The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

by Grady Hendrix

  “I came in to put something over her,” Maryellen said, hand flat on Patricia’s forehead, lifting one eyelid.

  All she could see beneath it was the white. Patricia was inert, lifeless, dead weight. Kitty tried to see if her chest rose and fell, but she knew that didn’t tell you anything. She prodded at Patricia’s throat without really knowing what she was doing.

  “How do you know if she’s breathing?” she asked.

  “I listened to her chest and there’s no sound,” Maryellen said.

  “Don’t you know CPR?” she asked.

  Patricia’s shoulders hitched and her body began soft, boneless convulsions.

  “Don’t you?” Maryellen asked. “I’ve only seen it in movies.”

  “You’ve killed her,” a voice echoed from the bathroom. It had a rasp in it but it still sounded strong and clear. “She’s dying.”

  Maryellen looked full into Kitty’s face, mouth slack, eyebrows raised in the middle like she was about to cry. Kitty felt lost.

  “What do we do?” she asked. “Do we call 911?”

  “No, roll her on her…” Maryellen took her hands and tried different approaches, fluttering over Patricia’s twitching body. “Maybe raise her head. She might be in shock? I don’t know.”

  Of course it was Mrs. Greene who knew CPR. One moment, Kitty watched Maryellen helplessly running through everything she knew and the next Mrs. Greene gently pushed her aside, placed her hands underneath Patricia’s shoulders and said, “Help me get her on the floor.”

  Kitty took her feet and they half-dragged, half-dropped Patricia onto the throw rug next to the bed. Then Mrs. Greene put one hand under the back of Patricia’s neck, the other on her chin, and popped Patricia’s mouth open like the hood of a car.

  “Check the blinds,” Mrs. Greene said. “Make sure no one can see.”

  Kitty almost wept with gratitude at being told what to do. She looked in the bathroom and saw James Harris still on the floor where they’d left him. At first she thought he was convulsing, then realized he was laughing.

  “I’m starting to feel much better,” he said. “Every second I’m feeling better and better.”

  She made sure the blinds were closed all over the house. She wanted to switch off the symphony music on the radio downstairs, but finding the on/off switch took too much time and she needed to be back upstairs. There weren’t enough of them to do all this.

  In the bedroom, Mrs. Greene applied four perfect chest compressions, then four identical breaths into Patricia’s mouth, as methodically and calmly as if she were blowing up a raft by the pool. Patricia’s mouth hung slack. She had stopped convulsing. Was that a good sign?

  Mrs. Greene stopped the CPR and Kitty’s heart stopped, too.

  “Is she…” she began, then found her throat was too dry to speak.

  Mrs. Greene pulled a Kleenex from her pocket and wiped her mouth, checked the Kleenex, and dabbed at the corners of her lips.

  “She’s breathing,” she said.

  Kitty could see Patricia’s chest lifting and falling. They both looked at Maryellen.

  “I panicked,” Maryellen said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I need you to put pressure on that wound,” Mrs. Greene said, pointing to Patricia’s thigh.

  The place where James Harris had been torn away from Patricia’s leg looked ragged and ugly. Blood oozed from it like sap.

  “You haven’t changed a thing,” James Harris said from the bathroom. “She’ll die later rather than sooner. So what?”

  “Don’t speak to him,” Mrs. Greene said. “He’s going to talk, try to convince us of something, but that’s all he can do now. We need to remember our jobs and do them. Get a washcloth and hold it on her leg.”

  Kitty went into the bathroom, stepping over James Harris, avoiding his hands, and brought back all the hand towels and washcloths she could find. Maryellen folded one of the washcloths into a square and pressed it to Patricia’s thigh. Mrs. Greene and Kitty went back into the bathroom.

  “What’s your big plan?” James Harris asked, as they rolled him over. His arms flopped uselessly. “You’re going to book club me to death? Not invite me to your next meeting?”

  They each gripped him beneath an armpit, raised him to a sitting position, and then Mrs. Greene and Kitty exchanged glances and nodded. One…two…

  “Lift from your legs,” Mrs. Greene said.

