by David Salkin
“Actually, she needs a doctor,” said Adam softly.
“What?” she asked in surprise.
“Your friend,” he said softly, remembering the smell of her breath. “She should see a doctor. Something wasn’t quite right. If she’s your friend, tell her to get a physical. Seriously.”
Sara leaned away from him and made a face. “What are you talking about? Why would you
say that?” She sounded annoyed.
“Don’t get angry with me, Sara. I just have a knack with these things. You’ll have to trust me. If I’m wrong, there’s nothing lost other than a few minutes of her time. If I’m right, you can save her life.”
Sara still looked pissed. “I don’t think this is funny,” she said.
“Neither do I,” he replied. “Tell her to see a doctor. If you doubt me, ask her if she has been having cramps lately. Especially in her lower right side. An appendix will burst if it gets too infected, and spill waste into the blood stream, poisoning the body and ruining the blood.” It was an interesting choice of words.
“How could you tell by just looking at her?” asked Sara, now very concerned about his specific comment.
“I just can. Now…I need you to take off three days of work.”
“Why?” she asked, still suspicious of her ‘new boyfriend’.
“I want to take you out of the city, to a very beautiful B&B up on a lake, in beautiful mountains, and see the fall foliage.” (He flashed back to old Prussia for a moment and remembered the beautiful mountains with their ancient forests.)
“Really?” she asked in genuine shock. “I mean, just like that? We take off for three days and go to the mountains?”
“Just like that. It’s a beautiful place. At least, it looked like it on the computer. It’s an exclusive place. Several hundred acres of woodlands and a huge lake. I think it would be nice to get out of this city for a while, and get to know you a little better.” He leaned in and kissed her, and she kissed him back, still in minor shock. It had been an interesting five minutes.
“I’m not sure if I can take the time off of work right now—it’s so busy. I mean, it sounds wonderful, really, thank you so much for even thinking of it, but can it wait for the weekend? We could go Friday to Sunday? I could probably take off Friday.”
Adam sighed. He had forgotten about ‘work’. He hadn’t worked, other than as a soldier, for decades. And even during those days, he found it more ‘interesting’ than actual work. Physical labor was nothing to him. As long as he had access to food, he could tolerate any conditions. The past thirty years had been his laziest. He lived in a nice apartment, ate whenever he wanted, and had access to everything that a city like New York offered to stay entertained, should he get bored with his existence. Maybe that’s where Sara fit in—it ended boredom?
“Okay, Sara. Friday then. We’ll leave Friday morning and head upstate. Just a few hours away, but it will feel like another world.” Adam thought about his world that was so different than hers. Would she come willingly to his?
They chatted about all kinds of things for another hour or so, and then Sara wanted to leave. “She had to work tomorrow”, and didn’t want to drink too much or stay out too late. She invited Adam back home with her, and he paused only for a moment. Could he control himself? He hadn’t fed in two days now. She smelled so good. Her heartbeat was so strong. He could almost feel her exploding into his mouth, the hot arterial spray. He could control it, he told himself. He wanted to be with her again and see her without her clothes on. He wanted to experience physical closeness with her again. It was so human—and so warm. He smiled and whispered, “Let’s go…”
Thirty-Four
VWX
Father Eduardo
Roy and Doug drove up town through crazy Manhattan mid-day Monday traffic. Taxis honked and swerved through each other in a game of kamikaze-kabby, cursing at each other as they accelerated, only to brake again a moment later. They parked illegally in front of the brightly colored church and walked up the stairs. A few mothers sat on the steps watching pre-schoolers jump rope out front. They entered the church and found father Eduardo standing on a bench, speaking to a member of his church. He recognized the two of them and pointed towards his office, and they walked back to the same office they had originally met him in while he finished his conversation with the parishioner.
The pair sat in the small office until Eduardo appeared, in his strange
• 194 • attire and leather cap. They stood when he walked in and the priest motioned for them to sit, then used a small stepstool to climb up into a leather chair.
