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 Mutter’s basements.
46.
—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 Mutter—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 Mutter 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.
“It’s a vampire, alright.” A vampire collected the same year as the battle of Gettysburg. The same year, presumably, that the cavern under the battlefield was filled with coffins. “You think this vampire knew our suspect?”
“It would be a surprising coincidence if he didn’t. Vampires are few in number at any given time. They seek each other out, when they can.” Arkeley read from his sheaf of papers. “‘Bones of a believed vampire. Remains of one Obediah Chess, of Virginia.’ You should recognize that name, I hope.”
She searched her memory. “Shit,” she said. She had it—kind of. “Malvern first came to America when she was already too weak to get out of her coffin. She was sold like a fossil, sold to a guy named, um,”
she worked for it, “Josiah. Josiah Caryl Chess.”
Arkeley placed a finger alongside his nose. “She killed Josiah, I’m relatively certain of that. He was found without any blood in his body. Not, however, before he had brought a son into this world.
Zachariah Chess, whose life seems to have been quite ordinary. Zachariah begat another son. Whose name was Obediah. Meanwhile Malvern rotted away quietly in the attic of the Chess plantation. I don’t know any details, but I will happily bet that it was Malvern who made Obediah what you see before you.”
The cold that gripped Caxton then had nothing to do with air-conditioning.
Arkeley continued to read from the paper he held. “‘Specimen obtained under unusual circumstances, donation of the War Department. Signed for by C. Benjamin, whom see for further particulars,’” Arkeley read. “Well, that would be tricky, since Dr. Benjamin died over a hundred years ago. But he was kind enough to leave us a few notes.” With his one useful hand Arkeley picked a sheet out of the packet and read it in silence, his head moving back and forth slowly for long minutes while Caxton could only wait.
Occasionally she looked down at the bones in the drawer, but that just made her feel cold.
“Can I see that when—”
“Done,” he said. He handed the sheet to her. It was an old photocopy of a much older document, written out in a long sloping hand. Caxton read it twice:
