by David Dean
In any event, if it had indeed been Gabriel that Fanny had seen, then Preston had little doubt that he was nearby and watching—he would make himself known at the time and place of his choosing. He was, after all, an animal, and like any animal would take every precaution within his means to protect himself.
Taking a pull from the brandy bottle he had brought along he pushed on, and within minutes reached Cedar Drive. Cars went whizzing past in either direction, their passage marked by the hissing of water beneath their tires. When the road was clear, he stumbled from the curb and hurried across.
Reaching the far side, Preston stepped over the railroad tracks that paralleled Cedar, crossing to the sandy access road that formed the perimeter of Wessex Baptist Cemetery. A peeling wooden sign, only some decades old, but already looking at home in the ancient burial ground, announced that it was founded in 1769. Preston halted to catch his breath, leaning against the sign and studying the scene that lay before him.
At his end of the cemetery most of the graves were burials of the last century, each successive row growing older as one walked north or east toward Cedar Drive. The newer section lay to the west and on the opposite side of Chapel Street, populated largely with severely simple markers, but ornamented here and there with the fashionably whimsical lighthouse or engraved portrait of the deceased.
Recovered somewhat, Preston pushed off and began making his way north toward the distant wood line. He left the access road walking carefully between the drunkenly leaning stones, their inscriptions blackened by centuries of soot and rain. Stones that grew older and older as he stumbled toward the cemetery’s heart. Some had sunk so far into the earth that little of them remained above ground. These appeared designed to catch at Preston’s dragging feet, causing him to stumble, almost falling onto the damp soil.
From time to time, an obelisk would appear as an exclamation in the darkness, its strange Egyptian geometry foreign and perplexing. Here and there lay enclosures encompassed in wrought-iron, the jumbled family groupings within still protected from interlopers by the rusted spear points of the fencing. Increasingly, the ground grew more treacherous, made lumpy and uneven by the roots of trees older than the oldest inhabitant of the necropolis they shaded. And it was toward the largest of these that Preston made his way.
His goal was a tremendous oak lying at the very edge of the cemetery, a tree three times the size of any other for miles around. Its great twisting limbs, largely bare, were lit from below by a street lamp planted where the perimeter curved back to the west. Viewing its strange, sky-clawing bulk, Preston shivered. He thought of its ancient network of roots stretching dozens of yards in every direction, and of the morbid nourishment fueling its titanic growth. How many coffins, he wondered, had this monster pried open like nuts to feed upon the moist kernels within?
And with that gut-churning thought, Preston no longer wanted to be in the graveyard, his desire to encounter Gabriel having grown as sour and tainted as the corpse oak. Turning, he began to hurry in the opposite direction, desperate to be away from this place. Like a man suddenly awakened to find that he is not in his own bed, his own home, Preston’s only wish was to steal away unnoticed before encountering the legitimate and rightful resident.
?
Fanny heard the knocking as something infinitely far away and moaned that something so remote should have anything to do with her. Tugging her blanket tighter, she burrowed deeper into the softness of her own bed. She felt Loki spring to his feet with annoyance, or alarm, she couldn’t tell which and didn’t care. She moaned softly once more in her troubled sleep.
Suddenly, as if time had telescoped from some distant memory to the immediate present, the faint knocking became thunderous in her ears. Her eyes flew open and she found herself sitting up with her feet already seeking her slippers. Fumbling with her housecoat, the tapping resumed, and she realized that the summons had been barely audible all along, a gentle, almost tentative, rapping on the panels of her front door.
Throwing open her bedroom door Fanny hurried down the hallway with Loki skittering along at her heels. She could see at a glance that the figure partially silhouetted in the small panes of glass framing the entrance could not be her father. The man (she felt certain that it was a man) was about his height, but possessed of a thicker, more powerful-looking frame. Her heart catching in her throat, she thought she recognized Nick Catesby’s outline partially captured by the nearest street lamp. The figure turned and began to move away.
