Midnight Hat Trick

by Vernon, Steve

  "I hear it too," Fergus said.

  "It's coming from the garden," Sprague said.

  They looked out the back door.

  The black bus was parked directly over Sprague's snow-buried green bean patch. Its lights burned on high, like a pair of neon beacons. The door to the bus was open and a figure was standing there in the doorway.

  It almost looked like a man.

  "Who in the hell are you and what the hell do you want?" Sprague asked.

  "And how in the hell did you get that bus into this back yard?" Fergus added.

  The figure stepped closer. Sprague could see him now, walking towards them. A heavyset man, stout in the way of a fisherman. His hair was as black as the paint on the bus.

  And he was smiling.

  Leo just shook his head in slow disbelief.

  "Not who in the hell," Leo said. "More like what in the hell are you? Whatever it is it doesn't look much human to me."

  The figure stepped closer. Its skin was pale, almost as white as the snow, and it had a peculiar way of moving – stiff, like a wooden toy soldier.

  "That's nothing human at all," Fergus said.

  "What the fuck is it then?" Leo asked. "A boogerman?"

  Sprague reached down and came up with the kindling hatchet that he kept by the back door.

  "I'm warning you," Sprague said, hefting the hatchet menacingly.

  The figure stepped closer.

  "I don't think that hatchet is scaring this booger all that much," Fergus said. "You wouldn't happen to have a chainsaw handy, would you?"

  "Maybe a howitzer or two?" Leo said.

  "If he wants trouble," Sprague said confidently. "I can fucking take him."

  And then the figure smiled, only its expression went way beyond what you'd call a smile. Its jaw dislocated and its gums seemed to peel back and its teeth grew icicle-long, winter-sharp and hungry until it looked like nothing more than a set of those wind-up walking false teeth.

  The teeth with legs hissed like a cat being swallowed by a python.

  "Jesus jumped-up palamino," Sprague swore.

  "Lord dying baldheaded Moses," Fergus swore right along with him.

  Leo said nothing.

  He was nowhere in sight.

  Sprague glanced over his shoulder. Had the man run?

  The teeth with legs came closer.

  "Here boys," Leo shouted, tossing each of them a whole head of garlic that he'd yanked from the string of garlic that had fallen into Sprague's sink.

  "What in the hell?" Sprague asked.

  "Bite into that garlic," Leo shouted, chewing into his head of garlic like it was a Macintosh apple. "Bite it before that bucktoothed Bela Lugosi boogerhead bites one of you."

  "Bela Lugosi?"Sprague said, in disbelief. "Are you saying that's a vampire?"

  "What in the hell else do they look like?" Leo asked.

  They?

  Sprague turned and looked.

  Three more figures climbed out of the bus and began moving across the back yard.

  "Jesus Joseph Joey R. Smallwood," Fergus swore and prayed simultaneously, getting that hunk of garlic down his gullet faster than you could say spit.

  Sprague bit down on the garlic without asking anymore fool questions.

  "Now breathe on the toothy bastards!" Leo said, gusting out a great exhalation of garlic.

  "Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…"

  Whatever those things were they sure didn't care much for garlic breath. The first one took a quick step back as if Leo had been blasting him with a gout of napalm instead of a case of garlic-inspired halitosis.

  Sprague stood directly beside Leo and exhaled just as hard.

  "Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…"

  The creatures took one more step back.

  Fergus tried to breathe before he'd fully chewed. He inhaled instead of exhaling. A chunk of raw garlic caught in his throat and he began to heave and whoop and choke and turn blue-faced.

  The lead vampire stopped retreating to take advantage of Fergus' predicament. He lunged right towards him, scooting around Sprague and Leo as easily as a fast-moving power play. Fergus nearly tripped over his own feet, still hacking and wheezing when all at once something caught and everything came back in a mighty surge. He power-puked pure garlic reflux directly onto the creature's face. The garlic-tainted vomit hissed into the soggy white flesh of the creature and it screamed like a month of pain as half of its face melted slushily away.

  Sprague and Leo linked arms in front of the fallen Fergus and exhaled mightily.

  "HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA."

