Home » Archives » May 2004 » David Parker’s Journal: 17

05/14/2004: "David Parker’s Journal: 17"

They were waiting when I came home from the student violin recital.

A late-winter storm was moving through the area, dragging ragged gray clouds across the rooftops. A mixture of rain and snow had fallen from the sky all afternoon, making driving especially treacherous once night came and the temperature dropped.

I was going up the hill toward my house, keeping a slow, steady pressure on the gas to keep from spinning the tires. I sensed the other vampires immediately. They did not bother to conceal their presence. There were two of them sitting in an idling car mostly concealed behind the neighbor’s carriage house.

My fingers tightened on the leather steering wheel. There were no other vampires in town. Whoever they were, they’d come to find me. What did they want?

The unmistakable vibration of old blood filled my head. The vampires were not mere fledglings but ancients, like my old friend Mozart. If they meant me harm – and why else would they turn up like this, unannounced on a winter’s night? – it was unlikely I could deal with the two of them. The older the vampire, the greater the strength.

Without making a conscious decision I drove past my driveway instead of turning. I would have more of a chance – slight though it would be – if I were not alone in my house for the confrontation.

The black Mercedes sedan pulled slowly onto the street, the headlight beams flashing in my rearview mirror.

I topped the crest of a hill, switched off my lights and turned into an alley. I pushed the gearshift lever to the right so that I could use the sport-wagon’s clutchless manual shifting. Another right onto the next street and I pushed hard on the accelerator. The wheels grabbed the wet pavement. The speedometer read 60 mph when I switched the lights back on.

I prayed silently I wouldn’t skid when I touched the brakes, slowing enough to downshift and get around the next corner. I was flying past Sacred Heart Cathedral when the Mercedes reappeared in my mirror, three blocks behind me. I wasn’t naive enough to think I’d lost them, but I was been hoping to put a little more distance between us.

I turned right onto a one-way and jammed the gas pedal to the floor. I don’t know what was holding the Audi to the pavement. The headlights reflected brightly off the wet ice.

The Audi was quick, but the big motor in the heavy German touring sedan was quicker. The Mercedes was gaining. My only advantage was that the smaller vehicle cornered better.

I took a quick left. The tires broke free, and I slid sideways down a narrow residential street with cars parked bumper to bumper along the east side of the street. The car came back around for me, and when I exhaled sharply I realized I hadn’t been breathing for the past few blocks.

I turned onto a boulevard running through a neighborhood of houses built at the end of the 1800s. The road curved back and forth, leading through several twisting drops as it wound its way down the bluffs and back around to the river. There was broad grass median between the two lanes, sections of which were paved in the original brick. The streets were deserted on a cold, wet Sunday night.

The Mercedes was behind me, but I regained some of the space I’d lost.

Where could I run? There were no crowds to hide in. I might make it into the police station, but what would I tell them? And if they were serious about killing me – and my gut told me they were – they would hardly shrink from the necessity of murdering whatever skeleton crew manned the stationhouse on a Sunday night.

The road straightened for a few blocks. The Mercedes shot forward, suddenly gaining.

I blew through the stop sign at Bridge Street, the Audi briefly airborne, coming down in a slide that fortunately followed the boulevard’s curve to the left. Maybe it was getting colder, or maybe it was just that we were going faster, but it was almost impossible to keep the car under control.

I knew that just beyond the next curve to the right there was a trestle where railroad tracks crossed above the street. The tracks were low, so low that trucks and panel vans cutting through the neighborhood frequently had their tops peeled back.

Holding my breath, I pushed the Audi even faster, hoping against hope.

The trestle flew past so quickly I barely saw it. The headlights in my mirror wavered back and forth and slowly rotated from horizontal to vertical. Then, the loud smash of speeding metal colliding with something dense and immovable.

I took my foot off the gas, still barely breathing until the Audi slowed to 20 mph, a manageable speed for such treacherous driving conditions.

I did not go back to see if the vampires in the Mercedes survived the crash. Chances are they did. Either way, I knew I could not go back to my house. The time had come for me to disappear.

As a vampire, disappearing was something I knew how to do.