by Hamill, Ike
“Yeah,” Amber said, sighing. “I guess.”
“Don’t make things worse by second-guessing yourself,” Ricky said.
“How could I possibly make things worse?” Amber said, laughing.
Eight: Alan
Alan and Bob were hunched over the snowblower when Ricky’s car pulled up.
“That’s my ride,” Alan said. “I’ll keep poking at this and see if I can figure out the problem.”
“You sure you don’t mind?” Bob asked.
“Of course not. I love these old things.”
“Cool. Thanks again,” Bob said.
Ricky saw that Bob was getting into his truck. He pulled off the side of the driveway so Bob could get by.
Alan waved at Ricky and then held up a finger to ask for a minute. He ran inside to use the bathroom and grab his wallet before he came back out. By then, Ricky had wandered over to the snowblower and was looking at it.
“Won’t stay running,” Alan said. “Starved for gas in the carb.”
“It’s the cutoff valve at the bottom of the gas tank,” Ricky said. He reached out and turned the thumbscrew. “You feel how it feels all gummy when you turn it? There’s an o-ring in there that wears out and gets pulled into the channel where the gas is supposed…”
“Hey,” Alan said. “Spoilers! I like to figure these things out. Just fixing them is ten-percent of the fun. Figuring out the problem is the other ninety.”
“Sorry,” Ricky said, shrugging. “My father has one just like it and he had the same problem.”
“Next time, keep it to yourself.”
Ricky returned Alan’s smile. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this one has a completely different issue. Could be the fuel filter, right?”
“Come on, Ricky! I just told you to keep your diagnosis to yourself.”
“Sorry. Ready to go?”
“Yes.”
Alan climbed into the passenger’s seat and was greeted with a wet nose in his ear.
“Tucker, down!”
“It’s okay,” Alan said, laughing. After buckling in, he reached back and pet the dog. “So, what do we know about this guy?”
Ricky turned the vehicle and then headed out towards the road.
“A couple people say he’s not crazy—people I trust—but most everyone else thinks he’s a little off his rocker. Supposedly, he lived through an encounter with the same things that attacked us in the hotel. He’s the only other living person I’ve found who might have information.”
They took a left and then a right at the end of the road, crossing the stream on a concrete bridge.
“I have significant déjà vu right now,” Alan said.
“Oh yeah?”
“That guy Bob who was in my driveway—he and I went on a similar mission years ago to talk to one of the Prescott brothers about… you know.”
“And?”
“Didn’t go so well. He committed suicide and all we found out was that we should have listened a lot closer to him.”
“Well I plan to listen very close today, so no problem there,” Ricky said.
Alan nodded.
“What else do you know about him?”
“His name is Romeo Libby and he’s pretty much a shut-in. He’s retired and fairly self-sufficient. He lives alone now, but he used to be a part of a small community that was established in the seventies. Some of them had local native ancestry and some were from away, but they were all looking for a way to return to the land. Then, every except Romeo disappeared. He showed up at the hospital one morning, ranting about vampires. The local sheriff’s office went to check it out and everyone was gone. No bodies were recovered.”
“So a bunch of people take off and one guy rants about vampires. I assume there were other details that make you think it’s connected to what we encountered?”
“Just the location,” Ricky said. “He lives near where the salamanders were catalogued.”
“Salamanders?”
“There is this book I found. I guess it’s more of a diary,” Ricky said. He began to explain.
# # #
“Okay, so you think that somehow the salamanders eventually evolved into…”
“Or infected, more likely.”
“Okay, infected a person or people and they inherited some of the qualities.”
“Yeah,” Ricky said. “Imagine that the salamanders weren’t a separate species or anything, but they were infected by something themselves. Maybe that infection found a way to jump to people. It could be the same way that a strain of flu starts with birds and then mutates until it can work on a different species. I suppose it might be like that and it made its way to people in the area and eventually took over this community.”
“Huh,” Alan said. “I don’t think that really fits with my understanding.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because of the similarities that I noted with—you know—other things. I thought maybe that they were an offshoot or related in some way. I definitely wasn’t thinking of it as an infection,” Alan said.
“It fits though, right? A person transforms after they’re bitten. It definitely appeared as though it was a disease that was transmitted through bites, like rabies or whatever.”
“True.”
“Maybe the things that you…”
“Careful,” Alan said. They were still way too close to where he lived for him to be comfortable talking about the creatures that had attacked him.
“Maybe they are related but their origin is somehow similar to these lizard vampire things.”
“I suppose.”
“Could be something in the air or in the water.”
“Yeah,” Alan said slowly.
“Anyway, one of the reasons that I’m curious is because this guy has lived, like, forty years since his attack and he has really definite ideas about it not being safe for him to leave his property. Assuming he’s right about that…”
“Big assumption.”
“Sure, but he must be doing something right, right?”
“I guess,” Alan said. “If it’s even related and he’s not crazy.”
