Vampire Innocent (Book 3): The Artist of Ruin

by Cox, Matthew S.

  I can’t even lift my head to peer at the door. Damn this is frustrating. All I want to do is get out of here and go back to my reality, but I’m stuck. Mom hesitates, then advances again at half the speed. Umm… why is she trying to sneak up on us? That gets the hairs on the back of my neck standing up, but maybe the woman is trying not want to wake us up.

  The door knob rattles. Anticipation stalls the breath in my throat.

  A faint squeak grinds out of the hinges as the door eases inward. Too slow. Far too slow to be Mom checking on us. A shadowy figure, taller than a woman, leans in. At once, I recognize that worker. He extends only his head past the door, staring at the three of us in our bed the way a coyote might eye baby rabbits.

  Despite knowing I’m not the six-year-old I appear to be, his stare fills me with bed-wetting terror. Only, Sally Ann doesn’t soil the bed, since she’s supposed to be asleep. Somewhere between feeling tiny and paralyzed, my mind runs away with panic. I need to scream for my parents, but no matter how hard I try to force air out of my mouth, I can’t move. The body my thoughts have somehow inhabited is asleep; I’m a mere spectator. In my mind, I scream and shriek, but no sound reaches the outside.

  The man steps in, his lip twitching. A manic smile flickers into existence for seconds at a time before the wild, emotionless mask overpowers it. Moonlight makes him seem as pale as a vampire, and his yellow eyes only add to the otherworldly effect. Right as I start to wonder if Rebecca had a reaction to me because I’m a vampire and she already met one, the man hefts an enormous axe.

  Oh, shit. He’s not going to feed from us… Nor is he planning to molest us as I initially thought from the way he stared at me.

  This is about to become the kind of movie I refuse to watch under any circumstances. Nothing with children being killed. Again, I try to scream, “No!” or force myself to unplug from the horrible vision I know is coming. In that instant, it hits me: Rebecca had a dark burgundy trim around the collar of her dress. That isn’t dye—it’s dried blood.

  Probably Sally Ann’s.

  Lost to panic, I feel like I’m strapped down to a table with a psycho coming toward me. I can’t move, scream, or even whimper. I don’t want to watch this, but I can’t escape. Fear overwhelms me and my mind voice shrieks so loud my throat hurts for real. Come on, Sally Ann! Wake up. Please wake up. Please scream or something!

  The man edges closer, squeezing and relaxing his grip on the axe handle. He glares at us with unbridled malice, as if we’re the reason he has no money. He’s going to show Finch Westcott what happens to men who cheat him. His ‘beautiful family’ is about to become a beautiful memory.

  I’m ready to pass out from pure fright, but one tiny hope keeps me sane. The old woman who owned the doll had to be Sally Ann. She had to live right? Or did she die and go into the doll? Could the doll’s owner be one of her sisters? But… no. Rebecca said her son looked like Sam.

  My eyes go wide.

  Eldridge, Sally Ann’s brother, looks like Sam.

  The man reaches the side of the bed and looks down at me. He stares with an unreadable expression, the venom in his eyes lessening. Part of me hopes seeing three little girls asleep and defenseless tugs at something human inside him. Maybe he can’t do it? His humanity doesn’t last but a few seconds before blind rage takes over.

  Muttering incoherently, he raises the axe.

  I try to scream, but little Sally Ann is really asleep, and can’t.

  The door flies open.

  “Found the damn thing!” The girls’ mother strides in, Rebecca dangling from her hand.

  The man whirls, glaring at her, axe poised over our bed.

  Time freezes as the killer and Mom process each other.

  “Fitch!” roars Mom.

  The man whips his head around to stare down at me. He heaves the axe even higher, about to drive it down into my face, but Mom leaps on him from the side. The axe swerves to the right, missing the bed entirely, and gouges a chunk of wood out of the night table. The clonk jars Sally Ann awake. She sits up, out of my control, and blinks, still half-asleep. Moonlight flashes from the axe blade as Mom and the killer struggle. He throws her aside and spins, staring death straight into my soul. With a snarl, he raises the axe again.

  Sally Ann cringes back, trying to guard her face with her arms, and shrieks.

