by Andy Maslen
I found Caroline slumped in the top floor corridor. She was soaked in blood from head to foot. Before her, a lake of blood has soaked into the carpet, staining the blue fibres almost black. As I arrived, she grinned at me, and it was a look of the purest triumph. A warrior’s smile. Teeth bright white, blue eyes flashing in a mask of red.
“I got her,” she said. “The bitch is dead. I sent her all the way to hell.”
“Yes,” I said. “You did.”
I knelt to hug her, then I hauled her to her feet and led her downstairs, through to the van and back to the sanctuary of Frederick’s house.
66
Hunt Book of Caroline Harker, 6th June 2011
OPENING ENTRY
Last night, we celebrated. The night turned into morning and still we were too elated to go to bed. It is 7.00 a.m. now and I write this before attempting to sleep, even for an hour or two. I am drunk, I think, though I have so much adrenaline running through my veins that I feel stone-cold sober.
Peta Velds used her dying breath to call me “Cutter”. Ariane told me that as the killer of the head of a lamia clan I am entitled to use the name without having been born into a cutter family. I closed my journal yesterday. From now on, I will enter my thoughts into this book. My hunt book.
On his way out of the ballroom, Frederick retrieved the SD card from the video camera I saw on the platform. The camera itself was smashed to pieces, but the card was intact. We watched it last night. It answered my one remaining question from the night. How did Peta escape the blast to taunt me from the balcony into chasing her?
Hearst makes his little speech about the course to come and then sits down, turning to speak to Peta. She leans towards him and laughs, displaying those undersized, little, white teeth. The burly servants are bringing in the stakes and setting them up, one beside each table.
As the final stake is erected on the far side of the ballroom, the man to Peta’s right frowns, then checks his phone. I recognise him as her General Counsel from Norfolk: Le Fanu. He places a hand on Peta’s forearm and speaks into her ear. The camera’s mike doesn’t pick up his words clearly. Except for one short sentence on which, clearly unable to contain his emotions, he raises his voice. “We’ve found another scientist.”
She rises from her chair, turns to Hearst and excuses herself, then follows Le Fanu to the nearest pillar. The camera angle reveals how she escaped the destructive power of the bomb. You can see her in front of the veined marble column, but the centrepiece is invisible behind its bulk. Le Fanu stands to one side, gesticulating. He looks excited and is smiling as he talks.
Peta nods and takes his hands in both of hers and raises them to her lips.
The hubbub in the background rises in volume.
Peta drops his hands and says something. He walks away from her, heading back to the table.
Then the bomb detonates.
The roaring explosion is cut off at the midpoint. Presumably it destroyed some sort of audio circuit inside the camera. The video spirals crazily, showing the ceiling, then the wall, then the floor, then the view across the ballroom again, this time sideways on. When the camera comes to rest, a large, silver-grey blur obscures the lower left quarter of the screen and a more sharply-defined crack cuts across the rest of the lens in a splintered, diagonal line. A nail, we assumed, had smashed into the lens, which is also tinted by a red smear across its upper right corner.
The scene visible in the remaining part of the screen is both horrifying and deeply pleasurable to watch. Bodies are strewn across the tables, smashed and mangled almost beyond recognition. The nails, carrying their lethal slick of salcie usturoi, are sticking into, and out of, every visible object. Gobbets of flesh slide off chairs and candlesticks. And the blood. So much blood. One by one, the lamia shudder and explode like liquid fireworks. One creature staggers towards the camera before bursting. The resultant mess spatters the lens so thoroughly that further visuals are lost. All that remains on the video are the screams, though these dwindle quickly to a few last moaning whimpers and then silence, apart from a distant fire alarm, ringing impotently from a distant point in the hotel.
67
Hunt Book of Ariane Van Helsing, 7th July 2011
Caroline has disappeared. She has been agitated these last few weeks since she and I returned from Manhattan. I now worry that bestowing the name Cutter on her undid something in her mind. She talked incessantly of the risks of the lamia returning to London, even though Lily and I assured her this was not possible. This morning, I had arranged to have coffee with her and she didn’t show up. I texted her, called and left messages, tried all the usual – and unusual – channels, but nothing. I called round to her house but there was a for sale sign up outside. Nobody answered when I rang and knocked at the front door.
68
Private Notes of Ben Schrader MRC Psych – for possible book – 22nd August 2012
My name is Ben Schrader. I work as a consultant psychiatrist with the NHS in a large teaching hospital near Euston Station. For the past 12 months, I have been treating a very disturbed young woman named Caroline Harker, a barrister. Caroline is under my care because she was sectioned. A member of the public had reported her to police for walking into an Aston Martin showroom in Park Lane carrying a sharpened stake. She claimed to the arresting officer that she was a vampire hunter and refused to relinquish the stake. By the time they subdued her, with a Taser, I think, she had managed to plant the first couple of inches of the stake into the chest of a merchant banker discussing finance options with a salesman.
