by Graham Brown
LEROY ATHERTON stared at the notice on the door of his dingy apartment. He tried to focus on the words, but for some reason, he couldn’t make out the letters, as if they were scrambled. It didn’t matter; he knew what it was. He’d already been given three others like it.
Eviction notices. He was pretty sure this would be the last one.
He tried his key, noticed it didn’t work, and then realized there was a shiny new lock where the old tarnished one used to be. Furious, he stepped up and busted in the door.
It was dark inside. He stumbled around. Some of his stuff was gone, but some of it was still there. He flicked on a light switch, but nothing happened.
“Damn it,” he mumbled.
He had a headache. In fact, his temples hurt like someone was pressing on them with their thumbs. He made his way down the hall to the bathroom.
The lights were on in there. Not bright, but dimly lit and bluish-green in tint. He twisted the old four-pronged faucet. At first, nothing happened. He turned it one way and then the other and then the other. Nothing, not even a sound, emanated from the faucet, and then, finally, cold water started running.
He splashed it on his face, but he didn’t really feel it. He cupped his hands under the water and scooped a couple of mouthfuls, but he couldn’t really taste it. He found he was still thirsty.
Leroy looked up into the mirror and dried his face off with an old brown towel that was in his hand. He opened the medicine cabinet. Lots of bottles. He looked through them, turning them and sliding them and looking for a familiar label. Nothing—no Tylenol, no aspirin, no Advil.
There had to be something for pain, he told himself. He continued shuffling through the cabinet until he noticed something strange. The vertical fluorescent lights on either side of the mirror were dimming and then growing brighter and then dimming again.
It almost looked like they were breathing.
Leroy closed the mirror and then cautiously tapped one of the bulbs with his finger. The light stabilized, and Leroy looked up. Reflected in the mirror, he saw a figure standing behind him.
He swung around. “Tre?”
Leroy could hardly believe what he was seeing. He stared at his son—with no bullet holes, no blood-soaked clothes. He wanted to grab him. Somehow, he knew he couldn’t.
“What are you still doing here, Dad?”
“What am I doing here?” Leroy said. “This is our home.”
“Is it?”
Leroy was surprised. His son spoke very calmly.
“Why are you here, Tre?”
“To bring you a message.”
“What kind of message?”
“You don’t belong here anymore,” his son told him.
“That’s just a damn eviction notice,” Leroy replied. “They have to take me to court first.”
Tre didn’t answer; he just stared at his father. He seemed to be throbbing with energy, just like the lights. It was the same pattern, the same pace.
“Just listen for the sound,” Tre said. “When you hear it…You’ll know what to do.”
The image of his son began to blur and fade.
“Wait!” Leroy grabbed for him, but the boy was gone. He fell to the floor and woke up to the sight of a weathered, tan-faced man shaking him by the shoulders.
Leroy glanced around. The open floor of the homeless shelter was filled with cots. A hundred people were looking in his direction. It was the middle of the night. The man who’d woken him was a Navajo Indian.
“You were shouting,” he said. “Are you all right?”
Leroy focused. He was right where he’d fallen asleep, in the shelter he’d come to after finding himself locked out of his apartment. “I’m okay,” he said. “I had a dream about my son.”
“It was more than a dream,” the Navajo man said. “I saw the light descend upon you. It was breathing.”
“Breathing?”
“Yes,” the man said. “The great sprit wants something from you. That’s why he sent a messenger, to help guide you down the right path.”
Leroy listened intensely, but a young man from two cots over broke his train of thought.
“Man, ain’t no light came running around here. That crazy old Indian is a fool, and your dumb ass is keeping the whole place up.”
A few snickers and laughs came from other men on various cots.
The Indian man put a finger to his lips and then whispered. “What did the dream want? What did it ask you to do?”
“I don’t know,” Leroy said, throwing off his blanket. “But I know one thing for sure, I’m not gonna find out around here.”
He pulled on his old shoes, grabbed his coat, and then stood.
“Can I have your blanket?” the old Navajo asked.
“It’s all yours,” Leroy said, smiling, and then he turned and made his way to the front door.
He had no idea where he was going, or any idea why, but for the first time in as long as he could remember, he was moving with a purpose and he knew he didn’t want to stop. He knew inside himself that he had somewhere else to be.
CHAPTER 30
THE LIGHT of the supernova continued to burn in the sky, but it had been dimming each night since its initial appearance. Its reflection shimmered off the waters of the bayou, the almost-perfect image lying flat on the surface until Terrance disturbed it by cupping the water in his hands and wetting his lips.
It had been a long, hard walk for the old man. Terrance felt around for his partner, a woman in her fifties, Bella Jackson, his second wife.
“This walk is beginning to take its toll on me; I’m not as young as I used to be.”
“You’re also not as good-looking,” Bella said. “None of us are.”
“It’s a good thing I’m blind, then,” Terrance said as he struggled to his feet, with Bella giving him a hand.
“It’s not much farther now.”
They were heading for an area deep in the bayou, far from civilization. Even the service roads got you only so close.
