She shouted, “What are you doing here!? You’re not welcome here! Get out! Now!”
Her words were strapping but there was terror in that voice. Real terror. Deep down, emerging from her soul, childlike, terror. Tiffany was not the smartest woman in the village but she was not dumb either, and she was well aware that eyes were not meant to glow in the dark. Not ever. Wasn’t right; it wasn’t natural. If she lived to tell the tale she’d be plagued with nightmares for years. Those eyes were wrong. Those eyes were immoral.
The third infant, Cynthia, released a weak sounding wail.
Stephenie hissed a second time and moved towards the housemaid with her blood stained teeth exposed.
Tiffany screamed, “Mister and Misses McCullagan! We have an intruder here! Doctor McCullagan!” She was about to say more but then she caught a better glimpse of Stephenie’s ghoulish features and her mouth snapped shut. She felt a tremble in her knees and wondered if she might fall over.
This thing that stood before her ‘twas the devil, plain and simple.
Stephenie heard the rumble of feet coming down the hallway; her time was short. After a slight pause, her eyes shifted towards the last remaining newborn and she licked her lips.
Cynthia McCullagan, currently weighing fourteen pounds, three ounces––who had just been robbed of her two sisters––opened her mouth wide and released her first boisterous cry of the night.
Tiffany snapped her head into the hallway and saw Mister and Misses McCullagan running before being promptly shoved aside.
Mister and Misses McCullagan exploded in the room.
Tiffany’s lantern bounced up and down erratically. Shadows bounced across the walls at random.
Seeing the babies’ parents, Stephenie knew her time had run out. She took one large step towards Tiffany with anger mashed into her features. She tightened her fingers into rakes and lashed out, tearing Tiffany’s throat apart.
Blood speckled the air and splashed against the shadowy wall in a thick L-shaped splotch.
Tiffany fell to her knees as gore dropped from her neck in lumps. The fireplace poker slipped from her fingers and landed with a CLANG. The lantern fell onto its side and the fire beneath the glass burned brighter.
Misses Marion McCullagan, mother of the children, screamed.
Bruce McCullagan, who was the town’s chief doctor, sounded a bit like a stage actor in a play when he said, “Oh my goodness! What’s happening here?”
Bruce didn’t know it, but his tone didn’t fit the moment. He sounded like he discovered the neighbor’s kids stealing apples from his tree. But this wasn’t apple-theft; this was a triple murder and two of the victims were his children.
In the man’s defense––assuming Doctor McCullagan deserved one––he didn’t have a clue what was happening. He didn’t know Paisley Rae and Mandy had been drained of their fluids and discarded like trash. He didn’t know his favorite servant (and if he was to be honest with himself, his good friend) was literally dying at his feet. He didn’t know what the problem was or what might have caused it. He just stepped through the door. One minute earlier he had been lost in sleep, dreaming about horses. Point is, Doctor McCullagan didn’t know anything and his lack of authority was proof.
As blood ran from Stephenie’s claw-like hand, she spun around, made a quick dash towards the third crib and snatched Cynthia by the throat. She yanked the child from the bed with a high-pitched screech.
Cynthia’s face, shoulder and arm slammed against footboard.
A terrible newborn cry was heard throughout the room.
Tiffany, gagging and bleeding, lost consciousness. She fell onto her face, breaking her nose and smashing several teeth free. Didn’t matter. She didn’t need the teeth anyhow. In another thirty seconds she’d be dead.
With the child gripped between her fingers, Stephenie made for the window.
Marion McCullagan clipped her scream and rubbed her eyes. Staggering forward she managed to shout, “What are you doing with MY BABY? My baby! My baby! What are you doing with MY BABY?” Her words echoed through the house.
Doctor McCullagan––a man that had once fasted for eleven days because God willed it (how’s that for doctoring?)––looked at his wife, considering her words. He was taken back by how upset she had become, and was yet to put the pieces of the puzzle together. “Oh my goodness,” he said, more firmly this time than before. “What’s happening here?” He was like a broken record, a needle skipping over the same phrase. “Oh my goodness,” he said for a third time. “What’s happening here?” It was almost funny.
