DarkTalesfromElderRegionsNY

by Hieber, Leanna Renee

  “I cannot get you out of prison,” Chambers told him slowly, “but I can guarantee your safety from those you stole from. Obviously, they know where you are, or else I would not be here. If it were not for the need to retrieve their property, they already would have sent their servant to condemn your soul. If I manage to locate it without your co-operation, well... your soul will be damned.”

  Defiance flowed out of Breton and his shoulders sagged. There was fear, real fear in those eyes. The ones for whom Chambers worked could inflict hideous torments from which even death was no release.

  “How do I know I can trust you?” Breton asked at last.

  “Do you recognize this?” Chambers produced a scrap of parchment from his pocket. Breton nodded, swallowed nervously. “If you give me what I require, I can use this to mark you against the devil they will send.”

  They sat in silence for a short while.

  “Can I trust you, Monsieur Chambers?”

  “No. But, you are certainly doomed if you do not...”

  “My neighbor. I gave it to my neighbor, Stephen, at number thirty, Bowery Road.”

  Chambers gave a curt nod. He knew the place, the dingy flophouse where Breton had been living before his arrest, had searched the man’s room there. Ironic that the item in question had been so close. The other tenants had been questioned, of course, but all professed equal ignorance of the man and his possessions, the standard response to anyone deemed a figure of authority in that haven of ne’er-do-wells and lawless itinerants.

  Breton repeated his statement and Chambers nodded. “Good.”

  “So, am I safe?”

  Chambers pressed the parchment with the sign drawn upon it against the prisoner’s forehead, who accepted it eagerly, with almost pathetic gratitude.

  “Of course,” Chambers told him without knowing if that was truth or a lie.

  *************

  The Bowery was a slum district full of brothels, beer gardens, pawnshops and flophouses, places where the dregs of society could live, work, and be entertained. Chambers knew it well, yet still felt a little nervous in the rundown district, even having chosen to dress less like a gentleman. The lower orders of New York were a boisterous people, willing to challenge both the City and Federal governments, even willing to face Federal troops over the much-loathed Draft. Chambers might work for an even more powerful group than the government, but here, alone, he was all too vulnerable should some thug take a fancy to his jacket or his pocket watch.

  Even in the chill weather, the place managed to stink and was filled with the noise of the crudest levels of human life going about its business. The Bowery was alive with a vibrant decay.

  Approaching number thirty, Bowery Road, Chambers found himself walking behind a weary-seeming man whistling a tune Chambers didn’t recognize, haunting and melancholy. The man turned upon reaching the flophouse and went inside. Chambers followed close behind.

  “Hello, John,” called a gap-toothed woman, clearly one of the prostitutes that infested the area. A strong accent made the name into “Yon.”

  “Hello, Greta,” the man replied with a friendly wave.

  “Excuse me,” Chambers interrupted them, “do you know which room Stephen is in?”

  Greta shook her head and shrank away. The man was friendlier.

  “Stephen? Oh, yes.” John gave directions. “He has been sick in bed three days with a fever.”

  “Yes, I am the doctor,” Chambers lied, ascending rickety stairs to the room and knocking. Getting no response, he took out a knife and pushed it into the lock, jiggling it until he heard a click, an old client had taught him that trick.

  Inside the cramped and noisome room, Chambers saw that there was, indeed, a person lying on the bed, his face pale and expression distant. However, they were propped up reading a book, not prostrate delirious. Stephen might not have stirred for three days, but not due to some bodily fever, if Chambers had it right. Lying on the covers of the bed were a pen and several scraps of paper. The ink from the nib had blotched a stain on the sheets that was strangely similar to that which was marked on the parchment Chambers carried still.

  Whilst reading, the man whom Chambers took to be Stephen was murmuring words. Chambers recognized the tune John had been whistling in the street.

  Stephen seemed unaware of his presence as Chambers approached the bed. Chambers ignored him in turn and reached down to pick up a couple of the sheets of paper, glancing at them. There were words written on them, a poem, it seemed. They were amongst the words Stephen was murmuring; it was a song.

