One volunteer is already out there, on his knees, bent over a patch of Swiss chard. His skin black as asphalt. He’s not looking at me. He doesn’t have to. He knows I’ll come to him.
And I do.
“I know why you’re doing this.” My shadow stretches over his back.
He plucks a clump of henbit from the soil.
“You feast on fear,” I say. “I saw how you ramped up the terror, savored the taste of horror, bathed in it like a sick fuck until you destroyed them in the most depraved way possible. And you’re doing the same to me, flashing that goddamn number at me like some sort of fucking weapon, watching me sweat and cringe. If I’m going to die, then let it be. I don’t need to hear a countdown.”
“Are you afraid of death, James?”
“I’m human.”
“Why do you cling to life?”
I laugh, loudly. The volunteers look at me. “Look,” I say, quietly, “you’re not afraid because you can’t die, you made that clear with that…”
I don’t want to say vision.
I feel like an idiot. I’m scared shitless about dying, I’ve bought his whole story. But that’s a lot different than admitting there’s a goddamn immortal on his hands and knees WEEDING A FUCKING GARDEN.
“I will die,” he says. “The universe will end. So will I.”
“Great. You’ll die 50 billion years from now. I’m so sorry—Jesus Christ, I can’t believe I’m having this conversation!”
I stomp away with every intention of not returning. If that crazy little fuck wants to have a therapy session, then he can talk to the cabbage. I’m not going to stand in the middle of a garden and argue about who’s more scared of dying—men or a vampire.
The phone buzzes.
I turned it off.
I stop. I want to leave. I do. I really do. But, shit. I can’t.
And then he says, “Pull weeds with me, James.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“I’m not doing this to you anymore than I’m making the sun set.”
I stifle the urge to laugh like a maniac, again. The volunteers have spread out. A pair of them are only two beds over, repairing drip tubing. I drop on my knees – they sink in the soft earth – and lean over the bed grabbing a handful of betony.
“I’m not talking about death,” I say.
He shakes the soil off the roots of another handful of weeds, gently places it on a green pile. Reaches for more.
“I’m talking about the visions. Why show me that? Just give me the number and be gone, I know what you are. Maybe you fool most people, but I know you’re a disguised beast. You are Death, incarnate.”
I grab a fistful of soil, my fingers scratching stone beneath the ground.
“You feed on fear and death.”
Another clutch of dirt and weeds and another hidden stone, my fingers numb as they scratch the cold, hard surface.
“And now that you’re 10,000 years old or whatever the ridiculous number is, you’ve sophisticated your approach into psychological torture, raping my mind instead of my body. Like you did to the barmaid.”
I pull away the soil, see the rounded stones piled at the bottom of the planter.
I lean my weight on the cold granite, get close to Drayton’s sweatless, darkened features.
“I hope you burn in hell.”
And the stones grind into my knees.
Drayton dissolves into black night. The weeds, the soil, the vegetables transform into the pale face of a child. His lips parted. The taste of his blood lingers on my lips. His essence is light and tender. Delicate.
Innocent.
I like it.
I stand on the cobblestone street, the pavement pressing unevenly on my boots. There’s fog above. The moon hidden. I relish the secret delight, a pleasant surprise as I’ve been wandering the streets in the late hours. I was not hungry, not looking for anything in particular, but my curiosity peaked when I felt the boy moving inside the building. I leaned against the wall, closed my eyes and felt him toss in his bed, struggling with a bad dream. Despite the barriers between us, I tasted his essence like vapor.
I called him outside. Yes, I put a thought in his mind to get out of bed, to open the door and come to me. He did. Man, woman or child, they all do.
And I was not disappointed.
I lean him against the wall, cross his hands on his lap so the nibble on his wrist does not immediately show. How could I ruin such an innocent face? I took his blood from the radial artery. My incisors sharpened to points for puncturing, not tearing. A single, surgical hole opened his circulatory system to my desire.
I dab my mouth with a handkerchief.
His mother is moving inside the apartment. I’m halfway down the narrow street, almost euphoric with delight. A child’s essence. Oh, dear. I quiver with excitement. Ecstasy follows me—
I catch myself against the wall.
A dagger of grief stabs my loins.
I’ve sensed this emotion in others but never have I felt it so intimately. Grief and remorse has never gripped my soul with its sharpened claws. Until now. I’ve always fed on the dregs of humanity, the lost souls, the tainted men and women that care less for others than they do for themselves. There was grief, but never like this. The wailing echoes along the walls, shrieks of a mother’s agony. The father bellows, wrapping his arms around mother and child. Rocking back and forth. Back and forth.
Whatever pleasure touched me rots like fruit caught in early winter. Each cry drives a stake deeper into my belly. Never have I felt such torment. Such loss. I slide down the wall. The neighbors’ lights come on. Men and women cross the street. I have felt loss before, only a faint glimmer. Never something as profound as a child.
His blood curdles in my stomach. I roll to my hands and knees, convulsing.
I splash the pavement red.
“Sir?”
A hand on my shoulder.
A woman stands back. Blue sky above her. Drool puddles below me.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
There’s a pile of weeds across from me. Drayton is gone.
