The Vampire Tapestry

by Suzy McKee Charnas

  “I’ll wait with you just in case,” Miss Donelly said. “You know, Wild Man Williams is a twerp, but he was right: Weyland’s vampire would be a time-traveler. He could only go forward, of course, never back, and only by long, unpredictable leaps—this time, say, into our age of what we like to think of as technological marvels; maybe next time into an age of interstellar travel. Who knows, he might get to taste Martian blood, if there are Martians, and if they have blood.

  “Frankly, I wouldn’t have thought Weyland could come up with anything so imaginative extempore like that—the vampire as a sort of leftover saber-tooth tiger prowling the pavements, a truly endangered species. That’s the next term’s T-shirt: ‘Save the Vampire.’ ”

  There was no point consulting Miss Donelly. She might banter, but she would never believe. It was all a joke to her, a clever mental game invented by Dr. Weyland to amuse his audience. She could not perceive, as Katje could, that he was a monster amusing himself by toying with his prey.

  Miss Donelly added ruefully, “You’ve got to hand it to the man, he’s got tremendous stage presence, and he sure knows how to turn on the charm when he feels like it. Nothing too smooth, mind you, just enough unbending, enough slightly caustic graciousness, to set susceptible hearts a-beating. You could almost forget what a ruthless, self-centered bastard he can be. Did you notice that most of the comments came from women?

  “Is that your lift?”

  It was. While the women in the station wagon shuffled themselves around to make room, Katje stood with her hand on the door and watched Dr. Weyland emerge from the building with admiring students at either hand. He loomed above them, his hair silver under the lamplight. For overcivilized people to experience the approach of such a predator as sexually attractive was not strange. She remembered Scotty saying once that the great cats were all beautiful, and maybe beauty helped them to capture their prey.

  Dr. Weyland turned his head, and she thought for a moment that he was looking at her as she got into the station wagon.

  Fear filled her. What could she do to protect herself from him, how could she alert others to the truth without people thinking she was simply crazy? She couldn’t think amid the tired, satisfied ramblings of the bowling friends, and she declined to stay up and socialize with them. They didn’t press her.

  Sitting alone at home, Katje had a cup of hot milk to calm herself for sleep. To her perplexity, her mind kept wandering from thoughts of Dr. Weyland to memories of drinking cocoa at night with Henrik and the African students he used to bring to dinner. They had been native boys to her, dressed up in suits and talking politics like white men, flashing photographs of black kids playing with toy trucks and walkie-talkie sets. Sometimes they had all gone to see documentary films of an Africa full of cities and traffic and black professionals exhorting, explaining, running things, as these students expected to do in their turn when they went home.

  She thought about home now. She recalled clearly all those indicators of change in Africa, and she saw suddenly that the old life there had gone. She would return to an Africa largely as foreign to her as America had been at first. Reluctantly, she admitted that one of her feelings while listening to Dr. Weyland talk had been an unwilling empathy: if he was a one-way time-traveler, so was she. She saw herself cut off from the old life of raw vigor, the rivers of game, the smoky village air, all viewed from the heights of white privilege. To lose one’s world these days one did not have to sleep for half a century; one had only to grow older.

  * * *

  Next morning she found Dr. Weyland leaning, hands in pockets, against one of the columns flanking the entrance to the Club. She stopped some yards from him, her purse hanging heavily on her arm. The hour was early, the campus deserted-looking. Stand still, she thought; show no fear.

  He looked at her. “I saw you after the lecture last night and, earlier in the week, outside the lab one evening. You must know better than to wander alone at night; the campus is empty, no one is around—anything might happen. If you are curious, Mrs. de Groot, come do a session for me. All your questions will be answered. Come over tonight. I could stop by here for you in my car on the way back to the lab after dinner. There’s no problem with scheduling, and I would welcome your company. During intersession the lab is empty. I have no volunteers. I sit alone over there these nights hoping some impoverished youngster, unable to afford a trip home at intersession, will be moved by an uncontrollable itch for travel to come to my lab and earn his fare.”

  She felt fear and excitement knocking sharply in her body. She shook her head, no.

