by Gene Baker
“They are taking me upstairs as soon as a bed is ready to keep an eye on me for 24 hours.”
“That seems like a good idea.”
“I guess so. That means I’ll miss your birthday though.”
Seeing the twinkle in Cody’s uncovered eye, Harley smiled.
“You just get better and not worry about that.”
“Well, I do worry about that. That is why Mee Mee had her neighbor bring this up here while you were sleeping.” From underneath his pillow, Cody drew out a small box and handed it to Harley. “Happy birthday!”
12
May 17, 1954
I am worried about Penny. She told me that father put a heavier lock on Mother’s room. Father spends most of his time at the office. When he comes home he is drunk and goes to stay in Mother’s room. One night she caught father watching her while she dressed. He said that it would not be long before she could wear the clothes that Mother left behind. I left a note for Mister Howard in the tree knot. He gave me a set of skeleton keys and told me to try them all on the locks on the doors. If the keys do not work and I need to get to Penny in a hurry he included a 5 pound hammer. I exersize with it to be ready.
Even with Penny’s closet door closed, Edwin could hear clearly the music that she played for him on the radio.
“Would you do me a favor?” he asked between songs.
“I guess so.”
“The next time Merrilee comes to visit me, could you play us some music?” Edwin couldn’t see the rolling of Penny’s eyes but he knew it had happened.
“You want the same music you used to play for Janelle?” she asked with more than a little biting sarcasm.
Hale took the non-too-subtle hint.
“No!”
“Do you even think about Janelle anymore?”
“Sure I do!” Edwin angrily snarled back. “If you are going to make a big deal of it, forget it like I never asked!”
“I’ve got to play something to keep my mind off what you two might be doing up there!”
“What is your problem?”
“The problem isn’t mine, it’s yours! How could you just throw her away like that?”
“I haven’t thrown anybody away. I will always love Janelle. There’s room in my heart for more than one person.”
The silence was so painful that Edwin’s heart felt like it was being squeezed with a cold, dead hand. When Penny finally spoke again, the tone in her voice cut through her brother like a sword.
“You are just like your Father!”
Edwin felt as if someone had cut his throat. When he was finally able to say something, it was with a terrible agony.
“Why do you want to hurt me like that?”
The long minute of silence was finally broken when Penny spoke with a tear-soaked voice.
“I suppose I should tell you. I overheard Mother and Father arguing before Janelle died. They were yelling about Father needing to take care of his daughter. At first I thought it was about me, but it was about Janelle.”
The thoughts whirling around in his head made Eddie dizzy to the point where he laid down hard on the attic floor. As he started taking deep breaths to calm his shattered nerves, he heard Bobby knock hard three times on Penny’s door. As the servant entered the girl’s room, unbidden Edwin heard him mumble.
“Yuh Pa want yuh at suppah tunite.”
In that moment, Edwin Hale’s mind was made up.
13
June 16, 1954
Merrilee came by to visit last night. I am just now able to put it all together to write down what happened. She told me that Mister Grant had told her about what was happening. She hugged me and kissed my cheek. I kissed her back on the mouth. I passed out and had a dream. When I woke up Merrilee was still there and told me that I was weak from not eating good. She had a bottle of buttermilk and said that Howard would come by every night at about ten. She gave me a rope so that I could pull up the food that he would bring. I told her about the dream and that it was so real. It was about her and terrible things that had happened to her. She looked real sad like she was going to cry but she didn’t. I said that I was sorry I told her. She told me that I should not be worried and that it was just a dream. I asked her if Penny and me could come to live with her. She said that she could not do anything like that now but was working on it. That things were hard right now. She also left some books and puzzles for me.
Edwin’s vision faded to black, and then suddenly the feeling of falling backwards envelopes his brain. As he mentally reached out to grasp hold of anything to stop his free fall, his sight cleared. He was somehow aware of being in a place called Vicksburg, Mississippi on the 30th of July, 1863.
Even if she could scream, Merrilee Victoria Anderson would not do it. It would only cause her attackers more pleasure. Their sweat was like acid on her ravaged and torn genitals. The man at her head groaned with pleasure then staggered away laughing and making fun of his friend who couldn’t finish. She could now see her little brother lying lifeless in a congealing pool of blood. The drunken Yankee soldiers had caved Thomas’s skull in as he tried to protect his older sister with the weapon that locals call an “Arkansas Toothpick” their father had given him.
Without warning, she felt the man between her legs being ripped suddenly away from inside her and disappear, screaming into the darkness above them. The other soldier gave up trying to button his pants and reached for his gore spattered rifle. His hand barely touched the firearm before he was completely engulfed by an enormous black shape. Merrilee’s attention turns away from the ensuing struggle and cries of “My God, please…no!” She saw the Toothpick and reached out to grasp it. As her hand crawled spider-like towards the weapon, she became aware that the lapping sound she had not consciously heard before had ceased. With trepidation, she slowly turns her head towards the now still body of the soldier.
