by Marta Acosta
I tore up the receipt from the Womyn’s Sexual Health Collective and shoved the velvet restraints in the sports bag.
I didn’t know when I would be coming back so I packed Jane Eyre and a leather box that held my most valuable possessions, Ian’s gifts to me: ruby necklaces, Victorian garnet earrings, an enamel fountain pen, the mirror ball earrings, gold bracelets … The last thing I put in the bag was my knitting project, the blue-gray scarf for Oswald.
Placing the bulky bag over my left shoulder, I picked up Wil’s shrouded body and hefted him over my right shoulder. The cloth released a puff of the fine powder.
I balanced Wil’s body as I hurried to the stairwell and down to the garage. After placing him in the bed of my pickup, I positioned gardening tools on top to hide his bulk.
I drove out of the garage and into the dark street just as a black car with a long radio antenna pulled up in the red no-parking zone in front of my building.
It was my fault that Wil was dead. I’d used Wil to get back at Ian, even though I knew Ian had no boundaries. I didn’t know what I would say or do when I saw Ian, but I needed to see him now, to make him pay for what he’d done.
I tried to drive like everyone else, about ten miles over the speed limit, and I gripped the steering wheel tight to stop my hands from shaking from my sorrow and fury. It was all I could do to function and watch out for cops.
I slowed when I reached Ian’s neighborhood and switched off my headlights as I drove up the winding roads, swerving once to avoid a raccoon that turned its masked face with eerily reflected red eyes toward me.
I remembered how Ian had casually said “when you dispose of him” in reference to Wil. I wouldn’t give Ian the opportunity to hide any evidence of his crime, so I turned into the service parking lot down the hill.
An extra-long Dumpster had been deposited at the far side of the lot for debris from a renovation project. I drove around it and parked at the farthest edge of the dirt before it sloped down the hillside, so that my truck was hidden from view.
I left the truck without taking anything and kept to the edges of the road to Ian’s house. Banging on the ugly tangerine-colored carved front door, I shouted, “Let me in!”
Mr. K opened the door. I shoved him aside and went in the house, screaming, “Ian!”
“Miss Milagro, please.” Mr. K followed me as I ran through the rooms, looking for the man who had murdered Wil.
“Miss Milagro, if you would calm down …”
I grabbed Mr. K by the lapel of his jacket and Mrs. K came into the room, looking alarmed.
I said, “Where is goddamn Ian Ducharme?”
“Lord Ducharme not here,” Mr. K said.
His wife said, “Miss, let’s be reasonable.”
I gave Mrs. K a look that should have fried her in her sensible heels. “Where is that evil bastard?”
“We are not at liberty—” Mr. K began, and I slammed him against the wall.
Mrs. K cried, “He’s across the country at a meeting with the Council! He’ll be there for another week.”
She had given up too easily. I put one hand around Mr. K’s throat and said, “Tell me the truth now …”
Mr. K. tried to shake his head, but my grip was too tight. His face was turning puce. Mrs. K said in panic, “He’s with Ilena at her home in Oslo.”
Ilena, Ian’s former lover. “When did he go?”
“He went straight to the airport after dinner at Gigi Barton’s the night before last,” she said. “I booked the flight myself.”
I released my grip on Mr. K’s neck, and he bent over, gasping.
“I’m sorry. I apologize for hurting you, Mr. K,” I said. “It’s inexcusable, and I’ll make it up to you another time.” Think, think. “Could Ian have changed his flight?”
Mrs. K shook her head. “When I phoned Miss Ilena’s housekeeper today to confirm that his luggage had arrived on the next flight, Lord Ducharme was there. I spoke to him. He said he would be going on to Lviv tomorrow and didn’t know when he’d return.”
So Ian hadn’t killed Wil. I turned and walked away.
Mrs. K asked, “Would you like us to give Lord Ducharme a message?”
“Yes, please tell him that I said he can go straight to hell. I’ll probably meet him there.”
