Blood and Bone

It wasn’t out of genuine neighborly concern that I rode out to the Neills’ farm that day. In fact, despite being my closest neighbors, they weren’t particularly good ones. At least the head of the family, Edward Neill, wasn’t. I think his wife, Abigail, and her mother, Agnes, would have preferred to be better friends with the people around them.
But I digress. I had been surprised to see Neill riding up to our homestead that Sunday and even more surprised when he asked for my help. He always calculated what was owed to him, whether it be money, assistance, or a meal, and it seemed wise to be ahead of him for a change. Anyway, he had a cow that needed to be killed, and his son was too small to be much help in the task of butchering such a large creature.
Though the next day, Monday, had been pleasant enough when I rode out to their place, they sky had turned an ugly gray by the time I arrived. It rather matched the mood of the homestead, when I reached the marker denoting this bit of prairie as claimed.
Abigail and her daughter, Nora, came out to meet me. They smiled and thanked me for my willingness to help, both looking rather wan and strained. It was somewhat to be expected; black diphtheria had carried off the older son and infant earlier in the year, yet I felt something else was the matter. I asked.
“It’s nothing,” Abigail said.
“It’s Tom; he’s mean,” Nora said, at the same time.
“Well, he’s your brother,” I said, squatting down to her eye-level. “I’m sure he doesn’t mean it.”
She pursed her tiny lips and clung to her mother’s skirts instead of replying. I looked up at Abigail, who bore a similar expression.
“Pardon me. It really is none of my business,” I said.
“It’s alright,” she said. “My husband and Tom are in the barn. He shot it already.”
“Thank you.”
What followed was a gruesome morning, filled with heavy silence, broken only when Neill scolded his son, or gave me some direction. Preoccupied with my own knife-work, I didn’t see what the boy did to earn such frequent rebuke, though I suspected it had something to do with his general lack of manners. Tom didn’t speak to me, or even really acknowledge my presence, and once I saw him lick blood from his fingertips after taking some pieces of intestine to give to the hogs.
And again, maybe that wasn’t youth. I subsequently observed the same habit in his father.
“This was a lovely animal,” I said, when Neill noticed my stare. “What was wrong with her?”
“Went dry,” he said, gruffly. “And she ate as much as the other two.”
Time passed, and I finally had a need to use my voice again.
“Where’s the, uh...?” I asked.
He directed me with a grunt and a point. I thanked him, and followed the vague instructions to the place I needed.
When I returned, the wind had picked up, and was quite noisy. This may have been why Neill and his son didn’t notice when I opened the barn door. Several buckets of the late cow’s blood had been collected, and they had dipped cloths into the thick, red liquid, which they then sucked dry. Or at least, that’s what Neill did. It didn’t seem to be enough for Tom, who dipped his head into one of the buckets, earning a stiff cuff over the ear.
Horrified, I backed out of the barn, making sure to make more noise as I re-entered. This time they heard me, because Neill was wiping his son’s face with the cloth, muttering about clumsiness.
I made to pick up my knife again, but Neill stopped me with a surprisingly friendly call.
“Alder, look back in there… the shelf? There’s a skull. Bring it here.”
I found the item he referred to. It was, I thought, the skull of a predator of some kind, maybe a wolf or coyote pup, based on the teeth. But then I realized it couldn’t be. Firstly, it was far too small. Secondly, the shape of the snout was all wrong, more like a squirrel.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I killed it when I took the boy hunting a couple weeks back. The meat wasn’t too good—stringy, tough, but it’s a good skull. Never seen teeth like that, have you? The women won’t have it in the house, of course, but I like it.”
I didn’t. The little bone gave me an eerie feeling, and I was glad enough to put it back after it had been sufficiently admired. Returning to the carcass, Neill thrust a chunk of shoulder-meat at me.
“Take that to the house,” he said. “Tell Abigail I want this for dinner.”
I nodded, wondering if they would take advantage of my continued absence to get at the blood again, as soon as my back was turned.
There was a very strong wind now, and it had been a dry season, making the air rather gray with dust. It was like nightfall, but still somewhat lighter than inside the house. Nora opened the door for me and fetched her mother.
