Turning Point

by K M Smith

“Alice, I—”

  “Get away from me,” she cut him off before he could explain any further. “Go away. Let me go. I don’t care which.” She looked around frantically, her knuckles white from gripping the railing too tightly. Her heartbeat had never returned to normal; Adam could sense her fear, and he began to sense her cunning. She was making plans as she jerked her head around and twisted her body, feigning hysteria. Those plans could be deadly. This was a new and precarious situation. His safety and security, his very existence, was dependent upon anonymity and the fact that to the rest of the world he was fiction. He had no way of knowing what Alice would do when she left. It was a gamble he would have to take.

  Alice begged for her life. “Please. Please, just let me go. I won’t tell anyone about you. I won’t say anything about what I saw—I didn’t see anything. Just let me get out of here. Please. Please don’t hurt me, don’t hurt anyone!” Her voice cracked, and the words sped out until she couldn’t say any more. Her knees buckled, but she kept her grip on the railing. A sob escaped her lips and she covered her mouth and closed her eyes while she awaited her fate.

  Adam didn’t move, didn’t even breathe, as she begged for her life. He wanted to tell her everything was okay, it was all going to be okay, but he needed her to see him as dangerous. That she was bargaining with the devil. He couldn’t charm her, and he couldn’t—literally couldn’t—kill or hurt her. He would let her leave, still breathing and with the full knowledge of his existence.

  There was no other choice; he had to trust that she would keep silent. Finally, after several still moments, he whispered, “Go home, Alice.” Time would tell if he had done irreparable damage to her, and lord knew he had plenty of time.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Alice

  Alice awoke in her bed at her mother’s house. Cozy and warm, she rolled onto her back as she breathed in a deep, cleansing breath. Arms reaching over her head and toes fluttering at the end of the bed, she stretched and let out a long sigh. The covers shished as she sat up and rubbed at her face. Soft morning light peeked through the curtains and sliced through the room, illuminating all the floating dust particles that hovered and kept eternal watch over her bed. The ethereal light highlighted a segment of her childhood quilt: a purple night sky with a sliver of a moon hanging above an autumnal tree. The fading patchwork a beacon for her thoughts.

  The eerie quilted scene jarred her memory of the night before, and she jumped out of bed. She stumbled into her vanity table and toppled her jewelry tree. Startled by her own movements and furniture, Alice fumbled with the jewelry tree before righting it. Not wanting it to fall again, she backed away with her arms outstretched until she stood in the center of her bedroom. It dawned on her then that she was in her room in her mother’s house, alone, and it was daylight. It’s okay, vampires sleep during the day, she thought as she tottered toward the window. Snapping the curtain back, she revealed the bright morning sun. Confused, Alice turned her back to the window. Where did that thought come from? Turning back around, she surveyed her backyard while her mind raced. Vampires aren’t real. What a nightmare! Her hand flew to her neck and she frantically searched for any sign of injury. His teeth were so close! With one arm around her middle she used the other hand to scratch at her hair. How did I get home? A whisper, “Where’s Lacy?”

  Vampires are real?

  A knock on her door interrupted her thoughts.

  “Alice? Sweetie, are you okay? I thought I heard a crash in there,” her mother called from the other side of the door.

  Alice sat on the stool in front of her vanity. “I’m fine, Mom. I…I just tripped over my shoes.” She rubbed at her forehead as she spoke, hoping she sounded confident and healthy so her mom wouldn’t worry.

  “Okay,” Sarah said, stretching out the word. “What’re your shoes doing in there anyway?” Her voice was muffled as she shuffled down the hall toward the stairs. “Coffee’s on if you want some.”

  Dazed, she remained on the stool while she gathered her thoughts. The night before seemed a blur but nothing appeared out of the ordinary. What is going on with me? She reeled through what she could recall. Sometime after dinner, she and Lacy made their way over to the Sigma Chi house. The party started in the basement. After a few drinks, Lacy hooked up with somebody. Alice wandered around the frat house then went into the living room to wait for Lacy to be ready to go. Mental note: text Lacy. Bored, Alice drifted off but snapped awake when she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Then, a strange man in a white t-shirt and leather jacket carried her out the front door.

