by Cullen Bunn
“We can’t just let him go,” Jack rasped from the floor.
“You don’t want trouble?” Seth flashed his fangs at me. “Is that what you told the children?”
“They attacked us, Seth,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Sue asked me. “What children?”
“Did they scream when you killed them? Did they cry for their mamas and daddies?” Seth shrugged. “Not that I care, of course. They were weak, not like me.”
How could he know all that? It was like he had been riding on our shoulders the entire time.
He stepped closer.
“Stay where you are, dammit.”
“No use fighting. I laid on the couch, fighting, for so long. The minutes seemed like years, you know that? And then I started to feel them…the children…screaming as you killed them. I still kept fighting, because I didn’t want to be like them, and what did all that fighting amount to? Nothing. It would have been so much easier to just give up the ghost. I feel so much better now.”
He didn’t even sound like Seth anymore.
He flexed his fingers. His talons clicked together.
“And you know what?” he said. “I won’t end up like the children, because they’re dead, and me … I’m gonna live forever.”
When he spoke again, his words were slurred, as if drool pooled in his mouth, even though he was bone dry.
“Who’s it gonna be first?”
He looked at Sue hungrily, licked his dry lips with a fat gray tongue.
“Naw, I’m gonna leave you for last. Best for last. Best for last.”
He turned his gaze towards Cecil, who still lay under a covering of money and playing cards. “Hell, you ain’t never been worth a shit, you know that? The Master would probably whip the skin from my bones just for bringing a no account like you over.”
Seth didn’t see Big Jack stand up behind him.
I did my best to distract the vampire. “The Master?” I asked. “Who’s that?”
“I’m connected to him.” He swept his arms out, as if welcoming us. “We’ll all be connected to him.”
Behind him, Jack was a tower of shadow. He inched forward, and as he passed the window, a beam of crimson moonlight swept across the mask of rage he wore for a face.
“What happened to you, Seth?” I asked. “I mean, who did this?”
Seth cocked his head. Either he didn’t know the answer exactly or he didn’t know why I would ask. His eyes snapped wide open as he realized I was stalling him. He whirled around.
Jack wrapped the thick fingers of his hand—his good hand—around Seth’s throat. The vampire squeaked in surprise and wheezed, even though he surely didn’t need to breathe, as Jack crushed his windpipe. Seth clutched at Jack’s forearm, his curled claws burrowing into the big man’s flesh up to the first knuckle.
Jack howled and flung Seth like a rag doll towards the window.
The glass exploded as Seth sailed out of the house, crashing to the porch in a hail of glittering shards and tumbling down the steps.
We rushed to the window. I grabbed one of the broken table legs and Jack’s stake from the floor.
Cecil’s dogs jumped to their feet, barking at the vampire. Seth brushed himself off with one hand and massaged his throat with the other. He seemed to float back onto the porch.
“Get on out of here,” Cecil yelled.
“You damn fools!” Seth spat. “Don’t you know what I was offering?”
Seth climbed back up the steps and moved towards the window.
I held up the two pieces of wood, placing one across the other in the shape of a cross. Seth howled, covered his red eyes, and jumped away. He scurried off the stoop like he had a bad case of the green apple splatters.
“You had your chance, asshole!” Cecil let out a short whistle and yelled, “Sick him!”
The dogs launched themselves at Seth, snarling and snapping at his pants leg. Vampire or no, Seth fled from the nipping fury of the hounds. He kicked and stomped, and the dogs almost tugged him to the ground amidst the rust buckets and thistles. Seth skidded to a stop at the edge of the yard, bathed in the reddish light of the moon, and kicked at the mutts. Heads lowered, teeth bared, they circled him.
“I offered you eternal life!” Seth yelled.
The vampire held his arms out and threw his head back. He produced a series of short squealing sounds.
“Rhee! Rhee! Rhee!”
“What’s he doing?” Cecil asked.
Seth’s throat swelled like a bullfrog’s.
“Rhee! Rhee!”
Throat puffed up, then shriveled.
“Rhee!”
Puffed up again.
“Call the dogs back,” I told Cecil.
A shadow moved across the ground behind the vampire, flowed up to his feet, like a spreading oil slick.
“What the hell is that?” I muttered.
The dogs lunged at Seth again.
The crawling shadow took on weight and shape. The mass washed over the dogs, swarmed over their paws and legs, up to their bodies, and they yelped and howled in pain and fear.
The shadow grew, swarmed past Seth and stretched towards the house. It flooded from the trees, out from under wrecked cars in a skittering wave.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Jack said.
Spiders.
A massive, chittering carpet of tarantulas spread across the yard. They crawled and hopped up the porch steps, scurried over the warped boards.
They clung to Seth’s body as he continued to cry out like a hog caller from Hell.
“Get away from the window,” Sue cried.
Cecil whistled for his dogs.
The hounds darted back towards the house, still yowling and biting at their own bodies, only they weren’t so much dogs anymore as much as dog-shaped masses of spiders, and they collapsed before reaching the porch, the tarantulas scurrying off of the steaming mess of bloated, chewed meat.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said. “Get to the back door.”
