Death's Excellent Vacation (28 page)

“Yeah,” I mumbled. “Sure. What am I supposed to do?”

“Now you come with me. You bathe.” He paused for the briefest of moments. “And you choose your knife.”

THEY left me alone in a pretty, open suite that glowed with Heartlight, falling with the sunlight through the open spaces that passed for windows here. There’s no need for glass when it’s always balmy. I don’t think I’ve scrubbed behind my ears that hard since the orphanage.

So all that afternoon I sat in the window, looked out on yet another garden, and turned the obsidian knife in my hands.

They’ve got all kinds—kukris and daggers and diver’s knives and even butcher knives. Hilts of every description. But the metal all reminded me of that thin thread of gold—the broken necklace that even now I had in my other fist. My hands were wide and blunt, and as soon as I saw the rock knives—flint, obsidian, bloodstone, you name it—my fingers tingled.

What are you thinking?

This was the Sanctum. It was green and perfect, and it smelled sweet, and the Inners didn’t move with that lurching awkwardness that shouts
gargoyle
. They’d all made their tithe and Tiend, and the Heart had taken their candidates, and they were here to serve. They got to bathe in Heartlight every day.

They had names. The thing every gargoyle wants, a name of his very own.

But dammit, Kate.
Kate.

I tipped my head back, bonked it gently on the window frame behind me. The frame was pure stone.

There was an Inner at my door. A guard. I wondered how many gargoyles considered something stupid when they brought their Heart candidate here. All of them? Just me? There wouldn’t be a guard if none of them did. Or was he there because I might need something? Like a good pep talk?

Like a reminder of why we did this? The Heart must feed. It fights the Big Bad; it powers all of us, gives us pieces of itself that grant us the stoneskin trueform. It even gives us names. True names, ones that don’t fade. None of that comes cheap.

But . . . Kate.

I had my feet outside the window before I thought of it. Pulled them back in.

What was I thinking? I was still damp from my bath, tingling from the Heartlight, and in a gray robe and cloak with a big, deep hood. I would still shamble, though. I couldn’t move gracefully at all. And I would have to keep my hands hidden. They all wear gloves.

Kate.
She had a name. She probably took it for granted, too.

Where would they have her? If I had to guess . . .

I didn’t have to guess. The entire Sanctum was ablaze with expectation, the Heart’s singing to one of its own. I could just follow it to find her. Or I could follow the ringing pull from the necklace in my fingers.

Or I could just sit here until they came to get me. I could do what I had to and get a name. I could be beautiful.

Kate.

I slipped the obsidian knife up my sleeve, pushed my feet out the window, and landed on garden loam.

THE door was wide, and old, oak bound with scarred iron pulsing with life. I put my hand on it and the iron zinged, singing in a high carbon whine. It creaked a little as it opened, and I peeked in.

The chapel was long and narrow. At the very end the stone rose like a wave, shaping itself into an altar draped with crimson velvet and pillows. I pushed my hood back. It fell away from my ears and I could breathe again.

Kate lay there, very still. The walls throbbed. It was deep down and close to the Heart. The beats were a melody the Heart inside me echoed. It was hard to keep everything human-sized and inside. The trueform just kept wanting to bust out.

The corridors had been sleepy and deserted. I’d done my best to glide and managed not to lurch too much. The necklace quivered in my aching fist. I’d wrapped it around the leather-wrapped hilt of the obsidian knife and pulled both up inside my sleeves.

They’d put her in a red dress. It was beautiful.
She
was beautiful, in a way I’d never be. Her arm was over her eyes and her hair spread out over the pillows.

God and Heart both forgive me. I pulled the door shut behind me as quietly as I could. My whisper boomed against the walls. “Kate?”

She stirred a little. Her arm moved.

“Kate. Wake up.” What if they’d drugged her?

This was a fine time to start changing my mind. I’d done my duty all my life. But this . . .

Being in the Heartlight makes you think about things a little differently, I guess. Or maybe it was the way she’d clutched at my arm. Maybe it was the way she’d looked when she asked me why they got names and I didn’t.

