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Once Bitten

Page 17

by Reinke, Sara


  “A hole in one,” he murmured, even though only two pairs of letters to that point had been revealed, N and L.

  “Amputation,” Wilma said with a snort from the kitchen. “Angiogram. You don’t need those things. You have a wound on your neck and it’s gotten infected. What you need is Neosporin.” She waved the plastic spatula in her hand imperatively. “Lots of Neosporin.”

  Why did the idiots on Wheel of Fortune always blow their potential winnings by buying vowels? John wondered, shaking his head as a contestant bought not one but two in the on-screen puzzle, leaving Vanna to reveal two O’s and two E’s as she sashayed across the stage.

  “A hole in one,” he said again, because he could tell even with it practically spelled out in black typeface and backlit, the contestant didn’t know the answer. A paunchy man in his mid-fifties with a graying, receding hairline and glasses that reflected the overhead studio lights, the player frowned at the puzzle as if sculpted by Rodin, giving the matter deep and serious consideration.

  “I’ll call my friend Myra,” Wilma was saying. “Her son is a doctor in Sarasota. I’ll get him to write you out a prescription for something, penicillin, maybe.”

  “A hole in one,” John said, louder now, growing impatient. When the A panel lit up and Vanna went to turn it, he clapped his hand over his face and groaned.

  “You can stay here and rest. That will help, too,” Wilma said. “I can sleep out here on the sofa and you take the bedroom. A good night’s sleep can be the best thing in the world, that’s what I always say.”

  “A hole in one,” John snapped, exasperated with the imbecile on the screen and his absolute, ignorant inability to decipher perfectly plain English. “A hole in one, a hole in one. What’s the matter with this guy?”

  She brought him a sandwich and he scooted over to let her sit beside him.

  “I don’t get it,” he said, taking a chomp out of the still-scalding crust. With a mouthful of molten Velveeta, he continued, “How can these people be so stupid? A chimp could solve these puzzles. It’s not rocket science.”

  Wilma shrugged. “It’s different, I think, once you get up there under the lights, in front of the studio audience, the cameras in front of you.”

  “I think they just like to put stupid people on here,” John said. “Think about it, Mom. I can solve these things in two letters or less.” To prove his point, he glanced at the new puzzle on-screen, since the dipshit in the glasses had finally guessed correctly on the previous one. All that showed were the letters C and T.

  “Creature of habit,” he said. Then To Wilma, he’d gestured demonstratively. “You see? You put anyone with half a brain on this show and it would be over in ten minutes, fifteen tops. It takes stupid people to drag it out to a half an hour, give or take the commercial breaks.”

  Wilma shrugged again. “Sometimes what’s obvious to us isn’t to other people.”

  “They’d have to be blind as well as stupid not to put two and two together and fill in the…” His voice faltered, then faded, as something Sandy had said to him earlier came to mind.

  I think it’s cute, your obstinate refusal to accept the obvious—even when presented to you by medical experts—simply because you consider it to be illogical.

  Then, shortly thereafter: None of your symptoms add up to one specific disease they can think of, but that doesn’t mean there’s not one cause for what’s happening to you.

  He shook his head. I am not turning into a vampire.

  After Wheel of Fortune, Wilma’s favorite tabloid talk show came on, and while she settled onto the couch to find out who was sleeping with whom, he shuffled down the narrow corridor to the bedroom. The drapes were already drawn and for the first time since leaving the hospital, John was able to take his sunglasses off and not squint. He stripped off the annoying hospital gown, kicked his jeans into the far corner of the room, then crumpled against the bed in his underpants. Burrowing beneath cotton sheets that smelled like his mother’s perfume he squirmed around, clapping one of Wilma’s feather pillows heavily over his head, cocooning himself in Chantilly-scented darkness.

  “If anyone calls or comes by looking for me, I’m not here,” he’d instructed Wilma before leaving the living room. “I’m dead.”

  Which, for all practical purposes, he felt like at the moment.

  That’s dead, not undead, he thought. I’m not turning into a vampire. Sandy’s nuts. So are Michael Gough and Lucy Weston. They’re all nuts and I’m the only person who’s in their right mind.

