TRUTHS AND CONSEQUENCES
I was so happy; at least I thought that's what it was. I was so twisted by that time, so full of fear and other things, I wasn't sure I could really be happy any longer… I thought maybe happiness was one of those things that was never really real to begin with, you know, and I was just now learning that. But I had some hope, yes, when you came in. I would at least get out. It would go no further.
Then. Remember? You heard him coming in. You poked the gag back into my mouth and shushed me. You didn't say anything, but I thought I had a promise that you would return.
And you left me. All alone you left me. I didn't mean much. That's what it felt like.
I was up there for hours, Mr. Kolchak. It felt like weeks. They did not find me right away. The house was sealed off. They didn’t search upstairs until much later. And I couldn’t move or make any sound or anything. You didn’t tell them! You just left me there when you heard him coming back, and later on you forgot! So I lay there for a while longer, and it already seemed to me that I’d been there my whole life. I remembered school like it was a hundred years ago, or just a movie I saw at some point.
I had started dreaming things, even though I was awake. These dreams, which were more like memories-- only they weren’t my memories-- kind of superimposed themselves over the room and the bed and everything else. Most of them felt very old. Like they really were a hundred years old, but they felt brand new to me. After a while, I could tell that they came from different lives. I had never lived any of them, but they had somehow gotten into me and they wanted me to pay attention to them. One of them I thought was the Civil War. The uniforms looked right, going by what I’ve seen in movies. Later I found out I was right.
There was blood everywhere, more than you could imagine, and a smell that was almost solid, I swear. It did something to my eyes, but it wasn't stinging them. It was more like they were saturated. In some of the visions I had a saw in my hand and I was cutting, cutting, cutting through something and someone was splashing alcohol on whatever it was I was cutting and there was a lot of screaming. And then I noticed the thoughts going through my head that weren't my own, and they kept repeating, "I must rise above this. I must live forever."
Another group of the dreams happened in a big city, but there were no cars and very few lights compared to cities today. I don’t think they had electricity. And I was in a sort of slum, with all these gray buildings pile up and shoved in together all crazy, this way and that. And there were these women, five different women I'd learned to recognize from seeing them time and again in this dream. And I was cutting in this dream too, but it was different. I was… Well, I was cutting these women is what I was doing, Mr. Kolchak.
And I had tools like a doctor would have, but I wasn’t helping these women, I was just cutting them up and removing things from inside them. I didn’t want to hurry, but I had to on all but the last one. She was different because she was younger and kind of pretty but she had bad teeth. I remember that. And we were inside a room, her room. This girl… I cut on her for a long, long time. I took everything out of her, everything I could find, and I threw some of it into the fireplace, and other parts I wrapped up in this heavy brown paper and tied up with twine. And there were a couple of things I just left on a little table beside her bed. I worked and worked until I had stripped most of her down to the bone, and I noticed through a little chink at the top of the door that the sun had come up. I was covered in sweat and I had blood on me too and I felt really cold. And I got ready to leave the room and go home, and I took the brown paper package with me and I think I was going to eat what was in it. I did not know it at the time, but her name was Mary Kelley and she was 25 years old.
Other dreams I had were more confused, more chaotic, and always dark. And of course there was blood, lots and lots of blood. It seemed to me that I could taste it.
I was like this for a while, drifting in and out, and eventually, suddenly, they found me. The police. They started shouting and a radio was pulled out and a bunch of squawking was coming from it. Someone took the gag out of my mouth but I couldn't think of anything to say. I didn't know where I was. I thought I was still in the room with Mary Kelley, you see, and I thought perhaps I had been caught doing what I did, and maybe they were taking me out to hang me. People were feeling parts of me and asking me questions I could not even decipher. I tried to look around to the fireplace where I had thrown Mary Kelley's insides, but it wasn't there. Then there was a lot of jolting, and springs squeaking, and some straps went across my chest.
After the hospital I went to another hospital, one run by the state, and I was there for two months I think. I was discharged into my parents' care and they took me home. But home wasn't home. I still had my dreams and visions, though I had mentioned nothing about them to any of the doctors. My mom and dad knew something was wrong. Beyond the obvious, I mean. As far as Skorzeny went, they believed the official story. A mass murderer had abducted me.
For a while I was at my parents' house, and at some point they got a letter from Doctor Richard Malcolm. Or Malcolm Richards, I forget which. He presented himself as a prominent psychiatrist specializing in acute trauma. Having read about my case in the newspaper, Doctor Richard Malcolm, eminent West Coast psychiatrist, took an interest in the poor traumatized Vegas girl and offered his help, free of charge. Soon, I was packed and bundled up and sent off with the doctor to his "research hospital."
And how!
You know, of course, who and what Malcolm really was. He took me back to Seattle and installed me in his little "resort" beneath the streets. And he told me things. He loved to talk.
Here are a few of the things he told me:
FACT: The individual you knew as Janos Skorzeny was not Janos Skorzeny. At least not the one you thought he was. He was much older. I'll get to that. By 1863 he had been a vampire for some years. He came to America during the Civil War and soon found employment as a mercenary-- working for both the North and the South at various times-- specializing in nighttime raids on enemy encampments.
FACT: Skorzeny, Malcolm and the Ripper were not isolated cases. They knew one another. In a sense, they created one another.
It was at Gettysburg that the three came together.
July 1st, 2nd and 3rd, 1863. The battle was a veritable orgy for creatures like them. Blood literally hung in the air like a mist. Malcolm, the quintessential mad scientist, could at last gorge himself on a limitless supply of raw material for his experiments. The future Jack the Ripper could indulge his one true passion openly, with no fear of sanctions or consequences.
Skorzeny was the only one with a complaint, as he could not immerse himself in the daytime slaughter. He made up for it by night, though, and on the second night he let himself get a bit carried away. When dawn came he was pinned down far from his coffin full of earth. He was wearing Union colors at the time, though on this occasion, he was working for neither side. He was merely enjoying himself. A Union patrol found him, immobilized, and carried him back to the field hospital where Richard Malcolm had been working feverishly for two score hours or more.
One of the Union men who had found Skorzeny sensed something odd and intriguing, and he remained there in the hospital-- that's really too generous a word-- with him, listening, watching, examining. When a minister came around, the vampire went into convulsions, and his Union rescuer, no fan of the clergy himself, took the opportunity to deliver a quick beating.
Soon the cleric was unconscious on the ground next to Skorzeny's cot. The vampire, weakened and disoriented though he was, looked upon this spectacle and could not restrain a smile. The smile revealed not only a gleeful appreciation of cruelty, but a pair of unnaturally long and sharp canine teeth.
Presently, the doctor made his way around to where Skorzeny lay. A quick examination was enough to tell him that here was something remarkable. He formed an alliance with Skorzeny and Jack, who demanded to be cut in (and even Malcolm could see that this was not a young man to be toyed with or ignored), and the rest was history. Well, sort of. Just not recorded history. Until now. In the months ahead, Malcolm studied Skorzeny carefully.
Malcolm was working on his own immortality. Skorzeny had found his. The Ripper wanted his own, and was prepared to do anything at all to get it. He had been a monster for a long time before he found his way there. During his years of ordinary life, murder had been an easy way to achieve whatever goals he had, large or small. Early on, it had been a slightly regrettable necessity. Later, he came to enjoy it, and then to revel in it. Finally, he needed it to live, like air or water. Had killing not served this purpose, he would still have sought it as an end in itself. To do what you love and make a living at it! Who could ask for more? Well, Jack could. He asked that he be allowed to do it forever.
Malcolm "perfected" a version of his elixir with Skorzeny's blood as an ingredient.
Skorzeny, who was fascinated by the miraculous technological advances of the 19th Century, saw an opportunity. He cared nothing for what science might do for humanity, of course. But he saw that faith in science might slowly replace faith in God, and so… He was the Serpent, you see. He was the devil who would taint the new "religion" with his own ancient evil. He alone, he thought, would breach that barrier and then seal it again. He would be a brand new Antichrist for the post-Industrial Revolution world order. If Malcolm represented the future of science, the future would be steeped in Skorzeny's blood. He was mind-bogglingly melodramatic. He had very little in the way of emotional nuance, and saw the world, I believe, in the same way a young child sees a cartoon.
The elixir was administered to Jack first. The effect on his system was not quite the same as it would be on Malcolm's. It has a lot to do with individual body chemistry. Or maybe "soul chemistry." After all, it was half magical, so who can say?
The Ripper had strength, speed, and agility like a vampire's. And he was nocturnal. Sunlight would not kill him, but he preferred the dark. He was stronger at night. And, like Malcolm, he needed the blood of women who had just been murdered-- it would be flooded with adrenaline and other things, concentrated in the major organs. It wasn't the blood itself he required. It was the substances the blood carried. He merely ate the raw material, there was no need for him to mix it and refine it in a laboratory.
Malcolm was the thinker, the scientist. Skorzeny was the strategist. Jack was the muscle. The other two needed him, you see, because Skorzeny could do nothing in the daytime, and Malcolm's grip on reality was so feeble even by this time that he was virtually useless outside of his laboratory. You saw what he was like at the end. Well, he was showing signs of what would now be recognized as paranoid schizophrenia before he even began his "treatments." The elixir froze him in place, physically and mentally. He got no worse, except for those 18-day periods every 21 years when the effects began to wear off and his body began to decompose, along with his reason and self-control. The three had eventually gone their separate ways, but maintained contact.
In fact, Skorzeny had been sending blood to Malcolm for years. Every 21 years, to be exact. But 1973 rolled around, Malcolm needed more of the blood, and none was forthcoming because Skorzeny was gone. Somehow, though, he had heard about me, and correctly deduced that Skorzeny had been slowly turning me. Which mean not just a draining of blood, but a mingling. Skorzeny had fed me some of his. Absolutely nauseating, I assure you.
His elixir would soon begin to break down again. He needed me. But he did not intend to use me in the way he normally used women. He thought that my blood-- tainted as it now was by Skorzeny's-- might hold some sort of key. After a few preliminary tests, he summoned the Ripper and prepared to begin his work in earnest. I was a woman. My body constantly produced the substances his formula required. Could it be stabilized using me as a growth medium?
Because the other ingredient Malcolm needed was the blood of a vampire.
Skorzeny had supplied him with it, but Skorzeny was gone now. But I had vampire blood in me, and I had the elixir too. Just like the Ripper. But I had something the Ripper did not. Female hormones. That was the key to everything. To life. In order to continuously renew life, you had to have aspects of both male and female. It makes sense, don't you think? Prolonging life is really the same as reproducing it. It's all about immortality. And so, to further that end, he administered a dose of the elixir to me. He did not need the fresh female blood to add to it, for obvious reasons.
