Her Loving Husband's Curse

by Meredith Allard

  Reporter #1: Mr. President, how long will the vampires be imprisoned for?

  President: I’m not saying they’re being imprisoned. We’ve made the decision to hold them temporarily until we can get a sense of each individual. If that individual isn’t proven to be a threat to society, then he, or she, can go home.

  Reporter #2: How are you planning on vetting these vampires? Whose testimony will be used to verify whether or not they’re a danger?

  President: We’re going to have to take that on a case-by-case basis.

  Reporter #3: Will the vampires have legal representation?

  President: This is the United States of America. They’re entitled to legal representation, and, like other American citizens, if they’re unable to afford attorney fees then they’ll be given a public defender.

  Reporter #2: What about the charge that the vampires aren’t American citizens because their country of origin can’t be proven. Many don’t have accurate birth certificates and weren’t born in this country.

  President: We’re treating vampires currently living here as American citizens.

  Reporter #2: Is that the only criteria you’re using to determine citizenship?

  President: We have it under control.

  Reporter #3: I understand the ACLU has filed a class action lawsuit to prevent the internment of the vampires.

  President: That’s going to be for the courts to decide. However, as the President I have some say in the matter (laughs).

  Reporter #1: You realize, Mr. President, that you’ve angered many Americans by siding with those favoring vampire internment. Many believe there must be a better way to handle the situation. By all accounts, many of the vampires who added their names to the watch list are every day Americans who happen to be dead. How can you justify pulling these families apart? Aren’t you simply going along with the hysteria sweeping certain segments of the country?

  President: I wouldn’t say I’m going along with the hysteria. There is reason for concern about the reality of the undead in America. If they’re law-abiding citizens as many seem to be, then this will be over quickly and everyone can go back to their lives.

  Reporter #1: Many of those in favor of vampire internment are also in favor of extermination.

  President: No one is being exterminated. We’re simply trying to determine who’s a law-abiding citizen and who’s a threat to society. We might wave some garlic in their direction (laughs), but otherwise there are no plans to exterminate the vampires.

  Reporter #4: Is there any truth to the rumor that scientists will be experimenting on the vampires in an attempt to see how they live though their bodies are dead?

  President: I’m not aware of any intention to experiment on the vampires.

  Reporter #1: Is that a no?

  President: That’s a ‘I’m not aware of any intention to experiment on the vampires.’

  Reporter #5: Will the writ of Habeas Corpus continue to be suspended while dealing with the Vampire Dawn? You’ll retain them as long as you want whether or not they have crimes charged against them?

  President: We’ll hold them until we know they’re not a threat, and then we’ll let them go. We’re going to do everything we can to make this as painless as possible for everyone involved.

  Thank you very much. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

  The doctor handed Sarah the box of tissues, standing by until the flood of despair washed her away and she was too dry to cry anymore. Suddenly, she was numb. She thought she would float away on a raft, down the road, across Maine, out into the open ocean where she and James and Grace could drift and dream until they found a place they could live together in peace.

  She began to breathe heavily, the exertion from her anguish too hard for her in her weakened condition. The doctor listened to her heart, checked the monitor, and checked the bags hanging from the IV stand.

  “Your blood pressure is too high, Sarah. I’m going to give you something to help you sleep.”

  Before Sarah could say no the doctor added a new bag to the IV stand, and then she was sleeping. Even medicated, it was a fitful, troubled sleep. As she dreamed she knew she dreamed. She dreamed James was there, rocking their daughter, singing the seventeenth century love song “Scarborough Fair.” She hummed as she remembered the words:

  Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, Remember me to one who lives there, For once she was a true love of mine…

  She imagined James stroking her hair as he loved to do, his fingers in her curls, kissing the nape of her neck. She felt him on the bed beside her, his strong arms around her, protecting her. When she awoke in the morning she felt the coldness linger. The blinds of the ice-like glass walls were closed while sunlight peeked between the curtains over the windows and Sarah saw a pattern like bars on the floor. Bars from three hundred years before or bars for her husband now…it didn’t matter. They were bars just the same, meant to keep her on one side and James on the other.

  As she stared at the patches of sunlight she heard a faint rustling outside. She listened, then listened again, and she realized she heard voices. She lowered the bar on the side of her bed, threw her legs over, and gripped the nightstand as she pulled herself upright. Her legs ached and her back cramped and her stomach pinched, but she strained to see. When she couldn’t stretch high enough, she dragged herself out of bed, limped to the window, and pulled aside the blinds.

  Outside she saw a crowd, not a thousand, not even a hundred, but enough to make themselves heard. Some held signs with slogans like “Down with Vampires!” and “No bloodsuckers in my backyard!” Most were calm, content simply holding their signs, allowing the words on the posterboards to proclaim their disdain. Others squinted, snarled, and pumped their fists in the air, wearing their frustration proudly.

  “If you only knew him,” Sarah thought. “If you only knew his heart you would love him as I love him.” But they didn’t care to know him, she knew. She dropped the blinds and turned away.

