Henry kept on going but I made myself turn around and grab Pete"s hand, not really helping but just pulling, trying to yank him back to his feet or at least away.
Over his shoulder I glimpsed the valley below and I saw the figures were down at the bottom of the rise, speeding our way in jerky blurred-black movements, like half-seen spiders darting across an icy window pane.
Pete"s face jerked up and I saw there what I felt in myself, and it was not a cold fear but a hot one, a red-hot meltdown as if you were going to rattle and break apart.
Then he was on his feet again, moving past me, and I followed on after him towards the disappearing shape of Henry"s back. It seemed so much further than we"d walked. It was uphill and the trees no longer formed a path and even the wind seemed to be pushing us back. We caught up with Henry and pa.s.sed him, streaking up the last hundred yards towards the fence. None of us turned around. You didn"t have to. You could feel them coming, like rocks thrown at your head, rocks glimpsed at the last minute when there is time to flinch but not to turn.
I was sprinting straight at the fence when Henry called out. I was going too fast and didn"t want to know what his problem was. I leapt up at the wire.
It was like a truck hit me from the side.
I crashed the ground fizzing, arms sparking and with no idea which way was up. Then two pairs of hands were on me, pulling at my coat, cold hands and strong.
I thought the fingers would be long and pale and milky but then I realised it was my friends and they were pulling me along from the wrong section of the fence, dragging me to the side, when they could have just left me where I fell and made their own escape.
The three of us jumped up at the wire at once, scrabbling like monkeys, stretching out for the top. I rolled over wildly, grunting as I scored deep scratches across my back that would earn me a long, hard look from my mother when she happened to glimpse them a week later. We landed heavily on the other side, still moving forward, having realised that we"d just given away the location of a portion of dead fence. But now we had to look back, and what I saw-though my head was still vibrating from the shock I"d received, so I cannot swear to it-was at least three, maybe five, figures on the other side of the fence. Not right up against it, but a few yards back.
Black hair was whipped up around their faces, and they looked like absences ill-lit by moonlight.
Then they were gone.
We moved fast. We didn"t know why they"d stopped, but we didn"t hang around. We didn"t stick too close to the fence either, in case they changed their minds.
We half-walked, half-ran, and at first we were quiet but as we got further away, and nothing came, we began to laugh and then to shout, punching the air, boys who had come triumphantly out the other side.
The forest felt like some huge football field, applauding its heroes with whispering leaves. We got back to town a little after two in the morning. We walked down the middle of the deserted main street, slowly, untouchable, knowing the world had changed: that we were not the boys who had started the evening, but men, and that the stars were there to be touched. That was then.
As older men we stood together at the fence for a long time, recalling that night.
Parts of it are fuzzy now, of course, and it comes down to snapshots: Pete"s terrified face when he slipped, the first glimpse of light at the houses, Henry"s shout as he tried to warn me, narrow faces the colour of moonlight. They most likely remembered other things, defined that night in different ways and were the centre of their recollections. As I looked now through the fence at the other forest I was thinking how long a decade had seemed back then, and how you could learn that it was no time at all.
Henry stepped away first. I wasn"t far behind. Pete stayed a moment longer, then took a couple of steps back. n.o.body said anything. We just looked at the fence a little longer, and then we turned and walked away.
Took us forty minutes to get back to the truck.
The next Thursday Henry couldn"t make it, so it was just me and Pete at the pool table. Late in the evening, with many beers drunk, I mentioned the fence.
Not looking at me, chalking his cue, Pete said that if Henry hadn"t stepped back when he did, he"d have climbed it.
"And gone over?"
"Yeah," he said.
This was bulls.h.i.t, and I knew it. "Really?"
There was a pause. "No," he said, eventually, and I wished I hadn"t asked the second time. I could have left him with something, left us with it. Calling an a.s.s cute isn"t much, but it"s better than just coming right out and admitting you"ll never cup it in your hand.
The next week it was the three of us again, and our walk in the woods wasn"t even mentioned. We"ve never brought it up since, and we can"t talk about the first time any more either. I think about it sometimes, though.
I know I could go out walking there myself some night, and there have been slow afternoons and dry, sleepless small hours when I think I might do it: when I tell myself such a thing isn"t impossible now, that I am still who I once was. But I have learned a little since I was fifteen, and I know now that you don"t need to look for things that will suck the life out of you. Time will do that all by itself.
BLOOD GOTHIC.
by Nancy Holder.