Now we get back to 1973. The time of the madness came. He had to do what he always did. He locked me away. But it was to protect me during those 18 days when the desperation came over him and he could not guarantee that he wouldn't attack me. Before that, though, when we were in the early days of his research on me, I had been given the run of the place. He had no reason not to trust me. And if he had, I fear he was too unbalanced to realize it. I could come and go. I stayed, returning every evening on the days I spent outside. Because he was not an unpleasant man, and I was curious about what happened to me and to him and to his friends.
I felt the need to do something, but I did not know what. For some reason, you came to mind. I tried to find you, but you had left Las Vegas. I made more inquiries-- my intellect, my inner resources, had expanded considerably since my experiences in Skorzeny's house. I found I could be very persuasive. I found out where you were. I made the acquaintance of some people at the newspaper in Seattle. I thought it best if I first obtained your friend Mr. Vincenzo. He was hired away from the Las Vegas Daily News at my "suggestion." Then you. I got word to you that you might find employment in Seattle and you came.
You look skeptical. Is it so hard to believe I arranged it? Is it easier to believe that first your editor and then you wound up in the same place at precisely the time that another near-immortal killer emerged from his seclusion by sheer chance?
And why did I do it? I don't know. I wanted you near. For revenge? For protection? I cannot say. I think I was already becoming a bit unbalanced myself by then.
But you came. Just in time for Malcolm's killing spree. Then you got mixed in and you put an end to Malcolm, and there I was again, Mr. Kolchak! Forgotten once again.
But I was found, and not so very long afterward, though once again it seemed like years. I sank deeper into the alien memories.
But I was "rescued" from that place. By the third member of the dark trinity. Malcolm had sent word, remember, asking him to come and participate in the new research. One day-- or night-- a man in a black suit and a black hat and a black cape lined with red descended into Malcolm's all but totally dead world and ripped the iron door off of my cage.
He told me his name was Jack the Ripper.
For a time, I belonged to him.
I've read so many books about him, so much speculation. Nobody ever came close. He was never what anyone thought he was. Strange. He was open to so many interpretations, like a figure from religion or mythology. He had these… meanings that were nothing to do with him, with what he really was. I was with him for a year, but it didn't seem like a year. I don't know if it seemed like more or if it seemed like less. It seemed like something else. Something that wasn't made of time at all. Time is not what most people think it is, Mr. Kolchak. It's… roomier. It must be infinite, I think, and if so, it is infinite in all directions, not just forward and backward. You can stick your arms out (which she did by way of illustration, at right angles from her body, and wiggled her long fingers), and never touch a wall, so to speak. And it is indestructible." She sighed and dropped her arms. "Some things can only be understood as metaphor, and even then…not really understood at all."
But he didn't want to kill me. He didn't need me for my blood, but he needed… I can't say he needed a friend, exactly, but… Some kind of a constant. Somebody who knew what he was, every bit of it. Not approved, just knew. Someone who would… be there I suppose. He certainly wasn't in love with me. That kind of thing was not in him. I think I was supposed to be like a… a pet maybe. Or a treasured knickknack that you take with you wherever you go and put up on a shelf so you can see it every day.
Apart from that, and his "sport…" He wanted you. You had murdered his "brothers," and he would have revenge. That's why we went to Chicago. That's why he paraded himself in public. To draw your attention. And it worked, didn't it? However, he found he had bitten off far more than he could chew.
You are formidable, Mr. Kolchak. I don't know what it is that you have. For more than a hundred years, Jack the Ripper had lived and killed and nobody could stop him. Nobody but you. I think I knew you would. I never foresaw it coming out any other way. I really had nothing against him, you know. He was never cruel to me. But absence of cruelty is not kindness, and it certainly isn't love.
I was there when you killed him. I saw it. And then something extraordinary happened.
I absorbed him. Something of his essence. Not his personality. Not his soul, if he even had one. I don't know what happened to that. But the power he had cultivated for so long. It came to me.
After that night, things were very different. I don't know what it was I absorbed when you killed the Ripper. I don't know if the electricity "boosted" whatever it was. But I had something brand new, and another set of senses opened in me. I could feel things. I knew there were many other anomalous creatures and forces in the word. If I concentrated, I could find them. Not only that-- but they could find me.
Not overtly. They didn't know why they came, or even that it was not their own idea. With the Ripper gone and his energy added to mine, I became open to these others, aware of them. The first one I sought out was your old friend Mama Loa. She was a voodoo practitioner, and a pretty ordinary one as those things go. Voodoo is mostly psychological. A houngan, or adept, serves his community as a sort of priest/doctor/judge.
She was grieving for her grandson, Francois. She wanted revenge for his death, but the spells she cast were feeble. She had been weakened by her years in America, far from the seat of belief in her religion. And in any case, she was not Bokor-- literally, 'the priest who serves with his left hand,' one who trafficks with the darker and more powerful of the Loa. When I met her, I could sense the Loa-- spirits-- all around her. They wanted to help, but her magicks were not enough to grant them access to this plane. They cannot act unilaterally, you see. But my power was of another order entirely. I brought the Loa over and I helped her raise her Francois up from the ground. Mama took me for Baron Samedi, the lord of the dead in her belief system, and I never bothered to correct her.
You never knew him in life, Mr. Kolchak, but I can assure you that Francois Edmonds was very thoroughly a monster before he died. I had no compunctions about using him as I did. The old lady was far from a saint herself. After the deed had been done, I found a way to nudge you in that direction. Because I knew what you would do. You wouldn't be able to stay away once you knew. I was there in that junkyard when you snuffed out his life, such as it was-- or should I say, forced it out of his body-- and I absorbed it. That was reassuring, since I now knew that the Ripper hadn't been a fluke. I never meant for him to kill you, and would have prevented it if he had tried.
Why you? Mr. Kolchak, you are more special than you have ever realized. Had I not brought them across your path, they would have manifested elsewhere, and nobody would have stopped them. You are still an enigma. I don't sense anything otherworldly about you, though. Maybe that's part of it… Perhaps you are so unremarkable you pass with impunity beneath anyone's radar. A vampire of any experience and standing is prepared for an onslaught by a fearless vampire hunter. He expects it. There is a certain type that gravitates to that kind of work, and they are easily identifiable, thus understandable and beatable. But a reporter with no innate magical ability, no discernible psychic ability, no history of involvement with paranormal issues…
Well, anyhow, I 'broadcast' an appeal, and they came. Catherine Rawlins 'heard' me, perhaps because I have some of Skorzeny in me, and it was enough to resurrect her. But she was terrified that Skorzeny might be waiting for her in the direction she felt compelled to travel, so she went the other way instead.
I took all the energy. Every time you killed one of them, there was a release, and I caught it. For some reason, it had to be you. I could not do it myself. It was enough to keep me going for a long while. It was my "elixir." And the monsters, Mr. Kolchak! Purging this plane of some of its nightmares and feeding me at the same time. This is an irony I believe you will like once I point it out. They were killers; they victimized anyone who crossed their path, all for the sake of their worthless power. And then you turned the tables. We turned the tables, you and I. I was always with you but you never knew. You became my stalker in the night. You did to them the very same thing they did to so many others. And you didn't know it, of course, but you were doing it for me. If-- and I say if-- you owed me anything for leaving me hanging twice, you paid me back in full and more.
After the final time-- that bizarre business with Helen of Troy-- I felt I had "turned a corner." My mind was clear and I thought my soul was too. I released you that night. As for that lizard thing a couple weeks later, I don't know what that was all about. Not one of mine. Neither was the robot. I do believe, however, that I somehow attracted those invisible aliens. By the way, they weren't invisible. You and everyone else involved saw them quite clearly. However, if your minds had actually acknowledged what you were looking at, they'd have had to shut down. That's what happens when you cram eight-dimensional creatures into three-dimensional space. They weren't from outer space… exactly. And the "saucer" you found was not a vehicle in the sense that we understand the term. The best way to express it in English would be a "temporary psuedo-Euclidian multi-point shallow interface enabler."
Be that as it may, once I had absorbed a certain amount of whatever it was I was absorbing from your kills, I felt wonderful. I didn't kill anyone after that. Until recently, that is. My appearance froze, just as Malcolm's had. I began to believe that, in most ways, I was normal. I had no desire to return to my parents or indeed anything I had known before. Shelley Forbes was dead. Whatever I was as I passed through the hands of that succession of monsters had no name, and she was gone too. I traveled for a long while. I saw most of the world. Then I had a desire to return… not home, I wouldn't call it that. To the country of my birth, then. And once there I would start a brand new life.
I wanted to go to college. So I did. It was wonderful. I met a lot of people. Friends. One in particular. After a time, though, I realized the possibility that I might never change. I could look young for… How long? Decades? Centuries? Most of the free radicals had been purged from my system. Mechanisms that produce visible signs of aging had been suppressed. But I got older in years. Unlike other people, however, it didn't leave any marks. Twenty-five years after I was taken by Skorzeny, I was 19 years old on the outside. There was every reason to believe that in another 25 years, the same would hold true. I believed, you see, that a great many biological processes had come to a halt, or had slowed down to a level that was all but imperceptible. Not so. But I didn't work that out until much later.
I now shared Skorzeny's old dilemma. Now and then he would let his old identity "die" and assume a new one in a different place. He was actually the great-grandfather of the Janos Skorzeny you thought you found in Vegas. He killed his great-grandson as though by divine right, and "became" him. Well, I didn't want undue attention either. And if I stayed in one place long enough, I'd receive it.
I didn't want to drag anyone else into whatever my life had become. Or would become. I didn't "die," but I left. I stayed in touch, but I gave flimsy reasons for doing what I had done. This was a year ago. And, in the event, it was a very good thing I had acted in this way, because I soon started to feel different. I became angry more often. I lost track of what I was thinking or saying. The other lives in my head got louder and more intrusive. For a week at a time I might think I was in Whitechapel in 1888, and I knew what it felt like to want so desperately to spill blood, then lap it up. And along with the blood, and just as sweet, the terror. I ached to slip from the chains of conscience and reason. I did not need blood and death, but I WANTED them. Very badly.
What was it that sounded the knell? It was menopause, Mr. Kolchak. Of all things. That was when I knew my eternal youth was just a façade. I might live a hundred more years, or a thousand, but my body would break down like any human being. But it would do it very slowly. I would I look the same on the outside, but that's just cosmetic. My skin is still supple, my muscles are still toned, but on the inside, things are shutting down. I'm in my 50s now. During menopause, a woman's body slowly produces less of the hormones estrogen and progesterone. And those are the very things that keep the vampire blood and the Malcolm elixir balanced. The elixir in my system was destabilizing after twenty-some-odd years. Perhaps I could keep the changes at bay if I could receive further treatments, but I have no idea how to do that. All of Malcolm's papers and equipment were confiscated while I was still locked in my room. If they were not all destroyed, they are someplace I was never able to find.
