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  Todd and Scott appeared in the doorway. Scott had been just newborn when Corky had seen him last. Now he looked at her with wide eyes. “Are you my cousin?”

  Before Corky could reply, Pam broke in. “Yes, this is your cousin Corky. She’s here for the books you were packing this morning for her. Can you take them to her car?”

  “Is that short for something? Corky?”

  Corky nodded and knelt in front of Scott. “Sort of. My name is Courtney. But they called me Corky ever since forever.”

  “Who called you it? Your mom?”

  “Yeah. My mom. My dad, too, I guess.”

  “Sometimes they call me Scotty. But I don’t like it.”

  Corky laughed lightly. “I don’t remember ever being anything but Corky.”

  “My grandpa is called Moony. But we—”

  Pam put her hands on Scott’s shoulders firmly, pushing him toward the door. “Scott. You and Todd get the boxes. Your cousin Corky doesn’t want to talk to you about this stuff.”

  “Is she Todd’s cousin?”

  “Yes. And she’s my cousin. She’s your grandfather’s niece. Now, go, please. We have to finish up the laundry room so we can—”

  “How can she be my cousin and your cousin?

  “For crying out loud, Scott, I don’t know, cousins are just like that. She’s a second cousin for you. Or once removed, or something. I don’t have time to think about it right now, just go, put the boxes in her car.” She turned back to Corky. “I swear, that boy’ll drive me insane with questions. I hope they got all the vampire books for you; they said they got all of them. Are you into vampire stories?”

  Corky shook her head.

  “Well. I’ll be packing the rest of the library up later, so if I see any more I’ll let you know. Will you be in town all week?”

  Corky considered. “Well…for a couple more days, anyway. I’ll probably head back Friday.” Or maybe Thursday. She didn’t have to be back at work until Monday and today was only Tuesday; technically she could stay here with her lovely family for several more fun-filled days. But why would she want to? She felt as if she had to stay at least until Thursday, visit Moony once or twice more, but her duty to him was limited, wasn’t it? Hell, it wasn’t as if he had even seemed to even enjoy her company when she had been there yesterday. So, a couple more days was enough. And then she could take the books and go home, and maybe she could go with Seth and Sarah to the zoo on Saturday.

  Pam nodded. “Well, I’ll be at the hospice later. I assume you’ll be visiting, so I’ll see you there, probably. I’ll let you know if we find any more books.” She walked toward the door, and drew Corky after her.

  Corky drove back to the motel. When she got there, she glanced at the boxes: two in the back seat, and one in the front. If she left them in the car, would they be stolen? Would she even care if they were? She blew it off, left them in the car, and went inside to rest a little before driving to the hospice.

  Chapter 7

  Uncle Moony was sitting by the window when she got to his room, again draped in a robe—but a different robe today. His fingers played lightly over the tubes that ran in and out of his arm. He looked up when she knocked on his door.

  “Corky? Are you here?”

  “Yes, Moony, I’m here.” Obviously. She took a few steps into the room so he could see her better. “Are Pam and Bruce here?”

  Moony looked at her vacantly. “Oh, I think they were earlier. I haven’t seen anyone in a little bit though. Except that nurse who was here a while ago. She was going to get me a towel.” He made a face and pointed down at the floor. “I spilled my water. She was going to… she said she would give me another water.”

  “I can get you some, Uncle Moony.”

  “The towels… she was going to give me one. Can you get me a towel?”

  Corky pulled a paper towel off a dispenser on the wall. When Moony reached for it, she drew away and knelt in front of the stain. “It’s alright, I’ll get it.” But the spot was dry, just a stain. She made a pretense of mopping at it. “There. All clean now.” She stood and balled up the towel, rolling in back and forth in her hands. “Do you want some more water?”

  Moony held his hands up. “I’m not sure where they put my...” Then his eyes went round and he exclaimed, “Oh, now I remember! Did you find the book? The vampire book?” He struggled a little in the chair, reaching out as though he wanted to grab Corky. “You got it?”

