A vagabond bit the jail floor. The cell gate closed behind him. The police turned to leave, but the vagabond spoke through his torn lips. “You must listen- I no liar!” The lady cop turned around and pointed a hook shaped finger at him. “Not another word out of you.”
The vagabond slapped the floor, then crawled to the bars and pulled himself up. The cellmates looked him up and down. Never did they see an inmate so beaten and broken. His eyes wild and swollen, blood and spit in his hair, his mouth missing most teeth but for a few yellow husks. He fell to his knees, breathing hard, and crawled to the nearest cellmate- a boy with long hair and a shaggy beard that looked too young for jail, reeking of refer. The vagabond pleased with him. “I'm not crazy either. Will you listen?”
The pothead scratched his beard and looked to the man next to him. A large handed skinhead with eight fingers stared down at the vagabond like a hawk. Bullet scars lined his exposed arms. He crossed his arms. The vagabond turned to him, blood and spit in his hair. “It’s true- let me tell you.”
“Shut your mouth.” The Skinhead commanded.
“Please, someone… someone-” the vagabond turned to a withdrawing drug fiend. “You have to listen me.”
The drug fiend shivered. “I do believe you-”
“At last!”
“-But I don’t care.”
The vagabond slumped on the bench. He looked to a tattooed man besides him. “How about you?”
“No habla Ingles.”
The vagabond slumped and wiped blood from his lips. “I'm going to tell you all anyway-”
The cellmates all groaned. The pothead pleadedto be placed in another cell.
The jail door opened. The sheriff came in. Some sandwich crumbs still on his tie and chin. He examined the cell patrons, and called on the vagabond. “Come with me, son.” He unlocked the gate and slid it open. The others looked with hope that he meant them, but upon seeing their faces light up the officer scowled. The pothead got up. “Not you!” the sheriff barked. The pothead slumped back down among the seasoned criminals. The sheriff pulled the vagabond by up his collar and locked the jail behind him. The inmates sighed in relief.
The sheriff took the vagabond to the interrogation room and handed him an ice pack and a handkerchief to clean up with. An empty pastry box sat by a cold pot of burned coffee. A camera recorded the vagabond sitting down on a plastic chair. The sheriff unplugged the wire connecting the camera to its monitor and sat down.
“My guys tell me you aren’t charged with any crime.”
“They didn’t listen to me- you’re all in danger! The doctors is-”
“Dr. Oliver Ekbaum in a vampyre.”
“You believe me!” The vagabond jumped from his seat. “We have to-”
“You’re kicking a sleeping dog.”
“I knew him when he was running a clinic in Uganda.”
“You’re a doctor too?”
“Not after that. Not after what I saw him do.”
The sheriff leaned back. “I can take you past county lines. Once you’re gone you stay gone.”
The vagabond writhed and wrung the the blood from the handkerchief before tossing it to the floor. The sheriff frowned at the towel. His daughter stitched her initials in the corner.
“I'll tell him you sneaked in to steal some pharmaceuticals. He’ll forget all about it. Everyone’s life goes on as normal.”
“I have no normal life.” He unfastened the top button of his shirt and pulled it down to reveal canine scars. “He almost killed me.”
The sheriff looked him up and down, rose his chin to show he listened, his eyes and cheeks firmed like stonework.
“Took me years to overcome this. I killed nothing. I’ve been looking for him ever since.”
“I can’t make this more clear. You’re giving us both trouble. I don’t want anyone getting hurt, son.”
The vagabond took to the corner of the room and screamed into his palms before turning back to the table and planting both hands down. His mouth opened, but the words didn’t come out. He buried his face in his palms and wept.
The sheriff escorted him to the car and drove him out of town. Along the way he saw the white teeth smiling on the billboard of the only clinic within fifty miles. “Dr. Ekbaum Medical Practice.” They drove until the town became glistening silver on the horizon. The fields and crops turned to tall weeds emerging from sand and dry patches of rocky, untoiled earth. The sheriff stopped in the shade of an autumn leafed tree. The sun burned through the clouds.
“Please, stay away. It’s for everyone’s good.” The sheriff said taking him out of the vehicle.
The vagabond stood and watched the car disappear behind the emerging heat waves. Buzzards picked at road kill.
