They were quiet for a while after that. Mona looked worried, nibbling on her nails every so often, while Alyssa appeared fiery, like she would kick him in the balls at any moment. All things considered, he may have deserved such a fate.
“Okay,” Alyssa said. “I’m willing to believe all that. For the moment at least.”
“Really?” Justin and Mona said in unison.
“Yes, which is why we need to get all the cameras we can and head to the old high school.” He started to speak but she cut him off. “Together,” she said. “We do this together. You owe me that much. My dad’s not dumb. He thinks I’m in there somewhere but he won’t go in guns blazing.”
“Actually,” Mona said. “He brought his gun with him.”
“Dad has a gun?”
“Apparently. I thought he’d gotten rid of it.”
“Okay.” Alyssa pulled her hair into a ponytail. “Dad has a gun. So that’s good. Even better. He can protect himself at least until we get there.”
“Maybe you should change, honey. I’m sure you have something more… fitting.”
“There’s no time.” She sounded confident and sure of herself and it was another reminder of why Justin had been drawn to her in the first place. “We need to find ourselves some cameras and fast.”
Justin tightened his grip on his dad’s piece. “I know just the place.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
On the ride to the old high school, Frank thought several times that he’d lost his mind. And that was saying something, considering tonight’s events. He had to swerve every few minutes to avoid vamps, not to mention their victims. He saw a bloodied old man, his face a pulpy mess, and a woman carrying her baby, screaming for help.
It looked like a war zone and had he not been in such a crisis, he would’ve stopped to help. He heard sirens in the distance but they didn’t seem to be coming any closer. He wouldn’t count on any assistance tonight. He only hoped the cops had arrived back home and Mona was safe.
He also wished with every ounce of his being that Alyssa was okay, that she’d kicked Busty in his balls and taken refuge under a desk somewhere. She was a tough girl, took after her mother, but it was impossible to ignore the nagging in the back of his head, the worst-case-scenario alert that came with being a parent.
She’s dead. You must know that. You let her down, lost another kid.
He shook his head, tried to block out the inner dialogue. It worked for a time but he knew the words would come flooding back into his thoughts before long.
Up ahead he saw the school through the mist. It seemed much too tall, as if its height had doubled since the last time he’d been there. Its walls were crumbling and graffiti now lined most of its surface, only it was no longer juvenile depictions of genitalia. There were detailed drawings of tentacled things not unlike those he’d found scattered about in recent times.
Not unlike those that Melvin Brown had obsessively drawn nearly a decade ago.
He parked at the foot of the lot. The vamps had spread fake webbing across the overgrown foliage, placed plastic spiders—though some looked remarkably realistic—along the walkway. Scattered around the perimeter were orange and black Halloween lights, looking like tiny eyes in the mist. There was a skeleton, perhaps taken from the former science wing, standing to the right of the main entrance. Attached to its face was a faded Polaroid of a young boy. Though he was too far to make out details, Frank was certain it was Melvin.
There were dozens of jack o’ lanterns placed along the cement. Their faces were not the traditional gap-toothed grins but instead resembled things from Frank’s worst nightmares: jagged fangs and distorted features, not unlike the vamps themselves.
He stepped outside and noticed the music for the first time: generic seasonal sound effects with spooky keyboards playing over it, something you could’ve gotten at a department store for a buck. He’d always found such soundtracks to be cheesy but tonight they got under his skin in a way he couldn’t quite comprehend.
His grip tightened on the pistol. It was old, hadn’t been cleaned or fired in a few years now. He wondered if it would still work or if it would backfire once he pulled the trigger. He looked around for something he could use for a weapon should the gun falter, a heavy brick or shattered piece of glass, but he stopped short when he noticed the bodies.
At first, he thought they were props like the other décor, generic decorations made from cheap material, but they were real flesh and real bone and his stomach did a somersault as he recognized the faces.
The first body lay on the ground in several pieces, limbs and abdomen scattered in front of what looked like a dish filled with candy. The head had rolled a few feet from the ruined body so that its lifeless eyes were staring upward, staring directly at Frank as if welcoming him.
It was Rick McNeil.
Hey Frank. How ya doing? I’m not so hot myself. Ever since these vamps came around, it’s like I’ve fallen to pieces. Ha! Anyway, your daughter’s inside and probably dead but you should go find out just to be sure. The coroner will need the body for the autopsy. Pretty obvious who killed her, though.
You did, Frank.
He covered his mouth and forced back vomit. The taste of bile flooded his throat. Just as he got things under control, his eyes focused on the second body.
Principal Fisher was sprawled above the front entrance, staked in place as if crucified. The spikes had been driven deep within the bricks and Frank wondered how those kids could’ve managed such a feat.
No, he thought. They weren’t kids. Not anymore.
Fisher’s eyes were missing, two black craters left behind. His mouth was frozen in a death scream. Much of his blood had leaked onto the front steps but a few stray drops still trickled down.
Frank’s stomach gurgled. He turned to the side and heaved, losing most of his dinner in the process.
“Like what we’ve done with the place?”
