Deadrise (Book 7): Bloodlust Read online

  BLOODLUST: DEADRISE VII

  Siara Brandt

  Copyright © 2018 Siara Brant

  BLOODLUST: DEADRISE VII

  ISBN: 978-1722826147

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization

  of this work in whole or in part in any form is forbidden without the written

  permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the

  product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance

  to actual persons, living or dead, or undead, business establishments,

  events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Printed in U.S.A.

  For the real Mr. Chubbs.

  Chapter 1

  Eymann Buckminster wished for one thing only. A moment of silence so that he could hear himself think. But just when he thought his wife should be running out of breath, she got a second wind, enough of a wind to get her started all over again. She was like a freaking talking machine, he thought irritably, one with a broken off switch.

  “I’ve been trying to call your sister for three days now.” Helice emphasized the word with her usual nasal tone while the barest hint of a sneer curled one side of her upper lip. Eymann couldn’t help being reminded of Mr. Ed when she did that.

  “She won’t answer me,” Helice went on. “Didn’t I tell you that she is just like your father? It’s obvious - as it has been for the past ten years - that she wants nothing to do with her family. Why else would she move almost five hours away from everyone?”

  Eymann, breathed an inward sigh of resignation. Not that he disagreed with a single word that his wife had to say, but he had heard all of this before, more than once, and he had other things on his mind at the moment. Like his neighbor. And his neighbor’s dog. Or more precisely, his neighbor’s dog’s poop. Which had been showing up regularly on Eymann’s property for the past few weeks. Just that morning, he had found a fresh pile in the driveway, right next to his car. Unfortunately, Eymann had been looking up at the sky at the time, trying to determine if he agreed with the weather reports or not, so he hadn’t seen the Stonehenge-looking pile until it was too late. After scraping most of it off with a stick, he added the flattened blob of excrement to the rest of what he had already collected. It was just one more thing added to the growing list of grievances he had against his neighbor to the west. His neighbor to the east? Well, that was an entirely different story. Grievances, yes. Dog, no.

  He later gave the shoes up as a lost cause only to have Helice berate him as being wasteful when she saw the tips of the shoes sticking out of the garbage can. Without telling him what she was doing, she had fished the shoes out of the trash and hosed them down. They were on the patio drying right now. He didn’t like being reprimanded by anyone, but most especially not by Helice, and he didn’t like the thought of having to wear shoes that might still be holding the smell of dog poop. Besides, he was an adult and he thought he ought to be able to decide for himself whether he wanted to throw his own shoes away or not. It was going to be a silent battle of wills for the next few weeks because he knew that Helice was going to be watching to make sure he did wear the shoes.

  But marriage meant putting up with a lot, Eymann had found, even though theirs was a sham of a marriage at best. At its worst it was a war zone. Unfortunately, it was one in which he had to live with the enemy and Helice could be one cold-blooded, ruthless enemy who had enough ammunition in her vast arsenal of verbal weapons to slay a sizeable army. But Eymann was not about to admit any of that, not even to himself, and especially not to Helice. To say that she was intimidating was putting it mildly. She could be downright merciless, not to mention vengeful, when she felt she had been wronged. In the beginning, when he was just getting to know her, he had thought that she was a woman of strong principles and deep convictions, one who had no problem speaking up for herself or what she believed in. Now he just thought of her as a bitch. Of course he would never, ever risk saying that word to her face, not even as a joke. It would have taken an act of God to make him say it out loud. But he did whisper it quietly to himself when she was out of earshot because he had been a bloodied casualty in his share of battles with her over the past twenty years. No quarter seemed to be the axiom that Helice lived by. And that proudly.

  “You reap what you sow,” Helice quoted smugly. “This proves just how important family is to her. When your sister ends up all alone, she’ll be wondering why. She’s already gone through one divorce already, and why do you think that is?” Helice looked positively gleeful - although, to her credit, she did a good job of hiding it under a veneer of righteous condemnation - as she considered the possibly of Lauryn being left all alone in the world. For reasons that were still one of the mysteries of their very small, very limited universe, Helice positively despised Lauryn. She always had. “And why didn’t she tell us about this new man in her life? Instead she keeps it to herself and we have to find out about it on the internet. I can’t help but wonder if she is ashamed of him. Mark my words,” Helice went on, barely pausing to take a breath. “This relationship isn’t going to turn out any better than her last one.”

  Helice continued on with her garrulous tirade, sweeping up anyone even remotely connected to Lauryn. “Look at her kids. They’re just like her. Not a one of them keeps in touch, either.”

  Eymann agreed that his sister had to repent for the error of her ways, especially for turning her back on her family and raising her kids to do the same. He had always believed there had to have been sin at the core of her marriage, or she would not have gotten divorced in the first place. She should have stuck it out. Like he had.

  The unspoken, deep-down truth was that the only reason Eymann and Helice had not divorced themselves was not because of their strict religious interpretation of divorce, but because they had come to rely on each other in their own strangely-perverse way. They could only tolerate living together because of the letters. If not for the letters, they would have to focus all their internal, unresolved rage and frustration on each other and that was something neither one of them was willing to do. So the rest of the world became the dumping ground for their personal baggage from the past, all those volatile, half-buried emotions that stubbornly refused to stay permanently buried in spite of their best efforts and would otherwise have caused them both to self-destruct by now.

