By Al Bruno III
March 12th: I imagine the only person surprised that Sara and I ended up sleeping together was me. She knew it was going to happen. The members of the FEAR AND TRUTH message board knew it was going to happen. My boss and landlady, Mrs. Vincenzo, knew it was going to happen. Hell, I bet even you knew it was going to happen.
But honestly, I thought I might never have a girlfriend again. Sure, I had a college sweetheart, but when I came home and got caught up chasing shadows, we just drifted apart. There was no real breakup—we just kind of stopped being a thing. After that, I was too busy to do more than go on the occasional blind date, usually set up by Mrs. Vincenzo. I like to think my looks have a smoldering mediocrity, just enough to catch a lady's eye but not much more. Kind of like what you'd expect from a side character on a CW drama. The problem is, beyond movies and music, there's not much I can talk about in depth—unless people want to hear about vampire genus classifications and how to kill them. That's a mood killer, for sure.
But with Sara, there wasn't that kind of barrier. We were both a little haunted and a whole lot hunted.
The night things got serious in all the right ways started out normally. I worked an open-to-close shift at the pawnshop so my landlady and boss, Mrs. Vincenzo, could spend the day visiting estate sales to find antiques, cast-off electronics, and other potentially resellable bric-a-brac. Normally, she took along one of her fellow energetic geriatrics for company, but this time she decided to roust Sara out of bed and drag her along.
They didn't get back from their trip until just as I was closing up the store for the day. Mrs. Vincenzo was carrying a slightly singed Art Deco lamp and a supposedly collectible doll from the 1980s that looked like Charles Schulz had wandered into the uncanny valley.
Sara had a shopping bag and a sly smile.
After some pleasant conversation, Sara and I retreated to my semi-spacious apartment. Have I ever described it to you? It has a half bath, a cramped bedroom, and a living area that doubles as both kitchen and living room. It wasn’t much, but it was mine—and best of all, it was rent-free so long as I manned the pawn shop at least four days a week.
Sara and I had planned to have a quick dinner, but our plans were interrupted by a call from my cousin Roy. Roy may not believe in the supernatural, but he does seem to have the uncanny ability to know when I’ve ordered a pizza from his favorite place—Namira’s Authentic Italian Cuisine.
He kept himself busy watching my TV and stuffing his face. At the same time, Sara and I sat at the nearby dining table, quietly discussing the woman named Ashley Fowler. Ever since that bloody fracas at the mall, I’d been trying to get in touch with her. But like most people rich beyond the dreams of the avarice, she had a highly dangerous security detail and an even deadlier squad of executive assistants.
“Obviously,” I said, “I’m going to have to get creative.”
“How did you start?” Sara asked.
“Being creative?” I said.
“No…” she said. “With the weird stuff. Witches, zombies, and clowns.”
“Oh.” There was no disguising the pained look that crossed my face—the combination of anguish over the past and dread over the future. “Well, it’s a long story.”
“I’d love to hear it,” she said. “Besides, your cousin just ordered *Curbside Crusader* on PPV, and that movie is almost two hours.”
“Damn it, Roy! Mrs. Vincenzo pays the cable bill.”
Cousin Roy shrugged. “So what? She buys one less ugly lamp.”
“You’ve got the time,” Sara said again. “If you’re ready to tell the story, that is.”
The strains of a faux Danny Elfman score began to blare from my TV. I smiled at her and said, “There’s no one I’d rather tell the story to.”
###
It was April 2009, and I was a nineteen-year-old college student living on campus, pursuing a double major in Journalism and early-onset alcoholism. My grandmother, Gail Foster, had been diagnosed with pancreatic adenocarcinoma the year before and had been living at my mom's house for six months. We all knew the inevitable was drawing closer.
That morning, my mom, Grace Foster, called to say Grandma was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed—almost like the woman she used to be. And that was heartbreaking. The doctors had long warned us about the rally—that eerie burst of energy some patients get just before the end. Mom hadn't explicitly asked me to come home, but I could hear it in the quiver of her voice. I felt guilty as hell for being so far away, but I knew pausing my education wouldn't change a damn thing.
It had hurt even more over the past week because the visiting hospice nurse had flaked out, stopping her visits entirely. Thank God for Mrs. Vincenzo, who stepped in and picked up the slack.
