Forgive this blasted handwriting, Dorris, but you must attribute the chicken scratch to my dire and dreadful situation—and to the fact that I’m a doctor. Had any of my other memos been written such as this one, by my own hand, you’d’ve seen that—while sloppy—my penmanship under the conditions I’ve found myself in is of a far more frantic caliber. Please know that despite this—and despite what I am about to scribble—that this is Daniel, this is Dr. Jacobson who is writing this, and that I have not gone mad. Of course, that’s entirely what a madman would say, I suppose, but I hope that, given my level of vocabulary here and our years of both professional and personal confidence in one another that you might believe me now.
Because this account is most certainly unbelievable.
Before I go back to the beginning, Dorris, and explain to you why you must do what I ask of you—as preposterous as it may seem—I must first skip to the end with a request that may be as dire to you as it is for me.
That if I do not return to the office today by five in the afternoon—or before whenever the sun begins to set—that you must kill me, by your hand or the authorities, but you have to tell them I mustn’t be shot. Impale me, burn me, decapitate me. Just don’t shoot. Please, God, just don’t shoot. And if you or they must shoot… just don’t miss. And use silver.
Should the police need a reason as to why to use deadly force against me, tell them I’m armed and dangerous. Tell them I’m a loon. Hell, show them this godforsaken note. Officer, I will kill people if you don’t kill me, you understand? Their blood will be on your hands, got it?
There, that ought to do it.
Now, Dorris, should I go missing—should you never see me again—in my absence, I want you to offer my position as senior dentist to Marcus Maelstrom, my associate. In his place, then, the new intern, Seth, will be his. Tyra will remain as our hygienist, and you, Dorris, will promptly give yourself a raise as our secretary, however you see fit, given all this trouble. I entrust you with this. And the deed to the building—should you or Marcus need it—is behind the picture of the smiling sloth in my office.
I think that covers everything in the end. Now, onto the beginning, which happened yesterday.
As you’ll recall, it was November the first. One of the busiest times of year in our profession, it seems. Be it due to the impending holiday season—family photos as early as Thanksgiving—or the last-minute usage of insurance benefits before the proverbial calendar folds shut. Most importantly, in the case of this story I’m relaying to you, it was the day following Halloween, when every worrisome mother or helicopter father rings your desk—as I’m sure you’re already aware—to get all’ve the so-called “sugary gunk” out of their children’s mouths after letting them be filled with Dum-Dums, candy corn, peanut butter cups, and every other vehicle for high fructose corn syrup on the market all in the span of four hours. Suffice it to say, Dorris, I hate Halloween… but also love it. Professionally, it makes an ugly mess of the otherwise top-notch services we provide to our community. However, personally—and perhaps more so selfishly—it makes all of us a quick buck after an otherwise slow season following the August back-to-school rush and the homecoming push of mid-September.
If that was a lot of superfluous or otherwise rhetorical information, then forgive me. My mind is quicker than my hand can even write this, and I suppose that’s because all of it is rather fresh after my little “chat” with little Robbie Beekman. Do you remember the Beekmans? Surely, you must. Perfectly quaint little family of four: Robert and Karen, Daisy and Robert Junior, whom I was introduced to simply as “Robbie.” You might recall the Christmas card pinned up in my office, the one sent with the box of a dozen candy canes some two years ago. If so, well, that is the Beekman family and their youngest—little Robert Junior—was here as of yesterday afternoon.
Dorris, listen—or rather read this—carefully, now. I want you to go into my office and grab that very card. Take a good look at it, and at that little boy. Look at his face. Look into his eyes. You may very well see that face again, but those eyes are long gone. Lost to something downright hellish if I’m right about this thing.
Therefore, this is the part that’ll be most difficult for you, as both a grandmother and as a human being, I know.
If you see that boy after dusk today—or any day—just as you’d see me… you must kill him, you understand? You must kill the boy, Dorris. Don’t let him live. And know that it isn’t a boy you’re killing at all. Know that well. In fact, you’d be doing a goddamned public service. Pardon my French.