  …three. They heaved James Harris up to sit on the edge of his huge whirlpool tub.

  “Drowning won’t work,” he said, grinning. “It’s been tried.”

  They didn’t care what happened to him now; he was as good as dead, so they let go and he toppled backward and smashed into the bottom of the fiberglass tub in a jumble of limbs.

  “You’ll have to do better than that,” he said.

  Kitty arranged him so that he lay full length, his back propped up against one end of the tub, while Mrs. Greene moved everything out of the way. Then she left the room and came back in with the cooler and the grocery bag.

  They unfolded a blue tarp over the floor and taped it down with painter’s tape. Kitty had taken several of Horse’s deer hunting books and photocopied the relevant pages. When they taped them up on the wall over the bathtub for reference, James Harris got a good look.

  “You can’t,” he said, eyes dilating with shock. “You can’t do that to me. I’m one of a kind. I’m a miracle.”

  Mrs. Greene laid out the tools from the cooler. Bow saws, ten identical hunting knives with crossguards, a hacksaw with two packs of extra blades, a squashed coil of blue nylon rope. Chain-mail gloves to prevent cuts if they slipped. She and Kitty put on green gardening knee pads.

  “Listen to me,” James Harris said. “I’m unique. There are billions of people and I’m the only one like me. Do you really want to destroy that? It’d be like smashing a stained-glass window or…or burning a library of books. You’re a book club. You aren’t book burners.”

  They pulled off James Harris’s shoes and socks, then his pants, and let him lie naked on the bottom of the whirlpool. His nipples were pale, and his penis flopped upside down on his blond pubic thatch. Mrs. Greene turned on the water and made sure it was draining. She put in a drain catcher so no big pieces went down the pipes to cause problems later. She handed Kitty a hunting knife.

  Kitty got on her knees next to James Harris’s head. She looked at the diagram with its dotted lines and reached for James Harris’s arm. The first cut was supposed to be all the way around his elbow, slicing through the ligaments, and then she was supposed to twist and pull it off. She told herself it would be just like dressing a deer.

  “Didn’t Patricia tell you about me?” he said, trying to make eye contact. “I’ve lived for four hundred years. I know the secret to eternal life. I can tell you how to stop getting old. Don’t you want to stay this age forever?”

  Kitty touched the tip of the knife to the soft skin on his inner arm, hardly daring to breathe. The point dimpled the inside of his elbow.

  “This is the one time in your life you are face-to-face with something bigger than yourselves,” he said. “I am a mystery of the universe. Is this really how you’re going to respond?”

  In the bright light, with James Harris lying helpless in the tub, and everyone watching, in the calm rational white-tiled bathroom, Kitty froze.

  “Exactly,” James Harris said. “You haven’t done anything permanent yet. Just give me a few minutes and I’ll be as good as new. Then I’ll show you how to live forever.”

  “Here,” Mrs. Greene said, putting one hand on Kitty’s shoulder and holding out her hand. “You wait in the next room. Keep an eye on Patricia.”

  Gratefully, Kitty handed the knife to Mrs. Greene and got up, then stripped off the warm chain-mail glove and handed it to her. Mrs. Greene closed her eyes in silent prayer.

 
“I’m the one thing in this world that’s bigger than all of you,” James Harris called after Kitty. “I can make you stronger than anyone you know, I can make you live longer; you have come face-to-face with something truly amazing.”

  “What would that be?” Mrs. Greene asked, opening her eyes and kneeling by the side of the deep tub. She pulled on the glove.

  “Me!” he said.

  “We’ll have to agree to disagree,” she said.

  Those would be the only words she spoke to James Harris for the next hour. Without giving herself a chance to hesitate, Mrs. Greene stuck the knife into the inside of James Harris’s elbow. It hit bone right beneath the surface but she worked it around, and the more she imagined she was trimming the fat from a Christmas ham, the easier it became to dissociate herself from what she was doing as he screamed.

  She hacked away at his elbow, giving up on clean, neat cuts and just chopping at the ligaments and tendons. She sawed, she sliced, she scraped at his skin with her hunting knife.

