Bradley Maurer's page

Bradley Florian (“It’s a family name; we’re German.”) Maurer is the eldest surviving child of Jacob and Francine Maurer, a surgeon and homemaker. For the first ten years of his life, he lived a respectable, affluent existence in the Milwaukee suburb of Whitefish Bay with his elder brother Matthias and younger siblings Katherine and Walter. For many years, Jacob promised them a big family vacation to Hawaii. They just needed to wait for Walter to grow up enough to appreciate it.

The time finally came in the summer of 1970. Jacob took the family out to a fancy restaurant to celebrate having all the arrangements made. He and Mom both had a few drinks -they always had something with dinner- that Dad seemed just a bit more out of it than usual. Matthias had just gotten his license and offered to drive, unwisely bringing the fact up. The Maurer children were taught to respect authority and do as they were told. Jacob silenced him with a cold stare and the promise that they would discuss things further at home.

They never made it. Jacob lost control of the car on a turn and sent the whole family screaming down a tree-lined gully. The Maurers all went flying forward when the car came to a stop. Jacob’s skull broke open against a rock he landed on. Francine’s throat was torn open by shattered glass. Matthias, who had been trying to reach up from the back seat to do something, flew forward and down. His neck broke when his head hit the steering wheel. The car was full of blood and glass. The younger children escaped with severe cuts and bruising, but they were trapped in the wrecked car.

For more than an hour they were helpless in pain and fear, before Brad slowly put himself together. His parents weren’t coming to help; they were dead. Matthias was dead too. They always taught the children that the older ones had to take care of the younger ones, and now that job fell to him. Brad forced his emotions down and worked out what had to happen. It was the middle of the night and they were on a country road. No one would be around for hours and hours. They needed to see doctors before then, in case one of them had a nicked artery or something.

Brad climbed out over Francine’s cooling body, then hauled it out of the way as gently as he could so he could get his siblings out the same way. Walter could barely walk, so Brad carried him and took Katherine in hand. They scrambled up the gully and walked four miles to the nearest farm. The police had trouble finding the wreck in the dark, so Brad took them right back to it once they came.

The Maurers had no nearby relatives. Francine was an only child and her parents died early. Jacob was estranged from his family, who were never spoken of in the presence of the children. But he had an older brother, Michael, a confirmed bachelor in the Marine Corps. Michael Maurer had spent most of the past decade in Vietnam in one capacity or another. It took him three weeks to come for them.

Neighbors had seen to the Maurer children in the interim, but Brad most of the practical work of keeping the house running. They expected that something like that would probably continue, but with Uncle Michael the man of the house. Uncle Michael had other ideas. He did not consider three spoiled children sufficient cause to terminate his career in the Marines. His objective in Wisconsin was to liquidate the household and transfer the children to base housing in Okinawa, where his new posting would be.

Uncle Michael bitterly resented having to deal with the children, telling them from the start that they were a great imposition upon him. They were spoiled and useless. But he was going to whip them into shape, literally if need be. The Maurer men had a long tradition of service in the United States Military, which their father had abandoned, and Uncle Sam just got two new recruits. Maybe they could make up for the one he lost.

Michael was simultaneously compelling and horrifying to Brad. His parents were often stern and strict, but ultimately kind. Michael was not. His authority was a physical force, exercised with little restraint. Within two weeks the family home was on the market. Michael collected all the children’s belongings and burned them in a bonfire out back. They had to watch as everything except the clothing on their backs went into the blaze. Then he handed over proper clothing he acquired at a base store before he arrived and the clothes they had on needed to go in the flames too. It was straight from that to the plane. The first stop in Okinawa was the barber shop, where Brad and Walter received regulation haircuts. They were marched off to school, at midday, rather than to their new home.

From then on, everything was strictly military. Bradley, no longer permitted to answer to Brad, and Walter slept on cots. They were expected to become fine specimens of American youth ready for induction on their eighteenth birthdays. Strict regimens of chores, discipline, and physical fitness dominated their lives. Katherine was to become a model military wife, silent and dutiful.