“Your husband would like you to cook this for dinner,” I said.
Abigail nodded distractedly, accepting the meat. “I’ll do as he asks.”
“He showed me the skull,” I added, carefully. “Unpleasant thing.”
“’Unpleasant’ is too charitable a word for it,” she said, bitterly. “Nothing’s been right since they took that day to go hunting. That’s when whatever’s ailing Tom started.”
“Something he ate, maybe,” I said.
Her words troubled me, more than I let on, but I remembered to make a lot of noise returning to the barn. It wasn’t difficult, given the poor visibility, and it genuinely took a couple of thumps against the wall to find the door.
“You can’t go home in that,” Neill observed.
“I’m afraid not,” I agreed, coughing.
“It’s your misfortune.” He nodded at a red parcel. “That’s your share, by the way. For your trouble.”
I wondered what he meant, even as I thanked him. When I agreed to help butcher the cow, it was with the understanding that I’d be here most of the day, and thus a bit behind on my own work. Evelyn, my wife, would be put to a bit more trouble, but given that our homestead was newer and smaller than Neill’s, it wouldn’t be insurmountable. At least, I hoped it was Evelyn he referred to.
The announcement that it was time to go back into the house and eat did little spread any cheer. As hungry as I was, the thought of at least one meal and a night of sleep here was not a welcome one.
And it proved to be a tense meal. Abigail’s mother, Agnes, was in bed with rheumatism and would not join us for dinner. Then Neill and Tom served themselves pieces of fried beef and ham without the table being blessed first. Abigail noticed that this startled me, and a faint blush crept up her cheeks.
But it was not my house, so I ate fried meat and cold apple pie without a word. Only Abigail, Nora, presumably Agnes, and I ate any of the pie. Tom was verbally scolded, and then cuffed sharply on the back of the head with the flat of a knife, for chewing with his mouth open. Revealing his long, sharp teeth.
“Once more, and you’ll spend the night with the animals,” Neill warned.
He was angry, and the dim lamplight glinted on his teeth. They were also unnaturally long and sharp. Like the teeth on the skull.
Were they vampires?
The question hung cold in my brain; I barely noticed when I was offered another piece of pie. It didn’t seem possible. Vampires were creatures that had already died and been buried. They slowly consumed their living relatives. And yet….
“I could tell a story to pass the time,” I offered, while Abigail and Nora did the dishes.
“If you must,” Neill said.
I relayed a story my grandfather told me. It was about a shoemaker with a reputation for drunken violence in life, who then rose from his grave to beat anyone who happened in his path, leaving the town in nightly terror. When I got to the part about the locals petitioning the bishop to exhume the body and drive a stake through its heart, Neill jumped to his feet and shoved the lamp alarmingly close to my face.
“Enough nonsense!” He growled. “You want to run your mouth? Read the Bible.”
“Where is it?” I asked.
He ignored me and sat broodingly at the table. Tom, sitting impishly by the fire, shrugged.
“Here it is.” Nora’s quiet voice startled me nearly as much as the lamp in my eyes.
“Thank you,” I said, taking the heavy, yet delicate, book with relief.
Abigail went upstairs to her mother, and Nora sat by my feet to be in the lamplight, mending an apron. I opened the Bible to the gospel according to Mark and selected one of the stories of unclean spirits favored by that apostle and began to read aloud. However, I barely got past said spirit’s plea to go un-tormented by Jesus when Neill snatched the light away.
“Enough,” he said. “Silence is better than the nonsense you talk.”
“Oh!” The disturbance had startled the girl, and she had stabbed herself, quite admirably, with her needle. Blood bubbled up immediately when she pulled it out.
“Quiet,” her father scolded.
Tom had quietly risen from his impish pose on the floor and stood in front of Nora, staring as though he had never seen his sister before.
“Papa,” she said, fearfully.
“Sit down, boy.”
He disobeyed. In fact, he snapped at her so violently that his teeth crashed together. I leapt to my feet in shock, knocking Nora over, and unbalancing the boy. But Neill was quick to grab him by the scruff of the neck, and then to strike him across the face.
