So much did I enjoy being the hero, conquering these feats that defied all logic, that I was momentarily dispirited when it came to an end and I had reached the metropolis that resided well below Yelena’s house. But then, I saw people in the distance and I could smell their blood. I touched my brow. Not a single drop of sweat was upon it. I didn’t even feel flushed.
I walked amongst the mortals, overwrought with knowledge that each one was a vessel containing the blood and bliss I sought. I soon noticed that I was being looked at by most of the people I passed. I brought my hand to my lips and made sure my fangs hadn’t slipped out. It then occurred to me that though I appeared as mortal to them as they were, I was still a child, and it was a considerably late hour on a school night. Children were out of place on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at two in the morning. In an effort to appear less conspicuous, I stopped staring in the faces of the adult passersby and looked down at my feet instead. I read the names of the movie stars who had their names emblazoned in brass on the stars that lined the sidewalk. I didn’t know most of their names, except I saw Gwyneth Paltrow and then Drew Barrymore.
“Oh my god! Little girl! You’re so cute!” a woman in a very short sequined dress cried out. She was walking with two other girlfriends who were similarly dressed and probably just left a bar or a club.
“Can we take your picture?” another woman squealed.
I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded shyly. They were all so much taller than I was that I forgot I was the predator on the hunt for throats just like theirs. I was suddenly dumbfounded on how I could take one of them right here on this well-lit boulevard. I wished Yelena were there with me. She would know what to do and I wouldn’t be this sore thumb of a child walking alone after hours.
“Oh, this is so perfect!” another one of the women said and grabbed my shoulder and scooted me to the side a few inches. I looked down at my boots and realized I was standing beside the star belonging to Mickey Mouse. I guess they thought it was cute—a little girl wandering the streets in the middle of the night just to find her favorite Disney character. One of them used her phone to take the photo while the other two bent forward to pose with me. Somehow, encountering them, mortals who showed no fear of me made me lose my confidence. I wanted to kill them all, but it was as if I didn’t know how and this frustrated me to no end. Again, I wished Yelena had been with me.
“Oooh, you’re so chilly, darling,” the warmest of the women said as she hugged me. “Aren’t you cold?”
I shook my head.
“Where do you live?”
“I live up your coochie,” I said sharply. It’s all I could think to say that I knew would make her let go of me, and she did, and I walked off with my frustrated cravings. They were taken aback at first, but as the distance between us grew, I heard them laugh all together and one of them called me a little bitch.
I walked on, and passed Tom Cruise’s star, which made me think of a vampire movie I saw before which, in turn, made me think of Kirsten Dunst. I wondered where her star was. In that movie Kirsten Dunst was a little vampire girl just like I was. In one scene she sat crying for her mother in order to lure a victim to her. And so at the next traffic light, I turned down a side street, put my back to the wall of a building and slid down it until I was sitting. I buried my head in my knees and pretended to weep. Luckily I wasn’t a great enough actress to cry on cue, because it would have meant bleeding from my eyes.
In no time at all, a man walking alone stopped and knelt down to ask me if I was okay. I sniffled and looked up at him. “I want my mommy,” I said.
“Where is your mommy?” he asked.
“She went over there with some man,” I said, pointing down the side street.
He probably thought my mother was a prostitute. “Come on, let’s go find her,” and he helped me up.
We walked down the street slowly, he because he was looking for a woman, any woman who might be my mother, and I because I was looking for a secluded place where I could kill him. I stopped when we reached a house with overgrown trees that shaded our path from the street lamps.
Wondering why I had stopped, he turned to me and asked, “Do you see her?”
I looked up in his face and nodded.
“Where is she?”
I motioned for him to get closer, as if I were going to whisper to him. He lowered his face to my level. I leaned forward toward his ear. “Mommy is in her coffin,” I whispered. Confused, he attempted to turn to look me in the face, but it was too late—like a bear trap that had been triggered, my jaws clamped down on his throat. Like my first victim of the night, his struggle was vigorous but brief. As his blood flowed into my mouth, the euphoria filled my being. Slowly, I savored what flowed from his lifestream. I let his dead body fall onto the driveway of the house we had stopped in front of. When I saw him laying on the cement I realized there was something I had not thought of before setting out on my search for blood. I hadn’t thought of how or where I would dispose of the body. I didn’t know my way back to the desert. I didn’t know how to contact Berthold. Could I just leave the body where it was? I didn’t think Yelena would like that. Could I bury it in the yard? I couldn’t do that without tearing up the grass and that would make the grave too obvious. While I was trying to come up with a viable option, I sensed someone watching me. I turned quickly and, to my surprise, I saw a tall man, expressionless, dressed in all black, stopped in his tracks on the sidewalk, eyeing me and then the corpse at my feet.
I thought of fleeing, but knew he could identify me. The best thing to do was to kill him and feed again. But then I imagined a third passerby as I killed the second. I would have to kill him too, only making the pile of bodies I’d have to dispose of even larger. I didn’t know what to do, and I guess he knew it, because he smiled. I saw his fangs and realized my predicament wasn’t what I thought it was. The corpse seemed like a much smaller thing now. I was staring at another vampire. One I didn’t know. I was petrified. I didn’t know if he would kill me.
