by Jonah Hewitt
“Oh, yeah!” Schuyler said a little too loudly, as if speaking to someone hard of hearing. “I just LOVE fixing up this pile of junk. What can I tell you? Kind of a sickness really. But I love her. She’s my old ball-and-chain.” He thumped the dash hard a couple times, but not in a loving way. There was more thumping from behind Lucy. Actually, it was more of pounding this time, like something loose rolling around in the trunk.
Schuyler looked anxious and annoyed. Maybe he didn’t like talking about his car, but Lucy thought it was nice. Maybe he was embarrassed. Guys liked cars, so she felt like she needed to make him feel good about it.
“Well, I like it,” she said at last, “It’s roomy and comfortable and has big bench seats – you could slide over and sit right next to someone if you wanted.” She quickly blanched. Had she really just said that?! Lucy suddenly realized she must have been daydreaming while talking again. She turned forward and pulled her hair behind her ears. Maybe he wouldn’t make anything of it. Schuyler just smiled at her. She looked away from Sky and back out the window and listened to the music. After the first verse, the heavy guitars were just getting warmed up for the chorus.
“Oh I love this part!” Lucy cranked up the volume and nodded along to the beat. She started singing the lyrics under her breath, but by the end she was yelling them out.
Schuyler looked a little embarrassed at first, but by the end he had joined in. It was great, like karaoke with a good friend, where you don’t care if anyone is any good but you just have fun. Or at least that’s the way Lucy imagined it should be. She didn’t really have any friends since coming to Pennsylvania, but her mom and she would sing along while doing dishes or chores and that was as close as she ever got to karaoke anyway.
The song ended. She didn’t want to think about her mom again, so she just leaned forward and tried to figure out how to rewind the thing. “We gotta do that again! That was awesome.”
Sky unexpectedly leaned forward and pushed the eject button.
“What’s wrong?” Lucy said a little surprised.
“Sorry, Lucy, I don’t want to be a buzzkill or anything, but I just really think we need to talk.”
“Talk? Talk about what?” Lucy was suddenly very nervous. She had almost been having fun there and the last thing she wanted to do was talk.
“Well, how about where we’re going for one?” He was being nice, but his tone was a little too earnest.
“I told you,” she said a little defensively. “We’re going to my place, just outside Ephrata.”
“Which is where exactly? You haven’t even given me an address.”
She had told him where to turn off of 322 a few minutes back. Why did he need to know that when she was there to give him directions? “I told you. It’s on a farm road just past a truck stop – we’re not far now. Don’t worry, I know the way, I’ll tell you where to turn off.” She tried to change the subject. “C’mon…let’s sing again that was fun.” She pushed the cartridge back in, but he just popped it right back out again.
“And what happens when we get to your place? Am I supposed to just drop you off and say goodbye?”
She hadn’t thought of that. Come to think of it, she wasn’t sure exactly what she expected him to do. Her plans were simple: get a change of clothes, some money and food and just keep moving she guessed. It sounded stupid now that she thought of it. It might be nice to have someone else to help her, but she couldn’t imagine Sky just hanging around indefinitely. Schuyler asked his next question as if he could read the apprehension on her face.
“Is there someone waiting there for you?”
She looked up at Sky with a frightened look. She didn’t really want to tell him that she was all alone, but she had to say something, and she didn’t want to lie. “No,” she finally said curtly.
“Then why are we going there?”
“Because,” she said, and she turned away, folded her arms and looked out the windows, but she knew that wasn’t a good enough answer.
“Isn’t there someone to look out for you? A parent or a neighbor?”
Lucy said nothing. She had no one now. After a while, Sky must have guessed she was utterly alone.
“Look, I know you’re in some kind of trouble, that much is obvious. It’s also obvious that it’s a heckuvalot bigger than just tonsils…or your appendix.” He smiled a knowing smile. Lucy frowned. He knew that she had been lying to him earlier in the gift shop. He was being nice, but she just hated that she was so transparent.
“I’m just worried about you being on your own, Lucy” he paused. “Yo-yo too,” he looked briefly over his shoulder to the backseat, “and I just think you, both of you, could use some help, that’s all.”