Maybe it was because no matter how many times I made an excuse to stand in her checkout line for a pack of gum, she always smiled at me. Or because . . .

Oh,
hell
and damnation. I would rather be ugly on the outside than ugly all the way through.

“Kate?” I whispered again, more urgently. The chapel floor was carved with fleur-de-lis, all circled, all tangled together. I stepped on them without mercy as I lurched toward the altar. They dug into my feet, sharp sliding edges. “Heart and Hell, Kate, wake up. Please.”

Her arm slid away from her face. She blinked, and the chapel walls resounded with a gong-struck quivering. I made it to the altar as the stone whispered away between fan vaulting, the Inners appearing in the leaf-shaped doorways.

Had they just been here, waiting for me?

“Shit.” I reached the altar and my human form shredded away. I whirled, my back to Kate, who let out a high whistling scream. The Heart thudded, and its light drenched us all with crystal clarity.

The Inners moved forward, and they each had their own knives. Their hoods covered their faces, but their eyes gleamed from the darkness underneath.

“The Heart demands,”
one intoned, in a deep, beautiful bell-voice.

“The Heart demands!”
the others answered, in chorus.

Kate screamed again. It was a lonely, despairing sound.

I put my feet down, dug my claws in.
“Stay back!”
I yelled. The harsh note cut across their singing, a blot on their beauty.

I should have never brought her here. Too late now.

They drew closer. They didn’t pay any attention to my warning, and both hearts inside my skin stopped beating.

Everything grew still. And I made up my mind. Too little too late, but I did it. I decided, and everything inside me fell into place.

I set the point of the obsidian knife against my chest.
Oh, my Heart. Kate. I’m sorry.

They wouldn’t hurt her if the Heart received its tithe. That was the Tiend—the payment of a heart.

They were almost close enough to spring. I knew that even though they were in robes, they were still gargoyles. I knew their strength and speed because I knew my own. Kate grabbed at my shoulders. She was shouting something. I couldn’t hear her through the noise of my heart and my Heart crashing in my ears.

The Heart spoke to me.

And I shoved the knife in hard, piercing both Heart and heart. It’s not that difficult if you know where to press. If you’re determined, and if you can hit one of us when we’re flesh and not stone. Or flesh in just one vulnerable place.

The Heartlight dimmed.

And my hearts . . . stopped.

IT felt like I’d been dropped in broken glass, rolled around, then dipped in acid and pulled apart. My head pounded. Everything seemed put together wrong.

Oh, shit. Didn’t I die?

There was a blurry light. Silvery and cool. Something warm stroking my forehead. It felt good.

“I think he’s coming around,” she whispered.

My eyes opened slowly. “Kate?” I croaked.

Behind her was stone ribbing. It was the same room I’d been in all afternoon. No sunlight, though. This was pure Heartlight, and the pulse in the walls was soft and satisfied.

“I’m here.” She touched my cheek. Smiling. She was smiling. “Hey.”

“Welcome back.” This was from our guide. He’d pushed his hood back, and I stared at him in wonderment.

Smooth skin. Regular nose, low wide cheekbones, blue eyes. He wouldn’t win any prizes, but he wasn’t a squashed-together linebacker with pitted skin and picket fence teeth.

He was unquestionably gargoyle, though. His ears came up to points and I could sense the Heart in him, echoing the beat in the walls.

“What the . . . ?” It was the best I could manage.

“Congratulations.” He pushed his long, straight dark hair back behind one ear. “You passed the test. You’re an Inner now. You can stay here, or you can go out into the world and do the same kind of work you did before. With your Heart.” He glanced at Kate, who was still in the same red dress. It was satin, and my God but her va-va-vooms looked even . . . well, voomier.

“Huh?” I blinked. Kate stroked my cheek again.

“They told me you wouldn’t hurt me.” Her smile was a little less tired now. The dress was cut low enough that I could see the upper edge of the mark on her left breast, running with its dark fluorescence. “All I had to do was scream. No big deal, I’ve done a lot of that lately.”

