Pages From a Vampire's Journal (4 page)

“This will sting a bit” she quipped.

“No, wait a min..!

He gritted his teeth as she poured a few drops of merlot onto his wound.

“You’re spoilin’ my party, darlin”.

“The party isn’t over yet” she remarked.

She sat up and kissed him deeply, letting a bit of merlot slip onto his tongue.

A few hours later, Trixie stood up from the pew, squinting around the church with a gargantuan headache. Cedric wasn’t around. The eeriness of the silence around her was beginning to get on her nerves. She looked down at her watch. It said 4:45am. She got up and picked up the wine bottle. Empty. She wondered where this god forsaken priest was, or if he even came around at all after hours. She walked back to the hallway where they had entered the church, her footsteps making no sound at all on the plush red carpet fit for a king’s throne room. She thought maybe Cedric was in the church restroom. Or maybe not, she thought. They hadn’t drunk enough to get sick, only enough to engage in some harmless flirtation and sensual engagement.

Trixie walked up to a large portrait on the wall. The painting was some historic bishop of theological importance, obviously. She looked down at the inscription which read:

“Di immortales virtutem approbare, non adhibere debent”. She had taken a bit of Latin, translating it as “
We may expect the gods to approve virtue, but not to endow us with it.
”

The aged face of the bishop seemed to pierce right through her, as if to look at her with a veiled jealousy for the living. His red robes gave off an air of hierarchical royalty and authority, but of what she wasn’t really certain. It didn’t say where his archdiocese was, or if he had even had one.

She touched the corner of her lip with her pinky, tasting the last droplet of wine was present. Merlot from 1980, she thought. Funny, it didn’t taste like 1980. What was 1980 supposed to taste like? She remembered all of the things good about that year, but wine wasn’t one of them. She thought of her icons from the 80s: Daisy Duke, Hardy Boys, WKRP, and Shawn Cassidy. None of them flourished in the spotlight of media for long, their popularity seemed to wilt faster than they blossomed. She leaned a bit conservative, but for reasons she couldn’t recall. Mayhap it was only in opposition to Camilla, who flourished as a union shop leader and an adamant supporter of the Carter administration. If she had been dark, Trixie would have been light. She remembered her real mother, a lively woman who nurtured her every whim for years until she had died in an accident via a suspended, icy bridge over a raging river in December of 1981. It wasn’t as if she was identified personality wise with her real mother, but she felt as if she was cursed to have the monster Camilla come into her life, as if she had done some dastardly thing in a thousand years earlier in some previous life. Mayhap she was a Viking warrioress who enjoyed the pillaging a little too much. Or perhaps she was a mistress of Jack the Ripper, Vlad the Impaler, or Marie Antoinette.

Journal Entry 101: “
Decided to drive out to the woods and get some air today. Met two hunters who thought they were some kind of elite commandos, hunting down quail, deer and bears. I rebuked them, saying it is because of them that we don’t have mammoths, saber-toothed tigers and other majestic creatures roaming freely. They got a bit spiffy with me and called me an elf (a what?) so I drained the both of them. They tasted bloody awful, like blood refrigerated in some lab test tube. It is amazing how over-confident hunters are with their prized guns. They just stood there gawking at me while I changed form. Did they think I was turning into a nymph? Maybe I should warn them next time as to what I truly am just to gauge their response. Probably more gawking
. ”

She heard a mild thumping in the distance somewhere. She immediately thought of the raging, bleating heart of Camilla which she swore she would one day rid herself of. The thumping was just on the edge of her subconscious…as faint as a fly on a feast of saints. She walked back down the carpeted hallway towards the entrance of the church. “Perhaps Cedric had gone outside for some fresh air and couldn’t get back in” she thought. Certainly he wouldn’t have risked it with that black she-devil of a
thing
roaming about outside. Maybe he went out for a smoke, she thought. She had wondered what catholic smokers do when they had to dare a drag. Did they go outside the church building or did they take their business in the restroom? Is it a vice or is it something that providence would look the other way from as long as the stood on sacred ground? She took more steps in the direction of the exit sign down the hall. The faster she walked, the less ground she seemed to tread. The crimson red carpet rolled out like a dragon’s tongue extending to the outside world

Two fluttering shapes jotted out from behind a fake fern next to a hallway desk. She picked up her finches and kept walking slowly, trying to zero in on where the thumping was coming from. It just might have been Cedric trying to pound through the door in the storm, she thought. She extended her fingers over the door and pressed her ear to its cold surface. A bizarre ticking sound echoed gently from beyond.

