"Marsha, let your father out. We need to have a family discussion. Max, you help her."
So we let him out, carefully removing six more valuable-looking silver nails, which Momma cringes from and won't even look at. Soon the coffin lid creaks open and there's my father, dressed in black cape and black pants, white shirt, vest, medallion, and one of those bat-shaped ties I know Momma has always hated—it doesn't go with the outfit—and his eyes are red and gleaming and he makes a claw out of one hand as if he's trying to hypnotize me, and says in a thick, thick accent, "I vant to drink your blllooodd!!"
Then he trips over his cape and stumbles out onto the rug amid an avalanche of dirt that will be impossible to clean up. Somehow he twists around and lands on his butt, and there he is sitting in the dirt, staring up at me while his mechanical bat-tie flaps pathetically, only one of its wings working.
"Marsha?"
"Hello, Poppa."
I help him up, taking him by the hand.
"Brrr! Poppa, you're cold!"
"There's a lot to explain."
AT OUR FAMILY CONFERENCE, a lot that needs to be explained is explained. Max is there, holding on nervously to his hammer and screwdriver, as if that would do him any good. After all, he might become family, or at least Momma wants to allow for the possibility. Besides, he knows too much now.
"After all I've given up for you," she moans, meaning me, not Max. She doesn't care a rat's ass about Max.
And I break in, saying that I had to give up a whole semester at Bryn Mawr to be here minding the house just in case she and Poppa should somehow reappear out of nowhere, and I did take care of Elvira and Vlad just fine, and I can't help it if they hiss and run and hide when Momma comes near them. (They hide from Poppa too. He's really unhappy about that.) And she has the nerve (I almost say noive but stop myself) to tell me to stop kvetching when she, my mother, is the world's greatest kvetch, a Niagara Falls of guilt poured out, a woman put on Earth by God to complain about how things aren't right and make people feel guilty about them. I think the only reason she doesn't want me kvetching is she's afraid I may have inherited some of her talent for it and she wants to make sure that if anybody in this house is going to kvetch, it's going to be her, no competition allowed.
And she says, "Besides, you're not going back to that snooty school anyway."
And when I say, "What?" she explains that there have been some, uh, changes, like she and Poppa are technically dead now, but not in any sense that really matters, they'll just have to keep different hours. Then she tells the whole story about how Poppa dragged her on this Children of the Night Special tour of Transylvania and after days of wandering into one crypt after another something happened and now they're both vampires, which did not, I gather, change her disposition much, or stop her kvetching. Although she's vague on the details, I gather that after some months of bouncing around in crummy coffins listening to Gypsy jokes, and reaching people's necks, not with a stepladder, but by getting people to bend over to look at a map of Bucharest when she asked them for directions (even if she was in some other city), and realizing she was still her old self, not svelte like the vampire-women in movies, she kvetched all the way up the chain of command until Dracula himself couldn't stand her any more and had her and Poppa nailed up in special coffins with silver nails so they couldn't get out. But even then she kvetched so much (he could still hear her; vampires have very good hearing) he finally gave up and shipped the two of them home.
She finishes deciding, "So the best thing for all of us will be that I should bite you, and, ugh, your father can bite Max, and then we'll all be a vampire family together."
Max raises his hammer and his screwdriver and crosses them. When Momma glares at him, he drops them to the floor: clunk, clunk.
I put my hand to my throat. "Momma, Gee, you'll never get any grandkids that way."
Then Poppa pipes up, which is amazing, since he never interrupts when Momma's Decided and Made Up Her Mind About What Is Best. Now he says, "Wait a minute, Honey Love"—a name he calls Momma when he's trying to wheedle something out of her—"sometimes it's useful for our kind to be cared for by mortals, like that nice Mr. Renfield we met—"
And Momma rears up, eyes blazing, fangs gleaming, and she says, "No daughter of mine is going to eat bugs!!"
"That may not be necessary, Honey Love—"
She nods to Max. "Now he can eat all the bugs he wants, but not Marsha Leibowitz."
