Vampires in Devil Town (12 page)

Fifteen

Jacob woke up around noon, fully-clothed, covered in sweat, and slightly confused. He was not used to waking up next to Rachel or on the couch pulled out into a bed. He felt strange. Despite last night being the most openly traumatic evening he had experienced in nearly two years, he had slept soundly, without a single dream or nightmare.
  Rachel and Rain continued to snooze, looking almost childlike, facing each other, their knees nearly touching. Jacob wanted to take a picture of them but knew they had things to do. He had shut the windows before going to bed and now the sun poured in and the apartment was hot. Crossing the room, he opened the windows, letting the fresh breeze stream in. Reaching over the couch, he tapped Rachel awake.
  “Morning,” he said.
  “Good morning,” she said. “What time is it?”
  “Just after noon.”
  “Fuck,” she said, hopping up out of bed. “I need to call my parents.”
  She grabbed the phone from the nightstand and went into the other room to talk to her parents, probably to apologize for not being there when they woke up and probably to apologize in advance for not being there the rest of the day. Of course, she wouldn’t be able to tell them
why
she wouldn’t be able to be there.
  Rain woke up while Rachel was in the other room.
  “Good morning,” Jacob said.
  “Morning.” She wiped the sleep from her eyes.
  “Sleep well?”
  “Surprisingly, yes.”
  “Are you still coming along with us?”
  “Of course. I think you guys’ll need the help.”
  Jacob nodded.
  “Got any plans?” she asked.
  “How do you plan against something that may not exist?”
  “Good point.”
  “So my plan is this: As soon as Rachel gets off the phone, we three will hike down to the Wake Up Screaming and grab the only decent coffee this ‘burg has to offer. There, we will sit down and talk. And then we will go hunting.”
  “It feels like we need supplies or something.”
  “What? Like silver bullets and holy water and all that shit?”
  “Maybe.”
  “Don’t think it would do any good.”
  “Me either. But if Bones is out there... I’m pretty sure a gun could stop
him
.”
  “You’re probably right. Sometimes I wish I was a gun enthusiast.”
  “I take it you’re not?”
  “There’s not a firearm in the place.”
  She looked puzzled.
  “I know... Maybe Rachel told you a little bit about what happened before and you think maybe it’s stupid not to have one around but, well, first of all, what good would it do and... if she had told you the
whole
story then you would know.”
  “She didn’t.”
  “She didn’t tell you the whole story?”
  “Any of it.”
  “Well, then, I think we have some brunch conversation.”
  Rachel came back into the living room and put the phone back on its charger.
  “They’re pissed,” she said.
  “Aren’t they always?”
  “I’ll never quite figure them out.”
  “You’re their little girl. They’re worried about you,” Jacob said.
  “Sometimes I wish I had a sister.”
  “I’ll be your sister,” Rain said.
  Rachel let go a sinister chuckle. “You should probably meet my parents before you say things like that. You may not know what you’re getting yourself into.”
  “That bad, huh?”
  “That bad,” Jacob answered for Rachel. “They do, however, have a soft spot for orphans.” Jacob was thinking about the weeks they had taken him in and parented him after his own parents had died, patiently, even though they were probably well aware he was fucking their daughter every time he was given the chance.
  “So... plans?” Rachel said.
  “Ah, yes, I thought we would retire to the Wake Up Screaming and clear our heads. Fill our new friend in on some of our glorious past.”
  “That’s a good idea.”
  “Let us go then.”
  Rain got up from the bed and announced she should probably go to the bathroom before leaving. Rachel and Jacob also found this a good idea so they all took turns before filing out of his apartment and down the dimly lit stairway.
  Outside, the air was brisk and bright. It didn’t seem like the right day to hunt the Devils. Jacob was infested with a mingling of fear and exhilaration. Part of him wanted to be on his way, toward the Devils, hunting
them
rather than the other way around. Another part of him felt hopeless, like they could hunt all they wanted to and not turn up anything. He knew the Devils liked to strike when you least expected it.
  They walked the two blocks down Main Street until they reached the Wake Up Screaming. It was a good time to go. It was after the breakfast crowd and before the high school crowd. But, in Lynchville, a crowd was never really that much of a crowd. Stoop’s cafe had a very old fashioned wooden sign hanging over the sidewalk. Both the cafe and the bookstore seemed slightly out of place in Lynchville. The sign for the cafe had a large painted bloodshot eye carved into the wood. One could see the eye as someone in the throes of a caffeine high but Jacob had always thought it looked more like the eye of someone gripped in fear. Like something you would see on the cover of a horror novel. The sign for the bookstore, Den of Iniquity, featured the Devil sitting on a chair and holding a book with his left hand, his pointed tale wrapped around his hooves, his right hand adjusting a pair of very studious looking reading glasses. Jacob was amazed the Baptists hadn’t cried for the sign to be torn down yet.
  Jacob opened the cafe door and held it open for the girls. It was a heavy wooden door and you had to step up a concrete step to get inside. Once inside, he followed Rain who followed Rachel to their customary spot in one of the booths toward the back. Rachel and Rain sat down, sitting next to each other so they faced the front door and the window overlooking the sidewalk. The barista would come to the table and take the order but Jacob didn’t really like to be waited on so he went to the bar and got three coffees. The mugs were large black heavy things, indicative of the coffee contained therein. Each mug was printed with a big white eye. The creamer and sugar were kept at the table.
  The boy behind the counter, after waiting on Jacob, went back to leaning on the counter. He sat down on a stool and put Beck’s
Sea Change
into the stereo. This was one of the reasons Jacob always loved Stoop’s. Nowadays, it was nearly impossible to find a cafe where you could listen to semi-decent music.
  Jacob sat the mugs down at the table and slid into the booth, his back to the window, feeling slightly hunted.
  Rachel added an abundance of cream and sugar to her coffee. Rain drank hers black like Jacob.
  They sat for awhile in the dimly lit cafe, the somber music playing around them, not saying much and sipping their coffees.
  “On Halloween night, nearly two years ago now,” Rachel said. “I made a big mistake.”
  

