The truth is that Shana hadn’t been to a church in a good number of years. She wasn’t particularly religious, and felt weirded out about Catholicism in general ever since she took a class about cults in college. All the weird stuff was there, she thought. The confessions were a form of hazing, degrading yourself by telling a faceless listener all of your sins so you could seek his approval. The ritual was primitive in nature, what with the blood drinking and trance-inducing organ. Even the word “mass” seemed to suggest that individuals should be made faceless, identityless in worship. She knew that it was a beautiful religion to some people, and always respected those who attained something spiritually greater thought it. She was just not one of those people.
At the church, “You feel so small in this place, don’t you Suze?”
“We’re all small in comparison to the Creator, aren’t we Shana?”
Shana just gave a little, “hmm,” and went on feeling small.
There was a panoply of colors in the cathedral that day, a detail which seemed to miff Suze. A glare was shot at Nate when he mentioned how people finally didn't look so drab in here for once. Suze believed you should dress modestly in front of the lord, for only he was great. It's impossible to tell how such Calvinism found its way into a lifelong Catholic's head.
Luke and all of the other kids filed out of the church to get their group photo taken. The priest kindly requested that the families stay seated inside and enjoy the choir. Soon enough, a processional of small children entered the church and camera flashes swarmed like so many ultrabright fireflies, with various utterances of “so precious” and “eat him/her up” expressing a greater reverence for the kids' skill at playing dress-up than for the holy trinity these kids were dressed up to honor.
Emotionally susceptible from the previous night, Shana let the air of revelry seep into her, experiencing a wholesome, godly bliss. This was an opportunity to feel rejuvenated, so she let her mind race through all there was to feel happy about. This week she had seen her sister’s family so happy together, seen little Luke grow up in the most adorable way. She was happy that her sister hadn't changed despite getting so into this God stuff, and for that matter, that Nate hadn't changed much either. They were good together, and she always had faith in there relationship.
And of course, Baker made her happy, that beautiful man who had helped reawaken parts of her that she didn’t even know were in hibernation. The time she shared with him over the course of the past few days was brief, but it transported her into some better version of herself. Just recalling his image drew Shana into a waking dream, a fantasy world grafted over current reality. The thought of his kiss made the faces in the pews run together into the one, the procession of children a snake adorned in fabric and human skin.
When it came time for everyone to take their seats, Shana remained standing. Suze had to tug her down by the dress sleeve, and Shana’s butt hit the wood seat with a thud that people seated a few seats away in each direction felt. People were generally too focused on the adorable children undergoing a rite of passage to even notice. Suze, though, noticed and scowled.
“Receive the body of Christ,” ordered the Father Florio.
“Amen,” said Sarah Johanski.
“Receive the body of Christ.”
“Amen,” said Mark Halperin.
The movement of Shana’s head implied that she was looking around the church, taking in an environment totally alien to her. Her sister gave a pinch on the arm and nudged towards the pulpit. Naturally, Shana yelped, and Suze glared again. But when Shana yelped, she didn’t even realize what had caused her pain. She was not present in the church, but in Lake View, snuggling with Baker on the turf in front of the Haserot angel. He was whispering nonsense in her ear, but it was the most beautiful poetry she ever had heard.
“Receive the body of Christ.”
“Amen,” said Joanne Jenkins.
“Receive the body of Christ.”
“Amen,” said Paul Goudreau.
Nate and Suze were getting anxious, since Luke was just about to go up. Suze tried to get Shana’s attention, to direct her gaze at Luke, but while Shana pointed her head in the right direction, her eyes were blank. Baker was licking the small valleys that make up her outer ear. She breathed heavily out of her mouth. Some may say that this style breathing was not appropriate for church, but the truth is that an asthmatic or morbidly obese worshipper was prone to equally labored breath. The vampire’s nose nuzzled the hairline on Shana’s neck, the tip of his cold nose poking directly at the skin over Shana’s brain stem. Fingers travelled slowly up her thigh. Suze tugged at Shana’s dress sleeve as Luke neared the pulpit.
“Receive the body of Christ.”
“Amen,” said Lorna DeBruzzi.
“Receive the body of Christ.”
“Amen,” said William Powell.
Suze took out her phone and started to frame the photo she would take of her boy receiving his wafer. Nate reminded, “turn the flash off, honey. Don’t want to create a nuisance.” The mother shot her third glare of the last few minutes, but followed suit. Nate sunk a little into the pew. It was a good thing that Suze was so focused on the picture, because right then she would have caught Shana rubbing the crotch of her black dress in a circular motion.
“Receive the body of Christ.”
“Amen,” said Elizabeth Barundi.
Luke gave a little bow as Elizabeth received her communion. Suze melted and clutched her heart. “Precious thing. Precious little, Luke.”
The look on Shana’s face was easily misinterpreted as one of familial adoration for a boy who was taking his first step towards becoming a man. This was at least what Suze interpreted for the brief second she glimpsed at Shana. Indeed, Suze thought, she had done good work raising a pious child if even her errant sister––comitting adulterous acts with the undead––could recognize the beauty of this holy moment which her son participated in.