The thing is… Did you know that women produce testosterone too? It's true. Not as much as men of course. And the level drops during menopause just as the other hormones do. But it doesn't drop off quickly enough, at least for my purposes. Testosterone is the volatile factor, the monkey wrench in the works of the Malcolm elixir. And it doesn't take much. Adding the vampire blood to the elixir did not produce any of the changes that would have been a red flag to Malcolm. He observed and tested the mix for weeks before trying it. It remained chemically stable. It should have worked.
Vampires, being dead and all, produce no hormones of any kind. There was no testosterone present in the compound to alert Malcolm to the danger. Another flaw of Malcolm's was that he saw the vampire as some sort of human aberration, an organic condition or disorder that could be understood and explained by science, given time. That is simply not the case. Call it magic if you like. Vampirism isn't a virus or a mutation or anything that can be explained in human terms. What possible biological base could there be for a lethal allergy to Christian iconography?
Crosses started bothering me. Stars of David too, oddly enough. I was raised a WASP, but… Anything that… stank of God-- that's the only way I can describe it-- put me off terribly. The sight of a Koran made me ill. I started thinking about things. Awful things. The kind of things from my dreams. But these were not dreams, and the thoughts did not come from anybody else. They were mine. My thoughts, my desires, my obsessions. I knew there was no hope. I was lucid most of the time-- I'm lucid now, but it's taking a lot of effort-- I knew I would have to be… dealt with… put down. Like the rest of them. My body chemistry has destabilized to the point that I am vulnerable to the sort of madness they all knew, to one degree or another.
I wanted it to be you. When I knew there was no way I could… come back. I knew I was going to get worse, much worse. I had to kill. I wanted to kill. I want to kill right now. Not necessarily you, just anybody. NOT you. I wouldn't. But it is now at the point where it can fairly be said that there is more than one of me; and the part of me that doesn't want to be a monster is outgunned, three to one. How can you get four whole lifetimes into one mind? Especially when three of them are unnaturally long? They outweigh me, you see. And all the while, without me noticing it, I was becoming what they were. There was no more dividing line.
I thought of you so often. Of your courage and how I had used you. And I had to do it again. I fought-- fought with myself--my selves-- over how to do it, or if I would even do it at all. I found an effective carrot, though. I offered myself the chance to murder. I made it all right because I would only murder those who had harmed you. The ones who stood in your way and refused to believe in you. I left a little trail I knew you would follow. It was the only way I could persuade myself to reach out to you. I'm ashamed of it. And I will do it again if I am allowed to leave this place alive tonight.
The tape ended and the little recorder clicked off. I started from force of habit to flip it over, but Shelley shook her head no.
"There's not much left," she said, "And the rest is better left unrecorded.
"What's left for me now is death. My own death. It's really the only way. And I cannot kill myself. I've tried. So…
"Someone who loves me should do it. It's… better that way I think. I don't know that it's necessary. But my believing it makes it necessary, if you follow. I didn't… I couldn't… There was someone, but I couldn't possibly… And I thought of you and what you had done for me before, even though you didn't know…Do you love me? Not romantically. Agape, not Eros. Even just a little, maybe? Because I love you. You were… almost like a father to me…Could you love me enough, do you think?"
My heart was breaking right then and there. I thought I knew what heartbreak felt like, thought I had experienced it, but I hadn't. Not until that very moment did I know what the phrase really meant. Oh God, this poor girl. I had been the center of her life, and I never even knew it. Like a father... Too sad to think about for very long. And I knew she was right about everything. I could see what was happening to her. During her monologue, I had noticed that her conversational style had changed three or four times. She was coming undone.
She walked up to me and pressed into my hands a long, sharp wooden stake and a heavy mallet. "Could you love me enough to kill me?"
That was some question. I thought about it. No, I didn't. I couldn't think anything. I felt dizzy. I don't know how long I might have stood there or how blank my mind would have gotten. But then…
"Well, if he doesn't, I goddamn sure do. Missy, what in the hell???"
From somewhere miles above me, several tons of pennies dropped, and other shoes hit floors for miles around. That voice went right through my head and made my scalp and everything else tingle. I turned ever so slowly to watch the shadowy figure emerging from what was, an age ago, Tony Vincenzo's office.
As she stepped into the light, I saw that Janie's face was blank. No expression. She looked at me like she knew me but didn't know me. At the moment, I felt the same way about her. She kept my eyes fixed with hers so I could not look down or to the side or anywhere else. The force of her personality was displaying itself in a way I had never before seen, and I was in awe of her, my little girl. This was not magic and it was not science. It was her.
There was another oddity about her appearance which didn't quite register at that moment, and which I will address later.
"Missy," she said, looking away from me, "You could have told me, you know." She was angry, but not for what would seem to be the obvious reason. "I am so pissed at you right now. You could have told me this and you should have."
"Janie," she said. "Janie, I never meant to deceive you. I never wanted to hurt you."
"Then you have some serious disconnect when it comes to pursuing your avowed goals," Janie snapped. "But never mind that. That isn't the point. You haven't got much time left, so please don't fritter it away spouting clichés. It really and truly almost never matters what a person did or didn't mean to do. That isn't why I'm pissed. I've always known who you are. You never could have faked that. I love you, and it isn't about me. I'm not a thin-skinned little buttercup, Missy. I know who you are, and what you are could never be of more than secondary importance. I'm not in love with the idea that you're a killer and a half-vampire or whatever the hell you are, but goddamn! What you must think of me! What did you think I'd do if you told me? Dump you? Kill you? Hate you? You just left. You went away."
"I didn't. I… I didn't disappear entirely. I stayed in touch, Janie."
"Oh, well then, yeah, I forgot. You wrote a couple letters. Okay, never mind then, I'm overreacting. Letters and phone calls where you said nothing, didn't answer anything, and certainly didn't continue anything. You know better than that. Do not try to present that shit as exculpatory evidence."
"Well, I…" Missy was stumped. Janie did that to people a lot. "I was afraid… When I started… changing… getting crazy… I was afraid I might do something to you. Kill you, or…"
Janie laughed. "Oh, honey, I'm not that much of a romantic. You try killing me and I'll make you forget all about Jack the goddamn Ripper. Why does everybody underestimate me? I guess it's my little wholesome pixie poppet looks or my effing sweet personality.
"And then, out of the blue, you invite me to come up and visit you, and while I'm reeling from that, in comes my father announcing that he's on his way to Chicago. I didn't tell him you were the one that made the suggestion because he's good at adding things up, as long as it's two and two. But I knew it was hinky. I mean I certainly didn't foresee anything like this shit. I didn't foresee anything. I could not begin to puzzle out how you inviting me here on the spur of the moment could have any possible connection with my dad wanting to come stampeding up here, on an equally spurious moment of his own. But there just aren't any coincidences that big, in my experience. I wanted to find out for myself and by myself what the fuck.
"So now I know. It's fucked up, but it makes sense, I guess. From a certain point of view. But I don't understand why you got me to come. Did you want something to hold over Dad's head, just in case? Tell me that is not why you invited me. And tell me even more persuasively that our whole relationship wasn't some kind of a Trojan horse."
Shelley's face was a perfect mask of anguish. "You must think… oh, I hope you don't think my whole… our whole… I didn't seek you out because of your father. That's the one thing in this that really was a coincidence. Mostly. I just happened to pick the same college you went to. I noticed your name on the bulletin board, looking for a roommate. I thought, there couldn't be very many Kolchaks in the world. I was so curious, I couldn't let it go. I called you. I met you. I moved in. Soon after that, I forgot everything else. You were… You were something I had never imagined having. I thought it might be okay. Somehow. I knew what I would very likely face eventually, but I… I let myself get caught up. I wanted to. I wanted not to think about later."
"Okay. But why did you want me here now? In Chicago, I mean. You had no intention of bringing me to this office for this... whatever. You would have succeeded in keeping me away, in fact, if I weren't so goddamn clever. So why?"
Missy raised her eyebrows. "Why? Janie. Please. Why do you think I would want you here? Why now, knowing that I am soon to die? I wanted to see you. I had to see you again before… this. I couldn't stand to leave the world without seeing your face and saying goodbye to you first."
"Oh," Janie replied, and fell into an uncharacteristic silence. Whatever was clawing at her insides right now had to be worse than any number of ghosts or zombies. Her eyes were dry, but her lips twitched and her chin dimpled up.
"You idiot" Janie said, her voice huskier than I had ever heard it. She had just swallowed a very bitter pill indeed, and was fighting to keep it down. "There's every chance I could have helped you before you let it go this far. And if I were you, I wouldn't even try telling me that there was nothing I could have done. You knew very well that I knew more about the world, the hidden stuff, than most people. You knew my dad was a bona-goddamn-fide monster-killer! And that really eats my lunch. Because now I have to do this! And if I've got the guts for it, which you're about to find out I do, then I'd have been able to come up with something before you dragged all of us here." And then my daughter whirled on me and held out her hand.
"Give, Dad."
I shook my head. "Janie, you can't…" And I just stopped talking because I knew it was not true. Whether she could or not, she would.
She held out her other hand. Slowly, I placed the stake in her left hand, the mallet in her right. I can do it, she told me, without saying a word. No telepathy or anything like that. I just knew what I was seeing in her eyes, and she knew I knew, and we agreed. She nodded and turned her gaze away from mine. My eyes felt as though some kind of physical restraint had been removed from them, and I actually swayed back and forth a little, blinking rapidly. Janie's gaze had kept my eyes cool and dry, and the release allowed dammed-up tears to suddenly spill, and my vision blurred immediately so that I could not clearly see what was happening. I was kind of grateful for that.
There wasn't much talk. No big scene. No declarations or recriminations, no laments, no screams, no crying. I heard Janie say, "What do you think, right here?"
Missy replied, "Uh-huh, that’s right. Between these two ribs."
"Okay, then. Here we go. You ready?" I could not know what it was costing my daughter to maintain her calm, but I had a feeling that when the check arrived it would probably break the bank.
