Monsters in the Midwest ( Book 1): Wisconsin Vamp

by Scott Burtness

  Herb’s head shook vigorously. “Nope. No, um. We, well I kinda. I mean we weren’t ever, you know. It was just. We were just. Huh.” Squirming under Lois’s knowing look, he skipped all attempts to explain what exactly he and Jenni were that night. “Well, anyway, I called that off, and I’m pretty sure she’s seeing some other guy now. Which is good.”

  Lois let him off the hook with another knowing smile and a wink. “Well that’s settled then. So you’re gonna pick me up at 9 o’clock sharp and we’re gonna grab a couple of drinks and go sing our hearts out, and it’s gonna be great.” Lois stuck out a hand, the other planted on her hip. “Do we have a deal?”

  Herb reached out, took Lois’s hand in his own, glad to have something to anchor him for fear that he’d float off into the ether. With a firm shake and a nod of his head, he agreed. “Deal. Now, I hope you don’t mind, but I have to go learn how to sing so I don’t make a complete ass out of myself.”

  Lois laughed. “But of course. You do that Herb. I’ll see you tomorrow. And remember, 9 o’clock. Sharp.” And with that, she was gone.

  Herb wasn’t kidding. He hadn’t sung a note since 5th grade choir. Any other day he would’ve been terrified of the prospect of joining Jasper on the little stage in the corner of the bar at Bay City Bowlers. But Lois had just asked him on a date! Every other concern that had ever weighed on his mind suddenly and completely dissolved. Humming a jaunty tune, he headed back into the kitchen.

  Chapter 42

  Thunk thunk thunk! Herb ran, but the violence followed him. It seemed like no matter how fast he ran, and he could run very, very fast, the monster still drew closer and closer. Belching steam from wide nostrils, spittle and slobber spewing out from between a wide mouth ringed with jagged, steel teeth that made a mockery of his own little fangs, electric blue sparks arcing from its eyes, chrome horns winding down its sides spewing black venom, and an absolutely gigantic pair of chrome balls, it flattened everything in its path, cutting a mile-wide swath of destruction and leaving a burning, smoking trail of ruin and blight. Herb gathered his secrets to his chest, tried to keep a grip, but like greased ball bearings, bits of secrets slipped from his sweating palms, falling to the concrete beneath his hard-pounding feet. He tried once, twice to stop and pick them up but there was no time, no time left. A steam punk dragon, it came after him, angry, seething. Perched high on its back, wearing a cowboy hat and a bloodied bowling jersey, sat Dallas. One hand was curled in the metallic blue mane of the beast named Deloris, the other carried a giant Magnum, each shot a deafening crack of thunder. Thunk thunk thunk!

  Eyes open, Herb moved from asleep to awake in an instant. But he knew immediately that it wasn’t time to be awake yet, and the headache started back behind his left eyeball almost immediately. He hated being up during the day. It was annoying, and made him feel like his world was slowly being pulled inside out. Adding to his annoyance, someone was pounding on the front door, hitting it so hard it was rattling pictures on the adjacent walls. Herb figured some insurance salesman had finally tracked down his backwoods-bungalow, or an over-eager Boy Scout was hawkin’ over-priced candy bars. Whoever it was, Herb was revving up to give them a piece of his mind, the really nasty piece that was full of curse words, colorful visuals and clear warnings to never set foot on his property again.

  Dragging leaden feet up the stairs from the root cellar, angry mutterings building toward the tongue-lashing he was about to unleash, Herb made his way through the kitchen. The piece of his mind that wasn’t preoccupied with reaming his daytime visitor noticed in an afterthoughty sort of way how clean his kitchen stayed now that he didn’t eat regular food anymore. Having tripped over that thought, he fell into a net of ennui. It seemed like ages ago that he’d stood in the front lawn in his old terrycloth robe, sipping Folgers and watching the sunrise. He missed his simple routines. Things were definitely different now, but maybe he could find comfort in some new routines. Like saving some blood in the fridge and having a glass at moonrise. He could still wear Scary Terry, stand outside and breathe in the scents. Still enjoy the woods that had always felt like home to him.

