The vampire’s body seemed to coil, every muscle drawing taut at once. It lifted its nose, making tiny jerking motions, looking for the scent.
He heard his mother’s laughter, and a man’s voice. Tyler was with her.
The vampire took a step toward the front of the house, its joints too loose, as if they were hinged with liquid instead of bone and ligament. Even in its broken, half-dead state, it moved quickly and fluidly. He thought again of a dancer. He imagined how it would look in full health, letting the night fill its body like a kite. Moving through the air like an eel through water.
“Take him,” Joshua whispered.
The vampire turned its eyeless face toward him.
Joshua was smiling. “Take him,” he said again.
“You know I can’t,” it said, rage riding high in its voice. “Why the hell don’t you let me in!”
“That’s not the deal,” he said. “Afterward. Then you can come in. And you can have Tyler.”
He heard the front door open, and the voices moved inside. Mom and Tyler were in the living room, giggling and whispering. Half drunk already.
“He’s all I’ll need,” the vampire said. “Big country boy like that. Do me right up.”
Someone knocked on his bedroom door. His mother’s voice came through. “Josh? Are you on the phone in there? You’re supposed to be asleep!”
“Sorry, Mom,” he said over his shoulder.
He heard Tyler’s muffled voice, and his mother started laughing. “Shh!”
It made Joshua’s stomach turn. When he looked back outside, the vampire had already slid back under the house.
He sighed and leaned his head out, feeling the cool wind on his face. The night was vast above him. He imagined rising into it, through clouds piled like snowdrifts and into a wash of ice-crystal stars, waiting for its boundary but not finding one. Just rising higher and higher into the dark and the cold.
The school day passed in a long, punishing haze. His ability to concentrate was fading steadily. His body felt like it was made of lead. He’d never been so exhausted in his life, but every time he closed his eyes, he was overcome with a manic energy, making him fidget in his chair. It took the whole force of his will not to get up and start pacing the classroom.
A fever simmered in his brain. He touched the back of his hand to his forehead and was astonished by the heat. Sounds splintered in his ear, and the light coming through the windows was sharp edged. His gaze roved over the classroom, over his classmates hunched over their desks or whispering carelessly in the back rows or staring like farm animals into the empty air. He’d never been one of them, and that was okay. It was just how things were. He used to feel smaller than them, less significant, as if he’d been born without some essential gene to make him acceptable to other people.
But now he assessed them anew. They seemed different, suddenly. They looked like victims. Like little pink pigs, waiting for someone to slash their throats and fulfill their potential. He imagined the room bathed in blood, himself striding through it, a raven among the carcasses. Strutting like any carrion king.
He was halfway into the crawl space when nausea overwhelmed him and he dry heaved into the dirt, the muscles in his sides seizing in pain. He curled into a fetal position and pressed his face into the cool earth until it subsided, leaving him gasping in exhaustion. His throat was swollen and dry.
“I can’t sleep,” the vampire said from the shadows.
Joshua blinked and lifted his gaze, still not raising his head from the ground. He didn’t think he could summon the strength for it, even if he’d wanted to.
The vampire was somewhere in the far corner beneath the house, somewhere behind the bars of sunlight slanting through the latticework. “The light moves around too much down here,” it said, apparently oblivious to Joshua’s pain. “I can’t rest. I need to rest.”
Joshua was silent. He didn’t know what he was expected to say.
“Invite me in,” it said. “I can make it dark inside.”
“What’s happening to me?” Joshua asked. He had to force the air out of his lungs to speak. He could barely hear himself.
“You’re changing. You’re almost there.”
“I feel like I’m dying.”
“Heh, that’s funny.”
Joshua turned his face into the soil. He felt a small tickling movement crawling up his pant leg.
“I remember when I died. I was terrified. It’s okay to be scared, Joshua.”
That seemed like a funny thing to say. He blinked, staring into the place where the voice was coming from.
“I was in this barn. I was a hand on this farm that grew sugarcane. Me and a few others slept out there in the loft. One day this young fella turned up missing. We didn’t think too much about it. Good-natured boy, worked hard, but he was kinda touched in the head, and we figured it was always a matter of time before he went and got himself into some trouble. We thought we’d wait for the weekend and then go off and look for him.
“But he came back before the weekend. Sailed in through the second-floor window of the barn one night. I about pissed myself. Seemed like he walked in on a cloud. Before we could think of anything to say, he laid into us. Butchered most of the boys like hogs. Three of us he left, though. Maybe ’cause we were nicer to him, I don’t know. He decided to make us like him. Who knows why. But see, he was too stupid to tell us what was going on. Didn’t know himself, I guess. But he just kept us up there night after night, feeding on us a little bit at a time. Our dead friends around us the whole time, growing flies.”
“Why didn’t you run when the sun came up?” Joshua had forgotten his pain. He sat up, edging closer to the ribbons of light, his head hunched below the underside of the house.
“Son of a bitch spiked our legs to the floor of the loft. Wrapped barbed wire around our arms. He was determined, I’ll give him that. And no one came from the house. Didn’t take a genius to figure out why.” The vampire paused, seemingly lost in the memory. “Well, anyway, before too long we got up and started our new lives. He went off God knows where. So did the other two. Never seen them since.”
Joshua took it all in, feeling the shakes come upon him again. “I’m worried about my family,” he said. “I’m worried they won’t understand.”
“You won’t feel so sentimental, afterward.”
This was too much to process. He decided he needed to sleep for a while. Let the fever abate, then approach it all with a fresh mind. “I’m gonna lay down,” he said, turning back toward the opening. The light there was like a boiling cauldron, but the thought of lying in his own bed was enough to push through.
“Wait!” the vampire said. “I need to feed first.”
Joshua decided to ignore it. He was already crawling out, and he didn’t have the energy to turn around.
“BOY!”
He froze and looked behind him. The vampire lunged forward, and its head passed into a sunbeam. The flesh hissed, emitting a thin coil of smoke. A candle flame flared around it, and the stench of ruined flesh rolled over him in a wave, as though a bag of rancid meat had been torn open.
The vampire pulled back, the blind sockets of its eyes seeming to float in the dim white bone. “Don’t play with me, boy.”
“I’m not,” Joshua said. “I’ll be back later.” And he crawled out into the jagged sunlight.
He awoke to find his mother hovering over him. She was wearing her white Red Lobster shirt, with the name tag and the ridiculous tie. She had one hand on his forehead, simultaneously taking his temperature and pushing the hair out of his face.
“Hey, honey,” she said.
“Mom?” He pulled his head away from her and put his hand over his eyes. He was on the couch in the living room. Late-afternoon light streamed in through the window. No more than an hour could have elapsed. “What are you doing home?”
“Mikey called me. He said you passed out.”
