by Kim Turrisi
Carmilla stands up. “Not that you aren’t welcome, but why are you two here?”
Now LaFontaine is all business. “The tests came back for the sludge we found in Sarah Jane and Nat’s room,” they say.
“And?”
“It was cerebrospinal fluid,” LaFontaine explains.
Perry emits a high-pitched whine of distress.
“Is that what I think it is?” I have to ask.
“It’s the fluid in your brain,” LaFontaine confirms. Yep, it’s my worst nightmare.
“I touched Betty’s brain fluid?” I say, hyperventilating. “I seriously think I’m going to throw up.”
“And there’s more …”
Carmilla smirks. “More than brain matter?”
LaFontaine starts to pace. “I ran a sample through the electron microscope, and that’s when I found these.” They lean over me and plug a USB key into my computer, clicking a few times while we peer over their shoulder. When the pictures come up, everyone except for LaFontaine shrieks.
There are wormlike creatures squiggling all over the screen. Perry starts to gag, and even Carmilla averts her eyes. “What the hell are those?” I yell.
“Don’t look at me, I’m just a vampire,” Carmilla says, cringing.
I study them even though my stomach is churning. “This could be why Betty and the others started acting so strange. Parasites will do that to you.”
“Exactly!” LaFontaine exclaims. They turn to Carmilla and ask, “During your mother’s game, was there something you gave the girls or made them drink that could have caused this?”
Carmilla squirms. “If that’s happening to them, it’s after Mother takes them. I’m not privy to that. Never was.”
Is she telling us the truth? LaFontaine pushes her to say more. “Think it over. You spent hundreds of years with your … mother. Granted, you had that brief period underground. Any nugget might help.”
“Not a fan of dredging up every excruciating detail of my painful past. This isn’t therapy,” Carmilla groans, then leaves the room. I want to follow, but we have to finish this.
LaFontaine tries to level with me. “I don’t want to make her uncomfortable, but she’s the one that would have the goods on her mom.”
“She lost someone she cared about, so this is upsetting her,” I explain. “She’s feeling something human … which probably makes her want to eat nails.”
LaFontaine can see right through me. “Crushing much?”
“I just feel bad for her,” I say, hedging. “The way her mother treats her. She’s a monster. No wonder she has so much baggage.”
“That may be, but I wanna figure this out before that baggage crushes us or, worse, bites us. We know the dean has her vamp army kidnap girls, infect them with brain parasites and then kidnap them again … but why?”
Wait a second. What if there’s another explanation?
“What if they don’t?” I wonder.
LaFontaine is perplexed. “Not following.”
“Let’s break it down. Parasites have life cycles, right?” I did learn something in high school science. LaFontaine nods. I continue with my theory. “So what if the girls vanishing the second time has nothing to do with vampires?”
“I don’t get it.”
“What if it’s just the next stage of the parasite? What if this is something we haven’t seen yet?”
Perry has been quiet for a long time, but all of a sudden she’s panicked. “No. No. No. I demand that you all stop this. Vampires, brain parasites, evil mushrooms. Just no. All I want is movie night and a formal dance at the end of the term. You’re supposed to come to me with relationship problems. Normal college stuff. Not this. Be normal.”
She makes a valid point.
LaFontaine goes over to her. “A little dramatic, even for you,” they tease. Perry smacks her.
“I know this is all fun and games for you, Susan, but you can’t expect all of us to go along with this insanity.”
“It’s the way it is. Weird. Like I’ve been saying. You can’t make the world conform to your comfort level. It doesn’t work that way.”
Perry relents, though she isn’t exactly a good sport about it. “Fine. That doesn’t mean you have to throw yourself into every single bizarre situation you come across. You won’t even let me call you Susan anymore.”
Steam comes out of LaFontaine’s ears. “I do not want to be Susan anymore! My name isn’t Susan. It’s LaFontaine. As a reminder, I do not identify as male or female. I insist you treat me as such. It’s quite simple: call me LaFontaine and use ‘they,’ ‘their’ or ‘them’ or I will not respond.”
