Her Loving Husband's Curse

by Meredith Allard

  What about the blood drinking? How can you explain that away?

  I don’t need to explain it away. They do drink blood. Scientists are trying to understand how blood helps the vampires stay animated. But as strange as it seems to us now, people around the world have always known about vampires. The longer our society has existed, the more technologically advanced we’ve become, the more detached we’ve become from the spiritual, fantastical elements, but they’ve always been there. There are many cultures throughout the world still innately in tune with the spiritual realm and they’re not at all surprised at the emergence of living vampires.

  They’re not living. They’re dead.

  Technically their bodies are dead, yet they’re animated and have consciousness as we do. Don’t forget, vampires were human once, and they have the same emotional lives we do. They feel joy, and fear, and worry. They fall in love. Often they create pair bonds as we do when we’re in monogamous relationships.

  Do vampires feel anger?

  Of course. We all feel anger.

  And they have a harder time controlling their anger.

  I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion. There’s no reason to assume…

  And traditionally the vampire is a symbol of violence and horror.

  That’s correct.

  Don’t they still represent violence and horror? Your argument lacks compelling evidence, I’m afraid. I’m going to ask you again. What about the blood drinking?

  Many of the vampires we’ve been studying are just as others have said, professional and family-oriented. They’ve found creative ways of feeding themselves that is as noninvasive as possible.

  The idea that there are nice ways to get blood is ludicrous, don’t you think? What are those noninvasive ways to get blood? I’m looking at my hands and there’s no blood there, that is, unless you pierce the skin. Can you pierce my skin without causing me pain? Or fear? Can you?

  I didn’t think so. Thanks for watching. Good night.

  Sarah turned the television off, crawled back into bed, slid her arms around her husband, and held on.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Wentworths lived quietly in Maine, comfortable in their nook at the edge of the water. The Silvers’ reconverted carriage house sat alone within a tree-studded, peace-filled woods which bordered the rugged shoreline where canoers and kayakers paddled the placid gray water. You could walk outside, turn in all four directions, see the trees and the birds and the flowers on three sides and the rocky shore of the bay on the other, and not see another person anywhere. You’d see soaring eagles and red squirrels scampering across the yard, but otherwise, no one for miles where their closest neighbors were organic farmers, artisans, musicians, and outdoorsy types. The solitary house in the chirp-filled woodlands perched alongside the isolated bay was, Sarah thought, idyllic.

  As far as Olivia knew, as far as anyone could tell, the Wentworths had fled Salem without being trailed. Olivia heard nothing about a hunt for James, and Martha and her other Wiccan friends were on the alert for any news and they had heard nothing. Sarah called her mother using the extra cell phone, and her mother was her usual preoccupied self, listing her ailments, noting the wrongs of the world and how she meant to right them because she knew the answer to everything better than anyone. She didn’t say anyone had tried to contact her about Sarah’s whereabouts. She didn’t hear the strain in Sarah’s voice as Sarah struggled to sound light and happy. Maybe she and James had been paranoid after all, Sarah thought. Maybe she and James had panicked. But it was for the best that they left Salem, she decided. They couldn’t take a chance that someone would come to take Grace. And how she loved Maine.

  To pass the long daytime hours, Sarah helped Theresa with the mid-April gardening, content to dig in the dirt, plant seeds, weed away the dead leaves, water the ground. It was still nippy in Maine in April, around fifty degrees, but Theresa was a master gardener and knew when to plant and weed and sow. Although Sarah loved how the house sat on the edge of the rocky shore, most of all she loved the wild, loose garden coloring with signs of life. Columbines, blue cohorsh, and Jack-in-the-Pulpits budded here and there. The birch trees and dogwoods were waking, and Sarah imagined the lush blues, yellows, and reds that would brighten the bay when the sun shined on the northeastern shore. Grace crawled on the springy green grass, laughing at the songbirds, pulling herself into a standing position with her mother’s help. Sarah also helped around the house however she could, cooking, cleaning, vacuuming, borrowing Francine’s lime-green Volkswagen Bug—they didn’t want anyone noticing the black Explorer with its Massachusetts plates—to travel to the nearest grocers, the general store fifteen miles away. She begged Theresa to take some money for the trouble—and expense—of having the three Wentworths there, eating her food, using her electricity, taking her space. But Theresa refused.

