by Cullen Bunn
Blood Feud
A Vampire Yarn … With Spiders
By Cullen Bunn
I’ve got a story to tell—a story about how me and a couple of poker buddies squared off against the very legions of Hell … and maybe even saved the world. Like all good yarns, this one has its share of action, adventure, mystery, and romance. As for how it ends, though, you’ll have to judge for yourself. Me, I’ve always been partial to happy endings—the singing cowboy riding off into the sunset—but I reckon that just ain’t the way of the world.
This story’s got vampires, too, loads of them, but not in the beginning.
It began, for us at least, with spiders.
In the fall, the tarantulas run, thousands of them, crawling in massive armies through fields and across paved and dirt roads alike. You can’t hardly drive across town without caking your Goodyears in the slimy carcasses of tiny, eight-legged speed bumps. Town’s named for the spiders, and for the muddy creek rushing down from the hills.
The tarantulas brought Sue Hatchell to Spider Creek.
And Sue dragged me into this mess, although I reckon trouble would have found me soon enough even if she hadn’t interrupted my weekly poker game.
* * *
Not ten minutes before the screaming started, I was staring at four of a kind, all of them kings, and listening to my cousin Cecil babble about dead frogs.
“I’ve seen some strange things in my time, but this takes the cake and the ice cream.” Cecil absently thumbed the worn edges of his playing cards. He removed two from the right side of his hand—he always shuffled his best cards to the left—and slid them face down across the table. I flicked two replacements in his direction, and he scooped them up. “I was hanging around on Main Street, right? This was yesterday. Bought myself a Co-Cola at the Tastee Freeze and took a load off down by the beauty parlor.”
Loitering outside the Spider Creek Beauty Parlor and Nail Salon—sounded like Cecil’s style.
“So, I’m minding my own business, sipping my pop,” Cecil said, “when I see old Roy Avrum strolling along the sidewalk. He’s wearing these mud-covered rubber boots and toting a frog gig in one hand and an old paint bucket in the other. The bucket’s slam full of big, fat bullfrogs, some of the biggest I’ve ever seen.”
He cupped his hands and held them up to illustrate the size, the way a man does only when describing breasts or bullfrogs.
I glanced at Jack and raised my eyebrows. He held up three fingers and I passed him his cards.
“Anyway, I figured I’d invite Roy to play cards with us,” Cecil said, “and maybe he’d bring along some plump, juicy frog legs.”
“Frog legs would taste good right about now,” Jack agreed. “A whole mess of ‘em, breaded and pan-fried.”
My mouth watered. I grimaced at the bowl of stale pork rinds and cheese puffs on the table. “So where is he? He too good to play cards with us?”
“I was getting to that part if ya’ll would quit interrupting,” Cecil said. “So, we’re standing there talking, and all of a sudden the bucket starts shaking and trembling, and the frogs start kicking and squirming and croaking. I swear, those frogs were deader than my Aunt Mami not a minute before. Saw them with my own eyes. But they woke up somehow and started floundering on top of one another and croaking like they were back in the mud. They knocked the bucket over, spilled out, and hopped down the sidewalk, heading torwards Black Rock Swamp, I figure. A couple of them had their guts near about ripped out, and they trailed behind them like wriggling earthworms.”
“You’re making this up,” I said.
“No, sir. I near about shit myself. Shook Roy up pretty bad, too. He looked like he was fixing to puke up his lunch.”
“Ask me, I’d say you and Roy both had too much to drink.” I kicked back my own bottle of Cold Creek.
“I hadn’t had a drop. Sadie Perkins saw it, too. She came stepping out of the beauty salon, all dressed up with her hair done up real high and pretty, and one of the frogs hopped right over her high heel shoes, leaving a trail of blood and guts over the patent leather. The roots of her perm damn near turned white. She swooned and almost fainted dead away, then started wailing on Roy with her purse, screaming about how he shouldn’t bring such filthy creatures among ‘civilized gentry.’”
