Why had Nicole fled? A reaction, yes, but this from the same woman who had so strongly stood by my side under far more gruesome circumstances?
And motherless spawn of Satan, who in the name of the four winds of Hades would murder Truck? Here truly was a kindly fellow. This I knew well, having experienced firsthand the generosity of his concern.
Inside the dispatch office, Dexter stared at the computer screen, silently rubbing his chin. Upon seeing me drop my waybill envelope into the safe, a flood of words flew from his lips, all at once angry and confused, bitter and hopeless.
But the words seemed to bounce off me, just sounds, just emotionally charged tones.
“Another one for the Madison Mangler,” Dexter said..
Ears pricked to attention.
“That’s what they’ll say in the papers,” he continued. “Another one for the Madison Mangler.” He shook his head slowly, then held his peace and resumed his steely, unfocused gaze upon the green-glowing computer screen. With a soft goodbye, I slipped into the night.
Another one for the Madison Mangler.
Questions consumed me, which took my mind off Nicole’s abrupt departure. Why Truck? How could someone inflict that kind of damage on one so imposing as Truck? This fellow, with bulging lumps of muscle well visible even under rolls upon rolls of fat, was no timid little coed, about as able to defend herself as a doe blinded by the headlights of an oncoming car. Truck had served in the military, had been a member of one of those tribal motorcycle clubs where they can and will take care of problems easily and swiftly by themselves. Kern once told me someone tried to rob Truck and spent a month in the hospital.
Questions, questions, questions. Had not Dexter said that Truck’s remains had been taken to the University Hospital morgue?
What if it was a vampire? What would you do?
Stop him.
Questions posed themselves. Questions demanded answers.
Guilt ate at me. I should have investigated when that first body was found in the snow. Too late for recriminations, I told myself as I drove to the University Hospital . Still sitting within my Toyota , parked a discreet distance from an inconspicuous rear entrance, I became mist and let the force of my will guide me into the hospital, down to the basement and into the morgue. When sensing myself alone, I rematerialized.
All senses on alert. No one around, my search commenced. The morgue was quiet and stark, with steel tables and dingy, white walls. Florescent lights bathed the room in a sickly glow. Ahead, a set of double doors loomed, the stench of disinfectant from within swimming up my nostrils, making my skin crawl.
Beyond the double-doors was a narrow room with stacks of drawers on either side. Finding the correct drawer was easy; only three drawers were labeled, all right next to each other reading, “Slinsky, David—A”, “Slinsky, David—B”, and “Slinsky, David—C”. I hastily pulled open drawer A.
“Motherless spawn of Satan,” I spat, staring at the headless corpse, my whisper echoing against sterile walls. Truck’s flesh was pale and chalky, rips and tears covering his thorax and abdomen—and most notably and grotesquely—from his groin. Apparently, the police did indeed find a body drained of blood, tapped from all those numerous cuts, including the jagged stump of what was left of Truck’s penis. Within drawer B was a familiar face, an expression of anguish clearly visible through the plastic wrapping. I compared the scraps of skin hanging from what remained of the neck in the first drawer with the bottom of the severed head. There had been a fair degree of gnawing, and the remaining neck vertebrae were twisted far from their normal alignment.
Even if it was obvious that Truck’s penis lay inside drawer C, I forced myself to open the drawer and inspect the organ wrapped in transparent plastic, forcing myself not to shut my eyes in disgust.
No human possessed the strength to inflict this kind of carnage. That was clear. My eyes slammed shut as the picture formed in my mind—a vampire, saliva-dripping fangs glowing in the moonlight, ripping Truck open one tear at a time, savoring his victim’s fear, prolonging life merely to taste the terror.
Images from the past flooded my vision. A wife, her throat torn open. A vampire hovering above, face mad with feral ferocity, poised to strike, but waiting and relishing the wait. Death, then a new kind of life that finds sustenance only from the lives of others, lives taken with the brutality of one without faith or hope, a mere empty shell, mindlessly seeking fulfillment.
Until another path was found.
