Reckless: Shades of a Vampire (16 page)

“When it is black, I am free. So I like black, like the night.”

“It won’t always be that way, Emma,” Michael says. “I hope not, anyway. Not if you can do something about it before it is too late.”

Michael puts a hand on Emma’s, resting on her lap. She looks at the hands, his on top of hers.

She likes the stack they make.

Emma feels her nerves, from her groin to her neck, becoming enflamed, like someone just threw a match on a pool of kerosene. She looks at Michael in the eyes, and he is already staring at her. He slides toward her, opens his mouth slightly, and moves to kiss her softly.

Emma opens her mouth, accepts the kiss, and tangles her lips with his.

In her mind, she’s speaking in tongues just as the snake handlers do. She wants to shout the ecstasy.

Emma slides closer to Michael. She darts her tongue toward his. They touch at the tips.

“Ahhhh,” she says, wrapping her arms and legs around him after placing the book down on the couch, beside her.

Michael pushes his body into hers. She falls back into the couch, tugging Michael along with her. She pushes her groin into his, and he pushes back. He cock is throbbing into her groin, and she desperately wants to spread her legs and engulf it.

“Michael,” she whispers.

He moves his cheek to her cheek.

Her mouth slides to his neck, and she runs her tongue along its flexed ridges.

Her mouth waters, and her head coils.

She licks her incisors, and yearns to drink from Michael’s neck.

“Oh no!” she thinks to herself. “Not Michael!”

Emma constricts, cocking her arms. An instant later, before Michael knows what is happening, Emma gives Michael a mighty shove.

WHAM.

He slams into the back of the couch, knocking over a lamp that crashes into the floor.

“Oh!” Emma says, covering her mouth with her hands. “Oh my. Michael, I’m sorry. I…”

Emma springs up, and runs to the door. She opens the door, and runs into the night as Michael tries to gather himself and get up. By the time he gets to the front door, Emma is far down the driveway. He can barely see her image in the faint moonlight.

He doesn’t try to call for her.

Michael watches until he sees vehicle lights come on in the distance. He hears the truck engine start.

“Emma!” he shouts, to no avail.

He sees the lights do a herky-jerky stop-go-stop before Emma gets it going.

Michael wonders where she got the truck.

“Emma,” he says softly, as Blue kneels at his side in the doorway.

Emma takes the truck in a big circle and turns facing out on the gravel driveway. At Grinder’s Switch Road, she turns on a left blinker and Michael watches her slowly drive away in the distance. He looks back at the couch to see that she’s left the book he tried to give her.

He rubs his brow.

Emma winds her way back to the Denton farm in Josh’s truck, turns down the rustic road, and drives the truck hastily back deep into the brush where it was before. She hits the brake, turns off the ignition and the lights, gets out and scampers back home.

She gets in the bed still wearing her black dress, and falls fast asleep.

It was Friday evening. He had knocked on the door. Her father had answered, as if he knew the visit was coming – waiting on it like the return of the next day’s sunrise. She had heard her father let David in the door, them embracing like old friends.

She had watched her mother approach her in her bedroom. She had heard her mother say that David wanted to meet with just her father. She couldn’t hear what was said.

"La la la la la," she was thinking.

But she didn’t need to hear. Emma knew what it was about about. Just as she knew why he was coming back now, the next day. This was about the preacher's daughter becoming the preacher's wife.

David knocks at the door. It is Saturday, Christmas Eve, and he’s paying a visit at the usual five o’clock, never too early, never too late. But there’s nothing usual about this visit, and Emma knows that.

Her parents have given clear instructions on being ready, and she has followed them. That, she listened to, because she knows better.

Pumpkin bread Emma bakes in the oven, almost ready to come out. She’s just waiting for the timer to ring. Coffee brews in the pot. Emma is wearing a green dress. A six-foot tall cedar tree adorned with popcorn, pinecones and an angel on top fills a corner in the parlor.

Under the tree is six presents – one from each member of the Mays family to another.

