Odd Stuff (6 page)

“Not exactly. Blood types are a reasonably new thing you people thought up to explain the tiny differences in blood. To me, you smell sweet. This is the thing I look for. I have a sweet tooth. I always have, even before I became a vampire.”

“How old are you, anyway?”

He smirked at me. “Older than you.”

“Okay, Mr. Mysterious, I get it. Never ask a lady her age. So, I am your preferred blood type, which was why Mia wrote to stay away from you?” 

“She what?” He sounded genuinely surprised.
Go, me. I stunned the undead.
 

“In her notes she left me. She said, and I quote, ‘Stay away from my friend, Vance. You are his type and he would really tear you up.’ But Type O Positive is a reasonably common blood type. Why would she warn me and not, say, the rest of the world?” 

“I have a question for you…Mia is a witch. She opened Odd Stuff as soon as she got her business degree. From what I know of her, she always embraced the fact she was different and tends to befriend those who do the same.” He looked at me. I squirmed. “You are as normal as mom’s apple pie. Single mom, married a lawyer…you are the picture of wholesome Americana. What do you and she have in common?” 

Cheerfully, I pointed. “Is that Natural Foods?”

He nodded. “You aren’t going to tell me. I smell something and, Mia was right, I like it. But what is it?” 

“Oh, it
is
Natural Foods. If you’ll excuse me, I need to buy some iron supplements.” I got out of the car and was not terribly surprised to see him follow me. He came in close and sniffed at my neck. I shooed him off, yanking my hair back tighter into a wad on my head. 

“I
will
solve the mystery. There is something buried under that Miss Normal act, and I will figure it out.”

“Sure.” I shrugged nonchalantly. I entered Natural Foods, which appeared to be a normal grocery store until you got to the aisles. Then you noticed the food was all whole grains and other wholesome good stuff. I hate health food. If I am alive, I want to eat something that tastes good. Save the roughage for the rabbits, that’s my motto. Then again, if you saw the size of my butt, you would guess that, rather than having to be told. 

I found the aisle with vitamin and mineral supplements and grabbed a bottle of iron pills. I also picked up some granola and yogurt for Vickie. Then I saw some strawberry preserves and picked those up, too. Leaving the store, Vance shuffled beside me, silent and lurking. I began to wonder why. 

“You really aren’t going to tell me, are you?” His tone was becoming annoyed.

“Nope.” I was less annoyed.

“Is it something common? Are you a witch? I know you aren’t a vampire.” 

“Nope.” I tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear absently. “It’s like you said, I am just mundane, wholesome Americana.”

He snorted. “It is spicy. I can smell it now. It is hidden under all of that sweet pretty goodness, but there is a spicy smell, too.” 

“That’s probably vampire funk.” I put the car in gear.

“And the vampires in the club should not have reacted quite that strongly…not just to some rinsed blood. It’s as if there was something else…” 

“Drop it, Batman.”

He laughed. I gunned it down Route Twenty and ignored his little guessing game. I was getting tired enough not to care. All those surges of adrenaline really take it out of a girl. 

Even with the scene at the strip club, we made it back to Odd Stuff by twelve thirty. Not bad time, really. I tugged my bag of groceries out and went to the front door of the shop. Three men awaited me. I unlocked the door, and they followed me into the store, my own parade of weirdness. Vance took the tail and looked around at the road before locking the door behind us. 

“Hi, I’m Janie Smith, an old friend of Mia’s. If you’ll give me a minute to put this stuff away and find her camera, we can head out. Sorry I’m late, we…got hung up.” 

“That’s okay, Mia is never on time. That’s why we meet at midnight rather than one.” 

Not even looking back to see which one of the three men answered me, I just booked it up the stairs. Buzzing through the living room, I passed Sven watching a reality show on the couch in pink flowered pajamas. I paused and Vance almost ran into me. I glared at my vampire shadow and then looked back at Sven.  

Such a huge man in pink flowered pajamas
. Then it occurred to me what a weird night I was having and I shrugged it off. I put the groceries away and asked if anyone knew where Mia kept her camera. 

“In the corner cupboard,” called Sven.

I snagged the camera, a cute little pink digital one, and a ski cap from my bag. I glanced in at Vickie on my way down the hall. Her snores filled the bedroom, so I reclosed her door and moved on. As I passed Sven, he held up a package of batteries, and I grabbed them on my way downstairs. 

