by Gene Baker
Without a second’s more hesitation, Hale gently pressed his lips to Merrilee’s and completely gave in to wherever her will was going to take him.
Howard Grant luxuriated over every bite of his hamburger, savoring the wonderful blend of flavors. Merrilee had given him the night off, even if it was just to chauffeur her and Edwin to town. So, while the two lovebirds were watching the movie across the street, he decided to while away the time enjoying the simple pleasures of being human. The man that had served him his meal was busy adjusting the new color television on the corner of the bar. The images on the small screen were nearly indiscernible unless you were right in front of it. The novelty of the latest technology was enough, however, that people like Howard would be drawn into the establishment. While there, the wafting smell of onions sizzling on the grill would make a burger irresistible.
As he reached to take a drink from his chocolate shake, Howard heard the familiar rumble of Edgel Hale’s 1947 Cadillac as it swung onto the main road out of town.
“Hey, Walt, let’s make those fries to go, will ya’?”
Merrilee looked down as Edgel barely avoided clipping Mrs. Cooper’s mailbox. Obviously intoxicated, he was weaving recklessly on and off the pavement. “Edgel Hale, you are making this entirely too easy!” she thought. With a sideways glance, the vampire assured herself that Howard and Edwin were bouncing down the oil field road in Grant’s Jeep, and all she had to do was delay the senior Hale for as long as possible. She gave a few extra flaps to her wings and that put her ahead of the car below. Vrana’s agreement with Edwin precluded doing anything to directly or indirectly cause Edgel Hale to die, though the man richly deserved such a fate. It was with this in mind that she put the final part of her plan into action.
Edwin found Merrilee standing in his bedroom wrapped toga-like in the comforter from his bed.
“I guess I need to be in the attic again before my father gets here?”
“Don’t worry about that right now, baby. It will be quite a bit of time before that needs to happen.”
Edwin’s brow furrowed as he looked at Merrilee’s disheveled hair and bare legs and feet showing beneath the cover.
“Are you naked?” he asked without a conscious thought to the question.
Giggling, the girl opened the covering slightly, giving Edwin the narrowest of glimpses showing that she only has on her brassiere and panties.
“Even a supernatural being has to obey the natural law every now and then. Things like gravity and wind resistance make it not so easy to fly around dressed in a poodle skirt!” Edwin’s eyes were peeled wide open. To see if he comprehended anything she was saying, Merrilee asked playfully, “You with me in there, Eddie?”
Edwin swallowed the lump in his throat.
“I can’t find the words,” he croaked. “You’re beautiful! No, that word doesn’t describe you either. I . . . have never seen a girl without clothes before!”
“Well that’s good, ‘cause I’d hate to have to whup up on some other girl tonight! Besides, I’m not really naked.” Looking down at the boy’s groin area, a smile spread across her face, nearly ear-to-ear. “Would you want some ice to put on that swelling, Mister Hale?”
Glancing down at the growing bulge in his pants, Edwin spun around.
“Stop it!” he shouted. “That’s not funny!”
As she quickly stepped towards the blushing boy, Merrilee spoke sweetly.
“I don’t mean to embarrass you, my love, much less twice in one night. But I’m glad you find me attractive in that way!”
“It’s . . . just . . . that I wasn’t . . .” Eddy stuttered before being embraced from behind.
“You’re so sweet! It’s no wonder why I fell for you.”
Edwin reached up, taking Merrilee’s hands from his chest, and kissed the back of each before sandwiching them under his and over his heart.
“I wish that we could go away from here and leave all this behind.”
“I do too, my love, and that is something I wanted to talk to you about.”
“What’s that?”
Taking Edwin by the shoulders, Merrilee sat them both down on the side of the bed.
“I’ve got to leave tonight to go back to New Orleans and meet with the Council.”
“You gonna talk about us?”
“Mainly, yes.”
“Can I ask what you’re gonna say?”
“I’m going to ask for a kind of leave from my responsibilities in the family business to spend more time here.”
Merrilee could see the eyes of Edwin Hale light up as he literally began to quiver with excitement.
“That would be great! You could live right here!”
“Whoa, Mister Edwin Andrew Hale! Let’s not move that fast!”
Seeming to ignore what the young Miss Anderson had just said, Edwin continued verbally developing his plans.
“I can make room for your bed and stuff right here! If it ain’t big enough, we’ll just make other arrangements!”
Grasping the sides of the young man’s head to try and bring him back to reality Merrilee spoke firmly.
“Eddie, I can’t live here with you! We aren’t getting married, you know!”
As if stunned by the thought, Hale looked back into his girlfriend’s eyes.
“How is this gonna work with us?”
“What do you mean?”
Hale noted the distinct hint of worry in the girl’s voice.
“It’s just that everything is different now from the way I was raised to think. You know, the whole growing up and getting married and having kids and stuff.”
“Not even I can predict the future, Eddie. These are uncharted waters for me, too, and you know that we can’t get married and have children in the traditional sense, right?”
