I Think of You: Stories Read Free Page B

He has horrid teeth. Over the picture is written Vampires. I don’t know what that means, but I already have a penchant for the romantic. I buy it. Something tells me my parents won’t approve, so I smuggle it in and hide it among my toys till their next going-out night.
    This time, not only don’t I mind: I positively want them to go. When they do, I sit up in bed and read by the night-light: “The undead … those monstrous characters who feed upon the blood of the living … In Transylvania, Count Dracula’s castle lay shrouded in blackest night.” Here is new material indeed for my imagination. That night (after carefully rehid-ing the comic), I have a nightmare. An octopus is trying to catch me to drive a stake through my heart. I can see my mother, but she cannot see me or hear me scream. Luckily my parents have come home. They wake me up and comfort me and I tell them about the octopus but not about the stake. My father tells me that if I am afraid I’ll dream of something, the thing to do is to remember it consciously before I go to sleep. Then I won’t dream of it. For nights afterward I religiously intone “Octopuses and vampires, octopuses and vampires” before I go to sleep. It works. I don’t dream of them. I also don’t buy any more vampire comics.
    My mother has a problem with me. I am finishing my books too quickly. We get home from school and long before bedtime I have finished the books from the library and am demanding more. In desperation she lets me browse among her books. I pick out a heavy red and gold volume of the Arabian Nights. “It’s all right,” she assures my father, “it’s only the Lane edition.” And I enter yet another new world. A world of Oriental souks and magic and djinnis. I am fascinated by the way djinnis can emerge from lamps, bottles, jars—in fact from anything. The world has undreamt-of possibilities. During the day I am at school and in the evening I am sunk completely into this firelit world of magic.
    The week rolls around and it is going-out night again. I have my bath and my chicken soup and get into bed. My parents tuck me in and kiss me. I lie on my side in bed, gazing at the wall. The night-light is burning. Slowly, slowly, the wall begins to move. I stare at it. It splits down the middle and swings slowly and silently open. In front of my eyes appears a giant black djinni with a shaved head. All he wears is a Tarzan-like swimsuit in leopard-skin, and his bulging arms are folded across his bare chest. Behind him appears the vampire in the black cloak. He is grinning widely and his long teeth are dripping with blood. For long seconds I am mesmerized; then I unfreeze. In a flash I am out of bed and on the chest of drawers under the window.
    My parents are still in the courtyard when they hear the sound of banging against glass. They turn and look up. A small figure in a white nightdress performs a demented dance behindthe darkened windowpanes. Fists hitting at the glass, mouth wide open in a silent scream. They race back up the stairs, unlock the door, and rush in. I am still on the chest by the window as, hysterical, I explain what happened. They tell me it cannot be and try to laugh at me. But whatever they tell me is no use, for it has been and I have seen it. They are not able to explain it away.
    My father sits in the living room and my mother comes and goes between us.
    “I must go down now and you must go back to bed.”
    “No.” I am hysterical and crying.
    “Daddy says he’ll be very cross with you.”
    “No.”
    “Daddy says there won’t be any new toys or books till Christmas.”
    “I don’t want any.”
    I know now my parents are neither omnipotent nor omniscient. They cannot stop the vampire from appearing, but at least they can be there when he arrives. I insist that they stay in and I win. I will not be left alone after this. And I am miserable.

1964

    I stood in the snow, freezing and waiting for the bus. I was lonely. I had woken