Christopher Buehlman - The Lesser Dead

I know she wanted to storm out on that line, but these things never happen cleanly in real life; the dog went to the door with her, overdue as he was to water the flowers on his afternoon constitutional. Slamming the door might well have decapitated Solly, and that would have been a bit much, even for a pissed-off Irish gorgon. So instead of a dramatic “Nothing would please me more,” Margaret’s last living words in the Peacock house were actually a staccato “Go on, go on now, stay here” while Elise, with difficulty, gathered Solly up in her arms, avoiding contact with Margaret’s eyes.

Now we go forward two months or so. May in New York City, warm days, cool nights, used to be my favorite month. I liked sleeping with the windows open, I was never bothered by the sounds of traffic or people on the streets, and the bugs weren’t bad if you left the light off. I liked being under a blanket in the cool night air. I was a good sleeper.

That’s why I was so bleary and confused when I heard the coin land in my room. Followed by another coin. Followed by a third. I sat up in time to see the fourth one coming straight at me. It hit me on the chin, but I caught it before it fell into my lap. A silver dollar, which believe me was worth something back then. I looked at the window, and there was nobody there. And then there was.

Margaret.

Pale and sick-looking, wearing a torn, dirty dress.

“Joseph,” she said. “I’ve got money for you.”

She opened her hand and it was true. A whole fistful of silver dollars.

“What are you doing here?” I said, still more confused than frightened. It hadn’t yet occurred to me to wonder what she was standing on. “What’s the money for?”

“For?” she said. “Why, for all the trouble I caused. For being a thief in your house. May I come in?”

“No,” I said.

“Well. That’s too bad,” she said, letting the money fall from her hand to jingle onto the sidewalk below. It must have been thirty dollars.

And then she was gone.

And as soon as she was gone, I wasn’t sure she had ever been there. Except there was a smell in the room. Like something dead in the attic.

I went to the window and shut it. Locked it.

It was a long time before I slept, but I did, at least until I had the nightmare. I dreamed there was a skeleton outside my window, rubbing its bones on the glass. I sat bolt upright, looking at the window, and indeed there was a shape there. I switched on the bedside lamp, almost knocking it over in my haste. You can imagine my relief when I saw that the shape at the window wasn’t a skeleton at all. Just Margaret in a torn dress. The sound I had mistaken for bones on the glass was actually coins; she was playing a game where she used the tips of her fingers to slide coins around against the pane.

“Joey!” she said, smiling. “Come open the window and let me in!”

I shook my head. She mocked me shaking my head, like a mother would do to a stubborn child. “What’d’ye mean, shakin’ your head at me like that? I thought we were friends?”

I just stared at her. Everything was wrong. What the hell was she standing on? I thought about calling my mom.

“Mommy!” she said, one step ahead of me. “You’re a grown man with hair on it and you want your mommy, don’t you? Go get your nasty Jew mommy. Tell her I brought money, she’ll let me in!”

It was when she said “mommy” that I first saw her long, sharp teeth, white at the tips, a dirty yellow-gray near the gums. You never forget the first time you see a vampire’s teeth. I think I pissed myself.

“Go away!” I said.

I heard nails clicking on the wooden floor. Solly heard voices and now he was coming to investigate. People stirring predawn might mean breakfast, or a trip outside, right? He poked his snout around the corner and gave a low, uncertain growl. By the time I looked back, Margaret was gone.

Solly stayed with me till morning. I didn’t sleep again.

I sleepwalked through school the next day, unable to focus, unable to stop yawning. I nodded off in American History class, although with Mr. Gunderson’s way of stressing seemingly random words when he lectured, this wasn’t unusual. They could have hired that man to test coffee.

“Are we boring you, Mr. Peacock? Would you rather a nap than to hear about the exchange of cannon fire between the Monitor and the Merrimack and the end of the era of sail -powered warships?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Gunderson. I was—”

“Dreaming about Harvard , or Yale, or Brown? You don’t work hard enough to go to those schools. But, no matter to me ; I can write a C as quickly as an A, and the world needs tailors , too. Just keep nodding off , Mr. Peacock, and sharpen your shears .”

I had just enough of my mom in me that I wanted to jab my finger at him saying, Do. Not. Interrupt. Me! but that would have gone over like a pig stampede at temple. Not that I went to temple. We practiced Dad’s religion, which meant twice-yearly trips to church and saying “Amen” after Dad thanked Jesus for the pot roast. The whole thing seemed pretty skinny next to the angry Irish bitch-monster outside my window. That looked real. I was going to need professional help.

“Vampire?” Reverend MacNeil said.

I nodded hesitantly. “Is this some kind of a joke?” I could see in his eyes that mischief or mental illness were the only motives he could imagine for such a question coming from a boy already in high school.

“Did some of the other fellows put you up to this?” he said, rubbing at a pinkish eye under his little round glasses. He was one of those unlucky pale types who always looked allergic to something.

“That’s right, Reverend. They did. I’m very sorry.”

“Who was it?”

“May I have a cross?”

“I beg your pardon.”

“A cross. You know.”

“Joey. This just sounds like more horseplay to me. Besides which, the true cross is in our hearts.”

Tell Margaret McMannis, I thought, but kept it to myself.

I looked around the church to see if there was something crosslike I could make off with, but nothing looked carryable. I was eyeing a wooden cross on the wall, trying to make out how well attached it was—it looked pretty solid—when Reverend MacNeil said, “Joey?” I had forgotten he was there. So I shook his hand good and hard like my dad taught me and set off for the park. They had branches and stuff in the park, and, with a little bit of kite twine, I could make a cross. Then I remembered that my kite had a frame like a cross, and I could skip the park entirely. Then I remembered the reverend rubbing his eye with the hand I shook, so I wiped it on my pants.

Did I mention I wasn’t that smart in 1933? I wasn’t. Maybe the only smart thing I did that year was to tell Margaret she couldn’t come in through my bedroom window. Weird vampire rule, but it absolutely works. Only with somebody’s home, not a business. I’ve tried to defy this little ordinance, we’ve all tried, but you just stand at the entrance and can’t go through. You can’t make yourself do it, like one of those darted lions on Wild Kingdom thinking about getting a good chew going on Marlin Perkins’s face, but he’s paralyzed so he just lies there and pants and looks at him. Last year I conducted a little experiment: I had Cvetko push me into a window I hadn’t been invited through, some little old lady Cvetko had bitten already, a house he was welcome in so he could go in and get me if I got in trouble. He said it was “an exercise in ignorance,” but he was too curious to refuse outright. Damned if I didn’t fall down and scramble back out the window on my hands and knees against my own will.