I was under the influence of Dark Shadows and Stephen King when I wrote this.
I was so regretting my not-so-bright idea of taking Spike’s dare to go into the haunted house a couple of miles out of town. Actually, I never should have said I’d been anywhere near the place. He said some dorky little nerdlet like me couldn’t have the balls to go into it. He said I should prove it. He dared me.
So we all rode our bikes up here. We took the road out of town and the trees just got thicker and taller on both sides. The house wasn’t even on a road. It must be really old because the only way to get there is up this unpaved dirt road with pits and bumps. It was hard enough getting up the road on a bike, never mind a car.
Over my head, there were all these thick dark clouds. I wished I hadn’t taken the dare already. The sky looked like it was going to open up and let loose a dam of water. I heard the sound of a cannon being shot off but I knew it wasn’t that. It was thunder. We were going to have one mother of a storm. If nothing else, we might all get electrocuted!
I couldn’t back out now, though. These guys would never let me live it down. They’d call me a lot worse than ‘dorky little nerdlet’ at school and everyone would laugh.
So now we came to the clearing and Spike hopped off his bike. He and the others turned around to look at me. They didn’t say anything yet, just gave me this “boy are you ever in for it now” kind of look.
“Man, it’s raining,” Jack said.
It’d just begun. It wasn’t a downpour yet but it would be really soon. That far-off cannon sounding thunder boomed again. The ground already had that rained-on earthy smell to it. It was so quiet except for that thunder. It’s like everything went into hiding.
“Well?” Spike said.
I dropped my bike on the ground and started up the path to the house. Man, I was scared now. I’d never been inside that thing before. Why did I say I had? I guess I just wanted them to think I wasn’t some little wuss.
That house hadn’t been lived in for years. The windows were all broken out and the wood was all splintery and gray. There were all kinds of stories about the place. It was cursed, that’s all I knew. It had the 17 year curse on it, like those locusts that live under the ground.
I sure didn’t want to go in there, but I had no other choice.
I’d just set foot on the old warped porch when there was a flash of lightning that lit up the sky. I looked up at the flash and there was something in a window up there! I stopped cold, trying to see what it was. It was gone in a flash, just that quick but I swear I saw a face. I think I wasn’t the only one who saw it.
“What was that?” Danny was asking.
“Did you see it too?” Jack asked him.
“It wasn’t anything,” Spike said like he was talking to a couple of babies. “You’re scared of lightning, that’s all!”
“No, man, I swear! It was there,” Jack said insistently.
Spike looked over at me. “Well, then, I guess YOU can go check it out, right?”
I didn’t want to go in there.
“What, scared?” Spike sneered. “If you’ve already been in there so many times then you know there’s nothing there, right?”
I didn’t want to go in there. “Right,” I said. I had to go in there. I had to. And so I kept going to the door and I just kept praying.
Just as I got through the door, the sky really opened up. I still didn’t want to go in there but it had to be better than being out in the open at the moment. I could just barely hear the guys yelling outside, the thunder had got so loud. There was a flash of lightning that lit up the inside of the house and I got a good look around.
There was some old furniture but it had been all busted up. Something smelled nasty, like it’d been dead or moldy awhile. I just stood there by the door, not moving. I was waiting for the rain to go away so I could run back outside. I figured I’d been in here long enough to show the guys I wasn’t any chicken. Besides, they’d all run off.
I was starting to ease back out the door when I heard someone coming down the stairs. No other living person could be in this place, so I yanked the door open to run.
“Wait! I want to go with you!”
My hair was about standing up on end but I stopped, frozen. It might have been because I was too scared to move. It sounded like a little kid’s voice. I looked over my shoulder and more lightning flashed. There was another kid coming down the stairs who looked very much alive!
I couldn’t tell if the kid was a boy or a girl. The hair was kind of scraggly like it had been slept on for days without being combed. The kid was wearing a tee shirt and jeans, like me. The kid ran down the rest of the stairs.
“Who are you?” I asked.
The kid slowed down and stopped. “Andrea. What’s your name?”
