“I guess not.”
Dugan guessed the man stood just under six feet. In human years, he was perhaps late thirties or early forties. His hair was medium-length and bluish black, with some sort of gel sweeping the hair away from his high forehead and graying temples. His yellow eyes stared at Dugan from beneath razor sharp eyebrows. A network of scars ran along both sides of his mouth and through his reddish black lips. His suit fit so well it might be a second skin. His black tasseled shoes were polished to a bright sheen.
Walking from the fireplace, he sat down in the chair opposite Dugan. When he looked up again there was a slight smile on his face. “Describe it for me,” he asked. “Tell me how it feels when you do it.”
Dugan was puzzled by the question. The man obviously knew all about it. But he decided to be polite and do his best.
“Well . . . it’s kind of hard to describe,” he began. “For me, it’s like time stands still. Everything seems to freeze up. I remember there was this one time . . .” He hesitated, unused to talking about such things.
“Go on,” the man said. “Please.”
“Well, one time I was outside and it started raining. I got an idea. I wanted to see what it looked like. The rain, I mean. What it really looked like. So I concentrated real hard . . . and then it was like the rain stopped. The drops just hung in the air. It was beautiful. I remember reaching out for a single drop and touching it with the end of my finger. It felt like a tiny water balloon. Then, I flicked it and it went a few feet and crashed against another raindrop, then another and another, until the weight of it I guess sent all of ‘em falling down.”
“Then what happened?” the man asked.
Dugan smiled shyly at the memory. “Just a second later, before I knew it, the rain started up again and I got soaked.” He looked at the man. “And that’s when I learned it was only a temporary thing.”
The man chuckled. “You know, that’s probably the best explanation for it I’ve ever heard. Funny, in all my years, I have never done that. Never even thought about doing it. Playing with the rain, I mean.” He went quiet for a moment before laughing. “Out of the mouth of babes.”
His voice was deep and warm. But his face suddenly took on a darker tone. When he spoke next his voice was harsh. “I see you have augmented your diet since last I saw you.”
Dugan looked down in shame. Was it that obvious, he thought? In his mind, he answered his own question. Of course it was. After a moment, the man spoke again.
“Who was it?” His voice was gentler, but to Dugan, his words were less a question than a demand.
“It was . . . just a guy at the carnival,” he answered. “The son of the owner.”
“What happened?” the man asked.
Dugan paused a moment to find the right words.
“I . . . caught him doing something really bad,” he said. “I didn’t plan on it or anything, honest! But . . . I got mad. I don’t even remember it, really . . . “
“That’s a lie, boy,” the man said, “and you know it.”
It was a lie. Dugan did know it. He remembered every second. But the man didn’t press the issue.
“We’ll talk more about that later,” the man continued. “Plenty of time for that. It’s just that there are things you need to learn about yourself. Do you have any idea how remarkable it is that you are even here? That you are even alive?”
Dugan shrugged. There had been some narrow escapes, that was true. A colorful mural of a boy who looked nothing like him flashed in his mind.
“Can you tell me about it? You’re change, I mean. What you remember of it.”
Dugan thought the question strange, asking, “How do you know I can’t remember?”
“You forget, I am like you,” the man answered. “Now. Please. Tell me about it.”
Putting his head down, Dugan picked out a spot on the carpet to stare at. He told his story in a monotone, what he could remember anyway. The pain as his insides ripped out. Flashes of half remembered faces of young people like himself who helped him as best they could. The all consuming hunger and thirst. Though Dugan had all but forgotten the man’s face except when staring at his picture, he talked about his uncle, how during the most painful part of his change, his uncle had shown up to thrust a soothing needle into his veins.
Glancing up while telling that part of the story, Dugan thought he might have seen a look of concern, even fear, appear on the man’s face. Setting that aside, Dugan went on to tell of his escape from a house, and a neighborhood, and the half remembered sounds of helicopters circling overhead. He spoke of the smell of his uncle’s fear as they approached checkpoints leading out of town.
He then told of their long drive cross country and how they had run out of the precious fluid the man kept stored in the trunk. Surprising even himself, Dugan spoke for the first time of his own futile attempts to hunt rabbit and other nighttime creatures, and of his only successful hunt, a dead possum he had found by the side of the road. That had provided weak sustenance for a few days. Then, he told about the pigs, and Fred and Maria, and the night the men and machines came.
When he saw another knowing look bloom on the man’s face, Dugan interrupted his story to ask, “Who are those people? Do you know?”
The man nodded gravely. “All in good time, my boy,” he answered. “All in good time. Now, please continue.”
Dugan recounted the chase through the desert night, and the train that happened by without a second to spare. He smiled when talking about Rudy and Gunther and Alice and the rest. He spoke lovingly of his time in the carnival, but stopped short of mentioning the poker game that caused Buck to crack, or any details of his murder. Glancing up, Dugan could tell the man knew he was leaving out important details. But the look on his face also seemed to say that there were some things all men kept to themselves.
During the silence that passed after Dugan told his story, the man got up, brought over a pitcher of the red liquid, and poured Dugan another cup. He poured himself a mug and sat down again. After taking a long sip, the liquid pulsing through his veins, Dugan broke the silence.
