“Goodness Herb! Are you ok?” asked Mrs. Devereaux. “Um, Herby dear,” she continued a moment later, as confusion warred with concern on her elderly face, “I do think… well, I do think you’re getting a tab bit of sunburn. You really should be more careful with a complexion like yours. Um, maybe you should be getting some aloe on that.”
Herb’s face felt like a colony of malcontent wasps were wriggling under his skin, and his brain felt like microwaved Cheez Whiz. He stared at Mrs. D., trying to make sense of what she was saying. Other blue-hairs began to mill closer to Table 4, nodding and clucking their agreement about the benefits of aloe and sunburns, one even going to far as to espouse the anti-inflammatory qualities of hemorrhoid cream. All fell silent though as they got a better look at Herb’s face. Skin red, raw and starting to blister, eyebrows singed black, eyes wide with pain, Herb stammered out between burnt and peeling lips, “Yeah, us redheads gotta watch out for the sun,” he gasped in rapidly escalating pain. “M-M-Mrs. Devereaux. Could you… aaaaahhhhh... Could you maybe take over my table today? I think...” Herb grimaced in pain, drew a ragged breath and yelled as he ran from the hall, “I think I need to go get some aloe!”
Herb ran beneath the burning sun, blood running freely from his ears, nose and eyes. Reaching his Pinto, he fumbled with his keys, yanked open the rear hatch, pulled out a worn blanket and wrapped it around himself. Half-rolling across the side of the car, he flopped into the driver’s seat, arm grasping at the glove compartment as the skin on the back of his hand smoked and blistered. Finally releasing the catch he pulled out a large pair of sun goggles, the kind old farts wear over their regular glasses. Shoving them onto his face felt like he was ramming toasting forks fresh from the campfire along his temples, but his eyes stopped boiling like poached eggs. Slamming the door, he reached for the steering wheel, only to realize that his still-exposed hands were literally sizzling like bacon on a flat-top grill. Cursing through blistered lips, Herb kicked open the door again, swearing all the way back around the car as he dug into the trunk again. Finding what he was looking for, he wrapped a long woven scarf around and around until his entire face was swaddled and hidden from the sun and pulled leather choppers onto his hands.
Herb leaned against his car, panting and hunched over as the pain slowly subsided. Despite being bundled to the hilt, his skin cooled from turkey fryer to Easy Bake Oven. A small crowd had gathered just outside the church door to watch his antics. Slowly, he waved, gave a double-thumbs up with his Chopper-clad hands, and climbed back into the Pinto’s driver’s seat. He gently shut the door, waved again, started up the Pinto and slowly reversed out of his parking spot. Still waving, he drove through the parking lot, down the row of cars to the lot exit, and turned onto the road. Once clear of the church parking lot, he stomped on the accelerator. The Pinto’s balding tired spun madly on the pavement and rocketed the car forward. Herb watched the church and small crowd of spectators recede in the rearview mirror. Flexing still-sore hands in the now-sticky fleece lining of his choppers, Herb fought back confused tears as he drove toward the sanctuary of his little home in the woods.
Chapter 9
Every window of his ramshackle home was covered. Newspapers, blankets and quilts, cushions from the couch, a place mat from the kitchen table, a flattened-out empty cereal box, all held precariously in place by no less than three rolls of duct tape. Here and there, little slivers of sun managed to slip through cracks in the haphazard defenses that Herb had erected, illuminating dust particles in thin shafts of diffused light. Herb wove around the bright slivers as he paced across the living room, thermometer sticking out of the corner of his mouth. When he reached the entranced to the kitchen, he pulled the thermometer out and looked at the thin silver line. Seventy-three degrees. He turned and wove back through the living room again and continued down the hallway. At the entrance to the bedroom, he stood for a moment and stared unseeing at the Packers flag taped upside down across his bedroom window. Eyes unfocused, chewing his lower lip, thermometer still jutting out from his mouth, Herb turned and retraced his steps back down the hall and through the living room. Once again, at the entrance to the kitchen, he checked his temperature. Seventy-three degrees. Herb had been pacing like that for close to an hour, checking his temperature again and again. The drive home from the church bake sale had been a mad, confused dash. Convinced he had typhoid fever or malaria or Lyme disease or some other malady, he’d grabbed the thermometer to see how severe his fever was. All he’d determined since was that his thermometer must be broken, and that he now felt just fine.
