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

  “Why?”

  Montrose shrugged. “This was the nineteenth century we’re talking about. People didn’t save every email and scrap of correspondence the way we do now. A lot of records from the war were destroyed, either when libraries and archives burned down or when somebody was just cleaning house and threw out tons of old paper.”

  She finished her search shortly thereafter. Of the ninety-nine skeletons in the tomb not a single one still had its heart. That was something. “Okay,” she said. “I don’t see any reason why we need to delay your work any further. Give me your phone number in case we have any more questions.”

  He gave her his info and started up the ladder ahead of her. Before she followed she took one last look back at the cavern. The silence of the place and its long shadows were enough to make it eerie. The perfect stillness of the air inside and the sporadic dripping of water from the ceiling didn’t help. It was the skeletons themselves, though, that made the place so creepy. Their combined chill was enough to set her hair on end.

  The place was a mystery. How had the skeletons gotten there? Why were they buried in an open space, in individual coffins? Someone had been careful enough to kill the vampires properly. Somebody had been scared enough to seal the place off by detonating a gunpowder magazine on top of it. Why, though, hadn’t they gone farther? Why not crush the bones to powder and dump the powder in the sea?

  Perhaps some long-dead predecessor of Arkeley, some nineteenth-century vampire hunter, had filled the cavern. Perhaps he had thought the dead deserved a proper burial. Perhaps the hundredth coffin had been placed there as she’d found it, empty and broken. Perhaps there had never been a hundredth vampire.

  She knew it wouldn’t be that simple.

  As she climbed up the ladder Montrose cut the power to the lights below. Caxton froze in place on the rungs and felt the darkness beneath her swell as if the cavern had been holding its breath, waiting for her to leave it in peace.

  She wasted no further time getting back up top.

  Arkeley waited for her there. “Now are you interested?” he asked.

  “I suppose you could say my curiosity is piqued,” she admitted, “but I don’t think we have anything to worry about. That tomb has been untouched for over a century. How did you even find out about this?”

  she asked. “Ancient crypts aren’t exactly your style.”

  “One of Geistdoerfer’s students wants to be a police officer,” he told her. She looked over at the archaeologist, who just shrugged. “That’s what she’s studying toward, anyway.”

  Caxton checked her notebook. “Is her name Marcy Jackson?”

  Arkeley nodded. “When they opened the first coffin and found a vampire inside she called the Marshals Service and asked to talk to me. I’m officially retired but they still had my number. I’ve left explicit instructions that I’m to be notified whenever a case like this comes up.”

  He asked her what she’d thought of the cavern. He grunted his approval when she told him she’d checked all the skeletons and that all the hearts were gone.

  “What about the other one?” he asked.

  “The empty coffin?” She turned and asked Montrose, “Has anyone been down there other than your team?”

  “Of course not,” he replied. “And we’re all under strict instructions not to talk about it. The professor was very upset with Marcy when she called you in—though of course, we’re happy to cooperate with your investigation in any way we can.”

  Caxton nodded. “And the coffin was empty when you found it.”

  The grad student concurred.

  “That doesn’t mean it’s always been empty. It doesn’t mean there wasn’t a vampire inside it at some point,” Arkeley insisted.

  “Okay, but what of it? You know as well as I do that a vampire buried underground that long with no blood couldn’t possibly be active.”

  He grunted again, less agreeably. “I also know better than to underestimate them.”

  She sighed, but she’d known it would come to this. Arkeley had spent twenty years of his life chasing down every vampire legend and rumor he could find. He’d turned up real vampires twice in that time—but only because he never tired of the search. He considered his hobby to be vital to the public safety and had frittered away his life with endless investigations. No doubt they had all been crucial, had all been fraught with danger, at least until he’d actually done the legwork and found a cold trail or a long-dead monster who had grown in time into a local myth.

  Arkeley had become obsessed a long time ago, and now he had nothing else to occupy his time. She wouldn’t let that happen to her. She wouldn’t let vampires define her life.

