The Otherworldlies (15 page)

Chapter 11
the sad tale of phoebe merriam

“F
ern?” Mr. Bing spoke softly, making his way back into Anderson’s Grove as gingerly as if he were trespassing. After notifying Chief Quagmire of Fern’s activities in the grove, he’d been given explicit instructions to retrieve all three of the children and bring them to Kimble & Kimble.

“Fern? Sam?” Bing raised his voice. He had no idea what condition the three might be in after what they’d overheard.

“Over here, Mr. Bing!” Lindsey said. Bing wandered to the easternmost part of the grove. Fern sat against a tree trunk, her head between her knees. Sam stared at the crown of his sister’s head, his face the color of a ghost. Lindsey looked at Bing, wide-eyed, anticipating what might happen next. The Sagebrush of Hyperion was quiet now, almost ordinary-looking, except for the small blue flames crackling at the top. Bing made a beeline for Fern.

“Fern, are you okay?” Bing questioned, crouching near her. Fern didn’t respond, still holding her head in her hands. “Fern? Did you hear what your mother and Mr. Kimble were talking about?”

“Not just that,” Lindsey said, putting her face in between Mr. Bing and Fern, anxious to weigh in. “We saw it—in the Sagebrush!” Lindsey was proud that she’d been able to channel the conversation so effectively. It had been the most impressive display of her powers yet.

Fern remained motionless. Bing refocused on Fern.

“Fern, we’re going to figure everything out, straightaway, you hear?” Fern kept her head bent in her lap. Bing whipped around and faced Lindsey.

“As for you,” he said, scowling in a way that none of those present had seen before, “just what do you think you were doing?”

“What do you mean?” Lindsey shot back.

“Using your powers of Hyperion without supervision, without a license. You’re lucky I don’t report you, carrying on as if you’ve gone through your transmutation. There’s responsibility that comes with it!”

“I don’t see how I was hurting anyone. Somebody should be helping Fern stay out of danger!”

“Look at her now,” he said, nodding his head in her direction. Fern was frozen in the same position. “Did you think about her reaction?” Lindsey’s air of defiance vanished. “It’s not right. This was no way for her to find out!” Mr. Bing, supposedly incapable of displaying anger, was seething. Fern finally looked up.

“A . . . a . . . a,” Fern said, hesitating to form the next word. “A vampire?” She lifted her head from her knees and looked Mr. Bing directly in the face. “I’m a vampire? A
vampire
?”

“Yes, Fern. As am I.”

“And Lindsey?” Fern asked.

“Yes,” Mr. Bing said, with a bit of hesitation. “The Lins are actually quite famous in their own right, although they’d be ashamed if they knew their daughter was acting so recklessly,” he finished, passing judgment in Lindsey’s direction. Fern stared blankly at Lindsey.

“What about me?” Sam pleaded, not realizing the irony of
wanting
to be a vampire. “Am I one too?”

Joseph Bing was almost grimacing now. “Not exactly. Let’s wait until we get to Kimble & Kimble before we get into this, all right?” Bing began to walk out of the grove.

Fern and Sam would not be put off. They wanted answers and they wanted them now. They hung back from Bing, talking in muted voices back and forth to Lindsey.

“Why did you tell me that I was an Otherworldly?” Fern growled at Lindsey, clearly wounded.

“Because you
are,
” Lindsey pleaded, realizing how upset Fern was. “The V-word freaks people out. I thought if I said that, it might scare you. They mean the same exact thing.
Otherworldly
is like the politically correct term.”

To Fern they didn’t mean the same thing—not at all. This
different
word made all the difference in the world.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you the whole truth.”

“No wonder it’s called
The UNdead Sea Scrolls
,” Sam posited. “I should have put it together. Vampires. So is Fern undead?”

“No. Fern is very alive. Because vampires live much longer lives than regular humans, people started to refer to us as undead a long time ago,” Lindsey said. “We’ve got certain ‘undead’ qualities, like lower core temperatures.”

“But when you say
vampire
,” Sam said, “you mean like Dracula and stuff? Like blood suckers and sleeping in coffins and the whole thing, right?” Sam was at once exhilarated and sick to his stomach. Fern just felt sick.

“Why didn’t you just tell me all this when you figured it out?” Fern’s tone was accusatory.

