by David Dean
“Samhain,” he blurted out at last, instantly reverting to his lecturing days in his great stress. “That’s what Halloween derives from, you know—a Druidic ritual that was ancient when the Romans first placed a sandaled foot in Britain.”
He had succeeded in gaining their attention. In fact, every parent present turned to stare at him. Looking beyond them, he could see Gabriel opening his new bag and transferring candy from it to the ballerina’s. She stared solemnly up at Gabriel’s face. As the child began to sway, he took her small hand into his unnatural grasp. Preston thought of the creature’s stultifying musk.
Preston’s gaze swiveled back to the parents, all of whom were regarding him with varying degrees of perplexity and distrust. “It seems harmless enough to us now, of course, but Julius Caesar took exception to the human sacrifice involved—you see, on this very night the Celts would imprison their captives in great wicker cages constructed to resemble a giant man, and set them ablaze, then dance the evening away by the light of their burning victims… a gruesome ritual by any standards. Still, it’s hard to imagine Julius Caesar being offended by a little bloodshed,” he babbled on. He certainly had their full attention now.
“What the hell…?” the dancer’s father murmured.
“So, in due course, the Roman legions stormed the Druid’s holy island and slew all their priests, put every man-jack of them to the sword… voila… pax—Roman style!”
The parents looked at him in horror as he watched Gabriel leading the little girl away into the darkness of the side yard. She walked quietly at his side. “But that was over two thousand years ago, and since then we’ve drained the barbarity out of the whole mess, have we not…” In a moment they would vanish into the night and she would be no more. “… and so, all we are left is… this.” Preston raised his arms to take in the festivities of the night. In two more steps it would be too late.
Leveling an arm to point beyond his captive audience, he shouted, “Stop him,” startling everyone and making the mothers scream. “He’s got the girl!”
Every head turned to follow where he pointed as Gabriel’s swiveled like an owl’s to see what was happening behind him. At a glance, he understood that he had been betrayed and exposed. He bared his long yellow teeth and hissed with anger, his grip on the girl’s arm tightening. Preston heard her gasp in sudden pain.
“Him,” he shouted again, still pointing, “The boy there! Don’t let him take her!”
The father, despite his paunch, broke into a sprint, crying, “Hey… you! Let go of her!”
At the same moment, Preston became aware of two other figures charging out of the darkness from opposite directions. They appeared to be closing in on Gabriel with a purpose. “He’s gonna break your way,” one of them shouted, and Preston recognized the voice of Chief Catesby. The other figure seemed to speed up at this warning as if to cut off the creature’s escape.
Gabriel snatched the girl up by her arm, clasping her to his waist in preparation to flee, but hesitated. More of the fathers broke free from the group, racing toward Gabriel and his prize, as if only just awakening to the danger. Catesby’s powerful form was closing, as well, but not as rapidly as that of the other man who was within yards of his quarry.
Preston could see from the creature’s expression that it apprehended its peril. Flinging the girl to the ground with a thump, Gabriel cried, “I will sup from your only child, old man… and squat in her entrails!” Then, with an impossible bound, he cleared the tackle of Officer Beckam, eluding Catesby’s grasp, and vanished with the speed of an optical illusion.
It appeared to Preston as if with the vampire’s movement, everything, and everyone, had been slowed to the point of observable detail. The fathers, the policemen, the child herself, all lay before him like a tableau of stupefaction. The young policeman, whom he now recognized from his second interview, drew his gun as if he could think of nothing else to do, uncertain as to what to do with it.
It was the whimpers of the saved girl that reanimated the group, and as one, the mothers charged forth to support the child’s own as she lifted her to her breast. Preston stood alone, and only belatedly, lowered his arm.
Catesby trotted up to him, breathless. “Where has he gone, Preston? We have to get him.” He bent over to grip his knees and catch his breath.
“My house,” Preston managed, “he’s going to kill Fanny.”
