Suburban Vampire: A Tale of the Human Condition—With Vampires

by Franklin Posner

  “Anyway,” Jack continued as soon as Irene left the room, “that lady you met today? Bad news. Her name is Elizabeth. She’s the head of the local branch of Enforcement. And she doesn’t play. She’s like the vampire equivalent of a mob hit man.”

  “Hit woman.”

  “Whatever. Suffice it to say, she’s not known for cutting much slack. You rub her the wrong way, you’re as good as dust. You dig?”

  “Yeah, I dig.” Scott had regretted his actions at the mall because of his own shyness and desire for privacy; now he regretted them as a potentially fatal decision. “Well, they know who I am, where I live. I’m stuck here. What do I do?”

  Jack stroked his chin. “Hmm. Well, I guess, now you are stuck. Damn. I did not see this coming. Not so soon.”

  “I’m going to have to appear, Jack. I don’t see any way out of this.”

  “We could get out of the country. I’ve got contacts in Rio. They’d be more than happy to—”

  “No. I am not leaving. And I am not running. If I have to face them, well, then I guess I have to face them. Consequences be damned. Besides, I don’t know anyone in Brazil.”

  “Okay, okay. Jesus, you really do have a hero complex, don’t you?”

  “Me? A hero complex? Uh, no. But I think you may have had a point about me not being what I used to be. The old me would probably have taken you up on that plane to Rio. But that ain’t me anymore. Now I take a stand.”

  “Well, I’ll be there with you. When is your hearing?”

  “This Tuesday. Eight o’clock.”

  “Tuesday at eight. Got it. I’ll see you there.”

  Jack turned to leave, placing the plate with the cookies and still-full teacup on the antique walnut accent table in the foyer, when Scott stopped him. “Jack, you know, what happened is your fault. You did this to me. You’re responsible, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe. Maybe. But you know, the House would agree with you. I may not get off scot-free myself here. See what I did there? Scott, free? Yeah.”

  Jack started to reach for the door when Scott stopped him again. “You’ve been real helpful, I can’t deny that. But you haven’t told me everything.”

  “No, I haven’t, Scott. Everything would take a hell of a lot of time. But eventually, you will learn.”

  Jack again reached for the door, and again Scott stopped him. “I got this feeling, at the mall, when the gunman showed up. Like, I don’t know. A slight shiver, an odd sensation, like I could tell he was going to do something terrible. Is this a vampire power? To sense when people are about to do wrong?”

  “Yeah. It’s a thing.”

  “I knew it!” Scott balled his fist. “Yeah, vampire power! We can use this to do good! Can you think of all the bad stuff we could stop—”

  “Whoa, whoa, slow down there, Cochise. Yeah, that…feeling. It’s not what you think it is.”

  “Okay, fine. What is it?”

  “Well, we call it the presimti, and it’s just not something we use all that often. Some say that the presimti was originally developed in order to identify competitive predators. Others say that it’s an aid for scavenging. You know, we can tell which human is about to shed blood, so we just follow the trail and let him do the business, and we get the blood. It’s why vampires have shown up on just about every major battlefield in most of history.”

  Now, that is some history you don’t read about in any textbook. Scott’s father had served with the 101st Airborne in World War II, having survived the Normandy invasion, the Battle of the Bulge, and several other engagements. The thought of his father facing not only Nazis but vampires, too, was not exactly comforting, but he knew if anyone could kick vampire ass, it was his dearly departed dad.

  “Oh. When you put it that way, it’s really kinda creepy.”

  “Yeah, well, like I said, it’s a sense we don’t often put to use. Like some vestigial evolutionary anomaly.”

  “Okay. I get it.”

  Jack was sure Scott’s curiosity was satisfied, which was definitely not the case. He turned to leave once more, only to be stopped again. This was getting old.

  “Jack, one more thing. Why did you turn me?”

  Jack sighed and then quickly looked at his wrist, where his watch should have been but wasn’t tonight. “Oh wow, look at the time. Sorry, gotta run!” He lit out the door and ran into the night.

