The Thirteenth Child

by David Dean

  Gabriel appeared to weigh Preston’s question, rolling it around heavily in his mind. “Do?” he repeated, then after a pause said, “She fed me her own blood… before I was able to hunt for myself she would allow me to sup at her throat. There were not so many of you here then,” he clarified, “and she might be gone for several nights before she could return. She would hide me away and I would await her. She had no speech,” he repeated. “There were few to speak with.”

  Preston stared silently at the boy, unable to account for his astounding, nonsensical, eloquence. He’s as mad as he is simple, he thought, even as events of earlier that evening returned in a new, even more sinister light. “Where is she now, Gabriel… your mother? Does she know that you are out so late at night?”

  “She departed many, many sleeps ago,” he answered, “and never came to me again. But it was no matter, Preston, as I had learned to hunt small things by then and could fend for myself. After each sleep, I found that I had grown a little and was stronger. There were also more of you around each time I awakened. This made things easier for me… for a while, at least.” He regarded Preston with an unreadable expression and the older man grew uneasy once more.

  Even so, his curiosity had been piqued by the bits and pieces of the boy’s strange ramblings. “That’s very tough circumstances to be in … to be left behind by your mother. When was this exactly? You said something about several ‘sleeps’ ago… How long are your sleeps?” Gabriel continued to watch Preston as if he expected something more from the older man. “Days… weeks…?” Preston offered.

  “I sleep when I am no longer hungry… I arise when I am. My days are not your days, Preston… my years are not your years.”

  Preston shook his head in bewilderment when suddenly it struck him that Gabriel had been using his name. “How did you know that I am called Preston, son?” he asked. He was certain he had not spoken it in the boy’s presence during their earlier encounter.

  Gabriel smiled once more, his dragonfly-green eyes glittering. “I listen at windows,” he giggled like a naughty child, covering his huge toothsome grin with a blood-specked hand.

  Preston was brought up short by this latest revelation. The thought of the feral boy creeping around his home in the darkness, peering in windows, listening in on conversations was unsettling. He had seen with his own eyes what Gabriel was capable of, and his thoughts went to Fanny.

  Something flew low and unseen over their heads, its passage a mere whisper of wind through feathers. Preston shuddered and asked, “Why don’t we have a fire, Gabriel? Would you like that? It’s a bit chilly out here tonight.”

  “Fires are nice,” the boy agreed, but Preston detected an unmistakable discomfort cross his features, his great eyes growing wary once more.

  Rising a little unsteadily, Preston began to cast about for driftwood. When he turned back to see if Gabriel intended to offer any help, the boy was gone. Preston turned this way and that but could see nothing that might be Gabriel. In the silvery light of the now-descending moon, the beach sand glowed whitely, revealing nothing. In the opposite direction the yellow marsh grasses swayed with the gentle on-shore breeze, the landscape empty but for the presence of a few black and twisted trees struggling at the dune line.

  The boy moves like a shadow, Preston thought, gathering an armful of dried wood from the high tide line, and glancing over his shoulder from time to time. The thought of trying to leave did not tempt him, as he recalled the long, dark distances he would have to traverse. Knowing where the boy was proved far more comforting than not knowing.

  When he had gathered enough for a small fire, he scooped out a shallow bowl in the sand, filling it with wind-dried twigs. Afterwards, he stacked the wood together above this nest of tinder and put a kitchen match to it—dozens of nights of “roughing it” had taught him the lessons that every hobo had to learn. Within a few moments, the tinder flared and the breeze fanned it into a blaze that caught quickly. Soon he was warming his hands at a crackling fire.

  Satisfied, Preston retrieved his bottle from inside his coat, uncapped it, and brought it to his chapped lips. As the amber warmth tumbled down his throat, he realized with a start that Gabriel had returned and was perched once more on the beached tree. He gasped and choked, while managing to say, “My God, boy, make some noise when you’re around, will you?”

