A Vampire-Smile

It was always the same sound we heard the last few weeks. But here, in the countryside, strange noises are nothing unusual. There are a lot of wild animals from the nearby forest, occasionally looking for food at night. It sounded like a scratchy, soft whimper reaching through the walls of our new neighbor’s home. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Nothing ever happened in our neighborhood. It was a quiet town, with good people and families. 

When our new neighbors from next door moved in, we didn’t greet them immediately. Even though our plots of land were directly next to each other and were only separated by a simple boxwood hedge which was not very high, we didn’t see much of the new family. Their house was particularly ugly, a red brick bungalow, L-shaped with a small undecorated terrace leading to a garden with nothing in it. The house was not big, but had a cellar, with windows that showed to the street and the backyard. There was not much decoration in and around the house. It didn't look very homey, as if they were passing through. When they moved here a year ago, they did so in the middle of the night. Since I am a very light sleeper, I noticed the activities next door, especially in the late hours. 

The property was not too secluded, so you had a good view of it. However, as the curtains of the terrace doors were always closed and the blinds on the remaining windows were always down, it was hardly possible to see anything at all. Therefore, we only guessed what was going on there. My daughters told me that most of the area’s children went a few steps faster than usual while passing the house. In the mornings when my daughters went to school, I usually waited with my coffee mug on the porch until they reached the corner of our street.  

I could see how some kids avoided the house, by passing to the other side of the walkway. Delia and Emma would do the same. Later that day, I asked my daughters why they would do that. 

“Don’t you know mom? This house is haunted”, said Delia.

I told them that there were no such things as haunted houses and that for sure, there must live a nice family next door. 

“But they have no children. And never go outside”, said my oldest daughter.

My youngest Emma knotted and added: 

“Ethan Edwards says that they are vampires and that they eat children. They catch them at night.”

“Why would Ethan tell you such a thing? There are no vampires. I think I have to talk to Mrs. Edwards.”

Delia stopped immediately, putting her fork down and alleged in a very serious way:

 “Mum, really…don’t you see it? They never go outside at daytime.”

“Ethan always tells stuff that scares me”, added Emma.

“Girls, girls, Ethan is a bully. I told you both that I don’t really like it when you play that much with him.” 

Both of them shared a knowing look. 

The first weeks we didn’t see much of the new neighbors. One day my husband Eric came back from work and told me how it happened that he had his first conversation with the man living there. Before that, it was just a “hello” or “good morning”. Eric never noticed anything odd around him in the real world. This was due to his work as College Professor that frequently kept him away from our reality, so he just kept reading his students’ work on the novel Carmillaby Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. As always, when it wasn’t written in ink, Eric didn’t notice any exceptionalities. 

The other day, after dusk I had my first conversation with one of the supposed vampires, while I was bringing the trash out. I first noticed the man from afar. He was standing on his terrace: a tall man with long blond hair, tied to a ponytail on the back of his neck. He stood there in the shadow, holding a cigarette in his left hand. As if he was observing something, he stared piercingly at me, in a way, men look at you at a bar, when they try to hit on you. Well, I thought to myself, why not have a talk right now, it has been a month since they moved next door. 

“Hello, I’m Amber Clark, from next door. We hadn’t had the chance to talk to each other yet. My husband told me that you work in the food industry. What was it again, I’m sorry I always forget about stuff?”

The man looked at me, his mouth half open and his tongue sliding over his upper lip, his eyes where blue, but the right one was more of a greyish, almost silver color. His pale skin tone looked like the kind of face masks that dry onto your skin, like another layer, directly strapped to his skull. His teeth were colored in a tobacco-infused yellow. Just in this moment, I had the chance to catch a glimpse of their living room: A worn-down room that looked smoky and showed old furniture from the 80s or 90s. A grey, dusty cat tree stood in one corner and next to it an old black leather sofa with one of those tiled couch tables in front of it. Not a pleasant look. A corpulent woman wearing a Black Sabbath Fan shirt, with disheveled hair was laying on the sofa, gone in time. She had a cat on her lap an no pants on. The man blew out the smoke. It occurred to me that I noticed that he had a strong accent. It sounded somewhat eastern European. I thought I’d better not ask. With a higher voice pitch than I expected he answered:

“Yes, I’m a butcher.”