  Scott went out after him, but he was long gone. He stopped on the front lawn of the green-trimmed white ranch house, just staring into the night, the question that had been nagging him most remaining unanswered.

  Why doesn’t Jack want me to know? Not to sound too obvious, but it’s really suspicious.

  CHAPTER 12

  Scott heard the faint rapping on his bedroom door.

  “Who’s there?” he asked, to no audible reply.

  The doorknob slowly turned, and the door gently creaked open. The footsteps were light on the hardwood floor. Slowly, quietly, the figure entered the room, the sound of ruffling fabric the only noise it made. As Scott’s vision began to unblur, he started to focus on this figure. He could not believe who it was.

  Dawn Rhinebeck.

  Dawn Rhinebeck was standing before him in his bedroom. The beautiful young redhead was wearing a short floral-pattern sundress, much shorter than Scott had ever seen her wear before, the hem some inches above her knees, revealing her long, shapely legs. Scott approved.

  Dawn closed the door and then faced him, her graceful, smiling form slightly trembling from excitement and nervousness for the act that surely was to come. She slowly stepped toward the bed as she lifted her graceful hands to her shoulders. Her hands moved to the straps of the pretty sundress and slipped them off her shoulders. She allowed the sundress to slip down her statuesque frame to the floor. She was wearing nothing underneath. Scott definitely approved of that.

  Her body was slim, her hips narrow, her breasts small and round. Scott observed that her body was different from his ex-wife’s—Laura was much curvier, but not fat, her hips wide and breasts large. Some men preferred one body style over the other; not so Scott. It was all good to him. Besides, he hadn’t much experience with women, anyway, so who was he to complain?

  And he certainly wasn’t complaining now. He rose from the bed and approached the virginal young girl, her body shaking with anticipation, her breath heavy and labored. Scott reached for her; his hands caressed her face, her breasts, her body. Her skin was soft and luxurious. Her soft hand stroked his chest (hairy though it was, she didn’t seem to mind), the little fingers curling his chest hair and then snaking upward around his neck.

  He pulled her close to him. He could feel the heat of her beautiful figure as their bodies touched, her small breasts pressed against his chest.

  He kissed Dawn. He kissed her long, hard, and deep, tasting the sweetness of her mouth, her soft little tongue struggling against his. He began gently kissing her soft cheeks, trailing kisses to her ear, teasing her earlobe and then down to her neck.

  She moaned in ecstasy as she leaned her head back, allowing Scott access to her long, graceful neck. He luxuriated in the soft flesh, the sweet young woman moaning gently with every touch of his lips as he kissed her neck.

  Her neck. As he kissed the soft flesh, he could feel her pulse pounding like a bass drum, reverberating through Scott’s being. He could feel the blood flowing through her veins.

  The blood. He could smell the blood. The smell infected Scott, infected his mind, and infected his hot desire. The madness was overwhelming; he could no longer control himself. Unbridled passion gave way to hunger. A deep, insatiable hunger. A thirst for blood.

  A thirst for Dawn’s blood.

  He could not stop the fangs from jutting out of his jaws. He could not stop the hunger.

  Without further thought, he plunged his fangs deep into Dawn’s neck. Her arteries began spurting the thick red fluid as Scott drank deeply and her passionate moans turned to shrieks of agony and terror.

  Scott
bolted upright in his bed in sweat-drenched panic. He tried to catch his breath and then realized he had no breath to catch. He gradually calmed himself down, assuring himself that this was just a dream, and sweet, innocent Dawn Rhinebeck was nowhere around.

  What the hell was up with that? It started so well and then went sideways real quick. Is this some kind of prophecy? Am I meant to hurt her or something like that? Damn. Now would be a great time for a vampire therapist.

  Thoughts raced through Scott’s mind, none of them comforting. In the gloom, he looked to the digital alarm clock on the nightstand at the head of his bed: 3:33 a.m. He knew from watching horror movies and supernatural thrillers that this was the devil’s hour, the time when the veil of this world was its thinnest and evil could play freely. Scott wasn’t sure why that was. After all, he read the news; he believed that evil didn’t keep to a set schedule.