  “Yes, of course, I have all the vampire books. Safe in my car. Moony, don’t… don’t do that, you’ll fall.” Moony had leaned far forward in his chair, and was still reaching with his arms. She moved closer to him and took his hands.

  “Car? No, you can’t… you have to read it. Did you find it?” His face took on a worried expression and he started looking past Corky, out the doorway into the hall. “Is Pam here?”

  “No, Uncle Moony, I didn’t see her. I don’t know where she is, though. Maybe she’s at your house, packing.”

  Moony grew more agitated. “The book… you have to have it. Did you see it?” He tried to stand up, and Corky pressed him back into his chair.

  “Uncle Moony, please. Calm down, OK? I have the books, I have them all safe. You need to quit moving around so much, you’ll get your tubes messed up.”

  “In your car! It won’t do you any good in the car! You have to read it. Right away!” He jerked his arms out wide, away from her, and raised his voice. “Now you can’t say I didn’t try, you have to read it and see how much I tried, how… how hard I have always tried!” He was yelling now, and red in the face. A monitor next to his chair started beeping. “You need to read it before I’m gone! You’ll have questions!”

  A nurse rushed into the room and went to the monitor. “Mr. Moonrich, you’ll need to get back in your bed now. Miss, you’ll need to step out. At least for a while. He needs to lie down.”

  Corky stepped back to allow the nurse access. “Can I help?”

  “No, there’s nothing you can do other than just go out for a bit. Let him calm down. He has these episodes.” She braced her arms underneath the old man’s shoulders and shifted him towards the bed.

  Moony grabbed Corky’s wrist with surprising strength as she stepped sideways to let them pass. “Read the book,” he hissed at her. “Your life depends on it!”

  He went into a coughing fit and the nurse shooed her out of the room. As she moved down the hallway, she could hear him yelling after her.

  “Life or death, Corky! Life or death!”

  ***

  Driving back to the hotel, Corky was taken by a crying jag, and she pulled over to the side of the road. It was just so sad. She remembered Uncle Moony as tall and strong. He had taken her out for ice cream; he had played horseshoes with her. She closed her eyes and thought about a day when she was just little and she and her mother had gone to visit Moony and Aunt Vi. The adults were all drinking wine in the den, and someone – probably her mother – had a guitar, and they were singing, singing some nonsense song about fleas. She and the other kids were playing in the hallway, and then Uncle Moony was there, standing over them all, just staring at them. Drunk. Telling her she looked like her mother, so much like her; and then Aunt Vi had come and dragged him off, patting him on the ass.

  Like my mother, Corky thought, looking in the rearview. Yep. She always had looked like her mother, had her knobby knees, and her flat chest, and huge, huge blue eyes like freak morning glories. Her mother had worked as a cashier, and her name was Cecilia, but her name tag had always said Cici, because that’s what everyone called her. When her mother died seven years ago, it was Moony who had called everyone for her. He had been at her funeral. Not Pam or Bruce, though. Rotten little shits hadn’t bothered to come for that, had they? They hadn’t bothered to drive down for her mother’s funeral, and yet here she was to support them. Here she was, sitting on the side of the road crying over their father.

  He had been such a... such a strong man, and now he was tied to a m
achine that beeped when he ran out of breath. She wiped her eyes and pulled back onto the highway. She looked at the books in the seat next to her. Poor old Uncle Moony. She felt guilty that she hadn’t even looked at the books. When she got back to the motel, she decided she may as well take at least one of the boxes in with her.

  She grabbed the box from the seat next to her and took it in, set it on the little table by the door, and sifted through it briefly. Dracula…more Dracula…Corky pulled a few more books out. Typical vampire fare. She paused as her fingers found the leather-bound tome, then pulled it out.

  “What’s this?” she muttered, fingering the cover. It was dark leather, stained and well-worn. She peered at the lettering, faded ink on the cover. “The Vampired.” She frowned. Vampired? She looked again; that was what the letters said, she was sure. But they were very faded, and there were other letters under it which were worse than faded, they were illegible.

  She flipped the book open to a random page, and recognized Moony’s handwriting.

