Her Loving Husband's Curse (16 page)

“How did it go?” Sarah asked.

“It’s a vampire literature class. How do you think it went?”

“Was it that bad?”

“I’ll survive.”

“It looked like a full class.”

James kissed Sarah’s forehead. “It was,” he said. “It was.”

* * * * *

I smell the charred timber, the dry smoke, the acrid ashes, their putrid fear. I step outside my cabin and see burning everywhere, fires like fiendish eyes blazing in the corn fields or smoldering my neighbor’s home while he helps his mother-in-law, wife, and two small daughters to safety away from the smoke and the flames. Nearby forest trees are charred tar-black, and he runs back inside his house to salvage anything he can grab that won’t singe the skin from his bones, but all he can find is a blanket and his rifle. Every possession he had in the world is gone. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. His face is gray with soot, and his tears streak his cheeks white. His sunken head and slumped shoulders show his defeat, and when the soldiers return to lead them away they will leave. What is here to hold them now?

I hear the women’s sobbing as close as if they sing their sadness into my ears. To the left, to the right, back and front, side to side I see the soldiers with their pointing rifles and piercing bayonets loitering in the darkness as they spread across the night to other homes, knocking on doors here, making loud declarations there. The blue-suited men wander freely in and out as if these houses were their own, setting aside what possessions they like for themselves, collecting everything else to cart away and sell. They leave nothing untouched, and when there is nothing left to confiscate they set the remaining houses on fire and leave, their damage done. I hear the crunch of their boots on the dried cornstalks as they retreat. For now. One last slap in the face remains.

CHAPTER 12

When you have a story to tell, you must tell it. No matter how you are laughed at, belittled, berated, mocked. No matter what others whisper about you behind your back. No matter the naysayers. Despite the frustration of speaking loudly and no one caring. Whether you get one-star reviews or five, whether you have word-of-mouth, marketing support, a respected platform, massive numbers of followers to hang on your every word or not, you must tell that story or else always wonder what could have been, forever hold your peace.

It was a clear, cold Monday night at the beginning of February when Kenneth Hempel appeared on Channel 16, Salem Access Television. Now everyone could see him telling his story.

“They’re here,” he said to the camera. He brushed his thinning hair to the side, then tugged at his tightly knotted tie. “Whether we want to believe it or not, whether we can believe it or not, they’re here, and we’re not safe if we continue to allow them to roam free. Not all of them are a threat to society, but some are, and until we know which is which we must guard ourselves against all of them.”

The reporter, a college-age girl with her white-blonde hair cut into a newscaster’s bob, looked like she wanted to laugh out loud. She suppressed a sarcastic grin. “You said you were going to name names,” she said. “Do you have the names of those you believe are vampires?”

Hempel cleared his throat and read from the paper in his hands. “The vampires currently living within Essex County are: John Edward Lewis. Nancy Bates. Christopher Banning. Jocelyn Endecott. Chandresh Mankiller. Timothy Bryston-Wolfe. And Anthony Davies. I’ll explain what proof I have against these individuals in a blog post I’ll publish next week.”

“There was an article in the
Salem News
this morning that suggested you’re trying to recreate the terror of the Salem Witch Trials by falsely accusing innocent people. What do you say to that?”

“In 1692, the people who were accused were innocent of witchcraft, but now the accused are what I say they are.” Hempel turned a determined gaze onto the young reporter, his back straight, his head high. “I’m not trying to accuse innocent people. I simply want the truth to be known. I want people to be safe from nighttime predators. If the vampires will willingly come forward, then I won’t need to pursue this route of outing them. People have a right to know the truth.”

James turned off the TV. He looked toward the bedroom, saw Sarah sleeping, her expression peaceful. The moonlight streamed through the open blinds and illuminated her face in a golden glow. He heard Grace’s short, full breaths and he smiled. He walked into his bedroom and sat on the bed, watching Sarah. He wanted everything to stay as it was, his wife and daughter content, his little family happy. But he could feel the cold storm creeping toward them, darkening the sky above their heads, stronger, harder, faster than the most brutal nor’easter ever to strike the shore.

He crawled into bed, spooning Sarah, pushing every other thought from his mind except the one where he felt awash with gratitude because he had her there, with him, in his arms. He held her tightly, trying to meld into her, make them each a part of the other. She opened her eyes and smiled, though James saw the uneasy flicker within her. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed his lips.

“As long as we’re together everything will be all right,” she said.

“Whatever it is, we’ll get through it,” he said.

He took Sarah’s hand and held it to his chest. He kissed her fingers, her lips, the top of her head. He made love to her with an intensity he hadn’t known since the first night they were reunited, as though he needed to reassure himself, and her, that they would always be that way.

* * * * *

Latest Headlines—Most Popular

Reporter’s Death: A Homicide, Says Detectives

Leap Day, Wednesday February 29, was a violent day in Danvers, Massachusetts, where former
Salem News
reporter Kenneth Hempel, 47, was found brutally murdered outside his home near Interstate 95. Police believe he was attacked in his home office, his body then dragged outside and left discarded in his front yard. Inside the house, splattered blood stains the rug, and the room where Hempel worked has been destroyed, his laptop computer smashed, filing cabinets emptied and tossed aside. It looked, one officer reported, like a tornado had blown through, leaving Hempel’s home office in ruins.

Hempel’s remains were first seen by Mrs. Elsie Anderson, who has lived next door to Hempel and his family for the last seven years. Mrs. Anderson was walking home from her Wednesday Afternoon Ladies Musical Auxiliary Society meeting when she noticed a lump of what looked like red mud near her lawn. She followed the trail and found Hempel’s bloody corpse. Neighbors heard her scream and called police. When asked what she saw, Mrs. Anderson said Hempel’s neck was pierced as though he had been bitten.

