Fat Vampire (8 page)

T
HE PHONE WAS
ringing as Doug entered the back door of his home. He let it ring, went upstairs, rubbed lotion into his dry cheeks. Then he sat at his computer and called for messages as he searched for “The Hawthorne Chestnut Hill.” It sounded familiar.

“You have…four…new messages. New message.”

“Hi, Doug…it's Jay. You were supposed to call by five, so…just calling to—”

“Message has been deleted. New message.”

“Hi, Doug…it's Jay. I hope everything's okay. “I don't—”

“Message has been deleted. New message.”

“Jay again. Call me as soon as you get this, I'm really wor—”

“Message has been deleted. New message.”

“It's Jay. I'm really, really—”

“Message has been deleted. End of messages.”

Doug laid the phone down on his desk. The Hawthorne turned out to be an eighteenth-century mansion in Chestnut Hill, another suburb of Philadelphia. It was going to be kind of far to bike, though. He'd probably have to take a train, change at Thirtieth Street, take another up there. If he went, that is.

Outside there was a squeal of brakes, the slam of a car door, and then, a few seconds later, the doorbell.

Doug answered the doorbell. Jay was on the step, bobbing like a balloon.

“Oh, hey,” said Doug. “I just tried to call you. Had you tried to call? I didn't get the messages yet.”

Jay just narrowed his eyes and frowned like a bulldog and shook his head. Then he turned and started back to the curb.

“Hey! Seriously! I just got home! Some crazy shit happened at the drainpipe! Secret meetings and this-message-will-self-destruct kind of shit. I need to tell you about it. I need help deciding what to do.”

Jay paused at the car door.

In what felt like the marathon of run-on sentences, Doug caught Jay up on the events of the day. Sort of. In this version Victor just wanted to talk to Doug about some private math tutoring, and the dead butler didn't arrive until after Victor left. When Doug finished, the sun was behind the trees and his mom and dad were returning home.

“Hi, kids,” said Dad.

“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Lee.”

“Mom, can Jay stay for dinner?”

Mom paused in the driveway, her arms hugging her briefcase and two bags of groceries. Her expression conveyed to Doug, via a bit of family-only telepathy, that he k
nows he's not supposed to ask in front of Jay like that because now how can she say no even though they're only having Manwiches?
“If it's okay with Jay's mom” was all she said out loud.

“You can help me figure out the best route to ride my bike to the party,” Doug told Jay when his parents were out of sight. He hoped that hook wasn't too flagrantly baited, but what he really wanted was for Jay to offer him a ride.

“You're definitely going?”

“I don't think it's the
Vampire Hunters.
Do you? It doesn't seem like their style.”

“No,” Jay admitted. “Do you want a ride? You don't want to show up all sweaty.”

“That would be awesome.”

 

The boys ate and finished their homework. Then they drove early to the Hawthorne to be sure they could find it.

“This has to be it,” said Doug. “It's perfect. You can't even see the house from the road.”

Past a
NO OUTLET
sign the dark and quiet street stretched into a sharp, thin curve. The front gate of the Polidori residence was garnished with thick ivy. You didn't borrow a cup of sugar from this sort of neighbor. This neighbor had no sugar for you.

Jay backed out to the
NO OUTLET
sign again and turned around.

“We'll go down to the creek somewhere,” said Jay.

“Good,” said Doug. “We should have done this before. I want to go into that house with as few questions as possible.”

They walked through the shimmering trees toward the smell of water. Jay carried a grocery bag in addition to his schoolbag, and it was from the former that he produced a set of high galoshes. He sat on a rock and slipped them over his shoes.

“We're going to the other side of the creek,” he said. “There'll be less chance of running into anyone else over there.”

“Uh-huh. Where are my galoshes?”

“I didn't think you'd care. You don't really feel cold when you're full of blood, right?”

“But I still feel this acute sense of embarrassment when I show up for a vampire party later with wet feet.”

Jay avoided his eyes. “Oh. Well, you'll be dry by then, with this wind,” he said, and started across the rushing water.

There was nothing else to do but follow. Doug didn't feel the cold, but he felt the damp, and there was no mistaking the transcendental goose of a suddenly wet crotch. He stumbled over the slick rocks and leaned into the incline on the other side.

“Sorry about that,” said Jay after a few minutes of walking, “but that was actually the first test. Some sources say
that vampires can't cross running water. It didn't hurt or anything?”

