“Michaelson,” she supplied with a blush. “Rebecca Michaelson.”
The rush of gratitude on her face was embarrassing. I had only fixed her door; she didn’t need to regard me as though I had slain a dragon.
“I am Isom. Isom… Ammon.”
“Isom? That’s an interesting name. Where are you from?” She smiled warmly at me, and I had to suppress the urge to pounce as the blood filled her cheeks.
“I was born in Egypt. My mother was a nurse at the British Army Hospital there,” I lied. It came far to easy for me now. “She now attends Boston Medical College.”
“Oh, what a life you must have had.” Her smile still warm.
Death she meant, what a death I must have had.
“Here,” I held out the cup for her to take. “Thank you for the tea. I really have to be going now.”
Without waiting for a response, I stepped away from the open door and kept walking.
I heard her walk to the doorway and call out a goodbye but did not turn my head. As soon as the door closed, I retrieved the supplies I had purchased for my own repair job from where I had left them by the fence. I wondered idly who had stolen the Michaelson’s Christmas gifts. It seemed a particularly churlish thing to do. They obviously were not well off, just a modest middle-class family. It must have been a crime of opportunity, not forethought.
The streets of Boston were getting busy with people hurrying home from work or shopping. Some were darting out to buy last minute gifts from stores that stayed open late. For a season that supposedly promoted peace on earth and good will towards men there was a remarkable amount of ill temper and anxiety. I gritted my teeth and endured the swirling mass of voices and scents until I could take it no more.
Darting down a less busy side street, I decided to cut through the poor part of town and rejoin the road leading back to the cottage on the outskirts of Boston. I’d have to cut through a field or two when I reached the end of town, but it was worth it. I could still hear the voices of people in the dingy apartment buildings, but they were muted by distance.
It was the faint scent of lavender that caught my attention first. A basement apartment window had been left open a crack to let air in. That was the source of the smell. It was the same aroma from the broken bottle on Mrs. Michaelson’s floor.
I turned to stare at the dirty grey steps leading down to the basement apartment. The voice of its occupant clinched it. I’d found the thief.
“This’ll fetch a pretty penny.” He said to himself.
I looked through the open window and saw the shadow of man studying a pocket watch, golden and gleaming by the light of a dying coal fire. No wonder he’d left the window open. The fumes were pungent. They nearly overpowered the lavender scent clinging to the thief’s clothes.
He opened the watch, swearing a little when he couldn’t figure out the catch at first.
“What’s this? An inscription? To Aiden, Love Always Rebecca?”
He set the watch down abruptly and pondered the new development.
The man seemed to be a manic self-talker. That was something I did not mind in the least, as it let me know his thoughts.
“This will lessen its value.” Dejection rolled through his voice.
“I’ll never get enough to pay off Frank, never. Why did I let Roland talk me into that poker game? I knew it was too rich for my pocketbook. Everyone knows Frank is a dangerous man. Now he holds my note.”
I envisioned a dirty scrap of paper where he’d written his ‘I owe you’.
“I’ll never be able to pay up by Christmas.”
From my perch at the window, I saw the thief’s hands. He held them up in front of his face and was staring at the way they were shaking in fear. Fingers curled as he clenched them into fists and let them drop.
“I can’t do this anymore, I can’t. My poor nerves. I thought my heart would stop the whole time I was in there. I’m not cut out for a life of crime.”
He picked up the watch again and stared at it as a wave of self-loathing went through him.
“Better to get beaten within an inch of my life. At least that way I won’t end up in jail.”
His voice became aggrieved.
“I paid off the amount I lost at the game. It isn’t fair that Frank keeps raising the interest. The way he has it set up it’ll never stop. He’s going to come after me and beat me, I just know it.”
The shadowy figure rose, and I caught a glimpse of wood planking, and then darkness as the light went out. After a moment, he began to sob.
Backing away, I forced my feet to move away from the building.
I hated the man for being weak, for being a thief, but most of all I hated him for making me feel sorry for him. What right had he to my pity? It was not my problem. I had a table to fix.
My footsteps slowed.
If it was not my problem, why did I feel guilty walking away? I could break into the thief’s apartment, take back the gifts and deliver them to Mrs. Michaelson’s house, but what then? How would I explain finding the gifts? And where would that leave the thief? He would be free to rob some other poor family and with the level of desperation I had heard from him, he would be convincing himself soon enough to go out and rob again.
I could break his leg, forcing him to stay inside, but that would make me just like Frank, the man he feared. Besides, Madeline would never approve. If I miscalculated the tiniest bit and broke the skin…
Shuddering at the thought of fresh blood, I knew I’d never be able to hold back. It was far too dangerous to contemplate.
Frank.
He was the real culprit.
I knew what I had to do.
I stashed my purchases down an alley near the apartment building and set off to complete my task.
Three visits to local saloons later, I found a man who believed my story about going to Frank’s to pay off my bed-ridden father’s gambling debt. He gave me directions to Frank’s house, making me promise to be discreet since Frank didn’t like doing business where he lived. Only my assurance that my ‘father’ owed a lot of money, convinced the barkeep to give me the address. Judging by these human’s reactions, Frank liked money a lot and tended to be unforgiving towards those who kept him from that money.
