The Blood Born Tales (Book 2): Blood Dream

by T. C. Elofson

  “Alright then.”

  “I told you something weird was going on here, Kenny,”

  “Yeah, you were right. What, you want a fuckin’ piece of candy?” He tried to sound jovial, but I could tell he was tired.

  “I got one more thing. I found this from archived news reports on line. In ’59, one camper supposedly survived the attack. Just a kid, barely crawled out of the woods alive.”

  “Is there a name in the file?” he asked me.

  “Yeah. A boy named Jimmy Wesson.”

  “Let’s go see him then,” Kenny said. But I wasn’t ready just yet. I wanted to have a talk first. There was something really wrong with Kenny and it was getting more and more apparent with each passing hour.

  “Dude, what’s going on with you?” I asked.

  “Man, I know you’re a little worried about me, but…”

  “Kenny!” I cut his words off short. “I think there might be something wrong with you. Really.”

  The look of shock on his face told me everything—he didn’t like any of the words that had just come out of my mouth and he definitely didn’t want to talk about this. But I wasn’t done, not by a long shot.

  “How much fear have you been feeling? I know you don’t want to talk about it, but it’s not normal. How fast is your heart racing right now? Think about it.”

  I received nothing but more silence from Kenny.

  “Dude, I saw it all in you. I saw the terror in your mind. You may be able to fool someone else. But not me. Now talk to me.”

  At that moment I realized something. A bead of sweat was starting to run down Kenny’s forehead. My eyes fixed onto it and I jumped into his mind. Kenny’s heart was racing faster and faster and his hips hurt. I could feel it. Then all of a sudden he fell from his chair and hit the floor. His body was shaking violently, his eyes were held tight and I could feel the fear in him again. It was coursing throughout his body like a serum. This time it was so much more intense and I thought for sure that he was going to die.

  “Call 911! Officer down!” I yelled to the teenage girl behind the glass window at the main countertop of the diner. She froze for only a few seconds before she realized the gravity of the situation and reached for her cordless phone.

  “Hang on, Kenny,” I whispered gently. He was shaking and tears were rolling down his face. Seconds later, it seemed I could hear sirens singing out their rhythmic calls from blocks away. They came softly at first and then they approached with their encumbering volume. Moments later—though it seemed like decades—the Toledo Fire Department was bursting through the small door of the diner. Men were there kneeling over Kenny, and questions flew at him and then at me.

  “Sir, can you see me? Do you know where you are?”

  Medical kits were being thrown open and lights flashing into his eyes and stethoscopes were washing over his chest, all in hurried actions, a blur.

  “He’s unresponsive. His pupils are constricted,” a medic was saying from behind me. I was talking with a fireman as they lifted Kenny out the door and onto a gurney, his heavy weight making it difficult for the men.

  “What happened?” the fireman asked me as I watched my friend disappear out the door.

  “We were just having lunch and he fell out of his chair and began to convulse on the floor. He had been acting strange today—a lot of nervous sweat, very jumpy.” I talked as calmly as I could, trying to tell them how terrified he was without saying too much.

  “I understand he’s a police officer?”

  “Yes, he’s a Seattle detective. We’re on a case here in Toledo.”

  And the more I talked with him, the farther away my best friend was getting. They were loading him into the back of an ambulance, but the fireman was standing in front of the door and was not letting me get to Kenny.

  “Please, sir—what hospital are you taking him to?” I asked.

  “Providence Centralia Hospital. You can follow us,” he told me as he ran to the back of his vehicle. I jumped over the hood of my truck like something out of some cheesy ‘70s cop show and was inside my Ford in only a second. The engine’s RPMs were flying as I raced up behind the ambulance, not caring about the stupid 25 mph speed limit.

  My truck seemed depressingly lonely as I tailed the aid cars and fire trucks up the hill. I looked over at my passenger seat for a moment and my heart ached. Then I pulled my old police badge out from the depths of my glove box. I was supposed to turn it in. I had lost this badge years ago and had reported it stolen, but then I found it under the seat of my old car. I had never turned it in, and it occurred to me that impersonating a cop was a serious crime, but at that moment I didn’t care. I needed to make sure that I stayed close to Kenny and that was exactly what I intended to do. At that point, I felt like I had nothing to lose. I pulled in closer behind the ambulance and we sped up the hill and out of the tiny, dusty town.