“I’m NOT going to the cops. They just wouldn’t understand!” She overreacted a little when she said this, but she didn’t trust anyone to keep her safe anymore.
Schuyler gave a nervous laugh. “I wasn’t talking about the cops, Lucy.”
“You weren’t?” she asked, puzzled, “Then who are you talking about?”
Schuyler smiled. “I have this place in Philly. You could hang out there with me for a few days. I have some friends that are very good at finding out things. You could lie low for a while and we could help you figure this whole thing out.” He ended those words brightly, but there was just something a bit too convenient about it. Friends? What friends? And why were they so good at figuring things out that cops couldn’t? Maybe he was right, but how on earth could anybody help Lucy with her problems? She doubted any of them would know anything about necromancers. Still, it was better than nothing.
Lucy thought for a moment about what her mother might say about her staying a few days with a seventeen-year old boy, but then, she didn’t have many options. Now that she thought about it, going to her house didn’t sound so smart anymore. “Maybe,” she said hesitantly.
Schuyler could sense her nervousness. “Tell you what, we’ll stop off at your place, get you a change of clothes and then head on over to my place in Philly. Whaddaya say?” He smiled that disarming smile of his.
It would be nice to have someplace safe, someplace Amanda didn’t know. “I guess so,” she said at last. Schuyler smiled again, but a bit too much, as if he was a bit too satisfied with himself. It was a little too smug, like he had expected she would give in all along. Lucy just turned forward and thought. Something was not quite right, and then she remembered something Schuyler had said back in the gift shop.
“Your place?” Lucy asked a bit anxiously.
“Yeah, my place,” Schuyler answered nonchalantly.
Lucy wrinkled her brow in thought, something wasn’t right. She remembered a snatch of conversation from the gift shop.
“You mean your stepmother’s place, right?”
“Who?” he said casually, not taking his eyes off the road.
Lucy’s eyes widened. “Your stepmother?” she repeated.
“Yeah, sure. My stepmother’s,” he replied, but his answer was a bit too glib.
She leaned back and thought for a moment. Schuyler was acting a bit strange.
“Your stepmother wouldn’t freak out about you bringing home some strange thirt…um, fifteen-year-old girl and a little boy with you?”
“Um, sure. No biggie.” Sky seemed confident, but Lucy couldn’t imagine a home where that wasn’t a biggie. Her mom wouldn’t have liked it.
“The one who doesn’t like you coming out all this way to visit your grandmother?”
Sky waggled his head and shrugged his shoulders a little. “She’s not so bad really,” he laughed, “I mean, it’s not like she’s a wicked stepmother or anything. She may not like everything I do, but she wouldn’t turn out someone who needed help.”
Lucy thought this over. It sounded reasonable, and yet still….
“What’s her name?” she asked impulsively.
“Excuse me?” Sky asked.
“What’s her name?” she said again a bit testily. And then she said, “I’m jus
t curious, that’s all,” to soften the sudden interrogation and avoid having Sky think she was suspicious.
He turned to look at her and got a far-off look. Then he turned back to look out the windshield at the oncoming pavement. After a while longer he simply said, “Rose. Rose Johnson.”
Lucy stared at him for a long time, but he didn’t flinch. His eyes never left the road. He acted as if he had no feelings for this name or the person attached to it, as if she didn’t exist at all.
Then he gave her a warm smile, and she melted a little. She was being paranoid she suddenly decided. He couldn’t possibly have made up the whole thing, and even if he hadn’t told her the whole truth, well she wasn’t exactly telling him the whole truth either. Appendix! How stupid a lie was that?! And he had seen right through it. Hadn’t even asked her about it later, like he knew it was a lie all along.
