“I don’t know,” Arthur said. “But here’s another fact: this crypt is colder than the others. Can’t you feel it?”
Doctor McCullagan stepped inside the door realizing that Arthur was right: the crypt was unnaturally cold. What did that mean? It meant they found the vampires! They found the monster that killed Paisley Rae and Mandy, the vampire that snatched little Cynthia from her crib.
The Doctor yanked the hammer and stake from Arthur and raced towards the coffin.
Arthur could have challenged him, but didn’t.
Mayor Scott shouted, “No!” feeling a flash of horror unlike anything he had ever known. “We have to pull the box outside, remember? Bruce! It’s not safe!”
As the Mayor was speaking, Doctor McCullagan grabbed the lid and flung it open, yelling, “Goddamn you!” His eyes were wide and insane.
With the coffin’s lid raised, the rafters exploded in a frenzy of wings as hundreds of bats took flight. From the corners of the crypt, rattlesnakes hissed and sprang into an attack position.
Doctor McCullagan screamed, and fell backwards, onto the floor. But he saw something, something––
He turned his head.
Cynthia’s corpse was lying in a coil of rattlesnakes.
A snake snapped its jaws and Mayor Scott yelled, “Get out of there!” Scott was standing at the door with both hands on the top of his head and his eyes bulging from his sockets.
Doctor McCullagan flipped onto his belly and crawled towards the door, trying to erase the image that was inside his head. He couldn’t. Seeing his baby lying there would burn into his thoughts everyday for all eternity. Bats swirled and swooped. McCullagan crawled. Once he was outside, Arthur slammed the gate shut; the interior door was left open.
Bats circled the tomb in a coiling tornado.
Doctor McCullagan lifted himself to his feet and dusted himself off; his heart pounded his chest. The men watched the winged rodents through the iron pickets in awe.
“What should we do?” Mayor Scott asked.
“We’ll come back after they settle,” Doctor McCullagan said. “Then we’ll drag the coffin outside and kill what we find.”
“Did you see anything?” Arthur asked. “Did you see anything inside the casket?”
“Yes,” Doctor McCullagan said, with his chin quivering. “I most certainly did.”
12
Stephenie’s eyes opened to the sound of men talking. Someone was yelling; someone was frantic. She heard someone crying out, saying there was a baby’s corpse lying in a heap of snakes. Her coffin got nudged. It seemed that someone wanted to open it and somebody didn’t. Someone said something about ‘doing it quick’ and being done with it. Someone said something about dragging the casket outside and letting the sun fry the abomination to ash. But she was the abomination now, wasn’t she? Oh yes. The men wanted to snuff out the existence she loved so much. They wanted to destroy a world where everything was beautiful and she was the most powerful creature of them all.
She wasn’t having it, wasn’t going to allow the fools to drag her outside. She knew what the sunlight would do. It would burn her to a crisp.
The coffin was nudged again.
Enough, Stephenie thought. This ends now.
She threw the coffin’s lid open and sat up straight.
The three men turned towards her. Doctor McCullagan was closest, holding the long, wooden stake at his side. Arthur McNeill was beside him, gripping the hammer tight. Mayor Boyle Scott was several feet away. His hands were empty; a lantern was sitting on the floor behind him.
With a speed nobody expected, Stephenie attacked.
She clawed the left half of Doctor McCullagan’s face from his skull before he knew it would happen.
Doctor McCullagan dropped the stake and lifted his hands. He was screaming. Blood poured through his fingers; a flap of skin dangled beneath. His right eye focused on Stephenie with a combination of terror, hatred, and rage, which was so direct it looked like he was putting a hex on her. His left eye dangled from its socket, cracked apart and useless.
Stephenie reached out, bloodlust crazy. She grabbed the Doctor by the collar and hauled him towards the coffin. She knocked away his hands and bit into his neck several times quickly, chewing on it like she was a rabid fox. And after she had hacked into his meat with her teeth, she sucked the fluid out of him. It tasted so good, so fucking good. She loved her new life. She loved it with all her heart, the dead one that failed to beat inside her chest.