  “My work would interest you, I think,” he added, watching her. “You are an alert, handsome woman; they waste your qualities here. Couldn’t the college find you something better than this job after your husband died? You might consider coming over regularly to help me with some clerical chores until I get a new assistant. I pay well.”

  Astonished out of her fear at the offer of work in the vampire’s lair, she found her voice. “I am a country woman, Dr. Weyland, a daughter of farmers. I have no proper education. We never read books at home, except the Bible. My husband didn’t want me to work. I have spent my time in this country learning English and cooking and how to shop for the right things. I have no skills, no knowledge but the little that I remember of the crops, the weather, the customs, the wildlife of another country—and even that is probably out of date. I would be no use in work like yours.”

  Hunched in his coat with the collar upturned, looking at her slightly askance, his tousled hair gleaming with the damp, he had the aspect of an old hawk, intent but aloof. He broke the pose, yawned behind his large-knuckled hand, and straightened up.

  “As you like. Here comes your friend Nellie.”

  “Nettie,” Katje corrected, suddenly outraged: He’d drunk Nettie’s blood, the least he could do was to remember her name properly. But he was walking away over the lawn toward the labs.

  Nettie came panting up. “Who was that? Did he try to attack you?”

  “It was Dr. Weyland,” Katje said. She hoped Nettie didn’t notice her trembling.

  Nettie laughed. “What is this, a secret romance?”

  * * *

  Miss Donelly came into the kitchen toward the end of the luncheon for the departing emeritus. She plumped herself down between Nettie and Katje, who were taking a break and preparing dessert respectively. Katje spooned whipped cream carefully into each glass dish of fruit.

  Miss Donelly said, “In case I get too smashed to say this later, thanks. On the budget I gave you, you did just great. The Department will put on something official with Beef Wellington and all the trimmings over at Borchard’s. But it was really important for some of us to give Sylvia our own alcoholic farewell feast, which we couldn’t have done without your help.”

  Nettie nodded and stubbed out her cigarette.

  “Our pleasure,” Katje said, preoccupied. Dr. Weyland had come for her, would come back again; he was hers to deal with, but how? She no longer thought of sharing her fear, not with Nettie with her money worries or with Miss Donelly whose eyes were just now faintly glazed-looking with drink. Weyland the vampire could never be dealt with by a committee.

  “The latest word,” Miss Donelly added bitterly, “is that the Department plans to fill Sylvia’s place with some guy from Oregon; which means the salary goes up half as much again, or more, inside of six months.”

  “Them’s the breaks,” Nettie said, not very pleasantly. She caught Katje’s eyes with a look that said, Look who makes all the money and look who does all the complaining.

  “Them is,” Miss Donelly agreed glumly. “As for me, the word is no tenure, so I’ll be moving on in the fall. Me and my big mouth. Wacker nearly fainted at my prescription for stopping the rapes; you entrap the guy, disembowel him, and hang his balls over the front gates. Our good dean doesn’t know me well enough to realize that it’s all a front. On my own I’d be too petrified to try anything but talking the bastard out of it;
you know, ‘Now you just let me put my dress back on and I’ll make us each a cup of coffee, and you tell me all about why you hate women.’ ” She stood up.

  “Did you hear what happened to that girl last night, the latest victim? He cut her throat. Ripped her pants off, but didn’t even bother raping her. That’s how desperate for sex he is.”

  Katje said, “Jackson told us about the killing this morning.”

  “Jackson? Oh, from Buildings and Grounds. Look out, it could even be him. Any of them, damn them,” she muttered savagely as she turned away, “living off us, kicking our bodies out of the way when they’re through—”

  She stumbled out of the kitchen.

  Nettie snorted. “She’s always been one of those libbers. No wonder Wacker’s getting rid of her. Some men act like hogs, but you can’t let yourself be turned into a man-hater. A man’s the only chance most girls have of getting up in the world, you know?” She pulled on a pair of acid-yellow gloves and headed for the sink. “If I want out of these rubber gloves, I have to marry a guy who can afford to pay a maid.”

  Katje sat looking at the fruit dishes with their plump cream caps. It was just as the Bible said: she felt it happen—the scales fell from her eyes. She saw clearly and thought, I am a fool.