  She stopped herself. More coffee was needed if she was going to think this through any further. Throwing on sweats and a cardigan, she joined her mother downstairs.

  “Good morning, sweetheart.” Sarah handed her a mug of steamy, black coffee. “Are you sure you’re okay? You’re looking a little peaked.” She brushed a wisp of hair away from Alice’s face and gave her a quick peck on the cheek.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks, Mom.” Alice cradled her coffee cup in her hands to blow on the steam before taking a sip.

  “I was surprised you were here last night,” Sarah said over her shoulder as she moved through the kitchen getting eggs and toast ready for breakfast.

  “I know, I…um, I just didn’t feel like going back to the dorm last night. Lacy…”

  “Lacy was glad to hear you’d made it here last night. You should’ve texted her, she was worried about you!”

  Alice gave a mental sigh at her mother’s mention of Lacy. At least she’d made it home all right last night. “Oh, yeah, I know. I should have. I’ll call her in a bit.” Placing her mug on the kitchen table, she went to the drawer to grab silverware and napkins, ostensibly to help set the table, but mostly so she could have something to keep her hands and eyes occupied while her mother finished getting breakfast ready.

  Sarah served up scrambled eggs and toast and brought over a fresh pot of coffee. The two ate breakfast in relative silence, the clinking of silverware on plates and slurpy sips of coffee offering the only background noise.

  After they’d finished, Alice brought the dishes to the sink. Sarah sat at the table contemplating her coffee cup then asked, “So, are you going to tell me what happened?” Wincing, Alice set the dishes down and turned around. Concern blanketed her mother’s face. Not wanting her mother to worry, Alice twisted back toward the sink to hide her reaction. She had learned the art of observation from Sarah, and she didn’t need her mother making any wild guesses. She hadn’t had enough coffee for that.

  “Oh,” Alice said over her shoulder as she fussed with the dishes and the dishwasher, attempting to buy herself some time to think of a realistic reason she came to her mother’s and didn’t check in with her best friend. “Um,” she wiped her hands on the dishtowel hanging next to the sink and made little throat-clearing noises until she sat back down across from her mother. “Nothing happened.”

  “Clearly.” Sarah arched an eyebrow at Alice.

  Alice winced. Her mother would never buy that, nor let it drop. “Nothing major, I mean. Lacy was having fun at the Sigma Chi party, and I wanted to go home. I came here…” Alice stretched out the words, stalling as much as possible until a thought finally hit her, “…because I wanted to see if you wanted to head over to Ann Arbor today. It’s been ages since we’ve hit the hippie shops on State Street.” She looked at her mother with puppy dog eyes, and hoped that Sarah didn’t see through the hurried, but genuine, offer.

  A warm knowing smile spread across Sarah’s face. “Sure! I would love to spend my Sunday hippie-shopping in Ann Arbor with you, my dear, thoughtful child.” She got up and kissed Alice on the top of the head before going to get ready for the day.

  Maybe one day she would tell her mother what really happened. But for now, it was better this way.

  Back in her room upstairs, Alice called Lacy. She grimaced during the silences between rings, hoping her best friend would understand and give her a pass
for last night.

  “Where did you go?” Lacy’s voice was tight on the other end of the line.

  “I’m sorry. I—”

  “You left me there,” Lacy said. Alice’s guilt swelled. She deserved whatever her friend was going to say next. “Do you know what I had to do to get myself out of there?” Lacy asked conspiratorially.

  Alice laughed at her friend’s lighter tone. “Uh, I’m pretty sure I can figure it out.”

  “A lady never tells.” Lacy cleared her throat. “And a friend never leaves her bestie stranded at a fraternity party.”

  So much for getting off scot-free. Heavy with guilt, Alice’s shoulders dropped. She hadn’t meant to run off. “I’m so sorry, Lace. I didn’t mean to leave you.”

  Lacy interrupted, “The question is, are you okay? It’s not like you to run off. Especially when I’m… occupied.” Lacy laughed, but she deserved an answer.

