Approx. 5,293 words
After two hours of questioning, Detective Samoza asked why we followed Frankie into the mountains of Virginia during summer break. I will never be sure, no matter how long I think about it. The frat treasury was low, membership was down, and it was highly likely we would not be able to pay the lease for the frat house during the next term. We needed new members, desperately.
Classes would begin again in September, and we hoped to pledge at least a dozen new members to Phi Kappa following the Halloween Bash. Frankie’s Halloween theme party would have a lot riding on it. We had already made arrangements with the girls of Gamma Beta to send us a dozen of their pledges as part of their pledge hazing. Nothing could be counted on more than a room full of topless sorority girls to get a frat party moving right along. In exchange for the cooperation of the Gamma Betas, we had to promise lots of music, lots of dancing, and unlimited booze; a small price to pay if our party would be a huge success. The Betas wanted to have a good time as much as we did.
Frankie Chapman is our pledge master. A junior, he majors in Media Communications with hope of someday replacing NBC’s Tom Brokaw, or at least Marty Davis on our local WSPA.
Frankie is also obsessed with Vlad the Impaler, commonly known as Count Dracula in popular movies and fiction. Aside from this weird eccentricity, Frankie is an above average college student with a 3.7 GPA. It was Frankie who conceived the idea of having the actual, genuine, authentic, one-of-a-kind coffin of Dracula at our Halloween Bash.
May was the month when Frankie first mentioned the idea to us. Naturally we all laughed thinking Frankie must be a few cans short of a full case. After all, we’re intelligent students and we know vampires are simply myth and legend based on the gruesome history of the former ruler of a minor principality in Europe.
“None of you know the truth,” Frankie insisted. “Vampires existed long before Vlad Dracul of Wallachia. Documents from the eleventh century tell us of vampires in Russia, and much before that we have stories from the Greeks before the time of Christ. Vampires have existed for millennia and probably still do. They’ve simply learned to better hide themselves from the rest of the world.”
Frankie was persuasive in his argument that he had knowledge of the approximate location of Dracula’s coffin. “It’s been moved several times over the centuries. Originally he was buried in Snagov Monastery after he was assassinated in 1477, but that tomb was found to be empty when opened in the 1930’s. It was empty because his coffin was moved to Prussia in 1710, then to Hungary in 1732, as loyal servants of the Prince of Darkness continued to protect his resting place.”
Only a geek with Frankie’s obsession would spend endless hours on the Internet searching reports from two and three hundred year old books and newspapers.
“In 1810 it was moved to England, as evidenced by reports of hundreds of sheep having been killed and their blood drained by the monster. In 1854 the coffin was hid in Jewett, Connecticut and several reports of vampiric activity were printed in local papers. After that, the trail mysteriously vanishes. Perhaps people were being more secretive in the years preceding the Civil War, or perhaps the coffin left the country, but I don’t believe so.
“While I was researching a term paper for American History, I found the diary of a civil war soldier in the school library. The soldier was from Pennsylvania and quite literate. He writes of his regiment sweeping south through Virginia in 1862 toward the Second Battle of Bull Run at Manassas. During the battle, Private Toomey was separated from his regiment and hiding from Confederate soldiers. He took shelter in an abandoned mine and found the hidden coffin. Toomey had no knowledge of the tales of Vlad or Dracula, but he did make a rubbing of a plate fastened on the top of the coffin. I’ve translated it to read ‘tepes’ which means ‘impaler’ and was one of the nicknames given to Vlad. I feel it right down to the marrow in my bones; this is the actual coffin of Dracula. We can find it, and we can have it on display at our Halloween Bash!”
“The Civil War is ancient history, Frankie,” I told him. “Why hasn’t anyone else made this discovery yet?”
“How many civil war buffs also have a deep interest in vampires and the legend of Dracula, Sniper?”
I hate that nickname, but everyone in a frat has one. Robert Henry Snipes easily became ‘Sniper’ to my unimaginative frat brothers.
Being the only frat-brother who owned a van, an old clunker of a VW which runs mostly on a powerful belief in the supernatural and at least a quart of oil per 1,000 miles, I was chosen as the driver and each of my brothers chipped in for gas and eats. Four of us, Frankie, Sam ‘Tippler’ Tipton, and George ‘Wildman’ Wilkins departed Pennsylvania in late July heading for the area surrounding Manassas, Virginia, to begin searching for that needle in a haystack known as Dracula’s Coffin.
