by I D Johnson
He pulled himself out of the chair and approached his brother who stood as well, and Elliott wrapped his arms around him. “I love you, you scrawny little ankle-biter.”
“I love you, too, big brother.”
Elliott pounded him on the back and walked out of the room, hoping that his brother would be okay and stay out of the woods. He had too many people to take care of at the moment to also be worrying about Jimmy, and even though he sometimes felt indestructible, at some point, something was going to have to give, or he was going to be the one needing to convince people he wasn’t crazy.
Back downstairs, Elliott was happy to see that Frank had taken a seat in his recliner. He looked paler than he remembered from the last time he’d visited, which had been a few weeks ago. “How you doin’, Dad?” he asked. “Feelin’ any better?”
Frank managed a smile. “I’m doing okay.”
Peggy had a worried look on her face, and Elliott attributed it to her husband’s failing health, as well as Jimmy’s changing disposition. “Doc have any idea what it might be?”
“Well, for now, they say he has a pneumonia in his right lung, but they think it might be more than that. They’re running a few more tests.” Peggy chewed on her thumbnail, a habit Elliott couldn’t remember ever having noticed before.
“Could be cancer, son,” Frank said, matter-of-factly. “Doc said it might be the cigarettes.”
“Cigarettes?” Elliott couldn’t believe that would be the cause. “Really? You give ’em up yet then?”
“Working on it,” Frank said with a smile that said he wasn’t quite there yet. “Anyhow, don’t worry about me. You’ve got plenty of other people to worry about.”
The truth of the matter had Elliott shaking his head. “What about the farm? You hired people to do all of that?” He had heard Peggy mention something about that not too long ago.
“Yeah, it’s taken care of. So, what did your brother say?” Peggy dismissed his question as quickly as possible to get to what she really wanted to know.
Elliott considered the promise he’d made to his brother and took a deep breath, attempting to figure out how to best answer that question. “Well, I sort of told him I wouldn’t tell you what’s bothering him, but I think he’ll work it out.”
“Are you serious?” Peggy asked, her mouth hanging agape for a moment before she added, “How am I supposed to help him if I don’t know what it is?”
“Maybe he doesn’t want or need your help,” Frank offered, his tone sympathetic but honest. Peggy looked at him incredulously.
“I really don’t think he does—not with this particular problem.” Elliott thought back to what Jimmy had told him about the strange man in the forest and his own experiences. He ran a hand through his hair and quietly said, “But on a related note—there’s something I want to ask you about.”
That got his mother’s attention. She was a smart woman and understood what he was getting at. If he could find a way to tell her what Jimmy was upset about without ratting his little brother out, then he would do it. “What is it?”
“Well,” Elliott began, not really wanting to think back to the night Reggie had died and Nancy had gotten pregnant but realizing he would have to, at least to a degree. “You’ve lived here a while right?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Peggy shrugged. “Long enough. Why?”
“I’ve lived here my whole life,” Frank reminded him, and Elliott nodded at him.
“Well, I was wondering, have you ever heard any stories about the woods out around Lawson’s Point? Or anywhere else for that matter?” The place where Jimmy reported seeing something was a few miles from the legendary lovers’ spot, but Settler’s Creek joined the two.
Peggy and Frank exchanged glances before he asked, “Why don’t you explain why you’re asking?”
With another deep breath, Elliott said, “One night, when I was out there, I thought I saw someone—something—maybe a few of them, in the woods. I wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but it was weird looking. Pale skin, dark eyes, with red around them. Anyway, I’m not the only person who’s seen something like this, and I was just wondering if maybe there’s a story to go along with it. Or, hell, maybe I’m looney tunes.” He decided to keep the story about the bus driver up his sleeve for now and waited patiently to be told they’d be calling the people with the white jackets to drive him away.
The looks shared between the couple told him there was something they weren’t saying, though, and he questioned whether they knew more. He wondered if they would tell him the Lawson bunch were a group of weirdos, or there was an old lunatic asylum up in the forest. He didn’t expect what they actually ended up telling him.