  The lead vampire looked up at him from its half-a-face, its one eye blazing with pure hatred.

  "You hurt us," it said, the words sounding funny coming out of all those teeth in that half-melted face. "But we know how to hurt you."

  The other creatures helped to drag it back onto the bus, slamming the door shut behind them. The bus backed out of the yard, almost bending itself as it somehow slid through the open back gate, which was barely wide enough to walk through.

  "Shit," Fergus gasped.

  Sprague and Leo helped Fergus back into the kitchen.

  "Are you all right?" Leo asked.

  Fergus nodded weakly, still trying to catch his breath. A bit of half-chewed garlic dangled from his lower lip.

  "I've got some wormy apples and clabbered milk laying in the back of the fridge that'll fix you up just fine," Sprague told Fergus, who barely made it to the sink before emptying his stomach of the rest of the garlic, rum and Solomon Gundy.

  Fergus threw up again on the very next morning for a very different sort of reason.

  Saturday morning, 8am

  All across the town televisions were tuning to Bugs Bunny, Sponge Bob, Batman and the Transformers. Satellite hookups were drawing entertainment from the air waves. Children and grown-ups alike were hunkered over bowls of Cap'n Crunch, Fruit Loops and Lucky Charms. Families were grinning and reminding themselves why they'd ever bothered being born.

  Everyone was happy.

  Everyone, except for the twelve-year-old boy tied to the hockey net at the far end of Sprague's rink.

  If you squinted fast it looked almost as if the boy were trying to enthusiastically block a slap shot.

  Except he wasn't.

  He wasn't doing much of anything at all, except hanging there, his arms and legs akimbo, dangling from the corners of the tattered hockey net.

  "That's Timmy, isn't it?" Fergus asked, only half wanting to know.

  Sprague just shook his head.

  "That's Tommy – Timmy's little brother. Timmy has redder hair."

  It was that hard to tell.

  The three of them stepped outside. Sprague was wearing his gumboots. Leo had a pair of sneakers that he beat around in most of the winter. Fergus wasn't wearing anything but a pair of gray woolly hunting socks.

  "Is he dead?" Leo asked.

  "If he isn't he'll do until dead comes along," Fergus answered.

  A black-backed gull landed on the boy's shoulder. For a moment the bird almost looked funny, as if the boy was trying to play pirate with a seagull instead of a parrot. Then the gull reached over and probed its beak into Tommy's left eye.

  That got the three of them running.

  "Get out of there you winged devil," Sprague yelled out.

  Leo just roared like a freight engine mating with a bull moose.

  Fergus slipped and fell on his ass, twice. The second time he lay there and vomited.

  The gull lazily flew off.

  "It's Tommy," Fergus said.

  "I already told you that," Sprague said.

  His mouth stopped working.

  The words fell away.

  All three of them grew silent, staring at that small boy, his jeans stained with crusted salt and blood, his flesh torn as if it had been gnawed, his skin pale and drained bloodless. He'd been tied to the goal with twists of barbed wire.

 
; Finally Sprague spoke.

  "The bastards said they knew how to hurt us," he said.

  Fergus and Leo said nothing.

  "They didn't do it here," Sprague went on.

  "Are you sure?" Leo asked.

  "Look at his face," Sprague said. "He was screaming when they done it."

  The three men grew silent again.

  Fergus just kept shaking his head.

  Finally Leo spoke.

  "I know what I need to do," Leo said.

  Without another word he walked off of the rink, and headed for his home.

  "Where's he going?" Fergus asked.

  "You keep asking me questions I don't have any answers to," Sprague said.

  "What the fuck would do something like this?" Fergus asked.

  "That's two stupid questions," Sprague said. "You're entitled to one more and then I'm going to have to hit you."

  "But where's Leo going?"

  Sprague shook his head.

  "I'm damned if I know," Sprague said. "Come on and help me move this boy's body."

  "Move him?" Fergus asked. "Aren't we going to call the Mounties?"

  "No Fergus, we're not calling the Mounties. They're probably still standing and staring at where the church used to be."

  Sprague's face grew grim.

