Scott Nicholson Library Vol 2

by Scott Nicholson

  “Whaaaft?” I managed.

  He pointed to the head of the table where Grandmaster seemed to be waiting for me. I swallowed a lump of half-chewed meat, and it nearly stuck just above my windpipe. I was mere inches from getting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation from Janice.

  “Mr. Barthamoo,” said Grandmaster, “might I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “You, uh, came across this information about your vampire in a local newspaper?”

  The cousins all stopped eating at once and looked at me expectantly. The silence was creepy, and so was their nose-breathing.

  “Yes, a newspaper article from the early nineteenth century,” I said. “It was part of a journalism assignment, and I pretty much stumbled upon it.”

  Grandmaster whispered something to an old grizzled man next to him, and I could have sworn I heard “M er er aqr er qer.” For all I know, he was muttering Hebrew or Mayan.

  The cousins were nodding their heads and whispering among themselves. I wondered what was going on.

  Grandmaster must have noticed my curious expression, for he said, “Don’t mind us. It’s just that we find all this vampire stuff really interesting.”

  Just as I once again penetrated the beef with my fork, Grandmaster spoke again. “Do you mind if I ask what newspaper it was in?”

  “Certainly not. The Inquireth.”

  “And you believed that story?” asked Grandmaster, shocked.

  “Only because it rang of vampiric truth,” I said. “You must understand this one fact: all we ever do is study vampires. That’s it. We have studied ancient manuscripts trying to glean the facts from the myths. We have learned when an immortal entity is truly present, for there is a common thread that runs through all the tales and myths and legends.

  “Long ago, it was a vampire who traveled these very roads, and that is why we are here. To trace his route, to perhaps gain something from nature that we were unable to obtain from the literature. Sort of like metaphysical tourism.”

  Granddaddy nodded, turning his fork over and over in his hand, swallowing the lie as easily as he’d swallowed the gravy.

  Before I dug into my steak, I added, “We’re experts, Grandmaster. Self-trained experts. Leave it to us.”

  A deathly silence descended, and the only noise was my serrated knife sawing meat. Janice glared at me as if I’d been rude. Buddy and Juan shook their heads. Dial looked pissed. And all his relatives stared at me in silence.

  Talk about ruining your appetite....

  * * *

  We all met in my room after dinner, minus the absence of the newcomer, who said he had chores to do. We were filled with beef, and from the sniff of things, filled with gas. I asked Juan to open a window.

  The others, who had brought chairs from their own rooms, were in a semi-circle with me at the head and Professor L at my side. I could tell with my keen sense of intuition that they all had something on their minds. That, and the fact they were babbling incoherently at once.

  But mostly I noticed Buddy shoving at Janice’s face with his huge paw, while she had a handful of his blond hair. It seemed like nobody could keep their hands off her except me.

  Damn it.

  “Janice, your impressions so far,” I began, wanting to divert her.

  She released Buddy’s hair and untangled a strand that had wrapped around her pinkie. “This place is spooky. What kind of family is this? And why are there so many relatives living in this one mansion? And why do they all look as if the Terminator T-800 used his futuristic medical advances to impregnate the She-Hulk, and out comes Dial and all his relatives one after the other?”

  “Vividly put,” I said, and felt my dinner rise in my throat a little at the odd sexual imagery. “To be honest, I’m just as baffled as you, and from the agreeing nods of Juan’s and Buddy’s heads, I’d say we all feel the same. Except,” And here I pointed at the professor. “And where were you at the time of the murder?”

  “Is someone murdered?” Professor L said.

  “Pre-law flashbacks,” I apologized. “As you all know, that was what I did at UCLA. At least, until I received word of this new major and found the only path I could follow with all my heart and soul.”

  “That’s okay,” said Juan. “We were once all part of the mundane world, secretly living our vampire fantasies. Yes, Professor L, you are a godsend, for we were truly lost until you, and you alone, founded this major.”

