Eugene refuses to hang the mirror and it promptly disappears as soon as they enter the house.
"I want to be able to see myself," Heli protests.
"Why?" asks Eugene. "You're always going to look the same."
"Not true. My hair is longer than I thought."
Eugene's eyebrows disappear into his own fringe. "Your hair grows?"
"Very slowly, but yes."
"That's so weird," Viken says. "So how would you normally like…" he waves his hands in front of his face.
"Huh?"
"If you really want I'll trim your hair but that thing is going to stay somewhere safe. Besides, if Soule sees it he'll scare himself." Eugene marches up the stairs.
"Why would I be scared? What's wrong with it?" Soule emerges from the kitchen with a bowl of crisps in hand.
"I think in this case it's a good thing," Viken mumbles.
They'd probably be more shocked to see Eugene's reflection in the mirror of lies. Heli decides to keep this bit of information to himself. Beyond whatever he's owed, what Eugene does is none of his business.
It's not deception if no one asks.
"That's right," Viken nods.
They give each other a quizzical look and Viken excuses himself for the night.
When Heli opens his eyes, his first impression is that someone upstairs is fighting. Between the banging and shouting, there's nothing else that could be happening. But there's another sound as well that he can't quite wrap his head around. Some sort of screeching.
He slides off the sofa and climbs the steps, pausing every few steps to listen. While he still can't figure out what's being said, strangely the banging sounds seem to be following a pattern.
He stops outside one of the bedrooms. The door is wide open and he cautiously peers inside.
On the far side of the room stands Viken. His back is to the door. He's jumping and shouting with an instrument that appears to be some sort of red guitar in his hand. Beside him what looks like a phonograph is spinning a black disc, its speakers crackling as it blasts a complete assault of cymbals and drum beats.
"I WANNA BE YOUR - WHAT ARE YOU DOING UP HERE?" Viken is screaming over the noise of the record as he spins around, finally spotting Heli standing in his doorway. Viken reaches over to lift the needle from his record, leaving no sound but the electric hum of his amplifier.
"What is this noise?"
"Noise!" Viken shrieks. "It's music, old man."
"This is music?"
"Obviously. Guitar, drums, bass, vocals. What else would it be?"
Heli looks from him to the spinning vinyl. "It's not very nice sounding though, is it?"
Viken rolls his eyes. "It's not supposed to be."
"I really don't understand."
"Okay, then sit down and I will explain to you."
"Can I wash up and change first?"
"Sure, whatever."
As soon as Heli steps away the record is blasting full volume again. When he returns, Viken lowers the volume so they can talk comfortably. He motions for Heli to sit on a somewhat chair-shaped red bag that feels like it's full of beads.
"First off, it's meant to be loud and in your face. That's rock n' roll," Gyu hits a chord on the guitar and lets it ring out.
"And chaotic?"
"It's not- listen. The important thing isn't being technically perfect. It's about what you have to say. The passion you put into it. Do you even know what that means?"
"I know what passion means, that's not where I'm confused."
"Are you sure? Because aside from the little rebelliousness you get when you're angry, I'm not sure there's anything going on in your head most of the time."
Heli's mouth drops open as he searches for a response. "You have done nothing but insult me."
"What I'm saying is the truth. You're a stuffy person from a stuffy time, so I suppose I should have expected that."
"I'm not stuffy."
"Show some emotion then. Come on, you must have something you feel strongly about. Being undead? Being left behind by all your friends? Being stuck with Eugene?"
"I-"
"You'll feel better if you let it out. See, I'm trying to help you."
Heli closes his mouth. "Why don't we just start with your music?" He's trying very hard not to frown.
Viken turns the record over and sets the needle down for it to play a new song. "What kinds of music did you listen to back in the day, anyhow?"
Heli shrugs. "We had a piano."
"Did you know how to play it?"
"A bit."
Viken strums along on his guitar with the song. "This is a good one."
Loud music, loud singing. More like yelling, actually. Somehow it suits Viken and he pours his heart into the words and the notes even though the lyrics are nonsense and he's a tad flat most of the time. After actually listening to the record, the various sounds are starting to make sense. Heli can piece together the rhythmic patterns, the repeating of the melodies, and the percussive embellishments. It's not like anything he's ever heard before. It's exciting. By the end of the second song, he's starting to actually like it.
Viken finishes the song with a yell and Heli gives him an enthusiastic round of applause.