  He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He might have actually succeeded, because it seemed like his mind had side-slipped into unconsciousness, and when he opened his eyes again, shoving the pillow away from his face, he had a sense of time having passed. A thin sliver of light leaked in through the part in the drapes. It seemed dimmer to him now, as if fading with the afternoon. Groaning, he sat up, gasping softly at the radiating pain in his entire left side.

  His mouth hurt. Drawing his hand to his face, he prodded lightly against his lips. His gums felt swollen and sore, the way they’d always felt when he’d been in junior high schools, saddled with braces, and would leave his orthodontic appointments having had the wires and brackets tightened and tugged on to excruciating tautness.

  Like someone had punched me in the mouth, he’d always described this sensation, because even his teeth had hurt, aching clear to the roots.

  Stumbling out of bed, he limped across the hallway to the neighboring bathroom. From the direction of the living room, he could hear the TV and could see Wilma sitting on the sofa, cutting her attention back and forth between the screen and a needlepoint project she was working on against her lap.

  He left the lights out in the bathroom, not wanting to add insult to injury by searing his hypersensitive eyes. There was enough illumination coming in from the corridor, the rest of the mobile home beyond, for him to lean forward and peer into the mirror, curling his lip back from his upper teeth.

  The first thing he noticed was that his teeth had grown. Not all of them; only his canine teeth, as if they’d elongated in his sleep, the pointed tips dropping at least a quarter inch past the bottom edges of his front incisors.

  Like a vampire’s, he thought, although his teeth were nowhere near the wickedly hooked fangs he’d seen in Lucy’s mouth. As soon as the thought went through his mind, he frowned and shook his head.

  That’s ridiculous, he told himself. Now I’m starting to sound like Sandy or Gough. I’m not turning into a vampire. This is just something I’ve never noticed before.

  He glanced in the mirror again, leaning close, sneering to reveal those peculiar, elongated canines again. Something I haven’t noticed in thirty-eight years of looking in the mirror at myself, brushing my teeth, popping pimples, shaving, combing my hair, he thought. Yeah. That’s got to be it.

  “Hey, Mom,” he said, ducking back into the hallway. “Come here and take a look at this, would you?”

  Wilma glanced up at his beckon and when she did, her face immediately twisted, a quick, startled grimace. “Ouch,” she exclaimed, shoving her thumb into her mouth.

  “You alright?” He started down the corridor, but she shook her head as she pushed the needlepoint aside and stood, still sucking on her finger.

  “I got myself, that’s all,” she said, lisping. “I do it all the time.”

  “You know, they make thimbles,” John began as she approached him in the hall. His voice fumbled then died, because all at once, in the narrow confines of the corridor, he became aware of something—a strong, tangy aroma, something bittersweet and tantalizing.

  She’s bleeding. He stood motionless, watching Wilma draw her thumb out of her mouth to study the dark, glistening pinpoint of blood that grew wider and wider, swelling into a fat bead.

  Just as he had when he’d smelled the pork chops in Sandy’s refrigerator, or had that peculiar, aroused reaction to the scent of Gilbert Manfried, John felt light-headed and dizzy, almost hypnotized
with fascination by the sight of his mother’s blood. As she stuck her thumb back between her lips, sucking anew, he realized he was salivating, his mouth wet and flooded in eager anticipation.

  He didn’t brown out, not this time, but when he was able to move again, it felt like he waded through quicksand. Everything seemed reduced to slow motion, his footsteps leaden and creeping, his breathing growing long and deep, the heavy gasps of a man seized with a sudden, urgent need.

  “Mom,” he said, his voice low, a timbrous thing, nearly guttural.

  “Yes?” She looked up as he closed the space between them, a pair of long strides abruptly swallowing the distance whole. Less than two inches apart, an intimate proximity, when she met his eyes, her puzzled facial expression suddenly slackened. She blinked at him sleepily, as if by locking gazes, he’d mesmerized her. Her hand slipped from her face, her thumb from her mouth, to fall limply to her side.