  Smiling down at him, Gabriel answered, “That would not be wise, Preston. I like to come and go as I please.” Preston noted with disgust that the blood on Gabriel’s chin appeared refreshed, moist and glistening.

  Preston considered this and said nothing, sitting himself carefully down next to the fire’s cheerful blaze, the bucolic scene marred by the presence of the skull. Even so, he had grown more confident in his odd relationship with the strange boy and could not contain his curiosity. “Have you cut yourself?” he asked, pointing at his own chin.

  Raising one of his own freakish digits, Gabriel dabbed at the blood on his chin. He regarded the result for a moment before flicking out a long and facile tongue to taste it, his cat-like eyes glazing with pleasure. Preston could not turn away from the boy’s obvious and disturbing enjoyment, watching in horrid fascination as Gabriel’s serpent tongue cleansed his chin of gore.

  “No,” Gabriel answered at last, “I have not hurt myself, Preston, but I was not yet finished with my feeding when you ran away. You are my good friend now, and I didn’t want you to be hurt in your haste so I followed. I went back to secure my prey.”

  Preston blinked. “Your prey,” he repeated. “Have you harmed those boys, Gabriel… you know what I mean… killed them?” He felt a twinge of guilt when he found himself half-hoping that he had.

  “That would be a waste of blood to kill them, Preston. It does not keep in the dead,” he replied with his little half-smile. “I wished to be sure they were too weak to escape before my return—they are young, and we have many nights yet to play together.”

  The older man stared at the younger in both confusion and horror. “I don’t understand you, boy,” he began, “I want to, but I don’t. Perhaps, now that we are friends, I could ask you some questions, and you could answer them for me… as best you can, of course, then maybe I could get a clearer picture of … what… that is, who… you are, exactly. That would make us even better friends, wouldn’t it?” he finished with a smile.

  “Would it?” Gabriel smiled back, adding, “If it will please you, Preston, I shall.”

  In spite of his newly revealed aptitude for speech, Preston noted that the boy still appeared to speak as if English might be a second language, haltingly, rummaging through his mind to make the correct selections. Even more puzzling was the archaic pattern of his English usage. Preston found it reminiscent of early American literature, colonial, perhaps, certainly no later than Hawthorne.

  Who would have taught him to speak in such a manner? He wondered. What’s more, who could?

  Preston leaned forward in anticipation, collecting his thoughts. “That’s very kind of you, Gabriel, very kind. You are a good boy, I think.” Clapping his hands softly together, he began by reviewing what he already knew, or at least had been told. “So, you have no name, and don’t remember your age. Is that right?”

  The boy disagreed. “Gabriel is my name.”

  Preston waved him off. “No,” he corrected him, “that’s the name I gave you. I am referring to your own… your real names—first and last. You don’t know either of these?”

  Gabriel turned his face away from Preston and whispered stubbornly, “Gabriel.”

  Preston chose to ignore the boy’s petulance and continued, “Yes, all right then, we’ll leave that for now, but what about this mother of yours? What was she called? She must have had a name.”

  Gabriel shook his head once, dislodging several dried leaves from the tangle of his hair. “She was called nothing. We had no speech then. I told you that there was no one to speak with… or very few in any case.”

  “Your mother never sp
oke to you at all?” Preston asked. “Was she a mute, then?”

  Gabriel shrugged his indifference. “What would we have spoken of?” he asked in his turn.

  “About a name for her child, maybe,” Preston barked. Glancing up at the boy, a little fearful of the tone he had used, he saw that Gabriel remained placid and unmoved. Preston rubbed his hands together to make a new start.

  “Now then,” he resumed. “Now then… how about these others you mention… these neighbors of yours? Wasn’t it necessary to speak with them?” A sudden thought flashed into his mind, an inspiration. “Your neighbors weren’t Amish were they… or something like that?” Linguistics was not his specialty but maybe that would explain the boy’s unusual speech.

  Dashing his hopes, Gabriel answered, “I don’t know Amish. Are they the dark-skinned ones who daubed themselves with clay and soil when they searched for me? Are those Amish?”

