Vampires on the Run: A Quinnie Boyd Mystery (Quinnie Boyd Mysteries)

by C. M. Surrisi

  I’m fumbling to get the clothes on under the covers when I feel a pressure in my ears. Like the ocean rhythm that rocks me to sleep every night has been replaced with static. Not loud. Just a low crackle.

  But I can’t stop reading because I have to finish this book tonight so I can read Transylvanian Drip tomorrow and be ready by Monday to discuss, compare, and contrast.

  When my tablet says it’s midnight, Count Dracula has started to give old Jonathan orders about where he can go in the castle, which of course Jonathan ignores. Why do victims always do that? He tries and tries to get out, but the Count has locked him in. He’s doomed. My heart is kind of breaking for him. Jonathan’s going to have his blood sucked for sure.

  The salty air coming through the bedroom window has plastered my bangs to my forehead. I keep scooping them out and fluffing them up.

  The next part of Dracula is prickles-on-the-back-of-your-neck creepy. Jonathan goes through some dark passageways and then—I can’t believe this—into the vault with the Count. I can’t scooch any farther under my covers. I think I hear a wolf howling. No. That’s crazy. Wait. Are there are wolves in Maine? There are bears in Maine . . .

  This is too, too, too scary. I set the tablet aside and pull the quilt over my head. I’ll read again when it’s light.

  But I can’t bring myself to close my eyes. I lie in bed for I don’t know how long, thinking about bloody fangs and horrifying castle hallways.

  That’s it. I decide I’m better off awake, so I pick up the tablet and read on. Jonathan grabs a shovel and, lifting it high, smashes it into the Count’s hateful face. The Count’s head turns and gives Jonathan a “grin of malice which would have held its own in nethermost hell.” Nethermost hell. Hmm. I assume that means the deepest, helliest part.

  This, this, this is why I don’t like vampire stories! And I’m only on page fifty-five!

  I throw off my covers and jump out of bed, running around my room. I flail my arms to scare away the demons, pick up my phone, and start to text.

  Me: I am freaking out here!

  I don’t expect him to answer. I’m pretty sure he’s sleeping and totally clueless that right next door, I’m being pursued by vampires in my head. Then, yay!

  Dominic: What page are you at?

  Me: 50 freaking 5! Only 55!

  Dominic: Oh man. Just wait.

  Me: Great. More gore.

  Dominic: Walk on the beach?

  Me: Now? It’s 3:30!

  Dominic: Still just the beach. I’ll protect you from the mutant crabs if you protect me from the ninja seaweed monsters.

  I laugh. Once I was on the beach a little past midnight at a Fourth of July bonfire. And I’ve been on the beach at five in the morning with Dad to dig clams, but in the middle of the night? The very middle-middle of the night? Nope. Not me. Until now.

  Me: I’ll meet you at the top of the beach steps.

  Dominic: In a flash.

  * * *

  I’m crouched down in the marsh grass at the top of the steps, squinting in the direction of his house, and Dominic startles me by standing up from a hunched position a few feet away.

  “Sheesh, scare me much!” I whisper.

  “Quiet,” he whispers back.

  We know that if any of our parents catch us, we’ll be jerked back inside by our hoodie strings. The temperature has dropped into the teeth-chattering range. I’ve got jeans and a sweatshirt, Top-Siders, and socks. Dominic is dressed warm too. But still, under his hood is the hat. Maybe he sleeps in it. Naw. He wouldn’t do that. Please, no. That would be the too-weird thing.

  The wooden stairs creak. They must creak all the time, but at three thirty a.m., you really hear it.

  We pick up our pace and walk down the shoreline, heading in the direction of Ella’s place, watching the surf bash the sand.

  “I’ve smelled the beach often enough, with my parents always foraging, but this place has a stronger odor,” Dominic says.

  “I think it’s the outcroppings. The big piles of rocks that form points beyond the tide line.”

  “I don’t think rocks smell.”

  “Not the rocks,” I say. “It’s all the stuff that lives—and dies—between them, like seaweed and crabs and fish and gull droppings. Mix that with salt water, and it’s pretty stinky. The pool is even worse because it almost drains twice a day.”

