Immortal Coil: A Novel (Immortal Trilogy Book 1) (6 page)

              He called himself The Dark One. He supposed he had once used a given name, but so many years had passed without hearing it spoken that he had long since forgotten it. The tabloids called him The Houseguest Killer because of how he selected his victims. More accurately, he was the Unwanted Houseguest Killer. This thought made him laugh. One of his favorite methods for picking out his prey was to visit the parking lot of a shopping mall and look for the decals on the back windows of minivans. This almost always told him how many members were in the household. He preferred three, but no less than that. To date he had never picked a house with more than five family members and probably never would. He wasn’t a glutton, after all.

He was a vampire.

He only required three blood-filled humans to satiate the need. Everyone beyond that was just wasteful, really. But it was so much fun to watch them bleed out.

Tonight’s meal consisted of a man, the man’s wife, and the wife’s elderly mother. He spotted them returning home from some day-long outing and thought,
why not?

              The houseguest Killer kept a lair in the Poconos, in a mansion that had once been an expensive bed and breakfast during the sixties, but was now just a run-down and abandoned haunted house, with graffiti decorating its facade. He tried to stick close to home, and mostly hunted in the city of Allentown, or the surrounding area therein. His latest family lived in the town of Cherryville. They owned a quaint little house in the suburbs.

The vampire walked around the house peering into windows. He assessed that the man and woman were in the downstairs sitting room, drinking tea and reading. The man flipped through the local paper and she read a hard-cover book, maybe a novel. The old woman slept in an upstairs bedroom. He would take her first, quietly and without too much fuss; he no thrill from torturing the elderly who were probably not even aware what was happening to them.

              The vampire’s dusty brown trench coat flapped like batwings as he moved through the yard to the next window. His aging black slacks and the loose, dingy yellow shirt presented no resistance to his movements as he hopped up into a tree and climbed over to the window to the old woman’s bedroom. The window opened without difficulty and he climbed into the room. He straightened out his clothes and stepped up to the bed where the elderly woman lay. He laid next to her on the bed and put his arm around her. This woke the woman and she gasped. She tried to sit up. When she couldn’t, she simply asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m your husband, don’t you recognize me?” he said.

              “Larry?” she asked in a sleepy, raspy voice.

              “Yes, I’m Larry.”

              She closed her eyes, planning to go back to sleep.

              “Wake up, stupid old hag. Have a little respect for the one who’s going to kill you.” The vampire rolled over onto her and sank his teeth into her neck. The teeth bit precisely into the soft loose flesh of her neck, penetrating the slightly tougher skin of the carotid artery with a soft pop. The blood began to fill his mouth immediately. He sucked at the wound, not wanting to wait for her old heart to pump the blood into his mouth. He felt the old woman’s heartbeat flutter as he drained the last bit of blood from her body. In a matter of minutes, the old woman laid still and cold…and dead. He slipped a knife out of a sheath on his belt and cut off her head. The decapitation was an important ritual unless he wanted the old woman to return as another living dead like him. She would not become miraculously young and vibrant; if she turned she would be the same as she was in life—old and senile…but eternal. He didn’t want that so he took the necessary precautions.

              He left the old woman’s room without another thought of what he had left behind. He listened at the top of the stairs for any commotion from below. Apparently, he had not attracted the attention of the couple down there. The only conversation he heard from them was regarding the tea they were drinking.

              Time to interrupt this heartwarming moment, he decided. He stomped down the stairs, making more noise than was necessary and invading their peaceful existence. The couple looked up at the man standing on the stairs, confused but not yet alarmed.

              He leapt at them, and took the man first, landing on him and driving him into the back of the sofa. The vampire tore the man’s throat out, sloppy and quick. The man’s fear made the blood pump heavily. When he had had enough from the man, he let the man bleed out and turned on the woman.

              The woman began screaming as soon as the vampire had made his move on the man. She continued screaming the entire time the vampire had been draining her husband, but she hadn’t tried to run away or fight.

              “Shut up.” the vampire yelled after discarding the man, trying to be heard over her screams. The blood on his lips splattered the woman’s face.

              She just kept screaming, clutching her book like a talisman. The vampire had had enough of her noise and attacked. He knocked into her like a linebacker. The book flew from her hand and hit the floor with a muffled thump. He silenced her only when he tore out her throat. He drained her, and then decapitated her. He also decapitated her husband before leaving. He never bothered to clean up after himself.