It was a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Woodridge to Albany. I left right after my last class, radio blasting, energy drink in the cupholder. I tried not to think about what I was driving toward, but of course I did—so much so that I missed my exit. Twice. Eventually, my battered Ford Escort found its way home. The driveway was full, so I parked on the street. Anyone who's visited an ailing relative knows a packed driveway is never a good sign.
Inside, I was greeted by two familiar faces.
First was Uncle Roy Foster—my grandmother's brother's son. Technically, that made him my first cousin once removed, but he'd always insisted on "Uncle," and honestly, he'd earned it. Despite the great scandal that had driven my grandmother from the Foster clan's Arizona home, he'd always been kind. He quietly helped her settle in upstate New York and showed up whenever she, my mom, or I were in a pinch.
I barely knew him before my teenage years, when we went to his second wedding. He was tall, gray-haired, with a construction worker's tan and a meticulous streak honed on decades of job sites. And speaking of things left behind—when his first wife walked out, she took the house and car and left him with custody of his sketchy son, Roy Junior.
"Hey, Uncle Roy," I said. "How was your flight?"
"Can't complain," he said, "except for your cousin trying to steal from the drink tray."
"Cousin Roy is here? That's great."
Actually, it wasn't. With any luck, this visit would end without any copper being stolen from our walls.
Then I turned to my Great Aunt Peg. She was Grandma's last surviving sister—sixty-five, plainly dressed, and fiery-eyed. If you were a younger member of the clan, you didn't call her Great Aunt Peg—or even Aunt Peg. It was Miss Peg or nothing. And if you worked in food service, you probably called her that bitch.
"Hello, Miss Peg." I flashed her my job-interview smile. "Thank you for coming all the way from Nevada."
"What choice did I have?" she said. "Matthew 25:35–36 obligates us to tend to the sick."
Miss Peg was over ten years younger than Grandma but looked about the same age, thanks to a misspent youth stretching into her thirties. The conservative Foster clan had chosen to overlook those wild years—selective memory or willful ignorance, either way, they never spoke of it. Maybe it was because she was now married to a churchgoing man, blessed with six kids (including two teenage twins), and cursed the rest of us with her transformation into someone determined to make sure no one ever had fun again.
When I thought of Miss Peg, I could hear my high school history teacher:
"The housewives of today are the fascists of tomorrow."
"How are things at college?" she asked.
Before I could answer, she added, "I hope you're keeping a clear head. Colleges are full of sluts and secular humanists."
"Sounds like I'm taking the wrong classes," I joked.
Uncle Roy laughed.
Miss Peg did not.
She asked, "Brian, have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior?"
"I like to think the big guy and I have an understanding," I said.
The glare she gave me was reserved for witches about to be burned at the stake.
"Salvation is not something to be taken lightly," she said.
I raised a hand in mock surrender.
"This is not a time for jokes," she snapped. "A woman is breathing her last breaths."
And didn't that phrasing punch me in the gut?
"Don't be so dramatic!" Uncle Roy said. "She was just chatting with Roy Junior ten minutes ago. Clear as a bell!"
Eager to change the subject, I asked, "Where is he?"
"He's in the backyard," Uncle Roy said, nodding toward Miss Peg. "Keeping her twins busy."
"Brian?" a voice called from the kitchen. "Brian, is that you?"
"Excuse me," I said. "I think I hear my mom calling."
Grace Foster was at the kitchen sink, setting up one of the extra saline bags the home hospice care left us for emergencies. I may be biased, but my mom was beautiful—short moonlight-colored hair, striking blue eyes like Grandma's. Right now, those eyes were not striking. They were on the verge of tears.
"Can you help me with this?" she asked. "The one from this afternoon is empty, and that stupid machine keeps beeping."
Tom Wynne, Mom's oldest and dearest friend, was mopping up the remains of a broken bag. Tall, dark-haired, with a gray mustache, he nodded warmly as I passed.
"I got it, Mom," I said, taking over. Mohawk Valley Home Health had crammed a five-hour home-care class into two, just to cover their liability.
I fussed for a few minutes, feeling like I was trying to catheterize a juice box, but finally got it right.
"See?" I held up the bag. "Under control."
Mom sighed and headed out to make use of it.
"Great job!" Tom clapped my shoulder. "You could be a doctor if you wanted."
"Well, I don't like blood, and I want my student debt to stay under five figures, so nope."