  “Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,” Chambers read, “starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee.”

  Stephen looked up, smiling, eyes not entirely focused. “She is my darling Cassilda, who dreams the city alive, out on the sea of vapors, fading at the bright coming morn...”

  It was clear he didn’t really grasp that anyone was there. Stephen might as well as have been in the grip of some feverish dream. Chambers had known others touched in the same manner.

  On another sheet, seemingly the opening to a different song, were written the words, “Dear friends and gentle hearts” and nothing more. Stephen seemed to have lost any inclination to write, being engrossed now in the book. Which, unless Chambers missed his guess, was the item to be reclaimed.

  “May I see that?” Chambers asked, reaching out to take the book from him. Stephen looked up at Chambers with a bemused expression.

  Chambers looked at the cover: L’Histoire d’Ys et Carcosa. Yes, this was the volume, stolen from his benefactors by the fool Breton, who’d become obsessed with the work. It looked as Stephen had fallen into the same trap.

  “Mine!” Stephen gasped, reaching out for the book.

  “No, it’s not,” Chambers told the other man, turning to leave.

  Stephen threw himself off the bed and towards Chambers, who just had time to turn before Stephen grabbed him. They began to struggle, each vying for the book. Chambers guessed that the other man must be about the same age, but an impoverished lifestyle had left him weak and malnourished. Chambers soon had the upper hand and with a good shove sent Stephen tumbling backwards into the washbasin, which shattered, gouging a deep wound in his head. He lay twitching, only semi-conscious, mumbling the name “Cassilda” over and over.

  “That will do,” Chambers said with a shrug, pocketing the slim volume. Quickly gathering the pages filled with words inspired by the volume, they were shoved them into another pocket. There wasn’t the time to check for any other sheets in the room. The other sheet with its single, uncertain line, was slipped into the man’s worn leather wallet which lay upon a nearby desk, he wanted the fever claim to hold water.

  There was little risk in summoning some of the man’s neighbors to take Stephen to Bellevue Hospital. In the current wintry conditions, it was doubtful they could get Stephen there soon enough to save him.

  Disappearing away in the chaos of clamoring neighbors lining landing and stairs, Chambers headed home to where he could read the book at his leisure. There was no need to hurry its return, after all. He’d heard all the peculiar rumors about those he served and had picked up a few titbits of the lore they guarded from them, but there was still much he didn’t know.

  As Chambers read of the tragic history of Ys, which he’d seen mirrored all those years before on the stage, he found himself humming a tune he’d heard before whilst imagining Cassilda dreaming the world into life.

  There was a knock at the door, but he paid it no attention. His maid let the guest in.

  A figure with a pallid, expressionless mask of a face and dead eyes entered the book-lined study and approached Chambers, just as Chambers had entered the cell at thirty-nine, Chambers Street. His employers were not ones to tolerate loose ends.

  When the maid returned, there was no sign of the stranger and her master was lying dead facedown at his desk. She screamed at the sight of his waxy, lifeless face. Unaware of the book, she’d no idea that it was m
issing, not that she’d paused to check whether anything was missing prior to fleeing the house to summon the authorities. Yet, dashing through the wintry streets, in spite of her panic, she found herself humming an unfamiliar tune that would haunt her till her dying day.

  ~~END~~

  The Professor’s New York Adventure

  by Gordon Linzner

  March 1911. They were clever, these undead.

  After half a month of investigation and deduction and bribery, sifting rumors from reality, Professor V had finally located the one he’d tracked from London. A novice might think the tunnels of New York’s seven-year-old subway system a perfect hiding place for such a predator, but no. Neither had the London Underground two decades earlier. Too much iron, perhaps.