Even if you don’t believe me—which I’m sure you don’t—at least humor the man whom you’ve known for the last decade and who’s signed every last one of your paychecks. A man you probably assume has gone absolutely batty, and justifiably so. Maybe you think the late hours we’ve spent laboring meticulously about the office have finally gotten to me. Or maybe that my recent divorce from Jane has pushed me over the edge. Know that neither of these is the case. As for the former, well, you’ve seen me day in and day out. You can attest firsthand to my sanity, my punctuality, my professionalism. For the latter, well, you can call Jane, by all means—you probably know her number by heart, but if not, it’s in the rolodex—and you can ask her to defend my character. Though yes, admittedly, the separation has been hard on us both, neither of us has been nasty to the other in any conceivable way. If not for our own sakes, then for the sake of little Vincent. Though I assure you there’s no bad blood between us, even if we hadn’t conceived a child together.
Children, yes. We must think of the children. Now more than ever. I suppose for their sakes I’ve wasted far too much time already. Allow me to get on with the story.
Robbie Beekman arrived yesterday sometime before nine in the morning. I was just finishing up with a patient—it must’ve been Missus Lancaster (the woman with the far too white dentures)—when Seth informed me that a young boy was waiting in the lobby for me. You must remember that Seth—bless his heart—is still developing those fine-tuned privacy and security skills you’ve all too well acclimated to over your many years of service. Even so, I cut the young man slack, given the rather bizarre circumstances of the boy’s visit.
According to Seth, Robbie arrived alone. It’s hard enough to spot anyone under the age of twelve in the toy aisle of a department store all by themselves, let alone in a medical office such as ours. So, when I was all finished up with Missus Lancaster, I telephoned Seth to let the boy back and then asked him.
“Good morning, Robbie,” I said, and the boy nodded shyly. “Where’re your folks?”
“At wurk,” the boy said. He said this with a considerable lisp despite the fact that I had no recollection of performing any wirework inside the boy's mouth, nor did I refer his parents to any sort of orthodontist who specialized in braces.
It then dawned on me—as it should’ve from the moment I realized you were behind the front desk, Dorris—that it was Friday per the child’s statement. “Oh,” I chuckled, admittedly somewhat nervously as I began to grasp the situation, “I must admit, Mr. Beekman… there’re certainly better ways to play hooky.”
“Um mot paying hooky,” the boy said to me.
“Oh? Is that so? Well, then… what brings you by, son?”
At this point, the boy opened his mouth with an accompanying “ahhh,” as is often my direction when doing so. There appeared to be something—even at the distance from my desk to the doorway—coating the boy’s teeth. Some foreign object, perhaps, or some kind of substance. Something slightly opaque with a light, greenish tint. I asked him to step a bit closer. He did and then explained it to me as I started to figure it out myself.
“Ther vampire teef,” he said. “An ther suck.”
“Stuck?” I asked a bit excitedly. The boy nodded with hard swings of his neck to the point where I thought he might harm himself. “Well,” I thought and glanced at my watch, realizing I didn’t have another appointment for a good half hour, “why don’t you take a seat, and I’ll have a closer look.”
The boy did just as I asked without another lispy word. I grabbed for my spectacles in their usual perching spot upon my desk and then realized they were dangling from around my neck, bouncing softly on my tie. I slipped them onto my face, grabbed my stool, and scooted up to the child as he settled back beneath the overhanging lamp. I went for its switch, and he stopped me.
“Docter Dacobson?”
“Yes, Robert?”
He swallowed before continuing. I remember that because it was very pronounced. “Cud you not turn the light on?”
I chuckled nervously once more. “Might be a bit hard to see, son.”
“I know,” he said, “but it’ll hur my eyes.”
I grinned with, as you once called it, my “signature” warm reassurance and rolled back on the stool until I hit the edge of my desk with my hip. The shades had been sitting in there for so long that I didn’t even need to feel around for them in the drawer.
