Round Two, Part Two: The Dark Side
“It’s only an old stain,” Eli’s mother told him.
“It’s scary,” said Eli. “It looks like a face.”
“You know,” said Eli’s father, “in some parts of the world, it would be considered holy. Did you know there was a fellow last year who found the face of Jesus on his back porch? The Catholic Church sent a priest to look at it and everything. They say that people who drank from his garden hose were cured of all their ailments. Blindness, baldness, pain...you name it.”
“I still don’t like it,” Eli said, squirming up against the far wall of the room. “I don’t want to sleep in here.”
“This is your new bedroom, honey,” said Eli’s mother. “You’ll get used to it. You’re too big to sleep with Mommy and Daddy now.”
*********
“There’s something wrong with the baby,” Gracie announced, as she tiptoed into the living room.
“Gracie!” exclaimed Daddy. He clicked at the remote control, and the naked people on the TV disappeared. He stood up, collecting her into his arms. “What are you doing up?”
“I told you,” Gracie replied, wriggling in Daddy’s arms. She reached for the plastic feet of her pajamas to straighten them out so they weren’t caught between her toes. “There’s something wrong with the baby. It’s not the same baby.”
“That’s silly,” said Gracie’s Daddy. He carried her back into the bedroom, turning on the light while they both looked at the baby. “See?” said Daddy. “He’s just fine.”
“He’s the wrong color,” said Gracie. “He used to be Carnation Pink and now he’s Salmon.”
“What?” asked Daddy.
“Like the crayons,” said Gracie. “Carnation pink is pinky-pink and Salmon is orangey-pink. It isn’t the right baby.”
“Maybe it’s just the light,” said Daddy. “Where would the baby go? And how did we get this one?”
“I don’t know,” said Gracie. “But it’s the wrong baby.”
Daddy told her to go to sleep, and he tucked her back into bed with a drink of water. But in the dim glow of the nightlight, she thought she saw the Gracie in the Mirror leering at her with a sharp-toothed grin.
********
When I was a little girl, there was a vampire who lived in my closet.
Really, there were four.
My parents said it was just a figment of my imagination, but I knew they were there. I could see their silhouettes distinctly among the shapes of the clothing, the same way I could see the green jaguar who prowled my parents’ closet when I snuck into bed with them. Sometimes, the jaguar’s eyes would gleam yellow, and that was when I knew it was on the hunt. I wouldn’t sleep in my parents’ bedroom then.
********
“The spot is getting bigger,” Eli told his mother. “And it has teeth now.”
“Don’t be silly,” said his mother. “It looks just the same.”
“It has teeth,” said Eli. “It wants to eat me.”
“It doesn’t want to eat you, honey,” said Eli’s mother. “It’s just a stain.
The next day, when Eli’s mother came home from work, she brought with her a thick, lime green plushie carpet. “You see?” she offered, as she rolled the carpet out and smoothed it over the dark spot. “No more stain.”
Eli wasn’t so sure.
********
They sat in chairs in the doctor’s office. Gracie dangled her feet and read Robert the Rose Horse while the grown-ups talked in hushed whispers.
“I told you,” she said to Mommy and Daddy as they left the doctor’s office, the lollipop the nurse had given her firmly in hand. “I told you there was something wrong with the baby.”
“Gracie!” chided Daddy.
“What a thing to say,” said Mommy.
“But I told you,” said Gracie. “It’s not our baby. It’s a different baby. The people from the mirror took our baby.”
********
There were four vampires. The elder three were sisters and as old as time. Carmilla, Mircalla, and Millarca. I don’t know how, at six years old, I had been introduced to the works of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu at six years old, but I was deathly intimate with the Countesses Karlstein.
I knew that they wanted to draw me into their dark world. I knew that they wanted to drink my blood. They would make me into a creature not unlike themselves, one that only knew thirst. I slept with the blankets over my head, so that my breath ran hot over my cheeks. My father gave me a crucifix to sleep with. I went to church and took home holy water to keep in my room. I hung rosary beads around one of my bedposts, but still, I could see them there, standing seductively just past my Sunday dresses that hung neatly in my closet.
On nights that I couldn’t sleep, I would watch my clock in terror. I knew that if I was awake when the clock struck ten, something terrible would happen. If nine-thirty came around and I was still awake, I would squeeze my eyes shut and pray to sleep, because at ten, the vampires could leave the closet. And if they left while I was still awake, I would surely be their victim.
********
“It’s seeping through,” Eli told his mother.
“Hmm?” asked Eli’s mother. She didn’t look up from the New York Times crossword puzzle, the pen pressed closely to her lips.
“The spot,” said Eli. “It’s seeping through the carpet.”
“Nonsense,” said Eli’s mother. She walked into his room. Eli followed behind, being sure to keep his mother between himself and the spot, as if she could protect him. “You see?” she asked, waving at the spot.
