Jacob, p.17
Jacob, page 17
“Sociopaths? Psychopaths?”
“Don’t get them confused. Do you know the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath?”
“No.”
“Psychopaths get caught.”
“Oh.”
“A successful vampire is a cunning sociopath. He’s charming, he manipulates, he takes what he wants, and he doesn’t care about what you want. A psychopath—he’s not charming, he’s just a monster. Even the men of The Community are appalled by that behavior. It’s … well, it’s just bad manners.”
Jacob considers his empty glass, decides not to refill it, places it on the table, returns his attention to me. “Yes, we have had a few people fail to cope with their own transformation. They become psychopaths, they get drunk on power, they turn into monsters, killing at will. It’s the imbalance of hormones. But the way you people portray us, you think we’re all psychopaths. No—you don’t see the real Community. You only see the ones who—well, most of the time, we find them and take care of them before you even know they exist. Most of the time, we clean up after them too. A missing person report is better for us than a bloodless body in a dumpster. But that’s the point, mon petit fromage—I am not your friend. Vampires don’t have friends. We are all sociopaths. We have to be sociopaths or we’re going to die a very ugly death—”
“Hunger—?”
“Not exactly. Not hunger, not as you know it, but a kind of hunger much more painful and debilitating than anything you can imagine, worse than anything a mortal can experience, because it goes on and on and on, without end. It’s a sensual grind as well as a physical one. No, until you’re willing to kill—you can’t be transformed.”
I put my own glass on the table. I hadn’t realized I was still holding it until I looked down at my hands. They’re shaking.
“And that’s the point—you don’t just become a vampire. You have to be trained. And first, The Community has to see that you’re trainable. What is your relationship with death? Does it fascinate you? Does it intrigue you? Does it draw you into its embrace? Are you willing to be its agent? Are you willing to kill to eat? That’s an easy one. Are you willing to kill to defend yourself? Another easy one. But are you willing to kill simply because you enjoy killing? Ahh, that’s the crucial difference—are you enough of a sociopath to succeed as a vampire? What The Community doesn’t need is another self-inflated idiot calling attention to himself. The self-appointed Master of Darkness usually dies quickly. That’s at least one thing your movies get right. That psychopaths make lousy vampires. The rest is bullshit—”
“Wow. I hadn’t realized.”
“No, you haven’t—and neither have any of your colleagues, at least none of the ones I’ve followed. That’s why you’re all so laughable—all puffed up with self-importance, and how many of you have actually taken the time to consider the physics, the economics, the psychology, the morality—yes, morality—and the simple raw experience of this existence? What a bunch of claptrap. What do you think a vampire does? Do you think I just sleep in a coffin all day and only come out to drink blood? Why would anyone want that kind of existence? It’s booorrrring.”
“I don’t think you’re being fair to—”
“Are they being fair to me? To my … associates? They make us out to be monsters. Or worse, teenage fantasies.”
“Well, you have to admit—”
“No, I don’t. I don’t have to admit anything. At best, you’re a snack. And I don’t play with my food. Yes, I am a monster—but I’m not the kind of monster you believe. I’m not any kind of monster you know.”
I have no words. Shrug. “You’re right. I’ve got nothing. You’ve deconstructed the mythology.”
“The mythology?” Jacob snorts. “I haven’t even touched the mythology.” He reaches for his glass, refills it. He sips. “I eat, I sleep, I drink—” He gestures with the wine. “And once a month, I get my period—”
“The full moon?”
“Oh, hell no. Where did you get that idea? More of those silly horror movies? You’ve got to stop wallowing in that bullshit. No—not the full moon. That’s the worst time of the month for hunting. It’s too bright, bright enough to see shadows. The prey can see every flicker of movement. No—the dark of the moon. Much much better. The darkest of darks. All the different colors of black. When the darkness gets so deep I’m invisible, that’s when I feed—”
“You can see in the dark?”
“Better than you can in the day.” Jacob smiles, his sharp teeth gleam. “Do you know that sometimes I watch you at night? Sometimes you go out for a walk. Sometimes I track you—”
“I—I—really?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“It’s fun. I like watching you. You’re so serious, so intense, you’re cute.”
“That’s because I’m thinking. I like to work at night, it’s easier, everything is quiet and I’m alone. Sometimes I take a walk because that helps me sort out my ideas.” A thought occurs to me. “Do you follow me a lot?”
“No. Only when I’m so bored I can’t stand it.”
“Should I be worried—?”
“No. You should say thank you.”
“Uh—why?”
“Two months ago—I wasn’t the only one watching you walk.”
“Oh?”
“I didn’t like his intentions. You belong to me, not him. He smelled bad, he tasted worse. I spat him out and left him in a dumpster.”
“Hm.”
“Yes, you’re thinking back. You’ve been tracking unsolved murders, haven’t you? Trying to figure out which ones are mine. Or anyone’s.”