“Of course not. That was a test? I've crossed running water all kinds of times since getting made. In planes. In cars. I'm even the only guy I know who washes his hands after he pees. Not that I pee much anymore…”

“Can cross running water,” said Jay as he made notes in a big red binder. “Doesn't pee much. Okay”—he brandished a big silver crucifix from his backpack—“take that!”

“Take that?”

“Yeah. Anything?”

“No, but like you said before, I'm Jewish. Where'd you get that thing?”

“Dark Matter. Here.”

Jay threw Doug the cross. Doug fumbled it, picked it up off the wet leaves. “What am I supposed to do with it?” he said.

“It's real silver. Plated. It doesn't hurt?”

“Silver is for werewolves.”

“Some sources say vampires, too. Try sucking on it a little.”

Doug sucked on the cross. It tasted like fork. “Nothing.”

Jay crossed the cross off his list, then they repeated the whole process again with a Star of David.

“Nope,” said Doug.

Jay tossed a pile of rice at Doug's feet. Doug looked at the rice, then back at Jay. “What? Do I eat it?”

“How many grains are there?” Jay asked.

“I don't know—I'm not autistic, I'm a vampire.”

“But you don't care? Some sources say if you toss grain on the ground in front of a vampire, he has to stop whatever he's doing and count it.”

“These ‘sources' wouldn't all be Wikipedia, would they?”

“Mmmmm,” Jay hummed, “mostly no. In fact—you know something? Remember when
Vampire Hunters
mentioned that thing about vampires having to be invited in? I remembered today where I'd heard it before. It's in that Cody Southern vampire movie that's always on cable.
Love Bites
.”

“I don't remember that.”

“No, it's true. I wasn't sure either, but you can watch the whole thing online. And you know what else? Practically all the good vampires turn normal at the end because they kill the head vampire.”

Doug nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I've read a comic like that, too. If you kill the vampire that made you a vampire you're not a vampire anymore.”

“Well,” Jay interjected, “in
Love Bites
it had to be the head vampire. Like, he's the top of the family tree. Killing the gang leader vampire wasn't good enough—Cody had to kill the antique store owner who made the whole gang.”

“That's just a movie, though.”

“Yeah. It doesn't really make sense, anyway. Like, how do you know who's the head vampire? Wouldn't the vampire that made the head vampire be the real head? Or the one who made him? How far back do you go?”

Doug thought about this.

“Anyway,” said Jay. “The list. So. I know you usually cut
through that Presbyterian parking lot on the way to school.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you still? Because then we'd know you can walk on hallowed ground.”

“Well, I can definitely
bike
on hallowed ground. If the hallowed ground really extends to the parking lot,” said Doug. “Is this really an issue? Cemeteries are hallowed ground. Old-school vampires
lived
in cemeteries.”

“Hmm, yeah. Never mind.” Jay consulted the binder again. “We know already that you have no trouble with mirrors, of course. Right?”

“Right,” said Doug. What he didn't say was that in the weeks since the change he had avoided seeing his reflection whenever he could. It was superficially the same, but he felt no connection to the boy in the mirror. Victor had taken that, too. There was only an empty stranger; a funeral mask; a pair of weird, dead eyes. He didn't see himself reflected at all.

He'd taken to keeping his bedroom mirror covered with a sheet, as if someone had died. Someone
had
, actually.

“Right,” said Doug again.

“And you've probably had garlic.”

“Oh, yeah. My mom puts it in everything. There was extra garlic in those Manwiches. Do you remember,” said Doug, “in fifth or sixth grade, when she read that it was good for your heart or something? She used to have my dad and me take garlic pills, eat garlic at every meal…”

Jay was looking more and more uncomfortable. He nodded gravely as if recollecting some great tragedy, until Doug finally said, “What?”

“That's why…” said Jay, “people call you Meatball.”

“What? No, it's not.”

Jay stared at the ground.

Doug was incredulous. “They call me Meatball because I'm short and…husky.”

“And smell like Italian food.”

“Shut up!”

“You don't anymore!” Jay rushed to add. “But you did back then. Especially during PE. It was like you sweated garlic.”

“Why didn't you tell me? Shit!”

A fresh breeze ruffled the trees. A dead leaf caught in the hair of Jay's heavy head.

