Vamp

Chapter 1

Chapter 1Okay, so the coffin in the basement was a bit of a surprise. Though, to be fair, as coffins went, it was a rather nice one, I suppose. I mean, it’s not like I had a lot to compare it to, but I do know quality when I see it. Then again, everything about the mansion screamed quality, or just plain old screamed, because, much like the coffin I was suddenly confronted with, the place was creepy—or better yet, CREEPY.

Yep, that’s about right.

In any case, as I circled it, round and round he goes, my index finger running along the metal finish, a new sensation washed over me. Well, through me, really, like deep on down through, because it suddenly felt as though the thing was calling out to me, drawing me to it, which might explain how I ended up in the basement in the first place.

See, I’d never been to the mansion before that day. In fact, I didn’t even know of its existence.

Or his, for that matter.

Not until his lawyer called me the week prior, out of the blue, or gray, as it were, foggy gray, in the dead of San Francisco summer. It seemed that my cousin Boris—seriously, someone actually named him that—had suddenly met his untimely demise.

“Boris?” I asked the guy on the other end of the phone, utterly confused.

“Your cousin, sir,” replied the man, the slightest accent detectable, something Eastern-European-sounding. “Boris Jackowski.”

I scratched my head and stared out the window of my tenth-story office building, the Transamerica Pyramid looming in the not-too-distant distance. Then I squinted my eyes and racked my brain. I mean, stands to reason I’d know of a cousin, especially one named Boris. “Nope, doesn’t ring any bells,” I freely admitted. “You sure you have the right Jack Jackowski?” Okay, talk about not casting the first stone, right? I mean, Jack Jackowski wasn’t going to win any naming contests either.

In any case, the guy on the phone did have the correct Jack Jackowski, right on down to my social security number, birthday, and home address, which was just the start of all things creepy. (I mean CREEPY. Sorry.)

“You’re his only living relative, Mister Jackowski,” explained the lawyer, “and heir to his fortune.”

Ding! went the bell in my head, or make that gong! or, more appropriately, considering the city I called home, clang, clang, clang! went my cable car. “Cousin Boris was a, um, wealthy man?” I managed, my voice barely registering above a hoarse whisper.

The man chuckled, which sent a chill down my spine for some odd reason, mainly because it sounded like one of those laughs you hear in the movies, just before the bad guy ties the damsel to the train tracks. “Obese understatement, Mister Jackowski.”

“You mean gross,” I said, “gross understatement.”

The chuckle repeated, the chill along my spine growing arctic cold. “No, sir, gross doesn’t even begin to cover it.” Then he sighed. “In any case, as the sole living heir to his fortune, all of it goes to you: his bank account, his belongings, and his mansion.”

I blinked and fought to catch my breath. “His…mansion?”

“His mansion,” he echoed. “Yours, all of it.”

I blinked again as I wiped the newly-formed bead of perspiration from my face. “Wait,” I thought to say, shaking my head from side to side, trying and failing to push away the cobwebs. “How exactly is Cousin Boris my cousin? I have no cousins, as far as I know. No parents, no grandparents, no aunts or uncles, not a step-anything or an in-anything, nothing once, twice, or even thrice removed. Nada. Zip. Zilch on the whole cousin front.” This wasn’t as odd as it sounded, seeing as everyone in my family, going way, way back, was gone and forgotten, my parents killed in a car crash a few years earlier, leaving little old me to fend for his little old self, or young self, as it were.

“Boris Jackowski was your great-grandfather’s brother’s great-grandson,” the lawyer told me as a second and third bead of sweat quickly followed the first one, tickling my face as they meandered ever downward, “leaving the two of you the last surviving Jackowskis.” His sigh repeated. “Make that just you, I suppose, now, sir.”

And still I kept shaking my head, because I’d never met my great-grandfather, but I knew he was an only child, or at least that’s what I’d been told, and so I said, “My great-grandfather didn’t have a brother.”

I heard papers being rustled on the other end of the line just before the lawyer told me, again in that barely-there accent that made me suddenly think of borscht and broiled prunes, “Your great-grandfather was born in Poland in 1892, Mister Jackowski. He migrated to the United States in 1910, leaving his brother behind to watch over the family estate. Your cousin, Boris, sold said estate in 2008 and moved to San Francisco the very same year.” The papers stopped rustling as my head stopped shaking, and my heart, it seemed, for just the briefest of moments, stopped madly pounding in my chest. “He knew of you, Mister Jackowski, even though you didn’t know of him. He knew of you and your family, though none of them knew of him or his family. From what I know, sir, from what your cousin told me before his death, the two sides were estranged.”

“Until now,” I couldn’t help but add.

“In a way, yes,” he said. “Bitter irony, I suppose.”

My hand was shaking as I held the receiver, the beads turning to a torrent, because none of what he was saying made any sense. How could I not know about an entire limb of my spindly family tree, and how could I not know I had a cousin living in the same city as me, and why, I wondered, did said cousin not contact me until after his death? “Wait,” I managed, my heart suddenly kick-starting as a new thought wormed its way through, “Boris moved here in 2008?”

