Page 49

Yet these things hardly prepared me for what I saw. My complexion was unnaturally pale, almost cadaverous. My hair, which had miraculously grown back, triangulated at my forehead to a comically perfect widow’s peak. My eyes possessed the alien rosiness of an albino’s. But the final detail was the one that stopped me flat. At first I thought it was a joke. Behind the corners of my upper lip, amidst otherwise ordinary dentition, two white points dripped like icicles—or, more precisely, fangs.

Dracula. Nosferatu. Vampyre. I can barely utter the names without a roll of the eyes. Yet here I was, Jonas Lear’s fantasy incarnate, a legend come to life.

The crunch of tires on gravel aroused me; as I emerged from the lavatory, a pair of headlights raked the room. I ducked behind a coat tree just in time for the door to fling open with a gust of spring air. The woman, whose name was Janet Duff—I’d gotten this from the framed diploma hung above the bill-cluttered desk in her bedroom—lumbered inside, wearing the flowered smock, white polyester trousers, and sensible shoes of a nurse coming off the late-night shift. Without missing a beat she deposited her ring of keys on the table by the door, kicked off her shoes, flung her overstuffed purse onto a chair, and made her way back to the kitchen, from whence ensued the sound of an opening refrigerator and the splash and glug of a tumbler being filled. A moment in which to down a soul-soothing quantity of wine (I could smell it: cheap Chablis, from a box, probably), and Nurse Duff returned to the living room bearing a glass the approximate size of a paint can, turned on the giant TV, and plopped down on the sofa, settling into its cushions like a punctured parade float.

How she had failed to notice me behind the coat tree I couldn’t guess, except to say that my new condition had afforded me the ability to stand with a stillness that functioned as a kind of camouflage, rendering me nearly invisible to the casual, world-weary eye. I watched her flick through various programs—a cop drama, the Weather Channel, a prison documentary—until she settled on a reality show about, what else, competitive cupcake making. Her back was to me. Sip by sip, the wine went down. I guessed it wouldn’t be long before the alcohol-anesthetized Nurse Duff began to snore. But with dawn’s blade sliding toward me, and my various needs pressing down—cash, an automobile, a safe place to wait out the daylight hours—I saw no reason for delay. I emerged from my concealment and stepped behind her.

“Ahem.”

—

I did not kill her immediately. Again, I seek not pardon but patience with my tale. There was data to collect, and for that, Nurse Duff needed to be alive.

A taste and the deed was done. At once, the woman fell into a swoon—eyes rolled back, breath expelled, every inch gone flabbily slack. Like an eager groom I picked her up and carried her to the bedroom, where I lay her on the comforter, then retreated to the bathroom and filled the tub. By the time I returned, the change had commenced. A white froth bubbled from her lips. Her fingers began to twitch, her hands. She began to moan, then grunt, then fell silent as a series of hard spasms shook her frame so violently I thought dear Nurse Duff would snap like a cracker.

Then it happened. The closest visual approximation I can offer is a time-accelerated video of a flower breaking into blossom. With a cartilaginous crunch, her fingers commenced their elongation. Her hair suddenly detached from her skull and fell fanlike onto the pillow. As if doused by acid, her facial features blandified until no trace of personality remained. By this time her convulsions had ceased; her eyes were closed, her face almost peaceful. I sat on the bed beside her, murmuring gentle encouragements. A green light had begun to emanate from her, bathing the room in a nursery-soft glow. Her jaw unhinged; with something like a dog’s sneeze, her teeth shot from her mouth like a handful of corn kernels, making way for the barricade of lances that ascended bloodily from her gums.

It was ghastly. It was beautiful.

She opened her eyes. For a long moment, she stared at me. What pathos in that gaze! We are, each of us, a character in our own story; that is how we make sense of our lives. But the woman who had been Nurse Duff—help maid to the sick and suffering, collector of quilts and butter churns, drinker of mai tais, margaritas, and Bahama Mamas; daughter, sister, dreamer, healer, spinster—had become unknown to herself. She was a part of me now, an extension of my will; had I desired, I could have made her hop on one foot while playing an invisible ukulele.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” I said, taking her hand in mine. “It’s all for the best, you’ll see.”

Once again, I lifted her into my arms. My strength was such that her considerable bulk seemed toylike. A memory came to me—I had carried a woman like this once. Though the circumstances were very different, she, too, had seemed to weigh almost nothing. The recollection aroused a feeling of tenderness so overwhelming that for a moment I doubted my actions. But there were things to learn, and the duty I was about to perform was, in its backhanded way, a kindness.