Around

by Glenn Rolfe

  He made a trip out back and gazed at the newly built porch he was supposed to have helped with. His uncle had known better than to wait for him and had finished it himself. Behind him sat the lawn chairs where they’d sat and drank after tearing the old porch down together. Turning back to the porch, he felt both a sense of sadness and accomplishment. Uncle Arthur was gone, most likely dead, but this was still here, standing like some kind of monument to him. Even when the house was sold to someone else, they’d use this place. Put tools or furniture out here. Sit out here in the warm mornings and drink coffee or tea. Maybe an old couple, talking about their past or their plans for the day. An old man and his garden out back by the blackberry bush. The old lady dead set to knit a new blanket for the sofa or tending to the flowers she’d put in every open corner of the house inside and out.

  Someone would make something of this place.

  Rocky smiled, just a little.

  He headed to the street and started back to his house. He knew no one would be home. His mom was at Grammy Jan’s and Julie had decided to try and go back to work, which meant he’d have to find something to do until they got home. What would they say when he told them that he’d gone to the police? That he’d pointed the finger for all the killings and disappearances at November’s brother. They wouldn’t be upset with him, he knew that. He figured he had about the longest leash of any teenager anywhere after what he’d gone through. He had no intentions of taking advantage of the situation, but it was nice knowing that he could make mistakes.

  He’d intended to take the side roads home, but found himself drawn to the centre of town, to more people. The sun and the sounds of summer, still alive and well, at least in the daylight, surrounded him at every turn. Girls in their summer clothes, guys with their tongues wagging after them, parents and their children in bright coloured shirts and shorts, Polaroids or disposable Kodaks in their hands. Little kids with their faces painted in melted ice cream, at least half a dozen dragging behind crying about being tired and wanting to go home. The heartbeat of his town seemed to be taunting him.

  The beach and the waves were where they always were, crashing and splashing on an ocean so cold it made your ankles numb to walk into. That would change near the end of August; by that time, the Atlantic would have warmed up to maybe sixty degrees, which would feel like a hot tub compared to what it was right now.

  He was almost home when he found himself wondering what may or may not have happened at the cottage. Officer Nelson seemed to believe Gabriel was responsible for something. Kidnap and murder? Maybe not, but Rocky had sensed the man’s fear. Like his own when Gabriel stood in front of him. Would November get in trouble?

  He reached the end of his driveway and grabbed the mail. More letters from family he hadn’t heard from in a million years. He sifted through the envelopes, reading the return addresses. Aunt Joan and Uncle Allan up near Augusta, Great Grandma Lilian and her boyfriend Stan in Monmouth. Dad’s friend Gary and his wife, Ruth, from work. He grabbed the letter and a Welby Superdrug flyer and stopped cold at the door. There was another envelope taped there.

  Rocky – For yours eyes only.

  -G

  His heart began to hammer in his chest. He spun around, scanning his and the neighbours’ yards for any sign of movement. Cars continued to whiz by and a slew of people made their way to or from town along the sidewalks, but he couldn’t see Gabriel anywhere.

  He set the mail under his arm on the stoop and sat down with the letter addressed to him.

  Holding the plain white envelope, he felt a familiar shape within. It was a picture. A Polaroid. He was afraid to see it.

  Carefully, he slid his finger in the corner of the envelope and swiped across under the flap, opening it. He reached in and took the picture in hand, letting the envelope fall to the ground.

  He raised the Polaroid and felt the world begin to burst at the seams. He couldn’t breathe; he knew he was going to throw up.

  He turned to the side and vomited in the grass.

  The image pummeled his insides.

  When his stomach was empty, he sniffled the snot from his nose and wiped his eyes, the picture still clutched in his hand.

  He looked at it again and the river of deceit and disbelief flooded him all over.

  November, lips overrun with blood, had her mouth buried in Uncle Arthur’s ruined throat.

  Rocky hugged his legs, burying his face in his knees, and grieved.

  His uncle was most certainly dead, and his girlfriend was a fucking liar and a killer.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “What have you done?” Mother asked, moving on Gabriel like a lioness on an unsuspecting elk. November trailed behind her feeling much as she did in her childhood when something posed a threat outside their old home in the woods. November had only seen her normally soft-spoken and tender mother’s aggressive side twice that she could recall. And it was just as shocking then as it was now.

  Mother, with her nails extended, teeth bared, and vampiric form on full display, had Gabriel by the throat and pinned to the front door. Gabriel, eyes wide, mouth agape, tried to speak but barely got out more than a squeak behind Mother’s death grip.

  “You have brought the authorities to us?”

  November had sat in her room, curled up in the corner, unsure of what was going to happen, while the police officers walked the house with her brother. Would they pull their firearms and start shooting? Would Gabriel react first and drain them where they stood? And how many more would come before they could get away? Would they escape? She was terrified. She was no longer innocent. Gabriel was not the only monster to have taken a life in this gracious little town. She could still taste the blood from Rocky’s uncle. She’d been sick over her actions ever since. She’d hardly slept and done nothing but loathe herself. But that despair, shame, and guilt were only topped by the immense hatred that now burned within her for Gabriel.

