Vampires in Devil Town (15 page)

“Whose car?” Charlotte asked as the two girls left the high school.
  “I don’t mind driving,” Autumn said.
  “Cool.”
  They got in the car and began the drive toward town, toward the Wake Up Screaming. This had become something of a ritual for them. They would sit at a table they had now sat at enough times to consider it theirs. Then, over some frothy coffee beverages they would talk about their respective weeks at school. They were both fairly studious and didn’t really talk that much through the week. When not studying, Autumn read voraciously and attempted to write short stories, maybe the occasional poem that would usually make her wince two weeks later. Said poem usually found its way into the trashcan or fireplace. Most of the stories she hung on to. She wanted to send them out to magazines but she didn’t really have any ideas where to send them so she spent a lot of time revising. Charlotte played around with painting and photography. She had taken a class her sophomore year and knew how to develop her own pictures. Much to her parents’ dislike, she had turned the basement bathroom into a darkroom. Autumn had posed for pictures. Most of them involved fake blood and not a lot of clothes. She wouldn’t have posed for pictures if anyone else was taking them but she had learned a long time ago that she had something of a girl crush on Charlotte and would do just about anything she asked her to do.
  The drive to the cafe was somber. All day, Autumn had sensed something bothering Charlotte. Well, not
all
day. She had seemed fine in English this morning. She guessed it really started around lunch. Charlotte had come to the table a little bit later than usual looking flushed and distant. And she was quiet. Charlotte was hardly ever quiet. She had even said herself she talked just to make conversation sometimes. She could normally comment on anything, be it the salt shaker at the table or Bobby Saxon’s ridiculous sweater. At first Autumn thought she had started her period or something but she knew that was wrong because their periods were during the same week.
  Autumn decided to wait until they got to the cafe to talk about whatever was bothering Charlotte. Talkative as she was, she kept things jovial at school. Seriousness—emotions—conveyed some kind of weakness. Autumn knew, if anything
was
bothering her, it would have to wait until after school.
  As they drew closer to the cafe, Autumn didn’t really know how she was going to broach the subject. She would probably be brash and just come right out and ask her what was bothering her. She lacked subtlety. Or maybe she just lacked social refinement. Charlotte was the only person she really talked to. It was probably just the new boy she was seeing, Autumn thought. She didn’t even know his name. She just thought of him as the mystery boy.
  Autumn pulled her small car up to the curb in front of the Wake Up Screaming. A dreadful parallel parker, she ran the tire against the curb before backing out into traffic and finally managing to get her car straight enough for it to classify as a parking space, rather than being half in the road and half-parked.
  “Good job, little driver,” Charlotte said. “That only took about ten minutes.”
  “You could have driven.”
  “I don’t like to drive.”
  “I don’t like to park.”
  “I don’t like to do that either.”
  They got out of the car and walked through the afternoon sunshine into the darker confines of the cafe. Autumn recognized David Macklin behind the bar. He had graduated last year and she was pretty certain he didn’t have a clue who she was. Not that things like that really mattered to her anyway. Besides, most of his attention was given to Charlotte. It was like he couldn’t look away. Charlotte dressed and moved like a model. Her dress probably had the boy wondering how long her legs were.
  Autumn ordered a cafe mocha with an extra shot of espresso and Charlotte ordered a skinny latte. The girls went and sat down. They knew the boy would bring them their coffee when it was ready. He moved painfully slow and Autumn thought she would die if she had to stand there and watch him do this.
  They sat in the seat by the window, hardly noticing the strangers huddled in the back corner of the cafe and only dimly aware of the sound of hushed, almost conspiratorial, conversation.
  “So what’s been bugging you?” Autumn asked.
  “Nothing, really.”
  “Is it the mystery guy?”
  Charlotte was silent for a minute. “Yeah, maybe it is the mystery guy... But there are other things.”
  “Like what?”
  “I’ll tell you later.”
  “Wait, you can’t say something like that and then say you’ll tell me later.”
  Charlotte met Autumn’s eyes. “Well,” she said. “Some of it’s kind of strange and I just think it would be easier to talk about around a campfire with some wine in our bellies. Not out in public like this.”
  “Okay. Well, what kind of stuff is it?”
  Charlotte looked at the table and shook her head, knowing Autumn wasn’t going to let up easily.
  “Is it sexual stuff?” Autumn asked just as David set the tall glasses of coffee down on the table. Undoubtedly hearing what she had just asked, he lingered a little longer than was necessary. In order to shoo him away, Autumn said, “That’s all for now. Thanks.”
  He lowered his head and crossed back to the bar dejectedly.
  “Really,” Charlotte said. “I promise I’ll tell you about it later.”
