THE VAMPIRE OF CROGLIN SCHOOL by Anthony Durrant Anthony Durrant 1st N.A. Serial Rights 572 Westminster Avenue Anthony Durrant, 1999 Ottawa, Ontario, Canada December 4, 1999 K2A 2V3 All Rights Reserved. In all the months I've been on the Internet, I've read stories about frail men and powerful women, but I've never read a story about a character who had been both a frail man and a pow- erful woman - so I've decided to tell my own story. I worked as a janitor at Croglin School, with my late partner Jake Moscow. We'd keep the halls clean and sweep the rooms with our brooms; make sure the furnace was working; clean up whenever vandals hit the bathrooms; and make the school a neat and tidy place. One day I was sweeping in the hall and decided to pay a visit to the chemistry teacher, Dr. Candida Bunsen. When I opened the door, I found her lying on the floor a few feet away from the window. Jake had long since died, so I called to a teacher who was stan- ding in the hall and had her phone the police. Looking down at the body, I noticed two tiny spots on her shoulder where something had drained the blood out of her - bite marks! "I still remember the night I first met Dr. Bunsen," I told Inspector Slowpoke later. "Jake had just died, leaving me all alone. She was working late that night, and saw me sweeping in the hall. She got up and walked to the door with a smile on her face. "'You look so sad, sir,' she said. 'Would you join me for a cup of tea?' "'I would be honoured, my lady!' I said, going into the room. "Well, we talked a lot, and I told her about Jake and how I missed him so much. "'He's not really dead, Lowgate,' she told me. 'Not as long as you remember him just as he was - a proud man who was like a second father to you. Jake wouldn't want you to cry.' "Well, after that we became very good friends - and I believe there was even a rumour of an affair some years ago - which wasn't true at all, of course! She'd stay up late, working on her personal project - which she would never talk about, even to the headmaster." "Thank you, Mr. Lowgate," Slowpoke said. "If we need you again, we'll call you." "You're welcome, Inspector," I said, picking up a vial and putting it in my pocket. "Now that I've finished the halls, I think I'll go home early for some sorely-needed rest." I squeezed my frail 5' 10", 110 lb. body between the officers by the door, and went home to my small flat near the school. I lived on the upper floor of what used to be Jake's house when he was still alive and had never moved. As I walked up to the porch, a boy threw a rock at me as a prank. Picking up the rock, I threw it back at him, hitting him on the cheek. "Let me alone, old man," the boy said, grabbing me by the neck, "or I'll bash you so hard you'll have to drink through your legs with a straw for the rest of your life!" "All right! All right!" I cried. "Just put me down!" "Out in Round One!" the boy cried. "I win by a technical knockout!" He put me down and ran away. Dusting my pants off, I opened the door, and walked into the house. Slowly, painfully, I climbed the stairs and walked to my room. When I came into the room, I sat down on the bed. Pulling out the vial, I looked at the bubbly fluid inside it. "So she keeps her soda pop in a vial, eh?" I thought. "I might as well drink it." Unsealing the vial, I put it to my lips and drank that bubbly fluid, then dropped the empty vial on the chest-of-drawers beside my bed. Now I felt very tired and lay down on the bed. Then I fell into a very deep - and very unnatural - sleep. I dreamed I was running through the forest on powerful legs, my aches and pains entirely gone. When I ran uphill, I found a cliff in front of me and knew the only way forward from here was straight down. Taking a deep breath, I leaped off the cliff and landed in a river. There I splashed and screamed, calling and calling for help. "Swim, Mahalla, swim!" a voice cried. "Swim, Mahalla, swim!" Other voices joined in the call: "Swim, Mahalla, swim! Swim, Mahalla, swim! Swim, Mahalla, swim!" Slowly calming down, I stretched out and started kicking my legs up and down, paddling through the water like a frog. Soon I saw the other side of the river, a green bank with trees near the edge. As I swam up to the riverbank my vision blurred: I was waking up. Opening my eyes, I reached across to the chest, and turned on the radio. I was feeling so good, I jumped out of bed and rushed to my bathroom. When I went into the bathroom, I flicked back the long hair in front of my eyes and pulled up the toilet lid. I reached between my legs as I pulled down my pants - to find nothing there! Rushing to the mirror, I saw a big muscular woman in front of me, wearing a coveral that was torn in half, barely fit, and was ripped in two at the back. "I feel fantastic!" I cried, flexing grapefruit-sized biceps. "I'm strong - powerful. If my older cousin, Ben Urich, saw me now he wouldn't believe his eyes!" After doing my morning chores, I went downstairs and cooked potato pancakes for break- fast. Though I didn't realize it, the "soda pop's" effect on my brain