Blood of the Impaler (10 page)

"After the same manner also He took the cup when He had supped . . ."

He began to feel the nausea rising in him again, and he struggled again to force it back.
Maybe I should have eaten breakfast
, he thought.
Maybe I'm just hungry
. But he knew that this was not the case. He had been eating in a careless, desultory manner for days, eating because he knew he must, but deriving neither pleasure nor satisfaction from it.

Henley came forward carrying a silver chalice, followed by an acolyte carrying a silver tray that held the wafers. He walked over to Quincy and placed a wafer in his mouth, saying softly, "The body of Christ." He waited a moment and then tipped the lip of the chalice as he placed it against the old man's mouth and said, "The blood of Christ." He moved sideways and looked at Holly questioningly. Not knowing if it was proper for her to partake, she shook her head.

Henley then moved to Malcolm and took a wafer from the tray. Malcolm opened his mouth as the priest placed the wafer on his tongue, saying, "The body of Christ."

What is this, cinnamon?
Malcolm thought. Communion
wafers were always bland, unleavened bread, but this tasted a bit spicy. Very spicy.

Horribly spicy!

The wafer seemed to be burning his tongue and his eyes went wide with pain. When the priest tipped the chalice to his mouth, he drank deeply of the wine, hoping to quench the fire. The wine rolled over his tongue and slid down his throat. It was like drinking molten lead, and it burned its way down his gullet and seemed to set fire to his stomach and chest.

Malcolm jumped to his feet, knocking Father Henley down, and then, clutching his throat and stomach, he ran screaming from the church.

Chapter Four

M
alcolm did not return home that afternoon nor that evening nor that night. Holly remained in the Harker home for a few hours, anxiously awaiting him, then took her leave alter exacting from Quincy his promise to contact her the minute Malcolm showed up. The old man was averse to telling untruths, but he agreed nonetheless, knowing full well that when and if his grandson returned, they had much to discuss before anyone would be told that Malcolm was home.

Quincy waited up for Malcolm that night, and he dozed sporadically in his easy chair all the next day. It was not until nearly ten o'clock on Monday night that Malcolm dragged himself into the large Victorian house and walked unsteadily toward the stairs. His grandfather watched him enter, noting with sorrow and anxiety the chalky-white face, the eyes red from weeping and weariness, and the slight bend to the young man's back, a bend expressive of sorrow and confusion.

"Malcolm," he said softly. His grandson turned slowly when he heard his name called. He looked at his grandfather and made no reply. "Are you all right, boy?"

Malcolm nodded slowly. "Yes. Much better now, thank you."

"Where have you been?" Quincy asked kindly and with concern.

Malcolm shook his head. "I don't know. I honestly don't know. In Forest Park, I think." He paused. "Yes, I was in Forest Park. I remember the band shell."

Quincy nodded, understanding the boy's disorientation. "How is your stomach, your throat? Still hurt?"

"No, they're okay," Malcolm replied. "The pain passed pretty quickly, I think." He walked away from the stairs and approached his grandfather. "I'm sorry, Gramps. I don't know
what happened, I don't know what's wrong with me. I just feel so ill all the time, and the communion service . . . I don't know. Please forgive me."

The old man held out his hand affectionately and Malcolm took it. "It's all right, boy, it's all right."

"Was Holly upset?"

"Sure she was. She's worried about you."

"I'd better call her," he mused. "She probably thinks she's getting involved with a mental case or something."

Quincy sighed. "She's a fine young woman."

"Yeah, she is," Malcolm agreed. "I'll go call her up—"

"Wait, boy. Not yet," Quincy said, rising shakily to his feet. "We have to talk for a little while."

Malcolm's face assumed a slightly pained expression. "Gee, Gramps, can't it wait until later? I really want to take a shower and try to pull myself together a bit."

"You don't need a shower, boy," Quincy said, shuffling toward the stairs. "Just come on with me up to my bedroom. I have a few things I want to show you."

Malcolm did not move, saying, "Honest, Gramps, I'd really rather this wait until—"

"Malcolm," Quincy interrupted him, "there are some things you must know. This is vitally important to you. Please come with me."

Malcolm sighed and followed after him, walking up the stairs as slowly as Quincy. It would be hard to say for whom the trudge up the steps posed the greater difficulty—the ninety-two-year-old man or his twenty-seven-year-old grandson. Both took each step as if it were a summit to be scaled, a hardship to be endured. "Wafer and wine burned you, didn't they, boy," Quincy commented, breathing heavily from his exertions.

"Yeah," Malcolm replied. "Must be I'm getting an ulcer or something."

Quincy laughed grimly. "Wish it were an ulcer, I do indeed." Before Malcolm could comment on this cryptic remark, Quincy said, "Sunlight hurts your eyes, doesn't it. Tired all day, energetic all night. No appetite."

They reached the landing and Malcolm frowned slightly. "Yeah. How'd you know? I never discussed it with you, Gramps. Did Holly tell you?"

He shook his head as he opened the door to his bedroom. "Didn't have to, boy. I know just what you're experi
encing. Your father went through it. So did I, at a much younger age."

"No kidding!" The sudden, terrible thought that he was suffering from a hereditary disease drifted into his mind, and he asked, "What is it? I mean, is it a nerve disease or something?"

"No." Quincy laughed humorlessly. "It isn't a nerve disease." He motioned Malcolm into a chair that stood beside the large window of the bedroom, and then he shuffled over to his closet and began to search around on the floor. "Come here, boy. Pull this box out for me."

Malcolm had just seated himself, and now he pulled himself wearily to his feet and went over to the closet. He knelt down and grasped the sides of a square wooden box the size of an orange crate and pulled it out with difficulty. It was not particularly heavy, but it was too heavy for him to manage comfortably. "Put it up on the table there," Quincy requested, motioning to the marble-top table beside the chair.