  …in the light of the daytime I can hardly bear it, but the nights are worse, the evil nights with him abroad and my eyes closed in slumber…

  Corky turned to another page.

  …nothing can smell like he does, I would know him anywhere, and he knows me, the hunted and the hunter, but which one am I?

  This was a side to Uncle Moony she wasn’t familiar with. He’d been writing a book. She wondered how long ago he had written this. She flipped through a few more pages at random. Very poetic stuff. Creepy. She tossed the book back on the table and reached for the phone to call Seth.

  Seth answered on the first ring. “Hello, my dear, I was just thinking about you.”

  “Yeah?” Smiling, she moved to the bed and sat there, waving her feet back and forth. “What were you thinking? Good things?”

  “Of course! I miss you. Did you get your books?”

  “I got them. Did I ever. Does Sarah like vampire stuff?”

  “She loves those ‘Twilight’ guys, I know that.” Seth laughed and raised his voice in a falsetto. “Edward is just too gorgeous!”

  Corky laughed. “Well, he’s not bad, I have to admit. Anyway, I have every vampire book ever written, apparently, so maybe she’ll want to read some of them.”

  “So, are you done up there already?”

  She leaned back on the bed. “Well, almost. I went by there after I got the books, to visit, but I didn’t get to stay for long. I think I probably need to go over again tomorrow morning. That may be my last visit, though. He’s kind of out of it.”

  “Aw, I’m sorry, babe. Why don’t you just cut out now and come home?”

  Corky sighed. “I wish I could, but I’d feel bad leaving it like that. I’d like to have the last visit be… I dunno. Better. Maybe he’ll be more himself in the morning. I figure I’ll try once more, go over in the morning and visit, wrap things up with my cousins… maybe I’ll be back by tomorrow night.”

  “I’m working sort of late tomorrow, but if you get in give me a call. Maybe we can have dinner.”

  Corky agreed to call when she knew what her plans were for sure, hung up the phone, and stood up, stretching. All this driving and sitting around was giving her a backache. She wanted a massage, and wished Seth was here to give her one. It was her own fault he wasn’t, though; he had offered to come with her. Corky closed her eyes and smiled, thinking about Seth, with his rockstar hair and his bartending job. She had met him a few years ago during a book fair at the store where she worked, and he had bought a couple of books on the subject of “divorced parenting,” and over the conversation that ensued she had been totally charmed. Things with Seth had been going pretty fine. His daughter lived across town with her mother, but visited him often, and Corky got along well with her.

  Her thoughts returned to the present, and she found herself flipping through pages of her uncle’s book again. Eerie, eerie stuff, Uncle Moony. So strange, not so much that he would try to write, or even that he would write stories about vampires. His love of vampire books was well-known. But it was strange that he’d written it by hand, in a journal like this. Maybe he didn’t know how to type. She turned a few pages randomly, reading nothing, just scanning the pages. Perhaps he had just done it this way for effect. Hard to know, with a man like Moony. She shut the book again and padded off to take a shower.

  Chapter 8

  The pain in my heart is bad… worse than the pain in my soul. I know it will change later, it has to. At the end, the soul will win.

  When Corky went to visit Moony on Wednesday morning, he was sitting in the lobby instead of his room. “They left me here,” he said sadly when he saw her. “Brucie and Pam, rolled me out here and then they went off.” Moony waved his hand in the direction of the halls. “I think it’s time to go back. Can you take me back?”

  “Of course.” She reached forward to take the handles of the wheelchair, but Moony grabbed her hands, looking frightened.

  “Corky!” he gasped. “Where have you been? Did you read the book?”

  Corky sighed, and nodded slightly as she moved around to the back of the chair. “I think I found the book you mean, Uncle. Was it a big, leather one?”

  “Yes!” He tried to turn and look at her, but he couldn’t quite meet her eye. “It’s that one, did you read it?”

  “I glanced at it,” she said, guilt lacing her words. “Did you write that one, Moony?”

  He shrieked a yes, and nurses nearby in the hall turned to look. Corky waved them off, shaking her head, and hurried to push the chair into the room.