"Do you understand yet?!" Viken shouts.
"Oh yes, it's brilliant," Heli laughs and Viken grins.
"Good, if you came up here and said you liked disco I would have lost it."
"What's disco?"
Viken's already moved on to the next song, tapping the volume on his amplifier just a bit louder. "I'm not going to talk about disco! Ask Eugene if you really want to know."
As he jumps and spins around the corner of the room, getting more wrapped up in the cable from his guitar and shouting at the top of his lungs, Heli can't help it. For the first time in a very long time there's a wide smile on his face. He's also sliding off the beanbag in laughter.
There's a knock on the door and he shoots up. Viken freezes and the door slowly opens. It's Soule.
"Do you mind turning it down a little? Just a little bit, please don't make that face. A little?"
Viken lets out a sigh but he turns down the volume on the record player back down.
"Thank you," Soule smiles as he closes the door, with a second glance at Heli.
"What a killjoy. None of them really get it," Viken switches off the guitar amplifier and places the guitar on a stand. He replaces a new record on the turntable and sets down the needle. "I haven't listened to this one yet."
After untangling himself from the cords, he makes an attempt to smooth the blankets on his bed and plops down.
Heli looks down to ask if he should go when Viken continues.
"You're both exactly what I thought and not at all what I thought at the same time."
"What does that mean?"
Viken pats the space next to him and Heli sits at the edge of the bed. Viken lies down on his back, stretching his arms out above him.
"There are a lot of myths about vampires that are apparently true."
"Like what?"
"Garlic, that one was true. Having to be invited inside was true, so is the burning in the sun."
"There are a lot of them, aren't there?" Heli lays back next to Gyu and crosses his arms.
"And the way you sleep, we could have staked you every day. It's kinda like, you're more fragile than I would have imagined. You actually have a lot of weaknesses, huh?"
Heli turns so he's facing Viken, who's still staring up at the ceiling.
"You wouldn't say that if you met an older vampire. Against someone centuries old, you wouldn't stand a chance."
"Maybe. What other myths are there?"
"I'm not sure.
Viken hums as he thinks.
"Turning into bats. Can you do that?"
"I know someone who can."
"Seriously?"
Heli nods. "There are some who can turn into other things too. Rats, snakes, wolves."
Viken's eyes widen.
"You have telekinetic powers." He says it as a statement of fact.
"Yes."
"Can you all do that?"
"No, it's not common." Heli narrows his eyes. "You were going to tell Eugene, but you didn't."
"I was going to tell him when you weren't around to stop me."
"Is it okay to be keeping secrets from him?"
"I have to one-up him somehow," Viken turns so they're facing each other and circles back to questioning.
"You sleep, but you don't need to be in a coffin. Or what's the other thing? Something about needing grave soil."
"I don't know about that one. There might be something to it."
"Obviously not though?"
"I don't have a grave."
"Oh," Viken is quiet for a moment. "Would you want one?"
Heli laughs before he notices that Viken's expression is serious.
"No? Why bother? No one is going to come visit and leave flowers for me." In his head it was a joke, but now that he's said the words out loud it just sounds profoundly sad.
"What about consecrated ground?"
"Really, please don't try to bury me, I don't-"
Viken lets out a laugh. "That's not what I was trying to say. I mean, would something like a crucifix or holy water hurt you?"
"Oh." This is a question for Jino. He'd explained it to Heli once, but Heli was so confused he didn't retain anything Jino had said. "That's more complicated. Yes but also no."
"It can't be both."
"Something about faith and intent."
"Hmm, I guess that makes sense. Okay what else? Fangs."
"You already know that, you've seen them," Heli says, but Viken is pulling on his cheek to try and look at his teeth. "Seriously."
He reaches for Viken's arm and grabs him by the wrist. He regrets the motion almost instantly.
Viken's skin is warm and his pulse is strong. What he wouldn't give for a mouthful of some of that blood that's flowing just beneath his fingertips. Pricks of pain are blossoming in his chest as he imagines it, but he can't stop. His throat burns.
Viken starts to pull away, his mouth is opening and his eyebrows furrow. Their eyes meet and Heli panics. Viken relaxes and his pupils dilate as his mind opens under Heli's gaze, nice and wide to whatever suggestion Heli wants to put into it. Heli freezes, letting out shallow breaths.