When I first met Caroline, I thought her case history quite the most remarkable I’d ever read. Delusional, of course. But fascinating nonetheless. She claimed to have been a vampire hunter.
When she was released from residential care and began attending my clinic on an outpatient basis, I saw her for an hour three times a week. I recorded all our conversations and much of what you have already read is based on our talks (she has an extraordinary ability to remember — or fabricate — verbatim dialogue). I also became interested in her carefully constructed paranoid delusions about vampires – the people she calls The O-One – and began conducting some research into vampire mythology. Caroline is eloquent and articulate, as one would expect of a barrister. From time to time she lapses into a peculiarly archaic idiom, almost as if she is voicing the thoughts of a young Victorian woman, and not a thirtysomething born in the 1980s. She is tall and has striking looks – a prominent, almost sculptural nose with sharp edges to the ridge, and a wide mouth that when she smiles transforms the plainness of her face, though nose and mouth then appear to be competing for space. An old-fashioned, rounded figure, with what my old Grandma Rosenberg would have called, “hips a baby would thank God for giving its mother”. Wide, anyway.
My diagnosis was one of borderline paranoid personality disorder incorporating hallucinations and aspects of dissociative disorder, and, perhaps not surprisingly, given what she claims to have seen and done, a healthy dollop of good old-fashioned anxiety. She was hypervigilant and could become withdrawn, almost catatonic, in fact.
As to medication, I prescribed the following daily medication suite: 30mg of Paroxetine – a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI, antidepressant – for the anxiety; 2 mg of Aripiprazole– an anti-psychotic – for the paranoia and the hallucinations; 20 mg of Zopiclone, a mild sleeping pill, as needed. I also prescribed 2 mg of Diazepam – Valium – not on a regular basis but to be kept by her as an emergency measure if she suffered a panic attack. A “break the glass in case of emergency” option.
She responded well both to the medication and to our sessions and I also arranged for her to speak to a colleague of mine who specialises in cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), to counter some of the unusual thoughts and beliefs that Caroline had come to rely on.
During our sessions, Caroline consulted a book of writings that she referred to as her journal, as well as other documents. It was clear to me that this w
ork was the product of her psychosis rather than any normal record of the daily comings and goings of a young barrister’s life.
I had intended my notes on Caroline’s case to form the basis of an academic paper: I am friends with one of the editors at a leading mental health journal; but I now lean towards a book-length piece, perhaps for standalone publication. Caroline’s ‘sources’ constitute an impressive narrative, if one is minded to take them as fiction. And a chronicle of a deep, but thankfully transient, psychosis, if one chooses, as I do, to take them as an elaborate facade to mask a stress-induced nervous breakdown.
The mobile phone, the printouts of emails, the so-called “Hunt Books”, the blogs and journals: they created a patchwork of distinct voices that lend verisimilitude to her fantasy of vampires running global corporations, suborning scientists, seducing actresses and generally creating mayhem in the world’s capital cities.
To counter her delusional thinking, I was able to show Caroline news reports of the fire at the Harker Laboratory in Norfolk in which her husband was killed, downloaded from one of the largest global media organisation’s websites. Her friend Lucinda Easterbrook is not dead. I found a press release online announcing that she had been appointed as an executive presentations coach for a company in Los Angeles owned by Velds Holdings.
It seems clear to me that Caroline suffered a psychotic break brought on by overwork and triggered by her new husband’s violent death. She now agrees with me and this analytic breakthrough, coupled with a carefully managed drug treatment regime, have restored her to sanity, though one must be careful, in my profession, when bandying such layman’s terms about. Nonetheless, she is healthy. I told her so today and have signed the medical papers necessary for her to be released from my care.
69
BBC News Website 23rd August 2012
Breaking news: top NHS psychiatrist, Benjamin Schrader, 37, was attacked in his Harley Street consulting rooms today by a seriously disturbed female patient. Dr Schrader suffered horrific injuries to his neck and died from blood loss at the scene. Witnesses report seeing a naked woman fleeing the scene and appearing to leap onto the roof of a bus before clearing a two-foot gap to the top of a nearby building.
70
Hunt Book of Caroline Harker 24th August 2012
It was a shame that Ben had to die. But there was no way I could warn him what he was getting into without ruining all the careful work I’d done in our sessions to convince him I was sane again.
I left Ben’s office for the last time two days ago clutching that precious piece of paper declaring me no longer a threat to myself or society and therefore under no restrictions of movement or need to report to the hospital, social services or the police. And something else. A spare key, which I found in his desk drawer when he excused himself to visit the lavatory. I returned late that night and, with my newly acquired lock-picking skills (thank you, dear Jim) I retrieved all the files concerning my ‘case’. The manuscript of Ben’s book is safe with me in Bloomsbury.
Ariane and Lily are rebuilding the London chapter. With Peta gone it won’t be long before a new mother appears to lead the lamia here.
And me? I have finished with my old life. I state the following for the record.
My name is Caroline Harker.
