The change in the weather seems to be having an effect on Sara. Or maybe it’s just bad chemicals in her head. Anyway, she’s swung real down again, like when I first met her. And nothing seems to help much. I even went out and bought her a cheap portable TV at Big Lots, thinking that watching a few programs might bring her out of her doldrums. And then I totally forgot, you have to have some kind of digital converter these days to get a signal. So I went and bought that, and really drove myself crazy trying to figure it out. I’m a writer. I don’t know shit about technology. But somehow I got it set up. Even when it’s working it doesn’t take much to knock the damn thing out: a plane flying overhead, a stiff wind, the rain changing direction. And the picture becomes this nonsensical mosaic of color and then goes black. So I have to adjust the cheap rabbit ears that came with the converter until it’s restored. A pain in the ass.
And Sara doesn’t even seem to care. She sits in the living room looking at the screen, watching game shows, watching sitcoms, concentrating on them as if she were watching the very first broadcasts picked up from an alien planet, watching as if nothing coming from that tube made any sense at all. She may have a point there. I despise television myself. But I thought it might cheer her up. Make her feel a bit more normal.
And she hasn’t fed in three days either. That’s beginning to worry me. Yesterday, I brought her in some blood in a coffee cup--dressed it up to look like comfort food, like tomato soup or something. She just looked at me and shook her head sadly.
“I don’t…I don’t want it right now, Henry. When I want to…drink…I’ll drink.”
So, I left it on the floor by her chair, just in case she changed her mind. And when I came back, after working in my writing room for about an hour, the blood was still untouched.
She seems obsessed with that girl we fed on, what was it, five days ago? That Mary Ann. I really made a mess when I tore open her leg. Her blood even left a damn stain on the mattress, one I could not get to come out no matter how much I washed it down with soap and water. I finally just ended up flipping the mattress over and leaving it that way. Well the other day I came into the bedroom, and Sara had lifted the mattress up and was staring at that damn stain. As soon as I entered the room, she dropped the mattress back on to the box springs.
“What the hell are you doing, Sara?” I said.
“Nothing…Henry,” she said, guiltily. “I was just thinking…never mind.”
Later, she asked me the strangest thing. Not that I haven’t thought such things myself, if you’ve been reading my Thoughts From A Dirty Old Vampire.
“Do you think…do you think that girl we killed is in heaven now, Henry? That Mary Ann?”
I looked at her for a long time with the rain blowing against the boards of the house, sounding like giants out there pissing all over us.
“Yes, I do,” I said. “And she’s there with a god. The one she’s been searching for all her life.”
I may be wrong, but I think she brightened just a tiny bit when I told her that.
But the worst thing is that she won’t even let me touch her, won’t even let me fuck her. And believe me, the thrill of being inside Sara has certainly not worn off yet.
“Don’t…don’t, Henry,” she said to me earlier this evening when we woke up. I bent over her, tried to kiss my way down her neck to the aureole of one of her breasts, but she pushed me away, turning to show me her naked backside. If she doesn’t want me to fuck her, why does she always come to bed naked?
I got out of bed in a huff, lit a cigarette. As I did, she turned over again and stared at me, almost in the same way she had been staring at the shows on the idiot box. As if I were some kind of hieroglyphic message she just couldn’t quite decipher.
“Now you’re mad,” she said, softly.
“Damn right I’m mad,” I said, drawing deep on my smoke. “Don’t you know what you do to me? When you lie next to me, naked like that? It’s been three days now. And I want you so bad baby. Don’t you want me?”
“I just…I just feel…”
“What? Tell me Sara. I want to help you. I really do.”
“You hear that rain out there, Henry? Well…I feel like we are in the cabin of an ocean liner. And the rain? Those are the waves of the Atlantic slapping against the sides of the ship. And the ship is slowly going down Henry. Like the Titanic or something. All the way down. Everything. Everything is sinking. And I don’t see where making love is going to change that.”