  At the moment, Eymann was focused on his next-door neighbor instead of his shrew of a wife who was still ranting and raving about his sister not answering her phone. Or at least he was trying to be focused there. Thankfully, dinner was over, which meant there was no longer any reason for them to be in the same room together. Because in spite of their tacit agreement to pretend that things were as they should be between a husband and a wife, things could get tense, really tense, especially if something had happened to set Helice off, like that confrontation with another shopper in the supermarket last week, or that driver who had cut her off yesterday, or if she was due to have one of her emotional meltdowns, something that was happening with more and more regularity than either one of them would have ever admitted out loud, to themselves or to anyone else.

  Eymann had already written a letter to his sister about the sinful nature of her life choices, right after the supermarket incident. That letter was already in the mail. In fact, Lauryn should have received it by now. But that letter was almost forgotten in Eymann’s eagerness to send a similar missive to his next-door neighbor. In fact, he was impatient to get his thoughts down in words and see the man brought down a few pegs. Caleb Lydon definitely needed to learn a lesson in humility.

  Hel
ice walked out of the kitchen and set a cup and saucer on the coffee table, the same cup and saucer she used every night. She turned the light on beside the couch, sat down and took a loud, prolonged sip of the steaming liquid in the tea cup, the noise setting Eymann’s teeth on edge. It was her usual evening ritual. A cup of herbal tea after dinner and a stack of five cookies, no more and no less, while she watched TV. She picked up the remote and, without looking at Eymann, asked, “When are you going to take out the trash?”

  He held back a sigh. He had his reasons for waiting before taking care of the chore, but he didn’t want to discuss those reasons with her so he mumbled something about seeing to it and went out into the garage to find some peace and quiet. Without turning the lights on, he immediately crossed over to the window. He leaned cautiously forward, careful not to ruffle the curtains in any way. He didn’t want to be caught spying on his neighbors, even though that’s exactly what he was doing. But it was hardly his fault that he had to resort to spying in the first place. He had been pushed to it. He had been backed into a corner and now he felt he had no choice but to take some kind of affirmative action. Anyone in his position would do the same, and he had already decided that a fair amount of stealth and scrutiny was going to be necessary to carry out his plan, especially if he didn’t want to be caught.

  It had been almost two months. Two months since the first incident. Two months of sleepless nights and anxious days. All because of his neighbor, Caleb. Or rather, because of Caleb’s dog, Otis, who was more affectionately known as Mr. Chubbs. How Eymann hated it when the Lydon’s stood on their back porch and actually called the dog by that ridiculous name. It was the stupidest name for a dog he had ever heard. Apparently, they didn’t agree. The thought of Otis - or Mr. Chubbs - pooping in his meticulously-manicured yard had been the last straw. Having neighbors who would blatantly allow their dog to trespass across clearly-established boundaries felt like a personal violation to Eymann. This wasn’t even about the dog anymore. This went way beyond that.

  But what could he expect from people who were living in sin? Even though Caleb and Selia weren’t married, that didn’t stop them from living together. Or fornicating. And while Caleb Lydon was disruptive in a hundred different ways as a neighbor, Eymann found Selia distracting in another way. He couldn’t say exactly what it was about her that held such a fascination for him. She was definitely not the kind of woman he should be thinking about, especially since he was a married man, but from the day they had moved in, he had found himself doing just that. There was an allure about Selia that he could not ignore, though heaven knew, he had tried. Whether it was her long flowing hair that gleamed with golden highlights in the sunlight, or her slender, womanly form as she stood on her porch or in her back yard in the early morning, something drew him almost irresistibly. She was beautiful, to be sure, but there was more to it. There were times when the light surrounded her with a soft halo, making her seem almost angelic. Eymann couldn’t get enough of looking at her.

  As attracted to her as he was, he had no delusions. She had been sent to tempt him and he must resist that temptation. Something that was hardest to do when she was in her bathing suit by their pool. The sight of her in her bikini stirred something deep inside him, something sinful and erotic, a sensation that Eymann found almost intoxicating. It was something he had never felt with Helice. One day Selia had caught him watching her. In that moment when she had slowly turned her head and her gaze lifted to meet his, it had taken a good amount of effort on his part to put forth a friendly demeanor and disguise his true feelings, to greet her with a neighborly smile and to keep his eyes from staring at those full, glistening breasts that heaved temptingly with each indrawn breath. Thank goodness his lower body’s traitorous reaction had been hidden behind the fence, otherwise he would have died of embarrassment. Or his conflict with Caleb Lydon would have taken a completely different direction.

  The image of Selia in her bathing suit continued to haunt Eymann when he was alone at night, which led to a great deal of frustration for him, both in his mind and his body. He was ashamed to admit, even to himself, that he lusted for the woman and that his unrequited lust had him tossing and turning in his bed and doing other unmentionable, wicked things. But he hadn’t been caught yet and he supposed he should count himself lucky for that, and the fact that he and Helice did not sleep together because of his snoring, because if she ever suspected . . .