Perry holds her ground. “That’s too bad. Because Susan was my friend. This LaFontaine … I don’t even know who she is anymore.”
“They,” I correct her.
Perry storms out, and LaFontaine is crushed. I don’t know what the hell to do, so I offer some chocolate. “You okay?”
“Just peachy. My best friend since I was five thinks I’m a freak now because I no longer identify as Susan.”
I put my arm around LaFontaine’s shoulder. “She’ll come around. Let’s leave all the vampire fighting alone and watch a movie. Stuff our faces with popcorn and candy.”
A moment passes. LaFontaine nods, worn out. “Sounds good. Just not Twilight.”
* * *
•
LaFontaine and I drift into slumber after back-to-back movies. Popcorn litters the bed, along with soda cans and candy wrappers. The signs of a perfect evening. Deep into sleep, I sense the nightmare creep in. I feel myself screaming and flailing around.
Carmilla shakes me awake. “Laura. It’s just a dream.” I don’t even remember her coming back.
I sit straight up and cling to her. “So much blood. It was filling the room. Then it was an ocean with a bright light shining over it.” Carmilla holds me close and my eyes fill with tears.
LaFontaine responds, “That’s not creepy. Does this mean that Hollis has been picked?”
Carmilla is still embracing me. “She shouldn’t be having the dreams anymore at all. The bracelet should have chased vampires and darkness away.”
LaFontaine’s gaze lingers on Carmilla’s arms around me. “The bracelet’s not very effective. Maybe it’s defective.”
Not gonna lie, I’m still pretty shaken up by the dream. “It wasn’t a vampire. It was a girl. Standing in all the blood. She didn’t even try to swim. She just stood there,” I whisper softly.
Carmilla squeezes calm into me. “Did she say anything?”
“She said I shouldn’t go into the light because the light was hungry,” I remember.
“I’m never going to sleep again,” LaFontaine says.
“That’s all she said?”
I notice that I’m entwined with Carmilla, and LaFontaine is watching. I extricate myself slowly and share a wild idea. “Sorry. Um. Yeah. The girl in the dream … it’s Ell, isn’t it?”
Carmilla’s eyes crinkle and a teardrop falls down her cheek. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen her. The girls we took would talk about how she looked in their dreams. They said she wore a white dress. Had a mole on her left cheek. She’s never reached out directly to me, though …” Sorrow covers her face like a shadow.
“I’m confused. Who is Ell?” says LaFontaine.
“Carm’s ex. Sort of. She got taken by the dean a long, long time ago.”
“The light is hungry? Not to go all peculiar facts again, but this might be a legit clue. It might have something to do with the parasite?” LaFontaine throws out.
I think about that for a moment. “Could be. But how are we going to cross-reference some ancient evil light and brain worms?”
LaFontaine picks up her phone. “I’ll google worms and evil light.”
“Oh, that’ll help,” Carmilla says s
arcastically. “Not. You need the archives in the library, from around the time when my mother first came here in the 1800s. I remember there was some guy who’d done research that could have exposed her.”
“What happened to him?” I ask.
“He … disappeared.”
You could hear a pin drop.
“Do you know where the archives are in the library? We’ll just pop over there.”
Carmilla scoffs. “I’ll have to show you. You don’t just pop over. They’re housed in a subbasement that exists only after dark.”
Naturally, here at Silas our archives come and go as they please.
“We need to protect ourselves when we go,” I say. We’re not taking any chances, what with mushrooms and vampires on the prowl.
Carmilla watches as we gather up headlamps and faux weapons — a flat iron, a jar of pennies and Betty’s Buddha desk statue — to prepare for our fact-finding mission. She rolls her eyes. “How did you all ever trap me? Not my most shining moment.”
I turn on the webcam and speak directly into it. My audience needs to know what’s coming next. I say in a low voice, “Though it’s risky, we have to go to the library after dark to find the research we need to uncover the mystery of the disappearing students of Silas. We have no choice.”