  Watching him suffer at Mother’s hand now offered a small sense of vengeance.

  “I sat by, admittedly unable to act due to my condition, but I will stand aside no longer. Whether I’m ill or not, your actions have consequences. For decades, your father led this family, fed this family, kept this family well and safe in a world that would just as soon set fire to us and watch us burn for what we are. He killed only to secure our well-being. He fed only to sustain his strength. Not for himself, not for lust or for power, but to defend our way of life.

  “You think your crimes have gone unseen. You thought your nightly adventures back home, sneaking out, going to different towns to quench your growing thirst were somehow out of my sight?”

  November stood at the edge of the hallway, slinking back step by step, uncertain how far Mother intended to take this. And worse, wondering what would happen if she let Gabriel go. Part of her hoped she wouldn’t.

  “This monster inside you is not your friend. Your gifts are not a right to take lives. Do you hear me? This thing will swallow your soul if you let it. It will only lead to one destiny. Death. The legends are all lies, my son.”

  Tears rolled over Gabriel’s cheeks. November’s resolve trembled. She hadn’t seen her brother cry since their father had passed. And that had been for a matter of minutes before he stiffened and accepted the role as head of the house. When he was twelve and November was five, they’d had a pet cat Gabriel had named Thomas after Tom and Jerry. They’d kept Thomas as an indoor cat for the first four years of his life but eventually, Gabriel began to take the cat with him out in the woods around their home. Thomas followed Gabriel, a loyal friend. The two were nearly inseparable. When Thomas disappeared one early evening, Gabriel searched and searched for hours. He looked for the cat for three days until Mother told him to stop. The cat had surely been attacked and eaten by a larger predator. The pain in her brother’s eyes then was with him now as he wilted in Mother’s grasp.

 
Gabriel’s arms reached out. Mother let him go and pulled him to her. His sobs were heavy and deep.

  “You are a good man, Gabriel. This sickness clutching you now is not permanent. As with any addiction, you alone can defeat it, but you must acknowledge it for what it is. You must accept the truth and you must decide that you want to change. That you want it to stop, to release you, to return you to us.”

  “Mother,” he said.

  “Yes, my son?”

  “It’s so powerful. I feel it coursing through me, even now. Standing here, I want to taste it. I want to feel the power that makes me forget.”

  “This bloodlust has its claws in you,” Mother said, stroking his hair as they sank to their knees.

  He looked like a boy, his head on her shoulder.

  “You have me, son. I will be right here with you every step of the way.” She pulled him back so she could look at him. “But you have to decide whether or not you want it. Whether you are ready to confront the monster and lay it to rest.”

  She wiped the tears from his eyes. Her monstrous form receded.

  “I love you, no matter what. Your sister loves you—”

  “No!” November stepped into the room. “You can’t let a few tears excuse what he’s done. What he’s brought upon us. What he’s made me do.”

  “November,” Mother said. “Please, go.”

  She saw Gabriel as he was the other night. Ruthless, hungry, vile.

  “He—”

  “November!” Mother said, craning her head back to look at her. “Leave us.”

  And in the split second between when their eyes met and Gabriel’s face transformed and shot forward, November’s world shattered.

  Blood seemed to explode from Mother’s neck, spraying like a broken fountain into the air, over her shoulder, onto the floor, against the wall. And as heinous a sight as the crimson burst was, it was the devastating hurt in Mother’s eyes that made November’s knees weak, and the light that went out of her mother’s forever sympathetic eyes that felt like a stake in her heart.

  She watched, feeling separate from her own body, as Mother’s dead, violated form slumped to the floor and Gabriel rose, a demon crowned and unleashed. His face and neck covered in blood. Mother’s blood. His eyes, black as a starless midnight, turned to her.

  “Little sister,” he said. His voice was like dirt shovelled on a fresh grave, gritty, cold and filled with a sense of finality.

  November fled straight to her room and smashed through the bedroom window. She took flight, hurling herself through the air without hesitation. Without worry of consequence of being seen. She flew away. Away from him, away from the nightmare her brother had become.

  She feared there would be no stopping him.

  Not now. Not ever.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Rocky jumped when November appeared, a mess of tears and shakes at the foot of his bed. He couldn’t navigate between the mash-up of fear, anger, betrayal, and even love colliding in his soul. He couldn’t speak.

  She raised a hand, gesturing for him to give her a minute. “Please, you have to listen and listen close. Gabriel…Gabriel is coming…he’s….”

  Rocky’s gaze moved to the Polaroid picture on his nightstand. Her words faded beneath the scream forming in his mind.

  He grabbed the photograph and held it out, rising from his bed and bringing it inches before her tear-streaked face.