  “Lost,” said Janice.

  “Wandering,” added Buddy, in a rare moment of reflection.

  We occasionally recalled the dreary confusion and frustration of our past lives before the creation of vampire studies at our beloved university. I discovered we had unconsciously linked hands and had bowed our heads. We were truly one, and no matter how different our lives had been in the past, there was an inseparable bond between the five us—and the glue that held it together was for the love of vampires.

  It didn’t matter if some of the time we did not get along; that was to be expected. If we were not different, there would be no challenge. And, as much as I’d wish there was some sticky glue between me and Janice, at least we were bound by this obsession of all things fanged.

  We looked slowly up at once, as if someone had said “Amen.”

  “People,” I said, “We must move on, for the time is drawing closer for our midnight departure to the cemetery.

  “Now, Dial insists that he has not spilled the proverbial chili beans about our true intentions, and we can only trust him. We all must remember, what we are about to do tonight is grave-robbing, and, sadly, it is looked down upon by the law. When we planned this trip a week ago, Professor L and I knew we had no chance of obtaining a judge’s permission to exhume the casket based on the fact that we believed a living vampire was confined in it.

  “So we must perform our act in secrecy. No one can know our true purpose. This community is too closely knit—if one person finds something out, the whole town would know soon enough—so that means we keep Granddaddy Grandmaster and the others in the dark. If word ever escaped our lips of what we are up to, we are in a heap of trouble, and that’s the end of the Vampire Club.”

  Since the cemetery was located on the road and wasn’t more than half a mile away, we didn’t need any transportation. A convoy of Broncos might have drawn unwanted attention. We would slip out of the house and walk the short distance. All we would bring were flashlights, shovels, and a special satchel that contained my vampire resuscitation kit.

  As the group headed out of my room, lugging their chairs with them, I pulled Professor L aside. You’d think a sixty-year-old man hanging out with college kids was a little creepy, but he was a true researcher, and what he lacked in youthful energy, he made up for in knowledge. The club couldn’t have functioned without him. Plus, he knew how to get grants.

  Once alone, I asked him, “So what’s your impression so far?”

  “We are in some serious shit.”

  That didn’t sound very academic. “Serious shit?”

  “Serious shit. Deep doo-doo. Catastrophic ca-ca. Bottomless—”

  “I get the point. Might I ask why?”

  “I have been a vampire lover long before Anne Rice, Twilight, and the True Blood series, and I have studied many a myth on the vampire. But there is one myth that seems far more legendary than the rest. It is so mythical I hardly know what I’m talking about, and I always know what I am talking about. It’s as if, well, let me put it this way: we all have five senses, but what if someone had another sense and he was able to discern future events? What if this was an actual sense, like seeing, touching, urinating—”

  “Not a sense.”

  “Should be. Anyway, do you know what I’m getting at?”

  “I think so,” I said. “Sort of like a sixth sense.”

  “Exactly,” he burst out.

  “An interesting concept. Like, half the world has seen that movie.” Yes, there’s more to life than vampires, but not
a whole lot.

  “This sense, this hypothetical sixth sense, is setting off warning bells in my head louder than any of that rapping you kids listen to. Your Kid Rock and Lady Gaga and—hey, isn’t Gaga another name for doo-doo?”

  “Professor, tell me about the legend,” I said, before he got going again. He was as bad as Perch. “What is it you read or heard whispered?”

  “It’s a clan, Andy, the VVV. They watch over all vampire graves. The members of VVV have sworn their very lives to guard the graves, to make sure no vampires walk the earth again. I am beginning to suspect that my ancestor Ed Royce was part of this very secret society.”

  I’d read a thousand vampire websites, but I had yet to come across this one. “What does VVV stand for?”

  “Vu Vlux Vlad.”

  “Of course.”

  Chapter Nine

  Mustering forth all my logic and deductive skills, I said to Professor L, “And you think Dial Toen and his relatives are part of this VVV?”