It was as if she couldn’t see it. But Eli could; Eli could see the spot eating through the carpet. “It looks like it’s breathing,” he told his mother, quietly.
“Eli, there’s nothing there,” said Eli’s mother. “Now, let’s play quietly until dinner. Can you play quietly until dinner?”
Eli hesitated, eyeing the spot cautiously, and then nodded.
********
Gracie was sleeping in Mommy and Daddy’s room, and Mommy and Daddy were taking turns sleeping with the baby. They kept using words like “failure to thrive” and “malabsorption” and other big words Gracie didn’t understand.
What she did understand was that the baby wasn’t eating as much as it should, and it wasn’t crying as much as it should. It was shrivelling up like an old potato.
One day she went into her old room to get her dolls. The baby was in the crib. She tiptoed up and peered through the bars.
What she saw there was wrinkled and brown. It had pockmarks all over it, and root hairs growing off it. It carried the sickly sweet scent of rot. She shrieked and snatched it out of the crib, racing out to show Mommy and Daddy.
“Gracie!” cried Mommy. “What are you doing with the baby?!”
“I told you!” she announced, gripping the root-monster-baby tightly. “Look! It’s not our baby! It’s a rotten old turnip!”
Daddy grabbed the turnip baby from her. “Gracie!” he scolded. “You can’t carry the baby like that! What’s gotten into you?”
“I think we need a time out,” said Mommy. She took the baby from Daddy and clasped it tightly to her, cooing at its smelly turnip head. “Gracie, go play in your room.”
********
The fourth vampire’s name was Acadia. She was a little vampire, a vampire close to my own age, and she was my only protection against the Sisters Karlstein.
Acadia had been their victim. They had lured her in with promises of sweets and pretty clothes, and she had trusted them until they drained her of her blood. When she woke, she was like them, but she didn’t want to be.
She fought it. She used a nail file to smooth her teeth back to ordinary incisors. The teeth would grow back every few weeks, and she would file them right back down again. That is how I met her, when she sneaked out of my closet to find a nail file. I took one from the hall closet for her.
After that, she came to see me when the sisters were otherwise occupied. She talked to me, told me not to trust them, even if they seemed beautiful, even if they made sweet promises. I think she was lonely. She didn’t have any other children to play with, and there was always the risk that if she made human friends, the Sisters Karlstein would kill them for their blood.
********
“Eli!” Eli’s mother called.
“Eli!” echoed his father. “It’s dinnertime!”
After a few minutes, Eli’s father marched into Eli’s room, and flung open the door. “Eli!” he chided. “Eli, what do we do when we’re called to dinner?”
But the room was empty. “Eli?” he repeated. He stepped into the room, and looked under the bed. “Eli, this isn’t funny.”
Eli’s mother joined him. “He’s been in his room the whole time,” she said. She moved to the window. It was firmly shut; there was no sign that anyone had entered or exited the room. “Eli?” she asked, her voice rising frantically. She looked in the closet, under the dresser, in the toy chest.
Eli’s father got to his feet. “When was the last time you saw him?” he asked.
“He came out about an hour ago,” she said. “He was complaining about that spot.
“Spot?” asked Eli’s father. “What spot?”
“You know,” said Eli’s mother. “The one under the carpet. The one he was afraid of.” To illustrate, she kicked back the corner of the carpet with her foot.
There was nothing there.
********
Gracie was all alone in the room. All alone, except for the other Gracie in the Mirror.
She took a deep breath, and steeled herself, and walked up to Gracie in the Mirror.
Gracie in the Mirror was grinning. Gracie in the Real World was not.
“I know you took him,” accused Gracie. “I know you took my brother and put a turnip head in his place, and Mommy and Daddy can’t see.”
Gracie in the Mirror didn’t say anything, but Gracie in the Real World caught a twinkle in her eye.
“You give him back,” demanded Gracie. “You give him back, or I’ll come take him back.”
Gracie in the Mirror was still silent, still leering. She licked her lips and snickered soundlessly.
Gracie climbed up onto the top of the dresser and pressed both hands against the mirror. “I warned you,” she said. “I’m coming.”
In the other room, her parents heard a loud crash.
The baby screamed.
********
I don’t remember when they went away. Sometime between first grade and fifth, I went from sleeping with a night light and the door cracked so the warm glow of lamplight from the hall could seep into my room, to sleeping with the door shut tight, the blinds drawn, and not a speck of light anywhere in the room.
I would stay up past ten, past eleven, past midnight.
When I was fifteen years old, I was very ill. I had a fever of one hundred and five, and the doctor prescribed ice baths to bring my fever down. I had vivid hallucinations, some I remember in more detail than I remember memories of things that happened for real.
