TUESDAY
May 6, 2008
4:36 a.m.
The old man's shadow seemed to outrun him momentarily as he moved from directly beneath the bright streetlight to the darkness just beyond it. His pace was near-perfect: his breathing rate was as steady as it would have been under hypnosis; his heart beat a strong, rhythmic cadence, unstressed by the pounding of the jog; his muscles and joints, relaxed.
He was relaxed. Why wouldn't he be? This was his neighborhood, and he had run this exact route a thousand times, perhaps to the very step. Had the route not been asphalt there might have been a visible path worn into the ground. The William H. Benton Memorial Trail, they would have called it. Large pretty signs would have been posted every mile, denoting the precise route. So, of course, he jogged through the silent streets, confident and proud as if the trail was marked right that minute, and he was still alive to enjoy its celebrity.
William H. Benton picked up his pace as he neared the end of his run. All that remained was to run the third side available of Rafer Johnson Junior High School, named for the famed Olympian and former resident. After that a quick left turn on Wilson Way and he’d be home.
A sweep of cold breeze whipped past his ears suddenly as he turned from Stroud Avenue onto 14th Street. He reached up with his right hand and gently pushed the longer than usual blend of black, but mostly gray, hair from his face. As soon as he lowered his hand though, the breeze pushed the hair right back.
I’ve really got to get this trimmed, he thought as he attempted in vain to push it back in place.
As he continued on the trail, the cold, whipping air grew stronger. Absently, he pulled the zipper on his navy blue jogging top all the way up. He was reminded of the vacation that he and Geraldine had taken in Alaska eight years earlier. Everything had been beautiful until the flight attendant had opened the Alaskan Airliner's doors and it was time for them to disembark the plane, and that was only the tunnel between the plane and the actual airport. They hadn't even stepped out into the naked air yet.
To him and Geraldine, two people who seemed to appreciate the desert more than the mountains, Alaska was brutally cold. Just like this.
Suddenly, the cold morning air was a barrier. It was as if someone had just opened a mystical portal into the North Pole, allowing the great arctic winds there to flow freely here. His smooth jogger's pace crumbled away immediately. His legs pumped laboriously, trying to maintain their original pace as Mother Nature beat against them. He huffed and puffed with each step; his exhales were suddenly a white fog, shielding his eyes from the track.
Then something seemed to whip by his left ear.
At first, he thought it was simply another blast of cold air, but it was soon followed by another going in a completely different direction, and then another. Each time, he thought he could almost hear some kind of squeaking. Or was it giggling?
He quickly glanced over his shoulders as his body grew more exhausted with the struggle, but there was nothing there. What was more, when he looked back, the giggling was suddenly in front of him. Now behind him again, but still he could see no one there.
Each step got worse than the previous one; his New Balance running shoes were suddenly full of lead. His body wanted, needed to stop but he could not. The sound was almost inside his ears now, pushing him well into panic. His heart was a million miles away from the steady, contented pulse of before. It was no longer a jog, but a dead run.
It was then that whatever was playing with him was no longer content to do so and attacked.
Benton struck the asphalt hard. His body rolled several feet before coming to an excruciating halt in the gutter. It was there that all sound stopped. Conscious of this, he rolled onto his back and listened, waiting. He knew that he was not alone. Moreover, he knew that there was nothing that he could do about it.
“Please,” he spoke at last. “Don’t hurt me.”
From high above, there came a giggle. This was unmistakable.
“Who are you?”
“Would you believe, a friend?” the voice teased.
Benton most certainly did not believe the confident, unfriendly voice which seemed to hover over him, daring him to rise to his feet. But he was a successful man who had built his career and reputation on facing and meeting every challenge, so he did his best not to falter before the voice.
“Please,” the voice spoke again. “Rise!”
Benton looked up, surprised at the sound of the command. Having caught his breath, his exhales finally began to thin enough to allow him to see the man behind the confident voice above him. Just before he was able to get a good look, however, the man spoke again.
“Did you not hear?” the voice asked, incredulous.
Although the voice had never been very soothing, there was now a definite tremor of turbulence to it. Benton noticed the difference with a faint chill up the length of his spine.
“Look,” he began, rising slowly to his feet. “I don't want any trouble. I'm just on my way home.”
“You were.”
“Yes, I am,” he calmly answered.
“No," the voice repeated, dryly, as if growing bored with the interaction. "You were."
Benton took a step backwards at the words. He moved to turn, the world spinning momentarily as he did so.
Two steps.
Four steps.
Eight steps.
He glanced over his right shoulder. There was nothing or no one there.
