by J. R. Rain
Shortly, I found the infamous birch tree. The tree was smallish, barely wide enough to conceal even me, let alone a big man with broad shoulders. As a shield, it was useless, as the additional bullets in Kingsley’s head attested. To have relied on it for one’s sole protection of a gun-wielding madman was horrifying to contemplate. So I did contemplate it. I felt Kingsley’s fear, recalled his desperate attempts to dodge the flying bullets. Comical and horrific. Ghastly and amusing. Like a kid’s game of cowboys and Indians gone horribly wrong.
I circled the tree and found four fairly fresh holes in the trunk. The bullets had, of course, been dug out and added to the evidence. Now the holes were nothing more than dark splotches within the white bark. The tree and Kingsley had one thing in common: both were forever scarred by bullets from the same gun.
The attack had been brazen. The fact that the shooter had gotten away clean was probably a fluke. The shooter himself probably expected to get caught, or gunned down himself. But instead he walked away, and disappeared in a truck that no one seemed to remember the license plate of. The shooter was still out there, his job left unfinished. Probably wondering what more he had to do to kill Kingsley.
A hell of a good question.
According to the doctor’s reports cited in a supplementary draft within the police report, all bullets had missed vital parts of Kingsley’s brain. In fact, the defense attorney’s only side effect was a minor loss in creativity. Of course, for a defense attorney, a lack of creativity could prove disastrous.
Someone wanted Kingsley dead, and someone wanted it done outside the courthouse, a place where many criminals had walked free because of Kingsley’s ability to manipulate the law. This fact was not lost on me.
Detective Sherbet had only made a cursory investigation into the possibility that the shooting was related to one of Kingsley’s current or past cases. Sherbet had not dug very deeply.
It was my job to dig. Which was why I make the big bucks.
I turned and left the way I had come.
8.
“So how often do you, like, feed?” asked Mary Lou.
Mary Lou was my sister. Only recently had she discovered that I was, like, a creature of the night. Although I come from a big family, she was the only one I had confided in, mostly because we were the closest in age and had grown up best friends. We were sitting side-by-side at a brass-topped counter in a bar called Hero’s in downtown Fullerton.
I said, “Often. Especially when I see a particular fine sweep of milky white neck. Like yours for instance.”
“Ha ha,” she said. Mary Lou was drinking a lemon drop martini. I was drinking house Chardonnay. Since I couldn’t taste the Chardonnay, why order the good stuff? And Chardonnay rarely had a reaction on my system, and it made me feel normal, sort of, to drink something in public with my sister.
Mary Lou was wearing a blue sweater and jeans. Today was casual day at the insurance office. This was apparently something that was viewed as good. She often talked about casual day; in fact, often days before the actual casual event.
“Seriously, Sam. How often?” she asked again.
I didn’t say anything. I swallowed some wine. It tasted like water. My tastebuds were dead, my tongue good for only talking and kissing, and lately not even kissing. I looked over at Mary Lou. She was six years older than me, a little heavier, but then again she ate a normal diet of food.
“Once a day,” I said, shrugging. “I get hungry like you. My stomach growls and I get light headed. Typical hunger symptoms.”
“But you can only drink blood.”
“You mind saying that a little louder?” I said. “I don’t think the guy in the booth behind us quite heard.”
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly.
“We’re supposed to keep this quiet, remember?”
“I know.”
“You haven’t told anyone?” I asked her again.
“No. I swear. You know I won’t tell.”
“I know.”
The bartender came by and looked at my nearly finished glass of wine. I nodded, shrugging. What the hell, might as well spend my well-earned money on something useless, like wine.
“Have you tried eating other food?” asked Mary Lou.
“Yes.”
“What happens?” she asked.
“Stomach cramps. Extreme symptoms of food poisoning. I throw it back up within minutes. Not a pretty picture.”
“But you can drink wine,” she said.
“It’s the only thing I’ve found so far that I can drink,” I said. “And sometimes not even that. Needs to be relatively pure.”
“So no red wine.”
“No red wine,” I said.
My sister, with her healthy tan, put her hand on my hand. As she did so, she flinched imperceptively from the cold of my own flesh. She squeezed my fingers. “I’m sorry this happened to you, Sis.”
“I am, too,” I said.
“Can I ask you some more questions?” she asked.
“Were you just warming me up?”
“Yes and no.”
“Fine,” I said. “What else you got for me?”
“Does the blood, you know, have to be human blood?”
“Any mammalian blood will do,” I said.
“Where do you get the blood?”
“I buy it.”
“From where?” she asked.
“I have a contract with a butchery in Norco. I buy it by the month-load. It’s in my freezer in the garage.”
“The one with the padlock?” she asked. I think her own blood drained from her face.
“Yes,” I answered.
“What happens if you don’t drink blood?”
“Probably shrivel up and die.”
“Do you want to change the subject?” she asked gently.
She knew my moods better than anyone, even my husband. “Please.”
