I thought I might share a recent excerpt from my work-in-progress, the sequel to my novel The Vampire Henry. In this bit Henry returns home after a futile attempt to track down his nemesis. Charles Robinson Serling, the vampire who killed his lover Sara. The first thing he does is visit her grave, which is in the backyard of his house.
There’s a cement path flanking the house and I stumble down that toward the backyard. I note, with another slight smile, how eroded and weed-choked the path has grown over the years. If my father were alive, he would probably see the state of it and have another fit of apoplexy. He always worked very hard—painting, hammering, mowing, weeding, pruning—to make his little fiefdom shine. BEST.HOUSE.ON.THE.BLOCK.
Year after tedious year…
Me, he couldn’t have given a shit about.
With a little difficulty, I get the wooden gate to the backyard open. It’s a clear, cold night in late January. No moon in the black sky but I can see hosts of stars for once. Constellations. Nebulae. I pause for a second to look up at them. Beautiful lights that might only be ghosts now. Might not even exist anymore.
I wish I knew a few of their names, at least.
Once again, dogs near and far are going batshit crazy. They sense me of course and are beside themselves. Welcoming the prodigal vampire home.
The backyard looks pretty much as I left it almost seven months ago. (I suppose that is good.) A small oblong plot of nothing, sloping slightly downward, surrounded partially by a black chain link fence. At the edge of the patio, my father’s charcoal grill (his pride and joy) leans, all rusted over, looking like it might topple if I were to go and breathe on its hood.
No more 4th of Julys, Daddy…
And out out, at the end of the yard, my mother’s small vegetable garden. Where she planted, every spring, tomatoes and green peppers and wax beans.
Pale ears of corn…
My mother’s garden
Sara’s grave.
It’s still there as well. Still undisturbed. A few gray tomato stakes leaning at crazy angles, looking almost like those antitank obstacles that lined the beaches of Normandy in World War 2. The shovel my mother used to dig with, I used to dig with, the blade stuck deep and fast in the frozen ground.
Another oblong mound of dirt and leaves…
Sara.
“Sara,” I whisper. “I’m home. It’s me…”
I cross the yard, the dogs snapping at my ears. I feel like I shouldn’t be here. Like I have seriously betrayed Sara’s memory by returning home. I should still be out in my failing truck, hunting for Serling-- her maker and murderer.
I will be. Just need a few minutes to rest. Regroup.
I reach the plot and just sink down onto the dead grass. Like Vasco De Gama glimpsing the Pacific for the first time. Like some supplicant before his Queen.
“I’m here honey…I’m here…”
I pluck a clod of leaves and earth from her little grave, let it run like confetti through my fingers.
“I missed you, honey…”
And I do. Every single fucking day the hurt never seems to let up. The wound never seems to close.
As long as that fucker is still out there making more graves, I don’t think it ever will.
“I missed you…”
I try to remember what she looks like, what clothes I dressed her up in when I carried her out here. But the only image that comes is the usual one, the constant one burned into my brainpan. Sara naked, her arms and legs tied to the posts of my little bed. An antique sword shoved up to the hilt between her pale breasts. A silverfish scurrying across the bloodless landscape of her ankle.
Serling
“I love you, honey” I mutter. Bending over to kiss the cold, cold ground.