We laughed. His laugh sounded so much like mine.
Did I mention that, like Grandma, Mom never married? That she worked as a bookkeeper for Tom's bike shop? That Tom had been married over twenty-five years to the same woman? And that I never knew my father?
Tom had been a semi-regular fixture in my life. As a kid, I thought he was just Mom's cool friend. In adolescence, I began to suspect otherwise. Mom confirmed it casually, hinting I was the result of a one-night stand. She even suggested the father was a visiting rock star, but the only concert in Albany around my conception was Mike + The Mechanics, and I didn't resemble any of those guys.
"I wish you had gone to school locally," Tom said. "We could really use you at the shop."
"I appreciate it, but I had to leave, at least for a while," I said.
"I get that," he smiled ruefully.
"By the way," I asked, "what happened to the nurse guy? Stuart?"
"He died. Pulmonary embolism. Sudden," Tom said, serious. "Mrs. Vincenzo found out—she knows his mother."
"Wow. Maybe you should go to journalism school instead," I said.
"Thanks."
Awkward silence.
We stared at our shoes.
I almost asked about Mike + The Mechanics, but Mom chose that moment to call.
"Brian! Someone wants to see you!"
Tom smiled and clapped me on the shoulder.
"Better not keep her waiting."
I nodded and excused myself, making my way down the hall to what had once been my mother's office, now converted into the room where Grandma Gail would spend the last days of her life. Her final resting place before her final resting place.
The last time I was home, she had been frail, slipping away before our eyes. But the woman I saw now was a stark contrast to that memory. She was sitting up in bed, her eyes bright, her hair freshly dry-shampooed. There was a liveliness to her, a near-electric energy that made it hard to believe she was dying at all.
The moment she saw me, her face lit up. She practically bounced in bed, arms wide for a hug.
"Sweetie-pie!"
"Hey, look at you!" I said, trying to deliver a hug that was both hearty and gentle. How hard do you hug a dying woman?
I needn't have worried. Grandma Gail's grip was as firm as a salesman's handshake.
"What are you doing home?" she asked.
"Brian missed you," my mom answered.
"I missed him too."
Grandma Gail finally released the hug but took my face in her warm hands.
"But you should have stayed at college."
She stared into my eyes as she spoke.
"You have a life to live."
"And so do you," I said, then immediately winced inside.
Thankfully, Grandma and Mom didn't seem to notice, so we all settled into the kind of long and rambling conversation that only families can have, where nostalgia becomes a private mythology.
A million college professors will study The Iliad and The Odyssey, but only the Foster family can tell the tale of the day little Brian came upon a pile of dead saplings and decided to plant them in the front yard and wait for a miracle.
We talked about family trips and local tragedies.
Mom prompted me to talk about college, so I shared some edited highlights.
For instance, when I told her and Grandma about my kinda sorta girlfriend Jenny, I did not mention that she had kinda sorta decided to see other people.
When I talked about my study partners, I did not mention that my pals and I spent most weekends studying for fraternity mixers.
When I bragged about the award my story for the campus newspaper had earned, I did not tell them the article was called Tracking Boots and Fuzzy Snoots and detailed the small-scale riot that erupted when a Cryptid Hunters Conference and a Furry Convention were booked at the same convention center on the same weekend.
Eventually, Miss Peg's twins entered the room.
A pair of gangly thirteen-year-old boys hovered uncertainly in the doorway, all elbows, oversized sneakers, and painfully forced solemn expressions. In any other situation, I would have told them they'd be a shoo-in to win a costume contest if they dressed as the twins from The Shining. Grandma would have loved that. Miss Peg... not so much. And suggesting her boys dress as little girls? Well, let's just say I'd have been the one dying in that room.
I'll tell you what did die in that room: conversation.
No surprise there. After all, what thirteen-year-old wants to sit at the bedside of a dying, mostly estranged relative? No, they were there because they hoped their perfunctory display of concern would be pleasing to the Lord and, more importantly, Miss Peg.
Couple that with the fact that they were homeschooled and shielded from just about every aspect of pop culture made after 1977, and conversation never really had a chance. It sputtered and meandered through awkward questions and uncomfortable silences until we finally managed to land on the subject of sports. Even that got weird when they started spouting conspiracy theories about why their home team, the Las Vegas Wranglers, were so maligned.
