“I couldn’t help myself,” Grayson said, pulling up to the massive, white tent. “I felt something stirring in my soul.”
I shot him a dirty look. “I told you to stop at four tacos.”
Grayson grinned. Suddenly, banging and grunting sounded from the back cabin.
I turned to see Earl slamming the wheelchair into the wall at the end of the passageway that lead to the front cabin.
“You gotta get out of the chair first,” I said. “What a dope.”
AFTER EARL FINALLY got out of the wheelchair, I’d revived my role as disabled vet. Grayson was pushing me in my Salvation Army wheelchair across the dirt parking lot toward the entry flap of the biggest damned revival tent I’d ever seen.
I scowled at my cousin shuffling along beside us. All of this was his fault. During lunch, he’d talked non-stop about Bertie and his magic healing powers until he’d piqued Grayson’s curiosity.
As a result, I’d ended up, yet again, the victim of another of Grayson’s hastily planned “field research” tactics.
I was to fake an illness in order to try and get Bertie to “lay hands on me.” While I was being felt up, Grayson was going to surreptitiously scan Bertie’s electromagnetic field with a detector, or some stupid crap like that.
Whatever.
“Salvation is at hand,” Grayson said, raising a hand toward the tent.
“Well, ‘salvation’ had better keep his hands to himself,” I grumbled. I frowned up at the huge, glittery banner draped over the entryway.
Reverend Bertie & the Baptist Evangelical Resurrection Path Seekers!
Below that spangled banner, a smaller, hand-painted one read; Hurry! November 17-23 Only!
“Get your miracle while it’s hot,” I quipped.
Then, suddenly, everything went black. My sight had blinked out again like a porch light in a horror movie.
“I can’t see,” I said.
“Oh! Are you here for a healing?” I heard a woman’s voice say.
“Yes, we are, fine lady,” Grayson said from a point above and behind me.
I elbowed him through the back of the chair. “Grayson, I can’t see!”
“She’s blind?” the woman asked.
“Yes,” Grayson said. “Since birth.”
“Only Bertie can save her!” Earl sobbed.
“Well please, come this way. We’re not open yet, but I’ll see if Bertie has time for a true believer.”
“We’re believers, all right,” Earl said. “I been a BERPSer for over twenty years.”
“Well, isn’t that something,” the woman said. “In that case, follow me.”
My wheelchair started to roll. Behind me, I heard Earl snicker. “You got some actin’ chops, Cuz. Blind. Ha ha! You nearly fooled me!”
THE ROOM WAS STILL and quiet, except for the noisy inhaling and exhaling to my left. I recognized it and the Frito breath as belonging to my cousin, Earl.
“Lettuce pray,” a semi-effeminate man’s voice rang out.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, then an overwhelming whiff of Old Spice cologne.
“Brother, are you ready to see again?” the voice asked. He was so near I could feel the heat of his breath.
The hand shook my shoulder. “Are you ready?”
“Uh. Oh...yes,” I fumbled into the dark void. I turned my head sharply. Something stuck me in the eye.
“Ow!” I cried out.
“Sorry, brother,” the man said. “I was just making sure you weren’t faking it.”
“By poking my eye out?” I grumbled, rubbing my eye.
“Silence,” the man said. “Peace be with you. Let the miracle begin.”
I felt my ball cap lift off, then a cold, sweaty palm landed on my forehead like a giant tree frog.
“Jeeezus!” the man said, nearly startling me out of my chair. “Jeeezus! We call upon you now to heal our dear brother!”
His hand pushed off my forehead, sending my head craning back. I heard a vertebra in my neck pop. Then a shadow passed over me. I blinked. The world had gone from black to gray. I blinked again.
My vision had been restored!
Hovering over me was a sweaty little man with beady black eyes. He was staring at me from beneath the worst toupee I’d ever laid eyes on.
“Can you see me, brother?” Bertie asked.
“I can see you!” Earl cried out.
I stared at Earl, then back at Bertie. I was too dumbfounded to even be annoyed at Earl.
Geez. Maybe the guy can perform miracles.