Mayor Scott felt his balls pull into his lungs and then he was running. A moment later he was outside, standing in the sunlight, watching the event through the open door. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He couldn’t believe his best friend Bruce was being eaten alive by something that lived inside a coffin. How could something like this happen? How was something like this possible? It occurred to him then, as strange as it may seem, that the good Doctor was right. This wasn’t something to be covered up. It was something people needed to know about. Trivial things like job security and popular opinion didn’t matter. What mattered was the safety of the town, the greater good. The truth.
Oh Bruce, he wanted to say. Oh Bruce, get out of there! Run Bruce; run! He didn’t. His voice, for the moment, was lost.
Arthur, still inside the crypt, took two steps back and watched the assault in horror.
He needed to do something helpful, something that would change the situation, but what? He looked at Mayor Scott, who was standing outside with his mouth hanging open and his bucket-belly shaking in front of him. He looked at Doctor McCullagan’s twitching shoulders and at the thin line of blood that was draining onto the floor beneath his feet.
Then he saw the stake.
He had the mallet––the stake was sitting on the floor. Not far. It wasn’t far at all.
He dropped onto his knees and snatched the tool in his fingers.
A second later Stephenie tossed the Doctor into the corner like a rag. He landed in a broken pile. Half of his face was white and drained of fluid. The other half was gone. His mouth was open; he had one cold dead eye, locked into place, gleaming white inside its awful black pits. He looked ghastly and terrified. Even in death, he looked terrified.
Stephenie leapt out of the coffin with unnatural speed. She was hissing again, hissing and spitting as Doctor McCullagan’s blood drooled down her chin. She landed in front of Arthur, legs wide; hands open, looking at him like a meal. She grinned and it was a terrible sight to see. There was no happiness in that grin, only loathing and fury. Only evil.
Arthur, still on his knees, lifted the stake up and slammed it into the vampire’s chest. He lifted the mallet high over his right shoulder, steadied his arm and focused his vision. He swung the mallet towards the stake, knowing his life depending on landing a direct hit. The mallet sped through the air. His aim was true.
The hammer––
Stephenie swatted both tools away with her hand and arm. She grabbed Arthur by the shoulders and threw him onto his back. With a quick jump forward, she landed with a leg on each side of his arms. She dropped onto his chest, grabbed his hair and yanked his head left and right several times. She pushed his head to one side and held it in place, exposing the flesh on his neck.
Arthur screamed, not once but a string of times. He thought the vampire’s plan was to rip his head from his body.
Stephenie, drooling and insane, tore into his neck like the animal she was. She chewed his flesh, swallowed it down, and drank greedily, like devouring blood was the single most important thing in the world. Her nipples hardened and her body grew warm. She loved killing. Loved it more than anything.
Blood splashed, feet kicked, and arms waved.
Arthur was convulsing. Eyes fluttered.
Mayor Boyle Scott ran into the crypt. He lifted the hammer and stake.
Snarling like a wolf, Stephenie lifted her head. Something had changed. She––
Mayor Scott slapped the stake onto the vampire’s back and brought
the hammer down hard.
The wooden spear blasted through Stephenie’s cold, dead heart.
She screamed, “NOOOOOOOOOOOO-ooooooooo!”
But it was too late. The damage was done. She could see the stake in between her breasts, covered in black, steaming blood. Her vision faded; light grew dim. Her body convulsed, not unlike Andrew’s had.
Twitching and moaning, she tumbled forward.
The Mayor pushed her onto her front, looking down at her with a full portion of disgust in his eyes. His spit on her, cursing her very existence.
“Go back to hell,” the Mayor said. “Go back, demon. And don’t return. We don’t want your kind here.”
Stephenie looked up at the Mayor, thinking about hell, and what hell meant to her. She whispered, “No… please no––”
Then the fading lights were fading no more.