  The door swung open and frightened her. Doctor Masters rushed in, checked her monitors, and unplugged the IV from the wall. “I need to get you out of here, Sarah,” he said. “I thought I could keep this under control, but it got out of hand so quickly.” He led her to the bed, helped her lay down, and added two bags to her IV. “I have an ambulance waiting. Hold on.”

  He raised the bars of the bed, unlatched the foot lock, and with the bed in his right hand and the IV in his left, he pushed Sarah through the door. She saw the surprised faces of the nurses, patients, and visitors as the doctor swung her around the corner. When the elevator door opened, he pushed her in. Sarah thought she should feel afraid at the abruptness of it all, at Doctor Master’s intensity as he navigated the narrow hospital corridors, but she didn’t. Maybe she was numb, she thought. Maybe what was going to happen had been preordained and there was nothing to do but wait and see. Maybe the Puritans were right. Maybe your fate was determined before you were born. What’s the point of fighting what’s already been decided?

  The elevator opened on the ground floor, and Doctor Masters pushed her out the emergency entrance. There was an ambulance, its red lights blaring, the backdoors open, two paramedics waiting. When they saw Doctor Masters they sprang toward Sarah, grabbed her bed, lowered the legs, and pushed her into the back of the waiting vehicle. The doctor jumped in beside her. The paramedics slammed the doors and they squealed away.

  “Did the crowd see us leave?” Sarah asked.

  “I don’t think so, but they’ll figure it out. Someone will tell them.”

  A few miles from the hospital the siren turned off and the ambulance slowed, making regular time in regular traffic. “They don’t want to attract any attention,” Doctor Masters explained. “We can’t have anyone following us.”

  He listened to Sarah’s heart, checked her pulse, flashed his pen light into her eyes. Could he tell how disconnected she felt, she wondered, as if she were watch
ing the scene from somewhere else? She felt the way she did during the past-life regression when she discovered a whole other self, Elizabeth, harbored inside her, waiting to be released to the surface of her consciousness. Sarah closed her eyes, and when she opened them she hoped she would be with James and Grace and this was all one last horrible nightmare, a residual effect from the times when Elizabeth would tap into her sleep. She dreamed they were back in the days before anyone knew vampires were real, when no one suspected her husband of being anything other than what he seemed to be—a dedicated professor, a loving husband, a devoted father. But she opened her eyes and saw the shadows on the wall of the ambulance and Doctor Master’s worried gaze. She heard the scratch of the ambulance tires along the small-town roads and she knew this was all too real.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “You’re going to Theresa’s,” he said. “I have everything set up for you. You shouldn’t have left the hospital yet, but it wasn’t safe there for you any more. James and I settled it last night. I’ll come by twice a day, James will take care of you at night, and you have friends there to help during the day.”

  “Aren’t you going to get in trouble at the hospital for this?”

  Doctor Masters shook his head. “I don’t work there any more.”

  The ambulance slowed then stopped, and Doctor Masters jumped out. The little tan and white carriage house seemed smaller suddenly and more isolated than before, Sarah thought as she saw it through the ambulance doors.

  “Are we safe here?” she asked.

  “I think. For now.”

  The three men pulled Sarah from the back and lowered the bed’s legs. Sarah looked everywhere around her, half-expecting the crowd from the hospital to be there. She wouldn’t have been surprised if Kenneth Hempel suddenly showed up, jumping out from behind the bushes, yelling, “See! I knew people would be appalled by the presence of vampires!” Though Hempel had been dead two months, nothing surprised her any more and the presence of a ghost reporter wouldn’t seem so strange to her now. But there was no one there, only quiet and bird chirps around the carriage house. There were two kayakers gliding past on the water, but that was a common enough sight along the bay.

  The front door burst open and Olivia ran out with Theresa by her side. Francine stood by the door with Grace in her arms.

  “Look, Gracie, it’s Mommy! She’s home!” Francine held Grace high above her head so Sarah could see her daughter’s angelic face and golden curls. Sarah smiled, her heart warmed by the sight of her baby, and she waved and looked as strong as she could. When Francine brought the baby closer, Sarah touched Grace’s cheek. Grace smiled, though her joy was stunted, as if she knew something was wrong. When Sarah saw Olivia she sighed. Olivia patted her hand and smoothed her hair.

  “It’s all right, dear. Everything is going to be all right.”

  The men carried Sarah into the living room. For some reason, the inside of the little house seemed different than she remembered. Separate. As if it wasn’t there, it hadn’t ever been there, and she was seeing it in a dream. The red-checkered curtains fluttered in the breeze from the open windows, and the red sofa, chairs, and light wood furniture were pushed aside to make room for Sarah’s hospital bed. Doctor Masters nodded to the paramedics, who nodded at him, and Sarah, before dashing back to the ambulance and racing away.

  “Joe is my cousin,” Doctor Masters explained. “He owed me a favor.”

  “Won’t they be angry with him at the hospital?”

