Dear reader,
A couple of warnings ahead of this submission. Firstly, like much of my writing, it is quite heavy on sexy biting and vampires. If that is your thing then great, but if not then it might feel a bit stilted. Secondly, this one is quite long, 25k words and so hence definitely into novella territory. It is not a quickie and it will take a bit of investment to get into. If you are not sure then I suggest have a look at my 'October River Walk' story to get a flavour of where we are going. Thirdly, hopefully as expected with stories submitted in the horror section, it is erm.. quite horrific in places.
You have been warned. Enjoy!
Copyright
jon.martin22 2022, all rights reserved.
(1) Tuesday, New York City.
Tuesday the ninth of October was a really weird day for me. Three quite significant things happened. Steph left me, seemingly for good this time. Her ring and her key dropped on the floor by the kitchen counter. I got fired, well, I got told that the process of redundancy consultation had started which is sort of the modern equivalent. Thirdly, Mum called to tell me that Uncle Kelvin had died.
I sat at my desk in silence as I put the phone down. My eyes resting on but not reading the overly polite email invitation at the top of my inbox that spelt the end of that part of my career. I thought about the last time I had seen Kelvin. It had been a long hot hazy summer day and the two of us had sailed Kelvin's boat over to Falmouth for lunch. Lunch at the club had rolled into a second bottle of wine and then loaded coffees. We accidentally left all the groceries that we had bought for the next day on the quay side in their shopping bag as we pushed off. We only realised halfway back to the house when Kelvin went down below to hunt out a few beers. By then the light was fading and it was too late to turn around. Eventually we ended up taking a taxi down to the single crummy diner in town and grabbing late night burgers and beers. It had been the perfect Kelvin day, haphazard, drunken and a lot of fun.
It took me a few passes to grasp the email from HR. In essence I was relieved immediately of any duties. The only task remaining for me being to turn up to an interview the week after next. Nobody actually came over to talk to me so it took a little while for the penny to drop and for me to stand up and gather my things. I habitually locked my drawer but then doubled back to peel the key off the ring and put it back in the hole as I left my desk for the last time.
It was an unfamiliar feeling to be back out on the street so soon after completing my own work commute. I gazed up the glass-domed office high-rise that had been my work-home for most of the last decade. The morning air was still fresh, the tail end of the rush hour commuters skipping their last few steps in to work. I looked up between the sky scrapers, blinking from the light. I thrust my hands into the silk lined pockets of my work pants and considered whether to go to the usual coffee shop just down the street or to walk a bit further the other way. I took a big breath and stopped to let the moment pass as I did.
I took the hike all the way up to the bottom end of the Bowery and was glad that I did. I enjoyed my coffee in a little shop full of stained wood and hip tourists. It was a welcome change from the the usual clean white formica business oriented ones. As I sat staring out into nothing on the street outside, I went through my phone messages. I ignored a few from mum telling me to call her since we had only just spoken however one did require some attention. It was from a lawyer in Boston, mentioning Uncle Kelvin and asking for a call back.
Over a coffee beautifully decorated with foamed milk and a crunchy pastry, I called the office of the man who had been Uncle Kelvin's lawyer. After a brief exchange with a bubbly assistant, I was put through to the kindly warm sounding voice of Callum Murphy. Callum was chatty and relaxed, it was more like talking to an old friend of Kelvin's than the efficient business exchange I had expected from a lawyer. It turned out that he had known Kelvin reasonably well from a professional stand point. Callum had worked with Kelvin for a long time, back when he had set up and then sold his company and now finally he was acting to administer his estate. Despite a depth of pleasantries, Callum was not going to give anything away over the phone more than the notice that as a named party, I should be present at the reading of the will which was to take place either the following week or the week after. He delivered the welcome news that the estate would cover all of my costs including the air fare, the hotel and even food. I agreed to have a look at my schedule and get back to him.
I ended the call and pulled up my calendar for the next few weeks. At first glance I was booked back to back but as I removed the now defunct work-related layer the page cleared. It reminded me of the truth that in-fact I now had no concrete plans for the whole of the next few weeks or indeed anything at all in the future whatsoever. A brief interaction over email with the bubbly legal assistant ended with me receiving a flight and a hotel booking for the following Monday and an appointment to see Callum in person. I looked up the hotel into which I had been booked and got a jolt of excitement, it was a far more fancy joint than I would ever have paid for myself.
As I downed my coffee, I called mum to tell her what was going on. Despite the sadness in her voice, I could hear her excitement at my summoning to Boston. She wanted to hazard a guess at what Kelvin might have left me in his will. Her excited guess was that it might be his boat. In truth, he had sailed a lot alone but I was probably the only member of the family who had ever gone out with him. After my dad had died, and Kelvin aside, I was the only seagoing member of my family. I have to admit, however, that despite the excitement, the prospect of taking on Kelvin's beautiful wooden-decked yacht as the September storms rolled in did give me a little feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. It was far too fancy a boat for me to take on so one way or another it would have to be sold. That is. If indeed I had inherited it. Which probably I hadn't.
What was more likely I suspected was that Kelvin had left instruction for me to do a clean-up job before the rest of the family came in to town.
Aside from the common bond over sailing, Kelvin had also shared a few of his other obsessions with me during my visits. In fact, the primary reason that none of the rest of the family had visited Kelvin for nigh-on a decade were exactly his other obsessions. After as Kelvin himself had described it, 'getting lucky', when he had sold his one man built tech company for more money than he had ever imagined, Kelvin then took up various new hobbies. These interests mostly involved self-experimentation with illicit drugs for which he would travel to procure as well as a fascination with darker ideas, the occult, histories of magic and alternative beliefs. Uncle Kelvin saw himself as a true agnostic scientist, ready to experiment using his own body and a one-man mission to find the truth of nature. As an external observer, I thought that he seemed more like someone searching for a new anti-religion. Some set of rules that would illuminate themselves to the lucky discoverer cum follower.
Either way, it meant that Uncle Kelvin's house was jam packed with various substances and unusual artefacts that had returned with him from his travels. I had a horrible feeling that I was about to be asked to go and clean up after him, hopefully avoiding the DEA as I did so.
Almost as an afterthought, as I ended the call with mum, I asked her what Kelvin had died of. Apparently a heart attack she replied. We both sat in silence for a few moments not saying but thinking the same thing;- that perhaps he had just put his body through too much or perhaps it was a nice way of saying overdose to a grieving family. Either way I didn't want to chase that one down, it was a dog to let lie.
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(2) Monday, Boston.
