Dark Valentines

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Dark Valentines Page 12

by Mark Onspaugh


  Being agile as well as strong, Flit bolted up out of the grave and was gone in a flash, seeking the quiet comfort of his crypt over in Rosewood Cemetery to the east.

  Sally quickly recovered and climbed up out of the grave. She felt ravenous, but she also felt a profound unease. She realized she was feeling an almost atavistic urge to fill in her grave, knowing somehow that she must not call attention to the fact that it was now empty. She tried to ignore it, but the idea of leaving the open hole was almost painful.

  Flit, for his part, had calmed down halfway to Rosewood and had stealthily worked his way back. He retrieved his clothes and was set to leave, but he was curious about the girl. How could she smell dead and not be? He watched from a large bush as she filled in her grave. He admired how strong she was, and how quickly she worked, despite having small, delicate hands. When she began replacing the sod, he felt a shiver of pride that he had made her job easier.

  Once the last square of sod was in place, Sally felt she could leave the cemetery and find her way home. She was in her prom dress, which was weird, because she was sure the prom was still a couple of weeks away. Her neck ached, and every time she turned her head it made a grinding, clicking sound.

  And she was so hungry!

  She walked toward the gates of the cemetery and Flit followed her at a discreet distance. He didn’t want to scare her again, and she might actually be strong enough to hurt him. She seemed lost, which made him feel sad, something he had rarely felt in the past.

  As luck would have it, three boys from Sally’s high school had climbed the wall of the cemetery to tag some of the tombstones. They were bored with vandalizing the school and had come in search of more exotic targets.

  One of the boys was Gabe Spurlock, a large and pockmarked youth who had pulled Sally’s pigtails and snapped her bra strap when they were in middle school, telling her it was the secret greeting of the “Itty Bitty Titty Committee.” When they had gotten into high school, he began asking her out, as if they had some delightful shared history. When she had refused, he spray painted the word “whoor” on her locker.

  Sally was going to give the three a wide berth when her thermal vision kicked in, and the night air brought her the rich scent of living, coursing blood.

  As if in a dream, she saw herself running toward Gabe, then launching herself in the air as he gaped at her, his big stupid mouth hanging open in surprise.

  Before anyone could react, Sally slammed into him, but the big lummox didn’t go down. Lightning-quick, she wrapped her legs around his torso and struck at him like a snake, plunging newly grown fangs and incisors into his beefy neck. Gabe screamed and beat at her, but Sally held fast.

  Flit smelled the hot, fresh blood spilling from Gabe’s throat and the scent almost made him ill. Most of the corpses he dined on were bloodless, and those that weren’t had blood that was cold and sluggish, thick syrup already in the throes of decomposition. That was how blood was supposed to be taken, not like this. Flit nearly gagged with revulsion.

  But Sally did not retch or scream at the acidic taste of living tissue. She kept feeding as Gabe’s struggles grew weaker and the big man sunk to his knees.

  Gabe’s friends, only now coming out of their shocked stupor, chose not to help their comrade but ran instead.

  Sally drained the big oaf, the disengaged herself as he collapsed to the ground. She licked her lips, then wiped her mouth delicately with the sleeve of his letterman jacket.

  Flit wanted to talk to her, to find out who she was, what she was, and why the scent of her called to him in a way that made him frightened and mad with yearning.

  Yearning… for what?

  Yet he knew she might still be afraid of him, and, truth to tell, he wasn’t sure he’d be safe with her. The man she attacked was much bigger than Flit, and he had died without so much as mussing her blonde hair.

  Sally, now almost drunk on her first meal of blood, had another atavistic urge; to conceal or destroy the body of her victim. She considered for a moment, then smiled. She dragged the body away, and Flit followed her cautiously. As he passed the pool of congealing blood, something sparkled in the light of a streetlamp, and Flit picked it up.

  It was a butterfly barrette that had been in Sally’s hair. The butterfly was set with mother-of-pearl. It had been one of her favorites.

  Flit could still smell her hair on it, could still smell her on it, and tucked it in his pocket. Then he followed at a safe distance, wondering what she was going to do now.

  Two hours later, Sally’s grave was no longer unoccupied, though her coffin was quite a tight fit for the former fullback of the Mayfield Mustangs.

  Then sensing that the sun was near to rising and would do her harm, Sally sought the darkness of one of the smaller mausoleums, one that had belonged to the O’Neills, who owned five hardware stores in the county.

  Flit himself had spent some time in that particular location and knew it was warm, clean and dry. Despite his need to dig and grub through mud and muck for his supper, Flit was actually quite fastidious.

  Unlike vampires, ghouls could not be killed by the sun, but they were uncomfortable in its brightness and could sunburn quite easily. No ghoul was out during the day if he could help it, and Flit was no exception.

  He waited until he could hear her softly snoring, then made his way into the mausoleum and scaled the marble drawers until he came to high shelf. She was on a similar shelf on the other side of a load-bearing wall. He could smell the exotic aroma of her, and heard her softly murmur in her sleep. He wondered what it might be like to sleep next to someone who was so energetic, someone who seemed so… alive.

