Her Loving Husband's Curse

by Meredith Allard

  Martin stopped midsentence. In the flash of a flicker of white concern in his black eyes he showed the world he knew he said too much.

  CHAPTER 16

  The next night James walked into the great room to see the blinds still drawn, the blackout curtains closed, the room left in eerie shadows that echoed the darkness outside. Sarah sat on the sofa, her eyes darting from James to the front door to the window and back to James, a quiet but alert Grace in her arms. Olivia, Jennifer, and Chandresh stood along the wall glancing uneasily at each other while Timothy hovered close to Howard.

  “Here’s James,” Sarah said. “Oversleeping as usual.”

  She tried to smile but her lips quivered. James stopped midstep, his head tilted, listening until he made out the footsteps, the voices, and the clicking cameras outside.

  “What is it?” he asked. No one answered. “Sarah, what’s wrong? Who’s outside?”

  “Everyone,” Olivia said, the weariness weighing down her voice. She slapped her hand in the air like she was shooing them all away. “Reporters. Photographers. Tourists. Busybodies.”

  “They want to see the vampire’s house,” Jennifer said.

  “This is ridiculous,” James said. “I’m telling them to leave.”

  “Don’t,” Sarah said. “When I opened the door to let Olivia in they rushed the house, shouting questions, snapping pictures. She barely made it inside.”

  “How many are there?” James asked.

  “Not that many,” said Howard. “Maybe fifty.”

  “Only fifty? What a relief.” James paced to the door and reached for the knob, his hand hanging midair until he dropped it. His agitation shimmered outward and he quaked. “They can’t stay there,” he said.

  “Sarah’s right,” Olivia said. “If you go out you’ll only make it worse.”

  “Look at the mess Hempel made,” said Jennifer.

  Chandresh took her hand. “This is what he wanted, and he wasn’t going to stop until he got it. Now we have to figure out how to make this right.”

  “Can this ever be right?” Howard asked.

  “You’d be amazed at what some people can overcome,” Chandresh said. “Not only overcome, but rise above and become better afterward.”

  Jennifer smiled at her strong-armed, doe-eyed man, and he kissed her cheek.

  When no one left the wooden gabled house by midnight, the crowd dwindled away. Timothy peeked around the blackout curtains as the last of the lookie-loos disappeared.

  “Maybe we should just confess,” Timothy said.

  “Why can’t you understand, Timothy…”

  “No, James, listen. I wanted to confess to Hempel last year, but you talked me out of it. I wrote a book about being a vampire that was turned down by every publisher and you told me it was for the best. But what if you’re wrong? What if we add our voices to this new vampire song everyone is singing? Everyone’s talking about the Vampire Dawn. We should too.”

  “And then we’ll sit around the campfire singing ‘Kumbaya’ and join hands and swear eternal friendship.” The sarcasm stretched James’s voice thin. “That’s not how it works, Timothy. We haven’t seen the repercussions from this Vampire Dawn because it’s too new. But it will come, and the humans won’t be as accepting as you keep wanting to believe.”

  Timothy’s pale cheek flushed hot with frustration. “Guess what, James—your way didn’t work. Your name’s in the paper, and so is mine, and so is Chandresh’s, and so is Jocelyn’s and there was just a crowd of people outside your door. We can’t hide any more. We need to help people understand they don’t need to fear us.”

  “Listen to James, Timothy,” Howard said. He put a fatherly hand on his son’s shoulder, but Timothy shook him away.

  “No, Dad, I’ve been listening to James and everyone still found out about us. Every night more of us are coming out, and it’s time to join them.”

  “Who else is coming out?” Olivia asked.

  “There’s that television show tomorrow night,” Jennifer said. “A vampire is submitting himself for a medical examination in front of a live studio audience. It’s been all over the news.”

  James dropped his head into his hands. “Doesn’t he know the problems he’s going to cause for us after he’s proven to be dead?”

  “We were human once,” Chandresh said. “We have the same foibles and weaknesses. We want to feel important. We want recognition as a way to feel like we matter.”

