by Watts, Peter
I looked through the windows and the peephole and convinced myself that he was alone. I unlocked the door and backed into the kitchen.
“Door’s open.”
Foyle stepped in, rubbing his gloved hands together. He cupped his hands over his face and exhaled a warm breath.
“It’s freezing out there,” he said. “Or maybe I’m coming down with something. Is your phone broken?”
“I’m not in the mood to talk.”
“I heard what happened to Lucy,” said Foyle. “It’s tragic of course, but it happens. Six months ago, another girl did the same thing, right before the Quarterly Dinner. Some of them can’t handle the pressure. Can I sit down?”
I ushered him to my kitchen table.
“Dr. P. has asked me to reassess your project,” said Foyle. “He wants this hushed up. Suicides attract attention. He just wants to keep the cops out. I want to see your project through. If you know of any lab notebooks or documentation that could help to replicate her studies, I’d like to have them. In time, I might be able to change Dr. P.’s mind and start the project up again myself.”
“I’ll see what I can find,” I said, trying to hide my irritation. Couldn’t he have at least waited a few days out of respect? I had come to Woodcross to escape “publish or perish,” but all it had done was give the phrase a new, macabre meaning.
“Good,” said Foyle. “But keep a low profile, and if you hear anything, talk to me first.”
Foyle took his briefcase and left, hunching his shoulders and pulling his coat up to his chin as he stepped out into the cold.
As soon as he’d left, I opened my suitcase and took the clothes out. Underneath, next to my passport, were two folders, one labeled RAT 23 and the other labeled LUCY. I decided that I could go to the cops tomorrow and give Foyle a chance to lay low, for Lucy’s sake.
An hour later, I left a message on Foyle’s voicemail. Six hours later, a terse reply came back.
“Bring your notes and meet me at eight at Woodcross Manor. Go around the back, and, whatever you do, make sure nobody is following you.” I heard an electric hum in the background.
~
Just after sundown, I circled around Woodcross Manor. Foyle let me in through the side entrance.
“Should we be here?” I asked, as Foyle turned, locked the door behind me, and led the way with a flashlight.
“Of course,” said Foyle. “Dr. P. pretty much leaves the place in my care while he’s away, unless I’m off at a conference. Stick close to me. This place is full of dead ends and hiding places.”
“And staircases, and rooms that hum.”
Foyle chuckled.
“You’ve been snooping around as well,” said Foyle. “Come on. I’ll introduce you to the real Woodcross.”
The room that he led me to, after a few twists and turns, was spacious and ornate as if it had been a ballroom, but Foyle had arranged it as a hospital ward. People occupied three of the twenty beds, and humanoid lumps under sheets occupied another seven or eight. The “participants” in Foyle’s research seemed to be sleeping or heavily sedated.
“Who are these people?” I asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Foyle. “Volunteers. People who see the value of my work.”
None of them seemed to see or hear much of anything, especially the ones under the sheets. I noticed racks of vials and IV bags on the tables behind the gurneys, and a thought occurred to me.
“Does your work involve,” I said, “a strange type of porphyria?”
“You’ve figured that much out,” said Foyle, as he glanced at the readouts of the three living participants. “Not that it was much of a leap. We always knew that vampirism was spread through the blood, so viral transmission made sense. The real challenge was seeing the potential of Woodcross Institute and winning Dr. P.’s trust.”
“So you got a sample of his blood and infected all these people?”
Foyle chuckled.
“The last thing I want is to release a whole bunch of vampires into the population. That would raise questions. I’ve exposed these people to isolated proteins transcribed by the viral DNA, to observe their effects. There’s only one person in this room who carries the virus.”
“You,” I said.
“Me. And you can be part of this too. Dr. P. founded Woodcross over two hundred years ago. Think of what you could accomplish here in that stretch of time. If you help me to unlock the full potential of the virus, we could present this to Dr. P. together. He could finally step out of the shadows.”
