by Billy Wells
The Millers gathered on the porch of the old farmhouse and watched the barn being devoured by the fire. Pam started to pray, and the neighbors from the surrounding farms flooded in to see the burning barn. In no time at all, the walls disintegrated into rumble, and the flies and horrible stench were gone with the warlock.
Orville thought of what he would do the next day and the day after to put their lives back together. He called all the neighbors together for a prayer to give thanks that the devil had been defeated once again.
Suddenly, the charred remains of the tractors and the block of concrete holding the ax exploded in the pit, and a strange whine was heard above the unison of the Lord’s Prayer. They all saw a shadow flit across the face of the full moon. One by one, the heads of those whose ancestors participated in the execution of the warlock in 1697 fell to the ground, and blood spurted from their severed necks. The headless bodies flayed at the air and finally toppled to the ground. The Millers and nine others lost their heads that night, while the others stood aghast at the carnage that had taken place. None of the survivors had any idea what had happened. No one saw what had killed the victims who were strewn about the grounds in front of the farmhouse. No one understood why he or she had been spared.
Earlier, just before midnight, Hank Gardner poured a double shot of scotch on ice. He had just written a suicide note with an explanation of the murders that he knew would take place all around the area. He was unaware how far Eli’s vengeance would reach. He mentioned the murders at the Millers’ farm as the initial murder scene. He thought the mass murders that took place that night might offer some credibility to his story, but thought some other explanation would be presented in the media to avoid what had really happened.
He heard a high-pitched keening sound far away, but gave it no thought as he took his final sip of scotch and placed the glass on the kitchen table. He picked up the revolver, but before he could place it in his mouth and pull the trigger, the window before him shattered in the flash of an eye, and his head and the hand holding the revolver toppled onto the table.
* * *
Vampires & Werewolves
Zack, the vampire, peered out the window of the Boeing 737 at the full moon. He smiled at the thought of his roommate at Yale, Jeff, and his werewolf friends licking their chops in anticipation of the feast they would enjoy shortly. His vampire friends would also be there for the party. This was a junket from Fort Wayne to Atlantic City, and free of the scrutiny mandated by a commercial airplane.
Looking at his GPS, he decided the time had come. He closed his eyes and began the mind connection to the pilot. A minute later, the pilot’s voice on the intercom announced to the 212 travelers on board. “Passengers and crew members, this is the captain. Don’t be alarmed, but we have detected a mechanical difficulty and will put down at the closest airport to evaluate the problem. It will only take a few minutes, and we’ll be on our way. Thank you for your patience.”
The passengers around him looked at each other in disbelief, but when the flight attendants promised a free cocktail after the plane was in the air again, the mood in the cabin returned to normal.
In a few minutes, the aircraft landed on the runway of the small airport owned by a multimillionaire who was in Monaco for the week. The plane taxied to a stop at the far end of the tarmac where five SUV’s were parked in the shadows. Dense forest surrounded the acres of asphalt encircled by stadium lighting. A large hangar was situated to the left, but there was no sign of a building to accommodate passengers. The passengers immediately started questioning why they were landing at such a god-forsaken place with no facilities when there were better airports in the vicinity.
Ignoring the barrage of questions, the flight attendants opened the forward doors and stood with a blank expression at the front of the first class section. The passengers in the front saw several men pushing a stairway against the front of the plane. The immediate howling of wolves emanating from the forest outside the open door seemed frightfully close. The passengers squirmed in their seats with their seatbelts fastened and peered nervously into the darkness beyond the side windows.
Without a warning, a group of twenty werewolves bounded through the open door and began devouring the passengers on the right side of the plane. The horrified victims leapt from their seats and started running amok into each other, trying to evade the marauding monsters.
Zack watched the wooly beasts tearing limbs from the passengers’ bodies and torrents of blood spraying the seats and the carpets as far as his eyes could see. Pieces of bodies began piling up in the aisle.
The passengers seated furthest from the door tried to escape, but ten of Zack’s vampire friends cut them off. The pre-boarding plan was to share the passengers equally with their werewolf friends. The stopover was scheduled to last only two hours.
In a matter of minutes, the vampires had been able to control every thought and movement of the helpless mortals with mental telepathy. Once the few who tried to sneak out returned to their seats, the wide-eyed weaklings looked like robots sitting face forward in their seats waiting to be slaughtered. The hundred or so passengers on the left side of the plane had been designated vampire food, the right, werewolf chow.
Zack and his ashen-faced friends satisfied their hunger tantrums by moving quickly from one passenger’s jugular to another. After imbibing to the fullest, they injected a catheter into the veins of the remaining victims designated as vampire food and drained each one’s blood into a zip-lock bag. When each bag was full, they placed it in on a bed of ice in a Styrofoam cooler for future consumption. The inventory would allow the vampires several days of vacation from seeking blood from the homeless or prostitutes as a nightly routine. Zack had promised to share his stash with his mother who was crypt-ridden from an unhealthy dose of direct sunlight.
