“Later,” Joshua said. “Not yet. After you finish changing me.”
The vampire coughed; it sounded like a snapping bone. Something wet hit the ground. “Well, come here then, boy.” It moved again, this time closer to the amber light. Its face emerged from the shadows like something rising from deep water. It hunched on its hands and knees, swinging its head like a dog trying to catch a scent. Its face had been burned off. Thin parchment strips of skin hung from blackened sinew and muscle. Its eyes were dark, hollow caves. Even in this wretched state, though, it seemed weirdly graceful. A dancer pretending to be a spider.
For the second time, Joshua laid himself on the soft earth, acrawl with ants and cockroaches, centipedes and earthworms, positioning his upper body beyond the reach of the streaming sunlight. The light’s color was deepening, its angles rising until they were almost parallel to the ground. Evening was settling over the earth.
The vampire pressed the long fingers of one charred hand onto his chest, as delicately as a lover. Heat flushed Joshua’s body. Every nerve ending was a trembling candle flame. The vampire touched its lips to his throat; its tongue sought the jugular, the heavy river inside. It slid its teeth into his skin.
A sharp, lovely pain.
Joshua stared at the underside of his home: the rusted pipes, the duct tape, the yellow sheets of insulation. It looked so different from beneath. So ugly. He heard footsteps overhead as somebody he loved moved around inside it, attending to mysterious offices.
Four days ago: he’d stood on the front porch of his home in the deep blue hollow of early morning, watching the waters of the Gulf roll onto the beach. It was his favorite time of day: that sweet, lonesome hinge between darkness and daylight, when he could pretend he was alone in the world and free to take it on his own terms. In a few moments he would go inside and wake his five-year-old brother, Michael, make him breakfast, and get them both ready for school, while their mother still slept in after her night shift at Red Lobster.
But this time belonged to him.
The vampire came from the direction of town, trailing black smoke and running hard across the no-man’s-land between his house and the nearest standing building. There’d been a neighborhood there once, but the hurricane wiped it away a few years ago. What remained had looked like a mouthful of shattered teeth, until the state government came through and razed everything to the ground. Their own house had been badly damaged — the storm had scalped it of its top floor, depositing it somewhere out in the Gulf — but the rest had stood its ground, though it canted steeply to one side now, and on breezy days you could feel the wind coming through the walls.
It was over that empty expanse the vampire fled, first billowing smoke like a diesel engine and then erupting into flame as the sun cracked the horizon.
The vampire ran directly for his house and launched itself at the opening to the crawl space under the porch steps. Oily smoke eeled up through the wooden planks and dissipated into the lightening sky.
Joshua had remained frozen in place for the whole event, save the rising clamor in his heart.
Their mother would be late getting home from work — and even later if she went out with that jackass Tyler again — so Joshua fed his little brother and directed him to his bedroom. On their way they passed the stairwell, which was capped now by sheets of plywood hammered over the place where it used to open onto the second floor.
“You want me to read you a story?” he asked, reaching for the copy of
“No,” he said, leaping into his bed and pulling the covers over himself.
“No story? Are you sure?”
“I just wanna go to sleep tonight.”
“Okay,” Joshua said. He felt strangely bereft. He reached down and turned on Michael’s nightlight, then switched off the lamp.
“Will you cuddle with me, Josh?” he said.
“I won’t ‘cuddle’ with you, but I’ll lay down with you for a little bit.”
“Okay.”
“Cuddle” was a word their dad used before he moved away, and it embarrassed him that Michael held on to it. He eased back on top of the covers and let Michael rest his head in the crook of his arm.
“Are you scared of anything, Josh?”
“What, like monsters?”
“I don’t know, I guess.”
“No, I’m not scared of monsters. I’m not scared of anything.”
Michael thought for a minute, then said, “I’m scared of storms.”
“That’s silly. It’s just a bunch of wind and rain.”
“. I know.”
Michael drifted into silence. Joshua felt vaguely guilty about shutting him down like that, but he really didn’t have it in him to have the storm talk again. That was something Michael was going to have to get over on his own, since logic didn’t seem to have any effect on his thinking.
As he monitored his brother’s breathing, waiting for him to fall asleep, he found himself wondering about how he would feel toward his family once the transformation was complete. He was worried that he would lose all feeling for them. Or, worse, that he’d think of them as prey. He didn’t think that would happen; everything he’d ever read about vampires seemed to indicate that they kept all their memories and emotions from life. But the thought troubled him nonetheless.
That was why he wouldn’t let the vampire into his house until he became one, too; he wanted to be sure it went after the right person. It couldn’t have his family.
The question of love was tricky, anyway. He felt protective of his brother and his mom, but he had a hard time aligning that feeling with a word like “love.” Maybe it was the same thing; he honestly didn’t know. He tried to imagine how he’d feel if they were gone, and he didn’t come up with much.
That thought troubled him even more.
Maybe he would think of Michael and his mother as pets. The notion brightened his mood.
People loved their pets.
Michael pretended to be asleep until Joshua left the room. He loved his older brother in the strong, uncomplicated way children loved anything, but recently he’d had become an expert in negotiating the emotional weather in his home, and Joshua’s moods had become more turbulent than ever. He got mad at strange things, like when Michael wanted to hold hands, or when Mom brought Tyler home. Michael thought Tyler was weird because he wouldn’t talk to them, but he didn’t understand why Joshua got so mad about it.
He listened as his brother’s footsteps receded down the hallway. He waited a few more minutes just to be sure. Then he slid down and scooted under the bed on his stomach, pressing his ear to the floor. The house swayed and creaked around him, filling the night with bizarre noises. He hated living here since the storm happened. He felt like he was living in the stomach of a monster.
After a few minutes of careful listening, he heard the voice.
Joshua opened his window and waited. He didn’t even try to sleep anymore, even though he was constantly tired. The night was clear and cool, with a soft breeze coming in from the sea. The palm trees across the street rustled quietly to themselves, shaggy-haired giants sharing secrets.
After about half an hour, the vampire crawled from an opening near the back of the house, emerging just a few feet from his window. Joshua’s heart started to gallop. He felt the familiar, instinctive fear: the reaction of the herd animal to the lion.
The vampire stood upright, facing the sea. Most of its flesh had burned away; the white, round curve of its skull reflected moonlight. Its clothes were dark rags in the wind.
A car pulled into the driveway around front, its engine idling for a few moments before chuckling to a halt. Mom was home.