“And what about them?” I pointed to the bodies. “Do they see it as a blessing?”
“Accidents. Like I said, they volunteered. Some people will do anything if you tell them you can unlock the secrets of immortality. What I don’t tell them is that I already have the secret. You're the only one that knows the truth. All I ask in return is that you give me your notes and help me keep it under wraps until we’re ready. You can start off as my assistant, but after that, who knows?"
Foyle took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeve. He sliced the skin on his arm and let a drop bead on the metal. He held the scalpel out toward me blade-first. I noticed scratches on the side of his neck below his ear.
“It’s easy,” said Foyle. “No fangs. Just a simple cut.”
I backed away from the blade. My fingers tightened around the two folders. The last time I had seen blood, it was on a slide back in the lab.
“There was no time difference, was there?” I asked. “You called me from Woodcross the night Lucy was attacked, just to give yourself an alibi, so that I wouldn’t suspect anything when you asked me for her research.”
Foyle tensed, the way he used to when his advisor called him out on a mistake during lab meetings.
“Lucy was going to go public with her blood substitute. She thought she was protecting Dr. P. by doing it anonymously, but it’s not like some archaeological dig or a painting. People worldwide would pay attention. They’d have asked questions about our research methods. They'd have discovered this room. I couldn’t let that happen. I needed more time to safeguard our work. You’ve got to help me. You owe me. Where would you be if I hadn’t invited you to Woodcross?”
“Maybe I do owe you something," I said. "I think you brought me here because you couldn't hide your ambition any longer. You needed at least one person besides yourself to stand with you, even when Lucy and Dr. P. wanted to move on. So let me return the favor and tell you what I really think. There's still time to walk away from this." I held up my notes. "We can get rid of all these secrets and look for a cure."
“Not yet. I need more time to fully understand what I’ve become. Then I will be just as strong as Dr. P. Then he’ll understand.”
“But he doesn’t understand now, does he? That’s why you have to feed in secret. Tell me about the suicide six months ago, when Dr. Patrescu was back in town for the Quarterly Dinner. Did she slit her wrists? Did she wind up in the infirmary with half her blood gone? It’s easy. That’s what you told me. No fangs. Just a simple cut.”
“I thought you had potential,” said Foyle, with an air of nonchalant disappointment. “I thought you understood what Woodcross was really about.”
I thought back to the pride on Dr. Patrescu's face when he introduced Dr. Miller's team. Looking back, I wondered if he had hosted those dinners as a way of bringing the world in, as if the glow on everyone's faces might be enough to knock the shutters off the windows and let some real light in.
"I know what Woodcross was meant for. It was his refuge from the disease. It reminded him that being a vampire didn't mean turning into someone like you."
Foyle’s left hand clutched a rag on the counter, and he lunged at me with sudden speed. A sickly sweet odor struck me as the rag brushed my face. I backed away and fended him off with a wheeled cart well enough to get a two-step head start on him as I ran out the door.
I managed to put some distance between us, maybe on account of him missing his ch
ance to feed off Lucy. I took turns at random—I forgot how many—until the hallway I was in ended abruptly in a descending, unlit staircase. I ran into the darkness. Once I reached the bottom and I heard no footsteps behind me, I ventured a glance over my shoulder.
Foyle stood at the top of the stairs. He had abandoned the rag in order to light a torch on the wall. He lifted the torch off its mount and held the flame out in front of him like a weapon as he took a few steps down.
“Back away from the staircase,” he said. The stairs creaked with each step. “Keep going.”
I struggled to think of a way past him, but between the torch, the scalpel and high ground, I didn’t see any point in trying. The hallway widened as I retreated further. Alcoves and shelves in the walls held musty books, faded carpets, tapestries, and skeletons—skeletons stacked as if the shelves were bunk beds.
“This is the Patrescu crypt,” said Foyle. “The whole basement is full of his past. I thought it fitting that you should end up here, like the rest of this junk.”
“Someone will find out. They’ll come looking for me or Lucy.”