  “Don’t yell that way, you scare people! Why—”

  But he cut her off with muttering, and began clawing at the arms of his chair, trying to get up. “You don’t understand at all. You haven’t … haven’t read it, I can see that. I can see that, alright. Did I write it? Did I write that one? If you had read it…” he trailed off, then grabbed her arms and began pulling at her. “Get me to the bed, I have to… I need to get something.”

  He was nearly weightless, and Corky was again shaken by how slight and weak he seemed, when he used to be so strong. She got him to the edge of his bed, where he began searching in the pillows for something.

  He caught her puzzled stare. “It’s a hat. I have a hat here, with… ah, here it is.” He drew out the small knitted cap. “I keep it here, and I think you’ll need it soon.” He clutched the cap, squeezing it with his pale fingers, then leaned forward to whisper. “But you can’t waste any more time, my dear, you have to read it! It’s urgent, he may kill you before long… he may have left you alone, but he…” Moony turned suddenly, looking over his shoulder, then back to his niece. “I always loved you like my own, you have to understand that.”

  Absurdly touched, Corky patted her uncle on the leg. “I know, I know. I’m sorry, Uncle Moony, I’ll try and read it, OK? You just get some rest now.”

  But Moony was not quieted by this, and began raising his voice. “I’m not an idiot! I see the look on your face, on their faces! I see death! Death!”

  Pam came rushing in, furious. “What is all this hollering? My word, Corky, what have you done to make him this upset? I can hear him a block away.”

  “Nothing! I was just, he was… well…” Corky blushed. “I swear, he just wanted his hat, and then he was yelling at me…”

  Moony pulled something out of the hat and closed it in his fist, held it tight to his chest. “Death,” he whispered. “Death and worse, I warn you, Corky.”

  “Dad—”

  “No!” Now he was screaming at the top of his lungs. “No! You make her listen to me, or it’s death and worse and not my own fault!” He began banging his head on the headboard, and Corky stepped forward to try and stop him, inserting her hands behind his head and getting them mashed for her trouble.

  “Idiot nurses, where the hell are they?” Pam ran to the doorway to call for them, and when she turned back around, Martin Moonrich was pressing something into Corky’s hand.

&nbs
p; The nurses arrived and brushed both of them aside, and as Corky went out of the room Pam caught sight of the cross she now carried. The one Pam’s mother had worn so often. The one Pam thought her mother had been buried with.

  ***

  Bruce shook his head. “How can you be sure it was Mom’s?”

  “It was Mom’s, that’s how I can be sure, because it’s a fact. You think I wouldn’t know my own mother’s cross?” She paced around the rose garden in angry circles, her shoes clicking on the flagstones. “You should have been in there. We shouldn’t leave him alone at all anymore. He’s getting worse and worse. And now, now he’s apparently just going to start giving things away.” She lit a cigarette and resumed pacing, ignoring the ‘no smoking’ signs.

  “We can’t stand there all the time, Pam. And Corky—”

  “She talked him into giving it to her, Bruce, she was there talking him into giving her the cross and God knows what else. Mother’s jewelry is valuable to me even if it’s not to you, and I’m not having some… some damn cousin show up and just walk off with it.”

  “I didn’t even know he had any jewelry in there.” Bruce leaned against a nearby post. “Where was it?”

  “Hell if I know. That cross was on Mother at her funeral. He must have snuck it off before they put her… well, you know. He took it off, probably because it’s valuable, Bruce. Right? That cross is probably worth money, that’s why he didn’t let them bury her in it. That’s why our dear cousin asked him for it.”

  “But, did she ask him for it? You can’t know that, Pam. Maybe he just wanted her to have it. We should ask him.”

  Pam snorted a huge puff of smoke out of her nostrils, a tiny dragon with short hair and angry eyes. “Oh, don’t be an idiot, Bruce. God. How stupid are you? Dad wouldn’t know a crucifix from a carnation these days. But I should ask her, that’s who I should ask, good old Corky. Taking things from a senile old man on his deathbed. And my mother’s cross, of all things.”

  Bruce nodded quietly, saying nothing, feeling sad. She had been his mother, too.