“Claim your healing!” Bertie said.
“I claim it,” I blurted, before Earl could beat me to it. “Brother Bertie, I can see!”
Chapter Thirty-Four
AFTER TIPPING THE TOUPEE-topped faith healer a twenty, I’d insisted that Grayson and Earl wheel me out of the revival tent rather than walking out on my own two legs.
I’d told them it was in order to avoid suspicion and maintain the ruse of me being an old nursing home vet. But the truth was, I was getting a real blast out of making those two haul my butt around like they were my personal Dumb and Dumber.
“Ugh,” Earl grunted as he lifted me through the side door of the RV and tossed me onto the sofa like a sack of potatoes. “Maybe next time you can get Bertie to heal your legs, too.”
“One miracle was quite enough,” I said, trying to make a joke of it. But inside, I squirmed with unease.
Had it all been a coincidence, or had Bertie actually cured me of my blind spells?
“I told you Bertie was the real deal,” Earl said.
“He’s real all right,” Grayson said, hauling the wheelchair through the side door of the RV. “But exactly what kind of deal has yet to be determined.”
I shot Grayson a WTH look. “Wait. You believe in a cannibal khakua demon, but not faith healing?”
Grayson shrugged. “No. I believe in faith, to a certain extent. But you’re forgetting one important fact, Drex. You faked being blind. Therefore, uh ... no miracle.”
“Oh, yeah,” Earl said, then frowned.
I sat up on the couch. “But that’s just it. I wasn’t. Faking it, I mean. I ... I had another one of those blind spells.”
“What?” Grayson’s face registered so much concern it scared me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I winced. “I did! You just didn’t believe me.”
Earl shook his head and tutted, “Oh, ye of little faith.”
“When did the blind spell come on?” Grayson asked, ignoring Earl. He locked his mesmerizing green eyes onto my dark-brown ones.
I sat up and chewed my lip. “Well, I was reading the tent banner, and—” I gasped. “Just like last time! Oh my God. You don’t think my blind spells are related to Bertie, do you? That he has some kind of weird, psycho-kinetic powers?”
“Perhaps,” Grayson said, studying me. “But it’s more likely hysterical blindness.”
“Hysterical!” I yelled. “Who’s hysterical?”
“No one, as far as you know,” Grayson said. “It could also be triggered by traumatic memories.”
I frowned. “But the first time it happened, I didn’t even know Earl was coming yet.”
Grayson’s cheek dimpled. “Back further than that, Drex. Were your parents carneys, perhaps? Were you ever traumatized at a carnival?”
“Not that I can recall. But I do have a weird aversion to clowns.”
“It’d be abnormal not to,” Grayson said. “What about the bad taste in your mouth? Did you experience that again, too?”
Earl snickered. I shot him some side-eye.
“Well, now that you mention it, yes,” I said.
“Did you take another Fred Flintstone?” Grayson asked.
“No.”
Earl raised his hand. I clenched my molars together. “What, Earl? This is important.”
“Uh, could a kale smoothie make your mouth taste bad?”
I sneered. “Ha. Ha. I didn’t have—”
“Uh, yeah you
did.” Earl shrugged sheepishly. “When we were at Topless Tacos, I might’ve dumped that little sample cup they were handing out into your iced tea.”
I closed my eyes to keep them from burning a hole through Earl’s skull.
“Any tingling like before?” Grayson asked.
I thought about it for a moment and opened my eyes. “No.”
Grayson nodded. “What did it feel like when Bertie touched you?”
“Like ikigai.”
Grayson’s eyebrows raised a notch. “Bertie’s touch infused you with a reason to live?”
“No. Icky guy. As in his clammy hands gave me the creeps.”
Earl gasped. “How could you talk bad about brother Bertie? He’s no creep! He’s been around for ages!”
Grayson shifted his gaze to Earl. “How many ages?”
Earl shrugged. “I dunno. But Granny Selma once told me that when she was a teenager, Bertie rubbed her warts clean off her.”
Eew!