  It felt like he was sleepwalking, watching himself remotely, an out of body experience as he backed Wilma against the wall. He imagined her could hear her heartbeat. More than this, he could hear the sound of her blood flow, a surging, tidal rush inside her veins, loudest of all from those vessels and arteries nestled within the meat of her neck.

  His mouth still hurt, but all at once, he realized what would ease that incessant ache. Biting something, he thought. Biting her.

  He leaned forward, tilting his head, and when his lips drew within millimeters of Wilma’s throat, the pounding rhythm of her heart became thunderous, the smell of her blood just beneath the surface of her skin heady and hot, intoxicating.

  He opened his mouth, feeling drool slip from the corner of his lips, trailing down his cheek toward his chin. He closed his eyes, anticipating the taste, the satisfaction, the incredible and immense release he’d feel once he’d sank his canines into the pulsating span of her carotid.

  The phone rang, a shrill screech that ripped through the mobile home and snapped John out of his trance. Just as the tips of his teeth touched Wilma’s flesh, he recoiled, his eyes flown wide in horrified disgust.

  Holy shit, he thought, stricken, scrambling back, putting as much space between himself and his mother as the corridor allowed. I almost bit her. I was about to bite Mom in the neck!

  For her part, Wilma seemed to have no recollection of what had just occurred. At the sound of the phone, she’d twitched slightly, giving her head a little shake, like a cow or a horse trying to shoo a fly. She blinked once, then twice, then said, “I have one already. More than one, in fact. But they’re tucked away in my sewing kit in my closet and I can’t reach them, not without climbing on a chair first. You know I’m afraid of heights. You hear all the time about women my age doing things like that and falling off, breaking their hips. They’re never the same after that.”

  The phone rang again. John blinked at her, bewildered and aghast.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked, his voice ragged and strained.

  “Thimbles,” Wilma replied, looking equally baffled. “You just said something about thimbles.” When the phone rang a fourth time, she turned, walking back toward the kitchen. “I don’t know why I’m bothering. It’s probably just another telemarketer. I don’t know how I wind up on so many call lists. I’m always getting them, subscribe to this service, donate to that. Last week, the same carpet cleaner called me three times.”

  As she spoke, she disappeared into the living room, catching the phone just as it started to ring again. “Oh, hi, Myra,” he heard her say brightly. “No, no, no, I was just talking to John. Yes, he’s home now.”

  There was more, her words running together in cheerful, nonsensical chatter that he tuned out as he shoved the heels of his hands to his brow.

  I was just about to bite her, he thought. What’s the matter with me?

  Sandy’s voice echoed in his mind. None of your symptoms add up to one specific disease they can think of, but that doesn’t mean there’s not one cause for what’s happening to you.

  “It’s not possible,” he whispered, but he had to admit, all at once he was having a hard time convincing himself of this, considering he’d just about taken a wolfish chomp out of the side of his mother’s neck.

  Stop trying to buy a vowel, a voice inside his mind said, cold and brutally honest. Solve the puzzle.

  The answer, of course, was A hole in one.

  “I’m becoming a vampire,” he said.

  John returned to the bedroom and opened his mother’s closet, digging around until he found one of his dad’s old button down shirts in the very back, hanging lopsided and forgotten on a hanger. Next he began opening different shoe boxes, hoping a pair of his dad’s sneakers remained. He’d been trundled off to the hospital bare-footed, and had left it in likewise condition. As he lifted the lid on one, he drew back in surprise, dropping it from his hands as if it had contained a live tarantula. The box landed on its side, the lid falling away from it, and all of the contents spilled out on the floor—his old police badge and identification card, the brass name plate from his Miami-Dade County patrol uniform, a canister of police-issue pepper spray he’d once worn strapped to his belt and his pistol, the nine-millimeter Heckler and Koch P7 PSP that had once called a holster at his hip its home.

  John stumbled back from the box until the backs of his legs hit the foot of the bed. Wide-eyed and gasping again, nearly gulping for breath, he stared at the gun as his body broke out in a sudden, icy sweat.

  I’m going to need that, a part of him thought.

