“Ha! I knew it!” She pointed at him, like an actor in a courtroom drama who was really enjoying her role. “You were going to rob the place. What are you, some kind of criminal? I should have known you couldn’t afford that car.”
“That car was a gift,” he sputtered, then, realizing that he was defending himself to a woman he planned on making a meal of, stopped himself. “Look, what does it matter? I was there, and I saved your life.”
“And you’re probably going to steal my silverware when my back is turned.” She shook her head, glaring off at seemingly nothing, as though accusing the air of ruining her evening. “This is just great.”
“Yeah, I’m having a hell of a time, myself.”
Her eyes narrowed as she glared back to him. “You’re out of here tonight. We’ll go down to June’s Place and foist you off on someone else.”
“Foist?” He chuckled. “That’s a pretty big word for a farm girl.”
Ignoring the barb, she dropped a plate in front of him. As she sauntered out of the kitchen, she snapped, “Eat up.”
“Oh, believe me, I will,” he said under his breath, and reluctantly lifted his fork.
They set out right after sunset. Jessa’s understanding of sunlight was that when the sun went down, there was no sunlight. It was a simplistic belief, but he couldn’t really expect much else from someone who was basically a Hee Haw personality. The residual light prickled his skin, but didn’t burn him. It did bring back the unpleasant memories of being nearly roasted alive in the trunk of his car, which he didn’t appreciate.
Before he killed her, he’d have to ask her where he could find a map to get back to the highway, so he wouldn’t get stuck in a similar situation once he got out of here. Who knew how many void towns there were in Ohio?
“You need to behave yourself,” Jessa scolded. He hadn’t even done anything yet. “Tom Stoke is the sheriff here. He doesn’t take lip from anybody, not even guys with fancy cars. And he has a way of dealing with people who don’t fall in line.”
“Tar and feathers?” Graf guessed, but Jessa didn’t smile. She pressed her lips together into an unattractive line and kept walking, head down.
Maybe this Tom person thought he was a tough guy, but most tough guys crumbled like dust when a vampire started sticking their teeth in them. Not dust…more like rag dolls.
“People in town don’t like different,” she warned ominously. “Bad things can happen.”
He would worry about bad things later. Right now, he needed to figure out a way to get out of town. He would think about bad things and this place when he was driving far, far away from it.
Tom Stoke’s house wasn’t a house so much as it was a single-wide trailer parked on a depressing lot surrounded by tall grass. Just after the grass a rotting wooden bridge spanned the gap over a ditch that ran through his driveway, giving the place the appearance of having a moat. It was like the worst castle in the history of all castles.
“Sheriff?” Jessa called, picking her way across the collapsing bridge. “It’s Jessa Gallagher. I’m coming to your door.”
Graf noticed the hand-painted, misspelled TRESPASERS WILL BE SHOT ON SITE sign as he crossed the bridge behind her. The front door of the trailer swung open, and a dumpy man—who looked to be about sixty in Graf’s estimation—came out to stand on the cinder-block steps. He held a rifle at his side. Totally normal way to answer a door.
“Who’s that with you? Derek?”
“No. This is what I came here to talk to you about,” Jessa shouted back, indicating Graf with a jerk of her thumb. “Sorry to come out so late, but I can explain.”
They crossed the yard, mostly hard dirt with a few pathetic yellow clumps of grass, and Graf ducked into the shade beside the trailer. In the twilight, nearly everything was shade, but this was a cool patch that had been sunless for hours, far more comfortable than the residual heat that lingered everywhere else.
The sheriff looked Graf up and down, stroking his beard with two fingers. “I’ll be damned,” he said, beady gray eyes squinting even further in his wrinkled face. He looked like Santa Claus’s brother who’d done some time in jail for DUI. Multiple DUIs.
Jessa pushed some stray, sweat-dampened hair from her face. “I found him on the road last night, out by the service station. He said he stopped for gas, but I’m pretty sure he stopped to rob the place.”
Narc, Graf thought. Maybe she was hoping the sheriff would arrest him right then and there, and take her problem guest off her hands. “It was a good thing I stopped, though, or you would have been dead.”