“Yes, Mister Jackowski,” he replied, “2008. Why do you ask?”

I gulped as I stared at the phone, eyes wide, Adam’s apple riding up and down my throat like a runaway elevator car. “That was the year my parents died.”

There was the briefest of pauses before he said, “An odd coincidence, Mister Jackowski. One family lost, one gained.”

The phone slipped out of my sweaty grip. I picked it back up and replied, “Not exactly gained, Mister, uh, Mister…”

The chuckle made its menacing return. “Bolinski,” he informed me, “Igor Bolinski.”

“Polish, too?” I asked.

“Polish, too,” he answered.

“They name them weird in Poland, if you don’t mind my saying so, sir.”

“Says the man named Jack Jackowski.”

Touché. He had me there. In any case, there was one more question in my repertoire, one that was steadily rising to my addled brain’s forefront. “Cousin Boris,” I said, “how, um, how did he die?”

The third and final sigh reached my ear. Too bad no one was beating off on the other end of the line to make it more pleasant-sounding. “Impaled, Mister Jackowski.”

An odd word. Sounded more like a day at the beach, and yet I knew it wasn’t. “How does one die of impaling exactly, Mister Bolinski? Did he fall on an upturned tree root, back into an exposed jagged pipe, parachute onto a spiked fence?” Ouch, ouch, and double-ouch.

The pause, like the sigh, made its triumphant reappearance. It stretched into infinity, though it lasted for barely the briefest of seconds. “A hunting accident,” was all he said, leaving it at that before quickly changing the subject. “Now then, I have some final paperwork to take care of before the estate changes hands. Can you meet me at the mansion in a week’s time?”

“The mansion,” I repeated. “My mansion?”

“Your mansion, yes,” he said, “as the master wanted.”

“The master?” I echoed, my heart suddenly galloping through a furlong.

He coughed, which, oddly, didn’t sound any less sinister than his chuckle, or his sigh, or his pause, for that matter. “Mister, I meant to say, Mister Jackowski. It was his final wish that it all goes to you.”

And who was I to argue with a man’s final wish, especially when that man was my estranged cousin? Wealthy cousin, that is, wealthy, estranged, impaled Cousin Boris.

CREEPY!

It bears repeating.

* * * *

And so I found myself at the mansion a week later. It sat nestled atop a cliff that overlooked the ocean far down below, a stately Victorian in only minor disrepair with a wide expanse of land surrounding it. There was a formidable fence around it all, an old growth forest outside of that, and enough eucalyptus trees to keep your sinus cavities open for years and years on end: potpourri on steroids. I breathed it all deeply in as I stood outside the gate, staring up at the massive home that was, by all accounts, now mine.

“Here goes nothing,” I whispered as I pressed the button on the security box, “or make that everything,” I corrected myself. Cue the menacing organ music.

The gate slowly creaked open, as if it really didn’t want to let me in but had no other choice in the matter. In truth, I felt much the same way. I mean, my Castro apartment was nice enough, and where, all the way out here, was I going to get a drink after I got off from work? Heck, there wasn’t even a nearby neighbor, let alone a gay bar. Still, I made my way up the gravel path, the stately mansion looming ever larger as I slowly approached, slack-jawed and wide-eyed. Me, not it. Though, oddly, it did seem to be staring down at me.

“Home sweet home,” I groaned as I lifted the metal knocker a scant few seconds later, sending it clanking loudly against the thick wooden door. Boom, boom, boom I heard from within, matching my heartbeat, boom for boom for frickin’ boom.

And then I heard the door unlock, the wood moving in reverse, before I saw a head poking out and then a hump, and not the good kind of hump, either. This one was on his back, twisting his diminutive body in an unnatural contortion, like he’d been ringing bells at Notre Dame for half his life. “Mister Jackowski,” he grunted, staring up at me through grayish-green eyes, mouth in a snarl, teeth yellow.

“Igor?” I asked, with a gulp.

He held out his hand in greeting. “A pleasure,” he said, a yawn trumping my gulp.

Reluctantly, I grabbed hold. “A pleasure,” I replied, but the pleasure was all his. Though, by the look on his face, not to mention his hump, which seemed to have a life of its own, pleasure wasn’t really something he’d come across in quite a long time, if ever.

“Please, do come in,” he then said, the door opening further, the foyer revealed, bedecked in muted reds, velvet on top of velvet, impossibly old furniture, enough dust to completely wipe out any of the lovely eucalyptus scent that permeated the forest behind me.

“Maid have the decade off?” I asked, choking back a cough as the door shut behind me with a loud bang, causing me to jump in place, hand instinctively reaching for my chest.

“No maid, sir,” he replied, the sarcasm apparently going over his head. Though, at his hunched height, pretty much everything went over his head. “No maid, no butler, no cook, no chauffeur, sir, just me.”

I stared at him inquisitively. “But you were my cousin’s lawyer.”