SO THE FAMILY CONFERENCE ends and I get to stay among the living, and so does Max, although Momma puts the whammy on him and before long he does eat bugs, insisting that they're organic and all-natural and taste like roasted peanuts, rather than simply disgusting. I can't imagine what I ever saw in him.
But he is really helpful around the house, once you get used to his gibbering, drooling, and constantly looking around for insectile snacks. The place seems to be overrun with bugs now and Momma will not allow me to call an exterminator. So, bugs and all, Max and I have to break up the basement floor with jackhammers—and I will kill anybody who asks if it ruined my nails—and dig a pit for the two coffins to rest side by side in their "native" New Jersey earth (with all the Transylvanian earth I could vacuum off the carpet thrown in for good measure), and, by day, that's where my parents sleep.
Yes, I know that vampires are evil and totally given over to Satan and a menace to be destroyed, yada-yada-yada, but she's still my mother and if you know my mother you don't worry about such things as going to Hell. Hell on Earth is having to listen to her kvetching, which she can keep up until Hell freezes over unless she gets her own way.
Poppa has Max fix up a flat-screen TV in his coffin lid and hook up the VCR to it so he can watch tapes during the daytime.
I never return to Bryn Mawr, but after some whining I get to transfer to Columbia, which is in Manhattan, to which I commute as a day student. But I'm under strict instructions to get home every evening by dusk, so I can help her and Poppa out of their coffins and "see them off" for their "evening rounds," as Momma calls it. "Terrorizing the countryside" is what Poppa calls it, as he swirls out the door in that ridiculous outfit with the cape. If he doesn't turn into a bat and fly away, he'd like me and Max to think he does. I'm past caring.
Can you imagine what this does to my social life? Max has moved in. I can watch him eat bugs, or watch TV, or do my homework. I become very studious. I get straight A's. But believe me, romance is not on the roster.
The scary part of all this is that sometimes I am not sure I really am living with my parents anymore, or with two all-devouring things, who will gobble up even me at the end. When your parents are undead, you can never be certain they love you. It causes anxiety, believe me.
Then there is the one time I dare to bring over my best friend Sylvie for a night of shared homework and girl talk—and miraculously she is willing to put up with the bugs and the stench of the place. Did I tell you that vampire lairs smell bad? I could go on and on. . . . I even convince her that Max is a retarded cousin the two of us should lock in the basement (we do, and he sits down there contentedly chomping on bugs). Things are going swimmingly, and I feel almost normal for once, when suddenly I'm not sure what is happening, and there is a mist sliding under the bedroom door, and that mist has red eyes in it and looks a bit like my mother. It might be a dream. I am not sure. I can't move. I want to call out, but I can't, and when I really do wake up there is Sylvie on the bed next to me, pale as the other white meat with two holes in the side of her neck and her eyes crossed and rolled up.
Oy vey. So Max and I have to carry Sylvie out into a deserted lot and bury her in a cardboard box, which is very dangerous because the police might see us, but Momma likes her privacy and won't share the basement (which she now calls "the crypt") with just anybody. And most nights afterwards Sylvie comes floating to my second-floor bedroom window, tapping on the glass, asking to be let in, and before long she's as much a nuisance as Max.
But I feel sorry for her and mayb
e I am even afraid of her. It is not her fault, what happened. But she also has that hungry, hungry, empty look in her eyes, and sometimes I am not sure if it's even Sylvie, just those eyes and a mouth full of sharp teeth that talks like my best friend.
EVERYBODY HAS THEIR BREAKING point, and I have mine. I think I'm already past it. But what can I do? I am not made of glass, that I can literally break.
I get on the Internet. I go to lots of chat rooms. I become something of a celebrity, but everybody thinks I am making this up. People don't take me seriously. They tell me how much they like my stories. The editor of Weird Tales asks me to send him something. I also get people writing to know what flavor of bugs I like, and am I really a hunchback, because hunchbacks are supposed to be the servants of vampires—and I write back, No, that's mad scientists, you dork! because this is my mother you are talking about—and I get some very odd spam, a lot of it from a dead African oil minster turned zombie, who wants to get together with me to share the thirty million dollars he intends to smuggle out of his country in a coffin.