  “You must remember, my student,” said Professor L. “The existence of the VVV has never been proven. Only whispers passed through the ages have kept the rumor alive.”

  “But, but...” I seemed to be at a loss for words. That was a first.

  “Andy, I want you to think back to our vampire-sighting charts. Has not the number of sightings dropped over the last century?”

  “Distinctively. Most troubling.”

  “Do you have any explanations for it?”

  “Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, about a thousand vampires on average were reported each year. Like with UFOs, some reliable sources have spoken up, but most were hoaxes, pranks, flat-out lies, or devices for cheap fame. Still, the sightings were reported and vampires were very active in those days, or rather nights.

  “During the twentieth century, the sightings began to dwindle, actually accelerating a trend that started in the mid-nineteenth century when reports began dropping ever so slightly. But nothing like the twentieth century.”

  It was definitely the most curious fact in our vampire studies. We had all researched and pondered the drop in sightings. Our most obvious—and horrifying—answer was they were dying or disappearing, and with it our chances of ever encountering one in the flesh.

  I continued. “During the first half of the twentieth century the number of sightings dropped from a thousand a year to half that, and after World War II, less than a hundred.

  “So, by result of our extensive research, we have learned that vampire sightings have dropped ninety percent. Rather significant, and most disheartening.”

  “Conclusions,” insisted Professor L, always the teacher. “Your conclusions, man!”

  “They’ve been attacked somehow, either from the inside where they’ve killed each other off—however that could be done—or from the outside where humans have managed to hunt them down. Professor, we’ve gone through this hundreds of times, because this is the main focus of our studies: where have all the vampires gone?”

  “I know, Andy. But don’t you see, here in this place, we are close to the answer? I feel it, like this original sixth sense you’ve coined. The fact is, as we’ve stated many times in class and the club, over the past decade vampires have went the way of the Do-Do. Or doo-doo. Gaga.”

  “VVV,” I said, trying to keep him on track.

  “Now, as I’ve stated, very few people have even heard of the VVV. I, myself, believed it to be such a fantastic rumor that I buried it away with all the other falsehoods on vampires. But I see now, in the situation we’ve found ourselves in, if the truth be known, we might very well be in the midst of the VVV.”

  “Cool,” I said. I could hardly wait to tell Janice, preferably alone. “That means we’re close to the truth.”

  “Now, Andy, there is no known way to kill a vampire, correct?”

  “Correct,” I said. “There was a recorded event in Romania, as we in the club all know, of an evil baron dismembering a vampire, scattering and burying his vampire parts across the country. But, as the tale goes, the vampire’s spirit is forever connected to the mortal body. So, still connected by the umbilical that would forever claim its soul, the vampire’s soul reached out like an expanding piece of melted taffy to the birds above, commanding their simple consciousness to seek his body parts and bring them to him, starting with the largest part, which I believe was most of his torso. The birds, then, sought out his scattered body and brought back the pieces. And, like a bloody jigsaw puzzle, reassembled the vampire.

  “The vampire, and rightly so, went on to ravage the countryside, the usual stuff, you know, killing women and children. Now, vampires are supposed to have many abilities, and one of them is the ability to command animals—not turn into animals, for we have discovered that is false. The vampire’s soul, which is attached forever to the body, has no right according to natural laws to stay in that body; for the vampire’s body is dead, yet somehow it stays alive, and we, in the club, think it’s all in the blood. I’m getting off the topic, as interesting as this all is. Quite simply, the vampire’s soul can reach beyond its dead body, like an out-of-body experience, but it is forever attached to the body. In other words, no matter what you do to vampires, they will not die, and will eventually come back as pissed as ever.”

  “What about burning?”

  “Simple, the flesh can’t catch fire, as is told and retold in many accounts.”

  “So,” said Professor L, “can we rule out the reason of the decline in vampires is due to death?”

  “Perhaps. But, as we’ve discussed and argued about in class a hundred times, vampires might be able to kill vampires. It is simply not known, since we can’t find any of the living dead to ask them.”