Nancy Holder is the author of more than eighty novels, including Pretty Little Devils, Daughter of the Flames, and Dead in the Water, which won the Bram Stoker Award for best novel. She"s also written a number of media tie-in novels, for properties such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Highlander, and Smallville. Writing as Chris P. Flesh, Holder is the author of the Pretty Freekin Scary series of books for children. A new paranormal romance novel, Son of the Shadows, was released last August. The latest in her young adult series, Wicked (co-auth.o.r.ed with Debbie Viguie), Wicked: Witch & Curse, is currently a New York Times bestseller. Holder"s short fiction-which has appeared in anthologies such as Borderlands, Confederacy of the Dead, Love in Vein, and The Mammoth Book of Dracula-has won her the Stoker Award three times.
Many of the stories in this anthology show vampires to be apex predators, with humanity as their prey. This story, however, demonstrates that perhaps the most dangerous predator of all is unfulfilled and unrelenting desire.
She wanted to have a vampire lover. She wanted it so badly that she kept waiting for it to happen. One night, soon, she would awaken to wings flapping against the window and then take to wearing velvet ribbons and cameo lockets around her delicate, pale neck. She knew it.
She immersed herself in the world of her vampire lover: She devoured Gothic romances, consumed late-night horror movies. Visions of satin capes and eyes of fire shielded her from the harshness of the daylight, from mortality and the vain and meaningless struggles of the world of the sun. Days as a kindergarten teacher and evenings with some overly eager, casual acquaintance could not pull her from her secret existence: always a ticking portion of her brain planned, proceeded, waited.
She spent her meager earnings on dark antiques and intricate clothes. Her wardrobe was crammed with white negligees and ruffled underthings. No crosses and no mirrors, particularly not in her bedroom. White tapered candles stood in pewter sconces, and she would read late into the night by their smoky flickerings, she scented and ruffled, hair combed loosely about her shoulders. She glanced at the window often.
She resented lovers-though she took them, thrilling to the fullness of life in them, the blood and the life-who insisted upon staying all night, burning their breakfast toast and making bitter coffee. Her kitchen, of course, held nothing but fresh ingredients and copper and ironware; to her chagrin, she could not do without ovens or stoves or refrigerators. Alone, she carried candles and bathed in cool water.
She waited, prepared. And at long last, her vampire lover began to come to her in dreams. They floated across the moors, glided through the fields of heather. He carried her to his crumbling castle, undressing her, pulling off her diaphanous gown, caressing her lovely body until, in the height of pa.s.sion, he bit into her arched neck, drawing the life out of her and replacing it with eternal d.a.m.nation and eternal love.
She awoke from these dreams drenched in sweat and feeling exhausted. The kindergarten children would find her unusually quiet and self-absorbed, and it frightened them when she rubbed her spotless neck and smiled wistfully.
Soon and soon and soon, her veins chanted, in prayer and antic.i.p.ation. Soon.
The children were her only regret. She would not miss her inquisitive relatives and friends, the ones who frowned and studied her as if she were a portrait of someone they knew they were supposed to recognize. Those, who urged her to drop by for an hour, to come with them to films, to accompany them to the seash.o.r.e. Those, who were connected to her-or thought they were-by the mere gesturing of the long and milky hands of Fate. Who sought to distract her from her one true pa.s.sion; who sought to discover the secret of that pa.s.sion. For, true to the sacredness of her vigil for her vampire lover, she had never spoken of him to a single earthly, earthbound soul. It would be beyond them, she knew. They would not comprehend a bond of such intentioned sacrifice.
But she would regret the children. Never would a child of their love coo and murmur in the darkness; never would his proud and n.o.ble features soften at the sight of the mother and her child of his loins. It was her single sorrow.
Her vacation was coming. June hovered like the mist and the children squirmed in antic.i.p.ation. Their own true lives would begin in June. She empathized with the shining eyes and smiling faces, knowing their wait was as agonizing as her own. Silently, as the days closed in, she bade each of them a tender farewell, holding them as they threw their little arms around her neck and pressed fervent summertime kisses on her cheeks.
She booked her pa.s.sage to London on a ship. Then to Romania, Bulgaria, Transylvania. The hereditary seat of her beloved; the fierce, violent backdrop of her dreams. Her suitcases opened themselves to her long, full skirts and her brooches and lockets. She peered into her hand mirror as she packed it. "I am getting pale," she thought, and the idea both terrified and delighted her.
