The Falstaff Vampire Files Read online

  THE FALSTAFF VAMPIRE FILES

  Lynne Murray

  Pearlsong Press

  Nashville, TN

  Pearlsong Press

  P.O. Box 58065

  Nashville, TN 37205

  1-866-4-A-PEARL

  www.pearlsong.com

  www.pearlsongpress.com

  © 2011 Lynne Murray

  www.lmurray.com

  Trade paperback ISBN: 9781597190381

  Ebook ISBN: 9781597190398

  Cover & book design by Zelda Pudding.

  Bridge photo © Bryce Newell—Fotolia.com

  Parchment graphic © Maksym Yemelyanov—Fotolia.com

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the written permission of the publisher, with the exception of brief quotations included in reviews.

  Other Novels by Lynne Murray:

  Bride of the Living Dead

  The Josephine Fuller Novels

  Larger Than Death • Large Target • At Large • A Ton of Trouble

  The Ingrid Hunter Novels

  Termination Interview • Death Flower

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Murray, Lynne.

  The Falstaff vampire files / Lynne Murray.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-59719-038-1 (original trade pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-59719-039-8 (ebook) 1. Women psychologists—Fiction. 2. Vampires—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3563.U7716F35 2011

  813’.54—dc23

  2011020936

  Part I: THE THING IN THE SHED

  The Files

  The package contained: a plastic spray bottle with a few ounces of cloudy liquid that smelled like onion juice; a grease-smeared menu from a Chinese restaurant; a rubber-banded file folder of typed pages with a few loose, handwritten pages on top; a red digital recorder/MP3 player; a simple black voice recorder; and a silver flash drive and digital recorder.

  The contents are presented here in chronological order except for the first few pages of handwritten notes.

  Chapter 1

  Kristin Marlowe’s handwritten notes

  August 5th

  My name is Kristin Marlowe and I’m supposed to be sane for a living, but my ex-lover stole the one irreplaceable item I own, and God help me, I broke into his creepy old house by the ocean to get it back. As a psychologist I know a dozen techniques to calm down and think rationally. Sorry! Too angry to use any of them.

  Technically I didn’t break in. I had Hal’s key, but before I could use it the front door flew open and the old woman caretaker came bustling out like a wool-clad force of nature. I caught the door and edged past her, mumbling something about getting my stuff.

  She stopped right in front of me. “Don’t go in the shed,” she warned in a hostile tone.

  “I have no reason to go there.” Shivering from nerves rather than cold, I started to close the door, but she blocked me and stepped so close that I could smell her personal perfume of eucalyptus cough drops and antiseptic.

  “I give you good advice. Take it.” She turned and walked away, muttering something about the nephew changing the locks, the old lady being gone, and go ahead and take the light bulbs and hospital bed.

  Okay, so I could be arrested and lose my therapist’s license if the old lady called Hal or the cops. But I needed to get my property back and I was still enraged that Hal had taken it. I walked into the darkened foyer paved in red stone. It was late afternoon, but very little daylight filtered in and the lights mounted on the wall already glowed in their twisted copper fittings. The veins in the alabaster seemed to pulse like reptilian eggs.

  Hal had told me on my first visit that his aunt lived in the ground floor flat on the right. “The corridor on the left leads to the back door. I keep my coffin in a shed out there. Did I mention that I’m a vampire in my spare time?”

  Strange how I forgot those words until I stood on the red stone floor again. I started up the chilly staircase, also red stone.

  A scrabbling sound nearby made me freeze in my tracks. I stopped to listen. The house seemed to shudder like a ship in the wind. The scratching sound was outside. The wind drove branches whipping against the walls. I went up to the landing. The first step off the stairs onto the floorboards creaked loudly.

  Hal’s flat sounded empty, with echoing hardwood floors.

  When we’d come here before, he’d turned on a dim lamp and we’d walked past three closed doors down a hallway with a narrow Turkish carpet runner. Hal’s apartment was as spare as I had remembered, furnished with solid vintage furniture he said he’d harvested from elsewhere in the old house.

  An hour of searching yielded no trace of my property. I hated to leave without it. I went down the stairs. A corridor led past the ground floor flat to the rear of the building. I squinted as the setting sun lit up the entryway so that I seemed to be walking on dried blood.

  No harm in looking at the shed.

  At the end of the corridor a room with rows of west-facing windows led out to the back stairs and the yard where the shed sat. Rubber mats covered the floor against mud and a row of hooks poked out of the wall. Low shelves just inside the door held only a wind-scrambled umbrella and a single pair of rubber boots. The wind off the ocean had coated the windows with a scum of salt and grit.

  The outside door creaked and stuck. I had to force it open and then pull heavily to close it behind me. Standing at the top of the weathered wood steps, I watched the Pacific Ocean gleaming for a moment and the red disk of sun bleeding into the banks of clouds to vanish.

  At the bottom of the steps the masses of untended bushes and trees blocked the light and the yard seemed colder. The shed and the trelliswork wall next to it had the same grimy, blistered green paint as the house. The trellis shuddered in the wind that swayed a few clinging skeletal shreds of ivy.

