The Vampire Underground

by Brian Rowe

  As Ash climbed farther up the hill, he decided to keep himself awake with some music. He turned on his CD player and changed over to CD number six, which had over twenty of his favorite film scores. While he had still never actually seen Chariots of Fire, he loved the inspiring, celebratory main theme. It was the first track on the CD.

  “We’re gonna make it,” he said. “We’re gonna find Brin. We’re gonna solve this mystery.”

  The best part of the score kicked in, and Ash started swaying his right hand in the air back and forth, as if he was driving into L.A. to take on his first day of film school, ready to spend the next four years celebrating the art medium he adored. College was still a year and a half away, but he didn’t mind taking this moment to dream about his future.

  Ash started humming to the music, closing and then re-opening his eyes every few seconds. When he re-opened his eyes for the tenth time, he saw something important up ahead.

  “Is that…” He squinted and leaned forward. “Is that a sign?”

  He pulled up to the large sign on the right side of the highway and stopped the car. It was cheesy, he knew, but he had to keep the music going. He blasted it through the car as he stepped outside into the cold.

  The Chariots of Fire theme song echoed over the vast, empty land as Ash kept the car running and the driver’s side door open. He pulled his big, black sweatshirt over his head as he playfully ran, in slow motion, a few yards up to the big sign. He didn’t know what the sign said from the car. But now he was sure. At the crescendo of the song, he stopped in front of the sign, shot his arms up in the air, and sang at the top of his lungs, “Dun dun dun dun… dun… dun! Dun… dun dun dun dun!”

  Ash looked up at the sign: BODIE GHOST TOWN, HISTORICAL MONUMENT, THREE MILES AHEAD.

  “Sweet,” he said. “Almost there!”

  He started jumping up and down, like such a motion would prevent the outside chill from piercing through his heavy sweatshirt. Ash couldn’t believe it, considering the circumstances, but he was actually in a good mood.

  The joy dissipated, however, when he turned around.

  Standing next to his car was not one but four creatures, all tall, all growling, all of their eyes glowing a blinding red light.

  Ash sighed. “Uh oh.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Where does this go?” Brin said as they reached the top of the staircase. They started heading down another hallway, this one thinner and tighter than the previous one. Brin was tired of hallways. She wanted anything but hallways.

  “Shh…” Paul said. “Don’t say a word.”

  The cheering dissipated, and now a single voice echoed from down below.

  As they reached the end of the hallway, where the only way to turn was to the right, Paul stopped.

  “What?” Brin said, startled. “Why did we—”

  “Shh!” Paul slammed his hand against her mouth, before bringing her down to the ground.

  Brin faced the granite tile. The booming voice nearby stopped. For a moment she thought their whereabouts had been discovered.

  But thankfully the loud voice continued. Even Paul let out an audible sigh.

  She looked up at the vampire, who now had his entire left arm wrapped around her. He stared into her eyes for a moment, before he turned and pointed through a small slit in the wall before them.

  Brin got on her knees, scooted forward, and peered through the slit.

  Down below was a giant arena, one that looked like the interior of a circus tent. A bright light shined against a single pale-faced figure in the center of the circle, while the arena stands above housed tons of clapping, pale-faced creatures of the night.

  “Oh my God,” Brin whispered. “There’s hundreds of them.”

  “I know,” Paul whispered back. “There’s more now than ever before.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Shh. Just listen.”

  The tall vampire in the center of the arena, dressed in a tuxedo, a top hat on his head, waited for the applause to die down, before he continued with his speech.

  “Welcome, my friends,” he said. “We have an extra special program tonight. I apologize for the delay, but we were in the midst of capturing some uninvited but very welcome visitors.”

  The audience members all whispered quietly to each other, while the star in the center enjoyed the surrounding commotion.

  Brin’s eyes widened.

  This is bad, she thought. Really, really, really bad.

  She turned to Paul. “Are they going to kill the people I came here with?”

  “Yes,” Paul said, not looking at her. “But we’re not going to let them.”

  “How are we supposed to save them sitting up here? There’s nothing we can do from here.”

  “We have to wait,” Paul said. “The timing has to be right. Just watch, for now.”

  She didn’t want to watch. But she knew she didn’t have a choice. “OK,” Brin said. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  He didn’t respond. He was already transfixed on the sight below.

  “Let the show… begin!” the formally dressed creature shouted at the top of his lungs.

  Hard rock music, the kind Brin tried to avoid whenever she browsed radio stations, started blasting through the auditorium, allowing Brin and Paul to raise their voices to each other without a cause for concern.

  “What the hell is this?” Brin said.

  Strobe lights started shooting in every direction, and the ground below, comprised of a black stage, started rising into the air. Three more stage lights shined through the strobes and focused on three performers, two on the side wearing tights, and one in the center in a clown costume, his already pale face painted white, with a red nose, a bright orange wig, and large black shoes completing the get-up. The clown started dancing in a goofy manner while the two figures in tights made fluid movements to the music, which had slowly transitioned from headache inducing hard rock to creepy, languid ambiance.

  “It’s the first set,” Paul said. “The first set doesn’t concern us.”

