With her work done and her adrenalin fading, the pain set in and she fell to the floor with a huff. Her twisted right ankle was beginning to ache and she could see bloody footprints that she had left on the way out and back to the hallway. The bottom of her left foot was blotted a crimson red. She glanced up nervously at the attic door and then pulled herself to her feet and limped into the bathroom.
Cleaning the cut, she found it wasn’t nearly as bad as she originally thought. A good sized bandage was all it took to cover the wound. With her left foot bandaged up, she hobbled to the kitchen to get some ibuprofen and an ice pack for her ankle. Then she loaded up her arms with food and bottled water, and after dropping her booty off in her bedroom, returned to her father’s gun cabinet where she found his double barrel shotgun and a box of shells she hoped would work with it. Grabbing the cordless phone off of his desk as she left his study, she went back to her room, closed the door, and shoved her desk chair up underneath the door handle.
Then she stopped, looked back at the chair and kicked it out from underneath the door handle. Putting the chair back behind her desk, she dragged her heavy dresser in front of the door. Then she sat down on the bed and picked up the shotgun.
Getting it to properly open was another story. She had seen her dad do it before, but it took a bit of finagling to get the barrels to crack open. She felt a bit of relief when the twelve gauge shells slipped snugly into the barrels of the gun. She locked the barrels back up into the loaded position and waited, staring at the door.
She wasn’t sure what she was waiting for. Maybe nothing. Maybe the door handle would begin to turn ever so slowly. Or maybe the door would begin to shudder and shake violently as the thing from the attic tried to force its way into her room. Either way, she was ready for it.
Virginia waited for a long time, but nothing happened. No banging on the door. No creaks in the ceiling. No door knobs turning. She was beginning to feel quite foolish. She knew how easily your mind could play tricks on you. But she had never experienced that illusion with such ferocity before. If she had just taken a flashlight with her, the entire experience could have been different. Even the voice, Virginia was quite certain, had been in her head.
She looked down at the shotgun clutched in her arms and smirked. “I can’t believe I did this.” She said to herself. “I’m such an idiot.” She went about cleaning up her cache of supplies she had hoped would get her through the day of waiting out the thing in the attic. She unloaded the shotgun and dragged the dresser back away from her bedroom door.
As she opened the door, the telephone rang and her heart nearly sprung from her chest once more. She hadn’t realized how quiet the house had been until that silence was suddenly broken. She looked at the caller ID. It was her Dad. If there was one thing the incident in the attic had done, it was to take her mind off of all her other woes. But with the distraction over, all her worries returned to her in force. She scooped up the shotgun and its ammunition and ran to her father’s study to replace them as she pressed the talk button on the telephone.
“Please tell me she’s okay!” She blurted out without any type of greeting.
“Some good news, some bad, but very little good, I’m afraid. Ginny, your sister was on that bus. But the woman they found near her purse was not your sister. Out of the twenty three people the bus company knows were on that bus, there are only fifteen victims found. The other eight, Julia included, are missing. But she’s alive somewhere. I just know it. Ginny, I have to find her.”
Her dad sounded so tired. She wished she could hug him over the phone. “What do you want to do?”
“I’ve got a motel room here in town. I’m going to look for your sister. Can you stay home in case she tries to contact us? Ginny, I’m so worried.”
“I know, Dad. I am, too.” She thought again about the attic. The nagging, yet totally irrational fear, just wouldn’t loosen its grip. “I’ll stay here, just in case. I’m sure she’ll call soon.”
He sighed. “Thanks, kiddo. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Daddy.”
She hung up the phone and finished putting away the shotgun and the food she had taken from the kitchen. She went back to her room and thought about removing the stepladder from the hallway, then thought maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to leave it there for the night.
The phone rang again while she crawled back into bed. It was the hospital where her mom had died. They probably needed some information about the burial. She had no intention of rehashing the details of her mother’s death with the hospital. She was still angry even though she knew it wasn’t their fault. She just needed someone to blame for a while. The hospital had become the scapegoat for her mother’s death. She let the answering machine pick up the call and never listened to the message.
What she would’ve heard, had she listened to the message, was that the police were investigating the theft of her mother’s corpse. They even had a sketch of the suspect, in fact. The suspect in the case was a young woman, age twenty-five to thirty, slim, athletic build, with long white hair and blue eyes.
No more news of Julia would come that day. Virginia kept herself busy with as many mundane tasks as she could find around the house. That night she slept fitfully and dreamed of her mother.
She dreamed that her mother came into her room, held her, kissed her forehead, and stroked her hair. It was a beautiful dream that brought tears to her eyes when she woke the next morning. But when the tears stopped, she noticed Anna, her childhood doll whom she hadn’t seen in years, was lying in the bed next to her. And the realization that the dream about her mother had most surely not been a dream at all came on like a tidal wave. At first, tears of joy rimmed her eyelids, until she remembered the silvery orbs in the darkness of the attic and a cold chill forced her to pull the covers tighter.
