MY FATHER'S ASHES

 

 

I WAKE WITH THE SUNRISE. As always.

I shift inside the coffin, not yet ready to meet the day.

Then I hear his voice in my head.

Time to wake up, Jake.

I moan in protest but open my eyes, relishing the darkness. I yawn, take in the comforting smell of ancient wood surrounding me, the earthy fragrance of oak mingled with the musky scent of my father.

After a moment, I press my palms against the underside of the lid and push, the hinges smooth and silent, opening myself to a different darkness, that of a wide-open subterranean space. I sit up. Cool air prickles my nerves. My eyesight is well-acclimated to the lack of light, enough to easily see my path. I climb out.

“See ya later,” I say to the brass urn settled at the foot of the long coffin, then close the lid tight.

 

MOTHER IS IN THE KITCHEN. She leans against the end of the counter smoking a cigarette, watching me. Her blonde hair is a halo against the early morning light, her face a shadow.

“You want pancakes, bucko?” she says, stamping the cigarette out in an ashtray. “You got a couple hours before you gotta be at school.” I nod, and she nods in return, red lips curling into a smile. “All right, then.”

While she starts breakfast, I stumble to the restroom and pee for an eternity. After, I wash my hands, stare at the face in the mirror.

Nearly fifteen.

I study the thick chop of black hair sprung from a head of milk-white skin, pale blue eyes my mother once said reminded her of frozen ponds. I lean in closer, study my cheeks and chin, checking for growth. Luminescent hairs where I’d wish for stubble. I bare my teeth. Strong pearly whites in perfect rows.

I’ve never visited a dentist.

 

I AM NOT A VAMPIRE.

My father, however, was.

Until he wasn’t.

Caught in the daylight when I was nine years old, he died saving my life.

 

WE WERE SPENDING A FEW weeks at our summer cabin, deep in the woods north of the city. One night, unable to sleep, I wandered away in the middle of the night with nothing but a flashlight, searching for the creek where I’d seen trout jumping the day before.

I’d made it about a half-mile when a starved-looking mountain lion found me. Not knowing any better, I ran, and it chased. As the dark sky turned a musty blue the cat leaped and I screamed, turning to throw up my arms, waiting for its claws to land on my chest, its open jaws burrowing into my neck. Then there was a blur of motion, and it was as if the cat evaporated in mid-air, the muscular body bent in half like a book being slammed shut. I heard its back snap before it burst into a showering cloud of blood, clumps of fur. A dislodged head rolled past and down a slope into a clump of kudzu.

I blinked and Father was standing before me, looking worried. He kneeled. “Are you okay?”

I nodded, lifted my eyes to the lightening sky. My father’s eyes, normally blue but now a bright gold, looked up as well.

“Too far,” he said, his long, cool hands resting on my shoulders. “Too far.”

There was no panic in his voice. No fear.

Just knowing, and acceptance.

He looked at me and smiled. “Can you find your way back? To the cabin? Your mother is worried.”

I didn’t know if I could or not, but I felt bad, and I was scared. Scared for him. But I nodded again, knowing there was no time. And then the sun broke the horizon.

There was no fire, no screaming and writhing, no last blaze of glory. My dear father was simply there one second, a pile of clothes and ashes the next.

Like a magic trick.

A disappearing act.

I did find the cabin, of course. Marking my way so I could show Mother the way back to what was left of him. Upon our return we both cried, and she carefully scooped up the remains, put the damp ash into a plastic Tupperware container she’d brought with her.

I asked to carry his clothes, wanting the smell of him.

As we walked silently through the lightening trees, I held his ash-dusted clothing close to my chest, my face, in a way I’d never be able to carry the guilt, nor the infinite loss of a father.

 

AT SCHOOL I FIND PLASTIC vampire teeth hanging against my locker. They’re attached to a string, the string to a large paperclip pushed through the vents of the metal door. I tug the plastic teeth free, open the locker. A piece of yellow legal paper, folded to the size of a postcard, rests on the edge of a shelf.