Tarantulas leaped through the shattered window—first one, then another, then dozens at a time. They scrabbled over the sill and plopped to the floor. Dark, hairy shapes crawled up the glass on the outside of the good windows. They thumped against the front door again and again. It sounded like hail.
I felt a searing sting at my calf.
Then another.
Two or three spiders crawled up my pants leg. I slapped at the bulges beneath my clothes and felt their bodies mash against my skin.
Sue cried out. A half dozen spiders crawled across her sandaled feet and up her bare legs, leaving a trail of blistering bites in their wake.
Cecil started stomping. His boots rattled the loose floorboards. He looked like he was mashing grapes for wine or dancing a jig.
I dropped the makeshift cross and grabbed a straw broom from the corner and started sweeping, clearing a path. The straws of the broom impaled several tarantulas. One scurried down the handle and bit my fingers.
Jack swatted at the spiders with the comforter that had covered Seth. With a flick of his wrist, the blanket snapped out like a patchwork bullwhip. Each heavy thud of the sheet left a mess of spiders upon the floor.
Still more spiders invaded the house. They crawled through the window. They plopped down from the chimney, and I heard more of them scrabbling down the flue. I rushed to close the vent—crushing spiders with every step—and a half dozen leaped onto my arm, tearing at my with their tiny, stinging fangs.
The dusty floorboards bounced and vibrated, and tiny, hairy legs scrabbled out from between the slats. They were under the house, trying to push their way in up under the floor.
I’ve been a churchgoer all my life, but never thought of myself as religious. Still, I gasped a prayer as I swept sheets of tarantulas into crushed piles. I just hoped someone was listening. I looked across the room at the two pieces of the cross. Spiders swarmed all over them.
Great, writhing patches of ta
rantulas came at us, all fangs and glittering eyes and twitching legs. Every time we killed one, a half dozen raced in to take their place.
I could hardly imagine that many tarantulas in the entire county.
Cecil got a hammer from a kitchen door and duck-walked across the floor, pounding tarantulas flat with machinegun quickness, leaving a ring of hairy legs around circular splotches of spider guts.
The spiders piled around Sue, climbing her legs, getting in her hair, biting her face and arms. She cried out. Then she did something I never expected.
She started stomping.
She swore a blue streak that would have put Buzz Harley to shame as she ground her sandals down on the spiders, mashing them flat.
Cecil whacked spiders in rapid fire strokes. As he knealt down, his shirt tail pulled from his jeans, and the crack of his ass peeked out. A couple of spiders jumped for the opening, and he straightened—“Youch!—and swatted at his own backside.
I was bitten in a dozen or more places. So was everyone else, though, some worse than me.
As I stumbled across the room, I noticed Sue’s tape recorder lying upon the floor. Without thinking, I scooped it up. Not really sure why I bothered. A tarantula sunk its fangs into the back of my hand. With a flick of my wrist, the spider sailed across the room. I shoved the recorder in my pocket.
I stood in the middle of a biting, hissing, jumping storm of spiders—hundreds of them. One of them jumped at me and caught hold of my shirt collar. I felt its tiny legs at my throat. I slapped at it, but it crawled up my cheek and bit me beneath my eye.
We swept and swatted and stomped the spiders till the floor was matted with a soggy carpet that sucked at our feet when we took a step. Welts covered our bodies, and I felt as blistered as a boy who spent too much time inner-tubing down the river on a hot and sunny day. A few stray tarantulas still crawled through the house, but it looked like we had beaten the fight out of them.
Still rubbing his backside with one hand and swinging the tarantula-caked hammer with the other, Cecil ran to the window and looked out. “I don’t see him!” he said. “I can’t see Seth!”
Snarling, the vampire jumped into the window.
Seth crouched there for a second or two, perched like a bird of prey on the sill. He bared his fangs. He braced his arms on either side of the window, and his nails splintered the wood.
Cecil backpedaled, swinging the hammer wildly.
Seth leaped at him.
They fell in a tangle. The hammer clattered to the floor. Cecil beat at Seth as the vampire snapped at him. Tarantulas joined their master in the fight, crawling over Cecil and biting his ears, his nose, his hands.
Cecil reached for his weapon. His fingers crawled across the floor like one of the tarantulas. The spiders covered his hand in seconds. Cecil screamed, but he reached the hammer, and as he grabbed it, he squeezed spider guts out from between his fingers. He whipped the hammer against Seth’s head. The claw punched through his skull with a gout of green vapor. Seth jumped back, slamming against the wall with the hammer still jutting from his temple.
“Got him,” Cecil cried.
Seth punched him, right in the gut.
Cecil made a whooofing sound as the vampire’s claws punched into his stomach. Blood spattered to the floor. Seth smiled and turned to face us. His arm was still submerged in Cecil’s breadbasket, nearly to the elbow. Cecil’s legs kicked in jerking spasms.
Jack came up behind Seth and wrapped his big arm around the vampire’s neck in a choke-hold. Several tarantulas that had been nesting in Seth’s hair leaped out and bit Jack’s face, but the big man didn’t let up.
