by Adam Rex
When the ashes were scattered and dead, the boys turned to watch the man retrace his steps down the pipe.
“Fucking crazy old fuck,” said Victor.
“He smelled like you,” said Doug. Except not as bad, he thought.
“He smelled like you, you mean. ’Cept not as bad.”
“Finally,” said Doug. “Cool vampire shit. A secret society.”
“I dunno. I’m probably not gonna go. Could be dangerous. You shouldn’t go either.”
Doug thought about the Vampire Hunters. He supposed it could be a trap.
“Go drink some blood and stay home,” said Victor as he walked away. “You look terrible.”
14
DARK STALKER
DOUG DIDN’T drink any blood, and he didn’t go home. Instead, he rode his bike to the street on which he thought Cat lived, and traced and retraced a long figure eight in the road. He thought he knew which house it was, which house Sejal was in. He’d been to Cat’s once freshman year, when she’d hosted the cast party on the closing night of Guys and Dolls. But he wasn’t certain. He wore his uncertainty like a veil. If he wasn’t positive, he could be excused for not riding up the driveway and knocking on the door.
“Is he still out there?” asked Cat. Sejal spied through the black curtains of Cat’s upstairs bedroom while Cat and Ophelia rifled through clothes. After learning of Sejal’s baggage mishap Ophelia had also accepted with brio the responsibility of dressing her. She’d arrived minutes before Doug with a Macy’s bag full of outfits.
“He is,” said Sejal.
“He probably followed me here,” said Ophelia from behind a sheer green blouse. “It’s weird how many guys are already into me this year.”
“Nah, he’s here for Sejal. Did you see how he looked at her at lunch?”
“Should I go say hello?” asked Sejal.
“No way,” said Ophelia. “If he can’t come ring the doorbell himself, then screw him. Besides, it’s only Meatball. I mean, no offense—maybe in your country the weird-looking guys are the hot ones, I don’t know.”
“I’m not certain he knows which is the correct house.”
“He knows,” said Cat. “Go talk to him if you want. He’s smart. Pretty funny, too.”
Sejal smiled. “I’m not interested in him as a…suitor.”
“Suitor?” said Ophelia.
“Whatever.” Cat grinned at Sejal. “It’s fine.”
“Truly, I am not.”
“Truly? Suitor?” Ophelia smiled at Sejal, too, a movie-star smile. “Are you the cutest thing ever?”
Doug was on the verge of giving up and leaving, as he had been for ten minutes, when the front door of the house-he-was-pretty-sure-was-the-house opened, and Sejal walked out. She was barefoot, in black jeans and a black T-shirt.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hey. Hey, I…thought this was your house, but…”
“Your skin looks better.”
“It’s cloudy out.”
“You could carry an umbrella, no? For when it is not?”
“No, too faggy,” said Doug. Did Sejal’s smile falter, then? “Sorry, I mean…too homosexual.”
Sejal folded her arms and looked at her feet. Her startling toes clutched at the grass.
They were like hazelnuts. Her toes, her feet were a golden brown—the same color as the rest of her, really; Doug couldn’t imagine why it surprised him. He couldn’t fathom why it made her feet look more naked than other feet.
Doug is staring at my feet, Sejal noted. She supposed she’d just been looking at them herself, so she couldn’t really…No, now he was watching that bird in the yard. Now a glance at her chest, now a pause at her shoulder. And again the bird. He was like a cat. He was like a cat at a mirror, looking anywhere and everywhere but at the pair of eyes in front of him.
She considered suddenly that he might be her reflection. There was something familiar about his eyes, his look of distraction. He was lost, maybe missing something, like she was. Perhaps he’d left his heart someplace, too.
Then he cocked his head and looked up at her face at last.
“Hey, you have a nose earring. I mean, a nose ring,” Doug said, though it wasn’t actually a ring. “A nose…”
Sejal brightened and touched the small silver stud with her finger. “My mother convinced me that in America I should leave the piercing empty, isn’t it? Then I meet Ophelia, and she has one, too! It feels different, like it’s a different kind of hole in you, here.”
