by Amira Rain
For the previous month or two, my frequent bouts of morning sickness and dizziness had kept me from going outside a lot, and I now realized that I was feeling a little deprived of fresh air. A little walk would do me good, I thought. Not to mention that I felt like I should go ahead and take one while I still could, while I was still feeling well. Since waking up in the house the evening before, I’d felt better than I probably had in weeks as far as my morning sickness was concerned.
What appeared to be the front door of the house was located on the far end of the kitchen, in a small, open foyer, and I walked over to it. However, that was as far as I got before I paused, having a sudden, weird feeling that maybe I should ask someone if it was okay before I went out on a walk.
On one level, this seemed absurd. After all, I was now an official adult, and although I’d gotten the strong sense that the MacGregor family wanted me to live with them indefinitely, I didn’t exactly feel like I was being kept prisoner under house arrest or anything. Also, Mark’s note had instructed me to make myself at home, and at home, I went out and took walks when I felt like it. But still, now that I was at the front door, something about essentially skipping right out it without a specific invitation to do so felt strange.
Ultimately, I didn’t exactly skip, but I went out the front door anyway, telling myself that I was just being paranoid or something. If anyone in the MacGregor family didn’t want me to go outside, for whatever reason, they probably would have told me, I figured.
As I’d guessed from my peek out the dining room windows, the house had a wraparound porch, which I loved. The section of porch out front was outfitted with a few rustic-looking wooden rockers, a few rough-hewn wooden chairs, and a small wooden table just the perfect size for a few people to share an outdoor meal.
Flanking three steps that led from the porch were two large planters filled with white petunias and yellow pansies, and I stopped by one of the planters just to have a look around. Turning toward the massive house, I was surprised to see that it wasn’t really like I’d imagined it would look, which was to say, like some sort of a stately mansion, maybe painted some somber, muted shade of gray.
Instead, the house was something like an enormous log cabin, with split-log siding in a shade of dark amber. It’s a mansion-cabin, I thought, thinking that the style fit the wooded surroundings. In fact, with tall evergreens, sycamores, and dense shrubbery surrounding the house, I got the feeling that I was more in the middle of a forest than on a farm. Even the dirt driveway, which was something like a U shape that led to a narrow dirt lane, was bordered by tall, dense trees.
However, through trees on one side of the yard, I could see some large, reddish object in the distance, and guessed that it might be a barn. Spotting a narrow walking path through the trees, I decided to investigate.
The walking path wasn’t long at all, and before I knew it, I’d emerged from the woodland into what appeared to be “the farm” that I’d heard about. There was the barn still a little way away, a couple of silos, and open farmland rolling west as far as the eye could see. To the east of the farmland, in the distance, a half-dozen or so large houses sat, each on their own vast plots of land; and from what I could see, it looked like maybe a half-dozen additional houses just beyond those ones. I also saw what I guessed might be an orchard of some kind on the distance, with rows of trees too orderly to just be part of the forest. This wasn’t all I saw, though, and all these things weren’t what interested me most. What did was that it appeared that the MacGregor family had a little business on the farm besides the farming itself.
A wide dirt drive that I assumed was an offshoot of a main paved road somewhere led to what appeared to be a small dirt parking lot. A large white sign maybe ten feet tall and ten feet wide at one end of the lot proclaimed MacGregor’s Family Farm at the top. Beneath this, it read Summer: Pick-your-own organic strawberries and blueberries. Fall: Pick-your-own organic apples- corn maze- hayrides. Ice Creamery Open Spring, Summer, & Fall.
An enormous white gazebo filled with little white café tables and chairs sat a short distance away from the parking lot, and beside it, several picnic tables sat on a wide patch of grass. Next to the patch of grass, a brick walkway led to a low, smallish-sized building with siding in a shade of cream. Indicating that the color of the building had probably been chosen very intentionally to reflect the building’s purpose, a large sign on the front of the building was painted with the words MacGregor Ice Creamery in fancy script.
