“I am that fast,” I told Margaret’s room. “I am.”
So I put The Codex(es) on the bar and got a good running jump that let me skinny up out of the hole. I looked at the chain on its wall hook, going up to its pulley. How like the mouth of a giant, biting clam the door looked. Fuck it. Two steps and a belly-dive. I could do this.
I grunted and strained as I unhooked the chain and the weight of the door immediately yanked it out of my hands. I moved faster than I ever had before. I moved like the shadow of a plane on the ground. I felt the door nip at the heel of my boot as it closed and I just missed flattening Margaret’s couch as I hit the floor, coming face-to-face with the faded bloodstain from the black Huncher Margaret had brained.
Go, now!
I grabbed the sketchbooks and slipped into the slot of darkness in Margaret’s wall, having no idea where I would come out. There was a story, another Greek story, about a guy in a cave maze with a ball of yarn, looking for a monster with a bull’s head. These guys in stories, running in looking for monsters. I was a monster, but I knew when I was outgunned. If I still did anything like praying, I would have prayed to the god of small places not to meet Margaret McMannis in that tunnel.
* * *
“Did you?” Cvetko asked.
“What?” I said, looking at a picture of a dog. It was a German shepherd, watercolored in, sitting on the trunk of a big 1950s car with fins on the back. His tongue hung down like a piece of ham at the deli. This picture was unusual because it was full of daylight. “How did he do this?” I said. “The dog’s not growling or anything, and the sun’s out.”
Cvetko pointed at a faint crease on the opposite page.
“What?”
“Paper clip,” he said. “Photograph.” That kind of deflated me. First, because I had liked the idea of Clayton breaking the rules, walking in the afternoon, making eye contact with a dog without it going apeshit. I always liked dogs, hated having to cross the street to avoid them, hated their barking and trying to bite me as much because I felt rejected by an old friend as by the unwanted attention it always brought. Daisy’s such a nice girl, but she wanted to kill that kid. Must be some kind of creep for sweet little Daisy to act like that. But I also felt deflated because I should have known better. Suns and friendly dogs only existed in photographs, of course that’s how he did this. I wondered if the pooch was on the trunk or if Clayton stuck it there, if there were separate photographs of dog and car. Only one crease. Clayton could work from life, too. It suddenly struck me as unfair that I’d never know if that dog actually sat on that trunk or if it was just something Clayton made up.
Now the kids stole up, all of them like a little pack. All of them but Peter. They gathered around Cvetko like he was Grandpa showing vacation pictures. Which I guess these were. They sure as hell weren’t the medical encyclopedia about being a vampire I’d hoped to find. What was more, and Cvetko didn’t say it, there were pages missing. Lots of them, I think. Did Clayton tear out paintings he wasn’t happy with? Did somebody get to these first and yank out the good stuff?
“I like the look of that dog,” Alfie said. “That’s a good-dog, guard-dog, keep-you-safe.”
“Not me,” said Duncan, shrinking away from The Codex as though even a picture of such a dog might bite, hiding his little hands in the blanket he had taken to carrying even on the hunt. It wasn’t the cleanest blanket in the world.
“You ignored my question,” Cvetko said.
“Which one?”
“The one about our esteemed leader bumping into you in the tunnel. Did she?”
“Oh,” I said, “no.”
“No, I don’t imagine that would have gone well.”
“Turns out her tunnel splits into three. The way I took dumped me out in an air shaft near Penn Station.”
Cvetko looked at the children.
“If I promise to show you some of the pictures in these books later, will you all leave us alone for a little while?”
“If you show us properly,” Sammy said, bending and unbending his small toes against the concrete beneath him. “And not just for a moment to send us away again.”
“I will show you properly, and answer whatever questions I can about them. But first I must speak to Joseph Hiram Peacock.”
Sammy kept looking at him.
“Alone,” Cvetko said.
