Count Dracula. Though she insisted that Dracula was a madman and not a vampire, she could not explain the missing quantities of blood. Miss Raymond also said that she thought she heard Dracula and Dr. Mornay struggling in the laboratory. They had also argued at the castle before the masquerade party. Perhaps they were lovers, she suggested. Perhaps they were expatriate Nazi spies. Whatever the truth was, it vanished with Count Dracula and died with Dr. Mornay. The scientist was buried in the neglected garden behind the home of her ancestors.
It wasn’t Miss Raymond’s calm truths but the wild claims of Young and Grey that marked the beginning of the end of LaMirada. Newspapers from Naples to Miami carried the story that a vampire was prowling the coast. Reporters, curiosity seekers, and even hunters descended on the region, overtaxing its resources for nearly a month during the summer peak and chasing away regulars. When no vampire was found and the fad ended, many of those regulars did not return.
Miss Raymond did return, however. Following a brief vacation she resigned from her job with Shippers Insurance. Because Dr. Mornay had died intestate, Mornay Castle was auctioned by the state. Using her savings and a small inheritance she shared with her sister, Joan Raymond bought the castle and moved in alone. She donated the laboratory equipment to New York University, hired workers to seal off the basement, and renamed the castle the Tombs. Except for brief weekly visits to the mainland, she kept entirely to herself.
The Beast made his first appearance a few days after Miss Raymond took title of the castle. A couple of never-say-die occult researchers from North Carolina’s Duke University still hunting for Count Dracula were brutally murdered during a storm in a little-traveled region of Big Cypress Swamp. Their jugular veins had been attacked and their blood half-drained, just like Professor Stevens—though there was a difference. Whereas the wounds on Professor Stevens’s throat had been what the Collier County coroner described as “neat slashes,” the wounds on the two new bodies were “savage lacerations.”
There was another brutal murder the next night. A young waitress was attacked while she was walking to her apartment after ten p.m., when her shift had ended. This time, however, there was a witness: a police officer, who wrote in his report that he’d heard a cry like a dog baying and saw “a shaggy man-like beast rushing away from the scene.” The veteran officer said that he fired two shots at the retreating figure and was sure that he’d hit him at least once. But there was no blood at the scene save for that of the poor girl, and the search for the “beast” turned up nothing. The only pedestrian in the vicinity, James Karl McDougal, owner of McDougal’s House of Horrors, gruffly claimed to have seen and heard nothing. When the police officer asked the normally resplendent entrepreneur what he was doing out with his shirt unbuttoned to the navel and his feet bare, he snapped, “Coming back from the beach, you moron!” Since the night of the masquerade, when he was attacked by a wolf, less-than-discreet associates reported that Mr. McDougal had been even surlier than usual.
Because the murders began when Miss Raymond returned, county Police Inspector Wellman went to query her about them. Where was she on the night of the first attacks? Island-bound because of heavy rains, she said. Where was she the night of the second murder? Repairing the storm-damage to her tiny launch. Did Inspector Wellman wish to see the boat? He did, and was satisfied that she was telling the truth. However, Miss Raymond did speculate that the killings sounded very much like the work of a werewolf. Why did she say that? asked Wellman. Miss Raymond only smiled and suggested that he arm himself with silver bullets. The inspector did not visit La Viuda again.
Despite the best efforts of local and state police to catch the
It wasn’t Miss Raymond’s calm truths but the wild claims of Young and Grey that marked the beginning of the end of LaMirada. Newspapers from Naples to Miami carried the story that a vampire was prowling the coast. Reporters, curiosity seekers, and even hunters descended on the region, overtaxing its resources for nearly a month during the summer peak and chasing away regulars. When no vampire was found and the fad ended, many of those regulars did not return.
Miss Raymond did return, however. Following a brief vacation she resigned from her job with Shippers Insurance. Because Dr. Mornay had died intestate, Mornay Castle was auctioned by the state. Using her savings and a small inheritance she shared with her sister, Joan Raymond bought the castle and moved in alone. She donated the laboratory equipment to New York University, hired workers to seal off the basement, and renamed the castle the Tombs. Except for brief weekly visits to the mainland, she kept entirely to herself.
The Beast made his first appearance a few days after Miss Raymond took title of the castle. A couple of never-say-die occult researchers from North Carolina’s Duke University still hunting for Count Dracula were brutally murdered during a storm in a little-traveled region of Big Cypress Swamp. Their jugular veins had been attacked and their blood half-drained, just like Professor Stevens—though there was a difference. Whereas the wounds on Professor Stevens’s throat had been what the Collier County coroner described as “neat slashes,” the wounds on the two new bodies were “savage lacerations.”
There was another brutal murder the next night. A young waitress was attacked while she was walking to her apartment after ten p.m., when her shift had ended. This time, however, there was a witness: a police officer, who wrote in his report that he’d heard a cry like a dog baying and saw “a shaggy man-like beast rushing away from the scene.” The veteran officer said that he fired two shots at the retreating figure and was sure that he’d hit him at least once. But there was no blood at the scene save for that of the poor girl, and the search for the “beast” turned up nothing. The only pedestrian in the vicinity, James Karl McDougal, owner of McDougal’s House of Horrors, gruffly claimed to have seen and heard nothing. When the police officer asked the normally resplendent entrepreneur what he was doing out with his shirt unbuttoned to the navel and his feet bare, he snapped, “Coming back from the beach, you moron!” Since the night of the masquerade, when he was attacked by a wolf, less-than-discreet associates reported that Mr. McDougal had been even surlier than usual.
Because the murders began when Miss Raymond returned, county Police Inspector Wellman went to query her about them. Where was she on the night of the first attacks? Island-bound because of heavy rains, she said. Where was she the night of the second murder? Repairing the storm-damage to her tiny launch. Did Inspector Wellman wish to see the boat? He did, and was satisfied that she was telling the truth. However, Miss Raymond did speculate that the killings sounded very much like the work of a werewolf. Why did she say that? asked Wellman. Miss Raymond only smiled and suggested that he arm himself with silver bullets. The inspector did not visit La Viuda again.
Despite the best efforts of local and state police to catch the
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