Life With The Boy Next Door

Hours later, Alice Vreeland woke up in a hotel suite in Fiji. That was putting it loosely, but the view was great. She got clumsily out of bed and fumbled her way over to the low door. She pushed it open and wandered out through the open gap, letting it swing lightly closed behind her. Alice rubbed her tired eyes and walked down the beach to the water’s edge. The warm, shallow waves lapped at her feet and washed up over her ankles. Without thinking, she lowered herself down and sat on the wet sand, allowing the water to soak her up to the waist. She crossed her legs and stared at her toes, the nails still scarlet from her mother-in-law’s colourful ministrations more than a day and a half ago.
Alice shut her eyes and tipped her head back to the rays of the dawn sun, just peeking over the edge of the horizon. Her mind was partially blank, a simple white slate with nothing painted across its surface. She was bleeding, but no one was up this early in the morning to see the red evidence swirling away in the sea’s soft current. She’d forgotten he wasn’t really human, forgotten he was a supernatural creature. She hadn’t realised how bad the pain she was in would be. She felt like curling up in a ball and dying. Every muscle in her body was contracting horribly whenever she moved, and there were no relieving intervals. Everything hurt and she didn’t know what she could do to make it stop.

Back at home in New Hampshire, Cassi woke up at a strange hour and tiptoes into her parents’ room, circling round the bed to her mother’s side. Annabelle instinctively heard her child’s heavy breathing and opened her eyes to find Cassi staring at her in the dark of the bedroom. She sat up and lifted her youngest daughter onto the bed with her, settling her on her lap.
“What is it, Cass?” she asked groggily, pushing her long hair out of the way.
Cassi snuggled backwards into her and held her mother’s hand.
“Something’s wrong with Alice” she whispered, turning her head in the dark so Annabelle could hear.
She stiffened and sat straighter, now wide awake. She clutched Cassi tighter against her, worry taking over all of her other senses.
“How do you know?” she demanded quietly, her words floating in the air past Cassi’s head.
She shrugged, blinking at the encroaching shadows.
“I just do, Mommy. Something is the matter. I feel it” she said plainly, her thoughts travelling to Cale.
She murmured his name and then felt Annabelle’s hold on her increase even more so.
“Cale is hurting Alice?” Annabelle hissed, not meaning to sound so angry with the little girl.
“I don’t think he meant to” Cassi whispered, wriggling out of her mother’s embrace and dropping to the carpet.
Annabelle tried to focus on her shape as she left the room, but the shadows were so inky and thick, she couldn’t see her own hand in front of her face anymore. An ominous feeling of concern lodged itself into her brain and refused to budge.

Cale woke and found that Alice, his wife, was not beside him. He pulled himself up on his elbows and glanced at the door. There was a ray of bright light seeping in through a slight crack between the door itself and the wall. He flung away the thin sheet and stood, his feet flat on the ground. The strong metallic scent of blood was rife in the small room and he could hardly detect anything else different.
Had he really not noticed it last night? He thought back briefly and tried to remember some time when Alice had shouted at him, which was what she had always done when she was in pain, ever since she was a little girl. Even when it hadn’t been his own fault but hers or somebody else’s, she had always pointed her finger at him and yelled until someone came and told him off. She loved him, but he was her source of blame, and probably always would be.
A sudden, cold thought gripped him. What if she fell pregnant and had an abortion? She had never wanted her own children, though he did. He shook it off, clearing his head. No, she wouldn’t do that. She didn’t have the strength in her to go through with an act of death and vengeance such as that. Her moral compass would point her due north each and every time.
Cale swung the door open and stepped out onto the sand, not feeling the soft, white pearls sifting beneath his feet. He spotted her immediately, her vibrant red hair standing out strikingly in stark comparison to the dark haired islanders out on the beach for an early view of the ocean. He tilted his head to the side; Alice was sitting right in the water and she was talking to someone. A young girl, maybe twelve or thirteen, was crouching next to her, a small hand on her shoulder. Cale quickly zeroed in on her face and noticed at once the odd discolouration in her eyes. They were quite obviously brown, but there was still a rather strange red film overlapping the brown. It didn’t appear to be scaring Alice, so he just stood, watched and waited. She was frowning slightly as the girl spoke to her, but she wasn’t ignoring her, as she normally would have done with random strangers.
After another few seconds, Cale couldn’t handle the waiting, and sharpened his hearing exponentially. The girl had a low sounding, resonant voice, bordering on the melodic. She was still talking to Alice, speaking in hurried sentences, her grasp of English exemplary.
“Alice, it’s dangerous what you are doing. See the blood? It’s a sign, you’re not meant to be doing this. I’m sorry, but you are not strong enough to do it. He will nearly kill you when it’s time for him to arrive. And he will arrive. It won’t take as long as a normal one, either, Alice. He will be here within the next four months or so. You may not have thought this could happen so quickly, but these things do happen, and they are happening to you. I knew it at once when I saw you arrive here yesterday night.”
Cale narrowed his eyes. Yes, he did remember seeing this girl around somewhere when he and Alice arrived the previous evening. He carried on listening.
“It is still your choice as to what you will do when it gets here, Alice. No one can take that from you, not even him watching us right now. No, don’t look. He can hear me, I know it. Be careful. Be very careful. Or you might die, Alice. Watch out for yourself” the girl murmured to her, then stood up and gathered her skirt.
She walked away, casting a look behind her at Cale. Her eyes met his, and held his gaze. She stared blank faced at him, the red in her eyes thicker and darker than it had appeared before.
“You’re going to kill her, Cale” she told him, her words a whisper carried to him on the wind. “And you can’t do anything to prevent that now. You have overstepped the line between the humans and us.”
Cale gazed back at her, his heart and pulse racing. He couldn’t kill Alice, could he? Did he have that in him? Would he ever have the capacity of hate in him to murder his own wife and lifelong best friend? What kind of circumstances would lead to that as the only available option open to him?
“Alice!” he called out, his voice rising and sounding more urgent than he wanted.
She turned round and saw him, scrambled up and trudged over the sand dune to where he stood. She smiled up at him, squidging the white sand between her toes.
“Hi, Cale” she said happily enough, leaning up on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek.
“Good morning” he replied slightly warily, his eyes on the retreating figure of the island girl.
What did she mean by ‘the humans and us’? What was she? He had met plenty of vampires in his nineteen years, but never a creature like her.
“What was that girl talking to you about, Al?” he asked, attempting to sound as calm as possible.
Alice looked up at him, her face open and perfectly innocent. She blinked her big eyes at him and he just about melted right there on the spot.
“Who, Tutti? Nothing, Cale. Nothing you need to worry about” she said breezily, gently pushing past him to get back into their hired room.
Letting her past, Cale turned around and watched her exit from him. She had lied so fluently, so well, he could almost believe her. If he hadn’t just heard the girl, Tutti, tell Alice that she would nearly die, and then tell him that he would kill her himself. He followed Alice into the island suite and sat down cross legged in the middle of the bed, observing her quietly as she moved about and dressed. Never once did she lift her eyes to meet his. Instead, Alice studiously kept her head bowed and studied the floor. What Tutti had just told her couldn’t be ignored and left behind to rot in the dust. But what she had said would fester in her mind until she died, and so that was that.