She became paler, thinner, more exhausted as her trip wore on. After recovering from the disappointment of the raucous, modern cruise ship, she raced across the Continent to find refuge in the creaky trains and taverns she had so yearned for. Her heart thrilled as she meandered past the black silhouettes of ruined fortresses and ancient manor houses. She sat for hours in the mists, praying for the howling wolf to find her, for the bat to come and join her.
She took to drinking wine in bed, deep, rich, blood-red burgundy that glowed in the candlelight. She melted into the landscape within days, and cringed as if from the crucifix itself when flickers of her past life, her American, false existence, invaded her serenity. She did not keep a diary; she did not count the days as her summer slipped away from her. She only rejoiced that she grew weaker.
It was when she was counting out the coins for a Gypsy shawl that she realized she had no time left. Tomorrow she must make for Frankfurt and from there fly back to New York. The shopkeeper nudged her, inquiring if she were ill, and she left with her treasure, trembling.
She flung herself on her own rented bed. "This will not do. This will not do." She pleaded with the darkness. "You must come for me tonight. I have done everything for you, my beloved, loved you above all else. You must save me." She sobbed until she ached.
She skipped her last meal of veal and paprika and sat quietly in her room. The innkeeper brought her yet another bottle of burgundy and after she a.s.sured him that she was quite all right, just a little tired, he wished his guest a pleasant trip home.
The night wore on; though her book was open before her, her eyes were riveted to the windows, her hands clenched around the winegla.s.s as she sipped steadily, like a creature feeding. Oh, to feel him against her veins, emptying her and filling her!
Soon and soon and soon...
Then, all at once, it happened. The windows rattled, flapped inward. A great shadow, a curtain of ebony, fell across the bed, and the room began to whirl, faster, faster still; and she was consumed with a bitter, deathly chill. She heard, rather than saw, the winegla.s.s crash to the floor, and struggled to keep her eyes open as she was overwhelmed, engulfed, taken.
"Is it you?" she managed to whisper through teeth that rattled with delight and cold and terror. "Is it finally to be?"
Freezing hands touched her everywhere: her face, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the desperate offering of her arched neck. Frozen and strong and never-dying. Sinking, she smiled in a rictus of mortal dread and exultation. Eternal d.a.m.nation, eternal love. Her vampire lover had come for her at last.
When her eyes opened again, she let out a howl and shrank against the searing brilliance of the sun. Hastily, they closed the curtains and quickly told her where she was: home again, where everything was warm and pleasant and she was safe from the disease that had nearly killed her.
She had been ill before she had left the States. By the time she had reached Transylvania, her anemia had been acute. Had she never noticed her own pallor, her la.s.situde?
Anemia. Her smile was a secret on her white lips. So they thought, but he had come for her, again and again. In her dreams. And on that night, he had meant to take her finally to his castle forever, to crown her the best-beloved one, his love of the moors and the mists.
She had but to wait, and he would finish the deed.
Soon and soon and soon.
She let them fret over her, wrapping her in blankets in the last days of summer. She endured the forced cheer of her relatives, allowed them to feed her rich food and drink in hopes of restoring her.
But her stomach could no longer hold the nourishment of their kind; they wrung their hands and talked of stronger measures when it became clear that she was wasting away.
At the urging of the doctor, she took walks. Small ones at first, on painfully thin feet. Swathed in wool, cowering behind sungla.s.ses, she took tiny steps like an old woman. As she moved through the summer hours, her neck burned with an ungovernable pain that would not cease until she rested in the shadows. Her stomach lurched at the sight of grocery-store windows. But at the butcher"s, she paused, and licked her lips at the sight of the raw, b.l.o.o.d.y meat.
But she did not go to him. She grew neither worse nor better.
"I am trapped," she whispered to the night as she stared into the flames of a candle by her bed. "I am disappearing between your world and mine, my beloved. Help me. Come for me." She rubbed her neck, which ached and throbbed but showed no outward signs of his devotion. Her throat was parched, bone-dry, but water did not quench her thirst.
At long last, she dreamed again. Her vampire lover came for her as before, joyous in their reunion. They soared above the crooked trees at the foothills, streamed like black banners above the mountain crags to his castle. He could not touch her enough, worship her enough, and they were wild in their abandon as he carried her in her diaphanous gown to the gates of his fortress.
But at the entrance, he shook his head with sorrow and could not let her pa.s.s into the black realm with him. His fiery tears seared her neck, and she thrilled to the touch of the mark even as she cried out for him as he left her, fading into the vapors with a look of entreaty in his dark, flashing eyes.