The vagabond walked down the highway. The clouds dissolved and nothing kept the heat from burning the back of his neck. His flesh boiled even years after eradicating the curse from his blood. He turned down a gravel road and walked towards a treeline. The gravel thinned to dirt, and the dirt to prickly grass that poked through the soles of his shoes and pierced his feet. He looked at his shoes. His toes stuck through holes. He took them off, and walked towards a wooden bridge extending over a dry creek bed. Beasts scoured below the bridge. The vagabond paid no mind until he heard the snarls and slippery tearing. He stopped to listen. Hooves stamped, throats growled, tricky meat tore away from bone like Velcro ripping. The vagabond’s epidermis chilled. Dust rose from the cracks of the bridge. He knelt down and peeked below. Three deer with ribbons of meat hanging from their flat teeth like looted flags wrestled over the rib cage of human hamburger. They ate like the deprived. One leg remained attached, the head looked like a flattened basketball. Dust adhered to the reddened bones. One of the creatures batted against the other. It wailed like a revving fan, and all of them ran in circles around their prey, stampeding the matted sleeping bag and garbage sack filled with belongings.
The vagabond wiped his brow, and rose certain that he no longer had a choice. He went in the direction from whence he came.
His camp hidden behind bushes between two meager farms reeking of pesticide. He took his trowel and pierced the ground under the crumpled tent cover and disinterred a belt rigged with dynamite. He covered himself with a coat, and smeared mud over his face to appear as a different person. He carried out his secondary plan.
The small town enjoyed a peaceful afternoon until a blast shook the ground under everyone's feet and ash rained into their backyard ponds. The birds took flight, and the cats and dogs broke free from their restrains. Sirens erupted. Smoke reached the sky from the middle of town.
The sheriff walked among the emergency vehicles. The hospital lobby still suffocated with smoke. The hoses beat flames with steady streams. The sheriff took his hat off and examined each body before the paramedics put them into the coroner van. They recovered four bodies: A middle aged receptionist. A security guard. A nun. And two nurses- then some pieces of a fifth unidentified person.
“Someone had enough powder to clear a tunnel.” The deputy said. “They must’ve planned this for sometime.”
But the sheriff didn’t answer. The patients evacuated the building. The sheriff went inside, and walked along the quiet rooms stinking of bitter smoke. He stood at the stairwell above the morgue, but no matter how hard he concentrated on his memories of gunfire and car chases, his nerves tensed, and he turned away.
At home that night he watched his son toss a ball against the barn wall. His sickly condition medicated with Ekbaum’s prescriptions. His daughter played her xylophone, with another five hundred dollar rescue inhaler waiting for her in a white bag with the doctor’s signature. The kitchen smelled of oregano and tomato paste. The mother of his children cooked dinner, her headaches getting worse by day.
The son came in and tossed the ball at his father. It struck his face and rolled back to the boy’s feet. He recoiled in anticipation of reprisal, but the sheriff only looked deeper into the boys eyes.
“What’s wrong?” the adolescent asked.
“Nothing, son. Go help your mother. If she doesn't need it, than help your sister with something.”
“Yes, sir.”
When he left the room, the sheriff took his phone and dialed the deputy. His daughter came down the stairs. “Can I go with my friends, father?”
“Not tonight.”
“But dad,”
“Not tonight..” He spoke like a eulogy. “Wash up for dinner.”
He hugged and kissed her. She went to the dining room.
The sheriff slid outside and called the deputy. The phone rang for one minute unanswered. He sat in the shadows, and checked the corners of his property to be be safe that no one listened. After three minutes the deputy answered.
“Yes, I know you’re sitting with your wife." The sheriff told him.
“We were in the middle of a bit more than sitting.”
“You need to meet me at the propane field at dawn break.”
“What for?”
“Do it. Don't be followed. Bring two assault rifles and enough ammunition to clear out the trailer park.”
He hung up, and went in to have dinner. The meat tasted over-cooked and the spaghetti all clumped together like playdough and the tomato sauce tasted like pure garlic. But it was the best dinner he ever ate.
Morning seeped through the dark cracks of the east. Shadows of maturing crops reached over the gravel. The propane tanks hummed. Dew drops turned red with rust. The sheriff zipped up his coat and kept his finger tips in his mouth. He checked his time again. Pesticide fog rose over the crops and the wind carried it across the propane field like coastal fog. The sheriff coughed and his lungs constricted. He pulled his handkerchief over his nose. The clouds brightened. A shrouded overcast welcomed him good morning. Red and purple splendor twirled along the horizon. The sun peeked over black hills. He looked at the time once more, and kept his watch to the distant roads as the pesticides settled to his knees in the gravel lot where as it rose higher and condensed over the roads, crops and trees like walls of gloom. A shape developed within the pesticide mist. The sheriff crossed his arms. The closer the mass came, the more defined the distinctions. Three people, two standing- and one in a wheel chair creaking along. The two on the sides remained still, concealed behind the pesticide. The wheelchair in the middle came closer. The sheriff crossed his arms. The doctor emerged. In one hand he held bloody strands of blonde hair. In the other a deputy badge.
“Did you forget our agreement, Sheriff Lawrence?”
“Your days are numbered.”
“I overcame death already. Who was the fool that blew up my hospital?”
“Some nobody.”
