Blood Worship (Chasing Vampires)

by Barbara L. Black

  “When we searched his room, we found a scrap of paper with your name and address on it, Jessie. I’m going to share some things with you, Jessie, in hopes that you’ll share what you know with me. I know you’re not involved but I think you know something, and these people know that.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her and Jessie nodded.

  “About seven months ago, a dealer got killed. Gunshot to the head. There were witnesses, who walked in on the whole thing, but they were looking to buy and they were high already. All they could give us was that it was a big guy, young, with blond hair, but he left his gun.” Bennett leaned back in the chair and the legs creaked.

  “That gun was supposed to be locked in an evidence room. It had been used in a robbery a year ago, and that meant it was a cop. We got it down to two guys who had access to the evidence room who fit the description, and Corey was one of them. Turns out the other guy was at his mother’s funeral in Idaho that day, and there were dozens of witnesses. We got one of the dealers form the tap on Corey’s phone. Do you know a Dan Jackson, or ever heard anyone talk about him?”

  “I’ve got some stuff in my room that you might be interested in,” Jessie said slowly, guiltily. She went to get the package of stuff she’d taken from Dan’s bedroom, and then she told him everything that had happened to her.

  Jessie felt better now that someone else knew about Sylvia shooting at her, and about the threatening phone calls, and even about the midnight visit from the man who pretended to be a cop. She left out the part about her dead mother talking to her and the strange things that had been happening to her. She wasn’t an idiot. She didn’t want them locking her up in some psycho ward somewhere.

  Later, when Jessie was in her room, she sat on her bed thinking about the picture she had found in the package in Dan Jackson’s room. Sergeant Bennett had read her the riot act about getting involved and for withholding information from him. He’d told her that he could put her in jail for what she’d done, even though she’d done it for the right reasons. He also said that he would put her in protective custody right now if it weren’t for the fact that they had already begun arresting some of the suspected killers. He felt that the danger had lessened somewhat, but he was still arranging for a police officer to spend the night. Bennett had been really upset, and so had Mrs. Davis. The little old woman had tears in her eyes when she told Jessie she must promise never to do anything like that again. She could have been killed like her friends, and that would just destroy her. Jessie had hugged her fiercely, but she hadn’t promised.

  Jessie sighed. She couldn’t sleep, she was too wound up. She didn’t want to go downstairs and watch television with the police officer currently on the couch, that would make them both uncomfortable, so she would just sift through all the things she knew. She had to keep her brain busy to keep from thinking about the torment that Kira and her mother must have gone through before they died. She didn’t want to think about Shannon being a murderer, about how she’d probably helped to kill all the people…

  Stop it! She ordered herself sharply. Just stop it right now. She willed the tears away and began to think.

  She closed her eyes and summoned up the picture of the house in her mind. It was bothering her, that house – she knew she’d seen it before. She just had to remember where it was. She thought and thought about it until her head was swimming and her eyes were burning. She had to quit now and get some sleep. She would call Bennett tomorrow and talk to him about it. He wasn’t so bad. At least he cared about finding the person who was going around murdering people. Jessie fell across the bed, yawning. Her eyes closed and she hugged her pillow close.

  And while she was sleeping, as often happens, the answer came to her.

  They were ten, and the three of them were supposed to be staying with Shannon’s Abuela while their mothers worked together at the Saturday job they’d found. Abuela, Shannon’s grandmother, was old. She’d fallen asleep, which made it the perfect time to go exploring.

  Abuela’s house was down by the river and Jessie had heard her mother talking to Shannon’s mother about it. Abuela’s husband had bought the land and built the house years and years ago, when the land was cheap. It had been a small Cuban community within Fort Myers then, but all her neighbors had sold out and moved away, one by one, and now sprawling, colossal monstrosities peopled with young white professionals surrounded the tiny little Cuban woman in her tiny little house. Abuela felt out of place in her own neighborhood, but her husband had made this house with his own hands and she wouldn’t leave. All her memories were here, she said.

