One Foot in the Grave - The Halflife Trilogy Book I

by Wm. Mark Simmons

  I grunted. “A missing blood sample is one thing. A corpse missing its own blood volume is another.”

  “As I said: sloppy. If only that was that the worst of it.”

  “There’s more?”

  He nodded. “As I was saying, I’ve monitored all reported deaths and disappearances since that forty-eight-hour period. There have been four more disappearances and another body since then.”

  “What? Why?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know. Ostensibly, New York sent a team to recover you and any evidence that might link you with vampirism. That particular goal and some very unprofessional blunders might explain the first three disappearances and the hospital break-in. Since enforcers characteristically travel in pairs, we assumed the New York team was completely eradicated with your second encounter in the cornfield. Obviously, we were wrong.”

  A lone flag popped up on the Missouri side, east by southeast of Joplin. “I’m not sure about this one.”

  “It doesn’t fit the pattern?”

  He shook his head. “Fellow by the name of Cantrell. Has a ranch over by Aurora, Missouri. Claims Satanists from Arkansas were trying to trespass on his property.”

  “Um,” I said, “Satanists from Arkansas?”

  “Said their cars had Arkansas plates.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Of course.”

  “Said he proselytized them with a shotgun. Sounds like a crackpot.”

  A memory surfaced and I shook my head. “Harold Cantrell. I know this guy. He was one of our Public Radio subscribers: stable, rock-solid—owns a sizable spread. And while he used to claim Cantrell Ranch was the most lightning-prone acreage in the world, I wouldn’t figure him for fringe. But Satanists from Arkansas. . .”

  I watched more flags pop up on the map, all on the Kansas side: Arma, Girard, Pittsburg, McCune, Parsons. “More New York enforcers, tells us how. It doesn’t tell us why.”

  “Why what?” Deirdre wanted to know.

  Damien leaned back in his chair and stretched. “We know that they know that we have Csejthe. They’ve already picked up all the existing evidence in the area that might link him with the wampyr. The additional disappearances have occurred since then. So why are they still running around Southeast Kansas? What are they looking for?”

  I stared at the phosphorescent lines and dots on the CRT. “Dr. Marsh might have some notes—”

  “Chris . . . Marsh is dead.”

  It came to me slowly. “What?” Then I went cold all over. “Dead?”

  Damien nodded. “They were very thorough. The Mount Horeb Hospital files are gone. Any notes with your name on them went up in the fire along with Marsh’s house. And, of course, the good doctor. It’s the one fatality on my list that could be dismissed as an obvious accident.”

  “It wouldn’t be a coincidence,” I said, bitterness flooding my mouth like vinegar.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  My hands balled into fists. “So, anyone else I know on your list? Have they tried to silence any of my friends, my coworkers?”

  He shook his head. “The rest is puzzling. It’s as if they’re looking for something else, now. As if they’re casting about for a new scent, a new trail.” He looked up at me. “You bite anybody on the neck during the last year? Leave your own trail of corpses?”

  “That’s not funny.” I turned and walked to the door. “Not funny at all.” I kept going.

  Deirdre caught up with me halfway down the hall.

  “I want to apologize for Damien,” she said, catching my arm and linking it with hers. “He’s outlived all of his family, his contemporaries, all of his human friends—”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m human, so he knows that he will outlive me, as well. He has a different viewpoint on death. He sometimes forgets what it’s like to be mortal and attached to other mortals.” She squeezed my arm. “Please don’t be angry with him.”

  “I’m not, I guess.” It was difficult to be angry when someone like Deirdre was squeezing your arm and gazing up at you imploringly. “Marsh’s death is a shock. And I’m furious at the people who did this.”

  “Let me buy you a drink.”

  “I’m not really thirsty.”

  “Neither am I. But I want to talk to you and it just seems easier to observe the social amenities as an icebreaker.” Now her arm was locked in mine and she took me in tow.

  The night was young and the main room sparsely populated. We ordered drinks and found a distant table next to the wall. I sat with my back to the main stage to avoid distraction and quickly decided that that was a mistake: I needed a distraction from those luminous blue eyes, that perfect face, those curvaceous red lips, her—

  “I want to offer myself to you.”

  I sat there, my train of thought utterly derailed. “Excuse me?” I said after a long pause.

  She smiled and leaned toward me. “I’m offering myself to you, night or day, for as long as you can use me. Oh my.” Her smile grew deeper. “The expression on your face.”

  I stared at her. Words wouldn’t come.

  “Didn’t Suki mention anything about this?”

  I managed to shake my head—that much I could do.

  “I want to help you.”

  “Help me,” I managed further.

  “Research,” she coached.

  “Research. Ah.”

  “Your presence here is more important than you could possibly appreciate.” She put her hand over mine. “But I appreciate the potential you bring. And I want to help tap that potential.”

  “You do.”

  She nodded. “So use me.”

  “Use you,” I said.

  “I’ll do research, run errands, transcribe notes, verify test results.”

  At that point our drinks arrived, along with my grasp on reality.

  “So, you’re interested in unlocking the secrets of the vampiric condition,” I said, pouring my Perrier over ice.