“I’ll leave you two to get acquainted.” Our guide nodded smartly. “Brother. Miss Katherine.”

“What the
hell
?” I still sounded lost. Everything hurt, but the hurt was receding. “The Heart—”

“The Heart has had its tithe.” The guide nodded, once. “You fulfilled the Tiend. Rest.”

And with that, he swept out the door. It closed softly, and I stared up at Kate. I stared at her so long she shrugged, defensively.

“This is all weird as fuck.” Her shoulders hunched. “But it’s better than checking at EvilMart.”

“He looks . . .”

“Not so bad, huh? You’re much better.” Her grin lit up her entire face. “They explained everything. Well, mostly everything. You did what you were supposed to do, and now you’re free.”

“I thought I was dead.” The weakness retreated. I pushed myself up on my elbows and lifted my hand.

The fingers were still callused and strong, but they weren’t gray and gnarled. And when I touched my own face I didn’t find craters. I found smooth skin and stubble, and my nose wasn’t a squashed mushroom. My tongue ran over my teeth, and the familiar geography inside my mouth was different. If I looked in a mirror, I probably wouldn’t see yellowed picket-fence teeth. I’d see straight white pearls.

I was in a stranger’s body.

“I kind of figured you had a crush on me.” Kate sat back on a low stool. There was a mirror across the room, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to look in it. Outside the window, the garden drowsed under gentle silver Heartlight. The smell of jasmine smoked in through the window. “I mean, all those CornNuts.”

“I’m not ugly?” I sounded about five years old.

“You never
were
.” She folded her arms. “But we’ve got to work on our communication. And what do I call you, anyway? Didn’t you ever give yourself a name?”

I stared at her fish-mouthed for a while until she broke up laughing. It was a nice sound, and the smile that cracked over my disbelieving alien face felt like sunshine.

“Call me what you want,” I mumbled, and that broke her up all over again. I settled back into the bed and stared at her. It was like waking up Christmas all over. “I’m not ugly?”

“You never were ugly. Ever.” She moved as if she were going to get up, and I flung out a hand to stop her.

A stranger’s hand. “Please. Kate. I’m sorry, I—”

She sank back down and stared at me. We looked at each other for a long time. “You mean you’re sorry for bringing me here, when you thought I was going to be a human sacrifice?”

My neck felt like rusted metal when I nodded. My hair moved on the pillow.

She nodded, golden hair falling in her eyes. She looked very solemn, and the Heart inside me—it was still there, ticking along as if I hadn’t shoved a knife in it—turned over. If I could have torn it out and given it to her, I would have.

Because it had been hers all along, hadn’t it?

“Yeah.” She settled back down on the stool. “It’s still better than checking at EvilMart. Just relax, for now. We’ll have to think up a name for you, they say. And they say we can go wherever we want, that you’ve got a vacation you didn’t go on.”

My throat refused to work right for a few seconds. Then I got the words out.

“How do you feel about Bermuda?”

Chris Grabenstein did improvisational comedy in New York City with Bruce Willis before James Patterson hired him to write advertising copy. He is the Anthony and Agatha award-winning author of the John Ceepak/ Jersey Shore mysteries,
Tilt-A-Whirl
,
Mad Mouse
,
Whack-A-Mole
,
Hell Hole
,
Mind Scrambler
, and
Rolling Thunder
; the thrillers
Slay Ride
and
Hell for the Holidays
; and the middle-grades chillers
The Crossroads
and
The Hanging Hill.
His dog Fred has even better credits: Fred starred on Broadway in
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
. With five brothers, most of his summer vacations growing up were pretty scary, but the only paranormal creatures Chris encountered were the mermaids at Webb’s City Drug Store in St. Petersburg, Florida, where the whole family went every August to visit his grandparents. The humidity was pretty monstrous, too. You can visit Chris (and Fred) on the Web at www.chrisgrabenstein.com.

