’m sorry, I’m so sorry. He just got me so mad.” Paul presented Marilyn with the sculpture, the woman locked in the man’s embrace, trapped by one joined, beating, pink stone heart. “I just, it’s been so perfect here. I don’t want you to go. I just want to keep everything exactly like it is. There’s so much noise and mess and dirt out there.”
She smiled despite herself, despite the throbbing cut in her lip. “Your sculptures, they’re made of dirt.”
“Soil,” he said, frowning. “Clay. It’s different.”
“Everything changes,” she said.
“It doesn’t have to change, if we can hold it in place for just one moment. If you can see, see the beauty of it. The rightness of it.” They both stared at the figures, held in a moment, held forever. It did have a beauty to it. A fog was settled over Marilyn’s mind, she knew that, she didn’t know how to see through it to the other side.
“Just wait a few days,” Paul was saying. “Wait a few days, and see how you feel. It’s just George coming in and disrupting things.”
o, Marilyn slipped into days of puttering around the house, of an easy routine, no pressures pouring in on her from outside. And in the nighttime, somewhere in the nighttime, there was something she had forgotten.
George called her on the phone one day.
“I haven’t heard from you.”
“Oh, I know. You know how it is. You get taken up with… everyday life.”
“How have you been? I mean, are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just tired, I guess.”
“Tired?”
“Not feeling too well, you know, sluggish. But it’s probably good for me, being out of the city. I’m not sure I’d be up to it.”
“That’s him talking. You know it is.”
“Oh, well…” her voice dropped off. She was glancing out the window, and her mind started to drift out into the sky, the summer sky, with a big hot yellow sun in it. She stared out the window, the sun pulsing bitter-sweetly into her brain, as George’s voice droned on, in the background.
“Listen to me, Marilyn, I’ve been doing some research. I know it sounds absurd, and you know it sounds absurd, but I know what I saw, and I swear it wasn’t just a dream, you know. That’s how these things would have to work, because they’re so unreal, that who’d believe them anyway? But I’ve been trained on Bella Lugosi all my life, and I’m not about to shut my eyes if something is really going on, and the best thing is just for you to get out.”
“Hmmm?” she said when he paused.
“Marilyn,” he said. “Are you listening to me?”
“I’m sorry, I guess I drifted off… I can’t seem to remember.”
“Okay. Marilyn. I’m going to talk in simple words of two syllables or less.”
“That was three syllables. Syll-a-bles.”
“Good! You’re paying attention.”
She laughed, but her laugh sounded hollow and strange, like it was echoing through a graveyard.
“I just want to know that we’re on the same page, and don’t dismiss me just as crazy, because if I’m crazy, what’s the harm? And if I’m not crazy, then you’ve got to get out of there.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy, George, but everything’s fine—”
“Marilyn. You know it, don’t you? That there’s a vampire?”
“I’m sorry, George, I didn’t quite catch that…”
She couldn’t. It was like when he talked to her, sometimes his words slipped behind a gray curtain, her head wasn’t turned at quite the right angle for the sounds to reach her.
And he felt like an idiot, saying the word.
“I said, vampire. Vampire. Vampire.”
Something dark and quiet and cold that came in the nighttime.
He convinced her to meet him in the town one day for coffee. There was no harm in it, but somehow she felt uneasy about it. She didn’t tell Paul.
hey huddled over coffees at a small, uncomfortable table. George talked at her, a fantasy out of a B movie thriller, with an unhesitating certainty that threw her.
“It sounds absurd,” Marilyn said, shaking her head, and looking into her swirling coffee cup.
“Honey, don’t you even see how different you are, sitting here in the light, than you are back at that place?”
She did feel different. Tired still, maybe, but free of some sort of fog.
“It was,” she said, “hard to leave the house.” She realized that she hadn’t been going into town for anything much lately, hadn’t been off the property for—how long? When it came time to get into the car and drive off, a perfectly ordinary thing, she could hardly bring herself to do it. She had to consciously put one foot in front of the other, not think about where she was going or why, not get distracted by little things around the house.
“What are you even doing out here, still? Whatever is keeping you here is not a good thing.”
She knew it.
“It’s those caves.”
Yes, there was something about the caves.
“I don’t think I can just pick up and leave,” she said, “not without saying goodbye, or having it out, it wouldn’t be honest.”
“Yes you can. Just do it. We can call him later. It doesn’t matter.”
“Call him later and say what? I had to leave, I couldn’t hack the vampires anymore.”
“He’s bad for you, too.”
“I need to get back to the city, on my own, to think things through.”
“Okay. Great. Fine. Let’s go.”
“But I can’t just leave. I need to go back, and talk to him. And then I’ll get going, first thing in the morning.”
