by Atha, DL
“Never mind the radio, Annalice. What really happened here?” she asked, her eyes taking in the scene of the room. The house had an open floor plan so the kitchen was fully visible to the both of us. I didn’t have to look around to know what she was talking about.
The kitchen was littered with the trash of living a week in captivity. Empty boxes, jars, and containers rose out of the sink in a jumbled mass. The cooktop was stained with the burnt spaghetti that I was cooking the night Asa intruded into my house and my life. The stench of the scorched pasta still hung in the air. I briefly wondered if Mom could smell it too or if it was only me.
I could just make out the outlines of my own bloody footprints across the kitchen floor, the ones I’d hastily cleaned up after Detective Rumsfield’s first visit. I knew Mom couldn’t see them since even I barely could. The kitchen island was a minefield of knocked-over empty cans, peanut butter jars half emptied and dried out, and stale pieces of bread. I didn’t have to open the refrigerator to know it was, for all intents and purposes, empty. In the corner lay the tumped-over trashcan; the contents spilled across the tile floor. Something sticky and green had leaked out and stained the baseboard.
The living room had fared better. At least, if you didn’t notice the near empty curio cabinet in the background. Which of course, Mom with her eagle eyes, did. She was staring at it now. I closed my eyes briefly against the flood of memories, thinking about the cause. I’d brought the shelf over on top of myself on purpose to make myself bleed—a blood sacrifice for the sake of my daughter.
“Look around, Annalice. I’ve never in my life seen anything like this. It’s disastrous. And what happened to all of the knickknacks on the cabinet? Why is your bedroom littered with a week’s worth of clothes? And why are some of them torn? Your hair is all over the bathroom. Walking on that floor is worse than walking barefoot in a hair salon. The bottom of the shower is covered in what I can only guess at. And now I find out there was no break-in. You lied to me, which is a new thing as far as I know, and suddenly, your old flame is a suspect in a murder. I didn’t even know you had an old flame.”
I started to speak, but my mouth was only beginning to open before she assaulted me again.
“You don’t even look like yourself, Annie, and I’m not just talking about your hair. You’re so pale it’s like looking at porcelain. Your eyes aren’t the same. I’ve tried to act like everything is okay, but I can’t. I turn away from you and I feel like I’ve put my back to a rabid animal. The police clearly don’t trust you, and yet you never had so much as a speeding ticket. And what happened to Samuel? That dog is Ellie’s most beloved friend, and he’s nowhere to be seen.”
A sick feeling crept across me when I realized I hadn’t thought of Samuel in days. I hadn’t thought to break the news to Ellie tonight, and now it would be left to Mom tomorrow, as I’d be dead come sunrise. Greatest mom of the year would never grace my tombstone. If I had a tombstone that is.
“I totally forgot about Samuel,” I said in shame.
Mom looked at me incredulously.
“You forgot about Samuel?” She could hardly believe her ears. Samuel had been with me for years. He’d been an important part of our little family.
“Your father gave him to you as a puppy. How could you forget about him?” she asked. To Mom, Samuel was a little piece of himself Dad had left behind. The last vestiges of a man protecting his daughter.
Strike daughter of the year from the gravestone too. “Yeah, I guess I did. I didn’t mean to, Mom. Everything has just been so awful here that, honestly, Samuel was the least of my problems.” Mom stared at me as if I’d just told her I was a serial killer. “Samuel died the night after you left with Ellie. He died protecting me. He was a hero till the very end.”
She caught her breath, reaching one hand to the mantle to steady her balance. “Protecting you? From what? You said it was just a little break-in. Although the detective didn’t seem to know anything about a break-in. ‘Nothing to worry about,’ you said. Well, this,” she said, pointing to the disarray around the house, “looks very much like something to worry about.” Her voice was as loud and accusing as it could be without waking up Ellie.
