The Journal of Edwin Hale (Silver Thorn Book 1)

by Gene Baker

  Without warning both antagonists turned their heads in the direction of Penny screaming.

  “No, Father! Stop! Don’t!”

  Perhaps it was the mouthful of Merrilee’s blood that he had swallowed, or the unleashing of pent-up rage. But with inhuman speed, Edwin snatched the poker from the knight’s hand as he leaped. Bobby was not so quick to shift mental gears, and it was only at the last split second before impact that he saw Edwin’s movement. At the same time as the poker struck Hutchins, a thunderclap exploded in Eddie’s ears and he felt the bullet hit with a thump under his left armpit.

  For a change, Howard Grant was glad for the extra strength and speed Beast gave him. The dense thicket of trees and thorny underbrush between the sexton’s house and the Hale mansion had flown by as he ran with his medical bag to Edwin’s side. Even the locked and heavy doors of the main entry to the house had been no real challenge as he literally ripped them from their hinges.

  Merrilee had jumped screaming from her bed. The mental images that she thrust into Howard’s head negated the need for words. It would still be several minutes before the sun descended below the horizon enough to safely allow her to also be with her love in his most desperate hour. As the last thin ray of light from the falling sun glinted off an uncovered section of window pane, the charged atmosphere crackled around her. Merrilee grimaced as the stinging became a more intense, searing flash of pain. The second her blistered skin stopped sizzling, she dropped low to all fours and in a flash, the girl was standing in the front hall of the mansion.

  Another wave of nausea and dizziness hit Edwin and he collapsed into Howard’s arms. As Edwin was slowly lowered to the floor, his consciousness seemed to leave his body. He felt as if he has been pulled inside Merrilee’s head. He was a part of her. Her thoughts, sights, sounds, everything was penetrating every part of him. No longer feeling the presence of impending death, he was strongly aware of everything.

  At first, there was an overwhelming jumble of sights, sounds, and smells. The girl’s seemingly heightened senses became more focused. There were no shadows, the whole room was illuminated. The sound of other heartbeats thundered in his head like a drum chorus. And then there were the smells: Howard’s body odor mixed with tobacco smoke and bourbon, the turpentine cooking out of pine logs burning in the old potbellied stove in the kitchen, the sweet, rusted iron smell--or was it taste?--of blood. Then Merrilee’s attention snapped to focus on Penny. There was a different smell emanating from her. There was blood, yes, but something else. Now there was nothing but an acrid stench. It was the stink of semen.

  The falling sensation again completely engulfed Edwin’s consciousness and he was suddenly back in his own body. He could feel how weak it had become, internal bleeding making it increasingly difficult to breathe. His blurry vision cleared slightly, and he looked back at his girlfriend. From deep within her throat, he heard the sound of a low snarling. It quickly built in intensity and volume while, at the same time, there was the ripping of cloth as bat-like wings tore through the back of her nightshirt. Delicate, slim fingers stretched out to twice their previous length, curled claws replacing manicured nails. Her shoes burst open as her feet and toes transformed like her hands. The sound in her throat abruptly ceased and a hideous scream exploded out of the mouth of the transforming girl. A long, slightly curved pair of fangs extended from the upper jaw as the hellish shrieking wound down into a growl. The mask had melted away and heavy brow ridges cast shadows over cat-like eyes. They were the eyes of an enraged demonic predator, and they were fixed on Penny.

  Edwin’s voice was a murmur only audible to the hypersensitive hearing of the Nocturnal.

  “Merrilee . . . I love you. Please . . . don’t hurt. Not . . . her fault.”

  The creature suddenly turned its threatening gaze onto Edwin. Quickly, Merrilee dropped to the floor beside her dying love.

  “Eddie?” she asked with a low, otherworldly voice.

  Ducking her head into her chest, the again human appearing Merrilee pulled herself into a ball of agony. Her whole body shook with an uncontrollable tremor as she felt her heart break.

  With the monster gone, Penelope moved quickly to wrap her brother in her small arms. Penny’s tears dropped off her cheek and onto Edwin’s increasingly pale lips.