After the Civil War, small plantations had sprung up in the area, often divided into sections for sharecroppers to work the land. But it was hard to make a living on forty acres. The soil was poor and the crops weak. When it came time to pay, there often wasn’t enough. In time, the land was sold off and given to other uses.
A couple of buildings, now dilapidated by time and the elements, sat on the property. One was an old juke hall, from a time when the nights seemed to never end and they were filled with laughter and music.
Today even those buildings sat empty. The only thing that took place here now was the ritual of voodoo rites that were best done where no one would see them.
As Terrance and Bella approached the site, a low drumbeat could be heard. And through the trees, the flickering orange light of fires could be seen burning. As they stepped into the clearing, Terrance could feel the heat, and he could see the arrangement in his mind, a group of six fires spread out in the open. They formed two perfect triangles—one for the living and one for the dead. Each of them was encircled by a line of mystic ash that cut them off from the rest of the world.
The triangle was an ancient symbol referring to the meeting of mind, body, and soul, which many religions used even today. Some even considered the Trinity of Christianity to be derived from a similar line of thought.
“How will it work?” Bella asked.
“There are two realms,” Terrance explained, “the living and the dead. Most things exist in one realm or the other, but the Nosferatu and certain other entities are caught in between, trapped in the void. They need nothing, much like the dead, but they want the taste of life, a hint of what was torn from them, their living souls. But now something else has crossed over, something Drake said has the power to turn them back. He called it an ‘abomination,’ but considering the source, I think it’s something brighter.”
“Is he afraid of it?”
Terrance thought about that. There was fear in Drake, but it wasn’t th
e angel he feared.
“No,” he said. “Drake wants me to bring it here, to call it like I once called him. But to call those in the void, we need a scent, and the only scent powerful enough to draw in the undead is the burning of the dead and the releasing of their souls.”
Decaying animals lay on the ground around them—road-kill, in some cases, as well as downed farm animals and dead things from the swamps. He didn’t tell Bella, but his followers had dug up graves and thrown old human bodies on the fires as well. As the bonfires rose, their ashes were sent high into the night’s sky. The winds would do the rest.
In the triangle of the living, a naked couple danced seductively, high on a concoction of wine and aphrodisiacs. Soon they would begin to make love. Terrance couldn’t see them, but he could feel their presence. He could feel the scent of life flowing from the place.
“Drake had better be right about his presence warding off the others, or we’ll have a problem,” Terrance said. “Can you take me inside?”
Bella led him past the ritual to one of the old dilapidated buildings. Once inside, she guided him to a wooden table near one of the rooted-out windows. She pulled a tumbler and a bottle from her coat pocket and poured him a drink of whiskey.
She then looked to the darkest corner of the room. “I don’t suppose you drink,” she said.
“Leave us,” Drake replied.
She tensed, but Terrance touched her arm. “It will be okay.”
She put the bottle down and stepped back and out into the night.
As she left, Drake came forward.
Terrance said nothing. He just took off his hat, placed it on the table, and drained the half-filled tumbler.
“Does she know?” Drake asked.
“Know what?” Terrance said.
“That you’re doing this to see Vivian again.”
“I told her what you told me,” Terrance said, “that Vivian could come back, that her children—our children—were in danger if I didn’t do what you said. But I’m not a fool, Drake. I know Vivian wouldn’t stay with an old man like me. That don’t mean she deserved what you did to her.”
“She chose, just like all of us.”
“She was a child.”
“Old enough to be with you.”
That she was. Terrance pushed the glass forward. “Mind doing the honors?”
Drake took the bottle of whiskey and refilled the glass. “That’s all incidental now,” he insisted. “If you want Vivian to live again—in human form—then you’ll finish your part. Things will come full circle, and our business will be finally settled.”
A long pause seemed to hold both parties in check, their uneasy relationship wearing thin. Drake slid the glass in front of Terrance, who picked it up and held it in Drake’s general direction as if getting ready to make a toast.
“I’m an old man now,” he said to Drake. “I don’t have many natural years left, so I don’t care much if you keep coming around me. But my family, I won’t have that. So you listen and listen good. You took an oath to leave us alone. As far as I’m concerned, you took another one when you asked me to do this. I’m doin’ it. I’m doing my part. But so help me, if you don’t keep your word this time, I swear to you—with all the power I possess—that, when I pass on, I’ll reach back into this world from the next one and make sure you’re sorry.”
With that, Terrance tipped the glass back, knocked the whiskey down, and then banged the glass firmly back on the table.
Drake paused, but his thoughts moved quickly.
Perhaps he had pushed this too far. Perhaps he had played with this voodoo priest for too long. The truth was, Terrance was powerful, a master. If anyone could cross back over the void and create trouble for him, Terrance would be the one.
The thought flittered away as quick as it had come. Drake didn’t fear Terrance. In a way, he was almost fond of him. He poured Terrance another shot. “You have nothing to worry about, old man. When this is over, you’ll never see me again.”
