Jessy's bat wings hung from the hook on the closet door, and her trick-or-treat bag sat ready in the middle of her desk. She popped the pop-up cat, listening to the squeak as the head sprang into existence. The transistor radio sat next to the bed, the sound turned down low. It was her last chance to get a story written this year.
Maybe the ghost was a girl who lived in the house a long time ago, when it was still a little railroad town, full of old wooden buildings and brick stores, like the ones downtown that had new siding and signs on them, but had been there forever. Her own house was an old house too, that had been there almost a hundred years. Or anyway, that’s how old Twyla said it was.
All she had so far was a page's worth of fog, and the moon barely visible in the mist. And the trees were bare, and the leaves were past the point they were at now, all dry and crumbling into dust and nothingness when people stepped on them.
When the fog thickened, the vampire appeared, and then, when it dissipated, he blew away, like a billow of snow in a snowstorm. That idea seemed kind of nice. She didn't know yet if he were old, or pale, or cute, so she left him mysterious, his face hidden in the shadows where he lurked. He would watch kids like her, walking by the cemetery and he’d be disapproving. Would he grab the girl and just drink her blood and kill her? Or would she get turned into a vampire? And if she got turned into a vampire, would everybody be able to tell right away?
The especially creepy thing about vampires, and werewolves, too, was that they bit people, and then those people became vampires and werewolves themselves. It didn't seem fair.
Finally, she got out her special plastic-wrapped pack of loose-leaf paper, and she took her pencil, and started writing the story straight through, from beginning to end, like she always ended up doing, no matter how much she thought about it beforehand.
It was set in one of the houses next to the cemetery, with that thin line of alleyway between them. There had been all these murders, and someone in the story mentioned it being like the ghost of Johnny the Hangman.
“That's just a story,” the main character said. “That never really happened.”
“But a vampire, you'll believe that.”
“Facts are facts.”
The heroine realized that her little sister’s boyfriend was the vampire, so she ran over to rescue her. She was wearing a necklace with a cross on it, but had it tucked under her shirt, so the vampire wouldn’t notice. When she got there, her sister was hypnotized, like people always were in vampire movies, and the boyfriend was about to bite her, when the heroine cut open her palm and held it out, tempting him, and drawing him away. Then she pulled out the cross and burned him with it, giving them a chance to escape.
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The Jack-o-Lantern Box Page 32