“Uh-huhey, do you want to go see a movie sometime?” said Doug before he had a chance to think, or inhale.
Sejal reacted as if she’d just been pinched unexpectedly in the ass. “I don’t know, Doug…”
“Oh, that’s cool.”
“I arrived so recently, I still feel very…unsettled.”
“I totally understand. I just thought you might be interested in seeing an American movie, because you’re probably just used to those kinds of dancey movies they show on Desi TV. That’s this late-night channel here, I don’t know if you’ve seen it.”
Sejal smirked. “Okay. I do not think I’ve seen any of the current American movies. Why not.”
“Hey, all right! Great. Um, well, I have this big dinner party to go to tonight, but Friday?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” said Doug. “Well, I’ll see you at school!” He stood hard on the pedals, then biked quickly away, before he was overcome by it. Before her yes could catch up to him and set him ablaze.
15
TESTING
THE PHONE WAS ringing as Doug entered the back door of his home. He let it ring, went upstairs, rubbed lotion into his dry cheeks. Then he sat at his computer and called for messages as he searched for “The Hawthorne Chestnut Hill.” It sounded familiar.
“You have…four…new messages. New message.”
“Hi, Doug…it’s Jay. You were supposed to call by five, so…just calling to—”
“Message has been deleted. New message.”
“Hi, Doug…it’s Jay. I hope everything’s okay. “I don’t—”
“Message has been deleted. New message.”
“Jay again. Call me as soon as you get this, I’m really wor—”
“Message has been deleted. New message.”
“It’s Jay. I’m really, really—”
“Message has been deleted. End of messages.”
Doug laid the phone down on his desk. The Hawthorne turned out to be an eighteenth-century mansion in Chestnut Hill, another suburb of Philadelphia. It was going to be kind of far to bike, though. He’d probably have to take a train, change at Thirtieth Street, take another up there. If he went, that is.
Outside there was a squeal of brakes, the slam of a car door, and then, a few seconds later, the doorbell.
Doug answered the doorbell. Jay was on the step, bobbing like a balloon.
“Oh, hey,” said Doug. “I just tried to call you. Had you tried to call? I didn’t get the messages yet.”
Jay just narrowed his eyes and frowned like a bulldog and shook his head. Then he turned and started back to the curb.
“Hey! Seriously! I just got home! Some crazy shit happened at the drainpipe! Secret meetings and this-message-will-self-destruct kind of shit. I need to tell you about it. I need help deciding what to do.”
Jay paused at the car door.
In what felt like the marathon of run-on sentences, Doug caught Jay up on the events of the day. Sort of. In this version Victor just wanted to talk to Doug about some private math tutoring, and the dead butler didn’t arrive until after Victor left. When Doug finished, the sun was behind the trees and his mom and dad were returning home.
“Hi, kids,” said Dad.
“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Lee.”
“Mom, can Jay stay for dinner?”
Mom paused in the driveway, her arms hugging her briefcase and two bags of groceries. Her expression conveyed to Doug, via a bit of family-only telepathy, that he knows he’s
not supposed to ask in front of Jay like that because now how can she say no even though they’re only having Manwiches? “If it’s okay with Jay’s mom” was all she said out loud.
“You can help me figure out the best route to ride my bike to the party,” Doug told Jay when his parents were out of sight. He hoped that hook wasn’t too flagrantly baited, but what he really wanted was for Jay to offer him a ride.
“You’re definitely going?”
“I don’t think it’s the Vampire Hunters. Do you? It doesn’t seem like their style.”
“No,” Jay admitted. “Do you want a ride? You don’t want to show up all sweaty.”
“That would be awesome.”
The boys ate and finished their homework. Then they drove early to the Hawthorne to be sure they could find it.
“This has to be it,” said Doug. “It’s perfect. You can’t even see the house from the road.”