CHAPTER TEN:
Groundhog Day
1
Stephenie opened her eyes. She was sitting in her car with her hands resting on the steering wheel. Again. The diner was in front of her. The passenger’s door was wide open. Carrie was making her way towards the front door with her knees squeezed together. She grabbed the door’s handle, which seemed to weigh a thousand pounds or more. She pulled with all her might. In the end, Carrie managed to wiggle herself inside. Just.
Stephenie watched it happen. And kept sitting there.
Doing nothing.
The swing between the gas station door and the restaurant door was empty. There was nobody named Christina ready to wave a hand.
Stephenie looked across the parking lot. Empty. Just six cars and a yellow school bus, no attendant, no cars on the highway. Nothing.
Time passed––a minute, maybe less.
The overwhelming amount of––well, everything––didn’t matter now. She wasn’t shocked. How could she be shocked again? She was numb. That’s what she was: NUMB. She didn’t care anymore, not about herself, or what happened to her, or what was about to happen to her. She didn’t care about Carrie––
Well, that wasn’t true.
She still cared about Carrie. She loved Carrie. But Carrie was gone now; nothing was going to change that. She was going to meet Carrie over and over again, in all kinds of new and interesting ways. Ten minutes ago, Carrie was a fucking vampire. Before that, she was some kind of bizarre monster that changed shape and talked about medication. Before that she was, what––an evil voice on the phone? Was that right? Was she missing one? Or two?
God, what was coming next?
Would Carrie be reincarnated as Frankenstein’s Monster? The Wolf-Man? The Creature from the Black fucking Lagoon?
Somehow, Stephenie had slipped through the cracks of what people commonly consider reality and now she was living in hell. It wasn’t going to change. It wasn’t going to get better. It was only going to get different––and sadly, worse.
She remembered creeping into the bedroom and killing those poor unfortunate babies.
My Lord, she thought. Help me. This is not right.
She put her hands to her face and cried. Then she looked up. The parking lot was still empty, of course. It was going to stay that way until she walked into the restaurant bought whatever shit those bastards were selling.
What’s it going to be this time? she thought. What haven’t they done to me yet?
Well, they haven’t set me on fire, right? Hell’s supposed to be all fire and brimstone, so I’ve got that to look forward to. And what else? Drowning? Oh yeah, that’s a good one. A little bit of drowning will be a real fucking treat, you bet. Oh… I shouldn’t forget falling, or have I done that one already? Yeah… no, no… I only thought about falling. Falling ‘for real’ is still up for grabs, so that’s good. Getting eaten by a shark, fuck. That one is so dynamite it should’ve happened already. Guillotine. Car accident. Poisoning. Oh, and how about getting caught in some kind of nuclear meltdown? It might take ‘em a while to get around to that one, but it’ll be good when it happens. Maybe my face can melt onto my tits. Oh… speaking of tits, what about rape! How could I forget rape? It’s a classic. Maybe they can mix things up––the Wolf-Man can rape my back end while a guillotine lops off my front end.
Stephenie punched the steering wheel. Then she punched it again.
What am I going to do?
Stephenie got out of the car slowly, looking a little like she didn’t know where she was. She slammed the door closed, turned around, looked at that fucking bungalow and cursed again.
“I can’t do this anymore,” she said. Her voice was flat and cold. “I just can’t.”
She looked at the side of the building; then she remembered…
She started walking fast, with quick moving strides. At the side of the building she saw a woodpile. She approached it. Looked at it.
And there it was: an axe.
She picked it up. It felt good in her hands this time, really good. The hatchet she had earlier was just a toy compared to this bad-boy. This motherfucker was the real deal.
“Okay you dirty cunts,” she said, grinning, holding the heavy iron blade in front of her eyes––shaking it back and forth while she prepared her heart and mind for battle. “You want to play. Okay. Lets play.”
She turned around, walked away from the woodpile and approached the restaurant’s front door. She was grinning. And as she opened the door, she took one final look at the sign that KING’S DINER and listened to the Christmas bells sing.