  The shed door held a padlock that had not been snapped closed. I lifted it out of the hasp, hung it on one side and tried the corroded doorknob. Frozen past repair, it didn’t turn, but the door opened smoothly and felt as heavy as a safe door. I stepped inside and it slammed shut behind me.

  Total darkness. Something brushed against my face. I jumped back and cried out.

  The door creaked open when I hit it, letting in a sliver of twilight. A string hanging down from a light bulb on the ceiling touched my face again, swinging back and forth. Laughing a little shakily, I pulled the string and the shed was bathed in harsh yellow light.

  It looked empty.

  A patch with oil drips on the floor indicated where Hal parked his motorcycle. No sign of my property. Everything looked inches deep in dust. The place had an earthy, grassy smell, with a faint hint of pine shavings. In one corner an ancient hand-pushed lawnmower leaned on a pile of garden tools rusted beyond recognition.

  The door slammed shut more solidly and the sound of the wind died away. The walls seemed thicker than an ordinary shed. My heart beat as fast as if I’d been running.

  At least there aren’t any coffins, I said to myself. Not funny, Kristin—you should go with your gut and get out of here. I took a quick look around. Where in this shed could Hal have hidden my property?

  Half a dozen old fruit crates held piles of dust-shrouded junk. Next to them a huge crate sat, clean and free of dust. About eight feet long by four feet wide and equally as high. A piano case? I’d seen no sign of a piano in the house.

  The big box was the only thing in the room that looked as if it were regularly opened. Could Hal have tossed my property in there? Maybe it was full of souvenirs stolen from other ex-girlfrie
nds.

  I eased across the cement floor, ready to run for the door at any moment. In the silence I could hear myself take a deep breath.

  Walking past the fruit crates stirred up dust and I began to sneeze. More than once.

  A sneeze exploded from inside the crate.

  I jumped back violently—back into the cloud of dust, which made me sneeze again.

  As if in answer, another sneeze and a series of coughs shook the crate. The hinges creaked as if something inside wanted out. The lid began to rise up and open.

  Chapter 2

  Mina Murray’s journal

  red digital voice recorder

  August 4th

  Today is the day Hal asked me to marry him. I celebrated by buying this cute little red recorder to start a journal. I want to remember this feeling. I’ve never been so happy in my life. Maybe our grandchildren will listen to this one day.

  First I should explain about why this love is so precious to me. My name is Wilhelmina, but I’ve been called Meena my whole life. Kids at school tried calling me Willa-Meanie for a while, but I was so shy that the nickname never stuck.

  I should explain that my mother suffered from schizophrenia. The things she told me about the world gave me serious problems with reality. I don’t always know what’s normal and what isn’t. It wasn’t until I got to school that I learned from the other kids that the CIA can’t watch you through your television—at least not so far. She didn’t trust telephones, radios or TVs, and she wasn’t so sure where else bugs might have been planted in our place. Maybe it’s just as well my mother didn’t live to read the news about the government wiretapping innocent people’s phones. A lot of her paranoid fantasies have happened in real life.

  What it boils down to for me is that I try to keep an open mind. Just because something sounds crazy, I never dismiss it out of hand.

  When I first met Hal I started to believe I could have a normal life. He’s an amazing man—tall, handsome, sophisticated and madly in love with me. Hal’s love and affection made me feel so good. Today, when he proposed, I couldn’t believe how happy I felt.

  Except that he also told me that he believed in vampires, and he confessed that he wanted to become one of them himself. Most girls would have said “You are crazy—goodbye.” But I’ve seen insanity up close when I was growing up, and this was different.

  Hal is older and more educated than I am and he says he’s seen these things. He offered repeatedly to prove that the vampire exists, but so far I’m too afraid to go see. Maybe he does have a vampire in a shed in his backyard. Or maybe it’s like my mother believing that the government planted listening devices in the toaster. I don’t know if I’m more afraid that Hal is crazy like my mom, or that he’s not crazy and there really are vampires.

  I love Hal and I don’t want to lose him. I don’t dare demand it now, but I’m hoping when we’re married, he’ll be able to give it up. Maybe he needs medication. I’ve lost too many people. My mom’s mental illness led to her suicide. She left me behind and I’ve never been able to fill the void.

  I feel so lucky to have found my therapist, Kristin. She’s about the age my mom would have been and she listens without judging. And she’s never said she didn’t believe me, even when I told her about the vampires.

  Chapter 3

  Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes

  August 4th

  For several months my client, Wilhelmina—Mina—has come in twice a week to talk about her fears of being stalked by vampires who wanted to make her undead. I don’t believe in vampires. But something was scaring the hell out of Mina. Her terror came along with her into my consulting room with a presence strong enough to make my own throat tense up. So the last thing I expected was for Mina to come in and start off the session with a shy smile and the words, “I’m engaged!”

  I smiled back and almost said “Congratulations,” but stopped myself, kept the smile and retreated into my therapist role. “Tell me about it.”

  She lowered her voice. “He wants to become one of them.”

