Leonardo di Caprio is a Vampire (7 page)

"Hey, what do you think you're doing?" Fisher protested, "This is my mom's house. Do you know my mother?" Arthur didn't seem as though a simple matter of a door was going to stop him, and Fisher was afraid he'd simply walk into the house and startle his mother. The outside lights were off, naturally. She kept them off on Halloween, a sign to the trick-or-treaters to stay away, that she had nothing to give. She didn't celebrate Halloween in any way shape or form. No decorations, no costumes, and certainly no candy to be divvied up among the costumed children. She didn't believe in it, never had, and it was how she had raised her son. In his confusion, his rattled brain didn't register that it wasn't Halloween yet.

They were heading up the walk now, and Fisher was close enough to see that the unfamiliar car was filled to overflowing, clothes and books in untidy piles on the back seat, and half of the front. As if someone were either moving in or out. He saw what looked like a telescope on top of the clothes. He half-remembered that his father had a telescope, but the memory was blurry, uneven, and far too indistinct to recall. He didn't get time to ponder the mystery, as suddenly he was literally yanked into the house—without benefit of opening the door. One moment they were outside, the next they were inside.

"How… what did you do?" Fisher demanded of his guide. Arthur shot him a look filled with pity, shaking his head.

"You're a bit slow about this whole ghost thing, aren't you? We walk right through walls, doors, windows, whatever the job takes."

"But I'm not a ghost," Fisher protested.

"Tonight you are."

Before Fisher could protest that sentiment, he heard voices approaching. Down the stairs came two people, in the midst of an argument. With a start he recognized the man as his father, just the way he remembered him from the last time he'd seen him, way back when he was ten. He'd seemed father-old to him then, but now he realized he was only in his thirties, probably mid to early thirties.

"Go on, leave then, leave if that's what you want to do." That was his mother's voice, cold, controlled, and emotionless. "He doesn't need you and I certainly don't either."

They had reached the base of the stairs. His father held a suitcase in one hand, an album in the other. Could it be a photo album? But why? His mother had always said that his father had wanted to leave, but she would never elaborate on the reason that he did. He felt like he was eavesdropping on a private conversation, and yet he couldn't keep himself from listening. Without thinking he pressed back into the shadows. Arthur, or whatever his name was, laughed.

"They can't see us. Trust me. Watch." He walked up right beside Fisher's mother and leaned impudently against her with one elbow, while staring straight at his father. Neither of them paid him any attention. Fisher relaxed slightly, but he still felt creepy about the whole situation.

"I can't stand seeing what you're doing to him. You're raising him to be just like you. No feelings, no heart… You're killing his imagination. What kind of parent doesn't let their child believe in fairy tales or trick-or-treating on Halloween?"

"Nonsense, I treat Fisher like an adult, and I don't fill his head with nonsense. No son of mine is going to grow up wasting his time on fantasies. This is the real world, Robert, and it's time you joined it!"

Fisher flinched at her words, on behalf of his father, who shook his head and sighed. She had always led him to believe that his father didn't care, but that's not what it sounded like to him. Of course, he didn't really know. Appearances could be deceiving—he tried to make excuses for his mother. She was the one who'd always been there for him, raised him, taken care of him, after his father left. Loved him. But somehow he got the impression that his father loved him too.

"He's just a boy, Beatrice, please. Let him believe and let him dream. And don't make fun of his stories."

His mother's face hardened into a mask, even more than he thought humanly possible. "No, if he wants to write, he can be a journalist. Real writing. Not imaginary stuff. Not my son."

"He's my son too."

"Not anymore." Harshly. "Don't bother to call us, I've had the number changed, and you won't be able to get it. And I'll get a restraining order if you so much as set foot in this neighborhood again. Just go away and leave us alone, so that we can live."

"If I thought that you would, I'd be happy to," he sighed, hefting the album higher into his grasp. "Your idea of living is not living, Beatrice. Why did you have to change? Why?"

Fisher's mother said nothing, maintaining a stony silence.