“Exactly. So that’s the first thing to figure out. Without describing any of what we saw, I want to get him talking on the subject and see if any of the details align. We can’t reveal anything though because if he’s crazy he might just latch onto what we say and parrot it back to us. That’s one of the ways that people drag you into their stories. They pick our your details and repeat them back.”
“Ah. So how are you going to work this?”
“I guess I’ll talk about the disappearance. People we lost at the wedding are still listed as missing. If he keeps up on the news, maybe he has heard about those cases and we ask if he sees any similarity to what he experienced. That could open the door.”
Alan watched the passing terrain and tried to imagine how that conversation might go. They might only have one chance to establish credibility with the man and if Ricky went fishing around for the guy’s story, it could make him wary to talk.
“I don’t know,” Alan said eventually.
“About?”
“Well, think about this guy having the story for forty years, like you said. When was the last time he talked publicly?”
“He was interviewed a couple of times in the late seventies and early eighties. There was the initial news, then a year later some of the families hired an investigator. He talked to them. And the final straw, I think, was a group that was investigating UFOs and abductions and stuff. They published their interview with Romeo and at the end he kicked them out. As far as I know, that was the last time he talked publicly.”
“But privately?”
“His brother-in-law used to be a deputy. That’s one of the people I talked to.”
“So, someone he trusts.”
“Yeah,” Ricky said.
“I imagine that after all this time he is pretty guarded about what he says,” Alan said. “I bet you won’t get anything
out of him unless you offer something first. Put yourself out there, open for ridicule, and he might feel comfortable enough to share.”
“Like I said though, I don’t want to tell him the details of what we saw because then we won’t know if he has any actual information.”
“Hold something back and let him fill it in.”
“Like how they’re allergic to light?”
“No,” Alan said. “Can’t be something big like that. We already know he has referred to them as vampires, so of course they would be allergic to light.”
“How they have to count seeds?”
Alan shook his head. “Too common. I’ve read about that in three or four sources since the wedding.”
They said it at the same time.
“Tapping.”
“Yes,” Alan said. “Tell him everything except the tapping and how they use it. Then we can ask him if they were able to open any locked doors or if he thought they were telekinetic or whatever.”
“Okay,” Ricky said. “Good.”
“And if he doesn’t seem crazy but he’s reluctant to talk, one of us should side with him and one of us should be more antagonistic.”
“Like ‘good cop, bad cop’?”
“Yes, almost, but not so contrived. More like alignments than anything else. One agrees and one disagrees,” Alan said.
“You’ll have to give me an example.”
# # #
The driveway passed under a stone arch. Alan leaned forward to look at it as they drove under it.
“Are you sure this is it?” Alan asked.
“The address on the mailbox was right and we’re supposed to see a big gray house up on… There it is.”
Ricky pointed through the windshield as the driveway emerged from the trees. The hill swept up to an enormous house. The lawn was covered by a thick blanket of snow. As the car climbed up the hill, the view opened up in every direction around them.
“I was picturing a cabin in the woods,” Alan said.
Ricky shrugged.
“He’s expecting us?”
“No.”
The driveway was plowed up to the garage and there was a space to the side to turn around. Ricky pulled into that and shut off his engine.
Alan opened his door and stepped out. It was a bright, sunny day but the wind coming over the hill made it cold. He pulled his jacket tight and waited while Ricky told Tucker to be good and came to stand next to him.
“Should we go knock?” Alan asked.
“Where?” Ricky asked.
“Good point.”
The driveway was plowed up to the garage, but there were no other paths cut through the snow. Ricky walked over to the snowbank and the stepped over into the virgin snow to slog through it towards the front door. Alan held his ground. A few seconds later, the garage door begin to go up. Alan faced it, took his hands out of his pockets and tried to look like he had nothing to hide.
Ricky turned around and started to trudge back to the driveway.
From the dark interior of the garage, a man studied them.
“Hi, are you Mr. Libby?”
From the car, Alan heard the muffled sound of the dog barking.
“Tucker, hush,” Ricky said, climbing back out of the snow.
“Mr. Libby?” Ricky asked. “We were hoping to ask you about what happened here forty years go?”
The question was answered by the garage door beginning to descend.
“Our friends were killed by vampires,” Ricky shouted, leaning down as the door dropped.
The door stopped for a moment and a voice said, “Then I’m sorry for them.”
When it started to lower again, Ricky shouted, “We want to know how to survive when they come back.”
Alan heard the reply as the door shut.
“They won’t.”
# # #
“They won’t?” Alan asked Ricky. “How can he know that?”
Ricky shrugged. He walked up and rapped his knuckles on the garage door. There was no answer.
“Now what?” Alan asked.
Tucker was barking again, so Ricky went over and opened the rear door of the vehicle so the dog could jump out. After a moment’s deliberation, he started working his way around the driveway, hiking his leg up to pee on different spots.
