by John Skipp
And his left hand found something soft.
Something thick.
The blackout curtain.
Dandrige grasped Peter roughly by the lapels. Peter grabbed blindly for anything: a weapon, a prayer . . .
And found both.
Dandrige yanked him straight up off the floor, mouth gaping, drawing him close . . .
. . . and Peter Vincent, The Great Vampire Killer, pushed a fourteen-inch sliver of packing crate squarely into his chest.
Dandrige stopped in mid-snarl, his one eye opened wide in shock and agony. Peter twisted out of his grasp. Dimly, the actor could see what was happening on the other side of the room.
Charley kicked at Amy’s face, striking a glancing blow. She fell back, and Charley pulled . . .
The curtain split open with a rending sound, sending a narrow beam of light slicing through the darkness.
Right into Jerry Dandrige’s back.
It hit the vampire like a freight train, slamming him against the stone wall and pinning him there, smoldering, a solid foot above the floor. He writhed like a slug under a magnifying glass, an endless keening wail issuing up from deep inside him. “NOOOOOOO!!!”
A cry echoed raucously by Amy, who watched in horror, her eyes turning milky and blind with terror. Charley lurched over, reaching behind her to grab another curtain. He pulled with both hands, the entire drape coming away this time, flooding the room with light. Charley grabbed the curtain as it fell, throwing it over Amy protectively. She curled into a fetal position under it, her cries muffled by the heavy fabric.
The light hit the shattered fragments of glass, sending countless refractions firing in every direction, spidery beams of cleansing color and light.
“Got you, mother-fucker!” cried Charley, staring at Dandrige victoriously.
The vampire cast him one final, baleful look. Seeing only his own death.
Seeing nothing.
Then—before Charley, Peter and God Almighty—Dandrige began to burn.
It didn’t take long. He seemed to fill with light: a clear, greenish glow that started deep inside, at his very core. It filled him until it seemed he might burst, puffing his torso out, stretching his limbs tight, rigid in agony.
Then it flooded out of his pores: brilliant fiery needles of light pushing out and out, intertwining with the countless prisms reflecting from the basement floor.
And he was molten, and he was charred, and he was ash, all in the space of a minute. All pinned to the alcove wall.
And he was awake through it all: awake, and aware.
His screams died like a candle being snuffed.
And it was over.
Peter and Charley lay in opposite corners of the room, sweating and panting and staring at one another in triumphant disbelief, as might the two sole survivors of a jet crash. Their gaze turned to the bundle of blackout drapery. Charley approached it, afraid to look under it.
Afraid not to.
He lifted it gingerly. Peter stared at him, covered in the thick gray ash that had been Jerry Dandrige, and waited. Charley looked up at him, his expression inscrutable, utterly drained.
“Peter,” he said. “Call an ambulance.”
EPILOGUE
Cookie Puss was back. Sometimes it seemed like Cookie Puss never really went away. There were nights where Charley woke up screaming, not with the pictures of Dandrige and Billy and Amy, but with the voice of Tom Carvel loudly croaking in his ears.
He lay back on his bed, a pile of pillows behind him, his shirt wide open and his pants undone. His many lacerations were pretty well healed over, although most of them had left scars that would never quite go away. For that, and for other reasons, he tended to like his clothing loose around him now.
Laying there, as he often did, made him think of the night when it had all begun: of godforsaken bra clasps and frustrated embraces, of Amy holding back while he plunged headlong. The sight of coffins being toted in the moonlight still lingered, of course; but it was little virginal Amy Peterson that he thought of most often, and her reluctant but firm resistance to his ardor.
It was something he would never know again.
The toad-voiced ice-cream vendor and his wares disappeared, thank God, from the screen. They were replaced, no thanks to God, by the bellowing pinheads from Barney’s Karpet Kingdom. Late-night television, Charley was convinced, went on in a permanent time warp. The constant flux of life and death notwithstanding, Barney’s would continue to sell carpets cheaper, every five minutes, on Channel 13.
He closed his eyes, and let himself slide back to the night of the end . . .
The aftermath had been nearly as lunatic as the events leading up to it. Somehow, he and Peter had managed to get Amy to the Brewster house, where the ambulance was to pick them up. Exposure to the sun didn’t seem to make her any worse, or any better. And neither he nor Peter were in the greatest shape themselves.
They had forgotten entirely about Evil Ed. It hurt to think about it, sometimes: how his erstwhile friend had died so horribly, then slipped so readily from virtually everyone’s mind. Charley hadn’t even known about it; there hadn’t been much time to discuss it at the time.