  Looking at the kitchen window over the sink, it was like seeing the crumpled scraps of newspaper and grocery bags held in place with a conglomeration of tape for the first time. Herb’s eyebrows moved toward one another slowly, pulled together by the growing frown. Sure, things were different now. He was a night person, well, night vampire if you wanted to get technical, but still. Lots of people worked nights, slept days and had normal lives. The stuff over his windows looked more like a meth-addict hoarder trying to avoid peering eyes than a respectable Trappersville citizen that just happened to be sort-of allergic to the sun. No, he had to be more presentable, more respectable. He was somebody now. A champion bowler, respected chef. Hell, even Lois had noticed the difference and it seemed like she was really starting to not just like him, but like him like him. And if they had fun tonight, they might even end up back here...

  Thunk thunk thunk. Thunkthunkthunkthunkthunk! THUNK! The knocking had grown more insistent, as if the knocker was aware that Herb was standing a short distance away but not moving as expected toward the door. With a fresh volley of curses and threats locked and loaded and ready for release, Herb stomped the remaining distance through the living room to the front door. Leaning in, he squinted into the peephole to identify the rude assailant first. His keen sense of smell registered a mixed bouquet of beer, whiskey, sweat and mild halitosis, his left eyeball focused on the regular, measured, perpendicular intersection of two small pieces of silver, and the language center of his brain had just dredged up the name Dallas and the word crucifix when the superheated bolt of plasma pierced his cornea, incinerated his iris, boiled the jelly-ish fluid inside the eyeball itself, and ignited his optic nerve like a fuse to the bundle of razor-wire wrapped dynamite in his cranium that exploded like a thousand suns going supernova on queue.

  At least, that’s how it felt to Herb as he lurched back, hissing and covering his offended eyeball with his hand. As quickly as the pain lanced through his head, it subsided, leaving a cold rage in its place. With a quick twist, he unlocked the handle and deadbolt, pulled on the door until the safety chain gave a sharp snap, the screws holding it to the frame of the door severely taxed in their effort to keep the chain securely in place. Glaring out through the resulting 6-inch gap, his right eye’s field of vision was full of a smug-looking Dallas.

  “What in the hell do you want, you stupid son of a turkey baster?” Herb snapped before fully processing that Dallas was standing at his front door with a silver crucifix. Once his brain caught up to the situation at hand, Herb carefully kept his good eye locked on the left lens of Dallas’s mirrored shades and continued his tirade. “I was working until five o’clock this morning, and was sound asleep. Did you really, really find it absolutely necessary to drive all the way over here to show me your new jewelry? Sonofa Viking fan’s mother! You’d better have a damn good reason for being here.”

  For a moment, the tiniest moment, a span of time so small that only well-qualified scientists with long strings of letters following their names around would be able to measure it with highly calibrated equipment, Dallas looked unsure of himself. But before that very natural and healthy self-preservation instinct could take control, his ego had grabbed the wheel once again.

  “Good afternoon to you, too Herb. Sounds like you’ve been borrowing from Ronnie’s book of rants. That was good, though. What was it again? ‘Son of a Viking fan’s mother?’ Very creative. I’m gonna use that one, that’s for damn sure. But, hey. What happened to your eye?”

  “Nuthin’,” Herb growled in response.

  “Really? Looks like you’re bleeding...” Dallas offered helpfully.

  Herb pulled his palm away from his face, and sure enough a trickle of blood had smeared his palm. The good news was that he could see his bloody palm with his left eye, so he wasn’t blind after all. Pressing his palm back to his eye again, he grumbled
, “Cut myself shaving. What do you want Dallas? Mashed potatoes again? Wait until I’m back at work. But right now, I really need to get some sleep.”

  “Well, Herb. I just thought I’d stop by, say hey. You want a beer? Gotta couple cold ones in Deloris. When I was patching her back together, I added a little travel fridge in the storage under the back seat. Neat, right? Road brews, always cold. Thought we could sit out in the sun, have a beer, talk about a few things. Been awhile since we’ve done that, huh? You and me. Just sat, tossed the shit, had a beer or two. So, whadaya say? Come have a beer with your old buddy. We can talk about, oh. I dunno. Movies, bowling, strippers, that dead guy in the woods, whatever. Lots to talk about, Herb.”

  For a long moment, Herb looked with his one good eye at the man that had been his friend for most of his life. A loneliness opened up somewhere in his chest. Him and Dallas and all the wonderful ways they could waste time. Simple pleasures. Drinking, bowling, occasional farting contests that Dallas sometimes let Herb win.

