The Vampire Files Anthology

by P. N. Elrod

  The kid was right. I was thirty-six, but my condition and diet made me look about twenty-two.

  “We saw you putting the trunk in the car and thought you were running away, but we weren’t sure—not until you went to the Stockyards, then we knew that you were . . . you had . . .” He gulped the idea down. “We followed you, but when you got on the road you didn’t act like you were running, so we just stayed back and followed.”

  “Biding your time until the dawn, huh? And then what? A stake in the heart and garnish with garlic?”

  He squirmed, utterly miserable.

  “Well, you ought to feel uncomfortable, that’s just about the dirtiest trick I’ve heard of, and I’ve heard plenty. Have you actually thought about what you were planning?”

  He had not.

  “Come on, Matheus, I’m really a nice guy once you know me. I am not some kind of diabolical maniac; I even send money home to my mother. Think of it as a medical condition. You wouldn’t try to kill me if I had polio, would you?”

  Seeing things from my point of view was a whole new experience for him.

  “Except for some physical and dietary restrictions, there’s really nothing bad with being a vampire.”

  He acted like I’d said a dirty word.

  “Would you be more comfortable if I said Undead or would you prefer something else? I know lots of substitutes, but they’re harder to pronounce.” I waited for an answer and tried again. “Come on, kid, if I could go back to being like you I would, but I can’t, so I’m just trying to make the best of the situation. I’m not what you expected, am I?”

  He shook his head grudgingly.

  “Don’t listen to him, Matheus!” It was the mummy, Braxton. He’d come awake and was struggling to pull himself together. He lurched from the car, looking ridiculous as he waved his shoe in one hand like a weapon. After a second he realized a shoe was hardly appropriate, so he dropped it and pulled a big silver cross from his pants pocket.

  I stood up, uncertain how to react at this point. Crosses don’t affect me unless they’re large, wooden, and used as a club on my head. My theory on this is that I’m not an evil creature; the use of a cross against a vampire is primarily an invention of the stage and Hollywood. Having the vampire cowering away from one makes for a good dramatic scene, but in reality, things are far different. If these guys were ignorant enough to rely on one for protection, it might be in my best interest to play along. On the other hand, Braxton might just be trying to test me.

  He pushed himself and his cross between me and Matheus. I moved back quickly because he practically shoved the thing up my nose.

  “Back, you demon!” he said, and quite dramatically at that. Matheus was impressed. I refrained from laughing and gave them some room.

  “And how do you do?” I inquired politely.

  “Did he hurt you, Matheus?”

  “Well, no—”

  “But he was trying to hypnotize you.”

  “He was?”

  “I was?” I echoed.

  It looked as though Braxton was just the sort of dedicated crazy I was occasionally compelled to interview when I’d been a reporter. Even at this early stage in our acquaintance, his manner was easily recognizable. I tried to recall if I’d once talked to him while on an assignment.

  “Leave us and trouble us no more,” he intoned solemnly.

  “Who wrote your dialogue? Hamilton Deane?” I countered.

  Matheus looked at me doubtfully. He knew who’d written the play, Dracula, but he still didn’t quite know how to take a vampire with a sense of humor. It went right over Braxton’s head, for he was too caught up in his Van Helsing imitation to pay attention to what I said.

  “Leave us,” he commanded.

  “Listen, buster, you were the ones following me. I was minding my own business. I’ll be a sport this time and let you go, as long as you run straight back home and stay there.”

  “No, we will follow you as long as necessary.”

  That really wasn’t the smartest thing for him to tell me. I sighed. “Matheus, maybe you can talk some sense into him. If I was half as nasty as you seem to think, I could just as well kill you both as stand around all night. I haven’t got the time to waste trying to convince you of my good character, either. Just stay out of my way or I’ll kick both of your asses all the way back to Manhattan.” I turned and walked until I was lost to them in the dark, then vanished and floated back to listen in on what they had to say.