  Bad pay is real, rape is real, killing is real. The real world worries about real dangers, not childish fancies of a night prowler who drinks blood. Dr. Weyland took the trouble to be concerned, to offer extra work, while I was thinking . . . idiot things about him. Where does it come from, this nonsense of mine? My life is dull since Henrik died; so I make up drama in my head, and that way I get to think about Dr. Weyland, a distinguished and learned gentleman, being interested in me.

  She resolved to go to the lab building later and leave a note for him, an apology for her reluctance, an offer to stop by soon and make an appointment at the sleep lab.

  Nettie looked at the clock and said over her shoulder, “Time to take the ladies their dessert.”

  * * *

  At last the women had dispersed, leaving the usual fog of smoke behind. Katje and Nettie had finished the cleaning up. Katje said, “I’m going for some air.”

  Nettie, wreathed by smoke of her own making, drowsed in one of the big living-room chairs. She shook her head. “Not me. I’m pooped.” She sat up. “Unless you want me along? It’s still light out, so you’re safe from the Cayslin Ripper.”

  “Don’t disturb yourself,” Katje said.

  Away on the far edge of the lawn three students danced under the sailing shape of a Frisbee. Katje looked up at the sun, a silver disk behind a thin place in the clouds; more rain coming, probably. The campus still wore a deserted look. Katje wasn’t worried. There was no vampire, and the gun in her purse would suffice for anything else.

  The sleep lab was locked. She tucked her note of apology between the lab door and the jamb and left.

  As she started back across the lawn someone stepped behind her, and long fingers closed on her arm: it was Dr. Weyland. Firmly and without speaking he bent her course back toward the labs.

  “What are you doing?” she said, astonished.

  “I almost drove off without seeing you. Come sit in my car; I want to talk to you.” She held back, alarmed, and he gave her a sharp shake. “Making a fuss is pointless. No one is here to notice.”

  There was only his car in the parking lot; even the Frisbee players had gone. Dr. Weyland opened the door of the Mercedes and inserted Katje into the front passenger seat with a deft, powerful thrust of his arm. He got in on the driver’s side, snapped down the automatic door locks, and sat back. He looked up at the gray sky, then at his wristwatch.

  Katje said, “You wanted to say something to me?”

  He didn’t answer.

  She said, “What are we waiting for?”

  “For the day man to leave and lock up the labs. I dislike being interrupted.”

  This is what it’s like, Katje thought, feeling lethargic detachment stealing through her, paralyzing her. No hypnotic power out of a novelist’s imagination held her, but the spell cast on the prey of the hunting cat, the shock of being seized in the deadly jaws though not a drop of blood was yet spilled. “Interrupted,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” he said, turning toward her. She saw the naked craving in his gaze. “Interrupted at whatever it pleases me to do with you. You are on my turf now, Mrs. de Groot, where you have persisted in coming time after time. I can’t wait any longer for you to make up your mind. You are healthy—I looked up your records—and I am hungry.”

  The car smelled of cold metal, leather, and tweed. At length a man came out of the lab building and bent to unlock the chain from the only bicycle in the bike rack. By the way Dr. Weyland shifted in his seat Katje knew that this was the departure he had been awaiting.

  “Look at that idiot,” he muttered. “Is he going to take all night?” Weyland turned restlessly toward the lab windows. That would be the place, Katje thought, after a bloodless blow to stun her—he wouldn’t want any mess in his Mercedes.

  In her lassitude she was sure that he had attacked that girl, drunk her blood, and then killed her. He was using the rapist’s activities as cover. When subjects did not come to him at the sleep lab, hunger drove him out to hunt.

  She thought, But I am myself a hunter!

  Cold anger coursed through her. Her thoughts flew: she needed time, a moment out of his reach to plan her survival. She had to get out of the car—any subterfuge would do.

  She gulped and turned toward him, croaking, “I’m going to be sick.”

  He swore furiously. The locks clicked; he reached roughly past her and shoved open the door on her side. “Out!”

  She stumbled out into the drizzling, chilly air and backed several hasty paces, hugging her purse to her body like a shield, looking quickly around. The man on the bike had gone. The upper story of the Cayslin Club across the lawn showed a light—Nettie would be missing her now. Maybe Jackson would be just arriving to pick them both up there. But no help could come in time.