Stephenie grabbed the window’s ledge with her free hand and tossed herself through the opening. She fell twenty-eight feet, still holding Cynthia by the throat. Upon landing, Stephenie tumbled onto her back and the child slipped from her grasp.
Little baby Cynthia slammed into the earth headfirst; her miniature body crunched.
Stephenie leapt onto her feet. She grabbed the little one by the leg and started running, sprinting.
Missis Marion McCullagan ran to the window and watched Stephenie go. She couldn’t help noticing that her child never screamed. But she did. She opened her mouth wide and screamed loud enough for both of them. And beneath her cries she could hear her husband’s voice.
He said, “Oh my goodness! What’s happening here?”
At that moment, the man was an idiot.
8
Stephenie ran across the lawn and through the open gate. She ran down the street and into an alley. She could hear shouts and cries and screaming and cursing. Upon turning a corner, she came face to face with an old man that had one too many at the ‘ole watering hole. The man’s name was Bill Wessington. He had a red nose, starry eyes, and was as bald as a freshly picked peach.
Bill burped, stumbled, and said, “Uh-ha… Pardon me, my lady!” His voice was loud and his words sounded like they were overflowing with the letter ‘s.’
Stephenie grabbed the old drunk by the hair, yanked his head back and snapped open her mouth. Before he even knew it was coming she bit into his greasy neck and blood splashed in three separate directions. Gurgles, burbles, bubbles and babbles––all this, followed by Bill’s hands shooting into the air and his left knee buckling. He fell onto himself, bleeding from the throat and nose, smelling like a barstool, dying where she left him.
Someone screamed and Stephenie kept running, still holding Cynthia by the leg. The child was hanging upside down with her head clipping off Stephenie’s leg with every stride she took. Bruises formed and blood drained from both ears.
More screams were heard.
Someone blew a whistle.
Stephenie turned a corner, and a man stepped in front of her. He was tall, skinny, and missing several teeth. Without a moments hesitation Stephenie smashed the man in the face, using the child as a club.
The man fell onto his back as the bones inside Cynthia’s body snapped.
Dogs barked and alley cats found shelter where they could. Birds took flight from a nearby fence.
Stephenie ran and ran. When things turned quiet she headed for home, which is to say she made for the graveyard. Upon arriving she went straight to the vampire child’s tomb. She plowed her way inside and the vampire child was there, sitting against the wall, next to the family of snakes.
As Stephenie’s eyes fell upon her, the vampire child said, “Hello Master. Did you have a nice night without me?”
Stephenie, still holding Cynthia like a bag of trash, could hear the contempt in the vampire’s voice. She said, “You ungrateful bitch! Don’t you ever speak to me that way! Understand?”
The vampire child looked to the floor, disgraced.
Stephenie was right, of course. It wasn’t her place to flaunt such a scornful display of disdain. “I apologize, Master. It’s just that… I thought you and I would enter the town together. Last night you showed such affection, I thought things were different than they are. Now I know the truth, honest I do. I won’t make the same mistak
e twice. You have my word.”
Stephenie flung the baby across the tomb like a playing card; Cynthia’s tiny, battered frame spun around in a circle and crashed into the vampire child’s chest.
“I brought you this, didn’t I? Is the prize of Bleedington not enough?”
The vampire child lifted Cynthia by an arm. She was about to say the baby was dead, and drinking blood that no longer flowed was something neither of them should do. Then she saw that little Cynthia wasn’t dead. She was alive. She was horribly bruised and swollen. Her bones were broken and her eyes were black, but she was breathing. Not much, but some. The vampire child said, “Thank you Master. You are both wise and kind. I shall never doubt you again.” She bit into Cynthia’s neck, devouring the baby fluids ravenously. When she was finished, she tossed the baby’s corpse in the snakes.
Time passed. The two vampires spent their minutes brooding.
After twenty minutes had passed, Stephenie said, “I made a mess down there, in town.”
The vampire child nodded. “I know. I heard.”
“Do you think they will come?”
“Did you leave evidence of what we are?”
Stephenie’s eyes fell to the floor. She considered lying but decided against it. “Yes. Quite a bit of evidence, I’m afraid.”
The vampire child seemed to know this already. She said, “Then yes. They will come. They will hunt us like dogs. Maybe not today, but soon.”
