Pages From a Vampire's Journal

by Olivia D'Abo

  Cedric walked back to the door, peered out to Trixie and asked:

  “How many lunchboxes did you have as a kid anyway?

  “I dunno, maybe four or five. Why?

  “Well someone must have really thought they would be worth something someday.”Cedric said.

  A creaking sound jutted out of nowhere.

  “Was that you?” she asked.

  Cedric was too busy in his sleuthing to respond.

  Inwardly he suspected some darker purpose though he needed more clues. He went back and opened more lunchboxes. Again, half eaten apples hard as a rock, sandwiches and Hershey kisses that had decayed to nothingness were scattered within the myriad of lunches as if the entire elementary system had suddenly grind to a halt, and some thing spirited the kids far away to some dark land of candy and cremes. He remembered she had told him her dad was into some kind of genetic research, but she didn’t say what kind. But what did her stepmother do? A debt collector of some kind, he recalled.

  Cedric noticed something on the back of the lunchboxes he had dropped to the floor. On the back of them was taped a piece of paper with names attached to them. John, Marnie, Cathy, Cassandra, all in the same script handwriting. From the corner of his eye, the gleam from a necklace hanging atop a box caught his eye. Walking over, he peered into the box. Inside: boys shirts from a decade past with the same icons as the lunchboxes. Looking further, he saw half-chewed pencils used down to the nub, unopened packs of loose-leaf paper, superhero stickers and tightly packed army-green satchels, the kind kids brought to school with them to store there elementary school things.

  In the adjacent room, Trixie looked through box after box for any sign of a flashlight or cigarette lighter. She knew her stepmother was a hoarder of all things that should be thrown out, and she never threw out her collected cigarette lighters she had bought in foreign cities like Toronto, Tokyo and Memphis among a hundred different hotels. Looking further, a kerosene lamp revealed itself at the very bottom of a box marked “throw out”.

  “A-ha…gotcha you little devil” Trixie said, while reaching deep into the 4 foot box to retrieve it. When her arm was fully deep within the recess, something heavy rocketed against the back of her neck. The shock paralyzed her as she stood lumped over the stack of boxes, her mind mechanically debating whether to shut-down her entire body. She immediately thought something fell from the ceiling, perhaps a loose 2×4 or a rock. A second later, something else came bearing down on her, striking her head this time. Blackness rained down in front of her eyes, kicking her out of sight and out of mind.

  Cedric yelled out, “Hey everything OK in there? What did you break?”

  He walked over to the doorway peering through. He didn’t see Trixie at all.

  “Did she climb back up through the window?” he thought.

  He walked back into the lunchbox room and looked through an old oak desk. Inside were test tubes of varying shapes, though all were bloodstained and had names attached to them: John, Marnie, Cathy, Cassandra, among many others.

  “Something doesn’t sit well with this”, Cedric thought. He looked over at the corner of the room. A large dresser with a padlock dangled ahead. Cedric pulled at the lock, trying to break it open somehow, someway. He placed one foot against the dresser and pulled with all of his strength, then a large pop rang out. The padlock was still in one piece, however the door had come off the hinge. A foul odor invaded the room. Cedric pulled the door as hard as he could, felling himself to the floor along with several human skulls that poured out of the dresser. Cedric lied on the floor next to them in disbelief. The skulls had been ravished by time.

  “What…the..hell?” he muttered.

  Quickly lifting himself off the floor he ran in the direction of Trixie.

  He skidded to a halt when he came to the doorway separating the two rooms. Standing over Trixie was a person he had never seen in his life, and was certain not related to Trixie in any shape or form. A silver medallion he wore bore the inscription “La eMe”. Cedric had heard that term before on the radio having something to do with the Mexican mafia, which was certainly fitting by the look of this stranger’s sickly appearance.

  “Are you Trixie’s dad? Where is Trixie?” Cedric asked.