At first, it worked for the boys. The trauma and abruptness of everything quickly broke through any resistance Bradley and Walter had. Uncle Michael was in command now and if he said it, that made it so. When Bradley was informed that athletic participation was required of him, he decided correctly that wrestling would be properly manly and physical to meet specifications. He threw himself into it, carrying Walter along by example.

For a few years, everything began to settle down. Then Michael began to drink heavily. He blamed the children for his stalled career. Repeated transfers never got him any closer to action or a big promotion. Physical discipline, often extensive, had been a feature of the household from the beginning. Bradley always swallowed his anger and accepted it, often to the point of taking the blame for Katherine’s and Walter’s sins. Once Michael began to drink in earnest, the clear system of calibrated pain broke down into one of drunken rampages.

Bradley took it still, even when his arm got broken and he had to sit out part of a season. As long as the cruelty fell on him, that was just part of the deal. Now and then Walter or Katherine caught the worst of it, but Bradley became adept at keeping them mostly safe. He got so good that Michael noticed and planned a bender for when Bradley was away at a meet overnight. He broke both Walter’s legs and one of Katherine’s arms and made them sit in agony so Bradley could see what he’d caused by being deceptive when he got home.

At the infirmary, all three children repeated the correct lies. Walter was playing around on the roof and jumped off. Katherine tried to catch him. Dumb kids made bad decisions all the time. They got home and Michael went to sleep some of it off. Bradley put the part of himself that had worked so hard to please Michael away. Brad took Michael’s gun and trained it on the Marine. Then he kicked his uncle awake and explained how things were going to be from now on.

Michael laughed and dared him to shoot. Brad pulled the trigger and found out the gun was empty. From then on, Brad was a virtual prisoner in the house. Since he thought he could outsmart a Marine, he needed to find out otherwise the hard way. Michael deliberately sabotaged his schooling to ensure Brad got barely adequate grades. He wasn’t even allowed to read in the house. The only thing left untouched was wrestling, because that was practically boot camp already. As soon as he was eighteen, he was done.

Brad had other plans. As much from spite as anything else, he rejected Michael’s vision completely. He was going to be a doctor like his father. He drove himself almost to the breaking point to undo the damage Michael did by getting as much accomplished at school as was possible. Brad knew his way around school. If there was anywhere he could stay two steps ahead, it was there. His grades recovered quickly, if at the cost of exhausting nights secretly reading and pouring every spare moment into schoolwork.

It wasn’t long before Michael caught Brad in the act and began confiscating all his books and other school material as soon as he came in the door. He locked it in a strongbox and kept the key on him at all times. From the time Brad got home from practice until he was locked in his thoroughly-searched bedroom at night, Michael assigned him additional physical training to drive the boy to exhaustion.

At first it worked. Brad’s grades plunged again and his life was one of constant exertion, leaving him too drained to even try to stay up and attempt schoolwork. He sat through classes in a growing haze of pain and exhaustion broken occasionally by jittery energy highs that demanded physical expression. He hated it. But Michael knew how to push Brad’s buttons. He’d committed strongly to wrestling and with the rest of his social circle excluded, the team became his world. All the hard work began to pay off by making Brad better on the mat. Walter, who loved wrestling more than Brad did, soon adopted the regime on his own. Doing anything but supporting Walter fully was anathema to Brad, especially since he knew Walter joined in partly to support him.

Brad knew what was happening. Michael was inside his head, using wrestling, his friends, and Walter against him. But he couldn’t fight it without making himself more miserable and the visible improvement in his wrestling sparked a competitive streak in him. Little by little, Brad stopped thinking about how much he hated everything and started to focus on the few positive experiences left to him. It wasn’t really what he wanted, but it felt like the only thing he could want.

Even as Brad started to give up, he remembered that he had had other plans. Sometimes he even dreamed about them. There was just no way he could achieve any of it, locked up in his room or sweating his brains out. Besides, wrestling had gone so well that Brad could almost taste the state championships. Laying in his bed thinking about it one night, Brad realized he could be using the time productively. He got up and started doing pushups next to his cot. He spotted a bit of wire that had broken off the beaten-up old thing.