  Oh, no, said another, this one louder and much more adamant. Hell, no. I’m not touching it. There’s no way. Sandy’s the one with the one-woman arsenal at her disposal. Let her take care of the shooting. I’ll do the staking, the beheading, throw garlic powder at Wilder, whatever. But no guns.

  He kicked the pistol, the spilled contents of the shoebox back into the closet, then jerked the door closed, hiding it all from his view. No guns.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  He drove Wilma’s car out to the Pink Palace. The two-door 1988 Nissan Sentra had belonged to his dad and John had taken care of it for Wilma since he’d died, keeping up with oil and filter changes, checking the tires, replacing belts, hoses and windshield wiper blades when and as needed. Wilma seldom drove it, and then, only in the daytime, because she had trouble seeing at night. She also had trouble driving more than fifteen miles-an-hour, as John had discovered on a couple of unfortunate occasions while riding shotgun with her to the grocery store, and how she’d never managed to be killed while behind the wheel—whether through her own ineptitude or by inciting murderous road rage in someone trapped behind her—remained a mystery to him.

  The gates to Gracie Dodd’s palatial estate were closed and he buzzed in through the intercom speaker. It took Gracie a long time to answer and because the air-conditioning in the Sentra was shoddy at best, and seemed to work even less reliably when the little car was left to idle—as it was at the moment—John sweated and drummed the fingertips of his feeling, functioning hand impatiently against the gear shift knob.

  “Well, hi, honey.” Gracie sounded pleased. With a creak and the momentary scrape of metal against metal, the gates began to swing open. “Come on up. I’m on the veranda.”

  She didn’t specify which veranda, and it took John a good five minutes circling the outside of the house on foot before he found her at the rear of the property, on a roofed patio facing both the swimming pool and the nearby Little Pink.

  Gracie sat cross-legged on the tiled floor, newspapers unfolded and spread around her in a broad circumference. Surrounded by cans and bottles of different kinds of paint, glue and glitter, she’d been working on a new art project from the looks of things, a conch the size of a football that she’d coated in a glistening, overlapping layers of bright pink, purple and sea-foam green paint.

  “What do you think?” she asked, looking up at him, her face paint-spattered and expectant.

  John kept his distance, not wanting to risk a
nother episode like the one he’d suffered at Wilma’s trailer. “Looks nice,” he said, affecting a moment’s appreciative consideration. “Hey, is Sandy around anywhere?”

  “Nope.” Gracie stood, swatting her paint-smeared palms against her equally paint-smeared jeans. “She left about an hour ago. Said she had a meeting with a client. Would you like some lemonade?”

  “Thanks,” he said with a nod as she crossed to a nearby café-sized table, atop which rested a serving tray with a large glass pitcher. “Are you expecting company?” he asked, because she’d brought two glasses out with the tray instead of one, which would have been most logical, since she’d been home alone.

  Gracie nodded as she poured, then awarded him a sly sort of glance that Sandy had obviously come by from her. “You.”

  “You knew I was coming?”

  She nodded again, carrying one of the glasses to him. “I know lots of things.”

  “Oh. That sensitive thing Sandy talks about.” He’d only just come to accept the admittedly ridiculous notion that he was turning into a vampire less than a half an hour ago, and all at once, the idea that Gracie might have some supernatural ability of her own no longer seemed as far-fetched to him as it once had.

  Gracie nodded again, watching as he tilted his head back and took a long drink. “I spiked it,” she told him helpfully.

  He choked, eyes wide and tearing up, nearly spitting out the lemonade. Which, as he’d just discovered, was little more than vodka with some lemon juice tossed in for color. “Yeah,” he croaked. “I can tell.”

  “Sandy’s been a busy little beaver today,” Gracie remarked, sipping from her own glass as she walked back to the table, then sat down against one of the matching chairs. Using the tips of her bare toes, she scooted the opposing chair back just enough to be an invitation for him to join her, which he did. “She stayed out half the night working on some sort of surveillance case, she told me. Then was up at the crack of dawn, hard at work all over again. She didn’t tell me what was going on, but I think she’s planting a garden.”

 

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