Time to meet the “Terrible Trio.”

~

The so-called “terrible trio” were, as I mentioned, three men. The oldest was Jimmy. Salt and pepper haired and fifty-six years old, Jimmy’s claim fame was that he used to be a bandmember of the ArmPits. The ArmPits, if Mia’s notes were to be believed, were a one hit wonder band from the seventies. The song,
Faded
, based on only the title, seemed an apt description of Jimmy. Jimmy was apparently also loaded—as in rich beyond words. He took what was left of his end of the royalties from
Faded
and invested in eBay. His status as a computer geek united him with the other two men, along with their love for ghost hunting. Skin tight leather pants with splashes of hot pink and aquamarine—topped off with a black leather trench coat and a lacy blouse—made Jimmy look like the lovechild of Billy Idol and Rod Stuart, but with Bob Carlin’s hair. When Bob had the ponytail, that is. 

Next in line was Gary, an actual forty-year-old virgin. I knew that personal detail from my notes, but I didn’t doubt it. A potheaded camera pro, Gary wore a holey, stained T-shirt. His jeans and shoes looked like they survived either a nuclear holocaust or the rebuilding of a Chevy. 

The youngest, and mouthiest, was Zane. Zane shopped frequently at Mia’s store and looked it. In black JNCO’s and a black silky shirt with flame buttons, he was one long line of darkness. He wore a dog collar and had his black-with-red-tips hair spiked a good three inches above his head.

Oh, and they all smelled like French whores.

I sneezed my way to the cemetery and figured, if nothing else, they would keep Vance from sniffing at me to figure out “what I was.” When we got to the cemetery, they told me to kill my headlights. I parked my car, and we all piled out. “Now what?” I yawned. I hoped to get this over with as quickly as possible. Sleep sounded really good. I rubbed at my eyes, now blurred from lack of sleep. 

Zane stood far too close to me and mumbled in my ear. “I am going to take pictures and so are you. Hopefully we’ll catch something on film. Jimmy works the machine that tests for magnetic fields and Gary has a temperature sensor to pick up any drops in temp that might mean there is a presence.” 

Ah, ha. Silly me.
How could I not know that? “So, where do I take pictures?” 

“Where ever you, like, feel something,” answered Jimmy.

Dig
, I thought sarcastically. “How many pictures does this thing hold?” 

This time I earned a dirty look from Gary. “You gotta stop talking so much. You are going to scare stuff off.”

“It’s ok.” Zane tossed an arm over my shoulder companionably. “She’s new. The memory card will hold three hundred.”

“And I have to take all of them?”

Vance chuckled. He and Gary were a good way into the cemetery already, but his voice carried in the silence.

“Yeah, then we will unload them and email any good ones back to you.” Zane pointed to buttons on the camera as he spoke.

Yeah, because I wanted the “good” ones. “Can I have a flashlight?” 

Now even Zane looked like I was trying his patience. “How would we catch anything if we lit the place up?”

Ahh. Okay, that made absolutely no sense to me, but what did I know? I didn’t believe in ghosts, either. Zane entered the cemetery, leaving me the only one standing near the car. Yeah, cemeteries at night were creepy. I looked around. All of the headstones loomed like ghosts in the darkness. One, a huge angel, seemed to be glaring down at me. 

The silence weighed down on me. The soft crunch of footfalls on the frosty ground made me keep looking behind me to make sure no one was following me even though logic told me it was the rest of the group moving.

With shivers up my spine and the hair on my neck at attention, I was creeped out by the whole scene. I decided the faster I took three hundred pictures, the faster I got to leave the spooky cemetery and go home and sleep.

I tiptoed into the cemetery. Tree limbs hung down like twisted arms in the moonlight. The headstones cast inky black shadows. The ground made a cracking sound almost like glass breaking under my feet, and I began shooting random pictures. I walked for awhile and couldn’t hear the others anymore. As I stepped behind one monolith, I froze, thinking I saw a ghost. 

I shot a few pictures of it, since that, after all, was why we were here. It lay on the ground and looked like a man. I crept a little closer and it didn’t move, so I shot another twenty or so pictures. I walked closer yet. In the moonlight, it looked as if the man wore a red blazer and a button down shirt. His legs lay in an odd position, and he was still not moving. 

