With that, the doctor was done with me and on to the next case. Even though I had no heartbeat.
When we got home, Mom drew a cold bath to bring down my temperature.
Can’t say I was thrilled about it. My arms braced on the edge of the tub. I tried a few quick breaths to quell the rising tension. It didn’t work.
I need this, I thought. I’m going to die unless I get this fever down. I can do this
“Come on, Noah.” I took a long hard look at the water. “You can do this.” I raised my eyes and focused on the wall.
Breathe out.
Legs in.
All or nothing.
I closed my eyes. I rolled my whole body into the chilly water. My eyes shot open. An awful wail, muffled by the icy water, ripped itself out of me. The power raced through my arms and legs, shooting them outward against the walls of the old claw-footed tub, which cracked into four solid pieces. The water gushed out around me. Time was moving in such minuscule increments, I thought I was in a dream.
A sense of tingling relief engulfed my body for the length of a heartbeat, but suddenly my back arched and I was forced violently upward, as if pulled by a sadistic puppeteer. I sucked in one last breath. Then, as the water surged greedily across the floor, my world went dark.
There is no such thing as a death rattle. It’s more of a hiss.
Chapter 2
After I destroyed the bathtub (and a good chunk of the hardwood floors), I came to in a giant puddle of water and shattered cast-iron. I no longer felt any pain or panic, just a cool steady peace. I thought I could smell the Casey family’s pot roast sizzling in the oven, four blocks away. I could have sworn I heard the local mechanic, Herb, watching a rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond in his shop a mile and a half down the road.
I thought I was hallucinating at first, but then again I could also see my mom freaking out three inches in front of my face, which was kind of interrupting my moment of Zen. The monstrous sound of the tub coming apart had sent her into an understandable frenzy. She was kneeling down next to me in the shallow pool I’d inadvertently created, hands on my slippery shoulders. She wasn’t shaking me so much as just clinging like a shaken survivor of a watery wreck to a piece of floating wood. For someone who worked at a hospital, she was remarkably panicked.
I knew I wasn’t dreaming. I knew I wasn’t dead. I also knew I wasn’t alive.
Everything was still moving slowly, as though each second was a careful, long brushstroke on the canvas of time. I had died, and yet I was still here. Still moving, thinking, sensing. And I was calm. At least for a minute.
“Noah! Wake up! Noah! Noah!” She was screeching.
My eyes rolled up at her. I sighed. “Jeez , Mom, please. Take it easy.”
For a second I thought her head was going to explode. “Oh my god! Baby, are you okay? What happened?”
“I don’t know.” Ugh. There it was again. That phrase I’d become so familiar with. It was only after I’d reassured her I was relatively okay that she really registered the rest of the situation.
Her eyes lingered on the giant shards of tub, which had been whole moments before. Then she shifted her glance over to me. “What happened?” she tried again, this time quietly.
“I broke the bath.”
I knew it was lame, but what else could I really say at that point? That I was dead but somehow was still sitting here talking to her? Even I wasn’t totally sure why the tub had exploded. That conversation would have to wait, at least until after some coffee.
“I can see that,” she stated. “How? Are you all right?”
Let me see, how do I say this?
“I think something’s happened to me.” Understatement of the century. She leaned forward and felt my forehead. A puzzled look stretched across her face. “You’re freezing.”
I was vaguely aware of that. Then again, I was sitting naked in a puddle of ice water. But I didn’t feel cold. Just still.
“I’m not cold though. I mean, I don’t feel cold.”
“We should get you warmed up.”
“I’m not sure that’s going to make much of a difference.”
“You’re awfully pale. We’ve got to get your blood circulating.”
I had a feeling that wasn’t going to make a difference either. She offered her hand to help me up, but I didn’t need it. In fact, I practically floated to my feet. It was effortless. And pretty strange. She left the bathroom to get fresh towels, and it was then I saw myself in the mirror for what seemed like the first time.
