The Case of The Dying Vampire

This Sherlock Holmes story takes place in the Conan Doyle era, where Sherlock and his brother Mycroft travel to Transylvania at the request of Count Dracula in order to find out who is slowly turning him into an invalid. It was submitted to Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine in late 2014, and Marvin Kaye, the editor at the time, said he admired the story & my writing style. A week later Marvin informed me that he couldn't use the story, due to Conan Doyle's rule of never mixing fantasy in with his Holmes work. 

Then Marvin had the nerve to ask me if I could turn it into a pastiche. I felt that tearing the story down to its base pieces and removing Sherlock's personae from the plot would leave the story uninteresting, bland, and a total waste of time. I turned Marvin down and was now stuck with what amounted to a piece of Sherlock Holmes fanfiction.

So, here for your reading pleasure, is the almost-published Sherlock Holmes adventure, "The Case of the Dying Vampire."

My dear Watson,

I am writing to you in the hopes that you are in better health.  I regret departing London on this arduous journey to Transylvania without you at my side, but Mycroft has proven to be an adept partner, although he is not particularly bright or very agile, considering his size.  Nevertheless, I must report to you the events that occurred during my brief but memorable visit to this sad and lonely part of the world, and the adventure that awaited me at Castle Dracul, home to none other than the king of the vampires, Count Dracula.

You will note from our prior experiences with the supernatural that I do not believe in such things as ghosts, specters, and poltergeists.  There is a simple, logical explanation for every occurrence in our universe, Watson, and if I cannot find it, then I'm afraid to say that nobody can find it.  As Mycroft and I rode inside a rickety stagecoach up into the Carpathian Mountains, I realized for the first time that our surroundings had changed from the brightest of days to the blackest of nights, and that a wicked wind was blowing through the peaks and canyons.  It was almost as if God himself were attempting to stop our arrival at Castle Dracul.

But alas, Watson, not even the Lord Almighty could put a stop to the strong black stallions that carried us to the very peak of the mountains, where a flat plateau existed.  On that plateau sat Castle Dracul, an ominous force that rose into the sky like a black obelisk.  As rolling thunder echoed from the horizon and vicious lightning danced across the Heavens, I got the impression that Mycroft and I should be departing the stagecoach and entering the castle, lest we disturb the good Lord's intentions.

The driver of the stagecoach, a queer-looking fellow garbed in black, from top hat to coat and even to his shoes, waved Mycroft and I forward as we stood on the plateau and took stock of our surroundings.  The sky had grown darker still and the lightning had grown fiercer.  By the time Mycroft waddled his way up to the front gate, it had started to rain, and by the time the gate opened (by what you might call "magic," Watson) and allowed us passage into the castle, it had started to pour in a raging, angry manner like I had never witnessed.

Standing inside the foyer of Castle Dracul as the gate closed behind us, I was struck by how decrepit the structure looked on the inside.  The draperies were yellowed with age; the carpets worn ragged from years of use; and the hearth had not been used in quite some time.  Mycroft and I wondered if anybody lived here at all, but upon that ponderous thought, a young woman appeared before us.  Well, to be clear, Watson, she didn't so much as appear as she scared Mycroft and I to near-death; she descended a spiral staircase from the upper floors of the castle, and when her shoes struck the limestone floor, it made quite the clatter.

She introduced herself as Adrianna Moonstone, the Count's nursemaid and caretaker.  Wondering what the mighty Count Dracula required a nursemaid for, she led a leery Mycroft and I down a narrow hall and into Dracula's study.  The carpet was heavily worn in this room, and I noticed several blood stains scattered on various sections of the material.  Mycroft noticed them as well, and acknowledged the observation with a nearly imperceptible nod.  Apparently his brain synapses were firing at full capacity all this time, Watson, and I had never truly realized it. 

