99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale

by David Wellington

  “Jesus, no,” Vicente said, staring. She could feel his tension in the wet air. “That’s not—”

  “I’m afraid so. Your people found the car early this morning, just as I was getting into town. At first they didn’t even think to connect it to my investigation.” Caxton took a key from Glauer and unlocked the driver’s-side door. When she pulled it open a foul wave of stink rolled out of the car. The stink of death. “Officer Glauer heard the report on his car radio and put the pieces together. It’s important you look, Chief,” she said.

  Vicente stared at her. She was pushing him hard, but she had no choice.

  They had made a solid identification of Subject One, the woman sitting in the driver’s seat. Her face was a pretty close match for the picture on the driver’s license in her pocket. What was left of her face, anyway. Her name was Linda Macguire and she was—had been—a resident of Tenafly, New Jersey. The state police records and identification unit up in Harrisburg had contacted her husband and he was on his way to make an official identification.

  The two kids in the back were Cathy Macguire, aged sixteen and Linda’s only child, and Darren Jackson, also of Tenafly, aged seventeen. Cathy’s boyfriend. According to Macguire’s husband, Linda, Cathy, and Darren had been on vacation in Philadelphia the night before. They’d gone to see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall.

  Linda had most of her shoulder torn away, the tattered ends of her shirt wrapped around her neck. The kids had massive defensive wounds on their arms and both of their throats had been torn out. All three of them were exsanguinated, and only minimal bloodstains had been found on the car’s floor mats.

  “What did he do?” Vicente asked, very quietly.

  “He needed someone to drive him here from Philly,” Caxton answered. “Most likely he just approached the first car he saw and forced his way inside.” The door handle on the front passenger’s side showed signs of stress, as if the vampire had tried to rip the door open. “He kept them alive—at least, he kept the driver alive—so she could operate the vehicle. Times of death have not been established yet, so we don’t know if he killed the kids in Philly or only after he got here. When he was done with the driver he killed her, too.”

  “You mean she could have been driving for hours knowing that her daughter and her boyfriend were already dead back there?” Vicente asked.

  “He can be very persuasive when he needs a ride,” Caxton said, her cheeks turning red with shame. If she had refused to take the vampire to Philadelphia, if she had just forced him to kill her on the spot, these people might still be alive—

  She had more important things to do than feel guilty.

  “Shall we move on to the next scene?” Caxton asked.

  The chief wheeled around to stare at her. “Don’t tell me there’s more bodies.”

  Caxton looked over at Glauer. Glauer just shrugged and failed to make eye contact with anybody. He’d never worked a homicide case before. Neither had the chief. Hell of a way to start, Caxton thought.

  60.

  I lit out at once for Gum Spring. My orders were quite vague, which was hardly unusual, yet there was enough in them to chill me. A creature had been discovered there, a vampire. I thought such evils were banished from the earth. Yet this war had dug up so many ancient wrongs—fratricide, treason and espionage among the more mild.

  At a field morgue in Maryland, I once saw teamsters fitting bodies for pinewood coffins. If the dead man in question proved too tall they would jump in with him, and trample on his feet and legs, until he became a shorter being and would fit better. Then there were the amputated limbs, stacked like cordwood, ripe with decay. When they found some man missing an arm or a leg they would place one from the proper pile in with his remains, taking no pains whatsoever to ensure the right man was matched with the right appendage.

  I chastised such men when I saw their work, but only the first time. I learned quickly what every soldier knows. A man is counted lucky, who is buried by his mother back at home. For most a shallow grave on foreign soil is their only recompense for service, a grave dug deep as possible by the decedent’s friends, so that hogs and other animals may not root it up.

  Should dumb animals, should nature herself have turned against us, what surprise is there in a risen corpse come to prey upon the living? None. Yet a vampire—what the deuce could this have to do with me?

  —THE PAPERS OF WILLIAM PITTENGER

  61.