  “What if there is no later? What if there is only now? What if the world ends before tonight? What then? Huh? I’ll tell you what then. Then I go to my grave always wondering and never knowing what was bothering Charlotte Black.”
  “Nothing’s really bothering me, okay? I’ve just never really had to deal with things like this before.”
  “Things like what?” Autumn couldn’t really understand what all the fuss was about a boy. At least Charlotte
had
a boy.
  “I don’t know.”
  Then it hit Autumn. “Oh, I get it. You
love
him, don’t you? Charlotte is in love. Is this your first time?”
  “I’m not in love. Love is for desperate people. But I think I’m in something.”
  “Is it a cult?”
  This caught Charlotte off guard momentarily. She almost thought Autumn was being serious. “Of course he isn’t in a cult. Cults are so passé. Do you really think I would be some kind of cult slut?”
  The people at the other table, two girls and a guy, got up to leave the cafe. Autumn’s back was to the door. Charlotte watched them closely. There was something that
wanted
her to look at them. They all looked kind of hodge-podge and disheveled. And they had dark circles under their eyes. They looked like she felt. Too many late nights maybe. She wondered if the guy was sleeping with both of them.
  “Okay,” Autumn interrupted her staring. “So I guess if you absolutely promise to tell me tonight then I’ll stop bothering you about it.”
  “What are we doing tonight, anyway?”
  “The usual sounds good.”
  “So you
want
to do the wine and campfire thing again?”
  “Might as well. It’ll be too cold before too long. You don’t have any plans with the love of your life do you?”
  Not knowing it, Autumn had struck to the core of what was bothering Charlotte. She probably could have told Autumn that and saved a lot of time later. Instead she shrugged and said, “No. We don’t go out every night. Hardly ever in fact.”
  “Oh, I see. It’s just sex. You
are
sleeping with him aren’t you?”
  “But of course. Jealous?”
  Autumn knew this was referring to a time earlier in the summer when, very drunk, the two girls had decided to make out. Charlotte had immediately forgotten about it, relegating it to the status of a joke. Autumn had obsessed on it for some time afterward. She had enjoyed it. That bothered her at first but she figured she knew it would before they ever did it and she had come to terms that Charlotte was just not into that sort of thing and Autumn knew Charlotte was the only girl she could ever do that particular thing with. That made it kind of intangible.
  Autumn took a sip of her coffee, holding the cup sneakily in front of her face, “Oh, I’ll win you back. You’ll see.”
  “Gross.”
  Autumn laughed at her, hoping Charlotte would think she thought it was gross too.
  The girls got away from talking about boys and recounted their week at school, lackadaisically sipping their coffee, two unemployed high school kids killing time. Charlotte thought about the trio that had just left. A quick and uncontrolled shiver ran through her body.

Twenty

Stepping into Jacob’s apartment, the gravity of their situation was driven home. In the time they were at the Wake Up Screaming, someone had been in Jacob’s apartment. It looked like the work of vandals. The ultimate goal seemed to be that of destruction, the only theft that of the remaining vestiges of security the three contained.
  The couch bed was gutted, the stuffing and even the springs from the mattress strewn about the apartment. The stereo was caved in. The windows were shattered. Shelves were tipped over. The coffeemaker was smashed. The door had been ripped from the microwave. The refrigerator and freezer were open, their contents strewn about the kitchen. Even from the living room, Jacob could tell all the books, records and CDs had been pulled from the shelves in the study. Many of them looked ripped and broken. The corn plant Jacob had rescued from outside the previous night had been depotted, its leaves shredded. The clublike trunk lay in the middle of the floor, covered in blood.
  Blood.
  That was the most disturbing thing. Jacob could have dealt with everything else—it was all just
stuff
when you got right down to it—but the sight of blood immediately shattered whatever stability he had been holding onto.
  It was like they all saw the source of blood at the same time.
  A dead dog lay against the bottom of the wall that the television had once been against. It was gutted, its fur and skin torn away from its middle in two ragged flanks. Written on the wall above the dog, in what was presumably the dog’s blood, was: RAIN IS DEAD.
  “Oh God,” Rain said, covering her mouth with her hand and going toward the bathroom.
  It occurred to Jacob that, even though the girl had shared the bed with a murderer for nearly the past year, she had probably never seen actual gore up this close. She had admitted to seeing the dead bodies but, if Jacob was correct in his assumptions, the bodies would have been somehow
neat
, looking just like alive humans only... not alive.
  Rachel looked at Jacob and he knew what she was thinking. She was wondering if whoever did this was still in the apartment. There weren’t a lot of places to hide but the bathroom door had been shut when Rain went in. Jacob grabbed the remainder of the corn plant from the floor and crossed over to the bathroom, pounding on the door.
