A Living Nightmare

by Darren Shan

  Mr. Crepsley reached into one of his many pockets and produced a small glass vial. He turned on the bedside lamp and held the bottle up to the light to examine the serum. "I must be careful," he told me. "This antidote is almost as lethal as the poison. A couple of drops too many and…" He didn't need to finish.

  He tilted Steve's head to one side and told me to hold it that way. He leaned one of his nails against the flesh of Steve's neck and made a small cut. Blood oozed out. He stuck his finger over it, then removed the cork of the bottle with his other hand.

  He lifted the vial to his mouth and prepared to drink. "What are you doing?" I asked.

  "It must be passed on by mouth," he said. "A doctor could inject it but I do not know about needles and the like."

  "Is that safe?" I asked. "Won't you pass on germs?"

  Mr. Crepsley grinned. "If you want to call a doctor, feel free," he said. "Otherwise, have some faith in a man who was doing this long before your grandfather was born."

  He poured the serum into his mouth, then rolled it from side to side. He leaned forward and covered the cut with his lips. His cheeks bulged out, then in, as he blew the serum into Steve.

  He sat back when he was finished and wiped around his mouth. He spat the last of the fluid onto the floor. "I am always afraid of swallowing that stuff by accident," he said. "One of these nights, I am going to take a course and learn how to do this the easy way."

  I was about to reply, but then Steve moved. His neck flexed, then his head, then his shoulders. His arms twitched and his legs started to jerk. His face creased up and he began to moan.

  "What's happening?" I asked, afraid that something had gone wrong.

  "It is all right," Mr. Crepsley said, putting away the bottle. "He was on the brink of death. The journey back is never a pleasant one. He will be in pain for some time, but he will live."

  "Will there be any side effects?" I asked. "He won't be paralyzed from the waist down or anything?"

  "No," Mr. Crepsley said. "He will be fine. He will feel a bit stiff and will catch colds very easily, but otherwise he will be the same as he was before."

  Steve's eyes shot open suddenly and focused on me and Mr. Crepsley. A puzzled look swept across his face and he tried speaking. But his mouth wouldn't work, and then his eyes went blank and closed again.

  "Steve?" I called, shaking him. "Steve?"

  "That is going to happen a lot," Mr. Crepsley said. "He will be slipping in and out of consciousness all night. By morning he should be awake and by afternoon he will be sitting up and asking for dinner.

  "Come," he said. "Let us go."

  "I want to stick around a while longer, to make sure he recovers," I replied.

  "You mean you want to make sure I have not tricked you." Mr. Crepsley laughed. "We will come back tomorrow and you will see that he is fine. We really must go now. If we stay any "

  All of a sudden, the door opened and a nurse walked in!

  "What's going on here?" she shouted, stunned to see us. "Who the hell are "

  Mr. Crepsley reacted quickly, grabbing Steve's bedcovers and throwing them over the nurse. She fell down as she tried to remove the sheets, getting her hands stuck in their folds.

  "Come," Mr. Crepsley hissed, rushing to the window. "We have to leave immediately."

  I stared at the hand he was holding out, then at Steve, then at the nurse, then at the open door.

  Mr. Crepsley lowered his hand. "I see," he said in a bleak voice. "You are going to go back on our deal." I hesitated, opened my mouth to say something, then acting without thinking turned and made a dash for the door!

  I thought he would stop me, but he did nothing, only howled after me as I ran: "Very well. Run, Darren Shan! It will do you no good. You are a creature of the night now. You are one of us! You will be back. You will come crawling on your knees, begging for help. Run, fool, run!"

  And he began to laugh.

  His laughter followed me through the corridor, down the stairs, and out the front door. I kept glancing over my shoulder as I ran, expecting him to swoop down on me, but there was no sign of him on the way home, not a glimpse or a smell or a sound.

  All that remained of him was his laughter, which echoed through my brain like a witch's cackling curse.

  I ACTED SURPRISED WHEN MOM GOT off the phone that Monday morning and told me Steve had recovered. She was excited and did a little dance with me and Annie in the kitchen.

