The Artist of Ruin

by Matthew S. Cox

  I rotate toward the voice.

  A dark brown guy in a white apron has frozen in his tracks halfway out the kitchen of a restaurant with two massive trash bags dangling from his hands. Dude’s got a mustache so fluffy it looks like he glued a hamster to his face—and he’s staring at the gap between my feet and the ground.

  “Oh, nothing.” I smile. “Just getting a little high.”

  He tilts his head, the grind of his mental gears jamming to a stop almost loud enough for me to hear.

  Giggling, I drift closer and make him forget seeing me. That done, he zombie-shuffles over to a dumpster and tosses the bags in as if I’m not even here. Good enough.

  Dammit! I’m a vampire not a psychic! Okay, well, maybe I do have some psychic abilities, but like clairvoyance and stuff isn’t one of them. My life is weird enough already. I don’t need ghosts showing up asking me for help. Especially ones who don’t give me any information.

  Argh!

  I don’t understand ghosts. Not at all. Why am I even seeing them? I thought that whole dealing with the dead thing was the Shadows’ deal anyway. Hmm. That gives me an idea. One thing Dad always says about working in programming: no one expects you to know everything, only that you know where to look to find the answers.

  And I think I might have an idea. Smiling to myself, I zip skyward.

  5

  Spiritualism 101

  Navigating Seattle at night is becoming second nature.

  I’ve never been great with directions, but I guess a lot of little things change for vampires. Like, I always know which direction home is in. That gets me debating if that sense comes from me thinking of my room as home or if there’s some deeper metaphysical connection between me and that house. For instance, if I decide someday to ‘lair’ somewhere else, would my direction pull change? Or am I like a ghost that’s stuck haunting the place they died? Well, if I was bound to my place of death, it’d be that backyard in Duvall.

  No sense confusing myself with questions I can’t answer.

  A few minutes of flying brings me to the apartment complex where Glim’s mortal family lives, still unaware that he’s not dead. Well, okay, he is dead, just not in the traditional sense. I get a distinct note of melancholy in the air, which means he’s either here or I’m starting to mentally beat myself up for still having my family.

  His choice to stay away from them makes sense given his ghastly appearance. Shadows aren’t known for their smoldering good looks, unless ‘just crawled out of a fire’ counts as smoldering. I dunno. His appearance doesn’t bother me at all. Yeah sure, he’s got grey skin, glowing yellow eyes, and big, non-retractable fangs, but I can still see the person beneath the monstrous features.

  He doesn’t dwell on it though. In the weeks since we’ve become friends, I’ve sought him out here a few times. It’s nice having someone to talk to at this hour, especially another vampire. While I consider Dalton and Aurélie both close friends, they each occupy quite different roles. Dalton’s more or less the erratic ‘cool uncle’ who’s always up to something kinda-sorta shady, but is a nice guy down deep. Aurélie has become something of a big sister-slash-second mom. Okay, third mom. Ashley’s mother is already second-mom.

  Geez, I have mothers like hobbits have breakfast.

  Anyway, Aurélie’s the kind of mother who’s overly sweet, but I really wouldn’t want to piss off. Or maybe more like a bizarre rich aunt, the type who’d bequeath millions to her cat. Not that she has a cat. She’s more into dolls, antiques really. The creepy-ass ones that I’m never quite sure they’re not really alive and staring at me. So, she’s a little eccentric. I’m sure when I’m a few hundred years old, I’ll have some quirks too.

  Anyway, Glim’s a listener. At least six times over the past few weeks, I’ve wound up here to hang out with him and talk. And yeah, I do most of the talking. He enjoys the company. Not many vampires who aren’t Shadows spend time around them, especially the image-obsessed Old Guard.

  I alight on the roof of the building across the parking lot from his ex-wife’s home. As soon as my feet touch the surprisingly cold surface, Glim appears out of thin air a short distance in front of me, sitting on the edge. Of course, he’s probably been there for a while already. He merely chose to let me see him.

  “Good evening,” he says, in a drawn-out parody of ‘movie-Dracula.’