  Mom rushes him again, knocking him away from the bed. The axe hits the mattress inches from my foot. Growling, the man whirls; he and Mom spin around and around. A soft, fleshy thud accompanies a moan of pain from Mom. She rolls off to the side and collapses to the floor, the doll still clutched to her chest. Blood smears over Rebecca’s face.

  The man curses and pulls his axe out of Mom’s side, raising it to finish her off. She only stares up at him, making no effort to move out of the way.

  Howling in anger, the girls’ father rushes through the doorway and plows into the worker, knocking him against the wall. The crash of bodies wakes my sisters. Camila grabs me from behind and pulls me back, hiding me against the wall before using her body to shield Celia and me.

  “Don’t look,” whispers Camila, trembling. “Don’t look.”

  “Mommy!” wails Celia, erupting in sobs. “Mommy’s bleeding!”

  Men grunt and struggle. Dad howls in pure rage. Both men blur into a tornado of fists and flailing arms that blows out the door. Sprawled on the floor, Mom gurgles and rasps for air. I crawl around my older sisters and peer over the edge of the bed. Blood seeps from Mom’s mouth and gushes out of a huge wound in her side. She clutches Rebecca tight to her chest, the woman’s eyes as glassy and unfocused as the doll’s.

  “Mommy?” whispers Sally Ann.

  Behind me, Celia and Camila cling to each other sobbing. One of them keeps trying to grab my shoulder and pull me back. Mommy meant everything to Sally Ann. The two had been inseparable for six years. This girl I’m inhabiting can barely process what she’s seeing.

  I feel her little heart shatter into a thousand pieces.

  I can’t even breathe.

  Dad staggers into view, catching himself against the doorjamb, face bloodied, but no worse than what a fistfight can do. “Becca!”

  His fury becomes grief in an instant. Wailing and sobbing, the man collapses to his knees and cradles the woman’s hand.

  “Becca,” he whispers, cradling her. “Girls. Get back! Don’t look.”

  Camila’s hand closes around my shoulder, trying to pull me away from the edge. Sally Ann is too broken to move, or even breathe.

  “Finch,” wheezes the woman. “I’m still here. Get Doc Kennedy. I swear that nothing will keep me from my children. I’ll be with them always.”

  Eldridge skids to a halt, gripping the doorjamb, staring in horror at his mother lying on the floor.

  Dad stifles a sob and tears at Mom’s dress, exposing the wound. “Oh God! Becca.” His eyes blurred with tears, he works feverishly to make a bandage from the ripped shards of fabric.

  Camila and Celia both grab me and try unsuccessfully to pull me away from the gruesome sight. My older siblings cling to me, all three of us sobbing and screaming for our mother.

  “Always…” wheezes Rebecca Westcott.

  She slumps, lifeless.

  25

  New Home

  The anguished scream that might have come from Sally Ann Westcott’s lips comes out of mine.

  I spring upright, sitting on the floor in Sam’s room, back in my body. Sobbing and shivering, I curl into a ball, trying to process the emotional sledgehammer that hit me. That little girl saw her mother die. The woman threw herself in front of an axe to save her children. I’m not sure how I know, but Finch killed that man. Beat him to death with his bare hands.

  Of course. Rebecca. The doll is that woman—she couldn’t have been older than thirty. Way too young to die. I want to reach back into that dream world and cradle those three girls, make them forget that sight. Take away all that anguish. No, I wanna go back there as me and tear that man’s h
ead off before he sneaks into the house.

  “Sarah?” asks Mom. My mom.

  I peer up at her. She’s leaning in the door, half awake, and looking far too much like Rebecca Westcott for my emotional state to handle. Not that they resemble each other, but the way she’s leaning into the room in her nightgown.

  “Mommy,” I mutter, before flying into a hug. My headspace at the moment is some bizarre tangle of six-year-old Sally Ann watching her mother gasp for last breaths and me trying to cope with sharing her emotions.

  “What’s wrong?” asks Mom, squeezing me back.

  I can’t talk, too constricted with grief.

  “Sarah?”

  After a few breaths, I push back enough to make eye contact. “Mom…”

  “Are you all right? What’s happened? You’re shaking.”

  Feeling her here gives me something real and physical to cling to, firm ground to pull myself back together. “It’s, umm, kinda hard to explain. I had like a vision or something. The spirit in the doll… she died protecting her kids from a guy with an axe. I just watched the whole thing happen.” I shudder. “No, more than watched. I was there.”

