by D. M. Nash
“Well, I just… I saw you out with him.”
I thought back. This didn’t make any sense. I did see Richard on Monday. Late at night. It must have been past midnight, at least. Too late for Becca to be crawling around in the shadows of the trees near the hill I like to go to sometimes. I went there alone all the time, just like I did Monday night. Richard had just… been there.
Looking back, I might have even been wanting something like that to happen. Hoping something interesting would happen was probably half the reason I liked going for late-night walks.
Nobody had seen me and Richard. At least, that’s what I’d thought.
It was like I’d stepped into a dream that was slowly tilting toward nightmare. This wasn’t the kind of fear I craved. This was a deeper, stranger fear.
I looked at Becca with new eyes. Or rather, older eyes than mine: my father’s. He would read plenty into a situation like this. I felt my inner hackles rising. I wasn’t ready to call Becca a traitor or anything, but I thought until I had more information it might make sense to keep my trap shut.
“Thanks for letting me wake you up,” I said sincerely. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”
“Okay. See you.”
She didn’t look nearly as confused about all this as I thought she should be.
VII
After Mrs. Wilcox dropped me off, I found Dad sitting in his easy chair, but there wasn’t anything “easy” about his posture. He was sitting on the edge as if waiting for some horrible news, and he didn’t relax when he saw me come in either.
I knew there was no way to avoid this discussion, so I sat on the couch. I wouldn’t have wanted to go running off to my bedroom anyway; I needed some answers about what Richard had warned me about.
Since I had never run away before—if you could call my lame late-night romp “running away”—I didn’t know quite what to expect from Dad. I could see it going one of two ways: passive-aggressive arguing, or him becoming Mr. Wounded Introvert. He had a penchant for both.
And to be fair, maybe we were both kind of like that.
But he surprised me. His tense posture didn’t change at all, but Dad said, “You really don’t want to leave Campville, do you?”
“Well, I…”
“I get it,” he said. “You wanted to show me you meant business.”
“I…” I smiled. I didn’t think he’d see through me so fast. I thought he’d at least consider the possibility that I was trying to run away for real. Goes to show what I know, right?
“If you still feel that way after I tell you… well, something I was hoping we wouldn’t have to talk about at all, then I’ll consider it. I promise. I’ll really think about it. But there’s something you should know.”
I went stiff. I don’t like lying to people, remember? I didn’t know if I should tip my hand or not. Was it a bad idea, considering the implications of whatever it was he was about to tell me, for me to keep Richard a secret? Or should I tell him I’ve already caught a whiff of the rumor that some “something bad” was about to go down in the area?
“Dad,” I said.
“No. You’re not going to talk me out of it now. No backpedaling. You’re not a kid anymore, and I’m starting to see that. I think vampire hunter families grow up a little faster than other families. So you’re sixteen, you’ll be seventeen in a few months. I wanted to keep this from you because you love Campville so much, but I guess it’s time I—”
“Dad,” I repeated, more urgently.
This seemed to shock him out of his little prepared speech. He looked at me like I’d just shown up. “What?”
“I kind of…” I bit my lip. Was I really about to admit that I’d been out with a vampire? Not just once, but also multiple times this week? Another way to phrase this question would be: Did I like my dad with or without smoke coming out his ears?
“You ‘kind of’ what?” he asked, his interest piqued. Well, that pretty much made up my mind. Unless I wanted to tell an out-and-out lie here, Dad wasn’t going to let this drop now.
“I’m going to tell you something,” I said, deciding maybe a little late on the draw here, that I should hedge this up a bit first. “Don’t get mad.”
One look told me it was too late for that. He was already getting hot under the collar and his face was turning, slowly but surely, to that patented shade of red that was one-hundred-percent Ray Briar. But he nodded his agreement. That was something, at least.
“Three times this week, once on Monday, once two nights ago, and again tonight, I talked with a vampire.” His jaw was clenched so tightly I was afraid I was about to hear something snap, but he didn’t speak, he just kept listening. I had to give the guy credit. “He’s one of the good guys as far as vamps go, and don’t go telling me there’s no such thing because you know they’re out there. Don’t make me go over the whole Victoria thing again.” Victoria was just about my favorite vampire in the whole world, and Dad knew it. He wasn’t going to argue with me about her right now. “This vamp… he came here to protect me, to protect us, I think. He said there’s something coming to Campville, or already here, I guess. He said Campville was ‘in its sights.’ Not vampires. Something else. So I already kind of got a whiff of what’s got you all upset. And yeah, like you’re saying, he told me the whole town might be in danger.”
He took a moment to compose himself, forcefully unlocking his jaw, and said, “Did he tell you what’s going on?”
“No. Nothing more than that.”
“He’s right.”
“You can’t kill him,” I said. “I’m serious.”
He raised an eyebrow, as if to say, Are you serious? “You don’t think I want to get in hot water with the Association, do you? If you think he’s one of the good guys, they’re probably not going to like me taking him out, now are they?”
“Right. I know.”
