The Scribbled Victims

by Robert Tomoguchi

  *

  When I woke it was quiet. I woke because it was quiet. The restless ocean had stilled.

  I pressed on the cover of my casket. It opened and I stepped out. As I shut it I saw the lid to Yelena’s coffin was removed but she was not inside. She was not in the chamber at all. As I stepped toward the staircase I realized how weak I was. I hadn’t fed the night before but that wasn’t enough of an explanation. I felt weaker than I should have for simply skipping one night of blood. Climbing the staircase had never been more strenuous. I didn’t understand why. What had she done to me to make me weak like this? Or what had Mirela done?

  I don’t know how long it took me to reach the top. But by the time I did, I was no longer standing. I was crawling on my hands and knees, drained of energy. When I reached the secret door, I couldn’t open it. I thought perhaps I was too weak. I called for Yelena, but she didn’t answer, so I sat for a while and rested, trying to gather my strength. When I tried again, I still couldn’t open it and I began to suspect it wasn’t my lack of strength but that it was being held shut, like it had before, the night I was introduced to Zacharias. Yelena had used her mental strength to prevent me from opening it. Was she doing that again? But why?

  I knew it was hopeless. If she didn’t want me to open it, I wouldn’t be able to open it. What was she doing on the other side? Was Mirela here? Had she come to kill me like Yelena said? No. If Mirela was here, Yelena was not strong enough to stop her from getting to me. And I still didn’t know if I should believe Mirela wanted me dead in the first place. I called to Yelena again, but still she did not answer. I didn’t even know if she was near until I heard her scream.

  Her cry was piercing and longwinded, as if she didn’t need to take a breath. I had never heard such a scream. It hurt my ears to hear it. She was in pain or terrified from something I couldn’t imagine. The screaming went on and on. I tried the door again, but nothing. I pounded on it as hard as I could in my lethargic state, but she never answered; all I heard was her screaming.

  “Mommy!” I yelled as loud as I could. “Mommy! Mommy!” I pounded and kicked, screaming for my mommy, panicked, and terrified of what was happening to her on the outside, just beyond the door that shut me in. I could feel the warmth of my blood tears streaming down my face. I didn’t know what was happening, but I wanted to be with her, and help her, or even save her from whatever it was frightening her. I don’t know how many minutes passed until her screaming stopped. Maybe one. Maybe three. I really don’t know. But when I noticed it had stopped, and that all was again silent within the house, I stopped shouting for her.

  I tried the door once more. This time it cracked open, despite my lack of strength. And when it did, I couldn’t believe what I saw through the narrow slit of the open doorway. It was sunlight. I felt it burn my wrist where the shaft of golden light glanced it. My skin sizzled and smoked. The pain was excruciating. I slammed the door shut, and in the dark, I pounded on it, screaming in vain again for my mommy.

  I lost my voice and I was drenched with the blood that slipped from my eyes. I was weak because it was day and I was outside my casket. I soon lacked the strength to pound or even knock on the door, and I slid down the stone wall and lay prone, with my face buried in my arms, sobbing. Hours passed as I wallowed in the darkness imagining Yelena’s fate. She had to be dead. That’s why she could hold the door shut no more. Why had she done it? Was it the things I said to her about not loving me? Had it wounded her that deeply? Was it the truth of the scribbles being innocents? Was it finally letting go of any hope of Marcel? I wanted to understand, but I couldn’t. Eventually, I felt my strength slowly return, and I knew night had fallen. I picked myself up and opened the door, afraid to see what was on the other side.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The lights were on throughout the house and the window coverings were still raised, allowing the moonlight to shine through the large windows of Yelena’s bedroom. The remote control that she used to lower and raise them laid on the wooden floor in my path as I neared the bed. I wanted to close my eyes when I saw her, but I didn’t. I expected to cry again, but I didn’t do that either. I was in shock and couldn’t even scream despite how much I needed to.

  Her bed was still made, but atop her bedding was a pile of ashes, vaguely resembling her shape. Sparkling through the ash were her diamonds—her watch, her bracelet, her earrings. And in the center of the pile, over where her heart had once been, was the asymmetrical pendant, still on its chain. I stood staring at her for a long time, still wondering why she had done it. Finally, the idea to scribble her came to me, even though I wasn’t sure if it would work when she was gone. I had to go to my room to get a crayon and my large sketchpad, but I didn’t go immediately. I didn’t want to leave her alone.