“De last time I saw you,” he said, pointing to Roy, “You were wit’ a large police officer. And you, you worked alone—FBI, is it?”
Doug nodded. “Yes, Father Eduardo. It was about a year ago.”
“So now da’ two of you are working together looking for ‘dis monster that lives among us?”
“Yes, sir, you could say that,” said Roy.
“And what about your partner from before? He is well, I take it?”
“Heart attack, actually. But he’ll be okay,” said Roy.
“Heart attack. Dey got cures for ‘dat. Being eaten alive—ain’t got no cure for ‘dat.”
Roy cleared his throat. “Yeah. Well…listen, Father, we came back because we have some more questions. And we don’t want to appear, um, unprofessional, you know what I mean? But…”
“But you are starting to believe de impossible now, ain’t dat’ da truth of da’ whole t’ing?” said the little man, now leaning over intensely.
“Well, we don’t ‘not believe it’—how’s that? Can we just say, for the sake of argument, that what we are trying to find is some type of evil creature that isn’t quite human. Let’s say, purely for the sake of argument, that it was one of the mythical creatures from one of your old books. How would we destroy it? Can we just shoot it?”
Father Eduardo sat back, the chair looking like a huge throne against his small physique, his leather cap, a crown of sorts.
“In de bible, der’ are stories and references to t’ings. Matthew and Ezekiel both wrote about t’ings dat’ maybe we’d call zombies or undead creatures. And who knows how many t’ings dey’ wrote dat’ were lost over de’ ages?”
“With all due respect, I don’t recall Dracula being in the bible, Father,” said Roy.
“Ezekiel 37:1-14!” said Eduardo looking serious. “He describes de bones of de dead comin’ togedder and re-animating. And Matthew, 27:52-53, describes de resurrection of de dead. Maybe in de ancient days, a man came out of a coma, and dey t’ought he returned from de dead? Or maybe dey saw somet’ing else? Or maybe it was never human to begin wit. Maybe dey didn’t see no Dracula like de movies, but maybe dey saw some t’ing we would never believe widout us seein’ it first.”
Roy recalled their conversation about dinosaurs. Who would believe those stories without seeing the bones?
Doug spoke softly. “I have a friend who is a Scuba Diver. He keeps a huge reef tank in his house. One day I saw this thing called a Medusa Worm moving across the sand. It was red. Looked like two feet of intestines with a mouth at one end that had ten fern-like appendages sticking out of it. It kept the tank clean for him—a detritus eater. If the thing was a land animal, and a little bigger, no one would ever leave their home. Scariest and strangest thing I ever saw. Point is, there’s a lot of stuff out there in the world that is hard to explain or understand. And personally, Father, I don’t need to explain it or understand it. I just want to know how to kill it.”
Roy added, “Will bullets kill it? I mean, in the books you have— how did the villagers kill these things?”
Father Eduardo tapped his pudgy fingertips together. “After de very first time I spoke wit you, Mr. FBI Man, I went back and looked at dem books again. I read enough stories to give myself nightmares. Nightmares. And not in one of dem stories did I read about any of de people killing dis t’ing. In one book, dere were pictures of de t
’ings head up on a pole. So dey managed to kill it. Maybe dey cut off it’s head. I don’t know.”
“In the Vampire movies, they use crosses and garlic and stakes through the heart. Think any of that stuff is based on old folk lore for a reason?” asked Roy, thinking back to the garlic of Doug’s pizza.
Father Eduardo shrugged. “I always have to assume dat stories are based on somet’ing in reality. It’s how Christianity works, ain’t dat right? A man is de son of God and dies for us, and comes back to life. Is dat just a story? Or did it happen wit so many people knowing it was da truth dat the story survives to dis day?” Father Eduardo hopped off his chair and walked back and forth in his office, pacing and speaking like he was preaching. “Do da monsters in our stories come from a survival instinct in some deep part of de brain, or do we all believe dese stories because we know dat it’s true? And for every scary story, didn’t momma and poppa have de solution? De werewolf can be killed by a silver bullet. De vampire by a stake tru de heart. A witch gets melted by water. Momma and poppa always had to have a way to put de baby back to sleep, right? Always a cure for de curse.”