“Hmm. I’ve heard of such accounts,” Grayson said. “Never underestimate the power of suggestion. How old is Bertie?”
“Don’t rightly know,” Earl said. “But Granny was eighty-one when she died four years ago. Bertie would’a had to be at least that old.”
Grayson rubbed his chin. “Interesting. He doesn’t look a day past fifty.”
“Maybe he’s related to George Hamilton,” Earl said.
“Or Nosferatu,” Grayson said.
Earl’s eyebrow ticked up. “Nose hair who?”
I scowled. “Bertie, a vampire? Come on, Grayson.”
Earl gasped. His eyes grew wide. “Lordy, lordy! That’s why Bertie’s always in that tent. He don’t wanna come out in the daylight for fear a burnin’ up!”
“That’s a common myth,” Grayson said.
“Tents?” Earl asked.
“No. That vampires are sensitive to daylight.”
“How do you know all this stuff, Mr. G?” Earl asked, and sat down next to me on the sofa.
I sensed one of Grayson’s conspiracy theories coming on, and groaned. I figured I might as well have some refreshments to go along with the show. I scrounged through my purse for a Tootsie Pop and struck gold. A red one. My favorite.
Grayson unfolded the wheelchair and took a seat close in front of us, like a disabled Army recruiter. “Bram Stoker was the first to bring vampires to mainstream attention.”
“Wow,” Earl said. “Was he some kind a monster hunter like you are, Mr. G?”
“Hardly. He was a business manager for a theater in London. He got paid so badly he had to supplement his income by writing sensational pulp novels.”
Earl’s eyes grew wide. “How sensational were they?”
Grayson’s left eyebrow rose a notch. “The most famous was the one he wrote in 1897, about Dracula.”
“That dude from Transylvania!” Earl whispered breathlessly.
Grayson sighed. “Actually, Romania. Stoker based Dracula on Vlad III, a Romanian royal. He was also known as Vlad Tepes, which, roughly translated, means Vlad the Impaler.”
“Did this Vlad feller sleep in a coffin?” Earl asked.
“No. Murnau made that up.”
Earl’s head cocked sideways like a confused puppy. “Murman?”
“No. Murnau,” Grayson said. “The German guy who wrote the silent film about Nosferatu in 1922. He also invented the idea that vampires disintegrate in daylight.”
Earl scowled. “Why would he go and do that?”
“For the same reason all writers embellish their stories.”
“To make ’em better?”
Grayson laughed. “No. To keep from getting sued for plagiarism.”
Earl nodded thoughtfully. “What about the whole drinking blood part?”
“Yeah. About that ....” Grayson took off his fedora. “Old Vlady boy liked to run people through with spikes for his dinner-time amusement. That’s how he ended up being called The Impaler. But, as far as we know, he never drank any of his victims’ blood. Stoker made that up.”
Earl’s nose crinkled. “So that’s all malarkey, too?”
“’Fraid so.”
“But what about all the vampire cults?” I asked. “People all over the world believe in vampires. If there’s nothing to it, why would the legend persist?”
“In a nutshell? Bad timing,” Grayson said.
“Huh?” Earl and I said in unison.
Grayson gripped the wheels on the wheelchair like he was contemplating doing a wheelie.
What is it with guys and wheelies?
“The year Stoker’s Dracula novel debuted, the world was in the grips of a plague of tuberculosis,” Grayson said, apparently giving up on the idea. “Back then, it was called consumption. People afflicted with it would cough up blood. And their bodies would waste away until they look like the walking dead.”
“That must’ve been horrible,” I said. “But I still don’t get the connection.”
“The victims looked like bloody-mouthed ghouls,” Grayson said. “Add a pinch of superstition and a dollop of hysteria, and you’ve got a whole new diagnosis—being ‘caught in the vampire grasp.’”
I blanched. “What?”
“That’s what they called having tuberculosis back then.”
I scowled. “You’re making that up!”
“I am not. Look it up for yourself. A man named Simon Whipple Aldrich died of it. His gravestone in Rhode Island says, ‘consumption’s vampire grasp seized his mortal frame.’”
