Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Vampire Summer ❯ Battle Plan ( Chapter 3 )

 

 

Johnny was gentle with Crystal. Kind. He treated her like a younger sister, only nicer. When I would get up in the late afternoon from my self-imposed naps, he would already be there, making supper. I thought vampires only came out at night. I told him that, and he laughed, but he didn't correct me. We were one big, happy family—me, my little girl, and the vampire who wouldn't leave us alone.

 

Crystal was happy, anyway. Johnny was the playmate she'd never had. I certainly was poor company for her. All I wanted to do was sleep. Johnny never took blood from me while Crystal was around, apart from that first time up at the cemetery. He would wait until after she was asleep, and I would see the cold needy look creep into his eyes just before he hit me like a freight train and it was lights-out until mid-morning. That's all I was to him—a snack.

 

I turned and twisted in front of the mirror, trying to see my body from every angle. Except for a few rough, red patches, I could find no marks on my skin. I didn't understand it—I'd seen his sharp teeth. Where were the puncture marks? I looked at myself more critically. I had lost weight. Normally I would be glad, but I thought of all the people in my cemetery who had died of a `wasting sickness,' and of Johnny's boast that he had been the cause of their sickness. Was I wasting away?

 

I felt a sudden urge to revisit the cemetery. The sun was high in the sky when Crystal and I set out, armed with a notepad and pen, and a picnic lunch. I had given Crystal a sketchpad of tracing paper and some charcoal pencils so that she could do rubbings on the old headstones while I copied out some of the more ominous verses we found there.

 

“Ezekiel Jamison, beloved son of Sarah and Nathaniel, died of consumption in 1792 at the age of six. Step lightly, all who tread here, your days, too, are numbered.” Right beside Ezekiel was the grave of his sister, another Sarah, and his mother and father. They had all died within a year of each other.

 

I moved through the gravestones, while Crystal diligently rubbed raised images of cherubs and weeping willows. So many families had been buried here. Died of mysterious causes. . . consumption. . . died of grief from the loss of her children . . . that one really hit home. Could Johnny have been the cause of some of these deaths? I copied the names, the dates of birth, dates of death. There was only one way to find out. I planned to research these poor souls. There was a little library right at the corner where our one paved road met the main road into town. It was hardly ever open, and never at night. Perfect for me.

 

Now that I had a game plan of sorts, I felt a little bit better. “Want to go swimming?” I asked my daughter. This was our vacation, after all.

 

We left the cemetery and stopped briefly at the cottage to drop off our things. I put my notebook in between my mattress and box spring, and took out a slab of liver to thaw out for me, and a box of chicken nuggets for Crystal. Then we went swimming. It was glorious. It was normal.

 

Johnny was flipping through the pile of Crystal's grave rubbings when we returned to the cottage. I still hadn't figured out how he got in and out so effortlessly. I know he didn't have a key. “You went up to the cemetery today?” he asked mildly, not taking his eyes off the papers in front of him.

 

Crystal spared me from having to reply. “Yeah! Mommy taught me how to do rubbings. Aren't they pretty?” She squatted down right beside Johnny and took the papers out of his hand so she could show him her favorites. “See, this one is a little baby angel. I'm going to color it pink, and maybe gold.”

 

Johnny relaxed as Crystal chatted on. He hadn't liked it that I went back up to the cemetery, I could tell. But if he thought I had just taken Crystal up to do some drawing. . . .

 

“Where are your rubbings?” he asked me abruptly. I felt myself go hot and cold.

 

“Mommy just walked around,” Crystal said, and I breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn't noticed my notebook. I nodded, and Johnny went back to looking at Crystal's drawings, so I went in the kitchen and started supper.

 

By some miracle, Johnny left me alone that night. In fact, soon after Crystal fell asleep, he left the cottage. He hadn't done that since she had come back from her father's. I pulled back the covers and crawled into bed beside her. My little baby. I wouldn't let anything happen to her if I could help it. I stroked the hair away from her forehead, and she stirred in her sleep. Johnny was wrong—she was my life, not his. Mine. Blood of my blood, my daughter. I fell asleep with a smile on my face.

