Peter stopped drinking first, looked for a second like he was going to retch, but shook it off. The others kept going, hunched like nursing piglets.
“Okay,” I said. The Indian boy stopped, looked up smiling, bloody.
“Stop now,” I said, and all but the redhead stopped.
The red-haired boy wasn’t about to stop; he was gorging himself on Mrs. Baker so fast I was getting worried about her.
“C’mon,” I said. “Enough’s enough. Save some for the fishes.”
Mrs. Baker started breathing hard, trying feebly to push him away, aware even in her charmed state that she was in danger.
“Knock it off,” I said, pinching ginger’s nose and pulling him off her neck. I put the dish towel I had in my back pocket on the neck and put her hand on it, said, “Press that.” She did. But ginger was fuming at me. He slapped me. Not hard. Before I could slap him back, Peter lunged and poked the kid in the eye with his finger. Hard.
“OW!”
“Don’t hit our friend,” Peter said.
The ginger looked even angrier for a second, his eye tearing up, then Peter said, “Caught a fart in your eye, didn’t you? Didn’t you just?” The kind of thing that’s only funny to kids, but boy was it funny to Peter and carrot-top. Whose name was really Sammy. I learned all their names that night. Sammy was British, too. The boys giggled.
In the other room I heard Cvetko saying, “Good girl. You took just enough. Now let him sleep.”
I heard the Baker kid groan.
I realized I hadn’t even fed yet, but I dared not; they really chewed on the Bakers good.
Whatever was up with these kids, they were ravenous.
I had my first moment of doubt, wondering if maybe Margaret had the right idea.
Then I heard the girl in the living room.
“Pretty bird,” she said softly.
“Pretty bird,” Gonzalo agreed. “Happy Days, time for Happy Days.”
Then he made the sound of a doorbell.
All the kids went to him now. It was hard getting them away from the gray bastard. Gary Combs had been right; they did like his bird.
PENNY DREADFULS
“So what are your names?” Margaret said. She had them lined up on the platform at the deserted 18th Street station. A jungle of graffiti stood behind her on the tiles; vines of it climbed up the posts. All of us were there, except Sandy. Even the Latins. Even Old Boy.
“You first, blondie. Who are you?”
“Peter,” said Peter, puffing out his bony chest out as if for military inspection. His bloody shirt was off soaking in a bucket.
She pointed at the rest in turn.
The girl mumbled something.
“Speak up,” Margaret said. “Was that Carmilla?”
“Camilla. No r. I don’t like the r.”
“Sammy,” said the redhead.
“Manu,” said the Indian boy.
“Alfie,” said the smaller blond lad.
“Duncan,” said the smallest of all, a brown-haired boy, all smiles. It was hard not to smile back at Duncan, but Margaret managed. She was still thinking about taking their little heads off, I could see it in the narrowing of her eyes and the set of her lips. The shovel wasn’t far off.
The little girl was fidgeting.
“Camilla,” Margaret said. “Who turned you into what you are? You know what you are, right?”
She nodded.
“So who turned you?”
She looked down at the floor.
Margaret pulled off a sandal and slapped her with it.
“Easy, baby,” Billy Bang said.
The girl looked at Billy Bang.
Margaret did, too, with hard, don’t-fuck-with-me eyes, but she spoke to the child.
“Answer me.”
“Varney,” Peter said. “His name is Varney.”
Before Margaret could say anything else, Cvetko caught her eye and said, “Varney was the name of a fictional vampire in the mid-nineteenth century. It was a penny dreadful.”
“What?”
“The book was called a penny dreadful.”
“That’s what he called us, too. His penny dreadfuls,” said Duncan. Duncan looked like the youngest, maybe six. Really infectious smile on that kid, he could have done commercials.
“He turned us all into little boys who would stay little boys,” Peter said. “He only likes little boys.”
“And one girl,” Camilla said low, “as long as she stays quiet.”
