Or so we thought.
When we finally came to the dirt road that would lead us through the woods to Janks Field, Dagny stopped and said, “Let’s take five before we start in, okay?”
“Scared?” Rusty asked.
“Hungry.”
That got his attention. “Huh?” he asked.
Dagny reached into a pocket of her jeans, saying, “Anybody want some of my Three Musketeers?”
“Big enough to share with a friend!” Rusty proclaimed.
“Sure,” I said.
I took out my flashlight and shined it for Dagny as she bent over, pressed the candy bar against the thigh of her jeans, and used her pocket knife to cut it straight through the wrapper. Rusty took the first chunk, I took the next, the Dagny kept the third.
Before starting to eat, she slipped the knife blade into her mouth to lick and suck it clean.
Rusty and I started to eat our sections of the Three Musketeers.
In the moonlight, Dagny drew the blade slowly out of her tight lips like the wooden stick of an ice cream bar. Then she said, “Somebody’s coming.”
Those are words you don’t want to hear, not on Halloween night at the side of a moonlit road, forest all around you, the town two miles away.
I suddenly lost all interest in the candy.
“Don’t look,” Dagny whispered. “Just stand still. Pretend everything’s all right.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Rusty whispered.
“You wish.”
Dagny stood motionless, gazing through the space between Rusty and me.
“Who is it?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“How many?”
“Just one. I think.”
“What’s he doing?” Rusty asked.
“Coming down the road. Walking.”
“How big is he?” I asked.
“Big.”
“Shit,” Rusty muttered. Then he popped the last of his Three Musketeers bar into his mouth and chewed loudly, his mouth open, his teeth making wet sucky noises as they thrust into the thick, sticky candy and pulled out.
“What’ll we do?” I asked Dagny.
“See who he is?” she suggested.
“Let’s haul ass,” Rusty said through his mouthful.
“I don’t know,” Dagny said. “Running off into the woods doesn’t seem like a brilliant plan. If we stay here, at least some cars might come by. Anyway, maybe this guy’s harmless.”
“Three of us, one of him,” I pointed out.
Dagny nodded. “And we’ve got knives.”
Still chewing, Rusty glanced over his shoulder to see who was coming. Then he turned his head forward and said, “Double-shit. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m outa here.” He hustled for the darkness where the forest shrouded the dirt road. Looking back at us, he called, “Come on, guys!”
Dagny stayed put.
Therefore, so did I.
“Come on!”
We didn’t, so Rusty said, “Your funerals.” Then he vanished into the darkness enclosing the dirt road.
“Great,” I muttered.
Dagny shrugged in the moonlight. “Two of us, one of him.”
I stuffed the remains of my Three Musketeers into a pocket of my jacket, then turned around.
And understood why Rusty had run away.
What I suddenly didn’t understand is how Dagny could’ve remained so calm.
Gliding up the middle of Route 3 was a ghost. A very tall ghost. Actually, a very tall person covered from head to ankles by a white bedsheet. With each stride, a bare foot swept out from under the sheet. But that’s all I could see of the person except for his general shape. On top of his head was a black bowler hat. Around his neck hung a hangman’s noose which served as a weight to hold the sheet in place.
There wasn’t much wind, but the sheet flowed and trembled around the stranger as he walked.
So far, he remained in the middle of the road.
“Maybe he’ll just walk by,” I whispered.
“Who do you think it is?” Dagny asked.
“No idea.”
“Who’s that tall?”
“Can’t think of anybody.”
“Me neither.” Dagny was silent for a moment, then said, “He doesn’t seem to be looking at us.”
True. To see us standing at the mouth of the dirt road—several feet beyond the edge of the highway—he would’ve needed to turn his head.
“Maybe he doesn’t know we’re here,” I whispered.
We both went silent, side by side, as the sheeted figure glided closer and closer.
It stayed on the center line, face forward.
But I knew its head would turn.
And then it would come for us.
My heart pounded like crazy. My legs were shaking.
Dagny took hold of my hand.
As she squeezed my hand, we looked at each other. Her teeth were bared, but I couldn’t tell whether she was giving me a smile or a grimace.
Turning our heads, we faced the stranger.
He kept walking. And then he was past us.
Dagny loosened her grip on my hand.
I took a deep breath.
The man in the sheet kept walking, kept walking.
We didn’t dare say anything. Nor did we dare look away from him for fear he might turn around and come back toward us.
Soon, he disappeared around a bend.
“What was that?” Dagny asked, her voice hushed though the sheeted man was far beyond hearing, range.
“I don’t know,” I muttered.
“Jeezel peezel,” she said.
“Yeah.”
We both kept staring down the road.
“Is he gone?” Rusty called from somewhere among the trees.
“Yeah,” I said. “You can come out now.”
Rusty tromped out of the darkness. The moonlight flashed on the blade of the knife in his right hand. “What’d you wanta just stand here for?” he asked, sounding annoyed.
Dagny shrugged. “Why run?” she asked. “He didn’t do anything.”
“I was ready for him,” Rusty said, raising his knife. “Lucky for him he kept going.”
We all turned and stared at where the sheeted man had gone.