Chapter 8
Virginia sat in the hallway, staring at the trapdoor in the ceiling that led to the attic. She had her father’s shotgun again. She had watched the door to the attic all day, taking breaks only to get food and use the bathroom. When whatever was up there began to move around, she would make her move. She couldn’t gauge where it was without hearing some movement. So rather than risk being caught in some snare, she decided to wait the thing out. But her patience was quickly wearing thin. Her butt hurt from sitting on the ground and sheer boredom was lulling her to sleep. If something didn’t happen soon, she would call it quits for the night. The sun was falling beneath the horizon and the house was taking on its usual nighttime pallor.
Her head bobbed loosely on her neck and she sat up suddenly, unsure if she had heard the noise or simply been half asleep and dreaming. Then she heard it again. A very nondescript sliding sound. A few seconds later, she heard a small creak. A footstep? She thought. She heard another creak. This time, it was right next to the trap door in the ceiling! She ever-so-slowly raised the barrel of the shotgun towards the trap door. She wasn’t sure if her hands were shaking from the weight of the gun or fear, but if that thing showed its face, she would shoot first and ask questions later.
But the footsteps paused for just a moment before moving past the trap door. She pulled up to her feet and followed the footsteps through the house, all the way to the far wall of her sister’s old room before they stopped. She thought for a long time that whatever it was must have been sitting in the attic right above her then remembered the old attic vent that never closed. Could it have gone out through the vent? She wondered.
She sprinted down the stairs and to the front door of the house. She ripped the door open and began circling the house, flashlight in hand, looking for the old vent. She finally found it just above the garage and wasn’t surprised at all to see it sitting ajar. Then a sudden wave of terror hit her as she realized that if the thing wasn’t in the attic anymore, that meant it was outside with her!
She ran back into the house as fast as she could and slammed the door behind her, locking every lock she could find. She ran throug
h the house, checking every window and door and soon found herself at the top of the stairs, staring at the trap door in the ceiling again.
The time was now or never. She knew it, but she couldn’t bring herself to reach up and pull down the stairs. She reached up for the string once, twice, both times retracting her shaking hand as if she had been bitten by an invisible viper.
“Get a hold of yourself, Virginia!” She spat. She reached up a third time and drew down the stairs to the attic. Nothing moved past the portal above her. Nothing reached out with clawed hands to pull her into the darkness. With renewed resolve, she pointed the flashlight straight ahead and moved slowly up the stairs and into the attic.
Madeline woke just after full dark. She could tell because the orange rim of daylight had disappeared from the edges of the roof vent she used to gain access to the house. Her arm was pinned underneath her and she slid it out from underneath and dragged herself to her feet. She felt renewed, fresh. She walked quietly towards the roof vent, careful to walk softly on the floor joists so as not to create too much noise, but stopped at the attic steps, still neatly folded and stowed away. She thought for a moment of lowering them and going to see Ginny again and then chided herself. That was stupid, last night. She thought. What if she had woken up while I was with her? Good thing she sleeps like the dead. Madeline winced at her own analogy. It was a poor choice of words, especially in light of recent events. She moved past the attic stairs and squeezed out the roof vent and onto the garage roof outside.
She took off at a dead sprint and leapt off the top of the garage, feeling the exhilaration of the wind in her hair. She wasn’t sure where she was going, just that she was hunting.
When she found them, they were in a small clearing near an old stone cabin. A bonfire roared in the center of their camp. She was alerted to their presence by the screams of a young girl, maybe sixteen years old. She heard the vampires laughing as they passed her around the campfire like a bottle of cheap whiskey. The girl was crying and kept looking over at a pile of flesh being devoured by a small group of humanoid type creatures. They looked human, but something was missing. The humanoids sat around the mass of unrecognizable flesh like chimpanzees in the wild. They picked with their fingers and gnawed on bones that may have once been human, maybe something else entirely. It seemed the humanoids didn’t know how to feed without mutilating their subject. Some of them sat away from the group, gnawing on a limb or a pile of entrails they had managed to sneak away with. She guessed they were some type of vampire as well but wondered why she hadn’t become like them.
She was grossly outnumbered and for the first time since becoming a vampire, Madeline felt a sense of helplessness. The girl was doomed and the mass of flesh that the humanoids were eating was long past saving. Madeline could only watch in horror as the vampires around the fire sapped the life force of the girl. Her limbs went lifeless and her sobbing ceased. Madeline was sure the girl was dead. That fact didn’t make the scene any less disturbing. She would’ve killed them all right then and there if she had had the means.
Instead, she circled around to the rear of the group where one of the humanoids had stolen away with the leg of the body they were feeding on. It was hiding behind the cabin and she could clearly see its features in the moonlight. Its face was a mess of gore and its nose had been ripped off, probably in a fight over food. Its eyes glowed red in the moonlight and it was suspiciously glancing back and forth over its shoulders in between bites lest its meal be taken away. It was a male, or at least had been. It was missing its clothes and she could see its genitals hanging between its legs from the silhouette of the crouching position it was in. She ducked underneath a nearby bush, clucked her tongue and tapped one of the leaves of the bush.
