by Lynne Murray
Chapter 55
Mina Murray’s journal
red digital voice recorder
August 25th
Hal followed the old man out of Kris’ yard and I watched him beg Sir John to make him a vampire. When he got no answer, Hal swore he would go to the Others again. I left and went back to my own apartment. I never expected to see or hear from Hal again, and I was too angry to care. But I missed him.
Six days later Hal called and begged me to talk to him. We went for coffee at Louis’ and then we walked along Ocean Beach. The minute I got close to him, I wanted him as much as I ever had. We were only a few blocks from his house and I was grimly determined not to wind up in bed with him. Usually I was afraid and he was confident, but now he seemed to be almost afraid to talk.
“I want another chance, Mina. I know I screwed up, but I don’t want to lose you forever.” I didn’t know how to ask what he was frightened of, but it was clear in the way he hugged me that Hal suddenly needed me desperately in a way he had not before.
Damn. How could I resist him?
We ended up in bed, and before we got out of it—several hours later—the engagement was back on. I cried when he persuaded me to put it on, and he gave me a couple of other pieces of jewelry with an almost frantic desire to please. That might have been a turn-off, but it made me feel secure for once in my life. The man I wanted more than anything wanted me desperately. Almost too good to be true, but I took it.
I began to relax and feel safe with him again, but I drew the line at spending the night at his house even with the thing in the shed gone. I know the vampire’s name is Sir John, and the one time I met him he didn’t scare me. But something about the house still gave me the creeps.
Hal said he would do anything to keep me. This was the moment to suggest selling the house, but I waited.
Over the next several days we settled into a honeymoon period. Sometimes we made love all afternoon in his big double bed. It seemed to inspire him to new heights of sensuality. He was trying to make it up to me, and I decided to let him. From the moment we got back together I was drunk on his love—the wild sex didn’t hurt either.
Hal told me he was going to D.C. to talk to the agencies doing the funding and firm up the details for his latest contract. After that he would probably be going overseas for several months.
So we drank a farewell bottle of wine with lunch and after a long afternoon in bed. We drowsed as if we were floating.
“Mina, we could get married right away. You could come with me.”
I stopped stroking his hair and examined his face. He seemed totally relaxed, but underneath it he was trying to push me.
“You’re saying I should quit work and leave everything and everyone I know.”
“You’re not close to your family here. We could relocate to the DC area. It’s closer to my work anyway. You don’t like this house. I’ll put it on the market.” It’s not practical to hang onto it, and with the ocean view, someone will buy it simply for the location.
“Hmm—that’s a thought.” Could it be that easy? I didn’t even have to suggest it.
“You don’t like your job anyway. You could find a better one in D.C. if you want—or don’t work at all, come with me when I go overseas.”
“The idea of being totally dependent scares me.”
“Totally dependent on me, you mean.”
I was so drained from sex, I didn’t see how he got enough energy to pout.
“On anyone.” The room seemed darker, and I looked up to realize that it was late. “It got dark outside when I wasn’t looking.” I was too tranquilized by wine and sex to feel as anxious as usual.
“It does that.” Hal didn’t say anything for awhile. I realized he was snoring. I had to smile. Maybe I had tired him out for once.
There was a noise outside the window. A faint scratching like a tree branch. Hal insisted on pulling the curtains shut even though I hadn’t minded the sunlight while we made love.
It had been a warm September night. Hal’s second story window looked out at the ocean. I got up and opened the curtains. I stood there naked for a moment, feeling unafraid in the moonlight. No one could see in because there was nothing between the house and the ocean—passing ships would be too far away and the window was dark, lit only by the light of the full moon. I thought about how unashamed Lucy always had been to be naked, any time, any place. I hadn’t seen her since the night when Sir John yelled at everyone—nearly two weeks ago.
My eyes focused on the window to see a face pressed against the glass, outside--two stories up.
It was Lucy.
She was naked. Her blonde hair gleamed silver in the moonlight, and swirled around her as if in some spectral breeze. Her eyes glowed red and her skin seemed to glisten a luminescent pearl gray color.
Floating in the air at eye level two stories above the ground.
She was not alone. At first I saw vague shapes surrounding her and pulsing in a mass, as if buoying her up. What were they? They were shaped like humans but with slick gray skin that glistened like sea creatures. Then like a field of lights going on all at once, they opened huge round, red eyes. Their eyes bored into me. The mass of bodies clustered around the window leaped into focus as a flock of pale gray creatures, gleaming slippery in the moonlight.
Their red eyes pulled me closer to the window. I put out a hand and touched the glass and instantly they clustered around it. The more I looked into those eyes, the more they seemed like flowers with a myriad of neon red petals opening like straws, drawing me in.
The scream died in my throat and I gasped and tried to back away.
The creatures’ eyes held me helpless, staring out the window. Several of the creatures pushed Lucy aside. She bobbed away as if floating in water. They pushed their smooth gray faces against the window—opened their mouths.
Teeth.
They had more teeth than I thought a mouth could contain. Several of them fastened their red mouths to the window glass and began to suck. I felt my life starting to drain out of me in a thousand threads.
