by Jeffrey Ford
“Forgive me, sir. I can’t have sugar.”
“Understood. We must have the same doctor.” He set the tray down and went to sit in the chair with the easel in front of him. Once settled, he leaned forward and turned the contrivance to face his visitor so the painting was in full view.
“Oh, my. That’s lovely,” said Feit. “And what are you asking for it?”
“I can let you have it for eighteen thousand dollars.”
“Very well.” The thief put his right hand into the left-hand side of his jacket as if to withdraw his wallet, but at the same time, Melody pointed out to Owen that Feit was reaching for the gun with his left hand. Even though they knew full well the gun was in the offing, they were both shocked when they saw it rise up. Both looked to Crenshaw. In an instant, the old man’s face went through a remarkable transformation, from the kindly old painter to a beetle-browed demon. The sleepers stepped back in shock. Feit aimed, but before he could pull the trigger, the artist pounced with a vicious growl. It happened so fast, neither Owen nor Melody could more than barely register it. As the gun went off, Crenshaw, having leaped in a blur, was on his prey, pushing away the weapon. The shot went wide and high into the ceiling as Feit’s throat was ripped out by the old man’s teeth in a gush of blood and a rapidly drowning cry of agony.
Melody froze but Owen screamed, loud and shrill. Crenshaw, who was lapping at the gaping throat while Feit’s body jerked and shuddered, suddenly spun around as if he could hear the cry. His glistening green eyes searched the shadows and glanced about the room as he sniffed the air. “He heard me,” said Owen.
“Back up,” whispered Melody. “Just keep backing up till we’re through the wall.”
The creature that had been the painter stood and started in their direction, his clawed hands out in front of him. The sleepers stepped back and back and passed through the wall into another room. It was a large bathroom with red tile on the floor and walls. A woman, obviously dead, hung upside down, her long hair reaching down into the tub of blood beneath her.
“God. What is this?”
“Just keep going till we’re on the street,” said Melody.
They pushed through a number of other rooms that smelled like a slaughterhouse, but neither of them stopped to look around. Eventually, they drifted to the ground on the side of the house and bounded away into the night.
11
THEY SAT ON SWINGS next to each other in the children’s playground behind the baseball diamond at the park. The night was still, whatever breeze there had been before now gone. The only sound, spring creepers and an owl. It was late enough that no traffic passed on the road a quarter of a mile away.
“What the hell?” said Owen.
“What the hell is right,” said Melody. “That was horrifying.”
“Did you know about this? Modern vampires in Westwend?” he asked. “Gangs and cutters and the miasma, people tripping on cicada-ass fungus? And now vampires?”
“I’ve never encountered it before,” she said.
“Had you ever heard of it in your travels?”
“Only rumors that sounded so outlandish, I passed them off as mere traveler’s tales. Exaggerations about an already-astonishing realm.”
“I think we can rule this one legit.”
“There’s so much going on at night, in the shadows, that people who spend most of their waking time in the sunlight have no idea about. Neon and spotlights and bulbs have pushed back the darkness, but night is still largely an undiscovered territory.”
“I thought vampires didn’t like cats.”
“Owen, please, this isn’t a Bela Lugosi flick. This is the real thing. We’re calling him a vampire, but he may be something else entirely. And he probably doesn’t adhere to the rules of fiction—wooden stakes and garlic, the lack of a reflection in mirrors.”
“He has the bloodletting thing down fairly well.”
“I wouldn’t take anything for granted.”
“And he heard me. That girl saw me in her backyard, the dog saw me in that couple’s bedroom a few nights ago, and the vampire heard me. What is it about me? I’m the least stealthy sleeper in town.”
“Creatures like this might have the extrasensory abilities of a dog or gifted child. Perhaps they sense you more readily because you don’t really belong here. I don’t think he saw us, but he obviously knew we were there. We’re dangerous to him and he’ll come looking for us.”
“I doubt anyone would believe us about him—especially not the cops.”
“We don’t have to convince them he’s a vampire. We just have to interest them in going inside his place to look for that dead girl’s body and the remains, if there are any, of Feit.”
“Do you think he was there to rob Crenshaw, or was he really there to kill him, knowing he was a vampire?” asked Owen.
“I’m confused. I could believe he was there to assassinate the old man if not for the fact his tattooed compatriot shot up the convenience store and murdered your friend’s daughter.”
“Yeah, that makes no sense. There is one person who might know, though.”
“Kiara?”
He nodded. “But how do I broach the subject, and if I manage to, what are the chances she won’t shoot me?”
“It’s either that or we go to the police, I guess,” said Melody. “One thing’s for sure: I bet he’ll come looking for us in the night world.”
“How will he know it’s us?”
“Did you see him sniff the air?”
“How can there be an odor if there’s no body? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe our ethereal forms have some kind of signature scent for him.”
“This sleeper business was altogether wonderful and magical before tonight. Now it’s altogether horrible.”
“Well, we could decide not to travel at night, but you’re not capable of controlling your abilities like I can,” she said.
