Turned

by Mazlow, J.

  An empty dinner followed. My short replies soon left everyone talking amongst themselves as I cut my roast into bite sized pieces and ate a few bites before I began simply pushing it around my plate with my fork. Mary was nowhere to be seen and the preacher and his songs were also noticeably absent though I looked for them for different reasons. I drank my beer too quickly, cursed myself for dimming my wits when vampires were everywhere and were not to be trusted even with my brother’s rules in place and then took another and drank it. Hot, bored, and dissatisfied I got up from the table telling anyone that asked that I needed fresh air and made my way out onto the porch. An old woman sat there rocking. My brother and his newest vampires had gone so I stood clutching the rail and looked out over the courtyard at the church. Its white walls glowed as if by its own power. My breath burst from my lungs in little puffs and the cold cleared the beer and warmth of the fireplace from my head. I shivered and clutched my arms close to my body. The night was clear, and the stars were spread so thickly that they draped the sky like a carpet that had a huge hole in it through which the light of the moon flowed. Its light was greenish like a body of water and I could easily make out the face on it. The night sky was crisper and cleaner here in the cool of the north. Behind me laughs and booming voices filled the dining hall while back in the alley’s figures moved slipping into small cottages, talking quietly with one another. A pair of vampires climbed the steps and entered the farmhouse shivering, their faces ashen above the scarves they’d wrapped around their throats. The room quieted briefly and then resumed its bustle. The old woman said nothing behind me, but the creaking of her chair continued steadily while out in the forest the howl of wolves set the dogs to barking as they ran towards the sound. It seemed a shame to be standing out in the cold shivering in thin windbreaker when I could have been drinking in a cozy house, but I was too on edge to sit in there. The night had wound on and more vampires had entered the house and men and women began filing out some wishing me a good night congenially. I didn’t feel sleepy and I didn’t relish the thought of laying on my hard cot in my small cottage listening to the man who shared the room with me, who I’d yet to meet, as I stared at the ceiling and the night light oozing in through the cracks in the wall.

  As I watched the people dispersing through the courtyard, I saw Mary walking quickly across the muddy space a bundle clutched tightly to her chest. The light of the moon shimmered across her hair as it stirred with her steps. I had descended the steps before I even knew what I was doing my gaze never leaving her face, cheeks rosy with cold and her eyes luminous in the dark. Her skirts swayed from side to side just above the ground as she walked. She halted just in front of me, a bit out of breath as if she’d been walking quickly and averted her eyes. She began trailing one foot in a narrow path through the dirt the brown tops of the slip-on shoes she wore peeking out from underneath her faded blue skirts. Her sleeves had fallen away from her arms as she held a pile of neatly folded clothing to her chest. The slight blonde hairs on her arms rose from their goose bump origins rigid and upright but only visible as a shine on her arm or a ripple in the air. In the night, her skin was pale, though her cheeks were tinted with pink as if they’d been rubbed with strawberry. Freckles around her nose faded in and out of her creamy skin. I swallowed and despite the cold my face went flush.

  “Mary,” I said in a cracked voice. I couldn’t raise my eyes from her foot, small and rounded as it moved in and out from underneath her skirt causing the fabric to rise and fall like the tides. She didn’t respond and we stood there for a few moments my face growing hotter and hotter. Someone sniggered as they passed through the courtyard, but I didn’t look up in time to catch the offender. When I did look up Mary’s blush had grown and with it her beauty. My head grew light and flew above my body as my vision began undulating and all sound was caught up in the beating of my heart. My lips felt numb, my tongue thick and my throat parched.

  I remembered a giggle that my mother had uttered covering her mouth as if she were a little girl. An older man, a silver fox my mother had called him, had elicited the magical sound with a single line and it fell from my mouth and hung in the air torturing me with its suspense.

  “You look lovely.”

  She looked up at me and smiled, her wet lips parting slightly to allow her white teeth to shine in the night lighting up her face. “Thank you very much,” she said her voice breathless. My heart raced and I resisted the sudden urge to throw my arms around her. Her eyes were luminous pale blue orbs that drew me into their swirls of green and sprinkles of auburn.

  “Here, these are for you,” she said and shoved the clothing into my arms warm from being held close to her body. I scrambled to keep it from falling to the ground and my hand traced her arm, smooth and delicate. The world collapsed into that point of contact and then it was broken leaving me stunned as if I would fall into her arms. I could smell her on the clothing and in the air a sweet musky scent mingled with the remnants of smoke and cooking. I cradled the bundle in one arm and pulled a sweater from it with the other.

  Her voice grew more confident but was still airy. “They were my brother’s.” She lapsed into another place momentarily and sadness passed across her face. “He died two winters ago. I kept them though; they’re too nice to be wasted. I imagine that you’re cold in that.” She looked distastefully at my windbreaker as she wrinkled it between two fingers thrilling me with the closeness of her touch.