  They turned off the path that wound down from the house, wandering idly along the riverbank. Kira picked up a stick and swished it back and forth in the water, splashing them. Laughing, they retaliated, and when they were done, they were wet from head to toe. But that was okay, the Florida sun was hot and they’d dry quickly.

  “Come on, let’s do it,” Shannon urged, wringing the water out of the long braid her mother always made of her thick, dark hair. “We won’t get caught. Nobody ever comes here.”

  “Yes,” Kira said. “I want to do it, too. We always say we’re going to, but we never do.”

  They were talking about going into the house.

  Or as long as they could remember, they’d been fascinated by the abandoned house down by the river. When they’d told Abuela about it, she had warned them away. It was an evil house, she insisted, and there was bad gris gris there. Shannon had laughed scornfully when she left the room, telling them not to pay any attention. She was just an ignorant old woman and she was superstitious. Everyone knew those were just made up stories.

  They had started to go inside many times, but they always lost their nerve and turned away. Something about the looming place made Jessie uneasy, and she listed her fears out loud to the other two.

  The flooring might be rotten. There might be pygmy rattlers in there. Or coral snakes. Or palmetto bugs, those giant flying cockroaches that were a sick joke from God. Or rats. Or monsters…

  Kira and Shannon jeered, but Jessie still hesitated. It wasn’t that she didn’t like to take risks, but going into abandoned houses could kill you. Especially that house…

  “Come on,” Shannon said impatiently. “If you don’t go with us, we’re going alone.”

  “Yes, come,” Kira said with a sly smile. “My Jessie wouldn’t be afraid.”

  They all laughed then; that was what Kira’s sister Caitlin called Jessie when she learned to talk. My Jessie. Jessie had played with her a lot because she was enthralled with the sweet-smelling little monster, and Caitlin followed her around like a little puppy. Kira had taken the term for a while to tease, and now used it whenever she wanted to cajole Jessie into doing something.

  So Jessie said yes, but a small shudder worked its way up her spine. She didn’t want to go in the house, but she didn’t want them to call her chicken, either.

  In the back of the house was a small door covered over with weathered boards which had long since shrunk with age. Through the gaps between the boards they could make out the door itself, held closed by a padlock with a rusted hasp.

  Gingerly, they tested one of the boards and the corroded nails gave way with a screeching groan. It only took them scant seconds to pull three more off. Shannon grabbed the padlock and Jessie held her breath. If the padlock gave, she would be committed to going inside.

  “Be stuck, be stuck,” she thought, and crossed her fingers for luck.

  But the rusted hasp broke loose, leaving the lock in Shannon’s hand. She discarded it with a moue of distaste, wiping the orange rust on her shorts. Kira pushed the door open and crawled through, Shannon pushing from behind. Jessie was the last to squirm through the gap.

  For a moment, the deep shadows blinded her, but then her eyes adjusted to the dim light of the interior. Jessie looked around. They were standing inside what obviously used to be a kitchen. The remains of an old cook stove were shoved off to one corner of the roo
m. A sink hung crookedly from the wall, drooping almost to the floor.

  It all made Jessie feel very uneasy inside. She didn’t know why, but there was something here that was very, very wrong.

  Shannon pushed on the swinging door that led into a hallway, and it gave with a creak. They walked down the hall silently, looking at the peeling wallpaper, passing a staircase, until they arrived at a central room.

  Kira exclaimed in wonder. There were paintings still hanging on the walls. Beautiful paintings, exquisitely rendered in vivid colors. There must have been at least fifteen of them, and Jessie could tell even then that they shouldn’t have been left in an abandoned house. These were good paintings, perhaps even great ones, and they were worth a lot of money, but Jessie felt uneasy when she looked at them. She wouldn’t let Kira take one off the wall and carry it home, though Kira wanted to.

