by Hamill, Ike
“Yeah,” George said. “Part of it happened down here.”
“What makes you say that?”
He approached a spot on the floor and lit up a circle of dirt that was darker than floor surrounding it. Crouching in front of it, he pointed his light up and then stood slowly to trace his finger on scrapes on the beams overhead.
“One of them was hiding here, near the stairs. It probably waited to get him as he descended. Maybe that’s how he got bitten—like on his ankle or something.”
“No,” Amber said. “It got him on the hand or wrist. They amputated at the hospital in hopes to defeat the infection but it obviously didn’t work.”
“Amputated?” George whispered.
Amber nodded.
“So they knew about it. Thats’s really interesting. I wonder what they thought was the matter with him.”
Amber turned slowly, trying to find more evidence now that she knew what to look for. On the stones that made up the foundation, she found more scratches in one of the corners. It was hard to see if there was any discoloration of the rocks or floor. There was some moisture leaking through the foundation, so everything was discolored in one way or another.
“I think this is a tooth,” George said.
Amber turned and went to him. Her light flashed across the thing that he was poking around in the gravel.
“That’s a piece of china,” she said. “See the blue ink?”
“Oh.”
They continued to look around the dark cellar. Amber began to wonder why they were there. George had convinced her that they might find some sort of clue about the mirrors. His search was haphazard though, like he was just poking around because of some morbid curiosity.
“So after he changed, he came to find you,” George said. “You were going to be his first victim.”
“No,” Amber said. “He killed two police officers first.”
“Oh, right! I never connected that. It was here,” George whispered.
“I think out back at the well, actually.”
He spun to look at her.
“Don’t even say it,” Amber said. “We’re not going anywhere near there.”
“Okay,” George said. He pointed his light up the stairs. Amber knew what was up there. She had visited once and sat in that kitchen, across from a man who was becoming a monster. She swept her flashlight over the electrical panel. The breakers were all tripped over to orange.
“Hey,” she said. “Look at this.”
George didn’t respond.
Amber glanced over to him just as George was shutting off his flashlight.
“What are…”
“Turn it off,” he whispered, pointing at her light.
There was such urgency in his voice that she almost obeyed him.
“Shut it off,” he said.
“No.”
Amber glanced over her shoulder and then the other direction. She began to back towards the bulkhead and her foot hit one of the mirrors that was propped up. George was pointing to his own light, as if that would persuade her to do what he was asking.
“George? What’s wrong with you?”
Amber reached the bulkhead stairs. She glanced through the opening to see her car’s headlights splashed on the doors above. There was sanity and safety up there. She barely contained the urge to run towards it.
“Nothing is wrong with me,” George said. “There’s something I need to see and I can only see it with the light off.”
Amber’s hand squeezed her stake so tight it felt like she might compress the wooden shaft.
“Nope,” she said.
“Fine.”
George clicked on his light and Amber was able to breathe again.
“We’re leaving,” she said.
“Can you grab your uncle’s mirror? I want to bring this one.”
“Nope, but I’m fine leaving it here.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yup.”
# # #
They entered through the kitchen door and Amber pressed it shut carefully before she locked it. The upstairs of the house was dark—Ricky and his parents were asleep. George set the mirror on the kitchen counter and began moving around the room, turning off the lights. Amber went to the cellar door and hooked the latch. Someone had left it unhooked.
“What are you doing?” Amber whispered.
George kept his voice low too.
“I’m telling you. There’s something. I saw it in the cellar out of the corner of my eye and I saw it a little in the car on the way here. You’ll see. Just let me finish.”
When he reached for the last switch, Amber got to it first. She put her hand over the light switch and made him wait until she pulled out her flashlight again.
“Just in case. Now what are we looking for?”
“I don’t completely know. Just look at it, but don’t really look directly at it,” he said, pointing to the mirror.
Amber tested her flashlight—on and off—before she nodded.
She flipped the switch.
A second later, while her eyes were still adjusting to the dark, George sighed and said, “Oh. I get it.”
Amber clicked on her light.
“Lit from below, his smile made him look a little crazy.”
“You get what?”
“You didn’t see it?” he asked. When she shook her head he said, “Try again. Please. Just try it.”
The second time, Amber finally understood the trick. She had to point her eyes directly at the mirror and the direct them just a few inches to the side of it. That’s when she saw it. It was incredibly faint and a little blue. It almost looked like the glowing algae that showed up in the waves at the beach sometimes. It was just a hint of light and it looked like it was deep in the reflection of the mirror.
Amber turned and looked behind herself, thinking that the glow must be coming from something in the room.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Is it something in the coating on the back of the mirror?”
She turned on the light and approached it. The frame of the mirror looked to be in pretty good shape, but there was one spot in the corner where the reflective surface was bubbling off the back. The edges of the glass were beveled and there was a scratch in one corner.
