Charlie Sullivan and the Monster Hunters: The Varcolac's Diary

by D. C. McGannon

  My damnable Lesser fools brought me a weak, fragile human. Its blood was dry and wholly unsatisfying, the flesh like ancient paper. I could not even finish it. I need more if my strength is to return. Something younger.

  My strength returns now. This last human’s blood was fresh and moist. Young. But I still hunger. That must be dealt with before I can begin again the Ritual.

  No matter. The time is close. I’m sending my most trusted servant to gather the last needed item for the Ritual. Until he returns, this will be my final entry. May I finish the Ritual and bring fear and glory back to my family’s line.

  “It ends there,” said Liev.

  Charlie’s hands had become limp and numb, and he became very cold, despite the warm hearth beside him. His mind wanted to believe this was a sick person’s way of making a joke. But he could not believe it to be a prank, as that would be only be denying the truth that was evident now. And looking at them, he realized the others couldn’t disregard the truth, either‌—‌not even Darcy.

  He thought about his recurring nightmares, about the Key, about this so called varcolac…. Could it all really be connected?

  Charlie realized Lisa was looking at him. Her big blackish eyes set him on edge. In truth, she was wondering about his instructions of what to look for back on Hunter’s Point. A book.

  “You’ve found a varcolac’s diary,” she said.

  “Yup,” agreed Liev. “We’re all doomed.”

  “Unless of course we kill the varcolac…,” she said, half in thought.

  Liev grimaced. “That would be quite difficult.”

  “How do we kill it?” Charlie and Nash asked at the same time.

  The twins looked at each other.

  “You can’t,” answered Liev.

  Lisa turned to her brother with a sour face. “That’s not true. You can kill it.”

  “Oh sure,” agreed Liev, “if you can get close enough without it biting your head off.”

  “Well, I’m not saying it’s easy, just that it’s not impossible….”

  “That’s arguable; look at Vlad Tepes. Nobody knows if he really ever died or not.”

  “We’re not talking about a possible vampire from history. We’re talking about a real, live varcolac.”

  Nash threw his hands up in frustration. “Look! I know you guys are excited but just‌…‌just tell us how we get rid of the thing, okay?”

  The twins looked at each other for a second or two.

  “It’ll be hard,” Liev said. “Give us until tomorrow. We’ll find out.”

  “Good,” said Charlie. “And then we have to go up there and kill it. Right?”

  Everyone nodded but Darcy.

  “We should,” said Nash. “We can’t just let this go on.”

  “Tomorrow night, then. We’ll meet again at Midday Street,” Liev said. He looked at Nash. “Do you think you could get us back up there, or should you get Fish again?”

  “I think I can get us back up there on my own. Fish is a bit superstitious as it is. If he knew some sort of monster was up there, well‌…‌he may stop us from going back.”

  Darcy chose to stand up indignantly at that point. “You’re all crazy! Insane! Whatever.”

  She grabbed her coat and went for the door.

  Charlie stood up. “Wait! Are you coming or not?”

  She stopped. She knew she had to. Deep down, it all made sense. And though that terrified her, it did not change the fact that she had to go along.

  “Yes,” she said, nearly biting her own tongue. “Just don’t tell anybody.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Lisa with a grimace. “Now that you’re crazy too, we’ll make sure no one else knows you’re crazy with us.”

  Chapter 4: Dangerous Discoveries

  The Chief of Assistants hobbled forward on all fours. His master’s eyes flashed like crimson lightning, fingers clicking impatiently against the armrest of the cold marble throne. The giant hearth behind the throne cast a long shadow down the length of the Hall, and the Chief of Assistants groveled within the shadow.

  “Where is it?”

  The Chief of Assistants bowed his head all the way to the floor, where his floppy ears fell flat. “M-m-my Lord. Fledglings, th-they stole your diary.”

  A fake smile flickered on the varcolac’s thin lips. “Human children. How did you even let the humans touch you?”