I don’t know why I’m lying here dreaming about 1975 and the demon in the dunes.

It’s summer. Seaside Heights, New Jersey. Saturday. August sixteenth. 1975. The night I first saw the demon lurking in the shadows at the dark edge of the sand.

Kevin Corman and I are running down a moonlit street away from the Royal Flamingo Motel and our families.

“You score?” Kevin asked.

“Yeah.” I held up two warm beer cans. “Schlitz.”

“Your old man won’t notice?”

“I don’t think so,” I answered—nervously as I recall. I wasn’t a big rule breaker when I was a teenager. I usually stayed quiet. Stayed out of trouble.

“Far out,” said Kevin, taking my two Schlitz cans and stuffing them up underneath the flapping coat of his leisure suit. He was dressed to score that night. Dressed like John Travolta would dress a few years later when he had the same sort of Saturday night fever.

Kevin and I were on our annual two-week family vacations down the shore. We were neighbors back home in Verona, New Jersey, went to the same high school.

“Uhm, were you able to get any, you know, booze?” I stammered as we tried not to look too conspicuous: two teens—one nervous, the other cocky—skulking down Ocean Avenue at 9:30 at night. When we were younger and on vacation, this is the time of night when we would’ve badgered our parents into taking us up to the boulevard for swirled soft-serve ice cream cones. Now, our mothers and fathers stayed by the motel pool to play cards, smoke cigarettes, and drink highballs out of indestructible plastic cocktail glasses while we lied about heading over to Funtown Pier so we could go out drinking ourselves.

“My parents drink whiskey, Dave,” said Kevin. “Extremely hard to rip off, man. Doesn’t come in a can.”

“Yeah.”

“Sometimes, my dad snags miniature bottles off airplanes. Doesn’t bring ’em on vacation, though.”

“Cool.”

“Hey, you ever even drink whiskey?”

“No. Not really.”

“Word to the wise: Beer and wine, mighty fine. Beer and whiskey? Mighty risky.”

I nodded as if I knew.

“So, where’s Jerry?” I asked.

“Said to meet him over on K Street.”

“Cool.” We had two more blocks to go. “What about, you know—the girls?”

“Relax, dude. They’re college girls. Means they’ll have their own wheels.”

“Yeah.”

“And Dave?”

“Yeah?”

“Chicks this hot? They definitely know how to find the dunes, bro. Probably been going down there to make out since we were like in junior high.”

I shuddered to think about all the things the curvy college freshmen we had met eight hours earlier might know. They were both nineteen. Kevin and I were infants: sixteen-year-olds with pimples when we ate too much pizza. Our buddy Jerry McMillan was a little older. Seventeen. He’d been “held back” a year. Always said he liked second grade so much, he took it twice.

We reached K Street.

“I did score these.” Kevin flashed me a half-empty pack of Kent cigarettes he had undoubtedly stolen out of his old man’s Windbreaker. “Want one?”

“No, thanks.”

“You ever try one?”

“Nope.”

He shook the pack. “More taste, fine tobacco.”

I waved him off.

Kevin shrugged and lit up. He smacked down a long drag and let it out in a series of billowing smoke rings. I remember I was impressed.

“We are looo-king goooood,” Kevin said between deep tokes, doing a pretty good Chico from
Chico and the Man
. A lot of guys did the same imitation back in the seventies, but Kevin had the shaggy Freddy Prinze hairdo to go with it.

We waited. Kevin smoked. He looked pretty damn cool doing it, and that made me wonder if I could ever look cool enough for the night’s coming attraction: my first blind date.

The two girls we had met on the beach had a friend.

That’s why I had splashed on some of my father’s Hai Karate cologne. Found it in his Dopp kit along with some foil-wrapped condoms. My parents having sex. That was something I definitely didn’t want to think about when I was sixteen and being fixed up with a college coed who probably had sex several times a day between classes.

“Where the hell is Jerry?” Kevin said as he ground out his cigarette butt in the sand at the crackled edge of the asphalt. “College chicks this hot won’t wait forever. They’re from Philly, man!”