  “I am,” I admitted.

  “It’s only going to get colder and I hope that you’ll stay,” she said clutching her skirts.

  “I think so.” I responded unsure of what I should say, but she seemed to hear what she wanted, and she beamed at me. I beamed back.

  Our bodies were drawing us together but then she said, “I hope they fit you, I let out the pants’ leg and drew in the waist somewhat.” I held the pants at my waist and let the legs drape across mine. “That should work,” she said. Then looked up at me and then at the farmhouse. “I have to go help clean up,” she said. She rushed up to me as quickly as a vampire her skirts swishing as she moved and then her lips soft and warm grazed my cheek and just as quickly she mounted the stairs and left me standing there clutching homespun clothing and watching my hot breath fade away into the night.

  A bright world lit up in the green light of the moon and the twinkles of the stars ushered me back to the small shack where I slept. The camp was for the most part asleep, with several cabins emitting loud snores as I passed them. The dogs never seemed to sleep. Their barks and howls would die down for several moments only to emerge again elsewhere. A rat ran along the shadows of the walls, but nothing could damper my spirits. I felt as if I was living in a fairy tale or a utopia. I stifled the urge to whistle as I walked. When I reached my shack it was all I could do not to rouse my bunkmate to share my exuberance, but instead I slipped my shoes off and undressed, my windbreaker rustling like a snake slithering through leaves. I tossed the clothing carelessly in a pile at the foot of my bed and shivering in the light-splintered darkness of the shack as the outside air blew against my skin I inhaled deeply of the clothes that Mary had brought me, imagining her face. Some unknown scent in the cloth felt so feminine I wondered if she’d washed them with flowers. Then I slipped them on. The cloth was rough against my skin and itchy, but I soon warmed, and I felt as if I was tucked away in Mary’s embrace. I got into bed pulling the blankets up to my chin and basked in the warmth as I recalled the silkiness of her kiss and the smoothness of her skin as my hand had grazed her arm.

  I could not sleep, and I did not want to sleep. The night moved on and I had slipped into a haze half dozing and wakeful dreaming of Mary when I heard footsteps outside of the shack. Immediately I snapped awake, my heart racing and my breath catching in my throat as I strained my ears. All my instincts were screaming at me to quietly get up, to make my way to the door and then bolt and my mind was howling at me with terror that the door was the sole exit and that the footsteps were conv
erging on it. I willed the footsteps to keep on walking while I tried to talk myself down and remind myself that I was surrounded by hundreds of people and the camp’s vampires. Those footsteps could have been anyone’s, a sleepwalker or someone who simply felt the urge to walk through the night but still I shuddered especially when I thought of the free rein my brother gave his vampire companions. My bunkmate rolled over onto his side snorting and the steps came to a halt just outside our walls. I could see the shadows in the holes in the chink of the walls. Whispers I couldn’t make out came from the shadows outside. I lay frozen in the bed, my breath caught pretending to be asleep until the steps moved on and then I sat up wishing for a gun. The shadows moved to the doorway, pulled back the hide covering and suddenly a stocky silhouette with a round head appeared in the seemingly origin less light of the night. The shadow stood utterly still framed in the doorway as the snores of my bunkmate filled the room, and then he extended one thick arm and crooked a finger at me. My panic subsided somewhat though I still imagined that it could be a trap to lure me to an unnoticed death or to having my new clothing stolen. Before I had moved the beckoning man lifted his finger to his mouth and pointed at my bunkmate then he slid out of sight allowing the flap to rustle closed behind him. I stepped quietly out of bed immediately missing the warmth of the blankets and followed with slow sure steps. As the hide fell closed behind me, I looked to the left and the right through the cold clear air. It was early morning, about two hours till the first rays of dawn would come peeking into the valley but compared to the darkness of the hut I’d been sleeping in the night seemed brightly lit. The man stood beside a hut two doors down from my own. I walked towards him and he stepped out into the lane walking ahead of me, leading me through the warren of little alleys. I stifled a yawn as I walked growing impatient as he continued his twisting path looking left and right at each intersection as if he needed to decide his way and keeping close to the walls of the hovels. The moon had set but the stars lent enough light so that I could clearly see that I was following one of the preacher’s burly sons. Though he looked dumb and hulking he moved lithely enough as we traversed a route through the village that I would never be able to recreate. Eventually the huts grew even shoddier, no more than boxes of tacked together plywood topped with a sheet or two of metal crowding a path no wider than two men walking abreast. The preacher’s son disappeared from my view as we neared where the path spilled out onto a pasture that fell away to the river but stepped away from the final building as I stepped onto the pasture.

  “Walk with me,” he said in a deep quiet voice and he walked at my shoulder as we followed the broader path down towards the river.

