Her Dear and Loving Husband (27 page)

James couldn’t look at the reporter.  

“There was nothing tender about it,” Hempel said. “My father was dead but his eyes were open, gazing lifelessly at me, seeing somewhere far beyond the forest. His face was frozen into the mask of horror he wore when he saw what was coming. I don’t know why the vampire didn’t attack me. Maybe he was satiated after feeding on my father. He didn’t seem to notice me.” Hempel dabbed at his forehead again. “I have been haunted by that night ever since. When I told my mother how my father was killed, she didn’t believe me. She was so upset she brought me to see a psychiatrist. He prescribed medication, but when I still insisted that a vampire killed my father he admitted me to the mental hospital. He had to treat my delusions, as he called them. I was telling the truth, I had seen it myself, but no one believed me. So I have dedicated my life to studying vampires, understanding them, hunting them, and now I can begin to prove they’re not merely legends or delusions, but real and here among us. People need to know so they can protect themselves from the evil ones, the ones that will kill your father right in front of you. I have proof now, so people will have to believe me.”

James waited while the reporter seemed to struggle against the violent memories. He had to speak when he could no longer stand the silence.   

“Not seeing someone during the day doesn’t mean he’s a vampire. Neither does not seeing him eat or drink. You don’t see other people use the restroom, but you know they do. Is that next? Are you going to follow me into the restroom?”

Hempel said nothing. He looked like an attorney in a court case where he expected the suspect to confess after a particularly moving testimony. 

     “During the Salem Witch Trials,” James said, “innocent people were falsely accused of witchcraft. Some were coerced into false confessions, and others who weren’t witches were hung for witchery. What will happen if you’re successful starting a new hunt? You’re just like the magistrates from 1692. Your decision about who is guilty has already been made no matter what anyone else has to say. You’ve made your decision about me and declared me guilty without allowing me to defend myself. That makes for a dangerous environment where lies and madness breed. I don’t want any part of it.”

“You seem to know a lot about the witch trials, Professor. Were you there?”

“I’m thirty years old.”

Hempel remained unmoved. James knew it was time to play the one hand he held that could make this nightmare go away.

“I have to go to class,” James said, looking at the time on his cell phone. “Meet me here tomorrow and we’ll figure out how to settle this amicably so I can prove my innocence to your accusations and we can both walk away satisfied and be done with this.”

“I have meetings and a deadline tomorrow,” Hempel said. “How about Friday night?”

“I don’t have time Friday night. Friday during the day would be better.”       

Hempel sat upright on the stone bench. He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “You would meet me here during the day?” He looked like a boy who just learned that his best friend was imaginary, air in his head, never really there. 

“Have I ever said I wouldn’t meet you during the day?”  

Hempel thought a moment. “Very well, then. I’ll see you here at the library on Friday. At noon.”

James laughed. “Very well, Mr. Hempel. Friday at noon. But on one condition: after you see me during the day you’ll stop this nonsense.”

“Yes,” said Hempel, extending his hand, “I’ll agree to that.” James hesitated, but he stretched out his hand. Hempel studied the sallow, blue-toned flesh. “You’re still cold, Professor. Did you know vampires are cold?”

Hempel walked away, though he turned back as if he had an afterthought. 

“By the way,” he said, “I recently reread
Dracula
and I realized I made a mistake when I referenced Van Helsing on Halloween. You’re aware of the mistake, I assume.”

James nodded. It didn’t pay to deny what he knew about the story.

“And what was my mistake?”

“Though Van Helsing is known as a vampire hunter, he was indeed a vampire slayer. He killed the three vampire sisters living in Castle Dracula.”

The reporter nodded as he disappeared into the shadows the campus lights traced on the ground. James felt a crashing wave of melancholy sweep over him. Friday at noon was not far away. He felt himself pulled in deeper when he realized he didn’t know how he was going to tell Sarah. He saw her through the tinted glass doors of the library and couldn’t bring himself to go in. He couldn’t face her yet. While he paced outside he called Jennifer and told her about his plans. Jennifer did everything she could to talk him out of it.

