Full MoonCity (24 page)

Oy vey. So Max and I have to carry Sylvie out into a deserted lot and bury her in a cardboard box, which is very dangerous because the police might see us, but Momma likes her privacy and won’t share the basement (which she now calls “the crypt”) with just
anybody.
And most nights afterwards Sylvie comes floating to my second-floor bedroom window, tapping on the glass, asking to be let in, and before long she’s as much a nuisance as Max.

But I feel sorry for her and maybe I am even afraid of her. It is not her fault, what happened. But she also has that hungry, hungry,
empty
look in her eyes, and sometimes I am not sure if it’s even Sylvie, just those eyes and a mouth full of sharp teeth that talks like my best friend.

Everybody has their breaking point, and I have mine. I think I’m already past it. But what can I do? I am not made of glass, that I can literally
break.

I get on the Internet. I go to lots of chat rooms. I become something of a celebrity, but everybody thinks I am making this up. People don’t take me seriously. They tell me how much they like my stories. The editor of
Weird Tales
asks me to send him something. I also get people writing to know what flavor of bugs I like, and am I really a hunchback, because hunchbacks are supposed to be the servants of vampires-and I write back,
No, that’s mad scientists, you dork!
because this is my
mother
you are talking about-and I get some
very
odd spam, a lot of it from a dead African oil minister turned zombie who wants to get together with me to share the $30 million he intends to smuggle out of his country in a coffin.

And then at last there is a message that merely says:
I think I can help you.-Heinrich.

Heinrich?

Is your last name Van Helsing by any chance?
I want to know.

No, it is Schroeder.

What do you want?
I type.

I want to meet you,
he types back.

Now this is
so
mysterious, and everything your mother ever warned you about when messing on the Internet, but when you have a mother like
mine,
maybe you take her warnings with a grain of… garlic? (And that’s
another
thing-ever since the Big Change, there is
no
pizza allowed in our house, but I am babbling…)

I am thrilled. Also desperate. I am almost ready to fling myself into the arms of the zombie African oil minister, or certainly a mad scientist’s hunchbacked assistant as long as his breath smells like garlic, and in such a deranged state of mind I tell my new friend Heinrich Schroeder that I would like to meet him.

So we make arrangements to get together.

At night.

Alone.

In a lonely graveyard near Hoboken.

This breaks
so
many rules that it just adds to the thrill. So I stay late after school. I eat a light supper at a Pizza Hut, and then wait some more, until it is dark. Yes, I know Momma will be mad, but I don’t
care;
I’m that desperate. In any case, I know she can take care of herself, and that idiot-retard Max will be able stop eating bugs long enough to cope with any vampire-hunters who might want to sprinkle holy water into the basement or whatever else they might do.

It’ll be
okay.
I tell myself that over and over as I get off the PATH train in Hoboken and walk down a dark street between dingy buildings, until I come to another street, which is even darker and dingier, and my footsteps are going faster, faster, tap-tap, tap-tap, like in the movies when the girl is about to get jumped, only I don’t get jumped, and eventually I climb through a broken fence and into an old, deserted graveyard. There
are
such places in the New York area. Not everything is modern and built-up. Probably nobody has been buried here for a hundred years, and if anyone or anything climbs up out of a grave to get me, I’ll just tell him or it who my parents are.

Not that such a thing happens. Heinrich is waiting for me on a bench, in the one spot where a little light from a streetlamp shines through the gnarly trees.

When he stands up to greet me, like a perfect gentleman, I see that he is
big
. My head doesn’t even come to his shoulders. He is broad-shouldered, like two or three linebackers crammed into one body, and I can see that he’s one of these guys whose face is always hairy no matter how many times he shaves, but maybe my senses are getting sharper from hanging around vampires so much, because I can
smell
him in a
good
way, not BO but an
alive
odor that excites me more than I can understand, and when he takes my hand in his and his grip is firm and so hard it almost breaks my hand, but
warm
, I’m instantly
in love!
Before we even say a word, we fall into each other’s arms, on the ground, rolling in the leaves, heaving with such passion that a decent girl like me (ahem!) will have to leave out some of the details.