“How did you know of me?”
The man laughed, an almost musical high-pitched giggle. Dugan couldn’t help but smile when hearing it. Such a laugh seemed so unlike the cultured man who sat before him.
“I daresay, young man,” he said. “Anyone coming within a thousand miles of me who call themselves “Vampire Boy!” is going to come to my attention. Let’s just say . . . there’s a grapevine.”
“Are there lots of us?” Dugan asked. He remembered feeling their presence scattered here and there throughout his long trip.
“Not as many as you might think,” the man answered. “Not when the average life span for those like us is no more than fourteen days, give or take.”
Dugan was stunned. “But I thought . . .” He let the half finished thought dangle there a moment before just shaking his head.
There was so much he didn’t know. But he became more certain with each passing moment that this was a man who could provide some answers. Buried deep within his own heart — though he had never dared articulate it — what he wanted most to know was about himself. Who was he, really? Where had he come from? He also wanted to know more about the people whose faces showed up in his dreams, though he wasn’t sure the man could help him with that.
When he realized his mind was wandering, he raised his head and saw the man was smiling. It must be the liquid, Dugan thought. It was playing tricks with his mind and loosening his tongue.
“It’s getting early,” the man said. “What’s say we take a quick walk up to the roof before bedding down?” The man got up from his chair. Dugan followed.
They left the room and walked down the hall to an atrium-like area with elegant staircases going up and a glass elevator in the center. Dugan followed the man into the elevator and watched him press a button labeled “Roof.” As the elevator ascended, Dugan saw each of the floors in this section of the ho
use had a balconied landing that looked down upon the atrium. Turning his eyes forward, he noticed the exterior walls of this part of the house were made of glass, all looking down upon the bright and shining city below.
When the elevator stopped, the doors opened onto a lobby with deep red carpet. Dugan could hear the wind whipping on the walls outside. The man went to a closet and pulled out a long wool jacket, handing it to Dugan before taking one for himself. After putting it on, Dugan followed the man to a pair of steel doors. The man pushed them open, and the two stepped outside into what looked like heaven’s waiting room. Beyond the fields of neatly tended grass and forest that Dugan earlier walked through, the city of Colorado Springs lay at their feet. Dugan saw lights coming on here and there, the city waking itself to face the new day. Caught up in the view of the city below, he felt the man take him gently by the shoulder and turn him around to show him the even more remarkable scene that lay behind them, the lone majestic mountain that loomed over it all.
“What is it?” Dugan asked rapturously. The man’s voice seemed equally awed when he answered.
“Pike’s Peak,” he said. “The Garden of the Gods.”
“It’s beautiful,” Dugan said.
“It is,” the man answered. “So beautiful, in fact, that it inspired a woman named Katharine Lee Bates to write a song about it. I’ll bet you’ve even heard it.”
Dugan waited expectantly before turning to the man. He had a glint in his eye that reminded Dugan of Fred showing off his horns.
“’For purple mountains majesty, above the fruited plain’ . . .”
Dugan smiled. He remembered that much. America the Beautiful. It was the song that played over the intercom every night to signal the closing of the carnival.
The two stayed a few more minutes taking in the scene until the first traces of brightness signaled the night was about to end. Before they made their exit, Dugan turned again to take in the city below. The man gave him a moment and smiled before he spoke.
“Plenty of time for that,” he said. “For now, let’s find you a place to stay and we can pick things up again tomorrow. You’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of you, though. I can promise you that right now.”
The two descended in the elevator where through its glass windows, hints of purplish blue began to appear in the sky above the city. Dugan felt the first stirrings of the inertia that afflicted him each day at this time. But somehow — whether it was the liquid or the air or simply being in the company of another like himself who seemed to have everything figured out — it wasn’t at all unpleasant. He wasn’t surprised to see the elevator not stop on the first floor but keep on going beneath the ground. After what he had already seen of this place, he wasn’t sure anything here would surprise him.
The sub-basement too was carpeted a deep, rich red. Still more paintings and other objects of art hung on wood paneled walls. What was displayed down here differed from the floors above. Unlike the portraits of old women and ballerinas and still lifes that dominated the upstairs, here were classically painted scenes of battle and death and crucifixion.
They passed a number of closed doors until the man stopped to open a door on the right and showed Dugan in. The room was sparsely furnished, with an antique desk set against one wall and a bureau against another. There was a sitting area in front of an unlit fireplace. To the right of a large bed was a closed door that led to something beyond.
“I think you’ll find everything you need in here,” the man said, smiling kindly. “And I’m very glad you decided to join us. I think you will find ultimately you have made the correct decision. Sleep well now, boy.”
Turning, he left to walk back down the hallway the two had come. Dugan watched him leave and then entered the room.
After closing the door, he began to get that familiar underwater feeling. His mind grew fuzzy. There was no time to explore. But curiosity got the better of him and he approached the door along the far wall. Opening it, he saw it was a smaller room with a single object within, a casket sitting atop a red velvet draped pedestal. The top of the casket was raised as if in invitation. Dugan backed away.
No thanks, he thought.
He closed the door just as his knees began to buckle.