  In the lobby of the hospital I reached into my back pocket for my badge and flashed it at the desk. The girl at the reception desk seemed to be a good-natured blond whose name was hidden by the long curls of her gold hair. Her phone was ringing, but she ignored it as I walked by her with the convoy of medics and Kenny. We moved quickly down the long, white corridor, passing rows of wooden polished waiting chairs and patient record rooms filled with filing cabinets.

  Kenny was rushed into a room. He was alert now and demanding to know what had happened.

  “Please try not to move too much. You were convulsing. Do you remember who you are?” a doctor was asking as they pushed Kenny next to a hospital bed.

  “Detective Kenny Johnson, Seattle Police Department,” he retorted pointedly as a nurse was taking his belongings. When she reached for his weapon I thought Kenny was going to snap her arm. She froze in fear as his big mitt of a hand latched on to her small fingers.

  “Please, Detective. We need to take your belongings. Your partner can hold on to your firearm, if you like.”

  Then Kenny’s eyes fixed onto me and relief washed over him as I stepped forward.

  “Oh thank god, Tim. What happened?”

  “You tell me, man,” I said shaking my head. “How do you feel?”

  “Fine, now.”

  “Well, you look frightened to me,” a nurse told him.

  “What?” he asked in disbelief. “Not me. I don’t get frightened. Never have.”

  “Listen, your heart rate is racing, you’re sweating, and your glands are secreting adrenaline in overdrive. Your mind is scared about something. You may be unable to admit it to your friend there, but the physical signs are all clear to me.”

  She was forceful and playful with him, and for a minute I almost laughed and he knew it. Kenny didn’t have to look into my mind to see my relief, it was all over my face.

  “Look, Detective,” she started in on him again. “We’re going to want to keep you here for an hour at least and make sure that you’ll be alright. We’ll need to run some tests to make sure that it’s safe to release you. We’ll want to do a CAT scan of your brain and take some blood. I will also need to know what, if any, medications you are on and if you have any history of neurological illness in your family. But don’t worry, I’ll take good care of you, okay?” With that she gave him a little wink.

  It never stopped amazing me how many women liked him. Kenny had never had a shortage of dates over the years that I had known him. He was a very good-looking man and the opposite sex had always responded to him. Even in the hospital, when he almost died, he got hit on. I was still amazed.

  I had to stand alone at a nurse’s desk and fill out paperwork as Kenny was wheeled away out of my sight. I didn’t like the feeling of not being with him during this, but soon enough I would find him in his room.

  “I want a drink,” Kenny announced as he opened his eyes.

  “I want to watch a football game and have a beer. A good beer from Washington, not that imported shit that you drink, Tim. I want to go to Spain. I’ve always wanted to go learn Spanish, and really
learn it. Speak it. Not just know the names of food and the sights. Or maybe go to Italy like you did… Well, maybe not just like you did, that was kinda crazy.”

  It was good to hear him talk about traveling, but I hoped he was kidding about having a drink. Kenny was a reformed alcoholic. And any such talk about drinking has always made me feel uneasy in the past. But I did miss the old days with my friend, bar hopping down Pioneer Square. I never really was a big drinker. And at the end of Kenny’s social drinking he had gotten to drinking wine, and wine was never my thing.

  If it’s the last thing I do, Tim, I will get you to enjoy the taste of a good Cabernet or a Merlot. And maybe if I’m truly lucky, a Pinot Noir.

  I never really had given them a shot, but oh, how Kenny had tried. And it didn’t matter how nice (or expensive!) the wine was, I never could develop a taste for it.

  But right now, Kenny’s words all sounded good to me. Well, not all exactly, since Kenny was… is a recovering alcoholic. Once you’re a recovering alcoholic, you’re always a recovering alcoholic, and there’s certainly no going back for Kenny. It was a constant struggle for him. The desire would always be there and some days he really wanted a drink, some days not.

