PETER AND THE VAMPIRES (Volume One) (PETER AND THE MONSTERS)

by Darren Pillsbury

  That made him feel better. Almost.

  As he walked along slowly and peered all around, something occurred to him: the longer he stayed outside, the longer Mercy had to show up. Long time equals bad; short time equals better.

  Peter bolted for the garbage cans.

  Unfortunately one was full, and the metal lid on the other one was stuck. He grabbed the handle and pulled hard. The whole can came up an inch off the ground, then clattered down with a thud, all without the lid budging.

  Peter’s heart was pumping so hard it nearly exploded in his chest.

  Forget this. I can just leave the trash by the can…I’ll put it in tomorrow morning. Yeah, tomorrow morning, like I should’ve done in the first place.

  He dumped the bag on the ground and turned to run back to the house.

  Except Mercy was standing right in front of him, five feet away.

  “AAAAH!” Peter yelled and stumbled back into the garbage bag and the metal cans. The cans clanged loudly as they spilled to the ground. Peter tumbled down amongst them but scrambled quickly to his feet. As he got back up, his foot almost slipped on the lid of the garbage can, which had apparently been knocked loose in the fall.

  Oh great, NOW you come off.

  Mercy smiled. “Peeeteeeeer…”

  Her face was fully visible in the moonlight. So were her eyes. Deep pools of black, like a bottle of ink spilled in a puddle on the ground.

  “You were so unfriendly last night. I’m glad you came outside. Now we can talk.”

  “W-what do you want, Mercy?”

  “Silly…I want you.”

  Peter nearly tripped against the garbage cans as he tried to back up. His left foot got tangled in the plastic garbage bag ties, and he tried to shake it off.

  “I want you to come play with me. We can hang out, like when I asked you on the bus. Is that so much, Peeeteeeer? I just want to hang out with you. We’ll have fun, I promise. It’s so much fun. We can go wherever we want, we can fly wherever we want to…over the ocean and back again…and no school, Peeeteeeer, no one to tell us what to do. And if they try, well, then we just…”

  She smiled. The same smile a shark gives before it eats its prey.

  Peter shivered, and tried again to free his foot from the handles of the garbage bag. He kicked, and there was a clattering sound as junk fell out. The smell of rotting bananas and lasagna scraps filled the air.

  Mercy stepped closer. She was smiling, though not wide enough for her two snake teeth to be seen. But Peter knew they were there. He knew they were there just like he knew that this was the end.

  His last image in life would be those teeth as she lunged for his neck.

  The next image, whatever he saw, wouldn’t be with the eyes of a living person.

  “Peeeteeeeer, just think how fun it will be…we can stay up all night and no one will ever care. We can do whatever we want, and no one can ever stop us…”

  Dill…if only Dill were here.

  Dill would know what to do. He’d be able to figure it out –he’d watched every monster movie on TV, ever.

  Mercy was only three feet away now.

  Peter backed up – and fell. His hand squished into something wet and nasty from the garbage. Ugh.

  Forget about that. Think, think. Dill said silver bullets – crosses –

  Crosses.

  He held up his fingers so that one crossed the other, in a symbol like a ‘t’.

  Mercy looked down at him, puzzled.

  Peter looked at his hands. They were dripping red.

  He felt like screaming until he realized it was just lasagna sauce. That’s what he had put his hand in. But it was red and dripping. He tried not to imagine it as his own blood, which would be pouring out of his body any second now and into the mouth of Mercy Chalmers if this cross thing didn’t work –

  – which it seemed to be doing.

  She stood there, looking down at him and his lasagna covered, finger-made ‘t’ shape.

  Then she leaned over and, with her thumb and forefinger, effortlessly flicked his fingers apart like she was playing “Break The Pencil” at school and had just snapped somebody’s yellow #2.

  “Next time,” she smiled sweetly, “try using a real cross.”

  She leaned over him, and her mouth opened.

  Her fangs gleamed in the moonlight.

  Peter screamed and raised his hand to ward her off.