  The stranger stood a few feet from Trixie, and just above a whisper, said to Cedric:

  “It’s a rare, rare thing for me I get served with two desserts after a meal. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, I feel God’s love a shinin’ down on me.”

  He flashed a grin at Cedric that looked like a badly carved pumpkin.

  Gilchrist gave Cedric a look of disapproval as he glanced at the bloodstain on his foot.

  “I see you and my beast have become acquainted. I can’t say it has usually worked out well for those that have met him in such a fashion, lassie”.

  “I said, are you Trixie’s dad?

  “Do I look it?”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Well there it is, kid. You always answer your own questions this way?”

  Gilchrist slowly pulled out a seven inch blade that bared a crude drawing of a Mexican bird on the blade.

  He motioned slowly towards Cedric, who grimaced at the sight of the wound in the stranger’s swollen, bloody eye.

  “You like this?” He pointed to the design on his knife

  “It’s called the laughing falcon in Mexico” Gilchrist stated with a chuckle. “They sound like a human crying s-sometimes, and laughter at others. You know laughing, son? I do, and I revel in it, when the moment merits it, heh.”

  Gilchrist bellowed out a vile, hideous laughter, like that of a devil ensnaring a saint from the deepest, hottest ravine in hell.

  He took a couple of steps toward Cedric, who stood steadfast against this monster who dared him to run. Cedric being the forest working type knew what happened to those who ran from bears: they usually died out of breath.

  “Maybe I’ll have your friend here for dessert too. Then go to the local breakfast joint and order me up some ham and eggs, then when missy waitress is gone I’ll reach into my backpack and pull out your little friend’s head and feed some ham to her. She’ll like that I’m sure.”

  “You don’t stand a chance, whoever you are” Cedric snapped back at him.

  Gilchrist quenched up his face and mocked him.

  “Oh Auntie you don’t stand a chance!” Gilchrist said in a little girl’s voice making a flighty gesture with his free hand toward Cedric. He sounded possessed.

  “When I am at the diner I am gonna pull your head outta my satchel and show the waitress, then stick my hand up your bloody neck and puppet what you just s-said tough guy!” he grinned.

  “…and I’ve learned my meals taste better if I take my time with em before the grill. Get em all nice and spooked. The gamier, the better. And it couldn’t have been any easier finding the both of you sweet tarts. Yer lil’ missy friend here left a trail of blood straight to her doorstep. Not very bright, is she…”

  He sighed and put his hand on his heart and said, “She’s so smart. I’m glad she is gonna be my new wittle pumpkin.”

  Cedric thought of the finches in Trixie’s coat.

  Cedric backed up a few steps, looking around the room for anything to defend himself with.

  Gilchrist walked slowly towards Cedric, looking down at the skulls in amazement and half-grinned. A small book lay on the ground with a simple, metallic lock. He picked it up and popped the lock with his blade. He flipped to a random page.

  He read aloud, “Entry 114: Got another one today. This time a red-headed girl about eight. Her blood tasted dreadful. Thought of going with a blond male originally. Should have stuck with original plan”.

  Gilchrist laughed.

  Again, he read aloud as if sermonizing, “Entry 145: Little bastard gave me flack and wouldn’t get in the damn car. I’ll have to fly out tonight and secure him. Getting sicker from not feeding”.

  “My my, we’ve been busy down here haven’t we
. You and I may just share some communal traits after all. You believe in karma, kid? Well that is me, right here, right now, and you’re gonna reap what you sowed. I am your karma, kid.”

  He tapped his chest with his blade and picked up a smallish skull and twirled it around the blade like an outlaw did to boast of his six-shooter in a saloon.

  “Enough tomfoolery. I do believe it is time we ate.”

  He lunged toward Cedric, penning him to the floor like a cougar would do a small dog.

  Cedric thrashed and fought like a swordfish being dragged by a boat, but no leverage meant he might as well have been up to his neck in wet sand. He couldn’t move his arms. He felt Gilchrist’s knees squeeze into him as if he were a sumo wrestler. He felt the air sucked out of him.

