Once Bitten

by Reinke, Sara

  “A garden?”

  “She spent the morning out at the hardware store, came back with a couple of these great big packs of wooden tomato stakes,” Gracie said. “A bunch of flower bulbs, too.”

  Thanking Gracie for the toxic lemonade, John left, driving past the Palace for Little Pink. Sandy’s car was gone and she’d apparently left in a hurry. In the dining room, the large table was covered with papers and at least a dozen of the wooden tomato stakes Gracie had mentioned. On one end, he found a spread of laser-printed color photographs on glossy paper, a series of shots in which the main subject seemed to be the exterior of a tourist-trap motel.

  One showed a car parked in the lot with its lights on, then another with its lights off, as if the driver had just arrived. Others still showed a heavy-set man getting out of the car and the door to one of the motel rooms swinging wide so a woman could come out to greet him. The couple embraced on the sidewalk then went together inside. Little pink post-it notes had been tagged to each, numbered to outline the sequence of events. These would be photo copies for their records. Gracie had mentioned Sandy had gone to meet a client and John suspected that she was showing a second set of these very same prints to the wife of the amorous fellow at the motel.

  “Hey, Sandy.” He called her cell phone, but it rang right over to her voice mail, so he left a message. “I know you’re with a client, that surveillance job, I’m guessing, but I wanted to let you know I’m looking at your shots from last night.”

  She’d told him her digital camera had a telephoto lens, and he could see she knew how to use it, judging by the details she was able to zoom in on in her shots: the man’s clearly defined profile, the license plate on his car and the number on the motel room door, both legible despite what must have been a wide vantage on Sandy’s end.

  They’re better than even I could have done, he thought, because that was the honest truth. He would have stopped with the embrace, with showing the fat guy’s license plate, him meeting a lover. But Sandy had obviously stayed the course, sticking around long enough to catch him coming and going, providing incontrovertible evidence to his infidelity.

  “They’re good,” he said at length. “Really good, Sandy. You should be proud.” His voice croaked slightly and he harrumph’ed a bit, clearing his throat. “Nice job.”

  On the other side of the table, far less neatly arranged, was an overlapping assortment of maps, printed documents, photocopied photographs and more. She’d left her laptop open amidst the mess, and he brushed his fingertip against the mouse pad to bring the screen to life. She’d been browsing a website called Vampirology, and had manually highlighted a small portion of text from the page:

  A vampire has many powers, variable according to the origin of the folklore. For example, some legends state that the vampire can assume animal forms, changing at will into bat or wolf. In some instances, vampires are said to change themselves into mist. They have been credited with controlling the weather, most specifically with conjuring storms. Vampires can enter a sleeping person’s dreams or mesmerize a conscious victim into a state of complacent semi-lucidity.

  However, these extraordinary abilities are limited. Vampires are not invulnerable and can only survive during the night, as exposure to sunlight can destroy them. They cannot cross running water except during the incoming or outgoing tides. Holy items, such as crosses and the communion host, repel them, as does consecrated water, which is said to burn them like acid. Garlic is also a commonly listed vampire repellent in folklore.

  In fact, while there is some debate about the effectiveness of religious articles, as vampire legends predate Christianity, garlic remains indisputably the best, most time-tested weapon in a vampire hunter’s arsenal.

  Silver, a metal with religious significance among Christians, is also considered lethal to vampires. Because mirrors are said to show the reflections of a person’s soul, which vampires lack, some legends also state that they cast no reflection in mirrored surfaces.

  No reflections, John thought, getting a peculiar, prickly sensation as he remembered coming home from the Show Me! bar, riding shotgun in the Galaxie and looking up into the windshield. For a moment, he could have sworn he’d had no reflection, but had convinced himself at the time it had been nothing but an optical illusion, his imagination playing tricks on him.

  Sandy had left a notepad on the table, flipped open to a page upon which she’d jotted a series of hastily scrawled notes. August 6, 1817, she’d written, followed by, Hurricane wrecks ship called PATRIOLA.