Something was missing; he required a boon of her before he could bind her against his heart. A thing that she must give to him...
She walked in the sunlight, enfeebled, cowering. She thirsted, hungered, yearned. Still she dreamed of him, and still he could not take the last of her unto himself.
Days and nights and days. Her steps took her finally to the schoolyard, where once, only months before, she had embraced and kissed the children, thinking never to see them again. They were all there, who had kissed her cheeks so eagerly. Their silvery laughter was like the tinkling of bells as dust motes from their games and antics whirled around their feet. How free they seemed to her who was so troubled, how content and at peace.
The children.
She shambled forward, eyes widening behind the shields of smoky gla.s.s.
He required something of her first.
Her one regret. Her only sorrow.
She thirsted. The burns on her neck pulsated with pain.
Tears of grat.i.tude welled in her eyes for the revelation that had not come too late. Weeping, she pushed open the gate of the schoolyard and reached out a skeleton-limb to a child standing apart from the rest, engrossed in a solitary game of cat"s cradle. Tawny-headed, ruddy-cheeked, filled with the blood and the life.
For him, as a token of their love.
"My little one, do you remember me?" she said softly.
The boy turned. And smiled back uncertainly in innocence and trust.
Then, as she came for him, swooped down on him like a great, winged thing, with eyes that burned through the gla.s.ses, teeth that flashed, once, twice...
soon, soon, soon.
MAMA GONE.
by Jane Yolen.
Jane Yolen is the bestselling author of nearly 300 books, including fiction for all ages, from picture books to middle-grade readers to adult novels. She has also edited several anthologies and written several books of non-fiction, as well as numerous volumes of poetry. Her books and stories have won the prestigious Caldecott Medal and have been nominated for the National Book Award. She is also a winner of the Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy awards. Her latest novel is Dragon"s Heart, the fourth volume in her Pit Dragon chronicles.
We know that certain types of brain injuries can turn nice people into sociopaths. At the flick of a switch these people, through no fault of their own, lose their basic sense of restraint, of remorse, of empathy. Vampirism seems to work the same way. So if a b.u.mp on the head or a bite on the neck turns you bad, are you still you? And if a b.u.mp on the head or a bite on the neck can turn you bad, are you ever really you? Such questions are especially perplexing for the affected person"s family-particularly when the individual in question is feasting on the local children.
Mama died four nights ago, giving birth to my baby sister Ann. Bubba cried and cried, "Mama gone," in his little-boy voice, but I never let out a single tear.
There was blood red as any sunset all over the bed from that birthing, and when Papa saw it he rubbed his head against the cabin wall over and over and over and made little animal sounds. Sukey washed Mama down and placed the baby on her breast for a moment. "Remember," she whispered.
"Mama gone," Bubba wailed again.
But I never cried.
By all rights we should have buried her with garlic in her mouth and her hands and feet cut off, what with her being vampire kin and all. But Papa absolutely refused.
"Your Mama couldn"t stand garlic," he said when the sounds stopped rushing out of his mouth and his eyes had cleared. "It made her come all over with rashes. She had the sweetest mouth and hands."
And that was that. Not a one of us could make him change his mind, not even Granddad Stokes or Pop Wilber or any other of the men who come to pay their last respects. And as Papa is a preacher, and a brimstone man, they let it be. The onliest thing he would allow was for us to tie red ribbons round her ankles and wrists, a kind of sign like a line of blood. Everybody hoped that would do.
But on the next day, she rose from out her grave and commenced to prey upon the good folk of Taunton.
Of course she came to our house first, that being the dearest place she knew. I saw her outside my window, gray as a gravestone, her dark eyes like the holes in a shroud. When she stared in, she didn"t know me, though I had always been her favorite.
"Mama, be gone," I said and waved my little cross at her, the one she had given me the very day I"d been born. "Avaunt." The old Bible word sat heavy in my mouth.
She put her hand up on the window frame, and as I watched, the gray fingers turned splotchy pink from all the garlic I had rubbed into the wood.
Black tears dropped from her black eyes, then. But I never cried.
She tried each window in turn and not a person awake in the house but me. But I had done my work well and the garlic held her out. She even tried the door, but it was no use. By the time she left, I was so sleepy, I dropped down right by the door. Papa found me there at c.o.c.kcrow. He never did ask what I was doing, and if he guessed, he never said.