by Ian Hall
Ker-ching! One could do a lot of damage with five-hundred bucks. Time to shop.
On the main street stood this sweet little vintage clothing shop just calling my name. Since I’d left home I pretty much just had the clothes on my back and no money to buy new ones. I mean, like Lyman, I would have had a pretty tidy inheritance coming my way. But, to date, my parents hadn’t even been declared dead; add to that I was a wanted felon. So, I would never see a penny of it.
With the debit card burning a hole in my pocket, I found my way into Lucy’s Closet. Cute name. Walking in, my senses were immediately assaulted by two things: nineteen-fifty pastels everywhere and a tingling up my spine.
By the way the lady at the counter froze in her tracks (she was collecting a bunch of garments another woman had been placing on consignment) and glared at me, I knew she felt it, too.
Presumably…that would be Lucy.
She was an older vampire; turned in her late thirties or early forties. Her brown hair had the faintest streaks of gray at the temples, and creases around her eyes. She wore an attractive, feminine, yellow and blue frock that screamed “housewife.” She even had a strand of pearls around her neck. This chick was so dead opposite of Hannah that I almost wondered if I’d pegged her wrong. Lucy looked more like my mother than some Amos Blanche henchman.
After a few frozen seconds, “Lucy” broke her eyes away from me and continued at her work. I wandered around the store, barely able to absorb the colorful garments on display. My mind swum with matters (dare I say it) more important than shopping.
It made sense. If Lucy was a Blanche vampire and turned mid last century, some part of her would feel connected to the time period her store represented. Personally, if I was going old-school fashion, it’d be eighties “Flash dance” styles. But, June Freaking Cleaver up at the counter fit in perfectly here.
That made me think of Jackson and his magic with the guitar. He was almost always playing Elvis or Buddy Holly – rock stars from his time; the time before he got turned. Made me wonder if I’d have some overwhelming connection to Lady Gaga for the rest of my life; dang, I hope not.
For good measure, without even really looking at it, I yanked a yellow, button-up sweater from one of the hangers and went to stand in line. Lucy’s hands were shaking as she folded up the last couple items. She made a point out of not acknowledging me. Bad business for the owner of a small shop.
“Okay, Donna,” Lucy said without looking up, “everything seems to be in pretty good condition. I’ll take it all. I just need to signature on the consignment agreement.”
Donna, a plump old chick with a mess of blue curls on her head scratched her autograph out super quick then turned to have a look at me. Man, humans did not age well. Her face was a roadmap of wrinkles and so much extra flesh hung off her chin, she could have made a whole other person from it.
“Oh…that’s going to look so adorable on you, sweetheart. The yellow’s going to set off that gorgeous blonde hair of yours.”
I cringed inside, knowing how wrong she was; yellow was a horrible color on me. I just smiled and let it go, but the crazy old broad kept beaming at me like some long-lost relative.
“Just look at that figure,” she told Lucy. “What a lovely thing! Oh, to be that young again.”
Donna snatched a blue-and-white checkered A-line skirt (no poodle, thank God) off the counter and held it up to me. It would have taken about ten of them to cover her enormous bulk but she proudly declared it had once made her feel like Betty Page when she wore it. Like I’d know who Betty Page was…
“Now, wouldn’t this just be divine with that sweater, Lucy? Show off that tiny little waist of hers…”
Lucy grunted her disinterest.
“All you need is a nice pair of saddle shoes to complete the look.”
Helpful Donna also presented a pair of these black n’ white lace up disasters. Okay, fine. Mrs. Consignment was trying to make a sale. With Lyman’s debit card at my disposal, I figured I’d make it easy on her and then she could get on her way.
“Oh! They’re perfect!” I said, all frilly and excited. “My school’s having a fifty’s dance in a couple weeks so I really want to make sure I look the part.”
Then I turned my attention to Lucy.