I walked in a daze back along the dark street toward the service parking lot. When I heard painful sobs, the sound was so close to my own heart that I took a moment to register that the weeping came from Cricket and Ford’s house.
I could have walked on and I should have walked on, although Don Pedro would have made some crackpot claim that I was destined to be there at that moment and destined to follow the sound.
My steps were silent on the granite brick drive as I passed between the dense privet hedges. The Poindexters’ house was a beautiful old brown shingle with white trim. A lantern on a post illuminated the glossy green front door. Now I could hear the choking, guttural cries more clearly; they sounded how I felt.
I knocked, and when no one answered I opened the front door and went into the house. I called, “Ford! Cricket! Is everything all right?”
I found them in the elegant farmhouse-style kitchen. Cricket’s body was sprawled on the limestone floor and her young husband knelt beside her. I saw shards of broken glass and blood everywhere. An unwanted craving surged through me at the rich, rusty iron scent of blood.
A bloody X-Acto knife had rolled under a butcher block cart.
“Oh, my God, Ford, what have you done?”
It was then that I saw the phone in his blood-covered hand. He held it to his ear and choked out, “Vampires killed her! Vampires wanted her blood!”
I grabbed the phone from him, dropped it on the floor, and stomped on it, making sure it was thoroughly crushed. “What the hell happened here, Ford?”
“Can’t you see!” His eyes flitted from me to his wife. He held up Cricket’s wrist revealing a deep ugly gash across it and dozens of scabs. “She wanted to give Ian her blood when he came back. She was draining herself every day because she …” He clenched his fists and squeezed his eyes shut.
“Breathe, Ford, breathe.”
“I told her it was too much, and she just laughed,” he said, looking at me. “I told her that he was in love with you, but she thought she could have him. She wanted him because … Oh, God, she’s my world.”
“Ford, did you …”
“I didn’t! I didn’t kill her. I didn’t mean to do anything. She asked me to help, to do it with her, and the knife slipped and the blood spurted out.” He let out a cry and stood up suddenly. Too suddenly.
Ford slipped on the pool of blood and fell. His head crashed against the stone of the kitchen island with a horrible thud. I caught him before he hit the floor.
“Ford!” I said, but his eyes were rolling up in his head and he took only one more shuddering breath. Oswald had taught me CPR, so I set Ford down on the floor and frantically tried to revive him.
Even though his heart had stopped and blood was spilling from his head, I continued to pump his chest and breathe into his mouth, thinking, Please, Ford, breathe!
I was still trying to save him when I heard cars out front. The men in black gear pried me off Ford’s body and I started screaming, “Ford, breathe, breathe!”
I stood shaking, covered with blood. I hadn’t personally killed Wil, Cricket, and Ford, but they were still dead because of what I did and did not do. My sins were both of omission and commission.
The men in black handcuffed me and yanked me roughly outside. They put a hood over my head and threw me in the back of a black van. Ford’s blood had seeped through my sweatshirt, and I was revolted by my loathesome craving.
The men didn’t speak, and I bounced around the back of the van as they sped down the hillside. I expected that we would stop at the police station or sheriff’s, but they drove many miles and I realized that they hadn’t shown badges or identified themselves.
The hum of traffic di
minished, and then all I could hear was the van’s engine. The vehicle stopped, there was a metal rattling sound, like a large gate, and the van drove slowly and stopped.
The van’s door clacked open and I was yanked out. I stumbled, but regained my balance when a hand shoved my back. I walked forward and heard the ding of an elevator. Someone bashed me forward.
We rode up a few floors before the elevator dinged again. The men pushed me forward and jabbed me until I hit a wall. I heard a door click shut behind me. There was a screech of metal on metal as something was moved behind my legs.
“Sit down,” a man said.
I sat. The hood was yanked off my head and a light glared in my eyes. I could make out the outline of men with short hair and dark suits in a military stance in front of me.
“Who are you and why did you kill Ford and Cricket Poindexter?”