  “James has helped our family for generations,” Theresa said. “This is the least we can do for him.”

  “Every time I ask James about his earlier years he says ‘Another time.’ I’d like him to tell me about his past for a change.”

  “I know it seems like he’s keeping secrets, Sarah, but I think when you’ve lived as long as James has it can seem burdensome to have to think back over hundreds of years. Especially when he’s happy now.”

  Sarah smiled. “That sounds like something Jennifer or Olivia would say.”

  “Olivia and I are first cousins. Our mothers were sisters.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Sarah looked at Theresa, recognized the same friendly, motherly gaze she saw in Olivia. Where Olivia’s eyes were steel-gray, Theresa’s were darker, like thunderclouds on a stormy day, like the Maine sky when it rained. She decided it was safe to ask Theresa. She was Olivia’s cousin after all. “Do you know how James became involved with your family? He told me your ancestor helped him first, in 1693.”

  “That story has been passed down for ten generations. James met our ancestor when he was a newborn vampling. She helped him understand what he was, and he protected her from some who meant to do her harm. Without him, she wouldn’t have survived and none of her future generations would be here.”

  Grace crawled to the shrubs, too close to the prickly rose bushes for Sarah’s comfort. Sarah picked her up and stopped to watch as the pink sky and blue clouds of the sunset reflected off the pink-blue water of the bay while the light dropped and grew darker. It looked too perfect to be real, Sarah thought, like it was painted with short feather brushstrokes and pastel watercolors, a Monet scene for the taking.

  “The days are long here,” Theresa said. “The sun rises before six in the morning and doesn’t drop until after seven in the evening.”

  “It’s hard waiting for James,” Sarah said.

  “I know,” said Theresa.

  As the darkness settled, Sarah carried Grace back to the wooden lawn chair near the edge of the embankment. She watched the moon shiver over the water in the bay, over the rocks and peaks, and she thought the scene was more perfect in Maine than Massachusetts. It’s colder later into the year here, she thought, but she could bear it. Maybe they could settle there. Maybe James would stay.

  Theresa brought out a steaming pot of Chai tea and two porcelain cups with a tin of sugar and a decanter of cream. She sat on the wooden lawn chair next to Sarah and took Grace into her arms.

  “Will you tell me how James met your ancestor?” Sarah asked.

  “I will,” James said. He opened the screen door, walked outside, and leaned over Sarah, his hand on her head, his fingers in her curls.

  “I don’t mind telling you anything you want to know,” he said. “I don’t mean to make excuses every time you ask me, but I worry that one day I’ll tell you something that will make you change your mind about spending your life with me. We had to flee our home in the middle of the night because of what I am, Sarah. Sometimes I think you’d be better off if we weren’t together. If you have to suffer for what I am, that would be the worst curse of all.”
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  Sarah felt the salt sting her eyes. “James, if you don’t know my place is with you, wherever, whenever, then I don’t know what else to say to convince you. You’re my dear and loving husband. I will never leave you ever.”

  “And I promise you the same.”

  Theresa tugged on Sarah’s sleeve, handed her Grace, then slipped silently into the house. James took Grace and held her to his chest with one hand, Sarah’s arm with the other, and he led them past the whitewashed fence of Theresa’s property out to the edge of Herrick Bay. It was colder now that the sun had dropped, but Sarah felt brave. The house was just steps away if she became too cold. She took off her shoes, rolled up her jeans, and she did the same for Grace. Grace’s feet were in the edge of the rocky sand where the water touched the shore. Taking her daughter by both hands, Sarah stood her on her small bowed legs. When the low-tide wave washed toward them, wetting their feet, Grace squealed with delight.

