RESURRECTED (18 page)

Before Caitlin hit the stacks, she’d used their online catalogue system, doing her research, using her brilliant mind to immediately get an overview of the rarest and most important volumes in the field. Once she immersed herself in a topic like this, she could take it all in with dazzling speed, process and analyze it faster than just about anyone. As she expected, there were a lot of dubious and skeptical books in the occult genre—books that sounded hokey or were dismissed by scholars.

But there were a handful of titles that seemed to persist throughout the centuries, embraced by one generation after the next, and which even scholars could not dismiss so easily. Within an hour, she felt confident she had an overview of the dozen or so most important books in the field that she had to read.

As she searched the catalog, she was thrilled to see her library had, on hand, editions of most of them

Caitlin grabbed a cart and had dove into the stacks, looking up each book by its call number, and slowly adding them to her stack. Some of the books were harder to find than others, and she’d had to use a ladder and go to the top, dusty shelf, deeper in the stacks than she’d ever been. One book she found stuck between two books, and literally had to pry it out. Another book she couldn’t find anywhere—until she realized that it was on display in the front window, for the Occult Exhibit; she guiltily unlocked the glass, slid it back, reached in, and removed it, making a mental note to replace it as soon as possible, before anybody noticed.

She was beginning to feel a little better, a little more in control, as she filled her cart to overflowing, with 15 leather-bound books on the subject. Satisfied, she’d wheeled it back to her desk, cleared her other books, and covered it with these.

That was hours ago. It was after lunchtime, now, and Caitlin had not stopped reading for a second. Her back and joints were stiff, her eyes were hurting from the non-stop reading, and she had already sneezed way too many times from the dust.

The book she was reading now was a huge, oversized volume with thick leather binding, cracked along the spine. It probably weighed ten pounds, and was at least twelve inches wide and long. She had it opened to the middle of the book, and each page she turned crackled with age. The pages were thick, so much thicker than those of modern books, and yellow with age. It was a physically gorgeous volume, published in 1661, interspersed with hand-drawn illustrations, some of them in color. Caitlin turned the pages with the utmost care as she went, not wanting to deface it in any way.

Thus far her marathon reading session had been interesting, but she hadn’t found anything compelling enough to convince her. She read volumes on vampirism and occultism and witches and magic and spells, and now, she was deep into a treatise on demonology. It amazed her that for thousands of years, myths and legends of vampires had persisted, in every language, and every country. Amazingly, the entire world had its own vampire tales.

How was it possible?
she wondered. Dozens of cultures and languages and countries, all with their own, independent, vampire stories? From the remotest corners of Africa, to the far corners of Russia—places and times where people had no way of communicating with each other—yet still, documenting the same exact stories. She was starting to feel convinced that vampirism was real.

Otherwise, how else could one explain it? It would have to be a huge coincidence.

Many of the vampire legends seemed to have a common theme: a vampire was created when someone died in a disturbing way, for example by murder, suicide, or disease—or when someone died a sudden, unexpected death. This was especially the case if the person was a low soul, such as a murderer or thief. Many of the stories had the vampire buried by the local villagers, only to have them visit the grave the next day and see it disrupted, the soil freshly overturned, the body still intact, not decomposing. In some stories, the corpse rose from the grave and attacked people; in others it stayed put, but the spirit of the deceased visited family and friends at night and tormented them. In many stories, the only way to kill the vampire was to drive a stake through its heart. But in older stories they did not use stakes—rather, they killed vampires before they could arise by burying corpses with bricks in their mouth, since they believed that evil spirits could enter a corpse through an open mouth.

Caitlin found herself getting lost, deeper and deeper in the world of vampire mythology and fables. It was becoming harder and harder for her to separate what was real from fantasy.

Nonetheless, the more she read, the more she felt validated, certain that there was something real to all this. She felt connected to history, to the centuries. Other people had experienced this before. It was not just her.

