Blanche and Jane and the Hollywood Vampire
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

I worked for the movie studio in the 1920s and ‘30s. I knew Blanche and Jane on a professional level. Blanche started in movies in the late ‘20s, when she was about eighteen. She had her first movie role around 1927. Of course, this was still the silent era. She didn’t become a star overnight, but she did well enough to get offers in other silent pictures. When sound pictures came in, she made the transition easily enough. That’s when she became a star. Every picture she made was a hit, and everybody liked her. She was going places. She was young, beautiful and talented.

Her sister Jane, though, was another story. She was a big deal in Vaudeville, with her singing and dancing, but after she became too big for her little girl act, she was headed for obscurity. Sure, she tried the movies, certain she could match Blanche’s success, but it just didn’t happen for her. Producers and directors hired her as a favor to Blanche, but they soon regretted their generosity. She was drunk all the time, couldn’t remember her lines and cues, and kept everybody waiting and wondering where she was and what she was doing. She was fired from three pictures in a row. She was finished as an actress.

Remembering her success as a child performer, though, Jane believed she was destined for stardom, if not in the movies, then on the stage. She had already had her run in Vaudeville, and Vaudeville was dead. People preferred movies to the corny Vaudeville fare, but that didn’t stop Jane. She practiced her old act night and day. If it worked for her as a child, it would work for her as an adult. The problem was that by this time she was just plain grotesque. The heavy drinking had spoiled her figure and her once-youthful face. Her beautiful blond hair now looked like a mop that had scrubbed too many floors. The more tactful agents told her she didn’t have what they were looking for. The ones who weren’t so kind called her a has-been and booted her out the door.

It was the mid-1930s, and Blanche was riding high. She had just been signed by the studio to a multi-million dollar, seven-year contract. She received sacks full of fan mail every day. She had to hire a secretary just to take care of her mail.

And then, on New Year’s Eve, it all came crashing down.

Blanche was invited to a party at the home of Chester Siler, the director of her latest cinematic triumph. Hating to leave Jane all alone on New Year’s Eve, she phoned Chester and asked if she might bring Jane along. “Of course,” he said. “Anybody you want to bring along will be most welcome.”

Jane was reluctant to go to a party of Blanche’s friends, but after she thought about it for a while, she saw how it might benefit her professionally. There would be producers and directors at the party and she might make some important showbiz connections. If nothing else, she might be able to humiliate Blanche.

The party was a glittering affair, filled with Hollywood luminaries. Everybody wanted to talk to Blanche and sit next to her. Some of the handsomest men in Hollywood waited to dance with her.

Jane was well-behaved at first. She sat with the older ladies, and when a gentleman asked her to dance, she smilingly complied. After hours of steady drinking, though, she became raucous. She stood on a table and announced to everybody that she was Blanche Hudson’s sister, and that she too was an actress. She was just as good as her damn sister, and she wanted the world to know it. She just hadn’t had all the lucky breaks.

When Blanche tried to calm Jane down and stop making a spectacle of herself, Jane socked her in the jaw and began calling her whore and slut and tramp and any other name she could think of. She implied that Blanche only became a success in pictures because she had no morals and would spread her legs for anybody who might further her career.

Finally Blanche got Jane down off the table and, with several of the other women guests, got her into the kitchen, where they had a pot of coffee brewed for her. Blanche was humiliated. The party was ruined for her.

Right after the countdown to midnight, Blanche got Jane into her coat and corralled her out the door and into the car. Jane slept the whole way home, snoring and sputtering, trying to talk but making no sense.

At their home, finally, Blanche got out of the car to open the gate, letting the car idle. That’s when Jane got behind the wheel of the car and ran Blanche down in the driveway, nearly killing her.

Blanche lay in the driveway screaming. Neighbors heard the commotion and called an ambulance. Police came. They tried to piece together what happened, but it made no sense to them. Blanche was apparently by herself. Jane was nowhere to be found. She was located ten days later in a skid row hotel under an assumed name.

Blanche was in the hospital for many months. Her back was broken. Every spinal specialist in the state reviewed her case; they all said there was no chance she would ever walk again. When she was released from the hospital and sent home, she had to have somebody in her family to take care of her. Her only family was her sister, Jane.

