Sid stretched leisurely, yawned, pot belly protruding. “Sort of, Ed. In a…destiny kind of way, yeah.”
“Destiny kind of way?”
Sid smiled. “Can I tell you something, Ed? As a former friend and employer? Do you mind if I tell you something?”
“Shoot.”
“This place of yours. It’s a real dump.”
“Why?”
“Hey, it’s your place.”
“No, I mean, you said a ‘former’ friend, Sid. Why ‘former’?”
“Ah. That.”
“I mean, aren’t we still friends? I’m not sore about being fired or anything.”
“Oh, I know you’re not, kid, I know you’re not. That’s the least of your problems, actually.”
“What is?”
“My firing you.”
I blinked. “Yeah? So what’s the most of my troubles?”
“Ah.”
“I really wish you’d stop saying that.”
“’Ah’?”
“It’s the way you say it. Something about your teeth. Can’t put my finger on it.”
I squinted at him. “Sid?”
“Yes?”
“Is that my suit jacket you’re wearing?”
Sid looked down at his pot belly peeking from under my taunt jacket button. He nodded resignedly. “Too snug, I know. But I intend to lose weight. In fact, I will lose weight, without even trying much. Already happening. And I always really liked this jacket, Ed. The house maybe not so much, but this jacket is nice.”
I felt like saying “ah” but didn’t.
“So what’s with your teeth, Sid? For that matter, what’s with your eyes?”
“What about them?”
Get out of here! a voice in my head warned suddenly. “Well, for one thing, you’re sitting in the dark but both your teeth and eyes seem to have this weird kind of…glow about them. Is there something I should know, Ed?”
“Probably. I’d say probably, yes.”
“Is it a bad thing I should know?” Hair standing up on my nape now.
Sid started to answer, paused to unbutton the tight jacket front across his paunch, then went on. That’s when I noticed his fingers. The nails in particular.
“I want you to know something, Ed. I liked you. Well…that’s too strong, maybe. Let’s say I never didn’t like you. I never hated you anyway. Fact is you brought a kind of…oh, nutty optimism to the newspaper. It was refreshing. I’ll miss that.”
“Why isn’t this making me feel better, Sid?”
“Also, I want you to know, before I…” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I want you to know that you aren’t losing your mind. You know, what with the talking dog thing earlier and then finding me here on your lumpy couch. With the front door locked and all.”
Run!
“You know about the talking dog, Sid?”
“I know about a lot of things, Ed.”
I suddenly felt very small. Like a mouse. Before a very large owl. But I screwed up my courage, put my best foot forward. “It wasn’t locked actually, you know. The door. I just forgot.”
Sid just smiled at me.
“I didn’t forget?”
Sid just smiled at me.
Shit.
I felt a wave of dizziness. “You came right through it, didn’t you? Locked door and all.”
Sid smiled wider. Enough for me to see the teeth again. “Left it unlocked for you, though, for, when you came home! Gotta give me points for that!”
I nodded limply “Not really kindness, right?”
Sid shrugged. “’Fraid not, kid. Sorry. Really. Nothing personal here, Ed.”
I swallowed thickly, the creepiness having settled against my larynx now.
“Please stop doing that, Ed. Makes your throat undulate.”
“So?”
“Gives me a light boner.”
I had the sudden certainty I was pouring through the cracks in the old floorboards like hot lead. “You’re gong to kill me, aren’t you Sid? The kid in the well story—you really hated it.”
“It’s entirely up to you whether you die, Ed. I mean, you are going to die, but you can still walk around afterwards. If you want. Call it a present between employer and employee.”
Maybe if you dive real quick through the window…
“Please stop sounding like one of the undead, Sid.”
“Can’t really do that, kid.”
Now I was suddenly cold all over, like if I seeped through the floorboards I’d snap and fall apart in the cellar. Sid got a funny look on his face the same moment I was thinking the word ‘cellar.’ “Shit,” I said, “that’s where your coffin is, isn’t it?”