  There was blood in every painting. Jessie whirled to look at them all, feeling sicker and sicker. A fox was being torn to pieces by hounds in one. In another, a dead bird lay upon a table, dripping crimson onto the floor. A deer was being set upon by wolves and it was still alive, still trying to struggle to its feet while the rapacious canines ate great, dripping chunks of its flesh. A man in a loincloth was being hacked to death by warriors in armor, his mouth leaking blood and his eyes full of agony. They were all full of blood, and they made her sick.

  And suddenly it came to her what was bothering her about the house. There wasn’t any dust.

  If the house had been standing vacant all these years, where was the dirt? Where were the bird nests and the insect life and the filth that it should have accumulated?

  Why wasn’t it dirty in here?

  Another hallway led off from the room to the back of the house. Shannon wanted to go down it, but Jessie threw a fit and refused to go further, because the house looked empty, but it didn’t feel empty. It felt as if something or someone was lurking inside these walls, waiting for them to come closer. And it was down that other hallway and it would kill them and play in their blood and it would be just like those horrible pictures. The house was whispering to them, wanting them, and Jessie wondered if there had been other visitors to this house. Had the visitors found what was waiting here for them, and had they screamed in agony while no one could hear?

  Jessie knew they had to leave now, before it was too late, before whatever it was came out of its lair and got them. She whimpered and moved closer to the others.

  “Let’s go,” she said urgently. “There’s something wrong here.”

  A loud noise made them scream out in panic, run down the hallway and out the way they had come, their hearts pounding. Once outside, they looked at each other and laughed, because it all seemed so silly now. Shannon pushed Jessie and called her a chicken. Kira said boastfully that she hadn’t been afraid, she just didn’t want to make Shannon and Jessie feel bad ‘cause they were the only ones running.

  Both Shannon and Kira must have felt the same things that Jessie had felt in the house, because they never went back into it again. They never even discussed it again. When Abuela died a couple years later, the family sold the house and the land and divided the money. Jessie forgot all about the house.

  Now, in Jessie’s troubled sleep, she was again standing at the back door to that house and she knew that she must enter it, once again. She put her hand on the doorknob and she felt the coldness travel all the way to the center of her heart. The door opened soundlessly, just as she remembered.

  It was quiet as a tomb inside the house.

  She had left the outside world behind and stepped into an ancient one, a world so different and frightening that it made her feel as if her blood had turned to ice in her veins. It pumped sluggishly through her, and Jessie moved slowly, slowly down the hallway. She was in the central room once again. Shadows danced all around her and a glow seeped from beneath a door that seemed far way. The door at the end of the other hallway. The hallway that had so frightened her when she was just a child.

  The hallway that frightened her now.

  “Jessie,” it called sweetly, seductively. “Come to me, Jessie. Come to me now.”

  She knew that voice; it was the voice of the man who had tried to force his way into her home. It was the voice of the man who thought he was a vampire.

  It was the voice of Dian Carman.

  Jessie saw the paintings all around her, still filled with bold reds and greens and blues. The paintings should not still be so bright, so filled with vivid color; they should have been dulled and dirty, but something in this place kept them fresh. Huge war-horses trampled fallen men in them; there were broken bodies and decapitated heads and men bound with chains dragged behind chariots. In all the scenes of slaughter, the blood gleamed bright scarlet, seeming almost to ooze from the frames.

  Blood and death was all around her, and Dian Carman called her name, over and over. Jessie stepped forward into the darkness, the noise of her footsteps echoing in the house. She walked down the hall and opened the door to the room, and Dian Carman stood there in the emptiness, in all of his beauty. He held out a hand to her; he seemed kind and benevolent, and he smiled at her. Jessie started to smile back, and then she stopped. She squinted her eyes.

  There was something wrong here, something…Jessie stared hard at the man dressed all in black silk. She did what Grandma Belle had said to do, and tried to look with the eyes underneath her eyes.

  Whatever that meant.

  Jessie looked deep beneath the surface beauty, behind his gilded skin. She saw a glint of something that exuded evil, and if she squinted just right, she could see it. Jessie concentrated harder, ignoring his voice speaking so gently and harmoniously.

