Blood Harvest: Two Vampire Novels (27 page)

One thing Cory did suspect, though, was that
Fond du Lac was not supposed to be his home. He had been brought to
this area from somewhere else. He had a vague memory of perhaps
growing up near a woods, possibly a stream. There were also some
blurry images in his head of another child, a girl. Since he knew
he had to be too young to have any children of his own—at his best
guess he was twenty at the oldest, although permanently stuck in
the body of an eighteen year old—so he suspected she might be his
sister.

There were times where he felt a desperate,
uncontrollable sadness when he tried to think back. A voice
whispered in his head that somewhere out there might be someone who
loved him and he was completely unaware of it. They would probably
think he was dead after being missing for so long. Or maybe there
was no one. He could very well have been forgotten. In fact, he
almost thought that would be better. Then his own fear and
loneliness wouldn’t be matched by someone else out there. He didn’t
want to cause that kind of hurt and pain to anyone.

The farther he got from the central downtown
area the smaller the buildings got. The old and slightly mysterious
(to him at least) architecture that loomed over him near the Retlaw
gave way to one- and two-story structures that were a lot newer. He
could see City Hall from here, although he kept his distance. The
last thing he wanted anywhere near him was authority, especially
authority spooked by the strange goings on in the city. The police
presence in the city had definitely increased in the last six
months, and it only got larger every time a new body showed up in a
public place, dumped by persons unseen in areas with cameras
pointed everywhere. The last thing he wanted was for anyone to
accidentally see him and his teeth and make the inevitable yet
incorrect connection.

There was a slight drizzle in the air making
his already baggy clothes damp and hang off his body like greasy
rags, but he still didn’t increase his speed. He had no decent idea
where he would go to ground for the day and the prospect of the
coming dawn should have been scary, but he found himself in one of
his occasional funks where the idea of pain actually felt good.
Part of him almost wished the sunlight could actually kill him like
in the stories. Sometimes death seemed like a welcome alternative
to the constant fear and loneliness, a fear and loneliness that he
nonetheless embraced purely because he didn’t know what else he
could have in his life. He was practically immortal and yet he
somehow had no future. He was strong and fast and forever young,
and yet he felt damaged. He didn’t know how to get past what had
happened to change him. Worst off, he didn’t know how he could
possibly ask anyone for help, especially when the only people he
could even tell he existed struggled with the same problems. None
of this felt like life to him. It was a holding pattern that didn’t
seem like it could end.

He barely noticed his surroundings anymore as
he reached the stretch of Main Street often called the Miracle
Mile. From what he’d been able to gather it got that name from the
fact that an abnormally large number of businesses along the street
tended to sell lottery tickets with huge payouts. People apparently
thought there was something lucky or supernatural about this area,
even though Cory knew well enough the only reason more tickets won
here was because more people came here for them. It was obviously a
self-fulfilling prophecy, and yet the idea that it had some kind of
supernatural aura still persisted. People would believe in a lucky
road, yet most of them couldn’t believe in a creature like him. In
some bizarre way the whole thing seemed rather unfair.

No, I shouldn’t be thinking that way
,
Cory thought.
You know who wouldn’t want me thinking that way?
My
…

He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and
waited for the thought to finish. For a moment he almost had it, a
memory of someone telling him something, something he had always
remembered, something that had stayed with him for his entire life.
He got the impression that it was the kind of comment that had
changed his entire worldview, something essential to exactly who he
was supposed to be.

Then the memory slipped through and was gone.
He could stand here until the sun came up waiting for it to return,
but he knew it wouldn’t.

He couldn’t help but start crying silently,
although no one looking would have noticed through the light rain
on his face.

“Memories are like that, my little Veal,”
someone hissed from nearby. “They slip through your fingers like
tiny little fishies. Things like us can’t catch them.”

Cory stopped again and looked around himself,
absolutely dumbstruck that someone was even talking to him, let
alone apparently knowing his thoughts.