“She was already … she was gone when I got there. Ford slipped and hit his head. I was giving him CPR,” I said in a flat voice, stunned by going from one death to two others.
“Ford Poindexter said that vampires had killed her. What did he mean?”
“I don’t know.” I stared at nothing and caution slapped me out of my shock. “I’d like to talk to an attorney.”
The first man said, “What’s your name?”
These men weren’t law enforcement, nor were they U.S. military. If they had my name, they’d get my address. If they got my address, they could find traces of Wil’s blood at my loft and animal blood in the refrigerator. They could find my friends’ names and information. They would find the stack of unused wedding invitations in my closet. They would learn about my truck and eventually find the body in the back.
“I have the right to speak to an attorney.”
“You haven’t been charged with anything. Did you have a sexual relationship with Ford Poindexter?”
“No!”
“Then who are you and what were you doing at the house? Why don’t you have any identification on you? How did you get there? Do you work the streets? Is that how you met them?”
“I’m not telling you anything until I talk to my attorney.”
“Tell us what we want to know and we’ll let you make a call.”
“Tell me who you are and let me speak to my attorney.”
It went on this way for hours. We were like automatronic dolls at a theme park, reciting a limited script on a loop. Ford’s blood dried dark brown on my sweatshirt.
Eventually they became impatient. “Tell us about the vampires.”
“There’s no such thing as vampires. You may as well ask me to tell you about zombies.” One man raised his hand and I relaxed so that the slap wouldn’t hurt as much, but it still stung so sharply that my eyes welled.
My throat got dry and I stopped talking. When I closed my eyes to block out the harsh light, someone behind me kicked the chair to startle me.
They dragged me down a dark hall with chipped green walls and industrial pendant lights, and shoved me into a cinder-block room. The thick metal door had a slot for them to slide food through.
There was an open toilet in the corner of the room and nothing else except a bolt in the wall. They took away my shoes and socks, and ran a chain through my handcuffs and locked it to the bolt. Then they threw a ratty blanket in the room.
The Vampire Council’s dungeon prison was like a luxury rumpus room by comparison. Well, the vampires I knew did everything with more panache, even imprisonment. In fact, when Ian had been under house arrest for cutting the vampire who slashed me, the Vampire Council let him stay in an elegant town house with an adoring housekeeper.
I sat on the dirty blanket and closed my eyes so I could think. Even if Ian was away when Wil was murdered, he could have ordered the murder. Did Wil’s murder have anything to do with the Poindexters’ deaths? No, except that danger followed the vampires, followed me.
I didn’t know if Ian had set me up, or if the Vampire Council had taken advantage of his absence to send me a message in the form of Wil’s corpse.
Ford’s phone call had summoned the people who now held me. Could these people have something to do with Ford’s father, who worked for a military contractor? Was this place his laboratory, and, if so, what the hell was he doing?
I sobbed for poor Wil and Ford, and even Cricket.
That’s when the music began blasting in my cell. It started with the Ramones. The three-chord, two-and-a-half-minute songs were the aural equivalent of haiku, expressing so much within strict conventions. The music was my companion and my solace: I wanted to be sedated, too, instead of being consumed by sorrow and guilt.
To keep from sliding into hopelessness, I did what I’d done as a child locked in my room: I occupied my time by composing a story in my head. The more I thought about the fauxoir, the more I realized how I could work everything around The Tempest, which had so many elements that paralleled Don Pedro’s crazy story: a deserted island, a mysterious sorcerer, and an imprisoned sprite.
It even had a smart, brave, affectionate girl who was sometimes too gullible. It had deception, magic, comic relief, romance, and a satisfying conclusion. I structured the entire fauxoir in my mind, first by chapters, then scenes, then dialogue.
My imaginary world became more real to me than my surroundings. I could close my eyes and see the island, the magical herbs, the azure ocean. I could smell the tropical breezes—salt water, humid forest, coconut, and frangipani.
