Alison.
Daisy wanted to see her daughter and her grandchildren, and even stepped out onto Halifax Street in the direction where 7th intersected, but she stopped before the crossroads and thought of how they would react. Alison, her youngest, might be in her thirties now, but no one, no matter how strong, was prepared to have their dead mother rise from the grave and come for a visit.
At 7th, she turned the opposite direction, making her boot-hobbled way toward Main, and eventually, the long road leading away from Cherry. At the welcome sign, she paused once to say good bye.
Happy Birthday, Daisy
Daisy Margaret spent several nights traveling across the land in a similar way, feeding off the small animals she captured, and hiding in abandoned buildings—old warehouses, sheds, houses both foreclosed and condemned. With the great sweep of foreclosures the recession had brought about, there were more than enough buildings to choose from, especially in the smaller towns and suburbs where people teetered on the edge of poverty.
Her goals were simple for the time, she needed to feed, to find shelter before dawn, and to move closer to the forest where she had spent almost every summer camping with Henry: The Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest. She wouldn’t be recognized as she would in her town and those surrounding it, and with any luck, could lose herself in the wilderness and never risk harming a human soul. From there, she would figure out what came next, for what other path had God left her?
On her fifth night of travel, having recently fed on an opossum—it smelled as foul as it looked and hissed fiercely at her as she hunted it down—Daisy wandered close to an antique store. In the window of the shop stood a tall vanity mirror, placed in an oak frame, outlined with intricately carved grapes and leaves. Out of curiosity, she stepped up to the window and looked at her reflection in the mirror. It might have been the light, she couldn't be sure, but her appearance struck her as peculiar.
Certainly, her gray hair was a tangled mess, and there were clumps of mud stuck to her dress and boots. The sagging lines in her face were as deep as she remembered, but still something intangible had changed.
She pushed and prodded her face with her fingers, touching parts and pulling them taut, when someone from behind said, "Vanity doesn't become you."
Daisy whirled around, looking for the speaker, but the streets were empty. The rest of the night she searched the town for the man, but all the town slept. She knew his voice, slow and even like a warm caress. Nathaniel.
Dawn forced Daisy to find shelter, but she remained awake well into the morning wondering why he was there, and why he had disappeared. What game are you playing?
Waking up was not easy the next night, the hunger pangs clawed at her from the inside, a trapped creature, and she stumbled from the dilapidated house with disdain for the road ahead. When she reached the sagging porch and the rotting boards of the house she'd sheltered in, she noticed something odd leaning against the rickety post holding up what was left of the porch roof. A dark lump laid out like an offering, wriggled when she moved nearer to it. Daisy crouched in a predatory stance, her hunger quickened by the shifting figure.
To her horror, wide, fearful eyes blinked at her in the moonlight. A muffled scream came from behind a gag. A small girl sat against the wooden post tied by an enormous ribbon with an exaggerated bow. Tears soaked the child's face. The breeze stirred the girl’s black hair and she smelled of fresh cream and wildflowers, causing Daisy’s stomach to clench in anticipation of a sumptuous meal.
When the shock passed, Daisy regained her composure, and said soothingly, "Shh. Child, shush. I’m not going to hurt you." She hadn't used her voice since her death, it scratched at her throat, but improved as she uttered more calming words.
Slowly, she approached the child, and announced her actions so as not to startle her. "I am going to step behind you," the girl shook her head vehemently. "I need to loosen your bonds, and then you can tell me who did this to you. I won’t let them hurt you, honey."
The little girl cried again, but allowed Daisy to examine the strips of cloth carelessly twisted around her, enough to cause pain. Whoever did this will answer to God, but first they will answer to me.
"Oh, you poor child." Daisy found the knot holding the girl’s hands together, and worked the ribbon free. She untied the gag across the child’s mouth, who cried loudly into the night, and it took Daisy several moments to calm her again.
"I know I look a mess, honey, but I’m a grandma. I wouldn’t let you come to harm, you don’t have need to fear me." As she said it, she wondered if that were true. If she became hungry enough, could she keep this little one safe from herself? Even now, she trembled with the urge to sink her teeth into her flesh and drink; the sound of the child’s heartbeat pounded temptation within her. "I-it will be all right now, honey. You’re almost free. Can you tell me who tied you here?"