  “She’s like me,” James said. “She’s used to the cold.”

  “Come on, Gracie,” Sarah said. “Show Daddy how you can walk like a big girl.”

  Holding tightly onto Sarah’s hands for support, Grace took her first steps, babbling in explanation the whole time. “That’s it, Gracie,” James said. “That’s my girl.” Sarah heard the joy in the softness of his voice. He dropped his head until he contained his tears, and he bent over the water and washed the red away.

  “You don’t need to hide,” Sarah said. “She loves you as you are. Like I do.”

  James dried his hands against his khaki pants. “I don’t want to scare her,” he said.

  “She’s not afraid of you.”

  James dried his face with his shirtsleeve. Suddenly, he stood still, his back straight, his head turned, his eyes closed in concentration.

  “What do you hear?” Sarah asked.

  “It’s the strangest thing. I could have sworn I heard…”

  “Is someone here? Do we need to leave?”

  “No, no. It’s…Geoffrey.”

  “Geoffrey is here?”

  James stopped, listened, and Sarah hardly breathed while she waited.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I must have imagined that smug, self-satisfied shuffle coming this way. What would Geoffrey be doing here anyway? No one knows where we are.”

  “He’d come over if he was here,” Sarah said. “He has no reason to hide from us.”

  They stepped away from the water, finding a dry place to sit at the edge of the sand. It was fully dark and windy now, but Sarah didn’t feel cold. She found the water’s mist soothing. They sat silently, the only noise the ebbing waves sleeping at the edge of the shore and Grace’s bursts of giggles as she slapped her hand on the sand. As Grace settled down, her gold eyelashes drooping over sleepy eyes, James picked her up and held her close, rocking from side to side as she fell asleep. Who could be afraid of this man, Sarah wondered?

  “I wish we could stay here,” she said.

  “Why can’t we?”

  “What about Salem? What about our house?”

  “It’s just a house, Sarah.”

  “But it’s our home.”

  “As long as we’re together, anywhere we are will be home. For now, this is home. No one is looking for us here. We’ll stay as long as we need, and longer if you want to.”

  Sarah took Grace into her arms and held her daughter close. “But how long can we afford it? Neither of us are working any more.”

  “Damn,” said James, looking distracted suddenly. “I still hate how I had to call Goodwin like a thief in the night to resign.” He walked back to the edge of the shore, his hands clasped behind his back as he pondered the winking stars. “I liked it at SSU. I liked the students there.”

  “You didn’t have a choice. Grace…”

  “I know, Sarah. No job in the world comes before you and Grace.”

  “But we have no more salary coming in.”

  “Are you worried about money?”

  “Aren’t you? I know we have some savings, but I don’t know how long that will last.”

  “You don’t know?” James kneeled in front of Sarah and looked into her eyes. “We were married so long ago the first time, but I assumed you remembered.”

  “Remembered what, James?”

  “Don’t you know who my father was?”

  “Your father was John Wentworth.”

  “And what was special about him?”

  “He was good and kind and he had a warm, loving heart. And…and…”

  “And wealthy. Good, loving, and wealthy. When he died he left everything to me, plus I have the money from the land I sold.” He took her hand and kissed her fingers. “I’ve been living off my professor’s salary, so that money has been saved, invested, and reinvested for hundreds of years. We have enough to support ourselves for the rest of our lives, and Grace for the rest of her life, and her children, and probably even her children’s children and their children after them. We have a lot of money, Sarah.”

  “But your father knew you were turned. You told me about the night he found you in the woods.”

  “He knew, but he didn’t care. He still left me his heir.”

  “Did you go back to Salem to collect your inheritance?”

  “No. Father returned to England after I left him. He was too heartbroken to stay in Massachusetts.”

  “After you left him?”

  James sighed. “After he found me in the woods I didn’t stay with him long. I didn’t feel safe there, for his sake. The witch trials were over, but the madness hadn’t gone. People still eyed each other warily. They still whispered behind other’s backs. And if there had been any reason to suspect anyone, I’m sure the hysteria could have broken out again easily enough. I couldn’t subject my father to that.”

