“Her name means ‘hope,’” her grandmother said. She stuffed little Esperanza into her pocket to later place on the altar in their home, an altar that held the large picture of Sainte Marianita de Jesus, and many, many candles. It would also hold some of the flowers they brought back home from the cemetery.
Remedios felt hungry, and wondered when they could return home and eat the good, thick locro soup, and drink the hot purple jellylike colada morada that her mother only made for the Day of the Dead feast.
The colorful pageant lasted a long time, with large wreaths carried back and forth through the square, with little stampas of the Saints, and prayer cards for the dead affixed to the red-and-yellow flowers. The padre held a big banner with a picture of the Virginsita, and two other priests carried an enormous one of Santa Marianita de Jesus, who gave her life to save the city from earthquakes, both images decorated with glitter and sea shells and many flowers.
Remedios felt sleepy and sat on the hard ground, leaning against her grandmother’s legs. And then, when she opened her eyes, the light had faded from the sky and the night descended over them like a dark figure swooping across the heavens to stifle all life … She realized they were now in the cemetery.
Here, the home of the dead. Stacked in cement drawers, one atop the other, four and five high. Many dead but little space, her mother said. She stayed seated on the ground before the graves of their ancestors while the adults placed beautiful white death lilies, and floral wreaths against the graves and behind the marble plaques that bore the names of the departed. The air became thick with the scent of flowers, and alive with the hum of chanting, and Remedios felt drowsy.
“Bring them!” the padre called. Suddenly, the night had become black, with only the light of the stars overhead. Dogs! So many! Where had they all come from? Hardly any of their neighbors could afford a dog. These animals roamed the streets, wild, in packs, competing with the people for food. How had they been lured here? It was the food scraps—Remedios had never seen so many dogs in one place, nor so much food handed over to them.
Much time passed with heated discussions as the men observed the dogs and argued in a friendly way—which animal was strongest, which the weakest? Would the large one be more determined than the second largest? And this little white one, it showed aggression—perhaps he would grow to become the dominant male that mated! Finally, finally, one was selected. A she-dog not so small, with brown fur, but she seemed to lack energy. The weakest, her grandmother said. “Someter,” her uncle said, telling the dog to submit.
Remedios stood rooted to the earth as Uncle Antonio sliced the throat from side to side. The animal reared, gnashed her teeth, howled—a haunting sound. She dropped to the earth, first on her front knees, then her side. Before she stopped twitching, the women rushed to the corpse and collected the spilled blood into basins—Remedios’s mother among them. Each family gathered as much of the precious lifeblood as they could, struggling to keep it from seeping into the earth.
Then, another dog was captured and brought snarling to the front, and Remedios tensed, tears still stinging her eyes. He was strong, this one, filled with life, not as large as the biggest animal, but his spirit felt enormous, and all could sense that. “The one best suited to survive,” Uncle Antonio said, and Remedios watched her uncle feed that dog the blood of his slain sister. And then she watched her uncle sip of the blood himself.
“Here, Remedios, drink this,” her mother said. “It will make you strong. You are the strongest, you must survive.”
Obediently, she placed her lips against the cool metal basin and drank the steaming thick blood down, as if it were milk. “The weak feed the strong,” her grandmother had said as she drank. “Sometimes the strong ones escape the herd and become wild, because once they have tasted it, they can only feed on blood. It has always been this way and will be this way again. The strong must be encouraged to survive, or all die.”
Remedios stared at her blood-covered hands. Why did they not repulse her as before? She sucked the sweet juice and could almost feel it charging her body with energy, just as she now remembered the blood of the weak dog sparking through every inch of her being.
She put the roast away and returned to her bedroom, to the dresser. Carefully she removed the rosary from the leather pouch and held it under the night table light.
