Is the world opening up for Mitchell, or shutting him out? And who keeps Josie safe?
If you're still reading, thanks. I love to hear from you more than anything.
Mitchell and Josie belong to BBC, TW, et al. Thanks for letting us tell more stories about them.
Big thanks to SunnyFla, Carianna, and WhiteHare for all the help and head-pats.
James and Albert are growing quite fond of Mitchell. They like to have people about when they are working. They say it lightens the atmosphere. Sometimes we visit and watch them push paint across canvas and crop giant photo prints of street people and furniture into collages.
We help recruit the audience for a performance. The attendees are ushered into a room. We turn out the lights. Groping in the dark, Albert and James hand out blank sheets of paper, one per person. The lights stay out. The audience murmurs and whispers and giggles, the din growing louder and louder until it sounds like a play during intermission. After five minutes or so, the lights go back on. The room falls dead silent while everyone's eyes to adjust to the brightness. Albert explains that there had been poetry written on the pages, but it escaped in the dark. The piece is over. Bows and thank yous. There's a ripple of nervous laughter, and they shoo everyone out the door. The end.
This time, after the show, we all go back to my place, where we chain smoke and get drunk on gin while playing old scratchy records on the phonograph. Mitchell knows all the words.
Feeling very much at home in my flat, the boys take over the couch. Albert rests his head on James' lap and lies there folding extra paper from the show into airplanes and launching them across the room, where they crumple their paper noses against the windowpanes and skitter to the floor.
Mitchell is sitting in the armchair and I'm coming back from the kitchen with more drinks, when from out of nowhere, a paper airplane glides onto the coffee table, sliding gracefully to a landing in front of James. He turns to see who's thrown it but there's no-one there. With a surprised expression, he picks it up.
"There's something written on this," he says. The pencil scratchings are unreadable until the paper is fully unfolded. "Hm. Look here."
The paper reads, Mitchell is a monster.
"Funny," says James.
Mitchell has gone very still. He glares in the direction the paper plane came from.
"Yes, funny," he says, clearly meaning the opposite. His expression darkens.
A figure resolves in the corner and waves merrily. Shit. Damn. Blast. It's Stephanie. This can't be good.
It's as if Mitchell's been kicked. He winces and wraps his arms tightly around his body. Standing beside his chair, I touch his arm, but he doesn't look up. Vindictive bitch. If she weren't already dead, I'd strangle her.
Albert, who hasn't yet registered our distress, sits up, tilts his head to one side, and scratches the back of his neck. "What kind of a joke is that?" he asks.
"Not much of one," I say, looking reproachfully at Stephanie.
She crosses her arms and stares daggers at both of us. "Come clean," she says. "Or you can stop seeing these friends of yours altogether. I can follow you, you know. It's only a matter of time before I work out how to get to their place."
"Josie, are there mice again?" says Mitchell, a little too loudly. "They've been so noisy the past few weeks."
That's not going to help.
"Mice who can write and throw paper airplanes?" says Albert. He sits back and regards Mitchell critically. "What on earth is going on here?"
Stephanie is adamant. "Tell them. Or I will. They might not be able to hear me, but my handwriting is fine. And I know how to spell 'vampire'."
"This can't happen," Mitchell says.
"She's been hassling me for weeks. Do you want to let her decide how this goes down? She's going to keep coming back."
His mouth tightens to a bitter line. "Why didn't you tell me?"
Should I have? She'd wanted me to, so he'd be thrown off-balance. "You had enough on your mind. She kept turning up, but there was nothing you could've done."
"Okay, now that you're here, what do you want?" he asks Stephanie. His tone is gentle, like he's speaking to someone fragile.
She shuts her eyes tightly for a second as if blinking back tears, then recovers. There's a slight quiver in her voice. "Personally, I've had with this ghost business. I'd like to be done with it. But I've been sent here to discourage you from playacting. It's not in the plan."
"What plan? Nobody told me about any plan."