The little girl walked away, and the rest did, too, Sammy last, looking again over his shoulder, but more at me than Cvetko. I’d have paid ten bucks to know what that little shit was thinking. If he hadn’t gotten his clock stopped, he would have grown up mean and clever. He would have made a good criminal.
“These paintings are quite expressive,” Cvetko said. “I think our Clayton would have been remembered as a notable, if minor, early American painter had he not had the sun stolen from him.”
“Yeah,” I said, “they’re great. But what’s wrong with these kids?”
“I share your disappointment. I was hoping for more insight into our condition. But, really, these are quite pleasant. There was a painter, a countryman of mine, Anton Ažbe, who had the ability to put the soul of the subject into the eyes. His painting of a Negress still haunts me, her gravitas, her eyes. Ažbe knew eyes. I wish I had met him but he died in Munich. This painting, of Clayton’s, Arthur 1922”—he traded books and flipped until he found what he wanted—“has much of the same power. Don’t you agree? You don’t know Ažbe, of course; Clayton had none of his training or photographic mastery of detail, but the sense of weariness is perfectly communicated. I suspect our Arthur did not survive long after this was painted.”
“Are you really going on about creaky old commie painters? What are we going to do?”
Now Duncan was at the door.
“Peter needs a bath,” he said. “He needs one.”
“No,” Camilla said, coming up behind him and snatching his hand, hard, making him show his fangs at her.
“But he does,” Duncan said.
“You’re the stinky one,” she said, and pulled him away, his blanket dragging behind him. I watched them go.
“You’re feeding them, aren’t you?” Cvetko said.
I trust Cvetko, I do. But I was so scared of Margaret finding out I just lied.
“No.”
He looked me in the eyes, tilted down his glasses to do it, smiled at me like my uncle Walt used to. Like he knew I was naughty but it was okay.
“Interesting.”
WAYCHEE ROO
The next night I woke up starving.
Feeding the munchkins really wore me out. I had to bleed somebody, and I remembered it was Tuesday night. Soap! Gonzalo! I schlepped through the tunnels till I got to the 23rd Street platform and took it north all the way to the Bakers’ stop. It was beginning to feel like work, keeping up with them, keeping blood in my stomach. All those paintings of Clayton’s had really gotten my wheels turning. Manhattan wasn’t the only place to be a vampire. What was it like out in the Ozarks, wherever those were? Down in Florida? Nah, too sunny. But Vermont, up in the mountains? Virginia? This had possibilities. Not too many people around, just you in a cave or a snowy cabin, creeping down at night to terrorize the villagers like Dracula. That sounded like the life. Except, where would I go to see a movie? What if the girls nearby were ugly, like with moles and country accents? Country accents drive me nuts; so does the music, I can’t even listen to it. Want to chase me out of a room, don’t bother with garlic or a cross, just put some George Jones or Conway Twitty on the jukebox. Not that “Have You Never Been Mellow” is musical genius, but Olivia Newton John (a) is foxy and (b) doesn’t twang. No, I keep an eye out for Kenny Rogers down in the tunnels, I’d love to decorate his life.
I checked my watch. 9:12. Plenty of time. Two kids on their way home from karate class sat in sweat-stained white uniforms, a green belt and a yellow belt. They babysat a rumpl
ed gym bag between them, one foam shin and foot pad trying to peek out of the zipper like a tongue out of a mouth.
“What style do you kids take?” I said.
They looked at me, not sure if they should trust me, and then the bigger one said, “Waychee Roo.” I knew about Tae Kwon Do and the great Bruce Lee’s Wing Chun Kung Fu. I’d heard of Dim Mak, the Death Touch; all the comics had ads for that. I had been about to send away for the Black Dragon Society book, but Cvets had pointed out that secrets for sale aren’t secrets and that any vampire, even puny little me, could wipe up the floor with Count Danté, however much of a badass he looked like with his ’fro and his snarling and making his hands into claws like he was a big funky wizard about to cast a spell of whoop-ass.
But I didn’t know Waychee Roo from a poke in the eye with a stick.
“What’s that?” I said.
