by Zach Bartlett
“Sephiroth,” he said, as I descended the basement stairs. “That’s what I want my vampire name to be.”
“You don’t need a vam-”
“Sephiroth Ravensbane. It’s Japanese.”
“You don’t need a vampire name!” I found myself shouting, having overestimated my own patience. “I was born as Vernon, I got bitten as Vernon, and I’m still Vernon. The alliteration is just a coincidence. You still have to be Brice.”
“Brice Ravensbane!” he cooed, like a teen girl mentioning a crush.
“Fine, fine, change the last name. It’s not like you’ll have much of a legacy to pass it down to at this point.”
After composing myself, I noticed that he’d modified his attire since last night. While he was still wearing a T-shirt and an oversized black trousers that were made from some kind of plastic, he had also donned a black velvet cape and what appeared to be an elaborate napkin collar. I’m not sure where he managed to find them–they certainly weren’t part of my evening wear, which is essentially all I own.
“What are you wearing around your neck?” I asked.
“Just something to hide the bite marks.”
“I gave you bandages last night. What is that, a doily?”
“It’s a cravat,” he said, with something resembling pride in his tone. “A lot of the guys in Interview with the Vampire wear them.”
“Well, this isn’t the 18th century, and even back then you’d look like an outright ponce wearing that.”
“Can I keep the cape?”
“Can you find one that isn’t velvet?”
He glanced at the floor and pressed his fingertips together, twisting them idly.
“I… uh… I like velvet,” he mumbled.
I didn’t see why he even needed fancy accessories when he insisted on living in the basement, but I decided to let him keep the things on the grounds that it would stop him from complaining about them for the rest of the night. With the matter settled for the time being, I was able to coax him out for some more rudimentary “vampiring lessons,” as he’d termed them. While his fashion sense may have been unwavering, there was at least hope to improve his nocturnal etiquette and feeding habits.
I motioned for him to follow as I turned to leave, and hoped that he wasn’t going to hold the ends of his cape and flap his arms while he walked.
***
Now before you go off and start assuming all sorts of things about me, let me say that it was absolutely not my intention to recruit such a fool into the ranks of the undead. Being a creature of the night, however, tends to remove one from the scope of modern culture, and I hardly think I can be blamed for not being caught up with recent publishing trends.
You see, after spending a number of years inhabiting museum storehouses and other safe yet helplessly dank locales, I’d finally found a relatively nice abandoned house to settle down in. The previous owners were found dead with all the doors and windows locked from the inside, and such events can give even the most wonderfully designed houses a reputation that frightens off potential home buyers for decades. After making sure it was free of squatters and vermin I boarded up the windows, for practical reasons as well as to further enforce the haunted house aesthetic.
My new home was quite comfortable if a bit spacious for my needs, and I was able to dwell undisturbed for nearly three months before I realized the flaw in my reasoning. Nobody was going to buy the house and discover me, that much I knew. But I had overlooked the fact that large empty houses, particularly those that come to have the “haunted” reputation as mine does, tend to attract groups of curious teenagers who aren’t welcomed in the numerous social circles that have better things to do than sneak around in abandoned houses on Friday nights. I was soon to discover precisely why the more gregarious types avoid them.
It began one night when I was busying myself in the upstairs study, and heard a sort of rapid creaking sound coming from the first floor. I was quick to investigate the source of the noise, assuming that rats had managed to get in somewhere. The creaking continued at a steady rate as I descended into the main hallway and followed it into the dining room, where I discovered a set of fingers trying in vain to pull a board off of one of my windows. After a final bout of shaking and muffled curses the fingers withdrew, having realized the futility of trying to pull at a window boarded up from the inside.
A shuffling from outside preceded a sharp knock at the window, followed by another that dislodged one of the boards. I drew back into the darkness of the hallway as two more boards fell in a similar manner, the last one bringing a crowbar in with it. I could now hear the intruders talking.
“Damn it, you weak-ass fruit!” one of the voices said.
“Stop calling me that, I can do like five hundred push-ups! I still knocked the hell out of that board,” said the fruit.
“Yeah, but your fruity self couldn’t hold on to my damn crowbar worth a damn,” said the first voice. He spoke with a certain authority that his vocabulary didn’t seem to qualify him for.
“What does it matter, we’re going in there anyways,” said a third voice.
“Shut up,” said the first again. “Now let’s get inside, find my damn crowbar, and get this damn thing the hell started. Get in.”
I slid behind the wall next to the doorway as a pair of hands began to pull a shaggy head and torso through the window. As I waited, listening for an opening, the first voice spoke again.
“Damn it, guys, I’m stuck.”
Fruit and the third voice started giggling.
“Shut up guys, get the damn crowbar and help me!”