was kicking in. After eating the pancakes, I put on my cap and went to the school. On the way I met the boy who'd threaten- ed me the night before and walked right up to him with a big smile on my face. "Time for Round Two, little man," I said. "Put up your dukes!" "Who are you, Miss?" he asked. "Do I know you?" "My name's Clayton Lowgate, little man!" I snapped. "Now, put up your dukes!" "Does Mr. Lowgate have a daughter?" "I don't!" I told him. "Now, put up your dukes before I get really angry!" Our fight was short but sweet - I knocked him out with a right cross to the jaw, and walk- ed away, letting him crawl back to his friends as the choir sang the school's theme song. At that same moment, an old chest opened and the Vampire of Croglin School sat up and opened his eyes. Singing along with the choir - though his voice was badly slurred - he stood up, then walked out of the building, his hairy face changing to a wolf's head on the way out. As the hours passed I slowly began to realize that the transformation had been permanent and that I was enjoying the results. From now on, I knew, my whole life would be changed. "Candida made the 'soda pop,'" I thought, "and like most scientists, she'd never make up a formula that would wear off. She would want the effect to be permanent." Soon, it was time for lunch, and I walked to the staff room in the new staff building, near the principal's office. When I opened the door, I saw someone bending over a woman and rush- ed in. He was naked, hairy and looked more like a wolfman than what he was - a vampire. Soon we were locked in combat, the vampire with his hands around my neck. Straining to break free, I managed to break his grip and get him in a hammerlock. He threw me and fled from the room, his eyes wide with awe and his fangs dripping blood from the woman he'd attacked. She looked up at me; it was the eighth grade teacher, Mrs. Boothroyd, a former classmate of mine. "Thank you!" she gushed. "I was so scared . . ." "I'm glad I was able to help," I told her. "Who or what was he?" "That was the Vampire of Croglin School!" she told me. "He's back from the grave, and out for blood. Wait a minute - the name on your collar! Are you Clayton Lowgate?" "Yes, Anna," I admitted. "How did you guess?" "Your smile's unmistakable, Clayton," she told me. "You've got nice white front teeth." Draping her in a coat I found hanging on the coat rack, I put my arm around her, and took her out of the room. On the way to her classroom, we ran into the principal, Mr. Lawton. A tall, dapper man in a grey suit with gold-rimmed glasses, Mr. Lawton seemed shocked. "What's the matter, Mr. Lawton?" I asked. "You are the matter, young lady!" he snapped. "Don't you know you should wear shoes? Going barefoot in the halls is strictly against the rules here in Croglin School!" "Don't you know," I snapped, "you shouldn't speak that way to a lady?" I ripped a phone book from one of the booths near the office and tore it in half. "Perhaps that will convince you to leave me alone, Mr. Lawton," I snapped. "I've swept your floors for so long, I'd long since forgotten what it was like to be treated like that." Mr. Lawton's eyes went wide; then he scurried back to his office. I noticed something on a table that was wrapped in a newspaper. Grabbing it, I opened it and found a sandwich beneath the newspaper. I gave half to Anna Boothroyd and ate half myself - it was delicious. "I thought you were allergic to bread, Clayton!" she said. "Were you buttering me up?" "I feel like my allergies have gone," I said, "like I could eat anything I want to!" When I opened the newspaper, I saw a headline about a bank robbery. Tucking the paper in one of the pockets of my tattered coverall, I took her by the hand and led her home so that she could shower and change into a new dress; the one she was wearing had claw marks on it. As Anna changed, I pulled out the paper, and looked at it more closely. On the top of the page was a date - May 25, 1890. Suddenly, I realized the newspaper page was actually a printout from a computer. Anna came out in a stunning red dress that made her light brown hair glow the way moonlight glows on a pond at midnight. She noticed my healthy cleavage; I blushed. "What was this printout used for?" I asked. "A school play," Anna told me, "about Sherlock Holmes." "I see," I said, looking at the photograph on the printout. "What a writable idea!" Looking closely, I saw that the photograph was of the London National Bank - the oldest, best known, and least robbed - and showed the front of the building, which was all that was truly left of the original building, which had had several floors added later. "Well, I've got a vampire to deal with," I told her, "and I know just where to find him." "Good luck, then," she said, "and farewell." "Farewell, Anna!" I said as I opened the door and walked out of her house. After leaving Anna's house, I hurried to the old shed at the back of the school, which had been used for years for storing tools but was now empty. Walking up to the door, I put an arm in the space between the