I stuff the note into my pocket, toss the teeth to the bottom of the locker where they land among other junk: a ball of worn socks, used pencils, empty potato chip snack bags.

I turn my head and see Mr. Jensen, the janitor, standing at the far end of the bustling hallway. He’s leaning on a push broom, watching me. I ignore the old bastard and slam my locker shut.

In homeroom I pull the note from my pocket and read it while Ms. Gilley monologues about Ho Chi Minh.

It’s only one word:

BLOODSUCKER

I raise an eyebrow, then fold the note back the way it was and return it to my pocket.

 

I WORRY.

So, yeah, I’m a worrier, I guess. Nick always said so. Used to make fun of me about it.

When Jake was born, oh boy, I worried. I worried a lot. Afraid he’d have too much of his father in him. Or not enough.

Because, truly, what would be better for the boy?

More him? Or more me?

I’d rather not answer that.

Now, while he sits across from me eating spaghetti and meatballs, I stare at this damned note he brought home. He acts like he’s not watching me, but I know he is, so I try to keep my face neutral, focus on inhaling the smoke of my cigarette. Focus on keeping my hands from shaking with fear.

I set the note down, look at him. “You think it’s a kid?”

Jake chews, thinks. He has Nick’s strong chin, thistle-thick hair, bright blue eyes. And complexion, of course. White as snow, my boy. I can almost trace the thin blue veins beneath his cheeks, riding down the inside of his neck toward his heart.

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Okay.”

“I mean, it’s not a kid’s handwriting. Plus, none of them know. If they did…” He shakes his head, laughs. “It’d be chaos.”

I nod because I’m in full agreement. Which makes me worry even more because it must have been an adult who did this, who infiltrated my son’s school, put novelty teeth on his locker. Left a note for him to read.

Asshole.

“Jake, you remember the time your father took you hunting?”

Jake forks in more spaghetti, but his eyes look down. The memory, I realize, is not a happy one.

“Mm-hmm,” he hums, still chewing.

I wish Nick were here and hate myself for wishing it. He’s my son, after all. Even if I’m flawed, or uncertain at times, I love him more than anything. Love him more than I ever thought was possible.

What really stirs my guts, what makes me reach for another cigarette to drive away this feeling of worthlessness, is knowing Jake wishes the same thing I do.

That his father was here.

 

THE YEAR BEFORE HE DIED, when I was around eight years old, I guess, my dad and I went on a trip. Just the two of us.

We drove for what felt like days, but in hindsight I realize it was only about eight hours. Sundown to sunup. Across the state line. I slept some, but excitement kept me awake.

He told me we’d be hunting.

My father didn’t like sleeping away from home. He had the basement in our house, and a root cellar at the large cabin we owned deep in the woods. Both had coffins.

“But this is a special trip,” he said. “And the car will do just fine.”

We have a big truck. A Suburban. That night, we parked it in an underground parking lot. The back seats are always folded down, the windows tinted, so we slept in the rear. Me in a sleeping bag, my father on the thin carpet, on his back, hands folded neatly over his stomach.

I watched him for a while, his handsome face, his thick black hair. He turned and saw me, smiled. His eyes, ice-blue like mine, danced. “Go to sleep, Jake.”

I closed my eyes and slept the rest of the day.

When he woke me, I was hungry and had to pee, and told him as much. He laughed and said he knew a place where both problems could be solved.

We went up the stairs to the street. There were shops and restaurants, people walking, cars rolling past. It was dark, of course, but not late.

He pointed to a diner a block away. The windows were bright white, and people were seated in red booths. Waitstaff bustled. My stomach grumbled and he took my hand as we crossed the street.

I used the diner’s bathroom, washed my hands, and returned to see my father chatting up a waitress. I knew he was handsome, my dad, and women were always interested in him. My mother was always teasing him about how women “swooned as he passed them by.”

He ordered me a cheeseburger and fries and watched while I ate. He pretended to sip a cup of coffee, lifting the porcelain cup to his lips every few minutes and nodding at me over the rim as I talked about school, toys, and superheroes.

When I was finished and we waited on the bill, he leaned across the table and took my hands in his. “You ready?”

