by C. S. Moore
He trailed off and squinted his eyes.
His parents sounded so much like Sylvia and Dylan, the love they had for him and each other rang of my aunt and uncle. And they were also always telling me that family came first. I looked out the window and watched the gray buildings fly by as we merged onto the freeway. Had I let them down?
“My mother was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, until I laid eyes on you. She had corn silk hair that fell down her back. When I was a small child, I would tell my friends that my mother was Rapunzel.” He sighed. “And she was so kind. I remember once on our way back from the city park, my dad hit a squirrel with his car. She cried over the little dead rodent. She was just so loving and tender, it broke her heart. I was only seven, but I hated seeing her like that… so I jumped out of the car and tried to give the thing CPR.”
I could just imagine an adorable seven-year-old Jaron trying to bring a squirrel back from the dead to stop his mother’s tears.
“I had a happier childhood than anyone has the right to, and maybe that’s why it happened. It threw off the balance of nature for one person to have so much… It all changed so quickly.
“I was walking home from school on a Thursday. I don‘t know why I remember the day.” He shook his head. “Along the way, I noticed a car pulled off to the side of the road at on odd angle. I don’t know if it was that or the fact that it was a 1930’s Model-A Ford—even then I appreciated a classic—that caught my eye, but I went to check it out. When I got closer, I noticed him. My first instinct was to run. I didn’t know why. I even laughed about it at the time. It was just an old man holding a map, looking like he needed help. I shrugged off my irrational fear and jogged over to help him. He had unusually bright red hair for a man of his age. I guessed him to be at least eighty. At first, I thought it was a wig, but it was his natural hair.
“I asked him if he needed help and he smiled, making his many wrinkles even more pronounced. His light blue eyes sparkled as he answered, 'Well, I didn’t know young people cared to help anybody anymore.'
“It was such a normal old person response, I couldn’t understand why his words made me shiver. Anyway, he told me that he ran out of gas and wanted me to walk him to the nearest gas station. I offered to run there and back, but he refused my help, he wanted to do it himself—he just needed me to show him the way.
“We walked down the tree lined sidewalk, crunching the fallen leaves of the autumn kissed trees with every step. As we talked, my wariness wore off. He was a very interesting man. He was a mechanic, had flown fighter planes, and traveled all over the world. I ate up every word that fell from his wrinkled lips,” he said through his teeth.
“After we filled up an old gas can and walked back to his car, he offered me a ride home for my troubles. I told my parents about the encounter at dinner, they praised me for helping an old man in need. Need,” he scoffed. “I just didn’t understand at the time what he was really in need of…”
“The next day I had a swim meet. My parents had never missed one, but they weren’t there. After every race, more and more anxiety built up in my chest, until I ran from the meet, still in my suit, not wearing any shoes. I ran five miles to my house. As soon as I got to the front door, I knew something was wrong. I could feel it in my bones freezing me to the spot.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear any more. Retelling the story was taking its toll on him. Sweat was beading on his forehead and his breath was shaky. What did he see?
“I opened the door slowly, it wasn’t locked, and peeked my head inside. Nothing looked out of place, and I let out the breath I’d been holding. That’s when I smelled it, the strong scent of blood.”
I shivered.
His thumb started tapping a spastic rhythm against the steering wheel. “I haven’t told anyone about this in years, and there’s more than one reason for that. I don’t want you to have to hear what I’m about to tell you, you are so sweet and sheltered. But I think it’s important for you to hear it… for your own safety. It’s your choice if you want to hear it or not,” he said, glancing over at me.
I couldn’t find my voice, so I nodded.
He continued. “Maybe I should have run to the neighbors and called the police. I don’t know… it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. But all that my thirteen-year-old brain could come up with was to find my parents. I shouted for them as I ran from room to room. Can’t remember if I was crying, but I do remember hyperventilating as I searched for them with that terrible iron smell in the air. My parents’ room was the only one left unsearched and I pushed the double door open quickly, too panicked to worry about stealth.
“On the other side of my parents beautiful master suit, a large man was going through a dresser. He weighed at least two eighty, I’d never seen someone so tall and muscular in my life, and he was glowering at me from under his prominent brow. Still, even beneath his terrifying gaze, I searched for signs of my parents—but they weren’t there. As the behemoth crossed the room in a flash and grabbed me by the collar, all I could feel was relief. My parents weren’t home, they were probably safely at the swim meet, wondering where I was. At least, that was the thought I had running through my mind as the strange burglar pulled me toward the garage door.
“He kicked the door open and the first thing I saw was the car, it wasn’t one of my parents’ cars parked in the spacious garage, it was the old man’s Model-A Ford. He was leaning against the hood of his beautiful ride, his light blue eyes trained on something on the far side of the garage. The thug’s thick forearm obstructed my view of what he was seeing. Not that I would have been able to look away from him quickly, I was too shocked by his appearance. He had blood splattered across his crisply iron shirt, a line of it trickled from the corner of his mouth, but it wasn’t the gore of him that shocked me… he was young. It was the same man I'd seen the day before, I was sure of that, the same bright red hair and light blue eyes, but his wrinkles and age spots were gone. He seemed to be in his early thirties
“He looked over at us, and when his eyes fell on me, he smiled. A red film stained his teeth, coloring where one tooth meets another a deep burgundy.