  And then she saw, clearly; Dian Carman’s very bones were black with rot. While she stared, she watched his face change. It melted in front of her like it was made of wax, and she could see all of the evil underneath. His teeth lengthened and became fangs, and his eyes were red glowing circles of pure, scorching hate that wanted to eat her whole.

  She saw the true face of Dian Carman. He was a demon.

  “I’m your friend,” the monster-face said to her, and it made Jessie sick to hear that honeyed voice coming from the face of evil.

  “Use your true voice,” she said. “I know what you are.”

  Jessie saw that the room had changed, too. It was no longer empty; an altar made of some dark stone lay directly behind Dian Carman. Jessie shuddered when she saw the stains upon the altar, because she knew that the stains were blood, the blood of all those he had killed.

  She began to see other things appear inside the once empty room. There was a broken skull beside her feet, grinning up at her. The bones of thighs and hands and ribs lay intertwined in the terrible room. As Jessie watched in horror, more and more bones appeared, skulls and feet and spines, until the room began to fill. The skeletons began to stack on top of each other, rising higher and higher between the two of them. The pile was up to his waist now, and Dian Carman took a step back and hissed in rage.

  “Who is this?” he hissed. “Who dares interfere with me?”

  “Piss off,” said a too-familiar voice, and Jessie laughed. It was her mother’s favorite expression.

  “It’s time to go, baby,” her mother said. “Go on home now. You know what he is and that’s the most important thing. He’ll never fool you again; he’s evil lurking behind a pretty illusion and you can see that now.”

  And just as quickly as that, she was lying in her bed. A hand seemed to caress her face, and Jessie smiled at the sensation.

  “You were never alone,” her mother’s voice said in her ear. “I was always here. When the undead called you, I sent you the memory of the house so that you would remember how you felt inside it that first time. I was right beside you, Jessie, the whole time. Every step you took in that place of evil, I took with you.”

  “I don’t believe in this, Mom,” Jessie said, and there were tears in her voice. “I don’t believe in vampires
and demons and the undead. I don’t even believe in you. You’re dead, and I’m only dreaming.”

  “Oh, honey,” her mother said. “It’s more like a nightmare, isn’t it?”

  When Jessie opened her eyes, she knew what she had to do. She had to go back to that house.

 

  Chapter Eight

  It was easy to sneak away from the cop downstairs. He was looking for someone to break in, not out. Jessie just went out on the edge of her little balcony and hung by her fingertips until she got up the courage to let go. It wasn’t that far to drop and there was only grass beneath her, but it looked like a long way down when you were hanging there. The trick was to close your eyes and hold your breath for a second and then let go, and that is just what Jessie did.

  She almost forgot the cross Mrs. Davis had given her and had to go back inside to get it. It was a good thing she hadn’t let go of the balcony yet when she remembered. Jessie had taken the cross off and put it on her bedside table, and she shoved it in the pocket of her jeans. Then she got her cell phone, turning it off and slipping it into her pocket, too.

  She eased silently through the hedges that bordered the back yard. She still had a key to Kira’s car, and it was parked on the street in front of the Matthew’s house, right where Kira had left it. She’d seen it yesterday and it had sent a pang right through her heart. Kira had loved that junky little car. Jessie said a silent prayer that no one would be awake at the Matthew’s, and that the car would start on the first try. She sighed in relief when both of her little prayers came through.

  She was on her way to that house, but she had a stop to make first.

  Just in case.

  Father Raymond Sullivan didn’t look very priest-like, at least the way Jessie imagined priests were supposed to look. They should be tall and thin, with grave, ascetic faces and always be serene.

  Father Raymond didn’t wear a white collar and he abhorred black suits. He tended to gravitate toward loud Hawaiian shirts and blue jeans. He was short and chubby, and instead of piercing blue eyes, he had weak ones that tended to water. He was nearsighted and he wore big glasses, and he poured sweat constantly. Mandy Hartwell told him once that he was as ‘nervous as a whore in church’.