  His hand, dripping with red…lasagna sauce.

  Lasagna

  Italian

  Vampires hate Italian

  Garlic

  “Garlic!” Peter screamed, and reached up and smacked Mercy in the face with his goopy red hand.

  Mercy drew back in shock and closed her mouth. She looked down at the bits of noodle and cheese dripping onto her dress – and screeched. Loudly.

  “YOU MESSED UP MY DRESS, YOU LITTLE JERK!” she yelled as she tried to wipe away the red sauce.

  “There’s garlic in there!” Peter crowed. Bam!

  “No there’s not,” Mercy said contemptuously. “It’s a TV dinner.”

  Ohhhhhhhhhh man.

  Peter reached around for whatever he could get his hands on.

  Mercy lunged again with fangs bared.

  Peter’s hand closed on the trash can lid.

  Mercy was in the air, her arms outstretched.

  Peter hurled the garbage can lid through the air like a giant Frisbee –

  KRANG, right into the side of Mercy’s head.

  She went down like a bag of potatoes and thudded into the grass.

  “Oh crap, oh crap,” Peter whimpered. He got up and ran as fast as he could with the garbage bag tugging on his foot and ripping and scattering everything behind him.

  Mercy pushed herself up on her arms and looked over her shoulder.

  “That HURT,” she howled.

  Peter made the mistake of looking behind him as he ran for the kitchen door.

  It was like she was wearing a rope around her body that made her weightless. She just pushed off from the ground and suddenly she was in the air and hurtling towards him, arms outstretched and dress flapping in the wind.

  She was flying.

  Flying towards him.

  Peter turned around. He didn’t dare look back again.

  He could hear her hissing somewhere above him.

  He was at the kitchen door now. His fingers closed on the handle, and he flung open the screen door –

  BANG. Before he was even halfway through, the screen door slammed against his body, pinning him against the regular wooden kitchen door.

  Mercy was on the other side of the flimsy wire screen, wailing and scratching at it with fingernails that looked like knives. And she was ripping through it with every slash of her fingers.

  His hand fumbled for the doorknob as he watched her shredding the wire. In only a few more seconds, the gap she was tearing would be big enough to stick her head through.

  His fingers closed around the doorknob and twisted, just as the screen ripped apart and her head came through like a giant eel snapping at his throat.

  But he was already falling, falling backwards into the kitchen, where he thudded onto the hard linoleum floor.

  Above him the screen door slammed. As it did, Mercy’s head seemed to hit some invisible force field that made her draw back in pain and frustration. She tried again to force her way into the house, but the invisible glass wall repelled her once more and knocked her two feet back into the night.

  “You can’t get in unless I invite you,” Peter remembered. “And I AM NEVER GOING TO INVITE YOU IN!”

  Mercy howled and spat and screamed and huffed…and then stopped. She hovered gently in the air and looked directly into Peter’s eyes.

  “This isn’t over,” she said softly. And then she bolted straight up into the night sky, out of view, like God himself had pulled her by a string up into the clouds.

  27

  Peter lay there on the floor, chest heaving, until
he remembered where he was. He whirled around, his lasagna-covered hand leaving red palm prints on the floor, and prayed that his mother would be there, her mouth hanging open, ready to cry and babble about how sorry she was that she hadn’t trusted him, now she understood why he didn’t want to take out the garbage, and could he ever forgive her –

  She wasn’t there. Nobody was there.

  Peter looked back at the shredded screen door, and closed his eyes. He had no idea how he was going to explain that.

  Then he had to laugh, just a little. There was a murderous vampire obsessed with killing him and turning him into one of the undead…and he was worried that the screen door to the kitchen was ripped.

  Oh man.

  He hobbled to his feet and went to the sink. He turned on the water, washed off his hands, then dried them on a dish towel.

  What was he going to say? This was horrible. No matter what, Mom wasn’t going to believe him –

  “PETER!” his mother called.

  Peter jumped two feet. When he hit the ground again, he realized she was yelling from the front of the house.