              The vampire looked down at his blood-covered clothes. He pulled his trench coat over the blood spatters and buttoned it up. Although he always left behind a mess, he was careful not to attract attention to himself. The night was warm and there was a comfortable breeze. On the breeze he smelled the familiar scents of popcorn, cotton candy and funnel cakes. He was in the presence of a carnival, he realized happily. He decided he might cruise the midway.

              Although it was fall, the night was too warm to be wearing a long heavy coat, but no one seemed to notice. He walked casually around the park. He paid for a ticket and went for a ride on the Ferris Wheel. When he was up at the very top, before the wheel started down the other side, the vampire spotted something he very much wanted for his own.

              It was a boy. He was a scruffy, black-haired boy with freckles across the bridge of his nose, and on his cheeks. He was asking his mother for money—had to be his mother, she looked just like him—then was running off to join his friends.

The vampire kept the boy in his sights, and once the ride stopped he followed this boy and his friends for most of the night. He thought he might take the boy now, here, at the park and then kill his friends. They were a group of troublemakers, picking on little girls and trying to break things. The black-haired boy laughed and carried on with the troublemakers; but he, himself, didn’t partake in the troublemaking. As the night wore on, he thought it best if he didn’t take the boy here, after all. He regretted that he wouldn’t be snapping the necks of those other boys, but there was just too much lighting. The possibility was too great that someone would see what he had done. He couldn’t risk getting caught. He was not afraid of being taken down by the authorities; he could easily break out of every jail, but it would mean moving, and he didn’t want to move. He liked his newest home. So, instead, he waited and followed the family home. He knew where they lived. There were four in the group: mom and dad, sis and the black-haired boy. He would not take them tonight, but he would hit them soon. Maybe tomorrow night, maybe not; but soon the little black-haired boy would be his.

              Tearfully, Maggie explained the scene she had envisioned of the Houseguest Killer taking the elderly woman and her family. “It happened in the Pocono region,” she said. “There was a green highway sign in the background as the killer approached the house.” The exact location was still out of her reach, however. “I didn’t get a street address.”

“At least we have a direction to point to,” David said and drove the RV toward the turnpike and the Pocono Mountains.

David didn’t have a license. In fact, he had no identification at all. At least, none that truly identified him. He did have state-of-the-art fake IDs that Antony’s shadier human assistants created for him. But David continued to fly below the radar. He didn’t need to earn a living since Antony had acquired a fortune over the last several centuries (Antony’s actual age was a carefully guarded secret, but David surmised he was at least 500 years old.) and David could access these funds any time he wished. Antony also owned homes all over the world under different names, and there were safeguards in place to be sure that the homes could be accessed whenever the need for them arose. David’s favorite of these homes was not a house, but the Zephyr. It was just an RV, but it was also so much more than that; it was a mansion on wheels. It had a reinforced titanium steel compartment which was air tight and free of sunlight for Antony to retreat to during the day. The Zephyr sported a faux fireplace and a plush, eggshell white sofa and loveseat combo. There was a bed, but David rarely used it. David hardly slept at all. With the help of energy drinks, and his own adrenaline, David slept a total of 5 hours in a 48-hour period. Maggie was welcome to the queen sized bed if she wished, he had told her.

              Antony hired people to teach David to drive, and he was a natural at it. He could drive the Zephyr or a tricycle with the same ease. Still, if David were to be pulled over there was an army of lawyers that would swoop in and protect his identity with just a touch of a button on the key fob. David didn’t want to test the system, however, so he drove only at legal limits and never got crazy behind the wheel.

              Maggie watched David drive with a look of fascination on her face. She smiled. He caught her looking and took his eyes off the road for several long and tenuous seconds in order to see what she was staring at, and then finally looked back at the scene outside the massive windshield. Maggie was amazed; he hadn’t even swerved a fraction of an inch from the lane he was in.

              “I’m sorry for staring,” she said at last. “But when you are really happy, as when you’re driving—or when you are with Antony—you light up with this beautiful aura that makes you almost angelic.”

              David raised an eyebrow. “How do you like having visions? Do they make your life easier, or harder?”

              “Most times it makes life easier, but sometimes it’s a cross I have to bear.”

              David let the silence stretch out between them.

              She had expected him to ask another question, or elaborate on the previous one, but when he didn’t say anything more she sighed and turned to look out her window at the tree-lined highway roaring by to her right. There were a couple more of miles of silence before she decided she couldn’t take it anymore, and she finally spoke up.

