This Darkness Got To Give

by Dave Housley

  He paused, allowed the stream of people to pass him by. Four girls danced outside a station wagon and he watched them with awe. They were barefoot and whirling, laughing and singing. He allowed himself the memory of Ilya for a few moments more, pictured her here, by his side. He could practically feel the sweet weight of her arm on his back, the brush of her hair on his cheek. Her smell—the perfume she had insisted on buying even though they really couldn’t afford any luxuries—came rushing into his nose and he gasped.

  Ilya is not here, he told himself. They had made their decision together, seventy-three years ago, and it was the right one. He told himself that again now. It was the right decision. The life he was leading, the life to which he’d been condemned, it was no way to be, especially for somebody as alive as Ilya.

  It wouldn’t do. There was no point in nostalgia, no place for even the ghost of Ilya in his life now. He forced himself to open his eyes. He focused on his boots—black, leather, sitting here and now on this stretch of concrete. The walkie-talkie buzzed. He searched for a place where he could talk without being conspicuous. There was work to do.

  Chapter 39

  July 9, 1995. Chicago, IL. Soldier Field.

  The Dealer had gone, left them alone for the first time. The girl fiddled with a magazine and then a file that was stuffed to bursting with printouts and official-looking reports. She looked different. Older. She had abandoned the ratty T-shirt for a solid button-up, the shorts replaced with jeans. Cain snuck a look at the folder. Printed in large block letters: “PROJECT MKULTRA: CONGRESSIONAL INQUIRY.”

  “Why were you helping me?” he asked. “Before, I mean.”

  “If you do anything, you know,” she held up a syringe filled with clear liquid. “This isn’t in the mythology, but it will kill you, sure enough. May be where the silver thing came from, some people think. Maybe not. There is dispute in the community.”

  “What community is that?” he asked. He wondered how quickly he could get to her, if she could get the syringe, or maybe her neck, before she had a chance to react. He realized that he didn’t feel anything. Or, he felt normal. The ache was nowhere near the surface right now, buried, at least for the time being. Normal. It had been some time.

  The girl looked at him and rolled her eyes, as if they’d had this same conversation many times and she was tired of it. She took off her glasses and cleaned them on her shirt. If I jumped right now, Cain thought, I could rip out her jugular before she got her glasses back on. But there was that feeling. Normal. “The scientific community,” she said, as if the answer was as plain as day.

  “The scientific community,” Cain said, “has no interest in…” he hesitated to say the word, and then felt silly for it. He hadn’t said it in all these years, had held off even, when possible, in his own head, as if the simple uttering of the word would somehow cement the whole situation. As if it there were options, some genie to shove back in a bottle, an exit strategy that involved something other than sun, silver, or stake.

  “Vampires?” the girl said, and Cain flinched. The girl smiled. She put the syringe down and turned her attention to a stack of papers sitting on the driver’s seat. “So interesting,” she said. “So reluctant to even say the word.”

  “I…” Cain started.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “You’re not the only one. Most. Rare is the vampire who is not afraid to say the word vampire.”

  “There are others?” Cain said. “I mean. I know there are others. Obviously. But you do, too? You’ve met…others?” It had been so long since he’d even had a conversation with somebody. He was out of practice, awkward at even the basics of personal interaction.

  She stopped with the papers and turned her attention to Cain. She cocked her head. “Do I look like some kind of amateur?”

  “You used to,” he said. “You looked like, I don’t know, everybody else around here. Which I suppose was the point.”

  He thought of the way she had helped him, practically teeing up those poor junkies. How many had it been? He tried to remember but just felt a bad taste in his mouth. He forced it out of his mind. No upside.

  “Invasive species,” she said.

  “What?”

  “What the government calls it. Calls you. Vampires. Department of Invasive Species.”

  “There’s a department?” Cain wondered what else he didn’t know. For the first time in a long time, he wondered if he should have tried to make some connections, find some community other than the band and the shows and the Deadheads. He had chosen to live among that community, but not to be in it. He lived on tour the way a burr lives on the coat of a dog. He had made his choices for a reason, but now he was realizing how much there was to know, or at least how much he didn’t know.

  “So what is this?” he asked. “What are you and him doing?”

  She put the papers down and crossed her arms. “It was—it is, rather—an experiment.”

  He nodded.

  “But you must know that already,” she said. “And now we’re at the end of the experiment.”

  “And how does it end?” he said.

  “That,” she said. “Is entirely up to you.”

  Chapter 40

  July 9, 1995. Chicago, IL. Soldier Field.

  They were walking toward the stadium when Pete felt it again, a tingle starting in his fingers and the back of his head. He stopped.

  “What?” Jenkins said. “You getting it again?”

  Pete nodded. He moved off to the side, away from the crowds that were stumbling or spinning or trudging toward the stadium. Soldier Field stood in front of them, looking solid and bright. “I think they’re headed this way,” he said.

  “Who?”