  “In here!” he called back.

  She hadn’t seen the screen door…yet.

  Mom stuck her head in the doorway to the kitchen.

  Peter held his breath…then realized that the refrigerator was blocking her view of the kitchen back door.

  “Where have you been? I’ve been calling you for the last three minutes!”

  “Uh…out back with the garbage.”

  “Oh. Well, you have a little friend out in the front hallway.”

  Peter’s heart lifted.

  Dill.

  Now that Dill was here, he could help out. He would know what to do, he would know how to fix the situation, he had seen every Dracula movie there ever was. At the very least, he could take the blame for the ripped screen door.

  Which Mom hadn’t seen yet…although she would. But for now Peter was safe.

  “Don’t be too long, it’s a school night,” Mom said. “I’ll be upstairs, I’m putting Beth to bed.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  She walked through the kitchen and disappeared up the back stairs.

  Peter bolted for the front. He was almost there before he realized something was wrong: Dill wouldn’t have come to the house. He would have called.

  But maybe he saw Peter fighting Mercy and ran outside.

  But then why didn’t he come and help?

  Well…Dill was kind of a coward when it came to monsters.

  But he wouldn’t leave Peter alone to die like that…

  Peter slowed down as he approached the front foyer.

  There was only one explanation.

  Mercy.

  No, that wasn’t right either – Mom had said that she’d been calling for three minutes.

  Peter had been fighting Mercy for the last three minutes, easily. There was no way Mercy could have gotten inside the house during that time…was there?

  Vampires could fly, but as far as Peter knew they couldn’t clone themselves.

  Or so he thought, until he rounded the end of the giant stairwell.

  28

  It wasn’t Mercy, though.

  But it wasn’t Dill, either.

  In fact, it wasn’t anybody. Not that Peter could see.

  In the living room across from the stairs was a long mirror that stretched over the fireplace. In it, he could see the reflection of the entire room, including himself, as he approached. And there was no one in there.

  Peter walked into the room. “Anybody here?”

  “Just little old me,” a voice behind him said.

  Peter whirled around. It was a girl with blond curls and a pug nose. She was wearing a plaid dress and a ruffled white blouse.

  Agnes Smithouse. The girl who had disappeared.

  Peter glanced at the mirror over the fireplace.

  According to the reflection, he was the only one in the room.

  Peter looked back at her. There was a scarf around her neck and white sunglasses perched on her nose. Both hid something horrible, Peter was sure of it. Two bloody little bite marks…and eyes black as night.

  Agnes smiled ever-so-friendly at him from behind the plastic daisies ringing her shades. “Hi, Peter. It’s nice to see you again.”

  Ice water filled Peter’s feet and legs. “What are you doing here?” he croaked.

  “Your mother was so nice to invite me in,” Agnes explained. “You know the best part about that? I can come over any time I want now!”

  Agnes clapped her hands like she’d just gotten the birthday present she wanted most in the world.

  Peter felt like throwing up. “What do you want?”

  He moved slightly, to put a table and lamp between him and Agnes.

  “Just to see how your talk with Mercy went.”

  “My talk.”

  “Just now. Out in the yard.”

  You mean the one where she tried to suck out all my blood?

  “Um…well…”

  “She said I should come with her, but she seemed like she wanted to spend some alone time with you,” Agnes confided. “And I was like, ‘That’s cool, I’ll just hang out.’ And then I thought, ‘Y’know, if it doesn’t go so great, maybe we better have a plan B.’” Agnes smiled sweetly. “So I told Mercy, and she was like, ‘Great,’ and I rang your doorbell, and now here I am!”

  “Uh-huh.” Peter nodded, trying to take it all in. “Soooo…what do you want?”

  Agnes leaned in. Her eyebrows arched high over her sunglasses. “Do you like Mercy?”

  Peter squinted. “What?”

  “She likes you,” Agnes whispered in a fake way, as though Mercy was right outside the room and could hear.

  Maybe she really is.