I got closer and shot more pictures. I guess it made sense. I mean if there were vampires and witches, why not ghosts? And since I had decided I was officially crazy, why not embrace the craziness? Okay, there
were
ghosts and I was getting some great pictures of one. Maybe I could sell them to the National Enquirer and become so rich that I would be considered eccentric rather than nuts. 

The ghost still didn’t move, and I realized I must be a really good ghost hunter to get so close. I snapped more shots. About five feet away from the thing, I began to wonder if he wasn’t a ghost after all.

His eyes faced up and his mouth hung open. Oh God, was he a dead guy?
I could not have found a dead body. Looking around, I realized the monolith was the last of the headstones and I probably stood on the edge of the cemetery. I backed away from the body, but couldn’t take my eyes off it.

Yup, I’d found a body.
Shit.
 

And then I fell.

I yelped, but I didn’t fall far. Only about six feet, since I landed in a grave.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I pulled myself to a sitting position. Actually, I was probably better off in a grave than up there, looking at a body.

Until the body fell in, too.
Zombie!
 

I screamed a good one when he plopped like a sack of potatoes on my legs. By kicking at him, I managed to get my legs free, which was good since I wasn't sure how good a camera would be against a zombie. He didn’t try to grab me, he just lay there like a…dead body. Someone just threw a dead guy on me.

Footsteps ran away above me, and then more footsteps ran toward me.

I looked up, but Vance’s head blocked some of my moonlight.

“Help!” I squeaked.

He put an arm down and pulled me out of the hole.

Gary, Jimmy and Zane all gaped at me. My hair had fallen down again and mud, some dried vampire blood, and some dead guy cooties covered my hair and clothes. 

I was not at my best.

I started to cry. I know, it’s so terribly girly, but let’s sum up here. I drove from south of Pittsburgh to northeast Ohio. Then, I ran a weird store and stabbed a vampire. I got bit in the ass at a strip club and I made out with the vampire I stabbed. Now, I stood rumpled and smelly in a dark cemetery, where I found a dead body and had it thrown on me in a grave. I couldn’t help it, I had reached my weird limit for one twenty four hour period. I wanted to curl up with a sloppy pizza and a good book and pretend I wasn’t me. Instead, I was stuck in a graveyard with a dead body, three ghost hunters and a vampire. 

When I recovered, I noticed the men stared at me helplessly. I got up and pulled my hair back into a wad on my head. “There’s a dead body down there.” 

Three ghost hunters and a vampire peered into the hole. 

“Um, it’s Marcus,” Vance identified the body. 

“Dude,” Jimmy muttered.

~

Vance decided we were better off calling in the dead body and leaving. I worried about that. What if I left DNA connecting me to the scene in the hole? I didn’t watch forensic TV for nothing. He hopped in the hole and came up with three strands of hair and the camera. 

I was satisfied with that. If a vampire said he’d found all traces of your scent, you roll with it I guess. We piled back into my car and I dropped off the ghost hunters at an all night diner, since they weren’t ready to turn in yet.  

Vance sat still in the car next to me while I stared at the
Witch Parking Only
sign. “What are the chances of you finding Marcus while ghosthunting?” His voice rippled through the darkness and I shivered at the velvety smoothness of the sound. 

“I guess I don’t need those iron supplements. That was the same Marcus, right?”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I am beginning to think that this whole mess has something to do with me.”

Not answering, I waited for him to continue.

“See, someone attacked me while I was resting for the day. They knew where I slept, staked me, and dumped me in a dumpster.”

I continued my blank regard. Maybe shock? Or perhaps getting numb to the nonsense.

“And then someone staked Madam Zulu,” he continued.

“Why aren’t you dead? Vampire, stake and all…” Even as I asked, I realized I requested logic to be applied to illogic and doubted he’d give any sort of answer which made sense.

“They missed. They hit my collarbone. The common misconception is that when you say the Pledge of Allegiance, you are putting your hand over your heart by sticking your right hand to your left breast.” He demonstrated. “More accurately, however, you would put both hands together and bend your elbows at a ninety degree angle to gauge around where the heart is. They hit where most think the heart is rather than where it actually lies. Also, it is nicely protected by the sternum.”