The Necklace Vampire

The street lamp burned. Its flame fluttered behind the smoky glass as huge jungle moths fell like dying leaves through the pool of light that poured into the black. It was deep night, the time when beings of sunlight turn to the false days of their dreams lest they drown in the hours before dawn.

Before dawn, was all Susan had left.

The airplane would leave tomorrow. It would take off from the strip of scarred land that served as a runway, flakes of rust in its wake, and drag her back to the cultured London parlors she had fled five months previously.

She didn’t want to sleep away the little time she had left. So she walked. A slight thing of indeterminate age, somewhere between eighteen and thirty, with long blonde hair and blue eyes that were a little too dark and at the same time a little too bright.

The small city placed at the edge of the Amazon was a maze of winding, cobbled sidewalks and wilted tour companies and dirty restaurants brimming with overripe bananas. Cars were rare here, and the streets were barren at this hour of the night. Susan liked it that way. She liked listening to the sounds of dark birds and prowling cats. She liked the solitude.

“I have what you are looking for.” Said a voice.

Susan stopped walking. She cast her eyes about until they settled on a certain shadow that seemed to be more substantial than the rest. The shadow leaned forward, so that the street lamp's light ran like liquid into the pores and crevasses of its face. It was the face of a young man, his skin deep tan, his hair, shoulder length, black, messy in the way one expects of those who dwell at the edges of the known world. The light trickled

down his neck and illuminated his red t-shirt, its collar left unbuttoned in the equatorial heat.

“I wasn't aware that I was looking for anything.” Susan replied.

“You are.” He said. “Anyone who comes to this town is looking for something. This is not a destination. It is where armies pause to pick up supplies, where those lost in the jungle come for medicines and miracles, where young dreamers struck by wanderlust sell their souls for adventure. No one stays here. No one comes unless they are looking for something.”

Susan smiled, humoring him. “Just what is it that I am looking for then?”

The young man lifted one hand and plunged it into the light, gesturing to a small rectangle of black velvet at his feet. On this velvet lay an assortment of necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and polished gems.

Susan rolled her eyes. During the day, the streets were swarming with vendors. When she first came to South America, Susan had tried to respond to every one of their plaintive shouts with grace. However, time had hardened her and worn away at her cultured manners. It had been weeks since she had so much as glanced at the tourist souvenirs which the swarms of thin children pressed against her face. The last thing she wanted to do was spend her remaining hours in paradise haggling over the price of fake jewels.

“I'm sorry,” she said, brushing her silvery hair behind her ear. “I really must be going. I have no money with me.”

“And I have no need for money.”

Susan laughed, then bit back her laugh. She turned. She walked five steps. She stopped. What harm was there to simply look at his wares? She thought of the plane, of England with its tame and timid streets, of the strange man and his strange words. She would never meet someone like him in England. She turned resolutely and walked back. She sat down and stared at him, as if demanding that he apologize for something that she couldn't explain.

“Where I come from,” Susan said. “It is improper for a man to be out of doors at night. And it is very much frowned upon for an improper man who finds himself out of doors at night to speak to a lady.”

“Where you come from, are women who walk alone at night down barren streets still considered to be ladies?” The young man asked. He smiled in a crooked sort of way. His smile revealed only a very thin line of his teeth. Sparkle of white.

“I should slap you for that remark. What is it that you are trying to sell?” As if in answer the street lamp flared suddenly and she could see the jewelry on the velvet in intimate detail. Jade beads, blood rubies, scarlet blue macaw feathers, etched silver, braided opal, silk. “How did you get these?” She whispered.

“I made them.” He answered. “Each piece has a story to it. I sell them at night because it is only at night that humans have enough time to stop and listen to their stories. It is pointless to own something without knowing where it came from.”

Susan felt a chill run along her spine despite the jungle heat. “Is that the only reason you sell them at night?”

“What makes you ask that?”

“Nothing.” It was nothing. Silliness. Unfounded. Still, as Susan reached out and picked up a string of milky jade, she suddenly became aware of just how dark the night was beyond the ragged edges of the lamp light.

“Take that necklace for example.” He said. He leaned forward eagerly and she leaned away from him, the beads glinting in her hands like green ice. “That is from a chest I found deep beneath a blue glacier. The chest had been buried by a pirate whose ship broke open on an iceberg. He and his men spent what little time they had alive digging a grave for their treasure. It was a vain gesture. After all the crew had died, one man who seemed not to feel the cold dug through the shredded, starry ice and resurrected the chest. He took this very jade from its heart as a prize.”

