There were a variety of dowels to choose from in the rack at the end of the long room. To Dugan’s untrained eye, while they all appeared to be of a standard length, there was an assortment of diameters. He remained silent and watched Jimmy survey the rack before he finally decided on a specific thickness. Dugan didn’t ask him his criteria. Jimmy used a pencil and ruler to mark a long rod into six twelve-inch sections, before moving over to the table saw where he quickly sliced it into pieces. He repeated this process six times before moving over to the lathe. After he secured the small post into the machine, he turned the lathe on and used a tool of some sort to shape one end of the rapidly spinning wood into the sharpened spike that was the finished product. Although Dugan had protested mildly, Jimmy still insisted that he wear the geeky looking goggles.
Although he always loved the smell of the wood shop, that was about all Dugan remembered liking about it. He recalled it mostly as just another humiliation inflicted upon him by the seventh grade powers that be. Jimmy’s face was all concentration as his skilled fingers worked to shape the wood. As he stood there watching Jimmy in action, Dugan wondered how he himself had ever managed to fashion a couple of rudimentary candle holders without losing a finger. He had liked eighth grade metal shop better, where he discovered a preference for bending metal into interesting shapes over the measuring and cutting up of wood. The truth was that the machines in wood shop had always kind of scared him.
Dugan wondered again why it was that kids in the upper divisions, like him and Larry, seemed to be all thumbs about such things, whereas kids in the lower divisions like Jimmy seemed so good at it. He assumed it was part of something else that had been clear to him for a while: there had been some random day in elementary school when an anonymous someone had made a decision about all of them. “These kids are smart. These kids are dumb. You smart kids, you go sit in these classes. Dumb kids, you guys head down to the shop.” The whole thing just didn’t seem fair.
Not looking up from the lathe, Jimmy asked Dugan, “So, you been badgering the witness regular or what?”
Startled out of his reverie, Dugan smiled and answered, “Yeah, I been puttin’ in all kinds of overtime at the meat factory.”
Jimmy smiled. “You tell her yet?”
Although he didn’t see the smile leave Dugan’s face, his lack of response was answer in itself.
“You gotta tell her,” Jimmy said again. Dugan grunted. After finishing the stake he was working on, Jimmy stood up and looked over at Dugan. “You want me to tell her?”
Dugan shook his head. “I’ll tell her, man. I just gotta find the right time, is all.”
Jimmy raised the plastic goggles to his forehead, giving him an unobstructed view of Dugan’s eyes.
“I don’t know that there’s ever really gonna be a right time.” He looked away. “I don’t really know how much time we have left.”
After Jimmy went back to his woodworking, Dugan finally remembered to ask a question he had forgotten all about. “Do you know where all those orchards in town used to be? You know, where they grew all the apples?”
Jimmy didn’t look up when he answered. “What street you live on?”
* * *
Larry rejoined them a few minutes later. After turning off all the machines and cleaning them properly, Jimmy swept the floor clean of all the wood shavings and discarded them in the waste barrel. The three walked out of the wood shop, each of them now carrying one of the knapsacks Jimmy had brought along. They bulged heavily with the weight of sharpened stakes that Dugan hoped and prayed he’d never have to use. As they walked through the cafeteria, Jimmy and Dugan both happened to glance up at the large wall clock at about the same time. What they saw there stopped them dead in their tracks.
It took another moment for a smile to appear on each of their faces. They dropped their knapsacks and began to laugh. Jimmy and Dugan high-fived each other and looked over at Larry, who was simply enjoying the moment with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. A few minutes later, the laughter subsided, and the three again picked up their heavy knapsacks. They walked together out of the cafeteria, in the direction they had come, passing underneath a large sign mounted high on the wall above the clock that read, “Tommy Swanson is a Vampire.”
