“Not anymore,” I say, starting back into the dark, dead house.
And then, much later, I decide, against all good judgment, to bury Sara in the back yard.
First, I go and get a bucket of water and a washcloth, clean her body, swab away all the blood that’s caked there, the blood around her mortal wound. I remember, as I do so, those three days I was sick, poisoned by Juan’s tainted blood. I remember how she never left my side in all that fevered time, how she pressed a cold washcloth to my head. I talk to her, as I do so, as if I were talking to a newborn infant.
“It’s OK baby, I’m here now. I’m so sorry, Sara. So sorry. I’ll never leave you again. OK, baby? I promise, baby.” I say all this soothingly, as I clean her off, get her ready to go.
I find some clothes in the closet, something appropriate to dress her in. The gray sweater and jeans she was wearing the night we fought abut Juan. The night we took down that girl, Mary Ann. It’s really hard to get her into the clothes because rigor mortis has set in fast, but somehow, I manage to get it done.
Before I take her out to bury her, I go down to the cellar and have a drink of blood from the stock I keep down there. It’s in a cheap refrigerator, just like the one that Emily used to have, and as I drink, replenish my strength, I think back to the night she gave me that first life-sustaining pint of blood. So long ago. I thought then how miraculous that blood was, how magical, how special. The world seemed to open up then, like a flower caught budding under the scrutiny of time-lapse photography. Now, as I drink, it seems to be closing just as quickly.
Finally, I am ready. I trudge back upstairs, gather Sara’s stiff body in my arms.
“C’mon honey, let’s go,” I whisper. “Let’s go.”
I take Sara out in the backyard. The long grass out there is falling, succumbing to winter. There’s a full moon in the blue/black sky, a moon almost as perfect and as desolate as the one that hung in the sky the night Emily changed me. Or the one that was there the night Sara and I drove through the streets on our way to drink at the bus terminal. The night she saw Ser… I can’t even say his name now. Anyway, this moon has no halo around it. And it is not smiling at me.
I take Sara out into the cold cold yard. The dog from earlier is still barking. Not so frantically now. As if he has given up hope of getting any kind of answer. As if he were the very last dog on earth.
There’s a shovel leaning against the porch, a rusty shovel that has been in the same exact spot for years. Was there when my mother was alive. She used that shovel to turn the ground in a tiny garden plot she kept here every spring/summer. I remember how she looked back then, kneeling down lovingly in the dark dirt, wearing a blond straw hat and green gardening clogs, pressing seeds with her fingers into the fecund earth. Another bright memory in a brain filled with bat guano. There are a few tomato stakes leaning out there precariously in the yard where that little garden used to be. I get the shovel under my arm, and with Sara’s body slung over my shoulder, start toward there. I imagine that she would like it, to be buried in that plot.
The ground is kind of hard to break, but somehow I get it started, Sara’s body slung down in the grass like some sack of pirate’s treasure that needs to be buried. I dig and dig. It gives me some comfort really, the act of digging, and when I have a suitable grave finished, I am almost sad that there is no more digging to do. I turn Sara’s body over and look at her for the very last time. At the pale face I have kissed and touched. At those ringlets of red hair, almost colorless now in the moonlight. At those hazel eyes, staring off now to where all the secrets are kept. Secrets I would give up a thousand chapbooks to possess. A thousand pints of blood.
“Goodbye, honey,” I say sweetly, touching all that red hair for the last time.
I place her body down into the grave that I have made. I take one last sorrowful look at Sara Miller. And then I pick up the shovel and begin to throw dirt back on top of her.
If there were any prayers, I would recite them.
This is the only one I know.