And here I stumbled, looking for words to make sense of the happenings that had left me as changed as a being could be. No longer human. No longer a member of the same species as the woman who’d labored to bring me into this world. I started to spill out the terrors I’d seen. For a split second, I wanted nothing more than to describe the harrowing things I’d experienced. To tell her how I’d scraped and fought to live, and how I’d won against all odds. Watching that man die in the woods and seeing the haunting face of Ms. McElhaney in the pictures the detective had showed me were so painful that I couldn’t imagine how I was going to keep it bottled up inside me.
I ached to tell her the things Asa had forced me to do and how I’d done them. I needed to tell her how I’d lied and schemed and yes, even been party to murder. And even more, I needed to confess that I’d enjoyed some of them. I needed absolution. I needed forgiveness. I wanted to tell her all the awfulness I’d been through and feel her soothing hands on my forehead like when I was a little girl, hands that could wipe away my every wrong and heal most any pain.
But clarity came quickly, and I realized I could hardly open up such a void between us. Could her love survive the gulf of immortality? Could it survive knowing that her daughter was a different breed, a blood-drinker who lived off the life of others? Would she think me irredeemable? Or would she see my transformation like a religious parent hearing of the death of their atheist child. A divide that could never be spanned, a permanent separation, a choice that could never be unchosen. I wasn’t ready to acknowledge such a gulf in our relationship. I don’t think I could have said the words if I were forced to.
She asked again, irritated by my silence. “Protecting you from what?”
“A man,” I finally said. “A monster really, and as good a man as the detective is, he was wrong. There was a break-in. But I lied to you about the police. I didn’t call them because the monster threatened to kill you and Ellie if I did. And I thought he would because he did kill Ms. McElhaney. He killed her to shut her up and keep her from checking on me. So I knew he was capable of it, Mom. I didn’t have any choice but to lie to the detective and to you because I never wanted you to know any of this.”
Mom had gotten quiet. It hardly seemed she was breathing even, she was so still. “Where is he now?” she finally asked.
Dead and buried in a shallow grave, I thought.
“Gone,” I said quietly because I couldn’t tell her I’d killed him. I doubted that murderers ever confessed to their parents. Everyone needs someone to think they’re innocent, to see their best side. Besides, she wouldn’t be able to lie effectively to Rumsfield.
And there will be no body. But there will be a stake, and I have to make it out there tonight, I reminded myself.
Mom was nearly beside herself with fear and not just fear of me. She’d always been terrified of this house and now with what I’d told her, she could hardly stand still. She resumed her pacing, her hands fidgeting nervously behind her.
“We can’t stay here, Annalice. We have to leave. You wake Ellie up, and I’ll pack some clothes for her. We can find a hotel in town, and tomorrow, you two can move to Missouri with me. Forget the house. We’ll hire a moving company to pack it up. They can sell the place on the auction block. Just grab the essentials tonight.”
I stood absolutely still, knowing the moment of reckoning had come. At first, she was too busy to notice. She was still pacing in front of the fire while she made plans. For the moment, her fear of me had been pushed to the back burner. Her mind was busy planning the drive home. How long it would take us to get to her house, which bedroom would be mine, and where Ellie would sleep. Logistics like that. Moments later, she realized I hadn’t moved.
“Annalice, time is of the essence. Why are you just standing there?”
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br /> “Mom, you said it yourself to the detective. I won’t leave.” Her eyes widened, and she threw her hands apart widely. “I know what I said, but I thought surely to God you would have come to your senses after what the detective showed you, and you just told me that a monster broke into this house.”
“I also said that he’s gone.”
“He could come back.” Her voice hissed with a potent combination of fear and anger. “Two people are dead. Right here in your neighborhood if that’s what you can call this backwoods hellhole.”
“Mom…”
“What, Annalice? What more reason do you need? What this time? What could possibly hold you here now?”
“I can’t leave.” The words came out louder than I meant them to, echoing around the room.
A statue stared back at me, a heartbroken, confused, angry statue.