“Yeah, I know. I also know that I will grow old and die, but you won’t. The thing is, I don’t care about that! Well, except maybe what people will be saying about an old, cradle robbin’ pervert and the sweet young girl he corrupted!” Edwin and Merrilee both broke out in joyous laughter. After the pair recuperated, Merrilee cast a sly look in Hale’s direction, stood up, and took a few steps back from him as he sat on the end of his bed. She checked her reflection in his eyes to make sure he could see all of her.
“There is a way we can be bonded to one another. It will be as close to actually being married as we can get right now. Would you like that?” She smiled as Hale’s head moved slowly up and down. Merrilee, dropping the blanket with a slight giggle, started taking tiny steps, slowly moving back towards Edwin. The boy’s eyes quickly darted towards the door of his room, half expecting Bobby to wake him from a dream. When she was so close that her chest almost touches Edwin’s cheeks, she stopped. Taking his left hand in both of hers, she wrapped her thumb and forefinger around his wrist and tightened her grip like a tourniquet. “Don’t worry about him, sweetness. Bobby won’t be interrupting us tonight.”
Lifting Hale’s hand so that it was close to her mouth, the nail on the thumb of her other hand changed shape. Suddenly, the claw pierced the palm and a stream of bright red blood found its way into Merrilee’s mouth. The vise-like grip of the girl vampire prevented Edwin from pulling his hand back in surprise and pain. He watched as her eyes rolled back and closed. She growled and released him.
Reaching into his back pocket, Edwin pulled out his handkerchief and stuffed it into his wounded palm.
“You could have warned me, ya’ know!”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. But I’m going on instinct here.”
Reaching around to her back, Merrilee released the hooks and eyes on her brassiere. After the undergarment fell onto Edwin’s lap, she took the clawed thumb that still bore traces of Hale’s blood, and opened a two inch long gash between her breasts. As the boy’s heartbeat thundered in her ears she issued a quiet demand.
“Drink quickly before it heals shut!”
“Ya’ know, Mister Hale, I ought to run ya’ in.”
Sheriff Johnson knew the world of shit he would be in if he tried to put Edgel Hale in a cell. The meanest man in East Texas owned every jurist this side of the Sabine River.
“Damn it, Bill! You need to be finding that giant bat that jumped on the hood of my car instead of wasting time here!” shouted the furious mill owner. “If you don’t believe me, just look at the claw marks on the hood!”
“I got a feeling, Mister Edgel, that those marks were caused by the barb wire fence you went through back there after missing the curve in the road.”
“Bullshit!”
“May be bullshit, sir, but if it weren’t for my daddy’s hay bales and the fact that these Caddies are built like brick shithouses on wheels, you’d be in a world of hurt!”
Merrilee lay on her side with her nose pressed against Edwin’s back between his shoulder blades. The first time she saw this bare skin, it was disfigured with horrible gashes. Now, thanks to the application of the oily black fluid that accounted for her blood, there was not even the faintest evidence of scars.
She engaged all her supremely acute senses now. Her sense of smell, usually enlisted to hunt her human prey, now served a different purpose. A hormonal rush had caused Eddie’s body to quiver as he pressed his face to her bosom and licked the life-force from her self-inflicted wound. It left a musky aroma that wafted from his skin and started her own heart beating faster. She listened to his steady breathing and felt his body squirm to press against hers. Hale was asleep and dreaming. The dead do not have what many would call dreams while they sleep during the day. Instead, the lives of the people they consume play out in vivid detail in the thick, inky darkness of the tomb. Every joy and every torment that the humans experienced in their cut short lives became part of the undead memories as well.
Merrilee last had a real dream nearly ninety years ago, and it surprised her slightly that she couldn’t remember what it had been about. It had not occurred to her, until now, that she actually missed that part of her human existence. Another part of her humanness that Merrilee had thought died when she was turned was love. As the daughter of a wealthy Vicksburg merchant, she would have had many potential beaus to choose from but, the war changed all of that.
William Anderson had called his girl child “Queenie”. It was a pet name because she had been given her middle name, Victoria, after the British Queen and Empress. From the minute his daughter was born, she became the center of his world. He was also determined to protect her at all costs, as he had done for her mother, from the evils he knew lay in wait outside their rural manor. Lily Anderson knew all too well what her husband was willing to do to keep his family insulated from hateful people with harmful intent. A year before they had married, William had killed a man in a duel. Euel James had been a fool for insulting the betrothed of a man with a reputation for being the best shot in the delta. Anderson had put six men before him in their graves, and had no qualms about paying for the burial of a seventh.
The fact that Lily was a half-breed Cherokee and Scot, and had been chosen to be William’s wife over local white girls, had angered many. This had inevitably led to a drunken Euel expressing out loud what others were smart enough to keep to themselves. The lead pistol ball smashing into James’s forehead had effectively ended further public discussions about Mrs. Anderson’s ancestry.
It was therefore, with somewhat less enthusiasm than her husband, that Lily saw the tuft of black hair on her newborn’s head. Despite her mother’s worries, Merrilee grew to be the beautiful young woman that sat next to her on the settee. It was the girl’s twelfth birthday and nature had brought its own gift on this day. And then there was “the talk” that every mother thinks they are prepared for but actually dreads the day it happens.