  Paul’s words went in one of Brin’s ears and out the other. She was focused on the bizarre show down below, occasionally glancing at the vampire-infested audience, who were all dressed in period outfits and sitting together in groups of two, three, and four.

  “It’s kind of like a circus,” Paul added.

  Those words Brin heard fine. “This isn’t a circus,” Brin said. “It’s the Cirque de Soleil from Hell.”

  A few more figures descended onto the stage from the ceiling above, covered all in black and swinging in and out of large, silver rings. The strobes disappeared and were immediately replaced with a set of blinding red lights, confirming to Brin that she was indeed in the middle of Hell.

  She watched for five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, as one act became three, and three became six. One set included three vampires dressed as gold miners from the 1800’s singing a bright cheery song about the joys of being a worker-bee. It was like the song from “Heigh-Ho” from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, except even more jovial (and sung by vampires). A quartet of older female vamps—all in their seventies when they were turned long ago—performed a tap dance that brought the crowd up to their feet with loud applause. The creepiest of the sets involved three children up on stage—all pasty white in the face, with eyes that emanated both red and orange colors—singing in high-pitched voices about how much they loved their mommies.

  “It’s those kids,” Brin said. “The kids I saw at the top of that house.”

  “What?”

  Brin didn’t clarify. She shook her head and turned to Paul. “This is insane. How do they do this? How do they even get electrical power down here?”

  “We have our ways,” is all he said.

  As another set concluded, this one involving the same male clown from before asking a corpulent female clown on a date, all the bright lights surrounding the stage turned off, leaving the auditorium
in momentary blackness.

  “What happened?” Brin whispered. “Is it over?”

  Paul didn’t respond. He bit down on his bottom lip and turned away from the slit in the wall.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “Here it begins.”

  “Here what begins?”

  The ambient music faded out. And one light from overhead shined against a chair in the middle of the stage. Someone was sitting on it.

  “Is that…”

  “Good,” Paul said.

  “Good?” Her jaw dropped. “That’s Sawyer! What—”

  “Shh,” he said. “Just wait.”

  “What are they gonna do to him?”

  Paul didn’t get a chance to answer, because by the time Brin finished asking her question, a second light beamed down, this one on the well-dressed vampire with the top hat. He had a microphone in his hand and an eerie smile on his face.

  Brin didn’t realize it until now. That’s the vampire I saw in the church.

  He didn’t say anything at first. He let the anticipation grow, as he did the applause. After thirty seconds, the whole auditorium burst into deafening clapping.

  The figure waved his hands in the air. “Settle down, everyone! Settle, settle!”

  It took awhile, but finally the audience members quieted down. Many of them leaned forward, hanging on the figure’s every word.

  “Hello, and welcome! I’ll be your emcee for tonight’s presentation! It is I, Damian, but you all know what to call me.”

  “DROZ!” everyone shouted.

  Brin blinked with confusion at that one. “Draws?”

  “Droz,” Paul said. “D. R. O. Z.”

  “That’s a weird name.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “Well, well, well,” Droz said, taking a step forward and bringing his hand down to Sawyer’s shoulder. He was stripped to a tank top and underwear, and his skin had catastrophic third degree burns, the worst of which was on his face. He was still alive, but barely. “It looks like we have a visitor.”

  The audience started clapping again, but the main vamp motioned for them to stop.

  “Bodie Ghost Town…” he continued. “It’s closed for all of winter, leaving us, for four months, in peace and quiet, to recharge our batteries, and prepare ourselves for another tasty year along the coast.”

  More applause. Brin, at the top of the hidden stairwell, didn’t know whether to turn away or watch in amazement.

  “But as you all know,” Droz continued, “every once in a while, we get our unexpected visitors, and it’s our duty, as always, to make them feel welcome!”

  Sawyer moved his head in a circle. He appeared to be drooling. He also looked to be in massive pain.

  Droz brought the microphone up to Sawyer’s mouth. “What’s your name, young man?”

  He was noticeably scared, as all he could do was breathe loudly into the microphone.

  “I asked you a question,” the vampire said. “Don’t be rude.”

  “Please…” Sawyer said, softly.

  “Apparently his name is Please!” the vampire shouted with a laugh. “Everyone say hi to Mr. Please!”

  The whole audience shouted “Hello Mr. Please” as if this freak show had momentarily turned into a motivational seminar.

  “He’s been badly burned by a car explosion, unfortunate for him, but fortunate for us. We all know what boiling blood tastes like, don’t we?”

  Brin’s eyes doubled in size. She looked at Paul. “What did he say?”

  “Shh.”

  “What? No. But Sawyer… we have to save him!”

  Brin jumped to her feet, but Paul pulled her back down. “No,” he whispered. “Now’s not the time.”

  “When then?” she said. “After he’s dead?”

  “I’m sorry, Brin. If we try to help him now, we won’t be able to save any of your friends.”

  She wanted to run down the stairwell and start screaming for help, but she stayed put. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes. She didn’t know what they were going to do to poor Sawyer.

  “Ardeth, if you please,” the head vampire said, waving to a young woman at the front of the stands who was outfitted in an 1800’s black dress. She pushed a small table with wheels toward the center of the stage. On top of the table was a mechanical lottery machine.