  “I—I’m fine. I just…” Alice let the words trail off.

  “I get it. You’ll have to tell me all about him later. I have to get in the shower and wash the Sigma Chi off me.” Lacy giggled. Alice joined her, relief spreading through her chest and warming her heart. She’d tell Lacy someday. Whenever she figured it out herself.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Adam

  Adam adjusted his arm under his head. The events from the night before lingered in his mind. He’d never left a human alive and with their memory intact before. Things were different with Alice, but she didn’t know that. What if she went to the police? They would keep her for psychiatric evaluation. Not something she would be eager to experience. If she went to Sarah that could cause problems. But, is she ready to have the “vampires are real” conversation with her mother? Unlikely. No, she needed to know he was real and baring fangs was shocking enough to achieve that. But, now what? The next move belonged to Alice. Adam sighed and shifted in the bed, unable to find a comfortable position.

  Two things about last night kept nagging at him as he stared at the ceiling. Why couldn’t he charm her anymore, and what the hell happened when their eyes met? Visits with Alice on the roof outside her bedroom, his habit from the time she had been old enough to open her window, always ended with a charming. She never knew he existed. He erased every memory of their interactions. It always worked. What changed? The rooftop had been empty for a few years, but that shouldn’t matter. Maybe with charming her so many times, her mind finally gave up? That didn’t make sense. There were stories of vampires keeping fang-hangers for years, a full adult human life, and charming always worked, no matter how many times their minds were tampered with.

  And what about their memory exchange? That was not normal. All of his experiences filled her mind. He didn’t envy her that scene. Having been present for much of Alice’s life, her memory mind-invasion wasn’t difficult for him. But it was novel. Something had changed in Alice. Something unexpected, unprecedented. It had to be some sort of vampire puberty. Could there be such a thing? There weren’t any known vampires who had been born and grown up. They’d all been adults from their vampire rebirth, as far as he knew. There had been a few children who’d been irresponsibly turned – like Claudia in Anne Rice’s famous tome. But a vampire going through puberty? Never heard of it. Then again, he’d never heard of a vampire being conceived in the womb to a living breathing human through vampire blood transfusion. This transformation signaled big changes on everyone’s horizon.

  Is it possible his intervention so long ago caused these changes in Alice? Could giving Sarah blood have had an effect on Alice in the womb? Was Alice even human?

  February, 2016

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Sarah

  Three weeks had passed since Sarah and Alice took their impromptu shopping trip to Ann Arbor. They had enjoyed their time together, even if the real reason for the trip kept niggling at the back of Sarah’s mind. She’d been a mother long enough to know not to push these things. But when Alice showed up for coffee again, red flags raised and whipped through Sarah’s mind. She was determined to get to the bottom of it.

  “So, coffee with mom, huh?” Sarah set two cups and a French press in front of Alice on her well-worn farmhouse dining table. Alice reached for the red one. Sarah smiled as she recalled Alice grabbing for her favorite, the red one with the big handle, during many coffees with mom over the years.

  “Yeah,” Alice said, dipping her eyes and scooching around in her seat, both hands gripping her mug.

  “Okay,” Sarah said gently as she lowered herself into the padded bench seat across from her daughter. She still struggled to fathom how this beautiful, strong, grown woman sitting across from her could possibly be her daughter. Really, she struggled to believe that she was blessed with a child at all. It all could’ve—should’ve?—gone a very different way, if not for what she supposed must’ve been “divine” intervention. They sat in silence for several moments. Sarah found herself thinking back to the time of her accident.

  Sarah and Andrew had married in June 1994. The wedding was a small affair: both sets of their parents, Sarah’s Aunt Nicole, her cousin Jennifer—her only bridesmaid, Andrew’s brother, Mike—the best man, and a couple close friends from grad school. They were the couple their friends loved and loathed in equal measure. A woman of the cloth performed the ceremony in an olde-worlde style pub in lower Manhattan: all dark wood, candle light, and rich greens and golds. Both Sarah and Andrew had graduated from NYU graduate programs the previous spring, and the wedding served as their last hurrah in New York before leaving their friends and carefree lifestyle behind and moving to the sleepy college town of Albion, Michigan, where Sarah had been fortunate enough to secure an assistant teaching position in the English department.

