by Tara Brown
They speak, but the secret room keeps the sounds muffled. My daddy milled the wood for it himself. He used the thickest boards for this room. I believe it could withstand any attempts at getting inside, beyond burning the house to the ground.
Their murmurs fill the silence.
My breath whispers from my lips, like a breeze slipping through a crack. I have nowhere to go.
The closet door opens. I feel the vibration of it being tugged hard against its frame.
I expect them to smell me.
I expect him to sense me.
I do not expect the knock that vibrates the wall in front of my face. It’s pleasant and soft.
I don't breathe.
Another knock. Like a knock one would do politely on the door of a neighbor to borrow some sugar.
A heavy-breathing mouth is pressed against the hidden hinges and words are spoken into the corner of the closet, “Little pig, little pig, let us in.”
They know about the room.
They know where I am, but it's not him speaking.
Words sit in my traitorous throat. I want to call to him but my lips refuse to open.
Terror is lodged with the words in my throat.
A loud bang fills the small room. I jump.
Several loud bangs knock against the wall. They are testing the strength. I can feel it when their hits land against the beam across the door.
Horror has crippled me. I imagine it will be as it was for my family. I imagine my blood will spray like theirs did, only here it will be across the peeling wallpaper and old carpet.
I want to scream. I don’t want to wait for my death any longer. If I had full use of my body I would open the door, but I do not.
I'm stuck, frozen.
I shiver against the wooden beam as the wall is beaten with a percussion session, the wall separating me from my death.
The banging and noise stops. I hold my breath, trying to guess where they are. Are they listening against the wall? Are they wondering where in the room I am as I wonder where they are?
“Let me in.” His voice starts my heart again. I hadn’t noticed it stopped. The jolt of the electricity his voice causes, shocks a gasp from me. “I can hear your heart beating. Let me in,” Whit whispers softly. I want to believe I can let him in and that once again his warm arms will be the ones to save me.
But he is not the man I thought he was.
Tears trickle down my cheeks. I don’t know what hurts more, his being on the other side of the wall or the vision of his hand swiping at my daddy's throat, spilling his blood against the shockingly white sculpture in the foyer of my home. His fingers took the lives of my family.
Like a traitor, I can't force the images of my dying family over the memory of his lips trailing along my throat. He has done something to me. He has made me this weak and pathetic thing.
My breath leaving my mouth is hot and sweet. I still taste the bourbon from the drinks I had and feel it searing its way inside me.
His effect on me is unnatural.
His breath is heavy suddenly. “Let me in. I want to take care of you. I want you to be like me. Then we can be together forever. Every night can be Nina Simone, Cuban cigars, and a different party to attend. I want to show you my world. It's a world you can't even imagine.” His deep voice bypasses my ears and speaks directly to my soul.
Think of the blood. Think of Emily.
Emily.
She was sixteen. She liked books and show tunes. She liked that boy Greg. He was at the party. His face flashes in my mind.
Alone in the dark secret room, orphaned and afraid, I still smile, seeing his face. He looked like a turtle. He was bashful in the way I believe a turtle would be.
Emily was gonna be a schoolteacher, even though Momma swore neither of us would work.
Her sweet face distracts me.
“You're going to die in there if you don't come out now. There is no safety from the sun in there. You need me. I need you.” He sounds defeated.
I make no moves.
His tone changes slightly. “Lorelei, I will always find you. You know you can't run from me.” It ain't a threat, it’s a promise.
It's silent for a few moments and then he speaks again, but not to me. “I have to go back and make sure everything is cleaned up. We have a lot of mess to clean up. You guys handled this really badly. My father is going to be devastated. The witch is gone. Just get her out. Don't hurt her, bring her back to the other house.” I hear footsteps. He is talking to the other ones.
Someone else responds. “You let her drink from you? Her blood is tainted.”
“She was never part of the deal.” Whit sounds angry.
“What deal?” I whisper softly to myself. I press my ears against the wall to hear better.
The other man speaks defensively, “Your father is going to be angry with you too.”
Whit sighs. “Then I guess we better clean this shit up and you better make sure not a hair is scratched on her head. If she is hurt or escapes, then I will tell him everything. I'll be at the mansion.”
I hear footsteps again. He is leaving me here with them. How can he leave me?
There are no sounds for a minute. Did they all leave?
The silence of the dark is more frightening than the possibility of leaving the small room. Not hearing them is driving me more insane than the banging on the wall was.
Cold starts to permeate through my sweat and fear. I turn slowly and peer out the tiny window Daddy had put in. It's from his boat. It's a round porthole. I see a shadow crossing the wheat field. I think it's him. I know his gait. I see the field light up as the moon comes out from behind the thick clouds. He turns and peers up at the window. His dark eyes glisten in the light of the moon.
The banging starts again, but I can't tear myself from the beauty of the man crossing the field.
I don’t turn around when I hear them more clearly. They speak fast, but I don’t listen for their words. I don’t fight them as I sense something sharp scratch at my arm. I put a hand up to the window and press my palm against the sight of him. I close my eyes and Nina sings what we both know to be the truest form of attraction and satisfaction.