“That’s done it,” Neill shouted. “Treat your sister beastly, and you can sleep with the beasts outside.”
One-handed (the other hand removing his belt), he dragged Tom out the door, kicking it shut behind them.
On the floor, Nora began to cry. I picked her up and did my best to soothe. Her cries brought Abigail, and I handed her off.
“Would you consider leaving with me?” I asked, when the child began to quiet.
Abigail ceased her comforting whispers to stare at me. “Are you insane?”
“Evelyn won’t mind,” I said. “Besides, it’s clear you can’t live like this. Something is deeply wrong with both your husband and son… and Neill won’t be able to control him for much longer. Not if what I think happened has… happened.”
She shook her head. “What could I do? To leave my husband… I can’t imagine such shame! And what about my mother? She’ll die without my care.”
“And your daughter?” I asked. “I’d stake my acreage that her brother was trying to eat her a minute ago.”
“I’ll put her in with her grandmother,” she said, with finality. “You can sleep here by the fire.”
“…Alright.”
They disappeared up the small staircase to the room where Agnes and the children slept. I found a stick and poked the fire, turning over my emotions with the coals, trying to make sense of them. Abigail’s lack of concern for her own wellbeing was somewhat understandable, even out here. But Nora was another matter, and it made me mad.
For that matter, so did Neill. Supposing unclean spirits, to borrow St. Mark’s term, weren’t at work in the family, he was a bad father and a worse head of the house. I regretted my decision to help him several times over.
The door opened, and the man himself stepped in, belt still in his hand. He wished me a gruff goodnight and disappeared into the room he and Abigail shared. A few minutes later, she reappeared, blew out the lamp, and followed her husband.
I stirred the coals again. As much as I didn’t want to sleep, I knew I should try. In the morning, there would be the journey back to my own place, and the extra work to make up.
Somehow, I nodded off, but I wasn’t asleep long. The first thing I noticed was that the storm appeared over; at least I could no longer hear the wind. Then it struck me as too quiet.
I crept to the window and looked out. It was too dark to see very much, but it was just possible to detect the movement of the barn door opening furtively, then closing again. Tom. Or rustlers. Carefully, I plucked a glowing stick from the fire to see by and, just as furtively, left the house.
My makeshift torch provided precious little light, only perhaps a four-foot radius. And it was all the darker outside it. A faint scratching sound made me turn and raise my light. It was Tom. He was climbing the house. Admittedly, it wasn’t the hardest of tasks—I probably could have done it—but it made a grotesque picture.
In my dim torchlight, his skin was bone-white, and his lips unnaturally red. As were, most disturbingly of all, his eyes. I couldn’t liken them to a wolf, because they lacked the dignity carried in the lupine family. The boy’s eyes just showed an empty hunger, such as I had never seen in a human of any kind before.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded, but quietly.
“Hungry,” he said in an unpleasant, pleading tone.
“And you’re climbing towards your grandmother’s window for that?”
He grinned, allowing me to see exactly how long, sharp, and inhuman his teeth were.
I had no intention of hitting him with either end of my torch, or my hands, but I shook the stick in his direction for emphasis. “Get down from there! I don’t want to see you for the rest of the night.”
Hissing, he slid down the wall, landed on all fours, straightened part of the way up, and ran into the dark. This was more than enough for me.
Abigail had said she wouldn’t go. Agnes couldn’t be moved. At least not only by me. But Nora could.
I reentered the house, thrust my torch back into the fire, and climbed the stairs in three steps. The venerable Agnes snored remarkably loudly for someone as frail as she was. Nora quickly poked her head up from the featherbed as I took a careful step towards her.
“Get dressed and take your cloak,” I whispered. “You’re coming home with me.”
“Not my brother?” She asked, nevertheless reaching for her folded dress.
“Not your brother.”
She pulled a dress over her smock quickly and wrapped herself in wool, and I carried her down the stairs, out of the house, and over to the barn. My horse nickered resentfully at being awakened, but otherwise gave me no trouble when I saddled her and placed the girl on her back. I didn’t touch my share of the cow, but I led Honeysuckle out of the barn before getting into the saddle myself.
