The Vampire Shrink

CHAPTER 12

It was official. Like Elvis, my brain had definitely left the building.

At some point during the last few hours I’d apparently fallen down the rabbit-hole. I didn’t have a map of Wonderland, and nothing in my previous experience or education had prepared me to deal with the strange parallel universe I’d landed in.

Had someone slipped LSD into my Bloody Mary?

There I was, in the nether regions of Dracula’s castle, staring at a gorgeous self-proclaimed immortal who insisted he’d painted my portrait eight hundred years ago, and I couldn’t find the instruction manual to put the pieces together. I couldn’t even find the box the damn thing came in.

Devereux seemed to have that effect on me. One minute I was ready to rip my clothes off, leap into his arms, and lose myself in a frenzy of body parts. The next minute I was rocketing between shocked horror, mind-numbing confusion, and righteous anger. My brain just wasn’t equipped for that kind of neurochemical rollercoaster ride.

Then all hell broke loose.

I heard loud, angry voices out in the corridor and frantic pounding on the outer door to Devereux’s office. Evidently the villagers with burning torches had arrived.

‘Master! Master! Come quickly. They’re back and they’ve got Luna.’

Devereux grabbed the painting from the easel, shoved it at me and ordered, ‘Stay here.’ He moved so quickly through the opening in the wall of books that my eyes registered only a blur.

He must have opened the outer door because a cacophony of chaotic, fearful voices filled the air before the door clicked shut again, leaving me in eerie silence.

Stay here? I seriously don’t think so.

I slanted another glance at the portrait then returned it to the cabinet. No matter when it had been painted, it was clearly high quality. Devereux was a talented artist. What was it with me? Why did I have to fall for brilliant men who were either egomaniacs, crazy, or both?

I hurried out of his secret room and crossed the main office area, heading for the door to the hallway. The closer I drew, the louder the sounds became. I put my fingers on the handle and gently pushed down, silently easing the door inward until I could poke my head out and view the area directly in front of the entrance. I half-expected to find a guard standing there, another of Devereux’s motorcycle-gang thralls, who would keep me in my luxurious holding cell. However, this end of the hallway was empty.

Judging by the noise level, all the action was happening further up the corridor, in the area behind the velvet curtains. The sounds of crashing furniture, blood-curdling screams, Darth Vader-like rumblings, and screechings that had to be a demonic choir rehearsing the Satanic Mass for the Dead assailed my ears. Something unpleasantly red was oozing along the floor in front of that entryway.

The only way out of the basement was to pass the crazed circus carrying on behind curtain #1.

I tiptoed along the hallway and stood with my back pressed against the wall next to the entrance to the insane asylum. I peeked in long enough to see that all the people – if ‘people’ was the right word – crammed into the room were locked in combat with willing and enthusiastic partners. Devereux’s assistant Luna had a huge hairy man wrestled down, her teeth shredding chunks from his neck as her victim screamed. A tall African-American male stepped near the doorway and turned his gaze in my direction. He opened his mouth, displaying long, bloody fangs, then reached into the chest of the man nearest to him and ripped his heart out.

Bile rose in my throat and my head spun.

The last thing I saw before I sprinted towards the stairs leading back up to the main floor was Devereux and Bryce, blood-covered, fangs bared, hair flying, levitating a few feet above the ground and clutching each other’s necks.

That was it for me.

Holy shit! They really are vampires!

The volume of noise swallowed my unintended scream and I bolted from the totally unbelievable towards the merely improbable.

I ran up the stairs like I was being chased by the Hounds of Hell, pushed through the door where John the biker, the vampire addict, had abandoned his post, and smashed into Alan’s chest. I screamed, instinctively tried to push away. He grabbed my upper arms and held me against him. I was shaking so hard my earrings rattled.

‘Kismet! I’ve been searching all over for you. What the hell’s going on here? What’s all that noise down there? What happened to you?’

‘They’re fighting. It’s a bloody mess.’