  As Scott came to that realization, he began to notice a presence. He looked about the darkened room. His night vision was of course heightened now that he was a vampire, and the light that streamed in from the moon cast some illumination. But one corner of his room seemed darker than the rest. Then he heard the laugh. A cloying, sickening giggle. It seemed to be aimed at him as it issued from that corner.

  “It had a naughty dream, it did, yes,” came a voice that Scott somehow thought was not exactly high-pitched but childlike—if that child had been smoking two packs a day for the past fifty years.

  Scott looked back to the black corner. He could begin to make out a small, doll-sized, humanoid figure slouched down in the corner. He could discern arms, legs, and a head but no further features.

  The creature kept up its perverse laughter. “It dreams about a pretty girl, yes, does it? My love always dreams naughty things about pretty girls.”

  Scott stared in fascination at the creature huddled in the corner. This had to be one of the negative side effects of being a vampire, he thought. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  It just kept giggling. Scott did not see what the creature found particularly humorous.

  “It wants to know who Tommy is,” the creature said. “It has no idea who Tommy is!”

  “Tommy? So, are you Tommy?”

  “Tommy is Tommy.”

  “Wow, that was helpful. Not. What are you, Tommy?”

  “Tommy is Tommy! Tommy told it that already!”

  “Yeah, but that’s not exactly the basis for a decent conversation, now, is it? So, please tell me, what is Tommy?”

  “It wants to know! It wants Tommy to tell it what Tommy is, oh yes, but it cannot comprehend. No, it is too stupid to comprehend. Stupid and useless, my love, yes, it is.”

  “Whoa, whoa, wait a second. Where do you get off calling me stupid? Tell me who you are, right now!”

  “Tommy is Tommy. And Tommy is its Tormentor.”

  “My what?”

  “Tormentor! Tommy is its Tormentor! That is what Tommy does for it. Tommy torments his love. Tommy loves his love; he is the only one who does.”

  “What the hell are you babbling about? And will you stop calling me ‘it’? That’s really creepy.”

  “Tommy said it would not comprehend! It is stupid. Tommy knew this, didn’t Tommy? Yes, Tommy did, yes.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you’re a—?”

  “Tormentor!”

  “Tormentor. Yeah. What is a Tormentor? And make it quick. This has been a real weird night so far, and I’d like to get this over with.”

  “Tommy knows it is frustrated, yes. Tommy likes it when it is angry, when it is sad, when it thinks naughty things about pretty girls.”

  “So is this a new thing? Is this like a curse or something?”

  “A curse, yes, like a curse, Tommy is. But not a new thing! No, not new. Tommy has been with it all its life.”

  Scott certainly did not find that comforting. This thing had been with him all his life, and he was just now getting wind of it?

  “Yes, all its life,” the creature continued. “But it could not see Tommy, no, my love, it could not see Tommy. But it heard Tommy. It heard Tommy tell it the truth, poor thing, about how stupid it was, how no one could ever love it, yes. Except Tommy, oh, Tommy loves it. Yes, he does.”

  “All my life?”

  “Yes, but it could never see Tommy before. Now that it is sad and that its soul went away, it can see Tommy. Now that it is a monster, now it sees Tommy.”

  Scott’s discomfort was only increasing. He also began to feel hate toward the creature, this Tormentor. And not just because it was annoyingly vague.

  “Yes, Tommy has seen it, all its life. Tommy has seen it when it was young, when it was in school. When it cried to its mother about the bad boys who hurt it. Tommy saw it when it was with its woman, its only woman, the only woman who could ever love it. And now its woman is gone, and it is unloved. Oh, Tommy has seen it when it is sad, when it is happy, when it cries, when it laughs, when it reads its holy book, when it masturbates—”

  “Okay! I so did not need to know that. I get the picture.”

  “Oh, does it?”

  “Yeah, yes, I do, and stop calling me ‘it’! That’s really getting old!”

  “Oh, it is ashamed of itself, my love. As it should be. It is a dirty, filthy boy. Bad, bad boy! Stupid, shameful, disgusting boy!”