“So you’re saying you believe there’s always a way to kill these things, no matter what it is?” asked Roy.
“No. I’m sayin momma and poppa made up a ting so de baby can be put back to sleep. But maybe dey just made it up. Maybe de idea dat everyt’ing out dere can be killed by humans is just a lie to keep us all from dyin’ of fright.”
“Thanks, that’s very reassuring,” said Roy softly.
Doug shook his head. “You were supposed to be helping us,” he said quietly.
“I can only help wit what I know. I know dis much. Der is too much out der in der world dat can’t be explained. Like da t’ing in the fishtank. It just wanna eat, right? Ugly scary t’ing that just wanna feed and survive. And maybe make more baby t’ings like hisself.”
“That’s a scary thought,” said Roy.
“Yeah, mon. Eat and make babies. Dat everyt’ing on dis planet.”
“Except priests,” said Roy, throwing a barb at him.
Eduardo smiled, showing his gold teeth. “So. Maybe now you believe in t’ings you don’t understand. Maybe you believe in what you don’t see. Maybe now you ready to lift it up to God?”
“Excuse me?” asked Roy.
“Time you ask God to help you. Maybe he send you an angel like Michael to kill dis t’ing.”
“He sent me a nine millimeter,” said Doug. “And Roy. He sent me Roy. And me and Roy are gonna’ shoot this thing whatever it is, and if I need to cut its head off to kill it, then that’s what we’ll do.”
Father Eduardo walked over and patted Doug’s leg. “Dat get a hallelujah!”
Roy pondered and then spoke. “Father, from what you have read, are there any descriptions of the thing? I mean, are we looking for something that looks like a human?”
“You ever read Milton? John Milton—‘Paradise Lost’?” asked the priest.
“Um, no—I must have been sick that day at school,” said Roy, embarrassed that he recognized the name, but nothing else about the epic poem of good and evil.
“Well, in dat story, my favorite t’ing to read outside de bible, it is de devil dat gets all de good lines. De smooth talker—de stylin groove— dat’s Satin. De angels, dey square. Boring. It’s de devil that speaks so sweet and convincing. I believe evil don’t have to look evil to
be evil. Maybe dis t’ing look just like you. Or you.”
“Or you,” said Roy, smiling.
Eduardo belly laughed. “Yeah, mon. Maybe he handsome like me. But to your question…I don’t t’ink you look at him and know. Not unless you catch him eating.”
“Yeah, watching a person rip open someone’s arteries and suck their blood out might give us a clue,” said Roy.
“So we have to catch him in the act?” pondered Doug. “We’ll have to try and find times of death on all these cases. I don’t seem to recall him only feeding at midnight or full moons and or anything like that.”
“Dat’s for you detectives to figure out. But you figure it out, and you find it, and you kill it and cut off its evil head. Den we all sleep better at night.” Father Eduardo climbed back up into his chair, and Doug and Roy thanked him for his time.
Thirty-Five
VWX
Adam & Sara
Adam didn’t see Sara Tuesday or Wednesday, although he spoke to her several times on the phone after Monday night’s sexual activities. He could feel his desire for blood coming on stronger and knew he’d need to feed soon. He also knew he had been getting careless and was being a glutton. Over the years, there had been a few narrow escapes from villagers and police in various countries. While he didn’t feel scared and didn’t understand the concept of worry, he didn’t like inconvenience. Being forced to move all the time was inconvenient. He liked his current situation—the apartment, the clothes and Goth Girl’s fur coat, the city. He wanted to be able to stay even after Sara joined him in his existence. He decided to “go out” for dinner.
