Chapter Two

A vampire.

Patrick shook his head again, eyes back on the closed curtains. An idea formed as there was one way to test the statement of this mysterious note, wasn’t there?

The sun was coming up.

Patrick gave one nod, stepped determinedly up to the window, and grasped the curtains with either hand. He was about to throw them open with a flourish and greet the day with a chuckle when he found himself frozen pre-throw.

He couldn’t move his arms.

His fingers grasped the curtains in a vice-like grip, keeping them shut rather than opening them.

Patrick would have panicked if the whole thing wasn’t so utterly confounding.

He let go, took a step back, hands on his hips as he tried to assess the situation.

”I’m not a vampire,” he said firmly. ”Like I wouldn’t know if I was…”

The simple presence of that newness when he woke returned. Something powerful inside, like a seed that was ready to sprout at a moment’s notice.

But that was impossible.

Why wasn’t he empirically rejecting the idea? Why was his brain turning the word over again and again as though it might stick. It wasn’t going to stick. For obvious reasons like how vampirism wasn’t real. There was no evidence anywhere that vampirism could exist. The more he thought it, the more his rational side was taking over. It calmed him.

Whatever was going on with him there was a perfectly reasonable explanation.

The note—a prank.

The inability to open the curtains—some delayed sleep-related muscle deficiency.

The memory gaps from the night prior—the selectiveness of the brain was scientific fact; for some reason it had chosen to delete how he made it home last night.

Perhaps something awful had happened and the screeching tires were hiding something much more sinister. Did he witness a murder? Was it really a woman screaming that he kept hearing and his brain, to protect him, had distorted the distressing memory into something else entirely.

Oh, God.

What if the note was some sick tease from the murderer.

What if the murderer had brought him home and this was the beginning of some twisted game? I couldn’t let you die, the note said. Like it was mocking him, telling him death was still coming for him. He just wouldn’t know when.

Just call Gavin, he thought.

Yeah, that sounded like a good idea.

Unfortunately for him, his phone was out of battery. He plugged it in, wondering if he might, in fact, be an idiot. He hadn’t had a drop to drink last night and yet he’d somehow blacked out. Was that even possible?

His phone lit up, the battery charged enough for him to call Gavin, preferably to yell at him for being a wanker and always taking everything too far.

But Gavin didn’t pick up.

”Wanker,” Patrick grumbled, hanging up.

Fine. There was nothing more to it. It wasn’t even nine o’clock yet and oh fuck! Patrick couldn’t believe he’d forgotten he had class in less than an hour. His first class with a professor he was desperate to impress. He had already made a plan for how their first conversation would go. He’d drawn a goddamn diagram of the probability he’d screw up and asked Sally to score it! Fuckadoodledoo, time the wake up! Whatever this mystery was he would have to solve it later. He couldn’t miss this class. Professor Waters was notorious for never allowing anyone into his good graces and Patrick wasn’t going to fail at gaining access before he’d even tried.

He pulled his clothes on, brushed his teeth, ignoring how his mouth felt like it had been set on fire, gathered his tattered briefcase in one hand, shoved his half-charged phone into it, and went up to the door.

He stood there for a moment as though he’d completely forgotten how doors worked or, rather, why he needed it open but then he reached for the doorknob.

And paused again, fingers barely grasping the brass.

No, not possible.

But it wasn’t only possible, it was happening. The same thing as with the curtains. He couldn’t move a muscle, he couldn’t even jiggle the handle. He couldn’t get the door open because his damn hand wouldn’t even so much as close around the doorknob.

He gritted out the words between clenched teeth.

How was this possible? It wasn’t. It was impossible.

He could fix this. He could overcome it. He would win.

He closed his eyes. Concentrated as hard as he could on what the sensation of grabbing the doorknob should feel like. The cold metal, the soft turning motion of his wrist. He tried to push himself, to force his hand to do his bidding, his whole body tensing until he made a noise of aggravation and stepped back.

He wasn’t leaving the room.

His bottom lip trembled and he pushed back on the overwhelm with a soft huff. It wasn’t that he’d been brought up in a household where men didn’t cry—even though his mother was a fourth generation Catholic and his father had never cried or so much as teared up in front of his son—but it was more a need not to lose it.

Not fifteen minutes in.

He headed back into the bathroom, switching on the light, staring at his reflection.

”Still have one of those,” he concluded.

He didn’t feel different. He wasn’t craving blood.

He tried to move at super-speed but since the room was so small it was difficult to gauge if he was running like normal or if he’d gain momentum if he had more space to move around. He didn’t feel like he could move faster, though. He jumped up and down a few times to see if he could reach the ceiling but no dice. He kneeled down next to the bed, grabbing into one of the thick wooden legs, attempting to snap it in half but the exertion only made his teeth hurt from clenching them again.

The sensation in his gums gave him an idea and he pushed his fingers into his mouth, dragging them over his teeth, searching for fangs or anything fang-like, but his teeth were just as they’d always been.

He wasn’t craving blood either.

He really wasn’t hungry at all.

He decided it would be a good idea to sprawl himself on his back on the floor, eyes once more on the ceiling. He rested his hands, one on top of the other, on his stomach and thought, with some bafflement, that vampirism so far sucked the proverbial big one.

