by Joe Humphrey
On the other side of the car, the man was crawling through the dirt, pulling himself into the desert with his hands. His face was a bloody smear of road rash. It was then that Charlie realized that her nighttime vision was improving. She could see the light of the stars reflected in his bugged-out eyes as he tried to push himself away from her. Charlie reached down and grabbed him by the belt and collar and picked him up.
Strange as it was, sometimes Charlie forgot her own strength. She didn’t feel any different, even though she was capable of so much more than she ever had been before. The man’s legs and arms flailed as she held him in place, waiting for Caroline.
“Get down!” Caroline shouted as she ducked down behind the car. Charlie looked up and saw that a car was coming up the highway and dropped herself and the man to the ground just before the headlights passed over where she had been standing.
“Help…” the man tried to yell, but his face was pressed into the dirt and Charlie was kneeling with her knee in his back. Charlie was suddenly glad for the fact that she was wearing jeans and a t-shirt that night instead of the dresses she so often wore when they hunted.
Though this wasn’t exactly hunting. At least, not the way that Charlie understood it. This was simply torturing a man for the crime of having been rude to them in a movie theater. When the car was gone, Charlie stood and saw Caroline walking toward them, carrying the shovel. The man was crawling again, dragging his injured leg, but Charlie didn’t try and stop him.
“What is happening?!” Charlie asked, suddenly feeling something she hadn’t felt in a while: guilt.
“We’re teaching him a lesson about how to talk to a lady.”
“How far are we taking this lesson? Are we going to kill him?” Charlie asked. Though it wasn’t, Charlie felt as though her heart was racing in her chest. The tightness there wouldn’t leave her for the rest of the night. She was standing up to Caroline and it terrified her even more than the prospect that they were possibly about to beat this rude but otherwise innocent man to death.
“That depends. What do you think?” Caroline asked, one hand on her hip, the other holding the shovel against the man’s back. Charlie paused and genuinely considered her question, then shook her head. Caroline sighed. “How about this: Let’s have our supper and then decide, okay?”
Charlie looked down at the squirming man.
“No,” Charlie said, unconsciously lacing her fingers together in front of her belly. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to go into his head looking for an excuse to kill him.”
Caroline looked at her for a long minute, eyes narrowed. The man stared at Charlie, his face wet with blood and tears. Charlie felt bad for him. Yes, he had been rude to them, and yes, in the theater, Charlie had wanted to kill him, but this was wrong.
Charlie felt surprisingly confident in her decision to stand up to Caroline. That confidence, however, didn’t stop her from being afraid of how she would respond. Caroline continued to stare at Charlie as she grabbed the man by the chin and the hair and twisted his head around backward with a sickening, audible crunch. Charlie let out a startled gasp and staggered back.
“Well, that’s decided. Are you ready to eat and get out of here?” Caroline asked, letting the man fall to the desert floor. Charlie stood there for a moment, her jaw hanging open. “Well, come on. No point in letting him go to waste.”
Charlie looked back at the road. It was dark in either direction. She couldn’t believe that Caroline had just killed him like that, for no reason. On the other hand, part of her knew that Caroline was capable of that and so much more. Charlie got onto her hands and knees and took one of the man’s wrists. Caroline passed the straight razor from her purse to Charlie. Her white gloves were covered with blood.
- 26 -
The man’s blood had an unpleasant, fishy flavor that Caroline later identified as the result of a failing liver. The two women sat on the hardpan desert floor, each with a wrist to their mouths. Charlie was afraid to dive into the man’s memories. She knew that they would find something that would ultimately justify killing him. She knew this just like she knew that Caroline had been incrementally chipping away at her resistance, pushing her toward that edge an inch at a time. She had to admit that part of her wanted to take the leap and let go of her conviction, just to stop the pushing, but she wasn’t there yet.