Jane moved into Blanche’s big house with her. (Jane insisted the house belonged to her.) Since Blanche could no longer walk, she was confined to her upstairs bedroom. Jane prepared the food in the kitchen downstairs and carried it up to Blanche’s room. She did all the cooking, shopping, laundry, cleaning, etc., that needed to be done. With the tidy fortune Blanche had made in the movies, they could have hired a housekeeper, but Jane didn’t want any strangers in “her” house.

Blanche was allowed one extravagance, her maid Elvira. Besides being a maid, Elvira was also a friend and confidante. She came in two or three days a week and helped Blanche with her letter-writing and with anything else that needed to be done. Blanche paid her a small salary, but Elvira would have done it free of charge.

Elvira’s plan was to get Jane “put away.” She saw how unstable she was and how she was habitually drunk. She believed that Jane would someday “hurt” Blanche in some vengeful way, maybe even kill her. Elvira envisioned Jane setting the house on fire and leaving Blanche upstairs to burn to death.

Elvira and Jane disliked each other with equal fervor. Jane was always looking for a reason to fire Elvira, but it was out of her hands. Blanche paid Elvira’s salary and all the rest of the bills for the household. Jane didn’t have a dime to her name except what Jane gave her. It was just another humiliation added to all the other humiliations she had had to endure.

Elvira was never shy about giving her opinions.

“That sister of yours is like a volcano waiting to erupt,” she said to Blanche one rainy Saturday afternoon when the two of them were alone in Blanche’s room.

“She’s not as bad as she seems,” Blanche said. “I’ve talked to her many times about her drinking. She tries to control it, but sometimes it’s too much for her.”

“You’re too easy with her. If she was my sister, I’d slap her in a mental hospital where she belongs.”

“Life hasn’t been easy for her. She showed great promise as a young person, but she’s been disappointed so many times.”

“I know all that, but it doesn’t excuse her behavior. She’s got a barrelful of liquor bottles in the corner of the kitchen.”

“I know, but we have to be kind with Jane.”

“She’s bad for you! She shouldn’t be taking care of you! You could afford to hire a real nurse and a good housekeeper to boot.”

“Jane and I get along quite well.”

“You could have her committed! You are the only person in the world to do it.”

Blanche laughed merrily. “Have Jane committed! Don’t you think that’s a little drastic, Elvira? Who would treat their own sister that way?”

“Do you know she’s hired a pianist? She’s been rehearsing her act night and day, just the way she did it when she was a little girl!”

“Yes, she still dreams of being a star.”

“It just isn’t healthy.”

“Well, I suppose we must indulge her in her whims.”

“Speaking of whims, I have one I want you to indulge me in.”

“What is it?”

“I have somebody I want to you to meet.”

“Another movie fan?”

“No. This is somebody who can really help you!”

“Another doctor? I think all the doctors agree I’m a hopeless cripple.”

“No. Not a doctor in the way you mean.”

“It’s not a faith healer, is it?”

“No, not a faith healer.”

“What is it, then?”

“All right, now, honey! Get ready for this! He’s a vampire!”

“Oh, Elvira! Not a vampire! You know how I feel about supernaturals.”

“Yes, but you need to keep an open mind.”

“Absolutely not! I will not agree to see a vampire!”

“What have you got to lose?”

“Will he want to drink my blood?”

“Not if you don’t want him to.”

After a sustained argument, Blanche agreed to meet the vampire for ten minutes.

The next week on a Tuesday evening, Jane went nightclubbing with her pianist friend. She might not be back home until morning, she said. It was the perfect chance for Blanche to meet the vampire.

Elvira was waiting for him downstairs. He arrived punctually at seven o’clock. She took his coat and hat and escorted him upstairs to meet Blanche.

She was sitting in her wheelchair in the middle of the room, waiting for him. He advanced toward her and took her hand in his.

“So this is the divine Blanche,” he said. “In preparation for this evening, I watched all your movies, even the silent ones. You have a special radiance that’s unique to the screen.”

“Thank you,” Blanche said. “Won’t you sit down?”

He was not what she expected. He was old Hollywood. He was more Adolphe Menjou than Bela Lugosi. He was dressed in a dark, old-fashioned, double-breasted suit. He wore a white carnation in his buttonhole. His eyes were piercing and his skin white, but there wasn’t anything frightening about him. His name was Ramon Valentino. No doubt a Hollywood alias.