“You remember the journal? You remember what SE Prescott was looking for the first time he went out?”
“Some kind of beetle,” Amber said, “Right?”
“Yes. A glow worm of some sort. Doesn’t that remind you of a glow worm?”
“I was thinking more about glowing algae in the ocean.”
“Same thing, I think. I mean, same kind of mechanism. Almost like a lightning bug or something, but not as bright and constant instead of flashing.”
“How is it in the mirror?” Amber asked.
“The mirror ate their eyes, I think,” George said.
“It ate their eyes.”
“My brother said that someone told him about glowing eyes. Or maybe he saw them himself.”
Amber nodded.
“Well, Ricky said that they were hypnotic and he thought that the glow was something he imagined. Maybe we’re just imagining this, or maybe their eyes really do glow and somehow a part of that was captured in the mirror.”
“The mirrors try to eat my eyes.”
“Vampires and mirrors,” George said. “Right? That’s a thing. Maybe we found proof.”
“That’s a thing? What do you mean? With vampires, they can’t appear in mirrors—that’s all. They have no reflection, so they hate mirrors because they expose them for what they are.”
“And they don’t like garlic, and they turn into bats, and they can fly. People make up things to explain the unexplainable. It’s possible that people made up the thing about them not having a reflection, but that vampires legitimately avoid mirrors at all costs for a different reason.”
“Because the mirrors try to eat their eyes,” Amber said.
“Right,” George
said. “Makes sense, right?”
Amber smiled. “Nope.”
George looked defeated.
“Don’t take it personally. None of this makes any sense. It’s not your fault.”
“Turn off the light again.”
Amber did. The mirror didn’t seem as frightening this time. She had the idea that maybe it was just reflecting moonlight off of something in the room, but then she couldn’t understand why when she looked directly at it the light disappeared.
Then, Amber heard a sound from deeper in the house. There was something breathing—some creature. She heard the rhythmic tick of claws. Amber slid to her left so she could flank the doorway. When then the creature came through, she would attack. Her stake was next to the door. She closed her hand around it and waited while George kept talking. He was saying something about the process they used to adhere the silver to the glass.
Amber prepared to jab her stake into the creature as it came through the doorway.
She froze when the lights came on.
George jumped and spun. His feet tangled and he went down to his knees.
Tucker ran to him, thinking he was playing a game. The dog licked George’s face.
Ricky stood in the doorway. “You guys think you’re being quiet, but you’re not.”
His eyes went wide when he saw Amber standing there, wielding her stake.
“I almost stabbed you,” she said, lowering the stake.
“What are you two doing, anyway?” Ricky asked.
“Get the lights,” George said.
Twenty-Five: Ricky
Amber drifted off at some point when George was talking about vampires and silver. According to George, some legends described vampires being allergic to silver—suffering burns or paralysis from it. Other sources claimed that it had no effect on the creatures.
Ricky put a finger to his lips and pointed at Amber. She was stretched out on the daybed, on top of the blankets.
Ricky and George stood up quietly and moved out of the room. Ricky flipped off the lights and waited for Tucker before he closed the door.
They went to the living room.
“I’m going back to bed,” Ricky said.
George nodded. “I’m just going to read a little longer.”
“Don’t stay up too late. We’re leaving just after sunrise.”
“Don’t worry about me. As long as we get some coffee, I’ll be fine.”
Ricky put a leash on Tucker and took him out, not letting the dog stray too far from the house. Back inside, he did a quick tour of the first floor, checking the doors and windows. He yawned and felt his eyelids growing heavy as he climbed the stairs, but once he was in the bed he felt wide awake. Ricky looked through the window across the field. The grass was tall and brittle with the snow almost all melted away. The wind sent ripples through it. They weren’t that far from the house where Ricky had grown up, but it seemed like a completely different landscape.
He had the window open just a tiny bit. The heat was barely on, but it was still hot upstairs. His father had examined the system and declared that there was no way to fix it. The thermostat was in a drafty part of the house, and the pipes all went to the upstairs first.
“Someone plumbed the thing backwards when the furnace was replaced,” Vernon had said. He had no real training in furnaces, but still managed to form unshakeable opinions every time he encountered one.
On the night air, Ricky heard the distant sound of the train. He knew just where the sound was coming from. The place where the tracks crossed the Barlett Road wasn’t too far away and they sounded the horn every time they rolled through there. As a kid, Ricky had put coins on the tracks at that crossing. Even when they watched carefully, they never figured out where the coins went after they were smashed. His friend Sarah was the only one who had ever found one of the smashed coins. Everyone else just hunted around in the gravel until they gave up.