2
Tools of the trade
The three returned to Moon’s basement just after two in the afternoon. The others had also returned from their missions. Tony and Artie had managed to collect five small wooden crates of raw garlic. With the pungent aroma of the stuff wafting throughout the basement, the two were now sitting on the couch threading it all into necklaces made from fishing wire. Picking up one of the completed necklaces, Dugan couldn’t help but smile when he read the small tag that had been attached to each: “Support Grantham High’s Drive Against Blood Cancer.”
Artie explained, “I figure we can maybe go around to the houses where we know things are still okay and hang ‘em up outside the front and back doors.”
“It’s brilliant,” Dugan said. He put the necklace down. “What was it like at the supermarket?”
Artie cringed. Tony just shook his head and said, “Ghost Town.”
Dugan looked over at Mark and Brian. They were sitting on the opposite couch, surrounded by dozens of plastic jugs filled with bottled water.
“Did ya get ‘em blessed?” Jimmy asked.
Mark nodded. “Yeah. Father Gould was really cool about it too, didn’t even ask what it was for…” He stopped.
“Go on,” Jimmy prodded.
“He…he was packing up his car when we drove up to the rectory,” Mark said. “He said he was taking a vacation, but if that was true…it looked like it was gonna be a long one.”
Jimmy let that sink in a moment before turning to Mike. “You guys find anything at all up at the quarry?” Moon and Mike looked down and shook their heads.
“Lemme see those maps again,” Jimmy said.
Moon went and got the large documents, handing them over to Jimmy who unrolled them on the floor. Jimmy and Dugan crouched over the maps for a while, before Jimmy asked, “Any ideas where it might be?” Dugan shook his head.
With frustration beginning to creep into his voice, Jimmy said, “We gotta find out where they’re…congregating.”
Dugan thought about that a while and then had an idea. He turned to look Mike in the eye. Pointing down at the map, he asked, “Can you make this?”
Mike stared blankly back at him before his eyes widened and he remembered. He began to nod. “I…think so. Maybe. It’ll take some time though. It’s kinda big.”
Dugan looked around the room and spotted the folded up ping pong table against the rear wall. He walked over and pulled it out, as Moon came over to give him a hand. When it was opened flat, Dugan saw that although it was a little warped and lopsided, it would do nicely.
“Put it up on here,” Dugan said. He turned to again look Mike in the eye, adding, “and make sure you sprinkle some of that magic dust you used the last time.” Mike looked at Dugan as if he had lost his mind, but nodded anyway.
Dugan drifted away after a while without saying goodbye. He took a few of the garlic necklaces, with the squirt gun that Mark had given him tucked into the waistband of his pants. All of his friends were busy doing something or other and Dugan felt like an extra wheel. He left the basement around 4:30 while the sun was still high. Although the temperature had not exceeded sixty degrees all day, there was just a hint of mugginess in the air.
Stopping outside Andy’s house, he placed a necklace beside her front door and then walked around the house to hang another on the back. He considered knocking, but decided against it. As he was about to walk up his own driveway, he heard a familiar voice call to him from behind.
“Hey!” He turned around and saw Larry half-jogging toward him. “Why’d ya run off like that?” Larry asked after catching up. Dugan shrugged. “Looked like you guys had everything under control, I guess.”
Larry smiled. “Jimmy was pissed. You broke
one of his rules.”
Dugan shrugged again and turned around. The two walked up to his back porch and sat down on the steps.
After a while, Larry asked, “You tell your father about any of this?”
Dugan shook his head. “No. What about you?”
Larry shook his head and the two sat there a while thinking the same things. It was all just too hard to believe. What did they have to go on, really? People go on vacation all the time and stop picking up their newspapers. Dogs die. Horny music teachers are probably always making moves on their students and it didn’t make any of them vampires.
Maybe it was all much ado about nothing, Dugan thought, the product of overactive teenage imaginations. But even as he sat there, Dugan knew that a quick glance in the mirror would be enough to convince him otherwise.