  Both Flit and Sally awoke as the sun was setting. Flit stayed very still, not wanting to alarm her. Some part of him, some part that may have, at one time, had a mother, knew it was rude to pay a visit when you are uninvited.

  Sally, sensing activity in the cemetery, went slowly to the entrance of the mausoleum and peered out. There were several police cars there, as apparently Gabe’s friends had told the authorities of their nocturnal misadventure.

  It was clear that the police had been there some time and were wrapping up this part of their investigation. Sally figured they would search for Gabe as they had for her attacker, and come up short once again. From her many hours of watching television, she figured they would employ corpse dogs, but good luck trying to use such a dog in a graveyard. Even if the dog sniffed out Gabe in her grave, they’d assume it was her dead body and move on.

  She decided to wait until the police were gone, and took time to review her situation. It was clear that she was now a vampire, and she marveled that she didn’t feel more frightened, repulsed or panicked. She suspected having fed might have caused some adaptive mindset to kick in. It had probably helped that she had always disliked Gabe the bully, and hadn’t spent any time agonizing over a need to feed on humans.

  Of course, she didn’t know everything. She could tell she was much stronger and faster, and that she needed to stay out of the sun. But what else? Would animal blood do? Did the blood have to be fresh, or could she feed on blood stored in hospitals? How might she prevent what happened to her from happening to others?

  Must she kill every time she was hungry?

  So many questions, but first she must find a place to live. She wasn’t hungry, and hoped this meant that she wouldn’t need to feed more than twice a week or so. In the movies, someone would show her the ropes, most likely her “sire,” but she was fairly certain that that idiot was in another county, maybe another state.

  It was obvious she couldn’t stay in Mayfield. Sooner or later she was bound to run into someone who recognized her and lived long enough to alert the authorities. They’d exhume her grave and then she’d be the source of a mystery, maybe even a manhunt.

  She knew her parents had put aside fifty thousand dollars for her college fund, something they started when she was still in diapers. She figured she was entitled
to that – she certainly wasn’t going to college… Maybe night school, but that could come later.

  She wondered if the stories were true, that she would cast no reflection, and that she couldn’t be captured on film. If so, she could use an ATM to access the funds that would get her started on her new life.

  The police finally left the scene, and she made her way through the woods to her neighborhood. She was extraordinarily good at sensing living beings, especially humans, but she was unaware that she was being followed by a pale figure that moved with preternatural stealth.

  Sally’s room was on the second floor of a large house on Bannerman Street. A peek through the window showed her mom, dad and little brother were seated at the dining table, sadly picking at a casserole from one of the neighbors. Her heart ached at the sight of them, but she knew they would find no comfort in her new reality. She climbed quickly and silently up the trellis and through the open window of her brother’s room.

  In her room, she recovered some cash and the ATM card from her purse. She took an old teddy bear named Mr. Candycoat that she had had since she was a toddler, her cell phone, a spare memory card of photos and a family portrait. She remembered how much she had hated posing for that, but she was grateful to have it now.

  In her search she did discover that she indeed cast no reflection. It would be harder to keep her appearance clean and neat, but she supposed blind people had the same problem.

  She looked around her room one last time. They were bound to notice the missing teddy bear and the cash, but these things would probably be blamed on her attacker.

  She thought for a moment, then sat down and wrote her family a little poem telling them how much she loved them. She tucked it into a book where they would be sure to find it, and assume it was written some time ago. She hoped it would give them some comfort.

  Outside the house, Flit watched from across the street. He was now attuned to her like he had never been to anyone or anything, and could tell when her heart beat faster, when her eyes filled with tears. He wondered at such emotions, and wondered what it would be like to have a family, to then lose that family and feel the loss so keenly.

  Had he ever had a family, even briefly? He concentrated and strained, but couldn’t remember. For a moment, he thought he recalled a pretty face smiling down at him and making soft and musical sounds, but then it was gone, like the fleeting shadow of a lone bird.

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  Several years passed, but time did not touch Flit nor Sally, perhaps compensation for lives spent alone and apart, and in darkness.

  Sally settled just outside of Seattle, where the gloomy climate gave her more safety from the treacherous sun, and where there were plenty of people to feed upon. She had discovered that only human blood would sate her, but she could regulate her feeding, leaving the person slightly weakened but not in danger. She was able to place her victims under a sort of trance, and could feed without raising any alarm. It was clear that the fellow who attacked her was not very bright, and had never explored the possibilities and potential of being a vampire.

  She also found that something in her saliva, perhaps the very thing that allowed her to heal with supernatural rapidity whenever she was injured, caused the small punctures she left to be almost invisible by the coming of the dawn. By using control and varying her feeding pattern, she left not so much as a rumor of her existence.

  Her family had renewed the search for her attacker when the theft of her bear and other belongings was discovered, and these were, as she had suspected, laid at his doorstep. She did have plans to repay them one day, but would need to give that notion more thought. For now, she found a nice apartment in Edmonds and kept to herself.