Herb stopped suddenly, listing to one side to avoid a tiny beam of sunlight. He reached a hand back to scratch at the scabrous wound on the back of his neck. His other hand he slowly, timidly moved forward until the little ray of sunlight fell across the backs of his fingers. The burning was immediate, the hair on the backs of his knuckles started to smoke and the faint scent of burnt hair filled his nose.
Turning, Herb sprinted back down the hall and into the bathroom. Flipping on the light, he grabbed the edges of the sink and leaned in close to the mirror on the wall. For a moment, all he saw was an out of focus blur where his face was supposed to be. Squinting, a strange reflection suddenly leapt out in stark and exact detail. Unruly, rust-red hair fell across his brow. Bruise-dark circles wallowed under bloodshot eyes, once-soft and rounded cheekbones and chin now jutted out at harsh angles beneath pale skin pulled taut. Scabs still hung where the blistering had been the worst, but for the most part the burns had healed just as inexplicably as they had appeared. The face in the mirror’s mouth hung open, oozing disbelief and bewilderment. The lips were dark red and freckles bright orange against the pale surrounding skin. The teeth were pearlescent white, and extending further than they really should, two sharp incisors framed a slightly protruding tongue.
The thermometer balanced precariously for a moment and then fell with a small clank into the sink. Herb didn’t notice, and simply stared at himself, transfixed by the stranger’s face gazing back at him. Suddenly, the reflection flickered and Herb gasped in shock. In and out of focus, solid and overwhelmingly detailed for a moment, fuzzy and translucent the next, Herb’s reflection sputtered like the silent cries of a dying firefly for the next few moments. Finally, the reflection diminished until only the faintest image gazed back from the mirror, a ghostly face that floated above his shirt collar and overlaid the patterned wallpaper of the bathroom wall across from the sink. Herb raised a hand and watched its specter appear in the mirror, as translucent as his face. A slight whimper escaped his lips as he backed away from the mirror and pressed up against the opposite wall. Herb slid down the wall, rolled over on his side, pressed his face into the peeling linoleum of the bathroom floor, wrapped his arms around his chest and drew his knees up tight below his gut. His mouth worked like a guppy out of water, and somewhere, far off in the distance, he could hear a voice whimpering, “No, no, please no.”
Chapter 10
Herb’s head snapped up. Lost in a deep dreamless sleep a moment before, he was suddenly awake. Wiping the drool from his chin and sitting up against the bathroom wall, he took a deep breath through his nose and exhaled slowly through his mouth. Turning toward the bathroom window, now covered with the shower curtain and duct tape, Herb realized that he could smell that the sun had gone down. No dusty slivers of light crept in through the cracks, but that wasn’t how he’d known. He could actually smell the night, and it was that smell that had awakened him so abruptly. Like the ozone smell after a spring rain, or the smell of newly turned earth beside a grave, night had a scent. While his depression and confusion from earlier hadn’t entirely gone away, it had been mostly replaced with a sense of calm and the faintest twinge of hunger. Pushing his fingers through the lank strands of his hair, he thought long and hard about what to do next.
Just to be safe, Herb waited until the sun had been down for about an hour. Recent memories of being deep-fried still fresh in his mind, he peeled back a
piece of newspaper covering the kitchen window to make absolutely sure the sun was good and gone. Before he could lose his nerve, he picked up his car keys, slipped out the door and walked purposefully to the Pinto. Once inside the car, he flipped down the visor and gazed hard at the ghostly reflection in the little vanity mirror. With a sigh and a shake of his head, Herb flipped the visor back up, revved the engine, whipped the little Pinto around and headed for the highway.
About ten minutes later, he pulled into Petro Patterson’s. Patt’s, as it was called by the locals, offered more than just a wide variety of beef jerky and three grades of gas plus diesel. Patt’s had movies. Not many, and most weren’t very good, but there were a few that Herb remembered seeing on the shelves.
“Knowing is half the battle,” he muttered, hoping to fool himself with false bravado. Fixing his Brewer’s cap firmly on his head, and pulling up the hood of his sweatshirt, Herb walked inside and immediately turned his back to the closed-circuit camera covering the front counter and door. With a quick wave at Patterson’s daughter, Pam who was sitting behind the counter, he headed toward the back where two shelves overflowed with VHS tapes.