  “I could go, maybe right this minute, by god,” he began again. It was his way of rejecting the situation and everybody in it, including me. And I didn’t need to hear that from him, not now. I didn’t need to hear that kind of self-indulgent apathy after what Fabiana had tried to do to herself. If one more person I loved tried to take their own life, I swore to god I was going to take mine right alongside them.

  I never really had considered myself suicidal even though as a teenager I had tried to end my life. The pills I took never worked and I think they were never meant to work. I wasn’t supposed to die there or then. It was a really difficult time for me and I really didn’t know what direction I wanted to go in. But after that was done with, after I recovered, I felt good.

  I felt good about being me and I was happy. It was like I woke up and everything had changed. Shortly after that I joined the Army where I met Kenny. Now all this time later he was telling me he could kill himself. Well, fuck that shit. I’ll be damned if after all we’ve been through I’m just going to let him take his life. Not as long as I draw breath.

  I sat next to Kenny’s hospital bed, dominating his room like a bull ready to pounce, my large hands scrolling down the screen of my laptop computer. Nervous energy. I had spent the last hour researching Kenny’s medical condition myself, and after having a telepathic conversation with Fabiana, I thought I might have an idea about what was going on with him.

  “Have his hallucinations started yet?” Fabiana had asked me.

  “Yeah, a few hours ago. You know what this is, don’t you, Fabiana?” I asked her. I felt right away that she had some thoughts about what could be happening to him.

  “He came in contact with someone who had died?”

  “Yes…” I said.

  “What time was that?”

  “Well, we saw the coroner at 7 p.m. yesterday, but Kenny was the first one on the scene, so 6 p.m. then, I guess,” I told her. “You know something, don’t you?” I asked once more, this time more insistent on an answer.

  “Kenny’s symptoms sound comparable to a disease I read about a long time ago in the Far East.”

  “What?”

  “The Japanese had a Book of Spirits of sorts that I discovered during the Edo period of Japan. It was one of the first books of its kind.”

  “You lived in Japan?” I asked, a little shocked.

  “For a very long time actually. I’ve mentioned it once or twice before, I’m sure. There I studied spirits and demons and first encountered the book. This book lists the kinds of ghosts that could cause the symptoms that Kenny has been experiencing. This spirit infects people with fear—a massive amount of fear—enough to stop a human heart. One other thing—ghosts like this are servants. They are slaves to the underworld. Any number of evil creatures could be working through the ghosts. So be careful, Tim.”

  “Wait. So someone may be using the ghost? Controlling it?”

  “What is it?” Kenny’s voice brought me back to him. I shut my laptop and turned to him.

  “You’re not going to like it, man.” I could no longer feel Fabiana in my head. But a single phrase remained, it seemed.

  “It’s ghost sickness,” I told Kenny, leaning closer to his bed. I had read the term before, but it wasn’t until that moment that I had really thought about it as a possibility.

  “Ghost sickness…?” he repeated my words apprehensively.

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh God, no…” Kenny dipped his head down in sadness and then looked at me again. “I don’t even know what that is.”

  I smiled and got closer to him, trying to speak softly, which was a problem for both Kenny and me. Our voices always seemed to carry way too far and could be easily heard from far away.

  “Some cultures believe that spirits can infect the living with a disease, which is why they stopped displaying bodies in homes and moved them to the morgues.”

  I read out loud from my laptop. “The belief continued until…”

  “Get to the good stuff, Tim,” he interrupted me.

  “Alright, alright fine. Symptoms are ‘anxiousness, high levels of fear, blackouts and/or seizures, and finally, heart failure.’ Sound familiar?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but I’ve never seen a ghost in my whole life, man.”

  “Well, I don’t think you caught it from a ghost. The first victim must have had contact with the spirit, but from then on it could have been anything. Once a spirit infects that first person, it can be passed on like any sickness—through a cough, a handshake, whatever. It’s like the flu. They can infect others with their fear. Now the first victim to die must have been Patient Zero,” I told him. “You must have never had any physical contact with him, right?”