  “I d-d-don’t know, my Lord,” stammered the Chief of Assistants. He looked for a way out of his own failure. “They are different from other mortals. Strong, these fledglings are. Some have gifts. Up to no good, my Lord. Found them, sneaking around in the woods. No good at all.”

  The Dark Prince nodded. “We must be wary of them. Still, their blood could be what I search for.”

  The varcolac stood and prowled toward the trembling figure. He bit into his own wrist, drawing frigid blood. Using cold fingers, the Dark Prince smeared the blood upon the Chief of Assistant’s bare head, forming an ancient word: VISVS.

  “You are my eyes, now. Go and follow them.”

  The Chief of Assistants nodded anxiously, ready to be out of his master’s presence, and half ran, stumbling as he went, to the great double doors.

  “And take care!” the varcolac called.

  The Chief of Assistants stopped, quivering, and looked back to the Dark Prince. The varcolac’s face was shrouded in the darkness, but wrath shone openly through his eyes.

  “Losing my diary was no small failure. If you disappoint me again, you shall regret it. This much I assure you.”

  “Y-y-yes, m-my Lord.”

  “Darcy, what is wrong with you today? Darcy!”

  Darcy looked over her shoulder before turning back to her friends. They stared at her questioningly.

  “Hm?”

  “You seem off,” said Caitlin. “Like you’re not here. Is it‌…‌boy trouble?” she whispered.

  “What? No, I just….”

  Darcy saw the crazy twins pass by. Lisa looked her dead in the eye, waving with a spiteful smile.

  “Were those the Vadiknovs?” asked one of her friends. “What did she want?”

  “Well how should I know,” grumbled Darcy, keeping an eye out to avoid Charlie or Nash.

  Caitlin popped a large, pink bubble. “You know, I dropped by your house last night. Where were you?”

  “Out. I‌…‌I’ll see you guys later, I’ve got to get to class.”

  Her friends watched as Darcy all but ran away, looking over her shoulder as if somebody was watching her and waiting to pounce.

  Nash sat in Miss Felton’s class, restlessly fidgeting his leg and changing his position in the chair every other minute or so. His classmates noticed this, and decided to have some fun at his expense. They threw paper balls and erasers at him whenever the teacher was not looking.

  Miss Felton noticed Nash’s impatient demeanor, although she missed the expertly thrown objects. Still, you could not reprimand a student for being in a hurry to get out of school. She decided to talk to him after class and try to see what was bothering him.

  That was until she sent him to the principal.

  Johnny Brown had just advanced from throwing tiny paper airplanes at Nash to spit balls. Miss Felton missed this, too, but happened to turn around when Nash flew out of his seat and hurled a pencil back at Johnny.

  Poor Johnny was sent to the nurse’s office with a scratched lip. Nash was sent to Mr. Adams’ office, storming his way there and all the way through to an immediate detention.

  The twins did not fidget like Nash, but they were impatient in their own way. Lisa dealt with this by reading up on the history of Hunter’s Key, while Liev pretended to sleep through class. He only raised his head to reply to her various mutterings about the legends of Hunter’s Key.

  Suddenly Mr. Switzler was by their side. He snatched the book away from Lisa.

  “What is this, young lady? No outside reading, thank you. And no talking in class, either. You two find different seats.”
r />   “What?” cried Liev.

  The rest of the class looked up from their books. The Vadiknov twins, separate?

  Mr. Switzler narrowed his eyes. “You heard me, Vadiknov. Move.”

  Liev glowered at his teacher, but felt a hand on his arm. He turned to see Lisa shaking her head.

  Reluctantly, the twins moved to opposite sides of the class.

  As for Charlie, he would have surely been sent to the principal’s office for his inability to focus on his schoolwork, had Mrs. Pinkerly not been sick. Another, more vivid nightmare haunted his thoughts, as well as what might lie ahead in Hunter’s Key.

  He was only too thankful, then, that Mrs. Pinkerly was out today, and that Mr. Snout was substituting for her. Mr. Snout did not, due to personal policy, pay attention to students. He only had eyes for the chalkboard. He had learned after 29 years of professional experience that paying attention to students only placed one into a heap of unpleasant confrontations and situations.