My heart beat faster.

We’d first met the two Philly girls when they were half naked on the beach and Jerry McMillan had had the balls to stroll over to their blanket and talk like a letter straight out of
Penthouse
magazine: “Is it hot out here or is it just you two?”

They should’ve laughed or groaned or even puked at Jerry’s lame pickup line. But, no. They both thought our somewhat older friend was cute. Most girls did. Jerry McMillan was lean and lanky with droopy eyes that made it look like he was half asleep at all times. He kept his shiny helmet of hair sleekly combed over his ears, its slanting divide always parked directly over an ironically arched eyebrow.

As it turned out, the girls Jerry had randomly decided to hit on were looking to get down and boogie. They eagerly volunteered their names (Donna and Kimberly) and local phone numbers. They were staying at the Bay Breeze Motel with another friend, Brenda. Three college girls in a single room. No parents. They were all probably on the pill. A lot of girls were popping birth control pills in 1975 because “makin’ love with you is all I wanna do,” at least according to Minnie Riperton’s big hit single on the radio. Everybody who was sixteen or over that summer had already lost their virginity.

Everybody except me.

“We’ve already done the Boardwalk,” sighed the girl named Donna, arching her back, stretching her double-D cups to the max. If Jerry McMillan was a
Penthouse Forum
letter, this Donna was the Pet of the Month without the staples.

“So,” said Jerry, “I take it you two are
bored
with the
Board
walk?”

Incredibly, the girls laughed at that lousy line, too!

“Yeah,” said Donna, who had Farrah Fawcett’s winged hairstyle from the pinup poster. “We want to have some real fun, you know? We are ready to feel the funk and party hearty!”

“Then, ladies, you came to the right beach,” said Kevin, who had been pumping iron on a bench in his garage all winter and spring so his chest and stomach would be ready for just this moment. I hung in the background. When you’re a timid teen, it pays to have brazen friends like Kevin and Jerry.

“So, Sunshine,” said Jerry, crouching down so the girls could gaze dreamily at his droopy eyes. “You ever heard about the dunes down south? In the state park?”

“Sure,” said the other girl, Kimberly, as she rolled over to tan her back. She was wearing a very small bikini spotted with Wonder-Bread-wrapper-colored polka dots. The bottom was actually two tiny triangles held together by white plastic rings at her hips. She reached around to unsnap the hook holding her skimpy top in place so she wouldn’t have an unsightly tan line racing across her back to add to the white doughnuts the sun-blocking circles would definitely be leaving on her flanks.

“Meet us down there,” said Kevin. “Ten P.M. We’ll bring the liquid refreshments.”

“We’ll find some driftwood, too,” added Jerry. “Rub a couple stiff sticks together and see if we can start a fire.” Every cheesy thing the guy said made these girls giggle.

I said nothing.

When I was sixteen, girls terrified me.

“Can we bring Brenda?” asked Donna, whose bikini was full of burnt-orange and harvest-gold flowers. Reminded me of the coffee percolator back in our motel kitchenette. “Brenda’s different. Likes to read books and junk.”

“No problemo. She can hang with Dave. He reads books, too. Finished the summer reading list like back in June.”

It was true. In books, I could be cool like Jerry and Kevin.

“You sure?” giggled Kimberly. “What if Brenda is like a total dog?”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Kevin. “Dave will bring his leash and walk her while the rest of us get down and get funky!”

SO at nine thirty that night, Kevin Corman and I stood underneath a hazy street lamp waiting for Jerry McMillan, more booze, the two horny college chicks, and my blind date with the bookish Brenda.

Like I said, Jerry was seventeen but looked even older, so he was always the one in charge of procuring the adult beverages for any party, be it a kegger or a spontaneous bonfire on the beach in Island State Park. He had headed over to Barnegat Bay Bottles, the scuzziest package store in all of Seaside Heights, maybe New Jersey, to procure a couple cases of beer and several bottles of Boone’s Farm wine: Apple and Strawberry. Both flavors tasted like Kool-Aid laced with malt liquor. Maybe gasoline.