  The woman didn’t say a word. She posed, her hand pointed at the ancient wheel, an obnoxious smile on her face.

  “Ardeth,” Droz said, “please turn the machine.”

  She started spinning it, numbingly slow, in a clock-wise direction, before a small white ball popped out on the right side.

  Droz smiled, picked it up, and shouted, “Number seventy-eight! Number seventy-eight!”

  Number seventy-eight stood up in the audience. He was a young vampire, maybe sixteen or so—the same age as Sawyer and Brin and the rest of the group—and he started clapping as he ran down five flights of stairs. He reached the main stage, nodded to the head vamp, and stopped at the left of Sawyer.

  The deep-voiced emcee picked another number. “Sixty-one!”

  Sixty-one was an older male, but he showed as much enthusiasm as the kid. He ran down the stairs and stopped on Sawyer’s right.

  Droz picked two more numbers—six, and ninety-two. Two more vampires—also males—ran down to the stage and kneeled in front of Sawyer’s chair.

  Brin watched in dread as Sawyer fearfully looked at all the smiling, ravenous vampires surrounding him. He didn’t look scared; he looked terrified. She could tell he was starting to cry.

  “All right!” Droz shouted. “Let’s have a countdown! Ten! Nine! Eight!”

  Every vamp in the auditorium counted down from ten, each number shouted louder and louder.

  “Three! Two! One! And… feast!”

  Sawyer screamed when the four chosen vampires sunk their teeth into his badly charred skin. The first two drank the blood from the sides of his neck, while the front two enjoyed slurping up their nutrients on the sides of his ankles.

  Brin turned away. “I’m gonna throw up.”

  She took a few steps to the right. Paul tried to stop her, but he couldn’t grab her without moving. “Don’t go,” he said. “It’s almost time.”

  “I’m serious,” she said. “I’m gonna… I’m gonna…”

  She returned to her knees. What followed was a mix of coughing and vomiting. A marginal amount of puke hit the ground.

  “Are you OK?” Paul said.

  She finished coughing. She turned around and backed up against the wall. She felt light-headed. She closed her eyes and never again wanted to open them.

  Paul approached her and brought his hand to her cheek. “Brin… it’s all right…”

  “Why are they doing this?” she said, bringing her head down between her knees. “This is something out of a nightmare.”

  He turned his head around. The cheering from afar signified that the bloodsuckers had nearly licked Sawyer dry.

  “It’s time,” Paul said. He grabbed a small kit hidden in his back pocket. “Now I need you to do something very important for me.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “Keep your eyes closed.”

  She blotted her chapped lips and sighed. “I’d love nothing more.”

  Brin thought she might fall asleep. But before she could enter another nightmarish world inside her own head, the touch of a petite brush against her cheek kept her firmly awake.

  She opened her eyes. “What…”

  “Shh,” Paul said. “I said to keep them closed. Please.”

  She did as he asked. “What are you doing?”

  “Just hold on. Don’t move.”

  She hadn’t a clue what he was up to. He was apparently applying make-up to her cheeks. She didn’t know why. She didn’t think now was a time she needed to look her best.

  Paul swiped the tiny brush against her nose, her eyebrows, her neck, her ears.

  “What are you—” />
  “Shh. Almost done.”

  She kept her eyes closed. She tried to imagine a time in her near future when she wouldn’t be fearing for her life or yearning for a trace of sanity.

  He didn’t touch her face for a moment. She thought he was done. But then he touched up her face, one more time, with a powder that made her want to sneeze.

  He finished rubbing the powder on the front and back of her neck, before he said, “OK. Open your eyes.”

  She did. She looked up at Paul. He pointed down to a small mirror in his hand.

  Brin leaned forward and took in the strange reflection staring back at her. Her jaw dropped. She didn’t know what to say. Most of all, she didn’t know why the hell she looked like death.

  “Oh my… oh my God… I’m you,” she said, taking in her new frightfully pale appearance. “I’m a vampire!”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “Umm… Paul?”

  He tossed the make-up kit aside and peered through the slit in the wall to see the four vampires step outside to reveal a pale, shrunken corpse that used to be Sawyer.

  “Yeah?” he finally said.

  “Why do I look like this?”

  “You’ll find out in a second,” he said. “Trust me.”

  “Trust you? You keep saying that! You’re one of them, and you just turned me into one of them!”

  “Shh,” he said. “Wait for it.”

  The final cheering died down, and Droz returned to the stage, kicking Sawyer’s dead body off the chair so he could take a seat.

  “Good job, everyone,” he said. “I hope you enjoyed the surprise. It’s too bad, however, that so many of you in the audience didn’t get a drop of blood. It’s a little unfair, don’t you think?”

  The audience loudly agreed with him.

  “I’m glad you think so, because I have another surprise for all of you. Stay tight, and prepare to quench your thirst.” He stood up from the chair, smiled big, and boasted, “Because we have four more visitors!”

  The audience members leapt to their feet and cheered loud enough to deafen Brin’s ears. Vampire children were jumping up and down, friendly old vampire ladies were hugging and kissing each other.