He pulled the guest chair closer so that their knees were almost touching. Again he took her hand.

“I can help you,” he said. “If you’ll let me.”

“How can you help me? Every doctor has told me I’m a helpless cripple.”

“You’re withering here. You’re wasting away. I see it in your eyes.”

“My sister Jane takes care of me.”

“Where is this sister?”

“She’s out for the evening.”

“I believe your sister is a large part of your trouble. She is not good for you. You need to get away from her.”

“How am I going to do that? She takes care of me. She’s the only family I have in the world.”

“Why not take care of yourself?”

“I’m not able.”

“What if I told you I could make you able?”

“I wouldn’t believe you.”

“With your permission, I’m going to give you an injection.”

“An injection of what?”

“Vampire blood, among other things.”

“Will it turn me into a vampire?”

“No need to worry about that now.”

He wheeled Jane’s chair over to the bed and helped her onto the bed. When she was settled comfortably, he administered the injection.

“This shot will make you sleep soundly and peacefully. You’ll wake up in the morning feeling better than you’ve felt in a long time. I will return in one week and give you another injection. There are ten in all. At the end of the ten injections, you will see a miraculous difference.”

“How much is this going to cost me?”

“I don’t care about money. If you’re not happy with the results, you pay me nothing.”

“It sounds too good to be true.”

“You must embrace the fantastic!”

After ten injections, Blanche’s spine fused and healed and she was able to walk again, to dance again if she cared to. She was young and beautiful again. She would be able to resume her screen acting career again that was so cruelly interrupted. When people heard about her miraculous recovery, she would be the toast of the town. Every producer would want her for his next film. People all over the world would be enthralled by her story and would eagerly anticipate her return to the screen.

Jane also benefited from Blanche’s recovery. She wouldn’t have to take care of Blanche anymore, but, better than that, her career was also revived. Introduced to vampire audiences by Mr. Ramon Valentino, she began dancing and singing in vampire theatres all over the world. Vampire audiences loved her act. What’s better than a worn, middle-aged, white-faced woman singing and dancing to songs from a bygone era, in the style of a woebegone child? What a sensation she created!

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

Where Men Are Men
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

The new gardener came in late summer. His name was Geoff Tallis. He wasn’t like the others. He wasn’t a grizzled old man with a sour smell, dirt under his fingernails and hair coming out of his nostrils. He was trim and light on his feet, like a boxer who knew all the moves. He hardly ever spoke and when he did his voice was quiet and confident. He cleaned up the lawn in record time, after a summer of neglect, without complaint and without excuses. And when he was finished for the day, he put away the tools and left without fanfare; never left anything out to get rained on.

Roddy was fifteen and just starting tenth grade. Summer was over and school had taken up again. Sitting in class all day long listening to people talk about things that didn’t interest him left him with a lot of pent-up energy. After depositing his books in his room, he liked to spend time outside, breathing pure air, walking around in the yard or just sitting quietly underneath the trees in the front yard listening to the birds twitter.

When Roddy saw Geoff working in the side yard, he approached him shyly, not knowing how he would take to being disturbed. Realizing Roddy was nearby, Geoff looked up from his work and smiled and gave a little wink. It was the wink that lifted Roddy’s heart and made him smile for the first time all day. Nobody had ever winked at him before.

Emboldened by these outward signs of friendliness, Roddy began speaking to Geoff whenever he got the chance. Roddy opened up to Geoff in a way that was rare for him. Geoff listened when Roddy spoke, never interrupting him or seeming impatient. They talked about clouds, animals, mountains, South America, Mars, the War of 1812, and anything else that came into Roddy’s head. He was amazed at how the words poured out of him and he didn’t have to worry about sounding stupid or being embarrassed. And, when all other subjects were exhausted for the moment, the talk inevitably turned to Roddy’s family.

“Watch out for my mother,” he said. “She’ll smile to your face and then stab you in the back. She fired the last gardener for cutting back the hibiscus bush too much. She didn’t even give him any warning. He was here and then he was gone. There were no goodbyes.”

“I’ll try to keep her from stabbing  me,” Geoff said.

“Have you met my sister?”

“I’ve seen her.”

“She’s a viper.  You don’t want to have anything to do with her. Her name is Janice. She’s seventeen and a senior this year. She’s ten times worse than my mother.”