  “Listen to me,” James Harris gibbered. “You’re confronted with the secret to eternal life and you’re just flushing it away. This is insane.”

  Mrs. Greene ignored him and finally got his elbow carved down to the bone.

  “Maryellen?” she called. “Let Kitty take care of Patricia. I need a hand.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Maryellen said, coming in from the bedroom.

  Maryellen held James Harris’s forearm in both hands and twisted it back and forth while Mrs. Greene held his shoulder and cut anything that looked like it was still connected. With a cartilage-tearing crunch and a series of small, fast pops, his forearm came free. A few strings of meat and gristle connected it to his body but Mrs. Greene cut the ones Maryellen couldn’t pull apart. Maryellen dropped the forearm into a black plastic garbage bag and carefully tied a knot in the top. Immediately, the bag began to writhe as the arm tried to get out.

  “I can feel my spine healing.” James Harris grinned at Mrs. Greene. “You’d better hope you can cut faster than I can heal.”

  Mrs. Greene worked fast, with Maryellen assisting. They took off the rest of his left arm at the shoulder, then his right foot, his right leg at the knee, then at the hip. The black plastic bags piled up in the corner of the bathroom in a squirming heap. As his muscle and bone dulled each hunting knife, Mrs. Greene dropped it into a plastic bag and picked up a new one. Maryellen cleaned the chain-mail gloves when they became too clotted with gore to keep a firm grip on his flesh anymore.

  “Where are your boys living?” James Harris said to Mrs. Greene. “Irmo, isn’t it? Jesse and Aaron. When I get out of here I’m going to pay them a visit.”

  Even when she turned him onto his stomach to work on his left arm and leg, James Harris kept up a running monologue that became less and less coherent as they cut more and more of him away.

  “I never went where I wasn’t invited,” he rambled. “The farm, the widow’s house, Russia, I only went where they wanted me. Lup asked me to use him, he asked me with his eyes, he knew I could keep him alive, but he had to keep me alive first. I’ll always remember that beautiful boy. That soldier wanted it, his face was so burned, and I did him a favor. I only did what people asked for. Even Ann wanted what I had to offer.”

  They took a break. Mrs. Greene’s arms throbbed and ached. The threat of James Harris’s spinal column knitting itself back together loomed over her. They didn’t have much time, but all she wanted to do was take a hot bath and go to sleep. The night felt endless.

  “How’s Patricia?” she asked Kitty.

  “Asleep,” Kitty said, still pressing the towel to Patricia’s thigh.

  Maryellen looked at the stiff way Kitty held her neck. A purple shiner circled her left eye.

  “What’ll you tell Horse?” Maryellen asked.

  Kitty’s face fell.

  “I hadn’t even thought of that,” she said.

  “We’ll figure it out when we’re through here,” Mrs. Greene said. Her confidence calmed Kitty. “Put some ice on your eye for now.”

  Back in the bathroom, James Harris’s torso greeted her again. It was time for his head. She dreaded this moment although she also hoped it would finally shut him up. One thing she’d learned about men: they liked to talk.

  As she worked her knife through the tough tendons and what remained of his spinal column, James Harris kept talking.

  “The Wide Smiles Club will come looking for me,” he said, eyes trying to find hers. “That’s what we do. They’ll come looking for me and when they find out what you’ve done, there will be hell to pay for you and your children and your families. This is your last chance. You can stop now and I’ll tell them to leave you alone.”

  “No one is going to come looking for you,” Mrs. Greene said, unable to resist. “You are all alone. You have no one in the world, and when you die no one will notice. No one will care. You leave nothing behind.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said, and gave a bloody grin. “I’m leaving you all a present. Just wait until your friend Slick gets ripe.”

  He started to giggle and Mrs. Greene crunched her knife through his windpipe and she and Maryellen gripped him by the hair and pulled off his head with a loud pop.

  Then they did what Miss Mary had told Patricia to do all those years ago at the supper table the night she spat at James Harris. Maryellen held his head and Mrs. Greene took a hammer and drove two thick twenty-penny nails into each of his eyes. His mouth finally stopped moving. Then they dropped his head into a bag and tied it shut.

