The House at the End of the Cul-de-Sac

No one knew exactly how the rumor had started. It may have been her appearance; pale skin, red lips, dark eyes sunken into deep sockets. It may have been her choice of location; the house at the end of the cul-de-sac had been uninhabited for as long as I had been alive. The lawn was badly overgrown, the roof was missing shingles, and the paint was cracked. Or it may have simply been her timing; the moving truck pulled up, unannounced, at the beginning of October. The air had turned raw and biting, and the days were dark. Our mothers peered out suspiciously from behind living room drapes. She arrived with nothing but a shiny black handbag and the contents of the truck. No husband, no children, no explanation. By the time the gossip had been whispered between every child on the street, it had hardened into fact: Ms. Lucy-Anne Owens, recent transplant to Cedarwood Drive, was a vampire.

The day she arrived, my mother sat at our kitchen table calling every woman in the neighborhood. My brother William and I were in the living room, planted in front of The Road Runner Show, and I watched out of the corner of my eye as my mother fidgeted with the telephone wire, wrapping and unwrapping it around her wrist as she spoke.“Did you know someone was moving in?... Of course not!… No, I don’t think she does … and she shouldn’t expect to, dressed like that!” 

The grownups never confirmed our suspicions, but we knew that they knew. She frightened them, or at least made them uneasy. The Community Alliance didn’t drop off a sheet cake or a basket of muffins at her door, as they usually did with new neighbors. Our nannies offered her no friendly greetings on the sidewalk. Henry Richardson swore he heard his mother hiss at his father behind their closed bedroom door: “Don’t you think about going near her. Don’t you even look at her!” And as William and I spied on the Cedarwood Ladies Book Club meeting taking place in our sitting room one Saturday, we noticed Lucy-Anne Owens had not been included.

“Yeah, stupid. You can’t invite a vampire into your house. That’s how they get you,” William explained, like I was the dumbest person in the world. He explained most things to me like I was the dumbest person in the world, and I couldn’t really argue, because he was two years older than me and a boy and could already read chapter books. “Vampires aren’t allowed to come into a house unless you invite them in. If Mom invited Ms. Owens, she would come in and butcher all of us and suck our blood out.”

“Oh.” I believed him, although it was difficult for me to imagine Lucy-Anne Owens butchering anyone. Actually, it was difficult for me to imagine Lucy-Anne Owens doing anything. As I rode my bike around the cul-de-sac I would stare at her house, trying to summon any image of what she might be doing inside. I tried to picture her folding laundry or washing dishes, but I couldn’t. Did she even own dishes? Did she make lemonade or cook pot roasts? I couldn’t imagine her in an apron. When I had seen her on the street, she wore clothes like nothing I’d seen on a woman - tight black pants, work boots, shapeless men’s dress shirts that hung down below her knees. She didn’t wear jewelry (“No ring,” my mother had observed, her voice radiating disgust), and her face was free of makeup except for an ever-present streak of brick red lipstick, the color more like a bruise than blood. She looked like no one I’d ever met on Cedarwood Drive. “Of course she doesn’t,” William had said. “She’s not from here, dummy. She’s from Transylvania.” 

The first Sunday after Ms. Owens arrived, everyone noticed she was absent from church. “If she takes a step inside, she’ll explode into flames,” Caroline Clark told the circle of children gathered outside after the service. “I heard she’ll explode if she even looks at a cross,” Billy Lewis countered.  “My mom said she’s a heathen.” It seemed the adults only spoke of Ms. Owens in hushed voices, so it was up to us to put the pieces together. We gathered in basements, in backyards, in treehouses, to share any shreds of information we had gathered. According to the parents of Cedarwood Drive, Ms. Owens was a widow, a divorcee, a spinster, a hussy. She had come from Chicago, from New York City, from New Orleans, from God Knows Where. She had inherited the house from a dead relative, she had paid for it with Dirty Money, she planned to open a Bed and Breakfast, a nightclub, a brothel. 

Adam Farmer, the oldest (and therefore the most worldly) kid on our street told us she had probably moved here because the people in her last town had chased her away with stakes and garlic. He told us never to go near her house because she drank the blood of children to maintain her youth. “That’s why she looks so sexy. She kills kids and sucks their blood and bathes in it, too. She’s probably 700 years old, but she looks younger than my mom.” He told us he had tried to peer into her back yard and catch her naked in the bathtub, rinsing herself in blood. “How come you can go near her house, huh?” My brother asked. “I’m no kid,” Adam scoffed, spitting a loogie onto the ground and leering. The thought of him looking at her made me shudder, but I wasn’t sure why.

