The Fall

SETRAKIAN UNLOCKED THE pawnshop door and raised the security gate, and Fet, waiting outside like a customer, imagined the old man repeating this routine every day for the past thirty-five years. The shop-owner came out into the sunlight, and for just a moment everything might have been normal. An old man squinting into the sun on a street in New York City. The moment inspired nostalgia in Fet, rather than encouragement. It did not seem to him that there were many more “normal” moments left.

Setrakian, in a tweed vest without jacket, white shirtsleeves rolled just past his wrists, looked at the large van. The door and side wall read: MANHATTAN DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS.

Fet told him, “I borrowed it.”

The old professor appeared pleased and intrigued. “I wonder, can you get another?”

“Why? Where are we going?”

“We cannot remain here any longer.”

Eph sat down on the flat exercise mat inside the odd-angled storage room on the top floor of Setrakian’s home. Zack sat there with one leg bent, his knee as high as his cheek, arms hugging his thigh. Zack looked ragged, like a boy sent off to sleepaway camp who came back changed, and not for the better. Silver-backed mirrors surrounded them, giving Eph the feeling of being watched by many old eyes. The window frame within the iron bars had been hastily boarded over, a bandage uglier than the wound it covered.

Eph studied his son’s face, trying to read it. He was worried about the boy’s sanity, as he was worried about his own. He rubbed his mouth in preparation for talking, and felt roughness around the edges of his lips and chin, realizing he hadn’t shaved in days.

“I checked the parenting handbook earlier,” he began. “Unfortunately there was no chapter about vampires.”

He tried to smile, but wasn’t sure it worked. He wasn’t sure his smile was persuasive anymore. He wasn’t sure anyone should be smiling now.

“Okay, so, this is going to sound twisted-and it is twisted. But let me get it out. You know your mom loved you, Z. More even than you know, as much as a mother can love a son. That’s why she and I went through all we did, what felt to you at times like a tug-of-war-because neither one of us could bear being apart from you. Because you’re it. I know that children sometimes blame themselves for their parents’ breakup. But you were the one thing holding us together. And driving us crazy fighting over you.”

“Dad, you don’t have to-”

“I know, I know. Cut to it, right? But no. This stuff you need to hear, and right now. Maybe I need to hear it too, okay? We need to set each other straight. Put it right out in front of us. A mother’s love is… it’s like a force. It’s beyond simple human affection. It’s soul-deep. A father’s love-my love for you, Z-it’s the strongest thing in my life, absolutely it is. But this thing has made me realize that there’s something about maternal love-it might just be the strongest human spiritual bond there is.”

He checked to see how this was going with Zack. Couldn’t tell.

“And now this thing, this plague, this awful… it’s taken who she was and burned off all that was good in her. All that was right and true. All that was, as we understand it, human. Your mom… she was beautiful, she was caring, she was… she was also crazy, in the way all devoted mothers are. But you were her great gift to the world. That’s how she saw you. That’s what you are still. That part of her lives on. But now-she is not herself anymore. She is not Kelly Goodweather, not Mom-and this is hard for both of us to accept. All that remains of what she was, as far as I can tell, is her bond with you. Because that bond is sacred, and it never dies. What we call love, in our sappy greeting-card way, is evidently something much deeper than we humans imagined. Her human love for you has… it seems to have shifted, has morphed, into this kind of want, this need. Where she is now, this bad place? She wants you there with her. It’s not bad to her, or evil, or dangerous. She just wants you with her. And what you need to know is that this is all because your mother loved you so completely.”

Zack nodded. He couldn’t or wouldn’t speak.

“Now, that said, we have to keep you safe from her. She looks different now, right? That’s because she is different-fundamentally different-and it’s not easy to face that. I can’t make this right for you except to protect you from her. From what she has become. That’s my new job now, as your parent, as your father. If you think of your mom, as she originally was, and what she would do to save you from any threat to your health, to your safety… well, you tell me. What would she do?”

Zack nodded, answering immediately. “She would hide me.”

“She would take you away. Remove you from the threat, get you to a safe place.” Eph listened to what he was saying. “Just pick you up and… run. I’m right, aren’t I?”

“You’re right,” said Zack.

“Okay, so-being the overprotective mom? That’s my job now.”

Brooklyn