Is it any wonder, then, that we were all slightly relieved when Miss Peg came to collect them and make her goodbyes for the night? She left us with no warm farewell, just a request for directions to the nearest Applebee's and a sharp reminder to beg merciful Jesus for forgiveness or face perdition.
Once they were gone, Grandma Gail started laughing and wondered what might have happened if she'd brought up Miss Peg's unfortunate tattoo in an even more unfortunate location.
I told her I didn't want our family to be responsible for two more lifetimes of therapy.
That set all of us off.
Tom Wynne came in then to ask what we were laughing about.
I said, "Stigmata."
And we were laughing again. Grandma could barely catch her breath.
When our sides finally stopped hurting, Tom said his goodbyes, hugging Grandma, shaking my hand, and making long, lingering eye contact with my mom.
I mean long, lingering eye contact.
Mike + The Mechanics.
Yeah, right.
The afternoon faded into evening.
Cousin Roy and Uncle Roy came in to say they were heading back to their hotel.
Cousin Roy started to make a morbid joke, but his dad cut him off. He said he needed to speak to Gail alone, so we all retreated and closed the door.
My mom and I stood in the hallway outside my room and spoke quietly.
"How long does a rally last?" I asked.
Mom leaned against the wall, her shoulders sagging.
"Who knows? It's... it's wonderful and scary all at once."
"Waiting for the other shoe to drop."
"Brian..."
She covered her face.
"I know this is awful, but I want it to be over."
She started to cry.
I leaned in and held her.
It didn't take long before I was crying too.
Sometime during our tearfest, Uncle Roy and Roy Jr. had let themselves out.
I'll never know what Uncle Roy's private conversation with Grandma was about, but what I do know is that, as he was leaving, Cousin Roy raided our fridge and filled the pockets of his jacket with as many cans of beer as he could.
A little after sunset, Mrs. Vincenzo arrived with foil-wrapped food and a Parcheesi set. There was no way I was going to turn down Mrs. Vincenzo's homemade lasagna, but I politely declined the board game.
Instead, I puttered around the kitchen while she and my mom rolled dice and made small talk. I loaded the dishwasher and refilled the ice cube trays. Then I checked over the inventory of medical supplies that seemed to have taken over all the available counter space.
When that was done, I excused myself to my room, where I unpacked my clothes and textbooks.
Then I paused to take in my surroundings.
This had been my room for most of my childhood and all of my adolescence, where I had gone from Fisher-Price to third base. I realized, with a twinge of sadness, that after a little less than a year away, it didn't feel like home anymore. Speaking of things that didn't feel like home, I had homework to do, but after staring blankly at my textbook for fifteen minutes, I realized I was exhausted.
I could worry more about Paul Y. Anderson in the morning. I stretched out on the bed, thought for a moment about how it was just a little too small now, and then fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Hours later, I woke up feeling disoriented. After all, I was waking up in a familiar place, just not the familiar place I'd expected to wake up in, and with a full bladder. I got to my feet and, after a moment of standing in the darkness to orient myself, shuffled across the hall to the bathroom.
Whether it was grogginess, consideration for my sleeping family, or the fact that nineteen-year-old college students are only marginally civilized, I neither flushed nor washed my hands.
Sometimes I wonder if things would have gone differently had I switched on the lights or made a little noise. If choosing to skulk through the shadows over something so mundane somehow marked me for life.
I left the bathroom and was halfway up the two steps leading back to my room when I heard... something.
Years later, armed with a much better thesaurus, I'd describe the sound as an insectile chittering. Back then, all I knew was that whatever I'd heard sounded wrong.
And dangerous.
And it was coming from Grandma's room.
Again, a different person would have shouted, "Who's there?" and turned on the hall lights, but me? I crept toward her room as quietly as my bare feet would carry me. The door stood open a crack, but that was enough for me to see something... and for something to see me.
The memory of what I saw has always existed in my mind as a triptych: three separate images frozen in time.
The First: the curtains were open, and the window was half-open. Moonlight filtered in, revealing the hospital bed and IV stand that consumed most of the available space. In one corner sat the battered file cabinet that was almost as old as I was. It had once held my mother's real estate paperwork. Now it was filled with morphine, IV supplies, disposable bedpans, and a thousand little necessities that came with watching someone die.