  Preston stared open-mouthed for several long moments, gathering his wits about him. “Daubed themselves?” he asked at last. “Searched for you? What are you talking about?”

  Standing suddenly on his log, the boy feigned the unmistakable drawing of an invisible bow, the release of a phantom arrow. Even through the wind, Preston heard his whistled mimicry of an arrow slicing through the air. Gabriel looked down at Preston to see if his pantomime had been effective, then raising his nightmarish arms to the inky heavens, he howled, “Hoo, hoo… hoo, hoo!”

  Preston fell back in surprise and shock—the boy made a terrifying picture as he clawed at the heavens and hooted like some great owl.

  “I was smaller, then,” Gabriel crowed, “and very swift, and they could not pierce me! I made their children my prizes!” The flickering light of the fire painted the boy in shifting shades and colors.

  “Gabriel,” Preston whispered, “that would make you several hundred years old, you know, to have had… encounters, shall we call it, with the Lenape. They left this area in the 1700s.”

  The boy nodded in agreement, but as to what part of his statement Preston couldn’t guess. Gabriel continued, “Once, when I awoke, the painted ones were gone and they never returned. But…” he glanced slyly at the older man, pointing a long, filthy finger at him, “there were many more of you by then.

  “At first, I fed well, as you did not know me, but in time I was seen. Then things grew difficult and I had to be very careful. I listened at windows to learn of your habits and tongue, and this proved useful—wearing garments and saying words helped the children to come to me.” Gabriel looked into Preston’s face. “In the days that I kept them, we would converse and I would learn more.”

  Preston thought of the little girl gone missing and the two boys he had left behind on the tracks, and a fine sweat began to form on his brow in spite of the breeze. “You don’t really hurt them, then?” he asked. “You don’t… kill them, do you?”

  “Oh yes,” Gabriel assured him. “In time they must die as they no longer have blood enough to live… by then they have gone stupid,” he added, “and no longer care.”

  The calm cruelty of the boy’s words struck Preston’s heart as cold as anything he had so far witnessed or heard. He returned to his questioning, repulsed and intrigued, fearful of what he might learn, yet unable to turn away. “Why do you keep them, Gabriel? Is it for company, are you lonely?”

  Gabriel reached deep into his borrowed trousers, scratching earnestly at his genitals and staring up at the sliver of moon sailing through the sky. After satisfying his itch, he answered, “Their blood goes bad too quickly when they’re killed outright. They have other uses as well.”

  “Such as,” Preston ventured.

  “Their speech, as I said, but also for…” Preston noted the hesitation; the slyness that crept into the boy’s smeared face, “… decoys.” He finished this statement with a coy glance at Preston from the corner of his slanted eyes.

  “Decoys,” Preston repeated, “what do you mean? I don’t follow.”

  The boy was silent for several long moments, as if considering the wisdom of continuing. “When I am hunted, Preston, it is useful to give the hunters a quarry. Many sleeps ago, after the painted people left, I saw that the new ones hunted me where they buried their dead. I didn’t know why, until a child wandered away from me when I had gone a-hunting myself—she had been stronger than I thought—so when I returned and found she had taken herself away, I went in search of her.

  “As I neared your village, I beheld the burial place was lit by men carrying torches and crying out to one another. They had found my girl wandering amongst the stones that mark your deaths, and they were sore afraid. I watched them from the trees and saw her stumble and moan at their coming.”

  Preston could easily picture the scene, as he had no doubt that Gabriel was referring to the Baptist Cemetery, no more than two miles distant, containing the crypts and burial places of Wessex County’s first settlers.

  “She fell and lay prostrate, and after a while they drew close to her and spoke in whispers that I could barely hear. These men said that it must have been she that had lured their other children away, that she was unclean and undead. One man did not like this, but the others pushed him aside. They listened carefully for her heartbeat, but could not detect it. Then she spoke some words, but they made no sense, and this affrighted them even more. They did not know that when the blood is drained away the children become insensible and I could smell their fear.