“Christ, I thought I was the poet,” I said, shaking my head and looking around for a damn ashtray. Apparently, I had left them all downstairs.
“Why don’t you go out, Henry?” she said. “Find somebody to fuck. Find somebody…somebody to…you know.”
“Damnit, Sara, I want to fuck YOU. And then I want to hunt with you again.”
“No…no…Just go, Henry. If I get hungry…I’ll go outside and find…something.”
I thought about the night I met her. How she had planned to walk out of that crumbling building and kill herself in the rays of the morning sun. No. I wasn’t about to leave her alone in her state.
So I got back on the bed and just tried to hold her. She really wouldn’t let me do that either.
As the rain continued to fall.
Finally, I do go out. The rain has slacked off considerably--just a drizzle now, peppering the puddles on the sidewalk. And being cooped up with Sara is beginning to drive me batshit. I just do not know what to do to placate her, make the demons inside her take a break. I don’t think she could really hurt herself in my absence. At least I’m hoping not. What’s she gonna do--drive a steak knife into her heart? It’s a remote possibility I guess. I feel sort of guilty about leaving her, but the night, the night keeps calling me out. The sound of automobile tires hissing on the wet asphalt. The smell of the rain dripping still from the canopy of leaves that cover my crooked street. Life and blood.
“I’m gonna go out now Sara,” I say. “Are you sure you don’t wanna come with me?”
“No no no,” she says weakly. She’s sitting in front of the TV, watching some kind of show where so-called “celebrities” perform ice skating routines with the common volk. Or it’s on. I don’t really know what she’s watching in that frayed brain of hers.
I’m going. There ain’t nothing good on TV. Ever.
So I slip out the front door. Out into the night. I think vaguely about jumping into my truck, heading to that biker bar down south I go to occasionally, but I opt to walk instead. I’m feeling contemplative at the moment.
AS I walk down the steps, I notice that the lights are on at Juan’s place. I think about paying him a visit, giving him a major heart attack. I’ve never been to his place ever. But no…
I walk down the wet street, headed toward downtown. What to do do do? I have some money in my pocket. Maybe I’ll go to the Kitten Shack, watch a few strippers bump and grind it for their daily bread. But again, no. Every time I think of that place I think of that stripper Marie, the way her dead black eyes just would not stay dead, how their orbits kept sucking me into undecipherable spheres. And I just don’t need that noise competing with the memory. There are other places to go.
I think about Sara as I walk. I have never seen anyone get so down as her so quickly. Like a storm cloud passing in front of the sun. And I have had my bouts of depression too. Mostly when I was human. I remember when I was living above that bar, sending out all those poems, getting rejected over and over. That was a bad time. Before Emily discovered me. Before she turned me. I would lie in my bed not wanting to get up and go to that stupid taxi place, not wanting to get up and try again. All so futile. Like Sisyphus rolling his boulder up a hill, only to have it come crashing back down on him with much violence. Who in world cared? Who in the world believed in anything beyond the credo my father had shouted in my ear for all eternity? Birth. School. Work. Death. Better to give up. Lie in my bed and will my heart to stop somehow.
But eventually I would alwa
ys drag my sorry ass out of bed. To write again. To drink. Celebrate the futility of it all. Shout it to the sky.
I think about what Sara said earlier. About the house being an ocean liner. And everything EVERYTHING is sinking. Maybe that’s true. I feel it too, sometimes. I should have told her that there’s really not shit you can do about that. Except hope you are a damn good swimmer.
I hope Sara comes back to me soon. I am sure she will.
The night is quite quite black. No stars. I think about the sun. The warmth of the sun on my arms. Five years now. Five long years now without the sun. There was a place in Key West that was renowned for having the most beautiful sunsets in the country. Really. People would assemble on a pier there just to watch those sunsets, as if they were assembling for some high mass in a cathedral. Rich people. Bums. I stood there and watched them too. Beautiful all right but they did not fill me with the Holy Spirit or anything. Just a sunset.
But man, I would really love to be watching one right now.
