Vampires in Devil Town (18 page)

Twenty-seven

An integral part of any teenager’s life, especially one in rural Lynchville, was driving. After Wake Up Screaming, Charlotte and Autumn drove back to the high school to get Charlotte’s car. There, Charlotte had driven back to her house, Autumn to hers. From there, Autumn drove over to Charlotte’s house.
  Now they sat, side by side, in front of the small but warm fire. Both of them had changed clothes. It being a chilly October evening, both of them had opted for jeans. Charlotte wore a black thermal shirt and Autumn wore a red hoodie over her t-shirt. They had already put away the first half-bottle of wine and were now working on the second. Autumn waited for when Charlotte was going to talk about the mystery boy and then decided she wasn’t
going
to unless prodded. Autumn was now just drunk enough to do a little prodding.
  “So are you going to tell me what’s been bothering you? About this boy.”
  Charlotte pulled another Camel Light from the box and lit it. This was the only time either of the girls smoked, around the fire. They both agreed it was actually a pretty disgusting habit and they tried to keep it to a minimum.
  “He’s just weird, I guess,” Charlotte said.
  What kind of answer was
that
? Autumn wondered.
  “How do you mean, he’s weird?”
  “I don’t know. He just doesn’t seem like other people, is all.”
  “Like how?”
  “Well, he bites me.”
  “He
bites
you?”
  “Yeah.”
  “So he’s kinky?”
  “Maybe. But it’s not like he playfully bites. He breaks skin.”
  “He breaks skin?”
  “He makes me bleed.”
  “He sounds like a psychopath.”
  “And I like it.”
  “You
like
it?”
  “Yeah. A lot, actually.”
  “Doesn’t it
hurt
?”
  “Like hell. But that doesn’t stop me from liking it.”
  “That
is
weird.”
  “That’s not all.”
  “Okay, tell me.”
  “You’re going to think I’m fucking insane if I tell you.”
  “Try me.”
  Now Autumn pulled a cigarette out of her pack. This was getting good. She turned to face Charlotte a little more. That way she could tell if the other girl was telling the truth or making up a story.
  “It has to do with the Devils.”
  Autumn’s first instinct was to laugh. Then she remembered her lingering dream from last night, the one that had made her feel icky for the greater part of the morning and decided not to.
  “So, what?” Autumn said. “You believe in the Devils now?”
  “I’ve always believed in them. Well, I’ve always
wanted
to, anyway.”
  “Why?”
  “I don’t know. You hear about so many things and then you have to start telling yourself they
are
real. I mean, it would be like too many coincidences if they weren’t real, you know?”
  “I’ve heard all of that too but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I
believe
in them. It’s geographical. Like Christianity. You hear a lot about that too but I don’t know if I would consider myself a believer. And if you’re going by sheer numbers then what about Islam and Judaism and Buddhism? A single person can’t believe all of them but each group boasts a huge amount of believers.”
  “Okay. I didn’t mean to bring religion into this or anything.”
  “I’m sorry. Tell me what you started to tell me.”
  “All right. Well, this kid, he just like comes out of nowhere, you know. And he doesn’t go to school and he doesn’t talk about his family or anything like that. He says he doesn’t even
live
with family. He says he lives with friends. And he’s always wearing the same clothes and he shows up at really odd times and today I think I saw him disappear.”
  “Disappear?”
  “Yeah. Okay, well, he came to the school today. He was in the bathroom when I went and we did our thing and then I started to leave and when I looked back he just... wasn’t there.”
  “There are so many things wrong with that I don’t even want to go into it. I think you’re just trying to freak me out.”
  “Why would I do that? Take this seriously, please. I’ve needed someone to talk to for a while. The worst thing is that, when I’m around him, there’s like this magic. I can’t explain it. It’s like something inside of me just shifts. I start to feel good. I feel like this is the right thing. I mean, it’s an actual
physical
feeling. And then when he goes the only thing I can think about is seeing him again. So, what do you think?”
  “What do I think about what?”
  “Do you think I should keep seeing him?”
  “I think you should keep seeing him until you find out the truth. Everyone has their kinks. Maybe he’s not a psychopath although he kind of sounds like one but it doesn’t sound like he’s done anything completely insane yet. Except for the disappearing. That’s just weird.”
  “You don’t think I really saw it, do you?”
  “Well, it’s kind of hard for me to believe. I’m sorry.”
  “Yeah, I don’t even know if I believe it myself. There’s just something about him that feels almost like a figment of my imagination. I wish you could meet him. That would make him more real.”
  “Well, any time you want to bring him around, I’d be happy to meet him. Do me a favor, okay, and just be careful. You don’t really know everything there is to know about this guy and as magical as it all sounds you have to realize there’s the potential he might be a dangerous person.”
  “Yes. I realize that.”
  “And you’re too smart to let him drag you down.”
  “Thanks, Mom.”
  Autumn threw her finished cigarette into the fire and took a slug from the wine bottle, warmth sliding down her throat.
  A loud popping sound startled her and she dropped the bottle. She and Charlotte both looked toward the sound, toward the perimeter of the woods.
  They saw a silhouette against the outdoor lights of Charlotte’s backyard.
