“Cult?”
She was nodding, rotating her small cup and watching the foam slowly melt into her untouched coffee.
“You mean like a religious cult?”
“I don’t know exactly what kind…. There are rumors about all kinds of weird things going on. The big thing seems to be some interest in vampires.”
“Like in Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Dracula or—?”
“I mean in real live vampires.”
Kristi gave her a look. “Vampire bats…or the Count Dracula kind? Oh, wait, I get it. You’re putting me on.”
But Lucretia was serious. “This isn’t a joke! Some of the kids run around with fangs and vials of blood hanging from their necks, and they are so into Dr. Grotto’s class that it’s almost like an obsession. Totally out of line.”
“But they don’t really believe there are vampires who sleep in coffins during the day and run around and drink human blood at night. The kind that are only killed by wooden stakes or silver bullets and can’t look into mirrors.”
“Don’t be that way.”
“What way?” Kristi asked.
“So…harsh. And I don’t know what they believe.” Almost guiltily, Lucretia played with a gold chain encircling her neck. Between her fingers a small diamond-encrusted cross dangled.
“So, Rylee was into this vampire thing,” Kristi said skeptically.
“Yes. Oh, yeah…” The diamond cross glittered under the huge suspended lights of the dining hall.
“What do they do? This vampire cult?”
“I don’t know. Rylee was…secretive.”
“What do you know about her?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call her the most stable girl on the planet,” Lucretia admitted. “She had quit college once before, maybe in winter or spring term of last year.” She cleared her throat. Looked away. The cross winked.
“And—” Kristi prodded, sensing there was more.
“And, well…she was…is a bit of a drama queen. Well, not just a bit, I would say. She did try to commit suicide once.”
“Suicide?”
“Shh!” Lucretia lowered her voice and quit playing with her necklace. “I know, that’s a cry for help and I’m not sure she ever got it. Her mother spent so much time worrying that Rylee would get pregnant, she never saw how much pain Rylee was in.”
“Her mother ignored her suicide attempt?” Krista asked incredulously.
“The way Rylee told it, she gave her mom a lot of trouble as a teenager—staying out late, partying, the wrong crowd, drugs, boys, you name it. So she washed her hands of her, turned her back on her own kid. How about that?” Lucretia said the last phrase bitterly and Kristi was reminded of Lucretia’s own disengaged parents. At least disengaged emotionally.
Lucretia cleared her throat. “Anyway, from what I understand, her mother thinks Rylee’s disappearance is just one more of her ‘stunts,’ a clamor for attention.”
“But you think it’s this…cult.”
“Yes.”
“And that she got mixed up with something or someone evil within the cult.”
Lucretia swallowed hard. “I hope I’m wrong.”
“You think she took this vampirism thing too far, really believed it, and got in over her head.”
Lucretia was obviously turning it over in her mind. “Yes…yes…I think it’s possible.”
There was something off about the conversation, something Lucretia wasn’t saying, something worrisome. Here they were in the middle of the damned cafeteria of the student union, surrounded by kids and adults, talking, laughing, joking, or studying, some listening to iPods, some eating or drinking coffee or sipping on sodas, and she and Lucretia were actually talking about vampires and cults. Something soulfully evil? She eyed her ex-roommate and wondered what had happened to her over the past few years. “What about you, Lucretia?” she asked, watching for the tiniest reaction. “Where are you on the whole vampirism thing?”
Lucretia glanced at the window to the gloomy day beyond. “Sometimes I don’t really know what’s real and what’s not.”
A shiver of apprehension slid down Kristi’s spine. “Seriously?”
“Do I believe in vampires? As in the Hollywood archetype? No.” Lucretia shook her head slowly. Thoughtfully. As if she were wrestling with the idea for the first time. Almost unconsciously, she began shredding her paper napkin.
“Let’s take Hollywood out of it,” Kristi suggested. She should probably drop the entire conversation. It was too weird. Too unreal. But she couldn’t help herself. Her curiosity had been whetted with the mystery of the missing coeds and she’d already decided to look into their disappearances; maybe Lucretia could help. She certainly seemed as if she wanted to.
Lucretia thought hard, then said, “Philosophically, I believe that you can make your own truth. People who hallucinate, whether from drugs or medical conditions, see things that are very real to them. It’s their truth, their frame of reference, though it isn’t, maybe, anyone else’s. My grandmother, before she died, saw people who weren’t in the room, and she was certain she’d gone places that she couldn’t have, because she was stuck in a hospital bed in a nursing home. But she described her ‘trips’ with amazing clarity, to the point she nearly convinced us. Was she dreaming? Hallucinating?” Lucretia shrugged her shoulders. “Doesn’t matter. Her reality, her truth was that she had been there.”
“So you’re thinking that the students who are in this cult, they’ve altered their reality. Through what? Mental problems? Drugs?”
“Or maybe desire.”
Kristi felt an icy wind cut through her soul. “Desire?”
Sighing, Lucretia finally brushed the pieces of her napkin aside, piling the tiny bits with the gooey used packets of condiments. “They want to believe it so badly that it’s real. You know what I mean. Wanting something so badly in your life that you can almost taste it. Wanting something…something you would do anything to get.” Her dark eyes zeroed in on Kristi and she grabbed her hand, holding it so tight her knuckles showed white. “We all want something.”
A moment later she let go of Kristi’s hand. Kristi found that her heartbeat had accelerated. “But this particular fantasy…Why would anyone want to think that there are vampires?” Kristi asked, truly mystified.
“It’s hot. Sexy.”
“Really? Drinking blood? Living in darkness? Being undead for centuries? That’s hot? Who in their right mind would want—”
“No one said anything about them being in their right minds.” Lucretia stared at her again, then finally picked up her coffee cup and took a sip. “These—believers—their lives are empty, or boring, or so goddamned awful that any kind of magic, or sorcery, or alternative existence is better than what they’re living.”
“That’s whacked. You’re saying there’s a whole cult of these people who believe in this creature of the night fantasy.”
“It’s whacked to you. But not to them. Oh, there are probably some who participate just for the thrill of it. There’s an allure to the whole vampire culture. It’s dark. It’s sexual. In some ways it’s very romantic and visceral. But to some people it’s not a fantasy. Those are the ones that really, and truly, believe it.”
“They need help,” Kristi said.
When