“A lot of girls at school have been talking about your shop. There’s gonna be a huge raid this weekend,” I giggled. Donna’s eyes got big with dollar signs. Lucy kept any expression from her face. “So, I wanted to make sure I got here before all the good stuff had gone. Ditched school today and everything…”
“Smart girl!” Donna practically applauded in her approval.
Still nothing from Lucy.
“But, I’ll need to get back to town before my mom gets home and listens to the answering machine…” I sidled in front of Donna to the counter. “So…if you don’t mind…”
“Oh no, my dear. You go right ahead.” Donna winked at Lucy. “I think I have a few more treasures back at the house; I know my sisters will. Don’t want to miss out on the weekend rush, y’know…”
Donna floated to the exit with about a million reminders to Lucy that she’d be back within the week. Lucy never said a word - not until we were alone.
She propped her elbows on the counter, her upper torso leaning all the way over to my side. When she finally spoke to me, her voice sounded dry and tired.
“Where are you from, young lady?”
I kept my gaze real steady. Sure, I felt intimidated. If Lucy was a Blanche vampire (which she WAS for sure), I could be in for the fight of my young vampire life. So, I tried real hard not to appear weak.
“Everton,” I replied; my voice shook. Shit.
“Everton? You know, my shop’s only been around for a few weeks. Odd that it’d be so famous all the way back in Everton.”
“What can I say? We’re all a bunch of rich, snot-nosed shop-a-holics. Can’t keep rumors of a good store down…”
“Cut the shit, girl.”
Ooh. Goodbye June Cleaver. Hello Rosanne Barr. Or worse.
Taking the Investigation Outside
It’s difficult to be enthusiastic about something if you feel shitty. We all know that, but after I started taking the vitamin pills, I felt fantastic. So, by the converse of the statement, I should have been feeling enthusiastic about getting the project onto the den walls, but I wasn’t.
My sudden new lease on life made me see one thing very clearly; Mary-Christine was certainly not as ‘all-over-me’ as before. I mean, left on our own for a few days certainly brought back the make-out sessions, but little else. Almost as if she were going through the motions, you know, the way when you’re undecided about someone; maybe even getting ready to give them up.
The worst thing was… I’d kinda gotten used to Mandy being here. At least she’d shown some enthusiasm.
With Mary-Christine’s lack of attention, maybe I’d looked for it somewhere else, and that upset me. Don’t get me wrong, when I thought of Mandy, it wasn’t in a sexual way, but I knew that it wasn’t in a strictly brother-sister way, either. She was vivacious, exciting, funny, and very clever; almost all the things that Mary-Christine had been before I got turned.
But we did get some work done over the first day or so.
We made it our task to target Phoenix, see what we could dig up there, and boy did we find a lot of stuff you don’t find in the newspapers.
Seems that Phoenix was reportedly the “Kidnapping Capital of the World.” So I looked under the statistics, and found that the police department down there had a really crappy, old computer system. I turned from my screen to see Mary-Christine looking at me.
“What’s up?” I asked, a smile covering my tension.
“Just lookin’,” she said, and returned the grin. “You’re really getting better, huh?”
“I feel great, Buffy!” I wheeled my chair towards hers. “The vitamins are really doing the trick.” Our knees touched, and we held hands there. “We don’t really know if th
is ‘battle’ is going to be temporary or long-term, but I can be this way for the rest of my life.”
I could feel her hand wanting to draw back. “There is something else, Mary-Christine, isn’t there?”
Her eyes glassed up. “Lyman, we know that you’re a Helsing; that much is true. And we know that you’re as committed to getting to the bottom of this as anyone, maybe more.”
“Yeah, Mary-Christine! They raped and killed my parents!”
She held her hands up. “I know, I know.” She swept the hair back from her face. Man, she looked pretty. “We go back to school on Monday. Are you ready for it? Can you take the normality again?”
Wow, for some reason I hadn’t expected that one. I’d been ready for the ‘let’s break up’ one, or the ‘time apart’ thing.
