99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale

She could say no to him. She was sure that she had the strength to do it. He was a weak old man now.

Yet she felt like she had to give him something. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll give you a ride. But that’s all.”

He frowned but he didn’t fight her. She knew him well enough to realize that was a bad sign, but she didn’t know how to react. “Very well. Let me get my coat.” He struggled as he walked around the side of the bed toward the closet.

“What about her?” Caxton asked, looking at the coffin.

“As long as I’m back by nightfall she shouldn’t be any trouble,” he said.

8.

The life of a spymaster for the War Department had its consolations. For one thing, I was appointed a horse to ride, while it seemed every other man in the world must walk. All that day I rode while the Army of the Potomac moved past me in a never-ending line, a human chain that stretched as far south as vision permitted, and went away from me to the north just as far. The dust they stirred up with their boots made a pall that rose on the air and hung there, like some spirit host of Araby made of sand. All day they tramped by, with calls and halloos from the drivers of the mule trains, and some singing, though not much.

This was just after Chancellorsville, when all hope seemed vain. Though outnumbered, Lee had trounced us yet again without breaking a sweat. He seemed invincible; surely that was the common belief. The Union has never known a darker day. The war had turned against us and even I believed the dream of a unified Union was doomed. Perhaps this helps explain what we did, and what we dared.

I was headed deep into Maryland, and away from Virginia, for which I was glad. I’d learned much from my contacts behind the lines, and needed promptly to report. From some runaway slaves who’d been attached to Jeb Stuart’s supply lines, I’d heard that Lee was moving again, and this time the enemy was headed north.

A very charming Southern belle, who was in secret a hater of slavery, had told me even more.

Lee was headed for Pennsylvania. For the first time he intended to bring the war to us, to the North. Already the democrats in Congress were howling for an end to this war. Well, it looked as if they might get it, but on Jeff Davis’s terms.

—THE PAPERS OFWILLIAMPITTENGER

9.

She followed him out to the parking lot. The clerk at the front desk gave them a cheery wave, which Arkeley completely ignored. The old Fed shoved himself into her little Mazda and in a minute they were off. It wasn’t a long drive to Gettysburg—it was the next town over from Hanover. Though they didn’t talk any more along the way, the atmosphere in the car never got too unbearable. She was just doing a favor for an old friend, she told herself. Well, friend was probably the wrong word.

He cleared his throat as they neared Gettysburg, but only to give her directions. “It’s on the far side of town,” he said.

She drove through the center of Gettysburg, a town given over almost entirely to history. She knew very little about the Civil War, but like most kids raised in central Pennsylvania she’d been dragged through Gettysburg on class trips as a child, so she knew it had been the location of a particularly important battle, the turning point of the war. Now it was a tourist destination.

Not necessarily a tourist trap, though. She had seen plenty of those: soulless little towns comprised entirely of T-shirt shops and gaudy ice cream parlors. Instead Gettysburg was a well-preserved Victorian town, full of brick buildings with slate roofs that hadn’t changed much in a hundred and forty years. It was almost tasteful—at least at its center. She drove through a traffic circle called Lincoln Square, past small museums and antiques shops, banks, and hotels. The town was crowded with tourists, families with herds of children carrying plastic replicas of Civil War–era rifles and felt forage caps with plastic brims.

The real things were in evidence as well, in some profusion: it seemed every corner had at least one reenactor in blue or gray, clad in authentic but itchy-looking uniforms, most of them with beards and long sideburns.

She sighed as she stopped at a crosswalk to let a gaggle of schoolchildren pass. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll bite.”

“Hmm?” he asked.

“What’s here?” she asked. “What kind of horror could there possibly be in a place like this?”

He shifted painfully in his seat. “Something old. I got a call a couple days ago from a student at the college here. An archaeologist was digging up some old Civil War ruins and found some evidence of vampire activity.”

“No,” Caxton exhaled, “we got them all!”

He waved one impatient hand at her. “Old vampire activity,” he said. “More than a century old. They found the bones of a number of vampires, still in their coffins. It’s almost certainly nothing.”

“But you won’t rest easy until you check it out,” she said.

“I never rest easy,” he told her. It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She didn’t want to have anything in common with him, not anymore.

Caxton stared straight ahead at the crosswalk, ready to get moving again. Eventually some adults herded up the children and moved them on. They drove in silence until she’d reached the far end of town. He had her turn off into the military park, up to the top of Seminary Ridge, a zone of quiet green hills studded everywhere by endless monuments—obelisks, arches, huge marble statues. There were fewer tourists out that way but a lot more reenactors, some of them having set up elaborate period-accurate tent camps. They drilled in formation or stood around polishing cannon and mortars that looked like they could actually be fired. Arkeley told her to turn off on a poorly marked gravel road, and the car rumbled along for about half a mile into a thick clump of trees. Three cars, late-model cheap Japanese sedans, sat in a crook of the road, and a foot trail led deeper into the woods. Caxton pulled up beside a red Nissan Sentra and switched off the ignition. She had no idea where she was or what Arkeley wanted there, and she told herself she didn’t care.

He cleared his throat again. “Aren’t you going to take off your seat belt?” he asked.

“No,” she told him. “I’m not staying.”

“Alright,” he told her. “If you’re determined to be unhelpful, so be it. Maybe you’ll do me one last favor, though.” He reached into his inside jacket pocket and drew out a long length of rumpled knit cloth. It was soon revealed as a necktie that was probably twenty-five years old. “There is a way to tie one of these with only one hand, but I haven’t mastered it yet.”

She squinted at him. Did he really want her to tie it on for him? Did he really want her to touch him? It would certainly be a first.

“I’ve never gone into an official interview in my life where I wasn’t properly dressed,” he explained. “I’m not allowed to wear my badge anymore, but I can at least look like a cop.”

She stared at him for a long time. Jameson Arkeley, vampire killer emeritus, needed somebody else to tie his tie. She fought back the wave of bitter sadness that gave her but she couldn’t quite swallow her pity.

“Alright,” she said. She unfastened her seat belt. It was easy enough to get the tie on him. She’d tied Clara’s tie plenty of times. When the knot was tight enough for him he grunted in satisfaction.

“Good. Now. Please help me get out of the car.”

She could hardly refuse him that. She got out of the car and gave him a hand climbing out of his seat and suddenly they were both standing there, just like they used to. Like partners.

“Tell me, honestly, that you aren’t even curious,” he said, looking at the trail.

She started to do just that. The words didn’t come easily, though.

“Tell me you don’t even want to take a look. What do you have to do today that is so much more important than this?” he asked.

She would have said no just on principle. She would have refused. But he was right—she was curious, even though her life wasn’t about vampires anymore. Especially not their moldering bones. He was right about another