Emma’s mother urged her to make David a present, but she didn’t. She figures she will be forced to give him something, though, soon enough.

Emma opens the front door, letting David in. He’s carrying a basket in one hand – “warm muffins for your family,” he says, “my mother made them” – and a small box in the other.

“Merry Christmas,” he says.

“It’s not Christmas yet,” Emma says, signaling him to come on in.

“You will want to eat these while they are warm,” David says, handing over the basket of muffins.

“I’m not hungry, really,” Emma says.

“Try one. I insist.”

She takes the basket from David. Emma reaches in with her free hand and pinches off a nibble from one.

“Mmm,” she says. “Yes. David. They are good. Thank you.”

Emma puts down the basket. She takes a seat on the corner of the couch and looks at David, sitting on the other end of the couch. He is on the edge, his buttocks are anchored just enough to keep him there. David's knees almost reach the coffee table in the middle.

The box he brought is there, on the coffee table.

She eyes it.

“Emma,” David says, “we have been courting for some time now, trying to determine if this is what God wants with us. I believe God has now spoken, and answered our prayers.”

Lord, Emma thinks to herself.

He didn’t take long.

One minute, he’s asking her to take a bite of a muffin; the next he’s about to pop the question.

She wants to run, and hide, but there is nowhere to go.

David looks at Emma for response.

She doesn’t have one. She is looking at the box on the table, like it is a snake that might bite her.

David picks it up, handling it with ease.

“I have spoken with your father. I have spoken with God. Emma, you are to be my wife.”

David opens the box, revealing a small gold band with a diamond sliver on it. He takes it out of the box, holding it in front of her.

“This is for you to have for our engagement. We will be married in the spring. You and your mother will set the date. Sometime in March.”

Emma doesn’t respond. She looks at the ring.

“Do you have anything to say? Emma, do you have anything to say.”

“Sure,” she says.

“Sure what?”

“Sure, okay.”

“Okay!” David says, smiling broadly. “We will be married!”

She takes the ring, and holds it in the palm of her right hand. And keeps it there.

“You will be a good wife. I know you will. You are ready. Emma, you are so beautiful. You can sew. You can cook. You can tend the garden. And you have been raised in God’s word. You will be a good mother and wife.”

Emma sits silent.

A mother. Goodness. She doesn’t want to bear a child with David.

Her parents come into the room.

“This is so exciting,” her mother says, clutching her face. “A wedding!”

“You were meant to be together,” her father says.

David stands up. He shakes her father’s hand.

“Son-in-law,” her father says.

“Not yet,” David says. “Not yet.”

They both laugh.

“Soon,” her father says.

“Well,” says David. “I best get going. We have much to celebrate tomorrow. I feel the spirit like I’ve never felt the spirit before.

“God is good.”

“Yes,” Jeremiah says, “God is good.”

David walks to Emma. He takes her hand, looks her in the eyes. She is looking at the floor. He touches her chin, lifts it up.

She quivers, and turns her head away to the side.

“She never did know how to act excited,” her father says.

“Nervous, I suppose,” David says.

“Yes,” Emma says, trying to recover. “I’m just nervous. That’s all. Give a girl a break. Marriage is a big deal.”

David takes her chin again, with a stronger grip this time, twisting it up so that she’s looking at him. He leans forward, purses his lips, and kisses her lips, which are clinched.

Emma’s lost memory of the snake biting her comes back to life. She sees the snake flaring its poison-laced fangs and snapping at her.

Strike!

Emma recoils from David’s coinciding touch, and shudders.

Emma reaches for her neck, touching her mark.

“He isn’t going to bite,” Emma’s father says, laughing.

David stands upright, and exhales.

“Nobody can doubt her purity,” her father says. “Nerves can’t hide that.”

Emma blushes.

“Practice will make perfect,” David says. “But only at the right time.”

Her parents laugh.

Emma fights back tears. Her temples hurt, but she doesn’t shed a drop.

“We will see you tomorrow?” Emma asks David.