My fists clenched tightly as I slammed the drawers shut, caring not if anyone would hear. No one deserves to die like this. This monster must be stopped.
———
It would have been wisest to proceed immediately to my cramped abode, but despite a lightening sky, anger clouded my thoughts, as did concern for one still living. The road ahead seemed to veer, diverting my southward path.
And then my car was parked outside Nicole’s house.
No lights burned inside the split-level Georgian. No matter. Within moments, my body rematerialized inside Nicole’s bedroom. Posters of Emma Goldman, Che Guevara and a young, slatternly couple labeled as “Sid and Nancy” guarded her sleeping form from their spots above the triple-layered bookshelves that lined opposite walls.
Nicole lay tucked in a tight ball, her quilt pulled tightly around her, leaving patches of the mattress as well as her calves bare. She groaned loudly, tossed and pulled the quilt with her as she turned to the other side of the bed.
I spoke her name softly. No reaction but for a groan followed by a vigorous toss and turn as if she wrestled with a demon from her dreams.
The darkness that painted the walls lightened, transforming into swirling shadows. It was time to leave. Nicole groaned loudly again, and then my cells spread apart, my eyes still transfixed on her sleeping form, the image of her nearly rolling off the bed splintering in my sight.
———
Just before the funeral, the mortuary parking lot was full of cabs, but Nicole was nowhere to be seen. I had left for work two hours prior to my eight o’clock start time, at the first moment the sun was low enough in the sky for the pain to be tolerable, the rays stinging, but not burning, not searing flesh from bone white to charred black. My Muskies cap, sunglasses, a bandanna around my neck, long slacks and a long sleeved shirt provided ample protection, though no amount of covering, not even sunscreen, could provide complete protection. Not even Francois could fully explain this, except that it is the mere presence of the sun that burns our kind, more in a metaphysical than real sense.
I scanned the crowd for Nicole, opened my nostrils, searching for that familiar, sweet scent. I searched for others as well, others come not to mourn, but to gloat, to drink the sadness and anger of those assembled. Truck’s killer would no doubt find such a taste as sweet as the blood of the most innocent of virgins.
The attendees clustered themselves in factions defined by their relationship to Truck. A quartet of large-boned, heavy-set women sat in silence, huddled on a couch next to the chapel entrance, their faces puffy, eyes bloodshot, their expressions stunned, eerily similar to the fear-grimace frozen upon Truck’s face.
A trio of bikers flanked the chapel entrance. One could have been Truck’s brother, except his long hair and shaggy beard were blond. He wore a green polyester blazer and stood next to a tall, skinny fellow, his ribs nearly visible underneath a too-tight jacket, his Adam’s apple bobbing violently as he listened intently to a rather short, muscular gentleman dressed in leather and a denim vest bearing their club’s emblem. His raven hair was pulled back tightly, accentuating high cheekbones and prominent scars.
“We ride tonight,” the short one said, his voice a hissing whisper. “Tonight. Every night.”
“Until we find the fucker who did this,” the fat one said. He patted his chest where something bulged underneath his blazer. The short one nodded, eyes narrowed to vicious slits.
“We’ll get that fucking bastard,” the tall one said.
Someone tapped my shoulder. It was Kern, along with Maureen, the general manager, and the operations manager, Kevin. Maureen wore a rather conservative beige dress, Kevin a navy blue suit, his tie hopelessly askew. Kern’s appearance was sloppy as always, but his grin was conspicuously absent.
“Hey, Al,” Kern said.
I greeted my fellow cooperative members. Maureen shook my hand firmly. Her flesh felt cold and clammy. Underneath the scent of her lilac perfume lurked the astringent aroma of perspiration.
“Thanks for coming, Al,” Maureen said.
“It is important.” These were all the words I could muster forth. How to put this into words! It seemed a prudent thing to do, to attend Truck’s funeral, but with more and more consideration, it became obvious that I wanted to be there as much as anybody else to share my outrage and grief.
