The Spiders' Tale

5. Horror Awaits at Home

The beating sounds were constant. Like tireless percussionists pounding a bass drum to an everlasting beat. Dragomir heard it before, back in the woods with Marius, but he didn’t realize it then. He only noticed it after a few minutes of riding the stallion, and that was when he detected the third beating drum. At first he couldn’t place what they were, but then in the end he knew. They were heartbeats. Sometimes he’d heard his own before, back before he...before his fangs came out. He’d heard it when he was scared. Out of breath. Anxious. But never when he was still and without passion. Even so, he would only have heard his own. To hear another from such a distance was disorienting.

With a frown and a furrowed brow, the boy kicked the horse’s sides and drove him slightly faster back to town. When the woods thinned out and the trees were familiar again, the pounding of distant hearts became more and more distinct the further they went. By the time they’d reached the narrow houses between which he and Marius had entered the forest, there was not an instant gone by without many a heartbeat overlapping the other. The rhythmless mess echoed in Dragomir’s ears, setting his every nerve on edge. 

There was a tingling in his gums and, sliding his tongue over his teeth, he knew his fangs had returned. Startled, he sealed his lips. Whenever he passed anyone he knew on the way to the VanDer house, he offered a curt nod and polite wave, too afraid to risk smiling and showing his teeth. Although his demeanor was that of a calm and perhaps indifferent individual, he panicked on the inside. His pulse rushed and his mind climbed into a flustered, agitated state. The longer his fangs remained outside, the worse this condition became.

It took him a moment to register the looks people gave him. Wide eyes. Curious frowns. Then they whispered. 

“Blood,” some said.

“Death,” muttered others.

Then, to confirm they were talking about him, they rasped, “Dragomir.”

It was when he found a wandering Mariana when he realized it. The four year old child smiled at first when she spotted him and the horse, and in this smile he saw Vivian. The VanDer girls shared similar grins - the kind that brightened up the entire face and left the onlooker feeling a bit more cheerful than he was before. But then Mariana gasped, hands flying over her little mouth.

“Why, Mr. Dodrescu!” she cried, “What on earth happened to you?”

He hesitated, touching his tongue to his teeth in the silence. The fangs were still out, so when he answered the youngest VanDer, his head was turned away. “I have a terrible headache.”

“A headache? I never heard of a headache bloodying up a shirt!” she yelled, keeping pace with the stallion. “And your mouth! Did you lose a tooth?”

Oh. Of course.

The boy looked down. The blood spots on his shirt were bigger than he remembered them. Redder, even. 

“Never you mind, Mariana,” he murmured, wiping his face on his sleeve. The horse continued to its home as if uninterrupted. Mariana ceased to follow, but Dragomir knew she watched his back as he went.

There was a certain, sweet sort of scent in the air that made his stomach growl. He didn’t know how he could be hungry at a time like this, so he dismissed it.

Vivian’s house was now in sight. The horse trotted faster the rest of the way, knowing its destination. Headed the same way from a different path was Vivian herself, her dark hair piled atop her head in fashionable ringlets, and her mahogany red dress billowing out behind her. A breeze picked up, and as she hugged her heavy black cloak to her slight frame she paused.  After listening to the clip-clop of the stallion’s hooves, she looked up and found him.