Count On Me

by Abigail Graham

  The milling guests spread out, opening a pit in the middle of the room, around what they used to call a conversation pit in old home and garden magazines. Two living men in suits dragged a terrified pair of people out of the back rooms towards the open pit. I didn’t know them, but when I saw the creatures standing a circle part to allow them to be shoved down into the pit, I had a sinking feeling. Elizabeta smiled and there was something real in it, actual enjoyment.

  Understanding stirred in what was left of my heart. I began to realize what these things really were.

  She knew I knew and it widened her smile.

  They couldn’t be much older than I was, maybe a little younger. A man and a woman, maybe a boy and a girl. They were dirty, scared, in torn clothes. The way they clutched each other told me everything I needed to know. She was blonde, skinny, pretty. He was average, and he loved her. I knew it when I caught a flash of his eyes. The little voice whispered in my ear, like a flick of a television channel quickly turned away.

  Milling around them, the things that formed a ring around the pit watched them with glee.

  “Hear me, children,” said Elizabeta, looking down at them. “Look up now.”

  They looked up.

  “These are the rules. Two of you, one blade. Fight to the death. The survivor walks free from this place, never to return. You have two minutes.” She nodded her head just barely. One of her lackeys produced a hooked blade and tossed it to the floor. “Try to fight your way free and you both die. Refuse and you both die.”

  She drummed the bannister with her fingers as the girl reached down and picked up the knife.

  “Go.”

  I rushed to the rail.

  The girl looked at the knife in her hands. The boy took her wrists.

  “You know they’ll do it,” he whispered, but his voice was so loud to me he may as well have been shouting.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “You have to.”

  They warred silently, readying themselves for the sacrifice. I caught the girl’s confusion and fear in her eyes, her understanding of what was about to happen. A sick, sad kind of love. Her lover was going to give the ultimate proof of his devotion, and she knew it.

  It had a taste. It tasted sweet, sweeter than blood ever would. It was like a warm breeze in my face.

  What was I becoming?

  “I can’t,” she whimpered. “Please, somebody-“

  The boy pulled. The blade met his chest. It wasn’t like a movie, where it makes a sound effect. It was more like a whuff noise, just from the impact, and a little crunch. She stared at him in horror as he pulled the knife into his chest by her hands and collapsed into a heap on the floor in front of him. She dropped it and looked at her bloodied hands and screamed at the top of her lungs.

  I realized what I was seeing. The end of someone else’s story, the last chapter in their tale. I’d never know it.

  I hated these things. I wanted them all to die.

  Elizabeta did not seem surprised at that.

  What she said next should not have shocked me, but I made a choked sound anyway.

  “I said you had to fight. That was not fighting. Kill her.”

  It was like watching ants swarm a piece of food. They all threw themselves at her at once.

  It started when I tasted the blood in the air. The cold in my belly moved. It swirled. It grew scratchy legs and clawed at my insides. I was moving before I realized it. My feet hit the railing. I jumped. It was an impossible, bone breaking leap, but I made it with ease, landed in a rolling crouch and threw myself into the melee. I don’t know if it was the boy or the girl. I think it was the girl’s. The skin was too smooth. I got my mouth on it and I bit and there was so much screaming.

  At least it ended for her fast, I think. She was in pieces before I realized I was covered in blood, swallowing more and crouching over a dead body, shoulder to shoulder with monsters.

  Only a few stood apart. The elders, the powerful. Elizabeta. Vincent, watching me feed, smirking so softly to himself.

  Never had I wanted to die so badly as that moment. I shouldn’t have begged him for mercy.

  I should have just let him kill me.

  11

  I don’t cry or scream this time. I just sit there in a daze, hugging my knees to my chest, my eyes fixed on nothing.

  He gets up. He comes over and he sits next to me. He reaches out and his hand nears my cheek.

  “Don’t,” I say.

  He pulls his hand away and rests it on the bed.

  “Just leave me alone.”

  “As you wish.”

