Blood Lite II: Overbite (24 page)

Exchange rates being what they were, Vanpirs decided within a day of his interview with the Apothek that he would join the great numbers of his fellow Europeans in traveling to the West.

He discovered a travel website that specialized in his particular interest: epicurean tours. He copied down one of their itineraries and made arrangements privately for accommodations at each venue.

For sentimental reasons, he planned first to visit the Seymour Hamburger Festival. He had spent many pleasant years in Hamburg ensconced in a thirteenth-century flat near the Deutsches Schauspielhaus. The American hamburger fest took place in a small Wisconsin town that was the home of “Hamburger Charlie,” the reputed inventor of the ubiquitous American sandwich. It was also the home of Charlie’s assistant, Emil Wurm, a man whose name Vanpirs found familiar, indeed, reminiscent of one of his former familiars.

It was difficult for Vanpirs to accommodate to American lodging, but he learned quickly that certain hotels had blackout curtains, as well as the meaning and purpose of the “Do Not Disturb” sign to be hung for the maid. Vanpirs soon learned that if he reversed the sign at the proper moment, he might pick up an extra meal, though disposing of the maid’s body was always a concern.

As the hamburger festival began, Vanpirs was disappointed to see so many “commercial” meals offered. But the evening hamburger cookoff held much promise. Vanpirs noticed the festival mascots entering and exiting a small building. This turned out to be a retreat for the costumed hamburger bride and groom. The burger costumes were bulky, and the teenaged mascots eagerly took breaks, where they could remove their foam prisons and drink cold cola and eat ice cream. The pair were also served quarters of the contest hamburgers—which were quite gourmet and up to Vanpirs’s discriminating standards.

The bride and groom were biting into the last of the contest burgers when the winner was announced—a Southwestern-themed sandwich, with pepper-jack cheese, black bean and corn relish, and ancho chiles. As the excitement outside built, Vanpirs slipped into the tent and experienced the full flavor of the festival’s offerings.

He hadn’t thought he would care for American ice cream, but to his surprise, it was decadently rich and delightful. And the combinations of flavors on the medium-rare, flame-cooked burgers were irreplaceable. The toppings, particularly cheese, whet his appetite for more. Thus inspired, he moved on to the next festival, one dedicated to cheese, conveniently located in the nearby Wisconsin village of Little Chute.

Vanpirs waited for the festival to begin, amusing himself by watching small, pink children riding the tiki-themed hotel waterslide as well as playing his “Do Not Disturb” sign game with well-fed Wisconsin hotel maids.

After a few days Vanpirs was perusing the local newspaper in the hotel lobby when he heard guests talking about a reporter from the Green Bay newspaper. She was at that moment interviewing people in the hotel lounge, asking about “maid disappearances.”

To amuse himself, Vanpirs found the reporter in the bar sipping a Cosmopolitan. He sidled next to her, identifying himself as a Romanian food critic. After pleasantries, he told her that Europeans were constantly amazed at the violence that seemed so common in America.

“No one ever disappears in Romania,” he told her and agreed to let her take his picture.

She seemed delighted to snap photo after photo of him, and Vanpirs was pleased to see his comments appear on the Internet within hours, although there was a small note to the effect that the pictures had not come out properly, perhaps due to a lack of sufficient light in the hotel lounge.

Vanpirs’s exuberant feeding that evening led to a four-state search for the “Festival Cheese Killer.” Soon after her coverage of the triple-homicide of the festival’s first, second, and third-place winners, the Green Bay newspaper reporter obtained both a paperback book deal and an offer for a reality show. The story was especially touching, considering that each victim had achieved a lifelong dream of winning a cheese-off trophy and ribbon, yet before they could fully savor their winnings, each had lost her life by unexplained exsanguination.

Leaving Little Chute, Vanpirs traveled to Eau Claire, Michigan, for the annual Cherry Festival, which encompassed patriotic fervor as well as a cornucopia of sweets. Vanpirs monitored the evening’s Sit-N-Spit contest with great humor.