"I think I am, Janie. I'm sorry. I wish I had trusted you. I do love you, you know. I always have. It wasn't about you. I mean, you were about you, but the rest was…"
"I know. I never doubted you. Or me. I knew whatever was wrong was something else. It's very fortunate that self-esteem is something I have never lacked. I don't know how the rest of you get along with so little… I hate to part on bad terms, but I'm still royally pissed at you, young lady. If you do find yourself in an afterlife, I want you to ruminate on the fact that you're going to be in for an eternal ass whipping when I get there... And we…" Her breath caught. "Oh… Missy, your eyes are turning red."
"Yes. My brain is too, on the inside. I think something's happening to my soul, as well. This is it. You have to do it now. Don't wait any more. Please, let me die without ever wanting to kill you! Okay? It's okay. I'll always…"
"Shut up," Janie whispered. "I will too."
Having done the thing myself twice I knew the drill, and even though Shelley Forbes was compliant and did not scream, the sounds and the smells immediately called up horribly vivid recollections of both Skorzeny and Catherine Rawlins. I swayed on my feet again, and this time I fell over, not even feeling the floor when I hit it. My head started ringing again and I squeezed my eyes shut. I did not even attempt to see what was happening, I just listened and I heard Shelley cough and whisper "Thank you," almost inaudible over the three or four sharp pops as the mallet in my daughter's hand pounded a wooden stake into her friend's heart. When Shelly got quiet, Janie didn't make a sound for several seconds. Then she sighed. I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of my jacket in time to see Janie lean down over Shelley and kiss her on the lips. Then, softly and sweetly, like a prayer or a blessing or a declaration of love she said, "God damn it to hell, Missy."
All things considered, it was an appropriate epitaph.
Missy's body dissolved. That's it. Were you expecting maybe an agonizing spectacle of blood and fire and screaming, a harrowing, climactic coda, the kind that is absolutely de rigueur in the final scene of a horror story? There wasn't one. She dissolved. First into a sort of gelatinous liquid, then something like fine sand, then vapor, and finally nothing at all. For a few seconds the air seemed to be saturated with static electricity, and I had the damnedest sensation that it was saying something I couldn't decipher.
So. All my questions were answered at last. But they left a brand new one in their place. Was it finally over? Had my daughter and I finally closed out the account that had started, for me and for Shelley, in Las Vegas so many years ago? Or… Or, had I just passed a torch that I had never asked or wanted to carry?
Janie and I stood there for a while, looking at the spot where nothing but a coarse brown robe now lay. The stake had dissolved too. I have no idea how or why. An elevated train rumbled by right outside the office windows and when it had passed I reached over and touched my girl under the chin with my forefinger, tilting her head up so I could see her eyes. They were dry, but that's about it.
"You'll be okay," I said. It wasn't a question.
She nodded. "Someday, I probably will. More or less. That was… I don't know what that was. Goddamn."
I smiled a little and asked her about the oddity I had just gotten around to noticing. "Where did you get that hat?"
On top of her head was an old straw hat with a narrow brim and a blue and red band. It looked as though someone had stomped on it repeatedly. Someone had. It looked as though it had once been saturated with sewage when its owner had gone down beneath the streets in search of a phantom swamp thing. It had. There was a small, ragged nick in the brim that an expert might recognize as having been made by the claw of a werewolf. A lot of things had happened to that hat before I lost track of it. One day it had just seemed to disappear. I had it in the morning; in the evening it was gone. Tony Vincenzo had referred to it as a "bird feeder" and an "eyesore," and he hadn't been wrong. But it was mine. I had raged and threatened dire consequences to anyone who might have taken it. Like King Lear, I promised to unleash "the terrors of the earth" upon the guilty party. But nothing had ever come of it. It was yet another unsolved mystery.
Janie motioned with her head in the direction of Vincenzo's office. "In there. It was stuck in the top drawer of an old desk. I was looking for something to hit someone with. I'd been here five minutes or so when… you know who came in. I had picked the lock. She just tore the goddamn knob out. With one hand! In that robe, I didn't know who it was. I was freaking out. Very quietly, of course. One of those things where if it were a movie, I'd have had to sneeze. I just kinda crouched down. Then you came in… But this hat…I just… I dunno, I liked the hat. The way it looked or something. I just stuck it on my head without thinking about it."
I scowled. "A desk drawer, eh? I knew it. Vincenzo. Why that…" Then I smiled. Thinking of Lear again, I was thankful that my only daughter was a Cordelia.
"Wait," I said. "How did you get in?"
She gave me a look reserved for small children who ask outrageously
obvious questions, and said, "Picked the lock. How else?"
I had to laugh. "Of course. Come on," I said. "Let's go somewhere."
As my little girl and I walked arm in arm along the street, I thought Janie suddenly looked much older. But no, that wasn't it… Not suddenly. I just suddenly noticed it. She had always looked older, and she did it in a way that made her look impossibly young and vulnerable. And if that doesn't make any sense to you, I'm sorry, but it's the best I can do.
We did not talk because it was time to be silent and just walk together because we could.
Were the monsters all gone now? Would any of them come back? Would there be new ones? We walked past an appliance store with a big screen TV in the window. One of the all-news networks with all the extraneous crawlers and photo insets and clocks cluttering the screen. They could make you take your eyes away from whatever was actually being reported on. Or let you. The center of the screen was a window on a war halfway around the world. A tiny girl, maybe six or seven, tottering along a littered street, one arm just dangling, blood all over the sleeve of her dress. The greatest hope she could reasonably entertain for her future was to make it to the end of that street without being shot or blown up. But her skin was dark. She didn't look like us or talk like us. Cut to the President of the United States, standing behind a podium, looking vacant as he no doubt spun another web of lethal lies. His bland face reminded me of the reality of Janos Skorzeny, his presence defined more by absences than by anything that was actually there. People mistook this vacuum behind his eyes for stupidity, but I knew what it really was. Or rather what it wasn't.
Below him, the death tolls scrolled by in their thousands, with hundreds more every day, and I thought of Jack the Ripper and the 75 women he killed in 86 years. His final victim had been my friend Jane Plum, and I thought of how wonderful she had been and how much poorer the world was for her leaving it. And she was only one.
I thought of the Ripper himself, who killed because he had to, because he wanted to, not as a smokescreen for some other, even sicker, agenda. He admitted his depravity; indeed he reveled in it in his letters to the police and newspapers. "I am down on whores," he wrote back in 1888, "and I shan't quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games." No justification, no attempts to blame, not a word about imaginary threats and phantom weapons programs. And I got to thinking that maybe I would miss him and his like in a strange way. The world Janie was inheriting might just be worse.
Janie spoke to me very softly. "I'm going to cry," she informed me in a businesslike tone. "In fact, I am going to have a complete goddamn nervous fucking breakdown, and I may very well wind up in an institution so I'll need for you to bring me magazines and stuff, and candy bars of course. I don't know the details right now; we'll just have to play it by ear. But I can't do it till at least next Friday, or maybe even after the weekend, depending on how busy I am."
"Of course," I replied, feeling something so bright and pure that there wasn't a word for it. "There is so much to consider with a thing like that. Give some thought to becoming delusional. You can probably get better drugs that way."
"You are such a help! It never would have occurred to me. This is why I need you, for things like this. You may lack imagination, but you're a fabulous detail man. I'm not kidding, you know. I really am gonna fall apart."
"I know, honey. Look who you're talking to. Been there, done that, as you young people say."
"I never say that. It's stupid. Way overused. It was funny maybe once. And if you had said 'got the t-shirt' at the end, I'd have killed you too."
"I'd have had it coming." There was one thing that bothered me, though. It had not struck me until that moment. "Janie," I said, "why did you go down to the old INS office? How did you figure it out? How did you know we would be there?"
She shoved her hands into the front pockets of her jeans and studied the sidewalk beneath her feet. "Because I'm clever, Dad. I'm Sherlock Holmes with tits. Not an overabundance of tits, it's true," she said, plucking at the front of her t-shirt, "but you get the picture." She chuckled. She looked up at me with a little cockeyed grin.
"You want to know the truth? I have absolutely no idea. Not a clue. I had gone to bed while Missy was out doing 'errands.' I was just drifting off when-- out of nowhere-- I knew I had to go to your old office. And I did."
"Oh. I don't know what to make of that. You had a weird thing, huh? Well, Shelley… That is, Missy did seem to have some kind of a telepathic deal going on. Or you might have subconsciously…"
"Dad. Shush. Let me have my magic, okay?"
"Sure, honey. Sorry. All I can say is thank God it never seems to occur to you to doubt yourself. You didn't save her, but it was much too late for that anyway. You didn't save me, because she wouldn't have killed me. Probably. But I think you needed to be there for your own sake, somehow. It's rough. It's horrible. Worse on you by far than on me. But you'll be okay. You're a survivor."
"Yeah," she said. A sigh. Silence for several paces. She was looking down at her feet, seemingly fascinated by the spectacle of her sneakers moving along the sidewalk. "You know why it never occurs to me to doubt myself?" She looked up at me, just a glance, less than a second. There was a smile there, though it was invisible. Then she looked back down and said, "Because you never did. You never doubted yourself, and you never doubted me. You never forgot me, Dad. You never let me down. And that's how I'm gonna survive what happened back there."
I think it was the greatest moment of my life.
What could I say to that? What would you have said? You'd have broken down and cried, which is what I knew I would do if I attempted to respond. Here was my Janie who would never back down from anyone or anything any more than I ever had. I knew it was pointless to worry over her. Not only could she never be controlled, she couldn't even be protected. It would be as pointless to try taming her as it had been trying to tame me so long ago. I wasn't Tony Vincenzo. I knew when I was outgunned. I loved her too much to insult her by thinking I would even stand a chance. Truth is, I admired and respected the living hell out of my girl. And it was mutual. I was so proud of her at that moment. And as her words sunk into my heart I was a little proud of myself, too. How could I call myself a failure now?
I grunted and jerked my head in the direction of a saloon we were passing. I looked a question and she smiled an answer. Without a word, she plucked her old straw hat from her head and plopped it onto mine. We walked into the cool dark of the bar, and that night my little girl and I got drunk together and talked as we had never talked before.
This may well be the last story I write about the weird stuff. Odds are you will never read it. You'll probably sleep better for that fact. But there will be other things for me, other stories, other experiences. I am nowhere near dead yet, and I hope I won't have to leave any time soon.