“No. That person knew me.” The doctor’s bald head dripped with perspiration. Tangles of orange facial hair barely covered his thin lips and his chin shaped like the handle of a baseball bat. His thin body looked like a spine with eyes disguised as a human in a pale blue suit.
“He said that he knew you in Uganda.”
“Ah- yes. I remember.” He pointed to same anatomy as the vagabond did when he displayed his scars. “I did good work in those clinics.”
“He made it sound like you preyed on them.”
“I did. We all do.”
“You’re a monster.”
“I’m receiving the fruit of my labor- I ask because he caused me a deal of problems. Some of my… patients… escaped. I need them back. I know you’ll do good work, sheriff. You’re smarter than most. Aren’t you…?”
The sheriff reached for his weapon.
Ribbons of handkerchief blew away.
The sun rose over the RV park. Imogen awoke. She recorded her tests. The viles of green and yellow created sediment that she applied to wounded plants. She scribbled down the results, and prepared a new test, but found she lacked the necessary components.
She parked her mobile home at the end of the RV park so she didn’t bother anyone, and they didn’t bother her. Some police sirens waned in the distance. Her stomach still ached with sickness from the news of the bombing and the deaths, but she drank some tea and ate breakfast, then she put on a shawl and exited for the woods in front of her door.
She collected various agents like tree bark algae, pedals and stems, and dropped them in a basket. She raised her hood. The branches dripped with fog. Blue aluminum cans dangled from the tree where she found the fattest blue mushrooms. She picked the beetles off and collected them. She sighed sifting through her cluster of forest debris. She didn’t have enough.
A path cut through the grass, she noticed, that exist the last time she came to the forest. She followed the matted foliage, finding blood droplets on the leaves. She heard a whisper that sounded like wind until she saw the leaves on the ground rustle and a pale mud soaked hand reach up.
“Help me,” the voice begged. The flesh of the pale hand boiled in the daylight. The hand retreated, but the steam remained floating in the air. Imogen came nearer and saw sparkles under the forest floor. “Bring me to the dark, please.”
Imogen looked around and noticed the ground scraped of growth and mounds of dirt. She started to unbury the person despite the hisses and cries as she eclipsed the glaring white sky.
“Why are you here?” Imogen asked, but she saw the young girl in the hole lost much strength and only moaned dull sounds. She recognized her. The sheriff’s daughter. She pulled her out and wrapped her shawl around the girls head. Her flesh continued to steam and split. Her eyes glossed and she fell asleep. Imogen lifted her up. She weighed no more than eighty pounds. He thin arms curled around Imogen's shoulders, and they went back out from the woods. The sheriff's daughter, though snoring, kept biting her lips and sucking up the blood droplets.
Imogen placed the girl in her bed. She poured more hot tea and burned special incense. She build a ring of crystals and sang Ojibwe healing songs she learned from a Swede named Snowflake on the California coast. She checked the pulse. The heartbeat felt weaker than water. She tried one more treatment, one of her own design. She went through her viles and mixed a salve in a bowl. The girl’s breathing exploded into marathon pace then settled again only to increase once more, bringing her to rib splintering extents, then dropping her back down. Her body convulsed and fluids started to leak from her nose, ears, and twin wounds over her exposed body.
Imogen knocked over glass bottles, spilling foaming fluid on the floor, trying to reach the ivory tusk she used to grind the contents to flakes and dust. She added honey and some sour smelling fluid. She poured it into a small pot and boiled it on the stove. The girl rested like the dead then spasmed from the bed, crushing cardboard boxes of empty picture frames and broken jewels. Imogen lifted her back on the bed, enduring scratches and slaps. She tied a belt around her wrists to keep her from falling again. The girls pupils constricted to pen points.
Imogen drained the fluid, cut an incision into the girl, then inserted a hose and siphoned the fluid into her body. The girl rolled her head and made a loud curse before falling down. Sweat soaked through the blankets and sheets to the bottom of the mattress. Body odor filled the trailer and not even open windows cleared the stentch.
Imogen checked the girls pulse- and found no heartbeat.
Imogen paced her trailer, pondering what to do next. She inspected the body, finding the girls knees and fingers covered in dirt. She owned no phone, so she locked the door she painted in rainbow quilt work and walked from the RV park, down the highway into town. She entered the police station. She saw nobody inside. She called and knocked on the desk. Not even the heating vents droned. She saw the cell block door open. Just a hair, she leaned over, to see inside. Empty jail cells. She went around the counter. Someone left the keys in the cell door and freed the inmates.
Imogen walked by. Not a single car drove on the roads. The clouds grew darker. Rain started to splatter the pavement. Imogen looked into store windows, seeing nothing but dark displays. She saw the sheriff's car in the middle of the road, looted and rendered undrivable by damage to the wheels. Bloody prints painted the windshield and hood streamed down the glass in flowing rainfall.
