MIDNIGHT RAMBLER. chapter two.
Willow Creek, Louisiana, 1971. 9 a.m. Monday morning
When Mortimer awoke the next morning, the Duplantier place showed no signs of life. He couldn’t stop himself from peering out his bedroom window, wondering if he would catch a glimpse of Sidney’s towering silhouette rising from his bed and slowly descending the stairs to put on a pot of coffee with a cigarette– or maybe, a joint?– hanging from his lips. In reality, he saw nothing; the curtains were drawn so that not even the tiniest sliver of sunlight could shine into the house. If it were not for Sidney’s rusted blue station wagon in the driveway, there would be no evidence that anyone lived there at all.
While reading the newspaper at breakfast, a large image of a bright-eyed young blonde woman caught his attention. The headline accompanying it read: “YOUNG WOMAN FOUND DEAD OUTSIDE NIGHTCLUB.”
“Willow Creek Police received a report of a young woman found unresponsive outside The Blue Velvet Nightclub in Crawdad Quarter at approximately 3 a.m. Sunday morning. She has been identified as Summer Holliday, 24, a resident of Foundry Cove and a bartender at The Blue Velvet. Holliday suffered severe blood loss from a wound to the neck and was rushed to the hospital where she was pronounced dead on arrival. The Willow Creek Police are currently investigating the circumstances of Ms. Holliday’s death and urge the public to call their confidential tip line with relevant information.…”
“Bella, darling, did you see this?” Mortimer asked, raising his eyebrows and taking a drag from his pipe. “Another death in Crawdad Quarter! That area is going to hell if you ask me.”
“It’s a good thing nobody asked you then,” she joked. Bella turned to look over her husband’s shoulder at Summer Holliday’s smiling face while she read the details of her premature death. A curious, intelligent woman with a morbid interest in death (particularly stories of murder), Bella wondered if the string of recent deaths in Willow Creek could be connected somehow. She sighed, mourning the loss of a young woman she had never met.
“Oh, Mortimer, that’s awful! She was so young. Most everybody who’s been dyin’ down there been young as her. And nearly all of ‘em women…”
“I know. I’m not sure if it’s even safe for you to be going to work down there. I would be devastated if anything were to happen to you, ma chéri.”
Bella rolled her eyes and gave her husband a peck on the cheek. “You know I can take care of myself, honey.”
Mortimer made Bella feel so adored. He took such good care of her and was the one person who understood her the most out of everyone in the world. Mortimer was her husband and her best friend; but, she resented that sometimes his adoration for her felt the same as his adoration for Cassandra. She was forty now, no longer the young woman Mortimer married, but sometimes she wondered if he still saw her that way, even as he grew older. She quickly changed the conversation back to the subject of Summer Holliday.
“The article says that she died from blood loss. Didn’t that also happen to that young man a couple weeks ago? I sure hope there isn’t a serial murderer so close to our home...” Bella gently placed a hand on Mortimer’s shoulder and gazed at Summer Holliday’s picture. “The thought of it makes me so worried for Cassandra and Alexander.”
Mortimer turned his head to kiss the back of her hand before gently placing his hand on top of hers. He looked up at her to meet her gaze. “Yes, we should discuss it with them when they get home from school. Cassandra will be upset about having an earlier curfew, but I would rather have that than…the alternative.” He couldn’t bring himself to say it. After a long, uncomfortable pause, Mortimer once again changed the subject.
“By the way, I invited our neighbor over for dinner tonight. I hope you don’t mind. He lives alone; I figured he could stand to make a friend or two in the neighborhood.”
“That’s sweet of you, baby. I’m glad your conversation with him went well.”
Mortimer took a drag from his pipe and turned his head to exhale the smoke away from Bella’s face. “It went very well! He said he’d have us over some time, and I told him that you would love to see the inside of–”
“The Duplantier place?!” Bella gasped excitedly, interrupting her husband. “I’ve always wondered what it looked like inside! They say the previous owner suffocated in his bed. I wonder if the bed is still there? You know, I also heard that…” Mortimer listened to Bella prattle on about the rumors she heard surrounding the Duplantier place. He’d heard them all before, but he loved seeing his wife’s eyes light up when talking about something she loved. It reminded him of the bright young woman he had fallen in love with fifteen years prior.
Sidney groggily opened the lid of his pauper’s casket and twisted his torso to produce a loud “crack” as each of his vertebrae popped, bringing him a small sense of relief after sleeping in a coffin that more closely resembled a wooden shipping crate; he wondered if he might sleep better if he simply buried himself in the backyard every day instead. Sighing, he rose from his resting place and approached the bedroom door. He grabbed his silver aviator glasses and a pack of Lucky Strike Greens off his unfinished antique wooden dresser and stepped into the hallway. He paused briefly to put a cigarette between his lips and wave his hand in front of it to light it. This was his favorite ability.
