by L. L. Soares
“Makes sense.”
“By the way,” Viv said, then shoveled a chunk of lasagna into her mouth.
“Yeah?”
“I can smell blood on you.”
He tried to keep from blushing, but it felt like he failed. “It’s that time of the month,” he said and then trailed off, not wanting to go into any more detail than he had to.
Viv chuckled.
Jeremy got two bottles of beer from the refrigerator.
“So, are you going to be okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure. I’ll live. I can feel the exhaustion coming on. After I eat I’ll head to bed. I’ll be real quiet for a day or two, as usual. Locked away in my room.”
“I understand. Nobody will bother you.”
“Thanks for being so understanding, Jeremy. I doubt many people would be as supportive as you’ve been.”
“You got me through some tough times, Viv. I can’t imagine not returning the
favor.”
“I know you feel that way, but thanks anyway.”
He moved closer and kissed her on the cheek. “I still regret not taking our relationship to another level, though. Even if it meant the death of me.”
“You say that now,” Viv said. “But I had your best interests at heart.”
“Well, if I find out I have cancer or something someday, let me go out with a smile, okay?”
“Sure thing.”
He took the beers down the hall, back to his room. Viv finished eating.
* * *
Sam returned to a dark, empty house. His first instinct was to take a shower, get cleaned up. There was some blood on him. This would have disturbed him, especially since it was becoming more and more common, but he was still in somewhat of a daze. Like coming out of a trance.
As he was taking a shower, he started thinking about Maggie.
When he was done, he made his rounds of the house he shared with her, looking in every room. He even looked in the closets and under the bed, which made no sense at all, but there was no sign of her. And there weren’t any messages on their answering machine. No words, spoken in her voice, to tell him where she was or put his mind at ease. No messages on his cell phone, either.
“Strange,” he said softly to himself, his head still slightly fuzzy. “This isn’t like her at all.”
He figured she must have gone on a drinking binge, and was at a bar, or worse, passed out in the gutter somewhere. Maybe someone even took advantage of her. This last thought made him shudder.
I remember searching for her, but not much else, he thought. Who knows? Maybe I went on a binge of my own.
But he felt too good. In fact he felt very good, energized. The more his head cleared, the more he could feel the energy surging within him.
What the hell was I doing all night? he wondered. Clearly, if I’d found Maggie, I would have brought her back home with me.
He saw the clock radio on the bedside table in the bedroom. It was after midnight. It was like he had been out sleepwalking. He wasn’t even sure if he’d ever been a sleepwalker before, but there were lots of clues that seemed to point in that direction now. The whole idea disturbed him; not having control over his own actions.
He stretched out on the bed, wondering what to do next about Maggie’s disappearance. Should he call the police now? Should he go out and look for her again?
Instead, he drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Alone in her room, Viv sat cross-legged and naked on the floor, trying hard to empty her mind. She should have been asleep by now. Usually, the exhaustion would take over a few hours after she “fed,” but for some odd reason her mind was sharper than ever.
Even though she tried to wipe her thoughts clean, she saw Maggie’s face, beatific in the midst of orgasm, thanking her for the peace that opened up before her. She saw the moment when life vanished from Maggie’s eyes, turning them to glass.
She also found herself worrying.
In the past, she was able to refrain from feeding for weeks at a time. Sometimes, she could go a whole month without having to find a victim. But lately, this had changed. It had only been a matter of days between Richard Croix and Maggie. Was her hunger getting stronger? Was she going to have a harder and harder time resisting the urges that welled up inside her? As she grew older, she thought the needs would diminish with time, that eventually she could resist the urge completely. But the exact opposite seemed to be the case. Her appetites were stronger than ever now.
I’ve got to cleanse my mind.
But the images were so vivid. The worry so nagging.
Eventually, the exhaustion came and took over, and she couldn’t concentrate on anything anymore.
She slid onto her mattress just before dawn, finally able to sleep.
* * *
Sam woke to the ringing of the telephone. He sat up in bed, franticly looking around the room. His eyes fell upon the clock beside his bed. It was almost noon and he’d forgotten to set the alarm for work. Then he realized that it was Saturday.
The phone continued to ring. Grabbing for the receiver, he knocked the phone onto the floor.
He picked it up. “Hello?” he said, before he’d brought it to his ear.
“Mr. Wayne,” the man’s voice said on the other end. “Sam Wayne?”
“Yes.” He had hoped it would be Maggie’s voice. But this man, asking his name. It couldn’t be good.
“Mr. Wayne, my name is Detective Ben Carroll. I have some news about your wife, Maggie.”
“Oh God, I was just going to call the police. She’s been gone all night. Is she okay?”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but I’d like you to come with me down to the city morgue and identify a body we believe might be your wife.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this way. A woman was found dead in a motel room this morning, and she had your wife’s identification. Margaret Wayne, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Do you have a pen handy? I’ll give you the address.”
