99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale

wrenching his neck around. “What’s his name?”

“Who?”

Arkeley bounced the thing’s head off the top of the display case. “Harold,” he said, “maybe you could find me a toolbox from somewhere. I need a hammer and maybe a pair of needlenose pliers.”

“No,” the abomination moaned, and bounced on the wooden case as he tried to break free of Arkeley’s grip. As infirm and decrepit as he might be, though, Arkeley was still stronger than any half-dead.

“I think we’ll start by pulling his teeth out. Then maybe his fingernails.”

“Don’t—”

“Don’t what?” Arkeley asked. “Don’t hurt you? I tried to be nice.”

Harold let go of the rope and walked off into the shadows. Arkeley placed his good hand across the half- dead’s temple and cheek and then leaned down hard, using all his weight, pressing Geistdoerfer’s skull into the wood of the case. The thing screamed horribly.

Caxton licked her lower lip. It was suddenly very dry. “Arkeley,” she said. “You’re going too fast. Give him another chance, for God’s sake.”

The old man stared at her with pure anger burning in his eyes. Then one of his eyelids drooped down and flicked back up. Was that?—yes. Yes, it had been a wink, Caxton thought. A wink.

He thought she was playing a game. The oldest interrogation game: good cop, bad cop. That hadn’t been her intention. She just didn’t think she could bear to watch Arkeley torture even a dead man.

“Listen,” she said, leaning over a little to look into Geistdoerfer’s bloodless face. “Listen, maybe if you just tell me a few things, maybe this doesn’t have to be so bad. I mean, is that something you might do?”

The half-dead’s face writhed as if bugs were burrowing under his cheeks and lips. “I don’t know his name,” he said, quickly. “He never told me. He just said he was a soldier. And then he said he had been tricked, that he’d never wanted to be a vampire. That it was all a trick! Please!”

Caxton looked up and Arkeley let a little of the pressure off.

“Who tricked him?” she asked. She threw a thumb over her shoulder, gesturing at the coffin behind her.

“Her? Was it somebody named Justinia Malvern?”

“I…I’m not sure. I think so.”

Arkeley leaned on his head.

“Yes! Yes,” the half-dead screamed. “It had to be! That was why—why he wanted to kill her so badly.

Oh God! Tell him to stop!”

“I will,” Caxton said, “but first I need something more. Something we can use. You have to tell me what he’s going to do next. Will he try to kill Malvern again?”

“Y-yes. I think—I mean, I know he will. It was the one thing he wanted to accomplish. He knows you’ll catch him eventually. He wants to kill her first. That’s all I know—I swear!” His eyes swiveled to look past her. “Oh, God, please please please please please…”

Harold had returned. He had a long red toolbox in one hand. The other held a big power drill.

“You don’t have much time left,” she said. “You need to tell me something more. Just think, okay?

Don’t guess, but think. Will he come back tomorrow night?”

“I don’t know—I don’t know,” the half-dead creaked.

“Think!” she shouted.

“Yes yes yes, he will, he’ll come back, he’ll—he mentioned something once, he just said it in an offhand way, but but but—”

“But what?” she asked.

“That night you chased him. When you chased him onto the battlefield, he came back, he came back and we talked a little. He said you were dangerous. He said he might not be able to do what he needed to do by himself. That he might need help.”

“Help.” Caxton made a hard line of her mouth. “You mean reinforcements. More half-deads like you?”

The thing on the display case managed to wiggle its head back and forth in negation. “No. He swore he would never make a half-dead. He swore it a hundred times—I think—I think there was something there, some story he didn’t tell me. He seemed to think that killing people and drinking their blood could maybe be okay, but that calling them back from the dead was the real sin. I don’t know why.”

“Then where would he get reinforcements?” Caxton demanded. A high whining, grinding noise startled her. She looked up. Harold had stretched an extension cord across the floor and had plugged in his power drill. “We’re out of time,” she said.

“Other vampires!” the half-dead screeched. “He’ll come back with more vampires. More—maybe lots more.”

Arkeley grabbed his hair again and pulled his head back. “He’s going to make new vampires? That’ll take some time. At least another night. That’s good, that’s useful to us.”

The half-dead stared up into Arkeley’s hard eyes. “Why would he do that? Why make new ones when he already has ninety-nine of them waiting to strike?”

54.

A courier met me with certain papers, hastily-made copies of letters from the Ranger Simonon to his masters in Richmond. One of my spies had intercepted them en route and made the copies, then sent the originals on, as were his standing orders. I read the letters with a growing fear, that was not alleviated when I’d finished. I asked the soldier if he knew where this place was, the Chess plantation, and he said he did not, but could direct me on to Gum Spring, at least. I listened closely to the directions he indicated, and then was off again. My horse needed rest. I needed food, and perhaps a nice cigar, and time to smoke it. They say misery loves company, but I doubt the horse was capable of appreciating the sentiment.

—THE PAPERS OFWILLIAMPITTENGER

55.

“I,” Arkeley admitted, his face blank, “may have made a mistake.”

“What are you saying?” Caxton demanded. She knew, of course. She just had to confirm it.

“The other vampires—the ones in the cavern—” the half-dead spluttered out. “They’re not dead. Just sleeping.”

“And you think he can wake them,” she said, speaking slowly to buy time. Time to think. Time to get her stomach under control.

“Yes, yes! He was quite clear on that.” The thing squirmed in its bonds. It seemed to think this was the simplest, most logical thing in the world.

“But there were no hearts,” she said, when she could speak again. “There were no hearts in the cavern—just bones. I checked every coffin. He can’t revive them unless he has their hearts.” At the time it had been reasonable to assume that the bones were dead. That the vampires were dead, permanently dead.

Her reasonable assumption was wrong. If a hundred vampires got loose—how much damage could they do before she could stop them? Could she even stop that many?

Arkeley was staring at her with a look of horror on his face. She didn’t need to say what she was thinking, because she knew he was thinking exactly the same thing.

“There were no hearts there,” she insisted again.

The thing that had once been Geistdoerfer was happy to fill her in. “When I entered the cavern there was a heart laid out on every coffin. Dipped in tar, wrapped in oilskin. I originally wanted to replace them all but he said no, I should let the others sleep. Together we gathered up the other hearts, to keep my students from disturbing them. We numbered them carefully and then we put them in a barrel.”

“I’ve seen that barrel,” Caxton said, turning to face Arkeley. It was in the specimen room of the Civil War Era Studies department of Gettysburg College. She remembered silver wood and hoops weathered down to rust stains. She had thought it was just one more artifact from the dig. “I’ve seen where it is. I know exactly where it is.”

The two of them stood there, looking at each other.

“If I can get somebody there in time, they can destroy the hearts. We can stop this before it even begins.”