Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror (37 page)

Once upon a time there was a family
, that is the story I tell Ivan.
And the family had a rabbit
, I whisper to him.

Up the hill is this crazy woman who comes to her door every night at dusk. Thin as a skeleton. She is in a torn, dirty nightgown even during the day. “Todd,” she calls. Sometimes for ten or twenty minutes, she hollers. Sometimes screeching. Sometimes crooning in a loud way. Sometimes wailing.
“Todd! Tooooooooooddddd!”

She won’t be around much longer, Mom says. She’s very old, and this is what happens when they start to pass.

Mom sits at the kitchen table, smoking, tapping her cigarette against the ashtray. “That’s how God works,” she says, and winks at me. “He takes your strength, and then he takes your mind, and then he takes your breath. Not necessarily in that order.”

And then she blows a stream of smoke toward the ceiling.

“Todd,” the crazy woman keeps calling. “
Todd!”
And upstairs my brothers are grunting and grumbling about it.

And Cecilia is standing at the doorway, holding Ivan, and his ears shift back and forth like the antennae of insects.

“Bernard,” Cecilia says, “come on, let’s go to the cutoff.”

But Mom says no. “You go on, Cecilia,” Mom says, and she sits down beside me and puts her arm around my shoulder. We look out together at the old tire swing. “Bernard can stay here with me and keep me company in the kitchen.”

Upstairs, the big boys are packing our things into boxes, because we’ll be moving soon, and their heavy boots thump as Mom lets her fingernails trace along the edge of my hair. I lean against her shoulder and close my eyes.
I love my mom
, I think, and I feel how soft her arm is when I rub my cheek against it.
I love my mom.

A
nother morning, another rape.

Actually, it could have been any time of day. There were no windows, clocks, computers, or cell phones. The lamp on the ceiling was always on, and even the line of light coming in from under the door was artificial. So in the absence of other data, I’d decided it was morning. The point was that I was awake and starved.

And that I’d been raped. Again.

My nose wrinkled at the stench of sweat and sex, and the stickiness between my legs disgusted me. There was soreness from the invasion, too, but the tactile evidence of his presence on me bothered me more. The pain would fade quickly, but it would take a good hour under the shower before I could feel clean again.

Relatively clean.

I hadn’t felt completely clean since the first time I awoke in that room, the first time I’d smelled him on me. Him being Claudio.

I hated to admit it, but I’d lost track of how long that had been. Days, without a doubt; quite likely weeks; perhaps even months. But most likely weeks, since my hair wasn’t noticeably longer and the curl was holding.

I climbed out of bed and looked down to see what ridiculous outfit he’d picked for me this time. Today it was a long white dress, with a pale pink corsage on one wrist, as if I were some virginal prom queen. Ludicrous, but hardly the worst set of clothing I’d found myself in. I’d woken up in a push-up bra, garter belt, and fishnet stockings; a filmy negligee; a schoolgirl’s plaid kilt with black patent-leather shoes and bobby socks. Once, I’d been dressed in an obviously expensive Supergirl costume, complete with cape. The first time, I’d been humiliated to find myself dressed like a doll. The next few times, I’d been angry. Now I just sneered at his pitiful attempts at kinkiness.

I pulled the dress off, wadded it up, and threw it into the wicker clothes hamper in the adjoining bathroom. The corsage went into the trash can.

The bed linens varied just as widely as the clothes: black satin, red silk, even camouflage once. Today was a pink flowered girly pattern, no doubt to coordinate with the prom gown. I stripped the bed, and the sheets went into the hamper with the dress.

All according to Claudio’s instructions.

The rules for my captivity had been left for me the first day, a printed sheet of paper placed on the table.

1) Bathe.

2) Place soiled sheets and clothing in the hamper.

3) Drink your meal.

Of course, I hadn’t obeyed. After a fruitless attempt to break through the door and screaming my throat raw, hoping I’d be rescued, I’d ripped the list into pieces, shoved the dirty clothes into the toilet to stop it up, ripped the surprisingly fragile bedsheets, and destroyed the hamper.

