by Hamill, Ike
“No way,” Sandy said.
George tossed the match.
Flying through the air, the matchstick nearly burned out. When it landed at the feet of the stuffed bear, the animal tilted its plush head down so the glass eyes could see the flame. It caught immediately and exploded with a whoosh of flame. The fire was gone as quickly as it started and the bear fell onto its back. There was no smoke and the stuffed animal was still.
“What religion is this?” Logan asked.
The door from the stairwell opened. George’s brother Ricky strode forward, holding a pillowcase.
“Wait, wait, wait,” George said, getting to his feet. He put out his arm and Ricky stopped. George fumbled another match from the box, struck it, and tossed it towards the bear. This time, nothing happened.
“I think we’re okay,” George said.
“Regardless, that thing goes in the incinerator.”
“Hold up,” George said. Before he let Ricky approach the bear, George doused the pillowcase with the rest of the spring water. Ricky picked the thing up like a dog turd, turning the pillowcase inside out before the grabbed it. When he had it in the bag, he twisted it and tied a knot in the cloth.
“Come on,” Ricky said.
“Let me get my stuff together,” George said. He knelt to pack his things back into his pack.
“What was that?” Logan asked. “What was any of that?”
“Just a ceremony,” George said. “It’s a whole thing. We’re trying to attract these paranormal things so we had to do a paranormal ceremony and we needed big windows that faced west. This was the easiest place I could think of.”
“Oh,” Logan said.
He looked over to Sandy who was just standing there with her mouth hanging open.
“Hey, you guys are going home for the summer, right?” George asked them.
“Yeah. I am,” Logan said.
“Where?”
“Florida,” he said.
George pointed to Sandy who stammered out her answer, “I’m from Westbrook.”
“Listen, Sandy, if you hear anything has happened to me—like murder, or I disappear, or anything like that—do yourself a favor and don’t be here this summer, okay? Just in case they’re drawn to you because of what you witnessed, okay?”
“They’ll be fine,” Ricky said from the door to the stairs. “Come on.”
“Gotta go,” George said. He left them there.
# # #
The fire was already going when Ricky and George showed up.
“What’s in the bag?” their father asked.
“Stuffed bear. It has to be burned.”
“This fire is permitted for clean brush. You know that,” Vernon said.
Ricky laughed. His father burned all kinds of atrocious things in his pit. The rules dictated by the fire department had never been taken seriously on their property. Ricky tossed the bag in. For a moment, Ricky and George both held their breath, waiting to see what would happen when the stuffed animal burned up.
“What are you two up to?” their father asked.
“Nothing,” they said at the same time.
Vernon laughed. “Ricky, if you want to be a decent cop, you’re going to have to learn to lie better than that.”
“Not all sheriffs lie, Dad.”
“The good ones do. You have to be able to say things like, ‘Listen, if you just tell us what you did, then we can work together to make this go away quickly. None of us want this to stretch out. If we go digging around, there’s no telling what we’ll find.’”
“You watch too much TV, Dad,” George said.
“Now I know you two are up to something. The only time you defend each other is when you’re in cahoots.”
Ricky leaned in close to George’s ear. “I think we’re okay. If anything was going to happen, it would have by now.”
“Did the demon you called come immediately?” George whispered back.
“No, but I left the ceremony hanging. I think you terminated yours properly.”
“You think we should walk away and leave it to chance that a giant teddy bear isn’t going to pop out of this fire and rampage through the town?” George asked.
“Don’t be dramatic.”
“Says the person who has already summoned a demon once.”
Ricky looked up and saw their father. He was standing with his arms folded across his chest and his eyebrows raised. Ricky tapped George’s arm and gestured towards their father.
“What?” George asked.
Vernon pointed at the flames.
“Did you just incinerate Dr. Hugs?”
“Sorry?”
“That was your favorite teddy bear until you were three and you just tied him up in a pillowcase and immolated him?”
The bear’s glass eyes were flickering in the flames. Part of his mouth was still intact. The smile had just been a line of black thread, but now the lips were split and the teddy bear looked like it was screaming silently.
“Oh,” George said. “My roommate had bedbugs and we couldn’t get them out of the bear. I had to burn it.”
“You’re a worse liar than your brother.”
“Ricky was just saying the opposite the other day. He said I was such a good liar that I should be studying law.”
“You’re going to listen to him?”
The conversation died away and they stood there, looking at the flames. Ricky remembered the winter fires from back when he was a kid. Their father would make a big pile of brush all summer and save it until it got cold out. Once the snow was deep enough, Vernon knew that there was no chance that his fire would spread too far. He would wait until a weekend when they had nothing else planned and then they would have a giant bonfire. Ricky’s favorite fires were the ones they would have while it was snowing. He and George would look up and try to see the flakes melting before they hit the fire. They never could. It always seemed the like the bonfire just created a protective bubble that was free from snowfall. Then, inevitably, the fire would melt the snow hanging from the surrounding branches and it would all come down on their heads.