  “This is a dead end,” she said. “Something bad was here, but that was a long time ago. You should go home. You should call your wife.”

  “You don’t want to open an investigation, then?”

  She turned to look right at him. The scars on his face didn’t bother her as much as they had before. “I’m not authorized to do that. This isn’t my job. It’s not even my jurisdiction. I’ll put in some calls. I’ll alert the proper authorities, get a bulletin out for people to keep their eyes open. Just in case. After that I’m done. Now, come on. I’ll give you a ride back to Hanover.”

  “Don’t bother,” he said. “Montrose will take me into town and I’ll get a bus from there.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Jameson. My car is right here and—”

  He had already turned to leave the tent. “You’ve made yourself clear. I can’t count on you. So be it.”

  Her chest burned with the rejection, but she let him go. Montrose gave her what might have been a sympathetic glance and then filed out after the old Fed, leaving her alone. She stood in silence for a minute until she’d heard them drive away, then went out to the Mazda and headed back toward town.

  Halfway there her stomach started to grumble and she realized she hadn’t eaten all day. It was five-thirty, about when Clara would be getting home, but Caxton needed to eat before she went back to Harrisburg.

  She parked in a public lot in Gettysburg and went into a little café that wasn’t completely overrun with tourists.

  She ordered a ham croissant and a diet Coke and sat down to eat, but the food was tasteless. She took two or three bites and pushed the rest aside.

  14.

  “If he’s hurt, I can track him, ja,” German Pete said, & reached for his haversack. From this reeking bag he took out a measure of black powder, some small greasy pieces of hollow bone that might have belonged to some unfortunate bird once, & a couple of hawthorn leaves. “It’s madness,” he told me, “to go traipsing in the dark when vampires are about, but I’ll do what you say, Corporal.” He ground his ingredients together in a tiny pestle with some spit, then rubbed the resulting paste into the blood that still stained his hands. He asked for a match & Eben Nudd broke one off his block, then snapped it to life. German Pete took the flame between his cupped palms & cursed liberally as the gunpowder there flared up. He put his breath into the fire, however, & the flame which had been yellow turned a dull & flickering red.

  All around his feet the same hellish light licked at the grass & the fallen leaves. Wherever John Tyler had lost his life’s blood the light shone, & much of it on his corpse & shirt as well, & everywhere we looked, though not as much of it as I expected. I’ve seen so many men die in this war, & always the blood splashed on the ground like a pitcher of water being poured out. Yet here only a few drops & splatters remained.

  German Pete had claimed our demon was a vampire, & I knew vampires sip blood as their repast. Perhaps I did not wish to believe it before; I had no choice now.

  “There, look ye,” German Pete said, & pointed with his glowing hands. A trace of dim fire led away from where we stood. Small drops of it could be seen heading off to our right. That was the same direction from which the vampire had first come.

  “Is that Bill’s blood?” I demanded. I was terrified, if the War Department
must know.

  “Ye’ll have to take a chance. This charm’s for tracking a wounded deer, as such it was taught to me, & I’ve never seen it used otherwise. Might be Hiram Morse’s,” German Pete told me. “Might be the vampire’s own. Yet it’s a track, & that’s what ye asked for.”

  —THE STATEMENT OFALVAGRIEST

  15.

  Night had fallen, just barely—the sky still showed a burning yellow through the black silhouettes of the trees. The streetlights were on, but some were still glowing a doubtful orange, occasionally flickering into life just to wink out again. In the street the air had gotten colder, far colder than she’d expected. She’d left her coat in the Mazda, and she wrapped her arms around herself for warmth as she headed toward the car.

  The very last thing she wanted to do was spend another minute in Gettysburg. It was time to go home.

  She thought of Clara, probably already waiting for her back at the house. She could go home, feed the dogs, and then spend the evening curled up on the couch with Clara while the TV put them both to sleep.

  It sounded just about perfect.

