Reckless: Shades of a Vampire (18 page)

“Then he left,” Emma says. “That’s all. He just left. Said we would not see each other for Christmas.

“That’s right. We thought he was going to have Christmas with his family,” Emma’s father says. But he really took to those snakes. I guess he had some business to settle up with the Lord. I’m sorry it did not work out for him.”

“I’m sorry too,” the sheriff says. “Been a tough year for us, with Josh gone missing and all and now this. A lot of noise for little old Sand Mountain."

“Whatever happened with Josh?” Emma’s father asks.

Emma looks out the window, to the Denton farm.

“Don’t know,” the sheriff says. “We have no clues. But it sure don’t look like he’s coming back.”

“Nope,” Emma says under her breath.

“What’s that?” the deputy asks.

“Nothing,” Emma says. “Just trying to take in this news.”

The sheriff and the deputy get in their car and Emma’s father leaves driving his car and following them to visit the church to see about the snakes.

Emma walks into the kitchen with her mother, who is rubbing tears from her eyes at the table.

“What’s for breakfast, mother?” Emma says. “I’m hungry.”

As Emma and her mother wash dishes after a breakfast of ham, eggs and toast, her father arrives back at the house from his trip to the church with the sheriff and deputy.

“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” he tells them in the kitchen. “Sure enough. Two rattlers missing from the box at the church. Why David wanted to do it at home, and without anyone else around, I don’t know. I would have helped him get those snakes out, if he had just told me.”

“Why couldn’t he wait until Sunday night?” Emma mother says.

“We don’t ever know what’s in a person’s heart,” Emma’s father says. “God obviously led David to do this and we see the intentions. He’s dead. The snakes are gone. The marriage is gone. We’re just going to have to pray for another opportunity for Emma. That’s all.”

Emma thinks of Michael, understanding, though, that’s not what her father has in mind.

She flings her ring on the table, and it jingles before coming to a stop.

“Can you get that back to David’s father?” Emma asks.

“I’ll have it if he comes looking for it,” her father says. “But he’s riled up, the sheriff says. Might be a while.”

“Well,” Emma says. “It’s out of my hands. I don’t want any part of David left with me.”

“What a shame,” Emma’s father says. “Didn’t see this coming. Lord works in mysterious ways. Yes, sir. Lord works in mysterious ways.

“Well, it’s Christmas morning," her father continues. "Remember Luke 2. ‘
An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.  But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.  Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord
.’

“We have some gifts to open. So let’s get on with it.”

“Yes,” Emma says, agreeing with her father for the first time since she can’t recall. “Gifts.”

Emma understands that hope is not a strategy, yet, as tender leaves break from buds and winter’s cold, short days give way to warmth and longer days, she is looking forward again with hope.

It’s the first time, she recalls, since she first looked forward to meeting Michael at the barn that hope has burned so brightly. Perhaps, she imagines, she will just look up one day and Michael will be back working again on the farm, driving the tractor, pitching the hay, while she watches with a fluttering heart.

But it is not Michael Emma is surprised to see on the Denton farm on this day but Deputy Billy Cagle.

He is walking the grounds by the barn, looking for nothing in particular. He glances at the well. He looks across the field. He walks into the barn.

Emma is planting lettuce from seed in the garden in the back of the parsonage grounds across from the barn when she notices the deputy prowling around. She is now only dabbling her hands on the soil, with knees entrenched in the dirt and her head titled up, watching each move by Billy Cagle.

There’s nothing for him to find in there, she thinks. But what is he doing? Why is he there?

The deputy stays in the barn longer than Emma is comfortable with. She’s lost track of the time, but knows it is taking longer than it should. She can’t imagine what he could find in there, but the very fact that he is there is troubling. No reason the deputy should be prowling the Denton farm and standing in the barn. No reason at all.

Deputy Cagle emerges, finally, walking from the barn door side facing the parson with eyes on Emma. He keeps walking, toward her, taking the same path over the fence and across the road that Michael once took.

