by Platt, Sean
Bob told him to hold on, disappeared for a moment into a side room, then returned holding a small black velvet bag. He handed it to Caleb.
The bag was light, two items shifting inside as Caleb pulled the black drawstring to a pair of circular stones, deep crimson. He touched one, and a slight spark shot from the rock to his hand causing Caleb to jump in his seat and drop the stone back into the pouch.
“What are these?”
“Artifacts, and part of the reason I think the feeders are coming for us.”
Twenty-One
John
John stood outside the boarded motel room door. Once closer, he noticed that the boards were on a hinge, easily pulled back to reveal a door semi-hidden. From the other end, John could hear the faint murmur of an old sitcom. He smiled at the slight recognition and could almost remember the actor’s face. But then the room’s occupant, a man with a somewhat raspy voice, laughed, and John felt a nervous wave roll through his gut.
He glanced back at the truck and saw Abigail’s head peeking over the dashboard, watching him intently. He smiled at her, though he wasn’t sure if she could see his face in the dark and at that distance.
John knocked and wondered, not for the first time, if he was making a mistake. What if the person waiting was the same person who left him buried alive? He tried to ignore the nagging doubt and after a moment without any response, knocked a second time, harder.
The TV went silent, and John heard movement.
“Who is it?”
John could hear the caution, and perhaps fear, wavering in the man’s voice.
“It’s John.”
From the other end, John heard several thumps, the crash of aluminum cans, some more thumps, and then the door opened slightly. A short young man with wild brown hair, thick black-framed glasses, and a big beer gut greeted John. He wore blue boxers and a faded black TOOL shirt.
THIS is the man holding the key to my past?
“Well, holy shit,” the man said, his eyes wide, joined by a smile even wider, “John!”
The man opened his arms to embrace him. John tried to step back but hedged a second too long and was squeezed like an old pillow. But he didn’t burst into flames.
John was baffled but allowed the stranger to continue with a lingering hug that threatened to last forever. There was something deep in the embrace, the sort of affection you saved for long-lost friends or family members.
“You sure as hell took long enough,” the guy whistled, standing back and eyeing John head to toe. “Shit!”
“What happened? Why aren’t you burned?”
The man flashed a smile that John felt he should recognize.
“Come in, come in.” The man escorted John into a dimly lit space, about as clean as a cramped dorm room shared by a pack of messy freshmen. Empty pizza boxes and soda cans littered the room; stacks of white cardboard file boxes were stacked ceiling high like Doric columns supporting the ceiling.
The bed was the room’s only clean spot. Across from the bed, on top of a long dresser, was a large TV, now turned off, a video game console, and a stack of at least fifty video games.
Who the hell is this guy?
John made his way past the first wall of mess and noticed a door to his left, slightly ajar, revealing an adjoining room bathed in the blue light from a bank of monitors. Only then did John notice the man was holding a black gun in his left hand.
“Just in case you were someone else,” he said, noticing John’s surprise. The man gently set the gun on a stack of boxes and led John toward the other room. “Actually, it’s for the rats; you should see the size of the fuckers here.”
As the man walked two paces ahead, John considered grabbing the gun, given that his one defense had no effect on the man. He resisted the urge, though his instincts were screaming for him to do otherwise. Besides, the man wasn’t exactly screaming danger, what with his messy hair, flabby gut, and cheeky grin.
“Hey, lemme put some pants on. I don’t wanna get you all hot and bothered with these sexy legs.”
The man paused as if waiting for John to laugh. When no laugh came, the man disappeared back into the first room. John stood in the adjoining room with its bank of monitors, confused, trying to make sense of his surroundings.
The second room was equally messy, though more organized and seemed as if some sort of work was being done inside. Long folding tables with television and closed circuit monitors lined three walls. There were two wheeled office chairs — one at a computer station, the other sitting in front of the monitors. Rows of computer hard drives with different colored lights, blinking and steady, lined the floor beneath the farthest table. The room seemed like some kind of secret headquarters.
But headquarters of what?
The man returned, now dressed in black jeans and black biker boots, holding two cans of Mountain Dew. He held one up, offering it to John, who declined with an absentminded shake of his head.
“What is this place?” John began, then asked, “Who are you?”
“Larry Keriowski at your service.” He extended a hand, grinning wide. “It’s okay, I’m vampire-proof.”
They shook. Larry’s soft hands matched his mushy midsection. John noticed his fingertips were coated in an orange powdered residue. “Sorry, I was eatin’ Cheetos; want some?”
John shook his head and repeated his first question.
“This,” Larry said, waving a hand around, “is the war room. I’ve been waiting for you to come back.”
John circled the “war room,” his confusion doubled.
Larry explained that he was using the equipment to track any sort of news that would let him know when John had returned, in case he hadn’t found his way home.
“I figured I might get some unexplained deaths from some small-town news a month or two from now. Little did I know you’d be all over CN-fucking-N.”
John looked up as a handful of screens began a video of John from earlier. He stepped closer to the screen.
“Oh my God.”