Geoff laughed. “She can’t be as bad as all that!”

“You’ll find out if you’re here long enough. And then there’s my father. He’s a lawyer. He works all the time. He doesn’t want to be bothered with little domestic details. He leaves everything to my mother. He might come out of the house and fire you, but he’ll be polite about it.”

“I’ll try not to give him any reason.”

“Well, how about you? What about your family?”

“I don’t have any to speak of. My father died when I was five years old. My mother got married again and moved away. I had one older brother but he died.”

“What made you become a gardener?”

“I don’t know. I like being outside and watching things grow. I don’t plan on being a gardener forever.”

“What will you do then?”

“I don’t know. I’m open to all possibilities. I can do carpentry, house painting, and I’ve worked as a machinist.”

“Do you like doing those things?”

“I have to make a living. I like it as long as it pays me money.”

Another time Roddy talked to Geoff about school. He never talked to his parents about school. They only lectured him about applying himself and getting good grades. Geoff spoke to him as an equal, never talked down to him and never gave out with platitudes about staying in school and becoming a success in life.

“I don’t like school very much,” Roddy said. “I don’t fit in very well.”

“Why not?” Geoff asked.

“I don’t know. I guess I’m not like other people. I can’t wait to finish with school and get away from my family and everybody in this town.”

“Where will you go?”

“Out West somewhere, I think.”

“Where men are men?”

“Yeah. Wide-open spaces.”

Roddy began looking forward to seeing Geoff in the afternoons after school and was disappointed when he wasn’t there. He was afraid his mother would fire him or he’d quit without saying anything, and he’d never see him again. He didn’t know where Geoff lived or anything else about him, so that would be the end of that.

On a Friday afternoon, Roddy found Geoff in the yard with his hand bleeding.

“Why didn’t you knock on the door and ask my mother for help?” Roddy asked.

“I didn’t want to bother her.”

“You need to wash that out.”

He took Geoff into the kitchen and held his hand under the faucet. Then he gave him a cold root beer out of the refrigerator and told him to sit at the table while he went to get some antiseptic and a bandage.

The next day Geoff gave Roddy a little gift. It was an insect trapped in a nugget of amber.

“It’s for helping me yesterday,” Geoff said. “I’ve had it since I was twelve years old. I thought you’d like it.”

“It’s beautiful!”

He held it up to the light so he could see the insect better.

“It’s just between you and me,” Geoff said. “Don’t tell the others.”

“No, I won’t.”

He put the nugget in his pocket and went into dinner with a happy smile on his face. Janice couldn’t stand for him to be happy.

“When you’re smiling, you’re up to something and I bet it isn’t anything good,” she said.

“Mind your own business,” he said.

“I saw you out there talking to the gardener.”

“So what? I’m the only one in the family who treats him like a human being.”

“What were you two talking about?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Mother, I think you should fire that gardener,” Janice said.

“Why?”

“I don’t like his looks. He looks at me funny.”

“He doesn’t look at you,” Roddy said. “He looks through you.”

“We’ll only fire the gardener,” father said to Janice, “if you’ll do all his work after school and do it as well as he does.”

“Has he said anything to you, Janice?” mother asked.

“No, he hasn’t said anything, but he looks at me funny.”

“Funny how?”

“Like he’s thinking things.”

“Well, if he says anything inappropriate, you let me know.”

“He would never look at you!” Roddy said. “He has better taste than that. You’re only jealous because he doesn’t look at you!”

“Neither one of you should be associating with him on a personal basis,” mother said. “He’s a grown man and we don’t know anything about him.”

A few days later, Roddy’s mother accosted him in the hallway when he came inside after spending a half-hour or so talking to Geoff.

“What is that man saying to you?” mother asked.

“What man?”

“The gardener.”

“He’s not saying anything! We’re just talking!”

“He’s not trying to get you to do drugs, is he?”

“Of course not! Do you know how ridiculous that is?”

“Is he telling you dirty stories?”

“Why would he do that?”

“I want to know what he says to you!”

“He doesn’t say anything! We’re just talking!”

“We’ve all noticed how much time you’re spending with him. Even the neighbors have noticed. You need to stop hanging around him. You’re keeping him from his work!”

Roddy the next day told Geoff what his mother had said.