  “Now is their chance to get the attention they’ve had to deny themselves,” Olivia said. “All the world will be watching.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” James said.

  * * * * *

  The event boasted more viewers than the Academy Awards or the Super Bowl. Millions were glued to their television sets or their computer screens as one vampire, a two hundred and ten year-old named Justin, who looked around nineteen with longish hair the color of the setting sun and eyes like intense coals. Justin had agreed to medical tests in front of the world. This was it, the commercials had promised. If you want to know once and for all if the legends are true, then watch—8:00 p.m. tonight, 7 Central.

  As promised, Thursday at 8 p.m. three medical doctors from Yale, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins University hooked Justin to hospital monitors so they could tests his heartbeat, his breath, his temperature, his pulse. One camera closed in on a gray-haired, gray-bearded doctor with Justin’s wrist in his hand.

  “There’s no pulse,” the doctor said. He spoke loudly, as though he needed to hear his own words.

  “There’s no heartbeat,” said another doctor. His words sounded like a question.

  The third doctor, the oldest of the three, his wisdom in his benevolent smile, said, “There’s no doubt in my mind that this man isn’t alive, at least not in any traditional sense. Look here.” He gestured at the flat-line monitor. “He has no breath, no heartbeat, no temperature and therefore no warmth to his skin.” He shook his head, his hand on his cheek, and the camera close-up caught a line of sweat beads on his upper lip. “These results prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this man’s body is dead. As a man of science, I never believed this day would come. This is truly miraculous.”

  “Are you declaring this man dead?” a reporter asked.

  “This man is dead, yet he walks. It’s impossible, but it’s true.”

  A close-up showed the monitors and their wires, as though the news director needed to prove that everything was plugged in, the power came from the electrical socket in the wall, the ends touching Justin. No editing tricks here. This man was dead. There was even a live studio audience, and random people were chosen to listen through the stethoscope, touch Justin’s wrist, watch his unmoving chest. As people became convinced of Justin’s preternatural condition they ran away screaming, or burst into tears, or quivered in their seats. Others expanded like puffer birds, unafraid. One woman in the audience stood and said, “I’m not afraid. He looks like my grandson.” Another woman said, “This is the work of the Devil. Only Satan could conjure something so hideous.” Someone else shouted, “What’s so hideous about that baby-faced boy?”

  An elderly man yelled at Justin. “Why are you here? You don’t need to parade what you are for all the world to see. Why don’t you keep it to yourself and let the rest of us live in peace?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with what I am,” Justin said. He didn’t look annoyed. He looked the elderly man in the eye.

  “What you are is an abomination before God.”

  “The truth is, sir, I don’t know why I am the way I am, or even how I came to be this way. But I cannot change my nature. I am what I am.”

  A woman pointed at the boyish-looking vampire. “I see the coldness, the murder in your eyes,” she said. “All you want is my death.”

  Justin looked at the floor, his eyes small in concentration, his hands folded in his lap. He would find the right words. Finally, he shook his head.

  “I don’t wish for your blood or your dea
th, ma’am. I know this is hard to accept. The existence of my kind doesn’t seem natural. I wish you peace, ma’am. That’s all.”

  “Dead is dead,” another man said. “They should be buried six feet under and left to rot with the other corpses.”

  “The whole world has gone mad,” a woman said to the television camera. “If you believe vampires are real, I have some oceanside property in Kansas I want to sell you.”

  The cameras pulled back, and the doctors crowded Justin, hands stretched out, grasping as though they were the mortally ill needing the faith healer who might fix them. They asked questions, and the young-looking man answered as well as he could. He didn’t know the answers to all their questions himself. Finally, he said, “It’s magic.”

  A woman shouted, “Hallelujah!”

  Fade to black.

  * * * * *

  Suddenly, people weren’t hiding their fear. It was all too familiar to Sarah, who had felt the same nail-chewing friction in 1692. The same kind of far-reaching fear. She saw it in the way people’s eyes darted left and right in the grocery store. She saw it in their tapping legs and high shoulders in the post office. She even saw it in the library, where people avoided her entirely. She had given her two-week notice to Jennifer, and she would be leaving soon anyway, but it hurt her, this sudden invisibility among people she had been friendly with for over a year.