Herb scanned the tapes for a moment, and quickly found what he hoped he wasn’t looking for. The black and white photo of Bela Lugosi stared directly at him as he reached out to take Dracula off the shelf. Nodding in approval, he selected Lost Boys next. A quick, guilty look-around later, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer found its way between the other tapes. Always good to have another perspective, right? Herb asked himself. This was research, after all. Just research.
“Wow. Theme night, huh?” Pam took stock of his selections, nodding appreciatively as Herb laid them on the counter.
Suddenly self-conscious, Herb looked at the tapes spread across the counter and shrugged.
“I get that. My friend Dustin watched all three of the Godfather movies in a row. Director’s cuts, too. Says he only got up to pee and order pizza. That’s like, wow.”
As Pam rang up the total, the side of her neck filled Herb’s vision and wiped away every thought. Herb watched perplexed as her neck moved closer, realized in a fuzzy way that it was in fact he who had leaned forward, palms flat on the counter, mouth opening wider. As the inches between his mouth and her exposed neck dwindled, the ringing of the register faded, replaced with whispers and sound of a heart beating faster and faster.
“Herb? Hello!? Earth to Herb, come in Herby!” Pam had finished tallying the costs of his rentals and was holding a plastic bag out toward Herb. “You in there?”
Herb rocked back on his heels like he had been slapped, but couldn’t pull his eyes away from the smooth skin of Pam’s jugular. “Um. Ok den. Yes. I’m here. And those are mine. Right.”
Pam’s growing discomfort was a wet blanket on his smoldering hunger. She self-consciously pulled at the collar of her shirt with one hand as she handed the bag to Herb with the other. There had to be at least a gallon of water in each of Herb’s armpits, and his shirt neck suddenly felt like a noose. Tearing his gaze away from Pam’s neck, he pulled a twenty out of his wallet, slapped it on the counter, and proceeded to fidget. As Pam counted out his change, Herb tore his gaze away from her neck, forced himself to look elsewhere, anywhere, just not at her neck. A moment later, he realized he was staring directly at the closed-circuit camera screen. Pam noticed the direction of his gaze and automatically turned to the monitor by the door. Her mouth dropping open in shock, Herb shoved his change in his pocket and dashed for the door. Petro Patterson’s had long vanished from his rearview before his hands stopped shaking and his panicked gasps subsided to something resembling regular breaths.
Chapter 11
Full night had taken over the Wisconsin countryside. A pale sliver of a moon hung among a million twinkling stars. Light clouds drifted by, casting silver shadows on the small house nestled in the trees below. Inside the house, Herb sat on his sofa, hunched forward, absorbed in the flickering television perched in the room’s corner.
What just days before would’ve had been mere entertainment were now vital survival guides. Unfortunately, the films produced as many questions as answers. According to Hollywood, he could have a really ugly face when he “vamped out,” or not. He might instinctively learn kung-fu, be able to control people with his eyes, turn into a bat, or maybe just be able to fly as-is. Did he need a coffin, or could he just sleep underground? Despite the variations, however, some definite absolutes were consistent film to film.
Avoid daylight? I think we can give that one a check. No reflection? Herb strode resolutely to the bathroom, flicked on the light and stood looking at... well, not much. He could make out a faint reflection in the glass, but the reflection was so weak and translucent that he could barely make out his features. He squinted, trying to will himself to show up better in the mirror. Surprisingly, it started to work. Slowly, his reflection swam into existence like a body floating up from the depths of a murky pond until he could only faintly see the patterned wall paper through his head. Huh, he thought. I guess sort-of a half check.
OK. Last one. Blood. His stomach growled, low and insistent. Unbidden, Pam’s neck sprung into his mind’s eye in stark relief. As he stared at his translucent reflection, his eyes glistened. Blood, he thought. Bloooooood. The whispers started to build in intensity, followed by a head rush and shivers coursing from the top of his skull all the way down to the soles of his feet. He felt more than heard a soft snick.
Herb opened his mouth to display two long, gleaming, wickedly sharp-looking fangs. He reached a finger up and poked first one fang, then the other. Rotating his head side to side, he took in the whole image. Stubble covering a weak chin, unruly hair, pimple next to his nose, shiny eyes and wicked fangs.