  “So how are you feeling about that?”

  Translation into normal English would be—where the hell did THAT come from? Mina hadn’t mentioned meeting someone new. Her only friends seemed to be these vampire types that both attracted and scared her so much. Marrying the thing that terrified her made no sense. So why was she doing it?

  We weren’t close to discovering what “vampire” meant to Mina. In the first few sessions she mentioned a schizophrenic mother who killed herself when Mina was fourteen. Her father was physically abusive, and she had moved out as soon as she finished high school and supported herself ever since.

  Mina had dealt with a great deal of suffering in her twenty-three years, and just as she began to talk about it she had switched gears and started talking about vampires. We’d been on that topic for six months now. Maybe that was the only way she could approach her family history. She said the men in the group were attractive, but she talked about the vampire women’s bodies at length. Was that her anxiety about her own body, or was she secretly attracted to the women?

  Many questions and so far no answers.

  “He’s amazing. I love him so much.” She began to smile, and her face took on a just-got-engaged glow, the fear vanishing for once.

  “Yes? Go on.” I smiled back and nodded encouragingly, noting the “he” and shuffled the latent lesbian theory to the back of the pack.

  Why she was so drawn to this group of people? Could they truly be dangerous? Her fear and isolation worried me. I kept wanting to make a joke to break down some of the tension. But that was my own way to deal with anxiety, not hers. She needed me to pay attention, to listen for clues.

  Mina crouched on the edge of the sofa nearest me, as if for protection against invisible enemies. She didn’t seem to belong to the Goth or vampire-fan subculture. No pale make up, visible tattoos, dark lipstick or antique black clothing—at least not when I saw her. Of course she did come to her therapy directly from her administrative assistant job at a business school in the Financial District.

  She seemed pathetically grateful when I took her delusion seriously. She showed no signs of paranoia beyond her conviction that she was both drawn to and threatened by a clutch of vampires. I looked up the plural.

  I found it sad when she praised the beauty of the thin women in the vampire group as compared to her own voluptuous figure. Mina could not accept how lushly attractive she was. She had glossy brown hair and blue eyes. I did mention that no matter what vampires may think, her sort of hourglass figure is greatly admired by many men of the human persuasion.

  It wouldn’t be ethical to talk about my own life to her, but I wish I could have told Mina that even though I’m in my 40s with streaks of gray in my hair and rounded hips and belly, way larger than this culture’s ideal, I managed to attract a handsome man nearly fifteen years younger. Sometimes I wanted to bring my boyfriend in and show him off and say, “See, it’s possible. Some men do enjoy a woman with an abundant figure.” Zaftig was the word my lover used when conducting an appreciative inventory.

  But Mina surprised me with her positive news. She leaned close enough to whisper, glancing around as if someone might overhear her. “The vampires still frighten me, but I’m so much in love, so proud to be getting married.”

  “What’s he like?”

  Mina sat back on the sofa and stared, unseeing, at some of the fanciful prints I’d framed on the walls. “He’s tall and athletic, but he likes my body the way it is. He says I’m zaftig.”

  I laughed. “Ah. Do you know what that word means?”

  “Juicy,” she said with a blush, and we both laughed.

  “He’s very passionate.” She laughed again, blushing even more. It was the first time she had laughed since we began our sessions. I scribbled briefly on my tablet. “He’s smart and funny. He was born and raised here, but he went to school back East. He’s got a great job but he can’t talk about much because it inv
olves some government stuff. It takes him abroad sometimes.”

  Several red flags popped up about the fiancé in that statement. The “great job” shouldn’t be mysterious. Mina admitted to problems sometimes telling reality from illusion. Could this man be lying to her about the government job? I noted questions to deal with later.

  The smile faded and Mina tensed, leaning forward again. “The only thing that frightens me is that he wants so badly to be one of them. The vampires, I mean. I’m not sure if he wants power, or if he just wants to be immortal. He’s an older man. He’s thirty-five.”

  I sat back just a little, partly to keep from smiling more, remembering my own twenties when thirty-five had seemed impossibly old to me. Now, in my late forties, it seems impossibly young. Scratch that. I happened to be dating—well, sleeping with—a thirty-five-year-old man, so I couldn’t call it impossibly young.

  “His name is Henry Roy.” She smiled, happy to say his name.

  It became very hard to breathe in my office at that moment. Henry Roy was the name of my own thirty-five-year-old lover. Everyone called him Hal.

  “Everyone calls him Hal,” Mina said.

  Chapter 4

  Hal Roy’s spoken notes

  silver flash drive/voice recorder

  undated

  I came to live in my aunt’s house by the ocean when I was fifteen and in a state of shock from my parents’ death in a plane crash. Aunt Reba wanted to be kind to me, but she was constitutionally unable to pay attention for more than sixty seconds to anything except herself. Whenever she remembered me she would look up from her Chronicle and say, “Poor Hal, you must be sad. I’m sorry that you don’t have any friends here in the city to play with. Look, Nordstrom’s is having a spring shoe sale!”

  They’d taken me out of school and the semester was nearly over, so I was at loose ends.