Whaling City Vampires: Love Beyond Death

by Alison Fish

  Chapter 19

  News of the mob being trampled at the cotton gin mill and the equally vicious but singular death of the supervisor at the coffee mill factory frightened the unhappy overworked factory workers into submission for the time being. They desperately craved better working conditions, more pay and shorter workdays, but they didn't want to sacrifice their lives for it. Mill owners exploited the tragic events to keep the workers in line by warning them that the same could happen to them if they left their jobs in protest and any protester would be a prime suspect in the death of another supervisor.

  Amy was disappointed when they passed the mills the following evening after Harris' murder and found no one loitering outside in protest and the mills running efficiently, "I thought we could initiate one of these poor workers into our family, Ruthie. These people seem like hard working God fearing people."

  "You want to reward them by turning them into a heathen?" Ruthie asked, "Why are you suddenly so interested in the people in the mills?"

  "I don't know," Amy answered, "they interest me, I suppose, because they're out at night like we are which makes them available, and they seem like good people."

  "Those people going to the church in the evenings are good people too," Ruthie pointed out, "you don't seem interested in them."

  "I want to find someone who might appreciate becoming a member of our family," Amy said and after a pause admitted, "and I don't want to hurt someone the way I hurt you when I forced you into becoming what you call 'a tool of the devil.'"

  "How do you know those factory people aren't good Christians like me?"

  "When we point out one we like, we'll stalk her or him for a while to find out."

  "At least you're learning to think about the consequences of your actions," Ruthie led Amy away from the rumbling textile mill they had been passing and headed back downtown, "you're becoming a very reasonable girl, Amy."

  "Why, thank you, Ruthie," Amy was pleased with the compliment, "Robert will be very proud of me when he returns."

  Amy remained disappointed as the nights passed and the workers of the city remained quiet and obedient leaving her to hunt for blood along the alleys and wharves of the waterfront. Few newcomers arrived in town on the night train the past few nights, which relieved Ruthie from seeing Amy taking advantage of innocent people made vulnerable in unfamiliar surroundings. At least the barely conscious incoherent alcoholics staggering or sleeping in the alleys were soon to expire from their own vices anyway and Ruthie could rationalize Amy's murdering as an act of mercy or simply speeding up the inevitable.

  In their search for vagrants and unconscious drunks on a chilly cloudy night that hinted at the coming winter frost, Amy and Ruthie agreed to pay more attention to the sober people passing in the street. Mostly sailors and fishermen traveled the sidewalks at night as they looked for entertainment and company on their short stay in town. Any women who might be out were prostitutes or barmaids in the taverns and the streets hoping to profit by helping the sailors find the entertainment and companionship that they sought. In the past, these working people didn't interest Amy and Ruthie because they didn't fall into their category of possible victims. However, the two vampires were hunting for a new family member, not a murder victim.

  Standing in the shadows between two shops that were closed for the day Amy and Ruthie watched two prostitutes loitering in front of a hotel. Ruthie was repulsed as one of them approached a young fisherman as he passed. She couldn't hear the conversation but she saw the prostitute smile seductively and put her hand on the man's shoulder as she spoke.

  "I know we're as bad of sinners as anybody else, maybe more so," Ruthie said to Amy who watched the prostitutes with interest, "but I don't want one of those girls to share our lair. How do we know she still won't be a prostitute after she becomes a vampire?"

  "She wouldn't need to be," Amy and Ruthie watched the prostitute walk away with her arm through the sailor's arm, leaving her coworker uncomfortably alone on the sidewalk, "she wouldn't need to make a living anymore since she'll be dead."

  "They don't have to make a living that way," Ruthie said, "They must like that kind of life. They could get a job in a factory or sewing or laundering-anything but that."

  "In other words, you think those girls are simply evil and immoral and they enjoy prostituting themselves?"

  "They must like it," Ruthie answered, "why else would they do it?"

  "I suppose you have a good question, Ruthie, but as you know, I'm unfamiliar with the working world and what makes a person take one job over another or how they make a living at all."

  "Well," said Ruthie with disgust, "that's one job you never would have seen me doing, that's for sure."

  "They must get paid very well," Amy observed, "those girls were certainly dressed quite richly."

  "Wearing clothes bought with dirty money."

  "Come along, Ruthie," Amy moved down the block toward the closest alley, "I'm hungry."

  Buildings built of brick or stone or wood tightly lined both sides of the street, leaving little room for alleyways. However, every block had an alley separating the buildings that ended one block and began another. On the west side of the street, instead of wide alleys, each block was separate with a street leading westward toward Main Street and away from the shore. Unlit and strewn with refuse and filth mostly from vagrants and drunks who sometimes slept in the alleys and hid there in search of shelter, all of the alleys on the east side opened out to the rear of the buildings where the ash cans and other trash was stored. The properties butted up to the railroad tracks and the river beyond the tracks. In some areas along the train tracks there were buildings that were also commercial buildings like those on the main street mostly associated with boat repair and services and abandoned at night.

  Amy chose one of the wide alleys to hunt for her blood. The wider alleys were more likely to house a sleeping drunk and easier to move into a position conducive to feeding. Ruthie followed Amy as they both slowly moved through the dark alley searching for the delicious scent of warm blood and watching that they didn't stumble over debris. This particular alley was unoccupied by humans, so they came out between fenced in properties on either side of them and the railroad tracks ahead.

  "It must be almost time for the night train to arrive," Amy said as they stood on the tracks, "let's continue to the station."

  "Fine," Ruthie answered having already fed on rats, "I've got all night."

  Standing in the shadows at the far end of the platform the vampires would have a clear view of passengers departing and arriving, "It seems the train is late tonight, Ruthie," Amy complained impatiently.