frame and the door and my other arm on the hinges. As I pulled, I felt my muscles ripple, and I ripped the door off its rusted hinges very easily. When I went into the shed, I looked around and saw an old tool chest in the corner. I took off the lid, and found the vampire inside the old chest. His eyes were open and looked straight at me. Grabbing an old sledgeham- mer and broomstick, I bent down. Putting the tip of the broomstick on his chest, I swung the old hammer down and sent the stick into the vampire's chest with a mighty thump. He gave a shriek like a frightened woman in an old movie; then his head fell back. He was dead. Taking some of his blood as a sample, I hurried to the lab to see Dr. Foster so he could analyze the blood. I also, in order to find out what had transformed me, gave Foster a sample of my own blood. "You're lucky you were not arrested for murder," Foster told me later. "I learned that he - the Croglin Vampire - was actually a mutant of some sort. He must have been 500 years old or more, and my tests showed he was dependant on human blood. From his history as described by the people he's attacked, I assume he had the ability to hibernate for years and to change his own shape to that of a raging wolf or a flying bat. Your own sample showed that that 'soda pop' was, in fact, nanodroids suspended in a chemical that were intended for Candida. Her goal was to en- hance people's physical abilities through a genetic engineering method I can only guess at. They have shut down now, having done what they were programmed to do." "If that was her plan," I asked, "then why did I change sex?" "You changed sex because the nanodroids were primed with female DNA, for Candida's personal use. After all, she intended to use the serum to enhance her own body." "Will the change ever wear off?" I wondered. "Will I ever be a man again?" "I'm afraid not," Foster told me. "As I said, the nanodroids have shut down. Because of the lack of an antidote to the serum that transformed you - and my friend on the police force tells me Candida destroyed her notes shortly before she was murdered - you're doomed to stay in that form for the rest of your life, Clayton. So, get out there and live! Enjoy being a woman." "Thank you, Foster!" I said. "You don't know the lift you've given my failing spirits." I walked over to the restaurant where I eat lunch every day. A waitress came to my table. "Would you like your usual lunch, Lowgate?" she asked. "Of course!" I said. "Tortellini in potato sauce with French fries on the side, please." "Yes, sir - er, madam!" she said, and walked into the kitchen. Just then the vampire swept the red tapestry he'd been hiding behind away, and stumbled toward me, dripping blood from the open stake wound that was still on his chest. "You stabbed me," he whispered. "Must . . . drink . . . your . . . blood . . . !" I could hear women screaming as I rose from my table and turned to the vampire. Before he could leap to the attack, however, the ancient mutant collapsed. Dying for certain now, he lay on the floor gasping out his last breath as I licked the blood off my coverall. His head flopped to one side and he crumbled to dust, leaving only a charred skeleton on the floor. I was amazed the mutant blood I had tasted had not affected my enhanced body; but then I was probably letting the memories of the "Zero Tolerance" affair several years ago get the better of me. Three waitresses rushed up with tortellini and French fries; they gushed out their thanks. "This is going to be some lunch," I muttered. "I think I'm going to enjoy this!" I ate heartily, and after paying for the large meal and leaving the waitresses a hefty tip be- fore going out of the restaurant, which was in the staff building, I went back to work. As I swept the hallway of the school building for the umpteenth time, I had the strange urge to investigate a certain office, down the hall from my own. I walked to the door of the office and slowly opened it; when I walked in, a big redhead was just turning on a tape. A commercial suddenly appeared on the TV in front of her; in it, a handsome man in a black tuxedo jumped on the back of a car to "steal the priceless Maltese Owl," according to the opening credits. He managed to get into that car through an open rear window and made his way to the front. As he reached toward the glove compartment, the big woman driving the car slammed her arm into his face while still looking at the road ahead. At that moment the company emblem appeared; the name was Floyd Lawton In- corporated, and a handsome head was between the words "Lawton" and "Incorporated." As the large woman hit the handsome, dapper man the male head in the emblem said, "Surprise!" "How the deuce -" I cried. "Oh, damn - Candida's formula! But - she destroyed it!" "She destroyed her notes, yes," the woman told me, "but she'd already e-mailed the com- plete formula to Floyd. He was easily able to duplicate the nanodroids she'd designed." She turned around and I realized I was looking at Maureen, Lawton's Irish secretary, who seemed to have put on