  It took a few minutes for their nerves to settle and to convince each other that they were all right. Once the question of health was out of the way, Matheus gulped a few times and asked, “Was he really trying to hypnotize me?”

  I could imagine Braxton nodding sagely.

  “But it didn’t seem like he was. He didn’t say anything that sounded like it.”

  “You wouldn’t remember it if he did. It’s like falling asleep, you don’t know you’ve been asleep until you wake up.”

  “Oh. What do we do now?”

  “We wait him out. He has to come this way, and then we follow him.”

  “But how can we be sure he won’t just double back?”

  “He has become a vampire, he must seek out his home earth. I know he comes from Cincinnati—”

  How did he know that? I wondered.

  “—and this is the road that will take him there the fastest. He said he had little time. For us time is on our side.”

  He didn’t know everything. He must have thought I’d changed only in the last day or so; he did not know I was merely augmenting my present supply of earth.

  “Are you sure about this, Mr. Braxton? He could have killed us, like he said.”

  Braxton had a blanket answer. “Lies. He’s only toying with us. They’re very clever, these creatures, but you’ll remember that he was the one to give ground before us.”

  I could almost see him waving his cross and puffing out his chest. Whether I was playing with them or not depended on how much they bothered me. Amateurish and ill informed as they were, they could still prove to be very dangerous. During my daytime oblivion I was completely vulnerable. My best chance of survival would be to lose them and hope they’d give up and go home. I had no desire to do them violence.

  I left them and returned to my car, starting it up. They would hear the noise and be starting theirs as well. I drove slowly past, their white and defiant faces staring grimly back as I waved. Matheus was getting himself ready for the road race of his life.

  It must have been a terrible letdown when their car swayed onto the road and with a lurch betrayed the presence of the flat tire.

  I hit the gas and left them behind. It would take about ten minutes for Matheus to change the tire, probably a lot longer with Braxton helping him, and by that time I planned to have a healthy lead of fifteen miles or more.

  4

  LUCK was with me and I managed to avoid the notice of cops looking for speeders, arriving in Cincinnati with enough time to spare to find a place to stay. The best protection was with the herd, so I checked into one of the bigger and busier downtown hotels under a phony name. The Buick disappeared into a distant parking lot with a lot of other late-model cars.

  A sleepy bellhop manhandled the trunk into a modest single with a bath. I dispatched him with a fair tip and hung out a sign to ward off the maid. My suit and body both felt rumpled from the long drive. I wanted a hot bath, a quick shave, and the inside of my trunk, and got them in short order.

  Sunset seemed to come again a few seconds after I’d closed the lid. While in my earth there was no sense of time passing, but the day had gone by as usual, since I felt rested and alert. I was in fresh clothes, checked out, and in my car in record time. My goal was to be back in Chicago that same night, so I hurried now.

  What was left of my grandfather’s farm wasn’t too far from the city, but owing to the twists of the road, it was still fairly isolated. Once I turned off the farm-market road and onto the weedy ruts that
led to the house, the trees closed in, and it was like going back in time. The Buick was a noisy intruder into a simpler and slower age, so I cut the motor and walked the rest of the way with Escott’s sandbags in one hand and the new shovel and some rope in the other.

  The place hadn’t changed since my last visit in August. It still looked forlorn and overgrown, but not completely neglected. My father came out occasionally to check on things. He kept the grass trimmed in the little graveyard where we’d been burying our own for the last seventy-five years. The house was boarded up. It would have looked sinister except for the neat paint job. Even the three-seater outhouse in back had gotten a coat against the winter. It was as though it had only been temporarily closed for the season and the family would return in the spring.

  I went to the cemetery. The earth near the big oak tree was vaguely scarred from my last expedition for soil, but not so much that the casual eye would notice. As before, I cleared another large area of fallen leaves and began scooping an inch of topsoil off and into the bags. I could have dug deeper, but that would leave definite signs, and I had no desire to accidentally include earthworms in my booty.