Adrianna stood in the darkened left-hand corner of the room, behind an aging man with thin white hair, a long, white beard, and skin so wrinkled it was almost hard to categorize him as human.  He was locked to a wooden wheelchair, and attached to the back of the chair was an apparatus that seemed to be transfusing him with blood at a constant rate.  I had never seen such a machine before, let alone heard of one, but the slight sucking noise it made as it transfused the blood kept my curiosity at bay.

I suppose it's time I told you, Watson, why I even agreed to travel the long distance to Transylvania and visit the dreaded Count Dracula.  It started over a month ago, when he scribed that letter to me that you so graciously read aloud in the presence of Inspector Lestrade (the one that made him leave our flat in terror, you'll recall).  The letter requested our presence at Castle Dracul to solve a matter of "great urgency."  I had heard of the Count before and how he was the terror of his nation, but for me, the intrigue did not lay in having an audience with a so-called vampire (again, I do not believe in such beings).  The intrigue was that the Count never described what this matter of great urgency was.  I remember your comment that perhaps he felt himself too important for explanations, but when I stood before the man in the wheelchair that had once been the mighty Count Dracula, I realized that ego had nothing to do with it--he had no time for explanations.

For you see, my dear Watson, Count Dracula was dying, the cause of which was a mystery...a mystery that was now up to me to solve.

Adrianna left the Count's study after Mycroft and I were seated across from him.  I noted that Adrianna wore a rosary and a crucifix around her neck, as if having both would offer her two layers of protection against Dracula's powers.  I had little time to ponder the meaning of her wardrobe choices, however, because Dracula had started to speak.

The once-mighty vampire pontificated in a voice that sounded as though he had spent the last hundred years wandering the deserts of the world.  If sand would have expelled from his mouth, Watson, I would not have been surprised.  He explained to Mycroft and I about his brief history as the king of all vampires and how he rose to power in Transylvania.  Mycroft inquired as to how the Count could even be real, due to Bram Stoker, the author, claiming that his novel was a work of fiction.  This Dracula chuckled and informed us that Stoker was a "stupid old sod" who had discovered pages from a collection of journals that Dracula had attempted to burn.  He did not expound on why he had burned the journals, and I did not press the issue, for the memory seemed to come from a very dark place and time for him.

Mycroft asked the next question on my mind before I could articulate it: Was the vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing real?  Dracula laughed boisterously, which I'm sure required a lot of effort on his part, and confirmed our suspicions that yes, Van Helsing was a real individual as well.  Dracula explained that Stoker had consulted with Helsing before writing his book, and that Helsing's ego "seeped from the pages like blood from my fangs."  The Count then revealed his fangs to us, which sent a shiver running down my back and right into my soul.  The fangs were real, Watson, as completely in tune with his mouth and upper teeth as our normal incisors are.  I was beginning to doubt my belief that everything supernatural was all imagination when I asked the Count how he ended up in such a crippled state.

The Count's fervor seemed to fade quite a bit when he realized what I'd asked, and as he launched into the story, I could understand why.  Dracula claimed that after he had slain Abraham Van Helsing in battle (a fact I was not aware of), Transylvania fell into a great depression.  Food was scarce, even for vampires, and if they did not feed every twenty-four hours, according to the Count, their bodies would slowly deteriorate.  Disease spread through the crops in the farmer's fields, and many of Dracula's subjects died from food poisoning.  As the situation grew more and more dire, Dracula shut himself off in his castle and began taking blood transfusions with Adrianna's assistance.

The problem, Dracula explained, was that with every transfusion, he grew weaker and older.  He could barely see across the room, he said, and did not possess the strength to push his own wheelchair.  He suspected that someone was poisoning his blood supply, with what he didn't know, but that the apparatus on the back of his wheelchair was the only thing keeping him alive.  It was also, he suspected, the very thing that was killing him. 