“It’s Okinawan.”
“You guys use numchuks?”
He shook his head sadly, like if he’d been a slightly luckier child he could have joined a dojo where they used numchuks.
“I have a pair,” I said.
“You mean nunchaku?”
“Yeah, numchuks.”
“Are you a black belt?”
“Yeah,” I said. Maybe not, but I could kick a black belt’s ass, that had to count for something. I noticed how tan these lads looked, which was not really tan at all, but after hanging out with pale, cold Peter and the rest, these warm-body blond kids looked almost like Arabs.
“Cool,” the small one said.
“Show us something!” said the brother.
I looked around at the dozen or so other people on the car. Nobody was paying much attention, so I grabbed a pole and extended my body straight out, held it just for a second, pointing my toes.
“Cool!” said the small one.
“My uncle can do that,” said the older one. “He’s a gymnast. He almost went to Munich, but Dad says it’s good he didn’t.”
“Bad guys,” the little one said.
“Yeah? Well, I’ll show you something even cooler when the train stops again.”
They leaned forward, all eyes.
When we pulled into the Lexington station, I waited till just the last second, waited until the leavers had left and the getters-on had gotten on, then I jumped up and karate-chopped the pole with my forearm, not snapping the pole cleanly like I thought, but denting it good and knocking it loose at the top. It was loud. Everybody looked. I had broken my arm. I made a little squealy sound without meaning to.
The big one said, “Kee-YA!”
“Cool!” said the little one, but a big black guy in a striped tie looked angry, said, “Why’d you do that, man? People ride this thing.”
I laughed and ran, just beating the shutting doors, cradling the busted arm, which was even now resetting and knitting itself whole.
* * *
The Bakers’ place was all wrong.
First of all, nobody came to the door when I rang so I had to go back outside the building and climb around to the balcony window, which was locked. I tried to peek in but the drapes were drawn. Had they gone on vacation? I went back around through the front lobby, took the stairs two at a time, rang the doorbell again. Nothing. I put my ear to the door and thought I heard talking. I knocked. Nothing. I was about to pull out Gary Combs’s American Express card and jimmy the lock when I heard the elevator ding, so I waited. A lady with curlers under a head scarf came out with a bag of corner-store groceries, the neck of a wine bottle sticking up like a periscope. I know I looked bad leaning against the wall looking at the ugly hallway carpeting, and she slowed up, her hand fishing in her purse for her keys. Her elbow vised down on her purse a little. She came a step closer, pulled her keys out. Jesus, she lived in the apartment next door.
“Can I help you?” she said, scared, but more that I’d try to take her purse or, God forbid, her wine than that I’d hurt her. I wasn’t exactly intimidating.
“Everything’s cool,” I said, using my little-boy voice. Then I got a good look at her. Pretty in a washed-out, Katharine-Ross-with-crow’s-feet kind of way. I switched to my sexy James Dean voice and poured on the charm, made myself look older. “Is anybody home now at your place?”
“No,” she said, saliva running out of her mouth and into her grocery bag.
“Expecting anybody?”
She shook her head no.
“Do you have a television?”
She nodded. Then she dropped her keys and unbuttoned her coat, rubbing herself in the zipper area, still holding her groceries, which I took from her.
“Jesus, not here. Pick up your keys and ask me in.”
She did.
* * *
For an older broad, like thirty-five, she had a good body. It was sitting naked on the couch next to me, a brown couch, thank God, because she was kind of a bleeder. I had tasted the bitter, high-in-the-nose notes of aspirin as I sucked from her thigh and went back for seconds on her wrist. My timing was perfect, too. The naughty stuff was over and now Soap was on. Dinner and a show is my favorite. I confess I wasn’t paying much attention, though; Jody, the gay one, was ranting about something, but I was in my head, still worrying about how I was going to replace Margaret’s books and find out what was wrong with Peter and the others. The sound from the neighbor lady’s Magnavox was weird, like it had an echo. That was when I realized the same show was on next door. Somebody was watching Soap at the Bakers’. They must have had the volume up to three-quarters. What the fuck? They didn’t like that show, not without me there.
