Page 29 of One Last Smile

Minnie. That’s her name. Minerva Montclair. Twenty-seven years from now, she’ll go missing, just like Annie.

“Silly Mary,” Minnie says, still facing away. “I went missing a year ago.”

I look down at my hands and rather than the smooth, soft skin of youth, I see the rough, leathery fingers of a fifty-year-old woman. “That’s right,” I say. “I’m looking for you. I’m going to find out what happened to you.”

“What do you mean what happened to me?” she asks. “I’m dead. I was killed. Annie was killed, too. You know that, right? You know that someone took her and used her and killed her and left her broken body somewhere to rot, and no one ever found her.”

“Be quiet,” I snap. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course I do. It happened to me too. Someone took me and killed me and left me to rot. No one ever found me. I’m dead and gone. Oliver fucks different girls now, and he doesn’t think of me anymore except to compare his new lovers to me. Eliza fucks different men and thinks how lucky she is that her body still works while mine is food for maggots.”

“Stop this,” I hiss, my voice thready. “Stop this at once!”

“Why? Is it not proper of me to swear?”

She laughs, a harsh, brittle sound like the shattering of a crystal glass. I take a step back, but my feet don’t move, and when I try to turn, my head doesn’t move either.

“That’s what happens,” Annie says, and it is Annie now. The shoulders are broader and the figure taller. “People use other people, and when they’re done using them, they discard them. It’s brutal, but that’s how it always is. You’re no different, you know.”

I open my mouth to protest, except now my lips won’t move either. I’m not sure if I’m actually trembling or if, once more, my body is frozen.

She turns to me, and in place of her eyes are empty black holes. “Of course it is. You used me to feel good about yourself. As long as you made a token effort to care for me and protect me, you could feel better about letting Mother burn me when I was a toddler.”

That’s not true, I plead silently.

“It is,” she says, replying to my unvoiced protest. “And when I went missing, you gave eloquent speeches about how you’d never rest until I was found, but the moment Detective Huxley offered you a way out, you took it. That’s you, Mary. Always looking for the way out.”

No, I reply voicelessly. No, it’s not.

“You used Mom to feel better about the shitty life she gave us. When Dad died, you imprisoned her in a life she hated and told yourself you were caring for her, but you weren’t. You were forcing a woman who felt caged her whole life to live in a smaller cage so you could watch as little by little her spirit broke down, whittled away until it was as small as yours.”

No! I shout inside my head. That’s not true! I did it for you! I hated her for what she did to you, and I was getting her back!

“No, you weren’t.”

I look closely and realize it is Minnie once more. She smiles at me with her pert mouth and says, “And now you’re using me. You hate that you abandoned Annie, so you’re trying to avenge me so you can look at yourself in the mirror and convince yourself that you’re good and strong and brave, but you aren’t, Mary. You’re only another vampire.”

She turns away from me and tilts her head. Two crimson dots appear on her neck, and as I watch in horror, blood begins to pour out of them. Iron hands seize my arms, and I am dragged toward the bleeding specter. I look in horror to either side and see Alistair on my left and Lucas on my right. Their faces wear the same flat stare my mother wore when she watched Annie stick her hand in the boiling pot.

I struggle against my captors, but their strength is beyond human and slowly, inevitably, they bring me to the porcelain-white form of Minnie.

“Drink, Mary,” she commands.

Alistair’s hand presses on the back of my head and forces it down toward the two crimson pools on Minnie’s neck. I struggle and fight, but to no avail.

“Help!” I cry out. “Help me! Please!”

“There’s no help for you,” Annie says.

***

I gasp and moan, “No, no, please, God, no…”

I feel something warm and coppery on my tongue and cry out, sitting bolt upright in the bed. My heart pounds in my chest, and my head turns wildly, looking for any sign of my tormentors.

They’re not there. The bedroom is empty.

Bedroom. I’m in my bedroom. I’m not in the forest. I’m in the Carltons’ house. It was only another nightmare.

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