“After this burns out,” Vernon said, “I need help moving that recliner up to the second floor.”
“Sorry, Dad, I have to take George back to school. I’ll help you tomorrow.”
“Bye, Dad,” George said.
The two of them turned and started back towards to Ricky’s car.
Their father called after them.
“Oh, sure, when you need to sacrifice Dr. Hugs to the flames, you don’t mind hanging out with Dad, but when he needs help with the Lay-Z-Boy, suddenly school is more important.”
“See you tomorrow, Dad,” Ricky called with a wave.
# # #
Back on the road, George was blowing fog onto his window. He drew a pentagram before it disappeared.
“Cut it out.”
“Afraid you’ll get kicked off the force for being a devil worshipper?”
“A little, yes. There were some strange questions during my interview. People knew that something happened when we were kids, but they weren’t precisely sure what. I think a couple of the officers were just looking for a reason to reject my application.”
“Any organization that doesn’t want to give you a job doesn’t deserve your talents,” George said.
“Great. I’ll tell them that next time I go in.”
George laughed.
“They just automatically hate anyone under thirty,” Ricky said. “I hear it’s worse down in Portland. You remember Fred Damon?”
“Sure.”
“He said that they’re so sure that young people are going to act entitled that no matter what they do or say it’s going to be misinterpreted. Fred volunteered to work crowd control for a rally and his superior accused him of thinking that overtime was his right. He gave the shift to one of the older guys and that guy got into a scuffle with a protestor and put him in the hospital. That’s exactly what Fred was trying to avoid.”<
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“Fascists do what fascists do,” George said.
“We’re not like that.”
“No, you’re not like that. It’s undeniable that some are.”
Ricky rolled his eyes.
“Every now and then, you should take a break from this whole ‘George’ thing that you’re doing and try being a real person.”
“Ha. Serious question, should we tell Dad?”
“Tell him what? He knows plenty.”
“But you didn’t tell him anything about the spell and how we’re trying to get my blood all juiced up in order to lure in and then kill lizard vampires?”
“It was your idea,” Ricky said. “I’m supposed to rat you out?”
“The spell was my idea. This whole Rouge Deputy Vampire Hunter thing is your deal.”
“Does he need to know? I mean, he’ll just try to talk me out of it or he’ll try to help. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to him because of my thing.”
“Isn’t this precisely how everything went so wrong that one summer.”
“I was a kid. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“I would argue that when it comes to lizard vampires, nobody knows what they’re doing.”
“Maybe,” Ricky said. “I mean, I have some experience. I survived them once and I was attacked before I even had a chance to plan. Next time, I’ll be ready and things will be on my terms.”
George nodded. “I still think Dad should know.”
“Let me finish my research first and then I’ll figure out if Dad should know. I’m beginning to wonder if maybe knowing about them puts a person at higher risk. Maybe that’s part of the reason they were so intent on following Nick back to the hotel. I mean, I’m sure it was the blood thing when they got close, but it could be that they like to try to tie up loose ends. One hid in Amber’s trunk and rode all the way down to Virginia trying to get her.”
“So, first, thanks for telling me about all this. It was super nice of you to pull me into this quagmire and put the stink of knowledge on me.”
“I didn’t develop this theory until after we talked.”
“Great.”
“You see what I mean though, right? I can’t in good conscience say anything to Mom and Dad. It’s just you and me and maybe the Harpers.”
“Hoopers,” George joked.
“Exactly.”
“And Amber,” George said.
“She won’t talk to me any more. Says I’m stalking her.”
“Are you?”
“A bit, yes. Her cousin just died a couple of days ago. She lives—lived, I guess—with her cousin, Evelyn, and she was really old. I got an alert when the obituary was published.”
“That sucks. Were they close?”
“I mean, they lived together, so yeah.”
“Amber has a big family though, right? Didn’t you say that they were all fighting over the inheritance?”
“There are a lot of them, but they’re not really close. That’s why Amber was living with her cousin. I guess fighting is what they do best.”
“Maybe the funeral will bring them together.”
“Maybe,” Ricky said.
He couldn’t help but think of Amber standing alone at the side of a grave. The image stuck in his head.
“You know,” George said, “this is the most we’ve talked in years.”
“Not my fault. Besides, you say that like we’re sixty years old. I think lots of brothers have a year or two where they grow apart temporarily. We were at different phases in our lives.”
“We’re in different phases now, we just have a common interest.”
“Well, if we survive the spring, I’ll be sure to make more of an effort to find common interests with you.”
“Thanks,” George said. “Hey, drop me off at the library, would you?”
Five: Amber
Amber stood alone a few feet away from the grave. When Shawn tried to stand next to her, she had sent him away. Now, she was regretting it a little. She felt like she was standing at the edge of a cliff and the depths were calling to her. The night before, that had been her dream. She had stood at the edge of a cliff that overlooked a bottomless pit.