She stares at the floor and scratches one of her forearms, which is crisscrossed with pinkish scars. "The... the way things are supposed to be. This isn't it. This is a lie. You don't belong with these people, not with her, not with any of them. Would you like me to appear to them the way you last saw me, Mitchell? Because they'll let me do that."
"Please don't," I say.
James gives me an accusatory look. After all, I'd been less than truthful with him about Mitchell, who's clearly bonkers, and now, as far as he can tell, I'm talking to nobody too. "Is he hearing voices?" he asks.
"Erm. Yes. I mean, no. I mean he is, but so am I. Because there's a... a ghost here. She wants to cause trouble."
"Really. A ghost?" says Albert.
He and James are exchanging looks in a kind of silent dialogue, trying to decide how to address our obvious shared insanity. "Josie, are the two of you on acid or something?" asks James.
"No!" I turn to Mitchell. "Maybe we should just tell them. She can't threaten you if they already know."
He has been gazing fixedly at a spot on the carpet, but at this he looks up and exhales audibly. He's still hugging his body, shoulders drawn in as if he's cold. "I don't know what we should do, Josie. I really don't know. Just... do what you think is best."
"I think I'm going to tell them."
Stephanie gives a start. She didn't think we'd really do it.
There's a hopeless look in his eyes. His shoulders sag. I slip my arm around him and say, "Please. It'll be okay, I trust them. We're all friends here."
He nods once, almost imperceptibly.
"Maybe you should go for a walk."
"Okay. Good idea." Mitchell rummages through the coats hanging one over the other on a hook in the entryway, finds his black leather jacket, and puts it on, leaving the others tumbled in a pile on the floor. The door clicks shut.
Stephanie smiles without a trace of joy. "You're on, sister."
"He's making you weird," says Albert. "You were practically in hiding for weeks, and now you say you're talking to ghosts."
"We're quite worried about you," says James. "Roger was no good for you, he made you into whatever he wanted. I know, I know, he took you places, and gave you opportunities, but at the same time, he made you smaller. He grew bigger and bigger and you kept shrinking. I hated watching that. He used you up and then he left. An alcoholic will do the same thing to you, only without the chance to travel."
"He's not an alcoholic. It's much stranger than that."
"What do you mean?"
"Before I explain, I first want to tell you I'm not mad. I'm not imagining things. I'm not on any drugs. I'm not even a little bit drunk."
I say everything very quickly, like ripping off a plaster all at once.
"I wish it weren't true, but … Mitchell is older than he looks. He was in the Great War, a soldier. He became a vampire, gave his life, to save his men. He came to me for help in getting clean, and I couldn't find it in my heart to turn him away. There was nowhere else he could go. He got so, so ill, in pain and delirious for weeks. You can't even imagine how awful it was."
Albert holds up his hand like a policeman ordering me to stop. "Wait wait wait wait. Did you say 'vampire'? Vampire?"
"Yes." My face feels prickly, pins and needles. I think I've been neglecting to breathe. Sitting on the floor seems like a good idea. If I pass out I won't have far to fall.
Albert folds Stephanie's note into rectangles, runs a thumbnail across the creases to sharpen them, and folds the paper again and again. "This 'getting clean' then... do you mean, from blood? That's absurd."
"I know it sounds that way. But Albert, you know me. Why would I make that up? It would be so much easier to say, 'Yeah, he has a few too many now and then.' I'd rather not lie to you. Please, you're two of my dearest friends."
"Is he in a cult?"
"No. Vampires aren't a cult. They're physically different from us. They live on blood. It's what they're built for, like lions eat zebras, or sharks eat seals."
"So how does he get this blood? Does he ask nicely for it?"
"Erm... it doesn't really work like that. They generally kill. But he doesn't do that anymore."
James has pushed his spectacles up to the top of his head so he can rub his eyes in disbelief. Now he squints at me. "Josie, this is really too much. you can't possibly think that it's sensible even to let someone like that into your home, far less into your life as a … an intimate. It's practically suicidal."