I am a Cutter.
The End
71
Draft paper for submission to Nature magazine, 13th May 2018, Author: Ariane Van Helsing
Proposed title: Origins, lifecycle and physiology of new species of human with notes on mythological and cultural interpretations.
Abstract (100 words): A sub-species of human being exists that I propose to call Homo sapiens lamia. Vampires. They evolved some 100,000 years ago ie towards the end of the Neolithic period. Their gross anatomy is identical with Homo sapiens, although there are certain mutations, both structural and physiological. They exist in symbiosis with a parasite that has re-engineered their DNA. The resultant hybrid feeds exclusively on human blood, and has certain evolutionary advantages over Homo sapiens. These include strength, up to ten times greater; longevity, ages of 375 years are not uncommon; and the ability to reproduce non-sexually. They are extremely dangerous.
Evolution of Homo sapiens lamia
In early prehistory, there was a group of hominids living in caves in the region of modern-day Bulgaria. Their diet, as far as we can tell from occasional bodies preserved in peat bogs, and skeletal remains from cave burials, included grains (mostly barley and a form of wild oat), small rodents (voles, shrews, mice), and water snakes, we assume from the caves themselves.
The snakes are the critical element in the evolution of Homo sapiens lamia. We have conducted research in Bulgaria and have discovered a species of water snake that lives many hundreds of feet underground in aquifers that feed cave systems. These snakes are blind and albino. They subsist on a species of salamander that also occupies the same environmental niche, plus the occasional rodent or bird that enters the cave system and becomes disorientated until it dies and falls into the water. We believe their senses have evolved to compensate for the lack of vision, and include highly sensitive smell receptors, pressure-sensing organs, plus some other sensory modality we are still researching, perhaps electrical in origin.
The snakes were infected with a parasite, possibly from the salamanders, that had adopted them as its host. We believe that either through biting or being fed upon, the snakes transferred the parasites into the hominids. Once inside the hominids, the parasites flourished, having a far more mobile and adaptable host, with access to a great many new food sources both inside and outside the caves.
Over time, the parasites re-engineered the DNA of these early Homo sapiens, as they had that of the water snakes. The chief effect of the parasites’ action was to vastly increase the ability of the humans to access energy from their food sources. Oxygen and glycogen conversion increased ten-fold, so that every calorie of food consumed resulted in perfect 100% conversion into one kilojoule of energy made available, rather than the 10% common in normal human beings. In practical terms, this gave the human hosts dramatically increased physical strength. A second effect was to improve longevity, and through radio-carbon dating combined with bone density analysis, we have demonstrated conclusively that Homo sapiens lamia is capable of living for up to 375 years.
The parasite
Name: lamia multigena (vampire brood).
Type: Endoparasite
The parasites are blood-sucking arthropods, of a maximum length of 0.01 mm. They travel into the host bloodstream in an injected anticoagulant fluid. It is suspected that the parasites are themselves hosts to microscopic pathogenic organisms (probably viral in origin) that may be the root cause of the infection and subsequent DNA modification in the human host.
What does the parasite get in return?
From the host, the parasite gets what all parasites get: life and the opportunity to multiply.
How has the infection changed human behaviour?
In order to reproduce, the parasite needs a new host to infect. They have modified the human brain so its primary food drive is cannibalistic blood-drinking – hematophagy. In the act of feeding, the parasite travels into the new host’s bloodstream in an anticoagulant injected through hollow fangs.
Extreme sensitivity to sunlight, most likely UV radiation, means Homo sapiens lamia are restricted to closed environments using artificial light during the day.
Possibly owing to the metabolic changes wrought by the parasite, the creatures need very little sleep – perhaps as little as two hours in every 24.
Libido is increased. The lamia are highly sexed and prefer Homo sapiens partners. In sexual congress with their own kind, the increased blood flow and hormonal changes create extremes of aggression, which result in one or both participants feeding on, and therefore destroying, the other. See note below.
How has the infection changed human physiology and anatomy?
The parasite has altered human DNA
to produce a range of anatomical and physiological changes.
Bucco-mandibular anatomy: behind the upper incisors, two long hollow fangs have evolved. These are erectable at will, as in members of the Viperidae family, such as bush vipers and puff adders. They are connected to individual sacs that produce a secretion containing an anticoagulant chemical.
The connective tissue and ligaments attaching the mandible to the styloid and mastoid processes have become hyper-flexible, allowing the lower jaw to partially dislocate without injury, facilitating a wide “gape” during feeding.
The tissues of the gingiva, soft palate, tongue and cheeks have developed into an extendible ring that forms a vacuum seal when feeding.
Digestion: Homo sapiens lamia feeds exclusively on human blood. The parasite DNA enables the host to extract 100% of the available energy from the calories contained in the blood.
Musculature: the extreme diet has produced dramatic increases in muscular strength. Muscular appearance is ultra-lean, and when hunting, physiological changes engorge muscles with blood giving the lamia a “ripped” appearance.
