Neighborhood Watch

       Janos laughed as he scrambled out of the car, giving his sister a push that sent her sprawling back into the seat. "I’ll get the ice cream first."
          "You turd," Jirelle yelled, as she struggled to regain her dignity, but her exit from the back seat was anything but graceful, although what was lacking in grace was made up for in speed. She raced after her brother. Prane laughed at the antics of her two children. Constance laughed as well.
       It had been a wonderful evening. All too rare with her two teenagers’ busy schedules. A movie, then a trip to Baskin Robbins for a couple of pints of ice cream. A way to beat the summer heat. Salem’s summers usually had only two or three uncomfortably hot spells, days when the heat climbed into the high 80's and 90's.
       Prane, herself, wasn’t bothered by changes in temperatures, but she knew her best friend and life long companion, Constance, suffered when it got too hot, perspiring, feet swelling, little physical discomforts that Prane would have given anything to be able to feel.
       "Hurry up, Mom," Janos complained. "The ice cream’s melting." Prane unlocked the back door and stood out of the way as Janos and Jirelle tumbled inside and headed for the kitchen and bowls.
       "Not too much for me," Prane yelled.
       "I’ll take her portion," Constance called out. She grinned at Prane and patted her middle-age spread comfortably. "One of the consolations of being an old woman of almost 50."
       "You’re not old," Prane protested. Prane was as thin as she had been as a teenager. Her face unlined. Only a grey streak in her dark hair made her appear older.
       That was the difference between them; Constance would grow old, while Prane would not. It was the burden a vampire carried, to know that all she loved and cared about would die and leave her alone. Enough! She scolded herself. She wouldn’t spoil this evening.
       "It hasn’t cooled off a bit in here," Constance complained. "Despite leaving the windows open. Maybe the ice cream will cool me off."
       "And, I’ll let you have the chair in front of the fan," Prane said.
       "I’ll take it."
       Prane followed Constance into the kitchen, where Janos and Jirelle were arguing over whose bowl was fullest. Squabbling like brother and sister. The sound was music to her ears. So normal. Prane prayed daily that nothing would shatter this normalcy, that her children would never have to know what their mother truly was.
       She picked up her bowl and stirred the ice cream, playing with it, pretending to eat. The little she tasted made her stomach rebel. It was not her kind of food. But if she didn’t eat too much, she could keep it down.
       She walked out into the living room. The VCR had been pulled out from its shelf and lay on the floor in front of the TV.
       "Hey, which one of you was playing around with the VCR?"
       "Not me." Janos came out to look.
       Jirelle followed, shaking her head. "I didn’t touch it."
       "Nor I," Constance said, her voice trailing off, as they all realized someone must have been in their house.
       They stood rooted to the spot, eyes scanning the room.
       "Jirelle’s stereo is gone," Janos said softly.
       "Oh, no," Jirelle moaned. "Not my CD player."
       "Wait here," Prane said. "I’m going to check the house."
       "I’m coming too, Mom," Janos said. Prane was about to protest, then nodded.
       Janos and Prane moved cautiously, room by room. Prane listened, but heard nothing. The thief or thieves must have been scared off by their arrival. Nothing else in the house appeared to have been disturbed.
       A young policeman arrived an hour later, took the information, wrote a report, and told them nothing could be done. No evidence. He left them with a pink slip of paper for the insurance company. At the bottom, he had checked the square "No further action." The policeman thought it was just neighborhood kids, seeing the open windows as a golden opportunity. They were lucky that only Jirelle’s CD player had been taken. He left a couple of brochures about preventing crime and forming a neighborhood watch.
       It frightened Prane to think while they had been laughing in the driveway, someone was in their house. Anger burned inside her, and a sense of violation. Constance and the kids tried to make light of it, but Constance checked the door locks three or four times an evening, Jirelle fell asleep with her bedroom light on three nights in a row, and Janos went around talking about what he would do to the punks if he ever found out who it was. Prane understood. In breaking into her home, the thieves had shattered, perhaps for all time, the illusion that this was a quiet, safe neighborhood, that nothing could harm her family.
       The young man who lived on the corner had his house broken into while he was away for the weekend. They only took his VCR. Maybe to make up for the one they hadn’t gotten from Prane’s house. Gang graffiti appeared on a few garage doors. There was talk of forming a neighborhood watch, but nothing came of it. Still, there was an uneasiness about the neighborhood that had not been there before.
       There was an uneasiness in Prane herself. She found herself checking more often on the kids at night and a sense of restlessness often drove her out into the darkness.
       Her neighbor’s front porch light was off, the one he usually left on all night. She ignored it, figuring it was no more than a burned out bulb, until her keen sense of hearing heard whispers and she spotted a couple of shadowy figures in a white car. Kids necking, then she realized the car was her neighbor’s new Toyota. She kept on walking, past the car. She could hear the rapid beating of frightened hearts. The neighborhood thieves?
       What should she do? Call the police? By the time the police arrived, these two would be long gone, and she would garner another useless police report.
       She rounded the corner and stopped, waiting in the deep shadow of a tree. Time passed, she heard a soft metallic sound as the car door opened.
       As two dark shadows moved down the street, she ghosted after them. Though they kept glancing about nervously, they didn’t see her following them. They passed under a street light, and she saw they were young. Janos’ age. No, younger! Gang banger baggy pants and oversize shirts. Gradually they relaxed, their walk slowed, and they began to laugh. The carefree laughter irritated her. She heard herself growl softly. She felt the transformation start, the stab of pain that radiated outward from her jaw as incisors grew, the brightening of everything around her until it seemed as light as she remembered a sunlit day, the seductive feeling strength that began in her hands and feet and moved upward, and the growing hunger that made her throat ache. She fought the change. No, that wasn’t the answer.