Adrianna entered the room and brought us all some warm tea.  The rain outside was slamming against the windows of the Count's study, lashing out in fury at the unholy creature that was contained within the castle walls.  I caught a glimpse of a lightning bolt striking just outside the castle windows, and it startled everyone in the room, so much so that we did not see the individual who entered the room in its wake.  He was quite tall and well-muscled for his age, which appeared to be somewhere in his fifties, and possessed a shock of white hair and a scar across the right side of his face that had sealed his right eye shut.  With his gait strong and his stride purposeful, I knew this individual could only be Abraham Van Helsing, the legendary vampire hunter the Count had claimed to be dead.

Adrianna was busy pouring my tea when Van Helsing joined us, and once she laid eyes on him, the teapot crashed to the floor and spilled all over the carpet.  Mycroft stood from his chair as Van Helsing strode past, one step at a time, measuring the distance between himself and the invalid vampire in the wheelchair.  I told Van Helsing to stop where he was and explain his purpose for being here, since the Count had not summoned him, and his words shook me to my very core. 

He said, "I am always welcome in my daughter's home."

Dracula turned his weary eyes toward Adrianna, who hid her face in shame, and then looked to me for supplication.  In truth, Watson, I had already suspected she was Van Helsing's daughter, and this only confirmed it.  Mycroft started making wild accusations, throwing his hands this way and that, but I rose from my chair and silenced him with a curt nod.  As you know, Watson, once my brother gets started, sometimes it's hard to get him to calm down, and I suppose I am like that at times as well.  But Lord love a duck, Watson, the last thing I needed at that moment was Mycroft calling the greatest vampire hunter of all a yellow-bellied coward. 

Van Helsing ordered me to sit down, but I politely refused, and launched into what I consider one of my best pontifications of crime and punishment ever.  I started by explaining to Count Dracula that yes, his nursemaid was not Adrianna Moonstone, but Adrianna Van Helsing, and she had been sent by her father to keep an eye on the Count after their last confrontation, the one where Dracula was certain he had slain Van Helsing.  The man in question scoffed at the idea and presented us with a clearer view of his scar, saying that the tumble he took off the castle wall cost him his dignity and his right eye, but that he had survived to fight another day. 

Admonishing Van Helsing for interrupting my dissertation, I continued, explaining that Count Dracula was indeed being poisoned, but not in any method known to current medical academics.  The perpetrator would have to know the specific weaknesses of a vampire, such as their vulnerability to wood, in order to perform the crime and escape without being caught.  For my final stroke, I pointed out that when Adrianna had first introduced us to the Count, she had been wearing a rosary and a crucifix, and upon returning with the tea, the rosary was gone. 

Adrianna faced her father and Count Dracula and reached into the neck of her dress.  She removed a small pouch, and in that pouch were each of the wooden beads from her rosary, ready to be dropped inside the Count's blood transfusion machine.  Adrianna explained that once inside, they would eventually dissolve and enter Dracula's bloodstream, where they would slowly cripple him to the state he was now living in.  If this treatment continued, the Count would surely have perished in a few months.

The interesting thing about all of this, Watson, was that during Adrianna's confession, she had tears in her eyes, and when she was finished, she shed them.  Here was the daughter of the great Abraham Van Helsing, who had tried to dispatch with Count Dracula in her own way, and she was weeping over what she had done to the poor fellow, like he was a treasured friend.  It made me realize something else, Watson, something I hadn't considered before.  Adrianna wasn't doing this on her father's orders.  She had come to Transylvania of her own volition, and any action she took was her own choice, and not her father's will exerted over her.

Van Helsing had heard enough, apparently, for he drew a wooden stake and mallet from his coat and held them above Count Dracula's withered body.  To his credit, the Count didn't flinch or recoil in any way; he merely smirked at the great vampire hunter and asked him if this was the way he wanted to end their relationship.  Mycroft and I were about to intervene when Adrianna wrenched the stake and mallet from her father's hands and threw them out the study's windows, shattering the glass and ushering in the storm, which was brewing like a tempest outside.  Rain soaked the carpet and the wind tore at everyone's clothes as Adrianna explained why she had come to Transylvania to kill Count Dracula.