"I know it looks that way. But I've never been so sure of anything in my life: he won't hurt me."
"Why do you think that?" Albert tosses the tattered paper onto the table and gets up. He stretches one arm behind his head, then the other, lifts each shoulder in turn, rolls his head in a full circle. He ends the routine by lacing his fingers together and turning his palms outward to crack all of his knuckles. He may be short, but he's broad-shouldered and well-muscled under that frayed pullover. I wouldn't want to fight him.
"It's been months and I'm still here, aren't I?" Nothing I say will convince them. My hands are clenched so tightly my fingernails dig into my palms.
Albert's shoes have been making loud clomping noises as he paces back and forth in front of the door. The clomping stops. "And that's all we have to go on? So you're telling me first, that he's a predatory animal that drinks blood, and second, that despite that, he won't hurt anyone? You've got to be joking."
"How long have we been friends? Have I ever done anything stu... Have I ever shown any signs of hallucinating or dabbling in the occult or believing in fairy stories? Do I seem like I'm in an altered state of consciousness?"
"But you've just said he's fucking dangerous."
Can I say he's perfectly safe? Exhale. Inhale. Think. I can't say it. I so want to.
"I've never felt endangered, not by him, and he knows that if anyone I care about gets hurt I'd never forgive him. I can't say what he's like when I'm not there, obviously."
"This is utter madness," says James. "And you can't possibly have a future with him. "
"I don't care. I have a now. Maybe I have a tomorrow, and maybe a next week."
With a bright white flash, the television turns itself on. We all swivel around to see Stephanie, in her nude, mutilated incarnation, regarding us from the snowy static. She looks like a butchered side of meat with eyes. "Now I'm on. Look, everyone. This is what Mitchell did," she says, moving her hand down her body like a model showing off a new car. Albert's eyes are like saucers. James replaces his spectacles. All the pink drains from his face.
I'm so frustrated I punch the side of the television. "Dammit, Stephanie! That was before. He wanted to stop because of you. You don't mean to force him back to that, do you?"
"What have I got to lose?" she says.
"Nothing. But we have plenty to lose. And if you take it all away from us, then what? Do you win a prize?"
"I'll have done my job."
"Your job? That's what you want to leave behind? You drove a well-meaning person back to evil? You denied him the chance to be anything else? It won't make you any less dead."
Stephanie seems to deflate. "This is so unfair! No matter what I do, it won't be right. If I split you up, he'll go back to the vampires. If I don't, then I'm not doing my job."
"You poor thing. Of course it's not fair. It won't ever be. I'm so sorry, love."
My friends are horrified. James looks pale and sick, his forehead glistening with sweat. Albert is flushed and glowering. "That's our ghost," I tell them. I think they believe me now.
Slow deliberate footsteps make their way up the stairs. Mitchell wants us to hear him coming.
On the screen, Stephanie pushes a wisp of bleached blond hair out of her eyes. "Whoops. I'll show myself out then," she says. With a click, the picture shrinks to a tiny white pinpoint in the middle of the black screen.
Albert may be shorter than Mitchell, but he's strong and quick. He spies a stake that must have fallen out of one of the pile of jackets, grabs it, and tackles Mitchell as he walks in, pressing him to the floor with a knee in the chest. Albert holds the stake threateningly, but Mitchell has hold of his wrist.
"Josie told me what you are. If anything happened to her I'd never forgive myself for leaving her alone with you." He points the stake at Mitchell's neck. "This stick, does it kill you?"
Mitchell's voice is flat and faraway. "Yeah, but you have to put it through here." With his free hand he points to his heart. "Go ahead. I won't fight you. I don't want anyone else hurt. Josie, thank you for believing in me. Thank you for everything. I mean it. I love you as much as I know how."
I can't believe this is happening. This can't happen. I won't let it.
"Both of you stop it! Get up. GET UP! I'm a grown woman. Do you idiots think I can't make decisions for myself? Get up."