Tick…tick..tick, she heard, which sounded like a cross between a pocket watch and a pendulum, swinging back and forth, hitting the metal beads that heralded the creeping of time.

She heard a light tapping on the door.

“Who is there? Cedric is that you?” she asked.

“No, it isn’t.” a lone voice remarked.

She heard the sound of panting.

“What do you want?” she asked.

There was a slight pause as if the party was thinking of the perfect answer.

“We’re looking for something. I have someone I want you to see. Please open the door.”

The accent sounded like that of a lawman looking for an outlaw.

She performed the lockstep maneuver Cedric had showed her and opened the door a crack to see who it was.

Outside, standing in the mounting snow was a tall, shadowy figure dressed in black. He stood out from the snow and wore a black cowboy hat with a ring of snowflakes crusting the rim. She thought he looked like Johnny Cash, only thinner. He tipped his hat to her before brushing the snow away from it.

“Hello, I’m Gilchrist. I am looking for someone you might have seen around this part of the neighborhood”. He spoke with a heavy-handed Mexican accent.

He pulled out a black and white photo and handed it to her.

Trixie glanced down at the photo. It was a scratched image of a black malamute. A thick, pretentious mane coiled itself around the scarred face.

The pervading ticking was louder now, coming from somewhere on the stranger dressed in black garb. It was somewhat annoying, like a broken clock fruitlessly trying to grind its gears forward.

“No sorry I haven’t seen a dog like that around here” Trixie said

“It’s not a dog. Do you work here?”

“No, but I am with someone who does. He is around here somewhere though”

“Maybe you could show this picture to him?”

Gilchrist’s eyes focused like a lens beyond her shoulder into the hallway where the dragon’s tongue stretched inward.

“Who is that? I saw something go into a room down at the end there.”

Gilchrist looked at the door suspiciously. Scratches pervaded the area near the doorknob seemed to repel the snow. He pinches something near the doorknob, sprinkles them in his hand and looked at Trixie.
“See this? This is a bit of dust from those scratches right there. Breadcrumb numero uno. That tells me the scratch happened within the last few hours. And see this? This is some hair of the dog that bit, so to speak, that was on the ground right here. That is breadcrumb numero dos. And if I may say so, you don’t wash up like yer mama taught ya to do.” He glanced at her hand.

Trixie looked down at her hand and saw a faint trace of blood from Cedric’s wound she had tended a few hours earlier.

“You know what we do to liars in old Monterrey, Mexico lassie? We string ‘em up naked and suspend them from public bridges for all to see. We do the same for snitches and thieves. And, I gotta tell you girl, you are one lousy fucking liar. It’s real grievin’ to me to see the art of lying so prostituted and pissed away in this day and age by ingrates like yourself who don’t appreciate this divine gift. And on sacred ground no less.”

He made a W shape to his faint mustache with his thumb and index finger while glancing at her legs.

“So I am gonna ask you again. And if you can’t lie properly, I’m gonna get real disappointed. That said…where did you see my beast?”

Trixie’s heart thumped so loud as to almost rip her shirt right down the middle.

“I think you heard me the first time…
lassie
.” She quipped sarcastically. She threw him an ice cold stare, as if she had just slain a thousand vampires.

“And furthermore, you ain’t in Monterrey. And you ain’t no threat to anyone in this church”

“Well you got stones little girl. What they say about books n’ covers is true I reckon. But I gots bigger ones than you do, and I’m have to say I’m gonna enjoy guttin you.”

With one hard shove he kicked-open the door, sending Trixie pummeling to the red carpeted floor face-down. She quickly turned over to look at him grinningly menacing towards her.

Gilchrist reached into his black leather coat, the kind that outlaws wore to hide their guns, and pulled out a knife fit for skinning grizzlies. He licked the corner of his lip and leaped towards her, landing on top and straddled her waste like straddling a bull in a rodeo. She could barely breathe as he pushed himself down onto her. She suddenly knew what a bird felt like in the jaws of felinity. He held up the knife to her neck to slowly make his mark.

“I’m gonna carve you a nice big smile pumpkin, real slow like so you’ll always be a smiling. Now, shhhhhh”

Gilchrist whispered, “hold sssstill. Don’t want to soil the painting now do we?”

Trixie, pinned to the carpet, breathlessly looked around the hall quickly for a weapon. Any weapon. She saw the portrait on the wall.