  The creature had chosen a site almost in plain sight. Not in some dank cellar or tunnel or sewer bypass, but concealed on the eighth floor of a factory building east of once-fashionable Washington Square, at the edge of the densely-packed, impoverished Lower East Side. The area was full of potential victims with few relations or friends in this country. Should the vampire feel disinclined to hunt, he had a ready supply of young veins during late overtime shifts. These were poor immigrant women and girls, most of them. Who would note the disappearance of one now and then?

  Professor V scowled as he entered the building. It was one thing to stake a vampire in a desolate warehouse by day; another to do so in the middle of a busy factory.

  There was but an hour or so of sunlight left that Saturday afternoon. The Professor found a stairwell and began to climb, though he had to pause at each landing to catch his breath. He did not wish to be remembered by some too-observant elevator operator. He’d had too many close brushes with police of various cities lately. Officials frowned on activities that, at best, could be construed as corpse-mutilation, and at worse cold-blooded murder.

  He had not brought his portmanteau. At his age he lacked the strength to carry heavy wooden stakes up eight flights of narrow stairs. There were other ways to destroy a vampire. All he needed was stuffed in the pockets of his overcoat.

  Professor V knew he had reached his floor before he read the sign. He could smell the lair. Decades of hunting had sharpened his senses. He followed his nose to the office of a man named Max Blanck. As he’d hoped, Blanck was not in. Professor V looked around, saw nothing large enough to pass as a coffin. He moved to the back wall, tapped a knuckle against it, felt along the bottom. Air filtered through a slight gap. A false wall.

  Sewing machines whirred down the hall, not loud enough to drown out breaking through the wall. He didn't have the strength for that, either.

  These manufacturers usually closed at noon on a Saturday. Blanck and his partner, Isaac Harris, must be trying to get a jump on their competition.

  Professor V stuffed dry newspaper and bits of cloth along the bottom of the false wall, then settled behind Blanck’s desk to wait.

  *************

  At a quarter to five, a loud ringing woke the Professor. He came to with a start, muttering a Teutonic oath at his carelessness in falling asleep, however briefly. No harm done, though. The bell signaled the end of the workers’ day. And the start of his.

  He struck a match and held it to the kindling against the wall. The paper flared briefly, then died. He lit another; this one took hold.

  Excellent. He would easily escape detection joining the crowd fleeing a fire, if not the departing staff. The building itself, being brick, would not even suffer greatly.

  The flames would, however, consume the living corpse behind that wall.

  When the wood began to char, Professor V left Blanck’s office and started down the stairs.

  *************

  Smoke billowed from the eighth floor window as Professor V stepped out onto the sidewalk. He’d hesitated in the lobby, waiting to merge with the fleeing crowds, but realized he would look more suspicious loitering there. Several passersby pointed up at the flames. He heard the shattering of glass, and then a thud a few yards away.

  “The owners are trying to save their cloth,” one gentlemen announced. “Look! Here comes another bolt!”

  Van Helsing turned despite himself. “My god,” he whispered.

  Plummeting to the cobbled streets was not a bolt of cloth, but the body of a young woman, arms flailing.

  More followed. Many more.

  *************

  The first Engine Company to arrive pulled out a life net to catch the next falling girl. Three more young women quickly leapt after her. All four bounced out of the net, landing on the paving stones with fatal results. A horse-blanket split in two under the weight of another hurtling body, leaving one more dead. Above, three men formed a human chain outside the windows of the eighth floor to help some of the girls reach safety. This worked until the three lost their balance and joined the growing numbers of dead below.

  Streams of water from the fire hoses only reached the seventh floor. Rescue ladders barely cleared the sixth.

  The Professor stood frozen in horror, unable to react even when a burly policeman physically carried him to the opposite corner of Greene Street. It hadn’t occurred to him that some factory exits would be locked, and others blocked by panicking employees of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company.

  Eventually the fire was brought under control. The grisly task of removing more bodies from the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors began. These were laid in rows on the east side of the building. Many were so horribly burnt they hardly appeared human. Professor V watched numbly, listening to cries of despair from relatives who had heard of the fire and rushed to the scene.