He yanked his head back around, slamming into someone very large. He braced himself for the impact with asphalt or cement, but it did not come. The earth spun again, but he did not fall. Someone had him by the arms and spun him around further. He made a face to protest, looking deeply into the man's eyes for the first time as his fingers bit into the sleeves of his sweat top and then deeper still into the flesh beneath, pulling him closer to give him a better look. They were black eyes.
“Let me go!” Benton shouted.
His attacker leaned into his face and sneered, opening his black eyes wide. Benton felt his face drain of color.
“Have you anything else to say before I make you my dinner?” he asked clearly, daring him to action.
Benton said nothing. He couldn't. He managed to part his lips as if to speak, but found himself completely immersed within the colorless regions of his attacker’s hypnotic eyes, unable to do anything but let loose a long string of foamy spittle. It dribbled down his chin and onto the top of his sweats as if he were a child.
“I am so delighted,” the vampire grinned. He released the man, but rested his cold, long-dead fingers upon his warm, flushed face. “I do hate these games!” And then he pushed his hands together.
Benton's skull gave in, killing him instantly.
There was a moment of exquisite silence for the vampire before the blood came, like some madman’s twisted orgasm. When it came, it was beautiful. The hot, red blood exploded free from every orifice, whether natural or new, including the sockets where there was nothing left of the old man’s eyes. The vampire allowed the blood to splash over him and the street only for an instant. Then he snapped back the man's head like a squashed piece of fruit and quickly drained what was left by placing his mouth upon the great wound in his neck and drinking.
5:09 a.m.
The scent of blood was strong in his nose tonight, he realized as he maneuvered through the shadows along the intersection of 14th and Ventura Street. As always, in every neighborhood that he visited, he left both house and occupants undisturbed, leaving no visible trace of his presence there. All Nathaniel needed was his meal.
Nathaniel watched the cat further. This morning, though extremely desperate, he had followed this particular cat for half a mile. The animal appeared well-fed and comfortable, yet did not seem to pay allegiance to any particular house or specific neighborhood.
We are a lot alike, you a
nd I, Nathaniel thought as the cat continued on its way, cutting across a well-manicured lawn and heading north. Two blocks away was Rafer Johnson Junior High School.
Growing more impatient with each subsequent step, Nathaniel filed the thought away for further consideration and started after his prey. So close that the vampire suddenly tasted salty blood, he hesitated. What's this?
Like the animal, the vampire thought that it was his hunger which seemed to flood his senses with the scent of blood, long before he had even taken a hold of his meal. However, Nathaniel realized that this was not the case.
The vampire suddenly stood upright. Unaware of the invisible menace above him, the cat jumped a foot into the air with the sudden movement as the presence was made known to it. It went scurrying across three yards, trying desperately to catch up with its legs, and didn't stop until it had disappeared in shadow somewhere across the street. Nathaniel ignored it. His senses were already too deeply immersed in what he could not yet see. He began to walk in the same direction the cat had fled, but now it wasn't the cat that he was after.
Tonight, Nathaniel had been planning on shedding a little blood. Somewhere near, however, a lot of blood had already been shed.
It only took Nathaniel a moment to locate the source of the disturbance to his senses. After he had, he wished he hadn't.
The body was lying in a heap beyond a chain-link fence twenty feet into what Americans would have referred to as a soccer field. Nathaniel leapt onto the fence and vaulted over it in short order, but approached the remains with a great sense of foreboding. He did not realize it then.
Nathaniel moved carefully, making certain that he was alone, that the monster responsible for the atrocity before him was indeed long gone. An upraised nose tasted the light breeze to check for predators, but could detect only the victim’s blood. The vampire started to kneel down before the remains, but stopped in mid-descent, startled, and bolted back upright.
The vampire was not horrified with the violence below him. He had seen much of what a beast or man could do to a fellow human being. He had seen carnage, brutality, rape and war. For as strong as man could be, he knew full well what little effort was actually required to render man undone. There had been nothing new done to this poor fellow that could have shocked him: the strength and extreme prejudice necessary to obliterate the old man’s skull. Clipped to the body was the front page of the latest edition of the Kingsburg Recorder. On it was a note that had been left for him.
In blood.
Hello Nathaniel.
Nathaniel knew the signature because he had seen it before, although certainly not recently. He had hoped that he had seen it for the last time, yet here it was in bloody splendor. He recognized the strokes made not with a finger but a very large fingernail; more similar to a claw, actually. And it was in that moment that he realized why he had found himself plagued of late by flashbacks of a time long thought forgotten.
He turned, surveying the area of the town about him. He felt alone presently, but generally speaking not nearly as alone as he would have originally hoped. He checked the breeze, but it was still too difficult to taste anything with all the blood in the air tonight.
As it wafted around, his mind began to wander off without him again.