Her Dear & Loving Husband

by Meredith Allard

  “There has to be another way,” she said.

  “There isn’t. I have to prove to Kenneth Hempel that I’m not what he thinks I am.”

  “But you are.”

  “That makes it harder, but not impossible. Meeting him at the library during the day is the best way to do it. He seemed surprised I’d agree to it, so I think I have the upper hand by going through with it. And he agreed that if he saw me during the day he’d stop harassing me.”

  “Can’t you eat or drink something in front of him? We could have him over for dinner one night.”

  “I don’t think that would be enough by itself. Think about it: you could drink blood if you wanted to. You wouldn’t like it, but you could do it. It’s the same for me with food. I don’t know if people think we can’t eat food. They think we don’t because we drink blood. Being outside during the day is different because that’s the first thing people think about—we can’t be in the sun—and either I’m in the sun or I’m not. That must have been the hook that got him to agree to leave me alone.”

  “Would it really be that bad if people knew the truth?”

  “Imagine the madness of the witch trials with twenty-first century technology.”

  He could tell she was suffering. She trembled as if she were cold, as if the cold were coming from inside herself. He wanted to put his arms around her and pull her close, but he knew there was little he could do to warm her.

  “All those nightmares I’ve had look like rainbows and ice cream compared to the visions flashing behind my eyes right now,” she said. “I keep seeing you contorted in agony, going up in flames, reduced to a mound of ashes, suffering in horrible ways. James…”

  “Sarah, listen to me. If Hempel makes it public, about me, about Jocelyn, or Timothy, or anyone else, he’ll unleash panic everywhere. There are others watching to see if he goes public with his proof, whatever it is, and they may try to retaliate in their own way. Hempel could start a new hunt that will be so much more far reaching than the witch hunts because the world is so much smaller now. You know as well as I do what happens when hysteria breaks loose in a society. People will become afraid and start seeing vampires in every nook and shadow. And they may catch some. What do you think they’re going to do to the ones they catch? And then people will start looking at their friends and neighbors and wonder if they’re vampires too. It will be bad enough if some real ones are implicated, but what’s going to stop innocent people from being accused? And if innocent people are accused, how will they help themselves if people fabricate evidence against them? They won’t be able to be helped any more now than I was able to help you then.”

  Sarah stood up, shaking her head as if she were pushing the memories away. “I can see them,” she said. “The pointing fingers. The false accusations. The hysteria. The hangings. Dying for no real reason at all.”

  “Then you know what I say is true. What if I can stop it this time? What if I can convince Hempel his whole hunt is a waste of time?”

  “But why does it have to be you?”

  “I think he thinks catching me would be like catching the vampire that killed his father.”

  “Why?”

  “He thinks I look like the vampire that killed his father.”

  “Did you kill his father?”

  “No. His father died about thirty years ago. I was long past hunting by then.” James paced the room, venting his nervous en-ergy. “Besides, you’re assuming the worst will happen. I went out in the sunlight once and I didn’t die.”

  “No, but you ran back inside in agony and you haven’t been out since.”

  “But I’m still here. And I’ll be here Friday night. I can stand a lot.”

  “You can stand anything but sunlight.”

  “For you, I can stand the light of a hundred suns at noon on the equator in June if that’s what I have to do to come back to you. I’ve been waiting over three hundred years to see your face again. I’m not leaving you now.” He grasped Sarah’s hands and held them to his chest. “Don’t you see? I’m doing this for you. What will happen to you if everyone learns the truth about me? They could accuse you too. How can I subject you to that again?” He tried to wipe her tears from her cheeks, but she pulled away. “I couldn’t help you the first time, Sarah. I won’t let that happen again.”

  “Are we back to that? Are you still blaming yourself? Please, let it go. It wasn’t your fault then, and what’s happening now isn’t your fault either.”