  “Shit,” Charlotte muttered. “What’s that?”
  “I don’t know,” Autumn said under her breath.
  “Hello?” Charlotte blurted, already standing, ready to run.
  Autumn tightened her grip on the bottle of wine, ready to use it if she needed to.
  The man grunted. Autumn wanted to get closer to him, to see if he was someone they knew. She also wanted to run. She didn’t get a very good feeling coming from this man at all. Maybe he was just someone drunk and stumbling through the neighborhood but Autumn didn’t think The Oaks really had that many homeless winos and she had a minimal amount of faith in the ever vigilant neighborhood watch program.
  “Hey!” she called, a little more forceful this time.
  The man grunted again, staggering toward them, coming into the ring of the fire’s light.
  He wasn’t right.
  Charlotte and Autumn seemed to observe this at the same time, both of them gasping.
  It looked like he was either rotting or had been very badly beaten. Badly beaten and then maybe dragged through the mud.
  “This isn’t good,” Charlotte said.
  “No,” Autumn agreed.
  “Get the fuck away,” Charlotte said.
  Hoping it would startle him into leaving, Autumn broke the bottle off on a tree, feeling like she was ready to get into a bar fight.
  “Hello,” the man managed to grunt out, raising his arm up in the air.
  And then he burst into flames.
  There was an audible
whoosh
as he expanded outward before being drawn back into the flame that had come from the inside of his body.
  Charlotte screamed. Autumn jumped, grabbing hold of Charlotte’s arm.
  The man collapsed into a charred heap on the ground in front of the fire. The girls surrounded him, looking down at him, still wondering what the hell was going on. Still terrified but now for completely different reasons. People did not just burst into flame. It was impossible. It didn’t happen.
  Then again, people didn’t disappear.
  “What’s going on, Charlotte?”
  “I don’t know.” Charlotte was crying now. This was all too much for her to handle.
  “What do we do?”
  “What do you think we should do?”
  “I don’t know.”
  They looked down at what remained of the body, just a few crackling embers and, after a few moments, even that was gone. Now there was just a pile of ashes that could have been left over from any fire.
  “Do we call someone? The police?” Autumn asked.
  “I think that’s a bad idea.”
  “Okay, well then what the fuck are we supposed to do?”
  Now Charlotte did not look so much terrified as excited.
  “Don’t you see?” she said. “This is a mystery. This is something we’re supposed to figure out. I think our lives just got a lot more interesting.”
  “Well, I don’t know about you, but I think my life just got a lot scarier.”
  “Certain things make sense now.”
  “Oh, shit. Like what?”
  “Come on. I have an idea.”
  “Where are we going?”
  “Have you ever heard of the Sad House?”
  “Of course I’ve heard of the Sad House. But I’ve never seen the Sad House.
No one
has ever seen the Sad House. And they’ve never seen it because it’s just a stupid made-up myth like the Devils and everything else in this town that’s supposed to be scary. Christ, if all this shit were true, who in their right mind would live here?”
  “I’m going to the Sad House. Are you going to come with me?”
  “I don’t see what that has to do with any of this.”
  “Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with this but I want to see Zack. I want to ask him a few things and I think I know where to find him now.”
  “Great. So, let me get this straight. Not only does he disappear but he lives in a house that doesn’t really exist? And you just came to this conclusion after seeing some guy... fucking
spontaneously combust
right in front of us?”
  Charlotte cocked her head, as if thinking about this and said, “Yeah, I guess... if you want to put it that way. Coming with me?”
  “Do I have any choice?”
  “Yes. You do. You have a choice. You can go home if you want to and leave me to face all the awful creatures of the night alone,” Charlotte pouted. “Me, your bestest-estest friend.”
  “You know I really hate you.”
  “How else are you going to make the exploding man make any sense?”
  “I don’t think any of this is going to make any more sense in the morning.”
  “But we have to go just to find out, don’t we?”
  “Whatever you say. I’m listening to you now, remember?”
  “That’s a good choice.”
  Autumn half-expected Charlotte to go through the back yard and head out to the street. She was surprised when she began going back toward the woods until she remembered the Sad House was supposed to be on the other side of the reserve, out on Barker Road, and it made just as much sense to go through the woods as it would have to circle all the way through town.
  The shock of what they had just seen still lingered within them and yet it was almost outside of them. Maybe that was what shock was. Some numbing sensation to keep them distanced from what really happened. To keep it from sinking in. And that, in the end, was why Autumn followed Charlotte. She was hoping to see something that would make everything make sense. She was hoping to see something that proved the burning man didn’t exist or maybe just to prove the burning man was another hallucination on a night of hallucinations. Or maybe she even secretly hoped to see sights even worse than the burning man, just to drive that initial image out of her head. She had woken up this morning dreaming about wolves and now she was with her best friend, on the way to a most likely nonexistent haunted house after hearing her boyfriend might be a Devil. It was a strange day and she didn’t think it showed any signs of letting up.