The men would drag me out now and then. I used those opportunities to look for escape routes, but the halls were continuously guarded by armed men in black T-shirts and olive green cargo pants tucked into black boots. They never said anything beyond “Go” and “Shut up” to me.
I thought I was hallucinating because I kept seeing the same striped cat everywhere. I’d look down one hall and there it was, licking its paw. The men would move me down another hall and the cat was sleeping in a corner.
They fed me now and then, dreadful dreck. I was grateful for the red Jell-O they sometimes included, and I craved blood. Knowing my craving was merely psychological didn’t diminish its power.
In those rare moments when I stopped thinking about my fauxoir, I thought of all the selfish, stupid things I’d done in my life. It was a long list, and Ian’s name appeared several times.
If Ian knew I was here, he would come to get me out … or to kill me, I didn’t know. But sometimes I imagined him strolling in, wearing an impeccable suit, saying something insouciant to the guards while he palmed a huge tip to them, and then telling me, “Pity about Spiggott. Come along, darling.”
I don’t know how long I’d been there before I met the Professor. The men took me to the interrogation room and a striped cat came meowing toward me. A man said “Scram,” shoved me down into a chair, and cuffed me to it before leaving.
I heard a shsh-shsh-shsh and a middle-aged man in corduroy pants came to stand near the desk.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“What’s yours?” I said, but I noticed that he had the same gawky body as Ford and a similar face. Later I overheard the guards referring to “the Professor” and I knew this must be Ford’s father.
“Do you comprehend that you are in a powerless position, Miss …?”
“I’m aware that I’m being kept by people who feel exempt from the law, yes.”
“It’s very exasperating for me to talk to someone who is fixated on banalities.”
“It’s very perplexing for me to talk about untimely deaths with someone who is so curiously without affect,” I said. “You seem more interested in me than sorrowful for the deaths of the Poindexters.”
He considered this and said, “You assume that death is a permanent condition.”
“You got me. I did make that assumption. Silly me.”
“My associates are not particularly bright, and they’re determined to use more extreme methods to extract information from you. Actually, these imbeciles use any excuse for violence. I’d rathe
r keep your organs healthy.”
“Why don’t I find that reassuring?”
He ran his hands through his messy hair and said, “I’ve got better things to do.”
“Exactly what is worth your valuable attention?” I asked.
He paused and then said, “I’ll try to put it in simple terms. Do you see that cat there?”
“It’s a clone, right?”
“The cloning’s nothing. It’s just a way to generate bio-identical spare parts to use in reanimating a subject.”
“Frankenstein’s monster,” I said, chilled. “You know what happened to the monster’s creator in that story?”
“That story was an allegory about the industrial age,” he said dismissively. “The problem with warfare is that people get upset at the soldier deaths. I intend to provide pre-dead combatants.”
“That is the sickest, most amoral idea I’ve ever heard in my life,” I said, shrinking back in the chair.
The Professor threw up his hands. “This is why I don’t bother with conversation. Any idiot could see that we’ll actually save lives by using corpses as soldiers.”
“But they’ll still be killing living humans.”
“You’re a simpleton. The only thing that doesn’t bore me about you is how you heal from injury. That could be extremely useful for my project.”
The Professor called to a man, someone I thought of as Average Joe, because he had the face of the guy next door, your coworker, a man in line at the bank, a face you wouldn’t remember unless you saw him smile as you screamed in agony.
The Professor said, “Here’s the key to my car. Keep it filled with gas and clean if I ever need to use it.” He handed Average Joe a transponder key and then said, almost as an afterthought, “Also, take this subject and get her identity. No damage to her organs because I want to use them later.”
“We can fill up that vat.”
“Don’t annoy me with trivialities.”
Sometimes I have nightmares about what happened next, my fear and the pain. The water.
My life had been endangered before, but nothing had terrified me like the water filling my mouth, my nose, my lungs. The worst of it was the feeling of helplessness. The deep water rendered me voiceless, the heavy chains rendered me powerless.