“Melody, I feel it coming on. I feel the vibration in my chest from when I get . . .” Owen was pulled back to himself.
The next day, instead of walking, Owen drove the car to work for the first time in recent memory. Once he got there, he hid out in his office and showed himself only when he had to check books out for the patrons, which, thankfully, were few. Even the dozen or so he helped, he eyed suspiciously, although he’d known most of them since they were born. He was put off by the younger Kelsey boy’s incisors and Mrs. Morton’s selection of Interview with the Vampire. Throughout the day, he was undecided about visiting Kiara. He had to tell her about Feit and desperately wanted to know what she knew. His other consideration was whether to buy a gun or see if he could borrow Mrs. Hultz’s husband’s.
In the afternoon, he researched news stories of missing persons last seen in or who lived in Westwend. As best as he could ascertain, there had been zero going back at least two decades. But then he was sorry he looked, because in searching for “missing persons” in the county, the hits started accruing from nearby towns. The phenomenon was fairly frequent, but consciously, carefully dispersed in a sixty-mile radius, going back to the 1960s. People did sometimes leave town, though. Because no one knew where they went didn’t necessarily mean they’d been abducted, killed, and drained by a vampire.
Owen counted twenty-five, and those were the ones local police knew about. Granted, they were spread out over eight towns and four times as many years. The police departments in those towns by the barrens were understaffed, and the crime rate for drug-related offenses had risen in the 1990s, taking a good portion of those departments’ resources and time. Old Crenshaw was a crafty individual. He killed like a rabid dog but had the acumen of a tactician. If he killed a person every so often, he could drain them into his tub and save the blood somehow—if he could prevent it from clotting—to ingest over time.
At the end of the workday, Owen closed the library and drove to the apartment building located across a field next to the grade school. The building held only six apartments, split
evenly between two floors. He remembered that Kiara’s rooms were on the second floor. Parking in front of the place, he sat for a few minutes, weighing his decision to contact her. Revealing that he had secret information on Feit that could only have been gathered through spying might not sit well with the gang. Also, she might not believe him as to what happened and blame Owen for her friend’s death. “How many people would believe me?” he wondered. Still, he turned the car off, opened the door, and got out. He wasn’t sure if it was the sight of the blood or the primal sound the creature made in its attack, but he felt unsafe and didn’t like being out in the open.
He found her name on the mailbox downstairs—K. BOLDEN, APT #6. There was no security, so he had no problem simply walking up to the second floor, heading down the hallway to its end, and finding her door. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and knocked, lightly at first before realizing no one would hear him. He considered running away and then knocked louder. A few moments passed without response, although he eventually noticed there was music playing inside. He was about to knock again when a female voice answered. “Who is it?”
“Owen Hapstead,” he said, and then nervously added, “I’m the town librarian,” which he immediately regretted.
“We don’t have any books out and don’t use the library.”
“Yes, ma’am, I know. I have information for you about Aaron Feit.” This statement was met with silence. “He’s an acquaintance of yours, is he not?” He stood waiting for a half minute before there finally came a response.
“Hold on,” said the voice. A little more time passed and then he could hear the chain lock sliding off. The deadbolt clicked, and the door swung back. “Come in,” she said, but he couldn’t see where she was. He took a tentative step through the threshold, and the instant he was inside, the door slammed shut behind him, a forearm came up and wedged into his throat. There was something hard and pointed jabbed into his back. He saw in front of him, the baby, William, sitting in a high chair near a table in the kitchenette across the apartment.
“Who sent you?” she said.
“Nobody; I’ve come to tell you something tragic has befallen your colleague.”
“Colleague?”
“The tattoo you all share.”
“What about Aaron?”
“I hate to tell you this, but he was attacked and killed.”
“By who?”
“I’m not trying to be obtuse, but the question is more by what than who.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Do you believe in vampires?” he asked.
She didn’t answer but he felt the gun withdraw from his back and her forearm drop away, leaving him able to breathe properly again.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’re not a cop?”
“I told you, I’m the librarian.”
She gave him a shove toward the kitchenette. “Sit down.”
Owen took a seat and held his hands up as if to calm her. “I know how strange this is,” he said.
She sat across from him next to the high chair but kept the gun trained on him. With her free hand she lifted a small bowl of dry Cheerios off the table and dumped a little pile of them onto William’s tray. The toddler saw them, smiled, and blew a few bubbles. He pressed his index finger into the hole on one of the bits of cereal and it stuck. Then he lifted it to his mouth.
“Start talking,” said Kiara.
“First, a question,” said Owen.
She cocked the pistol, and he automatically brought his hands up in front of his face. “No, I need to know this so I can tell you the right thing.”
“Go ahead,” she said, carefully released the hammer, and laid the gun on the table in front of her.
“Was Feit at the old man’s house to rob him or to assassinate him?”
“To kill him before he could kill anyone else.”
“You know he’s a vampire or something like that?”
Kiara nodded. “He killed my husband.”
“Wait, the man who held up the Busy Bee?”