‘Who’s fighting? I’d better get down there—’ He started to pull away.

‘No.’ I grabbed his arms. ‘Wait. Trust me – you don’t want to go down there. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this place really is filled with vampires, and I can say for sure that everybody is certifiably crazy. From what I just saw, you wouldn’t last five minutes. Please, I want to find Tom and go home.’

‘Okay, you find him. I’ll call the locals.’

‘No! Devereux wouldn’t want you to bring the police into this. Let’s just go.’

Alan tipped his head to the side and cocked a brow. ‘Devereux wouldn’t, would he? And how would you know that?’

‘I’ll tell you all about it – all of it – but right now, let’s get out of here.’

His eyes bored into mine for a long moment, and then he nodded. Either I was sufficiently crazed-looking that he’d decided to humour me, or he’d read deeper between the lines and got that my terror was authentic. I could at least admit to myself that I’d never dealt well with violent psychotics, and everything about the scene in the basement triggered my worst nightmares.

He took both my hands in his and stared into my eyes.

‘Okay. Just breathe. We’ll find Tom. You go check out the dance floor and I’ll see if he’s ogling the bartender again. Let’s meet outside in five minutes.’

I sighed in relief, pulled my hands free, and started off towards the crowded dance floor. After a few steps, I turned back to yell at Alan to hurry and saw him leap through the doorway to the basement. I should’ve known he’d have to be a one-man cavalry; an FBI agent, first and foremost. I filed away for future use the fact that he’d stared right into my eyes and lied to me.

Now more angry than frightened, I stomped off in search of Tom. Alan could flail around in the madness if he wanted to, but I was going to find my narcissistic ex-boyfriend, catch a cab and get the hell out of there. The further removed I got from everything that had happened downstairs, the more the idea of drugs in my drink seemed plausible.

I wandered around the club for several minutes, even going so far as to stand in front of the men’s room, sneaking peeks inside whenever the door opened. That got me a lot of unwanted attention, suggestive comments and lascivious invitations. What it didn’t get me was a glimpse of Tom.

Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen Zoë either.

One good thing about being tall to begin with and wearing high heels was the elevated altitude. From my lofty vantage point, I was able to scan over the heads of half the blissed-out party-goers and save myself from unnecessary body-jostling.

If Tom was in the club, he had to be under a table somewhere because there was no sign of him standing or sitting anywhere. Alan hadn’t emerged from the supernatural testosterone-fest below, so I was on my own. That was fine. I was used to being on my own.

It suddenly occurred to me that Tom might have gone outside, so I strode purposefully towards the front door and noticed the cadaverous bouncer was missing in action. I pushed through the heavy door leading out into the fresh night air and stood for a moment, coughing, as my lungs made it clear that I wouldn’t be getting off so easily after spending an evening breathing in the chemical spewing of a fog machine.

I hadn’t worn a watch, but I figured it had to be close to last call. Tom wasn’t outside either, but he’d have to come out of the club eventually, so I decided to wait. Then it struck me that he’d probably left without me. There I was, waiting for him to make sure he got home safely, and he’d just gone on his merry way without giving me a thought. That would be typical Tom – not to mention typical of how I’d let him walk all over me. How could a supposedly bright woman be so dense at the same time?

Groups of people stood in front of the club in various states of inebriation, drug intoxication and passionate embrace, so I strolled further down the block. I rested against the building and sank back into the shadows while I took full breaths to clear out my lungs and appreciated the silence.

I mentally reviewed what I’d seen in the basement. Nothing fitted with any of my therapeutic experience. In all my reading and research, I’d never run across anything that included fangs, levitation, informal heart surgery and the kind of unearthly noises emanating from that room.

Vampires really exist. Devereux wasn’t role-playing. What am I supposed to do with that knowledge? Where do I put it in my brain? If there are vampires, then I might as well pull up stakes – so to speak – and go and work in a fast-food restaurant somewhere, because everything I thought was true isn’t.