  “Right, Maiden Rock Tidal Pool. I’ve been hearing about it for days. My parents can’t wait to get their waders on and start taking specimens there.”

  We’re kicking sand as we make our way, and I’m trying to be a good example of how you keep it out of your shoes.

  As we pass beach house after beach house, I get into the rhythm of calling out the names of the houses or the people who own them: Two Gulls, Crow’s Nest, the Muellers, the Spencers—and then something moves in the clump of beach grass to our right.

  I jump. “What was that?”

  Dominic jumps too. “I don’t know. Ready to go back?”

  I look at the dune. The grass is still. Whatever was in there must have run the other way. “Just a few more houses and we’re at the end. Then we can turn around.”

  We’re about to turn around at Ella’s house. My eyes have adjusted to the contrast between the dark ocean and the moonlight. Ahead of us lies the large outcropping that separates Maiden Rock from Pidgin Beach.

  “Hey, look!” Dominic says.

  “What? Where?”

  “Up on the rocks. There’s a dog up there.”

  “No way. Those rocks are slippery.”

  “No, look now!”

  I stretch my neck to see where he’s pointing, and Dominic’s right. Something’s moving up over the rocks. It’s about the size of a German shepherd.

  “That is so strange. Nobody in Maiden Rock has a dog like that.”

  Then I remember how I thought I heard a wolf howl when I was scaring myself silly reading Dracula. And then I remember how in Dracula, the Count turned into a wolf when Jonathan was in the coach on the way to the castle . . .

  “This is way too creepy for me. That could be a wolf. And that wolf . . . could be . . . a vampire!” I pretend to raise my claws and bare my fangs. “Anyway, there are probably wolves in Becker’s Woods.”

  “Let’s go before it catches our scent and comes back to suck our blood,” Dominic says.

  Which starts us covering laughs and running and dodging between the water and the shore.

  But when I get back in my room, I can’t stop thinking about how the animal on the beach might be a wolf.

  I pick up my tablet again. The story’s where I left it, at page fifty-five. I scroll, search, and find the word wolf over and over. In fact, the Count turns into a wolf another time, when he travels by sea to England. When the ship docks, the crew’s gone, the captain’s dead, and a “large dog” is seen leaping from the deck—that wolf again.

  And when I put down my tablet one last time, I can’t breathe through the thought that a wolf could be as close as the edge of town.

  8

  I wake up at seven and really feel my lack of sleep: eyes sore from reading by tablet light most of the night, shoulders tense from what we saw on the beach.

  A dog. Just a dog.

  Or it could have been a wolf.

  And that could mean a vampire might have been in the neighborhood.

  Shut up.

  But vampires were so vivid in Dracula, like it was an actual, for-real journal.

  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

  This is why a person should not read scary stuff in the middle of the night.

  I shake my head, get up, and get dressed, and prepare to run downstairs and tell Mom about a possible wolf sighting on the rocks between our beach and Pidgin Beach. Until I realize the first question she’ll ask is, Where and when?

  Still, I want to know what we saw. So I consider another approach.

  She’s sitting at the kitchen table, her favorite apple butter–and–cheese toast on a plate in front
of her.

  “I’m trying to figure out how to use this body cam the state gave me yesterday,” Mom says. She’s spread a small box and instruction pages out on the table. Something the size of a deck of cards is nested inside the box, waiting to turn on and record a crime.

  “Cool. You’re going to be like the police on TV. Do you have to wear it all the time?” I reach for it.

  “Don’t touch it. I have to read all that paperwork and get it set up.”

  I imagine her making a traffic stop on Mile Stretch Road. Oh, man. She always stops the sisters because they are always speeding. She’ll get a recording of Sister Rosie trying to talk her way out of a ticket. Sister Rosie won’t want the monsignor to see that!

  “Do you have to tell people they’re on camera?” I ask.

  “Nope, and I can turn it on whenever I need to . . . while I’m on duty, that is.”

  “You’re on duty all the time.”

  “I’m on duty whenever I need to be.”

  “So, even me? I’m going to be on camera?”