Beneath the sign was a large, wide window, even though it now had a metal gate of sorts pulled down over it, and I assumed that this was a service window for ice cream.
Really liking what I’d seen of the farm so far, I decided to explore a little further, so I continued my walk down the dirt drive that deposited me in the parking lot. It was a little longer than I’d thought it might be, maybe even a quarter-mile, but after a few minutes of walking, I saw that the drive did offshoot from a main, paved road, as I’d thought it might. I didn’t know the area well, and I couldn’t see any street signs from the end of the drive, but I guessed that the paved road was US-12, which led directly into Sweetwater in a straight shot.
Preventing anyone from driving into the farm when it was closed for business, a large metal gate stretched from one side of the drive to the other, about ten feet from the paved road. Wanting to read a sign on the other side, I walked a little way into the woodland to just go around the gate.
While I read the sign, which just basically listed the hours for the Ice Creamery and the farm’s upcoming summer berry-picking hours, a few cars whizzed by on the paved road, and I vaguely wondered if maybe I shouldn’t be quite so visible not knowing if another lunatic was going to try to attack me in a car like the day before. With this on my mind, I finished scanning the sign quickly before darting back around the gate through the woodland.
Enjoying the sound of early morning birdsong, and also kind of enjoying having a look around the farm just by myself, I walked the half-mile or so back up the dirt drive, realizing that there was a narrow offshoot of it that I assumed connected with the dirt driveway in front of the house. Not really wanting to go back inside just yet, though, I made my way back to the Ice Creamery before coming to a stop.
The sun was now rising in the sky in full golden glory, making the big red barn in the distance appear to be painted a fiery reddish orange. This drew my attention to it, and after thinking for a few moments, I set out down a dirt walking path that apparently led to it, wondering if there might be animals inside, maybe horses or cows. Not really knowing anything about farms, it didn’t even occur to me that any cows would likely be kept inside a special dairy barn, away from other animals. I’d only ever visited a real working farm once, on a field trip in kindergarten, and I had only the haziest memories of how everything had been set up.
When I was maybe twenty or thirty feet from the barn, the birdsong I’d been enjoying began to be drowned out by a harsher, unpleasant sound. It was the sound of angry yelling. Instantly curious although a bit alarmed, I froze for a few seconds but then slowly began walking toward the barn again, now creeping maybe more than walking.
Within a few seconds, I began to hear the yelling a bit more distinctly, realizing in shock that two people were yelling, and one was a man, and one was a woman. However, as I crept a little closer, it became clear that it sounded like the woman wasn’t exactly so much angrily yelling as she was begging for some kind of an assault to stop. “No, don’t!” I heard her cry. “Please stop! Don’t do this!”
These words were followed by a few loud thuds, some groaning, and then a few words shouted in a deep male voice.
“You’ve brought this on yourself!”
With my heart pounding and adrenaline flooding my veins, I took off toward the barn at a sprint, hardly even thinking, just acting on pure knee-jerk reflex. Being a little on the shorter side and of fairly average build, Lord only knew what I could do to help the woman that was clearly b
eing attacked by an angry man, but I was going to try.
With my thoughts in a panicked jumble, I sprinted at least three or four paces before a realization hit me. The angry male voice I’d heard had been Hayden’s.
*
Sprinting the fastest that I probably ever had in my life, I reached the enormous barn door, which was half-open, within seconds. Just in time to see Hayden murder a woman.
With blood all over her face and shirt making clear that she’d been badly beaten, she was struggling on her back on the ground with Hayden beside her on his knees, pinning her down with a hand on her stomach. Sunlight glinted on a knife he held in his free hand, but just for a moment before he plunged the steel blade into the woman’s chest, making her yell and writhe in pain.