  “My father sent me to talk with you. He says that as of, yet you are still a man and all men can be saved, not that they will be but that they can be.” He looked at me with disgust with his beady dark eyes set deeply in his large round head before it relaxed a bit. It was as if his father had just whispered into his ear and he was begrudgingly following his father’s command.

  “I’m sorry, what’s your name again?” I asked. The two sons looked so similar I’d wondered if they were twins.

  “I’m Jonathon,” he replied annoyed. We walked steadily away from the village. The night was chill, but the walking combined with the clothing Mary had given me kept me warm. “My father wants you to know that it would be best for you to tell your brother what he wants to hear.”

  “What do you mean? What does my brother want to hear?”

  He pressed his lips together as if he were processing. “Your brother wants to go to war with the General, that’s why he had you interrogate the Made, but he’s not a fool. You came North with the Made and you have access to the Made. It will be best for you if you keep him convinced that he should attack soon.”

  “So, you want me to lie to my own brother,” I snapped louder than I intended.

  “Not lie. My father would never encourage anyone to lie. He simply wants you to only to avoid discouraging your brother. He’s eager to fight. Tell him the vampires are lazy. Tell him that they hate the cold. Tell him that they are unorganized. He’ll eat all of that up.”

  “And what if I don’t?”

  He shrugged. “I was simply instructed to tell you that it was in your best interest to encourage your brother to go to war.” We looked out across the river shimmering in the starlight. The water would meet up with the Mississippi and then it would pass by the General. Perhaps vampires were already traveling northward on its waters en route to crush the camp. Would they be as surprised as Abdul was to discover that it was already infested with vampires?

  “Why do you want my brother to attack so badly?”

  He looked at me as if I were some kind of alien, or worse a vamp. “It’s not about what I want.” He said. “I’m heading back now so wait a bit before you follow or else it may not matter if you cooperate or not. Just think on what I told you.” He turned then and went lumbering back up the pathway towards the village.

  I descended the riverbank passing between the trunks of the short trees that grew there and knelt by the smooth black surface of the water. The starlight turned the ripples gold in the center of the river and the air was much colder. An owl hooted and a fish splashed in the middle of the river. I felt extremely tired, even more tired than my lack of sleep merited. Did the preacher believe that my brother would die in his assault on the General? Was that why he wanted me to lead my brother down that path? It seemed obvious that he wanted my brother out of the way. I felt dense and bewildered by the plots and desires of the people moving around me. The preacher wanted my brother gone, my brother wanted more vampires and he wanted to attack, and Mary? Did she want something? She had found my brother handsome but obviously he hadn’t shown her any attention else why would she show interest in me. Unless it was another plot I couldn’t see. I sat down even though the soil was cold and dense and leaned my head against my knees and listened to the peaceful murmuring of the river as it flowed by slowly. My thoughts nagged at me though, picking apart the peaceful atmosphere woven by the grove. The preacher didn’t come to me himself; he sent his son in the dead of night and even then, we had to leave the camp before we could talk. Did my brother know of the preacher’s intentions? There was a tension between the two of them but what kept the preacher alive? I decided I had to attend services, hear the preacher speak and see what I could learn there. Perhaps Mary attended the gatherings and I could see her, sit with her, and talk if I could not talk with the preacher. Thoughts of Mary filled me with warmth and a brightness that took some of the edge off my paranoia, fatigue, and the chill of the night. Still I felt as if a net was closing around me. My mind was urging me to run. To get into the forest and never turn back, but even though no one was around, and it was early in the morning I had no doubt that one of my brother’s vamps would find me and return me. If not, as I was trying to leave then shortly afterwards.

  When the sun rose behind me and light brought the red and gold tree leaves alive, I got up and began walking slowly back towards the village. Another day in the corn awaited me. Men were up and moving cattle to new pasture on the valley’s walls behind the village. I trudged along until a bit of orange on the side of the wagon rut caught my eye. It was a flower opening to the warmth of the sun. A trickle of dew ran down one of its petals like a tear. I crouched down and admired its delicate beauty before I plucked it smiling and thinking of Mary.

  The flower drew some snickers as I held it close to my chest and walked into the dining hall of the farmhouse. Everyone was finishing up their grits and Mary wasn’t in sight so ignoring my snarling stomach and the roomful of stares I pushed my way into the kitchen. Mary was pouring all the remaining grits into a single pot and stacking the empty ones by the doorway. The ladies’ heads snapped around as the door creaked open and Liza opened her mouth to scream at me but forgot to as I stepped across the room and presented the flower to Mary. She took it with a trembling hand, crusty with grits and red, and her mou
th agape, held it close to her chest, sniffed it and smiled at me. It was the most beautiful smile in the world her eyes lighting up like beacons and her cheeks transitioning to a bright red blush as she saw the rest of the ladies in the room staring at her. I grinned back and then said, “Thank you ladies,” before backing out of the room.