  "It could be," Ruthie said, "or you're so hungry you just think it is."

  "Maybe," Amy agreed and then expectantly remarked, "I think I hear it."

  Sure enough, after a moment the train could clearly be heard as it slowly approached the station. The girls stepped back closer to the building as the train came into the station and stopped. Several people trickled out of the passenger cars, gathered their boxes and other belongings and entered the station. Unfortunately for Amy, they all appeared to know exactly where they were going and didn't appear to be new in town. No one seemed to be leaving the station and boarding the train so Amy and Ruthie felt it was safe to cross the empty platform to search elsewhere for blood. Just then a middle-aged man disembarked from one of the last passenger cars carrying a large case. He was unkempt and disheveled but certainly not a vagrant stealing a ride. Amy and Ruthie panicked and quickly tried to regain their hiding place, but were too far across the platform to escape before being seen by the man. Even though the hoods of their cloaks were drawn up, their figures were visible in the light of the glowing gas lamps along the platform.

  "Don't run away, ladies," the man called through his bushy gray beard, "what are you doing alone and out of the house this late at night?" Without waiting for an answer or even for them to turn around because he wasn't really interested and did
n't really care why they were out, he continued, "Since you are here, do you know where I can get a room for the night?"

  Ruthie and Amy looked at each other and Ruthie could see by Amy's hungry smiling face that she had found her victim of the night. They turned toward the traveler and Amy replied, "Of course we can, sir." Amy smiled without showing her teeth while Ruthie remorsefully stood by accepting that this man would be dead in a matter of minutes and she would be an accomplice to his murder. In her mind she was already beginning to pray for the man's soul as well as for her own and Amy's.

  "I'm new in town you see," he explained amiably, "I tried to get here sooner while it was still daylight, but I ended up staying in Philadelphia to close a sale and had to take the later train."

  "So, you're a man of business," Amy observed as she and Ruthie led the man away from the station and away from the main street and the closest hotel.

  "Why, yes, I sell tonic," the man raised his case to show that he kept his wares in the case even though he followed behind Amy and Ruthie and knew they couldn't see it.

  They approached a commercial area a block north of the city center and led the man behind a large building that housed riding gear and related hardware for carriage repair.

  "It seems exceedingly dark and quiet around here," the man remarked, "are you certain there's a hotel or a rooming house nearby?"

  "I'm certain there isn't," Amy answered gleefully as she abruptly turned toward the man with her sharp teeth glistening in the moonlight.

  Ruthie casually stepped back out of the way as Amy lunged at the man and attacked before he could comprehend his predicament. His case crashed to the gravel as Amy pushed his back up against the building with only her mouth doing the pushing. His panic stricken body stiffened briefly as she fed until he was drained of life and she let him slump over onto the ground, permanently relieved of his terror.

  Ruthie said a small quiet prayer for his soul and her own as Amy licked her lips and straightened her cloak, "Where are you going to hide the body?" Ruthie asked.

  "We're only a block away from Widows Row," Amy pointed out, "we can leave him here and set a dead animal across his chest."

  "But he's a stranger," Ruthie countered, "It will be suspicious. Why would a stranger be so far away from the station and the hotels?"

  "There may be many reasons why a stranger would have wandered here," Amy suggested, "maybe he was lost."

  Ruthie glowered at Amy from within her hooded cloak, "Now you're just making excuses not to carry him somewhere. You killed him and now you want to leave him here. Sooner or later someone is going to start noticing those bite marks in the necks of these dead people and know they aren't the bite marks of rats and dogs."

  Amy pouted at Ruthie's scolding, "All right Ruthie," she sulked, "I'll take him to the river and drop him off a pier. He's a rather large man and it will be very awkward."

  "I'll help you," Ruthie offered as she knelt down to help Amy lift him. In a second Amy had him over her shoulder and Ruthie carried his case, "this inconvenience is going to muss my hair horribly," Amy whined as they started back to the waterfront.

  "Messy hair is an easier problem to solve than having someone figure out that vampires are in the city."

  "Once again, Ruthie," Amy sighed as she walked directly toward the river just beyond the train tracks behind the station, "You are right. I don't know what I would do without you."

  "You probably would have had your head chopped off by now, Amy," Ruthie watched carefully to make certain there were no witnesses as they crossed the street to the station, "you've been a little careless lately, wanting to mingle with people and now wanting to leave that dead white man right where you killed him for anyone to find."

  In a dark corner along the far wall of the railroad station Amy knelt and let the body roll off of her shoulders onto the ground against the brick wall while she and Ruthie stepped silently to the docks to make sure no one was there to witness them dumping the body into the river.

  Having departed the station moments after the salesman followed the vampires to the street, the train was gone and the tracks were now dark and deserted. Fortunately, the tide was high and the body could be dumped closer to the shore and would, hopefully, be pulled out to deeper waters when the tide went out drawing whatever lay below toward Long Island Sound. With this in mind, Amy and Ruthie carried the dead salesman to the closest wharf and rolled him into the cold black water. Ruthie dropped his tonic case in after him and they stood watching the body bob along the pier as the medicine case floated along behind him.

  "I don't know why we bothered dumping the body in the river," Amy said as they watched the floating corpse, "he's sure to be lodged against one of the ships and be found in the morning."

  "At least he won't be found on the ground with a dead animal nearby," Ruthie answered, "too many of those will get people suspicious soon if they aren't already."

  "Well, it was very inconvenient carrying that big man to the water," Amy pulled her hood up over her hair, "it would have been much easier to leave him where he died."

  "Don't get lazy," Ruthie warned, "we can't keep leaving dead bodies, rest their poor souls, in the streets of the city. Sooner or later someone is going to find us out."

  With a sigh of surrender Amy agreed with Ruthie and suggested they return to the lair for the night.