  “Eddie, you told me you would never leave me! Was that a lie? Mother will be really mad at you!”

  Howard’s own face was wet with sorrow.

  “The time is close, mistress,” he said glumly. “He is all tore up inside. That small caliber bullet bouncing around inside his body really made a mess of him. Even if he could have gotten to a hospital, there is little they could have done. He’s tough as boot leather to have made it this far! It is now or never.”

  Merrilee hesitantly looked up at the scene she had been avoiding: the heart wrenching sobs of the human girl. It stirred feelings she thought had vanished completely when her own brother died nearly a century before. With her left hand, she reached out to touch Edwin’s.

  “My sweet love, I know this is selfish of me, but I can’t lose you!”

  With his last ounce of strength, Edwin Hale barely opened his eyes and looked up into Penelope’s. When they slid in Merrilee’s direction, she could literally see the life emptying from them.

  “Do it,” bubbled out of his blood filled mouth.

  Drahoslav Vrana, as a Master, did not have many of the same restrictions as most of his kind. He could tolerate more daylight, was stronger and faster, and had the ability to be an executioner if the occasion called for it. Lesser vampires could not end others like themselves for infractions of the rules.

  “You appear more nervous than usual, Chevrer,” he observed. “What is your problem?”

  “It’s just this whole thing with Merrilee and her human. What are we going to do?”

  Vrana’s claws dug deep into the desktop.

  “His name is Edwin and ‘we’ are going to do nothing!” he snarled.

  “Accept my apologies, Master, if I have overstepped my boundaries, but she is my sister and I think I have a right to be concerned.”

  “Don’t insult my intelligence by playing the concerned brother now! I have sent an appeal on their behalf to the Council, and all that remains in this matter is to await their decision.”

  “Well, Doc, whaddaya think happened the other night at the Hale House?” Sheriff Johnson asked while presenting a shot glass to be filled with some of the Kentucky’s finest that Doctor Lewis had offered him. “I understand that you asked Judge Akins for more time to finish your report.”

  “Yeah, Bill. I’m just a country doctor and I’m in way over my head with this. I’ve called a friend of mine from the coroner’s office in Dallas to give us a second opinion.”

  Johnson sat down in the chair in front of the doctor’s desk and sipped some of his whiskey.

  “I thought it was a pretty straightforward case and that was all?”

  “It probably is, but, on closer examination of the bodies, I got more questions than answers.”

  “Can I ask what you might be talking about?”

  Martin Lewis sat down behind his desk and began spreading out the autopsy photographs and notes before him.

  “Let’s start with the most straightforward cause of death. Edgel Hale had his skull split in two with a fireplace poker within a minute or so of his raping little Penelope.”

  “That scum-sucking sonofabitch!” the sheriff exclaimed, only slightly slurring his words. “It wasn’t enough that half the bastards born in this county over the last thirty years were his? He deserved to die a long, slow, painful death for doing that to his own daughter, for God’s sake!”

  “He would have if Edwin hadn’t taken care of business first. I diagnosed Edgel with a terminal case of alcoholic cirrhosis and tertiary syphilis a couple of weeks ago. Both of these conditions, besides being deadly, explain a lot about his penchant for aberrant behavior.”

  Leaning forward in his chair, Johnson l
ooked over at the Hale family portrait on the doctor’s desk.

  “How is Penelope doing, Doc?”

  “She’s bad off, Bill,” Doctor Lewis said quietly. “She fades in and out, saying things that didn’t make sense until I looked deeper into things.” Noting the questioning look on the county’s chief law enforcer, Lewis continued. “She talked, for instance, about a beautiful, black-haired angel that kissed Eddie, kissed her on the cheek, and flew away.”

  The sheriff had a sudden, choking spasm as he desperately tried not to spew his last sip of whiskey in the doctor’s face.

  “The hell? You said ‘black-haired angel’ just now?”

  “Yeah, why?” Lewis asked, wincing at Johnson’s distress.

  The steady tapping of the shot glass on the wooden arm of his chair seemed to sound in time to Sheriff Johnson’s speech and thoughts.