"Can I please just say good-bye to him, please, Beatrice?" Fisher held his breath, waiting for the answer, even though he knew what it must be. Must have been.

"No. Just go." When his father looked as if he were going to make a move toward the rest of the house, she narrowed her eyes. "Don't make me call the police."

Without another word, he left the house. Fisher stared after him, even after the anticlimactic closing of the front door kept him from view. Even after he heard the engine start up, and then die away. His father seemed to care about him, he really did. Stories? What stories? Those silly things he wrote when he was just a child? He barely recalled those. She'd taken them away from him. And he hadn't written anything else fiction-wise unless you counted his novel. And see how that had turned out. She'd been right, of course. Journalism was real; fiction was just a lot of pipe dreams and hallucinations. And yet he couldn't help but remember that Hunter had always liked his writing.

Fisher's mother passed right through them, moving into the house. When he started to follow, Arthur caught his sleeve and yanked him back.

"No, we don't have time," he answered Fisher's unspoken question. "Gotta go. I told you before, we don't have all night." He tightened his hold on Fisher, dragging him through the front door and out of the house once more. "Don't you know that life is the farce which everyone has to perform? This one has to go on without us, we have other places to be."

Fisher opened his mouth to protest but hadn't gotten even one syllable out when they were suddenly in another place completely. His head reeled in the same way as when he was a child, and he had spun himself about in circles until he had fallen to the floor laughing. He and Hunter, actually. They'd laughed themselves silly over nothing in particular other than the giddiness brought on by their spinning antics. Deep hard belly laughs which multiplied as laughter often does when shared. He'd forgotten all about that until now. Those days were such a very long time ago. Those immature days of youthful follies. Carelessness and irresponsibility. But in the back of his mind, he seemed to remember that they'd had fun.

Once his eyes stopped bouncing around in his skull, Fisher took stock of his new surroundings. The first things he noticed were rows and rows of bookshelves, stretching from floor to ceiling. Books of all colors and sizes, as far as the eye could see. They were arranged in rows, traversed by aisles. Arthur pulled him down first one aisle, then another, zigzagging him about as Fisher came to the slow realization where he was—his high school library. There was a good reason that it should be familiar to him—he'd spent a lot of time here during the four years he had attended the school. It had been a source of great pleasure to him, as well as a refuge.

So why was he here and what exactly was going on? He had stopped questioning the how, as no sensible answers seemed to be forthcoming from this Arthur fellow. He was just trying to make some sort of sense of this, figure out why they seemed to be re-visiting scenes from his past. And why was this guy who looked just like Leonardo di Caprio quoting Rimbaud? Nothing made any sense to Fisher.

They'd arrived at a table set apart from the others. It was big enough for four, but only two figures sat there. It was on the tip of Fisher's tongue to apologize to them, but the first thing he realized was that it would do him no good, as he was invisible to them. Secondly, he recognized them for who they were—himself and Hunter. Young men, teenagers obviously. Back in their high school days, hanging out together at the library.

Fisher sat on one side of the table. He wore black jeans and a Grateful Dead t-shirt—one Hunter had gotten for him. He would put it on at school and take it off before he went home, in order to evade his mother's notice. He was poring over a notebook, ballpoint pen racing across the page. Hunter, he noticed, was sprawled across the two chairs on the other side, reading. He wore a Led Zeppelin t-shirt. It was a tight fit which only served to accentuate his build, and a pair of tight jeans which almost seemed painted on. Fisher was so enraptured at the sight of his friend that he completely forgot the presence of his guide.

Arthur, probably bored with Fisher's obsession, was peeking over the shoulder of the studious younger Fisher as he wrote, reading silently along with his writing. "Hunh." A noncommittal grunt. "Guess I've read worse."

Fisher found himself shaken from his self-imposed reverie at the left-handed compliment. Only then did he realize what it was they were doing there. What he was doing, actually. Hunter was just being Hunter, keeping him company, while he was working on his novel. That piece of tripe. How embarrassing. Even if his friend did insist on reading every bit of it as he wrote it. He tried to shield the newborn words as they spilled from his pen, to prevent the Leo di Caprio lookalike from reading it. That did no good as Arthur seemed to be able to look right through him. Just then the Hunter from the past spoke.