  “Hey.” I pad over and sit cross-legged next to him. “You okay?”

  He manages to slip a smile around his fangs. “I am fine, thank you. And you shouldn’t feel guilt or regret for what you have.”

  “Are you reading my mind?” I ask in a playful tone.

  “I do not need to read deep to understand what is so clearly written on your face.”

  “Sorry. Can’t help it. Hope your family’s doing all right.”

  “They are well.” His eyebrows tilt up in the middle. “I trust your young sister enjoyed her dance performance tonight.”

  The wind picks that moment to throw my hair over my eyes. I pull it aside so he can see my grin. “Yeah. Once she got over her initial jitters. I don’t suppose you know what’s going on with the world anymore. My other sister was worried someone might start shooting people in the theater. She’s only eleven.”

  Glim sighs. “Those who insist that monsters dwell only in the dark often fail to see the ones standing beside them.”

  “Yeah, something like that. And why are you talking like the crazy old NPC from a video game?”

  He chuckles. His sideways glance tells me he knows he left me behind a little with that answer. “There is an urgency about you tonight. You’ve come with a question weighing you down.”

  “Yeah.” I tell him about the ghost following me around and asking for help. “How the heck can I even see him? I’m about as psychic as a doorknob. Well, I mean before. I thought doing stuff with the dead was your guys’ deal.”

  He laughs. “We are both standing on the border between life and death. It is not so uncommon for us to see those who have gone completely over. We—the Shadows—can do more, but any vampire has the ability to see them.”

  “Oh. But he disappeared from me when I wanted to ask him something.”

  “You are likely able to see them when they do not wish to hide from you. They cannot conceal themselves from me. Some of my line are able to summon them or affect their minds the way we all can influence the living.” He shrugs. “I never bothered delving into any of that. A bit too creepy.”

  Glim calling something ‘too creepy’ strikes me funny, even though I don’t consider him scary at all. He does at least appreciate the irony of what he said, and laughs along with me.

  “So, umm…” I fidget at the fray of my jean shorts. “I have no idea how to find people. He didn’t even tell me where Alex could be. Can you maybe help me find this guy?”

  “I would be happy to. Something to ease the boredom.”

  Yeah. Boredom. Better that than having people coming after me. I lay back, fingers laced behind my head, and stare up at the stars. “What do vampires do with all the time they get?”

  “Have you thought about knitting?”

  My turn to whip out the side-eye. “Seriously?”

  He tugs a bundle of purple yarn and knitting needles out of the giant pocket on his Army-green trenchcoat, then stuffs it back. “Seriously.”

  I laugh loud enough to scare all the pigeons off the next building.

  6

  Top Ten

  Around four in the afternoon the next day, my bedroom door opens.

  I look over the top of my e-reader as Ashley walks in. Today, she’s been possessed by the spirit of Sophia. Pink top, pink skirt, white socks with frills, and she’s probably left her pink shoes upstairs by the door. It’s unusually dark out in the basement, which strikes me as odd since the weather app on my phone showed clear and sunny.

  “Sare!” Ashley runs over to the side of my bed. “You gotta see this!”

  She’s giving off urgency like she ca
ught someone stealing from us. “What’s up? And why is it so dark out there? Did a thunderstorm roll in?”

  “No, your Dad’s putting stuff on the windows.”

  I shut off the e-reader and sit up in bed, shouting, “Dad?” at the door.

  “Sare!” Ashley tugs on my arm.

  “What’s so important?” I ask.

  Dad pokes his head in and speaks in a super deep, slow voice. “You rang?”

  “You’re putting stuff on the windows?” I ask.

  He grins, no longer talking funny. “Yeah. Tint film, like for cars. Hopefully, we won’t get pulled over in the house. I think we’d get a ticket for having the windows this dark.”

  I roll my eyes. “You’re not going crazy with it, are you?”

  “Nah. Just the basement level windows to give you a little more space on bright days.” He winks. “Gotta finish up.” He ducks out and pulls the door closed.

  “Come on,” says Ashley, still pulling.