“And what made you kids think you could find something hidden nearly a century and a half?” Detective Samoza asked me. I looked around the station house while trying to come up with an answer. It was nearly eleven at night and the place was mostly deserted. A janitor was pushing a floor polisher over the tiled floor while a drunk waiting to be booked lay half asleep on a wooden bench. In a small alcove on the far side of the room a police woman was taking fingerprints and mug shots of two women who had been busted for drunk driving after leaving a ‘gentlemen’s club’ where they failed to win the amateur dance contest of the evening.
“I don’t know, detective. Youthful exuberance I guess. Private Toomey’s diary gave a rough description, about three miles west of the junction of two creeks in Green Briar, Virginia. Of course, when we got to the area, we couldn’t find any trace of a town named Green Briar.
“But Frankie wasn’t about to give up, and having had lots of experience researching on the Internet, he found that the city of Manassas had annexed the small village in 1894. Later he learned a housing developer had converted one of the creeks to a storm drain and constructed a housing development named Green Briar Vista. We moved the van to a campground nearby and spent the next twelve days searching the area until bingo! We found it!
“When we opened it, of course it was empty, but we never really believed we would find the vampire. Still, it did have a brass plate affixed to the top and we could make out the worn engraving which read, ‘Tepes: 1431-1477.’ Later, the four of us trekked the coffin out of the woods during the night and placed it into my van, then drove home the next day.”
“And you didn’t think stealing a coffin and moving it across state lines would be a crime?”
“We didn’t think anything, detective. We never truly expected to find the coffin, perhaps Frankie did, and the rest of us were merely caught up in the excitement.”
“That’s what happened. It was early in July when we got the coffin back to the frat house. There weren’t more than six or eight students taking classes during the summer, and Frankie decided it would be okay to store the coffin in his room until the bash. Since we had three months until Halloween, Frankie set to work cleaning up the coffin; it was pretty yucky being more than 500 years old and having spent the time since the civil war in an abandoned mine shaft.
“Occasionally Tippler, Wildman, or I would stop by Frankie’s room where he was constantly polishing and rubbing the damned thing. It was pretty spooky, let me tell you. But Frankie was having the time of his life! He treated it like a real treasure.
“What did you and your other frat brothers do, Robert?”
“Not much… oh, we’d help Frankie just to be friendly, but like I say, the whole affair was pretty darned spooky.”
“How so,” the detective asked. “Describe it to me, please.” Samoza was running a cassette tape recorder to make sure he got everything on tape, but was also making notes in a wire-wound steno pad.
“Well, you could tell it was about a zillion years old. The hinges and the latch were made of bronze and forged by hand. The inside was in perfect condition and lined with some kind of fabric that I took for satin or some other expensive material. The underside of the lid had a gray ceramic tile fastened to it which was very puzzling to me. I asked Frankie what it was.”
“A religious icon of some sort, I suppose,” Frankie answered. Everyone in Europe was extremely religious in those days. Perhaps it once had some sort of painting or family history on the tile, but through the ages the paint has worn away.”
“What happened after that, Robert?”
“That’s about all there is to tell, detective. All the trouble took place the following night while I was at the library.”
“You don’t have to worry about telling us, Robert. We’ve checked your alibi and confirmed that you were at the student library from 5:30 until it closed at 9:00. You’re in the clear, but we still need to know what happened around 7:00. Is there anything more you can tell us?” Samoza tapped his teeth with a ball point pen and waited for me to answer.
“No sir. I have no idea at all what happened. Only Frankie and the other frat brothers who were home at that time can answer that for you.”
“And we’ll have a devil of a time getting answers from thirteen people who have vanished without a trace.”
Yesterday, August 7, 4:38 p.m.
Frank Chapman was elated. Before him was one of the great treasures of the world, in his personal opinion. The brass and bronze on the outside gleamed where he spent hours polishing the brightwork. Using the tiny vacuum designed for his computer he had painstakingly removed the dirt, leaves and other debris from inside the coffin. The strange ceramic tile affixed to the underside of the lid still puzzled him. What could it be? His lame excuse of a religious icon to Sniper didn’t really satisfy him.