Lucy bit her lip. If he knew that was a lie, what else did he know? Still, it wasn’t as if he was some creepy stalker. She was about to laugh at her own suspicions but it froze in her throat. Stalkers. Night stalkers. Isn’t that what Amanda had called them? She looked at him again and pulled her hair behind her ears. He looked utterly harmless. There was nothing wrong with him, except that he was really good looking and charming. Perhaps a bit too charming? Oh, that was silly. Besides, there wasn’t anything weird or creepy about him, not like those two weirdoes in the lobby who really were vampires. Anyway, he hadn’t stalked her, he had just bumped into her in a gift shop, buying a gift card for his grandmother…whom Lucy never met or saw. Still…their meeting was just a fluke, some random thing. It was all just an accident. “Accident.” She held the word in her mind for a long time. What had Amanda said? That meeting Sky was no accident? But that was crazy – this whole trip wasn’t Sky’s idea. She looked over at Sky. He had that satisfied smile on again. “Or was it?” she thought at last.
Lucy scooched over to the far end of the bench seat away from Sky. She looked at him. He looked back.
“You ok?” he asked nonchalantly.
“Yep,” she said a bit too curtly. Her eyes darted back and forth, but if he suspected anything it didn’t show.
“This is crazy!” she thought, “He can’t be a vampire! He just can’t!! Not that there’s any way I can tell.” She looked up suddenly. There was a way. She had already done it. She looked over slowly to Sky, and then slowly over the back of the seat. Yo-yo was still sleeping fitfully. She leaned forward. How did Amanda say to do it? Count the beats? 1, 2, 3, 4. She found her own heartbeat. It was beating faster than she wanted it to, but it was there, loud as a drum in her ears. She gradually brought it down to a more temperate rhythm. When the rhythm was steady she closed her eyes and listened, just like Amanda had said. There was a faint heartbeat, coming from somewhere behind her. It was somewhat nervous and drumming away rapidly. She could hear it as well as if she were listening through a stethoscope. She turned around. Yo-yo was still sleeping. That had to be his heartbeat, she guessed. She turned back around slowly and kept listening. There was hers, Yo-yo’s, the rhythm of the car, the road noise, the air rushing by, the engine, and the usual occasional thumping like something large and lumpy rolling around in the trunk, but there were no other heartbeats. She listened harder, but still nothing. Her own heartbeat got faster. So did her breathing.
She slowly turned to look at Sky. He looked as beautiful and calm as ever, but there was no sound coming from his chest. No heartbeat at all! She stared directly at his chest over the space where his heart should be. She realized her eyes were fixed on him like a pair of giant owl eyes, but she couldn’t look away. She had to be absolutely certain. She somehow managed to shut out all the other noises. She listened and concentrated directly on that spot, but still no heartbeat. Not even a whisper of one!! There was nothing there but a deep, empty silence, like a big hole and nothing else. As she felt her panic rise she stared gape-jawed at his chest. Then she took in a deep breath. She could actually see it!! There! Where there should have a been a living, breathing heart was a swirling mass of darkness like a living shadow, a dark and profound emptiness in that space that consumed all sound and thought. It was like staring down a black well so deep you couldn’t see the bottom, and yet inexplicably, you had the urge to jump, as if the darkness was dragging you over the edge. Her heart rate instantly doubled. She clutched the vinyl seat with both hands and began hyperventilating through her mouth but couldn’t turn away.
“Are you ok, Lucy?” Schuyler said.
Lucy finally managed to tear her eyes away from the gaping, black hole where his heart should have been and tried to stay calm. Whatever happened, she couldn’t panic and let him know she knew. She tried to put on a brave face and smile but she could tell she was grimacing all the same.
“Is something the matter?” Schuyler said totally innocently. Then he turned to look at her.
At first all she saw was the handsome, kind face, the crystal blue eyes and stellar smile of the wonderful teen Schuyler, but in a flash, they melted away like wax in a fire and she was looking into a corpse-white face with black, pupil-less eyes over a fanged, menacing grin. She panicked.
“AAAAAHHHHAEAARAHGAAAAH!!” Lucy screamed and clawed her way to the farthest side of the front seat away from Schuyler.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! What’s the matter?” Schuyler intoned.
“GET AWAY FROM ME!!” she screamed, “OH MY GOSH…YOU’RE A VAMPIRE!!!” She pressed herself up against the inside of the door, her hands scrambling behind her back frantically trying to find the door handle. She didn’t dare take her eyes off of him out of fear he would change back again.
“What?!” Schuyler tried to laugh it off innocently, but Lucy wasn’t buying it.
