He noticed his brother sitting in the easy chair on the other side of the room. Michael regarded him solemnly, his little hands folded in his lap like he was in church.
“You’re white as a sheet,” his mother said. “How long have you been feeling bad?”
“I don’t know. Just today, I guess.”
“I think we should get you to a hospital.”
“No!” He made an effort to sit up. “No, I’m fine. I just need to rest for a while.”
She straightened, and he could see her wrestling with the idea. He knew she didn’t want to go to the hospital any more than he did. They didn’t have any insurance, and here she was missing a shift at work besides.
“Really, I’m okay. Besides, we’d have to wait forever, and isn’t Tyler coming over tonight?”
His mother tensed. She looked at him searchingly, like she was trying to fathom his motive. She said, “Joshua, you’re more important to me than Tyler is. You do understand that, don’t you?”
He looked away. He felt his face flush, and he didn’t want her to see it. “I know,” he said.
“I know you don’t like him.”
“It’s not that,” he said, but of course it was that. Tyler had to be here so he could feed him to the vampire. He had a feeling that tonight was going to be the night. He didn’t know how he could go on much more, as weak as he was.
Michael piped up, his voice cautious yet hopeful: “It doesn’t matter anyway, ’cause Daddy’s coming back.”
His mother sighed and turned to look at him. Joshua could see all the years gathered in her face, and he felt a sudden and unexpected sympathy for her. “No, Mikey. He’s not.”
“Yes, he is, Mom, he told me. He asked if it was okay.”
Her voice hardened, although she was obviously trying to hide it. “Has he been talking to you on the phone?” She looked to Joshua for confirmation.
“Not me,” Joshua said. It occurred to him that Dad might have been calling while he was under the house, talking to the vampire. He felt at once both guilty that he’d left his brother to deal with that alone, and outraged that he’d missed out on the calls.
“You tell him next time he calls that he can talk to
Tears piled in Michael’s eyes, and he lowered his face. His body trembled as he tried to keep it all inside. A wild anger coursed through Joshua’s body, animating him despite the fever.
“Shut up!” he shouted. “Shut up about Dad! You think Tyler is
His mother looked at him in pained astonishment for a long moment. Then she put her hand over her mouth and stifled a sob. Aghast, Michael launched himself at her, a terrified little missile. He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her chest. “It’s okay, Mom, it’s okay!”
Joshua unfolded himself from the couch and walked down the hall to his room. His face was alight with shame and rage. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to feel. He closed the door behind him, muffling the sounds of the others comforting each other. He threw himself onto his bed, pulling the pillow over his face. The only things he could hear now were the wooden groaning of the house as it shifted on its foundations and the diminished sound of the blood pumping in his own head.
Their father left right after the hurricane. He used to work on the oil rigs. He’d get on a helicopter and disappear for a few weeks, and money would show up in the bank account. Then he’d come home for a week, and they’d all have fun together. He’d fight with their mother sometimes, but he always went back out to sea before things had a chance to get bad.
After the hurricane, all that work dried up. The rigs were compromised and the Gulf Coast oil industry knocked back on its heels. Dad was stranded in the house. Suddenly there was no work to stop the fighting. He moved to California shortly thereafter, saying he’d send for them when he found another job. A week later their mother told them the truth.
Joshua still remembered the night of the storm. The four of them rode it out together in the house. It sounded like hell itself had come unchained and was stalking the world right outside their window. But he felt safe inside. Even when the upper floor ripped away in a scream of metal and plaster and wood, revealing a black, twisting sky, he never felt like he was in any real danger. The unremarkable sky he’d always known had changed into something three-dimensional and alive.
It was like watching the world break open, exposing its secret heart.
His father was crouched beside him. They stared at it together in amazement, grinning like a pair of blissed- out lunatics.
Joshua heard a gentle rapping on his door.
“I’m going to the store,” his mother said. “I’m gonna get something for your fever. Is there anything you want for dinner?”
“I’m not hungry.”
He waited for her car to pull out of the driveway before he swung his legs out of bed and tried to stand. He could do it as long as he kept one hand on the wall. He couldn’t believe how tired he was. His whole body felt cold, and he couldn’t feel his fingers. It was coming tonight. The certainty of it inspired no excitement, no joy, no fear. His body was too numb to feel anything. He just wanted it to happen so he could get past this miserable stage.
He shuffled out of his room and down the hall. The vampire needed to feed on him once more, and he wanted to get down there before his mother got back.
As he passed by his brother’s door, though, he stopped short. Somebody was whispering on the other side.
He opened the door to find his little brother lying prone on the floor, half under the bed. Late-afternoon shadows gathered in the corners. His face was a small moon in the dim light, one ear pressed to the hardwood. He was whispering urgently.
“Michael?”
His brother’s body jerked in alarm, and he sat up quickly, staring guiltily back. Joshua flipped the light switch on.
“What are you doing?” Something cold was growing inside him.
Michael shrugged.
“Tell me!”
“Talking to Daddy.”
“No.”
“He’s living under the house. He wants us to let him back in. I was afraid to because Mom might get mad at me.”
“Oh, Mikey.” His voice quavered. “That’s not Dad. That’s not Dad.”
He found himself moving down the hall again, quickly now, fired with renewed energy. He felt like a passenger in his body: He experienced a mild curiosity as he saw himself rummaging through the kitchen drawer until he found the claw hammer his mother kept there; a sense of fearful anticipation as he pushed the front door open and stumbled down the porch steps in the failing light, not even pausing to gather his strength before he hooked the claw into the nearest latticework and wrenched it away from the wall in a long segment.
“We had a deal!” he screamed, getting to work on another segment. “You son of a bitch! We had a deal!” He worked fast, alternately smashing wooden latticework to pieces and prying aluminum panels free from the house. “You lied to me! You lied!” Nails squealed as they were wrenched from their moorings. The sun was too low for the light to intrude beneath the house now, but tomorrow the vampire would find the crawl space uninhabitable.
He saw the vampire, once, just beneath the lip of the house. It said nothing, but its face tracked him as he worked.
The sun was sliding down the sky, leaking its light into the ground and into the sea. Darkness swarmed from the east, spreading stars in its wake.