“Well, you’re in luck, sport,” I said in that real “way-to-go-champ” sort of way. “Now, I admit these probably aren’t what the kids these days call cool,” I said, handing him over the black shaded goggles which, as you know, nearly double as a welding mask, “but you strike me as a trendsetter.” The boy didn’t laugh. They never do. Usually, that joke gives the parents a slight chuckle at least, and for a split second, I expected it from over my shoulder, but that day I was without the typical peanut gallery.
The boy took the glasses apprehensively, then said, “Ill still hur my face, though.”
“Your face?” I clarified. The boy nodded. Had my chair had a back to it, I would’ve certainly sunk right in. Perhaps the boy had a sunburn, I thought, even though his skin looked fairer than my own, and I only go outside to fetch the mail. Or maybe he had some kind of disease or hypersensitivity, though I don’t recall it from any of our previous appointments. I say all of this to say, Dorris, that when confronted with the strange or bizarre, we tend to do everything we can to rationalize it. To explain it away. Otherwise, we must dare to confront a horrible truth about ourselves. That, deep down, we can so easily be swayed to utter madness.
“Well,” I said, folding as one might do in a game of cards, “I suppose I can see enough.”
“Dey are go-in-the-dark,” the boy said, and he was right. The little chompers inside of his mouth were glowing, albeit only slightly, as cheap, plastic toys of the same gimmick so often do.
I chuckled slightly. “Did your cape glow in the dark, too?”
The boy shook his head.
“Well, I guess even Count Dracula needs a nightlight, huh?”
The boy’s face stretched in confusion. “I wen as Ba-man.”
At the time, the irony went straight over my head. “Batman?”
Robbie nodded and tried not to gag as the saliva must’ve accumulated in his mouth. I nodded apologetically, switched on the ejector, and sucked out the excess before he nearly gagged again. The child then slurped once, licked the greenish plastic-like coating across his teeth, and thanked me. Afterward, I set the suction device down, retrieved a mouth mirror, and pulled myself, once more, closer to little Robbie with my glasses now at the tip of my nose. It was sweating despite the cool, autumn breeze that glided past the open window.
“The teeth weren’t a part of your costume then?” As I asked this, the boy opened his mouth, and I gently lowered the mirror into it. Simultaneously, my tie (which hadn’t been clipped on account of the x-ray I’d taken of Missus Lancaster’s osseointegration that morning) dangled just below the boy’s chin and began to tickle him. He giggled a little before I hoisted it over my shoulder and resumed the inspection.
“Uh-uh,” he mumbled, the rounded corners of his smile straightening, and shook his head slightly from side to side. Sure enough, the mirror only confirmed my surface-level suspicions. The object appeared to be nothing more than your standard glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth sold at every five-and-dime from here to Timbuktu. Instinctively, I went for my explorer.
“So, where’re they from?” I watched as the boy followed the sharp, metal object with wide eyes, never blinking.
“A howse.”
I nodded and lowered the instrument into his mouth alongside the mirror in my other hand. “Mm whose house?”
“I dunno,” he said, sighing that the scary, sharp object was now out of sight and hidden carefully in his mouth. With it, as carefully as I could’ve under the guidance of the small mirror, I began to lightly prod and pull at the object in an attempt to remove it from the child’s teeth and gums. This was a process much harder than it initially seemed despite my having done so with countless retainers over the years. The plastic vampire teeth were seemingly suctioned onto the boy’s jaw. In his own words, “stuck.”
When my initial curiosities about the situation were addressed, though not answered, I found myself now more so curious with the boy’s reply. That this otherwise seemingly innocent party favor lodged in his mouth was from a household that he didn’t know.
“What do you mean, son?” I asked. He was about to answer when I removed both of my tools from his mouth.
“It sad pwease take one so I did.” The boy said this in earnest, and immediately my heart bled on behalf of his innocence.