We rarely saw Ms. Owens during the daytime. Even on weekends, as we played kickball in the streets and our mothers tended their gardens and our fathers mowed the lawns, her house appeared deserted, the shades drawn closed tight. She had a light blue Ford Falcon that disappeared from her driveway in the early morning and reappeared after sundown. The car was the same model as my fathers’ - “Ridiculous,” my mother whispered to her friends over large glasses of wine. “What does she need a car like that for?”

 I had no idea where she went every day. William said she probably drove to the cemetery to sleep inside a grave. For the most part, we only spotted her in the evenings. At dusk, as our mothers called us inside for dinner, we would sometimes catch sight of the blue Ford pulling in the driveway. From down the street, I would watch flickers of light begin to illuminate the downstairs windows. These lights would eventually dim and vanish, one by one. Finally, one last light would flick on in the upstairs window, what must have been her bedroom. This light would remain on all night. As I watched, I tried to picture her walking from room to room, fluffing the pillows, turning on the television. But I failed to conjure up any images that seemed even remotely realistic. No matter how hard I tried, all I could see was the grotesque, thrilling image stamped into my brain by Adam Farmer, of Lucy-Anne Owens stripping off her bathrobe and sinking into a tub filled with blood. 

Sometimes, days would pass between sightings of Ms. Owens. Sometimes, her car would be gone when I left for school, and wouldn’t appear until the next morning. Other times, it seemed she would arrive out of nowhere. I would sprint around the corner to chase a kickball, and by the time I returned, her car was parked and the bedroom light was glowing from behind translucent curtains. I tried to pinpoint a pattern to her comings and goings, some way I could predict when I would see her next. But if there was any code, I could not crack it. Her inconsistency baffled me, leaving me feeling foggy and untethered. 

I found myself obsessively counting the days until Halloween. I reasoned that it was the only day we were allowed, even expected, to go onto our neighbors’ porches and bang on the doors. It was the only day the neighbors were obligated to answer. I could never be sure of Lucy-Anne Owens’ whereabouts, but I knew for certain that she would be there on October 31st, because those were the rules of Halloween. Decorations began popping up on every porch and patio. Pumpkins, bales of hay, ugly wooden skeletons we had made in art class that our fathers would painstakingly anchor into the lawns using stakes and balls of twine. Ms. Owens’ porch remained bare. The weeds now snaked up her front steps, and wet, decaying leaves carpeted the driveway. My parents scoffed over dinner.  “There is an understanding,” my father said. “When you move into this neighborhood, there is an understanding.” “Yes, exactly. There is a way things are done for the community.” “She could have at least put out a goddamn pumpkin.” From our window, I could just make out her house at the end of the street, dark and empty. Her house doesn’t need stupid Halloween decorations, I thought. It’s already a vampire’s house. 

“It looks like you two won’t be trick or treating there, I suppose,” my mother had said. My stomach dropped. “Why not?” “Well, I get the feeling Ms. Owens doesn’t like children very much.” Her voice was sharp. My brother mouthed to me from across the table: “Told you. She’s a kid-killer.” He grinned and chomped his teeth. Something burned inside of me. At that moment, I knew I could not obey my mother’s orders. It wasn’t a decision - more like a premonition. I would go to Ms. Owens’ home on Halloween, and there was nothing I could possibly do to stop myself. While this realization was terrifying, it soothed me. I felt a calm wash over me for the first time since Ms. Owens had moved to Cedarwood Drive. If she killed me and drained my blood and bathed in it to keep herself beautiful, there was what had to be done.

The feeling of peaceful resignation carried me until Halloween. Every year, my parents dressed my brother and I up in elaborate costumes. My mother would spend days sewing them from rolls of fabric she kept in a large cardboard box, and then she would present them to us the day before Halloween. I think we both would have been happy dressing as sheet-ghosts every year, but the holiday always seemed to revolve less around our interests and more around our parents’ dignity. “I won’t have you two going around to every damn house on the street with sheets draped over your heads like we can’t afford real costumes,” my father would grumble. This year, my brother was a cowboy, and I was a princess. It wasn’t a costume I would have chosen, but our choices weren’t part of the equation.

That Halloween was unusually cold and bright. Almost all the leaves had fallen from the trees, making the branches look fragile and skeletal. They bent upwards at odd angles, fracturing the sky into small, shattered pieces. The air smelled earthy and wet. As my bus turned onto Cedarwood Drive after school, I saw Ms. Owen’s driveway was empty. Something caught in my throat, and I tried to swallow it down. My mother stuffed William and I into our costumes and sent us out into the pack of screaming neighborhood children. 