a lot of weight since I'd last seen her. "Women seem to be getting bigger these days!" I told her. "Aren't they just!" Maureen said, unbuttoning her blouse and showing me her chest; her pectoral muscles were quite large and her tummy was as muscular as mine! As she closed up the blouse, she added, "Floyd duplicated the formula just for me! It was the best birthday present I'd ever had. Now, with Candida dead, he intends to honour her memory by marketing her formula, and making it available to every single woman in England!" "You little tramp!" I cried, smashing my left fist into her cheek. "Floyd murdered Cand- ida and is trying to cash in on her formula without fully realizing how dangerous it is." To my surprise, although she flew a few yards from her desk and hit the door of Lawton's office, Maureen wasn't hurt at all! This formula was more potent then I originally thought. "So it's a fight ye want, is it?" Maureen said. "Well, by Goshen, it's a fight ye'll get!" With that, she raised her arms and flexed. Her lovely pink blouse was ripped to shreds by her powerful biceps and for the first time, I saw a physique as powerful as my own. She was one of the most muscular people I'd ever seen - but her fighting skill was almost nonexistant. As she hit me with a right to the chin, I swung a powerful uppercut that sent her sailing through the door of Lawton's office, smashing it to pieces. She was down for the count and I walked over her into Floyd's office. There was a cup full of pens on his desk, and a laptop computer, but I was quite surprised to see the black-and-white picture of a beautiful lady - who bore a striking resemblance to Floyd Lawton - on his desk. Why would a fully-grown man who was going to marry his secre- tary - for Maureen was obviously in love with him - have another woman's picture on his desk at a spot where Maureen could easily find it? Then the answer hit me like a load of bricks can hit a concrete pavement. This woman was Lawton's mother, who'd died when he was young. "He's going to use the formula to bring his mother back to life!" I cried. Hurrying to the cemetery, I went to the crypt with LAWTON carved on the door; yanking the door open, I went inside and saw the Vampire of Croglin School kneeling over the elder Lawtons' coffin, injecting something into the withered body of a woman. He looked down at the corpse in joy as the shrivelled flesh plumped out and turned into living flesh. Alive and whole, the woman sat up in the coffin and grabbed the Vampire by the arm. She had become big and powerful, just like me. "Do you realize what you've done, boy?" the woman shouted. "You've brought me into Hell! Herman and I were content in death - and now you've shattered our eternal slumber." She grabbed the man by the throat and I had to enact the part of the mysterious stranger who'd raised the old man from the dead in the old British folktale by knocking her out with a quick right. I did not spirit her away, though, as I thought the police would be able to do that better than I could. Fortunately, he wasn't hurt - that is, until Maureen came into the Lawtons' crypt. "I destroyed the formula, Floyd," she told the Vampire, "and now ye'll pay for your crimes! Ye're going to jail - and I hope ye'll stay locked up until you rot in Hell!" "She did it on her own, your heartless fiend!" I shouted. "I didn't tell her to do it - but she did the right thing. That fomula's much too dangerous for a mortal to possess - it's best this way." "You'll never be a man again," the Vampire said in Lawton's voice, "without the Bunsen formula! Since you don't have an antidote, you'll have to remain a woman forever!" "I was a 110-pound weakling, Lawton," I told him, "so why would I want to be weak again? I feel that it's best for me to remain a woman - I told you, it's best for all that the formula was destroyed, even though I'd need to have it analysed in order to develop an antidote for the nanodroids!" Maureen grabbed the Vampire and pulled off the rubber mask he was wearing. Sure enough, it was Floyd Lawton - the ruthless man who'd murdered Candida after she e-mailed the formula to him, leaving her drained of blood with two puncture wounds from the needles he'd used to inject the poison he had used to kill her, and then market the formula under his own company name after using it on his own long-dead mother. With the formula erased from the hard disk drive of his computer, England was once again safe. Maureen called the police and they took Floyd Lawton into custody; after his arrest, he made a full confession. Later, I asked Inspector Slowpoke about the Bank of England photograph I had found, which I'd given to the police when they came to arrest Lawton for the murder. "That proved to be the major clue in the Bank of England robbery this year," Slowpoke said. "I had it blown up with a photo manipulation program - and we could see Mr. Lawton robbing the ATM near the front door to the bank as clearly as I can see you now. He says he needed the money to cover up his gambling debts and pay off the people to whom he owes money."