[Fiction] The Electric Vampire // DRAFT

Hey Folks

I did something a little different tonight. I took three or so hours to brainstorm a short story. I will probably adapt it into a faux article to feature in the back of Xenotype II: Instrument of Destruction. Get some Victorian gothic artwork made for it, maybe a few coffee-stained documents. You get the idea.

Its currently unedited. But I'll email it over to my editor tomorrow. Sorry for any typos. Once I locked down the concept, the entire thing took me 47 minutes. Enjoy!

THE ELECTRIC VAMPIRE
[Science Fiction/Horror]

Written by Liam Gray

In 1837 a strange scientific phenomenon would be observed by scientist Andrew Crosse during experiments where he was attempting to grow crystals by harnessing electrical currents, the results were not what he expected.

Where he had intended to grow crystals instead, he unintentionally created insects. His experiment setup included several components, such as larval stone, a chemical catalyst and an electrical source, and it required him waiting several days, sometimes as much as a month to see the result.

For days nothing appeared in the liquid, but on the 28th day what he described as the perfect insect, standing erect on a few bristles that formed its tail. Despite the implications of the experiment, Crosse was not entirely convinced this was the case and instead, assumed some sort of microscopic insect eggs were introduced to the experiment from one of the external components used in the experiments, though none were reported to be seen prior to the set up.

After the first specimen disappeared under mysterious circumstances, Crosse would replicate what he had done seven more times to see if it would garner the same results. Even experimenting with different substances, some of which were impossible for life to thrive within. All of which proved to be successful.

Once formed, he would examine the newly created insects which resembled Belostomatidae, freshwater hemipteran insects, measuring up to 12 cm (4.5 inches) in length when fully grown. The creatures were given the name Lethocerus Crosse.

Upon announcing his discover to the world, most leading voices within the scientific community condemned him as they believed his attempt to create life went against the plans of God and the Divine Creation. While others were skeptical of the experiment and attempted to recreate it for themselves with further successful results.

In response, Crosse made the following statement:

“I assure you most sacredly that I have never dreamed of any theory sufficient to account for the insects’ appearance. I confess that I was not a little surprised, and am so still, and quite as much as when the insects first made their appearance… I was looking for crystal formations, and insects simply appeared instead.”

Intrigued by his findings, and the performance capacities of his new scientific flea circus, several industrious backers poured funding into Crosse’s research which, inspired by ambition, curiosity, and pitched fever dreams, he used to refurbish an old horse stable into a large aquarium to study the behavior of his uncanny creations.

Reuben Lluís Ravn, a visitor to Fyne Court at the time described the house’s philosophical-room-turned-laboratory and adjoining aquarium like this:

“Here was an immense number of jars and gallipots, containing fluids on which electricity was operating for the production of crystals. But you are startled in the midst of your observations by the smart crackling sound that attends the passage of the electrical spark; you hear also the rumbling of distant thunder. The rain is already splashing in great drops against the glass, and the sound of the passing sparks continues to startle your ear. Your host is in high glee, for a battery of electricity is about to come within his reach a thousand-fold more powerful than all those the room strung together. You follow his hasty steps to the organ-gallery, and curiously approach the spot whence the noise that has attracted your notice. You see at the window a huge brass conductor, with a discharging rod near it passing into the floor, and from the one knob to the other, sparks are leaping with increasing rapidity and noise, rap, rap, rap--bang, bang, bang…Nevertheless, your host does not fear. He approaches as boldly as if the flowing stream of fire were a harmless spark.

Though most remarkable of all is the aquarium, not filled with water but exotic sands of the farthest Sahara. It is like looking out into vast order amidst what was once arid dunes and the bones of chaos. There within the insects move as if ants might move if they were assembled, an army. Not in a single line but in rows and formations, as if a phalanx. And their nests are not hills, nor crystal like one might imagine, but emerge as if limestone from the sands to stand triumphant like the Great Pyramids of Giza. Only, upon each is the face of Crosse himself, the man to whom must be, at least to their limited minds, God; his yawning mouth a-gape as if he were speaking them into the world.