“I have to stop talking to you so much,” he said. “My sister is jealous if she thinks I have a friend. She sees me talking to you and then she goes and tells my mother made-up stories. She’s a natural-born troublemaker.”

“I get it,” Geoff said. “I don’t want to be the cause of any trouble.”

“I didn’t want you to think I stopped talking to you because I was mad at  you.”

“I’d never think that,” Geoff said.

“If she fires you, please don’t go away without saying goodbye.”

Roddy began having trouble in school. He was caught cheating on a geometry test. When he got into an argument with a history teacher and she told him to shut up, he threw a book across the classroom and went outside and smoked a cigarette.

When quarterly grades came out, it was worse than he expected. He was failing geometry and almost failing two other classes. If he didn’t get himself “straightened out,” as his father said, he was going to “flunk out” of school, and then where would he be? He’d end living at the city dump, a worthless hobo, without family and friends.

His father engaged a tutor, a former college professor named Mr. Hatley. Two evenings a week Roddy spent three hours with Mr. Hatley in his “study” in the basement of his home. Mr. Hatley believed the only way to save a slacking boy was through hard work and military discipline. He drilled Roddy relentlessly on the finer points of higher mathematics. Roddy hated him instantly.

One evening when Roddy was returning home from a tutoring session, his heart gave a leap when he saw Geoff standing in the front yard close to the house.

“Are you looking for me?” he asked.

“I need a place to stay tonight,” Geoff said. “I thought I’d stay in the storeroom of your father’s garage, but I wanted to tell you about it first.”

“You can have the guest room.”

“The storeroom is good enough and I’ll be gone in the morning before anybody even knows I was here.”

“You’ll get cold.”

“I don’t mind.”

“You can stay in my room with me.”

“And how do you think that’ll go down with your parents?”

“They won’t have to know about it.”

“I don’t want to get you in any trouble.”

“You won’t. It’ll be all right.”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“My parents go to bed at ten. Come to the kitchen door at ten-thirty and I’ll let you in.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Roddy went to his room at ten o’clock when his parents went to bed and, true to his word, he went downstairs to the kitchen at ten-thirty and opened the back door. Geoff was standing outside in the dark.

Roddy held his finger to his lips to indicate silence and the two of them, with Roddy leading the way, crept up the stairs in the dark and along the hallway to Roddy’s room.

“You can relax,” Roddy said, after locking the door. “Nobody comes in unless I say.”

Geoff took off his coat and sat down in the chair and untied his shoes. “If you have an extra blanket,” he whispered, “I can sleep on the floor.”

“Nothing doing,” Roddy said. “You’ll sleep in my bed.”

“I’m not taking your bed.”

“I meant both of us.”

Roddy turned off the light and they both got into the bed. They went to sleep to the sound of the rain on the roof and the wind gently pressing against the windows.

When Roddy awoke in the morning, Geoff was gone; there was no sign he had even been there.

In school all day long Roddy was more calm and courteous than usual. He smiled at the history teacher with whom he had been feuding and admired her expensive leather bag. He passed a geometry quiz and was hating geometry a little less. A girl in his class invited him to a party on Saturday night; he didn’t want to go but was pleased to be asked.

When he got home, his mother was out for the afternoon and Janice was waiting for him.

“I know what you’ve been up with to the gardener,” she said. “I can’t say I’m a bit surprised.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about! I know you sneaked him into your room last night. How many other nights have you sneaked him in? I can only imagine what’s going on in there!”

“It’s none of your business!”

“I heard you creeping past out in the hallway last night and when I opened my door to see what was going on, I saw you take that man into your room in the dark.”

“What of it? It’s none of your business!”

“Do you know that what you’re doing is a crime? They’ll put you in jail for it!”

“Oh, shut up! You don’t know the first thing about it.”

“I suppose you just ‘talked’!”

“I don’t have to explain anything to you!”

“I’m going to tell mother and father! They’ll be appalled that such a thing is going on in their own house after they’ve gone to bed!”

“Nothing is going on! He’s my friend, that’s all. You’re just jealous because he doesn’t want you!”

“Mother will call the police and they’ll come and take your ‘friend’ away and lock him up for the rest of his life. You’re a minor and he isn’t. Do you know what a serious crime that is? There are names for men who do that sort of thing!”

