Christopher Buehlman - The Lesser Dead

Then my mom fixed everything.

“Don’t take him to St. Vincent’s. My family uses Beth Israel.”

“Leah, it’s farther.”

“He’s not dying, Walter, and Beth Israel is more sanitary. I read an article.”

Thanks to that article, if there was an article, I was driven to the thirteen-story medical wonder near Stuyvesant Park where Beth Israel had relocated in ’29. A new, sanitary building with first-rate doctors, shiny bowls to catch the blood in, and freshly painted walls uncluttered with pictures of saints.

And not a mother-loving crucifix in sight.

A word about the cross business: They work on vampires if those vampires believe in them. Margaret, like Cvetko, was Catholic as hell, and a cross will turn and maybe burn either one of them. Me? If I’m coming after you and you pull out your rosary, good luck. I can juggle ’em. But for the newly minted vampire Margaret McMannis, formerly of Connemara, Ireland, where the only comforts were High Mass and killing weevils, St. Vincent’s would have been like Fort Knox.

“So, you made a new friend tonight, did you?” the doctor said, looking things over under the bright light while his nurse snipped open my pants leg and dabbed with her swab. It was really starting to hurt and I whimpered. “There, there,” he said, his tidy mustache sitting on his upper lip, shaved down so it didn’t crowd his nose. A young guy. I thought about him later. I thought they might have shipped him out in the next war where he’d see things that would make him miss his Beth Israel anginas and dog bites and kite sticks in legs.

“That’s right, she stabbed him,” my mother said for the third or fourth time, “like a savage. Just not like a civilized person at all .”

“Well, I’m sure the police will sort that out, Mrs. Peacock, and, with your permission, I’ll sort this out.”

She took the hint and sat down.

He sorted me out pretty well, truth be told; it hurt like a bastard, but he was quick and tidy, got the stick out (boy, did it bleed), made sure the puncture was clear of splinters and swabbed out with disinfectant. Talked to me the whole time. I remember being fascinated with the greenish area between his mustache and his nose, thinking it must take a surgeon to shave a line that neat in a space so small, and I was tempted to try to count the little black follicles there; this guy was hairy, could have grown a big King Solomon beard if he tried.

Then I remembered Solly.

“Where’s my dog?” I said. The doc was stitching me. “Stop!” I said. “We have to find my dog! She’s going to hurt him!”

Then, to my surprise, the doctor stopped. He just stopped, midstitch. I looked at his fingers, holding the needle. Now some clear liquid ran on my leg, right next to the wound. Drool. A long strand of it spilled from his mouth. He swayed, very gently. “Solly,” he said, his voice sleep-thick. Now the nurse loomed up. The nurse took the needle from him, stuck it in my thigh. Not like giving me a shot, just stabbed me with it and left it there. I gasped and looked up. Her tall nurse’s hat sat crooked, it had been hastily put on. It wasn’t a nurse. Of course it wasn’t. You know who it was.

Margaret stood towering over me, glorious in victory, her teeth bared. She looked me in the eye, her eyes moons, cat’s eyes, each one of them a headlamp in the devil’s fastest car. “You won’t make a sound,” she said, and I felt my muscles go slack, felt myself start to drool. It was kind of a good feeling, getting charmed, like nothing could go wrong because you just weren’t in charge anymore.

“But you will have a look around, won’t you?” she said. “You’ll want to remember this night.” She put her hand on my chin and turned my head this way and that so I could see. My mother lay slumped against the wall, charmed, holding up a Life magazine that happened to be upside down, examining it like a strange dead bird. The actual nurse lay half-naked on the floor, her mouth opening and closing like a fish’s mouth, like she wanted to warn somebody but couldn’t. Now Margaret said, “Sit still, my little prince. Watch it all and then it’ll be your turn.”

My mom started to say “Joey” then, and she kept saying it like a broken record, soft and helpless-like. I think she really did love me in her way, as much as she could love anything. The vampire walked over to her, licked her neck good, then bit. I’ll never forget my mom’s gloved hands holding the false nurse’s back, saying “Joey” the whole time, moaning at the end like she was under my dad. Margaret pulled away, a jet coming from my mother’s neck, arcing up and spattering everything. Margaret stuck a sponge in her hand, put that to her neck. The wound was already starting to heal.

I saw Margaret look at the nurse, consider drinking from her, but I now know she needed room in her rotten stomach. Room for my blood. She walked over now, looked at me. Her big light-blue eyes in the yellowish sclera of the new vampire.

“Move aside, Doctor,” she said. He moved aside.

With a pale finger, she plucked open the stitch on my leg, pulled the thread out. Lipped the blood off it and tossed it down. I whimpered.

“Shut up.”

I shut up.

She bent and put her lips to the puncture, sucked hard. Sucked as much blood from that wound as she could get. But it wasn’t enough. So she shifted and slipped a sharp fang under the skin near the crotch, fished around until she found the femoral artery, punched a burning hole in it. Drank. She didn’t stop. She arched her back like a cat.

“Joey, Joey, Joey,” went my mom, her feet kicking weakly like an infant’s feet, letting her magazine drop.

Someone knocked on the door.

“Dr. Goldman?”

“I’m in surgery,” the doctor said, staring at nothing, leaning back now so his drool ran on his tie. “Stay out, please.”

“Sorry, Doctor.”

The room began to go black.

Margaret stopped drinking, let the blood jet from my leg while she said, “And now, you lying little bastard. Now you’ll die.”

Joey, Joey, Joey.

I heard my pulse in my ears weak and slow.

Then I heard the sound where my pulse should have been.

And I died.

If there’s anything as black as the inside of a hospital morgue drawer, I’m not sure what it is. Maybe the middle of a barrel of oil, maybe a mineshaft after a collapse. I returned to something like consciousness aware that it was dark, that I was cold and that my throat, stomach, and ass were raw and burning. Images played in my head, not dreams exactly and not memories, sort of in between, like what you see when you’re dozing off. Margaret was at my window, pale and puffy-eyed and dead, she was looming over me in a big nurse’s hat, and then I was running from her through a jungle. I came to a big chasm that dropped down a good mile through vines and rocks, but there was a fallen tree across it so I ran for that. A bunch of other guys were running for it, too, but no sooner had we gotten to it than King Kong came around the bend, bigger than life and blacker than hell, beating his chest and roaring. You probably know what happened next; he started rolling the log around and thumping it and guys started dropping off to their deaths, screaming all the way down. That was the scariest scene in that movie, to me at least. This big monkey has you trapped and he knows what he’s doing and there’s nothing to do but die, it’s just a matter of time. I saw it with my folks and Uncle Walt at the premiere—we couldn’t get into Radio City Music Hall like we wanted, but we did get seats at the RKO Roxy after a long, cold huddle in line, mostly handled by Dad and Uncle Walt while Mom and I went for doughnuts. Dad made nice with the people behind us by giving them doughnuts. And business cards.