The Second: Grandma lay still, utterly still, eyes wide, mouth gaping, her chest motionless. In those days, death was still an unpleasant stranger in my life, not the constant companion it would later become. Even so, I knew a dead person when I saw one. There was a subtle deflation to the way her flesh hung on her body. She had become inanimate. There was no other way to describe it.
The Third: I thought it was an animal, some kind of snake slowly moving through the open window. But only the window was open, not the screen. And it didn't slither or crawl; it wafted, spilling purposefully into the room. I wondered if it might be smoke. Then the moonlight caught it. Smoke isn't red, and it doesn't move with purpose. It coiled. It flowed. It rose over Grandma like a predator preparing to strike. It arced upward before slipping into her open mouth.
I sobbed. A tiny noise. No one heard. Thank God.
Grandma's eyes fluttered, then closed. A shiver ran through her body. She began breathing deeply and steadily. She shifted under the blankets and made a happy little sound that was disturbingly close to a purr.
There are moments when your understanding of the world simply ceases to function. This was one of them.
Then, just a few hours later, as the sun came up, it happened again. I was lying awake beneath the covers when my mom burst into my room to tell me Uncle Roy had died in his sleep.
###
I grew quiet then, my brow furrowing while Cousin Roy cheered on the cinematic adventures of a superhero who drove a taxicab. Sara looked to him and back to me. “Did that really -” then she caught herself, “Of course it did.”
“It’s Ok. I wouldn’t believe it either,” I shrugged. “If I didn’t have to.”
“What was it?” She asked.
The troubled frown on my face deepened. “The Vorvolaka.”
“Vorvolaka?”
“Think half-vampire, half-pathogen.”
“What happened next?”
It wasn't that I was afraid to tell my story. My life is an open blog. But part of me didn't want to tell it to Sara because it wasn't a story with a fairy-tale ending. I'm no psychiatrist, but by then I knew she didn't need another reminder that the good guys don't win all that much. “I’ll tell you later,” I said, “Just not right now.”
There was a long pause then, just Sara and me making eye contact while Cousin Roy cheered on a man in spandex as he saved a little old lady from monsters in a rocket-powered Zamboni. Say what you want about Cousin Roy, but he knows what he likes.
Suddenly, Sara’s voice and face brightened; she stood and said, “I guess it’s time for your present.”
“Present?” I asked.
She got up and went to the shopping bag that had been sitting in the corner. “For you,” she said.
“For me?” I said.
“Open it!”
And open it I did, revealing a hatbox which, naturally, had a hat in it.
“I got you a new straw fedora.” She was practically preening.
Actually, dear reader, what she had gotten me was a straw pork pie hat. Now, unless you lived through the Great Depression, you might not see the difference, but trust me, there is one. You see, a fedora has a pinched front and center-creased top with a wide brim that can be snapped down or up. A pork pie hat, on the other hand, has a flat, circular top with a crease around the edge—often called a "telescopic" crown. The brim is shorter and turns up slightly, giving it a more compact and relaxed feel.
Or to simplify it further: my old 1930s hat was a Humphrey Bogart; what she got me was a Thelonious Monk.
Not exactly my style, but since I didn’t have a hat at all, who was I to complain? Besides, Sara’s face lit up the moment I put it on and struck a pose—so how could I say no?
She got up and hugged me. I kissed her on the cheek.
That was it. The fuse was lit.
Sara kissed me on the mouth. I pulled her close. We both started breathing heavily as we kissed harder. She let out an excited squeal as we fell back against the dining room table.
I gasped her name.
And then Cousin Roy said, “Aw yeah.”
We both turned to look at him, watching us from my couch, the CGI superhero mayhem on the TV forgotten.
I cleared my throat.
Sara blushed.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” Cousin Roy said with a wide grin. “I just was wondering when you two would get down to it.”
“Get down to it?” I repeated, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Get down to it.”
“Down to it?” Sara murmured, still warm against me. “Was that your plan?”
“My plan?” I said. “I thought it was your plan.”
“I didn’t have a plan.”
“You bought me a hat,” I pointed out. “That sounds like a plan to me.”
Roy let out an exaggerated sigh as he got up off the couch and grabbed his coat. “You’re supposed to get around to it, and then you’re supposed to start arguing.”
When he slammed the door, Sara and I burst into laughter.
Then we got around to it.
Boy, did we ever.
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