“It’s the only way,” he said.

When he walked into the library he saw Sarah behind the librarians’s desk. He went to her, kissed her lips, trying to seem casual, as though there was nothing that could be wrong in the world because she made everything right. But Sarah must have sensed something was bothering him because he saw her worried eyes.

“It’s nothing,” he said to her unasked question. “I’ll talk to you after class. Don’t worry.”

Class went by quickly that night. It was Monday night, his poetry seminar. It was Timothy’s turn to present, and the boy recited Langston Hughes’s “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” The words meant something to anyone who wanted to understand, but to someone who had lived many generations, watching one civilization meld into the next, seeing wisdom passed from the tide to the shore to the people, it was particularly meaningful. Yes, James thought as he listened to Timothy, my soul has grown deep like the rivers. He hoped his river would not run dry on Friday. There could be no drought this time.

He waited until they were back at their house to tell her. She was frantic. She shuddered with the same barely contained frenzy he had seen the night she learned she might be the reincarnation of Elizabeth. 

“No, James. No!”

In a matter of moments her frenzy turned into fear turned into melancholy turned into frustration. It pained him to see her so upset, and he almost changed his mind about meeting Hempel. Yet if he didn’t go through with the plan the consequences would be palpable. The reporter had him in a trap and wouldn’t let go. 

“We just found each other again,” she said. “How can you do this now? You promised you’d never leave me ever.”

“I’m not leaving you, Sarah. I’m going out in the sun. You do it every day.”

“But you could die.”

“I’ll be fine.” He led her to the sofa and helped her sit. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have told you sooner. I kept hoping Hempel would give up, but he hasn’t. I can’t let him tell the world the truth. It’s too dangerous.”

Sarah sat with her head in her hands, leaning forward, as if she were trying to stop herself from falling over. He waited for her to say something, but she couldn’t speak. Finally, she looked at him and held out her hands, pleading. He sat next to her and took her hands in his.

“There has to be another way,” she said.

“There isn’t. I have to prove to Kenneth Hempel that I’m not what he thinks I am.”

“But you are.”   

“That makes it harder, but not impossible. Meeting him at the library during the day is the best way to do it. He seemed surprised I’d agree to it, so I think I have the upper hand by going through with it. And he agreed that if he saw me during the day he’d stop harassing me.” 

“Can’t you eat or drink something in front of him? We could have him over for dinner one night.”

“I don’t think that would be enough by itself. Think about it: you could drink blood if you wanted to. You wouldn’t like it, but you could do it. It’s the same for me with food. I don’t know if people think we can’t eat food. They think we don’t because we drink blood. Being outside during the day is different because that’s the first thing people think about—we can’t be in the sun—and either I’m in the sun or I’m not. That must have been the hook that got him to agree to leave me alone.” 

“Would it really be that bad if people knew the truth?”

“Imagine the madness of the witch trials with twenty-first century technology.” 

He could tell she was suffering. She trembled as if she were cold, as if the cold were coming from inside herself. He wanted to put his arms around her and pull her close, but he knew there was little he could do to warm her.  

“All those nightmares I’ve had look like rainbows and ice cream compared to the visions flashing behind my eyes right now,” she said. “I keep seeing you contorted in agony, going up in flames, reduced to a mound of ashes, suffering in horrible ways. James…”  

“Sarah, listen to me. If Hempel makes it public, about me, about Jocelyn, or Timothy, or anyone else, he’ll unleash panic everywhere. There are others watching to see if he goes public with his proof, whatever it is, and they may try to retaliate in their own way. Hempel could start a new hunt that will be so much more far reaching than the witch hunts because the world is so much smaller now. You know as well as I do what happens when hysteria breaks loose in a society. People will become afraid and start seeing vampires in every nook and shadow. And they may catch some. What do you think they’re going to do to the ones they catch? And then people will start looking at their friends and neighbors and wonder if they’re vampires too. It will be bad enough if some real ones are implicated, but what’s going to stop innocent people from being accused? And if innocent people are accused, how will they help themselves if people fabricate evidence against them? They won’t be able to be helped any more now than I was able to help you then.”