“Well, yes. I’m trying to figure out how to find a vampire. You couldn’t do it in Seattle.”
“I told you before, you don’t find vampires unless they want to be found. And if they let you find them, you’re probably in deep doodoo.”
“But you found them—The Community.”
“Yes. Eventually. And if I thought finding a vampire was hard, killing one is even harder.”
The train to Sacramento took most of two days. It was a slow, bumpy, uncomfortable ride. It was a lumber train, carrying wood from the Washington forests, but it also had two baggage cars carrying bushels of fresh apples, live crabs and lobsters in sea-water filled barrels, salmon on ice that had been driven down from the mountains, some silks and spices and tea that had arrived from China or Japan, I wasn’t sure, and one car for passengers, most of whom worked on the railroad or for one of the line’s major shippers. The meals served enroute were simple, but hearty. I had no cause to complain.
Mostly, I sat alone at the far end of the car, scribbling my thoughts in a notebook, trying to organize myself for my new life. I started with what I knew to be real. The Community was real. The Community had killed Georgie-boy.
That suggested several possibilities, any or all of which I had to accept as real. The Community was watching me closely—how, I couldn’t be sure, but certainly if they had known about my relationship with Georgie-boy, then I had to have been under their observation.
That also suggested that lawyer Durant had been keeping them posted on my inquiries as well. I couldn’t prove that, but if someone had visited him shortly after dark on that last evening, and if he had shared our last conversation—the one where I had asked him to put me in touch with any of Monsieur’s associates—then that gave that visitor enough time to seek out Georgie and dispatch him so violently.
I had told Durant that I was leaving Seattle on a steamship heading south, that I would debark in San Francisco, and that I would write to him as soon as I had settled in. I even went so far as to have Russell, his secretary, rush out and book passage for me.
Mr. Matthews, the cabbie dropped me off at the pier, and we parted as if we were old friends. As soon as he had driven away, I loaded my trunks into another cab and went straight to the train station. I paid for my passage on the lumber train in cash.
I wasn’t certain that I had not been observed, but at the time I had some small suspicion that the men of The Community in Seattle might have been satisfied just to see the last of me.
On the other hand, my last personal ad had been a declaration of war. I had published it in the personals column, they couldn’t have missed it. “Wherever you are, I will find you—and I will repay you.”
In retrospect, that was probably a mistake. It had marked me as their enemy, and they would certainly have little hesitation in giving me the same violent death as they had done for poor Georgie.
I needed to make myself as hard to find as they were. That would require some thought. It meant I could not stay in any one place very long, maybe only two or three nights at a time. Hotels, inns, boarding houses might suffice—the problem there was that those places often kept records. I would have to find establishments where cash was an acceptable substitute for credential. Most of those would be places of dubious repute.
But—whatever I did, if I fell into any kind of a pattern, that would also be a trap. I would have to keep shifting my behaviors.
That sparked a thought. The men of The Community were cunning and they were patient. They acted on their timetable—no one else’s. They studied patterns—I knew this from my time with Monsieur, and again as I had pored through the records that Durant had stored in his office—records I had claimed, packed, and shipped to a receiving agent on the other side of the continent, with sealed instructions to forward them to a second, and from there to a trustworthy third who upon opening his sealed instructions, would place the files in a secure storage facility—one of the same facilities that banks and some government offices used for their outdated records. Upon completion of this task, he would publish a coded personal ad in a specific national newspaper. The code would tell me—and only me—what city my files had been sent to and where I would find them.
I didn’t think the files had any real value, I had gleaned some information from them, but most of what I had discovered was how well Monsieur had learned to hide himself through a variety of barely legal financial maneuvers. I assumed that other members of The Community were equally skilled at evading detection. It was a finely honed survival skill. I was a neophyte up against masters. There was little point in continuing that avenue of research.
Perhaps at some point in the future, when I had gained more experience, I might have a second or third look—or I might have someone with more experience go through the various papers, someone I could trust not to report back to The Community. There might be something else in those files to discover—something I had missed the first time through. I doubted it, but I couldn’t rule out the possibility.
But an idea had occurred to me. While in Boston, I had been comfortable in an apartment of my own. Acquaintances from the university had made my rooms a convenient gathering place away from the campus—a place for drinking, smoking, cards, and occasional lascivious exercises. One of the young gentlemen had come from a family of well-established locksmiths. They provided safes and security vaults for banks, jewelry stores, government offices, and various other establishments that needed to store valuables.
My acquaintance had remarked that no lock, no safe, no bank vault was invulnerable to attack. Nothing is unbreakable given enough time and effort. The physical universe doesn’t have absolutes. A vault isn’t about safety, it’s about deterrence.
The security of the vault is not the vault itself, but the time and energy it would take to break in. If it costs more to break in than the value inside, then it’s not worth a robber’s time. “It’s a question of who’s willing to spend the most—you building your vault, or the burglar who wants what’s inside. Your job isn’t to construct a system that can’t be broken, there’s no such thing. Your job is to construct a system so far beyond the capabilities of an invader that it discourages all attempts.”