“That’s true,” Jessa agreed, surprisingly. “I was out there running from It, and if he hadn’t been there…I don’t want to think about what would have happened.” She said the last part the way bad actors deliver lines in Westerns. Not convincing, and you knew that they were mimicking the performance of someone better. Which gave Graf the distinct impression that she would have rather been caught by the monster. Either she was suicidal, or she hated him enough that she would rather be dead than know him. Either way, he had the solution to her problem.
“Doesn’t really matter why he was out there, does it? Not when there ain’t nothing out there to rob.” The sheriff put out his hand. “Tom Stoke. Sheriff. Let’s not worry about what you were doing out there. Let’s talk about how you got into this here town at all.”
He welcomed them inside the trailer. The interior was in a lot better shape than the exterior, though on a purely functional level only. On an aesthetic level, it was the seventh circle of hell. The walls were covered in wood paneling, save the small, open kitchen wall-papered in a print of huge mauve roses with metallic gold leaves. Not that much of the wall coverings were visible between the commemorative Elvis plates and shelves of Precious Moments figurines.
This decorating schema was as close to wholesome as Graf figured he’d ever get, and just standing in the midst of all of it made his skin itch.
“Marjorie, you wanna go to the kitchen? I got official business here,” the sheriff said to a woman about his age dressed in a sweat suit with a picture of two kittens snuggling on the front. She set aside the tattered crossword puzzle book she had been working on and nodded, not in a friendly way, to Jessa as she walked past.
“Sit down, young man,” Tom said, taking up residence in what was probably his regular chair, a wooden rocker with padded seat and arms. “Tell me how you got here.”
Graf took a seat in the armchair Marjorie had vacated, leaving Jessa standing awkwardly by the door. “Well, I got off an exit on 75 hoping to bypass a traffic jam, then I got all turned around. I was running out of gas and needed to get somewhere to sleep, so I pulled over at the gas station. I figured it was closed, but I thought I could sleep there and get gas when it opened in the morning. It was a win-win situation.”
“And that’s where you saw Jessa?” The sheriff glanced suspiciously at her. Maybe she had a record. Stealing street signs or something smalltownish like that.
Either way, the sheriff seemed to believe him more than he would likely believe Jessa. Her antagonistic glare cut right into him, practically carving liar on his forehead.
“Yeah. I saw the beam of a flashlight in the windows, so I went in to investigate. That’s when It attacked us. Mighty nice monster you got out here, Sheriff.” Graf tipped his imaginary cowboy hat, but Stoke didn’t crack a smile.
“I don’t know how much Jessa has told you about this town, but we ain’t had any strangers here in five years.” The sheriff rocked in his chair like a shark circling a wounded seal. “You’ll have to pardon me if I get a little suspicious when I hear your story.”
“That’s fine.” Graf held up his hands. “I’m suspicious, myself. I’m supposed to be meeting friends down in D.C., and they’re going to be worried if I don’t show up soon.”
“D.C.?” Stoke’s eyebrows shot up at that. “You FBI?”
Graf hesitated. “No…I was on my way to a party.”
“He’s
not FBI,” Jessa said with certainty. “He’s too dumb to be FBI.”
I’m smart enough to F. U. Up. He didn’t give her the satisfaction of acknowledging her remark. “The FBI has probably tried to get in here a million times, you’ve just never noticed. Think about it—all you people suddenly missing, not contacting your loved ones, not paying your bills. Heck, someone in this town has to have a car loan they defaulted on. You’re so far lost, even a skip tracer can’t find you.”
Stoke stopped rocking and leaned forward in his chair. “We know all about that, boy. If you ain’t FBI, and you ain’t the IRS or some other government agent, just a normal guy, how’d you get here?”
“That’s something I am dying to find out.” The sooner he found out how he’d gotten in, the sooner he could use that information to get out.
“Ain’t we all?” Stoke glanced up at Jessa. “I don’t know what you think I’m gonna do about him.”