“Ah,” I smiled, “a trick-or-treat treat,” I then said. Really, I thought, this must’ve been some kind of trick. I’ve heard—as I’m sure you have, Dorris—of those frightful accounts of tampered candy. Razor blades, poison… I mustn’t fill your mind with such images any further, but you get the idea. Never before had I heard of cheap, dollar-store fangs being such a culprit. Had someone filled them with super glue, God forbid? No, certainly not.
“Did you have any other treats last night?” I continued. I figured the boy had, perhaps, eaten some sort of chewy, tacky candy (gum or taffy or the like) before fitting the vampire teeth over his own, and subsequently over the sticky residue. Maybe he’d even left them on overnight—crashed from some sort of sugary high—and left the concoction to dry. These were, of course, nothing but a series of rapid assumptions on my part, assumptions that likewise assumed that the Beekmans were neglectful of their youngest at best. Knowing what I knew about their character from our interactions up until that point, this seemed highly unlikely.
“A cupple picky sticks… t’ocolate bars… and dose lil pum’kins,” Robbie answered. My stomach turned as if settling rotten milk. This confirmed my lingering fear. Someone had done this. And probably not to just little Robbie alone.
“Did you tell your parents about all of this, Robert?”
The child immediately shook his head. “No, dey’d be mad.”
I nodded. “And that’s why you came here instead of school?”
“Uh-huh.”
I nodded again. “You took your bike to get here?”
“Yuh.”
“And if I asked you to show me the house where you got these teeth… could you?”
The boy bobbed his head.
“How would you get there from here on your bike?”
Robbie thought about this for a quiet moment. I could hear the wind whistle.
“I wuld go down the steet.”
“This way or that way?” I asked, pointing in either direction to my left or right.
“Dat way,” he said, confirming the right. “Den I’d go weft and turn weft again at the wittle park.”
I knew where that was. The dog park. It isn’t far. Just as the child said, you’d take a right at Second Avenue, a left on Maple, and another left on Thirteenth Street. The park would be difficult to spot this time of year—now doubling as nothing but a flurry of orange and red leaves beside the lake—but otherwise it’s a rather sleepy part of town.
“That’d bring you to Thirteenth Street, right?”
The boy shrugged. “I guess.”
“Then which house is it?”
He thought again, a bit longer this time than before. “The wite one on the weft.”
“With the little porch?”
Robbie nodded.
Just as I feared. The old Shroder house. That was it, alright. I knew the Shroders, maybe you did too, Dorris. Nice old couple. Thomas Shroder was a former client of many years, in fact, and, unlike Missus Lancaster, had rather naturally colored dentures. Probably because the man was an avid coffee drinker, just like his wife. No one would’ve ever suspected she’d develop type 2 diabetes, probably because they wrongly assumed she took it black like her old man did, as did I. However, I was the first to suspect such a disease, even though I couldn’t very well diagnose it myself. Melody had had a canker, nothing major. Most folks do, although typically you’d expect them in a younger mouth like little Robbie’s over a woman pushing seventy-five. No, it wasn’t the mere presence of the sore that concerned me, however. It was that it hadn’t healed in nearly three weeks, according to the poor woman who, mind you, had only become my client after such rave reviews from her husband.
To make a long story short (which I’m doing an awfully poor job of), Melody Shroder had to have her right foot amputated on account of poor circulation. The surgery went about as well as it could’ve, but the house—whose bedroom is on the second story—immediately became problematic. For a good month and a half while the place was up for auction, the Shroders slept on the sofa downstairs, at least as it was relayed to me by other residents of Thirteenth and Maple. Then, when the auction ended and the house still hadn’t sold, they upped and left. Where they went, I cannot say. However, there’s reason to believe they moved in with friends while the realtor continued with home showings. I believe her name was Erica-something, but as of a few weeks ago, the “For Sale” sign in front of the home up and vanished, so there’s no way for anyone to verify that.
Suffice it to say, Dorris, that house is vacant. Meaning there’s no way little Robbie could’ve gotten anything from it at all. Unless, of course, the boy is lying.