  “When did you leave?”

  “I stayed with him about a month. I slept during the day, protected from the sun by the quilts he pinned over the window. When I woke up my father would be sitting in a chair by the hearth, staring at me like he still hadn’t reconciled himself to the specter I had become, like he had to remind himself every night that I was no longer myself.”

  “How did he take your change?”

  “You knew my father. His love knew no boundaries, even for his preternatural son. He loved me as he always had. He gave me a place to stay. He kept me away from the sunlight. He even found blood for me to drink.”

  “Where?”

  “From Mr. Eggleston after he slaughtered the hogs. Father explained his cook needed it for blood soup. He claimed blood soup was his very favorite meal, though in truth he couldn’t stand it.”

  “Your father loved Indian pudding,” Sarah said.

  James laughed. “Yes, but Mr. Eggleston didn’t know that. After a few weeks he must have realized my father was eating an extreme amount of blood soup, even for someone who claimed to love it so much. Then he and his sons began sniffing around my father’s house. One night the Egglestons came by, and Jonas, the younger son, asked my father if he was there alone. I was hiding behind the house, not wishing to be seen, but staying close in case my father needed me. Luke, the older son, saw me loitering and started as if in fear.

  “‘‘Tis merely my son, James,’ my father said. ‘Surely you know him. He’s been gone some time now but, blessed be God, he’s home.’

  “My father waved me inside, and I walked as close to the men as I dared. They refused to look at me, and I saw their memories of you in their downcast eyes. My father laughed heartily. ‘You Egglestons look white as specters.’

  The men quivered in their chairs, visibly nervous at being compared to the very thing that could have seen them hanged months before. And still they wouldn’t look at me, though they were reconciled that I was the unknown presence in my father’s house. They nodded at my father and left and didn’t come back. Yet I knew I was still a danger to my father. Every time I told him I must go, he begged me to stay.”

  James’s voice cracked, and his eyes
searched the water, barely visible in the darkness, as though he wanted to see his father again.

  “Is that when you left?” Sarah asked.

  “The following night I awoke and my father was sitting at the table as usual. He was slurping on a bowl of gruel, watching me absent-mindedly, his thoughts somewhere far away.

  “‘I must go,’ I said. ‘‘Tis too dangerous for you now with me here.’

  “‘You cannot leave me,’ my father said. He knelt besides me, grasping my hands, imploring me to stay.

  “‘I must go,’ I repeated. ‘I am leaving tonight.’

  “Even though this demon blood was still new in my veins, I felt very human then. I was a son abandoning his beloved father, and every ounce of my being felt broken because of it. ‘Those men will return eventually,’ I said, ‘and next time they may not be too ashamed to see me. They will step closer, look into my face, into my eyes, and they will know I am not myself. Then they’ll notice I do not appear in daylight, or they’ll question again the amount of blood you ask for.’

  “‘Is there no other way you can eat?’ my father asked.

  “‘Aye, but you do not want to know what it is.’ My father shivered. ‘You are afeared,’ I said. ‘You know what I say ‘tis true.’

  “‘The fire is not lit, and I am but a human and ‘tis growing colder.’

  “I looked at the unlit hearth, then glanced through the window at the night sky. I saw the beginning traces of winter as frost in the air. My father threw some timber in the hearth and lit a fire. The flames exploded into reds and oranges and I felt the heat against my skin. It was wonderful. I had become so used to cold that the warmth of the fire made me feel human. For a moment I weakened and thought I should stay. Perhaps living with my father, finding blood from unobtrusive sources, keeping his company and his counsel, was possible even as I was. I looked at my father’s face, saw the undying love in his eyes, how he would be there for me, that night and every night we were together. I knew he would do everything he could to make this life as easy for me as possible. Then I realized, like a slap on the face, that it couldn’t be done. I was what the witch hunters had been searching for—a demon presence in Salem.