Were they saying what I thought they were saying? Oh, this was nasty.
“Where is this fine gentleman now?” Margaret said, cutting her eyes to her shovel.
Nobody spoke, they all looked down. Margaret was out of the child-slapping mood, though, so she just said, almost gently, “Tell me where he is.”
Peter met her eyes.
“Looking for us.”
* * *
There was more, lots more. Margaret kept them up past sunrise, with the light filtering through the dirty ground-level windows of the abandoned station, not enough to hurt us beyond making us a little headachey and queasy if we looked directly at it. They were saying they wanted to go to sleep, but she kept on them, trying to wring the names of their parents out of them, how they got over here from England, if they were English. They were. They flew over on a plane, Eastern Airlines; the Indian boy even had a piece of his ticket. She tried to get them to talk about their parents, but they just cried. She looked like she was going to start working them over with her Sandal of Slappery, but Billy Bang was giving her the stink-eye; he wasn’t into how mean she was to them.
Cvetko said quietly, to me and Margaret, “I wonder if these tears are genuine,” then, more loudly, “Why will none of you tell us anything about your mothers and fathers? I find this very odd. I’ll tell you about my parents.”
“They really will go to sleep,” I said, and Baldy laughed; Margaret almost smiled.
“You,” Cvetko said to the quiet girl, “tell me your papa’s name.”
She scrunched up her face and made with the waterworks.
Margaret aimed those big blue gorgon lamps of hers at the girl and said, “Stop yer cryin’, you’re not a baby, are you? Tell the man about your father.”
She cried harder.
Cvetko squatted down in front of her; she turned her face away.
“Leave her alone,” Peter said.
“Yes,” Alfie said, “Let her be. She’s our sister.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Cvetko said, looking at Alfie. He pushed his old-man glasses up his nose, then asked Alfie, “When your father went to work, did he wear a tie?”
Alfie put his balled-up fists over his eyes, shook his head miserably.
Luna said, “Hey, why don’t we lay off them for a while? Let them rest.”
Margaret said, “Nobody comes to live with us until we know who they are and where they come from, not even children. Those are the rules and we all agreed. Didn’t we?”
Luna looked away, nodded.
“Does your father wear a tie to work?” Cvetko said again.
“He’s dead!” Peter blurted out, angry now. He pulled Cvetko’s glasses off his nose and threw them on the tracks. Margaret smacked his hand hard with the sandal. He showed his fangs but wisely didn’t bite. Cvetko leapt down on the tracks, fetched up his glasses.
The little girl said something quietly.
“What?” Margaret said. “Say it again.”
“He was a king.”
“A king, my arse. King of what, Piccadilly Circus?”
“And Mother was a queen.”
Everyone was quiet for a minute.
Then Cvetko, standing on the tracks and peeking up over the platform, said, “Well, we don’t know how old these children are.
”
“What?” Margaret said. “This is horseshit.”
“What’s your mother the queen of?” Cvetko said.
“Of a castle. With a dragon under it. She’s dead,” she said quietly.
“We can’t rule anything out,” Cvets offered.
“I can rule out a fuckin’ dragon,” Baldy said, getting a laugh from the Latins.
Baldy and Dominic hadn’t said anything through all of this, just watched quietly, but you could see Baldy’s wheels turning. Whatever happened with these munchkins was going to be a big change, and change is good when you’re in second place. He wanted that apartment of Margaret’s and, while he never did anything that would give her reason to move against him, you know he never forgot his humiliation by her.
“Mr. Štukelj, you’re not really askin’ me to entertain the notion that this ragamuffin’s some kind of ancient vampire princess.”
“Don’t forget the dragon,” said Dominic.
I felt bad for Cvetko, so I said, “He’s just saying we don’t know. That’s all he’s saying.”
Luna spoke up now.
“If this Varney motherfucker did my parents and turned me into a rape puppet I might tell you stories about being a princess, too.”
