The Medium

Chapter Seven-1

Chapter Seven

Kim didn’t mind bodies as much as some people. That cellar was horrible, and it stank, and it vibed her freaky in all the wrong ways, but it wasn’t horrible because there were dead people in it. It was horrible because something horrible had happened there, and it had stained the place in ways bleach couldn’t fix. Fire would clean it out better than anything else.

She slid her improvised telephone back into her pocket and zipped a flame out of her little plastic lighter. Bones wouldn’t catch, and cement wouldn’t catch, but she could give the flame a little boost, and the whole place would go up like her family’s last Thanksgiving. It was only a shame Sebastian Duran wouldn’t have the front-row seat he deserved. But if he’d been anywhere nearby, this wouldn’t have gone nearly as smoothly.

She blew carefully onto the flame, coaxing it brighter with a trickle of magic. Once the basement was going, she could go back up and light the building. All the buildings, just in case. She estimated ten minutes before the nearest fire station could get word, and another five for them to get there. Fifteen minutes would be more than enough time to destroy the structure of the place, wipe the walls clean of some of the bad juju they had collected. There had to be ghosts in a place like that.

She blew on the flame again, and it fanned out yellow onto the heap of corpses. There wouldn’t be enough left to match dental records, but everyone down there looked like they had been gone long enough to have been pronounced dead, anyway. It twinged her conscience to take that closure from those families, but it was more important to keep that pile from getting any bigger. The flame caught, dancing along a broken femur with a cheerful crackle as it slowly grew brighter than her flashlight.

And something hit her from behind, knocking her knees out from under her. She stumbled and hit her hip on the stairs. She could feel spindly, brittle fingers close on the fabric of her blue jeans, and she brought her flashlight down hard on them. They crunched like corn chips and pulled away with a papery hiss, and Kim scrambled up to try to get a look at her attacker.

She had taken it for the freshest of the corpses, halfway to mummification, but now that she looked closer, there was a weird suppleness to the withered flesh. It wasn’t rotting, either, just drying up like a raisin. Pruny, wrinkled skin clung close to its bones and stretched tight over a highly visible skull. Its eyes were dull and stained dark red from pupil to lid, and its lips were drawn back from white, slightly crooked teeth. The canines, top and bottom, were long and sharp.

The jaws parted as Kim watched, and the body tightened to lunge, but it toppled forward instead and lay still, gathering the strength to drag itself cross the remaining distance. It was fascinating to watch and painful at the same time. Kim stepped back, up the steps and out of reach. The thing pulled itself to the foot of the stairs, put out its broken hand, and then stiffened. Its eyes rolled back, and it fell to its side with a scratchy exhalation.

Not taking her eyes off of the thing, Kim took her compact back out and shoved a spark of power into the glass.

“Hey,” she said. “It’s me again.”

“Kim?” said the voice from the other end. “Whatchoo got?”

“I found something. I think it might be a vampire. Been down here a long time. Should I try to get it out of here or just let it burn?”

“How bad is it?”

“Looks like a mummy. Can’t tell the s*x. Tried to get me, but can’t seem to move real well. My guess is Duran was keeping it for a pet or something, then forgot it was down here.”

There was silence on the other end. Then, “Let it burn. Put it out of its misery. Just knock it out first, or something. Be the kind thing to do.”

“‘Kay. I’ll see you in a few.”

She hefted her flashlight and stepped down to the lowest stair.

One flat, red eye rolled up to look at her. There was no intelligence there, but it took in her stance and flashed with recognition the same way a beaten dog recognizes a broom. The eye shut so it couldn’t see the blow coming, and the crispy face turned down, pressing into the grimy floor.

“Oh, honey,” Kim whispered.

The fire flickered along an empty rib cage and leaped to the mummy’s tattered khakis. It whimpered.

“Oh, honey,” she said again. She cinched up her necklace, bringing the little cluster of religious medals up closer to her throat, shoved her flashlight into the waistband of her pants, and shook out her milagro bracelets. Then she slapped out the fire creeping up the mummy’s leg, threw its arm over her shoulders, and dragged it up the stairs.

It was a man, she decided. He’d had enough time to develop a week or so of stubble before his body lost the extra energy it needed to grow hair, however long ago that had been. He’d also had plenty of time to lose his strength and, by extension, his substance, and he weighed far less than he should, even as a dry husk. She had no problem carting his sixty or seventy pounds down the hall and out into the sunlight.

It seemed to take him a few seconds to figure out that he was upright and pressed tight against living flesh, but no pulse point was within easy reach, and he barely had the strength to stand; twisting out of Kim’s grip to get at her throat was out of the question, even if the thought crossed both of their minds. That didn’t stop him from struggling weakly, making sorry little noises that were lost in the rumble of growing flames behind them. They reached the outer door as an orange glow was beginning to creep up the stairs from the cellar.

Kim grabbed the doorknob, tripped over the draft guard, and sprawled face-first onto the concrete outside. Her mummy went down with her, but the second the midday sun hit him, he shrieked and recoiled like a late-night television monster, shielding his face with his forearms as well as he was able. It wasn’t even so much a shriek as a reedy whistle, a higher-pitched version of the hiss and the whimper, like he was scared to be too loud and risk catching someone’s attention.