But she did not find what she was looking for. She didn’t know exactly what it was she needed to find, but she imagined that maybe it was some sort of ritual, or remedy, or ceremony, or service—something tangible and concrete that could help Scarlet. Transform her back to human.

Something in the literature that explicitly stated that there was a way to cure vampirism. To bring the afflicted back to normal.

But so far, she found nothing. The only thing close were the ways to stop a vampire for all time—to kill them for good. Sometimes, this was accompanied by an ancient funeral service. In fact, they would repeat the funeral service, three times, and that would put the vampire to rest for all time. Oddly, as Caitlin read that, she felt some sort of memory, some sort of connection to that. But she didn’t understand what.

But this was not what Caitlin wanted: she needed to heal Scarlet, not kill her.

As she finished yet another book and slid it aside, with still no mention of healing anywhere, she began to feel a sense of despair.

She lifted the final book on the stack, a small, leather-bound volume with a red spine, entitled
De
Fascino Libri Tres
by Leonardo Vairo. Caitlin summoned her knowledge of Latin, and knew that translated to:
Three Books of Charms, Spells and Sorceries.

Intrigued, she turned the cover, and saw that it was all in Latin. Luckily, her Latin was still good enough for her to translate in her head. The long title page read: “In which all the species and causes of spells are described and explained with the Philosophers and Theologians. With the ways to fight the illusions of Demons, and the refutation of the causes behind the power of Witchcraft. 1589.

Venice.”

Caitlin dove into the book, scanning through, turning the pages as fast as she could, looking for any mention of vampires, of how to heal or cure one, how to bring one back to normal life.

As she began to read, she suddenly slowed down. She went back and read it again. Then again.

Her heart started beating with hope. She could tell right away that this book was very different than the others. This, of all the books, felt the most real to her, the most scholarly, the most impartial. It wasn’t filled with hyperbole and myth and wild stories told by grandmothers. This one was written, paradoxically, by a bishop, in the 16th century. Also a doctor, he had seen dozens of inexplicable cases of corpses coming back to life—and of people transforming into vampires. He wrote with such medical detail, had documented every case so fastidiously, that Caitlin felt this volume was authentic.

As she kept reading, her hands trembling with excitement, she came across something that struck her as pure gold:

“It was not until the late spring, long after the ground had thawed, that I stumbled across something that put an end to our small village’s epidemic. It was a combination of certain herbs.

When used in conjunction with the ritual, it healed the vampire before my eyes. She went from hysterical, desperately seeking blood, hardly able to be chained to her bed, to the teenager we all once knew. As of this writing, many years later, she never returned to vampirism and remains in her perfect state. The remedy only works if the vampire in question has not yet fed, has not yet inflicted pain on a human being. Thus it is imperative that one catch the vampire in the early stages. To my knowledge, no such remedy is written or spoken of anywhere else. It is:

“Three pinches Rosemary; two pinches dill; one spoonful of crush lavender. Boil in one cup of water with black licorice for one hour, at a high boil. Leave it to cool overnight, then force the vampire in question to drink it in its entirety. Of course, this is useless without the ceremony that accompanies it. One must chant the ancient Latin script, used by the church used for thousands of years—”

Caitlin’s heart stopped. As she turned the page, she saw that the next page in the book, the one with the ceremony on it, was torn in half. She could not believe it. Half of the page sat loose in the book, between the pages, displaying only part of the Latin ceremony. The other half of the page was missing.

Caitlin turned all of the pages in the book frantically; she hung the book hung upside down, shaking it. But, to her dismay, the other half was just not there.

No
, she thought.
Not now. Not when she was this close. It wasn’t fair.

Caitlin sat there, her heart pounding, wondering what to do. She immediately pulled out her keyboard, went online, typed in the name of the volume, and searched for any other copies of it.

Of course, there were none. It said this was a rare book, on loan, from England. As she searched the internet, it confirmed her worst fears: this was the only copy of the book in existence.