All that’s left is the harrowing emptiness of guilt and remorse.
The woman watches me sit.
Watches me weep.
DAY 1
I stay in bed until my wife’s gone. She doesn’t know about the hospital. She knows something’s wrong; I tell her I’m not feeling well. She knows I’m lying but I can’t tell her the truth.
Tomorrow, I’ll be dead.
Ritual is the armor against insanity. When the house is empty, I make coffee and stretch. I make a lap around the backyard, inspect the plants for insects or disease, pull a few weeds. When my cup is empty, I go into the back room and set up for meditation.
There’s a low table against the wall with a flower vase and a stone bowl with sand. I bow, stab three sticks of incense into the sand and light them. One more bow and I adjust the meditation bench, tucking my legs beneath it. There’s no use in waiting for calm to begin.
There’s the story of the Zen master that’s chased to a cliff by a man-eating tiger. The Zen master clings to a tiny branch just out of the tiger’s reach and as it slowly begins to break loose, he spots a strawberry growing from the crevice. “What a lovely gift,” he says, plucking it from the vine
I bang the tiny bell chime and fold my hands.
Have a thought fuck strawberries.
I listen to the traffic. A container ship is passing through the harbor, blaring its horn. The house settles around me. All so peaceful. Just another day.
Inside, sensations linger. Fear and remorse. An entire universe of emotions roil like a bubbling cauldron. I sit with it, allow it to brew. Allow it space. I feel like a balloon at its limits.
Ash falls from the middle stick of incense. It lands on the rim of the stone bowl. The bowl my daughter gave me.
I’m going to die.
That thought is accompanied by a cold shiver. My bones liquefy. I re
main sitting. I allow space for the thought and the sensation. Will it help if they know daddy’s going to die tomorrow? Should I tell them so we can… what? Hang out? Get closer? How do I explain that I’m treating a vampire and he informed me of an impending lethal stroke? My wife will commit me to an institution. At least she should.
I would.
Ash falls from the other two sticks almost simultaneously.
I’ve embraced insanity. I believe Drayton. I believe he’s been alive for thousands of years, that he’s viciously murdered countless people, drank their blood and feasted on their fear. I believe in monsters.
I do. I do.
He is the definition of a monster. How could those actions be categorized as anything else? But what’s it like to be alive for 8000 years? He started as an animal, abusing power in self-centered fashion. Has he developed empathy? Is there a spiritual evolution of the soul that takes place? Does he have a soul? He doesn’t know, at least that’s what he’ll say if I ask. If I ask him what he is, he’ll answer it like a koan: I don’t know what I am.
I am this.
Are any of us different?
Humans don’t live long enough. Few of us truly transform on a fundamental level. But, hell, give me a couple thousand years and unlimited power and maybe I’ll be cool with picking strawberries from the cliff.
If Drayton was an animal, what is he now? Every galaxy has a black hole.
The incense withers into a pile of ash. The last bit of smoke slithers up the wall, vanishes somewhere near the ceiling.
Sit.
Label thoughts.
Allow space for the moment.
For the tiger and the strawberry.
I’m nuking coffee number three when the doorbell rings. I watch the plate spinning inside the microwave, wait for the countdown to reach zero. Stir in creamer and sip once before going to the front door.
“May I enter?”
“Do I have a choice?”
I know the answer. I step aside, hoping he doesn’t infect the house with death, that my family will not catch it like a virus. It doesn’t work that way. Then again, vampires are only in the movies, so how the fuck am I supposed to know how it works. Maybe death works exactly like a virus.
He stands in the front room, facing the cold fireplace. His reflection looks back from the mirror above the mantel. I don’t care anymore about reflections and holy water. Honestly, I don’t think I care. And that worries me a bit.
I go to the kitchen, make tea. When I return, he’s still standing there. He accepts the cup and saucer with a slight bow and sits on the couch. I go to the window, watch a yacht sail through the harbor. The sail flutters in the hesitant wind, finally catching on the starboard side.
“I’m an overpaid, mediocre therapist,” I say. “Why choose me? Of all the people in the world, why come tell me how much time I have left? I didn’t ask for this.”
I shake my head.
“Doesn’t matter, I guess. I believe you. Maybe I’m dead already and dreaming you up. Maybe I’m a ghost in this house, waiting for a reason to leave. That would make a whole hell of lot more sense than believing a vampire is sipping tea in my front room.”
He’s sitting quite still, cup in hand. He blinks, slowly. Not looking at me, but listening. Always hearing.
“I don’t care, Drayton. I don’t care if you’re a monster, saint, or whatever you are. You know why?”
I sit in the chair across from him, the low table between us.
“Because the sun doesn’t need me to believe. It will rise without me.”
I cross my legs, cup balanced on my knee. Drayton looks up, his eyes large and calm. We sit this way for quite some time. The traffic goes by and the clock ticks on the wall. Our drinks turn cold. Drayton hardly moves, sitting as still and solid as if he’s petrified. His patience emanates like sound waves, penetrating me, filling me. My head buzzes. I am no longer agitated. I’m just here. He’s here.
Sitting.
The breeze blows through the room. My hair flutters.