  They gutted him and packed his organs and entrails into different bags. She was too tired to saw through his rib cage, so they simply removed as much meat from it as they could and wrapped pound after pound of flesh and muscle in different plastic bags. They double- and triple-bagged them, reducing James Harris to a pile of tightly sealed trash bags that could fit into an ordinary sized garbage can.

  When they were finished, the bathroom looked like an abattoir. Mrs. Greene and Maryellen went into the bedroom.

  “Finished?” Kitty asked.

  “We are,” Mrs. Greene said.

  “I need to get the car,” Maryellen said, then sat down heavily on the floor, making sure she stayed off the throw rug. “I just need to sit for a minute.”

  They all ached, right down to the bone, but they weren’t even close to finished. Mrs. Greene looked around the bathroom and the bedroom, and Maryellen followed her gaze. Kitty did, too.

  “Jesus, Mary, Mother of God,” Kitty said softly.

  Blood was everywhere. Despite the tarp, the bathroom was painted red. The countertops, the walls, the door frame, the toilet. There was blood on the dark oak planks in the bedroom, blood on the duvet cover where Patricia lay, bloody handprints on the doors and walls. Seeing how much they had to clean drained them of their spirits, hammered them down to nothing. It was almost ten. The Clemson-Carolina game would be over in less than an hour.

  “We don’t have enough time,” Maryellen said.

  Something whispered in the bathroom. They looked at each other, then pushed themselves up off the floor and stood in the bathroom door. The pile of black plastic packages containing pieces of James Harris’s body twisted like snakes. Their motion was muscular and angry.

  “We put the nails through his eyes,” Mrs. Greene said.

  “He’s not stopping,” Kitty wailed. “It didn’t work. He’s still alive.”

  The doorbell rang.

  CHAPTER 40

  “They’ll go away,” Maryellen whispered.

  It rang again, twice in a row.

  Mrs. Greene’s hands and feet went cold. Maryellen felt a headache start at the base of her skull. Kitty whimpered.

  “Please go away,” she whispered. “Please go away…please go away…please go away…”

  The black plastic packages crackled
in the bathroom. One of them rolled off the pile and hit the floor with a THUMP. It began to squirm towards the door.

  “The lights are on,” Maryellen said. “We forgot to turn out the lights. You can see them through the shutters. They’ll know he’s home.”

  The doorbell rang, three times in a row.

  “Who’s the least of a mess?” Maryellen asked. They looked at each other. She and Mrs. Greene were encrusted in blood. Kitty only had some bruises.

  “Oh, merciful Jesus,” Kitty moaned.

  “It’s probably one of the Johnsons,” Maryellen said. “They must’ve run out of beer.”

  Kitty took three deep breaths, on the verge of hyperventilating, then walked out into the hall, down the stairs, and over to the front door. Everything was silent. Maybe they’d gone away.

  The doorbell rang, so loudly that she squeaked. She grabbed the handle, flipped the deadbolt, and opened it a crack.

  “Am I too late?” Grace asked.

  “Grace!” Kitty shouted, dragging her inside by the arm.

  They heard her all the way up in the bedroom and came running downstairs. Grace’s face went slack when a blood-splattered Maryellen and Mrs. Greene appeared. She looked at them in horror.

  “That’s a white carpet,” she said.

  They froze and looked back at the stairs. Their bloody footprints came right down the middle of the carpet. They turned back around and saw Grace stepping back from them, taking in everything.

  “You didn’t…” she began, but couldn’t finish.

  “Go see for yourself,” Maryellen said.

  “I’d prefer not to,” Grace said.

  “No,” Mrs. Greene said. “If you have doubts, you need to see. He’s in the upstairs toilet.”

  Grace went reluctantly, fastidiously avoiding the bloodstains on the stairs. They heard her footsteps cross the bedroom and stop in the bathroom doorway. There was a long silence. When she came back down, her steps were shaky and she had one hand on the wall. She looked at the three women, covered in blood.