“Who is it?” she called out, her voice high, the quaver it normally contained heightened by the anxiety of being awakened in the middle of the night. The figure halted, appearing to hesitate before turning back to her door.
“It’s me,” she heard Nick say softly through the door, “Nick.”
She unlocked and partially opened it. Nick peered in at her clutching the robe to her throat, her long hair tousled with sleep, a stray tendril having become caught in the corner of her mouth. As he stared, she self-consciously tugged it free and attempted to sweep the rest out of her face with her slender hands.
“I was just out walking,” he said, his face a study in embarrassment and confusion, “and I saw the light on in the back of the house—I thought you might still be up… sorry. I hope I didn’t wake your dad, too.”
Fanny managed to find a scrunchy in her housecoat pocket and, in one smooth motion, expertly seized her unruly mane and snapped into a pony-tail. “That’s all right,” she answered. She looked back over her shoulder towards her father’s room, still shaking the fog of sleep from her brain. “I think he went out… I thought I heard him slip out the back around eleven.” She turned to face Nick once more. “He does that, you know. Unfortunately, I can’t lock him up like Loki here.” The cat sat on the floor several feet behind her, his glowing eyes studying the odds of successfully escaping through the partially open door.
Fanny took note of his intentions and said, “Come in, Nick, please.” She reached out to take his hand and she felt it jump at her touch. “You’re cold,” she observed with some concern, tugging him through the opening and into the shadowed hallway. Nick allowed himself to be pulled in as Fanny eased the door shut behind him. She flicked on a light as she led him toward the kitchen and saw that he was wet as well, his dark hair sheened with moisture, drops of it running down his neck and beneath his collar.
“Sit down,” she commanded, vanishing round the corner only to return moments later with a towel. She handed it to him and watched as he began to towel-dry his hair and face. “You look tired,” she murmured.
Nick smiled at her, the lines around his dark blue eyes crinkling, and nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed, his voice hoarse, “I am… it’s been a long day.”
Looking down at him from the other side of the table, her arms folded across her chest, she asked, “Would you like to tell me about it, Nick, or would you rather just sit here for a while?”
Nick glanced around the large, warm kitchen, with its scoured butcher-block table and racks of hanging pots and pans, the flourishing plants that lined the windowsills, and thought, ‘I’d rather sleep right here in this kitchen than in my own bed.’ But he answered aloud, “I’d just like to sit here with you, if that’s okay. I won’t stay long.”
Fanny pulled a chair next to him taking one of his broad hands in her own. This time he did not flinch. “You can stay as long as you like. Dad’s not likely to come back tonight… he rarely does once he’s gone out. Besides, Nick, this is my house, I just let dad live here.”
“Okay… good.” He studied their meshed fingers with apparent sadness.
“Would you like some coffee… or tea?”
Nick shook himself. “No… no thanks, but if it’s not too much trouble what’d I’d really like is a drink. Is that possible, or am I asking for the exact wrong thing in this house?”
Laughing, Fanny stood once more. “Are you kidding? I know every ‘secret’ hiding spot dad ever thought of… and some that he’s even f
orgotten about—name yer poison.”
Nick laughed too, saying, “Well then, make it a whiskey, Miss—a double if you please. And pour one for yourself, if you’ve a mind to.”
Fanny let go of his hand and curtsied, “You’re very kind, sir.”
Returning with the promised bottle, she found Nick asleep, his head cradled on an arm thrown across the tabletop. She stood watching the rise and fall of his back and shoulders for several moments before hiding the bottle once more. When she returned, she grasped Nick’s arm, gently but persistently, tugging him to his feet. He rose with a grunt to stare uncomprehendingly at her and the room around him.
“You’re exhausted, Nick,” she whispered, “and it’s time we got off to bed.”
“Couch…” he mumbled.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, guiding him down the hallway to her bedroom. For the briefest of moments, she wondered what Becky would say to her dragging a man off to her bed by main force, and couldn’t help but smile at her imagined approval.