  Bright yellow police tape wrapped around the house on Railroad Street leased to Jeff Montrose and three roommates. The house was a gray-painted clapboard affair with plenty of gables and a porch with white gingerbread details. Some of the carved wood had come loose and hung on rusty nails. Around the foundation clumps of ailanthus and hydrangea hung wilted and sodden. A basement window on the side of the house flashed with the trapped light of the police cruisers that filled the street.

  Caxton shook out the collar of her jacket, spraying water everywhere, and hurried toward the house, gesturing at the white wooden porch with its loose gingerbread. “This house is rented in part to a graduate student at the college, one Jeff Montrose. I tried to contact him to ask him about the coffins but he didn’t answer his phone. Officer Glauer and I came here to see if we could find him, or at least figure out where he might have gone.”

  Vicente went in first and then she followed. Glauer stayed outside. He didn’t explain why, but she supposed he didn’t have to. He’d already seen what was inside.

  Vicente stamped his feet on a mat inside the front door. It was warm and mostly dry in the front room, a big living space with a pair of mismatched couches and a television on top of a plastic milk crate. Beyond, through a high archway, stood the kitchen—dishes in the sink, a refrigerator full of leftover Chinese food.

  In any normal crime scene the room would be full of forensics cops taking samples, lifting prints, cutting fibers from the stained shag carpet. There was no need this time. Caxton had already learned what she needed to know from the house from her previous visit.

  She led Vicente up a wooden staircase that creaked at every other step. The old woven runner that draped across the risers was faded and worn through in places. Silvery light from an exterior window brightened the wall ahead of them and dazzled their eyes. At the top a hallway split off toward four different bedrooms. Three of the doors were closed. Mary Klein, Fisher Hawkins, and Madison Chou Zhang owned those rooms. All three were accounted for, safe at the homes of parents or friends far away from Gettysburg. They had left town after hearing Caxton’s press conference the day before, even though it meant skipping classes. Montrose had the fourth room, the farthest one from the top of the stairs.

  Vicente paused with his hand still on the banister. He looked slightly out of breath. Caxton wondered if he’d ever seen a dead body before.

  Together they stepped into the room where Jeff Montrose’s life had ended at approximately five-fifteen that morning, several hours before Caxton arrived back in town.

  The walls of the room were lined with posters from various concerts, black ink on vibrantly colored paper. Clothes and books littered the floor, were heaped up by the cot that had served as Montrose’s bed. Videos and DVDs were stacked neatly on shelves, prominent among them a copy of Teeth. Caxton hoped Vicente didn’t see it. A desk sat beneath the room’s single window, mostly covered in a big beige computer setup and thick sheaves of printer paper. In a chair before the computer Montrose remained just as Caxton had found him. He wore a white shirt open at the neck and wrists and a black cape lined with red velvet. He’d told her about that cape when she’d met him—he wore it when he did ghost tours in town. His eye makeup was impeccable, but the dark mascara and kohl stood in high contrast to the near-perfect whiteness of his face. Most of his neck had been torn away, but there was not a drop of blood anywhere in the room.

  Vicente took one look at the body and started to vomit. He turned around in a circle until he found a trash can and hugged it to him as his c
hest and shoulders heaved.

  Caxton waited patiently until he was done.

  “The killer was our vampire, the original one. There’s no real question. He must have come here directly from the crime scene in the alleyway. He would have been told where to look for Montrose by Professor Geistdoerfer from the college.”

  “The Running Wolf?” Vicente stared at her with wild eyes.

  “Professor Geistdoerfer was the one who woke our vampire in the first place. I don’t think he understood what the consequences would be, at the time. Afterward the vampire controlled him through threats and intimidation. He’s…dead now.” Presumably dead again, and for the last time, she thought, but didn’t say.

  “And this kid.” Vicente stepped a little closer to the body in the chair. He reached out and touched the cloth of Montrose’s cape. “Was he some kind of—Satanist?”

