An Ever Fixéd Mark

by Jessie Olson

  “I couldn’t, unless it was another vampire.”

  “But even then… wouldn’t you… well you wanted to try a new career. Wouldn’t you want to have a new mate after so many years… centuries?” Lizzie went to her bag.

  “Are you afraid I am going to get tired of you, Elizabeth?”

  “Well… yes. No. I don’t ... of course you will,” she pulled her jeans out her bag. “Damn it. I always say stupid things like that. I didn’t mean… I just don’t see myself as someone who could be compelling for 50 years. Besides, I’m getting old. You will always be… how old will you always be?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Well,” Lizzie sighed. “There it is. I’m already getting white hairs.”

  “You aren’t old, Elizabeth. You just ran through a gorge.”

  “Running isn’t going to make me twenty-five again.”

  “I look twenty-five. I am not… I’ve seen too many things to have any sense of naiveté.”

  “But you’ve got this perpetually youthful body. Why would you want to be with someone who is older?” Lizzie sat on the edge of the bed.

  Ben came behind and circled his arms around her waist. “Don’t worry about growing old, Elizabeth. You don’t know how much I envy that.”

  “Do you ever wish you could go back? That you were… mortal and could grow old?”

  “I’ve been a vampire long enough to know it is foolish to wish such things.”

  “I don’t know if I would want to outlive everyone I love.”

  There was a sad glimmer in his eyes. “That is challenging. It gets … people are taking better care of themselves now. They live longer.”

  “We still die.”

  Ben breathed out unhappily. “I can’t say it gets easier to witness. But I’ve learned that it shouldn’t stop me from appreciating when I find someone who makes the present interesting, nor does it stop me from wanting to spend as much time as possible with them while they are with me.”

  Lizzie felt a huge sorrow overwhelm her. She turned to see if he had any of that sorrow in his eyes or any expression on his face. She didn’t find the emotion and couldn’t curb her next thought from articulating. “But humans are still your source, first and foremost?”

  “No, Elizabeth,” he unwrapped his arms. “No.”

  “Have you…” she shut her eyes, able to catch the question in her mouth.

  “Go ahead,” he looked angry.

  “Never mind.”

  “Ask it.”

  “It’s not important,” she got up from the bed, uncertain if she felt comfortable in the presence of his anger.

  “It is important. You want to know. You need to know. Ask me.” Lizzie went back to her bag for her hairbrush. She turned to the mirror and began brushing her wet strands. “Ask it.”

  Lizzie breathed in and finished her hair. She set the brush down and turned to face him. He was waiting. “How many people have you killed?”

  “Five.”

  Lizzie shut her eyes and looked back to the dresser for an elastic. “Five,” she repeated, putting the elastic around her fingers but losing momentum as she saw the bite marks on her wrist.

  “Yes.”

  “Only five?” Lizzie asked. “In two hundred and thirty years? I would think you would have been hungrier than that.”

  “To go that far… it isn’t healthy.”

  “Indeed,” she breathed out.

  “One was…” he stopped. Lizzie turned around to face his downcast eyes. He fumbled with his hands. “I take the blame for one I allowed to happen… but didn’t stop.”

  “I want to go home,” Lizzie felt sick.

  “I will tell you everything, Elizabeth. I won’t…”

  “I don’t want to know,” she cried. “I don’t want to know about that part of you… not yet.”

  “We can go back to Newton,” he sighed.

  “I don’t want to… I want to… not care. But I don’t know how to not care.”

  “It’s what I am.”

  “Have they been recent? Even after you became a doctor and did all that blood research?”

  “No. The last one was in 1918.”

  “You said you put someone out of his misery.”

  “I did.”

  “What about the battlefield? Did you feed on corpses?”

  “I can’t feed on corpses. But it was a war… there were a number of willing … I didn’t kill anyone by feeding in the war. I was a soldier. That was a much more brutal way of killing.”

  “With no purpose,” Lizzie looked blankly in front of her. “I don’t know what is real anymore. Or what is right.”