  I spring out of bed as fast as I can move, getting behind her before she even notices I’ve gone anywhere. After hesitating barely long enough to allow her to perceive the empty bed and become confused, I poke her in both sides and yell, “Boo!”

  She shrieks and dives forward onto the bed. Her scream melts into something between giggling and crying. “Holy shit, Sare! You scared the crap out of me.”

  “Well, I’m out of bed. What’s up?”

  Ashley fans herself for a moment before clambering over to my computer and pulling up YouTube. “You gotta see this!”

  “Fail video?” I ask.

  “No, well. Kinda. But not really.” She pulls her phone out and hand-copies a URL from a note file.

  “Top Ten Unexplained Phenomena,” I say, reading the title of the video she opens.

  It starts with a security cam view of a large white room with a long table, chairs, and one fiftyish woman sitting at the end of the table closest to the camera. After twenty-eight seconds of nothing, some of the chairs in the background start moving on their own.

  “Oh, one of these,” I say. “Ghost stuff?”

  Ashley pauses it and clicks the bar to the 2:37 minute mark, which shows a small boy floating over his bed, arms and legs dangling. To my sharpened eyes, the column of whatever he’s balancing on is pretty obvious. Someone propped him up on a cylinder-shaped object the same color as the wall behind the bed.

  “That’s so fake.” I point at the screen. “He’s on top of a… thing.”

  “No, not that. This.” Ashley clicks play.

  The boy cries out for his mother in Spanish for another two seconds before the video moves to the sixth most impressive of the top ten. As soon as the image comes up, I feel like someone hit me in the stomach with a sledgehammer. I’m looking at another security camera view, only it’s of the Snohomish County morgue. The same morgue where I woke up as a vampire.

  Everything is still and quiet for about ten seconds until a muffled female voice yells. Shivering, I edge closer behind my chair and grip Ashley’s shoulders. Soft thumping comes from my speakers. My mind leaps back to the memory of being trapped in that horrible, tiny space, kicking at the door. She reaches up and presses her hand down on mine.

  One of the doors on the body cooler blasts open so fast it looks like a SEAL team from Call of Duty used C4 to breach it… and my bare-ass naked self tumbles off the tray onto all fours. Thankfully, whoever posted this video put blurry spots over my boobs and crotch, and the camera’s not the greatest quality, so it’s somewhat difficult to make out my face. I look like any average brown-haired young woman. On screen, I search around, pulling futilely on locked cabinets for a little while before heading out into the hallway. The video cuts to another camera with a view of me running straight toward it down the corridor.

  “You’re so skinny,” says Ashley.

  I figure she’s trying to lighten the mood, but she’s as freaked out as I am. Not over what happened, but at my being on YouTube naked, even with blur-censoring. Well, that would be embarrassing enough, but once I disappear out the door, the video jumps back to the morgue cooler door flying open in slow motion, my two feet hovering in the darkness after kicking it. I’m less worried about people seeing my ass than I am the wrong people seeing me at all.

  “Been hunting for stuff about vampires,” says Ashley, after pausing the video once my section is finished. “I think this is how those idiots found you. Or at least, how they came to the area. The video information identifies Snohomish County as where this story came from.”

  I nibble on my knuckle and start pacing. “Ugh. This is bad.”

  “Could be worse,” mutters Ashley, scrolling down. “Most of the comments that mention ‘number six’ think it’s fake. Special effects or a clip from an unknown foreign movie.”

  “Fake?” I stop walking in circles and take a knee beside Ashley in my chair. She scrolls while I read the comments. Some people call it ‘fake as hell.’ A few think the ‘special effects’ of the explosive door were awful. A couple even say my boobs are ‘way too small’ for movies.

  I fidget, poking at my chest. “Hmm.”

  “I don’t think they’re too small,” says Ashley. “But those special effects are kinda lame.”

  “Hah. Thanks.” Somewhat relieved at the comments, I let gravity pull me sideways to sit on the floor. “Yeah, I don’t think most people believe any of these videos. It’s like being in a tabloid. Everyone assumes it’s made up because of where they read it.”