Twenty-eight

Bones guided the body of Daniel Clock out of the reserve and back into his fancy neighborhood. It had one of those expensive signs at the entrance. An elaborate brass carving between two pillars of brick. “The Oaks,” it said. There he stumbled across the back yards, hoping he wouldn’t be seen until he came to the people who were supposed to see him. He heard Ernst (
or was it Ilya, or was it both of them
) whispering in his brain. They would tell him what to do once he reached those who were supposed to see him.
  It was just two teenage girls sitting around a campfire, filling the night with banal chatter and Bones couldn’t see what Ilya or Ernst would possibly want with them but it wasn’t his job to question. He was only there to serve the master. If he served the master correctly then he could claim his rightful spot. He was still wondering what that spot would be. He didn’t know what they wanted him to do but it seemed like they wanted him to get rid of the body he was in.
  It was a test.
  It had to be.
  Bones didn’t know how he was going to go about it. At first, he tried to just exit the body, imagine his spirit somewhere else, but this didn’t work.
  Then he imagined destroying the body. He imagined it burning from the inside and the body swelled out, catching on fire he did not feel. And then he was outside of the body. Above the body. Looking down at it. Watching it burn.
  Once outside the body, he heard the masters’ commands even more clearly. They were calling him back to them and they wanted him to enter his own body. They had it laid out and prepared for him, washed in the mysterious fire and hopefully stronger than before.
  Bones soared above the twilight trees of the reserve, going back to the small valley.

Twenty-nine

By the time Zack reached the woods from the house, he was no longer invisible. He didn’t know if the three people who had seen
something
leave the house, saw him become more substantial again or not. Grateful for the coverage of the woods, he raced along a path, hoping the three wouldn’t see him and start after him. He doubted he would be able to outrun them.
  When he heard the wolves behind him, crawling across the ground and stalking toward the edge of the woods he had just left, he knew he was safe for now. Ilya and Ernst had called the wolves. They had called them to protect him and that made him feel something like one of them.
  He stopped running and slowed down, catching his breath and regaining his composure.
  He had never really seen Ilya and Ernst in action. Had never seen their powers on anyone other than him and that other creep, Bones. He wanted to watch the wolves. Zack stopped and turned so he could look out at the wolves, careful to stay behind a large tree. He stared at the haunches of the black wolves, watching them spring into action. They went for both of the girls and for a second Zack seized up, hoping the boy would stay and try to fend them off rather than making a dash into the woods after him. Zack knew the boy had played the Devils’ game before and he wasn’t exactly sure how he would react. One of the wolves went after the girl on the left, grabbing her around the wrist and coming back into the woods.
  Coming toward him.
  He started to run away before stopping.
  The wolf brought the girl to rest about five feet in front of him.
  Was she dead?
  He approached them. The girl looked up, saw him, and screamed. The wolf looked at him, looked
into
him, as though expecting some kind of order.
  Zack knelt down beside the wolf.
  “Take her deeper into the woods,” he said. “But leave her alive. Don’t hurt her any more.”
  He stroked the back of the wolf, running his hands along the coarse greasy hair.
  The girl’s eyes were livid, insane, darting around in their sockets.
  “You have to help me!” she screamed. “You have to!”
  “You are not mine to help,” Zack said, turning his back on her, disappearing deeper into the woods.