by Ronald Kelly
She was halfway across the kitchen when a voice came from behind her. “Where are you going, Karen?” She recognized it as Wendell Craven’s.
Karen whirled, brandishing the knife threateningly. But she found no one there. The kitchen was completely empty.
“Not there, am I?” he asked. “Maybe I’m over here.” This time his voice came from the direction of the refrigerator.
Frantically, she turned. He was not there, either. “Where are you?” she demanded.
“Who knows?” he said with a laugh. “I could be to your right… or to your left.” The preacher’s voice came from both directions, causing her to spin from one side to the other.
“No, I don’t think so,” teased Wendell. “Or maybe I’m not here at all. Maybe I’m upstairs… with Penny.” Abruptly, his voice echoed from upstairs, distant but still clear enough to hear.
“Oh, my Lord!” groaned Karen. She took a couple of steps toward the hallway beyond the kitchen door.
She was almost there when she stopped. This time she sensed him rather than heard him. He was directly behind her. She could hear him breathing, could smell a smoky, sulfurous odor drifting over her shoulder. Slowly Karen turned, holding the knife ahead of her. She was right. Wendell was standing no more than ten feet away.
He smiled at her. Sharp fangs jutted from the corners of his mouth. “You might as well surrender, just like Bill did,” he suggested. “You can’t escape me. I believe you know that, too.”
Karen cried out and slashed at him with the knife. Her desperate action sent the sharp blade across Wendell’s left cheek, opening a long gash from his ear to the bridge of his nose. At first, the wound remained blue and empty. Then, gradually, red blood began to seep from the cut. Karen began to cry. She wasn’t exactly sure how, but something told her that it was not Wendell’s blood that she had drawn, but that of her own husband.
Tenderly, Wendell reached out and took hold of her wrist. His touch was so cold that it nearly burned her skin. “Let go of the knife,” he told her. “Remember the Scriptures? He who lives by the sword dies by the sword.” The minister’s eyes seemed to reach inside her head and cast a heavy blanket over her thoughts. “But death is not what I came here to bless you with, Karen. Not true death, that is.”
Suddenly, Karen Hughs found the knife too heavy to hold. She opened her fingers and let it clatter to the kitchen floor. She tried to shut her eyes as he came nearer, but she couldn’t. Her eyelids refused to close.
Wendell released her wrist, and raising his hand, placed a finger beneath her chin. “This is nothing bad,” he assured her softly. “This is nothing to fear.” Then he gently pushed her head back until she found herself staring at the decorative tiles of the kitchen ceiling.
Karen felt his cold breath wash against her throat, then his lips pressed against her flesh. She shuddered and waited, not fearfully, but almost anxiously. She recalled his eyes and something within her mind told her exactly what was taking place. She knew she would never be the same after this, but she didn’t care.
When she felt Wendell’s mouth open and then close, bringing a jolt of hot pain, she moaned and let go. She felt herself drifting away, fading with each ounce of blood that pulsed from the opening in her neck. Weakness overcame her and she knew she’d be dead in a few moments.
But she also knew that with death would come a rebirth. A rebirth of eternal darkness and a hunger that could never be satisfied.
Penny Hughs opened her eyes and looked toward the crack of the bedroom door. The light from the upstairs hallway filtered into her room, providing the comfort that she needed to fall asleep.
She had slept heavily that night and her dreams had been filled with strange noises. A knocking at a door, the shattering of glass, and the shrill cry of a woman that might have been her mother. Now she had awakened as if a veil had been lifted from her.
Penny sat up in bed and watched as the door opened.
A man stood there in the light, a large man she somehow knew. She wanted to be afraid, wanted to scream out for her father and mother, but oddly enough, she felt unthreatened. As the man walked into the room and came toward her bed, she recognized his face in the gloom. It was the preacher at the church she attended.
“Brother Craven?” she asked, surprised. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to take you on a wonderful trip,” he told her. “A trip better than make-believe.”
The five-year-old’s eyes widened. “Even better than Disney World?” she asked him.
The minister smiled. “Yes, Penny. Much better than Disney World.”