Stephenie’s brow furrowed. She walked to the door, looked across the graveyard, and at the town that sat below it. The view was still beautiful, but now everything was tainted. Bleedington seemed to have grown teeth in the last few hours, if only in her mind. She said, “What should we do? Is there anywhere we can go?”
The vampire child shook her head. “The night is almost over. Soon the sun will rise. There is nowhere for us to go tonight.”
“Are there no other tombs?”
The vampire child masked a tone that bordered on condescending, and spoke as if she had already considered the situation. “The graveyard is massive, but there are only thirteen crypts in all. Is one safer than the next? I think not. When they come, they will check each vault systematically. If they come today, they will find us.”
“Well… what shall we do?”
“We will do the only thing we can do. We will sleep, and if tomorrow night comes, we shall enter the town once again. We shall take residence and feed from within.”
“Take residence inside the town? That’s madness!”
“No Master. It’s not madness, if you don’t mind me saying so. We shall exterminate a family, maybe two, but nobody of significance… the act should go unnoticed easy enough. We shall dwell inside the family’s home. No one will search for us there. No one will enter the residence unannounced and uninvited. By the time the villagers realize the family is missing, we will have moved on to another family. We shall travel from place to place, feeding voraciously on those with little value to the town. We shall stay one step ahead of those who oppose us. It won’t be easy, but it’s our best plan, perhaps our only plan. You see Master, it won’t be long before they check the tombs, not if you left ample confirmation of our existence.”
“Maybe we should go into the village now. Find a place…”
The vampire child shook her head. “We don’t have time Master… not to find the right place. Not to make us safe. In twenty minutes the sun will rise. Twenty minutes, that’s not long at all. Entering the town now will work against us, not for us. It is in our best interest to stay where we are.”
Stephenie opened her mouth but she did not speak.
A few minutes later she returned to her crypt, wondering how dire her mistakes truly were. Slept came easy enough though, and her sleep felt wonderful––for a while. She woke earlier than expected.
Much earlier.
9
Arthur McNeill was a simple man, a good man. He didn’t learn much in the way of schooling and when it came to being employed, he took what he could get. Often times, he was jobless. Other times he worked inside town’s only sewer. And sometimes, when luck was upon him, he was a gravedigger.
Arthur liked being a gravedigger. Working with a shovel in Bleedington’s necropolis was hard, objectionable work––of course. But he endured it, and over time he began to enjoy the vocation. He wasn’t the graveyard caretaker, Lord no. That job was actually pleasant, and it belonged to a man named Ed Patch. If Patch stepped down and the position was offered to Arthur, he’d take it in a heartbeat. Why? Well for one, the job was yard-work mostly. Yard-work was good work. For two, yard-work came with a steady paycheck. And for three––and this is the big one, kiddies––the job was a job. A job that was too good for Ed Patch, who wasn’t anything like the trade he sustained, which is to say he wasn’t pleasant. Patch was a grumpy old fart that wouldn’t sell a glass of water to a man with his pants on fire.
No, Arthur McNeill wasn’t the graveyard caretaker; he was a gravedigger.
He dug holes that needed to be dug.
And money came slowly, if it came at all.
* * *
The morning after Stephenie introduced herself to the town, Arthur woke up learning that two new graves were needed. Patch had dropped by and told him the news, saying––in a guarded, don’t say anything kind of way––that the two graves might soon become three. Doctor McCullagan’s newborn children had suffered some type of illness.
News of this kind always struck Arthur in opposing ways. He was glad to have more work; denying it would be a lie because earning a paycheck was always welcome. But he also felt sad to hear that someone died. Arthur had a big heart, and because of it, today’s news pushed all kinds of strange buttons.
A dead child was a terrible loss. Not just for Doctor McCullagan and his wife, but for the entire town. Multiply one dead child by two and terrible loss becomes tragedy. Multiply it by three and tragedy becomes disaster. Disasters are never good. But on the other hand, a disaster meant that Arthur might land three jobs in a single day and that was cause for a celebration. Toss in the fact the deceased children came from one of the wealthiest families in the village and that meant that he didn’t need to deal with people applying for the underprivileged-discount credit. This was a full-pay contract, people––the big bucks. Plus child graves were smaller than adult graves. This meant the workload got cut in half while the salary stayed the same. (A grave is a grave, don’t ya know?) And digging a hole for an infant, as sad as it is to do, is the easiest grave to dig.