  “My deputy was at the movies Saturday night when Edwin Hale showed up with his date. Marty described her as ‘a very pretty girl with coal-black hair.’ He said her name was Mary Lee Anderson, and that she was from New Orleans.”

  “Holy shit, Bill! You need to try and find her, ‘cause she might be the only one with half a mind left who will be able to put the rest of the puzzle together.”

  “Damn it! You mean there’s more to this than what I’ve been made aware of?”

  “Yup! Check this out.”

  Johnson took the black and white picture of the shaved side of Bobby’s head and instantly noticed what appeared to be five partially healed individual cuts.

  “What am I looking at here?”

  “Those are on each side. Wounds that, on first glance, appear to have been inflicted by large, curved, scalpel-sharp claws. Like the talons of a big bird of prey.”

  “You mean like a hawk?”

  “Note the number five. If it had been a bird, there would have been four cuts.”

  Taking another look at the marks on Bobby’s head, the Sheriff asked, “How about a giant bat?”

  “What? What the hell you talkin’ about?”

  “Something Edgel said when he crashed his Caddie the other night. I just thought it was the rantin’ of a crazy drunk. He said it was a giant bat that caused him to lose control and crash. Now I’m gonna hafta go look for a giant bat, five fingered eagle, or black-haired angel out at the Hales’!”

  “Aw, shit, Bill!” The doctor smiled for the first time since the sheriff’s arrival. “You can if you want but, I seriously doubt you’ll find anything you ain’t’ already seen. Besides, that’s not what killed Robert Hutchins.”

  “Okay, what did then?”

  “The hook on the same poker that caved in Edgel’s skull. Apparently, Edwin caught Bobby in the neck, ripping open the carotid artery. Bobby bled out shortly after that.”

  Once again, Bill Johnson turned the focus of his attention to the picture of a seemingly normal family.

  “Poor Miss Annie, she was such a sweetheart! She definitely didn’t deserve what happened to her.”

  Lewis also looked at the young woman’s image.

  “She was the best!” he said somberly.

  “How did she come to be the way we found her?” Johnson asked, returning to the present situation.

  “She had been dead quite a while. She was virtually mummified. Apparently, she had been choked to death.”

  “Edgel Hale was one sick bastard, sure enough!”

  “Yeah, it’s real hard to blame Eddie for doing things the way he did.”

  “Speaking of which, what about that boy?”

  Lewis leaned forward, picked up the bottle of whiskey, and poured himself another full shot. The sheriff also leaned forward and presented his empty glass.

  “You driving tonight, Bill?”

  Without saying a word, Johnson sat back with a thoroughly dejected look on his face. The doctor smiled.

  “I just don’t think that Walt would want another body in his cooler. He’s already complaining about the Hales being in there. Bad for his business, ya’ know?”

  Both men let out a short, nervous laugh. After a moment of silence, the old physician reached down beside his desk and lifted a bedpan with a towel over it. Placing the object on his desk, he spoke with a feigned, halfhearted announcer’s voice.

  “And here, ladies and gentlemen, is Edwin Andrew Hale! Or what’s left of ‘im.”

  “What the hell ya’ talking about, you old coot?” Johnson rumbled in his deep baritone voice.

  “Old coot, huh? Well, you were there when we put Eddie on the gurney, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “By the time I got to him for the exam, it was late in the night, a little over 24 hours after we rolled him into Pa’s cooler. Now, you know it takes a lot to get me rattled, right?”

  “Yup, Doc, I’ve seen you handle things that woulda sent younger fellers to Upchuck City!”

  “Thank ya, Bill…I think! But, let me tell ya, I like to have shit my dyin’ turd when I pulled the sheet back! All that was there was a kind of Edwin Hale shaped husk! Like those shells that thirteen year locusts leave behind.”

  “Doc, if I didn’t know you better, I’d swear this was some kind of joke you’re pullin’!”

  Lewis stabbed the air with his forefinger in the Sheriff’s direction.

  “I’m tellin’ ya, Bill, this is a no shit situation we have here! I mean to tell ya, when I just barely touched it, poof! It turned into the pile of dust that I gathered up and put in this here piss pot!”

  The doctor watched the sheriff’s face as it twisted with the thoughts that were going on behind it.