“I don't think anybody means anything by it anymore,” he said. “It's just something to call you. Cat isn't being mean. She's nice. Stuart calls you Meatball, but you guys are still friends, right? And Adam? He wasn't even in sixth grade with us. He's a senior.”

“
Adam
,” Doug snarled. “That guy is completely full of shit. I saw him in Planet Comix over the summer. Twice. You were with me one of the times, for the McFadden signing.”

“Yeah. I guess he doesn't like admitting he reads comics.”

“I guess he doesn't like admitting a lot of things. You ever notice how he's nicer to us when we're away from school? But even then he's still looking over his shoulder like the girls' volleyball team is gonna jump out from behind a tree.”

Jay shrugged.

“Look, never mind,” said Doug. “Just…what's next.”

Jay looked at his list. “Holy water. But I couldn't get any.”

“And after that?”

“Um…here. Eat this mustard.”

A
T FIVE TO MIDNIGHT
the boys approached the gate of the Hawthorne for the second time.

“I'm going to get in trouble for staying out this late,” said Jay.

“I know.”

“I'm sorry about the garlic thing.”

“I know.”

They unloaded Doug's bike from the trunk and tucked it behind a hedge.

“I have my phone. I'll call you if…something happens.” Doug thought this sounded stupid as soon as he said it. Of course “something” was going to happen—he was going to
walk into a house full of vampires. The thought that this alone was not necessarily going to be the lead story of the evening made him suddenly cold. He marched quickly from the car before Jay could offer any words of encouragement. His feet were damp.

The gravel driveway looped like a racetrack around spare ornamental shrubbery and an expanse of lawn so large and plain that it seemed designed to testify to how much land this woman could waste. Doug had rarely seen so much grass in one place without a soccer net at each end.

The home of Signora Polidori was huge, redbrick, and brightly shuttered, more blandly Colonial than Doug would have expected. No gargoyles. No severe, Gothic arches. No bat-shaped door knocker. He supposed that last one would have been a little on the nose, actually.

He rang a perfectly ordinary doorbell, and a few moments later the door opened onto the crepe paper face of the man from the drainpipe.

“You honor this house with your presence, dark master,” he said, stepping aside to admit Doug. “Truly it has stood patiently these lonely centuries only that it could one day receive such an exalted visitant into its homely blah, blah, etcetera.”

Doug blinked as he walked into the hall. He had no idea how to talk to this person.

The interior of the house was more like it. The foyer was aglow with candlelight and clad in marble and bronze. There was a grand curving staircase of the sort that promised
majestic introductions. In the movies a staircase like this could only exist to provide a beautiful woman with a decent way to enter a room. This was no movie, however, and the banister was rubbed dull and dry. The center of each velvet step was bald like an old dog. But the beautiful woman was a beautiful woman.

She looked like a college girl but carried herself down the stairs with the air of a woman three times her age. For all he knew, Doug realized, she
was
a woman three times her age. Thirty, even. It didn't hurt that she was dressed like she'd stepped out of a school movie about the cotton gin.

Was this the vampire who had made Victor? She wasn't French, not with
that
name, but what did Victor know? He'd probably think Sejal was French.

“I am Signora Polidori. You may call me Cassiopeia,” she added, with a faintly raised eyebrow like a footnote, a little legal disclaimer to explain that she wouldn't normally permit someone like him to call her anything at all. Her voice was the sound of crisp new bills—a little British, not really Italian like Doug expected. More than anything, it had that sound of the East Coast rich that you heard so much in old movies.

She lowered a shoulder. She pointed a toe. She made the gentle tilt of her collarbone into the sort of thing that moved mothers to cover their children's eyes. Doug decided then that, yes, she was very old. She had learned to inflame men in an era when a glimpse of leg could start swordfights.

“You are already acquainted with my thrall, Asa.”

“Yeah. Hey,” said Doug to the thrall.

Asa somehow managed, without twitching a muscle, to favor Doug with one last, breathtaking display of contempt before leaving the room.

“You are the first to arrive,” said Cassiopeia. “How embarrassing for you.”

Doug followed her through dark, wide doors into a sort of study. More candles here, and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and one of those wheeled ladders on tracks that Doug had never seen in real life before. Curved steps at one end of the room rose to a platform that accommodated a small piano and three high-backed chairs.