Charlie also knew that Caroline believed she was doing the right thing, even though it certainly felt like the wrong thing. She understood that the nature of her existence among 'the living’ had changed dramatically and that Caroline believed it was part of the fabric of what they were to kill people. Even more, Charlie could feel that this was true, but there was enough of her humanity left in her to keep her from fully embracing that truth. Empathy was a bitch for a vampire and Charlie could feel Caroline growing increasingly impatient with her.
That didn’t change that Charlie hadn’t wanted to kill this man. It wasn’t that she felt a particularly strong level of sympathy for him, but she still had something of a moral code and crossing lines, no matter how shaky they were getting, was difficult. She had to admit when she was in the middle of her uncomfortable moment in the theater, and that man had not only told them to shut up (they hadn’t even been talking louder than a whisper) and called them bitches, Charlie had wanted to kill him. In fact, Charlie had imagined grabbing him by his greasy hair and taking Caroline’s straight razor to his throat. She’d considered it before forcing herself to let it go. The fact was that she’d spent the rest of the movie thinking more about hurting the man than watching what was happening on the screen. But there was a world of difference between the angry fantasies of a bullied teenager and what they were doing in the desert.
She felt Caroline’s hand touch hers. She spread her fingers and allowed Caroline to take her hand, interlocking their fingers. It was something Caroline liked to do when they ate together and Charlie usually enjoyed it too. This time she felt a touch of manipulation and it made her uncomfortable. Caroline was looking at her over the man’s wrist pressed against her mouth. She smiled.
“Look,” she said around the open wound at her lips. “Let go and see who he is.”
The fight ran out of Charlie. A sad defeated part of her was just happy not to hear any anger in Caroline’s voice. Charlie closed her eyes and allowed herself to fall into the man’s memories. They were muddied and unsteady. He’d been drinking from a pint bottle of cheap rum in the theater and reeked of it. Inside the man’s head, Charlie felt herself lurch dramatically to the side as Caroline pushed her toward a specific memory.
- 27 -
Images pulsed in and out of the sticky blackness as the man bled out. After a moment, it occurred to Charlie that the pulsation wasn’t just from the man’s brain dying, but from the memory itself. In it, the man was driving his boat of a car through a suburban neighborhood. His vision was coming to him through a narrow, warped mirror of a tunnel. He brought a bottle of Wild Turkey to his mouth and took a swallow, letting his head fall back momentarily as the alcohol burned in the top of his belly. The car drifted briefly into the opposite lane and he begrudgingly corrected its course.
Charlie could already see where this was likely going and didn’t want to be a part of it. When she tried to pull out of the memory, she felt Caroline hold in place somehow, as though through sheer force of will, she could grab Charlie by the scruff of the neck and push her nose in it.
Early evening sunlight flickered between the trees as the car drove past cookie-cutter duplexes. The man was in that lunatic place between angry and delirious, switching back and forth between drumming his fingers on the steering wheel along with Waylon Jennings on the radio (and completely missing the beat) and punching the dashboard in sudden fits of rage.
“That fucking bitch couldn’t just mind her own fucking business!” he would shout before hitting the dusty dashboard of his Ford Galaxie with the meat of his palm. “I don’t work for her! She’s just his fucking wife! That pussy-w
hipped fucking faggot is gonna fire ME?! I should fire HIM.”
Something black and white flashed in the corner of his eye. He turned the wheel just as he felt the thud and bounce of his car rolling over something in the road. Then the screaming came. The man gripped the wheel and slammed on the breaks, making the Galaxie squeal as it slid to the side of the road. The man looked in his rearview mirror, sweat breaking out on his forehead all the way up into the place where his hair used to be.
In the mirror, he could see the black and white and red remains of an animal. Then the source of the screaming: A little boy, no older than six, was running to the road.
“Oh, Christ…” the man muttered as he pulled the keys from the ignition and opened his car door. Once he was out of the car, he could see that the animal was a medium-sized dog of no discernable breed and that it was very dead. Blood had jetted from its mouth and it was twisted in a way that nothing could walk away from. The little boy was standing over the dog and sobbing hysterically. The man ran up to the boy and frantically put his finger to his lips.