I leaned past the doorjamb slightly, giving myself a view of the room while remaining relatively hidden should any of the intruders look over. Two and a half people were in the room, one unable to fit through the hole they’d made in my window. One was sitting at the head chair of my dining room table, which he’d turned to face the window. Another one was standing near the fallen crowbar. Two backpacks were lying on the floor nearby.
“What’s in it for me if I help you out of there?” said Fruit, apparently trying to negotiate out of his moniker.
“I won’t kick your damn ass is what’s in it for you! Now get me out of here before, like, spiders come down on me or something.”
I took the opportunity to sneak into the room while they were distracted debating the release of the larger one. I crept along the length of the table until I reached the end nearest the group, putting me directly behind Fruit and his superior’s crowbar. While he was still mid-debate I grabbed the fallen crowbar, sprung up and brought it down upon his head; the force of which sent him to the floor without so much as a whimper.
The other two stopped arguing and looked over at their fallen friend, then up at the creature that ended him. That’s when the shrieking began, which was unusually high for male interlopers. The one in the chair grabbed the nearest backpack and, in a valiant effort, sent it hurtling to the ground several feet away from me. I advanced on him, unfazed by the display. My approach sent him sprinting across the room and face-first into the doorjamb where he crumpled into an effete heap. After he’d conveniently incapacitated himself, I quickly silenced the one trapped in my window.
With the immediate threat squelched, I took the time to remove the corpse from my window and inspect their backpacks, in which I discovered an ouija board and several candles of varying color. While I had been expecting as much, they’d also brought a book that I was unfamiliar with.
Interview with the Vampire.
Struck by curiosity as to how and why someone would have been given the chance to sit down and interview one of my kind, I skimmed the first chapter. It seemed to me a fortunate coincidence; as for weeks previous I had been feeling that my spacious new dwelling, though well furnished, was still a bit empty. I had been considering recruiting a fresh… I’m not sure what the scientific term for a fledgling vampire is, but Brice kept referring to himself as a “thrall,” so that’s what I’ll use… a fresh thrall to share the house with. If the book’s interview was conducted with any considerable depth, which I assumed it was, then the intruders might have already been familiar with vampiric customs and I wouldn’t have to go through some heavy-handed orientation process.
It seemed like the perfect opportunity had just fallen into my lap. Two of them were dead, but the one that had run into the wall, Brice, was merely unconscious. After the “enthralling” process was complete, he was surprisingly enthusiastic about his induction into vampirism, though I soon discovered he’d been woefully misinformed about the basics of unlife.
***
Twelve thirty a.m.
Brice and I were perched atop an unoccupied brownstone in the downtown area, waiting for the bars to close. I’d spent the last hour teaching him the finer points of stealth, which involved a good amount of time untangling his cape from various surroundings while he squealed and fidgeted like a ferret in a glue trap. After the cape was lost due to an accidental tearing-it-in-half-and-slapping-him, Brice slowly began to master the art of walking in the dark without tripping over noisy things.
As I was beginning to explain how to do that neat neck-twist maneuver from behind an unsuspecting victim, I noticed that he was holding an arm straight up. He had a habit of doing this whenever he had a question to ask, though this time he had a smirk on his face that appeared unusually confident for a boy wearing a white neckerchief.
“What is it this time?” I said.
“Why do we have to do all this stuff to sneak up on people and stuff before biting them? Can’t we just go in to the bars and hypnotize them, then lure them out somewhere else, like in the-”
“Like in the books, you mean?”
“Yeah, they do it all the time.”
By my count, it was the tenth time that night that he’d complained about vampirism not working like in that grubby little book, and it was becoming far more of an annoyance than I had originally anticipated. Even after spending the majority of the first night explaining how we aren’t granted eternal youth and handsomeness, he still wouldn’t accept his circumstances. I was only able to convince him to let me teach him the basic necessities of vampiric existence by reassuring his belief that we actually have special vampire nightclubs where he’d get to wear latex and drink blood from a martini glass. I’m still not certain how he–or anyone–could think a loose-knit collective of thirsty corpses would want or need for such a place.
Since he was still having trouble reconciling the differences between the reality of his unlife and the expectations he had for it, I decided that he needed to have it shocked into him. I’d use the term “scared straight,” but that seems to imply an entirely different problem of his that I’m frankly unqualified to comment on.
“Well I’m certainly open to new ideas, and you seem to be a good deal more familiar with the process than I. Why don’t you go down there and mesmerize one of the patrons into following you into the alley?” I said, giving my best attempt at an enthusiastic tone and knowing full well that vampires can’t hypnotize people any better than your average human with a swinging pocket watch and pointy mustache.
I briefly wondered if such a pocket watch was the reason for the long chain hanging from his pants.
“For reals?” He asked, apparently too excited for grammar.
“Yes, uh, for reals. You’ve had enough of the intensive training for now. If this might be a more effective technique, then you should certainly give it a go.” I moved to the edge of the roof and motioned to the numerous bar signs lining the sidewalk below, which could only be described as offensively neon.