He pretended to shrug off the conversation with Janice, but in truth he was badly shaken. She could cause all kinds of trouble if she wanted to. He had always hated her but never more than now.

At the dinner table she looked at him smugly but didn’t say anything. He knew she was waiting for the right time to ruin his life.

He didn’t see Geoff for three days. When he asked his mother where he was, she told him he needed to forget Geoff. He wasn’t an appropriate friend for a high school boy.

On the fourth day, when Roddy was walking home, Geoff was waiting for him on the corner down the street from the school.

“Where have you been?” Roddy asked. “She fired you, didn’t you?”

“No, she didn’t have to fire me. I quit.”

“Do you have another job?”

“I’m going away. I wanted to say goodbye. You’ve been a real friend to me.”

“I’m coming with you!” Roddy said.

“Do you know how far we’d get? They’d come and get you and they’d lock me up. They’d say I abducted you.”

“I’d tell them the truth!”

“It wouldn’t make any difference. You’re a minor.”

“Will I ever see you again?”

“When you’re older.”

“Do you know…”

“What?”

“Never mind. I won’t say it now, but I’m sure you know what it is.”

“I wanted to give you this.”

He reached into his pocket and took out a small object and placed it in Roddy’s palm.

“What is it?”

“It’s an 1877 fifty-dollar gold piece.”

“You’re always giving me things. I’ve never given you anything.”

“Keep it to remember me by.”

“I’ve never had such a wonderful thing. Thank you.”

“I’ll write and let you know where I am.”

“I hope you will.”

They shook hands and then Geoff walked away quickly.

Father hired an old Italian man to take Geoff’s place. Janice never mentioned Geoff’s name to Roddy again.

Roddy never stopped thinking about Geoff. He knew they would see each other again, that Geoff wouldn’t forget him. He kept the gold coin and the amber nugget in the drawer by his bed and took them out and looked at them almost every night before going to sleep. He never told anybody about them.

The high school years passed in a blur. In his senior year he turned eighteen right before his graduation. While his classmates were excited about going to college, getting married or starting jobs, he was silent about his future plans. He told his parents he had booked passage to North Africa to join the Foreign Legion. He was going away for good and they would never see him again.

A week after graduation, he received a letter postmarked Denver, Colorado. He always knew the letter would come at the right time.

He took the gold coin to a gold merchant and was surprised to discover it was worth a lot more than he thought. After he bought his bus ticket, he had enough left over to buy himself a sturdy suitcase, some warm clothes and a pair of cowboy boots.

Geoff met him at the train in Denver. He still looked amazingly the same—the same dark eyes and thick hair—but Roddy had changed from boy to man.

Roddy and Geoff lived together for the next sixty years. Geoff died in late winter, an old man, and was buried under the wide western sky, with an empty grave beside him for when Roddy needed it. They had both known from the beginning that this was how things were always going to be.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

Bath Haus
~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp ~

Oliver Park and Nathan Klein are two gay men living together in a six-million-dollar home in the ritzy Georgetown section of Washington D.C. Oliver is a recovering addict from a small town in Indiana. Nathan is a successful surgeon from a wealthy family. Nathan has been Oliver’s savior, rescuing him from a life of addiction.

Oliver is always painfully aware that he and Nathan are of two different social classes. It’s Nathan’s family’s house he and Nathan are living in. He feels he doesn’t belong there. Nathan’s family, especially his mother, doesn’t like Oliver and feels that he is beneath Nathan.

Oliver is always struggling with his past, and most especially with his drug addiction. As much as he has benefited from Nathan’s kindness and generosity, he isn’t happy. When Nathan is out of town, he decides to seek some action on his own. He goes to a gay male bathhouse, called, oddly enough, Bath Haus. He finds some action, sure enough, but of a kind he would have been better off without.

In the dark and steamy confines of a gay male bathhouse, he meets up with a man who calls himself Kristian. He’s Scandinavian, or something, and devilishly attractive. When Kristian gets Oliver alone in a private room, he tries to strangle him with his bare hands, and there is no one who might help him. The only way he can get out of Kristian’s stranglehold is to slash at this face with a key.

Oliver has visible marks on his throat. He can’t pretend the attack never happened. He must think of a convincing cover story to keep Nathan from knowing where he was and what he was doing. This circumstance sets up the story to follow, a story of lies, deception, confusion and fear. Did Kristian choose Oliver at random, or is there something more sinister afoot?