              “You don’t like me much,” she said.

              He glanced at her briefly. “I’m just watchful. I will protect Antony with my life if I must. What he’s done for me…” He trailed off because were no words he could use to explain it.

              “I totally understand. And I hold no ill will toward you.”

              “Ill will?” David looked at her again. “For what?”

              “You singled me out as prey.”

              “Oh.” David squirmed uncomfortably. “Thank you.”

              “I want you to like me, David. I like you.” She tilted her head down and smiled.

              David hadn’t seen her look so innocent, and so devilish at the same time. He squirmed again.

              The sun was high in the sky, beating down on them in the cockpit of the massive house on wheels, drawing perspiration on their brow despite the air conditioning. Antony was safely tucked away in the steel compartment under the dining table. They were still about an hour away from their destination. After another mile of uncomfortable silence, David conceded that, like it or not, Maggie was now a part of the group and he would have to “share” Antony with her. He sighed; a defeated little sound, and turned to face her.

              “I like you just fine,” he said at last. Maggie laughed, reached over and kissed him on the cheek. David blushed.

             
He is so cute when he’s uncomfortable
, she thought.
I’ll have to put him in those positions more often.

              “I’d really like to know you better,” Maggie said. “What can you tell me about yourself?”

              “What do you want to hear?”

              “Everything,” she said.

              He hesitated for a minute, and then decided he would tell her what happened in his life to bring him into Antony’s orbit. He kind of wanted to tell it—needed to, really—so he could cleanse his mind of that dark past and be done with it once and for all. Not to mention it would also help pass the time.

              “My father died—my real father—when I was three, so I never really knew him. I have vague memories, but that’s about it. My mother didn’t like to be alone and her remedy for loneliness was an armada of ‘Uncles’ she would bring home. After I turned seven she married one of these uncles, a man named Ralph. At first he was no different from the myriad other men that passed through the door, except this one never left. He also had something else none of the others had. He owned two purebred blue pit bulls named Ghost and Frankenstein. Ghost was almost completely that bluish gray color that makes the breed so beautiful, and Frankie was a splotchy gray and brown with a white belly. They were brothers.

              “Our house was a two-bedroom shack on the north end of Philly. Mobile Street, but it was more like a back alley than a street. The house was drafty in the winter and stifling in the summer, but it was home and I was used to it.

              “I learned from the age of ten that I was attractive, at least the girls at school seemed to think so. I was always surrounded by girls, and although I never officially agreed to be exclusive with any of them Darlene Clawson considered me her property sometime during middle school. She would get extremely jealous if the other girls showed me any attention. She especially didn’t like Rachael Mc Fadden because I showed the most interest in her. But Rachael wasn’t one of the girls who hung around me, so I couldn’t get to know her as I would have liked. But then, if she
had
been like all the other girls that scuttled around me I probably would have ignored her like I did them. But she was unattainable, so I was into her.

              “I was ashamed of my home life so I never invited people home, and I would tell them lies about how great my life was just to sound cool. I used my meager allowance, and money I made doing other people’s homework, at the Good Will and bought designer clothes that I wouldn’t have been able to afford otherwise. No one knew I couldn’t afford new American Eagle or Hollister jeans. Sometimes the clothes were too small but since I was thin and muscular this just made me look like a trend setter.

              “I was twelve the first time Ralph took me hunting. The dogs were with us, but no one else came. It was not what I call exciting, but I did enjoy being outside. Learning to shoot was fun, too; but little else about hunting with Ralph could be described that way.

              “Ralph was a serious hunter. He wore camouflage greens with a hunting cap and combat boots. His favorite hunting knife was a sharp Bowie with a green camouflage handle. It was the knife I would eventually decapitate him with, but right now it was his turn to do the damage. And on this hunting trip, I would soon learn the true meaning of fear.

              “The dogs were moving ahead, sniffing the ground and marking trees. When we located a flock of pheasant, the dogs rooted them out and Ralph took aim. He took down two of the birds. He was a good shot.

“‘Why didn’t you shoot, boy?’ he asked and cuffed the back of my head.

“‘Cut it out,’ I griped.

“‘Don’t talk back you little wimp or I’ll give you worse than that.’ He walked ahead and I raced to keep up. ‘Next flock I expect you to take a bird of your own, hear what I’m saying?’