  But things were different now. Herb couldn’t look at Dallas and not see the man that punched him when he’d had the best night of bowling in his life, the man that was convinced Herb could only bowl well if he used deer antler spray or steroids. Dallas, who in one fell swoop had tried to molest and then almost killed Lois. Lois. Pulling on a smug smile of his own to match Dallas’s, Herb replied in a honey-toned voice, “Gosh. That sounds real nice Dallas. But I have a date tonight, with Lois and will probably be out pretty late. So I really need to get some sleep.” Taking his left hand away from his eye, he glowered at Dallas’s mirror-clad gaze. Grabbing the door with his bloody left hand, he moved to slam it shut.

  Dallas shot out a hand, pushing the door back open and causing the security chain to once again snap and groan. Dropping the fake smile, palming the little crucifix and extending his index finger, he pointed straight at Herb. “I know your little... secret. You hear me Herb? I know what you are, you freakin’ monster.”

  Herb froze, watching Dallas with unblinking eyes, one clear, one rimmed in drying blood. Time stretched, grew brittle as the two men stood like rams before locking horns.

  “That’s right. Got your attention? Not so sleepy now, huh? See, I was starting to wonder, what with you and that game of pool you shot. You have never, ever run the table on nobody. Then the bowling finals. Three perfect games in a row? Not possible. Not for you. I figured you had to be on something. I just didn’t realize what you were on.”

  Dallas took a deep breath before continuing. “Then Helen nukes herself and the cops find the dead folks in the dumpster and a body turns up on the outskirts of town. Too weird, but nothing to do with you, right? Of course not. But I couldn’t shake the feeling.” Dallas shook his mane, puffed his cheeks and exhaled slowly.

  “Shit Herb. When was the last time you covered a day-shift at Ronnie’s? Haven’t seen you around town at all. Not the grocery store, not the bank. Nope. Always at night. Ronnie’s, Stein’s, Bay City’s, the usual haunts. And you,” Dallas barked a harsh laugh, “Hell, you haven’t been you in quite a while. So I made some calls. Did you know that all them bodies, every single one, had suffered from unexplained blood loss? Well, once I found out that juicy tidbit, I did a little investigating. A little piecing the puzzle together. A little sleuthing. See, you’re not the only one in town with a video rental card at old Petro Patterson’s. I went to pick up a flick and must’ve just missed you. Pam, she made a joke, see? ‘Hope you’re not looking for a vampire movie,’ she said. ‘Cuz the last guy just took the last ones we had on the shelf.’ I laughed, made a quick remark about people loving Halloween all year round, and you know what she said?”

  Dallas was taking obvious delight in warming up to his big reveal. “That you must be the pumpkin king. The pumpkin king! Ha!” This time, the bark of laughter had no mirth in it at all. “With a little of the old Dallas charm, why that Pam was more than happy to talk about your taste in video rentals. And boom! Like a bolt of lightning, I knew. It all made sense.”

  Herb slowly exhaled through his nose, eyes still boring into the mirrored shades less than a foot away. The whispers were crawling out of the moldy cracks and crevices deep in his brain. This time, though, he swore he could understand the multitude of raspy voices. Kill Dallas. Kill him. Drink him. End him.

  Oblivious to the mounting danger, Dallas leaned in even closer. “I. Know. I know what you are, I know what you did and I won’t, I will not let you do anything to Lois, or anyone else. You and me, we’re gonna have a reckoning. And let me tell you, Old D’s gonna come down like a hailstorm and you, you’re gonna be like the shitty, thin sheet metal on a Japanese import’s hood. And I’m gonna start by denting the crap outta you, a million little pea-sized divots all over your face. Then that little hail storm, it’s gonna kick it up a notch. And that hail, now it’s starting to look golf ball sized. That’s right, you... whatever the hell you are. Golf balls. Then baseballs. Baseballs the size of fists. Fist-sized hailstones raining down, smashing your face. You get me Herb? There’s gonna be a hailstorm, and it’s gonna be righteous. People won’t be looking at me like I’m the asshole. Oh no! No damn way. They’re gonna see. They’re gonna learn. And that’ll be it for you, old buddy!”