Thursday night, Adam took the PATH train into Newark. He was
• 200 • dressed in shoddy clothes and tried his best to blend in to the crowd heading back across the Hudson in the evenings commute. When he arrived in Newark, Adam left the station and began walking. The rebuilt part of Newark around the train station wasn’t too bad, but as he walked further away from it, the neighborhoods grew seedier. He kept walking until it began to get dark. He left the residential areas and meandered into sleazy commercial areas with abandoned buildings and dirty sweatshops. Sweatshops had been, for over a hundred years, a great source of food. The migrant workers could be easily found, eaten, and never investigated. Most of them feared the police, and when a coworker disappeared, no one other than the family noticed.
Adam found a factory that was busy manufacturing clothes, filled with illegal aliens working for seven dollars an hour six days a week, and waited. Shift change ended up being at eleven, and Adam watched the street fill up with weary factory workers. Most would be walking home to save bus fare, and the streets of Newark were dark. Adam had decided he would gorge himself this evening to try and satiate, even temporarily, his lust for Sara’s blood. He needed enough to last for a few days out of the city. He walked far that night, following a group of Spanish speaking men and women for almost a mile and a half into darker, dingier parts of the city. When they came to a quieter part of the city, where few cars drove by so late, and the street lights were all broken and not replaced, he pounced. Three women and two men. The largest meal in a very long time. He wounded them all enough to incapacitate them without killing them, then dragged them behind an old house.
It took him almost three hours to finish all of them in an orgiastic shower of blood and human tissue. The ecstasy was indescribable. He dragged them inside the old boarded up house, one at a time, and
202 • David M. Salkin arranged them in what had been a den. He built a bonfire in the center of the room, like the group had been seated around the fire, and lit the place up. Adam pulled off his blood soaked jacket and shoved it into the fire. The old building burned even faster than he anticipated, and by the time he was a few blocks away, the fire was through the roof, and the house was collapsing. It reminded Adam of the farmhouse he had burned over a century before, when he tasted his first female victim. Reminiscing near the crackling of the fire brought his mind back to Sara, which made him smile and think about making her his companion for eternity.
Although it was cold out and Adam didn’t have his jacket, he was very warm with so much blood filling his body. Adam burped and smiled.
“Such a pig,” he said out loud to no one in particular. He spit out a tiny piece of flesh stuck between his teeth. He hadn’t gorged like this in so long; the feeling was no less than total euphoria.
By the time Adam arrived home, it was almost two in the morning. His cell phone sat on the counter with several voicemails from Sara. He smiled as he listened to h
er apologetic, slightly hysterical voice.
“Adam, it’s Sara. I have been trying to reach you—I’m at the hospital with Sharon. She called me and told me she wasn’t feeling well and I told her to get to the ER immediately. I felt like an idiot in case I was overreacting, but what you said at the bar…oh my God, Adam. Her appendix burst. If she hadn’t gotten there when she did, she might have died. You saved her life, Adam. I don’t know how you knew, but you did. She was fighting with me about going to the doctor and I made her go to the ER because of you! And you saved her! I don’t know what to say. I hardly know you, but I swear, I think I love you already. Thank you, Adam! Call me on my cell when you get this.”
Adam smiled. He had smelled the toxins in Sharon’s blood. Her appendix was already leaking very slightly, and eating her would have tasted foul. She would live. Sara would love him. She would want to be like him. Forever.
Thirty-Six
VWX
Following the Bloody Trail
It was early Friday morning, and Roy was fast asleep. He had been working crazy hours on his investigation. The LT and Captain Ammiano had gotten busy with other cases, and his “taskforce” now consisted of occasional phone calls to Heather Connell and his new “partner” Agent Patmore. It wasn’t that Captain Ammiano or Lieutenant Alexander weren’t interested in the case, they were—but they also knew that the Sixth had several officers from the task force still working on it full time, and with Roy working with Doug, they felt like they were contributing as much as they could. New York was a busy city. The captain was perpetually buried in paperwork, and the lieutenant was responsible for managing five other sergeants. Captain Alexander told Roy to work as much overtime as he wanted, and to
• 204 • “take the ball and run with it” with Doug Patmore.
On the third ring, Roy mumbled a groggy “hello”.
“Hey, Pisano,” said a horse voice.
“Holy shit, I thought you were dead,” said Roy, starting to smile at
