Watch

by Cass J. McMain

  Brenda stuck her head in the office.

  “Your freakshow’s back,” she hissed.

  “So that’s him, huh?”

  Brenda nodded. “I told him you’d be right out.”

  Corky tossed her pencil down on the desk. Great. “Well… OK, fine. I guess I better go see what the guy wants.” She ran her fingers through her hair absently as she made her way out of the office.

  He was tall. She felt like a child as she approached him. Brenda was right; he had pretty eyes.

  “Hi, I’m Corky. Brenda said you wanted to talk to me?”

  He smiled broadly and nodded. “I did. I do. I left my number. I don’t blame you. For not calling, you know.” He held a hand out. “I’m Grey.”

  Corky shook the hand. “So. How can I help you?”

  Grey looked down at his hands and then back into Corky’s eyes. “I’ve been looking for… someone. You might be able to help me. I heard about the diary you had.” He raised his hands in a calming gesture as Corky’s brow furrowed. “I wondered if you’d let me look at it. I don’t mean to be nosy, I know it’s none of my business—”

  “It’s really not. But I don’t see how it would be any help anyway.”

  He looked down at the floor. “My brother’s been missing for about a year. He was… we were in the vampire scene. You know? He was a donor.” Grey’s voice cracked and he lowered it, looking up sharply. “We were both donors. You know what I’m talking about?”

  Dry-mouthed, Corky shook her head, though she suspected she could figure it out.

  “Well, we… alright, it’s not important. I just… she said you had a diary that belonged to a vampire hunter. Did it have any… you know… names?” He cleared his throat as his voice hitched again. “Did he kill any?”

  “No, it wasn’t like that. He wasn’t hunting vampires. Just one, and it wasn’t a… it wasn’t like that. He was just chasing his brother. And he was nuts. They both were.” Corky put her hands over her face and rubbed her eyes. “What did Brenda tell you?”

  “Just that he had been hunting vampires and keeping a diary. The way she said it, it sounded…” Grey shrugged and held his hands out, palms up. “I’m sorry I troubled you. I’m just looking, you know.”

  Corky could have just nodded and let him go, but she was curious now. She felt bad. Damn Brenda. The man looked so crushed. “Looking for what?”

  “Looking for… just…” Grey sighed and dropped his arms so they hung slack at his side. “I don’t know. I’m afraid someone may have killed him. My brother. You know?”

  “Because he was a vampire?” Corky said softly. Why had she agreed to talk to this tattooed stranger, this freakshow? Her eyes traced over the scar on his forehead and she wondered where it had come from.

  “He was a Sanguinarian,” Grey said. “You’ve heard of the Sanguinarians. You must have.”

  She shook her head.

  Grey bit his lip lightly. “Blood drinkers. Vampires, right? You know there’s blood clubs?”

  Her mind on the diary, Corky nodded. “Yeah, I’ve heard of those. They really do that? Get together and drink blood?”

  “They do.”

  “From each other?”

  “From volunteers. Donors. It’s all voluntary. The donors enjoy doing it.”

  Corky thought about her uncle’s diary and his descriptions of her father’s madness. None of the scenes he’d described sounded completely voluntary. “Doesn’t it hurt, to… donate?”

  Grey’s eyes lit up. “No. It’s… hard to describe.” He held up his arm, the one that wasn’t tattooed, and pointed to the area between his wrist and the crook of his elbow. “I feed them from here. And sometimes the back of my shoulder. I bleed better here, though.”

  Corky looked. Grey’s arm was a mass of tiny scars. Her finger went out like an explorer and traced over a set of hash marks. Grey didn’t bat an eye.

  “That one looks new,” she said.

  “Two nights ago.”

  “And it didn’t hurt you? All these cuts, all over your arm, and your shoulder? Where else?”

  “No, it doesn’t hurt. You want to try it?”

  Corky jumped like she’d touched a hot iron. “No!” She took a step back. “No. I’m not… no. That has to hurt, you have to be kidding me.”

  Grey laughed. “Ok. You want to watch?”

  Corky shook her head and took another step back. “No, thanks. I can’t imagine that. What, you want to just cut your arm right here in front of me?”