“Go home,” I told her, nudging her sides gently with my heels.
I had gained much experience with horses since giving up my position as a schoolmaster in Connecticut to try my hand at homesteading, and now I prayed fervently that what I had heard about them always being able to find home was true. Otherwise, I had put myself and the child in an even worse predicament than the one we were leaving.
This anxiety kept me wide awake, even as Nora nodded back to sleep in my arms. My heart struck my ribs at every stimulus. Honey sensed my agitation, and a few times I reached out to pet her in what should have been a reassuring manner. But, because I was in a state, and holding the girl’s dead weight, it was mostly awkward.
At last, she came to a stop. It took me a moment to realize why; we had reached a gate. My gate!
“Thank God,” I said.
I couldn’t help but wake Nora in dismounting, and she began to cry again. Unsure of what else to do, I left Honeysuckle in the yard and banged on my own door, calling for my wife.
Under different circumstances, her expression of shock would have been funny. But it was the middle of the night, my clothes were spotted in blood, and I had our neighbor’s younger child.
“Please take her, Evie,” I said. “I’ll explain.”
Not that I had any idea how.
With Honey put away for the rest of the night, I went back into the house. Evelyn was settling Nora into a cozy-looking nest by the fire, an image that made me pause enviously. We had no children. It was true we had not been married long, but she had, unbeknownst to either of us, been carrying when we left Connecticut. It was lost when he passed through Ohio, and with nothing since, we both worried that would be the end of things.
Then Evelyn looked up at me and nodded to the doorway of the room we shared. “Get some rest. We can talk when the sun is up.”
“Thank you.”
I went to bed, but I couldn’t relax to sleep until my wife rejoined me. It was late when I awoke again—Evelyn and Nora were out milking. To try and make up for my own sluggishness, I went back to the main room and attempted a pot of chicory coffee. It wasn’t as good as she could have accomplished, but she seemed pleased to find the task completed on returning.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” I asked.
“I already planned to do some of this.” She shrugged and began to heat the broken spade sometimes used for broiling eggs. “It was no matter.”
“Still,” I protested, as Nora shyly took a seat at the table, and I pushed the bench closer for her.
Breakfast was eaten quickly, and largely quietly. Evelyn asked Nora to start the dishes, and she followed me outside, as I meant to start my work.
“What happened?” She asked.
I recounted what had happened as quickly as I could, while still maintaining accuracy.
“You should have taken your share of the cow,” she said, when I had finished.
“But,” I protested.
“I’m happy to have her here—she’s a good girl, and I don’t want to see a mad boy hurt her, but we could have fed her with that cut. Even if all her father saw fit to share with us was the ribs or the tripe.”
I sighed. “It just didn’t seem right.”
“And you were mad with Abigail,” she sighed. “I don’t say you’re wrong—a live mother and child are better than either one dead—but you are thinking along similar paths.”
I didn’t reply and occupied myself with mucking.
“How long will we keep her?” She asked, her voice softer.
“I don’t know.”
“Alright.” She wrapped her shawl more tightly around herself and then threw me a look with surprising affection. “You’ve always had a big heart, John.”
The next few days passed by largely without incident, though I kept an anxious watch out for Neill’s horse. But we saw nobody. Until the third day.
We were finishing up our midday meal, when Evelyn suddenly noted that there was a pony by our gate. I turned to look and recognized Abigail Neill standing beside it.
“Mama?” Nora jumped up and ran towards the door, with my wife and I not far behind.
We were all shocked by her appearance. Abigail leaned against the pony, like she was too weak to keep standing. She was pale, with dark circles ringing her eyes. She also seemed to have difficulty bending down to greet her daughter.
“Please, have something to eat,” Evelyn said, taking Abigail’s arm. “You surely need it.”
“No, I can’t, but thank you.” Abigail flinched on being touched. “I shouldn’t stay that long.”
“At least have a slice of cake,” she pressed.
“Alright. Thank you.”
Inside the house, Evelyn cut several slices of her thick butter cake, and we sat to eat it. Nora leaned on her mother, only taking a few sparing bites.