Between sobs, the girl said, "I didn’t," sniffle, "see him."
"Him? Are you sure it was a man?" But Daisy had a good idea who had done this, though she struggled to believe him capable of doing such harm.
She nodded her head, and with her newly freed arm, wiped her nose. Then she squeaked out, "felt like Papa’s arms, when he carried me," after a moment she added, "when I was little." Daisy finished her work, smiling at the comment from the child who could not be more than eight, and moved to face the girl.
"Did you notice anything else about the man who brought you here? Did he say anything to you?"
The red-faced girl thought about it and said, "He had funny shoes. They were black and had, um ... metal snakes on the toes. He told me I was going to be somebody's birthday present." She turned her face to look directly at Daisy, "Is it your birthday?"
Daisy thought about dying and waking to find herself crawling through the dirt of her own grave. "I suppose in a way it was my birthday last week." Does Nathaniel think he’s some guardian angel bringing her to me? Yes, of course he does.
"What’s your name?" the girl asked.
"My name is—."
No, it won't do to have my name mentioned. Daisy Margaret Shaw is dead.
"Call me Anthea," she said and examined the girl’s unfamiliar face. She looked to be little more than five years old. "What’s your name? Who is your papa?"
"I’m Perdy," she said and looked away. "P-papa’s …" the girl choked on the word, "dead."
"You’re very pretty, but ..."
"No! Perdy, Perdita!" The child spat the words out through a trail of snot and tears.
Daisy sat down as the child cried again, and inched near to her. "Well, Perdy, how about your mama?"
"I don’t have a mama," Perdy said between her knees; she had placed her forehead on her folded arms and hidden her face.
This posed an even greater dilemma. What am I to do, Lord? Is this child to be my test for redemption? A desperate need to drink from the girl caused her muscles to tense, her fangs to prick her tongue. She resisted the demands of her body and tried to think of what to do. "Is there anyone who cares for you? A guardian?"
Perdy reluctantly supplied the name of her aunt, and where she lived. "But please, An … Anth …"
"Anthea," Daisy said.
"Yeah, please Anthea, don’t take me back there."
"Why ever not?" she started to ask, but then saw the large bruises along Perdy’s thighs and arms. "Did your aunt do that?"
"No," Perdy shook her head, "my cousin Randy. He—"she kicked a stone down the stairs of the porch. "He keeps trying to get at me, and I won’t let him."
"Get at you? What do you mean?"
Perdy gave Daisy a sour, pointed look, making eye contact; she knew far too much for a girl so young, and she knew to fight against it.
"Oh, dear."
Daisy bit at her lip with worry until she tasted blood. Blood!
"What am I to do with you?" She had to feed soon, or she could not be trusted to do anything for the girl. "I have to go for a little while, but I will be back. Can you
wait here for me?"
"You’re leaving? What if he comes back?"
Daisy wondered the same thing.
"Honey, I’m not like ordinary people. I eat different things than you do, and it might be better for you to go back home and stay with your aunt." The fresh scent of the child hit her nose and set her mouth to watering, the tips of her teeth sharpened, and she warmed at the thought of taking her. "I should take you home."
"No!" Perdy pleaded, "I can’t go back there. He’s a lot bigger’n me, and Aunt Arabella never listens! But I have another aunt in the city. She’s nice. I tried getting there, but someone always brings me back. Can you take me?"
"Do you even know her address?"
Perdita removed a torn envelope from the pocket of her housecoat. The address was smudged, but readable, the paper yellowed and worn from being read and re-read countless times.
Daisy sighed and studied the child’s face. "All right, but I still need to eat something tonight. You’ll have to stay here while I do."
Despite Perdy’s pleading, Daisy left her sitting on the porch while she ran off in search of that night’s quarry.