“I hate funerals,” Maureen said. Kern nodded. Kevin twitched and shifted his feet back and forth. “I hate having to bury the people that helped make the co-op into something.”
“Yeah,” Kevin said, pulling at his tie. “Like Benny.”
“Like Benny,” Maureen repeated, her astringent scent suddenly becoming more prominent. I could almost feel each individual bead of sweat pierce her skin. “Benny—” She shook her head. “Hell, the whole cooperative was his idea. If it weren’t for him, we’d all be at somebody else’s cab company, slaving for dirt wages.”
Kevin laughed dryly. “Hard to believe. Hell, I knew Benny way back at Yellow Cab. Seems like forever.”
“It was,” Maureen added, a wistful smile on her face. “That must’ve been twenty years ago.”
“Yeah,” Kevin said, “and Benny was just a fuckhead of a college-dropout.”
“Just like you,” Kern added, the grin finally returning for just a moment.
Silence. A quick glance throughout the lobby. No sign of Nicole. No stranger cowering from the sun’s beams, feeding off the emotions of those in attendance. The circle of bikers grew, their whispers still angry, their bodies pressed closer together. The short biker broke from the circle and approached Truck’s female relatives. “Anything I can do,” he told them, “anything at all, don’t be afraid to ask.”
“Fucking sucks,” Kern said finally, fists clenched at his side. Kevin nodded. Maureen sighed, then greeted a couple rookies whom I did not know.
More stunned silence for a few long moments. “At least people like Truck and Benny leave us with significance,” I said finally. “The memory of what they did, who they were, it lives on in those who remain, for as long as they remain.”
“I hate funerals,” Maureen said bitterly, her lilac perfume completely obscured by the scent of her own perspiration.
“Well, at least Truck had the pleasure of throwing out a U-Ride passenger at least once,” Kern said.
Kevin twitched even harder. Maureen glared at Kern. “I never heard about that,” the general manager said.
“Good,” Kern replied. “It means the little fucker never called to complain. Probably ’cuz he was too busy cleaning up his underpants.”
“What the hell happened?” Maureen asked.
Kern retold the story, which drew laughter at its conclusion, even from Maureen, who commented that, off the record, Truck should have gotten a medal for putting that young man in his place.
I laughed with the others, visualizing Truck entering the driver’s room, slamming his things on a table, responding to our prodding, then giving a dramatic elocution as he told how he had thrown that “little fucker” out of his cab.
Then, it occurred to me that perhaps that “little fucker” was indeed the Madison Mangler. No possibility could be ignored. But to find a vampire, even in a small city, that was a most daunting task.
Finally, we were ushered into the chapel for the funeral. I scanned the crowd. The chapel quickly overflowed with a diverse collection of people, but no one who looked out of place and particularly distinctive.
And there was no sign of Nicole.
A minister, tall and fleshy, took the pulpit and began speaking of “David’s” faith, his long-fingered hands gripping the edge of the dais so hard that his knuckles glowed white. David. The name conjures up such delicate images of a ruddy-faced, muscular young man of singular beauty, making it difficult to think of Truck as “David,” though indeed, he was perhaps truly a king among men. The minister described how he had known Truck since he was a child, that even well into adulthood, he still attended services on a semi-regular basis, and on a regular basis, he worked with children at the church.
“David was a very gentle soul,” the minister said. “He didn’t always let people see that. It is a difficult world, and David knew that and wore his gruff exterior as an armor of protection. But his generosity was very real, as was his great faith, a faith in the inherent goodness of people.”
A familiar scent washed over me. Scanning the crowd, I saw Nicole standing at the rear of the chapel, her expression blank.
The minister concluded, and the short, muscular biker took his place at the pulpit. The fellow began by reading a poem Truck had written about cab driving, about how it is important to know where it is you are going.
The biker related how Truck published poetry in numerous journals across the country. How he was an accomplished trumpet player, having graduated from the Julliard School of Music, and though he disdained playing professionally, Truck had taught music lessons to children, free of charge.