Later we talk quite a lot, and I pour my heart out to him, the whole story, and he is
so
understanding. He has seen and experienced strange things, too, he says. He believes me. He
knows
I am telling the truth.

I look into his eyes. I may never look anywhere else again.

“You have to get away,” he says.

“But I don’t want to hurt Momma’s feelings.”

“She’s a minion of evil, a blood-drinking demon of darkness.”

“I know, but she’s my mom. Besides, one tries not to be judgmental about alternate lifestyles.”

“That’s the college girl talking, not the real you,” he says, and takes me in his arms again and once more we are rolling on the ground, making hay in the dead leaves, if you will pardon the expression, and
oh!
I have never felt anything like this and
oh!
goes on and on, and
oh!
I don’t care what Mom and Dad think, I just want to be with Heinrich.

“I might have a few deep, dark secrets of my own,” he says afterwards. “I am glad you are not judgmental.”

Then I suggest that maybe we should take the silver nails and nail my parents back into their coffins. It won’t be such an inconvenience for them because they’re immortal, so we could live out our lives and maybe let them loose again when we’re eighty or so-but at the first mention of
silver,
Heinrich hisses and recoils as if I’d handed him a live snake.

Which is very odd. But do you expect me to have a
normal
boyfriend?

Then Heinrich has to leave. He leaves, quickly.

“I love you!” I shout after him, but he’s vanished into the darkness.

There is indeed hell to pay when I get home, close to dawn, about the same time Momma and Poppa do, and even Poppa is beside himself with rage, his eyes burning red, his fangs dripping. He’s gotten his bat-tie repaired. Both wings are flapping furiously.

“You
are one
disobedient
minion!” Momma screams as she
oozes
toward me in that odd, rolly-polly
slink
that is so hard to describe. Her eyes are all fire, too, and her fangs are out.

“Damn it, Mother! I’m not a minion! I’m your daughter!”

Just then Max shambles into the room, a gigantic, live cockroach wriggling between his teeth. His back has been broken in several places, almost tied into a pretzel, though he doesn’t seem to feel any pain. Vampires really do have powers science can’t understand. Max is now a genuine hunchback of the finest quality, two-humped like a dromedary.

“Now
that’s
a minion!” I shout.

Momma shouts, too, orders to Max, who is surprisingly agile despite his condition, and surprisingly strong, not to mention
horrible
smelling, as he grabs me and drags me up the front stairs like a sack of laundry, while both of my parents are hovering over me, their faces hideous masks with red eyes and gleaming fangs, like something seen in a dream, and the cockroach in Max’s teeth seems to be saying, “You’re a naughty, naughty girl and you’re
grounded for life
!”

Maybe they’ve put the whammy on me, because there is a gap in my memory, and when I wake up I am on my bed in my bedroom. The first thing I do is put my hand to my throat to see if I feel warm, and I do. That calms me a little, but I get up woozily and only gradually discover, to my increasing rage, that the door to my room has been nailed shut, and there are boards nailed over all the windows.

My little prison consists of the bedroom and the adjoining bathroom. Someone or something (probably Max, who seems to have razor-sharp teeth these days) has
gnawed
a bit of the bottom of the door away, enough to make a slot where food can be slid in to the prisoner.

There’s a bowl of soggy Cheerios on a plate, but there’s a bug swimming in it and I push it back out.

So that’s how it is.

Yes, it is. I can’t go to college anymore. I can’t go anywhere. I am held prisoner, starving, occasionally able to nibble on the less disgusting things Max provides. (The lunch meat isn’t too bad. I can even manage the stale doughnuts.)