I dropped my head back against the cool of the old brick and closed my eyes. The moment I did that, a wave of dizziness swept over me and I braced myself against the wall, feeling as if the ground had actually moved. I waited, locked my knees to keep upright in the midst of the spinning, and opened my eyes. Everything was subtly different. I blinked a few times to clear my vision but couldn’t shake the sense that something was wrong. Something had changed. The darkness was deeper, more textured. The air felt thick, heavy, and was scented with a sweet coppery aroma. The smell got stronger until I could taste it in the back of my throat and I gagged.

‘Come to me.’

I gasped. The voice was repulsive; it crawled over my skin with slimy fingers. I automatically jerked my head to one side, raising a shoulder to block the sound entering one ear.

What the hell was that? I’m really losing it. I willed myself not to move.

‘Come. Now.’

I couldn’t tell if I heard the voice with my physical ears or inside my mind, but it was unlike any I’d ever experienced. It was as if the words attacked my eardrums. The sound split into dissonant octaves again and again, until it filled the entire vibrational spectrum. It reminded me of those experiments where the government used audio frequencies to create madness.

I also had the sense of feeling the voice kinesthetically, of being able to locate places in my body where it resonated, pulsed, invaded. My bones and organs vibrated in time with a powerful rhythm outside of me. The pressure increased as the sound waves echoed around and through me, becoming more painful as they escalated.

‘I am here. Come to me and I will show you miracles. I will grant all your earthly desires.’ The voice tore at my ears, repeating the same message over and over.

I covered them with my hands and screamed, ‘No!’

I felt myself moving away from the wall, as if pulled by a powerful magnet. My stomach tingled and ached and became hypersensitive. I had the bizarre notion that an invisible hand had attached to my midsection, physically compelling me. My head felt fuzzy, my mind disconnected. I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t resist. I walked away from the club into the darkness of the street beyond, the sense of dread and terror growing stronger with every wobbly step.

Then everything went dark.

I woke up in a coffin.

That might sound unpleasant, unsanitary, or maybe creepy to most people, but for me it was my worst nightmare.

This might be a good time to explain my greatest fear.

When I was young I saw an old movie called Premature Burial, where – due to a strange illness that caused complete paralysis mimicking death – people were buried before they were dead. The afflicted were put in boxes, placed in holes in the ground and were very aware of the dirt being piled on top of their supposedly deceased selves. They couldn’t communicate their aliveness to any of the grieving mourners, so they slowly suffocated. When the illness was finally discovered and the Unfortunate Buried Alive were dug up, it became clear that at some point in the process the paralysis had worn off and the bloody fingernails of the Unwillingly Interred gave evidence of their vain attempts to escape. It was a hideous death. I couldn’t sleep for weeks after watching that movie.

A psychic later told me that I’d died in a previous life due to being buried alive or maybe drowned or perhaps suffocated with a pillow – just choose one of the air-restricted methods – and that was why the movie had affected me so profoundly. I can’t verify the accuracy of my previous causes of death, but I do know that anything dealing with being unable to breathe thrusts me into spasms of terror.

It was perhaps lucky that I didn’t know right away that I’d woken up in a coffin. The first thing I noticed was a putrid smell, a unique stench consisting of backed-up sewer, rotted meat, blood, mould, mildew and death. The smell was so horribly potent that it caused me to become aware of the second thing: it was very dark. The reason the smell triggered me to notice the darkness was because as soon as I got a good whiff of it, my stomach heaved. I tried to sit up, or roll over, because I didn’t want to throw up on myself, and I was certain that barf was in my immediate future.

My attempt to sit up caused me to bang my head against an unexpected barrier, which led me to discover there was a ceiling directly above my body. I began to push against it and quickly deduced it was an immovable object, or at least a very heavy one.

Then I panicked.