Oliver knows that, with his visit to Bath Haus, he is jeopardizing everything he has, including his relationship with Nathan. The price he will pay is going to be a steep one.

Bath Haus, by P. J. Vernon, frequently veers into melodrama, but it’s an engaging and tightly plotted mystery with many surprising twists. It will keep you guessing right up to the end.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

Without Sin
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in Paranormal Horror Anthology.) 

The service ended. All the mourners departed, and the caretaker, whose name was Lemon, was left alone. He stood beside the open grave, his hands in his pockets, looking off into the distance. He was waiting for the two grave diggers to come and finish the job.

He approached the coffin. The lid had not yet been secured; he lifted it and looked inside. The deceased was a woman with artificial-looking red hair, about fifty years old. He wondered, as he always did, what had taken her. She looked healthy enough. He had heard of many suicides—something inexplicable in the air, perhaps, that made people melancholy and want to do away with themselves. Maybe she was one of those.

She was wearing a necklace with one fairly large red stone, apparently a ruby, and several smaller ones. It could be a real ruby or it could be colored glass. Her family looked prosperous enough. They wouldn’t want her to go to her eternal glory wearing fake stones. She was also wearing a wedding ring with a medium-sized diamond and some smallish earrings, no doubt worth a lot of money. He shook his head in amazement, as he had many times before, at the foolishness of people. Burying precious jewelry forever in the ground where it will never do anybody any good.

He heard someone coming and closed the lid. He looked up and saw the two gravediggers coming toward him. Drexel was the older of the two and out in front. He walked with a swagger wherever he was, even when no one was around. He thought he was cock of the walk and wasn’t bothered one bit that he displaced dirt and buried dead people for a living. The profession, for him, had certain advantages. He had few rules and could always do the job no matter how drunk he was.

The other gravedigger was as much a boy as a man. His name was Lanier. He lived with his mother in town. People believed him simple-minded but he was a good worker and never complained or caused trouble. He was happy to work as a gravedigger and looked up to Drexel, who was his third or fourth cousin. The two of them got along well because Drexel didn’t mistreat Lanier and Lanier always did as he was told without question.

“Where the hell have you been?” Lemon asked.

“Around,” Drexel said. “We’re here now.”

“I could have you fired in a flash for not being here when you’re supposed to be.”

“Well, we’re here now,” Lanier said in the cheeky tone he used only when he was backing up Drexel.

“What have we got here?” Drexel asked, pointing toward the coffin.

“A good lady, waiting for you to send her off to her eternal slumber,” Lemon said.

Drexel raised the lid and looked inside. “Looks like she’s already started on that,” he said with a little laugh.

Lanier looked away when the lid was opened. He didn’t like looking at dead people.

“That’s a ruby necklace she’s wearing around her neck,” Drexel said. “Must be worth something, if I know my jewelry.”

“Not this time,” Lemon said.

“What do you mean ‘not this time’?”

“I mean the good lady keeps her jewelry.”

“How is it that you get to say? You’re not the only one here.”

“Every living thing on earth is part of a hierarchy,” Lemon said.

“Part of a what?”

“In the hierarchy of things, the caretaker of the cemetery is above the gravedigger in all matters.”

“That’s crazy talk.”

“Nevertheless, it seems this woman is a distant relative of my mother’s. I don’t want to defile her person at a time when she is most unable to prevent it.”

“You haven’t got a mother.”

 “Very well, then. We’ll let a coin toss decide the matter.” He reached into his pocket and took out a coin. “Call it,” he said.

“Tails,” Drexel said.

“Very well. If the coin lands on its tail, we take the goods, bury the lady, and nobody is any the wiser. If, however, the coin lands on its head, the lady goes to her eternal slumber fully equipped.”

He flipped the coin into the air and made no attempt to catch it when it came down. It landed at his feet.

“Hah!” Drexel said. “It’s tails! I want the ruby necklace. I have a dear friend that it would look very good on.”

“I saw it first!” Lemon said. “The necklace is mine. And I’m not so stupid as to give it to somebody who might wear it in public and have it recognized.”

“Oh, and what are you going to do with it?”