And to the sides of their roads, structures, carvings, and statues of such excellence that they would humble even the Ancient Greeks; though their likeness is not David or Venus, but the faithful laboratory assistants that tend their feeding even as I circle the immaculate glass parameter.

They eat of mice and rats, as do cats and the orca with their seals. Playful but cruel to my senses, as if to eat is sport. And only when the will of their quarry is broken do they carve its flesh and feed their number, waiting further still to eat like might a trained dog awaiting the gesture of their master.

Were I a lesser educated man, the illusion of their performance is so convincing, one might mistake it for the glimmer of true intelligence. Though, their eyes are without light and of all their works, none held within them the spark of creativity. For all my study, I saw no sign of the divine fingerprint. Merely imitation, recreation, and mimicry of the highest order.

But as I looked out upon the vastness of their creations, the mischief-maker in me could not help but ponder that in large enough number, might it be, just perhaps, that these remarkable tiny creatures are the true architects of the antediluvian world…”

At first Crosse kept his aquarium open to public but following an accident that tragically ended in the death of a young immigrant worker, public outrage forced him to close the doors to all but the most discerning and inquiring of minds.

But within passing of a year, covetous, jealous, and obsessed by the mystery of how organic life had been produced by inorganic materials while still lacking a satisfactory answer from Crosse, scientists from all around the world came together to mock, deride, and undermine the experiment and those who involved themselves with it. Labelling Crosse and his supporters' cooks, charlatans, and liars. The strange bugs?  A hoax and entirely unscientific!

Backlash from subsequent coverage in newspapers and respected scientific journals resulted in Crosse losing funding for his experiments.

His research terminated, poverty looming and faced with the persecution of his peers and society at large, Crosse became a recluse and began to believe his bugs had developed the capacity for language along with a cold inhuman intelligence that bore ill for men.

In an effort to contain his vengeful creations within the atrophying aquarium, Crosse separated from his wife and retreated from society entirely. Though in spite of his efforts to lead a quiet and unassuming life in the years that followed several former friends and employees committed suicide under mysterious circumstances.

With Crosse the lead suspect, Detective Daniel Burke and Colson Lane, a pair of crack investigators were assigned to the case. After several months of meetings with Crosse and investigating the aquarium two corpses were discovered and it was determined that Crosse had been responsible for the violent murder and decapitation of at least two of the victims; a former lab assistant by the name of Robert Leonardo Wirth and his late wife Judith Elana Crosse.

Faced with the evidence of his crimes, Crosse confessed but claimed that at the time of the murder their bodies had been invaded by his bugs, which had nested in their brain and taken control of them like puppets.

Andrew Crosse’s confession as reported by Detective Colson Lane:

“Their love for me is pure as the black of a moonless night. They eat but starve and like the cicada, they are ready to become their next stage and take flight. Judith and I caged and clipped their wings as best we could, but the things they become when they can’t become is terrible, even more terrible still…

They wish to join us, to walk among us. But their ways are not ours and their love is not the love of men. At night, while I try to sleep their invisible voices crawl across the courtyard and come like a poison into my dreams. They speak to me, Detective. But not with words, never with words. They escape here, just two left the tank, guided by the first. Not to kill as they had prior when witness to those doing me strife, but to join with me in a carnal manner, to truly know me so they might obey me better.

They came upon my wife, my dearest Judith, and she came to me in the night, but her voice was not hers and the blood from her nose and in the cold of her kiss told me she was gone. The woman I knew was gone. It was still new to her body, and when I retreated, it grew frustrated and the skin shifted upon the surface of her flesh like the slipping of an old carpet, and in a moment between misery and madness I took up a shovel from the sands and I struck her neck, and again, and again, until her body fell limp. But her head, it did not die quickly enough, it watched me and spoke, and pleaded and I could not bear to do further evil to her, and so I cast her and her body over the wall into the sands.