Albert stands up but continues to brandish the stake. Mitchell pats Albert on the arm, walks past him to the armchair, and sits down. He crosses his arms over his chest. My god, I almost lost him just then. I stand behind the chair put my hands on his shoulders, feeling him solidly there, smelling the cigarette smoke in his hair. His hand reaches up and covers mine.
I'm biting the insides of my cheeks to prevent myself from sobbing uncontrollably. "Nobody wants this but me, and, I thought, you, Mitchell. Albert, James, I know you want to protect me. I'll never have better friends than you. Thank you. But please, please listen to me. Mitchell can't change what he is. We can't change what happened in the past. But we sure as hell have a choice about what happens next."
My face is streaming with tears. "We are better together than we are apart. It can't be forever, but I'm telling you it's real. I know the risk. I've known all along. To me, it's worth it. Please give him a chance, that's all."
James stares, glassy-eyed, at the wall. He seems to be talking to himself. "We're normally the odd ones, you know. Nobody thinks we're sincere anymore. Of course last week I told several people I was a tree. I felt rooted and generous that day, what can I say? After that, I had a bad week, and I was rain and mud, cold and dirty. But nobody took it literally. A vampire is just exactly a vampire, isn't he? No room for poetic license. You think you know someone and then you find out you really have no idea about him at all."
"But you do know him. He gets your jokes. He thinks your paintings are brilliant. How many times have you got drunk together? Why would he suddenly be different?"
"We're constantly different." James is speaking rather more loudly than he needs to. "There's who you are with your lover, who you are with your mates, who you are with the public, who you are when you're performing your own act, who you are when you're performing someone else's. All different. All artificial, aren't they? Even with your dearest friends, you show them the you that you want them to see."
"And what if people find out it's an act? I ask. "Does it change anything at all?"
"I suppose not. There is no 'who you are' apart from what people see, is there? Your actions are the only things they can know about you. You can tell any kind of story about someone, but the real story is the person looking back at you. The rest of it is always fiction. Some of the fictions are more fantastical, though. My word."
"Who wants gin?" asks Albert.
Several drinks later, James steeples his fingers in front of his face, pondering. "Mitchell, are you busy later this week?"
"No, I'd say I've a great deal of spare time, actually."
"What sort of things can you do?"
"Whatever you need me to. I mind my own business," he says.
"He's a very good cleaner," I say. "He could certainly be a help."
"Come see us tomorrow. I may have a job for you."
Now Mitchell works for James and Albert. He helps them with housekeeping, builds canvas stretchers, cleans paintbrushes, runs errands. It's good for him to keep busy, to get out of the house and interact with people, especially people who aren't me. I'm relieved that he's no longer cooped up in the flat, and grateful to finally get some time to myself. We're both much more relaxed.
One day, Mitchell comes home buzzing with excitement. "I helped them make pictures! At first I was holding things so they looked like they were floating. Then they pointed a camera at me and… and... and... asked me to do things. They said it changed the quality of the photo even though I didn't show in it. James went on and on about 'negative space'. I was in front of white backdrops, black ones, mirrors, even. He said he couldn't tell it was me, but he could definitely sense something. Look."
He's brought home a black and white contact sheet showing shot after shot of empty picture frames, staged like portraits but with nobody in them. Is the mood different from picture to picture? I can't be sure.
He points. "I'm in that one, and that one, but not that one."
"How can you tell?"
He indicates one frame, a picture of a mirror reflecting an empty room. "In that one I've got no clothes on!"
"Is that really true?"
"Do you want it to be? Then yes, absolutely." He stifles a laugh.
"Cheeky. Then that one's my favorite," I say. "Or perhaps this one. You're standing on your head in this one, right?" I choose a shot with a black curtain for a backdrop.
"Hey, I'm not even in that one!"
"Oh yeah? Prove it. Hey, what's wrong with your hair in that? And why are your eyes closed?"
It's a shame his absolutely stunning smile will never show up on film.