THE END
By Chuck Miller
Story copyright 2007 by Chuck Miller
Characters and situations copyright 2007 by Jeff Rice
Background info may be found here: http://en. Skorzeny- "The Night Stalker" (1972)
Dr. Richard Malcolm- "The Night Strangler" (1973)
The Ripper- "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" premiere episode (1974)
Francois Edmonds ("The Zombie") - "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" second episode (1974)
Catherine Rawlins ("The Vampire") - "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" fourth episode (1974)
Story copyright 2007 by Chuck Miller
Characters and situations copyright 2007 by Jeff Rice
Background info may be found here: http://en. Skorzeny- "The Night Stalker" (1972)
Dr. Richard Malcolm- "The Night Strangler" (1973)
The Ripper- "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" premiere episode (1974)
Francois Edmonds ("The Zombie") - "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" second episode (1974)
Catherine Rawlins ("The Vampire") - "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" fourth episode (1974)
Shelley Forbes' Story
I was so happy; at least I thought that's what it was. I was so twisted by that time, so full of fear and other things, I wasn't sure I could really be happy any longer… I thought maybe happiness was one of those things that was never really real to begin with, you know, and I was just now learning that. But I had some hope, yes, when you came in. I would at least get out. It would go no further.
Then. Remember? You heard him coming in. You poked the gag back into my mouth and shushed me. You didn't say anything, but I thought I had a promise that you would return.
And you left me. All alone you left me. I didn't mean much. That's what it felt like.
I was up there for hours, Mr. Kolchak. It felt like weeks. They did not find me right away. The house was sealed off. They didn’t search upstairs until much later. And I couldn’t move or make any sound or anything. You didn’t tell them! You just left me there when you heard him coming back, and later on you forgot! So I lay there for a while longer, and it already seemed to me that I’d been there my whole life. I remembered school like it was a hundred years ago, or just a movie I saw at some point.
I had started dreaming things, even though I was awake. These dreams, which were more like memories-- only they weren’t my memories-- kind of superimposed themselves over the room and the bed and everything else. Most of them felt very old. Like they really were a hundred years old, but they felt brand new to me. After a while, I could tell that they came from different lives. I had never lived any of them, but they had somehow gotten into me and they wanted me to pay attention to them. One of them I thought was the Civil War. The uniforms looked right, going by what I’ve seen in movies. Later I found out I was right.
There was blood everywhere, more than you could imagine, and a smell that was almost solid, I swear. It did something to my eyes, but it wasn't stinging them. It was more like they were saturated. In some of the visions I had a saw in my hand and I was cutting, cutting, cutting through something and someone was splashing alcohol on whatever it was I was cutting and there was a lot of screaming. And then I noticed the thoughts going through my head that weren't my own, and they kept repeating, "I must rise above this. I must live forever."
Another group of the dreams happened in a big city, but there were no cars and very few lights compared to cities today. I don’t think they had electricity. And I was in a sort of slum, with all these gray buildings pile up and shoved in together all crazy, this way and that. And there were these women, five different women I'd learned to recognize from seeing them time and again in this dream. And I was cutting in this dream too, but it was different. I was… Well, I was cutting these women is what I was doing, Mr. Kolchak.
And I had tools like a doctor would have, but I wasn’t helping these women, I was just cutting them up and removing things from inside them. I didn’t want to hurry, but I had to on all but the last one. She was different because she was younger and kind of pretty but she had bad teeth. I remember that. And we were inside a room, her room. This girl… I cut on her for a long, long time. I took everything out of her, everything I could find, and I threw some of it into the fireplace, and other parts I wrapped up in this heavy brown paper and tied up with twine. And there were a couple of things I just left on a little table beside her bed. I worked and worked until I had stripped most of her down to the bone, and I noticed through a little chink at the top of the door that the sun had come up. I was covered in sweat and I had blood on me too and I felt really cold. And I got ready to leave the room and go home, and I took the brown paper package with me and I think I was going to eat what was in it. I did not know it at the time, but her name was Mary Kelley and she was 25 years old.
Other dreams I had were more confused, more chaotic, and always dark. And of course there was blood, lots and lots of blood. It seemed to me that I could taste it.
I was like this for a while, drifting in and out, and eventually, suddenly, they found me. The police. They started shouting and a radio was pulled out and a bunch of squawking was coming from it. Someone took the gag out of my mouth but I couldn't think of anything to say. I didn't know where I was. I thought I was still in the room with Mary Kelley, you see, and I thought perhaps I had been caught doing what I did, and maybe they were taking me out to hang me. People were feeling parts of me and asking me questions I could not even decipher. I tried to look around to the fireplace where I had thrown Mary Kelley's insides, but it wasn't there. Then there was a lot of jolting, and springs squeaking, and some straps went across my chest.
After the hospital I went to another hospital, one run by the state, and I was there for two months I think. I was discharged into my parents' care and they took me home. But home wasn't home. I still had my dreams and visions, though I had mentioned nothing about them to any of the doctors. My mom and dad knew something was wrong. Beyond the obvious, I mean. As far as Skorzeny went, they believed the official story. A mass murderer had abducted me.
For a while I was at my parents' house, and at some point they got a letter from Doctor Richard Malcolm. Or Malcolm Richards, I forget which. He presented himself as a prominent psychiatrist specializing in acute trauma. Having read about my case in the newspaper, Doctor Richard Malcolm, eminent West Coast psychiatrist, took an interest in the poor traumatized Vegas girl and offered his help, free of charge. Soon, I was packed and bundled up and sent off with the doctor to his "research hospital."
And how!
You know, of course, who and what Malcolm really was. He took me back to Seattle and installed me in his little "resort" beneath the streets. And he told me things. He loved to talk.
Here are a few of the things he told me:
FACT: The individual you knew as Janos Skorzeny was not Janos Skorzeny. At least not the one you thought he was. He was much older. I'll get to that. By 1863 he had been a vampire for some years. He came to America during the Civil War and soon found employment as a mercenary-- working for both the North and the South at various times-- specializing in nighttime raids on enemy encampments.
FACT: Skorzeny, Malcolm and the Ripper were not isolated cases. They knew one another. In a sense, they created one another.
It was at Gettysburg that the three came together.
July 1st, 2nd and 3rd, 1863. The battle was a veritable orgy for creatures like them. Blood literally hung in the air like a mist. Malcolm, the quintessential mad scientist, could at last gorge himself on a limitless supply of raw material for his experiments. The future Jack the Ripper could indulge his one true passion openly, with no fear of sanctions or consequences.
Skorzeny was the only one with a complaint, as he could not immerse himself in the daytime slaughter. He made up for it by night, though, and on the second night he let himself get a bit carried away. When dawn came he was pinned down far from his coffin full of earth. He was wearing Union colors at the time, though on this occasion, he was working for neither side. He was merely enjoying himself. A Union patrol found him, immobilized, and carried him back to the field hospital where Richard Malcolm had been working feverishly for two score hours or more.
One of the Union men who had found Skorzeny sensed something odd and intriguing, and he remained there in the hospital-- that's really too generous a word-- with him, listening, watching, examining. When a minister came around, the vampire went into convulsions, and his Union rescuer, no fan of the clergy himself, took the opportunity to deliver a quick beating.
Soon the cleric was unconscious on the ground next to Skorzeny's cot. The vampire, weakened and disoriented though he was, looked upon this spectacle and could not restrain a smile. The smile revealed not only a gleeful appreciation of cruelty, but a pair of unnaturally long and sharp canine teeth.
Presently, the doctor made his way around to where Skorzeny lay. A quick examination was enough to tell him that here was something remarkable. He formed an alliance with Skorzeny and Jack, who demanded to be cut in (and even Malcolm could see that this was not a young man to be toyed with or ignored), and the rest was history. Well, sort of. Just not recorded history. Until now. In the months ahead, Malcolm studied Skorzeny carefully.
Malcolm was working on his own immortality. Skorzeny had found his. The Ripper wanted his own, and was prepared to do anything at all to get it. He had been a monster for a long time before he found his way there. During his years of ordinary life, murder had been an easy way to achieve whatever goals he had, large or small. Early on, it had been a slightly regrettable necessity. Later, he came to enjoy it, and then to revel in it. Finally, he needed it to live, like air or water. Had killing not served this purpose, he would still have sought it as an end in itself. To do what you love and make a living at it! Who could ask for more? Well, Jack could. He asked that he be allowed to do it forever.
Malcolm "perfected" a version of his elixir with Skorzeny's blood as an ingredient.
Skorzeny, who was fascinated by the miraculous technological advances of the 19th Century, saw an opportunity. He cared nothing for what science might do for humanity, of course. But he saw that faith in science might slowly replace faith in God, and so… He was the Serpent, you see. He was the devil who would taint the new "religion" with his own ancient evil. He alone, he thought, would breach that barrier and then seal it again. He would be a brand new Antichrist for the post-Industrial Revolution world order. If Malcolm represented the future of science, the future would be steeped in Skorzeny's blood. He was mind-bogglingly melodramatic. He had very little in the way of emotional nuance, and saw the world, I believe, in the same way a young child sees a cartoon.
The elixir was administered to Jack first. The effect on his system was not quite the same as it would be on Malcolm's. It has a lot to do with individual body chemistry. Or maybe "soul chemistry." After all, it was half magical, so who can say?
The Ripper had strength, speed, and agility like a vampire's. And he was nocturnal. Sunlight would not kill him, but he preferred the dark. He was stronger at night. And, like Malcolm, he needed the blood of women who had just been murdered-- it would be flooded with adrenaline and other things, concentrated in the major organs. It wasn't the blood itself he required. It was the substances the blood carried. He merely ate the raw material, there was no need for him to mix it and refine it in a laboratory.
Malcolm was the thinker, the scientist. Skorzeny was the strategist. Jack was the muscle. The other two needed him, you see, because Skorzeny could do nothing in the daytime, and Malcolm's grip on reality was so feeble even by this time that he was virtually useless outside of his laboratory. You saw what he was like at the end. Well, he was showing signs of what would now be recognized as paranoid schizophrenia before he even began his "treatments." The elixir froze him in place, physically and mentally. He got no worse, except for those 18-day periods every 21 years when the effects began to wear off and his body began to decompose, along with his reason and self-control. The three had eventually gone their separate ways, but maintained contact.
In fact, Skorzeny had been sending blood to Malcolm for years. Every 21 years, to be exact. But 1973 rolled around, Malcolm needed more of the blood, and none was forthcoming because Skorzeny was gone. Somehow, though, he had heard about me, and correctly deduced that Skorzeny had been slowly turning me. Which mean not just a draining of blood, but a mingling. Skorzeny had fed me some of his. Absolutely nauseating, I assure you.
His elixir would soon begin to break down again. He needed me. But he did not intend to use me in the way he normally used women. He thought that my blood-- tainted as it now was by Skorzeny's-- might hold some sort of key. After a few preliminary tests, he summoned the Ripper and prepared to begin his work in earnest. I was a woman. My body constantly produced the substances his formula required. Could it be stabilized using me as a growth medium?
Because the other ingredient Malcolm needed was the blood of a vampire.