  Maybe Clara would let her sleep with the light on for once. After the chill she’d gotten from the mass vampire grave she didn’t feel the need to be frightened again for a long time.

  It was only a few blocks between the café and where she’d parked. She walked quickly, keeping her head down. She didn’t look up at the windows of the houses-turned-souvenir-stores that she passed.

  When she reached the Mazda, though, a sound made her look up.

  An alarm bell rang somewhere nearby. The harsh panicky sound might have come from blocks away, but it was one of the sounds she was trained to notice and identify. It was a burglar alarm. Not her area of expertise, she told herself.

  She was who she was, however. She was a cop. She stepped away from the Mazda and back into the tree-lined street. The alarm was around a corner, she thought, away from the main tourist areas, deeper into the actual town. It would only take a second to check it out. She wasn’t supposed to do that, of course. The state police didn’t intervene in municipal criminal investigations. According to standard operating procedure, she should call it in and let the local police take care of it.

  She was right there, though. It couldn’t be more than a minute away on foot. She would just take a look, get the street address where the bell was ringing.

  Half-jogging, she headed around the corner and up the block beyond. The alarm came from a nondescript building across the street from the Gettysburg College campus. The shrill noise bounced off the big brick buildings of the college and rattled down the deserted street, which had been mobbed with tourists just a few hours before. She could see no one nearby. If the local police were on their way, she couldn’t hear their sirens.

  She moved closer, sticking to the shadows of the sidewalk. She couldn’t hear anything except the alarm, which was loud enough to give her a headache. She was close enough to see the building’s two wide plate-glass windows, obscured by heavy venetian blinds. A black awning over the doorway read MONTAGUE FUNERAL HOME. A placard above the doorknob readCLOSED .

  The door stood slightly ajar. The doorknob had been wrenched sideways in its socket, and it looked like the lock had been forced.

  Okay. That was all she needed to know. She dashed across the street to the cover of some trees and took out her cell phone. She called the Harrisburg office of the Pennsylvania State Police and asked the police communications operator on duty to patch her through to the Gettysburg police department. A woman’s voice answered, “Police Department Dispatch. How may I direct your call?”

  Caxton glanced at the building across the way. There was no sign of movement within. “This is Laura Caxton with the state police, Troop H. I’m at one-fifty-five Carlisle Street and I’ve got an activated burglar alarm.”

  “I’ve already registered that alarm and dispatched a patrol unit,” the dispatcher told her. “But thanks.

  Are you available to assist if the chief requests it?”

  Caxton frowned. “I’m off duty but, yeah. If you need help I’m here. What’s the ETA on your unit?”

  “Upward of five minutes. Have you spotted any subjects?”

  “No. There’s sign of forced entry, though. It’s the mortuary down here. I don’t see anyone outside or any suspicious vehicles, so—”

  The alarm clanged wildly and then stopped. Caxton peered through the lamp-lit gloom but couldn’t see any change in the building.

  “There’s definitely someone inside. They just disabled the alarm and—”

  One of the plate glass windows exploded outward, sending jagged shards of glass skating across the street. The blinds fluttered and broke apart, and then a square wooden object protruded from the shattered window. It lurched out to drop with a heavy thud on the sidewalk.

  No, no no, Caxton thought.

  It was a casket, a big mahogany casket. A much more ornate version of the hundred coffins she’d seen that afternoon. Caxton knew better than to think some junkies had broken into the funeral home to steal something that would be so hard to sell on the street. She had a much better idea who was behind the break-in. Somebody who needed a coffin because his old one had gotten smashed.

  “Trooper?” her phone chirped. “Trooper, are you there?”

  She bit her lip and tried to think, but there was no time. “Cancel that patrol car, dispatch. No, don’t cancel it—get as many people down here as you can, get them to clear out the vicinity. Get all the civilians off the street!”

  “Trooper? I don’t copy—what’s going on?”

  “Get everyone away from here!” Caxton shouted.