  Pete turned to Jenkins, who was making a signal to Spot, meandering along a few feet behind them and over a row in the parking lot. “I don’t exactly know, like, how this works yet,” Pete said. “My fingers are shaking, my head feels weird and I just kind of feel like one of them is coming this way, but other than that, I don’t know.”

  Jenkins nodded. “Sorry,” he said. “If that’s what we have to work with then that’s what we have to work with.”

  “I definitely feel like something is headed this way,” Pete said. “Almost like it’s…calling…or like there’s some kind of connection we want to make. I’m not doing a good job of describing it but, I don’t know, man.”

  “It’s okay,” Jenkins said.

  “I mean, I really don’t know what it is, even.”

  Jenkins put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Pete looked at his face, the lines around his eyes. His first partner was old enough to be his father, a thought he was surprised he hadn’t had earlier. “Do you have any kids?” he said.

  Jenkins smiled and nodded. “I do. A son. He’s fifteen.”

  Pete nodded. He had no idea what to say next. He realized that he had very little experience talking to adults outside a classroom. The vibrations grew stronger. There was a tightness in his head, a feeling like his body was preparing itself for something.

  “Oh, hey,” Jenkins said. “I’m really sorry. Talking about my family and you…” he drifted off.

  Pete could see Spot off to the side, playing with a yo-yo. Somewhere in the parking lot, Bob Dylan was singing about being stuck outside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again. People wandered by, almost in slow motion. A kid of maybe ten or twelve walked by carrying a tray of Rice Krispies Treats and a warm smell pushed into Pete’s nose. His mouth watered. He could see every translucent hair on the kid’s arm. What was happening?

  “Are you…is something…” Jenkins said. Pete nodded. Jenkins motioned to Spot, who palmed his yo-yo.

  Pete wanted to speak, but he couldn’t find the words. He took a step forward to see if he could do it, then another step back. He lifted his shaking arm and scratched at his cheek. He could still move, could still do whatever he wanted to do, even with whatever it was mounting in his body. Preparing. For what, he had no idea.

>   The feeling intensified and he put his hands in his pockets before somebody could notice the way they fluttered like bees. Jenkins was speaking into his hand. He would be calling the other vampire, Pete thought, the one they called Tibor.

  He felt strong and alive and he was surprised to find that he was unafraid. Whatever was coming, he was ready for it. He turned to his left without thinking and knew that he would see them there soon, making their way through the crowd.

  Chapter 41

  July 9, 1995. Chicago, IL. Soldier Field

  Tibor had some idea of what he was running toward but not really. His senses had not been stirred at all on this day, and he did not know how to evaluate their failure. It had always been hit or miss, more a divining rod than a metal detector, but he had always felt something, a stir in a certain direction, and these past few explorations were the first time he’d come away with nothing at all. He took that piece of information and put it in the back of his mind. It would make sense later, he knew, when there were enough supporting details, enough scribbles of information to assemble a full picture.

  He was moving the same way as traffic, weaving in and out of the strange masses lurching toward the sounds of drums just starting up in the distance. He did not understand these people. Blessed with the miracle of a normal human life, they had chosen to shackle themselves to…a musical group?

  It simply made no sense. Music was fine, pleasant. Those early nights in the Bronx, before the change, he and Ilya had danced through midnight, losing themselves. But that was more about Ilya than the music. To attach such importance that you were following one particular group across the country, across decades? He had seen much come and go and felt like he understood most of what happened in the world. The one gift of the change had been time, the long view, the ability to notice as the world evolved. Given time, he could assemble the data, could see the picture as it became evident. But this, these Grateful Dead people, they were beyond reason.

  He slowed to a brisk walk and looked for Jenkins and the boy. His fingers began to tingle. Tightness in his head. A feeling he hadn’t felt for years, decades. He knew that Portis was near, could feel himself being drawn forward. He looked down at his legs, watched them churn. It was like he was outside his body, watching from above as he moved ever forward. A group of kids were kicking something back and forth in a small circle and Tibor registered that he would have to walk around them and was surprised when he bumped into the tallest one, knocking him to the ground.

  “Dude!” somebody called after him.

  He wanted to stop but he couldn’t. He flashed to a hospital room, a younger version of Portis, a needle moving into his arm. He bumped into a group of young women twirling in a circle and kept moving. He had volunteered for the program on the assumption that the government wouldn’t put its own agents in harm’s way, but something had been off from the start. Portis was nervous, jumpy, and too quick to laughter. It was the sixties and half the world was stoned, but at that point he still believed that certain professions were above discretion. The rooms were dirty and disorganized, papers stacked in the corners, strange devices sitting around gathering dust. He was asked to sign a release form but Portis was unable to locate the papers and asked Tibor to sign an envelope in their place.

  But still, he had done it. They said they were working on an antidote, that there was a slim chance his “symptoms,” as they called it, could be reversed. A chance he could be buried next to Ilya, even after all these years.

