In Between Fangs

PRELUDE

     THE AIR WAS GLACIAL that evening. It had swept in through the front door and made itself comfortable in our home, unashamedly and relentlessly, as if it was trying to evict us – and it may have succeeded if not for the steaming cups of tea we each held close. Mom, Dad, and I were sitting in the living room across from one Detective Lane, who looked like he'd had too long a day and desired no more than a cooked dinner and a good night's sleep.

"I'm not sure how to go about this, Mr. and Mrs. Rowe," the detective sighed, his accent taking refuge on his African tongue.

"You said you had some questions, about what happened to Graeme?" Mom reminded him in an anxious tone, as if she expected something worse to have happened to the boy in the last twenty-four hours.

"They're questions," – he looked at Mom, and then at me – "for Leslie."

I could read the displeasure in Mom's frown. She did not understand what the police still wanted with me, but I did. I was the closest thing they had to a witness.

"Graeme is still in shock," Lane explained, brushing an exhausted hand over his buzzed head. He put his cup down on the coffee table, leaned his elbows upon his knees to close some distance between us and continued gently. "He told his parents that you know what happened. I need to know what he told you, Ms. Rowe, he won't talk to anyone else about it."

I bit my lip and held my tongue for long enough that my father had to urge me to speak. I shook my head slightly, as if I was trying to forget everything Graeme had said to me, because he had made me promise. Still, I remembered his words in detail, remembered how he had knocked on my bedroom window in the middle of night until I let him inside, and how he had sat on my bed and cried like no tenth-grader had before – another thing I could tell absolutely no one about. He'd told me about a dark alleyway, a voice from heaven and hell, a pair of toxic eyes.

I remembered how he had croaked, shivering in his fear. "She had fangs, Leslie. She was going to kill me."

"Shh. You're okay now, she didn't hurt you," I'd tried consoling him, rubbing my hand in circles on his back, but he only stared blankly at me.

"She would have. She only left because someone else called her away, one of her vampire friends."

My curiosity had wanted to know more, it always wanted to know more, but my sympathy persisted in spite of it. I'd had one question though, and it had been burning in the back of my mind.

"Graeme. Why did you come to me?"

He'd tilted his head and watched me with his puffy, red-stained eyes. "Well, you believe me, don't you?"

It was hard to believe, no matter how many times I played it over in my ordinarily limitless imagination. But I did believe in the supernatural world; it had been my obsession since fourth grade, since I first saw that news report about the bear attacks in the Hills that I knew weren't bear attacks. Bears didn't bite, they ripped apart. But no one ever listened to me.

I'd told Graeme that I believed in it all, that he could trust me not to say a word. It was in that moment that I'd figured it out, why he had come to me; anyone else would have said he was crazy. Detective Lane would say the same thing about me if I disclosed the truth. So, I lied.

"He said it was a bear."