 

Sam showed up Friday night—a day early—to pick up Crystal for his weekend. I hadn't had a chance to explain the situation to Johnny yet. He was there, of course, watching TV with Crystal while I cleared away the dishes. It was becoming our nightly routine.

 

Johnny watched Sam carefully, his face neutral, as I hurried over to introduce them. “Crystal's dad is taking her for the weekend. I don't know why he came tonight.” I turned to face Sam. “You were supposed to come tomorrow morning.”

 

Crystal, happy to have both men in her life with her at once, scurried around gathering up the essential stuff she wanted to take with her, including her sketchbook and her dolls. I think her excitement made Johnny re-think his original reaction, for his face slid out of that blank expression and into a sort of grimacing smile.

 

Sam glanced at Johnny curiously, wondering, I'm sure, why a teenager was hanging around his young daughter. He looked at me suspiciously for a minute, as if Johnny were my friend or my date or something equally inappropriate. If only he knew. “Johnny? You're the vampire, eh?” he said with a slight smile, remembering Crystal's remark from before. Johnny smiled back, closed-mouthed, sharing the older man's amusement.

 

“Yup, he is,” stated Crystal, nodding her head. “Vampire Johnny.” Everyone laughed politely, including Johnny, but Sam glared at me when he thought no one else was looking.

 

Sam motioned for me to follow him out to the car. “What the hell are you thinking, letting that kid in the house? Send him home. He's too old for Crystal to be playing with—and too young for you,” he added maliciously. “Where's your head?”

 

“Bye, Johnny!” shouted Crystal as she ran out to the car. “See you Sunday!”

 

Johnny had come to the doorway to see her off, and he slouched there in the dying sunlight until their car was out of sight. Then he went back inside. I was afraid to go back in. I knew he would be angry, and I was right. Eventually, I had to go back into the cottage. I was getting eaten alive by mosquitos out there.

 

Johnny looked up from the couch. The TV was on but he wasn't pretending to watch it anymore. His eyes were black and he stared at me. “Why did he take her?”

 

“He's her father. We're—separated—and he gets to see Crystal every other weekend. That's just how it is,” I said tiredly, waiting for whatever he was going to do to me in retaliation. “I can't have her all the time.”

 

“Why didn't you tell me?”

 

I was surprised. What difference would it have made? “I wasn't sure how you would react,” I admitted.

 

“I'm not happy.” He got up from the couch in one easy motion and stood in front of me. We were the same height, although he was skinny as a—as a teenager, I guess. He looked so young, except for his eyes. “I should take what I need from you, but I don't want you to die. Not yet.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “Get strong. I'll come back when Crystal is here.”

 

I sank to my knees as Johnny disappeared out the front door into the gathering dusk. I had been granted a reprieve. His disembodied voice floated back to me. “If Crystal doesn't come back, I will kill you. Then I will find her.”

 

Saturday and Sunday went by quickly. I pulled out my notebook and read over the names and dates I had written down. Too bad the little library was closed on weekends. But I went back to the cemetery on my own during the day and finished taking notes. There were patterns of death that I had never noticed before. At certain times, about forty or fifty years apart, whole families, sometimes whole communities, seem to have died one after the other over a period of a few months to a few years. Then for years it was just the ordinary few who died of various causes—disease, accident, old age. Women in those days died in childbirth quite often, and their babies died with them. There was a wave of deaths in the mid 1700's, then again towards the turn of the century, and again in the mid 1800's, around the time of the Civil War. After that, I didn't notice so many patterns to the deaths, and by the early 1900's, the cemetery had been mostly full. There were very few newer graves here.

 

I looked for all the graves with the name John, or Jonathan, or Johnny, and there were several. Despite what Johnny had told me, I didn't quite believe he hadn't risen from this very cemetery where we had first encountered him. Why else would he have been there? I ruled out the ones that had died too old or too young to be my Johnny. That left about three possible gravesites.

 

The oldest was from the 1600's, right around the time when the town was originally established. Jonathan Price had settled here from Rhode Island, and drowned when he was just 16. The grave marker didn't give much more detail, like what had happened to his parents. There were no other headstones with the name `Price' that I could see.