“Lucy did me the favor of offing herself,” said Foyle, now at the foot of the stairs, “but I have a plan for you, too. It shouldn’t be hard to figure out where you were planning to go and leave a few of your belongings there, just enough to throw the police off our trail. Why would they question it? You’ve walked away from failure before.”
Foyle stepped into the crypt and picked a dagger out of the rubble in the first alcove.
“No one will find you. Dr. P. only comes back every few months. I doubt he’s been down here in a century.”
“Of course,” I said, scanning the walls for a weapon. “Why would he want to be reminded of all the bloodshed, of all that slinking around the edges of cemeteries and battlefields? Face it, Foyle. You’re an embarrassment to him.”
“That’s a lie.”
I saw a sword in an alcove beside me, but it was rusted through. I didn’t think it would survive more than one swing. I needed more time.
“Dr. Patrescu doesn’t need you anymore,” I said. “Not after Lucy’s discovery. Think about it. With the blood substitute replacing his erythrocytes, and with no need for hemoglobin, the anemia and porphyria would disappear. He could be sunning himself on the French Riviera instead of cooped up in dusty rooms. You’re holding him back.”
“No!” said Foyle. “Dr. P. has lived for centuries. He’s learned so much. Even if the blood substitute is a cure, he won’t turn his back on immortality.”
“Not just a cure,” I said. “Something new. Symbiosis. All the benefits with no drawbacks. Red blood cells have no nuclei. The virus can’t rely on them to replicate. Removing them might not affect the virus’s anti-aging or immune properties. Dr. Patrescu wouldn’t have to give them up. All he would have to do is step out of the shadows.”
“Not quite,” said Foyle. “With you and Lucy out of the way, things will go back to the way they’ve always been.”
“Really?” I said. “Dr. Patrescu will eventually find out you’re the reason he still lives as a pariah and can’t see his hometown in the daylight. What will you say to him then?”
I heard the floorboards creak at the top of the stairs.
“There he is now,” I said. “Tell him what you’ve done. Tell him about your accomplishments. Tell him about all the bodies. How many cities did you visit? How many conferences? How many bodies did you leave behind?”
“I had to feed,” said Foyle. “Lucy started tracking the blood donations. I couldn’t skim off the blood bank anymore. I had no choice.”
“Lucy had a choice, right? She gave up her life’s work in order to keep you from using what she learned to harm innocent people. She wanted a chance to contribute—just like you told me on the day you offered me this job. I think you’d better start showing him that you measure up to Lucy’s example. Wouldn’t you say, Dr. Patrescu?”
Foyle turned toward the stairs while I reached for the rusted sword. Neither of us expected to see the ghostly figure of a woman at the bottom of the stairs.
“Lucy?” I said.
“Do you know what your problem was, Foyle?" said Lucy. "You never paid attention to details. One pale body on a gurney is pretty much like any other, right?”
“You…?” said Foyle.
“At first,” said Lucy, “I just wanted to do the full volume replacement, to prove it was possible. I remember looking at my face in the mirror, and at six liters of my own blood in bags on the lab table, when the idea came to me. I staged the scene with my friends from the infirmary, and once you believed I was dead, I snuck back into Woodcross Manor and waited.”
“Doctor Patrescu isn’t here after all,” said Foyle. “I don’t have to explain myself to anybody.”
“Details,” I said. I swung the sword, timing the blow so that the broad side of the blade hit Foyle’s face just as it completed the turn toward me. The blade shattered into a cloud of rust, which probably wouldn’t have done too much damage if Foyle had thought to wear eye protection or been quick enough to blink. Foyle staggered backward, and instinctively dropped the scalpel as he covered his face. I pushed past him and stood between him and Lucy.
“Get back, both of you,” said Foyle, brandishing the torch wildly. “I’m a goddamned vampire. Do you really think you can hurt me?”
“We don’t have to,” I said. “The police can handle it from here.”