 

WE SAT ON A COLD bench and watched people go by.

“Someone alone, obviously.”

He had an arm around my shoulders, which felt nice because my teeth were chattering from the cold. It didn’t affect him, of course. Weather, I mean. One more neat trick that didn’t make its way down the genetic ladder.

Like I said, I’m not a vampire. Nor do I have vampire qualities. I love the sun. I eat normal food. And I don’t drink blood.

The only trait I did inherit from my father is the way I sleep.

I can’t sleep in a bed.

I mean, I can nap anywhere. Floor. Bed. Couch. Dining room chair.

But to sleep? Like, really recharge? I need to be in a coffin. Just like my old man.

My mother thinks it’s psychological, but Dad always disagreed.

“We are bonded to the earth,” he’d say, looking at me with pride. “It’s where we draw our strength, from what lies in the dark beneath our cities. We live in the place where flesh meets soil.”

When I was a baby, crying at night like babies do, he’d come get me from my crib (Father being awake, of course) and bring me down into the basement. Into his coffin.

The second the lid closed my crying would stop. I’d nestle into him, sleep until dawn as he lied awake, sacrificing his nights for me.

After I’d been around a few months, the crib was kept purely for show, in case we had company or if Mom’s family was visiting. Later, my nursery became a bedroom with a bed that was never slept in. The sheets never changed, as far as I know.

As I got older, and bigger, Father built me my own coffin. Laid the bottom with soil and silk, like his. There was talk of a full-size coffin down the road, but after Father died there was no need. His would do just fine.

It was around the time I turned twelve, a few years after his death, that we began to commune. His ashes, stored at my feet. His voice in my head. We’d talk in the dark. About my life, my challenges. About Mother. Those conversations are my best memories. An aching sorrow mixed with rushes of joy in each word that passed between us.

“That one,” he said, and I looked across the street. Between passing cars I saw a hunched man in a black raincoat hurrying down the sidewalk.

“Why him?” I asked as he stood, ready to trail the stranger. We followed from a distance at first, staying across the street, but when the guy turned at the next block, we crossed over.

“I can tell by looking at him,” Father said, leaping gracefully onto the opposite curb, me all but running to catch up. “I can tell how alone he is. How pathetic and sad. That man is wasted life. Wasted flesh.”

“Wasted flesh,” I repeated sagely, watching the back of that raincoat, now only a few yards ahead.

Later, in the man’s living room, we sat by his dying body.

We’d come in through the window after climbing four stories. Me clutching Father’s shoulders while he stuck to the wall like a spider, bared fingers and the toes of leather shoes pressed into the sheer brick wall.

“I don’t know how much of me is inside you,” he said as we sat around the body, as if the unconcscious man were a campfire. He began loosening the shirt collar around the man’s neck, removed the tie, the eyeglasses. “And we may not know for some time, until you’re fully a man.”

He quickly slid a pointed fingernail along the flesh on the bared neck. Blood spilled as if he’d turned on a faucet. “But I still think it’s correct to teach the basics. I want you to drink and tell me what you feel.”

Hesitant, because I’d never drank blood before, but also exhilarated, I lowered my face to the still-warm flesh and put my lips around the pumping artery. Salty blood filled my mouth and I reflexively swallowed, drinking it down like tepid milk.

After three swallows, I pushed back, gasping for breath, coughing out the last mouthful in a spray, soaking my chin. My father’s eyes were on me, studying my reaction closely.

I wiped my chin gracelessly with a coat sleeve, sat back on my elbows. “I don’t feel much,” I said, still panting. Which wasn’t exactly true.

What I really felt? Nausea. That man’s blood sat in my belly like a ball of lead, and my insides gurgled in a way that made me think I might puke it all back out again.

“You don’t feel …?” He searched for the right word, shrugged. “I don’t know. Energized? You know, like a rush of any kind?”

I shook my head. “Not really,” I said, and then my stomach gurgled so loudly that he noticed, looking more bemused than disappointed.

