The Vampires of Vigil's Sorrow

by Cassandra Duffy

  The following evening, Henry dressed for the hunt, kissed his wife, packed his guns in his Cadillac, and drove into town. The envelope had indeed been taken before morning, leaving Henry with two distinct advantages: Pastor Gunderson had no idea he was coming and the thing in the woods now had an appropriate target for its rage.

  Henry pulled up outside of Pastor Gunderson’s house to find exactly what he’d expected—the pastor was in the middle of packing for a hasty move, which Henry wasn’t supposed to see. He strolled up to the front door and walked right in, scaring Gunderson’s skeleton nearly out of his mouth. The pastor stood in the middle of his mostly boxed little living room, looking as though he’d been caught red handed by Jesus himself.

  “The two day head start wouldn’t have been enough to…” Gunderson began.

  “Never mind that,” Henry cut him off. “Get your boots and your gun. We’ve got business in the woods.”

  Gunderson did as he was told, dressing as though they were going deer hunting and arming himself with an old, bolt action Springfield rifle. They drove in silence toward the deer trail Debbie had mentioned. Henry clicked off the headlights and drove in the dark the last bit, killing the engine to let his massive car haul itself down the final hill in almost complete silence. He pulled off to the side of the road, allowing the lumbering Cadillac roll to a stop on its own. They waited, watching the deer trail, for an hour before a ghostly figure emerged from the woods.

  “Who is that?” Gunderson asked, squinting through the darkness to better see the blond, willowy woman in tattered rags.

  “Go see for yourself,” Henry replied.

  Gunderson slipped from the car, taking his hunting rifle with him. Henry watched through the windshield as the pastor crept up toward the old barbwire fence, trying to get a closer look without being seen. Henry’s hand instinctively came to the Colt .45 in the breast pocket of his hunting jacket. He patted the reassuring weight and withdrew his hand. The pastor needed to see for himself.

  Pastor Gunderson stepped carefully through the barbwire fence into the muddy field, stalking closer and closer to the woman who was walking perpendicular to him, but not yet aware he was there. Henry took this cue to quietly exit the vehicle, using the front of the Cadillac as cover. The night was so silent, only an occasional breeze rustling the trees at a distance to break the stillness. Henry thought the zipper of his hunting jacket surely must have echoed for miles as he slowly pulled it down to get at the loaded pistol inside his coat. A quick glance around the front fender of the Cadillac confirmed that Gunderson was making good time across the field.

  Henry departed his cover and followed low along the fence line. Combat had tempered his nerves through the war, but the decade since had softened his resolve. The surge of excited fear hit his hands with a bit of a shake, but never broke the will required to continue forward. Gunderson would call out, that was his way, and the creature, which should be afraid of an armed man in the night, would instead attack, and this would be Henry’s chance.

  Gunderson came close enough to get a good enough look at the girl and came to a stop. He called out to her, the way Henry had hoped, and limbered his gun at his side to make it seem less threatening.

  “Excuse me, miss, are you okay?” Gunderson shouted as follow up when the creature didn’t immediately respond to his first hail.

  Henry began to wonder if he’d misjudged the whole thing. He crept farther up to get a better look at the girl to make sure it was the same one. Barely concealed by the long grass along the fence, he dared go no closer. Even at the fairly lengthy distance and when viewed through the gloom of night, Henry was certain it was the same creature that had stood on his lawn the week before his daughter disappeared.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Gunderson said. “I’m a pastor, Pastor Gunderson, and I’m only trying to help.”

  This simple reassurance set the creature off. It snapped its head around, finally acknowledging Gunderson’s existence with a withering glare. The narrowed eyes spread until the girl’s entire face had transformed into something else entirely, something inhuman. Gunderson panicked at this, seemingly caught between fleeing and fighting. He pulled his rifle up, fumbled with the bolt to chamber a cartridge, and nearly dropped the whole mess into the mud in the process. The girl started across the field toward him, taking its time, growing more monstrous with every step it took. Still, Henry waited, wanted to be sure in his shots as the Navy .45s threw heavy slugs, but did so inaccurately beyond a short range. More so, he wanted Gunderson to be sure in what he saw. He needed the pastor to believe this monster was every bit as real as the god he prayed to even if it was the thought he departed this world with.

  In a surprising bit of steely nerves that Henry hadn’t thought the pastor capable, he managed to get his rifle set to fire, shouldered the weapon, and tore off a remarkably well placed shot at the creature when it was a meager twenty feet away. The massive .30 caliber bullet struck home on the creature’s left shoulder, spinning her off balance in her methodical charge.

  Henry, not expecting the pastor to do quite so well in his own defense, jumped from his hiding spot too soon, missing his chance as the creature sprinted back toward the woods, holding its wounded limb.

  “Back to the car, Gunderson!” Henry shouted, making his own run back to the vehicle.