  “Where’s Sam?” asks Mom.

  “I’m working on that.” I retreat into the room and approach the closet, mercifully back to being a normal closet.

  Rebecca, the doll, sits on the floor, partially concealed by a shoebox full of GI Joe stuff. Hmm. I wonder if my being able to see the doll—her revealing herself at last—means she’s no longer possessing Sam. Probably. Oh, crap… Sophia said she saw a guy with an axe. Did this doll give her that same ‘video game’ like dream? Couldn’t have. No. If Sophia experienced what I just did, she’d still be hiding under her bed crying. I take a knee and shift the box of little plastic men and vehicles out of the way.

  “Hello, Rebecca,” I whisper as I pick her up into a hug. “Sam’s okay, right?”

  Though the doll doesn’t move or speak, the strangest sense comes over me that she wants me to know my little brother’s back to normal. I pat the doll on the back and stand.

  “You didn’t answer my question.” Mom walks around the bed, arms folded. “Where is Sam?”

  “He’s at Aurélie’s. I thought she could maybe help convince Rebecca to break her attachment to him. She did, but Rebecca needed me to see what happened to her. Sam’s okay now.”

  Mom shifts her jaw side to side. “You left him there? She’s not going to bite him, is she?”

  “No, Mom. Aurélie is a friend. I’m sorry for taking him somewhere without asking, but I’m having a crazy night, and I’m sure there aren’t many places he’d be safer than with her at night.”

  “I suppose that’s true. Still, I’m not entirely comfortable with him away from home at his age with a woman I’ve never even met.”

  “Sorry. Everything’s going crazy again all at once. Some guy almost burned Ashley’s house down and she thought her ex-boyfriend might hurt her when she broke up with him.”

  Mom gasps. “What happened?”

  I cradle the doll close, trying to comfort her. “Would you prefer I bring Sam back right away, or can that wait for like a three hour conversation?”

  She rubs her forehead, sighing. “Fair enough. Go get him and we’ll talk tomorrow afternoon.”

  I hug her again before making my way outside to the backyard. My thoughts swim with sorrow for Sally Ann. Without a doubt, I’m sure she knew her mother resided in the doll. As close as they’d been, I can’t imagine the grief that poor kid had to live with. Heh, kid indeed. It’s weird thinking of her that way. That little girl I momentarily embodied would’ve been in her nineties when she died a few years ago.

  “I understand,” I say to the doll. “I’d do the same thing to protect my siblings. Don’t take Sophia being afraid of you personally. She’s afraid of everything. And wow, yeah… Eldridge does look a lot like Sam. You kept your word. You were there for your kids, always. You knew that man was trouble, but Fitch not listening to you and getting rid of him wasn’t your fault.”

  Either Rebecca snuggles against me, or I’ve gone nuts.

  I don’t know if there’s any sort of afterlife, or reincarnation, or what. Maybe Sam is Eldridge reborn for another trip around the Earth. He was the eldest sibling, so he surely died before Sally Ann. It could be simple coincidence how closely they resemble each other. If there is an afterlife, wouldn’t Rebecca want to go be with her kids? Or maybe she can’t escape the doll. Or maybe her kids are with her somehow as ghosts.

  Ugh. I’m too wound up to think about this stuff.

  After making sure I’ve got a good grip on Rebecca, I zip into the air, flying straight up a couple hundred feet before angling toward Seattle. The flight is silent and somber. I can’t stop thinking about Sally Ann realizing the mother she loved so dearly had died right in front of her. How that girl managed to get past that grief, I have no idea. Maybe she didn’t get past it. Though, once she realized her mother was still with her in the doll, perhaps it became easier to live with.

  If my mother died like that when I was six, I’d probably still be in therapy, and while I love my mom, I can’t say we have as close a bond as Rebecca and Sally Ann did.

  By the time I get to Aurélie’s, I’m crying again. I mostly get myself under control when the elevator doors open to let me out at her apartment. Sam lays on the sofa by the huge television, asleep, covered by the blanket I brought him in. Aurélie waves from a chair nearby. She sets her goblet of blood down and smiles. It’s bizarre seeing her dressed like she’s from the 1800s while holding an e-reader.