“It’s like you think I’m some crazy berserker that can’t control himself.” He sighed. “But that doesn’t mean you can keep talking to him. I don’t see any reason for him to say even one more word to you. He can talk to me from now on, got it?”
I wasn’t about to get into all that with Dad, not when there were way more important things to get into. Not to mention the fact I wasn’t really ready to make any promises in that vein. Richard was… one of the more interesting individuals I’d had the pleasure of meeting in quite some time, and I’d really rather keep our conversations going if I could.
“So what’s happening here?” I said.
He looked into my eyes, as if weighing me for something, and for the first time I could really see the toll the news had taken on him. I was actually pretty sure he was more upset about whatever was going on in Campville than he was about me meeting up with Richard, and that was saying something.
He said, “In all the time I’ve been a hunter, have you ever known me to go up against something that can wipe a whole town off the map?”
“No,” I told him. I’d never even really thought about a creature doing that. It seemed like it would be too conspicuous, even for the more wild-hearted monsters and beasts out there.
“I guess…” he leaned back, letting the chair take his weight as if it could also take the burden from him. “I guess that’s why I’m so rattled this time. If I screw things up here it’s not just you and me on the line, or a couple of random citizens in town, it’s everybody. Assuming these things even can do what I’ve heard they can.”
“Enough with the these things talk, okay? What are we dealing with, here?”
“They don’t have an official name yet, but I’ve heard them called black suits.”
“Black suits?” I shook my head to show the phrase didn’t really mean much to me either.
“I know,” he said. “I’ve only ever talked to two other hunters who’ve actually seen them. This is going to sound crazy, but I didn’t really believe they were real. I didn’t think the hunters were lying, exactly, just that they were confused.”
That did sound crazy. “After everything else you’ve seen? Vampires, shapeshifters, leprechauns, for pity’s sake. I mean how out-there can these ‘black suits’ get?”
He smiled, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “Pretty out there.”
VIII
I told Dad to hang on while I got a glass of water. It hit me just then that I hadn’t had much to drink that day yet, and I was starting to get a headache.
When I came back I got comfortable on the couch, sitting at a right-angle to Dad’s chair, and said, “So what are they, like, the MIB or something?”
He laughed. “That’s not too far off the mark,” he said, surprising me. “They are men, usually white, usually in their thirties, that wear black suits and sunglasses. But neither of the guys I talked to mentioned anything about aliens or BS like that.”
I didn’t necessarily think aliens were BS—I mean, what’s weirder: an alien or a fairy queen?—but I didn’t need to get into that conversation right now, either.
I said, “Then what do they do, if not cover up alien activity or whatever?”
“They ask questions.” Even though this was a lot less scary than, say, something trying to suck you dry or trying to possess your body, I could tell from the way Dad said it that there was something disturbing about these “questions.”
He went on without needing to be prodded, which was a little out of character for Dad. I guess he’d decided to tell me what was going on, and he was sticking to that choice. I was glad for that, but it also made me feel a little sad. I guess I was growing up in his eyes.
“Nobody knows what they really are. If they are spirits or some kind of creature or what have you…”
“But they for sure aren’t human?”
He made an understated motion with his shoulders that a stranger might not recognize as a shrug. “Who can say anything ‘for sure’ with so little info, but the hunters I talked to didn’t say anything about that. I’m sure they didn’t think these black suits were human.” He stood up. “Damn it, now you’ve got me thirsty.”
He came back with a cup of milk and went on with his story. “They go around in twos, like they’re FBI agents or frickin’ Mormon missionaries or something, and they knock on doors. They always try to get someone alone, and according to the guys I talked to, the best defense you can have against these things is to have somebody else with you because they basically never go after somebody who’s not alone.
“Then they pin you down, not physically, but by acting like they’re in authority. The hunter I knew who actually got cornered by a couple of these things said they told him they were with the county commissioner’s office or something, and then they just go to town on you, drilling you with more questions than you know what to do with.”
I said, “I’m guessing it’s not so easy to just walk away or not answer?”
“No,” he said, and he looked like he might be a little impressed with my deduction. He shouldn’t have been: it’s not like this was my first rodeo, and not to toot my own horn—which, by the way, sounds like a fart joke—I’ve always had something of a knack for hunter work.
He took another sip. “The hunter who got pinned down had been shacking up in this little town in Texas where he was tracking these things. They’d already ‘asked’ six or seven people to death by the time he got hard on their trail.”
“What do you mean, asked to death?”
“The one thing both of the hunters I knew who had tracked these things could really agree on, as far as the lore of these creatures is concerned, is that they are trying to store up energy from humans.” I could hear the slight relief in Dad’s voice as he said this. We’d dealt with a number of creatures that preyed on or stored up human life-forces: some ghosts did that, as well as ideolis, and some of the creatures conjured by witches. While the concept was as dangerous as it was scary, at least it was something we were familiar with. “But these guys get the energy in the form of information. It’s weird, and I don’t know all the details. Basically they question you for a few hours. At the end of it, after they’ve had their fill of you, you’re basically a vegetable. Then they slit your throat for good measure.”