Nothing burst into flames or went up in smoke. It only worked like that in movies. But it was still sad to watch—coming out of the darkness only to be burned by the light. Kim wriggled out of her blue jean jacket and threw it over his head, and he went still and silent. Hiding, she guessed. You can’t see me if I can’t see you. Even at their worst, vampires were cunning, but cunning didn’t necessarily translate to spatial reasoning.

“You stay there,” she said, and she went to complete her job of arson. Four more buildings were starting to smoke by the time she got back to find that he hadn’t moved. She wasn’t surprised.

Somehow, she got him through the hole in the overgrown fence, through the parking lot of the law offices behind the storage place, over the drainage ditch, and into the passenger seat of her El Camino. He sat still, pulverized left hand pulled up beneath his chin, then shook the jacket off his head and stiffened, squeezing his eyes shut. Kim wondered how long it had been since he’d last seen light.

“It’s okay,” she said sweetly, using the same tone people use on cornered animals. She put a hand on his arm and could’ve sworn she felt his brittle skin jump beneath her touch, a tiny, nervous motion born of the certainty she was going to hurt him.

“It’s okay, baby. I’ll get you all fixed up, okay?”

He turned his head toward her voice and leaned over, lips drawn back to expose his teeth. It wasn’t an attack. Kim thought it felt more like a request, the hurt animal sniffing suspiciously at an offering of food.

“I didn’t mean right now,” she clarified, and put out a hand to push him back, but he convulsed again, body tight, eyes rolled back into his skull. Somehow, Kim didn’t think it was because he had accidentally gotten a faceful of Our Lady of Częstochowa.

She strapped him in, slammed the door, and watched from outside until the spasm passed. It was hard to tell on that desert of a face, but it looked like he was trying to cry.

A siren started dopplering toward them from the direction of the freeway.

Kim pulled out her mirror again, dialing a different metaphysical number this time.

“Look,” she said, before the person on the other end had a chance to respond, “I know this is going to sound stupid, and I promise lots of yelling time at a later date, but I really need you to raid a blood bank for me.”

“What the hell did you do?”

“Later! Just meet me back at my place and bring as much as you can carry. This will probably take gallons.”

She snapped the compact shut and dove into the driver’s seat. Red and white lights flashed between the trees a few streets over. She threw the El Camino into gear and puttered away, minding the speed limit carefully. The mummy in the passenger seat pressed himself against the window, eyes still shut tight, and let the light fall on his face. Under the dirt and between the cracks, his skin was bone-white. He let out a shuddering breath.

Kim’s place was a second-story apartment near the university. The building was too expensive for most grad students, but apartment 214 had sent five tenants packing in two years, which meant the building manager was open to haggling. Kim got it for less than half the usual rate.

“Vic!” Kim called as she unlocked the door. “Vickie, could you get the lights? I’m gonna be falling all over stuff, gawd. Gotta take some time to clean…”

There was a small amount of resistance as she tried to get the vampire through the door, but dragging apparently counted as an implicit invitation, and he fell through with a tiny metaphysical pop.

The lights inside flicked on, exposing the obstacle course of textbooks, pizza boxes, laundry, shoes, loose papers, extension cords, and knitting material. Kim cleared the couch of debris and deposited her unexpected houseguest on one end. He made a feeble attempt to get back up, and she pushed him down, and he stayed.

“Shower would be good,” she mused. She shot a look at the smears of grime that had appeared on her jacket and wrinkled her nose at the smell of very old dead things. That could wait until he was able to shower himself. The end of her couch wouldn’t get any nastier if he sat there a bit longer. Besides, rescuing a vampire from a hole in the ground didn’t create any obligation to bathe him.

She fingered the milagros on her bracelet and wondered whether she was too compassionate for her own good, but the potentially dangerous man on the end of the couch didn’t make any move toward her. He looked up once or twice, desperately hungry, but he seemed to have learned his lesson the first two times and didn’t show his teeth, though sitting still visibly pained him.

“The boys will be here soon,” Kim told him, even though she knew he was in no condition to understand. “We’ll get you all nice and reconstituted. Then we can talk. I mean, unless you decide to eat me. Not that you will. Actually, if you’re getting any of this, you should probably wait a few minutes and hear us out before you eat anyone. I think we’re on the same side, for the moment.”

He turned a dull, red eye on her and blinked once, slowly.

“Plus, I did just save your butt. It would sort of be nice if you could refrain from chomping me or my friends.”

He turned his face away and curled up into a tight ball, drawing his knees up to his chest and giving her his back. Kim took that as assent.

Vickie drifted through the wall between the kitchenette and the bathroom, pausing in the middle of the stovetop to pull her hair back. She rolled her eyes at Kim.

“You did something dumb, didn’t you?” she demanded.

Kim grinned and nodded cheerfully at the ghost. “Probably. A vampire followed me home.”