Perhaps because he had been so profligate at the cheese festival, Vanpirs held back at the Cherry Festival, only feeding on the elderly former mayor and his twin brother. The next day it seemed clear to everyone that the duo had succumbed after tying too many cherry stems into knots with their tongues during the day—a family talent—and by gobbling a five-pound cherry pie that evening.

As he left Eau Claire, Vanpirs struck on the idea of purchasing a motor home, which afforded him reliable daytime privacy and darkness, and which also opened up the entire landscape of great American food festivals.

In the coming weeks in his Coachmen Epic, Vanpirs attended International Pancake Day in Liberal, Kansas, the Oakhurst Chocolate Festival in northern California, and the Star of Texas Barbeque
and
Pig Out at the Park. These last two featured pork product competitions, much like the Pomeranian Schlachtfest.

By the following spring, Vanpirs had sampled regional specialties across America. A dim awareness in the criminal justice system had begun to flicker, however, because the FBI had begun to track the “food festival killer,” and Vanpirs had chuckled to see mention of the pattern of killings on MSNBC.

Vanpirs left Texas for Florida in early March. His destination was Orlando, although he was quite certain that the food at the Disney resorts was dreadful. He had no intention of visiting those locations: he was headed straight for the Pillsbury Bake-Off.

The quintessential American food event took place in a massive convention hall in which no natural light ever entered, thus qualifying it as a culinary paradise for Vanpirs. Acres of blissfully cool, sun-free indoor real estate was packed with food displays, demonstration booths, and in the contest hall, one-hundred identical cooking stations for the contestants.

Less appealing was the fact that the Pillsbury Bake-Off, as a commercial event, had been overtaken by contemporary ideas of “healthy eating.” After several low-fat chicken and tofu demonstrations and a teeth-gritting low-sodium, high-fiber, fat-free blended horror of Lovecraftian proportions, Vanpirs wandered into the contest hall to watch the intricate preparations for the Bake-Off. This was simple, for he carried a digital camera and a slightly altered set of press credentials that identified him as a critic for the glossy European publication
Epicurean
.

His urges to feed ebbed and flowed, but he willed himself to wait for the contest dishes to be prepared and tasted, telling himself that victory would be his following the announcement of the one-million-dollars winner that evening.

As the long day wore on, Vanpirs’s head felt light and strange. Perhaps, he thought, it was the great number of warm bodies in the convention center overwhelming him. He rested for a moment by the red, white, and blue balloon arch through which the hundred Bake-Off contestants would run on their way to their identical cooking stations. After a moment Vanpirs found himself sharing space with the Pillsbury Doughboy.

“Do you like hamburgers?” Vanpirs asked in an effort to make light conversation.

“No, man,” the Doughboy said. “I’m vegan.”

“Ah,” Vanpirs said, which explained the repulsive, weedlike odor of the Doughboy’s sweat.

Vanpirs watched the contestants enter to great fanfare, greeted by the Doughboy. He took photos, and toured the kitchens of those who were preparing main dishes; American desserts were simply too sweet for his European palate.

A cherubic brunette with flashing eyes preparing a chicken casserole was absolutely divine. Vanpirs watched, smiling, as she chopped ginger, then garlic, then spooned an entire can of cream of celery soup into a bowl and began to mix. He wanted to lick her neck.

Vanpirs leaned ever closer to her tempting, moist neck when he was overcome by a strange, keening wail that filled the convention hall, pulsing and threatening to burst his eardrums.

“I smell smoke!” he heard.

“We’re all going to die!” someone else shrieked.

Terrible, brilliant lights flashed. Vanpirs grimaced and lowered his head.

The brunette had dropped her spoon and was speaking to him.

In misery, Vanpirs uncovered his ears.

“Sir, your leg is smoking,” she said.

