by Phil Wohl
Sharon looked at Gary and nodded in affirmation, “We’re good.”
“Then we’ll bury the son-of-a-bitch tomorrow night.”
It was always a struggle to get the hunters to ‘play’ near the water, because it was the one place they knew they weren't safe. Without any special swimming skills - other than the dog paddle and drowning - Thaddeus, Emily, and Cal usually leaned on tactics that leveraged their on- land and air capabilities.
Every fight started with a move of a scramble, but usually ended with the age, gender and strength-specific pairings squaring off. But, on this night, I went right at Emily and was giving her a pretty good beating when Gary tied up Thaddeus in some old-fashioned fisticuffs.
That left old friends Sharon and Cal to mix it up, much to my chagrin. The tension between Sharon and Cal was palatable, and I knew it was only a matter of time before they wood hook up – if they hadn’t done so already.
There was that one time - only a week earlier after I was killed
- when Sharon met Cal in the woods. They went at it for hours in different forms and, although I didn’t actually see the pairing, the smell of togetherness was all over them.
While I was planning with my team for the night’s events, I noticed that Sharon was all-too-agreeable to tangle with Cal in the fight. She was no match for Cal’s strength and abilities, yet looked confident in her chances of keeping him occupied while I went to work on Emily.
It took Cal only a few minutes to get Sharon in a strangle hold – more affectionately called a ‘sleeper’ hold – but he wasn’t really cutting off her air supply.
“Meet me in the woods again tonight. I’ve been thinking about you all week.”
Unfortunately for Cal, I was tuned into the frequency of the conversation, while he put the finishing touches on tucking Emily into her dirt nap.
Dating was obviously a ridiculous double-standard in the vampire world, being that Emily and I had ‘tossed the pigskin’ around a few times in the past.
“You taste particularly delicious tonight, my dear,” I said as I drained Emily’s blood.
“I detect a hint of bacon in the ‘sauce’ tonight. It would be helpful in the future if you could cut back on the pork products and substitute it with turkey bacon. I’m trying to cut some fat out in my diet.”
Cal was feeling more amorous than combative on this night. My plan included a Cal-Sharon pairing because I knew of their attraction. It had taken me months to find Cal’s kryptonite, his weakness. He initially tried going after Belinda, but that fire had burned out, and he was no longer acting as a protective husband in love.
Cal was so focused on Sharon that night that he didn’t even notice me drinking the last drops of his sister’s blood and then dropping her to the ground like a piece of biodegradable garbage. He also didn’t see me charging at him and delivering a violent close-line to his face.
An unconscious Cal dropped to the ground and I said to Sharon, “Meet you at the bottom,” before I scooped up Cal and flew to the ocean. Once we were in the water there was no way for the hunters to prevent the inevitable from happening. So Thaddeus fought to get loose from Gary, and he was almost free until Sharon came over and the two protectors held him down.
Thaddeus had no idea what I was planning, but he could see the look of concern on Sharon’s face.
“You can’t let him so this!” Thad implored Sharon.
Sharon tried to fight off the tears, because there was no crying allowed when protecting a vampire, but she finally broke down.
“It’s what he wants.”
“But is it what you want?” Thad passionately replied.
Sharon looked at Thad amidst a face-full of tears and regrettably stated, “It doesn’t really matter what I want. Does it?”
She then looked over at Gary and he nodded that it was time. They let go of Thaddeus, who instantly changed into a hawk and flew toward the ocean to try to save his boy. Sharon and Gary made their way to the nearby inlet and knifed through the water as dolphins on their way to the ocean.
Thad flew as fast as he could until he saw me flying with Cal a few miles ahead. He figured that the only way he could catch me would be to wake his son and cause a disturbance. Being only a mile from the shore, I was feeling pretty good about my plan. That was, until I heard Thaddeus shriek in the distance at a frequency that would arrest Cal’s senses, because Cal started coming out of his slumber.
My pace slowed as he struggled to keep control of a now fully- awake Cal. Thaddeus was making up the gap and was now only 400 yards from me, as I was only about 500 feet from the shore.
Just as I was about to lose my grip on Cal, I utilized his strongest feature to lock him down.
“Not so fast, Brewster,” I said as I thrust his razor-sharp teeth into Cal’s shoulder, effectively taking any fight away that he had left. I zoomed toward the water with Thaddeus on my tail in hot pursuit. Thad
had one more trick up his wing – the no-flap, bullet thrust – and was just about to grab Cal when Gary the Orca whale jumped out of the water and swallowed him whole, as I plunged to the depths of the ocean with Cal.
Gary and Sharon swam to the bottom and started to push large rocks that would be considered boulders in some parts. I pinned a groggy Cal against the hull of a sunken 18th century pirate ship with a pile of smaller rocks.
Cal offered little resistance as his blood levels became depleted and then his breathing became shallow due to a lack of oxygen. His limit under the water was three or four minutes, which was fairly decent for a mammal, but not good enough for a mammal trapped in the ocean depths.
