A Taste for Red

by Lewis Harris

  "Svetlana," she whispered, "there's no such thing as vampires."

  Gentle laughter seeped into my thoughts, like the soft ringing of a wind chime; tinkling petals of thin steel between my ears.

  Then what's all this? I thought.

  Her cat eyes narrowed into shining green sickles. "A connection, Svetlana, a special gift binding special people." She lifted an apple from a desk drawer, offering it to me. The skin of the fruit glistened, red as a deep wound. "You're a remarkable young lady, and we're going to be great friends, you and I."

  Seemingly of its own accord, my hand reached for the apple.

  Nine

  On Saturday morning Mom called up the stairs, telling me I had visitors at the front door. It was Fumio Chen and Dwight Foote.

  "Let's go to the tree house," Fumio whispered, after my mom had stepped away.

  "Don't call it a tree house," I told him.

  " Whatever you want to call it," he said.

  "Don't be lame, Svet, just come on," Foote chided.

  I left Razor barking in the house and followed the boys across the yard to the Oak of Doom. Foote pulled himself up the ladder using his one good arm, his bound arm bouncing in its sling. He complained the entire way and struggled to navigate through the opening in the floor.

  "Get the lead out," I told him.

  Fumio had already grabbed my binoculars and was spying up Cherry Street toward Sandy's house on the corner. Over his shoulder and through the window, I saw where the trampoline used to be. The driveway was filled with unfamiliar cars. A police cruiser waited at the curb. Several men dressed in suits and uniforms stood about on the front porch.

  Foote elbowed between us and began snapping photographs of the house with his digital camera.

  "Did you watch the news last night?" Fumio asked.

  "No," I said, pushing them aside and claiming my binoculars.

  "The girls vanished into thin air," Foote said. "All three of them—just like Mr. Boyd."

  "Only they didn't skip town in a souped-up Corvette with a stash of cash," Fumio mused. "Something bad happened to them."

  Something bad. The words rang like a knell.

  I lowered the binoculars and studied Fumio's quiet face. "Bad?"

  "The news didn't say anything one way or the other," Foote noted.

  "'Cause they don't know anything," Fumio said. "The next time anyone sees those girls, it's gonna be on a milk carton."

  Imbeciles, I thought. They were just talking to hear themselves. "What do you two want, anyway?"

  "We don't want nothing," he said.

  "That means you want something, dork," I corrected.

  "We're riding over to City Park to help out with the search—we thought you might want to go with us," Foote offered. "People think the girls could've gone off into the woods and gotten lost."

  Fumio said, "Of course, the chances of those three prima donnas hiking off into the woods is less than zero."

  "It was on the news last night that they want volunteers to show up for the search. You should come along" Foote nodded his big head, blinking his blueberry eyes.

  "I can't," I said. "I've got to help my next-door neighbor today." I was supposed to go over to Lenora Bones's house at noon and read, which I was actually looking forward to—and not just because I was being paid.

  "The Bone Lady, who was spying on you?"

  "She's all right," I said. "She just wants someone to read to her."

  Foote said, "Well, we gotta go. I'm going to take photos of the searchers at the park and Fumio's going to write up a piece for the school paper."

  "But the school will never let us print it," Fumio said. "They're not going to say anything if those three girls don't show up. It's gonna be unmentionable, man."

  "Totally taboo," Foote agreed.

  I watched through the binoculars as a police officer left the Cross residence and climbed into the cruiser parked at the curb.

  "They'll show up," I said, my gut telling me otherwise.

  "Are you going to the carnival tonight?" Foote asked, meaning the Spring Fling at the school.

  "It's usually pretty lame, but they'll have bumper cars," Fumio said.

  "I don't know. Maybe." I lowered the binoculars. The police car drove away with its emergency lights off, turning at the corner and disappearing. I wondered if it was heading to the park to join the searchers.

  After the guys had left, Mom called me into the kitchen and gave me a tub of strawberry sauce and some sponge cake to take next door with me.

  "Those two boys seemed nice," she said.

  "They're okay."

