[/u]So My Son THought He Was A Vampire
[u][b]1
The house screamed silence. It sent a frenzy of shivers through Marie Tedder’s petite body as she entered the living room and shut the door behind her. She flipped a piece of dirty blonde hair off of her forehead, blew stale, cigarette breath into her palms and rubbed them together. The wind knocked on the door behind her, reminding her that they had the rest of the winter to do battle.
The family cat named Alex—she had allowed it to be titled “family cat” for the sake of being kind; she belonged to her and always did belong to her since the creature wound its furry body around her leg when it was brought from the shelter—was curled up in a ball near the corner.
“Hey there, Smoochums,” she said. Smoochums. She smiled. It was a funny thing when you called your little sister (who was not so little anymore) and pet cat the same nickname.
Alex yawned but otherwise lay undaunted; she knew what her name was. Marie rolled her eyes.
Marie removed her scarf and continued after placing it over her father’s hat (the thing only made acquaintance with his balding head once after it was purchased at a rundown flea market). The den was the next room over. She entered and immediately felt a runaway bead of sweat make its way down her forehead; the room was atypically hot, the way it sometimes heated up when her part of the Earth titled towards the sun. Her mother had always been fond of the heat, but Marie suddenly felt as if she were trapped in the sauna at her gym with the door bolted shut and her brains sizzling.
She could see her father’s bare feet propped up high on a pillow. The rest of his body hid behind the couch, presumably with a forgotten piece of pretzel held in his hands and slobber soaking the pillow. The Philadelphia Flyers game was on T.V.; there was a commercial, but she knew that hockey was the only sport that caused her Frank Tedder to feel obligated to turn the television on.
Marie looked around, looking for the cordless phone. Bobby Dunwood—her boyfriend since freshman year of high school, five years previously—had said to call his cell the moment she got a chance. She said she would be happy to, because Bobby had been so sweet about it, saying that he was terrified of the dark and needed someone’s sexy voice to get him home safely. The cradle lay on the small coffee table set up behind the couch, the empty cradle, and for a moment frustration threatened to take over her senses. Someone was always leaving the damn cordless under a couch cushion or in the bathroom or in the freezer.
“Ma?” she said. Her voice sounded as if it left her throat at a normal volume, and that was just fine because even though the house appeared to be large, one could whisper from the den and be heard from the upstairs master bedroom on the complete opposite side of the house.
No answer.
Marie called her mother’s name again, this time pushing the volume in her voice up from a six to a nine. She could see the fluorescent light pouring from the kitchen. She walked across the den (one of the Flyer’s announcers—the color commentator it sounded like; she could distinguish their voice tones in an instant—was screaming about a fight that had broken out), and pushed open the wooden kitchen door.
Katherine Tedder stood by the sink, hunched over as if she were in the midst of peeling a particularly obdurate onion. A knife protruded from her stomach and fresh blood hit the floor with a sickening splat. Marie stared and felt her throat closed. Her half-digested dinner—crappy food court pizza and some of Bobby’s movie popcorn—kicked the throat open and poured from her mouth. A shriek followed it, and she was shrieking as some sublime area of her subconscious—typically the section of her mind that remained locked—instructed her hands to grab the cordless phone off of the table.
Her feet took her to her sister’s room, which was the only bedroom located on the first floor of the house. She nearly dove in and slammed the door. An old Steve Carlton bobble head shook violently, inched forward a bit, and kissed the dresser goodbye, all before his head ceased going crazy.
A woman’s voice was speaking in her ears, monotone, but still human. Her hands had decided to take over, because her mind was in no shape to.
“911 Emergency,” she said.
Marie froze, unable to speak. MY MOTHER IS DEAD WITH A KNIFE STICKING OUT OF HER STOMACH AND HER BLOOD ROLLING THROUGH THE KITCHEN FLOOR WHICH I JUST CLEANED THIS MORNING. OH GOD. AND MY DADDY IS PROBABLY DEAD, TOO.
Whatever separated her thoughts and what she actually said—she always thought of it as some sort of filter, a sieve, perhaps—didn’t like that whole speech and decided to say: “Dead.”
“Hello? What is your emergency?”
“DEAD!” she roared. Pieces of spittle soared from her mouth with the straggling vomit. “THEY’RE DEAD!”
The bored, octave low monotone was forgotten and the woman’s real voice took control. And would you look at that, Marie thought idly, all I had to say was “dead”.
“Ma’am, first I’m going to need you to calm down and explain to me what exactly is going on.”
Marie swallowed and cringed as the throw up in her mouth was reintroduced to her esophagus. She took a deep breath. “Okay. My boyfriend dropped me off a few minutes ago outside of my house. He made sure I got in okay, and then I saw him pull away and I went in and closed the door. I walked in my living room and didn’t really pay attention, but I thought my dad was sleeping. Then I went in the kitchen to look for the phone to call my boyfriend and there was blood everywhere and my mom was in there.” She paused and a sob that originated deep from her chest left her mouth in a wail. “There was blood everywhere.”
“Both of them, ma’am?”
“Excuse me?”
“Both your mother and your father? They are not breathing at all?”
“THERE’S A GODDAMN KNIFE STICKING OUT OF MY MOTHER’S STOMACH I DIDN’T CHECK IF SHE’S BREATHING!” Her chest was heaving up and down and her heart felt the same way when she once drank enough coffee late at night to capsize any previous thoughts of sleep.
“Is there anybody there with you, ma’am? Anybody in the house?”
Marie took another deep breath and felt her heart regain control. There was a calm voice in her ear (a cop, an authority of the law) and it encouraged her not to descend into insanity. She hardly blinked; her mother’s blood was the only thing lurking behind her closed eyelids.
“I don’t know,” Marie said. “I have no idea. I don’t know who else is in the house. There could be anyone in the house…” Obviously, right? They didn’t do that to themselves, did they?
“Where are you now, ma’am?”
“In my sister’s room. She’s gone, though. She went out earlier to her friend’s.”
“Are you 9466 or forty-four, ma’am?” Marie could almost hear the woman’s finger nails typing on her computer.
“Six six. Please, as fast as you can.”
“Okay, I just dispatched two ambulances and law enforcement. Here’s what I want you to do. What I would like you to do is get out of the house as fast as you can and lock yourself in your car. Do not wait outside. You have a car, right?”
Marie nodded, as if the woman was sitting on the bed. “Yes.” Her sister’s face rose from the ashes of her disseminated thoughts. “Well, no. My sister took the Explorer to her friend’s.” She sobbed.
“Okay, ma’am. I want you to stay on the phone with me, okay?”
She sniffed and placed her hand over the majority of her mouth. “Okay.”
“Is there a way you can lock your door, your sister’s door?”
“They won’t, I mean they won’t lock. Would it be okay if I called somebody, like my boyfriend? He’s probably worried sick.” And the thought of Bobby driving home on a dark, tortuous lane, clutching his small cell phone acted as a catalyst for a fresh batch of tears and wails.
“No, no, dear, just stay on the phone with me, okay? They should be there in a few minutes…” The woman paused. “I need you just to bear with me and wait this out. It’ll be okay. What’s your name, hon?”
“Marie. Marie Tedder.”
“Okay, Marie. When was the last time you heard from your parents and your sister? Do you remember?”
“Last time I talked to my mom was when she called me around four P.M. at my boyfriend’s house before we left for the mall. And I didn’t see or talk to my dad since early this morning. My sister not since yesterday. My mom told me she was taking my car.”
“So that last time you talked to your mother was about four o’clock this afternoon.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Is the front door to your house open? Did you lock it when you came in?”
“I—” Marie couldn’t remember. “I have no idea. I—”
Her sister’s bedroom door flew open. The cordless phone slithered from her hands, and her ears vaguely caught the woman saying “ma’am, ma’am, ma’am, is everything okay, ma’am?” She couldn’t scream.
There was a knife. And blood.
And nothing. Screaming silence.
2
Marie Tedder was discovered at 9:42:32 P.M. on her sister Fallon’s bedroom floor. There was a crumpled note pinned to Marie Tedder’s skull:
Dear Family, Police, or whoever else:
So my son thought he was a vampire. Maybe he was. I don’t know. It’s not funny, so don’t laugh. One day he woke up and there was blood on his pillow. I got mad at first because I just washed his linens and shit. He said it was a nosebleed. There was no reason for me not to believe him. He’s been having chronic nosebleeds since he was four. One time he filled a whole bucket up with his nose and sinus blood.
I think it started with the nosebleed, but maybe not, I’m not sure. I’m not a doctor or anything. Even if I was I still probably wouldn’t have a clue. When he was an infant he had a bad fever, the worst I’ve ever seen, and we had to take him to the E.R. They said his temperature was like 104. He almost died. The antibiotics turned his two front teeth yellow. They’re still yellow. My husband was around then. He ran off with some fat slut named Ashley. One time I caught them in bed together. But now I sorta wish he was here. His shoulder absorbed tears well.
Anyway, my son took a shower after the first nosebleed and when he got out I could see that there were marks all up and down his arms. They looked like bite marks. I asked him if he maybe had bitten himself in his sleep but he started yelling at me and stormed in his room and slammed the door. Pimples lined his forehead, but as a mother I was supposed to look past them.
He started to get hungry after that, REALLY damn hungry, and that surprised me. He was almost sixteen, and for his whole life he had been a finicky eater. After the nose or arm bleed he seemed to wanna eat everything in sight. He ate me out of house and home.
Then one day he told me he was a vampire, and at first I sort of laughed and called him a creep. His face was real serious and he said he ain’t lying. He said he had been sleeping for five hundred years and woke up and was hungry as hell. He even gave himself a name they called him (meaning his friends) and it sounded real enough. I took him to a therapist.
A week later our whole house was shaking really bad, and I went up to my son’s room to investigate and he was just jumping up and down on his floor. When he saw me he started to scream. He was naked. I asked him what the hell was he doing and he said he ate the dog, Charlie. He wasn’t lying. The doggie’s bones were piled in the corner of his room and there was blood everywhere.
So my son broke down and said he had one more quest to do and he needed my help and then he said after I helped him I could send him to jail or wherever and forget about him. He said he needed to kill a girl (he called her a witch, and I think he meant a real one) named Fallon or something or other and that they met through a group of friends when they went to sacrifice animals in the woods. But Fallon got scared and threatened to tell and my son said they need to sacrifice her now.
I drove him here. That’s it. I guess I’m guilty as hell, too, but he’s my son and there’s something wrong with him and I didn’t know what to do. Anyway, I hope you can understand my reasoning for it. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Sorry about the mess.
There was no signature.