I lifted the more massive rocks one after the other and placed them strategically to trap Cal for as long as the rocks stayed in place. And, in this case, that would be 15 years – the first two of which Sharon checked on her flame regularly, although the visits became more sporadic over time.
There were many occasions, especially in the very beginning, when Sharon felt the urge to bash all of those rocks away and free Cal so they could be together. But her urge to be with Cal was overridden by her eternal oath to protect me at all costs.
Our lives were definitely enriched via Cal’s absence, but Sharon, Thad, and Emily had a much different experience. Belinda grieved at the loss of her husband, even though their relationship had thinned over the years. Daniel always wondered what his dad was like, but never really missed someone he barely knew. After all, I had been his father-figure in the previous life and this life's formative years.
HAVEN
Somewhere in between Cal's underwater burial and the kid's 18th birthday, was a period of exploration and confusion. It started off rather innocently with me taking my new charges to school on a regular basis. Cal and Emily were so eager to learn that a five-year losing streak did little to damper their enthusiasm. It was during the middle of that period that Sharon became enamored with me and we had a little dalliance, a brief affair, which actually - when I think about it - made Cal notice her even more and drove him to heightened obsession with overcome me as an adversary, both physically and mentally.
There were a bunch of years when we were losing on a regular basis that I decided to take off and clear my head. Well, that would have been an oversimplification of what was actually happening. I could tell there was cosmic energy in the air that would lead to better days for me. And, as we all knew, this is all about me anyway...
We had taken an initial break to let Thad and Gary start families, and this secondary break was to further build the family through Sharon, Cal and Emily. Sharon pared up with her lifeguard partner, Agent Blake Wallace, which produced Nicole who turned out to be my son's protector and future wife. Blake and Sharon never got married because she didn't tell him she was pregnant. He found out years later when he was a government official who became obsessed with us and then eventually joined the fold.
Emily married a nobody named Randy Prince, who she dispatched just after Andrew was born. But, it was Calvin Brewster's
relationship with Belinda Thompson that really was the shocker. Apparently, there had to be a conduit in this world that had the concentration of energy to match mine, in order to provide a window for my son. I have to admit that it was a case of extreme mixed emotions when I realized that my Nathaniel, now Daniel, was my fiercest rivals' son. There was no way there was room for the two of us in his life! At least, that's what I thought at the time.
My plan to bury Calvin Brewster at the bottom of the ocean had everything to do with the battle of the dads, and much less with the fact that he was cheating on his loyal wife Belinda with Sharon. And, there was also the issue of him becoming almost impossible to kill with his sister in tandem. I'm not going to say that I pushed Sharon toward Cal to distract him, and I'm also not going to say that I didn't. It was a case of using every tool that I had in my toolbox to disrupt the flow of energy that was surely going to lead to my 100th death before I had a chance to bond with my son.
Once Cal disappeared, it destroyed both Emily and Belinda, who moved away after it became apparent that he wan't coming back. It was a few years later, when Daniel was going into first grade, that Belinda moved to Beach Haven, New York for reasons that she couldn't fully explain. The truth was that I really liked the sleepy East Coast town and thought it would be a suitable place for the kids to grow up. Really, a suitable place for me to reunite with my son and then wait for my wife, his mother, to come to us.
Cal remained buried on the bottom of the ocean for 15 years while I became reacquainted with my son. He didn't know at the time that I had such a big stake in the game, but he managed to maintain a genuine hatred of me when finally set free from captivity.
Hours after Drew continually blasted the rock formation with his concrete head, Cal finally became dislodged and began the slow float from the depths to the ocean's surface.
Lucky for Cal, it was high tide – instead of floating out to sea, the current moved him steadily toward the shore. Hours passed as his water- logged body made the arduous journey toward land. He finally washed up on the beach at 3:00 a.m. on Monday morning, but had just about as much life as a broken tree limb.
If Cal had washed ashore during the hours of 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., his body certainly would have been discovered by a passing jogger or a young couple looking for privacy at night.
Cal was on his back for the better part of two hours, lying motionless and without a heartbeat. Speaking of the sun, it started rising out of the east and its rays slowly worked its way down the Beach Haven shore. The light passed by Cal’s body and steadily shot shiny crystals from his head to his toes. The healing process took about 30 seconds, with water trickling out of his pours and the last few quarts of liquid making its way upward as his heart started pumping again.
Cal coughed, as water shot from his mouth and sprayed all around him. He rolled over on his side in pain, as his body felt like it had been hit by a Mack truck. He continued rolling to his knees, as water streamed out of his mouth. Cal coughed repeatedly and tried to get his bearings as he sat on his butt, pained by the bright glow of the rising sun.
Years in the dark depths of the ocean had given way to the intense brightness of the new day. At first he had no idea who he was or why he was on the beach. He shielded his eyes from the sun, but then realized that the rays were the reason that he was even ‘being’ in the first place.
Cal slowly rose to his feet, the weight of his saturated clothes making it difficult for him to stand erect at first. He then, instinctively, spread his arms wide and faced the sun, letting the warmth brilliantly fuse atrophied muscles and bones, and reboot a brain that had gone off-line.