  "He snapped out of it by himself?" Dad asked.

  "Yes," she said. "The doctors can't understand it, but nobody's complaining!"

  "Incredible," Dad muttered.

  "Maybe it's a miracle," Annie said, and I had to turn my head aside to hide my smile. Some miracle!

  While Mom went off to see Mrs. Leonard, I started out for school. I was half-afraid the sunlight would burn me when I left the house, but of course it didn't. Mr. Crepsley had told me I would be able to move around during the day.

  I wondered, from time to time, if it had been a bad dream. It seemed crazy, looking back. Deep down I knew it was real, but I tried believing otherwise, and sometimes almost did.

  The part I hated most was the thought of being stuck in this body for so long. How would I explain it to Mom and Dad and everybody else? I'd look silly after a couple of years, especially at school, stuck in a class with people who looked older than me.

  I went to visit Steve on Tuesday. He was sitting up, watching TV, eating a box of chocolates. He was delighted to see me and told me about his stay in the hospital, the food, the games nurses brought him to play with, the presents that were piling up.

  "I'll have to get bitten by poisonous spiders more often," he joked.

  "I wouldn't make a habit of it if I were you," I told him. "You might not get well next time."

  He studied me thoughtfully. "You know, the doctors are baffled," he said. "They don't know what made me sick and they don't know how I recovered."

  "You didn't tell them about Madam Octa?" I asked.

  "No," he said. "There didn't seem much point. It would have meant trouble for you."

  "Thanks."

  "What happened to her?" he asked. "What did you do with her after she bit me?"

  "I killed her," I lied. "I got mad and stomped her to death."

  "Really? "he asked.

  "Really."

  He nodded slowly, never taking his eyes off me. "When I first woke up," he said, I thought I saw you. I must have been mistaken, because it was the middle of the night. But it was a lifelike dream. I even thought I saw someone with you, tall and ugly, dressed in red, with orange hair and a long scar down the left side of his face."

  I didn't say anything. I couldn't. I looked down at the floor and squeezed my hands together.

  "Another funny thing," he said. "The nurse who discovered me awake swore there were two people in the room, a man and a boy. The doctors think it was her mind playing tricks and said it doesn't matter. Strange, though, isn't it?"

  "Very strange," I agreed, unable to look him in the eye.

  I began noticing changes in myself over the next couple of days. I found it hard getting to sleep when I went to bed, and kept waking in the middle of the night. My hearing improved and I was able to hear people talking from far away. In school, I could listen to voices from the next two rooms, almost as if there were no walls between my class and theirs.

  I began to get in better shape. I was able to run around the yard during break and lunch without working up a sweat. Nobody could keep up with me. I was also more aware of my body and was able to control it. I could make a soccer ball do pretty much what I wanted, dribbling around opponents at will. I scored sixteen goals on Thursday.

  I grew stronger, too. I was able to do push-ups and pull-ups now, as many as I liked. I didn't have new muscles none that I could see but there was a strength flowing through me that hadn't been there before. I had yet to test it properly but I believed it might be immense.

  I tried hiding my new talents but it
was difficult. I explained away the running and soccer skills by saying I was exercising and practicing a lot more, but other things were trickier.

  Like when the bell rang on Thursday at the end of lunch. The ball had just been kicked into the air by the goalie who I'd put sixteen goals past. It was coming toward me, so I stuck up my right hand to catch it. I did, but as I squeezed, my nails sunk in and burst it!

  And when I was eating dinner at home that night, I wasn't concentrating. I could hear our next-door neighbors having a fight and I was listening to their argument. I was eating french fries and hot dogs, and after a while I noticed the food was tougher than it should have been. I glanced down and realized I'd bitten the head off the fork and was chewing it to pieces! Luckily, no one saw, and I was able to slip it into the wastebasket as I was washing up.

  Steve called that night. He'd been let out of the hospital. He was supposed to take things easy for a few days and not come to school until after the weekend, but he said he was going crazy with boredom and had persuaded his mother to let him come tomorrow.

  "You mean you want to come to school?" I asked, shocked.