Frank spoke first. “It’s time, Peggy.”
“Frank—” she said harshly.
“Peggy, you promised you would. He’s old enough.”
“But now’s not the time, not with the baby, and everything else.”
“Peggy, you may as well do it now that he’s asking before someone else does it for you.”
Elliott listened to the conversation with his forehead crinkled, wondering what in the world they were talking about and thinking maybe they also needed psychiatric evaluations. But he was patient, and when they were finished, Peggy finally turned back to face him. “Elliott, there are some things in this world not everyone needs to know about. Only certain people have the capacity to change them, so only certain people are granted the burden of knowing.”
“Some might call it a privilege,” Frank chimed in with a small smile on his face, drawing Peggy’s stare momentarily.
She cleared her throat and began again as Elliott waited for further explanation. “I do know what it is that you saw, and if I had any idea you were going out there, I would have told you not to years ago. I didn’t realize the kids were hanging out in that neck of the woods. I sure hope you aren’t saying that Jimmy’s been out there, too.”
“No, he hasn’t. But he has been down by the Miller place, by the railroad tracks.”
Peggy’s eyes enlarged to the size of saucers. “That’s close by.”
Elliott nodded, realizing she caught his drift.
“All the more reason to tell them,” Frank said, emphasizing the “them.”
Peggy turned to face him. “You can’t be serious. Jimmy is only thirteen. He has four more years.”
“Yes, but if you tell him now, he’ll be more careful. Peggy, if they were that close by, there’s a chance…. He’s not safe. Elliott can protect himself now, most likely, but Jimmy….”
Peggy didn’t seem to want to accept whatever it was Frank was getting at, but with an exhale loud enough to have been the product of a car’s exhaust system, she stood and went over to the stairs. “Jimmy, will you come down here, please?”
It took a moment, as if Jimmy were engaged in something really important, and Elliott turned to look over his shoulder at the stairs as Jimmy came down them, dragging his feet. He gave his older brother the stink eye.
“I didn’t tell her anything about what we talked about, I promise,” Elliott said, looking him in the eyes. Jimmy’s expression softened, and he took a seat next to his brother on the couch while Peggy resumed her position on a smaller sofa she’d purchased a few years aback, adjacent to them.
“Boys, there’s something that you should know. I’m not particularly skilled at explaining this information, so I’ll do my best, and if you’re still confused or you have questions, there are others who might be able to explain it better than me.”
Elliott and Jimmy looked at each other and then back to Peggy.
“What you saw in the woods, Elliott,” she emphasized, letting Jimmy know she had no idea he had also seen it, even though that was a sure fire way to let him know she really did have that information, “was a… Vampire.”
A chuckle escaped Elliott’s lips, one he could not contain. Despite Peggy’s ultra-serious expression, he thought there was no way she could actually be serious, and yet, she c
ontinued to stare at him without cracking a smile. “I’m sorry. A what?”
Jimmy, on the other hand, exclaimed, “I knew it! I knew it!”
Peggy licked her lips and continued. “I know it is hard to believe, and I don’t blame you for being skeptical. But the fact of the matter is, Vampires do exist. And they are quite harmful to humans. In fact, those who go against the rules and hunt innocent humans have been known to wipe out whole villages. We have a lot of that under control now. Well, I say we. I don’t actually mean we….”
“Honey,” Frank interrupted. “Calm down. Start from the beginning. Explain it to them the way that Janette explained it to you.”
She nodded, but she was nervously tapping her fingers on the arm of the couch. “Basically, there are three types of creatures that exist beyond what you know about humans, and we call them Passels. There are Vampires, as I’ve mentioned. Some follow the rules and behave themselves. Others are very dangerous and can kill people. To protect people from them, there are two other kinds of creatures—Guardians and Hunters. Hunters, obviously, hunt down Vampires and destroy them. Guardians act as an in-between. We shield Hunters from harmful Vampires, and if it was necessary, we could also be used to protect Vampires from Hunters, though that’s never happened before.”