  “Joe? He doesn’t work at the hospital. He’s a plumber.”

  Doctor Masters winked at Sarah, then set up her cot and IV. He pulled the coffee table closer to have a place for the medications he pulled from his backpack.

  “I’m going to put these in the refrigerator,” he said.

  The bedroom door opened. “Sarah?” James called. “Are you okay?”

  “What are you doing up?” she asked. “It’s still daylight.”

  “I heard you come in. Is Thomas there?”

  “I’m here,” said Doctor Masters. “She’s all right, James. Come back when it’s dark.”

  “Will you stay with her?”

  “I’m not going anywhere. It’s not like I have anywhere else to go.” The doctor smiled. He meant it in a joking way, but Sarah didn’t find much to laugh at.

  “Sarah?” James called. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m all right,” Sarah said. “Please, James, go to sleep. I’ll see you when it’s dark.”

  “I’m sorry, Sarah. This is all my fault.”

  She tried to get out of bed, go to him, but Doctor Masters wouldn’t let her. “Stay in bed, Sarah,” he said.

  “It’ll be dark before you know it,” said Olivia.

  “I always loved the bay windows,” Theresa said, “but now I wish there weren’t so many of them. I don’t have enough material to cover them all.”

  “Tomorrow I’ll run to the store to get some dark fabric to cover them,” Francine said. “This way James can sleep in here during the daytime.”

  Sarah closed her eyes and turned away. As far as she knew, James might be gone by tomorrow night.

  She must have fallen asleep. When she woke up Doctor Masters was gone and James was there, the nighttime fully descended. There was no moon, and the blackness felt heavy and overwhelming, like the black velvet Jennifer loved so much. James brushed a few stray curls from the corner of her mouth, and when she turned to him he smiled.

  “How do you feel?” he asked. “Thomas showed me how to add medication to your IV. He said you could have more pain meds now if you need it.”

  “I don’t want to feel groggy,” she said.

  “But he said you need to stay on top of the pain. If you let it get too bad it’s harder to control.”

  “I’m all right.”

  They sat in silence, James holding her hands in his. Outside the crickets chirped, the leaves on the trees blowing fitfully in the wind. Inside the carriage house was quiet. Grace was sitting up in the playpen Theresa bought for her surrounded by stuffed toys, but she sat silently, staring at her parents with a thoughtfulness unusual for a ten-month-old. What did she know? How much did she understand about what was happening? Sarah closed her eyes and pressed her head into James’s arm.

  “Are we safe here, James?”

  “You’re perfectly safe here.”

  “I said we.”

  James paused, the pain evident in his night-dark eyes. He looked out the window at the weighted darkness. Sarah grabbed his hand and tugged until he looked at her.

  “You have to tell me, James. You promised.”

  He looked through the window as he spoke. “The plan is to round us up and hold us until they figure out what to do with us.”

  “I saw the President on the news,” Sarah said. “You were right. We haven’t come as far as we’d like to think.”

  Olivia walked into the living room. She peeked over the playpen, saw that Grace was all right, and sat in the overstuffed recliner next to Sarah. “That’s not legal,” she said. “You’re a law abiding citizen, James. They can’t just take you away and lock you up.”

  “It’s been done before,” James said.

  “James?” Sarah looked into his eyes. “What else do you know?”

  “Nothing.”

  “James?”

  “Nothing, Sarah. Please.” He pressed the blanket closer around her and kissed her lips. “You need to rest. You still have a lot of recovering to do.” He sat back in the chair, took her hands in his, stroked her fingers, her cheek, her hair. She felt tired again, the weight of the stress and her injury and the unfairness of it all made her so tired, but she didn’t want to sleep. She was afraid that if she closed her eyes her husband would be gone when she opened them again.

  “Go to sleep, Sarah. It’s all right. Go to sleep.”

  She fell asleep, but it was a haphazard, worried sleep haunted by demons. She saw James slipping away, back across the
years, to a time she could never recover. What if they never found each other again? No matter how many preternatural visitors, no matter how many past life regressions—what if they lost touch of each other forever? She saw herself and her daughter, their empty arms reaching toward him as he slipped out of their grasp. She gasped aloud when she opened her eyes, but she settled when she saw James sitting beside her.

  “What time is it? she asked.

  “Two a.m.,” James said. “We still have time.”

  “Do we?”

  He looked away.

  “Tell me a story,” Sarah said. She needed to keep him talking, hear his voice, know he was still there.

  James sighed. He stared at her face, her hair, her hands. He stared at her as though he needed to memorize everything about her all over again so he wouldn’t forget. “I never finished telling you how I met Chandresh on the Trail of Tears,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  James watched the tailless black cat scamper across the hardwood floor and smiled. He looked out the window, his eyes small in concentration, that far-off look he always had whenever he spoke of his past.

  “I had been living alongside the Cherokee in the Smoky Mountains…”

  “That’s where you decided to stop hunting,” Sarah said.

  “Yes. When I realized the Cherokee were being forcibly removed from their land I followed them west.”