“I thought you might be a Blout, so I didn’t know if I could trust you. Because Blouts are the bad kind of vampire,” Lindsey said, looking to the left and right of her. “Rollens don’t associate with them.”

“Why are the Blouts so bad?”

“Blouts drink blood.”

“What? Do you drink blood? Am I going to drink blood? Am I going to start having the urge?” Fern was panicked.

“I don’t drink blood, and none of my family drinks blood. I’m sure you won’t,” Lindsey said. Her words were of little comfort to Fern.

“How do you know that?”

“I just do.”

Mr. Bing, now ten feet ahead of the rest of his party, turned and fixed his gaze on Fern McAllister. He could see the panic in her eyes, the panic in Sam’s eyes. He had been instructed to bring the children to Kimble & Kimble straightaway, but sympathy for the child who had been brought up knowing nothing tugged at him. He found a bench near the edge of the fenced-off part of Anderson’s Grove. He motioned for the children to join him there. Lindsey, Sam, and Fern stood in front of him. He closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and began.

“You’ll get a better explanation of this at some point, but let me try to clarify a few things for you. Many, many centuries ago, there was a divide among Otherworldlies. It had been common practice up until that point for Otherworldlies to take the blood of our human counterparts. The desire to do so was a chief characteristic of vampires and was viewed to be as natural as eating food or drinking water. Most vampires tried to do this inconspicuously, but the legend of vampires grew. What’s more, there were certain advantages to this behavior: a strengthening of power, a longer lifespan, and the quenching of a desire that can’t be put into words.

“It was the way things were done, children. Plain and simple. But it gave vampires a terrible name. An army of vampire hunters developed, and their main goal was to eradicate all Otherworldlies from the Earth.”

“Like Van Helsing?” Sam asked, breaking up Bing’s story.

“Van Helsing was a sham-artist who couldn’t catch a cold in a hospital. But yes, that there’s the general idea. At the turn of the fourteenth century, a group of people who became known as the Controllens began examining the Otherworldly life—a life of underground darkness, always on the run, perpetuated by literally feeding off those people much weaker than themselves. There was an enlightened resistance movement. The Controllen, or Rollen, philosophy began with one simple question: What if Otherworldlies didn’t give in to this urge? What if they tried to live alongside Normals as equals? Was it possible? Could it be done? Should it be done? The period was one of upheaval, henceforth known as the Great Debate.”

“So it’s kind of like the Reformation, and the Rollens are like Martin Luther?” Sam had always paid very close attention in history class.

“You could say that.”

“Could it be done? Did the Rollens succeed?”

“I don’t think any of us would be sitting in this here grove if it didn’t. The war has waged on, though, and each side thinks it’s right. Rollens named those who still carried on the vampire tradition of sucking blood Blouts.”

“The Rollens and the Blouts,” Sam repeated out loud. “Sounds more like two kinds of fungus, if you ask me,” he offered.

Fern had never given blood much thought before, but she now realized that its inescapable presence in her life would determine much of her future. Why was the red liquid so important? Sure, you needed it to live, but you needed a lot of things to live. Water did not plague her in this way. She was beginning to hate the stuff.

“Will I start wanting to suck people’s blood as soon as I hit puberty?”

“Every vampire goes through a period called transmutation. We grow fangs, and yes, the desire to suck blood may be present.”

“Yes, but how will I know if I’m a Blout?”

“Fern,” Mr. Bing said earnestly, “no one is
born
a Blout. And no one is
born
a Rollen. In some, the desire for blood is stronger than in others, but it’s a choice. We all must make a choice.”

“How come you don’t have any fangs?” Sam asked.

“In order to live up here without the threat of persecution, I had them removed, as almost all Rollens do. It’s as simple as getting your wisdom teeth out.” Bing looked at his watch. “All your questions about vampires are going to be answered, Sam, but we need to be going. We’ll talk more there. Follow me, children.” Before turning around, Mr. Bing fixed his gaze on Fern. She rose to her feet, looking almost stoic, her fiery pale eyes offset by the ebony frame of her hair.