Chapter 4
Frank Wallace lived in a nice part of South Boston in a brick house locked behind a tall iron gate. It took less than a second for me to leap over it. There were lights coming from windows on the ground floor. I crouched by the mellowed brick wall, careful to stay out of sight near two open windows that led to a side garden.
Three servants slept on the top floor, a man and two women. On the second floor the light and soft breathing of two children surprised me. A telltale sound of a woman slept in the room next to theirs, so recently asleep that she wasn’t breathing deeply yet. Frank had a wife? A family?
I dismissed the notion as I homed in on the smells and sounds of the only wakeful occupant of the house. He was half drunk, grumbling about having to put up with his sister and her two children for the holidays.
“Damn fool, getting himself sent up state for Christmas. Now I’m stuck with Ciara for the next six months until he gets released. Her brats too. Can’t throw them out either. I don’t want people saying I can’t take care of my own kin. It’s bad for business.”
He paused the muttering, and I heard him take a drink of something. It smelled of wheat and the sweet yet sophisticated character of plum. There was also a woodsy dry cedarwood essence. Expensive single malt, my nose told me. He took another gulp of whiskey, the now recognizable sound of ice in the glass clinking amongst the liquid.
“Ah, that’s the stuff. That’s what it’s all about. Good liquor, good food, and fast women. Not that there’ll be any of that this Christmas, not with Ciara in the house,” he muttered resentfully. I could just imagine this man’s mind touching briefly on past conquests.
As I came to the set of opened windows, I tried to enter. To my pleased surprise, I cou
ld without invitation. How interesting. It could only mean that this man did not truly own this house.
Moving soundlessly down the hall, I came to a pair of locked doors. The doors of an office. Thankfully, his muttered complaints from within had moved back to his grievances over his conquests.
“Saint Ciara,” he whispered derisively from just behind the door. “Reading Dickens to the brats and singing bloody Christmas carols is what I have to look forward to each night. I saw her looking at me when she read that bit about Marley and Scrooge. Ungrateful hag. I’m nothing like Scrooge. I’m a real businessman. If people can’t pay, they deserve what they get.”
A series of memories filled my mind. The name Frank Wallace in a conversation between Madeline and Dr. McDonald of all people. Wallace headed the Gustin Gang, a Branch of the Irish mob that ruled most of South Boston. These deplorables would bloody anyone who got in the way. Wallace or one of his henchmen broke them with bats, saps, and sometimes their bare fists.
“Besides, I don’t believe in ghosts.” Frank was whispering.
I couldn’t have asked for a better opening.
“Are you sure about that?” I growled as I broke the lock on the office doors and strode into the room.
Night air swirled in with me, causing the flames in the fireplace to leap high.
Frank Wallace’s jaw dropped. His glass slipped through his fingers, splashing his trouser leg with whiskey, and saturating the Oriental rug at his feet. Shock froze him in his armchair a moment, then he began to react.
He was a heavy man with red hair parted in the middle. His eyes were small and set into folds of ivory toned flesh. His broad mouth drew up in a snarl.
“Who do you think you are? Get out of my house!”
He was angry but not fearful, not yet. Placing his hands on the armrests of his overstuffed leather chair, he began to heave his considerable bulk to his feet, only to stop dead as I moved with vampiric speed to prevent it.
One moment I was in the open doorway, the next my hands were on top of his, securing them to the armrests, with my face directly in front of his.
It was dangerous to be so close, but thrilling too in a sense, to know that his life was mine to take or to leave.
He yelped, startled. Staring into my face, and I knew he was seeing dead black eyes and razor-sharp canines.
“Your eyes, your hands, so cold,” his voice, jumbled by fear.
Good. That was exactly what I wanted him to feel.
“What the… What are you?” he stammered.
“Perhaps I’m just a drunken nightmare come to haunt you after too much Dickens,” I suggested mildly.
“Or perhaps,” I continued, glaring, “I’m your conscience in human form.”
I let him ponder that for a second and then lowered my voice menacingly.
“Or perhaps I really am a ghost.”
A nervous smile flitted across his mouth as his mind rejected that outrageous claim.
“No, it’s not possible. I don’t…”
“Believe in ghosts?” I finished his sentence for him. “I know that. I know everything about you, you disgusting parasite.”
I lifted my right hand and drew an ice-cold finger down his cheek, stopping it at his jugular vein. I pressed the tip of my fingernail against it lightly, just enough to cause pain but not enough to puncture the skin. My mouth began to water. I had to swallow hard and focus on my task.
It would be so easy to rip it open. The skin would yield like tissue paper with a flick of my finger.
Savor filled my mouth. My stomach tightened. So close, so tempting was his blood. I swallowed back reluctantly. I had a job to do.
“It would be easy to kill you.”
I heard the longing in my voice. So, did he. His eyes widened, pupils dilating as his heart rate sped up. I had to swallow back another rush of savor in my throat. I could not bring myself to breathe, as the very scent of him would drive me to disaster.
