The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

by Grady Hendrix

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Right after I left. I was bored. No one was giving me good candy because they said I didn’t have a real costume. And he saw me and said it didn’t look like I was having much fun so he invited me inside to mess around on his Playstation. I’d rather hang out with him anyway.”

  What he was saying couldn’t possibly have happened because of what James Harris had done to Slick.

  “I need you to think,” she said. “I need to know exactly what time you went into his house.”

  “Like around seven-thirty,” he said. “Jesus, why do you care? We played Resident Evil all night.”

  He was lying, he didn’t understand the severity of the situation, he thought it was just another spray-painted dog. Patricia tried to make her voice understanding.

  “Blue,” she said, focusing on him intently. “This is extremely important. Probably the most important thing you’ve ever said in your life. Don’t lie.”

  “I’m not lying!” he shouted. “Ask him! I was there. He was there. Why would I lie? Why do you always think I’m lying? Jesus!”

  “I don’t think you’re lying,” she said, making herself breathe slow. “But I think you’re confused.”

  “I’m! Not! Confused!” he shouted.

  Patricia felt tangled in string, like every word she spoke only made things worse.

  “Something very serious happened tonight,” she said. “And James Harris was involved and I do not believe for a minute that he was with you the entire time.”

  Blue exhaled hard and turned to the front door. She grabbed his wrist.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back to Jim’s!” he shouted, and grabbed her wrist in return. “He doesn’t scream at me all the time!”

  He was stronger than she was and she could feel his fingers bearing down, pressing into her skin, against her bone, leaving a bruise on her forearm. She made herself unclench her fingers from his wrist, hoping he would do the same.

  “I need you to tell me the truth,” she said.

  He let go of her wrist and stared at her with utter contempt.

  “You’re not going to believe anything I say anyway,” he said. “They should put you back in the hospital.”

  His hatred radiated off his skin like heat. It made Patricia take a small step back. Blue stepped forward and she shrank from him. Then he turned and started up the stairs.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “To finish my homework!” he yelled over his shoulder.

  She heard his bedroom door slam. Carter still wasn’t home. She checked the time—almost eleven. She checked all the doors and made sure all the windows were locked. She turned on the yard lights. She tried to think of something else she could do, but there wasn’t anything. She looked in on Korey and Blue again, then she got into bed and tried to read November’s book club book.

  Books can inspire you to love yourself more, it said. By listening to, writing out, or verbally expressing your feelings.

  She realized she’d been reading for three pages without remembering a word she’d read. She missed reading books that were actually about something. She tried again.

  Take a time-out to center yourself, it said. So that you can then come together again with greater understanding, acceptance, validation, and approval.

  She threw the book across the room and found her copy of Helter Skelter. She turned to the back section about the trials, and read about Charles Manson getting sentenced to death over and over again as if it were a bedtime story. She needed to reassure herself that not all men got away with it, not every time. She read about Charles Manson’s sentencing until her eyes got grainy and she fell asleep.

  MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS

  November 1996

  CHAPTER 34

  They took Slick to the Medical University on Tuesday. On Wednesday, they started making visitors wear paper gowns and masks.

  “We don’t know precisely what’s going on,” her doctor said. “She’s got an autoimmune disease but it’s developing faster than we’d expect. Her immune system is attacking her white blood cells, and more red blood cells than we’d like are hemolytic. But we’re keeping her oxygenated and screening for everything. It’s too early to hit the panic button.”

  The diagnosis simultaneously excited and horrified Patricia. It confirmed that whatever James Harris was, he wasn’t human. He’d put a part of himself inside Slick, and it was killing her. He was a monster. On the other hand, Slick wasn’t getting better.

  Leland visited every day around six, but always seemed like he needed to leave the moment he arrived. When Patricia followed him out into the hall to ask how he was doing, he stepped in close.

  “You haven’t told anyone her diagnosis?” he asked.

  “She doesn’t have one as far as I know,” Patricia said.

  He stepped in closer. Patricia wanted to back up but she was already standing against the wall.

  “They say it’s an autoimmune disease,” he whispered. “You can’t repeat that. People are going to think she has AIDS.”

  “No one’s going to think that, Leland,” Patricia said.

  “They’re already saying it at church,” he said. “I don’t want it coming back on the kids.”

  “I haven’t said anything to anyone,” Patricia said, unhappy to be forced to participate in something that felt wrong.

  Friday morning, they taped a sign to Slick’s door that had been photocopied so many times it was covered with black dots saying that if you had a temperature, or been exposed to anyone with a cold, you were not allowed in the room.

  Slick looked pale, her skin felt papery, and she didn’t want to be left alone, especially at night. The nurses brought blankets and Patricia slept in the chair by her bed. After Leland went home, Patricia held the phone so Slick could say bedtime prayers with her kids, but most of the time Slick lay still, the sheets pulled up almost to her chin, her doll-sized arms wrapped in white tape, pricked with IV needles and tubes. She sweated out fevers most of the afternoon. When she seemed lucid Patricia tried to read to her from Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, but after a paragraph she realized Slick was saying something.

