Vampires, Hearts & Other Dead Things

by Margie Fuston

  The lady hands us our tickets with a scowl.

  “Sorry,” I say. “He’s not great with words.”

  I tug him out of there and into the convent’s garden.

  “If she wasn’t suspicious of us before, she sure is now,” I hiss.

  “Sorry. I’m not great at being a spy or a vampire hunter or whatever it is I am.”

  “Well, you’re certainly no Buffy.”

  He laughs. “Fair enough.” He goes quiet. “This is beautiful.”

  Low, immaculately trimmed hedges start in the center of the courtyard and jut out, lining the many brick paths converging in the center. I wonder if they carry some significant meaning. Instead of the one way, there are many. Dad would love to see this. It should be him, standing here with me, talking church history while I wait to get upstairs and look for vampires, but someday we’ll come back together.

  A black metal gazebo sits in one corner. A metal cross adorns the top. I let Henry wander down each of the paths even though I itch to get inside. The longer we enjoy the gardens, the less suspicious the woman at the entrance will be. I catch her watching us more than once. She must know the truth—a guardian of what’s inside. I bet they pay her well.

  Goosebumps rise on the back of my neck, and it takes all my self-control not to run inside and dart up the stairs.

  After enough time has gone by, I wave at Henry to follow me through the front doors.

  The first thing to catch my eye is the ancient wooden staircase right where I wanted it to be. Roped off.

  Henry comes up behind me. “Well, that’s inconvenient.”

  “Nothing I read said the second floor wasn’t open to the public,” I whisper, but he’s gone, perusing the stuff on display as if we’re actually here to learn about the nuns. Maybe on another day I’d be a little bit intrigued.

  I trail him into a room that finally catches my eye—an old wooden trunk sits against the wall. I grab his arm and squeeze. “What’s that look like to you?”

  “Too short to be a coffin.”

  “Yeah. Yeah.” I drop his arm. “I need to get upstairs,” I say, but he doesn’t hear me. He’s moved on already to another doorway.

  “Wow. Come look at this.”

  Thinking he’s found something, I hurry to his side, but it’s only the entrance of the church with its high beige ceiling and ornate stained-glass windows, various statues of angels and religious figures lining the rows of simple wooden pews. The floor, a deep green tile with a soft brown cutting through the middle, gleams as if polished every hour.

  The altar at the front is nearly impossible to look away from—the biggest I’ve ever seen, with beige and gold columns and a curved top peaked with a golden cross. Angels dressed in pastels trumpet from the top.

  Henry steps through the door and beckons me to follow. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”

  “Nope.” I don’t follow. Nothing about it reminds me of our church back home—my dad’s church, I mean. I’m not sure the church belongs to me anymore or if it ever did. If I really believed in God, would I be out here hunting vampires or would I be home praying every day?

  “Come look at this.” He stands in front of the pulpit, mouth open slightly as he takes in the rich purple walls and garish amount of gold. It’s too much. Too pretty. It lacks sincerity. Why present people with overwhelming beauty when real life is so very ugly? It makes my stomach turn.

  “Come on, you’re not a vampire yet. You can still enter a church.”

  His joking tone turns my skin hot.

  “I don’t have any interest in an overwrought church.” I resent every bit of money someone poured into this. Why not spend it on cancer research? At the very least, why not feed the hungry? Isn’t that what Jesus was known for?

  He walks back to me, face drawn. “Don’t talk like that.”

  “Like what? With honesty?” I sigh and look away. “I’m going upstairs.”

  “You can’t. All the stairways are roped off.”

  I just shrug. “I’m going upstairs.”

  He frowns. “I don’t think that’s a great idea.”

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  “We always have a choice.”

  “No. You have a choice. You can stay here in your cathedral and count the angels, but I need something an angel isn’t going to give me.”

  I spin before I can see his reaction.

  He doesn’t follow, which tells me all I need to know.