So many teeth! Some looked so fragile they might crumble to dust if she touched them too much. Others seemed larger, stronger, more capable to cutting, chewing, taking in and transforming the food that would nourish and sustain. And then the one so unlike the others. One designed by nature for survival. A fierce tooth. It could defend and protect, or destroy. She lifted the rosary over her head and placed it around her neck, letting it drop under her T-shirt. She felt the cool teeth rest against her skin. The point of one tooth pressed slightly between her breasts.
Remedios did not even need to ask herself the question she had been avoiding, for she knew in her heart the answer. The vampire tooth had come from her own mouth. A tooth unlike the others. The tooth of the strongest. The one who could live and survive in a place not like her homeland. The one who could look after an entire family, and make certain they were provided for. The one who had the strength to prey on the weak in order to survive, for survival was crucial. Her grandmother had said this; this is why they fed her the blood of the weak dog. Why her mother had named her God’s remedy—her mother was wise. She knew Remedios was born to remedy the wrongs that had been her legacy.
And now, images came to Remedios of the vampire, and of el Chupa-cabra, and she no longer felt threatened.
As the sky grew lighter, the knowledge that Remedios had unearthed with the rosary did not fade, but solidified within her, melding worries and insecurities, leaving behind a certainty from which to act.
The house lay shrouded in quiet, still as the dead. Remedios passed the rooms where Jess and Robert slept without pausing. She continued along the second floor hallway, watching her shadow creep over the walls. Finally, she reached the master bedroom and opened the door quietly.
Inside the room the air smelled of sweat mixed with the fragrance of Mrs. Richview’s perfumes. Remedios stared at the couple for a moment, making her decision. Her employers lay sleeping soundly, Mrs. Richview with plugs in her ears and a mask over her eyes. Mr. Richview sprawled close to the edge, on his back, snoring loudly. Remedios made her way to his side of the bed. She crouched beside him and reached out to gingerly touch the bulging blue in his neck. His breath caught for a moment. He opened his eyes and stared fearfully at her. She placed her finger to her lips and quietly whispered, “Someter.” His eyelids lowered as if he longed to return to his dreams. He turned his head, the vein an offering.
Remedios pierced it easily, quickly, naturally, like any strong animal that had learned somewhere in its life to love the taste of blood.
Remedios sat at the kitchen table, feeling refreshed. She signed her name at the bottom of the letter to her Uncle Antonio, telling him that he must use a portion of the money he took from the family as his “fee” to provide medical care to little Dolores, whose name, she reminded him, meant “pain.” The pain of his failing to comply, she assured him, would not be only for Dolores, but it would become his pain as well. She would cease sending home money until he did this. And if he refused? Yes, her family would suffer. Dolores would suffer more. But he would suffer most—she would personally see to it.
She folded the letter and placed it into an envelope, sealing all of their fates.
Just then, Mr. Richview walked into the kitchen. “Good morning, Remedios. How are you today?” He looked tired. Bewildered.
“I am very well, Mr. Richview. May I speak with you?”
“Yes, of course. About what?”
“I ask of you three things. First, I would like to visit my family for two weeks. I will need a plane ticket.”
He rubbed his neck for a moment, an absent look on his face. “That can be arranged.”
>
“Next, I must have an increase. I would like to be paid an additional one hundred dollars each month.”
Rather than scowling, or being even more annoyed then he had been the evening before, now Mr. Richview nodded, a dreamy expression filling his face. He spoke to her respectfully, as to an equal; to Remedios, a strong person, who knew what she wanted, what was fair. “All right. I think we can find an extra hundred dollars for you each month.”
“And for the last,” she said, “I would like for you to deposit this new money into a bank account, like the one you told me of, that will make me a millionaire in twenty years.”
She was only mildly astonished to see him nod approval. “Well, I can’t promise you’ll be a millionaire, but if you don’t touch it, I can promise you’ll have quite a bit of money. That’s a wise decision, Remedios. I’ll stop at the bank today and pick up the forms for you to sign so you can open an account—my accountant will make the deposits automatically, and you can go in any time and update your passbook. Once the principle increases, we can invest it in a high-yield fund. You need to be brave, take a few risks. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. It’s a tough world, dog eat dog. Only the strongest survive.”