It was a girl.
“Sam,” I said. I was glad I hadn’t run from a girl. Everyone would have really laughed then. “I never saw you before.”
“I don’t really live that close.” Andrea looked over her shoulder.
“Is anyone else here?” I asked nervously.
“No, just me.”
“What are you doing here? Especially all alone.”
“Well, I just walked here.”
There was another flash of lighting and I could see her face better. Boy! She looked like she was wearing white face paint, like a clown. Her eyes had dark circles under them.
“What happened to you?” I asked. Halloween wasn’t for another month.
Andrea looked over her shoulder again and then back. She looked scared and grabbed my arm. Her fingers were so cold she almost froze my skin!
“I’m cold,” she said, like I didn’t already know. “And I’m hungry. Isn’t there a pizza place in town? Can we go there?”
“I don’t think I have any money,” I said.
“I do,” she said quickly.
“Yeah, but I don’t know who you are,” I said.
“I’ll share my pizza with you, okay? And I’ll tell you why I’m here, okay?”
Well, pizza! I couldn’t turn that down. “Okay,” I said. “But we should wait for the rain to stop.”
“It’s not that bad out anymore,” she said. She looked upstairs and then around again. “It’s getting late, isn’t it? Isn’t it like dinner time?”
I wasn’t sure. It had gotten dark so quickly when the storm came. I knew one thing, though … I was hungry. “Okay, let’s go.”
She kept looking over her shoulder as we left the house and went down the steps. The rain slowed down to almost nothing and the booming had stopped.
“Do you have a bike?” I asked her.
She shook her head, no. She shivered a little bit even though she couldn’t be that soaked, having been inside when the storm started.
“Hey, did you run away or something, Andrea?” I asked her. She was looking around for someone, that’s for sure.
“Come on, let’s hurry,” she said. “I’ll tell you at the pizza place. Can you ride me on your bike?”
I thought we could walk but she wanted to get away so bad I said yeah. She got on the bike behind me and hung her feet down. I had a little trouble getting started but then we got riding away from that spooky old house.
We didn’t talk much after that until we got to Tony’s Pizzeria. She paid for two slices and two Cokes and we went and sat down in one of the booths.
“Okay, so what’s going on? Where did you come from?”
“I was brought here,” she said. “I live in a foster home, but it’s way far from here.”
“So who brought you?”
Andrea bit her lip and looked down at her pizza. I kept watching her. She looked scared but she also looked sneaky. “I don’t know his name,” she said finally.
“What, did he kidnap you or something?” I asked. This was going to be really cool, I could tell. Maybe Spike and the other guys wouldn’t pick on me anymore because I was about to solve a kidnapping case!
“Um, well, yeah,” Andrea said, and her face was turning all kinds of red. Then she whispered, “Well, no.”
“NO?” I was surprised. She went away with some guy and she didn’t know who he was?
“I had a dream,” she went on. She was just looking down at her pizza and not eating it. “I woke up because I felt a bee sting me and there was this guy there.”
I didn’t say anything. This was really going to be good!
“And when I asked him what was he doing there, he just smiled.”
There was something in her face when she said that. “Was his smile scary?”
She nodded. “His teeth were very sharp.”
“Whoa! Like a monster?”
“Like a … a … like Barnabas Collins from <i>Dark Shadows</i>.”
Well, I knew who <i>that</i> was all right! “Oh, man!” I was shocked beyond belief. A vampire! There wasn’t supposed to be any such thing as a vampire! “So it was just a dream, right?”
“I don’t know,” she said softly. Her hands were at her throat like she was going to move her collar. She was wearing this necklace. It sort of looked like those cheap ones you might find in a dollar store or something. It looked like it had been broken to pieces and then glued back together or something.
“What’s that necklace you’re wearing?” I asked her.
“Oh, it’s just a necklace,” she answered.
It was like Andrea knew what I was thinking. Slowly, she moved her collar and I saw bite marks on her neck. It looked like they’d healed some. “Could this be from a dream?”