  "Sounds weird, doesn't it?" He laughed. "Normally I'm looking for an excuse to stay home. Yet now, when I have one, I want to go! But you don't know how dull it is being stuck indoors alone all the time. It was fun for a couple of days, but a whole week ofit…brrr!"

  I thought of telling Steve the truth but wasn't sure how he'd take it. He had wanted to become a vampire. I didn't think he'd like knowing Mr. Crepsley had picked me instead of him.

  And telling Annie was out of the question. She hadn't mentioned Madam Octa since Steve recovered but I often found her watching me. I don't know what was going through her head, but my guess is it was something like: "Steve got better, but it wasn't because of you. You had the chance to save him and you didn't. You told a lie and risked his life, just so you wouldn't get into trouble. Would you have done the same if it had been me?"

  Steve was the center of attention that Friday. The whole class crowded around and begged for his story. They wanted to know what had poisoned him, how he'd survived, what the hospital had been like, if they'd operated on him, if he had any scars, and so on.

  "I don't know what bit me," he said. "I was at Darren's house. I was sitting by the window. I heard a noise but before I could look to see what it was, I got bitten and passed out." This was the story we had agreed upon when I went to visit him at the hospital.

  I felt stranger than ever that Friday. I spent the morning gazing around the classroom, feeling out of place. It seemed so pointless. "I shouldn't be here," I kept thinking. "I'm not a normal kid anymore. I should be out earning my living as a vampire's assistant. What good will English, history, and geography do me now? This isn't my scene."

  Tommy and Alan told Steve about my skill on the soccer field. "He's running like the wind these days," Alan said.

  "And playing like Pele," Tommy added.

  "Really?" Steve asked, looking at me oddly. "What's brought on the big change, Darren?"

  "There isn't any change," I lied. "I'm just on a roll. I'm lucky."

  "Listen to Mr. Modest!" Tommy laughed. "Mr. Dalton has said he might put him at forward for the under-seventeen soccer team. Imagine one of us playing for the under-seventeens! Nobody our age has ever made that team."

  "No," Steve mused. "They haven't."

  "Aw, it's just Dalton talking," I said, trying to brush it aside.

  "Maybe," Steve said. "Maybe"

  I played badly that lunchtime, on purpose. I could tell Steve was suspicious. I don't think he knew what was going on, but he sensed something was different about me. I ran slowly and missed chances I normally would have put away even without the special powers.

  My ploy worked. By the end of the game he'd stopped studying my every move and was beginning to joke with me again. But then something happened that ruined everything.

  Alan and me were running for the same ball. He shouldn't have been going for it, because I was closest. But Alan was a little younger than the rest of us and sometimes acted stupidly. I thought about pulling back but I was sick of playing badly. Lunch was almost over and I wanted to score at least one goal. So I decided, "The hell with Alan Morris. That's my ball and if he gets in my way, tough!"

  We clashed with each other just before reaching the ball. Alan gave a yell and went flying. I laughed, trapped the ball under my foot, and turned toward goal.

  The sight of blood stopped me in my tracks.

  Alan had landed awkwardly and cut his left knee. It was a bad gash and blood was welling up. He had started to cry and was making no move to cover it with a tissue or scrap of cloth.

  Somebody kicked the ball away from beneath my foot and ran off with it. I took no notice. My eyes were focused on Alan. More specifically, on Alan's knee. More specifically still, on Alan's blood.

  I took a step toward him. Then another. I was standing over him now, blocking the light. He gazed up and must have seen something odd in my face, because he stopped crying and stared at me uneasily.

  I dropped to my knees and, before I knew what I was doing, I had covered the cut on his leg with my mouth and was sucking out his blood and gulping it down!

  This went on for a few seconds. My eyes were closed and the blood filled my mouth. It tasted amazing. I'm not sure how much I would have drank or how much harm I would have done to Alan. Luckily, I didn't get the chance to find out.

  I became aware of people around me and opened my eyes. Nearly everyone had stopped playing and was staring at me in horror. I removed my lips from Alan's knee and looked around at my friends, wondering how to explain this.