The biker said Truck, like his fellow bikers, sometimes got into fights, but that he only fought when it became necessary to come to the aid of a fellow biker.
“One of those times,” the biker said, “Truck got a guy out of a jam, then turned around and punched him in the mouth because the guy was wrong.”
When the funeral was complete, it was time to commence the procession to the cemetery, which would take us from the north side of Madison to the graveyard at the near west side. The graveyard was actually one of three cemeteries sprawled together, bordered by a triangle of streets, forming an area known in cab lexicon as the “bonezone.” Ironically, Truck was to be buried a mere stone’s throw from where his body had been found.
By the time my cab joined the line, the front of the procession was beyond my sight. And many cabs still remained in the parking lot waiting to join the queue.
If my existence continues for another thousand years, I doubt I will be able to forget the sight of that procession. As the line moved down North Sherman Avenue , which spokes northward from the Isthmus, neither the front nor the rear of the line of vehicles was visible from my vantage point.
When my cab reached State Street , large crowds of pedestrians clumped at each corner, unable to pass until the final vehicle in the procession had cleared the intersection. Astonishment was clearly visible on the faces of many of those pedestrians, as was burgeoning impatience, if not anger, for those annoyed that a funeral procession was keeping them so long waiting.
There was no parking lot at the cemetery. All these vehicles, all these cabs had to park on the narrow driveways that wound through the graveyard, transforming those arteries of asphalt into a immense yellow snake.
The grave-side ceremony seemed almost anti-climactic after this procession. It was short, and then it was over, and Truck was gone, but not forgotten. Then, it was time for those actually working to start running the calls that surely had mounted during this interim.
When it was over, Nicole approached, her expression still blank.
“Are you all right?” I asked gently.
She shrugged her shoulders, her fingers toying with the key to her cab. “Okay, I guess,” she replied blandly.
“You disappeared the other night. I was worried.”
Another shrug of the shoulders. “I just needed to be alone. That’s all.”
I touched her lightly on the shoulder. She trembled slightly at my touch. “If you need to talk—”
“No.” Her voice rose, then fell. “No. That’s okay. I’m fine. Rea
lly.” Animation returned to her face. “We’re on for Saturday?”
“If you so desire.”
She nodded vigorously and smiled, much as she usually did, but her expression was just the slightest bit crooked, a tiny fissure shattering her veneer, revealing that something—something undeterminable—lurked underneath.
We parted, then quickly I was assigned a call at the Glenway Golf Course, a mere stone’s throw from the cemetery. The man in unmatched plaid, with golf shoes slung over his shoulder, was a perspiring mess of impatience.
“What the hell took you so long? I’ve been waiting for forty-five minutes.”
“I was at a funeral.” And that was all I said. No apologies, no explanations. And not anything resembling a pleasant tone in my voice.
———
“I want to watch you feed.” Those were Nicole’s first words when I had arrived to pick her up Saturday. None of the normal platitudes or greetings, just this strange request, a slight agitation tainting her enthusiasm.
“You cannot be serious.” But it seemed quite apparent by the sly smile on her face that she was, and it also seemed quite obvious that resistance would be futile; I simply could refuse her nothing, and surely she knew this.
Nicole took my hand and squeezed it as we walked to my car. Saturday night and we had not yet decided how to spend our evening. Would it be a movie? Or a long walk? Anything of her deciding would be satisfactory to me.
“I’m serious, Al,” Nicole said. “I want to know more about you. I want to watch you feed.”
We leaned against my Toyota , the steel skin cool and damp from the condensation of this warm May evening. The stench of rank, decaying aquatic vegetation hung in the air, wafting from Lake Mendota across the street.
“But you have seen me feed.”
She slapped me lightly on the arm. “Yeah, but that’s not the same. I’ve seen Al Farkus, vampire lover, but I want to see Al Farkus, heartless, vicious, savage predator. I want to see you as you really are, not the guise you wear when you pretend to be human.”
Her hyperbole drew laughter from me. “What I am is many things, sometimes savage, sometimes sublime.”
Vampire Cabbie Page 27