The night before my fever broke, the vampires from my closet paid me a visit. That was the last time I saw them.
“It’s scary,” said Eli. “It looks like a face.”
“You know,” said Eli’s father, “in some parts of the world, it would be considered holy. Did you know there was a fellow last year who found the face of Jesus on his back porch? The Catholic Church sent a priest to look at it and everything. They say that people who drank from his garden hose were cured of all their ailments. Blindness, baldness, pain...you name it.”
“I still don’t like it,” Eli said, squirming up against the far wall of the room. “I don’t want to sleep in here.”
“This is your new bedroom, honey,” said Eli’s mother. “You’ll get used to it. You’re too big to sleep with Mommy and Daddy now.”
*********
“There’s something wrong with the baby,” Gracie announced, as she tiptoed into the living room.
“Gracie!” exclaimed Daddy. He clicked at the remote control, and the naked people on the TV disappeared. He stood up, collecting her into his arms. “What are you doing up?”
“I told you,” Gracie replied, wriggling in Daddy’s arms. She reached for the plastic feet of her pajamas to straighten them out so they weren’t caught between her toes. “There’s something wrong with the baby. It’s not the same baby.”
“That’s silly,” said Gracie’s Daddy. He carried her back into the bedroom, turning on the light while they both looked at the baby. “See?” said Daddy. “He’s just fine.”
“He’s the wrong color,” said Gracie. “He used to be Carnation Pink and now he’s Salmon.”
“What?” asked Daddy.
“Like the crayons,” said Gracie. “Carnation pink is pinky-pink and Salmon is orangey-pink. It isn’t the right baby.”
“Maybe it’s just the light,” said Daddy. “Where would the baby go? And how did we get this one?”
“I don’t know,” said Gracie. “But it’s the wrong baby.”
Daddy told her to go to sleep, and he tucked her back into bed with a drink of water. But in the dim glow of the nightlight, she thought she saw the Gracie in the Mirror leering at her with a sharp-toothed grin.
********
When I was a little girl, there was a vampire who lived in my closet.
Really, there were four.
My parents said it was just a figment of my imagination, but I knew they were there. I could see their silhouettes distinctly among the shapes of the clothing, the same way I could see the green jaguar who prowled my parents’ closet when I snuck into bed with them. Sometimes, the jaguar’s eyes would gleam yellow, and that was when I knew it was on the hunt. I wouldn’t sleep in my parents’ bedroom then.
********
“The spot is getting bigger,” Eli told his mother. “And it has teeth now.”
“Don’t be silly,” said his mother. “It looks just the same.”
“It has teeth,” said Eli. “It wants to eat me.”
“It doesn’t want to eat you, honey,” said Eli’s mother. “It’s just a stain.
The next day, when Eli’s mother came home from work, she brought with her a thick, lime green plushie carpet. “You see?” she offered, as she rolled the carpet out and smoothed it over the dark spot. “No more stain.”
Eli wasn’t so sure.
********
They sat in chairs in the doctor’s office. Gracie dangled her feet and read Robert the Rose Horse while the grown-ups talked in hushed whispers.
“I told you,” she said to Mommy and Daddy as they left the doctor’s office, the lollipop the nurse had given her firmly in hand. “I told you there was something wrong with the baby.”
“Gracie!” chided Daddy.
“What a thing to say,” said Mommy.
“But I told you,” said Gracie. “It’s not our baby. It’s a different baby. The people from the mirror took our baby.”
********
There were four vampires. The elder three were sisters and as old as time. Carmilla, Mircalla, and Millarca. I don’t know how, at six years old, I had been introduced to the works of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu at six years old, but I was deathly intimate with the Countesses Karlstein.
I knew that they wanted to draw me into their dark world. I knew that they wanted to drink my blood. They would make me into a creature not unlike themselves, one that only knew thirst. I slept with the blankets over my head, so that my breath ran hot over my cheeks. My father gave me a crucifix to sleep with. I went to church and took home holy water to keep in my room. I hung rosary beads around one of my bedposts, but still, I could see them there, standing seductively just past my Sunday dresses that hung neatly in my closet.
On nights that I couldn’t sleep, I would watch my clock in terror. I knew that if I was awake when the clock struck ten, something terrible would happen. If nine-thirty came around and I was still awake, I would squeeze my eyes shut and pray to sleep, because at ten, the vampires could leave the closet. And if they left while I was still awake, I would surely be their victim.
********
“It’s seeping through,” Eli told his mother.
“Hmm?” asked Eli’s mother. She didn’t look up from the New York Times crossword puzzle, the pen pressed closely to her lips.
“The spot,” said Eli. “It’s seeping through the carpet.”
“Nonsense,” said Eli’s mother. She walked into his room. Eli followed behind, being sure to keep his mother between himself and the spot, as if she could protect him. “You see?” she asked, waving at the spot.