“My husband doesn’t know I’m here. And hopefully it will stay that way.” She reached out abruptly, taking my wife’s hand. “If he comes here, don’t give Nora back to him!”
We all stared at her; Nora whimpered softly, like she was about to cry again.
I thought of the boy climbing the wall that night. “Did something happen to your mother?”
Abigail went even whiter, and she looked down at the floor.
“He didn’t mean to,” she said, a moment later.
Evelyn threaded her way around the table and hugged her around the shoulders with one arm, gathering Nora in with the other one.
“Promise me,” Abigail looked up at me.
“Of course, we won’t give her up.” I stepped closer to the women. “But you’re here now… you don’t have to go back to him. Stay with us. It’s not too late.”
“It is too late. Forgive me.” She shook Evelyn and her daughter off and rolled up her sleeve, halfway up her forearm.
“Good God.”
Her flesh was marred with several black and purple bruises, obviously inflicted by teeth. One or two spots still looked red and raw.
“I had to bandage my other arm,” she explained, replacing her sleeve. “But it’s in the same condition. Meat isn’t enough now. I don’t know my son anymore.”
Now Nora began to wail in earnest. Abigail let Evelyn attend to her and continued to address me.
“That story. You know what to do when the worst happens?”
Drive a stake through the vampire’s heart. Or cut off their head. Burn the body. Everything the bishop in my grandfather’s story hadn’t wanted to do. I didn’t want to do it myself. But what other choice was there?
“I know what the stories say,” I allowed.
“It’s a lot to ask,” she said, hoarsely, eyes filling. “On top of everything else. But I can’t bear the thought of becoming that kind of creature. Maybe it’s inevitable now.”
Eveyln looked at me, holding Nora to her breast.
“That I don’t know,” I admitted, feeling sick. “But I will do what I can to spare you, should it come to that.”
By nightfall, having cried most of the afternoon, Nora was a bit feverish, so we decided she would sleep in the bed with Evelyn, and I would take the nest by the fire. It wasn’t nearly as cozy for me, and I had several nightmares throughout the night. It was a relief when the sky was light enough for me to reasonably begin chores for the day.
My work kept me further from my house than usual that day, so it was nearly dark when I was getting ready to return for dinner. Then Honeysuckle suddenly neighed in fright, rearing up. Turning around to calm her, I saw the reason why and came very close to shouting myself.
It was Edward Neill, but I had not heard him approach. More worrisome was his appearance—pale, drawn, and less human. His hair was unkempt and dirty, giving him a wild look, but his fingernails had grown alarmingly, resembling claws as much as anything. When he spoke, it revealed his teeth had, if possible, gotten longer and sharper than when I last saw him up close.
“It’s time for my daughter to come home,” he said.
“No,” I replied. “It’s not safe for her. Abigail understands. We have her consent.”
“Abigail is dying!” He snapped. “Nora belongs back with her family.”
I slid one hand into my cart with my tools. Ostensibly to steady it (Honey was shivering), but it occurred to me I might have to defend myself if we continued. He was stronger than me.
“Yesterday your wife looked unwell, but not near death. And what about Agnes?”
“That wasn’t Tom’s fault,” Neill said, for once sounding sheepish. “You know she had a bad heart.”
“My answer is still no. If you’re telling me the truth, then you should be with your wife now.” An unwelcome thought flew into my head. “Where is Tom? You left him alone with her?”
Neill growled angrily, and my fist closed around a wooden handle. Then, with a visible effort, he brought himself under control and spoke quietly.
“If you don’t give her back to me, I’m going to the marshal.”
“He will have questions you don’t want to answer,” I said. “Nora stays where she is.”
He lunged at me; Honey reared up in fear, and I quickly pulled out the randomly chosen tool to protect myself. It was a spade, and part of the head clashed against his outstretched hand; he fell back, bellowing in pain.
Even in the dimming light, I could see that the metal had burned his hand. The momentary distraction allowed me to get in a blow, and I hit him with the flat side, hard enough to drop, burning half his face in the process.