George sighed. “You’re worse than any horror movie girlie I ever watched, creeping up the stairs in the dark.”
“This isn’t a horror movie.”
“They all say that.” He had a backpack with him. “Just take it, don’t worry about it, just take it.”
She raised her eyebrows at it and took the bag. She opened the zipper and peeked inside.
“You’re serious.”
“Let’s just say I am, for sake of argument.”
“Okay, I’ll keep it close to my heart.”
Inside the bag, there was a vial of holy water, a silver rosary, a wreath of garlic. And a wooden stake.
he pulled up at the farmhouse with a sense of ambivalence. A part of Marilyn wanted to be back in the house, felt a comfort emanating from it, felt that it had become home. Another part of her was frightened by the feeling, remembering how difficult it had been to leave. She had torn herself out of the house, off the property. The longer she stayed, the harder it would be to leave. Every second she stayed seemed to be a second carved out of her life, when she was standing still instead of moving forward—forward—
The air went out of her lungs. What was she moving toward, anyhow? She hadn’t written a word here, but had she written anything more in all those years of wild, uncontrolled creation, in all those notebooks of unwieldy words, unmanaged sentences, undirected thought? She wasn’t going anywhere. Why did she want to keep traveling?
Marilyn got out of the car and walked into the house.
“Where have you been?”
“I was just in town.”
“Why? What were you doing in town?”
“Does it matter? I wanted to get out of the house for a while.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t know I had to tell you my every move.”
His face softened. “I was worried about you,” he said, embracing her, enclosing her in his arms. “You haven’t been feeling well.”
“I’m sorry you were worried,” she said, and she wanted to tell him that she was leaving, that she had to go, but she had forgotten why. She was safe here, entombed in his arms.
“Let me make dinner,” he said, patting her shoulders. “I’ll fry up a couple of steaks. You can relax. You can rest, take care of yourself.
“Okay.”
“How d’you want your steak?” he asked, moving toward the kitchen. “Medium?”
“Rare,” she said.
She felt ravenous. That’s just what she needed, some blood-red meat.
aul was working on his sculpture, and Marilyn lay in
bed. She was, for once, awake. She was too aware of the hypnotic, dream-like
state that threatened to overtake her. She forced her mind to look back at what
George had been saying to her.
Vampire.
Part of her interpreted it metaphorically. She was being drained, sapped of life force, held in stasis in a sort of living death. That was what George had been trying to tell her all along. But what was the use of all the trials and failures, bad dates, late night coffees anyway? Being with Paul had—what was it? Peace? Not quite peace, perhaps—or maybe it was. He wasn’t truly a vampire. It wasn’t her mortal soul that was at risk.
And as she lay there, staring into the darkness, she thought she saw a figure, not appearing, exactly. He had been standing there, she realized, for a while. She just hadn’t seen him.
“Paul?” she asked.
The figure stood stock still, blending into the corners of the room, the dark shadows recessed within the already shadowed walls. Was he really there? Or just a darkness imposed on the dimness?
“It’s okay, Paul. I wasn’t asleep…” She closed her eyes, so that she was looking into her own darkness, and not the bigger darkness, out there. “Do you think… really think that this is the best life we can have, here, where we can lock out the world—lock out change? I’m not even sure that’s exactly what I mean. But it’s like your sculptures, a perfect image, frozen in place, always searching for the one way to be, where you’ve reached Nirvana, or perfection, or apotheosis. Where nothing ever has to change, with no past, no future. No present, even. Comforted, embraced, like being in the womb… but missing… missing… something…” Her voice faded away, she was losing track of her train of thought. She had forgotten, even, that she was talking to Paul instead of to herself. Then, there was an answer. A low, smooth, rumbling voice.
“Even the mountains change over time. Holding on to one moment—even if you could—it degrades over time, loses its textures, loses its shapes, its details, becomes a caricature of itself, until all the edges smooth out and dissolve away, until it becomes nothing, an emptiness.”
She opened her eyes, and the man she thought she’d seen there had faded into the darkness, even while the words were ringing in her ears. Had she dreamed it?
Marilyn got up from the bed and looked around the quiet, empty room. A shiver ran down her spine, the presence of—
She found her way to Paul’s studio. She didn’t go to the studio much. It was Paul’s place, not hers, and when he was there, he was lost in something else. He had been working, working constantly. She hadn’t asked what he was working on. It must be something big, a grand achievement. She hadn’t seen anything he’d done since George left, the sculpture of the man—and the woman whom he embraced, enclosed.
She opened the door and looked in. He was engrossed in a figure.
“Paul?”
He didn’t respond.