My mouth made a movement like I was forming a silent "Oh" with my lips. Obviously, I was feeling stupid of trying to talk like the women around here.  

“I guess this is your wife. Is she from around here or why you chose this little town in the middle of nowhere?”

“Yeah… she’s not feeling so well.” 

“Oh okay. It's a pity one has to stay inside on these lovely summer days.

“Well, the doctors said, that it’s better to avoid the sun.”

“Tell her to get well soon”, I said, doing my best fake smile.  

“Thank you, Mrs. Clarke.” 

The man took a puff of his cigarette, knotted and walked back inside. The next day I met with my friend Chrissy from down the street. 

"Such people normally don’t live here", Chrissy said.

 "They seem, well…trashy, don’t you think?”, she added. 

I liked Chrissy; she was my only friend here. She was kind and generous, yet sometimes overly particular about appearances and status. Every now and then she reminded me of a modern version of Jayne Mansfield.  She mimicked the opinions of people who were more concerned with superficialities. She had done very well for a waitress from a trailer park. Her husband was 20 years older than Chrissy and they were living a comfortable life, with skiing trips and diving on Bali.  

“I don’t know… we didn’t really have a conversation. His wife is sick did you know?”

“Don’t get too attached, Amber. They won’t be here forever. Those people don’t belong here. Anyways… what do you think of a sexy vampire as Halloween costume?”

The people in this town, especially in our street, were of an elitist kind. This place was not very big, and rumors spread quickly, so everyone knew that the family of the dentist had a second family out of town. One greeted and asked about the wife and children, how it goes at work, these typical neighborhood conversations. No one really talked to the tall blond man. His house had no garage, nor an expensive car, nor a dog or any children. I was the only one talking to the tall blond man. Mostly, when we talked, he was standing in the shadow of his terrace, smoking. During summer our family spend the time mostly outside, playing in the backyard and barbecuing. My great passion is to restore vintage furniture. Therefore, on the weekends I try to visit as many antique shops and markets as possible in the area. Sometimes I would sell a few finished pieces on Etsy. However, we never saw our neighbors sitting outside together or having a barbecue together.

Meanwhile the visits became more frequent. Sometimes there was a man with dark hair, a thin mustache and a really ugly blue sweat suit, that couldn’t cover his bulging stomach. They only came when it was already dark outside. The first time he had a girl by his side. It looked like it was his girlfriend. But then the next weeks, he always brought another girl. 

My youngest daughter has always had terrible nightmares that would not let her sleep. She used to crawl in bed with us. Occasionally she would wake up screaming and crying.  But it hadn't happened for a long time. One morning she told me that she had heard a strange noise that she had noticed many times before. Then the nightmares started again. Emma claimed to have seen a tall man in the corner of her room, reaching out for her with his long, pale hands. 

            It was autumn and the leaves were falling from the trees one by one and lined the streets as if it was a red-brown and yellow ocean. During this time, one saw less and less of our neighbors. Just the visitors kept going and the noises still were there from night to night. A kind of whimpering. Sometimes a crying. My eldest daughter also complained more and more about hearing a scratching sound that seemed to come from the direction of the neighboring house.

It was on Halloween night when my daughters went out trick or treating. They ringed every house except the one next to ours. Later they told me that Ethan Edwards was bullying them. He stole their bags full of candy and dared them to ring the bell of the neighbor’s house, so they would get their candy back. We heard the screams of Emma coming from next door. Eric and I ran out. Next thing I saw Delia holding Emma’s hand and running to our driveway. The door from the neighbor’s house was open and the tall man was standing in front of Ethan Edwards. He grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up. Without saying anything, he put him down again. Everything happened so fast, I couldn’t really get in touch. Stumbling and obviously terrified, Ethan ran as fast as he could back home. I was ready to shout at our neighbor, when Delia and Emma came running to me. I saw an Egg in Emma’s small hand. One look revealed everything. They had thrown several eggs at our neighbor’s front door. The tall man was already gone. 