  "We're not done with these fuckers by a long old shot," he said. "They hurt us, hurt us worse than bad – but we've got the puck now."

  Saturday morning, 11am

  Sprague sliced and fried up some ham. He baked some bannock with a half a can of warm beer and drank the rest of the beer down.

  He wanted rum but he brewed some tea instead.

  "I wonder where Leo has got to?" Fergus asked.

  "Farting around with that old computer of his, no frigging doubt," Sprague said. "Maybe he just needs some time to clear his head."

  "You don't suppose he's run out on us, do you?"

  Sprague forked the ham out of the fry pan and set it on two plates, with the bannock.

  "Leo Kiniski wouldn't even know how to spell the word run if you pissed the word out in the snow for him twice," Sprague said. "No sir, he's up to something but I don't know what. Now eat your ham."

  "I ain't hungry," Fergus said.

  "You wants to be hungry," Sprague said, shaking a generous portion of garlic salt onto his ham.

  "We got a dead boy, buried in the backyard snow drift," Fergus said. "How in the high holy hells of Elvis's armpits can you expect me to be hungry after seeing something like that?"

  "It's the first rule of survival. You eat to get your strength."

  Fergus shook his head.

  "Just what in the hell were those things?"

  "They looked like vampires to me," Sprague said.

  Fergus shook his head again.

  "Vampires? Like in the movies?" he said. "I thought vampires wore capes and penguin suits, like Bela Lugosi."

  Sprague shrugged.

  "Maybe these ones are different. There's nothing to say that they have to be like anything we've seen in the movies. Or even if they were, well then maybe they've just gone and changed."

  "Is that what you figure?"

  "Why not? We've changed. We're a whole lot different than the Neanderthal, aren't we?"

  "I'm not so sure about that," Fergus said. "I've seen your morning toilet habits. Walking down to that water every morning in your bare-be-jesus, that looks pretty damn caveman-ish to me."

  Sprague slid the plate over to Fergus.

  "Eat," he ordered.

  "And fatten myself up for the likes of them things? No thanks."

  "You need your strength," Sprague kept on arguing. "Because we're going to fight them."

  "Fight them?" Fergus asked. "That's a job for the Mounties, isn't it?"

  "That's a good one, Fergus," Sprague said. "We'll go down to the lock-up and we'll tell Sergeant Preston there that he needs to serve a warrant on a pack of bloodsucking vampires. How fast before you figure he locks up, me son?"

  None of them could argue with that.

  "They're a pack of bloodthirsty creatures from beyond the grave," Sprague said. "Who in the hell better to fight them than a pack of old farts with one foot in the grave?"

  "You've got a point," Fergus grudgingly admitted. "But we're almost out of garlic."

  "Hush your foolish flapping mouth," Sprague said. "I've got me a plan."

  "Wouldn't it be quicker just to dig our own graves out there next to Timmy and pull the snow in over us?" Fergus asked. "I figure I've got just about enough time to draw up a will and testament."

  Sprague said nothing.

  "Alright," Fergus relented. "What's your plan?"

  "We're fighting the bastards."

  "How?"

  "Look," Sprague went on. "Nearly every goddamn vampire movie I ever seen the vampire hunters always get stupid and wait for dark before going up against these boys."

  Fergus just stared, still not getting it.

  "Well," Sprague said. "I ain't waiting."

  And then he fixed Fergus with a hard cold gaze.

  Fergus nodded slowly. Understanding was beginning to dawn on the man.

  "We ain't waiting," Sprague finished. "We'll hit those things this afternoon while their pyjama bottoms are still hung down."

  Fergus was nodding like his head was about to come off.

  "Let's nail the fuckers," Fergus agreed. "We'll high noon them while their toes are still tucked fast in their bone-boxes."

  They finished their meal. Fergus was even hungry enough to slather another slab of bannock in the ham grease while Sprague split some kindling and made them both some wooden stakes.

  "Are you sure stakes will work?" Fergus asked.

  "Garlic worked, didn't it?"

  "Garlic will work on most things," Fergus said, sniffing at his armpits. "Pee-ew."

  "Ramming a wooden stake works pretty good on most things too," Sprague said.