Something banged against the wall. Once. Twice. Three times.
“Coming,” my companion said, like it was the door, and stood up, a fresh runner of blood going down her leg.
“No,” I said. “Go get dressed.”
She stopped and swayed, then walked down the hallway bare-assed, one curler loose and bobbing as she went. Bloody footprints on the carpet; the carpet wasn’t that dark, I was making a mess here. I hate aspirin.
I was thinking it was time to get going when the phone rang.
“I’ll get it,” she sang out from the bedroom. I couldn’t hear what she said to the caller over the TV, but then she said, “Joey? Is that your name? It’s for you.”
My heart beat once.
“Tell them I’m not here and hang up.”
Mumbles from the bedroom. She came out. I stood up to go. The phone rang again. I picked it up.
“Curler residence,” I said, trying to make a joke, but I said it flat because I was scared.
“Joey.”
A kid’s voice.
American.
“Joey.”
“Who’s this?”
“It’s Mikey.”
“Mikey who?” I said, though I knew good and goddamned well who.
“From next door.”
My heart beat again.
The televisions blared their nonsense.
“You know,” he said. “The fat kid you bite and take blood from and laugh at. Why aren’t you watching TV with me? Do you like Ms. Kemp better?”
I didn’t say anything, I didn’t know what to say. I was trying to think but couldn’t. He kept talking.
“Are you putting your penis in her vagina? My daddy wants to do that to Ms. Kemp. He told his friend at the bar. He doesn’t put it in Mommy’s anymore, she says it hurts her now since she’s got lady problems.”
I made a fish mouth. Nothing came out.
“I’d like to put my penis in Ms. Kemp, too. Maybe I will. I’ll be right there.”
Oh shit oh shit oh shit.
I had never charmed anyone over the phone before; I didn’t know if it would work, but I thought so.
“Stay there,” I said. “Unlock your door, sit down, and don’t move again till I come over.”
He didn’t say anything. I started to repeat myself, but he interrupted me.
“Stay there, unlock—”
“I know what you’re trying to do,” he said. “But it doesn’t work on me anymore because I’m like you now.”
My heart beat twice.
I wanted to run but knew I couldn’t just leave a mess like this. Not unless I ran and kept running, ran to the Ozarks, ran to wherever that long-ago dog was sitting on the trunk of the car.
“I’m hungry,” he said. And hung up.
That broke the spell. I looked at Ms. Kemp. “Stay here, lock it behind me, don’t let anyone in!”
I heard the Bakers’ door unlatch, swing open. I leapt for Ms. Kemp’s door, opened that. We met in the hallway.
He looked bad. He stank. Blood bibbed the front of his yellow Izod polo shirt. He looked dead. He showed me his fangs like he was proud of them, little nubby new fangs in his very red mouth. He was about to say something. I heard the door across the hall start to unlatch. I grabbed his chin, shut his mouth, and shoved him back in his doorway, shutting his door just as the one across the hall was starting to open.
Oh shit oh shit oh shit.
“Don’t push me,” he said, pushing me back, hard. I rolled with it, rolled back to the television, which I turned up all the way, though momentum made me break the volume knob off when I did it.
“Hey, you want to keep it down over there?” a deep voice said from the hall. I clobbered the Baker kid so hard I broke his jaw; he squealed and sat down. I opened the door, looked at the big dago-looking guy standing there, told him and his huge mustache, “Mind your own business! Turn your TV on,” saw his eyes go blank, and then I shut the door. Heard him shut his. I turned around just in time to see the coffee table coming at my head, ducked in time so it was a glancing blow, but it still sent me tumbling. Only now did I notice what a wreck the rest of the place was: broken glass everywhere, the refrigerator standing open, one shelf collapsed so the food was on the kitchen floor, the Miracle Whip jar broken with Miracle Whip blobbed out everywhere.
The Lesser Dead Page 20