  “I was thinking you could come to the meeting. We don’t let a lot of outsiders in to watch, you know, but I could get you into one. You don’t have to, you know… do anything. You can just watch.”

  “Watch. At your vampire meeting? I hardly know you.”

  Grey nodded. “Fair enough, suit yourself. You just seemed interested, is all. I thought maybe you were looking for something, you know. Just like me. Looking for something to make it right.”

  “Make what right?”

  “Whatever it is that’s wrong,” Grey said. He turned to leave. “You have my number, if you change your mind.” At the door, he stopped and turned back again. “You can keep your cross on, if it makes you feel better. It’s not like you think.”

  Corky’s hand went to the cross at her breast as the door swung shut behind him.

  She hadn’t thought he could see it.

  Chapter 3

  Sarah bit into her pizza and chewed hugely, talking at the same time.

  “I finished that book you gave me, Cork. It was great. That one with the vampire who goes on the building and gets stuck in the vent? Did you read that one?”

  Corky shook her head. “No, hon. I didn’t read any of those books. Not my thing. Glad you liked it though.” She and Seth had picked out a few of the tamer vampire books to give Sarah before taking the rest to sell at the shop.

  “It was awesome. Can I get more?”

  Seth looked up. “Sarah, that’s not polite.”

  “I’d give you more, but I don’t have them anymore.” Corky looked at Seth with her eyebrows raised. “Maybe someday your dad can bring you by the shop, and you can look around there. We have a lot of books there you might like.”

  “Maybe,” Seth said, helping himself to another slice of pizza. “We’ll see.”

  “I want more like that one. The vampire guy, Horatio, he got caught in the vent and then his girlfriend came and couldn’t find him, and then he says to her ‘I’m up here,’ all spooky like he’s a ghost, and she gets scared and runs off. She was so scared! I think it would be awesome to have a vampire boyfriend like that.” Sarah paused for thought. “But not if he was lost in a vent, scaring me.”

  “Vampire boyfriend? He’d bite you, wouldn’t he?”

  “No, Dad. Horatio never bites Maria. He just holds her hand.” Sarah looked over at Corky and rolled her eyes. “Vampires don’t have to bite everyone. They can just bite who they want to. Right, Corky?”

  Corky looked down at her plate. “Sure,” she said. “I guess that’s right.” She hoped it was. She looked down at her arm and thought of Grey.

  Seth changed the subject. “How’s school? Did you bring any homework with you? I don’t want your mother yelling at me that I didn’t make you do it. She won’t let you spend the night here anymore.”

  Sarah sighed. “Yes, I brought some. But I don’t understand it all. Mr. Telette is a dumbass. He gave us this stuff to read and it’s all stupid, like some foreign language or something. It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know why I can’t read stuff I like.”

  “Don’t call your teacher a dumbass. What did he give you?”

  “Some Shakespeare play. I hate it. Here, I’ll show you.” Sarah ran off to the other room and returned with a booklet.

  “Romeo and Juliet,” Seth said, taking it and flipping through pages. “I had to read this in school, too.”

  Corky nodded. “Yeah. I had that one three times at least. It’s a good story. You’d like it,
if you give it a chance, Sarah. It’s about teenagers who fall in love.”

  “But they talk all stupid! All ‘wherefore’ this and ‘wither’ that and… blah. I don’t get it, it’s dumb. Why can’t they just talk normal?”

  “That was normal, back then. Shakespeare lived a long, long time ago, right? That’s how they used to talk. Five hundred years from now, someone’ll think how we talk now is strange. Just the way it is.”

  “Well, whatever. It’s boring.”

  “Boring. It’s not boring! They have love and passion and secret meetings and everything.”

  “And then it says they kill themselves,” Sarah said. “I don’t get why they have to be so stupid and all that.”

  Seth piled the dishes up in his hands. “Because it’s Shakespeare,” he said. “He’s always about some suffering or other. That’s why it’s a lesson.”

  “It’s a tragedy,” Corky added. “The whole point is that it was a stupid thing to have happen, and it could have been different if the parents hadn’t been so stubborn. It’s a classic. Tons of stories have been written around the same idea.”