  James didn’t know what to say. In fact, he had been feeling like the whole mess with Kenneth Hempel was somehow his fault. He must have trusted one person too many with his secret, done some unhuman thing when he thought no one was looking, used too obvious a food source at the local hospital, crossed one line too many. He wasn’t human. No matter how human he challenged himself to be, no matter how well he controlled his natural instincts and basic cravings, no matter if he assimilated so well he was virtually undetectable in their society, he was a natural predator of humans and he would never be welcome in their world. For centuries he had lived on the fringe, moving frequently, creating few ties anywhere. Now, with Sarah in his world, he wanted to engage fully in life again. She gave him a reason to wake up every evening. He wanted her to be his wife again. But as long as Kenneth Hempel wanted to expose him he would have to live in fear of having his newfound happiness pulled like a trick tablecloth from under him. He didn’t want to live that way. He didn’t want Sarah to live that way. She suffered enough before.

  “If I don’t do everything I can to stop him, then this time it will be my fault. You have to trust me. I’ll be all right.”

  Sarah slumped forward, her shoulders limp. “There’s nothing I can say to change your mind, is there? You’ve decided. No matter what I say, you’re going out in the sunlight, Friday at noon, a western-style showdown between the vampire and the vampire hunter, both of you ready to pull the trigger at the first sign of movement from the other.”

  “I’ll be all right,” he said again.

  When she finally calmed enough, James carried her to bed and she fell asleep in his arms. She slept fitfully, tossing and turning. He heard her pull herself out of bed about an hour before dawn.

  “Sarah? Are you all right?”

  From his desk in the great room he watched her come out of the bedroom with the blanket around her shoulders. It was spring and warmer in the house, but she shivered as she pulled the cover closer. He thought she looked like she would never feel warm again.

  “Did you have a bad dream?” he asked.

  “No.”

  She walked to his desk and stood behind him, rubbing his shoulders as he shifted through the papers in front of him. When he felt her hands on him he leaned back into her, allowing her warmth to comfort him. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Attempting to grade midterms. I’ve been teaching for two hundred years and every term the students get lazier. What’s wrong with this picture?” He showed her the paper.

  “The student didn’t even take the web links out.”

  “I remember the days when students used to at least pretend to read the books they were assigned.” He picked up his pen, drew a zero, then crumpled the paper and tossed it into the trashcan. “I’m starting to think I need another line of work. You need help at the library?”

  He saw how uncomfortable she looked standing there shivering with the blanket around her shoulders. He put his arms around her and pulled her onto his lap. She put her arms around his neck and her head on his shoulder.

  “What is it, honey?” he asked.

  Sarah sat up and looked into his eyes. “Why do you live here?” she asked.

  “Is there somewhere else?”

  “Maybe. Somewhere you can live as you're meant to.”

  “I can’t live anywhere else. Or any other way. Not now.”

  He thought for a moment, pulling the words together, trying to make sense of a time when sense didn’t matter. “I lived as a hun
ter for a number of years, but then I decided it wasn’t for me. I’m not even sure how many years I lived like that since my life wasn’t ordered by calendars or timepieces then. After I was turned I didn’t know what I was, and I hated that I was forced to live this limbo life of immortality, not that I knew I was immortal then. But I knew I needed blood.”

  “What did you do?”

  “In those early days I stayed mainly in the Massachusetts forests, dodging the Wampanoag and Narragansett tribes. Some natives noticed me, but they seemed unafraid of the nighttime blood-drinking man-spirit frequenting their woodlands. They called me Maske, their word for bear, and left me alone to wander as I would. As a white European settler I had been taught to fear the natives, and when I was alive I saw their beaded buckskin clothing, their seashell and bear grease decorations, their animal skin robes in winter, and I was afraid. After I was turned I was still more nervous about them than they were about me.

  “Even in those first years, when I was all blood and fire, I knew I loved my wife.” He kissed Sarah’s cheek. “I knew I loved my father, and I guessed he was distraught with grief over my disappearance. I wanted to know he was well, and some nights I wandered as close to Salem Town as I dared, hoping to overhear some word of him. One night I heard a woman calling my name. As she came closer I remembered her name, Prudence Staple-ton.”

