99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale v-2 Read online

  “I couldn’t know this,” she said.

  “I called you as soon as she was done typing. Didn’t you get the message?”

  Her cell phone—she had received a message while standing out in the parking lot. Right before they’d come inside. “I wasn’t in a position to receive it,” she said. “He was standing there watching everything I did. It was the best I could do to send you that text message.”

  He nodded but he didn’t look like he’d forgiven her. “Goddamn it,” he muttered. “I’ve been looking for a way to kill her for more than twenty years. I’ve devoted my whole career to it. The courts always stayed my hand. This would have ended so much misery and torment, so easily. If you had just been patient.”

  Caxton’s cheeks burned, but she wasn’t going to take the guilt. “Your misery. Your torment.” It was true that he had been trying tirelessly to find some way to end Malvern’s scheming. To put an end to her existence. It was also true what Malvern had said. “This message,” she said, pointing to the screen,

  “wasn’t for you. It was for me.” It was addressed to her directly, by name.

  Arkeley snorted. “She knows better than to appeal to my kinder nature.” He picked up the laptop and moved it closer to the coffin, placing it on a display case just within Malvern’s reach.

  The skeletal arm lifted slowly, very slowly, from the coffin, and the decayed fingers rested almost lifelessly on the keyboard. With painful slowness Malvern’s index finger tapped spastically at the H key.

  The hand fell back for a full minute, the fingers opening and closing slowly as if they were too weak to even lie still. Then the hand moved on, skittering across the keys like a dried-up leaf blown by an autumn breeze, moving up and to the left to touch the E .

  Something about the way the hand moved bothered Caxton. As slowly as Malvern moved from letter to letter, she was actually making pretty good time. “She’s speeding up,” Caxton said, frowning. She looked at the message already on the screen, the one begging for her assistance. “And she seems to have remembered how to use the space bar.” The first message, “ comformeheshall,” had been a lot less coherent. “What’s going on here?” she demanded. “What did you do?” She was afraid she already knew the answer.

  “It took her days to type that last message. She averaged about a keystroke every four hours. I didn’t have that kind of time.” Arkeley kept his eyes on the screen.

  “So you sped things up.” She was terrified that she knew how he’d done it, too. “Show me your arms,”

  Caxton demanded.

  Arkeley snorted again. She wasn’t kidding around, though. She needed to know. She grabbed his arm, his left arm. The one with no fingers. He didn’t fight her as she pushed up his sleeve. There was a thick bandage of clean white gauze around his wrist.

  “You fed her,” Caxton breathed, not believing it, not knowing what it meant. It was a bad thing, she knew that. “You bastard. You fed her!” When Malvern had first become a ward of the court there had been doctors who took care of her. There had been two of them and she had been responsible for both of their deaths. They had fed her this same way—with their own blood. Arkeley had worked for years to get a court order forbidding them from doing just that. And now he was doing it himself.

  Caxton could only shake her head in disbelief.

  44.

  The vampire wore a gentleman’s suit of clothes, & had a tarboosh upon his head worked with golden threads. His eyes burned with the light of the fire. His face was clean shaven & his white skin radiant in the darkness.

  “You wished to speak with me?” he asked. Slowly, Simonon stood up from his camp table, & approached.

  “I wish to beg your help,” the Ranger said. He was no coward, that man, I’ll say as much. “Jeff Davis wishes the pleasure of your company.”

  “You’d sign me up,” the vampire chuckled. “You’d make me one of your privates. Or an officer, perhaps? I don’t relish the prospect of taking orders.”

  “Then be a partisan like myself,” Simonon offered. “Choose your own targets, it will be allowed.”

  “Really?” the vampire did not move at all, nor make any flourish of his hands. Yet we could see his muscles bunch, loose under skin that barely seemed to fit him. He was like a catamount about to spring on a deer. “& if I choose you?”

  He lashed out then, with both hands, & his teeth fastened on Simonon’s shoulder. The Ranger screamed as flesh & bone parted ways & hot blood splashed the vampire’s mouth & cheeks.