Her language didn’t escape him. “What—wait. We?” Elliott asked. “What do you mean by ‘we’ when you say Guardians? Are you under the impression that you’re one of these mystical creatures, Mom?”
She nodded. “I’m not under the impression, darling. I am a Guardian. I have been for decades. And… you could be, too. Both of you. That’s why you’re here, why you were brought to me. Because we are the same.”
“What?” Jimmy exclaimed. “Cool! You mean, I can kill Vampires and stuff?”
“Well, not yet,” Peggy replied as Elliott continued to stare at her, dumbfounded. “You have to undergo a Transformation process first, and that can’t happen until you’re seventeen. That’s why we didn’t want to tell you yet, but maybe Frank is right. If you’ve both seen a Vampire around town, maybe more than one, then… maybe this is the only way to keep you safe.”
There were dozens of questions floating around in Elliott’s mind, and he wasn’t sure where to start. “Mom, are you on any kind of medication…?”
She let out a loud sigh and got up off of the couch, calling, “I’ll be back,” over her shoulder. She headed into the room she used as a study, and Elliott turned his attention to Frank who had a smug look on his face.
“It’s true,” he said quietly. “All of it.”
“And what about you? You some kinda wizard or a fairy or somethin’? Maybe an elf?”
Frank chuckled. “I wish I was a magical creature. No, I’m just a measly human. No chance at changing into a superhero for me.”
Before Elliott could ask the myriad of questions tumbling into his mind about Frank’s comment, Peggy returned. She had a photo album in her hand and indicated she needed her sons to scoot apart so she could sit between them, which they obliged. “Okay. Here you go. Proof.”
She opened up the book and began to flip through the pages. “This is me when I was a little girl.”
Elliott stared at the old, crinkled picture. “What do you mean?” he asked. “That thing looks like it’s from the 1800s.” The girl did look a bit like Peggy, but it was hard to tell for certain since the photograph was so old, and Peggy looked to be nine or ten at the time.
“Yep,” she nodded. “I was born in 1893, and this photo was taken in 1901.”
“Shut up,” Elliott muttered, and then seeing his mother’s face, he hastily apologized. “Sorry.”
“But, Mom, that would make you…”
“Sixty-four,” she answered quickly before Jimmy could finish the math.
“There’s no way,” Elliott protested. “On your last birthday, you said you were thirty-four.”
“Well, I couldn’t hardly tell you the truth without explaining all of this to you, could I? Listen, boys Guardians don’t age much at all. I’ll still look like this, for the most part, in two hundred years,.”
“Two hundred years!” Jimmy’s excitement was obvious as he broke into a huge grin. “Are you immortal, like the Greek gods?”
Peggy actually giggled, despite her serious expression. “Not exactly, but I will live forever, so long as a Hunter never accidentally kills me.”
“Why would a Hunter do that?” Jimmy asked.
“Well, sometimes when we are hunting Vampires, there can be mix-ups, and occasionally, a Hunter has accidentally killed a Guardian. It doesn’t happen often. But nothing else can kill us—nothing.”
“That’s so cool,” Jimmy muttered.
Elliott was not as convinced. “What else you got in the book, Ma?”
She turned the page to an even older looking photograph, though this one appeared to be a copy. It was a man and a woman in clothes dating back to the early 1800s, from what Elliott could tell. “Do you recognize these people?”
“Oh, my gosh!” Jimmy exclaimed. “That’s the people that brought us here, isn’t it? Janette and Jordan?”
“It is,” Peggy nodded. Elliott thought the couple in the picture looked similar to the pair that had dropped them off at the Livingstone residence six years ago, but it had been so long since he’d seen them, he wasn’t thoroughly convinced. “Jordan is a Guardian, and Janette is a Hunter. In fact, they are the Leaders of this organization and conduct operations all over the world, coordinating attacks of Guardians and Hunters whose job it is to go out and fight Vampires and destroy them.”
“Unbelievable.” Jimmy’s head was shaking back and forth slowly.