“You may repose here and await the others. The chairs upon the dais are reserved. Each object in the drawing room is worth a small automobile. Reflect on this before you touch anything.” With that, she left.

Doug stood stiffly. The air felt old, somehow, more brittle, and it smelled like books. He tried not to breathe it too deeply. He felt so terribly aware of himself here—heavier, fleshier…itchy.

Two guys who looked very much like Victor soon arrived, guys who looked like they were not so much born into this world as hiked, by quarterback, into an American flag. They took up places in the room and stared at Doug like he'd sat down at the cool kids' table. He was certain they were vampires, too, from the smell. With so many in such close proximity the room was growing sour with an old-milk stink that filled your throat. Could regular people not smell this? He realized now that he couldn't trust Jay to tell him he stank, though he
was confident Jay's sister would have mentioned it.

Victor himself came next, and stood at the far end of the room, and appeared to pointedly
not
stare at Doug; it was only for this that you might have guessed that the two boys knew each other at all. Doug fumed. They were all junior varsity vampires here, weren't they? They'd all made the team one way or another. In a hot rush he realized that Victor had always planned to attend the gathering. He just didn't want Doug there.

The great door opened and shut again. Finally, another girl. She was the last to arrive and the first who seemed to know how to dress for this sort of thing. She had straight green hair that just brushed her bare shoulders, and Doug imagined riding a tiny toboggan down their powder-white slopes into the foothills of her bust. She wore a black leather halter and skirt that showed a lot of everything. She looked to Doug like a video game character.

Signora Polidori returned now with another man. He was strikingly handsome in a way that looked very foreign next to all the homecoming kings in the room. Victor and his kind were big dogs, but here was a wolf, his face lean and sharp. He and Cassiopeia alighted on two of the three chairs.

“There! now,” said Cassiopeia. “All are here who will be here.”

All?
thought Doug. The third chair was still bare as a headstone. He could feel the others beside him glancing at it, too.

“I am, as ever, Cassiopeia Polidori. At my left is Alexander
Borisov. The third place is set out of respect for Mr. David, who enjoys his solitude. Until recently, we three were the only so ennobled for a hundred miles.”

“What about Asa?” asked the green-haired girl.

“Asa is not of our kind.”

“What is he, then?”

“He is my butler. Now. A gathering of the ton such as this will by no means be commonplace. For reasons you may have already deduced, our breed tend not to mingle.” Her nostrils flared slightly, and the point was made. “It is customary, however, for our kind to mentor those they grace—to guide, and to teach discretion. Discretion is paramount. You tell no one what you are. You speak to no one of our concerns.”

First rule of bite club: you do not talk about bite club,
thought Doug.
Got it.

“But that is not enough. Even in your private affairs must you be utterly clandestine. An elder shows her protégé how this is done. That you have all come so hastily and stridently to my attention suggests that you have not had the benefit—”

The green-haired girl tensed, her whole pointed demeanor aimed squarely at the seated man. “Well, if Count Dickula ever called
like he said he would—
”

“I got very busy,” Alexander protested in a thick stew of an accent. He pronounced every word like he was pushing it uphill. “Work has been a nightmare, I can't tell you…I was going to call this week—”

“Whatever.”

“But when I heard of this party—”

“What
ever
.”

A thick silence filled the room. The green-haired girl crossed her arms under her chest, which Doug appreciatively noted had a sort of push-up bra effect.

Cassiopeia sighed. “Perhaps we should try to conclude with the introductions. Short boy, tell them your name.”

Doug's face boiled, but he did as he was told. The other kids took their turns.

“Danny.”

“Evan.”

“Victor.”

“Absinthe.”

“Absinthe?” slurred Alexander. “At the rave you were called Beth.”

“Oh, so you remember
what
to call me, just not
how
to call me—”

“I believe it has been made rather plain how our dear Absinthe became one of us,” said Cassiopeia. “I am more interested in the provenance of our other guests.”

Don't call on me
, thought Doug.
Don't call on me.

“Douglas. Is the kinsman who granted your immortality present here tonight?”

“Uh, no,” Doug replied, and did some quick thinking. “No…not unless it was Absinthe, I guess.”

“Oh, right,” said Absinthe. “Sure. It was
totally me.
”

“Did she resemble Absinthe?” asked Cassiopeia with a note of surprise in her voice.

“It was dark,” said Doug.