I would paraphrase, Watson, but I am running out of space and paper.  The key element in Adrianna's vociferation was her desire to kill the Count and see her father's obsession with him end, so he could live his last days in peace.  When Van Helsing saw the tears in his daughter's eyes and heard the desperation in her voice, a change came about him.  His face appeared ragged, old, and I noticed several wrinkles and lines in it that I hadn't seen before.  If I were to guess, I would say that Time, being the cruel mistress that she is, had finally caught up to Abraham Van Helsing, and he realized how much of a toll that mistress had taken on him.  He turned to Adrianna, lowered his head, and told her to pack her things, for he planned to leave within the hour.  He then exited the room without so much as a backward glance at us, or even a sneer at Dracula, who relaxed in his wheelchair and let out a long sigh of relief.

I must say that events wrapped up rather neatly thereafter, my dear Watson.  Adrianna unhooked Dracula from his blood transfusion apparatus, and within the course of a few minutes I saw his condition improve dramatically.  Adrianna asked him if she should stay and nurse him back to health, and while I thought that would have provoked a bitter response from the Count, he merely walked over and embraced the girl, ordering her to go with her father and to "watch out for vampires."  Adrianna thanked the Count, thanked myself and Mycroft, and left Castle Dracul with Abraham Van Helsing, who never once looked back.

I shook the Count's hand as he thanked me for my efforts, his once-cold flesh warming up considerably.  Mycroft shook the Count's hand with a wary glance, because--and this is the strangest part of my escapade in Transylvania, Watson--Count Dracula had fully returned to his former self.  I was about to inquire as to how he had achieved such a marvelous recovery and to the sloppy appearance of his mouth and lips when the Count saw us to the gate, where the queer stagecoach driver and his stallions were waiting for us once again.  Mycroft and I climbed aboard and were led down through the Carpathian Mountains, and during that rickety trip I had time to consider Dracula's sudden recovery, and I came to this conclusion.

Dracula's lips appeared sloppy because he had recently drunk someone's blood.  He had drunk Adrianna Van Helsing's blood when he embraced her, for the briefest of moments, and she had probably only felt something comparable to an insect bite.  Unfortunately, there's another side to this coin that troubles me, Watson, for if I am to believe the legends about vampires, then it would mean Count Dracula's bite has turned Adrianna into a vampire...and I can think of no crueler revenge to take upon a foe than that.

Your dear friend,

Sherlock Holmes

 

The Father & The Gun

Here's a butt-kicking hardboiled story to kick off the new year. It's about a Catholic priest living in a small Mexican border town who gets involved with a bunch of drug traffickers in a very bad way. His name is Father Gibbons, and this is his story.

In El Concito, a little town near the Mexico/California border, there lived a priest. His name was Father Gibbons.

Father Gibbons lived and preached in a small one-room church situated in the center of El Concito. He slept upstairs in the church attic, with its creaky floorboards and rotting wood. The townspeople thought it strange that a white man had been sent to their town to preach in their language. Regardless, Father Gibbons preached every Wednesday night, Sunday morning, and Sunday night, no matter how many or how few parishioners came to hear his message.

Father Gibbons knew the people of El Concito didn't like him. He could see it in their sideways glances, could hear it in their lowest whispers, could feel it when they shouldered past him. They hated him, not because he was white, but because he preached a message nobody wanted to hear.

El Concito served as a stop for drug traffickers. The cocaine, produced in Mexico, was driven through the desert and up into California, where it was sold for profit. The traffickers always spent a night in El Concito before they traversed the sand to the California border.

One fateful night, a trafficker by the name of Suarez entered the little blue church that served as Father Gibbons' home. Father Gibbons, with the oppressive summer heat and the lack of air conditioning, wasn't in a preaching mood. Suarez asked the priest if he could confess his sins. Father Gibbons stepped into a confessionary, and Suarez took his place on the opposite side.