Emma stops working in the dirt and stands up, the afternoon’s drifting sun shining from her golden hair.

“Afternoon, deputy,” Emma says.

“Afternoon, ma’am.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Oh, nothing I suppose. I was just over here looking around,” the deputy says. “Was just out riding around this afternoon and had a hunch. Something told me to come over here and look around. So I pulled up, and here I am, looking around.”

“I see.”

“You know anything about this farm?” Deputy Cagle asks.

“No. I just know they call it the Denton farm,” Emma says. “Nobody ever much over there.”

“I see. You over go over there?”

“Me? No,” Emma says. “Got plenty to tend to over here. Nothing over there but a dilapidated old farm anyhow.”

“Yeah. Well, I saw you over here and just wanted to say hello under better circumstances. Last times I have seen you haven’t been pleasant. Once when Josh disappeared, then that Christmas morning when you fiancé was bitten by that snake and died.”

“How you doing?”

“Oh, fine I suppose,” Emma says, touching her neck. “True believers have to learn to let things go of course. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.”

“So I am told,” Deputy Cagle says.

“Still, that must have been hard,” he says. “Being your first boy and all. Isn’t that what you told us? That he was your first boy?”

“That’s right, deputy. First and only, David was. Father did the arranging. He didn’t let me out before that. It wasn’t time, he said.”

“Yeah, but I’m sure a pretty girl like you must have run across some other boys. Parents don’t know everything a child does. Even a preacher’s daughter might have a secret, huh?”

“No sir,” Emma says, looking at the ground.

She twists her dress nervously at the questioning in a side-to-side sashay of sorts, revealing her ankles. The deputy looks at them.

“Well,” he says. “Spec I better go. It’s getting late.”

“Yes. And I still have work to do,” Emma says. “The chores around here are never done.”

The deputy turns to walk away, but he stops and reaches into his pocket.

“Hey,” he says, as if he were waiting for the right moment. “Just remembered. I found this and wondered if was yours?”

The deputy pulls a bobby pin from his pocket, holding it out before his face for Emma to see.

“Oh,” she says.

“Yep. Found it on the floor of the barn, in a pile of hay -- like a needle in the haystack. I was thinking it might be yours.”

“Well, no,” Emma says. “I don’t know how it could be. As I told you, I don’t go over there.”

"I have seen you wear these before," the deputy says. "At Christmas. You had bobby pins in your hair on Christmas."

"Certainly I'm not the only girl that wears bobby pins," Emma says.

“Very well,” the deputy says. “But there ain’t many folks who come around here. You are the only girl in these parts for miles. And here I find this bobby pin in a pile of hay in that barn across from your house. Just seems strange. That’s all.

“Maybe the preacher’s daughter decided to cross the road,” he says.

“Shucks,” the deputy says. “I don’t know. But I’ll get on out of your way. Let you finish your chores.”

Emma senses the deputy isn’t really through with her at all.

“Wait, deputy,” Emma says. “It’s possible I could have gone over there. Just walking around. I don’t recall for sure. But, maybe if you show me where it was, where you found it, it might help me to remember if I was there or not.”

“Maybe,” the deputy says. “Worth a try I suppose.”

They walk across the road and toward the barn side by side in a slow gait. Emma looks at the deputy’s left hand, taking note he isn’t wearing a wedding band.

“Are you single?” Emma asks.

“Yes ma’am,” he says. “Free like the wind as they say. I was married once, but that didn’t work out so well. Got divorced about the time I moved up here from Fort Payne. Needed a change.

“Seems my wife had a different idea about what marriage meant than I did. I caught her and my best friend at the house one day. Liked to have killed both of them.”

“Why didn’t you?” Emma says.

The deputy smiles.

They reach the barn doorway and the deputy points to a corner.

“There,” he says. “I found it over there.”

“Let me see,” says Emma, strolling over slowly.

In the corner, Emma turns to face the deputy. Her heart flutters. Her pulse quickens. She thinks of Michael.