Or unless there’re squatters inside.
You may rightfully ask yourself, however, if that were the case, why on Earth would a squatter—who by their very nature, dwelling within a home still on the market, would want to remain as discrete as humanly possible—give out little Halloween trinkets, essentially announcing their presence to an entire neighborhood?
Your guess would be as good as mine, Dorris. Of course, I couldn’t outright guess it to the child at the time. Instead, I clarified what he had already told me.
“You said the teeth were in a bowl on the porch?”
“Uh-huh,” he replied, flinging spittle on his chin. I wiped it off with my glove.
“And a sign read ‘Please Take One’?”
“Wight.”
I nodded. “Did anyone else?”
“Yuh,” he said. “All my fends did.”
Good Lord, I thought. “Did any of them have this same… problem?”
Robbie shrugged. “I didn go to scoo.”
“That’s right,” I said aloud. That’s right. And his teacher’ll be phoning his parents about it at any moment. And they’ll be worried to death. And then they’ll wonder—if the boy was with you—I told myself, why you didn’t call them immediately.
Why didn’t you call us, Doctor Jacobson?
Because what was I supposed to say, Dorris? That their child was inflicted with a bad case of sticky vampire teeth, is that what?
So, all you need to do is pry them off, I reassured myself. Pry them off, maybe give the boy some anti-cavity toothpaste, and send him on his way.
So, that’s what I began to do, Dorris. I began to pry them off. Gently at first, but the more and more I realized my efforts were futile, I started to get aggressive on the jaw, pulling at the dimly glowing teeth with about the same strength I would’ve had they been a lid on a well-sealed jar.
“Uhh… ahhh!” the boy whimpered. I could see his eyes begin to water.
“I’m sorry, Robbie,” I said, still wedging my explorer between the boy’s teeth and the foreign object. “This’ll only hurt for but a moment more. It’s almost off,” I lied.
“Ukay,” he said. His voice was now shaking. I needed to end this. But I couldn’t. The damned thing just wouldn’t come off. What’s under this thing? I thought. Grout? I don’t even think the tile in my bathroom would hold this much.
After a good two minutes of tugging and pulling at the boy’s expense, I decided to give his mouth a rest as I thought up other ways of unlodging the object from within it. He could tell that I looked nervous, and soon his face began to mirror my own.
“Is it gon come off?” he asked.
“Yes, of course,” I reassured him. “It’s just a bit… stuck, is all. Nothing I haven’t seen a dozen times before, Mr. Beekman.” That lie was bigger than the first, and as you know, I never lie to my patients. Especially children. “Let me look again,” I told him, and then used my handheld light to inspect around, like searching a pitch-black cave with vaguely green columns. Sure enough, aside from the vampire teeth, there was also considerable buildup between what I could see of some of Robbie’s actual teeth, just above his gumline. Someone hasn’t been flossing, I thought, and then retrieved my instrument again.
“Now, Robbie,” I said, “I’m going to scrape away some of the buildup between your teeth, okay? That way, they’ll be nice and free from any obstructions… any gunk… and we can get these silly vampire fangs off of them. Sound good?”
“Will wit hur?”
I shook my head with a smile. “Not at all, son.”
The boy nodded and opened his mouth. My first targets were the left lateral incisor and the left canine—ten and eleven—and the plaque building up between them. So much as I could tell, it was probably just foodstuffs and candy, but it couldn’t hurt to clear up anyway. As soon as I started, it was immediately apparent that this was a neglected area of the child’s mouth. The gums immediately started to bleed, and I could even make out the softest stains of brown tartar.
“You eat a lot of candy, do you, Robert?”
The boy shrugged. “Only fur Hawoween, weally. And Cwismas. And Easer.” I was about to continue when I noticed his little face was still scrunched in thought. “And I guess sometimes awfer soccer pwactice.”
