Samantha Moon Phantasm, page 124
part #9 of Vampire for Hire Series
“Father, thee coddle me too much, but on this I relent as thee so wish. I will beest close, ov’r thither.” Daisy gestured at the stream and wandered off. No sooner did she percheth—I mean perch—beside the water than an army of small woodland creatures came out to her.
Cripes. The girl was a veritable Disney movie. I was a veritable Disney movie.
“Samantha,” said J.C. “It’s so good to see you.”
I blinked at his sudden shift in language. “Yeah. Why did you stop talking like a Shakespearean play?”
“I am who you think I am and I have lived through many years. As one who spends a long time in a new place often does, I have picked up the dialect.”
“Wait. Are you…”
“Neither alive, dead, undead, nor your sire.” He flashed a confusing smile. “I am a simulacrum of all of those things, but truly none. In this world, I am real. In your world, I am fiction. But what is reality but the experiences fed to one’s mind? I am no less genuine than anyone you are accustomed to in the third dimension.”
“You know about the whole dimension thing, too? Why am I the last one to find everything out?”
He laughed. “I know what you know because I am still a vampire, your sire, and know your mind.”
“You’re my sire, but not my sire?”
“Exactly.”
“My brain’s on fire.”
J.C. 2.0 chuckled. “To put it in a way you might better understand, it is quite possible for two nearby parallel dimensions to contain near exact copies of various people, concepts, even objects. A Jeffcock existed in the third dimension five centuries prior to your time there. I existed here in parallel to him. We are the same, yet not.”
“So, like twins?”
“That fails to adequately encompass it, but perhaps it will need to suffice, lest we waste precious time with a belabored explanation that will ultimately prove to be pointless.”
“Is Daisy going to…?”
“No. Not this version of her. You would do well to think of her as a fictional recreation. The way a character in a book is always there, unchanging, each time you read it. I believe we have existed here for many years, yet she is still a girl of sixteen. I would not have been a vampire at this point in my life in your world, yet here I am. Perhaps the Red Rider avoids Daisy here for he fears me in this form. When he took her third-dimensional self, I would have been helpless to stop him.”
I sighed. “Well, that makes me feel somewhat better, that she won’t die. So, she’s stuck here forever?”
We both looked over at her at the same time.
Daisy, or whatever this girl happened to be, sat in the grass by the water, surrounded by rabbits, baby deer, mice, birds, chipmunks… the whole nine. They all climbed over her, perched in her hair, and even appeared to be talking to her. Watching this triggered an upwelling of envy and anger. As with Annie, I didn’t have any ill feelings toward this girl, merely a sense of longing at what had been taken away from me in my lifetime. And anger at the Red Rider.
I already had plenty of that, but hey, there’s always room for Jell-O… or in this case jealousy.
To break my spiral of negative emotions, I pictured Judge Judy reaming out the Red Rider in her courtroom for preying on young girls. Ooh. Compared to that, maybe ramming the Devil Killer into his heart would be letting him off easy.
Still, I couldn’t help but feel a bit like a part of me had been taken away, and I mourned it, wanted it. Maybe I had really seen a fairy when I’d been a little girl. And I allowed my sadness at being poor, worry about being teased at school for being from ‘the poor hippie family’ and all that associated bullshit to drag my thoughts away from the fanciful.
I also expected Elizabeth to make a snide comment at catching me feeling maudlin, missing the magic that had been taken from me, but she surprisingly didn’t open her non-mouth. I would’ve said something about her being smart to keep quiet, but no sense poking a sleeping bear with a stick when I can ignore her.
“Stuck isn’t exactly the best term. Neither she nor I have any sense of being trapped or wanting to be elsewhere. This is our world, perhaps at the happiest it had been for her after my wife died.”
“Wait, if you’re a vampire, how are you out in the sun?”
He smiled. “How are you?”
I held up the ring.
“I am simultaneously a vampire and not. Perhaps that is why. Or I simply choose not to care about the sun.”