“Crenshaw bit him and put him under some kind of mind control. He was directed to hold up the store. He knew Duane was part of our organization and that we were closing in on him. It was a warning to put us off and to put the police on our trail. He’s powerful.”
“You all have the solar cross tattoo,” he said. “I looked it up.”
“Right.”
“Why that?”
“These creatures, we call them Ambrogio, from an ancient tale, don’t operate well in the sun. They don’t burn up like in the movies, but sunlight stuns them and makes them much more vulnerable. Daylight short-circuits their nervous systems. Now . . . Aaron.”
“My friend and I saw Aaron get attacked by Crenshaw. It was horrible. His throat was torn out. Your partner got a shot off but that was it. The old man moved too quickly.”
She closed her eyes and fell back into her chair with a heavy sigh. Tears leaked from beneath her eyelids. “I told him not to go alone.” Owen kept his mouth shut, allowing her to grieve. A couple of minutes passed in silence before she wiped her eyes and cheeks with the backs of her hands and sat forward again.
“This is the part that’s hard to believe.” He was surprised she didn’t stop him in the middle of his lengthy explanation. When he asked her if she knew what an OBE was, she nodded confidently. She also knew about traveling in the night world, and informed him that the Ambrogio traveled in sleep as well, but took to their beds during the day.
“You mean that thing could be at large in Westwend right now? Invisible?”
“He could be right in this room, listening to us,” she said. “That’s why it was so goddamn stupid of you to come here.”
Owen was stunned. He turned around as if he might see the old man materializing in the corner. “Can he hurt me when in his ethereal form?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Can you kill him?”
“I have special bullets that explode in the body and release phosphorous. All I have to do is get one in him anywhere from head to toes.”
“What are we gonna do?”
She took out her cell phone and whispered, “Give me your number.”
He whispered it back, even though he knew, if Crenshaw was in the room with them, he’d have it.
“I need someone to watch my son while I’m out hunting,” said Kiara.
“I might have someone for you,” he said. “I’ll text you later. Are you going after him by yourself?”
“No, you’re going to help me.”
12
OWEN WAS SWEATING BY the time he left Kiara’s apartment. He couldn’t get it out of his mind that the spirit presence of the old man could be trailing him, bounding along behind his car, seeing everything, peering into their preliminary plans. He stopped at the market on the way home in order to buy something easy to make for dinner. His scheme was to invite Mrs. Hultz over to eat and, in the process, try to talk her into babysitting William and lending him her husband’s gun. It was amazing to him that with so much on his mind, he could still be so devious. When he got out of the car and walked across the market parking lot, the feel of the persistent wind against his face made him think of a wispy Crenshaw swirling around him.
He chose pork chops for dinner. Also asparagus. The checkout lines were long because only two aisles were open. While he was waiting, a family passed by—two kids, a girl of about twelve and a boy, perhaps fourteen. The father, gaze on the ground, hands in his pockets, had raven-black hair and seemed in a dark mood. The mother exuded a kind of energy and looked familiar to Owen. Then he realized he was seeing Melody in the waking world. Definitely middle-aged, but tall and solidly put together, mid-length hair going gray. Her face wasn’t in an open smile, but she seemed calm and content. She turned and said something to her husband, who laughed and put his arm around her. As they passed from his sight, Owen was surprised that he felt something nebulously akin to jealousy.
Later, after having burnt the pork chops beyond recognition and boiled the asparagus to mush, he ordered a pizza and took it next door. He knocked but there was no answer. The inside door was open, and although the screen was closed, he found it wasn’t latched. After calling “Hello” numerous times and getting no answer, he pushed open the door and entered. From the foyer, looking across the lavender living room, he saw Mrs. Hultz slouched in the chair. He wondered, with a shiver, if the vampire artist somehow found out she was a tangential but important part of the plan and had done her in. As he was bolting toward her chair, he heard her snore. She opened her eyes as he stood over her and said, “Is this a nightmare?”
“No,” he told her, “the nightmare is next door. Burnt pork chops and overcooked asparagus. I was making dinner for you. How about pizza?”
She pulled herself up in the chair and, blinking her eyes, said, “That sounds swell.”
Mrs. Hultz insisted on having hers with gin, but Owen had read somewhere that alcohol makes you sleep poorly, and he had to make it to the night world later. They sat in the living room with dinner trays set up in front of them. On the TV was an old black-and-white crime movie with Jack Palance called House of Numbers. He wanted to spring the question on her about babysitting before she had too much to drink.
“How are things going for you, Owen?” she asked.
“Well,” he said. “Better, but there’s only one problem.”
“Tell me,” she said.
“I have a date tonight but it’s contingent on whether I can find a babysitter for my girlfriend’s son.”
“A date?
“Yeah.”
She clapped and the bracelets on her wrists jangled. “What about the old woman who’s your neighbor?”
“I never thought of it,” he said.
“I’ve gotten so easy in my old age. Sold out for a pizza,” she said.
“You will?”
She nodded. “I’d better stop drinking. Tell your friend to bring the child over at seven; we can spend a half hour getting acquainted.”
“I have one other favor to ask you.”