  Our surprise was matched only by the uproar amongst the Rebs below. Some raised weapons, & I saw sabers being drawn, but none rushed to aid their leader. He was dead already, & all present knew it. The vampire having finished his feast, he dropped his victim to the ground as a man might cast away the bones of a cooked and eaten chicken. Then he turned to look at the cavalry troopers who surrounded him.

  “I am the master of this house, & have invited none of you to be my guest! You go back to Jeff Davis & tell him I’ll serve no man, nor God, nor the Devil himself. You go & tell him!”

  —THE STATEMENT OFALVAGRIEST

  45.

  There were a million phone calls to be made while they waited for Malvern to spell out her next message. Far too many to keep straight. The local metropolitan police all wanted reassurances and advice. Arkeley took the brunt of that, nodding and yessing and confirming all the protocols. The Philadelphia Commissioner of Police spent half an hour of Caxton’s time demanding to know why she’d brought so much trouble to his city and what she planned to do about it. She offered to give a statement to the press, taking all the blame on herself, not that she really had the time. He grew silent then and when he spoke next it was to tell her he would take things from there.

  It was only after she’d ended the call that she understood. She’d been trying to help, but instead he’d taken her offer as a threat. He must have heard what had happened to the Gettysburg tourist trade after she spoke to the press there.

  Gettysburg—there were more calls, calls she was embarrassed to make, to Chief Vicente. He didn’t like being woken up. He sounded pleased to hear from her once she said where she was calling from, though, and why. “Don’t hurry back,” he said, with a little laugh to try to take the sting away. It didn’t work.

  “Can I tell my men to stand down from alert, then?” he asked.

  Caxton chewed on her lip. She hesitated long enough that he asked if she was still there or if her phone had cut out.

  “Yeah,” she said, finally. “I’m still here. I think your people are safe.” It was what he wanted to hear—it was what he’d always wanted to hear. “We know what he wants and it’s here. I think he’ll try again tomorrow night.” Something still worried her, though. She thought of what Arkeley would say. He would want them to stay on their guard, just in case. Would it really hurt Gettysburg that much to keep the town’s cops on their toes? “I’m not going to guarantee anything, though. Can you keep the tourists away another day or two?”

  “We don’t have any choice. Ninety percent of all hotel bookings for this week have already been canceled. Your vampire is costing us millions of dollars a day and I don’t see things changing until you give us the green light.”

  She thought about Garrity, and Geistdoerfer. If the vampire killed another human being and drank his blood, how many millions was that worth? “You brought me in as a consultant,” she said, finally. “I can’t tell you what to do, just give you advice. And my advice is to stay sharp until we have a confirmed kill here.”

  “You’re just covering your ass,” he said, almost making it a question. Or maybe an accusation.

  Was she? Maybe. But just because he wanted to hear something didn’t mean she had to say it. “I think it’s for the best, Chief,” she said, finally, a little steel in her voice. “Even if that means erring on the side of caution.”

  “I’m counting on you, Trooper,” he said. “You kill this jerk already. It’s your responsibility.” With tha
t he hung up on her.

  Arkeley put away his own phone and gestured her to come over to where he stood. She had one more call to make, though, and it wouldn’t wait.

  When Clara answered, the line was full of weird echoes and distorted voices. Caxton’s blood ran cold until she heard her lover laugh and say, “What? What? No, shut up! It’s Laura. Hey, baby.”

  Caxton smiled despite herself. “Do you have the TV on or something?” she asked.

  “Yeah—yeah. Stop that! Sorry. Angie and Myrna are over and we’re having a Maggie Gyllenhaal film festival. Donnie Darko right now, and we already saw Secretary . Are you coming home? I’ll send somebody out for more beer.”

  Caxton sighed and slumped down onto a wooden bench. A wave of jealousy washed through her like nausea. Clara had known Angie since high school. Every time Caxton had met her she had a different color hair. In her latest incarnation she was a little goth chick with dyed black hair and lots of lace shirts that never quite covered her belly button. She was supposedly straight, but everyone knew she had a crush on Clara. Myrna had well-defined arms and frosted blond hair that stuck out wildly from her head.