  That did it. Scott walked over to the corner where the creature sat and reached down. Much to his—and Tommy’s—surprise, he was able to pick the featureless, air weight, black thing up and squeeze its throat as he glared at its empty face or at least at the place where its face should have been.

  “No!” Tommy cried. “No! It is not fair. It never could hurt Tommy before, but now it can! It hurts Tommy! It is not fair!”

  “Look, you little prick, what is your game? Why are you here? Answer me!”

  “No game! Tommy does not play a game! Tommy has a job to do. Tommy only tells it what it needs to know. Oh, why does it hurt poor Tommy so?”

  Scott thought back upon his life, about the negative thoughts that he had had about himself. He thought about the times he had believed what others said about him but only when it was negative. And now he knew the true source of those thoughts. And he knew this creature was annoying yet ultimately powerless. Scott was angry, first at himself for believing the lies but quickly turned his anger upon the thing that had been feeding him those lies. And now was the time for some payback.

  “I am not the same man you haunted all his life, the man who listened to your lies, to your taunts. And I am not ‘it.’ I am Scott Campbell. I am done with your little games. And I am done with you.”

  “No! It needs Tommy! And Tommy needs it!” The sickening laughter long stopped; Scott only squeezed harder on the creature’s tiny neck, which seemed to shrink in his grasp.

  “I command you, Tommy, in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to be gone from my life, to be gone from this house, to be gone!”

  “It thinks it can get rid of Tommy so easily, but it doesn’t know. It needs Tommy. It needs Tommy!”

  Scott just kept tightening his grip around Tommy’s throat, and the creature kept shrinking in his grip, until it shrunk into nothingness. Scott shook his head. “Well, this night has sucked so far,” he said.

  He then fell back upon his bed into a restless sleep.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Guys, get in here,” Mason called out to Kevin and Grace, who were in the squad room of the detective division of the sheriff’s office. Kevin quickly concluded a phone call with a confidential informant, and Grace closed a folder containing pictures of a recent homicide scene. Both headed into Mason’s office.

  Mason returned to his office chair behind the desk that held a couple flat computer screens, framed photographs of his family, a miniature totem pole, and a keepsake ceramic Marine Corps bulldog statuette. Mason’s service in the US Marine Corps was one of the many reasons why Grace respected him as much as she did, for she herself had been a marine, having served honorably d
uring her four-year enlistment. Her term of service concluded in a harrowing tour of duty in Iraq during the early days of the War on Terror. While Grace no longer served, Mason was in the Marine Corps Reserve, where he held the rank of major. So Grace looked on him as doubly her superior, as she took to heart the old adage that once a marine, always a marine.

  “What’s up, Sergeant?” Grace asked.

  “Yeah, are those the pictures of the Cleary murder on your desk? The deputy DA has been asking about those, so we’ll need to get them to the DA’s office ASAP. And Kevin, did you talk to that CI about that attempted sexual assault at the community college?”

  Kevin told Mason that he had just gotten off the phone call with the informant.

  “Good to see you’re on the ball,” Mason said. “Hey, about the mall shooting: have you guys gone over all the video footage yet?”

  “Most of it,” Grace responded. “There are a couple of videos where you can hear some of the shots, but most of the footage is grainy and shaky. You really can’t see much.” Several mall patrons had taken videos with their cell phones during the shooting. Most of them submitted copies of their recordings to the sheriff’s office for investigative purposes while retaining the originals and posting them on various social media sites.

  “Yeah, that’s how it often is,” Mason said. “Are you sure you didn’t miss anything?”

  Kevin and Grace looked at each other and then turned their blank stares to the sergeant. “No,” Grace answered. “I’m pretty sure we got every bit of footage we could find.”

  “Well, that’s just as well. I’m sure we have more than enough to put this guy away. Besides, he’s gonna plead out anyway. Thank God. It means we won’t have to drag the victims through that mess again. But anyway, I was just forwarded a YouTube link to a cell phone video of the shooting that I think eluded us. It was posted early this morning. It’s pretty clear, not as shaky as most of the other footage. The guy who posted it claims it’s legit. According to the description, he took cover in a jewelry shop right next to the site of the shooting and shot the video through the closed glass door. It’s pretty wild.”