But Phaedra was not the girl I had killed in Iraq. Why did her face keep showing up in the hallucinations? Did it have to do with the psychic signals tapping the guilt inside of me, the guilt I’ve been yoked with since I helped kill the Iraqi girl? A guilt that had resurfaced and festered since I’ve lost Carmen?
Here was Phaedra, another woman careening into my life. We sat alone in my Toyota, the metal and glass cocoon a shelter from casual voyeurs.
She put her hand on mine, her warm touch inviting. There was a tiny quiver in her fingertips, yet she wasn’t afraid. Phaedra’s large brown eyes remained guarded but inquisitive.
Her fingers clasped my wrist. I could’ve broken free but remained transfixed, wondering about this mysterious young woman.
“What do you want, Phaedra?”
“It’s simple. You have to keep me from dying.”
Phaedra was dying? And she needed my help?
I said, “I don’t understand.”
“You’re a vampire, right?”
My fangs sprouted to combat length. My muscles tightened like springs.
Phaedra’s eyes locked and loaded. Don’t mess with me.
I didn’t need another psychic brain scramble. The murderous vampire routine wasn’t working, so I bent the rule about having to immediately kill her for knowing about the undead.
I gave a parting flash of my fangs as they retracted. “Yes, I am a vampire.” I motioned from her head to my mine. “What about you? Where does that mind power thing come from?”
“I don’t know. No one but you believes that I have it.”
The Araneum knew about psychic signals. Perhaps the zombies did as well. “Trust me, I believe you.” Had she discussed this with someone else? “I’m not the only one you’ve talked to about this?”
She replied, “That’s right. I’ve been in therapy for my hallucinations.”
Therapy? Hallucinations?
Phaedra reached into the left pocket of her slicker and pulled out a couple of small plastic bottles, one white, the other amber. “These are my meds.”
Wads of bills tumbled from her pocket. She scrambled to catch them with a clumsy, embarrassed grab.
I scooped the bills that had fallen over the center console. The bills were twenties and a hundred.
She took the money from me and shoved it back into her pocket. “It’s my…allowance.”
Quite a hefty allowance. The hesitation in her voice told me there was more about the money she didn’t want to explain.
I took the bottles of meds. The prescription label on the white bottle said: Haloperidol tab.5 mg. The label on the amber bottle: Nortriptyline cap 25 mg.
I returned the bottles. “What is the problem?”
Phaedra dropped the bottles in her pocket and snapped the flap. “The meds are for hallucinations and mood swings. And spasms.” She pointed to her twitching right eye. Next she extended both hands and the fingertips showed a slight tremble. “I have Huntington’s chorea.”
“I left my medical dictionary at home. You better explain.”
“Basically, my brain is rotting from the inside out.” Phaedra said this with less emotion than I’ve heard from others complaining about a broken fingernail. “It’s hereditary. My mother died of it when she was thirty-two.”
“You seem calm about it. If I had this disease, I’d be shitting my pants.”
“That’s not funny. I lose control sometimes and have shit in my pants. So no more shit jokes, okay?”
Okay. Better that I look sympathetic. “You’re sure you have Huntington’s?”
“One hundred percent positive. I might live to thirty. Most likely twenty-eight.”
Dead at twenty-eight? Wasn’t a diagnosis but a death sentence. I’d really be shitting my pants. “With a diagnosis like that, you seem almost cheery.”
“Because I have a way out.”
“Which is?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“Make me a vampire and I won’t die.”
My kundalini noir lunged in attack. I clenched my muscles to keep from showing the reaction.
“In case you’re unfamiliar with the concept, we vampires are undead. We exist with one foot in the grave. Sometimes we sleep there. Being a vampire is no picnic.”
“Neither is dying of Huntington’s.”
“We have other problems.”
She asked, “Do vampires die of Huntington’s?”
“Not that I know of. We’re immune to most human diseases. How do you know about vampires? About me?”
“My hallucinations.”
“How?”
“I get images in my head.”
“Images?”
“Perceptions. I wish I could explain it better but I can’t. It’s like describing colors to the blind, sounds to the deaf.” Phaedra stared at the dashboard. For an instant, her eyes turned vacant. “I send out special ‘thoughts’ and they wrap around what they find. At first I didn’t understand what I was seeing. Over time, I learned to focus my thoughts and I began to create sharper perceptions of things.”
“What things?”
“Things in a place.”
“Place?”
“A gigantic void. Like another world with nothing in it but a way to get from one location to another.”
Was Phaedra talking about the astral plane?
She continued, “We have time and space and I’ve found something more. In this void I can see another side to everything.”
Void? She must’ve read the confusion on my face, and her forehead clenched in frustration. “Sorry, that’s not the right word, but I can’t think of a better one. Being in this void made me think differently about the world. I began searching. Maybe in this void, this dimension, I’d find it.”
“Find what?”
“A chance to not die like my mother. What happened to her was so wrong.” Phaedra’s eyes glistened. “Day by day, she lost more and more control over her body and mind. The Huntington’s took everything. I remember finding her on the floor helpless with a puddle of mess between her legs.”
Tears pooled in Phaedra’s eyes, the drops fat and heavy with sadness. “I cleaned her up. I could read the awful question in her face. Why? I felt so ashamed for her. And I knew that’s what waited for me.”
How wrenching, but I wasn’t much for the emotional wringing needed to drive these heart-to-heart talks, especially since I had no heart. “The Huntington’s is responsible for your hallucinations and that in turn has led you to…” I didn’t want to say astral plane, so I said, “the void.”
“Seems that way.”
In a cruel twist, nature had compensated Phaedra. What a trade: get psychic power at the expense of your brain turning to mush.
The inside of the windows by Phaedra had fogged up. The windows around me were still clear.
I asked, “You looked for me?”
Phaedra wiped a spot on the passenger window. Rain dribbled along the outside glass. “I didn’t know what I was looking for. You are what showed up.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“It was like I was walking inside your head.”
Phaedra said this casually, but she had been privy to my most buried thoughts. My skull seemed to split open and let a rush of violation flood my brain.
I felt the withdrawal from the world. I clutched at the steering wheel and forced myself to remain engaged in the present.
Phaedra said something.
I was still a little off center. “What?”
“When is it going to happen?”
“It, what?”
“When are you going to turn me into a vampire?”
I tightened into combat mode, taut as the trip wire of an antipersonnel mine. She mentioned vampires and my reaction was to kill her.
What did Phaedra know about this vampiric existence? The lurking on the fringes of civilization. The masquerading as an ordinary human. The fear of discovery. The terror of the morning sun. The long stretch of immortality without the sanctuary of real family and love.
As a soldier I had killed one little girl and that tragedy had since defined my life. I hadn’t turned anyone and promised myself that I wouldn’t condemn another soul to my fate.