  She was an ex, the last woman Clara had been with before she met Caxton. If she had asked point blank Clara would have told her that they were just friends, but for some reason she didn’t dare ask.

  She didn’t dare say any of the things she wanted to. She had thought she would find Clara alone, with nothing better to do than listen to Caxton talk about how scared she’d been in the car, about how badly the vampire had hurt her, about how she’d almost been killed. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d used Clara as a sounding board. She couldn’t bring herself to ruin the girls’ movie night, though. “I’m in Philly,”

  she finally said. “Probably will be all night. Maybe tomorrow night too. Can you feed the dogs?”

  “Um, yeah, I can—are you okay? I mean, you’re obviously alive.”

  “Yes.” Caxton scratched at one eyebrow.

  “Well, that’s good. Because you know, I worry.”

  “I know.”

  Clara’s voice changed. The background noise cut out and the line got sharper, but it was more than that.

  She was suddenly quite serious. “I just walked out back so I could hear you better. It’s cold out here.

  You’re okay, right? I mean you’re not hurt.”

  “Yeah.” Caxton closed her eyes. “Go back to your movie.” It was suddenly all she wanted. For Clara to be someplace safe and warm and to be surrounded by friends.

  “Okay. Come home when you can.”

  “Don’t doubt it,” Caxton said, and then she switched off the phone.

  In the silence, in the darkened museum, she felt something dark stretching out its wings. All the fear and the pain were about to catch up with her. If she let them. When they did, she would curl up in a corner and just rock back and forth and mutter to herself. She would stop functioning.

  That was not an option. To dispel the darkness she went back to the coffin and read what Malvern had typed on the laptop:

  he’s been a soljer, ’tis most all i know

  he was not grateful for what i gave him

  some they like not the taste of blood

  “Not particularly helpful,” Arkeley said, coming up from behind her. “We already figured she was the one who made him a vampire, right? And the fact that he was a soldier was just common sense, considering where he was buried.”

  “Maybe we should try asking actual questions,” Caxton suggested. “Tell us where you think he’ll go to ground. Or what his name is. What I’d really like to know,” she said, “is how he can cheat time like that.

  He’s half as old as you are, but he has the strength of a newly created vampire. How the hell does he manage that?”

  Malvern’s hand reached for the keyboard. Caxton watched it drift across the keys, feeling their contours. Not for the first time she thought the hand moved like the planchette on a Ouija board.

  Arkeley looked up at her. His mouth curled up on one side. “It’ll take her a while to answer those. That gives us plenty of time to check out the bones I came here for.” They left Malvern there tapping at the keys, and went deeper into the Mütter’s basements.

  46.

  A poor white, a planter who swore he’d never owned a slave, nor wanted to, was my first informant. I nearly ran him down in the road. He had all his worldly possessions on his back and said he was heading to the home of his brother and could not tarry long. Still, when I gave him water and a mouthful of what the soldiers colorfully call embalmed beef, he proved quite loquacious.

  He knew roughly where the Chess plantation was, though he would never go there himself.

  “Haunted by ghosts,” he assured me, “or somewhat worse.” His tone favored the latter. “Old Marse Josiah Chess built that place in the last century. Filled it up with all manner of unnatural things. Bones of great big lizards they dug up out the ground, and of elephants and tigers and the like. Human bones, too, or so I am told. They say he got himself killed for his peculiarities, either by a rebellious slave, or—”

  I hazarded a guess. “Or somewhat worse.”

  My man nodded happily. “His son Zachariah took the place over, and made a fine living out of it.

  Died ten years ago. His son Obediah came next, but there’ll never be another in that line. Obediah ain’t been seen since ’fore the present unpleasantness.”

  I thanked the man and hurried on. I was no more than a mile from my destination when I was stopped by a sentry and then brought to a camp where the Third Maine Volunteer Infantry were resting after many days of marching. I protested voluminously but knew it was no use: I would have to be vetted by the local Commanding Officer before I could move on. It’s easier, sometimes, moving behind enemy lines, I swear. The CO was a nice enough fellow, one Moses Lakeman. I told him of my destination and he swore on the Creator’s name. “I have a company out there right now doing picket duty, man! Tell me I’ve not sent them into the proverbial lion’s den.”