Susan laughed nervously. She dropped the jade unceremoniously among its kin. “You shouldn't be such a blatant liar. Liars are frowned upon in nice societies, bad liars in particular because they show a singularly disturbing lack of cunning and intellect. I don't believe a word you've just said, and I think I would be justified in walking away this very moment without giving you a penny of my money.”

“I don't want your money anyway. There is a saying, if you wish for someone to believe you, lie to them. If you wish to hide the truth from them, place it before their eyes, so close that they cannot help but overlook it.” He smiled again, crookedly, awkwardly. It was a charming, tight lipped smile. “I have been in nice society before, I know well its rules.”

She played with her hair, pushing one strand behind her ear and another in front of her eyes. Her pale, cultured fingers flashed among the silver. “There you go, lying

again. There's no need for it. I don't think any less of you because you're poor and uneducated.”

“This piece, pick it up.” He said. He pointed.

She picked up the pair of silver earrings he had indicated. They were dripping with small, bright opals.

“Have you heard of Medusa?” Asked the young man. He inched closer to her and the light washed over the folds of his crimson shirt. It was the kind of shirt that Susan expected to see in London, not the Amazon. “She was a Greek demon who turned those foolish enough to meet her gaze into stone. These earrings are made of the irises of her most lovely victims. It took me many years to pry them from their forlorn hosts, and longer still to polish away the dirt and useless granite which encased them.”

“Please, don't ask me to believe that!” Her voice squeaked. She cleared her throat, patted her bosom. “Monsters like Medusa have no place in the reality of good society, and besides that, you are too young to have spent years polishing granite and digging through ice and sailing on ships and gathering treasures to yourself like the heart gathers the body's blood!”

Suddenly, Susan was shaking with anger and fear. The earrings dangled from her hand. The light glanced off their tiny, rounded edges. It made her think of a hundred winking eyes. She threw them at the merchant. She jumped to her feet.

“I don't want to know these stories! I don't want to know who you are! I'm afraid, because the longer I listen to you, the more I worry that I may not even know what you are!”

He shrugged, the crimson cloth rippling. “I am the person who knows what you are looking for. I know why you came here. Alone. You came to escape from the society whose rules you quote so often. And now you have to go back, don't you? And you are looking for something, and you cannot define what it is, and so you wander the streets, searching, until a shadow tells you that you have found it.”

Susan's face was pale. She held up a hand as if to ward him off, although he had not moved. His lips parted in a tight, hidden, smile. She wanted to leave but the thought of stepping outside the comfort of the flickering light terrified her for no reason that she could name.

“I just want to go back to my hotel.” She gasped.

“Alright. I won't stop you. But first, dear lady, wouldn't you like me to give you what you are looking for?”

Slowly, reluctantly, Susan sat back down and offered him her hand, palm up. “Fine, give it to me.”

The young man leaned forward and took her hand in his. His grip was as cold as glacier ice, his eyes as cold as opal. He lifted her trembling fingers to his lips and whispered. “What you've been looking for, dear lady, is a story. It is a secret. Something you can hold close to your heart for the rest of your mundane years. It is a piece of this perfect jungle darkness that the daylight will never manage to kill. It is not a ring or trinket, but the memory of something which, like Medusa, has no place in the sane reality of your society.”

He smiled. He opened his lips in a wide grin. She would have screamed if she had had the courage. He pressed his lips against her hand. She could feel two, sharp fangs pierce her skin.

The night wore itself out. The street lamp died. The moths dispersed. The dawn nudged dreamers back into wakefulness.

On an overgrown runway, at the edge of town, an antique plane rose into the air, flakes of rust following in its wake. A woman of indeterminate age, wearing a pair a earrings that dripped with opal eyes and a necklace made of green ice, sat alone, her bags piled around her. She pressed her cheek against the warm window, watching the town and the Amazon shrink. Already, the time she had spent there seemed like a dream. It was banished to memories, doomed to fade.

She moved her gaze furtively to the hand she held hidden in a pocket of her jeans. Slowly, she took it out and inspected the deep incisions. Fang marks. She smiled. Even after every photo was bleached by time and every memory gone, the scars on her hand would still remain.