  “So the question remains, where in the hell are all the vampires?”

  “God only knows, Professor.” He was breaking my heart. It was sort of like being constantly reminded that there was no Santa.

  “But we know, with reasonable certainty, that there is one not more than half a mile away, buried.”

  My mental gears grunted as they were once again put into use. The professor was on to something.

  “And as we also know, there is a simple way to incapacitate a vampire—the silver bullet.” The professor walked about my room. He knocked over my chair, tripped, and fell on my bed, flat on his face. I had a feeling he wasn’t thinking too much about navigation. “Lifffen tifff thifith.”

  “Roll over, professor.”

  “Listen to this. What if the majority of vampires have been shot with silver bullets? What if all the vampires have been shot with silver bullets?” He was practically shouting, and for some reason—maybe a sixth sense—I didn’t want Grandmaster’s clan to hear.

  “Calm down, Professor.”

  “That must be it,” he said, lowering his voice, but his eyes stayed as bright as red sparks in a vampire’s coffin.

  “But who would do this? The VVV?”

  “To wipe out all the vampires of the world would take an extensive and wide-reaching organization,” he said. “They would have to be powerful and organized, much like the CIA or the Tea Party or the Screen Actors Guild.”

  Sickening dread washed over me like a shower spouting mud. “Why, Professor L? Why?”

  “Andy, as you know, there are some in this world that do not see vampires as you and I do. They do not see their beauty, their gifts, their kick-ass in-your-face powers. Andy, some fear them.”

  I gasped. I knew a lot of people didn’t agree with me whenever I discussed vampires with them. Humor was the most common reaction. But fear?

  “Andy, though it has never been documented, I believe there is a VVV out there, or some form of it. I believe they’ve feared and hated vampires to the point of extermination.”

  “But they can’t kill them,” I reminded myself loudly.

  “No, but a silver bullet is just as effective. Out of sight, out of mind.”

  “But tonight.” I stopped. There was a confuse
d, wild panic in my eyes. I noticed it when I glanced in the mirror to check my hair. Still looking good. Janice, eat your heart out.

  “Tonight,” I continued, “tonight, the most glorious night of my life, we will hopefully uncover a vampire. No CIA, VVV, right-to-life, or right-to-death assholes are going to stop us.”

  “Andy,” said Professor L quietly. “Look around you.”

  I did. My head jerked around like a bird’s. I was in a nice room, inside a nice mansion full of Dial’s nice but big relatives, who just happened to be located half a mile from the nice vampire.

  “This doesn’t look good,” I said.

  Professor L shook his wizened head. “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Guess I should have kept my voice down.”

  Chapter Ten

  “So what are we going to do?” I asked.

  “Before we can decide what we’re going to do, we need to know what they’re going to do.”

  “Oh.”

  “We need some more information,” said Professor L, rubbing his gray beard as if he was summoning a genie from Aladdin’s Lamp.

  I was sort of new to this detective, reconnaissance stuff, so I asked, “What kind of info?”

  “Since Dial has no doubt told them everything we’ve discussed, they know we plan to dig up the vampire tonight. They know we are not here to admire the scenery and follow in the footsteps of our vampire. That we can be sure, but what we don’t know is what they plan to do about it. Will they be waiting for us with the cops and nail us for grave-robbing, or perhaps dispose of us in a deadly fashion? We need to know. We can’t walk out there blind.”

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t even go.” Yes, those were my words and I was shocked to hear my rather deep baritone utter them. Thank God Janice wasn’t in the room.

  “You know as well as I do that we can never settle for that. Remember this, Andy: they desire to be rid of vampires as much as we desire to find them—opposing forces. We, however, are far from defeated.”

  “They’ve got the advantage, Professor. They’re walking Marvel Comic supervillains. They’re ripped and cut and chiseled. They were recruited, no doubt, and maybe even bred to champion their cause.”