She only yelled briefly, though, because just as quickly as he’d stabbed her, Hayden pulled the blade from her chest and brought it down on her throat in one powerful movement, just like how a butcher might split a roast with a cleaver. This blow sent jets of blood spurting feet in the air, and also nearly severed the woman’s head. Just nearly, though. A few more quick blows of Hayden’s knife did it, and then the woman’s head was off, eyes still open and mouth in a silent scream.
Although I was barely aware of my own self at that moment or what I was doing, my own mouth was performing a silent scream. With a grunt of seeming satisfaction at his murderous handiwork, Hayden got to his feet, face and white t-shirt splattered with the woman’s blood.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. But suddenly, after just a moment or two, my silent scream became an audible one. Barely recognizing the sound as one that was coming from my own self, I began staggering away from the barn door, moving backward, hands flying to my face in horror.
This was when Hayden saw me, obviously having been alerted to my presence by my scream. With his eyes wide and his jaw dropping, his face reflected shock, and he stood looking at me for just a mere moment before issuing some kind of an anguished-sounding groan.
“Oh, no. Sydney.” Pausing, he raked his hands over his face with another low groan. “Please let me explain.”
He wanted to “explain” a brutal murder. One where “brutal” barely even covered it. At his feet, the murdered woman’s head and body sat in a pool of blood that was slowly expanding in the dirt, coloring her long, pale blonde hair red. Hayden still held the murder weapon in his hand, with vivid crimson blood covering the blade. And he wanted to “explain” all this. As I continued trying to stagger away backward, feeling as if my shaky legs were going to give out from beneath me at any second, the thought made me feel like hysterical laughter might soon rise from my chest.
“Sydney, just wait.”
Dropping the knife, Hayden began dashing toward me, making me scream again. Experiencing another strong surge of adrenaline, I instantly turned and began running as fast as my shaky legs would let me, knowing that I might be literally running for my life. Hayden might try to kill me because of what I’d seen, I figured.
I didn’t get too far before a strong hand on my shoulder made me slow and stumble. I would have fallen had Hayden not caught me. Then, making my stomach churn with pure disgust, he held me tightly, face to face, asking me to just take a deep breath.
“Or a couple. I don’t want you passing out again like how you did yesterday.”
Disregarding his instructions, I began struggling wildly, yelling at him to let me go. He didn’t, though, and instead just held me fast, with his arms feeling like iron bars around me.
“Just relax, Sydney. Please.”
Instead of relaxing, I landed a powerful kick to one of his shins. “You’re a monster.”
He barely even flinched at my kick and my words. “I wouldn’t argue that. A lot of times, I think I am a monster. But I would argue that unlike some monsters, I’m a monster who’s able to keep his monster side under control.”
Having stopped struggling, I scoffed, once again feeling like hysterical laughter might soon rise from my chest. “Liar. I just saw your monster side, and it was very out of control. It was sick.”
“Are you sure you saw what you think you saw?”
“Yes. I saw you brutally murder a defenseless woman.”
“Things aren’t always how they appear, Sydney.”
“Oh, you’re going to try to tell me it was self-defense or something?” Unable to keep my hysterical laughter contained any longer, I suddenly let a bit of it out in a sharp, short burst. “Like a tall, well-built guy like you would actually have to kill a woman to keep her off of you…even if she was trying to come at you or something.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Like you couldn’t have just sent her flying with probably just a single-fingered little shove to her chest.”
I was sure he could have, considering how strong he was, and also considering that the woman he’d murdered had been very petite, probably weighing no more than a hundred pounds.
Still holding me fast, Hayden gave his head a little shake, wearing a clear look of frustration and exasperation, as if he had any right to. “I’m not saying that I did what I did out of self-defense. The truth is a little more complicated. See, that ‘woman’ you saw me kill was actually a man, and that man, instead of being ‘defenseless,’ was actually one of the strongest vampires in the Warren Coven.