Cvetko looked down, touching his face. He had his glasses now, but just held them. He looked like a dog in the doghouse standing down there.
“Besides which,” Margaret said, “they flew across the Atlantic on an airplane. Have you forgotten that little detail? What’s that, eight hours now? I’m thinkin’ they’d have got some daylight on them if they were already family.”
Now the air changed. A light shone down the tracks, a train was rumbling down from 23rd on its way to 14th. Cvetko leapt up to the platform.
Normally it would be too dark for anyone to see us, but there was just enough light, so we all slipped behind posts, got small. All but the children. They didn’t know how. Margaret yelled over the growing rumble, “Lie down and hide your eyes! Hide your eyes from the train!”
That was one thing that stuck out in the dark, our reflective eyes. They did as they were told.
When the train was gone, Peter walked up to Margaret with his little fists balled.
“Our father wore a tie,” he said, still crying. “All right?”
Then he stomped back to his sister and hugged her. The others joined them, all of them sobbing and hugging her, forming like a protective circle around her. It was sad and sweet. I was starting to like these little shits, and I wasn’t the only one.
Billy Bang started playing “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
Margaret pretended not to hear him, talked over him like he wasn’t even playing.
“All right. Until we get some answers out of them, they don’t come live with us. They stay right here. And someone stays with them to teach them.”
“I’ll do it,” Luna said.
“Someone older, and more than one, in case this Mr. Varney shows up.”
“We’ll do it,” Baldy said. Dominic gave him a look like Oh, will we?
“Thank you for your team spirit, Mr. Balducci, but I think not. Mr. Peacock and Mr. Štukelj, are you up for it?”
“Oh shit,” I said.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
* * *
A few words might be in order concerning the 18th Street station, which was going to be my temporary home while we sorted out the kids. Just like Old City Hall, they decommissioned it in 1948 because the trains got longer; it was either shut it down or make it bigger, and after the war there weren’t exactly bathtubs full of money floating around for public works. We were too busy paying to rebuild German towns we just paid to knock down; I never get politics. I don’t vote. Anyway, I’m glad they shut so many stations down. This is prime real estate for vampires, what with no sun, easy transportation, an endless sea of humanity to hide among. Notice I didn’t say feed on; we aren’t supposed to feed down here just so we don’t get anybody wise to us. Commuters, I mean. Hunchers are fair game, if you can stand the drugs and booze in their blood. They don’t exist.
Oh, but the station. It’s small, typical. We had to chase a few Hunchers out when we annexed it—that’s a Cvetko word, by the way, annexed. I like it. Makes it sound official, more like a real estate deal and less like we just took it. Here’s how we do it. Say you’re a bum—or “homeless person” if you’re all sweet about it—and you’re hunching down here with eleven others, an even dozen. One morning, this voice comes out of the blackness of the tunnel saying, “Get out of this station. This is your only warning. If twelve of you sleep here tonight, eleven will wake up tomorrow.” And that’s it. What do you do? If you’re new to the loops, you might tough up and decide to post watches, dig your heels in. But that’s not you, You actually have been around, living underground, going to soup kitchens, scoring smack or drinking yourself slobbery, but you’ve heard about the “tunnel talker.” He always keeps his promises. You heard about a group of seven that got the same rap at the Worth Street station, some voice in the tunnel told the seven of them to pack up or they’d wake up with six, but they sat tough. Or tried to. The guy they posted to watch fell asleep, and in the morning, they woke up to squealing brakes and sparks and feathers all over the place because a train popped the guy and dragged him, goose down vest and all, halfway to the next station. Then the transit police came and moved them all out anyway, and they didn’t come back. And you, do you really want to stay now that the tunnel talker has paid you a visit? Hell. No. Not even in the winter, And this was spring. Better to take your chances in a cardboard condo.
So it’s just that easy.