Jack snorted. “I’m surprised Sadie even noticed the frogs, what with her nose turned up in the air the way it always is.”
“Dead frogs.” I finished off my beer and set the bottle down. “Sounds like something outta one of those science fiction movies Jack likes so much.”
I never considered myself the superstitious sort. I didn’t jump at shadows or search for the ends of rainbows. But you don’t grow up Spider Creek, Missouri, without realizing some folk tales sprang from the truth. Every old house is haunted in some way, either by lonely ghosts or lingering memories. There’s catfish in the deepest parts of the creek that’ll swallow a man whole. And witches living in the darkest hollows are known to hex crops and hobble cows when their burlap panties rode too high and tight. Folklore, maybe, but—
“The Good Lord can be a mighty peculiar sonovabitch,” my granddaddy used to say.
So I owed Cecil the benefit of the doubt.
Just chaffed my ass to give it to him.
“Been a lot of strange goings-on lately,” Cecil said. “Carol Grimes told me she saw four blue jays sitting on her fence Friday morning.”
Old wives’ tales claimed you never saw a blue jay on Friday because that’s the day they flew to Hell to get their orders from the Devil.
“Wonder what that means?” Cecil asked.
“Means there won’t enough juicy gossip for Carol to stick her nose into,” I said, “so she pulled that nonsense out the back of her drawers.”
“Damn.” Jack shuffled uncomfortably in his chair. He held his cards up before his face and squinted at them, as if they might tell him something different than they had the last few times he examined them. “Now I got a taste for frog legs.”
“Are we gonna talk about food and ghost stories? Or are we gonna play cards?” Eyeing the pile of money on the table, I grew a bit anxious to finish the hand and collect my rewards. If my luck held, I’d be a Hell of a lot closer to getting my pickup out of the shop. I threw another five into the pot. “I’m gonna raise.”
Across from me, Jack—Big Jack, we called him—frowned and folded, slapping his cards face-down to the table.
One down.
Cecil fanned his cards out before him, his beady eyes ticking from one to the next as he decided whether to fold or see my bet.
These boys were my best friends in all the world:
Big Jack Sutherland could have easily gotten a job in Hollywood as a stunt double for one of those muscle-bound action movie stars. As a younger man, he considered a career in professional wrestling, and the NWA even offered him a contract. Would have been something to see Big Jack (I always imagined that would be his fighting name) locking horns with Ivan Koloff, the Iron Sheik, or Nature Boy Ric Flair. But in the end he turned down the offer and ripped up the contract. He said a career in professional athletics would keep him away from home too often. I figured the decision had more to do with a certain Miss Cordelia Miles … but I’ll tell you about her later.
My cousin Cecil was as small and wiry as Jack was big. Never could understand how a boy who ate so much stayed so scrawny, especially considering he never worked an honest day in all his life, and near about broke out in hives at the thought of holding down steady employment. He got by doing occasional odd jobs around town and using his sly charm to wrangle free meals from the local ladies—usually the older, well-to-do, widowed ladies, mind you. When he wasn’t making time with the aforementioned women, he wiled away the hours watching television, d
rinking, and playing cards.
Every Saturday night we got together at Cecil’s place over on Old Mill Road for a few hands of poker and a few bottles of Cold Creek beer. The cabin reeked of mildew and dust and old chewing tobacco, and the roof sagged and leaked like a sieve when it rained, but I wouldn’t have traded the place for any three of those fancy, noisy riverboat casinos like the ones in St. Louis.
“Aw, Hell, R.F., why don’t we call this a practice hand?” Cecil’s whiskered face split open in a friendly grin.
“We’ve been playing for more than two hours, Cecil, so I’d say it’s a little late for practice,” I said. “Shit or get off the pot. You don’t lay down some money or your cards … cousin or not, I’ll take you out in the yard and whoop you right in front of your dogs.”
