“Who else?”
“What do you want?” asked Luke, turning on the lamp next to his bed.
The old man came into view, wearing a long black coat and a beret. “Surprised to see me, gaduche?” he said, turning off the flashlight and putting it into his coat pocket.
“How’s your leg?” asked Luke, trying to swallow.
“The wasp makes the eye cry out,” said the old man with a sigh. “That Gracie, she could bite.”
“What are you doing here? Where’s Darene?”
“I’m here to give you this. ” Sfortunado reached his gloved hand into the breast pocket of the coat and brought out a thick roll of cash circled by a red rubber band. “Three thousand,” he said, and dropped the money onto the top of the nearby dresser.
“You’re giving me three thousand dollars?” said Luke.
“Your cut of the diamond.”
“That was real?”
“What I say?” He smiled.
“And Darene?”
“They were called back to the old country for their shame.”
“Shame for what?”
“They didn’t do it. I told them they should, but my nephew loves his uncle.”
“You’ve got the gritchino in you now, don’t you? After Gracie bit you, you got it in you,” said Luke.
Sfortunado shambled over and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Are you going to eat my kidney?” asked Luke, pulling his legs away from the old man.
“Not tonight,” said Sfortunado. “I came to ask you to please, now, put a brass nail into my head.” He put his thumb to the spot above the bridge of his nose. “Darene and her father could not, and now they have been banished from here. I couldn’t go back with them because I have the gritchino in me. Until I die, I’m almost the same old Sfortunado, but after that I will be as Gracie was.”
Luke listened and shook his head. “Forget it,” he said.
Sfortunado reached into the pockets of the long coat and brought out a mallet and a long brass nail. “You see,” said the old man, “there are no Cabadula here anymore. When I come from the coffin, there will be no one to stop me. I will feast on many. This will happen.”
“No way,” said Luke.
“When vanquished by the nail, like gritchino, I will evaporate. And then I am gone and Darene and her family can return. You miss the girl, gaduche, I know,” he said, and reached the mallet and nail toward Luke.
“No!” yelled Luke.
Sfortunado stood up. “Do it,” he growled. When his lip trembled, the sharp tips of his canines were visible. He took a step toward Luke, but from down the hallway outside the bedroom door there came the sound of footsteps on the stairs. The old man’s head turned, like a bird’s, listening.
“My parents are coming,” said Luke.
“Turn off the light,” said Sfortunado.
The instant the dark came on, Luke knew he shouldn’t have followed the order.
“Think about it, gaduche. When you are ready, turn on your phone and whisper my name three times. I will come with the mallet and nail.”
The doorknob turned.
Sfortunado stepped back, and his silhouette melted into the dark. Then the door opened, the lights came on, and Luke’s parents were there, but the old man had vanished.
“We heard voices and then you yelling, ‘No,’” said his father.
“Where’d this money come from?” asked his mother.
Luke couldn’t answer. He turned on his side, curled up in a ball, and pulled the blanket over his head.
Sunbleached
by NATHAN BALLINGRUD
“We’re God’s beautiful creatures,” the vampire said, something like joy leaking into its voice for the first time since it had crawled under this house four days ago. “We’re the pinnacle of his art. If you believe in that kind of thing, anyway. That’s why the night is our time. He hangs jewels in the sky for us. People, they think we’re at some kinda disadvantage because we can’t go out in the sunlight. But who needs it. The day is small and cramped. You got your one lousy star.”
“You believe in God?” Joshua asked. The crawl space beneath his house was close and hot; his body was coated in a dense sheen of sweat. A cockroach crawled over his fingers, and he jerked his hand away. Late summer pressed onto this small Mississippi coastal town like the heel of a boot. The heat was an act of violence.
“I was raised Baptist. My thoughts on the matter are complicated.”
The crawl space was contained partially by sheets of aluminum siding and partially by decaying wooden latticework. It was by this latter that Joshua crouched, hiding in the hot spears of sunlight that intruded into the shadows and made a protective cage around him.
“That’s why it’s so easy for us to seduce. God loves us, so the world does too. Seduction is your weapon, kid. You’re what — fifteen? You think seduction is pumping like a jack-rabbit in your momma’s car. You don’t know anything. But you will, soon enough.”
The vampire moved in the shadows, and abruptly the stink of burned flesh and spoiled meat greased the air. It had opened a wound in itself, moving. Joshua knew that it tried to stay still as much as it could, to facilitate the healing, but the slowly shifting angles of the sunbeams made that impossible. He squinted his eyes, trying to make out a shape, but it was useless. He could sense it back there, though — a dark, fluttering presence. Something made of wings.
“Invite me in,” it said.
“Later,” Joshua said. “Not yet. After you finish changing me.”
The vampire coughed; it sounded like a snapping bone. Something wet hit the ground. “Well, come here then, boy.” It moved again, this time closer to the amber light. Its face emerged from the shadows like something rising from deep water. It hunched on its hands and knees, swinging its head like a dog trying to catch a scent. Its face had been burned off. Thin parchment strips of skin hung from blackened sinew and muscle. Its eyes were dark, hollow caves. Even in this wretched state, though, it seemed weirdly graceful. A dancer pretending to be a spider.
For the second time, Joshua laid himself on the soft earth, acrawl with ants and cockroaches, centipedes and earthworms, positioning his upper body beyond the reach of the streaming sunlight. The light’s color was deepening, its angles rising until they were almost parallel to the ground. Evening was settling over the earth.
The vampire pressed the long fingers of one charred hand onto his chest, as delicately as a lover. Heat flushed Joshua’s body. Every nerve ending was a trembling candle flame. The vampire touched its lips to his throat; its tongue sought the jugular, the heavy river inside. It slid its teeth into his skin.
A sharp, lovely pain.
Joshua stared at the underside of his home: the rusted pipes, the duct tape, the yellow sheets of insulation. It looked so different from beneath. So ugly. He heard footsteps overhead as somebody he loved moved around inside it, attending to mysterious offices.
Four days ago: he’d stood on the front porch of his home in the deep blue hollow of early morning, watching the waters of the Gulf roll onto the beach. It was his favorite time of day: that sweet, lonesome hinge between darkness and daylight, when he could pretend he was alone in the world and free to take it on his own terms. In a few moments he would go inside and wake his five-year-old brother, Michael, make him breakfast, and get them both ready for school, while their mother still slept in after her night shift at Red Lobster.
But this time belonged to him.
The vampire came from the direction of town, trailing black smoke and running hard across the no-man’s-land between his house and the nearest standing building. There’d been a neighborhood there once, but the hurricane wiped it away a few years ago. What remained had looked like a mouthful of shattered teeth, until the state government came through and razed everything to the ground. Their own house had been badly damaged — the storm had scalped it of its top floor, depositing it somewhere out in the Gulf — but the rest had stood its ground, though it canted steeply to one side now, and on breezy days you could feel the wind coming through the walls.