An old woman called out from a narrow alley way. Imogen looked to see her head rise from a trashcan. No teeth and eyes like fleshy slots. She beckoned Imogen to come near. Imogen approached, then noticed the beckoning hand did not belong to the old woman- someone held a severed head out and beckoned her with a youthful but bloody palm. Imogen turned and ran. Her feet pattered in the curb wash. Rain soaked her gown. She wiped water from her eyes, and each time she did the shadows in the corners of the street took new shapes.
She saw a vehicle parked near a hardware store. She tried to door but found it chained shut from the inside. An old man scratched his head as she begged him to open the door. He saw what pursued her and he disappear in the backrooms. Imogen turned around. Shadows crept nearer as the rain turned to fog. She took a piece of lumber and threw it at them. With a one handed catch, the lumber broke in half with a lighting quick grasp. They hovered over the water in the street.
“Take us to the girl.” They asked of her. “And you will not be harmed.”
Imogen spun around and sprinted into the alley away. She stepped through broken glass, jumped over a trashed Buick, into the steam of a manhole. She ran without pause until she reached the highway, there she cut into the woods, dodging low hanging branches and slicing her flesh on thorns. She went in circles to check for pursuing footprints in the mud, but she found none. She walked the rest of the way, unaware of her bleeding scratches dripping on the foliage.
All the RVs left. Her trailer sat alone in the park. She entered, closed the blinds, locked the windows and doors. She didn’t believe in killing, but she owned an unlicensed .44 she stole from a boyfriend some years back. She sat near the body of the sheriff's daughter. She left the lights off. As the sky darkened, so did her trailer. Something like raccoons rummaged through her garbage, crawled up the outer walls and tapped on the roof. She sat up from the bed, the .44 with her. She peeled back one blind. Outside she saw a host of shadowed figures within the night cast fog.
The springs of her bed whined. She spun around, and fired. The girl fell back, her flesh white wisps in the dark fluttering to the floor. But she crawled back up, holding the wound, prying out the bullet and dropping it to the floor. Imogen held onto her weapon, cocked back the hammer one more time, but the girl grabbed her hand and jammed a finger behind the trigger. Imogen bent her legs and placed one foot ahead of the other. The eighty pound corpse bit into her forearm like a bear trap. Imogen reached for the ivory horn and stabbed the girl in the mouth. She forced it in so far that her jaw cracked and her sharp canines lost their power. Imogen threw vile after vile at the girl, each one shattering but to no effect. At last she took the pot containing the compound she invented and poured it over the head of the girl. It ignited into sparks and smoke. A fire ignited within the girl and burned in her mouth, eyes, and throat. The girl collapsed as the fire spread from her corpse to the loose piles of dirty laundry. The shadows outside waited. Imogen doused the walls with fire extinguisher from under the window seat.
A charred skeleton remained smoldering on top of old garden magazines.
She mended her wound with towels and vodka. The shadowed lurkers scraped against the windows with claws. They even rocked it back and forth until Imogen felt her self tipped back against the wall and her belongings tumbled on top of her. The glass shattered. Cold wet streams of air blew inside.
Twisted faces seeped in within the fog. Imogen tried to raise her body but the contents her cupboards pinned her against the capsized wall. She took a deep breath, as the shadows became clearer- withered flesh and sharpened teeth, and raised her weapon once more. She shots caused the trespassers to retreat into the fog in a crumbling whirlwind- but only until the wind started to blow once more, then they came back in standing as straight as before. Imogen hurled the gun at them, closed her eyes and covered her throat.
They took the skeleton, and dragged it out, leaving Imogen to pant and sweat, listening to the bones grind against the walls, and disappear into the fog.
In the morning the fog cleared. Imogen crawled from her trailer. She undid the towel to see the wound on her arm raw with infection. She took to the highway, and walked out of town.
She never told anyone about what happened because no one believed her. Years went by, she found herself living in a van with two other women and a dog. One day she saw a billboard for a new terminally ill ward, a doctor with a strange name, but matching the likeness of the billboard that stood outside the town she once called home.
In that terminally ill ward, a child wasted away in bed one night. She pretended to sleep, listening to her monitor's cadence. Her bones felt rotten. Her skin felt like sandpaper. She gave up trying to dream, so she tried to read a book in the lamplight, but her eyes shook and watered when they concentrated. She gave, turned the lamp off
A ray of light cut from the wall and spread. The door opened, and wheelchair wheels squeaked.
“You don’t deserve to be so sick and weak. You don’t deserve to be human,” He offered his hand. “The price will be high, but there’s nothing better…”
His razor teeth shined in the moonlight. She dropped her book to the floor.
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