Blood Like Ice

by Lee Hayton

  I would have remonstrated Jimmy, but he’d been locked up for seventy years. He wouldn’t know.

  “Here she is,” Anne said, coming back to the door with a tablet.

  I craned my neck to look, careful not to let the glare from the screen highlight my pale face.

  “Worthington’s Aged Care Facility,” Anne said, in case I couldn’t read. “That’s only a few suburbs away from here.”

  She nudged her husband in the back, and he stepped forward, looking at her with a shrug. “My husband could give you a lift there if you like. It’s only a five-minute drive away.”

  She started to mouth something at him, but I was already backing up so far that I couldn’t make out the details.

  “That’s okay,” I said, sniffing and drying my tears. “I’m sure that I can find the way.”

  Her glance had gone to the corner on the right. If it was a short ride by car, it wouldn’t take us long walking to find it.

  “Are you sure? Buck will be happy to help.”

  “I’m sure,” I said, waving a hand. “It’s just down this way, right?”

  I pointed in the direction she’d looked, and Anne nodded. Although worry still lingered on her face, Buck had already finished the conversation. He’d turned back to the door, ushering his wife back inside.

  “I know where that is,” Jimmy whispered out of the shadows.

  Even though I knew he was lurking in there, it made me jump. “Well, take the lead, then. We need to get a move on. The later we arrive there the more we’ll stick out like sore thumbs.”

  The old people's home was set back from the street. A large oval driveway gave easy access to vehicles: they could drive in, circle around and then leave the same way they’d come. In the middle of the tarmac, a garden had been fashioned with a smooth lawn and flowers dotted around in the middle. Massive pillars held up the entranceway as though it was a grand old plantation, instead of a place to store the elderly until they died.

  Jimmy’s face had lost the expression of anticipation that it had held through the long trek down the hill. Now, it was pensive, cautious. His eyes were narrowed and deep-set under drooping lids.

  I understood. This wasn’t the sort of place you wanted to find anybody, let alone someone you loved.

  The lights inside the foyer were bright—the large rectangles of fluorescents in the ceiling didn’t offer the refuge of shadows. There was no way either of us could walk up to the front desk and not be seen for exactly what we were. Instead, I headed around the edge of the building, stopping to peer into windows as I tried to work out the lay of the land.

  “Perhaps we should go and leave this until another time,” Jimmy said.

  The hesitation in his voice made me want to weep. This was the reward you got for being a monster—your family aged and died around you while you stayed young. Too young, in my case. I’d been lucky to find a companion whose slow aging process made her feel compatible. The chips on our shoulders made a matching set.

  I clapped Jimmy on the shoulder, the only comfort I could extend to him. The farther around the side of the home we moved, the more we saw of how the older half lived. It wasn’t pretty.

  Each room came equipped with a small single bed. Above that were mounted various metal devices for lifting or moving or prodding or whatever the hell they did. A small bedside cabinet held three personal possessions. Judging from the regular appearance of only that number, I gathered it was a rule.

  A robe hung on the back of a door in each room—presumably indicating the wardrobe. A chair for sitting, overstuffed and so low that even my young back ached.

  That was dismal, sad, and those were just the empty cubicles. As I began to stare into rooms with solo residents, emotion threatened to stop me dead in my tracks.

  Jimmy spotted something and stood still, pointing. I looked into the window of the room indicated, but couldn’t see anything different. It was empty but the way it made Jimmy shake I guessed that it belonged to his granddaughter.

  A man entered the room, carrying a cardboard box. He picked up the three items on the top of the cabinet: a china dog, a card, a container full of fancy pens.

  “No,” Jimmy shouted, surging forward and clapping his hand flat on the glass. He pressed his nose tight as though he could force his way through by sheer desire.

  I caught his shoulder, trying to pull him back, then stopped. What of it? Let the man pound on the window in despair. From the looks of this place, it wouldn’t be the first time, though I bet most of those bangs would originate on the opposite side.