Confusion shone in the child’s eyes. “What about Mama and Daddy? Are they going, too?”
“Sure they are,” he said, stepping aside and waving toward the doorway. “See?”
Penny looked to where he pointed and saw her mother and father standing in the hallway. Both smiled at her, looking pale and peaked, the way Penny did when she suffered a particularly bad cold.
“Where we’re going…” she asked, “will it be fun?”
“It will be like Heaven,” he promised. “But even better.”
The preacher extended his hand and she took it without hesitation. Then he lifted her into his arms and carried her toward the hallway, where her parents waited.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Boyd Andrews woke up with a painful crick in his neck. He groaned and sat up, remembering that he had sacrificed his nice, soft bed in the back bedroom for the torture rack he called a couch. He and Tammy had discussed the subject of vampires and how to deal with them until late last night, and he had suggested she stay the night at the trailer… in separate rooms, of course.
He placed a hand on the sofa’s middle cushion and felt a couple of busted springs poking from underneath. As he stood up, he discovered that his back had suffered just as badly as his neck. So much for modern-day chivalry.
Boyd hobbled stiffly to the kitchen sink and stood there looking at the sparkling surface of the countertop, which he hadn’t seen in several weeks, due to his lack of housekeeping. Tammy had cleaned the kitchenette and living room while they talked, apparently disgusted by his sloppiness. The dishes were washed and stacked neatly in the cabinets, the refrigerator had been emptied of its more lethal leftovers, and the living room carpet had been thoroughly vacuumed. Looking at the lack of trash and clutter made Boyd realize just how much he had depended on a woman’s touch during the past few years. Joan had kept their house on Stantonview Road spotless and done all the things that make a structure of brick and wood truly a home. The trailer he lived in had never been a home, and in his opinion, it never would be. You needed love and a family for that.
It hurt him just thinking about Joan. Whenever his wife came to mind, he saw two images of her: the beautiful, smiling brunette he had married ten years ago, and the pale-skinned, red-eyed creature Josiah Craven had transformed her into. He relished the first Joan, but the second filled him with remorse, anger, and fear. He recalled what Tammy had told him yesterday afternoon, about how he would be forced to destroy Joan when the time came to confront those on Craven’s Mountain. The more he thought of it, the more certain he was that he would be incapable of performing the grisly task. Even after all that he’d witnessed on the mountaintop the night before last, Boyd still had a difficult time accepting that Joan was the monster who had viciously thrown him from the upstairs window of the old Craven house.
Boyd opened a cabinet and took out a clean drinking glass. He thought about the jar of moonshine he had hidden in another cabinet, next to the stove, and dismissed it. The pot of coffee Tammy Craven had forced on him yesterday had sobered him up—particularly to the fact that liquor was hurting him more than it was helping him. He had been half-drunk when he’d driven to the top of Craven’s Mountain, and it was a miracle that he had escaped alive. He knew he had no choice but to abstain from the booze, not only for his sake, but for that of his children. He remembered the last time he had seen them, s
tanding in that upstairs window, their eyes full of concern for his safety, as well as hope for his eventual return.
And he had made a promise to them, too. He had made promises before; promises he had broken out of frustration and weakness. But he knew he had to keep this one. The lives of Paul and Bessie depended on it.
He placed the glass beneath the faucet and filled it with cold water. He drank deeply, allowing the water to wake him up. He was almost finished when someone knocked on the door.
Boyd knew that Grandpappy Craven or his renegade protégé, Wendell, would be unable to venture out in broad daylight, but that wouldn’t stop Dudley. The mountain farmer could be standing on the other side of the door, ready to blow him away with his shotgun or, more ironically, with Boyd’s own .45 pistol.
Boyd waited for the visitor to knock again, then walked across the living room and reached beneath the couch. He withdrew a .30/06 bolt action that he used for deer hunting in the fall. The carpenter opened the breech, made sure there was a round in the chamber, then slammed the bolt back into place. He walked to the door, unlocked it, and stepped back.
“It’s open,” he called, bringing the stock to his shoulder and sighting down the blued barrel. “Come on in.”