 

The next `Jon' was a fourteen year old who had accidentally been shot in 1748, before the Revolutionary war. I thought 14 was too young for my Johnny, but I couldn't rule it out. The third grave belonged to a Jonny Crew, a boy who had died at 17 while attempting to rescue his younger sister. He hadn't succeeded, because the grave right next to his belonged to Emily Crew, age 6. It just said she died in an accident.

 

So, Jonathan Price seemed like the most logical choice for my Johnny. I would start my investigation with him first thing Tuesday morning, when the library opened.

 

I didn't know where Johnny had gone while Crystal was away, and I didn't care. She was safe, and I had a reprieve, and I intended to enjoy it. The reason I loved the lake so much was because I love to swim. After my day at the cemetery, I hid my notes and went down to the beach just as the sun was setting. It used to be my favorite time of day, before Johnny. The water was smooth as glass and I tried to cause not so much as a ripple as I slipped beneath it and let it caress my skin. It always felt warmer at night. I know it's dangerous to swim alone, but in light of the danger I faced at Johnny's hands every night, what did it matter? I let the water carry me away, but it kept pushing me back up towards the surface, and I sighed. It wasn't my time to die.

 

Wringing water out of my hair, I walked slowly back up to the cottage, unafraid of the dark. What terrors could be worse than my own personal vampire? And he had given me the night off.

 

Sunday was my cleaning day. The cottage was compact, with a central living room which also housed our main eating area, a galley kitchen, two very small bedrooms, one in front off the living room, and mine in back off the kitchen. Our bathroom was off the kitchen, too, and the shower had been built as an afterthought out on the screened-in porch which ran the whole length of the back of the house. Even with just Crystal and me, and now Johnny, it got messy over the course of a week. Cleaning took my mind off my other problems. I used to think my relationship with Sam was my biggest problem. But it paled in comparison to the vampire problem. Johnny was not going to get Crystal.

 

Sam pulled up just as it was getting dark, and I hoped and prayed that Johnny would have enough sense to stay away until after he had left. However, there was a complication. In the old days, when things were good between us, we spent our vacations here with our extended family. It was a family cottage, after all. But it belonged to my family, not Sam's, so I was surprised when not only Crystal, but also her aunt Mary, Sam's sister, and her three kids got out, too.

 

“We brought you some company,” Sam said, as he unloaded luggage and a plastic bin full of groceries from the back of his car.

 

“I thought the kids could play at the beach for a few days,” Mary said, coming around the car to give me a sympathetic hug. Sam must have told her we were getting a divorce. “You don't mind, do you? I hate to think of you out here all alone.”

 

Mind? No, I didn't mind. Johnny, however, was going to be furious.

 

“Sam!” I hissed, when Mary had gone inside with the kids. “What were you thinking? Where are they all going to sleep?”

 

He actually grinned at me. “The more, the merrier, remember?” he said. “Mary and Karen can sleep in Crystal's room, and the boys can camp out on the living room floor. Crystal can sleep with you for a few days.”

 

“Why are you doing this?” I whispered, desperation seeping into my voice.

 

Sam put down the bin with the food. “All Crystal talked about the whole time she was with me was Johnny. Johnny this and Johnny that. Johnny and vampires. I thought she should spend some time with kids her own age.”

 

And I got a babysitter. If Johnny didn't kill me now, maybe I could send him after Sam. It was a thought. But then a more sobering thought hit me. In the cemetery, entire families had been wiped out by the wasting disease, or consumption, as it was called back then. I was suddenly afraid for Mary and the kids. It wasn't safe here, not with Johnny nearby. “When are they going home?”

 

“I'll pick them up the next time I come to get Crystal,” Sam said, his voice indicating that the subject was closed.

 

“Two weeks!” Already the kids were running around the house, and Mary was moving her things into Crystal's room, ignoring the noise. What was I going to do?

 

“Bye, Daddy!” called Crystal, and I looked up from my stupor to see Sam driving back down the dirt road. Alone. On the other side of the road, half hidden in the bushes, stood Johnny. He caught my eye and scowled. I gulped, and quickly shut the door, locking it and sliding the bolt into place. It was the best I could do, under the circumstances.