Forever.
She opened her eyes and looked at the house again.
“No,” she said aloud.
You can stop this now. Burn that house.
No. She wouldn’t do that.
Why? Because he’s such a nice guy?
Because for the last almost twenty years, he and Amber were her only family. Because once upon a time, for all his faults, he had made her feel loved and protected. He hadn’t been all bad, and maybe not even half bad. By this evening, she would be at Fort Bragg, reunited with Amber. Very shortly, this creature that had overtaken her husband would starve to death. Vampire king or not, he needed blood. And there wasn’t much of that left.
She didn’t have to burn him. He’d die on his own, without her help. Which was good. Because she didn’t know if she could give it.
She saw something moving in the side mirror and turned to see a dirty white minivan pull up behind the truck. It took her a moment to recognize it as the one Amber and Justin had taken the night before. Her heart nearly stopped, then raced when the doors opened and the two of them emerged into the morning. She threw her door open and jumped out onto the road.
“Amber!”
Both of them froze. Amber stared at her in horror, speechless.
“I’m okay,” Heather said. “He didn’t get me. I’m normal. I….”
Before she could finish, Amber ran forward and enveloped her in a crushing bear hug, the strength of which felt incongruous with her slight frame.
“I thought you were dead,” she said thickly. “Like Dad.”
“I’m fine,” Heather said. She looked over Amber’s shoulder at Justin. He stood leaning against the van, hands shoved in his pockets. He smiled.
“I’m glad to see you, too,” he said. “You wouldn’t look good with fangs.”
Despite the night she’d just experienced, she smiled. She kissed the crown of Amber’s head and held the girl as she shook with sobs of relief. They stood this way for a long time. When Amber showed no signs of letting her go, she kissed her again and murmured, “We need to get going now, okay? Put as much distance as possible between us and this place.”
Amber pulled away, sniffling. She threw a glance past Heather at the farmhouse. “Is he in there?”
“Yes.”
Amber looked back at Justin, who looked down at the ground and kicked at a pebble with the tip of his shoe.
“What?” Heather asked.
“We figured out how he’s still eating,” he said. “And we can’t just go.”
When he finished explaining, Heather turned to stare again at the farmhouse. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said in a tone of disbelief. “He’s farming?”
Amber folded her arms and nodded. “Crazy, right?”
So there would be no starvation. This would continue. He would drink the blood of a cow, and he would make good on his promise to track her down. They could run to Fort Bragg, but he’d find a way to solve the distance problem. He could bottle the stuff and take it with him, keep a 20-ounce in the cupholder while he stalked her from place to place. Because while they could run all day, at sundown they had to pick a place and stay there. And with winter coming, the nights were getting longer. They would remain that way for a long time.
Justin cleared his throat. “Listen,” he said. “If you two want to get in the van and go somewhere else for a little bit, I can take care of this. You don’t have to be a part of it.”
Heather looked from the farmhouse to him. She bit her lower lip.
“No,” she said. “I do. I have to be the only part of it.”
With Amber and Justin watching, she walked over to the truck and began gathering paper and other dry things from the floor of the cab and the glovebox. Everything she would need to start a fire.
The house was old, the timbers dry and flammable. They sat in the van and watched the blaze consume the structure. When the screeching started, Heather plugged her ears and hummed until it stopped. It didn’t take long.
As the fire-weakened frame collapsed into a great pile of smoking and glowing wood, Justin started the van and sighed.
“We probably better get going,” he said, dropping the gear selector into drive. “Day isn’t getting any younger.”
Something occurred to her then, and she put a hand on his shoulder. “Can you wait just a minute?”
“Sure.”
She opened the door and got out. Neither Amber nor Justin said a word as she walked towards the burning house, stopping when the heat grew too great for her to continue. Then she removed her wedding ring and hurled it at the flames.
“Let’s roll,” she said.
Author’s Note
Have you ever told a child not to be scared because vampires don’t exist?
Yeah. Me, too. We’re lying, of course. Vampires have shadowed us since humanity’s earliest days; Lucy and Peking Man probably ran across one at some time during their short and difficult lives. Every culture has a story about a mythical creature that attacks people and sucks their blood, and there’s a reason for that: we’ve all met vampires. And some of us have fallen victim to them.
Dude…are you drunk?
Not right now. I’m dead serious: vampires are real. Think I’m crazy? Consider this story:
A few years ago, I ran across a childless lady in her fifties who, until about five years previously, had been living on her own. She had a good job, a healthy retirement account and substantial equity in a house and land. She lived within her means and used credit responsibly. She wasn’t rich, but she’d done well for herself. She’d built something.
And then she met a guy. And married him.
