Call out to the Dead

So there we sat pouring over books. Jo making notes about hers. I was mostly just left there flummoxed staring at a book.

About an hour in Jo sat her most recent book down leaning back into the couch running a hand down her face releasing a sigh. “This would be so much easier if we knew what we were dealing with.” She just looked at me for a moment before noticing something.

She leaned forward and reached over the coffee table gently touching the rosary. She went back to her notes. “That’s your mother’s rosary isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” I didn’t know where she was going yet.

“Personal talismans are said to ward off all sorts of different things!” She pointed at one of her notes mostly for herself.

“Personal talismans?”

She paused trying to think of how to word it. “Umm, things that have power because you believe they do. For most they’re religious tokens like crosses, stars of David, rosary beads. Yours has two generations of belief behind it now. You believe something of your mothers can keep her close and keep you safe and she believed rosaries to be a good connection with her religion.”

“My mother’s rosary is going to protect me?” I asked skeptically. Although the feeling I got when I touched it pretty much made it impossible for me to be that skeptical.

“What motivated you to put it on?”

That I couldn’t explain.

“I’ve told you many times my friend. More things in heaven and earth than what we could even begin to fathom.” She spoke when she knew I couldn’t. “But nothing here is a definite. We don’t know what we’re dealing with and professors of the occult who write these go based on old folklore as most haven’t encountered these things for themselves. We’re all just working on well read theories.”

“Joanne, if that was meant to be reassuring you’re not doing it right.” I spoke with a joking honesty.

“Well, all I know is we have to take a break and eat. I’m betting neither of us has eaten today and it’s almost 3.” She reminded me of the simple needs that I had no business forgetting about in the first place.

So that’s what we did. We studied her books until our eyes couldn’t focus on print anymore. All we came out with was a whole host of theories my strongest hope lying in the rosary. It was well after night fall and I was nothing but a ball of nerves.

One thing we’d stopped to do was walk around pulling the curtains on all the windows. Something that was never done in this house. With no neighbors you don’t worry about people seeing you undress. We’d agreed it would be better for our sanity if we weren’t worried about every shifting shadow out there.

We sat talking in spurts, not really keeping up a flowing conversation. Our minds were too cluttered to do that. Sitting in each other’s company helped ease our fears... Well at least mine.

My cell phone buzzed from it’s spot surrounded by the books on the table. I had to dig through a few of them to locate the thing. I looked on the screen and the number displayed to me wasn’t one I recognized.

I tossed Jo the phone. “Do you know this number?”

It took a minute for her eyes to focus. “No. I’ll put it on speaker.” She did just that and held it out between us so we could both hear it.

“Hello.” I spoke carefully just so the other person would talk.

Then the room was filled with the sounds of desperate ragged breaths and something like sobs. “It’s Janet!” The voice desperately cried into the phone. “Help me!”

I gave a horrified look up at Jo which she returned just as well.

“Please!” She was begging us now. The sounds of her running, breathing were all that you could hear. “I don’t know where they went! I don’t know where I am!” She broke to full on sobs then and you could tell she stopped. “I’m gonna die!”

I was almost in tears with her. This could be me right now. I could be the one lost in the woods -I assume- fearing to my very core that I was about to die.

She made a slight sound of fright. “My God. I’m surrounded.” Her trembling voice spoke. “I can’t see them.”

Jo looked at me. Something in her face told me her question, she wondered if we should try to save her.

I had to do the most disgustingly callous thing ever. I shook my head no and mouthed, “Too Late.”

Then another hiccup in her sobs. “Shit.” She spoke. “Don’t come any closer!” Then her sobs broke harder. Really a little crying waitress wasn’t all to threatening.

There was a thud, a distant scream, and a rough ripping sound she’d dropped her phone as whatever was out there with her had gotten her.

You wouldn’t believe the sounds you’d actually hear over the phone while someone is murdered. The grotesque sounds from the horror movies aren’t so far off. Especially that wet sloppy sounding crunch that very much isn’t just something the sound guys in Hollywood falsified. I was never so happy to have a line disconnect.