  “No. A student of dark history.” Caxton frowned. “He was fascinated with ghosts and vampires and other unnatural things. That’s why he came to school here, to study the darkest period of American history. The people of the nineteenth century shared some of his more ghoulish interests.”

  “So when a vampire came along he just jumped at the chance to help.”

  Caxton shook her head. “Just because he was interested in vampires, that didn’t make him evil. My girlfriend was a goth, back in high school, and she read nothing but books on vampires. I can promise you she’s not evil. Lots of kids play vampires and victims.”

  “Sure, we did that at my school, too. We’d tie black towels around our necks and run around pretending to bite each other, just like in the movies. Then we discovered girls and it all seemed kind of silly. This guy didn’t grow out of it, right?”

  Caxton shrugged.

  “And now he’s paid for it. Just a dumb kid.”

  She pushed some papers aside on the desk and showed him what lay there. A simple wooden stake, a piece of wood about a foot long, sharpened at one end. “He was a lot of things, but he wasn’t an idiot,” she said. “He knew something was up. I think he must have known all along, at least as soon as he heard on the news about how Officer Garrity had died. He must have known he was an accomplice, that he had helped bring the vampire back to life. He knew what was happening in this town.” She touched the pointy end of the stake. Montrose had probably known it was useless against a vampire that had already fed on blood that night. He’d studied vampires enough, had watched Teeth probably more than once. The stake must have been the best thing he could get his hands on. “I don’t think he was a bad person, at heart. He just couldn’t seem to make up his mind which side he was on.”

  Vicente shook his head. “I don’t understand, Trooper. Why did you want me to see this?”

  Caxton leaned over the computer on the desk. “We found this when we discovered the body. He made no attempt to hide it.” The computer was in sleep mode. When she tapped the space bar the screen lit up right away. It displayed the client for Montrose’s student webmail account, with a message already opened:

  Subject:

  A Humble Request for Aid

  From:

  John Geistdoerfer

  To:

  Jeffrey Montrose

  Priority:

  Normal

  My dear Montrose:

  I’m afraid it’s come to the worst. The police are going to seal off the site, well, we should have expected that. I believe you met Trooper Caxton. She’s on her way just now to come interrogate me. Rubber hoses and the third degree. I think I’m man enough to take it, but what might be worse…Jeff, they’re going to seize the coffins and other artifacts and I doubt we’ll ever see them again. I know you share my passion for this find and I’d like to ask for your help.

  What I have in mind may not be strictly adherent to the letter of the law. Don’t worry. I’ll take all responsibility, and pay whatever silly fine they want, if it comes to that. You will remember we discussed moving the coffins to a place where they could be better looked after. I’d like you to take the department van and start doing that today. Don’t tell anyone what you’re up to, though of course if you’re stopped en route don’t lie for my sake, either. Do it soon, Jeff, if you can.

  I see big things for you, son, big things indeed. I see your name just below mine on the paper when we describe this find. There are times when the petty temporal concerns of we mortals must bow to the needs of history—I think in you I have found someone who shares that belief. You have my eternal thanks.

  —John

  62.

  Hiram Morse had done his duty, according to general orders. When we first met resistance to our picket he had run back to the line as fast as he was able, & summoned aid, & much of it. He had brought the whole of the 3rd Maine with him, some twelve score men, & Colonel Lakeman at the front with his sword in the air. They carried lanterns through the wood to light their way, & it seemed like great fires moved through the trees there were so many. They made short work of Chess. The men got a length of rope around his neck, & hanged him from the tallest tree in his own yard, & settled in to watch him struggle & try to break free.

  Eventually he seemed to realize the futility of his efforts & he let his body slacken on the line, yet still he did not die. It was during this part of his destruction that I asked to look on him, the creature who’d so utterly corrupted my Bill. It was allowed, & I was brought close, & looked in his red eyes. I had thought to spit on him, but when I saw the expression & great intelligence in his face I banked my wrath. For a good minute I did naught but look on him, & he on me. In the end I could muster up not enough hate to curse him.