Zack’s father thought his wife had died from a heart attack, but in reality, his mother had faked her demise because her husband had grown suspicious that she looked the same as when they first met. Another group of vampire friends who were doctors and morticians had participated in staging her death and embalmment. They buried her in a private crypt in West Orange. After he orchestrated a similar plane crash five years before, Zack decided to place his coffin next to his mother’s. Her mausoleum was an ideal location for their nightly escapades into northern New Jersey, and it was an easy train ride into Manhattan.
After his mother had left the house, Zack no longer wanted to continue the daily charade of pretending to be a human. He longed to exercise his supernatural powers. He also wanted to lock in the age he would remain forever before he got too old. His mother had given him the choice of remaining human or becoming a vampire. One bite was all it took to live for eternity if he could avoid direct sunlight and the dreaded stake through the heart.
As the two hour time limit approached, Zack inquisitively crossed over into the werewolf section of the plane. He saw a few wooly beasts gnawing at the final slivers of flesh on an armless carcass that was still twitching. The sight he beheld was more ghastly than anything he had ever experienced. This side of the plane was in a state of unbridled chaos and bloodlust with body parts, intermingled with shreds of internal organs, matted hair, and blood-encrusted clothing strewn up and down the aisle. Eyeballs, noses, fingers, toes, teeth, pieces of tongues torn out by the roots, and parts of ears were scattered in heaps like trail mix upon the carpet. Blood, gore, and brains dripped from the ceiling and pooled into grisly puddles on the floor.
Zack considered himself lucky to be a vampire. Werewolves had no class. They were animals driven insane by the full moon. His friends had loaded all five of the SUV’s with the Styrofoam coolers; four of them had already taken off. Only the fifth vehicle remained for him. He had the task of giving the pilot who waited patiently in the cockpit the final flight plan.
As the plane took off, Zack saw the last of the werewolves disappearing into the dark forest. He took the passenger seat in the SUV, and the driver sped aw
ay down the desolate road.
Once the aircraft had climbed to the desired altitude, the pilot put the plane on automatic pilot. Thirty minutes later, he checked in with the tower and advised them of the reason for the delay. He assured them that everything was fine and cracked a joke about filling up a 737 at an airport in the middle of nowhere. Looking at the remains of his headless copilot in the next seat, he laughed good-naturedly.
When the tower asked about the location of the airport and the two-hour break in communication, he snapped off the connection. Popping a tic-tac, he flew the plane into the eye of one of the worst blizzards in the region’s history. The snowcapped mountain peaks filled the windshield ahead of him. He started singing “A New York State of Mind” as the mountains got bigger and bigger. On the intercom, the air traffic controller screamed a warning to pull up, but the pilot continued singing Billy Joel’s song.
The left wing snapped off when the airplane struck the rock-face of the mountain. The cockpit cracked open like a walnut, and the plane broke into several sections of fuselage. The fiery explosion scattered the victims of the werewolves and the vampires like playing cards across the rocky terrain and wooded landscape. When all the pieces had stopped moving, the snow continued to fall, turning the bloody chaos of the broken plane and the ravaged passengers into a winter wonderland of white. The animals of the forest smelled the blood and their yellow eyes glowed as they searched the wreckage and the woods for raw meat.
* * *
One month later, Zack’s father, Doug Blackstone, heard a knock at the front door. His immediate thought, “Was it the Mormons or the Jehovah’s Witnesses?” Opening the door, he saw a man in a dark business suit with a cold expression flashing a badge.
“I’m special agent, Wolf Presley of the FBI. I’d like to speak with you about your son’s accident.”
“You must have me confused with someone else. My son was a passenger on a plane that crashed five years ago. Are you saying new information has surfaced about my son?”
“Can I come in?” Presley said. “We need to speak privately, if you don’t mind.”
“Certainly. Pardon me. What you said startled me for a moment. Please come in and have a seat.” Doug ushered Presley into the den, and they both sat down in front of the television set.
Presley wasted no time, “Did you hear about the plane that crashed in the Adirondacks last month with 212 on board?”
“Of course. It was the main topic on the news for weeks, but what does that have to do with my son?”
Presley stared at the picture on the mantle over the fireplace. He recognized Blackstone, his son, and a woman who must have been Blackstone’s wife. “I need to confirm that Zachary is your only son.”
“I’m sure you’ve checked the records. You must already know he was my only son.”
“That’s what the records indicate, but I need to verify that Zachary did not have an identical twin.”
Doug looked at Presley like he’d suddenly grown another head and said. “Zachary was our only child. What’s this all about?”
“Please, let me ask the questions. Has your son contacted you since the crash?” Presley saw the bewilderment on Doug’s face and quickly added, “Since your son’s body was never physically recovered, there is a chance, no matter how slim, he’s still alive.”
“The insurance company paid the claim on his life insurance last year. They consider him dead. Are you saying you have reason to believe my son is still alive, and he didn’t die in the plane crash?”
Frankly, we don’t know what to believe. Surveillance video taken of the passengers boarding the recent plane that crashed shows someone who looks exactly like your son. We ran the image through our facial identification software, compared it to pictures of your son taken five years ago, and came up with a match. The odd part is that the man’s name on the manifest is Charles Moran, not Zachary Blackstone.”