A rabbit and two small birds proved to be enough to soften the edges of Daisy’s raging hunger, but only just. As she dropped the limp body of her second grouse, she heard a rustling in the underbrush of the forest. Silently standing in the same spot, she listened for the source of the noise—it came from behind her to her right. The shadowy figure moved nearer, closing in on Daisy Margaret.
She pivoted on her heel and grabbed at the dress of the little girl, snarling through clenched teeth, "Perdy! What are you doing here?"
"I got scared Anth—" she stopped mid-sentence, and looked down at the bird carcass. She took a few steps back, her mouth open in horror, and said, "You killed it."
Daisy glanced at the bird and back to Perdy. She sighed and spoke in a softer tone. "Honey, I have to. I need their blood to survive."
She waited for the girl’s response, standing motionless so as not to startle her.
After a few rapid heartbeats, Perdy stepped forward, and knelt down in front of the body. "We should bury it. It isn’t proper to leave it out here." Daisy nodded her agreement.
When they finished burying the bird in its own tiny grave, dug shallow by hasty hands, Daisy said a prayer for its soul. Perdy took her hand and they walked away toward the lights of the city. "I thought vampires couldn’t say stuff like that."
"Vampires?"
"That's what you are, isn’t it?"
"Yes," Daisy said, admitting it as much to herself as to the girl. "Yes, I suppose I am." She shook her head. "Come on, we have a long way to go before dawn."
Old woman and child walked hand in hand for most of the night, until Perdy grew too tired to keep up. Daisy lifted her into her arms, resting the girl’s head on her shoulder. As she did, Perdy whispered into her hair, "Happy Birthday."
While Perdy slept, Daisy ran. The ground rushed by them in a blur, and the grass whipped at Daisy’s legs, tearing her ill-gotten pantyhose more than before. She could not shake the feeling that she was being watched, or worse, hunted. What did this man with the black boots want with her? Was it really Nathaniel? And why, Lord, did he bring me this child? If he knows me so well, why bring me this as a gift?
She tested her limits, staying out at the edge of dawn, before finally settling them into a tool shed in the backyard of a house outside Macon; it was a risk, but there were fewer abandoned houses. At least this shed had few windows and sat at the far end of the yard in the shade of a large cottonwood and a pair of elms. Curling up around the little girl protectively and pulling an old blue tarp over them both, she silently prayed no one would need a hammer or the lawnmower during the day.
As Daisy succumbed to the dark hands of sleep, a thought came to her before she was pulled under: What if she gets hungry?
*
The afternoon wore on, and Perdy awoke hungry. Her stomach growled, but the weight of Anthea’s arm on her chest made it difficult to move. Hot breath fell onto her forehead. It was strange having a woman care for her, all she knew was the kindness of her Papa, the neglect of her aunt, and the torture of her cousin. She never had a mother or even a grandmother to take care of her. Another protest from her stomach, and she slid out from under Anthea’s heavy guard.
She stood up and stretched. When she looked down, the slightly lightened shed showed enough of the old woman. Were there old vampires? In the movies she had seen, all vampires were young and beautiful, or they looked like beasts. This one looked like the women sewing on their porches in the summertime, the ones who all have their grandchildren visit on Thanksgiving and tell their memories like fables to anyone who will listen. Why was this abuela drinking blood?
A noise outside alerted her, and she dropped down near Anthea, watching the light and shadows outside. Then she understood the sound, the laughter of children outside the shed. Careful to make her footsteps quiet, she crept to the small window to peek outside.
Two girls and a boy all near her age played together in the sunlight. They were plump in a way that suggested they were well-fed, they laughed easily, and seemed trusting. She considered whether she could convince them to share their snacks without alerting some adult she was there.
Perdita knew what it meant to be hungry, but for all her faults, her aunt insisted she eat breakfast—it was the only meal she could count on. "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day," her aunt repeated often, which to her seemed to mean it was the only meal anyone needed with regularity.
It took a lot of effort to remove the blocks her guardian had placed in front of the door, but Anthea slept without twitching. Perdy squeezed her thin body between the door and frame to prevent any light from hitting Anthea as she slept. She was just as careful closing it, so as not to make any discernible sound. She’d become adept at sneaking around unheard and unnoticed around her cousin when he sought her out, and her aunt when she wanted to sneak some food from the pantry.