Only two more months until the Halloween Bash and Frankie had made all the preparations. He planned to have the common room downstairs decorated in the best haunted castle fashion. There would be candles, Hollywood cobwebs from the drama department, rubber spiders and rats all over the place to make it as creepy as possible. In the center of the common room the coffin would rest upon two saw-horses draped in black, and at just the right moment Frankie would slowly open the lid and emerge in his Dracula costume. He didn’t plan to wear evening clothes and opera cape like Bela Lugosi; instead he would wear the chain mail and leather jerkin of a medieval knight which Vlad had been. The surprise would be heightened with the use of fake fangs and blood, and a wicked axe, also from the drama department. Frankie could practically hear the gasps of the partygoers as he emerged from the coffin. It would be lovely indeed!
He wanted to experience the excitement now and decided to crawl into the coffin and close the lid, then slowly emerge and practice his entrance. Not wanting to take any chances, Frankie inspected the joint where the lid met the coffin proper. He wanted to make sure there were no hidden catches which might trap him inside and spoil the experience. But he had affectionately caressed every square inch of the coffin during his cleaning and restoration and the joints held no surprises for him.
Wearing Levis, a sweat shirt and sneakers, Frankie eased himself over the edge of the coffin and reclined. It was an eerie feeling, knowing this wooden box had once held the body of a man reputed to be the most evil on Earth, but Frankie was enraptured as he pulled the lid down and closed it.
A metallic snick startled him as a muted humming sound came to his ears. What the heck was going on? Frankie pushed on the lid but it wouldn’t open. He pulled up his knees and exerted all the pressure he could with his legs and arms. It didn’t help. He was still trapped in the coffin!
The humming sound increased in pitch and volume then the ceramic tile began to glow an iridescent pale gray and three dark blue vertical lines bisected with one horizontal line appeared. It looked like a digital touch-pad of postage stamp size squares but there were no markings on the squares. The touch-pad, only inches above Frankie’s nose, began glowing brighter and within each square strange markings in green, yellow and red appeared.
“Well, I’ll be a sorcerer’s apprentice,” Frankie remarked. “It’s an LED screen! Now if I could just figure out what the markings meant, one of them will surely open the lid. But what will the other ones do?” With a trembling hand, Frankie awkwardly lifted his right arm across his chest until his fingers could reach the touch pad in the cramped space. “Eeny, meeny, miney….”
Frankie never finished the children’s nonsense rhyme. The humming ceased and the touch-pad went dark. Frankie couldn’t even see his fingers in front of his face until the lid of the coffin sprung open and he was bathed in soft golden light.
“Qrkx onna glmph toctu,” Frankie heard. “Why, you’re not Standor,” the voice said. “You’re one of those primitive Earth creatures. What are you doing here? Where is Standor?”
Frankie sat up and looked around to spot the person who was speaking. The coffin was sitting on a low dais, less than a foot and a half above a gleaming polished floor. He was in a circular shaped room, about forty feet across, with several tables or desks located around the perimeter. At each of the desks a creature sat peering at him, strange creatures. A few may have been three feet tall, others six or eight feet tall, but as they were all seated it was difficult to tell. Frankie thought of the Munchkins of Oz, Fodor of Middle-Earth, Leprechauns and trolls. This was a very mixed collection of creatures staring at him.
One of the creatures rose from his desk until he was standing about seven feet tall, but he was cadaverously thin, with a long face and pointed chin. “Speak up, I said! Where’s Standor?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know who you mean,” Frankie answered. “In fact, I don’t know where I am or who you people are.”
“You’re in Asgaard at the Bifrost gate, simpleton. We’ve been trying to locate the transport unit more than a dozen decades but it was apparently unoccupied and the homing beacon not activated. It wasn’t until a few calends ago the beacon turned on and we were able to retrieve the unit. We had no idea one of you apes had crawled inside.”
“I’m not an ape, I’m a human,” Frankie retorted. “I’m a man!”
“Yes, yes, that’s what they all say,” the thin creature answered. “We’re going to have to take you away and have you confined until we decide what to do. This will be a matter requiring the attention of the full assembly of the Council of Science.”
