The Vampires of Vigil's Sorrow

by Cassandra Duffy

  “I don’t know,” Debbie said. “But I know they’re afraid of what we are. I think what killed them was like us.”

  “It wasn’t Maggie then?”

  “No. She killed people, but never children.”

  The afterglow from the hunt was quickly fading and Annabelle suddenly wished to be out of the woods again. She wondered if Vigil’s Wood was once large enough to dilute the angry spirits still inhabiting it and if its dwindling size was concentrating so much supernatural energy to an increasingly small acreage. “Can we please go?” Annabelle asked.

  Debbie took her hand and led her from the woods at a brisk walk along paths she’d learned like a second nature. Annabelle chanced a few glances back over her shoulder to see the shades of children descend on the fallen deer, washing it over in darkness.

  6.

  Levity returned to the walk once they were clear of the woods. They strolled through the field across from the Baskin Robbins, hand in hand, giggling at newly shared jokes about recently discovered intimacies between them. When Annabelle became aware of where they were, her focus shifted to the darkened front of the ice cream shop and she almost subconsciously began guiding their path toward it.

  “I wonder if I’ll be able to keep my job,” Annabelle mused. “I wonder if I’ll even need a job anymore.”

  “Do you like working?” Debbie asked, resting her head on Annabelle’s shoulder.

  “It’s fine,” Annabelle said. “It felt small before though and now it feels…unimportant.”

  “We’re going to need to do some serious figuring things out soon,” Debbie said, “but we don’t have to plan it all tonight.”

  They shared a brief kiss before turning their backs on the ice cream shop. They turned the corner to head home, walking with their backs to the high school when Annabelle felt an increasingly familiar creeping sensation similar to the one she’d felt when the orphans were watching her. She glanced back over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of an ethereal form darting between the houses and trees of the darkened neighborhood behind them. It was too big to be an orphan and didn’t move with the same deliberate gate. The figure was blinking in and out of existence, flashing as though part of a very slow moving strobe as it trailed behind them in something of a haphazard path.

  Debbie caught on Annabelle’s unease, hugging closer to her side. “It’s Maggie,” Debbie whispered.

  “How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know, but I can feel her. Let’s hurry.”

  They picked up the pace, rounding the last corner to lead down Annabelle’s street. They both chanced one last glance over their shoulders to see how much space they might have created with an unspoken understanding they would break into a sprint after. The flashing apparition wasn’t behind them anymore. When they turned their attention ahead, they nearly ran into the rushing specter that had grown not only in intensity, but also in solidity. The ethereal Maggie rushed at them with only the most trivial trappings of humanity left in her gruesome visage. She didn’t even manage words this time as her mouth was little more than a jagged maw of broken, angry teeth. Instead, she shrieked like a banshee as she descended on them.

  Debbie wrapped herself around Annabelle, shielding her from the attacking spirit with her body. Annabelle struggled in her embrace, partially wishing to free herself for a fight or flight response, and partially because she had wanted to shield Debbie, but had reacted far too slowly. But the attack never landed. Slowly their bracing eased and they broke apart to find the street empty.

  “This is going to get old,” Annabelle murmured.

  “I think it’s me,” Debbie said, seemingly on the verge of tears. “She’s after me and I’m endangering you by even being around you. We have to…”

  “We have to stay together,” Annabelle cut her off. “If you think I’m going to go through this alone, think again. I need you.”

  “Need me?” Debbie’s eyes, already threatening with tears, sought out Annabelle’s to search them for truth.

  “It scares me how much I need you,” Annabelle said. “I need you so much I don’t even have anything to compare the need to.”

  “I need you too.” Debbie’s eyes finally spilled the tears down her cheeks in winding streams. “I thought…I don’t know what. But what do we do about her?”

  “We need to know who she was,” Annabelle said. “We need to know why Vigil’s Woods is the way it is.”

  They resumed their walk, a little more secure in one another’s company, although they both kept darting glances behind them and to the darkened front yards to either side as they walked. Annabelle gave Debbie’s hand a reassuring squeeze when they finally reached the driveway and Debbie responded with a squeeze of her own that had a surprisingly soothing effect. Annabelle didn’t know what she would do without Debbie, but she didn’t think she could survive it.

  7.

  They awoke together, tangled in bedding and each other’s limbs. Annabelle traced her fingertips idly along Debbie’s stomach, waiting for her to respond, which she finally did in the form of a squirmy giggle. They parted briefly to their respective sides of the double bed to stare up at the ceiling.

  “You don’t have breakfast or dinner with your family?” Debbie asked.

  “On Thanksgiving and Christmas,” Annabelle replied. “Otherwise we’re all usually busy.”

  “So they might not notice something strange is going on with you…?”

  “…ever, maybe.”