“He seemed like a nice enough man, a good family man, but I didn’t know him all that well,” Mrs. Anderson said. “I never believed him about the vampires. Now I don’t know. His neck was bludgeoned, I could see the teeth marks on him, and he was covered in blood. That’s what vampires do, isn’t it? Bite you and suck your blood?”

Detectives are cautioning the public from jumping to conclusions. “The perp, or perps, meant to make it look like a vampire committed the crime,” Detective Chase Peters told reporters. “There’s no reason to start believing in vampires.”

Hempel found notoriety due to several provocative blog posts where he asserted that vampires are real. On a local television appearance earlier this month he named several residents of Essex County as real-life vampires and he stated he had evidence to prove his assertions. With Hempel’s death and the destruction of his home office, that evidence, whatever it was, may not see the light of day.

Hempel is survived by his wife, Lynne, 42, and a son, 9, and a daughter, 6.

CHAPTER 13

Two nights later Geoffrey arrived. He was quiet and sullen, which annoyed James more than his usual smugness. He shrugged at James as he walked into the wooden house.

“I assume you heard the news about your friend,” Geoffrey said.

James looked at Sarah’s reaction, but her face stayed set. She had seen the report about Hempel’s murder on the news earlier that evening. She hadn’t said anything about it, but James knew she was upset. He could see it in her eyes. He knew her so well.

“He wasn’t my friend,” James said. “Yes, I heard.” He looked again at Sarah, whose chocolate-brown eyes watched him, waiting for answers.

“Was he killed by vampires, or was it a human with a sick sense of humor?” she asked.

“Neither answer is good,” Geoffrey said. “Both bring their own problems.”

“Who was it, Geoffrey?”

“Vampires.”

“The ones who were watching him?”

“Who else?”

James colored red with rage. He waved his arms, first in front of him, then behind, venting the horror loitering a thought or two away. “How could they put us in jeopardy like that?” he yelled.

“They’re not like you, James. They don’t have human feelings let alone attachments. They believe they have the power of a thousand moons and puny humans are no match for them. They were trying to make a point.”

“A point with my life,” James said bitterly. He closed his eyes, wrangling his anger, his fear, into a more rational line of thought. “What can we do about them? Where are they from?”

“They live in a clan in Delaware, and there’s around twenty of them. They shun human society, feed when they can on whomever they can, rationalize their actions with their own warped beliefs. A rather rude group, if I do say so. I don’t know what we can do about them. How do you handle those who don’t care?”

James watched Sarah, her eyes fixed on the dwindling fire in the hearth, her arms crossed over her chest, her shoulders slumped. James would have handed back every ounce of his immortality to Geoffrey and become every bit of the three hundred and forty-nine year-old man he was to brush that frightened look from her face. She looked too much like she did when he told her Rebecca Nurse had been arrested. He couldn’t bear to see her look that away again.

Geoffrey sat on the sofa and looked thoughtfully toward the baby’s room. “You’re doing quite well for yourself, James. A daughter is a grand thing. I had one once, a plump and pretty little thing like her mother, and a son. One son, who was the light and joy of my life. He was a fine boy, thoughtful, highly intelligent, of course. He was my son, after all.” Geoffrey smiled at James. “For years I wondered what sort of man he had become.”

“Didn’t you know?” Sarah asked.

“I’m afraid not. I was turned into what you see before you when he was only a very little boy.”

“Did you ever see him again?”

“Once, many years later, but he was quite a grown man by then with a wife and son of his own. I couldn’t bring myself to go round and say hello though I wanted to. I didn’t want to frighten him, being as I hadn’t changed in thirty years. But I was as proud of him as any father could be in his son. I could see the strong and steady man my good boy had become, and by then my good boy had a good boy of his own.”

“You should have gone to see him,” Sarah said. “I’m sure he would have accepted you, even as you are.”

“The saddest part of this story, my dearest little human person, is you’re correct. He would have accepted me even as I am. Only I learned that too many years later.” Geoffrey looked towards the baby’s room again. “Did you say her name was Grace?”

“That’s right,” Sarah said.

“Very good. We could all use more grace now.”

“Would you like something to drink, Geoffrey?” Sarah asked.

“Yes, thank you.” Geoffrey watched James follow Sarah to the refrigerator. “I still don’t understand, James,” he said. “Here’s a perfectly nice little human person who likes you well enough. Why don’t you drink from her? Jocelyn drinks from her human person. You don’t have to kill someone to drink from them.”

James was horrified. He thought of decapitating Geoffrey right there, a clean break, snapping the annoying vampire man’s skull clean from his spine and discarding the no longer immortal remains in the woods near Danvers. But he remembered that’s where Hempel was found, near his home in Danvers, and he supposed that wouldn’t work after all, though the thought of it made him smile. He grabbed an unopened red-filled medical bag from the refrigerator, sliced the top with a knife, and poured blood into two coffee mugs. He put the coffee mugs into the microwave and set the timer. He looked at Sarah, who was wondering, he was sure, why he had never told her that Jocelyn drinks from Steve. The microwave beeped, and James put a warmed mug in front of Geoffrey, who squished his face and crinkled his nose.

“It’s all…piecy,” Geoffrey said.

“It tastes fine,” said James.

“Smells like pig urine.”

“It’s donated from the blood bank.”

“Donated from the blood bank? Is that how I raised you, to be a little beggar vampire? Please, sir, I want some more…”

Geoffrey made a sad little boy face, his cupped hands out, a perfect picture of Oliver Twist asking for more gruel when the morsel he received wasn’t near enough.

“You didn’t raise me at all,” James said. “You left me alone.”