I let my memory of him be the truth of his existence as their hands pull me away from the window. They drag me through the hole in the wall they've made. The jagged wood scratches me on the way out.
I scream from the pain and come alive.
I grab at the wooden shards from the splintered hole.
I remember the stories.
Grandmamma’s stories.
The fight comes alive in me when I see the dark soulless eyes again. They do not belong to Whit. Their mouths don’t smile when they open wide with huge fangs.
Fear takes over for me, and I don’t know the moves I use or the way I fight to get away. I rip at wood and stab, shooting something from my fingers. The sparks are wild.
Light flashes as if lightning is being shot around the room and screams fill the air. The blood dripping from my fingers is not my own. I scramble away from the dead things on the ground.
Jumping up and bolting, I'm out the door and fighting the feeling of falling down the stairs while taking them three at a time.
I burst through the back door, breaking the screened storm door and soaring from the steps. I push myself in my strides across the field. The tickle of the wheat is lost in the journey. Screaming and shouting comes from the farmhouse. They weren’t dead and they’re coming after me.
I have no back-up plan and nowhere to go. There is light on the horizon as I round the top of a small hill.
I remember the stories Grandmamma told us and push my legs harder.
They will catch me. They are faster than I am. They are chasing me but the sun can save me. If I can just reach the sun.
My dark-green cocktail dress has also saved my life. My legs are free to run which I'm good at. I'm so glad I didn’t wear the pencil skirt Momma picked out for me. I smile, this must be a lucky
dress. I bought it because Jackie Kennedy wore one like it last summer. The summer before John, her husband, was shot. John died but Jackie lived. I will live too.
I don’t think about John and Jackie. I don’t think about Emily. I don’t think at all.
I chant the song “Feeling Good.”
And I run.
My lungs want to explode but I refuse to let them. My back is hot and sticky where blood is ruining my favorite Jackie Kennedy dress. My head is pounding from lack of oxygen. But I run. I run for the light. I run from the dark.
I don’t even know where I'm running to, but I jump logs and leap creeks and race through low-hanging woods toward the sun.
His breath is hot on my neck. Scotch is filling the air I breathe and I know he's close, but I run.
I see the McKenzies’ field in front of me and I almost quit. I almost let him catch me. Their field is on a huge hill. They don’t grow very good vegetables because of the steep incline. I race as hard as I can up it.
I crest the hill but my legs can't take another step. They collapse. The hay comes fast at my face. Something hits my stomach and the ground turns over and over and over. It rotates between ground and a bright light. I think I'm spiraling to heaven, until I land at the bottom of the McKenzies’ field with a loud thud. I can't breathe. My wind has been knocked out of me.
I fight for air. My eyes take a second to focus on my surroundings.
I see his face. I gasp for it but can't seem to get the air in.
He smiles his lazy grin but his dark eyes look sad. “I won't hurt you. Just let me explain.”
I sob and shake my head back and forth. I want to block him from my vision.
He tilts his head to the side and takes a step back.
I didn’t realize how close he was to me. “Your mother, she called my family. She wanted us to come and get you and take your blood.”
My hands leap to my ears as a scream rips from my throat and the air finally hits my lungs.
Tears stream down my cheeks and he takes another step away from me. His lips move, but I don’t hear his poisonous words.
He looks heartbroken and stops speaking. I lower my hands and watch him.
“Enjoy the last sunrise, my love. Enjoy it,” he says.
His eyes shine. They glisten as he takes another step back.
I shake the fog from my brain. I look down at the shadow I'm casting on the grass. My knees are bleeding and grass stained. My dress is torn and my hands and arms are dirty and bloody. Black blood stains my fingers.
A flash of memories fills my mind. I see it clearly now. The thing he wanted to show me back at the party.
I had slipped from the crowd to the dark house. I wanted him to touch me again. In the shadows of the house I hid. I waited excitedly. He stepped from a shadow across the foyer. His hand slid up into my long hair and pulled my head back. He pressed his lips into mine, like he'd been thinking about doing it all night long. He pulled away abruptly and smiled.
What he did next was beyond odd.
He bit into his wrist and whispered. “You need this now.”
It smelled like the sweet cigar smoke mixed with the scotch on his breath.
I shook my head but his eyes flexed and he smiled wider. “You have to drink my blood.”
The dark liquid that dripped from him had me mesmerized. He dragged his finger through it, like it was black finger paint and then put his finger into my mouth. It slipped on my lips like grease. In my mouth it tasted the way it smelled, seductive. He pressed his wrist to my lips.
Unbeknownst to me, my family had seen me slip away from the party. They walked into the house to see me drinking from his wrist. He pulled away from me. He stopped the taste and the feelings from filling me. He made a noise and his hands came down on them. I saw the blood spray. There were others like him. They were just as Grandmamma said they would be. They fought and ate and I ran, like a coward.
It was all just as she said it would be. Demons. They were from stories that weren’t supposed to be true.
I look up from the stains and the blood on my hands to his beautiful face. How can it be? How can he be a creature of the night?