  Even before moving to Salem, Sarah had never revealed much of herself to anyone. She always had friends, but she never felt a part of anything. She kept her own counsel, and she gave nothing away so others would have nothing to reproach her with. Not that she didn’t have a caring, loving heart, but she spent most of her life hiding it, keeping it safe in the locked cage of her chest, where no one could take it away or break it. Since the past-life regression the year before, she realized her cautious nature as Sarah was a result of her experience as Elizabeth. When James came into her life again her walls came tumbling down, only now she wondered if she needed to erect them again.

  Sarah comforted herself with the thought that she was paranoid, that’s all. They’re thoughts in your head, she’d say to herself, problems you’re creating in your own mind. And then someone, then someone else, and someone else again, would pass her with eyes straight ahead, staring at something that wasn’t there, not acknowledging the space she occupied. They no longer held the library doors open for her. One librarian, a scowling, dark-haired elf in glasses and permanently collapsed lips, not only wouldn’t acknowledge Sarah when they arrived at the same time but she walked faster so she could get into the library without worrying about such niceties as polite greetings. Normally, the elf managed at least a terse nod when Sarah said good morning. Again, Sarah tried to convince herself she worried too much, but she also decided she should be ready for anything. She would hope for the best and expect the worst. She wouldn’t be caught unprepared by the madness ever again.

  Her last night in the library was quiet. It was Spring Break, and the library echoed with the absence of bodies to fill the space. She sat behind the librarians’s desk and looked around at the industrial-style space with large windows and overhead beams, the bright fluorescent lights, the gray and blue chairs scattered around the computer terminals or the study desks, the stacks of books stretching wall to wall. The library would always hold a special place in her heart. This job prompted her journey across the country from Los Angeles to Salem. This was where she saw James the first time after their awkward encounter in front of the wooden gabled house. This was where they became friends, he sharing tales about Salem in 1692 and she only too pleased to listen. This was the very desk where she sat where he presented her with a book of Anne Bradstreet’s poems and they recited “To My Dear and Loving Husband” together. Sarah frowned when she thought how it was just above this room, in James’s office on the third floor, where he confronted Kenneth Hempel in the full light of the spring sun.

  Jennifer came out from her office and sat in the swivel chair beside Sarah. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Your witch’s intuition,” Sarah said. “When I first met you I always wondered how you knew what I needed before I knew I needed it.”

  “My mother is better at it than I am.”

  “I know.”

  Jennifer followed Sarah’s gaze across the empty room. “Feeling nostalgic?” she asked.

  Sarah nodded. “This library has been the center of my life as long as I’ve lived here.”

  “Now the center of your life is in your home with your husband and daughter.”

  Sarah felt the deep-seeded joy flush her cheeks hot. “Yes,” she said. But the joy fled and left her cold at the thought of what was happening in the world outside. “What’s going to happen, Jennifer? How is this going to end?”

  Jennifer looked away, and for a flicker Sarah thought she saw fear in her friend’s hazel eyes.

  “What is it?” Sarah asked. “What do you know?”

  Jennifer shook her head. “I don’t know anything, Sarah. I’m as worried as you are.”

  “Did Chandresh tell you something?”

  “Chandresh hasn’t told me a thing. He’s as close-mouthed as your husband. Come on, Mrs. Wentworth.” She took Sarah’s hand and led her out from behind the librarians’s desk. “Cough up the keys. They’re no longer yours.”

  Sarah took the blue and orange Salem State University lanyard from around her neck and handed it to Jennifer. She felt like she was giving away a piece of herself. Jennifer unhooked the keys and handed Sarah back the lanyard. “Keep this,” she said. “A memento.”

  Sarah clasped the lanyard in her hands. “I’ll cherish it, but I do have other mementos. I have you, your mother…”

  “And James.”

  Sarah smiled. “And James.”

  Jennifer looked at the time on the clock on the wall. “We better go. We don’t want to be late to your celebration.”