“I couldn’t just keep this kind of news from you. You’re the head of the town council. You’re the sheriff. They’ll all want to know about him, won’t they? Besides, he needs a place to stay,” Jessa piped up, her arms folded tight across her chest. Everything about her body language said that she wasn’t intimidated by this man, from the way she leaned casually against his door to the expression of boredom on her face. She feared him, though. Graf’s sense of smell was too good to miss that.
Stoke’s mouth canted sideways in the depths of his beard as he considered. Finally, he said, “You got that big house all to yourself out there, don’t you?”
She shook her head adamantly. “No, he can’t stay.”
“Put a crimp in your love life, does he?” Mrs. Stoke said blandly from the kitchen.
“Marjorie, you stay out of it, now,” the sheriff warned. Then, in the same warning tone, “Jessa, there are too many people in town and not enough room. What am I supposed to do with him?”
“Put him in over at the school,” she said with an exasperated sigh. The fear smell intensified, but so did her stubborn insistence that Graf wouldn’t stay with her. “Nobody’s using it!”
“Why, you know I’m using it for the jail. And school is neutral property, for the community. It ain’t a hotel.” Sheriff Stoke looked Graf up and down, like he was considering buying a cow. “Why don’t you take him on down to June’s Place and see if anyone there will take him? If you don’t want an extra hand around your place, there’s plenty who might.”
“I’m sure you’ll find something to do with him,” Marjorie put in dryly.
Apparently, Jessa had a reputation. Was that why she wanted him out of the house? So she wouldn’t sleep with him? Jessa, so uptight and moody, yet so unable to resist a roll in the hay with any guy who stumbled across her path. It was actually kind of hot. The reality was probably not that interesting. She probably just didn’t trust him, and didn’t want him to get in the way of her romance with a married man.
Jessa made a disgusted noise, but she didn’t do anything else to express her disapproval. “We better get heading over there, then.”
“I’m not quite done with your friend here,” Sheriff Stoke said, leaning back and putting his big, square hands on his knees. “I don’t believe in coincidences. Him just showing up looks a little fishy.”
“In my own defense, Sheriff, this whole town looks a little fishy,” Graf replied, annoyed. “It wasn’t my idea to get stuck here. And I will gladly leave at the first opportunity.”
“Wouldn’t we all?” Stoke agreed, but his expression was still hard, accusing. “I’m gonna have my eye on you, boy. Just keep your nose clean, and we won’t have any problems.”
“Squeaky, I assure you.” Graf stood, eager to be out of Elvis hell and away from these people who probably made a habit of needlessly mistrusting others.
“You have a good night, now,” Stoke said with a nod as Graf and Jessa stepped through the door and down the cinder-block steps. “And, Graf, keep your eye out. You got hit by It once, but until it draws blood, it’ll keep coming after you.”
“Well, that was a waste,” Graf muttered as they crossed the broken-down bridge.
“Not a waste, believe me.” Jessa sounded more worried than she had on the way over, definitely more frightened than she had in the trailer. “If we hadn’t come by, we would have heard about it.”
“What did he mean, about It drawing blood?” Was It some kind of mutant super-vampire? Graf didn’t know if he liked the idea of something else above him on the food chain.
Jessa’s mouth opened and her brow scrunched up. “Uh, well, that depends on who you ask. Some people in town have a theory about its movements and patterns.”
“You don’t agree with it?” How unlike her, to be contrary.
She shrugged. “I just have experience that runs counter to it.”
He waited a moment as they walked to see if she would continue explaining. When she didn’t, he snapped, “You wanna let me in on it?”
With a heavy sigh, she explained, “Except for the people It has killed, once it injures somebody it never goes back for them.”
“Could be a coincidence.” Graf kicked a rock and watched it bounce across the asphalt in the twilight. He frowned when he realized how entertaining that was to him.
“That’s what I’m leaning toward, myself. It does seem a little weird, though…” Her voice trailed off and she shook her head.
“No, tell me.” This was the kind of stuff he needed to learn so he could get out of town as fast as possible.