I nodded and appreciated the boy’s honesty. Children are often the most transparent clients, for better or for worse. “What kind of candy do you have after practice?”
“Uswually bubbwle gum. Kinda wike yours.”
“Like mine?” I asked.
The boy nodded. “Yeah. Like wen you cwean my teef.”
“Ah, you mean the polish,” I said, and the boy nodded. Usually, the paste I use is mint flavored for my adult patients and bubble gum for the kids.
“Mmhmm,” he hummed. “What fwavor is dis one?”
“This what?” I asked.
“Powish.”
I chuckled. “No polishing yet, Robbie. Not until I de-fang you, at least.”
I watched as the boy’s expression tightened, and his eyes narrowed. “Den… wut’s dat sweet taste?”
I aimed the handheld light into the child’s mouth and noticed that some of the blood from little Robbie’s gums had trickled down onto his tongue. And call me crazy, Dorris, but in that moment, a chill shot up my spine as I realized that the boy had begun to salivate because of it. Sure, he might’ve just had high blood sugar at the time, but in over thirty-five years, I’d never heard of anyone equating the taste of their own blood with candy.
“Wut’s wong, Docwur Jacobson?”
The boy could see that I had probably gone pale white. “N-nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all.”
I suppose to perhaps behave as casually as I could’ve given the circumstances, not to cause the child any alarm, I suddenly started to mindlessly pry at the vampire fangs with my explorer like a child picking at their uneaten food with the end of a fork, never minding the fact that it had been a useless endeavor. At least, it would’ve been, had the glowing green teeth not begun to slip off.
“Are wou okay?”
“Y-yes,” I replied to the boy. “Yes, of course, Robbie. The teeth!” I said, a bit too excitedly. “They’re coming off!”
“Weally?”
I nodded, my tie dropping to the boy’s chest as I did, and traded the handheld light for my mouth mirror, instinctively lowering it beside the explorer as the cheap, plastic-like chompers began to peel away. It was satisfying, Dorris. Oh, so satisfying, let me tell you. I had to tilt the mirror to get a better look. What had I missed? I thought. What had held the loathsome things on in the first place?
These questions were never answered, mind you, as a new one had abruptly seized me and my tongue, flushing my cheeks and forehead with immediate warmth and panic.
How could I see the ceiling in the mirror?
Surely, the roof of the child’s mouth would’ve been in the way. Yet, somehow, it was no longer visible, Dorris, I swear to you this. Nothing of little Robbie was visible anymore. The child’s reflection was simply missing.
“Docwur Jacobson, you dow’t look so good.”
It had just been there, hadn’t it? How else did I see the boy’s teeth?
“You’re all wed, sur.”
You didn’t sleep well last night, Dan. Trick or treaters kept you up, didn’t they? You’re just seeing things. You’re just—
“Eeeeerrrgghh—” the boy suddenly began to gargle. I looked up from his mouth and watched as his eyes began to roll back into his skull, showing nothing but the milky whites.
“R-Robbie? Robert!” I began to exclaim. “Robert, what’s happening?”
The boy’s mouth began to bubble with saliva, and drool overflowed onto his chin and down his neck. I then watched all too closely—the image forever seared into my mind, now—as the child’s cheeks began to swell like a baby about to vomit. But instead of vomiting, he spat the blood-covered vampire fangs into my face and opened his jaw hideously, like that of a snake.
And that’s when I saw, Dorris, that little Robert Beekman had fangs of his own.
“Wed,” I heard him grumble over the thumping of my heart. “You’re all wed, Docwur Jacobson.”
Then I felt the tug as Robbie gripped the end of my tie with his tiny hand and with great strength pulled me down toward him, his drooling mouth unhinging to a size I never thought would be humanly possible.
It wasn’t humanly possible.