"Please forgive me, Father, for I have sinned," Suarez began.

"Cut that shit out," Gibbons replied. "When is the shipment crossing the border?"

"Tomorrow. One o' clock. Two at the latest."

"Where?"

"Toward Yuma. Then Winterhaven. It's picked up by another crew from there."

"What's the signal?"

"I'll piss inside my canteen."

"Shit. Seriously?"

"Seriously, amigo. These fuckers don't fool around."

"Fine. My agents will be waiting for you."

"Should I look for them?"

"No, you imbecile," Gibbons snorted. "You look for them and you'll draw unwanted attention to yourself." He sighed. "Have you got that?"

"Got it."

"Good. Now get lost, my son. Find yourself a whore for the night. There's plenty of them in this dump."

Suarez exited the confessionary and walked out of the little blue church. He made his way up to Rita's, the local brothel, and stepped inside. The townspeople gave him a curious glance and wondered if he had confessed sins he'd already planned to commit.

Father Gibbons stood on the front steps of his church and reached for the flask of whiskey he kept in his robes. A loose chicken clucked at him.

"Go with God," Gibbons told the future McNugget, "and all that good shit." He took a slug of his whiskey. Took another. Replaced the flask. He didn't want, or need, to get drunk tonight.

After all, if everything went as planned, tomorrow would be Father Gibbons' last day in El Concito.

***

Father Gibbons woke with a start when he heard a mighty fist slam against the side of the confessionary he was napping in. Gibbons snatched up the wrinkled Playboy he'd been reading before he fell asleep and stuffed it under his robes.

"Father Gibbons!" a voice called from inside the church. The voice sounded angry and carried enough venom to kill a snake.

"Over here, my son," Gibbons replied in his priestly voice. He slid his side of the confessionary open and waved. There were three men, all of them of Mexican origin. One of them, the angry one, stormed over and dropped into the confessionary's seat.

"Well, we meet at last," the angry one said. "Wait a moment. I don't believe we've been properly introduced." He drew a large revolver from his back pocket and cocked the hammer. "My name is Alberto Ricardo Rodriguez." He grinned. The teeth he had left were all yellow. "But you already know that. Right, Agent Gibbons?"

"Do you have something to confess, my son?" Gibbons said. "If you do not, then please leave this--"

Rodriguez fired his revolver. The weapon roared inside the small church and tore a hole through the confessionary, past Father Gibbons, and out through the wall next to him. Lord only knew where the bullet went after that.

"Let's drop the bullshit, shall we?" Rodriguez said with a twitch of his neck. "I heard all about you from your buddy Suarez. You remember Suarez, right?"

Remember Suarez? In Father Gibbons' eyes, using that word when it came to a person was never a good sign.

Rodriguez cocked the hammer on his revolver again. "You're wondering what happened to Suarez. You're wondering what happened to your little squad of D.E.A. agents." Rodriguez snapped his fingers at his closest comrade. "Julio! Bring me the bag!"

Father Gibbons didn't like the looks of this. Rodriguez was a psychopath and had a gun that could blow a hole through the thickest Bible. He was also blocking Gibbons' only escape route.

Julio returned with "the bag," which was nothing more than a leather sack that looked better suited to Indiana Jones than Mexican drug dealers. Rodriguez laid his revolver down, undid the clasp on the bag, and emptied it onto the wooden shelf in the confessionary. What Father Gibbons saw nearly made him throw up--Rodriguez had gathered Suarez's index finger, and those belonging to Gibbons' squad, and lined them up in a neat display of savagery.

"Well, Agent Gibbons?" Rodriguez said with another twitch. "What do you think?"

"I think you're a sick fuck, Rodriguez," Gibbons replied. "I also think I'm going to kill you."

Rodriguez stared at Gibbons through the confessionary's latticework window. Then he burst out laughing.