Though John had vague memories of the man he drained on the street, they were fuzzy, without detail. Seeing himself, through footage someone had shot at the scene, sent a chill down his spine and cemented the reality of his murderous actions. While the video was of him, it didn’t seem possible he could do such a thing.
“I’m a monster.”
Larry laughed. “Well, not quite, but I can see how you’d get that.”
John sat in one of two chairs and looked Larry dead in the eyes.
“How do I know you? And why aren’t you surprised that I don’t remember you?”
Larry’s eyes flitted nervously for a moment but then returned with their jovial light.
“I’m your apprentice,” Larry said. “You’ve been teaching me magick. That’s magic with a K.”
“Magick? What are you talking about?”
“You really don’t remember … anything?”
John shook his head.
“Wow, it worked better than we hoped.”
John felt the hairs on his neck stand on end as something in his stomach twisted. What the hell did that mean? Better than WHO hoped? He started glancing around for another weapon, wondering if Larry had grabbed the pistol while he was changing his clothes.
“Relax, John.” Larry popped the tab from his Mountain Dew and took a deep swig. “You asked me to wipe your memories and bury you.”
“I asked you to what?” John said, trying to make sense of Larry’s confusing statement.
“You came to me two weeks ago, asking me to call Adam, a wiper who could could erase your memory and bury you alive. You said ‘they’ had found you again and that you needed to protect someone.”
“How does burying me protect someone? Who was I running from? And who was I trying to protect?” An idea flashed through John’s mind, the woman in the memory delivered by Abigail, but he didn’t want to give Larry any information until he was sure he could trust him.
“Yo
u didn’t say who, only that you could make sure they couldn’t read your mind if it was wiped clean. That involved a spell and a dash of temporary death”
“Well, why didn’t you come to get me? How many days have I been gone? And why wasn’t I completely buried?” Questions swarmed through John’s head faster than he could ask them.
“You told me not to come, that I needed to go into hiding and you’d find me. I’m not sure why you weren’t completely buried, whatever that means, because I didn’t bury you. The wiper did. You’ve been gone for two weeks.”
Larry looked at John, shaking his head. He grabbed the other chair, sat, rolled closer, and leaned forward with his hands out as if about to launch into a lengthy explanation.
“You’re not a human, John. You’re from another dimension, one that was once connected to this one. Think of it as an Earth Two, if you will,” Larry said, making a globe with his hands, “except the place you’re from is called Otherworld by anyone who knows of it. Its also called Orbis Alia, but that’s just in the old texts. It’s a place where stuff like vampires and fairies and all sorts of other crazy shit isn’t the stuff of fairy tales. Over there, it’s all real.”
John stared at Larry, trying to determine if he was insane, on drugs, or just fucking with him. Still, given all that had happened tonight, John supposed anything was possible.
But fairies?
“You’re a feeder. You need to feed off the life force of others to live. It’s kinda where the whole vampire myth came from, your people, though a lot got lost in translation. But some things are the same, including an extreme weakness to daylight. But on the plus side, you’re practically immortal, and age very slowly here.”
“Immortal?”
“Well, you were immortal, I should say. Then, fourteen years ago or so, you found a solution, to become human, for lack of a better word.”
“You mean, I wasn’t a feeder anymore?”
“No, you were able to live like anyone else and go outside during the day. You could even touch people without killing them.”
John looked at his hands, realizing how quickly he’d felt the weight of his curse and how he longed to lose his deadly touch.
“You were the happiest I’d ever seen you,” Larry continued, “even though you’d gotten sick a few times and could feel the effects of aging. You said it was all worth it.”
She must be special if I gave up immortality.
“Are there others?”
“Other what?” Larry asked.
“People from Otherworld? Feeders?”
“There are Others, but not many. And not everyone from there is a feeder,” Larry explained. “The feeding thing is like a disease that exists on the other side and was brought over here. There are only a few like you here.”
“How did we meet?”
“I was a PI, and we met about sixteen years ago when you needed me to look into a … personal matter. Soon enough, you hired me on full-time to take care of various things and help you get out of all the jams your condition sometimes got you into. In return, you occasionally taught me some magick. In addition to a nice paycheck, of course.”
“Which is why you’re immune to my touch?”
“Not exactly,” Larry said, “it’s a long story, but suffice it to say, I’m the only immune human I know of. So, anyway, two weeks ago, you came to me in a panic. You were a lot more secretive than normal, didn’t want me to know what was going on, saying it could put me in danger. More danger than usual.”
“I need to know everything you know.”
Larry leaned forward, his smile gone.
“There are some things you told me not to tell you, no matter how much you begged or threatened. Otherwise, you said, things could get dangerous for everyone. Hope you understand.”
John glared, wondering if his use of the word “Hope” was intentional.
“You have to tell me.”
“And you have to trust me,” Larry said, “or at least trust yourself and the instructions you gave me.”
“Can you at least tell me who is after me? Because I don’t think I was able to … ”
John heard footsteps approaching in the next room.