“I’m ready, Buffy!” I said, and watched the flash of annoyance cross her face at the name. That had been a glimpse of my old Mary-Christine. “I have to graduate, honey.” I grabbed her hand again. “I have to go back to the hum-drum. It’s the only thing that will keep me sane. I have to go back to the silly, infantile shit that Gregor Academy gives me. If I don’t, then this stuff here,” I spread my hands around the large walls, now almost totally covered with pictures, photo clippings, some linked with green and red strands of wool, “will drive me insane.”
She stood up, and I did the same, and we hugged in our little safe room. I looked down at her and brushed the hair from her forehead. I leant down for the kiss, and she returned it. Man, it felt good to taste those lips again. I closed my eyes and my head drifted away, the only sensation left in the world was the universe inside our mouths.
Then I moved my hands down to her rear, and pulled her closer to me.
Bam.
Well, she jumped six feet. Not up, but back. I followed her wide, staring eyes to my trousers. Well, actually to the zipper of my trousers. It lay open, and my boner stood out there in the world for all to see.
Mary-Christine slowly raised her hands to her face, as if trying to erase the sight, but she didn’t cover her eyes, and she didn’t stop staring.
“Oh, Lyman,” she mumbled behind her hands.
I didn’t know what to do.
So after what seemed like a few weeks, I stuffed it back into my trousers again, and locked the cage.
Mary-Christine looked like she’d seen a ghost and the mummy at the same time. She looked up at me, then down at the animal again.
“I’m sorry, Mary-Christine,” I offered with little honesty behind it. I mean, I didn’t know how it had escaped.
Her hands still covered her mouth. She started to shake her head. It began with a little tremor, then ended in a full slow shaking denial.
“No, Lyman. It’s not you who should be sorry.”
I looked at her, waiting for the actual revelation. But she took a step back towards the door, followed by another. Then she bumped into the side of the doorway.
I could feel the tension grow as she stood there, framed by the doorway, the carpeted room behind her.
“I did it,” she said, still looking down at my trousers, a trace of the shaky head left. “I knew what I was doing. I couldn’t help it. I let him out. I did it.”
And she turned and ran out of the room.
“What’s your trip, lady?” I demanded at Lucy, still trying to play like I wasn’t scared shitless of her.
“You fucking brats with all your fucking games,” she said, clearing the countertop with a swoosh of her arm. For a second I thought she would fly over it at me. “Haven’t we all lost enough? Is there anything else to lose?”
Lucy’s face, all twisted in rage, was truly the most vicious thing I’d ever seen up close. She looked fierce as a freaking lion; I stood in her gaze, a GD zebra. At that point I knew I didn’t stand a chance against her.
“I don’t want to take anything from you,” I said in a squeaky voice that reminded me of Mary-Christine. “It’s just…I’ve been on my own for a long time now. I came here looking for others like me, looking for a family.”
The lie worked like some miracle age cream, instantly smoothing the severe lines on Lucy’s scowling face. She even backed off from the counter, leaning on the register like all her energy had drained.
“You’re not one of them - are you?” she asked me.
Forcing innocence into the question, I gave her the biggest doe-eyes I could. “One of who?”
“Alan McCartney’s little drones…”
I took a fumbling step backwards after hearing that. If Lucy knew Alan, I wondered if she’d heard of Mandy Cross. Wondered if she knew about my history with him, how he changed me…how I’d killed him right there on the campus of Vampire High. And if she was so anti-Alan, I wondered how I could possibly use that to my advantage.
“I knew Alan McCartney,” I said weepily, “he’s the one…the one who changed me.”
That scowl swept back across Lucy’s face, “Then you are one of his and you are not welcome here. Get the fuck out of my store!”
“I WAS his. Past tense. Alan hurt me in ways you could never imagine…”
“Oh - you think not? I lost my daughter because of that son-of-a-bitch—”
“And I lost my parents! And my brother! My closest friends. My whole fucking life!”
It started to get a little real there for a sec and I found myself really screaming at Lucy. But, she did listen…
“That’s why I killed him.”
Lucy did that startled woman maneuver with the gasp and hand-over-mouth bit.