Then, without another word, he snatched the man’s body off the ground, jerking it toward his mouth with the ease of someone biting into a sandwich. His jaw clamped to the soft flesh. I watched with envy as his throat worked, as he drank and drank and drank. Simultaneously satisfied and, I assume, disappointed. In me, I mean.

Later, as we made the long drive back, he told me not to worry. “We will share so many things in this life,” he said, smiling over at me as I watched the night flow by outside my window. “Blood just won’t be one of them.”

I looked over, met his eyes. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

But he just shook his head. “No need to be sorry, Jake. You’re my son and I love you, as I love your mother. And besides,” he said, one hand squeezing my shoulder as he navigated the dark road home. “You may yet have some surprises in you.”

 

“WHAT ABOUT IT?” HE ASKS, his lower lip smeared with tomato sauce.

I stare at Jake a moment, wondering how much to tell him. How much I should tell him. My father used to say: To be forewarned is to be forearmed. But how do you tell your kid there’s a chance he’s being hunted?

That we both are. Every day.

“Well, your dad, he fed on a lot of people, you know, over the, uh, years.”

He nods and forks in more spaghetti, as if I’m telling him the most interesting part of my day.

“Historically. Meaning, like, in the past ….”

“I know what historically means, Mom.”

He smirks and I bite back a rebuke, annoyed that my anxiety isn’t transferring over to him. That I’m failing at making him worried or scared. Cautious.

“Anyway, a lot of people like your father were killed by people seeking revenge, or who were just generally afraid of, well ….”

“Vampires.”

I study him a moment, and for the first time since I began my little speech, he meets my eye. I’m grateful, because I now see signs of concern there, a lightly buried fear.

“Correct. Now, you and I, we’re not vampires, at least not in the textbook definition or whatever. But you have your father’s blood in your veins, and ….”

I feel the heat in my face and know I’m blushing, then grow furious with myself, which I’m sure just makes it more obvious. I can be so stupid sometimes, I swear to God. Of course, it doesn’t help that I can imagine Nick observing this entire, awkward conversation, smirking, arms folded, watching me struggle through it. I take a deep breath, let it out. I light another cigarette.

“Eat your greens,” I say, buying time.

Jake forks a brussels sprout, waiting.

“Let’s just say some of your father’s blood is in me, as well. I mean, in a different way.”

“He bit you?” Jake asks, chewing the sprout, eyes a mixture of confusion and concern.

“Yeah, but I didn’t turn. I never, you know, died.” I put this last word in air quotes and have no idea why. “But it’s more than the bite. We also … oh Lord, why is this so awkward? We also had sex, of course.” I chuckle, trying to hide my anxiety. “I mean, you’re here, right?”

Now it’s Jake’s turn to blush. What a pair we make.

“Without getting too … technical,” I say, pushing through, “let’s just say there’s a little bit of your DNA leftover from when I was pregnant with you. Get it? And, by default, your father’s DNA is also in my blood. Point being, Jake, is that some folks might see you and I as being … different. Even though we’re not. It’s sort of guilt by association, I suppose.”

I shrug, tap out the ash of my cigarette into an empty juice glass, my pasta untouched.

“We just need to be careful, is what I’m saying. We need to be, what’s the word? Watchful.”

Jake nods, thoughtful. He looks like his father when he gets like that, and it makes me wonder how much he’ll look like Nick when he’s older.

“And now the note,” Jake says finally.

I nod. “And now the note.”

 

ON THE DAY MY MOTHER dies, I get into my first fight.

But it wasn’t my fault. Honest.

During gym class we each have to climb a rope that’s fastened to a hook from the ceiling, the top easily more than twenty feet from the taped-over tip dangling at knee-height.

We all stand in a group, going alphabetically, each of us watching the others grunt their way up the dump rope. When my turn comes up, I find it easy to wiggle up and up, proud of myself at the ease with which I’m pulling my body weight. I’m approaching the top when Mr. Schumann gets a phone call and goes into his office.

Given the opening, Randy Butler decides to be an asshole.