It’s amazing how much I’m remembering now about that summer night in 1975. How vivid it all seems—especially when I realize I haven’t thought about any of this for decades. I grew up. Went to college. Became rich and famous. Locked my summers down the Jersey Shore inside a mental shoebox with the rest of my long-forgotten memories.

But tonight, as I lie in bed, fitfully drifting in and out of sleep, crisp details fill my head.

The swimming pool at the Royal Flamingo Motel with a curving slide lubricated with a trickle of water so you slid down even faster.

The Funtown Pier, home to all sorts of rickety thrill rides—including Dr. Shallowgrave’s Haunted Manor.

The swarm of suntanned bodies bopping up the beach with their radios on. All of them, in my memory, swaying to the blare of a Tijuana Brass soundtrack, the theme from
The Dating Game
.

But, most of all, I remember Brenda Narramore.

Please don’t tell my wife, who is snuggled up beside me now, cradled against my back, but I am dreaming about a girl I met one summer nearly three and a half decades ago.

Brenda Narramore.

My first summer love.

My muse and inspiration.

How many times have I redrawn her body, first as a leather-clad warrior in my comic books, then as an indestructible street fighter in a ripped and slashed flight suit as the heroine in my graphic novels? How many hours have I spent retracing her curves and lines? In fact, I made my fortune transforming my memories of Brenda Narramore into pen-and-ink drawings of Belinda Nightingale, superheroine of the postapocalyptic world.

The critics always label my impossibly busty Amazon in her tight, revealing costume as “nothing more than an adolescent sexual fantasy.”

They’re right.

She is.

She is Brenda Narramore.

The girl I once feared I’d let the cloaked demon snatch away.

JERRY’S car finally crunched across the seashells on the shoulder of the road.

I could hear “Love Will Keep Us Together” leaking out of his car stereo. Captain and Tennille. It had to be on the radio. No way would Jerry buy a cassette that bogus.

Jerry—who actually possessed a legal New Jersey driver’s license in addition to his fake one from New York State that made him officially eighteen and therefore old enough to buy booze—had his own car. A Starsky and Hutch Gran Torino with a modified V-8 and a Cruise-O-Matic transmission. I can still see the scooped manifold jutting up over the hood. His “ex-dad” had given the car to Jerry just after the divorce.

“What it is, what it is,” he said as he scrolled down his window. “You bring your bread?”

I dug into my shorts. “Five bucks, right?”

Jerry snatched the wrinkled bill out of my fist. “Funkadelic. You steal it from your old man?”

“Nah. I mowed lawns last month.”

“Dyno-mite.” He turned to Kevin. “Don’t leave me hangin’, bro!”

Kevin passed off his cash with a slap to Jerry’s palm.

“What it is, what it is,” said Jerry. I forget why. We all said that in 1975, I guess. “Hop in, brothas!”

Kevin called shotgun. I climbed into the backseat with the two cardboard flats filled with beer cans—one slightly refrigerated case of Schlitz, another of Falstaff. A wrinkled grocery sack stuffed with twist-cap bottles of what Boone’s Farm called wine clattered every time Jerry hit a pothole.

“Didn’t even need to hire Squeegie tonight,” Jerry bragged. “The blind doofus with the Coke-bottle glasses was working behind the counter.”

If Jerry couldn’t score our adult beverages with his fake ID, Squeegie was always his fallback plan: a burned-out World War II vet who slept in the Dumpster out back behind the liquor store. Squeegie would do just about anything for two bucks. Of course, back in 1975 gas cost forty-four cents a gallon, a stamp ten, and a whole pack of cigarettes only thirty-five.

The last time someone sneaked me a pack here in New York City, it cost him nine dollars, and I only got to smoke one before my wife caught me, started crying, and flushed about eight dollars and fifty-five cents’ worth of tobacco down the toilet.

I had told her I’d quit.

I had lied.

WE met the Philly girls at the state park.