  “Oh, yes!”

  I smiled and patted her hand in return. “You and Damien are very much in love, aren’t you?”

  She nodded and her smile grew into something extraordinary.

  “I can see why coming up with a cure for this disease is so important to you.”

  The smile faltered. “Cure?”

  “If Damien could be freed from his curse—”

  “Curse?”

  “I thought. . .” I stopped. I wasn’t sure what I thought anymore.

  “Chris, I’m not looking for some magic potion to make Damien mortal, again. I want to be like him.”

  “Like him?” Great. First I’m echoing her, then she’s echoing me, and now I was back to parroting her, again.

  “I want to be a vampire.”

  “Um. Okay. Why?”

  “Why?” The question seemed to surprise her. “Power. Immortality—or at least near invulnerability. Eternal youth.” She looked down into the mud-red depths of her bloody mary. “And then there’s Damien. . . .”

  I cleared my throat. “Under these circumstances, I can see how a mixed marriage would be more problematic.”

  “The Doman has Taj working on too many projects to give your research anywhere near her full time and attention. I’ve been doing a lot of my own research in the library and on the databases. I thought we might work together, you and I—pool our efforts.” She picked up her drink and her gaze wandered off, over my shoulder.

  “What about Damien?”

  She shrugged. “In a way, he’d be working with us. What he’s doing now may coincide with some of the answers that we’re looking for. But the Doman’s got him busy on other projects, too. We barely see each other some nights.” Her eyes came back to my face. “I need something constructive to do.”

  “Well. . .”

  “Say yes. You won’t be sorry!”

  “Deirdre, I haven’t had a chance to figure out where I would really start, what directions to go, what paths to pursue.”

  “You need to get
organized. I can help you right there: I’m a very organized person.” Her eyes drifted to the right again. “I think you have an admirer.”

  “Admirer?” Damn! The sensibility of this conversation had slipped away yet again.

  She nodded. “Over there. Near the door to the kitchen. No, don’t look!”

  “Why not?”

  “You’ll spook her. She’s really staring!”

  “Anyone you know?”

  She shook her head, raised her drink to her lips and peered over the rim of the glass. “I’ve never seen her in here, before. Hmmm. She’s rather striking. . . .”

  “Striking?”

  “Attractive . . . but. . . .”

  “But?” I sipped my Perrier.

  “There’s something about her . . . something that’s somehow . . . wrong.”

  “Describe her.”

  “Tall, maybe five-nine. Slender—no, skinny: almost emaciated.”

  “The waif look. Very chic.”

  “Dark eyes, dark hair. Something about the eyes, though. . .”

  “What?”

  She shook her head. “She’s wearing her hair in a French braid.”

  Sometimes Jenny had worn her hair in a French braid—she knew I liked it that way. . . .

  Stop it, I thought.

  “She’s wearing a white dress with poofy sleeves.”

  “Poofy sleeves.” Jenny had a dress like that. Kept it in a plastic bag at the back of her closet. It was still there—just six or seven months ago—before I had closed her closet door for the last time and promised myself I would only open it again when I was ready to throw everything out or donate—stop it, stop it!

  Deirdre sipped her drink. “Unusual attire for this time of the year.”

  I turned and looked. And, of course, because I was thinking about my dead wife, the woman across the room looked just like her for a moment.

  The moment stretched endlessly. The reason the woman across the room looked like Jennifer was because it was Jennifer!

  “She seems to know you,” Deirdre said as Jenny crooked her index finger into a “come here” gesture.

  I couldn’t move.

  How?

  The answer was quite simple: Jenny hadn’t died after all.

  You know better.

  I never saw her dead.

  You were in and out of consciousness for a week. The hospital didn’t release you until ten days after the funeral.

  Precisely, so how do I know her body lies moldering in a Kansas cemetery?

  Your family and hers—made the arrangements, attended the funeral.

  Hearsay.

  The county coroner—medical documents.

  Could have been forged.

  To what purpose?

  I don’t know!

  There was only one way to find out: I wrenched myself up and out of my seat, knocking the chair over with a muffled crash. The rest of the room got quiet. Only my wife was moving. Toward the kitchen.

  “Jennifer,” I croaked. “Jenny!” I stumbled after her. She was through the door before I was halfway across the room. I ran through the kitchen looking this way and that. She was gone.

  I grabbed a busboy. “A woman—about this tall—brown hair, white dress—which way did she go?”

  He shrugged.

  I released him and whirled about: side doors? Left or right would put her into corridors that kept her inside the building. Only the back door was a direct exit to the outside. I ran for it, yanked it open.

  Nothing. No one in sight.

  A taxi sat, idling, in the service alley, twenty yards away from the rear loading dock. The rear passenger door was open on the side nearest me.

  “Jenny?” I called.

  I saw a flicker of white in the dark depths of the vehicle’s interior.

  “Jenny!”

  “Chris?” Deirdre’s voice behind me.

  And Damien’s voice: “What is it?”

  A white hand at the end of a white, poofy sleeve reached out and grasped the handle on the open cab door.

  I moved toward the end of the dock and was caught, pulled back, by clutching hands.