For a second, I stood and stared. I didn’t think I had hit him hard enough to kill a normal man, and the fact that cool iron burned his skin demonstrated we were well past that. I could have swung again, with the edge, and taken his head off as he was a vampire, but I didn’t do it.
I calmed Honey again, and took off for the Neill place, with the idea of just bringing Abigail to my homestead. If he had been telling the truth about her condition, then she couldn’t put up a fight. Maybe we could keep her from dying.
The desperate hope helped light the way as the sun sank lower in the sky. Largely unlit, the house was harder to spot than I anticipated, but I could hear the agitated noises of their livestock, probably unfed, which served as a rather inauspicious guide. Honeysuckle’s ears were back, but I could only urge her to keep going.
On arriving, I heard the thuds of both the barn and house doors hanging open. Heart in my throat, I quickly tied up Honey and looked into the barn. The two cows were un-milked, and the ponies and sow joined them in voicing their displeasure. I had expected that, and I’m not sure what else, but the strips of knotted, chewed-through rawhide on the ground terrified me.
I retrieved my shovel from the cart and went through the threshold into the house. A call for Abigail died on my lips as the cloying smell of blood reached my nostrils. I was afraid to look, but after taking a breath, I took the oil lamp from the table and lifted it to look into the bedroom.
Tom was crouched, catlike, on the bed, drinking frantically from the wound on his mother’s neck. Even at this distance, I could tell that she was dead. Not only that, but she had died so gruesomely that the fact that the dead don’t really bleed was scarcely an impediment to the boy’s hunger. Before I could drop it, I quickly set the lamp back down.
The shovel felt heavy in my hands. Tom was so far gone he couldn’t stay content with just biting his mother’s wrists; he had killed her. But the thought of staking or decapitating him was even more unwelcome than it had been for his father.
Then he turned around and saw me. His teeth were long and sharp, protruding over his lower lip. And his nails. Claws. He snarled, and I raised the lamp again. The light or maybe the flame itself, prompted him to quiet down, but he still crouched, watching me.
The door behind me slammed.
I quickly glanced aside, not wanting to show Tom any side but my front. It was Neill. He didn’t seem to notice me, at first, nose working furiously, at the smell of the blood. But he didn’t move from his spot in the threshold.
“Abigail?” His voice cracked.
“Too late,” I said. My own words sounded oddly disjointed, as though I was listening to someone else.
Now he noticed me. He hissed again, as he had before when I struck him, but now his heart did not seem to be in it.
He stumbled ahead of me to look at his wife’s body. In the shaky lamplight, I could better see the damage I had done to his face before. In other circumstances, I might have cringed. The skin looked like preserved meat, and seemed to have lost some mobility.
As he passed in front of me, the boy hissed and snarled furiously at his father. And, to my astonishment, Neill responded in kind. Then, he stormed into the room and seized Tom around the neck with both hands. The small one showed his fangs and slashed with his claws—he scored a hit or two, but held at arms-length, it mattered little.
Neill turned his head and addressed me. “You weren’t man enough to use that thing to kill me. So, you won’t have the stomach for him, either.”
I put the shovel down since it was awkward to hold both things, and Tom did seem afraid of the little flame. Holding out the light, I cautiously approached them. “But it was more effective than rawhide.”
“Damn you!” He dragged, with some difficulty I noted, Tom further away from the bed. “Just cover her up for G-“
He choked, and seemed unable to pronounce the word.
“Just cover her!”
I complied, pulling the quilt over Abigail’s ghastly wounds, and finally her face. It wasn’t easy with one hand. A drop or two of lamp oil landed on the bed. My breath caught in my throat, and I stared at the new stains a moment before I straightened up.
Tom made another attempt to attack his father, who had slightly lowered his guard to look and see if the body was covered. I exclaimed a warning, and though the boy’s claws met his forearm, and I heard the flesh tear, Neill kept his grip on Tom’s throat, jerking him back, and slamming his head against the wall. Blood of an unearthly red streamed freely from this new wound, soaking into his sleeve, and dripping onto the ground.
“I’ll have to do it,” I said.
