The Vanishing Vampire (2 page)

“Tell me.” He hopped into his bed.

I told him. I watered it down and made up stuff to replace the really gruesome parts. He didn't need to know about the guy running around with his head flopping in two pieces, or what happened when the wizard cast the spell on the earthworms. The thought of that still made my stomach squirm. But I told him enough about the film for him to feel that he'd been there. That was our ritual. Rory wasn't allowed to see monster movies yet. But little kids need monsters, too. So I shared the movie with him.

“Like it?” I asked when I was done.

Rory grinned like a starving man who had just been given a box of chocolate doughnuts. He held out his arms and said, “Look, no goose bumps.”

“You're tougher than I thought. Now, go to sleep.”

“One more story. Please.”

Normally, I would have given in, but I was so sleepy, I figured I'd be lucky to make it to my room without stopping in the hall to take a nap. “I can't. I'm really tired. I'm wiped out. I'm sapped of all strength.” I tucked him in, then stepped away.

“Don't close the door,” he said as I left—even though he knew I wouldn't. Rory hated having his door closed at night, especially right after I told him about a movie. I was just the opposite when I was his age. I always felt safer when the door was shut.

I headed down the hall to my room.

Frankenstein's monster was waiting for me.

Six feet nine and in living color. What a great poster. He was hanging out with the mummy on his left and the werewolf to the right. It was the Lon Chaney Jr. version of the werewolf. Dracula, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the Thing were on the opposite wall. I loved the classics.

I hit the bed like a shovelful of dirt dropping into a pit. I just flopped onto the mattress and passed out before the first bounce.

I don't remember my dreams that night, but I think that I dreamed.

And I changed.

 

Three

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

I changed during the night. It wasn't a big change. Like once, a couple of years ago, I'd chipped a tooth. It was a tiny chip—so small, you almost couldn't see it. But it felt really, really big. Suddenly, there was this huge wrongness against my tongue. After a while, I got used to it. I don't even notice it now. It just belongs there.

This new change was much harder to describe, and so strange and dim that I knew I could chase after it forever without figuring it out.

It was hard to put in words. But when I opened my eyes, the world seemed different.
Sharper
is the best way I could describe it. Things were sharper—the way they are under a microscope. And it wasn't just things I saw. All my senses had changed. I could smell breakfast. That's not too strange, except I wasn't
smelling
the scent of bacon. I was smelling the bacon itself. That one drifting aroma contained the whole history of the animal that it came from.

I could hear everything. I heard the sizzle of the bacon in the pan, but I also heard the hiss of the gas as it rushed through the pipes into the stove. I heard the flames under the pan, and even the smoke as it rose through the air and brushed against the ceiling. I heard my family. There was breakfast chatter. Mom and Dad were in the kitchen, along with Rory, and Her Royal Highness, the Princess Angelina, my brat of an older sister. They were all talking at once, but I could hear each one as if no one else were speaking.

And I was starving.

I felt nothing but hunger. I rolled out of bed and walked across the room. My window faces east, and a patch of sunlight crawls along the floor in the late morning. The bright patch seemed extremely warm to my bare feet, almost burning hot. I hurried past it and got dressed.

“Welcome to the world of the living,” Dad said as I stumbled into the kitchen.

“Hey, it's Sleeping Ugly,” Angelina said, looking up from the piece of toast she was buttering.

“Your Lowness,” I muttered back.

Rory grinned. Mom shot me a look.

“She started it,” I said.

Dad spoke. “Kids…” Dads have these spells they cast. One word, sometimes two or three.
Blam,
like magic, they work their charms on us helpless youngsters.
Kids
is one of the weaker spells, but it works well at the breakfast table. It doesn't have the power of
I'm warning you,
or the force of the dreaded
Okay, that's enough,
but Dad isn't one to waste his power.

I heaped my plate with bacon, eggs, and toast.

“Hungering for dead fried animals and unborn chickens?” Angelina asked.

Dad said she was going through a phase. Phase or not, I was getting pretty sick of it. “And how many poor stalks of wheat had their heads chopped off for that one slice of bread?” I asked. “Think about it. There they are, happily waving to each other in the field when,
slash,
the razor-sharp blade of the harvester comes along and slices them up. Heads go flying everywhere, making little wheat screams. Then, there's an even bigger horror.”

“Dad, make him stop,” Angelina whined.

But I was just warming up. This was getting good. “The poor victims are dragged off to the mill. As they shudder in horror, the huge stone wheel descends, closer and closer, crushing the last of their life from them—”

“Okay, that's
enough
.”

