Grace reverently held the knife the way she’d seen her father and brother hold the same fishermen’s knives they both had. Her father nodded to her that she was wielding it correctly. She pressed the release button and folded the blade back into the handle.
“The Rutherfords on your mother’s side are all soft New Haven folks with even tempers and weak stomachs, but you’re a Corker from a long line of Maine men and women who carved life from the tall timbers and pulled food from a violent, unwilling ocean,” her father said. “Don’t you forget that when the small minds of the small people in this town endeavor to drag you down and make you feel as small as they are.” After stubbing out his cigarette, eating a bite of donut, and sipping his coffee, her father went back to being the taciturn man she’d always known. “Finish your donut, kiddo. We’ve got to get back to your mother.”
Grace slipped the knife into her purse in a slot meant for an eyelash curler, but with the easiest access of anything inside. It was probably the most words her father had ever said to her in one sitting. They ate donuts, drank coffee, and smoked hand rolled cigarettes in silence for another half hour before he paid the tab, slid from the booth, and strolled to the door with her walking at his heels. It felt good to imagine that she was cut from the same wood as such a great man; it felt even better to hear him say so.
6.
She slept better that night, perhaps through sheer exhaustion or perhaps because she had a knife now and the knowledge her father took her concerns seriously. Sleeping under the same roof with such a stout man put a little confidence in her that the slender thing shaped like a girl who had stood in her yard wouldn’t fair very well against her father. Still, she slept with the spring-loaded fisherman knife on her nightstand.
The following morning’s breakfast and ride to work were back to routine. She talked with her mother while her father read the paper. The car ride was silent as usual. But she felt better knowing she only had a week’s work left at the job she didn’t like. This freedom on the horizon sped the day along until she was freed from her duties at 4 PM when the old accountant began to get hungry and sleepy.
She strolled the quiet streets of Vigil’s Rest in her heavy winter coat, admiring all the Christmas decorations in the shop windows along Main Street. In her coat pocket where she’d casually stuffed her hands, her right hand was wrapped around the handle of her new knife. She mentally rehearsed drawing the weapon on a would-be attacker, specifically the girl shaped creature that had frightened her so.
The setting sun signaled to Grace that she should head back to the front of the office building to wait for her father. He would be another hour or so depending on his day, and so she wandered over to the park to sit on her usual bench and smoke a cigarette beside the plastic tented fountain.
She smiled and stubbed out her cigarette in the snow piled around the base of the park bench. Debbie was sitting on the other end of the bench as though she simply materialized there. The trick didn’t have the same frightening edge it did the first few times as Grace had already come to terms with Debbie being a ghost of some kind.
“We’re becoming proper mushroom people,” Debbie said with a shy smile.
“I was starting to feel clutched with how often you vanish on me,” Grace said.
“Sure, but you know I’m earthbound enough to come back,” Debbie replied.
“I’ve got something for you,” Grace said.
“Likewise.”
Grace slipped an envelope from her pocket and slid it across the icy bench toward Debbie. “Cast an eye on those.”
Debbie picked up the envelope, recognizing it from when she’d last bought a Greyhound ticket. Inside were two bus tickets to New Haven. “Next Saturday,” Debbie murmured, reading the date off the tickets.
“Yep, five more days and we’re splitsville.” Grace slid a little closer on the bench. She shook off the possible negative connotations of Debbie handing back the tickets, and tried to keep the mood light. “So, what do you have for me?”
Debbie smiled, reached into the front pocket of her coat and withdrew a little silver locket in the shape of a heart. “My mom gave it to me for graduation,” she said. “I think she wanted me to put Phil’s picture in the other side, but I never felt like it belonged there.” Debbie gently pried open the little heart and showed it to Grace. “My picture is already on one side, but I didn’t have a picture of you. I figure you can put your own picture in there and maybe wear it.”
“Maybe definitely I’ll wear it!” Grace turned around slightly on the bench to allow Debbie to clasp the locket on her. Debbie’s hands were ice cold against her skin as she slid the locket around her neck. Grace turned back around, tilted her chin up a little, and displayed her neck with the silver locket around it. “How does it look?”
Debbie didn’t answer right away although she clearly was making a close study of the jewelry. After the silence grew to the point of uncomfortable, Grace cleared her throat and Debbie snapped out of whatever daze she’d fallen into. “Oh, it looks beautiful,” Debbie said.
Grace made an obvious show of looking around to see if the coast was clear, although she actually did a fairly thorough job of making sure they would be alone when she’d selected the spot, before she leaned in and whispered to Debbie, “I’ve wanted to kiss you since you sat down.”
“You must think I’m fast, and you’d probably be right.”