By the time I met her, the retirement account was gone. Where’d it go? Same place as the equity in her house. Poof! She owed money on credit cards. And the husband? Left her. Moved out. Not because she was cheating on him, mistreating him, drunk, hooked on Colombian marching powder or any doing any of the other things that tend to end marriages, but because she was tapped out and had nothing left to give him. I know this because at her settlement conference, the soon-to-be-ex actually told the mediator and his lawyer that he’d left his wife because she wasn’t maintaining him in the lifestyle he preferred. She couldn’t fund his stupid hobbies anymore, or his bad investments. He’d taken everything she had, and then he left her. She had very little recourse, because in our state there’s no law against being an evil son of a bitch. In many ways, we’re a caveat emptor jurisdiction.
The essence of vampirism is the draining of life to the benefit of the vampire and the detriment of the host. Vampires take more than they truly need and more than you can afford to give them, and they keep on sucking even as you wither and start to die. They do this because they’re out for themselves. Your spiritual, physical, emotional or financial health isn’t a secondary concern—it’s not a concern at all. They don’t care that their need to possess you has cut you off from friends and family and other relationships that once made your life a better place. They don’t care that they’re spending you into bankruptcy or that you’ll never be able to retire because they wanted to take out an equity line to buy a bass boat or a 401K loan to buy a mobile home for that thirtysomething loser kid from their first marriage (seen it, seen it, seen it). They. Don’t. Care. They want you to do something for them. That’s it.
The phenomenon isn’t confined to romantic partners; sometimes it’s your own kids doing this. I once got appointed to an adult guardianship case for this 90-ish man who had spent World War Two fighting with the Royal Army in Burma. After his wife died, he ended up in a cruddy nursing home as a ward of the Department of Social Services because his alcoholic daughter—a 60-year-old toddler—was blowing all his money and not looking after his needs. She and her husband lost the home he’d spent a big chunk of his savings acquiring for her, because they were too drunk to hold jobs and pay the mortgage. So they moved in with him and used his credit cards to buy liquor. I think she’d had her fangs in him for
a long time, but after her mother passed and Daddy started slipping, she sucked harder.
In stories, vampires knock. Or they skitter around at night, screech, whatever—they’re pretty easy to spot. The real ones? Not so much. Nobody I’ve known or worked with who fell victim to a vampire was stupid. They just had a weakness somewhere—a need to be loved, a fear of being alone, a need to remain in a socially-recognized, committed relationship relationship regardless of the cost—and somebody exploited it. They opened the door for the wrong person. These stories are very common. And in their own way, very old.
So how do you get rid of a vampire? What is the real-life equivalent of sunlight and wooden stakes? I don’t know. I’m not a therapist. I don’t know if therapists know, either. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say the sunlight would be awareness; bloodsuckers prefer the dark, because once you see what they are it becomes harder for them to take advantage of you. And the stakes…maybe those would be words. Like “no.” And “get lost.”
I don’t know. If you do…I’m all ears.
Although writing is a solitary pursuit, bringing a book into the world can’t be. I’d like to thank Jan White, Lori Withers, Janet Rojas, Teresa Layton, Roger Bradshaw, Charles Butler, Karen Bennett, Angelina Jennings and Susan Jennings for reading an earlier version of The Last Days of October and doing what they could to keep me from inflicting bad fiction upon the world. I didn’t take every piece of advice I received, so any errors or poorly executed passages are my fault and mine alone. I have no excuses. If you have any comments, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected]. I could screw up a microwave burrito, so I’m sure there’s something.
Thanks for reading.
Also By Jackson Spencer Bell
Trigger Finger http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JS6W668
When two intruders break into his house one night bent on attacking his family, Kevin Swanson fights back--with deadly consequences. In the aftermath, he rockets from obscure lawyer to local hero overnight--a hero to everyone, that is, except for a strange man who calls in to a local talk radio show when Kevin appears as a guest. The caller, who won't reveal his name, has a message: Kevin is no hero. And his story about what happened isn't even close to accurate. Suddenly, Kevin finds himself thrust into the center of one violent crime after another, rising to the occasion and exceeding his wildest expectations each time. Strangely, though, none of his attackers carry any identification. And as his doubts drive him through his own investigation of what really happened that night, his crumbling reality sends him hurtling towards a face-to-face confrontation with the nameless caller—and the horrifying truth that won't let him hide.
Just Hang On http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KM1Z2P0
In 1995, 20-year-old Rebecca Francis learns that her roommate's boyfriend exposed her to HIV during a one-night stand. On a Saturday morning, the nurse at the clinic tells her she'll have her test results by Friday. All she has to do is wait. That shouldn't be hard...right?
But Rebecca has an internal radar that sometimes tells her when things are about to happen. This time, it's telling her she's going to die. And as she struggles to keep herself together in the face of mounting despair, Rebecca plunges into a downward spiral of depression and psychic anxiety that refuses to let her rest. A novella of shame, regret and the unbearable weight of uncertainty.
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