“Tomorrow. Yes! Tomorrow is Christmas, the holiest of days. After this Christmas we will be together. Tomorrow, however, we will spend rejoicing with our own families. So no, tonight is our time together. Tomorrow is our time to rejoice with God and our families.”

“Oh, Emma, dear,” her mother says. “You didn’t put your ring on, dear. Put it on, so I can see it. So David can see it before he leaves.”

Emma opens her clutched hand, revealing the ring and redness in her palm where she has buried it deeply.

“Well, put it on,” her mother says. “So we can see it.”

Emma takes the ring into her left hand, sliding it onto the ring finger on her right hand. She holds the hand out for them to see.

But she looks away.

“My goodness,” her mother says. “I might cry. My baby is engaged.”

“A wedding in March,” David says. “Well, I must be going. Merry Christmas to all, and thanks be to God for the birth of Christ.”

“Amen to that,” Emma’s father says.

David walks to the door. He turns back to Emma.

“This is an honor,” he says, before opening the door and walking out.

Emma turns back looks at her mother and father. She looks at the Christmas tree.

DING
.

“Oh,” Emma says, moving toward the kitchen. “The pumpkin bread is ready.”

The Christmas Eve dinner at the Mays house is the same menu they have every year anchored by roasted turkey, made by her mother. Her father makes the cornbread dressing from bread scraps saved throughout the year which are frozen until Christmas. Emma makes sweet potato casserole sweetened by orange juice and topped with browned marshmallows, green beans flavored with bacon and vinegar, and homemade yeast rolls.

The Christmas Eve conversation is rather uncomfortable, however, since despite Emma’s contempt, her mother and father focus talk on her engagement.

“We have wedding plans to make,” her mother says at the dinner table. “First, we have to pick the date. What are you thinking, Emma?”

“I’m not thinking, mother,” she says.

“Well you are engaged now. It’s time to think of that.”

“You always say mother one never knows what God has in store for them. Spring is a long time away. A lot can happen. I don’t want to talk about a date now.”

“God has called you to marry David,” Emma’s father says. “I suggest you get excited about it.”

“If God really has called me to it, God will get me excited about it, right?”

“Only because it is Christmas Eve,” her father says, explaining why he will spare the rod.

Emma’s appetite is robust, despite the conversation. She devours a plate, and second helpings, and after she and her mother put the dishes away and clean the kitchen amid the lingering smell of pumpkin pie, Emma goes quietly to bed early.

Despite her fill, however, her heart is racing with hunger at the thought of what lies ahead.

As before when Emma planned to go out into the night, she rests still in her bed with her eyelids wide open until she hears her parents go to bed. She then counts off another couple of hours, making sure they are sound asleep, not to be disturbed. When Emma looks through her window for the moon and sees that it appears to be in about the one a.m. position, she’s ready -- ready to bound into the night.

Emma puts on her shoes, reaches for a jacket, puts it on, and walks softly to the hallway closet where she looks for a roll of black material she had used before for dressmaking, storing the remnants away. Only a few feet of garment remains, which is all she needs.

Emma drapes the material around her body, over her jacket, and clutches it around her neck with her hands, like a cape. She flees the house, without disturbing her sleeping parents, dashes across the parsonage lawn under the dim moonlight, through the pasture, over the fence, and crosses the road as a dark, fleeting shadow. Emma hurries down the dirt road heading for Josh’s truck under a slight silver sky giving just enough light to see by.

Emma squeezes through the brush into the driver side door, finds the key to the ignition, starts the truck, put it into the R position, backs out onto the dirt road, straightens up, and heads toward the highway with the radio, still on the same station Josh had playing at the same pitch, blaring a Christmas song she’s heard in a female voice she has never heard.

Emma finds the volume knob and turns off the radio. Driving slowly up the highway with a constant left-to-right slur, Emma winds toward the church. Approaching, she is slowly humming the words of another song she knows, “
Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling…calling, O Sinner, come home!”