  His heart pounded, his boots crunched along the dirt road, and a rage built in him as they neared his car. This was what he remembered most from the war, the fear bringing about a murderous rage when the tide began to turn. He’d used it to fuel a devastating blood lust in pressing the advantage when the enemy showed its back. They jumped into the car, with Gunderson a scant step behind Henry. The Cadillac’s giant engine jumped to life, he hit the headlights, and tore down the access road into the field, quickly catching up to the wounded creature. He stomped the gas when the heavy Fleetwood was lined up on his target, spraying mud and sod out the back wheels. The car leapt to, closing the gap in an instant. The front of the car barreled over the creature illuminated starkly in the blinding headlights for only a second before they heard her rattling along beneath the floorboards.

  Henry stomped the brake and spun the wheel. The massive car pirouetted through the open field like a possessed metal bull. The exhaust smoke and mud thrown in the air by the charge and sudden change of direction left them blind for a moment. The creature came flying out of the hazy blue exhaust, hell bent on passing the vehicle back toward the woods on the driver’s side. There wasn’t time enough to get the front of the car going on an intercept course. Henry turned into the charge as best he could, waited for his moment, and then sprung the driver’s side door open to impact the creature as it came along side, flashing wicked fangs and dead, black eyes in the headlights of the car. The door hit home with a hollow, metallic thud, and the creature stumbled out into the field.

  Henry slammed on the brakes again and jumped out of the car when it slid to a stop. He got his pistol out and brought it to bear with a quaking hand. The headlights of the car only illuminated the back half of the creature with how she’d fallen and how he’d slid to a stop. He wanted to taste her demise, to make sure she knew who he was and why he was there. He’d never had that chance in the war, it was always at a distance with explosives and steel, but now he had an enemy no less evil than the Nazis under his metaphorical knife, and by god he would savor it.

  The creature he’d thought beaten and broken sprung to life at the last second, hurling herself out of the halo of light created by the headlights. He chased the fleeting black form, cursing his aging eyes from not adjusting fast enough to the darkness for a clean shot. He fired nevertheless. The Navy Colt jumped in his hand, snapping with the familiar sound of a .45 automatic, raining brass casings in his wake as he gave chase toward the woods. He stopped short of the tree line, convinced he hadn’t hit with a single shot.

  Pastor Gunderson came rushing to his side. The good pastor had retrieved Henry’s own hunting rifle from the backse
at of the Cadillac and now held it out to him.

  “I may have doubted before, but God has made me see the truth of this evil,” Pastor Gunderson said. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe your daughter and I’m sorry I doubted you. That thing isn’t human and needs to be destroyed.”

  Henry took the gun, trying to fight down the rage that had a firm hold over him. The plan could still work. The creature could still die by his hand. “There’s a clearing down around an old cow pond not far from here,” Henry said. “If you can lure the creature there, I can get a clean shot off from the bluff.”

  Pastor Gunderson, now an ardent, if unwitting, agent of his own demise, nodded his agreement and followed Henry into the darkened woods.

  7.

  Both practiced hunters, armed with flashlights and rifles, the duo easily tracked the wounded creature through the forest. Luring became less possible, making shepherding their primary function. The creature was slowed and wounded, stumbling through the underbrush, leaving a trail of blood and broken branches as it fled. Gunderson and Henry split up at the base of the bluff with the pastor ushering the creature ever forward toward the cow pond and clearing while Henry scaled the soft, damp earth of the bluff.

  Henry was breathing heavy and sweating profusely when he finally pulled himself up atop the shallow rise. The muck and mud of the forest had made the entire climb an ordeal, but the vantage point was well worth the strain. He found a fallen tree at the leading edge of the bluff’s decline and lay out behind it, steadying his rifle across the decaying tree’s bark.

  He looked down through the scope at the forest floor below, easily picking out the white rags of the creature flashing between the incomplete spring canopy of leaves. She was looking behind her, concerned with Gunderson’s pursuit. He couldn’t spot the pastor yet, but he could tell from the creature’s change in focus that Gunderson must be swinging wide to drive her back toward the bluff and the cow pond clearing. Henry took as many deep, calming breaths as he could to steady his nerve and take the shake out of his hands. It wasn’t such a long distance to create a difficult shot, but he wanted to make the hit a good one when the opportunity presented itself. If he hit her head with the 30-06, as he intended to, the shell would likely sheer off the entire back of her head on the way through.

  The creature was close to the clearing. The moon broke free of the patchwork cloud cover at the exact right moment, bathing the entire clearing in a pale white glow. For a second, a brief, triumphant moment, the creature’s gaunt face was beneath his crosshairs. In the second after, before his trigger finger could even caress the trigger, the gun was knocked from his hands and he was thrown back into the soft leaf litter of the forest floor.

  The surprise attack may have disarmed him, but hadn’t robbed him of his senses. He scrambled back to his feet, yanking his pistol from the front of his jacket to fell his would be attacker. The beam of his flashlight, trained in unison with the muzzle of his pistol, scanned across the woods back to where he’d made his sniper’s nest until he spotted his assailant.