  "So how would you know?"

  Sprague just winked.

  "Come on," he said. "Let's go and hunt them up."

  They got as far as the front door and opened it.

  The bus was waiting for them in the street – looking like the shadow of midnight perched on a set of wide base steel radials.

  "Tar baby sit there," Sprague said. "Don't say nothing."

  "What should we do?" Fergus asked.

  "Running seems like a plan."

  Fergus shook his head.

  "Those bastards have begun to bore the blue hell out of me," Fergus said, stepping forward. "Why don't we just walk over there and call them out?"

  That was what Fergus was good at. Whenever Sprague missed the puck, Fergus would back his play to the hilt.

  The two of them crossed the road together.

  Sprague started whistling Do not forsake me, oh my darling as they walked towards the bus.

  "So how did High Noon work out for Gary Cooper?" Fergus wanted to know.

  "Old Coop shot Lee Van Cleef and then rode on out into the sunset to bump uglies with his Mormon wife," Sprague answered. "Let's get this done."

  Sprague and Fergus stepped into the street.

  The bus just sat there.

  "It isn't moving," Fergus said.

  "Of course it isn't moving," Sprague said. "Do you see anybody at the wheel?"

  They walked a little closer.

  "Do you think there's anybody in there?" Fergus asked, trying to peer through the black paint.

  "Of course there's somebody in there. Its daylight, isn't it? This is where they sleep. You can count on that," Sprague said. "Isn't that right, fuckers?"

  Sprague yelled the last of it, trying to make himself heard in the bus.

  "Are you asleep? Did I wake you?"

  He hammered on the bus. It felt warm to his touch as if it were alive somehow.

  "Sprague," Fergus whispered, looking about nervously as if he thought the whole town was watching the two of them calling out an empty black school bus.

&nbs
p; "Come on you leeches," Sprague shouted. "This is your wake-up call. Just like in the hospital. Wake up and take your NyQuil!"

  Sprague dug into his pocket and pulled out his house key. He dragged it against the bus, point-first.

  SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…

  The key made a high pitched, nails-against-a-blackboard sound that rattled Fergus' denture work clear down to the gums.

  "Come on you pasty-faced bastards," Sprague kept on yelling. "Wake up, why don't you?"

  Fergus looked around fearfully one more time.

  And then the bus door opened.

  Just opened and hung there.

  "Should we go in after them?" Fergus asked.

  Sprague stared at that open door.

  He shook his head slowly.

  "It's a trap," he said. "And we're not taking the hook."

  Fergus heaved a sigh of relief.

  Except Sprague wasn't done.

  "Why don't you assholes come out and play?" Sprague called out. "Meet me on the ice tonight. My rink, my rules. Bring your sticks if you've got them."

  Nothing moved.

  "I don't think they come to Labrador to play hockey," Fergus offered.

  "I don't give a gollywog what the hell they come for. I know just what'll do the trick," Sprague said. He rooted in his pocket again. Fergus had the feeling that he might pull out an honest-to-Gary-Cooper six shooter.

  Only it wasn't a six shooter.

  It was worse.

  Sprague pulled out more garlic.

  "Come on, Fergus," Sprague said. "Let's show those Bela-Lugosi-wannabes how we roll up here in Labrador."

  He threw a bulb of garlic to Fergus. The two of them sponged down the bus with the garlic. The paint seemed to run, like gasoline on a rain puddle. You could hear the bus screaming and writhing beneath the garlic.

  "This isn't any ordinary bus, is it?" Fergus asked.

  "No shit, Sherlock," Sprague said. "Keep rubbing that garlic."

  "Something's moving in there," Fergus said.

  Sprague looked up. He saw a shadow in the doorway. Something was standing there.

  "Forget your sun block?" he taunted.

  Then he rubbed the bus down good one more time.

  "This'll piss them off," Sprague said.

  The shadow just stood there. Sprague could feel the emanations of pure, undiluted hatred rolling from out of the open bus doorway.

  The black paint twisted and ran on the bus. Blood and puss and something that looked and smelled a little like bad malted milk oozed from every pore of the bus.