  He lingered long through the night & up until the dawn, when the light of day touched him like the finger of God. Then his flesh melted away like candle wax, & his naked bones fell from the noose.

  They made me a stretcher, for I could walk no longer, and carried me hence.

  —THE STATEMENT OF ALVA GRIEST

  63.

  Vicente read the message over a couple of times, just as Caxton had before him. While she waited she wondered about Montrose. The day and night before, the student had taken on a truly gruesome task. Alone, unaided, he had moved ninety-nine coffins to a new location. She supposed that if you were studying to be an archaeologist you learned how to handle bones and not be creeped out by them. Still. It must have taken him all day. It must have left him exhausted.

  Then he’d come home after all that hard and dirty work and put on his cape, the one he wore when he led his ghost tours. He had prepared his stake and sat down to wait and see what happened. He must have been so confused—wanting, desperately, to actually meet a real vampire in the flesh. Terrified because he knew he probably wouldn’t survive the encounter. She wondered what the two of them had talked about. She wondered if Montrose had, in the end, learned what he so badly wanted to know.

  When the chief finished reading he looked down at the body again. He seemed to have recovered from his squeamishness. “I don’t get this. He helped the vampire. Why did it kill him?”

  “Because Montrose could have told us where the coffins are. You’ll notice Geistdoerfer was careful enough not to give the location away in his email. Montrose here would be the only living person who knew it.”

  “We need to find those coffins,” Vicente said. “We need to find them before dark.”

  Caxton nodded. That was about half of what she’d wanted him to say. About half of what she’d wanted to get by bringing him down here and making him look at Montrose’s corpse. The other half would take some more finesse.

  She lead Vicente out of the murder scene, down the stairs again and out onto the sidewalk. While they’d been inside the rain had turned serious. Glauer stood at attention by the chief ’s car, the brim of his hat completely soaked.

  “Officer, I want you to organize a house-by-house search,” Vicente said, his face perfectly impassive. “I want you to bring in every man and woman we can get, have them check every possible place someone might hide
all those coffins.”

  “Yes, sir,” Glauer said, but he didn’t move at once. Caxton had already rehearsed him in his part of the drama that came next. “I think we can get about thirty people together, each of them with a vehicle. We’ll get right to it. There are hundreds of places like that in and around the borough. We’ll do what we can.”

  “I sincerely hope so,” Vicente spluttered. “Do you know what’s at risk here?”

  Glauer stood stock-still and said nothing. After a long, tense silence, he turned and looked across at Caxton.

  Vicente broke the silence. “What is this? What aren’t you telling me?”

  “This scene is considerably more violent than others we’ve seen from this vampire,” she said. She had thought, once, that this vampire was different. That he had some sense of honor or decency. Arkeley had known better—she should have listened to him. She should have known it herself all along. “I’m willing to call it a pattern. He started by wounding Geistdoerfer. He could have killed him then and there, but he had enough restraint to hold back. He moved up to provoked homicide with Officer Garrity, who tried to kill him. He then killed Geistdoerfer because he was hungry. The family from New Jersey,” she said, pointing in the direction of the alley and the death car, “he did because he was in a hurry. From there he went directly to this house. Montrose was actively helping him. He spent his whole life wanting to be a vampire’s best friend. The vampire killed him just because he knew where the coffins were—just to tie up one simple loose end. Human life has lost all meaning to this vampire, Chief. He’s become a real sociopath now, capable of acting in cold blood. He’s getting nastier and he’s not done yet.”

  Vicente’s face was already pale. He turned to look away, up the rainy street. He wasn’t looking at her.

  She moved around him, got right in his face. This was the dangerous part of the game, the part where she had to rely on him being a reasonable man. “Originally, he didn’t want to wake the others. He wanted to let them rest in peace. That was before he started to change. I think he’s more than capable now of bringing them all back. He won’t just wake up one or two of them—he’ll wake them all.”