A basketball had been left rolling around from some random practice earlier that morning, and Randy thinks it’ll be hilarious to chuck it at me while I’m gripping a coarse rope twenty feet in the air, nothing but a two-inch mat between me and the hardwood floor of the gymnasium.

The ball hits me in the back.

It doesn’t hurt, not really, but it surprises the hell out of me. Enough that my hands let go and I fall backward, watching the wire-meshed ceiling lights rise further and further away.

A girl screams. I hear random shouts of panic and concern.

I’m not a hundred percent sure what happens exactly, all I know is that at some point I feel the ground coming, can almost see it closing in on me—faster, faster. I guess instincts take over because at the last moment, easy as pie, I flip my body, throw out my arms, and land effortlessly, perfectly, on my feet, knees bent, eyes dead ahead.

The room goes quiet. I mean … quiet.

I look to my left and see Mr. Schumann standing at the open door to his office, jaw hanging open. I look ahead and see Randy Butler staring at me with something like terror in his eyes.

“You throw that?” I ask.

He nods and swallows. His best friend, Craig Johnson, takes a half-step away.

Me? I take three quick steps and swing a tight fist into Randy’s stomach. He blows out a gust of breath then drops like a sack of wet cement, clutching his gut as if I’d sliced him open.

Honestly worried (I mean, I hit him really hard) I begin to see if he’s okay, but then my vision is filled by the bulging belly of Mr. Schumann’s royal blue Sabbath High sweatshirt. “You! Go sit in my office and stay there until I come for you.”

I look up at the teacher’s red, lumpy, unshaven face. “He started it,” I mumble, already knowing the argument is both infantile and futile, especially given Randy doesn’t appear to be breathing so good.

Schumann points to his office, eyes wide as saucers behind his glasses, as if he’s equal parts angry and frightened.

“Now, Jake.”

Later, they call my mom to tell her to come pick me up, since both me and Randy have been suspended.

It’s not until the principal looks at me over the phone (in obvious annoyance) that I know my mother isn’t answering the call.

It’s also when I know—somehow know without a doubt—that something is very wrong at home. Horribly so.

 

IN THE END, I WALK home from school with a note in my backpack that Mother is supposed to sign, letting her know about my suspension and to call if she has further questions.

When I enter the house, yelling out for her, I’m barely surprised to see old Mr. Jensen, the janitor from my school, sitting at the kitchen table. He watches me approach, but hardly moves from the chair he’s settled into. The hand holding the gun also doesn’t move, but stays steady, pointed directly at my mother, who is tied up in one of the other chairs. Her hands and feet are bound with thin white rope, and I absently wonder if he’d taken it from the school, and how he’s a thief if he did.

Mom sits calmly, you know, considering. Her eyes look almost bored, but her mouth is set in a grim line, and I know what she’s thinking:

What I wouldn’t give for a cigarette.

“Hiya, Mr. Jensen,” I say, dumping my backpack to the floor.

Mr. Jensen, still wearing his janitor uniform—Dickie’s pants, black steel-toe shoes, a blue button-down work shirt—only nods at my greeting.

He looks nervous.

“My father,” he says, his words a slow drawl, like he’s as bored as my mother looks, “killed vampires.” Mr. Jensen has an oddly southern sling to his words, an accent often mimicked by the kids at Sabbath High. “And when he died, I took over.”

I look at my mom, who only stares back. If those eyes are relaying any sort of message, I’m not getting it.

“Okay,” I say.

He nods, as if I’ve given permission to continue.

“Been following your family a couple years now. My father knew there were vampire in this area. More than a few, actually.”

This is news to me, but I stay quiet.

“Your father being one, of course.”

“But he’s dead, Mr. Jensen.”

He nods sagely, that gun hand not twitching in the slightest. “I know, I know. You saved me some work there. But I fear the blood is in you, and in her.” He looks to my mother for the first time since my arrival. “So, I gotta do you both, just to be sure.”

I start to respond when his hand jerks and there’s an air-shattering CRACK, the whiplash sound of the gun firing in our small kitchen.