“Maybe,” she says, slowly, sashaying the hemline of her dress to reveal her ankles. “Maybe…maybe I was here.”

“The truth comes out,” the deputy says, moving closer to Emma.

“Come here, Deputy Cagle, and I will show you where I was, exactly.”

The deputy fronts Emma.

She reaches out her arms to his waist, grabs him, and pulls him toward her. Deputy Cagle stands more than six feet tall, and he’s in full uniform with boots, making him tower over Emma.

She looks up to him, and smiles.

“Maybe,” she says, pulling the deputy’s face downward toward hers, while speaking in breathy tones. “Maybe I was here.”

“I’m listening,” the deputy says.

He opens his mouth and thrusts he tongue inside Emma’s mouth.

She opens wide, and lets him in.

The deputy thrusts his torso against hers. She drops to the ground, and pulls the deputy down with her, on top.

“He was here,” she whispers, thrusting her crotch against his. “He was right here.”

“Who was?” the deputy says, thrusting against Emma.

He hikes her dress, so that just her lace panties are against him. She wraps her legs around his legs and moves her mouth to just below the deputy’s left ear where she is whispering to him.

“Michael. Michael was here,” Emma whispers.

The deputy is reaching for his crotch, trying to undo his pants zipper.

“And Josh,” Emma says. “Josh was here too.”

“What!?” the deputy shouts, stopping the thrust and sitting up on his knees with Emma's legs splayed apart before him. “What!?”

"Yes," Emma says. "I asked Michael to fuck me but he wouldn't. But Josh, he licked my pussy."

"Emma," the deputy says, fumbling for his zipper.

"What do you want to do to me, Deputy? Do you want to fuck me from behind? Do you want to take my virginity? What do you want to do to me deputy?"

But before he can utter another word, or move an inch, Emma’s head coils and releases for his neck.

Strike!

“Yeeeoowww,” the deputy yells, falling back to the ground with Emma on top.

She digs her incisors into his veins, tapping into his life stream.

Within minutes his body is limp as Emma drains his blood, savoring every drop. Emma’s eyes blink as the last bits are drawn from Billy Cagle.

Emma rolls off the deputy, rests her head on the hay beside his corpse, and thinks of Michael as she falls dreamily asleep.

A car traveling down the blacktop highway at a fast pace wakes Emma up. She looks to the barn door, seeing the last shades of red sunlight fading into the west amid an otherwise dusky sky. She stands up and walks to the door, looking toward the parsonage.

She sees lights on inside the house.

She looks at the sky, determining its still before 7 p.m. If she hurries, she figures, she can get in the house before her mother and father are alarmed since it’s not unusual for chores to take her till sundown.

Emma wonders where the deputy parked.

What shall she do with his car? The sheriff’s department, certainly, will be looking for it later in the night, or early in the morning at the very least. Emma walks to the opposite end of the barn, where the driveway pulls up by the door.

Sure enough, there’s the deputy’s car, marked with lights and all.

Emma shudders of the thought of hiding it.

If they find it at the farm, they’ll certainly come looking for her, and only her for answers. If they find it somewhere else, she’ll have to get it there, soon. But first things first, since the deputy’s body is still lying in the barn.

Time for the deputy to find what he was looking for all along, she figures – Josh.

Emma takes the deputy’s body under the arms and drags it toward the barn door. The deputy is about the same size as Josh, requiring all of her strength to get him moving.

She gets him out the barn door and angles him toward the well that she dumped Josh in. One car passes midway through the jaunt, but Emma simply drops the deputy in the green grass that’s been growing at a healthy spring clip and lies down beside him. In the dark and in the cover of the uncut field grass, both are out of sight.

She finally reaches the well with the deputy’s corpse. She remembers to search his pockets for keys, in case he didn’t leave them in the car. Sure enough, they are there in a can opener ring with about 10 others jingling. She puts the keys on the ground, and, with a one, two, three, uses her last remaining muscle to heave the deputy up, over and into the well.

She counts – “one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi… “