Looking up into Preston’s eyes, Nick said, “Not if I kill him first,” then began moving again.
“Beck,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Get everyone’s names and addresses for statements, then follow me to the Professor’s house… and bring him!” He hooked a thumb at Preston as he ran for his unmarked car parked nearby. “Hurry,” he commanded. Gunning the engine into life, he shot away from the curb, hitting Fanny’s number in the speed dial of his cell phone.
?
Gabriel waited until several children and their parents moved on to the next house before crossing the street. He had narrowly escaped harm just moments before and was now wary of the company of man once more. Keeping to the shadows, he crossed the small patch of lawn that fronted Preston’s home, still toting his festive treat bag. Deprived of the child, his instincts told him that time was running out before his next great sleep.
And thanks to Preston, his would be a sleep that would grow hungry and uneasy, his growth slowed as a result. He wished to kill the old man for this, but appreciated that Preston now had strong, fully-matured males protecting him and that it was too risky. Not so the daughter… if he acted quickly he might salvage something from all this—she was not optimal for his needs, but would have to do.
Something crouched in the darkness at the edge of the portico, just beyond the yellow spill of light from the porch lamp. It hissed at his approach and without hesitation Gabriel sprang upon it, seizing it with his taloned hands. When he had done, he raced around to the rear of the house, the sound of children’s laughter, and the low murmur of adult voices, at his back. Peering through the same window he had watched Preston and Fanny earlier that evening, he heard the sound of the doorbell, but waited until the female appeared in the hallway before once more slipping through.
Within, Fanny’s cell phone buzzed around on the kitchen table in small spurts of mute alarm, its setting still on “vibrate” as required by the library. Walking past it without notice, she continued to the door.
Gabriel felt the autumn air wafting down the hallway as she opened the door, and with it, the scent of the children he had been denied. Even above their excited cries his convoluted ears could hear the thrum of their small hearts, the singing of their blood, and he began to salivate.
As Fanny closed the door once more on the satisfied children, Gabriel glided down the hallway, his treat bag still in tow.
When she turned, he stood before her.
“Trick or treat,” Gabriel lisped the time-honored challenge, thrusting his open bag against Fanny’s stomach.
A small scream escaped her lips. Though she had only seen him at a distance, and cloaked in the grey drizzle of days before, the awful hand he held up to silence her told all—this was Preston’s strange boy—this was Gabriel.
“I…” she gasped, trying to speak while taking in the terrible Pan-like face and edging back toward the door all at once.
“For you,” he continued in his odd voice, the rusty voice of throat cancer. “Reach in.” Smiling at her with jumbled yellow teeth, his tongue flickered redly within the canyon of his mouth.
Matching her small footsteps with his own, he maintained the narrow distance between them. His odor wafted across her and with it the scent of corpses. A strange, cloying musk lay beneath this and its presence made Fanny grow heavy with the leaden legs of a nightmare.
“For you,” he repeated with more authority.
Fanny tilted her head down as he commanded. Within lay something both black and white and her first thought was of a fur boa curled up in the bottom of this awful boy’
s sack. But why would he insist on showing her such a thing? Something golden glittered within the incomprehensible arrangement and she leaned closer still, a terrible suspicion growing within her.
“What…?” She felt her breath catching in her throat. “Oh my God… that’s not…? Oh… my… God!” She tried to seize the bag from the hideous boy, but he was the quicker, dumping its contents onto the floor.
With a soft, awful thump Loki landed at her feet, his fangs bared in an eternal snarl, the one eye visible a golden marble in his smooth skull. His head faced in the wrong direction, left as Gabriel had wrenched it moments before, a thread of blood trickling from his mouth.
Fanny’s hands flew to her face, her mouth falling open to scream or wail, but she was not allowed to do either. Leaping upon her, Gabriel rode her to the floor, her skull rebounding with a crack against the floorboards. But rather than feeling any pain, she felt only a sudden tiredness, a growing, paralyzing lethargy. The boy’s hands gripped her arms with such strength that it seemed pointless to struggle against him. Like the opening of a grave, his awful, reeking breath flowed over her face. The thought of Loki lying dead at her feet brought warm tears to her eyes, and these ran onto her cheeks.