The only things Brad could have in his room were clothing and some weights. He couldn’t break the window without waiting waking everyone and probably hurting himself. He couldn’t kick the door down. But maybe he could pick a lock. It took most of a week, but Brad taught himself by trial and error and that little wire bought him freedom.

Every inch of Brad was screaming to run out of the house and never come back. He padded down and out the front door without a second thought, only slowing to grab a snack from the kitchen. Then it dawned on him that he had no money and no way to get past base security. But he had friends. Michael wanted him to be a wrestler, so Brad was going to be the best wrestler he could be. He’d support his team and they could support him. They had enough of the same classes.

Over the next few days, Brad collected several friends willing to stay up late or get up early and let him use their materials to catch up. It was arduous and part of Brad actively fought going back to how things were, but he powered through. The work drove Brad almost past breaking, but every time he felt like quitting and accepting his fate he remembered what Katherine and Walter looked like with broken bones. His grades came back and in time, Brad came to enjoy sneaking around. It was almost a game.

But Brad couldn’t conceal his report cards. Michael saw them and threatened to break Brad’s arms and legs. Brad smiled and told him to go ahead. Ever since he started to recover, Brad had been presenting just enough classic abused child symptoms to keep his coach and a few teachers right on the edge of suspicion, then carefully disabusing them any time they got too near. They knew Brad was troubled somehow, but always came just short of provoking a serious inquiry. He’d also kept careful records, complete with rolls of film, documenting every beating and injury he’d suffered. Brad didn’t really have the film but his ability to rattle off dozens of incidents down to the day and recite months of carefully-phrased inquiries and concerned looks from the faculty carried the lie. If Brad was going down, Michael would go with him. They may not drum him out of the Marines, but his chance for promotion would be shot.

After that, they didn’t speak. When Michael locked him in at night, Brad started leaving notes in Michael’s bedroom to flaunt his ability to come and go at will. Surprise inspections and room swaps with Walter and Katherine to deprive Brad of picks and a pickable lock failed against Brad’s careful squirreled away copied keys and extra picks. When Michael padlocked the door, Brad finally broke the window. Michael exploded and Brad dared him to make a big stink. Just why would a dutiful, loyal, disciplined boy like Bradley Maurer, who everybody knew was religiously patriotic and would never hurt a fly, break a window that belonged to the United States Marine Corps? Did Michael want to open those doors?
Michael screamed, cursed, and threatened, but Brad was over being intimidated by that. He even dared the Marine to come at him and see what all that extra work at wrestling had accomplished. But if he left a bruise, or if he laid a finger on Katherine or Walter, they could go down together.

From then on Michael kept up the forms of his confinement, but Brad sailed through the rest of high school. He graduated top of his class, thanks to a lot of extra credit to make up for lost time, and came within a few points of winning a state title his senior year on top of it. Toward the end of the year, he even took to openly mocking Michael’s attempts to control him by leaving notes for Michael and his siblings to find in the morning or getting up early to cook them all breakfast. It was petty, but Brad earned it. He’d be gone to UNC-Chapel Hill in a few months anyway.

Just after the cutoff date for fall applications, Michael revealed that he’d intercepted all Brad’s mail to college. He was eighteen and the day he graduated he would be inducted, end of story. Brad told Michael that he got the applications that he was supposed to. The duplicates that his coach sent in came back with admissions paperwork. Then he laughed in Michael’s face and told him that a dumb grunt shouldn’t expect to outsmart Jacob Maurer’s son, future surgeon.