“Oh, wouldn’t that be nice.” I sighed wistfully.
Watching Daisy interact with the animals warmed my heart despite making me feel even more like the kid no one picked in gym class. An outsider. “How did you come to be here like this? Doesn’t reliving the same day over and over again drive you mad?”
“It isn’t the same day, it’s the same moment, the same period in our lives. Think of it like days passing but neither of us grow older. A creator captured this point in time, preserving it for eternity.”
“Van Gogh.”
J.C. bowed his head and nodded.
“How did he even know to paint you like this?” I wracked my brain trying to understand. Alternate worlds, multiple stacked dimensions, all of it overwhelmed me to think about. Yet, the Red Rider had escaped via that strange box. The world inside it looked much like my present surroundings, painted.
“That, I’m afraid is beyond my knowledge.” J.C. sighed.
“Are you and Daisy the only people here? How far does this forest go?”
“As far as it ought to. The town is still there where I left it. My daughter much prefers the quiet solitude out here. I imagine the whole world—or perhaps a version thereof—exists here.”
Hmm. They say artists create whole worlds, but I didn’t think they meant to be quite so literal about it. “If the Red Rider found Van Gogh somehow and exploited… wait!” My eyes widened in realization. “He’s like a hub or something. All those paintings could act like the spokes of a wheel, pathways to different dimensions.”
J.C. furrowed his brow. “I’m afraid I do not know much of this rider, only what I am able to see in your mind through our link. Yet, I feel as though I should.”
“The reason you hunted him hasn’t happened yet in this timeline. Perhaps it won’t because this isn’t really a timeline as much as an alternate world with alternate versions of you and Daisy in it.”
“I’d say that wouldn’t explain how I am presently a vampire and know I sired you, but I am sure you have more pressing things to attend to than unwinding a Mobius strip of intra-dimensional logic.”
“I’ve more pressing things to do than unwinding whatever you just said.”
He laughed.
“If I’m right, and Van Gogh is the nexus… there must be something here. I need to go.”
“Of course.” J.C. bowed. “May you find what you seek.”
I thanked him and ran off into the woods. My theory didn’t make much sense, but then again, I’d gone inside a painting. That didn’t make much sense either, at least in terms of what most normal people would consider ‘making sense.’ I had no idea where to go or what exactly to look for. Perhaps following my gut would pan out...
Chapter Sixteen
An hour—as best I could estimate—later, the distant thump, thump, thump of a heartbeat emerged from the placid sounds of the wild.
I couldn’t quite tell if I really heard it or imagined it, but I decided to go toward it. The pulsing never became as loud as it had been in the cave where I’d found Annie, but I continued walking toward the source of the sound until I reached a pastoral clearing. Pale green meadow grass lined a swath of open terrain speckled with flowers of yellow and red. White butterflies darted around, dancing to the trill of unseen birds.
A man in oldish clothing sat on a sizable boulder beside an easel. The canvas waited for his brush, blank and filled with limitless possibility. He stood out from the environment as he constantly shifted back and forth from appearing painted to photographic. Or, I should say, normal, like any other person from my three-dimensional world. His body shifted in an ever-changing swarm of colored lines that faded to standard humanity and returned, like the Eighties music video I’d wandered into had decided to go trippy.
At my approach, the man turned to look at me, revealing a bandage over his right ear.
Holy shit. Van Gogh!
“Hello, Samantha,” said the artist.
“You know me?”
“Of course. You are in my world. You could not exist here if I didn’t know you.”
I walked up to stand beside him. Admittedly, looking at the bright paint lines squiggling in and vanishing so rapidly hurt my eyes, but I didn’t want to flinch away for fear of offending him. “Can you help me find the… creature known as the Red Rider?”
“Perhaps. The entity of which you speak has been trespassing in my realms for a long time. Though, he does no real harm here, merely tramples through crushing flowers.”
“He’s been murdering innocent girls for centuries.”