I gasped as I felt terror and a tremendous surge of life leaving my body in a rush.
At the same time there was a glorious floating sensation of pure pleasure.
That afternoon, the afterglow from all the lovemaking with Hal, faded. This volcanic hot red joy made sexual ecstasy seem like a faint, cheap imitation. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t manage more than a faint whimper as a giddy languidness came over me.
Was I dying? Did I care if I was? A desperate, faint wailing came from somewhere in the depths of my being.
NO!
I thought I screamed, but it came out as a faint moan. Hal woke up, scrambled out of the bed and yanked me away by the shoulders.
A wave of pain and darkness crashed over me as the connection broke. Hal stepped between me and the window. His breathing was hoarse. I could feel his terror. He was shaking. He hugged me and reached behind him to pull the curtains. I weakly trying to push past him, to dive back into that ecstatic molten pond.
“Don’t look at them.” But I couldn’t help but turn away from his grim face and struggle back to the window.
He wrapped both arms around me, walked me back to the bed, sat me on the edge and crawled in, pulling me up against him. I didn’t have the strength to resist, didn’t have the energy for hysteria.
“Lucy was out there, floating with those—things. Gray—red eyes—red teeth.”
“I know. Mina, I’m sorry. I am so sorry. I was sure you couldn’t see them and you’d be safe.”
“You mean they’ve been here all along? You’ve seen them?”
“They come here at night. Lucy tries to get in.” He shuddered. “We were looking for power when we first found them. But what they did to Lucy—” He shook his head. “The thing is. I don’t know how to get rid of them.”
“Can you ask that old vampire?”
“I can’t find Sir John.”
“I wa
nt to go home.”
“You can’t go outside now, Mina. Once you see them, they can follow you. They drank a lot of your life force—they did that to Lucy.”
I started to cry. No words came. I felt violated to the core, and some deep, raw, evil part of me wanted them to take more or give more.
Hal was angry. He laid me down carefully on the pillow. I was literally too drained to move. He got up and began to pace. I watched him, half horrified, half wondering if I could get past him and reconnect with those creatures.
“Damn it, I’m leaving tomorrow. I want you to come with me, Mina.”
“Can’t.”
“How about if you go to your father’s place? That way I’ll know someone is looking after you.”
“No. I never go there except for holidays. I don’t trust my father, and his new wife doesn’t like me.”
“At least call in sick to work tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll take you home in the morning before I go. They don’t come out in the daytime. I’ll sell the house. I don’t think they can follow us if we move in the daytime.”
I started to cry, but I was too weak to continue for long. Hal held me and stroked my hair. I slept and mercifully did not dream.
The next morning Hal was packed and ready to go and I was still very weak. But he drove me to my apartment in my car and took a cab to the airport from there.
I went inside, heading for the bedroom. I sat down on the sofa to rest first and never made it all the way to bed. When I awoke it was dark again. I glanced at the window and saw red bicycle reflector eyes clustered around the edge of the curtain.
They had followed me. I hid my head under the sofa pillow in terror. The darkness descended on my mind again, but I turned my face away from the window, clung to the sofa and slipped into a world of nightmares.
Chapter 56
Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes
August 26th
The days after Vi rose as a vampire blurred into hours of bright sunlight and disorientation for me. It was good that I had taken time off from seeing clients, because I was functioning just well enough to call the people in Vi’s phone book whom she wanted told that she was dead. The ones whom she had decided to email and see in the evenings was a much smaller list. She told me that those two groups didn’t overlap at all, so there was no danger of a friend hearing she was dead.
I was oddly grateful I had written Edgar Morford’s suggested words down. I recited, “She died at her home, very suddenly of heart failure.” The people who heard the words heard the numb shock from me. That was genuine.
I did that all morning, and around noon the doorbell began to ring. Friends and neighbors who had known Vi came over. Most of them brought food or drink. Some hugged me, even though I’d only met a few of them. Most sat for awhile, talking about Vi.
Three of the legendary Feral Cat Ladies came in a group, and appeared to be sixty-something, seventy-something and eighty-something respectively. The eldest spent most of the time talking to Vi’s three tomcats, who ventured out to sniff them cautiously.
The youngest, Pamela, interrogated me while Ariel sat on the back of her chair and nuzzled her hair, which made her smile. The other two women played with Sly. Even Hamlet gave up his hiding place to check them out from a safe distance, stretching out his neck and his whole body to sniff Pamela’s outstretched hand. “Who is taking care of Vi’s cats?” she asked when Hamlet had settled down to observe them.
“I am. When she was alive Vi asked me to take them in if anything happened to her. I’m glad to do it.”
All three women nodded their approval, perhaps with a tinge of relief. If I had hesitated or seemed unequal to the task, I guessed that they had cat carriers in the car ready to rescue them on the spot.
“How about the ferals?” Pamela asked. “Vi told me she fed a couple in the mornings in the back yard.”
“Oh, I’ve been feeding them too. I can keep doing that.”