Skorzeny had supplied him with it, but Skorzeny was gone now. But I had vampire blood in me, and I had the elixir too. Just like the Ripper. But I had something the Ripper did not. Female hormones. That was the key to everything. To life. In order to continuously renew life, you had to have aspects of both male and female. It makes sense, don't you think? Prolonging life is really the same as reproducing it. It's all about immortality. And so, to further that end, he administered a dose of the elixir to me. He did not need the fresh female blood to add to it, for obvious reasons.
Now we get back to 1973. The time of the madness came. He had to do what he always did. He locked me away. But it was to protect me during those 18 days when the desperation came over him and he could not guarantee that he wouldn't attack me. Before that, though, when we were in the early days of his research on me, I had been given the run of the place. He had no reason not to trust me. And if he had, I fear he was too unbalanced to realize it. I could come and go. I stayed, returning every evening on the days I spent outside. Because he was not an unpleasant man, and I was curious about what happened to me and to him and to his friends.
I felt the need to do something, but I did not know what. For some reason, you came to mind. I tried to find you, but you had left Las Vegas. I made more inquiries-- my intellect, my inner resources, had expanded considerably since my experiences in Skorzeny's house. I found I could be very persuasive. I found out where you were. I made the acquaintance of some people at the newspaper in Seattle. I thought it best if I first obtained your friend Mr. Vincenzo. He was hired away from the Las Vegas Daily News at my "suggestion." Then you. I got word to you that you might find employment in Seattle and you came.
You look skeptical. Is it so hard to believe I arranged it? Is it easier to believe that first your editor and then you wound up in the same place at precisely the time that another near-immortal killer emerged from his seclusion by sheer chance?
And why did I do it? I don't know. I wanted you near. For revenge? For protection? I cannot say. I think I was already becoming a bit unbalanced myself by then.
But you came. Just in time for Malcolm's killing spree. Then you got mixed in and you put an end to Malcolm, and there I was again, Mr. Kolchak! Forgotten once again.
But I was found, and not so very long afterward, though once again it seemed like years. I sank deeper into the alien memories.
But I was "rescued" from that place. By the third member of the dark trinity. Malcolm had sent word, remember, asking him to come and participate in the new research. One day-- or night-- a man in a black suit and a black hat and a black cape lined with red descended into Malcolm's all but totally dead world and ripped the iron door off of my cage.
He told me his name was Jack the Ripper.
For a time, I belonged to him.
I've read so many books about him, so much speculation. Nobody ever came close. He was never what anyone thought he was. Strange. He was open to so many interpretations, like a figure from religion or mythology. He had these… meanings that were nothing to do with him, with what he really was. I was with him for a year, but it didn't seem like a year. I don't know if it seemed like more or if it seemed like less. It seemed like something else. Something that wasn't made of time at all. Time is not what most people think it is, Mr. Kolchak. It's… roomier. It must be infinite, I think, and if so, it is infinite in all directions, not just forward and backward. You can stick your arms out (which she did by way of illustration, at right angles from her body, and wiggled her long fingers), and never touch a wall, so to speak. And it is indestructible." She sighed and dropped her arms. "Some things can only be understood as metaphor, and even then…not really understood at all."
But he didn't want to kill me. He didn't need me for my blood, but he needed… I can't say he needed a friend, exactly, but… Some kind of a constant. Somebody who knew what he was, every bit of it. Not approved, just knew. Someone who would… be there I suppose. He certainly wasn't in love with me. That kind of thing was not in him. I think I was supposed to be like a… a pet maybe. Or a treasured knickknack that you take with you wherever you go and put up on a shelf so you can see it every day.
Apart from that, and his "sport…" He wanted you. You had murdered his "brothers," and he would have revenge. That's why we went to Chicago. That's why he paraded himself in public. To draw your attention. And it worked, didn't it? However, he found he had bitten off far more than he could chew.
You are formidable, Mr. Kolchak. I don't know what it is that you have. For more than a hundred years, Jack the Ripper had lived and killed and nobody could stop him. Nobody but you. I think I knew you would. I never foresaw it coming out any other way. I really had nothing against him, you know. He was never cruel to me. But absence of cruelty is not kindness, and it certainly isn't love.
I was there when you killed him. I saw it. And then something extraordinary happened.
I absorbed him. Something of his essence. Not his personality. Not his soul, if he even had one. I don't know what happened to that. But the power he had cultivated for so long. It came to me.
After that night, things were very different. I don't know what it was I absorbed when you killed the Ripper. I don't know if the electricity "boosted" whatever it was. But I had something brand new, and another set of senses opened in me. I could feel things. I knew there were many other anomalous creatures and forces in the word. If I concentrated, I could find them. Not only that-- but they could find me.
Not overtly. They didn't know why they came, or even that it was not their own idea. With the Ripper gone and his energy added to mine, I became open to these others, aware of them. The first one I sought out was your old friend Mama Loa. She was a voodoo practitioner, and a pretty ordinary one as those things go. Voodoo is mostly psychological. A houngan, or adept, serves his community as a sort of priest/doctor/judge.
She was grieving for her grandson, Francois. She wanted revenge for his death, but the spells she cast were feeble. She had been weakened by her years in America, far from the seat of belief in her religion. And in any case, she was not Bokor-- literally, 'the priest who serves with his left hand,' one who trafficks with the darker and more powerful of the Loa. When I met her, I could sense the Loa-- spirits-- all around her. They wanted to help, but her magicks were not enough to grant them access to this plane. They cannot act unilaterally, you see. But my power was of another order entirely. I brought the Loa over and I helped her raise her Francois up from the ground. Mama took me for Baron Samedi, the lord of the dead in her belief system, and I never bothered to correct her.
You never knew him in life, Mr. Kolchak, but I can assure you that Francois Edmonds was very thoroughly a monster before he died. I had no compunctions about using him as I did. The old lady was far from a saint herself. After the deed had been done, I found a way to nudge you in that direction. Because I knew what you would do. You wouldn't be able to stay away once you knew. I was there in that junkyard when you snuffed out his life, such as it was-- or should I say, forced it out of his body-- and I absorbed it. That was reassuring, since I now knew that the Ripper hadn't been a fluke. I never meant for him to kill you, and would have prevented it if he had tried.
Why you? Mr. Kolchak, you are more special than you have ever realized. Had I not brought them across your path, they would have manifested elsewhere, and nobody would have stopped them. You are still an enigma. I don't sense anything otherworldly about you, though. Maybe that's part of it… Perhaps you are so unremarkable you pass with impunity beneath anyone's radar. A vampire of any experience and standing is prepared for an onslaught by a fearless vampire hunter. He expects it. There is a certain type that gravitates to that kind of work, and they are easily identifiable, thus understandable and beatable. But a reporter with no innate magical ability, no discernible psychic ability, no history of involvement with paranormal issues…
Well, anyhow, I 'broadcast' an appeal, and they came. Catherine Rawlins 'heard' me, perhaps because I have some of Skorzeny in me, and it was enough to resurrect her. But she was terrified that Skorzeny might be waiting for her in the direction she felt compelled to travel, so she went the other way instead.
I took all the energy. Every time you killed one of them, there was a release, and I caught it. For some reason, it had to be you. I could not do it myself. It was enough to keep me going for a long while. It was my "elixir." And the monsters, Mr. Kolchak! Purging this plane of some of its nightmares and feeding me at the same time. This is an irony I believe you will like once I point it out. They were killers; they victimized anyone who crossed their path, all for the sake of their worthless power. And then you turned the tables. We turned the tables, you and I. I was always with you but you never knew. You became my stalker in the night. You did to them the very same thing they did to so many others. And you didn't know it, of course, but you were doing it for me. If-- and I say if-- you owed me anything for leaving me hanging twice, you paid me back in full and more.
After the final time-- that bizarre business with Helen of Troy-- I felt I had "turned a corner." My mind was clear and I thought my soul was too. I released you that night. As for that lizard thing a couple weeks later, I don't know what that was all about. Not one of mine. Neither was the robot. I do believe, however, that I somehow attracted those invisible aliens. By the way, they weren't invisible. You and everyone else involved saw them quite clearly. However, if your minds had actually acknowledged what you were looking at, they'd have had to shut down. That's what happens when you cram eight-dimensional creatures into three-dimensional space. They weren't from outer space… exactly. And the "saucer" you found was not a vehicle in the sense that we understand the term. The best way to express it in English would be a "temporary psuedo-Euclidian multi-point shallow interface enabler."
Be that as it may, once I had absorbed a certain amount of whatever it was I was absorbing from your kills, I felt wonderful. I didn't kill anyone after that. Until recently, that is. My appearance froze, just as Malcolm's had. I began to believe that, in most ways, I was normal. I had no desire to return to my parents or indeed anything I had known before. Shelley Forbes was dead. Whatever I was as I passed through the hands of that succession of monsters had no name, and she was gone too. I traveled for a long while. I saw most of the world. Then I had a desire to return… not home, I wouldn't call it that. To the country of my birth, then. And once there I would start a brand new life.
I wanted to go to college. So I did. It was wonderful. I met a lot of people. Friends. One in particular. After a time, though, I realized the possibility that I might never change. I could look young for… How long? Decades? Centuries? Most of the free radicals had been purged from my system. Mechanisms that produce visible signs of aging had been suppressed. But I got older in years. Unlike other people, however, it didn't leave any marks. Twenty-five years after I was taken by Skorzeny, I was 19 years old on the outside. There was every reason to believe that in another 25 years, the same would hold true. I believed, you see, that a great many biological processes had come to a halt, or had slowed down to a level that was all but imperceptible. Not so. But I didn't work that out until much later.
I now shared Skorzeny's old dilemma. Now and then he would let his old identity "die" and assume a new one in a different place. He was actually the great-grandfather of the Janos Skorzeny you thought you found in Vegas. He killed his great-grandson as though by divine right, and "became" him. Well, I didn't want undue attention either. And if I stayed in one place long enough, I'd receive it.
I didn't want to drag anyone else into whatever my life had become. Or would become. I didn't "die," but I left. I stayed in touch, but I gave flimsy reasons for doing what I had done. This was a year ago. And, in the event, it was a very good thing I had acted in this way, because I soon started to feel different. I became angry more often. I lost track of what I was thinking or saying. The other lives in my head got louder and more intrusive. For a week at a time I might think I was in Whitechapel in 1888, and I knew what it felt like to want so desperately to spill blood, then lap it up. And along with the blood, and just as sweet, the terror. I ached to slip from the chains of conscience and reason. I did not need blood and death, but I WANTED them. Very badly.