His eyes were closed for a good five minutes while his body underwent extensive repair. Neurons were sparking wildly like a group of connected power lines. When he was fully restored, Cal’s eyes opened wide as he turned to land.
His face turned from a blank to slate to one of frustration and fury. Then he defiantly exclaimed, “HARTWELL!” as he raised his fists toward the perfect, azure sky.
Cal dropped his fists toward his side and then crouched down in a sprinter’s position. He then focused on me, and only me, as the fire ball blazed a scorching trail toward my lair.
Once the coordinates were set, Cal exploded out of the blocks, throwing sand in every direction behind him until he hit land.
The two-second journey along the coast felt more like 20 minutes to Cal. He thought about many things on his way to ‘meet his maker.' The first of which was Sharon – for a moment he thought about putting off killing me for a few minutes until he could visit her first. But when he dug deeper, more anger was unearthed. She had left him down there for who knows how long? So, he stayed on the course of his original objective.
Cal longed to see his sister and father, and the nephew he left behind. But the one person he thought about the entire time was his son, Daniel, and how hard it must have been for him to grow up without a father. The image of Daniel as a child sent Cal to another level of hunting, through his focused rage.
He turned the corner as the action continued to slow. I opened my front door and was not visible to Cal, who was so hyped up that it appeared – to the advanced naked eye – that he had run past his intended target.
I stopped in his tracks and then was driven back into my house and onto the floor. I looked up and saw Cal Brewster, breathing hard and holding my still-beating heart in his hand.
“I hate Monday’s,” I panned. “It’s going to be a long walk home,” I said as I died for the 100th time.
Cal dropped the now beat-less heart on the floor and then walked over and cleaned his hands off in the kitchen sink.
LOVE
Daniel shook his head in disbelief and then mentally reached for the
picture of the family back in San Francisco during happier times. He studied the picture for the better part of seven seconds and then asked, “What happened to us?”
Daniel floated the picture over to me, as I had studied the trio many times in recent days.
I initially talked with my head down. “We had a great life. Your mom and I were madly in love, and then you came along and I life was so much fuller. We traveled, we laughed, and we really enjoyed each other’s company.”
My face turned blank, “Then the plague hit… and…” I tried to hold back the icicles. “And then, before I could do anything, you both were gone.”
Daniel took it all in and then responded, “So, you only became a vampire so you could see us again?”
I nodded in agreement.
Daniel could see the merits in such a noble act, but that still didn’t satisfy his curiosity.
“So, why me? Why turn me? I mean, you could have just told me.”
I sent the picture back to the table and returned to my usual, unflappable self.
“I could have just told you? That would have worked out. How come you never really questioned – all of those years – who I was?”
Daniel searched for the answer, I filled in the blank.“Because you knew me.”
“Because I trusted you,” Daniel stated.
“Because I am your father,” I added.
Maggie was the new Beach Haven High School librarian, and she also happened to be the first iteration of my wife who died in the early 1900’s.
Maggie’s life had been fairly stress-free until she decided to pick up and move from her roots in Portland, Maine. At the time she had a great library job and was about to buy her first house when her parents were killed in a freak skiing accident.
Instead of staying in Maine and putting down roots, she sold her parents’ house and got the job in Beach Haven. The New York community was her second choice to a job she was offered in – of all places – San Francisco.
Maggie was all set to take the job. She even went out to the West Coast and spent a long weekend in the area, meeting with school personnel and looking around with a realtor to find a place to live.
Everything was in place until she walked aroun
d by herself on Sunday morning. Maggie turned a corner and was hit with an Empire State Building-sized flashback.
She was holding a little boy’s hand and he was saying, “Did you see that mom and dad?”
The flashback continued as the boy – wearing a white dress shirt, a cap, wool pants, and shoes – ran up the long flight of stairs to what was presumably their house. She turned and kissed a man, but his face was blurry and she couldn’t make him out.
The flashback stopped and she was standing in front of the very house she lived in with me and Daniel, at least when Daniel was named Nathanial. Something was telling her at that moment that this wasn’t the place she was supposed to be.
Maggie looked in awe at the house as her cell phone buzzed, alerting her that she had an e-mail. She pulled her phone out of her purse and opened the e-mail, which was from the Beach Haven School District. They wanted to interview Maggie for their soon-to-be-open librarian position.
She was a firm believer in signs. The combination of the flashback with the eerily-timed e-mail convinced her where her next step in life would likely occur.
It was 1:59 and 56 seconds. Daniel turned to me in our house and said, “You ready?”
I replied, “As ready as…” and then we were standing in front of Maggie’s door, “I’m going to be,” I seamlessly finished my sentence. I then looked at the doorbell and nodded.
Daniel rang the doorbell without even touching it. The bell never actually made an audible sound, only Maggie believed she heard it.
“It’s my gift to the environment,” Daniel beamed as he contributed to the reduction of noise pollution and Maggie’s carbon footprint.
Maggie swung the door open and she looked extremely relaxed and radiant in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, with no sign of shoes or socks. The 21st century version of Maggie was much “crunchier” than her 19th/20th century predecessor.