“Why can’t I just be sent back,” Frankie asked?
“Back?” the thin creature replied. Evidently he was the only being who spoke English, or he was the superior and the rest remained silent in deference to him. “Why, that can’t be done. No, no, no indeed. There can be no unauthorized use of an inter-dimensional transport unit. You must have travel permits issued by the council and that can’t happen unless you are a licensed researcher and can satisfy them your destination and temporal period meets the requirements for scientific study. No one can be allowed to go gallivanting willy-nilly among the dimensions, you know. There could easily be serious repercussions. No, I’m afraid we’ll have to lock you up until your case can be heard.”
“But I haven’t done anything,” Frankie shouted! “I should be entitled to a trial. I don’t even know what I stand accused of having done?”
“Ignorance is no excuse,” the cadaver said. “You’re species is not very intelligent anyway. It would most likely be a waste of time to explain your intransigencies for you certainly wouldn’t understand your error. Your species seems to think you know all the answers, when in fact you can not even fathom the questions.
“Security!” the creature shouted. "Take him to a holding pen. Be sure the animal is fed and watered but take precautions to insure there is no possibility of escape. He doesn’t have any immigration papers and no visas, and probably hasn’t had the required shots either. Make certain he cannot go wandering about Valhalla before his case has been heard.”
Two creatures emerged from the darkness and ambled toward Frankie. Each had a very stiff legged gait, as if walking were not their usual mode of locomotion. Frankie had the hilarious impression of Chester, from Gunsmoke, with two stiff legs instead of one. He almost laughed aloud until he saw these creatures each had six octopus-like tentacles in place of arms and a utility belt hung with tools of their office, a dagger, a mallet, shackles and chains. Frankie looked hurriedly for a place to run, but finding none, he decided to go quietly with Gruesome and Fearsome. Perhaps once outside this room he could escape; these two storm-troopers seemed none too steady on their stiff legs and he might be able to easily topple them over.
He quickly banished that thought when the Keystone Kops flanked him and each extended two tentacles which wrapped tightly around his upper arm and then a leg. Unceremoniously he was lifted a full foot above the floor and taken from the room.
As his guards carried him down a hallway lit with the same ruddy-gold light, Frankie was amazed at the assortment of beings they passed. A pair of three-foot high snails slithered toward him but slid aside for the guards leaving a sticky substance on the tiled floor, while their eye-stalks followed him with curiosity. An Arachnid, six-foot tall, from tip to tip, walked upright on two legs with two others pawing the air while the remaining four legs were wrapped about its tiny body where a beaked mouth protruded beneath two tiny eyes.
Following the spider a few paces back was an attractive woman entirely naked, except for a light downy-fuzz which made her look like an Easter duckling. Frankie was sure she was a woman because she had a figure that would have looked equally well as the centerfold of this month’s Playboy or Field and Stream.
Shortly his escort stopped in front of an entryway closed with a shimmering green light. The one nearest the door used a spare tentacle to remove something from his belt and touch it to a small gray spot next to the entrance which caused the green shimmer to shut off. They pushed Frankie roughly through the door and released him to drop to the floor with a thud. As they left the green shimmer sprang back to life and blocked the door.
Frankie simply lay where he had fallen while he categorized the bruises, aches and pains. When he had taken stock and decided none of his injuries were serious he rolled over and sat up holding a hand to his aching head.
“And what have we here,” his cell-mate asked?
Frankie looked and wished he hadn’t. His cell-mate was a grizzly bear, almost. The snout was a little shorter, the body a little thinner, but the teeth and claws looked just as vicious as any bear ever featured in American Rifleman.
“Excuse me?” Frankie asked. “Were you speaking to me?”
“Well I certainly wasn’t talking to those refugees from an aquarium that dropped you off here. They must be back in their tank by now. Are you injured?”
“Nothing that a Jacuzzi and two fingers of bourbon can’t fix,” Frankie said.
“Bourbon? Oh, you mean the distilled ethanol beverage of your culture. I understand that one, but what is a Jacuzzi? Do you take it internally or rub it on?”
“You sit in it,” Frankie explained. “It’s like a liquid massage to relax your muscles and ease your bruises. Why the heck am I having a conversation with a bear?”