An hour after Arthur heard the news of the infants deaths, Patch returned. He said two graves had just become four. Not because of the third child, but because Bill Wessington and Tiffany White were also dead. Patch offered no more information than that.
The news was absolutely terrible. Wessington was a good man to drink with and White was a good woman to look at. But four graves, possibly five. Wow. It was the most work Arthur had been offered in years.
Around 1pm, Boyle Scott, the town’s Mayor, arrived at Arthur McNeill’s front door. Mayor Scott told Arthur a similar story to the one Patch had told, although the Mayor didn’t mention Bill Wessington and Tiffany White, at least, not right away. His focus was the children.
As the Mayor spoke, Arthur found himself stunned.
Being asked to dig holes didn’t usually come from high up. Being told that two baby-holes might become three (but keep that under your hat, good man, for the love of the Virgin Mary!) added to his surprise. Not because of the dead children, and not because he needed to keep it under his hat. (And how under the hat can the information be if he heard about it twice before noon? Not very––that was his thinking.) The astonishing part came when Mayor Scott told Arthur that the children weren’t just dead; they had been murdered. Somehow, this part of the story hadn’t been shared with him, probably because Patch didn’t know.
For fifteen minutes or more the men talked about the horrific tragedy (the deaths, not the killer) in all kinds of
ways except one: just why the Mayor was standing at Arthur’s front door in the first place. There was a slight pause in the conversation, and both men knew the time for answers had come.
Mayor Scott said, “Arthur, I need your help. Doctor McCullagan needs your help. In fact, the entire town needs your help, although most folks in town don’t yet know it.”
Arthur rubbed a hand across the stubble on his chin. He looked a little like a man yanked from a concession stand and asked to play quarterback at the Super Bowl.
He said, “Anything, you want, Mayor Scott.”
The Mayor, who was a nice enough guy with a gigantic belly (that he sometimes referred to it as ‘the bucket’), said, “You can call me, Boyle, Arthur. Truth is, I’d prefer it if you do. I might be Mayor Scott, but I’m also just a man. And I’ll still be a man after the title of Mayor gets handed to someone else.”
Arthur nodded. He said, “Okay.” But he didn’t call the man Boyle. Not once. It didn’t seem right. Boyle Scott had been Mayor for twenty-two years and most people figured he’d be Mayor for twenty-two more. He was a man of the people, and it was comments like the one he just unloaded that kept him in charge.
Boyle said, “I didn’t come here to talk to you about digging holes, as I’m sure you can imagine.” He paused. “Bleedington is not a big place, which is to say the people that live here know everybody. And if you don’t know somebody, you’ve probably seen ‘em around. I’ve seen you around, Arthur. Oh yes I have. I know you’re a good man that deserves more from life than life has given you.” Boyle paused again, looking thoughtful this time, looking the way a Mayor should.
Arthur considered saying something, but he didn’t have anything to add and he thought silence was a respectable policy that kept him from getting in trouble.
Boyle put his hands together and looked at them.
He said, “Bruce McCullagan is my friend. I was with the Doc and his family when his wife Marion gave birth. There were four children born that night. Not three, four. Four girls. Did you know that?” He looked up. “Probably not… I suppose most people don’t.” He looked down. “After eighteen hours of pushing and screaming Marion gave birth to all four girls within an hour and a half. The forth one came out in a pile of blood. The child was… well, what I’m trying to say is, she wasn’t ready yet. She wasn’t… formed. The poor thing had no arms and no legs, no neck either––she was just a lump, really. She was a lump with a face imbedded in her chest. The face had eyes and the eyes were moving around, real alive-like, although not for very long. The child, if you could call it that, died. Marion took it poorly, very poorly. We tried to tell her to be happy with the three children that survived but she wasn’t having it. We buried the lump-child in the McCullagan’s backyard that night, under the light of the moon. Marion told us to do it. She didn’t want the town to know what had happened.”
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