The only instructions I’d followed were to bathe, because I stank of him, and then to drink the “meal” that had been left for me,
because I was insanely thirsty. I’d have made do with drinking from the faucet if I could have, just to defy him, but he’d done something to the water. I could bathe in it, but every time I tried to drink it, the foul taste made me spit it out again.

The next morning, there’d been a new note.

If you cause damage, you will be punished.

I hadn’t taken it seriously. After all, who was going to punish me? I hadn’t seen a living soul while awake during those endless hours. So I’d repeated my performance, and broken the table into bits for good measure.

The morning after that, I’d awoken chained to the bed. Unable to clean myself, I’d had to smell that stink on myself all day, plus the inevitable result of not being able to get to a toilet. There’d been less of my meal that day, too, and I’d grown so thirsty that I’d imagined I could see my skin getting drier before my eyes and after a while, my screams for help were nothing but croaking.

Since then I’d followed Claudio’s instructions to the letter, hoping for a loophole.

I
’d first met Claudio in his home. I’d been expecting an office building when I got the call to set up the appointment, but it turned out that he did business out of his Manhattan brownstone. I was wary—I was hungry for a job, not stupid—but I’d relaxed after seeing other people bustling around the requisite amount of office equipment. Besides, I’d known professionals ranging from literary agent to lawyer who conducted business out of their homes. It was, however, an indication that this might not be the kind of corporate-career job I was hoping for. The next was Claudio’s response when his secretary escorted me to his private office.

“Mr. Mendoza?” I said, offering my hand.

He blinked several times. “You’re Taylor Blake?”

I suppressed a sigh, realizing that he’d assumed I was a man. “That’s right.” I was still holding out my hand, and he rose to take it limply, as if my female bones might snap from a firm grip.

He was shorter than I was, even if I hadn’t been wearing high-heeled pumps, and not particularly attractive. His teeth were yellowed, and his skin pale and pockmarked. If I’d met him socially, I would have passed him by, but I was there to interview for a job, not to choose a lover, and his clothes, watch, and overdone jewelry said money.

I needed a job. Badly.

I’d taken two pay cuts in order to survive multiple rounds of layoffs at my old company, only to be out of work anyway once the place shut down, and with only a skimpy severance package. The ones who’d been laid off earlier turned out to be the lucky ones—they had first shot at the jobs in our field. By the time I hit the market, I was burned out by that last year of frantically trying to keep the company going and tainted by association with a failed firm. Now that my job hunt had stretched into its ninth month, I was more than a little desperate.

Claudio and I sat, and he referred to the résumé on the desk in front of him to go through the usual queries about background and previous experience. I wasn’t overly impressed with him. For one, he needed me to explain common business terminology like
downsized
and
outsourced
. For another, he asked too many questions about my personal life.

I shouldn’t have answered of course, but he had an accent, South American I thought, and I knew that business was run differently in other countries. I’d once had an elderly Swiss man ask why he should hire me when I was going to quit my job to get married and have babies within a couple of years, and a British headhunter had wanted to know what my father did for a living, as if he
could determine my place in the class system that way. So telling Claudio that I was single and without close family didn’t seem too far out of the ordinary.

I did dodge his questions about other relationships, but that wasn’t so much observing proper boundaries as it was not wanting to admit that my friends were primarily work-related. That meant I’d had to lay off many of those I’d socialized with, hardly a recipe for bonding. As for the rest, contacts who couldn’t help me find a job were of no use to me. Once I had my career moving forward again, I would make time for such things.

Finally, Claudio got down to describing the position he was filling, and I knew immediately that it wasn’t what I’d hoped for. I’m an executive, and I’m at my best when working with a large staff and a good number of direct reports. What he wanted was a business manager—a high-level one, given what he told me about his finances, but hardly something to help build my future. The person he hired would be working directly for him, sharing his secretary, without a single direct report.