With that, Brad was off to university across the country. He worried intensely about Katherine and Walter, but there was no way he could have stayed to help them. As much as Brad could, he tried to focus on the here and now. He buried himself in classes the same way he’d buried himself in wrestling. More than once he thought about trying to walk on to the UNC team, but Brad contented himself with staying in shape. He heard nothing from either sibling for three years. Katherine got in touch by mail, telling him she ran away the second she turned eighteen and was living on a commune. Walter had turned into a true believer in the Gospel of Uncle Michael, but the last she heard he was doing well. Things had gotten harder after Brad left, but never as bad as they were before.

While an undergrad, Brad roomed with Stan Moretti in the dorm. Stan was naturally gregarious and Brad didn’t realize until they was gone how tightly he’d been bound up with his family and team. Their absence left a gap that Stan partly filled. Soon they worked out together regularly and Brad helped Stan with his math. They became close friends, bonding over shared Catholicism and interests in Latin, wrestling, and kept in touch after graduating. Neither one wanted to talk a lot about their family life and they silently reached an understanding that they had that in common too.

Brad excelled at university and easily got into medical school. There he discovered that he didn’t like working with patients at all. He was always either too diffident or too cold. But he excelled at pathology, dissection, and handling cadavers. They were complex, rational systems. They told stories. His father always said a doctor’s job was to help people and Brad decided the best way to do that was to become a forensic pathologist and help the police catch killers. It wasn’t saving lives like Jacob did, but close enough.

After medical school, residency, and his fellowship, Brad found work in the Chicago morgue. On his own, doing well, with work he enjoyed and considered meaningful, Brad was the happiest he’d been in more than half his life. Stan having a job at city hall only made it better still. They were both busy people, but managed to work some regular hanging out into it.

Brad’s coworkers found him a little odd, but the job tended to draw that type. Anyway, he earned points by spotting things they missed and making connections they didn’t, eagerly putting in extra hours just like he had back in school to do it. Brad even volunteered for the night shift whenever he could because there were fewer interruptions, except by new bodies.

That was the problem, really. After the first few unusual cases, he started keeping a personal record of exsanguinations with no visible wounds and the occasional “animal attack” that looked like someone got mauled by a bear in downtown Chicago. Most of Brad's coworkers didn't care or were too swamped to bother and shrugged off Brad's "Little Black Book" but the mystery was compelling and fun for him. He scoured the records for similar cases and hit the library looking for exotic diseases and industrial accidents that might explain the bodies.

Brad could never find explanations that fit most of the cases, so he kept at it. He was good enough with the ones that did have an explanation that his supervisor didn't care much about hobbies. Repeated attempts to interest the Chicago PD in the files failed. The DA's office never returned his calls. Brad even tried to get a meeting with the mayor. After a while, he began to suspect mob hit men with odd tastes but further research showed that the professionals were usually more careful or much more obvious. It wasn’t even trying to find a killer anymore, the pure fact of not knowing was maddening.

Getting nowhere, Brad finally made contact with a reporter. It was the last thing he wanted to do; Brad didn't even like it when his name appeared in the paper after he had to present his evidence to juries. He tried to be anonymous, but the reporter refused to deal with someone who wouldn't identify himself. Brad caved on it and they agreed to a meeting.

Brad waited for four hours in a sleazy restaurant, nursing the same cup of coffee and trying not to touch anything; it looked like nobody had cleaned the place since Watergate. He was just about to leave when a black man dressed like one of those punk rockers Brad knew from alarmed news reports sat down across from him. He made his apologies and rose to depart. Clearly he’d been mistaken for someone else. Punks were violent; everybody knew that.

The punk told Brad he knew about the cold cases, and he really ought to sit down. Thinking himself seated across from a serial killer that had been active for decades, Brad barely forced himself to stay. If he ran, he was sure he’d be dead in minutes or carried off to some torture basement. Maybe he could drag it out and get someone’s attention.

The strange man gave Brad a long, sincere talk about how the mysteries he was investigating just weren’t that important. Brad couldn’t even remember why he cared about them. He met Brad’s eyes often and Brad kept getting a nagging feeling that he should do what he was told, then dismissing it. He nodded along anyway, in the remote hope that the killer would think he bought all this and leave him be.