“One minute,” Sam said, pulling open the drawer of his night table and rummaging around for a slip of paper and a pen. When he had it, he told the officer on the other end, and then wrote down the address the man gave him.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Sam said.
“I’ll be waiting for you, Mr. Wayne. Once again, I’m sorry for your loss, if it is her.”
Sam hung up the phone.
He tried to figure out what he was feeling at that moment. All he could really come up with was numb. There was a chance, after all, that it wasn’t Maggie. But everything seemed to point to the possibility that it probably was. She was missing. She hadn’t called or tried to contact him in any way. And her behavior had been very erratic lately.
“Oh, Maggie,” he said, wanting so badly to cry, but it just didn’t seem real yet. It felt as if he were still dreaming, or in a bad TV movie.
He got his clothes together and went to take a shower. Maybe the water pounding on him would wake him up a bit. Maybe then he’d realize that this wasn’t really happening.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“So it’s your wife?”
“Yeah,” Sam said, staring down at her. The coroner had opened one of the long, metal drawers and, there, lifeless before him, was Maggie. It was strange how death transformed people. Just because he was looking at her body didn’t mean that it really felt like her anymore. She seemed so alien to him now.
He looked at her face. Almost angelic, but also weird, like a mask. He wondered what was beneath the sheet? Had they cut her open at all? Performed an autopsy?
“I’m sorry,” Detective Carroll said, nodding to the coroner, who closed the drawer.
“What happened to her?”
“Appears to have been a heart attack,” the coroner said, looking into Sam’s eyes. He was older than Carroll, and where the detective was stocky and intense, the corone
r was thin and seemed bored. “No sign of trauma.”
“She was found in a motel room by a cleaning lady,” Carroll said. “There doesn’t seem to have been any foul play, but we’re investigating it. She seems to have died peacefully.”
“Thank God.”
“On the phone, you said something about her being missing. That you were just about to call the police yourself?”
“When I got home from work yesterday, she wasn’t home. I had no idea where she was. And she didn’t come back all night. I was worried, but I had no idea something like this had happened.”
“So you really had no clue where she’d gone? If she was with anyone?”
“None. I just told you that. Was she with anybody?”
“Your wife was the one who got the room key, and she did it alone. We’ve been asking around and someone saw a woman near the room. Walking away. And I hate to say this, but there appears to have been sexual contact. But there was no evidence of force. There’s no sign of a crime.” Detective Carroll didn’t wait to get Sam’s reaction to his wife’s infidelity. “Did you know your wife had a heart condition, Mr. Wayne?”
“No, I didn’t,” Sam said.
“Well, sometimes people have one and don’t even know it. I guess that’s what happened here. It’s strange that a doctor never caught it at some point.”
Sam could feel the tears welling up in his eyes. He tried to hold them back.
“I’m sure she died without much pain,” the coroner said. He led them down the hall, back to his office.
“You can tell?”
“There are signs,” the coroner said.
Sam suspected there was no way to be a hundred percent sure about such things. That the coroner was trying to put his mind at ease.
“Can you fill out these forms, Mr. Wayne?” Carroll asked him, indicating some papers. “They just confirm that the body in there is your wife?”
“Yes, of course.”
Sam skimmed the papers quickly, then signed them.
“You should probably make arrangements to have someone come get her,” the coroner said. He sucked his back teeth and acknowledged Sam’s blank state. “You know, a funeral home or something.”
“Oh. I hadn’t even thought about that.”
“That’s because you’re in shock, Mr. Wayne,” Carroll said. “It’s totally understandable. This would shake anybody to the core.”
“What about the woman someone saw leaving the room? You think they were lovers? Do you know who she is?”
“You didn’t know anything about it?”
“No,” Sam said. “I don’t have a clue who it could be.”
“Our witness said it was a blonde woman. Beyond that, she wasn’t too helpful. She said it was difficult to see the woman’s face. Does that mean anything, Mr. Wayne?”
“She has a few friends, and I know one or two of them are blonde, but nobody out of the ordinary. No one who would hurt her. She’d been kind of keeping to herself lately, anyway, from what I can tell. She’s been missing a lot of work.”
“I see,” Carroll said.
“Do you think it’s relevant?”
“I’ll look into it.”
“I want to thank you for calling me, Detective. For letting me know.”
“I’m sorry I had such bad news,” Carroll said. “But I guess somebody has to do these things, right? What else can you tell me about your wife’s health, Mr. Wayne? Was there anything else, any illness she’d had recently?”
“Not really,” Sam said, then thought about it. “Well, I had this suspicion that she’d been drinking a lot lately. I was going to try to stage some kind of intervention, but I didn’t have a chance.”
“The autopsy did show alcohol in her system. But she didn’t die from that. You see, the reason why I’m taking such an interest in all this is, there have been a few deaths like this, recently. Strange deaths. Seemingly healthy people just up and dying. No sign of a struggle at all. Nothing suspicious. But the deaths themselves are suspicious. To me, anyway.”
“I understand,” Sam said.
“I’ll be in touch if I find out anything more,” Detective Carroll said.