“Listen,” Larry said, breaking the silence, “they’re having a banquet up at Sally’s restaurant tonight. I promised I’d go. It’s just a small thing, Mr. Fedora taking out some of the kids who helped out on Dennis Martin’s Eagle project. It should be over by about nine-thirty or so, and my parents are going out tonight, so I was wonderin’ if maybe, you know…”
Dugan smiled. “Nine-thirty at Sally’s restaurant. I’ll meet you there. We’ll go home together.”
Relief flooded Larry’s face. “Thanks. I appreciate it.” He looked over at Dugan. “Could it be that we’re just making all of this stuff up? I mean could it just be some kind of mass hypnosis or somethin’?”
Dugan shrugged again, not knowing what else to say. Sometimes it felt that way to him too. Larry thanked him again, leaving Dugan alone on the porch to ponder that and other questions. A few minutes later, he walked into his house and heard his father puttering around upstairs getting ready for work. He went into the kitchen and opened up the fridge, taking out the fixings for a bologna and cheese sandwich.
Dugan was watching television when he heard his father leave for work around 6:30, and was still watching television at 7:30, when he decided impulsively to leave the house. Walking outside, he looked up and saw only ghostly wisps of daylight left in the sky, before going out back to get his bike.
He passed not a single vehicle along the way. When he entered the downtown, only the lights of the sub shop were on, but when he looked inside, there were no people in any of the booths. As he rode on up the street, he saw that the lights of the Thunderbird were on and right next to it, so too were those of the adult bookstore. He smiled when he wondered if there was such a thing as vampire porn, and thought a moment about going into the Thunderbird and spilling it all to his father before putting that off again. That wasn’t the reason Dugan had left the house. He was looking for Skunk.
Dugan rode all the way down to the cemetery. When he got there, he leaned his bike against the stone wall and wandered in to pay his respects. He noticed that all of the damaged headstones had been removed and many of them had been replaced. The rows that were still missing markers looked to Dugan like a mouth that was missing some teeth. He stood and prayed over his mother’s grave for a few minutes before looking up at the Colonel’s tomb, feeling that same strange tug he had felt last fall. Looking away quickly, he glanced down at his watch and his heart began to pound.
It was 9:25. He had been standing here for an hour and a half. He ran out of the graveyard and back to the stone wall where he had left his bike, only to see that it was gone.
3
Larry goes home
It was a quarter to 10:00 by the time Larry assumed Dugan had forgotten all about him. The scout get-together had actually ended a bit early, and when Mr. Fedora had offered him a ride home, he declined. Only three of the dozen boys who helped Dennis with the project had shown up, but it was April vacation and maybe they had other plans. At around 10:00, Larry decided he would walk home.
Sally’s was on a street just off the town center, but Larry opted to avoid the downtown area entirely and use the side streets that would eventually take him back onto 135. As he walked, he thought he should probably have called Dugan to remind him, or maybe even Jimmy, but it was too late now. Glancing from house to house along the way, he saw most of the lights were off. He knew that he should at least have seen the blue glow of a television set turned on in some of the houses, but he wasn’t surprised that he didn’t.
Taking the left down Spring Street, he walked behind the Odd Fellows Hall and then turned right onto Walnut Street to get back on Route 135. He wondered, as he always did when passing the building, just what the hell an Odd Fellow was.
* * *
Dugan stood outside the gates of the cemetery, stunned by the missing bicycle. He walked back and forth the length of the wall several times before it sank in that the bike was really gone. Then he felt his blood boil. Looking down at his watch, he saw it was already after 9:30 and he was late for his meeting with Larry. He felt tears begin to burn his eyes, but held them back by sheer force of will as he began walking rapidly toward the downtown.
It was a couple of miles. He knew he wouldn’t make it now until well after 10:00, but he had to try. He hoped and prayed that Larry would still be waiting for him when he got there and began to jog. He passed a house every now and then. They were all set far back from the road in this part of town, but he saw not a single light on nor any other evidence of life. As had been the case all evening, he had not seen or heard the sound of a single motor vehicle. He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn’t hear the car slowly creeping up behind him, and when it gave a short bleep of its siren Dugan jumped out of his skin.