  “What are you worried about?” She smiles. “You never do anything you wouldn’t want me to see, right?” She takes a bite of her toast and studies my reaction.

  “Stop it,” I tell her. “Mom, are there wolves in Maine?”

  “What?”

  “I think I heard one howling last night.”

  “Around here? I don’t think so. But why don’t you ask John Denby. He’ll know.” She flips the instructions over like she can’t find an answer. “I know there are coyotes.”

  “Here? There are coyotes here in Maiden Rock?”

  “Just about a month ago, I saw one on the side of the road. It had been hit by a car.”

  “Aw.”

  “Yep. Skinny thing. Looked like it had late-winter starvation.” Mom takes a drink of coffee. “I called it in to Animal Control. Now what are you up to today?”

  It occurs to me that I have a ton of things to do. “I have to finish reading Dracula and re-read Transylvanian Drip and show Dominic more of Maiden Rock. And maybe I’ll ask John Denby about wolves, or if there could be another coyote around.”

  “Mmm-hmm, good.” She’s deep in thought as she places the body cam on her shirt. I’d say she didn’t hear a word of what I just said, but I know better. She probably got every bit of it.

  Still, I can’t resist testing Mom. “And then I’m going to drive Ceil and Edgar’s Flying Spur to Old Orchard Beach and ride the Galaxi until I throw up.”

  “Oh, yeah?” she says without looking up. “Be home by five, okay?” She adjusts the body cam again. “What’s a Flying Spur?”

  “It’s the fancy car that Ceil and Edgar drive—that Count Le Plasma drives too.”

  “Is that a real car name?” She looks up like she’s mentally checking her motor vehicle database.

  “Uh-huh. Dominic says it costs three hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Hmm. I don’t know about that.” She angles her shoulder toward me. “Say cheese.”

  I scream, duck, and run. “Going to the café for breakfast.”

  “Love you!”

  “Love you too.”

  It’s eight thirty on Saturday morning, and normally I would be going to Gusty’s with Ella and Ben would be joining us before he goes off to baseball practice. But when I walk out of the house, there’s no Ella coming down the road toward me. I look over at Dominic’s house, and his parents are packing up their SUV with specimen boxes.

  “Headed to the tidal pool?” I call to them, trying to hide a smile. “You don’t have to drive there. It’s just across the street. Up there.” I point in the direction of Gusty’s.

  “Oh, we know, honey. We just have so much gear, and we want to approach it from different access points as the tide is going out and coming in.” Dominic’s mom closes the back door of the car with a wham.

  “Great!” I say. I’d warn her about all the strange and ugly sea life that gets stranded in the muck as the tide goes out, but then I realize that’s exactly why she’s so excited to go.

  “Dominic says you’re showing him the rest of town today,” she says.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You kids have fun,” says Mr. Moldarto.

  They climb in the car and pull out, heading up toward the Maiden Rock Yacht Club, and Dominic comes out of the house.

  “What’s on the tour today?” he says.

  But before I can answer, Mom comes out of our house, walks to her cruiser, and says, “Quinnie, would you please pick up the order for Ceil and Edgar and run it down there?—Good Morning, Dominic.”

  She doesn’t wait for a response from either of us. She gets in her cruiser, backs out, and jackrabbits a little bit as she heads out of town, ready to capture crime on video.

  “Wanna help me make a delivery?” I ask Dominic.

  “Sure. But I have to eat something. My mom says she set up an account for me at the café, so I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want. I suppose that’s kind of like you.”

  “I guess.” I don’t usually think about it. I eat when I’m hungry. I never pay for food at Gusty’s. It’s like my personal free restaurant. “Okay, let’s go eat something and take the delivery to Ella’s house, and then we can talk about something.”

  “What?” Dominic asks.

  “First things first.”

  Edgar and Ceil’s takeout package is ready when we get to the café, and Dad is eager for us to get it down there.

  I whine a little bit. “Can we eat first?”

  “Got you covered,” Dad says. He puts a small brown bag on the counter for each of us. “Fried-egg-and-crab-cake breakfast sandwiches with blueberry muffins.” He leans under the counter, comes up with a handful of paper napkins, and stuffs a few in each bag.