  Whether dirt specifically from the family cemetery was necessary for me to survive had been a question in my mind for quite a while. My prior researches indicated that all vampires must be in their graves by dawn, and had I truly died, my body would certainly be resting here with the other Flemings. I suppose any of the earth in the immediate vicinity would have been suitable, but there was no time for experiments. I had a traditional turn of mind, anyway.

  As I worked, my mind was already on the road, retracing the route back to Chicago and deciding which places to stop for gas. I vaguely wondered if I would again be plagued by Matheus Webber and James Braxton. They were worrying, but there wasn’t much I could do about them until I could get their names to Escott. Hopefully he might be able to trace them down in New York while he was there, then I might remember where I’d met Braxton—

  The work and thought were interrupted by several heavy objects slamming against my body like cannonballs and knocking me flat.

  Two hard things caught me full in the chest, and a third had cracked against my head. In the very brief time between impact and hitting the ground I decided they were large rocks and that somebody really had it in for me.

  The last rock must have been the size of a brick, but I hadn’t been killed, or even concussed. There are undeniable advantages to being supernatural.

  My body fell back and rolled. I glimpsed a whirl of leaves and branches that abruptly faded to gray and then to nothing. My body had taken things over again and I’d dematerialized from the shock of the sudden pain. No emergency called me back, so I remained disembodied and was glad of it. Floating upward until safely within the concealing branches of the oak, I slowly re-formed, arms and legs wrapped around one of the big limbs.

  I was about thirty feet up, and once solid, had to endure a few bad moments of recovery. My head was the worst, I had to cling with my eyes squeezed tight until the dizziness passed. I hate heights.

  While hiding in the tree and counting my blessings, developments were taking place below. Three foreshortened figures came into view and prowled uncertainly around my excavation. They were rough-looking men, each with a rock in one hand and a big stick in the other. Had I not vanished immediately they would have probably followed up with those clubs. The clubs were of wood and would have succeeded where rock had failed.

  My headache rapidly subsided as I became interested in finding out who these guys were and why they’d attacked me out of the blue. Perhaps then I would work off the chagrin of being taken by surprise. They must have been hiding out the whole time I was digging, or else I’d have heard them sneaking up.

  One of them cast around like a dog for a lost scent. “He musta rolled away fast after we hit ’em,” he told the others. They agreed and made a swift search under the oak, then spread out among the grave markers.

  “You sure we hit ’em?” asked another.

  “Din’ you keep your eyes open? We all hit ’em square. I know we did. Din’ we, Bob?”

  Bob grunted something affirmative and made a quick leap to look behind the big piece of carved granite over my grandfather’s grave. It was the only possible hiding place, the rest of the stone markers being too small. They circled back to the sandbags and kicked at them curiously.

  “What you suppose he was diggin’ for, Rich?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Rich was upset. He looked at the oak tree, his eyes traveling up the trunk toward me. I kept still, knowing he couldn’t see me in the darkness among the leaves. “Go check his car,” he told Bob. “Mebee he got some stuff we can use.”

  Fugitives from a local Hooverville or tramps off of any of the trains that passed through the city, they’d been looking for someone to rob, and I’d been handy.

  Bob lumbered off to the car. The keys were still inside. I’d felt safe being back home, after all. Vanishing, I floated in Bob’s direction, tracking the crunch his feet made on the gravel and old leaves. He was almost to the car when I re-formed in front of his startled face and gently knocked him out.

  He was a gaunt, rawboned specimen and I’d have felt sorry for him had it not been for those well-aimed stones. Proving assault against them would be impossible, but I was, or at least I felt like, an outraged homeowner and they were trespassing.

  I sandwiched Bob into one of the road ruts in front of the car, which gave me an idea: it was more of a childish impulse, but irresistible.