  Gilchrist leaned into Cedric’s face, nose-to-nose, letting a bit of drool rappel down to his chin unbroken.

  “Now I’ll ask you the same as I did my missy over yonder. Have you seen my beast? Look into my eyes…you have, haven’t you?” he sneered. Cedric noticed his pupils were eerily dark, along with the wolfish teeth on either side of his grin.

  A flea jumped from Gilchrist’s sideburns into Cedric’s hair.

  “Now we’re one son, and I can see right into your witty bitty soul. And I gotta tells ya, you don’t seem so bad really. Just need a bit o’ adjustment. Some seasoning will fix ya right up” he snorted.

  Cedric glared at the wolf-like teeth on either side of Gilchrist’s grin while he twisted his waist back and forth…anything to shift the monster’s weight.

  In the next moment, Cedric felt a gallon of vile blood and fleas pour down the sides of his neck that reeked of dead flesh and foul disease. He felt the weight of the monster lift itself from him to one side. Cedric opened his eyes and saw protruding through the monster’s ribcage was a long black poker. Gilchrist dropped his knife and grasped the pointed end of the poker, trying to ascertain who or what got the best of him.

  Hundreds of fleas jumped off of the sinking titanic of a man birthed from the darkest corner of humanity. Gilchrist slumped to Cedric’s side in a thump of blood with the smell of cheap cigarettes. Standing three feet from Cedric was a ghostly figure squinting back at him in the darkness.

  “Camilla?” he said, trying to catch his breath.

  “Who the hell are you?” she glared at him as if he were no better than the monster she had just slain. Cedric was taken aback at how callous she sounded to him, like a judge issuing a death sentence. She looked like an apparition in a graveyard who had caught two trespassers in her sanctuary, and he was most certainly next on the poker list if he didn’t answer to her satisfaction. He at least owed this strange woman some kind of debt for saving his life. Cedric was completely at a loss for words, as if he had just met an archangel of Heaven, or the vilest demon from Hell for the first time, and anything you said…anything…would in all probability be damned to the core regardless of one’s intentions.

  Camilla walked over to Gilchrist’s limp, Mexican body and placed her foot on his leather-jacketed back before yanking out the long poker. Her effort produced a slithering, sloshing sound like a coiled, surprised snake in a rainy, muddy hole in the ground. She pointed the black and bloodied spear tip at Cedric’s forehead.

  “You’re next if you don’t speak up. So TALK you fucking little idiot.”

  CHAPTER 7: CLAN CABANIS

  Journal Entry 166:

  “I killed our parish priest today. I decided to see if these pitiful confessionals were the same now as they were a millennia ago. I decided to have a little fun with him in confessing my “sins”. Didn’t think he would take me seriously! He let spill some details that some in our flock are seeking divine forgiveness??Weak. Thought I heard someone else in the church building, but maybe not. Probably just the wind, which has made a fine mess of my beautiful hair. Anyway, that damnable detective will probably be going door-to-door again. Will have to stop procrastinating and do something about him. In the meantime, my little collection of childhood trinkets grows a bit unwieldy. Maybe need a bigger house?”

  Trixie opened her eyes and glanced slowly at the dark ceiling while raising her hand to her head in pain. She could barely remember her name. Boxes were on either side of her as well as on top.

  “My god this hurts…” she muttered as she tried to at least get on her knees. She rubbed the back of her neck, half-expecting something else to fall from the ceiling. Or so she thought. She wobbled up and looked around the dark cellar, which bestowed a strange phosphorescence to the interior. She glanced in the direction of the creeping glow. In one corner was a group of glowcap mushrooms huddled close together, safely numbered.

  “Cedric where are you?” she called out. She rubbed her head some more trying to wish away the pain.

  In the room of skulls, Cedric looked up at Camilla as if he had been caught in a snare.

  “I’m gonna stand up now…don’t go poking that thing anywhere near me”, he said.