Our rooftop perch granted us a view of two intersecting streets, both of which were flanked by several bars. With little deliberation he decided to try a gaudily-lit establishment across the street from us called the Salty Sailor. After making an odd gesture with his hands and muttering something about “invoking his bloodline,” he descended the building’s fire escape into an adjacent alley, yelping as he made the three-meter drop from the bottom tier to the ground. As he minced across the street I sat on the edge of the roof and waited, eager to see the precise manner in which he would fail his given task.
Soon enough Brice stumbled out of the Salty Sailor followed by three significantly larger bar-goers who didn’t look like any longshoremen I’d ever known. I assessed that things were not going well based on the angles of their caps and the fact that one of them was now holding Brice by the doily, shouting something about cigarettes as the boy was trying to cringe hard enough to break his grasp. I’d obviously have to step in to lend a hand… just not an immediate one.
After his attacker shouted a particularly venomous taunt about his clothing, Brice reached back and, probably trying to tap into some sort of vampiric strength, delivered a slap that accomplished about as much as a slap can ever hope to. His attacker flinched, which allowed Brice to wriggle out of his grasp and dart back into the alley.
The three larger coves pursued Brice, gaining ground quickly. Realizing that he couldn’t outrun them, Brice made a spectacular running leap towards the nearby fire escape. He soared through the air and almost managed to brush the bottom rung with his flailing arms before he landed flat on his back, emitting the type of squeal one would use to try and communicate with dolphins.
It was then that I realized I’d forgotten to tell him we can’t fly.
Brice’s pursuers halted their approach and began chuckling at the sight of his escape attempt. Their chuckles turned into outright howls when he picked himself up, turned to face them, and raised his hands in what he apparently thought was a boxing stance. After thoroughly slapping their knees and lobbing a few more insults at the boy they made their way back across the street, leaving Brice more injured than any fight could have.
I descended to the bottom tier of the fire escape and leaned over the rail at Brice, who was then sitting against the wall clutching his legs to his chest.
“What did we learn?” I said.
“Drop the ladder down.”
“I said, what did we learn?”
“You said I could hypnotize people!”
“Did I? I remember saying you could try, which you apparently did. I’m not sure where you got the idea that you’d have any chance of succeeding, even with that ridiculous pocket watch of yours.”
He gave me a confused look, like a cat stuck in a hamper.
“That’s for my wallet,” he said, holding up the chain attached to his jeans.
“Well, then it looks ridiculous.”
“Hey!” He stomped a foot and threw his hands to his sides. “Who are you to talk? You look like a math teacher.”
“My dinner jacket is not open to debate. Why do you need a chain on your wallet? Nobody wants to steal your bus pass.”
His jaw dropped, and he curled into a sniffly ball again. Perhaps I had been a bit harsh, but apologizing would only undermine my authority.
“I’m only going to ask one more time. What did we learn?”
He gave an exaggerated sigh and threw his hands down to his sides. “That you know what it’s like to be a vampire better than some puffy housewife with a publishing contract.”
I was expecting something trite, “don’t believe everything you read” or whatnot, but the venom in his response gave me hope that he could yet be molded into a proper vampire. I lowered the ladder for him, and handed him half of his cape to clean himself off.
We ascended to the roof again and waited until last call, when Brice managed to subdue and feed from a drifter while sustaining only minor bottle-lacerations. When we returned to the house, I saw to it that we destroyed his accursed Interview book.
Over the next few days he began to make good progress in his lessons, though he displayed a marked lack of his original enthusiasm. Then, one evening, he wasn’t in his basement when I came down. I searched the house only to discover a charred cravat amongst a pile of ashes on the back porch. While I may not be as culturally adept as some, I know a cliché suicide when I see one.
I briefly considered reciting the standard eulogy for him out of respect, but figured the “ashes to ashes” bit would have been in poor taste. Instead, I swept the remains into a dustpan and scattered them as I assumed he would have wanted: over the local mall’s bus stop.
I was slightly worried that Brice’s parents would be looking for him or, if they’d known where he was going that first night, that they would send a team of investigators to the house. Fortunately the outside world didn’t seem at all bothered by his disappearance.
My house remains uninhabited save for myself, and I’m finally beginning to grow accustomed to the solitude. Fortunately when a small town has three unsolved disappearances, rumors begin to circulate; and I fancy that impressionable folks will likely blame them on the sole “haunted” house in the area. In fact, unless the concept of vampires undergoes some strange makeover in popular culture, I’m almost certain to remain undisturbed for decades to come.
About the Author
Zach Bartlett is yet another author from the frigid land of New England, though he promises not to spend nearly as much time writing about cold snaps and covered bridges as certain others have. Unless he’s gotten too frustrated with the whole ‘blog’ scene, he can be found here.
©2009 Zach Bartlett