“Are you sure, dear? It’s a major commitment. Please, let us know if you need help.”
“All right, I will.” I was distantly amused that they were treating me like a possibly flighty youngster, and looking at how this situation would affect the cats. They left some sweet rolls and a couple of extra jugs of kitty litter. “You never want to run out,” Pamela said.
For the next two days I was on a split shift. In the daytime more people visited Vi than I had ever seen in the house when she was alive. I was anxious about how Vi intended to tell some people she had died and not tell anyone in the writing community.
She rolled her eyes when I asked. “Writers and publishers live in different worlds,” she said. “The writers are thinking about their own work, and the publishing world only hears from me when I finish a book. It might be different if I lived on the East Coast, but I could have been dead for years and no one would have been the wiser as long as I send email and meet my deadlines. It’s three hours earlier in New York, so I can even call them on the phone before it’s dawn here.”
“Amazing.”
Vi told me she would move her office down to the basement so she could work closer to dawn. She said she had so much material now, but she hadn’t touched her computer since she came back from the dead.
As long as I had known her she had been obsessed with writing, and now she seemed to totally forget it. I didn’t ask. Perhaps it was because she was living what she had only imagined on paper before.
The vampire orientation sessions took up her nights the first week. She left every evening at dusk and by the time I came over in the morning to feed her cats she was down in the basement, safely tucked away in her coffin.
I also noticed that the cats were hiding when I came in every morning. When I fed them in the evening, I waited till dusk to say hello to Vi when she arose, but the cats vanished into their hiding places the moment they heard her step on the basement stairs.
“Vi, have you seen your cats?”
Vi looked at me strangely. “No. Are they all right? They seem to be hiding. Do you see them when you feed them?”
“Yeah, they come out for meals. “
Neither of us said anything. I still wasn’t used to how quiet Vi could be now that she was undead. I never had a clue what she might be thinking.
“The cats are still a little standoffish with me,” I said.
“But they let you pet them?”
“The boys do.”
“They won’t come near me now.” Her face looked very solemn. But she said no more and went out to feed and go to class. I never asked where she was getting the blood, or from whom. I went home and went to bed early.
Something woke me, not a sound but a feeling of pure terror stronger than the worst nightmare of my life. I sat up, heart pounding, short of breath for no known reason. I looked around. My bedroom was the same. The bedroom door to the hall was open as I had left it.
I was alone in the room. Nothing I could see explained what had wakened me. But the feeling was one of real danger. The large digital clock numerals read 2:00 a.m. I got up and went down the hall to the front of the cottage where the kitchen window and my office window faced Vi’s house.
There was a faint sound in the garden between my house and Vi’s and a flickering red light outside the window. Could it be from a police car out on Clement Street in front of Vi’s house?
I pulled the curtain aside and looked out the window, the way I had a thousand times before.
A seething mass of gray bodies swarmed over Vi’s house. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Then a flickering of red that seemed to be gleaming eyes turned toward me in that writhing carpet of bodies.
I ducked back behind the blinds. That was what had wakened me. The terror gripped my heart again, as if to confirm it.
But there was no sound. No rustle of animals moving in a huge group. I had to look again, but I hid behind the curtain, hoping they would not see me.
Not bats, certainly not rats. T
hey were bigger, much bigger. Built like humans, two arms, two legs, various sizes of body—some smaller than a child, others large as a big adult. These creatures swarmed in mid-air, floating without wings and diving down to join the mass blanketing the house.
They covered the two-story house in a living, crawling mass that billowed and moved in waves. Some crawling over each other. Some floating up, as if buoyant, to circle about and return, like pigeons rising from a flock and settling back down again.
The glints of red were huge, round eyes in otherwise featureless faces.
One of them left the pack and zoomed toward me—red eyes, burning like coals. It seemed to see me behind the curtain. I dived down straight down to the floor without a moment’s hesitation. A moment later I heard a rustling at the window and a gentle bumping against the glass as if someone were tapping on the window with a balloon—bizarrely light, considering that they seemed to be the size of humans.
I could see the reddish glow on the floor reflected from the luminous eyes peering into my window. I backed up along the floor until I was at the opposite wall, where they should not have been able to see me. Occasionally one of them bobbed past the gap between the curtains and I caught a flash of moving, shark-gray flesh and neon red eyes. They didn’t seem able to break the glass—they encountered it like fish at the edge of a tank, puzzled, interested. There was a faint slithering sound along the exterior wall of the cottage.
My mouth was so dry, I could barely swallow. I made myself take deep breaths and stayed on the floor as I scrambled into the next room. What were they? How could I keep them out? Were these creatures of the night, like vampires, who would be gone with the morning light? I wanted to talk to Vi, worried that they might be hurting her—not that I knew how to stop them if they were.
I called and got Vi’s voicemail. I huddled on the floor. Faint bumping noises outside and I saw the red light of the creatures’ eyes reflected on the wall opposite as they clustered at the window. I looked over to the door and saw the same red flickering around the edges of the door. The digital clock on the wall read 2:30. I called Larry.