“Maybe his was the same one who got me,” said Victor. “Doug and I talked about this already…we were both attacked in the Poconos.”

“Attacked?” asked the signora. Her distaste for the word was palpable.

“Well, not ‘attacked,' maybe. It was…it was fine.”

Doug felt a surge of love and gratitude. He could have cried. He could have bumped Victor's fist, or done one of those complicated handshakes everyone else seemed to know how to pull off but him.

Victor described his vampire then as “college aged” and “hot.” Average height. Foreign. Hair that was either black or brown. Danny and Evan, in turn, described their vampires in much the same way. Danny ventured that her hair was really dark brown, not black, and Evan offered that she definitely had an accent but that it wasn't the same as Signora Polidori's.

“You cannot fathom my relief,” she said. “Well,” she added, sharing a meaningful look with Alexander, “it seems we have an enchanted stranger in our midst. Such intrigue.”

“Such a delightful turn of events,” muttered Alexander.

“Alas! our mysterious friend has been remiss,” she continued. “Each of you should have your tutelage. I will take our Miss Absinthe under my wing; she may do well to have a fairer hand at the tiller than Mr. Borisov's.”

“I will take on Victor, then,” said Alexander.

“And I will take Daniel, as well.”

“Then I will take Evan.”

There was a fat pause, during which Alexander cleaned
his fingernails.
Oh, give me a break,
thought Doug.

“It occurs to me…” said Cassiopeia airily, “I hesitate only because it occurs to me that, absent though he is from our gathering, Mr. David should know the joys of mentorship as well.”

“Oh yes?” said Alexander. “Oh. Yes. Yes, definitely.”

“So we are agreed.”

“Definitely agreed.”

“Douglas”—Cassiopeia smiled sweetly—“you shall have the surpassing benefits of Stephin David's many wise years. I will arrange it personally. It is, I daresay, a perfect match.”

She rose to her feet.

“Now! who will have some supper?”

 

It was like eating somebody's stamp collection, this supper. Everything was small and difficult to acquire and had a story behind it that was meant to be interesting, but wasn't. Parakeet's eggs and truffles, roe from an endangered salmon served in a ring of lightly battered kraken. Edible flowers. A supper planned by someone whose relationship with food had drifted over the years. Doug was relieved to see that he was not the only one picking at his plate.

The party broke up at a little after two in the morning. Asa saw all but Alexander to the front door—Doug hadn't noticed if he'd stayed behind or simply left by another route to avoid Absinthe. They walked toward the front gate, the three Victor clones a little ahead, Doug lagging behind and trying to appear to be lost in thought, Absinthe
a couple steps behind him.

“Hey,” she said. “Douglas, right?”

“Yeah. Absinthe is a cool name.”

“Why aren't you up there with the rest of the big bats?”

Doug shrugged. The answer, in fact, was that back here he was maybe Victor's friend. Back here he didn't force Victor to choose whether to accept him in front of the others.

It was nice of her to pretend that there was nothing separating Doug from the other guys. Or it was a
kind
of nice, at any rate. One that allowed her to spotlight Doug's standing in life, his outward flaws, meanwhile casting herself as the sort of guileless ingenue who believes it's what's inside that counts. Or maybe Doug was overthinking things, as usual. He told her he had a lot on his mind.

“I hear that. God, isn't she rad? La Signora? I'm so stoked to see her again next week. Fuck Alex.”

Doug didn't know what to say to that. He tried to nod sagely.

“So…” Absinthe said, “have you…told anyone about becoming…ennobled? You can tell me if you have.”

“I haven't, though,” said Doug. “I…almost let it slip to a friend, but I didn't.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I didn't either. Signora sounded so serious about that. Like it might be dangerous for anyone you told.”

The night was quiet, apart from the crunch of gravel beneath their shoes. Up ahead the other boys erupted into bawdy woofing. The phrase “killer rack” drifted backward on the breeze.

“Hey,” Absinthe said suddenly, “if I fly home, would you get my clothes for me?”

“What?”

She answered by changing into a small green-and-brown bat, in a wink, and her clothes dropped to the ground beneath her. She flittered around Doug's head until he bent down and retrieved her garments. He was inches away from what was technically a naked, beautiful girl but he couldn't appreciate it. He folded her clothes neatly in his hands and the bat gave a lyrical chirrup and flew away.