  “Do you think it isn’t right to be here with me?”

  “You didn’t… you stayed away. You ran away. There must have been a reason,” Lizzie still looked ahead blankly. She couldn’t look at him, even as she knew she should to see his reaction.

  “I was scared.”

  “Scared you would kill me? Or scared that I would think you were a psychopath and never want to see you again?”

  “I was scared for you…” he answered slowly. “And scared that I would never see you again.”

  Lizzie looked up and met his pained eyes. She felt a surge of sympathy warm within her. “I don’t want to go home just yet.”

  “Okay.”

  Lizzie pulled her hair back and wrapped her watch around her left wrist. “Why me, Ben?”

  “I told you, Elizabeth. I like you very much.”

  “But … all this for some mousy girl you met at Springs High School and spent one night with fifteen years later? I don’t understand.”

  Ben stood up and went to pull his keys from his coat pocket. “I think you need some breakfast. You just went running and still haven’t eaten a decent meal since we got here.”

  Lizzie met his eyes again. She felt her stomach growl with the recognition of the truth of his words. “Are you going to answer my question?”

  “Why I chose you? I don’t think that explanation is any different for me than it is for you,” he shrugged. “Why are you here with me even though you know what you know? Maybe it’s just because we like one another’s company?”

  “Maybe,” she agreed to end the conversation followed him out the door.

  *****

  Lizzie didn’t know how to talk to him as they sat in the dining room eating breakfast. She ate breakfast. He sat with a cup of coffee from which he never drank. He talked about the activities of the past three days – walking in the gorge, driving across the state border into Lebanon and Dartmouth, and all the pine trees. Lizzie filled her plate at the buffet so she didn’t have to talk and wasn’t even sure if she was completely listening to him. She tried to empty her thoughts of their conversation in the room. The reality of the situation was starting to wear off the warm glow of infatuation.

  Was that what it was? She found herself asking that question. She hated sappy emotion. She hated to be all girly and swoony. The last time she was such an idiotic fool. And… really… that stupid love thing was always so messy. But this… this wasn’t just messy. Was she really debating sappy emotion with herself when there was a very real fact of danger hovering in her mind like a bad cloud?

  “Elizabeth?” he asked in a tone that made her wonder how many times he repeated her name.

  “Mm?” she swallowed another bite of eggs.

  “If we aren’t driving back to Boston, what are we going to do today?”

  “I don’t care,” she took another mouthful. She saw the annoyance creep across his face.

  “You don’t want to go home?”

  Lizzie looked around the dining room. It was empty but for one other couple at the opposite end. “What about your brother?”

  “I told you.”

  “Yes, he’s like you,” Lizzie was careful with her words, even in the empty dining room. “But how?”

  Ben took in a deep breath. “He was changed almost forty years later.”

  “Why did he go t
o Springs? Did he want to change careers, too? He went back to high school so he could go to college and stay there?”

  “Oliver had a different reason for going to Springs.”

  “You don’t like talking about Oliver,” Lizzie observed. “Did you have a falling out?”

  “We have gone separate ways for a while,” Ben tried to offer a smile.

  “But he… well, he’s someone who knows what you are,” Lizzie said sadly. “It must be lonely without him. It must be lonely for him.”

  “Actually, he is married and perfectly happy.”

  “To a… non-vampire human?”

  “To a vampire,” Ben laughed. “They have been together for just over ten years… which was the last time I spoke with him.”

  “But you are friends with him on Facebook,” Lizzie remarked.

  “We can see what one another is doing and not have to speak to each other,” Ben still seemed uncomfortable.

  “Does he know about me?”

  “No,” Ben said emphatically.

  Lizzie watched him grip his coffee mug. His fingers clung tightly around the ceramic handle. Lizzie scanned her memories of Oliver to recall any acrimony between them at SRHS. She could only remember him being there for a year. In that year, her memory was mostly of the debate club. “You don’t want him to know?”