Jack laughed.
Now, I’ve been known to be a terrible son-of-a-bitch from time to time, and I ain’t afraid to whoop an ass when its deserved. But I had no intention of hurting Cecil. He moaned and complained and piddled about every time we played cards. All part of his routine. I was used to his antics by now and was only funning with him.
Tossing his money to the center of the table, Cecil said, “I’ll call,” shakily.
Outside, the dogs started barking.
A heartbeat later, someone banged on the front door. Hard. Sounded like it might come off its hinges.
Startled, Cecil hopped to his feet, knocking his chair over with a clatter. I jumped, too, and bashed the underside of the card table with my knees. Jack looked hopefully towards the door.
“You think that might be Roy with some more of them frogs?”
Cecil’s a-frame sat just off a seldom-traveled dirt road meandering through hill, forest, and pasture country. Besides me and Jack, he didn’t get many visitors, especially not roundabout nightfall.
“Help!” The scream—a woman’s scream—came from outside. “Is anyone in there? I need help out here!”
Poker night pretty much went to shit from there.
* * *
“Guess we’ll call this hand, right?” Cecil asked.
“Leave those cards and the money where they are,” I said, “and answer the door. Or haven’t you noticed there’s a woman screaming on your front porch?”
The woman continued yelling and pounding at the door. “Can you hear me?” she cried. “ Is anyone home?”
Cecil went to the door—with Jack and me half step behind—and threw it open.
Cecil’s two mangy dogs stood at the foot of the porch steps, their red fur standing on end as they growled at the pretty young woman at the door. She leaned with one hand on the doorframe and the other on her hip. Her tan skin glistened under a light sheen of sweat, and her olive-colored tank top was soaked beneath her arms. She stepped back and wiped her palms nervously against her shorts. As she caught her breath, her ample chest heaved, just barely contained within the top. I found myself staring right into the sweaty cleavage peeking out from the dipping collar. I shook myself from my trance and hauled my eyes up to meet her own. Heat washed across my neck, ears, and cheeks.
Her name was Sue Hatchell, and she studied spiders.
I recognized her, of course. In a town the size of Spider Creek, a young college girl from the city—especially one who came to study the local tarantula population—was the subject of quite a bit of discussion. From the moment she stepped off the Greyhound bus, the hens started clucking and the roosters, myself included, started strutting.
She had a head of fine, honey blonde hair (pulled back beneath a checkered red hippie bandana) and bright blue eyes, clear as a summer’s afternoon down by the river. She was broad-shouldered, maybe a little big-boned, and she probably wouldn’t ever grace the pages of a girlie magazine, but I liked her just fine, despite the fact that she had her nose pierced and sported tattoos of Oriental lettering on both her shoulder and ankle.
I had seen her around, sure, walking along the road, following herds of tarantulas, all the while scribbling notes on a pad of paper or recording memos into a miniature tape recorder she carried in the back pocket of her khaki safari shorts. Once I saw her step right out in front of Buzz Harley’s beat-up pickup, stopping him cold so he wouldn’t run over a slow-moving colony of spiders trundling across the road. That mean old coot pitched a red-faced, screaming fit, threatening to roll right over Sue and calling her every name in the book and a few brand new ones to boot. Sue wouldn’t hear any of his ranting, though, and didn’t budge until the very last poky spider skittered into the weeds. Word around town was she came from up Springfield way to research the tarantula population as part of her college studies. A lot of ladies would be terrified to work so close to even one of those big, hairy spiders, let alone a good two- or three-hundred, some as large as a man’s fist. Spider Creek tarantulas were known for their ill tempers, and if one gets riled it can jump a good three feet and bite several times before satisfying its anger, but Sue would stand right out in the middle of them as they scrabbled around her sandaled feet. They seemed to have an understanding, her and the spiders. “We’ve all got places to be and jobs to do,” the tarantulas might have said. “Don’t get in our way, and we won’t get in yours.”