As Luke left behind the pulpit Suze turned to each side to praise her son. Her husband gripped her hand when she turned right towards him. They each shed a tear. But when Suze turned left towards Shana, she felt an awful nausea. Her sister was racing out of the pew, rather rudely at that, not waiting for anyone to even move their legs to let her go. As Shana rounded the bench’s edge into the walkway, her eyes caught Suze’s and she mouthed “bathroom.” The rudeness shocked Suze. How could she just watch her nephew and then run? People held their piss during long car rides and even until commercial breaks, but Shana couldn’t even exercise the minimum decorum required to show respect to the Lord and all who worshipped him?
The pipe organ was resonating the whole building by the time Shana got to a stall and locked it behind her. Baker, this whole time, had never exited her mind, had never ceased in stirring her into an absolute frenzy. The organ vibrated her whole body. She dug through her purse and grabbed a little lipstick looking thing, her pocket vibrator. Squatting over the toilet, she went to work with it on herself. Baker slowly sucked on each of her vagina's lips before parting them with his fingers and lapping on the more sensitive regions. The organ grew louder, purifying the church with its holy chords.
Baker licked in a straight line from her clit up to the cleft of her chin, working his way from her navel to the space between her plump, sensitive breasts to her trachea along the way. He braced her rear with his arms and pulled her upright as he rolled onto his back. As he lay on the cemetery grass, flat as a corpse, Shana mounted him. The choir hit a high note and Shana did too, defiling the entire occasion quite literally single-handedly.
Shana was standing outside grabbing some air when mass was letting out. Shoving through the crowd frantically searching for Shana, Suze almost knocked over two children who had just received the body of the Lord for the first time in their lives. The lids of Shana’s eyes opened wide when she saw Suze rushing towards her like a warthog.
“Luke was great in there. He did great, Suze.” For the first time since they had arr
ived at the church, Shana seemed alert and engaged. She leaned in for a congratulatory hug.
The hug was rebuffed. “I just wanted you to know,” Suze spat out her red face, “That I called Tom before the service this morning and told him about those scratches on your neck. He knows where they came from and he knows where that corpse of yours resides.”
Dumbfounded, that’s the word you’d use to describe Shana’s face. Dumbfounded because how did Suze figure it out? Dumbfounded because why would she tell Tom? Dumbfounded because what’s the big deal anyway?
“He said he was going to start driving out here around noon, which means you’ve got about seven hours to figure out why you were messing around with that blood sucking demon.”
Shana slugged her sister in the jaw and stormed off. A circle formed around Suze, partially out of concern for the struck woman, partially to ogle the damage, partially to keep her from pursuing fisticuffs at a place of worship.
Chapter Five
On the walk back to her sister’s house, Shana’s phone rang six times. She never picked up. At the precise moment Shana realized she didn't have a key for the house, her phone started ringing a seventh time. The desire to enter was outweighed by the revulsion she felt for her kin in that moment, by the familial betrayal she had suffered. She sat on the stoop, checked her missed calls (all Suze and Nate) and called her fiance.
Tom, like Shana did to her sister, ignored the call. Not because, mind you, he wanted to ignore the call. In fact, all he wanted in that moment was to hear his fiance’s voice, to hear how badly she needed him right now, how dependent she was on her everything, her Tommy. Maybe if she pleaded enough he could turn around and go home, call it a day. No, he ignored the call because the grindcore he was listening to was playing too loud over the car’s stereo. He chose the angry music because felt angry. The music amped up the road rage he felt being stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway at 1 PM on Sunday afternoon. Where were these people going anyway at 1 PM on a Sunday afternoon?
He stopped off in Mineola to get a bag of Doritos. Chips would soothe his weary soul.
Dread consumed Shana as she heard Nate’s car pull around the block. Her muscles tensed in some barbaric animal reaction to her sister, the quick preparation to fight until their mutual annihilation. When she heard the car doors open, Shana was ready to pounce. But Suze was weeping and Nate walked around to assist the slow waltz towards her sister.
“Shana, why didn’t you pick up?”
“Why the fuck did you tell Tom?”
“If you had picked up we wouldn’t have had to rush back here.”
Shana’s body tensed again. “Don’t you even make this about me.”
Nate chimed, “We couldn’t find Luke after the service. We still can’t find Luke. The police are at the church now and they’re going to be here soon.”
The whole of Shana’s epidermis turned cold as a cadaver’s, and her body went as stiff as one too.
“Did you see him Shana? Did you see him leave while you were outside?”
A tight shake of the head was all Shana’s neck would allow for. She saw nothing, not that she was paying attention.
“Well,” Nate said, “better tell the police that since it might help them map possible routes he could have taken.”
“But…” Thoughts could barely be sculpted into words. “Why would… Run?”
The sobs started strong from Suze. “He wouldn’t have. I told him right before he went up there that we’d eat at the Olive Garden afterwards.”
“The Olive Garden is his favorite.” The way Nate said it, it was like he was talking about a dead person whose interests had travelled with him to the beyond, leaving only the Olive Garden in its wake.