I really expected him to reappear, gliding toward us around the curve.
But the road was empty.
“Let’s get out of here,” Dagny said.
“Janks Field?” asked Rusty. When he saw how we looked at him, he said, “Just kidding.”
So we headed north on Route 3, walking back toward town. We walked more quickly than usual. We often looked behind us.
When at last we reached the sanctuary of well-lighted streets, porches with glowing jack-o’-lanterns and houses with bright windows, we slowed to our usual pace. And we didn’t look behind us quite so often.
“You know what?” said Rusty. “We should’ve gone after him.”
“Sure,” said Dagny.
“No, really. I mean it. Now we’ll never find out who he was. And you know, he must not’ve been following us like we thought, so what was he doing? Where was he going? There isn’t another town for twenty miles in that direction.”
“Nothing but more forest,” I added.
Shaking his head, Rusty said, “Shit. We should’ve followed him or something.”
“Sure,” said Dagny.
“Wouldn’t you love to know what he was up to?”
“I don’t think I want to know,” Dagny said.
The thing about that night is that Rusty got scared and fled.
We could’ve gone with him, of course. It was our choice not to run off and hide. But after he knew that we were staying by the road, he didn’t come back.
He didn’t stick with us.
That’s the point.
Rusty couldn’t be completely trusted to watch out for Slim. In a bad situation, he might save his own hide and let Slim go down.
I never should’ve lef
t them on the roof together.
Chapter Twelve
On our way back to Route 3, Lee drove the dirt road very slowly. We both scanned the woods in hopes of seeing Slim and Rusty.
Three times, Lee stopped her truck and tooted the horn. I climbed out and called their names. Then we waited. Nobody yelled back. Nobody showed up. So she drove on.
When we reached the two-lane highway, I said, “Maybe you’d better let me out.”
She shook her head, but she didn’t drive on. Most adults would’ve just stepped on the gas and whisked me off, but not Lee. “I don’t think they’re in the woods,” she said. “By now, they’re probably long gone.” She put her hand on my leg. “Did you tell them where you’d be going?”
Blushing a little because of her hand, I said, “Not really. Just that I wanted to get a car and come back for them.”
She patted my leg. “You know what? I bet they’re looking for you. They probably headed straight for town…”
“But we would’ve passed them.”
“A lot of ways we could’ve missed them. Depends on when they left. And maybe they took short cuts.”
“Maybe,” I muttered. I supposed Lee was right about missing them one way or another. It was sure possible. “But I’ve got a feeling they’re still out here,” I told her. “I feel like something went wrong, you know? I mean, Slim already had all those cuts. What if she passed out? Or what if the dog attacked them? Or maybe Rusty broke his leg jumping off the shack. Or maybe they were captured by those people who run the vampire show. I thought they were a pretty creepy bunch. No telling what they might do if they caught someone like Slim.”
Lee didn’t smirk or laugh at me. She looked concerned. “You’re right,” she said. “Any of that stuff might’ve happened. Or something else, just as bad, that you haven’t thought of.” A smile crept in. “Though I think you’ve covered the bases fairly well.”
I almost smiled, myself.
“The deal is,” she continued, “they’re probably somewhere in town by now—more than likely at your house, because they’d be needing to let you know what happened and your house would be about the best place to find you.”
Nodding, I said, “I guess that’s where they might go if they’re okay.”
“So let’s look there first.”
“Okay.”
“If we don’t find them at your place, we’ll keep looking till we do find them. That sound good to you?”
“Sounds fine.”
So then she pulled out onto Route 3, turned right, and headed for town. “We might even pass them along the way,” she said.
We didn’t.
The first thing I noticed as we approached my house was the empty driveway. It puzzled me for a moment. Mom should’ve been back from the grocery store. Apparently, she’d had other errands to run.
A lot of errands, I hoped.
With a little luck, maybe she and Dad would never have to find out about any of this.
“Look who’s here,” Lee said.
Her words gave me a moment of pure joy, but it faded when I saw Rusty leaning back against an elm tree in the front yard, shirtless, his arms crossed.
No Slim.
Rusty looked carefree, though. He smiled and waved as we pulled up to the curb. On his feet were the sneakers that he’d thrown at the dog. I took that for a good sign.
But why wasn’t Slim with him?
Feeling squirmy inside, I climbed out of the truck. Lee got out, too. As we walked toward Rusty, he asked me, “Where you been?”
“Out to Janks Field,” I said. “Where’s Slim?”
“She went home.”
“Is she all right?”
“Fine. Except for, you know, the cuts.” He smiled at Lee. “Hi, Mrs. Thompson.”
“Hi, Rusty.”
“So what happened?” I asked.
“Nothing much.”
“You were supposed to wait for me.”
“Yeah, well. We did. And then we thought we heard you coming…a car, you know? You were supposed to come back with a car, so we figured it must be you. Only what came out of the woods was a hearse. Man, I nearly…” With a smile at Lee, he said, “It scared the heck out of us. I mean, a hearse? Give me a break. So we figured it wasn’t Dwight coming to the rescue.” Looking at me, he added, “Where would you get a hearse, right?” To Lee, he said, “Then a big black bus came out of the woods, and that’s when we figured it must be the Vampire Show. So we beat it. We jumped down behind the shack and ran into the woods.” He shrugged his meaty, freckled shoulders. “That’s about it. When we got back into town, we split up. Slim went to her place and I came here so I could tell you what’d happened.”