  By the end of Dallas’s tirade, Herb was shaking. A nasty concoction of fear and rage had just been forced down his throat. His bloodied palm still gripped the door and his fingers were starting to leave impressions in the dense wood. The whispers had mounted to a roar so loud Herb wanted to grab his skull and rip the voices out of his head. Inside, Herb was raging. Outside, a gossamer of self-control held him motionless in the face of Dallas’s threats.

  “What the hell are you talking about Dallas?” Words like jagged chunks of a crumbling glacier fell and shattered around the men. “I’m a cook, a damned cook at a truck stop, and I haven’t done anything to you, Lois or anyone else.”

  Dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, Dallas said, “She said I was drunk. She says I don’t remember. But I do. I remember Herb. Sure I’d had some drinks. I mean, c’mon! We were having fun. A damn good night. And we were on the way back to my place when you flipped my truck! I don’t know how the hell you did it, but I know it was you.” Interpreting Herb’s sudden, shocked look as vindication for his theory, Dallas plowed on, voice rising in volume with each sentence. “That’s right, you son of a bitch. I should’ve just driven right over you, let Deloris chew you up and spit you out like a raccoon pancake. Let’s just say you’re lucky you’re alive, you goddamned vampire!” Dallas’s booze-lubed rant poured like pus from an infected wound. “You tried to eat me, you no good sonofabitch. I’m your best goddamn friend! And you tried to eat me! What stopped you? Figured out you couldn’t kill Dallas that easy-like, huh? Even upside down and banged around, I was still too much for you, wasn’t I you little pansy!”

  It was too much for Herb to take. Yanking on the door, ripping the chain plate from the wall, Herb swung the door wide, risking the midday sun to rage back at Dallas and his booze-twisted recollection of that horrible night.

  “YOU STUPID BASTARD! You were blind drunk, you tried to rip Lois’s shirt off and cop a cheap feel while you were driving, that’s why you lost control of the truck and that’s when you flipped into the ditch. You want to know what happened? I was going home after work, I saw your flipped truck, and I saved Lois’s life! And yours! I saved you too!”

  Herb felt his fangs, knew whatever chance he had of hiding his secret was lost, but indignant rage kept him from caring. “I could’ve killed you. I should’ve killed you. But I didn’t. I saved your drunk ass.”

  “Oh really? Is that how it happened, you Satan-spawned bloodsucker?” Dallas turned his head and raised his chin, a demented giggle slipping out. The midday sun brought the two pink puncture scars into sharp relief against the canvas of tanned skin. “Doctors said this must’ve been little pieces of flying glass. Glass! When auto glass breaks, it breaks in small, dull pieces. Not perfect little
spears conveniently spaced the same width apart as a pair of vamp fangs! Ok, yeah I was drunk. But I remember the important shit. And I remember you biting me! That was your plan. Scare me into flipping Deloris, and right when me and Lois were starting to get romantic. Then kill me as an appetizer and get Lois for the main course. But the cops showed up and you had to skedaddle. That’s what happened. I don’t know how you tricked Lois, tricked the cops. But no one tricks old Dallas, no one! So now what? What’s your plan now? Get Lois all to yourself, turn her against me so I won’t be there to protect her?”

  Herb remembered a long time ago, watching an old Looney Toons cartoon. Bugs Bunny was playing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The switch between the two was comical back then, but watching Dallas now, Herb found the recollection terrifying. Dallas had driven himself nuts, pure and simple. Gone was the fun-loving megalomaniac he’d called his friend for all these years. In his place was a paranoid delusional that knew Herb’s secret. Dallas had whammy’d himself, stitching together booze-soaked recollections of a handful of details, filling in the blanks with a coarse brush dipped in half-truths, haphazard discoveries and pure conjecture. The conclusions he’d drawn weren’t just skewed, they were dangerous.

  Taking deep breaths, Herb fought to bring his bloodlust and blood pressure down to reasonable levels, and almost swooned as exhaustion swept over him. He felt and heard his fangs snick back to their more normal size, and sagged, now using his hand to support his weight. “I don’t care what you want to believe. But understand one thing. I would never, EVER, do anything to hurt Lois. You don’t need to protect Lois, because nothing bad is going to happen to her. I swear on the friendship we used to have, and maybe we’ll have again someday. I will not hurt Lois. Now go home, Dallas. This conversation is over.”