  “No, the only one I touched was that guy last night, in the morgue, with Marty.”

  “Good. We still have some time then,” I told him. I seemed calm as I gave Kenny a comprehensive lesson on ghost sickness. However, I was anything but calm as I talked with him. I was utterly terrified out of my mind that soon I would lose my closest friend.

  “Well, he was in this town, as were the other two victims. The answer has to be here somewhere,” Kenny said. “Our very own outbreak. He was here in Toledo over the weekend, which is where he must have infected the others. They were all here, but for what?”

  “It’s all about the vampires. We need to get back to that,” I told him.

  “So Patient Zero infected Frederica, the second body found in all this mess. And she passed it on to the other guy and I got it from his corpse?” Kenny asked, dismayed. “So now what? I have 48 hours before I go insane and my heart stops?”

  “More like 24 hours now.”

  “Why me? Why not you?” he asked, somewhat insensitively. But I knew how he felt.

  “Yeah, I have a theory. What if all three victims shared a certain physical link? Maybe all three victims were born from the direct blood of the Origin himself, all vampires chosen by Cognatus. I was born from Fabiana; you were born from the Origin.”

  “How do we stop it?” Kenny desperately wanted to know.

  “We kill the ghost that started it all… If we do that, the ghost sickness should stop.”

  “Yes. Oh god, I hope.”

  After waiting what seemed like forever and a day, the nurse came in with Kenny’s test results. Thank god they came up negative for any known neurological illness. Of course, if it really was ghost sickness, there would be no way to test for that. It would be up to us to find out.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here then. We’re burning daylight,” Kenny finally said, and I could see he was glad to be leaving the hospital.

  Chapter 18

  1:05 p.m., May 6

  With a punch of the gas, my truck took off in a trail of dust and smoke out from behind u
s. Kenny and I were back on the case, on our way to see the only witness of these disappearances, the boy that had escaped those menacing woods so long ago. I found a report of his family’s tragedy on the internet. He was just a boy at the time. His name was Jimmy Wesson, but by now he probably went by Jim or James. The boy—now a man—lived hidden from society, spending his days alone in the woods.

  The man lived in a rundown log cabin that was probably prefabricated and had been built on a wooded lot in view of the Cowlitz River. The bushes were now overgrown around the cabin. Long, tall trees as wide around as a man hulked overhead and lengthy shadows of onyx reached out like fingers from death’s hand, blocking out the afternoon sun. We made our way up the small, thin trail of a beaten path that seemed to point the way to the house.

  Kenny and I approached the ramshackle cabin with cautious vigilance. Did we really want to enter the world of vampires again and learn the secrets that lay beyond that door?

  Kenny and I traded mournful looks, and then he rapped his meaty knuckles against the old wooden door as I pulled my scratched up badge from my pocket.

  “You know I could bust you for impersonating an officer of the law, right?” Kenny said silently to me. All I did was nod my understanding of his statement.

  “Yes, but you won’t.”

  I knew he understood why I decided to go against the grain a little bit. We were in uncharted territory and I wanted all the advantages I could get.

  Then the door creaked open and a hesitant man eyed us from behind the darkness of the old home. And from that little look I got all I needed to know about the man. He was a hermit, shut off from the world, and the last people he wanted knocking on his door was us.

  “Can I help you, gentlemen?” the overweight man standing before us said gruffly.

  “Good afternoon, sir. My name is Detective Johnson and this is my associate, Tim Anderson. I would like to ask you some questions about the summer of 1959,” Kenny said in a deep, professional tone.

  The man seemed to understand nothing. It was his method to offer silence more than information and I could see it at my first glance. It was times like this that I missed Jack Mitchell the most. Trained in psychology, he was most helpful in finding out information. Kenny and I had our own tricks for getting clues and facts, but we still preferred to have a person of interest tell us his story rather than to have to read his thoughts. I felt it was a total violation to use telepathy and chose to do it only when necessary. My friend and partner did not agree with my reservations. Kenny seemed to take any advantage he could get in an investigation.