  “Is that what your buddy from the coroner’s office is coming here for?” Johnson asked when he was finally able to speak.

  “That, and some of the other strange stuff that I told ya about. Oh, and by the way . . .” Lewis hesitated slightly before continuing. “Frank will be accompanied by someone from the FBI.”

  “What the hell did you say?”

  “An agent by the name of Harbisson, if I remember right.”

  “What’s the Fed up to?”

  Doctor Lewis smiled.

  “Come to find out, he’s one of Tail Gunner Joe’s Boys!”

  “No! You’re shittin’ me! McCarthy is looking for commies at the Hale House?”

  “I guess so?” Martin sat back and began quietly twisting his empty glass on the arm of his chair. “It seems there’s no record of Annie being declared a citizen, and neither her or the kids applying for passports to go on their little trip to France. Annie, being from Czechoslovakia, which is now a communist country, has apparently sent up all kinds of flags in D.C.”

  “Annie was a sweetheart! Way too good for an asshole like Edgel Hale, and she definitely weren’t no commie! Besides, we now know that she and the kids never really left. Something is really wrong with this picture.”

  “In a whole heck of a lot of ways, Bill.”

  ***

  Looking out the window next to her bunk, Harley scanned the nighttime darkness and fog-enshrouded woods for floating blue orbs. Instead, she saw a teenage boy staring back at her from near the front yard gate.

  “What is Cody doing?” she asked herself aloud.

  Suddenly, she felt a fist hit her chest, the realization that the shadowy person standing there had no aura. Everyone glowed except…Harley jumped up and nearly ripped the curtain from the rod to shut away what she was seeing. Whoever, or whatever, was out there was not human.

  Snatching the 65-year-old Hav-A-Tampa cigar box from underneath her bed, she threw its contents out onto her lap. Carefully, she slid a photograph out from the middle of the pile of envelopes and letters. Harley turned the Hale family portrait around and placed her trembling finger at the feet of the boy standing between a younger girl and a woman with a maternal hand on his shoulder. The words screamed in her mind, “It’s him! It’s Edwin Hale!”

  Harley felt safe sitting in the old parlor chair she had retrieved from underneath the tarp in the library. Straight ahead
of her were the blood stained stairs and landing where Edwin Hale had died. No one else could see the blood that had been scrubbed away from human vision six decades ago. Now, its invisible presence protected them.

  “Vampires cannot set foot where they spent the last moments of their mortal existence.” Gaielos had advised her.

  A thin beam of light from the rising sun glinted off the cut crystal of the chandelier above her and set the sanguineous floor to crackling. Hers were the only ears that could hear it and she breathed a sigh of relief. Cody snored loudly from under the blanket he was rolled up in at her feet and Nikki emitted one of her snort-laughs.

  “That boy can sure make a lot of noise.”

  “Just like Daddy. It used to make me feel safe when I could go to sleep listening to him.”

  “I don’t see how he can sleep like that with all that is going on.”

  Harley looks down at the head that still bore an only slightly healed gash laced with stitches.

  “When you have the kind of life he has had, you learn to grab moments of peace wherever you can.”

  “We need to get some rest as well. How about it?”

  “Yeah, but I think we need to move our stuff out of the RV and into the house. At least until we can figure out a better idea.”

  ***

  October 21, 1954

  Penelope Hale felt the chill night wind on her face and welcomed its refreshment of her thoughts. The contents of Eddie’s note had made it through the whispered gossip of the home. She would never actually take possession of the short letter, and everyone denied it even existed. However, each night after she heard about it, Penny would come to this dark and hidden corner of the garden.

  Penny knew that Edwin Hale had survived the gunshot wound and would find a way to see her. Perhaps they could actually go away together like they had planned long ago and start over new. She could even learn to tolerate Merrilee. That was why she came to this out of the way area, away from the rose bushes of the central courtyard, lest Merrilee became entangled in them and held there until the rising sun turned her to ash. There was also an issue with the crosses that the church mandated be placed at every nook and cranny. The high wall behind the bench she sat on would shield the vampire from the effects of the shrine on the other side.