Vanpirs looked down. Twin streams of smoke were curling up from the cuff of his carefully pressed Euro jeans.

“How can this be?” he asked.

“There are a lot of ovens on around here. It wouldn’t be hard to—”

“That man is on fire!” screamed a blond woman, pointing at him.

All at once every contestant save the kindly brunette threw down their utensils. A nearby judge went down, shrieking, as Bake-Off cooks, friends, relatives, and sundry hangers-on stampeded toward the balloon arch.

They enveloped the Doughboy. Vanpirs caught glimpses of his collapsed white form as the crowd parted, then coalesced in waves.

“Come on,” said the brunette. “Let me help you.”

Vanpirs nearly fell against her as she took his arm. Gratitude and terror mixed in equal parts in Vanpirs, along with the insistent desire to bite the woman, even as she tried to help.

“There is no . . . help for me,” he gasped, remembering the Apothek’s warning. He should change his diet—it was the endless fat, the grease, the oily blood of all those he’d tasted for so many—why hadn’t he listened?

Most of the crowd had headed toward the arch, while there was another exit sign flashing only yards from it, and she led him toward it.

“I—I have to rest,” he said. Perhaps the fire would go out. And how had it started? There were over one hundred stoves in the hall and all of them turned to high heat. Had it been a spark from a stray gas lighter? A fiery crackling of burned cake from a contestant’s humiliating failure? It could have been any of these, for Vanpirs’s body had long since been comprised of more highly flammable cholesterol than long-dead bone and sinew.

Vanpirs’ helpmate bit her lower lip as he sat heavily in a chair by the exit.

“It’s getting worse,” she said. She began patting at his leg with the hem of her apron, which produced nothing but an even more concentrated jet of smoke curling from the cuff of his jeans.

She lifted the cuff to see the source of the smoke and blinked.

“Oh, my,” she said.

“What is it?” Vanpirs asked in alarm.

“Why, I can see—” she said. She found herself unable to tell him that she’d seen a rapidly darkening bone, roasting and crackling along with a big patch of oily flesh, just like a barbecued beef rib on the grill. She bit her lower lip and said, “Oh, gosh. I think I should get some help.”

Vanpirs’s head was spinning with the need to bite, and he almost did not notice the small silver cross hanging around her neck. “Please do,” he said in a small voice as he pulled quickly away.

“You stay right here,” she said, wagging her finger as if he were a naughty child. “I’ll be back.”

She needn’t have warned him, for neither of Vanpirs’s legs would move any longer. It was exactly as it had happened in Stralsund, only ever so much worse. He noticed with terror that smoke had now begun to rise from his other ankle.

He rolled up one of his sleeves and watched the skin darkening, even crinkling here and there. Before his eyes, it burst into flame.

“No!” he cried.

But it was, of course, too late for Vanpirs. The flames were already inside of him. And though he could not feel pain, he could feel the flames feeding, as flames will do upon finding a great deal of combustible material such as concentrated human cholesterol, all in one place.

• • •

The Orlando firefighters were reluctant to immediately enter the building, so it was therefore several hours later when, out of direct reach of the facility’s sprinklers, a pair of waxy white feet clad in expensive French leather loafers were found resting beneath a chair near the exit. Upon the seat of the chair was a pile of greasy black ash, in the midst of which was discovered an odd set of dentition containing a matched pair of long ivory teeth.

The Ghoul Next Door

NANCY KILPATRICK

He’s a ghoul all right, but he ain’t the only freak in
this
neighborhood. That’s a fact. Take my word for it.

There’s hairy old Jack down the block, for instance. Raise the dander on anybody’s neck, though come to think of it I ain’t seen hide
nor
hair of him lately. And the Laveaus at the corner? Bunch of deadbeats, if you ask me. Him and the wife cement themselves to the front porch all night long every summer, guzzling some concoction she brews, staring off into space. How they manage the payments on their “crypt” as they call it, that’s the question. Lucinda Varney next door—face of an angel and that’s where the connection to heaven ends. Don’t get me wrong. I love that girl dearly, as if she was my own daughter—if I had a daughter, which I don’t—and I was her natural mother, but I’ve watched her suck in more than one fellow, wearing skirts up around her . . . But I guess you wanna hear about the ghoul.