  I stop at the main staircase and try to see up to the second floor, but I can’t. I don’t hear anyone moving either. Nothing but a flimsy black rope between me and the stairs. And a statue of the Madonna and child. Wearing robes of gold and an overlarge crown, she seems to stare straight into my soul, and I can’t move. The babe in her arms gazes up the staircase like a watchdog in a crown twice the size of his body. Perhaps their judgmental expressions were meant to admonish people like me who intend to break the rules.

  I turn and head down the hallway to another staircase without any statues guarding it. I step under the rope with only the slightest twinge of guilt, but the old wood stairs creak louder than alarm bells as I climb them.

  I pause on the second floor long enough to notice a lovely mustard velvet settee, something I could totally imagine Lestat sitting on, sipping from a glass of red wine mixed with the blood of his latest victim. A little shiver traces down my spine. I turn to the next rise of stairs, roped off again. I read a rumor that the base of these stairs is rigged to set off an alarm the second you cross. I found no other accounts of this, though, so I hold my breath and crawl under the rope.

  No alarm bells, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t trigger a security system. Or something else altogether.

  The first flight of stairs is polished, gleaming wood to match the ones before, but once I turn the corner, out of view from the second floor, the varnished wood ends. The last stretch hasn’t been renovated—dull and worn, they cry out as I climb. My steps slow. Will I scream the moment fangs break through my skin? The thought pulses in my mind, heavy and demanding. Dark stains cover some of the steps—stains I don’t want to investigate—and my stomach rolls. A tremor turns my legs soft, and I grip the railing, sucking in a deep breath of ancient wood and dust and something else more sinister. Or maybe I’m letting my imagination escape from me. But what if I can’t get them to turn me? What if I just end up drained of blood, and Dad’s final memory on this earth is hearing about my gruesome murder? Even worse, they could find a way to cover up the truth. I’d end up another comment on a blog dedicated to vampire research.

  They never found the missing kid that got pinned on Gerald ten years ago and sent the vampires back into hiding. Nobody knows if vampires are inherently bad or if they’re like people—bad and good mixed together so thoroughly it’s hard to tell who is which until someone’s ripping out your heart.

  I’m panicking like prey about to get tossed into a cage with a predator. And prey gets eaten. I need to be bold and fearless to stand a chance. I take several shallow breaths, reminding myself who I am: a girl who takes risks. A girl who will do anything to save her dad.

  I bound up the stairs and reach a dense, dark wooden door.

  Two thick, black old-fashioned bolts lock it from the outside.

  Only one reason exists for locking a door from the outside: you’re keeping something, or someone, in.

  I pull at the first lock. Metal scrapes metal and then gives up the fight. The second lock follows suit. I grip the handle, take a deep breath, and pull.

  Nothing.

  I yank harder. The door’s jammed or double-locked from the inside or maybe nailed shut. I crouch and begin examining the edges for evidence of blessed nails holding it in place.

  I wiggle my fingers under the doorjamb. That would freak Henry out for sure if he’d had it in him to come with me, but what’s the worst that can happen? I get bitten? The icy air on the other side of the door chills my fingers so abruptly that my whole body t
rembles and not just from the chill. Why keep an attic so very, very cold? It should be brutally hot from the summer heat. Unless something is up here.

  I pull my fingers back out and slap my hand against the door. Something scrapes on the other side.

  “What are you doing up here?”

  I jump and turn, pressing against the cold door. Abnormally cold. I make a mental note and add it to my list of evidence before acknowledging the slender older man dressed in a faded navy security uniform. His bushy eyebrows meet as he glares at me from a few stairs below. I don’t know how I didn’t hear him coming.

  “I… I was…” I curse myself and my inability to lie.

  “I know what you were doing.”

  I gulp. I bet he doesn’t, but I’m not about to explain myself.

  “You’re one of those supernatural yahoos always trying to break in upstairs and make some grand discovery.” Okay, maybe he does. “I hate to break it to ya, but there’s nothing but a bunch of old records in storage up here.” He looks tired, as if I’m the millionth person he’s had to say this to.