  He leaves me alone. He takes the notebook and his pencil and he closes the door behind him but doesn’t lock it, because a magic collar will choke me like a misbehaving puppy if I try to leave. I slide down the bed and stare up at the ceiling and wonder why, of all the people I’ve hurt, I am alive, or something like it, and they are not. I want to live, no matter how unworthy I am.

  I want to know why this man cares so much.

  I want to do something else. Be somewhere else.

  So, books.

  I end up staring at the page. I flip through the Lord of the Rings but I lack the patience to really read it. It’s not really the easiest book. A great book, but not a brisk read by any stretch of the imagination. When I look at the pages I see faces staring back at me. Andi, that boy and girl.

  I never knew their names or their ages. What he told me makes me sick. If by feeding the vampires ate their souls, were they torn into pieces? Kept apart? What were they to each other? Lovers, or brother and sister? Maybe I read too much into it and he was just kind and selfless for all the good it did him.

  One thing I know for sure: They died and I didn’t. Or, at least, I got to get up and walk around after. Keep going. They’re gone.

  I look down at the pages and see one is dogeared and wonder what kind of a jerk dog-eared a collectible leather-bound gilded book. I turn to that page and scan down until I see the passage of interest that marks this page as special. There are many who live and deserve death, and many who die and deserve life.

  With a thump, I close the book. No, I can’t give it to them.

  I slip the book back in its case and stare at the others. There’s a collection of textbooks mixed in with the others. English texts, what look like philosophy texts. I’m so curious as to why Michael thought I would enjoy reading Nietzsche and the American Experience that I can’t help pull it off the shelf. It’s a used textbook, like many of the others. As I turn it, I see marks on the bottom. Someone has written across the edge of the pages.

  C. MOORE

  When I open the front cover there’s a name on the inside, beneath another name, crossed out. The latest owner.

  Christine Moore.

  I drop the book. It flops right out of my hands with a dull thud and I stumble backwards until I hit the bed and slide to the floor.

  That’s me. My name.

  My name is Christine Elizabeth Moore.

  I say it softly to myself, out loud. “Christine Elizabeth Moore.” Each syllable is like a word in a song, the whole thing a chant. Each little piece of sound sends a shiver running through me as I play with them, bounce them around with my voice. My name is Christine Elizabeth Moore. I remember my name. I can feel it. There’s more. I was named for my grandmother on either side of my family, a Christine on one and an Elizabeth on the other- we called her Betty. My mother’s name is Sarah. I don’t know her face or her voice or her touch. I feel them but I can’t see them, but I can remember her name.

  Slowly, very slowly, I get up.

  I look around the room. I touch the table, the chairs. I pick up the Nietzsche book and put it on the table, spread open. It belongs there. It owns the place. I look at the hearth, look around the bedroom, at the bed. I go to the closet and open it and pull out the first article of clothing I can. It’s just a shirt, plain, nothing special about it, but it’s mine.

  Somebody took my bedroom a
nd perfectly recreated it in this house. I’m sure of it now. When I look at the television, even it is familiar. It’s a flatscreen but not top of the line, more from age than anything. The plastic parts are a little scuffed, one side a little faded from the sun during the day. How did he get all this stuff? Why would he build a perfect replica of my bedroom in another place?

  I shake my head. It hurts to think about it. Every time I try to puzzle it out I feel something clouding it at the back of my head, making it go all fuzzy.

  There’s something I’m missing. A piece of the puzzle, and when I find it, all of it will click.

  Nietzsche is a little heavy. I put it back, and then spot it.

  The book from my dream. Creased and scratched with a worn cover, just like the one I remember. I pull it down and take it to the bed and begin to read. I fall into another world, away from this one. For a little while I feel alive as I soak in the familiarity. The room is crowded with the edges of memory, like any moment the door will fly open and somebody I recognize step through.

  I yawn.

  I sleep. It hits me before I realize it’s coming. I’m aware of the book tumbling out of my hands, then blackness.