“You’re the girl? Mandy Cross?”
I stuck my chin out and squared my shoulders like presenting for roll call. “Yes. I am.”
There was this little section that lifted up on the counter. Lucy opened it and came out from behind her barricade. She put her hands over mine.
“Oh, my dear girl, this is no place for you,” she told me, all desperate. “There are those of us who applaud your killing of that foul monster; but many others who would do just the same to you. You’ve got to get out of Winslow - out of Arizona if you can manage. If you think you’ve seen the worst of what Alan McCartney can do, you are sorely mistaken.”
“He’s here, isn’t he?”
Lucy suddenly looked scared out of her wits. “He’s got a presence here for sure. You saw what he did in Gregor - how he built his small army. He’ll do the same here in Winslow and once he’s got sufficient numbers…”
“He’ll move on and continue building someplace else. I know. That’s why I need to find him; to stop him before he can get a foothold.”
“You’re going to take on Alan McCartney by yourself?”
Well. Not exactly by myself but Lucy didn’t need all the details.
“I did it once before and succeeded.”
“You only succeeded in forcing him into hiding, making it that much harder to take him on face-to-face. Soon he’ll have mobilized his following - and they’ll do his dirty work for him.”
“Then I’ll need to get to Alan before he gets his followers organized.” I pleaded with her now. “And if you have any information that might help me find him, then I really, really need to know.”
“Have you any idea what you’re asking of me? You want me to turn on my own kind to help you on your little revenge quest?”
Lucy, the eloquent vampire with the hot temper, reduced to tears. Whatever her story had been, I figured it had to be at least as painful as mine.
“Tell me about your daughter,” I told her, real calming.
Lucy choked the name out like vomiting knives. “Amy. She was only sixteen when she crossed paths with Alan McCartney; he turned her and killed her family.”
The story sounded eerily familiar. I could feel the hate in me rushing through every blood vessel.
“How long ago?”
“Twenty years ago. My husband and I had been turned long before; childless, we were asked to take her in. She was a reckless girl and so infatuated with Alan McCartney; he could get h
er to do anything. No matter how much we loved her, no matter how we tried to keep her away from him…”
“There’s nothing you could have done,” I said. “I know that for a fact.”
“He turned her whole world upside-down, tortured her, and eventually destroyed her.”
“Was she part of Alan’s gang at Gregor Academy?”
“No. Amy died well before we ever got to Arizona; she was killed by another one of Alan’s admirers in Chicago, 2002. My husband went for retribution and he…” Her eyes got real haunted. “After I lost my family I tried to get away from the others…but, it can’t be done, Mandy. Once you’re part of the mob, they never fucking let you go. I followed them to Gregor six years ago; after Alan’s public slaying and the…incident…where his little gang members ended up dead, I was ordered to move west, here to Winslow. I’ll never get away from them.”
“By ‘them’ you mean the Blanche vampires?” I asked.
The name stuck her a little, she gasped again. “Yes. The Blanche vampires.”
“I think I can help you, Lucy. I least…I’m willing to try.”
“I don’t see how.”
“You don’t have to believe in me; just help me…only a little…”
Lucy sounded stronger after that. “What do you need?”
“I just need to know how to get to Alan.”
Well, the cat had well and truly been let out of the bag, so to speak. I didn’t see Mary-Christine the rest of the day. I walked around the house for a while, then I settled in the safe room, browsing over all the stuff on the floor that we hadn’t really sorted out yet. I ended up cross-legged on the floor, with pages of the diary all over the place. They were all written on lined paper, and had obviously been in a notebook at one point, but very few were dated.
I started to gather the pages that seemed to go together, but the story had gotten all jumbled. To his credit, Marvin Knight had done a great job passing on his information, but he’d done a shitty job of dating everything. The circled obituaries were great, and we’d even linked a couple of photographs to the obits, but the actual diary lay in terrible shape. Of course, every actual name in the diaries was in code, in case found by the wrong people. A real mess.