Blinking away the blurriness from her eyes, she saw an amorphous shadow slither off the dead man. It quickly took on a human-like shape crouching in the half-grey light of a full moon night. Glowing yellow eyes like those of a cat stared at her. The thing began to crawl on all fours like an animal in her direction. Huge, featherless wings lifted up out of what seemed to be its back.
Merrilee shut her eyes and the clicking of claws on the roadbed ceased as she felt something cold and sharp pierce the skin on her chest. Opening her eyes to look at the cause of the painful sensation, she saw her own hands wrapped around the handle of Thomas’s dagger. A voice with an unfamiliar foreign accent emanated from the direction of the shadowy creature.
“I really wish you would not do that!”
Her fingers, seemingly again acting on their own accord, opened and the combat dagger fell with a clanging noise to the bricks beside her.
A stinging in the back of his eyes suddenly exploded into a kaleidoscope of whirling colors. In the distance he heard Merrilee’s voice.
“Eddie! Edwin Hale! Can you hear me?”
As the colors slowed their spinning, like pieces of a puzzle they came together and he saw the girl that was calling his name hovering above him. Gravity had pulled her long hair into dark curtains surrounding her face, which was etched with concern. Momentarily unable to make his mouth form words, Edwin finally found his voice.
“What the hell was that?”
Moving to the side to allow Eddie to sit upright, the girl laughed.
“I don’t know, but you scared the poop out of me!”
“I hope I didn’t hurt you by kissing you too hard?” the young boy asked after taking a moment to gather his senses and still his jumbled brain. Merrilee turned her head to the side and lifted a querying eyebrow.
“Why do you say that?”
“I think I tasted blood.”
Still smiling, but not as broadly, Merrilee seemed to think for a few seconds before answering.
“You might have. Sometimes it happens with Porphyria, I bleed from my gums. I’m sorry; I should have pulled away and warned you.�
�
“That’s okay, I was just worried that I had hurt you.”
Merrilee laughed nervously.
“I know you would not hurt me, even if you could. I liked it very much when you kissed me.”
A shot of pure energy rushed through his veins and the room suddenly became brighter. The beautiful girl sitting beside him became the center of his world, like the feeling he had lying under the Christmas tree with Janelle, seeing love framed in multicolored lights and twinkling strands of tinsel. Then the darkness at the edge of it all closed in, and he became engulfed in a bitter sadness that actually hurt in his chest.
“While I was out, I had a dream about you.”
“From the look on your face, it wasn’t a good one.”
A cold lump formed in his throat.
“No, it wasn’t good,” Edwin choked out. It was horrible!” And then he started crying. As Merrilee reached out and pulled the broken boy into her sympathetic embrace, Edwin started his terrible narrative.
***
“You don’t understand!” Harley shouted. “They are not like dreams, they’re too real!”
“I hear ya’, Harley, and I do understand what you’re saying!” Cody shouted back. “There’s no need to bite my head off!”
After taking a deep breath and exhaling it slowly to release her exasperation, Harley began speaking in a calmer voice.
“I’m sorry, you really are more understanding than most people.”
“Thank you, I like to think so.”
Harley continued as if she had not heard what Cody had just said.
“At first, it was like I was at a movie just watching the life of Edwin Hale. More and more, I’m seeing what is going on with other people like Merrilee and Howard. It’s so real to me though, I can actually feel things, and smells, taste, everything! I’m there!”
***
Edwin was finding it hard to breathe, he was being held so tight. He pulled away just enough to move his head up from the shoulder he had pressed his face into. The girl’s blouse was soaking wet with his tears. He was at last able to see Merrilee’s face and saw that the whites of her eyes were streaked with red. They also looked as if they were ready to burst with the pressure of tears that could not flow.
“I’m sorry I made you sad. I’m so stupid! I should not have told you about that stupid dream!”
“It was just a dream, Eddie, and you are not stupid! If I look sad, it is because you were so upset by it.”
Edwin struggled not to shout what he wanted to say next, but he was afraid Bobby might hear it.
“I love you, Merrilee Victoria Anderson!”
Casting her eyes downward as if she saw something crawl across the attic floor, Merrilee hesitantly responded.
“I know you do, Eddie, and that may be a problem.”
Feeling as if he had been stabbed in the heart by what the girl of his dreams just said, Edwin stuttered in dismay.
“Why would the fact that I have these feelings for you be a problem?”
Merrilee turned her head enough to look through the window behind Hale. It seemed that she was searching the reddening eastern sky for an answer.
“We can’t be the way you would want us to be. The disorder I am burdened with would make that kind of relationship impossible.” Turning back to look the disappointed boy in the eyes, a gentle smile moved across her face. Her mind was pounded by her heart to just this once relieve the aching loneliness within it. Then Merrilee decided that she was too tired to fight her warring emotions at this time and place. She raised her hand and gently placing it on Edwin’s cheek. “I have to go now,” she whispered. “I promise I will see you again as soon as I can.”
“Can I at least ask you to think about it?”