Sixteen

A Halloween Interlude

1.

Two years ago and it still amazed Rachel how fast it could all come back to her. Just a second of thinking about it and she was there, standing on her front porch, watching the costumed children parade through the dead leaves of the neighborhood.
  And it smelled just like every Halloween she could ever remember:
  Candle wax.
  The latex of the masks and the weird smell of the greasy make- up.
  The smell of sugar, drifting out of mouths and from cotton pillowcases and crinkly plastic bags and hard plastic pumpkinhead buckets.
  Fires, burning off in the distance. Fires that burned for the children to come home so the whole family could gather round and have one last weenie roast, one last marshmallow roast, all gathered round and sipping cider and waiting for the bitter winter to come on.
  Clean air, always so crisp. Always so perfect for this day.
  And the smell of dead leaves, the cold damp coming up from the ground. The smell that, to Rachel, symbolized Halloween more than anything else.
  The fallen leaves.
  The fallen leaves were everywhere.
  She could smell them. She could
hear
them, crunchy and brittle as the trick-or-treaters went from yard to yard.
  The leaves were beautiful. They looked beautiful. They smelled beautiful.
  The leaves were dead.
  This was the peculiar thought she recalled with perfect clarity as she stood there and watched two gorillas, much bigger than the other trick-or-treaters, march up the walk to her front porch.
  They weren’t
completely
gorillas.
  They only had gorilla heads.
  The rest of them: the leather jackets, the jeans, the black combat boots, were more recognizable.
  Dave Gross and Steve Kenyon.
  It had to be.
  Dave was the shorter and stockier of the two. He was on the left.
  “Trick-or-treat,” he said gruffly.
  “My,” Rachel said. “You’re a big one. Aren’t you?”
  “Growth disorder,” the gorilla huffed. “Trick-or-treat.”
  “Do you have a bag or something?”
  “Trick-or-fucking-treat,” Dave said.
  “Dave!” Rachel said. “There are kids behind you.”
  “I’m not Dave.”
  “Sure.”
  “What are you doin?”
  “What’s it look like I’m doing? I’m trying to give out some candy but there are two big effing gorillas in my way.”
  “Huh-huh,” he laughed. “‘Effing.’”
  “Will you guys move?”
  The gorillas moved off to her right. She sat on the top step of the porch. They leaned against the base of the porch. An alien approached her and she tossed a couple of bite-sized candy bars into his pillowcase.
  “You wanna come out?” Steve asked.
  “Not right now. I’m passing out candy.”
  “We could go out later.”
  She tossed some candy into a little girl’s pumpkin pail. She couldn’t tell if the little girl was supposed to be a princess or a hooker. A princess, she figured.
  “I don’t know. I’d have to ask Mom.”
  “No problem,” Steve said.
  He climbed the porch steps beside her, hoisted open the storm door and called, “Mrs. Stokes! Mrs.
Stoookes
!”
  “Yes?” she heard her mom’s voice call from inside the house, probably the kitchen.
  “Can Rachel come out after she’s passed out all the candy?”
  Now her mom had come to the door. She was covered in blood from head to toe. Rachel had told her she was too old to go to their Halloween party as Carrie and her mom had told her to get bent.
  “Sure. We’re not going to be here to entertain her. What are you guys going to do?”
  “Oh, Dale Septum is having this Halloween party at his house. He invited just about everyone.”
  “Is there going to be drinking there?”
  “You bet. Drinking, pot, sex... someone was even talking about scoring some crack.”
  “You’re such a goof.”
  “I know. It’s totally punch and cookies. Supervised and everything.”
  “Yeah, right. You were probably closer the first time.”
  