Van Gogh grimaced. “So sad. There is so much sadness in the world. Tis why I left.”
“Do you know where he is? Not sure why I’m asking you… the angels can’t even locate him.”
“He goes to what you would refer to as the fifth dimension.”
“How does he survive there?”
“I know not. I create worlds; I do not take them apart to see the gears.”
“What’s with the box, the heartbeat?”
“Box?” His eyebrows crept up. “Oh. That. The entity you seek constructed it. He destroyed one of my paintings and used the canvas to line the monstrosity. It is something of an anchor for him.”
“Grr. So I should’ve jumped into the box after him. Dammit.”
“That may have placed you right… what is the phrase, ‘on his tail?’ but you would not have been prepared for the transition in frequency, which could have left you vulnerable.”
“I need to find him. Can you help?”
Van Gogh turned back to his empty canvas. “I’m afraid I’m waiting for the muse to speak to me.”
I furrowed my brows. Okay, time to play the muse.
“Mr. Van Gogh?”
He looked up at me.
With a smile, I gave his brain a subtle poke. He found me entrancing and wanted to paint a scene of me. The sparkle in his eyes told me my suggestion caught on. He sprang to his feet and walked about ten paces away where he arranged me to stand under a tree, reaching up toward a flower on a branch. I put up with his posing requirements, seeing as how he appeared to be the key to my pursuit of the Red Rider. The last time he made eye contact before returning to the canvas, I further prodded him with a desire to paint me into the fifth dimension.
Van Gogh hurried back to his canvas and got to work.
Being undead did wonders for my ability to hold still. Soon after he started, I remembered Kingsley’s admonition not to run off alone… so I filled Van Gogh’s head with images of him, Allison… and my kids. Part of me hesitated at including Tammy and Anthony, but I could no longer deny that both of them had come into power in their own right. Neither remained helpless children in need of protection. The Fire Warrior was a serious badass, and if any being in the universe could get into the Rider’s head, Tammy could. Then again, maybe she shouldn’t look in there. My daughter could barely handle what I imagined he did to those girls. Seeing the truth would break her. Still, she could help in other ways, like sharing ideas among us that he couldn’t hear or react to. Or maybe even forcing ideas into his head instead of reading, perhaps even confusing and disorienting him.
That, and I didn’t want to leave her alone.
Van Gogh flew into a frenzy of waving arms. I hoped time passed differently in this world than mine, as it felt like many hours passed before he finally sagged back to sit on the boulder, out of breath with a look of… Well, let’s just say the last time I saw that expression on a man’s face, Kingsley wore it and we lay in bed together, both quite exhausted.
I resisted the urge to make a ‘was it good for you, too’ joke, and walked over to check out the painting. It caught me off guard mostly because it looked nothing at all like the scene I’d posed for. He hadn’t even included the tree. Rather than stand there like some young French girl with nothing better to do than wander the countryside in summer, he’d painted me standing in the pose of a warrior maiden, my wings out, the Devil Killer held at the ready. A cluster of small animals gathered around my feet, staring up at me with adoration in their eyes. Also, the tiny figure of a faerie stood on my shoulder, in much the same pose as an admiral on the bridge of a battleship heading into war.
Kingsley, Allison, Tammy, and Anthony stood around me, all striking dramatic poses like the cover of an epic fantasy novel. Only our modern clothing broke the vibe. The background exploded in vibrant colors, fuchsia-leafed trees, a green sky with indigo clouds, plants of no kind I’d ever seen before, all covered in fuzzy puffs of pastel blue or yellow. In the distance to the rear left, the silvery gleam of a futuristic metropolis radiated light. Opposite it, the sky darkened, suggesting that way led to a bog or mire.
Great. He painted the cover for National Lampoons goes to Krull or something. Left turn, utopia city. Right turn, the swamp of evil. Something tells me I know where I’ll be headed. Ugh. I also got the sense that touching the painting would have the same effect that touching the one back home did… pull me in.