And that’s when, for the first and last time in my adult life, Dorris, I slapped a child across the face. Right across the face, like you’d see in the movies. Except, to my surprise and horror, the boy didn’t yell or shout or holler about it, despite the fact that my hand was stinging and surely his cheek must’ve been too. He merely lay there stiff as a board as I stumbled backward toward the door, gripping my metal tools with one, jittering hand and fumbling for the cold handle with the other. I then watched as the child slowly sat up, turned his head in my direction, and drooled onto himself.
“R-Robert,” I said, beginning to turn the handle, “I’m calling your parents this second!” In hindsight, this was a foolish threat, but the only one I could make in the moment and with any potential consequence to a child of the boy’s age.
Robbie’s eyes rolled forward with a look so intensely penetrating that, immediately, my head began to throb. “No! You can’t tell them!” the child screamed.
“I can’t tell them,” I repeated without affect. I still don’t know whether or not I had said this of my own accord.
I then watched in a paralyzed stupor as little Robbie’s eyes rolled back again while he began to approach me. Whether or not he was gliding through the air, I can’t seem to remember, but in my mind’s eye it appeared that way. He was advancing at an almost ethereal speed.
No, I didn’t slap the boy again. As I said, the first time was also my last. Instead, I did something far more effective. Instinctually, as if playing Van Helsing in some old black and white horror show, I raised my instruments into the sign of the cross before me and winced.
Little Robbie did too. In fact, he did more than wince. He screeched. It was shrill and painful, and then he brushed past me, pushing open the door and fleeing into the lobby. I heard a handful of shrieks over my shoulder as I got my bearings straight and then, when I had found myself finally grounded, followed in the boy’s direction. But by that time, he was already gone.
Seth stood in the open doorway, gripping its frame with both hands and leaning into the hallway. Behind him, the lobby buzzed with murmuring voices. Magazines fluttered on the ground like freshly fallen foliage, and a single chair lay overturned.
A small hand suddenly and softly gripped my forearm from behind me. I flinched and spun around on my heel with a gasp. The old woman (whom I immediately recognized as Elma Lutterman) matched my expression with a slight hiccup. “Dr. Jacobson!” she then exclaimed, laughing nervously to herself, “that, uh… that young man just stole my umbrella.”
I nodded without processing what she had said (although clearly, given this recollection, I did, in fact, remember it). My mind was still on the boy, you see. His eyes, his fangs.
I think I said something absentmindedly to her like, “I’ll be right with you, Elma,” before meandering up to Seth and putting a hand on his shoulder. He shivered under my touch and then turned to me, relieved.
“What in God’s name happened, Seth?”
The young man shook his head, mouth open. “I-I dunno,” he said. “That creepy little kid just stormed through here and took that poor lady’s umbrella. I mean… who the hell steals an umbrella, doc?” He chuckled uncomfortably. “It’s not even raining.”
Something about the intern’s wording caught my attention. “Creepy little kid, Seth? What do you mean?” I agreed that little Robbie Beekman was most certainly creepy, but Seth hadn’t been in the room with us to make that assessment for himself. In fact, before that morning, Robert Junior was a completely normal, unthreatening child.
“I mean, did you look at him, doc? Really look at him? There was somethin funny in his eyes. Besides, the way he was standing at the door earlier was all… I dunno. Creepy.”
“How was he standing at the door?”
Seth looked at the entryway and then back at me. “All still and… I dunno. Creepy, like I said.”
“He didn’t step in?”
The intern shook his head. “Not at first, no. I asked him if he had an appointment, and he shook his head. Then I told him to come on in and wait while I’d ask you to see him. That was it.”
Come on in, I thought. Seth invited him in. Just like in the movies.
“T-thank you, Seth,” I stuttered, and patted the boy on the shoulder before walking away. Where I was headed, I didn’t know.
“For what?” I heard him ask in confusion. I didn’t answer. Really, I didn’t have an answer to give.
The rest of the day was more of the same. I guess you could call it “coasting by,” not really thinking about much of anything aside from the boy and merely going through the motions of the job. I think I gave poor, umbrella-less Elma Lutterman a crown instead of a root canal. Poor Elma Lutterman indeed. When we make it through this thing, Dorris—if we make it through—remind me to correct that mistake, would you?