  “Oh my god, Rocky…I—”

  “You killed him. You. How could you do this?” He couldn’t hold back his sobs.

  She reached for him.

  He smacked her hands away and shoved the photo in her face again.

  “That’s you. That’s the real you. Killer. Liar. Monster.”

  “Rocky, I know it’s…I can’t take it back, I wish I could, but you don’t understand—”

  “No, you don’t understand. You’re a fucking vampire. You’re a murdering…horrible….”

  “Gabriel is something worse. I know it won’t matter to you now, but he made me do that. He gave me no choice. He was going to kill you, your family, my…my…mother.”

  Rocky stepped back, shaking his head. He crumpled the picture in his fist. “No, I can’t…I can’t trust you or anything you say.”

  “Rocky, please, I just watched him kill my mother. The police showed up and he walked them through our house, but, but he packed everything up. Everything, anything, and I thought we were leaving. But when the officers left, Mother confronted him. I thought she’d gotten through to him, but then…but then he….”

  Tight-lipped, sniffling, Rocky swallowed hard and tossed the Polaroid to the floor.

  “Rocky, he’s going to come for you. You have to hide.”

  “Get out,” he said, not able to look at her.

  “What? No. You have to get as far away from here as you can. You and your family.”

  “Get out of my house! Take your lies and just go away. I never want to see you again. Get out!”

  She backpedalled to the window.

  “Rocky, please,” she whimpered.

  “Haven’t you done enough? Leave me alone.”

  She opened her mouth to say something more, but he pointed at the window and she clamped up. She was still crying when she slipped over the windowsill and vanished.

  Let him come, Rocky thought. Let that bastard come here and try to kill me. Rocky reached into the pocket of his shorts and pulled out the jackknife he’d picked up at his uncle’s. He opened it and stabbed it into the wall next to his window. Monster or not, Gabriel could be killed. November had said so or alluded to something about how they weren’t like the indestructible things in the Hollywood movies. They were not eternal creatures.

  Night was still a few hours away.

  Rocky figured he still had time to prepare for Gabriel’s attack. As big and bad as he was, the vampire still only took his victims at night. And if Officer Nelson had been there to see him once, Gabriel had to know his time in Old Orchard Beach was through. Dead or alive, Gabriel was done after tonight. There was a chance he’d take November and leave now, but Rocky didn’t believe it. The vampire would make time for one last kill. He’d make time for Rocky.

  Rocky spent the next hour preparing. He hoped his mother would stay late at Grammy Jan’s house again as she had the last two nights. If Julie came home, he’d find a way to make her leave. Make her go to one of her friends’ houses. Say he needed the place to himself, cry or swear or break things until she finally gave him space.

  He grabbed his knife and hurried out to his bike.

  Wait a second, I have a car.

  They’d moved his car into the garage next to Mom’s. The only problem, well, besides the fact that he didn’t have a licence yet, was that his dad’s truck was blocking the way.

  When he looked at his father’s Chevy, the thought was there. Drive it. He laid his bike down in the freshly mown grass. One of Mom’s work friends, Debbie or Kimberly, had sent their son over to cut the grass this morning.

  Rocky ran into the house and found his father’s keys in the basket on the kitchen counter where his family kept them. Holding them in his hands, with the big silver Chevy symbol, Rocky remembered how proud his father was of his Chevy. He’d even had a hat made at one of the custom design screen-printing shops in town. The hat had My Chevy printed over a photo he’d brought in of his truck parked on the front lawn. Rocky remembered the day he’d taken the photo. He’d helped his dad wash the truck. He was happy to get to spray the hose and even got his dad and Julie wet during the process. They’d feigned anger with him and by the end of it all, the truck was clean and the three of them were soaked.

  He made his way outside to the truck. When he opened the driver’s -side door, it all came rushing at him. The smell of the pine tree air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, the hint
of stale cigarettes clinging to the fabric seat cover, the working smell of oily tools hiding behind the bench seat; he imagined his old man there behind the wheel, aviators, slicked-back pompadour he wore well past its in-style times of the fab fifties. Marty Robbins crooning about El Paso from the truck’s cassette player.

  He shut the door. He couldn’t do it.

  Thinking it over, traffic would be terrible in and out of the square. He’d spend way more time inching his way to town than he would cruising through on his bike and he didn’t feel like wasting another minute.

  He thumbed away the tears from his eyes and brought the keys to his dad’s truck inside.

  Two minutes later, he was on his bike and pedalling up Old Orchard Street, heading for St. Margaret’s Church. He dropped the kickstand and rushed in through the front doors. A number of white-haired men and women were scattered about the pews. He made a beeline for the little cream-coloured fountain holding water Rocky hoped was blessed or holy or at least touched by the hand of the Lord somehow. Turning to position his body between the water fountain and the parishioners, he pulled out the jackknife and placed it at the bottom of the little pool of water and knotted his hands in prayer.