Brushing his hand off the armrest, I ripped off the leather and stuffing covered wood and held it up for Wallace to see before tossing it into the fireplace. The flames began to dance and the smell of burnt cowhide filled the room as they began to consume it.
“I could snap your neck just as easily,” I informed him.
“What do you want?”
His mind would be scrambling for options. He had none. His bodyguard was upstairs asleep, I knew this from the sounds of breathing through a nose broken multiple times. I was stronger and faster. He didn’t have a chance of beating me. I’d just demonstrated that.
“Your promissory notes. The gambling debts you’ve collected.”
A frown creased the fat man’s face. What was he thinking? I willed myself to read his thoughts, knowing it was not possible.
“Which one?” he asked. Then the frown deepened. “Who sent you?” He demanded, a moment of bravado in his tone. “Who could afford to hire someone like you?”
That’s how he thought of me, as a hired thug sent to scare him. I suppose it was easier for him to believe than what he was seeing with his own eyes.
I hesitated for a breath of time, realizing I didn’t know the name of the thief. Then I smiled as a solution presented itself.
“All of them.”
“What? No! I can’t.” Incredibly, his greed was overcoming his fear. He must be totaling up the amount he’d lose by releasing the notes.
Brushing his other hand off the remaining armrest, I continued to vandalize the chair by ripping it off as well and tossing it to join the first one in the fire.
Then I laid my hand on top of his trouser covered kneecap, pinching either side of it gently with my thumb and forefinger.
“I can remove other things besides armrests,” I said softly.
The stench of urine filled the air as his bladder released.
“Where are the notes?” I asked.
It took a moment for the gibbering mass of his words to calm down enough to form a coherent answer. I waited patiently. It was full dark outside. I could wait all night if I had to.
“Wall safe! The wall safe!”
He turned to look at an oil painting, a hunting scene with huntsmen in red coats on horseback with dogs milling about all around them. I’d seen it as I entered the room.
Straightening my spine, I stepped away from him.
“It’s over…” he trailed off for I was already in front of the painting on the wall by the fireplace, moving it aside on its hinge like a window shutter.
“I know where it is,” I said sharply as I stared at the newly revealed square metal door.
I left him to ponder that mystery as I grasped the black handle and wrenched the metal door off the safe, letting it drop at my feet with a muted clunk as it hit the carpet.
Inside were two shelves. The bottom contained folders and records of his personal finances, including a deed to this house, which was in the name of someone deceased, plus the deeds to a couple of apartment buildings. I bet he was a horrible landlord. Below those I saw a sheaf of paper money and an account book.
“So, you own those apartments, but not this house?”
Frank did not reply.
“I will have your permission to go into these apartments, I assume?” I waived the deeds in the air before me.
He watched the movement, eyes wide in fear, but some confusion there as well. “If you want to go into those ratholes, be my guest.”
I nodded and tossed the papers to the floor and took out the folder from the top shelf. A small notebook began to drop out of it. I caught it one handed and opened the folder to find bits and pieces of papers containing ‘I Owe You’ notes. Curious, I opened the notebook to find the names and amounts owed meticulously recorded. I’d be taking the notebook too.
“These will be going with me. If you happen to remember any of the names or amounts and go after anyone on this list, I’ll be back.”
Frank whimpered and pressed his back into what was left of his armchair as I glared at him
from across the room.
I walked in a leisurely fashion to the open office doors, turning around as one of his whimpers caught my attention.
“What will you tell people?” I echoed mockingly. “Tell them that the ghost of Christmas future came to call and in the true Christmas spirit you’ve decided to forgive all debts and start fresh in the New Year.”
As I left, I somehow knew he was already beginning to plan more rigged poker games to recoup his losses.
Sighing mentally, I leapt back over the gate, tucking the folder and notebook under my coat.
I had successfully fulfilled my role as the “ghost of Christmas future.” Now I would attempt to perform the duties of “the ghost of Christmas present.”
It started to snow, the flakes gently wafting down to land on my head and shoulders where they’d stay until I brushed them off. Snow didn’t melt on me anymore.
Chapter 5
In a short while I was back at the basement apartment.
Ironically, the thief forgot to lock his door. With Frank’s invitation, I was able to walk in and surveyed the decrepit two-room abode. The sitting room had a small coal fire, a table and two chairs, and not much else save the smell of the latrine on the floor directly above. The Michaelson’s gifts were stacked on the table.
Moving aside the curtain that served as a door between the two rooms, I knelt down by the thief’s bed.
His face was relaxed in sleep, unshaven with the sort of blonde hair more the color of ash than of gold. I could smell the remnants of tears on his lashes and the blood of course, pulsing through his veins. It seemed I was intent on torturing myself.
I shoved the bed, causing it to bump against the wall. The occupant of the next apartment cursed, rolled over and tried to get back to sleep.
The thief woke with a start to find my hand over his mouth.
“Do not speak, do not call out for help.”
He shivered, near paralytic with fear, but was able to nod.
Holidays Bite: A Limited Edition Collection of Winter Holiday Vampire Tales Page 82