There was a moment of silence after a long and stumbling discussion about what it means to become a woman. Then, Merrilee’s hazel eyes looked up into her mom’s and she asked another question that every mother would rather not hear from her not-yet-teenage daughter.
“How do you know if you are in love with the right boy?”
Lily’s chest heaved with a heavy sigh.
“What is his name?”
“Jeremiah.”
“The sixteen-year-old son of your father’s stableman?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Lily threw her arms into the air and brought her hands down to slap her knees.
“Lord have mercy, girl! Your father would skin him alive if he even thought you and that boy were seeing each other!”
“I know that! All we do is talk!” Merrilee retorted, her hands on her hips.
“Talk, huh? What about?”
“I asked him to keep an eye on Daddy and take care of him when they went off to fight the Yankees.”
“Don’t you think that your father can take care of himself?”
“Yes, I do, but I just wanted to be special sure he would come home again.”
Tears formed in both of the women’s eyes as Lily asked a question.
“What did he say?”
“He said that, ‘There ain’t no Yankee bullet made that will get past me and to Captain Anderson!’ And I really think he meant it.”
“And was there any kind of promise made on your part for Jeremiah taking on this responsibility?” Lily asked quietly, raising an eyebrow as she leaned in towards Merrilee.
As she blushed brightly and lowered her head, the youngster spoke shyly.
“Well…sort of. I kissed his cheek and told him that he could call on me when he got back.”
“You know that is not something you can promise!”
“I know, but you and Father have said that everything is going to be turned upside-down when the war is over! I might be able to marry for love like you did, and that is why I asked you that question.”
“Well!” Lily was taken aback by the girl’s precociousness. “If that is how it is to be, let me tell you something that my mother told me when I asked her your same question: actions speak louder than words. You can’t trust just words. You can still be terribly hurt by someone who speaks sweetly. You can tell when a man is putting your feelings first. When his comfort and desires are second to fulfilling your own. It is like finding your way home after being lost in the darkness for a long time. You are able to be the you that you want to be, and it is effortless.”
Jeremiah was never able to fulfill his promise. He was killed by an exploding cannonball just two days before Captain William Anderson was felled by a Union Minié ball.
A stinging like a thousand ants were attacking her skin returned Merrilee to 1954 East Texas. It was the alert to her system that she had less than an hour to be back in her coffin or the sun would rise and incinerate her. She lifted up and kissed the back of Edwin’s head. Merrilee Victoria Anderson had found the kind of love that her mother had told her about. She looked forward to when night’s velvet shroud would revivify her and she would rise again to see her Forever Love’s smile lifting her to his warm embrace.
17
June 27, 1954
My whole world has changed overnight. Merrilee is leaving tonight for a few days to see about coming to stay here all the time. I will be busy getting things together so that maybe she will come to live with me. She says she will live at the sexton’s house with Mr. Grant until other things can be worked out. I hope that Father will be going out again today so that I can see Merrilee off tonight when Master Vrana sends a car for her.
It was Sunday and Edwin heard the ringing of the church bell calling the faithful for evening services. It was a sound he had heard all of his life, but now it took on an ominous intonation. It actually sent a shiver down his spine. Checking his watch, he went to stand at the attic window and cast a glance in the direction of smoke coming from the chimney of the sexton’s house. Merrilee, my darling, my love, I will see you again soon. Just his immortal’s name flowing silently through his brain was enough to make him tremble uncontrollably. The way her cool, smooth skin felt next to his, how he seemed
to be completely swallowed by her perfect body as they melted into one another; it made him weak.
The sun would be setting in little over an hour, so he had to start making plans and putting them into action. If he was going to see Merrilee off to New Orleans, he would have to make sure that Penny would be all right for a while. Father would be hung over after sleeping until way after noon. Bobby would not be a problem.
With that last thought, he hears Bobby’s distinctive steps coming up the stairs. The smell of meat smoking down at Pa’s had set his stomach to growling.
As the attic door opened, Edwin said over his shoulder, “I think that I’ll get Mister Howard to go with me to Pa’s tonight. I’ll be sure to bring some back for you and Penny.”
“You goin’ nowhere, Ebbinale.”
As Hale slowly turned around, he heard the double click of a gun cocking. There was Bobby, standing with that same crazy look in his eyes he had had before Merrilee had placed her spell on him. The varmint pistol was aimed directly at his head. We are wolves, son. We act in a careful and well thought out manner. We don’t react stupidly. Edwin remembered his father telling him that long ago when Edgel was someone a son would look up too. Disarm him with a smile. Edwin Hale hoped that the grin he stretched across his face didn’t look stupid.
“Well, Bobby, if you don’t want some grub, that’s okay. No need to get testy about it!”
“You be’en smotass not hep you!”
Between him and Bobby there was an old, rusted armored knight that had stood next to a fireplace in his grandfather’s day and held the fire tending tools. This was almost hidden behind a ten inch thick roof support.
“I thought we had become friends, Mister Hutchins?” Hale asked in a low monotone as he slowly moved to put the solid oak column between himself and the gun wielding maniac.
