99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale

caught me, copper. Red-handed.” He looked down at his arm. She studied the sling closely for the first time and saw a drop of red welling up through the bandage around his wrist. “Oh, that’s kind of funny, isn’t it?”

Then he started to laugh.

30.

It had been a fine house once, with paintings on the walls & plentiful lamps to provide illumination. Now only sunlight, slanting downward from the rent dome of the cupola, limned the place in a yellow radiance that hid as much as it revealed. I could see where the paper on the walls had peeled back, & where the floorboards were littered with the bodies of dead wasps, dry

& brittle so they crunched as I trod on them.

The entrance gave on an elaborate spiral staircase that must once have risen majestically to a second floor. An enormous finial in the shape of a chess pawn stood at the bottom of the railing,

& it remained in fine shape, but shortly past that point the stairs had collapsed, or been pulled down. They had been reduced to a heap of plaster & broken marble that filled much of the room.

Beyond these stairs I proceeded, & found a luxurious parlor, reduced to a shambles. Shattered mirrors lined the walls while elegant chairs had been shoved to the back of the room like so much rubbish, some broken down to kindling, some still showing satin upholstery. In the center of the room stood a raised platform, perhaps like an altar, but with a rounded top. It was made of alabaster & chased with gold. I stepped closer & saw that it was hinged on one side & would open like a chest. Then I sucked in a deep breath & tried not to sicken. It was a sepulcher I had found.

A gilded coffin.

“They cain’t hurt ya by daylight,” Storrow hissed at me from behind. I looked back & saw the other men standing in the doorway, peering over each others’ shoulders but unwilling to take one more step forward.

I screwed up my courage & grabbed the side of the sarcophagus & threw the lid open. It rose easily on springs & I let go & jumped back, ready for anything.

Inside I saw a lining of stained red velvet, & nothing more. Not so much as a mouldering bone or scrap of a shroud.

“Nothin’ ever was that easy, I s’pose,” Storrow said, sounding almost regretful. For myself I was glad enough to find the vampire missing. I did not look to tussle with it again, at least not so soon.

“Bill’s not here,” I told the others. “Come on, let us keep searching.”

I grasped the lid again & tried to close it, but it felt as if it had locked into place & all my strength could not move the lid. There must be some hidden catch or a release lever, I thought, & I bent to look closer.

At that moment some hard metal object caught the back of my collar, & jarred the very bones of my spine. Had I not been leaning forward it would have caved in the back of my skull, I am sure.

Stunned, my arms tingling, I turned as quick as I could to see my assailant bringing his weapon back for another blow. It was a gold candelabra, I saw, with white wax still clotted in its receptacles. The man who wielded this expensive club wore a long nightshirt & had a stocking cap on his head. His face hung in tatters, the skin peeled back from the grayish muscles underneath. Just as Bill had come to look.

There was a struggle; the short of it is, I lived, and he did not. I would have studied the dead man in more detail, I think, had we not at the moment heard footsteps scuttling on the floor above our heads.

—THE STATEMENT OFALVAGRIEST

31.

Caxton squinted. “If you’re making a joke I’m afraid I don’t get it.”

“Then allow me to explain. You were quite right to come here, quite right.” He leaned forward again and opened his eyes, and they flashed with a wild light that made her flinch. “I’m your culprit. I opened that cavern not knowing what I would find inside, but once I saw those coffins, once I saw the first set of bones, I saw the potential. I sent Montrose and the rest of the students away. I don’t think any of them even saw the heart.”

Caxton sat up very straight in her chair. Her Beretta was holstered under her left arm and she was very much aware of it.

“If they did they probably didn’t know what they saw. It looked like a lump of coal, because someone had been good enough to coat it in tar. I imagine they meant to preserve it, though for how long I could not tell you. It was sitting on top of one of the coffins. Just one out of the hundred but I understood. It was meant to go inside— there might as well have been written instructions. I opened the coffin and placed the heart in the center of the rib cage and it started to work almost instantly. You’ll wonder why I did such a stupid thing, of course.” He nodded at the saber on the wall. “I have longed, my entire life, to speak with the poor man who dropped that. I have spent decades imagining what he would say to me, and the questions I would ask him. I thought the fellow in that coffin would be quite forthcoming. And I was right, in a way. He had plenty to say. Of course, he asked most of the questions.”

The temperature in the room had dropped ten degrees while Geistdoerfer spoke. Caxton reached for her handgun, but before she could get her hand up someone reached down from behind her and grabbed both her arms in an iron grip. She didn’t have to look down to know that the hands holding her down would be as pale as snow. She could feel the vampire behind her, feel the way he made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up straight.

“I knew what I was doing. I knew that it was probably a mistake. I felt a certain compulsion, though he tells me he had no power over me at that time. It was pure curiosity that moved me, then. Exactly the thing that killed the cat.”

Geistdoerfer started to remove the dressing on his arm. It took some doing, as he only had one free hand and his mouth to work with. The vampire didn’t speak while Caxton waited to see what lay beneath. The vampire didn’t even breathe on her neck.

The vampire didn’t tear her head off, either, or suck out all her blood. That might mean he just wanted to play with her first. Vampires had very little inner life—they mostly spent their nights pursuing blood, thinking about the blood to come. Occasionally they played with the bodies of their victims, and occasionally they played with their food before they drank. Human death amused them. Corpses could provide them with hours of entertainment.

“It was quite something to see. As soon as I lay the heart among his bones it began. The heart started to shake and jump. The tar on the surface cracked and whitened, then it burst open, as if it were under considerable pressure from within. A kind of white smoke leaked out, except it wasn’t quite smoke. It seemed alive, like it had a will of its own. It filled the coffin and a thin ribbon of it spilled over. I thought it might crawl across the floor and come after me. Then I saw the bones inside that tendril of vapor, the finger bones.”

Caxton barely heard him. She was too busy thinking about what it would be like to be a vampire’s toy.

Another possibility, though, was more likely, and also far more chilling. It was possible the vampire didn’t want to kill her because he wanted something from her. One vampire, Efrain Reyes, had wanted her to be his lover. Kevin Scapegrace, who came after, merely wanted her because Malvern had decided it would be ironic to turn her into the thing she had destroyed. Then there was Deanna—but she didn’t want to think about Deanna.

A third possibility presented itself. The night before, this vampire, the emaciated creature that Geistdoerfer had awoken, had spared her life because she was a woman and he was sworn never to hurt a member of the fairer sex. It was possible he was going to let her go again.

She doubted it, though. She doubted it very much. Such niceties belonged to human beings. A vampire, drawn by the smell of blood, would shed gallantry and courtesy quickly enough. What had saved her once was very unlikely to save her twice.

“The smoke solidified as I watched. At first he was as transparent and wobbly as a man made of jelly.