  The man in the room looked up, eyes narrowing as he strained to see out into the dark. He walked over and flicked the room light off, blinking as the confined space plunged into darkness. In the time it would take for his eyes to adjust, I seized Jimmy by the waist and hauled him back.

  Instead of complying, something that Jimmy appeared to spend most of his time doing, the vampire fought me off to rush to the window again. This time both palms went flat against the glass, his forehead pushed against the pane. He howled.

  Inside, the man took a step back, head tilted to one side, then he put the box down and came back to the window, pushing the sash up.

  “What are you two doing out there?” he barked. “It’s closing in on midnight. If you’re thinking of robbing the place, then think again. We don’t keep medication on the premises.”

  Bullshit, they didn’t. But I hauled at Jimmy once more, not wanting to get into a discussion with the staff member.

  Jimmy shook me off again. He turned and gave me a push for good measure. Though it looked effortless, it was enough to send me sprawling on the ground.

  “Hey,” the man inside called out. His head withdrew, but Jimmy reached through the window for his collar. He bunched the man’s shirt in his fist and pulled him half out the gap.

  “Where’s my granddaughter, Esme?” he asked, his voice choked beneath a layer of dread and anger. “She lived in this room. Why are you packing up her things?”

  The man’s expression went from scared to terrified. He clocked the pale skin, the glowing pink eyes, the age discrepancy between young Jimmy and old Esme.

  “She died,” he said, raising a hand up to ward off a blow that didn’t come. “The old girl’s been feeling ill for a while and then this morning, we couldn’t wake her.”

  He looked out at us with a mix of pity and disgust on his face. Disgust for what we were, pity for the circumstances.

  “Esme died in her sleep.”

  Chapter Eight

  Jimmy let go of the man’s shirt, and he retreated inside the room, straightening himself out. If it were me, I’d be running for the door, but I guessed his training encompassed handling relatives in stressful circumstances and passing on the news of death.

  The only difference was that this time, he was delivering that information to some vampires.

  “It was peaceful,” the man said in a reassuring tone that sounded like a bored lie. “She wasn’t in any discomfort.”

  If she wasn’t in discomfort, then they must have had her drugged up to the eyeballs. Just the act of getting to her age would cause untold aches and pains in a hundred different locations.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Jimmy reached through the window again, making a grab for the guy’s neck. He’d learned, though—the man danced back a step, out of reach. For a second, I thought that he’d step back all the way, leaving the room and alerting the authorities. Then his head tilted to one side again.

  “You were her granddad, yeah?”

  As tears slid down Jimmy’s face, he nodded. “She was just eight years old when I left.”

  I saw it then. The man inside was overwriting his disgust with sympathy. It welled up in his face like a bud flowering into full blossom.

  “Why don’t you come in, then? You can’t stay too long, but at least you can collect her things.”

  Jimmy nodded, clapping his hand over his still and silent heart.
“That would be grand,” he said, reaching forward to grab hold of the side of the window.

  “Uh”—the man pointed with a tentative finger to his left—“there’s a door. That’ll be easier.”

  The furtive glances the man cast around him as he let us in looked designed to draw attention. May as well have worn a sign saying, ‘I’m doing something wrong.’

  It was midnight, though, so the halls were empty. Jimmy and I followed along in tandem while he walked back into Esme’s room.

  “I’m Gregory,” he said, sticking his hand out.

  Jimmy ignored him, walking over to the box of possessions instead and picking out the china dog.

  I stepped forward, not leaving him hanging. “I’m Norman, and this is Jimmy.”

  “Please to meet you, uh—” Gregory’s face dropped as he realized what he’d said. “Sorry about the terrible circumstances.”

  “Did Esme stay in this residence long?” I asked. There was no burning desire to know, but Jimmy’s gaze remained firmly fixed on the small sculpture in his hand. A shame that small talk wasn’t my forte.

  “She’s been here for five years, closing in on six. A nice old girl. Never made trouble for anybody. Just seemed happy to sit and rock in her chair.”