“Dr. P. would never go to the police,” said Foyle. “I’d tell them everything, His secret will be out. Woodcross would be ruined.”
“If we say we’ve found a serial killer,” I said, “who’s been stealing from our blood banks and doing unauthorized experiments, I don’t think it will help your case all that much if you tell them you’re a vampire.”
“Think about it,” said Lucy. “Life sentences mean something quite different when you don’t age.”
“And being two hundred years old won’t win you any fights on the cell block,” I added. “You need the cure as much as Dr. Patrescu does.”
Foyle sneered and chuckled at first, but then he backed away. His torch brushed against a stack of books, setting one or two of them aflame. Foyle saw this and retreated further into the clutter, lighting anything that might burn. After a while, all I could see clearly was the light from the torch.
“What are you doing, Mark?” I asked.
“Fire can’t harm me,” he said between coughs. “I’m a vampire. You’ll see. I’ll get out of here if I have to burn the place to its foundation.”
“You read too many stories,” I said, thinking back to what Patrescu had told me. Real history is what’s around you. I heard Foyle scream when he brushed against a tapestry and the fire spread to his designer suit, but by then we were too far away to save him.
“The fire’s spreading,” said Lucy. We stumbled through the darkness together. My chest burned, and I felt light-headed. Still, I paused before climbing the stairs to listen for sounds of Foyle somehow wading through the flames toward us. I heard nothing.
When we reached the front steps, we paused to catch our breath.
“Lucy?” I said. “Are you crying?”
She looked surprised and wiped her cheek. Her fingertips glistened as she held them to a candle flame.
“I must have cut myself,” she said, and as she spoke, the clotting factors turned the droplets of artificial blood into a tangle of cobwebs. She brushed them from her hand and watched the fine wisps drift to the floor. The cut on Lucy’s forehead had already turned powdery white.
“You could use some antibiotics,” I said, “until we’re sure that the immune system takes well to the blood substitute, but it should be good as new before long.”
We stood and watched the fire together until we heard Dr. Patrescu's helicopter in the distance, a familiar fluttering of giant mechanical wings.
~
“Another one?” I asked. “We’re running out of space on the bulletin board.�
�
Lucy handed me a postcard with a beach in the foreground, a blue sky in the background and the word HAWAII in bright letters scrawled over the top. I moved a few of the newspaper articles out of the way.
WOODCROSS TO START CLINICAL TRIALS OF BREAKTHROUGH ARTIFICIAL BLOOD
SERIAL KILLER BELIEVED DEAD IN SHOCKING BLAZE
WOODCROSS COMMUNITY MOURNS, RALLIES AROUND RECLUSIVE LEADER.
FROM THE ASHES: DR. LUCINDA CARROLL SPEAKS OUT ABOUT WOODCROSS'S HIDDEN PAST, NEW FUTURE.
I turned the postcard over and tacked it up. The inscription read, in a practiced hand:
IT IS AS BEAUTIFUL AS IT LOOKS IN THE PICTURE. I COULD NOT HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOU. VA MULTUMESC FOARTE MULT! -DR. P.
S.R. Algernon studied fiction writing, biology and post-war Japanese science fiction, among other things, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has been a member of critters.org for three years. His fiction interests include historical fiction, Golden Age science fiction, contemporary Japanese science fiction, hard science fiction, and science fiction that explores the sociological and political impact of new technology. He currently resides in Singapore.
EUDORA
James S. Dorr
"The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out—"
—Children's play song
When Eudora was twelve, her father bought her a wormery.
"A what?" she asked.
"It's called a 'wormery,' a place you raise worms. It's like an ant farm—you know what that is. They've got one in your classroom in school. I thought it might help you get better grades in science."
Eudora was already having issues with early puberty. The last thing she wanted to worry about was worms. But her grades were poor.
"You mean like when you die?" she said.
It was her father's turn now to ask, "What?"
"You know, they eat your body. Worms, that is. When you're in the coffin—we learned about it in science. And you rot and stink—"