Vampire High Sophomore Year

26



Halloween came. I was jumpy as a cat all day. I couldn’t concentrate. Or actually, I was concentrating on the coming night, and on what could go wrong, which was everything. I wondered if this was how Diaghilev had felt.

Finally, I decided to go over to the mill and worry there. And, because it was Halloween, I took Turk’s inflatable Scream along with me. My date for the evening.

Getting to Crossfield without Turk’s car was a pain. The buses had stopped running across the river a few days before. I had to take one that stopped five blocks from the river and turned back. And it was slow, slow, slow. The streets outside the windows were empty. In another year, there would have been people in costumes—witches, ghosts, aliens, everything but vampires. Not this year.

When I walked up to the bridge, there were two Burgundians guarding it. Guys I knew slightly from Vlad. They were wearing armbands and swords. Each one had a massive crossbow on his shoulder.

Where had they gotten that stuff from? Were there secret arsenals around New Sodom? And why such ancient weapons? And what weapons would the Mercians use?

“I’m here on business,” I said.

“Pass, gadje,” one of the guards said. “Duke Gregor told us to permit it.”

Around the mill there were six more guards, and four on the roof. But the yellow police tape was uncut.

Vladimir was there.

“It begins,” he said, and handed me a knife. “This is Duke Gregor’s blade. He asks that you use it for this work.”

“Here goes,” I said, and cut the tape. It fluttered to the ground and danced there in the wind.

I unlocked the door of the mill and went in.

Cold, stale air blew in my face. The frame of the wigwam looked exactly like the skeleton of some weird beast in the fading light. Except for it, and for Turk’s stuff hanging on the walls, the place was barren. It felt lonely and lost. For a second I wished Turk was back, complaining and giving orders no one listened to.

I set The Scream inside the wigwam. Then I went downstairs and turned on the turbines, then the master switches. Lights came on overhead. The building was coming to life.

I went back upstairs and met a crew of jenti with brooms and mops. Ilie was in charge of them.

“Duke Gregor has sent us,” he said. “You wish us to begin now?”

They whipped through the place while I went around turning on the rest of the lights. As soon as they were done with the first floor, a big truck pulled up out front and a couple of gadje got out.

“Where do you want us to put the piano, kid?” one of them asked.

There was even a candelabrum to put on top of it.

When Mrs. Warrener showed up, she ran her fingers over the keys, nodded, and started to play. Something sad and full of moonlight.

Ilie and his guys put down their brooms and came over to listen. We were still listening when Gregor showed up.

He was wearing combat fatigues and carrying a sword.

Mrs. Warrener beckoned him over. Quietly, he unbuckled his sword belt and joined us.

Mrs. Warrener started playing one of those mysterious songs in high jenti, and Gregor sang. Ilie lit the candles and turned off the lights in the room. Then the other jenti joined in, singing the chorus and making the walls shake. It was beautiful and sad, and when Gregor hit a high note that was just south of a wail, I shivered.

Gregor bowed, his guys bowed to him, and they left as quietly as they’d come.

“We indulge ourselves,” Gregor said. “Tonight, with everyone here and electric lights, it will not be the same.”

“It will be great,” I said.

Mrs. Warrener smiled.

“Oh, Cody,” she said. “I so hope nothing bad happens tonight.”

“In any case, we shall finish a few songs at least before—before whatever must happen happens,” Gregor said.

Mrs. Warrener blew out the candles.

The three of us stood in the near dark, not talking or moving. It was like we were waiting for something to end and something to begin, and it wouldn’t be right to rush it.

“Un ange passe,” Mrs. Warrener said.

“What?” I said.

“An angel passes,” Mrs. Warrener explained. “It’s what the French say about a moment like that.”

“We could use a few angels tonight,” I said.

“In any case,” Gregor said, “it is time to see who we do get.”

When we turned the lights back on, I saw how much Ilie’s cleaning crew had done. The redbrick walls shone and the windows glittered. Even the old dark wood of the floors glowed. Turk’s art seemed to leap off the walls. The old building was ready to party. And what would happen tonight was about to start.

There was a timid knock on the open door.

Justin stood there with a package under his arm.

“Hi, Mom. Hi, Cody,” he said.

“’S’up?” I said.

“Who let you past, Mercian?” Gregor said.

“I’m not a Mercian,” Justin said. “I told ’em, whatever they were planning, I wasn’t part of it anymore.”

“Oh, thank God,” Mrs. Warrener said.