My eyes had always been a generic brown, but now they were a deep, rich oak. My body looked strong and smooth, like marble. There was something elegant about me. I had never thought of myself as elegant.
There was a subtle shadow under my cheekbone that gave my face a more defined, less boyish, tone. In fact, it looked a little intimidating. And was I a bit taller? That was probably wishful thinking. I continued examining myself. My dark hair looked the same, pretty much, just thicker. I glanced down. I was impressed with my new abs—it looked like I’d been hitting the gym nonstop. For a moment, I was actually starting to get psyched about all this, whatever this was. I felt new, untouchable. Until I saw them.
My fangs.
I thought I might be imagining things, so I pulled back my lip with my finger. I leaned in closer to the mirror. Sure enough, a sharp white tooth, too big to be a canine, gleamed back at me from the mirror. I pulled back my lip on the other side, where a twin stark white tooth was settled. I ran my tongue gently under the one on the left. Without even a hint of pressure, the tooth pierced my tongue, which started bleeding.
I froze.
My blood was black. Not burgundy. Not crimson. Black.
Black was, after all, not a color. Unless you counted the Crayola rule where you mixed every color in the box, and even then the result was more like puke brown.
Black was my blood. Black was the absence of light. Black was the absence of life.
So what was I?
To be perfectly honest, despite my awesome new physique and incredible strength, I felt really, really stupid. Too stupid to even say it out loud. Instead, I kept the thought to myself.
Vampire.
No, vampires were from fairy tales; they didn’t exist. Neither did werewolves, mummies, or Santa, for that matter.
Vampire.
If you say a word enough times in rapid succession, it starts to sound like gibberish, even if you don’t say it out loud. It worked backward with this. The idea started out impossible. Ridiculous. Nonsense.
Vampire. Vampire.
Slowly it became silly, then strange, until finally, after a lot of internal repetition, it sounded almost as natural as a breeze. It all made sense. The bites. The lack of a heartbeat. The fangs.
Vampire. Vampire. Vampire. I am a vampire. I tried it out loud.
“I’m a vampire.”
Mom came back in carrying a stack of clean towels.
Just then, I couldn’t help it—I burst out laughing. “I’m a vampire!”
My mother looked at me like I was insane, but I couldn’t stop. The laughter racked my body and shook my core. It tore through me.
Tears were streaming down my ivory face. Well, it was good to know my tears weren’t black, at least.
Mom dropped the towels onto the chilly, swamp-like floor. I could see in her face that she was searching for a word of comfort, or sense, but neither of those things was of any use to me. The tears began flowing down her cheeks at that point.
Within seconds, my laughter died and morphed into anger. How had this happened to me? My rage was bubbling over and morphing into a bizarre and awful thirst. A desire to hurt. Almost everything else, including my rant, was steadily drowned out by the sound of my mother’s heartbeat. Like a war drum.
Suddenly, I craved her blood.
A wild bloodlust hijacked my every thought, and all I wanted was to satisfy it. Whatever good or human part of me that was left was swiftly shoved int
o a tiny corner as this new beast within took hold and prepared for a feeding. I was struggling against it…but losing.
She saw the wild sheen in my eyes. Right then, she made a decision that saved both our lives.
“Go to your room.” She spoke it quietly at first.
It took me off guard. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t budge though, rooted so firmly in the insane thirst. Her voice got louder. Firmer.
“Noah.” her eyes were blazing.
“What…” I couldn’t think. I was a machine.
“Go to your room. NOW.”
It was the absolute authority in her voice that won out and broke the spell of my terrible craving. I stood just a second longer before making a frantic retreat to my room.
I quickly closed and locked the door. Locked door. A lot of good that’ll do me. Who was I kidding? A lot of good that would do her.
****
My phone whirred on the bedside table. Once. Twice. And then it rested quietly. I checked the screen. It was my best friend, Malcolm. He didn’t bother leaving a message this time. He had given up after the fifth try. He’d known since the momentous day in the seventh grade when we each got cell phones that if I didn’t pick up after two rings, chances were I wouldn’t pick up at all. It was comforting to know he was still calling though.