?
Preston aimed himself toward a street lamp, this time one that lay near the railroad tracks and the southeast corner of the cemetery. Once there, he had only to cross Cedar once more to be back in his own neighborhood, and this was something he now greatly desired.
Like a curtain the low bank of clouds suddenly parted to reveal the brilliance of the hunter’s moon, throwing generations of dead and their small earthly holdings into sharp relief.
As if cued by this event, something small and white stumbled into Preston’s vision. A doll, he thought with a frisson of horror, a large doll, as wobbly as a puppet on strings. It occurred to Preston that he might have gone mad, that drink had at last driven him round the bend. The creature tottered unsteadily into his path and before Preston could change his course to avoid it, it was suddenly caught up by a more familiar figure.
Sweeping the little girl up into his arms like a protective older brother, Gabriel turned to regard Preston, his large glittering eyes seeming to penetrate his motives, his now-wavering loyalty.
He said nothing, however, but gently lowered the child to sit drunkenly on the edge of a marble vault. Preston could see that her long brown hair was roped by moisture that ran down her stuporous, ashen face in rivulets. Her clothes, some sort of pink stretch pants with a matching top featuring a romping kitten, were similarly damp and stained by dirt, as well as something dark and tacky-looking. Turning away to avoid seeing what that “something else” might be, Preston had no doubt that this was the missing Megan Guthrie—the little girl from the schoolyard.
Gabriel held up a long, taloned finger and Preston stopped edging away. Again, with a studied approximation of tenderness, the boy reached down and patted the girl-child on top of her small head, whispering something that Preston could not hear.
Then, looking up once more at Preston, he smiled—a ghastly display of teeth as jumbled as the headstones that surrounded them, the tongue flickering redly within the cavernous mouth. Preston recoiled in horror. My God, he thought, my God! What have I been thinking? He is a monster.
Seemingly unconcerned, Gabriel loped off toward a mausoleum, disappearing into the moon-shadow it cast and leaving Preston alone with the near-bloodless Megan. He stared in silence at her for several moments before it occurred to him to simply take her hand and lead her away from the place, but fear made him hesitate and in those precious moments he observed Gabriel returning.
Still smiling, Gabriel led the two boys out into the bright moonlight and down the slight slope to where Preston and the girl waited. Preston recognized them at once.
He watched their coming as if in a dream, Gabriel leading them by their hands, something neither of them would have tolerated in normal circumstances. Gabriel the gentle shepherd, the loving caretaker of these stolen children—children that he intended to drain of every last drop of their life’s blood. Preston grasped this now in a manner that was no longer intellectual, but gut-wrenchingly visceral.
Taking in the full horror of this moonlit, incongruously pastoral scene, he understood that he must stop this creature if he could. But even as he thought this, he doubted his own ability to accomplish such a thing. He had never been in a position before that challenged his actual physical courage, and now feared he had none at hand. Preston heard himself moaning in dread at the trio’s approach.
Dancing ahead of Connor and Jared as they stumbled in his wake, Gabriel made a terrifying Pan for his stuporous followers. Jared’s spindly legs were bare and pebbly in the freshening breeze, his jockey shorts wet and dirtied. While lurching along behind came the husk of Connor Lacey, bare-chested in the chill night air, his desiccated torso smeared with mud and old leaves. It was quite clear where Gabriel had obtained his current wardrobe.
Blue veins pulsed faintly beneath the boys’ marbled skins, and like Megan they appeared barely able to stand, the whites of their eyes gone grey with dying. They all reeked of decay.
Bumping into Gabriel, who now stood in front of Preston, the boys shuffled to a halt. Again, the vampire raised a filthy forefinger, this time to his wide lips, and Preston understood that he was to remain silent.
These boys will never threaten me again, Preston thought, they will never threaten anyone. But this thought gave him no satisfaction because he understood also that none of these children could survive Gabriel’s ghastly ministrations much longer. And in that moment he began to hate the creature that could visit such misery on them. In a rare burst of empathy, he even thought of their terrified, sorrowing parents, and the new agony of their existence.