She moved forward. He was working in the dimness, his hands crusted with clay, but he was still, as if he were frozen over his sculpture. It was a smooth, egg-like figure, flowing in upon itself. So different from his usual intricate style, but somehow familiar. A womb.
And around the walls of the studio, the motif repeated itself. Similar, but subtly changed. Sculpture after sculpture, like looking at the works of Mondrian arranged over time, a tree slowly devolving into not-a-tree, a windmill losing its detail and taking on another meaning, raw color and form. Only this sculpture was the embrace, the figure he’d presented her with, the human heart joined and dissolved into a fundamental principle, a smooth curvature.
Paul was moving, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, as if slowed to non-existence by the layer of clay that coated him.
Marilyn retreated from the room, an unnatural awareness creeping over her. The package that George had given her was stuffed behind the passenger seat of the car. She took it out and went back into the house. On the kitchen table, she unpacked the bag. Just objects. A rosary, cold, smooth beads that ran coolly between her fingers. She hung it around her neck, the metal pressing against her skin. A bottle of water, just water. She poured some on her hands, smelled it on her fingers. Was it holy? Was it blessed? Garlic. She pulled a stinking rose off the vine and tore it open, tore into the small, smooth buds with her fingers and held it to her nose. There was something pleasantly real about the smell and feel of raw garlic.
Then there was the stake. She picked it up and held it in her hand, in its smooth simplicity. Somehow reminiscent of Paul’s sculptures, of the simplicity into which they had evolved. Like the garlic, it was a dead thing. Once it lived, breathed, and grew. Took nourishment from the soil and the air, until it was torn from the ground, separated from its life force, and carved up with a knife. Smooth and hard and surprisingly sharp, it had its own earthy smell. As it lived slowly, it also decayed slowly, imperceptibly, but it did decay, even as it lay in her hand.
Marilyn sat at the table, holding the stake in her hand. She could feel the hypnotic pull of the house and of the night, but she forced her head out of the fog. Once she did, she felt suddenly silly, sitting in the kitchen holding a wooden stake. She was just about to get up, to go to bed, to go to sleep, to close her eyes and exit consciousness until the sun again rose in the sky. But as her hand loosened on the smooth curve of the stake, the window swung open. It was closed, and now it opened.
And it let in a darkness.
Marilyn jumped up. Even as her mind processed the shock, she realized that this was not the first time. Her brain was somehow cleared this time. She could see the darkness, and inside the darkness, she could see the eyes, and the pallid cheeks. She could see the teeth, the vicious, white, and gleaming teeth.
“My dear,” the vampire said.
She stood frozen.
“Ah,” he said, stepping toward her, one cold, smooth hand reaching out to her. “I see you are ready. Like your mother. Like your mother’s mother.”
The fingers were reaching toward her. They were almost on her flesh, and she could feel them already, a creeping feeling.
“Get out.” Then stronger. “Get out.” Then she was screaming. “Get out, get out, get out!” And when she topped screaming, he was gone.
She stood, shaking, and breathing, and eventually thought came back to her. She could, as George said, get into the car an drive away. She could be gone at any moment, back to the safe, bright city where the nighttime was banished by eternal lights.
But her mother. Golden hair shining in the sun, against the blue of the daylight sky, so long ago. Her mother, who didn’t belong in darkness, but in light. Who left one day, who would be back soon, who never returned.
The stake, in her hand. She was holding it tight. Holding it close to her chest.
And she knew where she had to go.
The caves.
nd now, we’ve wandered around in the caves and we’ve come back to the beginning.
“Ah, yes,” he breathed into the darkness, into the coldness, with a breath that failed to disturb the atoms it passed through.
But this time, there was a difference. Because nothing stays the same forever. Because 20,000 years ago, humans did not know how to farm. 10,000 years ago there were no antibiotics. 1,000 years ago there were no flush toilets. 100 yeas ago there were no computers. Every day, every minute, the world is changing. Slowly, perhaps. A little less prejudice. A little more insight. As the cycles go round, as the cycles repeat, they also change.
She hesitated there, on the brink of darkness, her hand clasped around the stake, the clouds of darkness insidiously invading her mind.
“Ah, yes,” he said, with the echoes of time.
She thrust her hand forward in one moment of impulse, of breaking loose. Fluidly, like a knife into butter, like stabbing a cloud of dust, the stake thrust forward. And the dust fell. Silt, raining down over her hand. Falling to the earth in a fine, silken spray. Nothingness, just nothingness.
And released, beneath, Eileen-Virginia-Ginny-Marion-Crystal dissolved to ashes, Nora melted away, Katy fell into dust, layers of the past became one with the Earth.
I was there, and I felt the tension leaving me, the tension of their prolonged deaths, incomplete for so long, as they passed into—somewhere. Maybe an alpaca farm in South America, who knows?
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