  “I don’t need the poker to do that. Now who are you already before I run you through…”

  Trixie walked in from the room of boxes.

  “Wait, he is with me! Don’t hurt him!”

  Trixie let out an audible gasp at the sight of the skulls littering the floor.

  “W-who do those belong to??” she asked Camilla pointedly.

  “They belong to me, if you must know. Twits. Nosing into my things is the last thing your pink fingers will ever get into”.

  Her voice plummeted to a tone only an ancient succubus would possess. A crimson curtain of redness crept down over Camilla’s eyes.

  “You know what killed the cat don’t you? It wasn’t curiosity. It was appetite. She wanted too many mice for her own good. That is how most alley cats die. They just wander into dead-ends where dogs await them. And they are eaten, just like you will be in a dead-end. Usually it takes two to get one person into trouble, and that someone ain’t gonna be me” she whispered.

  Camilla swung the poker at Cedric in an arc that sent empty paint cans flying across the room. Cedric backed up a few paces.

  Cedric barked at Trixie, “Is this thing your mother?”

  “She isn’t my mother! She never was! And now I’m getting the police over here to do what they should have done the last time I called them!”

  She motioned towards the top of the stairs, now unlocked by the beast Camilla.

  Trixie looked like she was about to vomit.

  “I can’t believe you really did it. You were supposed to be tutoring them, and you just killed those kids like they were nothing? Why!”

  Camilla barked back, “You’re not going anywhere, and those kids as you call em do what they were bred to do, to feed us, and they are hardly missed at all from anyone. We only take the sick and the weak. They are young calves they keep the peace between us and your kind. Take that away and it is war all over again. We’ve had enough of that mess for eons.”

  Camilla looked at Cedric backed into a corner and then back at Trixie. She hesitated, trying to decide which was the more optimal prey.

  Trixie couldn’t believe what she was hearing, as if it were an amateur play put on for the amusement of bar braggarts and brigands. None of it seemed real. She looked at Camilla’s eyes, which seem to boil with a black hatred of everything that wasn’t hellspawn. Trixie wondered why Camilla never killed her in the previous years they had lived together.

  “We have dined on kings, politicians, world-class thieves and even triceratops, and you balk at our meager demands? You should feel privileged to go out of this life giving your life’s blood to an immortal. Don’t go to a coffin unfulfilled, dear. Come to me. Come and be given mercy.”

  Cedric leapt at Camilla, wrapping his arm around her scrawny, pale neck in a headlock, and tried to drag her to the ground. Camilla muffled a laugh into his arm.

  She reeked of disease and lustful desire, grasping his forearm behind her head as she bent over, throwing him on the ground. The impact of the concrete floor s
tumped him. He looked up at her as if he had just been swatted by a gorgon from Greek myth.

  Cedric ran towards the lifeless Gilchrist, grabbing the Mexican blade from his hand and motioned towards Camilla.

  “You’re both murderers, both you and this devil here next to me.”

  Camilla smiled a perverted smile at him, looking him over as if wondering which piece of him to savor first.

  “Murderers? Your mortal life is a murder, son. It’s a con game diced when you were born and won at your grave. We’re no more murderers than you are. We’re just more honest about it.”

  Camilla looked towards the window, pointing to it.

  “Out there, we initially started with a few bodily donations. What you call murders. A few here and there. We don’t make distinctions between any of you. But if we catch you while you’re running away, you taste better than a sleeping emperor. So run already.”

  “You’re not only a murderer; you’re a damnable liar as well. You lurk around in shadows and secret cabals and call it honest? I’m gonna put you in your place you sick, squalid creature of a human being!

  Cedric dashed for the stairs, knocking over more cans of green paint. The air started to breed noxious vapors.

  Camilla caught the belt loop on his jeans.

  “Gotcha, you little snitch”.

  Cedric brought the knife to her neck and pressed it firmly against her throat.

  “You let go of me or I’m going to end your miserable existence and send you straight to the Almighty”.