“Cody, I’m sorry,” Justin said. “I know that’s pretty inadequate, but I am. If you don’t want me here, just say so. But I had to come and tell you and Mom.”

“Well … I guess it’s a big deal to be a Mercian,” I said.

“I thought it was,” Justin said. “Maybe three hundred years ago it meant something good.”

“You didn’t know,” Mrs. Warrener said. “And you thought they were something else. And when I tried to tell you, you didn’t want to hear.”

“I guess not,” Justin said.

Mrs. Warrener held out her arms and Justin walked into them.

“I know it’s hard without your father,” she said. “I know what you were hoping to find.”

Gregor and I looked away. This kind of thing didn’t usually happen with old-time New Englanders. But right now, the two of them didn’t care who saw them.

And maybe another angel passed just then.

Justin took something out of his pocket and handed it to Gregor.

“Take it if you want it,” he said. “I’m through with it.”

It was a silver eagle with two heads.

“I do not want this trash,” Gregor said. But he didn’t seem to know what to do with it.

“Not my problem,” Justin said.

“Here, gadje. Take this. Please,” Gregor said. “Get it out of my hand. A souvenir of something. Of your opening.”

I took it and put it in my pocket. A souvenir of getting a friend back.

“Well, if you stick around here, I’m going to put you to work,” I said. “Bandaged hand or not.”

“In that case, here,” Justin said, and handed me the package. “Thought you might like to have it for tonight.”

It was a tube of brown paper tied up with white string that looked like it had been knotted a long time ago. I cut the string and started to unwrap whatever it was.

“Careful,” Justin said. “It’s kind of old.”

Mrs. Warrener gasped.

A bolt of cloth started to appear, and Justin came forward to help me unroll it.

When we were done, we were each holding one end of an old flag. The field was red, and in black letters at the top it said, NEW SODOM. At the bottom it said, DON’T TREAD ON ME. In between were two rattlesnakes twined together around an angel.

“Mercy Warrener’s flag,” Justin said. “Mom gave it to me about a year ago, said I could do what I liked with it. Been thinking about it. I thought maybe we could fly it here.”

“We have to,” I said. “Can’t open this place without Mercy.”

“The flag expresses an excellent sentiment,” Gregor said. “Fly it.”

We refolded the flag and went up to the third floor, with Gregor and Mrs. Warrener. We opened the window next to the flagpole, and ran the flag out. It streamed sideways in the wind and the dusk.

I saw a couple of vans pull up out front.

“There are the artists,” Gregor said. “You had better go and tell them where to set up.”

As I went downstairs, Justin was beside me.

“Cody, I’m pretty sure something bad’s going to happen tonight,” he began.

“I know,” I said. “We’ll deal.”

“Right,” Justin said.

And just like that, everything was the way it had been.

By now there were six trucks and vans in front of the center, and paintings and sculptures and video equipment were exploding out of them. I put Justin in charge of the second floor and Gregor on the third, to make sure everybody set up in the right places. I took the first floor myself. Mrs. Warrener greeted every arrival and directed them to parking.

So far, so good.

Meanwhile, the Burgundians were thickening outside, surrounding the building, flying overhead. It was sinister.

But inside, the old mill was filled with sounds of hammering and loud voices. Happy, excited voices. In less than an hour, half the walls were covered, and the floors were filling up. More vans came, and by dark the old mill looked like a gallery. The piano was surrounded by wild and crazy stuff, and folding chairs were being set up in the empty spaces.

Folding chairs? I hadn’t ordered any folding chairs. But they were coming off a big truck that said NEW SODOM PARTY AND BANQUET SUPPLIES, and Mrs. Warrener was seeing to it that they got put where they were wanted.

“Hey,” I asked one of the guys setting up, “who paid for all this?”

“Don’t ask me, man, I just truck the stuff out and set the stuff up, y’know?” he said.

Then the poets and actors and musicians started to arrive and I didn’t have time to think about chairs.

The Shakespeareans went on the third floor. The Daughters’ slam was supposed to be on the second. Pestilence gave a slow wink and squeezed my arm as she went by. A rock group called Styx of One didn’t even have a reservation. I found them a place in the basement. They didn’t seem to mind.

Mr. Shadwell showed up wearing a tuxedo. Ms. Shadwell was with him, hanging on his arm and smiling like her inner wolf.

“Where do you want me, Elliot?” Mr. Shadwell roared, and I sent him up to where the Daughters were already hollering their poems to an empty room.