A police car stops me as I am walking down Queen Avenue, headed toward the river again.
They pull up behind me, blast their sirens and lights for a quick heart-rending second. I walk on for a few paces, pretending that they couldn’t be stopping for me. What have I done? (Except kill people and drink their blood that is…)
Then they are out of their cruiser and shouting at me.
“Buddy…hey buddy? You wanna come here for a second…?”
I turn around now. There are two of them. A man and a woman, both in their late twenties, dressed in their gray uniform shirts, black pants. Guns and batons slung at their sides. They walk toward me, both swaggering like gladiators. Peace officers.
“What’s the problem, officers?” I ask.
The man, the driver of the cruiser, produces a flashlight from a shirt pocket, shines it at me making me blink. This is IT, I think, trying to look beyond the glare of the flashlight, discern something in his eyes. He has a blank, expressionless face, beady eyes.
“Can you tell me where you were headed, sir?” the guy says, clicking off the flashlight and putting it back in his pocket.
“Sure. I was headed down to Moundbuilder River for a little while and then home. I just live on Lanehurst Avenue.” As I try to stay calm and cooperate, banner headlines spin around in my mind: Vampire Killer Apprehended—Dies in Police Custody. Maybe they found a body. Maybe somewhere, I got careless.
“You got any ID with you?” the guy officer continues, his hand resting casually on his black baton. I look over at the woman cop. She hasn’t said anything at all. Just standing next to her partner. She’s pretty sexy actually. Nice body. I like the way her breasts look in her uniform shirt. I’d like to watch her slowly strip out of that get up.
“Sure,” I say, fumbling for my wallet and getting my license out. The guy takes it, hands it to his partner, who heads back toward the cruiser.
“Sir, can I ask you to put your arms on top of your head, spread your legs apart?” the guy officer says, coldly.
“I haven’t done anything officer. What’s this…?”
“Sir, can I ask you to put your arms on top of your head, spread your legs apart?” he repeats, emphatically. As if it is the last time he is going to make this request.
I put my arms on top of my head and spread my legs apart.
The peace officer gets very close to me, starts patting my torso, my legs. Looking for a weapon I guess. I smell him as he does so: faint hint of Polo aftershave washed away almost by a couple of showers, smell of coffee on his breath as he exhales. Not much else.
He steps away from me.
“Can I put my hands down now, officer?” I ask. I think about Sara at home for a second. What is she going to do, after I die in some jail cell?
“Not just yet,” he says, pursing his lips. “Where did you say you lived again?”
“1186 Lanehurst Avenue.”
“A house?”
“Yes.”
The woman officer returns with my license, nods at her partner, hands me back the plastic.
“He checks out,” she says, in a low, almost inflectionless voice.
“You can put your hands down now, sir” the guy officer says. “Thank you for cooperating with us.”
Obviously I have not been found out yet. Obviously I am not going to die in jail. Not tonight at least.
I oblige and bring my hands back down to my sides.
“Can you tell me what this is all about, officers?” I ask.
The guy cop produces a piece of paper from his black pants, unfolds it quickly and shows it to me. It’s some kind of computer printout or something. In the upper left-hand corner there’s a black and white photo of a guy. He’s gaunt looking with intense dark eyes, black hair, a prominent Adam’s apple. He looks more like a vampire than I do.
“We thought you were this guy,” the women officer says simply. In the same inflectionless voice.
“I don’t…I don’t look anything like this guy,” I reply. Even friggin’ Mr. Magoo would not mistake me for the man in the photo. Incredible.
“You do sort of. The black hair. And from the back we thought…we thought you might be him,” the guy says.
Ok. I’m balding in back. This guy obviously has a head full of thick black hair. Again, incredible.
“We’re very sorry to have inconvenienced you,” the guy says. “You’re free to go now.”
“You don’t want to be driving on that license until you get it renewed,” the woman cop says.
And with that, the cops back away from me and start heading for their car.
“What’s this guy done?” I shout after them.
“Bad things to women,” the woman officer says, not even looking back at me.