Sid just smiled.
I shook my head morosely. “I never go down in that damn cellar.”
Sid smiled wider still, showing the full length of his fangs. “I noticed.”
“I don’t want to be a vampire, Sid. I really don’t.”
“Up to you, kid, like I said.”
I sprang for the front door, almost without knowing it.
I know you’ve heard that expression before, but I literally sprang to the front door-- landed right in front of it in one long, graceful leap. Couldn’t do it again if I tried.
Sid didn’t budge from the old couch. Maybe chuckled a little.
Probably at the locked door.
I twisted and yanked but the knob wouldn’t budge. How in hell did he do that? Was that a vampire kind of thing, locking and unlocking doors at will?
I turned to say something and screamed—just a short one, I’m not a total coward—but Sid was suddenly standing right behind me--like he just materialized out of the air. “Jesus!” I cried.
“Goes with the territory, kid, incredible speed. Sure you won’t change your mind, about the vampire thing?”
I stalled for time. “Well…” I looked around for some kind of weapon. “…how are the hours?”
“Late. Always.”
I nodded, searching the dark room wildly for something, anything. “No sunshine, of course.”
“Sorry.”
“And I just bought all that Coppertone!”
He wasn’t laughing.
I sprang for the dining room table.
Ed didn’t budge. Chuckled a little again.
I upended the heavy table, grabbed the nearest leg, snapped it off into one jagged end, turned and plunged the stake into Sid’s vampire heart!
--or that was the plan, anyway; in reality the rented table was very old and of very sturdy, solid oak, expertly crafted and beyond breaking. I just stood there pulling and grunting at the unmoving leg like a berserk beaver.
Sid appeared beside me magically, smiling encouragement. “Nice try though, kid! Now you get creative! We could have used more of that on the paper, Ed.”
And he leapt at me.
And you have to see an overweight, flat footed, pot bellied, middle aged man leap to really appreciate it. Even as he’d grabbed my neck and bent my back painfully over the up ended table I was tempted to congratulate him on his speed.
And his strength! Amazing. Terrifying. Like the awful famished look in his eyes…the burning red eyes of a thing that hasn’t tasted food for a while.
I closed my own eyes tight. Maybe I was forced to endure this, that didn’t mean I had to watch. So long, Carrie, I thought, sinking into blackness. Carrie Lynn Johnson had mistakenly walked into my grade school bathroom and caught me standing there with my johnson in my hand. ‘I’m sorry!’ I’d apologized for no reason. “I’m not!’ she’d smiled in leaving. I’d never followed up on it. But I’d never forgotten her. Funny I should think of her just then as the darkness was settling in.
Nothing happened then for a few moments.
I finally realized I wasn’t dead and opened my eyes again.
Sid was still staring down at my throat, but his eyes had lost some of their heat. Actually they were shrinking, like that white dot on an old TV screen receding to darkness.
&n
bsp; Sid kept his iron grip up but he was frowning doubt now, head cocked just so, as if listening for something….something way off in the distance beyond my hearing.
Then, just for an instant, a new light crept into his eyes, his dead white cheeks pinking ever so slightly…
…just before the north window exploded in a symphony of flying glass, a darker streak swept the darkened living room, and that silly talking dog seized Sid’s ankle in its teeth.
FOUR
The dog dragged Sid Mathers all over the living room, screaming like a woman. Sid, that is, doing the screaming--the dog only growled and thrashed, shook its victim like a rattle and threw massive quantities of blood over my walls and threadbare carpet.
I’m not sure I’d ever heard a man scream before except on TV and I’m not altogether sure this was a man’s scream anyway; more like a woman’s, a very deranged woman. And that isn’t it either, really. Inhuman I guess is the word I’m looking for. And balls-to-the-wall unnerving. And the way Sid spit and clawed like a cat, when his long nails could reach that far, at the dog’s furry back, the dog always shaking its head furiously at the last second before the claws could make purchase, which only made Sid scream and spit and claw all the more....pulling down the drapes, destroying the coffee table, spraying everything in scarlet globes.