The feeling of my hands pushing against the resisting material immediately triggered a cellular memory of the aforementioned movie and I started to scream, which shifted my attention away from throwing up. This proved to be very helpful: fear is a powerful motivator. Like the mothers who lift multi-ton vehicles off their children, imagining myself locked in a box for my ride up the Entry Ramp to Eternity allowed me to become Hulk-like in my strength, and to force open what turned out to be the bulky lid of an old coffin.

I sat up, still screaming, the sound reverberating off the walls of the small, decrepit building I’d awakened in. A building that smelled extraordinarily bad.

Raising the lid on the coffin allowed me to see the sunlight filtering in through the broken front door. I couldn’t tell how much time had passed, but it was obviously daytime. A chunk of my life was missing. I valiantly tried to reconstruct the chain of events that had brought me to this moment, and failed.

I stopped screaming – mostly because it hurt my throat – and let my eyes adjust to the dim light. Being able to see where I was made things worse. Instead of only suspecting I was up shit creek, I now had verification.

The building was an old, run-down mausoleum. Low spots in the cement floor were filled with stagnant, rancid water mixed with blood from several dead bodies. Even in the limited light, it was clear that no one in any state of alive-ness could be the colour of the remains scattered around that room. The place looked like a human slaughterhouse. Back in a corner were bones and pieces of rotting clothing, which gave evidence to the likelihood that whatever was going on here had been going on for a very long time.

Needless to say, I had to get out.

I assumed that whoever had killed all those people was probably coming back to get me. I didn’t have time to think about why I was still breathing, why the murderer had left me in the coffin instead of adding me to the collection on the floor. It occurred to me I was probably in shock, which explained the strange fuzzy feeling in my head.

Since the lid of the coffin had only swung back on its hinges and was still standing straight, I couldn’t brace myself by holding on to both sides. Grabbing the available edge, I put my other hand down alongside my legs and felt it sink into clumps of dirt or sand. As I pulled my knees underneath me, I heard a soft clattering sound as something knocked against the inside of the coffin. I reached my hand out to find what had made the noise and closed my fingers around a long stick-like thing. I brought it up into the light and found myself in possession of a human bone. I had been lying on top of whoever had been buried in that coffin.

Holy shit!

My stomach lurched again and I rose to my feet as if pulled by ropes. Looking down, I could clearly see the remains of the original resident. With shaking hands I brushed off as much of the desiccated decomposed material as I could from the rear of my trousers and apologised silently to the person I had scattered into the air.

The coffin I was now standing in was situated on a pedestal about three feet off the floor. The area close around it was filled with dead bodies and pools of bloody water. I would have to jump, which under the best of circumstances called on grace I hadn’t cultivated, and to jump while wearing four-inch heels would guarantee a painful outcome. But if my choice was to wait in the coffin for the psychopath to return or take my chances with a sprained ankle, I’d choose the sprain anytime.

Since I was far from adept in physical situations, it took me a moment to work out that I could sit on the open edge of the coffin, swing my legs out and scoot down, then find a small space for the ball of my foot on one of the few dry spaces on the floor and ease myself away from the pedestal.

Kismet the nerd who flunked gym class in ninth grade.

That’s what I did, all the while listening for any sound that would alert me to the return of the monster who’d brought me there.

I walked on tiptoes through the carnage to the door, unable to avoid wading through puddles of slimy, bloody water, and finally reached the stairs leading up to the light. My stomach had been clenched so tightly I’d barely breathed since I left the coffin. I climbed up the stone steps and shoved the door. It swung open on rusty hinges, making that sound always present in horror movies. Then I stepped out into the sunshine and found myself in the middle of an old graveyard.

I heard sounds of traffic nearby and moved in that direction. I kept glancing behind me to see if it had been a trap, if someone – or something – was going to spring out at me from behind one of the huge gravestones and haul me back into the pit of hell, but I was alone.

Doubtless I must have been quite a sight as I walked out of the ornate cast-iron gates of the graveyard and crossed the parking lot of McDonald’s.