It was as if she couldn’t see it. But Eli could; Eli could see the spot eating through the carpet. “It looks like it’s breathing,” he told his mother, quietly.
“Eli, there’s nothing there,” said Eli’s mother. “Now, let’s play quietly until dinner. Can you play quietly until dinner?”
Eli hesitated, eyeing the spot cautiously, and then nodded.
********
Gracie was sleeping in Mommy and Daddy’s room, and Mommy and Daddy were taking turns sleeping with the baby. They kept using words like “failure to thrive” and “malabsorption” and other big words Gracie didn’t understand.
What she did understand was that the baby wasn’t eating as much as it should, and it wasn’t crying as much as it should. It was shrivelling up like an old potato.
One day she went into her old room to get her dolls. The baby was in the crib. She tiptoed up and peered through the bars.
What she saw there was wrinkled and brown. It had pockmarks all over it, and root hairs growing off it. It carried the sickly sweet scent of rot. She shrieked and snatched it out of the crib, racing out to show Mommy and Daddy.
“Gracie!” cried Mommy. “What are you doing with the baby?!”
“I told you!” she announced, gripping the root-monster-baby tightly. “Look! It’s not our baby! It’s a rotten old turnip!”
Daddy grabbed the turnip baby from her. “Gracie!” he scolded. “You can’t carry the baby like that! What’s gotten into you?”
“I think we need a time out,” said Mommy. She took the baby from Daddy and clasped it tightly to her, cooing at its smelly turnip head. “Gracie, go play in your room.”
********
The fourth vampire’s name was Acadia. She was a little vampire, a vampire close to my own age, and she was my only protection against the Sisters Karlstein.
Acadia had been their victim. They had lured her in with promises of sweets and pretty clothes, and she had trusted them until they drained her of her blood. When she woke, she was like them, but she didn’t want to be.
She fought it. She used a nail file to smooth her teeth back to ordinary incisors. The teeth would grow back every few weeks, and she would file them right back down again. That is how I met her, when she sneaked out of my closet to find a nail file. I took one from the hall closet for her.
After that, she came to see me when the sisters were otherwise occupied. She talked to me, told me not to trust them, even if they seemed beautiful, even if they made sweet promises. I think she was lonely. She didn’t have any other children to play with, and there was always the risk that if she made human friends, the Sisters Karlstein would kill them for their blood.
********
“Eli!” Eli’s mother called.
“Eli!” echoed his father. “It’s dinnertime!”
After a few minutes, Eli’s father marched into Eli’s room, and flung open the door. “Eli!” he chided. “Eli, what do we do when we’re called to dinner?”
But the room was empty. “Eli?” he repeated. He stepped into the room, and looked under the bed. “Eli, this isn’t funny.”
Eli’s mother joined him. “He’s been in his room the whole time,” she said. She moved to the window. It was firmly shut; there was no sign that anyone had entered or exited the room. “Eli?” she asked, her voice rising frantically. She looked in the closet, under the dresser, in the toy chest.
Eli’s father got to his feet. “When was the last time you saw him?” he asked.
“He came out about an hour ago,” she said. “He was complaining about that spot.
“Spot?” asked Eli’s father. “What spot?”
“You know,” said Eli’s mother. “The one under the carpet. The one he was afraid of.” To illustrate, she kicked back the corner of the carpet with her foot.
There was nothing there.
********
Gracie was all alone in the room. All alone, except for the other Gracie in the Mirror.
She took a deep breath, and steeled herself, and walked up to Gracie in the Mirror.
Gracie in the Mirror was grinning. Gracie in the Real World was not.
“I know you took him,” accused Gracie. “I know you took my brother and put a turnip head in his place, and Mommy and Daddy can’t see.”
Gracie in the Mirror didn’t say anything, but Gracie in the Real World caught a twinkle in her eye.
“You give him back,” demanded Gracie. “You give him back, or I’ll come take him back.”
Gracie in the Mirror was still silent, still leering. She licked her lips and snickered soundlessly.
Gracie climbed up onto the top of the dresser and pressed both hands against the mirror. “I warned you,” she said. “I’m coming.”
In the other room, her parents heard a loud crash.
The baby screamed.
********
I don’t remember when they went away. Sometime between first grade and fifth, I went from sleeping with a night light and the door cracked so the warm glow of lamplight from the hall could seep into my room, to sleeping with the door shut tight, the blinds drawn, and not a speck of light anywhere in the room.
I would stay up past ten, past eleven, past midnight.
When I was fifteen years old, I was very ill. I had a fever of one hundred and five, and the doctor prescribed ice baths to bring my fever down. I had vivid hallucinations, some I remember in more detail than I remember memories of things that happened for real.
The night before my fever broke, the vampires from my closet paid me a visit. That was the last time I saw them.