He drops Gyu's wrist and breaks the eye contact. Viken pulls his arm to his chest.
"What the hell?" he whispers.
"Viken," Heli says, his eyes focused on the space between them. "Please, don't let me hurt you."
"That's what you do, though. It's what makes you monsters isn't it? Killing people?" Viken murmurs.
"I- we made a promise."
"What kind of promise?"
"Because I don't want to kill anyone."
Viken opens his mouth to say something else, but there's a knock on the door.
"Should I be concerned?" Eugene cracks open the door.
"About what?" Viken springs up and crosses the room to close the door again, but Eugene pushes it wider.
"Soule said you were both in here."
"You're the one who invited him in and have been pushing-"
"That's not what concerns me. But also not why I came up here. Heli, can you come downstairs please?"
Heli follows behind Eugene slowly down the stairs. Taho is sitting on the floor in the middle of the living room next to a stack of papers. Soule and Avys are fighting with some sort of tripod contraption. Soule pulls down on a cloth screen and it snaps right back up.
"Do we really need to set this up?" Avys whines.
"After the amount of work I've done, yes, yes we do." Taho looks up at Heli and motions for him to join him on the carpet. "You're not an easy person to find."
"Did I do something wrong?"
"I'm not sure yet." Taho reaches over to the stack of papers and picks up the top bundle. He unfolds the brittle, yellowed pages of a newspaper.
Viken settles down on the other side of Heli. "This isn't going to be the Christmas of '74 slides again, is it?"
"You're not from around here," Taho ignores Gyu. "You're not from the country Eugene and Viken found you in either."
Heli sits in silence, waiting for Taho to continue and see just where exactly this is going.
"You did mention a travelling carnival, and I didn't think a carnival full of vampires could go around the countryside without something weird popping up around it. As it turns out I was correct."
He turns over the paper to show Heli an all-too familiar advertisement. Though faded and ripped with age he can make out the words
Carnival Claritas
"Is this your carnival?"
"Yes," Heli pauses. "How did you figure it out?"
"Just followed the trail. In the days either preceding or following the appearance of this carnival, which gave very little advance notice about its arrival, there were also reports like this." He flips open another paper from the stack and points to a small column.
Three children disappear in overnight fog
"Pretty nifty detective work in my opinion," Taho adds.
"Ought to be considering I drove you all over the damn country for days looking for this stuff." Eugene says.
Heli looks from the article to Taho, to Soule and Avys who are finally managing to get the screen to stay where it's supposed to. "That is the carnival. But not everyone who worked in it was a vampire. And I don't have anything to do with disappearing children."
"Are you sure about that?," Taho sighs. "Because I'm pretty sure you are one of the disappearing children. This was printed not long after an advert for the Carnival Claritas."
Heli stops cold when Taho flips over another paper. In dark, bold ink, the headline on the front page reads:
Orphanage Burns to Ground - Two Women And Several Children Presumed Dead in Blaze
He snatches the paper from Taho's hands and skims through the article. The words wrap around a photograph of the burnt out ruins of the place he had once called home. His eyes stop over his own name under a list of those thought to have died in the fire. He's still reading when Taho slides over another edition.
Quarantine! - Deadly Epidemic Breaks Out in Boy's Home - Strange Illness Leaves Children Cold
"This is from a few days before the fire. 'Speculation persists that a contagious disease was introduced to the children by way of an animal bite.' Sounds like vampires doesn't it? Don't deny anything, I already saw your name in the article."
Heli tries to ignore their stares as he finishes reading the page.
The remaining children were taken under the care of Dr. Ernst Himmel, a renowned disease expert. Though it has been suggested, as the unaffected children were removed before the blaze, that the conflagration was intentionally set to destroy those affected, or possibly cover up some crime committed under the tenure of the home's current owner, G-. G- reportedly has no plans to rebuild, nor to place any memorials for the women or orphans who perished in spite of protest and enquiries into his character...
"What happened to him?"
"Who?"
"Dr. Himmel."
Taho shrugs. "I was only looking for you. Want to see what else I found?"
He points to Avys who switches off the light, and turns on a device sitting across the room, facing the screen. At first, the image projected onto it is a blur, but with some adjustment the shape of a building comes into focus. The orphanage, in a clear black and white photograph, exactly as he remembers is illuminated onto the screen. Avys hits a button and it flips to another image, this time a woman in a long light-coloured dress standing in the parlour room. The piano is behind her. It flips to the dining room with its long bare tables. Once more and they're standing outside in neat rows, arms folded behind their backs as they pose in front of the orphan asylum. The teachers flank each side. Most of them are looking blankly into the camera, though some have moved and their faces are a blur.