He shrugged, sort of. I mean, what with the hump and all, it seemed sort of a difficult feat for him to successfully pull off. “Your cousin needed little, sir,” he replied by way of an explanation.

And little was what he got, I thought to myself, but said instead, “So you were his tinker, tailor, soldier, spy, so to speak?”

The shrug-in-training returned. “You left out lawyer, but yes, that would indeed cover it, sir.”

I walked past him and moved into the living room—living not quite the word for it, though. The room was massive, deathly still, uncomfortable-looking in its stately grandeur, with enough gilt to make Fort Knox jealous, and enough dust and cobwebs to make King Tut’s tomb seem shiny-clean in comparison. “Where did all this stuff come from?” I asked, Igor suddenly appearing at my side, which again made me jump in place.

“Shipped from Poland, sir,” came the bored-sounding response, “same as me.” He smiled—again, sort of. See, the hump even tamped that down, pounded it into submission.

“So you’re part of the estate as well, Igor?” I hesitated to ask.

He bowed by way of an answer—again, sort of. “Your room is upstairs, sir, down the hall and to the right. Dinner is at six.” He moved in reverse now, never taking his eyes off of me, my belly knotted so tight it would take a team of Boy Scouts to untie it. “When can I expect your belongings to arrive, sir?”

In truth, I hadn’t planned that far ahead yet. I mean, I had to see the place first, confirm that it was all mine. As if he were reading my mind, Igor was now pointing to a piece of paper resting atop a nearby marble end-table. I walked over and lifted it up. It was my cousin’s will, I quickly realized, mainly because it read Last Will and Testament of Boris Jackowski in bold letters across the top.

“Everything is legally mine,” I muttered after I read the document, that slack jaw of mine going further into limp-noodle mode.

“As I already told you, sir,” came the reply.

“But, again, where did it all come from?” I asked, “The money, this house?”

Igor suddenly stopped moving in reverse, his hump swaying just a tad, much like a bowl of Jell-O. In an earthquake. “Your family goes back many generations. Many, many, in fact, too far back to count.” Then he turned and headed out of the room altogether, adding over his shoulder (or at least hump), “This is your heritage, sir, all that remains.” And there was one of those obese understatements again, because this all was seriously all: millions and millions and millions of dollars of all, really. This wasn’t a heritage; this was the reserve for a small country, like China.

In any case, with that, he was gone, and in his place rested a new unease, a pit in my belly to go along with those knots, plus a cyclone in my head. And that pull I mentioned earlier, something drawing me to the aforementioned basement, to the aforementioned coffin.

To my unaforementioned destiny.

* * * *

I stopped circling the coffin, my index finger lifting off the metallic surface, my eyes, however, still glued to it, stapled and plastered and nailed and stitched to it, in fact. Or at least to what was inside, because that, I sensed, was what was doing the calling to begin with, the yanking at my very soul. This, I figured, was what a moth felt like when it encountered a flame. Only with me, with the coffin, it was more like a brushfire, four-alarm, teetering on an incendiary five.

And so, I rested my hands on the coffin’s handles and grabbed hold, the metal like ice against my flesh. Please be empty, please be empty, please be empty. Then I said a silent prayer and flung the lid open, like ripping a Band-Aid off a scab: quickly and with as little thought as possible. Then I said another silent prayer, this one a thank-you, because, yes, the coffin was indeed empty—um, mostly.

With trembling hands, I lifted the casket’s lone content off the silvery satin interior. It was a sheet of paper, crisp and white, the words written by hand with a distinctive script.

And so, I read.

Greetings, cousin, the letter started off, the words turning my blood to ice. If you are reading this, then I fear I am no longer roaming this world and have ascended to or, more than likely, descended to yet another.

My hands shook as I continued reading, my mouth instantly going Saharan dry.

I have rested along with this note for a very long time now, knowing that this day would come, though, of course, hoping otherwise. And yet, come it has, and you, I’m afraid, are now the lone survivor of a great war.

My stomach churned so much it was a wonder I didn’t suddenly s**t out butter.

Sadly, I cannot help you much in this last pitched battle. Save, that is, for the one piece of information I was none too eager to leave you with, hoping beyond hope that our family secret would remain mine and mine alone as I watched over you since my arrival at this city by the bay. For only I have ever been prepared for it, prepared for what this secret entails. Still, there is no other recourse now. If you do not win the battle, then this war of ours will forever be lost.

I fought to catch my breath as I neared the end of the letter, none too eager for what remained of it.

And so, dear cousin, this is my secret, now yours, as it was my father’s and his before him, back to the very beginning of it all. And one that you must guard with your very life, guard as this coffin will guard you, if need be, as I have guarded you these past several years from those who wish us gone, ground to the dust from whence we sprang.

Then I read the last remaining words before I dropped the paper, before the world shrank to a pinprick of light and then not even that.

You see, I am a vampire, Jack, as you will be once you drink the vial in my nightstand. For if you don’t, then the battle, the war, is already lost.

And so shall you be.

Just like all the others who have come before us.