He walked through the kitchen, which was the most dilapidated area of the house because Sidney had never used it. The once-beautiful light blue wallpaper was peeling and scratched in several places. The walls were lined with a border of water stains and grime that produced a musty, mildewy smell. Inside the stove hood and in one corner of the countertop, black spiders the size of quarters had spun their homes, and each web had several drain flies trapped in its strands. There were many places where the tile was cracked, where water could seep in and produce mold.
Sidney passed through the archway leading to the living room, which was in slightly better condition than the kitchen. The turquoise wallpaper adorned with delicate gold leaf designs was still beautiful after half a century, although it was peeling in some places. A couch and two living chairs were arranged around a scratched-up, dark wooden coffee table covered with empty beer bottles, a bong, and another pack of Lucky Strike Greens. The room’s centerpiece was the large, intricately carved fireplace…which was blocked off by a small television sitting atop two suitcases. Sidney groped around the wall for the light switch before entering the pitch-black room and opening the curtains. He opened the worn, white wooden door to retrieve the “morning” newspaper and, upon closing the door again, gasped in horror when he saw a face he recognized on the front page. The headline next to the picture of the smiling young woman read: “YOUNG WOMAN FOUND DEAD OUTSIDE NIGHTCLUB.”
His anxiety escalated. Sidney frantically read the article, barely absorbing the information: her name was Summer, she was a bartender, and the police were investigating her death. Sidney’s thoughts began to spiral as the world seemed to fall out of view. She– Summer– must have just been getting out of work. Who was waiting at home for Summer to come back? Who found Summer in the alley? Did Summer have a child? Did Summer have pets? Were Summer’s parents expecting to see her when they woke up?
Like most vampires, Sidney’s old mentor, Count Vladislaus Straud, preferred to seduce his victims and lure them into his home, persuading them to offer themself to him. Sidney’s way of hunting was highly frowned upon by His Excellency and all his associates; he preferred to strike quickly and hastily drink until he heard his victim’s heart stop beating. That is how he “met” Summer– he leaned against a wall in the alley, smoking a cigarette to not attract attention to himself, and pulled her into the darkness because she was simply the first person unfortunate enough to walk by. By ambushing his victims this way, he figured, at least he wouldn’t have to learn their names (or even look at their faces).
However, none of Sidney’s victims had ever appeared on the front page of the newspaper. He figured he might have been getting a little reckless hunting in Crawdad Quarter so often because Summer’s death was the most recent in a series of deaths in the same area over one month. Her story on the front page of the Willow Creek Tribune told Sidney that the police were starting to notice commonalities in each case. How long, he wondered, until they came knocking on his door? Sidney’s stomach churned. He dropped the paper on the floor and rushed to the bathroom, slammed the door open, opened the toilet seat without turning the lights on, and vomited. When he finished, he rested his head on his forearms and began to cry softly, staining them with blood. He leaned his head back against the wall while he attempted to steady his breathing when he heard the absolute worst sound he could hear in this state: someone was knocking on the front door.
Knowing the unexpected visitor could not hear him, Sidney weakly called out into the pitch-black bathroom: “Go away!” He blindly groped around for the light switch on the wall behind him, still feeling too weak to stand up. After managing to turn on the light, Sidney wiped the blood from his mouth with toilet paper and flushed.
Fuck. Sidney hastily scrubbed the blood from his face and arms and quickly brushed his teeth, nearly making himself vomit again, before running to answer the door.
“Mr. Goth! How ya doin’ this evening, sir?” He asked politely, barely able to mask the quiver in his voice, and shook his hand. Mortimer felt a familiar warmth travel up his arm and collect in his chest when Sidney gently squeezed his hand, deliberately choosing not to crush it in his grasp. He noticed that Sidney’s hand was trembling.
“Please, call me Mortimer,” he began, feeling his face growing hot. “I’m doing well, thank you! I just thought I would drop by to ask if you are still available to join my family and me for dinner tonight. I came by earlier too, but you must not have been home. I just didn’t want you to think I forgot about you!”
Sidney heard Mortimer’s inner monologue: This visit has been on my mind all day. He’s not dressed– I hope he didn’t forget.
“Yeah, course I’m still comin’!” he replied with a plastic smile. “Just gotta get dressed– I kinda got a late start today.”
Mortimer’s inner monologue: A late start…at seven in the evening?
“All right! Shall we say you’ll arrive in…an hour? I’ve already started dinner!”