Mary Lou grinned. She caught the attention of the bartender and pointed to her martini. He nodded. The bartender was cute, a fact not lost on Mary Lou.
“So what case are you currently working on?” she asked, stealing glances at the man’s posterior.
“You done checking out the bartender?”
She reddened. “Yes.”
So I told her about my case. She remembered seeing it on TV.
“Any leads yet?” she asked, breathless. Mary Lou tended to think that what I did for a living was more exciting than it actually was. Her drink came but she ignored it.
“No,” I said. “Just hunches.”
“But your hunches are better than most anyone’s.”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s a side effect.”
“A good side effect.”
I nodded. “Hey, if I have to give up raspberry cheesecakes, I might as well get something out of the deal.”
“Like highly attuned hunches.”
“That’s one of them,” I said.
“What else?” she asked.
“I thought we were changing the subject.”
“C’mon, I’ve never known...someone like you.”
“Don’t you mean something?”
“No,” she said. “That’s not what I mean. You’re a good mother, a good wife, and a good sister. You are much more than a thing. So tell me, what are the other side effects?”
“You saying all that just to butter me up?”
“Yes and no,” she said, grinning. “So tell me. Now.”
I laughed. “Okay, you win. I have enhanced strength and speed.”
She nodded. “What else?”
“I seem to be disease and sickness free.”
“What about shape-changing?”
“Shape-changing?”
“Yes.”
Having my sister ask if I could shape-change struck me as so ridiculous that I burst out laughing. Mary Lou watched me briefly, then caught on because she always catches on. Soon we were both giggling hysterically, and we had the attention of everyone in the bar. I hate having people’s
attention, but I needed the laugh. Needed it bad.
“No,” I said finally, wiping the tears from my eyes. “I can’t shape-change. Then again, I’ve never tried.”
“Then maybe you can,” she said finally, after catching her own breath.
“Honestly, I’ve never thought about it. There’s just been too much other crap to deal with, and this...condition of mine doesn’t exactly come with a handbook.”
“So you learn as you go,” said Mary Lou.
“Yes,” I said. “Sort of like The Greatest American Hero.”
“Yeah, like him.”
We drank some more. My stomach was beginning to hurt. I pushed the wine aside.
“You ever going to tell me what happened to you?” Mary Lou’s words were forming slower. The martinis had something to do with that. “How you became, you know, what you are?”
I looked away. “Someday, Mary Lou.”
“But not today.”
“No,” I said. “Not today.”
Mary Lou turned in her stool and faced me. Her big, round eyes were glassy. Her nose was more slender than mine, but we resembled each other in every other way. We were sisters through and through.
“So how do you do it?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“Look so normal. Act so normal. Be so normal. Hell, life’s hard enough as it is without something like this coming out of left field and knocking you upside your ass. How do you do it?”
“I do it because I have to,” I said. “I don’t have a choice.”
“Because you love your kids.”
“Sometimes it’s the only reason,” I said.
“What about Danny?”
I didn’t tell her about Danny. Not yet. I didn’t tell her that my husband seemed revolted by the sight of me, that he turned his lips away lately when we kissed, that he seemed to avoid touching me at all costs. I didn’t tell her that I was sure he was cheating on me and my marriage was all but over.
“Yeah,” I said, looking away. “I do it for Danny, too.”
9.
The shower was as hot as I could stand it, which would have been too hot for most people. Some of my sensitivity had left my skin, and as a result I needed hotter and hotter showers. My husband, long ago, gave up taking showers with me. Apparently he had an aversion to the smell of his own cooking flesh.
My muscles were sore and the water helped. I was thirty-seven years old, but I looked twenty-seven, or perhaps even younger. There wasn’t a wrinkle on my pallid face. My skin was taut. Usually ice cold, but taut. My muscles were hard, but that could have been because I never stopped working out. After all, there is only so much one can lose of one’s self, and so I was determined to maintain some normalcy. Working out reminded me of who I was and what I was trying to be.
My body was still sore from boxing, but the soreness was almost gone. I heal fast nowadays, amazingly fast. Just your average, run-of-the-mill freak show.
I stood with my back to the spray and let my mind go blank. I stood there for God knew how long until an image of Kingsley and his bloody and confused face drifted into my thoughts. It had been such an angry attack. Full of pent-up rage. Kingsley had pissed off someone badly. Very badly. At one point in the shooting, the shooter had actually paused and looked at Kingsley with what had been thunderstruck awe, at least that’s how I interpreted the grainy image. The look seemed to say: How many times do I have to shoot you before you die?
I had already soaped up and washed and conditioned my hair. There was nothing left to do, and now I was only wasting water. Sighing, I turned off the shower. Rare heat rose from my skin, a pleasant change for once. My skin was raw and red, and I was in my own little piece of heaven. The kids were with their sitter, and tonight I was going out with my husband. We tried to do that more and more lately. Or, rather, I tried to do that more and more lately. He reluctantly agreed.
Early on, after my transformation, Danny had been a saint. Someone he loved (me) was hurting and confused, and he had come to my rescue like no other.