It had been two days. Two very long days.
I was just starting to grasp what was going on—what I’d become—and none of it really made much sense. On top of it all, I was hungrier than I’d ever been. I’d been cordoned off in my room for two days since the bathroom incident in an attempt to keep from drinking my mother’s blood. I was bored out of my mind. And totally scared to leave my room.
It was a Monday and I wasn’t at school, which was probably why Malcolm had been calling. I heard him talk to my mom on the landline briefly. She told him I was sick. It was partially true, I guess. I wanted to murder my mother and drink her blood. That was pretty sick if you asked me.
BZZT.
Another text from Malcolm.
DUDE SICK? THATS LAME PICK UP UR PHONE!
I knew it would have taken two seconds, but I didn’t have the heart to respond. I hated lying. I wasn’t good at it. I didn’t do it. Even the white lies, the ones you tell to make someone feel better? Yeah, I couldn’t pull those off either. One time, after a particularly unfortunate haircut, Mom asked me how she looked. My answer? “Not like a Muppet…at all.” So I really didn’t feel like lying to my best friend. And the whole “I’ve become a vampire” talk was not a conversation to have right now—especially via text.
BZZT.
This time it was from Paige.
HOPE UR OKAY! LUNCH IS BORING W/OUT U ;)
Normally a text like that would have made my day, but again, I couldn’t bring myself to find any suitable response. Paige and I had been friends for a long time, but any time she said anything remotely flirtatious to me, it fanned the flames in my heart. If I couldn’t handle lying to Malcolm, I most definitely couldn’t handle lying to Paige.
I had already gone through all the shows on my DVR and was getting sick of the only news story the local stations were covering: the disappearance of Esther Jones, a twenty-year-old Whitehaven native. She’d been missing for three months and there was no trace of her. I presumed she was dead. The cops presumed she was taken to another state. The reporters presumed that everyone in town still wanted to hear about it, even though it was hardly news anymore.
In my utter boredom, I compiled a list of things about me, hoping that it would somehow lead to a clearer understanding of what I was. Or, you know, just kill a couple hours.
So here’s what I’d learned thus far:
I really was a vampire.
I had mad cravings for blood.
Sunlight did me no good. I was sitting on my bed when a ray of light inched through the blinds and eventually onto my leg, which immediately began to sizzle. Mom ran out and got me some industrial-strength SPF, which I tested in the backyard one day. It worked all right for a limited amount of time, but I had to reapply every forty minutes. Even though the sunscreen prevented me from frying alive, the sun on my skin still stung.
I was really, really strong. The solid cherry-wood desk that had taken two burly, sweating men to carry up the stairs to my room felt light as cardboard. I could lift it with one hand. A simple nudge of my finger sent my outdated, oversized box of a television crashing to the floor. Luckily for me, it still worked fine (as long as I ignored the line of static in the center of the screen).
I was also pretty fast. Since I’d been isolated in my room, I’d only had the chance to test how quickly I could dart in twelve feet of space.
I bled black.
I could still feel, although my tolerance for pain had shot through the roof. Don’t ask me how I tested this. Let’s just say I needed to learn how to repair large holes in walls.
I didn’t sleep. Ever. Oh, trust me, I tried. I was desperate to sleep. Not so much because I was tired (which I wasn’t), but because I was eager to find some sort of constant, some simple piece of my life that I could use as a buoy for my sanity. Alas, I lay for twelve full hours with my eyes closed tight and not once did I venture into the realm of the unconscious.