The voice came from above, to the left of Fisher’s body. Through a cracked window, in what had once been one of Frank’s classrooms, he saw Busty peering out. His face was even less human now, the features almost demonic.
“Where is she?” Frank lifted the gun, pointed it toward the window.
“Why, she’s with us.” Busty’s voice came out as a gravelly drone, no longer resembling the pompous punk he’d once been. “Won’t you come find her?”
“You better pray she doesn’t have a scratch on her.”
Busty flicked a stray piece of glass off the sill and onto the ground below. “I don’t pray all that much these days. She’s still alive, though I can’t promise you how much longer that will be true. My brothers and sisters—vamps as you like to call us—are still quite hungry. Sure, we’ve fed throughout the night but we’ve hardly had our fill. She’s so young, Frank. So…delicate. I’m getting a hard on just thinking about her, you know?”
He raised the pistol and pressed the trigger. To his surprise, a round fired, the bullet ricocheting of the windowpane.
“You’ll have to work on your aim,” Busty said. “Let’s get to the fun part. It’s Halloween and I’d like to play my favorite game. With all the practice, I’ve become somewhat of an expert at hide and seek.” Busty was swallowed by the shadows. The rational part of Frank’s mind thought he’d simply backed out of sight, but the reality was that he’d simply vanished into the darkness.
From inside, he thought he heard a scream.
He lowered the pistol, keeping his grip tight, and hurried through the front door.
●●●
“I’m not sure about this,” Justin said, looking around Main Street.
“It was your idea.” Alyssa poked his chest with her index finger. “Plus where are we going to find this many cameras?”
“Yeah, but…”
“But what? Are you really worried about breaking the law on a night like tonight? In case you haven’t noticed, all bets are off.”
She was right. He listened to the soun
ds of chaos, which had grown worse. Screams and pleas and loud crashes. A few minutes ago, they’d smelled smoke, but not that of a barbecue or a wood stove. It smelled of things that weren’t meant to burn. By the time they parked, they saw flames on the western part of town. Something was blazing. The fire seemed too large to belong to one home.
The sirens had been sounding on a constant loop but something told Justin the cops couldn’t respond to every call tonight. He wondered what the town would be like in the morning. Assuming, of course, they made it through the night.
Alyssa sighed. “Fine, I’ll do it.” She picked up a large rock from the sidewalk and wound back.
“No, wait.” He grabbed her arm.
“Now what? We don’t have time for this. My dad…”
“I know. I should be the one to do it.” He opened his hand and she placed the rock into his palm.
“Make it quick,” she said.
They stood outside Lynnwood Photo Supply Shop. The store was rarely open aside from tourist season and even then, the lights were always dim. Justin hadn’t set foot in the place for over a decade. Not since it had been Bruce’s Joke Shack, his father’s short-lived foray into the world of small business. A few years after Bruce was forced to shut the place down—kids, it seemed, didn’t much care about whoopee cushions or fake dog shit—the place had reopened for business as a camera shop. At the time, Justin thought there was no need for such a store but now he saw it would come in handy.
It might even save their lives.
He pictured a younger version of himself inside the smudgy windows, his father lifting him up to help stock the shelves. It brought on such a rush of nostalgia he thought he would back out. Then he remembered where his father was now and how he wore Bruce’s camera around his neck like a talisman. It seemed connected somehow, too convenient.
He wound back and threw the rock. It shattered the left display window into tiny shards. They backed away, trying not to get cut by any of the slivers. Alyssa patted his back. “Not bad for your first burglary.”
He offered to boost her in through the window but she declined, climbing through on her own and opening the door from the inside.
“Go for the digitals,” he said, surveying the aisles. “We don’t have time to be loading film. And grab all the batteries you can.”
She nodded in agreement, the strap of a camera in her teeth as she picked up as many boxes as she could. By the time she was finished, there were perhaps a dozen cameras, each with their own straps, tied around his chest.
He tried not to imagine the way the shop had been organized as a kid, tried not to pretend the jar of taffy was still resting on the front counter. He grabbed several more cameras, albeit smaller, cheaper models, and found a pile of batteries. He tore into the packages and loaded his arsenal, tossed the rest to Alyssa.
As they turned to leave, they saw they weren’t alone.
There were three vamps standing on the front sidewalk. The first he didn’t recognize, a kid with oversized black sunglasses that covered much of his face. The other two he knew well. They were perhaps the most popular vamps, had climbed the ranks, if there was such a thing, and become poster children for Lynnwood’s resident cult.
“We were just on our way home,” Tom Parkins said, “when we saw the mess you made out front. We figured it was one of ours but I guess you wanted to try your hand at looting.”
Tom put his arm around Vickie. “Babe, what should we do with these two? I mean, they’re expendable now. We don’t have to bring them back now that Mr. Tanner’s about to get it.”
“Shut up,” Alyssa said.
“Someone’s feisty,” Vickie said. She turned to Tom, grabbed his chiseled chin, and pulled it toward her lips, sucking his face. They made slurping sounds. Justin thought he was going to be sick.