  But eventually the need to know things outweighed everything else and I went to my bedroom. When I returned I sat on the bed beside her softly, careful not to cause her ashes to crumble. I turned to a blank sheet and began to scribble. As things began to take shape, I was relieved. I could see Yelena in the scribble. I saw her watching me in the cafeteria the night we met. I could see her overdosing with the heroin addict the night she believed I had died. She was standing over my dead body in the hospital just before she turned me. I saw her sadness during my first kill out in Runyon Canyon. But I also saw many happy times together. There we were on her moonlit terrace the night she taught me to dance. In the upper corner of the paper, she was brushing my hair and below that she was giving me my first pair of earrings. I was meeting Dr. Sloane the only time she brought me with her when I begged and she introduced me as her niece, Ashley. I saw us at Disneyland every single time we had gone. To the right we were walking through St. Petersburg where she showed me where she had been born as a mortal and where she had been born again as a vampire. I saw her the night she met Marcel and saw their first kiss that happened that very night. I kept scribbling until I saw her leave me, when she had gone to the Malibu house and stayed up all night with Berthold creating and signing documents. Berthold handed her forged documents for a girl named Orly Solodnikova. And to that girl, Yelena had willed everything she owned—this house, the beach house, other properties I didn’t even know she possessed, and all the things within them, including her extensive art collection that in itself was worth millions. There were many upon many bank and brokerage accounts based in various countries throughout the world, all full of enough money that I would never be without in my endless lifetime.

  She spent those days sleeping in Marcel’s coffin. She was finally acknowledging his death and accepting that he was nowhere waiting for her. In her mind, she saw him as what and where he truly was—ashes that had either blown into the sea or settled and mixed into the sand.

  I saw when she took Berthold to the desert to bury him. The lock on the door of the enormous shed unlatched when she looked at it and the tall door slid open. Just by walking over the ground she knew where the other bodies were buried. She only stopped when she came to a spot where she knew no one had been deposited yet. She laid Berthold’s body on the dirt floor and began to dig. Once the hole was deep enough, she wiped her hands and kissed her fingertips and placed them on Berthold’s forehead before she buried him. I could see in the scribble she was saying goodbye to her beloved servant. And when the hole was filled, Mirela was there, standing alone in the doorway.

  Yelena rose from the dirt and turned to face her. “Imparateasa,” she said softly and bowed her head.

  Mirela did not greet her. Instead she asked plainly, “Do you know why I have come?”

  “No, Imparateasa. I do not.” But in her mind, Yelena did know.

  “I heard you were happy again,” Mirela said.

  “Not quite yet, but getting there, I think.”

  “You won’t get there, Yelena. Did you think I would ever forget what you did to me? Forget how you stole him from me, only to kill him in the end?”

  Yelena knew it was pointless to argue that she had
not stolen Marcel, that he had chosen to leave Mirela all on his own. “No. Never once did I believe you’d forget,” she answered.

  “Do you know what happens now?”

  “No, Imparateasa. I do not.”

  “Allow me to enlighten you, then. One of you will die. You will choose who. And from the bottom of my heart, I hope you choose Orly. Because, without her, things can go back to how they were, when you were eternally filled with the guilt you were blessed with, which is why I allowed you to go on living this long in the first place. That is what I would like most, but the choice is yours. One of you will burn in the sunlight just as Marcel had.”

  In an instant, Yelena flew at Mirela with her fangs bared but before she could cover half the distance needed, Mirela, without a single movement, repelled Yelena and rifled her through the air until she hit the back wall of the shed. Yelena fell to the ground. She knew she would not succeed in attacking Mirela, but maternal instinct drove her to do it anyway.

  Without visibly taking a step forward, Mirela was upon her, looking down at Yelena lying in the dirt. “Don’t defy me, Yelena, or I will kill you both horribly.”

  As Yelena rose to her feet she pondered what could be more horrible than being fated to die in the sunlight, but when she was standing again all she asked was, “When?”

  “Your daughter has been keeping a secret from you. When she reveals it, one of you must die at the next sunrise. Now bow to me.”

  Yelena bowed her head lowly and did not raise it again until she knew Mirela had departed.

  I understood everything now. Yelena had chosen my life over hers. She had laid down to her own death to save me. When she told me, “I love you so much,” she had meant it, and I could not even tell her I loved her back, even though I knew that I did. I hope she knew the truth. I couldn’t yet see it in the scribble. We had been in the infancy of our eternity together. Our love had been like the love between the mother and child that sparked Yelena’s guilt when she killed them. A love that she herself had described as one that had just begun to blossom, boundless love, the kind of love that is life itself.

  A blood tear finally fell and splashed onto the bottom corner of the scribble. My heart had been punctured. She had loved me so much.

  Had I never told her about the innocent scribbled victims, would she be alive now? Could we have gone on forever had I only kept that a secret? My spitting out the truth just to hurt her is what doomed her to die the following morning.

  I stopped scribbling and put the crayon down and sat with her ashes. Though I remained still my insides were being destroyed by the clashing of my grief and my rage.

  Mommy was no more. Mirela must die.

  *

  The next night, I collected Yelena’s ashes and placed them in a black urn I stole from a local funeral parlor. I was putting on Yelena’s diamonds when the front door opened. It was Hisato and his muses. He entered the house as if he knew something was wrong and was uncharacteristically silent when I showed him the urn. None of them said a word until it was time to say goodbye.

  Hisato offered for me to come live with him, but I declined. I allowed two more nights to pass before I asked Darcy to drive me out to the desert to retrieve Berthold. She didn’t know where the property was, but I had been there enough times to remember my way. I had no indication that it was time to unearth him, if he were awake or dead, but I saw no point in waiting any longer and reasoned I could rebury him if it was not yet time.

