Pretty Dead (8 page)

M
y hands were shaking. Never before, since my human existence, had my hands shaken. They were always still, and steady as marble. I gripped the steering wheel and rounded the curves of the Pacific Coast Highway. When I arrived at my house, Jared was still passed out. I got out of the car and hauled him up the front steps. I was not used to feeling weakness in my limbs; it frightened me.

I heaved Jared down onto the couch in the front room, almost falling on top of him. My hands were so unsteady I could hardly light the candles or pour the
wine. The shaking in my hands seemed to be telling me something. There was something I must do.

I sat at the table with the red cloth, the white wax from the candles pooling onto it, and picked up the pen. After William changed me, I did not believe I could write any more poetry, anything at all. I was too empty. Writing poetry seemed to be another aspect of the human world lost, like crying, giving birth, producing milk or dying. I remembered how I practiced psychography, a way to communicate with the spirits, to feel less alone after Charles died. Loneliness was one thing William had not taken away. In fact, he had bestowed it upon me to a chilling degree.

Now my fingers tapped on the paper before me. There was an ache in my fingertips, all the nerve endings pricking like pins. This also reminded me of something from a distant past, a time when I felt an almost painful desire to write my feelings down on paper. I was changing; I wanted to understand what
had happened to Emily and I had no idea where else to begin, so I picked up the pen.

I
was slumped at the table, with my head in my arms, when Jared shook me awake the next evening. We had both slept straight through.

His eyes looked red and swollen, and his cheeks were bloated and bloodless. His big hand gripped my shoulder.

“What did you do?” he shouted.

“What?” Everything was a blur. I remembered a red room with writing on the walls. Jared lying on a couch, like a statue of Jesus. That infernal candlelight, and a girl in a red dress.

“I wanted to become like you!” he screamed. “That’s all I wanted. I finally had my chance. It wouldn’t have been on your head at all. I found him and he agreed, and you ruined it.”

“Why, Jared? Why did you want to be like me? So that you could be with Emily again? Did you know about her all along?”

He staggered back as if I had bitten him. “What the hell are you talking about? What about Emily?”

“She was there. In the red dress. You saw her. She’s one now.”

“I didn’t…. That was a dream. You saw my dream. That wasn’t…”

And then, before he could say another word, the Santa Anas blew the window open, the frame slamming the wall. Two figures were in the room. They had brought the night with them.

Emily had changed out of her red dress. She wore a long, black lace sleeveless gown with a deep neckline.
The hemline fell to the ground, and under it, through the sheer fabric, you could see she had on black riding boots. William stood behind her with his hand on her shoulder.

She looked into my eyes, so deep into the dark, bloody depths of who I was, and I knew that this was not a dream and that none of this would be happening if I had not done something, something as shocking and evil as anything William Stone Eliot had ever done.

Someone had made Emily into a vampire. Someone had made me into a human. I did not understand it all yet, but I knew I was somehow to blame for what had occurred.

“Forgive me,” I said.

“There is nothing to forgive,” said Emily. “I have what I always wanted. Except for one thing.”

William stepped closer, “Now give us Jared, please.”

Emily was staring at Jared. She was wrapping
her curls around her index fingers, pulling, then letting them bounce back. She had a sly, kittenish expression on her lips. Jared stood behind me. I could feel the fear coming off his body like dry ice.

“Emily,” he finally whispered, stepping forward.

“She’s not Emily, Jared.” I turned to face him.

“Oh, really! And who are you, then?” Emily asked. “What happened to the girl you used to be when Billy changed you?”

“She’s not herself anymore,” I said to Jared, ignoring her.

“What am I, then? A monster? That’s funny. A monster calling the monster a monster!” Emily started to laugh.

Jared looked at me pleadingly. “What happened?” he asked me. There were tears in his eyes. “Tell me what happened! Who did this to her? Was it him? Did he kill her and bring her back? Did I bring her back because I wanted her so much?”