  A voice calls my name in the dark.

  Christine.

  I’m back in the hallway, walking on broken tiles with bare bleeding feet, hugging myself against the cold. I can see puffs of mist in front of my face when I breathe. I’m breathing. The voice rolls through the dark again, echoing off the lockers in a tinny drumbeat. It rolls over my shoulders and moves me forward with a physical force and I break out into a run. The voice rises behind me, louder and louder, in an angry dirge.

  Tiles breaking. Footsteps. I see a long shadow on the wall behind me as she moves down the hall to follow, calling my name.

  Die with me, Christine.

  I can’t do this. I have to get some place safe. I can’t see her.

  If I see her I’ll die. I just know it.

  Someplace safe. I think that over and over as the tiles cut into my feet, biting red gashes into my heels as I run. Someplace away from here, someplace safe.

  Then I’m not in the hallway anymore.

  I’m lying on something fuzzy and hard, staring up a sagging headliner. I’m lying in the back of a car, on the folded down seats. The scratchy carpet is under my arms but I’m lying on a blanket with a flat, lifeless pillow under my head. My chest rises and falls, I’m breathing hard and covered in a thin sheen of cooling sweat. I raise my hand and move it in front of my face, watching my fingers, and giggle softly to myself. I’m sore as hell between my legs, but I feel contented, like a cat lying out in the sun.

  Beside me someone stirs. He rolls over and slides his arm around me. We’re naked under the blankets. His hands are rough from lifting weights but his skin is smooth as silk. I try to turn and face him but I can’t move. My arms move on their own. I’m just a passenger here.

  I hear the words but I don’t hear the voice.

  “I love you.”

  I see my hand, my slender delicate fingers lacing between his as he squeezes my palm.

  “I love you too,” I giggle.

  “Can I keep you?”

  “Yes.”

  He takes my hand and slides a cheap little ring on my finger. It looks like it’s about two steps above something from one of those gumball prize machines. Costume jewelry.

  I’ve never seen anything more beautiful.

  “I’ll get you a real one, someday. I promise. With diamonds and emeralds just like you like.”

  “I don’t need that. I just need you.”

  I can move my fingers. I can move. I turn my head, but when I look at him I see his face as though through shattered glass, behind a blurred mirror. I hear his words but not his voice.

  “I love you so much.”

  I reach out to touch his face and the glass cuts my fingers.

  There’s something behind me. It’s hateful and ancient. I can feel it approaching, feel its silvery sharp legs digging into the carpeting behind me. I draw closer to him.

  “Tell me your name,” I plead. “Tell me who you are.”

  “Why do you ask if you already know the answer?”

  He’s gone and I’m back in the hallway, and the thing is behind me.

  I run, but first I turn to look. It’s in the shadows, swallowing up the light. I see hints of silvery, chitinous legs, a bulbous hairy body, nine eyes instead of eight. It’s so utterly wrong that it freezes me on the spot before I tear my eyes away and bolt full tilt down the hall past the dead classrooms, weaving between and jumping over doors and piles of junk, broken down desks and old books in stacks.

  The impact throws me backwards to the ground. Andi stands over me in her bare feet, her skin as pale as paper, dark rings around her eyes, her lips a pale bloodless blue. Her throat is a ruin of shredded flesh hanging loose down the front of her shirt until she gathers it up and mushes it back in with her hand and speaks in a harsh rasp.

  You killed me, she accuses, her voice scraping around the insides of my skull.

  “It wasn’t my fault. He made me.”

  You held me down and ripped open my neck.

  “I’m sorry,” I clutch the sides of my head. “I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to. He made me.”

  I was your best friend.

  I look down at my hands and they’re bleeding. Wounds open slowly across my palms, cutting themselves into my flesh, bleeding down my arms, like I’m raking them through a thorn bush. They’re opening all over, the red soaking through my clothes. Behind me the thing with too many eyes hisses and raises it legs, and glistening wet fangs gleam in the murk.