I shuddered. It was a creepy thought. Such a lonely, strange way to die.
I said, “That sounds pretty gnarly, but isn’t this still just a normal job? A run-of-the-mill, find-the-bad-guys-kill-the-bad-guys deal?”
“Yeah,” he admitted, “the hunter I talked to said he’d set up a trap for them and got them alone in a room where he’d hidden a shotgun. Boom. They died with one shot each. Blood, bones, brains, the whole deal. If he was right about that, they probably aren’t spirits, so they can die normally. It’s just…” He shook his head. “He seemed so confused, you know? I’m not sure he really knew what he saw. It probably didn’t help that they’d gotten some of his life-force before he killed them.”
I shifted on the couch, uneasy, because I knew Dad was going to have a pretty good answer for my next question. If he didn’t, none of this would have even been an issue. I said, “So why are you so worried? Why do these things have you so riled you want to pull us out of Campville?”
“I told you,” he said, clearly a little agitated by the question. “Because the stakes are so high. I don’t really like having the weight of a whole town on my shoulders like this.”
“Why don’t you get some help then? I’m sure the Association would send somebody if you asked. Or what about one of your buddies?”
He watched me for a few seconds, something going on behind his eyes. “Things are a bit tight for them right now because of a land dispute north of here, in Zion National Park. It’s this big, complicated vamp thing, and it’s just getting worse.”
“How often do you get reports from them?” I asked. I kind of had the idea that the Association was there to pay bounties and make sure hunters were behaving themselves; I’d never really considered that they might keep Dad updated on the stuff they had going on that he wasn’t directly connected with.
“Often,” he said frankly. “But let’s return to the matter at hand. At this point, I’d love some help, but it’s probably not going to happen, especially since the Association doesn’t have these things even registered as threats. Can I get back to what the hunter told me, please?”
“Sure.”
“He got out of Texas not long after he’d shredded them with his shotgun, and he—”
“Wait a sec,” I said. “Why aren’t the black suits registered if he killed two of them? Didn’t he take their remains in to his assessment when he got his bounties?”
Dad shook his head and made a face. “That’s a big part of why I didn’t really believe him. He didn’t even have the presence of mind to do that after they’d scrambled his brains. I’m not even sure he brought it up at his assessment. He only told me because he was drunk half out of his mind the night I talked with him. This was a couple years back. Anyway, he skipped town. You know, thinking the evil had been exterminated because he’d taken out two of them. And then he said two weeks later there was no more town.”
“Meaning?”
“He said officially it was listed as a huge gas leak. Ridiculous. Everyone in that town, maybe two-hundred people, was found dead one night.”
My eyes narrowed. “I can see why you didn’t really believe him. Have you ever Googled it?”
“I use Bing,” he laughed. “They have a good reward program.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay then, have you Binged it?” That didn’t really have the same ring to it, but whatever.
“Binged, Yahooed, Googled… hell, I even asked Jeeves.” He took a moment to think about that. “You’re probably too young to get that joke. But as far as I can tell no such town ever existed. It’s been totally wiped off the map. There’s not even a bogus story about a gas leak anymore. There’s nothing.”
“Well, that does sound like the MIB, right?” I sat back, feeling suddenly tired. “So you didn’t believe him, but now you
do.”
“Maybe.”
“Right, now you maybe do. What changed?”
“I’ve seen them now three times, here in town.”
“Guys in suits? That could be anything.”
That was when I noticed the newspaper next to him. His eyes went to it and it leapt out at me, a prop he’d placed there for this very conversation. “Take a look at this,” he said, and handed it over the coffee table.
The paper was folded back to a sinister-looking article under a generic crime scene photo and a dated portrait of a middle-aged woman with floofy hair, smiling. Maggie Hatfield, 64, found dead in her home Tuesday. Throat slit. No sign of forced entry. Her bottom lock, one that could be activated on the way out the door, had been locked, but the deadbolt had not.
He said, “That happened two blocks from here.”
I looked at the address and recognized the street. “So you’ve seen them, and then this popped up?” He nodded. “You said you’ve talked to two hunters about this? What did the other guy have to say?”
“The other guy who told me about them is a paranoid whack-job,” Dad said. My father could be understanding when he wanted to be, but there was something about incompetent hunters that just boiled his blood, and he didn’t cut them a lot of slack. “When he saw the first sign of these guys he split town and then actively avoided the news after that because, as he said, he ‘didn’t want to be dragged into it.’”
“So he just left the town to die?”
“If that’s what happened, yeah. He wouldn’t even tell me the name of it.”
“Useful,” I said. A beat passed while we thought our own thoughts.
I didn’t want to wound my father. Well, not much. But there was no delicate way to say what I had to say next. “Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing? You want to get out of Campville, don’t you?” His eyes told me a story. There was a lot he was keeping in, and I didn’t catch all the details, but the general picture was enough. I said, “You were planning on coming back after we moved, weren’t you? Take them out once I was out of harm’s way?”