“I’ll tell you,” William answered, stepping between me and Jared. “Charlotte killed your Emily. Or almost killed her. I came along just in time. I saw that pretty face, those sweet eyes and lips. I knew I couldn’t live without her, and I heard her ask for it. ‘On nights like this, when everything is so beautiful, I want to live forever.’”

The room seemed to be growing smaller. “What did you say?” I grabbed William’s arm, but he brushed me away like an insect.

“So I made her,” he said. “But it was almost too late. Too much damage had been done. I had to make a bargain, an exchange.”

“What are you talking about?” I lunged at him, and he caught me in his arms. “That thing you said! About Emily wanting to live forever. You heard her say that? She said that to me.”

“Yes, darling. I was watching it all.”

“You were there? How dare you! You have always tried to control me. Always!”

William smiled. “Perhaps. But look what you have received now. Look what I have given you.”

And he touched a finger to my cheek, wet it in my tears, and dabbed the salty substance onto his lips.

T
hat night Emily had brought her boyfriend, Jared Pierce, over to my house. They’d already been drinking when they arrived and stood swaying on my doorstep, giggling, a bottle of red wine in Emily’s hands.

I remember thinking,
You are so lucky, Emily. You are both so lucky.

She didn’t need to bother with makeup or pretty clothes. He loved her in a baggy sweatshirt, cutoffs and sneakers. She barely came up to his armpit. He was so tall that even I felt small next to him, almost
petite. I loved that feeling.

“Can we go swimming in your pool, Char?” Emily cooed. “Please?”

I let them in and we drank the wine and ate some caviar.

“Ooh, salty fish eggs, yum,” Emily said. At that moment she sounded childish to me in an affected way, not like her lovely, innocent self. Jared didn’t say much at all, but I could feel him watching me, and I could tell Emily noticed. Her eyes flicked back and forth between us like black butterflies.

“You’re
so
dressed up!” she said in a hard little voice full of italics. “I don’t think I’ve
ever
seen you without makeup and jewelry. It’s
so
grown-up of you.”

Jared looked nervous, picking up on the female tension. It was hard to miss, more obvious than the huge antique-jade necklace I wore.

“Put on Interpol!” Emily squealed. She was taking off her baggy sweatshirt. Under it she had a boy’s
white undershirt and no bra—the usual. She ran outside. “It’s cold! But the water’s warm. Oh my God! Jared, come on!”

He followed her out there. He’d hardly said a word to me the whole time. I watched them strip. His body looked huge next to hers. He got in the pool and held her, and I knew that under the water she was wrapping her legs around his waist.

I came and stood by the pool. The garden lights streaked the water with pale, shaking light. I undressed slowly, expecting them to watch me, but Emily pulled Jared around so his back was to me, and she started kissing him. Neither of them saw my perfect white body, naked and glowing in the night like a rare flower that, if plucked and consumed, could bring eternal life.
They have no idea what they are missing,
I thought.

But the truth was, I was the one missing out. And I knew it.

I remembered that day by the lake so long ago, older than human memory. Monster memory, it was.
But I was not a monster yet. I was a girl as beautiful as a flowering tree, undressing for a boy as beautiful as a lake. And as much as I was a part of the trees and he was a part of the lake, we were even more a part of each other. I was a girl diving into the blue water, splashing and swimming and happy and never imagining that the boy would be taken from me and that I would have to grieve for eternity.

Then rage surged up in me. Rage at any god that would take my brother from me. Rage at the devil for using my grief as a trap to make me his. Rage at time, at history, at memory, at all humanity with its cruelty in the face of endless loss. And rage at this happy mortal boy and girl playing in the water, in my pool, with no fear, no loss, no sense that someday they would be without their beloved and that the someday would last for an eternity.

I don’t remember what happened next, but I know that William Eliot was telling the truth when he revealed the terrible thing that I had done.

Suddenly, like a nightmare remembered hours later, one so brutal as to be only worse in the bright of day, it all came back to me.

i follow you home and wait outside your window.

i watch, seething and bucking with my rage while you and jared make love on your little-girl bed.

i wait until he leaves, and then i go inside and bend over your small, beckoning body.