  A light shines in the darkness, blinding. I collapse back as the sunlight soaks into my skin, and burns. Smoke erupts from under my nails, ash falls from my hair, makes a choking glob in my throat. Andi screams, and all the color leaves her, leaving an Andi-shaped mass of translucent film that barely hangs together.

  “Help me, Chris,” she begs me in a tiny voice. “I don’t know where I am. It’s dark in here. I’m scared.”

  Then she’s gone.

  The light grows stronger, and stronger. When I look I see two things at the same time. I see two serpents twined together, facing each other, over a black sun. I see him. He raises his left hand and the cheap ring on his finger matches mine. The light is in the glass gemstone, hammering away the dark. I can’t see his face for the light, but it’s there, so close I can taste it. I rise up despite the pain, despite the flames sloughing the skin from my bones, and reach for him. His hand is inches away.

  In the dark the thing hisses and takes my leg, ramming its sword-blade limb through my flesh, and drags me back to the darkness.

  His hand closes around mine, his grip firm and strong. When he touches me I feel a dozen flashes, hints of things I used to hold in my heart and sleep soundly.

  “Can I keep you?” he says, and I hear his voice.

  “Yes!”

  A shape moves in my chest, beat-beat, beat-beat. My lungs burn, my eyes water.

  Then I wake up.

  My skin is burning. This isn’t a dream, I can feel it. I topple onto the floor, clutching my chest. It’s not my imagination, there’s something moving in there in rhythmic thumps. I gasp and gurgle for breath, arching my back to breathe deeper and fill my lungs, but no matter how much air I draw in. I can hear voices.

  “This isn’t working, Mike.”

  “Give it time.”

  “You said you could fix her.”

  “I said I could help her. I never said I could fix her.”

  “This isn’t helping her. She’s suffering.”

  “You can’t imagine what I’ve been through, Sarah, and I’d do it all again a thousand times over. I’ll never let her go. Never. I’ll follow her into Hell itself. You know that.”

  “I know, but my little girl…”

  I know that voice. He’s talking to…

  “Mom?” I croak.

  They can’
t hear me. I crawl to the door. The movement in my chest is a hammering now. I feel crawly all over, something moving under my skin. Then I look at the clock.

  It can’t be four in the morning. I’d be awake. That means four in the afternoon.

  That means the sun is up.

  I hit the door with my fist.

  Then it stops. My chest goes still. Cold sweeps through my body, more than ever. I fall in a heap to the floor and blackness comes up from the deep in a crushing wave and when it pulls back again, I go with it.

  But not all the way.

  I’m still here. I can hear, almost feel. The door clicks and opens, and I hear two sets of footsteps. Arms slide under my body and lift me bodily from the floor, cradling me against a warm body as I’m carried like a newlywed back to the bed. He lays me down and pulls the blankets up to my chin, turns me, fluffs the pillow, sweeps my hair back out of my face.

  “She almost looks peaceful, doesn’t she?”

  Why can’t I move? If I could just open my eyes. Please, God let me just open my eyes.

  “Mike, look. She moved.”

  “I told you, it is working. We’re getting closer and closer every night. I can reach her.”

  “Can I sit with her a while?”

  “Not now. It’ll be sunset soon. We need to let her come around on her own. Come on.”

  The door closes. I’m alone again.

  When he opens the door I’m already waiting for him. I went right to it as soon as I could move.

  “What are you doing to me?”

  He stops before he enters the room.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Answer me. Please. What’s happening to me? How did I wake up during the day?”

  “I’ll tell you what you need to know. Sit on the bed.”

  “I need to know it all,” I say, rising on my tip-toes.

  He leans in, over me. I freeze, eyes wide. If he moved any closer all he’d have to do is tilt his head a little and touch his lips to mine. Kiss me. I stumble back and he steps into the room and closes the door, and brushes his hair back with his hand as he sets a cooler down on the side table. He tosses me the blood pack. I catch it, and look at it.