He remembered one time when he was five years old he had seen a bat for the first time. It had been flitting like something possessed between the trees of his grandmother’s garden. She’d told him it was chasing the flies and mosquitos but he’d wondered if perhaps it was lost and trying to find its way home.

The memory makes him move his hands to the place of his heart, pressing down on the sensation of nostalgia spreading through him.

His grandmother’s garden was his favorite place in the world as a kid. He’d spent whole summers there. She’d taught him everything she knew about how to make even the most stubborn plant thrive. With the memory comes every sensation he used to experience while spending time kneeling by flowerbeds, weeding in the shade, cutting the grass with the ancient lawn mower. The smells, the calm, the sense of belonging. He found himself reveling in recalling it all.

Then the memory morphed into his first date with Sally. He’d opted for Oxford’s very own botanic garden, hoping he’d be able to wow her with his knowledge of flora and fauna. He had not disappointed himself. Her smile had been so bright that day that he’d thought it could power a whole city—hell, a whole country—if anyone could figure out the math of how to tap into the voltage. Then she’d teased him to stop smiling and he’d realized he could probably power a country or two and that quite obviously, if they chose to stick together, they’d easily solve all the world’s problems. As long as she kept teasing him and he kept smiling about it.

His mind drifted to their first meeting. It had been during week 0 at Oxford, both equally giddy and terrified at the grandeur of the place. They’d bonded over the fact that they’d both brought the exact same trail mix in a ziplock bag, surreptitiously trying to sneak themselves nuts and Maltesers when none of the other students were looking.

Well, Sally had thought no one was looking but Patrick had been. In truth, he hadn’t quite been able to look away. Not after first spotting Sally walking down the aisle of chairs in the auditorium where orientation was partly taking place. She had appeared as if aimlessly searching for a spot with her name on it, which had been endearing, but once he clocked her habit of sneaking snacks, he’d known he was done for. The compulsion to know what mix she’d brought had been overwhelming; enough so for him to approach her to find out. He wasn’t very prone to idle conversation but she’d launched into such a passionate rant regarding raisins that he’d become besotted within a minute.

The taste of chocolate mixed with cashews was suddenly so stark on his tongue that it brought on a frown. All of the details of the memories were shockingly clear: the smells and the sounds, the tastes, every sensation.

He reached for another one and it presented itself in the same fashion, like a high definition movie projecting itself against his eyeballs. He flattened his palms against them, rubbing into them without it helping at all. Instead, the memory movie sped up and began to roll without him consciously having much to do with it. This was different to the murky dreams he’d had, the strange half-assed flashbacks that had appeared while he was asleep. This time, the details lingered in such a way that his brain was starting to feel seriously cramped for space. He could recall everything with perfect clarity.

What shoes he’d worn on his first day of kindergarten and the scuff to the leather above his left big toe; the smells of the house he’d lived in for the first three years of his childhood before his parents moved to the house they were still currently living in; the first time he saw the ocean when he was barely two; the first time he sat on a swing when he was even younger than that. He began to fear that time would somehow warp and he’d start seeing memories from past lives. As he thought that might actually drive him insane he sat up, shaking his head violently from side to side, quietly begging for the assault to stop.

To his relief his mobile dinged with a message.

”Gavin, you sod,” he swore to himself but the message was from Sally.

He immediately relaxed at the sight of her name; the red heart she’d sent as response to his ’good morning’ making the smile that belonged to her and her alone appear on his mouth. Everything was going to be okay. They’d figure this out the same way they’d been figuring life out since they met—together.

He messaged her and asked her to come over after class. She texted the hand-making-the-OK-sign emoji and he deduced she must be trying to concentrate on the lecture. Her class ended in a couple of hours and, knowing her, she’d stop to grab them lunch and then she’d come right over. He was as familiar with her habits as he was with his own. It brought the smile back, the heaviness in his chest easing up a little.

He barely dared blink, staring at the chest of drawers by the foot of the bed to keep his mind from slipping back onto Memory Lane. He had no desire to trod it. After a minute he began to grow bored of the staring and decided to brave getting to his feet. The movement didn’t cause another avalanche of the past to attempt an overwhelm and when he dared to focus back on one of the memories all that happened was that it was sharper, as if he had just lived through it seconds ago.

But then he had to wonder if even seconds old memories were this detailed ever.

He sat down on the bed, hands on his legs, back straight, and closed his eyes.

There the memories were but this time they weren’t crowding him. It was as though they’d been organized into slides ready for the projector and he’d been approved as the machinist. They weren’t as suffocating anymore, though there were so many of them. He wondered how he was every going to know how to find a specific one but just thinking it made him know instantly which one he wanted to look at.

The moment he stepped off the pavement outside the pub was stark, the scent of rain filling his nostrils, the nip in the air. He took three step across the street. All was quiet, he was about to reach the curb and step back onto the safety of pavement when lights flashed, hitting him a split second before the sound of screeching tires.

He yelled out, jumping to his feet with his arms outstretched and the pain only getting a chance to graze him before he’d opened his eyes against it, cutting it off from reminding him what it felt like to be hit by a car and sent flying. He knew he’d been sent flying without needing the replay. Flashes of memory now because he’d barely been conscious for much longer after being hit. Hands on his shoulders. A man’s voice. Apologizing?

”My god,” Patrick mumbled, automatically doing the sign of the cross for taking the Lord’s name in vain.

A knock at the door made him turn sharply to it.

Sally.

She’d have to use her key.