Origin of the Vampyre

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

Rachel pulled the package across the desk toward her. It was quiet in the book stacks, with Adam gone to collect Helen from daycare and promising fettucine alfredo and fresh garlic bread by the time she arrived home. She cut the string and pulled back the layers of paper and bubble wrap, stopping when she realized the contents of the package.

She flinched at a loud thud on the far side of the subterranean room. Her heart thumped in her chest in concert with the slow, dull staccato of bank after bank of fluorescent lights shutting off across the nine acres of book-stacks. She checked her watch. The darkness ratcheted nearer until nothing outside her office was visible, save for the green exit sign at the far end of the corridor. She’d spent many an evening cradled by this darkness doing research. But now, as the glass walls of the office reflected her and the document box in front of her, she only felt alone.

Again.

The box was simple in its structure, unlike the ornate trunk that had unearthed unexpected horrors related to her Shelley bio. Plain wood covered in a dark, waxy film, this box bore no escutcheon nor required any key. The lid was held shut by a simple hook latch. Several daubs of grey-blue wax were placed unevenly along the lip of the lid, each stamped with a seal to confirm the safekeeping of the box’s contents, all long since broken with each opening of the box. Perhaps two-hundred years ago, Rachel surmised, noting the initials JWP in the wax impressions of the damaged seals.

She glanced again at the crumpled paper packaging and the address of the sender:

Aubrey Polidori.

“How did you know?” she whispered in the silence of her office.

On instinct, she opened her laptop and created a spreadsheet for her observations, then pulled on a pair of cotton gloves and photographed the box from multiple angles. Finally she nudged the delicate latch to the side. The lid creaked as she opened it, a slim wooden arm angling out to hold it high. Inside the top of the box’s lip sat a wooden tray covered in a threadbare, cobalt-blue silk, and nestled within it, an envelope with her name on it. Until today, she’d never seen her name written in such lavish copperplate. The envelope was either very old, or very expensive, with beautiful blue strands of silk pressed into the pulp. She leaned over the box and sniffed, waving its scent toward her face. A faint but distinct aroma of parchment, port, and cigars. A combination she’d not smelled since working with Mary’s letters. She photographed the envelope front and back, then slipped a letter opener under the flap to extract the single piece of parchment within. In the same rich hand of the package addressing was written:

You will find within all you need to complete Polidori’s story.

Rachel leaned back and read it over again. The document box wasn’t very large. The research she’d already done would fill it hundreds of times over with letters, newspapers, diaries, and esoteric fragments. What could it possibly contain that would adequately explain the final years of Polidori’s life? And death? She photographed the parchment and slipped it back into the envelope. Then, standing, she grasped both sides of the ancient tray, fragile in its age. She lifted it carefully, but still the slim length of wood on one side, long-splintered, came off in her hand. She settled the intact portion of tray onto her desk, her face going slack as she saw what was inside the box.

Nothing.