  Then the solution hit me and I jumped up and spread my arms. "I am the vampire lord!" I yelled. "I am the king of the undead! I will suck the blood from all of you!"

  They stared at me in shock, then laughed. They thought it was a joke! They thought I was only pretending to be a vampire.

  "You're a nut, Shan," somebody said.

  "That's gross!" a girl squealed as fresh blood dripped down my chin. "You should be locked away!"

  The bell rang and it was time to return to class. I was feeling pleased with myself. I thought I'd fooled everybody. But then I noticed someone near the back of the crowd and my joy faded. It was Steve, and his dark face told me he knew exactly what had happened. He hadn't been fooled at all. He knew.

  I AVOIDED STEVE THAT EVENING AND rushed straight home. I was confused. Why had I attacked Alan? I didn't want to drink anybody's blood. I hadn't been looking for a victim. So how come I'd jumped on him like a wild animal? And what if it happened again? And what if next time there was nobody around to stop me and I went on sucking until…

  No, that was a crazy thought. The sight of blood had taken me by surprise, that was all. I hadn't been expecting it. I would learn from this experience and next time I'd be able to hold myself back.

  The taste of blood was still in my mouth, so I went to the bathroom and washed it out with several glasses of water, then brushed my teeth.

  I studied myself in the mirror. My face looked the same as ever. My teeth weren't any longer or sharper.

  My eyes and ears were the same. I had the same old body. No extra muscles, no added height, no fresh patches of hair. The only visible difference was in my nails, which had hardened and darkened.

  So why was I acting so strangely?

  I drew one of my nails along the glass of the mirror and it made a long deep scratch. "I'll have to be careful of those," I thought to myself.

  My attack on Alan aside, I didn't appear to be too badly off. In fact, the more I thought about it, the less dreadful it seemed. Okay, it would take a long time to grow up, and I'd have to be careful if I saw fresh blood. Those were downers.

  But apart from that, life should be fine. I was stronger than anybody else my age, faster and fitter. I could become a sprinter or a boxer or a soccer player. My age would work against me but if I was talented enough, that wouldn't
matter.

  Imagine: a vampire soccer player! I'd make millions. I'd be on TV talk shows, people would write books about me, a film would be made of my life, and I might be asked to make a song with a famous band. Maybe I could get work in the movie business as a stuntman for other kids. Or…

  My thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. "Who is it? "I asked.

  "Annie," came the reply. "Are you finished yet? I've been waiting forever to use the bathroom."

  "Come in," I told her. "I'm done."

  She entered. "Admiring yourself in the mirror again?" she asked.

  "Of course." I grinned. "Why shouldn't I?"

  "If I had a face like yours, I'd stay away from mirrors." She giggled. She had a towel wrapped around her. She turned on the bath faucets and ran a hand under the water to make sure it wasn't too hot. Then she sat on the edge of the tub and studied me.

  "You look strange," she said.

  "I don't," I said. Then, looking in the mirror, I asked: "Do I?"

  "Yeah," she said. "I don't know what it is, but there's something different about you."

  "You're just imagining things," I told her. "I'm the same as I always was."

  "No," she said, shaking her head. "You're definitely…" The tub began filling up, so she stopped speaking and turned aside to turn off the faucets. As she was bending over, my eyes focused on the curve of her neck, and suddenly my mouth went dry.

  "As I was saying, you look ," she began, turning back around.

  She stopped when she saw my eyes.

  "Darren?" she asked nervously. "Darren, what are "

  I raised my right hand and she went quiet. Her eyes widened and she stared silently at my fingers as I waved them slowly from side to side, then around in small circles. I wasn't sure how I was doing it, but I was hypnotizing her!

  "Come here," I growled, my voice deeper than normal. Annie rose and obeyed. She moved as if sleepwalking, eyes blank, arms and legs stiff.

  When she stopped before me, I traced the outline of her neck with my fingers. I was breathing heavily and seeing her as though through a misty cloud. My tongue slowly licked around my lips and my belly rumbled. The bathroom felt as hot as a furnace, and I could see beads of sweat rolling down Annie's face.