Teeth_ Vampire Tales - Ellen Datlow [82]
He shuffled out of his room and down the hall. The vampire needed to feed on him once more, and he wanted to get down there before his mother got back.
As he passed by his brother’s door, though, he stopped short. Somebody was whispering on the other side.
He opened the door to find his little brother lying prone on the floor, half under the bed. Late-afternoon shadows gathered in the corners. His face was a small moon in the dim light, one ear pressed to the hardwood. He was whispering urgently.
“Michael?”
His brother’s body jerked in alarm, and he sat up quickly, staring guiltily back. Joshua flipped the light switch on.
“What are you doing?” Something cold was growing inside him.
Michael shrugged.
“Tell me!”
“Talking to Daddy.”
“No.”
“He’s living under the house. He wants us to let him back in. I was afraid to because Mom might get mad at me.”
“Oh, Mikey.” His voice quavered. “That’s not Dad. That’s not Dad.”
He found himself moving down the hall again, quickly now, fired with renewed energy. He felt like a passenger in his body: He experienced a mild curiosity as he saw himself rummaging through the kitchen drawer until he found the claw hammer his mother kept there; a sense of fearful anticipation as he pushed the front door open and stumbled down the porch steps in the failing light, not even pausing to gather his strength before he hooked the claw into the nearest latticework and wrenched it away from the wall in a long segment.
“We had a deal!” he screamed, getting to work on another segment. “You son of a bitch! We had a deal!” He worked fast, alternately smashing wooden latticework to pieces and prying aluminum panels free from the house. “You lied to me! You lied!” Nails squealed as they were wrenched from their moorings. The sun was too low for the light to intrude beneath the house now, but tomorrow the vampire would find the crawl space uninhabitable.
He saw the vampire, once, just beneath the lip of the house. It said nothing, but its face tracked him as he worked.
The sun was sliding down the sky, leaking its light into the ground and into the sea. Darkness swarmed from the east, spreading stars in its wake.
Joshua hurried inside, dropping the hammer on the floor and collapsing onto the couch, utterly spent. A feeling of profound loss hovered somewhere on the edge of his awareness. He had turned his back on something, on some grand possibility. He knew the pain would come later.
Soon his mother returned, and he took some of the medicine she’d bought for him, though he didn’t expect it to do any good. He made a cursory attempt to eat some of the pizza she’d brought, too, but his appetite was gone. She sat beside him on the couch and brushed the hair away from his forehead. They watched some TV, and Joshua slipped in and out of sleep. At one point he stared through the window over the couch. The moon traced a glittering arc through the sky. Constellations rotated above him, and the planets rolled through the heavens. He felt a yearning that nearly pulled him out of his body.
He could see for billions of miles.
At some point his mother roused him from the couch and guided him to his room. He cast a glance into Michael’s room when he passed it, and saw his brother fast asleep.
“You know I love you, Josh,” his mother said at his door.
He nodded. “I know, Mom. I love you, too.”
His body was in agony. He was pretty sure he was going to die, but he was too tired to care.
* * *
A scream woke him. The heavy sound of running footsteps, followed by a crash.
Then silence.
Joshua tried to rouse himself. He felt like he’d lost control of his body. His eyelids