  I looked at the low-set chair and wondered how many residents spent all day trapped in those things just because they couldn’t stand up. I shook my head. After I got done with self-pity, I didn’t have much left over for anybody else.

  “Did she have many possessions?”

  At that, Gregory’s eyes grew shifty. He glanced over his shoulder at the door again, then across to the window.

  “I was just going to box them up.” The man leaned over and pushed at the edge of the box with suddenly restless fingers. “Somebody called to make sure that I did it. Tonight. They’re coming by to collect it, and god forbid it not be here waiting for them.”

  I turned to Jimmy with raised eyebrows. That sounded far too secret squirrel for some old dead bird that just happened to be a relation. The vampire’s attention wasn’t on me, though, or what Gregory had said. Every piece of his energy seemed focused on the object in his other hand.

  Gregory walked over to the wardrobe, tugging it open with one sharp jerk. His voice dropped to an even lower whisper as he talked to me over his shoulder. “She had a collection of stuff, really weird. I asked her about it once, and she said it was to do with her grandfather.” He turned to Jimmy. “I guess that means you.”

  Jimmy made no acknowledgment, so I nodded in his stead. Slowly, with his eyes still fixed on the china dog, Jimmy turned and sank down onto the bed.

  I dropped my voice down to a whisper also. “What kind of weird?”

  “Lots of stuff.” Gregory heaved up a box from the wardrobe floor. “Usually, matron wouldn’t let a resident keep all this junk in their room—she doesn’t like mess. But I told you, Esme was a quiet old girl. Matron never had any reason to take things away to keep her in line.”

  That phrase sent a shudder through my body, but Gregory either didn’t recognize the horror of the words or had grown so used to dishing out punishment that he didn’t understand what he’d said.

  “Here, look,” he said, handing over an old news clipping. “I told you, really odd stuff. News items, pictures, mythology. Years ago, when she first arrived, she even arranged for a day trip away from this place to interview an old codger up north. She recorded the whole thing on an old disk somewhere.” He paused, chewing on his bottom lip while he frowned. “The phone call seemed most interested in that.”

  Gregory let his fingers travel deeper into the box, wandering until he gave a cry of triumph and held up a flash drive.

  “Here we go.” He handed it across to me.

  “Did she have anything I could play it on?”

  Gregory shrugged. “We’ve got some old-style computers in the common room. She probably used those, if they were in working order. Sometimes they take a bit of loving before they start up.”

  Gregory flipped through a dog-leafed notebook, then handed it over. “Completely mad. Look at that stuff—all about witches and shapeshifters. I swear, sometimes she acted like all those old legends were true.”

  I stared at him quizzically, myself being one old legend that had turned out to exist in reality. If irony was on this guy’s radar, something had jammed.

  “What was all of this for?” I waved my hand over the box and the spill of items Gregory was still digging out of it. “Do you know?”

  He looked up and laughed. “Well, Esme said once that she was looking for a cure for her granddad. I didn’t think much of it at the time”—Gregory shrugged—“but I guess that might have all been true.”

  I sat down on the bed next to Jimmy. Between the box and him, it was quite a squeeze. With one hand resting on his shoulder, I peered down at the old knick-knack, trying to work out the fascination.

  “Did you give her that?” I asked, taking a stab.

  Jimmy shook his head. “She won it at the county fair one time. At a pitch’n’grab, you know?”

  I nodded, guessing just from the name. “I guess she knocked down something big to win something that pretty.”

  The fairs I remembered from my childhood had a multitude of cheap crap that got handed out. Judging from the look of the china, this one was at least a mid-level prize.

  “I took her to the fair because it was the closest we could come to the circus. It traveled through town one autumn, and no one looked at us too strange for visiting past sundown. Lots of folks went out at that time to see what the fuss was about.”

  I nodded and clapped a hand on his knee. “Sounds like they’re some good memories. You want to ask Gregory anything while we’re here?”