I did find her umbrella, you know. It’s resting on the Beekman porch; probably right where little Robbie left it after his folks invited him into his own home. They were probably concerned as to why their own son—who surely had a house key—needed a warm welcome, and one during the middle of a school day, of all things. It was probably Karen, come to think of it. Robert Senior would’ve been at the office. She probably pulled her boy inside, and rightfully so, feeling confused as I did one moment and the next feeling the child’s teeth sink into her neck. Daisy would’ve been next, then there’d be three of them, and even a man as capable and broad-shouldered as Robert Beekman wouldn’t’ve been able to ward off three.
Three of them, Dorris! Three of them right here in our community! They were probably watching me as I drove by, plotting their next move. God knows there’re probably more of them. Probably in that empty house.
That’s why I decided last night, being unable to sleep despite the garlic cloves and my mother’s crucifix I had brought into bed with me, that come morning I’d pay a visit to the old Shroder house.
And yes, I’d of course bring the garlic and crucifix along with me. You might think I’m crazy, Dorris, but I’m certainly not stupid.
Which leads me to the police. Why haven’t I called them myself? After all, if I’m as sensible as I claim to be, wouldn’t the most sensible thing to do given this wild situation be to call the authorities?
And tell them what exactly? What I’d’ve told the Beekmans? That their son may now very well be a creature of the night on account of some bargain bin plastic fangs? Hello, Officer. Yes, I’d like for you to drive a stake through a sixth grader's chest, if you’d please. I believe he’s a threat to the public health.
Even if I told them the truth without all the spooks—that there may very well be squatters camping out in the old Shroder residence—you more than anyone (given your history as a paralegal) would recognize that the red tape such an endeavor would string up would take so long to cut through that, by the time it were all snipped, half the city would be already be bloodsuckers.
Besides, if my research is correct (which was rather unorthodox to conduct in my profession, there not being many empirical articles written on vampirism, after all), any and all vampires ought to be at rest during the daylight hours on soil from their native home, or native grave (superstition is confounding if not vague). Ultimately meaning that it should be perfectly safe for me to venture onto the Shroder property so long as the sun’s overhead. I may not even need the garlic or crucifix at all. Perhaps, I’ll only need a stake. A shame, really, that the one that once held up the “For Sale” sign in the front yard is no longer there.
In my search for the truth (which mostly comprised of sifting through cheap tabloid articles, not unsurprisingly given the subject matter), I also attempted to determine whether or not anything like this has happened before, perhaps in another town not unlike our own. As you’d expect, there wasn’t much in terms of supernaturally charged plastic teeth (which themselves are quite unremarkable, I might add, seeing as I picked them up off the ground out of a puddle of saliva and examined them closely). I found three articles about three separate children choking on their respective sets, but I hardly see anything otherworldly about these accounts. There was, however, a young man who, back in the late eighties, found a pair of “x-ray goggles” in his pillowcase and then proceeded to swear that there were “skeletons walking down the street” hours later, despite having only worn the glasses for twenty minutes. This was, of course, a story from the pages of the “Downtown Tattletale” and, as such, ought to be taken with a grain of salt. Similarly, there are countless so-called “eyewitness” testimonies surrounding deadly Halloween candies, not filled with glass or razor blades but rather a sort of paranormal power.
But I digress.
Given the task set before me, perhaps these many words of mine scribbled on these many pages were but a way for me to delay the inevitable.
Now, I can delay it no more.
If you’ve reached the end of this memo without disregarding it entirely, Dorris, then I thank you. My longhand truly is as much, I suppose. Do know that right after my consideration of calling the police, I considered calling you. However, it was the dead of night at the time, and I didn’t wish to disturb you.
However, I suppose, by now, I regrettably have, haven’t I?
Give Jane and Vincent my love, would you?
Yours Truly,
Dan
Written by MakRalston
Content is available under CC BY-SA