“Well.” She hesitated. “According to Mitch Moody, when It cornered him in his barn, it slashed his arm, then immediately backed off. Like it didn’t like the way he reacted or got bored with him.”
“Maybe he didn’t smell tasty,” Graf wondered aloud. “I mean, maybe there was something about the guy’s blood. Animals won’t eat prey that smells sick.”
“It doesn’t eat people,” Jessa snapped with disgust. “You don’t have to be so gruesome-minded.”
He changed the subject quickly. “What was up with the sheriff’s wife? Did you piss on her birthday cake or something?”
Jessa didn’t answer. She kept her head down as they walked, still hugging her arms around her chest.
“Well, let me feel free to form my own conclusions, then,” he went on. “You have a reputation.”
“What are you, from the sixties or something?” she snapped. “A ‘reputation’? Who am I, Rizzo?”
“I see I have struck a nerve.” He followed behind her, kicking stones down the road. “And, while dated, reputation is a perfectly good word. You have one. Either that, or you stole Marjorie’s boyfriend when the two of you were in high school.”
Jessa stopped walking and dropped her hands to her hips. Without facing him, she ground out, “Yes, everybody in town thinks I’m a whore. Are you happy?”
“I don’t care either way. But if I’m going to be shacking up with a woman, I would prefer her to be a loose woman.”
The minute she turned around, Graf knew his joke had not been interpreted in the spirit with which he had intended it. Jessa’s hand slashed out, her palm connecting with his cheek with a crack. It stung a little, but he made sure to grimace and rub his jaw. Little tricks like that made a vampire seem more human.
“Sorry,” he said, and he meant it this time. Being an asshole on purpose was one thing; being an asshole by accident was worse, somehow.
Jessa shook her head and turned back to the road, marching away from him with purpose.
“Look, that was uncalled-for, I admit.” He jogged to catch up with her, then slid smoothly in front, cutting off her forward progress. “We should at least try to get along until this whole mess is straightened out.”
“It’s never going to be straightened out, pal. You’re here for a while.” But she stuck her hand out, anyway, and shook the one Graf offered. “Just so you know, we’ll get along a lot better if you can refrain from calling me a whore.”
“I will file th
at away,” he promised.
“…and then it became a kind of co-op for everyone in town. A central meeting place.”
Graf nodded, though he hadn’t been listening for some time. As they walked through the dark, he’d asked one innocent question about their destination— June’s Place—and had received a history lesson that had lasted at least a mile. His feet ached, his throat was dry, and his ears were his worst enemy.
“So, there’s going to be someone there willing to take me in, then?” He slapped a mosquito off his neck.
Jessa shrugged. “Maybe. Despite what Sheriff Stoke said, you might be able to get one of the rooms at the old high school, if enough people argue on my side. There aren’t classes anymore, because of It.”
Scanning the road behind them, then ahead of them, Graf took some comfort in the shotgun tucked under Jessa’s arm. He didn’t have a clue what “It” was, but he didn’t feel the burning need to run into the thing again to try to figure it out. “So, people are afraid of It, enough that they won’t send their kids to school anymore, but they’ll come out to this June’s Place in the middle of the night?”
She shook her head. “It’s different, when it’s kids you’re talking about. People know they’re taking a chance coming out, but they’re more comfortable taking that chance when it’s just them and not their babies likely to get killed. Anyway, the people who’ve already been attacked don’t have anything to worry about, in their minds.”
“How many people has this thing killed, then?” he asked. “Like, has it ever killed a kid, for these fears to be warranted?”
“It has. One.” Jessa’s face got the same bitter, far-off look she’d had in the kitchen when he’d mentioned the stupid chore chart on the fridge the night before. It was the kind of expression that was visible even in the dark.
“Ah,” he said in understanding. “So, I take it that’s what happened to your family?”
“No. Someone else…” she said, and then a brightness in her voice signaled that their conversation would not be heading down that particular road. “Really, it hasn’t killed that many people. And the ones who’ve died either got in It’s way, or they picked a fight with It. Protecting livestock or their kids, you know?”
American Vampire Page 5