“
We may expect the gods to approve virtue, but not to endow us with it.
”

With every ounce of strength she had, she pulled her arm out from under his grasp, with full fidelity in mind hastily reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her only hope, raking down the avian’s beak across the eyelids of her molester. Blood sprayed from his eyelid across her face as the sharp beak scarred him a signature he could never erase. He screamed in agony, dropping the knife to clutch his pain-stricken eye. Staggering up, she watched him yell out obscenities at the bended knee, as if to plead mercy from the pious onlookers adorning the walls. Like an Olympic soccer player at the final goal, Trixie raised her leg backwards and let it fly right into the eye of Gilchrist, sending him flying into the fern, its earthy roots toppling over into his gaping wound.

Trixie grabbed her precious Pog and bolted for the oaken door.

The snow was punishing and battering down harder than ever. She ran in any direction she thought might get her closer to home, for whatever that was worth. Two beasts lay at either end of her now: Gilchrist, and Camilla. She kept running, and running, and running. Five blocks away, she slowed down to look behind her. Nothing but blinding snow and luckily enough, no Gilchrist or other beasts in sight. She tried with all might to keep from fainting, wondering if her finch was dead, if Cedric was dead, if Camilla was home, what her dad was doing…she pressed onward.

A few minutes of blurriness and despair passed and her house was finally in sight. No lights from the house revealed themselves, thank God. Walking towards the house was like walking towards on oncoming train in the darkest tunnel in the world.

She walked up to her driveway cautiously and slowly.

She stopped.

Squinting in the darkness among a billion snowflakes, she made out a silhouette of a figure standing near the front door. Her heart started to race again. The figure noticed her and quickly bolted after her. Trixie started to run…

“Wait wait wait!” Cedric yelled.

Trixie skidded to a stop and turned around.

“My god, where the hell were you??” she demanded.

She raced into his arms and wouldn’t let go. She pressed her frozen cheek against his as hard as she could.

“Well I was gonna ask the same to you!”

He thrusted his tongue into her mouth and held her as tight as he could. They embraced like lovers who had been in separate prisons on different continents, their ribs trying to interlock with each other.

Cedric took a deep breath.

“I got stuck outside the church again. The door sometimes sticks in ice storms. I banged and banged on it for a good half-hour but had to leave before I froze. I thought you might have come home. Jesus!”

“There is a guy that attacked me in the church building. I think he is knocked out! He came around looking for that thing that bit you” she stated.

“You knocked him out? Christ what did I miss?! What did you knock him out with?”

“Well its, its kinda complicated” she said, biting the corner of her lip.

“Well I guess to stay safe we had better relay this to the cops and let them handle it…lets get inside. Do you have the key?”

Trixie realized she didn’t. The brass key that opened the dragon’s den lay on top of her nightstand upstairs.

“No…” she said, rubbing her forehead.

Trixie gulped and said, “Just ring the bell. My stepmom will answer it.”

She didn’t look forward to explaining why she was out all night with the James Dean look-alike.

“Forget that I already tried. I’ve been ringing that damn bell for quite a while now and nothing”

Cedric walked over to the side of the house.
“What about the basement?”

“That’s been sealed off for a long time. My dad says they the previous owners had a meth lab in there. The chemicals they left made him ill so rather than bulldoze the house he just sealed it up. Never been in there myself”

“Meth lab, seriously? Well we have to get in otherwise we’ll freeze to death. There is a window over there”.

Rubbing his hands together he pried at the basement window like a safecracker opening a bank vault. The window gave way an inch, and then retracted to its original position.

“Damn, its one of
those
windows. The kind that are a stubborn sons of bitches in winter.”

He tried again, then success. There was just enough room for him to crawl through.

Trixie crawled in after him, her hips just barely small enough to squeeze through without tearing her clothes.

“I don’t suppose there is a light switch?” he said

Trixie checked near the cellar door that still bared a huge lock. She flicked the light switch and a lone bulb sprang to life. It smelled like they had stepped into an Egyptian tomb, unearthed for a thousand years, ignored even by the likes of thieves and termites.

Around the basement were boxes marked “old furniture” having never been thrown away, and never cared for. A rusty old bicycle hang suspended from the ceiling, it’s spokes decades old and misaligned. In the far corner what looked like a broom closet of sorts, though gauging how big the interior was didn’t look feasible from the outside. Trixie remembered her dad telling her eons ago why they were sealing this section off. They had worried about their little girl getting just as sickly as her father. Her father had signed her up for any kind of activity to stave off any sickness. Boosting her immune system he thought, was a great idea. He started signing her up for martial arts at eight years old and watched her develop into the agile young lady she was today. In hindsight this was probably the best thing her dad had ever given her.