“Who?” he asked. “Where?”

“Over here, Tenderloin. Look down.”

Cory looked to his left and at first didn’t
see anyone. He was right at a gas station with a pizza place right
next door, hardly the sort of place he would expect to have any
kind of interesting encounter. In the narrow walk between the two
buildings, however, he saw someone huddled in the darkness far from
the street lights.

“I don’t know you,” Cory said, ready to start
running. He didn’t want to talk to anyone at all right now. He felt
like his skin was crawling, or maybe more like something was
crawling
underneath
his skin. There was an unpleasant
sensation like something intangible was poking him to see if he
would react. It was faint, but the feeling was most definitely
there.

“You do know me. You know me very well. Don’t
you remember your old pal Pig?”

Although Cory didn’t move any closer the
quality of the light seemed to change and he could see more details
in the shadows. Yes, that was Pig alright. Cory remembered the man
quite well. He just didn’t want to.

Cory fought a desperate urge to run. He
didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to have this conversation.
His heart pounded irregularly in his chest and it suddenly felt
harder to breath, as though some force was deliberately pressing
down on his chest.

“Come closer,” Pig said. “Let’s have a
chat.”

“No,” Cory whispered. It was all he could
force out of his mouth.

“Come closer,” Pig said again. His voice was
exactly the same, as though someone was just playing back recorded
words. “Let’s have a chat.”

No, no, please don’t make me
, Cory
thought. He took a step closer. He couldn’t disobey Pig. Pig was
his friend. Cory had to listen to him, always.

As Cory shuffled a few feet nearer to the
narrow path Pig seemed to grow more defined. He was exactly as Cory
remembered him, which was a problem because there shouldn’t have
been any way Pig could get here in his normal state. For one thing
he didn’t have any legs. They ended just above the knees in a mass
of rotten, putrid flesh that stank distinctly of decay and
infection. Pig had told him that the legs had been chopped off when
he’d tried to escape once, but he had run for the door at the aisle
instead of the exit in the vain hope that there would be a second
way out. He had been wrong, and it was only through Pig that anyone
trapped in those filthy cages had ever known that the thing waiting
for them behind the door was horrifying, offensive to the senses,
unexplainable. He told everyone. Pig was the person who truly made
each person trapped down there understand that there was no
hope.

But beyond that, there was also the fact that
Pig was completely naked. He was still covered in grime and filth,
which from the stink of it consisted mainly of the green puss that
seeped from his wounds and his own diarrhea. As he sat back against
a wall Cory realized he sported an enormous erection which he
fondled idly with his fingers. In fact, now that he thought about
it, Cory wasn’t sure that he had ever seen Pig in his cage doing
anything other than masturbating.

Pig looked down at himself and then looked
back at Cory with a grin. “Might as well, right? It’s not like
there’s much else to do with ourselves down here in these
cages.”

For a single horrifying moment Cory thought
Pig was right, that they were both still deep in the dark, silver
cages soaked in garlic oil closed tight around them, and
unthinkable screams coming from the tunnels beyond the door. He
could hear the echoes of moans and the distant drips of water, he
could smell the stink of frightened young people soiling
themselves, he could taste his own blood as he absently gnawed on
his knuckles in a desperate attempt to stave off a hunger he barely
understood. He knew he was still down there. He had never escaped.
The entire last year had been nothing but a fever dream that he
would wake from any second.

No no no no
, he thought, closing his
eyes tight as they sights tried to assert themselves over his
vision.
It can’t be real. None of it. I escaped
.

“You never escape, Porkchop,” Pig said. His
voice was something akin to the hiss of a rabid rodent. Although
Cory knew Pig was sitting several feet away, that there was no way
he could stand up and come any closer, Cory still heard his voice
with complete clarity directly in his ear. “You really don’t
understand, do you? You don’t leave unless the mish-mash wants you
to leave. You are a plump, ripe fruit that has been thrown to the
fertile earth. You have a purpose yet. You know you do.”