He must have sensed my consternation, because he tried to subdue the uneasiness between us by bowing courteously, like a gentleman from another century. He straightened himself and smiled again. I didn’t see him take a single step forward but instantly he was within reach of me.
“You’re a young one,” he said. His voice was raspy.
I didn’t know if he meant that I looked like a child or that somehow his vampiric senses told him the truth—that I was only two nights old.
“Who made you?” he asked.
I didn’t know if I should answer him. Would saying Yelena’s name somehow put my mommy in danger?
“I can make you tell me.”
“Then make me,” I said, in my best attempt to appear forceful and unafraid.
But he just smiled again, and said, “Young, indeed.” In what appeared to be a single motion, he knelt to the ground, lifted the corpse, and slung it over his shoulder. “You should get home, my little princess,” he said and then disappeared with the man I had just killed. I tried to detect which direction he went in, but I couldn’t and I doubted I would have followed him anyway. I looked down at the cement. Only a few drops of blood. No one would care. They would believe a rodent had been killed or a homeless man who had been bleeding for no explicable reason had passed through the neighborhood during the night.
*
Dawn was still over an hour away. I sat in Yelena’s living room on a sofa, debating whether or not I should tell Yelena I had seen another vampire. Would she punish me for sneaking out like I did? On the wall opposite me hung my four scribbles that had been on the wall inside the Clover Gallery. Berthold must have hung them while we were asleep, or supposed to be asleep. The more intently I stared the more I felt those scribbled in black crayon within the frames were staring back at me. Dead memories of evil men. But then I noticed something in the rapist scribble that I hadn’t noticed before. It was one of those red Radio Flyer metal wagons that children used to pul
l before they were replaced by video games. It had been given to Donald as a birthday present when he was six. It had a balloon tied to its handle the day he received it. He loved that wagon and took it with him everywhere. He had been sitting on it the first time his uncle fondled him. It confused me how I could have missed the molestation when I had scribbled him and wrote his life’s summary on the back.
I looked in other corners of Donald’s scribble. I saw a girlfriend he had had and loved. I saw his parents. I saw him graduate high school and then college. He had had a son with another woman he dated but never married and never saw again after the birth of their child. In all her aspects represented in the scribble, that woman wore nylons and garters.
I turned my attention to the other three scribbles. Again, in each of them, I saw things I had not recalled seeing before. Births. Weddings. Laughter. Childhoods. Aspirations. And then there were the horrible things that happened to them. They had all been victims of something themselves. It was as though there were a new depth to the scribbles. They were no longer two-dimensional. I was confused. How could I not have seen any of this when I had been dying in my hospital bed? I knew a lot of me hated the living as they would all outlive me, but had I really been so jaded not to see beyond the evil deeds that justified me hating each of them? I didn’t want to think so. And then it dawned on me. Just as my strength and speed had become unnatural, so had my perceptions. And now, with vampiric eyes, I saw everything that was hidden within the scribbles. Everything. All the things Yelena wouldn’t want to know encompassed and accompanied the evil I illustrated for her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Yelena rushed into the living room in a panic. Below ground, she had opened my casket and found it empty. She exhaled in relief when she saw me. I had fallen asleep on the couch. She woke me gently and when I opened my eyes, I felt terrible. I was confused as to my whereabouts. I had a headache, and felt weak and desiccated. My eyes felt too sensitive to the artificial lighting. It was similar to what I was told a hangover was like.
“Orly, it’s dangerous to sleep out here. And you’re not strong enough to sleep outside your casket.”
“Sorry, Mommy.”
She sat with her thighs near my head and placed her hand on my forehead and then combed my hair with her thin fingers.
“I feel sick, Mommy.”
“I know. It’ll be years before you can risk sleeping elsewhere. Can you get up?”
I tried to sit up, but couldn’t. Yelena stood, scooped me up and headed into her bedroom. Her closet and the secret door were still open. She entered and descended the staircase with me in her arms.
“Aren’t we going to feed?”
“Not tonight.”
“I’m so hungry.”
“You need strength to kill, my child. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to spend this night in.”
She lowered me into my casket.
I wanted to ask her to kill for me. To bring me a victim. To lay her on top of me and shut her in tight. But I didn’t. Yelena kissed me affectionately on the lips before shutting the casket cover over me. Enveloped in death, I knew she was right. I was hungry, but more than anything, I needed rest. My eyes closed on their own accord and I fell asleep even though it was night.
When I woke, I felt the pangs of hunger in every cell of my body. I had never known such a craving. The cover of my casket had been opened and Yelena was sitting, looking at me peacefully.
“Is it still nighttime?”
“Yes, it is.”
I was relieved to hear that, hoping we could leave immediately to feed.
“Two nights and two days have passed since you last lay down,” she said.
Two nights? How could that be? I hadn’t stirred at all in my casket. I hadn’t opened my eyes once. And I don’t believe I dreamed. She must have seen the astonishment in my face.