  That wasn’t to say Charlie was having a day any better than the others were having. If you, dear reader, can imagine trekking through sinister woods to find kidnappers and otherworldly diaries and discovering monsters really do exist, only to be dragged back to school the next day…. Well, if you can imagine that, you know what Charlie was going through. He sped into the hallway the moment the bell rang.

  And so it was that Charlie Sullivan, the Vadiknov twins, and Darcy Witherington all flew out of the school doors and, trying desperately to avoid each other, took the long routes to their respective homes.

  An hour later, as the sun made its way west, the few detentionees of the day were let out, including a very angry Nash Stormstepper. The few who remained, including Donnie Wickles, noticed him stomping away meaningfully and efficiently down the stairs and past the school parking lot. Donnie raised an eyebrow and carefully began to follow.

  The fledglings did not stay together. That sorely disturbed the Chief of Assistants. What was worse, none of them carried the diary.

  He looked from the black and white ones, to the boy, to the girl with her head bowed low. Which did the master want him to follow? And where was the other one?

  Ramming his head on the roof of the school, the Chief of Assistants quickly decided to follow the boy. The one with the gift forming in his eyes. He was the one who had found the diary. Perhaps he had been the one to keep it.

  Quickly and quietly, the Chief of Assistants began to follow.

  “Hey Dad!” Charlie called out as he closed the front door.

  “Hello?”

  It sounded like Mr. Sullivan was in his study.

  Charlie ducked into the kitchen, grabbed an apple, and skipped two steps at a time on the way to his room. He almost bumped into Mr. Sullivan when he reached the landing of the second floor.

  “Hey kiddo. Going a little fast, huh?”

  His mouth full of apple, Charlie nodded. “Me and some friends are going to a movie. Told them I’d meet ‘em after school.”

  He walked into his room and dropped his backpack on the floor, looking for his pocket flashlight.

  “Oh?” said Mr. Sullivan from the landing. “What movie are you going to see?”

  Charlie hesitated. He did not want to lie to his dad, but what could he say? That he was going to kill a vampiric monster, which, by the way, had been the cause of all the missing people?

  “Vampire Reign,” he answered guiltily.

  Then he grimaced. It was the first thing that came to mind, given yesterday’s events, but he was not sure if Mr. Sullivan would be too happy about him going to see a gory horror flick.

  That, and he was lying.

  “Really? Tell me how that is, will you? I was thinking of taking your mother to the movies. Thought she might like it.”

  Charlie smiled to himself. He doubted that his mom would enjoy Vampire Reign at all.

  “Sure thing!” he called. He found his flashlight and escaped down the stairs, and through the front door, calling behind him, “Love ya! See ya!”

  Mr. Sullivan smiled, sipping a cup of joe before going back to his writing. They grew up so fast these days.

  Darcy was surprised to see she was the first to show up on Midday Street. She wore what she thought to be a drab hoodie and plain jeans, making sure no passerby would recognize her. She looked around and began to feel rather foolish, wondering when the others were coming.

  Accordingly, she nearly jumped out of her drabness and back when Lisa spoke from behind her.

  “Punctual, are we? I thought you’d have locked yourself in your room.”

  Darcy quickly composed herself. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “Only that I don’t really see what’s in it for you, doing all this. Are you just trying to get the juicy gossip, or do you have the hots for one of these guys?”

  “Easy,” Liev whispered to his sister. He knew Lisa had not been in the best of moods today.

  Charlie walked up just then. Ran actually. He bent in half with his hands on his knees, trying unsuccessfully to catch his breath. He rubbed his eyes furiously. Judging by how bloodshot they were, the others assumed he had a sleepless night.

  “Well,” said Lisa, her lip curling cruelly, “there’s your boyfriend. Or wait, is it the other one?”

  “Hey guys,” said Charlie, catching just the last half of Lisa’s statement. “What’s up?”

  Darcy “hmpfed” and turned to look at the trees. Lisa looked in the opposite direction. Charlie and Liev awkwardly looked around for a few long seconds before Charlie asked the question that had been worrying him all day.