  “Then why’s it locked?”

  “Girl, don’t push your luck.” He motions for me to follow him, then turns and heads down the stairs without waiting to see if I do. I’m tempted to turn around and give the door one last tug, but I don’t. I’m not the first one to try this, which means everyone else failed before me, or worse, didn’t fail but didn’t live to tell. Maybe these people aren’t on some vampire payroll. Maybe they’re actually keeping the worst of the worst locked away. As self-preservation kicks in, I follow him back down.

  Henry’s mouth gapes when we pass him, but I don’t say anything. Best if I go down by myself. Besides, he was too much of a coward to do anything to begin with.

  As we exit the front door, the humid air closes in on me like shackles, and I start to panic. I can’t be arrested. I need to keep looking. I need to get back up there. Even horrible things can sometimes give you what you need.

  “Sit here.” The guard gestures to a stone bench in the garden. It burns the backs of my thighs when I lower myself onto it.

  The guard walks over and starts talking with the woman we bought the tickets from. She does not seem pleased, to say the least.

  The door clicks open behind me, but I don’t bother to look up until Henry passes me, face grim, and goes up to speak with the two of them.

  I can’t hear what they’re saying, but the old woman and the security guard glance in my direction more than once. Henry keeps his back to me.

  The next thing I know, Henry’s leading me by my elbow off the hot hell of my stone seat and through the front gates of the convent. As we exit, I glance back at the woman and the security guard, expecting to see fury. I don’t. What I do see is much worse: pity.

  Henry tugs me along until we’re across the street, standing underneath a flowering tree.

  I yank my elbow away from his touch. “What did you tell them?”

  He looks up at the white blossoms draping over the side of a high stone wall. “The truth.”

  My face gets hot. “Which is?”

  “Don’t.” He finally looks down at me, and the problem is, it feels like he’s looking down on me not just because he’s ridiculously tall, but because he sees me as a child chasing a fairytale, or a nightmare, or something between the two, and I want to slap the look from his face.

  “I hate you.”

  He jerks back a little, then reaches for me.

  “Don’t touch me.” I shrug away from him and start down the street, but his long strides pace right behind me. “You shouldn’t have come,” I holler over my shoulder.

  “Victoria, wait.” His pleading reminds me of when we were kids and he needed me to slow down so he could catch up to me—before one of his steps equaled two of mine. Now he could overtake me at any moment, but he doesn’t. He lingers behind me and waits for me to turn. I do.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “For what?”

  “Listen.” He runs his hand through his hair, stalling, like he didn’t expect me to turn around and let him speak. “I can’t apologize for not believing in vampires. I don’t, but I do believe in you. I believe you’re doing everything you can to save your dad, and nothing’s braver than that. I want to help you. I was only trying to help you.”

  He’s telling the truth. He always did when we were kids, even when it got us both grounded. I used to hate that about him, but now I cling to it.

  Honesty’s a difficult thing when someone you love is sick. How do you balance it with optimism and hope? Sometimes honesty just feels like brutal pessimism. But Henry knows how to wield it.

  “Okay,” I say simply. I don’t ask him again what he said. I don’t need to hear it. I already know.

  He smiles and steps closer to me as the wall of ice between us dissipates, leaving us standing in chilly water, but that’s easily ignored.

  “What do we do now?” he asks. “Where else can we look?”

  “I’m not sure.” My throat throbs as everything piles up inside of me—disappointment, fear, lingering anger at Henry and at myself for not being more prepared. I could have fit a crowbar in a large purse. Why didn’t I think of something so basic? “That was my best lead,” I whisper. I want to melt into the cracks in the sidewalk. “I don’t know why I came here. What did I think would happen? That I could roll into town, break into an attic, and get some vampire blood? I’m ridiculous. I’ve watched too many movies. Professionals have been searching for vampires and haven’t found one. How can I expect to do better? I can’t believe you didn’t talk me out of this.” I keep babbling as all the doubt I buried rises to the surface.