“You needed your rest, Orly. You will likely need more nights.”
That was disheartening to hear. I felt my hunger well up inside my soul and a blood tear fall from my eye and roll down my cheek.
“There, there,” Yelena said. “I know, love. I know you’re hungry. Sit up.”
I tried to sit myself up but it was a struggle. The hangover feeling in my head was gone, but my full strength had not been returned to me. Even after two full days in my casket, I was still so exhausted. Yelena gripped my upper arms and pulled me up. I exhaled in relief as she leaned me back so that my spine touched the wall of my casket. It must have looked like I was sitting in a silk-lined bathtub.
And then I noticed we were not alone in the chamber. Slumped up against the wall was a young man, probably in his teens. He had his mouth gagged and wrists and ankles bound. My mouth opened and his eyes widened as he saw my fangs. He tried to free himself and when that didn’t work, he began to inchworm himself across the floor, but there was nowhere for him to go as he couldn’t possibly climb the stairs restrained as he was.
I was confused. I knew he was mortal. I could smell his blood and know that. But I didn’t think Yelena would ever bring an outsider down to our chamber unless they were doomed to die, and I didn’t expect her to bring someone so young. His age didn’t bother me. I wanted his blood in my mouth immediately, but I lacked the stamina to rise from my seated position. I looked at Yelena. If she saw the surprise in my face at receiving such a young gift, she didn’t show it.
When you read a book that has no pictures, you imagine for yourself what the characters expressed on the pages look like. Whenever a movie is made of a book you’ve read, you’re forced to adjust to the actor who never looks like what you expected while reading. The same thing goes for when someone tells you a story. This young man, who squirmed on the stone floor, is what Yelena imagined the teen looked like—the one who raped me in the garage twice. She was wrong. They weren’t anything alike. He differed in height and hair color and the hue of his skin was lighter and gave way to freckles. It was in a later scribble of Yelena that I learned this youth she condemned to my teeth is what she envisaged my abuser to look like.
Yelena had never killed a child, not even a teen, but I could and so she brought one to me, because she was my mother and because her baby girl was very hungry. She chose him instead of an adult in the hopes of seeing some semblance of revenge for my stained childhood. She hoped I would get a taste for vengeance and reveal the name of the foster family who harmed me, but I truly didn’t know their names. I’m sure I knew it once, but it had been blotted out of my memory. And I wouldn’t connect this kill with the recompense she imagined would play out before her eyes because, like I said, they bore no resemblance at all.
She lifted me out of my casket and set me down on the cold floor, taking her time to steady me before letting go. Seeing me set loose, the young man’s vigor increased as he fought his constriction and attempted to get away. Yelena stepped over him and retreated to the staircase and sat. I tried to rise to my feet but fell over like an unsupported infant. It was like I hadn’t even learned to crawl. I rolled onto my stomach and, lying prone, I began to pull myself toward him. My chase was slow and labored. The time it took to drag myself near him seemed immeasurable as he always clambered away, writhing like a maggot in the sun. But the excitement of the kill awakened my senses. I could smell his blood and could distinguish how its scent differed from the scent of his tears. Although my heightened senses seemed to return, my strength still did not and finally, Yelena rose from the staircase and sat again, on the floor near him, with her legs apart at his head, pulling him into her like a teddy bear. He tried to kick free, the tears gushing, but it was hopeless, as she held him still without effort. To an observer it may have appeared apathetic if not sadistic for Yelena to hold him in place for me to kill, but the opposite was true. She was accelerating the inevitable she had designed, by ending his mental anguish that had been engendered by the knowledge that he was prey to something he believed only existed in nightmares.
Although the subterranean chamber was not too l
arge, it took nearly five minutes for me to pull myself over to Yelena. When I got there, I did not have the strength to lift myself to his throat so Yelena pushed his head to the floor so that his exposed neck was at the same level as my mouth. I think he was struggling, but there was no movement. Yelena’s strength wouldn’t permit it. In his eyes, I saw he was pleading with me but I wasn’t moved. I wanted to taste his blood. I squirmed closer until my lips were upon his throat. I licked his skin before I bit. His blood fountained into my mouth. The awkward angle I was positioned in, due to my lack of strength, prevented me from being able to feed without spillage. I felt the warmth of his blood on my cheeks and chin, and pooling on the floor below me, soaking through the fabric of my dress. Even though much of the blood was being wasted I loved the feel of it seeping through my clothing. By the time he was dead, much of my strength had returned. I had the ability to rise to my feet without too much effort and I felt awake.
Lovingly, Yelena looked at me. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Yelena drew me a hot bath, disrobed me, and lowered me in. She used a soft washcloth to wash my body. It was relaxing and I continued to feel my whole self revive. Just as she was about to begin washing the blood off of my face, I told her what I hadn’t told her.
“I saw Marcel,” I said.
Yelena smiled at me and used the cloth to wipe the blood from my cheeks. She didn’t believe me.
The Scribbled Victims Page 20