After about an hour, the man seemed satisfied. He asked Brad to hand over his research. Thinking about the duplicate copies in his apartment, his locker at work, and a safety deposit box, Brad readily agreed. He and the punk stranger parted company amicably.

Brad went straight to the police and made a full report. He tried to get in contact with the reporter, but she insisted that he’d stood her up and wouldn’t have anything more to do with him. After a few days of not hearing back from the police, he checked in. They had no record of his report. Something big was going on.

The time for drastic action had come. Brad didn’t want to be famous or dead, but he couldn't live with not knowing. He started thinking of more and more wild theories to explain what was going on. Was it Satanists? Aliens? And why did he spend so much time at the restaurant feeling like he should actually agree with the killer? That bothered him more than anything. He knew how Michael had gotten into his head, but couldn’t imagine how someone who lacked that kind of absolute control managed to influence him with just a conversation.

Brad wrote a lengthy explanation of his research and made two dozen copies of all his files, spending a small fortune at a university library he’d been using to find medical causes for the bodies. He boxed them all up and planned to take the lot to the post office right after his night shift. In a week or two, every victim rights group and media outlet in the Midwest, plus the FBI, would know everything he knew.

The punk was waiting when Brad loaded the boxes into his car that night. This time he seized Brad and all of high school wrestling wouldn't shake him. He held Brad an inch away and started giving commands. Brad felt the same urge to do as told and fought it for all he was worth, but after a few minutes the punk’s voice was the only thing he could hear and everything went black.

Brad woke up in a nice hotel room. The punk, who introduced himself as Garwood, was there and paging through one of the boxes. He casually complemented Brad on his diligence. Brad tried to run, to scream for help, anything, but all he could do was sit quietly. Garwood explained that he had become quite a nuisance with all this investigation, but his willingness to think outside the box as conventional explanations dried up spoke well for him. Brad also had a commendably strong will. Did he still want the answers he wrote so much about? Brad refused to answer. Garwood gave him the day to think about it and left.

For hours Brad struggled against whatever kept him from escaping. He couldn’t use the phone, write notes to slip under the door, go out the window (six stories up) or do much of anything but sit quietly, watch HBO, and raid the mini-fridge. Every time he got close, he found himself seated back in the chair he woke in until he was completely calm. But over many attempts, Brad found loopholes. He couldn’t make noise, but he could turn the TV up loud. In the middle of the day, no one cared. He could touch the doorknob, as long as he didn’t use it. Worrying away at those boundaries, he got himself closer each time until finally he made it into the corridor.

Brad called the police from the front desk, ignoring the people looking at him like he was a crazy person. They had to believe him now! Or if not, they were at least protection from the crazy punk until Brad could get out of Chicago for a while. They came and took a statement, but refused to grant Brad protective custody. The most they would do was have a patrol car go by his building at night and have an officer go home with him to check out the premises. Brad took it and decided he would only be home long enough to pack for a long vacation. Chicago was nice, but he had a good resume and lots of places needed medical examiners. Maybe New York would take him. The officer promised to stay long enough for Brad to pack a bag and, after he declared the apartment safe, Brad went in to do just that.

In the middle of stuffing a pair of underwear into his suitcase, Brad heard Garwood’s voice tell the cop he could move along. Brad raced out to identify the punk and get him arrested, but the officer was already down the stairs and the punk was on Brad in a flash. Again. Sharp pain gave way to wondrous pleasure as Brad squirmed and then fell still on his own bed.

Much later, Garwood explained that he took the successful escape as close enough to a yes. A mind like his really shouldn’t go to waste. He spent a few nights going over the basics with Brad and explaining the role that the fledgling would have in Kindred society...in time. Brad found it all easy to accept. When his sire spoke, things just sounded right. He knew, in theory, he should hate his jailer and murderer, but instead Brad felt a powerful urge to please him and be shaped by the elder vampire. He was beginning again and he needed to change to suit his new situation. His new life -immortality!- was a gift Brad was happy to embrace.

