Darrell Schweitzer - Full MoonCity

Then there is the one time I dare to bring over my best friend Sylvie for a night of shared homework and girl talk-and miraculously she is willing to put up with the bugs and the stench of the place. Did I tell you that vampire lairs smell bad ? I could go on and on… I even convince her that Max is a retarded cousin the two of us should lock in the basement (we do, and he sits down there contentedly chomping on bugs). Things are going swimmingly, and I feel almost normal for once, when suddenly I’m not sure what is happening, and there is a mist sliding under the bedroom door, and that mist has red eyes in it and looks a bit like my mother. It might be a dream. I am not sure. I can’t move. I want to call out, but I can’t, and when I really do wake up, there is Sylvie on the bed next to me, pale as the other white meat with two holes in the side of her neck and her eyes crossed and rolled up.

Oy vey. So Max and I have to carry Sylvie out into a deserted lot and bury her in a cardboard box, which is very dangerous because the police might see us, but Momma likes her privacy and won’t share the basement (which she now calls “the crypt”) with just anybody. And most nights afterwards Sylvie comes floating to my second-floor bedroom window, tapping on the glass, asking to be let in, and before long she’s as much a nuisance as Max.

But I feel sorry for her and maybe I am even afraid of her. It is not her fault, what happened. But she also has that hungry, hungry, empty look in her eyes, and sometimes I am not sure if it’s even Sylvie, just those eyes and a mouth full of sharp teeth that talks like my best friend.

Everybody has their breaking point, and I have mine. I think I’m already past it. But what can I do? I am not made of glass, that I can literally break.

I get on the Internet. I go to lots of chat rooms. I become something of a celebrity, but everybody thinks I am making this up. People don’t take me seriously. They tell me how much they like my stories. The editor of Weird Tales asks me to send him something. I also get people writing to know what flavor of bugs I like, and am I really a hunchback, because hunchbacks are supposed to be the servants of vampires-and I write back, No, that’s mad scientists, you dork! because this is my mother you are talking about-and I get some very odd spam, a lot of it from a dead African oil minister turned zombie who wants to get together with me to share the $30 million he intends to smuggle out of his country in a coffin.

And then at last there is a message that merely says: I think I can help you.-Heinrich.

Heinrich?

Is your last name Van Helsing by any chance? I want to know.

No, it is Schroeder.

What do you want? I type.

I want to meet you, he types back.

Now this is so mysterious, and everything your mother ever warned you about when messing on the Internet, but when you have a mother like mine, maybe you take her warnings with a grain of… garlic? (And that’s another thing-ever since the Big Change, there is no pizza allowed in our house, but I am babbling…)

I am thrilled. Also desperate. I am almost ready to fling myself into the arms of the zombie African oil minister, or certainly a mad scientist’s hunchbacked assistant as long as his breath smells like garlic, and in such a deranged state of mind I tell my new friend Heinrich Schroeder that I would like to meet him.

So we make arrangements to get together.

At night.

Alone.

In a lonely graveyard near Hoboken.

This breaks so many rules that it just adds to the thrill. So I stay late after school. I eat a light supper at a Pizza Hut, and then wait some more, until it is dark. Yes, I know Momma will be mad, but I don’t care; I’m that desperate. In any case, I know she can take care of herself, and that idiot-retard Max will be able stop eating bugs long enough to cope with any vampire-hunters who might want to sprinkle holy water into the basement or whatever else they might do.

It’ll be okay. I tell myself that over and over as I get off the PATH train in Hoboken and walk down a dark street between dingy buildings, until I come to another street, which is even darker and dingier, and my footsteps are going faster, faster, tap-tap, tap-tap, like in the movies when the girl is about to get jumped, only I don’t get jumped, and eventually I climb through a broken fence and into an old, deserted graveyard. There are such places in the New York area. Not everything is modern and built-up. Probably nobody has been buried here for a hundred years, and if anyone or anything climbs up out of a grave to get me, I’ll just tell him or it who my parents are.

Not that such a thing happens. Heinrich is waiting for me on a bench, in the one spot where a little light from a streetlamp shines through the gnarly trees.

When he stands up to greet me, like a perfect gentleman, I see that he is big . My head doesn’t even come to his shoulders. He is broad-shouldered, like two or three linebackers crammed into one body, and I can see that he’s one of these guys whose face is always hairy no matter how many times he shaves, but maybe my senses are getting sharper from hanging around vampires so much, because I can smell him in a good way, not BO but an alive odor that excites me more than I can understand, and when he takes my hand in his and his grip is firm and so hard it almost breaks my hand, but warm , I’m instantly in love! Before we even say a word, we fall into each other’s arms, on the ground, rolling in the leaves, heaving with such passion that a decent girl like me (ahem!) will have to leave out some of the details.

Later we talk quite a lot, and I pour my heart out to him, the whole story, and he is so understanding. He has seen and experienced strange things, too, he says. He believes me. He knows I am telling the truth.

I look into his eyes. I may never look anywhere else again.

“You have to get away,” he says.

“But I don’t want to hurt Momma’s feelings.”

“She’s a minion of evil, a blood-drinking demon of darkness.”

“I know, but she’s my mom. Besides, one tries not to be judgmental about alternate lifestyles.”

“That’s the college girl talking, not the real you,” he says, and takes me in his arms again and once more we are rolling on the ground, making hay in the dead leaves, if you will pardon the expression, and oh! I have never felt anything like this and oh! goes on and on, and oh! I don’t care what Mom and Dad think, I just want to be with Heinrich.

“I might have a few deep, dark secrets of my own,” he says afterwards. “I am glad you are not judgmental.”

Then I suggest that maybe we should take the silver nails and nail my parents back into their coffins. It won’t be such an inconvenience for them because they’re immortal, so we could live out our lives and maybe let them loose again when we’re eighty or so-but at the first mention of silver, Heinrich hisses and recoils as if I’d handed him a live snake.

Which is very odd. But do you expect me to have a normal boyfriend?

Then Heinrich has to leave. He leaves, quickly.

“I love you!” I shout after him, but he’s vanished into the darkness.

There is indeed hell to pay when I get home, close to dawn, about the same time Momma and Poppa do, and even Poppa is beside himself with rage, his eyes burning red, his fangs dripping. He’s gotten his bat-tie repaired. Both wings are flapping furiously.