  “What’s that?” Patricia asked, leaning over.

  “Anything…else…,” Slick said. “…anything…else.”

  Patricia pulled the latest Ann Rule out of her purse.

  “‘September 21, 1986,’” she read, “‘was a warm and beautiful Sunday in Portland—in the whole state of Oregon, for that matter. With any luck the winter rains of the Northwest were a safe two months away…’”

  The facts and firm geography soothed Slick, who closed her eyes and listened. She didn’t sleep, just lay there, smiling slightly. The light outside got dimmer and the light inside got stronger, and Patricia kept reading, speaking louder to compensate for her paper mask.

  “Am I too late?” Maryellen said, and Patricia looked up to see her pushing open the door.

  “Is she awake?” Maryellen whispered from behind her paper mask.

  “Thank you for coming,” Slick said without opening her eyes.

  “Everyone wants to know how you’re feeling,” Maryellen said. “I know Kitty wanted to come.”

  “Are you reading this month’s book?” Slick asked.

  Maryellen pulled a heavy brown armchair to the foot of the bed.

  “I can’t even open it,” she said. “Men Are from Mars? That’s giving them too much credit.”

  Slick started coughing, and it took Patricia a moment to realize she was laughing.

  “I made…,” Slick whispered, and Patricia and Maryellen strained to hear her. “I made Patricia stop reading it.”

  “I miss the books we used to read where at least there was a murder,” Maryellen said. “The problem with book club these days is too
many men. They don’t know how to pick a book to save their lives and they love to listen to themselves talk. It’s nothing but opinions, all day long.”

  “You sound…sexist,” Slick whispered.

  She was the only one not in a mask, so even though her voice was weakest, it sounded loudest.

  “I wouldn’t mind listening if any of them had an opinion worth a damn,” Maryellen said.

  With three of them in Slick’s little hospital room, Patricia felt the absence of the other two more acutely. They felt like some kind of survivors’ club—the last three standing.

  “Are you going to Kitty’s oyster roast on Saturday?” she asked Maryellen.

  “If she has one,” Maryellen said. “The way she’s acting they might call it off.”

  “I haven’t spoken to her since before Halloween,” Patricia said.

  “Give her a call when you have a chance,” Maryellen said. “Something’s wrong. Horse says she hasn’t left the house all week and yesterday she barely left her room. He’s worried.”

  “What does he say is wrong?” Patricia asked.

  “He says it’s nightmares,” Maryellen said. “She’s drinking, a lot. She wants to know where the children are every second of the day. She’s scared something might happen to them.”

  Patricia decided it was time more people knew.

  “Do you want to talk to Maryellen about anything?” she asked Slick. “Do you have something you need to tell her?”

  Slick shook her head deliberately.

  “No,” she croaked. “The doctors don’t know anything yet.”

  Patricia leaned down.

  “He can’t hurt you here,” she said, quietly. “You can tell her.”

  “How is she?” a gentle, caring male voice said from the door.

  Patricia hunched as if she’d been stabbed between the shoulder blades. Slick’s eyes widened. Patricia turned, and there was no mistaking the eyes above the mask or the shape beneath the paper gown.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier,” James Harris said through his mask, moving across the room. “Poor Slick. What’s happened to you?”

  Patricia stood and put herself between James Harris and Slick’s bed. He stopped in front of her and placed one large hand on her shoulder. It took everything she had not to flinch.

  “You’re so good to be here,” he said, and then gently brushed her aside and loomed over Slick, one hand resting on her bed rail. “How are you feeling, sweetheart?”

  What he was doing was obscene. Patricia wanted to scream for help, she wanted the police, she wanted him arrested, but she knew no one would help them. Then she realized Maryellen and Slick weren’t saying anything, either.

  “Do you not feel up to talking?” James Harris asked Slick.

  Patricia wondered who would break first, which one of them would cave in to niceties and make conversation, but they all stood firm, and looked at their hands, at their feet, out the window, and none of them said a word.

  “I feel like I’m interrupting,” James Harris said.

  The silence continued and Patricia felt something bigger than her fear: solidarity.

  “Slick’s tired,” Maryellen finally said. “She’s had a long day. I think we should all leave her to get some rest.”

  As everyone shuffled around each other, trying to say good-bye, trying to get to the door, trying to get their things, Patricia worked spit into her dry mouth. She didn’t want to do what she was about to do, but right before she said good-bye to Slick, she spoke as loudly as she could.

  “James?”

  He turned, his eyebrows raised above his mask.

  “Korey took my car,” she said. “Could you give me a ride home?”

  Slick tried to push herself up in bed.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she told Slick. “But I need to go home and get some groceries in the fridge and make sure the children are still alive.”

  “Of course,” James Harris said. “I’ll be happy to give you a ride.”

  Patricia bent over Slick.