  Dr. Weyland had gotten out of the car. He stood with his arms folded on the roof of the Mercedes, looking across at her with a mixture of annoyance and contempt. “Mrs. de Groot, do you think you can outrun me?”

  He started around the front of his car toward her.

  Scotty’s voice sounded quietly in her ear: “Yours,” he said, as the leopard tensed to charge. Weyland too was an animal, not an immortal monster out of legend, just a wild beast, however smart and strong and hungry. He had said so himself.

  She jerked out the automatic, readying it to fire as she brought it swiftly up to eye level in both hands, while her mind told her calmly that a head shot would be best but that a hit was surer if she aimed for the torso.

  She shot him twice, two slugs in quick succession, one in the chest and one in the abdomen. He did not fall but bent to clutch at his torn body, and he screamed and screamed so that she was too shaken to steady her hands for the head shot afterward. She cried out also, involuntarily: his screams were dreadful. It was long since she had shot anything.

  Footsteps rushed behind her, arms flung round her pinning her hands to her sides so that the gun pointed at the ground. Jackson’s voice gasped in her ear, “Jesus Christ!”

  His car stood slewed where he had braked it, unheard by Katje. Nettie jumped out and rushed toward Katje, crying, “My God, he’s shot, she shot him!”

  Breaking off his screaming, Weyland tottered away from them around his car and fetched up leaning on the front. His face, a sunken-cheeked, starving mask, gaped at them.

  “It’s him?” Jackson said incredulously. “He tried to rape you?”

  Katje said, “No, he’s a vampire.”

  “A vampire!” Jackson exploded. “Have you gone crazy? Jesus!”

  Weyland panted, “Stop staring, cattle!”

  He wedged himself heavily into the driver’s seat of his car. They could see him slumped there, his forehead against the curve of the
steering wheel. Blood spotted the hood of the Mercedes where he had leaned.

  “Mrs. de Groot, give me the gun,” Jackson said.

  Katje clenched her fingers around the grip. “No.”

  She could tell by the way Jackson’s arms tightened that he was afraid to let go of her and grab for the gun. A siren sounded. Nettie cried in wild relief, “That’s Daniel’s car coming!”

  Weyland raised his head. His gray face was rigid with determination. He snarled, “The door—one of you shut the door!”

  His glaring face commanded them. Nettie darted forward, slammed the door, and recoiled, wiping her hand on her sweater. The engine started. Weyland drove the Mercedes waveringly past them, out of the parking lot toward the gateway road. Rain swept down in heavy gusts. Katje heard the siren again and woke fully to her failure: she had not made a clean kill. The vampire was getting away.

  She lunged toward Jackson’s car. He held her back, shouting, “Nothing doing, come on, you done enough!”

  The Mercedes crawled haltingly down the middle of the road, turned at the stone gates, and was gone.

  Jackson said, “Now will you give me that gun?”

  Katje snapped on the safety and dropped the automatic on the wet paving at their feet.

  Nettie was pointing toward the Club. “There’s people coming—they must have heard the shooting and called Daniel. Listen, Jackson, we’re in trouble. Nobody’s going to believe that Dr. Weyland is the rapist—or the other thing either.” Her glance flickered nervously at Katje. “Whatever we say, they’ll think we’re crazy.”

  “Oh, shit,” said Jackson tiredly, letting Katje go at last. He picked up the gun. Katje saw the apprehension in his face as he weighed Nettie’s assessment of their situation: a wild story from some cleaning people about the eminent professor.

  “We’ve got to say something,” Nettie went on desperately. “All that blood . . .” She fell silent, staring down.

  There was no blood. The rain had washed the tarmac clean.

  Jackson faced Katje and said urgently, “Listen, Mrs. de Groot, we don’t know a thing about any shooting, you hear?” He slipped the gun into an inside pocket of his jacket. “You came over to make an appointment at the sleep lab, only Dr. Weyland wasn’t around. You waited for him, and Nettie got worried when you didn’t come back, and we drove over here looking for you. We all heard shooting, but nobody saw anything. There was nothing to see. Like now.”