I get back to the house and Sara is asleep in the living room, her chin nestled against her chest, her hands curled in her lap. The TV is still on, the sound blaring from its tiny speakers. Once again, the picture has broken down into bricks of digital color.
I go to turn it off and notice as I do so that Sara is clutching something in her hand. I lean over and quietly steal it from her. She murmurs something as I do so and then settles back into sleep. It’s a photograph, its colors dulled by age, of a young couple standing in front of a brick building with stained glass windows. A church. Sara’s parents, I think, when they were first married. I stare at it for a few minutes. At the groom in his pale blue tuxedo and ruffled shirt, a lopsided smile on his face. He has the same almond-shaped eyes as Sara’s, the same high cheekbones. The bride wears a full-length white dress, a crown of baby’s breath in her (of course) red hair. She is holding a bouquet in her hands and smiling shyly, her eyes turned toward her groom.
I look at the picture for several minutes, feeling a tinge of sorrow for these people that I have never known, who I will never ever know. Sara came from them. Sara, who is sleeping in my chair. Sara who I have been inside of, who I have held in my arms. What would these two people do with all of this if they were alive today? Could they love Sara, knowing what she was? Knowing that the only way she could live was to drink blood? Probably not.
I turn the picture over. Someone has written an inscription on the back, in neat cursive:
Pookie,
Can you believe we were ever so young? Anyway, Daddy and I love you very much and are very proud of you. Happy thirteenth and many more to come…
Love,
Mom
“Hey, it’s not polite to steal other people’s stuff,” Sara says. She’s awake now, smiling at me. That’s a good sign. She slowly stretches her arms and legs, casting out the last vestiges of sleep.
I go over and kiss her on the cheek, give the picture back to her.
“Your parents?” I say.
“Yeah. On their wedding day.”
“They look very happy.”
“They were. We were,” she says.
“Are you OK?”
“I think…I think I am. I feel better, Henry. I’m awful
ly thirsty.”
“Well…it’s early,” I say. “Why don’t we go get a drink?”
“Sure. Wow. I feel like I’ve slept for a thousand centuries. Where did ya go?”
“Out. Went to look at the river.” I do not tell her about my run-in with the law. That feels like it happened a thousand centuries ago.
I go to turn the TV off again. The news is on. The picture is back to normal and as I go to switch it off, something catches my attention. A report about a murder in Shepherd County, about one hundred miles south from us. A little girl, four years old. The community is an uproar over the crime because of the girl’s youth and the savagery of the attack. They have not been able to find the girl’s…head. And all of the blood has apparently been drained from her body by the perpetrator.
Sara comes to my side, clutches my arm, transfixed by the report.
“Serling,” she whispers.
“Probably,” I say.
Chapter Nineteen
“I feel god damn stupid,” I say. I am wearing (and I kid you not) a full-length Dracula cape, black with a red-satin lining. Juan Perez is having some kind of costume party at his place--Halloween being about three weeks away. He’s been over to our place (weird how I have come to consider it our place now) every day to remind me about it. (Although secretly I think he comes around just to look at Sara.)
“Everybody I know’s comin’,” he told me. “Everybody from work. Hoes from the strip club. Should be off the hook.”
“Ok, Juan,” I said, having no intention of going. I hate parties. Add it to the long list of things I hate. Bunch of people gathered in a room somewhere, mostly engaged in pissing contests with each other. Look at me! Look at how much money I make! Look at how hot my wife is! What’s your golf game then? Well I shoot lower than that fucker. No thank you. It was better when I was human. Then at least I could drink myself into a stupor and forget about it. In my present state, drinking at a party just leads to…ummm, complications.
But Sara wants to go. It’s weird. She’s classic bi-polar. No middle ground with her at all. When she’s up, I’ve never seen anyone who gets such unabashed pleasure from things: looking at the moon, riding somewhere in my truck…drinking. But when she is down, no power on earth can convince her that the ship is not sinking.
The Vampire Henry Page 13