  I could tell him nothing of the sort.

  —THE PAPERS OFWILLIAMPITTENGER

  47.

  Following Arkeley, she passed down a short hallway with a vaulted brick ceiling. Safety lights hung in cages every few yards and long rusted pipes hissed on either side of her. At the end of the corridor stood a large open room, sealed off by a thick metal door. Inside, heavy-duty air conditioners blasted cold air down from the ceiling, and Caxton started shivering instantly. The air felt weird in other ways, too. Very dry. The brick walls had been coated in generation after generation of whitewash, but there was a lot less light than in the hall and a lot more shadows. The room was full of enameled metal cabinets. They stood in long rows with just enough room between them for a person to pass sideways. Some were simple filing cabinets, some were big enough to be wardrobes, big enough to hold very large objects. Each cabinet had been labeled in a spidery hand, some of the ink so old and eroded that she could barely make out the strings of numbers and letters.

  She had a feeling she knew what was in the cabinets. They weren’t as attractive or well polished as the display cases in the museum, but they probably served the same purpose. This had to be the real collection of the Mütter—all the bones and biological oddities and antiquated medical equipment the directors had amassed since the 1780s. The stuff that wasn’t fit for display, for one reason or another.

  Arkeley stopped in front of a tall cabinet with three long sliding drawers. As he passed through the room he had picked up a leather-bound book, a big ledger with broken gold lettering on the front. It had to be a catalog of what was in the various cabinets. He bent to match the cabinet’s label against something in the ledger, then pulled loose a sheaf of white paper that had been folded into the book.

  “Are we supposed to be down here?” she asked.

  “Harold said it was fine,” he told her.

  “Harold’s the night watchman.” She frowned. “He could
very easily lose his job over this. What does he owe you?” she asked. Arkeley didn’t have a lot of friends—it had to go deeper than that.

  The old Fed sighed. He closed the book and laid it on top of a filing cabinet. “About twenty years ago, Harold used to have a family. He ran a hardware store in Liverpool, West Virginia. He had a pretty wife and a pretty little girl named Samantha.”

  Caxton’s mind made the connection. “Liverpool was the place where you first discovered Lares.” That had been Arkeley’s first vampire case, the one that had shaped his entire life. “I remember the details.

  There was a kids’ slumber party. Six little girls. Lares—”

  “Shredded them.” Arkeley looked right into her eyes. “I pulled Lares’ heart out of his chest with my bare hands, but Harold’s little girl didn’t make it. Neither did his marriage. He started drinking and he lost his hardware store. Moved out of the state, took a series of odd jobs. He’s never been right since. But he was good people then, as they say in Liverpool, and he’s good people now. Harold will keep his mouth shut and he’ll give us good warning before we’re caught down here. Now, help me with this. It might take two hands.”

  She did as she was told. She reached down to open the bottom drawer of the cabinet, a metal tray long enough to hold a human body. The drawer pulls felt like ice in her hands. When the drawer slid out she found a long black vinyl bag inside with a zipper that ran its whole length.

  “It was Harold who wrote to me recently to say the Mütter had a certain specimen that would interest me. When he told me it was dated from 1863 I thought it might do more than just satisfy my curiosity.”

  He waved a folded piece of paper at her. “I did a little research before you arrived. Let me show you what I dug up. ‘Item 67-c, Lot 1863a. The remains, in part, of a male. Believed to be a vampire.’”

  Arkeley looked down from the paper and nodded for her to unzip the bag. “I think we can confirm that.”

  Caxton thought so too. She’d seen enough vampire skeletons—especially after the ninety-nine in the cavern in Gettysburg, she knew to look for that jaw. Rows of translucent teeth jagged outward from the mandible, some sticking so far out that they looked like they would have shredded the vampire’s lips every time he opened or closed his mouth.