In the evening we were watching the news; a mother with tears in her eyes was giving a speech, begging the police and people to help find her 17 old daughter who went missing eight months ago. Later I often had sleepless nights, seeing the blond long hair with pink tips that were just in fashion and her big Bette-Davis-like eyes, fighting the feeling in my gut that something bad was going to happen. What would I do? 

The next day the clouds where hanging grey and gloomy above our neighborhood. There was our neighbor, standing and smoking on his front porch. I wanted to apologize for the incident. 

“Good morning! I’m sorry about yesterday. My daughters, they didn’t mean to disturb you. And I’m very sorry for what happened with your front door.”

The tall man had his hands in his pockets and looked to the floor. Then he took a cigarette out of a package. I went closer until I was standing beside his porch.

“Sure – kids. It’s just that we like to have our privacy. You know, my Sarah, she is not alright.”

“Sarah, your wife?” 

“Yes, yes. She’s been ill for a few years now. The doctor’s said that its’ temporary. She needs to rest.” 

Confusion hit me. I had been seeing a lot going on there in the past few weeks. 

“Well, then I guess your family is very supportive.”

“Oh, you mean my friends. Well you know I love poker. And she doesn’t mind if I have friends over once in a while. And you Mrs Clarke, do you play poker?”

“Call me Amber, please. No not really. I don’t even know the rules so far.”

He seemed to be in a good mood. Suddenly he kept talking and explaining to me the world of Poker. We never had such a long conversation since then ever again. Poker was his big passion as well as watching professional snooker games. He told me about the most important wins he had and what funny stories happened to him due to this phenomenal game called Poker. I was being distracted by the house; it was falling apart.  My eyes kept wandering around their property, noticing that the color of the walls was fading and that even an abandoned house had more character to it than this. While looking, I wondered why they had wood panels instead of window grills in the cellar. All at once, while I was looking to the left side of the house, where a small part of the window wasn’t covered, I saw something like a hand touching the window. I winced.  

“Mrs. Clarke? I mean Amber, what’s wrong? 

“Oh what? Yes, sorry. Where were we? One night without pants? Yeah… so crazy.”

The tall man was looking in the same direction.

“Sarah, I need to go back to her. It’s time for the medication. See you around, Amber.”

It was one week before Christmas, and we woke up by dogs barking and blue lights. Emma and Delia came running into our bedroom, saying that the police were in the neighbor’s house. Loud cries and tirades of swear words went around. The tall blond man was being led to one car, along with another man I had seen before. I recognized the other man with the dark hair immediately. He was one of the poker friends. We stood out on the driveway, with us several other families, including Chrissy and her husband and the Edwards from across the street. 

It was also the first time that I saw Sarah's face and not just a glimpse of her profile. She had a cut on her head. It bled heavily because her white fan shirt was covered with blood and ran past her mouth. She gave me a Vampire-Smile, showing all of her above teeth, drenched in blood, as if she'd just fulfilled her blood thirst. It baffled me. I couldn’t understand what exactly was going on, until I saw the two girls in the back of another police car. Horror overcame me and spread from my stomach towards my chest, which slowly began to close up and make me gasp for air. That was when I recognized it: the blonde hair with the pink tips and the big blue Bette-Davis eyes. 

Several weeks after the incident, the house still remained a crime scene. Later it turned out that the two men were from Romania and were human traffickers who tried to force a 16- and 17- year old girl into prostitution. Several times they have tried to escape their dark fate and finally the girls managed to save themselves. How exactly they did this is still not fully clear to us. There were held captive for over a year. Once the girls tried to escape before but were caught right away. In the news, they said that the girls finally managed to send a distress call from Sarah’s phone. 

A rich family bought the house, shortly after the incident. We saw how the old house was demolished. They built a new one, bigger, brighter and without a cellar. One that had nothing in common with the old red brick bungalow. 

It was a sunny April’s day and Chrissy and I were having coffee on the front porch, like we used to do, while the first trucks drove on the newly built house. They were filled with a lot of antiques and teakwood furniture. Chrissy was having a blast observing the movement next door and the furniture movers.  

  “They must be rich, don’t you think, Amber? The new house looks absolutely fantastic. Very fancy. What was the new owner again? A Plastic Surgeon?”