  As it was, guilt ate at him had him worrying that Selia might suspect his deep, dark secret and that she could read his lecherous thoughts it in his eyes. Of course the more he tried not thinking about her, the more he thought about her, probably, he reasoned, because forbidden fruit always seemed like the sweetest. Selia was very, very different from Helice. She was the apple in the garden, and simply looking at her was like having a glimpse of heaven and then settling for the lowest reaches of hell as a substitute. It just wasn’t fair.

  Was she home yet, he wondered? Sometimes when she turned on her bedroom light, he got a brief glimpse of her before she closed the curtains. Maybe tonight-

  He was snapped out of his lustful imaginings when Helice appeared silently behind him. In fact, he nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of her voice.

  “Don’t do that,” he said irritably to cover up his guilty thoughts.

  “Don’t do what?”

  “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

  When he heard her low chuckle in the darkness, it set his teeth on edge once again. She got entirely too much enjoyment out of startling him.

  She stepped closer to the window and craned her neck to see past him.

  “What are you looking at?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer. “Their car isn’t in the garage,” she informed him, relishing, as she always did, the fact that she knew more than he did. In fact, it made her positively giddy. “They’ve been gone all day. They were going out to dinner and then to a movie which starts at 7:30. Her car is being worked on. The fuel pump.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “I heard them talking.”

  He should probably give her a lecture on eavesdropping, but this was Helice. She would come back at him like a pit bull.

  When she told him the name of the movie, his lips thinned into a reproving line. “A movie about zombies. I should have known. He’s probably getting ideas for his yard haunt this year.” Eymann’s voice lowered as he said the dreaded two words. The yard haunt was another sore subject for him. The Lydons decorated their front yard for Halloween, something the Buckminsters heartily disapproved of. The Lydons decorated for Christmas and Easter as well, but it was the Halloween display that the Buckminsters found it so offensive.

  The Buckminsters decorated for Christmas with a single, tasteful strand of lights running along the roof and a light-up board in the yard that said: Jesus is the Reason for the Season. But celebrating a pagan holiday like Halloween- They didn’t like the idea of something like that right next door to them. Every October, whenever they stepped outside, it was like a slap in the face.

  “What can you expect of heathens like that?” Helice asked with a shrug.

  Eymann muttered something under his breath about the works of the flesh when Helice informed him, “He’s planning a more elaborate cemetery scene this year.”

  “What?” Eymann carefully closed the opening in the curtains before he turned around. “After the talk that I gave him? Is he purposely trying to throw his paganistic lifestyle in our faces?”

  “Why wouldn’t he? Look at all we’ve had to put up with since the day they moved in.”

  Not only had there been the offensive Halloween yard displays. There had been the loud music. And how the Lydons mowed their yard very early in the morning. Usually on Sundays. Not to mention the basketball hoop and the ball bouncing against the concrete driveway all hours of the day and night.

  “She told me he’s planning a bigger display this year with more lighting effects,” Helice said. �
��And sounds.”

  “Sounds? I see my talk with him about the pagan origins of Halloween had no effect whatsoever. Can’t we stop him somehow?”

  “Probably not without starting a neighborhood war,” Helice told him. “There are others like him.”

  That was true. Several other neighbors were now decorating their yards for Halloween. But that was only because the Lydons had started it in the first place.

  “The more we try to protest against it, the more they’ll try to prove to us that they can do whatever they like,” Helice said. “He’s taunting you, seeing how far he can go. And that feather-brain goes along with every idea he has.”

  Just like Lauryn, Helice had not liked Selia from the moment she had first laid eyes on her. In spite of her reservations, however, Helice had tried being neighborly, but Selia just seemed to turn a cold shoulder to Helice’s efforts.

  “He probably thinks you’re going to sit back and take it and not do anything about it,” Helice commented as she leaned forward and peeked out through the curtains herself.

  She was probably right. So far, Eymann had turned the other cheek, but how long was he supposed to keep doing that?

  “He hasn’t got any respect for you,” Helice told him as she arranged the curtains and then turned around. “Not as a neighbor and not as a- ” There was a slight hesitation before she finished her sentence. “Man.”

  She’d done it with a single word. She’d thrown it out there like a grenade, the one thing that was guaranteed to push Eymann’s buttons. And now all she had to do was to wait for the explosion. She saw it building in Eymann’s eyes, which were hard and narrowed now with the dislike and the contempt he harbored for the other man.

  But Helice was never content with merely igniting an ember, and so she continued stoking the fire. “He’s the kind of man who thinks he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants. And he’ll walk all over other people to prove it,” Helice went on. “His dog is still coming over here, isn’t he? Even though you’ve politely asked him to take care of the problem. Why do you think you haven’t been able to catch him in the act? It’s probably because he lets him out when you’re dead to the world. He’ll probably do the same thing tonight. While you’re snoring away, he’ll be out there in the darkness laughing at you. And tomorrow I’ll have to hose down another pair of shoes.”