“VAMPIRE!!” she screamed again and pointed at him in horror and accusation.
“WHAT?!”
“GET AWAY FROM ME!!!” she screamed again. She found the door handle and yanked on it repeatedly, but it didn’t budge. The door was locked, but she couldn’t think straight enough to figure out how to unlock it. She had lost the ability to think rationally. She didn’t care if the car was still moving. All she thought about was getting out of that car, NOW.
“What?! Lucy, stop! Lucy, I think you need to calm down.”
“DON’T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN, YOU BLOODSUCKING FREAK!!” She began banging on the window and hitting the door as if hoping it would break free. As she did so, she tore open the fresh scabs and wounds on her hands from her recent fight with Amanda and the other vampires, leaving bloody handprints all over the interior.
“Lucy! Don’t! You’ll hurt yourself!!” He reached towards her but she just screamed and kicked her feet at him.
“GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU FREAK!!”
“LOOK OUT!!” Both she and Sky turned around. It was Yo-yo. She had forgotten all about him! He was standing up in the back seat pointing towards the windshield with a look of horror. Instantly, she and Sky turned around to catch a glimpse of a strange boy, wide-eyed in the headlights. He had a shaved head and was wearing a white robe and heavy eyeliner of all things.
Everyone in the car screamed. Schuyler swerved but not in time. They were going to hit him! Then something like a giant goose shoved the boy out of the way just in time, but not soon enough to save itself. It bounced of the hood and hit the windshield, which spider-webbed on the passenger’s side with a terrible “CRACK!” The goose, or whatever it was, gave out a horrible honking sound and then there was more screaming, this time from somewhere in the trunk. The car spun out of control skidding first to the right and then to the left. Schuyler desperately tried to gain control of the car and only managed to do so at the last moment keeping the car moving down the lonely farm road.
Lucy whipped her head around just in time to see the boy fade into the distance. He was on the side of the road sitting up, looking back at them. He was ok. Lucy felt as though she had seen him somewhere before. Then as she got her bearings, she remembered where – in the visions after the accident, in the
ambulance! They weren’t very far from where the accident had happened right now! Only after this thought had passed did she remember she was still in a car with a vampire.
“STOP THE CAR!!” Lucy spun around and screamed at Schuyler, “STOP THE CAR NOW!!”
“Look, the kid’s ok, and we’re on a tight schedule. Nobody’s stopping right now.” Schuyler’s whole voice had changed. It wasn’t reassuring anymore but was snotty and dismissive.
“Tight schedule?!” Lucy thought, “Tight schedule to where?! Where was this freak taking her?!” she thought anxiously. “STOP THE CAR!!” she yelled again.
“No,” Schuyler replied adamantly. He stared her down and all the warmth was gone from his face. She could tell the ghastly, fanged visage of the vampire was hovering just beneath the surface of his beautiful face. “His beautiful FAKE face,” she thought, but she didn’t know what to do.
“Lucy?” It was Yo-yo, cowering in the back, his eyes barely peeking over the seat.
“It’ll be ok, Yo-yo.” she said thinking, desperately trying to regain her composure. She had an impulsive thought. “Stop the car NOW or…or I’ll jump.”
“You’re not gonna jump, Lucy,” Schuyler said, totally dismissive of her threat. He didn’t even bother to look at her as she said this, he was so sure of himself.
She regained her composure and the ability to think. She reached for the door lock and popped it up. His eyes darted her direction and narrowed. They were cold and menacing now and not warm and friendly at all. She couldn’t believe that she had been taken in so easily by this thing! She couldn’t believe she had actually been attracted to it!!
“I swear I’ll do it!” she said defiantly.
“You’re bluffing,” he said coldly.
She jiggled the door handle. He narrowed his eyes even further at her. Something like fear flitted behind them. Something was keeping him from hurting her outright, fear of something, some reprisal. He needed her alive she guessed, or he would have killed her by now. He considered her for a long while. She slowly began pulling the door handle to where it was just beginning to feel the tension of release. Any harder and it would pop open. She wasn’t certain if she was willing to do it or not, but she was going to find out.