       The boys entered an alley. Their voices grew silent as they crept across a backyard to an open window and crawled in. For a moment, she thought they had found another house to rob, then a light went on. She approached, standing just outside of the circle of light, watching the boys examined their trophy, a car stereo, dangling multi-colored wires. Finally, they packed it back into a knapsack and readied themselves for bed.
       If Prane called the police, she would have to testify. She couldn’t afford to get involved. Still, she couldn’t just let the boys go on stealing whenever they liked. She doubted that an anonymous call to the police would work. No, the police would need more concrete proof. Suddenly, she smiled. She knew just what to do. She went to the front of the house, noted the house number, then she went home. It would be awhile before the boys were safely asleep.
       It was simple to slip through the still open window and quietly pick up the knapsack. One of the boys stirred, but did not wake.
       Then Prane placed the knapsack and a carefully worded, typed note in her neighbor’s car. The sky was beginning to lighten as she let herself in her front door and pulled off her gloves. Janos and Jirelle were still sleeping peacefully. She headed for the safety of her basement, and her rest.
       It was late afternoon when Constance came to wake her. "Guess what? Our neighbor’s car was broken into last night. This morning he found his stereo in a knapsack on the front seat with a note apologizing and explaining that it was covered with the thieves’ fingerprints and telling the police where to find them. It was signed the Neighborhood Watch." Constance looked at Prane, "You?"
       "Why accuse me?" Prane asked. "You know my kind never gets involved."
       "Of course not." Constance laughed. "The police arrested one boy, but he’s already been released into his parent’s custody. It just doesn’t seem right." Prane had to agree with her.
       It was 11 o’clock when Prane positioned herself where she could watch the boy’s room. She stood waiting in the dark long after the bedroom light had gone out, but she wasn’t surprised when a shadowy figure climbed out the window, moved across the yard, and down the dark alley. At the end of the alley, the first boy was met by a second.
       "You didn’t give me up, did you?" one shadow whispered.
       "If I had, you’d be in juvie right now."
       "Thanks."
       "But what are we going to do about that guy? He’s going to press charges."
       "We’ll just have to show him what happens to finks."
       Prane followed them to the market and waited, watching them do their shopping. Eggs, large bottles of catsup and mustard, and toilet paper. She wondered why they passed by the spray paint, then remembered some talk about a law against selling spray paint to minors. She didn’t know if the law had passed, but she realized these boys were smart. What they had would do the job and was less likely to be traced back to them. Prane felt terrible. She liked her neighbor and didn’t want to see his property vandalized because of something she had done.
       Should she call the police? What could they do? The boys hadn’t done anything, yet.
       No, she would have to do something herself. She was the one who had created the problem.
       The boys liked dark alleys which suited her just fine.
       Usually she fought the transformation, but tonight she welcomed the change: the pain as her incisors grew, the strength that coursed through her body, the eyes that adjust to the darkness. She was the primeval huntress. As she moved up behind them, she could feel the heat of their young bodies, smell the fresh blood coursing through their veins. So quietly and quickly had she moved that neither boy noticed her until her hands took a healthy grip on each of their arms. They yelped in surprise and pain.
       "Listen, boys, stealing is very bad."
       "Us?" One boy recovered enough to protest. "We’ve never stole anything."
       "Lying, too." She let all her hypnotic power stab into to their minds as she commanded, "You will go home. You will never steal from anyone again. You will not lie." She felt their resistance and knew their own conditioning was too strong for her hypnotic suggestion to be more than partially successful. They wouldn’t steal for a while, but it would erode over time. She could smell their fear; it was like an aphrodisiac. She licked her lips hungrily. Why not solve the problem, drain them and be done with it. They would never steal again, never do anything again. Such temptation, but suddenly Janos and Jirelle’s faces superimposed over the boys’ pale faces, and the temptation was gone.
       She pushed the boys forward until they stood in the pool of light from street light at the end of the alley. She wanted to be sure the boys saw her. "This is my territory," her voice hissed. "I’m the only one who hunts here."
       The boys’ eyes widened until the white of their pupils showed. She knew what they saw–lips curled back to reveal the long pointed teeth, glowing red eyes like an animal at night. "Tell your friends! Remember, if you come back here again, you won’t leave. Do you understand?"
       She sensed the boy’s scream rising before it broke the surface, a wail of pure panic. Both boys struggled in terror, but she didn’t let go. Then her sharpened sense of smell caught a whiff of something, and she laughed aloud to know that one of the boys had literally been scared shitless. She released her grip. The boys tumbled weak-kneed to the ground, then scrambled away.
       "Remember," she called, "I’ll be watching and waiting."
       A light came on in one of the houses, and Prane faded back into the darkness.

       "Hey, Mom, you want to hear a good one?" Janos asked. "The word’s out, this neighborhood is off limits. The story is that there is some kind of awful monster haunting our neighborhood and no gang member would be caught dead here."
       "What kind of monster?" Prane asked, feeling a stab of sudden fear.
       "A vampire."
       "A vampire, in this neighborhood?" Prane spoke, hoping her voice sounded right, casual, disbelieving. "Surely, you don’t believe it?"
       "Aw, come on, Mom., vampires? Really? But if those dumb jerks want to believe it, why should I complain. Not, if it means they’re going to leave us alone."
       Prane silently agreed with her son.