  Beneath this, she’d made a rough list of events organized by dates: October, 1817 – Farmer on Big Sister Island reports enormous, dog-like creature attacking his livestock. Sheep and goats found dead with necks broken, bodies drained of blood.

  August, 1818 – More than 30 farmers across the island have reported deaths of chickens, livestock. Four children reported missing. They are never found.

  September, 1819 – Incidents of heavy fog caused unprecedented nine shipwrecks since PATRIOLA.

  June, 1820 – Twenty-eight people missing. Bodies of only four recovered. Decomposed but drained of blood. “Perro del Diablo” – the devil’s hound blamed. Also reports of gigantic bat that attacks by moonlight, carries naughty children away to what was then known as Cayo Norteño (Northern Island, today it’s Duvall Island).

  August, 1820 – With consent from Cuban government, then-governor Juan Estevez Torres sells all three islands to Duvall Wilder for the sum of $1 USD.

  She’d copied several sheets from the library, old newspaper clippings from the archives. Some of these documented the incidents she’d noted, at least, if John’s rusty bilingual skills were correct, as these were printed in Spanish. The photocopied images showed different portraits of the same man—stern-faced and stoic, with a shock of white hair swept back from his high brow, clinging to his cheeks in thick side-burns. Even though they were low-grade copies of obviously faded and careworn originals, John could see that the man’s eyes were lucent, nearly white, a stark contrast to his pupils.

  They’re not albino, Sandy had told him of Boyd Wilder, who had shared this very same trait, leucism she’d called it. It’s a very rare hypopigmentary congenital disorder. Boyd Wilder has it, his father had it and his grandfather, too. Their skin and eyes are extremely photosensitive. They don’t go out much in the daytime

  Duvall Wilder had been printed beneath the man’s portrait, but John hadn’t needed the clarification. He’d have to have been blind to miss the family resemblance. 1790-1878 was listed beneath this.

  She’d copied pictures of Duvall’s descendents as well, including his son, William Pardon, Williams’ son Samuel and Samuel’s son—Boyd’s father—Landon. All shared this apparent hereditary disorder, which begged the question in John’s mind, as it had from the start: How ‘very rare’ can it be if they all have it?

  The easiest answer, he supposed, was that it wasn’t a disorder at all, congenital, very rare or otherwise.

  They’re all vampires. A regular, real-life Addams Family.

  ***

  Gilbert Manfried, the fat marina manager, must have caught sight of him lumbering along the gangplank upon his arrival at Coconut Grove, because even though John tried to limp past the office building unnoticed, the door swung open wide as he passed.

  “John,” he heard Gilbert call out.

  John gritted his teeth and groaned—not an easy thing to do considering his canines were still uncomfortably elongated. He drew to a halt, letting his stricken arm swing like a lead pendulum beside him.

  “John!” Now he heard the heavy patter and even heavier panting as Gilbert ran to catch him. “Hey, I thought that was you. Listen, have you got a minute? Because I was really wanting to talk to you.”

  “Now is not a good time.” When John turned slightly, lowering his sunglasses enough to glower over the uppermost edge of the frame, Gilbert skittered to a halt, quite the feat for a man of his considerable girth.

  His
eyes widened as he took John’s appearance fully into account, then he wisely stepped backwards once, twice, then three times. “Hey, John,” he offered, smiling feebly. “You okay?”

  John frowned at him for a long moment. “Do I look okay, Gilbert?”

  “Uh, no.” Gilbert gulped, then managed to smile again, strained and hesitant.

  John pushed his sunglasses back into place. “Then there you go,” he said, turning to shuffle away again.

  Twinkles the dog was waiting for him, launching itself toward the taffrail of the Cookie’s Cutter, thick ropes of frothy slobber dangling from its juicy gums, its furry lips drawn back from its teeth as it issued sharp, throaty barks. Like Gilbert, when John drew close enough to get a good look at or whiff of, or whatever dogs used to identity those who are human from those who are more-than-half-dead, Twinkles fell abruptly silent. With a low, anxious whine, it retreated from the railing. And as John bypassed the Quagmire, making a shambling bee-line for the Cutter, Twinkles backpedaled all the more, growling at him now, its thick claws scrabbling against the fiberglass and wood decking.

