The Blood: A Denouement

“It’s over,” Myron said one day.

All through practice he’d been lackluster, and finally Dan asked what was wrong.

“It’s been ending for a while, but it’s definitely, definitely over,” Myron said.

To Dan it seemed too bad that you could be just turning sixteen and your most important relationship be over. Myron stared stonily at the garage door, but the more he tried to look stoical, the more he looked like a kid who was about to cry.

“I tried everything,” Myron said.

And then Dan said, “Well, come on.”

“What?”

“Let’s go somewhere. Let’s go on a drive.”

“I don’t think I really want to,” Myron said.

“Well, I do,” Dan said “And a drive makes everything better.”

They drove past Germantown, through the south side, and out into Ogden and then, to Glencastle, where Dan hadn’t been since the autumn, and now spring was coming back and it took him a while to find the street, and then he went looking up and down for the house. 4848 Brummel.

“I,” Dan began looking over the steering wheel, “was going to take you to these friends,” he said, “Well, not friends, really. But. Yeah, they are friends. And they were going to make everything right.”

“Really?” Myron stirred from his sadness, not because he believed that anyone was going to make anything alright, but because he wanted to make Dan happy, who was here to make him happy.

“I was looking for 4848 Brummel Street.”

“Well,” Myron said, and the houses were easy to see in the spring with trees and bushes bare, “there is a 4846 and there is a 4650. Maybe 4848 is on the other side of the street?”

“No,” Dan said. Besides, that was much too simple. Why wouldn’t Dan have known that?

“It should be right here.”

“Well,” Myron said.

“Yeah,” Dan stopped. They moved up the avenue until they came out onto a main street and he said, “We should go to Dairy Queen.”

“You hate Dairy Queen.”

“I don’t,” Dan said.

“You just said you did.”

“That was when you said you loved it. And, besides. they have good drinks. Sort of.”

Dan was mildly confused and a little bummed out about not being able to find the house.

As they headed down the main road which would become the highway and take them back to Lassador, Myron said, “You’re a good friend.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re actually my best friend.”

Dan said, ‘You’re my best friend, too.”

“I have a mission for you,” Kruinh said to Laurie, “and Dan and Tanitha as well.”

“Where is Tan?” Dan asked.

“Back with David. Since she is leaving she’s decided to spend as much time as she can with him.”

“Where are we going?” Dan began.

“You’re full of questions,” Anne commented.

Kruinh said, “You must go to Rosamunde in England. Evangeline implied that she knew about the Strausses, more than implied. And I want to know just what she knew.”

“Because I want to know,” Myron said, quietly.

“Yes,” Kruinh said. “You might call it, honor among…”

“Monsters?” Anne suggested.

Myron frowned at her and she grinned and Dan thought, They’re lovers… Or… something.

Laurie said, “I don’t have a problem going to see that bitch, and I will call her a monster with no qualms, but…” Laurie gestured to Dan, who now looked at Kruinh with apprehension.

“We know,” Anne said.

When Dan opened his mouth again, it was Kruinh who said, “Everything these days is unusual. I chose you Daniel, because Rosamunde was your Maker. I believed it best for you to see her. But if you would not—”

“Then I will go,” Sunny said.

“You will not,” Kruinh laid a hand over his lover’s. “I cannot have my companion killing my niece. I have forbidden you two to be in the same room.”

Kruinh said, “Now, Lawrence, you must ready yourself to go, and Daniel, I leave it to you to decide. You can come back with us—”

“I will go,” Dan said. “I never said I wouldn’t. I just needed time to think about it.”

“You won’t go alone,” Myron said.

“Wha?”

Myron Keller shrugged.

“I’m going with you. It only makes sense. This is about my family. Besides… you’re my best friend.”

Loreal, Lewis and Chris sat in the large old anteroom with Jim and Seth. In the next room, where Lewis and Chris would sleep, an old fan turned lazily, and Loreal thought, “Slaves would have done that, once. Once, but not in a very long time, for Long Lees had been held by the Dunharrows since the late 1700’s.

“Ghost,” Lewis repeated what Seth had said, reaching for a cigarette, then deciding against it.

“They’re all over the place,” Seth said. He looked at Chris.

The pale, long faced man shook his head.

“I’ve never seen a ghost in my life, I don’t imagine ghost and vampires meet.”

“It would be an awkward meeting, probably,” Loreal noted.

When Chris looked at her, the cinnamon haired girl explained, “Given how many ghosts a vampire would be responsible for making.”

“If memory serves me,” Lewis said, not seeing Chris’s frown or Loreal’s look of satisfaction, “a ghost is a spirit who doesn’t really know he’s there, hasn’t moved on, repeats motions. He’s a sort of memory of the land, a leftover.”

“That’s what these are like,” Seth said. “I don’t think they even see me.”

“Slaves?” Jim raised an eyebrow and pushed a wing of his dark gold hair from his face.