“A typical response of your species, if it looks like a bear it must be a bear, despite evidence to the contrary. Have you ever heard of talking bears before?”
“Only Yogi-Bear and Boo-Boo, but they never made much sense to me,” Frankie quipped.
“Would it surprise you to know that my name is Gautier and I am from the fourth planet of the star you call Canopus? My race is at least two million years older than yours and much more intelligent. We were traveling among the stars more than a million years ago!”
“If you’re so smart, Gautier, why are you sharing a cell with me?”
“Ah, therein lays the rub. I’m a theoretical physicist and mathematician among my kind. I was in the process of testing a device which I hoped would prove my theory of a multi-dimensional universe when I arrived here and….”
“….Got picked up for an immigration violation!”
“I see you understand my predicament.”
“We’re in the same boat, chum, but for a different reason. I thought I had discovered the coffin of Dracula and planned to use it as a display in a Halloween party, and then somehow I ended up here.”
“Remote homing beacon,” Gautier said. “They install those in every Inter-dimensional transport unit so they can retrieve them should it become abandoned on a primitive planet.”
“I wish you’d quit calling my planet primitive!”
“Sorry,” the bear said. “Of course it’s not polite to make fun of another’s disability, but you’ve simply demonstrated your youth and lack of learning again. The transport unit looks like a coffin so you naturally give it that name, even without understanding its purpose. And because one of your kin saw someone disappear and moments later saw a bat in the same area, he asserted the person had changed into a bat and flown away. What rubbish!”
“It was none of my, kin,” Frankie contested. “The legends of vampires have been told among my people for hundreds, even thousands of years.”
“Rubbish I said and rubbish it remains,” Gautier answered. “Your species has a compulsion to understand everything and if you don’t, you invent fanciful tales and call it understanding. You lack the intelligence for scientific investigation and don’t have the patience to wait for an explanation, so you invent one.”
“I didn’t invent anything!” Frankie insisted.
“No, of course not, you merely passed along hearsay as if it were first hand knowledge. Why I remember that humanoid from Rigel-Kent, Jesu was his name, who was studying your planet two millennia ago. Because his race had perfected certain PSI capabilities, he was able to perform simple acts of legerdemain which your culture assumed were miracles. He was stupid and vain enough to let them continue to believe these parlor tricks and let the people deify him. Naturally he was not a deity and the old style shamans of your planet could not allow him to have them cast aside. So they persecuted him for the crimes of blasphemy and heresy and he was put to death. The Council of Science allowed his crucifixion to take place as an object lesson to any other Inter-dimensional travelers not to interfere in local affairs. Three days later they recovered his corpus and rejuvenated him using DNA techniques still unknown on your planet.”
“What?” Frankie said, all but exploding. “You mean Christ was a scientist from this council? Why hasn’t the world been told this?”
“Do you think we’re stupid, or something? Religion is based upon belief, without fact or reason. If an outsider attempts to enlighten the believers with truth, the outsider will always be destroyed unless capable of overpowering those who would destroy him. We have found that your kind is exceedingly reluctant to learn the truth when your mind is made up with so-called ‘facts.’”
“I can understand that,” Frankie said. “We have government agencies with the same attitude. ‘There’s no reason for it, it’s just our policy.”
“Now you understand,” the bear said. “I could tell right away you weren’t one of the average primitives.”
“You can say that again, brother. Momma Chapman didn’t raise no stupid children.” Frankie looked around their cell, or pen as the cadaverous being had called this holding area. “Even if I’m not stupid, I don’t see an obvious way to escape this holding area, and if I did, I’m not sure I could use that transporter device to get back home.”
“You mean to say the transporter unit is here, actually right here? I had no idea! I thought they had whisked you here for study purposes.”
“I said so, didn’t I? When I crawled into it, somehow it became activated and I arrived here inside the coffin... I mean transporter unit.”
“Well, that puts a different light on things,” the bear said. “Normally a researcher will send back many items for study, before he returns with the transporter. But if the unit is here, then we can make an escape! Where did you say it’s located?”
“I didn’t, but it’s just down the corridor in that circular room where everyone met me when the coffin… I mean transporter unit, opened.”
“Excellent,” the bear said. “Now all I have to do is deactivate the force field barring the door and I can use the transporter….”