I just stood there gaping like a moron.
In between smashing Sid against the front door and ceiling, the dog would let go an instant and yell at me with snarled muzzle. “Get a stake for chrissake!”
I finally came unglued long enough to walk in little frantic circles before all the growling and screaming. “Where?”
The dog bounced the shrieking Sid on the sprung couch and tossed him into the north wall. There were some bad cracks there anyway. “The dining room table, you idiot!”
“I already tried that!”
Now the dog’s look was so infuriated I was sure it was going to bite me. “Goddamnit, use one of the chairs!”
Why hadn’t I thought of that?
I ran back to the dining room, seized a heavy oak chair by the back and swung it at the carpet. It didn’t break. I slammed again. Nothing. I kept bashing it on the floor.
Then it occurred to me that as long as I was bashing at things it might as well be Sid’s head. Pretty soon I was chasing behind them around the living room, hopping over over-turned furniture, swinging at Sid’s balding head in a kind of fever dream, occasionally connecting, occasionally hitting the dog by mistake.
The dog snapped at me, eyes even redder than Sid’s, to say nothing of its muzzle, now dark with blood. “You’re accomplishing nothing!”
“I can see that!” I gasped.
“Try the wall!”
I bashed the heavy chair at the wall. One of the legs broke off. The part that was formerly attached to the seat came away in a nice jagged point. Perfect, what I’d wanted all along.
When the flailing, foaming Sid saw this he suddenly kicked into high gear. He thrashed and flailed with renewed fury, a deranged demon, finally catching the dog a good one under the chin. The dog let go a moment and Sid came flying straight at me across the room, almost like he had wings; maybe he did.
But it wasn’t me he wanted. He went by me and my stake in a fast breeze, heading for the back porch door. “He’s getting away!” I shouted. Always the quickest guy in a group to state the obvious.
The dog stood splay-legged and panting on the blood-glistening carpet a moment, head down, getting its breath, chest working like a bellows. “No…he’s not…”
I looked at the dog—it looked exhausted. I turned to look at the hallway in time to see my former editor disappear into the kitchen, turned back again and looked at the dog. “How do you know?”
The dog lifted its head, began trotting patiently past me, jerking its dark nose at the windows. “Sun’s out again. Come on.”
I think that was the first time I realized how Sid had made it from the office to my house in the broad daylight; it had been raining all day.
I followed the dog through the kitchen to the heavy cellar door, which had been flung open in haste, a clear trail of blood spatters making tracking a cinch. The dog started down, taking its time. It seemed to know exactly where it was going and was in no particular rush to get there.
I hit the light wall switch above the swishing tail and we crossed the cold cement floor past towers of shadowed boxes, pipes and small, darting things. The dog watched one scurry under a pile of stacked wood and I got the distinct feeling its pricked ears were working hard to resist chasing. We came around some piled junk through more pools of shadows to the back of the furnace. And there was the coffin. Sid was in there when I pulled back the lid, eyes closed, arms folded, like he was asleep or dead. Or both, I guess.
I turned to find the dog shaking its head philosophically beside me. “Why do they always come back here? Like it’s going to help them or something.”
The liquid doggy eyes looked up at me with anticipation, followed by quick impatience when I just stood there. It nodded at the table leg in my hand.
“Well! I don’t think he’s going to stake himself!”
I looked over in horror at Sid. “I can’t do that!”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, I can’t!”
“Fine. Let him be, then. And wake up tomorrow morning with his teeth in your neck.”
I was trembling all over. “Oh, shit. You do it!”
“Sorry. No opposable thumbs.”
I looked at the stake in my hand, my insides caving.
“You’ll need a mallet,” the dog said, sitting back to scratch behind its ear.
“I don’t have a mallet! I wasn’t trained for this!”
She gave me a beleaguered look. “We’re you trained to hammer nails?”
“Yes.”