  “It’s not really any of his business,” Ben loosened his grasp of the mug and tried to lighten his voice. “We’ve gone our separate ways.”

  Lizzie suddenly thought about Sara and how that friendship turned to disinterest and latent bitterness. She could understand Ben, even if he didn’t articulate what or who came between them. Besides, Oliver was in California and unlikely to cross her path again. “Have you told anyone about me?”

  “Like who?”

  “I don’t know,” Lizzie bit her lip, her annoyance with Ben shifting to annoyance with herself for acting so stupidly girly. “Your friends at the clinic?”

  “I don’t think they would … I keep to myself, Elizabeth. I don’t have the circle of friends that you do.”

  “Aren’t you lonely?”

  “I have my work.”

  “I have work, but that doesn’t… it isn’t enough,” Lizzie frowned. “Then again, I’m just a secretary essentially. I’m not inventing cures for lead poisoning or computers that do things I can’t explain in English.”

  Ben laughed and reached for her hand. “Elizabeth, in the six months since I saw you at the reunion, I realized that keeping to myself isn’t enough. That’s why I decided to do this. That’s why I came to tell you my truth. That’s why we are here now. I don’t want to be on my own when there is an option to be with you.”

  She swallowed, overwhelmed and uncertain what to say. She didn’t want to ruin it with a clumsy response or ignore it with the chill of silence. “I…” she squeezed his hand and breathed out. “Ben, of all the things you’ve explained in the past few days, that is the most important thing you’ve said. We can stay here for the rest of the week or go back to Boston. Wherever we are, I want to spend the time with you.”

  She saw his green gray eyes lock on her. She felt a sudden chill across her shoulders, like the ghostly drafts she felt in the rooms of the Fulton House. It ebbed away quickly as the look of the green eyes warmed her. They were familiar, as if she knew that stare from before and had been waiting for it to return. As if she were meant to be sitting there across from those green eyes all along.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lizzie sat beside Ben on the couch. She put her bottle on the table in front of her, making sure it was very close to Ben’s. She was aware of Meg and Nora looking in their direction whenever a lull in the conversation lasted more than a beat. She supposed it was a novelty. Lizzie never had a date to anything, not even informal gatherings among friends. And now, for once, she wasn’t the odd extra single.

  Ben was telling Mark about his business. Mark worked in pharmaceuticals and found interest in Ben’s medical computers, something Lizzie still didn’t quite comprehend. She probably now understood more about the science of vampires than the science of the machine in front of which she sat each day for hours. She was glad that Ben had something to talk about with Mark, who didn’t mix so well with Alec.

  Meg brought him to the evening of drinks Nora suggested. Lizzie knew Nora wasn’t thrilled to have the philandering professor in her living room, but was able to keep her reservations quiet in light of the fact there was a new member of their company. Meg stayed by Alec’s side, as if protecting him from Nora and Mark. Ben didn’t seem much interested in striking up a conversation with him either. Lizzie didn’t know if that was because she had told him about Meg’s manic infatuation or if it was because he was the professor guiding Meg’s thesis on vampires.

  “Have you ever been there, Ben?” Lizzie turned her focus back to Mark and his question to Ben about County Kerry.

  “No,” he shook his head. “I’ve only been to Dublin, I’m afraid.”

  “The whole country is amazing,” Alec startled everyone by entering the conversation. “You should go back. Rent a cottage anywhere along the Ring of Kerry. Get a car and explore the county.”

  “Maybe I will,” Ben slipped his hand into Lizzie’s palm.

  “Good answer, Ben,” Meg nodded. “Otherwise we would be here for hours while Alec tried to sell you on Ireland over any other vacation on the planet.”

  “There’s no other place like it,” Alec took a sip of his Guinness.

  “Yes, I know your poetic soul yearns to go back,” Meg smirked. “I think you must have lived there before.”

  “I spent two years teaching at Trinity,” Alec looked at Meg.

  “I mean in a former life,” Meg answered.

