The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires(13)
The biggest white bag had been dragged into the narrow alley between the blank brick wall of their house and the stand of bamboo marking the boundary of the Clarks’ house behind them. She heard the slurping sound of someone eating jelly as she flicked her flashlight up to the bag.
It was cloth, actually, and not white but pale pink, and covered in rosebuds. It had dirty bare feet and when the flashlight beam struck it, it turned its face into the light.
“Oh!” Patricia said.
The harsh white beam picked out every detail with unforgiving clarity. The old woman squatted in a pink nightgown, cheeks smeared with red jam, lips bristling with stiff black hairs, chin quivering with clear slime. She crouched over something dark in her lap. Patricia saw a raccoon’s nearly severed head hanging upside down over the old woman’s knees, tongue sticking out between its bared fangs. The old woman reached one gory hand into its open belly and scooped up a fistful of translucent guts. She raised that hand, shiny with animal grease, to her mouth and gnawed on the pale lavender tube of intestines while squinting into the flashlight beam.
“May I help you?” Patricia asked, because she didn’t know what else to say.
The old woman slowed her gnawing and sniffed the air like an animal. The heavy smell of fresh feces, the suffocating stench of spilled garbage, the iron reek of the raccoon’s blood forced their way up Patricia’s nose. She gagged, stepping backward, and her heel hit something soft. She sat down suddenly in the pile of greasy white bags, struggling to get up, trying to keep the flashlight beam centered on the old woman because she was safe as long as she could see the old woman, but the old woman was halfway to her already, crawling on her hands and knees, coming too fast, plowing through the spilled garbage, dragging the raccoon’s forgotten corpse along by its head.
“Oh, no, no, no, no, no,” Patricia chanted.
A hand gripped her shin, hot through her pants leg. The other hand released the raccoon and gripped Patricia’s hip. The old woman put all her body weight on Patricia, pressing her down onto something that dug into her right kidney. Patricia tried to thrash backward, or up, or away, but she couldn’t get any leverage and sank deeper into the pile of bags.
The old woman hauled herself up Patricia’s body, mouth open, slaver swinging from it in glistening ribbons, eyes wide and mindless like a bird’s. One of her filthy hands, tacky and rough with raccoon gore, burrowed past Patricia’s collar and clutched the side of her neck, and then she dragged her body, warm and soft like a slug’s, completely over Patricia’s front.
Something about her long white hair pulled back in a ponytail, frail neck, and clunky digital watch worn around one wrist snapped into place.
“Mrs. Savage?” Patricia said. “Mrs. Savage!”
This face hanging over hers, slobbering with mindless hunger, belonged to the woman who, for years, had been the bane of the neighborhood. This yawning mouth whose white teeth had raccoon fur stuck between them belonged to the woman who grew beautiful hydrangeas in her front yard and patrolled the Old Village in the midday heat wearing a floppy canvas hat, carrying a stick with a nail in one end to spear candy wrappers.
Now all Mrs. Savage cared about was getting her open mouth onto Patricia’s face. She was on top, and gravity worked in her favor, and Patricia’s world filled with white teeth smeared with blood and bristling with raccoon fur. Patricia felt things tickling her face and realized they were fleas leaping from the raccoon’s corpse.
Full of panic, Patricia grabbed Mrs. Savage’s wrists and rolled to one side, scraping her back painfully, and Mrs. Savage lost her balance and fell heavily against the wooden fence, her face hitting it with a hollow donk. Patricia squirmed backward through the garbage bags and pushed herself to her feet. The flashlight lay on the ground, shining directly on the disemboweled raccoon.
Patricia didn’t know what to do as Mrs. Savage writhed in the bags, and then the old lady was on her feet, lurching toward Patricia, and Patricia ran through the absolute blackness of the side yard, toward the front yard. She could see it, lit by the porch lights, as serene and peaceful as ever. She burst into the light, wet grass under one foot, realizing she’d lost one shoe, and she opened her mouth to scream.
It was one of those things she’d always thought she could do if she were ever really in trouble, but now, at ten p.m. on a Thursday night surrounded by people who were either already asleep or getting ready for bed, Patricia couldn’t make a sound.
Instead, she ran for the front door. She’d get inside, lock up, and call 911. That was when Mrs. Savage grabbed her waist and the old lady tried to mount her from behind, taking Patricia down to her knees, which thudded into the grass painfully. The old woman crawled up her body, forcing Patricia onto her hands, and Mrs. Savage’s mouth slobbered hot and wet and intimate into Patricia’s ear.
I drive car pool, Patricia’s mind gibbered. I’m in a book club. Well, it’s not really a book club, but essentially it’s a book club. Why am I fighting an old woman in my front yard?
Nothing fit together. None of it added up. She tried to drag herself out from under Mrs. Savage, but a screaming pain ripped through the side of her head and she thought to herself, She’s biting my ear. Mrs. Savage, whose yard won the Alhambra Pride Award two years ago, is biting my ear.
The old lady’s small, sharp teeth clamped down harder and Patricia’s vision went white—and then a blinding light smashed into her face as a car turned into the driveway slowly, slowly, so slowly and pinned them both with its headlights. A door clunked open.