“Yeah,” LaFontaine echoes rather enthusiastically. “We will not be denied!”
I explain, “If we don’t come back, Danny, Perry, we’re sorry we didn’t listen to you.”
LaFontaine grabs my shoulder. “Oh, hell no. No apologies. We embrace the weird. Bring it. We are making weird our bitch!” The words are screamed into the webcam just before the video is posted. Carmilla and I exchange a glance.
The three of us head to the library, hiding behind trees and dodging other students, all in an effort to remain undercover.
“There’s a window in the back of the library that has a broken lock. It hasn’t worked since 1810,” Carmilla whispers. “We can climb in, and no one will see us.”
I had no idea vampires could be so useful.
We make it inside the library with no problem, and our flashlights show the way as we hurry to the subbasement. Every step we take brings a sense of foreboding.
“Did you feel that cold breeze?” I ask.
Neither of them answers. Carmilla just shushes me.
Carm opens a door and guides us through it. It slams shut, scaring the crap out of me. LaFontaine grabs my arm. If Carm is freaked out, she’s hiding it well.
We climb down the stairs, slip through dark aisles and eventually come to an area that looks like a cave. Carmilla stops. “This is it,” she says.
The temperature drops at least twenty degrees and lights start to flash all around us. I see a wall of old-school computer screens, and a man starts talking to us when LaFontaine turns one on. Yes, he’s inside the computer. Because this is Silas and nothing is normal.
“Hello, I’m J. P. I work here,” he says. “Can I help you?”
Carmilla is unfazed and gets in front of the screen. “Do you know anything about students going missing? A hungry light? Brain-eating parasites?”
My breathing is fast and ragged. I am seriously scared. Where is the dean right now? Can she see us? Will we be next?
“You look just like your mother,” J. P. says. Lightning strikes and we all jump.
“Let’s get out of here!” I scream.
“No way. We’ve come this far,” says LaFontaine. “We have to know!”
J. P. whispers, “All the information is right here in my research. Take the big book.”
The big book? I grab the largest one I see — it must weigh ten pounds — and step away. We’ve got what we need — we have to go!
LaFontaine pops a USB key into the port on the side of the gigantic hard drive of the computer. J. P. disappears, then a download starts.
Footsteps echo in my ears. Someone’s coming. We hear screams, then a series of explosions. This is it.
“Run!” Carmilla yells.
The computer screen blows up as soon as LaFontaine removes the USB key. Smoke chases us up the stairs, and for some reason we are hit with flying goop as we flee. I can’t wait to take a shower. But we manage to run all the way back to the dorm.
* * *
•
The memory of tonight’s activities will be engraved on my brain forever. In terms of nightmarish and insane, this was legend. Even the shower and scrubdown didn’t help. While Carmilla chugs blood straight from the bag, LaFontaine continues a dogged pursuit of all the weird, popping the USB key into my computer. I sit in front of the camera to update the student body.
“We survived the research trip. Which we will never speak of again. Ever.”
Carmilla and LaFontaine nod, finally agreeing on something. I raise the gargantuan book above my head. “Here’s our haul. One gnarly Sumerian book circa before time began.”
LaFontaine types furiously on the keyboard. “Check it out. The rescued digital consciousness of J. P. Armitage, the junior records clerk and Silas student. Class of 1874. Meet the internet, J. P.” A hologram of one J. P. Armitage pops up. He looks so distinguished with his longish hair, glasses with round frames and plaid bow tie.
I do the play-by-play for my audience. “Because someone really did get absorbed into the library catalog. The folklore is true. Though how he got sucked in a hundred years before anything was digitized is iffy …” I explain.
J. P. waves frantically. “He’s kinda cute,” LaFontaine whispers to me. I soldier on.
“Per J. P.’s research, there was a rash of disappearances back in 1874. He didn’t have an electron microscope to test his theory about brain parasites, but he did dig up information on the hungry light and a vampire contingent serving it.”