“Shh! It’ll be ok! You’ll get another dog! Please stop crying! Where are your parents?”
He put his hands on the boy’s shoulders but the boy yanked away, looking at him with a fiery hatred. Something inside the man turned and he stood up.
“Fine!”
“You killed Pepper!” the boy suddenly screamed and began sobbing again. Without even thinking or any warning, the man’s hand whipped out and struck the boy in the face. Not particularly hard, but enough to startle him. The boy stopped crying and looked at him, stunned.
“You shut the fuck up, you understand? You don’t want my help? I’ll leave then. I tried to help you. I tried to do the right thing! You shouldn’t be out here by yourself with a dog anyway. Your parents are fucking idiots and it’s their fault your dog is dead. Remember that,” he said as he walked back to the car. “And forget you saw me, you little shit.”
Inside the car, the man’s hands were shaking as he started the ignition and pulled the car back onto the road. Whether it was from fear or anger, Charlie couldn’t tell and didn’t really care. She’d seen enough.
- 28 -
Charlie let the man’s wrist fall from her mouth and into the dirt. She sat there for a moment, blood drying on her lips, and refused to look at Caroline. She felt utterly exhausted and was dreading the conversation she knew she was about to have. Caroline stood up and walked over to her.
“Stand up, honey,” Caroline said, her gloved hands folded in front of her. Charlie got to her feet, deliberate and slow. Charlie was able to see the stars reflected in Caroline’s eyes as she looked up to meet her gaze. Caroline pulled the glove off of her right hand and wiped the blood from Charlie’s lips with her thumb. She let her hand slide down Charlie’s jawline and rest on her throat. It wasn’t clear to Charlie if Caroline meant to choke her or kiss her, but either way, she was suddenly terrified.
“We aren’t playing a game here and this isn’t a democracy. I’ll answer questions but you don’t get to tell me ‘no,’ do you understand?” Caroline said, stroking her fingers along the side of Charlie’s neck. Charlie was acutely aware of how silent her body was when she wasn’t breathing. She nodded. “I brought you here, into this world, as a gift. That only works if you do what I say, when I say it, without question,” Charlie watched as Caroline’s eyes seemed to scan her face, darting up and down and left and right. After a long, uncomfortable moment, she took her hand away from Charlie’s neck.
“I’m sorry,” Charlie said, swallowing the blood and saliva that had accumulated in her mouth.
“I’ve been walking the earth for over a hundred and fifty years. I don’t intend on stopping any time soon. I want the same for you, but for us to proceed, I need to know that you’re with me. Understand?” Caroline sucked blood from her thumb and then slid her hand back into its glove, looking at Charlie the whole time. Reluctantly, Charlie nodded. She wasn’t comfortable with what had just happened, but she agreed that Caroline knew better than she did how to deal with these kinds of situations.
“This guy… this piece of garbage…” Caroline said, nudging the man’s lifeless body with her toe, “Did he deserve to die? Do you feel bad that he’s dead?” Charlie shook her head. “Do you?”
“No,” Charlie said, looking down at the man’s eyes. They stared, sightless, at the night sky.
“No, of course you don’t. Because he was a real bastard and he deserved what he got. Now help me lug him into the trunk before any more cars drive past and see us parked here.
- 29 -
The rest of the evening went surprisingly quickly. They put the man, whose name Charlie never even learned, into the back of his Galaxie station-wagon and drove it a half-mile or so into the desert. Then they pulled him out, buried him in a shallow grave, and drove the car back to the highway. From there, Caroline drove the Galaxie (Charlie, who had finally learned to drive, followed in the Caddy) to a nearby truck stop, where she took the keys to the Galaxie and took her place behind the wheel of the Cadillac. They drove to a diner twenty miles away and Caroline went into the bathroom, took the man's keys off of their ring, and flushed them down the toilet, where they could rust in the septic tank.
On the drive home, Caroline and Charlie didn’t say much. Caroline smoked in silence, occasionally humming along to Patsy Cline on the radio.
“Are you mad at me?” Charlie finally asked, looking at Caroline. Caroline glanced at Charlie and shook her head.
“No honey, I’m not mad at you,” Caroline said, tapping her ash into the wind. Charlie sighed.
“Okay. Are you disappointed in me?”
Caroline shook her head again.
“Nope.”
Charlie sat there staring into the dark, not sure what to say. She felt like she was going to vomit.
“You’re something. What is it?”
Caroline took another drag, then flicked her cigarette butt into the night. She looked at Charlie.
“I’m cautious, hon. That’s all. I need to protect myself, and part of that is being one hundred percent sure that you and I are on the same page always. Make no mistake about it, we are going to occasionally kill people. When I make that decision, it’s because I’m confident that, working together, we are safe in that decision. It’s fine if you want to philosophize and debate the morality of what we do. We can do that all night long when we aren’t in the middle of killing someone. If I make a decision, I need to know that you’ve got my back. Otherwise this thing,” she pointed to Charlie and then to herself and then to Charlie again, “it ain’t gonna work.”
“We’re on the same page. I’ll do what you say, I promise,” Charlie said, trying not to cry. Caroline nodded and pulled another cigarette out of the pack and into her mouth.
“That’s what you said. Now you gotta prove it to me.” She handed Charlie the pack and Charlie cautiously took a cigarette out and lit it. “You can do that, right?” Charlie nodded.
“Yes. How?”
Caroline smiled.
“Just do what I say, when I say it, and save the questions for after. That’s it.”
Charlie nodded her head and let out a long, shaky breath full of smoke.
The Cadillac sailed down the desert highway into the velvet black night.
- 30 -
That night, as Charlie stretched out onto her mattress on the floor, Caroline entered the secret room wearing her white flannel nightgown. She knelt onto the mattress and pulled Charlie over so that her head was in her lap. Caroline stroked Charlie’s hair, which was getting long and in need of a cut.
“You’ve very important to me and I care about you so much. We’re going to be just fine, I know it.”
Charlie shivered. It had never occurred to her before that moment that they might not be okay, and the thought of what ‘not okay’ might look like scared her deeply. Still, scared as she was, she felt herself being pulled into that black, dreamless place she went to every nig
ht. The timeless place where thoughts blew away in the wind before they had time to formulate into coherent ideas. The last thing she saw before falling into the abyss was Caroline’s beautiful face smiling down at her, her eyes with that milky, soaped over quality that Charlie occasionally saw out of the corner of her eye. She wanted to scream but her eyes closed and she was gone before her mouth could open.
CHAPTER FOUR
- 1 -
In the late winter of 1974, Charlie finally found someone she really wanted to kill. It was a direction Caroline had been gently pressing her toward, but the right person just hadn’t presented themselves — and it did need to be the right person. While Charlie had come a long way regarding hunting, she was still uncomfortable with the idea of killing someone outright, with premeditation.
Though the further they got from the experience of killing the man from the movie theater, the more comfortable she became with it. Caroline had been right all along, and Charlie felt silly for having questioned her. Of course he had done terrible things. She should have seen that from a mile away. People who behave like how he behaved in that theater didn’t get to that place without damaging some people along the way.
More than having participated in the man’s death, Charlie was haunted by the face of the little boy and the image of his poor little dog, twisted and crushed in the road. When she thought of those things, she found herself wishing that she had killed the man personally. Charlie had always been very protective of animals, so when she saw how he’d reacted to having killed a child’s beloved pet, she was more than happy to end his tenure on planet earth.
When she considered what she might have done differently with him, the one thing that stood out the most was that she wished she hadn’t gone looking for a reason to kill him beyond the fact that he’d already shown them the kind of person he was. That and the fact that Caroline knew he deserved to die. Charlie regretted not trusting the evidence at hand and Caroline’s opinion, because she hated having that memory of the dead dog and the little boy in her head. It was almost worth compromising her already eroding principles just to avoid having to sift through the mind of some garbage person, looking for the worst thing they’d done so that she could feel comfortable killing them.