  It had been a stressful couple of months adjusting to life as a married couple. Even though they had been living together in New York, they were discovering that things change, and compromises must be made in marriage. Uprooting themselves from the splendid chaos that is Manhattan and moving to a po-dunk town in the middle of nowhere with only one bar, and that was always overrun with college kids, felt like going the wrong direction. Starting a new job in that Podunk town, at a school that caters to rich kids, wasn’t going to be easy.

  It was a lot to take on all at once. Youth does that to a person, though, blinds them to the complications associated with so much change, complications that would quite often cement older, wiser people to their current locales. Sarah managed by focusing on her work: researching, lesson planning, paper-grading, it was all-consuming. Andrew hadn’t fared quite as well. Albion was supposed to provide employment, job security, a future, for him. Instead, the contacts never panned out and job prospects were non-existent. Two months in, and he began spending his days sulking on the couch and frequently found reasons to go out as Sarah was getting home in the evenings.

  Things came to a head between Sarah and Andrew over Thanksgiving break that year. Sarah’s parents were flying in from upstate New York. Andrew was supposed to pick them up from the airport in Detroit. Instead, Andrew spent the whole day at Cascarelli’s drowning yet another round of disappointments in whatever draft beer was on special that day.

  Sarah got a call from her parents after they’d landed, as they had grown impatient waiting for Andrew and searched the airport for a pay-phone. Furious and disappointed, Sarah rushed to get them – she didn’t bother to hunt Andrew down.

  Twisting and strangling the leather helm of her Honda Accord, she raced down I-94 weaving through traffic and rehashing life choices in her mind. “Why now, Andrew?” Her sharp voice cut through the silence of her empty car. “You’re acting like an imbecile. So, we left Manhattan. Boo. Hoo. You told me I should go for this job. You told me you’d follow me to the ends of the earth. I guess you meant as long as that was east of the Hudson River!” Her knuckles glowed white as her grip tightened and her mind jumped to its own conclusions. Fearing that her marriage was over almost as soon as it began, she let out a loud, tearful hiccup. She
ran the sleeve of her favorite grey and worn NYU hoodie across her nose and used the back of her hand to wipe the tears from her eyes as she drove.

  “Dammit, Andrew!” She banged the butt of her hand against the top of the steering wheel. “Ouch!” she shook her hand and came out of her angry revelry. A black BMW behind her caught her eye as she glanced in the rear-view mirror. She returned her eyes to the road but felt compelled to look in the rear-view mirror again. The driver seemed to be staring directly at her –his gaze boring into her soul. Did she know him? Had she seen him around campus? She shook her head and returned her focus to the stretch of highway ahead of her. Spotting the signs for her exit, she pulled off to collect her frustrated and travel weary parents.

  After an uneventful return trip from the airport, Sarah and her parents arrived at her modest Albion home. Her father, Gary, hefted their bags from the car, lugged them up the five snow-covered steps to the front porch and dropped them on the polished wood floor just inside the front door. “I need a beer,” Gary announced as he stomped off the snow and used his heels to pull off his shoes.

  “A glass of red wouldn’t go amiss…” Sharon, Sarah’s mother, a plump and matronly woman, intoned as she carefully removed her wet, salty winter boots and set them on a mat next to the door to drip dry.

  “I’m on it!” Sarah called from the kitchen. Sarah grabbed a cold bottle of beer from the fridge and was rummaging around for the corkscrew when she heard footsteps above her, heading toward the stairs. He’s home. Resting her hand on the counter, she took a deep breath. She wasn’t in the mood to deal with his insecurities and she didn’t want to argue with him in front of her parents. He left them at the airport! She shook her head as she went through the motions of pouring a glass of wine for her mother. Taking her time, and hoping to avoid making a scene, she waited for Andrew to come into the kitchen.