  “Hi, John!” Only Ethel Merriwether could be completely unbothered, even oblivious, to the way he looked. She breezed out of the cabin dressed in a tropical-print gown, the old-lady kind with short sleeves, a scoop neck and snaps up the front. Her hair had been twined up in bright pink plastic rollers. “How are you doing?”

  “I’ve been bitten by a vampire,” he called back. “I need to borrow your shovel, the one you used to bury Nutsy the other day. You mind?”

  “Not at all,” Ethel replied. “Except I don’t have that shovel anymore. That nice little girlfriend of yours borrowed it.”

  He blinked in dismay. “Sandy? When?”

  “Oh.” Ethel checked her wrist, then apparently remembered she wasn’t wearing a watch. “Not too long ago, I guess. Maybe an hour or so. The Young and The Restless had just started.”

  “Did she say where she was going?” he asked and Ethel shook her head.

  “Not a word. She just lugged a whole bunch of gear, took three or four trips, I guess. Gardening stuff, it looked like. She brought it out to her boat and took off from there.”

  When she pointed to the end of the dock, John followed with his gaze. Her boat? he wondered, bewildered. And then realized with a shock.

  What were you doing at the marina, anyway? he’d asked Sandy while in the hospital.

  I was on my way to pick up Gracie. I saw the lights come on aboard the Quagmire and went to investigate.

  And just before Lucy Weston had attacked him on the Quagmire, he’d noticed…

  “His Girl Friday,” he whispered.

  The sleek Bayliner—the seafaring beauty he’d coveted and admired for so long was now gone from its customary berth, awarding John an unobstructed view of the harbor and Gulf beyond.

  Gracie hit the lottery, he thought, remembering the picture at Little Pink of Sandy’s mother holding the big cardboard check. Eighty-one million dollars. She can afford a fleet of yachts.

  “Can you believe it?” Ethel said, shaking her head. “All this time, I’ve wondered who the asshole was blocking my view of the bay and it’s been your girlfriend.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” John said, absolutely dumbfounded.

  “Well, she should be,” Ethel replied as she turned to duck back into the cabin. “You know how much one of those things costs?”

  Only about three-quarters of a million dollars, John thought, his brain as numb as his arm and leg now.

  He first called Sandy on her cell phone then, when that went straight to her voice mailbox again, he ducked aboard the Quagmire and tried to raise her on his shipboard radio. Tuning to channel nine, he drew the mic up to his mouth.

  “Calling His Girl Friday,” he said. “His Girl Friday, this is the sailing vessel Quagmire, Fox-trot one-two-three-four Alpha Bravo, do you copy, over?”

  He released the transmission button and waited, listening to the prolonged hiss of static-laced silence. With a frown, he thumbed the button and tried again. “His Girl Friday, His Girl Friday, His Girl Friday, this is the sailing vessel Quagmire, Fox-trot one-two-three-four Alpha Bravo, do you copy, over?”

  On the third try, he abandoned seafaring formality. “Sandy, it’s John. Do you read me?” he snapped into the line. Still there was no answer.

  Where could she be going? he wondered. True, she’d said she was going to go try and hunt down Boyd Wilder, but she’d then told him Wilder had gone to Miami. She wouldn’t be nuts enough to try and follow him there, would she?

  He shook his head. What was he thinking? This was Sandy.

  Of course she’d be that crazy.

  His Girl Friday could have more than easily handled the passage between the Sister Islands and the southern peninsula. Which only left the question of how she’d find Wilder once she had arrived in Miami.

  “Damn it, Sandy,” he muttered, slapping the radio mic down and hauling the unwieldy deadweight of his leg back up the stairs to the main deck.

  ***

  Wilma’s eyes flew wide when she opened the door to her mobile home. “Johnny!”