  Rich and his pal separated, looking for my missing body and puzzling over the odd situation. It was easy to wait for a convenient moment and take the pal from behind. His unconscious body went next to Bob’s in the adjoining rut. For an artistic effect, I folded their arms funeral style and decorated each with a large weed, as though it were a lily. When things were ready, I tooted the horn a couple times, turned on the headlights, then ducked into the cover of the trees.

  Rich didn’t delay investigating. He was complaining about the noise in a few short, coarse words, which trailed off when he saw his friends lying neatly in the ruts. He went on guard, held his stick at a threatening angle, and listened. It seemed a shame to disappoint him, so I threw a fist-sized stone at his legs. His yelp was more of surprise than pain, and he hopped to one side before twisting to face me.

  I wasn’t there anymore. By vanishing and shifting around I could move without being detected. In the darkness outside the glare of the headlights I was all but invisible by simply standing still. Re-forming a short toss behind him, I bounced another stone, this time off his butt. He had no appreciation for my marksmanship, though, and came charging at me with his stick. While he viciously assaulted the foliage, I moved back to the first hiding place and gave him another volley of rocks.

  Not surprisingly, he got tired of this very quickly and bolted for the road, urged on by several parting shots. I couldn’t let him leave without a personal good-bye and made a point to appear directly in his path. He had no time to stop and we connected solidly. He dropped, the breath knocked out of him, but he quickly recovered and took a swing at me with the stick. I went to a partially solid state and it passed right through, which was not what he expected. He stared at the stick, then at me, and tried again and failed. That was one too many and he ran away.

  That didn’t work, either.

  I caught him at the front gate, swung him around, and pressed him face first against the bole of a tree, making sure he got well acquainted with the bark.

  “Lemme go, I din’ do nuthin’!” he squealed.

  He struggled, but I had him firmly pinned and he eventually stopped. There had been a lot more fight in little Selma Jenks.

  “Okay, I’ll do what you want!” This was indistinct, as his mouth was mashed into the bark.

  I whipped him around. He knew he was in trouble as his feet left the earth. I held him up by his stinking clothes, with his toes swinging free in the air
.

  “How long you creeps been here?”

  “C-couple days.”

  “How’d you find this place?”

  “Mailbox—sign on it says it’s safe here.”

  “You’re gonna change that, understand? It ain’t safe anymore.”

  “Yeah—whatever you want.”

  My next action was pure show-off, but it also served to drive home the point that I was more than capable of handling him. I forced him over double and snaked an arm around his midsection. He was too dumbfounded to vocalize a protest as his feet left the ground again and he was carried like a sack of flour along the road to the mailbox. There, he eradicated a symbol scratched on the post and substituted another that meant “keep away” to any other bums that might happen by.

  “That okay?”

  He wasn’t getting any pats on the head from me. We locked looks and I gave him a few choice words of advice, nothing as specific as those I shared with Selma, but along similar lines. I last saw him pelting for Cleveland at a dead run. If he kept up the pace he’d make it by morning.

  His pals looked like they’d be out for some time, so I left them and had a good look around the house and barn. The barn was untouched, but the house had been broken into via a back window. Through it I could see signs of recent and very messy occupancy. This discovery inspired a lot of violent thoughts aimed at the two remaining bums. The only thing to do would be to give the cops an anonymous call and ask them to come out. They in turn would contact my father; by that time the bums would be gone, which was probably just as well. If Dad had come out for a visit alone, he might have been the one assaulted, not me. That idea had set my blood to boiling when I’d been talking to Rich, and now I stalked back to revive his two friends.

  A little shaking did the trick, and I gave them no chance to run away. I had their full attention as I picked up the discarded clubs. They were heavy and hard, like baseball bats, but not so thick that I couldn’t get my hands around them. I held them out front, making sure my guests had a good view.

  “You boys get out and stay out, or I’ll break your necks.” At that I snapped the clubs in two with a sharp movement. The men were impressed, but didn’t stay for an encore. If anything, they moved even faster than their leader as they ran for the road.