I go back inside. It is after four now. I go and sit in the canvas chair in the living room. I wonder just what the hell to do now, how to proceed. I think about the immensity of the task at hand, the immensity of the world. There are over seven billon people who crawl around here and that fucker, that Serling, could be anywhere. He could be in the next county. Or he could be in Saigon. I have never felt so alone, so desolate, in my entire life. Even when I was bumming around, sleeping in public parks, eating candy bars for dinner, I never felt this down. Even then, at the core of my being, there was something golden and intact, a belief that I would finally find my place in the sun. Now I will never see the sun. Even in the dark of night. I just suddenly need to talk to someone, to hear their voice rattling around in my skull. Some compassion. Some counsel. Even Juan talking his bullshit would be welcome right now.
Juan? Does this horror movie ever fucking end? The one called survival?
I get up wearily from the chair. Well there’s nothing really to do tonight. Tomorrow I may get the truck ready to go after Serling. Don’t know where the hell I am going to go now that the trail is cold. But somewhere. I think about going out and hunting, drinking. There’s still enough time before daybreak. But the thought of bringing down another person, killing a human being, is suddenly abhorrent to me. I think about how I felt at Kindle College when I was up on that stage, reading to all those people. I felt really connected. In tune. Maybe Emily, sweet Emily, had something there with her Buddhism. Her abstaining from killing. I think about what all the many years of feeding, of murdering, have done to my nemesis. That Serling. Sara was right. I never fucking want to end up like that. An eating machine. With no laughter. No compassion.
No love.
I reach into my pants pocket to pull out my crumpled pack of smokes. My hand touches something else there and I pull it out. It’s that business card from that guy…that Kellar in Oakland. The guy who wants to publish my stuff. I stare at it for a minute or so, looking at the tiny drawing of Icarus in the corner, wings spread out defiantly, ready to fly to the sun.
If you could write a novel that would be great, he said.
Suddenly, I know what I want to do.
It’s true. A billion words will not bring Sara back. They won’t bring Emily back. They won’t bring Juan or Daneeka back. They won’t bring back the people I have killed so wantonly and so carelessly.
But 60,000 words will make a confession.
I go up to my writing room. I put a fresh piece of paper in the machine. I turn on the radio. They are playing Wagner, the overture to the opera Tanhauser. The music breaks defiantly through the room. Like some knight riding to battle against overwhelming odds. I sit down at the typer. A comforting ritual, like digging Sara’s grave almost was. This is what I need to do right now.
I begin to type. I type and type, pounding the keys in time to the music that comes out of the radio, the souls of long dead geniuses. I jab the platens into the paper like a fighter possessed.
Hours pass and I type. Days pass and I type. Not thinking about sleep. Not thinking about blood. Not thinking about anything but the next word. The next sentence. The next paragraph. I write about everything. Becoming a vampire. Emily. Sara. My mother and father. Jobs. Writing. Everything gets churned up and spit out onto that damn white paper.
As white as a vampire’s skin.
Finally, after 290 pages of this, I write The End at the bottom of a page. I tear the last page from the typer, add it to the neat stack of pages I already have.
“So, I’ve written a novel…” I think.
I don’t feel any exaltation at all, now that the book is finished. I just feel the desolation coming back in waves.
I hear the birds outside the house, chirping and whistling. It’s dawn now. I don’t know how many days have passed while I was working on this thing. Two or three at least.
What to do now? I know that I am going to box this thing up and send it out to
Kellar on the West Coast. That is a certainty. Whether it is publishable or not is immaterial. I’ll let him decide. I’m beyond it.
And then?
Well, the plan was to get the truck ready and go after Serling. I’d have to sun proof all the windows in some way of course, in case I’m forced to sleep outdoors while I’m searching for him.
And then, I think again about the immensity of the world. All the places there are to travel to, all the places Serling could be hiding. He could be at the bottom of the fucking ocean for all I know.
I let out a sigh. Light my millionth cigarette. Listen to the birds, oblivious to everything but catching the early worm.
Maybe I’ll just go outside, I think. Catch the sunrise.
The End.
Copyright © 2018 by Michael Walker
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The Vampire Henry Page 19