He come to our neighborhood last year, ’round the time the lake swallowed up the Francis girl. Let me see . . . It was Halloween, All Saints’, some of them ’round here call it.

The ghoul—his name’s Henry, just so we all know who we’re talking about—didn’t bring much, only a heavy-looking flesh-colored backpack. No suitcases, boxes of pots and pans. You know, no household things. ’Course, it’s only a room he’s got, at Liz Nedrob’s. Lets the one at the back. Not much bigger than a broom closet, but he was alone, far as I could tell, though I’m just a wrinkly, so what do I know.

Anyway, this young fella moves in on my other side and that’s the last anybody sees of him till Thanksgiving, the day everybody stuffs themselves on bird flesh and lives to regret it.

I wouldn’t do it, and I’m one of the worst old fools you’re likely to meet. But I’m no tofu or whatever eater, so let’s get that straight.

I sit here most days and well into the night so I get a pretty accurate picture of the comings and goings—passes the time. Not that I’m a busybody, mind you. It’s just that I’m retired now—acted in the silent films, I did, and even a couple of early talkies, though they cut out most of my lines. I don’t get around much anymore so there’s plenty of hours to stare out the window. Though I couldn’t care less how people live their lives. Between them and their maker. ’Course, that’s how I first seen him eating raw flesh. The ghoul, that is.

It was after midnight and one of them bitter nights when what they call the wind chill factor puts you well into the deep freeze. Naturally there was nobody outdoors, man nor beast. I was watchin’ a bit of television—them housewives that are so desperate, they’re right on the money, ain’t they?—when I glanced out the window like you do. Well, it was dark and lonely out there, wind bashing trees, a touch o’ snow tornado-swirling like’n it’d drag you down to hell given half a chance. I was surprised to see old man Jack’s big furry wolf dog—also named Jack; don’t that beat all?—taking a stroll across the street. While one o’ my old rivals gnashed her teeth in a Polident commercial, I watched Jack head for the alley beside my house, probably following the scent of some foxy bitch.

Out o’ the corner of my eye I see something movin’, a shade within range of the streetlight. The hound’s at the mouth o’ the black alley between me and Liz’s when he stops dead in his tracks. Tail goes rigid. Ears and lips pull back. He lifts his muzzle then turns it this way and that, like he’s sniffing the air and catches a whiff of somethin’ he ain’t sure he likes.

A gust comes outta nowhere and whips branches every which way and knocks over a garbage can. But that old wolf-dog stands rooted to the spot like he’s froze. Suddenly his fur springs straight up from his body. I can’t hear him but I can see he’s howlin’ like he’s seen a ghost. Before I know what’s got him spooked, some dark shadow snakes outta the night and snatches Jack up.

Well, I couldn’t believe my eyes, which have deteriorated real bad, I’ll grant you, but they still do the job. I watched awhile, but there was nothing more to see. ’Course, I thought I imagined the whole thing. I was about to turn back and switch the channel in case they were showing one of my old black-and-whites when a car tears up the street. For a split second the beam of one headlight catches a pale thin face and a crazy red eye just where Jack was standin’. It was him, all right. Henry. Likely having hisself a feast of dog flesh.

Now that’s sickenin’, I’ll grant you, but the things I’ve seen in my time. And the young people of late. Bloodless wonders, shrouded head to toe in black cow hide, pasty faced, looking like they’d swallowed a gallon of embalming fluid for breakfast. . . .

Well, I won’t go on. Let’s just say there’s plenty of stories if you wanna hear ’em.