“Charlotte,” you say. Your voice is thick with alcohol and dreaming. “What are you doing here?”

I am so ashamed of what I am, in contrast to your innocence.

“I know what you are,” you say.

I feel as if I’ve been struck in the chest with something sharp. Suddenly I wonder why I came here. What led me to your door as if under some spell. I pull away, full of remorse.

You go on. “I want to be what you are.”

I have never made a human into what I am. I have never felt the desire, nor did I believe I would have the restraint not to go all the way and take a life in the process.

i am choked with a thirst i have never felt.

i lose all restraint, all sense of humanity.

i beome the beast, and i pierce the beauty, pierce your shallow wrists with your own pocket knife, and then i feed until you are dry.

or almost dry.

because that is when william, who has been watching me for days, who has followed me through the night, who has masterminded it all, swoops in and changes you while i stagger home alone and without a memory of what i have done.

you will be buried so no one will suspect, and then you will rise out of the crypt and walk with him.

and in those moments when william bargained for your soul, i had no idea that both our greatest wishes were being fulfilled, or at what great cost.

“I
s it true, Char?” Jared was staring at Emily. “Tell me! Is it true? You did this?”

At first I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t look at him. I turned to William.

“Why did you come back again?” I asked. “You said you wanted to release me. Why did you come to my house the other night?”

“I came to see if the bargain really worked.”

“Emily!” Jared rushed at her and tried to grab her dress, but she moved back imperceptibly, and he fell to his knees on the carpet like the man in
Rodin’s sculpture
Eternal Idol
.

“Who did this to you? Tell me! Is it true?”

I had to answer him. I had to look at him. My face was burning. “Yes, Jared. It was me. I am a monster. That is what monsters do,” I said. There were so many tears pouring from my eyes that I couldn’t see him. I tried to touch him, but he pushed my hand away.

“You never said that. You never said you killed anyone.”

“I didn’t remember until now.” Now it was I who wanted to fall to my knees.

“You lied to me.”

“No. Everything I said was the truth. Except one thing. I said I couldn’t feel love, only desire. That was true with William and with Emily. But not with you. Something has changed.”

“Yes, it has.” William smiled. “She’s changed, Jared. I exchanged her for Emily. She is a mortal just like you now. Do you want to stay like that, growing old and wrinkled and diseased, riddled with tumors,
then rotting in your grave? Or do you want to come with me and your true love, Emily? I never minded male companionship. We’d have quite a time, the three of us. We’d rule the world.”

He walked slowly over to where Jared remained kneeling on my carpet, covering his face with his hands. Then William stroked Jared’s black hair, his jawline.

“Jared!” I screamed. “Don’t let him! Think what you want about me. Do what you want to me. But don’t go with them.”

Emily looked at Jared, and he rose as if she had pulled him by invisible strings. He stood in front of her, staring at her face. Then he strode over to me. His hand slapped my cheek, so hard that I reeled around and crashed against a cabinet. The Ming vase fell from its alcove and shattered on the floor.

I crawled to Jared and grabbed at his ankles. “I will go away. I will never bother you again. But you must stay away from them! You must.”

Jared turned away from me.

“Forgive me, Emily,” I said, staggering to my feet. “Forgive me. You were my best friend. You suffered enough.”

I saw Emily then, Emily as a girl, not as this monster, like the monster I had been for so long. She was asleep in her bed, and the door opened and a man stumbled in. His breath smelled of whiskey. His hands were huge and calloused. He was more of a monster than what she had become. And now I knew, looking at Emily and William, that the man, Emily’s mother’s ex-boyfriend, the one who had raped her, wherever he was, had not much time left to live.

I ran to the door and took the keys to my Porsche, and I left them there, the three I loved or had once loved or had thought I loved.

“Jared,” I said from the doorway, “you brought me back to life.”

He was looking at Emily again, but when I spoke I saw him turn, and for a moment I thought I
recognized regret upon his face.

William shouted after me as I escaped into the night. “Wrong again, Charlotte. I am the one who made you alive. As you said, I am always the one.”