“No!” Seth said.

Then, as if discovering something, he said, “No, these are all white. They are white. Men, women, children. Mouths open, bloody, wailing. I cannot hear them wailing, but they make the movements. If I could speak to them, I could calm them.”

“If you could speak to them, they would slap and you say “Get to work, nigger,” a new voice said from the doorway.

They turned to see Augustus leaning against the lentil, smiling.

“Or… negra, as they were wont to speak. They wouldn’t see you if they were alive and when they were alive they would have certainly told you where to go, yes, even a quadroon like you, my Seth.”

Augustus turned to go, saying, “Leave the dead alone. Their story is told. Worry about your own.”

In the large bed, with the fan twirling overhead, Marabeth glanced at the large book turned on its face where Pamela had spoken her last words. It was so strange because even though she had often been shocked by the things her aunt had said or done, Pamela had been, for some time, a constant companion, alive again, and now her words were gone.

She was holding the old envelope she had been using as a book mark and now Marabeth looked at it, blinking, and smiling a little, not with happiness so much has irony. The envelope was wrinkled and covered in scribbles. On the other side of it was Caleb’s handwriting: FUCK YOU, erased. He had been such a miserable husband. It was the last letter she had written. He had apparently read it. There were, ink spots where he had either cried of spilled drops of water. She licked those spots to see what they were because she just had to know. And they were definitely salt. She wondered then and wondered now, if it was possible that you could love someone strongly, but the love just not be enough, and she opened the letter she had not really even thought about, and began reading.

Marabeth got up early in the morning and put on a cotton dress she hadn’t believed she’d be able to wear. It was blood red and she told herself she looked like Snow White.

“But a sexy one,” she murmured. “Not that stupid bitch from the movie.”

No, no, she was like the real Snow White, the one who made her wicked stepmother dance around in shoes of iron pulled fresh from the forge. But why think of that when there was all of this land to be lost in? And as she walked about she marveled because, as large as the house on Dimler Street was, the house they were so proud of, its land ended at the coach house in the alley, and the two houses on either side. This land, with its rolling hills and thick green grass, with its streams sparkling in the sunlight, seemed not to end, seemed to be more land than was necessary for one plantation house. There were, to be sure, a few other houses, brick and stone, not wood, and then forest hemmed everything in, far in the distance. It seemed, to Marabeth, like at one point in time there had been more on this tract of land, and the more had been replaced by this guarded wilderness.

And it was guarded, Marabeth was sure of that, looking at the river moving slowly through the screen of sphagnum moss, Marabeth was sure that no one who was not wanted came here. Past the not so distant shore she could see islands.

“How are you finding it?”

Marabeth turned around and said, “If the air was colder, and I was more myself you would have made me scream, Lewis.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s so quiet here,” Marabeth said. “It’s so… I sort of understand what Pamela meant.”

“I never read the journal. What did she say?”

“That this place was enchanted. It was different from everything else. She said that Augustus told her she should just stay.”

“Well,” Lewis looked around, “it is enchanted. After a fashion. You might say that it has a permanent magic circle around it. We are in the South, after all, for a very long time it wasn’t a safe place for Black people to live. May not be that safe now. Augustus saw that unwanted people, white people, kept clear of his lands, and his lands are wide. Dunharrows were not the only people who lived here. But this was a Black country. And those islands out there, they always have been. It is our land.”

“There’s a story in there.”

“Yes there is.”

The way Lewis said that did not invite Marabeth to press further. But she said, “I miss Pamela. I miss the journal. I knew it was ending. Somehow I thought it would continue, but I imagine she was quite old when she finished it. I mean, she stopped at the death of her father, my great grandfather. Do you know that evil old man lived until 1967? It’s like we just missed each by about thirteen years?”

“Well, then there’s only thirteen years to fill in,” Lewis said.

“There’s so much I don’t know,” Marabeth said.

Then she said, “And yet, you know what? I don’t care. Not at the moment. I haven’t been much but a cipher for a while. My best friend’s boning my cousin, who I never thought of as that interesting, but he’s a werewolf who ties himself up in a dungeon. Jim and Seth are having a life together. But me? I’m just reading this book, and I’ve been deep in it. And when I finished it, I began thinking about my life.”

“And?”

“About my disastrous love life. About my shitty ex husband.”

Lewis nodded with half a smile.

“About the sensation of someone leaving you, someone who goes away and you’re telling him to stay, to make an effort. You’re angry at being left. You’re angry at him breaking his promises so easily, just shrugging them off and going, just not being worth anything. And the moment he’s gone, almost the moment he’s gone, you realize… you’re relieved, because the truth is he wasn’t that great. The truth is he took away from your life. He didn’t add to it. The truth is it was hard with him. And now life is lighter, and there’s a little part of you that is… not great. But... do you know what that’s like?”

“There were a lot of people before Christopher,” Lewis said. “So… yes.”