“Do you know how long I have before I start to disintegrate?”
“Not terribly long, I’m afraid.” Van Gogh offered a sad smile. “However, I will do what I can to protect you.”
“How?”
“Repairing the painting as it fades. But that will only give you more time, as I cannot continue to paint forever. You will need to return home as fast as you are able.”
“Thank you. I understand.”
One of the rabbits he’d added near my foot appeared to be staring at me out from the painting as if alive. In fact, the whole canvas felt more like an opening into elsewhere than a flat image.
Here goes nothing.
I reached out and gently touched the painting...
Chapter Seventeen
With a brilliant flash, the impressionist forest around me changed into the vibrant otherworld in the painting. The scattering of animals gathered around me took only seconds to ‘drink me in’ before they decided to run like hell. Can’t say I blamed them, I am, after all, undead. It still kinda hurt though.
Oh well.
Kingsley, Allison, Tammy, and Anthony all stared at me. For an instant, I felt incredibly glad that the creator in question was Van Gogh and not, say, Raphael or Boris Vallejo—or we’d all be mostly naked… and probably rippling with ridiculous muscles.
“Oh, wow, that worked,” I said on a whispery breath.
“What worked?” asked Tammy.
“Are you guys really here or are you like J.C. and Daisy from the other painting… some kind of copies?”
“Mom.” Anthony put a hand on my arm. “There’s this guy at school who does a presentation about drugs. I think you should listen to him.”
Tammy scoffed. “She’s not on drugs, butthead. She’s just not making any sense.”
“She’s making sense.” Allison looked around. “It’s just a topic that melts down most normal brains… like that movie Inception.”
“Ugh.” Tammy shivered. “That one gave me a headache.”
“I liked it.” Anthony shrugged.
“That’s because you didn’t get it enough to understand that you didn’t understand it.”
“Dork alert,” said Anthony.
I blinked. Okay, maybe Van Gogh didn’t make copies and somehow brought them here for real. Or they’re really damn good copies. Either way, I kept my promise to Kingsley. I wasn’t going to charge in alone.
“Pink leaves are a nice touch.” Allison whistled in awe. “This place is wild.”
“Actually, I think that’s fuchsia.” Kingsley scratched behind his ear.
“What’s fuchsia?” asked Anthony.
“Pink for hipsters.” Tammy folded her arms.
Kingsley feigned offense.
As I turned in place looking around, a bizarre feeling scraped over my awareness. The direction remained constant regardless of how I faced, like I stood at the corner of a building and rubbed against it while spinning.
“Guys.” I pointed in the direction that matched—sure enough at the dark place in the distance. “I’m getting a weird feeling from that way.”
“Yeah. It’s called ‘don’t go to the Forest of Total Creepiness.’” Tammy shook her head. “You know every character in every horror movie sees something scary and messed up and yet they still go there.”
“We’re not in a horror movie,” I said. “And you saw Annie. I have to stop that bastard.”
Tammy, uncharacteristically meek, leaned against me with a ‘not too overt for public’ hug. “Yeah. We gotta.”
“I should have my head examined bringing you two with me to a place like that.” I sighed. “I fail at momming.”
“Nah.” Anthony patted me on the back. “Child services won’t take us away from you.” He waited a moment. “You’d just mind control them.”
“Heh. Funny.” I glanced at him. “True. But funny.”
“Okay.” Allison waved her hand around, summoning a few scraps of dancing light, which orbited my head. “Yeah. Annie’s magic is working. I’m sure you’re feeling the Red Rider’s trail. What she did made the link you have with him much stronger. Enough that it’s probably a physical sensation.”
“Yeah. And it’s pulling me that way.”
“Of course it is,” muttered Tammy. “Into the deep dark woods.”
“What?” Anthony shrugged. “You expected a monster who tortures and kills young witches to live in a little pink house full of kitten pictures or something?”
She gave him the side eye. “No. The Red Rider isn’t that evil.”