Halleluiah, she thought. Halle-fucking-luiah.
2
The scene was tranquil. Everything was calm. The customers were eating and socializing, the staff were working and everyone was happy. There was no blood on the walls, no bodies slumped over in the booths, no body parts lying amputated on the floor. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing disturbing. Nothing to suggest there was a problem big enough to have people shaking their heads in disbelief. It was a diner, just a simple diner with no strings attached. Florescent lights buzzed in the ceiling and ceiling fans spun below. It smelled like coffee, toast and bacon. The smell alone was enough to get your stomach rumbling and your waistline expanding.
Susan Trigg was closest. She was standing near the door dressed in her yellow waitress uniform, holding an EMPIRE PENCIL CORP pencil in her hand. She looked at Stephenie and smiled.
And from there, things happened fast.
Stephenie raised the axe over her head and slammed the blade into Susan’s skull. Susan dropped to the floor like a bundle of rags with her eyes wide open, shockingly open, dreadfully open. Her face held an expression of terror so absolute she seemed to have died of fright before the killing blow had been able to claim her. From Stephenie’s current point of view, she could see Susan’s brain just as clearly as she could see the bone fragments lying on top of it.
Half the restaurant screamed. The other half didn’t see it happen.
Stephenie turned towards Craig Smyth and lifted the axe.
Craig’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open. Then Stephenie plunged the axe blade into Craig’s chest. Craig fell against the counter with blood exploding. Within a blink, Stephenie had raised the weapon again.
Jennifer, who was behind the counter, was reaching for Craig. Her movements suggested that she was trying to catch him.
The axe came down a third time with blistering speed.
Jennifer’s arm got caught beneath the blade. Iron slammed into the countertop, and Jennifer’s arm was severed at the elbow. She raised her bleeding arm up and blood shot into the ceiling fan. From there, it rained blood eight feet in every direction. Jennifer’s legs gave out and she tumbled behind the counter with her arm bouncing after her.
Again, all of this happened fast. The people in the restaurant were still screaming, still releasing their original cry. Some hadn’t even had a chance to scream yet. Some were facing the wrong direction and didn’t know what was happening. And those that knew––the one’s that saw everything––well, hey, they weren’t thi
nking defensively yet. They were in awe with their feet planted on the floor.
Stephenie yanked the blade from the countertop and spun around.
Karen Peel and Denise Renton were sitting at the table on the other side of the door.
Karen had a spoon in her hand and saw what was happening.
Denise was faced the other way and didn’t see anything yet, but she knew something was wrong. Everyone was realizing that.
Denise turned towards the action just as Stephenie brought the blade down on her skull. The pain she felt was enormous and blood splashed everywhere, but the blow didn’t kill her. Not instantly. And in the minutes that followed the assault she managed to make her way out of the restaurant, cross the highway, and die on Jacob’s lawn.
But before that happened, Karen opened her mouth and screamed for the first time since she was twelve years old. She had time to think, I need to get out of here! Then Stephenie swung the axe like a baseball bat and caught her right in the mouth. Teeth went flying and most of Karen’s jaw was gone.
Wayne Auburn was the first one to make it to his feet. Wayne, with his long sideburns and a round potbelly, was the fifty-five year old man that wore a red-checkered shirt that looked like a tablecloth and jeans that were two sizes too tight. He said, “What do you think you’re doing, lady? Are you trying to hurt somebody?!” And before he had a chance to realize that he was a complete fucking moron, Stephenie was bringing the axe down again.
She had her rhythm now. She wasn’t chopping and hunting. Her enemies were everywhere. All she had to lift the axe and bring it down; lift the axe and bring it down.
So far she was four for four.
And after she cracked Wayne Auburn’s head open, making his skull look like a Venus flytrap, she was five for five.
Wayne dropped onto his knees with his squished brain sticking between his eyes. And right around the time he fell over, things started getting real messy.
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