  “Celebration?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? We’re having a get-together at Jocelyn’s tonight. You know how we Wiccans like to celebrate the solstice and the equinox, the autumn harvest and the winter moon. Now we’re celebrating your New Spring, Sarah. This is your time.”

  “My time for what?”

  Jennifer flipped off the lights, set the alarm, and locked the door as they walked outside. “We’ll have to see,” she said.

  They walked arm-in-arm down Lafayette into Marblehead toward the childcare center, their conversation dotted with the shrieks and giggles of girlfriends.

  “I’ll never forget the look on your face when you saw James looking at you through the window in the library that first time. You looked like you’d seen a ghost.”

  “I thought I had seen a ghost. Here I am minding my own business getting ready for a seminar and suddenly there he was staring right through me. I felt like he knew everything about me.”

  “He did.”

  “I didn’t understand it at the time. I only knew I felt drawn to him.”

  Sarah clutched Jennifer’s arm tighter. She shivered in the evening air, the heavy breeze from the bay still adding a nip in March. There were buds and blooms ready to sprout, spots of color here, more green there. They crossed the street and walked up the short hill toward Primary Time Child Care and Preschool.

  “Should I call James and tell him to meet us at Jocelyn’s?” Sarah asked.

  “He already knows.”

  “So everyone knew but me?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Is your mother cooking? I love your mother’s cooking.”

  “You don’t think I’d let Jocelyn take care of the meal for us, do you? I don’t think she’s cooked in over fifty years.”

  As Sarah opened the door to the Victorian-style house she saw Miss Nancy by the front bay window staring out as though she were looking for someone. When her eyes lit up Sarah realized Miss Nancy was waiting for her.

  “Miss Candice,” Miss Nancy called, moving her eyes from Sarah to scan Jennifer. “Mrs. Wentwor
th is here. Bring Grace and her belongings, please.”

  Miss Candice was a large woman with short arms and cascades of black hair who appeared with Grace in one arm and a pink backpack in the other. Grace wasn’t crying, but she looked upset somehow, or worried, or…Sarah wasn’t sure. She clutched Grace to her heart, stroking her daughter’s gold curls from her topaz eyes, kissing her forehead. Grace clutched Sarah’s neck and buried her face away. Miss Candice held the pink backpack out as though handing month-old laundry to the maid who didn’t do her job. Jennifer took the bag and wrinkled her nose at Sarah.

  “What’s wrong?” Sarah asked.

  “We put children first at Primary Time, Mrs. Wentworth. We’re concerned for the welfare of the children.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Miss Nancy looked at Miss Candice, who nodded. Miss Nancy paused as she considered her words. “We think it would be best if Grace didn’t come back. We don’t believe we’re the best place for a…child of her kind.”

  “How could you ask this little girl to leave your school?” Jennifer asked. “What has she done?”

  “She hasn’t done anything. Yet.”

  “Yet?” Jennifer was yelling now. “What do you mean yet?”

  “She means,” Miss Candice said, “she may bite the other children.”

  Sarah shielded Grace from the impossible women and backed toward the door. “My daughter doesn’t bite,” she said.

  “Now you listen here…” Jennifer glared at the women, trying to cut them with the bilious look in her eyes, but they were haughty in their self-righteousness. Sarah touched Jennifer’s arm and shook her head. She knew they weren’t worth the energy it would take to find the right words, but even as she walked away she wanted to knock some sense into them. She wanted them to understand how special Grace was, how far she had come to find her way home. She wanted to make them feel as small as she felt. She wanted to scream. She wanted to rage. She wanted to bring the fury of the heavens down on them, but their smugness stopped her cold.

  She held back the tears until they crossed the quiet road. Jennifer followed, holding the pink backpack, the anger still etching lines between her brows. At Jocelyn’s yellow house Sarah saw everyone through the window, and as soon as she saw them she knew something was wrong. At first, she thought they knew what happened to Grace, but that couldn’t be right—there was no way for them to know. Steve opened the door, and Sarah saw his red-rimmed eyes. Chandresh stood behind him, and he looked worried too.