Together we had devised schemes to let the world know I was different. It was his idea to tell the world I had developed xeroderma pigmentosum, a rare, and usually fatal, skin condition. With xeroderma pigmentosum, even brief exposure to sunlight can cause irreparable damage that could lead to blindness and fatal skin cancers. People eventually accepted this about me―even my own family. Yes, I hated lying, but the way I saw it, I had little choice.
Danny helped me change careers, and helped me set up my home-based private investigation business. He also explained to the kids that mommy would often be sleeping during the day and to not bother me. Finally, he helped set me up with my feed supply with the local butchery.
Danny had been a dream. But that had been then; this was now.
So tonight we were going to dinner. I would order my steak raw and do my best to participate with him. He would avert his eyes, as usual. Not a typical relationship by any means. But a relationship, nonetheless.
I found myself looking forward to tonight. I had recently read a book about how to be a better wife, how to understand your man, how to show your love in the little ways. It’s amazing how we all forget what’s necessary to keep a loving relationship intact. Well, I was determined to show him my appreciation.
Of course, most marriages didn’t deal with the issues I have, but we would make it through, somehow.
I was still dripping and toweling off when the phone rang. I dashed out of the connecting bathroom and into the bedroom and picked up the phone on the bedside table.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hi, doll.”
“Danny!”
There was a pause, and I knew instinctively that I was going to get bad news. Call it my enhanced intuition, or call it whatever you want.
“I can’t make it tonight,” he said.
“But Danny....”
“We’re backed-up at the office. I have a court case later this week, and we’re not ready. I hope you understand.”
“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“I’ve got to get going. Don’t wait up.”
That was our little joke now. Of course, being a creature of the night, all I could do lately was wait up.
He hung up the phone.
10.
It was evening.
I was pacing inside the foyer of my house. The muscles along my neck were tense and stiff. Outside, through the partly open curtain, I could see the upper curve of the setting sun.
I continued to pace. Breathing was always difficult at this time of day. I was making a conscious effort to inhale and exhale, to fill my lungs as completely as I could.
In and out.
Slowly.
Keep calm, Samantha Moon. You’ll be all right.
Nevertheless, a sense of panic threatened to overcome me. The source of the panic was the sun. Or, rather, the presence of the sun. Because I did not, and could not, feel fully alive until that son-of-a-bitch disappeared behind the horizon.
I checked the curtain again. The sun was still burning away in all its glory.
Crap! Had the earth stopped in mid-orbit? Was I doomed to feel half-alive for the rest of my life?
Panic. Pure unabated panic.
I breathed.
Deeply.
Consciously.
I leaned against the door frame and closed my eyes, willing myself to relax. I reached up and rubbed my neck muscles. I continued to breathe, continued to fight the panic.
And then, after seemingly an eternity, it happened. A sense of peace and joy began in my solar plexus and spread slowly in a wave of warmth to all my extremities. My mind buzzed with happiness, pure unabated happiness, and with it the unbridled potential of the coming night. It was a natural high. Or perhaps an unnatural high. I opened my eyes and looked out the window. The sun was gone.
As I knew it would be.
* * *
The kids were with Mary Lou and her family at Chuck E. Cheese’s. I owed Mary Lou big. Danny was working late, preparing for his big court date. So what else was new?
I had not yet realized just how much my life was unraveling. It occurred to me then, as I was driving south along the 57 Freeway, that I might have to give up detecting if Danny was going to continue working so late. In the past, he would be home with the kids. Now, he rarely got home in time to see them off to bed.
The thought of not working horrified me. Like they say, idle hands are the devil’s tools. By keeping myself busy, I was able to forget some of what I had become, and to keep the nightmare of my reality at bay.
But something had to give here, and it wasn’t going to be Danny. He had made it clear long ago that this was my problem.
My windows were down. The spring evening was warm and dry. I couldn’t remember the last time we had rain. I liked the rain. Perhaps I liked the rain because I lived in Southern California. Rain here was like the elusive lover who keeps you begging for more. Perhaps if I lived up north I would not like the rain so much. I didn’t know. I’d never lived anywhere else.
I took the 22 East and headed toward the city of Orange. At Main Street I exited and drove past the big mall, and turned left onto Parker Avenue and into the parking lot of the biggest building in the area.
I took the elevator to the seventh floor. In the lobby, I was greeted by a pretty brunette receptionist. Greeted might have been too generous. Frankly, she didn’t look very much like a happy camper. She was a young girl of about twenty-five, with straight brown hair that seemed to shine like silk. My hair once shone like silk; now it hung limply. Her pink sweater knit dress was snug and form-fitting, highlighting unnaturally large breasts. Did nothing for me, but then again, I am not a man. I sensed much animosity coming from her. Waves of it. I think I knew why. She was working late, and I was part of the reason she was working late.
I gave her my most winning smile. Easy on the teeth. The nameplate on her desk read: Sara Benson.
“Hi, Sara. I’m Samantha Moon, here to see Mr. Fulcrum.”