I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“I need your help,” she said then. “I need to find out where he is and kill him.”
“But you’re just a kid! You should tell a cop or something.”
“I can’t,” she said. “They wouldn’t listen.”
“But what about your parents? They’re going to know you’re missing!”
“I don’t live with them,” she said. Yeah. I’d forgotten that. “I live in a foster home and they won’t care except they won’t get any more money from social services.”
“Why don’t you just run away from here? I could help you do that.” I couldn’t think of one single way a kid could kill a vampire – not even with another kid’s help!
“He won’t let me go,” she said.
Well, if there really are vampires, why could she tell me? Barnabas made all the people he bit keep his secret. I asked her.
“I don’t know. It’s not all the same, I guess. But he’ll find me and he’ll make me one too.”
That was really scary. I didn’t feel like eating my pizza anymore. I got up real fast. “I’ve got to go.”
“But I need your help!” She said and she sounded like she was going to cry.
I got to the door as fast as I could. I didn’t want to seem “cool” anymore and I didn’t want to solve this kidnap case. “I gotta go, my parents will kill me,” I mumbled and I got out. I picked up my bike and rode home as fast as I could.
I tried to forget that whole experience. When I went to school the next day, I wondered if Spike was going to give me a hard time but he didn’t. It seems like him and Jack and Danny were trying real hard to steer clear of me. Man, that was a relief!
At home, my old man and old lady weren’t hassling me as much either.
I was beginning to wonder if I looked different or smelled different or something. Everyone who ever bugged me before didn’t have anything to say to me. Actually, it was kind of cool.
Even Shep, my beagle, didn’t seem to want to be around me and he was a real psycho dog. The minute I was out of his sight he’d start barking and whining. My old lady was always in my face about my neurotic dog. But after I got home, all Shep did was whine and cry when I’d come around.
The only thing I didn’t like about people and Shep leaving me alone was that I always felt like somebody was watching me. I’d turn around real quick to see if it was that spooky Andrea and no one would be there. That wasn’t so cool.
About two nights after I met that crazy Andrea I had the dream for the first time.
I know, I shouldn’t have been reading <u>Salem’s Lot</u> after everything that happened to me. I don’t even know why I picked that book to read. It’s about a town that gets over run by vampires. Well, I felt good and spooked one night and I kept expecting to see Andrea floating outside my window.
I made sure the window was locked and I pulled the shade down before I went to bed.
Before I fell asleep completely, though, I heard this scratching noise at the window. Oh man! I couldn’t believe it! I ignored it and pulled the sheet over my head.
Later, I heard Andrea say, “You didn’t help me.”
“Go away,” I said.
“I’m not going away. You let me in and I’ve brought a friend.”
“No, I did not let you in!” I answered, pissed off. I pushed the sheet down and sat up. I didn’t see anyone. “Where are you?” I asked.
I felt really cold hands on my shoulder, pulling me back on the bed. My head went back into something cold instead of my pillow. “Hey!” I was scared.
“We want you to join us,” Andrea said. She sounded like one of those soap opera sluts.
“Join who? Just leave me alone!”
There was another shape in front of me. It was someone wearing a hood and long cape. All of a sudden there were white dead looking hands coming at me from that cape. I screamed. I know what it was.
I saw red hot circles inside the hood and then there was a gleaming white. Two sharp teeth! There was also this smell of death coming from the vampire’s face. I couldn’t really see anything except those red eyes and the sharp teeth.
Those dead hands grabbed my head and turned it to the side. With Andrea also holding my shoulders down, I couldn’t move. I started screaming, hoping my parents would hear and come save me.
The vampire climbed on top of me and that hot nasty breath was in my face for a minute. Then the cold hands turned my head to the side. I screamed again. If my parents didn’t hurry up it would be too late!
And then I felt the sharpest pain in my neck. My whole body went on fire for a minute and then I started to relax. I stopped screaming. I didn’t care if my parents showed up or not. I wasn’t scared anymore either. I could have power, just like Andrea and the vampire. Now I was glad it was biting me. Soon it would be all over.