  Peter’s stomach turned, and he darted a quick glance around. No Mercy.

  “You’re all she ever talks about,” Agnes continued. “She’s just boy-crazy. ‘Peter this, Peter that.’ So I came over to find out if you like her.”

  “Like her?”

  She just tried to kill me, Agnes. Tell Mercy I want to marry her.

  “Couldn’t you have sent a note over?” Peter asked, and edged behind the couch.

  “Like ‘Check Yes or No’?” Agnes laughed. “We talked about it, but that’s more of a school thing, and as you’ve probably guessed, I don’t think we’ll be going back to school anymore.” Agnes grinned. “Unless they start having night classes.”

  Peter was looking for something, anything, he could use as a weapon. So far he could only see a candlestick, but it looked like it was brass and not silver. There were some old National Geographics lying around, but he doubted he could kill a vampire with paper cuts.

  “Soooo…what do you want, Agnes?” Peter said for the umpteenth time.

  “Do you like Mercy?”

  “Uhhhhh…Mercy’s okay…” How do I say this and not get killed? “…but I don’t really like her the way I think she likes me. Maybe we should just be friends.”

  Agnes stamped her foot. “Mercy’s not going to like that.”

  Yeah, she didn’t seem to like it too much when she was ripping through the screen door with her claws and fangs.

  Agnes sighed. “I told her girls mature faster than boys. I said, ‘Let’s go find a cute fifth grader, an older man,’ but nooooooo, she has to have you.”

  Peter shrugged and smiled goofily. “You know me, I’m just really…immature.”

  Agnes took her first step towards Peter. Peter automatically took two steps back.

  “I think you could really learn to like her. Just spend a little time with her, Peter. It’ll be a friends thing – love can come later. We’re going to have so much fun! You really don’t know what you’re missing out on! No more school, ever.”

  That would normally be reason enough for Peter to do just about anything, short of selling his soul. At the moment, however, the safety of Mrs. Cashew’s classroom seemed like the most wonderful thing in the world.<
br />
  Peter studied the doorway to the den out of the corner of his eye. If he bolted for it, could he outrun her?

  “Um, you know, I think I’m going to stick with school.”

  Agnes frowned. “Really.”

  Running was his best option. There was nothing in here to defend himself with.

  But there are knives in the kitchen.

  “Yeah. I’m, uh…I’m really digging fractions.”

  “Fractions.”

  “Yeah. It’s like…pie.”

  “Pie.” Agnes frowned, clearly not following.

  Good. Confuse her. Count of three – on strawberry pie.

  “Yeaaaah. Banana cream pie…cherry pie…straw – ”

  “I love your family, Peter,” Agnes interrupted.

  Peter froze, the countdown kaput. He hadn’t been expecting that.

  “Your mom was carrying your little sister when she answered the door – she’s sooo cute!” Agnes squealed.

  And then her voice changed, got darker. There was an evil sense of humor in her words now.

  “So cute that I could just eat her up.”

  Peter’s blood went from icy to boiling. “You stay away from my sister,” he snarled.

  “All that talk about pie was making me hungry.” Agnes smiled. “Well, what about your mom?”

  “If you hurt my mom…”

  “You’ll what? What’ll you do, Peter?” Agnes mocked him.

  Peter’s entire body shook – from fear or anger, he couldn’t tell.

  When Agnes next spoke, her voice was soothing, gentle. “It doesn’t have to be like this. All you have to do is come with me. Mercy came and got me last night, and it’s been…”

  Agnes took a big breath and blew it out.

  “It’s wonderful, Peter. Don’t get me wrong, it was scary at first…the dying part. But then I woke up again a couple of hours ago, just like Mercy said. Everything is just like she said. Flying is so cool…and life is going to be different now. School doesn’t matter…grown-ups don’t matter…the only bad thing is how thirsty you get,” Agnes muttered, and licked her lips. “But Mercy told me there’s something you can do to make that go away, too.”

  Peter realized that she was looking at his neck. It felt like a cockroach was creeping across his skin.