Cecil slid off of the vampire’s arm and fell in a drizzle of blood. He dragged himself away from the monster as even more spiders attacked him. He didn’t seem to notice the bites.
Jack wrestled with the vampire, nearly pulling him off his feet.
“Somebody stake this bastard!” he cried.
Seth bit Jack’s arm. Blood spurted up around his fangs as he tore through muscle.
I cracked Seth over the head with the broom handle. It snapped in two over the bloodsucker’s skull. His teeth pulled out of Jack’s arm, and the big man released Seth.
As Seth pick himself up, I planted my boot on his chest and shoved him to the floor again.
“You can’t stop us!” he hissed through swollen, cracked lips.
I shoved a broom handle through his heart.
Seth writhed and grabbed at the shaft of wood and spat and cursed. His red eyes bulged, and he slammed his head against the floor again and again. A vented geyser of green vapor sprayed out from the flesh puckering around the broom stick. The point of the stake struck the floor beneath the vampire. Finally, Seth lay still.
For a few seconds, I kept my foot upon his chest, holding Seth down in fear that he might rise again. The rush of my blood thundered in my head, and my pounding heart hammered against my chest. All other sensations were gone. I heard only my own blood flow, felt only my rapid heartbeat, and saw only Seth’s twisted face leering up at me.
Jack grabbed my shoulder, shook me. “He ain’t getting back up,” he said.
“You sure about that?”
He shrugged, but I took my foot away from the corpse and stepped back.
Every stick of furniture in the house was broken or overturned. Shattered glass and scraps of timber littered the room, along with the smashed remains of spiders on the floor, walls, and evening the ceiling.
Jack was covered in sweat and mashed spiders. Blood soaked his sleeve, dribbled off his fingers, and puddled at his feet.
Sue stood upon a wet mat of crushed tarantula carcasses. Her sandals were covered in squished spider innards. The mess pulled at her feet like quicksand as she stepped away.
Somewhere in the house, Cecil moaned.
* * *
Following a smeared trail of dark blood across the floor, we found Cecil in a back room. He had crawled into the room, and now leaned against the wall, gulping quick mouthfuls of air. He clutched bloody hands over the gaping gut wound. His shirt was stained a glistening red, and blood pooled beneath him.
He wheezed out a laugh. “Reckon that wasn’t so smart. I’m not cut out for vampire fighting. Ought to have left it to you and Jack.”
“You did just fine,” I said.
He coughed and winced.
Jack and Sue followed me into the room. A sad and angry grumble grew in Jack’s throat, while Sue stifled a gasp and sob.
A few straggler tarantulas crawled around Cecil. I pressed one beneath my boot heel and enjoyed the crunch.
“Just rest easy there.” I hunkered down next to my cousin, trying to keep a calming smile upon my face, trying not to look for too long at the yawning, bloody hole in his stomach. “You’re gonna be just fine.”
He smiled, but it slipped away quickly.
“He killed my dogs.”
“We’ll get you some new dogs, all right?”
“You don’t think I’ll come back, do you? I mean, not like Seth.”
“What are you talking about? You ain’t gonna die. You’re too damn annoying to die.”
“Ain’t worried about dying. I’m worried about coming back.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Jack. He shook his head.
“No.” I fought to keep my voice steady, but my eyes burned. “You won’t be coming back. You weren’t bit.”
Cecil looked past me. “Jack—”
“Don’t worry about me.” Big Jack’s voice hitched just a little. “I’ll be all right.”
“You big dumb asshole, getting yourself nipped like that trying to help me.”
“I’ll know better next time,” Jack said.
Cecil’s eyelids fluttered. “I’m so tired.”
“You just go ahead and sleep then,” I told him.
He closed his eyes.
I rested a hand on his shoulder. Sue wept behind me. The house creaked, settling.
Cecil opened his eyes agai
n.
I half expected to see red orbs staring back at me, but his eyes were normal.
“Did I win?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. You got him.”
“That’s not what I mean. The cards. I had a straight. Did I win?”
“That’s right. You beat me. Won near about all my money.”
Cecil smiled. “Liar.” His eyes slowly closed again. His final breaths came in rattling gasps.
“Ain’t gonna be no next time,” he muttered.
And he was gone.
Silence. No one dared speak. We all held our breath until we were sure he wasn’t coming back.
* * *
“What do we do now?” Sue asked.
“We could just wait here until morning—until the sun comes up,” I suggested.
“It’s several hours to daybreak. What happens if another of those creatures shows up?”
None of us wanted to consider the possibilities. I couldn’t shake the memory of the tiny, hairy legs of the tarantulas on my skin.
“I hate to piss on the parade,” Jack said, “but I don’t think I’ll make it until morning.”
He rubbed his shoulder just above spot where Seth had chomped away a good part of flesh.
“I’ll stay with you as long as I can,” he said. “Sooner or later, though, I’ll have to take my leave of you. I’ve been bit. I’m gonna change. I’ll let you know before that happens, and I’ll finish myself off if I have to.”