Without turning away from her, Tom signaled Sunglasses. The kid seemed to get the message because he smiled as he walked toward the counter. He stopped inches away from Justin. “You’re the kid whose dad died, right?”
Justin didn’t respond. He stared at the blackness of the kid’s shades. He swore he saw red orbs within.
Sunglasses nodded. “It is you. I transferred near the end of last semester. We move around a lot. My dad is in sales. Or was. I ate him earlier tonight. Your dad, though—I wouldn’t have wanted to eat him. Not after what happened. I bet cancer tastes like shit.”
“Leave him alone,” Alyssa said, raising one of her cameras.
“This your girlfriend?” Sunglasses said. “Alyssa, right? I’m still learning everyone’s names. You fucking her? Man, I’m jealous. I was a virgin before I joined my new family. My dad was hard on me when it came to grades. Always told me to study, study, study so that I could make a shit ton of money like him one day. I was on track to graduate with honors but I’m glad I don’t have to worry about grades anymore. Does she have nice tits? I bet she does. I jerked off to her once, you know. Saw her at a pep rally and I couldn’t stop thinking about what she looked like under those clothes. A girl this hot, I don’t think I could even handle it. I think I’d go blind.”
“You’re right about that.” Alyssa brought her camera to eye level and pressed the button. The flash went off, momentarily filling the store with bright light. The kid’s face went from pale white to gray to green as it bubbled and steamed, sliding away from his skull. She snapped another photo as the kid went down. He screamed and gurgled and crawled toward his family members, as he’d called them.
“What the fuck?” Tom said, backing away, his eyes wide as he surveyed the puddle forming on the floor.
“What did you do?” Vickie said, nearly hissing at them.
Alyssa raised her camera higher, held her hand out.
They seemed to make the connection then. By the time she pressed the button, they were already on the sidewalk. Tom yelled in pain, though it sounded more like mild annoyance from the distance between them, and then they were gone.
Justin leaned against the counter, trying to catch his breath. “Good shot.”
They looked at the remnants of Sunglasses. “The closer they are to the flash,” Alyssa said, “the easier they are to kill.”
“Which means we’ll have to get up close and personal with them.” The black shades had landed near Justin’s feet. He crushed them with his shoe. “What a creep.”
“You mean the jerking off part?”
Justin nodded, his face growing red. “Yeah, that.”
“Some guys jerk off and others watch from their windows. Creepy is relative.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She grabbed his elbow and lifted him from the counter. “Don’t be so sensitive.”
She took a camera in each of her hands, stepped over the puddle and into the night.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The dark was disorienting. It played tricks with Frank’s mind. Things seemed different from the last time he’d stepped foot in the old high school, as if the architecture had changed somehow. Take, for instance, the front stairwell. He remembered a foyer from his time teaching but it had vanished, replaced with a set of stairs that stretched for what felt like forever. By the time he stepped foot on level ground his legs burned and he was out of breath. He leaned against a wall for support.
They’re trying to wear you out so that you can’t run when the time comes. I don’t know how but they changed the goddamned layout of this place.
It sounded farfetched in his mind but when you took into account everything else they’d accomplished up to this point, it made an eerie amount of sense.
He passed several classrooms, all of them set up as if the school committee had decided to leave this place as a monument, a demented museum—or memorial. He knew that was impossible. The teachers had worked an extra week after the school closed, helping to clean the place out. He’d complained at the time, agreeing with Rick that they weren’t getting paid to be movers. They barely made enough money teaching.
But
Rick lay in pieces out front now and Frank could not deny the desks and school supplies he saw as he passed each room.
The flashlight he’d brought from home wasn’t much help. The beam was much too short, stopping ten feet in front of him as if the darkness itself was a wall.
He stopped at one classroom and peered inside. The door was open and just like the others, the desks were arranged in neat order, open books on top of each, the pages wilted and yellowed by time. A layer of dust covered everything. If he remembered correctly, this had been Murray’s room during Frank’s tenure here. He imagined the smell of whiskey on the man’s breath, could practically hear the kids making fun of him.
“Alyssa?” he whispered, careful not to be too loud, lest he draw attention to himself.
How many of them were there? How many vamps were hiding out here? He’d heard rumors that most of them had abandoned their homes to live within these walls. Were they watching him this very moment?
His skin came alive with crawling things. He wiped at his shoulders, certain there were spiders and centipedes skittering along his neck but his hands came back empty.
He moved to the next room. On the chalkboard was a picture that was burned in Frank’s brain by now: a large beast, made mostly from tendrils and mouths. Next to it was a stick figure of a girl. She lay on the ground, her mouth a small oval of terror as the thing moved in for her. Above her head was a speech bubble.
I’m going to die because my dad is a horrible father.
“Fuckers.” He gritted his teeth, stepped into the room, and grabbed the eraser. He wiped at the board but the chalk didn’t come off. It didn’t even blur. The image remained crystal clear despite his efforts, as if the chalk were permanent paint, etched into the board itself. He tossed the eraser across the room. It landed in the corner.
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