The lovely, however wan face leaned forward, planted a kiss on the young man’s anxious forehead, and said, “I can do that.”
Edwin Hale closed his eyes and emptied his entire being into the cool, soft palm caressing his face. When he felt the warmth of the sun’s light on his back, he opened his eyes to see that hours had passed. It was mid-morning and Merrilee was gone.
Howard Grant wasn’t sure if other vampire minions had names for the creatures they were coupled with, but he named his, Beast. Beast was strong, stronger than ten ordinary men. It was also merciless and completely without anything resembling a conscience. It was the brawn, but Howard, as a former medical doctor and researcher, was the brains of the team. Beast also had total disregard for the doctor and was immortal. If the human body that it cohabited with Grant died, it didn’t matter. Beast would just go on to parasitize another human host. Unlike those lower life forms, however, Beast was beneficial, at least in the short term. Over time, the vampire favorite would slowly lose its human self to the monster. Terrible acts of insanity would follow. Howard knew the medical description of the condition called Renfield’s Syndrome.
His mistress, unable to directly cause Grant harm, would be forced to influence her servant into suicide. It is unacceptable to have an uncontrolled incident. Purges in the past had nearly wiped out Nocturnals and others like them. It was imperative that humans remained nothing more than prey, servants, entertainment, and, on occasion, lovers. The fate of these other subordinates was something that Howard would not sit idly by and wait for. His superior intellect gave him the edge. It also provided the means to control the growing power over his body that Beast would have no problem with exerting. The doctor, therefore, developed the unique chemical cocktail he injected himself with daily. As soon as the syringe emptied into his vein, Beast would start painfully slamming his fists into the inside of Howard’s skull in rage. To pacify Beast’s anger, the concoction was laced with a low dose of opiates.
This discovery was not the only one that endeared him to his mistress. The vampire’s saliva, left in the victim's resulting bite wound, had a key function in feeding. The saliva contained compounds called “anticoagulants” whose function was to inhibit blood clotting. There were also substances that prevented the constriction of blood vessels near the injury. Howard would take some of the vampire’s saliva into a syringe and inject it into the unconscious victim. He was then able to perform exsanguinations without the blood clotting before it could be returned to Merrilee for consumption. Grant was just finishing giving himself a mental pat on the back when he heard the familiar sound of small feet padding gently across the floor behind him.
“My, but you are up early after being out so late! The sun has just now gone down.”
“Don’t talk so loud!” Merrilee grumbled.
“I have breakfast ready if you’re hungry.” Howard turned around to present the evening’s repast to the young lady that had just risen from her bed of dirt. She was in the process of removing her nightgown as she headed to the shower across the hall. Now naked, the vampiress turned to glare angrily at her servant. Her eyes so soon after rising had no pupil, iris, or sclera. They appeared instead as slightly almond-shaped black marbles.
“Just keep it warm for now.” Then, casting a disgusted glance towards the body at Howard’s feet, she growled, “And get rid of that before I come back out here! I don’t need to be reminded of what you call my ‘condition’ so damn early.”
As the bathroom door closed with a soft thud and the shower started hissing, Howard looked down at the deceased “donor” on the kitchen floor.
“Oh, young mister Edwin Hale, you poor thing. You have no idea of what you’ve gotten yourself into!”
***
“Wow! That is crazy!” Cody exclaimed.
“Are you calling me crazy?”
“What? No, hell no!”
“I’m just joking, dumbass! But if you think what I just told you was nuts, look at this!” Harley held up an early 1950s era Big Chief writing tablet with The Journal of Edwin Hale scrawled next to “Property of.” “Do you remember how this looked when I first found it?”
“That cannot be the same tablet, it looks like it’s brand new!”
“It is the same! It has been renewing itself every time I have one of those dreams or visions, whatever you want to call them.”
“Have you told your mom about this?”
Harley narrowed her eyes and pointed her small finger right at the boy across from her, stopping barely an inch from the end of his nose.
“She knows about some of what I have seen in my head but not about what is happening to the journal,” she said sternly. “Don’t you dare mention it either!”
Cody’s eyes crossed in an attempt to focus on the digit pointed like a pistol at his head.
“Sure! No problem! It will be our little secret.”
“Good!”
“Oh, shit, I just had a thought,” Cody said as Harley’s finger backed away from him and went back to the journal.
“What?”
“What happens when the story ends? If the journal completes the restoring process?”
Setting the tablet down on the floor at an arm’s distance, Harley began to back away.
“Burn it, Harley! Destroy that damn thing before we do find out!”
“It’s not the journal, it’s me.”
“What? What do you mean?”
Harley stood up and walks to the dining table covered in schoolbooks.
“You asked why I was homeschooled.”
Cody stared at the journal as if it might turn into a rattlesnake and bite him should he take his eyes off of it.
“Yeah, and I remember you didn’t want to discuss it.”
“I guess now would be a good time to tell you.”
Cody stood up and moved next to Harley.
“It’s okay. You can tell me some other time.”
