Teeth_ Vampire Tales - Ellen Datlow [81]
He looked away. He felt his face flush, and he didn’t want her to see it. “I know,” he said.
“I know you don’t like him.”
“It’s not that,” he said, but of course it was that. Tyler had to be here so he could feed him to the vampire. He had a feeling that tonight was going to be the night. He didn’t know how he could go on much more, as weak as he was.
Michael piped up, his voice cautious yet hopeful: “It doesn’t matter anyway, ’cause Daddy’s coming back.”
His mother sighed and turned to look at him. Joshua could see all the years gathered in her face, and he felt a sudden and unexpected sympathy for her. “No, Mikey. He’s not.”
“Yes, he is, Mom, he told me. He asked if it was okay.”
Her voice hardened, although she was obviously trying to hide it. “Has he been talking to you on the phone?” She looked to Joshua for confirmation.
“Not me,” Joshua said. It occurred to him that Dad might have been calling while he was under the house, talking to the vampire. He felt at once both guilty that he’d left his brother to deal with that alone, and outraged that he’d missed out on the calls.
“You tell him next time he calls that he can talk to me about that,” she said, not even bothering to hide her anger now. “In fact, don’t even talk to him. Hang up on him if he calls again. I’m going to get his number blocked, that son of a bitch.”
Tears piled in Michael’s eyes, and he lowered his face. His body trembled as he tried to keep it all inside. A wild anger coursed through Joshua’s body, animating him despite the fever.
“Shut up!” he shouted. “Shut up about Dad! You think Tyler is better? He can’t even look at us! He’s a fucking retard!”
His mother looked at him in pained astonishment for a long moment. Then she put her hand over her mouth and stifled a sob. Aghast, Michael launched himself at her, a terrified little missile. He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her chest. “It’s okay, Mom, it’s okay!”
Joshua unfolded himself from the couch and walked down the hall to his room. His face was alight with shame and rage. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to feel. He closed the door behind him, muffling the sounds of the others comforting each other. He threw himself onto his bed, pulling the pillow over his face. The only things he could hear now were the wooden groaning of the house as it shifted on its foundations and the diminished sound of the blood pumping in his own head.
Their father left right after the hurricane. He used to work on the oil rigs. He’d get on a helicopter and disappear for a few weeks, and money would show up in the bank account. Then he’d come home for a week, and they’d all have fun together. He’d fight with their mother sometimes, but he always went back out to sea before things had a chance to get bad.
After the hurricane, all that work dried up. The rigs were compromised and the Gulf Coast oil industry knocked back on its heels. Dad was stranded in the house. Suddenly there was no work to stop the fighting. He moved to California shortly thereafter, saying he’d send for them when he found another job. A week later their mother told them the truth.
Joshua still remembered the night of the storm. The four of them rode it out together in the house. It sounded like hell itself had come unchained and was stalking the world right outside their window. But he felt safe inside. Even when the upper floor ripped away in a scream of metal and plaster and wood, revealing a black, twisting sky, he never felt like he was in any real danger. The unremarkable sky he’d always known had changed into something three-dimensional and alive.
It was like watching the world break open, exposing its secret heart.
His father was crouched beside him. They stared at it together in amazement, grinning like a pair of blissed-out lunatics.
Joshua heard a gentle rapping on his door.
“I’m going to the store,” his mother said. “I’m gonna get something for your fever. Is there anything you want for dinner?”
“I’m not hungry.”
He waited for