Part of that change meant breaking ties with his old life for a time. Garwood allowed Brad to use his new gifts to arrange an indefinite leave from the morgue, explaining that he had a distant relative who had fallen ill and needed help. Stan received the same explanation. Then Garwood sent Brad off to Gary until the circumstances would allow for a proper entry into Kindred society.

Brad dislikes Gary. He has more than enough money to handle his basic comforts there for some time and he finds sufficient vitae to get him through the nights, usually hunting among the late night crowds at the university libraries. He dresses down and pretends to be an older student, then uses his gifts to waylay people in the bathrooms or very deserted corners of the stacks, then wipes their memories after. More and more he considers simply binding a few in his blood to spare him the bother, but Garwood impressed on him that such beings easily become liabilities and that he should cherish the hunt as part of his new nature.

Ally Stanley Mallory is a lawyer working in the Buildings and License Enforcement division at city hall. Until Brad had to relocate to Gary they met to have some drinks and maybe work out about once a week, often after church.. He and Brad have been close friends since their first year at university. Stan has a large, close-knit Italian family in the area who are extremely important to him. He occasionally misses their usual meetings because they have a family gathering. Every time, Stan both invites Brad and makes it clear that Brad should not come. Brad put the pieces together long ago and makes a point of not asking questions. They still exchange relatively regular phone calls, but Brad is careful to use a variety of pay phones, just in case.

Mentor Brad has become quite close to his sire. Despite vast differences in life experience, age, and personal inclinations, Brad feels they have much in common. He doesn’t quite trust Mr. Marshall implicitly, but the elder vampire is an important person in Brad’s life and he has a strong drive to please him. Brad understands that he was embraced to be useful and they aren’t father and son, but he finds it hard to resist the urge to be what his sire wants him to be.

Resources Brad has lived frugally since coming to Chicago and his salary, while not huge by medical standards, has been more than enough to keep him in basic comfort and ahead of his loan payments. Since his embrace, he has been casually studying how to safely grow his savings over a very long term.

Brad works hard to be invisible. He presents himself as an unremarkable, nerdy guy and dresses in a bland, conservative style. He doesn’t put himself forward or seek to make an impression. He chooses bulky clothing, or else a size or so too big so that he looks smaller and less built than he is. He wears nondescript wireframe glasses or contacts, depending on the situation.

Even when thrilled with discovery and investigation, Brad maintained a strict professional demeanor except around fellow morgue geeks who would understand. Around genuine friends, Brad is much more open and casual. He likes to play up the crazy coroner angle a little for laughs. In the presence of superiors, Brad prides himself on being quiet, disciplined, competent, and as indispensable as he can manage. He works hard to go above and beyond and doesn’t question authority in public or to its face, no matter what he may think of them.

Brad considers himself a person of strong values. He is a convinced Catholic, but one much more attached to the ceremony and mystery than the doctrines as such. He was a regular churchgoer until his embrace. He believes that his present state, and the hostile reaction it produced when he tried to speak to a priest in Gary, demonstrates the truth of some of the dogmas he grew up with but does not consider himself damned. Instead he believes that his immortality has a purpose that he will discover in time. He used to pray daily, but that’s slid away since his death.

Brad is personally and politically conservative by nature. His upbringing impressed deeply upon him the importance of hierarchy and tradition. Finding himself initiated into a new set of traditions, he has done his best to learn and conform to them. He’s not entirely sure what it means yet, but he considers being a part of Clan Tremere somehow important.

Uncle Michael left a deeper impression on Brad that he sometimes cares to acknowledge. He strongly admires the armed forces, especially the Marines, and feels a perverse pride in being raised in that tradition. Does his best to keep abreast of military news and Walter’s career. He firmly believes in military virtues and the values he imbibed in years spend wrestling. He credits wrestling in particular for teaching him courage and discipline. For his adult life, Brad kept up as much of the training as he could as a way to honor that part of his life and stay connected to the coaches and friends who helped him get through bad times. That he doesn’t need the exercise anymore is slightly disorienting to him.