  Then he swings a big coffee thermos up onto the counter. It’s the size of a gallon of milk and has a handle at the top and a spigot on the side.

  “That’s new,” I say.

  “Yep. Jack Philpotts dropped it off. He brought two. We’ll have them in rotation. Tell them it’s as mind-crushing as I can get it.”

  Dad looks pleased with the whole situation, which is good to see. Not only is he happy about all the orders, he’s getting into the challenge of a stronger cup of coffee. “Now, go, please. While it’s nice and hot.”

  Dominic reaches for the thermos and his breakfast bag. I grab the takeout order and my own bag. As we walk across the parking lot, I look up for Buster and the seagull gang because I have some biscuit crumbs for them, but they’re not around. I figure they got into some fish heads by the lobster pound.

  Dominic holds his breakfast bag up to his nose. “Oh, man, this smells so good. Can’t we just stop and eat it?”

  “You heard our orders. Deliver the food while it’s hot.”

  “I’d like to deliver this blueberry muffin into my stomach right now.”

  “Dad usually cracks the top and smears some butter in it.”

  “Ooh! You’re killing me.”

  A few cars go up and down Mile Stretch Road as we head to Ella’s. From behind me, I hear the familiar grrr of Ms. Stillford’s old Volvo. She stops next to us and powers down the window. “Lovely Saturday morning!”

  I can’t help myself. I have to report my progress. “Ms. Stillford, I read Dracula.”

  “Excellent, Quinnie. Quite different from Transylvanian Drip, isn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh.” Oh great, I didn’t mean to start a full-on school conversation. If I had wanted to, I’d have said, Urgh, Ms. Stillford, why are you making us read things that are keeping me up at night imagining there are vampires in Maiden Rock!?

  “Well, I’m off to Three Kittens Yarn Shop in Rook River,” Ms. Stillford says. “They have some new angora.” She raises her eyebrows like new angora is something special. “See you two. Have a lovely day!”

  We keep walking.

  “I just want you to know,” Dominic says, “my stomach hates you.”

  I laugh. “Fine, stuff you
r face with that blueberry muffin if you can’t wait.”

  I’m kidding, but he’s not. He pulls the muffin out and peels back the waxy brown paper. Drips of butter roll down his hand. Either he doesn’t notice or he doesn’t care. In one bite, a third of a big muffin disappears.

  “Zats gud,” he manages to say with his mouth stuffed. After a swallow, he smiles. “My stomach likes you again.”

  A few houses away from Ella’s, something catches my eye. Buster and his buddies have gathered on Ella’s roof. Several of the seagulls are perched on the ridge of the roof. Others are lazily circling above it. “Hey, Buster!” I call out to him. “Given up on Gusty’s?” I look at Dominic. “Gulls are fickle things.”

  “That’s scavengers for you,” he says. “They go where the food is.”

  “I guess they figured out we were bringing it here.”

  Before we can knock on the door to Ella’s house, Ella throws it open.

  “Hi!” She grabs the delivery bag from me. “I’ll be right back.” She turns and runs it into the kitchen, then returns for the coffee. “Right back.” Once she’s delivered the coffee, she comes out and shuts the door behind her. She looks unusually cheery. “What are we going to do this morning? Ben gets back from practice at two. He’s going to meet me at Gusty’s.”

  I guess we’re not going to see her aunt and uncle today. “How are Edgar and Ceil?” I ask.

  “They are great.” Ella is bubbly. “They got a great night’s sleep. They woke up looking better than I’ve seen them look in a long time.”

  “Oh, good.” I still wish Dominic could meet them, but since Ella’s steering us away from the house, I guess that won’t happen.

  I look back at the seagull convention. “Did you see all the gulls on your roof?”

  “Did I see them? Those noisy squawkers woke me up this morning with all their screeching and cawing.” She shivers and shakes her hands. She’s changed her nails from Darling Daffy Gold to the dark red color that Ceil was wearing. “How do you get rid of them?”

  “I recommend not bringing large quantities of lobster fries into the house,” Dominic says. This draws a look from Ella, which he immediately picks up on. “No, I mean, they like the fries. Hot fat, that’s all.”