blood. That might mean he just wanted to play with her first. Vampires had very little inner life—they mostly spent their nights pursuing blood, thinking about the blood to come. Occasionally they played with the bodies of their victims, and occasionally they played with their food before they drank. Human death amused them. Corpses could provide them with hours of entertainment.

  “It was quite something to see. As soon as I lay the heart among his bones it began. The heart started to shake and jump. The tar on the surface cracked and whitened, then it burst open, as if it were under considerable pressure from within. A kind of white smoke leaked out, except it wasn’t quite smoke. It seemed alive, like it had a will of its own. It filled the coffin and a thin ribbon of it spilled over. I thought it might crawl across the floor and come after me. Then I saw the bones inside that tendril of vapor, the finger bones.”

  Caxton barely heard him. She was too busy thinking about what it would be like to be a vampire’s toy. Another possibility, though, was more likely, and also far more chilling. It was possible the vampire didn’t want to kill her because he wanted something from her. One vampire, Efrain Reyes, had wanted her to be his lover. Kevin Scapegrace, who came after, merely wanted her because Malvern had decided it would be ironic to turn her into the thing she had destroyed. Then there was Deanna—but she didn’t want to think about Deanna.

  A third possibility presented itself. The night before, this vampire, the emaciated creature that Geistdoerfer had awoken, had spared her life because she was a woman and he was sworn never to hurt a member of the fairer sex. It was possible he was going to let her go again.

  She doubted it, though. She doubted it very much. Such niceties belonged to human beings. A vampire, drawn by the smell of blood, would shed gallantry and courtesy quickly enough. What had saved her once was very unlikely to save her twice.

  “The smoke solidified as I watched. At first he was as transparent and wobbly as a man made of jelly. Then he sat up and roared, a long, hoarse noise I could barely stand to hear. His whole body shook, even as it grew more and more solid, more complete. Finally he leaped up out of the coffin and stood hunched over in the cavern, looking like he had no idea where he was. He picked up the coffin and smashed it against the wall. I still don’t know whether he was aware for the whole time he was in that box, or whether it was like a long sleep. He didn’t seem to want to spend another second inside it, however.”

  Eventually Geistdoerfer got the bandage loose. It fell in a bloody, sticky heap on his desk. What was revealed beneath looked less like a human arm than a raw leg of lamb after a dog got through with it. There were still three fingers on his hand, but most of his wrist and forearm had been gnawed away. His thumb was missing altogether. A little blood welled out of the wound as Geistdoerfer flexed the muscles remaining to him.

  When the blood glistened in the open air, the hands holding down Caxton constricted. The grip on her arms grew stronger. She did feel the vampire breathe then—a long, cold sigh of desire that drifted down her neck like a tendril of fog.

  “He struck me as hungry, so I offered him a drink,” Geistdoerfer explained. “He was a bit more eager than either of us expected. He has apologized, of course, but I’m not sure that will be enough. I want you to know something, Trooper. I want you to know I had no idea what he would be like. After being buried, tucked away for so long—and he looked so thin, so cadaverously thin. I had no idea if he could even walk under his own power, or how strong he could really be.”

  Most people didn’t. It was one reason that people like Arkeley and Caxton had to exist, because most people had no idea what vampires were capable of. You underestimated them at your peril—more often than not, your mortal peril.

  “After this happened I wanted to go to the hospital, naturally. I fear I screamed quite a bit. He wouldn’t let me go. He didn’t want to let me get that far out of his sight. I have a friend, a professor here, who gave me the pills I’ve been taking. She has a bad back, but it only bothers her sometimes, and for now she was willing to share. She had plenty of questions herself, but I knew how to fend her off.” Geistdoerfer looked up at her. “You’ve gone very quiet,” he noticed.

  “She knows what’s coming,” the vampire said. His voice was a growl, an inhuman burr in her left ear. She closed her eyes as he moved his thick jaw across her neck. She could feel the hardness of his teeth, feel the cold triangular shapes of them pressing against her warm flesh. None of them pricked her, though. He was holding himself back. If he drew her blood, he might not be able to resist his unnatural urge to kill her. “Forgive me if I take a liberty, Miss,” he said, much softer than before. His hand, cold and clammy, stole around the side of her neck. His fingers drew across her throat, then reached down into the collar of her shirt.

  “I see you’ve not replaced your amulet,” he said in her ear. His breath stank, though not of blood. It smelled like an open grave. It filled up her nose and her mouth and made her want to pull away.

  Still she said nothing.

  She was far too scared to speak.

  Geistdoerfer replaced his bandage with fresh linen, wrapping it carefully and not too tightly around his ruined arm. Halfway through he had to stop and take some more pills. Finally he slipped his arm back into its sling, and then he rose from the desk and came around to stand next to her.

  “I’m going to take your sidearm, now,” he told her. He sounded truly contrite, but she wasn’t about to forgive Geistdoerfer for what he’d done. Garrity’s widow wouldn’t have forgiven
him, she knew. With his good hand he drew her Beretta out of its holster and laid it on the desk, well away from her hands. He took the can of pepper spray from her belt and pushed it into his own pants pocket. His hand moved upward, touching the pockets of her coat. He took away her handcuffs and her flashlight. He found the lump of her cell phone next and squeezed it experimentally. He left it where it was. She glanced up, trying to catch his eyes, but his face revealed nothing.

  32.

  The fiends were thick inside the door frame presently, wasting no moment on startlement at seeing us again. They pushed through as if their divers bodies had become a single, gelatinous mass.

  Storrow’s shotgun blasted my senses as he fired two loads of buckshot deep into that host. Torn faces & flailing limbs shattered & fell away. There was no blood, which surprised me, but much tearing of flesh & grinding of bone. I had the presence of mind to discharge my own weapon into the fray & heard a distant popping sound which came from German Pete’s revolver. To me, half deafened by the noise of the shotgun, it sounded like a man throwing stones at a wooden fence. Yet the bullets it fired cut down half the foemen before us…

  An imp of hell with a ragged face came clambering over the sundered bodies of the dead, a fireplace poker in his hand. There was no time to reload, so I jabbed forward with my bayonet. The blade sank with sickening ease through his skull & brains & he fell away without making a sound. Two more came charging at the doorway then & Eben Nudd knocked them sideways with the butt of his weapon.

  & as easy as that, the door was clear.

  —THE STATEMENT OF ALVA GRIEST

  33.