Anyways, the second time I seen the ghoul at his trade was just after Christmas. Come to think of it, maybe he only gets hungry on bona fide holidays. Pigs out like the rest of the human race.

This time there was snow on the ground, oh, six inches or so. You know how bright it looks around Christmas? The holiday lights plus the white covering everything? A little like daytime so things is pretty clear.

What I’m getting at is, if I had my doubts, now I was sure.

Sure as I am that there’s a condo of sorts waiting down at the cemetery with my name chiseled on the mailbox.

He come out of Liz’s wearing a brown fur coat and scarf up around his face, so he stood out real nice against the crystal snow. I watched him hunch his shoulders against the cold, then head on down the street. All of a sudden he stops. I look to where he’s staring across the road. It’s the Laveaus’ youngest.

All bundled in a new peppermint-striped snowsuit, cute as that youngster can be, building a snow-something in front o’ the house.

I can’t for the life of me remember if it’s a boy or girl.

They give the kid one of them names so’s you’re never sure. Pat, it was, now that I think on it. Anyway, when I look back at Henry to see what he’s up to, he’s nowhere to be seen. Naturally this makes me uneasy. Mary Laveau’s flat-featured face appears at her window, checking on the little one, then she’s gone. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, the tyke turns its head, then starts toddling toward the burned-out garage next to the Laveaus’. Well, I was fit to be tied. I waited a bit but when the kid didn’t come out I got on the horn to Mary. Damn line was busy and I know she’s got call-waitin’. People talk too much on the phone, that’s what’s wrong with the world today.

Anyway, before I could get through to her, I checked the street again. I was at a bad angle but it looked to me like a fat candy cane jutting out from the charred doorway. I took a gander through my field glasses and, sure enough. But by then Mary’s on the sidewalk, searching all over hell and gone for her young ’un. Never seen that woman so animated. Wasn’t long before she spotted the snowsuit.

The police came. An ambulance. Wasn’t enough left to cart off to the morgue, I’ll tell you. All the neighbors were out there giving statements. I would’ve told what I knew but nobody asked. They never do. And every time I tried the Laveaus’, the damn phone was busy or the answering message machine thing came on, and I ain’t about to talk into one of them squawking monsters. I didn’t feel right, but I was starting to wonder just what I did see, and I figured the cops knew what they were doing. It was up to them to finger the ghoul. At least, that’s how I explained it to myself back then.

Well, time passed, as it does, and everything died down so much it just kinda faded, if you know what I mean. I didn’t see Henry so I didn’t know if they’d caught him or he’d moved on or what. Until tonight. Valentine’s Day. Right on schedule.

Just after sunset, as per usual, saucy Lucinda comes flying down her front steps, all painted up for a night on the town. I swear that girl lives in another world. She grins up at the moon, which is full and clear, then starts down the walk, but she don’t get two steps, though, when I see young Henry appear from between the hawthorn hedges. It’s like he’s been stalking her. Biding his time.

Now Lucinda’s a pretty thing, tiny, a bit too thin, but she takes after her folks. And modern, you might say. Of the “me instead of you” generation. I was good friends with her mom and dad before they were killed one morning by some maniac. Streets aren’t safe, I tell you. Anyway, she inherited a pile and she’s independent in other ways, too, but they made me a godmother of sorts and I promised the Varneys years ago if anything happened to them, I’d keep an eye on their girl. I was already feeling a bit guilty about Mary’s offspring, so naturally when I spot Henry I start to worry.

Before Lucinda gets a chance to say or do anything he walks right up to her, bold as brass, takes her by the arm like they’d knowed each other a lifetime, and leads her back into the house.

Now Lucinda ain’t the brightest female. She not only don’t put up a fuss, she licks her lips and practically yanks Henry up the steps. They disappear inside lickety-split.

I’m no prude. I was young once. I remember what it’s like to be hungry. But that Varney girl, she’s starving. Had to have been to go with Henry.