  Bodies piled up by the score. The Professor wanted to leave, but could not move. This was a high price to pay for the elimination of another vampire. An appalling price. Yet justified, he struggled to tell himself. A vampire could slay this many in a year. Those he might turn into fellow undead would slay more. Professor V did not think he could have deliberately, callously, slain so many people, so horribly, mostly young women and girls, but destroying the vampire would ultimately save thousands.

  He could live with that.

  He would have to live with that.

  *************

  The Sunday papers were filled with lurid descriptions, eyewitness reports, and survivors’ harrowing tales. Professor V did not even look at the headlines. He spent the day in his room at the Hotel Brevoort trying to sleep, having been unable to all night. Despite tightly shut windows, the smell of smoke seeped into the room from three blocks away.

  As dusk approached, he threw on his coat and took to wandering the streets. He intended to walk west, to the docks, away from the factory building. His feet betrayed him. He soon found himself back at the corner of Greene and Washington Place, staring up at the brick façade, just over twenty-four hours since the tragedy.

  The smell of burnt flesh still hung in the air. It was an odor no one ever got used to, though he’d had more opportunity than most.

  “You’re a fool, Professor.”

  The old man stiffened. The stench of the grave wafted over his shoulder, overpowering the burnt smell.

  “No,” he whispered. “Not you. It couldn’t have been for nothing.”

  “I made the papers,” the voice continued. “Several survivors claimed they saw a man in black, a man no one recognized, helping young ladies out one of the windows.”

  “To plunge to their deaths.”

  “A more merciful death than those trapped in the factory suffered. A more merciful one than you’d planned for me.”

  Professor V turned reluctantly. The figure before him, though not physically imposing, exuded power and authority.

  “Monster!” Professor V hissed.

  The figure stood with arms folded. He wore no overcoat, though the day was chilly. An index finger stroked his pale, gaunt chin, but it was the ice-cold eyes that held his antagonist’s attention.

  “An interesting choice of word, coming from a man responsible for the deaths of o
ne hundred forty six innocents in less than an hour.”

  Professor V pulled a silver crucifix from his coat pocket. “This isn’t over!”

  The figure slapped the old man’s hand, not quite hard enough to break the wrist. The crucifix flew. “Not just a fool, then. An idiot.”

  Professor V straightened his shoulders. His back protested.

  “Very well. I knew this day would come. End it. I have disciples. My death will not go unavenged.”

  “Why should I bother, Professor? You are finished. One hundred forty six dead here, who knows how many others along the path of your obsession. I kill to survive.”

  “I’ve heard that rationalization before.”

  “You kill because you have nothing else. My kind no longer need fear you, Professor. The deaths of those innocents will weigh down your arm when next you try to strike. Death is a mercy you do not deserve. No, live out your few remaining years with your conscience. I can imagine nothing worse.”

  The vampire turned and walked away.

  Professor V slumped against a lamppost, then scanned the sidewalk for a glint of silver. He recovered the crucifix, gripped it tight until it left a deep, painful indent in his palm, and hurled it toward the site of the fire as hard as he could.

  “You are right, monster,” he whispered. “I am done.”

  Professor V shambled back to his room at the Brevoort, to face alone the horrifying possibility that, in his zeal to his the world of an unholy evil, he may indeed have done more harm than good.

  The next day he booked his return by steamer to his native Amsterdam.

  He never traveled again.

  ~~END~~

  Now Departing…

  by John Peel

  Death came, inevitably, at the most inconvenient moment.

  Melissa was standing —slouching, more accurately— on the uptown platform of the N, Q and R train at Union Square, reading her book. In her backpack were two new purchases from the Strand, one of her favorite shops to explore in the city. “Seven miles of books” made the place irresistible to her, and she visited it at least twice a week without fail. Then, afterwards, the first train up to Herald Square and on to her favorite pub, Brendan’s, on 35th. She had her routine well planned, and she enjoyed the predictability of the pleasure it brought her.