Sam nodded. “Is it okay to go now?”
“Of course,” Carroll said. “Thanks for coming down here. I wish it were different circumstances; that it wasn’t your wife. Once again, I’m sorry for your loss.”
Sam nodded and made his way down the hall.
***
After that, Sam didn’t remember very much. He must have wandered out of that place in a real daze, and somehow he’d ended up in the park.
“You blind bastard,” someone shouted. It took Sam a moment to realize it wasn’t directed at him. It came from behind some trees. He moved in that direction. There was a baseball diamond on the other side. A little league game was going on.
“Enough of that,” an umpire was saying to a parent in the stands. “Watch your language.”
“You blind fuck,” the father said. “You made the wrong call.”
Sam could feel the tension. He saw one of the kids tense up, probably the irate father’s son. The air around Sam was crackling.
“I told you to watch it,” the umpire said. A coach came over to try to defuse things.
“You asshole,” the father said and jumped off the bleachers, running onto the field. He grabbed the umpire.
Everyone seemed to freeze at that moment. Like a still photograph. Sam saw the father grab the umpire, his other fist balled up and ready to strike. He saw the coach preparing to grab his arm and try to restrain him. But everything had stopped.
Then, everything sped up.
Fists were thrown, the umpire was on the ground, and the coach was grappling with the father. But then something strange happened. Everyone’s attention was focused on the altercation. Everyone in the stands, all the kids in the field.
And then, something snapped.
Fights broke out in the stands first, and then the violence spilled out onto the field, as the kids and coaches started fighting with each other. In no time at all, everyone in the stands surged toward the field.
Sam watched as it became a massive brawl. Everyone lashed out at whoever was closest. People were crying out, fighting, bleeding.
Sam stood there, watching, taking it all in.
There was a full-blown riot breaking out right in front of him. A kid struck a woman in the face, knocking her to the ground. A grown man attacked the kid, punching him over and over. Everybody was attacking someone. Children were beating mothers, fathers were punching each other. A pregnant woman was on the ground, being kicked in the stomach by a pack of kids. Their faces were red with rage.
Sam walked away, back toward the trees.
He felt strangely serene as he disappeared into the woods. He could hear police sirens in the distance.
* * *
Viv woke covered in sweat. She’d had a nightmare, strong enough to wake her, but once awake she couldn’t remember any of it.
She looked around the mostly bare room. She was alone. She could not remember the details of her dream, but there was a feeling that she was under attack. It was such a strong feeling, that even now she was struggling to regain her composure.
After she fed, Viv would usually be completely exhausted for a good twenty-four hours. Sometimes longer. She usually came back to Jeremy’s place to hide away and recover. She’d learned a long time ago that it was better not to fight it, that the best thing she could do was to sleep it off.
As the feeling of dread left her, it was replaced with a sense of physical well being. As if Maggie’s energy had been sucked into her. That always happened afterwards. She just didn’t think about it very much. She definitely didn’t want to think about it now.
In fact, there was a lot about her needs that she did not understand at all. She took them simply on faith. What really happened when she found “the lock” inside people? How did she take their lives away? And was it really “feeding”?
It felt that way, as if something were leaving them and entering her. Their souls, perhaps? Since it happened to her at the moment when the others died, that’s what she always thought. But Viv wasn’t sure if she believed in souls. There was definitely some kind of energy exchange, though.
At first, after the other person died, she felt euphoric, but it eventually gave way to exhaustion. After she got some rest though, and assimilated what had happened to her, she felt a different kind of pleasure. She felt whole. Satiated. She positively glowed.
Like right now.
She wouldn’t let herself think about the fact that the energy making her feel so good now was a direct result of Maggie’s death.
What really concerned her, though, was the immediacy of Maggie’s death. She usually didn’t need to feed so soon afterwards. There would be an aching inside her, and she would put it off for as long as she could, before she had to seek out her next victim. Was that the right word? Was she like some kind of vampire who sought out victims? She saw it coming. Viv knew before they went to that motel room that Maggie would die there. She also knew that she would be unable to resist it.
Some people had such a sadness in their core, that they were irresistible to her. Maggie was like that. There was something deep inside her that begged Viv to release her. That was why she couldn’t resist the urge.
It was inevitable that they would meet, that Viv would take her life away.
But why so soon? Viv wondered, sitting up in bed. Why couldn’t we just have a few weeks together?
She knew deep inside that it would have made things worse. If she felt this guilty now, what would she have felt if they had been even closer? As it was, she had been on the verge of falling for Maggie. On the verge of breaking her own rule, to never get emotionally involved with a victim. It was intimate work she did, and such intimacy always brought with it the risk of pain.
Viv remembered Maggie’s face the last time she saw her. Maggie was stretched out on the motel room bed, her face so peaceful and angelic. Viv’s victims were nothing if not grateful for what she bestowed upon them. They all wanted release. But Maggie’s face had been even more beatific than most. Like she had seen the face of God before she died. And who knows, maybe she did.