What was it that sounded the knell? It was menopause, Mr. Kolchak. Of all things. That was when I knew my eternal youth was just a façade. I might live a hundred more years, or a thousand, but my body would break down like any human being. But it would do it very slowly. I would I look the same on the outside, but that's just cosmetic. My skin is still supple, my muscles are still toned, but on the inside, things are shutting down. I'm in my 50s now. During menopause, a woman's body slowly produces less of the hormones estrogen and progesterone. And those are the very things that keep the vampire blood and the Malcolm elixir balanced. The elixir in my system was destabilizing after twenty-some-odd years. Perhaps I could keep the changes at bay if I could receive further treatments, but I have no idea how to do that. All of Malcolm's papers and equipment were confiscated while I was still locked in my room. If they were not all destroyed, they are someplace I was never able to find.
The thing is… Did you know that women produce testosterone too? It's true. Not as much as men of course. And the level drops during menopause just as the other hormones do. But it doesn't drop off quickly enough, at least for my purposes. Testosterone is the volatile factor, the monkey wrench in the works of the Malcolm elixir. And it doesn't take much. Adding the vampire blood to the elixir did not produce any of the changes that would have been a red flag to Malcolm. He observed and tested the mix for weeks before trying it. It remained chemically stable. It should have worked.
Vampires, being dead and all, produce no hormones of any kind. There was no testosterone present in the compound to alert Malcolm to the danger. Another flaw of Malcolm's was that he saw the vampire as some sort of human aberration, an organic condition or disorder that could be understood and explained by science, given time. That is simply not the case. Call it magic if you like. Vampirism isn't a virus or a mutation or anything that can be explained in human terms. What possible biological base could there be for a lethal allergy to Christian iconography?
Crosses started bothering me. Stars of David too, oddly enough. I was raised a WASP, but… Anything that… stank of God-- that's the only way I can describe it-- put me off terribly. The sight of a Koran made me ill. I started thinking about things. Awful things. The kind of things from my dreams. But these were not dreams, and the thoughts did not come from anybody else. They were mine. My thoughts, my desires, my obsessions. I knew there was no hope. I was lucid most of the time-- I'm lucid now, but it's taking a lot of effort-- I knew I would have to be… dealt with… put down. Like the rest of them. My body chemistry has destabilized to the point that I am vulnerable to the sort of madness they all knew, to one degree or another.
I wanted it to be you. When I knew there was no way I could… come back. I knew I was going to get worse, much worse. I had to kill. I wanted to kill. I want to kill right now. Not necessarily you, just anybody. NOT you. I wouldn't. But it is now at the point where it can fairly be said that there is more than one of me; and the part of me that doesn't want to be a monster is outgunned, three to one. How can you get four whole lifetimes into one mind? Especially when three of them are unnaturally long? They outweigh me, you see. And all the while, without me noticing it, I was becoming what they were. There was no more dividing line.
I thought of you so often. Of your courage and how I had used you. And I had to do it again. I fought-- fought with myself--my selves-- over how to do it, or if I would even do it at all. I found an effective carrot, though. I offered myself the chance to murder. I made it all right because I would only murder those who had harmed you. The ones who stood in your way and refused to believe in you. I left a little trail I knew you would follow. It was the only way I could persuade myself to reach out to you. I'm ashamed of it. And I will do it again if I am allowed to leave this place alive tonight.
The tape ended and the little recorder clicked off. I started from force of habit to flip it over, but Shelley shook her head no.
"There's not much left," she said, "And the rest is better left unrecorded.
"What's left for me now is death. My own death. It's really the only way. And I cannot kill myself. I've tried. So…
"Someone who loves me should do it. It's… better that way I think. I don't know that it's necessary. But my believing it makes it necessary, if you follow. I didn't… I couldn't… There was someone, but I couldn't possibly… And I thought of you and what you had done for me before, even though you didn't know…Do you love me? Not romantically. Agape, not Eros. Even just a little, maybe? Because I love you. You were… almost like a father to me…Could you love me enough, do you think?"
My heart was breaking right then and there. I thought I knew what heartbreak felt like, thought I had experienced it, but I hadn't. Not until that very moment did I know what the phrase really meant. Oh God, this poor girl. I had been the center of her life, and I never even knew it. Like a father... Too sad to think about for very long. And I knew she was right about everything. I could see what was happening to her. During her monologue, I had noticed that her conversational style had changed three or four times. She was coming undone.
She walked up to me and pressed into my hands a long, sharp wooden stake and a heavy mallet. "Could you love me enough to kill me?"
That was some question. I thought about it. No, I didn't. I couldn't think anything. I felt dizzy. I don't know how long I might have stood there or how blank my mind would have gotten. But then…
"Well, if he doesn't, I goddamn sure do. Missy, what in the hell???"
From somewhere miles above me, several tons of pennies dropped, and other shoes hit floors for miles around. That voice went right through my head and made my scalp and everything else tingle. I turned ever so slowly to watch the shadowy figure emerging from what was, an age ago, Tony Vincenzo's office.
As she stepped into the light, I saw that Janie's face was blank. No expression. She looked at me like she knew me but didn't know me. At the moment, I felt the same way about her. She kept my eyes fixed with hers so I could not look down or to the side or anywhere else. The force of her personality was displaying itself in a way I had never before seen, and I was in awe of her, my little girl. This was not magic and it was not science. It was her.
There was another oddity about her appearance which didn't quite register at that moment, and which I will address later.
"Missy," she said, looking away from me, "You could have told me, you know." She was angry, but not for what would seem to be the obvious reason. "I am so pissed at you right now. You could have told me this and you should have."
"Janie," she said. "Janie, I never meant to deceive you. I never wanted to hurt you."
"Then you have some serious disconnect when it comes to pursuing your avowed goals," Janie snapped. "But never mind that. That isn't the point. You haven't got much time left, so please don't fritter it away spouting clichés. It really and truly almost never matters what a person did or didn't mean to do. That isn't why I'm pissed. I've always known who you are. You never could have faked that. I love you, and it isn't about me. I'm not a thin-skinned little buttercup, Missy. I know who you are, and what you are could never be of more than secondary importance. I'm not in love with the idea that you're a killer and a half-vampire or whatever the hell you are, but goddamn! What you must think of me! What did you think I'd do if you told me? Dump you? Kill you? Hate you? You just left. You went away."
"I didn't. I… I didn't disappear entirely. I stayed in touch, Janie."
"Oh, well then, yeah, I forgot. You wrote a couple letters. Okay, never mind then, I'm overreacting. Letters and phone calls where you said nothing, didn't answer anything, and certainly didn't continue anything. You know better than that. Do not try to present that shit as exculpatory evidence."
"Well, I…" Missy was stumped. Janie did that to people a lot. "I was afraid… When I started… changing… getting crazy… I was afraid I might do something to you. Kill you, or…"
Janie laughed. "Oh, honey, I'm not that much of a romantic. You try killing me and I'll make you forget all about Jack the goddamn Ripper. Why does everybody underestimate me? I guess it's my little wholesome pixie poppet looks or my effing sweet personality.
"And then, out of the blue, you invite me to come up and visit you, and while I'm reeling from that, in comes my father announcing that he's on his way to Chicago. I didn't tell him you were the one that made the suggestion because he's good at adding things up, as long as it's two and two. But I knew it was hinky. I mean I certainly didn't foresee anything like this shit. I didn't foresee anything. I could not begin to puzzle out how you inviting me here on the spur of the moment could have any possible connection with my dad wanting to come stampeding up here, on an equally spurious moment of his own. But there just aren't any coincidences that big, in my experience. I wanted to find out for myself and by myself what the fuck.
"So now I know. It's fucked up, but it makes sense, I guess. From a certain point of view. But I don't understand why you got me to come. Did you want something to hold over Dad's head, just in case? Tell me that is not why you invited me. And tell me even more persuasively that our whole relationship wasn't some kind of a Trojan horse."
Shelley's face was a perfect mask of anguish. "You must think… oh, I hope you don't think my whole… our whole… I didn't seek you out because of your father. That's the one thing in this that really was a coincidence. Mostly. I just happened to pick the same college you went to. I noticed your name on the bulletin board, looking for a roommate. I thought, there couldn't be very many Kolchaks in the world. I was so curious, I couldn't let it go. I called you. I met you. I moved in. Soon after that, I forgot everything else. You were… You were something I had never imagined having. I thought it might be okay. Somehow. I knew what I would very likely face eventually, but I… I let myself get caught up. I wanted to. I wanted not to think about later."
"Okay. But why did you want me here now? In Chicago, I mean. You had no intention of bringing me to this office for this... whatever. You would have succeeded in keeping me away, in fact, if I weren't so goddamn clever. So why?"
Missy raised her eyebrows. "Why? Janie. Please. Why do you think I would want you here? Why now, knowing that I am soon to die? I wanted to see you. I had to see you again before… this. I couldn't stand to leave the world without seeing your face and saying goodbye to you first."
"Oh," Janie replied, and fell into an uncharacteristic silence. Whatever was clawing at her insides right now had to be worse than any number of ghosts or zombies. Her eyes were dry, but her lips twitched and her chin dimpled up.
"You idiot" Janie said, her voice huskier than I had ever heard it. She had just swallowed a very bitter pill indeed, and was fighting to keep it down. "There's every chance I could have helped you before you let it go this far. And if I were you, I wouldn't even try telling me that there was nothing I could have done. You knew very well that I knew more about the world, the hidden stuff, than most people. You knew my dad was a bona-goddamn-fide monster-killer! And that really eats my lunch. Because now I have to do this! And if I've got the guts for it, which you're about to find out I do, then I'd have been able to come up with something before you dragged all of us here." And then my daughter whirled on me and held out her hand.
"Give, Dad."
I shook my head. "Janie, you can't…" And I just stopped talking because I knew it was not true. Whether she could or not, she would.
She held out her other hand. Slowly, I placed the stake in her left hand, the mallet in her right. I can do it, she told me, without saying a word. No telepathy or anything like that. I just knew what I was seeing in her eyes, and she knew I knew, and we agreed. She nodded and turned her gaze away from mine. My eyes felt as though some kind of physical restraint had been removed from them, and I actually swayed back and forth a little, blinking rapidly. Janie's gaze had kept my eyes cool and dry, and the release allowed dammed-up tears to suddenly spill, and my vision blurred immediately so that I could not clearly see what was happening. I was kind of grateful for that.
There wasn't much talk. No big scene. No declarations or recriminations, no laments, no screams, no crying. I heard Janie say, "What do you think, right here?"
Missy replied, "Uh-huh, that’s right. Between these two ribs."