Every evening I hear my parents rise from their coffins. I hear everything. I think my senses
are
heightened beyond what is normal. The lids creak, I think, because they like it that way. They
could
oil the hinges, but it would be against proper vampire style. They go out. They come in a little before dawn, exchanging a few pleasantries. “Did you have a good time, Morris?” “Yes, Honey Love.” Sometimes I overhear a few words about “What are we going to do with our daughter? What
can
we do?” followed by assurances (from Poppa) that all parents go through this with teenaged daughters and things will work out.

Yes,
they will. Thank God for the Internet. Max is too addled and I don’t think my parents ever quite understood what computers are for, particularly a wireless connection through a laptop. (They’ve ripped out my phone.) If I am typing away, they think I am doing my homework.

(“
Could
we let her go back to school?” Poppa asks. “She’s still working so hard.” Momma just hisses like a snake and that settles that.)

I type away, day and night. By day, idiot Max the hunchback is there to make sure I don’t escape. At night, my old friend Sylvie still hovers outside the window like a Halloween version of Tinkerbell in a trailing shroud, tapping her skeletal fingers on the windows, asking me to let her in. I don’t, but she’s still out there, certain to make sure I can’t go
out.

Where
did
she get the shroud, anyway? She was wearing jeans and a top when we buried her. But I can’t bring myself to care anymore.

I type and type. I find Heinrich again, and we exchange e-mails fast and furious.

I too am a creature of darkness,
he types.
You might not be happy with me. I have a terrible secret.

Yeah, yeah. I DON’T CARE!

You sure?

YES I AM SURE. COME AND GET ME!

I shall rescue you, then, as a knight would rescue a maiden imprisoned in a tower. It’s very romantic, really.

Yes, it is, and I spend my days and nights dreaming of him, imagining that I am with him, that he is in my bed, doing things a nice girl like me doesn’t talk about. I spend hours before my mirror trying to make myself presentable for him. We talk over the Internet every day, sometimes all day, but the one thing I can’t understand is why I have to
wait.
Why can’t he come and get me
right now
?

These things have to be done right, for the sake of romance,
he types.

I don’t care!

But you should, my sweet. There is, too, the matter that my power will not be at its greatest until the end of the month.

I have experienced enough of his power to last me a lifetime and I want more, but I do, ultimately, have to wait. The routine goes on. I listen to what Mom and Dad say to each other every morning after they come back from terrorizing the countryside. I can even hear the soundtrack of the movies Poppa plays inside his coffin.

I cross the days off the calendar.

28th, 29th, 30th.

And then, just after sundown, the front door
explodes
like it’s been dynamited, and I hear Max yelping and then such
screams
and snarls as you’ve never heard before, like there’s a rabies outbreak at the zoo, and furniture is crashing.

Then Max is whimpering outside my door.

“It might hurt the Master and Mistress! It might hurt them!”

Crash! Smash!
Howl.

It?

I pound on the door.

“Max, can you hear me?”

He whimpers and whines and slobbers. I hope I have his attention.

“Max!
Let me out!”

“Can’t!”

The chaos downstairs continues. It doesn’t sound as if Mom and Dad are getting the best of it. The whole house begins to shake and sway. If this goes on much longer, the place may be ripped off its foundations.

“Max!
I can help them!”

Max stops whimpering, and, in a voice that sounds almost like his old self, asks a surprisingly intelligent question. “But why should you help them after what they’ve done to you?”

“Max! They’re my
parents
! Can’t you understand that?”

Then he’s tearing away the boards nailed to the door, and in a moment, I’m walking downstairs into what used to be the living room, with Max shambling somewhere behind me.

There isn’t much of the downstairs left. The walls are out. The TV is smashed to bits and smoldering. Most of the furniture is in splinters. Wading through what used to be the dining room, a huge, hairy Thing faces off against my parents, circling as they do. Momma’s dress is in tatters. Poppa’s cape is gone, and his vest and starched shirt are shredded, and
everybody’s
claws are covered with I-don’t-want-to-know-what. Everybody’s eyes are blazing like furnaces. They lunge at one another, jump out of the way, parry, and thrust with their whole bodies like fencers.