  “I was impatient for them to go away so that I could fetch her back before she died, but they did not leave, only went some little distance away from her, where they conversed amongst themselves. After a while, one man separated himself from the others, while several more led the other, the unhappy man, away. Then, before I could think of how to get my prize back, this man pierced her heart with his knife. When she screamed, he leapt up and ran some several feet away before stopping once more with the others. They had all become as white as my prey.

  “I thought then of how I wished to drink from this man since he had robbed me of my food. But I dared not approach as there were so many, and none were pups. Then the man with the dagger knelt down and sliced the throat of the girl through and through until her head fell away. They all marveled at how little blood she contained and spoke aloud of this as the cause of her hunger for their children. This last made me know them even better, so now I knew how to trick them and lead them away from my trail.” Gabriel glanced once more at Preston to see if he understood, then said again, “Decoys.”

  “You mean to say that you would leave your victims to be murdered by their own friends, their own families?” Preston asked.

  Gabriel watched the dying flames with interest. “Not all of them, Preston,” he answered, “only those necessary to throw off my pursuers. The others I finished myself as I am needful… but in these times, I am seldom sought for amongst the stones. I have other ways now to confound my hunters.”

  “So they don’t become like you, Gabriel… they don’t become… vampires?” Preston watched for the boy’s reaction to the word.

  Gabriel stared blankly at him for a moment, then said, “No, they do not become like me, Preston. They become dead.”

  “My God,” Preston heard himself saying, “The hurt and misery you must have caused.”

  Gabriel replied with animation, “I, too, was sore hurt once—my very heart shot out.” He lifted the ill-fitting shirt to reveal his narrow waist and the great rib cage that swelled above it, and placed one of his fingertips into a thumb-sized depression. “See here, Preston, what was done to me. This hunter knew to aim before me so that I would spring into the path of his ball. He had stalked me for an entire season and learned my habits. I did fear him so.”

  Preston stared hard at the puckered, faded scar that surrounded the tiny crater and thought of a musket ball’s spherical shape and density. He had seen dozens displayed at the county museum. “It’s right over your heart,” he murmured, “how could you have…?”

  Answ
ering his unfinished question with a smile, Gabriel said, “I have two, Preston, one in either breast. I have seen the innards of both man and beast and know myself to be alone in this. The hunter, though he had studied me well, did not know this.

  “It hurt me sore, Preston, but I drank all that man’s blood for his troubles, and then I went to my sleep early that season. When I awoke, I was once more whole and strong.”

  Preston turned up the bottle with shaking hands, draining it. The shock of the events of the evening, combined with the effect of the two bottles of brandy, made his head swirl and he tossed the empty onto the sand. He could see the night tide was drawing away from the beach revealing a series of sandbars, like arising islands, as the swift current ran south into the Atlantic Ocean.

  “It can’t be,” Preston whispered, “it just can’t.” Turning once more to the boy, his curiosity near even with his loathing and fear, he asked, “How can I believe without proof? You must show me that you are not… one of us, Gabriel.”

  The boy hesitated, but just a moment, before sliding down from his perch to present himself to Preston. He smiled his panting half-smile, and Preston, assailed by his rancid breath, forced himself to approach.

  Cautiously, in much the same manner as he might have neared a suspect dog, he reached out, gently taking Gabriel’s hands in his own. The tops, besides their extraordinary length and claw-like nails, were narrow and thickly corded with tendons, the numerous hairs long and coarse. They resembled the feet in almost all respects, but for the facility of their digits. When he turned them palm up, he found that the pads of Gabriel’s fingertips were dark and cracked, without line or whorl—he possessed no fingerprints.

  Still holding onto Gabriel’s hands, Preston glanced up into the boy’s mesmerizing eyes to find the child leaning close in to him, the fearful tongue lolling from his mouth, the nostrils distended and questing. Startled, Preston drew back, releasing the hands and gasping, “You won’t harm me… you said you wouldn’t.”