Past a NO OUTLET sign the dark and quiet street stretched into a sharp, thin curve. The front gate of the Polidori residence was garnished with thick ivy. You didn’t borrow a cup of sugar from this sort of neighbor. This neighbor had no sugar for you.
Jay backed out to the NO OUTLET sign again and turned around.
“We’ll go down to the creek somewhere,” said Jay.
“Good,” said Doug. “We should have done this before. I want to go into that house with as few questions as possible.”
They walked through the shimmering trees toward the smell of water. Jay carried a grocery bag in addition to his schoolbag, and it was from the former that he produced a set of high galoshes. He sat on a rock and slipped them over his shoes.
“We’re going to the other side of the creek,” he said. “There’ll be less chance of running into anyone else over there.”
“Uh-huh. Where are my galoshes?”
“I didn’t think you’d care. You don’t really feel cold when you’re full of blood, right?”
“But I still feel this acute sense of embarrassment when I show up for a vampire party later with wet feet.”
Jay avoided his eyes. “Oh. Well, you’ll be dry by then, with this wind,” he said, and started across the rushing water.
There was nothing else to do but follow. Doug didn’t feel the cold, but he felt the damp, and there was no mistaking the transcendental goose of a suddenly wet crotch. He stumbled over the slick rocks and leaned into the incline on the other side.
“Sorry about that,” said Jay after a few minutes of walking, “but that was actually the first test. Some sources say that vampires can’t cross running water. It didn’t hurt or anything?”
“Of course not. That was a test? I’ve crossed running water all kinds of times since getting made. In planes. In cars. I’m even the only guy I know who washes his hands after he pees. Not that I pee much anymore…”
“Can cross running water,” said Jay as he made notes in a big red binder. “Doesn’t pee much. Okay”—he brandished a big silver crucifix from his backpack—“take that!”
“Take that?”
“Yeah. Anything?”
“No, but like you said before, I’m Jewish. Where’d you get that thing?”
“Dark Matter. Here.”
Jay threw Doug the cross. Doug fumbled it, picked it up off the wet leaves. “What am I supposed to do with it?” he said.
“It’s real silver. Plated. It doesn’t hurt?”
“Silver is for werewolves.”
“Some sources say vampires, too. Try sucking on it a little.”
Doug sucked on the cross. It tasted like fork. “Nothing.”
Jay crossed the cross off his list, then they repeated the whole process again with a Star of David.
“Nope,” said Doug.
Jay tossed a pile of rice at Doug’s feet. Doug looked at the rice, then back at Jay. “What? Do I eat it?”
“How many grains are there?” Jay asked.
“I don’t know—I’m not autistic, I’m a vampire.”
“But you don’t care? Some sources say if you toss grain on the ground in front of a vampire, he has to stop whatever he’s doing and count it.”
“These ‘sources’ wouldn’t all be Wikipedia, would they?”
“Mmmmm,” Jay hummed, “mostly no. In fact—you know something? Remember when Vampire Hunters mentioned that thing about vampires having to be invited in? I remembered today where I’d heard it before. It’s in that Cody Southern vampire movie that’s always on cable. Love Bites.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“No, it’s true. I wasn’t sure either, but you can watch the whole thing online. And you know what else? Practically all the good vampires turn normal at the end because they kill the head vampire.”
Doug nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ve read a comic like that, too. If you kill the vampire that made you a vampire you’re not a vampire anymore.”
“Well,” Jay interjected, “in Love Bites it had to be the head vampire. Like, he’s the top of the family tree. Killing the gang leader vampire wasn’t good enough—Cody had to kill the antique store owner who made the whole gang.”
“That’s just a movie, though.”
“Yeah. It doesn’t really make sense, anyway. Like, how do you know who’s the head vampire? Wouldn’t the vampire that made the head vampire be the real head? Or the one who made him? How far back do you go?”
Doug thought about this.
“Anyway,” said Jay. “The list. So. I know you usually cut through that Presbyterian parking lot on the way to school.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you still? Because then we’d know you can walk on hallowed ground.”