Larry leaped from his seat and grabbed the gun from his waistband — so he did get the gun — with surprising agility, especially for a fat guy. He ran into the room, weapon drawn. John followed and saw the target, Abigail, standing in room, confused, eyes wide as Larry descended.
“No!” John meant to scream, “She’s with me,” but could only make an incoherent yelp. He reached out desperately to grab Larry’s shoulder and pull him back, but Larry was too far ahead, gun drawing down on Abigail too fast for him to do anything but be a helpless witness.
A sharp pain shot through John’s brain, spine, and then his extended arm as a bolt of blinding energy shot from his hand and slammed Larry forward with the rolling force of an ocean wave.
Larry flew into a pile of boxes. His gun bounced on the floor and skidded toward Abigail. She grabbed it and handed it to John, who was shaking, frightened and on his knees, suddenly exhausted.
Larry sat up, rubbing his head. “What the hell?”
John aimed the gun at Larry, finger tight on the trigger, gun wobbly in his hand. “She’s with me.”
Larry looked at him, then up for a moment, “Ah, she’s the girl on the TV, the one you kidnapped.”
“Whoa,” Abigail said to John as she stepped cautiously toward him. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
John looked up and smiled. “Yeah, me either.”
Then John noticed that the gun, still trained on Larry, was violently shaking.
“Dude, you might want to sit,” Larry said, inching toward John.
“Wha ... ?” John said, before the world spun black and fell in around him.
Twenty-Two
Abigail
Abigail reached out to grab John as he started his collapse to the floor.
“Whoa, there.” The pudgy man grabbed Abigail around the waist and pulled her back. “You don’t wanna touch him.”
She took a tentative step back then dipped down and grabbed the gun. The man felt John’s neck for a pulse, shook his head, dragged him across the floor, and propped him against the wall.
“You … you can touch him?” Abigail asked, surprised.
“Yeah,” the man said, standing up and rubbing his forehead, which was already turning a bright shade of red from being knocked to the ground. “John and I go way back. Name’s Larry.”
He offered his hand out to shake. Abigail ignored it.
“It’s okay. I’m not one of them.”
He waited a moment before withdrawing his hand.
Abigail looked over at her fallen angel while keeping one eye fixed on Larry in case he made any sudden moves. She wasn’t yet sure she could trust him and hoped he wouldn’t ask for the gun, even though most of her felt silly holding the heavy metal in her hands. It wasn’t as if she knew how to shoot. She imagined missing her target, pissing Larry off, and having the gun used against her. She wished she could just make it disappear so nobody would be able to use it.
“Is he going to be okay?”
“I think so,” Larry said, “do you … know what he is?”
“Some kind of vampire?”
“More or less,” Larry said, “but with touch rather than biting. He feeds off the energy of our souls. Only now, he just shot all his energy at me.”
“Are you okay?” Abigail asked, courtesy in her voice but nowhere else.
“Yeah, I’ve had worse.” Larry smiled. “Now that he’s running on empty, he’ll be out cold for a while. He should be okay. But, we’ll need to take precautions.”
Abigail watched Larry move toward the back of the motel room, kicking empty soda cans aside as he waded through a sea of trash. What a pig, Abigail thought. Larry swiped a stack of newspapers off of a black trunk, flipped its fasteners open, and thrust his hands inside. Abigail tightened her grip on the gun
, eyes focused in anticipation. Larry retrieved a rough-looking white jacket with long sleeves and an assembly of straps and buckles. Whatever it was, it didn’t look good.
“We need to restrain him.”
“What? Why?” Abigail asked, nerves tickling her neck.
Larry dropped the jacket in front of John. A heavy thud echoed in the room as the metallic buckles banged against each other and the floor. He turned to Abigail, squatted on his haunches and folded his hands in front of him.
“Listen, I know you don’t know me from Adam and you’re probably scared. But I need you to trust me when I tell you this one thing, okay?”
Abigail glanced at the gun in her trembling hands then back up at Larry. She nodded, her head barely moving.
“When John wakes up, he’s going to be very hungry. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Abigail thought she did, but at the same time, knew she was missing a finer point. She shook her head.
“John’s tank is empty. If he doesn’t feed as soon as he wakes, well, our boy could die of starvation. But the bad part for us is that when he’s that hungry, he becomes something else entirely.”
Abigail didn’t like where this was headed; the acid in her stomach agreed.
“He will feed off of the first person he sees. Won’t matter if it’s you, me, his own mother, or all three of us and a birthday cake; the hunger overrides everything he knows. Which is why we need to put this jacket on him. To protect ourselves.”
The small room felt suddenly smaller. “He wouldn’t hurt me,” Abigail said, her voice coming out more childish and whiny than she wanted.
A smile spread across Larry’s face. There was something in the smile, not mocking her statement, but rather some sort of genuine kindness that matched the gentle gleam in his hazel eyes. He looked a bit gruff, but Abigail suspected Larry was secretly a teddy bear.
“I don’t know what happened between you guys.” Larry pointed to the rows of monitors replaying news coverage of the kidnapping just beyond the doorway. “Or how you came to be traveling together, but you’ve got no idea what John is capable of.”