The door opened. Boyd let out a sigh of relief and let the gun sag from its target. It wasn’t Dudley Craven, after all. It was Caleb Vanleer.
“Good God Almighty, Boyd!” proclaimed the mountain man. “I figured you was sore, but not bad enough to bust a cap on me.”
Boyd put the rifle on safety and leaned it against the wall. “What are you doing here, Caleb? I thought you’d want to keep your distance after our talk at the Piggly Wiggly.”
Caleb stood in the doorway, looking uncomfortable. “That’s why I’m here, Boyd. I came to apologize. I had no cause to doubt you like that. Take it from me, I believe what you told me now. I believe every damned word of it.”
“What made you change your mind?” Boyd asked.
“Jamie Bell, that’s who,” he said, looking a little frightened.
“What about Jamie Bell?” asked someone from the far side of the living room.
Caleb looked over and saw Tammy Craven exiting the trailer’s hallway, tucking her blouse into her blue jeans. At the sight of the woman, Caleb raised his eyebrows and turned to Boyd. “Sorry if I barged in on you, son,” he said in a low voice. “Didn’t know you had female company.”
Boyd rolled his eyes. “It ain’t what you think, Caleb,” he assured him. “Tammy here spent the night back in my bedroom and I bunked on the couch—honest.”
“Ain’t none of my business,” said Caleb, eyeing the woman. “But as I recall, you like ’em with a little more meat on their bones.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d pull your mind out of the gutter, Mr. Vanleer,” Tammy told him. “Now, what were you saying about Jamie Bell?”
“Well, the girl who got killed out at the drive-in,” continued Caleb, “you might think this is hard to swallow, but she wasn’t dead. She’d been turned into… well, something hellacious, to say the least.”
Tammy nodded to herself. “A vampire? Is that what you’re trying to tell us?”
Caleb was surprised. “Why, yes, ma’am. You’re as right as rain.”
“That would explain her disappearance from the hospital in Sevierville,” said the preacher’s wife. “After the medical examiner did his autopsy, she got up and walked out of the place.”
“But she ain’t one any longer,” Caleb told her. “I killed her last night… after she killed Ol’ Nailhead.”
“Aw, no!” groaned Boyd, looking genuinely shaken. “Not Nailhead.”
“I’m afraid so,” replied the mountain man. Sadness hung heavily in his eyes. “He went down fighting, though. Died saving my sorry hide.”
“What did you do with Jamie after you destroyed her?” Tammy asked him.
“Put her six feet under, that’s what.” Caleb glanced over at Boyd. “Should I be telling her all this?”
“She knows what’s going on,” the carpenter assured him. “Her husband is one of them.”
Caleb respectfully removed his coonskin cap. “Sorry to hear that, ma’am.”
Tammy couldn’t help but smile. “Your politeness is driving me up the wall, Mr. Vanleer,” she told him. “Please, no more ma’ams. Just call me Tammy.”
A smile appeared beneath the graying bristles of the mountain man’s beard. “Then you just feel free to call me Caleb.” He turned back to Boyd. “Anyway, the Bell girl ain’t the only thing that turned me into a believer.” He hesitated for a moment. “Boyd, I had that dream about Nam again last night. And this time I was there from start to finish. I know what happened down in that tunnel now. All of it.”
Boyd searched his friend’s eyes. “It had something to do with what’s going on here in Green Hollow, didn’t it?”
Caleb nodded. “The same godless sons-of-bitches,” he told him, “but on the other side of the world. We’ll sit down and I’ll tell you about it, if you’ll round me up a taste of corn liquor. I know you keep a jar of my popskull somewhere hereabouts.”
The carpenter grinned and shook his head. “Sorry, Caleb. Drinking is off limits, thanks to Carry Nation here.”
“We’ve got a serious problem to deal with,” she told Caleb. “And if we’re going to deal with it successfully, both of you will need a clear head. If you go up to Craven’s Mountain half-pickled, you’ll get yourselves killed. And you’ll end up getting me killed in the process.”