He takes a step back. The line of the rising sun is pushing us apart. I hate him but still want him and I can't fight it. The memory of their death ain't stronger than my want for him.
“I'll see you tonight.” His words are the knife that finishes me off. I have drunk his black blood. His blood is filled with the death that will come and claim me when the sun goes down. That’s how it was in the stories.
The sunrise gives me a chill. I turn back to where he is as he waves and takes a step back.
I want to run to him. I stand on my wobbly legs, but I stay where I am.
He takes a step back. He is on the hill. The sun is coming fast.
His lazy smile creeps along his face, sending a shiver over my body. “Come with me, Lorelei. I came here to be with you. You aren’t alone in this world. You will never be alone. I will always come for you.” He whispers and somehow it's so loud it's like he's right next to me.
When I don't move my feet, he turns his back and runs up the hill and over it. He is gone.
The line of the sun creeps up the hill, chasing him.
I turn my back on the hill and start to walk. I need as much distance as I can get between him and me before sunset. I have only one day to make my escape. I wonder where I will go.
“Paris,” I hear Emily whisper to me across the wheat field. I smile and think about the things I will have to do, for the both of us.
Her face fills my mind and stops me from thinking about how long it will be before he catches me, and what he will do to me when he does.
Chapter 9
Revelstoke, Canada, 2012
Go home.
I look around. I'm alone but the icy whispers are back. The first ones make me feel batshit crazy, but then I realize it's just them. I'm grateful to have someone, even if it's death calling for me. I just wish the call wasn't coming all the way from Louisiana.
Go home, Lorelei.
Danger. Go home.
They chant the whisper over and over.
Home.
The prospect of home is a frightening one. There is nothing there for me. Not that there ever was. No, that’s not true. There was always Emily. Emily and Angie and Ramón. But I killed them. I let them die because I was blind.
And now I am one of them. A demon. A thing of the night. The darkness. Always in the dark. It’s funny that I used to fear the dark and now I am stuck here, living every day like it’s my last, only it isn’t. I don't run out of days. Or time. Just light.
I glance out the window at the small town and smile. Smoke rises from the chimneys of the houses. It's quaint and I feel a love for it I can't explain. It's the first place I've felt safe in a long time. Canadians are amongst some of my favorite people.
A knock at the door makes me jump. The word “home” is stirring emotions and fears. Fears I will always have when I think about that place. Fears that make me jumpy.
I step into a shadow and wait. I can hide in the shadows. I'm part of the darkness the rest of the world doesn’t see.
A guy's voice joins in on the knocking, “Lee, you home?” It's Andy, my nineteen-year-old boyfriend. I'm old enough to be his grandmamma. He just doesn’t know that.
Go home.
The voices whisper.
Home.
“Lee, you in there?” Andy saying the name I go by now makes me feel things I haven't felt in this quiet town before, a need.
It's time for me to leave. I'm falling for him and I have to leave before I hurt him. I have liked being Lee. She is a small-town kind of girl. The kind I think I woulda liked being, if I had ever had a choice in the matter.
Home.
The icy whispers fill the small shadow.
Home, she needs you at home.
She still needs you.
Who needs me? Not like I can ask them. The icy
whispers have their own agenda. They don't answer, they just talk shit. They could talk the hair off a hound with all that cold air.
I stay in the shadow and wait for Andy to leave. He's a sweet guy, sweeter than most. My mouth waters thinking about him.
Once my mouth wants something, it's time to move on. I'm no longer able to stay, no matter if I want to leave or not. I'll leave everything. I always do. I have done it for almost fifty years. I've managed to stay here longer than most places. I don’t think he likes the cold, Whit that is. I never sense him in cold places.
I cross the room and look out the window. The sun has just set. The orange glow of it burns the skyline in the far-off distance. The far-off distance I will have to make my way to.
When I look down, I see Andy walking away from the apartment building. My heart aches a little bit. I'm gonna miss him. I'm gonna miss nighttime ice hockey and taking a stroll in the cold mountains. His warm hand around mine. The smell of his cologne in the air, calling to me. The way he assumed I was a sweet small-town country girl and doted on me. The way he made me feel normal.
I look around at my things. Nice things. I'm gonna miss it all.
She needs you. The icy air whispers. The voices are so much stronger than they were when I was alive. Before, I barely made out a word.
I snap my fingers making the flashes of light.
My brain fires—Tessa. Could it be my aunt needing me? My aunt hasn’t needed me since she moved into our house. I don’t understand why she needs me now. My guts ache for the scent of the white lilacs and the way the air at home coats you in itself. Marking you.
The Canadian air is clean and fresh, and every bit of it feels like it's never touched anyone before. It's fresh from the trees.
Not like the air at home. The air that presses itself against you and brings with it the smell of everything it's touched along its way to find you. I miss home. Seeing Tessa would be nice and shutting the whispers up would be amazing. They've been barking at me for some time. I swear I can even see a sliver of light in the air when I hear them now too. It's creepy.
“Home,” I mutter and look around the room.