Sam, Fern, and Lindsey followed Bing as he headed away from St. Gregory’s toward the south side of Anderson’s Grove. Sam walked behind his sister. She was walking in an odd manner, slow and deliberate. Sam imagined she’d walk exactly that way if she had to walk the plank. He was nearly paralyzed with unanswered questions.

Fern had just as many questions rolling around in her head.

“Vlad, the man who’s looking for me—he’s a Blout, isn’t he?” Fern said with sadness in her voice.

“Yes,” Lindsey said, shifting her gaze downward.

“Does he want to suck my blood?”

“Not all things revolve around that,” Lindsey responded, awkwardly.

“You two must wipe clean your notions of vampires,” Mr. Bing said, intentionally interrupting, still leading the children through the grove. “We’re not at all like people think we are. It’s much more complicated than that.”

“Is there anything that
isn’t
complicated?” Fern said, kicking the ground, frustrated.

The foursome had traveled out of the grove and down an alleyway. In front of them stood a chain-link fence and drainage ditch—the entrance to a network of storm drains that ran underneath most of the city. Without hesitation, Joseph Bing took a running start and hopped on the fence, grabbing the top pole. Using his arms as a fulcrum, he swung his legs deftly over the fence, flipping his feet high over his head and snapping them forward, then landing upright on the other side.

“Wow,” Sam said. “Mr. Bing, you must be younger than you look.” Mr. Bing smiled widely, his cheeks spreading farther apart as he chuckled.

“It’s been several years since I celebrated my two-hundredth birthday, I’ll say that much. Now, give your sister a boost. Come on, then,” Bing said.

Sam looked startled. The entrance to the drainage canal was dark and forbidding. “Um, are you expecting us to go in there?”

“It’s perfectly safe—unless it rains, of course, and it’s not going to rain for several weeks yet. Many of our fellow vampires use the sewers,” Mr. Bing said, trying to bolster his young companions.

Our fellow vampires. I am a vampire,
Fern said to herself. The thought made the knot in her stomach tighten. Fern ran her tongue along the cragged tops of her teeth.
No sign of fangs
, she thought, relieved.

“Why can’t we use the sidewalk?” Sam asked, his imagination unable to let go of the dangers that lay ahead in the dark tunnel.

“St. Gregory’s janitor and three truant students can’t very well go wandering about town without raising some eyebrows. We must go this way.” Bing’s words echoed off the concrete walls of the canal.

“Aren’t there bats down there?” Lindsey said.

“Certainly. Along with an errant Cyclops now and again, as well.” Mr. Bing grinned tensely, unable to mask his stress. He yanked a flashlight out of his blue uniform. Lindsey hopped onto the fence, and Sam and Fern jumped up, joining her. They struggled to climb it together, the chain links wobbling beneath them. After a few minutes, the three were over the fence, though none scored a ten on the dismount as had the graceful Mr. Bing. With the damp ceiling above them and graffitied walls to the left and right, they descended into the unfathomable darkness.

Ms. Fannie Burrill had been working as Alistair Kimble’s secretary for over two decades. Although she hadn’t quite figured out her hirsute employer, she’d become accustomed to his quirks. He liked his coffee neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm. He never raised his window shades, preferring artificial light to the natural kind. In twenty-plus years, she could count on one hand the number of times he had laughed. He often worked late into the night, but sometimes he left at lunch and was gone for days, leaving behind detailed notes with instructions for what she was to do during his absences. And although he was the only lawyer in the entire state of California with an unlisted phone number, he had an abundance of strange friends with odd names calling him at all hours. Some days, it seemed as though the phone never stopped ringing.

So when Kenneth Quagmire walked into the upstairs office and introduced himself, she recognized the voice immediately. He was one of the worst offenders, calling around the clock without any regard for schedules or her sanity.

It had been a strange morning. First, a hysterical blond woman demanding “to see Alistair Kimble at once” had confronted Fannie. Kenneth Quagmire appeared soon after. As she delivered bottles of water to the conference room, Fannie Burrill marveled at the newest arrivals: a man in a full janitor’s uniform and three children. After depositing the children in the conference room, the man departed, claiming he had to get back to work.

“Is there anything else I can do for you or your guests, Mr. Kimble?” Fannie asked, blinking wildly and taking a long look at the unlikely group that surrounded the long mahogany table. This was surely the strangest child custody case Mr. Kimble had ever taken on.