“What about the dog?” I asked.
“Last I saw of that little…mutt…it was running toward the hearse like a madman, barking its tail off.”
“So it didn’t chase you guys?”
He shook his head. “Nope. We got off scot-free.”
All my worries had been for nothing. That’s usually how it is with worrying. More often than not, we get ourselves all in a sweat over something that might happen, then everything turns out just fine.
“What about Slim’s cuts?” I asked. “Did they bleed much on the way home?”
“Nope. They were fine.”
“They didn’t reopen?”
“Huh-uh.”
From what he said, I might just as well have stayed on the roof with them. It would’ve saved a lot of wear and tear on my nerves.
“Where did our shirts end up?” I asked.
“Slim has ’em. They’re ruined anyway. She wore ’em home.”
“Where’d her T-shirt end up?”
“Still on the ground, I guess. Did you see it when you were there?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t seen Slim’s T-shirt or any sign of the dog or the sneakers…
“Wait,” I said.
He suddenly looked worried.
“How’d you get your sneakers back?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“What’d you do, run halfway across Janks Field when the hearse and bus were already there and…?”
“Heck no. We jumped off the back of the shack.”
“Then how’d you get your shoes?”
“My shoes?” He looked down at his sneakered feet. “Oh!” He gave out a laugh and shook his head as if relieved. “You thought I threw my shoes at the dog!”
“I saw you throw them.”
“Not my shoes. Those were Slim’s.”
“Slim’s shoes?”
“Sure.”
“Jeez, man. Why didn’t you throw your own?”
“It was her idea.”
“Real nice.”
“Don’t blame me, she tossed me hers and told me to throw ’em, so I did.”
“So then she had to go through the woods and all the way home barefoot?”
“No big deal. She was fine. Anyway, I offered her mine but she wouldn’t take ’em.”
“Not that they’d fit her anyway,” I said, a little annoyed.
I had sure misjudged Rusty, giving him credit for what turned out to be mostly Slim’s doing.
At least Rusty had done the throwing.
“Well,” said Lee, “glad you both made it out of there all right. We had our doubts.”
“We got out fine,” Rusty said, smiling and bobbing his head. “In fact,” he added, “Slim’s coming over here as soon as she’s gotten herself all bandaged and cleaned up.”
“Good deal,” said Lee. Then she turned to me. “I think I’ll head on home, now. When Slim gets here, why don’t the three of you talk things over and decide what to do about tonight?”
Rusty raised his eyebrows.
“Lee got us tickets for the show,” I explained.
“No shit?” he blurted. Then he quickly added, “Excuse me, Mrs. Thompson.”
“No problem, Rusty.”
“Just slipped out.”
“Tickets for all of us,” I
explained.
“Oh, man, this is too cool.”
“I’ll hang on to the tickets,” Lee said, “and drive us out there tonight.”
“Oh, wow…”
“But you’ll have to work things out, yourselves, with your parents. Handle them however you want. I won’t tell on you, but I don’t want to have a hand in any deceptions you decide to use.”
“We’ll figure something,” I said.
“If we’re going,” Lee said, “we should probably leave from my place by about ten-thirty. We’ll want to get there early enough to beat the crowd—if there is a crowd. And find ourselves a parking place.”
“That’ll be great,” I said. “Your house by ten-thirty.”
“And you’re welcome to come over earlier. Always better not to wait till the last moment.”
“We’ll come over as early as we can make it,” I told her.
Then she nodded, said, “See you later then,” and headed for her truck.
Rusty and I watched her drive away.
“Your brother,” he said, “is one lucky son of a bitch.”
“You’re telling me.”
“Shit. What I wouldn’t give…” He shook his head and sighed.
“Well, we’re the ones going to the Vampire Show with her.”
“Yeah! Fantastic! She got four tickets?”
“Bought ’em,” I said. “They cost her forty bucks.”
“She forked over forty bucks?”
“Well, not cash. She used a check.”
“Do we have to pay her back?”
“She didn’t say anything about it. I think she’s treating us.”
“Wow!”
“It didn’t even matter that we’re underage. The guy knew it, but he didn’t care. Julian? He’s the owner. He’s the one we talked to when we went looking for you guys. He sort of warned Lee that it’s an adults only show…”
“What’d he say?”
“He said the show can be real gory. And clothes get ripped off.”
“Holy shit!”
“Yeah. But Lee didn’t seem to mind. She said she wanted the tickets anyway, so the guy went ahead and sold them to her. But only on the condition that she goes to the show with us. We can’t, like, go without her.”
“Ah. I bet he’s got the hots for her.”
“You know what else? If we stick around after the show, he’ll introduce us to Valeria.”
Rusty moaned almost as if in pain. “We get to meet her face to face?”
The Traveling Vampire Show Page 8