"You? Kill me?" Rodriguez asked through his tears of laughter. "That's, that's...what's the word you gringos use?"

"Rich?" Gibbons offered dryly.

"Exactly!" Rodriguez roared with laughter. "How do you plan to kill me when you don't even have a gun?!"

"I don't need a gun," Gibbons said. "I've got yours."

Rodriguez searched his side of the confessionary. His revolver had vanished into thin air.

"What--the hell--?" he stammered.

"Adios, amigo," Father Gibbons said. He squeezed the trigger on Rodriguez's revolver and delivered him into the devil's eager hands. The recoil from the gun threw Gibbons against the wall and made him slide to the floor, as Rodriguez recoiled from the confessionary and blasted across the floor, his blood mixing with the dusty sand that coated the ceramic tiles.

Julio and the third bandito knelt alongside Rodriguez's dead body as Father Gibbons kicked the confessionary open and dove for the floor. Julio spun around and drilled the wall with his Uzi, emptying half of his clip into the picture of The Holy Virgin that hung on the wall.

Father Gibbons snaked across the floor, following the path of the wooden pews, as Julio took careful steps down the center aisle, which led up to the pulpit and the baptismal. The third bandito stayed by the entrance and watched for any escapees with his wild eyes and his finger tickling the trigger of his Ruger M-12.

Julio stepped up to the pulpit and stared at the picture of Jesus Christ on the wall behind it. Sunlight was filtering down from the attic windows, and it landed right on the picture, making Jesus look almost life-like. Julio seemed overcome with the Holy Spirit at that moment, took one hand off his Uzi, and crossed himself. He finished up by closing his eyes and whispering a short prayer in Spanish.

Father Gibbons couldn't believe his eyes. He also couldn't believe Julio could possibly be so stupid as to take his hands off his gun. Gibbons lifted the beastly revolver, cocked the hammer, and fired, the bullet tearing a hole through Julio's head and exploding it. Gibbons slid back against the wall and crashed into a clay pot, which shattered on impact, leaving shards of hardened clay in Gibbons' back.

Gibbons looked up in time to see the third guy sobbing and screaming at the top of his lungs. He took his Ruger in both hands and fired it in every direction but Gibbons', destroying the holy place and everything in it. Gibbons crawled to the front pews, trying desperately not to get shot, and ducked out from his cover long enough to pop a bullet in the bandito's right ankle.

The man fell flat on his face, screaming and cursing in Spanish, while his Ruger slid across the floor and stopped next to Gibbons' feet. Father Gibbons stood, keeping both hands on the revolver, and gave the bandito a kick in the groin before he stepped outside.

The sunlight had never felt better. The stickiness of the heat almost felt cool against his skin. The clucking of that chicken almost made him smile.

That's when Father Gibbons noticed the white Ford Pinto pulling up in front of the church. He sat down on the front steps, sat the revolver next to him, and removed his flask of whiskey. As he drank it straight down, a short, spectacled man in a plaid suit and bow tie emerged from the Pinto and combed his thinning hair back.

"Who are you supposed to be?" Father Gibbons asked.

"Father Gibbons," the rotund man replied. "Who are you?"

The priest threw his empty flask at the chicken and limped toward the Pinto.

"Nobody, apparently," the priest managed to say. He pointed to the church. "She's all yours." He climbed into the Pinto's driver's seat, but stopped and waved for the real Father Gibbons' attention.

"Yes, sir?" Gibbons asked. "What is it?"

"Watch that trap door on the first confessionary," the priest said. "It's a killer."

The priest closed the door on the Pinto as Father Gibbons, carrying three suitcases and a laptop bag, found his way to the church. The priest smiled, put the Pinto in drive, and headed for Yuma. Maybe he could get in touch with his D.E.A. contacts and set up another operation there. Maybe he could find a nice church with a nun who had loose morals. Or maybe he'd just get drunk and dance the night away.

The latter sounded like a good idea. 

It sounded like a real good idea.