How could it be? Why was the page torn in half? Who had torn it? When? And why? Was it centuries ago? Was it a vampire, or some dark force, that didn’t want this ritual to get out?

Caitlin felt struck with the urgency of time. The ritual only worked before the vampire’s first kill.

Had Scarlet killed anyone yet? How much time did Caitlin have before she did? Was it already too late?

Caitlin extracted the loose, torn page from the book, and held it in her hands. She stared at it, knowing that she couldn’t let this go. She had to find the other half. She felt guilty, holding it there like that, with both her hands, out in the open, when every instinct in her, a rare book scholar, told her that the page should be protected, inserted back into the book it came from. But she couldn’t help it. Scarlet’s life was at stake here.

As she held the page, she realized she could not let it go. She had to steal this page, take it with her, out of the library, and then do whatever she could to find the other half.

“Caitlin?” came a voice.

Caitlin jumped in her chair, quickly hiding the page, and spun around. Over her stood Mrs.

Gardiner, the old woman who oversaw the library, short, with gray puffy hair and glasses. She looked down at her, expressionless, as she held a bunch of books in her arm.

“I didn’t know you had come in today,” she said, disapprovingly.

As Caitlin looked up at her, she could have sworn she saw her glancing at the books on her desk, at all the titles—and even, possibly, at the loose page on her desk. Her heart pounded. She felt like a criminal.

“Um…yes…I…um…came in early,” she said, thinking quickly. “I wanted to catch up on work.” Mrs. Gardiner was definitely looking at the titles on her desk, and she saw her eyes widen in surprise.

“Is that one of our display window titles?” she asked, surprised.

Caitlin quickly turned and picked up the book, flustered, not knowing what to say. She had to think quick.

“Um…yes it is,” she said. “There were some occult titles I had to catalog, and I…um…wanted context in knowing how best to classify them...so I thought I’d take a look at everything we had on the subject.”

It was a lame excuse, and she hoped Mrs. Gardiner bought it.

Mrs. Gardiner stood there, pausing for a moment, and Caitlin felt a cold sweat break out on the back of her neck. She had never been in this position before, feeling like a criminal. Of course, she’d never thought about stealing a book, not in her entire career.

“Well, I trust you will put it all back when you’re through,” Ms. Gardner said, then nodded curtly and walked on.

Caitlin breathed a sigh of relief. It was a close call.

Caitlin turned, grabbed the loose page from her desk, looked both ways, and made sure no one was looking. She looked up at the ceiling, at the hidden cameras. She knew she was being recorded, so she conspicuously put the loose page back in the book she found it in.

She walked the book down the hall, back towards the stack, went to a place where she knew there was a blind spot from the cameras, then quickly slipped the page out of the book and into a manila folder she had brought with her. She then put the book away, and slid the manila folder into her bag.

Without waiting another second, Caitlin marched down the corridor, down the sleek-white steps, and across the lobby. She looked straight ahead as she went for the front doors, not daring to look at her colleagues, her heart pounding as she felt like she was walking out of a bank with a rare jewel.

She stepped outside with a breath of relief. She hurried to her car, and sat there, breathing deeply. She thought about her next move. She knew who she needed to talk to. Aiden. If there was anyone in the world who would know where to find the missing page, it would be him.

But she still couldn’t bring herself to call him. She thought again of his words, of stopping Scarlet, and something inside her would not allow her to speak to him.

Instead, she had an idea. If vampires were real, if her journal was real, then all those places she mentioned in her journal had to be real, too. And some of those were in New York. Like the Cloisters. If everything she had written was true, then she should find something there, some evidence, some validation, some trace of her being there. Some trace that vampires had existed.

Maybe even a clue, or a lead. Maybe it would even show her where to go next.

Without another thought, Caitlin tore out of the parking lot, heading for New York City. She was determined not to return home until she found the proof she needed.