  “So how do we kill it?”

  “Well,” Liev began, ready to launch into one of his eloquent and elaborate speeches, but he decided not to, given the ineloquent nature of what they must do. “Lisa and I did some checking. The most trusted method would be to‌…‌find the varcolac, drive a nail into its heart, behead it, cut it into pieces, then burn it and scatter the ashes.”

  “Oh,” said Charlie, rubbing his neck. “I see.”

  A few minutes later, Nash arrived in his customary fury. After a session with the library’s dreadful brown wall, he was late and that upset him. The gossip reached him just as he left detention that Nash Stormstepper was love-struck and very nervous about a certain girl, and that upset him even more. He had stubbed his toe on his way, and that upset him most.

  “Hey,” said Charlie jovially.

  Nash just stared at him with a fiery glare until Charlie shrunk away.

  “Are we all ready?” Liev asked, looking around.

  It was bad timing. Darcy had been texting on her phone to Caitlin about a new shade of nail polish she recently bought when suddenly she cried out in despair.

  “Oh, no!”

  Everyone looked at her questioningly with varying degrees, all the way from Nash’s hot-headed temperament to Lisa’s icy glare.

  “I just realized. My phone battery is dead!”

  Nash turned bright red. “Your phone battery? We’re about to go kill a vampire‌—‌”

  “Varcolac,” interjected Liev.

  “‌—‌and you’re worried about a cell phone?”

  “Figures,” said Lisa, rolling her eyes.

  “No one asked you!” Darcy bit back.

  “Really? That reminds me of something,” said Lisa, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “Oh yeah. It reminds me of how nobody asked you to come along!”

  “Oh yes, somebody did! If I remember correctly, Charlie and Nash came to my house last night, asking me for help. Remember, Charlie?”

  Charlie shrugged and stammered. “I, uh‌…‌well, when you say….” He really did not think it was good for his health to join this conversation.

  Darcy turned to Nash. “Nash! Right?”

  Nash looked as if ready to burst into flames. He raised his finger and opened his mouth, but Darcy cut him off.

  “See?” she said, taking their stammering as enough affirmation. “They remember, you elitist‌
…‌bookworm!”

  “Hey!” cried Liev, defending his sister.

  Lisa, more than capable to defend herself, stood inches from Darcy, nose to nose.

  “Elitist bookworm? I suppose a pompous, rich brat like you wouldn’t understand the value of knowledge!”

  Nash, infuriated‌—‌temper measurable by degrees, Fahrenheit‌—‌and now feeling a little left out, jumped in between them.

  “Stop yelling! You blockheads are going to attract attention.”

  Darcy, Lisa, and Liev all took offense at being called “blockheads”‌—‌quite understandably‌—‌and turned on Nash. A cacophony of bickering teenagers rose into the night.

  Charlie inched forward, hesitant. “Guys, really, calm down.” He laid a hand on Nash’s shoulder.

  Nash reared back. “Don’t tell me to calm down!” he yelled, raising his boot and smashing it as hard as he could into the ground.

  And with that stomp, everyone stopped fighting. Blue sparks flew from beneath Nash’s winter boot. Literally. They scorched the sidewalk where they landed. But the sparks were not the real problem.

  Everyone dived away from Nash as a bolt of electricity stemmed from his boot. It flashed and flowed in a solid stream, causing their hair to stand on end. Looking very much like a bolt of lightning, the stream of electricity hit the nearest street lamp with the force of a baby elephant being thrown through the air. The light crashed sideways and flickered out. At the same time, Nash lifted his foot in shock and fell to the ground, and the lightning-like bolt of energy winked out of existence.

  Lying scattered in a broken circle, the five teens all exchanged looks of disbelief. Charlie pushed himself up and walked over to the street lamp.

  “The metal is melted.” He stared at Nash. “How did you…?”

  Nash looked just as stunned and disbelieving as everyone else.

  “I don’t know!” Then his face spread into a grin. He started laughing. Then, since he was already on the ground, he started rolling with the laughter.