  “Let me go,” I said. “Jenny!”

  “Hold him.”

  “Chris, you can’t leave the building!”

  “Come back inside.”

  “Don’t let go.”

  I struggled trying to escape the multitudinous hands and voices. “Jenny! Wait!”

  The hand pulled the door closed with agonizing slowness. A brief glimpse of her face at the window. The cab was pulling away. In a fit of desperation, I shrugged off two of my handlers, swung my fists, punched and kicked at the flesh that was trying to envelope me. I broke free. Tried to run for the departing vehicle. Made four, maybe five steps before I was tackled, smothered to the ground.

  I screamed against the concrete.

  The Doman’s elbows were planted on the table, his left hand balled into a fist, cupped inside his right. He leaned forward, pressing his knuckles against his lips. “You are sure?”

  My own elbows were similarly planted, but I was resting my forehead against the palms of my hands. “It was Jenny.”

  “I don’t suppose you carry a photo of your wife in your wallet. It might help Deirdre make a positive ID.”

  I shook my head. I had taken Jenny’s and Kirsten’s photos out of my wallet and down from the walls a month after the funeral. Maybe that was a sign of denial. All I knew was that it hurt so much more to open my billfold or look across the room and still see their faces. . . .

  Pagelovitch sighed. “Doctor?”

  “There are, of course, psychological and stress-related factors that could cause him to imagine that he saw his dead wife—”

  “I’m not crazy, I really did see her.”

  “—so that he might easily see her face and form when no one was there.”

  “But there was someone there,” Deirdre said. “I saw her, too.”

  “And easier to project her face and presence onto a woman of similar stature and coloring.”

  Damien entered the room with a file folder.

  The Doman raised an eyebrow. “Photographs?”

  Damien nodded. “One. Photocopy from a newspaper story—the quality is not that good.”

  Pagelovitch gestured toward Deirdre. “Show it to her anyway.”

  I sat up a little straighter. “You have a file on me? On my wife?”

  “On you. Any information on your wife is peripheral and, in this case, fortuitous.”

  Deirdre was shaking her head. “I don’t know. It’s too fuzzy. Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “You’re not sure?” Clearly, the Doman was unhappy without a clear decision either way.

  “I just can’t tell.”

  “Still, it’s highly unlikely that your dead wife just turned up here in Seattle.”

  I scowled at the Doman. “Why not? I just turned up here, in Seattle.”

  “She was pronounced dead, Christopher—”

  “So was I.”

  “—and buried. You weren’t.”

  “Maybe she was infected the same as me. Maybe better: maybe she’s a full-fledged vampire.” A part of my conscious mind was standing back and observing this conversation with a detached sense of horror. Another portion was desperately trying to make Jenny real at any price.

  The Doman was relentless: “So, where has she been for the past year?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she was trapped in the grave, underneath the ground, in her coffin. Maybe she just got free recently.”

  “So, why is she with New York?”

  “What? New York?”

  “We checked all the dispatchers. No cabs were logged in this vicinity during or for an hour either side of this incident. No independent or company taxis in this city match the description of your vehicle.

  “Christopher,” he continued in a gentler voice, “for some reason New York still wants you. It would be very simple for them to hire a body double to act the par
t of your departed wife, to lure you outside of our sanctuary.”

  “With your psychological situation,” Mooncloud chimed in, “a little makeup and the right dress would be all that was necessary for the power of suggestion to be complete.”

  “Perhaps they even went a step or two beyond makeup,” the Doman said.

  I stared at Pagelovitch. “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps a glamour of some type. . . .”

  “Magic? You’re telling me they can use magic?”

  Looks were exchanged around the room. “Of course not. But if there was another vampire involved. . .”

  “A Projective,” Mooncloud said. “Some form of mental domination.”

  “I thought other vampires couldn’t come on the premises without a specific invitation to cross the threshold.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I don’t have all the answers, yet.” Then his gaze softened. “But that would tend to shoot holes in your theory that your wife had returned as a vampire.”

  I grasped at my last straw: “Maybe they found some other way to resurrect her.”

  “Magic? Hocus pocus? Come now,” the Doman smiled, showing pointed teeth, “this is reality. . . .”

  Chapter Eight

  Knowledge is power. So wrote Hobbes in Leviathan.

  In Of Heresies, Bacon said: Knowledge itself is power.

  But perhaps André Gide said it best when he wrote: “Education, c’est délivrance.”

  If education was, indeed, freedom, the Doman’s library was the place to form my escape plan. I began my studies the following evening and, aside from regular evening visits from the two-tailed cat, I worked undisturbed until Saturday night.

  “Looking for a cure?”

  I glanced up from the tumbledown fortress of books that encompassed me at the library table. “At this point I’d settle for a little sanity.”

  Taj Mooncloud sorted through the sprawl of volumes that had slid to the far side of the table. “The Golden Bough, Crosland’s English adaptation of Valeria and Volta’s The Vampire, a couple of Montague Summers’ better known works, The Natural History of the Vampire by Masters—my goodness, even a translation of the Malleus Maleficarum! You’re looking for sanity, here?”