  The vampire jumped up onto the jagged lower edge of the broken window and then leaped down into the street. His skin was the color of cold milk, his eyes red and dully glowing. He had no hair anywhere on his body, and his ears stood up in points. His mouth was full of row after row of sharp teeth.

  He looked as if he hadn’t fed in a century. His body was emaciated, pared down by hunger until he was thinner than any human being she’d ever seen. His skin stretched tight over prominent bones, and the muscles on his arms and legs were wasted away to thin cords. His ribs stuck out dramatically, and his cheeks were hollow with starvation. His skin was dotted with dark patches of decay and in some places had cracked open in weeping sores. He wore nothing but a pair of ragged gray pants that were falling apart at the seams.

  He looked up the street, then back down as if he expected somebody to be there. Then he looked right across at Caxton and she knew he could see her blood, could see her veins and arteries lit up in the dark, her heart pounding in her chest.

  Caxton’s free hand went to her hip to draw her weapon. It didn’t look like he’d fed that night. If she was fast enough maybe she could keep him from ripping her to pieces. Her hand touched her belt and found nothing, and she wasted a vital second looking down, only to realize her Beretta wasn’t there. It was still in her car.

  “Dispatch, I have a vampire over here—do you copy? I have a vampire!” she screamed into the phone.

  “Request immediate assistance!”

  16.

  After long searching I found my quarry & almost at once I regretted it. Bill lay curled on a tussock of grass & mud, his body twisted up & broken. His pack & musket were missing & nowhere to be found & his blue jacket had been torn open in the front, the buttons cast about him as if he’d torn them off in a frenzy. His neck & his hands were as pale as the belly of a fish, but that was not the worst of it. His face hung in ragged strips as if he’d been mauled by a bear. Flaps of skin hung loose on his cheeks & his nose was laid open, as completely as if it had been flayed in an anatomist’s classroom.

  I found his forage cap near his hand. I picked it up, & wrapped it around & around my own hands, & wept for him, for my Bill was dead.

  Eben Nudd placed one hand upon my shoulder, which I was most grateful for. German Pete sat down on his pack & drank deep from his canteen
.

  I knelt down to kiss my friend’s brow one last time, & it was then I had the worst shock of my life. For though I could feel no heat in him, nor did he breathe or show other sign of life; yet Bill moved. He winced away from my touch.

  “Alva,” he said. He stirred, too weak it seemed to sit up, yet desperate to get away. “Alva, he’s calling me.”

  “Who is, Bill? Who calls you? Come, let’s get you up & back to camp. The surgeons will do something for you.” They could hardly repair his torn face, I thought, but plenty of men in this war have been disfigured, & yet lived to fight again. “Come.”

  “No!” he screamed, his voice as high & thin as a whistle. He struck me on the shoulder & knocked me backward onto my fundament. “No, none of you get closer! Leave me! He’s calling, O, can you not hear him? He calls even now!”

  With that he leapt up, & ran off, calling over his shoulder that I should not follow. That I should give him up for dead.

  —THE STATEMENT OFALVAGRIEST

  17.

  The vampire saw her. His red eyes bored right into her. She tried to look away, but she couldn’t.

  In an offhand, very casual way, she knew exactly what was happening. He was mesmerizing her. It had happened before. Had she been capable of it she would have screamed, run away, at least tried to move her eyes. But she couldn’t. The vampire had the power to compel her. The amulet at her throat grew warm as it fought that influence, but it had little power of its own. Its purpose was to focus her own mental energies, to give her the clarity to fight the vampire’s psychic attack. Unless she could reach up and grab it, turn her thoughts toward it, it was useless. And until the vampire looked away from her she could do nothing but stare at him, her rational mind disconnected from her body.

  The cell phone in her hand made loud buzzing noises. Most likely it was the dispatcher on the other end asking her frantic questions. She opened her fingers and the phone slid to the ground. It bounced off the sidewalk, but she couldn’t look down to see where it had gone. She couldn’t look anywhere except into the vampire’s eyes.