  “I’ll see you soon,” she said, and kissed her on the forehead.

  Maryellen insisted on walking with her to James Harris’s car, which was on the third level of the parking garage. Patricia appreciated the gesture, but then came the moment when she had to go.

  “Well,” Maryellen said, like a bad actor on television. “I thought I was parked up here but I guess I was wrong again. You go on, I’ll have to figure out where I put my car.”

  Patricia watched Maryellen walk to the stairwell until all she could hear were her heels, and then those faded, and the parking garage was silent. The door locks chunked up and Patricia jumped. She pulled the handle, slid self-consciously into the front seat, pulled the door closed, and clicked her seat belt on. The car engine came to life, idled, and then James Harris reached for her head. She flinched as he put his hand on the back of her headrest, looked over his shoulder, and reversed out of his space. They drove down the ramps in silence, he paid the attendant, and they pulled out onto the dark Charleston streets.

  “I’m glad we can have this time together,” he said.

  Patricia tried to say something, but she couldn’t force air through her throat.

  “Do they have any idea what’s wrong with Slick?” he asked.

  “An autoimmune disorder,” she managed.

  “Leland thinks she has AIDS,” James Harris said. “He’s terrified people will find out.”

  His turn signal clicked loudly as he made a left onto Calhoun Street, past the park where the columns from the old Charleston Museum still stood. They reminded Patricia of tombstones.

  “You and I have been making a lot of assumptions about each other,” James Harris said. “I think it’s time we got on the same page.”

  Patricia dug her nails into her palms to make herself keep quiet. She had gotten into his car. She didn’t need to talk.

  “I would never hurt anyone,” he said. “You know that, right?”

  How much did he know? Had they cleaned his stairs completely? Did he know she’d been in his attic, or did he just suspect? Had she missed a spot, left something behind, given herself away?

  “I know,” she said.

  “Does Slick have any idea how she got this?” he asked.

  Patricia bit the inside of her cheeks, feeling her teeth sink into their soft, spongy tissue, making herself more alert.

  “No,” she said.

  “What about you?” he asked. “What do you think?”

  If he had attacked Slick, what would he do to her now that they were alone? The position she’d put herself in began to sink in. She needed to reassure him that she was no danger.

  “I don’t know what to think,” she managed.

  “At least you’re admitting it,” he said. “I find myself in a similar position.”

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  They mounted the Cooper River Bridge, rising in a smooth arc over the city, leaving the land below, soaring over the dark harbor. Traffic was light, with only a few cars on the bridge.

  The moment Patricia dreaded was coming soon. At the end of the bridge, the road forked. Two lanes curved toward the Old Village. The other two veered left and became Johnnie Dodds Boulevard, running out past strip malls, past Creekside, out into the country where there were no streetlights or neighbors, deep into Francis Marion National Forest where there were hidden clearings and logging roads, places where occasionally the police found abandoned cars with dead bodies in the trunk, or babies’ skeletons wrapped in plastic bags and buried under the trees.

  Which road he took would tell her if he thought she posed a threat.

  “Leland did this to her,” James Harris said. “Leland made her sick.”

  Patricia’s thoughts fragmented. What was he saying? She tried to pa
y attention, but he was already talking.

  “It all started with those damn trips,” he said. “If I’d known, I never would have suggested them. It was that one last February to Atlanta, do you remember? Carter had that Ritalin conference and Leland and I went on Sunday to take some of the doctors out golfing and talk to them about investing in Gracious Cay. At dinner, this psychiatrist from Reno asked if we wanted to see some girls. He told us there was a place called the Gold Club owned by a former New York Yankee, so it must be on the level. It wasn’t my kind of thing, but Leland spent almost a thousand dollars. That was the first time. After that, it seemed to get easier for him.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Patricia asked.

  “Because you need to know the truth,” he said, and they were coming down the last rise of the bridge. Up ahead, the road branched: right or left. “I became aware of the girls last summer. Leland would be with a different one almost every trip. Sometimes, when it was places like Atlanta or Miami where we went a few times, he would see the same girl. Some of them were professionals, some weren’t. You know what I mean by that?”

  He waited. She nodded stiffly in acknowledgment, eyes on the road. He drove in the middle lane, which could go either way. She wondered if this was a full and final confession because he knew she wouldn’t be able to tell anyone soon.

  “He got a disease from one of them and gave it to Slick,” James Harris said. “There’s no way to know what it is. But I know that’s what happened. I asked him once if he used protection and he just laughed and said, ‘Where’s the fun in that?’ Someone needs to tell her doctor.

  He didn’t put on his turn signal to change lanes; his car just came down off the bridge and then drifted, so slightly she almost didn’t notice, and they were on the road to the Old Village. The muscles in her back unclenched.

  “What about Carter?” she asked, after a moment.

  They rode Coleman Boulevard’s gentle curves toward the Old Village, passing houses, streetlights, then stores, restaurants, people.

  “Him, too,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  She hadn’t expected it to hurt so much.