  “That seems sad.”

  Annabelle turned on her side to look at Debbie. “What about your family?”

  “I don’t know,” Debbie said. “I don’t really want to know.”

  Annabelle decided to leave the topic alone. She didn’t like talking about her family and it certainly seemed like Debbie didn’t either. The vast difference between their family values might come up later, but she decided that would be a problem for her future self to deal with.

  They got dressed in heavy clothes, scarves for their heads, turtlenecks, and the largest sunglasses Annabelle had; with their hair rearranged to cover as much of their faces as possible, they stepped out into the sunlight of early afternoon. Annabelle immediately felt like she had a migraine, menstrual cramps, and shin splints all over her body. The sensation of having several new senses and heightened existing senses vanished and the entire world became a whitewashed world of pain coming down every receptor.

  “Fuck me,” Annabelle muttered as she leaned against the railing for the staircase up to her apartment. “It’s like a ten ton hangover. Are you sure this isn’t doing any permanent damage?”

  Debbie seemed equally dazed and suffering, but also a little more used to the idea. “Not as sure as I used to be,” Debbie muttered. “Can you see me? Do I look like a monster?”

  Annabelle struggled to pull her eyes open, but even then all she could see was a hazy version of the world as though she were looking at everything through a frosted pane of glass. She had a vague idea of where Debbie was, but couldn’t be sure of anything beyond her outline being the same. “I can’t see anything,” Annabelle complained. “How the hell are we going to get to the library like this?” Even talking started to hurt. When she opened her mouth, sunlight flooded in and it felt like she suddenly had dozens of cavities on every surface of every tooth and the ache of repeated tongue bitings.

  Debbie stepped back into the bedroom, into the blessed protection of the darkness, but held out her hand to block Annabelle from coming in when she tried to follow. “Let my eyes clear and I’ll tell you if you look different.”

  “Okay, but hurry,” Annabelle said. She thought about being allowed in while they waited for Debbie to recover, but she wasn’t sure she would have the nerve to step back out into the light if she received even a brief reprieve.

  Debbie’s recovery was swift. She took her time inspect Annabelle’s face and hands in the light, but didn’t seem to note any significant differences. “I don’t understand,” Debbie
said. “You look the same—pale, but not like a monster.”

  “Yippy-fucking-skippy—Maggie was wrong.” Annabelle pushed her way past Debbie into the haven of the room and immediately felt relief. She leaned against the wall, breathing through her mouth as every breath seemed to carry away some of the pain from her teeth and tongue. “We have to figure out something else. I don’t think I can do that again.”

  “You should look at me though,” Debbie said, taking a step toward the doorway.

  Annabelle’s hand shot out, catching Debbie’s wrist, preventing her from stepping back out into the light. “I don’t want to,” Annabelle said. She was partly concerned for Debbie’s wellbeing, but she also wondered if she could stand seeing Debbie with the death mask Maggie wore. “Who cares, really? We’re not going to be going outside again anyway.”

  “You’re afraid I’m a monster,” Debbie murmured.

  “If you are, then I am too, and it doesn’t matter.”

  Debbie allowed herself to be pulled all the way back into the room, flicking the door closed behind her. She wrapped herself into Annabelle’s arms. The extra padding of their heavy sweaters and jackets numbed the hug. Annabelle came to the realization that clothing muted hugs were fine for family and friends, but she much preferred naked hugs when it came to Debbie.

  “I’m going to check the sunset time with the library’s closing hours to see if there’s any overlap,” Annabelle said. They broke the hug and she made her way to the computer.

  Debbie began peeling away the carefully arranged clothes that had failed so spectacularly at shielding them from the sun. When she removed her scarf, her hair felt longer and heavier than it had even the day before. She ran several thick strands through her fingers to find them strong and healthy.

  “So it looks like we’ll have a little over an hour tonight.” Annabelle looked back to Debbie to show her the computer screen, but stopped when she saw her. Debbie, in a state of partial dress, long, strawberry blond hair apparently gaining in volume and glory by the second, looked a little like a modern Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, but with unbuttoned jeans too tight through the hips because apparently Debbie’s dimensions were so 50s luscious that Annabelle’s modern waistline jeans couldn’t fully button over the glory of Debbie’s curves. Annabelle thought it was probably the hottest thing she’d ever seen. “You don’t look like a monster,” Debbie said. “You look like a goddess.” She quickly typed in the title of Botticelli’s painting on her search bar, and popped up the picture in question for Debbie to see.

  Debbie glanced to the screen and smiled. “That is amazing. You can just think of something and see it.”

