The Vampiric Housewife (14 page)

    
The sound of the car door opening startled her.

    
“We’re set. I want you to keep a sleeping bag around you just to be safe.” He left the door open and popped the trunk.

    
The blankets were still covering the kids like death shrouds. They weren’t moving. They weren’t making a sound. It was as if they were dead. In a sudden irrational panic Valerie ripped the blankets off. The kids blinked and stirred. Her heart dropped. They were alive, they were okay.

    
“Come on,” she told her children on the brink of tears. “Time to get out.”

    
Charlie helped Amelia climb out and covered her in a blanket. Her eyes were still adjusting, the colors washed out by the brightness of daytime. But as she looked around trying to orient herself, everything came into perfect focus. She lifted her head to the sky. It was so light yet rich in saturation. She never would have imagined the sky to be such a pretty, incandescent blue. She had discovered a whole new spectrum of color and couldn’t wait to capture the new palette on canvas. Bringing her eyes back down, she saw two humans walk by the alley. They were awake. Free. Talking. In a city. It made no sense.

    
Valerie pulled Harry out. He looked as if he had just woken up.

    
“Are we at a restaurant? I smell humans,” he said groggily.

    
Valerie hugged him tight. She had never been so happy to hear her youngest mention human blood. It was so causal, so normal. He wasn’t scarred by being forced into the trunk of a car by his parents.

    
John climbed out next stretching. “Where are we?” His eyes were wide and alert. A car honked, someone yelled in the distance, a cat or rat or some other creature rustled in the dumpster. John spun around trying to locate every sound as if it was a threat.

    
“A motel. Wrap yourselves up,” Charlie ordered. “John, grab the suitcase. Follow me.” He left the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition. He’d be surprised if the car lasted fifteen minutes on the street. Hopefully the perp would drive it far, far away.

    
Inside the musky motel room sat two queen size beds, the linens slightly disheveled and undoubtedly filthy. Dark wood paneling and a very bad painting of fruit covered the walls. The brown carpet was stained various different colors. There was a futuristic TV and a yellowing bathroom adjacent. Charlie immediately shut and locked the door behind them then pulled the curtains of the single window tightly shut. Valerie switched on a lamp.

    
“Where are the coffins?” Harry asked.

    
Valerie looked to Charlie. She had actually been wondering the same thing.

    
“Why don’t you guys sit down.”

    
Valerie and Harry sat on one bed, John and Amelia on the other. He had four sets of eyes weighing on him. He leaned against the television. “It’s not 1954. It’s 2009.” Charlie waited for a reaction from them, but all they did was stare at him wide-eyed like he was a creature from another planet. In a way, he was. “Vampires do not populate the world. Humans do.” They blinked at him. Valerie put her arm around Harry and pulled him close.

    
“Sangre Valley was a community created by Dr. Venjamin about thirty years ago. He traveled the world collecting as many born-vampires as he could find. You see, most vampires are not alive.”

    
John spoke. “What do you mean ‘not alive’?” It sounded preposterous.

    
“There are no such things as the Coven of the Living and of the Silent. Silent vampires were born as humans. They were attacked by a vampire, bit, and transformed into a vampire themselves.”

    
“That’s impossible,” John scuffed.

    
“So you were once human,” Amelia said. He was amazed at how open her mind was and how fast it adapted to a given situation. Charlie had not been nearly as open minded when Venjamin first told him about living vampires.

    
He nodded.

    
“So humans are just like us? They’re not just animals.”

    
“No,” he said firmly. “Humans are food. We’re still higher on the food chain. But they are dangerous. They do rule the world so it is very important that you don’t ever let anyone know that you’re a vampire. They’ll kill us in an instant.”

    
“Why did we leave Sangre Valley then?” John demanded. “We were safe there. I want to go home.”

    
“We can’t ever go back. It’s not safe there anymore.”

    
“What about school? And all my stuff? And Lisa? I didn’t even get to say goodbye to her.”

    
“I’m sorry, John. Sangre Valley wasn’t a real town. It was Dr. Venjamin’s experiment on vampires. If we hadn’t left, Dr. Venjamin was going to begin experimenting on the three of you. I couldn’t let him do that,” Charlie said.

    
“I don’t believe you. Dr. Venjamin was always nice to us. If we told him we didn’t want to participate—“ John continued to protest.

    
“Dr. Venjamin is human,” Charlie said.

    
“No—“

    
“You smelled him. You know,” Valerie said quietly.

    
“That’s because he lives on a human ranch. The smell—“

    
“He was feeding us his own kind,” Amelia interrupted, her voice soft, shocked and horrified by her own conclusion. In a louder voice she asked, “What kind of experiments?” If he could butcher and feed his own species to another, she couldn’t imagine what he would do to a totally different species.