He cooks? Sidney wondered to himself. Maybe the Goths aren’t the conservative type of old rich folk. He and Mortimer agreed that Sidney would meet him at his home in an hour. After shutting the door behind him, he rushed upstairs to find an outfit that would be sufficient for him to even step onto the Goths’ property wearing it. The only shirt in his tiny, mostly empty closet that fit this criterion was a white button-down shirt with billowing sleeves fastened at the wrist and ruffles of fabric down the center, framing the buttons. Inspecting himself in the mirror, he thought:
This shirt makes me look like Zorro.
He looked around his bedroom for an accessory that might draw attention away from the shirt– a necklace, a jacket, anything– and his eyes landed on a deep red, silk clip-on bow tie. He sighed as he picked it up and clipped it to the collar of his shirt. Sidney pulled on a pair of black chino dress pants and hastily buckled the belt before tying his hair back into a neat low ponytail and applied his usual mascara, but smudged his eyeliner a little less than he normally would.
Before leaving, Sidney studied himself in the mirror one last time, smoothing down his hair and ensuring he had combed all the blood out of his beard. He looked at the coffee table in the living room with the bong sitting on top of it, directly in his view. Sidney wondered if he should smoke before leaving; his stomach was in knots and his mind was racing, but he chose not to. He didn’t want to show up at the Goths’ door smelling like weed– Mortimer had already smelled it on him the night before, but he did not want to risk offending Mortimer’s wife or the children. He tied the laces on his nicest pair of black patent leather loafers that were, to his embarrassment, scuffed due to being bought secondhand, and started down the stairs of his front porch toward the Ophelia Villa estate.
Ophelia Villa was the biggest house that Sidney had ever seen. He took a moment to gawk at it from the curb before opening the iron-wrought gate that one might expect to see at a cemetery's entrance. The house's exterior was painted a warm shade of dark grey with black trim along the exterior of each story and surrounding the tall windows. Beautiful white ornate columns with black details supported the roof on the front porch. It looked, Sidney thought, exactly like The Addams Family’s home. The only color present was the garden in the front yard, filled with brightly colored flowers that contrasted with the house’s foreboding presence and greyscale color scheme in a way that Sidney found amusing. He carefully approached the door, admired the door knocker shaped like a lion’s head, and finally worked up the courage to knock.
A gorgeous middle-aged woman with tanned olive skin and long, wavy black hair greeted Sidney. She wore a long, blood-red linen dress that tied at the waist to accentuate her figure and had flowy sleeves cinched at the wrists– not unlike his shirt. A slit in her skirt starting at the mid-thigh revealed a leg with perfectly smooth skin and a pair of black high-heeled shoes. The woman looked up at Sidney and flashed a radiant smile, revealing straight white teeth framed by full lips painted the same shade of red as her dress, and offered her hand to shake.
“You must be Sidney!,” the woman began, her honey-brown eyes glistening in the reflection of the porch light. “Please, come in! My name’s Bella; Mortimer’s my husband. He’s in the kitchen finishin’ dinner. Follow me and I’ll introduce you to our children!”
Sidney noticed that Bella didn't try to mask her accent like Mortimer did. It seemed to him that the husband and wife were polar opposites. Well, opposites attract, I guess, he thought to himself. Bella was incredibly friendly and possibly the most beautiful woman Sidney had ever met; he thought everything about her was elegant. She gestured with her slender, blood-red manicured hand toward two children standing in the dining room, about to take their seats at the table. The flickering candlelight from the chandelier above their heads reflected off the large diamond on Bella’s wedding ring. She beamed while she introduced Sidney to her children.
Bella began by turning her attention to a lanky teenage girl whose face looked like a carbon copy of her own, except the girl’s was hidden behind a pair of large black glasses with rounded, square-shaped plastic frames and blunt bangs that stopped just above her eyebrows. Her black hair was thick and perfectly straight, braided into two pigtails that sat on her shoulders. She sat with an awkward, stiff posture and looked like she wanted to disappear into thin air.
“This is our daughter, Cassandra. She’s a freshman at Copperdale Prep, top of her class, and plays the flute in the school band! Cassandra, this is our neighbor, Mr. Schafer.”
Cassandra blushed and looked down at her hands, embarrassed by her mother’s bragging. She looked back up to make eye contact with Sidney while she spoke to him, the way her parents had raised her to. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Schafer,” she said shyly.
“Nice to meet ya, Cassandra!” Sidney replied with a polite smile, taking care not to reveal his fangs, and shook her hand.
Bella turned next to a thin young boy with thick, straight black hair just like Cassandra’s, except his was cut into a bowl shape, trimmed neatly around his ears. He looked just like a miniature version of Mortimer with a mischievous twinkle in his eye that was visible even behind his silver wire-framed glasses with thick lenses that made his eyes appear smaller than they were. “And this is our son, Alexander. He’s in the fifth grade at St. Thérèse Elementary.”