Blam
. Dad cast the spell of silence. I grinned at Angelina, who refused to look back. I was pleased to see she was staring at her toast with just a hint of disgust. Score one for the good guys.

“Crush,” Rory said. “Eeeeee!” He made a tiny scream, a Rory version of the death scream of a stalk of wheat. Little brothers can be pretty cool.

Dad looked at him, but didn't say anything. I saw a smile flicker across Dad's lips. But he hid it well. I guess he knew that Rory, if encouraged, would spend the rest of the day making those sounds.

I dug in to my breakfast, cleaning my plate in an instant. The flavor of everything was fabulous. I don't remember another breakfast that tasted so wonderful. I couldn't get enough.

“Glad to see you have an appetite,” Mom said, smiling.

I took another helping. I was still hungry. Something was wrong. I was stuffing my face, eating like the king of the pigs, but I didn't feel satisfied. I barely managed to hold off from taking a third serving.

As I carried my dish and silverware to the sink, I glanced at the knife that rested on my plate, not yet aware of what would happen when I picked it up.

 

Four

REFLECTIONS

I scraped my plate, rinsed it in the sink, and put it in the dishwasher. Mom has us trained fairly well. As I rinsed the knife, I saw my reflection. I also saw the refrigerator reflected in the knife blade. But the fridge was
behind
me. My folks listen to this old song by the Beatles called “I'm Looking Through You.” Well, in the knife, I was almost looking through me. I mean, I was there, but not by much.

The knife slipped from my fingers and clattered into the sink. I snatched it up and took another look.

Everything was normal. I was there. I was solid. I was worried. I put the knife in the dishwasher. I was tempted to take another look, but I was afraid of having the transparent version show up again.

As I was going upstairs, the phone rang. “It's for you,” my mom called from the kitchen.

“I'll get it up here!” I shouted, heading toward the phone in my parents' bedroom.

It was Norman on the other end. “Want to go into town?” he asked.

“Sure. I'll meet you by your house.” There was no point sitting around waiting to fade again.

I got dressed, grabbed my jacket, and headed out. The morning sun felt really hot. I took off the jacket, but that felt even worse with the sun beating down on me, so I put the jacket back on. As I walked past the house next door, Mr. Nordy's dog, Browser, came running up to the fence. I stopped to pet him.

As I reached out, Browser whined, then turned and ran around to the back of the house, his tail between his legs.

Weird.

I met Norman by his place, and we headed into town. It's not a long walk—about nine blocks. As soon as I reached him, Norman started telling me all about some new software he'd downloaded. He's big on that stuff. We both like monster movies and comics. And we both like video games. But Norman is way more into computers than I am. I think they're fun, but I don't get swallowed up by them the way he does. I could just imagine him getting sucked into his computer with nothing but his feet dangling out.

“Uh-oh,” Norman said after we'd walked a couple of blocks.

I looked ahead. Down the street, on our side, I saw one of life's real monsters. It was Lud Mellon. Put him together with his brother Bud, and you'd have enough IQ for half a person. They were stupid
and
mean. Getting a Mellon angry at you was like taking something from one of those cursed Egyptian tombs. Sooner or later, one way or another, doom would fall. It was always a good idea to avoid being noticed by Lud or Bud.

We crossed the street, hoping he hadn't spotted us. Luckily, Lud seemed to have something else on his tiny piece of mind and didn't look our way.

“I hate those guys,” Norman said. “Somewhere along the line, a couple of their genes took a U-turn and headed back to the Stone Age.”

“Agreed.” We reached the comic book shop without any other problems. This place sold comics and monster books and masks and stuff and was called the Gore and More Store. “Great,” I said, seeing that the newest issue of
Swollen Rat People from Another Universe
had finally arrived.

“Look,” Norman said, holding up his discovery. “It's the new
Hyper Hurricane Man
.”

“I'll tell you what: I'll get
Rat People,
you get
Hurricane,
and we'll swap after we read them.”

“Deal.” We took our purchases up to the register and paid Lenny.

“Thanks, guys,” he said as he counted the change. “The new
Hawkchild
is due out next week. Should I save a copy for you?”

“Sure,” I said. We headed out.

“Where to?” Norman asked as we returned to the bright light outside the store.

“Your house?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Mom's cooking.” Norman's mom was a caterer. She made fancy meals for people having parties. Most of the time, she was real friendly. But when she had a big order to fill, she didn't like having any extra kids around. So there were times we couldn't go to Norman's house. On the other hand, it also meant there was usually lots of good food when we did go there, since his mom was always trying new recipes. “How about your place?” Norman asked.

“We'll have to share our comics with Rory. That's okay with you, isn't it?”

“I don't mind. He can read mine first.”