  Henry’s eyes widen as he witnesses my breakdown.

  “Let’s go home,” I say. But that doesn’t feel like an option the second I say it. Go home and do what?

  I can tell by the look on Henry’s face that this is the moment he really came with me for. To scoop up my pieces when I realized what a fool I’d been and return me home to watch my dad die.

  I open my mouth to take it back—I can’t give up this easily—but Henry beats me to it.

  “No,” he says. He looks as shocked as I feel. “You’ve never been a quitter. Remember that time in fifth grade when we had the school Olympics and you sprained your ankle during the mile and refused to bow out gracefully?” He smiles a little. “You limped around that track and made everyone else wait until you crossed the finish line. We didn’t even get to do the fifty-yard dash because you just had to see your race through.”

  “You were pissed,” I remind him.

  “It was my best chance at a medal!”

  “You didn’t talk to me for a week.”

  “I think it was two.”

  “You forgave me eventually.”

  “Yes, but you wouldn’t have forgiven yourself if you’d quit, and you won’t forgive yourself now.” The expression on his face says he’s surprised to be the one talking us into staying.

  How can he know me so well? I guess some bonds don’t go away with absence. They’re easy to find again if you need them. This feels easy, standing here in the street with Henry—my emotions swinging from anger to forgiveness. When you have enough memories to lean on, differences can be overcome.

  Hope expands in my chest again. I almost let the pity and disbelief of the security guard, the ticket woman, and Henry take it away from me. But it’s there. I can’t let it go so easily. I’m stronger than that. If I don’t keep believing, then I’ve already failed, and that’s not an option.

  “You’re right, but I don’t know what to do.” The words aren’t easy for me to say. They’ve never been easy for me.

  “I know what will help.”

  You’d better get yourself a garlic T-shirt,

  buddy, or it’s your funeral.

  —The Lost Boys

  Five

  Butter. An unnatural amount of butter is Henry’s idea of help. We sit at a local seafood and burger s
hop—everything in this town is seafood and something—with a huge plate of thin-fried catfish and wedges of garlic fries covered in so much butter it drips onto the plate as I free a fry from the pile.

  “Wow,” Henry says for maybe the hundredth time. “These fries are amazing. Who would have thought to put butter on fries?”

  “Probably not a cardiologist.” I bite into another rich, buttery, garlicky fry and decide Southerners know how to eat. The fried catfish is just as amazing—crisp, without a trace of grease on the light breading, the perfect complement to the dripping fries. Besides, if I’m going to become a vampire, this may be my last chance to eat garlic. Garlic’s been used forever to ward off supernatural evils. People still believe in it today—as recently as the seventies, a church handed out cloves of garlic to test its congregation—if you didn’t eat it, you were a vampire. Might have made sense if they cooked it, because what rational human hates garlic? But raw garlic? No thanks.

  Dad loves garlic. If I didn’t think she’d be suspicious, I’d call Mom and tell her to make him his favorite roasted garlic potato soup.

  I love it, too. It’s not something I think about on a daily basis—my love for garlic—but how many foods have garlic in them? Dad and I always talked about going to the Gilroy Garlic Festival one day and trying garlic ice cream. Even Mom was excited for that. How awkward will it be going now when Dad and I can only go at night and all the food repels us? It’s almost funny to think about. And sad.

  But I don’t want to think about the things we’ll give up as vampires. Nothing matters as much as being alive. Or kind of alive, I guess.

  “We should probably get some sort of vegetable with this,” I say to distract myself.

  Henry stops chewing for a second, eyes narrowing as he examines my face. Somehow the tiny trace of sadness in my chest leaked into my voice. He knows me well enough to hear it. I will him to ignore it, to not confront me on something I’m trying to avoid.

  He gives me a light, easy smile—a gift. “No way. It would ruin the flavor combination.”

  “For once, you’re absolutely right,” I say as I rip off another piece of catfish and dip it into the jalapeño tartar sauce.