"Fisher, almost done with the next chapter?"

"I said, why didn't you—" the ghost began again, but Fisher wasn't listening.

"Hush, I can't hear Hunter," he shushed him, straining to hear the conversation between the two. Even though he'd lived through it once, already.

Hunter leaned across the table. He reached for the notebook, and tried to turn it in his direction. The startled Fisher managed to keep his grip on it, mostly by dint of sheer luck. "What? It's not ready."

"Fisher, you're amazing." Hunter never moved his hand, which now lay atop Fisher's own. The younger Fisher could feel, as well as see himself blush, but whether it was at Hunter's words or his touch—well, he wasn't ready to admit to himself, much less anyone else. "You're going to be a famous writer someday, and I'll be able to say I knew you when."

"Yeah, sure," Fisher managed to mumble, torn between glancing down at the words on the page, or into the handsome face of his friend.

Fisher watched the tableau with some fascination. Had Hunter always looked at him that way, and he'd never noticed before? Or did his own recent burst of intuition cause him to look at the past in a different way? Knowing that he could neither be seen nor felt, he dared to reach across to the dream Hunter, his intention being to caress his cheek, but his entire hand went through him, no more substantial than a mist. Naturally. He sighed, even as Arthur chuckled.

"You are so smitten with him, you're worse than Verlaine, and he had it pretty bad for me. C'mon, we don't have time to waste here, I think you've seen enough."

Before Fisher could protest, Arthur grabbed his sleeve, and the library, and the two boys at the table, were gone.

This method of transportation did not improve with repetition, the nauseous Fisher decided. Once the world had stopped spinning around him, and he found himself able to resist the urge to retch, he rose from the position he found himself in—upon his knees in the grass—to take stock of the situation. To see if he could figure out where he was. And when. He was catching on real quick that time was an obvious variable in this changing scenario, and it wasn't just a matter of his physical location, but temporal too.

His eyes were met with a familiar sight. Which made the where quite obvious. This was home. Their home, his and Hunter's. Now to discover when.

Without waiting for Arthur, Fisher strode up to the front door and through it—he was getting the hang of this ghost thing—into a virtually bare house. For a heartbreaking moment he wondered if he was seeing into the future. A future in which Hunter had moved out.

He wandered through the hall and into the living room. A rather shabby couch with delusions of grandeur held court in the middle of the room. Before it sat a small television set on a cheap stand that looked like something you might pick up at a garage sale or a flea market. And there were he and Hunter, sitting on the couch together, drinking cheap wine from a bottle.

Oh yes, he knew now what was what, and the thought produced a smile. They had just moved into their house, this was them eight years ago. They didn't own very much yet, just starting out and all, both of them having just moved out of their parents' houses. Most of their money had gone into the down payment, and a few repairs that had to be made before they could move in. But they didn't care. They celebrated their first night in the house with a $2 bottle of cheap white wine, laughing and making plans for the future, and how they wanted to fix the place up. That sofa was long gone now, replaced by something a bit sturdier. But while they had had it, they had spent a lot of hours in its floral embrace, watching television, listening to music on a stereo which wasn't there yet, and talking.

Always talking. It was amazing how they never ran out of things to talk about. Never.

Except now. Now, when Fisher couldn't even tell Hunter what was on his mind and in his heart, for fear of losing him.

Fisher became aware of Arthur's presence when the other leaned against him, rather heavily, placing his chin on Fisher's shoulder as he took in the rather domestic scene before them.

"You two make a lovely couple." He sighed in an overly dramatic fashion.

Fisher tried to push him backwards, but the annoying spirit seemed to have the ability to make himself substantial when he chose, and he never budged. "We aren't a couple," Fisher replied sharply.

"Oh yeah, you are, you just don't know it. I could see it at the library. The way you look at him. The way he looks at you. Why don't you admit it? And be grateful you were born into a time that doesn't demand that two men hide their affections for one another, as I was."