“No. I will,” Neill snapped.
As far gone as the boy was, he understood what we meant, and he began to shriek and cry, his movements now indicating that escape was at the forefront of his mind. It was rather pitiable, even as his inhuman cries reminded me of his new status as a fully-fledged monster.
Now grunting at the effort, Neill dragged him out of the bedroom, and through the main room. The door had slammed shut at some point during the last few minutes, and I opened it again. Outside, the animals redoubled their noise as we approached. Honeysuckle reared, screaming, as we passed in front of her on our way into the barn. Worried that she might try to run, I stopped and did my best to soothe her.
“Alder!” Neill called me in.
I took my light into the darkened, loud barn. Near where we had butchered the cow only a few days ago, Neill abruptly took one hand off his son’s neck to seize his claw, when he slashed again. Then the other.
A wave of nausea crashed over my stomach, and I swallowed rapidly as I quickly searched for something we could use. Especially when I alighted on the skull. Turning away from it, my lamp illuminated a scythe.
When I turned around, Neill stood with Tom’s arms pinned behind his back, pressing him down towards the dirt floor, but still roughly standing. Neither of their faces were visible, but then Neill looked up at me.
“Hold him,” Neill said.
“No.” I strode forward, levelling my new weapon. “You keep him. I won’t fail now.”
He stared at me. I could not read his expression, in large part due to the burns, yet I felt there was fear in it, even as he nodded for me to do what needed to be done.
I swung. Just I did, Tom made another attempt to flee, so the cut was not a clean one, and blood sprayed everywhere, soaking the ground and my legs below the knees, but his head stayed on his shoulders. He could no longer scream, but there was still dreadful noise. As I raised the scythe again, I realized that now his whimpers sounded human.
This time I was successful, and Neill threw the headless body of his son away from him as though it burned. Then he sagged against the wall, and I pitied him. No father should have to see, much less be party to, what had just happened to Tom.
Neill raised one hand to his face and, absently, licked the drying blood from the wound on his arm.
Mutely, I raised the scythe a third time and swung with all my might. I saw the spurt of blood rise in the air before the body fell forward with a thud. I dropped the scythe with a cry.
The lamp sputtered, and I retrieved it, walking heavily back to the house. My promise to Abigail was now at the forefront of my mind, and I searched for the Bible. I found it, concealed under a pair of half-mended pants, took it to the bedroom, and placed it on top of the quilt covering her.
I wondered what to do next, as that was clearly insufficient, as much as it provided comfort. And there were the bodies in the barn on top of that. I could hardly bury them all by myself, but getting assistance was out of the question. And simply burying them would not guarantee that any of them might walk again.
“I’m sorry,” I said, resting my hand on the cover of the book.
My voice still sounded strange to my own ears as I went back to the main room and built a large fire. Returning to the barn in three trips, I brought in the heads, and then the bodies, which I left on the floor. I scattered a few pieces of firewood and spilled lamp oil around them, saving the last few drops of oil for the bed. Then I threw the lamp onto the quilt and ran.
It was cold and damp, and I prayed that meant the flames wouldn’t spread and become wild. Outdoors, the air was now eerily quiet, as I returned to the barn for the last time. The ponies bolted as soon as their gate was open, and the two cows were of a similar mind. The pig, however, was too distressed to think clearly, and ran deeper into her enclosure, snapping at me when I tried to guide her out.
Another frightened neigh from Honeysuckle moved me to abandon the sow, and I made to leave the barn. But something stopped me, as I neared the door. The skull.
Maybe it had no power. Maybe passing its curse, its infection, whatever it had been, onto Neill and Tom was the end of it. But I hated that bit of bone, and I couldn’t risk leaving any trace of vampire behind.
I took it into my hand and stepped out into the night.
By now the house was engulfed in flames, and I threw the skull into the column of scarlet and orange with all my strength.
Only then could I go home.

***

Kathy Sherwood is a writer from Wisconsin. She grew up with bedtime stories about goblins, vampires, and history from ancient Greece to the old west, resulting in the strange person she is today. Her other work can be found at Everyday Fiction and Haunted Mtl.