  Sarah tapped her temple with her finger. “My cousin,” she said.

  “That’s right. ‘Oh, James,’ Prudence said. ‘Richard said he saw you here the other night and I didn’t believe ‘twas so, but he brought me here and now I can see with my own eyes. ‘Tis you.’

  “I nodded, afraid to speak or do anything that might reveal that I wasn’t as I was.

  “‘Your father is coming,’ she said. ‘When we saw for certain ‘twas you Richard ran to fetch him. Oh, James, where were you? We were afeared you’d gone mad after Lizzie died.’

  “Suddenly I heard my father’s panting breaths and running footsteps, and I saw him sprinting toward me. Prudence and her husband backed away, leaving us our reunion to ourselves.

  “‘Oh James,’ my father said. ‘I was afeared you’d run off to another colony, or gone back to England, or…’ He couldn’t finish the thought. ‘Why didn’t you come to me? You know I would do all I could for you.’

  “‘I’m sorry, Father,’ I said.

  “My father didn’t understand my meaning. He thought I was apologizing for disappearing, but really I was apologizing for my weakness, for the fault in me that allowed me to become this unnatural thing.

  “‘You needn’t apologize,’ my father said. ‘My Prodigal Son is home.’ He recited the passage from the Bible: ‘Son thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. ‘Twas meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again, and was lost and is found. You are found, James, and I shall rejoice.’

  “He clasped my hand and tried to lead me forward. ‘You’re cold, Son,’ he said. ‘Come home. I shall warm you with tea by the fire.’

  “‘I cannot come home,’ I said. ‘I cannot be warm. And I am dead and alive again, Father, I am.’

  “My father stroked my hand, trying to warm me, trying to soothe me the way he did when I was a child. It was nearly a starless night, so he leaned close to my face. Even in the dark-ness he could tell my eyes were wrong. Though I found comfort in his presence, I knew I couldn’t stay with him. I felt diseased, like lepers from Biblical days yelling ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ to warn passers-by from drawing too near lest the passers-by become contaminated themselves. I didn’t want to contaminate my father with my uncleanliness. Even newly turned I loved him too much to hurt him.

  “‘I cannot come home,’ I said again. ‘I am not myself, Father, and I cannot stand for you to know me as I am.’

  “My father looked afraid, not of what I was, but of losing me again. ‘You shall come home, Son,’ he said. ‘I insist upon it.’

  “I tried to scare him into letting me go. I spoke with my most growl-filled voice. ‘I am a demon now. Do you hear me? I am one of the evil specters the people in Salem have been searching for. I have been a demon since the time Elizabeth died. This is why I wanted you to believe I died, because I am dead, Father. I didn’t ask to be this way, but I am, and now I am a danger to you in more ways than one.’

  “‘You shall stop speaking nonsense, James, and you shall come home with me.’

  “‘I can tell by your look you know what I say is true.’

  “‘Even so, you shall come home with me.’

  “‘Are you certain? Even as I am?’

  “‘You are my son.’

  “‘Yet what if I truly be a demon?’

  “My father looked me steadily in the eyes as he had always done. ‘Then my son is a demon,’ he said. ‘And yet I love you still.’ He pressed my cold hand in his. ‘Come home, Son, and we’ll see this through. Please, I beg you, come home.’

  “I followed him to the house where I had lived with him, worked with him, shared my love for you with him. The house looked different to my far-seeing eyes where details are etched like sharp pencil drawings into my corneas. Things looked darker, sadder than I remembered, though it might have been my preter-natural vision projecting gloominess where before I had seen only contentment and light. I hoped he had changed his mind and he would lock me out and never see me again, but he opened the door and stepped aside. I hesitated, but I went in. My father lit a fire, poured water into a pot, and placed the pot on the hook inside the hearth.