  “There’s typing involved too, but sure, I suppose it is pretty amazing,” Annabelle said. She’d grown up with the internet—it had never occurred to her that it was amazing. She had a sneaking suspicion that the ancient town records they needed at the library would probably require Debbie’s skill set in researching though since Annabelle couldn’t say for sure if she even remembered how to use the Dewey Decimal System from the lone field trip to the library in third grade which was the one and only time anyone even tried to explain it to her.

  Debbie sat on the edge of the bed with her back to Annabelle. She glanced over her shoulder, her face partially obscured by her lustrous mane of hair. Annabelle caught on the only movement in the room—Debbie’s right hand caressing back and forth along the bedspread beside her leg.

  “Are you…?” Annabelle asked.

  “Yes, again, is that weird?”

  Annabelle shrugged. “Who knows?” She stood from the computer chair and slipped her turtleneck sweater off over her head and did her best seductive saunter around the foot of the bed to stand in front of Debbie. “But if it is, we’re both weird.” Annabelle leaned down to kiss Debbie, which only fueled the crazed fire inside her that craved everything about Debbie. Every second spent not touching her was an eternity, every scrap of clothing separating their skin was a wall too thick, and the more Annabelle got, the more she wanted. She couldn’t say for sure if what she felt was love, as it felt so much like going insane, but it frightened and thrilled her all at once which was a vast departure from the crushing boredom of her life since summer.

  8.

  They walked to the library after sundown that night despite the offer of a ride from Annabelle’s mother. Debbie wanted to take the ride, and told Annabelle along the way that in no uncertain terms, she was going to get to know Annabelle’s mother. Please don’t, was Annabelle’s feeble response.

  The records wing, and the one they would have to research within to find anything old enough to contain information about Maggie, had been moved a dozen times until it finally occupied an out of the way room in the original housing of the library, long since relegated to unimportance by a handful of new additions to the building. They stopped in their tracks as they wandered down the matured hallways smelling strongly of old paper and aging municipal building. The archway above the doors, dingy as it was, clearly read “Deborah Poole Memorial Reading Room.”

  “What the fuck?” Annabelle asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Debbie replied.

  A plaque of faded bronze on the wall held an answer, albeit a vague one:

  In memoriam of Deborah Poole

  Our beloved Harvest Festival Princess, cheerleader, and true daughter of Vermont, taken before her time, but never to be forgotten.

  May 1937 to August 1955

  Debbie traced her fingers along the tarnished old plaque and snort laughed her disdain. “Funny how I was forgotten,” she said.

  “Say what you want, but they wouldn’t do something like this if I died,” Annabelle said and suddenly burst out into a strange giggle. “Never mind, I did die and nobody did shit.” Annabelle tugged at Debbie’s shirt to draw her attention to another plaque on the opposite side of the hallway mirroring the first, but this one without the old black and white photo of Debbie. “Do you recognize any of the names?” Annabelle asked, indicating that the second plaque was a list of donators who made the whole thing possible.

  Debbie scanned the list, finding her parents of course, many of her former friends, Phil’s parents, even Pastor Gunderson, and at the end, as if added reluctantly, was Grace Corker. Debbie touched the name with reverent fingers and smiled. “Her,” she said. “She was my first real love.”

  A wicked, barbed jealousy snaked its way up Annabelle’s spine. It was a ridiculous emotional response to someone who would either be well into their seventies or dead by that point. She didn’t suppose it was reasonable to assume Debbie was like her, without any real relationship history to tell. Annabelle mustered up every scrap of maturity she could find and swallowed the jealousy like a bitter little pill.

  “What happened to her?” Annabelle asked.

  “She died…no, she didn’t die, Maggie killed her,” Debbie said. The words reopened a wound she’d thought long since healed. It had been decades since she’d said the words aloud despite having thought them countless times. “Maggie killed her,” she said again just to feel the cold edge of her hatred grow keener with the repetition. The sweet part of her, the part cherished in memoriam by the other plaque across the hall, that might have found a shred of pity for Maggie in death, couldn’t survive the sharp words. Debbie had killed Maggie by accident and she’d done so in protection of Annabelle, but she’d wished for so long that she could do it in vengeance of Grace.

  “I’m so sorry,” Annabelle murmured. Her jealousy crumbled and faded into nothingness. As tragic ends for first loves went, the rift that separated Grace and Debbie was vast and majestic leaving Annabelle to love them both as one might love Tristan and Isolde.

  “I still can’t do it.” Debbie turned with fresh icy tears painting her cheeks. “I can’t separate the parts of her that I hate from the parts I am eternally grateful to. If I’d never met her, I still wouldn’t have had Grace.” Debbie tried to wipe away the tears with the back of her hand but fresh on
es immediately took their place. “I didn’t even have to kill Maggie. I could have let Grace’s father do it. But even then, even if I let her die, I might never have met you since you were who she wanted to replace her. She was completely insane by that point, but still, the motivation for me to come see you came from her.”