It nodded. “That’ll do.”
* * *
I sat in hot, steamy suds, washing the blood off me.
Mitzi sat watching me near the tub. Sometimes she looked like a Lab mix, sometimes like a Golden Retriever mix, sometimes like a German Shep—
“A poodle! I’m a poodle, for cripe’s sake!”
I glanced over at her sitting there on the white bathroom tiles. “Like hell. Where’s the poodle? I don’t see any poodle.”
The dog turned, stood on its hind legs and stretched up at the sink mirror, turning her dark golden head appraisingly at her reflection. “Okay, I’m not saying there isn’t a little mutt in there…”
I grunted. “A little, yeah.”
She came back down again, forepaws hitting the hard tile silently in that way dogs have. She looked me up and down once. Reminded me of the dame doing that in the bar.
“Fine,” she said. “A mutt then. But with the heart of a poodle. I can feel it.”
I scoured at my forearm with the washcloth, adding more soap. “You’re just saying that because you want to be a poodle, on account of everyone knows how smart they are.”
She snorted and put her head down between her paws. “And what are you, some kind of small town newspaper reporter?”
“Scotch-Irish, mostly with a hint of French and just a soupcon of German.”
“To wit: a mutt.”
I smiled.
“Got a nice smile, though, I’ll give you that.” She rose up momentarily and peered over the lip of my tub. “Cute little wee-wee, too.”
I splashed water at her and she settled back on the floor, licking at the suds.
I stared at her until she looked up again.
“What? I’m a woman! We notice those things.”
“Little wee-wee?”
A louder snort. “Men! You’re all obsessed.”
I snorted myself. “What do you know about men? You’re a dog. This may all be a dream but I know a dog when I see one, especially a mutt.” I scrubbed at my chest.
“I’ve been around the block.”
“Mostly doggy-style, I’d imagine.”
She looked up s
harply. “Oh! Oh, that’s cute! I just saved your life while you stood around doing nothing and—“
“Hey, I staked Sid!”
“—doing nothing and now you’re the comic hero! That is so male! Mister so-called reporter-failed private eye! You know, I’ve got better things to do with my time than sit on your roach-fragrant bathroom floor and stare at your stubby johnson.”
I put the soap in the dish and lay back in the steam with a grateful groan. “So why are you?”
She put her head back down. “Like I said at the bar, you and I might have something together…some kind of future. Might being the operate word.”
“How so?”
She closed her eyes, resting but not resting, like dogs do. “Look Eddie, I’m a Reader, okay? I’ve been sniffing your heels for weeks, literally and figuratively. You’ve got promise. I’m not saying you’re a real Reader yet, you aren’t. But you can hear me speak. And that’s a start.”
“I meant to ask you about that. How do you speak without moving your lips? Some kind of ventriloquism thing?”
“’Some kind of ventriloquism thing’?” she mocked, shaking her head hopelessly. “I can see this isn’t going to be easy.” She sighed. “No Edward, some kind of mind-projection thing. Dogs can’t move their lips, in case you haven’t noticed, or form vowels or consonants. And then, of course, there’s the lack of human vocal cords…”
“Okay, okay, I’m an idiot. So why are you wasting your time? What do you want me for?”
“Hunting vampires, of course. You don’t think I slam those bastards all over just anyone’s living room, I hope.”
I thought about it a moment. “Reader, you said…”
“That’s right.”
“You read people’s minds.”
“Certain people, within a certain proximity.”
I nodded at the bubbles. “And just for clarity’s sake--it was you I was talking to in the bar earlier today, right?”
“Dry-humping in the bar, practically.”
“But talking to you, not the dame.”
“Not the dame, Eddie. The dame is Alicia. A badass super-bitch you really don’t want to mess with. Lucky for you—for both of us really—Reading is not one of her talents. But that’s about the only thing that isn’t. She can get inside your head in lot of other nasty ways, mess with your brain, scrape out your skull and have you strung up and drained white before she finishes her cigarette.”
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