“I want to, Mom. More than anything, I wish I could strike a match to this house and walk out the door. I’d leave it all behind if I could.” I nodded, acknowledging the truth to myself for the first time. “But he changed me. In ways that I can’t really explain but I know you’ve picked up on.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She finally found her voice as the stone mask of her face splintered with suspicion.
I looked at her sadly while in the breadth of that second, I heard her heart beat pick up. Down the hall, Ellie shifted in bed; the sheets slid across her legs. The ticking of the massive wall clock pounded in my ears. The tree branches tapped the upstairs windows. I could feel the stirrings of hunger, and it wasn’t for food.
Should I tell her it was the racing of her heartbeat or the quickness of her breath that gave her new fear of me away? The fine hairs that I could see standing up on her arms. Should I say ‘You’ve been crying and I can smell the salt of your tears?’
Instead, I called her a liar. “I think you do know, Mom. You just don’t want to say it.”
She ignored the truth in my words. “That man could come back, Annalice. How can you risk Ellie like this?”
“He’s not coming back,” I said. My gaze dropped to the floor. My emotions were high. Looking directly at her wouldn’t be the greatest idea.
“How do you know he’s not coming back?” she asked.
It was a leading question. The detective had said there were things about me she didn’t know. But he was wrong. She knew. Mothers always know.
Unable to stop myself, I met her gaze and the violence inside me reached out to her. I felt it swell out from my heart and fill my arms and legs with blood lust. Not for her. It was a remnant of what I’d felt for Asa and the human he’d killed in the woods his last night.
Her breath caught as reality settled in, a silent “oh” on her lips. Most people say they could kill someone who threatened their family. Everyone feels brave from a distance, but knowing your daughter possessed the ability to kill is another thing entirely.
“I was only protecting myself, Mom, and the two of you. But if I leave now, I’m more of a suspect than ever. I have to see this through, or Ellie will never have a chance at a normal life.”
How strange this must all be for her. When she’d left a week before, I’d been a typical working mom living a boring but happy life, and now I was someone with secrets she didn’t recognize. Lots of secrets.
The fingers of her right hand clenched around a small bottle she’d concealed in her hand; her nails slid across the metallic canister. Mace. She always carried it in her purse. She took one last frightened look at me and started to turn away to leave the room. Then she remembered the fear of having her back to me. I saved myself and her the embarrassment and left before she had to back out of the room.
Chapter 5
I sat on the back deck staring at the night sky, waiting for Mom to go to sleep, needing to know that she’d find a little rest. The next few weeks would be tricky, and she needed to be able to sleep a fearless sleep. I knew she wouldn’t leave Ellie. Nothing could drive her away from her only granddaughter.
Ellie had dropped into a deep sleep only a few minutes after I’d left her room. Sleeping like only a child can rest, safe and secure in the knowledge that Mom and Dad—or in her case Mom—had it covered. Ellie’s heartbeat, quiet and calm, brought me a little peace. I might go to jail. I might fry in the sun, but she’d live, and Mom would be with her. I’d survived the worst even if I didn’t make it through the next few weeks.
I’d realized tonight at the restaurant when I’d stood next to Lisa that I’d have to have blood soon. The thirst wasn’t bad. Yet. But it wouldn’t be long. Some innate knowledge told me that. I had a day or two at best, and then something bad was going to happen. Not all vampire knowledge was inborn, it seemed, but thirst was inherent.
Everything else clearly had a learning curve. I had great hearing, but it was new to me. I couldn’t determine distances very well. Smell was easier, and I’d adapted to that heightened sense easier. I was stronger, but how much I couldn’t tell. I was faster, but how much I didn’t know. I needed to readjust to my new boundaries.
But tonight, the stake I’d left beside Asa’s grave was a burning priority. My new strengths would have to wait. Impatiently, I sat tensed on the back deck while Mom tossed fitfully in the bedroom above me.