“I’ll sell it to the acquaintance of mine in the faraway city who pays a good price and doesn’t ask questions, as with the other stuff. You see, there’s a way to remount a stone like that so the lady herself would never recognize it.”

“Says you!”

“A worthy rejoinder, if I ever heard one!”

“You talk like a damn fool. Let’s get the goods before somebody comes and get the old dame in the ground and get it over with.”

Lemon opened the coffin again and took hold of the necklace and gave it a tug. He couldn’t see how to get it off and didn’t want to break it, so he slipped it off over the dead woman’s head. Once he had the necklace in his hands, he held it up to his own neck, waggled his hips and took a few mincing steps.

“Oh, what a lovely girl!” Drexel said with a sneer.

Lanier had turned his back on Drexel and Lemon and didn’t want to think about what they were doing. He knew they were doing something bad and he wanted no part of it, although he did nothing to stop it.

“I’m going over there,” he said and walked quickly away out of sight.

“That boy is without sin,” Lemon said, “rather like those three little monkeys: Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.”

Drexel removed the woman’s wedding ring with a devilish chortle and put it in his pocket. When he tried to remove the earrings, though, he couldn’t see how to get them off.

“There’s a little thing in back that releases them,” Lemon said.

He helped Drexel turn the woman partway over so they could see the backs of her ears. She was as stiff as a pillar of salt and didn’t bend at the joints.

“She’s really truly dead,” Lemon said.

“I think I hear someone coming,” Drexel said.

He let the woman fall back into place and took out the pruning shears. He cut off the woman’s earlobes neatly and wrapped them, earrings and all, in a rag and put it in his pocket along with the wedding ring.

“The good woman will arrive at the gates of heaven with her earlobes missing,” Lemon said. “St. Peter will take one look at her and believe she has met with an accident.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Drexel said. “When you’re dead, nothing matters.”

“Nevertheless, she shall be welcomed with open arms!”

Drexel whistled for Lanier to come back and began to secure the lid of the coffin.

“One moment!” Lemon said. “I wish to bid the good lady the fond farewell that she so richly deserves.”

He bent over and kissed the dead woman full on the lips. Drexel did the same and, not to be outdone, licked her lips and squeezed her breast.

“Ah-ah-ah!” Lemon said. “There’ll be no necrophilia in my presence.”

“As if you yourself don’t engage in the practice every chance you get!”

Lanier returned and they secured the lid and lowered the coffin into the grave. Before they were finished replacing all the dirt, another service began in another part of the cemetery. They tidied up the gravesite, cleared away their tools and left unnoticed.

Two days later Lemon and Drexel were both dead.

When Lemon failed to appear to perform his duties as caretaker, the cemetery owner and his assistant went looking for him, expecting to find him in a drunken stupor. Instead they found him in the caretaker’s cottage, lying on the bed in full woman’s rigging, including dress, stockings, shoes and curly red wig. Around his neck was the ruby necklace he filched from the dead woman. They thought to revive him but on closer inspection discovered he had been dead long enough to stiffen. His tongue was swollen out if his mouth and his eyes and ears were seeping old blood.

As for Drexel, an old farmer saw him standing in the middle of an empty field with his arms outraised. When the farmer went to him to find out who he was and what he was doing, Drexel was babbling and insensate. While the farmer was asking Drexel useless questions, he fell dead at the farmer’s feet. The farmer looked through Drexel’s clothing to try to find some clue to his identity and discovered the handkerchief containing the earlobes with the diamond earrings attached and the wedding ring.

The woman with the ruby necklace had sickened and died with alarming suddenness. Her doctors didn’t know how to treat her illness because they didn’t know what the illness was. How or where she contracted it was never known. It was obviously an illness that came about through contact with one infected, rather than through the air. Had the lady led a secret life of some kind?

Lanier never touched the woman or her jewelry, so he escaped the illness. His mother forced him to abandon his profession as grave digger, however, as she suspected that Lemon’s and Drexel’s deaths had something or other to do with acts they performed on a dead body when nobody was around. The thought sickened her.

When Lanier was asked what Lemon and Drexel were doing on that last day in the cemetery that might have made them sick, he shrugged his shoulders and smiled his benign smile. They were always doing and saying things that didn’t interest him, he said. He was in another part of the cemetery tending to some flowers he had planted, minding his own business while other people minded theirs.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp