Her Dear and Loving Husband (14 page)

James turned back to the book in his hand, though the sentences hardly made sense to him. The words scattered into letters and the letters spread across the pages like spilled alphabet soup.

“I don’t know where she is,” he said. 

“I’ll have to come back another time. Good night, Professor.”

James tried to go back to work, but he couldn’t concentrate. Now he was concerned that Hempel would involve Sarah in his quest. James remembered suddenly what it felt like to be hunted—trapped, searching frantically for a way out, hoping your captor wouldn’t end you right there. The recollection of being the weaker one shocked him. He hadn’t felt the torment of being the hunted since the Salem Witch Trials. His Elizabeth had died in the trap. Now, Hempel was reveling in his role as the hunter, piecing together a plot meant to ambush James into confessing his truth. The witch hunters had done something similar over three centuries before—only they tried to force their victims into confessing a truth that wasn’t true. But Hempel would be disappointed. He wouldn’t succeed in his quest. Not if James could help it. James considered following Hempel to his green Buick in the parking lot, but he shook his head, forcing himself to stop thinking that way. As much as he enjoyed the idea of making the reporter disappear, he knew that wasn’t a practical solution to his problem. He turned his thoughts to a far more pleasant topic.

Sarah.

The rest of his nights looked pale compared to the sharp contrast of color he saw when he was with her. He knew he hurt her when he didn’t kiss her. It hurt him, too, because he had been wanting to kiss those lips for oh so many years. He dreamed of it every day. But standing in front of her house that night he couldn’t do it. She looked exactly as Elizabeth used to, dressed in modern clothes, perhaps, her dark curls loose and uncovered. She even stood on her toes and pointed her chin up waiting for his lips to touch hers, just as Elizabeth had. Still, in that moment he was more sad than happy to see her that way. He didn’t know who he was going to kiss, Elizabeth or Sarah, and he was afraid his confusion would be too obvious. He didn’t want to hurt Sarah because she thought he only wanted her because she reminded him of Lizzie. And besides, before there could be physical contact between them, lips on lips, skin on skin, she needed to know the truth. He was angry with himself for keeping his secret from her so long, and he was upset that his inability to tell her had kept them apart. He didn’t want to be apart from her anymore. He would tell her.  

How long he stood in the stacks, staring at the same page in the book he held forgotten in his hand, musing over Sarah, he didn’t know. Suddenly he heard Jennifer say his name. He looked at her through the space between the stacks and saw her speaking into the telephone receiver as if she were talking to someone on another line.

“James, if you can hear me nod your head.” He nodded, but he turned his eyes to the book as if he were reading. “Hempel left the library a while ago, but I don’t want anyone to see me talking to you right now. It turns out he’s been snooping around campus all day, trying to get someone in the office to give him copies of the transcripts from your degrees, trying to find where else you’ve taught, where else you’ve lived.”

James walked from the stacks and sat in a chair further from the librarians’s desk. He turned the pages of the book he held and waited for more.    

“He’s been asking your students if they know any personal information about you, who your friends are, your family, if anyone knows where you are when you’re not on campus. And there's something else. My mother talked to Sarah. I know what happened.” She stopped, perhaps waiting for some response, but James didn’t move. “Did you know her ex-husband wants her back?”

He faced Jennifer, the surprise obvious in his wide eyes and open mouth. Anyone could have seen them communicating from too far across the library, even Kenneth Hempel, but James was stunned and his defenses were down and he was hearing too well in public.

Jennifer hissed into the phone. “Turn around!” When he looked away, his eyes unfocused on the pages of the book, she continued. “She found out her ex-husband asks about her, and he told a friend he wants her back. I thought you should know.”

That was the moment when James learned about another kind of madness, the kind you feel when you’ve been unwilling to tell the woman you love your truth and then you lose her to someone else’s waiting arms. The madness he knew centuries before belonged to others, but this time the madness was his own. He felt Sarah slipping from his grasp because of the wall he kept between them. He was making the decision to keep her in the dark regarding his secret as if she were a child, too immature to handle such sensitive information. That wouldn’t do. There were no more questions in his mind—he had to tell her the truth so she could decide for herself. She had a right to know. Would she want to be with him the way he was? He couldn't say. She might think it’s madness, this bizarre story he was going to tell her, which is how any reasonable person would respond. She might not mind. Or she might mind very much and run in fear, leaving him alone once more. He didn’t know if he could stand the loneliness again. But he had to tell her. That night. He felt Jennifer’s questioning eyes on him as he disappeared into the elevator up to the third floor. He had to consider the consequences of what he was going to do.  

CHAPTER 12

At first Sarah thought Jennifer was mocking her, or maybe recording their conversation on the camera on her cell phone to post on the Internet, the video of the gullible girl talked into believing in something she shouldn’t believe in.

As soon as Jennifer walked into her house, Sarah sensed something was wrong. Jennifer sat on the sofa, petting the cat, avoiding Sarah’s gaze.

“What is it, Jennifer?”

“James is going to kill me. He doesn’t know I’m here.”

Sarah sucked in her breath. “Why doesn’t he know you’re here?”

“I knew you had to know and he didn’t say he was going to tell you so I thought I should tell you, but I know he’s going to be upset because he didn’t tell me I could tell you and…”

Sarah held up her hand. “Please, Jen. What do you want?”

“I want you to believe me.”

“What do you want me to believe?”

Jennifer paced to the window, pulled aside the blinds, and looked out as if she could see something lingering across the clear, cold winter night.  

“Do you believe there are things out there that are real but defy any sensible explanation? Do you believe in things you can’t necessarily understand, things like supernatural powers?”

“Like ghosts? I don’t believe in ghosts. Why? Are we going on a ghost hunt?”

“Not exactly.”

Jennifer sat back on the sofa, intent on the cat’s black fur, smoothing it down the cat’s back. “What do you know about vampires?” She turned to see Sarah’s response.

“Vampires?” Sarah laughed. “I guess I know as much as anyone else. They come out at night. They attack people and drink their blood. People like to watch movies and read books about them. Why?” 

“First of all, you can’t believe everything you read. A lot of it is hearsay—folktales from centuries ago.” Jennifer thought for a moment. “Do you think they could be real? Vampires, I mean.”

 “It doesn’t seem likely that vampires are real. There’s so much about them that doesn’t make sense. How can something come back from the dead?”   

“I know it doesn’t sound logical. It even sounds silly if you think about it. But did you ever think you might actually know a vampire?” 

Sarah was ready to call in the joke, but Jennifer was so serious Sarah couldn’t smile about it any more.  

“Are you trying to tell me you’re a vampire? I thought you said you’re a witch.”

Sarah jumped when the banging struck her door. The thuds were awful, threatening, and Sarah thought she saw the leering, laughing, pock-faced monster leap out at her from the shadows, iron chains in hand, ready to bind her and drag her away. When she saw James through the window she relaxed, but only until she heard his frustration.  

“Jennifer!” he yelled.

Sarah opened the door and he brushed past her with barely restrained fury. 

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded. “What gives you the right…”

Jennifer shrugged as if there were no problem, everything was fine. “You weren’t going to tell her and she has the right to know.”

“I was going to tell her! I was coming over here to tell her!”

Jennifer backed out the open door. “I’m sorry, James. I was only trying to help.”

“I’ve been taking care of myself for over three hundred years. I don’t need your help.”

“Very good, then. I’ll leave.” She smiled at James. “Now no biting tonight, Professor, or you’ll hear from me tomorrow.” 

“That’s not funny.” He slammed the door behind her. 

Sarah sat on the couch, her head in her hands. 

“Will someone please tell me what’s going on?”

 James sat next to her. She thought, as she looked into his night-dark eyes, that she had never seen anyone look so serious, not even at an unexpected funeral.

“I am a vampire.” 

Sarah laughed. Another joke. All right. She had a sense of humor. She would go along.

“Vampires don’t exist. They’re legends and nonsense.”