CHAPTER 31
A COLD drizzle fell over Baltimore, not enough to do anything but keep the people inside. For James Hecht, that was a problem. Disfigured from his battle with Christian, he couldn’t show his face—or what was left of it—in the places he was used to frequenting. And with no one on the street, he was desperate for a fix.
He stumbled through the night, his clothes muddy, his hair matted to his head. He crossed through back alleys in the tougher parts of town, but still hadn’t found anyone. Finally, he came to an underpass. A small fire burned underneath it, stoked in a dented orange-and-white highway barrel. Three homeless men stood around it trying to keep warm, wrapped in whatever they had scavenged.
Hecht limped up to them, his side still aching from the knife wound Christian had left him with. It reminded him of a similar pain he’d felt a hundred and fifty years before.
The homeless men watched him suspiciously.
He held up his hands to show them he had nothing. “Okay if I join you?”
One of them nodded. A second one moved around the side, making space for Hecht.
Hecht stepped out of the drizzle and moved toward the orange-and-white barrel. It smelled of gasoline and plastic—things they’d probably used to get it going. Two-by-fours and a broken chair back seemed to be the main source of wood.
The men held their hands over it, warming them on the heat of the fire. The irony, Hecht thought. It had been one of his favorite feelings.
Hecht mimicked them, though he felt nothing.
“You new here?” one of the men asked. “I ain’t seen you around.”
Hecht nodded. “Down from New York.”
As he watched one of them chew on some food from a dumpster, Hecht’s mind began to churn. What he would do to feel the heat, to taste the food. Even food from a garbage heap was more than he could imagine. These men were the bottom of the human chain. And yet, their lives were like kings compared to his.
He held his hands closer to the fire. He sensed the flames licking him, but he felt nothing, no warmth.
“What’s up with your face?” another one asked, spotting the back alley stitch job on Hecht’s nose.
“Nothing,” Hecht said.
“That’s gotta hurt.”
Hecht ignored him, pressing his hands closer until the flames were singeing his palms, melting his skin. Still, he felt nothing. The anger boiled up inside him.
“Hey, man, what are you doing?” the guy with the sandwich said.
“Trying to get warm,” Hecht said.
“You gonna burn.”
One day, Hecht thought. One day I will. But not today.
The man closest to Hecht grabbed his hand and pulled it back. Hecht looked up at him and snapped. He lunged forward, knocking over the barrel in the process.
Burning wood and sparks and kindling flew through the air. The barrel clanged down loudly ten feet away. The other two men scattered as Hecht landed on the first with his hands around the man’s throat.
“What do you feel?” Hecht shouted.
The man’s eyes bulged. He couldn’t move or speak.
Hecht glanced up to see the other homeless men running out into the rain. He was alone. Just as he wanted to be. The man in his clutches gurgled and fought, but his strength was nothing compared to Hecht’s.
Hecht yanked him up and dragged him over to where the remnants of the fire burned. When life coursed through the Nosferatu, different passions came out. Some liked sex, others food, but James Hecht only wanted to feel the warmth of a flame running across his palm. It reminded him of his real life, a time before electricity, when fire was heat and light.
He could barely wait to feel it again. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife. He flicked it open, but before he could use it, a strange sensation came over him. He felt dizzy for a moment.
He hesitated, tried to clear his mind and looked at the man in his grasp.
The wave of dizziness floated over him again. His ears be
gan to ring. His mind began to waver. He couldn’t really place it, it was no more than the slightest tone, like the sound of silence.
He stopped what he was doing and glanced around, looking for the source of the noise in his mind. The underpass was empty. The rain still fell beyond the shelter of the concrete above, but there was nothing to see.
Hecht considered the possibility of madness. Who had more right to madness than him? But even as he looked around and tried to ignore it, the ringing in his ears grew stronger.
Hecht looked down at the man he was about to bleed, released him, and stood up. He stepped back, feeling a little dizzy. He stumbled around from one side of the underpass to the other, looking out into the misty rain. It seemed like something was out there, calling to him.
As Hecht stumbled around, the homeless man got to his feet and scrambled away. Hecht didn’t hear him running off, he didn’t see him and didn’t care. He was studying the steel beams above, as if the ringing was coming from them or maybe from the road up on top. There was a power to that sound, a power he needed to find.
He stepped out into the rain and scrambled up the muddy embankment to the road above. He looked left and then right. There was nothing to be seen.
Finally, he began to understand, began to feel the depth of the world. The tone was coming from somewhere else, somewhere far away. It was calling him, offering him some form of sweetness he could hardly remember, it was offering him… life.
With great conviction, Hecht turned his eyes to the south, and without looking back, he walked off into the night and the pouring rain.
CHAPTER 32
ELSA’S WORDS flowed like water in Christian’s mind.
The calling will test you and tempt you and try to break your will as nothing before ever has…If you chase the moment you seek, it will hide. But if you wait, if you lie quiet and still, it will come to you.
He’d been prepared himself, but he’d never expected the calling to feel as it did. After forty-eight hours of fighting against it, the sound rang in his head like a deep bass drum. It whispered to him like a lover. The invisible scent of life was like the fragrance of a feast to a starving man.