  She pushed the seal closed around the plastic container and placed it inside a grocery bag along with the cake and the empty plate from the sugar cookies we'd finished eating. "Be sure to thank Ms. Bones for those cookies."

  "I will—I'm not a jerk."

  When Mom smiles, her face crinkles up and tiny crow's-feet appear at the corners of her eyes. Her face crinkled now as she grabbed and squeezed me, hard enough that I almost dropped the cake.

  "Whoa," I said.

  "Hey, sweetie." The smile was gone from her face when she pulled away, still holding onto my shoulders. "I don't want you wandering off—okay? I want you to stick around the house this weekend and come home right after you've finished reading to Ms. Bones, do you hear?"

  She was thinking about Sandy Cross and her friends.

  "Dwight and Fumio asked if I wanted to go to the school carnival later," I said.

  "I guess you know about those lost girls?"

  "Sure," I said. "Kids at school were talking about it. I'm fine, Mom."

  "Well, I'm sure those girls are fine, too. They'll probably show up later today."

  "Probably," I echoed, not believing it even as I said the words. Why did I think something awful had happened to them? I'd had a bad feeling all week, since the very first day of school, really. It was almost as if there was something dangerous in the air, something inescapable. "They're just lost," I said.

  Just lost.

  But sometimes lost things never get found.

  Ten

  Lenora Bones opened her front door, and I was drowned in the delicious aroma of fresh-baked cookies. "What a beautiful smile on your face!" The old lady beamed, beckoning me to enter, her dainty fingers drawing me inside. "And exactly on time! Very good!"

  She closed the door, latching little fingers onto my wrist, pulling me after her. Her frail frame was lost inside a long red dress that dusted the floor. White cuffs were fastened around her thin wrists, and a starched collar was buttoned high around her slender neck. Her silvery hair fell in curls, framing her narrow face. Gray eyes sparkled. She flashed a porcelain-white smile. "Do you smell that wonderful smell?" Flash.

  "Yes." The sweet smell wrapped me.

  "I smell it, too." Lenora Bones laughed lightly, tugging me along. "Come, Svetlana."

  The house was practically devoid of furnishings. A padded straight-backed chair was the sole item in the living room. There were no shelves, no knickknacks, no pictures on the walls. Heavy black curtains were drawn closed.

  "I have stacks of unpacked boxes in the den, but I can't say I'll ever bother opening them. I'm uncertain how long my stay in Sunny Hill will be," she explained.

  I followed her slight figure through the house. The dining room was completely bare. In the kitchen, a square table with matching wooden chairs was pushed against the wall. A large black leather-bound book rested on the tabletop.

  "But you've just moved here," I said.

  She turned. "I hadn't intended to take up residence, but after finding you, I knew I had to stay a bit. That's the very reason I chose this house."

  "After finding me?"

  She lifted a twig-like finger to her face and tap-tapped the side of her nose. "A fortuitous discovery." She relieved me of my burden, taking the bag containing the cookie plate and the dessert my mother had prepared. "Strawberries and sponge cake, how perfect," she said without g
lancing inside.

  "How—"

  "It's all over your face, sweet girl!" She patted my cheek with the tips of her fingers. Her touch was like the delicate brushing of feathers against my skin. "You'll have to give your dear mother my thanks—if she can ever forgive me."

  Forgive her? I didn't understand half of what this old lady was talking about. Could the poor woman be senile?

  Lenora Bones chuckled. "Ha! Not quite! But I doubt I'll be a very good influence on you, I'm afraid, Svetlana. Or, at least, I doubt your mother will think so! Of course, she won't have to know a thing if we can help it. That would be for the best, I think."

  "Won't have to know what?"

  "Do you mind if we try some of this before we begin?" She pulled out the tub and the sponge cake and went to work divvying up two bowls of dessert, slicing the wedge of cake into two enormous pieces and ladling on the rich strawberry sauce until everything was completely covered. "Nice and red," she announced, glancing playfully from the brimming bowls to my smiling wonderment.

  "Do you—"

  "Oh, yes," the old lady crooned, spooning a mouthful of strawberries. "Mmm. I have a decided preference for the taste of red." She winked. "Let's adjourn to the back patio, shall we? I have raspberry tea already prepared."