  Little Debbie Poole, frightened and dirty, stood barefoot and trembling at the edge of the bluff. Henry relaxed a moment, but didn’t lower the flashlight or gun from their aim on her chest.

  “You can’t kill her,” Debbie said. “Please, Mr. Corker, I need her to survive.”

  “She’s a monster,” Henry objected.

  “I know, but she’s all I’ve got!”

  “I can take you back to your parents…”

  “I would die before going back.”

  Henry knew it was true. He hadn’t when she’d first told him about the nails and the impending commitment to a mental hospital, but he’d known it all to be absolutely true when he’d seen Gunderson’s reaction to the nails. Delivering her back to her parents would be a fate worse than death, and he couldn’t do it against her will even if it meant clearing his daughter’s name.

  He lowered the gun, but not the flashlight. He’d been so certain, so damn certain the whole evening and now he was faltering because he knew how much his Gracie had cared for her friend, and somehow, somewhere he hoped she saw him showing Debbie a bit of kindness in hearing her out.

  “Just leave,” Debbie said. “Go home, forget all about her, and forget about me.”

  “That thing is a killer,” Henry protested, stopping himself short of saying who she had killed to warrant such vengeance. He’d convinced himself with only the tiniest trappings of proof, but he didn’t know, not really, and if he was wrong, it would mean wronging Debbie Poole all over again.

  “She saved me from being raped,” Debbie said. “Once when the drifter attacked me and again when Phil tried. I’m only alive now because she saved me.”

  There wasn’t any reason to think she was lying, not when so much of what she’d just said matched the things Grace had told him that horrible summer. As with most things, it was all a lot easier to remain determined when he kept his head down and ignored everything but his goal. He suddenly felt very old and very tired.

  “What about Gunderson?” he asked as the final gasp of his dying desire for vengeance.

  “You were willing to sacrifice him for your revenge,” Debbie said. “Don’t the same reasons apply for mine?”

  Many of them did, and Henry had to admit it. Gunderson had a lot to answer for and not just when it came to Grace Corker or Deborah Poole. If the woods didn’t claim the children of Vigil’s Rest, Pastor Gunderson might take them when they’d grown to teenagers. If Henry hadn’t been so hardheaded and thought so little of the pastor, who knows what Gunderson might have convinced them of when it came to Grace and Warren. But Debbie didn’t know all of the reasons, and she needed to. Henry put away his pistol and retrieved the knife he’d given to Grace, the blade still stained with blood. He held it out and waited for her to take it. She reluctantly took a few steps toward him, remaining as far away as she could, and accepted the offered item.

  “What is it?”

  “I gave Grace that knife to defend herself after we all thought you were killed by a drifter,” Henry explained. “She never went to New Haven. The night before she was supposed to leave, she wasn’t there when I went to pick her up from work.” Henry walked past the stunned Debbie and collected his rifle. He wanted to look through the scope to know what was happening in the clearing, but he resisted the urge, turning his back on the edge of the bluff without so much as a glance down the hill. “When they found the knife in the spring thaw, there was blood on the blade. I’ll leave it to you to decide how it got there.”

  Henry couldn’t say for certain what the nature of the relationship between Debbie and his daughter had been, and he really didn’t care anymore. Revenge wasn’t going to bring back Grace and the more he learned of the situation the less he wanted to have to do with the whole thing. Grace’s revenge, if there was to be any, could be Debbie’s decision.

  “For what it’s worth, my daughter sure thought you were something special,” Henry said as he walked past Debbie, back down the bluff the same way he’d come.

  8.

  Debbie rolled the knife over in her hands again and again. The blood on the blade, dried and degraded as it was, smelled familiar and she knew precisely why since the entire forest was alive with the scent of Maggie’s blood that night.

  Debbie could hear Pastor Gunderson’s final moments in the clearing below. Maggie had rallied with the time purchased during her escape and without Henry’s possible killing blow, the good pastor who had once threatened Debbie with eternal damnation and electroshock therapy was left to fight the witch of Vigil’s Wood alone in the dark.

  Feeding upon Pastor Gunderson and recuperating from her injuries would take Maggie most of the rest of the night. Debbie fled the scene, knife in hand; she had to see something, had to know something before she spoke to Maggie again. Debbie raced through the woods, ignoring the curious eyes of the darkened, ghostly silhouettes throughout the forest that represented the lingering spirits of the dead. She
suspected they could see her intentions as though she wore them like a cloak of the brightest red. They loved her, believed she would save them, she could feel their trust in her, but she didn’t know how to save them, how to free them from what held them in the shadows of the haunted woods. Sometimes she wondered if they were real or just a deepening of her own madness that she suspected was increasingly matching Maggie’s.

  The bone field, the clearing where Debbie had died, where Maggie eventually brought most of her kills, was somewhere Debbie avoided as cursed and holy at once. She hadn’t set foot in it since the night Maggie had saved her from Phil. But she entered it now with a vague goal in mind.