Demons Hide Their Faces by A. A. Attanasio

Author:A. A. Attanasio [A. A. Attanasio]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, Contemporary
ISBN: 9780983608417
Google: rxsUC7gk5QQC
Publisher: A. A. Attanasio
Published: 2011-05-11T22:00:00+00:00

Part Five: Investigations of the Fractal Blood Soul

Vampires.

Investigations of the Fractal Blood Soul

After the soul has been severed from the body, it continues its journey, its path unknown, the destination unknown. It is a trembling day.

Zohar 1:201b

Trembling Day

The moon’s paw padded silently among hurrying clouds. Giant pines wore feather boas of fog. And a bluff of limestone glowed soft as a breast in the wilderness night. A lovely occasion for vampires.

How was I to know? A 54-year-old yoga instructor from Rahway, New Jersey, I thought bloodsuckers were swamp worms and lawyers.

Sure, the travel agent had said the bluff was haunted. A wraith of a Revolutionary war soldier, the specter of a Mohawk brave, perhaps a flitting apparition of Ralph Waldo himself—these are the spooky experiences of imperishable memories.

But vampires in the Adirondacks?

Bernie and I had come to this remote resort in Black River Valley to celebrate our 17th anniversary and the opening in Short Hills Mall of a third outlet for our own franchise, a bodymind-fitness-studio slash vegetarian-stirfry-restaurant: Go Yoga! & Wok Like This!

With three places of business that Bernie would have to manage accounts for and new instructors and cooks I had to break in and oversee, who knew when next we’d have a chance to traipse off together and watch moonrise over a haunted bluff?

Bernie would rather have stayed in the lodge at his laptop. He was there for golf and relaxation, not canoe trips, foliage hikes, outdoor tai chi, lakeside dawn meditation and other bliss-inducing activities I adore. But he adored me and went along with me that night of the big moon.

That’s my sorrow now. A tough karma. I’m working at it with all my might. You see, we hadn’t snuggled together in the feathered moonlight under those secluded conifers for five minutes before vampires struck.

A steel clamp of horror squeezed my heart so tight my last breaths came in gasps.

Gasps!

Vampires are not at all elegant like in those movies. Their faces are brilliant as lanterns but blue, cyanotic blue, and leopard-spotted.

Maybe it was just the moonlight. Bone shadows fluoresced like X-rays through their flesh. Vampires are skeletal people with squid eyes, just black keyholes in chalk dead faces. Really. I could have screamed, except I had no breath.

Bernie, wide as a lumberjack, my globe-shouldered Bernie, leaped up, his face scrambled with emotion. And the first vampire lifted him with one slender neon arm and slammed him against the spruce so hard needles rained and a whiff of Christmas floated briefly before a fecal stink fouled the air.

His feet, free of the earth, kicked like a swimmer’s. The vampire that had pinned its trophy to the tree floated horizontally in the moony air like a tattered banner, its narrow body concealed in filthy wrappings, face hidden against Bernie’s throat.

Tar spackled the back of its head, webs of tar that must once have been hair meshed now in filament braids. Or perhaps that was mold thriving in the sutures of its skull.

Bernie’s eyes stared straight ahead, wide open and electrocuted.

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