"Ah, there's you!" Soule points to someone in the back row.
Sure enough, Heli is there, his head tilted and eyes looking somewhere over the camera, off into the distance. Beside him stands Jaan, his face serious. Jino is holding Noa's arm in the row in front of them. Next to Noa, Shion is the only one with a smile on his face as he looks over at Jakah. Solon is one of the blurry ones, but he'd moved at the last minute on purpose, whipping his head to the side as the photographer pressed the shutter button. Miss H- had scolded him for a long time for intentionally ruining the picture.
"Where did you get these?"
"Archives, libraries. We really went all out." says Taho.
"But why?"
Avys switches the lights back on.
"At first I was curious, and I thought it would be helpful to you. But the more we found, the less things were adding up." Taho says. He points to the dates on the newspaper's cover. "These are from 1908."
"And?"
"And you told me you became that in 1913. Your words."
"I was telling you the truth."
"Really? Then how is it, after a bunch of kids die from what appears to be vampire bites, you and your friends conveniently vanish in a fire, and I should add not all the bodies were found, did you read that part?"
"Yes, I did."
"And all this after a carnival, that you admitted to travelling with as vampires, was in town."
"Sounds like you have been lying about something," Eugene interjects.
"I have not. And we didn't kill any of the children," Heli says.
"Then what happened between 1908 and 1913?"
Heli slides the papers towards Taho. "We did meet vampires at the carnival. And they followed us back to the orphanage. I didn't know what they'd done to Jakah. I was the one who let him in."
He continues as they listen, letting out things that had been unspoken between the seven of them, things no one wanted to admit out loud. As if speaking the words would make the weight of regret worse. But after all this time, with people who weren't there, it feels like a cleansing confession.
"We started the fire too, but everyone was already dead! I couldn't let Dr. Himmel and the rest come back to that place. No one would have believed us. And we couldn't live normal lives anymore, so we went with them."
"You mean you went with the vampires?"
Heli nods.
Taho leans back and crosses his arms. "But you weren't a vampire then?"
"Not exactly. But not completely no."
"That doesn't make any sense at all," says Viken.
"I know."
An anomaly, she had called it.
They sit in silence for a long time before Soule quietly says, "I don't think he's lying."
"I don't think so either," Viken exclaims. Eugene raises his eyebrows at this show of support.
"Alright," Taho nods. "Since we have the projector out, how about more slides?"
"I'll get them!" Avys bounds off and returns with an overflowing box.
"Please not Christmas '74 again." Viken moans.
"I want to see it."
Taho laughs and rummages through his stack of paper as the rest settle in to watch as Avys sets up the projector.
"Nothing is labelled so we might just get Taho's grimoire lectures again."
"That'd be fine."
"Please, anything but Christmas."
"What does he have against Christmas?" Heli whispers to Taho.
"That was before he discovered rock music. I think he's embarrassed to be seen in his normal fashion days." Taho presses a small envelope into Heli's hands. "Does this mean anything to you? Just something else that I found with the newspapers."
There's no address on the envelope, and it's not dated either. Heli opens and unfolds the small paper inside. The corners crumble between his fingers as he gingerly holds it up to read it in the light from the fireplace. Faded ink flows across the page in a delicate handwriting.
Kindly note that the previous copy excluded Heli. Please be sure to add him to the list - though a timid child, he is thoughtful and eager to please. I do believe in the correct environment he could have a bright and meaningful future. I am anxious for results in the positive that we can find some of these children loving homes.
E-
"That was the only thing I could find that looked like a personal item," Taho says "There weren't even any official records of your birth or parents, or anything."
"That's okay," Heli replies. His heart is dropping. He folds the paper back into its envelope. He doesn't want there to be anymore, but at the same time, he wishes Taho had been able to find something else. While the rest are preoccupied with a slide of Viken wearing bright yellow and standing in front of a tinsel-covered tree, he slides the newspaper with the fire headline from the pile and steals the slide with their group photo from Avys's box.
Something more would have been nice. But a little note and a single photograph are all that's left as proof that he had lived.