Carmilla speaks up. “Let me guess. My mother was leading the pack.”
“Yep. She and her special council. Once J. P. got close to the truth, though, he became absorbed.”
“Well,” Carmilla chimes in, “übernerd better have more than ‘hungry’ and ‘eats girls.’ We need more information than that. This entire book is filled with that kind of stuff.”
“What do you mean?” I question her.
Carmilla flips the book open and starts to read to us. “ ‘Yogoth, raised with twelve virgins burned at the stake; Kalos, the sprinkled blood of virgins on the roots of the sacrificial tree; Nyarlothog, Spinner of Lies, prefers the livers of virgins force-fed red wine for three days.’ ”
I shake my head. “Not very subtle. Who are these guys?”
“No idea. Maybe ancient vampires,” she cracks.
A light tap on the door interrupts us. Perry pokes her head in, surveys the room. “Oh, good, you’re all here. I had to check on you. Because, you know, I saw the last video. I needed to make sure you weren’t dead.”
She tries to make eye contact with LaFontaine, who avoids her like the plague. They’ve been on the serious outs since the big fight, and LaFontaine is clearly not in the mood for this now. Perry huffs and leaves again, almost as fast as she arrived.
I reach out and pat LaFontaine on the shoulder. “She’ll come around. You’re awesome, and this stuff is just tough for her to wrap her brain around. We’d be nowhere without you.”
LaFontaine hugs me and then turns back to the hologram. “J. P., let’s you and me hit my anatomy book and see what we can figure out about how these pesky parasites work.”
J. P. responds with a thumbs-up. LaFontaine pops the USB key out and J. P. disappears. LaFontaine salutes us on their way out the door.
Carmilla and I are finally alone. The lamp’s amber tone gives her face a beautiful glow. Her cheekbones are so high, like a model’s. Her glowing face is so inviting.
And her lips …
I’m not sure who turned up the heat, but I feel sweat beads on the back of my neck.
It’s so quiet that I can almost hear myself think. Carmilla’s eyes are melting me. I break the quiet and say, “Hey, thanks for coming with us to the library. We needed you. I needed you.”
She half smiles. “I like that.”
I reach for her. “You went because you want to know what happened to Ell. Don’t you? Because you’re hoping you can save her somehow?” I feel a twinge of jealousy, but you can’t be jealous of a dead person. Can you?
She doesn’t look up, and her voice breaks. “Ell is dead. That I know. And my mother is responsible.”
“Still.”
“Don’t start expecting heroic vampire bullshit from me, cupcake. I know better than to tangle with my mother.”
“So,” I tease, “if you don’t want me getting heroic notions about you, you should probably stop saving my life.”
She can’t help mellowing and crawls close to me. “If you were gone, who would buy the cookies?” We fall back on her bed and continue to read in silence. Side by side. Shoulders nuzzled. A world of questions hanging between us. She makes the cutest sound when she’s breathing.
I roll over, opening my eyes and squinting when the sun hits them. Wait, that means I slept through the night for the first time since I got to Silas. Apparently on Carmilla’s shoulder. “Nothing like a good night’s sleep,” I announce. “Hey, sleepyhead,” I say, nudging Carm. She’s like a brick. “I dreamt about that damn cat again but it was curled up on my rug, napping.”
Carm grunts, pulls her pillow over her face.
In the past, the cat in my dream was scary, like it was going to attack me or even kill me. Not last night, though. Everything means something, but I think this is just a cat.
“I have to study this morning. I haven’t been to class in two weeks. I’m so behind,” I tell her.
Carm hits me with a pillow. “Shhhhhhh. Sleeping.”
Perry bursts in, a total wreck. Hair flat, clothes wrinkled. Is that coffee on her sleeve? She races around the room, searching for something. “Where is she?” she demands. I have no clue what she’s talking about.
She launches into an explanation. “I know things have been tense with us, but her hiding out is ridiculous. Just tell me where she is.”