    
Charlie looked at his daughter. How fast her mind worked, putting the pieces together. He couldn’t bear to tell her what her own fate would have been. And he cringed knowing that it wouldn’t be long before she realized that he had committed the same crime as the doctor—fed his own kinds to another species. Maybe he did not do it in the literal way Venjamin had, but he had done it nonetheless. Would she ever be able to forgive him? “It doesn’t make a difference. They were dangerous. They won’t ever happen now.”

    
“I’m hungry,” Harry injected as he squirmed in his mother’s arms. “It’s the scent of humans all around us. It’s making me hungry.”

    
“Blood. That’s all you care about. Don’t you care that we’re never going home again? You’ll never go to school again or sleep in your own coffin or see Bobby. I’ll never see Lisa again or play basketball or hang out with my friends!”

    
“It’s going to be difficult, I know, but—“ Valerie said.

    
“You don’t know! You can’t possibly know!” John yelled near tears.

     
“What your father has said is a lot to take in, and it’s going to take time to adjust. This is all new to me too. But we have each other. That’s what’s important. We’re going to be okay—“

    
Staring at her father, Amelia interrupted. “What was your job at the hospital?”

    
The room went silent.

    
“Dr. Venjamin was your boss. You’re a ‘made’ vampire. You knew about the experiment.” There were accusations in every one of her statements. Her stare was a million stakes aimed at his heart. She knew that he was one of Venjamin’s men, that he had been their keeper, that he had lied to her from the moment she was born. Charlie couldn’t have despised himself more at that moment. He could not answer her.

    
“The sun’s up. We all need to rest,” Valerie deflected. “Amelia, why don’t you use the bathroom first to clean up and get out of that bloody dress.”

    
Silently Amelia removed her eyes from her father and went into the bathroom. Harry clicked on the TV as John sat on the edge of the bed quietly crying to himself. Valerie wanted to go to him, take her son into her arms, stroke his hair, comfort him. John was the only one who really loved his life in Sangre Valley. He had everything he had ever wanted. And now all that had been ripped away from him. She wished she could tell him that the truth may hurt, but it was better than continuing to live a lie. But then again, she hadn’t loved the lie like he had. So she let him be, let him grieve all that he had lost. She did all she could do for him: gave him privacy even if that only meant adverting her eyes.

    
They all took turns in the bathroom then settled down into bed—the boys shared one of the queen sized beds, Valerie lied next to her daughter in the other, and Charlie was propped up in a chair. The world outside their little room was coming to life. It was frightening to hear so much noise in the middle of the day. The voices yelling and laughing and talking in mutters. The traffic growing louder and louder. This would be what she’d have to get use to. She didn’t know if she wanted to.

   
Soon Harry was softly snoring. Valerie put her arms around her daughter. “I’m so sorry for what happened to you tonight,” she whispered in her daughter’s ear. They had been so consumed with fleeing Sangre Valley and finding some place safe, they had completely ignored the traumatic night that Amelia had been through. She had almost been sexually assaulted. She had been physically attacked. Then she came home where she was supposed to be safe only to find out it wasn’t and that her father had used her and lied to her.

    
“I’m okay, Mom,” she whispered back.

    
“We can talk about it. I don’t want you to feel like we’re ignoring what happened to you tonight. You were almost raped.” Now Valerie felt like she was going to cry.

    
Amelia flipped on her side to face her mother in the dark. “In a sense, you were the one who was raped, Mom.” Valerie just stared at her. “In a sense.”

Chapter Thirteen

Six Feet Under

    
Everything in Dr. Tobar Venjamin’s office was in prime order. His desk was clear of all clutter only supporting the flat screen monitor of his computer, a single lamp that provided adequate light, and one personal item, a black and white photograph of a younger self who was sulking a bit with his arms crossed and an older man who looked much like Venjamin did now, smiling brightly with his arm around his son, a Russian backdrop behind them. In his drawers all the pens were lined up, all paperclips and tacks in their proper bin. There was no dust on his spider plants, and not a single file was out of place in his massive filing cabinets. Dr. Venjamin liked order. Order was control. And Venjamin needed control. He created the vampires’ world, much like God first created the Garden of Eden. He built the houses, chose the time period, even dictated their vocabulary, then spent millions of dollars to recreate television shows and movies that featured vampires in the lead roles instead of humans. Sangre Valley was his universe, and Venjamin was the supreme ruler.

    
In truth, Venjamin detested made-vampires. They were animated corpses which made them a mystery to be solved, but still something uncouth and unnatural. In working with them, he had found that they were much like insects: little thought processes and mostly reaction to their environment. Of course, he had never been very interested in made-vampires. It was like when a horse and donkey mated and produced a mule—stubborn, stupid, and sterile. A creature a mere reflection of the greatness of its parents. But like the mule, made-vampires had their uses.

    
Vampires that came into this world through the birth canal, those were the creatures he revered. They were the perfect mammal, the perfect predator, so superior to made-vampires, and even a step higher than humans in evolution. Of course there was their beauty and intellect, but it was their blood, their infallible immune system, and their immortality that earned Venjamin’s respect and intrigued his genius.