  She’d called him this as a child. By twelve, he’d grown exasperated with the childish moniker and asked her to stop. By the time he’d been eighteen, she’d finally remembered, lapsing only on rare occasion, when she was exceptionally sad, glad or mad. Or, as in this case, worried.

  “Where have you been?” she cried, opening the door, letting him shamble inside. “You left so fast. I’ve been worried half-sick.”

  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  “That’s it,” Wilma said, hands on her hips. “I’ve had enough of these island doctors. They have no idea what they’re doing. You’re obviously sick.”

  You have no idea, John thought, plopping heavily down onto the couch.

  “I’m taking you to Miami, to the hospitals there, where they at least…”

  Miami.

  John blinked. “Mom,” he said, interrupting her, startling her as he shoved himself clumsily to his feet again. “That’s it. You’re absolutely right.”

  Wilma blinked at him, mouth ajar. “I am?”

  He nodded. “I need to go to Miami.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. Right now, in fact. Well, no. First, I have to run an errand.”

  “What kind of errand?”

  He slapped his lifeless, numb arm across her shoulder and steered her toward the door. “You’ll see.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “I can’t believe you brought me here.” Wilma frowned behind the wheel of the Sentra, leaning forward and peering out the windshield at the brightly colored stucco façade of the Show Me! bar.

  I can’t believe I did, either, John thought, baring his back teeth to bite back a groan as he shoved open the car door and maneuvered himself out. Because if there was anything more humiliating than bringing his mother to a nudie bar, it was asking for her help in getting out of the car to go inside said nudie bar. “Give me a shove, will you, Mom?”

  She planted her hands against his back and offered a hearty heave-ho. “I can’t believe you brought me here,” she said again. “What a disgusting place.” She made a show of shuddering, to John, looking very much like a Yorkie shaking off a dousing of water. “I feel like I need a shower just sitting here in the parking lot.”

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” John promised, closing the door behind him.

  The scrape of rusted hinges as she opened the driver’s door stopped him cold. “You can’t possibly expect me to stay here all by myself,” Wilma said.

  He turned. “Mom,” he protested.

  “Someone might see me,” Wilma said, wide-eyed and in a faux-horrified stage whisper. “Someone might recognize me. And let’s not even mention the fact that a woman my age sitting in a car by herself is a prime target for carjackers.”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot. The islands are just rife with that kind of thing.” John rolled his eyes heav
enward, wondering if death by vampire bite would really be such a bad thing after all.

  It was late afternoon and the bar was relatively empty. While John lumbered into the showroom—having shelled out the twenty-dollar cover charge—Wilma stayed in the lobby, pretending to be occupied by racks of neon-colored T-shirts, shorts and other tacky souvenirs.

  “Well, hey, look who it is,” said Jame Covey—he of the no-S-on-the-end, circa-1970s mullet cut and the Mack truck physique—as John limped to the bar. Covey’s mouth stretched wide in an oily grin that looked eerily like a great white shark’s flipped upside down. “Mr. Harker, private investigator.”

  “Call me John.”

  “Good to see you again, man.” Covey cut his eyes down, taking in John’s appearance. “Looking a little rough,” he remarked, and there was something in his eyes as he said this, a cold and malicious sort of glee. “What happened? That barracuda bite you’d told me about turn bad?”

  “Yeah. Ha, ha.” Using his right hand, John hefted his immobilized left and plopped it onto the bar. “I’m looking for Wilder.”

  Covey chuckled. “I bet you are.” He said this in an undertone and if the song blaring from the speakers overhead hadn’t ended at about the same time, allowing a moment of heavy silence to fall upon the room, John probably would have missed it.

  “I know he’s in Miami,” John said. “But since that’s the sixth most populated metropolitan area in the continental United States, I’m hoping maybe you can narrow it down for me a little more than that.”

  “Fifth,” Covey said. “According to the Census Bureau, the Miami metro area is the fifth largest in the U.S. The United Nations estimates it’s the fourth. It was also ranked as the country’s cleanest city by Forbes magazine a couple of years ago.”