Gabriel knew that he did not have much time as the others would be searching for him now, the old man having pointed them in this direction. As Fanny’s struggles weakened and she became increasingly inert, he released one of her arms to reach up and grasp her chin. Tilting her head back to expose her long throat, he observed with growing excitement the carotid artery throbbing in panic just beneath the paper-thin flesh. His mouth flooded with a saliva that would retard any coagulation of the blood from the wounds he was about to inflict.
Normally, when he had fed his fill, he would reverse this by licking the wounds with his broad furred tongue, sealing them with an exuded paste that ensured his victim might live to feed him again. He had no intention of doing so in this instance.
Through brimming tears, Fanny watched the boy’s large face rising above her own, his great eyes flat and merciless as a shark’s. She could not raise the hand he had released nor cry out for help. His freakish mouth fell open with an audible click and unhinged to gape bonelessly, as the scarlet tongue curled back to expose the tubes of flesh concealed beneath it. As Gabriel’s face drew nearer still, Fanny was able to witness the viper-like fangs slide forth from their protecting muscle, then the creature clamped down upon her throat with its rancid maw.
For just the slightest bit of time nothing happened, then, with only a faint sense of their penetration and a flicker of pain, Gabriel’s twin fangs pierced her jugular and he began to feed. She may have gasped, but didn’t think so. He drew his sustenance from her with patience and assurance, and Fanny could feel the effect in the form of vertigo—a sense of sinking into a growing and comfortable darkness. He was an incubus squatting on her chest, draining the life from her body, and she no longer cared.
She was only remotely afraid of that moment when her consciousness would wink out, wondering who might take care of her father, and whether Nick would forgive her for her cowardice of the day before. She also thought with sadness of Loki, and the malice shown by the creature in killing him—Gabriel might not be human, but in killing her cat he had demonstrated he was an apt pupil of human behavior. Perhaps he was still evolving. The light that hovered above her was drifting farther and farther away, becoming a dim star, even as the awful slurping and grunting of the creature’s feeding grew fainter, less disturbing.
From somewhere far away a roaring, as if from a distant sea, crashed against her fading consciousness, and a tremor ran along her spine. But it was not this titanic, if remote, upheaval that arrested her descent, but the sudden release of pressure at her throat.
With a gasp, she took in a great draught of air and saw the distant star become a flare of light and pain. Her lungs were on fire as if she were drowning.
Crashing through the door, Nick heard his own voice as a hoarse bellow as he beheld the creature feasting. In the milliseconds of his movement, he took in Fanny’s stricken face as she lay pinioned beneath the monster, her features already settling into a death mask.
Seizing the unclean child by the back of his neck and the waist of his ragged pants, he flung him into the wall with all his might, even as Gabriel turned to confront the threat that had overtaken him.
His loose mouth spraying crimson, Gabriel recoiled from the impact with a snarl, landing on his long, narrow feet. All in a single motion he leapt over Fanny, racing down the hallway to Preston’s sleeping porch and the freedom of the back door.
With a cry Fanny sat bolt upright, grasping her wounded neck slick with the monster’s juices, her own hot blood spurting between her fingers in twin jets.
Even as he took in the creature’s escape, Nick understood that Fanny was fighting for her life and clamped his large hand over her wounds. The pressure, though growing faint, spewed wetly now between his own fingers, and her face, always pale, was luminous with impending death. “Goddamnit,” he cursed, fishing his radio out of his jacket pocket, pressing the send button. “Beck, get an ambulance over here right now!”
After an interminable pause, his radio crackled into life and Beckam answered, “On the way.”