Got to admire her spunk.
I like to think that if Sue and I met under different circumstances—
But there’s no reason to dwell on such things, is there?
Especially not now.
As my granddaddy always said, “if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a wonderful Christmas.”
Cecil said nothing for several long seconds, staring at Sue’s bosom like a starving man drooling over twin cuts of prime rib on the grill.
I pushed past and shrugged him back. “What’s wrong, miss?”
“There’s a man out here who needs help,” Sue said between gasps. She pointed down the road. “He’s hurt. Bad.”
As she hurried down the steps, the dogs skedaddled out of her way, but threw a couple of quick barks in her direction to save face. She looked back, waiting for us to follow.
Quick as a whip, the three of us went after her.
Cecil’s yard was a tangled, cluttered mess of old junkers, rusted swing sets, balding tires, and overgrown landscaping. The bulks of cars and trucks rose like craggy islands from a sea of weeds. (Cecil swore he didn’t know where some of the cars came from.) Sue cut across the yard, paying no mind to the scratching weeds, even though she wore sandals and no socks.
The dogs woofed at us, whined a little, then followed.
Along the root-knotted hills on either side of the pebbled and rain-washed road, spindly shadows spilled from overhanging trees. Thick patches of dried weeds crawled along the slopes, and when a breeze blew through, the weeds rasped as if whispering secrets. Katydids screeched from the brush, their last hurrah before vanishing in the cold months ahead.
“He’s right over here,” Sue said.
“Who is he?” I hustled to walk by her side. “Your boyfriend?”
I winced, realizing how clumsy that must have sounded.
“Don’t know him. He just stumbled out of the woods.”
The road crested a hill, and Sue raced ahead of us.
“You said he needs help,” Cecil called after her. “What’s wrong with him?”
“I don’t know. He’s … messed up.”
“What does that mean?” Cecil’s voice peaked in his excitement.
“Messed up.” She didn’t glance back, but frustration edged Sue’s words. “Like he was attacked or something.”
I looked at Cecil and Jack. Both of them stutter-stepped and paused—just for a second—while they considered what she had said.
Attacked?
The dogs cocked their heads and sniffed at the air as if catching a whiff of something out of kilter. One of them whined. The other growled. Those two hounds were no count in most respects, and they were uglier and smellier than week-old lard buckets full of armpits, but they had good noses on them. They smelled trouble.
On the other side of the hill, the road curved sharply, vanishing behind an outcropping of trees. Just before the bend, a figure lay in the middle of the track. Damp leaves trailed the man out of the surrounding brush and across the road to where he sprawled. Dark stains—mud and blood—covered his rumpled, tattered coveralls and threadbare T-shirt. He lay on his stomach, his arms stretched out in front of him. I saw no movement, and he might have been dead for all I knew.
“He came out of nowhere.” Sue said. “Scared me half to death.”
Sue and I hunkered down next to the man and gently rolled him onto his back.
Blood, dark and dry, spread in flaking patches across his face and neck. His wide, wet eyes stared up at us, and he choked out a cry. He was alive after all. His legs kicked in the dirt as he tried to back away, but he collapsed again, blubbering and clawing at the earth with dirty fingernails. His eyelids fluttered and closed.
“It’s all right,” Sue said in a soothing voice. “I found help, like I promised.”
Cecil and Jack sidled up behind me. The dogs remained a few feet back, dashing back and forth and snarling.
“Lord Almighty!” Cecil leaned over the injured man. “That’s Seth Stubbs.”
I had hardly recognized him for all the dirt and gore, but looking more closely, I noticed the tell-tale pimples and pockmarked flesh of the Stubbs family. Folks in these parts always said the Stubbs could make a lot of money with their looks, but not for being pretty. Every last one of them was as pimpled as a freshly plucked chicken.
“You know him?” Sue asked.