As restless as Mom was, the night sky was the opposite. The evening had quieted, the earlier wind dying down so that it barely rattled the trees. No clouds blotted the sky, and Orion was awake, his stars burning brightly, his bow poised in the eternal search of Scorpio. My yard spread out from the house and then transformed into the rougher terrain of the pasture. In the distance but quite plain to my sight, I could pick out the individual pine trees that formed the perimeter of the national forest.
Even after twenty‐four hours, I could still see plainly my path from the night before as I’d run from the brutality of the sun. Certain that it had been visible to even a human last night, I wasn’t sure now. To a highly experienced tracker yes, but to the average human untrained in such things, I was doubtful.
While I studied my day‐old path, Mom finally drifted off into a semblance of sleep. Her breathing was labored as she struggled in her dreams, her heart thumping out erratic patterns. She tossed and turned. I could hear an occasional word as she talked in her sleep; it took very few of her whispered words to know that I was the subject of her nightmares.
Wishing them a good night, I began to retrace my steps back across the frozen ground to where the nightmare with Asa had ended.
The woods were quiet and I, even quieter, as I jogged through them. It’s a strange thing to suddenly have speed and strength, and I felt the way a ninety‐year‐old woman must feel if she was to wake up in the body of an eighteen‐year‐old. The sensation was almost overpowering, and it seemed the woods brought it out that much more. The air was cold, the forest silent, and any animals I heard bowed to my presence as I rushed past. Hunt, my mind urged. There’s something out here for you.
I fought the urges. As much as I wanted to streak through the trees and enjoy my newfound strength, I wouldn’t allow myself. Surely it was akin to laughing in a funeral home—something taboo—and I struggled to believe that those rules still applied to me. I wanted them to apply to me. To feel human. To be human. If I acted like one, wasn’t that half the battle? A man had died here less than twenty‐four hours ago. A death I’d watched and done little to stop. It was too early for running.
I searched the forest, my eyes easily making out tiny details that I’d never noticed. The rough bark of the pine tree housed thousands of bugs; I could hear their bodies clamoring over each other in the search for food. Dead leaves clinging to winter’s branches whispered to me in the small breezes. Tiny bright eyes peered out from under fallen tree limbs and then disappeared into the dark as I came close.
I slowed as I passed less than a hundred feet from the unfortunate human encampment Asa and I had come upon last night. Two of the camping trailers were still there, the metal siding creaking
with the occupant’s movements. From within one, I could hear the low sobbing of a man. The third human must have packed up and left him alone in his grief.
I listened momentarily, understanding in part what he was going through as I’d nearly lost everything myself. He could be yours. Probably wants to die anyhow. My forward motion stopped at the thoughts that popped into my brain, and I turned towards the camper. Wouldn’t I be putting him out of his misery? Answering the questions of what happened to his son? The thoughts came easy. Too easy. I hadn’t intended to think them, and yet they were there. NO! I screamed back at my own self. I will not be this thing!
Disgusted, I turned and ran deeper into the forest, leaving the man to his tears.
Another quarter mile and I slowed again as the smell of human blood began to blend with the smells of the forest. The scent was old but still recognizable—still delicious. And although I knew I needed to focus on retracing my steps to Asa’s grave, I couldn’t ignore the blood.
And I had died here too. I couldn’t ignore my own death site any more than I could ignore the blood. Like dying and getting to go to your own funeral. It was irresistible.
As I had the night before, I let the scent lead me like a ribbon of red through the woods until I stood over the spot where the human’s blood had soaked into the ground, leaving a large dark stain that would soon be decayed by the forest. Tonight, however, the smell was still potent.
The blood had painted a portion of the sandy soil a deep ruddy brown color; burgundy spatters flecked the nearby fallen leaves. There were hundreds of footprints encircling the stain, but none had threatened its border. No one had blurred the proof of my sins into the ground. Maybe they’d had no desire to smooth out the last traces of a man’s life, as if leaving his blood pooled on the ground kept him present on this earth awhile longer.