  Lenora Bones carried her dessert along, plucking the leather-bound book from the kitchen table as she passed. She slid the glass door open with a buckled boot, calling me to follow.

  The patio was a half-moon shape of clay-colored flagstones shaded by the sprawling limbs of a twisted oak. A cardinal splashed in a rusted birdbath, taking wing, whistling off into the warming afternoon. There was a wrought-iron table with two padded chairs. Steam lifted from the spout of a china teapot centered on a silver tray. The old lady poured hot pink tea into delicate porcelain cups, adding a splash of milk to her own. "Do you like?" she wondered.

  "Please," I answered, watching her spotted hands measuring milk into my tea. With silver tongs, I dropped two cubes of sugar into my cup. I'd never tasted hot tea before.

  Ms. Bones studied me from across her cup. "I wonder, what is your favorite thing to read, Svetlana?"

  I glanced to the large black volume she'd set aside on the table. I sipped the tea and thought of all the books I had ever read. Was there anything that I didn't enjoy? "I'm not sure."

  "I bet you love adventure stories," she said. "And ghost stories. And science fiction." She slurped her tea and cut away a forkful of cake. "I like travel stories myself; adventures in exotic places."

  I swallowed my own bite of cake, reaching for my book bag. "I brought a couple of books with me. I didn't know if you already had something in mind for us to read." I pulled out Tarzan of the Apes and Treasure Island, books I'd read before.

  "Oh, those are good," she said. "But I do have a particular book for us already, a bit of nonfiction, I'm afraid. I've read it myself a number of times, but the information is terribly important, well worth revisiting. I'm hoping you'll take a special interest in it as well." She pushed the black volume across the table.

  The book was as big as a box of cereal and as thick as a door. There were no markings on the cover, no title on the spine, no author's name. It smelled like a new shoe, though it was obviously old, its cover soft and worn. I opened it and found the first pages blank. The third page offered only a design at its center, a series of circles arranged into a symbol. There were three circles, two the size of a quarter, one black and one white, and a third circle no bigger than the fingernail on my pinkie, a spot as round and red as a droplet of blood. The larger circles barely touched, and where they met, the red circle was fixed. I stared at the symbol, feeling as if the larger circles were eyes peering up at me from the page.

  "This is you, Svetlana," Lenora Bones said, reaching and tapping the end of her slender finger to the spot of red. "This is who we are." Her voice had taken on gravity, a solemnity reflected in her eyes. She looked from the page to my puzzled expression. She pressed her finger to each of the two larger circles. "The natural and the unnatural," she explained. "And in between ... the Circle of Red." She lifted her hand from the book and gently touched my face. The sweet aroma of cookies filled my nose.

  "It's you," I said. "The cookie smell is you."

  "And you as well. Isn't it wonderful?"

  Her eyes were bright with happiness, but as she continued peering into my face, the joy melted slowly from hers, dissolving into worried concern. "You're so young," she whispered, almost to herself.

  The words embarrassed me somehow. I dropped my eyes back to the book, turning the page. Three words were handwritten in bold black print: What Is Known. The page that followed had a list of chapters and page numbers. I read down the chapter titles: Lycanthrope, The Kraken, Zombies and Re-Animated Flesh, Sorcery (Old Country), Sorcery (Voodoo and Latin America), Water Spirits, The Tribe of Qwerril, Bloodstones and Possession. I looked up from the list into the old woman's studied gaze.

  "Where I think we should begin reading," she said, "and where I think it will most benefit us to start, is Chapter Thirteen."

  I moved my finger down the contents page to Chapter Thirteen, the chapter titled Vampyres and the Corruption of Blood. As I took in the words, a strange constriction wrapped my chest, pressing over my heart.

  Does the subject interest you, Svetlana?

  The whisper came into my mind, but not shockingly so. The old woman smiled slyly, pouring herself another cup of tea. She motioned toward my half-empty cup, and I shook my head no, eyeing her carefully. She set the teapot aside.

  You do not seem surprised. She sent the thought to me as she sipped her tea. That's very good. Her words played inside my mind like smoky tendrils, uncoiling behind my eyes and tickling the inside of my skull.