As the train jerked along through the dark forests of Oregon, his remarks bubbled up in my memory. I had no security, but I could make all attempts at observation and detection more trouble than they were worth.
Toward that end, I had to demonstrate—I laughed out loud at the realization—behavior so irrational there was no obvious pattern.
Or—
Another thought also occurred to me. I could allow myself to be observed sinking into a life so degenerate that I no longer represented a threat to The Community. That might work too.
Or—
I could simply get on a steamer and sail off to some far horizon, someplace where I would have no power at all to effect any danger to The Community.
Or—
I could retreat to a mountain cabin so remote and difficult to achieve that it would take several days for anyone to reach me. No member of The Community could risk being exposed to that much sunlight. Or maybe a desert location. That would be even more unapproachable. But I wasn’t exactly excited about the idea of living in so much isolation.
Perhaps—
I could build or purchase a big house, a mansion, something alone on a hill, and then fortify it, put up a moat, walls, fences, bring in vicious dogs, hire guards, and become—
That one stopped me. That was exactly what a member of The Community might do—retreat behind an unimpeachable barricade.
If I wanted to find a vampire—maybe that’s what I should be looking for.
Hmm.
I scribbled all these thoughts in my journal so I wouldn’t forget them. I kept that book close to me, in an inside pocket, triple-buttoned—and connected by a metal chain as well. It was more valuable than my wallet.
My mind kept churning.
Hmm, Maybe I could set myself up in a house anyway, someplace not too obvious, but just enough—and use that as a decoy while I hid out somewhere else.
Or—
If I lived on a boat, I could sail out each night, up the river to somewhere in the back of the Sacramento Delta where there aren’t any roads, and only come back to shore after sunrise. That might be one way to stay out of the reach of The Community.
At least, I had options now.
I arrived in Sacramento late in the day, which was not an ideal time. I left my trunks at the baggage claim and walked around the corner, up two blocks, left, two blocks over, one block back, then waited in a doorway to see that I hadn’t been followed. Satisfied, I headed toward the business district, and checked into the first hotel I saw, a somewhat shabby building, but I had resolved to live beneath my means and adopt the general demeanor of a man who was living from meal to meal, job to job. I would soon be dressing the part, wearing workman’s dungarees and cap. I didn’t know if a disguise would hide me from a determined Community, but it could provide some small advantage. As cunning as they were, there was always the possibility that they would not think to search for me outside the pattern of life I had lived in Seattle—a slim possibility to be sure, but I had resolved to learn all the different ways to be invisible in the hopes that the combined efforts would provide a greater degree of protection.
Maybe. Maybe not.
I had to recognize that that my departure from Seattle had not been immune to detection. It was possible some private agent, some daysider had been assigned to watch my actions, just like Durant, and that person might have tracked me to the train, might have then reported back to The Community that I had not left by steamboat. It was equally possible that someone in Seattle had telegraphed someone in Sacramento, had told them to watch out for me. And it was possible that someone reporting to The Community here, and eventually to The Community in Seattle, had seen me debark.
But even if that were the case—and I couldn’t discount it entirely—all that it might prove was that yes, The Community had frightened me so badly that I was fleeing like a terrified dog, running and hiding and doing everything I could imagine to keep them from finding me. And that part was true anyway. They had terrified me.
As for the rest—well, I had the beginnings of a plan.
I knew I couldn’t outthink them. Not yet. The Community believed me to be naïve—too naïve to be a threat.
Well, yes I was.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t learn. And if there was one thing I had learned from Monsieur—and again in Boston—it was that I was more than just a good student. I had what could only be called an obsessive desire to master any subject that interested me. More than once, I had immersed myself so deeply in a specific study that it alarmed my professors. While at first they had considered me an excellent student, they soon began to fear that I was possessed of some manic compulsion, plowing through one book or journal after another, as if caught up in a desperate search for the ultimate level of truth, the last elusive fact that would unlock all the mysteries still unsolved.
And that was true too.
It was the mystery of The Community that I wanted to solve. All the mysteries of The Community. Yes, I wanted the secret of life everlasting, but not at the price that Monsieur had paid, living life in permanent shadow—so yes, I wanted to find a cure for his condition so he could return to the daylight. I believed then—and still believed even after the betrayal of his disappearance—that on some level, he desired a mortal relationship. Perhaps even some of the other men of The Community regretted what they had become, and perhaps they too secretly hoped that one day there might be a cure.
Somewhere in my fevered thinking, I realized that I had no way to know if The Community was watching me or not. So whatever I did, however I behaved—I could never assume I was acting in secrecy. That led me to a rather amusing realization. If I acted as if I thought I was hiding, The Community would assume that I believed I had fooled them. If I knew that I was not fooling them at all, I would have my secrecy in plain sight.