Still, it was a job I could do in my sleep, and I tried to wax poetic about what I would be able to accomplish for him, but I could tell he wasn’t enthused. I knew damned well it wasn’t my résumé, because if anything, I was overqualified, and since Claudio was so out of touch with business, I couldn’t imagine he was bothered by my association with a dead firm. When he remarked that the previous manager had been a man, I could only conclude that he was uncomfortable with the idea of having a woman handle his money.

Since I wasn’t planning a sex-change operation, I didn’t really expect to hear from Claudio again, so I was elated when he called two weeks later and asked for another meeting. Apparently he’d reconsidered the idea of working with a female business manager, because he requested that I come back to the brownstone late that afternoon. I hesitated just long enough to make it sound as if I were
juggling other appointments, when in fact none of the headhunters I’d spoken to were even returning my calls.

The brownstone was much quieter that day, which I assumed was because of the hour, but I was too excited to worry about it, even when the secretary popped in during the meeting to announce that she was on her way out. The discussion with Claudio went for two solid hours as he posed specific questions about what I would do in various circumstances. He gave me far more detailed information about the businesses he owned than he would have if he hadn’t already decided to trust me.

At last, Claudio said that he’d found no one whose business acumen could match mine. Moreover, he needed someone he could work with closely, on a personal level, and he was sure he and I would be completely compatible. I could hardly believe my luck when he handed me a formal offer letter, with a salary better than what I’d made at my previous job and substantially beyond what I was willing to settle for at that point.

I told him that I’d have to think it over—I knew better than to sign a contract without reading it carefully. There was one provision I immediately had concerns about: a probation period of up to six months. I was going to suggest that I come back the next day to discuss final questions but then thought of the pile of overdue-payment notices waiting at my condo. The sooner I signed, the sooner I could pay those bills. So even though it was a rookie mistake, I said, “Actually, I’ve changed my mind. I’m extremely excited about this position, and I’m happy to accept right now.” I signed on the dotted line.

“Splendid!” he said, looking delighted. “Why don’t we have dinner tonight to celebrate?”

One rookie mistake was enough. Going out with the new boss was no way to start a professional relationship. “I wish I could,” I lied, “but I have plans tonight. Maybe drinks instead?” I’d passed a likely-looking bar half a block away, so I wouldn’t even have to get
into a car with him. And of course, had we made it there, I would have known better than to leave my drink unguarded with a man I didn’t know well.

All my common sense added up to no protection at all.

Claudio said, “A drink would be perfect.” Then he stood and looked into my eyes.

The next thing I knew, I was in that room in that bed, smelling Claudio all over me.

I
went to the shower. My breakfast was waiting, and though my stomach rumbled at the sight of the pouch on the table, I knew if I slurped it down, I might not stay awake long enough to finish bathing. Claudio was drugging me, though either he was using progressively less or I was developing a tolerance, because I stayed up longer and longer each day. Still, I didn’t want to take the chance.

The bathroom was small, with a shower stall instead of a tub, but I’d never run out of hot water and there was always plenty of high-end soap, shampoo, and towels. A couple of times I’d found perfume, but I’d decided I’d be damned if I’d make myself smell good for him. So I poured it down the toilet, then peed on top of it before flushing, a meaningless act of defiance that had cheered me for all of ten seconds. Apparently perfume was optional, because I hadn’t been punished for it. So far, it was the only loophole I’d found in the instructions, but that didn’t stop me from trying to find more.

I spent my usual hour in the shower, took my time drying off, and brushed my teeth thoroughly, even though there was no sign that Claudio had taken me in the mouth the previous night. Then I put on the short red robe hanging in the bathroom. The only other choices were going naked or wrapping a towel around myself.

Back to the room, where my choices were nearly as limited: sit on the bed, sit on the floor, sit on the chair. Or I could run around
the room, screaming and yelling and generally going berserk. I’d tried that more times than I cared to admit. Unless I destroyed something in the process, no notice was taken, so I’d given up that approach.