The front door is open. Terraces have replaced the harbor. Wheat waves along the hillsides, golden and heavy with seed. The sun is near the ridge, grazing the fields. A flock of blackbirds circle in the heat.
An old man lies on the ground. His skin dark from decades in the sun, weathered like leather. His graying, frizzled hair sprays from the wide-brim hat crumpled behind his head. His brown eyes look through me, his cracked lips gaping. His heart is giving up. He labors for breath.
I know this man. He didn’t always look this way. He was younger and stronger, spry and zestful. Time chipped that away, chiseled him down like marble. I have known him most of his life.
The life that’s coming to an end this day.
Decades ago, he lost his wife to childbirth. I was with him for that. We buried her behind the house and laid a stone near the grave, chiseled her name into the surface. His son was born with complications. He died years later. I was there for that, too. We buried him next to his mother. I dug the hole while the man looked on. He wept later, when he was alone. I wasn’t with him, but I felt it. I felt the depth of his grief, the remorse that softens the girders that hold up one’s life, threatening to bring it all down. Turn it to dust.
Together, we worked the fields, sold his crop. Some years were good, others bad. He never paid me, only provided food and shelter, neither of which I need. He never questioned where this dark-skinned lad had come from, or why he stayed. He never asked why – when his body ached and bent to time’s will – I never aged. Some days he just thanked his good fortune.
Other times, he cursed it.
For thirty years, I worked alongside Redmond O’Gallchoir. During that time, I abstained from taking blood. The craving sometimes burned, other times ached. After eons, thirty years is but a small slice. The craving never disappeared, but it ebbed. It transformed.
I had transformed.
No longer the lusting beast, I found space for the craving to exist. Somehow, I had become more and the craving became less. No longer did I chase something that could not be possessed, for the craving would always be that. It would always be empty, never be satisfied.
The old man stiffens. The last breath leaks from him.
His eyes plead. He doesn’t have the strength for words, but I feel them inside. Thank you, he says. And he bestows upon me a gift.
His body becomes light as if charged with particles.
I touch his neck, feel the something escape from him. It is light and silky. An essence that once infused his blood now drains into me. It is not good or bad, not pleasurable nor offensive.
It is filling.
Without taking his life, I find peace.
His body is as light as a sack of dry sticks. I carry him behind the house where I bury him between two large stones. I roll a third to the head of his grave and rest while the sun sets.
No more bloodshed.
No beginning. No end.
Just this moment.
The stone softens, the darkness lifts, and I’m sitting on a chair in my house. Drayton is gone, of course. Whatever fear he once instilled has transformed into something else.
Something that fills me.
What do you do with your last day? Climb a mountain? Parachute out of plane? Do you go do something that’s absolutely insane, something you didn’t have the courage to do until now – now that life is almost over?
Is life about filling the bucket? Is it about finding happiness?
Don’t ask me. I know, I know… I’m a licensed psychologist, I help people with their problems. I have all the answers. But who says problems are supposed to be solved?
Who says they’re even problems?
What do I do with my last day? I do something crazy, all right. I call my clients and apologize for not coming to our scheduled appointments. Three of them reschedule for next week (I don’t tell them I won’t be coming to that one, either, but they’ll understand), Ms. Kampman schedules that afterno
on because she’s got a real problem that just can’t wait (I say yes, of course), and Mr. Cullough says fuck you. Well, not really fuck you, he used other words like I’ll be finding another psychologist. His tone, though, that definitely says fuck you.
I understand.
So that afternoon, I ride my bike to the office. That’s right. With one day left, I mount up and grab coffee, meet Ms. Kampman at the office, savoring the bumps in the roads, the sound of the fountain, the squirrels wrestling seed from the birdfeeder.
Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
I’m not enlightened. Would I know it if I was? No self-respecting teacher ever claims to be enlightened, even when it appears obvious to his or her students. Maybe things have transformed, I don’t know. I don’t think about it, I just go about the daily business of life and wonder why I didn’t do this every day of my life.
Sound boring?
It’s wondrous.
Before dinner, I do the laundry and fold clothes. The carpets get a quick vacuum and the floors are swept. Everything’s in order when I go out to the balcony with a glass of sweet tea and call my 80 year old father. We talk about the Braves, about my kids and his next doctor’s appointment. He can’t talk long, he has to get down to the bank before it closes. I avoid saying things like I’ll be seeing Mom tomorrow, anything you want me to pass along? I don’t even say the predictable I love you.
I just say, “Thanks, Pop.”
“All right,” he says.
I finish the tea and watch the harbor through the branches of a live oak draped with Spanish moss – an oak that’s perhaps a thousand years old. Still doesn’t touch Drayton. So much history in the Lowcountry. My ancestors have been part of it since the beginning. Maybe that’s why Drayton came to me.
Redmond O’Gallchoir. Gallagher.
Reddmond O’Gallchoir is one my ancestors, I feel certain. Maybe that was the moment of Drayton’s enlightenment, although it seems odd to describe a vampire as enlightened. Let’s call it transformation. The moment Drayton no longer took blood but rather absorbed human essence. The moment Drayton no longer took life to get it.
The Drayton Chronicles Page 21