“I said I did.

“And I did get a bird, but Ralph complained about my form. He criticized how I held my gun and even how slow I was retrieving the kill. I was a little annoyed that he sent the dogs in to collect his kills, but I had to get my own. Not a big deal, though since I only had one bird to collect.

“Toward the end of the day, when it was just about time for us to head back, things took a strange turn. Suddenly Ralph was aloof, distracted. He walked behind me most of the time. When I stopped he would stop, too.

“‘Go on up ahead,’ he said. I looked at him for a long time before I started moving. I was looking behind me every couple of steps just to make sure he was still there. I suddenly had a feeling that I was Hansel about to be left in the woods. But what was going on was even more sinister than that.

“When I was about five hundred yards away I heard him lift his rifle. I heard the click as he cocked it. I stopped moving, afraid to look back. Was he pointing the gun at me? Somehow, I knew he was. My blood ran through me like ice. I suddenly wanted to hug my mother really bad. I would miss her. She was never really that good to me, but she was the only mother I had. Would she cry when I didn’t return? I would like to believe she would, but I didn’t know. I squeezed my eyes as tight as I could and waited for the rifle shot.

“‘It’s a dangerous world out there, you should be careful,’ Ralph said then pulled the trigger. The gunshot echoed through the trees stirring up all kinds of wildlife around us. I dropped to my knees, felt at my back for the hole that wasn’t there. About twenty yards to my left a wild turkey lay headless and bleeding, its body still twitching. Behind me Ralph was laughing. Did he know I had wet myself at the moment the gun went off? Probably not, but he soon figured it out, though. He had the nerve to be angry at what I had done. This wouldn’t be the last time Ralph would play this game, but future episodes would not be as fun for him because I never again wet my pants, and I wasn’t half as scared. Yes, there was always the possibility he would go through with the real thing but by then I just didn’t care anymore.

“When we got home he said, ‘Go clean yourself up; you’re disgusting.’ As if I had done this out of stupidity or something.

“I showered and dressed for dinner, and in the kitchen my mother was preparing the birds so I watched.

“As she plucked the feathers from my pheasant, I asked if she needed any help.

“‘I got this,’ she said. My mother was young when she had me: seventeen. She was young now. She married a man twice her age just so she wouldn’t feel alone, or so I believed. She was convinced this was her last chance at happiness. I was a distraction from her true happiness, and a threat to it as well, I think. At least, that’s how I felt.

“‘That’s my bird,’ I said.

“‘Tough bird,’ she complained. ‘And probably not even worth cooking. I’m tempted to throw it to the dogs.’

“My smile faded. ‘I’ll eat it.’

“‘It’s full of buck shot. You should have used the Remington 7600 and saved some of the meat.’

“
That’s the gun your husband intended to shoot me with
, I wanted to say. But she would have hit me for being a liar and threatening to destroy her marriage. ‘That’s not the gun Ralph let me use,’ was what I said instead.

“I helped her when I could, but mostly I just sat there staring at her wondering how she could be so blind to the evil Ralph exhibited. Eventually, I would give up trying to figure her out. But back then I still held out for her love and attention.

“I ate some of the turkey that Ralph shot instead of shooting me, and it tasted good. But I credit that to my mother being such a good cook. My bird was tough like she said. It ended up in the dog dish. They seemed to like it, anyway.

“The dogs slept with me most nights and I enjoyed their company. That night they were belching up my bird and reminding me of my colossal failures. Ghost slept at the foot of my bed and Frankenstein slept on the rug next to my bed. They were my protectors and I slept better knowing they were there with me.

“When I turned thirteen Ralph started with the physical attacks, no longer satisfied with the verbal and mental abuse, I guessed. And my first encounter with his wrath was brutal. I had been out late after school with some friends, and because I didn’t want them seeing where I lived, I walked the long way home. I arrived home around 10 pm. I was very quiet, hoping maybe no one would know. The house was dark as I headed for my room.

“I don’t know where he had been but suddenly Ralph was behind me. He had taken off his belt and was holding it with the buckle dangling to the floor. I didn’t even know he was there until I heard the whistle of the leather cutting through the air. By then, however; it was too late. The buckle caught me in the back about mid-way up on the left side. I fell to the floor gasping for breath. He took the buckle into his palm and commenced slapping the strap across my back and legs. I still hadn’t recovered from the buckle when the barrage began. When I gained my breath I started screaming.