  “‘The tea shall soon be ready,’ he said.

  “‘I do not drink tea,’ I said.

  “‘You love tea.’

  “‘No longer. I have a thirst for something stronger.’

  “‘You want ale? I may have other spirits here as well.’

  “‘I have a thirst for something stronger than ale.’

  “My father stared at me, waiting for an explanation. The water boiled, he poured himself some tea, and then he sat in a chair by the hearth. Though I wouldn’t look at him, I sensed him studying me, seeing how changed I was in this paranormal body I didn’t understand.

  “We sat in silence for some time. Finally, my father asked, ‘So what has become of you?’

  “‘I know not what I am,’ I answered. ‘Truly I don’t.’

  “‘How have you come to be this way?’ he asked.

  “I explained about that night outside the jail, how the long-faced man with the smirking grin lured me and bit me, how when I woke up I was changed into something unnatural and left to fend for myself.

  “‘I’ve done things, Father, terrible things. If I am not already in hell then I shall be there soon from the demonic things I’ve done. I would hardly believe it of myself except ‘tis scratched into my memory. I wish I were dead, truly dead, Father, because I want to be human again and I know I cannot be. I cannot live like this.’”

  “Demonic things?” Sarah asked.

  “I didn’t always get blood from the hospital, Sarah.”

  After a pause, she asked, “How did your father react?”

  “At first he didn’t seem to believe me. ‘Don’t say that, Son,’ he said. He leapt from his chair and kneeled before me, taking my hands, trying to soothe me, but there was nothing he could say to take the burden of this preternatural life from me. I pulled away and flashed to the other side of the room. My father’s head jerked as he watched me.

  “‘All shall be well,’ he said.

  “‘‘Nothing is well! Nothing shall be well again!’

  “‘‘Tis not you, James. None of this is you.’

  “‘‘Tis me. ‘Tis what I am now. I’m dead, Father. I walk but I’m dead.’

  “To prove my point I took my father’s hand and pressed it to my chest. He gasped aloud and tried to pull away, but I wouldn’t let go.

  “‘Look at me!’ I yelled. ‘I am a demon! My eyes are black and my skin is cold and I do not breathe and my heart does not beat! I drin
k blood, Father. That is why I do not want your tea or ale—they do nothing for me. I need blood! And you do not want to know what I do to get it. Look at me and know me for what I am, man! How can you see me this way?’

  “My father closed my face between his hands. ‘You are my son, James, and you are still in there. Though your body be changed I look into your lightless eyes and I see your truth still fighting to live. And no matter what has become of you, I shall help you. I am your father.’

  “‘I am the son of Satan,’ I said.

  “‘No. You are my son. My son!’

  “I began to cry from the frustration of having to control my rage. The sight of the blood streaming from my eyes upset my father more than anything else he saw that night.

  “‘Are you hurt? Are you ill?’ he asked.

  “‘No,’ I said, wiping my face with my hand, streaking my cheeks demon-fire red. I began pacing the floor, my arms flailing around me. “‘‘Tis blood now, blood yesterday, blood tomorrow. Blood to drink, blood to weep. ‘Tis always about blood.’ I held my bloodied hands to his face. ‘Blood is all I have.’

  “My father finally saw me for what I was. He turned away and dropped his head into his hands. There was nothing left for him to say.

  “‘I must be on my leave,’ I said. The sight of my father grieving for a son standing before him was too much. ‘I cannot be here. Imagine the difficulties you’ll face if others discover your son the demon in your home.’

  “‘The witch hunts are past,’ he said.

  “‘The hunts shall never truly end. Humans shall always search for a way to lord their power over others. They shall always lie about others to protect themselves.’

  “‘But I shan’t allow you to run because you are afeared of what others might do. You shall stay with me and I shall help you however I can. You cannot leave me. I have lost so much already—your mother, Elizabeth…’

  “‘Me.’