He was also a shapeshifter, and shifted into the form of his sister when I spotted him on the property yesterday, probably thinking that I would have done everything to avoid killing her, which I would have. I saw him shift, though; he wasn’t fast enough.
So, I attacked him right away, seriously injuring him, then put him in a special steel cage in the barn overnight, thinking that I might be able to try to get some information out of him. When morning came and he still refused to talk, though, I decided to kill him. Very unfortunately, you just happened to walk in during the middle of it.”
“Right. What a likely story. Like vampires and shapeshifters even really exist.”
“They do.”
“Well, if that’s the case, then why didn’t the supposed shapeshifter you killed shift back into his own form once his sister’s form didn’t stop you from attacking him anyway? Got an answer for that, too?”
“Yes. He didn’t shift back into his own form because he apparently couldn’t. When I first attacked him, I delivered a blow to his head so hard that it seemed to knock his supernatural abilities off-kilter or something. Several times while I was fighting him so that I could get him down on the ground to kill him, he shifted back into his own form, but the shifts just didn’t seem to ‘stick,’ for whatever reason, and he was back to his sister’s form within a second. If you’d shown up earlier, you would have seen that.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“Well, you would have.”
“So you say. But if I’m supposed to think that what you’re saying is the truth, that the person you killed was actually a man, and a powerful vampire, then why did I hear that person begging for their life?”
“Well, that’s easy. Many of the Warrens are complete cowards who refuse to die like men. They’re a very powerful, physically strong group of vampires, but most of them end up crying like little girls before the end. When it comes down to it, most of them have no pride, and no honor.”
Looking up into Hayden’s eyes, I decided that he was either telling me the truth, or he was the most brilliant, convincing liar that had ever existed. Not only did his answers make sense, at least kind of, but his eyes held a look of complete sincerity that told me that if he was lying, he believed his lies so totally that to him, they were truth.
I didn’t know what to say. And when I said nothing in response to Hayden for a moment or two, he spoke again.
“Look. If you’ll come back to the barn with me, you can see for yourself that I’m telling the truth.”
“How?”
“Because no matter if their shapeshifting abilities are damaged in life, a shapeshifter always shifts
back to his true form within a few minutes of death, no matter what. I’ve never heard of a case where this hasn’t happened. I bet if we go inside the barn right now, Richard Warren, the man I killed, will be lying dead, looking exactly like his true form in life. Just come with me and look.”
“Right, like I’m going to come inside the barn with you so that you can kill me, too.”
Hayden sighed. “If I wanted to kill you, which I definitely don’t, I could just do it right out here, right out in the open.”
“Well, then, maybe you’re just trying to get me in the barn so that you can ‘clear’ my memory or something, like how I saw your uncle do to a person yesterday.”
“Again, if I wanted to clear your memory, which, to be honest, I kind of do, I could just do that right out here in the open. I won’t, though, and you have my word that I won’t ever. My family and I see clearing as a very morally gray area; we don’t like it; and we only do it in pretty extreme emergencies. We never do it to people who can handle the truth that we’re vampires, people we care about, or people who need to know that we’re vampires anyway.”
I scoffed, although feebly. “Right. Vampires.”
Sighing again, Hayden suddenly released me from his arms so that he could rake a hand through his hair. “Just please come look in the barn with me. I know it’s a gory sight, and I don’t want you to be upset by it…but I don’t want you thinking that I’m a murderer of defenseless women, either.”
I didn’t know how to respond, partly because I was a bit preoccupied at the moment by a strange, sudden sense of loss, which seemed to be somehow connected to the fact that Hayden had taken his arms from around my body. You’re sick, Sydney, I thought. He’s rubbing off on you. You actually liked the feel of being held in a murderer’s arms. And liked maybe wasn’t even a strong enough word.
When I didn’t say anything after a moment or two, Hayden tried again. “Please, Sydney. Just come look in the barn with me. I promise this isn’t any kind of a trick or anything. I just want you to see the truth.”