After taking two steps, his knees did buckle and he collapsed to the floor. Deeper underwater now, he had just enough time to crawl across the floor and underneath the bed, kicking the coverlet closed behind him before he died yet again.
3
As the days turned into weeks, and the stifling heat of the long summer collided with the first crisp hints of an Oklahoma autumn, the boy’s trail went cold. There had been no trace of him since his daring escape into the desert, though early on there had been a few promising leads. But the bloody double murder in Tucson turned out to be merely a love triangle gone bad. The dog found impaled on a white picket fence in Amarillo was simply the result of a dispute between neighbors.
Arthur kept a close eye on the southwest region over those first few days and weeks, but as time went by, he suspected the boy was dead. That he had survived as long as he had was a miracle in itself, but stragglers never lasted long on their own. He wanted to interview the boy’s uncle to learn exactly how he had managed to keep both himself and the boy alive. The few minutes he had with him before the CIA took him into their own custody were fruitless. The man wasn’t talking.
The old man insisted he touch base with Richards regularly to keep him appraised of the situation. In their last phone conversation, Richards intimated the DCI was not happy to hear the boy had escaped. He had further insisted in no uncertain terms that his capture remain a high priority. Even so, Arthur had been surprised to hear a kind of distracted tone in Richards’ voice. The man who didn’t seem to take much of anything seriously had something on his mind he wasn’t sharing. But, no matter. Arthur had secrets of his own. In fact, he was looking at one right now. Wilson had done his usual thorough job.
His report on the Stetson boy revealed a young man who, like Arthur himself, had been born into privilege and gone to the best private schools, The Steward School through eighth grade and then off to Andover. He maintained good grades throughout. He had been just a toddler when his father became Governor, and the report contained a number of family photographs that had been circulated over the years to the newspapers for public consumption. One of them had even become something of an icon. It showed the then three-year-old scion of the famous family whispering into his father’s ear during a meeting with the president. He had to go to the bathroom. Even the taciturn president who would later resign in disgrace was smiling.
While looking through the pictures, Arthur was again startled at the young man’s resemblance to the Dugan boy. Reaching for his wallet, he removed the photograph of the now undead boy and placed it beside the most recent photograph of young Stetson. There was no denying it. Aside from the length of Dugan’s hair, the two were dead ringers.
The last page of Wilson’s report made clear that something had happened to the Stetson boy this past February, when his parents had unceremoniously pulled him from Andover. Strange they would do it mid-term, Arthur thought. Wilson could provide no reason for it. The boy’s grades had remained strong. He was the captain of the junior varsity lacrosse team. He had already paid for an upcoming trip to Paris with his French class, scheduled for later on in the spring. There was no record of the boy having enrolled anywhere else for the upcoming fall semester. Wilson postulated — and he was quite clear it was only a guess — that perhaps he was being home schooled. The report ended on a curious note, that the boy’s roommate at Andover had completed the spring term, but he too had left the school headed to a military academy in Texas for the fall semester. Arthur sat back a moment and calculated the school was only about ninety minutes away by helicopter. That was convenient.
4
Dugan awoke the next evening to find himself in yet another strange place. It took a few moments after coming out of his fugue to remember
his journey from the carnival to the house on the hill. Crawling from beneath the bed, he opened the hallway door to see a tray had been prepared for him. There was a pitcher of the rich, dark liquid along with a dozen strips of a delicate, rare meat. He carried the tray to the desk and ate ravenously. The meat had a gamey flavor similar to the taste of the liquid. He could imagine himself becoming quite used to them both.
That evening, the man laughed when Dugan confessed his embarrassment. He had talked so much about himself the night before that he neglected to ask his host’s name.
“Julian,” the man answered. “Julian Mallett.”
The two were again in the small study where a warm fire burned. Dugan had a thousand questions but didn’t want to seem impolite. The man sensed his confusion.
“What’s on your mind, son?” he asked. “Go ahead. Feel free to ask anything you like.” After a moment, Dugan did.
“Who are you?” he asked. “Where did you come from? What is this place?” He stopped himself from asking anything more and looked down, somehow ashamed he’d even asked that. His voice had seemed too loud in the confines of the small room. Julian just laughed.
“Those are big questions,” he said, “and a lot of ground to cover. But what the hell. We’ve both got lots of time.”
Getting up, he grabbed a pitcher that was warming on the hearth. He filled both Dugan’s mug and his own before setting it back down and making himself comfortable in his chair. He took a long sip of the warm liquid. His eyes took on a faraway look as he began to speak.
5
“I was born Joseph Kummler, in Cumberland Ohio, in 1837, though it may have been a year earlier or a year later. As you might imagine, they didn’t keep the most exacting records back then. My parents were itinerant farmers who had come from Germany seeking a better life in America. Though I was the eldest, my parents sometimes spoke in hushed whispers of an older brother named Wilhelm, who had died during their ocean passage. But death became a constant presence for me as I watched four brothers and sisters all succumb before my tenth birthday. In 1849, when my mother and only remaining sister were lost to the cholera outbreak, my father and I were the only ones left to remember that any of them had ever lived at all.
Applewood (Book 2): Fledge Page 16