“I’m real, Sarah. Most humans think we don’t exist, yet you only have to look around during the dark night hours to discover us everywhere. We’re ghost-skinned, black-eyed, and dead to the touch, but otherwise we seem the same as you. After all, we were human once. We’re everywhere you are, we do everything you do—we walk, we sleep, we drink, we love. Forever.”

 Sarah shuddered. She realized, despite all of her reasoning and logic, that he was telling the truth. It was absurd, but she believed him.  

She was afraid to look at him. “That’s impossible,” she said, unable to accept the fact that she believed him. “I think I would have noticed something like that about someone I’ve been spending so much time with.”  

“I decided a long time ago to integrate myself into society as well as I can. But there are differences. I can’t go out during the day so I go out at night. And my human body is dead.”

“You’re dead?”

“No one’s perfect, Sarah.”

 He fiddled with his eyeglasses, a curious gesture from a man who was supposed to be immortal.  

“I’ve never heard of a near-sighted vampire before.”  

James laughed. He sounded relieved. He took the glasses off and waved them in the air. “They’re just glass. They help me blend in better.” He folded the frames and slid them into his shirt pocket. 

“This is ridiculous,” Sarah said.

“I know, but it’s true.”

He took her hand, the first time he touched her skin. She shuddered as she noticed the dead-blue undertone to his pale complexion, the flat blackness of his eyes without his glasses. Suddenly, she realized that, though he had placed her hand on his chest beneath his button-down shirt, there was nothing there. No warmth. No breath. No heartbeat. Nothing.

It wasn’t a joke anymore. She leapt off the sofa, away from him. She struggled to stay calm though she wanted to hide behind silver or garlic or brandish a wooden stake.               

“Don’t you think that’s something you should have told me sooner?” she said.

“I would never hurt anyone—I’m past all that—but I would certainly never hurt you.” He smiled in a strained attempt at lightening the mood. “I’m harmless, like a trained tiger.”

“Some tigers will forget their training and attack using their instincts.”

“I don’t forget my training.”

He looked at her, through her, as if he wanted to see what she was thinking, as if he wanted to know her heart. Would she be afraid of him now that she knew the truth, his eyes seemed to ask? At that moment she didn’t know. She didn’t know what to say. She stayed back, away from him, watching him. She looked out the window, trying to see what Jennifer had been staring at with such intensity, but all she saw was bare-branched, snow-covered trees and the shimmer of crystalline ice reflecting on the road.

“I think you need to leave,” she said. 

“Sarah…”

“You need to leave.”

He stood up and hesitated, as if he wanted to go to her. But Sarah held her arms tight around her chest, her hands around her neck, wondering if he was going to bare his fangs, spring on her, grab her in some preternatural lock, and drink her blood for dessert. She didn’t want him anywhere near her. 

He paused with his hand on the knob. “Will I see you soon?” he asked.

“I don’t think so.”

He opened the door and stepped into the frigid winter night. “Let me know when you’re ready to talk,” he said. And then he went away.

Sarah sat on the sofa, struggling to clear her head enough to have a coherent thought. Nothing made sense. Language had lost its meaning. It was all gibberish and nonsensical syllables and half-used sounds. Knowledge evaporated into useless ideas. After an hour of emptiness, she gave up. She double-checked her windows and doors, making sure they were locked, before she went to sleep.

I am standing in front of a tree. The tree is scarred, hunched, ugly, not beautiful like other trees because this tree knows its sinister purpose. There are twisted ropes swinging from the strongest branch, ropes meant to hang the five women waiting there. The women are numb and resolute, confused and terrified. They should not be here. They have committed no crime. They know this is the last sight they shall see, a riled, jeering crowd that cheers for their executions, happy to see the convicted witches go back Satan’s way. But these women are innocent and they shan’t confess to a crime they didn’t commit because they are afraid of the damnation of their souls. They believe there shall be no peace for them in the next life if they admit to being demons in this one. They are praying for some release from this nightmare, for forgiveness for their trespasses, for eternal salvation. The one standing before the hempen skeleton rope is frail but firm in her stance. She shall not be afraid. The reverend, with his God-fearing way, asks her one last time to confess. The woman has already seen her young daughters caught up in the madness of the witch hunts and she shall not be swayed.