  There were multiple patches of freshly-turned earth in the shed—most had undoubtedly been dug by Berthold, but I knew from Yelena’s scribble which hole he had not dug but was instead dug for him. Darcy offered to help, but I asked her if she minded if I did it alone. It didn’t take long before my fingers were wiping away the remaining dirt on the cover of his casket.

  Berthold’s eyes were open when I lifted the cover. The linings inside were in shreds. I smiled at him but he didn’t smile back. I reached forward and helped him sit up. As I hugged him, he squeezed me tightly and began to weep, his poisoned blood falling from his eyes onto my dress. He knew Yelena was gone. He expected this outcome, as she foretold how it would all play out while they were still in Malibu, but he hadn’t accepted it until he saw my face.

  As expected, Berthold was weak in his reborn state and so Darcy and I took him to feed before driving home in order to build his strength. When we returned home, Darcy declined to come in and only dropped us off, and Berthold and I entered the house that now belonged to me. Berthold needed to rest immediately and he followed me down into the chamber where a new casket was waiting for him. It too had been stolen. I had placed it on the other side of Yelena’s coffin where Marcel’s had been. Berthold climbed inside his casket only after taking a long, solemn look at Yelena’s coffin.

  For weeks, we tried to make things in our household as normal as possible, but there was no doubt we were both in mourning. We didn’t seek a new servant right away. Berthold and I only needed the company of those who knew and loved Yelena. Anyone else wouldn’t help us heal.

  One night a man came to take the urn away. I couldn’t look at it anymore as the thought of the ashes inside pained me with the memory of Yelena’s sacrifice. We had long since burned the bedding that had been covered in her ashes, but we hadn’t even begun to discuss clearing her closet. We knew we needed to remove her clothes in order to move on, but neither of us could do that yet. I would sometimes sit inside her closet alone just for the comfort of being shrouded in her clothing.

  Months later the man who had taken the urn returned and presented me with a small box, which I accepted eagerly. I closed my eyes before I opened it. I touched it before I saw it. Inside was a brilliant cut, single carat diamond that the man had grown in a lab from Yelena’s ashes. Shortly after, I had a jeweler set the stone, filling the empty setting in the asymmetrical heart-shaped pendant Yelena had worn around her neck for so many years. I wear it now, keeping Yelena close to my heart. And within my heart, despite what these memories or scribbles may have said about her, Yelena was just like her diamond. She was flawless.

  A NOTE ON THE TEXT

  In Chapter Twenty-Three the phrase “fade and wither dismally with age” is borrowed from the author’s favorite book, The Dead by James Joyce.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The publication and promotion of The Scribbled Victims was made possible in part to those listed below who generously donated to the crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. Robert would like to thank them for their willingness to support an independent author.

  Christine G. Adamo, Jenieke R. Allen, Holly Vernola Angelopoulos, Matthew J. Ashton, Sarah Bannen, Jenni Bean, Jessica Berrones, VJ Boyd, Danielle Brown, Samantha Buck, Alexandra Bunch, Carrie Burkholder, Paul Burt, Jane Butler, Heidi Caberto, Joseph Chiang, Mariam Chiroglyan, Daniel Cimo, Jesse Cu, Jen Davis, Arcelia Delgadillo, Sissy Dillon, Allison Emery, Mattie Estevez, Ross Fisher-Davis, Kaira Flowers, Ruth Gandara, Rosemary Giese, Riley Gray, Erika Guardado, Cynthia Guizado, Aliya Hassan, Jenny Haugh, Todd Hoskins, Amie Howell, Jenny Jenks, Lynn A. Jenner, Rachel Jensen, Andrea Kern, Tom Kilishek, Linda Kim, Joy Kim, Kristy King, Samantha Klein, Jacqueline Knight, Brooke Knisely, Ethan Knisely, Noah Knisely, Rachael Kubart, Paul Lampano, Ana Licon, Cynthia Lopez, Courtney Daisy McDaniel, Mary Zaint Medellin, Karissa Miller, Laurie Murphy, Priscilla Nguyen, Jennifer Prescott, Eloisa Ramos, Haley Rangel, Adi Reich, Michie Reigle, Christa Ritchie, Candy and Erika Rodriguez, Farishta Sarpas, Omar Saucedo, Amirah Schwartz, Tanya Sepehrnia, Mila Shank, Lauren Soltvedt, Lark Spencer, Jonni Taylor, Carolina Tomoguchi, Kat Weed, Jehann Williamson, Sierra Yarusi, and Anonymous.

  THANK YOU

  Robert would like to thank the members of his writing group: VJ Boyd, Stefanie Leder, and Aaron Marshall for their invaluable contributions during the writing of this novel.

  He would also like to thank his pre-readers: Jessica Berrones, Paul Burt, Arcelia Delgadillo, Ashley Marie Doss, Cynthia Guizado, Kristy King, Ana Maria Lopes Costa, Cynthia
Lopez, Eloisa Ramos, and Amirah Schwartz, for the sincere feedback they provided.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Robert is a proud Banana Slug, having attended Porter College at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he received his degree in Modern Literary Studies in 1995. The Scribbled Victims is Robert’s first full length novel. More about Robert can be found on his website: deadponies.com.