“There must be some mistake. If my son were alive, he would have come home. We were very close; he wouldn’t have let me suffer for five years thinking he was dead.”
“Are you aware of the mysteries surrounding the flight five years ago and the similarities with the one last month?”
“I know that some of the locals think werewolves and vampires boarded the plane, but I never took it seriously. Was Charles Moran’s body recovered from the crash site?”
“That’s why I’m here, sir. Moran looks like a clone of your son, and his was the only body not recovered, just like your son five years ago. With that said, would you have any objection in taking a lie detector test?”
“Of course not. I have nothing to hide.” Doug retorted, meeting the agent’s cold stare.
After another half hour of repetitive questioning, Presley left. Doug had made an appointment to take the test the next afternoon. He sat on the sofa still reeling from what the FBI agent had said. Zack couldn’t be alive unless he was an amnesia victim, but if he were, he certainly would not have had anything to do with the deaths of over four hundred human beings. He was a wonderful person. He liked everyone, and everyone liked him.
The next day, Doug took and passed the lie detector test and returned home.
Heartbroken with grief from the crash, Doug had left his son’s room just like it was the day he left. Now he wondered if something there might shed some light on what had happened to Zack if he really was still alive.
He went down the hall to Zack’s room and took a deep breath. Opening the door, he immediately noticed the musty smell. Except for the dust covering every surface, it was just like it was. He collected all the clothes from the hangers in the closet, and finding nothing in the pockets, placed them on the bed. After removing everything from the closet, Doug vacuumed and dusted the shelving. During the cleanup, he noticed a loose floorboard in the far corner of the closet. Removing a set of keys from his pants pocket, he used one of them to pry up two narrow boards about three feet long and eight inches wide. He found the space packed with peculiar items he’d never seen.
He extracted a folded piece of black material. Opening it, he discovered it was an expensive cape with intricate designs sewn into the red velvet. He thought it strange that Zack had hidden the cape in a secret hiding place. He couldn’t remember him dressing as a vampire on any past Halloween.
Picking up a black antique box with the same designs engraved into the wood, he opened it and was horrified to find a human eye wrapped in a zip-lock bag. A second plastic bag held a woman’s finger. He returned the grisly bags to the black box and placed it on the carpet. Next, he picked up an old book with tattered pages. Turning the first few pages, he saw detailed drawings of various forms of torture and mutilation. He didn’t like where this was going. He went to the liquor cabinet in the den, poured a triple shot of Jack Daniels, and went to his back porch to think.
What was Zack doing with such a book? These atrocities made no sense to Doug. Could these things have been here before he bought the house in 2000? Maybe they didn’t belong to Zack at all. Maybe that was it. Leaving his drink on the patio table, he returned to Zack’s room.
The next thing he touched made his blood pressure skyrocket. Inside a black leather pouch, he found a photograph of Zack wearing the black cape with blood dripping from the points of two elongated canines. Looking further, he found other pictures of young women dressed in long white gowns who appeared to be dead. Each had two punctures in their throats and dead open eyes. These pictures were bad enough, but it was the last one that made Doug’s hair stand on end. It was a picture of his wife with Zack; both looked more like vampires than any he had seen in the movies. Their ravenous eyes chilled him to the bone. If his wife had been a vampire, where was she now? Why had she broken his heart and left him all alone? Was she the reason Zack had become a vampire?
Thoughts of suicide gripped him as he stared into space, overcome with the realization that the time he’d spent with his wife, Fiona, was a charade. His love for her meant more to him than anything in
life except for the love of his son. It hurt so badly to think he’d never really known either of them if they were vampires. He wondered if they had ever cared for him.
Why had this vampire woman chosen to live part of her life with a human being? The only reason he could think of was to bear a child. Maybe vampires couldn’t have children with one another. He went to their bedroom, pulled out their wedding album, and started reminiscing the beautiful memories of that day. He realized immediately Fiona looked the same at her funeral as she did at her wedding. He guessed she’d always looked that way.
He remembered how several of their friends at the funeral had remarked how she’d never aged. They assumed she’d had a face-lift, but he knew she hadn’t. He slammed the album down on the dresser. How stupid to think he knew anything about her. He knew only what she wanted him to know. After all, she probably had lived hundreds of years.
Then he saw the card that must have fallen from the dresser drawer. It was the one he’d received after the latest plane crash from Harry Brubaker, his next-door neighbor when he’d lived on Mulberry Street. He indicated that his little girl, Melissa, had been a passenger on the plane that crashed, and her body had been recovered. He said that identifying her remains had been the most horrific event of his life. He wanted Doug to know how sorry he was not to have called him when Zack’s plane crashed. Now he understood what it was like to lose a child.
He remembered the little girl who was as cute as a button when they lived next door. He couldn’t believe she was dead, but even more terrible was the possibility Zack had orchestrated her death. Could he live with himself, knowing that sooner or later another plane would crash and other little girls like Melissa would be slaughtered? At that moment, he decided to become a vampire killer.
A tear rolled down his face as he returned to Zack’s room to search more thoroughly. He didn’t find any more gruesome items. He needed to think. Where could his wife and son be? And suddenly he remembered what he’d promised Fiona on their wedding day.