  Seth returned from the sink. “Yeah. It’s a celebration of stupidity. They’re stupid ’cause that’s what people are. People do stupid things all the time.”

  Sarah laughed. “I guess. But I still don’t get it.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Seth said. “Go take your shower. I’ll try and help you with it in a little while, OK? Shakespeare’s cool. Look, he even wore an earring.”

  Sarah looked at him skeptically. “He did?”

  Seth pointed to the portrait on the back of the book. “See?”

  “All artists used to have earrings,” Corky said. “To show how cool they were.”

  “OK. I guess that is kinda cool.” Sarah sighed. “I still want to get my ears pierced but Mom keeps saying no.”

  “That’s your mom.”

  “But she has hers done! And you have, and even old Shakespeare has.”

  Seth didn’t respond to this. “Shower,” he said. “Homework after.”

  Sarah sighed and shuffled off, leaving Corky and Seth at the table.

  “Why won’t she let her get the ears done?”

  Seth shook his head. “Control freak. I told her three years ago I thought it was fine, but she just wants to keep Sarah a baby forever. She’s gonna drive her away like that.”

  Corky smiled a half smile. “Everyone gets their ears done these days, and the guys get both ears now, not just one.” She thought about Grey. “I saw a guy with both of his earlobes all stretched out like this big.” She held up her fingers to demonstrate.

  “Gauged, they call it. He’ll be sorry if he ever gets in a fight. Guy’ll rip his ears right off.”

  Corky shuddered at the idea, thinking. “He was some weird guy alright.” She looked sideways at Seth. “You ever hear of Sanguinarians?”

  “Sangui-whatigans?”

  She laughed and explained.

  “Oh, that’s gross. Was your ear guy one?”

  “He was in the shop buying vampire books. Of course. So we got to talking a little. He showed me his arm, all scarred up with knife-marks. Razor, I mean.”

  “Creepy. There’s all sorts of sickos in the world, I guess. You think maybe your dad was into that stuff?”

  Corky shook her head, her mind on Grey, then on Moony and Edgar. “No… I don’t think so. There wasn’t anything in the diary about anything like that, anyway. Just hookers.” She sat back, reflecting. How many hookers had there been? Would her father even have wanted a donor if he could have found one? She wondered if he could have found one, back then. Probably he could have, she decided. All sorts of sickos in the world.

  There certainly were.

  Chapter 4

  …Now I see him in every corner. He is gone, but never gone. This is worse than the madness that was. I almost wish I had let him be. But I can’t wish that, can I? No. I can’t.

  Corky stood at the front of the bookstore watching out the window. People passed by on the sidewalk, some of them looking in at her, most of them just going on by. There was a coffee shop next door, and people went in and out. A group of skateboarders flew past, hollering with easy youth. One of them lagged behind the rest and stopped in front of Corky’s window to adjust his position. His ears were gauged, like Grey’s, she noticed. That must hurt like hell to do, Corky thought. She guessed that was the point.

  She moved back to the counter and eyed Grey’s phone number, still pinned to the message board there. She picked up the phone twice and put it back down, but the third time, she dialed. When Grey answered, she offered to let him borrow the diary.

  “Why the change of heart?” he asked.

  She didn’t really know why. “I just keep thinking about you. Maybe you’ll see something there that I didn’t,” she said. “Maybe something that makes it easier to understand. I don’t know, but… I don’t know.”

  He agreed to meet her at the coffee shop after work. She didn’t want the bookstore people to know she was doing this; it felt too private, like she’d offered to show him a scar.

  She left the bookstore after her shift, got into her car, drove around the block and parked in the back. Then she gathered up the diary from the trunk of her car. It had been there for days and days, riding around like a passenger, waiting for her to pluck up courage enough to call Grey.

  Her eyes adjusted to the light in the coffee shop, and she saw Grey in the farthest, darkest corner. He looked at home, comfortable. Almost like he was a normal man with no strange secrets.

  Almost.

  ***

  “So, you found this after he died?”