My mother’s chair is flung backward, landing with an impossibly loud crash, the yellow wall behind her sprayed crimson. Her legs twitch and her face, thankfully, is turned away from me, but a part of her blonde hair is slowly turning red, from the roots to the tips. A slow-moving pool emerges from beneath her head, and I look away, back at the janitor.

He’s turned the gun to point at me, and I’m shaking. Whether in anger, shock, or fear I don’t know. Maybe it’s misery.

“Now you,” he says.

I think Mr. Jensen is surprised at how fast I move. I hear the bullet whizzing by my head, the punch of it hitting the wall where I stood only milliseconds before. The basement door is only a few feet away, and I’m already through it before he can get off a second shot.

I’m at the bottom of the stairs when I hear him curse at the doorway, most likely looking for a light switch that doesn’t exist. Not knowing what else to do, or where to go, I do the one thing that seems, if not rationale, appropriate.

I open the coffin, climb inside, and close the lid. I instantly feel better. Safer. An illusion, sure, but if you could find peace in the last moments of your life, you’d do it, right?

Footsteps clomp slowly, carefully, down the stairs. I slow my breathing, close my eyes, try to relax until it’s over.

My foot taps against the metal urn. “Dad?” I whisper.

There’s no answer. Only the emptiness, the quiet.

“He got mom,” I say softly, the words barely audible as I move my lips in the total dark of the coffin. “And now he’s gonna get me.”

When he still doesn’t answer, I go on, wanting just one more conversation with him before Mr. Jensen lifts opens the lid, points that gun at my head.

I try to imagine my father’s voice, smooth and deep, in my mind. I try to imagine what he would say to me now, in the moment. What he would teach me.

But there’s no voice. Not even in my imagination. It’s as if he’s suddenly gone; really, truly gone, and I wonder why it’s taken me so long to realize that. Why it only seems real to me at the end.

Part of me wants to cry, to scream and wail and batter my fists against the hard wood inches from my face. To take the urn of his ashes into the light and dump it into a strong wind, let it take him away, so I’ll never hear his voice again, never wish he was here with me, lying with me in this tomb of my life.

As tears burn my eyes, however, I hear the thunderous sound of feet hammering on the stairs. Coming down.

Coming down fast.

There’s a scream—a man’s scream—and the loud crack of the gun going off in the room just outside the coffin. I hear thumping—something being thrown against a wall over and over again—then there’s a groan, followed by a crackling noise, as if someone was crushing a fistful of eggshells ….

And then silence.

A few moments later, hands settle on the lid of the coffin, then lift it up.

My eyes have always been keen in the dark and are quick to adjust—the few moments in the coffin have practically given me night vision—so I can see my mother clearly as she looks down at me, a smirk on her wet, dripping lips.

There’s a dime-sized hole in her forehead, and her face is half-painted with her own drying blood. “Come on out,” she says. “It’s okay now.”

I climb out of the coffin and hug her around the waist. She hugs me back and I can feel the strength in her arms. Her body sings with rebirth.

There’s a twisted mound of flesh on the floor behind her, Mr. Jensen’s face a frozen snarl of shock and terror. His stomach is ripped open, his skin gray and shriveled, the limbs atrophied.

He’s been drunk dry.

I look up, concernedly, into my mother’s face. I notice her eyes have adapted, as well. They’re shimmering gold in the heavy darkness.

“I’m fine,” she says, then shrugs. “I was bored with the sun anyway.”

I press my face to her dress, her warm skin already cooling against my cheek, her heartbeat nonexistent. “You can turn me,” I say. “We could be together.”

She shakes her head, blows the hair out of her eyes. “Nah, I like you just the way you are.” She strokes my hair and I hold her tight, sad that she had to die.

“He doesn’t talk to me anymore,” I say, finally letting my tears come, soaking the fabric of her dress. “In my head. I can’t hear him.”

“It’s okay,” she says, “Don’t worry, sweetie.” Her mouth is close to my ear, her breath a cigarette-scented whisper. “I’m here now.”

She pulls me away, holds me at arm’s length. Her strong hands grip my shoulders tight, golden eyes dancing. A sharp white tooth climbs down her lower lip.

“You can talk to me.”