“Don’t you mean ‘we’?” Frankie interrupted.
The bear stood to his full height, which Frankie estimated to be over eight feet. His form began to shimmer and flicker and suddenly he grew shorter, the fur disappeared and was replaced with bluish-red flesh covered with scales. The claws on the end of the hands grew longer and became more curved while taking on the sheen of polished ebony. The bear’s feet grew longer and the arch higher. The toes grew long black nails and the heels became hard, bony knobs.
Frankie was terrified watching the transformation take place. The creature spoke again, this time the voice was rasping and sibilant. “Ahhh,” the creature spoke with a reptilian hiss. “It takes so much effort and concentration to maintain that illusion, but I find it necessary when dealing with a species like yours. No, my friend, I do not me ‘we.’ If the transporter is here, I have but to activate it to make my escape from this way-station where they’ve been holding me until I could be sent to my execution.”
For once, Frankie was speechless. He had no smart-aleck quips to toss back at the hideous creature before him.
“I am a scientist, as I told you, but my home world wants to destroy me for certain crimes against the general population. I suffer from a progressive genetic disorder which makes it impossible for me to absorb nutrients in the usual fashion of eating a normal diet. I must have the blood of primates, already thick with nutrition. My race has spawned many creatures such as myself, though the condition remains rare. With all our knowledge, we have been unable to affect a cure and the only solution seems to be the destruction of unfortunates such as myself.
“But I don’t intend to let that happen to me. I know others have escaped thru the use of multiple dimensions, and I will do the same. When I get out of here, I’ll use the transport log within the transporter to take myself back to your home world. Once there I can hide myself for another thousand years amongst your superstitious race!”
Gautier beamed with satisfaction as he revealed his plan to Frankie. In this tiny holding area, there was no place for Frankie to run, no place to hide, and he was ill-equipped to defend himself from the fangs and claws of the monster from Canopus. Gautier began to approach his victim, the claw-like nails and bony heels of his feet making an ominous dragging, clacking, tapping, sound on the tile floor. The sound was something that would strike terror into Frankie the Vladophile for the remainder of his life, which turned out to be no more than four seconds before the creature wrapped powerful arms around Frankie’s torso and vicious little fangs pierced his jugular as Gautier greedily absorbed the life giving nutrient flowing within.
When the animal’s blood had been drained, Gautier cast it to the floor and reveled in the new strength and power coursing through his veins. Before his meal, he was too weak to use his short-range telekinesis to transport his body beyond the shimmering green restraint preventing him from leaving the cell. Now, with full concentration and power he easily whisked his physical body into the hallway and freedom.
Knowing his reptilian form would be instantly recognized and an alarm would sound, Gautier altered his physical appearance until he would easily be mistaken for a menial employed to perform cleanup duties in Asgaard. He unhesitatingly moved down the hallway and entered the room known as The Bifrost Gate and found it deserted. In between transport missions, the scientists and technicians must have returned to their laboratories, homes classrooms, or wherever those fools spend their time. Gautier was pleased to be alone with the transport unit resting in the center of the room.
The lid was still open and Gautier quickly settled into the transporter unit, pulling the lid shut behind him. The LCD panel began to glow and the touch-pad controls appeared. Gautier poked a pudgy finger at two squares in succession and waited for the log of dimensional transports to appear, then keyed in a return trip to the previous departure point.
The humming sound increased in frequency and volume as the light inside the transporter went out, leaving Gautier in total darkness. Gently he pushed up on the lid and emerged into the dormitory room of Frankie Chapman, pledge-master of the Phi Kappa fraternity.
“What a nice dwelling this place is,” Gautier thought. Swiftly he altered his physical appearance and became a doppelganger of Frankie Chapman. He took the precaution of deactivating the transporter unit so it could not be automatically retrieved by the Asgaard scientists and closed the lid. Now for another little snack, he would need all his abilities if he was to go into self-imposed exile on this planet, and the first order of business would be to hide the transporter unit in the event he might need it to make another escape. His telekinetic powers could transport him a few feet or miles, but he was incapable of performing feats of teleportation between the multiple universes.
Gautier smiled inwardly and left the room for downstairs where he would surely find another meal.
There would be, of course, no Halloween Bash for the Phi Kappas.