“Well, I can definitely bike on hallowed ground. If the hallowed ground really extends to the parking lot,” said Doug. “Is this really an issue? Cemeteries are hallowed ground. Old-school vampires lived in cemeteries.”
“Hmm, yeah. Never mind.” Jay consulted the binder again. “We know already that you have no trouble with mirrors, of course. Right?”
“Right,” said Doug. What he didn’t say was that in the weeks since the change he had avoided seeing his reflection whenever he could. It was superficially the same, but he felt no connection to the boy in the mirror. Victor had taken that, too. There was only an empty stranger; a funeral mask; a pair of weird, dead eyes. He didn’t see himself reflected at all.
He’d taken to keeping his bedroom mirror covered with a sheet, as if someone had died. Someone had, actually.
“Right,” said Doug again.
“And you’ve probably had garlic.”
“Oh, yeah. My mom puts it in everything. There was extra garlic in those Manwiches. Do you remember,” said Doug, “in fifth or sixth grade, when she read that it was good for your heart or something? She used to have my dad and me take garlic pills, eat garlic at every meal…”
Jay was looking more and more uncomfortable. He nodded gravely as if recollecting some great tragedy, until Doug finally said, “What?”
“That’s why…” said Jay, “people call you Meatball.”
“What? No, it’s not.”
Jay stared at the ground.
Doug was incredulous. “They call me Meatball because I’m short and…husky.”
“And smell like Italian food.”
“Shut up!”
“You don’t anymore!” Jay rushed to add. “But you did back then. Especially during PE. It was like you sweated garlic.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Shit!”
A fresh breeze ruffled the trees. A dead leaf caught in the hair of Jay’s heavy head.
“I don’t think anybody means anything by it anymore,” he said. “It’s just something to call you. Cat isn’t being mean. She’s nice. Stuart calls you Meatball, but you guys are still friends, right? And Adam? He wasn’t even in sixth grade with us. He’s a senior.”
“Adam,” Doug snarled. “That guy is completely full of shit. I saw him in Planet Comix over the summer. Twice. You were with me one o
f the times, for the McFadden signing.”
“Yeah. I guess he doesn’t like admitting he reads comics.”
“I guess he doesn’t like admitting a lot of things. You ever notice how he’s nicer to us when we’re away from school? But even then he’s still looking over his shoulder like the girls’ volleyball team is gonna jump out from behind a tree.”
Jay shrugged.
“Look, never mind,” said Doug. “Just…what’s next.”
Jay looked at his list. “Holy water. But I couldn’t get any.”
“And after that?”
“Um…here. Eat this mustard.”
16
SECRET VAMPIRE SHIT
AT FIVE TO MIDNIGHT the boys approached the gate of the Hawthorne for the second time.
“I’m going to get in trouble for staying out this late,” said Jay.
“I know.”
“I’m sorry about the garlic thing.”
“I know.”
They unloaded Doug’s bike from the trunk and tucked it behind a hedge.
“I have my phone. I’ll call you if…something happens.” Doug thought this sounded stupid as soon as he said it. Of course “something” was going to happen—he was going to walk into a house full of vampires. The thought that this alone was not necessarily going to be the lead story of the evening made him suddenly cold. He marched quickly from the car before Jay could offer any words of encouragement. His feet were damp.
The gravel driveway looped like a racetrack around spare ornamental shrubbery and an expanse of lawn so large and plain that it seemed designed to testify to how much land this woman could waste. Doug had rarely seen so much grass in one place without a soccer net at each end.
The home of Signora Polidori was huge, redbrick, and brightly shuttered, more blandly Colonial than Doug would have expected. No gargoyles. No severe, Gothic arches. No bat-shaped door knocker. He supposed that last one would have been a little on the nose, actually.
He rang a perfectly ordinary doorbell, and a few moments later the door opened onto the crepe paper face of the man from the drainpipe.