Except there is no one in our school named Dale Septum
, Rachel thought.
  Rachel’s mom leaned her head out the door to address her, “Be back by one?”
  “Yes, Mom.”
  “I mean it. It’s best to get home before all the drunks are on the road.”
  “You mean like you and Dad?”
  “We’re meth-heads. You know that. It helps the concentration. At first anyway... You’ll have your phone. Call if there’s an emergency.”
  “There won’t
be
any emergency,” Rachel said, exasperated.
  “Fine, fine. Just make sure it’s charged.”
  “We’ll take good care of her, Mrs. Stokes.”
  “All right. Poke your head in and holler before you go. And there’s still a half-hour left so don’t just dump all the candy on the next kid who comes. Or else his diabetes will be on your hands.”
  “Yes, Mom.”
  “Have fun.”
  Her mom, thankfully, disappeared back into the house.
  “Your mom’s kinda hot when she’s all covered in blood,” Dave said.
  “If I give him a sucker, will he shut up?” she asked Steve.
  “Only if it’s the kind with gum in the middle,” Dave said.
  Rachel rummaged through the bowl until she found a cherry Blow Pop. She threw it at Dave. It plunked against his jacket and he trapped it with his hands, greedily unwrapping it and pulling off his gorilla mask so he could suck on it. Rachel noticed he had a huge black eye.
  “What the hell happened to you?”
  “Car accident.”
  “Well then
you’re
certainly not driving.”
  Rachel deposited a random handful of candy into a Day-Glo plastic bag held by a pudgy kid in a Jason mask. Hopefully, the sugar wouldn’t send him into a homicidal rage.
  “He’s shittin you,” Steve said, still wearing his gorilla mask.
  “No accident?”
  “Not a
car
accident,” Steve said.
  “She doesn’t have to know...” Dave said.
  The next handful was larger. This one to Harry Potter.
  “We’re buds. We tell each other everything,” Rachel said.
  “See, Davey here had a run-in...”
  “Man, it’s embarrassing.”
  “With Bryan Adams and Darryl Hall.”
  “I can’t believe those two guys hang out with each other. I mean, they
know
, right? About their names.”
  “At least one of them isn’t named Oates. I don’t remember his first name,” Steve said.
  “See, now why’d you have to tell? Feel better now?”
  “It’s just Rachel,” Steve said.
  “Thanks,” Rachel said.
  Double-handfuls to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. It wasn’t until they were walking away Rachel noticed they had nooses around their necks. She rolled her eyes.
  “You know what I mean,” Steve said.
  “Yes, I’m too short and pudgy and don’t buy my clothes at the mall and until I do I’m just Rachel.”
  “I’m sorry.”
  “I’m just kidding.” She was, too. She didn’t mind being “just Rachel.” At least, not around Dave and Steve anyway. To her, they would always be just the boys down the street. The ones who went way back to when boys were kind of icky.
  “Besides,” she said, “don’t feel sorry for me. I’m not the one who got beat up by Darryl Hall and Bryan Adams.”
  “Real nice. Good going, Steve. Well, I’m not the only one,” he said, yanking Steve’s gorilla mask off. His top lip looked kind of mashed and swollen.
  Rachel, knowing she probably shouldn’t, burst out laughing.
  “You’re on thin ice, Missy,” Steve said. “We don’t have to take you anywhere.”
  “Fine. Then I’ll just call Anna and we’ll have our lesbian sleepover lingerie party and you losers will most definitely not be invited.”
  “Where is hottie Anna, anyway?”
  “I don’t know. I left a message but she wouldn’t call back. Probably out getting an abortion or something.”
  A kid dressed like Jesus came up and handed her a Jack Chick comic. Rachel smiled and dumped the rest of the bowl into his brown paper sack, figuring he was going to need it, diabetes be damned.
  “I didn’t think Jesus freaks were allowed to go trick-or-treating,” Steve said.
  “Well, he’s not the Jesus freak. His parents are. We ready to go?”
  “Whenever you are.”
  “Let me grab a coat and compliment Mom on her dirty pillows.”
  “Right on. Tell her what I said about the blood,” Dave said.
  Rachel snorted. “Come back next week. I think she’s on her period then.”
  That shut him up.