I could hear the soft throb of the rock band coming up through the floor, and the chat of voices all around me as the artists checked out each other’s work. Once in a while, a few loud words came down from the gallery where the poets were. The evening felt like it wanted to take off and fly. It was trying its wings, seeing if it could get airborne on this dark, windy night.

A few visitors drifted in. Some of them were parents or friends, but a few were gadje who’d heard about tonight and wanted to check it out. They came in with their shoulders hunched, looking around like they were scouting for booby traps.

Then Ms. Vukovitch arrived in a black dress that could have slithered across the floor by itself if she hadn’t been in it. She gave me a smile and sauntered down the rows of Turk’s paintings.

“Hey, Ms. Vukovitch,” I said, catching up to her. “Would you like a job?”

“Does it pay better than teaching science?” she asked.

“It doesn’t pay at all,” I said. “I need someone to greet these gadje as they come in. Make them feel less nervous.”

“Sure.” Ms. Vukovitch shrugged. “Anything for the arts, gadje boy,” and she intercepted the next couple who walked in. After she’d done that a few times, a lot of the men were smiling. Most of the women weren’t. They kept looking at Ms. Vukovitch and frowning. But at least they weren’t worrying about their safety.

Almost six-forty-five. In another half hour, Mrs. Warrener and Ms. Vukovitch would start their part of the evening, if it lasted that long. Anyway, things seemed to be going along okay down here. I thought I’d better check out the second floor.

There was a modern-dance concert going on at one end. Seven or eight kids moving around to some canned music. No audience, at least not yet. I gave them a thumbs-up and moved on to the poetry slam.

Now, here there was an audience. Mr. Shadwell, Ms. Shadwell, and four people who looked like they were parents of some of the Daughters. Basil IX was open and pumping:

“Where do they go,

The old TV shows?

They go on forever

Getting weaker and weaker

Out across space,

Falling apart, losing the meaning

They never had

Till they fall off the edge

Of the universe.

No need to rehearse

All those old shows.

They make just as much sense

When they fall off the edge

As the babble of dying stars.”

There was a lot more like that.

Everyone clapped, then Basil IX sat down and Mr. Shadwell got up.

“I would like to begin with a few lines from my first epic, Penobscot,” he said. “This passage describes the coming to Vinland of Leif Ericsson in 1003, more or less. It was my first, not completely successful attempt to merge the elements of Anglo-Saxon prosody, which I greatly admire, with the stylistic elements of Walt Whitman’s verse.”

He took a deep breath and began.

“The shore-stones wave-ravaged, the land unnamed.

No, not unnamed, but known by name

Never to be known by men who came

In swift sea-skimmers sent from far fjord

In hopeful reconnoiter for a richer steading.

Their name they gave it: Vinland! Vinland the good.

And where they found safe harbor as seemed fair

To men salt-crusted from long days upon

The gray and friendless whale-road, they dragged

Their dragon ship ashore. Its keel-mark on sand

The first stroke of the first rune of their first kenning.”

The Daughters started doing little things in pantomime behind Mr. Shadwell’s back after about the first two minutes. Gelnda put her head between her knees. Hieronymus Bosch put his finger down his throat. Death and Famine hugged each other and cried. Basil IX tried to gouge out his eyes.

Some of the audience shook their heads, trying to get their kids to stop. Some smiled. A couple laughed. Finally, most of them got up and wandered away. Mr. Shadwell plowed on until his time was up. Then he bowed a little bow and sat down, and his wife clapped.

Gelnda got up and raised her fists over her head and shrieked. It was a good shriek, but apparently not what she was after. Because she did it again, long and wavering like a siren. Then she shrieked three more times, each time on a higher note. Then she screamed in short little bursts like a machine gun. She kept making up new screams until her voice started to give out on her. Then, in a rasp that we could barely hear, she said,

“The earth is our mother.

Let’s make her scream.”

And she sat down.

All the Daughters clapped, and both remaining pairs of moms and dads. Mr. Shadwell sat leaning forward with his hand on his chin and a frown on his face.

Hieronymus Bosch got up next, and ran through something about garbage. That was the whole poem, a list of what was in his garbage can. At the end of it, he said, “With thanks to Walt Whitman,” and bowed to Mr. Shadwell.

Mr. Shadwell sat back and crossed his arms.

I wasn’t sure I liked the way this was going. I didn’t want to see Mr. Shadwell get dissed. Or trod on. But then Justin put his hand on my arm and whispered, “Just thought you ought to know. Your cousin’s here.”