Turning from the mirror, he walked back to his living room, lost in thought. He was still Herb, an overweight, under-groomed cook at a truck stop. But for the first time in his life, that wasn’t all. He, Herbert Knudsen, was something more. Something special. He was a vampire.
It had been a long time since something akin to resolve showed on Herb’s face. It was an uncomfortable sensation, and seemed to pull his cheeks and forehead into awkward shapes. Gritting his teeth, he tried a couple of kicks, chops and punches. Was it his imagination, or did he actually feel something? When his arm sliced through the air, was he moving faster? He side-kicked his leg three times in sequence, each time kicking his foot higher and higher. After the third kick, he jumped up and turned to bring his other foot around in a wide roundhouse kick. A soft whoosh followed his swiftly-moving foot. Following the momentum of the roundhouse kick, Herb pivoted gracefully into a crouch. Still turning, he rotated his body, thrust up with his legs, and swung his arm toward the wall. Palm up, hand held in a rigged claw, his fingers raked up the wall, shredding deep grooves into the sheetrock. No sooner had his hand finished raking the wall than his other fist shot straight-out, punching a hole clean through the wall. A picture of Herb, Stanley and Dallas holding recently caught fish rattled and fell to the floor with a crash.
Herb stopped, looked at his hands in disbelief. Not a scratch, not even a nicked cuticle. His gaze moved to the wall, to the four parallel grooves and the hole directly above them. A laugh bubbled up, turning to a whoop as Herb started to cavort around his living room.
“I know kung fu! Bad ass! Bad ass! BAD ASS!” Herb chanted as he fist-pumped the air around his head. Bringing his hands down and resting his fists on his hips, he started a jig around the living room. “Bad ass, bad ass, beedelie-boodelie bad ass. I’m. A. Bad. Ass! I’m. A. Bad. Ayek!” Herb exclaimed as his foot hit a stray beer can, causing his legs to shoot straight out. For a moment, he lay across the air, perfectly horizontal, mouth wide in shock. The next moment, gravity had pulled him back down, landing him solidly on his back, knocking his breath out with a sharp, “Hooff!” followed by a pained sigh. Herb lay still for a moment, working the taste of humble-pie around his mouth, face screwed up in thought. “Ok. Maybe a little stronger, faster. St
ill kinda clumsy. I’m ok with that. But what else can I do? Holy crappola! What else can I do?”
The night air was electric on Herb’s skin. Each follicle of hair tingled as the breeze shifted and ebbed. His terrycloth bathrobe rippled around him like the cape of an unassuming superhero that just happened to like the Green Bay Packers. Looking down from the peak of his rooftop, Herb giggled again. Getting up on the roof had been no effort at all. He’d scampered out the front door and up the chimney, landed on the pitched roof, slipped slightly as his slippers found purchase and then moved with feline grace. Herb had never felt so alive. Each move felt so sure, so right. He looked up again at the night sky, still dark. He knew that dawn was still about two hours off. He could do this. He knew he could. The fangs, the kung fu, climbing his house like a monkey on loan from the Milwaukee zoo... he could do this.
Breathing deeply, Herb raised up on the balls of his feet. His arms rose up slowly to each side, his chin lifted toward the treetops. Like DiCaprio on the Titanic, Herb leaned forward, felt the breeze quicken around him, catching him, lifting him. For a moment, he wondered what it would be like as a bat. Then he turned his thoughts to blood, blood, blood! A slight spring of his legs and Herb was free of the roof, floating, rushing toward the night sky.
When he belly-flopped on the ground about two seconds later, all the air was knocked out of his lungs and Herb both heard and felt at least two ribs crack. His teeth bit down when his chin was jammed up, impaling his tongue on one of his new, sharp incisors and dislocating his jaw. And judging from the lacing pain in his hip, Herb was pretty sure he’d cracked his pelvis. Immobilized by the pain, Herb lay face down in the grass. A single bloody tear welled up in his eye, rolled sideways down to drip into the grassy dirt pressed into his cheek. Fangs? Yup. No reflection in mirrors? True. Ugly? Not yet. Kung fu? Sorta. Fly? Not so much...
Monsters in the Midwest ( Book 1): Wisconsin Vamp Page 6