Ricky returned to the garage door and knocked harder. Leaning around the corner, Alan could see that the garage was connected to the house via a narrow shed. There was a window on the shed and he didn’t see anyone pass by. It seemed that Romeo was still in the garage even though he wasn’t answering.
“We need your help,” Alan yelled. “Our families are at risk. If you’re really certain that those monsters won’t come back, we would love to know why so we can sleep at night. Right now, we’re terrified what will happen when they come out of hibernation.”
Ricky picked up from there and shouted, “They seemed intent on hunting us down. What makes you think they won’t still be after us in the spring?”
They waited in silence for a moment.
Alan heard the man cough behind the door. Then, it started to rise again.
“You mind?” Romeo asked, pointing at the dog.
“Sorry?” Ricky asked.
“You mind taking him out back instead of him sullying my driveway.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
Romeo gestured towards the rear door of the garage and Ricky whistled to Tucker. He led the dog out through the back door. Alan approached cautiously with his hand extended.
“Hi, I’m Alan. We’re from Kingston.”
“I know who you are,” Romeo said.
“Sorry?”
“Bert told me that Ricky was asking around about me. I figured he would bring you here sooner or later.”
“Me? Ricky just asked me to come a week ago. How could you…”
“I guessed,” Romeo said, tapping a finger to his temple. “Come on inside, I suppose.”
He started moving towards the side door of the garage—the one that led to the shed.
“Nice floor,” Alan said, pointing down to the cement. It was coated with a blue epoxy.
“Easier to clean,” Romeo said.
Alan noticed that the truck’s sideview mirror was covered in a cloth bag. Alan’s own sideview mirrors were heated to keep away the frost. He figured that Romeo’s bag must be for the same reason.
“Let me just tell Ricky that…”
“He’ll find his way,” Romeo said. He opened the door and put a hand out, indicating that Alan should lead the way. Beyond the window, the shed was dark. Alan had the feeling he was headed towards a trap of some sort. Taking a deep breath, he moved forward anyway. His eyes finally focused on the door in the darkness just before he reached it.
“I save the lights for night,” Romeo said. “That’s when you need them. Handle is on the right.”
Alan saw the door knob just before Romeo instructed him. He clenched his teeth and turned the handle. The door opened towards him. When Alan pulled it open enough to see around it, he was blasted in the face with brilliant purplish-white light that drilled into his eyes and felt hot on his skin.
He stumbled back, still holding onto the door handle and crashed into the wall behind him.
Romeo laughed and said, “You get used to it,” as he moved by Alan.
Alan blinked as he tried to see past the bright smear across his vision from the lights. He heard Ricky come down the shed hall from the garage.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” Alan said. He could see enough to follow Ricky through the door, but ran into Ricky just after.
“This is quite a setup,” Ricky said. “Are these lights ultraviolet?”
“Yup. They’re all LED lights. Very low power,” Romeo said.
“You could have fooled me,” Alan muttered. He followed Ricky into the kitchen.
“It’s against my better judgement to talk to you two,” Romeo said. “I couldn’t care less what happens to you and your families,
but your dog is a different topic. What they do to dogs is unconscionable.”
“I saw tracks out back. Where’s your dog?” Ricky asked.
“Waiting,” Romeo said. “Have a seat and I’ll fill you in.”
The bright spot in the middle of Alan’s vision was almost gone. He took a chair next to Ricky’s at the table in the corner. Romeo sat down too.
“The key is to get somewhere that they’ve been dispatched,” Romeo said. “It’s some kind of superstition with them. They hate to go anywhere one of them has been dissolved. I don’t know if it lasts forever, but it lasts at least forty years, I can tell you that. Once you’re safe, make sure you have lights that can’t be tampered with. Don’t use any mechanical switches unless you can lock them on, and don’t rely on a single power supply. And, most importantly, don’t trust anyone—even people you would trust with your lives.”
Romeo took a breath, glanced around like he was trying to remember something he had forgotten, and then spoke again like he was replying to an unspoken question.
“Yes, that’s right, don’t rely on your dog. He might be the best guard dog in the entire world, but he can’t help you with this. You train that dog so that when he hears or smells unexpected guests, he goes to his safe place. Train him to make it through the night without having to go out. That’s what you need to hear. You get all of that?”
“I think so,” Ricky said, “so can you tell us what…”
“Then repeat it back,” Romeo said. “Not verbatim, just the salient points.”
“Sorry?” Ricky asked.
Alan spoke up. “They’re superstitious about returning to a place where one of them has been killed. We need several light sources with no mechanical switches. Don’t trust anyone. Train dogs to stay away from strangers.”
“That’s pretty close,” Romeo said. He turned his head and shouted, “Albert!”
It was several seconds of waiting before Alan heard the dog’s feet climbing a set of stairs that were around the corner. Just after that, a big dog with a non-stop tail came through from the living room. Albert went to Ricky first, sniffing at his shoes and pants and then thumping his tail on the floor as he sat while Ricky scratched his head.