  It was a simple procedure: answer some questions, get a shot, wait for an hour, and leave. They drew blood at the beginning of each session, and again at the end. The shots had made him lightheaded, caused his fingers to tingle, but that was all. But halfway through the eighth week of treatment they began a series of follow-up exercises that seemed to contraindicate the experiment’s stated purpose. In these, he was asked to stand in a room and let his mind go blank. He felt the tingle in his fingers then, the tightness in his head. He stood in the room and thought of nothing, tried to put everything out of his head. He felt as if he was hovering, and a white noise seemed to have started up somewhere, a low static sound vibrating in his head. His foot lurched forward, first the right and then the left. He jumped, tried to back up, but he was moving forward, straight toward the wall.

  He should have known enough to stop it then, leave and never come back. The next time, he was led into a different wing of the facility, past armed guards and locked doors. He should have run. He still wasn’t sure how much of the doctor’s influence led him into the that room, into the cage, had forced him to watch while the hypodermic plunged into his arm and the tingling started up, and then the pain settled down like rain.

  He had the same feeling now, but amplified. For the first time in decades, he wondered what they had put into him. He knew that whatever it was, it was still there.

  Chapter 42

  July 9, 1995. Chicago, IL. Soldier Field

  Jenkins watched the kid vibrate with the same intensity he’d seen before. “I think I could have stopped him,” he had said. It was too late for Crabtree, but maybe not too late to shut this whole thing down. Whatever the kid had in him, it was their best chance.

  This is what it’s come to, he thought.

  Portis was standing twenty feet to their left, the steady stream of Deadheads moving past him like water over river rocks. He held something in his hand, but Jenkins couldn’t tell what it was. It didn’t seem like a weapon—too small, and he was holding it all wrong if he expected to attack anybody with it.

  From the other direction, moving along with the crowd, he saw Tibor approaching. He was walking fast, as always, but too fast, bumping into people, knocking them out of the way, leaving a trail of confused hippies in his wake. This was not the careful old man Jenkins knew. And his face: it was mask-like, something about it…not his. The eyes were dead and staring past Jenkins, over his shoulder, right at Portis.

  Chapter 43

  July 9, 1995. Chicago, IL. Soldier Field

  Pete felt another presence now, something coming from a different direction. Without looking he knew it was Tibor. And he also knew the old vampire cop was in trouble.

  In the back of his mind, he picked up a frequency, faint but getting stronger, like snowmelt moving down a mountain, a trickle that would become a gulley and then a stream. There were no words, but something was compelling the old cop forward, an energy, a will that was coming from the professor. This is what he had felt before, he knew, when the vampire had attacked Crabtree. It was why Pete knew it was not the vampire’s fault, that there was something else compelling it forward, pulling the strings.

  He concentrated, but the old vampire still came closer. He was twenty feet away. Then ten. Pete visualized his own energy interfering with the professor’s, pushing the vampire back. Tibor got closer and paused. His eyes flickered with pain and regret and something Pete couldn’t place but he knew there were years in it, decades.

  The energy was moving the old man further, pushing him toward Jenkins. Pete focused all of his being into breaking the trance. He stepped in front of the old man.

  “I’m sorry,” Tibor said. He pushed Pete to the side and lunged at Jenkins, stumbled, turned and grabbed the closest person, a teenage girl in a tie-dye with flowers woven into her hair. The old man’s teeth sunk into her neck and there were those ripping sounds again, the terrible suction sound of the body torn open and still needing air.

  Chapter 44

  July 9, 1995. Chicago, IL. Soldier Field.

  Jenkins had pulled the stake out of his shorts when the old man paused in front of the kid. Something about the look in his eyes. Jenkins had known him for twenty years, had done more than a hundred cases with him, and never had he seen this look in Tibor’s face. He realized the look was fear.

  Jenkins felt the wood in his hand. So strange, that this could actually work. In some things, apparently, the folklore was right. Tibor was tearing the girl’s throat. All aroun
d them, people screamed and ran. Jenkins paused for only a second. He knew what Tibor would want him to do: he took a step forward and brought the stake down in his old partner’s back.

  Chapter 45

  July 9, 1995. Chicago, IL. Soldier Field

  “So where did he go?” Cain said.

  “More experiments,” the girl said. “Always for him. A way of life, really, if you can believe that.”

  She was working on a computer, moving numbers around on a spreadsheet. Computers were one thing Cain did not understand. He’d seen the news stories, watched them creep into his radio and television and even seen a few in person as he wandered the late-night streets of Philadelphia or San Francisco or Chicago. It wasn’t unusual, of course, that some new thing would suddenly appear in the world. He had been through the sixties. But still, computers were the first thing he just did not understand, where he could feel the limitations of his understanding as certainly as walls on every side—these little boxes that looked like a television and a typewriter at once. What did one do on them? What could the girl be doing right now with her numbers? He didn’t know her well, but he thought he knew enough to understand that she would never tell him.

  “Are you working on an experiment?” he asked.

  “Kind of,” she said, her voice indicating she was clearly not paying attention to anything other than what was right in front of her in the screen. “Kind of not.”