Her eye on that side was lidless, staring and dry.
Michael had seen all sorts of horrors come through the E.R. doors, but this was enough to make him want to retch. He turned away and drew a long, shaky breath.
Immediately, he wished he hadn’t. Now, he smelled her, too. A cloying, stifling odor of rose sachet, filth and decay emanated from her.
“May I sit?” she asked.
“Of course. I mean, this is your home, not mine.” He stepped aside and motioned toward the sofa. She chose the big, overstuffed reading chair, instead.
“You sit,” she said, smiling as well as she could. “I’m not going to hurt you, so don’t be so antsy. I’ve watched you sleep, so if I wanted to harm you, I would have drained you the first night you slept here.”
Hesitantly, Michael sat back down on the sofa, but he didn’t relinquish his grip on the gun.
“The woman, Susan, told you to go,” she said again. “You don’t belong.”
“I’ll leave. I didn’t know someone still lived—“
She waved him off. “No one does, Michael. Besides, I meant that you don’t belong in Charlestowne, not in this house.”
“Susan doesn’t belong, either,” Michael said.
“Is Susan still human?” She leveled her gaze at him. “Or is she like I am?”
This last statement threw him. Like her? Could Susan ever become like this creature? He wanted to ask her why she looked as she did. Had she been tortured? Maybe Kasper had gotten to her at some point. “She has . . . changed.”
“We call it transforming. Do you know who brought it on her?”
Michael nodded. He felt strange saying it, after reading Sandra’s journal, but after a pause, he said, “His name is Devin.”
“I see,” she replied. “He does get around.”
Michael smiled uneasily, but he was slowly warming up to this odd woman. “I suppose.”
“Would you be uncomfortable if I straightened the house a bit?”
“No. I probably should go, anyway. Been thinking about returning home. Maybe it would be best to leave Susan to this—whatever it is.”
Sandra stood. “No. Don’t go. I just try to tidy up from time to time. It makes me feel like I did when I was alive, when Joey and Jenna were alive. Stay. Stay and talk to me.”
She moved into the kitchen and removed a towel from the handle of the oven. She began to wipe at the counter, the heavy darkness of the area seemingly unnoticed. Michael got another beer and tended the fire. He tossed the remains of the chair he had broken onto the flames. “Sorry about the chair.”
“It doesn’t matter. Nobody likes to be cold.”
Michael found her easier to talk with once her face had faded back into the shadows. From where he sat, only her silhouette was visible. She scrubbed hard at the range.
“Would you like a beer?” he asked.
“Never was a big drinker,” she told him. Then, realizing what she had said, she laughed, watery and nearly choking.
***
As dawn spread its running orange paint across the purple sky, Sandra Harp left her home to sleep the day away in the cluttered and pitch dark garage belonging to a neighbor she had never liked in life. She confessed this in a not-so-subtle trade-off—you leave me alone, and I’ll do the same for you.
Michael had added the spindly wooden legs of a bar stool to the fire at Sandra’s urging. “I never liked the things, anyway. Joey fell off one and split his chin. Burn them all.”
Sleep found him quickly, but it was as thin as gossamer and riddled with nightmares.
In the most vivid of the bunch, Susan trailed a cool finger around his ear, that little trick she used on him time and again because she knew it drove him crazy. She then drew her naughty fingers across his lips, and he kissed the tip of each one.
Next, she worked her way lower, through the coarse hairs of his chest. She scratched one nipple sharply with her nail, and then followed it with an incredibly tantalizing nip with her sharp little fangs. He grew hard. But then, her sweet touches became rougher, feverish. A putrid odor filled his nostrils.
Inside his dream world, Michael opened his eyes.
Standing above him, her face just visible in the moon’s flat, silvery glow was Sandra Harp, except the ruined half of her face was alive and writhing with maggots. They slipped into her gaping jaw, between the broken tombstones of her teeth and up into the wide space where her nose used to be. She bent and brought her rotting, torn lips to his.
A fat, slow-moving roach fell from her hair and onto the pillow beside Michael’s head. Her dry, wrinkled hand fell to the front of his pants.
He awoke screaming Susan’s name.
A rat, roughly the size of a puppy, crawled lumpish and awkward across his groin. It paused at the top of one trembling thigh, then turned and threw him a disapproving stare, daring him to swat it away.
With a disgusted groan, Michael reached for his gun, but the flabby creature had already faded down the hallway, into the darkness.
He wanted so much to just go home.
But he couldn’t go alone.
He had seen Susan, and she was alive. Still, in just the hours since, her image had taken on the fuzzy quality of a dream.
Through the salt-crusted slider that faced the Atlantic, the sky gave him the vague indication that the sun would be up soon and very bright, almost like spring. No matter how terrible the dreams became, he could count on the sunrise putting an end to the night. Sunrise used to work for the dreams, as well, but that was all over now. Nightmares had become a constant thing and didn’t end just because the night faded to light.
He lay awake, staring upward at the ceiling, which grew lighter by the moment. He wouldn’t sleep again anytime soon. He lit one of Sandra’s fat white candles, but the vanilla scent had long faded. He then pulled the journal from beneath the cushions of the sofa where he had shoved it when he realized Sandra had visited. He hadn’t wanted her to see that he had read her diary, but she probably already knew.