Well, I consider what to do. I try phonin’ Lucinda. Her voice on her blasted voice mail sounds like some disembodied spirit. There ain’t but one thing left and that’s to pick myself up and get on over there.

Moving’s not as easy at it once was for me. The old joints squeak a bit. Ticker’s winding down. Took me a while to drag myself down my steps and up hers. I knock. Nobody answers. I let myself in.

Haven’t been here since old Varney invited me over one night to admire his collection. Photographs, it was. Ancient tombstones, mausoleums of the past, cemeteries in general. He was an oddball, all right. Anyway, looks like a century since anybody’s bothered cleaning, judging by the cobwebs. Lucinda doesn’t take the care with her home that she does with her appearance, that’s clear.

I hear a sound in the basement and figure that’s where he’s got her. No use hollering, that’d just scare him off. I head on down the twenty-five cellar steps—counted each one. Took my mind off the agony.

The cellar’s windowless, dingy concrete, with a big oil furnace stationed in the middle and shadows clinging to all the corners. It’s in the same musty state as the rest of the house. I spot a door and hear a thump behind it. Might as well open it. I come this far and wouldn’t want to waste my energy.

Well, I’ll be damned. If it ain’t Lucinda and Henry, curled up together on an old cot, tight as triffids. She’s got those pearly whites sunk into his neck and he’s gnawing away happily on her inner thigh.

“Lucinda!” I growl, in the deep tone I was famous for in my movies. I thought they’d both hit the ceiling.

She blinks a couple times, recognizes me. If looks could kill. To her credit, she thinks the better of expressing that and instead gets embarrassed. She opens her mouth but before there’s a chance of anything coming out I tell her, “Get on upstairs. I wanna talk to this fella. Go on, now!”

Like I say, Lucinda’s long on looks and short on brains, but she’s got enough sense to disappear.

Henry stares up at me, half defiant, half terrified, about to bolt or attack. “Calm down, son,” I say. “We gotta talk.”

That doesn’t put him at ease any. My bones are tired from all that climbing so I sit myself on the edge of the bed. The kid scuttles away like I’m some human-sized insect. “Now look here,” I begin. “I been watchin’ you.”

His eyes get big. The thought never occurred to him.

“Saw you the night old Jack disappeared. And the Laveau kid. And now with Lucinda.”

He seems kinda haunted by bad memories but stands up for himself. “I wasn’t gonna hurt her.”

“And I wasn’t born yesterday. I seen what you were doin’.”

His mouth twists into that petulant look kids get that makes the rest of us wanna swat ’em. “She’s no angel,” he says. True, but a right poor defense, in my books.

“Lucinda may not be innocent, but she’s one of us and you ain’t.”

Well, saying that hurts him and that makes me feel guilty. After all, I guess in my heart of hearts I don’t believe he’s all that different. Only, you know, a bit ghoulish. “Son, you just can’t move into a tight-knit community like this and upload—is that what you kids say?—your peculiar ways on everybody. The neighbors won’t stand for it. We got our rules, like everybody else, and when folks choose to live together they gotta cooperate and learn to get along. You can’t go preying on your neighbors. It just ain’t done.”

Well, that appears to be a new thought to him. He considers it and nods a bit. I figure I’m getting through.

“Now you and Lucinda,” I say. “What’re your intentions there?”

The kid shifts a bit but thinks it over before answering. “I love her,” he blurts. “A lot. We have things in common.”

Yeah, I think, me and Frankenstein got things in common, too. Both of us could use a face-lift.

“We’re getting married.”

Well, this is news. “When’d you two decide that?”

“Tonight. Lucinda wants you at the wedding. After all, you’re like a mother to her.”

I grunt. Truth is, it’d solve quite a few problems. The kid will have to grow up, take responsibility. Learn to fit into the community. They’ll live next door so I can keep an eye on things. And if there’s one female capable of settling somebody like him down, it’s probably Lucinda. Whether or not he can settle
her
down’s another matter.