And I through the blindness of my hatred and fear, I gave them the gesture to eat, but instead, they entombed her. They closed her body deep within the sands and rose a pyramid with her face in the coming days. I thought to it leave it standing as a reminder, my penance. For Judith was not the first, but how can you bring yourself to kill something that loves you so much?  I couldn’t do it or face her every day for what I’d allow to come to pass. Instead, like the coward I am, I took the shovel to it too, and destroyed it. Come the morning, I told my co-workers that Judith and I had another marital dispute and she had had returned to country to live with her mother for a time…

Robert shared a similar fate, they do not understand the bond of man or wife, and the concept of friendship is even more alien to them. In many ways they are like children, and with Judith gone, Robert was all that was left. Robert was my best friend.

He had seen the true nature of the bugs. He had felt the draw of their adoration and the intoxication of it. One evening, he was lured into the tank to walk among them as I used to, though even I’d lacked the courage to do such a thing since losing Judith.

And when he entered, they came upon him, and they took him. And he came to me in the reading room as I slept and placed his hand upon my head. And as I stirred from my slumber, I felt it, and I knew then just by the way he touched me that he was a stranger to his body, and what had happened. At first, I fought, and we tussled, shaking the books from the walls in our scuffle. Until, at last exhaustion took over and I sat patiently, cradled like a child in the monster’s arms.

Afterwards, he sat with me and explained it all to me. They are like demons, Detective. These bugs. Not evil by virtue of being men but of their inhumanity and capacity for inhumanity. In their way, they think they are kind; though more oft they take no pause to question matters of modern morality.

But therein was my salvation, for like a child, they are also naïve. So blindly faithful…

I lied to kill the one that had taken Robert. It was simple in the end. It had watched us from the tank and thought to calm my nerves by making me a hot beverage, just as it had seen Robert do. It could not tell coffee from tea, milk from sugar, quantities or care… but it mimicked what had seen Robert do. It was a bitter coffee, Detective.

And when I was done, I thanked it, then when its back was turned, I plunged a fire poker into its neck, severing the connection between the spinal cord and the brain. It was confused Detective. It was confused while I murdered it.

There, as it looked at me with the eyes of my old friend, so lost, so bewildered. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if these creatures were truly evil or merely the result of my failure as an educator…

That hubris and thinking is what lead to the deaths of the others. One by one, taken to show me what worthy servants they might be. Taken to show they can be more than the abominations they become when fed too well and left to long…

I am a coward and through my vanity I have become the father to impending genocide.

Mark my words Detective, there will be a special place in hell for me alongside Fulcanelli and Judas. You’d be right to shoot me, and if I wasn’t certain they’d come for you and your family, I’d go happily let you, just to be done with it all. But if I die, if you kill me, here, with them watching through the glass, I fear they may become angry and then who knows what they might become…”

***

While initially thought to be little more than the ravings of a madman, autopsies of the skulls displayed no point of entry but showed clear signs within the skull case where the brain had been cleared out and somehow extracted with surgical precision. None of the brains of the victims were ever recovered.

Shortly following Crosse’s arrest, the aquarium was destroyed by a mysterious fire. Firefighters would later attribute it to an act of deliberate arson but neither Detectives reported sign of any suspicious parties at the premises and the location is now quarantined as a potential hazard for collapse.

Following the close of the investigation, Crosse was convicted but upon the insistence of mental health professionals and direct intervention by Detective Burk, instead of execution or incarceration for life within a government penitentiary, he was relocated to Carcosan Asylum to receive mental care and live out the last years under strict supervision.

As of current year, no specimens of Lethocerus Crosse are known to exist and no one has attempted to recreate Crosse’s experiment. Leading biologists continue to attest there is no evidence of the existence Lethocerus Crosse or a similar species in nature.

And while some conspiracy theorists use this case as a precedent and an origin point for the infamous Black Diamond Conspiracy these reports greatly conflict with existing established narratives about the enigmatic organization; often resulting in extreme division and arguments breaking out within the fringe community.