He read and reread it until he dozed in the safety of the sunlit morning.
chapter thirty-nine
“Do you know why I look this way?”
Michael prodded the fire and nodded his head. Of course, he only had his suspicions, and what he had imagined was far-fetched, even when he compared it to all he had already seen in Charlestowne. He didn’t look at her. Even after four nights of her visits, her appearance chilled him. A woman missing half of her face was not an easy thing to grow used to.
“I suppose it’s obvious,” she said.
“Does it,” he hesitated, searching for a tactful way of putting things, “hinder your feeding?”
Sandra sipped the cheap wine he had purchased earlier from the dank all-night supermarket, the only one that stayed open after dark.
“Sometimes I have to do things . . . things that no person—no mother—should have to do.”
Michael couldn’t stop thinking of Susan. Did she hate the thing she had become? Even before her ‘transformation,’ she could appear as emotionless as a machine. He remembered Philip, one of Susan’s colleagues at the police department, referring to her as the “Terminator,” one day early in their relationship when he had come to meet her for lunch.
“So, you’re taking out the Terminator?” he had asked.
Taken aback, Michael had responded, “Pardon?”
“The Terminator. You know, that amazing lack of feeling. Surely, you’re not expecting to have a good time.”
It had pissed Michael off, but he only shrugged good-naturedly and replied, “I hope we do.”
Philip slapped him heartily on the back. “Good luck, man.”
There was certainly a darkness in her; he had felt that on their first date. It was nothing directed toward him, but it was there, a part of her, just like her blue eyes or her dead brother. To love her was to love everything about her—the good and the bad. And, he had done just that.
To have given so much didn
’t leave the option of letting her go without a fight.
He came back to the present, and Sandra was still describing the horrors of the hunt and the despair that came with the thirst for blood. She sounded like an addict recounting the sick craving for drugs.
“So many times, I have tried to end this,” she told in her wet voice. More than once, Michael had found himself hearing that hideous voice in that fugue of consciousness as sleep was just taking over. He always awoke startled and unable to fall back to sleep.
“Did you know that it is impossible for those like me to die, Michael? We’re doomed to this world, no matter what.” The wine made her sound melodramatic. “Demons. Or maybe ghosts with unfinished business who still reside in a physical form.”
Perhaps the wine had affected him just as oddly because before he realized what he was telling her, Michael said, “I know how you can die.”
Sandra placed her glass on the coffee table and raised her eyes to his. The firelight touched the ruined side of her face and created deep, harsh shadows in the craters of her skull.
“You know how we can die?”
Michael shifted his gazed. He saw where this was leading and attempted to divert her attention. “What about sunlight, Sandra?”
“It doesn’t work. At least, not quickly enough. It’s agonizing. Plus, it’s not foolproof. Sometimes, it takes so long that the sun sets, and you’re still living, left to heal overnight. You’re left in pain. It’s like burning. No vampire wants to be burned. It’s a true living hell, and I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it at the hands of some madman on the boulevard. He strung a boy Deathwalker up on the tombstone sign outside the haunted mansion, that old tourist trap, and doused him in gasoline. Then, he set him on fire. He was left there for days. No one would help the poor thing. The flesh burned away to the bone, black as a chicken left on the grill too long.
The sun cooked him even more, and in the cool of the night, he would heal, but just enough to continue living. He stared. How he stared—his eyelids had melted away. He screamed all the time. For nearly a week, these hoarse and whispery screams, because he no longer had much of a throat, and his tongue was molded to his lips.
“Children hit him and yelled for him to be quiet. The adults ridiculed him, but nobody came to help him.
“And then one night, I realized the screaming had stopped. When I got to that corner, the boy was gone.”
She stopped and looked at Michael.
“If you know what it takes to stop this, you need to tell me,” she whispered. “Michael.”
“You know,” Michael answered. “Nothing can go on without brain function. The head needs to be removed.”
Sandra collapsed back into her chair. “Yeah, that. Of course.” She laughed, soft and weak, like a balloon losing air. “You must realize—removing one’s own head can be a tricky proposition.”
“I can imagine,” Michael agreed.
“At first, I thought a gunshot would be enough. The pain—it was as if my brain had caught fire. I couldn’t see, couldn’t move. But, I came back. Slowly. I remember touching the side of my head and realizing that part of it was missing. I felt for sure I would die from it, but no. No such luck—I never had much luck, anyway—one time I won a contest at a Tupperware party and got a free snack bowl. Anyway. . . “
Michael didn’t know what to say. How the hell did someone respond to that? Sorry your suicide attempt didn’t work out. Maybe I can help out next time. At least you won a Tupperware bowl.
As if she had read his mind, she said, “Help me, Michael. You know what to do.”
Michael stood and moved over to the fire. Still, he felt chilled to the bone, and his stomach hurt. “Sandra . . .”
“You know what to do.”
“Listen to me. I’ve never killed anyone. Even as a physician, I’ve never helped anyone die.”