“Go away,” Cory said, still refusing to open
his eyes. “You don’t exist. You can’t exist.”

“Your purpose is to get crushed,” Pig said.
“An overripe tomato to spray seeds. Create the garden. Get it to
grow. And then, when it’s ready again, the combination will come
back. It will find its new garden and it will have its
harvest.”

“No,” Cory whispered again. He knew he
couldn’t just continued standing here with his eyes shut tight. He
had to open them and confront this. “Why are you doing this to
me?”

“To torture you,” Pig said. The voice seemed
to be getting farther away. If Cory really concentrated he thought
he could hear the sound of flesh on the rough ground as Pig pulled
himself down the path. “To tease you. To help you. I’m your biggest
enemy. I’m your greatest hope and asset.”

“Go away, please,” Cory said.

“Suit yourself,” Pig said. Now Cory could
barely hear his voice. It had faded to little more than a whisper
on the wind, a soft hush that nearly became one with the delicate
patter of the rain. “But remember, when you’re suffering soon, that
I tried to talk to you. And if you had let me, I might have even
warned you.”

Cory waited for him to say more, but there
was nothing. He counted to ten, drawing out each number as long as
possible, before he finally forced himself to open his eyes once
more.

Briefly he convinced himself that he could
still see Pig in the darkness, but as he stared, waiting for some
dark shape or form to waddle around and reveal itself as Pig in
hiding, all he saw was bits of wrappers and cigarette butts
clinging to small, forgotten piles of dirty snow that were even now
shrinking slightly in the gentle rain.

No one was there. Cory cautiously moved a
little farther down the path, looking for any sign that Pig had
ever been there to begin with. There was a dark, greasy stain
against the wall right about where Cory had seen him, but there was
no way to tell if the dark spot had been caused by the disturbing
little man or some other more natural occurrence.

He wasn’t there
, a voice in his head
thought.
He never was. In fact, maybe he never existed at all.
He couldn’t have, right? After all, how would he even have been
able to escape
?

Cory didn’t allow himself any time to think
on this possibility further, though. Farther down he saw something
else on the wall, something that most definitely had not been left
there by someone leaning their filth-ridden body against it. He
probably wouldn’t have noticed if the artist had used a darker
color, but instead it was in bright yellow, a color that he would
have been able to see even if the light from the street hadn’t
managed its feeble penetration this far down the path.

It was a cross.

I should
run
, he thought.
No one would possibly be able to catch
me
. Yet that strange death wish came over again. If he stayed
then yes, it was entirely possible that exactly the wrong type of
people would find him. Perhaps that was exactly what he wanted. Let
this group or gang or whatever find him. Let them put a stake in
his heart. Then this would all be over.

Can’t let that happen. She would be
disappointed in me if I gave up
.

Again that thought came to him with no
explanation, but he knew somewhere deep down that there was truth
to it. No need to sit and analyze the feeling for now. Just trust
it. Trust it and run as far from here as quickly as he could.

Even though he knew how fast he could move,
his initial instinct was to stop and get low, crouching down in the
corner to watch and listen intently to his immediate surroundings.
According to what FancyDancer had said earlier, this new gang
shouldn’t be in this area. He had no idea if this group had the
same types of territorial leanings as a typical gang, or even if
Fond du Lac had anything like typical gang activity. If the city
did, though, there shouldn’t have been any way this group would
encroach on an area they didn’t think was theirs. This cross here
in this place felt wrong. He had no idea why it would be here
otherwise, though.

He also had to wonder if he was being
paranoid. The cross obviously wasn’t fresh, or else it would be
drizzling in the rain. He had no idea when it had been put here.
There was a likelihood that someone had just seen the opportunity
to tag this place and then moved on. Cory had no real reason to
suspect that whoever had left it was still in the area, or that
this person would recognize him for what he was and try to do
something about it.