  My heart may be a cold, dead, shriveled thing in my chest but I’m not emotionless. Still, whatever Jimmy came here seeking was gone. Not long gone but where death was concerned, it didn’t matter how close you got. Touching distance or lightyears, once someone was dead, they were gone.

  “Should we get going, otherwise?”

  Gregory looked up from reading a notebook, startled. “You want me to box all these things up again, for you?”

  “Won’t that get you in trouble?”

  The man shrugged and gave a shy smile. “I’ll just hand across her old clothing and whatever she kept on the bedside cabinet. Nobody’s going to know if you take some things away beside those.”

  When Jimmy remained silent, I took the initiative. “Yes, please. We’ll take anything personal that we can carry and all the notes you can fit back in the box.”

  “Sure, thing.” Gregory set to work with renewed vigor, packing everything he’d just pulled out.

  “We need to get somewhere safe before dawn,” I whispered to Jimmy. “Tomorrow, we can head back to my place, and hopefully my friends will be waiting.”

  In actuality, I thought it most likely that my friends were dead or gone. Maybe one of each.

  I thought back to the conference center, the look of terror in Miss Tiddles’ eyes, the puzzled despair raging across Asha’s usually benign features.

  Nope. Even if they’d both made it through, I don’t think I still possessed the right to call them friends.

  “Here you go,” Gregory said, hefting the box into my lap.

  It was heavy. Enough so that I hoped Jimmy soon snapped out of his funk. He was the muscle out of the two of us. I’d say I was the brains, but with the hunger gnawing into prime position in my head, that became less true each second.

  “Come on, Jimmy,” I whispered. I didn’t like having Gregory staring at us, not while Jimmy was in such a vulnerable state. It made me feel like a stage show. “It’s time to go now.”

  I stood up, struggling to balance the cardboard box in my hand. Jimmy stayed seated on the bed, staring at the dog.

  “Come, on,” I said again with more force. “We need to get going, Jimmy. On your feet.”

  The part of his brain that had been taught to ob
ey every command without question over the last seventy years snapped into play. Jimmy stood up, still fixated on the object in his hand but at least some way toward getting out of the hell-hole of the old people’s home.

  “Follow me,” Gregory said, jumping to his feet.

  I thought he must have been going to show us a different route out of the home, but he just retraced the few yards to the same doorway. Maybe he thought we were both thick. Perhaps the man wanted to ensure that we left.

  As we filed out, he closed the door behind us, and I heard the snap of a deadbolt. Whatever playtime fun Gregory had wanted to have with vampires and defying authority, was up.

  I started back toward the front of the home, my arms already protesting the weight of the box. Shelter better be nearby, or soon I’d be in agony. I wasn’t letting go of it, though. Not until I’d read my way through every article, listened to every scrap of a voice recording. If what Gregory said was true and Esme had been searching for a cure, then damned if I’d let that information slip away.

  That somebody else wanted to get their mittens on it, just made the whole thing more credible.

  “Once we get safely inside somewhere, we need to think about finding some food.” I turned the corner to the front of the home and walked a few steps before I realized that Jimmy wasn’t beside me.

  With a hefty sigh, I retraced the few yard’s progress to find him leaning against the wall, crying.

  “Look, Jimmy. I know you’re upset. It’s been a terrible shock, I’m sure.” I wished that I could put the box down and draw him into a hug. If I did that, though, chances were I wasn’t picking it back up. The longer I went without blood, the weaker I grew. Right now, I was back to my teenage boy level. Give it another day, I’d downsize my strength into that of a tiny girl.

  “Once we’re somewhere safe for the night, we can talk.” I walked over and nudged him awkwardly with my elbow. The best I could manage. “You can tell me all about Esme and what she was like as a little girl.”

  Jimmy shook himself, like a slow-motion dog coming out from a spray of water. He stepped forward, moving along without looking, without seeing. I caught up and fell into step beside him, missing the old Jimmy with his constant chatter.