When he had done this, Malcolm fell into the chair and wiped his brow. "I feel so weak!" he sighed.

"I know, boy," Quincy said sadly. "I know." He opened the wooden box and began taking out old notebooks and sheaves of bound paper, yellowed and frail looking. They smelled of age and dust. He tossed a few on the table and handed Malcolm a few others. Then he looked at Malcolm contemplatively and said, "Boy, I have something to tell you that you won't want to hear. You won't even believe it at first, but it's true, nevertheless."

Malcolm began to feel panicky. "Gramps, if I've inherited some sort of illness or something—"

"It isn't an illness, boy," he interrupted. "It's worse than an illness, much worse than an illness. Religion is its only cure. No, not cure. Controller. It can't be cured. It can only be controlled." He paused. "You've heard Rachel talk about inheriting bad blood and all that, haven't you?"

Malcolm felt suddenly relieved as he began to suspect that his grandfather was going to begin saying the same sort of nonsense that his sister always said, about hereditary insanity and improper associations, and he laughed. "God, Gramps, you scared the hell out of me!"

Quincy's eyebrows rose. "What do you mean, boy?"

"If this is all building up to your telling me that Rachel is right and that I've inherited insanity from my father, then please just forget it. That's nonsense, all nonsense."

Quincy nodded. "If that were all I had to say, you would be right. But it isn't insanity we're talking about here. It's something much worse than insanity."

Malcolm's heart sank.
God
, he thought,
it is a disease
. "Okay, go on," he said. "You say that you had the same problem I'm having. What is it?" He waited expectantly.

Quincy looked down for a few moments, as if to collect his thoughts, or perhaps to marshal his strength. Then he said, "You've never read any sensationalist literature. I know that, because we've never allowed any of it in the house."

Malcolm could not repress a smile at his grandfather's conviction that keeping something out of the house could effectively shield his family from it. "I haven't read much," he admitted. "I never cared for it, really. So what?"

"And yet," Quincy went on, "you have seen films and watched television and so forth, so you know something about
that type of entertainment."

"Of course. So?"

Quincy paused. "Have you ever heard the name Dracula?"

"Of course I have. Everybody has. He's a famous monster in movies and books." Malcolm began to rise from the chair, saying, "Listen, Gramps, I really feel like I need a shower—"

"Sit down, boy," the old man said, tossing him one of the books he had taken from the box and sitting down on the bed. "Turn to the last page of this book. Read the first paragraph aloud."

Malcolm examined the book in a cursory fashion. It was an old copy of
Dracula
by Bram Stoker. "Listen, Gramps—"

"Malcolm, please," the old man insisted. "Just open to the last page and read the first paragraph aloud."

He waited patiently and Malcolm, sighing, complied. He flipped to the last page and read, "Note: Seven years ago we all went through the flames; and the happiness of some of us since then is, we think, well worth the pain we endured. It is an added joy to Mina and to me that our boy's birthday is the same day as that on which Quincey Morris died. His mother holds, I know, the secret belief that some of our brave friend's spirit has passed into him. His bundle of names links all our little band of men together; but we call him Quincey." He looked at his grandfather. "What . . ."

"Read the name at the bottom, the name in capital letters as if to indicate a signature."

Malcolm looked back at the page. "Jonathan Harker," he read.

The old man nodded. "My father. Your great-grandfather. The woman named there, Mina—Wilhemina, actually—was my mother, your great-grandmother. And I, of course, am the little boy he mentions, Quincey Harker. Quincey Abraham John Arthur Harker." He rubbed his old eyes wearily. "I dropped the 'e' when I was in my teens. I thought it made the name seem somehow effeminate."

"Gramps," Malcolm said gently, "I hate to argue with you about anything, but this is a novel. This is fiction."

Quincy nodded understandingly and said, "Turn to the very first page, before the title. Read what is written there."

Malcolm did as he was bidden and squinted in an attempt to read the somewhat odd and antique handwriting. "My dear friend Jonathan," he read. "Accept this first edition in the hopes that there will be others to increase its value, and also accept my thanks for making the records of your little band available to me. Your devoted friend, Bram Stoker." Malcolm frowned, growing angry, "Hey, Gramps, if this is supposed to be funny . . ."

"Do you see me laughing, boy?" his grandfather asked him. "Am I trying to keep from smiling?" He sighed. "Everyone assumed then that it was a novel. Everyone still does. But it isn't a novel. It's a written record, a record of fact, of real events and the tragedies of real people."

Malcolm did not quite know what to say or how to react. He kept waiting for his grandfather to start to chuckle or to slap him on the shoulder and laugh, but old Quincy merely sat and looked at him sadly. "Gramps, you can't be serious about this book! It's a fairy tale!"

"No, a demon tale, boy," he muttered. "Now turn to page two hundred and seventy-three. Be careful with it. The page is worn and delicate from years of use. I've read and reread that page thousands of times." He waited as Malcolm searched through the page numbers. "There's a section marked in pencil. Read it to yourself."

Malcolm found the designated page and allowed his eyes to move over the lines:

The moonlight was so bright that through the thick yellow blind the room was light enough to see. On the bed beside the window lay Jonathan Harker, his face flushed and breathing heavily as though in a stupor. Kneeling on the near edge of the bed facing outward was the white-clad figure of his wife. By her side stood a tall, thin man clad in black. His face was turned from us, but the instant we saw we all recognized the Count. With his left hand he held both Mrs. Harker's hands, keeping them away with her arms at full tension. His right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down upon his bosom. Her white night-dress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man's bare breast. The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten's nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink.