by Joe Humphrey
Then another, more upsetting thought passed through her head. She imagined Caroline meeting up with her old vampire friends and handing over this supposedly priceless gift, this untouchable man, and being forgiven for her transgressions. Being told that whatever she’d done to get herself banished out of California was absolved and she was welcome to come back to California and be among her kind again. Her REAL kind. Not just some straggler kid she’d picked up and was keeping as a kind of glorified pet.
This last idea made her stomach drop and turnover. She didn’t like to think about the dynamic of their relationship. She knew that if she started analyzing her life, things could very well come unraveled. There were too many questions that needed answers and too many dark corners that would surely reveal monsters if she started poking around with a flashlight.
Caroline’s relationship with her old vampire associates was one of those dark corners. Charlie had asked about Caroline’s life before coming to Arizona, and she’d always received ambiguous, vaguely threatening responses. It was always that other vampires are devils and liars and corrupt and evil. That Charlie is better off not dealing with them until she’s much older, if ever. It always scared Charlie enough that she didn’t ask further questions, but sometimes when she was in bed, looking at the ceiling in the darkness, she wondered just how far removed Caroline was from those other vampires. She talked big about how happy she was to live her own little life out in the desert, but her lifestyle and ambitions seemed stifled in the little house in the suburbs. There was no getting around the fact that Caroline belonged in a big city, not out here on the outskirts of Flagstaff, watching TV and sewing all night. And if they were so awful, why is she suddenly in such a hurry to get back to California? The answer was obvious to Charlie, and it was something she'd always suspected, which is that the California vampires aren't the monsters she made them out to be. They rejected her, so she hated them. Knowing Caroline as she did, this made perfect sense.
It was clear to Charlie that whatever had happened to cause Caroline to leave Los Angeles had been dramatic enough that Caroline had to completely change her life. While Caroline rarely talked about her life before settling in Flagstaff, Charlie had gleaned enough information to figure out that Caroline had once been quite wealthy, and lived a lifestyle that was suited to that wealth. Caroline still had money, but she didn’t have the lifestyle, and Charlie got the sense that she missed it.
All at once, Charlie found herself both terrified and exhilarated. The idea that, maybe, Caroline could come back and tell her that they were moving to California would be a dream come true. On the other hand, what if they told Caroline and she had to choose between Charlie and California? Caroline had explained the fact that Charlie was technically not supposed to exist. Charlie had pieced together that one of the main reasons Caroline lived in the suburbs instead of the city was that she didn’t exactly live by the laws the vampires used to govern themselves. One example of that is the fact that Caroline flipped Charlie without permission. Another rule Caroline had broken in flipping Charlie was that Charlie had been too young. While she never said how old a person had to be before they could become a vampire, it was apparently older than sixteen.
Charlie sat down on the couch in the living room, still in her underwear and Ziggy Stardust t-shirt, and it came to her that she had no idea how old she was. For the first time in her life, she had to do the math. It was October of 1973 and she’d been born in January of 1955. That meant she was eighteen. She didn’t have any ID and didn’t know how to go about getting one. Not that she really needed it for anything, but she thought that if she was eighteen, she’d like to be able to prove it. She also kind of wanted to vote. She didn’t know exactly how voting worked, since she’d never done it, but watching Nixon become president had motivated her to at least consider voting in the future. As far as she knew, she had no social security card (though she did have the number memorized) and while she'd learned how to drive, she had no driver’s license. Given their nocturnal lifestyle, she wasn’t entirely sure how she would go about getting a license. Caroline had one, she was sure, but she had no idea if it was legit and how she got it.
Caroline had all those documents. She even had a passport. The legality of these documents was certainly dubious, as they obviously didn’t use Caroline’s real age, and probably not her real name either, but did they function? Charlie thought they might. Charlie suspected they’d been given to her by her fellow vampires, either before she left or as a parting gift.
There was a pack of Chesterfields sitting on the coffee table and Charlie leaned forward and picked it up. She turned it over in her hands a few times before pulling one out and popping it into her mouth. They rarely smoked at home, and even less often inside, but Charlie was alone and enjoyed the momentary thrill of doing something that Caroline might not approve of. She popped a match from the book that was tucked under the cellophane and lit her cigarette. The smoke made her momentarily light-headed and closed her eyes.
The clock on the wall told her it was almost eleven and Charlie wondered how far Caroline was from home. It was a four-hour drive from Flagstaff to Vegas, and she assumed Caroline had left somewhere around nine or ten. She usually woke up an hour after sundown, and this time of year, it started getting dark around seven-thirty. She would have had to pack the man into the car, clean up the pantry and take off. Then, once she got to Las Vegas and did whatever it is she was going to do there, she’d need to check into a hotel and sleep until sundown the following day before driving home again. That meant that Charlie wouldn’t see Caroline until sometime tomorrow night. Charlie had never been alone in the house for that long before.
She stood and put out her cigarette in the ashtray on the end table and walked over to the stereo cabinet. Sitting on the turntable was one of Caroline’s John Denver records. Charlie returned this to its sleeve and looked for one of her own records. She smiled as she pulled The Doors first album out, dropped it onto the spindle, and lowered the needle. She turned the volume up far louder than Caroline ever would have allowed and walked back down the hall to the bedroom.
Charlie turned the light on and looked at the room. It was a simple affair, with no artwork on the walls other than a cheap-looking reproduction of a painting of a beach somewhere sunny and blue and far from Arizona. Charlie wandered over to Caroline’s nightstand and stood there for a long moment, contemplating whether she wanted to cross the line she knew she was going to cross. She fingered the little handle on the front of the drawer before finally pulling it open.
The first thing she noticed when she opened the drawer was a little green glass bottle with a rubber dropper in the lid. She picked this up and looked at the label. It was morphine. She shook the bottle and listened to the liquid slosh around inside, then put the bottle back. Beside it was a ratty, yellow, eight-by-ten envelope with a string clasp. Charlie carefully unwound the string and opened the envelope. Inside were several photographs. Charlie dumped them out on the bed and picked one up. It was of a teenage boy, no older than fourteen or fifteen, wearing a suit and smoking a cigarette. He leaned against a wall and looked moody. Charlie flipped the photograph over. Written in pencil on the back was James Butler – 1946. She looked at the photo again. Something about the boy’s eyes was unnerving. It was as though she could feel him staring at her and it made her clamp her legs together protectively. His expression, which she’d originally taken for sullen, now looked lecherous, even predatory.
Charlie put the photo back into the envelope and picked up another. It was of a nice-looking car, though Charlie had no idea what kind of car it was or who it belonged to. There was no writing on the back. She dropped the photo into the envelope. She picked each photo up and looked at it before returning it to the envelope. Most of them were of people she didn’t know, and only a few had dates, ranging from the 1920s to the late 1940s. One photo showed Caroline, looking far less manic and cartoonish, sitting at a table in what looked like a restaurant. She
was sitting with two other women and that teenage boy was there with her. His expression was far less menacing in this photo. Caroline looked serious and uncomfortable, as though she didn’t want to have her picture taken. Charlie wondered if these people were vampires, and thought that they probably were.
The last photo in the pile was one she’d deliberately saved for last. It was an old-style photograph in a leather frame. She turned this over and looked at the ancient photograph inside. It showed Caroline, dressed in a dress that looked something like a Japanese Kimono, sitting stoically, her hair pinned up in an elaborate bun. The image was at once confusing and startling. Not only because the look was so different for Caroline, but because the photo was so old. In the bottom corner of the photo, stamped in silver, was San Francisco, 1870. Charlie dropped the photo and stood up, waving her hands as though she’d been burned. Something about seeing photographic evidence of Caroline’s age made the rats in Charlie’s stomach start frantically chewing and running in circles. If her story was true (and with this photograph, she had no reason to believe it wasn’t) then Caroline had been alive since before the Civil War.
This wasn’t new information to Charlie, but somehow, she’d managed to gloss over the reality of it in her head. The ramifications of it were too much to handle. There had been plenty of unbelievable, seemingly impossible things that had happened since she’d been flipped, but the idea that Caroline, and by extension, Charlie, could live for hundreds of years without aging was something that had major philosophical and psychological ramifications.
It made her role in Caroline’s life clearer. She’d always thought of herself as a kind of protégé, created to eventually go off and live her own vampire life one day when she’d learned all she could from Caroline. Looking at the old photo, Charlie could see just how lonely Caroline was. She wasn’t a protégé, she was being trained to be a companion. A life companion, in a life that never ended.
Charlie suddenly felt like a bug in a jar and desperately needed air. She dropped the photo back into the envelope, put it back in the drawer, marched down the hall to the back door, and stepped out onto the porch. The night was freezing. She wasn’t uncomfortable and the chill helped clear her head. She took deep breaths that her body didn’t need, but helped her think anyway. She stared up at the sky. It was clear and very dark. As she looked up at the stars, she felt her mind opening to the possibilities of an unending lifespan. She did the math in her head and figured out that Caroline had lived somewhere between six and seven times as long as she had been alive.
A frightening thought came to her: What if Caroline wasn’t training her to be a vampire at all, but to be a captive? She had certainly made Charlie dependent on her and had taken her away from everything she’d known as a normal life.
But then again, had she? Charlie had trouble remembering the year or so before she’d come to live with Caroline. She remembered that she’d been pregnant, but so much of it was a blur. She’d been severely depressed, suicidal even, and her mother had all but stopped speaking to her. She’d gone into the hospital and her mother had left, leaving a note saying something about going back to Tennessee. She hadn’t thought about her mother in so long. Charlie tried to picture her mom in their little house, packing up her meager possessions into their car and leaving her alone in the hospital. It didn’t seem right. As angry and unhappy as her mother had been, she had trouble believing that her mother would take that final step and abandon her.
Suddenly she was angry because her mother had done exactly that. There was no denying it. She had left her alone and Caroline had been there to scoop her up and take her in. The fact that Caroline was hardly doing a selfless act wasn’t lost on Charlie, but she also had to admit that it was a huge kindness Caroline had done for her. She’d not only given her a place to live but had given her this gift of immortality. Now she had to contemplate the shift in the dynamic between her mother, who hadn’t wanted her, to Caroline, who wants her forever. Both aren’t great, but isn’t it better to be wanted than to be abandoned?
Charlie wasn’t sure. Either way, she knew that she wasn’t ready to be on her own, so that meant that she’d spend at least a while with Caroline. Whether that was a few years or a few decades, she didn’t know. While the last couple of years had gone by quickly, her day to day life was often tedious and boring. It wasn’t exactly prison, but it wasn’t freedom either.
Looking up at the stars, she considered the idea that she was paying her dues, and wondered how many other vampires went through a similar experience in their early years. She thought probably quite a few, though perhaps not in such isolation. She knew that Caroline’s circumstances were different from that of her peers.
Something else she considered was that she had all the time in the world. Why was she in such a hurry? Maybe Caroline was keeping her close, but was that so bad? For a little while at least? Her life was tolerable, even pleasant at times. Caroline clearly loved her, in a maternal sort of way, and that was nice. She loved Caroline as well. That had to count for something.
So, which was it? Was she trapped by a clingy, needy, lonely old woman who wanted to keep her forever, or had she been saved by a magical creature who was providing her with a life and gifts she could never have dreamed of? She supposed both could be true at once. So where did that leave her?
Charlie stood with her hands on her hips, looking out into the darkness. She felt like she’d analyzed every aspect of her relationship with Caroline and was still in the same place she’d been when she started. The fact of the matter was that she had nowhere to go, and Caroline was giving her a place to live, protection, and guidance. That was worth something. It was worth a lot. Charlie turned and went back inside.
- 7 -
The bed in her little hidden room was the only place she felt truly comfortable. Maybe it was because there were no doors that lead outside, or maybe it was because she’d finally made the room feel like it was really hers. Either way, she found herself feeling restless and anxious in the rest of the house. Cuddled up under the blanket in her room, she felt cocooned and safe from the pressure of thinking too much. She stretched out and read her book. Rosemary’s Baby. She had wanted to see the movie when it came a few years earlier, but her mother had forbidden it, saying it was satanic. Reading the book, Charlie couldn’t really fault her for thinking it was satanic.
She had no idea what time it was, but she could feel herself getting tired, so it must have been getting close to five am. She folded the corner of the page she was on in her book and rolled onto her back, looking up at the ceiling. It felt weird to go to sleep with Caroline out there in the world somewhere and not in the house with her. She was so used to having her here all the time, especially when she slept. The idea of being in the secret room, all alone in the house, sleeping, made her feel vulnerable. When she slept, she was completely under, unable to wake up for anything. Caroline, on the other hand, was able to be up and around if she needed to be. She had to keep the drapes drawn and the doors closed, but she could do it. That’s how she was able to make phone calls and take care of daytime household business. Business that she didn’t need to leave the house for at least. It wasn’t easy, and she didn’t do it every day, but she was capable of it. Charlie, on the other hand, was completely comatose when she slept.
So, the thought of being asleep with no one around to protect her if, say, the house caught on fire or someone broke in, was unnerving. Regardless, she was falling asleep and there was no stopping it. She hopped out of bed and checked the door. It was locked. Charlie flipped the light switch and slid under the sheet in her bed, trying desperately to fight off the anxiety that was beginning to grip her.
- 8 -
Charlie sat up in her bed. That feeling of lost time was particularly scary. She rarely remembered falling asleep. Her experience was like blinking and losing twelve or thirteen hours. For the most part, she was used to it, but this evening she’d gone to sleep anxious and woken up just as anxious. S
he hopped out of bed and put her ear to the door. Again, she could hear the clock and the refrigerator, but nothing else. She unlocked the door and stepped through the wardrobe. Caroline’s room was dark. Charlie made her way to the hall and into the living room. Everything was as she’d left it. Her magazines were still scattered across the sofa, as they’d been when she went to bed. If Caroline had been home, they would have been neatly stacked on the coffee table.
She let out a sigh and went to the bathroom to shower.
- 9 -
Charlie jumped up when she heard the garage door rumbling up and the Cadillac roll in and cut its engine. Suddenly, she became very nervous about what Caroline was going to say when she came in. While it was a relief to know that she was home, she was also freaking out that Caroline was coming home with bad news. Charlie wrung her hands and walked to the kitchen to be ready to greet her when she came through the door from the garage.
She stood there for a minute, then two. After the third minute, she tentatively approached the door and touched the handle. It turned beneath her fingers and swung open. Charlie gasped at what she saw.
“Please move,” Caroline said, before walking into the house. The first thing Charlie noticed was that she was wearing someone else’s clothes. Pajama pants and a sweatshirt with Mickey Mouse on the front. She looked almost unrecognizable in such pedestrian clothes. The next thing she noticed was that Caroline’s hair was down and in her face, and was filthy. The third thing, and perhaps most alarming, was what she noticed when Caroline walked past her and into the hall – she stank. She smelled like rotten meat and human shit.