“Fanny,” Nick whispered, running down the hall to grab a dish towel. Returning, he balled it up, pressing it to the wounds. Within moments, it was heavy with her blood. From what seemed like a great distance arose the wail of an approaching ambulance.
?
Managing to stanch the flow of blood from Fanny’s neck, the EMTs lacked the means to restore her dangerously low blood pressure. They hustled her gaunt form into the back of the waiting ambulance as neighbors came out of their homes to watch. Several passing parents clutched their costumed children to them. Preston made to climb into the back of the rig with his daughter when Nick gripped him by the shoulder.
“Wait,” he commanded.
Turning to look at the younger man, his expression hag-ridden and removed, Preston said, “I couldn’t tell you about the children… he promised he would kill Fanny, if I did. I’m so sorry… I’m so very…”
“Professor,” Nick interrupted him, “I need your help. This creature… this boy… he’s real… I can see that now—but what about the children? Are they still alive… where does he keep them? Do you think you know? Did he give you any clues as to where they might be?” He stared hard into the old man’s face willing him to know, to answer.
Preston blinked slowly, shaking himself. “They were very weak… they couldn’t travel far or fast.” He glanced into the interior of the ambulance, at the slender white form that lay waiting there. “I think he keeps them in the cemetery,” he continued, the images and memories of the past few days racing through his mind, each scene struggling for primacy. “Yes, that would have to be it, wouldn’t it? That’s where he wanted me to meet him tonight so that I would be found with them. That’s why he wanted me all along—to be his scapegoat for all this.” He said this last with a kind of despair.
“Go,” Nick whispered, gently shoving Preston toward his daughter. “I’ll meet you at the hospital as soon as I can.” Slamming the door shut on the miserable old man, he slapped the exterior to signal the driver. The siren rose in answer and the ambulance pulled away, picking up speed, its blue lights painting the houses it passed with fear and uncertainty.
Nick glanced at his watch, his heart aching at sending Fanny off without him. When he thought of the boy at her throat, his grunts and slurping, her ashen, terrified face, he felt a burning, righteous anger. But the children were still out there, perhaps there was a chance yet to save them. Turning, he found Beckam at his elbow.
“I’m gonna kill that sonofabitch,” he promised him.
Beckam nodded without expression, as if this kind of statement was to be expected from his superiors.
“The cemetery,” Nick said, and they turned to their waiting vehicle.
On the
way over, Nick placed a call to Jack Kimbo who promised to join them within minutes. They turned into the cemetery.
Switching off the car’s headlamps, Beckam allowed it to coast to a stop beneath a cedar tree that shaded a small family plot. He could read the names on the tombstones by the strong moonlight, but they meant nothing to him—the family had died out a century before and was no longer remembered by the living.
Retrieving flashlights and a tire tool from the trunk, the two men turned to face the sea of upright stones bleached beneath the lunar light. Here and there amongst them arose a compact house, its doors shut to the living world. Some were protected by low iron fences, ornately wrought; most were not. Nick shrugged at the nearest and the two officers started toward it without speaking, their thoughts at what they were about to do private.
From the other direction a car turned onto to the service road and sped toward them, headlights doused. Nick recognized the FBI agent’s standard issue car.
Jack threw open the door, announcing, “I’m from the federal government, and I’m here to help.” Stepping out with his own flashlight, he held a crow bar up, smiling. “We’re all issued these when we graduate the academy; we call them ‘search warrants.’”
“Thanks for coming on such short notice, Jack,” Nick greeted him. “I needed someone I can trust.”
“Didn’t I just say that I’m from the government?” Jack quipped, pushing his heavy glasses back up onto the bridge of his thick nose. “Glad to be of service.” Glancing around at the quiet panorama of death, he asked, “Split up or stay together?”
“After what I’ve seen tonight, I think we should stay together.” Nick answered. “Beck, you and I will do the heavy lifting,” he took the crow bar from the agent; “while Jack here covers our backs—he’s the best shot in the county.” They started toward the nearest mausoleum.