Mrs. Brewster had come home to an open door, a broken banister, a demolished table of knickknacks and a boneless pool of goop under the stairs. She had quite naturally called the police, not knowing that her son was already in something like custody.
And the questions! Oh, the questions! They gave no indication of ever coming to an end. Kindly old Lieutenant Detective Lennox had gone well out of his way to make the hours that followed as cheerful as possible. The famous vampire-hunting prowess of Peter Vincent had impressed him very little.
Seven hours later, when the police had finally and reluctantly allowed them to leave, they’d gotten back to the hospital just in time to discover Amy’s fate.
He opened his eyes at the sound of the Fright Night theme music: Bach’s ever-popular Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. The familiar drippy blood-red logo was draped over the familiar clips of Karloff, Lugosi, two generations of Chaneys.
Followed by the same old cheesy cemetery set.
Followed by the show’s terrific new host.
After Peter was fired, one of the wiseass stagehands had taken a shot at ghost-hosting. Within three days, half the teenage population of Rancho Corvallis had risen in protest. The station managers had been boggled by the response. The stagehand had gone back to wisecracking from the shadows.
The new host stood a good bit taller than the old Peter Vincent. Despite the neckbrace, he was a far more formidable presence. The utter confidence that had shown through, in all those old movies, was back.
“Good evening,” Peter camped in grand old fashion, “and welcome to Fright Night. Tonight’s grisly thriller takes you, not beyond the grave, but beyond the stars, as John Agar and Leo G. Carroll defend the earth from alien monsters in Mars Wants Flesh . . . !”
“Honey?” Charley’s mom called, rapping gently on the door. Charley jumped, just a little, and the figure beside him stirred.
“What is it, Mom?” he answered, zipping his pants with his one free hand. He didn’t think that she’d come in, but you could never tell.
“Just going to bed now, sweetie. Thank God for Valium.” He heard her try to stifle an enormous yawn, then giggle. “Good night, dears!”
“G’night, Mom.”
“G’night, Mrs. Brewster,” called a third voice, sleepily, from beside him.
It had been touch and go there for a while. Aside from the massive blood loss and the million lacerations (not the least of which were the two holes in her neck), she’d also been clubbed over the back of the head and hurled through a window. She’d made a reasonably speedy recovery; but even now, nearly three months later, she had a couple of spots that he was careful not to touch.
Only a couple. Very easily gotten around.
Amy sighed and curled around him. He sighed and held her tight. Her blouse was open, and the
greatly enhanced cleavage that Jerry Dandrige had given her pressed sweetly against his naked chest. The one good thing that came of this, he thought happily.
He’d skillfully removed her bra three hours ago, having mastered the art in the last few weeks of practice. They’d made love twice tonight, in fact; and from the way she was looking at him, the odds were good that they were about to do it again . . .
“Oh, Charley!” his mother interrupted again, this time from down the hall. “Did you notice that there are lights on in the house next door again? I swear, I don’t understand why people wait until the middle of the night to move! You’d think they’d be exhausted by the time they . . .”
“Damn,” Charley quietly hissed. Amy rolled her eyes and shrugged her shoulders. He gave her a little peck on the forehead, then dragged himself to his feet and moved to the window.
Directly across the way, in what had once been Dandrige’s bedroom window, a pair of baleful red eyes stared out at him.
“No,” he moaned, heart jackhammering in his chest, as the glowing red lights blinked once, twice. Amy jumped up from the bed and moved quickly to his side . . .
. . . as the lights blinked again, then veered sharply to the left and disappeared . . .
. . . as the U-Haul trailer backed hesitantly into the driveway, taillights blinking one last time and then cutting out completely. A harmless-looking middle-aged man in chinos and a jean jacket got out of the car. His equally harmless-looking family could be seen through the living room window.
Amy breathed a sigh of relief and held Charley tight. “You had me scared for a minute there.” She nuzzled his neck. “Now, please, come back to bed.”
Charley stood, rigid and uncertain, staring at the window that faced his own. The ghost of a woman’s scream echoed faintly in his mind. “I’m not so sure, baby,” he ventured hesitantly. “I mean, what if something is still knocking around in there? What if . . . ?”
Amy opened her blouse, and brushed her bare breasts against his shoulder blades.
“Then you’ll deal with it, lover.” She smiled. “In the meantime, deal with this.”
Charley groaned and turned to her. It was just the trailer lights, he told himself. Of course it was.
But what if . . . ?
Then Amy did something extra-specially nice, and the question became instantly moot. Then you’ll deal with it, lover, she’d said, with utter confidence.
And if it came down to it, he would.
“Right,” he whispered, reaching back casually to draw the blinds.
And the two of them went back to bed.