“Yeah, it is. It really is,” Elliott agreed, though he was much more serious than his brother. “What else you got?”
Peggy continued to turn pages, showing photographs of herself dressed in what she called “hunting gear” mostly black, form fitting clothing, and holding various weapons—knives, guns, even an axe. In one picture, which was very blurry, she was actually in the process of decapitating a man with pale skin and short black, slicked back hair.
“Is that a Vampire?” Jimmy asked.
“It is. We were moving so fast, it was hard to take a picture, but Jordan has a man who works for him who is very good at technology, and he was able to enhance the camera so it could take better action shots. He can also make our cars drive faster. He even helped invent this.” Peggy reached into her pocket and pulled out a small black box.
“What is it?” Jimmy asked, looking at it suspiciously.
“It’s a type of telephone. We use it in emergencies,” Peggy explained, opening it up to reveal a dial.
“But it’s not plugged into the wall,” Jimmy reminded her.
“I know. Isn’t it fascinating? Christian Henry, the man who helped create it and did all of those other things I was talking about, was a Revolutionary War soldier. He makes all kinds of neat things like this.”
Elliott had never met this Christian person, but he already hated him. He sounded like a know-it-all prick. Not that he even believed the guy existed. Clearly, whatever this whole mess was, Peggy believed it. “So I can just call this guy right now, and he’ll confirm this is all real?”
“We could. But don’t you think it would be better to call Janette?” Peggy asked. “I mean, you know her and would recognize her voice, wouldn’t you?”
“I met her once, six years ago,” Elliott reminded her.
“We are really only supposed to use the phone for emergencies,” Peggy said, seeming to puzzle over it in her mind. “Tell you what, let me finish explaining, and then we can give her a call.”
Jimmy didn’t seem to want to wait, but he nodded, and Peggy continued taking them through the photo album, showing them pictures of other Hunters and Guardians.
“Now, Hunters can be killed by Vampires, of course, but that’s it. Though, they will die of old age eventually. And Vampires can be killed by Hunters and Guardians, but they c
annot kill Guardians. If they could, that would defeat the purpose of Guardians.”
“Seems simple enough,” Jimmy said. “So why don’t you do this anymore?”
Peggy let out a loud sigh. “Because, I wanted to stay home with you guys. That and, I decided it wasn’t for me. There’s only so much carnage one person can experience in their life, in my opinion anyway.” Elliott could see that. It was strange to think of his mild mannered mother cutting the heads off of monsters, which was just one of the reasons why he couldn’t believe any of this was true. “They didn’t want me to leave, though, and if I’m honest, I haven’t spoken to Jordan or Janette since I quit six years ago. They told me to keep the phone in case I needed them, but… I haven’t used it. Jordan said some things I didn’t really appreciate….”
“Is that why he didn’t come in that day when we got here?” Jimmy asked.
“Yes. I was already wanting to quit, but he just kept trying to get me to go on one more mission, one more hunt. When I finally told him no, I wasn’t very nice about it.”
“And what about Janette?”
“She’s a distant cousin of mine. She wasn’t as hard on me as Jordan was, but…. It doesn’t matter. If you want me to call her, I will.”
“I’d just like to see how the phone works,” Jimmy said, still as enthusiastic as he had been at the beginning of all of this.
“I have a question,” Elliott said, his cynical voice cutting through his brother’s jubilance. “How does this work exactly? Why am I a Guardian and Janette’s a Hunter? And Frank’s just a regular ol’ human?”
“Good question,” Peggy said, nodding, like she’d meant to include that. “It’s passed down through your family lines. Your mother’s family is descendent from Guardians. She could’ve Transformed into a Guardian if she’d wanted to, but she decided not to. Her father also decided he didn’t want to be part of this world. His mom was a Guardian.”
“Was? So did a Hunter kill her?” Jimmy asked, and Elliott was glad for the question.
“No, actually, I think she is still alive,” Peggy replied. “But a lot of Guardians get so tired of the life after a while, they disappear, not wanting to be found. A lot of them go to islands in the Caribbean Ocean.”