  “You found her,” says Aurélie, standing.

  “Yes. She decided to let me bring her here.”

  “What’s wrong? I can feel the sorrow wafting from you like smoke.”

  I hand Rebecca over as gingerly as if I’m handing off a live baby. “It’s the most bizarre, saddest thing I’ve ever experienced.”

  We sit on the sofa, near Sam, and I tell her what happened in the dream. Aurélie dotes over the doll the whole time I talk.

  “Fascinating. This is the first I have heard of a living doll being infused without the use of more elaborate means.” Aurélie smiles at Rebecca. “Yes, dear. I know you are no child… but to me, you are. It would be wonderful of you to help me take care of the others.”

  “Any idea what that was?” I ask.

  “She showed you her past. Part vision, part dream. Rebecca trusts you.”

  I tilt my head. “But wouldn’t that have made me see out of their mother’s eyes? The vision was all from Sally Ann’s perspective.”

  “The child had a strong emotional attachment to the doll, even before it contained her mother’s soul. Over the years she kept it, she, too imprinted on it. I think the energy within Rebecca has become a combination of both of them… or perhaps there are two souls in there.”

  “Whoa,” I whisper. “I’d believe it. That girl was way close to her mother.”

  Aurélie stands, holds the doll out at arms’ length, and spins around like an oversized child playing. Her incredibly long, snow-white hair trails after her. After a few twirls, she swooshes over to me, her sapphire eyes sparkling with glee. “Oh, you simply must pose again for another painting with Rebecca.”

  “Sure.” I shrug. “I can do that.”

  Sam mutters in his sleep.

  “But…” I point both thumbs toward the couch. “I need to take him home.”

  “Of course.” Aurélie leans close and kisses me once on the cheek. “Be safe.”

  “I’ll feel a lot safer when the Petra situation is put to bed.” I cross the room and scoop Sam up.

  “We will get there.” Aurélie heads for the double doors, bringing Rebecca to the doll room. “Do not let that woman get under your skin. If you take the fun from the game, she will cease playing it.”

  Right. I head for the elevator. “Somehow, I doubt it’s going to be that easy.”

  26

  Ruin

  Mom’s s
till up when I get home. She helps me put Sam back in bed, then seems to relax enough to return to sleep herself.

  I don’t have enough time to accomplish much before sunrise, so I decide to try and recover from the crazy emotional roller-coaster tonight has been with a nice hot soak. The timer I set on my phone goes off way too fast for my liking, but I force myself out of the tub since the bathroom window faces east. If the sun came up strong, I’d be toast. My parents could not handle finding my charred skeleton in here.

  Not to mention, Mom doesn’t allow smoking in the house.

  I dry off and wear a towel for the quick dash down to the basement from the second floor. Once in my room, I work another towel through my hair, slip into a big T-shirt, and crawl in bed. On a morning like this, being a vampire is a real help. No way would I ever be able to sleep after all the crap that happened if I were still mortal.

  As soon as that sun comes up, I’m out.

  Time skips forward. In what feels like mere seconds, I’m awake again and it’s 2:04 p.m. Slight stiffness warns of a sunny day, but it’s probably not too bad. Going upstairs in the house would be draining, going outside would suck—a lot—but, I think it would be possible for emergencies. Suppose I’m getting the hang of how to vampire, at least a little, if I can measure daylight by how stiff I am.

  I grab the phone and call Michelle, warning her to be on the lookout for possible threats. Of course, she asks why I would say that, so I explain the firebug we found at Ashley’s. Michelle proceeds to chew me out like I did something wrong, but I let it wash over me. She’s frustrated at being frightened and being in a situation she couldn’t possibly explain properly to her parents. Mr. and Mrs. Gerard are out of the loop insofar as the whole ‘v-word’ goes, and they’re going to stay that way.

  Her mother doesn’t handle spooky well. A flickering light bulb once made her want to sell the house. And her father? If we managed to convince him that vampires exist, he’d probably try to kill me. He’s way too into the whole Baptist thing. Anything he can’t explain is the work of Satan or something like that. He wouldn’t see me as Sarah Wright anymore, I’d be a demon pretending to be me. Yeah. The dude like literally believes in demons and stuff. I could so mess with him if I had telekinesis or something.