“The strongest and the smartest,” she said, thinking how much more sense it makes to live off the strong rather than the weak.
MISS MASSINGBERD AND THE VAMPIRE
Tina Rath
Author and actress Tina Rath gained her doctorate from London University with a thesis on “The Vampire in Popular Fiction” and her MA with a dissertation on “The Vampire in the Theatre.”
She has lectured on vampires for various groups and universities and has been widely interviewed about the subject on radio and television.
She sold her first dark fantasy story to Catholic Fireside in 1974, and since then her short fiction has appeared in such periodicals as The Velvet Vampyre, All Hallows, Ghosts and Scholars, Supernatural Tales, Amazing, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Weird Tales, along with the anthologies The 19th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, The 17th Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories, Midnight Never Comes, and The Year’s Best Horror Stories XV.
She is currently Poet in Residence at the Dracula Society.
“While I was finishing my thesis on ‘The Vampire in Popular Fiction,’” explains Dr. Rath, “I came to the conclusion that the vampire’s cloak is an extraordinarily versatile costume: it can be worn by men or women; it can conceal and disguise, but paradoxically it can also be used for display; it can suggest the cowled monk, or the sophisticated opera-goer; it can itself be concealed, rolled up and carried unobtrusively, but as soon as it is put on it transforms the wearer.
“The vampire, which is both male and female, terrifying and alluring, similarly offers the ultimate disguise, fancy-dress, fantasy—a persona which we can slip on either to hide or parade; a unisex, one-size fits all masquerade. The cloak is an ink-blot test, in which we can see our obsessions, not only our fears but also our desires—for sexual potency, freedom from the restraints of gender, morality, and the entire material world.
“And of course, it’s not real, so when we have enjoyed our fantasy we can discard the cloak and be human again. It is hardly surprising that the vampire has an immortal appeal.”
About the following story, the author explains: “I wrote this particular story because I live near a very beautiful, ivy-covered churchyard, which actually does have a path running through it. It was crying out for a vampire, so I gave it one.”
MISS MASSINGBERD FIRST heard about the vampire from her fifth-formers. They were quite the silliest girls in the school, and she paid very little attention to them. Of course, she delivered her little lecture about going straight home from school, and walking in a brisk and ladylike way.
“And then no one will bother you. Human or vampire,” she concluded, and confiscated all the pieces of garlic and crosses made from broken rulers and Sellotape that seemed to have found their way into most desks in the classroom.
Now Miss Massingberd’s own quickest route to school and back lay through St. Elphege’s churchyard. In the mornings there was no problem, but sometimes, at night, when she had been kept late by a parents’ meeting, or a committee, or rehearsals for the school play, she might go the long way round. However, she was a strong-minded woman, and scorned superstitious fears. You did not, she told herself, become Head of English at the biggest comprehensive school in her area of London by allowing yourself to be easily frightened.
So on that luminous autumn evening when she met the vampire herself she was taking her shortcut. And she was not walking briskly either, but loitering like the silliest of her fifth-formers, breathing in the scent of burning leaves from a hidden bonfire and enjoying that strange nostalgia for a past she had never actually experienced that she always felt in autumn, when she saw the dark cloaked figure standing among the headstones.
At first she naturally supposed it was the vicar, and she was passing him with a polite “Good evening,” when he turned to look at her. He was quite unmistakably a vampire. The points of his canine teeth were just visible on his lower lip. And he was tall, and dark, and heartbreakingly handsome. Miss Massingberd looked at him and fell helplessly in love.
She was so taken aback by the sensation (she had never even thought of such a thing before in her life) that she stood quite still, gazing into the vampire’s dark and haunted eyes. And the vampire gazed back at Miss Massingberd. It is difficult to know what might have happened if the real vicar had not ridden past them on his bicycle, calling a cheerful greeting.
