They’re coming from the graveyard.
Someone else is here with me.
Six
JULIAN
Ileft work for the day without finding old Reginald. That fucker was in the wind, an impressive feat with how small the hospital was but it’s also not like I could ask for him by name either.
“Excuse me, there’s a vampire named Reginald that works here. Do you know if he’s on break?”
Yeah, not happening.
I’d gone through the motions of work and headed home at five pm sharp. A big change from the multiple eighteen hour and twenty-four hour shifts I pulled in Seattle. Too much time on my hands isn’t good. I’m a vampire. I already have nothing but time but now I’m finally understanding why some of my kind choose the Final Death willingly. I spent about an hour or two pacing the house before I left. I headed into town for dinner, not a necessity as a vampire to eat but at least it’s something to do. Living life this slowly comes naturally to people but not vampires. It’s harder to settle into nothing when you know nothing is all there is waiting for you.
When you don't age, the people and places around you crumbling and dying, fading to dust, even the vampires that walk through the centuries with you begin to vanish one-by-one. The kiss of the Final Death comes for us all, immortal or not. Somehow, someway, nature always has a way of keeping the balance. It might be a vampire’s stake or the decision of the Varolacus, but the end is always there, heralding the arrival ofnothing with all the force and finesse of a nuclear blast.
Vampires run from nothing and are nothing all at once. Maybe that’s why we run from it.
I walk though, not run, through the blocks of downtown that Vesper Point has to offer. Some towns are nothing but a few restaurants and maybe a coffee shop, nothing with heart, not lived in the way towns used to be. But Vesper Point is lived in. I can feel the life of it bustling and teeming like silverfish in the low tide.
Vesper Point is the perfect mix of old and new aesthetic that movie directors and influencers salivate over. Victorian meets the retro fifties. Wrought iron and gold filigreed business names on glass store fronts with creeping ivy and a bandstand in a little park at the center of town. Cozy and shit like that. Chrome and neon flashes in the diner at the center of town, the red neon lights of the seagull flying over a burger dancing across the bricked sidewalk while a stone gargoyle perches over the newspaper office across the street.
The Vesper Point Call.
There is a single light on at the back. Someone is working late it seems. What kind of news would someone be burning the midnight oil over in a town like this? What it was had to be juicy. Fraud at the swap meet or maybe there was a scandal at the last PTA meeting. Maybe a tussle at the boat slips?
I chuckle to myself at the thought of drama in Vesper Point, which gets me a few looks from the couple enjoying their burgers out in front of the burger joint. The looks are a clear sign that I need to move on and find something to do or I’ll go from thenew mysterious hot doctor to the crazy new doctor, the latter of which doesn’t factor into laying low.
I give the couple a quick smile and continue on my way. I make a loop around town, down to the docks and through what looks like the seedier part of Vesper Point. The waves are louder here, the ocean closer in this part of town. I pause at the edge of town and watch the fog roll in from the sea. Inch by inch it crawls towards town but I don’t stay to see it up close. There are a few bars down here, but nothing too exciting. The scent of salt and sea wraps itself tight around me, the fog nipping at my heels as I walk back up from the docks towards downtown proper.
I wander through downtown taking in the night when a restaurant catches my eye. Papa Mia, an Italian restaurant, makes me pause looking in the windows at a flower shop. I haven’t had Italian in a very long time, maybe twenty years? I’m not sure.
A fresh-faced hostess and the heady scent of roasted meats and garlic welcome me into Papa Mia. The restaurant, I think, will be the perfect place for people watching but I’m wrong on that because about half the town comes by my table to introduce themselves and their families, which takes up over an hour of the night. Everyone seems to be here, somehow the streets of Vesper Point emptying and dumping them all here in this place with me, and all of them eager to meet the new doctor in town.
I even see Father Paretti, deep-throating a bowl of bolognese. The dumb fuck. His arteries will be closed by the time I’m served the pasta I’ve ordered. Dinner is good. Thank fuck for tiny miracles. I leave the restaurant, making sure to keep a pleasant smile on my face and slow down long enough to say, “Evening, Father,” while Father Paretti glares at me.
“Doctor,” he grunts, before turning his attention back to his pasta, making it clear I’m dismissed.
Anyone else might have felt slighted or worried about what the townsfolk nearby might have thought by seeing it. They’re watching with interest while pretending they aren’t. No doubt it will make its way down to whoever is still working in the newspaper for the morning print but all I do is smile and go on my merry way.
I’m not bothered by Father Paretti for good reason. And that reason is the fact that somewhere between the mushroom stuffed shells with the right amount of garlic and the glass of red I’d had, I’d made the decision to see Parettifor dessert.
The old bastard isn’t going to be staring me down in a restaurant while I cosplay at civility and put up with his bullshit check-ups. No, I really don’t think I want to be bothered by the Father for the long haul. There really is only so much one vampire can take when in forced exile, and Father Paretti isn’t going to be one of them.
Seven
MARIS
Ihold my breath while I listen to the people in the graveyard. It’s dumb with the way the wind is blowing. It’s so loud that no one would hear me but still, I hold it and wait. They’re getting closer, louder, more…angry.
Why are they so mad?
I should leave. I know that but there’s something that keeps me rooted where I am. I think it’s because I’m not ready to leave the graveyard. Not ready to leave my family. Why should I be the one to leave? And on today of all days. Who else would be here at this hour, on my parent’s day?
But when I peek over the headstone I’m hiding behind, I understand the yelling. I understand the reason I have to share the graveyard.
It’s them.