“Holy shit dude.” Jo said breathlessly.

I felt the tears rolling down my cheeks before I even realized they were flowing. There was a piece of me that almost wished for whatever was coming to me. The tranquility of death had to be better than this.

“I’m the only one left.” I spoke, another thing to flow from me beyond my will. “Again.”

I walked out of the room not even thinking about what I was doing.

Jo followed, trying to talk to me the entire way.

I walked straight through my room and threw my French doors open inviting the night to flood in.

“Eliza! Stop!” She grabbed my arm holding me just behind the threshold.

“Whatever you are just finish this now!” I called hopelessly out into the woods.

Jo pulled me a little just to make me listen to her. “Don’t be crazy!”

“I’d listen to her if I were you.” The voice I’d only heard in my dream called back to me from the woods. The silhouette stepped into view at the edge of the forest.

I was shaken, all of it had been connected, and Jo started pulling more desperately. “Come out and say that to my face coward! I don’t fear death!”

Jo let go of me and I couldn’t feel her at my back anymore.

“Oh Eliza, I’m so glad I came alone.” The figure stepped out of the shadows. I recognized him instantly, it was the full lipped man that smiled at me at the party. “There is something about you,” Then he disappeared.

Seconds later he was just sitting on the edge of my balcony. “That I like too much to share.” His eyes lingered on me, and his cynical half smile showed off his straight white teeth. As he sat there just looking at me his canine dropped into a long razor sharp fang.

Jo was at my back again and pulled my left hand behind me. I felt her place something in my hand making sure I positioned my hand around it properly. My dad’s gun. That had been in the night stand longer than I could remember.

I suddenly felt more confident, as most people feel with a loaded gun in their hand. I stayed there facing him. Waiting for his next move.

I saw him focus on Jo and size her up. “Hello darling, I don’t believe we’ve met.” I don’t know why he was dragging this all on but I just had to wait. “I’ve rudely neglected to introduce myself. You may call me Michael.”

“I would say nice to meet you Michael but I’d be lying through my teeth.” Jo spoke with a venom I’d never heard from her before. “You need to leave this place.”

“You’re the spiritualist that brought Eliza the sage I smelled last night aren’t you?” He sounded nothing more than amused. “I’m obviously a little more that just an ‘evil spirit’ or whatever that’s supposed to work on.”

“Noctem Aeternus?” She spoke words I didn’t know. I assumed it was a question only because of the inflection.

He chuckled stood up and took a few casual steps toward us. “Those spiritual types always know Latin Eliza.” He was explaining my best friend to me. Dick. “By Eternal Night you mean ‘Sanguine Lactentis Lamia’ don’t you?”

“Vampire more than witch.” She spoke stiffly.

“They didn’t have a different word for vampire.” He fired back. “Witch, vampire, ghoul; all fell under the same word.”

“Let me guess you were there?”

I was tired of the banter. I wanted this to be done. His steps had put him standing right in front of me so that seemed like the perfect moment.

I shot him.

His tattooed hands covered the wounds and he let out a groan. He lifted one of his now blood covered hands and just looked at it. "If only this were the first time I'd been shot by a pretty woman. It’s really losing it’s charm."

Now this isn’t what shooting someone is supposed to be like. Even as someone who’s never done it before I knew that. He should have been on the ground bleeding out begging us to call an ambulance.

“Well maybe it has something to do with your approach.” Jo spoke with a slight tremble to her voice now.

He pulled his black blood soaked shirt up revealing the “H” in “Heartless” pulling back together after the bullet pushed out hitting the ground with the softest clang.

Seeing flesh heal right in front of me frightened me beyond thought. I squeezed two more rounds out of the chamber.

He let out a sound of pain akin to a lion’s roar. The most fearsome sound of pain that was ever made I’d wager.

Then he moved in his lightening speed and was less than three feet from me fangs bared. I don’t think banter was on the agenda anymore.

His eyes were glowing bright green. He was ready to end the foreplay, it was time for the action.