  Flit had followed her, which was a big move for him. He had never been out of Hayward County, and felt afraid leaving the comforts of the Mayfield, Rosewood, Blaisedell and Green Gardens cemeteries behind. Unlike Sally, Flit had just one memento, and that was the butterfly barrette she had lost that first night in Mayfield.

  There were plenty of cemeteries in the area and Flit never went hungry, but he had discovered over the years that he wanted more than just to satisfy his hunger. He followed Sally on her nighttime forays, and would watch her apartment from a hiding place until the approaching sun made it necessary to seek refuge.

  He realized that he was lonely, and it became a constant ache. By some alchemy, the very knowledge of her had created a void he had never experienced. How could such a thing be? Flit had never thought much of his existence, but he wondered at it, now, and why it should trouble him after so many seasons of ignorant contentment.

  He thought of the not-living, not-dead girl in her apartment, missing a family who still grieved, but who had gone on with their lives.

  Lives.

  Could she who was not alive have a life?

  And him, why was he here? Was he a miracle someone had cherished, or a curse someone had thrown away? Had he ever been human?

  And why did a song sometimes spring unbidden in his memory? A song that sounded far away, across the mists of time, from some forgotten shore.

  Was that his home?

  For the first time in his life, Flit wanted someone to talk to. He did talk to himself, occasionally, when the day brought no sleep or the stars were particularly brilliant. He had never prayed, and didn’t know how, but now he pleaded with some vast and unanswerable universe that his life might never be empty of the girl with the butterfly barrette.

  At last, Flit could take it no longer. Lately he had been less careful in his shadowing of Sally, and he suspected that she suspected that she was being followed. Though he had never studied psychology, he thought he might be doing this on purpose, to lead to discovery and confrontation, and so once and for all declare himself and his feelings for her.

  But that was as foolish as their first meeting, when she had been unprepared to meet him and had seen only the nightmare.

  And so he began to collect femurs from his rounds, and carved new flutes of bone. On one he carved runes that came to him in a dream, some language from a time long ago, when more of his kind had cavorted between standing stones luminous in moonlight. On another he carved her name, wondering where and how he had learned to read and write.

  But his finest piece, his masterwork, was the one where he incised interlocking butterflies that swirled around the bone in a double helix of delicacy. He raided a nearby shell shop and inlaid the butterflies with mother-of-pearl and sea glass.

  One night, while she was out and hunting, he left the flutes at her apartment. Nervous, he carefully printed a note that simply read, “I mean you no harm.”

  He watched from his safe place, and saw her freeze when she discovered the gifts arranged carefully on her satin bedspread. He saw her look wildly throughout the apartment for an intruder, and it grieved him to think that perhaps this all had been a colossal mistake.

  He could tell she did not sleep the next day, and she kept peering cautiously through her thick curtains, perhaps expecting the police to surround her building at any moment. Flit longed to go to her and explain, but something told him he must wait.

  When disaster did not come after three days, Sally began to relax and go about her normal routine. Flit feared she might throw his gifts away, but she did not.

  Two weeks later, he heard her playing, and the sound was beautiful. He knew from working on it that it was the butterfly flute she played.

  The music she made was so lovely he cried, and was both surprised and amazed by the tears that spilled from his eyes.

  Every day, just before sunrise and just after twilight, she would play, and he would listen.

  Finally, one fine autumn night, when Orion dominated the night sky, everything changed.

  Flit was following her at what he thought was a safe distance, when he came upon her waiting for him in a small clearing.

  Sally looked at him, taking in his ill-fitting clothes, his bat’s face as pale as sta
rlight.

  “You’re the boy I saw the first night.”

  “Yes,” he replied, his voice hoarse from nerves and infrequent use.

  She held up the butterfly flute. “You made this, didn’t you? I can smell you on it.”

  He only nodded, his heart beating rapidly in his chest.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said softly, looking at it in the silver light. She looked up at him, her hazel eyes glittering with tears. “I never thought… I never thought I would receive something beautiful again.”

  “I love you,” he said, and though he had never said the words before, he knew them to be true.

  “You… you know what I am.”

  He nodded.

  “Are you… are you like me?”

  He swallowed hard, because he could not lie to her, but he was sure the truth would drive her away. No matter her appetites, she would find him repellent, evil.

  He told her what he was, and she nodded. Sally had always been a practical girl, and her own state had made her suspect there were others in the world as strange or even stranger.

  Her old self would have been sickened by him, it was true, but over the years she had seen much that was wonderful and much that was horrible, and many things a combination of the two.

  And hadn’t he created these beautiful things for her, just for her?

  She looked at him and did not find him ugly. She saw only the beauty no one had ever bothered to look for.

  “I’m Sally,” she said, holding out a cold hand.

  He took it, his own hand equally cold, and smiled.

  “I’m Flit,” he answered, and realized he was feeling something new, something alien and wonderful.

  He was happy.

  THE MILKMAID’S TALE

  Many who came to the Red Lion were on their way to or from Aubendroth, the small village half a day’s ride from the inn.

 

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