“'Well, if it isn’t the very person who made this all possible,' he said in a friendly voice, pulling away from the car and walking to greet us.
“'What are you doing here?' I demanded, trying to pull free of the hands holding me.
“'Why you led me here, dear boy… let him go, he’s done nothing wrong.' The hands loosened on me and I stepped forward—” Jaron stopped talking abruptly and his thumb tapped the wheel faster and harder before continuing.
“I looked from the now young man’s smiling face to the other side of the garage. There I found both the source of the smell and my parents. They were strung upside down, slashes at the neck and wrists. From the look of it, the life had been drained out of them for a while, but blood still trickled out of their wounds, collecting in jars placed beneath them. I tried to stop taking in the scene, but my senses wouldn’t shut off. My mother’s beautiful hair had been cut off and laid in a pile by one of the filled jars. My father’s face was swollen and his nose smashed in.
“'Nothing personal, lad. I know you didn’t choose to be what you are, but the prices you people fetch is too great to ignore,' the man said half consolingly and half mockingly. 'Now I wasn’t planning on harvesting you just yet, but you showed up at a bad time… Stefan, string him up,' he barked to the man still in the garage doorway.
“I couldn’t even feel fear for my life, just anger at the loss of theirs. When Stefan touched me, he burst into flames—not like what you saw yesterday that was controlled. I mean his entire body was engulfed in mere seconds. The smell of burnt hair and charred flesh overpowered the scent of blood and my mind cleared momentarily. The man stacking jars of my parents’ life stopped what he was doing and leapt at me. He was set aflame as well, the two huge men ran around the room, catching everything else on fire as they went. I didn’t know what was happenin
g, but I turned to the old man, hoping he would somehow combust as well. His smile was gone, replaced by a look of total surprise.
“'So young to be so powerful,' he whispered.
“The fire was intense, hungrily devouring everything it touched. The two men were on the ground, no longer moving. Over the sound of the raging fire, a siren rang out in the distance. The man bolted for the jars that were stacked neatly in a row. I went after him, determined that he wouldn’t take any part of my parents with him. Before I reached him, a burning shelf fell from the wall and knocked me unconscious.”
My mind couldn’t fully process the story. To be so young and exposed to such evil and pain. How was he able to function? Sure, I'd lost my parents… but not like that. There was a difference between an accident and having them ripped from your life by a madman.
“A fireman was carrying me out of the garage when I came to. The car was gone, and so were the jars. The first person to meet me at the ambulance was my brother, Owen—”
“You have a brother?” I interrupted without thinking.
“Yes, I couldn’t meet his eyes when I told him that our parents were dead. He was two years older than I was and my hero.” He cleared his throat. “That’s where we’re going, Maribel, to see my brother.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
“Same place that he’s been for the last two years, the hospital. That’s where I go every lunch hour. To visit him. Well not much of a visit, really.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s in a coma. He’s been stable for about a year now. Before that, with every passing day, he got sicker and sicker. The men that you saw yesterday, they have been giving him medicine that seems to help him with whatever mysterious illness he has. The doctors have no idea what’s the matter with him.”
“Is that what yesterday was about? They helped your brother, so they are trying to blackmail you or something?”
“I owed them a favor, but what they asked for was too much. I couldn’t do it, I just hope that Owen doesn’t have to pay for my choice… these men, I’m beginning to think they’re the same kind of people that killed my parents.”
I shivered.
“That’s why I told you that story. My parents… I think they were like us and possessed some kind of abilities. It looks like there are people who are more than willing to kill for a look at us. I don’t know if they were stealing my parents' blood for scientific experiments or what, but these psychos will do anything to have at us.” He turned into the hospital parking lot and looked around nervously. “I need to talk to them about amping up security. I can’t let anything happen to my brother—he’s the only family I have left.”
“What can we do? Won’t he get worse if they stop giving him medicine?” I asked, as he slid the car into a space. I couldn’t allow anything to happen that would bring more loss to him, he had lost so much already.
His eyes darkened and he hung his head in defeat. “Yes, he will.”
“Then let’s just give them whatever they want, Jaron. If you need money, I’ll give you some,” I said, trying to reason with him.
He surprised me by pulling me into his arms. “It’s not that simple. I can’t allow them to have what they want.”
I unbuckled my seat belt and took his face in my hands. “What do they want?”
“I can’t tell you, and I’ve already made my choice.” He brushed a hair out of my face. “Now we have to find another way to save him.”
The smell of high strength sterilizer stung my nostrils as Jaron walked me through the brightly lit hallway to his brother’s room. I was terrified that when we got there his bed would be empty. Jaron’s only remaining family already carried off by those awful men. But when Jaron opened the large metal door, everything was as it should be. The man in the bed was so much like Jaron it was like looking into a mirror image of him. My head spun for a moment, and I had to tell myself that Jaron was fine and standing beside me, not hooked up to an IV, lying unconscious.