  He heard a muffled sigh come from inside.
  “Are you okay, Rain?” he said, almost yelled.
  He heard her retch and then say, “Yeah... I just... I’m sick. That’s all.”
  Jacob went into the study, wielding the trunk in front of him. He quickly scanned the entire room, subconsciously taking in the devastation that was the result of years of collecting. Turning to his right, he went to the closet and threw the door open, expecting the worst. But there wasn’t anything in the closet. After hearing about Rachel’s evening, he thought he would always have an even greater than usual fear of closets. He came out of the study and told Rain it was all clear.
  “Who do you think did this?” she asked.
  “Whoever it was knew Rain was with us. Which means they’re a little bit more ahead of the game than we gave them credit for.”
  “That’s a scary thought.”
  “Damn right that’s a scary thought.”
  “Do you think it was one of
them
?”
  “Honestly... no. I don’t think it was the two people Rain was talking about. I think it was someone else. Probably Bones or another one of their henchmen.”
  “You really think they have henchman?”
  “I think, if they can manage to control people’s minds, then they can pretty much have anything they want.”
  “Why aren’t they controlling us?”
  “Are you sure they
aren’t
controlling us?”
  “Would we be going to hunt them if they were?”
  “Think about it... Last night we take in a stranger. I mean an
absolute
stranger. After years of not even letting our friends in on our lives we let someone in, someone who almost tried to kill you, and tell them everything we know. Well, almost everything, anyway. And now, we’re getting ready to go visit these fucks. We’re walking right into whatever traps they’ve set for us. Maybe they
are
controlling our minds. Maybe they’re leading us right to them.”
  “But we can’t just sit around and let everything explode. And we can’t just pack up and get the hell out of Lynchville.”
  “If we did that I think a whole lot more people would die.”
  “Whoever it was, they seem to have a particular hatred for Rain.”
  “Yeah, that was kind of what led me to believe it was Bones.”
  “Maybe he followed us.”
  “It’s possible.”
  “Followed us and waited.”
  “I wouldn’t doubt it at all. He doesn’t seem the type to let a good thing get away.”
  Rain came out of the bathroom and mumbled, “Sorry.”
  “No reason to be sorry,” Rachel said.
  “I know he did this. That stupid shit.”
  “You know,” Jacob said, “you don’t
have
to come with us. You don’t have to do this. We can drive you to the edge of town, put you up in a motel...”
  The girl shook her head before Jacob could even finish.
  “No,” she said. “I’m going with you. If I don’t help destroy these things I’ll never be able to live with what I did. I know it isn’t possible to undo what I’ve done but at least I can make sure it never happens again.”
  “Stay with us, then,” Rachel said. “And if we come across your sweetheart again, maybe you can rationalize with him. Maybe you can bring him around to our side. I think we’re going to need all the warm bodies we can get.”
  “I think he’s too far gone to rationalize with.”
  Jacob said, “I think we should probably get going before it’s too late. We’ve already wasted a lot of time and there isn’t a helluva lot of daylight left. I was thinking we could swing by McDonald’s and grab something to eat on the way so the coffee doesn’t make us all jittery.”
  “I think we need to be jittery,” Rachel said.
  “We also need to be strong.”
  “Are you saying McDonald’s makes you stronger?”
  “Now is not the time or the place for jokes, Ms. Stokes.”
  “Fuck off, Riley.”
  “I love you. Even after that last comment.”
  “Good. I’ve got you right where I want you then. And I love you too.”
  “Let’s stop before we make Rain throw up again.”
  “You guys are nice to see,” Rain said and Jacob noticed the look of longing in her eyes. It was the look of an innocent girl who thought, at one time, she had everything Jacob and Rachel had before having it stripped away from her. And that, he guessed, was why she was insistent about coming with them. She might have been interested in righting her wrongs, but she was also mad as hell at the people who she blamed for taking that away from her. “I want to get out of here,” she said.
  “Let’s go then,” Jacob said.
  They left the apartment and piled into Jacob’s battered old Saab, on their way to whatever cruel fate awaited them.
  Jacob tried not to think about it. Thinking, he knew, wouldn’t do him any good. The Devils had the ability to take everything he was thinking and make it somehow wrong. Every thought he had was a trap. Especially if they
did
have the ability to pick his brain. The goal was to give them an empty bag without any thoughts to pick from, without any conscious or subconscious to warp into their twisted nightmares.
  They drove the streets of Lynchville, oddly busy with Friday traffic. The conversation was nonexistent. They drove to the edge of town, first stopping at the gas station. Jacob pulled the five-gallon plastic gas container from his trunk and filled it up. He didn’t think this would be enough gas to burn down a house, let alone a house that might not even be there. He didn’t even know what it was they were trying to do. Maybe they were just trying to force some kind of confrontation. The thought of how that confrontation might end petrified him.