“Makes sense,” replied Caleb. “But after all this is over and done with, I aim to pull one humdinger of a three-day drunk.”
“And you’ll deserve it,” said Tammy. “But until then, no alcohol, okay?”
“You’ve got it, little lady!” declared Caleb. He spat into his hand and held it out to her.
Tammy frowned at his wet palm. “I’ll take your word on it.”
“So, it sounds like y’all have been discussing what’s to be done,” said Caleb.
Boyd nodded. “We had quite a bull session last night.” He looked over at Tammy with admiration. “This lady knows quite a lot about these creatures.”
The woman blushed. “Well, only what I’ve learned from books and movies. I mean, I’m not really an expert.”
“You’re more of one than me and Caleb combined,” said Boyd. “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t know the first thing about fighting these things.”
Caleb regarded the two. “So, how many are we talking about?” he asked.
Tammy shrugged. “Three that we’re absolutely certain of. But there could be more. I think Grandpappy Craven will deal strictly with his blood kin, but who knows what Wendell might attempt? He might just try to convert the entire population of Green Hollow before it’s over with.”
“You kill these buggers with stakes through the heart and such as that, is that right?” asked Caleb.
“That’s right,” agreed Tammy “Along with other things.”
“Well, I brought a truckload of things from Eagle Point,” he told them. “Weapons that might come in handy with a little modification.”
“Why don’t you go fetch them, Caleb?” Boyd suggested. “Me and Tammy will meet you out in the workshop. Then we’ll put our heads together and see what we can come up with.”
Caleb walked through the open door of the workshop toting a heavy canvas bag over his shoulders. He set it on the floor of the garage and sniffed at the air. “I can still smell her, Boyd,” he said with a scowl. “Blanche.”
“Yeah,” replied the carpenter. “I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to get rid of it.”
“What have you got there?” Tammy asked him curiously.
“Let me show you.” He opened the drawstrings and carefully laid each object on the sawdust-covered floor.
Caleb had brought a variety of weapons to choose from. There were two muzzle-loading rifles; a Navy Arms .58 caliber Mississippi rifle, like those used by the Confederacy during
the Civil War, and his own big-bore .50 Hawken. There were also five or six pistols and revolvers, all black powder firearms, everything from a .36 Colt Navy to a big .44 Dragoon hogleg. The last two weapons he removed from the bag were hunting bows. One was a fiberglass compound bow with a quiver of arrows bolted to the frame. The other was a medieval-type crossbow, but with the stock and foregrip of a modern rifle.
“Got powder and caps for these guns?” Boyd asked, picking up the .44 Dragoon and hefting it.
“Out in the Blazer,” Caleb replied. “Enough to fight a whole army of those no-account bloodsuckers.”
Boyd turned to Tammy. “I’d say we might be able to use these. I could tool down some wooden bullets, maybe grease them up so they’ll fire easily and not plug up the barrels. How does that sound?”
“Well, it sounds practical, but we won’t know for sure until we actually try it,” she said. Tammy picked up the Colt Navy revolver. “Truthfully, I’ve never held a gun before in my life.”
“We’ll be glad to teach you everything you need to know,” said Boyd. “Right, Caleb?”
“Sure,” agreed the mountain man. “I’ve always heard tell that a woman is a better shot than a man. Now’s my chance to prove whether the myth’s true or not.” He picked up the compound bow and held it out to Boyd. “Remember when we used to hunt for white-tailed buck during bow season? I recall you were quite a hand with this contraption.”
Boyd laid the Dragoon aside and took the bow in his hands. “I had an eye for it,” he admitted. “But hell, Caleb, I haven’t held one of these things in years.”
“Seems to me like you could use that lathe over yonder and fashion yourself some wooden arrows,” suggested Caleb.
“I believe that compound bow might be a little too powerful,” Tammy told him, putting in her two cents’ worth. “It might be the most accurate, but it could shoot the arrows completely through them. It would be in and out before it could even faze them.” She picked up the crossbow. “This looks like it’s better suited. Less impact and easier to handle, especially for a weakling like myself.”