The humanoid snapped its head up from its meal and emitted a low, throaty growl. Keeping the thing in sight while staying hidden, she backed away about ten feet and made the sound again. It dropped the leg it had been chewing on and began to skulk forward on all fours like a prowling leopard. She moved away again and made the sound for the third time. This time, the humanoid bolted towards the sound. She ran from her position and let it see her. The chase was on!
She powered well ahead of the thing but it was slowly gaining on her. It made no difference. Madeline wasn’t trying to get away. She ran her tongue over the tip of one of her canine teeth that had begun to grow longer, sharper. The better to eat you with, my dear! She thought and smiled.
When she felt they were far enough away from the camp, she ducked behind a large bush and as the humanoid came bursting through, she dove onto its back and wrapped her arms and legs around the beast as it crashed face-first into the muck, unable to use its pinned arms to stop itself. Her teeth sank easily into the flesh of its neck, the blood pulsing into her. Its struggle grew weaker and weaker until it ceased.
Feeding on the humanoid was like nothing she had experienced, yet. It tasted differently, smelled differently. And the power she felt after feeding on it was incredible! She felt like a live electrical wire. Power pulsated through her. Raw, pure energy. She felt like she could lift a bus!
Her thirst sated, she ran back to the house where she leapt up onto the roof and climbed back in through the vent in the attic.
Virginia had only waited in the darkness of the attic for an hour or so when she heard the soft footfalls of something on the garage roof outside. She was instantly terrified. What seemed like such a good idea a few hours ago now felt like suicide. What was she thinking even coming up here! But it was too late to make a run for it. The vent was open and whatever was living in her attic was crawling inside. It took all she had to keep her bladder from releasing. Her hands shook, but she clicked on her flashlight and yelled, “Freeze!”, because that’s how every police officer on television does it.
But all she saw was a ghostly white face and a glimmer of silvery white hair, and the intruder was gone. She searched frantically with the flashlight only to have it knocked away by some unseen force. The flashlight clattered to the other side of the attic and broke. The shotgun went off as it, too, was torn from her grasp.
She searched the darkness, the muzzle flash from the shotgun leaving a huge orange blot in the middle of her vision. “Please don’t hurt me!” She cried out. “I was only trying to find out who was up here!” She dropped to her knees, hands raised, even though it was too dark for the gesture to be seen.
She heard a grunt from a few feet away. Then a voice, angry, but familiar. “You nearly shot me, Ginny.” The voice said.
“Mom?” It couldn’t be. She’s dead. We saw her dead on the steel table in the morgue! She thought.
“Yes, Honey. But you shouldn’t have come up here. I can’t do this. I can’t…” Her mom trailed off.
“Are you hurt?” She felt in the darkness for her mom but she had backed away.
“No, I’m fine.”
“Mom, you can’t be here. They said you were dead, Mom! They said you were dead!” Virginia felt the tears warm her face as her mother’s caressing arms wrapped gently around her. Something was off, Ginny would remember thinking at that moment. Something was not quite right about her mother, but she couldn’t pinpoint it. Still, the woman holding her was her mother. Of that, she was certain.
“Shh. Shh. Don’t cry, Honey. It’s okay. I know this is crazy. But it’s me. It really is.” Her mother said.
“Then why are you hiding up here? How do you even get up here? Your sixty-two, Mom. And your arms…” Virginia pulled away. “They’re like… Like steel.”
“Listen, Ginny. Things are different now.” Her mother said with a hint of hesitation. “Things are going to be different from now on. I don’t know if I can stay.”
“What the hell are you talking about? What do you mean you can’t stay?”
“I mean…” Her mom stumbled over the words. “I’m not exactly who I used to be.”
“I don’t understand.” Ginny was getting frustrated with the conversation. She didn’t unde
rstand it. She didn’t understand any of it. How was her mother alive? Why was she living in their attic? Why did she have to leave? None of it made any sense.
“Ginny, let’s go downstairs and talk. I’ll explain everything, but you have to promise not to freak out.”
Ginny knew that that kind of promise was much more easily made than kept, but she agreed. She walked down the rickety attic stairs and waited there for her mother.
“Now, I’m going to look quite a bit different to you. But you need to understand that it’s really me, okay?” She heard her mother’s voice call from the darkness of the attic.
Virginia had no idea just how right the woman in the attic was until she stepped down into the light. There was no way this person was her mother. Her body was slender and taut, like a strung bow. Her hair was her mother’s lustrous white, but her eyes were a deeper blue, and her skin… Her skin was that of a newborn’s unblemished perfection. No way was this woman her mother! Virginia felt the anger well inside her. “I don’t know who you are, but you need to leave before I call the cops.”
“Ginny, please just hear me out.” The woman said.
But Virginia wasn’t in the mood to hear anyone out. Least of all, this intruder that sneaks into her house and then tries to say she is her dead mother! She folded her arms under her breasts and glared at the woman.
“I was attacked by something, honey. Something… I don’t even know what. But it bit me and I woke up in the morgue. I’m telling the truth, please, you have to believe me.”
“So now you’re telling me you were bitten by a fucking vampire? Sorry, not buying it.” The woman seemed taken aback by her profanity. Truth be told, Virginia almost never used the f-word. But under the circumstances, it lent some credence to the anger that lay broiling underneath.
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