* * *
Larry was about halfway home now and increasingly creeped out by the lifelessness of his town. Only occasionally did he pass a house that had a light on. Every time he did, he had to stop himself from running up to the door and banging on it, to ask if they would let him stay until morning. As he got closer to his own neighborhood of Applewood, even those paltry signs of life got fewer and farther between.
He was about a quarter mile away from his own street when he stopped dead in his tracks as something loomed ahead that had no business being there at all. They were the headlights of a large vehicle, and he recognized those headlights as the same ones that had approached him every weekday morning for the past couple of years.
Frozen in place, he felt at first a sense of disbelief that quickly turned to terror. Because just as it had every morning for the past few years, the vehicle began to slow down. He saw only the shadow of the person driving the big bus.
* * *
“Where’s the fire, kid?” the cop asked, rolling up alongside. He smiled in a friendly manner. Dugan thought the cop looked a bit familiar.
“My bike just got stolen.” He kept walking down the road while the cop drove slowly beside him.
“Why don’t you get on in, kid? I’ll give ya a ride. Where do you live?”
Dugan told him he was supposed to meet a friend at Sally’s. After the cop again offered to give him a ride, Dugan looked down at his watch and saw that it was almost 10:00. Thinking he might still catch Larry, he stopped and said thanks to the cop, who pushed a button to let Dugan into the otherwise impregnable back seat.
* * *
The bus was almost upon him now. Larry heard the familiar squeaking of the air brakes and found himself standing directly in front of the door to the bus. He heard noise and boisterous laughter come from inside.
A moment later, a few of the half windows on his side begin to squeak their way down and then the door slowly opened. He looked up and his eyes went wide when he saw the Mardenthing in the driver’s seat. When the blood encrusted Marden-thing smiled down at him, he saw the bus driver’s newly acquired rows of sharp pointy teeth. Then the thing began to laugh.
“Don’t need a ticket today, kid! We’ve suspended the rules!”
Laughter and hooting and howling came from the open windows. Turning his head slowly, Larry looked up to see Cotter and Walsh grinning down at him. Tommy Swanson was there too, and Richie Brook
s. Larry had just begun to slowly back away from the open door when a cold finger passed along his spine as he saw a Stephen Harris thing there too. It looked down at him through dead fish eyes.
It was when that thing began to smile down at him too that Larry began to run.
He stumbled backwards at first and almost tripped on his own feet. Then he turned around and bolted down the street, leaping over the fence into the dairy farm.
He could still hear laughter coming from behind as he ran across the field where cows had once grazed. He didn’t even stop to wonder where all the cows had gone.
* * *
They were entering downtown Grantham. When the cop should have taken a right to head on over to Sally’s, he kept going.
“Um, Mister, I mean Officer, right here is just fine,” Dugan said through the metal barrier that protected the cops from the criminals.
He watched the cop raise his eyes to glance into the rearview mirror for a moment before he looked back at the road. When the car kept right on going, past Sally’s and toward the center of town, Dugan reached over for the door handle only to discover there was none.
* * *
Larry’s lungs were about to explode but he just kept running. He still heard the voices and laughter come from behind him. Sometimes the laughter seemed right next to his ear. At other times, it seemed to be coming from very far away.
He ran behind the dairy farm and on into the woods, and he kept on running until he found himself leaping over ancient stone walls and running along the abandoned railway. Before he realized it, he was halfway up Lookout Hill. He went on up the hill until his body screamed in agony and he was forced to slow down. When he caught his first glimpse of the tower, without thinking about it he decided that would be his destination.
* * *
Dugan realized he was a prisoner as soon as the cop pulled into the police station on the far side of the town center. After the cop brought the cruiser to a stop, Dugan thought he’d give it another try.
Applewood (Book 1) Page 19