And then at last there is a message that merely says:
I think I can help you. -Heinrich.
Heinrich?
Is your last name Van Helsing by any chance? I want to know.
No, it is Schroeder.
What do you want? I type.
I want to meet you? he types back.
Now this is so mysterious, and everything your mother ever warned you about when messing on the Internet, but when you have a mother like mine maybe you take her warnings with a grain of . . . garlic? (And that's another thing—ever since the Big Change there is no pizza allowed in our house, but I am babbling . . .)
I am thrilled. Also desperate. I am almost ready to fling myself into the arms of the zombie African oil minister, or certainly a mad scientist's hunchbacked assistant as long as his breath smells like garlic, and in such a deranged state of mind I tell my new friend Heinrich Schroeder that I would like to meet him.
So we make arrangements to get together.
At night.
Alone.
In a lonely graveyard near Hoboken.
This breaks so many rules that it just adds to the thrill. So I stay late after school. I eat a light supper at a Pizza Hut and then wait some more, until it is dark. Yes, I know Momma will be mad, but I don't care, I'm that desperate. In any case I know she can take care of herself, and that idiot-retard Max will be able stop eating bugs long enough to cope with any vampire-hunters who might want to sprinkle holy water into the basement, or whatever else they might do.
It'll be okay. I tell myself that over and over as I get off the PATH train in Hoboken and walk down a dark street between dingy buildings, until I come to another street which is even darker and dingier, and my footsteps are going faster, faster, tap-tap, tap-tap like in the movies when the girl is about to get jumped, only I don't get jumped, and eventually I climb through a broken fence and into an old, deserted graveyard. There are such places in the New York area. Not everything is modern and built-up. Probably nobody has been buried here for a hundred years, and if anyone or anything climbs up out of a grave to get me I'll just tell him or it who my parents are.
Not that such a thing happens. Heinrich is waiting for me on a bench, in the one spot where a little light from a streetlamp shines through the gnarly trees.
When he stands up to greet me, like a perfect gentleman, I see that he is big. My head doesn't even come to his shoulders. He is broad-shouldered, like two or three linebackers crammed into one body, and I can see that he's one of these guys whose face is always hairy no matter how many times he shaves, but maybe my senses are getting sharper from hanging around vampires so much, because I can smell him in a good way, not B.O. but an alive odor that excites me more than I can understand, and when he takes my hand in his and his grip is firm and so hard it almost breaks my hand, but warm, I'm instantly in love! Before we even say a word, we fall into each other's arms, on the ground, rolling in the leaves, heaving with such passion that a decent girl like me (ahem!) will have to leave out some of the details.
Later we talk quite a lot, and I pour my heart out to him, the whole story, and he is so understanding. He has seen and experienced strange things too, he says. He believes me. He knows I am telling the truth.
I look into his eyes. I may never look anywhere else again.
"You have to get away," he says.
"But I don't want to hurt Momma's feelings."
"She's a minion of evil, a blood-drinking demon of darkness."
"I know, but she's my Mom. Besides, one tries not to be judgmental about alternate lifestyles."
"That's the college girl talking, not the real you," he says, and takes me in his arms again and once more we are rolling on the ground, making hay in the dead leaves if you will pardon the expression, and oh! I have never felt anything like this and oh! goes on and on, and oh! I don't care what Mom and Dad think, I just want to be with Heinrich.
"I might have a few deep, dark secrets of my own," he says afterwards. "I am glad you are not judgmental."
Then I suggest that maybe we should take the silver nails and nail my parents back into their coffins. It won't be such an inconvenience for them because they're immortal, so we could live out our lives and maybe let them loose again when we're eighty or so—but at the first mention of silver Heinrich hisses and recoils as if I'd handed him a live snake.
Which is very odd. But do you expect me to have a normal boyfriend?
Then Heinrich has to leave. He leaves, quickly.
"I love you!" I shout after him, but he's vanished into the darkness.