I was practically indestructible. Let me explain. It was sort of like that third-grade science experiment where cornstarch is combined with water in a plastic bag. When only the bag is moved around, the mixture behaves like a liquid. When the mixture is squeezed, it becomes solid. This principle is called suspension. Why did I remember that? Because secretly I am a huge nerd. But, anyhow, that’s what my skin did. If I caressed it lightly, it felt normal. As a test, I decided to slam my hand in the door. Genius, right? Since I’m a righty, I used my left hand, just in case my theory was totally off. I gritted my teeth, placed my hand between the door and the frame, and slammed it shut. I was actually very surprised by how little it hurt. Don’t get me wrong, there was definitely some pain, equivalent to a stub of the toe maybe, but not the crushing of a hand. Slowly I pulled my hand back and inspected it. There was a small purplish area like a bruise that started to fade right away, as soon as I looked at it. Within a minute it was gone, and my hand was fine. I have to admit, it was pretty cool. Speaking of cool…
I was startlingly cold to the touch.
My hearing and sense of smell were unparalleled.
I was terrified of water. Not sure why. I don’t mean a glass of it, but a tub was obviously enough to freak me out.
I had no idea who did this to me or why.
My hair looked great. All the time. Bonus! (Oh, and we appear in mirrors—so myth busted.)
I could hold my breath for an extraordinarily long time—another discovery as a product of extreme boredom. The weird part was that I realized I didn’t actually have to breathe at all. I didn’t require oxygen. There was no tight burning in my lungs that developed when I deprived myself of air. I still had the compulsion to breathe, however. It didn’t feel right to simply stop. After awhile, the compulsion to breathe overpowered my ability not to.
I still liked TV.
So there it was. I was a vampire. It was almost too much to take in all at once. It felt a little like the first day of high school—confusing, disorienting, scary…maybe a little exciting.
I pictured myself strolling down the dank halls of the high school and feeling different. Powerful. Confident. Invincible, even. I was strong. I could probably even go out for the football team. I’d never really had the desire to be labeled a jock, but it would be fun to be the best at something. Football players got a lot of attention. Hmm, on second thought maybe that wasn’t the hottest idea.
Something more low-key would be better. Track, maybe? I liked running, but I wasn’t super fast. I didn’t excel at it. I didn’t excel at anything, come to think of it. I was exceptionally mediocre. That is, before I became a vampire. Now, with little effort, I could probably speed past anyone on the track.
I started thinki
ng about what everyone would be doing at school, how for everyone else, this was just another Monday. I thought about Malcolm being all fidgety in math class. Malcolm would be totally geeking out right now if he knew I was a vampire. He’s huge into the comic book and fantasy stuff. Me? Not so much. But I’m pretty well versed since I have to listen to him go on about it all the time.
Then I thought about Paige. I thought about how she was the most perfect girl I’d ever met, and about how she never seemed to notice that I’d been in love with her forever. I liked how she always picked the seat near the window in history.
She gets cold easily, so she liked to sit in the sun. She also seemed to daydream a lot, and yet she always knew the answers to every one of Mr. Halstead’s questions about the Renaissance or World War I. She’s sharp like that. Oh, she would definitely notice my new physique. Maybe I could get her to check out my abs in gym class.
As I lingered on thoughts of Paige, I felt a tremendous wave of thirst wash over me, followed by a subtle fluttering in my stomach.
Then it happened.
In a flash of a second, the room became enormous! Everything looked panoramic. I was no longer lounging on the bed but bobbing in hectic circles about a foot above it. At least I think it was a foot. It seemed more like a hundred feet. Once again I was plunged violently into a world of uncertainty—I had no idea what was happening to me.
On instinct, I guess, I was flapping my arms frantically. My arms! My arms were gone, replaced by thinner-than-paper filament. Wings? I had wings. They were too thin to be bat wings. Oh, this was just great.
It was hard to process any of this though, because not only did it seem as though I were looking through a gyroscope, but the world was spinning at such an insane rate that I thought I was going to either vomit or pass out. Or both. Instead, I crash-landed onto my bed, which now appeared to be a mile long. The clothes I had been wearing lay in a messy heap that formed a massive rolling cotton terrain. Once I had come to a complete stop, I tried to make sense of the newest part of my insane life. I felt trapped—as if I had been stuffed into a suitcase, twisted and contorted until I fit into a new, unnatural mold.
I Heart Vampires Page 2