  “I think Mark played for the Red Sox in his last life,” Nora spread some cheese on a cracker. “And he can’t seem to let go of Fenway Park.”

  Mark laughed. “Sure, Nora,” he took a swig of his beer. “What did you do in your last life, Ben?”

  “He was a doctor,” Lizzie said absently and caught the sudden glances of everyone, including Ben. “That’s what I think. He understands a lot about physiology.”

  “Oh really?” Nora laughed on her cracker.

  Lizzie felt the blood rise to her cheeks, realizing the hole she just stepped into. Ben caught the laugh and looked at Lizzie, kissing her gently on the cheek.

  “I bet Nora was a matriarch of some Victorian family,” Meg sobered Nora’s laughter.

  “What were you Meg?” Nora retorted

  “Oh I was a spinster, who died of a broken heart.”

  “And Lizzie?” Mark asked.

  “I bet she broke the hearts,” Nora winked.

  Ben let go of her hand and picked up Lizzie’s bottle. She watched him pretend to take a sip. She could tell he wasn’t really swallowing anything. “I didn’t break anything,” Lizzie looked back at Meg and accepted the bottle from Ben to take a drink.

  “Not that any of that is real,” Mark took a handful of crackers and sat back in his chair.

  “What? Reincarnation?” Lizzie found herself attentive.

  “Well, yeah… I mean, once you die, you die,” Mark plunged a cracker into the cheese spread.

  “That’s a depressing thought,” Meg pouted.

  “You don’t think it’s depressing to think that you could come back here and have no idea you were alive a hundred years before?”

  “I don’t think we have no idea. What about déjà vu? What about things that draw our attentions for no obvious reason? I really do think Alec has some connection to Ireland,” Meg argued.

  “Yeah, his last name is McCaffrey,” Mark muttered.

  Lizzie thought of her conversation with Ben on the way to Jack’s gig. She looked at him to see his reaction. What would Mark say if she told him that Ben was perpetually undying?

  “Or what about Lizzie? That house she works at on the weekends? Even she admits that there is something about that house that she can’t
explain.”

  Lizzie looked away from Ben, annoyed that Meg was using her in an argument with Mark, which was more about her disinterest in Mark than about any belief about death. “Meg, I don’t think I was one of the Fultons.”

  “No… but don’t you think you were there when it was a house and not just a museum?”

  “It’s been a museum for over a hundred years.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Meg, we all believe what we want to believe,” Nora jumped up and headed towards the kitchen. “Can I get anyone something else to drink? Ben?”

  “No thank you, Nora,” Ben smiled and looked at Lizzie.

  “I think we are all drawn to things that had something to do with when we were here before,” Meg maintained her position.

  “So, what… does that mean you liked vampires, Meg?” Mark sneered. “Maybe you were killed by one in your last life.”

  Lizzie felt Ben’s arm go over her shoulder. Lizzie watched Alec’s reaction to Mark. Lizzie didn’t think he was the type to throw down a gauntlet and protect his wounded girlfriend. Not that she could imagine Alec succeeding in any challenge against Mark. She knew Ben was calm and collected. She imagined this petty squabble was like a bunch of teenagers to him. She liked his protective arm and wondered why Alec didn’t offer one to Meg.

  Nora reappeared quickly with another plate of food. Lizzie smiled up at her and decided to spread some of the tapenade on the sliced bread. “Thank you, Nora,” she leaned back against Ben’s arm waiting to hold onto her. “You know I like the idea of reincarnation,” Lizzie offered when no one spoke after she finished chewing. “I like the possibility of getting a chance to put things right.”

  “How can you put them right if you don’t remember?” Nora sighed, annoyed that the conversation was continuing.

  “Well… maybe it’s just the idea that it’s possible that counts. It’s hope for us before we leave this planet. Hope that no matter how much we mess up, we can fix it,” Lizzie reached for another piece of bread. “Even if it never gets the chance to be fixed. Just the hope that it can be… isn’t that worth something?”