They met in the middle despite Debbie being the inviter. This kiss started soft and sweet with a little edge of reticence on both sides. As their kiss intensified, their concerns over their somewhat public display melted under the heat of the kiss. They nuzzled closer to one another pawing awkwardly at each other’s winter coats. The kiss slowly fizzled when it became clear they were exciting each other unduly and there wasn’t really anything else they could do on the park bench in the dead of winter without risking frost bite or arrest. Debbie rested her forehead against Grace’s.
“You are the absolute most, Grace Corker” she said with an infectious smile.
“Can you meet me here after work?” Grace asked.
“Every night until I meet you at the bus station,” Debbie said.
“You’ve got me real gone.”
“Likewise.”
They kissed briefly again before Grace pulled herself from the bench to go wait under the street light for her father. She glanced back to the bench near the fountain only to find Debbie was gone. Five days was too long to run away with Debbie and twenty-four hours was too long to wait to see her again. Grace pulled the locket up from the front of her shirt and opened it to gaze at her picture. Even tiny and in black and white, Debbie was beautiful.
Grace practically floated the whole way home and all the way through dinner, which seemed to please her parents that their formerly gloomy daughter was perking up. Grace was giddy, far too giddy for easy sleep, and once again she found herself waking up to check the window in hopes of Debbie being there waiting for her. The first time she checked, the night was empty. The second time Grace peeked out the curtains to the front yard, her heart froze. The terrifying girl was back, standing in almost exactly the same spot, glaring up at the window despite the shades being drawn. She still had the murderous intent although now her hair was pulled away enough from her face to see both crazed eyes. Grace swallowed hard, determined to let her father’s words be true about her. She was strong, from a line of strong people, and even if she was afraid, she wasn’t about to let the monster in her yard know that. She threw open the curtains and looked with unabashed disdain down to the girl shaped creature. Their eyes met and it took everything in Grace not to look away.
“Fuck you,” Grace whispered, flipping off the girl with enough emphasis to make her point clear even across the distance between them. “I’m not scared of you.”
The girl shaped creature snarled, its face contorting in inhuman ways to display a mouth full of jagged teeth, eyes flashing angry with a demonic white light. It made a screech s
ound reminiscent of a bat, but much louder and larger. Despite her knees weakening, every hair on her body standing on end, and an overwhelming urge to wet herself, Grace stood her ground. It took everything she had to pull it off, and she even channeled a bit of James Dean to make it stick, but she managed to simply shake her head with an undeniable air of calm hanging around her.
The creature howled again and bounded away into the night, running with an oddly stilted gait as though the changes to her face weren’t the only ones that had taken place to effect the hideous screech. With the monster departed, Grace fell to the floor, clutching her thundering heart. She managed to coax herself back into bed, clutching her knife, eyes locked on the window that she couldn’t bring herself to draw the curtains on again. Even with her back pressed against her bedroom wall and her knife between her and the window, sleep was elusive and fraught with nightmares.
7.
The week wore on without further nocturnal incident. After work, she sat on the bench waiting for her father until Debbie arrived. They spoke, although never about the girl creature on Grace’s lawn, and kissed, and held hands. It was the loveliest time in Grace’s life as far as she was concerned.
The locket and the knife became like totems for Grace. Neither was ever far from her person. She slept with them, bathed with them, ate with them, and always had both within handy reach.
It only took her a night to select a picture of herself for the other side of the locket; apparently her mother had been planning for just such a request and had many photographs of various sizes already available. When she asked to see the locket in question, Grace simply said it was something she wanted to keep in mind for New Haven. Grace’s mother said that was very smart and provided Grace with an envelope of possible pictures. When Grace showed Debbie the picture, one of her in her cheer sweater, she stated she couldn’t have imagined a better choice.
Grace’s bedroom quickly moved from a state of being lived in to boxed for storage and set aside in luggage for travel. Grace was no stranger to moving as her father had moved them fairly routinely most of her life, first with the Navy and then for building his businesses. Grace had no particular attachment for the room, the house, or the town, save Debbie, and she was taking that with her.
Grace talked on the phone with her Aunt Lorna a few times during the week. Her aunt seemed genuinely excited about the prospect of Grace coming to live with her. It wasn’t simply a matter of familial obligation or money woes creating the need for a tenant; Aunt Lorna said she’d been increasingly lonely and could really do with some company. Grace asked her if it would be alright if one of her friends moved in as well. Lorna cheerily exclaimed the more the merrier so long as they didn’t mind sharing a room until the sewing room could be converted to another bedroom. Grace knowingly stated she didn’t think either of them would mind that one bit.