Sarah stood up, shaking her head as if she were pushing the memories away. “I can see them,” she said. “The pointing fingers. The false accusations. The hysteria. The hangings. Dying for no real reason at all.” 

“Then you know what I say is true. What if I can stop it this time? What if I can convince Hempel his whole hunt is a waste of time?”

“But why does it have to be you?”

“I think he thinks catching me would be like catching the vampire that killed his father.”

“Why?”

“He thinks I look like the vampire that killed his father.”

“Did you kill his father?”

“No. His father died about thirty years ago. I was long past hunting by then.” James paced the room, venting his nervous energy. “Besides, you’re assuming the worst will happen. I went out in the sunlight once and I didn’t die.”

“No, but you ran back inside in agony and you haven’t been out since.”

“But I’m still here. And I’ll be here Friday night. I can stand a lot.”

“You can stand anything but sunlight.”

“For you, I can stand the light of a hundred suns at noon on the equator in June if that’s what I have to do to come back to you. I’ve been waiting over three hundred years to see your face again. I’m not leaving you now.” He grasped Sarah’s hands and held them to his chest. “Don’t you see? I’m doing this for you. What will happen to you if everyone learns the truth about me? They could accuse you too. How can I subject you to that again?”  He tried to wipe her tears from her cheeks, but she pulled away. “I couldn’t help you the first time, Sarah. I won’t let that happen again.” 

“Are we back to that? Are you still blaming yourself?  Please, let it go. It wasn’t your fault then, and what’s happening now isn’t your fault either.” 

James didn’t know what to say. In fact, he had been feeling like the whole mess with Kenneth Hempel was somehow his fault. He must have trusted one person too many with his secret, done some unhuman thing when he thought no one was looking, used too obvious a food source at the local hospital, crossed one line too many. He wasn’t human. No matter how human he challenged himself to be, no matter how well he controlled his natural instincts and basic cravings, no matter if he assimilated so well he was virtually undetectable in their society, he was a natural predator of humans and he would never be welcome in their world. For centuries he had lived on the fringe, moving frequently, creating few ties anywhere. Now, with Sarah in his world, he wanted to engage fully in life again. She gave him a reason to wake up every evening. He wanted her to be his wife again. But as long as Kenneth Hempel wanted to expose him he would have to live in fear of having his newfound happiness pulled like a trick tablecloth from under him. He didn’t want to live that way. He didn’t want Sarah to live that way. She suffered enough before.  

“If I don’t do everything I can to stop him, then this time it will be my fault. You have to trust me. I’ll be all right.”

Sarah slumped forward, her shoulders limp. “There’s nothing I can say to change your mind, is there? You’ve decided. No matter what I say, you’re going out in the sunlight, Friday at noon, a western-style showdown between the vampire and the vampire hunter, both of you ready to pull the trigger at the first sign of movement from the other.”  

“I’ll be all right,” he said again.

When she finally calmed enough, James carried her to bed and she fell asleep in his arms. She slept fitfully, tossing and turning. He heard her pull herself out of bed about an hour before dawn.  

“Sarah? Are you all right?”

From his desk in the great room he watched her come out of the bedroom with the blanket around her shoulders. It was spring and warmer in the house, but she shivered as she pulled the cover closer. He thought she looked like she would never feel warm again. 

“Did you have a bad dream?” he asked.

“No.”

She walked to his desk and stood behind him, rubbing his shoulders as he shifted through the papers in front of him. When he felt her hands on him he leaned back into her, allowing her warmth to comfort him. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Attempting to grade midterms. I’ve been teaching for two hundred years and every term the students get lazier. What’s wrong with this picture?” He showed her the paper.

“The student didn’t even take the web links out.”

“I remember the days when students used to at least pretend to read the books they were assigned.” He picked up his pen, drew a zero, then crumpled the paper and tossed it into the trashcan. “I’m starting to think I need another line of work. You need help at the library?”