Ricky forced himself to take several deep breaths in a row. Tucker was pressed against his side, already snoring. Ricky closed his eyes. He couldn’t stop thinking about his brother and all the research that George was doing into vampire lore. George was very careful to talk about which sources he trusted and why. If he could find an assertion that was made in two independent places, he would give it the benefit of the doubt and dive farther in. Then, if he could find some source that attributed a reason to a claim, he would search farther to see if anyone had tried to test the theory and repeat it.
But in all that folklore, George hadn’t found anything that really talked about stopping the problem completely. It always boiled down to how to ward them off, or how to nurse someone back to health from a minor infection.
That’s not what they wanted to do. They wanted to completely eradicate the infestation.
“Why would they write that down?” George had asked.
“Are you kidding?” Ricky asked. “Why wouldn’t they?”
“Well, if they thought that they cured the problem forever, would they need to document precisely how it was done? You want to pass along knowledge if you think it will have use in the future. If you’re convinced that you’ve just solved the problem forever, then aside from bragging what’s the point in documentation?”
Ricky flipped over, tugging at the sheets to free himself. The cold air that blew in felt good, but it brought another distant train whistle. The end of the sound trailed off and almost sounded like a dying, tortured moan.
Ricky put a hand on Tucker’s head, stroking the dog lightly even though he knew it would wake Tucker up. He wanted the dog to watch over him while he went to sleep. He seemed to know what was expected of him. Tucker climbed over Ricky and put his head on the windowsill and Ricky closed his eyes again.
# # #
Both of his parents were already down in the kitchen when Ricky woke up.
“How’d you sleep?” his father asked.
“Occasional,” Ricky said. “You?”
“I like this house,” Vernon said. “I like the way the sun comes in as soon as it comes up.”
“I like our house,” Mary said.
“Of course, but there’s something charming about this old place. It has seen things, but it doesn’t judge.”
“You’re crazy, Vernon,” Mary said with a laugh.
Ricky found the bread on the counter and fished out two slices to put in the ancient toaster.
“Careful,” Vernon said. “The cord on that thing heats up as much as the filaments.”
They turned at the sound of shuffling. George came through the doorway, rubbing his eyes.
“You guys think you’re being quiet, but you’re not,” George said.
Ricky laughed.
“Is Amber up?” Ricky asked.
“Up and out,” Mary said. “She went to gas up before your trip.”
“I have to take a shower,” George said.
“Make it quick,” Ricky said. “We’re on the road soon.”
George turned around and went back down the hall.
“Are you staying here today, Mom?” Ricky asked.
She shook her head. “I need all my stuff back at home. I’ll work there and be back before sundown.”
Ricky nodded and gestured towards Tucker.
“Of course. The old slob can stay with me today.”
“How long is this little vacation going to last, anyway?” Vernon asked Ricky.
Ricky could only shrug. “I’m hoping we get things taken care of, but I’m afraid we don’t know exactly how long it’s going to…”
“Fine,” Vernon said, throwing up his hands. “I get it. Just remember, you can’t turn a frog into a squirrel just by throwing it into a tree.”
“I…” Ricky said, shaking his head. “I don’t have any idea what that…”
“He’s just making up nonsense,” his mother said, cutting him off. “Don’t pay any attention to your father. He’s getting worse every year.”
“Better,” Vernon said. “You mispronou
nced better.”
“But speaking of time limits, you should tell Amber to get rid of that rental car already. That must be costing her a fortune. We can find a car for her somewhere, can’t we?”
“Don’t look at me,” Vernon said. “If I knew where there was a decent car, I would be using it myself.”
“I think she likes to be independent,” Ricky said.
“Fine,” Mary said. “Good money after bad.”
# # #
“Finally,” Ricky said, climbing into the passenger’s seat. “Let’s get this done.”
“Wait,” George said from the back. “One stop first.”
Ricky rolled his eyes and threw up his hands.
“No,” Amber said, “he’s got a good point. We talked about it.”
She pulled out of the driveway heading the wrong way. The road was a dead end in the direction they were going.
“We’re keeping secrets now?” Ricky asked.
“It’s a very small secret.”
Ricky looked through the window at the passing field and remembered the night before. The sun was still low on the horizon. The shadows were deep.
Over the crest of a small hill, he saw the house where Amber’s neighbor had once lived. It looked like it hadn’t been inhabited in years. It always amazed him the way that places decayed. In other countries, it seemed like they had historic sites that went back thousands of years. In Maine, you couldn’t let a house sit vacant for six months without risking serious damage. The windows were knocked out, a shed door hung at an angle, and police tape fluttered from one of the doorways. The doors to the cellar were wide open.
Amber pulled up in front of those open doors.
George got out.
“I’ll be back in two seconds.”
Ricky sprang from the car. “You’re not going alone.”
“It’s fine. Trust me for once.”
The morning light hadn’t penetrated the cellar yet. George slowed halfway down the steps and swung his light around to make sure his footing was good. Ricky was glad that his brother was at least taking some amount of care. Amber stayed up top, waiting.