  “No, he gave it to me before that. He wanted me to read it. Right away actually.” She sipped at her coffee and let her mind run back. “He said it was a matter of life or death. See… well, when you read it, you’ll see. He wasn’t really all there. In the head, you know? He kinda lost it.”

  Grey let the palms of his hands caress the leather. “Do you think it’s true? What he wrote?”

  Corky shrugged and looked down into her coffee. Ring of truth. “Yeah. I think it is. Or was. Some of it, anyway.”

  “I really appreciate you letting me read it. I’ll be careful with it. I don’t know if there’ll be anything to help me with my own stuff, but there might.”

  Grey shifted the diary and his arms were exposed again. Corky stared at them: two innocent arms marked up in different ways. She looked up to find Grey smiling at her.

  “Interesting tattoo. Is that a snake?” she said.

  “Yeah. That wasn’t the arm you were looking at, though.”

  “You have new cuts.”

  He nodded and held his arm out so she could see it better. “Not very deep.”

  Corky winced, but leaned closer and looked. “Do you ever drink? The blood? Or are you just…?”

  “Sometimes.” He looked up and took in Corky’s reaction. “Not very often, but sometimes, just to feel more connected with them. Usually I just give the blood. It makes me feel good, to watch them feed on me. I know that probably seems gross to you.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Do they bite? The vampires. Do they bite the donors?”

  “No. Well, some of them do, yeah. Most don’t. There’s a few donors who get off on being bitten, you know. I couldn’t do it, that hurts like a bitch.”

  “Some people want to be bitten? Even though it hurts?”

  “Yeah. Not a lot, like I said. Most don’t. Razors usually. Some of them use a needle. I prefer a razor; bleeds better, and it hurts less.”

  “So all those scars are from razors?”

  Grey nodded. “They aren’t bad. I used to use a knife, and that left bigger scars. See, look.” He held out the other arm, and traced a line down the middle of the snake. “See that big scar? The snake covers it.”

  Corky peered deeply at the arm. She saw other scars hidden in the tattoo as well. “You can’t tell me those didn’t hurt. You can’t.
”

  “Well, you’re right. Those did hurt. I was pretty new to it, then. I didn’t know what I was doing. My brother has a worse one. Or he had.” Grey withdrew his arms and sipped coffee, looking down into the cup as though there was some small and fascinating thing in there. “The tattoos hurt worse than any of the rest though. The tattoos were hell. But worth it.”

  Corky watched him for a moment, watched his pale brown eyes. “So, your brother… do you really think someone might have hurt him? Did you call the cops?”

  “Well, yeah, we called the cops. They’re not much help. I mean, you know, what can they really do?” He drained his cup and waved at the waitress for more. “He was just a donor, like me, and then he started hanging out with a hardcore group. Those guys who get off on bites, like I was saying? Well, he was hanging out with a few of those guys. He was still donating with our regular group, but then he’d go off and take blood with these other guys sometimes. Rituals down by the river, under the bridge. Then the cops found one of them dead down there. By the river.”

  The waitress came and went. Corky watched Grey stir cream into his coffee, but didn’t say a word.

  “Shot through the head, execution-like. And staked.”

  “Staked?”

  Grey looked at her. “God, you have big eyes. Yes, staked. After they killed the guy, they drove a spike into his heart. A vampire hunter, right? They haven’t found him yet, either.”

  All sorts of sickos, she thought, all sorts, all sorts. “But…your brother… he’s OK, right? I mean, if he was… if he was, you know. Dead. They’d have found him. Right?”

  Grey nodded but said nothing.

  “So he just ran off. Or something. To start over somewhere.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t know. That’s the problem. I mean, if I knew he was fine, out there wherever, that’d be… well, I won’t say I’d just be fine with never seeing him again or anything, you know. I mean, I’d miss him. But I’d be OK with it, if that was what he wanted. It’s just having no idea, you know. That’s the thing. He could be out there anywhere. He could be anybody.”

  Corky leaned her chin into her palms and watched Grey pick at the edges of his napkin. He was quiet, but his fingers trembled a little. Maybe it was the coffee, she decided. His eyes met hers briefly and then went back to the napkin.