Earl shot up off the couch. “Mr. Whipple was a vampire?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s why he was always squeezing the Charmin.”
“Joke if you want,” Grayson said. “But people were dropping like flies from the disease. Then a foreign doctor from Eastern Europe arrived in Illinois with a cure.”
“Thank goodness!” Earl said.
“Not so much,” Grayson said. “His cure was to dig up the first known victim, cut out her heart, burn it, and feed it to her infected brother.”
“Did it work?” Earl asked.
I bopped him on the arm.
“No,” Grayson said. “Because tuberculosis isn’t caused by vampires. In truth, there’s only been one verified account of a death related to vampires.”
“Shannon Dougherty?” Earl asked.
“No. It was a guy who put cloves of garlic in his mouth to ward vampires off. One got lodged in his throat while he was sleeping and he choked to death.”
I shot Grayson a gimme a break look. “Any relation to Melvin?”
“So the garlic thing’s real?” Earl asked.
“About as real as clinical vampirism,” Grayson said.
Earl’s eyes grew wide. “I knew that clinic I went to took more blood samples than they needed!”
I smirked. Grayson was getting a dose of the medicine I’d been enduring from “Dr. Earl” for nearly four decades. I hope it cured him of ever inviting him along on our investigations again.
“Well, at least we’re in agreement about doctors,” Grayson said. “Those blood suckers aside, clinical vampirism is real enough—at least to those who suffer from it. They truly believe they need to drink human blood in order to survive.”
“Where would they get a crazy idea like that?” Earl asked.
Grayson sighed and stood up from the wheelchair. “I thought we just covered that. Books and movies.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. I grabbed Grayson’s arm. “Wait a second. Let me get this straight. Are you saying that vampires aren’t real?”
Grayson shot me an incredulous look. “No. They’re real all right. They just don’t drink blood.”
I scowled. “Then what the hell was the point of that desensitization program you made me watch? Why put me through all that for nothing?”
“It wasn’t for nothing,” Grayson said. “It was to help you to conquer your own self-generated fears.”
“What about the mirror thing?” Earl asked, making a face into a hand m
irror. “Vampires ain’t got no reflection, or is that just a myth, too?”
I grinned. The strained look on Grayson’s face made enduring the vampire video worth every second.
Grayson sighed. “Look, Earl—”
A loud knock on the side door of the RV silenced Grayson mid-sentence.
“Hey!” a man’s voice called out. “You guys okay in there?”
Chapter Thirty-Five
GRAYSON, EARL AND I exchanged glances. We were in the RV, parked beside the BERPS revival tent, and someone was pounding on the side door.
“Who could that be?” I asked, flinching at the reverberating knocks. “Didn’t I pay Bertie enough?”
“Anybody in there?” a man’s gravelly voice called out.
“Quick. Get in the wheelchair,” Grayson said, pushing it toward me. I hustled my butt into it and reached for the doorknob. “Try to act natural,” he whispered at Earl, who was thumb-wrestling with himself. “Or, well, just do the best you can.”
Grayson snatched open the door. I rolled my wheelchair next to him, nearly running over his foot.
A wiry, muscle-bound guy was standing right next to the door. Half of him was covered in black leather, the other half in tattoos. “You got engine trouble?” he asked.
“No. We’re fine,” Grayson asked. “Why?”
“You’ve just been parked out here for a while.” The man adjusted the red do-rag on his head and tried to peek inside.
“My friend here just had a healing by Bertie,” Grayson said. “We were just discussing him.”
“We were?” Earl asked, looking up from his thumbs.
I shot him a gonad-withering glare.
“Yes,” Grayson said. “We were just wondering how old the miracle man is.”
“Bertie’s ninety-nine,” the biker wannabe said. “He turns a hundred on Monday. We’re having a big celebration.”
“A hundred years old,” Grayson said. “Interesting. How long have you been working for him?”
“Been with Bertie for forty years. He stopped me from squandering my life on drugs, sex, and rock-n-roll. I’ve been working for him ever since.”
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