The narrator of her nightmare said, “If you fall in, you’ll either die down there in the blackness or end up praying for death.”
She had woken up sweating and alone in her cousin Evelyn’s house.
All the other relatives who came to town had gotten a hotel. Only a few were still talking to Amber. Her cousin Karen had asked her to let someone else handle the execution of Evelyn’s will. The implication was clear—they all thought that it was her fault that Uncle Bill’s house was still in limbo. She was the one who had volunteered to go take care of everything and nothing was settled. Now, she had another estate to contend with. The cousins were going to be even angrier once that will was read.
Amber had found a note in Evelyn’s drawer when she was picking out clothes for Evelyn to wear in aeternum. In the note, typed on attorney’s letterhead, Evelyn had dictated that she wanted Amber to have everything. She said, “I don’t want you to be surprised when they read the will. I want everyone else to be surprised, but not you.”
Amber sensed someone approach her and stand next to her.
Without turning, she whispered, “I told you not to stand next to me.”
“Sorry,” the man said.
Amber turned so fast she almost lost her balance. The voice hadn’t been Shawn’s.
“Ricky? What are you doing here?”
“I thought you might need a friend,” he said. He took another half step and stood next to her. He was wearing a dark suit that fit him a little tight, but he looked good. Compared to her relatives, he stuck out like a sore thumb.
“You didn’t know Evelyn.”
“Funerals are for the living, right? That’s what my mom always says. Besides, the four of us made a pact to have each other’s backs.”
That’s when Amber saw the Harpers. Liz and Alan were a few paces back, standing on either side of their son.
Amber had managed to stand stoic with dry eyes until that point. At the sight of her unexpected friends, the tears began to flow. She looked at the coffin and wished that she had explained to Evelyn why Ricky and the Harpers were so important. If Evelyn was looking down and seeing these unfamiliar faces, Amber wanted her to know how much it meant that they had made the trip all the way from Maine for the funeral of someone they never met.
Ricky held out a pressed handkerchief.
Liz came up on Amber’s other side and put an arm around her while Amber pressed the handkerchief to her eyes.
They listened to the pastor talk about family.
# # #
Liz rode with Amber while the others followed in their rented car.
“I can’t believe you came,” Amber said.
“Ricky called and explained. He didn’t divulge anything, but he suggested that there might be problems with the rest of your family. I think we witnessed a bit of that at the ceremony.”
Amber nodded.
“Thank you.”
“That was a lovely service. Is there going to be a memorial service later? Or a celebration of life?”
“No,” Amber said with a sad smile. “Cousin Evelyn had very strong opinions of such things. She said that it was important that people got to see her go into the ground, but she didn’t want people sitting around in a church talking about what they remembered about her.”
“Oh?”
“I can’t explain it. She even specified that none of the family were to be invited to her house after the burial. She said that too many of them had sticky fingers and that her possessions were to be doled out after the fact. As soon as I alerted her lawyer that she had passed, he fired off letters to everyone. When she talked about death, Evelyn was always so casual. She claimed that she didn’t care what happened after she died because she hoped that she would be leaving all that behind. But then she had all these carefu
l instructions. She was a mystery.”
“You were close?”
“For the last few years, yes. When things fell apart between me and the rest of the family, she tracked me down with a phone call to let me know that I was right and everyone else was wrong. There was no reason at all for her to get involved, but she did. That pretty much ruined her relationship with everyone too. It was so nice of her to…”
Amber wasn’t able to finish the sentence. She waited until they reached a traffic signal before she wiped her eyes with the tissue that Liz handed her.
“Please let me know if we’re intruding at all,” Liz said. “I know we weren’t expected.”
“No, please. I’m surprised, but I’m really grateful that you came.”
“Good. Ricky said that you were getting sick of him.”
Amber smiled. “Not him, just his obsession.”
Liz sighed. “I hear you. He’s been trying to get us to open up with other people in the town. He doesn’t seem to realize how difficult it is. We will always be outsiders to most of them, and broadcasting what happened is likely to alienate us even more. People don’t need to be reminded that we disrupted things.”
“Actually, that was my idea,” Amber said.
“Oh?”
“I figured that more people in on the secrets would mean more eyes looking for future trouble. I thought he could create a network, like a paranormal version of neighborhood watch.”
“Huh,” Liz said. “I wish he had put it that way. It makes sense when you describe it that way. Everyone is so hesitant to admit that anything strange is happening because it challenges their status quo and then…”
“They fall victim,” Amber finished.
“Exactly. But by normalizing these undeniable things we all see the world more clearly. Smart.”
“That was the hope,” Amber said. “I guess it hasn’t worked so far?”
“Now that I understand better, it’s worth another shot. Thanks for thinking about us.”
“No problem,” Amber said. “I owe you guys.”
“And we owe you.”
# # #
Back in Evelyn’s kitchen, they sat around the table in mismatched chairs while Amber put on a pot of coffee.