The biggest distinction between the two was their hair. Owen’s was a much lighter shade of brown, the color of wet sand. He was smaller than Jaron too, although he was older. I guessed that was because of the time spent in a hospital bed.
“Maribel, this may be as close as I ever get to introducing you to the family… So forgive me if this feels a bit insane. This is Owen.” He gestured to the bed. “And Owen, this is Maribel. She’s the only thing that has made me happy since Mom and Dad died.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said with a curtsy.
Jaron smiled at me, playing along.
“Sylvia told me growing up that you only get one shot at a first impression.” I didn’t know if that applied to people in a coma or not, but didn‘t want to take any chances. “You two look so much alike,” I said, sitting on the chair at the foot of the bed, leaving the one next to it for Jaron.
He sat down with a sigh. “Yeah. When we were young, people would mistake us for twins and he’d turn to me with wide eyes and say, ’I’m not that ugly, am I?’” He laughed at the memory and it lit up his whole face.
“You were close,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I could feel that they were.
“He’s my best friend, even now. I haven’t really been able to talk to him for two years, but I don’t feel differently about him.”
Seeing the way he looked at his brother, I was so thankful that he still had him in his life. Even in this state, Owen still brought something to Jaron’s lonely existence. I wondered if he was the reason Jaron was able to keeping going after what he had witnessed.
“So how did he get sick?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It happened when everything just started to feel better. We weren’t in the system anymore. He was eighteen and my legal guardian. He took a trip for work, and when he came back, he was ill. It was like some allergic reaction—he was itchy and couldn’t stay hydrated no matter how much he drank. The doctors thought he had a virus. But instead of getting better… he got worse. He almost died—but last year those people found me and gave him something that made him stabilize. They said if I did something for them, they’d cure him completely and we could continue with our lives.”
“Who are they, Jaron?”
“I can’t say.”
“What do they want from you?”
He locked eyes with me and opened his mouth. I thought I was finally going to hear what was going on, but he started coughing and holding his throat. After a few seconds, he shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”
“You mean that literally when you say it, don’t you?” I asked.
He sighed. “I have to go talk to security. Are you okay here?”
“Sure,” I said, not wanting to leave Owen alone until security was aware of the situation. “What are you going to tell them anyway?”
“We come from wealth. I’m just going to say I got a threatening note demanding money. It won’t be too hard for them to believe.” He stood up and handed me a strange remote.
I looked at him questioningly.
“Push the red button to call the nurse if anything happens. I doubt he got the medicine today…” He walked out of the room and shut the door behind him.
As soon as the door shut, I tried to digest all of the things that had happened since morning. My uncle had beaten the crap out of Jaron then they decided we were going to move at the mere mention of the men who had confronted us. What had Sylvia said, something about those guys being after them for a while now? Suddenly panic washed through me, picturing Sylvia and Dylan strung up in place of Jaron’s parents. Were the people after my family like the ones that took his from him?
I fumbled for the cell phone in my pocket. The screen lit up with missed calls and text messages. I quickly sent a message to Sylvia.
I’m okay. I’m with Jaron. I’ll be home soon. Stay safe.
Not more than two seconds after I sent the message, my phone vibrated. I sighed in relief. They were okay. I opened the text.
We figured you were with him. Come home sooner rather than later. We need to talk. We’ll stay safe. You do the same. Love you. Sorry about this morning. That couldn’t have possibly gone more wrong. I feel wretched!
I frowned, I hated when Sylvia beat herself up.
Don’t worry about it. I love you both so much.
The door opened, I was about to call out to Jaron but realized that the sound was off. Someone was trying to be quiet. I stood and turned to face the curtain that was between me and the door. Whoever had entered hadn’t wanted to make themselves known. The remote to call the nurse was on the bedside table, I had put it down to text Sylvia. I would need to take a few steps to grab it, but I was terrified to move when I could feel the stranger’s eyes watching me intently on the other side of the curtain.
I looked at Owen. I had to be brave for him. I wasn’t the one this stranger had come for, after all. Taking a step toward the table, I eyed the curtain. Nothing. I ventured another step, reaching out my hand to get the remote. The fabric of the curtain bowed toward me, as if whoever was on the other side was running their hand down the length of the cloth. I jumped for the call button and the person came at me, still completely covered by the fabric like a cheap Halloween costume. Pressing the call button over and over, I put myself between the drape covered stranger and Owen. There was a commotion out in the hallway and the person retreated, leaving the curtain flat and un-menacing once more.
The door opened, this time with loud footsteps and voices. The curtain was pulled back by a middle-aged woman in flowery scrubs.
“Everything all right in here?” she asked, raising her eyebrows and looking around the room.
“Yeah, sorry. I knocked this thing off the table and pushed the button trying to catch it,” I said with a smile. “I’m pretty clumsy. They shouldn’t allow me in hospitals. Sorry for wasting your time.”