When she got around to the side of the shed, she found the other children who stopped to gawk at the strange girl with tangled, brown hair and tear-streaked smudges now dried on her dark cheeks.
Perdy said, "Hi."
The youngest child looked at her siblings to see what she should do, but neither of them moved nor spoke.
Feeling a little less confident about her nascent plan to befriend these children, she added, "I’m Perdita. Can I play with you?"
"No way!" shouted the boy, who was certain the dirty girl was coated in cooties. The little girl said, "Ok?" while the eldest shushed them both.
Perdita shuffled, distressed at the noise the boy made.
"Perdita? That's your name?" The older girl stepped forward while her brother stared at the grass, his face getting red. "I'm Ima Jean. That's Sally, and he's," she stuck her thumb out hard at her brother, "a grub."
"I'm not a grub!" He made to kick his sister, but stopped himself. The grub sniffed once and announced, "I'm Brent!"
Perdy pointed to the yellow ball Brent held behind his back. "Can I play with you?" The boy tossed the ball to her, and shuffled off into the house across the lawn, his eyes brimming with angry tears. The girls told Perdy not to mind their brother, and together they kicked ball while they talked. "Whatcha doing here, Perdy? Where'd you come from?"
Ima Jean kept a close eye on the wild girl in the dirty pinafore while they chased after the sunny sphere across the grass. Perdy wondered if she should say anything about the shed or Anthea, but found it hard to come up with a good story when the ball shot her way and she had to swerve to kick it. She didn’t see the patch of mud and slipped.
Her feet came up from under her, and she fell to the grass, scraping the side of her thigh on a rock. A small whimper came from her throat, and Ima Jean and her sister stopped their game and came running. Ima Jean said to Sally, "Go get Mama. Perdita's hurt." Ima Jean was old enough to know to get an adult, but not quite old enough to know how make
the blood stop.
The scent floated across the grass and rippled in light waves under the shed door. It swirled beneath Daisy Margaret's buried face, whose eyes shot open, and her hunger tugged her into sitting up. If it were not for the shafts of sunlight coming in through the window, she might have shot straight out after that delicious smell beckoning her, but instead, she held her body rigid, and listened with eyes closed to the sounds that alerted her to a bigger danger than the sun.
Her heart, to her surprise, raced inside her chest. Thought I was dead; Nathaniel never mentioned—
Perdita was gone from the shed, and Daisy heard her crying out in the light. She noted that they were cries of pain, different from those of the previous night, when the girl trembled with fear in her bonds, sure she would die. Raising children and helping raise her grandchildren taught her to discern which sounds demanded attention and which were not so serious. However, the voice of another girl and the coming footsteps of an adult complicated matters. Daisy weighed her options. Should I try to go outside? Should I let her stay here? Perdita was not really her responsibility, but she cursed herself for a sentimental old woman and knew the mother outside would send the girl back to her abusive family.
Daisy had promised to take her to the city and that made her responsible; she fought back the urge to cover herself in the blue, plastic tarp and run out to whisk her off to safety. Better to let night fall and steal her away then, if she could. Besides, she couldn’t trust herself to keep the girl safe when that heavenly scent wafted by on the breeze, reminding her of what woke her in the first place. Although she curled back up into the darkest corner of the shed, she didn't sleep, but waited and listened.
Sticky Situation
The day went too slowly for Daisy, as she was forced to stay immobile in the shed, listening to the sounds of the neighborhood, and smelling the seductive salt scent of sweat off the bodies of humans in the heat of the day. Hunger clawed at her insides, but she knew restraint before, she would master herself until it was safe for her to leave. One of the advantages of her new state was her ability to hear small sounds even far away. Though it troubled her, she had heard the exchange when the mother came out to find Perdy lying on the ground with a scraped thigh and tear-stained face. The appearance of a strange child surprised the woman, but she kept her head, and dressed the injury. She drew a bath and cleaned and fed the girl before starting to ask questions.
Daisy After Life (Book 1): Perdition Page 2