"Okay, then. Here we go. You ready?" I could not know what it was costing my daughter to maintain her calm, but I had a feeling that when the check arrived it would probably break the bank.
"I think I am, Janie. I'm sorry. I wish I had trusted you. I do love you, you know. I always have. It wasn't about you. I mean, you were about you, but the rest was…"
"I know. I never doubted you. Or me. I knew whatever was wrong was something else. It's very fortunate that self-esteem is something I have never lacked. I don't know how the rest of you get along with so little… I hate to part on bad terms, but I'm still royally pissed at you, young lady. If you do find yourself in an afterlife, I want you to ruminate on the fact that you're going to be in for an eternal ass whipping when I get there... And we…" Her breath caught. "Oh… Missy, your eyes are turning red."
"Yes. My brain is too, on the inside. I think something's happening to my soul, as well. This is it. You have to do it now. Don't wait any more. Please, let me die without ever wanting to kill you! Okay? It's okay. I'll always…"
"Shut up," Janie whispered. "I will too."
Having done the thing myself twice I knew the drill, and even though Shelley Forbes was compliant and did not scream, the sounds and the smells immediately called up horribly vivid recollections of both Skorzeny and Catherine Rawlins. I swayed on my feet again, and this time I fell over, not even feeling the floor when I hit it. My head started ringing again and I squeezed my eyes shut. I did not even attempt to see what was happening, I just listened and I heard Shelley cough and whisper "Thank you," almost inaudible over the three or four sharp pops as the mallet in my daughter's hand pounded a wooden stake into her friend's heart. When Shelly got quiet, Janie didn't make a sound for several seconds. Then she sighed. I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of my jacket in time to see Janie lean down over Shelley and kiss her on the lips. Then, softly and sweetly, like a prayer or a blessing or a declaration of love she said, "God damn it to hell, Missy."
All things considered, it was an appropriate epitaph.
Missy's body dissolved. That's it. Were you expecting maybe an agonizing spectacle of blood and fire and screaming, a harrowing, climactic coda, the kind that is absolutely de rigueur in the final scene of a horror story? There wasn't one. She dissolved. First into a sort of gelatinous liquid, then something like fine sand, then vapor, and finally nothing at all. For a few seconds the air seemed to be saturated with static electricity, and I had the damnedest sensation that it was saying something I couldn't decipher.
So. All my questions were answered at last. But they left a brand new one in their place. Was it finally over? Had my daughter and I finally closed out the account that had started, for me and for Shelley, in Las Vegas so many years ago? Or… Or, had I just passed a torch that I had never asked or wanted to carry?
Janie and I stood there for a while, looking at the spot where nothing but a coarse brown robe now lay. The stake had dissolved too. I have no idea how or why. An elevated train rumbled by right outside the office windows and when it had passed I reached over and touched my girl under the chin with my forefinger, tilting her head up so I could see her eyes. They were dry, but that's about it.
"You'll be okay," I said. It wasn't a question.
She nodded. "Someday, I probably will. More or less. That was… I don't know what that was. Goddamn."
I smiled a little and asked her about the oddity I had just gotten around to noticing. "Where did you get that hat?"
On top of her head was an old straw hat with a narrow brim and a blue and red band. It looked as though someone had stomped on it repeatedly. Someone had. It looked as though it had once been saturated with sewage when its owner had gone down beneath the streets in search of a phantom swamp thing. It had. There was a small, ragged nick in the brim that an expert might recognize as having been made by the claw of a werewolf. A lot of things had happened to that hat before I lost track of it. One day it had just seemed to disappear. I had it in the morning; in the evening it was gone. Tony Vincenzo had referred to it as a "bird feeder" and an "eyesore," and he hadn't been wrong. But it was mine. I had raged and threatened dire consequences to anyone who might have taken it. Like King Lear, I promised to unleash "the terrors of the earth" upon the guilty party. But nothing had ever come of it. It was yet another unsolved mystery.
Janie motioned with her head in the direction of Vincenzo's office. "In there. It was stuck in the top drawer of an old desk. I was looking for something to hit someone with. I'd been here five minutes or so when… you know who came in. I had picked the lock. She just tore the goddamn knob out. With one hand! In that robe, I didn't know who it was. I was freaking out. Very quietly, of course. One of those things where if it were a movie, I'd have had to sneeze. I just kinda crouched down. Then you came in… But this hat…I just… I dunno, I liked the hat. The way it looked or something. I just stuck it on my head without thinking about it."
I scowled. "A desk drawer, eh? I knew it. Vincenzo. Why that…" Then I smiled. Thinking of Lear again, I was thankful that my only daughter was a Cordelia.
"Wait," I said. "How did you get in?"
She gave me a look reserved for small children who ask outrageously
obvious questions, and said, "Picked the lock. How else?"
I had to laugh. "Of course. Come on," I said. "Let's go somewhere."
As my little girl and I walked arm in arm along the street, I thought Janie suddenly looked much older. But no, that wasn't it… Not suddenly. I just suddenly noticed it. She had always looked older, and she did it in a way that made her look impossibly young and vulnerable. And if that doesn't make any sense to you, I'm sorry, but it's the best I can do.
We did not talk because it was time to be silent and just walk together because we could.
Were the monsters all gone now? Would any of them come back? Would there be new ones? We walked past an appliance store with a big screen TV in the window. One of the all-news networks with all the extraneous crawlers and photo insets and clocks cluttering the screen. They could make you take your eyes away from whatever was actually being reported on. Or let you. The center of the screen was a window on a war halfway around the world. A tiny girl, maybe six or seven, tottering along a littered street, one arm just dangling, blood all over the sleeve of her dress. The greatest hope she could reasonably entertain for her future was to make it to the end of that street without being shot or blown up. But her skin was dark. She didn't look like us or talk like us. Cut to the President of the United States, standing behind a podium, looking vacant as he no doubt spun another web of lethal lies. His bland face reminded me of the reality of Janos Skorzeny, his presence defined more by absences than by anything that was actually there. People mistook this vacuum behind his eyes for stupidity, but I knew what it really was. Or rather what it wasn't.
Below him, the death tolls scrolled by in their thousands, with hundreds more every day, and I thought of Jack the Ripper and the 75 women he killed in 86 years. His final victim had been my friend Jane Plum, and I thought of how wonderful she had been and how much poorer the world was for her leaving it. And she was only one.
I thought of the Ripper himself, who killed because he had to, because he wanted to, not as a smokescreen for some other, even sicker, agenda. He admitted his depravity; indeed he reveled in it in his letters to the police and newspapers. "I am down on whores," he wrote back in 1888, "and I shan't quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games." No justification, no attempts to blame, not a word about imaginary threats and phantom weapons programs. And I got to thinking that maybe I would miss him and his like in a strange way. The world Janie was inheriting might just be worse.
Janie spoke to me very softly. "I'm going to cry," she informed me in a businesslike tone. "In fact, I am going to have a complete goddamn nervous fucking breakdown, and I may very well wind up in an institution so I'll need for you to bring me magazines and stuff, and candy bars of course. I don't know the details right now; we'll just have to play it by ear. But I can't do it till at least next Friday, or maybe even after the weekend, depending on how busy I am."
"Of course," I replied, feeling something so bright and pure that there wasn't a word for it. "There is so much to consider with a thing like that. Give some thought to becoming delusional. You can probably get better drugs that way."
"You are such a help! It never would have occurred to me. This is why I need you, for things like this. You may lack imagination, but you're a fabulous detail man. I'm not kidding, you know. I really am gonna fall apart."
"I know, honey. Look who you're talking to. Been there, done that, as you young people say."
"I never say that. It's stupid. Way overused. It was funny maybe once. And if you had said 'got the t-shirt' at the end, I'd have killed you too."
"I'd have had it coming." There was one thing that bothered me, though. It had not struck me until that moment. "Janie," I said, "why did you go down to the old INS office? How did you figure it out? How did you know we would be there?"
She shoved her hands into the front pockets of her jeans and studied the sidewalk beneath her feet. "Because I'm clever, Dad. I'm Sherlock Holmes with tits. Not an overabundance of tits, it's true," she said, plucking at the front of her t-shirt, "but you get the picture." She chuckled. She looked up at me with a little cockeyed grin.
"You want to know the truth? I have absolutely no idea. Not a clue. I had gone to bed while Missy was out doing 'errands.' I was just drifting off when-- out of nowhere-- I knew I had to go to your old office. And I did."
"Oh. I don't know what to make of that. You had a weird thing, huh? Well, Shelley… That is, Missy did seem to have some kind of a telepathic deal going on. Or you might have subconsciously…"
"Dad. Shush. Let me have my magic, okay?"
"Sure, honey. Sorry. All I can say is thank God it never seems to occur to you to doubt yourself. You didn't save her, but it was much too late for that anyway. You didn't save me, because she wouldn't have killed me. Probably. But I think you needed to be there for your own sake, somehow. It's rough. It's horrible. Worse on you by far than on me. But you'll be okay. You're a survivor."
"Yeah," she said. A sigh. Silence for several paces. She was looking down at her feet, seemingly fascinated by the spectacle of her sneakers moving along the sidewalk. "You know why it never occurs to me to doubt myself?" She looked up at me, just a glance, less than a second. There was a smile there, though it was invisible. Then she looked back down and said, "Because you never did. You never doubted yourself, and you never doubted me. You never forgot me, Dad. You never let me down. And that's how I'm gonna survive what happened back there."
I think it was the greatest moment of my life.
What could I say to that? What would you have said? You'd have broken down and cried, which is what I knew I would do if I attempted to respond. Here was my Janie who would never back down from anyone or anything any more than I ever had. I knew it was pointless to worry over her. Not only could she never be controlled, she couldn't even be protected. It would be as pointless to try taming her as it had been trying to tame me so long ago. I wasn't Tony Vincenzo. I knew when I was outgunned. I loved her too much to insult her by thinking I would even stand a chance. Truth is, I admired and respected the living hell out of my girl. And it was mutual. I was so proud of her at that moment. And as her words sunk into my heart I was a little proud of myself, too. How could I call myself a failure now?
I grunted and jerked my head in the direction of a saloon we were passing. I looked a question and she smiled an answer. Without a word, she plucked her old straw hat from her head and plopped it onto mine. We walked into the cool dark of the bar, and that night my little girl and I got drunk together and talked as we had never talked before.
This may well be the last story I write about the weird stuff. Odds are you will never read it. You'll probably sleep better for that fact. But there will be other things for me, other stories, other experiences. I am nowhere near dead yet, and I hope I won't have to leave any time soon.
THE END
2 comments:
that was ace ! gonna check for more . lock your doors at night nice one thanx
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