Turning, Gabriel gripped the boys by their shoulders, making them sit on the muddy earth, before spinning round once more to Preston. “Sudden and loud noises afflict them with ague,” he whispered, “and they are easily startled now—but soon,” he promised, “they will rest more easily and not rise again.”
Preston began to speak but found he couldn’t, then cleared his throat and tried again, “Gabriel,” he whispered hoarsely, “how did you know that I would come here? Were you watching my home?” In the presence of these dying children the thought of Gabriel lurking near his own home—and his own daughter—took on terrifying possibilities that he had not fully grasped before.
“I watch many homes,” Gabriel lisped, “yours as well.”
Preston mulled this over for a moment beneath the bright moonlight. “Yes, but did you wish for me to join you here? Is this why you showed yourself to my daughter… to get me out of the house?”
Gabriel squatted onto his haunches amongst the boys, a position, Preston noted, that appeared to be his normal resting posture. Looking up, he replied, “I saw you come out and followed you. When you came to this place, I thought to show you my catches—they are healthy and good, are they not?” He placed long fingers to the neck of each boy, the yellowed nails indenting their panting flesh. Each of them flinched, but made no move to escape.
Feeling a touch of nausea roil his stomach, Preston sat back onto an upright headstone, his mind racing. “Healthy? No… I wouldn’t say so,” he disagreed, forcing a sickly smile. “They have grown sick and weak, Gabriel. That much seems obvious.”
Gabriel turned his head from one child to the next as if examining them for proof of Preston’s words, a slight crease forming between his extraordinary eyes. When he was done, he turned his gaze once more to Preston. “Their hearts will stop soon,” he agreed.
Leaning forward, his narrow rump still resting on the edge of the lichen-covered grave marker, Preston concurred, “Yes, yes, that’s exactly right, Gabriel. But in the meantime, their hearts slow and their blood thickens, does it not?”
Gabriel appeared to give this some thought, nodding his shaggy head once in puzzled agreement.
Megan began to cough as if to make Preston’s point about the state of the children’s health. Gabriel’s head snapped round to regard her coldly.
“See… see, my point exactly,” Preston persisted. “Not that I’m an exper
t on these things, of course, but I suspect that as they grow weaker and weaker that their blood not only grows more torpid, but loses its original vitality and taste. Would you agree with that?” he asked. He slipped off his parka, draping it as casually as he could over Megan’s damp, shivering shoulders.
Gabriel observed this last with a growing frown. At the same moment, Jared began to fidget and mumble something unintelligible. Connor lay across the cold, brilliant earth with his arms thrown back, unmoving, his breath barely visible as a faint, rising moisture on the cooling night air. Scowling openly at the children and Preston, Gabriel pronounced, “They are passing good, I like them well enough for all that.” He flicked a sinewy hand at his prizes.
“Of course you do,” Preston hastened to reassure him, “of course you do, and why shouldn’t you?” He dared now to raise a finger himself. “But consider this, my friend—what if, rather than… than drinking from the bottom of the barrel, so to speak, you were to release these poor specimens back into the wild? After all, what’s the point of carrying on to the end? There’s nothing really gained, is there? It’s a matter of diminishing returns, don’t you see? You’ve kept them past their expiration date, beyond their expected shelf life—time to cut the old losses and strike out fresh, I say!”
The boy-like creature listened to Preston’s speech with rapt attention, his filthy neck stretching upward as his eyes grew wider still. When he was done, Gabriel brought his awful hands to either side of his head clasping his own skull and gaping at Preston.
“Your words are like birds in a church, Preston,” he answered, at last. “They flutter and fly, battering themselves on the painted windows, but find no place to rest—I must not give up these children.”
Mesmerized by Gabriel’s words and his terrible Bacchanalian face, Preston was unable to reply. Even in the cool night air, he could feel the sweat running down his spine.