“I’m already dead, Michael.”
He took a deep breath. “Sandra . . .” he whispered. But when he turned and caught her hideous face in the orange firelight, he knew he would do it.
chapter forty
Against Devin’s better judgment, they left the house to feed. It had been nearly a week since they had last gone out. Their last kill had been the would-be child molester at the high-rise hotel. Since then, word was out that two more Deathwalkers had been killed—one burned alive and left to remain in agony. Devin was positive it was the work of Jacobsen. Because of that, he and Susan had been relegated to feeding on each other. Neither of them was completely satiated, but it was enough to keep them going and somewhat clearheaded.
Susan needed an excuse to break away from Devin and John’s watchful eyes and go to the address Michael had scribbled on the torn receipt back at the New Charlestowne Inn weeks ago. She had plucked Kasper Jacobsen’s name from his thoughts. He knew something. She couldn’t entertain the thought of continuing to creep around, scared, like some kind of pathetic animal, all because of some lunatic.
Repeatedly, she felt in her coat for the little slip of paper, although she knew it was no longer there. Had she dropped it, or had Devin or John discovered it? If it had been John, she would have picked up that stray little thought. Although it was an unsaid rule that John’s mind was off-limits, she still pried into his head from time to time.
No matter. She had memorized the street. If Michael was around, she could pick up his brain waves just as easily as she could John’s.
They moved along the littered streets of Charlestowne, their feet never really touching the pavement, only grazing it, soundlessly as cats. The night was clear, which was a nice change; Susan had become accustomed to the perpetual drizzle of the shore. There was a tavern, the same one where they had found the john and his tiny prostitute. A band played old New Wave songs, and the only one Susan recognized was the one by Blondie. The tempo of “Dreaming” was obscenely slow-paced, and the male singer had a much higher voice than Debbie Harry.
She knew what Devin was up to; he anticipated making her too drunk to hunt, and then he would take her back home where they would exchange enough blood to live yet another night.
“Come on, Devin,” she whispered, squeezing his arm. “I need to feed.”
“Let’s have another round first, all right?” He motioned to a waitress who looked like a strung-out porno star and smelled like two-dollar perfume. The waitress brought over two more glasses of horrid red wine. Susan’s sloshed over the rim of her glass, and the waitress fished a wrinkled paper napkin from her sagging apron and tossed it on Susan’s lap.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
“I’m sure.” Susan picked up the edge of the paper and placed it carefully on the other side of the table. Then, she turned to Devin again.
“You made me like this, you know. Now, you need to live with it.”
He sighed, threw a wad of bills on the table and led her by the arm through the crowd. She could tell by his walk that she had made him angry. She didn’t care.
Outside, Devin pushed her into the doorway of a closed donut shop.
“I don’t see why you want to do this. You know how dangerous it is with Kasper out there.” He glowered at her. “This is not a game, Susan. It is about survival.”
She grabbed the front of his coat and yanked him hard to her. She kissed him, her tongue probing into his mouth, tasting him. He pressed himself against her and pinned her to the wall. She loved the hot crush of his body on hers and bit his lip, drawing a drop of blood. She licked it away slowly.
“Shhh. It’s better than draining each other night after night.”
“I can’t let you . . .”
She kissed him again..
“I always share,” Devin protested. “Besides, I don’t enjoy the thought of you with another man.”
“How do you know I even prefer men? Women are easier to catch.”
“Are they, now?” He laughed. “That’s sort of hot. How about I follow you? Just to watch?”
Susan shook her head. “I need to learn. Yo
u said so.”
“Tonight is not a good time.”
“I know what I’m doing, Devin.” It occurred to her to simply tell him the truth, but she couldn’t determine how much danger that might place Michael in.
Devin drew back slowly. “Okay, go. But meet me at the pier before light.”
“I’ll be there.” She started away then looked back. “And don’t try to follow.”
“Of course not.”
“I can see it in your face, Devin,” she said.
“Okay. Okay! Here, I’m going back inside to listen to that shitty band and drink more of that shitty wine.
***
Her instinct had always been to help when she heard the cry of a child. That hadn’t changed very much for Susan since the transformation. So, when she thought she heard the sob of a young boy, she had to search it out. Devin had disappeared back into the tavern; she wondered if she should get him before following the sound. Then, she decided that asking for his help would make him think she was weak.
She spotted the source of the weeping quickly. It was a boy child of nine or ten years of age. Down the boulevard, he wove between a bum on one side and an aged hooker on the other. He glanced over his shoulder at Susan with the tears on his face shining like wet silver. He had blond hair and wore jeans and a t-shirt without sleeves. He wasn’t wearing shoes. He would freeze before morning if he remained outside.
Susan followed, zigzagging between the bum, the hooker and several other unsavory-looking characters and wondering who exactly smelled the worst.
“Wait,” she called. She would give the child her coat; she might even bring him home for food and a warm night’s stay. Neither she nor Devin would feed from a child.
Maybe she was growing a conscience, as Devin had put it. Whatever—she had always had a place in her heart for children. The image of the Grinch from the old holiday cartoon popped into her head—his heart growing until the little frame around it burst.
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