  I set my hands on my hips, debating trying out that phone number to the PIBs. Maybe Agent Hendricks can kill that video. Then again, the government doing something like that would make the tinfoil hat people go crazy. Meh. Better off leaving it sit there and drown in conspiracy and accusations of being fake.

  “So…” Ashley spins around in the chair to face me. “What do you wanna do today?”

  I shrug. “Not much yet. It’s way too bright out there. I can almost feel it.”

  “Yeah… It’s real sunny out. No worries. Let’s hang here.”

  “It won’t bother me if you want to go out and enjoy the day.”

  She waves me off. “Bah. And do what? Stand around alone in the sun and turn into a lobster? Really, how often did we go outside before?”

  “Other than Michelle’s pool? Not much. Okay. As long as you’re sure. Sun’s pretty rare here. You sure you wanna miss it?”

  Ashley scuffs her feet back and forth over the rug. “I’ll get plenty of sun in a couple years when I’m married with a family or something and can’t just spend time hanging out with you whenever I want.”

  “Heh.” I grin. “Video games or movies?”

  She makes a pensive face, folding her arms. “Guess we’re a little too old for dolls anymore.”

  “Ya think?”

  “I’d say Chelle’s pool, but she’s working and that’s outside.”

  “We could try D&D again,” I say.

  “Not enough people. That was fun, but we need like four more bodies for it to be worth doing.”

  “My dad and the littles would probably give it a try.”

  Ashley stares at me. “You’re not serious. They’re too young.”

  “We were eleven when we first played.”

  “Yeah, but we’re not little anymore. The stories would be a lot more complicated and deep and kids aren’t into that. But, if we do, you should totally run the game. Wouldn’t need to send players notes for stuff, you could just telepathically talk to us.”

  I laugh. You spot a trap five feet in front of the barbarian.

  Ashley snickers. “Okay, okay. I know I always play rogues.”

  “Always? We played D&D three times.”

  “So? I made a rogue every time. That’s always.” She hops out of the chair, crosses the room, and falls seated on the edge of my bed while pointing at the TV. “Let’s find some lame ass movie and make fun of it.”

  “Ooh! We haven’t done that in forever. Great idea!”

 
; “Sweet. Start checking Netflix. I’ll be right back with popcorn.” She dashes out.

  I can’t help but feel a little awkward at preparing to have fun with my best friend when that guy the ghost wants me to find is out there somewhere on his way to death. And, I have no idea where to even start looking.

  “Any time you wanna pop in and give me something more to work with, feel free,” I say to the ghost, no idea if he’s even watching me. “Besides. I can’t go outside right now anyway.”

  Mom pops in. “Hey, Sarah?”

  I glance back over my shoulder at the door. “Yeah?”

  “Would you mind giving me a hand with the laundry? I’m buried with work again.”

  “Sure. Just, umm… you’ll have to bring it to the basement. Too bright for me. If you bring it downstairs I’ll deal with the rest, okay?”

  She blinks. Astonishment at my complete lack of protest lasts only a few seconds before she grins. “That’s such a help. Thank you. Oh, hon, how did that war between vampire elders go? Did the right people win?”

  “Didn’t I tell you about it?”

  “No…” Mom shakes her head, evidently unsure.

  “I managed to stop it. Got that spyglass back to its original owner who’s probably one of the most powerful vampires in the area.”

  “Oh, that spyglass thing was the war? You did tell us about that.”

  “I thought so. And yeah. You’d think after being around for hundreds of years it would take more than a stupid telescope to set off a war.”

  She chuckles, rolling her eyes. “Some of the things I’ve seen in a courtroom…. So ridiculous what people will sue for. Anyway, I need to get back to work. I’ll get everything downstairs for you.”

  I give her the thumbs up.

  After maybe fifteen minutes of listening to the brain numbing ping, ping, ping of scrolling across Netflix, Ashley walks back in. “Hey. Got conscripted to carry stuff. There’s a crapton of laundry out there.”

  “Yeah, I know.”