“And I’m running for Student Council!” Alexander added with a beaming smile.
Bella chuckled softly. “He wants to be President when he grows up.” Man, this kid’s a geek, Sidney thought.
“Sorry, I can’t promise ya my vote, boy. I’ll hafta wait and see what platform you’re runnin’ on in twenty years,” Sidney joked.
Mortimer entered the dining room, carrying a bottle of red wine in one hand and precariously holding three wine glasses with the stems secured between his fingers in the other. The bowls clinked against each other with each one of his light steps. His eyes lit up and he grinned when his eyes landed on Sidney– a facial expression that looked out of place on a man with such stern features. His pencil-thin mustache curved upward so that it looked like his smile had been drawn on. The small, older man had a prominent brow ridge, an aquiline nose, and a thin mouth that seemed to sit naturally in a judgmental grimace; these created a unique silhouette that was extremely recognizable to Sidney, though they had only met once before.
“Sidney! What perfect timing! Would you like a glass of wine? I have an aged Château Latour. Grand vin,” he offered, raising the bottle of wine in his left hand.
“It’s as old as he is,” Bella interjected. Mortimer chortled, but Sidney could hear his inner monologue expressing annoyance at his much younger wife’s joke.
“Not quite. I would say it’s closer to Sidney’s age,” he retorted. Sidney wondered how he had managed to be inserted into the couple’s bickering. The younger man gladly accepted Mortimer’s offer for a glass of wine, though he felt it would be wasted on him since he could not taste it. He didn’t know what “Château Latour” was, nor could he tell the difference between wine that had been aged and wine that had just been bottled, but he assumed that a man like Mortimer Goth only drank the finest wine.
When Mortimer handed Sidney a glass, he lightly swirled it around (because he had seen people do it before) before taking a small sip. He didn’t want to seem rude and gulp it down like he did with his usual drink. The older man invited Sidney to sit at the table with Bella and the children while he returned to the kitchen to serve dinner. Though Sidney could not taste the food Mortimer had prepared, he knew by the earthy smell of the mushroom risotto and the crisp, fresh green salad that he was a skilled cook– and that he was incredibly attentive, remembering that Sidney had told him the night before that he doesn’t eat meat.
“So, you say you work in the city. What do you do?” Mortimer inquired, looking at Sidney across the table, who was taking another sip of his wine.
“I’m a medium,” he replied. “I go to folks’ homes and clean up the ‘energy,’ help ‘em talk to dead relatives, whatever. Ya know, I didn’t believe in it myself till I watched a china hutch tip over on its own while I was pretendin’ to get a poltergeist outta this old lady’s house. Trust I’m a believer now.” He felt scrutinized as all four of the Goths’ eyes lit up with interest. If blood still flowed in his veins, he would have turned beet red.
Bella gasped. “And now, you live in that haunted house ‘cross the street!”
“Actually, I told Mortimer yesterday that I ain’t seen or heard no ghost, and I been livin’ here nigh on a month, now. After some of the shi–” he looked at the children and immediately corrected his language, “uh, stuff– I seen in my line of work, I hope I never do. Knowin’ my luck, I’d get one of them malevolent spirits; the ones that possess ya and make ya kill your family and such.”
All four Goths nodded in understanding. Sidney heard Cassandra mocking how he spoke in her mind and grew quiet, prompting Mortimer to break the brief silence. “Well, you already know that Bella and I are very interested in studying the afterlife, and we think it is so exciting to see someone finally living in the Duplantier place, haunted or not! Bella is an archivist at the library and has extensively researched that house and its original owner.”
Sidney couldn't believe how cool the Goths were. He began to think that, for the first time since he was turned six years prior, he could tell this family of humans about his condition. Tempted as he was, he refrained, because his vampirism was not one of the first things he wanted Mortimer’s family to know about him. Bella excitedly told Sidney about a research conference she was scheduled to attend in six months, March 1972. Mortimer was clearly very proud of his family with good reason, and Sidney felt that he eventually found his stride and succeeded in fitting in with them. He walked home at the end of the night after drinking the finest wine and eating the finest food in the most beautiful house he had ever been in, hoping the Goths liked him as much as he liked them and anxiously awaiting the next time they could get together.
As his human neighbors were getting ready for bed, Sidney sat on his couch, opened a jar of weed on the coffee table, and filled a bong after tearing the pungent, sticky plant matter into small pieces. He cupped his hand over the bowl to light it and stood up to put on a record after taking a large hit. He gently leafed through his collection of albums to find one he could listen to while preparing to leave the house again to hunt.
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