Chapter Six
Tom sped down the I-80, uncaring for or just ignorant to the fact that Pennsylvania cops were positively itchy to pull over a car with New York plates. He tossed the empty Doritos bag out of his window and it hit a motorcyclist in the face. The biker swerved, and so did the cars around him. There was no collision, but one car in the right lane ended up getting stuck in an embankment on the side of the highway. Tom’s fly was undone so that he could scratch.
The police were friendly enough considering what they must put up with in Cleveland. A Rust Belt city during the recession was not an easy place to keep the peace, what with drugs used and petty crimes committed by so much of the citizenry just to get by. But many officers are family men, well aware of the multitude of threats to a household. Hence, the disappearance of a child was one of the few times in which a cop's steely demeanor dissolved. The detective that came by the house was the same one that talked to Suze about the disappearance of Benjamin Henderson, the son of the meth addicts a few doors down.
Roy Kerring was a three-decade veteran of the force. At a certain point in a detective's career, deduction becomes as much a process of instinct as reason. He understood the type of home Luke came from and the type of parents he had. Something in his gut told him that this was not a place a boy would want to run away from. A mother didn’t dress so well for a communion and act this kind of hysterical––Suze was literally pulling out strands of eyebrow after a few––without some deep mutual dependence established amongst members of the family.
The three adults did the best they could to answer all police queries, but as is the nature of questioning in general, you only get answers for the questions you ask. Had the detective not looked back to the house as he walked out to his black Lincoln Towncar, he never would have noticed the blemish in the family’s front door. Closer inspection indicated that something sharp had created the protrusion in the door, and Nate confirmed his hunch that it may be an ice pick.
“One second, officer.” Nate went to the drawer where he and Suze stashed the map the night before. It took half a second for Roy to understand what he was looking at. Each red dot marked a place in Cleveland where a person who went missing in the past year was last scene. Some of these missing people turned up dead, and the police figured there was one person responsible.
Ohio, recounted the detective, has been home to as many of America’s presidents as its serial killers. For Roy Kerring, there was little difference between tracking the rise of a president and that of a serial killer. There are acts that define the, milestones in their tenure which fortify their legacy. But presidents sign bills and killers dispose of bodies. Understanding the patterns of each will help you understand this person you are studying.
This is the point where Suze totally lost it. Roy Kerring was savvy in police work, not in people skills. Conversation was off the table, he discovered after another three or four minutes of this monolog.
“Well,” resolved the officer, “I’m going to just make my way out of here, need to get started on paper work back on the station. Any of you got anything else to tell me?”
He looked around the room, and only made eye contact with Shana. And then it came to her: that hobbling man with the stubby fingers and the ice pick.
“Officer!”
Roy was half in his jacket, half out. He paused waiting.
“There is one thing…” And then Shana caught herself. She had gone this long without telling Nate or Suze that a man with the ice pick caused the damage to their car. Who knows what kind of chaos that information could incite now. Shana willed herself into sobbing to avoid telling the details.
“Yes?” Shana’s sob was the only answer to the officer’s question. “Well if you end up in a state to tell me later, you have my card.”
Chapter Seven
By sundown, Tom was taking a dump at a rest stop just over the border of Ohio. He was checking another eBay auction and spent 45 minutes on the can. Something about the situation reminded him of the morning Shana left for Cleveland and his fury forced him out of the stall and into the car. He forgot to wipe.
Shana needed a reprieve from the chaos. When she left, the phone was off the hook, beeping, and Suze was neatly organizing everything in Luke�
��s room for when he came home. Nate was in the garage drinking beer. It was too much.
Naturally, there was one place Shana wished to go and that was the cemetery. Rational thought would have dictated that she avoid the place where she encountered the mad man just nights before, and for that matter, avoid the creature who was sowing fissures in her most near and dear relationships. But rational thought could not cut through the spell that gripped Shana.
Still reveling in a reprisal of her adolescence, she wandered around the cemetery, admiring the gravestones of various arcane, elaborate shapes: the obelisks, the busts, the low-laying slabs. As she used to do, she went by each of them making up little two-sentences stories about the people who rested beneath. Nora Joralemon wore high heels every day. She never learned to surf like she saw on TV. Chet Yantis was always tinkering with the household appliances. His son never got a hug after puberty.
As she approached Baker’s tomb, her knees quivered a little, breaking the even line of her stroll. The grass was a little more moist than usual, letting her shoe footprints sit for a little while longer before the grass rose back upright. The moon floating in and out of mist.
She found Baker standing outside of his mausoleum admiring the moon.
“Does it look any different after all these centuries?”
“Shana.” The vampire’s pale face lit up. “So good for you to come by.”
“No class tonight?”
“No.” They kissed. “Come.” The found a patch of that moist grass and sat down. Shana was wearing the same dress she wore to church, and the moisture quickly seeped through to her bottom.
They were far from Baker's mausoleum, and as such, did not see Tom pull up to it. Gripping a wooden stake, Tom rushed into the mausoleum to slay the vampire like he had seen in the movies. There was nobody in there. In his dumb way, Tom just kind of milled around for a second and picked at his fingernails.
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