Cvetko and I stole a set of lockers out of a shitty gym on 14th Street, moved them through the tunnels wearing our stolen transit authority uniforms, set the kids up in those. Vampires don’t actually need coffins, we just like them. It’s instinct. Plus, it’s good hygiene, what with bugs and all crawling all over the place. I mean, you could get perfectly used to sleeping on the floor, but why would you? Beds are nicer. Same thing.
Before we left to get the lockers, we had a chat with the kids.
I did the talking; I related better to them.
“It’s like this,” I said. “You need to learn some things about being what you are now.”
“Dead!” Duncan offered, smiling.
“Yeah, dead. Undead. But you need to learn how to keep from peeling people. Otherwise you’re going to blow it for all of us, get it?”
They said they got it. I wasn’t sure they got it.
“Let me put this another way. You have to stay here while we’re gone, okay? If you leave, Margaret . . .”
“The scary lady,” Camilla whispered.
“Yes. The very scary lady will come get you. But if you stay here, she’ll be your friend. Like me and Cvetko.”
“Friends,” Peter said. “I like having lots of friends.”
“Right. You’re going to learn a lot of neato things from me and Cvets, and we’re all going to be fwiends.” I said that last bit like Elmer Fudd.
The kids giggled at that. And they did stay put. Or at least I thought they did.
When we got the lockers in, I went back to our loops under Chelsea and got some clothes for me and Cvets, as well as my numchuks and a bunch of his travel magazines. That was a fun trip, carrying all that shit alone. But the alternative was for both of us to go again, or for me to trust Cvets to get the clothes I told him I wanted, and that wasn’t going to happen.
The sun hadn’t been down too long, so I went up to a corner market I knew that had a rack of six coin-operated toy dispensers. I traded a shiny new bicentennial quarter for a little plastic bubble containing a brand-new superball and stuck that in my pocket before hefting my box of stuff again. I thought about getting a Spaldeen, but those weren’t fast enough. Not for vampires.
Be
fore we started playing games, I had to establish rule number one, what Captain Kirk would call the Prime Directive. I caught a rat and threw it against the third rail. Pop-ka-BANG!
They got the message. Now the fun could start, and what fun! A superball in the subway is a riot. The kids loved it, and I loved watching them chase it. Fast little bastards, so fast, and I’m no slouch. I chased it, they chased it, they threw it at me so I could swat it with my numchuks like a baseball. We practiced getting small between the running rails and letting the trains go by over us, getting small behind posts, climbing sideways and upside down. They were naturals.
Cvetko sat on his ass with a Time magazine and read about Kampuchea or somewhere.
Then they dropped the bomb. It never ceases to amaze me how kids can just forget to tell you something important, even something you asked them about before.
I said, “Varney’ll never catch you guys now. Or are all English vampires this fast?”
“Oh, Varney’s not English,” Peter said.
“No? Is he a Yankee-Doodle Dandy like me?”
“No.”
“What is he?”
“A henchman!” Duncan said.
“Whose henchman?” I asked.
Cvetko was paying attention now, to hell with Kampuchea.
“No,” Camilla said. “Not a henchman.”
My heart turned over and scraped out a beat. I knew what she was going to say before she said it.
“A Hessian.”
THE HESSIAN
Wilhelm Ulrich Messer, I wasn’t allowed to call him Willy, was, as far as I know, the oldest New Yorker, maybe the oldest American, which was kind of ironic because he spent a few months trying to kick Americans out of New York. He came over from Germany when it wasn’t Germany yet and fought for the British in the war of 1776, in a couple of places your war buff types would know, but the only one I remember is Saratoga because he claims he shot Benedict Arnold’s horse there, and I don’t care for horses. Or Benedict Arnold. Traitors chafe my ass. So Wilhelm Messer was all right in my book, even if he was mental, but maybe that’s not his fault. He was old-ass-old. Got turned in his forties, after he had settled down and married, like 1800 or so.
The Lesser Dead Page 15