The vampire’s eyes flashed ruby red in the light of the bicycle lamp, and he vanished into the dusk. Miss Massingberd was left, shocked and shivering, and feeling as if she had suddenly awakened out of a deep sleep.
But she could not say if she had been roused from a dream or a nightmare.
The vicar, seeing her standing looking so lost in the dusk, wheeled his bicycle around with a swish of gravel and asked her to come in for a cup of tea. He was new in the parish, and unmarried, so he was always glad to see visitors, and he knew Miss Massingberd well by sight, as vicars and schoolmistresses often sit on the same committees.
Miss Massingberd was too flustered by her encounter with the vampire to refuse, and she followed him into his horrible late Victorian vicarage, which seemed to have been designed for a polygamist with an unusually large extended family.
“I call it the barracks,” the vicar shouted cheerfully across the echoing spaces of the entrance hall.
It was paved with tiles depicting the sacrifice of Jephtha’s daughter, Miss Massingberd noticed, averting her eyes hastily.
“Just chuck your coat on the hall-stand.”
He led her into a parlor so large that the corners of the high ceiling were lost in the dimness beyond the power of a single sixty-watt bulb to dispel. The vicar lit the gas fire and recommended Miss Massingberd to sit close to it.
“It’s always freezing in here,” he said, “and it’s worse upstairs. If you don’t mind hanging on here for a moment, I’ll go and rustle up some tea.”
Miss Massingberd sat, staring into the dark corners of the room, wondering how she came to be having tea with the vicar, instead of going home to do her marking. It was the vampire’s fault, of course, but she could not blame him. Her thoughts drifted away, to moonlight, and ruined towers, and fiery eyes, becoming more and more unsuitable for a schoolmistress every moment.
When the vicar came back with his tray, he was surprised to see how flushed and pretty she looked in the dim light.
“Only Indian tea, I’m afraid,” he said, wishing suddenly that he had something more exotic to offer her, “but there’s some rather good cake.”
Miss Massingberd withdrew her gaze from the darkness and smiled at the vicar. She thought she was giving him her bright, efficient, friendly, committee smile. She had no way of knowing that it was now the rapt, mysterious smile of a woman who has fallen in love with a vamp
ire, and the vicar was taken aback. He had never realized, in all those committee meetings, how blue Miss Massingberd’s eyes were, and how bright her hair.
He smiled too, and fought a ridiculous and unclerical impulse to put a finger very lightly on one of those tiny coils of hair at the nape of her neck, which had sprung from her severely-rolled French pleat. Instead he concentrated on cutting her a piece of cake.
He started to talk sensibly about their committee, and asked Miss Massingberd her feelings on the Christmas bazaar, but Miss Massingberd simply crumbled the cake on her plate and smiled like Mona Lisa.
It was not really very long before his stream of cheerful commonplace things to say began to run dry and he said, almost accusingly, “You’re not eating your cake.”
Miss Massingberd murmured that she was not very hungry. So the vicar, always a polite host, stood up to take the plate out of her way. Miss Massingberd, recalled to her proper social role, stood up too and smiled again, and the vicar, lost and drowning in her blue eyes, kissed her.
And Miss Massingberd, having learned the trick of it, fell in love all over again.
She and the vicar were married, of course. They turned the dreadful, echoing barracks of a vicarage into a hostel for homeless families. And what with that, and the Youth Club, and the Brownies, and all the other parish duties, they never seemed to have a moment even to think.
Only sometimes, in the long green dusks of spring, or the short red twilights of autumn, Miss Massingberd would walk alone in the churchyard for a while. She would come back looking greatly refreshed, if a little pale, and wind a silk scarf around her throat before going to the Youth Club, or the Brownie meeting, or the Parish Council. And her husband would sigh a little, and remind her to take her iron tonic.
The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women Page 11