I broke away from the crowd the moment I was out of my mother’s sightline. I knew no one would notice. I was one of a dozen princesses. I crept unsteadily down the street in the tiny pink kitten heels my mother had bought for me, until I was just a few yards away from Ms. Owens’ house, then I crouched behind a hedge and waited. I couldn’t tell how long I crouched there. Hours, maybe. My knees grew stiff, and the rough leaves on the hedge scratched against my face. As it got colder, the shrieks of the other children faded. I closed my eyes and listened. I heard the parents at their doors, calling for their kids to come home. 

When I opened my eyes, the car was in the driveway, and she was sitting inside, resting her head on the wheel. I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. I must have been breathing, because I could see the puffs of frozen air clouding in front of my face, but my lungs felt tight and sore. It seemed like ages before she got out of the car and started towards her house. She tread steadily across the ground in dark, mud-caked work boots. Her long jacket streamed out behind her, and I could just make out the silhouette of her denim trousers. She was so close to me, and so remarkable. I didn’t break from my trance until I saw her begin to shut her front door, and I remembered my guise for being there. 

I bolted towards her house, letting out a noise somewhere between a shriek and an attempt at “Trick or Treat!” I caught a glimpse of her red hair, her face turning towards me, and then my body collided with the ground. My little high heel slid over wet leaves and my legs crashed against the pavement. My breath was knocked out and there was a sharp sting on my knee. A crimson stain began to bloom on my dress, soaking through the pink taffeta.

And then she was there, kneeling on the damp ground in front of me. Her eyebrows were knit together in concern. It was an expression I’d seen before, on every teacher or nurse or parents who had seen a child fall. “Oh gosh, kid. Did you skin your knee?” My breath was still gone, and I could only nod. “Does it hurt, hon? Could I take a look?” She peeled my skirt away from my knee, revealing the patch of torn skin, the glint of dark blood. “Alright. You stay here. Give me just one second.” Then she disappeared into her house. For the first time, I could picture her clearly in my mind’s eye. I imagined her readying her bathtub. I imagined her returning to me in a black robe, sharp fangs suddenly bared. I imagined her putting her mouth to the gash on my knee and draining the blood out of my body. I imagined her cold fingers on my neck. And I imagined feeling content, suddenly peaceful again.

She came back with a damp cloth and a bandage. “Okay, let’s get this all patched up.” Her hands felt calloused and warm against my skin as she dabbed at the blood. “Still hurt?” My eyes locked with hers for the first time. “What -” I could barely choke out a word. “Where do you go … What do you do every day?” She smiled at me. “Ah, this and that. Odd jobs, y’know, whatever comes my way. I fix things. Bikes, cars.” My eyes must have widened, because she laughed. I noticed a small gap between her front teeth. “I waitress, I bartend. Whatever keeps me busy. I paint. I make little sculptures. I’d like to be an artist someday, maybe when I’m all grown-up.”

“You are grown-up,” I said, a half-question. 

“Ah, not really. Sure don’t feel like it. I’ll decide when I’m a grown-up, I guess.”

I knew that Lucy-Anne Owens had lived for longer than I could even imagine. She was 700 years old, Adam Farmer had said. But right then she seemed so young, and so vibrant. And I wanted something, something that she had, so badly I thought I might cry. This must be what it feels like, I thought. This must be what it feels like to be a vampire. To want someone else’s blood. To want what is inside someone else so much that you can’t even stand it. The inside of my mouth had turned dry and sour. I was so thirsty.

At that moment I was jolted into awareness by the sound of my mother’s voice calling my name. “That you?” Lucy-Anne asked. Her hand rested on my knee. I wanted to rip the bandage off and tell her I didn’t care, it was okay, she could drain my blood out if that’s what she wanted. Instead, I stood up and ran back to my house as fast as I could. That was the first and the last time I saw Ms. Owens up close.

That night went by in flashes. Now I can only remember small pieces, tiny shards like glass. My mother yelling at me about the bloodstain on my dress. My brother making fun of me for returning home with an empty candy bag. My father asking Where The Hell I’d Been. Sitting at the kitchen table, gulping down glass after glass of water, trying to get rid of the strange, parched feeling in my mouth. And I remember standing in the washroom in front of the mirror and not being able to see myself. I could have sworn, for a second, my reflection was gone. Then I rubbed my eyes, and I reappeared. I was there in my dress, my cheeks red and streaked with mud and tears I didn’t remember crying, and I could just barely recognize my face. 

       Ms. Owens moved away that spring, without plans or notice, just as she had arrived. The next owners of the house at the end of the cul-de-sac painted it yellow and planted flowers in the yard. It became unrecognizable, and I became a grown-up, as I had expected might happen. Now I can almost always see my reflection. Almost always. But sometimes, when I pass by a store window, or I look into my car’s rear view mirror, it’s gone. For a moment, there is no one looking back at me. And then I blink, and I can see myself again.