Grace began to wonder what a ghost ate, and this led to wonderings of whether or not Grace was the only one who could see Debbie. In all their talks, the semantics of what Debbie was and how she functioned never really came up as it all seemed such unsavory talk and their time together was so limited. On Friday morning, Grace resolved to ask Debbie a few of the harder questions that night.
She waited on their bench after work, smoking a cigarette and watching the sun fade over the tree line of Vigil’s Wood. She didn’t want to walk the town anymore. She’d long since said goodbye to anything that mattered to her and she didn’t want to waste a minute with Debbie should she arrive at the bench first. As soon as the last color of the day faded from the sky, Grace expected to find Debbie beside her, but instead, an ill wind blew harsh across the park, threatening to tear the plastic sheeting from the fountain.
“You can’t take her from me,” a girl’s voice, made hollow and inhuman followed the wind.
Grace leapt off the bench and searched the area for the source. The girl shaped creature was standing not twenty feet away, hands held in gnarled claw shapes at her side, the same deranged, murderous look in her eyes. Until that moment, Grace hadn’t really connected the two occurrences in her mind. Of course the girl was talking about Debbie—Grace couldn’t believe she’d missed the obvious thread between the events.
“It’s not up to either of us where she goes,” Grace said, trying desperately not to sound frightened although every shred of her wanted to run screaming.
“It’s up to me!” the girl screeched.
She rushed across the park to Grace. In the blink of an eye, her hands were around Grace’s throat. In her panic-addled brain, Grace thought they couldn’t possibly be hands around her neck. They were too strong, too rigid. She thought it must be a metal vice of some kind. Air was becoming precious and Grace knew she was done if the vice stayed on her throat. She slipped the knife from her pocket, pressed the button to extend the blade, and jabbed the knife into the girl’s armpit. She twisted once and yanked the blade back out. The girl shrieked, this time in pain rather than anger. Air burned down Grace’s bruised windpipe, restoring lucidity almost immediately.
She could run, part of her wanted to, but she was angry, blindingly angry and knew she had to give more before fleeing. Grace lunged forward, brandishing the knife at the creature who was looking more and more monstrous by the second. The creature apparently hadn’t expected this. Her hands came up to defend herself a moment too late, and Grace’s second thrust found its mark with, burying the knife into the girl’s right eye. Grace stepped through the thrust until the blade hit bone; she grasped the knife with both hands and twisted hard several times before pulling the knife free with most of who knows what still clinging to the serrated back of the fisherman’s knife.
The creature stumbled back, half blind, grasping at its gushing socket. Grace now turned and ran. She screamed for help, fleeing toward Main Street where she hoped someone would still be around. She cut across 1st Street, finding no one, and turned right to continue on to Main. At the end of the street, eye still missing, blood streaming down the side of her contorted face, was the creature. Grace skittered to a stop, changed directions and tried to run back the way she came. In a flash the creature was there too. Grace opened her mouth to scream for help again, but the creature’s hand found her throat.
She tried for another stab at the monster’s remaining eye, but this time the girl was ready, easily swatting away Grace’s hand, knocking the knife painfully from her fingers. She felt her feet lift off the ground, suspended entirely by her neck. She choked and gasped as the imperfect, yet incredibly painful grip didn’t entirely cut off her airway. All her kicking, clawing, and struggling came to an abrupt halt when the creature thrust her free hand directly into Grace’s chest. It hurt more than she thought anything could and suddenly she was choking on her own blood. The monster twisted the hand inside her with willful glee written obviously across her hideous features. Grace considered it a blessing when her mind began shutting down. She could still feel the creature digging around inside her and she knew it still hurt, but it was almost as though her body was no longer hers and she was quickly gaining distance from it.
The monster recognized this loss of attentiveness in Grace’s eyes, and removed her hand. Grace was vaguely aware she was being dragged by the foot toward the woods although this too she could no longer feel through the numbness spreading across her body. She watched the night sky passing above her, wishing she could find the breath through the blood filling her mouth to call out to Debbie who would no doubt wonder where she’d gone.
Part 3: Slumber in Broken Earth
Winter 1955 – Debbie
1.
Debbie stood at the bus station for hours, concealed by shadows, heart full of dwindling hope. When the last bus for New Haven departed, she continued to wait until the last departing bus going anywhere was gone. Still, with the bays empty, Debbie waited.
Eventually Maggie came to collect her and it was truly a collecting as Debbie was well within a heartbreak that was certain to leave her exactly where she sa
t until who knows what would happen to her. Maggie guided her away from the bus station, careful to keep her concealed even at that late hour, until they were safely back in the woods. Debbie couldn’t tell Maggie that Grace hadn’t come, although she doubted she needed to. She’d told Maggie she was leaving, to which Maggie cryptically said she had her doubts.
The Vampires of Vigil's Sorrow Page 7