  If they did this, he thought, if they did this right and they were able to flush the Devils out of Lynchville, then he and Rachel would have to leave as well. That was all there was to it. He couldn’t live surrounded by fear and that would be what remaining in Lynchville would be like. He already knew he wouldn’t be able to live in his apartment anymore. He wouldn’t be able to step foot in it without thinking of that ghastly gored dog lying there on the ground and this whole rather ghastly day, spread out both behind and in front of him. He would go back to clean up and collect his things and that was it. That thought didn’t comfort him at all. He liked his apartment. And now he was going to have to abandon it just because of them.
  Finished with the gas can, he went into the convenience store to pay.
  They drove across the parking lot to the McDonald’s, getting some food that would hopefully give them a bit of energy. They ate in the car on the way out to the reserve, to Barker Road, to a little valley that maybe, just maybe, contained some portal into an entirely different world. It was both mundane and terrifying. Three young adults sitting in a car, sucking down soda and French fries, heading toward some archetypal nightmare that had, in different ways, haunted each of them.
  In the sky, the sun experienced a slow death. Along the twisty winding roads out past the flat farmland, the trees had a strobe effect, filling the car with alternating light and dimness.
  That was exactly how Jacob felt.
  “It was around here somewhere,” Rachel said.
  “A little further,” Rain said.
  Up ahead of them was a sort of clearing in the woods and the road rose while the ground beyond it seemed to dip.
  “Okay, up there, I think that’s it,” Rain said.
  “You remember that from last night?” Rachel asked.
  “I have an uncanny knack for directions. Going from town to town, I think you kind of develop that. Or else you just spend a lot of time being lost.”
  Jacob’s grip on the wheel had tightened. He pulled the car off the gravel road and onto the grassy shoulder. The sight of Bones’ van was the only thing hinting they were in the right spot.
  Jacob, not knowing it was Bones’ van, said, “Looks like somebody already beat us here.”
  “That’s Bones’ van,” Rain said. “Isn’t it stupid?”
  “Well, it wouldn’t occur to me to paint a skull on my car but it also probably wouldn’t occur to me to kill a lot of people so somebody else could drink their blood, either.”
  “He’s probably in there,” she said.
  “Wanna see?” Jacob said. “It can be our first challenge. Warm up with the humans before battling the monsters.”
  “We don’t have any kind of weapons do we?”
  “There’s a tire iron in the trunk. I think that’s about it,” Jacob said.
  “So prepared,” Rachel said.
  “I don’t think we should go down to the van without
some
thing,” Rain said.
  Jacob, feeling somehow obligated to act macho, said, “I’ll get the tire iron and go down. If worse comes to worst, he’ll kill me but we all know that no one ever really
dies
here. Maybe it’ll be an advantage.”
  “No,” Rain said. “I think I should go down. I know how to talk to him. But I still want to take the tire iron and I want you guys to be close by.”
  “How ‘bout we all just go together?” Jacob said.
  “Good plan,” Rachel muttered.
  They all got out of the car. Jacob went to the trunk and opened it, the smell of gas hitting his nostrils. He took the can out and put it on the ground before reaching in to grab the iron.
  He slammed the trunk shut and said, “Am I the only one who fails to see the house?”
  “I don’t see it,” Rachel said.
  “Me either,” Rain said.
  “Okay, so I’m not just blind. Anyway, this is going to make it kind of hard to burn down.”
  “I think we’ll have to wait,” Rachel said.
  “Wait for what?”
  “Dark. I have this feeling they’re not going to let us see it until dark, when they’re stronger. The darkness is
their
time. But they
do
want us to see it. At least, they want
me
to see it.”
  “You could have shared this feeling back at the apartment.”
  “Why? So we could hang around there a little bit longer. I know it’s so hospitable and comfortable there right now but I kind of wanted to get out.”
  “Your sarcasm does not amuse me. I have a tire iron and some gas. I’m heavily armed, you know.”
  “You don’t scare me.”
  “Fine.”
  Rain was already walking down toward the van and Jacob thought there had to be a part of her that wanted Bones to be in the van. And there was probably a part of her that wanted to find him somehow transformed into who he used to be, the disillusionment lifted from his brain. Jacob saw the first as a grim possibility but he knew the latter was highly improbable. Wherever the boy was, he wasn’t going to return the same person who went into this nightmare.
  Rachel and Jacob trailed Rain by about fifteen feet. Rain walked through the knee-high grass until she reached the van. She went to the back of it, her hand on the chrome of one of the back doors. Jacob heard the door click as she depressed the handle.
  He took a deep breath as she pulled the door open.