  She's another one, I thought. The same as me, the same as Ms. Larch.

  Across the table the old woman suddenly faltered, the blood draining from her face. She dropped the china cup. It slipped from her fingers and shattered on the flagstones. A wave of panic, not completely my own, washed through my mind. Ms. Bones reached across the tabletop and clutched my hand, her bony fingers squeezing.

  I winced. "Ouch."

  Who? She asked loudly—thought loudly—her voice lifting inside my head like a pressurized wave, filling my mind completely. It pushed against my skull with the force of hot air expanding inside a balloon. I grimaced and pulled free of her grasp.

  "Who?" she demanded. The question croaked from her trembling lips this time. She moved around the table and laid spidery hands on my shoulders. She was barely as tall as I was. Her slate-gray eyes searched my face. "You've seen her?"

  "Seen who?" I asked.

  "Her! She's—she's shared your thoughts?"

  "Ms. Larch?"

  Lenora Bones whispered the name, tasting the sound of it: "Ms. Larch." She reached her hands to my face, palms cool against my cheeks. I was smothered in the warm bakery smell. Ms. Larch, she thought, not in my mind this time but within her own, where I found it. She returned slowly to her seat, the hard bottoms of her black boots crackling over broken china. She paid no notice. The liveliness that had painted her face before was gone completely now, replaced with worried dread. "You know her?"

  She's one of my teachers at school, I thought, forming the words inside the old woman's mind.

  Lenora Bones fixed me with an appraising look, approving, smiling a mirthless grin. And you've spoken to her? Like this?

  Yes.

  She brooded, staring below the wrought-iron table at the points of the polished boots poking from beneath her red dress. She kneaded her brow, working the pads of bony fingers in circles across her wrinkled forehead, as if to conjure a thought. Finally, she cocked an eyebrow and asked, "Did she ever touch you?"

  "Touch me?"

  "Grab you? Try to take you?"

  "Take me? Where?"

  "Away.... Believe me, she has plans for you, my dear. I think it's only your ignorance that's saved you."

  Ignorance
? Who did this old lady think she was talking to? I'm no Einstein, but I'm not chopped liver, either.

  Lenora Bones chuckled. "I don't mean 'ignorant' in a critical fashion, sweet girl. I only surmise that your lack of understanding in this matter has spared you thus far."

  Could she read my every thought?

  Not every thought—and none at all, if that's your wish. Only an unguarded thought can be read.

  "You're not helping with my lack of understanding," I said, tired of talking in circles.

  "No—you're quite right. And I apologize. You're extremely lucky. I should have contacted you sooner, but I had no idea she was masquerading as a teacher at your school. She's diabolical, indeed."

  I reached into my book bag and pulled out the folded copy of the Sunny Hill Bee that Fumio Chen had given me earlier in the week. I opened it to page three and handed it to Ms. Bones. "That's her: Ms. Larch."

  Lenora Bones studied the photo Dwight Foote had taken of Sylvia Larch standing in front of the school. Her wrinkled face crinkled into a hard mask of recognition. I couldn't read her thoughts, but her anger was evident, falling away in waves of primal heat. The force of her emotion unsettled me.

  "I'm sorry," she said, sensing my discomfort. Her face relaxed. Her anger, as palpable as the heat from a boiling pot, faded.

  "Do you know her?" I asked.

  "I know of her. But in England she was Diana Frost, a nurse at Kensington Hospital"

  "A nurse?"

  "Not one you'd want to have looking after you," she said, shaking her head. "How did Larch approach you?"

  "On my first day of school—she knew."

  "Knew?"

  "About the red foods. That I eat only things that are red, that I sleep under the bed."

  "That you what?"

  "Sleep under the bed—although she said that she didn't."

  "Well, who would? Unless the mattress was simply dreadful. I don't know why you would want to sleep beneath your bed, my dear."

  "It's better."

  Lenora Bones shrugged, lifting the knobby peaks of her sharp shoulders, and rolled her eyes. I didn't latch onto her thought, but if I had, it would probably have been something to the effect of Whatever floats your boat.