THERE IS INDEED HELL to pay when I get home, close to dawn, about the same time Momma and Poppa do, and even Poppa is beside himself with rage, his eyes burning red, his fangs dripping. He's gotten his bat-tie repaired. Both wings are flapping furiously.
"You are one disobedient minion!" Momma screams as she oozes toward me in that odd, rolly-polly slink that is so hard to describe. Her eyes are all fire too, and her fangs are out.
"Damn it, Mother! I'm not a minion! I'm your daughter!"
Just then Max shambles into the room, a gigantic, live cockroach wriggling between his teeth. His back has been broken in several places, almost tied into a pretzel, though he doesn't seem to feel any pain. Vampires really do have powers science can't understand. Max is now a genuine hunchback of the finest quality, two-humped like dromedary.
"Now that's a minion!" I shout.
Momma shouts too, orders to Max, who is surprisingly agile despite his condition, and surprisingly strong, not to mention horrible smelling as he grabs me and drags me up the front stairs like a sack of laundry, while both of my parents are hovering over me, their faces hideous masks with red eyes and gleaming fangs, like something seen in a dream, and the cockroach in Max's teeth seems to be saying, "You're a naughty, naughty girl and you're grounded for life!"
Maybe they've put the whammy on me, because there is a gap in my memory, and when I wake up I am on my bed in my bedroom. The first thing I do is put my hand to my throat to see if I feel warm, and I do. That calms me a little, but I get up woozily, and only gradually discover, to my increasing rage, that the door to my room has been nailed shut, and there are boards nailed over all the windows.
My little prison consists of the bedroom and the adjoining bathroom. Someone or something (probably Max, who seems to have razor-sharp teeth these days) has gnawed a bit of the bottom of the door away, enough to make a slot where food can be slid in to the prisoner.
There's a bowl of soggy Cherrios on a plate, but there's a bug swimming in it and I push it back out.
So that's how it is.
Yes, it is. I can't go to college anymore. I can't go anywhere. I am held prisoner, starving, occasionally able to nibble on the less disgusting things Max provides. (The lunchmeat isn't too bad. I can even manage the stale donuts.)
Every evening I hear my parents rise from their coffins. I hear everythin
g. I think my senses are heightened beyond what is normal. The lids creak, I think, because they like it that way. They could oil the hinges, but it would be against proper vampire style. They go out. They come in a little before dawn, exchanging a few pleasantries. "Did you have a good time, Morris?" "Yes, Honey Love." Sometimes I overhear a few words about, "What are we going to do with our daughter? What can we do?" followed by assurances (from Poppa) that all parents go through this with teenaged daughters and things will work out.
Yes they will. Thank God for the Internet. Max is too addled and I don't think my parents ever quite understood what computers are for, particularly a wireless connection through a laptop. (They've ripped out my phone.) If I am typing away, they think I am doing my homework.
("Could we let her go back to school?" Poppa asks. "She's still working so hard." Momma just hisses like a snake and that settles that.)
I type away, day and night. By day, idiot Max the hunchback is there to make sure I don't escape. At night, my old friend Sylvie still hovers outside the window like a Halloween version of Tinkerbell in a trailing shroud, tapping her skeletal fingers on the windows, asking me to let her in. I don't, but she's still out there, certain to make sure I can't go out.
Where did she get the shroud anyway? She was wearing jeans and a top when we buried her. But I can't bring myself to care anymore.
I type and type. I find Heinrich again, and we exchange e-mails fast and furious.
I too am a creature of darkness, he types. You might not be happy with me. I have a terrible secret.
Yeah, yeah. I DON'T CARE!
You sure?
YES I AM SURE. COME AND GET ME!
I shall rescue you, then, as a knight would rescue a maiden imprisoned in a tower. It's very romantic, really.
Yes, it is, and I spend my days and nights dreaming of him, imagining that I am with him, that he is in my bed, doing things a nice girl like me doesn't talk about. I spend hours before my mirror trying to make myself presentable for him. We talk over the Internet every day, sometimes all day, but the one thing I can't understand is why I have to wait. Why can't he come and get me right now?
Funny Horror (Unidentified Funny Objects Annual Anthology Series of Humorous SF/F) Page 4